Babychain Blues

by Tony Masero

  Caitlin was still sitting in her chair. He humped the bag of tools past her and into the bathroom down the hall. As he went back out to get the rest of his gear he saw she was staring numbly into space. She looked like a wounded animal to him, glazed and waiting for the pain to pass. Almost as if she did not understand where it all came from or perhaps that it was just a moment in time and in a little while things would be different. Not better, just different.

  ‘Say,’ he said. ‘You’ll have hot water now. How about using it in that sink and making us a fresh cup of coffee when your done with the washing up.’

  She looked at him a moment. ‘Oh, yeah. Right, cup of coffee,’ she said, not moving.

  ‘Now, would be good,’ he said, knowing it wasn’t his place but feeling she needed a firm hand to get her out of the stunned rut she seemed to be welded into.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, slowly unwinding herself. Her fragile obedience was worrying for Cole and he could see how she had become the deadbeat bedfellow for a piece of work like Demus Barnes.

  ‘You know, Caitlin…. is it okay if I call you that?’

  She nodded acceptance.

  ‘You really shouldn’t let any man treat you so.’

  She twisted her lip and winced as she did so, ‘Oh, Demus isn’t so bad. He can be real nice sometimes. It’s just when he gets to drinking with his Indian buddies he gets a little edgy.’

  Cole looked at his boots and didn’t say anything; he turned away and went into the bathroom to start work.

  ‘I’ll get you your coffee,’ she called after him.

  Two hours later he had made good headway and broken down the old ceramic shower base. He was carrying out broken shards of the pedestal when he heard the roar of the El Camino. Setting down the canvas bag of broken pieces he went to his toolbox and took out a hefty ball peen hammer. Rolling down his shirtsleeves, he slid the shaft of the hammer up the sleeve, keeping the head hidden in his right palm. Then he lifted the bag of rubble again and made his way out front.

  Demus was leaning in the doorway, barring Cole’s way outside. He held a steaming cup of fresh coffee in his hand and smiled thinly at Cole.

  ‘See you got started then,’ he said.

  ‘Sure have,’ Cole agreed.

  Caitlin was back in her chair, a magazine on her lap. Cole noticed that although her head was down she was watching them both surreptitiously from under the bottom of her fringe. The kitchen he noticed was clear of dirty crockery and looking like somebody lived there apart from mice and rats.

  Demus rubbed the side of his nose, ‘Seems like Caitlin’s been doing some cleaning up. Must be you’re having a good influence. Sure is more than I could get her to do.’

  ‘Oh, she’s does just fine without any help from me.’

  ‘No, she’s like that with older men,’ Demus said with a slight sneer in his voice. ‘On account of her not having any Pa. That’s it, ain’t it, honey? Never knew who your Ma and Pa were, did you?’

  ‘Must be a lot of us in that particular boat,’ Cole observed, hiking the loaded bag higher. ‘Excuse me; I have to get this outside. It’s kind of heavy.’

  Demus backed away from the door allowing Cole room.

  ‘You the same then?’ he asked, smiling slyly, the insidious tone of insult evident in his voice. ‘You a bastard too? Not having no folks to call your own.’

  ‘Guess so,’ agreed Cole, brushing past. ‘I’m a bastard alright. Say, you couldn’t show me where’s best to dump this rubble could you?’

  Demus levered himself away from the wall and set down his cup on top of the TV. ‘Okay, somewhere out back I guess. It don’t really matter.’

  ‘Be good to know what you’d like. I don’t want to mess up your driveway.’

  ‘No,’ Demus grinned cynically and snorted a laugh. ‘We wouldn’t want to mess up our driveway, now would we?’

  He swaggered around in front of Cole and led him to a gully at the rear of the cabin. Demus pointed to a heap of garbage piled there. Old rusty cans and broken bits of machinery, waste paper and half burned packing cases.

  ‘Anywhere here, it don’t matter none.’

  ‘Say, Demus. Can we have a word?’

  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  Cole tipped out the bag and dropped the broken masonry and dust all over Demus’ boots.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Demus, leaping back. ‘What’re you doing, you dumb fuck?’

  ‘You like beating up on little girls, do you?’ Cole asked coldly. He was watching Demus from beneath lowered brows, his body tense and the hammer head clasped firmly in his hand but still out of sight.

  Demus was brushing off his denims and he looked up with narrowed eyes at the question, ‘What’s it to you, asshole? You got something to say on this, because if you have keep it to yourself. It’s none of your business and you’d best keep your mouth shut.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘I’ll take you on, old man. I’ll beat the living shit out of you.’

  ‘Come try then. Lets see if your up to beating on a man instead of a girl child.’

  Demus lunged forward, sure of his brawny strength and youth.

  Cole let drop the hammerhead, catching the shaft as it fell from inside his sleeve. As Demus leered towards him, already grinning in expected victory, Cole swung upwards in a sweeping loop and the hammerhead slammed under Demus’ jaw, clacking his teeth together and bringing him up short.

  Cole didn’t give him time to collect his thoughts, he bent over and swung again, low down, smacking hard against the side of Demus’ knee.

  Demus howled, his leg buckling under him. As he fell Cole leant over him and sideswiped his cheek. There was a harsh smack as the steel met bone and Demus swung away, a sluice of blood escaping from his lips as he bit into the inside of his mouth.

  ‘Wha…’ he gasped, trying to scrabble away on his elbow and heels.

  Cole swung down and slugged him again in his exposed chest. He did not pull back and hoped the blow was hard enough to crack ribs.

  ‘Ah,’ gasped Demus, clutching at his side. ‘Don’t. No, don’t.’

  ‘You like to hurt others, don’t you? You dinky little ass. Now you know how it feels.’

  Cole felt the coldness rise up in him as he stood over the quivering figure of Demus. It blanked out his normal more reserved self and he was back again in a killing mode where nothing mattered except destroying the enemy. If he had taken a moment, Cole would have been surprised to find it so close to the surface. But he was fired now and any thought of consideration was long gone. As Demus tried to lift himself into a sitting position with his back against the pile of garbage behind, Cole swung back his boot and kicked him full in the face. Demus arched over, the back of his head driven into the rusty cans and bedsprings.

  Cole came in close, he knelt, pressing his knee into the chest of the half conscious Demus and holding him down with the pressure. The hammerhead came up under Demus’ jaw forcing his head up so he could look into Cole’s face.

  ‘Now, hear what I say,’ Cole said in a low intense voice, his face close up against Demus and staring directly into his eyes. ‘I think its best you pull out, don’t you? Leave this girl alone. Go away, somewhere far away, because if I see you again I might just have to kill you. Am I plain?’

  Demus panted, saying nothing but whining quietly in pain.

  ‘Let me hear it,’ ordered Cole.

  ‘Yes,’ Demus murmured, his eyes sliding away and his head sagging in defeat. ‘I got it.’

  ‘Never could abide bullies. And you’re one. So go with God but best know He won’t protect you from me I ever see your face again.’ Cole clutched his shirtfront and pulled Demus to his feet. ‘Get going.’ Cole thrust him away and Demus hopped and limped to the corner of the building, clutching his side and making low whimpering noises.

  ‘My ribs is bust,’ he complained.

  ‘Lucky it ain’t your neck. Now go.’

  Cole listened to the Camino start up. He stayed
where he was, feeling the adrenalin race through his bloodstream and the breath coming fast in his dilated nostrils. Man, it had been a long time. But like the taste of sweet things after a long diet, it was real good. Might not be too healthy, he realized, but the thrill was electric and left a feeling of vitality in its wake.

  Slowly he steadied his heartbeat. He slipped the shaft of the hammer in his work belt and let it hang down by his side. He picked up the empty bag and went back around and then inside the house.

  Caitlin was stood there, biting at the wound on her lower lip nervously. ‘What did you do?’ she asked.

  ‘Demus decided to move on. He sent his respects but he won’t be coming back no more.’

  She looked at him a long moment and then started to bite at the bent forefinger of her right hand.

  ‘He’ll be real mad,’ she murmured. ‘You beat him didn’t you?’

  Cole nodded, ‘He had it coming, Caitlin. He shouldn’t do what he did, it was cowardly and far from fair. I just pointed him in the right direction.’

  ‘You are a real gentleman, aren’t you, Mister Junger?’ There was nothing cynical in it; it was a statement of fact as far as Caitlin was concerned.

  ‘Why don’t you call me Cole?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, a smile starting to play at the corners of her mouth. ‘You want to stay for supper, Cole?’

  ‘Long as you clean up that kitchen. I ain’t one for roaches in my feed.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said shyly.

  ‘Then you go do that and then I’m taking you to Baxter General to get that eye checked out.’

  ‘Aw, I don’t need a doctor. Really its not necessary.’

  ‘Better to do it, Caitlin. I don’t like the look of that eye.’

  ‘Alright then.’

  She sounded comfortable with the idea and accepted his directive readily, Cole noted. Almost pleased at the suggestion and he guessed no one had taken much trouble over her before.

  He moved another bag of rubble and stopped on the way back in whilst she worked in the kitchen, tidying and washing down surfaces.

  ‘How’d you get out here, Caitlin?’ he asked from the doorway.

  She looked up from where she was crouched in front of the stove. ‘Like Demus said, I didn’t have no Mom or Pop, I was left in the Holy Mother Orphanage up in Spokane when I was little. Later they put me out into foster homes, I spent a while doing that. I worked a while too, slung hash for a time in a diner. Was a hand at the Riblet Plant, did shift work there until the foreman got a little too friendly.’

  ‘So how’d you end up with this place?’

  She smiled at the memory before remembering her split lip and raising a finger to dab at the wound. ‘That was Mister Sandford. He was real nice; he owned the garage over in Baxter. He needed a girl in the office and took me on, even though I didn’t know nothing about paperwork or office stuff. He was kind man, a good Christian. He died two years back and he left me this place in his will. That sure was a surprise, I can tell you. Me, getting something like this.’

  ‘He must have been a good man.’

  ‘He surely was. Took me in his house and everything. Said he liked to look at me, that was all.’

  ‘Look at you?’

  ‘Mm,’ she nodded. ‘It was kind of a sexual thing. But he was an old man, so he didn’t touch me or nothing. He liked to look at me with no clothes on, that’s all. I guess he couldn’t do it no more at his age.’

  ‘You didn’t mind doing that for him?’

  She shrugged, ‘No, why not? It didn’t cost nothing and I done it plenty of times before. Only then I had to do a sight more than walk around naked of course.’

  Cole was surprised at the open way she admitted it, ‘You were a prostitute?’

  ‘Well, I like to call it ‘escort’ but I guess that’s what it was. Uhuh, for a while when I couldn’t get no other work. Then Mister Sandford left me this place, and that’s when I quit all that.’

  There was an open innocence to her confessed whoredom, it seemed that she thought of it as a normal progression in her situation and not a matter of much consideration. It had obviously not demeaned her and mentally she was able to skate over any moral qualms that might have arisen in one more sensitive to social mores.

  ‘And Demus?’

  ‘He just turned up one day about twelve months ago and kind of stayed on.’

  Cole could see how it happened. The emptiness and abuse of her earlier life followed by the freedom and isolation of living out here in a haven in the backwoods. It would engender a kind of dream world that she might escape into.

  ‘You done in here?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Then lets forget about eating and go down to the hospital. Sooner that eye’s seen to the better.’

  ‘What about you?’ she asked once they were in the truck and he had started the ignition.

  ‘I’m just a forty year old plumber, that’s all I am.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re a nice man.’

  He looked across at her wondering if she was joshing him but he saw she was serious and he half-smiled.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Look here,’ she said. ‘You saw off Demus and you’re taking care of me, taking me to the doctor. I think that’s pretty nice.’

  ‘That’s not much, Caitlin. It’s nothing special.’

  ‘It is to me.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you think so. But really, think nothing of it.’

  ‘Can we stop at the store on the way back? I have to get some things if you’re staying for supper.’

  ‘No problem.’

  The admissions nurse at Baxter General ushered Caitlin off to await an emergency doctor in a curtained cubicle and came back to the desk.

  ‘You do that to her?’ she asked brusquely, pushing an admissions form down in front of Cole on the elbow-high desk counter.

  The nurse’s nametag read Martha Jane Kolinsky and she was a fine boned, dark-haired, no-nonsense kind of woman with streaks of gray showing amidst her dark locks. Quite a handsome face, Cole noted, with laughter lines around blue eyes that were not laughing now. In fact they were colder than The Rockies in fall.

  ‘The hell no,’ Cole said, with a disgusted shake of his head. ‘I wouldn’t do such a thing.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘Her dumb boyfriend.’

  ‘And what are you? Her father?’

  ‘No, ma’am. I’m just the plumber fixing her bathroom. I found her like that this morning.’

  Martha’s attitude mellowed somewhat at that, ‘Well, it was good of you to bring her in.’

  Cole shook his head, ‘She doesn’t have transport, its no big deal.’

  Martha pulled up some spectacles on a chain around her neck and set them on her nose. Quite a cute nose, Cole reckoned. She lifted her chin and looking down her cute nose and studied him a moment. ‘We had a boy in here about two hours ago. Pretty beat up, two busted ribs; face the size of a melon and kneecap I ain’t too sure he’ll use again. Now that wouldn’t be anything to do with you. Would it?’

  ‘Accident’s will happen, I guess,’ Cole answered vaguely.

  She smiled at him, those laughter lines coming into play at last. ‘I’m Martha Jane,’ she said.

  ‘Cole Junger. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.’

  ‘Wish there were more like you around, Mister Junger.’

  ‘Why’s that, ma’am?’

  She drew a deep breath and was about to say more when a heavy figure strode up and butted the counter.

  ‘You got a Demus Barnes, in here?’

  The voice was deep and abrupt and Cole turned to see a heavyset man of obvious Native American origin backed up by two others of similar build.

  ‘We do,’ admitted Martha Jane.

  ‘Where’s he at?’

  ‘You friends of his?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Indian.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll see if he’s ready for visitors,�
�� she said, reaching for a phone and swiftly tapping out numbers.

  Cole took the moment to study the three. Cherokee he reckoned. The main man had a long ponytail tied at his back, his lips were thick and well defined but his forehead was lumpy, swollen like a boxer’s as if he had been punched out a few times. One of his partners was chawing on a wad of tobacco, his jaws working overtime and the other was a tall, wide-shouldered and narrow eyed man of a predatory demeanor. All of them looked around cautiously as if wary of being in the place.

  The main man noticed Cole’s glance. ‘Howdy,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ Cole answered.

  ‘You visiting?’ asked the Indian.

  ‘Just bringing someone in.’

  The Indian was about to say more when Martha Jane came back to them.

  ‘You can go on in. He’s down the hall there, room 103. No more than half an hour though, boys.’

  The Indian nodded and without a word the three bundled off down the hall like a trio of prowling lions.

  ‘Joey Loon,’ said Martha Jane. ‘Him and those two others have been in here more times than I care to mention.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Cole, with a frown.

  ‘You name it. Knife wound, beaten up, the usual fare those moonshine boys indulge in. The kind of folk you stay away from, Mister Junger.’ She said the last with a note of warning in her voice.

  Cole pursed his lips, ‘They ain’t nothing to me.’

  ‘Maybe they will be though. Just take care.’

  ‘I’m obliged for the advice, Miz Martha,’ Cole said, turning to leave.

  Her voice called him back, ‘Come an evening. Around ten when my shift’s over, I usually stop off at the Welcome Bar for one on my way home.’

  It was a leading question and she said it with an inviting twinkle in her eye. Cole stopped and slowly turned to face her.

  He smiled briefly and raised a salutary finger to his brow. ‘I’ll remember that, Martha Jane. Tell the girl I’ll be waiting outside in my truck if she needs a ride home.’

  ‘Will do, Mister Junger.’

  Chapter Five

  As it happened they decided to keep Caitlin a while longer until the swelling had subsided and they could tell with more confidence if there was anything seriously wrong with the eye. She had a few stitches in her lip and they x-rayed her jaw with no bad results found. It was Martha Jane that strolled out to the car park and gave him the news.