Redemption

Jim stood on the curb and glanced up the empty street, then back at his watch. Curb was only a relative term, a transition from dirt and gravel to pitted, broken asphalt. Few people drove down this street and fewer lived here. Reflecting a time when land was cheap, the distance between the homes was generous. Most were in disrepair and surrounded by scraggly trees and bushes. Anyone still living on this stretch of road was standing with one foot in the grave. Jim knew the town council viewed the location for a future strip mall.

He returned to the swing hanging from the cottonwood tree in the front yard. He repeated this nervous pattern at least twenty times in the last hour. Walk to the curb, look, walk back to the swing and sit. His fingers curled around the weathered ropes suspending the swing, wondering if they would hold his weight. He examined the frayed rope, fingering a loose strand. It was already worn when he took it off the hook on the garage wall. That was the day he hung the swing for his nephew, Tyler, who was then four years old.

Tyler's father, Richard, purchased the swing at the store during a rare and short-lived moment when he wasn't being an ass. Predictably, it sat on a shelf in the garage for a year before Ann, Jim's sister, asked Jim to hang it in the tree. Richard was in the garage, sitting on his prized Harley. He took better care of the bike than his car, which was constantly disassembled and on jack stands, its parts cluttering the garage floor. Stepping over a tire, part of an axle, Jim grabbed the swing off the shelf.

"What the hell you doin?" Richard said. His eyes covered by aviator's sunglasses, he wore a black tee shirt that was two sizes too small. On the little finger of his right hand, he wore a silver skull ring with ruby eyes. The tattoo of a black panther, coiled to strike, decorated his forearm.

Ignoring him, Jim scanned the garage walls and retrieved the coil of rope from a hook, and left the garage.

"Don't fuck up my lawn," Richard called after him.

Tyler bounced around the front yard while Jim climbed the tree and tied the ropes to a limb. Once the height of the swing was right, Tyler hopped on and swung, his feet tearing at the pristine grass. Glaring, Richard stomped up the steps and disappeared inside, and slammed the door. Jim knew the tough-guy look was all show. Richard was a coward and would do nothing except in front of Jim. After that day, Tyler would call Jim and beg him to come over so he could use the swing. It was the only time Richard permitted it. Or rather, he knew better than to try to stop it. Jim stared at the scuffed ground at his feet where tufts of grass were reclaiming the oval-shaped, worn spot.

Ann called him three months ago.

"He's gone. I'm leaving," she said.

"He's gone? Richard?"

"I need you to watch the house."

"Where are you going? Where's Richard?"

"Will you watch the house?"

"Why can't he do that? Is Tyler okay?" He pictured her with bruises on her arms, heavy makeup, and dark glasses.

"Tyler's fine. He's with me. Will you watch the house or not?"

"Yeah, I'll watch the house, but..."

She hung up. He tried to call back, but the phone just rang. She called him at work, knowing he couldn't leave right away. That evening, he drove by the house, but the driveway was empty. She finally left him. She and Tyler would be all right now, he told himself. The problem wasn't his.

A manila envelope appeared in his mailbox a short time after. It had her handwriting, but no return address and the postmark was illegible. Inside, he found the signed title and keys to the house. Stuck to the title was a yellow post-it. "It's yours - Ann." He didn't go to the house right away. He drove by a few times, scanning for any sign of Richard, but he never stopped. The garage door was closed, the driveway was empty, and the grass grew unattended. Richard would mow the grass if he were still around. But Jim had bills to pay and not enough cash. If he cleaned it up and sold it, he could use the money to get his life together. That was why, on this hot July day, he stopped.

When he unlocked and opened the door, he noticed the smell. At first, he thought it was because the house had been closed up for so long. It wasn't until he stepped in that it hit him. There was no mistake — he knew that smell.

He knew it from a long, hot summer when he was thirteen and lived with Ann and his mother in the house. The previous winter, his father died after a prolonged illness, and his mother began to drink. Ann was seven, and Jim was faced with taking care of his little sister and keeping his mother sober enough to go to work. He did the household chores, the cooking, got Ann ready for school, and paid the bills. At first, he attempted to force sobriety onto his mother, but she abused Ann when she was not drinking. He budgeted some of their meager cash to provide enough alcohol to his mother to keep her calm and protect Ann from her unpredictable rages.

He smelled it that summer. The intensity of the odor grew over weeks until it became almost unbearable. He set out one afternoon to find the source of the odor in the field next to the house. Through the center of the field lay a deep, tree lined ravine. In the ninety-degree sun, he followed the scent into the ravine where he found the dead horse. It lay on its back, bloated, its legs protruding into the air. Its lacerated flesh exposed white bones and yellow maggots roiling through the corpse.

That smell greeted him when he entered the house for the first time in 15 years. The door remained open, and his lunch decorated the stoop. He retreated to the car and drove to the nearest gas station, where he helped himself to a cup of cola and the pay phone. Next to the phone was a tattered note that read "Odd jobs–no job too small." He dialed the number and got a price. They were three hours late, and the day was getting hotter.

He looked back at the house. He knew he should open some windows. When he reached the door, the sweet-acrid smell gagged him. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his nose and mouth. Stepping over his vomit, he dashed inside and opened as many windows as possible. The last one was stuck, and he could not use both hands to open it, so he turned and dove from the house, his stomach turning somersaults.

"You Jim?"

Jim gazed through watery eyes at a balding, middle-aged man standing at the foot of the steps. He wore blue overalls and a thread-bare flannel shirt. Removing a smoldering cigar stub from his mouth, he grinned through darkened and missing teeth. A rusty pickup sat in the driveway, and a large, younger man sat on the tailgate, pulling on a pair of boots.

"Zeke." The man offered his hand. "You call about a clean-up?"

"Jim." He shook Zeke's hard, calloused hand. "I think something died in there."

Zeke climbed the steps and sniffed at the open door. He screwed up his tanned, lined face and stepped back.

"You got yourself a nasty smell there. Probably a coon crawled in and died." He scratched at the stubble on his chin and rolled his eyes. "A hundred up front, and if I gotta clean up maggots, I gonna need more."

"The lady on the phone said fifty."

"She don't set the price. I do. I say a hundred."

"I have seventy-five," Jim said.

Zeke scratched his head.

"Awright." The younger man strolled up the walk. He was a burly, round man with a Midwest "corn-fed" look. He wore a filthy, gray tank-top beneath his overalls and the muscles in his arms bulged as he carried a steel tool box.

"Where you want the tools, pa?"

"Ain't gunna need no tools, boy," Zeke said. "Just a strong stomach." He turned to Jim. "We best get after that coon. Probably the chimney."

Zeke entered the house, his son following behind him. The boy grinned at Jim as he squeezed past, not noticing he planted his foot in the puddle of vomit. Zeke reappeared at the door.

"You comin?"

Jim frowned and glanced inside the house.

"Ain't bad." Zeke grinned. "I smelled dead in the 'Nam worse'n this." He disappeared back into the house. Holding the handkerchief over his face, Jim stepped into the house. The sickly sweet smell was now moderated by a light breeze blowing through the open windows. He stopped in the foyer, gazing around the living room. A thin layer of dust covered everything, including the scuffed wooden floors. The furnishings had not changed since he was a boy and were now dated and ragged. Against the far wall was the plaid couch where his mother used to pass out after an afternoon of drinking. The leather recliner in the corner was his father's favorite spot for watching the game on TV. There was the three-legged, oval coffee table that Jim's mother fell over during his struggle to stop her from beating Ann with a leather belt. The floor lamp his father made from the trunk of a tree that served as a mountain battlefield for Jim's plastic soldiers. The woven rug in the center of the floor was where twelve-year-old Ann stood, tears streaming down her cheeks, begging Jim not to leave.

Jim glanced at the wall next to the door. There was a picture of the children, Ann and Jim, standing in the front yard, holding hands and grinning. The tall figure of their father was behind them, resting his hands on their shoulders. Next to it, a photo of Ann sitting on her father's shoulders. Another photo of Jim and his father working in the garden in the backyard.

Zeke was on his hands and knees, his head in the fireplace. His son squatted next to him, his upper lip protruded as he attempted to gaze past his father.

"I don't see nuthin, pa."

"Ain't nothing." Zeke looked over his shoulder. "Got a basement or crawl-space?"

"Half cellar, half crawl-space." Jim said.

"I guess we best look down there. Smell ain't bad up here no-how."

They followed Jim into the tiny kitchen just off the living room. The linoleum floor creaked and popped under his feet. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes, adding their own scent of decay to the atmosphere of the house. A pipe wrench and screwdriver lay on the floor in front of the open cupboard doors below the sink. A chipped laminate table sat in one corner. That was where his mother sat behind a half empty bottle of vodka when Jim announced he was leaving.

"What about your sister?" she asked.

"It's down here." Jim opened a door next to the table and flicked a light switch. A single bulb cast a shadowy gloom down the hazardous stairwell to the basement. The stairs were narrow, and they had to side-step down the steep course. When Jim reached the bottom, he felt for a light switch and flipped it. A fluorescent fixture flickered and chattered to life. The smell was stronger in the confined space, and Jim clutched the handkerchief to his nose and mouth.

The low ceiling in the cellar was constructed of exposed beams decorated by thick, dusty cobwebs. Against the far wall was a workbench with a disassembled garbage disposal sitting next to a mangled spoon. Tools were scattered across the bench and on the floor. A spider ran past a red toy car lying next to an irregular, brown stain on the floor and a short length of pipe. That was where he found his mother one morning after she fell down the stairs and broke her hip. He quit his senior year at high school to go to work and support her and Ann until his mother healed. She went back to work after a year, but the experience taught Jim that his ticket out of this house was money and a job, so he never graduated.

Zeke pushed past Jim, his eyes scanning the dimly lit basement. He stepped to the far wall, which was about four feet of concrete topped with wooden planks that covered the crawl space. He sniffed at the wall, scowling.

"It's in the crawl space, ah'right." He grabbed a crow-bar hanging on the wall and levered it between the boards. The board cracked and broke. "Help me out here boy, there's a hammer on that bench." The younger man lurched past Jim, snatched up the hammer, and pried at another board. The boards gave way with loud creaks as the two men worked.

Jim took a step forward, but nudged something with his foot. Glancing down, he spotted a steel pipe stuck in the brown puddle. Bending over, he pulled it loose and examined it under the light. The pipe bore the same brownish material as the puddle on the floor, with long fibers clinging to it. He pulled one fiber free and raised it to the light—it resembled a strand of dark hair.

"What's that, Pa?"

"Holy shit…"

Jim looked up. An arm hung from space between a board and the top of the concrete wall. He knew that arm from the ring on the little finger and the coiled panther tail tattoo. The eyes of the skull ring sparkled in the low light. A torrent of images rolled through his mind.

A spoon jams the garbage disposal. Richard removes it and takes it to the basement. Tyler's on the floor playing with his car. Richard jams his finger and screams. Tyler says something, or maybe he does something. Richard hits Tyler. Tyler cries and Ann comes down the stairs. She sees Richard standing over her crying son. She grabs the pipe. In a moment, Richard lays dead on the floor in a pool of blood.

The police detective would see it as well. The pieces fall into place. There would be no trial. The public defender convinces Ann to submit a plea. Jim is in the courtroom when they cuff her and lead her away. He holds Tyler who screams, "Mommy! Mommy!" She pauses at the door leading back to her cell. Her tear-filled eyes lock on Jim. The same eyes he saw so many years ago when Ann stood on the woven rug in the living room and pleaded with Jim.

"How can you leave me with her?" she said. "What am I supposed to do?"

He opened the door, paused, and looked back at his sister.

"I don't care what you do," he said. He turned away, closing the door behind him.

Pregnant at 16, Ann married Richard. He was the only man willing to support her and her baby. She didn't finish school, and she had very few resources to escape the abuse she and her son suffered over the years. Jim knew what was happening, but he didn't care. It wasn't his problem.

He didn't care for his sister when she needed him. He left a girl of twelve with a drunken, abusive mother. He said nothing when she married Richard, and he did nothing when he saw her and Tyler with the bruises and when he drove her to the emergency room because she had broken ribs. He was the only one who could have stopped it, but as he told himself, it was not his problem.

Zeke and his son stared in shock at the lifeless arm dangling from the crawl space. They faced away from Jim, but they would turn around at any moment. The son was the immediate threat. He looked strong. Jim advanced, targeting the pipe at the base of the son’s skull where it met the spine. It took two blows to bring the big man down, which was all he needed for now. The old man’s arms flailed as he stumbled against the workbench. Jim slammed the pipe down on the top of his balding head. The blow shattered the man's skull, his eyes rolled up, and he fell to the floor and jerked violently. He felt a tug on his jeans and saw that the son clutching his pant leg. He struck three more times before the boy let go. Glancing back at Zeke, Jim saw the single strike had finished him.

Jim drove away from the house and glanced in the rear-view mirror. Flames flickered through an open window on the main floor. The investigation would reveal arson and three bodies, all murdered with the same weapon. They would catch him because he had no plans to run. They would find his bloodied shirt in the trash can outside his apartment. In the end, he would tell them the story he wanted them to believe, one that proved his guilt and gave them no reason to dig deeper. Ann and Tyler would be safe.

None of this mattered to Jim. He didn't care.