Sins of the Fathers

by John Richmond

“TIME TO GET up.” Far away, foggy.

  She mumbled, sleep smeared. “Don’ wanna’ look ‘nymore.”

  “C’mon, Tie.” A gentle hand on her shoulder. A warm squeeze of strong fingers.

  “Daddy?” She opened her eyes. Father. Not hers, Calvin. The world and where she stood in it rushed back. “Hey,” she said and stretched, her long legs fetching up under the dashboard. “We there?”

  “Nope,” Calvin said. “I need you to stay with the van while I do a little maintenance.”

  A little more of their situation flowed to the foreground. They were parked next to a pair of peeling red gas pumps outside a low cinderblock building. The station was either closed for the night or for the foreseeable forever. A glance into stretching fields and a distant horizontal ribbon of light that must have been the highway gave her the impression it was the latter. She twisted in the seat. Jeremy was a lump in the back of the van, but Tie thought she had a better idea now of what really lay sleeping beneath those blankets. “He, uh, okay?” she asked.

  “You’ll be fine,” Calvin said, catching the note of unease in her voice. “He’s got enough juice in him to keep him down for another day, day and half.”

  Tie looked at Calvin.

  “He’s trussed up like a spring lamb, for Christ’s sake. You’re fine for a minute.” He squeezed her shoulder again. “I’ll be right back.” Calvin leaned down and popped the hood. He opened his door and cool, fresh air washed into the van. Tie’s eyes were big in the dark. “We’re all right,” he said and lay his hand on her thigh.

  The contact, the most intimate they’d shared, ran up her leg and heated her. But all she could manage was a weak smile, the warmth from his touch flaming out, curdled. She watched Calvin slip out into the crisp night and shivered.

  The dream clung to her, a sweater knit of slime and rotten sticks. She wasn’t like her mama, she wasn’t. A lot of children didn’t get along all that well with their parents. Wasn’t a wonderful fact of life, but it wasn’t uncommon either. She didn’t hate her father, she just—well, she just didn’t think about him all that much.

  Just like your mama.

  Fuck that. Fuck that, and fuck that little bastard in the back. Her eyes grew hot. Tie punched herself in the shoulder and the pain dumped some ice back into her veins. Her tears retreated for now.

  Calvin walked around the front of the Van and lifted the hood. He should have checked this before they ran, but it hadn’t occurred to him. Stupid. He really was losing his edge. Whether that was from falling in love or the constant adrenaline buzz from being on the run with the possessed child of a mobster, he wasn’t sure. Probably both. Either way, he needed to slow down and get frosty, or he’d make a mistake that would get them killed. Peering into the engine, he wondered if it was already too late.

  The grease-slicked intestines of the Dodge radiated warmth back at him. Where was the damn thing? They hid these things so you couldn’t do what he was attempting. Like an exploring surgeon, he reached into the block and began to feel around, mindful of the super-heated areas. His eyebrows rose. That’d be it. It wouldn’t be close to anything too hot. Where was the coolest part of an engine? Calvin yanked his hand out and dropped to the ground next to the passenger side tire. He wiggled his head and shoulders under the van and looked up into the engine block from below. There! Between the oil pan and the dark recesses that held the water pump, a tiny red light pulsed. Had it been daylight, or if they’d parked under a street lamp, he never would have been able to see it. But the gas station was dark and the sky was covered with misty cataracts.

  He stood up, his knees popping. Felt good after the long drive, but there was a lot more road to eat up before they were done. Calvin walked around to the back of the van, gently tapping the glass of Tie’s window, offering her a wink as he passed. He startled her out of some morose reverie, but the corners of her lips bent up, little arrows of flesh forming at the sides. She brushed her fingers along the inside of the glass, he felt a blast of warmth in his chest, and then her face was gone as he moved around the back.

  It was like that now, every time they shared a glance or the smallest touch, a spark spanned some gap in his head and a great, dusty machine jumped into whirring life in his solar plexus. Now, that he had admitted it to himself, his feelings for Tie were amplifying like some giddy chain reaction. He wondered if was like that for her too, and thought of the little dimples next to her mouth. That had been a good smile, a deep one, a real one.

  Calvin stood in front of the double doors at the back of the van and whispered, “God, I…” but trailed off, unsure as to where he’d been headed with that. Was he about to compose a prayer to a deity in whose name he made a living from killing? Was he about to ask for something from that God? “I hope you’re not as bad as I think you are,” he muttered and opened the doors.

  The kid slept. Oh, let’s be honest, Padre, shall we? The kid was in an anti-psychotic drug-induced coma. Calvin leaned in, head cocked. Okay, the kid was breathing fine. Once again, he marveled at the boy’s strength. Even a healthy man would have succumbed to the myriad physical stresses Jeremy’s body had endured. Children were fucking amazing; little Teflon people.

  After he’d administered the thorazine to the confused and shrieking demon, Calvin had bound his wrists and ankles with leather restraining cuffs bought earlier that day on his little pre-exorcism junket. He’d rolled the child up in an army blanket, a sweating, stinking eggroll, and carried him down the stairs. The Dodge had been waiting right outside the front door, parked where he left it. He’d tossed the boy in the back and coasted down the drive.

  Calvin reached over and grabbed a toolkit bungee-cabled to the side wall. He was close enough to get a good noseful of the reek Jeremy exuded, but something had changed. The boy still smelled horrible, open sewers and ancient sick-rooms, but the stink of death was off him. He was ripe, but he wasn’t dying anymore. Poor kid was dehydrated as hell, though. His lips were puffed and cracking like a pastry left in the sun. Calvin checked Jeremy’s pulse. Still strong, in fact a little too rapid for his tastes considering the amount of trank he’d dosed the kid with, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that anxious, penitent crap.

  Calvin began to pull the toolkit out, but it caught on something. He squinted and realized it was stuck on the edge of a blocky flashlight, also attached to the side of the van. This sucker was outfitted for some serious work. What had Mason’s boys used it for? Calvin’s mind summoned a montage of shiny Italian suits, shovels, body parts, and wild laughter flung into deep woods. He tested the light, his face a momentary goblin in the purple night, then popped the lens-bulb assembly off the top. The blocky twelve-volt battery was just what he needed. “The Good Lord provides,” he said and closed the doors.

  Fifteen minutes later, Tie was just beginning to wonder what in the hell he was up to under the van—she’d been able to hear him clunking around under her seat, at once unnerving and little exciting—when Calvin popped up next to her window.

  “Got it!” he said, holding up a black plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes like a hard-won kill. A couple of wires, one red, one black or blue—hard to tell in the low light—sprang from the side.

  Tie rolled down her window. “What is that?”

  “A soon to be repentant thief. Here, hold this.” He placed the box in her left hand. She marveled that such a small thing would be so heavy. “And this,” he said, plopping the even heavier flashlight battery down into the open palm of her other hand. “Hold them steady for me a minute.”

  She watched fascinated as Calvin wired the black box to the battery. He took a half-step back, scowled, and reversed the wires on the battery terminals. A dim red light she hadn’t noticed before winked into life on the top of the box like an electronic eye. She jumped a little and almost dropped it. “Huh,” Calvin said. “I wasn’t entirely sure that would w
ork.”

  He took the strange box and battery from her and walked over to a trash barrel next to the empty garage. He bent over the can and lay the blinking package on the bottom. Tie watched, as he straightened and pulled something from his back pocket. After he tore off a page, she realized it was a small spiral bound notebook, the kind you use for shopping lists or writing down thoughts. Calvin dropped whatever he’d scrawled into the can and jogged back to the Dodge. A minute later they pulled away from the gas station.

  They traveled along a secondary road, empty save for its own fading lines and bordered by scrub woods and forgotten fields. Tie left her window down, the rush and roar of the night air was like bathing her mind in spring water. That and the stink from the kid was getting pretty bad. She watched the little gas station and its two flaking pumps shrink in the side rearview mirror. That feeling of adventure and release was beginning to steal over her again. Nightmare or not, the nap had done the trick.

  “What was that thing?” she asked. “What’d you mean a ‘soon to be repentant thief’.”

  “That little box was a time-thief,” Calvin said. “Maybe a life-thief as well. Now, if it works, it’s going to give us back some of what’s its stolen.”

  “Time-thief,” Tie mused, liking the way the words made her thoughts crackle. “You’re a poet, Padre.” And quick as a flash of moon from behind a cloud, she leaned over the seat and kissed his cheek.

  That machine in Calvin’s chest skipped a gear. His pants were instantly too tight in the crotch and he was nervous as a teenager that she would see. Another part of him was desperate for her to see, and more. “Thanks,” he muttered, cheeks flushed. “I just hope it works.”

  “What was that you were writing?”

  “Nothing. Just a little howdy-do,” Calvin smirked through the windshield into the rushing night.