Son of Destruction

22




Walker Pike


So it isn’t really Kalen’s fault that the fat drunk imploded at the Fort Jude Club, spilling Walker out in a treacherous place – unless it is.

There was too much history in that room, repeating like something bad he ate. It cracked his protective shell, exposing the man he used to be.

What was he thinking? That he could dump Brad Kalen and get shut of him? In one of those toppling domino displays, everything Walker did that day led to something worse. The collision at the 7/11. The detour to Pine Vista. Profoundly shaken by his near-encounter with the stranger who looks like him, he teetered in Chaplin’s kitchen, poised to speak. Then Kalen shattered the night, kicking and yowling, battering the interior of the Beemer’s trunk until he rocked the car.

Bad things happen when Walker goes out, and he knows it.

Hurry, he told himself, fleeing the house. Drop him at that f*cking club. Vanish before you do something worse.

He should have burned rubber and rolled Kalen out on the steps of the Fort Jude Club, but the stink creeping into his car from the trunk told Walker that he’d thrown up. He was back there rolling in it. Walker despises him, but it was so appropriate that he laughed. He stopped at an all-night car wash to hose out his trunk. To silence Kalen and clean him up. Planning, he was relieved to find that he was no longer angry, just resigned. Get him there. Dump him and go. You have disrupted me enough.

‘’Onna sue your brains out.’ Brad spat on his shoes. ‘F*cking Pierce Point trash.’

Walker just finished hosing him down.

‘Scumbag junkyard shit.’

Pathetic.

‘Your father licked a*sholes for a living, that f*cking drunk.’

‘Take this,’ Walker said, throwing him the T-shirt he uses to wipe down his car after a rain. ‘Yours smells like puke.’

‘And your mother was a cunt.’

Walker handed him a comb. Pleased, maybe, that Kalen couldn’t make him angry. ‘Get the crud out of your hair.’

‘I know what you are,’ Brad snarled through a mouthful of spit, ‘and I know what you did.’

Not likely. Nobody knows.

Walker gave him another blast with the hose. It wouldn’t matter what Kalen said or did now. It took years, but Walker has gotten comfortable with, OK, he doesn’t want to be pretentious, but. He’s gotten comfortable with what he is. He and it have come to terms. He threw Kalen a roll of toilet paper.

‘Wipe your face.’

‘She’d go down on a coon dog for a nickel.’

‘Get in.’

‘And your father’s a crap mechanic.’

‘My father’s dead.’ Belted into the passenger seat, Brad was too drunk to continue. In spite of the hose-down, he stank; it will take more than simple detailing to get the Kalen out of this car. Leaving the Fort Jude Club, Walker rolled down all the windows but his sweet vintage Beemer still stinks. It will stink for days in spite of the towel he put down on the passenger’s seat before he shoveled his captive in. Interesting, then, that he kept his cool. Intent on finishing the job.

But Brad! Brad belched insults. In the lexicon of blunt instruments, he was rummaging for the right one. As they rolled into the Fort Jude Club he came up with it, hissing wetly, ‘Lucy whispers when she comes.’

I could kill him now. Walker rocked with pain. Thank God we’re here. He reached across Kalen’s baggy front, unbuckled his bulging belly and shoved him out. Dump him and go.

But Kalen wasn’t going. As Walker leaned across the seat to close the door on him, Kalen yanked it wide. His head revolved like a cheap effect in a bad movie as he sprayed, ‘You want to know what she whispers? She whispers your name.’

Whose name, Kalen? Mine? Yours?

So Walker had to jump out of the car and beat the crap out of the baboon before the thing escalated, pushing him into a dangerous place. The valet parker and the maitre d’ guy in the uniform vaporized. Which of us are they afraid to touch? Kalen? Me? He doesn’t know. In a way, Walker was glad nobody saw. He needed to re-organize his face before he delivered his package which, for reasons, he had to do.

Grimly, he dragged Kalen upstairs to the grand ballroom, astonished by how leaden he was. Pleased, really, that nothing worse had happened. No. Surprised and relieved. But that was last night.

Snapping awake at first light, he sits up and – God! Daylight crashes into his head, streaming into him through the crack.

Locking his arms around his knees, Walker shudders, rocked by loss.