Work trips

I showed up at the house we were renting early, but apparently not as early as my parents did. As my cab pulled up the driveway, I could see my parents unloading an SUV in the driveway. I had hoped that I would actually beat their arrival time this year. 

My mom was bringing in the hunting gear. I was hoping this year Dad wouldn’t be doing any hunting. Every year, it felt like when we all arrived we’d immediately split up. Dad would be busy with whatever activities he planned, never ones I got invited to; though, my brother was invited along on some. My mom would split her time better than dad, and I usually ended up getting at least one real vacation day with her. With Dad, I usually settle for getting two straight hours of his time without him running off. 

My dad was the first one to greet me as I got out of the cab. He surprised me with a hug almost as soon as I had grabbed my bag. He always moved deceptively fast for such a large man. “There’s my boy!” He’d said as he gave me a crushing hug.

My brother arrived the next day with Lola, but he didn’t arrive by car or even by plane. No, my brother, being the odd ball he is, arrived in a “tricked out speed boat.” How he afforded it, much less how he was able to use it to get all the way here, was beyond me, and I had long since learned it was best not to ask David these things unless you wanted him to make you listen to hours of his explaining every decision he made about the boat and how it works. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you” I say to Lola as she hops onto the dock and as David passes her their bags one by one. 

“You too! I met your parents already but it’s great to get to meat the elusive Devin.” She pulls me into an awkward quick hug with the bag slung around her shoulders getting between us and making whatever was in it painfullly poke into my stomach.

Even with her warm greeting,  I barely saw her for the next two days. I barely saw any of my family for the next few days. Each of them giving me their own excuses for why they were going off on some solo adventure during a family vacation. If I were better at confrontation, I would confront them about how we never actually have a family vacation and how they always end up leaving me alone. 

The third day of vacation brought with it the usual excuses from my family before they all split off. I would never get why they felt they had to lie about what they were going to do when they were obviously going hunting. As if I couldn’t see the guns and gear packed up in the SUV. That’s what tended to hurt the most: the lying. I’ve never been the type to enjoy hunting, so I wouldn't have wanted to go if they had told me the truth. 

Lola came back early. She didn’t say why, but I was able to talk her into going downtown to an arcade, something I had wanted to do with my brother but he had said he wouldn’t have time in the schedule. Apparently, there was a family schedule for which I didn't get the memo. 

“I don’t mean this in a mean way, Dev, but if you are this good at shooters, why aren’t you going out on hunting trips?” Lola said as she put the game's plastic gun back into its compartment. 

“I can kill an endless amount of computer generated people or animals, but I just don’t have the stomach to shoot a real animal," I said with a shrug. I led us over to a racing game and started searching my pockets for another dollar just to find none. “Looks like that was our last game thanks again for-"

“No need to quit now; I think we’re on a roll!" Lola reached into her purse and pulled out a platinum credit card. I’d thought my brother had said she worked as a freelance writer. How would she have one of those? I cut off the train of thought; it was none of my business.

On the fourth day of the vacation, I came home early from the trip to the beach. There was only so long I could stay out there alone before I started feeling self conscious about being the only solo person on the beach. I felt like people were starting to think I was some sort of creep just sitting alone watching people, even though I was really just watching the shoreline. 

My family was supposed to be out doing whatever separate plans they had told me they were doing instead of actually spending the vacation together. When I pulled up to the house though, I could see that both my parent’s SUV and David’s car were in the driveway again. 

Had they really faked leaving just to turn around and come back once I wasn’t home any longer? In that moment, I made up my mind . I was going to confront them, but I wasn’t going to rush in hot-headed. I would come in quietly, and if they were together, which I hoped they were, I would sneak up and catch them red-handed avoiding me. 

I thanked my lucky stars that the rental house wasn’t old or creaky and that it allowed me to come through the front door with barely a sound. I could hear muffled or muttered noises almost as soon as I was in the house. With fists clinched at my side and a feeling of betrayal in my chest, I approached.

“Are you ready to spill yet?” I heard my mother say from inside the kitchen. She was using the same voice she used when she’d find out one of us had gotten detention or an F on a test. I couldn’t help but to go towards her, just to see what trouble my brother (presumably) had gotten into.

Another slap echoed; no, not a slap, this sounded more like a punch. I needed to see what was going on. Maybe they were just tenderizing meat in a really weird way while having an odd and intimidating conversation. 

I crept through the hallway and positioned myself just so that I could peek around the wall, hopefully without anyone in the kitchen noticing me. I held in a gasp as I saw my family with the bonus of Lola standing around a chair with a man tied to it. My father suddenly swung at the man so hard that it knocked the chair off balance. If it weren’t for my mother grabbing the side of it, the chair and the man in it would’ve toppled over. 

“We aren’t going to ask you again.” My father's voice was that scary kind of calm.  I was trying to piece together what was happening. They were practically torturing the man. 

I made the mistake of looking at the kitchen counter where everything we needed to make dinner was spread out… everything except the meat. It hit me with such a shock that I fell over, landing in plain view of my family and the man, and drawing all of their attention to me.

I stood up quickly, scrambling to my feet. “Why is there a man, beaten and bloodied, in our kitchen? Wait! Oh, God! Oh, no! Don’t tell me he’s dinner! Are you guys cannibals? Wait! If you are, then you’ve been feeding me…That means I’m a cannibal! Oh, no, no, no!” My panic was getting worse with every second, and my family was staring at me with indecipherable looks on their faces, and the man in the chair looked like he was about to soil himself. He looked frightened now, not stoic and stubborn. 

“Devin, calm down. There’s no need to shout.” Behind my mother, my brother was shoving a wad of cloth into the restrained man’s mouth, and Lola was fidgeting nervously.

“Calm down! Calm down! My family is about to make a man into dinner, and I need to calm do-" I had barely registered Lola bringing some sort of straw to her mouth, but as a blow dart hit me, and the world started to fade to black, I realized I might actually be in danger. Maybe I shouldn’t have been yelling at the people holding weapons and beating a man senseless.

“Dev, Dev, bud, wake up, please.” My brother's voice and incessant shaking of my shoulders was slowly rousing me. It was difficult to open my eyes. My body felt like it was filled with a mixture of water and wet cement. 

“Gejkrddl” I’m not really sure what that sound was, but I was trying to tell him to stop shaking me. 

“Sorry about that Devin. I panicked.” Lola’s sheepish voice was coming from somewhere behind my brother, who for some reason was looking all twisty turny. 

“Silefnam mouam” I half shouted, hoping that my mother would be able to understand the new slurred language I was speaking and come help me. I know she was with Lola and my brother and my dad, but I just knew that whatever trouble this was, Mom would help me sort it out. 

“I’m here, sweetheart. It’s all ok.” My mom came up, appearing almost out of nowhere and grasping my forearm gently. “We are so sorry about earlier. It's like Lola said,  she panicked. You were getting loud and so distraught, she acted without thinking. We’ll explain everything just as soon as we get back. We just have a little bit of work to do first, but David is going to take care of you while we’re gone. Aren’t you, David?” 

“Yup, I guess I am.” He didn’t sound too happy to be on baby sitting duty, but I didn’t have the mental capacity to care much in that moment.

It was early morning when my parents and Lola returned. I was feeling better and was able to talk again. I had tried to get something out of David, but the only thing he’d told me was that this was only a vacation for me; it was a work trip for everyone else. With some time to calm down, I realized the cannibalism thing wasn’t logical. It was more about me, and the fact that I had dinner on my mind when I’d come home yesterday. 

My father had all of us come gather uncomfortably in the dining room. All eyes were on me, but I was waiting for one of them to speak up first. Finally, after a tense thirty seconds, my father did. “Yesterday you saw something you weren’t meant to, and I’m sorry about that. Obviously we can’t erase memories or undo the past, so it’s time you learned what our actual jobs are.” 

My mother picked up for him from there. “There’s no delicate way to put this, we” she motioned to everyone at the table except for me. “We are killers for hire, mercenaries, assassins; any of these titles works.” 

My mind felt like a glitching computer as different clues fell into place and as I tried to fit the picture of my family killing with the supportive  loving (even if, often absent, on vacations) family that I knew. I must have been sitting there with my mouth open like a fish out of water, because my brother started snickering at me, just for Lola to elbow him. Finally, I got my thoughts together enough to ask questions. “Why were you beating a guy in the kitchen then? That's more mob muscle than assassin. And how long have you been doing this? When did it start?”

“We needed information from him. And I’ve been in the business for about four years now. I have no idea about mom and dad.” David answered a little haughtily.

“I’m not sure the exact number of years, but we’ve been doing this since before you boys were born. It’s what pays for all of this, all the big toys and gaming consoles, all those expensive things we were always getting you two. Did you really think that out bookstore was making that much money?” My mom said, a little like she had expected me to figure it out on my own because of those things. 

“I just figured that one of our grandparents or great- grandparents had been loaded.” I said defensively. “Who the heck would jump straight to thinking their family was secretly killing people just because they had extra money!”  

We spent the last day of our vacation sitting and talking. All of them answering my questions as best they could and me still trying to compute all of it. Finding out Lola and David had met because they got hired to kill the same person was probably the most surprising part. My family apparently hadn’t been hunting in years, not since David moved out. In hindsight  it should have been suspicious to me that they would come home from “hunting trips” empty-handed but still saying that it had been a complete success. 

The next morning we all got up early, packed our things, and were off. David and Lola took their weird speedboat  and I piled into the SUV with Mom and Dad to head to the airport. At some point, Dad had gotten rid of the “hunting equipment.” It may have gone with David, or he may have disposed of it. I didn’t really want to know. 

I had to remind myself as we went through airport security that they had been doing this for years and never once had TSA found anything on them. I ended up getting pulled aside and searched by three different agents, because I was acting so nervous. I think they would’ve done a cavity search too, if my father hadn’t convinced them that I was just deathly afraid of flying, and we hadn’t been able to pick up any meds to help me before the flight. 

The cover story must have reached the flight attendants, because throughout the flight different attendants would stop by to check on me, and I would have to act terrified, but not so terrified that they would need to stick around to calm me down. It was some of my best acting, if I do say so myself. 

It was only as we got off the plane and were headed to the car that a few new questions hit me - rather big questions. I had been so focused on how and why my family had gotten into their business that I hadn’t even thought to ask myself why they had brought my brother in but not me. Why they would even bother inviting me on their work trips if they knew the whole time I would be miffed that they were leaving me on my own. 

As soon as the car doors shut, I opened my mouth. “Did you leave me out because you thought I would snitch, or was it because you thought I was too weak to be part of the crew?” I’m not sure if I’m sad, or if I’m angry. I know morally I probably should be more angry about what they are doing and not about their leaving me out of it, but at this point, I think my morals have taken a vacation.

“Oh, sweetie, no, no, neither of those,” my mother twists around in the passenger seat to look me in the eye and does her best to contort herself so she can reach out an arm and pat my leg reassuringly.

“I was the one who decided not to bring you in, boy.” I took a sharp involuntary breath thinking that he was about to dish out all the ways I hadn’t lived up to his hopes, so he hadn’t bothered to try to give me a chance to prove myself. “Do you remember when you were about nine or ten? You begged and pleaded to come along on a hunting trip with me and your brother. You wanted to go to prove yourself a big, strong boy. You practiced your shooting and learned how to aim and aim well, but when we got there, when the moment came, and a deer came into your crosshairs, when you tried to make yourself pull the trigger, you started shaking, and I swear you nearly passed out.”

“That was years ago I was little how does that-“ 

“Don’t interrupt me, boy. My point is I saw you weren’t the type to be able to kill; it would hurt you too much, but if I had asked you to, if any of us had told you, you would’ve begged and pleaded and demanded to be allowed to try, because you'd want to impress us and to prove yourself. We don’t want you to become a killer for that,”

My mother jumped in at that “If you ever become a killer, let it be for the right reasons, for yourself because YOU want to kill someone, not because you want to prove to us that you can. Don’t you get it? We love you no matter what…unless you snitch. Then, we will have to make everyone believe you are absolutely insane and need to be institutionalized.” When both my parents laughed, I forced a nervous fake laugh that I hoped didn’t sound as uncomfortable as I suddenly felt.