Blood in the Water (Kairos)

BLOOD

IN THE

WATER

The Kairos Series

Book One

B
y

Catherine Johnson

FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

Blood in the Water
© Copyright Catherine Johnson

2014

All rights reserved

Catherine Johnson has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Susan,

Who does everything she can to keep me writing.

And to my kids,

Who do everything they can to keep me from writing.

Also, with thanks to
the Freaks who helped make sure that this was worthy of belonging anywhere other than the hard drive of my laptop.

Kairos

(’kI-ros)

The perfect, delicate, crucial moment; the fleeting rightness of time and place that creates the opportune atmosphere for action, words, or movement.

PART ONE

1984

Paul dragged himself up the splintered wooden steps to the door of the dusty trailer that served as his family home.  Family?  That was a laugh.  He didn’t know who his pa was.  It was just him and his mom, at least most of the time, some of the time.  There was usually some fella that he was supposed to call ‘Uncle’ around.  Sometimes they stayed for a month or more, but they never did stick around for long.  His ma thought he didn’t know what was going on, thought he was too young to figure it out.  He thought maybe he didn’t understand it all the way through, but he understood enough.

He let himself in, being real careful with the door as he stepped inside.  If you didn’t keep hold of the door it swung back and hit the wall behind it with a loud bang, since the trailer wasn’t leveled quite right on its supports.  Until he was sure it would just be him inside, he’d try to make no more noise than a mouse.  The latest ‘Uncle’ had a real bee in his bonnet about noise.  Any sound earned Paul a yelling at or a beating, depending on where his ‘Uncle’ and Paul’s mom were up to with the booze or their pills.  Yeah, he understood enough.

He crept into his home and shut the door behind him with the barest hint of a click to announce his presence.  He hadn’t heard any voices from outside, but that didn’t mean nobody was home.  No one was sitting on the couch.  Yeah, that was funny too.  The couch was actually padded benches that ran round the three walls of the trailer at one end.  The trailer was roughly divided into three parts.  The couches with the fake wood table in the middle that did double duty as both desk and dining table made up the living area.  The middle third of the trailer had the kitchen on one side and the toilet and stand-up shower opposite.  The last bit of the trailer was taken up by his mom’s bedroom.  Paul slept on the couches, covered in a ratty, stinking throw.  When he was younger his mom had let him share the bed with her, but then the long line of ‘Uncles’ had started to arrive and he’d been told to sleep on the couch instead.

He left his school bag on the table and tiptoed to his mom’s bedroom door.  It wasn’t locked.  He opened it with well-practiced silence and peeked into the room.  It was dim inside; the daylight had given up trying to get through the curtains that were sagging off the rail.  His mom and his latest uncle were passed out face-down on the bed, still fully dressed this time at least, shoes and all.  He went back to the table and got his homework out.  At least he could get it done before the yelling started. 

He’d managed to finish all his homework tasks and still there were no signs of stirring from his mom’s room.  Looked like he was making supper, then.  He made sure to put his school bag away where it wouldn’t be tripped over and then started to make mac ’n’ cheese from a packet mix.  He made enough for himself and then some.  Chances were that his mom and her friend wouldn’t want any, but if he didn’t make enough for them they’d call him selfish and lazy.  If they didn’t want it they’d say he wasted food.  He couldn’t win either way, but it made him feel better to make some food for his mom at least.

While he was waiting for the food to heat through he ran through in his head the list of chores he had to do.  All the surfaces needed wiping down, and the floor was beginning to need a mop run over it.  The laundry needed doing sometime soon, too.  All his clothes might be hand me downs from neighbors or from the Goodwill basket at the local church, but he still took care of them when he could scrape the change together for the laundrymat machines.  If he left it to his mom they usually got left in the basket.  She just kept forgetting about stuff like that.  Ever since that teacher had sat him down and quietly explained why it was that none of the other kids wanted to sit near him in class he’d made sure he got the money to keep his stuff clean.  Doing a few chores for Mrs. Pitt in the next trailer over on a Saturday usually got him enough change for a couple of washes. 

Supper was nearly done when the door to his mom’s room opened.

“What’re ya doin’ ya skinny li’l shit?” 

His Uncle’s voice was a bit slurred.  Whether it was sleep or something else Paul couldn’t be sure.  All he knew was that the tone didn’t sound good.  And he’d tried so hard not to make too much noise.

“I’m fixin’ supper, sir.”

“You done woke us all up with all that bangin’ and crashin’.  Ya make one hell of a racket, boy.”

Paul didn’t think that was fair at all.  He hadn’t made hardly a sound, but he knew better than to try and argue.  He hung his head.  He didn’t want the man to see how angry he was, and he really wanted to avoid getting in more trouble if he could.

“Sorry, sir.”

It didn’t work.  He could almost feel the rage building in the man that stood in the bedroom doorway.  Paul didn’t even try to run.  It would only make it worse if he did.  The guy was huge as far as he was concerned.  He was tall, and he had this big pot belly that hung over his jeans.  It was covered in a stained beater that might have been white once.  Paul thought it was gross when the man walked around with his belly hanging out and no shirt or anything on. 

He didn’t look up even when the man grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the couch.  He waited patiently as the man unthreaded his belt and went limp when his ‘Uncle’ sat down and pulled him across his knee.  He felt his jeans and underwear being yanked down, and then the first fiery brand as the belt landed.  He jerked, but he didn’t cry out.  In this at least he knew very well that any sobbing or tears would only mean more thwacks with the belt.  He was relieved a little bit that this one used the belt folded up.  One of his mom’s previous friends had like to make him stand in place and taken swings at the back of his legs with buckle end.  That had stopped when one of his teachers had come round one night.  The next morning that ‘Uncle’ had disappeared and his mom had been real mad at him for making him go away.

At the fifth stroke Paul dared to lift his head a little, just to see if the loud snick of the belt hitting his skin had maybe woken his mom up.  It had.  She was standing in the bedroom doorway, leaning one hip against the frame, her arms crossed.  She looked real disappointed.  Maybe he must have made more noise than he thought.  He really wanted his mom to say something, to make the man stop, but she wouldn’t, she didn’t.  His mom looked kinda tired.  Her hair had come out bright yellow last time she’d dyed it and it was all stuck up in every direction like those cartoons when they put their finger in a plug socket.  Her makeup was smeared; there was a whole mess of black stuff around her eyes. She’d looked like that yesterday too. Paul didn’t think she noticed what she looked like too much any more.

Ten strokes.  That was pretty standard.  The man pushed him roughly off his knee and Paul gingerly pulled his jeans back over his raw backside.  If he winced or something he’d likely earn himself a cuff on the ear.  He kept his head down so no one would see how much it hurt.

The man was heaving himself off the couch now.  He was out of breath from the effort of the whipping.

“Fuckin’ noisy brat.  Keep fuckin’ quiet next time.  Don’t need ya wakin’ us up when we’re sleepin’.”  He turned to Paul’s mom.  “Come on ya dirty whore.  Ma head is splittin’ like a truck’s runnin’ through it.  I need a drink.  Don’t know why ya can’t keep any booze in the place.”

Paul thought that the reason that they couldn’t keep any booze in the place was because the man kept drinking it, but he didn’t say so.  He kept very still as they stumbled out of the trailer, slamming the door shut behind them.  His mom hadn’t said a word.

Now that they were gone he was free to screw his face up and hiss at the pain when he moved.  He didn’t even realize himself that there were tears streaming down his cheeks.  The mac ‘n’ cheese had pretty much boiled dry and welded itself to the pan.  He managed to salvage a couple of mouthfuls that would stop the painful rumbles in his tummy for a little while at least.  He scraped the pan out as best he could and made sure to fill it with hot water and dish soap to try and soak the burnt bits off.  He went to leave it in the sink then thought twice.  If his ‘Uncle’ saw it he’d probably be mad that Paul hadn’t cleaned it already.  Paul lifted it gingerly, he didn’t want to spill any water on the floor, and took it outside.  He hid the pan in the crawlspace under the back of the trailer.  He’d come collect it tomorrow when the water had softened the gunk up and he could wash it properly.

His backside was still burning as he climbed carefully onto the couch and pulled the smelly throw over him.  The benches weren’t well padded and between the pain from the beating, the hard surface and the stink of the cover he struggled to get any kind of comfortable.  He didn’t have any pajamas to change into, and he wouldn’t have bothered if he had.  There wasn’t much in the way of heating in the trailer and it got awful cold at night.  He’d just change all his clothes tomorrow before school.

This last weekend he’d snuck into the movie theater in town and managed to watch Return of the Jedi without being spotted and thrown out.  He wanted to be Han Solo so bad.  That looked like a good life, to have his own spaceship and be able to fly wherever he wanted in the whole galaxy.  His small chest ached at the thought of all that freedom, of having control over his one life, being able to choose his destiny.  Before he fell into an exhausted sleep, nine-year-old Paul wished himself happy birthday.