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Kale Soup

Lucky I’ve not yet hit the thing I won’t do, thought Jeter.

An ember in the hearth snapped, and the kitchen’s only other sound was the purring of kale and bacon soup in the kettle, steady as the cicadas that would rev up when the sun edged over the ridge.

Hamish, Rivers, some of the others would be back before then, and they’d have the snitch in tow. No way they wouldn’t catch him. Jeter’s own trial might follow, to see could they trust him with the big secrets, and he aimed to fail, if it meant a killing. All he officially knew was to do with three stands of weed, but a man could watch and guess. Hamish was full of surprises, but Jeter could see the patterns. No way the real money wasn’t coming from crystal. He could see it in Rivers’ skin and teeth, in Hamish’s eyes.

He tilted back, then let the chair ease forward on its rockers, the only motion in the room, the rhythm of a cradle, but that wouldn’t hold long. He’d hear the engine and tires crackling the gravel, see headlights wash across the oaks beyond the window, but for now the room was his, smelling of grease and coal oil, lit by the slow hickory fire just enough to throw a patch of light on the wall, his own shadow the darkness inside that swath. It was a far cry from X-rays, but he couldn’t not think of them, two years in the bright rooms of Mitchell Tech learning the radiology his mother hoped would save him from such mischief. It might have worked, had he not met the girl.

He’d been a driver for Sonny when Hamish found him and took a shine. He’d worked nearly a year thinking the contracting business was all. Now, he wondered if they’d used Aline as bait or if she’d just stepped in on her own, sashaying across the office with that smile, addressing him as Big Boy. He’d thought it was his idea, never guessed he’d been summoned.

Just a week ago they’d had him shoot out two lights behind the ball field to deepen the darkness, and his next session with her had been the hottest yet. Now he saw it as a reward for his sharpshooter gift.

If he had a lick of sense, he’d rabbit, head for the flatlands and honest work—guiding patients, standing behind the lead shield as the deadly healing beams shot through the afflicted.

His shadow on the wall seemed to him a figure of drowsing blackbirds all clustered together. They might wake, the first wings showing in silhouette, one by one rising to scatter, as his shadow gradually shrank to nothing.