DC Suburbs -- Part 35
by Martin H Slusser

Chains clinked. He shivered in the dank chill of the cell. On the wall a gas heater flared and rumbled, but it did little to dispel the gloom of the room. Benny pulled on the chain, counting the plastisteel links until he had gathered it all in his hands. He uttered one dull curse. The chain wasn't long enough to reach the glass enclosed light fixture in the ceiling.

Benny groaned and squatted on his heels.

Though tempted, he held himself close, refused to let his essence escape to the quiet place, the place of peace that existed on the far side of the Veil of the Sun. He needed to be up and around in case he had to get rowdy.

High on the rusty steel plated door, the small trap grated back. Benny ignored it. Guards opened it on a regular basis, as if unable to believe he had been captured.

“Hey kid?”

The door swung back, and he said with all the quiet bitterness and cold rage he could find, “Hail the conquering hero, Mike the master-blaster.” The door swung in. Wolf-like, Benny smiled. This was the very lowest level of the house. Benny wondered who the man had planned to lock in here. His errant wife, maybe?

Mike winced at the muffled scream of the un-oiled hinges. “They sound like the very gates of Hell.” He smiled at his attempt at humor and shrugged at Benny's hostile face.

“Word, cop, the Gates of Hell sound way worse than that.” Benny closed his eye.

Mike gave Benny a sharp look and saw no mockery. “Yeah, well, if you say so.”

Without preamble, Benny shrugged. “I do. I saw them more than once.” He moved his shoulders against the wall and ask softly, “Do you hear them?”

“Hear what?” Mike winced at the crack in his voice.

“The slaves. The McAllen folks used to lock them down here, in the dark, ones who tried to escape, and torture them.” Benny tensed. Ghosts of screams whispered in his ears. He looked at Mike and offered a faded smile to the disbelief on Donnelly's face. “No, I guess you can't. But me, I'm psycho, remember?”

“A psychic, isn't it? Speaking with the dead, I mean.” He squatted on his heels. To Benny's unhappy eye, he was just out of range.

“Is there a difference?”

Mike tried to laugh at that.

“Hey, kid, about Ter-”

“Shut it.” Benny's hiss cut him off in confusion. Benny gestured at the walls. He shook his head at Mike. “Got ears. Got all kinds a weird shit, too. Stuff that can about read your mind, even, if you're set up for it.” His hand stole to the back of his neck, and he scratched at the scar. “Y'know? No? Well ask the bitch, she's responsible for it.”

Mike tried sign language. Benny snorted. “Eyes, too.”

Most of what Mike signed Benny understood. He had learned it so he could cuss out a deaf kid at the Children’s Home up in Wilkes-Barre. They became friends instead. It wasn't too different from the old-style signing that was used by the Peoples since before Abraham was a gleam in his daddy's eyes, like Grampa Wya used to joke. Once upon a time they had been the same thing. French explorers took it home to Europe, and the European style became the official version. The old-way was all but forgotten.

Mike scowled at the floor.

He rose and shook his head at Benny before he left. Benny leaned back against the cool damp stone of the foundation. He ached from the beating the remote gave him, from being cut off from the healing presence of the Earth under a confining slab of steel-reinforced cement, from the pain of loneliness and captivity.

Mike wanted to talk. Benny smiled, secretive and amused. Yo, and about his sister, Sweet-Bottom.

When had he seen her last? Leaving her parents home down in N.C. Man, but it had been mutual hate the first time he saw her. Benny hugged his knees to his chest and grinned. At the hospital in Camp LeJeune, right after that thirty car pile up in Fayetteville. Cindy almost got him that time, and would have, but for that old harridan of a nurse. That old woman even spooked Cindy, and Cindy's meaner than cat shit.

Weeks of snapping and sparring with Sweet-Bottom and right on the peak of one of their worse fight they wound up in a linen closet. And got found out, too.

What an amazon. Warrior-lady fer sher.

And now she's knocked up higher than a kite, and it was his kid, and now she was in double jeopardy. His back slid down the cold, sweating wall.

“Another fuckin' Janissary for Cindy,” he whispered to the echoes of long dead men. He leaned his head on his knees and stared at the dusty cement floor between his feet.

The man on duty opened the slot and stared at Benny for a long while, his eyes thoughtful. Sergeant Ivanovitch’s kid.

Cindy covered little Ben's head with a blanket. She motioned for the agent to open the door. He gave her a worried frown but pushed the door in.

Benny's eye came up, saw the light blue of the blanket in her arms. “Get out. You think I want my kid to see his old man like this?”

Pained, she murmured, “Now, Benny, he's only a baby yet-”

“No.” Benny looked away from her. She sighed and opened the blanket.

“Benny?” A quaver entered her voice. She scowled at the guard. He cleared his throat and closed the cell door behind her. Cindy lay the baby on the floor. Ben scooted off the blanket and raced to her feet. He glared at his father, distrust and suspicion in his dark blue eyes.

“Benny, it's been quite a while since you saw him.”

He took a deep breath. Benny looked at his son and against his will, held out a hand. The chains clinked. The boy grinned at the sound and crept forward. Benny took him up and held the squirming child close. He sat the boy in his lap and smiled.

Almost casually, he ask, “Any ravens hangin’ around?”

“I-” She nodded, unable to speak.

“Yeah. I seen 'em too. Eagles, hawks. Flocks of Blue birds. Even,” he snorted a droll laugh, “turkeys.” Benny took out his bandanna. “Like I told you, Cindy, birds are sacred to the Eagle-Woman. They love to do Her bidding. Anything happens to this kid, and you’ll swear you were the main actor in an old Alfred Hitchcock movie. Like back in Sandy Valley, babe.” With a gentle smile for the boy, he opened the bandanna, grinning softly at the eagles and flags on it. A banner to freedom. He knotted it around his son's head, bent forward and kissed the soft hair. With a deep breath he closed his eye and hugged his son. Maybe this would be the only one of God alone knew how many Cindy had bred off of him that he'd ever get to see and to love.

Mom would gather them, though. She wouldn't let Cindy pervert the richness of his ancestry and the gift the God had bestowed on those who were ani:Wya by choice.

“Don't bring him back. Please?”

Cindy nodded. “The air down here . . . are you feeling alright, Benny?”

He showed her all his teeth and mocked her. “I'm dying, and I'm glad of it.”

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