Kin

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  “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.”

  “Huh.”

  Finch grabbed his beer, and headed for the booth halfway down. It was far enough from the door and Frat Boy to give them a little privacy, unless of course the guy decided to invite himself into the conversation. Finch hoped he wouldn’t. It might force Billy Badass to live up to the name he had just been given—a name he might have liked, as it was infinitely better than his unwieldy real name, which was Chester “Beau” Beaumont.

  “Orange juice if you got any,” Beau told the barman and turned his back on him, leaning against the bar as he appraised Finch, who had just slid into the booth. “Slummin’, are we?”

  “Hey, I like this place.”

  “Wasn’t talkin’ ’bout the place, man.” He looked pointedly up the bar at Frat Boy, who quickly looked away and started muttering to his beer.

  “Just one of those kids in the middle of a transitional period,” Finch said. “Going from idiot to asshole, though someday he’ll probably end up owning half the city.”

  “He’s welcome to it,” Beau said, and nodded his thanks to the barman, took his drink and joined Finch in the booth. “I swear,” he continued, as he settled himself and set the large envelope between them. “Every time I walk these streets I think we made some kinda bet with God and lost. I was down this way over the weekend and you know what I saw?”

  Finch shook his head.

  “Two guys in the alley, up by that clothes store with the funny name?”

  “Deetos?”

  “Yeah. Reminds me of chips. Well, here were these two guys right? One’s down on his knees with the other guy’s dick in his mouth. Nothin’ funny ’bout that if that’s your thing, but get this… the guy gettin’ lubed is slappin’ the other guy in the side of his head. Hard. Over and over again. Now, maybe I’m gettin’ old or somethin’, but if I got some babe workin’ me down there, I ain’t doin’ shit to break her concentration, know m’sayin’?”

  Finch grinned. “Yeah.”

  “Damn, I don’t know if it’s some shit I missed in all those porno’s growin’ up but I can’t understand it. And hey, let’s just say for argument’s sake I’m the one doin’ the lubin. Strictly for argument’s sake, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I ain’t lettin’ the guy privileged enough to have me down there in the first place smack on my skull. One time is all it’d take and I’d have that motherfucker mulched.”

  Though enjoying the camaraderie and Beau’s banter, Finch was eager to get down to business. He looked down at the envelope. “That what you got in there? Pictures of the one time you experimented?”

  Beau smiled. “Naw. Any mother took pictures of my dick, they’d need a tapestry, not a camera.”

  Finch nodded. “I’m sure there’s a whole wall in the Metropolitan reserved for it.”

  Beau slid the envelope to him. “I figure everythin’ you need is in there. Sorry it took so long. Hard to find shit out if no
one talkin’. You may as well be askin’ what happened to a white supremacist in Compton.”

  Fingers trembling slightly, and aware that Beau’s eyes were on him, Finch turned the envelope over. It wasn’t sealed. He opened it and withdrew a sheaf of paper.

  The barman, apparently bored of listening to Frat Boy complaining and the inaudible conversation from their booth, ducked down behind the bar. A moment later, soft bluesy music rose up and danced with the smoke.

  “Looks like a lot of info,” Finch said, examining the papers. He nodded appreciatively. “Hell of a lot more than I was able to find on my own.”

  “Yeah, there’s some readin’, but I don’t think you gonna find everythin’ you need to know. Lot more about the victims than the villains. Got names for them, but no faces and that was hard enough. They’re like ghosts, man.”

  “Well, thanks. I know what you’re risking here.”

  Beau looked around the bar. “I ain’t riskin’ nothin’. I’m a good liar if it comes to it. You, on the other hand, lookin’ to get into a whole world of hurt if you’re plannin’ any Charles Bronson shit.”

  “My gun’s a lot smaller.”

  “Yeah, and Chuck was a whole lot better lookin’ but you get what I’m sayin’ right?”

  “Sure, and it’s duly noted, but I can look after myself.”

  Beau gave a rueful shake of his head. “Wish I had a dollar for every time some dumb white boy said that to me. I’d be drivin’ a Cutlass Supreme with Lexani alloys by now instead of a piece a’ shit Toyota.” He leaned forward. “And if I remember correctly, you were damn glad to have my ass coverin’ yours back in the desert.”

  Finch didn’t look at him. “I can handle it.”

  “Not what I’m sayin’.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying ain’t no man tough enough to fight a war on his own, especially if it’s a personal one and he’s outnumbered. You need my help, you ask.”