Page 4 of Sebastian Gerald

“I’ve been putting cash all over the house for you to take and go. The land, all fifty thousand acres, is in your name now, too. As soon as I go into hospice, I want you to sell it off to the highest bidder. Then, before my body is even cold, you light out of here. Them kids of mine will want a piece of it, and I don’t want you to share with them at all. I want you to have it all. If’n you don’t leave before they pounce on this town, my damned kids will wonder where all their inheritance is, and they’ll hunt you down. But I taught you how to avoid them. You keep yourself away from them, and you’ll be a happy man.” He had asked her about her funeral. “You don’t need to be hanging around to see me all dolled up in no coffin, Sebastian. You and I have had the best years that we can, and I couldn’t love you any more than I do. You go on, or they’ll hurt you. And they’ll steal from you until all my hard work is for nothing. You hear me?”

So he did what she wanted. The morning that they came to get her, to take her for her final days, he’d sold off all the land for a substantial amount of money, gathered up the cash that she’d listed for him to find, and then took to the streets. Walking from Colorado to Ohio had given him a great perspective of the country, and he wouldn’t have done it any differently if he’d had to do it over again. Now that he was here, he felt just a little that he could relax. But not too much. Not only was the mob after him but his deadbeat family as well.

He found himself on the street that Toby lived on just after lunch. There were houses on the street that were as big as hers was but not nearly as well maintained. The mansion, no other word for it, gleamed with old wealth. The yard and the landscaping were well maintained, and the oversized eight-car garage just to the right of the house looked like it had been there forever. However, Toby had told him that her father had had it built just before he’d been killed to house his extensive old car collection. He hadn’t lived long enough to see it finished.

Walking up to the front door, he wasn’t positive that he’d be welcomed. He couldn’t for the life of him understand why he’d come here in the first place. When he rang the doorbell, the door opened with a man dressed in all gray. It made him want to laugh just a little when he heard Toby behind him fussing at the man.

“I told you that I had it. Herman, I swear to you, you listen to me less and less as you get older.” Toby looked at him and then asked him what he wanted. Before he could answer her, even if he’d been able to think of a good reason to be there, she invited him in. “I was just going to have some lunch. I don’t know what we’re having, but you’re more than welcome to join me. Let’s not make a habit of just showing up. Call next time.”

“All right. I don’t know why I’m here.” She seemed to understand and nodded. “Thanks for inviting me in. I don’t know what I would have done—I guess I just would have gone back to Caleb’s and stayed in my room. I feel like an outsider in their home.”

“I know that feeling.” Entering the kitchen, the room smelled like his grandma’s home. Cinnamon and sugar. The smell of fried potatoes cooked with bacon grease. There was a large pitcher of brown liquid on the work table that he’d bet anything was filled with tea. The cook, he couldn’t remember her name, was just pulling another plate from the cabinet when he was asked to be seated. The three of them, including the butler, were going to have lunch together. “This is my cook and friend, Ginger Marshall. She and her husband run the house for me. This is Herman, butler, driver, and whatever else I need for him to do.”

“Good to meet you.” Whatever he expected out of having lunch with them, it wasn’t at all what they had. It was like they had decided to put tabs with what they had around written onto the papers and put them into a large hat and pulled out things to have. He thought that it was the best meal he’d ever had since his grandma had gotten too weak to cook for the two of them anymore.

There were fried potatoes, and the drink was unsweetened iced tea. Cinnamon rolls, along with a bowl of fruit for each of them. The sandwiches, something that Ginger told him, were open-faced sandwiches, roasted chicken in a thick gravy poured over a thick slice of bread with mashed potatoes. Lots of carbs, really, but he wasn’t going to complain. It was filling and homey. He couldn’t have liked it any better because of the company.

After lunch and loaded down with carbs, Toby invited him out on the deck. Following her, he stood in the doorway to the ‘deck’ and marveled at what greeted him. Christ, to call it a simple deck was understating things. It was a place right out of a magazine. It was simply beautiful.

“My grannie loved the outdoors. Year round. So when she and grandda came to live with us, my dad had this put in for her. The large screens will be covered up in the winter months with glass panels, and the heat will be turned on. Though we don’t use it much, the heat, I mean, the sunroof makes it nice and cozy out here. Also, this serves as a place to eat when the pool is open. I’ve not bothered with it this year as it’s just me, but I think that was a mistake. I missed being able to come out here for a midnight swim.” He asked her about her grandda. “I’m going to go and see him today. You should come. He just answers questions with a nod or shake of his head. He does tell me that he should have protected grandma better. I don’t know how he would have done that. He’d been the first person that had been hurt and nearly died from the injuries.”

“I’m not going to pry, but you were hurt that day as well, I’m guessing. The hatchet marks on you show that you were hurt badly, too, right?” She didn’t look like she was going to answer, but she finally nodded. “How long ago was this? I’m assuming that it’s been at least a few years.”

“Twenty. I was seven. My brother was five. Mom and dad were just about to celebrate their tenth anniversary the next night. The house, more than likely how the man got in, was being overrun by caterers as well as decorators. The back yard was decorated as well as most of the house, by that last night. The finishing touches were supposed to be done the next morning. The guy, David Rochester, hid in the basement until it was just us at home.” She looked at him. “I’m about to tell you the part that I’ve never told anyone else. Not even my therapist. But David was young, twenty as a matter of fact. However, everyone knew that, but he was slightly mentally handicapped. He wanted my dad to hire him so that he could get a paycheck. He told him that he’d even be willing to not go into work every day so that he’d not be pressed into doing something that he didn’t know how to do. David told my dad, while he was standing in the living room covered in blood, that he just wanted a paycheck so that he could prove to his dad that he wasn’t a deadbeat. He’d already hit grandda and nearly killed him. Thomas, my little brother, was dead or dying by then. David removed his head with a hatchet in one move. Once he killed my grandma, my grandda dying on the floor, dad told him that he’d hire him, just to let his wife and child go. David must have realized that it wasn’t going to work at some point, and he raped and killed my mother. Then he started on me.”

“I’m so sorry, Toby. I can’t imagine what your father might have gone through to see his parents and children killed.” She thanked him. “What else happened? There is more, I’m assuming.”

“Dad attacked him when he got close enough for him to do so. I don’t know how he’d done it, but Dad had been able to get out of the rope that he’d been tied with. My dad was no pushover, so he was able to get in a few well-placed blows to David as well. He died from the wounds, I was told. But when he hit my dad with the hatchet in the head, it was sticking out of his skull. Before he could, if that was his plan to finish off me, the police had arrived. Grandda had crawled, with his insides hanging out of him, to his cell phone and called the police. I think that was the only thing that saved the two of us.”

“You said that your grandda was in a nursing home.” She told him that he’d given up on the world and wanted to die. “Sounds to me like he’s the hero in all this. Does he know that? Poor man.”

“I tell him that all the time. However, since I seem to feel the same way that he does about life, he doesn’t want to hang out with me anymore.” Sebastian laughed. “You find this funny?”

“No. Not what happened. Never that. But just thinking about the two of you hanging out. I have a feeling that he and you are like two peas in a pod, as my grannie was so fond of saying.” She smiled and told him that they were forever plotting something or another that would get them both in trouble when she was younger. “I can see that. Though I’ve never met him, I’m betting that he’s a pistol and speaks his mind just as much as you do.”

“Now, that would be wrong. I never spoke my mind until this happened with my family. It sort of brought me out—I was such a girly girl when I was younger. Would get upset with a single spot of dirt on my little dresses. Wouldn’t dare leave the house with my mom unless I was dressed well with my hair done up. Then, after this, I just found it useless to even put forth the effort for much in wanting to impress. I’ve gotten better over the years, but I don’t have it in me to try and make an impression on anyone.” She looked at him. “Which makes me wonder why you’re seeking me out. You do understand that I’m not fit for company. That I can barely make myself go to work when I have to. I’m a mess.”

“I don’t know why either. But there is something so calming about you that I feel better myself with you around.” He laid his head back on the chair he was in and closed his eyes. “I’ve not had a moment’s reprieve since I was about fourteen, and my mother tired to kidnap me from my grannie and shot me up full of drugs so that I’d not run away. I’d had a good life until then. But after that, it was a serious shit going on that I couldn’t get a grasp on anymore.”

~*~

Donald was nervous. He’d not had a lot to do with his brother and sisters since their momma had died, and they’d all been put in jail for attacking the limo that she’d been riding in. He’d gotten to go and see her before they burned her up, thanks to Ms. Tabby. It hurt him still that he’d been such a bad boy to her all these years. While he was sure that she understood that it was all William’s fault—to not act like he did would get him beaten to snot, not that he still should have done it—but he missed her.

“All Rise for the Honorable Lance Coldwell, the presiding judge in the state of Ohio, town of Dresden.” Donald stood up immediately, but he watched the other three, his brother and sisters, as they fought and argued about who was going to stand up first. He didn’t understand why William, as the oldest, thought that everything should revolve around him. Actually, Donald had been thinking about a lot of things that had to do with his brother. Almost as soon as they were up, they were told to have a seat again. Donald sat still, hoping that none of his family would realize that he wasn’t sitting with them. But almost as soon as he tried to make himself look small, his brother found him.

“What are you doing way over there, Donald James? Get your ass over here with the rest of us. I done told you that we’re going to be tried together. I don’t care what you have some fancy pants telling you. We’re family, and since I’m the oldest, I say what goes. My way, they’ll have to split up our time four ways and not three. Get your butt over here like I said.” He told him, for the first time in his life, that he was just fine on his own. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me right. I said to get your butt over here and—where did all your fat go? What have they been doing to you, Donald James? Holding out on your meals so you’d be skinny? I’ll take care of this for you. See that I don’t.”

“I don’t want you to take care of anything, William. I’m fine right here. I decided—yeah, I decided that I was going to be on my own in here. I don’t cotton to you telling me what to do no more. I got me a good attorney too in Mr. Palmer here.” Mr. Palmer told him that he didn’t have to talk to them if he didn’t want to. “Hear that, William? I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to. Now, you leave me be.”

When William started to stand up, caught up in his chains, he fell on his butt. Donald knew better than to laugh at his older brother, but it sure was funny watching him wrestle around, trying to get up off the floor again. It took four men and a chair to get him up again. Then he glared at him like it was his fault. Donald was getting mighty sick of being treated like everything going on was his fault. He’d seen the light, so to speak, he thought.

His attorney told him that he could maybe get out in a year, no more than five. He’d been cooperating with the police people about things that William had done, too. Also, his sisters. Betsy Sue wasn’t so bad as April Showers, but she was mean as a rattle snake when things didn’t go her way. Which he’d come to realize was a lot. He sort of listened in while the judge was telling his family that he had decided to go separate from them and that his trial was next. Not that he was a good man, either. He’d been led around by his brother since he was old enough to walk. But no more. He was standing up for himself even if he got the snot beat out of him again. Donald looked at the paperwork that was in front of him.

Donald couldn’t read a lick of it. There were a few letters that he was beginning to know, like the first three. But they didn’t do him any good when they were all jumbled up with the rest of them. Mr. Palmer handed him a pencil and paper to play with. He’d been a durn site better to him than his family had been in all his life, with the exception of Ms. Tabby and his grannie.

Donald wasn’t smart. He knew that he had a low IQ. He couldn’t read, write, or even add stuff up. While he did know his numbers to say them, usually, he would get them messed up in order and have to start all over again. But that was all right, Mr. Palmer told him. That was what was going to get him out of prison.

When he realized that something was going on in the room, he looked at where his family was sitting. William was making a fuss again about something, and April Showers wasn’t having any of it. He’d heard tell that both his sisters were divorced now. Not that he could find fault with their husbands wanting nothing to do with them. But since his wife, Lisa, had left him too, he thought it was sad. And lonely. But he did have him a friend in the police station who was helping him out with stuff. She even made sure that he had some fitting clothing for today, too.

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