Page 34 of Fire for Effect

“You’ve got kids?” I asked, assessing him from head to toe. He seemed like one of those guys that spent all their time on the road. I doubted he spent a ton of time with anything that would resemble a healthy family.

“I have a daughter,” he said. “Light of my life.”

There was a glow in his eyes, and that familiar pang of envy came back to the surface. Again, what would that be like? To be the light of someone’s life?

“Lucky kid,” I said, turning back to the Jukebox to line up another song.

I found the song I wanted - the First Picture of You by the Lotus Eaters. An over dramatic one hit wonder from the 1980’s.

“I hope she thinks so,” he said with a fond smile.

Again, another dagger in my heart. I bet my dad didn’t smile thinking about his kid. Maybe he had other kids. But I was probably a forgotten, distant mistake.

“What’s with the name?” I finally asked, nodding to his cut with the name proudly emblazoned on a scroll. “You religious or something?”

He shrugged. “Not particularly. It's more… symbolic of the fact that we’re fallen from what we used to be.”

“What did you used to be?”

“We’re all veterans,” he said. “A bit disgruntled with how things are going.”

“Disgruntled?” I pried, wondering exactly what kind of disgruntled they were.

Were they marching down the DC mall with signs disgruntled, or Timothy McVeigh, bombing a building with Federal agents and their kids in it kind of disgruntled?

“The Prodigal Sons aren’t thrilled with the current administration, and the bureaucratic decision making that occurs in relation to certain non-State actors,” he said, looking away, his tone flat, like he was reciting a trivia fact. The song changed to the one I chose, and he smirked. “This is a good song.”

When the song came on, he nodded in approval.

“Good one hit wonder,” he said with a charming smile. His eyes went back to me. “Where’d you hear it? What’s the story with you and this song?”

“No story,” I said, wondering why he was being so intimate.

These weren’t the usual questions a person would ask. So, what was his deal?

“Your old man sing it to you or something?” he said as if it was something he would know. Like maybe he did that for his kid.

“Nope.” I shrugged. “My old man bailed, and never looked back.”

Why the hell was I admitting that to a stranger? It wasn’t a badge of honor. It wasn’t much of anything. It was just… fact.

“Oh?” He said, instantly curious. Almost too curious.

“Yup,” I flipped through the little list in the Jukebox to find the next song I wanted. “Mom got pregnant, and he bailed. Fed her some lame excuse for why he left. She looked him up a few times, but I guess he lied about everything.”

He tilted his head.

“What about child support?” That was a curious place to go with his questions. Rarely did people go straight into thinking about child support, but hell, maybe he did. I didn’t see a wedding band on his hand.

“Nope. Nothing.” Hell, any support would have been nice. We had lived on the brink of disaster my entire childhood.

“Did your Ma tell you that?” His bushy, sculpted brows came together. “Something like that,” I grumbled.

“Interesting,” he said.

And he meant it. He was acting like my mundane story was something that rocked his world.

“My name’s Cobra. “He held his large hand out to me, his palms calloused and dry. I took it, and nodded.

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