Page 122 of Bad Seed
I try to blank out the thought, but the stench of burning sugar cane fills my nose even as I take a sip. Green couldn’t have hit me harder than the memories from this whisky. My skin blistering and turned to ash, the farm I hated and loved a red flag among the thriving green. And no one coming to help. No one coming to put out the flames. Because they started it. They sat back and watched him burn.
“You were so angry,” Mr. Ato says. “You’d have killed the whole island that night, I swear.”
My hands shake, slopping the thousand dollar whisky over the side of the glass. He’s right. In my grief, and my rage, I didn’t care who I hurt. They all needed to suffer.
“But you listened to me.” Mr. Ato leans closer. “Without my guidance, without me there to keep you from going on a rampage, what would you be today? Incarcerated? Dead? You owe me your life, Talong.”
He didn’t calm my mind, but pointed me like a gun. I was the bullet, taking out those who he told me to. Who he assured me had set my Lolo’s farm ablaze. I didn’t question it. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t feel it until I was alone scraping the blood and soot off my body with steel wool.
“I gave you my life,” I mutter before staring him in the eye. “But you took my soul instead.”
A great smile breaks up Mr. Ato’s dour lips. He slaps his desk and laughs. “A soul? When has that ever concerned us, Talong? We are not like them. Trapped inside one body, incapable of the feats of strength and stamina a man of the vegetable is. They can piss themselves over the state of their soul. We don’t need one.”
I agreed with him once. That life was just a serious of misfortunes. Sometimes you were the victim, sometimes the one doing the misfortune. So why not do everything you can to be on top?
“We could use you.”
I gasp and sit up harder, but Mr. Ato’s dead serious as he takes another drink.
“Boss?” Green asks.
“Are you out of your fuck—?”
Mr. Ato glares at Red, silencing him. “He’s made mistakes, sure. Who amongst us hasn’t? Green, your little stunt giving that five-year-old the teddy bear stuffed full of fentanyl? Red, when you beat one of the cops on our payroll to near death? I forgave them. Why can’t I forgive this too?”
Even with his head coated in blood, Red scurries across the floor. “You can’t trust him, boss. How do we know he didn’t tell the Brassicas? Maybe he’s been on their side the whole time.”
“Mr. Bell?” He spins his cane around and slams the blunt end into Red’s chest. Instead of flinging back, Red collapses like a bag of potatoes. “The adults are talking.”
Green crawls over to his brother, his eyes wide. “He’s not breathing! Reddy. Come on! You got to breathe!” He starts shaking the man back and forth.
I move before I realize it. One hand shoves Green away and the other guides Red’s unresponsive head to the carpet. “Compressions on his chest,” I order his brother.
“What?” Green fumbles to the side.
“His heart stopped. You need to get it beating again. One, two, three, four, five. Like that.” I mime doing CPR. The brother slaps his palms over Red’s sternum and starts to pump.
“One, two, three…” While he’s counting, tears flood down his cheeks. “Reddy. This isn’t funny!”
Best I can do is smear the blood off of Red’s face. Pinching his nose, I question every decision I’ve made in my life, and breathe oxygen into his lungs. Three times. “Again,” I tell Green.
He’s inconsolable. I check the pulse.
“Again.”
This is insane. Is he going to die here on the boss’s carpet and no one will lift a finger?
A flutter. Breath glances across my cheek, and I lift up Red’s eyelid. His pupil constricts, and the eye rolls down to me.
“You…” He barely makes a sound, but he’s alive. And he lifts his arms to try to strangle me.
“Brother!” Green intercepts the attempted murder by hugging him. “You’re not dead!”
“There.” The would-be murderer calmly sat on his desk the whole time watching. “Now you see why we need him, Mr. Bell.”
“Ye…” Red coughs, spraying blood everywhere. “Yes.”
“Good. There will be consequences for your actions, Talong. We can’t have people just up and leave for months at a time. But for now…”
