Pap

Pap

“Peter Gibbons?” the nurse asked.

             I nodded, started to reach for my wallet, that automatic gesture we all learn early on. The one that says ‘hey, I can prove it, here are my papers’. Only they’re not papers anymore. Plastic mostly. Two-inch by three-inch chunks of some sort of polymer with some ink arranged in just the right way.

             The nurse waived me off and pointed down the hall. “Room four-oh-four.”

             I headed down the hall, not bothering to thank the guy and listening as my brown oxfords clicked and echoed on the polished tile. I found the room I was looking for on the left-hand side, about three-quarters of the way down the corridor. I pushed my way through the door, right past the sign on the wall that said ‘Burdock General’.

             Below that, ‘404’.

             And scrawled in black, erasable marker below that?

             ‘Harry Gibbons’.

             Jesus.

I’ve not been back here in twenty-eight years. Twenty-eight. Jesus. When I say it like that…

             It seems so long ago. And it doesn’t. Decades. And mere seconds. I was eighteen then, fresh from high school and with my signature on a brand-spanking-new Navy contract. Press hard, six copies, as the recruiters would say. My ticket out. Away.

To somewhere…what?

Better?

Possibly.

Different?

Yes.

Hopefully.

I’m forty-six now. And I’m back. Not because I want to be. This town—a little place in Maryland called Burdock—is the last place I want to be. I’m here because I was summoned. Pressured, if you will. By emotions. By memories. Hell, by family, if you want the truth.

The same family I ditched twenty-eight years ago.

The reason?

Well, that’s easy.

He’s on the bed—one of those high-tech jobs with the usual array of bleached white sheets and blankets—about ten feet away from where I’d stopped. He was hooked up to the standard mess of machines, those hugely-expensive gadgets that purportedly keep you alive when all they’re really doing is counting down. Hours. Minutes. Seconds. Heartbeats. Just beeping away. Sometimes softly. Sometimes not. Until that last buzzer. The long one.

There are tubes running everywhere. Under the sheets. Into his nose. Oxygen. Saline, I suppose. Medicines, mostly.

The lights are down. Not because they really need to be. I don’t think the man knows if it’s light or dark in the room and I’m not certain he sees much these days. Hell, I don’t think he’s seen much in his life, outside of what he wanted to see.

The man in the bed is my dad and, frankly, I really don’t like calling him that. Mostly because he just doesn’t fit with the term. At least, not with my definition of it.

A dad should have taught me things. Good things. Memorable things. How to ride a bike. How to fish. How to field a sharp ground ball hit to the hot corner at third base. How to change my own oil. How to set the timing on my old car.

But mine didn’t teach me those things.

He taught me how to hate.

And I learned those lessons well. Just not the way he wanted.

The man who should have spent his time teaching me how to throw a tight spiral or shave had spent the first eighteen years of my life fitting me out for my very own hood and swastika.

“Where’s Pete?” the voice drifted through the room, soft and startlingly fragile.

And what did I expect? The brash, gruff growl of a man who spent most of his adult life climbing stacks at the old refinery? The roughneck bark of an old hand who’d spent whole days of his existence carrying tools up and down the cracking towers?

That man was gone, I told myself. Long gone. Eaten up by the cancer. And all that was left was the ninety or so pounds of wrinkled flesh laid out ten feet from where I stood.

“He’s here, Pap,” said the man to my right, my younger brother, Hank. “All purty-looking, too.”

Hank was four years younger than me and a good hundred pounds heavier. Twenty-four years earlier, he’d been the star linebacker on the high school football team, a chiseled two-hundred-and-thirty-pound anger problem ranging the local gridiron and eating running backs for lunch. He still had the anger issues. And he was now pushing a good three bills, courtesy of his nightly case of Natty Light or whatever the hell it was he guzzled from his spot on the couch.

“He got himself all did up for ya, Pap,” Hank jeered. “Clean shirt an’ everything. All preppy and shit.”

I avoided shooting him a dirty look only because that’s what he wanted. Hank wanted a fight. Hank always wanted a fight. Couldn’t say no to one. Never could. It’s the reason he lost his scholarship. Well, that and the fact that he failed every damned class West Virginia University threw his way.

“Tha’s e’nuff, Hank,” Pap wheezed. He coughed. Not hard. One of those weak, gasping coughs. It barely registered on the monitors keeping track of his lingering vitals. “Leave us be, Hank.”

Hank drew his shoulders back and hitched his massive gut in. He glared at me in that way younger brothers do. Especially the ones who have a score to settle. I imagined, right then, that it was the same look Cain would have given to Able.

“But, Pap…”

“I said…” Pap wheezed. “Leave us be, Hank.” Another hitching breath, enough to make the sheets covering his skeletal frame move. “Go on, boy. Git.”

He said the last word with all the force he could muster. With what used to be his command voice. The one that came out when you were in deep shit. The one he’d resort to right before his fists would start flying and bruising and breaking things.

Only now, it was just sad. Sad as all hell.

Hank looked at our Pap, grunted, and pushed his way past me, making certain to give me one of those hyper-aggressive shoulder bumps on the way out.

“Shut the door, Pete,” Pap said. He breathed, a slow, almost rattling sound. “Shut it. And sit.”

I shut the door, but I didn’t take the offered seat. I took up station at the foot of his bed.

He was a fucking mess.

Yeah.

My Pap.

The big burly sonofabitch who taught me how to hate was a damned disaster.

The muscles were long gone. The one arm I could see was pale as his sheets in some places and bruised black and blue in others. The skin no longer had that healthy look you just expect to see on folks. It was thin, like when you get a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper wet. His face was sunken and sallow. The eyes were there, burning in the deep hollows under his brow. The shock of unruly brown hair was gone, replaced by wisps of silver-white. His jowls were missing. Just absent. What was there now was so thin that I could make out the bones of his skull and jaw.

“Messy huh?” he breathed.

I said nothing.

He stared.

I stared back. The beeps of the monitors kept the both of us company for a good, long moment.

He sucked in as big a gulp of air as I supposed he could manage.

“I know you didn’t wanna come back,” he said. “Not for anything. ‘Specially not for this shit.”

I still said nothing.

He eyed me for a moment, then went on.

“Don’t blame you for leavin’ the way you did.” Another hitching gasp. “Can’t say I understood, but I don’t blame you.”

“That’s nice.”

He almost smiled. Almost. “Hank didn’t think you’d come. Said you’d stay away. Called you snooty. And worse.” Another breath. “I told him you’d show.” He attempted to grin.

“What did you want?” I asked.

The half-assed grin failed and faded. He waved his bony arm at the seat next to his monitors. “Have a seat. Got somethin’ to explain.”

“If it’s about your will,” I started. I couldn’t imagine that it would be. Hell, I’d be shocked if the old man had a will. I’d be more shocked to find my name in it. And if I was in the will, what would I get? The two trucks and the trailer out on Riley Road were going to Hank. That I knew as well as I knew my own shirt size. So, what then? What would this old, hateful bastard leave me?

His old robes, my brain said. The bastard would leave me his old robes. Red and black satin. Old as all hell. The kleagle of the local klavern.

I nearly laughed at the thought.

Jesus, if it was true, I’d have my own little burning five minutes after the will was executed. Faster if I could manage. I imagined lighting fire to the robes right there in the lawyer’s office up on Broad Street.

“Ain’t about my will, Pete,” he wheezed.

He coughed and spluttered and the monitors beeped and buzzed a little quicker for a moment or two, then everything settled back down.

“Sit,” he said.

“I’ll stand,” I said.

He managed a half-assed shrug. “Got somethin’ I need to tell you, ‘fore death takes me.”

I stared, waiting.

He stared back, decided I really wasn’t going to sit. He swallowed. “Somethin’ else first, just so’s we’re clear.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“This ain’t no apology,” he said. “I ain’t sorry for what I did.”

My eyebrow dropped back into place.

He coughed, tried to spit, and failed miserably. He wiped at his chin and smeared the spittle around a bit. I didn’t offer any assistance.

“That little n— had it comin’,” he said. “Takin’ food from my kitchen and all.”

I felt my stomach contract, just a little. I couldn’t say why. He’s gonna tell me about one of the beatings he’d administered to one of the local black kids, I thought. Why in the hell would he want me to come all the way back to Burdock to tell me he’d beaten one of the black kids? He’d done it at least a dozen times by the time I’d shipped off to the United States Navy. Black kids. Brown kids. Anyone who wasn’t white, really. He and his little group of Klan buddies would get all boozed-up and they’d start wandering around town in their Fords and Chevys and rusted-out Dodges, just looking for a target.

And they’d find one. They’d always find one. Usually, some kid walking home from one of the parks. And they’d ‘charge’ him with something. Some shit they’d make up on the spot. Dribbling a basketball after dark. Not staying on the sidewalk. Spitting in public—which they would do almost constantly during the ass-whooping they’d give the kid.

And they’d never been prosecuted for it.

Never even charged or detained for questioning.

Why?

Because Pap’s second-in-command—the deputy kleagle, if you will—was Sheriff Brightman. And the klavern’s treasurer was—you guessed it—Deputy Sheriff Barkley.

Rage Against the Machine was right, you know.

“You brought me all the way here to tell me about beating the shit out of…”

The chuckle that came out of the bag of bones in front of me froze my goddamned soul. He laughed. The sonofabitch laughed. And not that sickly, old man laughter. No. This was some horror-movie shit. Some deep, Emperor Palpatine, fuck you kind of laughter.

He stopped laughing. He looked at me with something that I’d best describe as disbelief.

“You don’t know,” he said, his voice strong at the moment and it kind of shocked me. “You really don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice firm, tried to keep it steady. The voice I used with disappointing undergrads. But it didn’t work. I could hear the trembling in my voice. I could feel it. My mind raced, trying to imagine all the horrible things I might not know about Pap.

And it had to be horrible, with the way he’d laughed and the near look of unbridled joy that now graced his shrunken face. Whatever it was that I did not know would not be something which only qualified as despicable. No.

Whatever was on his mind had to be something truly heinous.

“All these years,” he said. “And you still believe the lie. I’ll be damned.”

I leaned forward, put my hands on the thick, plastic footboard, gripped it tight enough to hurt my fingers. My knuckles. My wrists, even.

“What?” I asked. “What don’t I know?”

He reached over with his one free arm, IV tubes hanging and wriggling, and pushed the button that raised the head of the bed.

Slowly.

Jesus-ever-loving-Christ it was slow.

And damned if that didn’t make it creepy as hell. The lack of voices. The incessant beeping of the monitors. The low burring of the motor that raised this skeletal asshole higher.

And the whole time, the sonofabitch was grinning at me. Bony skull, protruding jawline, missing teeth and all.

Grinning.

The bed stopped.

The smile finally faded.

He crooked a thin finger at me.

“Come closer, Pete,” he ordered. “Don’t want you to miss a word of this.”

I didn’t move.

He grinned again. His lips parted. He spoke.

A name.

Just a single name.

That’s it.

But that’s all it took to make my knees waver, to ratchet up my own heartrate.

“Mikey Harreld.”

He was smiling again. A thin, knowing smile. Because he knew each and every thought that was going through my head.

Mikey Harreld had been my best friend, despite his being black and his knowing exactly who and what my family was. We’d gone through school together. From kindergarten to our senior year. We’d jumped gravel piles on our bikes out by Spiceland Pike quarry. We’d gone door-to-door with those stupid school fundraising cookie and chocolate bar kits. We’d been on the same little league teams. The Cubs in second grade. The Dodgers in fourth. The White Sox in seventh. We’d played Pop Warner ball together. We’d double dated. We’d even paired up as cheerleaders during the annual powder puff football game.

But Mikey hadn’t graduated.

He hadn’t stayed in town that long.

He’d packed up and hauled ass one night back in April of 1995. Two days after turning eighteen. He hadn’t left a note and he hadn’t told a soul. He’d just vanished. One day there, right behind me in sociology with Mr. Werner. The next day, gone.

The story had always been that he’d joined the service. Probably the Army. He’d always talked about that. Always. It’s what he’d wanted to do. What he’d thought he’d been destined to do.

And when he vanished with a pair of suitcases and most of his clothes, its what everyone believed he had done.

Especially since everyone in town knew how his father had used him as a punching bag once or twice a week.

Mikey Harreld had ditched school and joined the Army.

Everyone believed that.

I believed it.

It hurt, him not saying goodbye and all, but I believed it.

No reason not to, until now.

“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Pap said. “Mikey Harreld joined the Army. Two days after turning eighteen.” The voice was still strong. “But listen, Pete. You listen good. That no good fucking n— didn’t run off to join no Army. No, he didn’t. I guaran-damn-tee that.”

I swallowed, hard. I gripped the footboard tighter, hard enough that I heard the plastic groan.

The grin was back. It was back and God-help-me I wanted to remove it. Wanted to let go the footboard, walk up the side of the bed and put my fist through that thin, cancer-riddled skull.

“Wanna know how I know, Pete?” He eyed me and the smile cracked even wider. “Yeah, you do. You wanna know. You gotta know. Your little bleeding liberal heart just has to know.”

I started to let go of the footboard, started to move round the end of the bed.

“I fucking killed Mikey Harreld.”

I stopped, my gut a ball of ice, my legs wooden, and a fire raging in my head. I didn’t hear that, I told myself. Didn’t hear the crazy old bastard right.

“Yeah, Pete. You heard me. I killed that fucking n—. Beat him to death with that loaded Louisville I used to keep in the truck. Beat him and put his black ass in the ground. For all that food he took off my table over the years. All that food you kept giving him.” Pap paused, coughed, wheezed, and went on. “I told you not to, boy. Told you to stop. Told you I was tired of my hard work fillin’ the bellies of freeloadin’ n—s.”

My knees went nearly limp. I nearly dropped right there.

“Buried him out in the back forty. Under the busted-up Chevy. With the goddamned bat.”

“Why?” I finally forced the word out of my mouth. “Why?”

He didn’t answer.

He just started laughing again.

The fucker sounded like Jigsaw.

*****

The cops are out here with me, out in my Pap’s back forty. They’ve got me in cuffs and stuffed in the back of a cruiser while a tow truck driver works to pull the busted-up old Chevy from the place it has occupied for twenty-eight years.

             There are men standing by. Men in dark blue windbreakers with the letters ‘FBI’ printed on the back. They have shovels and they’re waiting for the Chevy to move.

             My lawyer is here, too and he looks nervous. Looks nervous as hell.

             Cause if they pull that Chevy and they don’t find Mikey’s body buried six feet underneath, well, then my lawyer is gonna have his work cut out for him. Cause that’s when I’m gonna get charged with Pap’s murder.

             Fuck it.

             Body or no body, that punch felt good.