Keeping Promise Rock, page 33
“You don’t have to, asshole.” Crick shifted his attention to the person on the other end of the phone. “You’re goddamned right I still want to do this, lady—don’t you hang up on me now. Yeah, I’ll punch it into the phone, just wait.”
Crick shifted the phone again and squinted at the little letters next to the numbers on the keypad. “I-M-I-S-S-C-R-I-C-K-2,” he muttered, and Deacon made a grab for the phone too late when he realized that Crick really did know the password.
“I knew you wouldn’t change it—you told me what it was when I was in Iraq, and I thought you were kidding,” Crick hissed, and Deacon turned around and threw his fist through the goddamned wall with a lungful of “Fuck!” as Crick finished the transaction.
Benny pounded into their room looking furious and scared, just as an angry, awkward silence fell over the echoes of Deacon’s fist punching through the drywall.
“What in the fuck?” she asked, glaring at the both of them. “You two idiots are going to wake the baby. Dammit, what are you fighting about?”
“Deacon, let me see,” Crick muttered, and Deacon held his bruised knuckles to his chest.
“It’s nothing,” Deacon grunted. “Just your brother throwing his goddamned future away….”
“Don’t be a stubborn asshole,” Crick snarled, grabbing his hand and dabbing at the blood with some tissue from the desk. Benny ducked out and came back in half a second with some gauze bandage and ointment. “I was throwing my money into our home.”
“You were throwing money into my problem!” Deacon snapped, his pride lacerated and bleeding at his feet.
“I was trying to keep you from killing yourself before you hit thirty, dammit! I just got here. I’d like to see you more than ten minutes a goddamned day!”
“Where’d you get the money?” Benny asked, wrapping Deacon’s hand like a pro.
“My college-slash-Army pay-slash-disability fund,” Crick grated, pitching Deacon a sour look. “Do you have any idea how much money he was sitting on while he was killing himself to make ends meet?”
“It wasn’t my money!” Deacon protested, too hurt to hide it.
“Cool!” Benny said practically. “Can I throw my college fund into the pot?”
Deacon and Crick both shouted “No!” at her, and she stepped away and glared at them.
“So Deacon, now you know what we’d do to protect you. And Crick? Tell me how that felt?”
“Bite me, little sister,” Crick growled, and Benny blew a raspberry at him.
“Thank you, Shorty,” Deacon said politely, and she threw her arms around him in a hug.
“His heart was in the right place, Deac—don’t ever doubt it.”
“I never have,” he muttered before she let him go and pattered down the hall.
Silently, Deacon pushed past Crick and went to sit down. All his checks were written, just waiting until he had the money to cover them. Methodically, he began stuffing each envelope with the check and the receipt, and licking the envelope shut.
Crick watched him in the unnerving quiet, and after seeing what he was doing, began to help.
When they were done and each envelope had a stamp, Deacon stacked them neatly to put in the morning mail and turned around to go to bed. Crick followed him, turning off the light, and Deacon crawled into his side of the bed, grabbing the comforter in the early morning chill and wrapping his shoulders tight as a Christmas package on the edge of the bed.
He was unprepared for Crick to snuggle up behind him, almost exactly the way they’d fallen asleep earlier that night, wrapping his long, damaged arm around Deacon’s shoulders and kissing his neck. In spite of himself, Deacon began to relax against him—God, he’d forgiven him for Iraq, right?
Crick lifted his head and put his lips against Deacon’s ear and whispered, “Because of you, Deacon, I will never come home and find my shit on the lawn.”
Deacon’s body relaxed a little more. “Yeah,” he conceded.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure.”
Crick sighed in his ear again and held him tighter. “Every time you say that, it sounds more and more like a lie.”
Deacon woke late the next morning and swore when he heard everybody out in the kitchen, including Crick. As quick as he could, he slid into yesterday’s jeans and brushed his teeth, hitting the kitchen just in time to hear the front door close as Benny and Andrew left for their morning at Amy’s. (Amy was getting pretty big these days—as soon as Crick was mobile, Benny had gone back to visiting at her house and helping her with her chores.)
“Dammit,” he muttered. “I wanted to tell Benny to get shampoo when she went to Wal-Mart.”
“She’s got a cell phone, Deacon,” Crick said from behind him, using both hands to sip coffee out of the mug he’d bought Parish for a long-ago Christmas.
Deacon looked outside the kitchen window, frowning. Someone had just made the turn into the driveway, and he didn’t recognize the old brown Ford.
“Yeah, but I always forget during the day, which is why we’ve been using hand soap for a week.” He risked a glance over his shoulder at Crick, not quite meeting his eyes. “You let me sleep in.”
“You needed it.” Crick put his coffee down deliberately and came to wrap his arms around Deacon’s waist, and Deacon actually breathed a sigh of relief and fell into him. He couldn’t be mad at Crick—it was like his entire body was hardwired against it. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever be ready to apologize, but he wouldn’t expect Crick to, either.
“I’m sorry,” Crick said, and Deacon almost fell down.
“Why?” Deacon muttered, turning his head and searching Crick’s brown eyes. God, he was pretty. Growing up and into his height and size hadn’t changed his appealing, narrow-cheeked, big-eyed beauty, and Deacon had a minute to think muzzily that maybe it was just the way he saw Carrick and not what he actually looked like.
“I forget you have pride too…. You’re usually so good at being unassuming, Deacon—I forget how proud you are of us, you know?”
Deacon was going to respond—he was truly on the verge of something intelligent about ‘Fuck pride, I have you’—but a shriek from Benny drew his attention, and he swore, even as he went tear-assing out the front door without a shirt or his shoes.
Melanie was driving the strange car, and Step-Bob was right there, on Deacon’s front lawn. He’d apparently knocked Andrew on his ass—from behind, they later learned, by kicking his prosthetic leg out from under him—and he was pitched in a tug-of-war with Benny for Parry Angel.
“You keep your hands off my baby, asshole!” Benny was screaming, and then Deacon was there.
Bob didn’t see him, he was so intent on stealing the screaming little girl away from her mother. He sneered, “Ain’t no faggot niggers gonna raise my blood, you little whore!” while giving Parry a particularly vicious yank.
The words were damned ugly, but Deacon didn’t hear any more of them. His first punch stunned step-Bob enough to make him let go of the baby, and the second punch made the guy’s knees weak enough that he would have fallen if Deacon hadn’t grabbed him by the front of the shirt.
Deacon’s third punch broke the guy’s nose, and the blood spatter was fairly stupendous. That was when his vision went red, and he didn’t remember much more until Crick, Andrew, and Patrick pulled him off.
Chapter 23
Not Okay
Oh Christ—Deacon was going to kill the fucker.
His fists just kept hammering away at Bob’s face, and he was shouting incoherently as he worked the douchebag over.
“Don’t you touch my family, you fucker—my family—you leave my family the fuck alone….”
His face was twisted in rage, and his body, still too thin with stress, was a gnarled tree root made of iron. Crick gave Andrew a hand up and waited until his leg was situated, because he was going to need help pulling Deacon off.
And even with one man on each of Deacon’s arms, hauling him away, he might have overpowered them and succeeded in committing murder. It was Patrick who thumped him on the back of the head, and that instinctive flinch, left over from childhood, seemed to break the terrible spell of fury that had possessed him.
With Crick and Andrew wrenching on his hands, Deacon let go of step-Bob’s collar. The fucker dropped where he stood, and Deacon shook them off to turn for a second and stalk away, his bare feet padding mindlessly on the small-gravel driveway. The baby was still screaming, and Melanie was wailing in the front of the car, but without the violence of Deacon’s attack on the asshole who had caused all the chaos, it felt like silence. Crick and the others watched Deacon in the sudden stillness, and when he turned back, he was Deacon again, and not the avenging angel that he had become for a moment.
“Patrick, call the cops,” he said roughly, looking at step-Bob with so much hatred they were lucky the guy didn’t burst into flames. Step-Bob groaned, and Melanie gave a muffled sob from the car, and Deacon spat on step-Bob’s twitching meat sack before he turned to Benny and the baby.
“You all right?” he asked softly, and Benny nodded, holding Parry out for him to check over.
The baby calmed almost instantly in his arms, wrapping her chubby little arms around his neck and giving a little hiccup against his chest.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Deacon crooned. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that. No big-bad-mean guy’s gonna get you while Deacon’s here, right? That just won’t stand, will it Angel?”
“Deek-deek,” she said sadly, and Deacon kissed her fuzzy little brown head as she whimpered against him. Crick came around behind him and put his hands on Deacon’s shoulders, grateful when Deacon leaned back.
“You okay?” Oh God—it was such a reflexive question. Crick knew what the lie would be before Deacon even opened his mouth.
“Spiffy, Carrick. No worries, all right?”
“Cops are on their way!” Patrick called. He’d taken a few steps away with the cell phone. Crick glanced over at the man and had a sudden thought that he was old—old enough for retirement, old enough that this sort of shit wasn’t a lot of fun anymore.
“Good,” Deacon murmured. “Could you call Jon next? We’re probably gonna need him too.”
By the time the sheriff arrived, Bob had picked himself up off the ground in a bloodied daze and gotten back in the car. The Ford Whatsit peeled out past the sheriff’s car as it turned on the drive, and with the exception of Patrick—who was off trying to round up the horse who’d escaped the ring when the fuss broke out—the sheriff found them all in the kitchen, tending to the wounded.
“Will you stop fussing, Benny!” Andrew took Crick’s sister’s hands rather tenderly in his own as she tried to put some ointment on his skinned elbow. “I’m fine.”
“Really, Benny,” Crick said dryly. “The guy lost a leg in the war—I’m thinking a few scrapes won’t do him in. Deacon, stop being a baby—it’s just hydrogen peroxide.”
Deacon grunted. His knuckles had been soundly abused by step-Bob’s false teeth, and Crick thought that since it was unlikely he’d go in for stitches, a couple of butterfly bandages would have to do.
The young man in uniform stood politely in the open doorway, waiting for them to acknowledge him. He was handsome in a practical sort of way, with brown hair cut short, brown eyes, and a square-chiseled, capable sort of face.
“Yeah, we see you,” Deacon muttered. “You just missed them, but come on in anyway.”
“I’m Officer Perkins,” he said with quiet confidence. Crick let Deacon shake him off to wipe his bloody hands off on the kitchen towel and extend a hand in greeting to the officer. To the officer’s credit, he didn’t think twice about shaking it.
“Deacon Winters. You might want to check hospitals—I worked him over pretty good.”
The officer raised his eyebrows. “Any particular reason?”
Deacon scowled. “That man trespassed on my property and put his hands on my family. Nobody puts their hands on my family. No-fucking-body, you hear me?”
Crick fought the inappropriate urge to chuckle, because seeing Deacon get all caveman was something special.
Officer Perkins raised his eyebrows and nodded, then got out his little notebook and started to ask some serious questions.
“Okay—whose child is it?”
Crick, Deacon, Benny, and Andrew all said, “Ours!” and the poor guy had to start all over again.
“I take it you’re the mother, right?”
Benny nodded, her lips pursed. Parry Angel was sitting in the high chair, eating the last of her Deek-deek’s favorite cookies to make up for the trauma, and Benny put her hand protectively on the baby’s fuzzy brown head.
“And you would be…?”
“I’m Benny Coats.”
“Like the guy who got his face beat in?”
“That would be the sperm donor who created me, yeah.”
Officer Perkins’s eyes widened. “And who’s the baby’s father?”
“A guy with a restraining order and a sex-offender ankle bracelet,” Benny said flatly. “You want to know who’s been raising her? You’re looking at them, but Deacon’s the one she loves best.”
Officer Perkins looked at Deacon with his hands out in a “help me here” sort of gesture. “And you’re related to the girls how?”
Deacon blushed hard enough that Crick could feel his body throwing off wet heat. “I’m Benny’s brother’s boyfriend.”
Those brown eyes got even wider, and he looked at Crick, who had started to edge himself protectively between Deacon and the new threat.
“So how did Benny and the baby come to be living here instead of with your parents?”
Crick found himself growling, so it was Benny who put it into words first. “Because when my dumbass brother here was out getting blown up in Iraq, Deacon picked me up off the front lawn and took me in. Do you want to see my room? The social worker wanted to see it—and she wanted to see the baby’s room and she wanted to see my medicine cabinet and to check if I was on birth control and that woman damned near wanted to do a pelvic exam. Now my dumbass ‘father’”—she included air quotes—“got it into his tiny pea brain that my baby would be better off with him….”
Officer Perkins nodded his head and tried to take over the conversation again—he was the one writing the report, after all. “Okay—now did he say why?”
And it was Deacon who spoke. “I believe his exact words were that he didn’t want no ‘nigger faggot raising his blood’.”
Perkins winced and looked at the three men. “And, um, which one of you was he talking about?”
Deacon and Andrew met eyes and smirked. “I don’t actually know,” Deacon said on a reluctant chuckle. “Drew, any ideas?”
Andrew’s chuckle was a little less reluctant. “I don’t know, sir—you are kind of tan.”
Crick shook his head violently. “It’s not funny,” he said, feeling a surprising amount of anger after the fact. “What made him think he could come here and do this? I’ve got legal custody of Parry and Benny—he was trespassing and kidnapping. What would be going through his teeny-assed-pea-brain?”
Officer Perkins cleared his throat. “I can answer that,” he said, nodding to Jon as he came in. “Is Mr. Coats a church-going man?”
“Christ yes,” Crick responded.
“Well there’s a tent revival going on in that vacant field out by Elverta. There was a guy out there yesterday going off about the evils of miscegenation and homosexuality and the usual—probably lit a fire under his ass and made him feel empowered.”
“I’m surprised you all didn’t have a chapter out there yourselves,” Jon said dryly, situating himself by the counter near Deacon and Crick.
Deacon said, “Easy there, cowboy. Officer Perkins has been fairly decent to us.”
“Yeah,” Benny acknowledged irritably, “but we all remember the last one.”
Officer Perkins had the grace to flush. “I’m sorry about that. You need to know we’re not all like that. I really would like to be a friend here, all right?”
Jon nodded, considering him carefully. “Well that would all depend on whether or not you’re going to arrest Deacon here for protecting his family.”
Officer Perkins looked down at his notepad and shrugged. “I’m thinking that’s a big ‘no’. Although it will depend on how badly Mr. Coats was injured—did Mr. Winters use more force than necessary to stop the crime?”
“If the bastard got into the car by himself, I’d call that a big ‘no’ as well,” Crick snapped, and Deacon put a restraining hand on his arm. Crick looked down and saw Deacon’s knuckles, taped together with butterfly bandages and covered in gauze, and got mad all over again.
“I honestly don’t remember,” Deacon said, and there was something odd about his voice, something remote and alien, that reminded Crick of the day his father died or the moment Crick told him about the Army. “I’ve… that’s weird. He just… he needed to let go of the baby, that’s all.”
Suddenly Deacon was the center of attention, the place he least liked to be. “I’ve got to….” He swallowed and flushed again. “Are we done, Officer?” he asked, and Crick could see the effort it took for him to focus on the question.
“Yes, sir. I think we are.”
Deacon nodded and shook his hand again. “This here’s Jon Leavens—he’s a friend of the family, and he helps us with legal stuff. If you need to arrest me, give us a call so Jon can arrange bail.”
“You’re awfully casual about that,” Perkins said dryly, and Deacon shrugged.
“At least this time I’ll probably be awake when you all pound down my door.” And with that, he started padding—barefoot and still bare-chested—for the mudroom, making to go outside that way.
“Deacon, where are you going?” Crick asked as Deacon put his hand on the knob to go outside.
“I’ve got to go shift the hay,” he said tersely, and Andrew rolled his eyes.
“Well, that was something we were going to do today,” he muttered as the door slammed, and Crick leaned back against the counter and pinched the bridge of his nose.
