Keeping Promise Rock (17 page)

Deacon blinked and tried to focus his darkening vision on the owner of the voice. “I’m not going to the store,” he said faintly. “I thought I was going to, but I can’t.” His vision cleared, and he got a good look at the girl.

“Benny?” he asked, surprised. She looked like hell. Her face was lean and dirty, and her teeth looked like they hadn’t been brushed in a while. Her hair was still dyed that shocking red, but it was stringy and knotted around her face.

“I’m surprised you recognized me,” she sneered. “You’ve walked right by me now for a week!”

A week? “I looked for you,” he told her, his voice feeling far away.

Oh God—all that time spent worrying about her, fretting over Crick’s little sister, and she’d been right
here,
with a front row seat to him flushing his life down the toilet? Fucking Christ.

“When?” she asked, and even with his vision swimming, he could tell she hid a lot of desperate hope behind that angry word.

“For two months,” he said, seriously. “For two months I sneaked by the house to bring dinner for Crystal and Missy. For two months I asked after you. They’d tell me you’d stopped by but they never knew when.”

“Why’d you stop?” she asked suspiciously, and Deacon had to look away.

“Your mom caught me there—threatened to call the cops. Called me some sort of sex deviant.” God, that had stung. Melanie Coats could barely clothe her own children—they’d been cooking their own dinner since Crick had left—and one glimpse of Deacon feeding her kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and she was mother of the fucking year.

Deacon found he could look Benny in the eye about this matter after all. “I didn’t really have a choice, Benny. I’m no one to your family, really.” Benny looked stricken, and with that look, her shoulders collapsed, and her hands tightened in her pockets, and her oversized hooded sweater got tight against her middle, and Deacon got a look at the thing that maybe made Benny run away.
Oh Christ—Benny. What are you, fourteen years
old?

“My brother loves you,” she said through a tight throat, tears making tracks of clean grime down her cheeks. “How can you be nothing?” Oh God.
My brother loves you.
Deacon swallowed, fought nausea, and swallowed again. “It’s been hard,” he said softly.
Write something
real.
That there was the most honesty he’d spoken since Crick had left him in Georgia.

Benny reached out and took his sweating hand in hers. “Yeah,” she said softly.

“You told your parents yet, Benny, or did you just decide to run away before they kicked you out?” He said it kindly and without judgment, and she seemed to appreciate the honesty.

“Well, Deacon, you’re not the only one who went to the wrong place for comfort when my brother left.” She glanced at her swollen stomach with troubled eyes. “I’m not eating enough,” she said apologetically. “I want to, but my friends can only put me up a night at a time.” Deacon nodded. “You’re welcome at The Pulpit
,
Benny. You always are.”

Benny looked at him with a sort of bitter betrayal. “I won’t live with another drunk, Deacon Winters. Bob is bad enough.” Oh God. She must have been so desperate, only to see him walk blindly past her, bent on easing his own misery. “I’m officially on the wagon,” he said, trying to say it like he wasn’t two minutes away from tossing his cookies and running screaming through the door of the liquor store just begging for something, anything, to ease the pain of withdrawal.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she snapped, and he guessed he must look every bit as desperate as he felt. But he wasn’t going to let Crick’s sister down—hell, what he’d been doing for the last three months was bad enough. He couldn’t walk away from her. Dammit, the girl needed him.

“I’ll bring you proof,” he said quietly.

“Proof how?” Okay, fine. She had the right to be suspicious.

“I’ll find something. You need to go to your parents’ first. Eat.

Bathe. Get your shit together. See if you can’t get them to enroll you in independent study or something—it’ll be easier if they do it and a pain in the ass if I try. What’s today, Sun… Sunday?” That shiver had been hard, dammit. Fuck. He didn’t have long before he had to be home, alone, someplace where this shit could work its way out of his system without witnesses.

“Yeah, Sunday.” She looked at him like she knew what his damage was, and he gritted his teeth and stood up a little straighter.

“You go do that. I’ll even drive you to your folks and stay outside to make sure they don’t do anything too drastic. You put up with their screaming and their bullshit for four days. I’ll be back on Friday for you and your shit. I’ll have proof. I swear to God.”

“Swearing’s easy,” she said, so obviously miserable for something to believe in that he wanted to just take her home right now. But he knew—

had a bone deep feeling and
knew
what was around the corner for him, and he refused to let her be a witness to that. If he had his druthers, no one would.

“All right then. I swear to Crick.” He stuck out his hand and she took it, wincing a little at the clamminess of it.

“You going to make it, driving me home?” she asked uncertainly.

“You look pretty fucked up, Deacon.”

“I’ll make it,” he promised, and then he tried the truth—he’d been good at it once. “But it’s gonna be close. Get your ass in the truck, Benny, and remember not to tell them about the baby until I come get you on Friday. I’ll be ready then.”

He got her home and waited for her “all-clear” wave at the window.

Her face was taut and angry, and he swore to himself again not to let her down.

He blew chunks twice on his way home and barely managed to get himself out of the car and into the bathroom before he lost it again, with nothing more than stomach acid for company.

The next morning, he was huddled in the bathtub, naked under a blanket, resting his head on the toilet seat from a kneeling position. His soiled clothes were wadded in the corner. He heard Patrick calling his name into the front door as he had every morning for most of Deacon’s life, and called out hoarsely.

“Patrick—man, do me a favor, would you?”

Patrick had been their hired hand, Parish’s best friend, and Deacon’s only extended family for most of his entire life. Deacon figured that facing him from under that blanket was about the bravest thing he ever did.

“Jesus Christ, Deacon—are you okay?”

Deacon wrapped the blanket tighter, figured he was about done puking for the next thirty seconds, and slumped back into the bathtub.

“Patrick, do me a favor, would you?” he repeated. “Could you give Jon a call and tell him I need some fucking Valium?” His lips were cracked, he realized. He was so dehydrated they were bleeding. “And a glass of water would rock the house.”

Facing Patrick had been bad. Facing Jon was worse.

“Deacon?” Jon came to the edge of the bathtub warily about an hour later—as well he might be wary: Deacon had thrown up most of the glass of water about two minutes before Jon walked into the house.

“What’s left of him,” Deacon chattered.
Please, Jon, please, just put
the fucking Valium on the sink and let me deal with this alone.

“Jesus.” Jon sounded legitimately shaken. “Deacon, what’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve got the mother of all bugs—what’s Valium going to do?”

Deacon’s vision flirted with black and then resolved itself to gray.

“Valium is a benzo.” Deacon shortened the name because he wasn’t sure he could say it all, but otherwise he thought his “textbook voice” did him proud. “It’s used to treat alcohol withdrawal symptoms, reduce mortality, and will hopefully keep me from thinking my skin is crawling off my bones… so, did you bring any?”

Jon handed him a tablet from what looked to be a little brown bottle and filled a cup by the sink with some water for him. Deacon downed them both and rested his head on the cool toilet seat for a moment while his body decided if it was going to accept the offering of the Valium or make his life complete by yakking it back up.

“It’s Amy’s prescription,” Jon said numbly. “She was really freaking out during the bar exam. She doesn’t take it anymore. Did you say alcohol withdrawal?”

“God, you’re quick.” Oh… Deacon’s stomach was emptier than step-Bob’s soul. All it took was a little bit of chemical grace to bestow a miracle on him. With a sigh, Deacon relaxed a little, sank to his ass in the bathtub, and leaned his head on the side of the tub instead of the toilet.

“But, Deacon, you’ve only been drunk once in your life… three months ago.”

“Yeah,” Deacon admitted, wishing he could die of embarrassment quickly instead of dying of the DTs slow. “Welcome to the hangover.” Jon blanched and sat down on the floor and then grimaced. Deacon hadn’t exactly been right on target with all his shots. “I did this to you?” Oh fuck. “Don’t be an asshole.
I
did this to me. It runs in the blood—it’s what my mom died of, I should have known better.” Woohee!

There went that little bit of information. Go Valium!

“Oh God….” Jon looked like that made him feel worse. “Deacon, you didn’t tell me….”

Now he was starting to sweat a little… and his sweat smelled putrid, like living in his own vomit and diarrhea hadn’t been enough. “I didn’t tell anyone,” he murmured. “Parish barely told
me
. It’s not your fault, man—

the only person who knows is….” Deacon couldn’t say his name. Not in this condition. Oh Jesus… how was he ever going to look at Crick again?

“Crick.” Jon said it for him and then shook himself earnestly. “Hell, Deacon—we’ve got to get you into a program or rehab or something.

Twenty-eight days and all that shit. I’ll book you a spot—my treat.”

“Fuck that,” Deacon muttered. “What day is it?”

“Monday, why?”

“Because I need this dump cleaned up by Friday, that’s why. Crick’s little sister is coming here to live, and I need every bottle out of here and something pink in Crick’s old room, and I need to”—Oh crap, the nausea hadn’t left for good…
Fight it… fight it… there we go
—“I need to give a passable imitation of a human being by then.”

“Crick’s little sister?” Jon sounded downright dazed. “What in the hell…?”

“She’s pregnant, Jon.” Deacon wondered if his psyche could take a recitation of his wrongs again, and then he figured, why the fuck not?

Wasn’t there something about an alcoholic coming clean? “I passed her going into the liquor store for a week, and didn’t see her. I… I promised I’d give her a place to come home to, since I let her down so bad.” An after-shiver passed through him then, and he convulsed a little around the blanket and then stabilized. It felt like maybe the worst of it had passed—at least until he couldn’t live without the Valium again.

“Four days?” Jon was looking at him like he was crazy. Well, he was a functional alcoholic—didn’t crazy come with the T-shirt? “Where are we going to start?”

Deacon sighed and made to push himself up in the tub. He wobbled, his hands down on the side of it and his ass in the air, and then he pushed off against the wall and stood. Well, he was used to his vision being black anyway.

“How’s about a shower?” he asked, trying to sound confident.

Jon nodded, and stood up himself, grimacing at the what-all he had sat in. “I get it after you. You got any clean clothes?”

“Loads,” Deacon told him. It was the truth—he’d been wearing the same clothes for days at a time. Who needed to use the clean ones in the drawer? Unselfconsciously, because Jon had seen his shit before and didn’t give a fuck, he let the blanket slide down, and he gave it a weak-armed pitch to the corner where his soiled clothes were. “And if you could burn all that, I’d take it as a personal fav—” Keeping Promise Rock

“Holy fuck,” Jon whispered, staring at him, and Deacon’s head felt like it weighed six thousand pounds. He didn’t think he could look down at himself, so he yanked the curtain shut and turned on the water blindly. It was freezing when it came out, and he almost screamed. His skin was hypersensitive, and it was all he could do not to double over and resume his position huddled on the floor of the bathtub, shivering under the spray.

Jon was still outside, and Deacon heard him sit down heavily on the toilet so he could start taking off his shoes. When he spoke again, his voice sounded strange, even over the sound of the shower.

“Deacon, you’re all… you’re all bones, dammit—when in the fuck was the last time you had a meal?”

“Jon….”

“No, man—I’m serious. You couldn’t call me? You broke your fucking hand or something?”

Deacon actually felt a laugh push at his chest. “Yeah, I broke my hand—and wrenched my shoulder, and I think I might have broken my nose on the doorframe one night, but I must have set it before I fell asleep….”

“
Stop it!
” Jon yelled, and just when the water was starting to get warm, he wrenched open the curtain, and Deacon was there, in the middle of every bad nightmare he’d ever had. He was shivering, naked, and he’d fucked up. His life had spiraled out of control, and there wasn’t a person he could sob on for refuge because he’d managed to lose everyone he cared about just by being alive.

Feebly, he pulled at the shower curtain, trying to get some privacy so he could wish he was dead, and Jon just kept it open, looking at him.

“You couldn’t ask for help? Dammit, Deacon.” Jon’s voice broke for real, and if Deacon thought he’d felt like Death shit him out and served him as the dog’s breakfast before… well, now he knew how it felt when the dog threw him back up and buried him in guilt. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

Deacon didn’t answer. He reached for the shampoo and dropped it instead, and Jon put his hand on Deacon’s shoulder and stopped him from bending down.

“I’ll get it,” he snapped. “If you bend over you’ll fall down.” It was probably true, so Deacon let him.

“You still didn’t answer my question.” Heedless of the water on the floor—it needed a good washing anyway—Jon kept the shower curtain open and soaped up Deacon’s hair while Deacon stood there like a child.

He wondered vaguely why there was nothing sexual about their situation, but he missed Crick so bad, he couldn’t bring himself to care.