“Come with me,” King said. Righting my clothes, he took my hand and led me back to the pier. When we passed the bonfire, we were greeted with a lot of whistling and applause.
They’d obviously heard us.
I didn’t care.
We sat on the dock with our legs dangling over the side. The fog had lifted off the water. The full moon cast our shadows over the glass-like bay, making it appear like black ice.
King held my hand in his, and when I tried to pry it away, he tightened his grip.
“King,” I started.
“Brantley,” he corrected. “Call me by my first name.”
“Brantley,” I said, testing his name out.
“I hated it growing up, but for good or for worse, it’s the only thing my mama ever gave me. Grace is the only other person who uses it.” He paused, then added, “I like the way it sounds when you say it.” His serious tone and soft eyes made me question where he was going with this, but then, it hit me.
He was letting me in.
“Okay, Brantley, what else you got?” I nudged his shoulder. He took a deep breath.
“You know about Max?”
I nodded. The girl we went to see, the one from the picture. “Your sister.”
“Pup, Max isn’t my sister,” King admitted.
“Then, who is she to you?” I asked. If she wasn’t family, then why did he have so much interest in her?
“She’s my daughter.”
Holy. Shit.
“Your daughter?” I asked, my throat tightening.
“Yeah, Max is my daughter. She’s the real reason why I went to prison, and only Preppy and Bear know the truth about her.” He squeezed my hand tighter. Looking out over the water, he seemed pained to be recalling memories associated with Max. “Do you want to know the story? Because you asked me if I wanted to let you go or keep you, and I want to let you in. I want to keep you, but it’s a hard story for me to tell. I’ve never told it to anyone. The only people who know where there in some way.”
“I want to know.”
“Do you know why I was in prison?”
“Because of your mom.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t make apologies for the things I’ve needed to do for the sake of business. Preppy and I had shit lives growing up. We did everything we could to turn it around for ourselves, most of those things were far outside the law, but we did it. Shit was amazing for a while. But my anger would get the best of me, and I would almost always be the one who ended up in jail here and there, usually just overnight. Sometimes, for thirty or sixty day stretches, depending on the charges. The other players in the game we play know the rules. They also know that when you step out of line, things happen. Things that make you dead. But this wasn’t one of those times. I didn’t pull a trigger, or use a knife, or send someone after her.”
“Your mom?” I asked.
He nodded, then told me his story.
By the time I was fifteen, Me, Prep, and Bear were our own little crew. Just three young shitheads who just wanted to have a good time, get laid, and make some fucking money. Surprisingly, we did make money. Enough for me to buy the house.
The three of us were on top of the world for a while. I’m not gonna lie. It was the best fucking time of my entire life.
But then, I got pinched. It wasn’t the first time, and it wasn’t for anything I should’ve actually gotten pinched for. A stupid bar fight in an upscale place Preppy wanted to check out across the river in Coral Pines. Some shitty tourist spot.
I was talking to a girl when some pink sweater-tied-around-his-shoulders douche-bag stepped to me for talking to her. We got into it, broke some shit in the bar, chairs, glasses, tables.
I’m covered in tattoos, and I have a record. He’s got a pink fucking sweater tied around his shoulders. It was easy to figure out which one of us was going to jail when the sheriff showed up.
I got ninety days because of my priors. When I was in county, this girl I used to screw around with showed up for visitation. She was as big as a fucking house. I thought that she was going to give birth right there in the visitors’ room. She told me the baby was mine, said that she wanted to raise it with me when I got out.
I didn’t think much of the girl, but she was nice enough, and after I got over the initial shock of it all, I was really excited to be a dad. I made a plan, made promises to myself that I was going to be a good dad, especially since I could only narrow down who my father was to every man in town except Mr. Wong who ran the corner store, for obvious reasons.
I wrote the baby letters from prison, though Tricia didn’t know then if it was a boy or a girl. She’d said they tried to find out on the ultrasound but he or she was moving around too much. It was exactly what I needed. And then it was what I wanted.
Sure I had money, but the baby gave me a reason to want more out of life.
Purpose.
The morning I got out of county, Tricia was supposed to pick me up but never showed. I walked to a payphone to call her, and when she answered, she told me she’d had the baby the week before.
A girl.
She’d named her Max, the girl name we picked out when she was still pregnant.
I asked her where the baby was, and she mumbled something about it being too hard and that she couldn’t handle it. That the whole motherhood thing wasn’t for her. She said she wasn’t coming back. There was a lot of noise in the background, glasses clinking, music. It sounded like she was at a bar. She was shouting into the phone.
Where the fuck is she? I kept asking her over and over again. For a second, I thought she was going to say she gave her up or something, and I was already thinking about who the fuck I was going to have to kill to get her back when Tricia said something that surprised me and turned my stomach.
I LEFT HER WITH YOUR MOTHER
Before that day, I hadn’t seen my mom but a handful of times in years, and none of those times were on purpose. Most of the time, when I ran into her, she didn’t know who I was. The very last time I’d seen her, she called me Travis and asked me how Bermuda was.
As soon as Tricia told her where the baby was, I hung up and called my mom, but the phone line was dead, and I didn’t know if she had a cell.
I took a cab to Mom’s and called Preppy to meet me there.
I got there before he did.
I knew walking up to the door that something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut.
I banged on the door of her apartment until my knuckles bled, but there wasn’t any answer. I could hear the static from a TV inside. I screamed out for my mom, but there was no response. I was about to turn around and walk away, check with some of the neighbors to see if she even still lived there, but then I heard it.
I heard her.
My Baby.
Crying.
My baby was crying.
Not just a little cry or a cranky cry, but a strangled cry straight from the gut, the kind that says that shit ain’t right.
It’s like she knew I was there, and she was calling out to me.
I kicked in the front door. The living room was dark except for the TV. When I took a step, trash got stuck on my shoes, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts. The counter was littered with garbage. The trash can was overflowing. Flies circled the kitchen sink which was piled high with dirty dishes.
I heard her cry again. It was coming from the back of the apartment.
I ran into one of the spare rooms and turned on the switch, but nothing came on. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when they did, I saw this little baby, this beautiful, scared, skinny, little baby, no bigger than half my forearm, covered in shit from head to fucking toe. Her eyes were red and crusted over from crying. She wasn’t in a crib. She was lying on a dirty sheet on the floor. No bottle. No blanket. No lights. No nothing.
I gently scooped her up in my arms, and she weighed practically nothing. Even though she was visibly hurting and I was hurting for her, I remember that first feeling of holding her. Before she was even born, she became the most important thing in the world to me, but holding her sealed the deal. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Nothing.
I would hurt anyone and everyone who ever made my baby cry like that again. I would burn down cities for her.
I fell to the ground with my back against the wall and rocked her until she calmed. I told her about all the things I was going to buy for her. I told her that daddy was here, that she was safe. I got up and found the cleanest towel I could and wrapped her up in it. She settled against my chest and fell asleep.
I was fighting mad. Deeply disturbed. And completely in love. All at the same time.
I was leaving with Max in my arms when the light from the TV flashed, and I saw a shadow in the Lazyboy. Sure enough, it was my Mom. Next to her was an empty bottle of some cheap fucking whiskey and an ashtray full of little bags of leftover crystal.
She didn’t take care of my newborn baby because she was too fucking busy getting drunk and high.
Max would’ve died if I hadn’t gotten to her in time.
It was that thought that set me off. It still pisses me off to this day, and it makes remembering what happened next a whole lot easier to digest when I recall the memory.
Rage consumed me. The kind that makes you want to rip out someone’s throat with your bare fucking hands.
A lit cigarette hung from her bottom lip, an open newspaper on her lap. Her face was covered in pock marks and her skin was draping off of it like it was melting. As much as I wanted to hurt her, it was like the fucking karma cosmos or whatever aligned, because the lit cigarette fell from her mouth, and the newspaper ignited.
I stood there and watched it happen.
I was happy. It couldn’t have gone better if I lit the fire myself. It was a horrible way to die, but knowing what could have happened to Max, I really didn’t give a shit if it was the most horrible death imaginable. To me, in that moment, she deserved it.
I still feel that way.
Mom’s chest rose and fell, so I knew she was alive, but she was so far gone into whatever high she’d been chasing that not even a fire on her lap disturbed her.
When the paper fell to the ground, the carpet caught fire. The light from the flames allowed me to get a good look at the place. There wasn’t a section of the floor that wasn’t covered in filth and rusty syringes poked out of the couch like it was a pin-cushion.
When the flames got higher, I made the decision.
I turned around and left.
I felt the heat behind me as I walked away. I was halfway across the street when the windows exploded and the glass shattered.
I bought diapers, bottles, and formula from the nearby convenient store and hosed Max off in the restroom the best I could. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to put on the diaper.
Preppy saw the flames from my mom’s trailer and pulled up behind the gas station.
He took us home.
He sang to her made up, profanity laced, lullabies.
Max gulped down a bottle so quick she would pause to choke, and my heart skipped out of my chest every time she did it, but then she would keep going.
I was so nervous. I was a single guy in my early twenties who’d never so much as been in the same room as a newborn before. I’d never even spent more than a couple of hours with the same woman.
And suddenly, I had this baby girl to raise. It was the first time in my life that I can say I was truly terrified.
I talked to her again and hummed some Zeppelin to her until she fell asleep on my chest.
I covered us both up with a blanket and watched the fan spin around until I saw lights flashing through my front windows.
Blue and red.
“It turns out the convenient store had some pretty decent surveillance. Since I walked away without seeking help and I made no attempt to douse the fire or save my mom, they arrested me. Charged me with manslaughter and put me away.
Max got sent to foster care right away since they couldn’t find Tricia. They wouldn’t release the baby to Preppy because he was a felon himself, not to mention he didn’t have a legit job on record, anyway. Grace was in Georgia, getting treatment for her first fight with her cancer at the time.
“Do you know what ever happened to Tricia?”
“No, but if she’s smart, she’ll never show her fucking face in this town again.” King sighed. “They took her from me. I was her dad for only three hours, and they were the three best hours of my fucking life. And they fucking took her from me.”
“You’re still her dad,” I offered.
“Yeah, I’ve been trying to be,” King said. “While I was away, I did everything I could. Filed papers. Hired lawyers. But it got me nowhere.”
“Is there anything else you can do?” I asked. “There has to be. This can’t be it.”
“There are two options left, at least two that I know of. The first one is a long shot.” King flashed a sad smile. “But there’s this guy, a big shot judge. A dirty fucking politician. Bear has ties to him through the MC. The senator thinks he can make him see things my way and rule for custody in my favor.”
“So what are you waiting for? Do that!” I shouted excitedly.
“It will cost me about a mil,” King said flatly, killing my growing enthusiasm.
“Shit,” I cursed. “A mil? As in a million dollars?”
King laughed. “Yes, Pup, as in one million green-backed American fucking dollars.”
“Do you have that kind of money?” I asked.
“I did,” King said. “I don’t anymore. We sunk everything into getting the granny operation going. Even if I sold the house, it needs work, and that costs even more money. And the market sucks right now, so even if I sold it I wouldn’t be able to come up with even half that.”
“And if you do get custody, you need a home to bring her to,” I added.
“Yeah, I’ve imagined building her a tree house in the big oak by the garage and turning my studio into her room, move my tattoo shit into the garage apartment.”
“Then, where would Bear go?” I asked.
“Home! Bear has a room at his pop’s place and a room at the clubhouse. He just likes to take up all the rent-free space he can.” King laughed.
“I am so, so sorry, about all of it,” I said, tears spilling out onto my cheeks. He wiped them away with the pad of his thumb.
“Don’t be sorry, Pup. I’ll never be the good guy in the story. I let my mom burn to death. I lost my daughter because of who I am and the things I’ve done. That shit’s on me. That’s my cross to carry.”
The deep need to help reunite King with his daughter dictated my decision-making. I took a deep breath and grabbed his hands, folding them onto my lap.
“What do we need to do next?”
“We?”
“Yeah.” I let the word sink in. “We.”
“WE don’t need to do anything. I’ll figure something out.”
“But wait. You said there was a second option.”
King shook his head. “It’s a worst case scenario, and honestly, it’s going to be bad whether I decide to do it or not. I can’t win either way.”
“Tell me what exactly is it you’d have to do.”
“It’s a dark road to travel down, and I’m not sure it’s one I could ever come back from.” It was the lingering sadness in his voice that made my heart break for him and made me not want to press him further. “But it’s a worst case scenario, so I’ll cross that bridge when and if it comes down to it.” King looked at me thoughtfully. “For now, I’m going to kick the granny thing in high gear and see what we can come up with.”
“Let me know if you need my help. I’ll do anything.”
“I’ll remember you said that,” King said, pulling me onto his lap.
“I mean it.”
“So did I,” King replied, squeezing me tighter. He buried his nose in my neck. “I might need you to stay with Grace a while.”
“Why, is she okay? I mean…you know.” I stammered.
“Grace is fine for now, but we might have some shit going down here soon, and I need you far away from it.”
“The Isaac thing?” I asked.
“Yeah, the Isaac thing. But don’t worry about it. Just know that when I say you need to go to Grace’s that’s where you need to be. No questions asked. No arguing bullshit. You got me?”
“I got you.”
“Can we talk more later, Pup? I feel like a fucking chick right now, spilling my guts to you.” King laughed.
“Yeah, we can talk more later,” I said.
I wrapped my arms around King’s neck and looked over the water. The bird that was the inspiration for my sketch sat on top of a crab trap buoy in the middle of the bay. His beak was down, searching in the water for his next meal.
“So what now?” I asked, turning back to King.
“Now? Now, we need to go upstairs, and I need to get you in my bed because I’m not even fucking close to being done with you tonight.”
