Blown Away

by Shane Gericke

  Oh, no. Emily was that pretty young pitcher whose parents objected when Dwight razzed that umpire. Her husband’s face pinched like a crab claw every time he brought up Mr. Thompson’s name, which was at least once a week, even after all these years. “Why do you say that, Brady?” she asked, not knowing what Dwight had told him. “Why wouldn’t your father approve of your seeing Emily?”

  “He ordered me to stay away from her, Mom,” Brady said. “After that softball game with Our Lady. I can’t even talk to her at school. He said Emily and her parents are jealous of our success. That they’re blue-collar trash and they want to make big trouble for our family.”

  Not knowing what Brady meant, she asked, “What did the Thompsons do—”

  “I don’t believe it, Mom! Emily’s great!” Brady interrupted, frustration pouring out. “She’s supersmart and plays baseball as good as I do. She’s beautiful. And she doesn’t take crap from anyone, not anyone. She keeps trying to talk to me, Mom. Even after I ignore her and treat her like garbage. Why can’t I talk to her, maybe help her with math or something? Why won’t Father let me ask her to the dance? It’s not fair!”

  “Kojak’s on!” Emily squealed, prompting the fast break from the game table to the TV set. Mama darted to the kitchen for the ice cream, Daddy tuned the channel, and Emily pushed Mama’s rocker next to Daddy’s chair. Mama passed out bowls of French vanilla as Emily plopped onto the shag carpet, sitting up against Daddy’s shins. She was too old to sit on his lap—“Those sharp elbows just poke me to death,” he teased—and this was the next best thing. They spooned in unison as the theme song played. “Ahhhh,” Daddy moaned after the first swallow. “I’m telling you, ladies, the French do everything right! Maybe we’ll fly there when Emily graduates college. I’ll show you my D-day beach and all the places I visited after I personally plucked out Hitler’s mustache.”

  “Oui, oui, monsieur,” Mama said, rubbing his thigh. “And we’ll find those French doctors who kept you alive after being shot. I want to thank them for all the years we’ve had.”

  “Shhhh!” Emily shushed. “Kojak’s gonna say it…now!”

  “Who loves ya, baby?” they shouted in unison.

  Alice fumed as Brady turned to hide embarrassed tears. Why should her boy have to worry about the simple act of asking a girl to a school dance? Why should he have to worry about anything at age thirteen? And why, in fact, should I? As Dwight’s career stalled, thanks to that investment scandal in L.A., the “corrections” of his family were getting worse. After he locked Brady in a closet for an entire weekend, she’d said she wanted the family to seek professional counseling to learn how to not anger Dwight so much. Instead, she couldn’t leave the house for a week lest neighbors notice the staggering gait that came from her kidneys being punched till she threw up. Thanks to his high income, winning personality, and soundproof root cellar, everyone believed Dwight was a fine, upstanding family man who doted on his son and wife. Which he did, actually, in between “punishing” and “correcting” and “guiding to greatness.” He was handsome and articulate, with a keen eye for clothes, cars, and artwork. He was a stallion in bed and didn’t fool around on the side as far as she knew. Professionally unstoppable until the scandal, he provided a beautiful home in a safe neighborhood, with all the modern conveniences a wife could want. He never forbade her girlfriends from visiting and was garrulous even to strangers, greeting them as “friends I haven’t met yet.” More than one wife had confided to her during a coffee klatch that they’d kill for such a great husband.

  But those were trappings, she’d finally come to realize, and they just weren’t enough any more. Death or crippling shouldn’t be the tax she paid for Dwight’s love. Her best friend, Maggie, said she’d take them into her home in Wisconsin “for as long as it takes,” so food, clothing, and shelter were covered. She could get a job at a tourist boutique, work her way up, maybe attend night school and start her own business. She’d make it, no matter what. The real problem was Brady. He worshipped Dwight. Like a slave loves his cruel master perhaps, as Maggie so sourly put it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

  As for Dwight, she had a pretty good idea how he’d react. Which is why she’d decided to flee while he was out of town. Maggie would arrive any minute from Lake Geneva, they’d throw in the suitcases she’d already packed, and their new life would begin. If losing his family jarred Dwight into seeking help, maybe one day they could return. Despite his abusive ways, she still loved him, and Brady still needed a father. But she couldn’t keep assuming their son wouldn’t die in one of Dwight’s frenzies. Accidentally, of course, but that wouldn’t make the ground less cold or the darkness less eternal. She owed her child this chance to keep living.

  “Honey,” she said, stroking her boy’s butter blond curls. “I’ve got some fun news. Aunt Maggie called while you were at practice. She wants us to come visit. Would you like that?”

  “Sure!” he said, brightening. “Aunt” Maggie was his overwhelming favorite of Mom’s friends. He loved the hills, forests, and endless blue water of her home in Lake Geneva, where he could swim, fish, and hunt to his heart’s content. “With that rifle Father bought me for my birthday, I could shoot enough rabbits to feed us for a week,” he said. “Could we stay that long?”

  “Maybe even longer,” Alice said, smiling. “And honey, we can leave right now….”

  “Holy cannoli!” Gerald barked. “That’s the ugliest Mr. Potato Head I’ve ever seen!”

  Emily held up her gnarled, sprouting creation. “It looks like Father Snowe!”

  “Now, Emily,” Alexandra admonished as she scooped more ice cream into the bowls. “You shouldn’t say mean things about people.”

  “Even if it’s true?” Gerald asked.

  “Truth is entirely beside the point, dear,” Alexandra said, squishing a glob of French vanilla on his ski-slope nose. He crossed his eyes like Crazy Guggenheim, trying to lick it with his tongue, making Emily fall off her chair giggling.

  “Finally,” Dwight grumbled as the baggage carousel rumbled to life. “The one time I catch an early flight, the luggage takes forever.” He grabbed his blue Samsonite, walked outside to hail a taxi, headed for the Southwest Side.

  “No way! We can’t leave Father!” Brady said, shocked at what Mom said when he asked why she’d packed so many suitcases. “He loves us. We love him!”

  “That’s true, darling,” Alice said. “But we’re not leaving your father. We’ve giving him time to deal with his problems.”

  “He doesn’t have any problems!”

  “Yes, he does,” she said. “He beats us senseless when he’s angry. Makes you do push-ups till you vomit, then punches you for dirtying the floor. He burned your foot with that cigarette—”

  “I deserved that, Mom! I didn’t run fast enough to make the catch! I lost us the championship—”

  “And he forces you into that little closet. Wrapped in your own wet sheets. Remember that?”

  Brady’s shudder made her pray Maggie didn’t get a flat tire. “He’ll beat you so badly one of these days, you won’t recover. You wouldn’t be able to play football or go to college. You might not even be able to walk.”

  “Father would never do that!” Brady howled, springing from the chair. “Never! We’re his family!”

  The Yellow Cab turned onto Dwight’s well-lighted street. “Hey, Mr. Kepp, didja run into any of them Hollywood starlets on your trip?” the cabbie inquired.

  “I sure did, friend,” Dwight said. “There were several at the dinner party the L.A. boys threw for me last night. Liz Taylor even stopped by.”

  “Hoo-wee!” the cabbie said, mightily impressed. “So didja…you know…get lucky?”

  “Didn’t try,” Dwight said, clapping the bony man’s shoulder. “The only starlet I want lives right there in my house. I’ve been away from her and my boy much too long.” The cabbie pulled to the curb, retrieved the suitcase from the trunk, grinned at the huge tip. “Wow! Thanks!�
� he enthused. “Any time you need a ride, you ask for me personally, Mr. Kepp. I’ll take real good care of you.”

  Dwight nodded, then headed to the front door, suitcase in one hand, Chinese takeout in the other. He had the cabbie stop on the way. His family would celebrate tonight. He’d managed to convince Los Angeles prosecutors the firm had zero knowledge of the office manager’s deceptions and should be held criminally blameless. That would put him back on the fast track. He’d also quietly put a chunk of his own savings into this midget-computer thing. If it worked out half as well as he thought it might, forget CEO—he’d own the damn company.

  “Hey, remember that guy?” the senior Chicago cop asked his junior partner as Dwight disappeared into the white brick house. “Kepp?”

  “Yeah,” junior said. “We rousted him for beating his kid? Three or four years ago?”

  Senior nodded, jinking the cruiser around a pothole. “Guess it worked,” he said. “He’s been a good boy ever since. Hope his son’s doing OK.”

  “I hope Mama’s OK,” junior said, fondly recalling the lithe beauty of Kepp’s wife.

  “Don’t let your old lady hear that,” senior laughed. “She’s a pistol. She’ll mount your pecker over the fireplace for sure!”

  “Beautiful night for a walk,” Alexandra said, linking her arm through her husband’s.

  “You say that even when it’s twenty below and I’m freezing my balls off.”

  “But you love how I warm them afterwards,” Alexandra teased. Gerald winked, then pointed to the Kepp house, the turnaround point of tonight’s meander. “Not a peep,” he said, nodding to the cops driving by. “Guess old man Kepp listened to me.”

  Alexandra snuggled closer.

  Emily washed the Jell-O bowls as her parents took their “constitutional.” She found herself thinking of Brady Kepp in his tight orange football uniform. Their little cold war had started thawing after she beat him up, and they’d come to like each other. She knew they’d never be boyfriend-girlfriend or anything—their parents’ dislike made that impossible—but they might get away with going to homecoming together. If Brady didn’t ask her by the first day of school, she’d bicycle over to his house and pop the question herself.

  “Yes, Brady, we are leaving,” Alice said firmly. They still had five hours before Dwight’s plane landed, and Maggie had called from a gas station to say she was thirty minutes out. “I’ll call him from Aunt Maggie’s and explain what’s going on. When he gets help for his problem, we’ll come home.”

  “This is all my fault!” Brady raged, pacing the kitchen like a caged tiger. “I tell you I like Emily, and now we have to leave! Forget Emily, Mom! I don’t want to see her anymore! Or her stupid family! Never! Just don’t make us leave home! I want our family the way it is!”

  “What are you talking about, boy?” Dwight snarled, flinging the egg foo young as he stomped into the kitchen. “Who the hell’s leaving home?”

  Alice wheeled in panic. Brady wheeled, too, overjoyed Father was home to stop this crazy thing. “I told Mom I want to take Emily Thompson to homecoming,” he explained. “Now she says we have to go live with Aunt Maggie, and we can’t see you till the doctor says you’re better!”

  Dwight backhanded Brady across the butcher-block table. “How dare you tell such lies about your mother! After all she’s done for you!”

  “Leave him alone!” Alice shrieked, planting herself between husband and son. “He’s not lying, Dwight! You’re sick and you need help! You’re going to kill us with your beatings, and I can’t take it any longer! Maggie’s picking us up, and we’re living with her till you’re cured!”

  Dwight roared and flung himself at his wife.

  Gerald swore a blue streak as shrieking erupted from the Kepp house. He waved his arms at the cops, who’d already pulled a U-turn and flipped on lights and siren. “Kepp’s killing his family!” he yelled as the cruiser screeched to the curb. “Stop him!”

  Dwight’s belt slashed to bone, but Alice refused to abandon Brady. “You’ll never leave me, you cunt!” he screamed as the sterling silver buckle filleted her back. “Never! Never!”

  The cops pounded on the door. Two more cruisers spilled reinforcements. “This isn’t our fight anymore,” Alexandra said, tugging her husband away. “The law will deal with Mr. Kepp.”

  Alice’s head spun, her body burning like napalm. Dwight was so berserk, he’d already cracked half her ribs. If she passed out, there’d be no one to shield her son.

  She crawled to the counter, drawing Dwight away from Brady. Spitting broken teeth, she stood, absorbing his pummeling fists, feeling for the big china bowl behind her. “Stop it!” she screamed, flinging bloody chicken and flour into Dwight’s face. She smashed the bowl on the cast-iron sink, waved a foot-long shard. “Get out of this house!” she ordered, his snarling image swimming out of focus. “Brady and I are leaving, and you can’t stop us! Get out of my way, Dwight, or I’ll cut you to ribbons!”

  “No!” Brady wailed, seeing blood spurt from where Mom gripped the shard. He exploded from the floor and grabbed it from her hand so she wouldn’t get hurt more. His feet scribbled on wet chicken, and he fell, the razor-sharp edge slashing hard across her neck. Arterial blood exploded, and Alice crumpled, eyes staring into her horrified son’s. Dwight made a strangled cry and snatched the shard from Brady. “Why the hell did you do that?” he croaked.

  “I was protecting her!” Brady cried. “I didn’t want anybody to get hurt!”

  “But you did, boy! You did! You killed your own mother!” Over and over he kneed Brady, who absorbed the ruthless blows without complaint.

  The front door imploded, and cops raced to the kitchen. “Drop the weapon, motherfucker!” senior roared, leveling his Smith & Wesson as junior sprinted to the woman in the pool of blood. “Drop it now or I’ll shoot!” Dwight opened his hand, and the shard hit the floor.

  The boy on the floor stared at them. “This is all my fault,” he wailed.

  “Shut up!” Dwight shouted. “It was me, Officers, I did this! She wanted to leave me. She was taking my son away from me. Forever! It made me insane, and I just snapped—”

  “Save it for the judge, asswipe,” junior growled, handcuffing Kepp’s wrists behind his back.

  “Brady, the police officers will watch you till I get back,” Dwight instructed as more cops flooded the house. “Don’t say anything until our lawyer arrives. Understand?”

  “Yes, Father,” Brady said, sniffing.

  “You’re a good boy,” Dwight said. “The best son a man could ever have.” Brady’s eyes filled with tears. “They’re taking me to jail now. I’ll be out as soon as our lawyer pays the bail. Then I’ll take you home. None of this is your fault, son.”

  “Shaddup, asshole,” senior growled, ordering Kepp removed.

  Dwight Kepp surveyed the enormous holding cell at Cook County Jail. It stunk like dead alewives and was packed with lice-ridden desperados. He hitched up his trousers—the cops had confiscated his belt as evidence—and bumped someone to his left. “Sorry about that, friend,” he said, slapping the moon-faced fellow on the back. “It’s so crowded in here.”

  The fellow nodded, saying nothing. Then drove a fist of tattoos into Dwight’s Adam’s apple, fracturing his throat and flooding it with blood.

  “What…why…” Dwight gurgled, legs turning to baby food. He slumped to the urine-slopped floor. “Why did you do this to me?”

  The moon-faced fellow shrugged. “Never did like being touched.”

  Senior and junior escorted Brady to the empty roll call room. They handed him a can of pop and seated him at a brown oak table scarred by ten thousand interrogations. “I’ve got bad news, son,” senior said, hating to hurt this boy more, but someone had to tell him. “Your dad is dead.”

  Brady stared, gripping his knees.

  “He was in a jail cell, waiting for his lawyer,” junior explained. “Another prisoner punched him in the throat. Your dad died on the way to the hosp
ital. The head nurse, Mrs. Hoffmeyer, just called to inform us.” He cleared his throat as tears welled in the kid’s eyes. “We’ll charge the man with murder, of course, and…well, the state’s attorney has decided to drop all charges against your dad. He’s been punished more than the state can ever do. You’ve suffered enough, too, losing both your parents this way. It’s a tough break, but you’re a big, strong kid. I know you can handle it.”

  Brady didn’t reply. His mind was instead crystallizing on the cause of his devastating misery—Emily Thompson. She’d stolen his family just like that, and someday, somehow, he’d get even. “Where will I go now?” he said.

  “Your Aunt Maggie is here,” senior said. “We’ll let you see her as soon as we’re finished.”

  “She’s not my real aunt, you know,” Brady snuffled. “She’s Mom’s best friend. We just call her aunt.”

  “We know,” junior said. That was the problem. Maggie wasn’t blood. And none of Brady’s relatives would take him. They had “enough problems with our own kids” without adding a “homicidal teenager” to the mix. Which meant Brady was headed for the state home for boys in southern Illinois. Junior drove a kid there once and spent a couple hours nosing around. The place was nice enough, with rolling terrain filled with what every boy needed—lakes, forests, and fishing holes. The social workers tried hard, the odor of piss and fried perch was less strong than at other such places, and the military-style high school had a ranked football team. He explained Brady’s new reality, and senior added, “The government takes fine care of kids like you. If my boys lost me and the missus, this is the place I’d want them to live….”

  The cops waved good-bye as Brady disappeared into the government station wagon idling at the curb. “He’ll be all right,” senior remarked. “The boy’s tough—didn’t cry. And he’s smart enough to know his relatives are pricks, so this is the best thing for him.” He smacked his hand in his fist, enthused. “Let’s visit Brady sometime. Go fishing, play a little ball. You know, encourage him. A boy like that would make a good policeman. Yeah, we’ll visit in the fall, after he’s settled in, tell him a few war stories, nudge him toward a copper’s life….”