The parking lot was enormous and open. The summer Charlotte heat beat down and the atmospheric pressure swirled over the top of the asphalt. Lines of heat swayed up into the air and buried themselves inside the first sign of a tree or human being walking to the front doors of the grocery store.
Off to the left of the front doors flowers of various colors and types surrounded wicker tables and wooden chairs. They were put there by the corporate office to give the place a look of high class and other upscale snobbery. Leo Murphy was anything but upscale and high class. He slid his body halfway down the chair and flopped his arms over the armrest of the chair like he owned it. His butcher coat both bloody from the morning’s cuts and caked in kabob seasoning was open at the front, exposing the same black checkered short-sleeved button-up shirt he wore every day underneath the butcher’s coat.
He hadn’t shaved in more than a month and didn’t seem to care to keep clean-shaven. He was on the wrong side of forty and a transplant from Boston. Back home in Southie the name Leo Murphy meant something. He was called on to do away with people and dispose of the bodies. Sometimes he had to do both. Leo didn’t use guns and other weapons of choice that other hitmen often used. He used knives, cleavers, and axes. So, when it came time to vanish from Boston after the FEDS came down on the O’Brien Family, it only made sense that he took a job nine hundred miles from home and became a butcher.
Over the years since he left, he hadn’t hurt another man or woman. He thought about the screams and blood every day, especially at night when trying to sleep. Nothing worked. Much like a war veteran, sleep was a rarity for him. He lowered his head and worked fifty, sometimes sixty, hours a week without a complaint. He took codeine and Vicodin to numb the past. He was paid a modest hourly wage, unlike his former life, when a kill could pocket him anywhere from twenty to fifty grand, depending on how many people and if he had to get rid of the bodies himself. It was something his coworkers hadn’t the slightest clue about.
They thought of Leo as another hard-working man bending over for corporate America. It never crossed their minds that they were working side by side with a killer. They always tried to invite him out, like ‘Cheese Steak’ Campagna. His real name was Mario, but Leo liked the nickname because he was fat and jolly like a cheese steak. Leo always turned him down for a night out of beers and concerts. He couldn’t seem to manage being around people outside of work for long periods of time.
He went home, took his pills and tried to sleep. He hadn’t owned a television set in years. He either read one of his thousands of books or went for long walks. The activities helped him forget the past. He felt some of them deserved what they got, but he never could forget Tara. A young prostitute who walked the night hours up and down the streets of the Combat Zone. He hated being paid to kill her. He loathed himself for pretending to be a “John,” and then driving out to the harbor, slitting her throat and kicking her body into the ocean. After he slit her throat, she looked surprised, shocked even, that she was dying, and that look never left him. Leo didn’t really know why, and he didn’t ask, but word on the street was she was fucking Adam “Chilly-Cool” Wise. And when “Chilly-Cool” was finished with her after a few weeks she had heard too much crap fall out Adam’s Tequila drunk mouth. The O’Briens couldn’t risk it, they called Leo. Not long after, he put a cleaver in Adam’s skull for trying to cut a deal with the police following an arrest for stealing a postal jeep high on crack and Mr. Bungle.
One hundred T-bones a day, both cut and trimmed. Fifty ribeye, sixty Porterhouse, it didn’t matter over and over he thought of Tara’s face. He studied his boss’ actions. He learned the movements of his coworkers. It was out of habit to study people. He couldn’t help himself. He let them bust-his-balls often, even smiled, but he knew he could end every single one of them if he truly wanted to, but he never wanted to entertain the thought at the same time.
He yearned for home, to be back among his people. The cold salt air of Southie. The corner stores and coffee shops that knew what a “medium regular” was. He missed late nights watching the Sox go into extra innings. He missed being a person people called on when they needed him. Now, the people don’t even look at him walking in the street. He’s a nobody. A wanderer of the void with two feet that might as well be four. Sideways, forwards, and backwards all at once and without a change to his face. It had become a life he could no longer taste, touch nor feel.
Before his break was over Leo looked in the bakery case. The eclairs, cupcakes, and pies made his mouth water. He saw Priscilla opening and closing little ovens. She had a ponytail pulled out from the back of the store labeled baseball cap. A week’s worth of tiredness dripped from her narrow face. He didn’t know Priscilla well enough. She was quiet like he was. Leo had heard her husband and three boys were killed in a car wreck some years back, and she took up with Sammy Long on occasion to help her forget the loss of her husband. Cheese Steak told him that Sammy was a violent drunk, typical Carolina trash. He came from a long line of trash. All known for beating women and fucking everyone in town that would spread their legs for a Long. Cheese Steak said, “yep, all them Longs have a baby with a different last name in every nook of the city.”
She looked like an intelligent woman. Not in the book smart way, but in the way a person is beat down by life. A person near suicide daily. They’re never allowed to come up for air. Bills upon bills piled up so high that all there is to do is laugh hysterically because there’s never going to be enough money to pay them all on time. It gives a person a kind of dark wisdom being so broke and making it work somehow. The pain from loss, regret, death and bad decisions, gives a person a certain worldview that college and books never will give you. Leo appreciated that about Priscilla although he’d never say that to her for fear of her thinking him crazy. But he could see each line around her eyes as another year of wisdom gained from a mind she wanted to escape.
“Seen you over by the bakery again,” Cheese Steak Campagna said with his hand pulling out a pound of pork from the grinder.
Leo watched him pull out the pound of pork without applying much pressure to the front of the auger. Leo shook his head but didn’t say anything, he picked up his knife and sharpened it.
“You should ask her out for a beer, Leo,” Cheese Steak continued, “I mean, I don’t think she’s much serious about Sammy Long. It wouldn’t hurt for you to get out and get some ass, know what I mean?”
He didn’t like him referring to Priscilla as a “piece of ass.” He wished he could say something. Instead, he put his head down and went to work cutting an order for two dozen sirloin steaks.
He thought about a lot of things when he cut. It was a form of meditation for him, silently standing and cutting the flesh, blood collecting in pools around the meat, his knife decorated in bright red from the overhead lights. Doing it released him from the ghosts of the past. He found it easier to breathe and focus. Most of all, it freed him from the look Tara gave him after he ran his blade across her throat.
He sometimes wondered why he went into the butcher profession after all he’d done back in Boston. Why he didn’t become a truck driver or maybe a fence post digger. He thought, maybe in some sick way he truly never wanted to leave his former profession behind. Maybe he wanted to keep it close as a form of punishment for the lives he took. The guilt of Tara would never leave him, he felt he deserved the life of torment.
After his shift was up Leo went back over to the bakery and looked in the case. Priscilla came over to the case, “Hey, Leo what can I get you?” He continued to look and was fixated on the eclairs.
“Did you make those?” He asked.
She smiled and leaned over the counter and moved closer to his face, “Angela the new girl made those and she’s ‘bout as smart as washrag, I’d steer clear of those today.”
“What did you make?” He asked with a smile.
“You have a nice smile, Leo, you should smile more. You know, you always look so serious all the time.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“You look like life has been kicking you in the balls over and over. Kinda like that.”
He appreciated plain spoken people.
“I made the lemon bars a couple of hours ago, if you want a treat made by me.”
“I’ll take a half-a-dozen,” Leo said.
Priscilla got a box out and put the lemon bars inside and put it on top of the counter.
“Six lemon bars,” she said.
He liked the lines coming from the corners of her mouth. How her cheap and faded red lipstick cracked with her dry lips. He reached up and grabbed the box, then started to pull into his chest and began to turn around, Priscilla picked up a rag and wiped the powdered sugar from the top of the counter. He thought about what Cheese Steak had said earlier about Long not really being much of a factor, and how in reality he didn’t want to go home and read and eat six lemon bars and go for a walk in Chantilly Park.
“Priscilla?” he asked.
She looked up at him, “Yeah, Leo?”
“Wanna do something later? Grab a beer or get something to eat?”
She studied what he had just asked her, and her eyes lit up.
“I’d like that, Leo.”
“Where would you like to go?” He asked.
“I could use a couple drinks later,” she replied. “Ever been to Billy Boyle’s Pub on 2nd Street?”
“No, but I know where it is.”
“It’s a great place. Last of the amazing dive bars in Charlotte. You know, before everything turned micro bullshit this and waxed mustache that. Billy Boyle’s has shitty band posters on the wall. A juke box with ‘70s music, and a dark wood bar and stools, and the place smells a bit like puke and piss. Just like a good bar should.”
She looked happy, even a bit shy that he asked her out. “Want to meet me there around seven-thirty?”
“I’ll be there,” he replied.
As he walked away, he saw Cheese Steak give him the thumbs up for finally growing a pair. Leo smirked and shot him the middle finger. The soft voiced store manager, Daniel, shook his head out of disgust over a cart of pears but he was too soft in the body and mind to say or do anything about it.
Leo arrived at Billy Boyle’s Pub at seven so Priscilla didn’t have to wait on him. It allowed him to order a tall beer and a shot of whiskey to kill the nerves. He couldn’t remember the last time he met a woman for drinks. He put down the shot and nursed the beer. The pub was everything she told him it would be. It reminded him of the hole in the wall joints back in Southie. He took a sip of beer and a memory hit him like a lightning bolt to the brain. How in Costigan’s Pub off L Street, he followed a man into a bathroom and when he was pissing the beer away in the stall Leo opened the door and slammed a knife into the man’s throat. It wasn’t so much the killing that bothered him, but the look of amazement on the man’s face. The blood coming out of the back of the base of his skull. The red oozing down the corners of his mouth. That look followed him all the way down to the piss-stained floor, until Leo pulled out the knife and left him there. Leo ordered another shot of whiskey and downed it.
He walked over to the juke box and flipped through the cards inside the glass, each card the cover of an album with a list of songs he could play from the album. He flipped through a dozen or more bands and singers he hated: Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot, Foreigner, The Outfield. Leo felt like giving up, then he saw Springsteen’s THE RIVER. He dropped a dollar into the machine and chose SHERRY DARLING. The summer sun blinded the bar when Priscilla opened the door and walked inside.
She wore a black house dress she either made or bought at Target. It had tiny pink flowers all over it and it ran just below her pale white knees. Her dirty blonde hair was up in a clip and a bit wet from a shower. She didn’t care to impress Leo or anyone else. And he liked that about her. ‘Take me as I am or don’t take me at all’, is how she presented herself to the world.
“I love this song,” she said to Leo.
“I played a couple songs from the album.”
She approved with a smile, “I could really use a drink,” she said.
They sat in a couple of chairs facing a giant Jamesons Mirror on the wall above the cash register. She ordered a Maker’s Mark on the rocks, and Leo ordered another tall beer. Priscilla downed the Maker’s and ordered a second, then downed the second even quicker than the first. The bartender figured she’d want another, and he wasn’t wrong.
“Does this bother you?” She asked.
“Does what bother me?” Leo replied.
“That I downed two whiskeys quicker than you could take a couple sips of that beer?”
“Not at all,” he said.
“Good, because I had a long day at work. And I had an even shittier phone call before I left. I really need to let loose a bit.”
He wanted to ask about the phone call, but he didn’t. He wanted to ask why her day was so long at work, but he didn’t.
“So, I know,” Leo said.
“Know what?”
“About your boys.”
Her eyes lit up. He wasn’t sure why.
“Well, Evan, he’s the oldest and he’s ten. Thinks he knows everything about everyone. Pain in my ass, but he’s my little Evan. And then there’s Dean, he’s eight and the quiet one, but you know what they say about the middle child? “They are the ones that turn out to be serial killers.” She laughed and continued talking about her boys like they were still among the living, “Then there’s Tommy, he’s the baby and acts like one too, he’s five. Love my boys but sometimes they can be a handful.” She took a sip of her whiskey and Leo took a long chug of his beer. “What about you?” she asked. “Any kids?”
“No. I don’t have any. I guess it wasn’t in the cards for me.”
“Ever been married?”
“Nope, never been married either,” he said.
He felt like he should’ve lied about that last question so he could fit in. Maybe make her feel more comfortable with something to relate to, but he didn’t want to lie. He liked her.
“You know, Leo,” she said.
“Know what?”
“I’m glad you asked me to hang out.”
“Whys that?”
“All the women in the bakery think you are a good-looking man; you know for an older guy.”
“They do?”
“Yes, we all talk about it, but no one really knows you. You are mysterious and you walk around like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. I bet you have a lot of secrets, don’t you?”
“Who doesn’t?” He replied, ordering himself another beer and another whiskey for Priscilla.
“I suppose you are right,” she said.
“You live in Charlotte long?” Leo asked.
“My whole life. Never got out of this city outside my honeymoon up in the mountains outside of Ashville, but that was a long time ago.”
He watched her vanish into a long-ago time in her mind. A place where she was forever stuck, the frost from the ice cubes danced around her lips and nostrils. Leo thought of her look like a black and white photograph hanging in an art gallery. He thought of her mind like a puzzle with a missing piece. He didn’t want her to break from her thought and return, but he also understood to live in the dark for too long wasn’t good for anyone.
“Oh, by the way,” he said. “Older man?”
She snapped out of her thought, “You know you got some white hairs in your scruff. It’s handsome though. I like it. Leo the distinguished butcher.”
“How old are you?” He asked.
Priscilla slapped the bar and looked over at him, “You know never to ask a lady her age, but you see the lines around my eyes and mouth,” she said pointing at her face, “And the bags under my eyes?”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said.
“Well, three boys, a dead husband, a dead-end job, and you’d have to say that creates a forty-two-year-old woman going on ninety.”
Leo couldn’t understand why she accepted her husband’s death and not the death of her boys, but he let it go, “I’m forty-seven. Age isn’t really a big deal.”
She didn’t reply. She was lost in the frost of her ice cubes again and Leo could only admire her. The alcohol both picked her up and let her fall back into her unshakable thoughts.
“So, where you from originally?” She asked. “I can tell you aren’t from here.”
He wanted to tell her all about Southie and growing up in the streets and fighting to make it home from school every day. And his abusive Catholic upbringing, and how in his early twenties he was an amateur boxer and lost his career to shattering his left wrist in a fight. He wanted to tell her about his family, both blood and friends, but in order to keep the rest of his life a secret, he had to tell her a lie. “I’m from Portland, Maine.”
“You don’t have the accent like they do in the movies.”
“Which movies are you referring to?”
“You know, like ‘Dolores Claiborne,’ they all talk with that thick and funny accent.
“It never did take,” he said. “Besides Hollywood always over does it with the accents.”
“I suppose,” she said. “What did you parents do?”
“Dad was a fisherman and Mom was a second-grade teacher.”
“How long you been in Charlotte?”
“Around seven years.”
“Why here? Not often we get many Mainers moving this way.”
“Well, both Mom and Dad died, and I didn’t have much family left, so I came down here. I wanted to start over fresh.”
He hated lying to her. He wished she’d change the subject to anything else but his past. He knew telling one lie would lead to one hundred more lies. And he liked Priscilla and wanted to get to know her on a more intimate level.
“Can I ask you a question?” He asked.
“It’ll cost you, Murphy.”
“What’ll it cost?”
She shook her empty glass, “another round and a couple of songs on the juke.”
“What do you want to hear?”
“Surprise me,” she said, “but no rap or disco. Give me something with electric guitars and lyrics.”
He chose a couple of songs from ‘Sticky Fingers,’ and he picked upbeat songs, ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,’ and ‘Brown Sugar.’ She leaned her head in his direction with a buzzed look in her eyes. “Great fucking choice, Leo! Now come on over and ask me your question.”
He took his seat and ordered another beer. He spent so many years trying to shake some of the facial expressions of his ‘hits’ that he forgot how to live, but the time with Priscilla was something he hadn’t experienced since before leaving Boston. He’d almost forgot what it was like to talk and hang out with a woman. All he knew was that he liked it, and he wanted to stretch out the night as long as he could.
“You having a good time?” He asked.
“That was your question?” She said in a playful and sarcastic tone. “How boring Leo. I thought you were gonna ask me a deep philosophical question. One we could debate. Or at least ask me what color my panties are.”
“If I had to guess I’d say pink.”
“Well, you guessed fuckin’ wrong. They are black and they go with my black bra. Not that you’ll see them tonight.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking I’d…”
She slapped him on the shoulder, “Relax, Leo,” she interrupted. “I’m fucking with you. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t.”
“What about Sammy Long?”
Her facial expression soured, and she took a sip of her drink, “What about him?”
“Nothing, really,” Leo noticed how she turned from playful to a bit angry. “Just that Cheese Steak told me you have been maybe dating him?”
She slammed down her whiskey and ordered another, “I wouldn’t call it exactly dating, if you know what I mean.”
“I suppose. I’m sorry for asking it’s none of my business.”
She snapped out of wherever the question took her, “Ahh, don’t worry about it, Murphy.” She leaned over and smooched him quickly to break the tension. He could taste the gooey gloss on her lips, and he liked the fake cherry flavor of it. He didn’t return one out of respect. He didn’t want to push a borderline drunk woman even if they both wanted it.
“Priscilla,” a voice yelled from the doorway of the bar.
They both turned their attention to the voice. Leo saw the man standing there wearing a worn ball cap. The sun had tanned his skin from working with a road crew. His long-sleeved western shirt was rolled up to his elbows, and his long dark hair underneath his hat pointed out and up over his ears. He was drunk and vibed rage fifty feet in front of him. He didn’t like that Priscilla was sitting with another man and having a good time.
“Get your fucking ass over here,” he shouted. The entire bar stared at him, then her to see what she’d do.
“I’m sorry Leo. Let me go see what he wants.”
She walked over to Sammy, and she wasn’t but up to his chest in height. He was easily six foot and a few inches to her five foot three. Leo watched them argue but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The bartender asked if he wanted another drink, but Leo lifted his hand to gesture ‘no.’ Sammy shoved her, and Leo stood up.
“What,” he said to Leo. “You gonna do something about it?”
He imagined moving a blade gently across the veins in his neck, blood all over Sammy’s hands when he reached up to try and push the blood back into his throat like he was trying to reverse his death. But he didn’t make a move, he sat back down and pretended to be a coward.
“And stay seated, motherfucker, if you know what’s good for you.”
Priscilla ran over to the bar and grabbed her purse. “I’m sorry, Leo, I’m going to have to call it a night. Sammy, he’s, well, you know.”
Leo touched her hand. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” Her eyes briefly glowed like it had been a lifetime since she heard a kind word spoken to her. “Maybe another time?” She nodded and walked back towards Sammy.
Leo waited a minute, paid for the tab, then walked out into the lot. Across the way he saw Sammy’s big hand gripped around her upper arm. He opened the door of his pickup truck and tossed her in the passenger seat and slammed the door both to control and to scare her. Leo couldn’t understand why a strong and intelligent woman would let such a garbage human into her life. He knew she was better than that. He got in his car and followed them. After twenty minutes of driving, Leo followed them to the outskirts of the city and into a trailer park.
Leo waited at the end of the street until he spotted where they stopped and watched him grab her by the arm and drag her towards the stairs of his trailer. She tried to pull away, but Sammy wasn’t having it. He gripped tighter and dragged her with force, then she fell on the stairs. Sammy kept dragging her. She didn’t even scream for help or yell at Sammy, she accepted the abuse.
Once inside for a few, Leo cut his headlights and pulled across the street facing the trailer. He could see them in the bedroom window. She stood at the foot of the bed. He couldn’t make out what Sammy was saying to her, but he watched her turn her face away from Sammy and look down at the ground over her shoulder. Sammy chugged a beer, then threw the can down. He tried to move his hands and body close to her without being aggressive. When he noticed that she kept looking at the ground and didn’t respond to him, he’d had enough and slapped her across the face. Leo couldn’t hear the sound, but he felt it. Sammy ripped open the front of her dress and dragged the remaining threads off her body and threw it to the ground. When she leaned over to pick it up, he slapped her again, knocking her head upwards. She stood there with a bloody nose. It didn’t matter to Sammy, he owned her. Priscilla was his property, he pushed her down on the bed, unbuckled his pants and crawled on top of her.
Leo made his way into the trailer. He could see at the far end the door was closed and he could hear Priscilla putting up a fight, dropping every cuss word possible. Leo looked through the kitchen drawers, but he couldn’t find a weapon to use. Next to the grease-spotted oven that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a year, he saw a butcher block full of knives surrounded by cobwebs. He looked through them and picked out the largest one and the smallest one. Both were still sharp from not being used.
He made his way to the door; he could hear shitty new country music playing. He didn’t know the names of the artists. He only knew Toby Keith, so he referred to all new shitty country as Toby Keith. He slowly opened the door and saw a naked Sammy pawing at Priscilla’s beat up and bruised body. He couldn’t get off her panties because she kept putting up a fight. She flat out refused to take anymore from him, but she also knew she didn’t have much fight left in her. She noticed Leo at the doorway, the large knife facing out in his right hand, and the smaller one gripped in his left hand and down by his side. She lifted her head up, her eyeballs shot out over the fury dented in her forehead. Sammy took notice of her expression, for a moment it took the life out of him, but he turned around anyway.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” He yelled.
A naked Sammy with cock swinging and tatted chest full of skulls and Nazi symbols charged at Leo.
“Put it in his fucking neck, Leo!” Priscilla screamed.
He moved back quickly from Sammy’s bull charge and made it out into the kitchen. Priscilla with her puffy split lip and bruised cheekbone stood at the bedroom doorway covered in what remained of her torn dress. Sammy leaned in and landed a punch to Leo’s gut. He jerked back on impact and felt a rib crack.
“What you are gonna do with those knives, little man, kill me?”
Sammy took another swing and landed another blow in the same cracked rib. Leo fell to one knee; he felt the pain in his teeth. Sammy went into the cupboard above the sink and dragged out a silver revolver and jammed it in Leo’s mouth.
“You’re trespassing and best I see it I can kill you right now.” He cocked the gun. “Priscilla, baby, I’m going to splatter your friend’s brains all over the kitchen.” She didn’t have it in her to move. She looked at Leo like it was going to be the last time she was going to see him. She turned her head away, unable to look into the eyes of the inevitable.
Sammy returned his attention back to Leo, but before he could wrap his finger around the trigger, Leo planted the small knife into his shooting hand. Sammy dropped the gun and screamed in agony. He looked at his hand and saw the knife point sticking out from his palm.
“You’re a dead man now, motherfucker!” Sammy turned to grab a knife from the block, but before he could reach for it, Leo jammed his large blade into Sammy’s nut sack and pushed it in deep and rotated the blade a few times. Blood poured out onto the floor like a river breaking a damn. It emptied out onto the linoleum and Sammy slipped in it and fell to the ground yelling. Priscilla reached deep inside her mind, through the past and the pain and what tortures all humans, she gave Leo a nod.
He pulled the knife from Sammy’s groin and picked up his head by the hair, and slid the knife across the veins in his throat. His daydream wasn’t far off, Sammy grabbed at the blood and tried to push it back into his throat.
Priscilla ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall and walked over to a dying Sammy and he looked up at her in disbelief. Sammy was the kind of man who subdued and owned women, and for a short time he was able to control Priscilla, but she wasn’t taking his shit anymore and felt neither should any other woman. One less Sammy Long was exactly what humanity needed. Leo didn’t stop her. She repeatedly slammed Sammy’s face with all the rage of this world with the butt end of the extinguisher until Sammy’s face split into a pulp mess of splatter and brain. Until Priscilla didn’t have the strength to destroy the present nor the past anymore.
She dropped the extinguisher to the ground and fell in the pool of blood in nothing but her panties and bra. Sammy’s blood staining her legs. Leo, too, was covered in his blood. Leo stood up and held out his hand and grabbed Priscilla’s hand and helped her up. He ran into Sammy’s closet and picked out one of his large hoodies and grabbed her purse, shoes, and what remained of her dress. Leo walked her out to his car and gave her the keys.
“Drive back to the bar and get into your car and drive home. Leave my car in the lot.”
“What are you gonna do?” she asked.
“I’m going to clean up here, so this hopefully doesn’t come back to us.”
She looked at him with the same face she carried around in the bakery. She had gained another notch of wisdom in her beaten-up and scarred life. She hadn’t the slightest idea why she did, but she trusted Leo.
“I don’t think you are from Maine, Leo, and I don’t think you moved to Charlotte to start a new life.”
“Yes and no,” he said.
“Which part is yes, and which part is no?”
“I’m not from Maine, I lived a very different life and I’d like the chance to tell you all about it, one hundred percent honesty, but I did move here to start over. I hope you let me tell you about that life, but the truth is, once I’m done in there I’m going to have to move on. You are welcome to come.”
She was taken back by his invitation to run away and start over, she wanted to say “yes,” she also wanted to say, “no,” but she only nodded and started the car and drove away.
Leo went inside and saw the mess of what was left of Sammy Long. He thought of burying him out back, but he didn’t have the time. Instead, he soaked the curtains of the trailer in lighter fluid and struck a match and tossed it into the kitchen curtains. The fire started slowly, and he doused Sammy’s body with the leftover fluid and struck a match and tossed it on his corpse.
In the window he saw the eyes of Tara looking at him. A face he saw every day full of fear and shock, now looked at him with forgiveness. He wasn’t sure if it was because he killed a man who deserved to die, or because he had returned to killing or both. “I’m sorry,” he said to the vision. “It wasn’t right what I did to you. You didn’t deserve to die so young. I’m sorry.” Tara’s face kept forgiving him until it vanished from sight. He hoped forever, but he also knew that would never be the case. She would always be his chains. His deepest mistake. A piece of the past he couldn’t return to and change.
Leo waited a day before trying to contact Priscilla, but when he made the call, she picked right up and was excited to hear from him.
“It’s about time. I was wondering if you skipped town and were going to pin that shit on me,” she said in a sarcastic tone.
“You think about my offer?”
“About leaving Charlotte? I did.”
“What do you think? We could start over somewhere new. There’s nothing here for either of us. Eventually there will be too much heat. The police or the Long family will figure us out soon enough.”
“I’m not sure why I trust you Leo, I do, but I’m afraid to go. Maybe I should come clean.”
“They’ll find you in or out of prison. You’ll be dead within a week,” Leo explained. “We can go anywhere you want to go. You pick.”
“Any ideas?” She asked.
“I don’t know, New Mexico where all the UFOs are? Maybe Southern California where all the movie stars live? Or perhaps somewheres out by the Grand Canyon so we can investigate the world’s largest hole every single weekend of our lives.”
“I’m voting for UFO country myself,” Priscilla said with a smirk he could feel through the phone.
“I’d like that too.”
“You know, not to spoil all of this, but some of the Longs are on T.V. screaming about how it wasn’t a fire. They think Sammy was murdered.”
“That’s why we need to be gone from here as soon as possible.”
“What are you thinking, Leo? Time wise?”
“Two days tops. You pack whatever and I’ll bring over a U-Haul and we can put some shit into it.”
“Why do I have a feeling you’ve done this before.”
“Like I said the other night…”
“I know what you said,” she interrupted.
“I promise I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Do I want to know?”
“No, you don’t. You’ll fucking hate it, but I’m telling you, I’m not that man anymore.”
“Fair enough, but not today. Maybe not for a while. Let me come to you once I am ready to hear about it all. Maybe I’ll wake up in the middle of the night because of a strange dream that you are in, and I’ll need to talk about it. I don’t know. Maybe my sons will guide my way when I need to understand what happened in that trailer. There’s a good chance I’ll never want to know. I can’t get past the visions, and I can’t read thoughts, but I can feel, and when I am ready to feel again, I’ll know, and I’ll tell come to you.”
“Whenever you are ready,” he replied.
They attached the U-Haul to Leo’s truck. She packed up all her bedroom and living room furniture into the trailer and packed her dead children’s clothes and toys. Leo said he had plenty of money tucked away and could buy more things, whatever else Priscilla needed to feel comfortable. Leo only took his books and clothes with him. Everything else he left behind in his apartment. They were headed for southern New Mexico without a town or place in mind. Once they got there, they’d know, and they’d settle down and start their lives over. Leo figured he’d return to being a butcher and Priscilla figured she’d bake again, but neither of them mentioned it to one another. They headed towards the interstate to start their journey. Priscilla saw the boys sitting in the back playing video games on handheld game systems. The look on their faces didn’t seem to mind the new man in their mother’s life. She felt it, and soon after she was able to settle into the choice she made. Priscilla reached down to Leo’s right arm resting on the console that separated them. She rubbed his arm then slid her hand on top of his hand. He looked forward and let her have her way.
Near the ramp leading to the interstate sat Boyd’s gas station and parked inside was a pickup truck, brand new, with steer horns on the front of the hood, and a gun rack loaded with shotguns in the back window. Hugh Long, matriarch of the long family, sat in the driver’s seat. His brown Stetson hat shaded his long beard and big stomach. He watched Priscilla and the strange man pull off onto the interstate and he started his truck, if anyone had something to do with his son’s death, he was convinced it was her. Hugh pulled out into the road and started up the ramp to the interstate six car lengths behind the U-Haul.
