Bread and Blood (pt 7).

Five hundred dollars is left on two doorsteps: one to the family Dixie went to for Uncle Charlie, and who had watched in squealing terror as he kicked down their door and hauled their father onto the lawn and beat him for all to see. It was the only time Dixie ever worked for them, and he never took the money they tried to give him. The other amount went to Sergeant Dale Stroup, the Army recruiter who fudged records to get Dixie enlisted despite his age and temper. On each stack of money that was wrapped in a plastic bag was a note that simply said THANKS.

Dixie is watching both times, bent down behind cars; some invisible weight slides off of his shoulders when they walk back inside their homes with the money - regret is about as useful to Daniel Gamble Jr. as gills but now he knows what it’s like to stand without it; now he knows what it’s like to look back up.

At that moment he realizes with perfect clarity that when he goes back to the city that’s been his home for two years now that he has to kill his friends, and when that’s done he can kill himself. Before this moment he would have never believed that this was what he wanted, but once identified the thought is tender and gentle: he can finally go to hell.

He loves the two of them so much, and that alone meant they needed to end, but more than that he’s afraid for them. There’s a lot of bad guys who’d love to take a bite out of either one of them, and then they’d have to turn into monsters for real, and they’re not, not really, not all the way, not yet. That was his job, to be a monster so they wouldn’t need to do that – and maybe that’s the thing Dixie would scream at the top of his lungs all night long if he could just get one of these son of a bitches to understand, was that was what his dad did for all of them, he was a bad guy all right but everyplace needs bad guys and they were god damned lucky to have a bad guy as good as they did.

Mechanic Street will take him to Centaur which will take him to Barber, and that’ll take him out of this part of his memory for good. Dixie chuckles, wishing he hadn’t crashed his dad’s truck because walking in the cold is bullshit, and half-skating he gets going. The ice breaks under his every step.

*

It’s not supposed to be like this. You’re not supposed to be the last one left. It’s like some stupid joke, only I don’t get what’s so funny about it. Half the time I want to rip their heads off and the other half I don’t know why I don’t go ahead and do it.

The roll wasn’t even that bad, I didn’t get nothing but a black eye. It shouldn’t have hurt them that bad. I should have floored it when I saw we weren’t going to beat the train, and then it would have only maybe tore off the bed and just shoved us into the ditch. We would have walked away from something like that just fine. Or I could have turned left and the train would hit my side instead and they’d be okay. I know ways for sure I could do it right if I had a chance, but nobody’s going to give it – because it’s just a thing that happened. It’s just god damned bad luck.