Daniel (7 page)

Chapter
7

Benny waited near the house. He knew
that she’d called him to tell him Mr. Hunter was coming, but he still had no
desire to be caught in the house again if someone came in. The last time with
his real mom had been bad enough. The gate was open for him, and all he needed
now was the password to leave. He hoped she was all right.

He knew she’d been hurt. The first night
it had happened he heard her cry out. But when he’d gone to her to see if he
could help she’d told him she was fine. He knew that she wasn’t, but she kept
telling him to go inside and she’d be in soon. Then this morning he’d had a
hard time waking her up. He thought she’d been dead until she looked up at him
with her eyes all glassy looking.

His real mom had done drugs. He wasn’t
stupid to think that she hadn’t. He knew what a person looked like when they
were full of something bad. His aunt didn’t look like that. She looked like she
hurt. And when she moved, she looked like it hurt her really bad. He tensed up when
he heard a car pull into the circle driveway.

He recognized Mr. Hunter, but he didn’t
know the woman with him. She was old, and Benny wondered if it was his
girlfriend. Then Mr. Hunter called her “Mom” and told her to wait there while
he went to the house. Before he could get to the porch, Benny stepped out from
behind the garage.

“You startled me.” He smiled at him, but
Benny wasn’t ready to trust just yet. “Your mom sent me to get you. They took
her to the hospital, and she’s going to be all right. But she didn’t want you
to be left here to worry.”

“I wouldn’t. She will come home to me.” At
least he hoped she would. He loved her, but he still remembered what it was
like when his real mom would leave him for days, sometimes weeks at a time to
go to that man.

Mr. Hunter nodded. “Well, come on. I’m
taking you to my house. And my mom is going to go with us. I don’t know a great
deal about kids, and I know your mom keeps you safe.”

“No.” Benny wasn’t sure how this was
supposed to work, as he’d never had to use the code word before, but he knew
that he couldn’t ask him for it. That was something she’d drilled in his head
for hours one day. “I’ll be all right here.”

The man took a step toward him, and
Benny clutched his pack back tighter to him. If the man wanted to, Benny knew
he could bring him down. He just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

“I’m sorry. I forgot. Sierra. I’m
supposed to tell you sierra.” He put out his hands palms up and wide apart.
“Will you come with me now?”

Benny felt the tension and terror roll
off him. He was nearly dizzy with relief. Before he could take a step toward
him, the woman came from behind Mr. Hunter. He looked at her, then back at Mr.
Hunter.

“This is my mom. Annemarie Hunter. Mom,
this is Benton Harlequin, O’Reilly’s son.” He moved slowly toward him and
reached for the bag at his feet, not touching the one Benny had in his arms. “Come
on, Benny. I’ll take you to my house. Then we’ll see if we can get some
information on your mom.”

He got into the little car. The back of
it was barely big enough for him to fit in with his backpack, but he sat
sideways and buckled. The man and the woman sat in the front, and both of them
buckled, too. Mr. Hunter turned around to back up and winked at him.

“I don’t know how to cook kid stuff, so
we’ll either order out or see what I can throw together from the freezer,
okay?” Benny nodded.

“I can cook. Mom said all men should
cook in case the woman they meet can’t. She can cook pretty good, but I make
better spaghetti sauce.” He didn’t know why he said that and looked away before
continuing. “And she don’t like to be called O’Reilly. It’s just Reilly.”

“She
doesn’t
like to be called
O’Reilly. And I know. That’s why I do it.” He stopped at the end of the drive
and looked at Benny. “Will the gate lock up, or do I have to do something to
engage it?”

“I set it on fry when we leave.” He
flushed. “The power is on. And she does that, too. Corrects me. Can’t a man
have any peace from learning something?”

The older woman laughed, and Benny
thought it the nicest sound he’d ever heard. His aunt laughed with him all the
time, but this woman laughed without him making a joke. Not that Reilly did,
but the kids at school sometimes did when he got better grades than them. He
looked out the window and asked about his aunt.

“Mr. Hunter, is she going to die?” He
didn’t look at the man until he was quiet for so long. He was looking at him in
the mirror in front of him. “Is she?”

“No. She has a bad infection from the
burn on her back. Did you know she’d done that?” Benny nodded and waited for
him to yell at him, but he didn’t. “I thought so. It must have been hard for
her to hide it from you so you’d not worry. But in answer to your question,
she’s not going to die. She’s sick, but with the proper care, which I will promise
she’ll get even if she doesn’t think she needs it, she’ll be up to her old
grumpy self in no time. And, Benny, I’d very much like it if you called me
Daniel. Mr. Hunter is my brother. He’s the old one.”

Benny didn’t understand the man’s
laughter when his mom hit him. It wasn’t hard, Benny supposed, but still when
his mom had hit him she’d been a lot meaner. He leaned back in his seat and thought
about where he was going.

He didn’t know this man or his family,
but he didn’t make him feel nervous. There was something very…calming about the
man. The woman, too, if Benny thought about it. Mr. Hunter, or Daniel, seemed
like a nice guy, but Benny was aware that people wore all kind of costumes and
what sort they pulled out was how he reacted to them. Benny was waiting to see
how this man was dressed before he let his guard down too much.

The house they pulled in front of was
huge. When he’d lived in Florida with his mom, they’d lived in this big
building, too, but this was very different. This one had one person living in
it, while the other place had about a million. And he’d bet his last allowance
money that there wasn’t a rat within a hundred miles of this place.

This one had a nice garden in the front.
Flowers were everywhere, and Benny figured that he’d make a mint off this guy
just watering them all. The front of the house was big, too, with four big
columns holding up the top of a porch-like thing. The windows gleamed in the
sun, and he wondered how many people lived here with him. When they pulled into
the garage, Benny knew it had to be at least six if the number of cars and
motorcycles had any bearing on it. He said as much to the man.

“No. I like cars and collect them. The
bike I’ve had since high school and couldn’t part with it when I started making
money. It depends on where I’m going and what I plan to do when I get there on
what I take. But the bike is for special occasions.”

“My mom has just the one car. She said
she could get a new one, but that’s just a waste of money if you can only drive
one at a time.” He flushed when the woman laughed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
that you waste your money, sir.”

He ruffed up his hair and told him not
to worry. “I’m the butt of someone’s joke all the time. My brothers all sold
their fun cars when they got married. So since I never plan to marry, I can
keep my toys for as long as I want.”

Benny was shown to a room and then was
told where Daniel slept. “If you need anything, I’m right there.” Then he told
him that it was just the two of them in the house if you didn’t count his
friend and cook, Roger.

Roger was a huge man, Benny found out
later, and he thought the man was sweet on Mrs. Hunter. He got bright red every
time he spoke to her, and stammered all over his words whenever he spoke to
her. Benny thought it was stupid to like girls. They smelled pretty sometimes,
but so not worth the effort. He decided that Daniel had the right idea: don’t
ever get married and you would never have to sell your stuff.

He had a dinner of grilled cheese and a
bowl of tomato soup. Roger said that no self-respecting person ate soup from a
can when Benny had asked what brand it was. He had no idea what that had meant,
and didn’t ask again. He figured the guy was nuts or very possessive of his
food names. Benny told him it was the best he’d ever eaten. And it was.

“Roger is a cordon bleu chef. He works
for me until something better comes along.” Daniel sat next to Benny and leaned
toward him as he finished speaking. “He’s been telling me that for years, and
yet he’s still here.”

This was a weird house, Benny concluded
later when Daniel and Roger argued over the best kind of cheese to make a
sandwich with and how to slice the bread when making one. Benny and Reilly
simply pulled the bread out of the bag and used it. They didn’t care much how
it was sliced so long as it was. He told them that when asked his opinion.

“Heathens,” Roger said. “I will fatten
your girlfriend up when she comes to stay with us in a few days. That will stop
this baggage bread nastiness.”

“Mom is your girlfriend?” Soup halfway
to his mouth sloshed on the table. “I don’t think…she doesn’t need a boyfriend.
I take care of her fine when she lets me. And you can’t be her boyfriend,” he
suddenly realized. “You don’t come over and knock her around when she makes you
mad.”

Benny knew he’d made a big mistake the
moment he’d realized what he’d said. He looked around at the silent people and
started to stand. He’d leave before he let this guy hit him, too.

“Sit, Benny. No one here is going to
knock anyone around. And your…mom isn’t my girlfriend. She can barely stand me
enough to let me near her, much less…besides, I think your mom can kick my
a…butt if I made her mad enough.”

Benny sat, but he was no longer hungry.
He looked at the phone on the wall and wondered if he could call her. Mrs.
Hunter came into the room then and sat across from him.

“I just spoke with your mom’s doctor,
and they said she is doing fine but will be out of it until tomorrow afternoon.
He is concerned about how bad the burn is, but says that other than a few small
scars she’ll be fine. Do you know how she did it?”

“She was building that kiln and had to
burn off some of the wiring that she didn’t need. She said that she’d gotten it
hotter than she meant to, and when she tripped over some of the kiln bricks,
she’d fallen against the hot wall of other bricks. She gets burned all the time,
but it’s always little stuff.” Benny hugged his pack to his side. “She said if
she ever gets hurt enough to be in the hospital that I didn’t have to come see
her. She knows I hate hospitals.”

But he found he wanted to see her, to
make sure she was all right and she wasn’t hurt like his mom had been. He
looked at the phone again, and then Daniel spoke up.

“I’ll go and see her tomorrow and send
you a picture of her from her bed. If she’s awake, you can speak to her, and
she’ll tell you she’ll be fine herself.” Benny nodded and yawned. “Why don’t we
get you up to your room and to bed? It’s been a long day, and I’m sort of
tuckered out myself.”

Mrs. Hunter left before he went upstairs,
while Roger went to his rooms. Daniel stood at the bottom of the stairs and
watched the cook go up. Benny turned to look at Daniel one more time and came
to a hasty decision.

“You know, don’t you? That she’s not my
mom.” It wasn’t a question, but Daniel nodded anyway. “Then why are you taking
me in like this? Do you want to get into her pants like that man who hurt her
did by trying to be nice to me?”

Daniel didn’t come up the stairs and hit
him like he expected him to, but he did lean against the handrail. “That’s very
crude, and you know it. What would O’Reilly think if she heard you speak like
that? Or better yet, what should I think if you’ll speak to me so
disrespectfully?”

Benny wanted to cry. He’d meant to make
the man mad at him, but now he wasn’t sure why. He dropped his head and snapped
it back up when Daniel told him to look at him when he was being spoken to.

“I don’t want to be here.” That wasn’t
quite right, so he tried again. “I saw what he did to her. My real mom. I saw
how he…he beat her with a bat before he let those men have her like an animal. Then
they all got to punch on her while she was screaming.”

Daniel was up the stairs in a second and
pulled Benny into his arms. “I’m so sorry, Benny. I didn’t know you’d been
witness to that. What did your aunt say when you told her?”

“I didn’t. I’ve not told her anything.”
He looked up at the man and scrubbed at his tears. “You won’t, either. I can’t
let that man have what he wants. If I do, there ain’t nothing left for me to
keep him away. If he knows what I have, he’ll let me go if I give it back to
him, right?”

Daniel didn’t answer, and Benny was sure
it was because he was trying to figure out how to get rid of him before that
man came here. He pulled away and felt as if someone had taken a warm blanket
from his heart.

“I’ll go back to the house now, please. There
are plenty enough boxes of stuff there for me to eat until she comes back.”

“You’re not going anywhere. Christ. You
and your aunt are the most…why do you think I want you to go? Because I don’t. But
as I’ve told your aunt, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on. Who
is this bastard, and why is he threatening O’Reilly?”