Sins of the Fathers

by John Richmond

TWENTY FIVE

  THE SUN STAYED down that morning, or at least to Tie, it seemed to. The scud of clouds that had blotted out the stars earlier that night descended on them over the miles, the hours. By morning, acid dawn ate away the dark, but there was no golden sun, just gray illumination that reminded Tie of office jobs.

  She hadn’t been able to drift back off to sleep after their stop at the old gas station, her excitement and fear their own strong coffee. Try the new Scared-a-Latte from Starbucks. She almost laughed, yawned instead. The woman in the passenger side mirror looked like shit. Tired. Really freakin’ tired, but too wired to keep her eyelids down. In leaving—and oh, let’s be straight up, Tiesha, honey—and becoming an accessory in the kidnapping of Frank Mason’s only son and heir, she had helped light a fuse. The explosion would happen when that crazy spark caught up with them. She could feel it, him, behind them.

  They passed exit signs for the Michigan/Ontario Bridge/Sault St. Marie, Canada. Calvin guided the van onto a side road. He seemed to know when the turns would appear out of the mist. How many times had he been up here, Tie wondered. She wished she could see better. There were so many trees up here; they created deep tunnels of green that slipped off the roadside. They beckoned and warned. Slip down my cool throat and I’ll show you… What? Tie shivered, smiling. She would go for walks and take deep breaths of earth and green in those tunnels. She’d discover what was hidden in those vermilion shades. Maybe paint some paintings of what she found.

  “We almost there yet?”

  “You sound like a little kid,” Calvin said, squeezing her knee.

  “Hey!” she jerked and slapped at his hand. “That tickles.”

  “Careful now, you’ll get us into an accident. Leave the driver be.”

  She eyed him from the side. “You wait ‘till you not behind the wheel anymore, white boy. Then we’ll see some real ticklin’.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” She winked.

  Calvin’s heart thudded.

  “Straight up,” she said. “How much farther? If I don’t stretch my legs soon, I’m gonna’ go nuts.”

  “Is that a lady-like request for a urination break?”

  Tie straightened up and tented the tips of her fingers on her knees. “Darling? If I have to urinate I’ll just ask you to pull over so I can take a leak, dig?”

  “Dig,” he said. “You’re so demure.”

  She really was. Tie could spew forth a tirade in truckereze and still sound like Ms. Manners. Calvin found it arousing. He’d always gotten a charge from a woman who could display a typically male trait and maintain her femininity. Not that women didn’t cuss. It was just the way Tie did it, rougher somehow, but sweet. On assignment near a West Bank settlement in the early 90’s, Calvin had watched a Red Cross worker disarm an Israeli border guard. The guard had grabbed her ass and she’d taken him out with a mule kick a Kung-Fu master would have been proud of. It had turned him on for days.

  “So?” she prodded.

  “Oh, sorry. Woolgathering. I’m about done in.”

  “S’okay, sug.”

  “We’re almost there, though. See that sign?”

  Tie read the reflective lettering as they passed. “Desperats?”

  Calvin snorted. “Pronounced like the name Deborah. French Canadian. They have sort of a different take on the language.”

  “You speak it?”

  “Oui, ma petite choux,” he said, his accent so flawless it was as if he’d taken on another personality instead of just another language. Tie looked at him with scary wonder. Even his facial set had changed. “Of course,” Calvin said, sliding back to English and himself, “I have a better take on regular French than the Canadian stuff..”

  “How many languages you speak?”

  Calvin had to think about it for a second. “Twelve. No, sorry, thirteen. I can pass for a native speaker in six of them and out of those I can only write in four.”

  “How come you can’t write in so many of them?”

  “It’s the way I learned them. Phonetic infusion, it’s called. You learn sounds and how to associate them with objects and ideas, but not really how spell. I’d get that too, given enough time, I suppose, but I’m not in any one place long enough usually.”

  “You lead a hell of a life, John.”

  He put his hand on her knee. She tensed for the tickle, but softened. This was a different touch. She warmed beneath him. “I wasn’t happy until just a few hours ago,” he said.

  Tie looked at his face, the dark flesh beneath red eyes, the stubble, the unruly lock of hair over his forehead. “You must have been happy some time before,” she said, doubting the words even as they fell over her lips.

  “If I was,” he said, staring through the windshield, looking for something, not finding it, “I have no memory of it.”

  He took a crackling turn onto a gravel road that ran up into the woods. Tie stared ahead as the trees closed in, protective and thick. “Strange way to be,” she whispered. It seemed right to keep her voice low, as if they were in a cathedral.

  They drove down the gravel track for close to a mile, the rough paving retreating and the greenery and weeds growing up between the ruts in the ground. A flash of brilliant blue streaked past Tie’s window. She craned her neck just in time to watch the jay bluster into the woods. The blue jays in the city weren’t so vibrant, she was sure of it. When she looked back they rounded a bend and large log cabin came into view.

  It was perfect! Like a honeymoon or vacation, something she never imagined she would experience. Tie turned a radiant grin on Calvin, but the look on his face turned her cold. A bead of sweat dripped down his temple.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  A chuckle, starting low and building into a high, liquid giggle, slimed from the back of the van.

  * * *