Murder of the Prodigal Father

by Mark Wm Smith

  As I trudged down the walk, the old woman opened her door behind me. I half turned.

  “That sister of yours is running the car dealership alone now?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Pity.”

  The door slammed shut. My head hung a little lower for the remainder of my trip to the Chrysler.

  In my room, having successfully avoided Mother, I tapped my fingers on the phone. I’d been to Jasia’s. I hadn’t found the information I needed. I’d slipped on the slippery slope of lust, and sworn off of her forever. Now, I found myself struggling with the idea of calling. She had to know who was seeing who in Miles City, Montana. My mind could turn up no other person with that kind of knowledge. Not even Mrs. Caruthers, who stayed locked in her house all day.

  I punched in the numbers, and told the operator what I needed. My heart beat faster. “Be there,” I mumbled.

  My room shrank around me. The clock ticked off a minute.

  I closed my eyes, imagining my body expanding through the roof with a splintering racket that brought the neighbors running out of their own homes.

  “Hello?” A familiar male voice.

  “Garboski?”

  A clattering noise and dead silence.

  “Hello? Is that you Garboski?” My heart rate increased another ten beats per minute. “What are you doing in my house?” I felt like my chest could explode. My hand squeezed the receiver until it burned, but I couldn’t wring another peep out of it.

  Silence shouted at me. The digital numbers on my alarm changed twice.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the operator said from five thousand miles away, “your call has been disconnected.”

  My hand fell to my lap, the phone stuck to it, the operator still chittering at me. I held my forehead with my other palm. My breath came quickly. Excess oxygen filled my brain with light.

  Could she do this to me?

  Of course she could. I deserved it. I’d slept with Sharon. Her best friend on the island. I’d violated a sacred trust. She could do that to me. With my best friend. The guy who shared my strip club adventures and kept my dirty secrets. Garboski the G-man, “G for gals and good times.” And I certainly couldn’t trust him. He would move on me in a minute. I’d seen him in action a hundred times.

  It didn’t seem her style. But neither did gambling, once upon a time.

  I lifted the phone. “Ma’am?”

  “Your call has been disconnected, sir. Would you like me to try to reconnect you?”

  “Please.”

  A clicking sound. A pause. The squawking of electronic geese told me the phone was off the hook.

  “Damn her!” I slammed the handset back in its cradle. Straightening my back, I sucked in a deep breath to clear my head. Was Nansi really capable of getting paybacks? Why else would Garboski answer my phone?

  I lifted the receiver and poked in more numbers. Guilt filled my forehead at the realization that I could do it from memory.

  The line opened after a single ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Jasia?” I sucked the word in. It sounded more like an inhale than her name. “Jasia.”

  “Just a moment.” A thump and a shuffling noise came through the earpiece.

  I closed my eyes and pressed the phone closer, picturing the scene at the other end. And then I was praying under my breath, “Dear God, protect me from lust—”

  “Hello?”

  “Jasia,” I said, rushing this time.

  “Connor? I didn’t expect to hear from you.” Was that disappointment or sarcasm I heard?

  “Hey. I had some questions I never got to ask. About local romances.” That didn’t sound like what I meant. I spoke faster. “I think my dad was seeing someone before he died. A woman.”

  Dead silence. I’d lost her. This whole idea was crazy, anyway. Best—

  “A woman?”

  “I think so. Nothing is real clear about all of this. It could be nonsense. I just thought you might—”

  “Using me for the local tattletale?” She sounded like she was smiling.

  “Trying.” I loosened my shoulders.

  “Maybe I don’t pay attention to that prattle.”

  “Your business thrives on prattle.”

  She sighed. “Touché. But I’ve got other business right now. Meet me by the river.”

  “What?” My heart pumped harder and my breath caught.

  “You know the place. Nine o’clock.”

  “Or, maybe—“

  The phone line went dead.

  “Jasia?” I pinched my forehead. “Damn.” She played this much better than I. “First rule, Connor,” I said to my dead phone. “Don’t try to outsmart a woman.”

  I’d meet her. But I’d keep it simple and direct. Get the necessary information, and make it clear to Jasia Weaver that we no longer had a relationship. Commitment to my wife meant saying goodbye to past relationships. Over meant over. Regardless of Garboski. No way Nansi would let him in. The best plan to keep Nansi, was to say goodbye to all other women.

  On my way to Dairy Queen— a place I was sure I’d never find Jasia— for an overdue meal, I repeated my commitment mantra. “I’m a one-woman man. I’m a one-woman man.” As sweat built under my arms, I spoke more forcefully.

  The restaurant parking lot was nearly empty when I arrived.

  I sat staring through the large windows at emptiness for five minutes after the car rattled to sleep. “Great, Connor,” I told the hub of the steering wheel. “Seven and a half hours to go before your screw up your whole life.” I banged my forehead a couple of times against the hard plastic. Then I got out and went inside.

  After lunch, I dumped my misery out with the paper wrapping my sandwich came in. Jasia had information about Dixon’s secret lover. If I didn’t see her, she would stop talking to me. Our old lover’s rendezvous held the risk of diving into the past, but there was no good way to avoid that.

  At ten minutes to nine, having slept off some of my earlier anxiety, I pulled the Chrysler to the precarious edge of Yellowstone Boulevard.

  When Jasia and I found the place, the River Road was a dirt track on the levee that kept flood waters out of town. I’m sure boulevard held more romance. For me, sweat lining the inside of my shirt with the prospect of meeting Jasia in a few minutes, “river road” was closer to the redneck attitude I was feeling.

  Her silver BMW glinted in the radiance of a veiled moon. She parked in front of the Chrysler and climbed out. As she ambled over, hips swinging rhythmically, I floundered for resolve.

  “You look tense,” Jasia said, as she took the step that pressed her body into mine.

  “I am tense, Jasia.” Formally stating her name staved some of my surging lust. “This isn’t the way things should go.”

  She took my hand and stepped back half an inch. “I know this is difficult. How do you think I feel?”

  I hadn’t thought about her feelings much. My focus had been on Connor and his family. The idea that she had emotional involvement stunned me silent.

  “Since I heard you were coming home,” she said, “I’ve tried to keep my mind off of you.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could—”

  Her body pressed into me, harder this time. “Don’t crush me so quickly, Connor.” She pushed her cheek into my chest. “I know there are considerations. I know you have to return to your family. I know how difficult this must be.”

  I wrapped my arms around her heat. It couldn’t be helped. Hearing Jasia’s emotional dilemma changed things, released a desire for the vulnerability that had gone unexpressed in our dating years. Its absence had given me room to abandon her then. Now, my morality was slipping into the abyss of longing to know her as I never had before.

  “We’ll work it out,” I said, not knowing what exactly. Not exactly caring.

  Jasia squeezed me. “It’s cold. Let’s get in the car.”

  I held the back door of the New Yorker open and she slid across the seat. I slipped i
n after.

  Holding her, caressing her smoothness, touching her face, kissing those luscious lips, time disappeared. We were high school kids again. Life reeled back in, finding us at the crossroads of adulthood. These were the choice moments that defined our future.

  My sexual energy built into a force of need. Each touch of blistering female skin sparked a greater level of yearning. My mouth hunted nakedness and Jasia’s responses fueled me. We were perpetual motion, feeding on each others carnality. No one existed outside of our glass and metal love nest. We burned toward unity, searching one another for unseen sanctuaries, finding only necessity. When no more energy remained for the quest, our bodies joined and we ran together into physical bliss, finally collapsing into a sweating heap of displaced hope.

  My head rested against Jasia’s bare breast even as my body folded into satisfied defeat of my concerns over the corruption of flesh. A deep sleep fell on me, while Jasia stroked my hair.

  I awoke shivering and alone. Jasia was gone. The New Yorker’s interior was as cold and dark as my father’s coffin.

  Sitting up forced a groan from my solar plexus. An ache in my bones projected outward, permeating every muscle until it scraped up against my stiffened clothing.

  My mind reformulated the events that brought me to this moment. They rapidly coalesced into despondency. The universe pulled at me from its most distant points, ripping my soul into fragments. Loneliness formed a vacuum inside my chest cavity. This swelled to an emptiness I had only brushed up against in the past, as a boy when my father left the house for good, and shipwrecked my normal, self-preserving nature.

  “The world would be better without me.” The words flattened like a blanket over the icebox interior of Mother’s Chrysler. I stared past the frosted windows toward the frozen river that called to me.

  “End the pain,” the water cried.

  The option sounded more than feasible. It seemed ordained by circumstance.

  I closed my eyes and pounded my fists against my forehead. Oh God, oh God, oh God. My befuddled mind cried out in unison with my aching body to a God I didn’t know. Quentin and Penelope Jane flashed alive inside my brain. In a voice without words, I begged forgiveness for my sinful passion.

  Grief filled my chest and poured into the empty space. Like a guttural chant, I choked it out between rasping breaths. I rocked on the seat and coughed up my remorse for ten minutes. The aching in my bones began to wash away. When the final utterance rolled over my lips, peace flooded me.

  Immediately, I had to pee.

  My limbs moved with stiff resistance. Exiting the car slowly, I stumbled outside, snow from the partially covered windows and roof drifting into my shirt as I bumped through the door. Staggering to a cottonwood near the front end of the vehicle, I leaned against the tree and began to relieve myself. The release of my bladder and the freezing temperature stimulated nerves under the surface of my skin. My body shuddered so hard I had difficulty standing.

  Large, wet flakes touched my face with tiny, frozen fingertips.

  Hurrying my zipper got it stuck. “Great time to forget your jacket, jackass,” I said, bending forward. The move squeezed a chuckle from my quaking stomach.

  The blackness of winter’s night prevented me from seeing my hands.

  Despair stirred again, like I’d tipped my frame too far and my soul began to pour out. This I deserved, struggling with the simplest of tasks for eternity.

  I squinted and tugged.

  A baseball bat slammed into my right shoulder blade. The impact bounced me against the cottonwood.

  My shoulder exploded with phosphorescent pain as I hit the tree bark. I teetered toward the downward embankment.

  A gunshot cracked in the distant night.

  Paranoia grabbed me by the chest. I let it pull me down the hillside into brush and rocks. Once, twice, three times I bounced. Each landing forced a howl of agony.

  Another far away clap of gunfire sounded. Debris scattered, landing like popcorn in and around my body as I came to rest.

  I lay sprawled sideways in a bush. My shoulder burned like someone held a welding rod next to my bone. The pain radiated outward, assailing every part of me. My vision blackened for a second. I can’t stand this for long. I squinted to force the pain back in place.

  A sharp twig bore into my side, and underneath me, several stones dug into my thigh, hip, and ribs.

  I needed to move, but moving meant revealing my position. I held my mouth wide, letting the river cover the sounds of rasping breath. My nostrils filled with the rotting scent of saturated wood and earth. A hint of fishiness tainted the frozen air. Snowflakes rested longer on my skin before melting. My body shook violently from torment and hypothermia. The rocks and branch jabbed in deeper.

  Will I die here? Alone? The price of my sin? Like my father? I didn’t want it that way. Please, God.

  “Why did you leave me here, Jasia?” I whispered, and then cringed.

  But no bullet came.

  Getting away from this exposed location was my first priority. My freezing, shaking, probably perforated carcass wouldn’t allow me to stay hidden in this spot for long. I had no way to pinpoint the gunman. Those shots might have come from any direction, their report echoing off of trees and water and the high cliffs across the surging river. Climbing back up the levee and into Mother’s car would expose me. And how far could I get? I wasn’t sure I could even use my right arm.

  My mind swirled these ideas like eddies in the river. One conclusion kept repeating, though it seemed like certain death.

  I mustered every psychological and physical reserve I could, and sucked in a deep breath of very cold air. I rocked myself onto my right side. The tungsten fire reignited and I cried out. Anticipating another bullet, I shoved off the ground and took a staggering dive for the frigid water of the mighty Yellowstone.

  Shocking icicles stabbed into every inch of my skin. My mouth flew open automatically, but I managed to stay the gasp until I’d cleared water.

  The rush of freezing movement yanked me down into the rock bed. It then dragged me across the bottom, slamming every stone until my buoyancy and the change in depth bobbed me to the surface. Wrapped in churning ice kept my body from warming. The rotating exposure to frigid air and agitated ice water threatened to siphon every molecule of oxygen from my lungs.

  I tried flailing my arms, seeking control of my wild ride.

  My right arm would not function. I began sinking again.

  My heavy feet kept me from lifting my legs. Remembering my boots, I grabbed my left boot string and yanked it into a tight knot.

  The move rotated my body and my head went under.

  I took a half a mouthful of the black, liquid death into me. Bobbing to the surface, I coughed it out and sank again. Beneath the surface the coughing continued and water filled my lungs and stomach.

  In the second I realized everything in the universe had shrunk in around me, including the warmth that came with that celestial blanket, I pictured my father, Dixon Pierce, jogging down the football field in uniform, wearing my high school number.

  And then I was dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Resurrection

  I floated along in the comfort of the Presidential Air Force One, the reclining seat velvety as a cloud, classical music tranquilizing the temperate atmosphere, peace massaging my heart, before Death popped a security exit and dropkicked me from ten thousand feet.

  My lungs burned with the sudden inhale. Sterile air surrounded me, violating my nostrils with chilling accusation. A chattering noise, like loose shutters, teased my ears. Cool, crisp light encased me. A warm, tingling film covered my skin. My mind floated between rattling metal and swarms of frosty birds pecking my skin. I shifted my weight for a look over the edge of consciousness.

  Searing steel sliced into my shoulder.

  I screamed.

  “Connor? Are you all right?” A familiar voice. A woman.

  The fiery penetration just be
low my shoulder blade cooled a degree.

  I kept my back arched to prevent certain agony. I was on a mattress. And I didn’t have the strength to maintain this position for long. Any movement would combust inside my shoulder and back as soon as I rested weight on them. I groaned.

  “Connor?” the insistent female repeated.

  Mother.

  Gritting my teeth, I lowered myself onto the damp sheets. Seven levels of electrified, blistering torment drove a less high-pitched, more controlled screech from my throat.

  “Mr. Pierce,” a gentle, dry voice said quietly from near my face. I could feel her minty breath on my chin. “You must lie still. You have a significant laceration on you back.”

  “Uhn-huh,” I managed. “Significant.” The word sounded like squishy pudding.

  My eyelids cracked open.

  A plump, undefined face of a nurse inspected me. She placed the back of her hand lightly on my forehead.

  It was good to see her. Not only because her blurred form appeared kind and gentle. Knowing where her hands were prevented the unexpected touch that could send my body back into excruciating torture.

  She ran her hands along the sides of my biceps, straightening the bedding I’d just tussled.

  I grimaced. But she was careful. It didn’t hurt a bit.

  Watching her, my eyes opened a little more. I wanted to ask the time, but decided it wasn’t worth the energy.

  Besides my nurse, I could now see two women sitting on one side of my bed. Mother and Renée. It warmed me to see people I knew, and even loved most of the time, here to greet me when I woke up.

  “Are you all right?” Renée asked. Her eyes looked oversized for her head, making her waifish frame more severe.

  I thought it sounded stupid, since I had just screamed at them from a hospital bed. But she was here, with me. “S’okay,” I replied.

  “Ten minutes,” the nurse said from the door. Pink and blue shapes glided around in a larger room behind her. “Then I’m kicking you out.”

  “That’s harsh,” I attempted.