Son of Destruction

42




Jessie


Alone in her office, Jessie is both glad and sorry she ran into Walker out there at Golden Acres. She loved talking to him after all this time. He’s so dark and remote that these old girls – her friends – are scared of him, but she and Walker go way back. With her, he is so easy! They’ll always pick up where they left off even if it’s another hundred years. It was the best thing about a routine, perfectly pleasant Sunday in Fort Jude. Then on the way out of Mrs Earlham’s room she got in a fight with Wade, but that isn’t the downside.

It wasn’t really a fight, just one of those emergency exits women build out of words when they’re feeling crowded by a lover who is not quite enough and expects too much. Everybody needs a little down time, but Wade got pissed – hurt feelings, she supposes. ‘All right then!’ he said, and dropped her here. After a long day with big old Wade, who wouldn’t know a boundary if he fell over it, she’s relieved to be by herself again, in a place where she won’t be distracted by the pressure of his expectations or weighed down by that sweetly persistent, clueless will.

Jessie did not flee Golden Acres because she was freaking – unlike Dan Carteret, who will admit as much when he comes back to the Flordana at dusk. Old people are ancient history to her. She’ll be living among them when her time comes and she knows it. She just hopes that if he survives her, Wade sees to it that she gets a single room. Hell, even if they check in together she needs a single room.

Yep, she tells herself, and this is not such a bad thing. It’s gonna be Wade.

Seeing Walker today disrupted her; there is shared history. The crackle of what might have been. As long as she was inside Mrs Earlham’s sunny corner room in the assisted living wing, she could put it aside. Their spunky old kindergarten teacher is still bright, and she laughs a lot. She gets around her quarters better than can be expected; she knows more gossip than Jessie. She’s cool; they let her keep her dog. She asked after Walker who, she would not stop reminding Wade, was handsome as Lucifer and smarter than a bundle of whips. ‘I always knew that boy would go on to do great things,’ she said, and when Wade didn’t respond she said, ‘what’s he up to, honey? How is he, anyway?’

‘Oh,’ Wade said carelessly, and Jessie cracked her mouth open wide as a baby bird, hoping to be fed. ‘He’s fine,’ Wade said, and that’s all he said.

When they came outside Jessie couldn’t help checking – was the car still there? – and she can’t help what her heart did when she spotted Walker slouched behind the wheel, but that isn’t it, not really. That isn’t the downside.

Everything came back in on her. Everything.

Hurting, she started in on Wade, but she shut down the fight before it could get too bad. She said what with the party and the fire, the pile on her desk back at the Flordana was so high that scorpions were nesting in it.

Wade came back with: no problem, he’d come in and smash the little suckers flat, so she had to tell him she was really, really tired – which she is, but not in a way Wade Pike would understand. When she flared up at him he got over-solicitous, which he always does. He still thinks that Jessie, who had it all scooped out at nineteen – thank God she would never be pregnant – isn’t really upset when she gets mad at him, it’s only P.M.S. which, OK, it’s a little late for that. She was out of the car and halfway across the courtyard before he could open the door for her.

She needs time and space to sort out the sorry about running into Walker, which at the moment is overriding the glad. She sent the desk clerk home and slipped into the office, where she can keep an eye on the front desk and the entrance, in case.

It doesn’t take long to figure out what the matter is. Memory has been rolling in from so far off that for a long time she didn’t hear it coming. Now it hits with all its terrible freight, and mashes her flat.

The tastes, the sounds, the crap they were all drinking that lost, bad night come back in on her, everything rank and sour and so sudden that she shudders. The pain is old but still fresh. Her mouth fills with the taste of mingled snot and blood the way it did when it happened; she feels the cold, hard sand behind her head and under her bare back and she can feel wet sand creeping into her crotch as she gasps under the weight of the sleek, arrogant, angry bastard grinding the sand deeper into her most private part, and before anything she feels the humiliation.

She was never sure which ones ran off and which ones stayed to watch.

A high school sophomore. Stupid kid, what was she thinking, crashing the seniors’ houseparty when it wasn’t even her year, and they couldn’t see her for dirt? Lord knows she was pretty enough, stacked and sexier than those f*cking Barbie cheerleaders, and with people who didn’t know, she could easily pass for older which is how she got in the door in the first place, but she was too young! The trouble was, Mollie Regan knew her from church and she never liked her – jealous, Jessie supposes, that woman was still stuffing her bra when she was old enough to afford implants. Jessie blended in fine, she was dancing with Billy Pouncey when Mollie spotted her. Ms. Head Cheerleader dug those purple fingernails into her arm, hissing, ‘You don’t belong here,’ and yanked her off the floor, which is how she ended up out on the curb in the middle of the night.

Her own damn fault for crashing, everybody knew houseparties were for seniors only and it didn’t matter how cute or sexy you were. She was sitting on a cement sea turtle out there on Coquina Alley waiting for Billy or some other boy to come out that she would consent to ride home with in exchange for a little of the one thing Jessie did best. But then Chape’s brand new Jeep came along, filled with sophomore boys scoping the scene like it was their senior year and they were the killer dudes laying waste and pillaging the maidens, come what may. Six first-string players from the FJHS Tarpons riding around drunk as bastards, acting like they ruled the world which they did, in a way, rolling to a stop at the sight of her.

‘Girl, you want a ride?’

Stupid, she thinks now. Stupid, heedless little bitch.

Stupid ever to get in any car with Brad Kalen, never mind who else was along. The boys were all loaded but so was Jessie, so what else is new? Besides, she recognized the car which was Chape Bellinger’s sweet sixteen present before she saw Brad was behind the wheel. She thought it was Chape stopping for her which, given who he was and given where Jessie came from, was an honor. Plus, given how late it was, she could use the ride. But Brad was driving, with Chape out cold and insensible, wedged in the back behind the bench seat, which was full of guys. Brad gunned the motor, laughing. ‘Are you getting in or what?’

He was a little heavier set than most even back then, but he was also a year older than them. Back then he worked out and Jessie is here to tell you that he oiled the biceps and the pecs. With tight gold curls and that big, heavy head Brad Kalen looked like f*cking Tiberius, riding in to take the throne. She was a little scared of him so she said, ‘There isn’t room,’ but the guys in the back all said like one person, ‘You can sit on my lap.’

Cute Bobby Chaplin was riding shotgun, smart and safe as houses, so why not? If the look Bobby shot her should have told her that he had misgivings, she wasn’t about to pass up a ride. Who wouldn’t want to be seen out riding around these cool guys? She tossed her hair like a cheerleader and jumped into the back.

Stitch Von Harten and the Coleman twins skooched over so she could slip in between Buck and Darcy instead of jouncing along on their knobby knees – too bad about Darcy but who knew he was already doomed? Brad passed the bottle – God only knows what they were drinking – and Jessie knocked one back. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thinks now, but in the beginning, so crazy and so very much fun, being with these guys – top of the line, leaders of the pack. They were singing, and she remembers riding along thinking, Now I’m in with them, these are my main men.

When you grow up on the outside and something like this happens, you think, Now everything is going to be different. They’ll want you at all the parties now, and not just because you have big knockers. Yeah, right. Brad took a turn nobody expected and her neck snapped. They were at the head of a coral road going nowhere. ‘Shit,’ Bobby said, and Brad said, ‘No shit.’ Then Bobby, who Jessie was so psyched to be hanging out with, said, ‘This is where I get off.’ She remembers just exactly how it sounded. ‘This is where I get off.’ He reached over the seat and grabbed her hand. ‘And you should come too.’ He was asking her to jump down and come along but she was out with the boys and they liked her and by that time frankly, she was too fried to think about that big of a decision.

Oh shit, Jessie thinks, jumping up so fast that she upsets her chair. Done is done. She can’t go back and she can’t make it change. The trouble is, she can’t get rid of it, either, and seeing Walker again today the way she did on a bright Sunday afternoon after so long and just when she thought she was on top of things – she can’t handle it. She just can’t.

It isn’t the pain or humiliation, it’s the knowledge that Walker Pike saw her like that, tattered and bawling in the sand, which he did because it was Walker who ended it. Just when she thought she was going to die – and by God she wanted to die that night and at certain times every night for years afterward – Walker came. Alone by that time, and she can’t know when the others fled – alone, and brutish, vengeful Brad Kalen was rolling her over to try something new when headlights exploded the night and everything changed. A car door slammed and Walker Pike came down on them like the Trojan army and ended it.

Everything stopped in a shower of sand and flying spit and her attacker’s bloody teeth and the hell of it is that every time she sees Walker now, and she does love Walker, Jessie knows he is remembering. No matter how old they get or how pretty she makes herself, Walker is seeing her like that. Like that.

It isn’t fair, she thinks bitterly, he never looked that way at Lucy. In spite of all that.

Distracted and miserable, she finds herself running around the lobby of her hotel thumping tapestry pillows and misting her bromeliads – anything to escape the sense memory, which is overwhelming. She is straightening lampshades when the kid from up north comes out of the elevator with a Jiffy bag under his arm – when did he come in? Was she so wrecked that he went past the desk without her noticing?

Lucy’s boy.

It breaks her heart to see him. Then she looks at his face and her heart goes out, and for more than one reason.

She chooses the easy one. ‘You look like you’ve been hit by a truck.’

He grins, probably because Jessie is smiling. ‘Long day.’

‘Bar’s closed, but I can buy you a cup of coffee.’

‘I just came to pick up something. Gotta be somewhere.’

‘Have you eaten?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice.’ Now, why does this embarrass him?

She says kindly, ‘You need a Flordana burger so you don’t die on your way to wherever you’re going. Chips on the side, and guaco. Come on, come and sit five minutes while Sibby fixes it, it looks like you could use the mercy.’

‘Mercy?’ He stands there, juggling the Jiffy bag while he thinks it over. Should he stay or should he go? His lips aren’t moving but they might as well be. It’s not clear what he is considering, but she can see that he’s sifting through significant material.

‘I can get it to go, if you’re in that much of a rush.’

‘OK.’ It’s a good smile. Honestly pleased. ‘Thanks.’

This is nice, Jessie thinks, studying the kid while he stirs too much sugar into the iced tea she ordered for him because, she said laughing, he needs a caffeine jolt to keep him going while Sibby gets his hotel Happy Meal into the clamshell. All these years childless and she’s sitting here with a great-looking man, and instead of flirting she’s coming on like Mrs Mom. It’s kind of restful. Besides, it’s taking her out of herself. Sweet, sitting here with a sweet guy who doesn’t know how they did me, talking about nothing. ‘So,’ she says, ‘Fort Jude. Scary, right?’

Then he puts the snapshot on the table. Yes, she saw it the first day. Yes, she knows what he wants. No. She knows what she wants. It’s time.

‘Do you know these guys?’

Him. She puts her finger on the snapshot so she won’t have to see that face again. ‘Oh,’ she murmurs, ‘Oh, shit.’

‘So you do know them.’

She grimaces to mask what she is thinking. ‘Always did.’

‘I’m looking for my father?’ Not a statement, a question.

Jessie says gently, ‘We don’t always know what we’re looking for.’

‘You’re going to help me, aren’t you.’ Not a question.

‘If I can.’

‘These guys.’

She takes a long breath. OK, as the guy who led her business seminar in Vegas said, Let us begin.

‘Lucy should have known better than to get in a car with those guys, no matter how many there are. There is no safety in numbers in this town.’ Like it or not, she is back there. ‘You don’t do that when you see him, not even when it’s full of boys which is why you get into the car in the first place. Son of a bitch loses the others along the way, he just throws them out the back or they get fed up and jump out because they can’t stop him and they know where this is going, and where you thought you were safe . . .’ She breaks off, hoping she can jump from here to the business about Lucy without telling him too much about herself, but it’s too late.

‘When you get to be my age, you get used to a lot of things and you learn how to handle it, but I was only fifteen!’

‘You.’ Daniel is too quick for her. ‘You?’

So she has to tell him. ‘Yeah. Me.’

‘Same guy?’ He grimaces. ‘Same guy.’

‘After he did it he beat the crap out of me.’ This pops out even though she is trying hard not to talk about herself. She pulls her voice back together and starts over. ‘Your mother should have known better, she was eighteen.’

Sad, what his face does then.

‘It’s OK, it ended differently.’ Then without explaining because she can’t bear to tell another living human what happened to her when she was young and stupid, Jessie makes the jump cut to Lucy’s story, that is, as much of it as she knows.

‘Nobody in her right mind gets in a car full of drunks, but look. She was sheltered, it was her first beach party, how was she supposed to know? Oh shit, I should have warned her but we didn’t talk – not that she was snotty, just standoffish, and besides, I was distracted. I was with Clete Rucker that night and hey, I was invited, getting down with all the kids out there just like I belonged, down with the bonfire and great music and moonlight on black water, God only knows what we were drinking; we were all crazy and by the time I looked up, she was getting into that Jeep and it was too late to warn her.

‘When I saw what was happening I screamed and ran after them but by that time they were bombing down the beach and I knew. I ran along after them it seemed like all night, crying and screaming to stupefy the dead. I yelled, “Lucy, watch out,” but the wind took it. Forgive me I ran screaming and forgive her she didn’t hear and then I lost sight of them.’ She is swallowing tears. ‘There was sand in my eyes and in my mouth and in my hair and my God, I cried and cried.’

Ashamed, she meets his eyes; it’s what honest people do. ‘I should have called the beach police, I should have brought the Air Force down on them, I should have taken their guns and shot him dead or howled to break glass and kept on howling until she heard me and took warning, Watch out for Brad . . .’

‘Brad. Kalen, you mean.’ Click.

‘. . . but I was so drunk I was puking sand, and . . .’ She breaks off. The kid is sitting across from her with his mouth cracked open, not drop-jawed, just trying to hear more than she is willing to say.

‘And what?’ He drops a warm hand on her wrist, squeezing until she flinches and pulls away. ‘And what?’

Now they arrive at the heart of her pain and, OK, Jessie thinks, it’s time to admit it, her bitter, bitter jealousy. She tells him, ‘Thank God Walker saw them go.’

‘Who?’

Jessie Vukovich loves Walker Pike, she always will and they both know it but that’s as far as it goes; Walker is a very private person. Never mind that she knows without having to look that he’s parked out front on Central Avenue right now, that he’s sitting out there in the dusk waiting for the kid to come out so he can follow him, and never mind that Jessie isn’t sure why Walker is tailing him, but she has her suspicions.

She says lightly, ‘Just a boy I used to know,’ and the kid’s irises explode. Then because she can’t just drop it and leave it lying there she says, ‘But he got there in time. Walker caught up with the son of a bitch, which is why the ugly f*cker graduated missing three teeth. I guess he beat her pretty bad. Walker had to clean her up before he took her home, and Walker . . .’ She is rolling into a little threnody when Dan Carteret lunges up like a shark, all teeth. ‘Wait! Your food!’

‘I can’t.’ Choked with anger, he wheels. ‘I have to go.’

‘Not yet. This is important. You might as well know . . .’ The details pile in on Jessie and she is surprised that even though she will never outlive her own misery and humiliation, what became of perfect Lucy after Walker saved her from Brad Kalen is a source of greater pain than anything Brad did to her. ‘Wait,’ she cries. ‘Wait for the rest!’

Too late. He’s out the door. Running for his car so hard and fast that he won’t see Walker parked there.

She says anyway, ‘If you’re looking for your father, Kalen’s the wrong guy. You got born a lot later. A whole year later, at the very least.’