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“Don’t be. I killed her.” He grimaces as if tasting something bad. “She was a lovely thing, a nursing student when I took her. Fought like the dickens. I thought I had her properly trained, but after she gave birth to Paxton, she tried to take him and escape. Franklin women only leave the family one way. So we had a hunt. Also a family tradition. It started when my great-great-great et cetera grandfather Isaiah’s second wife turned out to be a treacherous little sinner who tried to run away with a local fur trapper. After that, we kept our wives isolated.”
“It sounds like these traditions go far back.” We’re heading toward an apple orchard now. I can see what looks like an old wooden cabin at the far end of the orchard and beyond that, a thick forest.
There’s a faraway look in his eyes. “Hundreds of years, to Isaiah Franklin and Jedediah Franklin, two cousins who settled on this land in the 1700s. But we’ll get to that in a little while. Let’s talk about Robert. I assume you know he was my son.”
Past tense. So he knows.
“Yes, I did.”
“Someone killed him. And his little sinners, and his guards.” He glances at me. “Was it you?”
Interesting. He doesn’t look upset.
“What if it was?” I say. I want to understand this family. They hold the Franklin name in highest regard, but what kind of individual loyalty do they have?
Paxton, trailing behind us, makes a snarling noise.
“Easy, there,” Solomon says with a laugh. “You think your father can’t handle himself?”
“Kiss-ass,” Paxton spits at him. “Just wait for the fucking challenge.”
Challenge? This sounds interesting.
Artemis stares out into the distance. “If he let you walk in and wipe out him and his guards, I’d be disappointed in myself. I thought I’d raised my son to be able to defend himself like a man.” He heaves a sigh thick with frustration. “It’s just as well that the challenge is coming.”
I stare at him, fascinated. Even though my parents are fictional characters who strangled me in a web of lies, I know one thing. They would burn the world down to get at anyone who hurt me. This man believes I might have hacked his son’s head off, but he’s strolling along beside me as if we’re on a friendly nature hike.
“It wasn’t me,” I say with a shrug that’s perhaps overly casual, considering we’re talking about his son’s life here. “Four very well-trained men broke into his house. It was a professional operation. They took out his guards, they disabled his alarms. I was crouched in the woods watching his house when they came running out. I shot them, left their bodies on the front lawn, went into the house and found your son’s head sitting on a platter. There was a note next to it that said ‘MAYbe he should have been a little more careful,’ with the word May in capital letters.”
He stops walking, and his face flushes with anger. He stands there for a minute or two, breathing heavily, and then winces, rolling his shoulders back. “Dammit. Dammit to hell! Such a waste. He never could tell the difference between confidence and fool-hardy carelessness. He shouldn’t have left the estate during a challenge.”
What is this challenge business? I want to ask, but I suspect that a control freak like Artemis will reveal what information he wants to, when he wants to, and not before.
“A sniper tried to shoot me earlier that day. They came very close to taking my head off,” I say. “I’m guessing he was sent by the same people who killed your son. Did you find the bodies of the men I shot? The ones who were outside on the lawn?”
“No. There were no bodies. Not even any blood. Sections of lawn had been cut away.”
Interesting. So whoever sent the men did a cleanup operation after I wiped out their squad.
Artemis chews his lower lip and looks at me with resignation. I think I see a glimpse of sadness there too, just for a moment, but then it vanishes, replaced with steely, angry resolve.
“All right. It’s time for you to learn more of our history.” He starts his stroll again, heading straight for the wooden cabin. Solomon and Paxton continue walking behind us.
“I will start at the beginning. I told you about the two cousins but didn’t mention that Jedediah was a traitor. He tried to kill his cousin Isaiah because he wanted his land and he lusted after Isaiah’s woman. He invited the family to dinner here, then shot Isaiah and left him to bleed out and die. But Isaiah was stronger than that.” His eyes gleam, and his mouth turns up in a triumphant smirk. So I can guess which branch of the family Artemis descended from.
We reach the front door of the wooden cabin. An old wagon wheel leans on a wall. Wooden barrel planters on either side of the doorstep burst with fresh flowers. He stops there, his eyes shining. His son and nephew hang back, watching.
“Jedediah told the two sons they must bow down to him and serve him. One of them submitted to his uncle out of fear. He let Jedediah sodomize him. He begged his uncle not to kill him and offered to be his servant for all of his days.”
All of his days? Okay, now we’re doing eighteenth-century preacher talk. I keep the impatience from my face as Artemis continues. “Jedediah whipped the other boy, Homer, half to death, but he wouldn’t bend. No sir, not for anything!” Artemis’s voice has risen and rings through the air as if he’s preaching to a church full of hymn-singing believers.
“Jedediah took Isaiah’s wife, Sarah, right there in front of her sons, while Isaiah lay near death on the floor, and because she was weak, she did not preserve her virtue from him. She should have taken her own life rather than submit to the lustful perversions of her husband’s enemy, but she was a craven coward and a whore. She lay there and let Jedediah rut her like a sow. Isaiah called upon God for strength. The next day, Jedediah left the house to tend to his flocks, and God gave Isaiah strength to rise up from the floor. He grabbed Jedediah’s shotgun, for God gives strength to the worthy, only to the worthy!”
Artemis gestures to the heavens now. Would it be poor form to ask for theReader’s Digestversion? Yes, I imagine it would. His son and nephew, who surely have heard this story a time or two, have schooled their expressions into an appearance of rapt attention, so I curse inwardly but do the same.
Artemis continues. “Isaiah shot his wife, Sarah, for allowing Jedediah to dishonor the family name. He shot his weak son, the one who had parted his buttocks and allowed himself to be defiled. He only spared Homer, from whom I am descended. He knew that God had saved him for a purpose, so he could be an example to his children, and preach the ways of true manlihood to them. Teach them how to live and die as God intended.”
I missed some Bible verses, apparently? Like the ones where you get to kidnap, rape, and breed women? Those would have made Sunday school so much more fun for me.
