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At
Mountain Top, the motorcycle hung a left off of 309 and raced the miles down
to White Haven. Benny hung over the bars. Wisps of mist became lowering clouds
of fog. He dashed away the clammy moisture and suddenly found the road tipping
down. He grunted. The Night Sun seemed to find every pothole and rock. It had
never been this bad. Had it?
She
wobbled and Benny’s stomach lurched. The Uohali
swayed to a halt. Benny fell off the Night Sun and his stomach heaved. He had
to keep the Uohali upright. If he
didn’t he’d never be able to pick her up off the road.
The
pain, the physical pain, was nothing compared to the grief of Angie’s
betrayal.
Acrid
fluid spattered on the rocky ground under his knees. Benny spit hard and wiped
his mouth with the back of his arm. He got on the motorcycle, letting her roll
and continued on in grim silence.
In
another ten minutes he was squinting at a flashing yellow light that marked
the beginning of Freeland. The warning sign stating POSSIBLE
CAVE-INS under the light was invisible. And a joke. A very un-funny one.
Benny’s
eyes peered through the heavy mist for the cut-off that was the Sandy Run
road. He shuddered, hoping he wouldn’t miss it and wind up in Freeland. Then
he would have to backtrack several miles in this graveyard soup.
Karr’s
Bottling Plant was a solid, dim bulk, hardly darker than the night when he
passed it. The few people who squatted there were still asleep.
Biting
off a curse, he cut a hard left. The Night Sun looped around an empty,
overgrown lot, then back across route Nine-Forty.
Benny
shivered in the mist. He bounced over the rough gravel of old man Karr’s lot
and stopped, hoping the owner wouldn’t think he was trying to raid the place
of the junk stored in the back. The dude shot first and ask questions later.
Around here, who didn’t.
Benny
opened a saddle bag. He grasp a denim jacket inside and paused in a near
reverent silence in the deep stillness of the night.
This
had been his father’s jacket. It was old, faded and worn with age. But if he
tried, real hard, he could just smell the cologne and sweat of the man who
once wore it.
The
Army claimed his dad was a hero. Ben the Second’s estranged father called
him a fool for leaving for a war that brought the Greylov clan no profit. All
Benny knew was that somebody deprived him of a father. Someone who would have
protected him from the evil that claimed his body. In a way, the man had.
His
dad hadn’t wanted to go. He had to, to escape his father’s vicious hatred.
Benny knew that from reading the letters Dad wrote to Mom. Then that Pais del
Noche drug lord, Escobar, the Sweeper, caught and tortured him to death.
For
Benny and Anna, Carl made the man and his followers foremost in Carl’s
hate. There were worse things in the world than being hated by Carl, but Benny
couldn’t think of any.
No
more Pais del Noche roamed the highlands of Brazil’s western provinces.
Escobar had been totally insane with a hatred for anything remotely American.
In Carl he met someone even worse.
Benny
closed his eyes and drew on the soft coat. Swallowing a sob, he pulled the
snaps together and felt instantly warmed by the love of his father.
It
was one of the few, so very few things, that old man Greylov’s ravenous
family hadn’t gobbled up after Greylov had died at the ‘Stone. Benny
frowned. A cold grin bared his teeth. It was unlikely he would have seen his
seventh birthday if one of the Greylov tribe had managed to be appointed his
guardian by the courts. God knows, they spent thousands trying. Instead, the
Project’s vast influence sent him into Dubcheck’s nutty house, then the
reformatory. To soften him, Conner said.
He
didn’t soften too well.
Not
with a bro like Carl. Yo.
Pulling
the jacket close, Benny smiled.
Old
man Greylov threw the coat at Benny, when Benny was about five, going on six.
He stared down at the too solemn, under-sized kid.
“No
runt half-breed would ever be man enough to fill my son’s shoes, let alone
his jacket.” Old man Greylov rasp a harsh laugh. “Benny? Think you’ll
live long enough to try?” The eyes staring down at Benny darkened and grew
flint sharp. He aimed a slap at Benny’s head. “Get up to your room, you
murdering little bastard, and get out of those clothes I have to waste my
money on.”
Clutching
the jacket to his narrow, heaving chest, Benny darted up the ladder to the
loft. Greylov’s voice shrilled at him, “Your fault my son left.” He
crept to his bed, a rusting Army surplus bunk, to undress as slowly as he
dared to.
He
balled the jacket under his face and lay on the bed. Breathing in deep gasps,
he tried not to cry. He tried real hard. That only made Mr. Greylov worse. The
jacket smelled of moth balls and cologne. The sweet scent of the aftershave
brought a slight comfort as he waited, tense and deeply afraid of what was to
come.
The
sound of heavy foot-steps crept up the ladder. They moved in a slow and
measured pace across the bare planks of the unheated loft. There was a hiss,
like an in-drawn breath. The first of many streaks of fire laced across the
thin back.
Less
than an hour later the old man dressed himself and stumbled down from the loft
to join his drunken wife by the fireplace. Weary, he grinned, satiated and
happy that he had ‘punished’ the rednigger for killing his Ben.
Benny
hugged the denim to himself and drew it on over his battered flesh.
Mom
washed the jacket. She asked Uncle Charlie to keep it for Benny. A tiny
military-issue Bible was in the left hand pocket, wrapped in a self-sealing
pack. These days, you had to pay for them, and according to Mom, were changed
radically from the real meaning. The Party saw to that. It was the one thing
his father had personally bequeathed to Benny. The inside page was covered
with Ben’s words, starting out,
“To
my beloved Son, Benjamin Wya Grey.”
He
hadn’t even been born yet, not due for months, but Dad took Mom’s word
that their child would be a son.
Mom
wanted a son first, for Dad. The right side of Benny’s mouth crooked up.
Then about twenty daughters for Mom.
The
Native American Built Uohali had
been a high school graduation gift from old man Greylov to his son. At the
time of Greylov’s death it had been hidden at Uncle Charlie’s.
Uncle
Charlie put it in a manmade cave up on the mountain. The same cave he kept his
‘corn-converter’ in. The clouds parted for an instant to show a full moon.
Benny
laughed noiselessly.
A
still was more like it, but Uncle Charlie wouldn’t lie to save his ornery
old hide, so corn-converter it was.
How
the Greylovs screamed when they couldn’t find the motorcycle. Fifty grand
worth of Uohali, and it was gone-gone-gone, man. Real gone.
Benny
shifted his shoulders in the heavy material.
It
was a little big, but Carl said time would take care of that. When he got his
man’s growth, the jacket would fit.
All
Benny had to do was to survive Leda and the Owl and what was left of the
Greylov coven.
And
time would take care of the rest.
Provided
he survived Mom’s rage in the morning.
Benny
laughed. He roared in sheer delight.
“Mom’s
a real bitch,” he announced to a few birds that complained at him in sleepy
chirps. “And guess what that makes her son!”
Rudely awakened, the birds had their own ideas on that one.
The
Uohali bounced slowly out of the
lot, down towards Sandy Run village. They followed the twisted broken snake of
a road.
A
huge doe jerked her head up at the sound and sight of the Uohali. He bellowed, “Freekin-A,”
and the Night Sun slued towards the cliff.
©2002 StoriesByEmail.com
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