Ham

by Dustin Stevens

  Twenty years I’ve been away, and still everything sits right on the surface. Raw nerves resting exposed and open, sensitive to the slightest irritation.

  Yet another reason I chose to head south instead of north.

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “As soon as she wakes up, I’d love to hear it all myself.”

  Glenda’s head moves back my direction, her brows rising. “So you two haven’t...?”

  “Three years,” I reply, feeling her eyes on me but not wanting to meet her gaze. I know just from her words what I’ll find there. The look isn’t one I’m particularly feeling up for at the moment.

  I’ve beat myself up enough for one day already.

  “Seemed better that way.”

  For a moment, there is no response. We both remain locked in place, each aware of the other without directly addressing them, before Glenda turns her focus back to Amy.

  “Three years ago was about the time we got a large anonymous cash donation,” she says. “Made it possible for us to make all these updates and renovations.”

  Much like the last time, I know what she is getting at without looking over. Careful to keep my gaze down, I say nothing, recognizing the words as a statement rather than a question.

  Somewhere else in the house, I can hear footsteps. The sound of voices interspersed with giggling, the sort that only young girls can make.

  Rising in volume for a moment, they fall away as fast as they arrived, culminating with the sound of a screen door slamming shut.

  “And you?” Glenda asks.

  “Me?” I ask, shifting back up to her.

  “Yeah,” Glenda says. Her gaze traces over my tan skin, musculature obvious. My hair shaved short on either side and pulled back behind my head. The clothes I’m wearing.

  If there is any judgment, I see absolutely no sign of it.

  “Are you well? Are you safe?”

  “I am,” I reply. “I live a quiet life now, a simple life.”

  A life she would be proud of, one I wish I could give her more details about. But much like the gap between my last visit with Amy, it’s better that I don’t.

  The less people in my life know, the better.

  She smiles. “So, I take it you left the life?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you’re still Ham?”

  I match her smile.

  I’ll always be Ham.

  And we both know it.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  For all the additions and improvements that have been made, the place is still much the way I remember it. The classrooms in the basement. The omnipresent smell of something baking. The sound of footsteps in the hall.

  Rising from the chair alongside Amy’s bed, I pass by the main living room and out the front door. Behind me, I can hear the sounds of pots and pans, the background din of voices. In the kitchen, I know Glenda is preparing dinner, working with whichever of the girls is on shift this week.

  Once the meal is over, others will be in charge of dishes. Different ones still are tasked with making sure the animals are fed.

  Inevitably, they will all complain about the work, though they should realize how lucky they are. With seven, nobody ever has to do more than one thing at a time.

  Amy and I weren’t nearly so fortunate.

  With my earlier offer to help swatted away like an annoying mosquito, I pass through the front door and out onto the porch. Stepping across to the edge of it, I spread my arms wide and draw in a deep breath, memories so thick around me I feel as if I can reach out and push them away with both hands.

  The place has no name. Giving it a title would mean there is something for people to write down. A moniker they can punch into Google or Bing. A starting point to begin their search.

  No matter how careful everyone affiliated is or will be in the future, at some point something would slip. Someone will have a few too many drinks and start talking. Or they will allude to the place while confiding to a loved one.

  Or something. Something that would jeopardize what Glenda has built.

  Which is a refuge. A place for the broken and the discarded, the battered and the unwanted. A spot for young girls like the seven currently calling it home. Like Amy and her daughter.

  Like me.

  Who they are or what they’ve been through doesn’t matter once they arrive. If Glenda chooses to take someone on, the sole things required in return are that the girl does as asked, and that she always respects the sanctity of the place.

  For everyone else, as much as herself.

  “Hey.”

  The sound of the voice pushes a jolt of adrenaline through my system. Dropping into a crouch, my hands come up before me, fingers open, standard aikido position. Body drawn taut, I remain poised for a moment before identifying the source.

  Sitting fifteen feet away on a wooden swing hanging from a chain on either end is Amber. Her feet crossed at the ankles, her toes are several inches above the floor, a bit of breeze pushing her back and forth.

  Relaxing my stance, I let my hands drop to my side, registering her wide eyes and sagging jaw.

  A single word of greeting and I was ready to take the head off a ten-year-old.

  It’s amazing what three years out of the life can do to one’s instincts.

  “Hey,” I reply. I take a few steps her way, catching the scent of jasmine and the perfume of the flowers hanging from the window boxes. In the side yard, a garden is still clinging to the last gasps of summer bloom, the golden tips of canola reflecting the setting sun.

  Pulling up several feet short of Amber, I hook my thumbs in the rear pockets of my jeans and lean heavily against one of the support posts. “How you like it here?”

  One shoulder rises in a shrug, pushing the hair away from her neck. “It’s okay.”

  Not a glowing endorsement, but far better than anything I had to say about the place on my first day.

  Or year, for that matter.

  “Just okay?”

  Hands gripping the side of the swing on either side of her knees, she lets her gaze drift down to the deck. There she lingers a moment, thinking about things, before lifting her face my way.

  “Just been a lot today.”

  It has. For all of us.

  From minute to minute I’m still trying to process all of it. I can’t begin to fathom what this child must be thinking.

  “Have you met the other girls?” I ask.

  She nods. “Some of them. A couple are too old or young, but there’s a few my age.”

  Which is how it usually seems to go. When I first showed up, I was not much older than Amber now. At the time, there were only three others, and two of them were about to come of age and move on.

  The other was six and cried all the time.

  “Are they nice?”

  “Yeah,” Amber says. She keeps her focus downward another moment, continuing to ponder, before raising it to me. “Where are all the boys?”

  I can feel my eyebrows rise in surprise as I look back out over the grounds. Most of the view beyond the immediate vicinity of the house is obscured by thick forest, the choice quite deliberate at the time.

  A decision made all the more prescient now by the rise in drones and aerial surveillance.

  “So you like boys, huh?” I ask, letting her see my smile.

  “No,” she replies too quickly, her cheeks flushing red. “I just...I’ve just never been anywhere that’s all girls before.”

  I knew what she meant even as she said it.

  By and large, the reason most of us passed through this place was because of the actions of some man. My father. Amy’s uncle. Glenda’s ex-husband.

  Even now, Amber is sitting here because of her stepdad. On a larger, macro level, because of the rapist professor years before.

  “No,” I say, “this place is just for girls.”

  “And you grew up here?” she asks.

  To say I grew up here would be an extreme overstatement, if only because I was al
ready grown by the time I arrived. I might have been young in terms of years, but the things I’d endured put me well beyond people twice my age.

  Created a gap that — with the exception of Amy — I’ve never quite been able to bridge.

  “I lived here,” I say, “with your mommy, for about seven years.”

  “Did you like it?”

  Compared to the place I’d been before, it was a cross of Utopia and Shangri-La. Even if it did take me a long time to see past my own childhood stupidity to realize it.

  “Yeah.” Pushing away from the post, I walk forward a few steps. “Come here, I want to show you something.”

  Remaining seated, Amber watches as I move past her, my boots silent against the floorboards. Turning at the neck and then the waist to watch me go, she waits until I am well past her before hopping down, her weight thumping against the porch.

  Moving at a jog, she catches up with me just as I reach the corner of the porch and lower myself to a knee. Wrapping one hand around the corner post, I swing my body out to the side, peering at the base of it.

  The years have eroded the letters somewhat, the edges sanded over by time and the elements. Several new coats of paint have been added, filling in some of the shallower spots.

  But the carving remains, just as it has for over twenty years.

  “See this here?”

  Dropping to her knees, Amber tucks her body under my outstretched arm. Her hair hangs down as she holds her head perpendicular to the porch.

  “What?”

  “There,” I say, pointing to the indentations at the bottom of the post.

  HAM – AMY – 1999

  The lettering is a bit uneven, carved with a switchblade by my seventeen-year-old hand, and it got us both a triple ration of chores for the remainder of summer, but it was worth it.

  Now, as much as then.

  “Wow,” Amber says. Slowly, she reaches out, pausing halfway before going the last few inches. Touching her fingers to the wood, she traces the grooves, working in rapt silence.

  When she is done, she stares at them for several moments, before sitting back, balancing her backside against her heels.

  “What was she like when she was my age?”

  I smile, saying the only word I can think of in response.

  “Perfect.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The tamales are a gift from Consuela Ramirez, a full platter still wrapped in husks. Sitting on the coffee table in the center of the headquarters, the smell of masa and spiced chicken fills the air.

  An unnecessary gesture for sure, but not one Hector Lima was about to turn down. Doing so would have been rude, undoing whatever goodwill they had earned by acting on her tip the day before.

  Instead, he accepted with heartfelt thanks, even receiving a hug from the woman as she departed.

  Apparently, under her watchful eye, the Eldorado had not returned.

  If the looks on their faces as they departed were any indicator, Lima didn’t expect to ever see them back again.

  Reclined in one corner of the couch, he sits with his feet extended. Phone in hand, he scrolls through the slate of upcoming NFL games, checking schedules.

  Seeing the kids out behind the school the day before has given him an idea. If he can find the right game, and a couple of willing parents to act as drivers and chaperones, organizing a trip to see a game could do wonders.

  Not the Chargers, who technically still belong to San Diego and play down in Carson.

  Definitely the Rams at the Coliseum, no more than ten miles from where they are now sitting. The team with a couple of players from the area on the roster.

  The type of thing kids can look at and aspire to. Proof that hard work and living right pays dividends.

  Seated on the couches to either side are Dwayne and Monte. Both with tamales in hand, they eat loudly, making small groans in appreciation as they do so.

  Their reward for a job well done.

  “Hey, boss, we got company,” Bocco says. Leaning against the side of one of the windows lining the front, he uses two fingers to peel the curtain back. Late-day sun streams through without the cover, flashing across his face.

  Looking up from his phone, Lima asks, “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Bocco replies. “Looks like our present finally got opened.”

  All day, Lima has been expecting as much. He’d actually assumed that Spiers would call that morning, chewing his ear off, talking a big game while separated by the phone.

  The response has taken longer than he thought, but at least the man has the balls to show up in person.

  About the only positive he can say about him at the moment.

  “Let him in,” Lima says, pocketing his phone. Maintaining his spot on the corner of the couch, he sits reclined, one arm along the back of it, one foot propped on the table.

  At the front of the place, Bocco watches, waiting by the window another moment, before cracking the door open. Heading to the opposite side of the room, he leans against one of the desks the girls had been using the day before, his arms folded.

  Both Dwayne and Monte finish their tamales, leaving the platter in the center of the table.

  All four are turned toward the door as a fist connects with it. Not expecting it to be open, the knock sends it flying backward, bright light flooding in, marred only by a single silhouette.

  The surprise seems to take away some of the fire that Jensen Spiers arrived with, leaving him standing awkwardly, his fist still raised in the air. Pausing a moment, he looks at the door standing wide open before taking a step forward.

  He leaves his hand in a fist, clenched by his side.

  In the other is the envelope they left for him the night before, the paper twisted under his grasp.

  “What the hell is this?” he asks, taking another step forward and tossing the envelope onto the table.

  The misshapen mass lands on a side, sliding across the smooth surface, before coming to a stop against the platter the tamales are resting on. Watching it, Lima arches an eyebrow. He waits a moment to see if there is more to the outburst, letting the man have his one moment of posturing before he shuts this shit down.

  One.

  When it becomes apparent there is nothing more the man has rehearsed to say, Lima looks up at him. “Hungry?”

  In his periphery, he can see Bocco crack a momentary smile, well beyond the sightline of Spiers.

  “What is that shit?” Spiers demands a second time, as if they didn’t hear the first.

  “What’s it look like?” Lima replies.

  Hands still balled up into fists, blood flushes Spiers’s features. Enough to push his face from red to almost purple, his shoulders quivering, rage permeating his body, about to be unleashed.

  A scenario he does not want, for a variety of reasons.

  “You sonsabitches dare step foot in my home? In the home of my partner?”

  Saying nothing, Lima lowers his feet to the floor. He leans forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees, examining the man standing before him.

  When Spiers first entered, the sun was too bright to make out specific details. Backlit and shrouded in shadows, he had been little more than a shape before them.

  Now, having stepped forward into the light streaming in from either side, his features are more obvious. As is the plastic mask covering most of his face and the intense bruising around it.

  Ignoring his comment, Lima asks, “What the hell happened to you? You owe somebody else money too?”

  Spiers’s right index finger flies up before him. Extended from his fist, it is clear he is about to unleash a torrent.

  A lecture none of them have any interest in hearing.

  “Now, you listen here—”

  “No, you listen,” Lima snaps, cutting him off as he rises to his feet.

  For the first minute or two, seeing the man walk in and try to slam his dick on the table was almost funny. The perfect encapsulation of law enforcement in
the city, one of the many reasons Lima first decided to put this crew together.

  Have a loud voice and a shiny badge, and the world kowtows to whatever they say.

  That minute has passed.

  “Yeah, we went in your houses,” Lima says. “Saw the pictures of you and your wife and your daughter. Saw where your partner’s son sleeps.

  “And those pictures are to remind you that we can do it again anytime we want.”

  Veins bulge along the side of Spiers’s neck. His entire body seems to quake, needing only a direction in which to aim his fury.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Who we are?”

  “Of course we do,” Lima fires back. “Of the thousands of cops in this city, why the hell do you think we came to you? Huh?

  “You think it was coincidence that you agreed before we’d even finished our proposal? That suddenly you’ve got a fancy villa and your partner just built a brand-new place?”

  Lima watches as Spiers’s jaw flexes, his gaze darting around the room, assessing the four guys sitting in front of him. He can almost read the man’s thoughts, trying to determine how many others there might be, what it would take to make this problem disappear.

  “And since I can sit here and see you trying to run the math in your head, let me jump right to the conclusion for you,” Lima says. “The reason you sprung at what we offered was because you knew if you didn’t, a hundred others would.

  “A hundred others that know what we’re offering is too good to pass up. That have seen you and your little team out making busts and smiling for the papers and becoming the toast of the LAPD.

  “You might think you’re in the power position here, but you’re not. You ain’t shit. All you are is the middleman, the guy who goes where we tell him and accepts the awards when they roll out.”

  Taking a step to the side, Lima walks around the corner of the center table. He closes the gap between him and Spiers, moving so that the shorter man is forced to look up at him, no matter how much he glares from beneath that ridiculous mask.

  “And in return, you give us our cut, or you get cut out.”

  The hatred Spiers exudes is almost palpable. It is obvious he wants to spring forward, flying into Lima.