Chapter 5 #4
Roger saw the headlights of a pickup closing in on his house, and he didn’t waste a second hauling ass out of his room and down the hall to the stairs. There was only one kind of visitor who would come in the night.
But like the previous night, Tobias was already up. As Roger reached the stairs, he met Tobias hurtling up, hauling his duffel bag up with him.
“Roger,” he gasped, his voice hitching in panic.
“I know, kid, I know.” Roger grasped his shoulder in a quick squeeze, then released him. “Just head to my room and keep breathing, I’ll take care of it.”
Tobias tore down the hall. Roger descended the rest of the stairs and turned on the lights, checking the guest room to make sure the door was closed. Tobias had already cleared the living room of all signs of his presence.
The headlights had come to a stop, washing his porch in brilliant halogen glare. Roger picked up his shotgun from beside the door and waited.
The truck’s doors opened, and three men got out, one helping another as he staggered. They were little more than shadows behind the headlights.
“You up, Harper?” one called.
“You made enough noise coming in,” he answered through the screen door. “Who’s there?”
“Roy Davis here, and Gene Lewis and Bucky Walsh with me. We had a run-in with a couple of vamps outside Las Cruces, could use a space to patch up. Maybe a drink?”
Roger grunted. He’d check them, but there was no good way to turn them away. “Come on up.”
“Bucky’s bleeding already,” Davis said, grinning at Roger as he reached the porch’s illumination. He had blood on his teeth.
Roger stood back, watching his wards as the men crossed the threshold, then checking them against the basics (silver, bronze, a couple of charms he had). Everything came up clean, so he went for his first-aid kit and the cheap whiskey stash while they settled in the living room.
Lewis was staggering between his two buddies, loopy with what was most likely a concussion, as Walsh kept smacking him upside the head with his non-bandaged arm to keep him awake.
Roger let Davis pour out the shots while he checked Lewis’s eyes (definitely a concussion) and cleaned and stitched up Walsh’s arm. He listened to the meandering story of their hunt, which they’d basically stumbled into and escaped by the skin of their teeth.
“Did you take them out or not?” Roger cut in at last.
Davis shrugged. “Walsh definitely took the head off the first one, and I’m pretty sure I got the last one in the head, but it was already in the trees.”
Roger sighed. “Okay. Well, there’s a motel five miles down the road that’s always got some empty beds.”
Walsh stared at him, then let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Are you fucking serious? You can’t let us pass out on your couch for a few hours?”
“You ain’t paying, and this ain’t a motel,” Roger said.
“Since when?” Lewis exclaimed. His eyes weren’t quite focusing, but he still managed to put a hell of a lot of indignation in his voice.
“Since always,” Roger snapped.
The tension in the room ratcheted up, like a rubber band stretched thin between them.
They all knew it could snap, but no one was quite sure who would feel the sting.
Roger breathed carefully and calculated his odds.
These men were tired, one concussed and another down to one working arm.
It was also three-to-one odds, and all Roger had was the shotgun resting against his chair.
Wouldn’t be the worst fight he’d been in, but he worried about the kid upstairs.
The tension broke when Davis stood, hands lifted in surrender. “Fine,” he snapped. “Sorry for interrupting your fucking beauty rest. Gene, Bucky, get your fat asses up, we’re hitting the road.”
Roger braced the door with his foot as they filed out, instinct telling him he should have both hands free, just in case.
Walsh stopped on the porch, turning back with his right hand sliding into his back pocket, eyes calculating.
Roger shifted. “You don’t need to tip me,” he said, “but if you’re reaching for anything but your wallet, we’re going to have a problem.”
Walsh held his gaze. Then Davis shouted from the truck, “Bucky! Get your ass down here before Gene starts drooling,” and Walsh half-turned as he moved down the stairs, keeping one eye on Roger all the while.
Roger stood at his door, watching until the pickup turned the corner and the sound of its engine faded into the night. Then he locked the door and slowly headed back upstairs, trying to ease his racing heart.
From the hall, he called out, “Coast is clear, Tobias.”
No response. Roger hadn’t expected one.
He knew where to look this time. Slowly he slid open his bedroom closet door. Wedged between Roger’s boots and his second-best suit in its dry-cleaning bag, Tobias stared up and through Roger with neither a smile nor relief, but a terrible, familiar flat blankness.
Roger swallowed. Despite his protesting joints and his pulse racing like he was headed into a fight, he bent down to one knee before holding out his hand. “They’re gone, Tobias.”
After a long minute, Tobias took his hand, allowing Roger to haul him up and out of the closet.
Roger walked him back downstairs, knees almost shaking. He didn’t know if any of those particular hunters had ever visited Freak Camp, didn’t want to think about what could have happened if they’d come across Tobias. Even without that possibility, that had been too damn close.
At the guest room door he paused, groping for something to help, but not yet ready to pour a teenager whiskey. He settled on a broad offer: “You need anything?”
Tobias shook his head and stepped inside, still holding onto that duffel bag.
He hadn’t said a word, Roger realized. No sense in pushing him now, not when Roger was shaken up too.
He double-checked the locks on his front door and returned to bed.
He wouldn’t call Jake tonight, he decided.
Tobias could call him if he wanted to, and Roger would see what the morning brought.
* * *
At breakfast, Tobias had returned to an earlier, silent version of the kid Roger knew.
Roger felt the familiar pang of guilt, but at least Tobias wasn’t flinching at his movements.
He didn’t speak and didn’t make eye contact, not until Roger asked the question that had been in his head when he’d woken up this morning, thinking about these two Hawthorne boys.
“Does Jake still drink like a fish when things go south?”
Tobias snapped his gaze to Roger’s face. He looked startled, which was progress. He considered the question for a long moment; just when Roger started to worry, he answered. “Not in a while. Not like he used to.”
Roger nodded. “There was a time, in the space before he got you, that I used to lock most of my liquor in a safe when he crashed here. All hunters like a bottle, but when a fifth of Jack starts looking like a one-man serving size, that’s a surefire way for a hunter to meet an early grave.”
Tobias winced.
“His old man was like that, off and on over the years,” Roger added.
“The habit gets carried in the blood and by example. Jake got it both ways. I hoped—well, he was so set on getting you, I hoped if it all . . . worked out, maybe he’d give his liver a break and stick around for his thirtieth birthday. ”
Tobias looked deeply unnerved by the idea that Jake might not make it to thirty.
“Things are working out,” Roger said mildly. “But every drinker falls off the wagon sometime. You be sure to pocket the Eldorado’s keys when he does.”
Tobias gave a slight, incredulous shake of his head, not in refusal so much as amazement. Slowly, he said, “I can do that now. But I couldn’t have, not so long ago.”
“Well, he’s made it this far. You just gotta be on the lookout going forward. And even if he ain’t driving drunk—if it’s making you uncomfortable, Tobias, it’s a problem.” He leaned in, making sure to catch Tobias’s eye.
Tobias returned his gaze, still looking skeptical, but more alive than he had since before Roger had helped him out of his closet the night before. “Everything makes me uncomfortable. Even the normal stuff that shouldn’t.”
“I’m not talking about the normal stuff. There’s nothing normal about being too drunk to see straight.”
“He hasn’t done that,” Tobias protested, “in a long, long time.”
“Yeah, well. Even if it’s just enough that makes you feel uneasy, or it’s a headache to get him back to the motel, you gotta tell him that the next day. That ain’t right. Takes two to tango, and he’s not the only one calling the shots.”
Tobias nodded. “That hasn’t happened . . . in a while. Jake’s—he cares. He notices when I’m upset. Even though that’s everything, even the dumb stuff.” He spoke quietly, not quite meeting Roger’s eye.
“It ain’t dumb if it makes sense according to everything you’ve ever known,” Roger told him.
“It feels dumb,” Tobias said, in a tone that could almost be called bitchy. Roger hid a smile behind his coffee mug. “But it’s better than it was,” Tobias added a moment later. “Or it doesn’t get to me like it used to. And I’ve learned—” He hesitated, glancing at Roger and then away.
“Yeah?” Roger prompted. “You figured out how to wind Jake round your little finger? Don’t figure that would take much effort.”
That got him a hint of a smile. “No, I mean . . . it took a while, but I figured out that it makes him happy if I pretend to care more than I do, about the little stuff. Even if it’s just where we’re having dinner.
I’ll talk about how all I really want is Mexican food, but there’s no Mexican restaurant in the next town, and I act like it’s the end of the world.
Stuff like that. Do you think that’s okay, if I pretend like that?
I don’t lie about anything more important. ”
Roger huffed a laugh. Someday this kid was going to give him a damn heart condition if he kept saying heartbreaking stuff at this rate. “Sure, kid. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. How’ve you been doing since, uh . . . West Virginia?”