William, p.1
William, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
World Castle Publishing, LLC
Pensacola, Florida
Copyright © Kathi S. Barton 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 9798377199694
Paperback ISBN: 9781960076328
eBook ISBN: 9781960076335
First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, February 13, 2023
http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com
Licensing Notes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.
Cover: Karen Fuller
Editor: Karen Fuller
Prologue
There was no hope for it. Tally was going to have to go to Ohio and figure out what the fuck was going on with her brother. The fucker. He’d better be sick or dead, or she was going to get his ass in trouble again. All he had to do was tell her Clay was doing all right in school and send her a list of things he needed for winter. She’d buy them, never sending him money, then send them on to him.
Tally had been afraid that he was selling the things off instead of giving them to her nephew. Since Allice had left Howie, he’d been using more. Not that she thought he’d ever stopped, but he had some way of getting around Social Services when they’d show up at his house when she called.
Letting the phone ring and ring, she tried to remember when the last time it was that she’d been to see Howie. It had to be at least a month now. The bastard had made her stay in a hotel rather than letting her bunk on the couch in order to see the little boy who had come to mean the world to her.
“What the fuck do you want?” She wasn’t bothered by his tone anymore. It didn’t even bother her that he sounded drunk. Recording each and every call to and from him was something that the internet told her that she should do. “Tally, I’m busy. What the fuck are you doing calling me when I know for a fucking fact that you can’t afford to miss a day of work. You should be at work right now. My rent is coming due.”
“I’m not working right now.” She sat down while he began screaming at her about his money. “Shut the fuck up.” That seemed to get his attention.
“What do you mean you’re not working? You’d better be. I’m telling you right now, if I don’t have rent money from you, I’m going to sell off this fucking kid. He’s not worth spit as it is now. Just last week, I had to go into a meeting with the school because he wasn’t bringing himself any lunch in to eat.” She asked him if he’d packed him something. “No. Why should I have to get him something to eat to take to school? He’s old enough to know what he’ll eat or not.”
“He’s six, Howie. I don’t think I should have to point that out to you that a six year old doesn’t know that he’s supposed to hit all the food groups when making his lunch. Why the hell aren’t you making it for him?” He said that he wasn’t getting up that early. “Then make it the night before. Though I don’t know why you’re not getting up to put him on the bus in the first place. Why aren’t you?”
“Ain’t none of your bees wax. Get off my back. When are you going to be sending the money for my rent, Tally? I’m telling you right now, I won’t put up with you delaying it again. You know that I’m serious about selling him off?” While she was glad that he was saying these things for the recording, she wasn’t happy to know that he would do just what he said he would again. “I need that five hundred dollars pronto.”
“Your rent isn’t that much. It’s only one-fifty because you live in government-subsidized housing. Which you said you didn’t. And you don’t pay any utilities like you told me, either. I’ve been doing some research, Howie. Nothing you’ve said to me is true.” He didn’t say anything. “What have you been doing with the money that I’ve been sending you? I was also informed that the school would supply him with a free meal if you were to go in and fill out the paperwork for it. Why haven’t you done that either?”
“I was told that it would affect my food card.” She hadn’t realized that he was getting a food card either. It never occurred to her that he’d lie to her about so many things. “With me and little Howie here, we get a nice size of money that can fill the fridge up a few times a month. But it won’t go as far if I have to go in there and tell them to give him some food when I ain’t got anymore left for him. He don’t eat much anyway. And don’t think that I didn’t notice that you didn’t tell me why you’re not working. I want that money, Tally. I deserve it for having to be around this kid all day.”
“He’s a good kid, and I doubt very much he wants to be around you either, Howie. Will you stop calling him little Howie? His name is Clayton. There isn’t any reason whatsoever that you call him that.” Howie told her that Beth should have named him after him. “She should have kicked your sorry ass to the side of the road when you went to prison for robbery. The very fact that she put your name on his birth certificate at all is a surprise to me. You’re nothing but crap. Where is Clay? I want to talk to him.”
“Not unless you have some money for me, you’re not.” She cried then, careful not to show her brother how much his words hurt her. “You’re not working. Why the fuck not?”
“A big company bought the place and is tearing the building down to put in a parking lot. I guess they think that a little grocery store isn’t as important as having people have a place to park.” She wanted to scream about how it wasn’t her fault that the building was as old as rocks.
It leaked like there wasn’t a roof on it when it only rained a little. The furnace was temperamental, as in it would only work if you begged it to work. There was no air in the place, but up front, when you first came in and all that came from a window air conditioner. The freezers had given out about a year ago, so they no longer had ice cream. Meats were all right, she supposed, but that fridge was going out as well. Well, it did go out the day that the new company that owned the building came in. Christ, she didn’t know what she was going to do now.
With paying her brother a thousand dollars a month when she didn’t have to was killing her on top of her own bills. If she never ate another peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she’d be happy. Also, ramen noodles. Tally had a list of things that she could do with them longer than she thought most people had thought of. All just so she could save her nephew from being sold off like Howie threatened to do weekly. It was then that she realized that he’d hung up on her.
When Beth had left Howie, no one believed Tally when she told the police that she thought he’d killed her, the baby was left behind. Beth would never have left that little boy, and when she did leave, she would have come to her and told her that she was leaving. But Howie had won that battle, and he’d been stuck, his words having to care for a little baby all on his own. She’d gone to help him for a while, staying in a hotel that she could ill afford after buying diapers, formula and other items that Clay had needed.
But it only lasted for the first couple of months before she had to return to her work. Each day she would care for Clay while Howie did whatever he did during the day and at night. She’d hunt for clues that would tell her where Beth was. She’d been close, she thought, when Howie had caught her looking around. Christ, she’d barely made it home with all her injuries after the beating that she’d taken that day.
After that, he’d forbidden her to come around. But it didn’t stop her from having to send him money. Then she’d found out, quite by accident, that Howie was getting not just a food card but insurance and subsidized rent for housing.
Going to her cot, not even the size of a twin bed, she laid down on it to try and rest. Tomorrow she was going to have to find a job, or she’d not even have this wreck of a place to live. When the couple next door started their nightly fight, she got down off the cot and hid under it. There were always guns involved in their kind of nightly ritual.
The knock at her door sometime later woke her up from a nightmarish sort of dream. It was nearly always the same. Beth begging her not to tell her brother that she was having a son, and him finding out and chasing her all over the place with a gun. Staggering to the door, she opened it without looking.
“You didn’t even ask who it was. For all you knew, I could have been a murderer. Or come here to rob you.” She slammed the door in his face and went to the bathroom. She could hear him pounding on the doors when she went back to her cot to lie down again. “Open the fucking door. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want to talk to me. It’s about the place you used to work. I have a check here for you to help you get along until you find another job.”
“Fuck you. If you’d just left the place alone, I’d still have a job, and I wouldn’t have to be wondering where my next meal is coming from.” She did get up, curious about the check, had her opening the door and taking the envelope from the big man. Tally was ready to slam the door in his face again when he put his foot in the door. The couple took that opportunity to start firing at each other again, and she knocked the man back when one of the bullets went by her nose. When the guns were finished, she sat up and looked at the man beneath her. He had his eyes closed, so she smacked him around—which actually felt pretty good, considering. He looked at her with one eye.
“You’re bleeding.” She shrugged at him. “You were shot. Is this something that you have to put up with all the time?”
“No, I only stay in this house in the winter months. My summer home is much more bullet-riddled. I’ve been shot before. If you don’t have anything else to impart to me, I’d like to get back to what I was doing.”
“Plotting the deaths of other people?” She moved off of him, making sure that she elbowed him at least four times before she was on her feet. “You’re really bleeding a great deal. I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“Well, I hope you get in it on your own because I’m not going to be able to pay the seven hundred bucks they’ll charge me for not taking it to the hospital. That is if they show at all. This isn’t exactly the best of neighborhoods in the event that you didn’t know that.” She looked at the blood on her blouse and then put her hand over the wound. It hurt like hell, but she wasn’t going to go anywhere. “What else did you want to tell me? That you’re all making it so that we don’t have to look for jobs? That there is one that is providing transportation as well? Go home, whoever the hell you are and have a nice life.”
She did get to slam the door in his face this time, as he’d sat up enough so that she could do that. When her neighbors started screaming about her making all that noise, she didn’t bother speaking to them. They’d just fire into her room again, and she didn’t have time for that shit. Going to the bathroom again, she pulled out her dwindling first aid kit and looked at what she had to deal with.
The man must have left because when she went out of her place to go downstairs to get her milk and eggs, the snow had already covered his prints leaving the building to a parking lot. Getting her things out of the snow that had piled up overnight, she was glad now that she’d been able to get some food the day before. Otherwise, she’d be shit out of luck in getting out now. Taking it into the house to cook, she was suddenly not all that hungry. Her wound was bleeding badly now, and she wasn’t sure that she shouldn’t at least call someone to fix it for her.
The only doctor that she knew was the vet that lived below her. Well, he wasn’t a vet any longer. He’d lost his license some time ago when he’d been doing illegal things to the poor animals left in his care. Tally never asked, but she had a feeling that it wasn’t just cutting them up but sexual things too. Shivering, she put her things out the window onto the little deck—that was too dangerous to hold a plant—and warmed herself up in her cot.
Sleeping fitfully, she had strange dreams about shit that she didn’t know what it meant. There was a woman in white that was standing over her, yelling at the man that had been at the door. Police had come in and were taking away her neighbors. An elderly woman, a very beautiful one at that, was asking her why she was living here, and she did remember answering her. What she said, Tally had no idea, but she must have said something because she, too, disappeared.
“Don’t leave my milk outside. It’ll freeze up, and I won’t have any hot cocoa in the morning.” Someone asked her if she had any coffee. “Who the hell can afford coffee? I can barely buy a candy bar to melt down for my cocoa once a month after sending my deadbeat brother everything I have. He’d better not be selling off Clay again. I’ll murder his ass if he does that again.”
She remembered some questions about her health and had no idea if she had answered them. It was the strangest dream that she’d ever had. When something warm, like a big old warm fuzzy blanket that she would get from her mom every Christmas seemed to float over her, she let herself dream about something else. Sometimes the past would come up and kick her in the ass so hard that she’d want to just starve herself to death rather than deal with it.
“It might be cheaper for me to just die, I think.”
~*~
“If you don’t calm your ass down, I’m going to knock you back on it and see where that gets you. I said that I’d tell you what I knew, but I won’t be bullied into giving you answers that I don’t have. Sit down and shut the fuck up, William, or so help me. I’m going to call mom.” William looked around as if mom might pop out of one of the rooms he was surrounded by. “Are you ready to listen or not?” Darrel would just walk away from him without giving him any answers. So he told him that he was ready. “All right. She’s dehydrated, undernourished and has been shot before. The bullet, this time, only hit her belly, where we had to remove a portion of her colon to get it back to rights. The other bullets, two different times, were removed as well. One was lodged into her ribs the other was in her thigh. How she was able to get around after that one is—keep your mouth closed, or I will walk.”
“Why the hell didn’t she get help?” He didn’t answer him. Anyone that had been in her apartment or really a room the size of a closet would know that she was barely making ends meet. “I offered to call her an ambulance to go in.”
“Were you like this? All pissy and in a shitty mood. I don’t know that I would have taken you up on it, either. But she was right in telling you that they might not have shown. There are records that indicate that one of her neighbors had died when it took them three days to get there to offer treatment. She might well have only survived before because she’s not stupid enough to think anyone is going to help her. Which brings me to the question as to why you did? You don’t seem to like anyone anymore, much less people that might want to depend on you. Even mom has been avoiding you.”
“One of these women might be something to me, and I don’t need a wife in my life. I think I like things just the way they are.” Darrel pointed out that his disposition might keep the most determined away. “Don’t be a jackass. I’m not in the mood.”
After punching his brother in the face and walking away, knocking him back on his ass, Darrel went to recovery where Tally Washer was. She was doing well, considering she needed about thirty more pounds on her already slender body. When he went to the nurses’ station to make sure they knew she was to have the best of care, Elizabeth was there waiting for him.
“She all right?” Darrel told her everything that he’d said to William and more. “I’ve had Del and Katie look into this brother of hers. I have a feeling that William knows who the kid is. He was just talking to Robert about him yesterday.”
“Do you think that he really sold the kid off?” Elizabeth didn’t say anything, which was saying volumes for her. “I see. So you believe this. Also, I heard from one of the nurses that Beth Washer is missing and presumed dead. What can you tell me about that?”
“Nothing. I did tell Del about it, and he’s pulling some strings to find out. If he, Howard, killed her, then the little boy would be safer with Tally. That’s her name, too, by the way. Not short for anything.” They moved down the hall to the office he used when he was working here. “Tally had a job up until the store that she was working in was closed down. I guess that the land was bought by the family. And the store, after inspecting it, didn’t even hit any of the code parameters for being a store. No heat, no air. The refrigerators were more than thirty years old and barely working. They had coolers out with bagged ice in them for the customers to sort through when they wanted something.”
“Christ.” She asked him if he wanted it all. “I don’t think I want to know any more about that. Not right now, anyway. What about her story about the brother taking her money? I’m sure you have something on that by now.”
“He apparently told her that his rent was too much for him to get around. Also, she supplied them with food and other items. Buying them first and then sending them to him so he’d not have the money. I don’t know why he’d fuck over his sister like that, but some people just need to be killed. Howard didn’t work but stayed at home all day. I don’t even want to think about what the house might look like when there isn’t an inspection slated for him to come in. He hires a group to come in and give the house a good cleaning so he can live there without any trouble. You’d think he’d be using that money on things for himself or Clay. Anyway, that’s what I know. Oh, Clay has been picked up from school by Social Services and is on his way into the hospital to be looked over. I thought you or I should do it, but the police told me that they didn’t want us going to the house to kill him if there was a nail cracked or something. I’d like to think I have a better hold on my temper than that.” He just stared at her. “All right, I would have. But I’m telling you right now, I want to adopt that kid. He seems like he’s been abused enough for someone so young.”
