Kealan Burke - Kin

Jack was afraid. Good sense had abandoned him over the past few hours and all because he’d had the boy in the truck with him. If he’d just left Pete at home, he could have done what reason and common goddamn sense had suggested and just kept driving when he saw the girl in the road. Sure, the guilt would have weighed heavily on him later, but that was what whiskey was for, and it wouldn’t be the first round of it he’d had to deal with. After sixty-one years of hard living, he’d gotten pretty good at sweeping things under the rug and stomping them down until they were easier to walk over than study. But he knew the boy wouldn’t have let it go. He was too simple, too unaware that there was a great big gray area between right and wrong, especially when it meant putting yourself in harm’s way. He had not yet been educated on the kind of monsters who preyed on Samaritans.

Jack had spotted the girl before Pete, but had kept his mouth shut, even tried to distract the boy so he might miss it, told him it looked like a storm if those thunderheads coming over the hills to the left of them were anything to go by. He should have known the boy would catch on. He rarely said two words to his son unless he had to— in all his years he’d never truly learned how—and certainly wasn’t given to idle banter, so instead of looking out his window at the clouds, and away from the girl, Pete frowned and looked at his father instead. And from there, his eyes had drifted to the crumpled form at the side of the road. Even so, even when Pete had grabbed Jack’s arm hard and pointed at the girl, he’d considered just stepping on the gas and telling the boy what he was telling the doctor now.

“It’s just…trouble, Doc.”

“What kind of trouble?”

Jack searched for a way to say what he wanted without saying too much, but his mind was a jumble of unfinished thoughts and burgeoning panic. It needed numbing. He ran a hand through his hair and looked beseechingly at Wellman. “You got somethin’ to drink?”

The doctor nodded. “Come on into the kitchen.”

In the strained light of the ageing day, Pete inspected the rust-colored stains on his fingers, then held them out to the rain. It was strange to have her blood on his skin, something she would not have shared with him had the choice been hers. A secret she was not yet aware he’d been let in on, a part of her she might not yet know was missing. When they were wet enough, he withdrew his hands and rubbed them together, then wiped them on his jeans. It made him feel a little sad, almost disrespectful, as if her blood was of little consequence to him, like dirt he was anxious to be rid of. Nothing could be further from the truth. As he lingered before Doctor Wellman’s door, still hoping to overhear something of the discussion inside, but thus far unable to make out much over the grumbling of distant thunder and the hiss of the rain, he wished he were inside. Not with the men and their whispering, but in the girl’s room, if only so she would have someone there when she woke up. He hated the thought of her being alone, as she had been alone when they’d come upon her, as she must have felt when her attacker had done those horrible things to her. Alone, helpless, lost. It made his heart hurt to think of her that way.

Stepping out from the shelter of the porch, he narrowed his eyes against the rain and looked at the truck. It stared back, headlights dull, chrome fender long past gleaming.

Pete dug his hands into his pockets. You don’t even know her . He exhaled through his nose. He wondered how long his father would be inside. He was a man of few words, so Pete guessed it wouldn’t be long. Then again the way he’d looked in the hall, all wrapped up in himself, made it seem as if he had plenty to tell.

He glanced to his left, at the two windows at the front of the doctor’s house. The window to the girl’s room would be somewhere around back.

Leave her be .

Knowing he was probably making a mistake, and one that might get him in a world of hurt and trouble, he nevertheless ducked low and moved away from the truck, toward the corner of the house.

They sat facing each other at a small square table, which had once worn a lacy tablecloth, but was bare and scarred now. Since his wife’s death, Wellman hadn’t seen the need for those little touches that made ordinary things look pretty, not when the only thing he had ever considered pretty was buried in cold, uncaring earth. He offered Jack the bottle of Scotch and watched the man pour himself a half glass.

“Do you know who did this to her?” He accepted the bottle but did not take his eyes from Jack’s face as he filled his cup.

“Not for sure, no,” the other man said, before taking a draw from his glass that almost emptied it. “I mean…I didn’t see ’em do it, or nothin’, but…”

“Go on,” Wellman urged when it seemed the man had snagged on his own thoughts.

Rain pattered at the window. The single bulb above them, hooded by a floral glass shade that was the room’s sole concession to decorativeness only because the doctor couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to remove it without breaking it, made their shadows long and blurry. It was not yet night, but plenty dark, almost as if Jack Lowell and his boy had brought it with them.

“You remember those kids that went missin’ years back?”

Wellman nodded. “Backpackers. Couple of guys and their girls. I remember.”

“Yeah. You remember the big fuss around here at that time. Kids were rich. Once their folks found out that Elkwood’s where they’d last been seen alive, they came down here like an army, put the screws on the Sheriff pretty bad. Newsfolk and everythin’.”

“That’s right.”

“I saw those kids.” He joined his hands around the glass. There was dirt caked beneath his nails, his grubby fingertips touching.

Wellman sat back. “When?”

“Gave ’em a lift that day. Saw ’em all out there on the road, in that heat, sweatin’ like a buncha hogs. Felt kinda bad for ’em, even though no one in their right mind should be out walkin’ in that kinda heat. So I told ’em to pile in. Took ’em as far as the General Store, though it were closed. Even offered to take ’em farther if they wanted. They didn’t. Heard one of ’em say the truck smelt like cowshit. ’Nother one said I was like somethin’ outta Deliverance , whatever the hell that is.”

“A movie,” Wellman told him. “’About a bunch of hillbillies who hunt some city folk.”

Jack considered this for a moment, then smiled, but only briefly. “Yeah. Anyways, I left ’em there, and they went missin’ soon after.”

“So you didn’t see what happened?”

“No, but my place’s only about twenty miles from the store. Only other house ’tween here and there is the Merrill’s. Out there in the woods past the river.” At the blank look on the doctor’s face he said, “They don’t come into town much. Keep to themselves. They have a junkyard. Hunt their own food. Buncha brothers, far’s I know. Heard there used to be a sister too, but for all I know that might be just talk. Only one I ever seen in town is their old man, and he’s a scary lookin’ sumbitch. Has a way’a lookin’ at you…like he’s lookin’ inside your skull or somethin’…readin’ your thoughts or…” He trailed off, and drained the glass.

Wellman refilled it. “So you think they had something to do with those kids going astray?”

“I do.”

“But…why? They could’ve gone anywhere. Might even have passed your place that day and you just didn’t see them.”

Jack raised his glass a little, tipped it in gratitude, and took a sip. Then he smacked his lips and stifled a belch. “I called the Sheriff a few weeks later when I heard those kids’ folks was in town askin’ questions. Told ’im what I thought, even though there weren’t no good reason for thinkin’ it other than a bad feelin’ I got every time I passed that damn place. So McKindrey comes over, tells me he’ll go out there and ask some questions. See if the Merrills know anythin’.”