Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1) (3 page)

How the hell had he got himself twisted in this mess? Jake sighed as he cruised south on US 71 Highway out of Kansas City, through the city of Grandview and on to places less populated. Take care of his dying old man and kill a rival drug lord for his boss. What a clusterfuck homecoming.

Hard to believe he’d been doing this shit for Keats for six years. He used to lie to himself and think of collecting as just a job like someone working in a bank or flipping burgers. He’d tell himself those he collected from were degenerate scumbags who rolled the dice the second they took a dime from a man like Jason Keats.

The douche bags were the easy ones. The ones to whom the world owed a favor. Nothing was ever their fault. The fuckin’ Jets blew the spread by allowing that last meaningless touchdown. The asshole boss fired them, not because they couldn’t show up to work either on time or sober, but because they didn’t like their ethnic heritage, whether black, Hispanic, Italian or White Trash. These people always blamed someone else for their crappy lives and Jake had no qualms putting a few lumps on their skulls with a blackjack to collect what they owed.

The problem was they weren’t all douche bags. Sometimes they were friends. Sometimes the sound of a friend’s thumb snapping like a twig echoed in his dreams. Sometimes the howling winter winds outside his window in the dark of night sounded like the screams of a child walking in as he punched their daddy to a bloody pulp. Sometimes he had to get up and scrub his hands raw under scalding-hot water to get at the blood that would never wash out. Sometimes he stared in the mirror at hollow eyes, seeing the face of a man who hid in the shadows, a man he swore he’d never become. Sometimes.

He rolled past Harrisonville and exited US 71 on to Highway 7, his stomach knotting tighter as he closed in on his hometown. Thirty minutes later, he drove into Clinton and stopped at Wendy’s to take a leak and grab a late lunch before pressing on.

Jake could almost smell the oil and grease from the Clinton junkyard where the old man used to take them on the weekends. Jake and Nicky crammed together in their dad’s ancient heap, listening to him cuss the wasted truck’s very existence in between puffs of Camels lit one after the other in an unending chain. Stony placed Nicky in charge of keeping upward pressure on the eight-track cassette in the dash, so “He Stopped Loving Her Today” would play without warbling. Any deviation to the tone of George Jones would earn Nick a smack to the back of the head. Ever since Mama died, Stony would listen to almost nothing else in his truck but that eight-track. The premise itself made for a stupid country song.

The roads curved and the hills deepened the further Jake got from Clinton, like the road itself didn’t want to go to Warsaw either. He took a pull from his water bottle and turned on the radio, tired of the silence. He sang along and agreed with Kenny Chesney; he should indeed sit and have another beer in Mexico. Mexico sounded good. Warm sun, fine sand beaches, clear blue water and Pacifico beers lined up in front of him. Find a big-breasted señorita with a happy disposition. Maybe after this trip. Maybe after Stony finally kicked the bucket and he fulfilled his obligation to Keats.

The town of Coal swam up, so small that if you sneezed, you’d miss it entirely. Jake slowed without thinking and pulled into the dirt lot of The Coal Bin. He dropped his six-foot two-inch frame out from the truck and ran his hands over his cropped hair, pushing his muscular arms into his back. The vertebrae clicked and crunched.

As he leaned on the warm hood, smelling a mix of manure and exhaust fumes, a dark-haired boy darted out the front door of the white-washed general store and jumped off the step. The boy looked just like Nicky. Mop head and deep dimples the girls giggled over. Nicky. It was hard not to remember their last trip here.

They’d had a particularly good junkyard hunt, Dad finding a needed part to some contraption he was fixing. Old Stony feeling generous, actually hugging his two boys as they went inside, the non-violent physical contact a rarity. Jake peered into the pop cooler while Nicky perused the candy rack. Stony’s thin, steely arm draped around Jake’s neck.

“You always had a sweet tooth for that orange fizzy shit, Jakey.” He stroked the back of Jake’s head. “Why don’t you get one of them Orange Crushes?”

“Just wondering if I should try somethin’ new,” Jake said, liking the feel of his dad stroking his ten-year-old head despite the cold band of the ring on Stony’s finger.

“Nothing good comes outta new things, boy,” Stony said. “Stick with what ya know and you’ll never be disappointed. Come on, pick something. We got shit to do today.”

Jake grabbed the can of Orange Crush and set it on the counter next to Nicky’s Hershey bar. Stony added three packs of Camel shorts to the haul, which would last him the rest of the day and into tomorrow afternoon at best. Depending on how much he drank.

Jake and Nicky grinned ear to ear as they strolled out of The Coal Bin. Janey would whine she didn’t get anything, but for now, the brothers were kings. Kings until Nicky tripped over a pothole on his way to the pickup sending his unwrapped candy bar flying through the air, dumping with a puff on the thick dirt in front of the gas pumps. Tears welled up in his eyes as he stared at his lost treasure.

“Pick it up,” Stony said after a moment, dark storm clouds rumbling to the east with his clipped cadence. Stony’s mood could turn on a dime. Dust covered Nicky’s candy bar along with a dark liquid. Probably oil leaked from some junk heap. A glop of bird shit rested on the edge, already blending in as the summer sun blast melted the chocolate.

“Pick it up,” Stony repeated, each word a menacing statement. Jake tightened his grip on the Orange Crush can.

“But, Daddy,” Nicky protested. Stony took a step toward them and leaned forward, his bared, yellow teeth inches from Nicky’s face.

“Boy, I paid a quarter for that candy bar and you will pick it up in the next two seconds or you will be one sorry little son of a bitch.”

Nicky picked up the candy bar by the end, holding it in front of him between his thumb and index finger, like a dead rat he held by the tail. He shook it. Some of the dust fell away, but the dab of bird shit clung to the end of the bar, white with black speckles.

“Eat it!”

Nicky looked at Jake in horror, desperate for some support. Jake dropped his gaze to his wiggling big toe sticking out of his hand-me-down tennis shoes. There was nothing he could do.

“Eat it,” Stony repeated.

“But it has bird poop and dirt on it,” Nicky said, his voice the high-pitched whine that set their father off every time. Jake cast a quick glance to the old man’s wry smile.

“I don’t give a damn what it’s covered in, boy. I give you a treat and you throw it on the ground like we got money coming out our asses. Now, eat it. And if you try to wipe off anything from that candy bar before it goes into your whiny fucking mouth, I’ll beat your little ass until you can’t sit for a week.”

Tears rolled down Nicky’s face as he brought the shit-covered chocolate bar to his mouth. Jake held out his Orange Crush for Nicky to wash down his punishment. Stony’s hand shot out like a striking snake and knocked it from his hand. His soda fizzed in the dirt before Jake scrambled to grab the can. He hurried to the pickup, away from his brother and Stony. He faced the truck and raised his head to the cloudless sky. Nicky began to cry.

The slam of the front door to The Coal Bin scattered the echoes of Nicky’s cries. A farmer emerged from the store with a pack of cigarettes in his hand. Jake climbed into his truck. He’d thought about going inside for old time’s sake, but remembered the old times weren’t so good. As he rolled back on to Highway 7, he remembered after that trip, Nicky never ate chocolate again.

Shadow and light danced as Jake cruised the tree-lined highway, the outskirts of Warsaw looming ahead. Three years ago he’d made it this far, only to chicken out and take the long way around to the cemetery so he didn’t have to set foot in town. How much had the place changed in his sixteen year absence? The sign declaring the town’s motto of “Striving to Be Drug Free” was gone. He guessed they eventually gave up.

Casey’s hunkered in a depression on his right, the lot full of trucks and boats gassing up for a day’s adventure on Truman Lake. The lake and the associated reservoir covered over fifty-five thousand acres, featuring great crappie and bass fishing waters bounded by jagged bluffs. Thousands of tourists flocked to the area for weekend getaways or national fishing tournaments. It appeared the town’s big source of income hadn’t changed.

His sister Janey would be waiting at the house. The thought of the homestead tightened the knot in his stomach and an overwhelming urge to head back to Kansas City rippled through him. But that would mean a return to a life with Keats. If he wanted out, he had to press on. He turned off the highway and on to Main Street, Bob Seger ironically playing a song of the same name on the radio.

As he crested the hill, all three blocks of downtown Warsaw rose up. Hole in the wall restaurants, corner bars, and the small town standards of an attorney, drug store and bank. A side street dipped toward the lake, empty trailers perched on the asphalt while the boats flashed back and forth on the water.

The road declined past a muffler shop, and squatty houses cropped up on either side, alternating between well maintained and borderline abandoned. He wheeled to the right at a fork and the ranch houses gave way to a used car lot, gas stations and a strip mall housing half a dozen businesses. The old Pizza Hut still operated in a bowl below the road. He’d managed to work there for a brief three days before the old man came in drunk looking for free pizza. When he didn’t get any, Stony broke a stack of plates along with the jaw of the store manager who promptly fired Jake through a mouthful of bloody teeth.

Jake rolled down the window to evacuate the memory and gunned the truck south to the White Branch exit. He stopped at the T-junction across from the Headwaters Motel looking down the hill to some of Dad’s favorite watering holes. Memories flashed like lightning—his first kiss, his first slug of Jack Daniels in misty rain, the first time he found the value of a pool cue as both a money making tool and a weapon. The Roadhouse Bar where he learned in a muddy parking lot how much pain he could both dish out and endure.

He turned right heading past the Lake Hills Motel and the high school where Jake met the only girl he ever loved. After a series of twists and turns, Poor Boy Road lay ahead. Stony said someone named the road after a combination gas station liquor store ran by Howard and Madge Gardner in the fifties called Poor Boy Store. A Poor Boy Garage came and went next door, ran by one of his dad’s drinking buddies. Jake guessed the name just stuck.

He turned, cruising slowly all the way to Turkey Creek Cemetery, where generations of Ozark families were buried. He stopped at the entrance to the tiny cemetery, waiting for some feeling, any feeling to take hold. Instead, stone-cold silence. He drove through the empty lot and parked by the gate. As he climbed out the truck, a flash of brown nabbed his attention across the road. A beautiful auburn horse with a jagged white splotch on its forehead focused bowling-ball eyes on Jake over the top of a white fence. Nicky loved horses.

Jake plodded through the gate and down the cracked, asphalt pathway. Ancient, pitted cemetery headstones mixed in with freshly covered graves. Born in 1827, died in 1866. Born in 1979, died in 2013. Side by side, the recent and the historic. Generations of families laying together forever.

Jake walked a hundred yards to the back of the cemetery before stepping off the path through the mix of grass and thistles, past headstones gaudy and plain. He stopped before the simple black, granite tombstone of Margaret Anne Caldwell—died June 5, 1985. Nicky was ten, Jake eight and Janey five when their mother dropped dead of a heart attack in the family kitchen while making dinner. He didn’t remember much of her. Just a haze of a long-haired woman who loved him.

Next to her marker was another that brought a flood of memories, not hazy this time but high-definition sharp. Flashes of laughs and screams, fists and fights. Tears burned inside Jake's face, aching to be released. He choked back the pain. Caldwells didn’t cry. Heading back toward the truck, the plain, black, block letters etched into a generic, white granite marker burned in his retinas. Nicholas Caldwell. Born November 3, 1975. Died February 7, 2012.

Jake had watched Nicky’s funeral from the safety of his truck, far down the road. There'd be too many questions he didn’t want to answer, and the anger still boiled toward his father—an emotionless robot by the graveside. Janey’s shoulders heaved with sorrow under a midnight black dress that belonged to their mother. He saw all the familiar faces and though part of him wanted nothing more than to go over, the shame for abandoning them pressed his foot on the gas as Nicky’s coffin was lowered into the earth.

He stared at the tombstone a moment longer, checked his watch and headed back to the truck. His cell rang as he reached for the door handle. Keats.

“Where are you?” Keats demanded.

“Heading to the house to see my dad.”

“What about Langston?”

“I just got to town, Jason. Haven’t exactly had the chance to do any detective work.”

His boss’s heavy breathing cracked the cell phone. “I want that motherfucker dead. I don’t care how you do it, just do it now.”

“What happened?”

“A box with a dripping head just showed up on my desk, that’s what. The head of his fucking brother.”

Jake leaned against the truck and blew out a breath. “Jesus.”

“Yeah, Jesus. That’s exactly who that crazy little son of a bitch is going to need before I’m through with him.”

“Why’d he kill his brother?”

Keats paused. “Don’t worry about it. You worry about putting him in a body bag. I know what you’re going through so I’m going to be generous. You got two days.”

Jake stood, gripping the phone tight. “Two days? I don’t have a clue where this guy is and don’t even know what’s going on with my dad yet.”

“Two days, Jake. Or I’ll send someone else to do it and they’ll be coming home with two body bags.”

The line clicked and Keats was gone. He pressed his lips together and resisted the urge to throw the phone across the parking lot. He stared across the road to the horse.

“What the hell are you looking at?”

Jake climbed in his truck and headed toward home, the forty-eight hour clock in his head ticking away.