Past The Patch

tight slant-eye slit was getting wet yet, she stabbed him in the groin and cut him from nuts to navel.

“I’m Vietnamese, you pig,” she’d told him them. He bled out and died before anyone could even call 911. In court, Liz tried to argue that she was only defending herself. The prosecutor, that cold bastard named Lomax, brought up her history of failed relationships and made her look unstable and dangerous. She was put away for ten years.

“Why don’t you lick my cunt?” Brenda was a big woman in her early fifties who often said, “Yeah, I’m a fuckin dyke, you got a problem with that?” She had beaten a man to death in a bar with her bare hands after he had seen her kissing her girlfriend at the time and had said they were the most ass-ugly rug-munchers he’d ever seen. Her lawyer was able to argue diminished capacity, Brenda was utterly shitfaced at the time, but Lomax had still put her away for twenty years.

“That’s my job, bitch,” Marisa said, her accent heavy. Marisa was twenty-eight, unspeakably beautiful, and unspeakably mean. She was also a former member of the Nortenos who had been locked up for assault, arson and grand theft. The three strikes Lomax used to send her to prison were finally reduced to one after his retirement and after she spent a year sucking off two public defenders, a local representative of La Raza who publicized her mistreatment under the law as racial injustice, and a Ninth Circuit Court judge. She was sitting in the back seat beside Brenda. Her shoes were off and she had her feet in Brenda’s lap. Brenda kissed one of her toes, and she squealed. “Ayyy, mami!”

All of them had met in the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville. The women thought they had been screwed by Lomax. All of them thought Lomax should be made to pay. Brenda and Marisa were the most aggressive on that final point, they wanted to tear Lomax’s balls off and make him eat them. Liz was on the fence, but wanted the chance for a face to face with Lomax to plead her case and point out that he had been wrong, as pointless at that would be. Patty was just following in their wake.

She had no friends or family and nowhere else to go.

“Here’s the turn,” Liz said, pointing to a narrow road on the right.

Patty turned off the state road and onto what was not a road at all, but the five mile driveway to Big Sky Estates.

Marisa offered Brenda another toe for the kissing.

Brenda smiled and looked down the road. “Get ready, Lomax. The Fingerbang Quartet is coming, and you are going to pay, you son of a bitch.” Lomax had dressed after his morning shower, tied his shoes, huffing with the effort to reach past a gut that hadn’t been there ten years ago, and then looked at himself in the mirror.

Christ, he thought. I look like my father. He turned sideways.

Welcome to Gut City. Then he raised his eyes and looked at his own face.

There was a time when he avoided his own eyes in the mirror; there had been a hardness there that he really didn’t like. Now that face was gentle.

Open. Friendly. He smiled, and the smile came easily.

He patted his gut. A big belly for an easy smile. “Fair trade,” he said, and went downstairs where his rambunctious brood was already running amok, the big screen TV blasting Saturday morning cartoons.

Lomax went down the hall to the back door. He opened the door and peered through the screen. Lying on a plastic mat Lomax had put down were three prairie dogs, a skunk, and a porcupine. All of the animals looked vital and alive; their necks had been snapped so fast they had not time to react.

Lomax frowned. Prairie dogs did make a mess of the acreage, and their holes and tunnels were especially dangerous to the horses Lomax kept in the corral, but using the porch as a dumping ground . . . At least they are on the mat, he thought.

The house was big. Lomax had his bedroom, a den, and a vast bathroom all to himself on the first floor. On the second floor were the girl’s rooms; Claire, Annie and Shae were eleven, twelve and thirteen, and although they all had their own rooms, they usually spent their nights together in one of those rooms. They had been living at Big Sky Estates for a year now, and for these once lonely and abused young girls the thrill of having sisters, even if they were what they called paper-sisters, trumped the thrill of a big bedroom complete with TV, DVD player, and laptop. Despite her young age Claire was the acknowledged master of technology in the house. Annie was the resident girl. She liked nice dresses and fussing with her hair and watching teen dramas on TV. Shae was already mother hen to all the kids, helping Mrs. Mears in the kitchen, making sure the other children had bathed and brushed their teeth, and generally trying to maintain order when the others were getting ramped up over some looming event, as they were late on this Halloween morning.

On the third floor were rooms for Gary and Lyle and Eddy, although outside of winter Eddy spent most nights on or under the porch. Eddy had been spending more time in his room lately, although he usually slept under the bed, not on it, and he preferred looking out the window or watching shadows on the walls to TV. Eddy was ten. Lyle was nine, and enjoyed watching old black and white movies. Gary was six, and he was happiest with a pencil and paper, drawing whatever came to mind.

All of the kids had their own rooms, outfitted the same. All of them had been abused in one way or another. They all loved the freedom of the estate; endless miles to roam and no one to fear, and they all loved Lomax.

Until he took on these kids, Lomax had never been loved. He hadn’t even known what love was until he was forty-five years old. He had been sitting on the big porch at the rear of the house overlooking the back spread of endless open fields, sipping lemonade and enjoying a fresh summer breeze on his face when Eddy came back from his morning run. The boy was wearing nothing but the khaki shorts he called muh britches. He had about twenty pair and from May to October they were all he ever wore.

“Have fun?” Lomax had asked. Eddy was a tough case and Lomax wanted to give the boy plenty of room with no pressure. Eddy had picked up his water bowl from the bench near Lomax’s rocker, slurped loudly as water trickled down his brown, skinny chest, and then had given Lomax a fierce hug, tucking his shaggy head under Lomax’s chin.

Now when Lomax looked at his kids he felt strong and weak, protective and proud, and a fluttery something in his stomach made him feel giddy.

Big Sky’s fourth floor was the cavernous attic, converted into storage rooms, a playroom, and an observatory, with a squat Celestron telescope set up in front of the French doors that led to a widow’s walk.

There was also a spacious, maze-like basement. Lomax had lived here five years now and he still hadn’t seen all the rooms down there; the original owner of Big Sky had been a bit of a basket case, building room after room underground, expanding far beyond the foundation of the house. There was the laundry room and a caged storage area for valuables and the room holding the massive furnace, and dozens of other halls and tunnels and rooms and cubbyholes.

Lomax entered the kitchen and said good morning to Shae and Mrs.

Mears, who were filling cereal bowls, cooking eggs and making toast. Mrs.

Mears looked at her wristwatch and raised an eyebrow.

“I slept in because we are celebrating Halloween tonight instead of during the week,” Lomax said.

Lomax would have preferred to call the woman Sarah, but Mrs. Mears was a strong-willed Texan lady, a widow who was a few years younger than Lomax, patient, attentive, and very proper. She kept house, cooking, cleaning and caring for the kids. She also kept Lomax’s life in order. She had a little three room cottage a half mile to the east on Lomax’s property.

From what little Lomax had learned she had been a teacher when she was younger, had lost her only child in some unspecified accident, and her husband had committed suicide when his oil venture had gone bust. All of this had happened when she was young. She had been working as a caretaker for young and old ever since and had excellent references.

“How are the kids, this morning?” Lomax asked her.

Shae looked over her shoulder and gave him a big smile. She had been born with a cleft palate left uncorrected until Lomax came along. Even after her surgery she had continued to hold one hand over her face until just recently.

“Annie, Lyle and Claire are in the TV room,” Mrs. Mears said, pointing toward the hallway with a butter knife.