In The Falling Light (2 page)

“Did they call the sheriff, Daddy?”

Leo shook his head. “Ain’t you been
listening? I told you we take care of our own. We sure don’t hand
family over to the law, or ship them off to a pack of doctors. Earl
was family, and there’s nothing more important than that. My daddy,
he was a good man, and he did what he did to protect mama and me.”
He crushed out his smoke. In a softer voice he said, “Daddy didn’t
have no choice.”

Neither one spoke for a while, then Matthew
asked in a small voice, “Did grand-daddy…kill Uncle Earl?”

Leo didn’t answer, just went back to
squinting at the sky. “Daddy didn’t have no choice,” he repeated,
and Matthew couldn’t tell if he was speaking to the past or trying
to convince himself.

“At the end of it, Earl was scared of water.
Couldn’t drink it, throat closed right up, and near pitched a fit
any time daddy tried to give him some. Thirsty as he was, he
wouldn’t touch a drop.”

“Hydrophobia,” said Matthew. “We learned it
in school.”

Leo turned and grinned, ruffled his son’s
hair. “You’re a smart boy.” Then he tipped his face back to the sky
and closed his eyes. “No, daddy didn’t kill Uncle Earl. Killing a
man goes against God. What daddy did was chain old Earl by the neck
to this tree right here, the one you’re leaning on. Earl used to
sit on this very rock like we are now, raving mad and yanking on
his chain and screeching like a cat in heat. I guess daddy never
figured what it was doing to Earl, being so close to the creek and
all.”

The stream rippled past within arm’s length
of the tree, sunlight dropping through the leaves to dapple the
water.

“Daddy chained him to this tree so he
couldn’t hurt no one. Then he let the rabies run its course.” He
opened his eyes, and tears began trailing down his weathered
cheeks. “Earl lasted three days, and I don’t think he was quiet
once during that time. Screamed until he could only make little
raspy noises, thrashed about and rolled on the ground, tore his
hair out of his own head. Wouldn’t go near the creek, though. And
the unholy things that came out of his mouth, sweet Jesus. I had
nightmares for years. Sometimes I still wake up in the house and
think I hear him back here, crying and cursing and begging and
wishing all manner of hate and death on my daddy. He would have
torn us all apart with his hands and teeth if daddy hadn’t been
such a strong man, hadn’t made that hard decision.”

Leo sighed. “And daddy stayed with him
through it all.” He pointed to an old stump fifteen feet away. “Sat
right there keeping watch, keeping Earl company, talking when the
man would listen. You don’t walk out on family, Matthew, not
ever.”

“What…what happened to Uncle Earl?”

“One morning he was quiet, so I walked out
here, thinking he must’ve gotten better. Daddy was sitting on the
stump, crying. The only time I ever saw him cry. Uncle Earl was
dead.”

Matthew looked at his father, anxious. “He
died from the rabies?”

Leo shrugged. “In a way, I guess. Uncle Earl
bashed his own head apart on this rock.” He set a palm down on the
grainy surface. Matthew’s eyes went to his father’s hand, then back
to his face.

“Madness can make a person do near anything,
son. That’s what the rabies is, madness. So now you understand,
don’t you?”

Matthew started to cry. “Daddy, doctors can
fix rabies.”

Leo shook his head. “Not when it’s so far
along. I’m sorry.”

Matthew jerked at the chain that was
padlocked around his neck, the same chain that then encircled the
tree and was secured with another padlock. He tried to grip the
collar of links, but it was so tight his fingers could barely get
between flesh and steel. He pulled at the chain where it met the
tree, but it held firm. “But Daddy,” he wept, “I’m not bit.”

Leo stood and moved a few feet away,
watching his son yank uselessly at the chain. He rubbed his hands
at the tears which wouldn’t quit, the skunk bite on the back of one
rough hand a pink, infected bloom. “The rabies is making you crazy,
Matthew, just like Earl. I’m so sorry, son, it’s the only way to
keep you from hurting anyone.”

“Daddy!” Matthew strained against the steel,
making a wheezing sound. “Doctors can fix it! I’m not bit! None of
us are!”

Leo blinked through his tears and looked at
the two adjacent trees, staring as if he was seeing them for the
first time. His wife Emma was neck-chained like her son, sitting
splay-legged with a dazed look on her face, uncomprehending. Locked
to the next tree over was Jamie-Lynn, nine years old, slumped and
sagging, only the chain holding her up. Jamie-Lynn’s face was
purple, her tongue was thick and sticking out, and her eyes looked
like cloudy marbles. Her chain collar had been locked down just one
link too tight.

“The rabies makes you think things that
aren’t true,” he told his boy, tapping the side of his head with a
finger. “Even make you think you don’t have it.”

“I’m not bit!” Matthew pulled again and
again at the chain. “I’m not bit! You are! You are you are
YOU
ARE DADDY!”

Leo’s heart was breaking to see his son like
this, for what he was about to go through. But his own daddy had
been strong and so he would be strong too. But dear God, it hurt so
much. He walked to the stump and sat down, resting his hands on his
knees, his left eye beginning to develop a tic. He didn’t like the
sound of the creek, didn’t even want to look at it, and certainly
wasn’t going to go near it. The creek was a bad thing, though he
wasn’t sure why.

“Daddy,
please!”
There was more
screaming and rattling of chain.

“Gonna stay with you through this, Matthew.
Ain’t gonna walk out on you, gonna stay right here.”

Leo wiped at his mouth.

His hand came away wet with foam.

The woman was old. Ancient. Like a
collection of dried, dead leaves held together in a hunched, human
shape with straggles of long white hair. If the heat kicked on,
that first rush of warm air would cause the leaf-person to blow
apart with a crackle and disintegrate into tiny, fluttering
pieces.

How old was she exactly, Cesar wondered? The
agency said it didn’t know. Close to a hundred, if not more. She
looked more like a thousand, like a mummy in a faded black dress,
with an old afghan over her knees.

Rosalyn Acre sat in her rocking chair, feet
barely touching the floor, curved so far forward by osteoporosis
that her head was closer to her knees than the back of the chair.
Her skin was cracked and lined like a desert mudflat, and her eyes
were runny and pale with cataracts. She wore high, pink hospital
socks with white strips of rubberized tread, and diapers which
required frequent changing.

Cesar watched as she raised her cup and
saucer to pinched, lined lips, making crude smacking noises with
her tongue in a mouth where teeth had not resided for three
decades. The hands holding the saucer, spidery and veined blue,
trembled and made the cup rattle against the china, slopping out
tea. She slurped. Cesar was careful not to let his disgust
show.

“Toys go mad when they’re not played with,”
she announced into the tea, her raspy voice sounding hollow and
thin against the china.

“Right, Mrs. A.”

“May I have a cookie?”

“They’re on a plate right next to your
chair, Mrs. A.” Cesar pointed, and the old woman slowly turned her
head to look.
Slow,
he thought,
the seasons move faster
than this old broad.
She set the saucer in her lap and began to
reach for a macaroon, her twig-like arm extending in excruciating
inches. Cesar didn’t have the patience to watch, and sighed as he
rose, stepped to her side table and handed her a cookie. She made
the same, sticky smacking noise as she dipped it into the tea until
it was soft enough to gum, then crammed it into her toothless
maw.

The heat did kick on then, but she didn’t
blow away. Cesar was glad it had, as the sprawling, Victorian
mansion was prone to all sorts of drafts and chills. He wore two
shirts under his pale blue scrubs, the first a simple white
undershirt, the next a long-sleeved thermal. Sausalito sat on the
north side of the bay, and the house rested on a cliff-side
property overlooking the water, San Francisco visible to the south
when it wasn’t shrouded in fog. It got chilly up here, much cooler
than Southern California, but the long-sleeved shirt wasn’t just
for the cold of the climate and the house. It was as much to
conceal his tattoos, especially the ones he had picked up at Chino.
The baggy scrubs also went a little ways to hide his build;
broad-shouldered and solid, like a boxer. He had been hard when he
went inside the last time, but four years work on the weights in
the yard had made him harder, and bigger too.

“They get so lonely,” the woman mouthed as
she gummed her soggy cookie, “and then they lash out, like angry
children. Do you understand?”

“Sure, Mrs. A.”

“Please, Lyle, call me Rosie.”

“Okay, Rosie,” said Cesar. He didn’t know
who Lyle was. It could have been one of the many home health care
workers who had gone before him, or a person remembered over the
century of her life, or maybe just someone she invented. He didn’t
care. He did know a few things, though.

He knew he despised changing her soiled
diapers, despised the noises she made, her raspy voice and breath,
her dead eyes. He knew she was frail, and that nearly anything
could finish her off; a fall, a choking spasm in her sleep, a
sickness. Hell, by now even Death had to be tired of waiting around
for this artifact to check out from old age. Yet she clung to life,
never deteriorating beyond her current state, as if she had pulled
out of a dive and was now circling just above death in a holding
pattern. Essentially, despite her vulnerability, she was healthy,
and Cesar had to keep her that way.

Not because it was his job. That was a
joke.

He had to keep her healthy because she was
loaded. Rosalyn Acre was said to be worth in the neighborhood of
two-hundred-forty million. No living heirs, her vast fortune
scheduled to be distributed among a wide variety of charities –
including the State of California, the biggest fucking charity case
of all – upon her passing. Cesar imagined there was a phone book
worth of people marking off days on the calendar towards that great
payoff moment. Not Cesar. He needed her alive, because he believed
she kept a lot of her wealth right here in the house, in cash.

And he hadn’t found it yet.

If the old broad died, he would be
immediately out of a job and out of the house, unable to continue
his search. It was in his best interest to keep her warm and
properly medicated and living.

Cesar knew one other thing. Once he found
her stash, he was gone.

Killing the old bitch then would just be an
added bonus.

Rosie’s head was drooping even further, and
Cesar quickly snatched the cup and saucer away before she could
drop them. He had no worry she would topple forward out of the
chair. He always belted her in. Ragged snoring now, so Cesar headed
to the kitchen with the china.

He passed through a room big enough to
handle banquets of a hundred plus, then stepped out the back door
and lit up a smoke. The bitch flipped out if she smelled cigarette,
so he was careful to always go outside, and kept mints in his
pockets just in case. Behind the mansion was an expansive green
space of manicured lawns and flowerbeds bursting with color, all
leading to a walled drop-off and the water beyond. Although it was
well over a hundred feet down to where the surf rolled and crashed
against rocks at the base of the bluff, it could still be heard as
a soft, rhythmic shushing. It was peaceful. Tall pines provided
shade for walkways meandering through the greenery, which Rosalyn
frequented when the weather was fair, Cesar always in attendance,
bringing the wheelchair in case she needed it. She usually didn’t,
relying on an aluminum cane – not even a walker! She was strong for
her age, and he smirked through his cigarette smoke. All those
motherfuckers sitting around waiting for their big
“Rosie’s-dead-now-pay-up” moment were going to be waiting a long
time.

At least until Cesar got what he wanted.

She wouldn’t nap long in the chair, so there
would be no searching until later. Cesar lit another smoke, leaning
against the wall. He wondered what it cost for the landscapers to
take care of this place, and shook his head. All that fucking money
to cut grass and trim hedges. What a waste. He had better things to
do with cash.

Cesar had been on his last three months of a
four year robbery bit – out early on good time – when he was given
a new cellmate, a skinny black kid named Jevon who got himself
jammed up in a bigger-than-average coke deal with weapons present.
He’d landed a fifteen year stretch, and this was his first taste of
hard time. Jevon was scared and ill-equipped for what awaited him.
Cesar made the kid his bitch immediately, satisfying his own needs
and renting him out for smokes and protection.

Jevon talked a lot, and that was what
originally set Cesar on the path which would bring him here. Before
moving south to LA and getting busted, the kid had worked for the
Youngman-Price Healthcare Agency in San Francisco. The agency
provided live-in health workers who cared for those who were not
yet ready for – or refused – full time residential placement, and
could afford to have someone stay with them four or five days a
week to see to their medication, feeding and cleaning. Jevon
explained what it took to get that kind of gig, and Cesar had been
shocked. Three months of training in basic first aid and geriatric
care, a clean background check, and some prior experience
preferred. That was it. Fucking California, man. It was that same,
half-assed system which allowed so many pedophiles to slip
undetected into the education and daycare system. It made him
sick.