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“None of your business.” I increased my pace and stuck my nose up in the air. Then, because I couldn’t help but rub it in a little, I said, “I know you won’t understand this Kid Harding but I’ve got something important going on.”
“Hahaha, that’s a good one.” He grinned at me.
“Go away.” I kept on walking.
“Come on, Liddy. We both know you never have anything important going on.” He smirked in that obnoxious and superior way of his.
Because pride is a dangerous thing, I pulled the painting away from my chest where I had been holding it next to my heart. Then I shoved that blue ribbon painting right up under Kid Harding’s nose.
“Lemme see that.” He reached out and grabbed hard at the picture. Panicked at seeing my prize-winning painting in his grubby little hands, I grabbed hard back. Only when Kid had snatched the painting from me, I had let it go. And when I had tried to snatch it back, he held on.
Up until then, my young life had held patches of deep disappointment and consummate sadness. But never ever,ever,had I felt heartbreak like I did when that paper ripped in half. The sound of it tearing hurt me so much that for a moment I lost my breath. Everything went dark and I felt as if I was caught up in some vengeful wizard’s kaleidoscope where all of the colors were black.
The next thing I heard was the sound of Kid Harding screaming bloody murder, and the next thing I felt was the gush of blood as it filled my mouth. I chomped down hard on the hand that still held half of my soul. Kid tried to pull away, but my teeth just sank in deeper. He was howling and I was chomping, and in the end, Kid had to pull the hair right out of my head to free himself. Then he took off like a shot holding his injured hand and leaving blood spats on the dirt road. I ran like hell fury after him. Kid was really fast, but I had the benefit of rage on my side. I almost caught him too. But as my feet were flying, I tripped on a rock in the road and went down hard. I looked up just in time to see Kid drop his half of the painting and run into Fast Motors, the motorcycle repair shop that his daddy owned.
Both parts of the painting were now crumbled and lying in the dirt and a shard of broken glass was sticking out of my skin. I picked up the torn pieces of the picture but when I tried to take the glass out of my badly scraped knee, it stung so badly that I decided to leave it for another time. Then, with malicious intent and strength of purpose, I limped as fast as I could right after Kid and into that garage.
The building loomed empty before me while the strong smell of motor oil, tobacco, and coffee came rushing at me. All of the bays were empty except for the motorcycles that sat in different states of repair. I knew someone must be there because there was a whole bunch of motorcycles parked out front, and I knew fresh-brewed when I smelled it.
The pain in my knee was excruciating, but the pain in my heart was worse. I was going to do the best I could to make sure that Kid Harding paid for ruining the picture that I had worked so hard on and that I loved. I was going to make that boy pay for ruining my chance to shine in the only way I knew how. I was going to make him pay for missing out on the chance to make Aunt Betty proud.
I stood in the middle of that big empty garage and knew that he must be hiding from me like the miserable coward he was. And I was pretty sure I knew which door he had gone through.
There were four doors in that wide-open space. Three normal-looking ones, and one more. The one more looked like the devil himself had carved it. The wordsSilver Sinnerswere burned deep into the wood and etched under that banner was a large, grinning, horned devil. I would recognize that smirk anywhere. If there was any door that Kid Harding had slinked into, I was betting on the one with the smiling demon.
Filled with heartbroken rage, I hobbled fast over there. I had to use two hands and all my body weight to push it, but to my surprise, the door suddenly seemed to swing open of its own accord. “KID HARDING! YOU SLITHERING SNAKE OF A BASTARD, I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” I shouted out as I fell into the room.
With all that fierce fury coursing through me, I didn’t even flinch when a dozen men leapt out of black leather chairs and pointed their guns right at me.
“What the hell are you doing, Liddy? Trying to get yourself killed?!”Deke’s eyes went fierce with fire when he shouted out at me, but when he put his gun back into his waistband everybody else did too. Then his voice changed from loud and angry to medium and angry. “You shouldn’t open closed doors in strange places, Liddy, you could get yourself hurt.”
I pulled back my bony little shoulders, straightened my spine, and felt the tears stream down my cheeks. I swiped them away angrily because the last thing I needed right then was to be seen as a crybaby. I didn’t want pity, I wanted revenge.
“YEAH, WELL THERE’S A LOT OF SHOULDN’TS GOING ON AROUND HERE, DEKE HARDING!!! AND I HAVE ALREADY GOTTEN MORE THAN MY FILL OF THEM THANKS TO THAT NO GOOD, MEAN, SONOFABITCH BOY OF YOURS!”I hollered out in deaf-defying decibels.
A heavy blanket of silence fell hard in that room. Deke made a motion with his hand and the Silver Sinners all sat back down. Someone coughed and another took a long tug on his beer. Two or three were grinning behind their thick tattooed hands.
“I need a minute, boys.” Deke scrubbed a hard hand over his scruffy jaw. He waited until the last man closed the door behind him, then he leaned his hips against the table and crossed his arms over his chest. “Talk to me, Liddy.”
“Kid’s been TORMENTIN’ ME!” I cried out and my whole body began to shake with the weight of all the misery that boy had caused.
“Take a deep breath and calm yourself down, honey.” Deke’s tone gentled as he took in all of me. He looked from my tear-swollen eyes right down to my scraped hands and wounded knee. “I’m gonna get you a can of soda pop and some Tylenol to help with the pain. Then I’m gonna clean off those scrapes and get that chunk of glass out of you. While I’m doing that, you’re gonna tell me all about you and Kid. But first, I’m gonna call your aunt because I’m sure she’s wondering where you are.”
“She’s at a beauty school lesson in South County. She won’t be home until six o’clock and won’t be able to answer her phone until the lesson’s over at five-thirty.” I sniffled out, but when I bent my knee without thinking I almost started howling all over again. “You want her number?”
“I have it.” He answered really quickly. And when he did, I wondered why in the hell Deke Harding would have Aunt Betty’s phone number at the tip of his fingers. But the answer to that question was going to have to wait, because I had bigger fish to fry right then.
Deke looked at my dirty face with the rivulets of those big tears making muddy streams down my face “Aw, honey, don’t cry.” He said gently. But then Deke Harding handed me a raggedy piece of the scratchy paper towel sitting in a roll on the counter instead of a tissue. It felt rough against my cheek, and I wondered at the absence of at least one box of soft Kleenex in that place. But then I supposed that nobody sitting in that room ever broke right down and cried.
In between sips of an ice-cold cola, I let Kid’s daddy in on all the years of bent up grievances (small and large) that I had against his son. To give credit where credit is due, Deke listened with the careful intent of a priest on confession day. His face remained stoic and expressionless as I told my tale of harbored woes. There was a small break in Deke’s façade when he cracked the flash of an admiring grin after I told him about the three checks hair-pulling incident back in Miss Bonticelli’s classroom. But then Deke’s expression darkened when I showed him my torn, crumbled, and ruined painting.
“I’m really sorry about everything, Liddy, especially the painting.” Deke’s voice was somber. “Kid’s got a good heart, but he’s got this wild side to him.” Then he rubbed a rough hand through his hair and said in way of apology. “Apple doesn’t fall far, and all that other happy horseshit. I try to do the best I can, but the boy needs a mother.”
“Aunt Betty says the problem with Kid is that he has toomanymothers.”
Deke Harding’s eyes shot up from dabbing peroxide gently around the place where the glass was still stuck in my knee.
“She does, does she?” The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “What else does Betty say?”
