Page 77 of The Evening Wolves

“This is your fault,” Drew said. His voice was shaking. “You deserve it.”

“Yeah,” Casey said. He was smiling now, the expression big and open. “Tell him.”

For a moment, John-Henry couldn’t get the words out. “I deserve to have my son hurt and humiliated?”

“You’re not my friend,” Drew said. “I don’t know who you are. The John-Henry I knew, he’s gone. As soon as he—” Drew stabbed a finger at Emery. “—came back, you were different. I should have known something was wrong. As soon as you started letting him give it to you up the ass, I should have known. Fuck, man, you’ve been around Allen. I let you and Cora babysit him. And then I find out—I mean, Jesus Christ, Somers, little kids? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Everything seemed to come undone. John-Henry felt like he was floating, like he was looking down from a great height. Something was wrong with his ears, maybe. Some sounds seemed too loud: the buzz of the security light, his breathing, the rustle of his coat. But everything else was silent, like he’d gone deaf. Your balance, he thought. The inner ear. Maybe that’s why he felt like he was floating.

“Fucking pedophile,” Casey added with a smile.

John-Henry barely heard him. Thoughts zipped through his head—I never touched Allen and You know me and then, like he was tuning in to a stronger signal that drowned out the rest, How dare you? He finally worked his jaw, heard something click, and said, “We’re leaving. Tell your kids to stay away from our son.”

John-Henry turned, took a step toward Emery, and stopped when Redgie spoke.

“He’s not even your son,” Redgie said. “He’s some kid you picked up so you could diddle him. Everybody knows why you two wanted him.” A wad of spit struck the back of John-Henry’s coat. “Fucking groomers.”

The piss-soaked jersey.

The ruined trophies.

The spray paint on the side of their house.

The night in jail, listening to its madhouse sounds.

The days of humiliation and frustration.

The years of watching everyone from his old life pull back, close ranks, shut him out.

Colt, beaten and bloody on the couch.

Emery’s eyes, and the old, familiar pain.

John-Henry spun back toward the men and charged. Drew shrank back, tripped over his own feet, and fell flat on his ass. Casey drew back too, the smile falling off his face. Redgie, however, tried to set himself. When John-Henry crashed into him, they both went down. They hit the asphalt still locked together and rolled, Redgie hammering on John-Henry’s ribs, John-Henry pounding one fist against the side of Redgie’s head. It wasn’t martial arts. It wasn’t even the basic grappling he’d learned as a police officer. This was down-and-dirty brawling, uncoordinated, an outlet for all John-Henry’s rage, and he struck blindly and furiously, barely feeling the blows he took in return.

And then it all changed. Redgie got him into some kind of hold—all those years wrestling finally paying off—and he did something that made John-Henry’s head feel like it was going to pop off his neck. He screamed, moving into the hold, trying to ease the pressure, and only saw Drew sneaking up, one fist raised, out of the corner of his eye. When the punch landed, his world flashed red, then black, and then it came back scrambled as fists and kicks rained down.

It went on for a long time. Moments of it crystallized like snapshots: Drew sneering through bloody lips, and John-Henry’s distant, satisfied thought that he must have gotten a punch in somehow. Casey kicking him in the side, over and over again, laughing. Redgie pulling his hair to make him move as they dragged him toward the curb. One of the unnamed men wrapping a belt around his hand.

From far off came Emery’s shouts, which quickly became cries of pain. And then John-Henry couldn’t hear him anymore, and he didn’t know what that meant. His world compacted into pain, cold air, the tang of blood, the rough solidity of asphalt.

And then someone was shouting, “What’s going on out here?”

Steps raced away. Someone laughed. A man—a barely conscious part of John-Henry thought it was Redgie—roared in triumph.

John-Henry’s vision was blurry no matter how many times he blinked to clear his eyes. All he could make out of the shape approaching him was black. Like night had taken form and was moving toward him. The man—it was a man—said something in Spanish, and then, “Don’t move, ok?”

I won’t, John-Henry tried to say, but the world was getting smaller and smaller, moving away from him. He felt like maybe it had been a joke, that he should laugh. The world was a marble now, small and frozen and just out of reach. And then it disappeared completely, and his last thought was, Where am I going to go?

17

John-Henry woke in another place, and for a moment, he didn’t know where he was. Then it came back to him in flashes: the paramedics, the long ride in the ambulance, the fluorescents of the emergency room stabbing his eyes. Now it was morning, and he was in a hospital bed, and the sunlight that came through the window made him think of spiderwebs.

“You’re awake,” his father said and shook his newspaper for emphasis.

Pain crowded in on John-Henry’s awareness, and when he tried to shift position, he stifled a groan.

“I thought you might feel that way,” Glennworth Somerset said. The way he held the paper made it impossible to see his face. “I asked them not to give you anything for the pain until we had a chance to talk.”

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