Rebelonging

Chapter 33
He made a noise that probably was supposed to be a laugh, but didn't quite make it. "Nicest one in the neighborhood."
I glanced around. Actually, he was right. The home wasn't any larger than the neighboring houses, but it was definitely nicer, like someone not too long ago had actually cared. It had white shutters and a matching porch, peeling in places, but noticeably fresher than its surroundings.
"She loved that house," Lawton said, his voice quiet.
"Is she, uh –"
"Still alive?" Lawton shook his head. "No. She died a few years ago. I grew up here though."
"Just you and your Grandma?"
"Sometimes my Mom lived here too. But most of the time –" He shrugged. "She was off doing other things."
"Like what?" I asked.
He gave another bitter laugh. "Drugs, mostly. My Grandma, she was a school teacher at St. Mary's. She always said she should've done better, especially with Mom being her only kid."
He looked off into the distance. "But I dunno. Mom was just wild, I guess."
"Like mother like son?" I teased, trying to lighten his mood.
"No." His gaze snapped in my direction. "I'm nothing like her. She never looked out for us, never gave a shit one way or another what happened to us when she was off doing f*ck-knows-what."
I shrank back, surprised not only by his language, but by the venom behind his words. Sure, I cursed like a sailor, but – . No, I used to curse like a sailor. Now I just cursed like…well, Lawton, actually.
His gaze softened. "Sorry."
"It's alright," I said. "You said 'us'? You mean you and Bishop, right?"
Lawton shook his head. "No. I didn't even know about Bishop 'til I was a teenager. We're half-brothers. Same dad, different cities."
"So how many kids did your Mom have?"
"Two. Me and a sister."
"Where's your sister now?" I asked.
"College out East. Working on her master's in social work."
"And your Mom?" I asked.
"Dead."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," I said. "How?"
"Overdose. Finally. Best thing she ever did."
Even knowing more of his life story, his icy demeanor was a shock. What kind of guy was actually glad when his mother died? Even with my Mom, as crappy as she was, I'd still be sad if anything bad happened to her.
He studied my face. "I know what you're thinking."
"I'm not thinking anything," I said, "just taking it all in."
"Let me ask you something," he said. "Your brother. He's thirteen, right?"
I nodded.
"Well, I'm the oldest," he said. "My sister, she's maybe three years younger than me." He smiled. "Probably about your age, come to think of it." The smile faded. "When she was thirteen, Mom tried to sell her."
I felt my body grow still. "What do you mean?"
His gaze hardened. "You know what I mean."
I blew out a breath. I guess I did, but I was hoping that I'd just misunderstood him.
"That's when Grandma kicked her out for good," Lawton said. "Told Mom if she ever came back, she'd be dead before she hit the door. And Grandma meant it. She never said anything she didn't mean. She had this old Remington. She was a hell of a shot too. Took me deer hunting up north once."
"She sounds like an amazing person," I said.
"She was," he said with the trace of a smile. "She'd been a widow forever too. I never knew my Grandpa. Neither did my Mom, come to think of it. He died in some factory explosion a month after she was born. So I guess my Mom didn't have it so good either."
Lawton shook his head. "Anyway, even with Mom out of the house, I couldn't let the thing with Kara go. I mean, what kind of man does that? And why the hell should he get away with it? So I ask around, and I find out who the guy is."
"Then what?" I said.
"Then," he said, "I go after him."
I did the math. "So were you what, about sixteen?"
"Yup."
"So what'd you do?"
"I showed up at his house, knocked on the door, all nice and polite. And then, when he answered, I beat the piss out of him. The guy was in I.C.U. for a week."
"Good," I said.
He gave me a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Oh c'mon," he said, "no warnings about vigilante justice?"
Thinking of my own brother, I could only shrug. I knew exactly what I'd want to happen if anyone tried that with him.
I glanced again toward the house. "At least you didn't kill him," I said.
"Yeah. But it didn't end there. The guy was a city councilman. Had a wife, a couple of grown kids." His voice grew sarcastic. "A regular pillar of the community."
"So he pressed charges?"
"Yup."
"What were they?" I said.
"Attempted murder."
My voice was quiet. "Wow."
"Yeah." Lawton shrugged. "But hey, it was true, right?"
"You wanted to kill him?"
"Wouldn't you?" he said.
"If you really wanted to kill him," I said, "you would've grabbed the gun. Right?"
"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe, shooting the guy seemed too easy."
"But with what happened to your sister, I mean, that had to count for something, right?"
He gave a bitter laugh. "Not when Mom wouldn't testify. And Kara, she didn't even know about it. And I was damned determined to keep it that way."
He looked out over the street, marred with potholes and weeds. "And let's say the thing with Kara got out. She'd be the girl who almost got molested by some forty-year-old. School was hard enough already. She didn't need that."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Our school? It was the worst in the district. But it was the only one we had. And Kara and me, we got enough shit already because of the way we talked."
"I don't get it," I said.
"Like I mentioned, Grandma was a teacher. English mostly. And she didn't put up with any sloppy talk."
"You mean swearing?"
"Or bad grammar."
I felt myself smile. "But that's a good thing," I said.
"Yeah, well people didn't like it, especially other kids."
"Why not?" I said.
He looked around, taking in our surroundings. "Wherever you live, you gotta fit in, right?"
I thought of myself at the Parkers'. Slowly, I nodded.
"Well, we didn't fit in," he said. "It was a problem. And the older we got, the bigger the problem."
"So what'd you do?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I learned to blend. Or when I couldn’t, I learned to fight."
"Well, you sure learned that good," I said. "But what happened with that councilman?"
"Officially, I was a minor. But at first, the guy worked like hell to see me tried as an adult."
"At first?" I said. "So he changed his mind?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"With that," Lawton said, "I had a little help."
"From who?" I said.
"Bishop."
"But he couldn't have been much older than you."
"He wasn't. But he was old enough."
"What'd you guys do?" I asked.
"That, I can't tell you."
"Why not?"
"Because," he said, "it wouldn't be right. My secrets are one thing. But his?" Lawton shook his head. "They're not mine to be giving out. Even to you."
"I can respect that," I said. And I could. Somehow, it made me think more of him, not less. "So tell me in general terms," I said. "What happened with the case?"
"Plea bargain," he said. "I spent a couple years in juvie, got out when I turned eighteen. And you pretty much know the rest."
I tried to smile. "I seriously doubt that."
"Wanna know something funny?" he said.
"What?"
Lawton's gaze took in the neighboring houses. It suddenly occurred to me that we hadn't seen a soul since we'd stopped. It was kind of eerie, actually.
Lawton returned his gaze to me. "Juvie was a cakewalk compared to this."
"Why didn't you guys move?" I asked.
"Because Grandma had a bad hip and a pension that barely paid for groceries. And besides, where would she go?"
I looked around. "Anywhere but here," I said.
Lawton gave a bitter laugh. "Easy for you to say. When I was born, Grandma owned that house outright. But when I got in trouble, she mortgaged everything to pay for my legal team, sorry as they were."
"But what about a public defender?" I said.
"That's what I told her. But Grandma wouldn't hear of it. She said I deserved better."
"She was right," I said, thinking of the worst-case scenario. If things had gone badly, Lawton might be sitting in prison right now, as opposed to sitting with me.
"By the time it was done," Lawton said, "she owed more than the house was worth."
"Oh wow," I said, letting that sink in. "That's awful."
"And what's worse," he said, "it wasn't all to the bank."
"Who else did she owe?" I asked.
"This local guy, specialized in high-risk loans."
"You mean a loan shark?" I said.
"More or less. Though he didn't like to be called that. Don't ask me how I know."
"So who owns the house now?" I said.
"The bank, probably. When Grandma died, she still owed a lot of money."
"To the loan shark?"
"No. Him, I paid off."
"How'd you do that?"
"One day, he saw me mixing it up with a couple of guys in the neighborhood. Said he liked what he saw, offered me the chance to work off some of the loan."
"By fighting?"
Lawton nodded. "It was the one thing I was actually good at. And for whatever reason, people liked to watch."
This was totally unsurprising. All I had to do was look at him. His body was a work of art, and he had a face to match. I liked to watch him no matter what he was doing.
"I can see why," I said.
He turned to look at me, a smile tugging at his lips. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," I said, hearing the breathiness of my own voice. "Totally."
How Lawton had survived unscathed, I had no idea. Well, actually, I did. I had never heard of him losing a fight. And the way he moved, it was deadly poetry. No matter what he did, he made it look easy. But the way it sounded, easiness was a foreign concept in his world.
"So anyway," he continued, "one fight led to another. Every time, the money got a little better. And then there was that fight video that made the rounds." He shook his head. "I still don't know that got out. The organizers weren't too happy about that."
"Because the fights were illegal."
"That and taxes," he said.
"Taxes?"
"Yeah. They didn't like to pay them."
"Oh."
Outside the car, I saw the first sign of life. A couple blocks in front of us, a lean, scruffy man with bushy hair weaved his way from one side of the street to the other. As he walked, he stopped every once in a while, peering into the few beat-up cars that dotted the oddly quiet street.
"You know him?" I asked.
"Not from before. And not from now either. I never come back here."
"So why today?" I said. "And why with me?"
"Because," he said, "there's something I need to say."