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The Big Burn

Trey Barker

While the bodega burns, she watches.

And the money rolls in.

***

Mom cries hard.

Her eyes are lined in roadmap red and it's a map I don't want to follow. It isn't going anywhere new, it's an old map taking me to all of the old places.

The air around the cemetery melts. Midland in high summer; the stench of cattle and oil and dead brown dirt, of melting asphalt. Bitter and thick and laden with the oppressive sound of crickets and cicadas and coughing traffic. Shadows with no depth because the sun is directly overhead, and the canopy over the mourners doesn't lessen the heat.

I recognize no one in the small crowd. A few women Mom knows probably from work or her bowling league; a few men ditto. One man stands in a cowboy hat, his western suit as shiny black as his boots.         

Glaring at me, Mom raises her slight frame to its fullest. “Get away from my son."

"Your son, my brother," I say.

Her fists clench.

"You want to hit me?"

Maybe, if I taste her fist, everything will be okay. Enough punches to my head and maybe the map will take us some place new and different. But I know it's bullshit. We will always be in the same place. The only difference now, ten years later, is that Ryan is dead.

Near us, Ryan Powell’s name looks so fragile on the small slate-gray tombstone. Somewhere beneath the mound of fresh dirt is Ryan’s casket. Partially filled. There hadn’t been much left of Ryan.

“I wanted to say goodbye."

“You already did that," Mom says, her jaw tight, her eyes on everyone except her living son.

 “No I didn't. You never gave me the chance.”

When she finally looks at me, all the defiance is gone, replaced by exhaustion. She is tired from burying one son, from hating the other. “Because I couldn’t take it anymore, Alan. The stealing, the lying. I love you but…I just couldn’t do it.”

Keeping my voice low, I say, "I got a job so I could be the man of the house."

"You were no man."

Easy words, but scalpel sharp, slashing through me. "Yeah, it was all you, Mom." I snort. "Hell, there wasn't even enough food."

Every Sunday, Mom had made a huge pot of spaghetti. For the next seven days, the three of us prayed it lasted the week because there was nothing else.

“We ate when I started working,” I say.

"And doesn’t blood food taste so good?"

"Bullshit, food is food.”

Mom pushes me away from her, away from the group, away from my brother. "I was the mom. We were doing okay."

"I needed to help."

She moves away from my attempt to slip a comforting arm around her shoulders. "And I needed you gone.” She turns away. "You weren't helping anyway with your blood money. Drugs and loans and God knows what else. I did my best with you, but…. Christ, Alan, Ryan saw you with those people…with that Mexican...Father Gong or whoever.”

“Daddy Wong and what does it matter? It was penny ante bullshit.”

She rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t matter the sin’s severity, only the sin’s existence.”

The laugh comes out before I can stop it. "Got a little religion in you now?"

Contempt smothers her face. “You’ve been dead to me for years, Ryan’s only --"

"A wee bit melodramatic, don't you think?"

Sucking her teeth, she says, "Ryan's been dead a week. Let me grieve," and walks away.

Then I'm alone, like in the flop-houses strung out across Texas and Louisiana and Oklahoma, like in the bars and dives, like in the drunk tanks of various county jails.

Fine. You grieve, Mom. I got other things on my personal agenda.

But back in my Buick, I cry. It isn't supposed to be like this. Can't Mom and I come together on this one thing? Can't we set aside all the crap and reconnect over the grave of someone we both fiercely love?

Instead, she cries graveside and I cry behind a cracked dashboard while sweat runs down my back like blood from a self-mortification ceremony. When the lot is empty, when the sun-bleached sky has gone to shadows, I finally leave.

***

Lenny’s. A cheap club on a shabby street in a low-rent part of town. Blues music screams from the speakers, splitting my cranium like a cheap pinata.

“Gimme a stout, Lenny."

Lenny’s eyebrows arch. “Since when you do tough beer?” He slides a Guinness down the scarred oak bar. “Sorry about Ryan.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“Tough to do. I called Austin and they told me you were in New Orleans. They told me Colorado Springs. From there it was all about shit-hole towns.”

Beer joints, restaurants, a Wal-Mart in Bozeman, Montana. Working forty or fifty hours a week, sending token amounts of money home; a financial penance.

“Your mom asked me to call."

“What?” That tosses me for a quick surprise. I shrug. “The Reporter-Telegram has some good reading these days.”

“That so?”

“Bang. Bang bang.”

“The hell is that?" he asks.

"Me hitting my head on the wall you just threw up. Talk to me. The newspaper is full of warehouses and crackhouses. Seems like Midland's burning to the ground.”

“Desert sun, you know, burning us all up."

“You ain’t that dense, Lenny.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, I run a clean place.”

“Can’t wash every customer. I just wonder if you heard anything.”

“What good will it do, Alan? You’ll just hurt some more.”

“All out of hurt. My brother’s dead, my mother hates me. What’s left?”

“Then why you asking?”

I take a long pull off the beer, listen to the music segue from blues to jazz. “I'm the big brother, Lenny. I should have saved him. Damnit, he burned to death, or didn’t you hear?”

Lenny’s glare cut glass.

“Wanna know how much was left? Bones. That's it. Bones charred as black as a barbecue pit. I just -- I don’t know. I need to know what happened. Not knowing is tearing me up.”

“Knowing ain’t gonna fix you. Besides, you ain’t interested in the why or the how. You're looking for the who.”

“Then give me the who.”

“And what in the mothering hell are you going to do? Part-time back-up muscle for Daddy Wong ten years ago don’t qualify you for the bigs. You ain’t got the meat for head-bustin’. You ain’t a hardcase.”

“But I need -- ”

“Bah." Lenny tosses a dirty ashtray into a sink of soapy water. “Ryan was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's why all of us die.”

“I don’t care about all of us, I care about Ryan.” I hate the weakness in my voice. “The cops aren’t going to do shit. The store was nothing, a little grocery store on the wrong side of town.” I blast back the beer, damn near choke on its harshness. “Give me this and let me give it to Mom.”

Lenny snorts. “Hah. She ain’t buying what you’re selling.”

“Then give it to me.”

Lenny rubs the side of his face. His fingernails scratch across his two-day beard like an off-key accompaniment to the Marcus Roberts jazz playing on the jukebox. “Damn. I’d kick the shit out of you if I thought it was worth the time.”

“I’d help if I thought it was worth the time.”

Finally, Lenny says, “Word says good money for a few flames.”

“Why?”

“I’d guess insurance.”

I cock my head. “Yeah, 'cause crack house insurance is big business."

Lenny shrugs. “Don’t know. Don’t care. I just want to get through the night without getting my front window busted out, okay? Tomorrow, I’ll want to get the money to the bank. Then I'll want some lunch. Then I'll get through another night without getting the window smashed."

“The number. Give.”

“Ain’t mine to give. Belongs to Daddy Wong.”

The beer goes flat and the jazz gets boring and the whole place suddenly smells of stale sweat and my heart pounds. “Damnit.”

Lenny pours a beer for another customer. “I’m sorry your brother died, but I don’t care about anybody running around burning stuff.”

“And if they burn this place?”

“Six days outta seven, and mosta that seventh, I’d give ‘em the match.”

***

Daddy Wong’s eyes are as sharp as stiletto blades, as intimidating as stiletto heels. The handful of customers go about their business at the various washing machines and dryers, always avoiding Daddy Wong’s gaze. Steam heat fills the laundromat while the lone evaporative cooler works feverishly.

“It’s been awhile,” Daddy Wong says. “How’s your day?”

“Yesterday was shitty, today is shitty, tomorrow’s not looking great, either.” I sit in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs.

“Quite the glib answer. You need a favor, I guess?”

Damn well wouldn’t come for anything else. “Phone number.”

The knowledge comes quickly into Daddy Wong’s face, and disappears just as quickly behind a perfectly polished, neutral emptiness. “There are phone numbers galore decorating bathroom walls all over Midland. Take a look, maybe you’ll find the number you need.”

“I can call your girlfriends later.”

Daddy Wong smiles. “You aren’t much funnier than I remember.”

Leaning back in the chair, I watch the Asian martial arts flick splashed across the laundromat’s large screen TV.

“‘RIKI-OH: The Story of Ricky,’” Daddy Wong says. “An excellent movie. The trials and tribulations of a man seeking vengeance.”

“Does he get it?”

Daddy Wong shrugs. “I received the movie from a connection in Estes Park.”

“Yeah, 'cause Estes Park is a hotbed of karate chop flicks.”

Daddy Wong frowns. The breeze from the air conditioner catches the folds of his kimono, making the pink dragon on his breast dance. “’Karate chop flicks?’”

“Sorry,” I say, lowering my eyes and hating the groveling I have to do.

“You need to learn patience, Alan, and self-discipline. Perhaps you should explore the subtlety of the Asian martial arts world.”

“The actual Asian martial arts world or the one filtered through celluloid?”

Daddy Wong smiles. “Another glib answer from a man still in debt.”

My insides chill. “We settled that, Daddy.”

“Yes, you paid the entire principle. Yes, you paid the entire interest. But what of the cigarettes you snatched on your way out the door?”

“Daddy, please. That was what, twenty bucks?”

“Fifty-four dollars and thirty seven cents. I chose to not worry overly much about that money. But, if you’ll remember, I said perhaps you could do me a favor one day.”

“And that day is now?”

“Unlikely since you’re asking instead of dispensing.”

“Shit." Frustration sluices over me like raw sewage bursting the pipes. “We’re not talking about a snort or a roll with one of your girls, Daddy, we’re talking about my brother. Ryan. Is. Dead.”

“Yes.”

“He died in the convenience store fire.”

“Yes.”

“You know about that fire.”

With the remote, Daddy Wong pauses the video, a man in mid-flying kick, his face contorted. Probably how you look when you're seeking vengeance.

“I know of a fire, I don’t know if it was your fire.” Daddy Wong is silent for a beat. “How is your mother?”

“Fine.”

“You know this how? A reconciliation, perhaps? There is nothing more important than family.”

Through clenched teeth, I say, “I talked to her at the funeral."

“Your mother is a wonderful woman.”

“Shut up about her. I hear her name on your lips again and we’ll go ‘round right here. I caused her enough pain, she doesn’t need to know about any of this.”

A slow, creeping smile radiates across Daddy Wong’s face. “You lose control, Alan, not like the martial masters in my homeland.”

“Homeland? You're from Juarez.”

“My spiritual homeland. Why do you want this man?”

I leave it unanswered, but keep my eyes on the paused movie.

Finally, long after most of the dryers have stopped clanging, after steam has frosted all the windows in the place, after the movie is over, Daddy Wong writes a number on a slip of paper.

“Two favors you owe me.”

"The day's shaping right up, ain't it?"

***

His watch ticks off an hour.

Wall Street is alive with the night crowd: the homeless, the forgotten, the hipsters so cool and edgy for hanging with the dirty. Cars roll and stop, fists bang and brutalize. Above it all, a distant dog howls like the broken-hearted. When the pay phone rings, the shriek is jarring enough to shatter steel.

“Yeah?”

“I got a page.”

“From me," I say.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Looking to do you a favor," I say, wiping west Texas sweat from my face.

“Got enough favors already owed me.”

“Word is you need some sparking.”

“Word is shit and ain’t got time for this.”

I swallow. “Daddy Wong gave me the number. I can do what you need.”

“Who says I need anything."

But his voice says otherwise. He's curious, interested. Has no idea who I am but Daddy Wong's name commands some measure of fearful respect.

"I’m going for chow," he says, "then I’m gonna step next door and buy me a girlie magazine, then go across the street for a bottle of companionship.”

Line goes dead. Simple and quick. Was that how Ryan had died? Or had his death been messier? “Stupid fucking question,” I say as a Midland squad car, its copper staring hard at me like he might remember my penny ante days, passes.

There is no easy burning death. Burning -- by fire or a town in the middle of the desert -- is a hard death.

***

The man’s face is round and pockmarked. Sausage fingers mash the burger into his chomping mouth. A magazine is folded up under his right arm, a box of wine under his left.

“Figured it out," he says.

“Wasn’t that hard, Einstein." Food. Fuckbook. Booze. There is only one place in Midland where those three things are next door and across the street from each other. I just waited in a parking lot until I saw one person do all three places.

“Smartboy.”

I grab his doughy shoulders, quick, sudden. “Smart enough to whip your ass.”

The guy’s eyes pop wide as he burps a yelp. It's decorated with bits of half-chewed hamburger. "The fuck is this?"

It's not easy, dragging a struggling man off the sidewalk. Harder still with people staring, their eyes popped wide in surprise. But I manage it; into an alley, behind some gray industrial dumpsters.

The man drops his load. The box smashes and leaks and booze smears the cheap pages. Breasts and asses become swatches of flesh-colored ink. The guy clutches at me, his fingernails digging trenches in my hands and wrists.

“Help,” he shouts. “He’s going to kill me.”

“Like you killed my brother?” I slam the guy into a dumpster. The metallic bang echoes through the alley.

“I didn’t...didn’t kill nobody.”

“Yeah? Then who’s that buried in his grave?” I let fly a fist, hard against the guy’s mouth. Teeth crunch, blood dribbles.

Then I land a hard one in his gut. The reek of cheap hamburgers explodes and assaults me like the stink of a backstreet wino. The guy stumbles backward but somehow manages to find his feet and toss some punches my way.

One swing narrowly misses, the other connects and son of a bitch it hurts. It's been a while since I was in a street fight and I know it always starts as a soft pain. I also know it's going to grow exponentially with every punch. And when it does hurt, when pain works up and down my arms and legs, when I can feel the outline of his high school ring against my cheek, I realize something else. This pain is different. It's not street fight pain, it's not getting my ass kicked pain. It's the pain of the yelling, of Mom screaming top of her lungs at me. It's the pain of seeing little Ryan through the upstairs bedroom window as I drove away after Mom threw me out.

It was, this man beating me to a bloody damned pusbag, all the hurt I'd ever had.

“...the fuck you’re problem is.” Another punch. “I didn’t kill nobody.”

Fists flying, feet kicking, I lunge and connect. A face, a gut, balls. The man hits the ground hard.

And then I lose count of the kicks. At first my feet find hard skin, hard bones. Then soft flesh, fractured bones. “You burned him,” I shout, my feet marching through the pulp of the guy’s face. “You burned him.”

I pull a lighter and bend to his face. A snap of the wheel and the thing comes to life. “Now you’ll see.”

Blood leaking from lips, he shakes his head. “Not...me. I don’t burn...I hire.”

“For who?” I stare at the man, sickened by my own violence, by the violence Mom so perfectly predicted and hated.

“A woman. She...calls me...sometimes. I send...someone over to...see her.” Weakly, he pulls a pager from his belt. “She calls...leaves an address. She called tonight. Go see her...she’s the one.”

I grab the pager, punch a button that illuminates a small screen.

‘Gotta light?’

Beneath that, an address.

I stare at the man I've beaten. Blood covers his face and it's as though there is no face at all.

Then I run, ashamed. Ashamed that Mom had been right. On Wall Street, I throw up twice, spatter my shoes and pants. People laugh and hoot, point fingers at me, but I only hear my mother.

“Get out, you bully,” she had said that terrible day. “I don’t need you. Ryan doesn’t need you.”

After two or three more heaves, I spit, wipe my mouth, and head for the car.

***

Her place vibes. Like a street corner in the wrong part of town.

African masks cover one wall, whips and leather straps another, photographs of nudes still another. Jagged chords and ethereal vocals serenade us from the stereo. Pale blue moon light rides a thin shaft through the window.

She stands in a doorway. “Parky send you?”

“That his name? Fatboy with a face like a trash dump?”

“That’s him.”

“You expecting company?” I ask, pointing at her robe. It's open and I like the show. Her white skin is criss-crossed with the straps of a negligee.

She covers herself. “Hope springs eternal.”

“Uh...okay.” I wrench my eyes from her body to her face. “Need something burned?"

“You’re going to do it?”

I try to clue in to the vibe, the feel and texture of the place. The air smells of musk and candles. Dim waves of yellow light -- candles burning in another room -- jitterbug against the walls. “I’m standing here, ain’t I?”

“I get lots of guys standing here.”

“Better learn to keep the door closed, then.”

“Can’t get lucky if you’re not open to new things, right?” Her head inclines. “You look familiar. Have you torched a place for me before?”

“I’d probably remember.”

Nodding, slowly cinching her robe closed, she opens a cabinet door so I can see some video equipment. “Film it.”

“Film it?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is hard. She turns toward me and I catch a flash of thigh through the robe's slit. “That a problem?”

I swallow into a desert dry throat, all my time alone on the road painfully clear now. Maybe I called it penance, working odd jobs and sending money home as a way to pay for leaving Ryan behind. But now, with this woman and her skin, with her scent, with the promise of all the things I had denied myself, I see it for what it was: running.

How easy to tell myself to stop sniffing between her legs. How hard to actually do it. Yeah, she killed my brother but there was something about her…. “You film them to make sure you get what you pay for?”

“Among other things." She walks the room, watches me with deep eyes that leave me disconcerted, as does the hushed rustling of her robe when she moves. As she strolls around me, her hands occasionally reach for me, other times ignore me.       “You like fire, right?” she asks. “You don’t do it just for money, do you?”

This is Ryan’s killer. Her money had burned my brother to death.

And somehow, standing in her house, smelling her and seeing the outline of her breasts and hips in the moonlight, I want her. Cheap and shitty and like a bad movie, but there it is. I can't keep from imagining lowering her to the floor and exploring the criss-crosses. Her perfume slips into the cracks between the scent of musk and of burning candles. Her voice trembles, matching the shiver in my bones.

When I clear my throat, it's like swallowing sandpaper. “Some things for money, some things for kicks.”

“What kind of kicks?”

“What’cha got?”

“Naughty boy.” Her hand traces my neckline and chest before trailing away.

As she circles me again, I glance at the gear. Digital camera. Notebook computer. “You watch them on computer?”

She pulls a disk from the computer on the coffee table. “I don’t just watch them. I indulge in them. I wallow in them. I upload them.”

“You what?”

Her face glows as she points to a shelf full of disks. “I upload and sell the files to other...interested parties.”

My head pounds.

“And I fuck to them,” she says with a throaty growl.

The world -- my part of the world, anyway -- spins. I bite down on my tongue, keeping everything inside except the warm blood trickling over my lip. She isn't just a firebug, she's something much more. And that much more has stuck in me like a fucking fish hook in my mouth. Careful. Spit that hook out before she guts you.

I try to put my head somewhere else, maybe in Ryan's coffin. “You have the grocery fire? A week ago? You upload that?”

A beatific smile slid across her full lips. "Ahhhhhhhh."

I frown. "What's that mean?"

“The first big burn,” she says. “First time live. I made six thousand dollars. And came four times.” Licking her lips, she grabs the equipment and hands it to me. “Tonight’s a big burn, too. Set up the camera, plug it into the port. Turn on the computer. Open up the LightTheNight connection.”

“Light the night?”

“Our isp, special to us.”

“Us." The pronoun sits flat on my tongue.

She nods. “Start the camera -- see that button right there? -- before you douse the place. I want to see that, too. Then light it and stay as long as you can. Set up across the street or in the shadows or something. Get the whole fire.”

It's just a camera. Plastic, some metal, a motherboard. Cables and cords. But much more than its individual parts. Anger rides me like Midland's summer squalls. Ryan is dead and not only did she watch, she sold the watching to others.

And screwed while watching.

Forever, maybe hours, maybe years, I stare at her. None of this means anything to her; none of it except the fire and the sex. Ryan means nothing, I mean nothing and at that moment, I become her fire. Every muscle and nerve is the convenience store fire or the burned warehouses or destroyed crack houses. If I touch her, a finger to her hair, a palm to her stomach, lips to her breasts, she will burn in my rage.

Instead, I pull away. “Want to play a game?”

She frowns with an edge of anticipation. “What kind of game?”

“Ever fucked the torch?”

A slow, luxurious smile spreads across her face. “You are a naughty boy, aren’t you? How would you do that?”

“Timer. Simple as pie.”

“Two thousand dollars,” she says. “Burn it well and there will be more.”

“Don't worry about the burning, it'll be fine."

***

She is prone on the bed, wet with nipples hard enough to cut my finger.

In the bathroom, my eyes closed, my heart stumbles like a drunk. This is all wrong. Revenge, the reckoning, whatever it's called, might have been the right thing, but not this way. She killed Ryan and here I stand, naked, erect, wanting her. Lenny had told me, Daddy Wong had tried to tell me. The why...the how...both of those things are mine now and I don't care. What matters, since the moment Lenny called me, is the who.

Now I have the who and I'm gonna betray Ryan for a quick taste of her shaved fur.

“Doesn’t matter,” I say, splashing my face with a blast of cold water.

On the bed, she purrs. "Now we're both wet. How soon?”

“A few minutes."

"Do you ever watch the fires?” she asks.

“No.”

“They’re beautiful. The way the flames lick the wooden studs. Fingers of flame. So phallic. It’s like the night is the feminine against the flames’ masculinity. The fire tries to climb up inside the night; masculine into feminine.”

“Or maybe,” I say, “The wooden studs are phallic and the flames feminine.”

She grins. “So fuck me, phallic.”

“Yes.”

At the bedside, I shove her head into my crotch. Ryan dead or not, this woman the killer or not, I rise to her mouth. As she licks me, I say, “Let me tie you.”

With a nod, she lays flat on the bed and spreads her legs toward the bedposts. “Scarves in the third drawer.”

In that drawer, I find handcuffs, an electric wand, various leather whips. In the far corner, her computer hums.

“Hurry, before the burning starts."

I rope a wrist to the bedpost. After the second wrist, she pulls slightly and the scarves tighten.

“What’s the safe word? In case you go too far.” She smiles sheepishly. “I don’t think that’s possible but you never know.”

“Ryan,” I say, tying her legs. When she pulls, they too tighten.

“Too tight."

“Fire’s coming,” I whisper.

“Loosen the scarves.”

“No."

“Loosen the scarves.” She squirms. “Enough already.”

“That’s not the safe word.”

“Damnit, untie me.”

I slap her hard.

Tears well in her eyes. “Asshole, that hurt.”

“Good. I’d hate to waste a slap.” I lean down, taste the soft folds between her legs, her taut belly, her pert breasts. When I reach her lips, she jerks her head away. “You don’t know real hurt, but you will.”

“Ryan,” she says. “The safe word.”

On the screen, the timer buzzes and a spark catches. Her head twists to see the screen and her passion stomps out her fear. Ryan’s name disappears from her lips. Her pelvis thrusts at nothing, as though it is a a hungry mouth, desperate to be fed.

“Temperature’s hotter inside the fire,” she says. “It’s where me and the fire are sisters." Her head swivels toward me. “What’s that noise? Outside the window?”

“The Big Burn. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Live fire? Something spectacular? You’ll make ten grand easy when all those people realize whose house is burning.”

Her eyes widen with understanding. They’re tinged with something that might be fear and just as easily might be lust.

“They’ll shoot their twisted little wads all over their computers when they realize you died in a fire you bought. You’re going to burn just like my brother.”

“Ryan,” she says.

“The bodega fire.”

Her eyes spark and I see the memory come back. “He looked like you. That’s why you look familiar.”

“You saw him?”

Her eyes shine like rubies. Outside, flames begin to trace the bedroom window. “He died like a pussy. Had his face pressed against the glass, crying like a baby. Too fucking stupid to break the goddamned window."

“You stupid -- ” My fists become soldiers with their own orders. I smash her mouth and her lips burst like a rotten banana. The skin above her eye splits and looks like a grinning, bloody, second mouth. Blood tromps across her face, stains the sheets and pillows. She turns her head and my last punch breaks her nose. Her breath whistles, audible above my own heavy breathing.

The fire grows around the house’s foundation, eating the wood as enthusiastically as a carnival-goer eats cotton candy.

“Ryan,” she screams through a collapsed mouth. “Ryan. I’s a sa’e wuhd!"

My hands covered in her blood, I leave her behind.

***

"Fifty-four dollars and thirty…five…six…seven cents."

Daddy Wong pockets the money.

I hand him two disks. My copies are locked in the Buick, unwatched.

"I heard there was a fire last night."

"Yeah,” I say.

“What are these?”

“Gifts. One’s Ryan’s killer.”

“Dead?" Daddy Wong takes a deep breath. "’One fire burns out another's burning. One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish’.”

“The Asian masters again?”

“Romeo and Juliet. What’s the other disk?”

“Ryan’s fire.” I pause, unable to keep a good picture of Mom in my head. “I can’t give her Ryan back but I gave her some justice. She probably won’t want to see these, but if she does....”

Daddy Wong nods. “Don’t worry about her, Alan, I’ll take care of it. Maybe you should take this.” He hands me a copy of ‘RIKI-OH: The Story of Ricky.’

“Tell her I did the right thing. I tried to take care of Ryan, even if it was too late. And tell her I love her, I never stopped, even when she hated me.”

Daddy Wong hands me a small box full of envelopes scrawled with my handwriting and postmarks from all over the country. If I open the envelopes, I'll find all the cashier's checks and money orders, all the money I'd ever sent, all the penance I'd ever done.

Mom never cashed any of them.

"Patience, Alan," Daddy Wong says. "There is always tomorrow.”

"Yeah," I say, shaking the box. “But tomorrow’s looking pretty shitty, too.”

Copyright(c) 2007 by Trey Barker

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