Prodigal Blues

"How much longer until we get to our first stop?" I asked.

"About that," he said.  "There's been a change in plan."  He looked at me.  "If you don't mind, I want to stop by my family's place first.  I've been thinking about what you said, about how I'm above it now, better than him"—he gestured with his head back toward the trailer—"and I've decided that this has to end now.  You talk to my folks, do your Mr. U.S. Marshal number, then I'll show myself and we'll call the cops and they can take him and do whatever they want."

"What about the bodies in there with him?"

Christopher paused, blinked.  "Think the police will believe it was self-defense?"

"I honestly don't know—but after what you've been through, I doubt any judge is going to want to put you in prison."

He nodded.  "Well… I'll guess we'll see, won't we?"

"You realize that I have no idea what your last name is?"

He laughed.  "I guess it didn't come up, did it?  It's Matthews."

I held out my hand.  "Pleased to meet you, Christopher Matthews."

He shook it.  "A pleasure, sir."

I sat back, checked myself in the mirror—the black eyes were so dark I looked like a raccoon—then patted down my hair and said, "My grandmother treated my dad like garbage his entire life."

"Now we get to it."

"You told me about your Grandpa, I'm going to tell you about my grandmother—unless you interrupt me again."

He mimed zipping closed his mouth.

"Look, the list of things she did to him when he was a kid—let alone what she did to him as an adult—would go on forever and depress the shit of you, so I'm just going to skip to thing that made me write her off permanently, okay?

"The last Christmas before Dad retired, money was a little tight—hell, money had always been tight, but this year it was even tighter than usual, right?  Dad only had sixteen dollars to buy Grandma a present, so the day before Christmas, he puts on his best coat and best boots and walks downtown because he doesn't want to waste money on a cab—no, my folks didn't drive, either one of them.  I mean, they used to, but both their eyesight was going and, besides, they could always call Tanya or me.  Anyway, he walks downtown—we're talking three, four miles in the middle of winter, ten degrees and snowing, a sixty-three-year-old man who's still recovering from radiation treatments from the first bout of cancer—he walks down and goes through all the stores, looking for something nice he can buy her with his sixteen dollars, and eventually he finds this really, really nice scarf, gloves, and perfume boxed set, thirteen bucks.  He shoots the other three bucks to have them gift wrap it because Grandma is supposed to come over and pick up her gifts that night.  Then he walks all the way back home in snow that's getting wetter and heavier.

"Grandma never showed up that Christmas Eve, she didn't show up on Christmas Day, or the day after, or the day after, not for New Year's… that present sat in their house for six fucking months before she got it—and even then she sent one of her other grandkids to get it, then went out of her way to call and tell him that she already had plenty of gloves and scarves but maybe she could use the perfume.  It broke his heart.  By then he was getting sick again—that little Christmas Eve stroll left him with walking pneumonia, and it was while he was being treated for it that his doctor discovered the cancer was back.

"Flash forward.  Both Mom and Dad are dead and buried—she didn't come to the either funeral, by the way, she had a little touch of the flu both times.  She decides to move down to Kansas to be near her sisters and sets about looking up my sister, who's living down there with her husband, and trying to 'make amends.'  My sister, by the way, made the drive all the way to Ohio and back for both funerals, and she was sicker than hell both times.

"Okay, so Grandma tries to make all nicey-nice with Gayle, and Gayle's too polite to tell her to go to hell—we both knew she was just an old woman trying to get into Heaven any way she could.  Grandma would call me sometimes to see how I was doing and reminisce about Mom and Dad like she ever gave a shit for either one of them.  I tell her that I got nothing to say to her and hang up.  So she sets about making Gayle her new, last best friend.

"When Grandma died, she left a lot of money—well, what I consider to be a lot.  It was divided up among her sisters and living children and grandchildren—but Gayle and me, she left us a real nice chunk of change, over ten thousand dollars.  I didn't want her goddamn money, not after the way she'd treated Dad, and I told her lawyer as much.  Well, Grandma must have suspected I was going to say that, because she left a codicil in her will that if I refused my inheritance, it was all to go to Gayle—provided that I signed all the necessary papers.  By this time my sister has divorced her redneck hubby and wants to get the hell out of Dodge—or, rather, Topeka—as soon as possible, so she calls and asks me if I'd drive down to Kansas and sign the papers because if I did the money would be released to her that day.  How the hell could I say no?  I took the time off work, drove down, signed the papers, loaded up what Gayle wanted me to bring back, put her and the kids on a plane, and then had car trouble just outside Jefferson City.  You were around for everything else, so now I think we're up to date."

Christopher mimed unzipping his mouth.  "You really loved your folks a lot, didn't you?'

"Yes, I did—screw that past tense—I do.  Just because they're not here any longer doesn't mean I don't still love and miss them."

"I hope my folks have missed me half that much."

"I'm sure they have."

"Yeah…?"

"Count on it."

He looked at me and smiled.  "I realize this is going to sound incredibly stupid, all things considered, but man am I glad we grabbed you and not that other guy."

It took a second for that to fully register.  "What other guy?"

"Huh?  Oh—there was a dude about four miles behind you at a rest stop with a couple of flat tires.  I don't know what he ran over but it chewed the hell of them.  We were doubling back to get him when Denise spotted you.  She thought you looked nicer."

"Oh."

"I didn't mention that before?"

"Must have slipped your mind."

"Oh."

I imagined this guy now all safe and sound at home, kissing his wife, hugging his kids, petting the dog, bitching about the bills, and said:  "I hope the son-of-a-bitch is still stuck there."

We looked at one another, then burst out laughing.

The road dipped slightly, we went over another steel bridge—this one more stable than the last—and emerged onto a smooth and seemingly freshly-paved stretch of asphalt.  The trees thi

"It'll be coming up on the right in a couple of miles," said Christopher.  "You need to make yourself presentable—there's a light jacket in the black duffel bag back there.  You should put it on to cover the blood on your shirt."

I moved to the back, grabbed the duffel bag, pulled it open, and immediately shrieked as the skulls gri

"I said the black duffel bag."

"Yeah… uh… sorry."  I knelt there for a few moments, shaking, eyes closed, my heart pounding against my ribs, then took a deep breath, opened my eyes, and closed up the bag of bones.  "Sorry, Randy," I whispered to the top skull.  They'd be home soon, as well, to weeping families and waiting graves.