Artifacts

by Bailey Bradford

  “Thanks.” Aldric hummed as he finished with the register. It was his first time closing up, and he was both awed and excited. He almost felt like he was in a sacred place. To him, it was. The shop and those who worked with him were opening Aldric’s eyes to new possibilities.

  He hadn’t realized he’d been living in a depressed state for years, and though he wasn’t educated in psychology, he did believe that had been the case. It’d only taken ten days of working a job where he was treated like an actual human being rather than a target for abuse to dispel the darkness that had permeated his mind for so long. Not that he was totally free of it, but the cloud had begun to lift, and he could see now that the world wasn’t all bad.

  Shaking his head at his thoughts, Aldric double-checked that the front door was locked and the alarm set. The blinds were secured, shielding the shop from prying eyes and any illegal temptations that might spring up. The floor shone with a golden gleam and the wooden floors were polished to perfection. Aldric wanted to have a home with real wooden floors someday, and lots of windows.

  “And space inside and out…” Aldric turned off the main lights, leaving only the security ones on. He traipsed to the office and picked up the repurposed box from the Buckman sale that contained his goodies, his favorite being the colorful teacups and saucers. Elliot had explained they were a play on words, as the term harlequin set meant an unmatched set of objects with a theme, so making cups with repeating patterns of contrasting diamonds, and saucers with patterns of elongated squares, no two colors the same, was a silly, subtle joke. All the items from the sale had been equally as light-hearted.

  The box was bulky, but not heavy. Aldric was tempted to open it and make sure he’d packed everything well. No. He’d used plenty of padding, so his anxiety was not going to get the best of him here. Though it almost felt painful to do so, Aldric refused to cut the tape and double-check.

  He set the box on the desk long enough to fetch his keys from his pocket, then lifted the box up and walked to the back door. The Exit sign glowed in the dim lighting, and for some reason, Aldric shivered. He’d heard the saying ‘someone must be stepping on your grave’ for such instances. He doubted that was the case, yet he couldn’t shake the discomfort that came over him.

  He had to put the box down again to unlock the door, prop it open with one foot, pick up his treasures again and exit. He placed the box on the ground and turned to lock the door behind him.

  The blow stunned him. One second he was reaching for the box, the next, pain exploded at the back of his head. Bright starbursts bloomed in his vision—then total darkness.

  Chapter Four

  The San Antonio Riverwalk buzzed as it usually did, but the people strolling the narrow pedestrian walkway or clustering under the colorful café umbrellas barely registered with Darrell. He usually liked to watch the boats on the water, but today he was trying to work out what this summons could be to do with. He wasn’t even sure who’d issued it. It had come from his father to the family group text, as did the usual monthly get-togethers—although this wasn’t one of them—but someone else could have wanted them all to meet up.

  There was no family birthday on the horizon. Maybe his elder brother, Travis, had gotten some promotion or other? Or his younger brother Ryan had aced basic training at Randolph and won some award or medal? Darrell snorted. Yeah, they’d be more likely to turn out for that sort of occasion than they would for his commendation at the station. Well, he’d only been congratulated by a captain. And the SAPD wasn’t military.

  “You could have joined the military police!” He heard that in three voices, because his brothers copied their father in saying it to him. Only, Darrell didn’t want to be a provost, policing the armed forces. He wanted to ensure the safety of citizens, in San Antonio or wherever else he might possibly transfer to one day.

  He crossed the bridge over to the stretch of more individual buildings. Brick’s Tavern was the tallest of the short row, although that wasn’t saying much, and seemed the most solid, at least to Darrell. Tourism sites and pages tended to describe it as traditional and unchanging, although there was nothing rundown or dingy about it.

  Darrell took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, heading inside the tavern’s long room. He waved a hand at any bartender or server behind or around the bar running the length of one side, even though the one he really knew, Zé, he couldn’t see. A dark-haired girl waved back and twisted to call behind her, into the kitchen.

  Late-afternoon sunlight glinted off the shelves of alcohol bottles and the upside-down stem glasses behind the bar and made the brass footrail gleam. The sights were as familiar to Darrell as the aroma of spicy-smoky grilling meat and salty-sharp melting cheese that filled every corner of the room and clung to clothes. He waited a second and, sure enough, clatters and thuds rang out from the ping-pong and air hockey tables in the recessed alcove at the back.

  Enough nostalgia. Darrell ran up the old but well-maintained spiral steps, feeling their thump and give, to the second floor where Jack ‘Chief’ Williams, his father, preferred to sit.

  The round table at the end of the balcony, where the big windows opened to the outside, was full of his family. He was last to arrive. He took a moment to observe the table’s occupants. The three guys were dressed in 5.11 pants and had Oakley sunglasses slotted into the vee of their rolled-sleeve outdoor button-up shirts in the approved ‘casual tactical’ style of the special forces, for all Ryan was still in training. Darrel compared it to his own clothes. In uniform, he’d stand out more than he did already.

  Darrell looked beyond the surface image, trying to gauge the mood, the reason why they were all there, and thought he’d figured it out from the way Ryan’s girlfriend, Leah, had her chair so close to Ryan’s that she was almost sitting in his lap.

  She was the first to spot him, probably because she’d been looking out for him. “Darrell!” she squealed, making Travis’ wife, Ashley, wince. Leah would have to learn to moderate her tone in the Williams family. Ashley had. “Guess what?”

  A diamond ring winked on the appropriate finger of the hand she had around Ryan’s arm, but Darrell didn’t need the clue. “Congratulations!” he said, slapping Ryan’s shoulder and bending low to kiss Leah on the cheek. “About time.”

  That was appropriate, wasn’t it? Leah didn’t seem to think so, if the speech she launched into about waiting until Ryan was almost through with basic and they knew what he’d be doing, and she was secure in the office of the company she worked in, was a clue.

  He nodded in the right places, made the correct “uh-huh” noises and greeted his father. Jack stood and gripped his upper arms while looking him up and down, his version of a hug. “Let’s hope so, Lea-Lea!” he said over his shoulder to Leah.

  “Huh?” Darrell raised an eyebrow. He’d missed a bit.

  “Your turn next,” Ryan repeated his fiancée’s words.

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Yeah?” Travis took the ball from his brother, casting him a glance. “Got something to tell us, bro?”

  Darrell wished he could. He would have loved to be able to, but the words needed to say it didn’t exist in the Williams family. He gave a meaningless shrug. “So when’s the wedding?”

  “I just finished telling you!” Leah cried, her pitch shrill.

  Jack swiveled his head in her direction and raised a finger in front of his face, as if he were going to bring it to his lips, in a gesture for silence. He didn’t have to. The signal was enough. Leah reddened a little, and when she started to repeat what she’d said, both her volume and tone were lower.

  Travis started in with his doings at the same time, Ryan asking questions and exclaiming over the answers, meaning Darrell still couldn’t hear the wedding plans. “I got a commendation,” he said, just to see if anyone responded. “For my work on a case. There’s talk of me moving up to sergeant.” Well, Sean had joked about it. “Or moving into criminal investigation.” He had thought about becoming
a detective-investigator.

  “Darrell.”

  “Chief.” The response was automatic, his father’s nickname ingrained. He sat straighter.

  “You see Brick on your way up? He said he’d try to get in to say hi.”

  “No, sir.” Darrell slumped.

  Brick had been in the service with Chief’s father and had opened this place when he’d gotten out. His son Luke was Chief’s age and had taken over, making the bar into a restaurant and bigger and better. There’d been no pressure on him to lockstep his father. Darrell wondered if Leah would have preferred to celebrate her engagement someplace else, a little more romantic, perhaps, than the place her fiancé had been coming to since he was a kid and where any minute now the server would—

  His brothers cheered as the brunette, Kelly, rounded the top of the stairs and deposited the plates of hot chili-salt fries, along with the place’s signature homemade condiments and pickles, on the table. There was also a helping of plantain strips—for the girls, he guessed. The shrimp platter was next, the tang of the tartar sauce and the zing of the lemon as sharp as ever. The place we’ve all been coming to since we were kids and where we eat the same meal too.

  “Hey, remember that time—”

  “Son.”

  “Sorry, Chief.” Travis, recounting a story with his mouth full, stopped on a dime at his father’s command and covered his mouth to chew the half a plate of fries he’d just forked in, sucking in air at the chili and garlic as he always did. Slivers of green and red pepper peeked out when he’d swallowed enough to continue. “Remember when Luke got a little fancy with the menu and added shrimp toast?”

  “And Darrell said he wanted to try it and you let him!” Ryan raised his fork to his father.

  Darrell remembered. They’d called him shrimp for at least four months. “It’s good to try new things,” he said in self-defense.

  “Luke certainly thought so, until he realized no one wanted Gulf shrimp mousse,” Jack said.

  Ryan snorted and half-choked. He was more like Travis than Darrell was, for all Darrell came closer in age to Travis, the eldest, with Ryan being the youngest. “Hey, we getting the empanada platter too?” Ryan asked.

  “What, the steaks not enough?” asked the guy walking up to the table. “Sorry, I couldn’t get out of the kitchen until now.”

  “Luke!” Jack, then Travis, Darrell and Ryan greeted him in order, with Ashley and Leah following suit. The engagement news was relayed, Luke congratulating the couple and whistling over the balcony for a server to send up a round of free drinks.

  “You cooking?” Jack asked.

  Luke shook his head. “Zé. Says he knows just how you like ’em.” Luke knew, just as his father had, how regulars liked their meat. Well, their orders in general.

  “Guess we’ll see,” Chief replied.

  Luke took a quick seat. Darrell had known he would. He could even have predicted which table he’d spin it from, and where he’d place it, just as he knew which turn the conversation would take now.

  “Engaged. Doesn’t seem a minute since Ryan graduated from burgers to steak.” Luke shook his head. “You told that lady of yours about those crazy competitions you and your brother had, seeing how much you could add to a burger? Cheese, bacon, onion rings…”

  “Avocado, tomato, fried egg!” Ryan used his hands to show the height of the burger with the extras.

  “So that’s where you got your bad eating habits from!” Leah slapped his arm. No one spoke, but Ashley cut her eyes at Leah. “And you grew up big and strong.” Leah stroked her palm over Ryan’s biceps.

  “And didn’t Darrell work his way through one sandwich after another for, like, a whole year?” Ashley asked. “And you worked out he was going in reverse order up the list—”

  “And the first one had pork butt!” Travis fed her a plantain chip.

  Yeah, that had been a nickname too.

  “Well, everything on the menu’s good!” Luke joked, getting to his feet.

  True. And Darrell could just go for a bologna sandwich now, despite the teasing. He wouldn’t say no to going to play on the old skill machines down below. He’d leave the table football and ring toss to the others, his father included, like he always used to. He changed his mind when Luke, having fussed with the table and the space next to it, beckoned his son over with the portable stand to cook their steaks tableside.

  “Zé.” Darrell gave him a big smile, Zé shooting him a sly wink in return. Zé was gay. Darrell had seen him out with a couple of different guys over the last few years. If things were different, he’d have liked to sit down and chat with Zé over a beer. They had a lot in common and, yeah, Darrell found him sexy. He watched Zé’s deft movements in slapping the tenderloin over to fry its other side in the garlic herb butter.

  Travis used the noise and commotion of frying and plating as a cover to lean into Darrell and say, “Yeah, he knows his way around meat. So I heard.”

  “You did?” Darrell kept his eyes front. “Where d’you go to pick up that sort of gossip?”

  Travis spent a few seconds working out if that was an insult. “Just to warn you.” He made sure he was turned completely away from the others. “Because the way you were looking, like you were eyeing something hot and juicy…and I don’t mean the steaks!” He snorted then laughed.

  “What?” Ryan called over, hating to miss a joke.

  “Nothing,” Darrell told him. “Planning your bachelor evening.” Let that worry Travis. His phone buzzed and he glanced at the screen. “Oh, I gotta take this. One minute.”

  He walked away to relative privacy to answer. “Mateo?” They never Facetimed. Had only called each other once. Their communication was the quickest of messages. “What’s the matter?”

  “How’s it going with the family?” Mateo’s tan face and bright blue eyes filled the screen.

  “Huh?”

  “You said you were meeting up to have an early dinner. Didn’t seem too keen on it. But it’s going okay?”

  “I…” He’d mentioned this personal detail, when they’d met at Cesar’s two nights ago, before going to Mateo’s to fuck?

  “Want me to drop by, really give them something to talk about?”

  “Jesus, no.” Darrell’s horror wasn’t just at the thought. It was fine for Travis and Ryan to bring home girls or bring them to Bricks’ meals, but he could not imagine Chief Williams’ reaction to a son of his seeing a guy.

  But he wasn’t. Didn’t. Any guys he hooked up with were just that, fuck buddies.

  “Okay. Jeez.” Mateo looked a little affronted. “Wanna meet later, talk about it? Or…not talk?” he added, when Darrell’s silence stretched.

  “No. I don’t know. I have to go. I’ll text.” He cut the call and eased his way out of the space behind the top of the staircase.

  “Oh, hi!” Leah stood and waved at a girl who’d just reached the top of the stairs. She beckoned her and Darrell, just behind her, over. “This is Brianna from work. She has an appointment nearby, right, Bri, so she said she’d drop by and say congratulations and hi to y’all. Can you stay for a little while, Bri?”

  Darrell’s heart plummeted, more so when Ryan added, “Move around there. Can we get an extra chair?” with a meaningful smile at Darrell. His reaction to the new arrival screamed foreknowledge and even rehearsal.

  Darrell got through it. Through Brianna being pressed to stay to eat. Through his father and Luke discussing the big football game coming up and how they’d all be going to support their old high school, and Darrell was coming of course, no argument. He could have predicted the invitation to Brianna to come along too, if not Leah’s exact, heavy-handed, “Darrell, Bri’s a recent transplant to the Military City and needs someone to help her experience its flavor!”

  They’d reached the stage of looking at the dessert suggestions on the menu, even though they’d all go for an ice cream at The Parlor, the traditional end to a Williams meal, when Darrell’s radio buzzed. He excused himsel
f to answer and had rarely been so happy to get a call.

  “Son!” Jack reproached.

  “I got a couple of hours off, with time banked, but I’m on call.” Darrell smiled at Bri. “Have my ice cream for me. Mint choc chip.” In that, he was unchanging. God alone knew what would ever have happened if he’d tried out tutti-frutti.

  On the way to where Sean was picking him up, he dropped a quick text to Mateo, saying he thought they should cool things down, give each other a rest. Mateo’s call had made him realize that the other guy was assuming that their relationship was evolving beyond Darrell bending him over any available surface and fucking his brains out—and that Darrell was in danger of falling into that trap too.

  Better to disarm that ticking bomb now, before it went off in his face.

  Chapter Five

  “Mister? Sir? Are you dead?”

  “Oh shit, I think he is! The dude’s, like, croaked, right here in front of us. I’m freaked, man!”

  “No, look—he’s breathing, see?”

  “No, I don’t wanna see. What the hell you doing to him?”

  “I’m trying to feel a pulse in his neck, like on the cop shows. Yeah, I got one! He’s okay.”

  “Call that okay? Jesus! I’m calling nine-one-one. Hey, maybe we’ll be on the news for saving the dude!”

  Aldric figured he couldn’t be dead, since he was hurting so much. There was no way he could even open his mouth to tell anyone this and doubted his voice would work even if he could. He tried to open his eyes instead and groaned as pain ricocheted around his skull.

  “Mister, just take it easy.” Something patted his shoulder. “T’s calling for help. You got a signal, T?”

  Panic zipped through Aldric and he couldn’t get his mind to work the way he wanted it to. He opened his eyes and yelped, then cringed at the pain he’d caused himself by being loud.

  “Dude, chill. I swear we aren’t gonna hurt you.”

  That was the voice belonging to the guy who wasn’t ‘T’.