Matt Hilton - Cut and run

Luke couldn't tell how long he hid there. His only measure of time was how the knothole in the wall darkened and finally became invisible against the night. He heard occasional noises: thuds and clatters, thumps on the back porch. He caught the grumble of Etienne's pick-up truck starting and the crunch of tyres on the dirt road. But still he was too afraid to come out of hiding. For some time the only sound he heard was the soft creaking of the shed walls as the breeze picked up and tugged and pressed at the shingles as if trying to get inside.

Maybe he fell asleep. He couldn't tell. All he knew was that he started violently, almost dislodging the pilings around him as he fought against the shadows. He held his breath again. A door slammed. He'd missed Etienne returning, because it was undoubtedly his truck door. That noise had become recognisable as his cue to lie low for a while but this time it drew him out of the shed.

He crossed the hard-packed yard, feeling the stones in the earth through the thin soles of his sneakers. It made him walk funny, like he was afraid that the earth would crack open beneath his tread and swallow him whole. It felt like an age passed before he made it to the low steps that led up to the cabin. He stood on the bottom step, thankful to be off the yard but afraid to go any further.

The door opened and he flinched.

Etienne was silhouetted against the light from within, looking even larger than usual. Luke's eyes went to his hands, searching for the belt, but it wasn't there. The man just watched him, the rank smell of liquor wafting off him in waves. There was another smell coming off the man that Luke was unfamiliar with. Soap.

'Luc, where 'ave you bin?'

Etienne's voice was thick with alcohol. His accent was more prominent than when he was sober, which wasn't that often. Whatever state of intoxication he was in he always called the boy Luc. Luke hated it, but he answered this time. 'I was playing in the woods.'

Etienne's gaze went over the boy's head towards the woodshed. He looked down slowly. 'Come in, boy.'

Luke paused, expecting the man's voice to rise at any second. For his hands to start pulling at the belt.

'Come inside.' Etienne's voice remained soft and his hands by his sides.

'Where is my mother?'

'Come inside. I 'ave somethin to tell you.'

Luke began to shiver. He could barely support his own weight as he went up the steps and into the cabin. Etienne stood aside to let him in. Luke stood on the threshold and he could feel the man's presence looming over him. Etienne placed a hand on Luke's shoulder. It was a surprisingly tender touch that the boy had never known before. Etienne gently pressed him into the room. Luke went with faltering steps. The room looked different. The scratched and sinking old furniture was still the same, but the rug was missing from the centre of the floor. Luke could see where the boards were less faded: the rug had been a feature of the room for as long as he could remember. There was another pale patch on the floor. It looked like it had been scrubbed with a wire brush and the smell of detergent hung heavy in the air.

'Where's my mother?' Luke felt that he was stuck in a loop and those were the only words he could find.

'Come sit with me.' Etienne picked up the boy and took him to a chair in front of the stove. The door of the stove stood open and Luke could see rags smouldering inside. The rags looked wet and darker red than the flames. Luke wanted to pull out of Etienne's grasp, but he was both repelled and comforted by the man's arms. Etienne ran a callused palm over the boy's head, ruffling his unkempt hair. 'Your mother was never very good to you, Luc. She cared only for herself and for her next drink. You know that, oui?'

Luke nodded dumbly.

'Your mother, she is gone. She has run away. She has left us both, young Luc. But do not be afraid. I will be your daddee from now on.'

Etienne turned Luke on his knee, so that they were staring into each other's eyes. 'We do not need your mother. We do not need any woman. They think they are better than us, Luc, but we will show them. Together, we will show them that no woman is better than a man. I will teach you how.'

Twenty-eight years on, the adult Luke Rickard remembered the coldness in his gut at Etienne's words. He could see the pale boards on the floor, the freshly scrubbed floor, a couple of darker spatters that Etienne had missed. He had looked up at the big unshaven face that filled his vision and he had spoken a single word. 'Yes.'

He was a child back then, but he wasn't a fool. He knew that his mother hadn't run away, but she had abandoned him. Her drunken rages had pushed away Luke's real father and a succession of other surrogates before Etienne arrived on the scene. Luke hated her. She was cruel and unloving. She thought her needs came before all others, and she had been ready to show Luke how he got in her way with the flat of her hand or with the green stick switch she kept by the front door. Well, Etienne had stood up to her, and now he was showing his true side, a kindness to a boy who'd never known its like.

The cold feeling in Luke's belly had roiled and squirmed. It felt like he would be sick, but he wasn't. Saliva had invaded his mouth, as though something pushed up from inside seeking release, but that was as far as it went. He'd swallowed down, then leaned into the embrace that Etienne offered.

And there the serpent was born and his education began.

They moved from Oregon to North Carolina, exchanging one remote home for another that was even further removed from prying eyes. Luke loved the woods and the mountains, but he always held on to a yearning for the sea which he'd only ever seen on TV. Someday, he'd told Etienne, he would be rich and he would own a house overlooking the ocean. Etienne had laughed at him, told him that he'd better find a way of making good money. And then he'd shown him how.

Etienne Pagnon had been a warrior before he was a drunkard. Being Canadian and around before the events that formed JTF-2, the modern Canadian Special Forces, he had first been recruited into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Special Emergency Response Team. Etienne had been a sniper and that was not good for a man who had begun imbibing strong liquor. Released from duty, he'd spelled for a tour with the Legion etrangere, but had found his tastes more suited to that of a freelance mercenary. He had been in demand as a sniper but his desire for alcohol let him and his sponsors down. Having nowhere to turn but to crime, he'd embraced his new profession, working for a succession of low-life gangsters, first in Canada, then Seattle. Burned out and feeling the daily shakes, he drifted south to Oregon where he'd hooked up with Luke's mother. He was a shadow of his former self, but he had much to share with his willing student.

From Etienne, Luke learned everything about stalking and killing men. He also earned a secondary education: Etienne showed him that women were below them and were things to be used and abused. At thirteen Luke took his first woman, paid for by Etienne, and Etienne had made sure that the woman earned every cent. She was the first person Luke killed.

Luke was a good apprentice. His surrogate father wasn't always the best teacher, his way of ensuring that the growing boy learned his lessons well was to beat the idea into him. Always afterwards he would hug the boy and tell him he was proud of him. The beatings were a necessary evil he said; they would make the boy into a strong man. Luke took the licks until he was eighteen years old. Then Etienne wasn't capable of hurting him any more. When he was drunk and Luke sober, he'd struck at the younger man's face. Luke caught the man's chin in the crook of his elbow, gripped his opposite bicep and placed a hand to the back of Etienne's head. He constricted the life from the man, while remembering that patch of pale wooden floor in the cabin ten years earlier. Luke hated women, he'd hated the bitch that had birthed him, but when it came down to it, Etienne had it coming.