HOLD (16 page)

CREED

I didn’t really give a shit what kind of grudge that idiot at the station desk was nursing.  If she figured she could flare some nostrils and glare me down then she figured wrong.  Probably one of my blood relations had wronged her in some petty fashion and the name Gentry had struck a sour note.  But I’d never seen her before and didn’t feel like dealing with anyone’s historical anger when I was still trying to process a dead mother. 

“Big C,” called Chase from two seats down.  He waved to me over Cord’s head.

Cord, meanwhile, was slumped in his chair and looking grim. 

But Chase was watching me with a mother hen kind of worry.  What did he think I was going to do?  Go ape shit in the Emblem police station?  Head out on a blood hunt to sniff out Benton?  I wasn’t the kind of volatile guy I used to be.  I had a wife and a kid at home and they were my priorities now.   This was just a sad obligation.  We would fulfill it and then we would go. 

“You got a restroom?” I asked the scowling wonder, who was still glowering at us from behind the desk. 

“Public restroom is down the hall, first right.”

Cord blinked at me when I stood up.  He must have been so lost in his head that he hadn’t heard the conversation at all.  “Where you going?”

“Nature calls.” 

“Oh.” 

I nudged him with my foot.  “You hanging in there?”

He nodded.  “Yup.” 

Chase and I exchanged a look and Chase reached over to pat Cord on the shoulder.  Cord was usually the one who kept the balance.  But getting that phone call in the middle of the night seemed to have shaken him up the most.  I could tell from the second he stepped into my truck this morning that he wasn’t okay.  If it was guilt he was feeling then he should know better than that.  After all, a woman who would let her own children suffer in squalor and be abused for the sake of a terrible man and her own addictions couldn’t be redeemed.   If it was rage at Benton, well, there was really no good place to put that either. 

Not that I would mind getting my hands on him for ten minutes. 

After taking a quick leak and washing my hands I lingered in front of the dirty bathroom mirror for a minute.  If I allowed it, my senses could reproduce the stink of the trailer and the cold sweat of fear that broke out on my neck whenever I heard my father’s voice.  There was a time when I used to drink so hard I’d black out.  I had reasons.  Bad reasons, but still reasons.  I’d think of him and I’d have murder in my head and my heart.  Drinking was the only way to dull the rage, although I’d hear from my brothers the next day how I’d gone out of my head, muttering and cussing until I vomited the pain out and lapsed into darkness. 

The harsh fluorescent lighting glinted off my wedding ring and I balled my hand into a fist, holding it over my heart.  The past was the past.  It couldn’t be rewritten.  And some things couldn’t be forgiven.  But I had a life with a lot of love in it.  And as soon as we were done here we’d go home and move on.  We’d made it.  We’d won. 

I switched the light off on my way out of the bathroom.  I could see Chase and Cord straight down the hall.  They were standing, talking quietly to that goofball cop everyone called Gaps.   He acknowledged me with a nod as I joined the group. 

“Hey Creed,” he said, offering his hand for a shake.  “Was just telling your brothers I was damn sorry to make that call this morning.” 

He had a clammy grip.  I released his hand and tried not to wipe my palm on my jeans. 

“It was inevitable,” I said. 

Gaps looked sad.  “Damn shame nonetheless.”  He glanced around and shifted his weight. “He’s still back there you know.  Usually he screams bloody murder to be let out but all night he’s just been sitting in a cell staring at the floor.  Not crying or nothing.  Just quiet.  We told him he was free to go but he’s still just sitting there.  I know you guys don’t see your folks but do you want to-“

“FUCK NO!”  Cord shouted and everyone in the station stopped to stare.  I would have said it if he didn’t but I was surprised at his vehemence.  Cord didn’t lose it too often. 

Chase put a hand on Cord’s shoulder.  “Think we’ll pass on the family reunion, Officer.” 

Gaps looked at us each in turn with sympathy in his eyes.  He was an all right guy.  At least that’s what Deck had always said and I trusted Deck’s judgment as much as I trusted my own. 

“Coroner finished with the autopsy,” he said.  “Official results won’t be in for a while but I had an off-the-record chat with her and she said it was pretty cut and dry.  There was no fresh physical trauma.  Maggie passed out on her back and there was no one around to help when she started choking.” 

I didn’t have anything to say about that.  Neither did my brothers.  We just stood there and let the image sink in. 

Gaps stepped closer to us.  “Do you want to see her?” he asked quietly.  “I can only let you in there for a few minutes but you boys deserve the chance to say goodbye.” 

The front desk demon had apparently been listening to the entire exchange.  “That’s against protocol,” she bleated.  “You can’t let them in to see the body without written permission from-“

“Shut up,” Gaps interrupted with a roll of his eyes.  “I mean it, Darlene, or else there might be a few reasons to probe a little harder into the case of the vanishing office supplies.” 

Darlene quieted down although I could practically see the steam rising from her curly hair. 

“What do you say?” Gaps asked. 

“Yeah,” I answered, looking at the boys.  “After all, we did come down here to say goodbye, right?”

“We did,” Chase agreed, squeezing Cord’s shoulder.  “Right?”

Cord closed his eyes.  “Right.” 

We followed Gaps outside.  All the municipal buildings were in the same cluster on Main Street.  He led us into a modest structure a few dozen yards away.  It didn’t have a sign on it other than a simple Town of Emblem plaque over the door. I figured that inside must be where they kept bodies that were in need of some official business before they could be laid to rest. 

Laid to rest. 

Bullshit phrase if ever there was one. 

Gaps greeted a black-haired woman who looked like she might not have seen the sunlight for at least three years.  He talked to her quietly and she looked over at us. 

“Come with me,” she said with a wave of her pale hand.  As she tiptoed down a lime green corridor I started getting kind of a horror movie vibe.  In a way it actually
was
a horror movie.  Marching off to bid farewell to your mother’s dead body was certainly horrible. 

The woman reached a closed door.  “Wait here,” she ordered, and then disappeared inside, closing the door behind her. 

Cord leaned against the wall, looking more or less as green as the floor tile.  Chase crossed his arms and stared at the ground.   They looked so lost, so much like the little boys they’d once been.  I wondered if I did too. 

A few minutes ticked past before the door opened again and a hushed voice told us we could enter.  Neither of my brothers moved so I went inside first, knowing they would follow.  An acrid chemical smell made me think of high school biology.  I wrinkled my nose involuntarily and figured that smell would linger until I took a shower.  In the center of the room were three long tables but only one was occupied.  I would have guessed that a room like this would ordinarily be severely lit by high wattage fluorescence but instead the lighting was muted, shadowy.  I wondered if the black-haired woman had done that on purpose, to spare us a clear look at what was lying on the nearest table.  Just as she’d probably been the one to neatly tuck a gray blanket around Maggie Gentry’s shoulders and smooth her hair around her sunken face. 

I’ve heard all kinds of things said about the sight of dead bodies. How they look peaceful, serene, simply sleeping.  My mother just looked like a shell.  The tortured person who’d live inside there for so long was gone and what was left behind was what we were looking at.  I heard Chase suck in a breath and exhale shakily.  Cord stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared. 

“You can have a few moments alone with her,” said the black-haired woman and there was kindness in her voice.  Whatever her role was in all this - coroner, body sitter, whatever - she was definitely someone who was used to the sight of death.  She left us alone silently and all I could hear was the sound of my brothers breathing until Chase broke the silence. 

“There were times,” he said, “when we were kids that I would wake up in the middle of the night and be sure that she was dead.   I was afraid to go check and not just because Benton might wake up and thrash me.  I’d just lie there on my mattress and watch sunrise approach, praying to whoever lived beyond the sky to keep her here a while longer.  For a time I was convinced that if I stopped thinking that silent prayer then she wouldn’t be alive in the morning.”

He winced and swallowed. 

“You guys remember that time he punched her in the stomach and she fell into the television stand, opening up a four inch gash in her head?  We were only about nine or ten but Creed, you went at Benton like a tiger, calling him a filthy fucker and beating on him with all that you had.  You caught him off guard and he lost his footing, landing smack on his ass and whacking the back of his head on the wall.  He just kind of sprawled there all stunned and you were getting ready to kick him in the gut when Mom started screaming.  She crawled across the floor, full of blood and bruises, and hurled her body across his so you couldn’t kick him.  And the most terrible thing about that memory was the look on your face.  Because in spite of everything he’d ever done to her, and to us, he was still what she loved the most.  I thought you would cry Creedence, but you didn’t.  You ran out the door and straight into the desert.  We chased you but couldn’t catch up for nearly an hour.” 

“I don’t remember that,” I frowned. 

I didn’t.  There were a thousand rotten memories to choose from and none of them stood out too much against the others at the moment. 

“It happened,” Cord confirmed. 

“I’m sure it did.” 

Chase had gotten closer to the body.  He wasn’t crying but he seemed pretty damn close. 

“I wish you’d loved us the way we loved you,” he said and the raw hurt of that honesty almost brought me to my knees.   Cord let out a small, agonized sound and turned away.  I stared at the floor.  If the stories were true and hell possessed infinite rooms then surely this was one of them. 

Chase tucked the blanket closer to the body of Maggie Gentry.  Her papery skin had already begun to look strange.  I tried to think back to the last thing she’d ever said to me but then decided I didn’t really didn’t want to remember it after all.  It wouldn’t have been anything nice. 

“Goodbye,” Chase whispered and then backed away.  I watched him breathe deeply and close his eyes.  When he opened them again they were clear and calm. 

Cord was the one who’d wanted to come here and say goodbye but in the end he couldn’t seem to find the words.  He touched her shoulder and then recoiled. 

“You okay?” I asked him, and then mentally kicked myself for asking such a dickhead question. 

Cord nodded but he was leaning his palms against the far wall with his head down, breathing hard like he was trying not to be sick.  I was starting to worry about him.  Our mother had been lost to us for many years.  We knew it.   And Cord has always been the most rational of us, the one who would talk me and Chase out of shit like diving into a raging canal during a flash flood as we tried to shove each other aside to prove who was the toughest.  But I guess there was no way to tell how you’ll react to heartache until it happens.  

I didn’t feel the need to get any closer to her.  She wasn’t in there anymore anyway and if there was something to theories about souls hanging around for awhile, watching the world pass by, then she could still hear me just as well from across the damn room.  

“We’re your sons,” I said, even though I’d stopped thinking of myself as anyone’s son a long time ago.  “You don’t even fucking know us and you never did.  But we’re alive because of you.  We survived in spite of you.  And now we’re fine without you.”

I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.  It hung in the air, as suffocating as the harsh odor of the room, a smell that tried to mask death and was only halfway successful.   I’d already crossed the room and had my hand on the doorknob before I turned around. 

“I hope if there is such a thing as peace wherever you are that you were finally able to find it.” 

I opened the door and waited while Chase nudged Cord away from the wall. 

Gaps and the black-haired woman were waiting at a polite distance down the hall. 

Cord had gotten ahold of himself and shook the woman’s hand. 

“Thank you for that,” he said and the woman gave him a sympathetic smile before returning to the room of the dead. 

Chase looked at Gaps.  “You know if any arrangements have been made?”

Gaps shook his head.  “Benton’s been sitting in that cell and as far as I know it hasn’t even been brought up yet.”  He paused.  “I’d imagine they didn’t make plans for this so if he doesn’t come forward I can make some calls.  You have a problem with cremation?”