UnWrecked Press presents: Free Fiction Friday

This week’s Free Fiction Friday story from UnWrecked Press is “Family, New and Old.”

UPDATE: Now that the free week is over, you can read the rest of this story by downloading an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords. Then you can read it on your laptop, desktop, Kindle, iPad, Nook, iPhone, or whatever device you use to read ebooks.

This story is a prequel of sorts to my novel Family, Pack, and it also has some other characters and events not in the book, but directly related to it.

Think of it like the DVD extras you get when you buy a DVD…

Family, New and Old

After running for half an hour in the moon-lit woods on the Westhoff farm south of town, Tommy could tell he’d lost a few steps, which at his age was pretty damn pathetic. Frozen sticks snapped like bones under his feet, and he dodged bare tree limbs reaching for his eyes as if he could hear their approach.

He pushed himself harder, heart thumping, blood rushing, vision going crystalline with clarity. The bark on the big oaks, crawling with tiny bugs. The wet slurp of the cold mud under his feet close to the tiny stream. The mad scamper of other animal feet through the undergrowth—squirrel, rabbit, gopher, mouse—fleeing his huffing approach.

Above it all, the wide-open, unfettered night sky of eastern Iowa, opening up like a black book filled with stars instead of words.

And the moon, a few days short of perfect roundness, smiling down on his, whispering words of power and life into his waiting, cocked ears.

Tommy knew this route so well he could’ve closed his eyes to run it. He just hoped he had enough in him to make it at least halfway down the usual path before he had to turn back for home. Mom had first taken him out here when he was barely three years old, the night cold as this one, but nowhere near as clear.

That had annoyed Mom, he could tell. He would learn that she always liked to have everything her way. A trait he now found in his girlfriend. Bossy and demanding. At least I’m consistent, he figured.

Tommy had wanted to cry when they left the car parked on the Westhoff’s lane, and he remembered her saying something about this being the only time they’d ever drive her. Mom had long blonde hair, curly, the prettiest woman Tommy had ever seen.

He followed that mane of hair, focused all his attention on it as she began jogging once they were inside the trees. She just left him. In the woods, in the dark.

Forgetting all about crying, the blood thumping now in his ears, a smile stretching his face, Tommy ran, too. Mom bent low, running hard now, and he pursued her. Fear melted into anger, then anger began pure, unbridled bliss.

It was all he could do to dodge the trees and bushes and keep from tripping in his bare feet, panting, the world rushing past as he went lower and lower, feeling his toes and even his fingers dig into the hard, cold dirt, smelling six kinds of shit and tasting five flavors of fur, with the constant, maddening taste of blood coating his tongue.

He made it all the way to the end of the trail on his first run, and Mom had been waiting for him at the end, laughing, sweat steaming off her glistening body, and she’d picked him up and engulfed him in the biggest, longest hug of Tommy’s life.

Tommy crossed over a clearing of dead grass, his shadow a brief partner, then pursuer in the sharp moonlight. I’ve waited too long to come back here. He sniffed one of those flavors of fur—rabbit—and toyed with the idea of pursuit.

But I’m not hungry. Haven’t been really hungry for years, now.

Mom had stopped taking him on runs when he hit his teens. Something went out in her eyes during that time, and looking back on it now, as he felt the burning in his limbs on the sharp rising leading to the end of the trail, Tommy guessed something had happened between her and Dad. Of course, nobody had said anything about it.

Not my problem, he told himself. His chest was aching now, the cold air burning in his lungs, the good taste of life in his mouth going sour.

If Corinne has it in her, I’ll bring her here, too. Can’t wait. And I’ll explain what’s going on, not leave her in the dark.

If she had it. So far, no sign.

The thought, combined with the extra pounds and the reduced lung capacity that came with them, killed his momentum.

Steaming in the cold night air, Tommy exhaled long and deep. He straightened himself up and immediately began to shiver.

How can I get away if I can’t even run?

Walking back toward where he’d parked his car on the Westhoff’s lane, he looked once more at the moon, which didn’t seem to be smiling tonight. Feeling small and alone out here, even with all the skittering animals fleeing his noisy approach, Tommy stubbed his toe on a frozen tree root and let loose a yell that quickly turned into a wail.

The walk back to his car, in the cold, took forever. By the time he got there, he knew what he had to do about Corinne, as well as the rest of his life.

* * * * *

Carl sipped his bottle of Raccoon River Stout and looked around at the Iowa Hawkeye and Chicago Bears and Cub pennants tacked to the paneled walls of Scooter and Babs Bar. The air was thick with grease from the poorly vented kitchen, and he didn’t see a single familiar face in this bar barely two blocks from the Interstate.

He never even knew this place existed, but that wasn’t saying much, as he and Melanie couldn’t afford to go out for so much as a beer together since his layoff.

He still couldn’t believe it. Two nights after his dull night at Martin and Shari’s, and here he was, one-on-one with Martin Burlage again.

Someone rip out my throat and put me out of my misery, already.

Martin sat in the booth across from him, sipping his watery draft beer from a frosty mug and fidgeting. Like he was building up to something.

Carl put his nose to his own shoulder, wondering if he’d reek of smoke and fried food once he ever got out of here. He wasn’t going to get to see either of his boys before he got home. Martin better be picking up the tab. At least I don’t have to be up early for an interview or anything.

“This is a cool place, isn’t it,” Martin said in his dull voice. He nodded along with the country western song that had just fired up on the jukebox, then stopped.

“Yeah. Nice of you to call me and all that. So how’s work and that… engineering stuff you do at that tech company and… all that.”

Carl drowned the sigh that was forming with more beer. Haven’t I been through all this from three nights ago? Making conversation with the wall would be more fun.

“Ah, it’s a lot of programming, lots of translating chunks of data from one segment to another, synthesizing.”

Martin stared into the foam slipping back down into his otherwise empty mug while he talked. Then his face changed. The slack expression went sharp, and his eyes narrowed.

This was Martin, focused, Carl realized. He caught himself wanting to smile.

“I have a weird question to ask you.” Martin leaned closer, rolling his beer mug on its edge. “How close are you to your nephew?”

“My nephew? What the—”

“—I know. It’s goofy. My wife and I were talking the other night about this, and I promised her—I swore to God I’d do this for her. She’s kinda wrapped up in this baby thing. Here, let me get another round.”

Martin waved at the woman tending bar and pointed at his empty mug and Carl’s mostly empty bottle. Two hunched men in seed caps and flannels shirts at the bar looked over at their table and leaned their grizzled heads closer for a second. Trying to place us, Carl figured. He finished off the rest of his stout before the bartender could set down its replacement and whisk any beer away.

“Okay,” Martin said, waggling his hands in the air as if trying to signal something. “Let’s just say that there’s a situation. A situation where the normal processes, the normal channels just. Aren’t. Working. Where people have been doing the right thing for years, frickin’ years, man, and they’ve gotten nowhere, exactly nowhere, just more in debt and more…”

“What?” Carl said, pulling hard on his beer. An old pop song from the ’80s fired up on the jukebox, something do-whoppy by Billy Joel. “Desperate?”

“Well, angry was the word I was gonna say. But yeah, desperate, too.”

Carl set down his bottle of beer and sat up straight. He looked the skinny man with the low motility sitting across from him.

“What exactly are we talking about here, Martin?”

Martin almost blinked, almost flinched.

“I’m talking about your nephew, the big lug of a kid who lives over two hours from here. The kid who you never see. The one who had a kid out of wedlock, unplanned. His baby, Carl.”

The way he said his name, all friendly but with an edge underneath, blowing his beery breath in his face, just pissed off Carl.

“I’m talking about that tiny, helpless baby of his, Carl. Shari and I have been talking about that baby a lot.”

“What the hell, Martin? She’s my nephew’s daughter. My great-niece. Grand-niece, whatever the hell you call it.”

“And that’s just it,” Martin pounced, nearly knocking over his full mug of beer. “That innocent child is caught in a hell of a mess. Shari and I can help her. And,” he added, his eyes watching Carl closely again like the other night in the basement, “we can help out you and Melanie, too. If you’ll help us.”

* * * * *

Read the rest as an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords.