She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,105

was not what he signed up for. A waste of his talent.

That would change today, and that was exciting.

That got the blood pumping through his aging ticker.

The diner, though, the diner bothered him.

An unknown variable.

He didn’t like unknown variables.

Another cloud drifted past the sun. This one dark and gray, and ready to burst. The temperature dropped too, a cold breeze kicking up. Rain soon. Heavy rain.

The payphone behind him began to ring.

Preacher considered pulling down the sign, then left it.

He crossed the sidewalk and picked up the call with his gloved hand, careful not to let the receiver actually touch his ear. “You didn’t say anything about the diner.”

“The diner?”

“Looks like some kind of fire. What happened?”

“The diner fire is unrelated. It doesn’t concern you. I figured you would have heard.”

“I’ve been in Arkansas.”

A sigh. “Good for you.”

“Was the boy…?”

“No. He’s fine.”

Preacher glanced down at his watch. Ten minutes until six. “Are we still a go?”

“Yes. Are you ready?”

That was a stupid question. He was always ready. “Yes.”

“Nobody lives, understand?”

That last bit made him forget the stupid question.

He couldn’t wait.

12

One block away, only two parking spaces down from where the surveillance van used to park before Duncan Bellino moved out of the apartment building located at 1822 Brownsville Road, Detectives Faustino Brier and Joy Fogel sat in a cream-colored Honda Civic pulled from the motor pool earlier in the day. They didn’t want to drive their regular vehicles, not today, on the off chance the Thatch kid recognized either of them.

Faustino watched the man who drove the black Pontiac GTO hang up the payphone and walk back toward Willock. He probably parked in the same place as the last time he saw him.

“I’ll stay on him,” Faustino said. “You follow the boy.”

“Got it,” Fogel replied, already climbing out of the car, eyeing the dark clouds above warily.

13

Turns out, Willy had found the small bottle of Captain Morgan in my top dresser drawer. The bottle hadn’t been hidden or anything, just sitting in the middle of some old comics, loose coins, random school assignments, a half-full box of condoms, and some drawings not worthy of display but not quite bad enough to throw out.

I want to be clear about something. I didn’t really need alcohol. Not now, and not back then. I’m not, and never was, an alcoholic. I’ve met a few in my time, more than a few—alcoholism is a horrible disease that lives far beyond the need to numb some feelings. Alcoholism lives within the cells, a hungry animal screaming to be fed. Maybe that comes later, but what I had wasn’t that. At least, I didn’t think so. I simply wanted to forget. I wanted to wipe away the last year. I wanted to go back to a time when I didn’t know the medications needed to treat acute myeloid leukemia by heart. I missed Auntie Jo’s incessant complaining, I missed the warmth of Gerdy’s hand, I missed the heat of Krendal’s kitchen and the greasy feeling of the dishwater after a dinner rush.

The last year of my life had been a nightmare, and I wanted to wake from it. I couldn’t wake from it, so I tried to forget instead. Alcohol allowed me to do that, even if just for a little while. I suppose had I spotted the remainder of Auntie Jo’s pain meds after the fire, after leaving the hospital, had I found her pain meds and sampled those rather than that first bottle of Jameson, it might have been pills that helped me forget rather than alcohol, but it would have been something. I needed something. If I hadn’t found some way to slip away from the pain, some way to numb the pain, I surely would have taken Auntie Jo’s pills by the handful and put a more permanent stop to my horrific ride. It’s silly to say alcohol saved me, but in some ways it did. Alcohol saved me from myself.

The first few days after the last drink were tough.

The shakes came and went, tag teaming with fever and sweats and dry mouth. I couldn’t keep food down, not that I really wanted to eat. My body threw up everything, heaving until my throat grew raw. I had trouble sleeping, and when I finally did drift off, I’d wake with attacks of anxiety, my heart racing so fast it felt like a motor stuck in the wrong gear attempting to chug up a hill. This passed after a few days, but it