“Where we headed?” Steve asked the two women in his life.
“The only place in town that serves a decent breakfast,” Linda replied, looking out the window.
“Joe’s Cup,” Sarah said from the back seat. “Best pancakes in the state.”
“Not too bad of an omelet, either,” Steve added.
“If you put hot sauce on it, don’t even think about trying to kiss me,” Linda said with a scowl.
“Oh, they’ll be hot sauce,” Steve replied with wiggling eyebrows, as he grabbed her knee. “As well as hot kisses!” he started tickling his wife’s thigh.
“Stop!” Linda said with a beautiful laugh. “Keep your hands on the wheel!”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “This is almost obscene.”
The aging American native man sat at the diner, sipping his coffee in solitary silence. He had come to this small town because his ancestors’ peace was being disturbed. His people were doing everything they could to stop this trespass but the courts were slow in dealing out justice, so he had come to speak to the man in charge of this grave robbing. Perhaps he could speak some sense into this confused teacher.
It wasn’t until he had reached the area that he started to understand there was something else stirring here. It floated on the air like soot and ash from a rancid fire of the burning dead. It tainted everything, even the coffee he sipped.
“What have they found?” he asked himself, finishing his coffee and placing money on the table for the bill. Right before he stood up his eyes meet Steve Hendrix’s as he and his family stepped through the front door of Joe’s Cup.
Less than eight feet stood between them. Both men were full of stress and anxiety over what they considered a passion. Both were also nauseous with the evil that had suddenly contaminated that love, making it something putrid, like a beautiful woman who suddenly became a rotting corpse as you kissed her for the first time.
They moved towards one another with dark eyes and scowls. Neither of them condoned violence, but nor did either man shy from it when it was necessary. A logical man would say this was not one of those moments, unfortunately, neither one of these wise men were in a logical mood at the moment.
“What in the hell…” Steve began.
“What have you found?” the old Indian bellowed at the top of his lungs, his finger in Steve’s face. “What have you unleashed?”
“History!” Steve yelled back as the diner suddenly got quiet. “The history of this land and the people who lived here!” Steve’s finger pointed right back at the old man’s face. “People that you have no way of proving are your ancestors!”
“Does that really matter now?” The Indian whispered as he got in Steve’s face, even though he was a good six inches shorter than Steve’s six foot two frame. “Are you getting more than just dirt on your hands now, professor?”
Steve’s mind stumbled as he tried to think of what to say. “I’m not a professor,” he replied. “I’m a teacher.” He pushed past the old Indian.
“All the more reason that you should know better,” the old man said, walking out of the diner.
Linda and Sarah looked at one another, mortified.
Steve looked back at them. “Come on, let’s get a table.”
Linda was about to tell her husband she wasn’t going to eat at a place where her husband just embarrassed the hell out of her when Lenny Marshall started clapping.
Lenny was a short, stocky middle-aged man that was known for being a loud mouth, but had enough of a personality to usually get away with it. He also owned the local construction company that Steve was using to excavate the dig site.
“That was a better show than anything that is going to be on the Saturday Matinee!” Lenny said with a laugh. “Jenny!” he called out to the waitress. “I’m picking up their bill.” He tipped his coffee cup at Steve, “It’s the least I can do after such an entertaining show.”
Steve waived Lenny down. “You just get your boys to be more careful with the backhoe and we're square.”
Lenny shrugged. “They’re construction workers, they ain’t artists.”
“Fine, then you are paying for my breakfast,” Steve replied. “You should be able to afford it with those union rates you’re charging me.”
“You think my boys are rough with your ancient pottery pieces, let’s see what happens to that shit when you bring in a bunch a rats to do the work instead of union men.” Lenny said as he shoveled in a forkful of pancake.
Half the restaurant laughed, including Steve, so the tension in the room seemed to dissipate as Steve took a seat and looked at his wife and daughter, who still stood in the same place they had been in during the argument.
“What?” he asked, looking down at the menu.
With an angry sigh Linda went to the table with Sarah following behind.
“You’re an asshole,” Linda said, looking at her own menu.
“Aren’t you an excellent role model for our teenage daughter,” Steve replied still looking at his own menu.
“That was so embarrassing, dad,” Sarah said, looking around the diner to see if anyone from school was here.
“That was nothing compared to what I’ll do when you start bringing guys home.”
Linda grinned slightly and shook her head.
Steve pointed at her. “Hey, you’re not allowed to laugh at my jokes, you’re mad at me, remember?”
Jenny the waitress came over to their table. “You crazy kids ready to order?”
“Got anything stronger than coffee?” Linda asked.
Jake awoke with a dry throat and an aching head. Sitting up, he ran his hand through his hair and looked at his pack of cigarettes that sat on the nightstand, waiting for him.
"What would dear old dead pappy think right now?" he whispered to himself as he lit up. The flash of his butane lighter winked at him in the mirror on the wall.
"Smokes gonna make you slow and quick to wind, boy," he said in his dead father's southern Illinois accent, looking at his reflection. "Ain't one damn NFL player smokes, I guarantee it," blowing smoke out of his nose just like his father had when he had said it.
"Fucking hypocrite," Jake said, walking into the bathroom to take a piss. His dad had loved how Jake seemed to be a natural on the football field as a linebacker, and it gave them common ground when their relationship was starting to become stressed due to Jake becoming a teenager. When Jake's father died, he stopped playing, and he didn't miss it a damn bit.
His old man could be a mean son of a bitch at times, especially when he drank too much whiskey, but overall he had been a decent father, and Jake missed the hell out of him. He didn't figure out the only real reason he had played football was to make his dad happy until he died.
It had been an accident at the corn processing plant that had killed his father. He had been fourteen when it happened so he never heard the grizzly details first hand, only what he had overheard from conversations in other rooms late at night. His father had been foreman over the maintenance crew and they had been trying to repair one of the massive machines that was fucking up. It was supposedly bigger than most people's houses and his father was on top of it, doing some damn thing to try to get it to work. For some unknown reason, he slipped and fell into it. The augur that twisted inside of the giant metal box chewed him up into red jelly in less than three seconds.
The corn processing plant had paid out a good sized settlement, between that and the life insurance his mother didn't have to worry about money anymore. She could quit her job as a bank teller if she wanted, luckily she didn't, because the health insurance she had through her job was much needed when she was diagnosed with cancer a year later.
Lung cancer, which made perfect sense, she smoked a pack and a half a day with ease. She had taken it all in with ease as well, just like dad's death, just like when she found out that the plant had blamed her husband's death on his own neglect of safety. She had explained it all to him in whispers and a half smile. His father coul
d be a mean son of a bitch, but his mother was the Queen Bitch of Cold.
Soon she would be even colder, when she was six feet under, and he would be all alone in the world.
"And who gives a shit," he threw his cigarette into the toilet and got into the shower. He quickly washed away the sins and the hangover from the night before and went back to his room and got dressed.
He heard the screen door open from the front of the house. It had been opened all night most likely, neither he nor his mom gave enough of shit to lock up the house.
The heavy clumping of work boots told Jake who it was coming down the hall. Grabbing another smoke and lighting it up, he waited for his dark ego to enter the room.
Johnny, his best friend, walked into Jake's bedroom with an evil smile. "Up and At 'em, bro," he said, leaning on the frame of the door. "Time to raise some hell and deflower some virgins."
Jake nodded his head, forgetting about his previous thoughts. "Best idea I've heard in a while."
"My 'stang is still all fucked up," Johnny said, grabbing one of Jake's cigarettes. "Can we take your mom's truck?"
Jake shrugged. "Not like she's driving it anywhere."
"Cool," Johnny said as he lit up. "Let's roll."
"You got any weed?" Jake asked as they made their way into the kitchen.
"Course I do. I wouldn't show up empty handed, now would I?"
"You obviously didn't show up with any cigarettes," Jake replied grabbing a pack of smokes and a bottle of vodka out of the freezer.
"You got your party favors," Johnny said, pointing at the booze and smokes. "And I got mine," he pulled the quarter of marijuana out of his back pocket.
Jake shrugged. "That evens things up."
She watched them walk out to the truck and leave from the upstairs window in her room. A tear trailed down her face as she began to have a coughing fit that ended with her hands soaked with blood.
"What have I done?" she whispered hoarsely in the dusty stillness of her bedroom. It wasn't the cancer that slowly ate at her due to the decades of smoking that she spoke of. It was the path she had set her son on that truly pained her.
"You've done what needed to be done," the demon with the farm implementation hat explained, suddenly appearing from out of the shadows. "You had no choice either way."
"My choices are my own," she rasped out through a bloody throat and lips. "You have no right to make me damn my own son!" The fiend's sudden appearance didn't seem to faze her at all.
The demon sat down on the window ledge, waving her away as he watched the kids drive off. "That's a lost cause already Margaret, and you know it. He's been on our side of the fence for a while."
"He can still change, he still has time."
The demon tilted his head. "What good would that do you?"
"This isn't about me."
That got a good chuckle out of the demon. "Margy, this has always been about you! Remember all those years ago when you were young, hot, and always looking to do the wrong thing with me and my buds.
"I didn't know who you really were."
"Yeah well, that's my kinds' M.O." the demon said with the shake of his head. "And I let you just walk away from it all for all those years. I even let you start a family like none of it had ever happened." He leaned forward, the shade of the curtain masking his face but doing nothing to the low yellow glow in his eyes. "Did you really think you weren't going to have to pay up for what I had let you have all this time?" He lightly touched her bloody chin. "Did you really think I'd ever forget your pretty face?
"Sorry, Linda," Jenny the waitress replied about having something stronger than coffee. "Cup of Joe is as good as it gets."
"That will have to do then."
"And what can I get for you, miss?" Jenny said to Sarah, one of her best friends.
"You know what I like," Sarah said with a sigh.
"You got it," Jenny said, starting to walk off.
"Hey!" Steve said. "What about me?"
Jenny looked at the two females. "Is he allowed to order?"
"No," they said in unison.
"That's what I thought," Jenny said, walking off.
Steve looked at the two most important women in his life with his hands in the air. "What the hell is going on?"
"Just deserts," Linda explained.
"A guy defends himself, and pays in spades," Steve said with the shake of his head.
"Clueless," Sarah said, looking at her mother.
"It's a man thing," Linda said with a shrug.
"It sure is," Steve replied.
Jenny came back with three cups of coffee, "Cream for the ladies, straight black for the gentleman."
"Thank you, Jenny," Steve said with a bow of his head. "I knew you would understand."
"It's more about the tip, than anything, Steve," she smiled.
"We understand," Linda said.
"Thank you," Jenny replied. "That's what matters."
Steve looked from Jenny to Linda and Sarah with a shrug. "Whatever, so long as I get some coffee."
The Indian Chief inhaled deeply as he walked across the parking lot to his old Cadillac. The smell was even worse outside of the building.
"Why couldn't these damn palefaces just stayed home?" A voice asked him from behind.
The chief stopped in his tracks, saying nothing.
"Wouldn't it have made all this easier?" the voice asked. "Your kind knew better than to stay here for long. Your kind always figured it out pretty quick compared to the dumb-fuck palefaces."
"Why are you bothering me, monster?" the chief asked without looking back.
"I'm just curious if you are going to try and help these pieces of shit that destroyed your way of life, or if you are just going to go home and let things play out the way they should."
"Your way is not the right way," the Indian replied.
"Neither is theirs," the monster spit into the Indian's ear. "Two wrongs don't make a right, but two self destructs on land you'll never be able to reclaim can't be a bad thing for you and your people, can it?"
"We will never be allies in any way, shape, or form," the Indian Chief protested.
"No, of course not," the fiend replied. "This is just a happy circumstance for both of us. Now get the fuck out of here and don't look back."
The Chief did just that. Driving away, wondering if he was doing the right thing, or just paying back in kind what had happened to his ancestors in years past.
"Doing the right thing will help the white people," he said to himself in the rearview mirror. "It will do nothing for my people, " and with that he justified his decisions and drove out of the conflict. The saddest part of it all was the simple truth of his words.
Chapter 4 Morning Regrets
Frank and Lloyd went on their morning walk. They watched an old Cadillac, drive out of the dusty parking lot of the Cup of Joe just a little too fast, the tail end of the car fishtailing slightly as it made its way onto the highway. As the dust settled, they made eye contact with the demon.
"You just missed the dialogue with a potential ally," the fiend said with a deep chuckle. "Story of your life, Franky."
Frank slowly shook his head. "We're not looking for any new friends."
The demon's eyes got ice cold. "You better not fucking be."
"We're not," Frank said with a shrug. "Everything we need, we got right here." They stopped for a moment as Lloyd urinated on a fire hydrant.
The demon growled as the symbolism wasn't lost on him, making Frank chuckle and Lloyd sneeze as they moved off.
Jake and Johnny jumped into the old Chevy truck and kicked up some dirt as they sped off.
"Where to?" Jake asked.
Johnny gave it some serious thought as he loaded his one hitter. "Let's go to Joe's Cup."
Jake looked his old friend in the eye. "Why would we go there?"
Johnny lit up the pot pipe and inhaled deeply. "Cause Drew is working in the kitchen, maybe he can score us some free food."
> "How the hell would he do that?"
"I don't know, man" smoke crept out of his mouth. "His fat ass will think of something."
Jake shook his head. "What waitress are you looking to tag, now?"
Johnny looked at him with a smile. "Not sure, keepin' my options open."
"You're such a slut," Jake said with a laugh.
"You wish you could be me," Johnny said as he lit up again.
"In some ways," Jake thought to himself.
"You want a hit?" Johnny asked, smoke curling out of his nose.
"It's too early, you fucking junky."
"Such a pussy."
"Kiss my ass," Jake said as he held his hand out. "Load me some."
Jenny brought their food. She knew what Steve normally ordered, and brought him a plate of hot cakes with some bacon on the side.
"You're an angel, Jenny" Steve said with a smile.
"Like I said," Jenny replied. "It's all about the tip."
"Honesty is the best policy," Steve said, popping a piece of bacon in his mouth.
Jenny turned to Sarah. "I'm off at two, what are you up to, today?"
"Whatever you feel like doing," Sarah said with a shrug.
"Cool," Jenny replied. "I'll swing by your house after I take a shower," she said, moving on to her next table.
The front door dinged as it opened, everyone turned and looked for a brief moment as the two stoned teenagers walked in. Johnny smiled, loving the temporary spotlight as everyone went back to their food. Jake couldn't care less if anyone noticed their entrance, until he made eye contact with Sarah.
She quickly looked down, acting like she hadn't seen him. Jake kept looking at her until the old guy sitting next to her got in the way, staring back at him.
Jake turned his head away casually, "Daddy doesn't like his little girl getting eyed," he thought to himself with a half smile.
Sarah's heart was suddenly in her throat as she started slicing up her pancakes with slow, strong cuts of her fork, trying to get her breathing slowed back down.
The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) Page 3
