hidden and safe,” Vess tells him and withdraws from the pocket a small brown bundle, which Hendricks mistakes for a stubby cigar. But as he prepares a suitably bemused tone with which to deliver his verdict, Vess, pale worm- like tongue poking from between his teeth, reverently unwraps the small parcel and holds it up, inches from the doctor’s face.
“I found more, but I wasn’t sure whether disturbing it was a good idea. I don’t need no ghosts on my tail. Isn’t that right? Not when I’m out of place.”
Hendricks doesn’t answer. Instead, ignoring the smell from the man, he adjusts his spectacles and steps closer.
“Told her I’d bring it back before she even know’d it was gone. Have to respect women you know. Even I know that and I’ve forgotten a lot.”
Hendricks raises his eyes and appraises the man anew, not because he has developed any kind of respect or admiration for his guest, but because he is now as suspicious and wary of Vess as he would be toward any man who showed up at his door with the remains of a human finger in his pocket.
Iris is on my mind as I steer the truck out of Winter Street. Woman like that makes me think of the future, no matter what she does for a living or how screwed up she may be because of it. Makes me want to help her, to fix her somehow, and in the process maybe fix myself. And that doesn’t make a lick of sense. I don’t know a damn thing about her except that she’s a whore, that she’s been with any number of men, including my son, and I’m not sure that’s something I wouldn’t see in her every time she smiled at me.
I can’t shake the feel of her lips on mine, though. It’s enough to distract me, take me away from the cruelty I’ve brought down on myself, to a place where everything isn’t sharp edges and pain, death and ruin. A place I’d like to stay, and might have, if Brody hadn’t just jerked me out of my thoughts.
“Check that out,” he says, sounding amused. “There’s someone out there.”
I check the rearview to see where he’s looking and then I spot it.
I’m a little ways past Hendricks’ place when I slam down hard enough on the brakes to make the truck shudder into a fishtail. The smoke from scalded rubber sweeps past my window.
“Jesus,” Brody groans, grunting as he shifts himself back onto the seat.
Bloodshot dawn glares at me from over the hills.
Between this road and the river, there’s a field. Dan Cannon, the previous occupant of the house Doc Hendricks now calls home, used to grow corn there. Now it’s barren and yields only a harvest of rocks. Tonight, someone has lit a fire in there a few feet from an oak tree with spindly branches that was the bane of Cannon’s prematurely short existence, and from here, I can see a figure moving sluggishly around it, the flames revealing a craggy ruined face I’m too afraid to admit I know, disfigurement and all.
“Isn’t that…?”
“Yeah,” I mutter. Milestone doesn’t have two giants. After what happened at Eddie’s it shouldn’t even have one. But that’s Wintry up there, doing what looks to be some kind of a slow-motion drunken war dance around the fire.
“You know what to do,” Cadaver says. He is hidden in the shadows beside the tree, shadows that refuse to be burned away by the light from the fire. Wintry tries to fill his lungs with enough air to power the words, but gives up at the realization that there is nothing he can say that the old man doesn’t already know. He wants to die now, but it appears even in his darkest fantasies he’s been wrong to think even an end to his suffering would come without a price. And tonight, here, that price has taken the shape of a dark pair of hands wriggling their way free of the oak tree’s trunk, pushing forth from the rotten bark, thick fingers trembling.
It is dark despite the fire.
It is cold despite the heat.
And those hands, now clenching and unclenching at the end of scarred and meaty forearms, are hands Wintry knows.
Near the roots of the tree, a battered work shoe is wrested free. Dirt and bark tumble; the fissure widens. At the top of the tree, almost but not quite at eye level, pale white orbs, striated opals, fix Wintry with a raging glare. Beneath it a sharp nose, shooting breath to clear the passages of bark and rot. Inevitably then, a mouth, dirty teeth bared above a pointed chin bearded with moss.
“Loser,” says the black devil as he jerks free of the tree to stand before his son. “No-good sonofabitchin’ loser.”
“You know what to do,” Cadaver says again, but now that there are two men before the fire, it is unclear to Wintry who is being addressed. His father does not spare the old man a glance, but nods faintly.
“Pop,” Wintry croaks.
“Lucius,” his father says, and the mere mention of Wintry’s given name is enough to unleash a cascade of unwanted memory:
That voice, resentful, and almost always raised in anger.
That mouth, sneering, twitching a little with each punch of those piston-like arms, smiling slightly at the cries, the injury, the fear.
Those hands, blackening his mother’s eye, shattering her nose, loosening her teeth.
Those hands…tousling the boy’s hair before bedtime, before the bad time.
Those hands, ripping off his clothes, breaking his bones.
Those hands. Around his neck, squeezing. And the words:
“How are you here?” Wintry asks, softly, not because he is threatened, which he is, but because his throat is raw and sore and the words feel like rocks being forced through a whistle.
“Don’t matter.” His father takes a step closer. He is a big man, bigger than his son but not as tall. The difference never mattered though. His father’s fists were always a great leveler, as Wintry suspects they will be now. “What matters is I’m here, and I’m more here than you, palooka.”
He advances another step and Wintry, already quivering from the shock of his injuries, is close to rattling free of the shoes that have been melted to his feet. Into the firelight steps his father, a man who, until tonight, existed only in memory.
“I don’t want this,” Wintry says, then turns his head to look at Cadaver who appears to have woven himself into a mesh of dead branches. “Make it stop.”
“Only you can do that, son,” Cadaver replies.
Narrow face taut with rage, the man before the fire chuckles. “Hell, he ain’t gonna do shit. He ain’t never done a damn thing worth a damn thing. He nothin’ but a worthless punk sent to steal all I had from me and make my wife ashamed of what she let into the house.” His smile widens, teeth gleaming in the amber light. “Shit. He didn’t find out till prison that we wasn’t his folks.”
Wintry sighs. “What do you want with me?”
“To put you down, boy. Just that. To put you down so’s you remember what you done.”
“I don’t need to fight you to remember.”
“Sure you do. You think you got ghosts now Lucius, but you’re forgettin’ all the good ones. All the real big mean ones, ain’t that right ’ol man?”
Cadaver says nothing, just goes on watching.
“So right here, tonight, me and you’s gonna dance. You gonna get the chance to swing a few, see if time’s taught you somethin’, see if you grew some balls up the river, and if you don’t, then you gonna be hurtin’ even worse by the time I get through with you. But I’ll be your Pop for a spell and do you a favor, for ’ol times sake. I’ll let you in on a secret.”
Whatever the secret is, Wintry has no desire to hear it. The fire is licking at his skin though he’s far enough on the other side of it to be out of reach of the flames, and the worst of the heat. Every nerve screams with pain, every muscle spasms, every organ revolts. He wants to lay down and die, most certainly does
“For every blow I land on that cooked-up face of yours, you’ll remember somethin’ you forgot. You’ll remember some of the bad things you done that you don’t blame yourself for no more. You’ll see the little bits of
