Reaper's Salvation: A Last Riders Trilogy

by Jamie Begley

  “Shit. I hated that son of a bitch. Still do.” The tiny flame of the joint was visible between Greer’s fingers as he turned his head to spit on the ground. “One night, he gave Tate and me a beating bad enough it left Tate unconscious. He didn’t give a rat’s ass. Locked us in the barn without any heat in the dead of winter. It was no never mind that Tate was sick with the flu. Had to listen to my ma trying to dig us out while Pa was passed out, high as a fucking kite, for Lord knows how long before he caught her and dragged her back in the house to lock her and my baby sister in the bedroom so she wouldn’t let us out. Yeah … those were some good fucking times.” Greer’s voice was filled with sarcasm as he extinguished the tip of the joint with his fingers.

  Squatting down by the fire, Silas stared in the crackling flames. “What we say while we’re on this mountain, around this fire, is forgotten when we walk away. Deal?” Silas turned to stare at them gravely. “Neither of you don’t have to share your own personal shit—that’s your prerogative—but it stays only between us.”

  “Got my word.” Greer shrugged. “Probably won’t remember it no way.”

  “You have mine.” Reaper had no intention of sharing. He would keep anything said to himself.

  Silas threw some more wood on the fire. “You have my word, too, so I’ll be expecting you keeping yours.”

  Rising to go back to his chair, Silas stared moodily into the twinkling sky. “Freddy didn’t always have custody of me. I lived with my mom until I was seven. Freddy would come and get me on the weekends and had to have me back by Sunday morning before church. She wanted my stepdad and me there to make sure we appeared to be one happy family in front of that sanctimonious hypocrite preacher we used to have in town before Pastor Dean.”

  “Saul Cornett.” Reaper placed his empty bottle on the ground, patting Suki as he listened.

  “Saul was a sadistic bastard. He used to get his kicks by spanking kids in front of the congregation. Makes me sick to my stomach to this day remembering the joy on his face when he would beat those kids. The parents would tell him what they’d done bad during the week, and Saul would beat the demon that had caused them to act that way. My mother and stepfather never told on me, not because they didn’t believe in the stupidity he was preaching. No, they didn’t tell because they didn’t trust Saul wouldn’t leave a mark on me. They knew if Freddy ever saw that a hand had been laid on me, they would be minus one preacher. Instead, they had their own way of handling my discipline.

  “Every Sunday night after dinner, my mother would go to her bedroom and turn the television on high. She’d let my stepfather punish me. My stepfather would take me into my bedroom, read off the list my mother made of my “sins.” After he read the list, he would make me take my clothes off, then spend the rest of the night raping me.”

  Reaper heard Suki give a low whine.

  “He and my mother told me that if I ever told anyone, especially Freddy, my stepfather would sneak into my dad’s house and kill him and me.”

  “Did you father find out?” Reaper asked gruffly.

  Silas turned his face from the sky to look at him. “Has Ginny told you what Freddy’s gift was?”

  “Some. Greer, toss me another beer.” Reaper was careful with what he said, not wanting to get Ginny in trouble with the little she had told.

  Greer took two beers out, handing him one, then took his plastic baggie out. “I’ll be taking another myself. I’m lighting a second one of these bad boys up, too.”

  Studying Greer closely, Reaper could tell from his reaction that he had been unaware of Silas’s abuse.

  Silas waited until Greer had the joint lit.

  “Each member of my family have separate and distinct gifts, except Freddy and Fynn. Freddy could read the skies like you and I read books. He knew when things were going to happen and when to intervene within reason. If he interfered in someone’s life, it put the book out of whack. Chapter ten would happen in chapter six, or events were skipped ahead to chapter fifteen. That wasn’t even the worst. Freddy said some events wouldn’t appear at all. They were deleted. Only one member is born in a generation with Freddy’s gift, and usually toward the end of the previous generation’s lifetime. When Fynn’s gifts became apparent, Freddy knew it was a matter of time before he passed on.”

  Reaper stared down at Suki as he continued stroking her fur. Gavin understood why Silas was describing Freddy’s gifts. “Freddy knew you were being abused.”

  “One Friday he came to pick me up. When we got to the house, as I was getting out of the car, he asked if I wanted to go for walk before dinner. We walked to where Moses’ house is now; there’s a big rock not too far from there. He said, ‘let’s rest before we head back.’ So I sat down on the rock with Dad, thinking we were taking a break before heading back to the house. As we sat there, he looked down at my shoes and asked why I wasn’t wearing the new tennis shoes he bought me.”

  Reaper heard Greer begin to cough. “You okay, Greer?”

  “Yeah,” he rasped out, handing him the joint.

  Silas waited until Greer stopped coughing before continuing his story. “I told him that the whole class had been making fun of the way Greer’s shoes smelled. Freddy asked me if I was one of the kids making fun of him. I told him I was. Then I told him how Greer followed me into the bathroom and stole my shoes when I was taking a shit.”

  Reaper took another hit of the joint. He wasn’t stupid; he knew the men were trying to steer the conversation into him sharing what had happened to him. He had no intention of giving in to the sneaky maneuver. Still, his interest was caught as Silas’s story unfolded.

  “You swapped shoes with Silas?”

  “I was pissed.” Greer glared at his cousin. “He was always on my fuckin’ back.”

  “We were both dicks.” Silas gave a crooked smile. “I grew up. I’m still waiting for Greer to. Looking back, most of it was acting out because our home lives were shit. I hadn’t told my mom about my shoes, because it would give my mother another excuse to punish me.

  “I expected my dad to tell me that he would get me another pair. Instead, he told me it wouldn’t hurt for me to walk in Greer’s shoes for a while. I started crying because I knew my mother would see Greer’s old shoes before we went to church. Freddy started crying, too. ‘Son, no matter how hungry you get when you miss dinner or miss lunch, you’re never going to feel true hunger until you experience it yourself. You have a girl in your classroom whose father was laid off from the mines and hasn’t had anything to eat in two days. No matter how sorry you feel for her, you don’t understand the hunger pains that eventually go away because your body has given up hope of being fed. When I look at Greer’s shoes, I see his parents don’t have enough money to buy him a new pair. I also see parents refusing to take a handout. The sole is worn down on them. It’s a chilly day. Are your feet cold?’ he’d asked me.

  “I admitted they were freezing and my socks were wet. Then my father asked, ‘So, you understand how Greer felt when he was wearing them?’ When I nodded my head, Freddie added, ‘Wearing those shoes, you now understand how he felt, but most importantly, you feel a small portion of what Greer’s life is like. As a father, I want to say let’s go to the store and get you a new pair, but that isn’t what Greer’s father would do, is it?’”

  Silas took a hit of the joint and stretched his long legs before continuing. “When I said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘Then, since you’re walking in his shoes, you should fix the problem, shouldn’t you?’ Damn I wanted out of those shoes so bad. My toes were freezing off, my ass was freezing off on that rock, and Dad was still crying.”

  Reaper saw the sheen of tears on Silas’s cheeks in the firelight.

  “By then, it was getting dark, and I told him I was cold and wanted to go back to the house. He said he was waiting for the stars to come out. It took me for my ass to go numb before I figured out what he was doing. Dad told me he could read the stars to see what was going on in people’s lives. That’s
when something clicked, and I scrunched up my legs to sit better on the rock. Dad could read the stars, like he had me looking at Greer’s shoes to find the details of Greer’s life. He wasn’t buying me a new pair of shoes, because he wanted me to solve my own problems.

  “I told him about my stepfather and my mom and what she was allowing. When I told him, he quit crying. He didn’t get angry at Mom or her husband; he just sat there and listened without making a noise, even when I told him that my stepfather would kill us because I told.

  “Freddy said he was going to call the sheriff, and I wouldn’t be going back to my mom’s house to live. Then he got off the rock, took out his pocket knife, and said, ‘Come here, Son.’ I got off the rock, and Freddy pointed at it. ‘This rock doesn’t have any feelings. No matter how hard you beat it without your fists, it won’t break or chip,’ Freddy went to the rock and used his knife to scratch the surface to make a mark. ‘Is the rock different now?’ he asked, and I told him it was, because he gouged it.

  “He said, ‘This rock has sat here untouched for years with storms passing overhead, yet I made a mark when a tornado hasn’t. The mark will always be there because of what I did. If we use our gifts the wrong way, we could hurt someone without meaning to, where you can’t hurt the rock. No matter how angry and mad at someone we can be for pain they’ve caused someone we love, we can’t interfere.’”

  Silas weaved his fingers together around his beer bottle as he talked. “I asked him what I was supposed to do. Freddy handed me the knife and told me to make a mark, and then walk away, leaving all the pain and anger in the rock. That the rock would hold the pain and rage, and that I wouldn’t have to carry that burden any longer. So I scratched a line on the rock, then gave Freddy his knife back. After that we went home; Freddy carried me all the way.”

  Greer took a hit. “Freddy was a good man. Didn’t weigh hundred ten pounds soaking wet.”

  Reaper stroked Suki’s head. “How long did you have to wear those shoes?”

  “Until Monday, when I asked Greer if I could have the shoes the teacher had given him, which was why the kids had made fun of him. Greer had hidden them in the coat closet and then stole mine when I was in the bathroom. He gave them to me, but never gave mine back. Greer and I never fought after that.”

  “Yep, we came to an agreement that benefited both of us.”

  “Which was?” Reaper asked curiously.

  “I’d leave him alone to take his dumps, and he’d give me a new pair of shoes each year.” Greer waved his boot tips. “Thanks, cuz, these may be my favorite pair.” Standing, Greer squashed the bud out to put it back into the plastic baggie. Reaching into his pocket, Greer then took out a pocket knife and went to stand next to the large rock. He looked down at it as he took something out of his pocket. Reaper heard a scraping sound and saw a flame and knew Greer was holding a lighter in order to see the rock.

  Rising, Reaper went to the rock to see what Greer was staring at. What he saw had his knees shaking.

  “Can I see the lighter?” Reaper held his hand out to Greer.

  The flame went out and the lighter was placed in his hand.

  “Careful, it’s hot,” Greer warned.

  Flicking the lighter, Reaper went to his haunches to see the straight lines marked on the rock. There were so many that he had to shuffle his feet on the ground to keep looking. When he couldn’t bear to count any longer, Reaper moved his thumb away from the light, shutting off the flame.

  Letting the lighter fall to the ground, Reaper buried his face in his hands, fighting the years of bottled-up emotions spilling out. Dropping to the ground, he felt Suki land on his lap as Silas and Greer knelt by his side, enfolding him in their arms.

  The rock hadn’t broken after nine and half years’ worth of lines scratched on its surface. The rock hadn’t broken, regardless of how many times a knife had been used on it to release the pain and rage the person was feeling. The rock hadn’t … but that night, he did.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Reaper shut the truck door, giving a final wave to Silas and Greer as they drove off.

  Going up the steps, he reached the front porch where Moon was pulling guard duty. In the early morning sun, Moon looked like death warmed over.

  “Lucky was looking for you last night. Said he’d catch up with you today.”

  Why hadn’t the brother called or texted? Mentally shrugging, he figured it must not have been important. Noticing the grey pallor of Moon’s skin, Reaper thought the brother must have played hard last night. “Had fun at the party?”

  Moon tugged his skull cap over his ears. “Had better, had worse.”

  Reaper went into the house, knowing where the brother was coming from. The parties, as much fun as they were, didn’t fill the void from the emptiness. He had felt the same void before meeting Taylor. Being with her had temporarily filled it, but that void had been opening again before his kidnapping.

  Walking through the door, he found the main room empty. Deciding to get breakfast before going upstairs to shower, he pushed the kitchen door open and stared, dumbfounded, at the huge half-eaten wedding cake sitting on the kitchen counter.

  He blinked to make sure it was really there and not the effects of the joint and the two beers he’d had last night. When he opened his eyes and saw it still sitting there, he turned his head to see Puck and Nickel sitting at the table, eating slices of the cake.

  “It must have been a real party last night” was all Reaper could think to say.

  “Help yourself,” Nickel offered. “There’re some fancy appetizers in the fridge, too, that no one knows how to pronounce.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  Going behind the counter, he made himself a bowl of cereal and poured himself a glass of orange juice. “It must have been a hell of party last night. Who got married?”

  “No one, which is why we have the cake,” Nickel explained as Reaper took a chair at the table.

  Eating his cereal, he thought about asking more questions, then decided he didn’t care enough. He was looking at his phone to make sure he hadn’t missed a phone call when Jewell and Jesus came into the kitchen.

  When neither of them asked any questions about the cake but began pulling trays of food out of the refrigerator, Reaper knew they were aware of where the food and cake had come from.

  Jesus sat down across from him at the table. “Lucky was looking for you last night.”

  “I heard.” He would call Lucky when he went upstairs to take a shower.

  He was finishing his juice when Lucky and Willa came through the back door, saving him the trouble of making the call. Nickel and Puck left the table to go the counter and started loading the dishwasher from the mountain of dishes that had been left there from the party.

  Lucky and Willa took their seats at the table.

  “Heard you were looking for me last night. What’s up?”

  Lucky shook his head. “We can talk later.”

  “What’s wrong with now? I need a shower and want to grab a nap. Was so important?”

  “Not to me, brother, but to you, probably.”

  Reaper frowned at the curious way Lucky was responding.

  “Finish your breakfast, and we can go to my room.”

  “Good idea.”

  His curiosity rose when Reaper saw the amusement on his face.

  Willa must have been in the dark, because she looked just as confused as he was. Finding no clue from her husband, Willa gave up, wiping a dot of frosting from the corner of his mouth.

  Giving Lucky her napkin, Willa glanced toward him. “Where’s Ginny this morning?”

  “She went to a slumber party at Sex Piston’s. They must not be up yet, because she hasn’t texted me.”

  “Darn, I wanted to see what she thought of the picture I took of her yesterday. She didn’t text me back last night, and I’m getting ready to leave.”

  “What picture? May I see?”

  “Sure.” Willa took out her phone.
“I’ll text it to you.”

  Picking his phone up off the table, he saw Lucky lean his head to his side to glance at the picture Willa was sending.

  “Wait—”

  Lucky snapped his mouth shut when Willa must have pressed Send

  When Lucky’s gaze jerked to his to see his reaction to the picture, Reaper didn’t need a fortune teller to tell him he wasn’t going to appreciate whatever image Willa had captured.

  Ginny was riding a motorcycle in front of the church. She was riding on a fucking motorcycle that wasn’t his! She had ridden on motorcycle for the first fucking time and it wasn’t his fucking motorcycle!

  Fury hit him with the magnitude of a hundred bulls stampeding through his head. Everyone in the kitchen froze at the bellow of rage coming from his chest as he rose from the table, sending his chair skittering to the side. Then he angrily threw his phone at the wall with enough force that his high school coach would’ve shed tears of joy.

  “Fuck …,” Lucky moaned. “Reaper, don’t overreact. He was just giving Ginny a ride to the church and back. She had a meeting with me.”

  “Whose fucking bike was she riding?” Reaper shouted. He had been so furious that he’d forgotten to look at whose bike it was before he busted his phone to smithereens.

  “Let’s go to your room.” Lucky stood, coming around the table as Razer and Beth came up the basement steps. From their disheveled appearance, he had woken them up when he his phone hit the wall.

  “Who’s …?” Reaper glared at Jesus, who was frozen in place. “Were you the one to give Ginny a ride yesterday?”

  Jesus’ face went ashen. “No, brother. I didn’t leave the club all day. I swear, brah.”

  Clenching his teeth, he glared at Puck. “Was it you?”

  Puck stepped behind Jewell. “No, I was here with Jesus. I left to go to the store … but I swear I took Cash’s truck and Ginny didn’t go with me.

  Lucky put his hand up in the air when Reaper started toward Nickel. “Reaper, let’s go talk. There is no need for this jealousy—”