Light Shines Through | Chapter 2 - Jake
The Shattered World Series (Book 1)
Jake | October 2041 — Dutton, Georgia, New Confederate States of America
The sharp crack of a gunshot in the far-off distance shocks Jake Murphy’s eyes open into semi-darkness.
His mind gropes against the fogginess of sleep and cold. Nothing close, he’s sure of that. But to his ears, it sounded like real ammo, good ammo, which means someone else is out here hunting.
As he focuses, he becomes aware of his surroundings, separating reality from the confusion of dreams. What had started as a long-lost memory of his mother had turned into something more intimate and uncomfortably erotic, involving Beau Jackson and what it might feel like to hold his body close, and then twisted with shame and jumbled into some half-formed specter of fleeing a Texan raiding party on foot through an unknown dark forest. He breathes slowly, trying to will his heart rate down.
The first hints of dawn breaking are a slowly brightening reddish glow to the east, and the birdsong that is just beginning to echo through the forest. Jake is sitting in a hunting blind in the chill of morning, losing his battle against boredom and sleep.
He’s been hunkered down in more blinds freezing his balls off than he could ever possibly count; he wonders idly for a moment if he should try, and then gives up, bored with the idea before he’s even begun.
The first time, though, he can easily remember. The first time his father had brought him hunting — proper hunting, sitting in a blind, doing the patient work of a man —was when he was eight years old. His whole memory of the event is suffused with an excited glow in the way that only first memories from childhood can be.
Since that time, Jake has learned everything his father could teach him about hunting, and more. He hasn’t had a choice — with every passing year, his father has become more detached from reality and spends more time lost at the bottom of a bottle. The responsibility for working the farm and hunting meat for the table had fallen to Jake early. Now that he is nineteen, he figures he’s spent some significant fraction of a decade sitting in the middle of nowhere, waiting for dinner to stumble by.
He feels the beginning of a leg cramp coming on, and quietly shifts his weight, stretching out his right leg, letting his mind wander — a dangerous thing to do, because it means his mind keeps jumping back to all of the things he shouldn’t be thinking about.
As the sky brightens around him, clouds paint the dawn a vivid Dixie red, and the forest begins to resolve into crimson-tinted focus. He’s been in this spot so many times before that he knows the structure of the land and the trees around him by heart, but it still surprises him every time as the landscape unfolds. The hornbeam and the hickory, off to his right, and the cluster of birches in the medium distance behind them. The stand of Loblolly pine farther off, dead center to the north, where he’s facing. Buckeye and mountain laurel clutter the spaces between. A beauty and a logic to it, he thinks, and although he can’t read the pattern, it’s familiar enough that each tree and bush is like a friend. An acquaintance, maybe, Jake thinks, since he doesn’t have any real friends. He tries to push the bleak thought away, keeping the mean, creeping darkness of his worst thoughts at bay for just a little while longer, trying to fill his mind with blankness instead.
He closes his eyes for a moment, and unbidden, an image of Beau from the dream springs into his mind. He grunts, frustrated and angry, subconsciously squeezes his crotch, and shakes his head, quietly trying to dislodge the image from his brain.
Beau isn’t here with him, of course. Beau barely knows Jake exists. He is undoubtedly waking up in his warm bed, where his mother or the help is fixing a fine breakfast of storebought food, and his jackass of a father is blathering on about New Confederacy politics and his campaign for the NCSA Senate.
But Jake can’t stop himself wishing that he was curled up in that warm bed next to Beau, or that, at the very least, Beau was here with him in the blind, warm body pressed up against his own with the excuse of the cold to cover his need. Jake adjusts his jeans again, trying to hide evidence of his arousal, even though he’s alone in the woods, and no one can read his mind. He hopes.
And this is the problem. Not only should Jake not be turned on thinking about a guy whose father is a preacher and a wretchedly ambitious state senator in one of the most conservative, warmongering parties in the Confederacy, but Jake shouldn’t be turned on by a guy at all. For the millionth time, Jake wonders if thinking about Beau like this makes him a fag and a sinner, and for the millionth time, he thinks that yes, yes, it almost certainly does. This is an endless little loop that his mind plays over and over again, like a song. Like a terrible song he hates, and would happily never hear again, but that continues playing on repeat nonetheless.
He touches the small silver ring he keeps on a chain around his neck, and says a little prayer under his breath to God to lift this burden from him, squeezing his eyes tight until he sees stars, as if this amplifies the power of his conviction. He catches his breath and feels a kind of peace settle over him.
Tentatively, he experiments and conjures up an image of Beau in his mind. His hardon gives a little throb, and a tiny piece of hope inside him dies, just as it has done every other time he’s tried to pray the gay away.
A rustle of leaves catches his attention, and he pulls himself together. With practiced ease, Jake raises his crossbow to get a sight. Squinting to get a better view, he lines up his shot in the direction of the noise and imperceptibly prepares his body for action. He slowly releases his breath and waits.
There, just past the willow oak, movement. A doe, moving with cautious elegance. Fire burns through Jake. With this doe, there will be venison for the party next week, and for weeks to come.
A step, and then a slow turn of her head, listening for danger, catching a whiff of something that Jake prays isn’t him. Another step. One more, and she’ll be perfectly lined up. The back part of Jake’s mind is synthesizing the world around him; wind speed and temperature, his knowledge of the bow and this bolt in particular, the one with the expandable head and a tiny notch out of one of its fletchings that somehow seems to make it fly truer.
The red dawn is highlighting everything perfectly. The adrenaline is flowing through him, and it’s working in the way he needs it to — increasing his focus, making him hyper aware of the world around him.
And then, in the fraction of a second before the doe takes her next step directly into his perfect shot, a gun cracks off to his left, followed by a whoop, and Jake pulls the trigger.
The bolt misses and embeds itself into the bark of the tree behind the deer, and the doe, all of her dark suspicions about the world confirmed, has bounded away before Jake can process what’s happened.
Cussing under his breath, he swings the bow down, and automatically, he is pulling out his next bolt and the cocking rope. He knows she’s gone, but the mad hope of a missed opportunity keeps his hands moving of their own accord. He slaps the bolt into the bow, hooks on the rope, pulls, and — bam! The cocking rope breaks, and his right hand swings back in the unexpected release of tension, and he punches himself in the face, just under his right eye.
The adrenaline is working against him now, and it takes a couple of minutes before he gets his breathing under control. His face hurts, but not too badly. Mostly it’s free-ranging anger at the jackass with the gun: to have screwed up his shot, to have yelled right after shooting, and to have precious live ammunition and commit the sin of wasting it while not even bagging the deer.
He could hand-cock the crossbow, but that’s not a viable long-term solution. He needs to stop by Dempsey’s to see if he can trade for a new rope, and maybe some meat for the party while he’s at it.
He sits in the blind for another ten minutes or so, calming down, and barely noticing the scarlet-fingered dawn in full bloom around him now. Feeling frustrated, Jake realizes that his morning is shot — no pun intended, he thinks — and that he should just get on with his errands.
An embarrassingly loud rumble from his stomach emphasizes the point, and he decides that it’s time to pack it in. He pulls some hardtack out of his bag and crams it into his mouth. As his nerves stop jangling, he begins to tune in to the sounds of the forest. As the rush of the moment flows out of him, he begins to connect to the larger space — the chatter of the birds coming back up to volume, the sound of the wind in the treetops.
His awareness expands, and the zenlike calm he was looking for earlier and not finding begins to manifest within, drop by drop. He closes his eyes for a moment, the first rays of the sun finding his face, and breathes deeply, letting the last of his frustration go.
And in the calm sounds of these woods he knows so well, there is a very tiny sound, just catching at the edge of his awareness. A baby crying? That can’t possibly be right. He turns his head slowly, trying to place the sound in the sphere of space around him. The high-pitched cry is faint and intermittent, but within a moment he has placed it as coming from off to his right.
Jake packs up the rest of his kit and climbs quietly — as quietly as possible — out of the blind. When he gets to the ground, he thinks for a moment he’s lost the sound. There couldn’t possibly be a baby here in the woods, he thinks again, but he knows he heard something. He stands stock still and holds his breath.
And then there it is again, definitely off to the right. He moves gently through the underbrush, checking before he places each footstep. After fifteen minutes of moving carefully, standing still, and listening, he finds it.
A kitten.
It’s filthy, and covered in fleas and leaves and what looks like shit and dried blood, but as far as he can tell, it’s almost entirely black with a spot of white just above its pink nose, and three white paws. Its eyes are just beginning to open, and are a stormy ocean blue. He looks down at it, momentarily perplexed, and then the larger scene clicks into focus.
The half-eaten body of a mother cat, hind leg caught in a snare that isn’t one of his. Two small bodies near her, the littermates that didn’t make it.
The kitten, which had momentarily gone quiet at his approach, throws caution to the wind and begins meowing as if its little life depends on it. Which, Jake thinks, it probably does. The scrappy little kit has clambered over the thorny scrub to his right boot and has placed its mismatched paws, one white, one black, up on Jake’s foot so that it can raise its filthy face to Jake and meow for help with a renewed vigor.
Without even thinking about it, Jake bends down and digs into his pack for his clean chamois cloth and his canteen. He crouches down, picks up the tiny cat by its scruff, and then holds it in one hand, feeling the fragile cartilage bones through loose skin. This kitten was starving even before its mother died. It’s a miracle that it is somehow still alive.
He sets the kitten into his lap and then pours some water into his cupped hand. The kitten knows immediately what to do, lapping eagerly for the water, so that Jake can feel its tiny sandpaper tongue rough against his palm.
Once the kitten has had its fill of water, Jake wets a corner of the chamois and begins methodically cleaning the kitten's face. Within moments, the kitten is purring so loudly that Jake is astonished that something so small can make a sound so big. Without meaning to, he glances around to see if anyone or anything else can bear witness to this phenomenon.
It takes another ten or fifteen minutes, but he manages to clean enough grime and pluck and crush as many fleas as he can find off of the kitten so that it looks like a different creature. It is squirming with delight, headbutting his hands, licking, and purring. It appears to be thoroughly in love with Jake. Which means that you are the only thing in the world that is, thinks Jake. He rolls his eyes at himself for such maudlin self-pity.
But now the larger issue that he’s been avoiding thinking about rears its ugly head. What is he going to do with this thing? He can’t keep it. He doesn’t need another mouth to feed, and he isn’t around enough during the day to take care of it. Current purr volume notwithstanding, he’s pretty sure that the kitten will need a lot of attention and care for the next several weeks just to pull through and survive.
The idea to give it to Annabelle as a part of her birthday present floats into his mind, but he dismisses it quickly. Melinda, his stepmother, will hate it. Jake remembers that she’s not fond of cats, and then laughs a grim laugh at the idea that she’s not fond of anything, really, except Annabelle, and her fervent conviction that Annabelle is destined to be not just Miss Georgia Peach, but Miss Rebel, and from there find some limitless, glamourous future. Melinda has been cooing over how beautiful Annabelle is since the girl was born, dressing her in increasingly more elaborate outfits, and entering her in pageants before she could even stand.
At the moment, though, Jake can’t think of what else to do with the kitten. Leaving it here to die sends a wave of nausea flowing through Jake so strong that he rejects the idea out of hand. For now, though, he knows he needs to go to Dempsey’s to see if he can find a replacement cocking rope for his crossbow, and beg Dempsey for a bit of credit so he can get some kind of meat to bring home to dinner for Annabelle’s party next week.
He slings his canteen over his shoulder and arranges his spare shirt on the bottom of the bag for the kitten. He lifts it in, and after stroking it for a moment to calm it down, he closes the bag. He’s rewarded with a fusillade of angry meows, which transform into purrs the moment he opens the bag and the kitten sees him. After several rounds of hide-and-seek, he seems to convince the obstreperous little cat that it is safe, and he hauls the pack onto his back, where it jostles with each step against the canteen, his empty rifle, and the crossbow.
After making his way through the scrub to fetch his one lost bolt, he begins the trek back to his bike. The fresh morning sun has broken through the clouds and is shining in his eyes, scarlet transformed into gold, limning the world in amber as if everything were dripping with honey.
Jake tromps back to his bike, still lost in thought. There's no need to be quiet now that he knows yet another hunting expedition is a bust. Something about abandoning his normal, careful movement through these woods feels good. It is a simple defiance. He's here, he exists, and for the moment, he owns this little forest.
He's been hunting this patch of land and several other spots like it nearly his whole life. All of them are within biking distance of his home. Jake doesn't have a truck, because most people these days don't have cars or trucks. Electricity is expensive, and gasoline is even more expensive still, ever since the fucking Texans captured most of the Gulf Coast during the Second War Between the States.
Jake's father, Mitch, has an old Ford truck that he keeps in the back barn. Jake has early memories of his father washing and caring for it, but it's been hidden under tarps for at least the last ten years. Originally, Mitch talked about plans to use it as a work truck once “business” picked up, and then later about how he could sell it for a pile of money when it became clear that business of any kind wasn't picking up for a long time. But now it just sits there under the tarp, about as useless as Jake's father has become.
Over the last couple of years that Jake has been trading with Dempsey, he’s been picking up spare parts along the way, trying to bring the truck back to life. He figures even if he can’t ever afford a tank of gas for the damn thing, he could at least make good on the idea of selling it.
Jake grabs a handful of berries off a swamp huckleberry as he’s walking past, and throws them into his mouth, reveling as the sweetness explodes across his tongue. That berry patch hadn’t produced much last year, but this year it’s been going gangbusters. He’s surprised there’s still fruit, and he ponders stopping for a moment to try to gather enough worth trading, but decides against it, thinking of the kitten in his bag, who has mewed only once as they’ve been hiking out of the woods.
He scuttles under three old fallen trees rather than going around the long way, past the marshy area, and tries to imagine what he’d do with the cash from selling the truck, a game he used to enjoy playing. But the way things are going with the farm, thinking about money just pulls him down another dark path of thoughts.
Jake works the farm, takes odd jobs like fixing the machinery at the cigarette factory outside of town, and he’s in the Reserves, trying to get into Ranger school, even with his “family need” deferment from active duty. He barely makes enough to keep the family fed.
What small amounts of money they get from his father’s army disability check, Jake's stepmother and half-brothers steal from Mitch's wallet. And what little they don't steal, his dad spends on hooch.
Sometimes Jake is half tempted to keep the money he earns to himself, but he’s sure that he’d catch a rash of shit if he even tried it. He knows his family is using him, but he feels guilty every time he thinks of leaving.
This is straying dangerously close to another line of thought that Jake doesn't like pursuing: for as much as his family extols the virtues of the South, and bemoans the raw deal the New Confederate States of America have received at the hands of the fucking Yankees and Texas and Heartland, they still seem like the kinds of lazy grifters that they complain about all the time.
After the Flash and the Crash, the South set up the New Confederacy to finally be free of all those godless heathens, and keep hard-earned Southern money in the pockets of honest Southern folk. No more handouts to freeloaders like the Mexicans and the blacks anymore.
But none of that seems to have worked out the way it was planned. After the Crash came the Smash, the Second War Between the States, which the South won, except for the treachery of the goddamn Texans.
Everyone thought that the global depression that kicked off after the Flash, Crash, and Smash would end once the fighting was over and the new national borders were agreed upon — but for most of Jake’s life, it just seems like the hard times keep getting harder and lasting longer.
He gets to his bike, unlocks the complicated lock he has devised to keep this precious possession safe, and stows the collapsible, one-wheeled game cart into its smallest configuration. He’s proud of the jerry-rigged device, and shakes his head thinking of the doe that could be riding on it now.
Jake isn't an economist or a politician. Hell, he's not even a high school graduate. But through the old emergency radio he keeps hidden on the roof outside his bedroom window to try to find new music, he occasionally hears snippets of the world beyond, and most of the other countries sound like they're doing okay. It might be lies told by the enemies of the South, but it seems like the Yankees and Texans are doing well enough. The folks out in Deseret are relentlessly happy.
Annoyingly, the Freaks on the West Coast are doing best of all. On the rare nights when he can pick up a signal from California or Cascadia, half of it is some of the best music he’s ever heard, and the rest of it is news or ads.
Once, about a year ago, after listening to a song that had made him think of flying, he had been shocked to his core when an ad had come on that he thought, at first, was amazing new music -- uplifting electronica. Two voices had cut in, a man and a woman, talking about how Cascadia was always welcoming new people — “People just like you!” — regardless of race, color, creed, religion, political affiliation, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
His heart had been racing just thinking about it, getting as far away from his family as he could ever dream, in a place that would welcome him, even if he was gay. It had surprised him so much at the time that he’d snapped the radio off and gone back inside, shaking.
For months afterwards he had tried to find the station again, just to hear that ad. He told himself it was to hear the music again, but he knew, deep down, that he wanted that promise. It might be a trick or a trap, but just the idea of it made his heart leap -- that a place might welcome him, just the way he was.
As Jake gets closer to Dempsey’s shop, an odd feeling overtakes him. His skin prickles like something is amiss, but he can’t place what. No vehicles are here, which is not that strange at this time on a weekday morning. He rides up slowly, keeping an eye out for anything that seems out of the ordinary.
As he gets up alongside the large building Dempsey uses as his shop, Jake hops off his bike and walks it around the corner. Just as he turns the corner, he looks up to see someone dressed entirely in camo round the other corner, away from him.
“Hey!” Jake shouts. He looks around quickly, and then shoves his bike into a steep lean against the building wall and dashes ahead. As he rounds the far corner that the camo man had just turned, he is greeted with nothing. There’s no one there.
Jake sprints around the next corner of the building, and still can’t find any trace of the man — he thinks it was a man — dressed all in camo. He stands there for a moment, trying to look at the whole scene to deduce where the stranger has disappeared to. After several moments, he gives up in frustration. He doesn’t want to run around Dempsey’s property, yelling at nothing. That’s how you get shot.
He heads back to his bike, wheels it to the main roll-up door, leaning it more gently against the wall this time. He locks it and heads in. As he walks into the shop, he notices that while the lights are on, and it seems like Dempsey is open for business, there’s no one here. He calls out a couple of tentative greetings and then starts puttering around, looking through the stacks of junk.
He looks through the various auto parts and doesn’t find anything he needs. He moves on to the pile of old hard drives, and sees that of the fifteen that Dempsey has, there’s only one that’s new since his last visit. He picks it up and then realizes that he’s been there for at least fifteen minutes and hasn’t seen or heard from Dempsey.
He becomes aware that he’s been hearing faint music coming from the house, and as he approaches the beat-up old workbench towards the back of the shop that Dempsey uses as a work desk and checkout counter, Jake can see a sliver of light coming from the door to the house, which is just barely cracked.
None of this makes sense. The business appears to be open, and yet no one is in the shop. Jake has never been in the house, and he knows that Dempsey, while kind, has always made it clear that he doesn’t like people prying into his privacy. A chill goes down Jake’s spine, and he suddenly feels the creepiness of the situation. Is Dempsey dead? Has he been robbed? Was the man in camo not a customer, but an assailant of some kind?
Jake edges towards the door, tuning into his gut, which is telling him that there’s something not quite right going on. He calls out again.
“Hello? Mr. Dempsey? It’s Jake Murphy. Hello?”
Jake pulls his rifle around and wishes for the hundredth time that he had ammo. He moves towards the partly open door to the house, once again calling out.
As he approaches the door he pauses, listening for anything unfamiliar, any sound coming from the house. The only thing he’s greeted with is the soft music coming from inside. A woman singing in rich and melancholy tones to the sound of a guitar. Jake is intrigued because it’s nothing he’s heard before, and he likes it. A tiny part of his brain is making a note to ask Dempsey for a copy of whatever it is, even as the larger part of him is trying to make sense of what’s going on.
Jake reaches forward to knock on the door, but it just swings open at his touch.
“Dempsey? You in there? It’s Jake Murphy,” he announces again.
There’s nothing except the song, a final exclamation of missing you when you’re gone, and then the chords fade into silence and the song ends. In the new, more complete silence, Jake strains to hear anything that gives a clue as to what’s happening.
He cautiously steps into the house just as a new song starts — more guitar and a gentle syncopation. The same female voice starts singing gently about these old walls, and the stories they’d tell if they could speak. A frisson of feeling goes through Jake. A realization that he’s hearing something new that he likes, contrasted with the strangeness of the situation.
He edges into the hallway, and the first room is wide open — an office, packed full, holding a desk with a computer on it, and an organized chaos of memorabilia and electronic equipment. Sitting open on the desk is a photo album, which even from the doorway he can see is stuffed to overflowing with pictures.
Curiosity gets the better of him, and he lowers the rifle and edges around the desk so that he’s looking down on the shiny, slightly yellowed plastic pages of the burgundy faux leather binder.
He’s looking at pictures of people he doesn’t know — a family maybe? A handsome man with dark brown hair and laughing blue eyes, and a full beard that makes him look like a bear. But the woman — the woman is one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen. She has big, friendly eyes that are filled with a light and humor that Jake can’t help but admire. Her hair is done in meticulous cornrows, occasionally decorated with small beads, or sometimes left plain. The couple has a baby — a boy, based on the outfits he’s wearing in various pictures, a little sailor suit, a firefighter, and a teddy bear costume — and Jake can see that the boy is the perfect blend of the man and the woman. The man’s jawline, even through the chubby cheeks, the woman’s nose, the striking blue eyes of the man, and skin that is a coffee with cream tone somewhere between the two.
One picture is out of the plastic, sitting on top of the page. In it, the man and the woman are dressed in costumes. He’s dressed in black and white stripes, and she’s wearing an old-fashioned police uniform. In the picture, they are laughing, but leaning in, touching foreheads while looking into each other’s eyes. The little boy is dressed as a pumpkin, with a little green stem cap on his head. The boy is looking directly up at the photo, leaning away from his parents, reaching up with one hand like he’s grabbing towards the camera while his other hand is stretched out, holding onto the black plastic strap of a small pumpkin-shaped bucket filled with candy.
A lump forms in Jake’s throat, and with a tiny gasp, he realizes that the man in the photo is Dempsey — a much younger, much fitter Dempsey before he lost his foot. He’s feeling cotton-headed, like his thoughts aren’t making it through his brain, as feelings war inside him.
He’s horrified that young Dempsey is sexy, and feels a hot rush of shame, at the same time that he’s feeling jealousy at the easy and profound love captured in the photos. On top of all of that is an awareness that — obviously — something changed. Many things changed.
For one thing, Jake doesn’t know this woman and boy, and the pictures have familiar settings — this house, this shop, but with a boat in it, and a large RV. They don’t live here anymore, or anywhere in the Confederacy, Jake thinks, because he’s never seen a free black woman.
A tear tracks down his cheek, and before he can reach up to wipe his eyes, he hears the sound of a shotgun pump, and his blood runs ice cold in his veins.
“Put that photo down, and put your hands up, and turn around so’s I can see you” a voice says.
Jake looks up to see Dempsey aiming a gun at him, the barrel opening seeming to take up most of Jake’s field of vision. He gently sets the photo down and slowly raises both hands over his head.
“Mr. Dempsey. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t find you, and I called your name, but no one answered, and the door was open, and I didn’t know if you were OK I was worried...” his words come spilling out in a stammer, and he feels ridiculous.
Dempsey uncocks the gun and lowers it in one smooth motion.
“Jake. Jeez. For the love of … can’t a man go take a shit in his own damn house in peace!” the old man hollers at him.
“Sorry, sir. I’m sorry. I’ve been here for twenty minutes, and, well, you’re never not here. You know? If you’re not here, the shop is closed, and you’ve got the sign up. It was all open, and I started to get worried. I saw someone leave just as I got here, and then I came in and I …” he lamely gestures down at the photo album.
Dempsey stomps forward on his peg, and it strikes Jake as momentarily odd that he could be so loud in this moment, and yet sneak up on him so silently just seconds ago. His estimation of Dempsey, already high, ticks up another notch. Dempsey slams the album shut and shoves it under a pile of books on ancient computer programming languages that can’t be worth keeping.
“Stay outta my stuff, and outta my house, Murphy,” Dempsey growls at him.
“Who was that, Mr. Dempsey? I mean, that was you, but who was that woman and boy?” he asks.
“I said stay outta my business, Jake. Just leave it.” Dempsey rumbles, ominous as thunder on the far horizon.
“But she was ...” Jake starts.
“Don’t you dare say that fuckin’ word!” yells Dempsey, the picture of fury, face red, and veins popping on his temple, spittle flying from his lips as he shouts.
Jake is frozen in fear and confusion.
“What?what word?” be blurts, completely befuddled.
“The ‘N’ word!” yells Dempsey.
Jake’s mind grinds through gears for what seems like forever before it finds traction.
“What?! I … no! Not that word. I never say that word!” Jake hollers back, angry, but thinking that yelling at a man with a loaded gun might not be the wisest idea.
“I hate that word. My mom … my real mother hated that word, and I hate it too.” He has a flash of memory, like a spear of lightning lighting up a pitch-black room. Him, two, saying a word he’d heard his father use, his mother’s face a mask of anger, the smack across his mouth, and the bitter taste of soap.
“No, sir,” Jake says, standing up straighter and looking Dempsey in the eyes. “I was going to say that she was a beautiful woman. Sir.”
A look of shock races across Dempsey’s face, and then something else Jake can’t identify, and then the rage drains out of the old man like a balloon being deflated. Jake can practically see the sadness wash back into the man, ancient and deep, like an ocean wave that rises and swamps him and never rolls back out.
Dempsey nods his head and glances an apology at Jake.
“Yeah. She was. She really was. My Lyneisha, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known in my whole goddamn life.” He laughs a short, bitter laugh. “You have no idea, son. She was a powerhouse. A force of nature, that woman. She was strong and smart. A lawyer. And funny! The funniest person I’ve ever met.”
A smile that is a dim echo of the smile of the man in the photos flashes back onto his face, and Jake is disturbingly reminded that young Dempsey was incredibly good-looking.
In that moment, a strange new sound, and both men reflexively look around, bewildered. Jake suddenly remembers the kitten in his bag, and laughs. Dempsey looks at him with puzzled amusement, and Jake swings his bag around onto the desk. He opens it and reaches in, pulling out the squirming ball of fluff, awake now and meowing, demanding immediate attention.
Jake holds the kitten up for Dempsey to see.
“I found a little friend while I was out this morning. All alone. Lost its mother,” he says.
The little kitten meows indignantly, bright blue eyes in fuzzy black fur, and reaches out one paw towards the men’s faces. Just like the boy in the photo.
“What do you want for ‘im?” asks Dempsey.
Jake opens his mouth and then closes it a moment later, not sure what to say.
“The kitten?” he asks, knowing it sounds dumb, but trying to give himself time to think.
Dempsey nods.
“I, uh, I was thinking of giving it to Annabelle at her birthday party next week.”
Dempsey snorts with derision.
The kitten meows loudly, moving its little head in such a way that it seems to be agreeing with Dempsey and saying Can you believe this jackass?
“Not bringing this little guy around the Murder Twins. Besides, Melinda hates cats.”
Whatever protest Jake had dies on his tongue. He knows his stepmother hates cats, but he’d completely forgotten about his half-brothers, Winfield and Wexley. He’d never heard anyone call them the murder twins before, but Dempsey isn’t wrong.
His father and Melinda had celebrated their marriage by giving birth to fraternal twins when Jake was four, beginning Jake’s feelings of displacement in his own family. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, the twins were the picture of Rebel purity. But regardless of how charming they could be, or how much they looked like little angels, it had been clear to Jake from a very young age that something fundamentally human was missing in his half-brothers.
It wasn’t just that they treated him with contempt, even as small children. It was that no one seemed to matter to the twins, except each other. They’d fight like cats and dogs, but the moment any other person stepped into the picture, Win and Wex shifted their attention to dominating and manipulating that person in whatever way possible.
Now that they were fifteen, they were like a world unto themselves. They came and went as they pleased. They had a small cadre of other boys they led into trouble. Even Melinda had given up trying to tone down their behavior, as it was clear they had no more respect for her than anyone else. Only their father seemed to be able to cow the boys from time to time, and now that he spent most of his days down at the Old Regulation, lost in a bottle, that wasn’t very often at all.
He hated to admit it, but Dempsey was right. This kitten had somehow survived on its own through the night, but it wouldn’t survive Winfield and Wexley in the Murphy household. He’d be dooming it and Annabelle to grief.
Jake thinks for a minute and then nods sharply.
“You’re right. OK. I need a new cocking rope for my bow, and meat to bring home for Annabelle’s birthday party next week. Enough for about two dozen people.” He pauses for a moment, watching Dempsey tickle the kitten behind the ear, and thinks he can ask for a little more.
“And this drive? If there’s music on it, I want it. And whatever you were just listening to in here.”
Dempsey looks at Jake sideways for a moment, and then just shakes his head.
“You and the music kid. Never met anyone who’d listen to damn near anything so much as you. Could be a bunch of eighties crap on here and you’d still want it.”
Jake shrugs, but feels a little bloom of victory in his chest. He notes that Dempsey hasn’t said no to any of his terms.
Dempsey hands Jake the kitten and thunks off for a couple of minutes. He returns with a cable, a small bowl, and a glass container of cream.
He shoos Jake out of the way and sits down in front of the computer. He turns on the old machine, and while it’s running through its startup, he pours cream into the bowl and gestures to Jake. Jake sets the kitten down, and without missing a beat, the tiny cat is face-first into the bowl of cream. Jake worries it’s drowning, its face is so deep into the liquid, but the loud thrumming purr that starts up reassures him that it can still breathe. Dempsey looks down at the kitten in surprise, and the up and Jake, and the men can’t help but laugh.
Dempsey shakes his head again and starts scanning the contents of the hard drive.
“Well, kiddo, you’re in luck. There’s a ton of music on here.” He pauses for a minute. “It’s practically nothing but music. And some of it seems like some pretty weird shit, so that should make you happy, I guess.”
He spends another couple of minutes examining the drive, moves some files around, and then shuts it down, unplugs it, and hands it to Jake.
“Your lucky day. That thing has crappy music on it, I got a cocking rope, and if you come back the day of the party, I can get you about ten pounds of fresh venison sausage.” He beams up at Jake. “That is, if you’re willing to part with little Jerry, here.”
Jake laughs. “Jerry? Where’d you get that name from?”
Dempsey laughs, and once again, Jake is reminded of the man from the old photos.
“You ever heard of a movie called ‘Cats?’”
Jake shakes his head no.
“Well, don’t watch it. It sucks. Unless you’re high.” He laughs again at the shocked look on Jake’s face. “Back before the world went to hell, me and Lyn went to go see it in the theater. ‘Cept we’d heard it was so bad that you needed to be in an altered state to appreciate it.
“So’s we go see it high as kites, and lemme tell you, it was one of the strangest damn things I’ve ever seen. We were laughing so hard we thought we were gonna die. There’s this one song about these two cats called Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser, and so,” he reached out to pet the kitten who is now licking the very last traces of cream from the dish. “This here is ‘Mungojerrie’, or just ‘Jerry’ for short.”
At that moment, the kitten completes his task cleaning the bowl, and looks up at the two of them with its nose and whiskers covered in cream. It gives an audible little fart, and then meows at the men as if they were the ones being rude. Jake and Dempsey burst into howls of laughter, as Jerry continues to demand more cream.
Dempsey’s expression turns serious, and he looks at Jake out of the corner of his eye.
“So’s earlier, when you were lookin’ at my pics.” He says it as a statement, not as a question, and continues in the same tone of voice. “Looked like you were cryin’.”
Jake opens his mouth and then shuts it again. He shakes his head, and then, finally, feeling like he can’t get out of this situation without lying to the old man’s face, he says simply, “Yeah.”
“Why?”
Jake shakes his head slowly for a moment, as if the motion will knock the right words into place.
“I just … I never seen a little family look so right together, you know?” He says the words, feeling their inadequacy as a lump in his throat. “Y’all looked so happy together. I’ve never had that. I barely have photos of me and my mom and dad. My real mom. And none of them looked like … that. Like love.” He has to stop, afraid that he’ll start crying again.
Dempsey is looking at Jake with an intense expression he can’t interpret, and he realizes that the shine in the man’s eyes is the sheen of tears that haven’t yet felt the tug of gravity. As he watches the old man’s face, first one eye spills over, and then the next. Jake feels a sudden warmth for him, like he wants to somehow bundle this burly man up and tell him it’s going to be okay, when he knows that can never be true.
“They died,” Dempsey says, his voice creaking under the weight of his emotion. “Back after independence. After the Flash and Smash and shit. Things started to change, and...” He stops, and another tear streams down his cheek.
“They died in a car wreck, while I was at work. Everyone says they died in a car wreck. And I ain’t got no real reason to doubt, except...” He stops, shaking his head like he can’t believe his own words.
Jake feels the crush of the implication. Dempsey’s wife and biracial son were killed in a car wreck, just as black people were being driven from the New Confederacy, or pushed into servitude.
Jake feels suddenly aware of the selfishness of his own self-pity. There are worse things to suffer than being secretly gay, he thinks. Like losing the love of your life and your child at the hands of your neighbors and never being able to seek revenge, or even knowing if revenge was necessary.
« Chapter 1 — Sharon | Chapter 2 — Jake | Chapter 3 — Jackie »
The Shattered World Series | Book 1 | Light Shines Through
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This is sooo well written and the story! Lordy. One of best things I have read here on Substack. I am excited to read more of this story and others of yours. Honestly good, good stuff. I felt like I was there watching this story like a movie. Bravo Lawrence W.
write more about boners and throbbing 🤣💕