by J. Thorn
But isn't that the truth? she asked herself, and realized that she was no longer thinking about the diner and what had happened there.
With a deep breath, she hurriedly brushed her hair away from her face and took the hot chocolate and coffee into the living room. It was a mess, but Pete didn't seem to notice. She supposed he wouldn't. The farm had hardly been well maintained, inside or out.
"So," she said, handing him the mug. "How on earth did you find me?"
Wayne took the coffee from her without looking away from the boy. "And what made you think of lookin' for her now?"
This was going to be Louise's next question, and she wished Wayne had let her ask it. She would have put it to the boy with less suspicion in her tone.
Pete looked from Wayne to Louise, then down into his hot chocolate. An expression of deep sadness came over his face and Louise felt her chest grow tight. Somethin's happened. The boy confirmed this a moment later when, eyes still lowered, one gloved finger running circles around the top of the cup, he said, "My Pa's dead."
Louise gasped, a hand to her mouth, though in truth the shock was less potent than she pretended. Something about the boy's posture once she'd recognized him outside the apartment had suggested loneliness, and his face when he removed the scarf seemed thinner than she remembered it, the light in his eyes dimmer than before.
"What happened?"
Knowing how close Pete had been to his father, despite the man's utter inability to express any kind of love for the boy, she fully expected to watch him crumble, to see the tears flow as his face constricted into a mask of pain.
What she saw instead surprised her.
There was grief, and pain, but presiding over them all, was anger.
"They kilt him. The Doctor too."
Wayne's eyes widened. "Shiiit. I think I seen that on the news."
Louise turned to look at him. "And you didn't tell me?"
He shrugged. "It was half over and I was drunk when I switched it on. Didn't get no names. All I remember thinkin' is: 'Damn, Louise used to live somewhere around there.'"
"We've talked about the farm, Wayne, don't give me that shit. I must have mentioned Pete and his daddy a hundred times. Why didn't you tell me?"
Wayne's face darkened. "I said I didn't hear the goddamn names, all right?"
Not now, she cautioned herself. The kid doesn't need this, and I don't either. She returned her attention to Pete who seemed to be preparing to withdraw into himself. She scooted close and put her hand on his wrist.
"Who killed them, Pete?"
"We found a girl, in the road. She was messed up pretty bad."
"Messed up how?" Wayne asked.
"Beaten. Cut up. She were naked, all covered in blood. Me and Pa...we stopped to pick her up, brung her to the doctor's house to get her fixed up." There was no emotion in his voice now, as if this was a story he had grown weary of telling. "Pa told the doc it'd be better if he didn't ask any kinda questions about it all. I didn't understand that. Not then. I was worried about the girl. We went home, left her with the doc. But then my Pa...he got his rifle out and sat there like he were waitin' for the devil to kick down the door, and he...he told me I needed to get in the truck and go to the doc's house again, even though we'd just come from there. He said the doc would tell me what to do. So I went, and when I got there the doc said to me I needed to bring the girl to the hospital 'cuz she was in real trouble."
"Who was the girl?" Louise asked. "Did you know her?"
Pete raised his head, shook it once. "Her name was Claire. She were pretty like you wouldn't believe. Least I guessed she was. It was hard to tell because of all the blood and they had cut out one of her eyes."
Wayne frowned. "Jesus."
"You took her to the hospital?" Louise asked. "Why didn't your Pa go with you?"
"He stayed home," Pete said. "And he shot himself. Don't know why, but I guess he were too afraid of what was comin' to want to be there when it did."
Louise buried her face in her hands. "Oh God."
"I didn't know, or I'd never have left him. Maybe if I was smarter I'd have known, but I ain't, so I didn't. I just drove the girl outta town to the hospital." Something like a smile turned up the corners of his mouth. "She were real nice, though. The girl. We talked some on the way. Just a little because she was tired. But I liked her. Wished I could have stayed with her a while." He dipped his head, sipped at his drink, and his smile grew. "This is real good. I always liked your hot chocolate."
Louise's vision blurred with tears, her throat tightening as she struggled to keep her composure. It's not fair, she told herself. Not fair that I left them. Not fair that he died. And when a grimmer thought followed, What if I had stayed with them? Wouldn't I have died there too? The answer was: Maybe you should have. Maybe that was where your true path ended and now you're wanderin' blindly ten miles farther along the same road 'cept now you know for sure it ain't goin' nowhere.
"You tell the cops what happened?" Wayne asked, his interest apparently sincere.
Pete frowned. "When?"
"When you got the girl to the hospital?"
The boy shook his head. "I didn't want to answer no questions. I was afraid, so...so I just got the girl inside and let the hospital men take her away. One of them asked me my name and I told him, but then he told me to wait and I ran. Maybe I shouldn't've."
"You were scared," Louise said.
"Sure was," Pete agreed. "More scared than I've ever been in my life. I drove home pretty fast. But when I got there, the house were burnin' and weren't no one tryin' to put it out. I tried to do it myself but couldn't." A single tear welled in his left eye. "I told myself Pa got hisself out. Told myself a piece of burnin' wood had tumbled out of the fireplace and Pa had tried to put out the flames, but then run when it got the better of him. Told myself he was out there somewhere in the dark past the fire, waitin' for me, and I just couldn't see him. So I looked." He drew the back of his glove across his nose and blinked, freeing the tear to run down his cheek. "That's when I found all the blood. In the barn. It was burnin', but only the roof. I went inside, to see if Pa was in there maybe tryin' to free the animals—" He glanced at Louise. "That's what I'd have done." Then he lowered his head again. "They was gone, but there was a whole lotta blood in there, all over the place, great big puddles on the floor and splashed up the walls like it had come outta a hose. There were plastic there too, bits and pieces of it, like someone might've wrapped up the pigs before cuttin' on 'em."
"Are you sure your Pa didn't—"
"No. He wouldn't've. They was all we had left in the world, 'sides each other."
Louise moved close, put her arm around him and let her chin rest against his head. "Why would anyone take the pigs?" she asked quietly, and felt him shrug against her.
"Horse was gone too. Cora."
"Cora?"
"That was the mare's name. Good horse too. But she weren't hurt. I found her on my way into town after I gave up tryin' to find Pa."
"What did you do?" Wayne asked, his elbows braced on his knees, fists propping up his chin like a child watching Saturday morning cartoons.
"Rode 'er to Sheriff McKindrey's, but he weren't there. The lady at his office said he was down at The Red Man Tavern, so I went there. The Sheriff was pretty drunk, but when I mentioned the fire, whole buncha folks ran out and got in their cars and went out to the farm. They got the fire out pretty quick and found my Pa in there, all burned up."
"How do you know it wasn't just an accident?"
"Heard a few of the men talkin' to the Sheriff. They said they found some canisters of kerosene that we always kept in the barn. They were inside the house. Said they thought someone set the fire."
Wayne scratched his chin. "Maybe...and I know this ain't gonna be easy to hear, but..."
Louise shot him a glare. "Don't."
Wayne shrugged, but said no more.
"S'all right," Pete said softly. "I know what you was gonna say, but Pa didn't
burn himself up. Not unless him and the doc had the same idea at the same time, cuz the doc's place was all burnt up too."
"Yeah," Wayne chimed in. "That's what I saw on the news. They found all those pieces of bodies there. Doctor went mad or somethin', didn't he?"
Louise spoke before Pete could answer. "Who do you think hurt all those people, Pete? Who do you think did this to your Pa?"
"It weren't the doc," he said. "It weren't him, no matter what they're sayin'. He wanted to help that girl real bad and when he sent us away, I could see he was afraid of somethin', just like my daddy was. They were waitin' for bad folk to come."
Louise kissed his head, suddenly reminded of the nights she'd spent in this same pose with the boy while they looked at the stars, and that one night in particular as they watched one fall from the sky when he asked her, "Are you gonna leave us too?" She'd been unable to reply, unable to lie to him, and so had distracted him with talk of the Heavens. Then she had left him, and now his world had been obliterated, leaving him in the company, however temporary, of a woman he had to believe didn't care.
"How did you find me?" she asked in a whisper, unsure whether the question was a rhetorical one.
"They had your address at Jo's Diner. Said you called them with it so they could send you a paycheck they owed you or somethin'. After the funeral, the Sheriff organized a collection and they gave me some money. I used some of it to take the bus here."
"So you've still got some left?" Wayne asked.
Louise stared at him. It wasn't clear whether he was asking because he didn't think they could afford to keep the boy for long, or because he planned to relieve the child of his money. Again she was struck by the unpleasant feeling that he was hiding something from her, that his paranoia might have its roots in something very real, and very troubling.
"Some," Pete said. "Not much."
"Well," Louise said with a sigh, "We need to get you cleaned up, fed and bedded down if you're going to be stayin' with us for a while."
She stood.
Pete frowned up at her. "I don't want to stay with you," he said, and Wayne couldn't restrain a small sigh of relief.
Louise raised her eyebrows. "I don't understand. I thought that's why you were here."
"No," said the boy. "I came here to tell you what happened to daddy, because I know he loved you and would want you to know."
"Well, I'm glad you did. I'm glad—"
Pete set his hot chocolate down and rose. Wayne was right. The boy had grown. He was now as tall as Louise. When she'd left him, he'd barely been up to her shoulders.
"And I came to tell you," he said, his face impassive, a queer light in his eyes. His hands had begun to tremble and she reached out to hold them in her own. His skin was cold. "That I aim to find those folks and make 'em sorry for what they done."
-17-
It was a Tuesday night, and McClellan's Bar was mercifully free of the rowdy crowds it entertained on the weekends. There were no businessmen with their ties slung back over their shoulders, shirts unbuttoned as they spoke to each other in roars; no manicured women in short dresses trying not to look desperate as they eyed the men who appeared drunkest, and wealthiest; no underage teens balancing false courage with crippling nerves as they waited to be asked for their fake I.D's; no couples canoodling in the red leather booths beneath veils of smoke, their hands touching as they preserved a blissful moment sure to be destroyed out there in the world where uncontaminated love was a thing of fairytale and film; no loud music as young men and women fed the jukebox in the corner by the restrooms; no girls dancing on tables, cheered on by their equally inebriated girlfriends; no aggravated men looking to start a fight with the first guy unfortunate enough to nudge against them while pushing through the crowd.
Tonight there was only the tired-looking barman polishing glasses that were already clean, a lone woman with long, tousled yellow-gray hair smoking a cigarette and staring at her own unhappy reflection in the mirror behind the bar, and Finch, who sat at the far end of the long narrow counter, away from the door but facing it, so he could see whoever entered. Kara had thought this habit—his refusal to sit with his back to any door in any establishment—a dangerously paranoid one, the behavior of a criminal, or a mafia soldier. He had never disagreed, or tried to explain it, but was glad that they had already broken up by the time he returned from Iraq, because it was much worse now. He had never admitted to her that his caution had been an affected thing, taken from some gangster movie he'd seen once in which one of the characters had professed an unwillingness to sit with his back to the door because one of his friends had been 'clipped' that way. Finch had liked that movie, though he couldn't remember much about it now, and so had secretly justified his wariness as good sense in a world full of unseen danger. Nowadays, the paranoia he'd feigned had mutated, become real. Nowadays he sat facing the door because he was afraid something dangerous might at any moment explode through it.
A woman in an abaya perhaps, a scared smile on her face as her hands moved to her waist, to the wires...
Elbows on the bar, he brought his hands to his face and scrubbed away the memory of blood and smoke. He could still smell it on his skin, all of it mingled with the scent of fear that forever clung to him. And when finally he lowered them, he sensed the woman at the other end of the bar watching him, and there was a presence to his right, standing unsteadily between Finch and the door.
"Whassup?" said the man, and smiled. He had short blonde hair, a tanned youthful face, and was obviously drunk, his eyes bloodshot, Abercrombie & Fitch clothes slightly wrinkled, his shirt untucked. Finch figured him for a sole survivor of a bachelor party, or an escapee from a frat house where the celebrations had been defused, leaving this guy to seek out any excuse to perpetuate his immaturity. An oddly feminine hand with delicate fingers was braced on the bar, and seemed to be the only thing delaying his inevitable appointment with the floor.
Finch nodded, and went back to his drink. There was only the woman in the bar with them, and given the lack of aesthetic appeal she would have in Frat Boy's eyes, he expected more shallow conversation to come. He was not disappointed.
"You look pissed off," the guy said. "Lighten up, man!" He brushed a hand against Finch's elbow. "S'early!"
Finch ignored him.
The barman materialized. "What can I get ya?" he asked the wobbling man.
"You got Sambuca?"
"No."
Finch noticed with amusement the bottle of Sambuca on the shelf behind the barman.
"Shit then, I'll have a beer. Make it cold though, okay, man?" He laughed at this, and turned to Finch. "Three fridges in the goddamn place, and not one cold beer. Ended up drinking vodka instead. Vodka. Russian pisswater, my friend."
Again, Finch said nothing, hoping it would be enough to carry a message through the drunken padding in the other man's brain that he was in no mood for company, at least of this kind. But instead, the guy moved close enough that Finch could smell his breath. He'd heard it said that vodka, once ingested, didn't give off a smell, a quality that, along with gin, made it the yuppie drink of choice, but he could smell it on this guy, which pretty much confirmed his theory that saying liquor of any kind didn't come with its own stench was akin to claiming no one would know you pissed yourself if you were wearing rubber trousers.
"You in the war or something?" he asked now, and surprised at his perceptiveness, Finch looked at him.
"Yeah. I was."
"Figured."
"What gave it away?" he asked.
The other man shrugged. "You're not the first guy I've seen tonight that got himself all messed up over there. The other guy didn't even have legs. Said he got them blown off in..." He struggled to recall the name, but gave up with a wave of his hand. "Over there."
Finch bridled. "What do you mean 'messed up'?"
The barman reappeared and slid a Budweiser before Frat Boy. There were still flecks of ice on the bottle. He nodded approvingly and dropped
a ten on the counter.
"Besides," he continued, ignoring Finch's question and the tone with which it had been delivered. "My older bro was there."
"In Iraq?"
"Yep."
Finch pictured the type: Rebellious, conscientious rich kid, eager to prove he was worth more than Forbes would estimate in two decades time, eager to show his loveless father that he was his own man and not afraid to step outside the protective bubble his family's wealth afforded him. A casualty of wealth would become a casualty of war, one way or another.
"Can't understand it myself," Frat Boy went on. "No need for him to do that shit, know what I'm sayin'. Plenty other guys out there fighting the good fight. No offense."
"None taken," Finch lied. His perception of how indifferent and selfish society could be had been heightened by his time away from it. The kids coming up these days, and most of their parents, had no idea what the world was waiting to do to their children, no concept of the depth of evil that permeated the world ready to corrupt the naive.
The door squeaked open, and a tall, well-built black man entered. He was dressed in a red OSU sweatshirt, navy sweatpants and sneakers, and though he didn't look big enough to play football, he was too large to be mistaken for a basketball player. His head was shaved, and the gold stud in his ear glinted in the light. In his right hand he held a large manila envelope.
"Huh," Frat Boy said. "Lookit Billy Badass."
Finch grinned. While the wariness in the guy's tone undoubtedly stemmed from his stereotypical view of men bigger than him, it might have cowed him further to know he was right. The man at the door's name wasn't Billy, but "Badass" was right on the money.
Finch leaned back in his seat, so Frat Boy wasn't shielding him from view. The black man spotted him immediately and his lips spread in a winning smile, exposing large perfectly straight white teeth. He jabbed a finger at the booths lining the wall opposite the bar and Finch nodded.
"Friend of yours?" Frat Boy sounded disappointed.
"Yep."
