The Storm Giants (4 page)

Chapt
er 7: Constructive Purposes

Everett
pushed a wheelbarrow of concrete laying tools along a newly poured concrete walkway to the water pump. He picked up one of the bags of cement stacked there. Everett emptied the bag of cement into the wheelbarrow and started pumping at the water spigot’s handle. Water gushed out in hoarse spurts as he worked.

Everet
t mixed up the concrete with the piece of two by four. He rolled the barrow up the series of cement walkways to a fire pit, mid way up the embankment toward the highway.

Next to the fire
pit was a squared off form built out of two-by-four lengths. Everett dumped the cement into it, raked at the slurry and then got down on his hands and knees with the framing level, Everett referred often to the level during the final scrape and smoothing.

D
uring the last sweep of the board he noticed there was a contentment here that he’d been feeling the entire period this project took – several days of dawn-to-dusk labor. It was strenuous, distracting.

Everett
had capable hands, steady and precise. When he was four, the boy he’d been was able to cut the skin off a sunny side up egg without puncturing the yolk. He’d had Raymond try the same stunt once, and he managed it just as well. Raymond’s hands would grow soon enough into the ready tools Everett’s were – Raymond could be a surgeon someday if he wanted to.

Everett looked down at this lat
est victory, feeling the peaceful satisfaction of acting out a constructive purpose.

Chapt
er 8: The Mortal Risk of Display

Kerri
approached as Everett finished the work; she was carrying her watercolor kit as she’d been catching the light down by the river. He laid down his tools and stood to greet her. He rinsed both hands under the spigot before reaching to drag her close and take a sniff at her red hair, inhaling her scent.

Kerri
burrowed her head against his broad hard muscled chest. She smelled burnt hair and noticed a scorched patch on the back of his head. He’d managed to burn himself while he was down in the Bay Area.

She
gave an inward sigh. That was just like Everett – not taking care of himself at all if she wasn’t around. She wondered just what he’d done involving fire.

“Got a letter from the
Montessori School up in Arcata,” Kerri said. “Raymond starts next month, they want us to drop by with him soon. We can tour the classrooms, meet his teachers.”

She
sensed his unease. “What, Everett? You thought we could hide forever? We’ve got to move on some time.”

It was kind of her
to say ‘we,’ but that wasn’t the pronoun she should be using. The prospect of seeing the teachers was what unnerved him. At the meet-and-greet they might look at Everett and see the wrongness.

But they
’d extend that fear to Raymond, and judge the son by the father. Everett was approaching the end of his usefulness if he couldn’t figure out the line for this. Everett stroked Kerri’s shoulder and looked past her at the house and beyond that at the river.

Raymond was
down there, squatting on his hams at the water’s edge and pointing a stick at a dead salmon bobbing in the shallows. He jumped erect to twirl in place, swiping his stick at invisible enemies.

The technique was childish
, but Everett tried not to critique it even to himself. Raymond was strong and body smart like his daddy. Everett could show him a beginning level athletic trick once and Raymond would be able to reproduce it after a couple tries as if he’d practiced it his whole short life.

It was time to start teaching
Raymond the stick work: how to hold the rattan, how to swing it, and where the best body targets were. No kill moves though. Raymond wouldn’t need any of those skills to survive through adulthood.

Kerri
watched the way Everett looked at their son down by the river. She said, “I can always tell when you feel safe. That’s the only time you look at him like you care. Is it that scary to let the world know what he means to you?”

Ch
apter 9: A Night at the Sprints

The evening
Everett first found out about Raymond’s existence did not begin auspiciously. He and Kerri were living in Castro Valley at the time. One night Rolly called the house just as they were on their way out to the Outlaw Sprints, down at Baylands Racetrack in Fremont.

Kerri
enjoyed Everett’s relative animation at the races. Everett always seemed exhilarated by the power of those 700hp winged pocket hot rods. He listened to the thunder of those engines like they sent a personal message.

Kerri
hadn’t much liked Rolly’s phone call interruption, as it broke the rhythm she was trying to establish for the evening. But Everett told her they had to stop by Rolly’s, so of course there’d been nothing to do but make the detour and pick up Everett’s oh so charming partner first.

Everett
asked her to drive, but rather than go direct to Baylands he had her head over to the Flats near the Coliseum, a bad neighborhood deep in the Killing Fields of East Oakland.

As directed
, she parked in front of a house off 66
th
. Everett and Rolly got out, walked up on the porch and were allowed through the front door.

Kerri
looked around the neighborhood in growing wariness. Tight faced blacks on the corner looked right back at her. Expensive cars crowded the curb at the liquor store up the street, all kinds of wide open drug dealing and flesh peddling brawling around her on 66th.

If
Everett hadn’t seen fit to bring her, a white bread girl like herself wouldn’t have anything to do with this hood. What the hell was he thinking, leaving her alone in the car out here?

But this was the
environment he lived and worked in, Kerri thought in epiphany, having started to figure out what Everett was all about even by then. This was where he made his money, and how he paid their bills.

She wasn’t a hypocrite; s
he spent the fat wads of cash he brought home all right. But this was an intolerable situation, even if it didn’t bother Everett any.

A
smacking sound came from inside the house, a sharp crack loud as a pistol shot – hella loud for her to be able to hear outside in the car. The front door flew open and a huge young black man bulled out, clad only in a pair of white boxers.

The big black
rocketed so hard out the house that he sailed past the top step and into space, his legs still wind-milling a Fred Flintstone aerial sprint as he arced through the air off the porch. He had both hands clasped to his lower face. He flew and landed full length on the walkway, hitting with a horrible thud that made Kerri think he wouldn’t get up again.

But ad
renaline can perform miracles and his legs pistoned him erect. He sprinted down the street crying, hands still clutching his mouth. Blood cascaded down across his pot belly and fragments of teeth scattered from his broken jaw as he ran. Even as Kerri watched, his shattered face commenced swelling up like a smashed pumpkin.

He sobbed
at the top of his lungs as he ran past a crowd of hangers on at the corner, who watched with wise cracking interest. She could still hear him howling after he disappeared down 66
th
.

Everett
and Rolly strolled out of the house. Everett’s eyes glowed bright electric blue. His face was almost unrecognizable under the porch light. As if her Everett wasn’t there anymore, and had been replaced by someone she had no interest in knowing.

The partners
came down the steps, the backlighting from the porch transforming them into black, featureless silhouettes. As they approached on the front walk Kerri saw them clear again. It was much like the Wolfman movies, the way Everett’s face had mutated back to normalcy. She could almost convince herself she’d imagined that hideous expression.

It felt
even more surreal when she noticed the bystanders’ response. All these slangers and bangers pretended Everett and Rolly weren’t even there. Every gaze was averted from the two as they ambled to the car.

These street p
eople knew who and what Everett was even if they’d never met him before, and wanted to make sure he didn’t think they were witnesses. Somehow that was even worse than the black kid running away with his teeth spilling out.

Everett
and Rolly got in the car. Everett held a briefcase on his lap bulging with whatever. In the rearview Kerri watched Rolly put away a slapjack, his eternal sunny smile absent until he felt her eyes, then he pasted on a phony grin for her benefit.

Neither
Everett nor Rolly said a word. Not because she was there or because they were still preoccupied, but as if they needed to morph back into a semblance of normalcy. Kerri bit her own tongue as she dropped Rolly and briefcase off at his house.

By the time
they got to Baylands, they’d already missed the first heat. Everett unbuckled his seatbelt in a relative hurry, eager to get out and watch the sprint cars roar round and round their tiny clay track.

Kerri
just sat behind the wheel, her mind racing. Everett saw the look on her face, and settled his weight back into his seat

“It was just business
,” he said, going for a mollifying tone which infuriated her with its implied condescension. “Timeliness issues. Couldn’t wait. Penalty clauses in place for late delivery. Sorry.”

She’d imagined a defter buildup
, thought she could wait until he was happily rapt by the race before dropping her bombshell. But he’d earned nothing but bluntness tonight, and she was out of patience.

“I’m pregnant
, Everett,” she said, with a scowl on her face instead of the smile that should’ve been there. “I was going to spring it on you gently, but here you are. We’re going to have a baby. Doesn’t that change anything for you?”

Everett
went even blanker than usual as he wrestled with this news, just as she’d known he would. He avoided her eyes, instead scanning the parked cars surrounding them.

“Bad l
ine,” he said. “Shouldn’t have involved her. Should have gone without her no matter what.”

“Damn right
, bad line,” she shouted, she verged on furious now. “Are you trying to force me to leave you?”

Kerri was
gratified at how Everett’s eyes widened. She maybe penetrated some of his defenses. “You can’t be putting us in the middle of it like that, Everett. You have to choose: this thing you do, or your family.”

The big
block sprint cars on the other side of the fence howled a bone deep subsonic that Kerri knew from experience would make her lungs vibrate like twin bass speakers once she was in there watching the race. But their guttural snarls were semi muted as her man’s mind spun, like the slick tires of those unseen sprints.

She took
Everett’s hand and placed the palm against her lower abdomen, covered her hand with his. He instantly relaxed as he felt Raymond’s pulse.

“It’s all right
,” he said. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll quit, I swear. I’ll get out as soon as I can.”

Despite her lingering anger and terror at this entire surreal evening
, she’d clung to his words as a shipwrecked sailor clutches at flotsam. But Everett still focused on what was going on around them in the parking lot, giving her only part of his attention. Even with Raymond burgeoning in her womb, Everett was still turned half away, focusing on what might creep up on them.

Kerri
considered Everett’s eternal vigilance as the sprint cars continued their snarling race to nowhere on the other side of the fence. He listened to the storm thunder of the sprints as he stood guard.

Chapter 10
: Homecoming Interruptus

In the here and now
, the Christmas decorations were up and Raymond’s presents stacked under the tree. Kerri sidled up to her easel and became one with her pallet, brushes, tubes of paint, and other accouterments of her painting. She’d only been taking a break from imposing her dreams on the world.

She
turned on the Bose stereo and went to work. When they first met, she’d been partial to Mozart’s ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ and Debussy’s ‘Claire De Lune’ when she painted. Now it was Nine Inch Nails playing while she worked, or Bartok – fitting stuff to inspire the dark paintings she excreted.

“
Brother Rick and Brother Norm were asking about you,” Kerri said as she picked up her brush and studied this latest piece with a dominating scowl. “They wanted to say ‘hi’ when you got back.” She reached out to make a microscopic change in a detail of the painting.

Everett
’s attention was arrested as ever by her skill. Things stopped when he watched her work, though he observed from the side or behind so as not to be a distraction.

As
Everett left to respect her privacy, Kerri continued her painting trance. The vision flowed from her and through her brush onto the canvas, as if this creation was the one to make everything whole.

Kerri’d already had several
feature spreads in Juxtapoz Magazine. Other San Francisco gallery owners called her all the time with commissions from wealthy, influential clients. The hoity-toity New York crowd was sniffing around, sensing up-and-comer edgy bargains. Every canvas she painted was sold long before she even finished it.

Her
income was what fed them. She knew that they’d escaped the darkness and were bulletproof forever. They’d never have to touch any of Everett’s stashes of illicit cash buried around the property like a squirrel’s nut hoards, or a hungry child’s desperate caches of food.