The sun was coming up the next morning by the time that Billy picked the four up from the police station. They all now stood there staring at the charred remains. No one could tell what was still the morning fog and what was smoke still rising from the ashes. It was all just piles of scorched memories of Ian’s childhood and everything Ronnie had ever known.
The boy had refused to leave the arms of one of the men. He spoke little and remembered less. The cop in charge, a smiling quiet man they called Sergeant Cummings, didn’t press. Jude’s statement was enough. Though in pain, bruised and bloody. He remembered every detail.
Janie and Jude had walked in the house to hear the boy whimpering, “No Daddy. I don’t want to.” Jude ran down the hall and kicked the bathroom door in. Kyle had his hands around Ronnie’s throat, trying to force the boy to perform oral sex on him.
Jude jumped in and quickly threw a punch. Kyle dropped the boy and Ronnie ran, Jude assumed to his mother’s arms. Jude said Kyle jumped up, grabbed the shower curtain rod and hit him with it. It had caught him by surprise and he fell backward and hit the back of his head against the toilet. While he struggled to get up, Kyle managed to jump over him and out the bathroom door into the hallway.
He heard Janie yell, “Run Ronnie, run!” By the time Jude got himself to his feet, Janie and Kyle were fighting on the floor. Jude picked up a lamp and swung it connecting with Kyle’s head. He rolled off his wife and bolted out of the house. Jude pulled her to her feet and they ran after, hoping to find the boy.
They got to the porch and started yelling the boy’s name. Jude said he heard a shot, and looked up. Kyle was standing between the lean to and the shed with a gun in his hand. He saw him pull the trigger a second time and he turned his head to see Janie grab her shoulder and hit the floor. Kyle pulled off the third shot and Jude ducked. He heard it ping on the heating oil tank off the porch behind him.
Jude said he made a drive toward the man and ended up face down at his feet. Kyle kicked him in the side and rolled him over into the ditch. He kicked him one more time in the face and Jude felt Kyle put the barrel of the gun to his head. Then he heard the boom and that was it, until he saw Ian and Reese standing over him.
Firemen found Kyle’s body impaled in a tree, hanging there like a fallen vampire they told them. Janie’s body, burned almost beyond recognition was pulled from the wreckage of the house. All the buildings on the property had burned either to the ground or beyond repair. It was assumed that nothing could be salvaged.
Sgt Cummings now stood beside them, looking at whatever was left. “Can I take you boy’s somewhere else?’ He asked.
“That’s our rental.” Reese pointed at the dirty car that could now easily be seen in the lane across from what used to be a field. “I assume it’ll run.”
“You boys take care.” The man said. “I’ll call if I need anything, but there won’t be any charges. This is just a nightmare we’ll all gonna try and forget as quick as we can.”
He tipped his hat, hopped in his car and pulled off into the nowhere he came from leaving them to stand there surveying what was left of nothing.
“Well, it’s all gone now.” Jude said, his forehead taped shut and his left arm in a cast and sling. “All of it…ever damned thing.” He shook his head in disbelief.
Reese looked at Ian and the little boy clinging tight in his arms, face buried in his shoulder. “So what do you want to do, Ian? I can stay as long as you need.”
“We should stay or at least come back for the funerals.” Ian said quietly.
“Won’t be no funerals” Jude said. “Don’t need to put the boy through that. I’ll have her laid to rest next to Miz Hil. She’d like that. Janie would, too. Him I’ll let ‘em dump him in a hole somewhere. Don’t really care.”
Ian took a deep breath. “Let’s all just go back to our hotel room, clean up and get some rest. We’ll decide what to do then.”
No one moved. Reese rubbed the back of still in shock boy, now dressed in one of Sonny’s tee shirts and a pair of Ian’s socks that came up to his knees, clinging desperately to Ian. The other four just looked at the blackened mess in silence.
“Raze it, Jude.” Ian turned to his old friend. “Bulldoze every fucking piece right into the ground and forget it ever existed.”
Jude nodded his head. “I’ll see if there is anything left the boy might want, and then make sure no one can ever remember what was here. Maybe when the boy’s older he can sell it like you did.” Jude turned to Billy. “Will you take me home?”
“Sure, Jude. If that’s what you want.”
Ian leaned his head against the child’s. “Come on then. Let’s all go get cleaned up and get something to eat. Reese can get us ready to fly back, but you call me if you and the boy need anything…anything at all.”
Jude looked at Ian. “Son, take the boy with you.”
“Fine, you’ll join us later though? You have our room number?” Ian started to hand Ronnie, his face still buried in his shoulder, to Jude.
“I’ll come say goodbye. Reese, buddy, will you and Billy take the boy and let Ian and I talk?”
Reese nodded and reached for the boy. Billy ruffled the boy’s hair, as Ronnie allowed himself to be switched to the other man’s arms like a rag doll. The boy clung to Reese, one arm around his neck, the other hand clinging to a singed and docile kitten. Jude and Ian watched him being carried across the field to the car, Billy following behind.
Jude put his one good hand in his pocket. He looked at the ground then but up to Ian. “Take the boy back home with you…I’ll fix it so no one will ever try to take him from you.”
“Jude? I’m just a stranger to him, you’re his family, all he knows…all that’s left.”
“Ian, son, I ain’t got much time neither…” Jude saw the question on Ian’s face. “Liver’s gone…got the cancer. Doc says maybe a year. Hadn’t even told ma girl. You leave him here; the boy watches someone else die and then gets hauled around from home to home until he turns eighteen. That’s not what you wanted.”
“Jude…”
He put up his hand. “Just hear me out. I know, I know…but things have come full circle now. You do right by this boy, just like you allus did, give him ever thing we couldn’t give you. Ever thing we wanted to give and I still can’t give to a child now. He ain’t got no family but me. Kyle’s mama’s dead and his daddy’s in worse shape than me. I’ll talk with him and we’ll get legal papers drawed up real fast…”
“Oh, Jude…” Ian sighed. “I don’t…this isn’t a good idea. I mean, look at me…all the pain…and it just keeps following me around.”
Jude pointed his finger at Ian. “Don‘t! Don’t cha even think like that. You made the right decision, make the right one this time.”
Ian held his ground. “How can you say that, Jude? Look!” He forced the old man to looked at the black, smelly mess of what his life and Ronnie Kyle’s life once had been. “If I had made a different decision none of this would have happened…none of it!”
He stepped in front of the old man and looked in his eyes, pointing behind him. “This is my fault, Jude, and you want me to take that boy to live with me? Not good Jude. Not good! What kind of nightmares will that kid have for the rest of his life, because of something he had no control over? I know what that’s like, Jude. No, I can’t do it. You can’t ask me to do it!”
“You don’t know that Ian. None of us knew about that boy’s…Kyle. What you did was…”
“Selfish, what I did was selfish Jude. I saw an out and I took it. I thought I was making things better for everyone, but I’ve just made it worse. Janie, Kyle, Ronnie and you, I made things worse. People are dead and that boy’s life is ruined, don’t ask me to seal his fate.”
Jude put his hands on Ian’s shoulders. “You think things would be better if you’d made different choices? Why, son? Taylor would still be gone, and you’d still be livin’ in a shack with no hope.”
He slipped his good arm around Ian’s shoulder and squeezed him close. “It’s time, bubba. You take that boy. You give that child everything you ever wanted. You give that boy all the love you tried so hard to give away. That’s all ya both need. None of us can make up for the bad stuff, but when it’s meant to be…it makes it so much easier to forget.”
Ian looked at the ground. “Meant to be?”
“Meant to be, Ian, you take that boy and you got something you was allus suppose ta have…family, real honest to God family. That’s meant to be, Ian. I know it in my heart. What’s happened is awful, so nows your chance to take it all, the nightmares of your childhood and the nightmares of his and make ‘em good. Ian, this were meant ta be. Take ‘em, take ‘em and don’t look back.”
“Come with us Jude…please?”
Jude shook his head. “No…caint. Gotta spend the rest of my time trying to find whatever is that was hid from you, hell hid from us all. I may not be able to do right by you, but you can do right by my gran baby, and maybe I can find something that will help you both.”
Ian started to hug Jude. “Just go now. I’ll stop by before you go, maybe bring the boy some clothes, got a couple things at the house that’s his, probably all he got left. I’ll sift through this mess and see what I can find.”
Ian gave Billy a hug and got in the car, watching Judd just silently looking over the charred remains as they drove off. As the rattling of the dirt road gave way to the smooth rock of pavement Ian finally asked Sonny. “Can we make it home before dark?”
“Probably.”
“Make it happen.”
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