Children of Chaos

by Greg F. Gifune

  Equal parts embarrassment and anger surged through me. It felt like I was sitting naked in front of her. Almost.

  “I certainly don’t mean to intrude on your personal business, Phil, honestly I don’t. But never even knowing who my father was, and losing my mother at such a young age, I know how painful this can be.” A new, profoundly sincere tone had come to her voice. “I don’t think Mrs. Doyle fully understands how potentially dangerous this job you’re going on could get. While I’m sure you’ll be all right, if something does go wrong, I know despite everything that happened with my parents, if I could have even five minutes with either of them I’d give up just about anything to do so. In fact, I’ve hired a firm to see if they can locate my birth father too. I’ve always wanted to but I’ve never been in the financial position to do so until now. Who knows? Maybe he’s still alive and might want to see me. Maybe he won’t. But I feel I should at least try. Maybe you feel the same, maybe not. I just felt it was the right thing to let you know that...I’m sorry, Phil, but he’s deceased. He passed away two years ago.”

  I was too tired and overloaded to take offense, and besides, I believed her. She felt obligated to give me the news and was trying to do what she thought was right. I’d have done the same thing in her place. “It’s OK,” I said, surprised at how this information had shaken me. For years I’d convinced myself I didn’t give a damn one way or the other about the sonofabitch, but now that I knew he was dead something about the finality of it all rattled me. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I always thought at some point before one or both of us stepped off the planet we might see each other again and make things right before it was too late. I guess I’d never really thought it would happen in any real sense, but the possibility kept it alive. Now the book was closed, and it hurt. How could it not? My old man was a shit, but he was still my father. I wondered if at the end he’d been sorry, or thought of me at all.

  “Are you all right?” Janine asked, placing her hand on mine.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for telling me. You did the right thing.” I glanced down at her hand, enjoying the warmth of her touch.

  She took her hand back and nervously cleared her throat. “Yes—well—I’ll make the necessary arrangements to get you the rest of your money before you leave.”

  “I’m staying at the dump over by the highway,” I told her. “Maybe you could join me for dinner later.”

  “I really don’t think my fiancé would approve.”

  “Then don’t tell him.” When she didn’t laugh I tried again. “Tell you what. Why not stop by the motel tonight and we’ll take a romantic stroll across the parking lot to this quaint little vending machine I know. Maybe nibble on Zagnuts, Doritos and down a chilled bottle or two of vintage Yoo-Hoo. The sky’s the limit, baby.”

  “Oh I think you can afford a little better than that now, don’t you?”

  “Who knows? Maybe I won’t make it back from Mexico. This could be one of my last meals. I’d like it to be something special. Thus the Yoo-Hoo.”

  She laughed lightly and just stared at me, as if she expected more. When I didn’t offer anything but a wry smile she asked, “I can almost see the wheels turning. What are you thinking about?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Janine removed her glasses and let the curved tip of the arm rest in the corner of her mouth. “Try me.”

  “I was thinking about what you’d look like without any clothes on.”

  “You’re right, I don’t want to know.”

  I laughed then too, but we were whistling our way past graveyards and we both knew it. “You know where to find me.”

  “You’ll have your money before you leave.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  We held each other’s gaze awhile. She blinked first.

  I left the sunroom, where ironically there was nothing but rain, and found my way back through the jarringly quiet house…back to the storm… back to the darkness in my mind…back to the scarred man’s bloody wounds, Martin’s leering face and the evil spirits they’d both conjured to find me.

  SIX

  I grabbed a sandwich and a beer at a little joint not far from the motel then settled back in my room, thoughts of Mexico and madness raging in my head. To distract myself, I focused on Janine Cummings instead. What was her life really like once you got beyond all the formality and presentation she clearly worked so hard to put forth? Her fiancé was on the other side of the world and she spent her days caring for a dying woman, how happy could she truly be? Her whole super efficient Girl Friday routine was irritating and struck me as likely patterned after a character in some old movie she’d probably seen. It was a creation for sure, something this poor girl who’d been the child of drug addicts and grown up in foster homes had obviously not only devised, but honed to what was quite possibly second nature to her by now. But once that façade came down, who was she then? My mind wandered to memories of her face and body, but I seemed incapable of thinking about her without feeling guilty. Maybe because I knew she was already in a relationship with some poor bastard who was in combat on the far side of Hell. Last thing he needed was the love of his life getting involved with a bag of shit like me while he was off serving his country. Christ, I was probably old enough to be her father anyway, and besides, I’d found Trish’s relationship with a guy in his twenties repugnant, shouldn’t I hold myself to the same standards?

  After lunch it occurred to me that I probably didn’t have to worry about it, as the odds of her being interested in me romantically were likely slim-to-none. With that uplifting realization in hand, I briefly toyed with the idea of finding a quiet bar and spending the afternoon getting sloshed. But I wasn’t feeling terribly sociable, so I drove back to the motel, refilled my ice bucket and decided to pull a George Thorogood and drink alone.

  Once there, in the quiet solitude of that dingy room, I knew I’d made a mistake. There were no saving distractions, and I’d left myself nowhere to hide from the things constantly on the prowl for me.

  While I sat in a rickety chair with my feet up on a cheap pressboard desk, minutes bled into hours as the afternoon crept past. A drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I surrendered to time, letting it wash over me like ocean waves swallowing a fatigued swimmer, pulling him under and drowning him. Slowly. How many days had I burned like this, wasting away without as much as a whimper, much less a fight?

  The view from my room window was less than enthralling: a near empty parking lot with an ugly stretch of rain-soaked highway beyond. Even by late afternoon the weather hadn’t gotten any better. In fact, the rain was falling harder than ever, as if the scarred man was controlling it, driving it down upon me from some hidden perch like a god of old spewing forth his anger on mortal Man. I pictured him in the clouds, throwing bolts of lightning at the earth below, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t allowed myself to remember his face in such detail in decades. I tossed back more whiskey to obscure the unusual vividness of his image, even if only for a little while. The liquor moved down my throat, and as I felt it coursing through me, flowing deeper into my body, the face in my mind retreated to shadow.

  But he was still there. Like always.

  As I watched the rain I thought about the shopping plazas, strip malls and supermarket that had been built over the field where he’d died, where we’d killed him. All the cement and glass, pretty signs, shopping carts and condominiums in the world could never be enough to erase that which had come before. Blood had desecrated that ground, only no one knew it but our shattered little circle, our trinity in black. Like ancient Indian burial grounds long ago converted to other things, built over and on and trampled across mindlessly by those who never realize what lies beneath their feet, their histories unknown, dismissed and forgotten except by tribal elders who know better, that old field and river beckoned me still, called to me through the downpour, forever mindful of what we’d given it. The sacred bones and ancient things we�
�d sacrificed to it, left to it in the hopes it might devour, absorb and conceal our sins, spoke to me as they always had. I knew the secrets and spirits that haunted that place and this town, all those profane and unseen things lurking just behind the veil but suffering still. I knew because I was one of them, and nothing could ever change that. Not all the whiskey I could drink. Not all the fantasies of pretty young women I could evoke. Not even a crazy mission of mercy to save Martin from himself and the evil that enslaved us both.

  I was chained to providence. We all were.

  * * *

  When it started to turn dark I decided to call Gillian before I got too looped. Rather than pay the long distant charges through the motel phone, I used my cell. Trish answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, it’s me. How’s Gilli-bean doing?”

  “Little sore but otherwise fine. Listen, I’m getting ready to start dinner, can I call you back in awhile?”

  “I’m not home, just let me talk to her real quick.”

  A heavy sigh. “She’s grounded, remember? All privileges have been suspended, including the telephone.”

  “Trish, don’t be a douche bag. I’m her father, put her on the phone.”

  “Don’t start with me, I—”

  “It’s important, OK? I need to talk to her.” I struggled to clear my mind long enough to come up with a believable story. “I’m going out of town for awhile. I’m headed to Mexico tomorrow. I don’t know when I’ll be back and I—”

  “Excuse me, did you say Mexico?” Snide laughter. “Unbelievable. Your alimony and child support payments are constantly late because you’re always whining about not having any money, but you can afford vacations to Mexico?”

  I bit my lip. “It’s not a vacation. I got some good news today. I was going to surprise you. A new deal came through. I just signed a huge five-book contract with a major house.”

  Silence, and then: “What, in Mexico?”

  “No, New York, but they want me to base my first novel in Mexico at least in part because they’re expanding and starting distribution of their crime fiction line down there. Anyway, the publisher’s flying me down to Tijuana for awhile so I can get a feel for the place and do some research. It’s a big deal, biggest payday I’ve ever had.”

  I held my breath, hoping she’d buy it.

  “Oh Phil, that’s wonderful. Congratulations, really, I mean it.”

  “Thanks.” I pictured her there in the kitchen, believing my lies in the house we’d once lived in together, wall-phone to her ear. How I sometimes wished I was still there with them, but only my life would’ve benefited from such an arrangement. They were better off without me and we all knew it. “Now can you let the prisoner out of her cell so I can share the good news with her?”

  “Hold on, I’ll get her. Travel safe, OK?”

  “OK, talk to you when I get back.”

  After a moment Gillian came on the line. “Hi, Dad.”

  Sweetest sound ever. “Hey, listen I had a good day today. Mom can fill you in after we hang up, but I want you to be on the lookout in the mail for something, OK? Now keep this between us, but in the morning I’m going to mail you some money. A thousand dollars.”

  “No way.”

  “Way. Now I want you to promise me two things. One, you’ll take half of it and blow it on really stupid stuff. Go shopping, go to the movies or take a bunch of your friends out to eat or over to that water park you love and—”

  “That’s not open until June, it’s only May.”

  “Well whatever, you know what I mean. Then take the rest and tuck it away in your sock drawer so you’ll have backup funds for anything else you might want or need. Blow half, save half. Cool?”

  “Bangin’.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s like cool.”

  “Sweet.”

  “Dad, nobody says sweet anymore.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Where are you getting the—”

  “Don’t worry about it, signed a nice contract today.”

  “That’s a lot though. I mean, are you sure you can—”

  “It’s just between us. Our secret, right?”

  “Right,” she said, but her voice was still laced with disbelief.

  “How’s Albert been treating you?”

  “Really nice.” She lowered her voice. “Did you say something to him?”

  “Would I do that?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Bangin’!” I heard her laugh one of those God-my-Dad’s-a-huge-dork laughs I loved so much. “Sweetheart, the main reason I’m calling is to let you know I won’t be around for awhile. I’m going to be out of town for a few days. Be good, try not to drive your mother too crazy and I’ll see you when I get back, OK? We’ll go out and do something.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to go to Mexico on business.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, research stuff. I’ll bring you a present. You want one of those giant sombreros?”

  I could hear her breathing. “Just be careful. And Dad, try not to drink so much, OK?”

  It felt like someone had just buried a knife in my gut all the way to the handle. I wasn’t sure if I’d been slurring or if she figured the subject matter was so off-the-wall I had to be smashed. Either way, it hurt to know my child worried for even a moment about how much of a screw-up her old man was. Embarrassment, anger and frustration filled my eyes with tears. “I’m fine, honey,” I managed. “I promise, OK? Things are turning around. Mom can tell you all about it but I—I gotta go now.”

  A sudden knock on the door startled and saved me all at once.

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too, baby.” I clutched the cell tight, unable to let her go. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  As she hung up it occurred to me this might be the last time I ever spoke to my daughter, the last time I’d ever hear her voice. Wracked with emotion, given my druthers I’d have sat there and wept like a child, but another insistent knock rattled the motel room door.

  “Yeah, I’m coming, hold on!” I snapped my phone shut, wiped my eyes and took a moment to compose myself.

  The door opened to reveal Janine Cummings standing in the rain with a pizza box and a brown paper bag balanced in one hand, a canvas satchel in the other. “Pizza chick!”

  “Gee, lady, I didn’t order a pizza, but come on in.” I gave her my best roguish grin. “Aaaand, cue porno music!”

  She rolled her eyes and pushed by me. “Such a jerk.”

  I shut the door and threw the chain lock on. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and changed into a tight pair of jeans, knee-high brown leather boots, a Celtics sweatshirt and a lightweight jacket. Even casually dressed she looked meticulously groomed and sexy, but far more relaxed. Her eyeglasses were spotted with raindrops and had begun to fog over so she put the food, the satchel and her purse on the table, removed her glasses, cleaned them off with a tissue that materialized from her jacket pocket, and then slid them back on. “First things first,” she said, opening the satchel and holding it out for me. Even from where I stood on the other side of the room I could see the banded stacks of bills inside. “Go ahead and count it if you’d like.”

  “Looks like forty grand to me,” I said with a shrug. “I trust you.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t the trusting kind.”

  “I’m not.” I lingered a few feet from her. “But you’ve won me over with your devastating charm.”

  “Oh how exciting for me.”

  Her sarcasm was solid; I had to give it to her. It took some doing to hang with a veteran wiseass like me, but she managed it with ease. “This whole thing just keeps getting more and more surreal. A beautiful woman showing up after dark in the rain with a bag full of money, suicide missions to Mexico—shit—sounds like one of my novels, you know, only better.”

  She put the satchel back on the table. “I liked Evil
Ransom,” she said, referring to my last book.

  “You really did read it, huh?”

  “Interestingly enough,” she said, removing two salads in plastic containers from the paper bag, “the lead character reminds me a lot of you.”

  “But he was a dick.”

  “Hmmm.” She flashed a cartoon-like pout and held up the salads. “Hungry?”

  Thunder crackled in the distance. The room was dimly lit, so I flipped a switch and added the fixture over the table to the mix. Once in the light things seemed more serious and unavoidable. “You know how futile this whole thing is, right? Doesn’t take a psychiatrist to tell from those two minutes of video footage we saw that Martin’s done. He’s snapped—gone—we both know it. And deep down, even though she doesn’t want to face it, Mrs. Doyle knows it too. There’s no way in hell I’ll ever be able to reason with him, much less convince him to come home. It’s wishful thinking, nothing more. The best we can hope for is to find out just how far he’s fallen and the extent of his madness, maybe the level of dangerousness this cult represents. Hardly seems worth it for any of us.”

  “Having second thoughts?”

  “I was having those hours ago. I’m just telling you how it is.”

  “Sometimes in this life,” she said as she set a place at the table for each of us, “we have to make certain journeys just to know for sure that we can. Other times we make them without knowing the reasons why until it’s all said and done.”

  “That’s pretty deep for a personal assistant.”

  “Do you try to be an asshole?” She put paper plates down and arranged the salads. “Or is it more a God-given skill?”