“What?”
“Yeah. You know I’m right. Think about it. In the end there’s just a huge fight and shit everywhere.”
Jefferson looks at me. His grip on the kid has let up some. Some. In these situations infinitesimally small concessions like that are to be counted as blessings. They wear down. Drop their guard. Then come in with the haymaker. I can see the calculations going on in those drained, beady eyes.
“I want to help you here, Jefferson. That’s why I came,” I say, taking a minute step forward. This has to work just so. “The kid? The kid is scared and hurt and he’s on autopilot. Believe me, I’ve been a cop a long time and I know how kids are in bad situations. Would you agree this is a bad situation for the boy?”
He slowly nods yes. Slowly.
“Yes, women fuck up everything. Yes, women are all around us. Yes, women are the reason why any man will do anything. Women are the fuel in our engines. But let the boy get old enough to make his own problems with women. Don’t shove your burden on him.” Twist that rapport knife. This is what crisis-intervention folks will tell people not to do.
Build it; don’t use it to agitate. But I’m old school. The old school guys say I have enough of the war in me to not be their type of old school. Maybe I’m just something else altogether. So be it.
Jefferson’s face scrunches and fights crying. His eyes redden and squint, his lips purse and then—just nothing. Blank. The calculations stop. Here we go. Suicides come in two categories: the ones who think they want it but are still working up to do it, and the ones who have already found their peace with it.
Stoke looks down to his scared, battered child and says: “Hey, kiddo. Want to go see your mom outside?” He says this with a bit of a smile, fawning eyes and he sniffs back a tear. Too late I realize Jefferson Stoke asks this question because he wants to hear his boy say no, he wants to stay with his daddy.
But instead Thomas does not hesitate to say, “Yes, Daddy. I want to go outside with Mommy.”
In the blink of an eye. These things take the blink of an eye. Fawning smile to roaring, contorted mask of contempt and bitter jealousy. Thomas is thrown, shotgun leveled. Why he didn’t pull the trigger with it next to his head God only knows. I think Jefferson wanted one last expression of fury before he cleaved his boy in two with buckshot. I jump, snatch the shotgun, turn it. The blast is deafening. The drywall reduces to a cloud of shards and choking dust. I move, lose my footing. A single hot shotgun shell ejects from the port and hits me in the face. Jesus Christ, this fucker can re-rack a shell before I can regret showing up. One hand shoves the firearm somewhere else besides the boy’s general direction. The other hand finds the boy and I shove him towards Clevenger, towards the door. “GO!” I shout. I slip. Jefferson slips. Knee to my gut. Drywall dust in my eyes. Aggression pulses and I throw my body at him. The second shot sprays across the living room and I hear the boy scream. I see Clevenger cover the child with his own body and nosedive out the front door. One hand to the shotgun barrel. The other to the pistol grip. Jefferson’s drained beady eyes an inch from my own. I slam my head into his like we are rams competing for a mate and I intend to win. Blood. Stars behind my eyelids. Another knee. Another head-butt. He screams. Sirens outside. Clevenger shouting. We collapse in a heap. Stoke on bottom. One solid heave and the barrel stabs him in the mouth. Blood made watery with his saliva cuts a river path down the steel. In an instant he has slobber-coated his peace of mind; a tube filled with violence to end his suffering. I wrangle one of my feet up to my chest and step on the gun, all my weight holding the shotgun to his head. Blood drizzles from my face down to him. My suit is ruined.
There was a day when tuning up some asshole was the correct way to fix the problem. The best way to teach a child abuser to stop abusing is not counseling.
It is not therapy.
It is a mouth full of broken teeth.
And worse.
Bold. Bold now because that is what is required. I free one hand and rack a round. Business time. I grab his hand, put it to the pistol grip.
I never pass up an opportunity to become a fearful memory in the mind of a man big enough to hurt a child. His guardian angel with razored feathers for wings, ready to aid him to the Promised Land the only way I know how.
I look him in the eye, calm: “Here is your Number One Problem Solver, Jefferson Stoke. Take care of business.”
He knows the fight is over. Time to be a man. I stand up as he makes his call.
The blast goes off just as the SRT fellas breech the front door. Everyone saw something different; it’s how I got to keep my job.
It is also how I was ruined.
Now, after all the fires and Derne’s sobbing, I leave before the sun breaks over the world.
No new snow yet but it’s coming. Thick stretches of pregnant, angry clouds are amassing on the eastern horizon. A tide of frost. The Rail station isn’t far. I walk. Enjoy the bitter breeze. Bitter as I am becoming.
A word on the Rail: the Rail, as it is commonly referred to, is actually the Dual Community Rail Transit System. It was a pet project back in the ’80s between Saint Ansgar and Three Mile High and their mayors. In the ’70s Saint Ansgar was trying as hard as it could be to be the most ultra-liberal city in America. In some respects it succeeded. Any of those triumphs took very little time to become curses on the city.
One such success was the city’s stance on criminal rights. The ’70s were very gentle towards criminals. That’s why movies like Dirty Harry were created back in that decade. That’s also why guys like Dirty Harry were so popular. Citizens and safety took a back seat to the every imaginable right of a criminal.
Eventually in the early ’80s Saint Ansgar became swamped with lawsuits placed against them by the families of all the victims who, because of a slight, minute, worthless technicality, received no justice. The city did what it could to swim under these lawsuits but in the end they were effectively ruined.
New political blood began pumping up from everywhere, and the mayor’s office, the sheriff’s office, the city council and beyond were swept away and replaced by folks who spoke highly of reinventing the city. Ideas were vast and as different as any ideas could be, but there were a lot to choose from.
One thing everyone wanted to do was install a rail system. During the ’70s the criminal friendliness became such a plague that a good amount of Saint Ansgar’s taxpayer income got up and moved. No one—especially those people who made higher salaries and therefore paid more taxes—were going to sit through nearly a decade of the city government making it less and less safe to live within its walls.
So they moved out. And the people who were left were light on cash. No cash equals no cars. They wanted some incentive to stay before they pulled up chalks and left also. So a rail system it was.
Meanwhile, all those years ago Three Mile High was struggling burg nestled up to the mountain range on Saint Ansgar’s east side. Theirs was a nice place to visit but as far as being a fulltime, growing community Three Mile High was a failure. A lot of Saint Ansgar’s upper crust relocated th