Inheritance: A Novel Part 42

When she was on her feet, he said, "I want the kitchen cleaned. I want everything in here cleaned up. You hear me?"

"Yes, Martin. I hear you."

"You've got two steaks in the freezer."

"Yes."

"Cook them both. One for me, one for Paul. He's got a big night ahead of him."

A long pause. Too long.

"You hear me?"

"What are you gonna do, Martin?"

"That ain't your concern. Just get this place cleaned up."

"Martin, that's my son. I won't let you corrupt him. I won't let you make him into what you are. You're evil, Martin. You're a sick, evil man, and I won't have my boy being anything like you."

Paul's mother was breathing hard, her mouth twitching with barely contained rage. But his father was calm. He almost looked amused.

"I got big plans for Paul, Carol. He's gonna be powerful one day. You don't know how powerful. When he's a man he's gonna lead nations. Nations, Carol! Do you understand that? He will be a prophet, and his words will be as sweet in their ears as honey on their tongue. Can you picture that? Can you picture this world pa.s.sing away, and my boy ushering in a new age?"

"I don't want him being anything like you."

Martin Henninger did something then that surprised Paul. He walked across the room to where his wife stood cowering and he put a hand on the back of her head and he stroked her oily gray hair almost like a master strokes a dog.

He said, "Carol, he ain't gonna be like me. He's gonna be bigger, stronger, more powerful. And sweetheart, it ain't your decision to make."

She pulled herself away from him.

"It is, too. I'll take him away from here. Away from you!"

"What you're gonna do is clean this kitchen. After that you're gonna-"

"You go to h.e.l.l, Martin Henninger!" She was nearly spitting the words at him. "You go to h.e.l.l, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"Carol, you're gonna clean this kitchen up. Now if you wanna get the s.h.i.+t kicked out of you before that happens, well, that's your decision to make. Either way it's fine by me. The job will get done regardless."

They stood there, staring at one another. Paul watched them both. He could feel his father exerting his power over her, and he could feel her fighting against it. Her whole body was quivering with the effort.

Finally, she broke.

Her shoulders sagged.

Her eyes turned down to the floor.

Martin Henninger smiled, turned, and walked out the door.

His mother left the kitchen and went to the room with the yellow wall. Paul followed her, wis.h.i.+ng that he could say something to her. He wanted to tell her that he had misunderstood, that he had screwed up so very badly. He had no idea what she had been fighting against, and the fact that she had lasted as long as she did spoke to the depth of her feelings for him. All this time, she had been acting as a buffer between him and his father, keeping the man at bay by sacrificing herself. She had fought to save him, and all he had thought to do was hate her for taking the coward's way out.

She went to the bed and reached under it and came up with the picture Paul had seen her secret away in the folds of her skirt. She sat on the edge of the bed and held the picture in her lap and sobbed quietly. Then she sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and flipped the picture over.

She took a pen from her blouse and started to write something on the back of the picture.

She was writing from memory, and writing quickly.

He only saw the first line before the room around him started to s.h.i.+ft, but that first line was like a punch in the gut.

They f.u.c.k you up, your mum and dad.

Whatever it was she had written on the back of that picture had been some sort of victory for her. Every stroke of the pen had been another step towards standing up straight and taking back a piece of herself from the black pit that was her marriage to Martin Henninger. She was stronger now. Paul could feel her strength echoing through the house. And it wasn't just coming from her as she walked through the kitchen, cleaning, smiling, even whistling a tune that, to Paul at least, sounded like vintage Patsy Cline. It wasn't just that. He could also feel it as a sort of positive energy, an eddy breaking the smooth flow of his father's power. Martin Henninger watched her moving through the house, and he was trying to rea.s.sert his sway over her, but somehow the connection had shorted out. His control was slipping, and he knew it. He was fl.u.s.tered, uncertain, even a little scared of her now. She was still a dog in his eyes, but a dog who no longer cowers just because the master raises his fist.

Martin Henninger came up behind her as she did the dishes and stroked the back of her hair. She stiffened for just a moment, an almost imperceptible moment, but never stopped scrubbing the pot in the sink.

He said, "You don't like it when I touch you like that, do you?"

"I'm working."

"That ain't what I asked," he said. And as Paul watched, his father curled his mother's hair around the back of his fist and yanked her head back until her face was pointed up at him.

In a breathless whisper, she said, "You're gonna do whatever you want to do."

He didn't let go. He said, "That's right," and grabbed one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with his other hand and squeezed. It was a violation, a prelude to a rape. Paul felt his arms tremble with rage, his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands as they curled into fists.

His mother remained perfectly still. Her arms stayed limp at her side, and white, sudsy water dripped from her fingertips and onto the floor.

Just then there was the sound of a truck slowing out on the road.

Paul looked up. Steve Sullivan's truck. I'll be coming home soon. I'll find her in here, and she'll be smiling. She'll say, "Hey baby. h.e.l.lo Steve," and I'll think something is wrong because for the first time in G.o.d knows how long, she won't be a wasted vegetable curled up in the shadows. She'll look almost healthy, and I'll think something is wrong, but I'll think what's wrong is that she looks healthy. I'll never guess the truth. My G.o.d, I never had a clue.

Martin Henninger's lip curled into a sneer of frustration. Carol Henninger just laughed. He said, "d.a.m.n it," and threw her to the floor.

Then he stormed out the screen door and let it slam behind him.

It was nighttime now, and he was standing in his old bedroom. Moonlight filtered in through the window above his desk, silvering the wooden floor. The air felt cool. On the bed a younger version of himself huddled beneath the blankets, listening to his parents screaming at each other down below. Paul, the boy, whimpered. Paul the man took a deep breath and walked out of the room and down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he saw his father slapping his mother to the floor.

She looked up at her husband and sneered through her b.l.o.o.d.y lips. "You can't stop me," she said. "You can't. He's mine, and I won't let you have him."

"You ain't got no say in it," he said.

"I won't let you have him," she said again. There was no fear in her voice. Nothing in her eyes but contempt.

He raised the back of his hand to her, but she just laughed.

"Go on," she said. "Hit me. Hit me, you dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You think you can break me. You can't break me. You've tried. For six years you've tried, and you still haven't done it. You hear me? You haven't!"

He lowered his hand and said, "You don't understand."

"Then tell me what it is I don't understand, Martin. I see you're trying to corrupt our son with your witchcraft. I hear you claim he's going to be some kind of G.o.d among men, but I can't think you actually believe that. You'd have to be insane to believe that. Are you, Martin? Are you really that f.u.c.king crazy?"

He regarded her with a cold intensity that made Paul's bowels quiver.

"You don't understand, Carol. You won't ever understand. Not fully. But I can show you."

He bent down, grabbed her by the hair at the back of her neck, and dragged her into the living room.

Once again Paul fought back the urge to intervene. But he knew that would be pointless, maybe even impossible. Whatever was about to happen had already happened twelve years ago. He couldn't change the past. And besides, he was being shown this for a reason.

His father dropped his mother onto the floor next to one of his stick lattices.

"You can close your eyes if you want. It don't matter. You'll still see."

He grabbed Paul's mother by the arm with one hand and placed his other on the stick lattice.

"Watch," he said, and focused on opening the doorway that led into the visionary landscape Paul had seen when he made his lattice.

Paul could feel a rush of energy swirling around him, moving through him, filling him up with its power and giving him a high like endorphins coursing through his veins. His father was feeling it, too. His eyes were closed, his head thrown back, his mouth open in ecstasy.

And then the world fell away and they were standing in a rubble-strewn street in the middle of a ruined city. Whole city blocks had crumbled into heaps of concrete and dust. Those buildings that still stood had been reduced to their frames. The sky above them was a swollen, unhealthy red that was filled with windblown ash. Towering columns of oily smoke rose all around him. The columns entered the sky and trailed away into black shoestring clouds. Everywhere about them, scared, dirty people scattered like mice for shelter.

Paul didn't recognize the city, but he knew that didn't matter. What he was seeing was happening all over the world. It was the same lowering sky over every living thing.

Strange, keening moans filled the air.

Paul turned toward the approaching moans. On top of a tabled slab of concrete not far away he saw a much older version of himself, scarred and bent-backed, but still obviously him, chanting, arms raised high over his head as an army of the dead poured into the streets. They came from every direction at once, rooting through the rubble, pulling the screaming people from their hiding places, devouring everything they touched. This was the end here. This was the turning point his father had promised him, the new world devouring the old.

Screams filled his ears.

Paul wanted to vomit. Beside him, his mother was covering her eyes with her hands. But Paul knew it wasn't making any difference. Eyes shut or eyes open, she saw it all just the same.

She was sobbing helplessly, and when she spoke, her voice was so shaken Paul could barely understand her.

"Why?" she said. "Why would you want something like this?"

When the scene cleared Paul realized he was crying. Could he really be responsible for what he had just seen? Even if he was only some sort of conduit for the power his father wors.h.i.+pped, it was still unacceptable. Even now he could smell the smoke and the ash in his nostrils and he hated it. He spit on the floor, and he gagged on the oily taste of his own saliva.

He was standing in the darkened living room of his old house, his father on his knees in front of a stick lattice, rocking back and forth and muttering to himself.

Somebody was banging on the screen door in the kitchen.

Martin Henninger rose to his feet and walked to the door. A pair of Comal County Deputies were standing there at the foot of the concrete stairs, Paul's mother between them. She looked utterly defeated. She was barefoot, wearing an old yellow housedress that accentuated the thin frailty of her body. She looked as unhealthy as an old used up crack wh.o.r.e.

Paul's heart went out to her. The vision his father had shown them had sickened her to her soul. It had sickened Paul, too, but it had affected her even more. It had sickened her so thoroughly that she had left Paul alone with his father, despite her promise to never give him up. Looking at her, he sensed that that was why she felt defeated. She had drawn a line for herself that she said she would never cross, a low to which she would never sink, and she had promptly sunk below it.

"We found her walking along County Road 131," one of the deputies said.

"Yeah?" said Martin Henninger. "So what?"

"She looks like she's had a pretty good scare, Martin. Anything you want to tell me about that? You guys have a fight?"

"She's f.u.c.king nuts," Martin said. "She wanders off sometimes and ain't got a clue what planet she's on. What the h.e.l.l you want me to do about it?"

The two deputies looked at each other. The one who had spoken first, a white-haired, big-bellied man with a walrus mustache said, "We brung her back to you, Martin. How about you take her inside and get her some water or something? You could make her comfortable. That'd be the decent thing to do?"

"f.u.c.k that," Martin said. "Leave her dumb a.s.s there. She'll be all right." And then he walked back inside, letting the screen door slam behind him.

An awkward moment pa.s.sed. The fat deputy whistled. His partner put his hands in his pockets. Paul's mother never moved. She just stood there, sobbing quietly.

The fat deputy said, "Ma'am, you gonna be all right if we leave you here?"

She didn't answer.

"Ma'am?"

The cop in Paul knew what the deputies were thinking. He'd been there himself. It was a bad situation. She didn't have any obvious injuries, and she wasn't saying anything to help them help her. All they had was a woman who appeared to be off her rocker and a husband with a reputation for being a first rate p.r.i.c.k. But there were no obvious signs of family violence, and it wasn't a crime to be an a.s.shole. They had no choice but to leave her here with this guy. There was nothing else they could do.

The fat deputy muttered something about calling them if she needed anything, and then the two men walked away, leaving her there in the dark.

Paul watched them get in their car and drive away.

He said, "Momma, how come you didn't tell them? You could have taken us both away."

But she gave no indication that she knew he was there.

His father swung open the screen door then and said, "You need to get yourself inside, Carol. I'm about ready and I don't want you hanging around out here. I want you up in the front room where you can't cause any trouble."

She looked up at Martin, her eyes vacant, like the eyes of the dead.

"Go on. Get inside."

"I don't wanna," she said, and the sudden, country girl tw.a.n.g in her voice surprised Paul.

Martin's voice was hard, but he hadn't started to yell yet. He said, "I don't care what you want. What you're gonna do is get your a.s.s inside."

For a moment, her eyes cleared. Paul's father must have seen it, too, because he sprang forward and grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her inside.

"You wanna give me s.h.i.+t?" he said. "You think you can give me s.h.i.+t?"

He yanked her off her feet.

One leg went sprawling and hit a chair and knocked it over.