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Part IX: 1917- War on All Fronts
"I could've told you that much," said Danilo casually. Marco gave him a look, to which Danilo made an 'aw, phooey' sort of gesture with his hand, which Marco would find demeaning if he hadn't been treated worse by purportedly more respectable people in allegedly more enlightened times.
"You're okay, at least, that's good."
"For you," Danilo agreed, "Think what'd happen if he'd kicked your head in for an audience. That'd be the end of the cabron one way or another," he paused, "Or not."
Marco had an unsettled feeling. The same worry that had been needling at him since he first heard Bert's assertion against the Teague kid. If the forebear of a prominent local family...potentially even a direct ancestor of one of Marco's oldest friends...had been found guilty of what amounted to domestic terrorism barely 100 years ago...
Why didn't he know about it?
"Either way," he said at length, surprised at the muted quality of his own voice, "It's out of our hands now," seeing Danilo's expression, he sighed, "It, uh...it means we did everything that we could."
"No, I know what it means," he grimaced, "I also know what 'empty-handed' means," he eyed Bert dubiously, "Papito was worried about you."
"Your Dad," said Marco, "He means it to be a dick..."
"But I'm right."
"But he's right. We didn't tell him what you were doing. Because we didn't know..."
"We knew,"
"We suspected."
"And were right."
"But we didn't tell him," Marco doubled down.
"Old man's sharp as a virgin knife, he didn't need us to tell him."
Marco hesitated, "...that's fair."
-Danilo and Marco
"Papito?" Bert shook his head, a humorless chuckle escaping his lips. "What's he worrying about? I'm old enough to mind my own decisions. Just because I have the courage to even bother with anything outside that candied tomb of his doesn't put me at risk." Still, he did feel a pang of guilt in his heart, though he wouldn't be quick to admit it. "I expect I'll hear a mouthful when I finally get home then?"
"Probably get sent home without your supper," said Danilo lightly. Marco nudged him in the side, "You know, I think it's cool your Dad's up in your business."
Danilo let out a cough of laughter.
"Mine was pretty hands off," Marco continued, figuring he might as well now that he'd started, "After a certain point."
"This before or after you got yourself into college?"
"Because of it, actually," said Marco earnestly, "He didn't approve of my career choices."
"I don't know what's wrong with construction," if he'd heard it once, he'd heard it a thousand times, "Good work, reliable, and they'll always need you..."
"They'll always need engineers," Marco had pointed out, maybe idealistically but not, he'd never thought, proudly, "Dad, it's good work, honest. People starting now...people like me...we're going to save lives."
He heard the crack of Sandy's skull against the pavement and winced.
"We don't talk much."
"He still in Juarez?" Danilo asked.
"Even farther than that."
He'd called home, after the accident, mostly to let his folks know he was alright...partly to see if he would get any "Told you so's".
"A damn shame," his father, infinitely practical, "All that college debt won't be drying up anytime soon. Those job offers..."
It was more elegant than an 'I told you so', but it had answered his questions. His mother, for her part, was classier about her disappointment, but had been sure to mention, "That poor woman..." every other sentence for the entire conversation, with what Marco couldn't help but imagining was a tinge of accusation.
Or disgust.
"Well, I've had enough of hospitals and police for the day, the month, and the rest of the damn war," Danilo continued breezily, "As long as it's out of my hands," he repeated the euphemism very dramatically, looking at Marco with a cheeky smirk, "I'll find something else to fill one. Like a drink."
Marco laughed soundlessly as Danilo looked dubiously at Bert, a lock of hair hanging in his face, "You know..." he tweaked Bert's nose jokingly, "A drink? I figure you earned one, before your spanking."
-Danilo and Marco
Bert smirked, playfully brushing Danilo's hand away. He had to admit the man was growing on him, despite their differences at first. At least in this instance, it seemed Danilo was the only other person here looking at this situation rationally. Definitely more than his father.
He felt guilty even thinking that, as if he were betraying his own blood by going against him. Bert grimaced, realizing he'd have to confront his father sooner or later. The lecture was inevitable and if he was raised to be anything, it was to be honorable and face these things head-on.
"Thanks, but I think I'll pass," he replied, smiling despite the talking-to he was bracing himself for. "Best I face the music now, lest I hear it everywhere I go. Feel like it'll put a damper on drinks." Bert slapped Marco and Danilo on their backs. "Have fun tonight, eh? I'd say it's well-earned."
With that, Bert left them and marched on back home, ready to face his father about what he had done or at least planned to do. The old man would probably want an apology out of him but, God love him, Bert couldn't muster that within him. And Lord knew how his father was able to not only be a doormat but remain content with it. On top of that, how he thought it to be a noble act as well, bending the knee to the very people who'd like to see him dead.
Bert's family was a complicated one, indeed, as small as it was. Perhaps he'd never understand it.
DIK Smith had returned to his shop to find it still, but undisturbed. The shattered display window, which would've provided easy entrance for thieves of all stripes, remained no more destroyed than it had already been, the planks he and Bert had nailed across the vacant span right where they'd been left.
Candy was hardly a hot commodity in a crisis. Small favors.
He hummed tunelessly as he swept the floor (not merely a habitual task...ash from the stinking air had been filling the room all day while he'd been out; he dreaded to think how much of the stock, though not stolen, was still spoiled), a ditty he had plucked as if from thin air, only presently realizing he hadn't made it up. It was the hymn that kindly woman had led them all in at the church yesterday.
She had been selfless and noble, distracting the increasingly agitated crowd to give them time to get away. Her husband, Smith remembered, had been a worker at the factory as well. He hoped he'd come out of it alright.
A hot summer wind skirled along the street outside, scattering the dust he'd just been sweeping across the floor, and filling the shop with a stale chemical stink...not as strong as last night's, but still sour.
"Ach," he grimaced, disgusted, "Sisyphus of the Sweeties, serving his sentence apace."
With grim determination, he changed his position and resumed sweeping, his movements strict and measured. In the fading light, and with only one lamp lit on the counter (the shop...and for all he could tell, the whole neighborhood) still without power, it was getting harder to see his progress. No matter, he told himself. As long as he got somewhere, in this, the one area he ought to have complete control over, he'd consider the evening's work well...
The brass bell over the door rang as the door opened, letting in a sharp gust of wind and upsetting his work down to the speck.
"Botheration!" he swore, looking up to find his son on the threshold, "Have I raised a man or a human hurricane?"
While the sight of Bert had kindled some relief in his heart, he could not let it properly founder.
"You saw Marco and the irascible one, I expect?" he asked, not waiting for an answer, "They had their own suspicions, of where you had gone," another pass with the broom, only barely looking up to meet his son's eyes, "Were they correct?"
***
"I'm just saying," said Marco.
"Si, mama..." Danilo rolled his eyes.
"You don't have to be such a jerk to him all the time."
Danilo gave him a look, "'Jerk'?"
"Yeah, jerk. It means..."
"Asshole?"
"Sure."
"I know what it means, but it's fun to make you try on big boy words," he shrugged.
"I'm serious," Marco insisted.
"Are you ever anything else?"
"Bert's helping us," he continued, "You don't have to be on his case all the time."
"I wasn't on his anything. I offered him a drink, didn't I?"
"You joked about him getting spanked."
"Joke? You've met his father."
Marco couldn't hide a guilty smile, "I don't know. I guess if I were him, I'd be pretty frustrated too."
"I don't need to be him to be frustrated," said Danilo easily, "Jesucristo, I almost pity him."
"What? Because of his Dad?"
Danilo snorted, "Because he wants to be useful."
Marco considered, "Doesn't everybody?"
"No," Danilo wasted no time answering, "Obviously not. Come on, hermano..." he slowed down, "I can respect that freshly baptized baby innocence off you only so long before I start wondering if you got dropped on your head..."
To Marco's credit, he did not think about Sandy that time. He thought about her later, of course, in a bitterly ironic way that accompanied the desire to burble out a guilty, ghoulish laugh, but what are you gonna do?
He looked up and down the crookback street. The late afternoon sun was tinging the smokey air a hazy, burnt orange. He found himself thinking of the gauzy amber filter movies used whenever they went South of the Border. Somehow, he doubted Mexico's atmosphere was clogged with early 20th century chemical pollutants. China's, maybe. But you didn't see movies turn orange when they went there.
Danilo was continuing apace, "Most people, they want to get their business done. Get through their day, not cause any trouble for themselves, go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again. Así es la vida."
"I guess that's true," Marco granted, "People want to be useful to themselves."
"And nothing wrong with that," said Danilo, "I'll tell you, if it wasn't my room got raided by those federales this morning, I wouldn't have got in a mile from that police station."
Marco frowned, "You really think that?"
"I know myself, don't I?"
"But..." he considered, "You weren't one of the guys who got arrested. You and I...we got away. So, technically...getting Helmut to talk, that doesn't directly help you, does it?"
Danilo made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat, "Could've been me, though, could it? Or you," with a slightly tighter clip to his tone, he added, "Don't elevate me to sainthood just yet."
They continued in silence the rest of the way to the Secret Garden. Or, well, the Jardin. Marco idly thought to himself it was a funny name for a bar: "Yeah, I'm going to the Secret Garden with the fellas. What? No, no, it's not like that..."
"Happy Hour still on?" Danilo prompted, leaning in the open doorway.
Alejandro looked up from the bartop he was determinedly polishing, "On hold until something happy presents itself," seeming to notice their roving eyes, he explained, "We're closed," and, looking at the bar's only other occupant, sitting before him at the bar, "Casi."
"Hey, Helm," Marco moved over to the bar, nodding a greeting at Helmut, "How'd it go?"
"You're not in cuffs, so Bertie's got one less worry already," said Danilo cryptically, "For you. Him..." he shrugged.
"Long story."
"Thought you said you had people sleeping over last night?" Danilo eyed Al, "Why the evictions?"
"Evictions nothing," Al snorted, "There's a curfew on for tonight."
"You're kidding!" exclaimed Marco. At Al's quizzical expression, Danilo interjected, "Lindo y vacante."
Marco decided to pretend he hadn't heard this.
"Expect they want to know where everyone is. Roads out of town are blocked as well," he shrugged, dutifully going to the taps to fill two new flagons, "Tells you something, eh?"
"For starters, they don't think they caught the real bomber in that raid," Marco pointed out, cautiously heartened as he turned back to Helmut, "So...you told them everything?"
-DIK Smith, Marco, Danilo, and Alejandro
"They were," Bert replied tersely, slamming the door behind, further disturbing the pile of dust his father had accumulated. "Don't worry. Nothing happened." He made to stride over to the stairs, muttering to himself, "Just as you like it."
***
"Ah! Marco! Danilo!" Helmut raised his mug to the arrival of his new friends. His loss of hearing be damned, he felt he was in good health and even better spirits. And he had good reason; as he was about to recount, things at the police station went surprisingly well.
"I told them every single detail, mein Freund," Helmut exclaimed, inviting Marco to take the seat beside him. "Dimwitted as that sheriff may be, he hung onto my every word! Even went so far as to write some of it down. Have to admit, I'm flattered; I've never been quoted before, at least by anyone important." He quickly realized that his best friend had not come in with Marco and Danilo. "Is Bert not with you? He should be here with us, celebrating!"
-Bert and Helmut
DIK Smith let out a cry of protest, starting toward the foot of the stairs, propping himself up against the broomstick as though it were a staff.
"Now, attend to me, young man!" he began, "You may not like to hear it, but I have only the best for you in mind. What do you mean to do, running up and down the town with this hot head of yours, getting into fights and slinging accusations? No good can come of it! No good will come of it..."
For he needed no confirmation that Marco and Danilo had been correct in their assumptions. Bert's taut manner indicated as much.
"These are powerful people we must contend with, and the world against us! There are ways to get justice and there are ways to hang yourself, and it shall be a fine spring afternoon in Hades when I consent to see my only son hanged!"
***
Marco looked questioningly at Al, who shrugged, "I didn't to..." he searched for the word, "gossip. Not without knowing if you were right."
"We were," said Danilo casually, sinking onto a bar stool and taking the drink Al had prepared, "This is free, yes?"
"You have any money?"
Danilo smiled knowingly and Al shrugged. Marco, left to contend with the bad news, turned to Helmut, "He went to the hospital. Tried to force a confession out of Freddy Teague, by the sound of it."
"But didn't," Danilo added.
Al's expression darkened, "That's a gamble."
Danilo scoffed, "This one..." nodding at Marco, "I had to keep him from going after him."
Marco bristled, "Well..." drumming his fingers on the bar, "Excuse me for caring."
Danilo gave him a look and burst into a peal of laughter, pressing his knuckles to his eyes, "Ah..." he let out a shaky, mirthful breath, "Querido."
This was barely audible. Al had resumed his work on the bar and gave no indication he'd heard it. Marco decided he'd act the same, though his attention lingered on Danilo, staring into the amber dregs of his quickly draining glass.
Querido...his mother had called him that, as a term of endearment. Not unusual...he was sure lots of Latino kids had grown up in the same way.
Still...
-DIK Smith, Marco, Danilo, and Alejandro
"Oh, come off it!" Bert snapped, fed up with his father's sanctimonious attitude. "As if we're not already at the gallows every day we spend in this rotten town!" No longer did he bite back his tongue or lower his voice, as years of pent-up frustration and anger flooded forth. "It's the best our kin can manage in this godforsaken country! But I suppose I should be grateful like you, father? Is that it? Grateful for every time a brick is thrown through our window, every time some drunken patriot spits at our feet, every time one us is murdered because we dared to be born in the wrong place! My best friend was almost killed!" His voice wavered then; to his own surprise, Bert was fighting back tears. "But I suppose I should have sat on my hands, as you would have wanted. I'd be hanged either way, in the end. Only other thing I'd lose then would be my dignity." He shook his head, a shaky exhale passing through his mouth; a single tear managed to escape, streaming down his cheek. "I suppose then...we'd finally have something in common."
***
Helmut sighed, lamenting the lengths his friend was going to on his behalf. "I love that man like a brother, but von Gott, he's a reckless one." He patting Marco on the back as his new friend took his seat. "It's best you didn't go after him. He prefers to be left alone when he's angered; he calms down then." Taking a sip from his beer, Helmut added, "Sometimes, I worry about him. He tries to hide it but...he has this rage, burning within him. America has not taken to him, I'm afraid." He shrugged, planting his drink back on the counter. "After the week we've all had, I can hardly say America has taken to any of us."
-Bert and Helmut
Dieter Smith felt the air come out of him in a great gust, as if through a siphon. He watched his son, the lone tear shining on his reddened face.
"Dignity," he repeated the word, feeling his whiskers tremble with agitation as he thought I must look so foolish, and so, so old, "You speak to me of dignity. When I..." he jabbed his thumb into his chest, "Came to this country with an ailing wife and an infant son upon a boat crammed to the gills with the indignant cast-offs of every nation under heaven, did I not have dignity? When I went door to door in the heat of summer with a basket of toffees hung about my neck like a pack mule's yoke, did I not have dignity? When I counted every grubby, sweat-shellacked penny pressed into my palm to see how much bread my family would eat this week, was there no dignity at the bottom of that jar? When I promised your mother on her deathbed I would put her in as good as a pauper's grave, so as not to watch you go hungry, was there no dignity between us?"
He stepped forward, his jowls aquiver with the vehemence of his feeling, "When I opened my shoppe and filled my shelves, and the people of this town began to come in and set their money upon the counter as if they had not so long ago spat in my face for a foreigner, did I earn dignity for my till?" he shook his head, "Nein. They could have given me custom or they could've walked on by; they could've made me rich, or they watched my business founder as soon as it began, but they could not give me dignity, no more than rob it from me. Dignity, my son, comes from within. Like wits, like love...it is not accountable to others. I have my dignity, like I have my brains, and the sinewy wisdom of too many years upon this earth..." he let out a heavy, rheumy breath, "If you conduct your life hungering for the respect of others, you shall always be hungry. And your mother and I did not break our backs to see you starve."
With heavy, gouty tread, he moved to the back stairs and mounted, his head bowed low, wary of checking over his shoulder to see his son's face, not sure what he might do or say when he did.
Yes, he thought resolutely, I have grown too, too old.
For the first time, the thought saddened him.
***
Danilo made a low dismissive noise in the back of his throat, "Así la vida," before getting up and crossing, with his drink, to one of the scratched-up tables in the shadowy recesses of the bar. Al cocked an eyebrow, but didn't make any comment. Marco couldn't tell if this was usual, but something told him it wasn't, no more than anything else that had happened to these people since he dropped in was 'usual'.
Asi la vida...he thought of translating for Helmut's benefit but decided not to, no more than he would divulge Danilo's quiet 'querido'. It may not be strictly polite to speak in another language when you know not everyone can understand you...but that's also the point, isn't it? A tiny shield, made of words. Comfort in knowing something other people didn't, having one shred of privacy in an over-exposed world. 'Asi la vida'...that's life.
He felt his lips twitch into a reluctant smile. Scraping the bottom of his glass against the bartop, he got to his feet before he could think better of it and, with a little nod at Al and Helmut, went to join Danilo at his table.
"Saludos por ello," he countered lightly.
"Cheers to what?" Danilo countered, in English, cocking an eyebrow in question.
"Life," he put one hand on the back of the chair opposite Danilo and the other man shrugged permissively. Marco sat. The nearest lamp in the place was a few tables away...Al hadn't bothered to get the bar cozy for patrons tonight, for self-evident reasons.
Marco regarded Danilo in silence for a while, wondering if he should say anything at all. Danilo, for his part, was wearing that dubious expression he affected so often, like he wasn't sure whether to laugh or scowl. Not for the first time, Marco wondered whether Danilo thought he was crazy, or at least stunted in some way.
And maybe he was. Maybe that was the big, shameful secret he'd been running from his whole life. He was a little slow, a little soft in the head. Sure, he always got good grades, he graduated at the top of his class, he was on track to be somebody in a competitive, technological field...
So what? What did all that really matter when the chips were down? When no amount of studying could prepare you? When it didn't matter how much you knew, but how fast you could think?
Danilo shifted in his chair, taking another drink and swigging it around in his mouth before swallowing; his breath was hot and weirdly starchy in the close confines over the table, "Are you proposing a toast?"
Marco shook his head, "Just...what you said, it made me think..."
"Sorry about that."
"...there's a song," he paused, wondering if that was strictly correct...if there was a song, or if there would be, "I remember it from when I was a kid. Gracias a la vida. And it's kind of like a...a toast, I guess."
"To life?"
"Or still being alive," he paused, "My abuela, she used to sing it when she would watch me."
She'd died when he was very young. Heart disease that, Marco learned later, she'd known about for years, and had always refused to get treated. Doctors, of course, being fakers and sneakthieves. She'd been of the opinion that she'd die whenever her body decided to give it up and lower the safety barricade keeping her patient immortal soul from joining her husband and sisters, who had marched off ahead of her.
Marco remembered sitting on the kitchen floor, building towers out of Lincoln Logs from a huge cylindrical tin his father had picked up from a church jumble sale. His grandmother a few steps away, in her floral-patterned housedress and slippers, rolling out tortillas with flour-stained hands, her firm voice singing at a leisurely pace, sometimes pausing for as much as half a minute between lyrics as she put aside one roundel of dough to begin pressing out a new one.
"Gracias a la vida/Que me ha dado tanto..."
He wondered how long she'd lived. Surely, she wouldn't be alive now? The thought gave him an odd, creeping assurance, a warmth in his gut that had nothing to do with the beer.
"A pretty sorry toast, isn't it?" Danilo asked, "Thanks for life. What they call the bare minimum, eh?"
"Maybe," Marco shrugged, "But I guess it's not that minimal a minimum, is it?"
And Danilo nodded, "No. No it isn't. Whole world's filling up with graves, it looks like. Even this backwater barrio," he looked into the glass, expression inscrutable. In the earthy light, Marco noticed grooves, canyon-deep under his eyes and around his mouth. Had they always been there, and he'd never noticed? He was pretty certain Danilo was younger than him.
But it was, of course, an ugly world. Getting to 30 was a gift.
Gracias.
"What are you doing here?" Danilo asked abruptly, lifting one eye to meet his.
Marco sat up, pinballing wildly through his mind to dig up what Danilo was supposed to know, what he'd said, back when he'd had to say something. His lips had just begun to form a poorly remembered cover story when Danilo added, "Sitting here. With me."
"Oh," he bit his lip, that fuzzy warmth in his chest migrating to his ears, "I dunno," but Danilo cocked his eyebrow, as if to communicate they both knew he wasn't that dense.
(He'd be wrong in that. Marco didn't know what he knew.)
"I just...saw you come over here and..." he shrugged, "You okay?"
And Danilo laughed. Not a big, boisterous laugh or anything, which only made it seem realer.
"You're really something, Silva."
"That's what I've been told," he bit his lip, "That you dodging the question, or should I just shut up?"
"Ninguno," Danilo dismissed either option with a short wave of his hand, "I should be in good spirits, yes? Helmet's done his duty, the Teague boy's gotten the scare of his life, and a bunch of sorry Mexicans who I guess are as good as friends as I have in this country will be let out of their cell any day now. And I didn't even have to get my hands dirty."
"But you did," said Marco, "You helped, I mean. Convincing Helmut and..."
He shook his head, "If I didn't tell him, you would've, and either way, he's soft-hearted enough he would've done it anyway, once he knew," he didn't say these things bitterly, but with a calm, almost confident resignation, as if it might've better off if things had happened that way, resolving without him.
"But the important thing..." Marco tried, "Is that you did help, isn't it? That you wanted to."
"What they say in this country...I had the 'good intentions'."
He thought, inexplicably, of The Simpsons, reruns on TBS during finals. Ned Flanders, sick of being nice for everyone's benefit but his own, finally blowing his top after seeing how the Springfieldians "rebuilt" his destroyed house.
"I can't live in good intentions, Marge!"
Danilo blinked, "Who's Marge?"
"Me," offered Marco, "Maybe. I dunno. Someone who tried."
"More than tried, I think," Danilo continued, "If you've done a single selfish thing since I've met you, I'll ask Al for a tap of good German beer and put it on Bertie's tab, en solidaridad," before Marco could mount a refusal, insist he wasn't that selfless, that he couldn't shake the feeling any selfless thing he did do here was only as a result of selfish acts committed long ago, in another time and not too distant place, he went on, "I keep thinking of what Smith said at the hospital."
Marco began to ask if he meant Smith senior or junior, but the sad set of Danilo's mouth confirmed it, "Bert was just angry. He didn't want Helmut sticking his neck out..."
"But he wasn't wrong, was he?"
"About Helmut?"
"About me. What he said...'there's two borders, pick a direction and start running'..."
Last night, then. Not this morning. Marco had almost forgotten, "He didn't know..."
"Neither do you, do you?" he shook his head, "I've been running. From one war to another, it looks like, and I'm not in an hurry to fight either one. Some people...people like our Bertie...they do things. It makes them feel good to do them, too. Go after the bomber, rally the troops, blow the bugle, pick up the pieces. They don't throw their hands up bitching about the state of things...gracias a la vida, and they find something to be thankful for," the beer left amber waves in his eyes, "I'm not like that. I run. No cause, no mission, nobody to fight for. I see someone being pushed around, I see a woman crying, a kid begging in the alley, and I think 'Stay on your side of the street; pretty hips, pity about the face; long as he doesn't pick my pocket.' You have men in this country signing up to go over to France or Germany or some burnt-out desert in Jesucristo's backyard...they don't wait for their letter to come in to ship them out. The men back home..." his words had become tight, constrained, his knuckles whitening against his glass, "...who fought for the government, or the one before it, or a dozen other revoluciones from when our fathers were children. They grab a gun and a bag and leave home and they fight. Land will be cheaper, it will be easier to make a living, we will answer to no one but ourselves, we will avenge our grandfathers or their grandfathers or the painted Indians the Spanish killed 400 years ago.
"And they all fight, and some off them die, but they don't seem to mind that much at the start. Because they believe in something. In their country or their people or in not paying out the culo to the taxman. Because men believe in things. It puts them apart from dogs, maybe, I don't know. Or maybe they believe in things too. And it must feel like something...like beer, or drugs, or sex...something so good that you forget how goddamn stupid what you're doing is. So you don't mind when they shoot at you, or when bodies of strangers hit the ground, or when the man next to you drops down, a few inches shorter than he was," a brief, bitter laugh, almost wistful, escaped from deep within him, "It sounds like a sickness. Like the ones without it are better off, eh? But it's like losing a tooth...you spend all your time feeling around, looking for something that should be there and isn't. And you know, you know it's missing and there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing to believe in, nothing to fight for, nothing to want. Nothing to do but eat, sleep, and run."
Danilo drained the glass, setting it down with a harsh clink. Marco winced at the noise, and more at the bright red imprint on Danilo's palm, the grooves of the tumbler digging into his skin, already pretty calloused, presumably from his old job in the sugar fields and who knew what else before then.
A lot of running means a lot of jobs.
"I tried to jump off a church once."
The admission ought to have been guilty and reluctant. Marco didn't really think about it, though. It felt like the only thing to say, after everything Danilo had just told him, presumably not expecting Marco to do anything but (maybe) listen, certainly not expecting him to make any claim to understand him. He probably could've stayed quiet.
But he'd been quiet for five years.
Danilo met his eyes, his mouth hanging a little ajar. There was a tugging of muscles at the corner of his lips, as if he wasn't sure if Marco was joking. His eyes, though, were dark and serious. He believed him, Marco decided, and felt something like relief.
"I'd had some bad luck," he explained, unconsciously leaning forward in his seat, "Really bad luck."
"At...college?" Danilo pronounced the word euphemistically, but Marco nodded.
"More or less. I made a terrible mistake and...my life started falling apart. I lost my job, I couldn't pay my rent, I was drowning in debt...my family stopped talking to me..."
(He'd visited his abuela's grave that first Christmas, after Sandy, after he'd purified the air too well. He'd thought of gracias a la vida, and flour tortillas, and he'd felt irrevocably that he could never go home again, not just because the hardworking old woman was dead but because when he'd purified the air in that R&D lab, he'd somehow over-purified himself, flicking away the little boy playing with his Lincoln logs on the kitchen floor like so many particulate impurities.)
"I lost everything, and..." he shrugged, "As far as I was concerned, I had nothing left to believe in. So I went to the church..."
St. George's. The parish of his childhood, with bunting still up from Christmas...Dia de los Reyes was still a few days off, and there had been poinsettias around the altar and beautiful trees in the back. The creche in the front of the church, which had been a prize makeout spot back in school, still all together, with the porcelain Baby Jesus crudely taped into the manger to prevent enterprising Christ-nappers on dares.
"I was up on the roof, and it was so cold...so cold I almost felt like I was outside myself, like I couldn't feel anything so...it's almost like what I was doing wasn't even happening to me. I stood there, right on the edge, looking down at the street and I felt...why not? It's been a pretty empty life, and I have nobody to blame but myself."
"But you didn't jump," there was no particular inflection in Danilo's words, but Marco realized he was leaning forward too, one hand loosely propping his head up. He thought to himself nobody had ever looked this interested in him in his life.
"I would've," said Marco, "But someone stopped me," seeing Danilo's questioning eyes, he answered before he could ask, "The priest. Nice old guy, maybe a little confused. But he came up and he put his hand on me, and..."
He thought of the poor old priest, Torres, slaughtered in the confessional of that same church, a few days ago and about 90 years removed from Marco's aborted suicide. Deep within him, he felt that yawning hope, guilty as it was, that there was a purpose here. That, somehow, he belonged here, because of the life he had lived, because of the things that had happened to him, that he'd seen and done. That he was equipped, somehow, for the work that had been set before him.
"...he gave me something to believe in."
"God?"
"No," he answered quickly, but then hesitated, "I dunno. I'm not really sure about God, or...heaven or any of that. But he gave me something to..." and he almost laughed then, at the paucity of the idea as he verbalized it, how silly it really seemed, such a tiny thing to have transformed his life so utterly, "He gave me something to do. And it helped. It really...really helped. And I can't really explain how it did, but..." he met Danilo's eyes, "I felt better. So when you say what it's like, not to believe in things, and how...how sick that can make you feel, how empty, like there's something wrong with you..."
Again, he thought of Schiano's words, on that frost-blue night, urging him off that ledge: "Your life isn't over, Marco. Not yet. There are great things in store for you. But you must take the first step."
"I know how that feels," he continued, feeling his eyes heat up, "Because that was me. Is me, maybe, I don't know if I'm really fixed, but...but the point is, Danilo...you're not alone."
Danilo looked at him, long and lingering, before saying, in a reverent, beer soaked whisper, "Gracias a la vida," and leaning forward to kiss him.
Marco moved back, unthinking, felt the chair skid beneath him. His glass tipped over onto the table, clinking but not shattering. The back of his head met the wall with a harsh thud, blurring his vision. As it resolved, he saw Danilo, framed in the dusky low light of the Secret Garden, hovering as if in space, half out of his chair, half over the table, his hands on the worn wood, a lock of dark hair in his face. His mouth was still open, his lips wet with the beer he'd drunk and what little he'd gleaned from Marco's lips in the half-second before he realized what had happened.
"Danilo..." he tried, his heart in his mouth, "Danilo, I..."
Danilo moved first, leaning back, the legs of his chair thunking decisively against the worn wood, "Lo lamento..."
"No," he said, which was probably the wrong thing to say, "No, don't...you don't have to apol..."
But it was too late. Danilo had gotten to his feet with feline fluidity, "I'm going for a walk. Clear my head..."
"The curfew," said Alejandro, from behind the bar, a world away.
"Let them come for me," Danilo said, not looking at him, at any of them, "I can outrun them, at least."
The door slammed shut behind him. Marco rose from his seat, finally, pressing one hand to the back of his head and the other to the lips that had rejected Danilo's drunken, desperate kiss, realizing in mixed guilt and horror he had given Danilo something to believe in at last.
***
It was well past dark, and the hospital was silent as a tomb. Which, Freddy supposed, was appropriate, given the number of hopeless causes that had filled its rooms in the last day. He couldn't help but wonder how many of the wounded survivors still clung on to life, or else had succumbed to their burns, or to the clotting poison that had taken root in their lungs.
And here he sat, staring at the featureless ceiling, held here for no other reason than an overnight observation, and all prepared to be released into his father's care tomorrow morning. That had been the promise the nurse had made this afternoon, at least, seemingly in large part to quell Buford Teague's titanic temper following Bert Smith's impromptu visit.
He would take care of everything, so his father had promised Freddy before taking off. It didn't take a great tactician to sus out what he meant by that.
Freddy had drawn some conclusions of his own, and made determinations in his own right. He was hardly an indecisive person...one need only look at his word and deed to see a pretty slam-bang decision, for starters. But in most things, his father held the veto. Surely, he would've put a stop to Freddy's scheme if he'd known about it beforehand but, now that it was done, he wasn't going to let Freddy be delivered into the waiting arms of justice.
And perhaps that would be comforting, in any other circumstance. Perhaps Freddy was being exactly the sort of spineless coward Smith had accused him of being...but he saw no solace in his father's assurances.
His father would handle things, less for Freddy's own sake than for that of his name, of the family. Freddy's name was already blackened. It was only a matter of damage control now, harm mitigation. Freddy's entire life would henceforth be lived under his father's thumb, in a constant state of debt.
And his crime would go unanswered. The good men who had died as a result of his juvenile pique would go unavenged. And innocent men, Freddy was quite sure, would be tarred with the crime and gotten rid of.
Freddy wasn't sure he believed in ghosts. But, lying in his bed in a hospital full of the dead and dying Freddy had guided to their fates, he felt icy hands digging into him.
So he made up his mind. Murderer he was, and saboteur, and a coward every minute of his stunted life... The first two charges he could do nothing to correct.
But he could do something about the third.
His room, for the moment, was unobserved. His father was presumably still out on his business, and Nate would not be due to check in on him until his shift at the prison was over. The nurse who had been halfheartedly stationed outside his room as a "precaution" after Bert's visit had presumably decided there were sicker patients that merited her attention.
Good for her, and Freddy too. They were both of better use elsewhere.
Assessing for what felt like the hundredth time that the passage outside was quiet, Freddy threw the thin coverlet aside and rose gingerly from his bed. His aches had abated, subsiding to a dull, hollow soreness, no different from the complaints of burdened joints after a long day's work.
He was lucky. The thought made him vaguely sick.
There were no clothes for him to change into. Nate was supposed to be bringing some tonight. Nate, of course, would also want to stop him. He seized the ungainly mustard-colored dressing gown from the peg in the corner and drew the sash around his waist. Felt slippers by the bed would have to suffice. It would be a short trek to the police station, where the federal men were bound to keep all hours. Even better, he'd heard snatches of talk among the nurses that a curfew had been put on. Let him be caught, then. Fewer steps to take.
He was terrified, of course, which seemed perfectly natural. He ought to be terrified, had put himself into exactly the right position to be terrified. If he wasn't terrified by now, he'd be out of his mind.
He thought of sanitariums and insane asylums and shuddered. No, he was perfectly in his right mind. Which brought the cadet realization that, being in his right mind, he would face a sane man's jury. He imagined the gibbet in the yard of his father's prison, heard the creaking of that old noose in the dry wind.
It occurred to him, with grim finality, that he was walking to his death.
But, he supposed, he would be doing the very same if he remained here, wouldn't he? It was just a different type of death, but no less permanent, no less destructive.
Freddy stepped out into the passage, and looked up and down the deserted stretch. The air here was stale and sterile, and a sour stink of ether hovered in the atmosphere. It was dead silent. In these late hours, only a scant skeleton crew remained, and most of them, Freddy figured, would be attending to the more serious cases. He shouldn't meet much opposition.
Still, he padded slowly, with painstaking care, along the corridor, eyes open for potential watchers. There was precious little he could do if he were caught...all the doors led into patient rooms, and there was nowhere to hide if someone came along. Only a little desk at the end of the passage, close to the stairs anyway, where the nurses gathered about in the daytime...
And, it turned out, the night. A white cap, stark and bright in the shadows, lifted up. Beneath it, a pleasant, porcelain face cocked an eyebrow, "Now, Mr. Teague..." the nurse on duty rose from her seat, her smart shoes clacking like castanets against the tiled floor, "You know very well you ought to be in bed."
She drew closer, and Freddy felt himself pinned in place. His mouth, dry and failing, struggled to form words, an explanation, an excuse.
"I'm sure you're eager to see the back of us, young man," she continued lightly, "But it's only a few hours more and then home sailing for you..."
Freddy found words, though their sufficiency was debatable, "You don't understand, I..."
"I understand well enough. I've been around long enough, Mr. Teague, and there's not a story I haven't..."
"Salías del templo un día, Llorona..."
Someone was singing. A soft, female voice, faint as if coming from the next room. It came so suddenly that Freddy gave a surprised start, his eyes darting to the nurse, expecting her to be caught as off guard, perhaps creating an opening for him to bolt.
"Cuando al pasar yo te vi..."
The nurse frowned, briefly, her brow knitting. Freddy took a step back, just as the woman shook her head and began to advance. He made up his mind and dashed forward, throwing himself against the opposite wall to brush past the startled nurse.
"Oh, now, really!" the nurse protested. Freddy thought of crying out an apology, but his heart was hammering too quickly. He could think of nothing but the way ahead, the door to the stairs quickly approaching...
The unseen woman was still singing.
"Hermoso huipil llevabas, Llorona/Que la Virgen te creí..."
The voice seemed louder now, though there was no indication where it was coming from. No matter, Freddy told himself, wrenching open the door and moving into the...
Passage.
"Todos me dicen el negro, Llorona/Negro, pero cariñoso..."
He was in the very hallway he'd just left, but way on the other end. There, midway down, was the white-clad woman he'd been running from...
Except she wasn't wearing a nurse's whites.
"Yo soy como el chile verde, Llorona/Picante, pero sabroso..."
The female figure was wearing some flowing white gown of voluminous, diaphanous fabric. A gauzy shawl, like a bridal veil, covered her head. Behind it, Freddy could only made out the vague impression of a face...of bright, almost black eyes, shining like onyx.
The air no longer smelled like ether. Flowers: sweet and sticky, as of dozens of bouquets heaped up upon each other.
A funereal scent.
Freddy felt his blood turn to ice.
"Ay que dolor, que penas, Llorona/Llorona, que penas las mias..."
He turned for the door, threw it open and raced through. He didn't expect to be miraculously deposited in the stairwell, and he wasn't, instead finding himself in a small doctor's lounge. A pathologist was sitting at a table and smoking a pipe, the late edition of The Lakewood Leader open before him. A nurse, petite and pretty...not the same woman who'd been in the hallway (either iteration) stood behind him, one hand on his shoulder.
"Doctor!" Freddy cried, leaning against the table, "Doctor, please, there's a..."
"Terrible business these copper futures," he told the nurse in desultory fashion, "War's gonna make pikers of the lot of us."
"Is that what's got you so wound up?" the nurse rubbed his shoulder.
"That, Francine, would be the wife..."
"Hello?" Freddy moved between them, looking from man to woman, "Hello? Can't you..." he blinked, "I'm right here!"
"De que me sirvio el dolor, tu dime, si ya no me pertenecías..."
"What you need, doctor, is a nice, long rest cure..." said the nurse as the woman in white appeared through the haze of pipe smoke, which had in a moment become as thick as the fog over the lake.
Freddy let out a cry, throwing himself against the door...
...he landed on the desk, the nurse's desk, from the hallway. As unreal as this all felt, that hurt. Wincing, he sat up, looking around...
The nurse! The one who'd tried to stop him. She was two steps away, rifling through a ledger with a pen.
"Hey!" Freddy cried, scrambling off the desk, "Hey, it's...it's me again, don't you..."
She looked up, her eyes widening briefly in recognition...
"La pena y lo que no es pena, Llorona/Todo es pena para mi..."
Just as quickly, she looked back down at the ledger, smiling to herself in a self-deprecating fashion, as if to dismiss a spurious concern. Freddy let out a frustrated scream, turning around and coming face to face with the veiled singer.
"No!"
"Ayer penaba/lloraba por verte, Llorona/Y hoy peno/lloro porque te vi..."
The song clearly was coming from her, though she didn't seem to be singing it. Though her face was obscured behind the veil, there was no indication of movement, no flutter of breath to suggest a mouth moving with words.
To suggest, indeed, breathing.
"Oh God..." he whimpered, a child, frightened, cornered...
Behind him the nurse began warbling her own tune, utterly ignorant of her competition, winding down a few snatched spinniels about our boys and how they won't stop until they're overoverthere.
"You don't want her..." Freddy realized, "Y-you don't want..." the edge of the dusk cut into his back, "No..." tears on his face, a kid's tears, "No! I was going to...I was going to confess. I was going to make it right, I..."
"Ay de mí, Llorona, Llorona/Llorona de azul celeste..."
With a cry, he ran past, hurling himself at the nearest door. He fell through, landing on his back on a hospital bed...
His hospital bed, as good as he'd never left. But this was no dream.
"No dejaré de quererte, Llorona/Y, aunque la vida me cueste..."
She was over him, bright white against the drab darkness, as if lit from within. The song was loud as if being piped directly his ears, and yet somehow it didn't feel harsher than a whisper. His limbs had gone slack...though he knew he must rise, that he had to run, to do whatever he could to get away, he could not will himself to move. A torpid looseness seemed to have descended on him, aided by that strong perfume in the air, by that voice, by...he realized with an animal revulsion...the sinuous curve of the Woman in White's hips as she bent over him, long, pale hands reaching out...
He wanted her, Freddy realized. He wanted her like he had never wanted anything.
She was, after all, what he deserved.
"I tried..." he said meekly, pathetically, surrendering, "I tried...to make it right."
And this time, he heard her song not in her language, but his.
"Although it costs me my life, Llorona/I will not stop loving you."
He lifted her veil himself. He screamed at the moment of release and, for a moment, felt better.
-DIK Smith, Marco, Danilo, Alejandro, Freddy, and the Woman in White
Bert had not realized fully what he had said until he saw that look in his father's eyes--if he hadn't known any better, he may very well have struck the old man. For the first time, it seemed he hurt his father, a feeling which gave him no pleasure as he felt his heart sink to the pit of his stomach.
But his pride quelled any apology from slipping as instead, Bert listened to his father speak in a way he hadn't ever heard him talk. Each word seemed to be dripping with disappointment, with sadness for his son. Bert had few things to live for in his meager life--he liked to think his father was one of them and yet Bert was failing even him. He shied his gaze away, unable to look at his own father as he did his best to hide the tears forming in his eyes. His fists were now clenched in anger, anger that was brewing not just from tonight but years upon years of tension between the two, erupting from the simple inability of them to really understand one another. For all of the old man's talk and "wisdom," he'd never truly get it. He was so set in his ways, so determined to think his understanding of the world was correct, simply because he had lived longer, suffered longer...
And that broke Bert's heart, more than any petty argument of theirs could. Because at the end of it all, he simply wished a better life for all of them; that was the source of his anger, even if he failed to properly shape and direct it. He loved the old man in a way he was too prideful to admit.
Bert had many chances to rectify this mistake as his father slowly left him alone, brewing in his own rage within the candy store. But here, he held his tongue, for Bert was still at the age when pride could easily be mistaken for dignity.
Once he heard his father close his bedroom door upstairs, Bert lashed out all the anger he'd repressed, sweeping a box of taffy off the counter, kicking the display case, punching the wall--every word of righteous anger and disgruntled futility Bert wanted to say to his father's face was communicated by his actions. He'd grown sick of this store, this home, this prison, constantly chiding him to settle and to take punishment, lecturing him that even though he knew he deserved better, that he should never act on it. That he should live in timid fear for the rest of his life as he worked like a dog to make ends meet while his contemporaries looked down on him as if he were some kind of lesser specimen.
Maybe then, Bert would finally have been an American.
Breathing heavily from his outburst, he stormed out of his father's store, needing to get some much-needed fresh air, his conscience now a brewing mess of resentment and regret.
***
Helmut watched as Danillo ran past them. "Danillo, wait! The night is still young! What's the matt.." But his new friend was gone in an instant, leaving him, Alejandro, and most of all, Marco dumbfounded. "Mein Gott..." He muttered to himself as brought his mug to his lips. "...what I would give for one dreary, dull day in this town..."
But unfortunately for Helmut, he was correct: the night was still young, and their troubles were far from over.
-Bert and Helmut
Marco looked balefully back at Helmut, "It's my fault," which came off pretty convincingly, because it usually was, "I'll get him."
Alejandro frowned, "So you can get grabbed by the police too?"
"They're used to me by now," Marco shrugged, "Look, he's upset and..."
And he kissed me, or tried to.
His stomach was still in a knot, trying to reconcile what had just happened. It didn't seem real. Danilo, grinning and snarky and always a bit randy but...for him? The way he'd been panting after Eva certainly hadn't suggested Marco was at all his type. And even if he was into guys, which Marco had to concede some people were, even before the advent of Cher and Judy Garland...why him?
"I can't leave him alone," he said eventually.
Was Danilo having a nervous breakdown? Not that they called them that in this time...women who had nervous breakdowns were 'hysterical', Marco knew, and men were 'interesting specimens' at gothic sanitariums, unless they were rich, in which case they were 'eccentric' and part of a royal family.
Danilo was both poor and a Mexican, so it would be the operating table for him.
Al sighed wearily, grabbing his hat from the hook behind the bar and plopping it on, "What did he ever do to have such faithful friends?" he nodded to the door, "Ve ahora. I will follow, once I've locked up."
Marco, mildly surprised at Al's gallantry, nodded in understanding, and headed toward the door. He turned questioningly at Helmut, "Sorry about that. He's just..." he frowned, thinking of that dark, despairing, hungry look in those baleful, for once unguarded eyes.
"He's going through some stuff. I don't know what, but I do know how that can get if there's no one handy to pull you out at the other side."
-Marco and Alejandro
"I'll go as well," Helmut hopped off the stool and brushed himself off. "Better we catch him than the authorities. Then, I fear, he will have his fair share of 'stuff' to endure." Patting Marco on the back, he encouraged his comrade, "Let's go!"
***
Nate usually didn't have to fight this hard to get extra time for a break from one of his shifts at the prison. The other guards gave him trouble about being his father's son and getting special treatment but they didn't dare say that to his face because deep down, they knew he was the best among them when it came to keeping that riff-raff in check.
Besides, they couldn't argue that now, not since his father had been treating him so coldly since their little altercation over Freddy's hospital bed. His face still smarted from when the old man struck him, but he wouldn't ever give the bastard the satisfaction of letting him now. He'd just do what they usually did after fights like that: bury it and let it rest for a week or so until tempers had safely cooled. In the past, it was Dougie who was the reliable mediator between the two of them but since he'd left, these fights had occurred more and more often. And Nate would be willing to go round after round if not for Freddy's sake. The poor boy was always caught in the middle and Nate hated subjecting him to those arguments.
Indeed, if there were anyone Nate truly cared for in this world, now that his sainted mother had been gone for so long, it was Freddy. He loved Dougie, too, but Nate knew he could take care of himself. At least he told himself so in the hopes that he would come back from the front in one piece. Freddy, on the other hand, was still a child in a lot of ways and that oaf they call a father could hardly be seen as a real parent. His blood had grown cold the minute he'd lost his wife; Nate wondered if the old man could ever really love again.
It was hard to think he could, considering how distant he was regarding all this. Always the stern and stoic patriarch, never one to stoop to being "vulnerable" or "weak." As recently as when Nate approached him asking for this break, the man was short with words, insisting that he not lose concentration by mooring himself down with this emotional piffle. He had a job to do; Teague men always did their jobs. Nate had insisted that family came first before all of that, challenging his father to fire him and see how his prison fared then. Eventually, the old man caved; he looked and sounded tired, nursing a glass of whiskey. An odd detail, considering he always scolded his men for drinking on the job. Maybe the strain of what had happened with Freddy was finally bearing down on him; what else could have been on his mind?
Whatever it was didn't matter to Nate in the end; the old fool could burn for all he cared. All that mattered now was that he was going to be with his brother once again, sharing all manner of advice and laughs. It was in these moments when Nate truly felt happy. Because once all was said and done, what else do you have in this cruel and violent world besides family? Money, sex, power--those were fleeting escapes. Blood outlasted them all.
Entering the hospital, Nate was surprised to see such commotion at this hour of the night. Doctors and nurses all running about, patients peering from their curtains to get a peek of the action, confused visitors such as himself trying to navigate the chaos--something had happened. Again. Had this town become cursed over night, another tragedy befalling it so soon after the factory fire?
"Excuse me," he muttered, pushing his way past people as he fought against a tide of anxious faces. Nate only needed to step just a bit further to see that all of this action that was brewing was centered around this crowd that had amassed just ahead. His curiosity getting the best of him, Nate waded through these people as well, hearing frantic murmurs like, "How did this happen?", "What should we do?", and "How awful..."
Finally, Nate reached the center of the crowd. He immediately wished he hadn't.
Freddy's cold, lifeless eyes stared back at him, his scrawny body now a sickly grey complexion. His mouth was slightly agape, his whole body growing limp. There were bloodstains around the collar of his shirt and some kind of wound on his neck, presumably where...where...
Nate couldn't bring himself to even think it as he still tried to reckon with the sight before him. His little brother, a kid, a goddamned kid...now still and cold and fallow. He barely even looked like Freddy. For a moment, Nate told himself that maybe it wasn't Freddy. Just some empty husk, dropped on its way to the morgue.
But Nate knew better. And he hated himself for it.
"'How' is a question for the constable." A doctor was kneeling beside Freddy; Nate hadn't noticed him until now. "Just clean this up and get everybody back to..." He looked up to find Nate standing there, frozen. The pieces seemed to click for the doctor; for its all faults, Lakewood was a small town. People knew one another and they knew that Freddy was Nate's brother. And if they didn't, the shocked look in his eyes, locked with Freddy's, would be enough to tell you who he was.
Clearing his throat, the doctor rose to his feet and reached his hand out to console Nate. "Son, I..."
Without a word, Nate pushed him aside, slowly stepping forward and kneeling down beside his brother. The entire place had grown dead quiet, or so Nate thought. He couldn't hear anything, couldn't feel anything--he was barely even there. Nate was floating through the motions, barely one with his own self.
Nobody dared to approach him as the doctor respectfully stepped away and all those around him chose to silently look on, wishing they could look away but finding they couldn't.
Eventually, Nate tried to grab Freddy's hand but immediately recoiled at the cold, cold touch. For whatever reason, it was that shiver, running through his fingertips, up his arm and down his spine, that brought Nate back. It was that which made this real.
"Freddy..." He spoke in a ghost of his voice, a tear now streaming down his cheek. "Freddy, I..." Nate fought back the urge to cry, fearing he'd be weak in a moment when he needed to be strong for himself, for his brother.
And yet for all his strength, what good did it do Freddy?
Nate reached out to touch his brother again, this time braving the touch as he took Freddy up in his arms and hugged him close, cradling him back and forth the way he did when Freddy felt frightened alone as a young child. The same way Nate's own mother cradled him...
"It's OK..." Nate found himself whispering to Freddy, a false consolation that he wished could be made true. "It's OK, I...I'm here now, Freddy. I'm here..." A quiet sob escaped him as he placed a quick kiss on his brother's cheek before cradling him more, repeating again and again, "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry..."
For a while, Nate just sat there Freddy, holding him for as long as he could, before the doctor would have to separate them. Before Nate would have to go home and tell his father that they were now just a measly family of two. Before he'd have to grow the stomach to see his brother, once so full of life and joy, lying dead in a casket, gone too soon...
"Son..." Nate felt the doctor's hand on his shoulder; he didn't need to hear anymore. It was time.
Setting Freddy gently down on the floor, Nate slowly got to his feet, staggering slightly as he did so as he still felt lightheaded and groggy from the shock of it all. What ultimately brough back was a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye...a flash of red. On his own hand.
From Freddy's neck.
Finally, Nate found the will to finish the thought that made this all real. Freddy was dead.
Worse yet, he'd been killed. Someone did this to him. Someone took his brother away. Someone so cruel, so evil, so full of hatred...
Suddenly, it all became clear to Nate, his eyes widening a couple of doctors picked up Freddy and carried him away. He turned on his heel and pushed back through the crowd. He heard some nurses insist he sit down and get some rest, offering their own condolences.
But Nate wouldn't be stopped as he stormed out of the hospital, his sorrow rapidly supplanted with a surge of red hot anger that boiled his blood until he could only thing one thing and one thing only.
They'll pay for this.
-Helmut and Nate
The night air seemed charged, or maybe Marco was just projecting. In books, you sometimes read stuff like that, about the air being "charged", like with electricity. Probably, it was supposed to mean "tense", but sometimes it seemed the writer meant "sad" or "horny".
Marco guessed tonight it was all three.
He couldn't stop thinking about it. Not in a sexual way, not that it would be bad if it was in a sexual way, but...the suddenness of it, and the sadness, and the sense that there was a whole cocktail of thoughts and fears, wants and shames wrapped up in such a small gesture...
He felt so small, so dwarfed by the ramshackle, soot-stained houses on the street, by the flickering gas lamps standing sentinel on streets that would change in every way but where they were going in the next 100 years.
The world was such a big, old place. 100 years wasn't very long at all, in the grand scheme of things. Of course people hadn't changed very much. They may dress differently and speak differently and spend their money on different things, but they were all still going the same way.
You can purify the air all you want, but the things breathing it are gonna keep belching out their own carbon impurities: their wants and needs and shames and secrets. It ought to be reassuring...
He felt sick.
"Danilo!" Marco called, cupping one hand around his mouth as the name rebounded up and down the street, "Yo! Dan..."
"Cuidado." Alejandro cautioned, laying a light hand on his arm, "Not too loud, yes?"
"Right, yeah, the curfew," Marco said distractedly, "But if we don't call for him..."
"You cannot drag a man to his senses. Not that man, anyway."
Marco thought of the sad fondness in Danilo's voice: "You're really something, Silva."
"He needs help."
"He does at that," Al chuckled darkly, "I'd point him to the church if there was still a priest in it. This life puts enough yokes around our necks. You are a good man to want to take on more, but in the end, you only weigh yourself down."
"You ever consider he's such a dick because he's lonely?"
"Maybe he is lonely because he is a dick."
Marco gave Al a double take, surprised he'd understood the English euphemism, which he wasn't sure existed yet. Bilingual people had to be good at reading context into things. Another of those little superpowers nobody ever paid any mind to but were relieved to see in the wild anyway.
"Sometimes, Al, all you need in your life is one person who doesn't give up on you. No matter how hard you push and scream and make a stink about it...no matter how hard you make it for them...someone who believes in you and doesn't quit until you're back on your feet."
"It sounds like an ugly deal."
"I guess it is."
"You do not owe Danilo all this kindness."
"Maybe not," Marco hesitated, "But I do owe it. Might as well pay it off wherever I can, right?"
-Marco and Alejandro
"Take it from my experience," Helmut advised the both of them as they continued to look for Danilo. "Some men are too prideful to see the sense of accepting help, even if they have good intentions. In that way, Bert and Danilo have more in common than they'd like to admit." He paused, an idea came to him from the darkness. "Do you think we should look for him as well? It can't hurt to have an extra pair of eyes scouring the streets, no?"
***
It was an ordinary day at Devlin's, a humble pub filled with the surliest and drunkest of Lakewood's Irish community. In addition to the usual ill-thought wagers and fish stories that permeated within these walls, the whole place was rustling with talk of the latest tragedy that had struck their town, sharing theories as to who in the end was responsible. More often than not, the culprit was agreed to be the Krauts or those swarthy Mexicans, eventually with some consensus being met that in the end, it was all of the above. Their town was in dire straits and these patriots were ready to take up arms to protect the town they loved, if not the country they loved, from these external threats that infiltrated their community and sought to destroy it from within.
The bar door slammed open with a thunderous CRASH!, causing the entire bar to fall silent. If it were any other lay about or loon, these patrons would have looked the other way.
But alas...it was Nate Teague, looking as distraught as these locals had ever seen him.
And yet there was a look in his eyes that showed a drive and desire among anything else. An urgency that things had to get done fast and he couldn't do them alone.
In Nate Teague's eyes, there was a cause to fight for. A cause these men implicitly understood.
And so they listened to the young man's tale. They didn't need much convincing beyond that.
***
Soon enough, Nate was leading a battalion of Irishmen behind him, with his various lackey's knocking on the doors of friends and neighbors, rallying them to their cause. The crowd grew and grew as Nate's pace became faster and faster, his anger beginning to bubble out from underneath his stoic composure. He needn't look over his shoulder to see if he was alone; he knew they would follow.
And even if he did take this fight on by his lonesome, Nate was willing to do so. He didn't care what became of him in all of this, so long as he didn't go down fighting.
Because Teagues did not give up. They were fighting men and by God, was Nate ready for a fight.
As the group of surly brawlers ammassed behind Nate, it became clear that these men were all Teagues tonight.
-Helmut and Nate