Her Quiet Legacy

Chapter 2

Can be intentional and used for textureThe kid let me walk away, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps the sight of Roddy hauling himself from his stool and staggering across the carpet made him think twice before picking a fight with the biggest guy in the room. Roddy sprayed beer from his lips as he addressed the kid. “Let him go, Nathan. Look at his muscles, dude. He’ll crush you like a bug.”

Nathan looked me up and down before jabbing a knobbly forefinger into the wall of defined pectoral muscle, which created a plate across my chest. “Stay away from Tahlia!” he growled.

I ignored him, tilting my head at Roddy as a silent farewell. The neat cravat tied around my neck seemed tighter as I moved, tension swelling my blood vessels until it became a noose. He jerked his chin upward before reaching for my full bottle and drowning his life in hops and foam for another evening of small-town fun. The alcohol negated his memories of a wife he lost through neglect and a son who crossed the street to avoid him.

The forward motion of walking eased my nerves, each touch of my soles to the sticky carpet providing comfort and the solidity of routine. Twenty-one yellow squares. Twenty-two blue. I passed over the threshold, paying lip service to the fallen soldiers commemorated on a verdigris plaque on the lobby wall. My fingers knew their names with the accuracy of braille, and I paused to touch the third one down in the right column. Jonathan George. He’d died in Normandy generations before mine. We shared no connection other than his placing on the memorial board. Acknowledging his name with a touch satisfied another of my compulsions and kept the monsters at bay. I’d work through the entire list in five years, top to bottom, left to right. Then, with anticipation and a faint sense of thrill, I’d start again at the top left like a snail traversing a wall. I liked to think of it as progress. If the patrons of the Returned Services Association bar thought it weird, they kept their opinions to themselves. The medals nestling in the safe at home rewarded bravery during active service, but the ghosts in my mind betrayed a body count I’d buried beneath routines and habits designed to suppress them.

Roddy’s drawl carried through the open doorway, and I paused as I heard my name. “Don’t pick a fight with Jack. That guy can strip a g*n in half the time as any normal human. Show him a map and he’ll know the terrain after five seconds.” His cackle accompanied the scrape of my abandoned glass bottle across the wooden bar and the hiss of the bubbles as he poured it into his glass. “Hell, he’ll even correct it for you and put in routes you never noticed.”

“Shut up, Roddy!” The growl of an older patron rebuked him. No one in the RSA talked about their service. Those who boasted brought suspicion to themselves, their bravado tales alienating instead of ingratiating them with the locals. Real warriors didn’t tell war stories. They showed up each night, played Housie or dominoes and drank to forget.

Four steps took me into the car park and the fresh winter air. Sixteen more would take me to my truck on the road, but my phone vibrated in my pocket before I could begin the familiar count. I let it ring five times and then answered, my reply curt. “Jack Jethro.”

“Hey Jacques.” Her Parisian tones filled my ear like syrup, enticing me towards a life I’d rejected. She whispered my name, embracing it with her tongue.

“Yeah.” As always, she stripped the words from my throat and left me with nothing but a grunted acknowledgement. Julia knew me well enough not to bother with niceties.

“I have a contract for you, mon amour.” She left the sentence hanging, waiting for the information to percolate through my brain and perhaps encourage a different answer from last time.

“No more.” The two words elicited her dramatic sigh which whooshed into my ear. I’d said them twice in recent months and four times the previous year. “You said you understood.” She’d said that last time, accompanying the sentence with a promise. It caused a physical ache in my chest that she’d lied.

“I know.” Her tone became conciliatory. “I do. But you’ll want this one. I need to see you again, anyway.” She paused. “I want to see you again.”

“No.” A stabbing index finger disconnected the call. I knew what would happen when we got together. The pattern was always the same, but one which grabbed a hold of me and took control. I couldn’t afford to engage with habits and patterns over which I had no authority.

The phone slid into my back pocket with ease, but my fingers twitched. As though given a mind of their own, they formed around an imaginary cylinder and the auditory centre of my brain joined them in their conspiracy. I heard the hiss of a spray can and the tinkle of the ball bearing at the bottom. The heady scent of Acetone, Xylene and Toluene returned to haunt me, and I shook my head to shuck off the lure. Thirteen steps and counting took me almost to my truck.

“Hey, you!” The skinny kid raised his voice as he left the safety of the lobby and crunched across the car park.

I turned to face him, obliging him with a reaction he expected. My arms hung by my sides in a non-threatening manner, and I schooled my features into an impassive mask. His steps quickened as he moved towards me, growing in confidence with each stamping step. My fingers twitched, changing the imagined sensation of the paint cannister for the deep ridges surrounding a grenade. I pictured releasing the pin and filling the kid’s mouth with the hard metal object. Messy, but fun.

“Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you!” He added a bullishness to his tone, assisted by the alcoholic fuel he’d imbibed at a discount in the RSA. Dilated pupils occupied the space where cobalt irises should have glittered under the glare of the street lamps. Something else accompanied the beer to tickle his sense of righteous indignation.

“I’m not walking.” I stated the obvious, my most infuriating gift in life.

His eyes bugged, the whites like boiled eggs in the darkness. “Smart a*s!” he growled. He ground to a halt before me as though his thought processes hadn’t taken him beyond this moment. “Go near Tahlia again and I’ll kill you.”

“Right.” I remained stock still, weighing the possibilities of his next move. The laws of probability activated, filling my brain with ratio and percentage as I trawled through scenarios. When his fist rose and headed towards my chest, a wave of disappointment exhaled with my sigh. The sum of the probabilities for all outcomes is one.

I blocked his fist with my forearm, the fingers of my other hand closing around his throat. “There were better options,” I mused. My thumb and middle finger constricted the arteries on either side of his neck, and his hands clawed at my sleeves. I held him at an arm’s length, reducing the effectiveness of his feckless kicks. “Leave. Me. Alone.” The words ground from my throat, and I hardly recognised the guttural tones created by my frustration. A hard shove set him on his backside in the road. I shaped my fingers into an imaginary g*n, levelling them towards his face. He leaned on the asphalt with his arms splayed behind him, feet still lifted in the air. “Boom.” I whispered the word, filling it with the venom of a kill shot before pulling my keys free and unlocking the driver’s door of my truck.

“Weirdo!” he shouted. “You’ll get what’s coming to you. I know something you’d rather I didn’t. You’re gonna pay.” The diesel engine roared to life, and I counted to four before slipping the gear lever into reverse. The kid scrambled sideways on his hands and knees, perhaps realising he’d fallen outside my range of interest. Backing over him would cause a heap of issues, not least a wasted hour of pressure-washing the tyres in the dark. I spun the vehicle in an impressive U-turn before wincing as I travelled in the wrong direction. That wasn’t meant to happen. It wasn’t how I ended my evenings at the RSA. I’d allowed the kid to get to me and he’d spoiled my routine. I drove to the main road and all the way home before returning and starting again. When I parked my truck for the second time that evening, the kid was gone.

Chapter 3