Currency of Souls (14 page)

He advances another step and Wintry, already quivering from the shock of his injuries, is close to rattling free of the shoes that have been melted to his feet. Into the firelight steps his father, a man who, until tonight, existed only in memory.

"I don't want this," Wintry says, then turns his head to look at Cadaver who appears to have woven himself into a mesh of dead branches. "Make it stop."

"Only you can do that, son," Cadaver replies.

Narrow face taut with rage, the man before the fire chuckles. "Hell, he ain't gonna do shit. He ain't never done a damn thing worth a damn thing. He nothin' but a worthless punk sent to steal all I had from me and make my wife ashamed of what she let into the house." His smile widens, teeth gleaming in the amber light. "Shit. He didn't find out till prison that we wasn't his folks."

Wintry sighs. "What do you want with me?"

"To put you down, boy. Just that. To put you down so's you remember what you done."

"I don't need to fight you to remember."

"Sure you do. You think you got ghosts now Lucius, but you're forgettin' all the good ones. All the real big mean ones, ain't that right 'ol man?"

Cadaver says nothing, just goes on watching.

"So right here, tonight, me and you's gonna dance. You gonna get the chance to swing a few, see if time's taught you somethin', see if you grew some balls up the river, and if you don't, then you gonna be hurtin' even worse by the time I get through with you. But I'll be your Pop for a spell and do you a favor, for 'ol times sake. I'll let you in on a secret."

Whatever the secret is, Wintry has no desire to hear it. The fire is licking at his skin though he's far enough on the other side of it to be out of reach of the flames, and the worst of the heat. Every nerve screams with pain, every muscle spasms, every organ revolts. He wants to lay down and die, most certainly does
not
want to be here in the heat facing down a man who died of prostate cancer while his son was in prison.

"For every blow I land on that cooked-up face of yours, you'll remember somethin' you forgot. You'll remember some of the bad things you done that you don't blame yourself for no more. You'll see the little bits of truth. You'll see yourself. Then maybe you'll understand why I was the way I was with you." His father leans over the fire enough to let the flames singe his short scraggly beard. "I saw what you was becomin' boy, and you was becomin' me."

For just a moment, Wintry sees an aspect of the devil floating in the flames. "You want me to fight you?"

"Yeah, that's it." His father is enthused. "Go a few rounds with your old man, see what happens. See what you remember. See if you've changed."

"I...can't fight. I'm hurt bad."

"Everybody hurtin', Lucius. That shit don't fly with me. Think I weren't hurt when my brother dropped you off on my doorstep with no money to keep you? Think I weren't hurt when my wife left me for a bucktoothed guitar playin' crackhead from San Antone? Think I weren't hurtin' when every bit of company I tried to keep got scared off as soon as they heard tell of a kid? Or when they fired me from a job I'd had for over thirty years? Fired for drinkin' and why, Lucius? Why was I drinkin? Because nothin' ever worked right for me, and you weren't nothing but another wrong thing in it. Everythin' I had I gave up to raise you right and you fought me all the way no matter what I did to toughen you up. So you stand tall now boy and be a man. Fight me for the last time. This here's long overdue."

Wintry raises his head, realizes that at some point during his father's seething monologue, he has fallen to his knees. The wet grass burns rather than soothes and it takes every ounce of strength he has left to stand again. When he does, the fire turns gray, then a darker red, and the hands, his father's awful hands are poking through it and separating, like a swimmer parting water.

Tongues of flame lash from the fire, one of them narrowly avoiding Wintry's face. Instinctively he ducks, groans and shields his eyes, wondering as he does so why his father spoke so passionately about fighting if he means to burn him alive. But the fire carries on past him until it touches the grass a few feet away and ignites. It is as if someone has touched a match to a gasoline trail poured in a perfect rectangle. The perfect shape for a boxing ring, the name of which has always puzzled him, because it isn't a ring at all.

"This won't..." Wintry starts to say, but gives up, the words too heavy in a mouth too weak.

"Straighten up," his father commands, and steps through the flames. Wisps of smoke curl from the shoulders and sleeves of his denim jacket, which he shrugs off to reveal a soiled and yellowed vest beneath. The gray tangle of his chest hair streams smoke, blackens and curls. He stands three feet from his son. "Let's go boy." Sinewy muscles grow taut as he assumes a fighting posture, shoulders hunched slightly forward, fists raised so that only his eyes are visible above the dark work-roughened knuckles. He bounces every so slightly on his toes, an old man trying to prove he's still as fast as he was in his glory days.

"I can't fight you."

"You can and will. Don't you disappoint me again boy. I've come a long way to see you."

Wintry shakes his head. "You're dead."

"Not tonight I ain't. Now put 'em up and
fight
, you little pussy."

Wintry looks at him, at this impossible caricature of his father, fashioned from oak and clay and ivy, and hate, and shakes his head again. "You want me to hit you. That all?"

"Be a fine start."

Cadaver is still just a shadow and quieter than the dark. Watching.

Abruptly, there is a sound like a baseball hitting a bag of cement and darkness explodes before Wintry's eyes. The world drops away, he falls—for a brief moment he is floundering weightless in outer space—and then the ground slams into his side, eliciting a silent cry of pain from him as burned flesh is crushed. Stars whirl across his field of vision; the wounds on his face ignite anew. The earthy smell of wet grass and the fiery agony in his skull keep him from tumbling headlong into merciful unconsciousness.

"Now," his father says. "That's one. You should've seen it comin'. Pay attention."

Wintry tastes fresh blood on his lips. He opens his eyes wide. Field and fire are gone; his father vanished. This is no longer Milestone, but a back alley somewhere in Georgia. Wintry is lying on his side in a puddle. It's cold, and soothing, and for a moment he relishes the relief, until he realizes there are people around him. He raises his head, into the rain of which he has only now become aware, and sees water sluicing down the groove in the barrel of a silver gun. Above it, made blurry by the rain, the gloom, the steam that billows from the vents in walls around the alley, and the proximity of the muzzle, which demands his attention, he sees a smile just as silver as the weapon. A man with a hat nods, cocks the hammer.

"Who the bitch now?" the man says and starts to pull the trigger.

Drawing from memory infinitely stronger than the pain, Wintry is on his feet, almost slipping on the slick concrete, then hunkered low and running, not away, but into the man with the gun, the man who he knows has been hanging around the gym, offering the kids little baggies, parachutes from which he promises an escape from the doomed plane of their lives, fairy dust to sprinkle on their troubles. Caught by surprise, the man does not do as he is expected to do. He does not quickly alter his aim. Instead he throws up his hands, the gun drawn back as if he intends to use it as a weapon, but by then it's already too late. Driven by fury Wintry plows into him...

...and there is fire, and cold, and pain. And his father, looming over him.

"Then what did you see?" he says.

And Wintry remembers.

Smoggy daylight.

The man is dead, neck crushed, skull broken, three silver teeth scattered around his head, one stuck to his lower lip. Wintry is straddling him, fists joined together and raised over his head, an anvil ready to deliver another fatal blow. The children, cowering next to dumpsters, holding each other, covering their eyes at the sight of one monster killing another, stop him. He looks at them, an unspoken apology on his lips, pleading in his eyes. Glances from one terrified face to another until his skin goes cold and the blood drains from his own. There is a man there, nodding sagely as if what he has just seen is confirmation of what he has always suspected. The stranger is not as sharply dressed as the man with the fedora, the man Wintry has just beaten to a bloody pulp. His smile is not silver, but it's just as blinding. He wears driving gloves, the leathery fingers on his right hand curled around the emaciated shoulder of one of the children, a small boy with tears carving clear lines in a grubby face. But while the boy may be deriving some solace from the stranger's hand, there is no compassion in the man's eyes. Only glee. And the knowledge that his efforts to contaminate these children will now go unhindered. The police won't care enough to feign concern. The children are poor and black, after all. And the one man who assigned himself their guardian is going to be put away for the murder of a pimp.

Wintry starts to stand and when he does it is the night that greets him.

"The wrong man," his father says. "But you been foolin' yourself, tryin' to make believe you been feelin' bad about killin' a man when all that's been botherin' you is not killin' the right one."

"What did you ever know about me?" Wintry asks, a new burning starting deep down inside him, a welcome flame that sears away some of the fear, numbs some of the pain. "What did you ever know about anythin'? Think now that..." His breath catches as new agony flares in his knees. He straightens, blinks once, twice. "Think now that you dead...think now that you know it all you can come along'n throw it in my face?"

His father is still bouncing on his feet, knuckles making creaking sounds, as if they're encased in leather gloves. Wintry sways, staggers and rights himself, draws up to his full height, and in two unsteady steps is in his father's face. "You know nothin' about me," Wintry says, and brings his right fist around in an arc, which his father watches with interest, approval, then avoids with a quick back-step. He follows the dodge with an uppercut that makes Wintry think his brain has been sent shooting from the top of his head.

Blood flies. He watches as it spurts upward and...

..."I can't make it stop," he moans and reaches down, his trembling fingers slick with the woman's blood. "Jesus please..."

White light in a bedroom.

The olive-skinned woman stares at him, but the life has fled her eyes. The accusation however, hasn't. She stares, peers deep into his soul and Wintry can hear her crying
Why didn't you see? Why didn't you know?
She is naked, lying in bed, her head propped up against the headboard, her wrists opened. She moves, jiggles, mimics life, but this is merely the effect of Wintry's desperate attention. He moans, wails, rages at the ceiling, at whatever cruel God is impassively watching this drama unfold. She is the love of his life and he knows now the reverse was never true. Had it been, she would still be alive. Had it been, she would not have betrayed him and herself, by waiting until she was alone to die.

Then, abruptly, her mouth drops open. His moaning subsides. Frantically, he scrubs tears from his eyes, narrows them, afraid to believe he has just seen what they are telling him he's seen.

And though no life returns to her face, she speaks, though here is where Wintry knows memory has slipped the rails. It hardly matters though, because what she says are the same words that have tailed him through life.

"You killed me."

With a roar that is animalistic yet filled with sorrow and rage, Wintry once more regains his feet and without knowing, without caring, whether his aim is sure, he swivels on his heel and jabs hard at the air. His father is prepared and smiling a suddenly silver smile. He dodges the punch, as Wintry knew he would. It is a feint, a ploy to induce the dead man to open up into a vulnerable position. His father has grown too certain, too comfortable, depending on his son's injuries and hesitation to make him predictable. In the old days he would have anticipated the feint. But these are not the old days.

An instant too late, he realizes his folly, tries to correct it. And in that instant Wintry unleashes a volley of punches: left jab, straight right, left hook, uppercut. His father reels, but refuses to go down, so Wintry does not stop. The anger in him rages to the surface, equals the fire in his wounds. Straight left, jab, jab, rabbit punch, right hook, uppercut...

"You fuckin'..." his father starts to say, his teeth connected by strings of black blood. Wintry steps back, watches his father try to regain his balance, and does not wait.

"Sonofabitchin' los—"

Uppercut.

It almost takes his father's head off.

"What...do...
you
...see?" Wintry says, his teeth grinding out a squeak as he punctuates every word with another punch, his arm pulling back, head jutting forward, knuckles crunching into yielding bone, skin slipping against tar-like blood. "What...do...you...
see
...you...son...of...a...
bitch?
"

"Wintry?"

The voice does not belong here, so he ignores it. There is no third man in the ring, no chief second howling advice at him, no cut man. There are no lights, no crowd, no world beyond the face that is caving in like a pumpkin but will not fall.