Lucky's Girl (15 page)

Frank pulled off his cap and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Jerry, please keep talking. About Lucky. I need you to keep talking because I can’t. I need your help.”

Jerry looked out, a chill coming over him even though the sun was up and the day was growing warm. What was he talking about? Why was he here? What the hell was going on with him? Was this some kind of delayed function of alcoholism? Of trauma? Of guilt for the boy in Detroit?

Frank reached over and tapped him on the arm. “Jerry, you were talking about Lucky. Please. Continue.”

Jerry shook his head. “I can’t, Frank, it’s like I just… can’t.”

Frank nodded, eyes wide. “When you start talking about it, you get hazy, then you get chills.”

Jerry was dumfounded. “How the hell did you know that, Frank?”

Frank pulled his arm back and looked down. “It’s what happens when they make us talk about the war, about combat. Traumatic stress syndrome. That’s what the VA calls it. We can’t talk about it. We can’t think about it. We lock it away but it still steers the ship.”

Involuntary tears came to Jerry’s eyes. “I shot a kid, Frank. When it comes into my head I shut down.”

Frank nodded, head down but still nodding. He had to force himself to raise his eyes to look at Jerry. It took every ounce of his will.

“Yeah, Jerry, me too.”

Jerry looked back at him. He grabbed Frank’s arm. “Frank. You were in a war. It was kill or be killed. Those fucking commie animals. All you did was save your life and the lives of the men around you. You’re a hero.”

Frank nodded, blank and glazed. “Lucky does the same thing to me. I can’t think, I can’t do anything until I give him what he wants, until I approve, until I get out of his way.”

A scary revelation descended on Jerry. “When we questioned a bad guy, when we interrogated them, we’d yell at them, we’d threaten, we’d scare them ‘til they told us what we wanted to hear. We broke their will.”

Frank looked uncomfortable, as if he had to force himself to stay here in this conversation, to not disassociate. “Yeah, we did that too.”

Jerry looked at Frank hard. “We’d break their will Frank. That’s how it works! That’s what he does. Lucky breaks your will. He gets in your head somehow and you do what he wants you to.”

Jerry continued. “People who’ve never been there, never seen war or seen what we have to do, they don’t understand, they don’t question it.
They can’t question it because they’ve never felt the symptoms from something else.
Something traumatic like war, like
hard
cop shit.”

Frank cast out his line again. “They just fold, and they don’t even know what happened.”

***

Christie Tellefsen had her back to the bathroom door. The toilet was splattered with vomit, and she felt like there was still more where that had come from. It felt like it would just keep pouring out and never stop.

She had driven past that stupid fucking church probably twenty times after that tent revival trailer park shitstorm.

He hadn’t even looked at her
.

She hadn’t stayed for the disgusting picnic because that stupid slut Mary was there with her drooling dad. He’d worn a trucker cap in church and had slept.
And
drooled while he did it.

And her.

Mary
.

Brunette, not blonde.

Cheap tacky clothes from goodwill or a trash can.

Yeah, she was pretty. In a really unsophisticated small-town girl-next-door wallflower deaf-mute retard sort of way.

Christie held up the little compact mirror, checking her hair and makeup. She’d worked on it for hours before she’d gone to that church. Those morons didn’t wear makeup, so she’d put it on to look like she wasn’t wearing any. And she’d styled her hair to look like them. Long, straight, parted in the middle. But she had looked better than any of them, gorgeous and shiny blonde. She had spent hours going through old fashion magazines for pictures because if she was going to go slumming she sure wasn’t going to be upstaged by any girl from that slum.

But he’d ignored her.

She’d done a final check in the mirror before she’d left. Stunning, gorgeous, breathtaking. No man could have resisted her, no man could have failed to notice her. She’d sat right on the front row, wearing a long straight skirt she’d gone all the way to Bloomingdales in Chicago to find.

But he’d ignored her entirely.

He’s fucking with your head you stupid slut.

“No! He had to deal with his parishioners, his flock, his sheep, or something…”

Flock? Sheep? Parishioners? You don’t even believe in God because you can read and write and walk and chew gum at the same time unlike the hopeless idiots from this backwater.

“He has bigger responsibilities. He’s a Prophet. He’s going to have a worldwide mission, he’s going to save the world like Jesus and Gandhi and Bono and that’s why he was too busy.”

He’s going to have a worldwide mission? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you really using those words? You’re a feminist! You hate religious hillbilly bullshit!

“No, I told you to stop it with all the lies! Mason is real! Mason is a Prophet!”

You fucking lunatic! Go check yourself into the bughatch. You failed, washed out loser! Gonna marry small town prince charming! Son of the preacher man? Well I’ve got just one thing to say. You’ve betrayed everything that your father worked so hard for…

“NO!”

Christie’s fist smashed into the front of the refrigerator, leaving a bloody knuckle print on the front of a postcard her parents had sent from the Democratic Convention in Atlanta. She put her hands out, bracing herself.

She had been in the bathroom earlier.

Now she was in the kitchen.

Somehow she was standing here arguing with herself about something. She didn’t even know how she’d got here. Her lips moved, forming words. “Some part of you hates joy and love. It wants misery and loneliness. It wants you to be a bitchy shrew on the inside and a polished Barbie doll on the outside. The part which wants you to be an uptight cunt.”

She had just used the “c” word.

She hated that word.

That wasn’t like her; it was disrespectful to women and…

Are you ready to wake up yet, Christie? I don’t know what’s going on or how you got hypnotized by that little weasel snake oil charmer, but you’re not like this. You just punched the fridge and used the ‘c’ word. Is that you?

She spun around as if to face an unseen assailant. “Stop it you miserable, angry, unloving, uncaring…”

Miserable? What, are you going to be the preacher’s wife? Hallelujah! Praise Jesus! And you know he’s fucking everything else with a pulse if he’s fucking that little whore Mary.

Christie’s hand came up to her face, wiping blood across it. She could smell it, metallic and salty. She put it to her lips. It tasted how it smelled. Like the taste of Mason’s cock when he’d held her by the back of the head and exploded in her mouth. He always did that. At first she’d choked but she’d learned how to do it right.

She wanted to do it right.

For Mason.

She wanted to do it right for Mason, right now.

You’re crazy, you’re an idiot, your parents would be so ashamed of you.

She looked at the bloody print on the postcard, then slammed her forehead into it as hard as she could. It made a loud
whunging
sound, the freezer door flapping open. She fell to the kitchen floor next to the cat food bowl.

She looked at the bloody front of her hand. Then she turned it over, looking at the palms. A bright red row of fingernail gouges cut into the palm, caused by squeezing her hands into tight little fists. She needed to do this when Mason wasn’t around or she’d have trouble breathing. She needed him.
She needed him now!

Her hands went under her long skirt and she pulled her panties off, flinging them across the kitchen floor. Red, lacy, expensive. Also from Bloomingdales in Chicago. Her bloody hand found her lips hot and wet, her fingers digging in deep.

She spoke his name. “Mason, the Son of God.”

CHAPTER 6

Kenny looked out the passenger side window. This whole day had been a blur and his ears were ringing. When Jerry had finished with him he’d walked out into the woods, sunk down on his knees, and puked long and hard. He wasn’t sick. Not physically at least, but he was burning up inside his mind. The constellation of his life was unraveling.

His best friend wasn’t who he thought he was. But it wasn’t just that, it’s that his whole life wasn’t what he’d thought it was. He was
poor
. He’d always known those words and what they meant, but it just hadn’t ever mattered.

Now it did.

The world was
ugly
.

How could he have been insulated from that?

Or that his uncle was a shell of a man?

Or that they lived in a shack, his uncle hunting and fishing for most of their food?

Or that most of the people in this town were so fucked up they couldn’t even function?

Why hadn’t he ever thought of leaving?

And right now, in the passenger seat of Lucky’s truck, he wanted nothing more than to jump out and hit the ground running. Just keep running, never looking back. Go somewhere, anywhere, far away from this place because this couldn’t be normal, this couldn’t be
right
.

Lucky looked over, shaking his head. Kenny didn’t look good. “Look bud, I can tell things have got you worried. But I gotta tell ya; you and me? We’re outta this fucking dump in two weeks. Christie’s got some cash and she’s gonna spot it to me. We’re finally going on the roadtrip we’ve been talking about ever since we first grew hair on our balls!”

Kenny looked back from the window, with the wind blowing on his face.

He kept up a poker face. “Christie’s giving you the money?”

Lucky smiled, looking at him from the corner of his eye. “Damn straight, Tonto.”

Kenny couldn’t say anything. This was just some more fucked up shit that wouldn’t have phased him a week before, but now seemed so inexcusable, so totally wrong.

Lucky gave him a conciliatory look. “You know, I know. I know you don’t approve. I know it’s all starting to freak you out. And you’re right, or rather,
you would be right
.”

Kenny felt himself tensing. He didn’t like this. “I’d be right about what?”

Lucky laughed as if this was all so obvious. “How I live, Kenny. And how
you’ve been living too
I might add buddy.”

Kenny nodded, disgust on his face.

Lucky continued. “Kenny, I’m Lucky. Yeah that’s my nickname, but I
am
lucky. You know this. I’m good looking. I’m good with the ladies. I’m good with a crowd. People like me. Dick Clark was lucky. Kennedy was lucky. Tom Cruise is lucky. But you know and I know that nobody gets away with what I do.”

Kenny was having trouble containing himself. For the first time in his life he wanted to beat someone up. Like all teenage boys he’d been in fights, and in a town like this there was no avoiding it. But he’d never wanted to hurt someone, to make them feel pain. But right now, he wanted to hurt Lucky.

Lucky held up his hands, taking them off the steering wheel. “Hey buddy, calm down. I get it, I really do. I’ve got some explaining to do, but first I want to tell you something. More than anything else. I love you. I do. You’re my brother. Always have been.”

Kenny’s shoulders slumped and he exhaled hard. He was mad, hurt and disgusted, but just like that the fighting rage had washed out of him. “I just don’t get it. What the fuck is going on here?”

Lucky nodded. “Hear me out, Kenny.”

Then Lucky laughed, shaking his head. He continued, “I’ve never told anyone this and I’ve known this stuff my whole life. Okay, here goes; I know magic.”

Kenny waited for the punchline. “Okay, you know magic. What the hell does that mean?”

Lucky’s face was blank. “I’m serious, Kenny. When I was really little I started seeing things. Like the way the wind moved the trees or the sound birds would make at night. I saw patterns. I did things. I began speaking in tongues to the woods. And the Big Tree called to me.”

Kenny scoffed. “Bullshit. Why are you telling me this?”

Lucky cleared his throat. “Most speaking in tongues
is
bullshit. You’ve seen it at the church. People just get all worked up and flip out because they’re retarded. But some speaking in tongues is real. It taps into something.”

Kenny rolled his eyes. This was silly and he was frankly disappointed in Lucky. Yeah, they both went to that church, but they didn’t really buy into the whole routine. “Okay, something
what
? What does it tap into?”

Lucky actually looked a little embarrassed. “Something
else
. I think some of it is in the brain, locked away somewhere. I read this author who called it ‘genetic memory’ but I think that’s only part of it.”

Kenny just stared at him.

“You remember in the
Hellraiser
movies, how the guy sought out the box in the first place? Well, it’s kinda like that, but in reverse. The Big Tree saw me, saw that I was ready, and called me. And it
showed me,
Kenny.”