“Yes, my mother’s dead. But she loved me, Gabriel. She didn’t give me up. Is that what this is all about? When you killed those children, did you think you were killing a part of yourself? The part your mother couldn’t accept?” Titus said.
“Don’t fucking try to profile me. I want you to remember what I told you. Your fucking flock ain’t safe.”
The line went dead.
Titus tossed his phone on the desk and put his face in his hands. It was like the Last Wolf’s insanity was secreting through the cell towers into his brain. Talking to this maniac, thinking like him, was corrosive. It ate away at his soul.
* * *
The phone rang again.
Titus picked it up with a pit blooming in his stomach.
It was his father.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Titus said.
“Nothing, calm down, boy. I was just calling to tell you not to pick up nothing for dinner. I’m making baked chicken, greens, cornbread, and tater salad. And I got somebody bringing by some oysters for the grill,” Albert said.
“That’s a lot of food for just me and you, Pop,” Titus said.
Albert chuckled. “Just come on home, boy.”
“I got a lot to do here.”
“Titus Alexander Crown, you can go back to work after you eat. Now come on home. By the time you get here, the food be done,” Albert said.
“What’s going on, Pop? I told you I don’t want Darlene coming over while all this is going on,” Titus said.
“It ain’t Darlene, big head. Now come on home.”
* * *
Titus got out of the SUV and headed for his front door. A pale pink patina still coated the fiberglass. He went in the house and was immediately embraced by the aromas of a long day in the kitchen for Albert Crown.
“You trying to put your foot all the way in it today, huh, old man?” Titus said.
Albert was stirring a pitcher of tea with a wooden spoon. “Sometimes ya gotta.”
“Is that your famous lavender sweet tea?” Titus asked.
Albert grinned. “I don’t know how famous it is, but yeah.”
Titus took in the baking dish full of chicken, the aluminum pan full of macaroni and cheese, the old butter container of potato salad.
“Pop, you got a lady friend coming over?” Titus asked.
Albert laughed. “Boy, sit and shut your mouth. I’m gonna make your plate while we wait.”
“I can make my own plate, Dad,” Titus said.
“Suit yourself,” Albert said, and went back to stirring the tea.
“You really not gonna tell me who coming over?” Titus asked as he spooned the macaroni on his plate.
“You the detective. You figure it out.” Albert cackled.
Titus ate a spoonful of macaroni. The old man hadn’t lost his touch.
His father had put out three place settings. He was making his lavender tea. Titus glanced at the oven. Behind the tempered glass he saw a pan full of croissants. Only, when he and Marquis were kids, they didn’t call them croissants.
“Roly-polys. You made roly-polys. Pop, you think Marquis is coming over?” Titus asked.
Albert grinned. “Finish your plate,” was all he said.
Titus sat his plate on the table. “Pop, he ain’t been over here in years. What makes you think—” Titus started to say, but a knock at the door stopped him in his tracks.
“Hey, I couldn’t get no oysters,” Marquis said as he came in the house. He came in the kitchen carrying a six-pack of beer. “Hey, big brother. You look scary, as usual. Pop, you wanna put these in the fridge?” Marquis said.
“Yeah, go ahead. This tea is ready. We can crack open the beers later.”
“You sure that tea ain’t too much for you, old man? Look like you fighting that stirring spoon,” Marquis said as he passed Albert and playfully punched him in the shoulder.
Albert spun around and put up his fist. Titus had taken one step toward them when he saw the grins on their faces.
He grinned too.
* * *
After the chicken had been eaten and the sweet tea had been drunk and all the beer was gone, the three of them leaned back in their chairs at the kitchen table with full bellies and cheeks sore from laughing.
“Got damn, I got the itis,” Marquis said.
“Everything was good, Pop,” Titus said.
“I know. I can still burn up something in the kitchen,” Albert said. He yawned and cracked his knuckles. “I’m think I’m gonna hit the hay.”
“Pop, it’s eight thirty,” Marquis said.
“Yeah, past my bedtime,” he said.
All three of them guffawed.
“Nah, I took a pain pill for this ol’ hip. Mr. Sandman is calling me.” Albert rose from the table with a slight grimace. He put his hand on Marquis’s shoulder and stared at Titus.
“It’s good having both my boys here,” Albert said. He squeezed Marquis’s shoulder, nodded to Titus, and then headed for the stairs.
“Pop still got some of that good ’shine around here?” Marquis asked.
“Yeah, in the same place,” Titus said.
“Remember when we stole one of his jars and he caught us and made us drink the whole thing?” Marquis asked.
“Still can’t stand the smell of raspberries. By the time we got to the bottom they was just sludge,” Titus said as Marquis retrieved the mason jar.
“Wanna go out on the porch? I feel funny drinking corn liquor in the house,” Marquis said.
“Only time I heard him and Mama even kinda argue was when him and Gene and Gary Parrish got drunk at the kitchen table after work that time,” Titus said.
Marquis grabbed two glasses and headed out the door. As he passed the mantel he paused and blew a kiss at their parents’ wedding picture.
They sat side by side in lawn chairs and passed the jar back and forth until the warmth of a buzz settled over them like a fog.
“I gotta ask. What made you show up tonight?” Titus said.
Marquis took a sip from the jar. “Somebody nails a sheep to your daddy’s door, you should probably come check on him.”
“Fair enough. I mean, I know it’s hard for you to come over here,” Titus said.
“If I don’t think about hearing that rattle in her throat, I’m okay,” Marquis said.
“I think about it all the time,” Titus said.
“I don’t know why you torture yourself like that,” Marquis said.
Titus swallowed his ’shine. “You know, part of me thinks if I don’t, if I start to forget that night, I’m disrespecting her. I guess I feel like somebody gotta carry it. Her memory.”
“I didn’t say I don’t wanna remember her. I just don’t wanna think about that night, or the six months before. I wanna think about her helping us make them kites,” Marquis said.
Titus laughed. “You electrocuted yourself with that thing.”
“I’d never seen her so mad and so scared before,” Marquis said. He chuckled and sipped some more ’shine. “How you doing? I know you running down behind this boy who cutting people up and leaving ’em in cornfields and shit. I know it’s got to be pressing on you.”
“It’s the job. It’s what I signed up for.”
“Negro, you did not sign up for no Silence of the Lambs shit. This is Charon. The most you should be doing is breaking up fights at the Watering Hole,” Marquis said.
“Speaking of the Watering Hole. You was right. Boy on my team was getting paid,” Titus said. He held out his hand and Marquis handed him the mason jar.
“That’s what I was hearing,” Marquis said.
“Was you hearing it cuz you was doing some work for Jasper?” Titus asked.
Marquis turned his massive head to look at him. “You don’t wanna know that. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, I had done a little something-something for them in the past. If I was any kind of a good brother, I would have stopped the day you got elected cuz I wouldn’t want to get my big brother in trouble,” Marquis said.
“Well, let’s play that hypothesis out a little more. If you was working for them and you stopped and then I fire their inside man, they not gonna come after you, are they? Cuz that’s more serious than some broken tables,” Titus said.
“They know better than to start some shit with me. Let’s leave it at that. Let you have some plausible deniability. I don’t want you to lose your golden child status,” Marquis said. He winked at Titus.
“I ain’t no goddamn golden child,” Titus said. He handed Marquis the mason jar.
“Come on, man. I’m the black sheep, no pun intended, and you’re the good son. Graduated top of your class from UVA, then Columbia, then worked for the FBI for, what, ten years? Shit, I don’t know why you came back here, and don’t say Pop’s hip.” Marquis took a big swig of the ’shine. “And is this my belt you wearing?” Marquis asked. He handed the jar back to Titus.
Titus glanced at his waist. “Mine broke and yours kinda matches the uniform, even if it’s got a knife in the buckle,” Titus said. He took another sip. “But like I said. I’m no golden child.”
Marquis laughed. It echoed through the night and brought a response from a few nightjars and an owl. “Boy, you so straight they can do geometry by your backside,” Marquis said as he held out his hand for the mason jar.
Titus first took another long swig of the ’shine. The moonshine burned all the way to his toes. He handed Marquis the jar.