Page 88 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Shouting felt…better than he’d expected. He wasn’t sure he’d ever shouted, save to be heard above the roar of the boatmotor, when he and Daddy were out on the water, cruising from one line to the next, the wind snatching at their hair and stealing the words from their mouths, so even with yelling loud enough to be hoarse, it was still an exercise in lip reading.

Daddy…

He realized that his eyes were shut, and when they were, all he saw was Daddy sprawled out on the floor. And Gram in the yard, her skirt tangled around her legs…

He opened his eyes, and found that the prospect had gone white to the roots of his not-quite-brown hair, eyes big and frightened.

Good, Mercy thought.Leave me the fuck alone.

He threw back the rest of his drink, braced a hand on the edge of the bar, and was readying to attempt standing when a remarkable thing happened.

The prospect blinked, and his face screwed up into an expression so pinched, and pink, and ridiculous that Mercy didn’t immediately recognize it as anger.

“Fuck you,” the kid hissed, and Mercy burst out laughing.

It was a mean laugh, rather than his convivial chuckle; he wasn’t sure if that was a sound he could ever recapture. “Fuck me?” he asked. “Is that what you just said? Fuckme?”

The prospect sucked in a shuddering breath, puffed out his skinny chest, and said, “Yeah, fuck you, I’m trying to be your friend–”

His anger reached a dizzying new peak. Or maybe that was the booze. Who the hell knew. But this kid was on the straight and narrow to becoming a bitter, angry loser just like Oliver Landau. How many years before he went from a nasty little suck-up to murdering old women in their own yards?

I’m trying to be your friend.

Mercy shoved him. Hard.

He tumbled back off his stool and landed flat on his back with anoofof expelled breath.

Mercy stood over him. “You’re not my friend.” He pointed at him, and his hand was steady, and it was far too easy to imagine leaning down to grip his shirt and slam his head back on the floorboards. “You’re nothing but a chickenshit wannabe who doesn’t know his place. Don’t you ever speak to me about my family again.”

His brothers called after him as he stalked to the door and let himself out onto the porch. Exhaustion, and grief, and nausea crashed over him, along with a fair measure of shame. He slumped down onto a bench and buried his face in his hands.

He was like a boat cut loose from the dock, drifting with the currents, rudderless. He’d never been rich, never been lucky, never been destined for anything important or meaningful. But his life had made sense, and he’d been happy, in his own way. Happy out on the water, checking lines, hauling in gators. Happy at the dinner table, swatting away flies with napkins, and listening to Remy’s broad, drawling voice tell a story he’d heard a hundred times, and which he’d happily listen to again and again. He’d begun to wonder, in a distant and half-fearful way, if getting married was in the cards for him. If he might someday meet a woman who was nothing like his mother, who would love him, and in turn love the children they made together.

And now his tiny world was shattered, and he had no idea how to breathe through the pain, much less live through it.

His head sloshed and swayed, and he was only distantly aware of the door slamming. A few moments later, a bike started up. When he lifted his head, he saw the prospect’s narrow silhouette in the glare of the security light. He walked his bike backward clumsily, feet slipping in the gravel, and nearly went down. But then he got it pointed out, and revved the throttle, and took off jerkily, spraying gravel.

Mercy slumped back against the wall and felt like the world’s biggest asshole.

~*~

“Wannabe,” Mercy said, now, and his head swam like it had then, though he hadn’t been drinking. “That’s what I called him. Wantabi.” He looked up at Colin, at Alex, at Ava, still perched unmoving as a raptor beside him. “Want. To. Be. Wannabe.”

“Shit,” Colin murmured. “Fucker thought he was clever.”

“Mercy,” Alex said, face creased with a cop-like concern that was, strangely enough, comforting. He looked authoritative and assessing, which was good considering Mercy’s brain threatened to drift out to sea. “You were a jerk to him, yeah, but let’s be real: what you said wasn’tthat bad. It wasn’t stalk-you-arrest-you-kidnap-your-kid bad.”

“I thought we already established that he’s a psychopath,” Ava said.

“Yes, and he is. Just even more of one than I thought,” Alex said with a wry headshake. “You’re sure that’s all you said to him?”

“Yeah. Nobody saw him again after that night.” Mercy frowned. “He didn’t even return the cut. Bob was pissed about that.”

“Two guesses where the decoy you got a Lean Dogs cut, and the first one doesn’t count,” Colin said.

Alex scratched at the back of his neck. “So here’s the scenario: Boyle used to spy on you guys when you hung out as kids. During that time, he built up some fictional mental picture of being your friend, of being a part of your group, and when he was eighteen, he prospected the club under the name Hank. A long-held fantasy like that would have become a very involved and precious thing to him. A castle made of spun sugar. Yourrejection of him, no matter how mild, was like dumping a bucket of water over the whole thing.”

“Nice metaphor, Hemingway,” Colin said.

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