Keeping Promise Rock (44 page)

Not Okay

OH CHRIST—Deacon was going to kill the fucker.

His fists just kept hammering away at Bob’s face, and he was shouting incoherently as he worked the douchebag over.

“Don’t you
touch
my family, you fucker—
my
family—you leave
my
family the fuck alone….”

His face was twisted in rage, and his body, still too thin with stress, was a gnarled tree root made of iron. Crick gave Andrew a hand up and waited until his leg was situated, because he was going to need help pulling Deacon off.

And even with one man on each of Deacon’s arms, hauling him away, he might have overpowered them and succeeded in committing murder. It was Patrick who thumped him on the back of the head, and that instinctive flinch, left over from childhood, seemed to break the terrible spell of fury that had possessed him.

With Crick and Andrew wrenching on his hands, Deacon let go of step-Bob’s collar. The fucker dropped where he stood, and Deacon shook them off to turn for a second and stalk away, his bare feet padding mindlessly on the small-gravel driveway. The baby was still screaming, and Melanie was wailing in the front of the car, but without the violence of Deacon’s attack on the asshole who had caused all the chaos, it felt like silence. Crick and the others watched Deacon in the sudden stillness, and when he turned back, he was Deacon again, and not the avenging angel that he had become for a moment.

“Patrick, call the cops,” he said roughly, looking at step-Bob with so much hatred they were lucky the guy didn’t burst into flames. Step-Bob groaned, and Melanie gave a muffled sob from the car, and Deacon spat on step-Bob’s twitching meat sack before he turned to Benny and the baby.

“You all right?” he asked softly, and Benny nodded, holding Parry out for him to check over.

The baby calmed almost instantly in his arms, wrapping her chubby little arms around his neck and giving a little hiccup against his chest.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Deacon crooned. “Didn’t mean to scare you like that. No big-bad-mean guy’s gonna get you while Deacon’s here, right?

That just won’t stand, will it Angel?”

“Deek-deek,” she said sadly, and Deacon kissed her fuzzy little brown head as she whimpered against him. Crick came around behind him and put his hands on Deacon’s shoulders, grateful when Deacon leaned back.

“You okay?” Oh God—it was such a reflexive question. Crick knew what the lie would be before Deacon even opened his mouth.

“Spiffy, Carrick. No worries, all right?”

“Cops are on their way!” Patrick called. He’d taken a few steps away with the cell phone. Crick glanced over at the man and had a sudden thought that he was old—old enough for retirement, old enough that this sort of shit wasn’t a lot of fun anymore.

“Good,” Deacon murmured. “Could you call Jon next? We’re probably gonna need him too.”

By the time the sheriff arrived, Bob had picked himself up off the ground in a bloodied daze and gotten back in the car. The Ford Whatsit peeled out past the sheriff’s car as it turned on the drive, and with the exception of Patrick—who was off trying to round up the horse who’d escaped the ring when the fuss broke out—the sheriff found them all in the kitchen, tending to the wounded.

“Will you stop fussing, Benny!” Andrew took Crick’s sister’s hands rather tenderly in his own as she tried to put some ointment on his skinned elbow. “I’m fine.”

“Really, Benny,” Crick said dryly. “The guy lost a leg in the war—

I’m thinking a few scrapes won’t do him in. Deacon, stop being a baby—

it’s just hydrogen peroxide.”

Deacon grunted. His knuckles had been soundly abused by step-Bob’s false teeth, and Crick thought that since it was unlikely he’d go in for stitches, a couple of butterfly bandages would have to do.

The young man in uniform stood politely in the open doorway, waiting for them to acknowledge him. He was handsome in a practical sort of way, with brown hair cut short, brown eyes, and a square-chiseled, capable sort of face.

“Yeah, we see you,” Deacon muttered. “You just missed them, but come on in anyway.”

“I’m Officer Perkins,” he said with quiet confidence. Crick let Deacon shake him off to wipe his bloody hands off on the kitchen towel and extend a hand in greeting to the officer. To the officer’s credit, he didn’t think twice about shaking it.

“Deacon Winters. You might want to check hospitals—I worked him over pretty good.”

The officer raised his eyebrows. “Any particular reason?” Deacon scowled. “That man trespassed on my property and put his hands on my family. Nobody puts their hands on my family. No-fucking-body, you hear me?”

Crick fought the inappropriate urge to chuckle, because seeing Deacon get all caveman was something special.

Officer Perkins raised his eyebrows and nodded, then got out his little notebook and started to ask some serious questions.

“Okay—whose child is it?”

Crick, Deacon, Benny, and Andrew all said, “Ours!” and the poor guy had to start all over again.

“I take it you’re the mother, right?”

Benny nodded, her lips pursed. Parry Angel was sitting in the high chair, eating the last of her Deek-deek’s favorite cookies to make up for the trauma, and Benny put her hand protectively on the baby’s fuzzy brown head.

“And you would be…?”

“I’m Benny Coats.”

“Like the guy who got his face beat in?”

“That would be the sperm donor who created me, yeah.” Officer Perkins’s eyes widened. “And who’s the baby’s father?” Keeping Promise Rock

“A guy with a restraining order and a sex-offender ankle bracelet,” Benny said flatly. “You want to know who’s been raising her? You’re looking at them, but Deacon’s the one she loves best.” Officer Perkins looked at Deacon with his hands out in a “help me here” sort of gesture. “And you’re related to the girls how?” Deacon blushed hard enough that Crick could feel his body throwing off wet heat. “I’m Benny’s brother’s boyfriend.” Those brown eyes got even wider, and he looked at Crick, who had started to edge himself protectively between Deacon and the new threat.

“So how did Benny and the baby come to be living here instead of with your parents?”

Crick found himself growling, so it was Benny who put it into words first. “Because when my dumbass brother here was out getting blown up in Iraq, Deacon picked me up off the front lawn and took me in. Do you want to see my room? The social worker wanted to see it—and she wanted to see the baby’s room and she wanted to see my medicine cabinet and to check if I was on birth control and that woman damned near wanted to do a pelvic exam. Now my dumbass ‘father’”—she included air quotes—“got it into his tiny pea brain that my baby would be better off with him….” Officer Perkins nodded his head and tried to take over the conversation again—he was the one writing the report, after all. “Okay—

now did he say why?”

And it was Deacon who spoke. “I believe his exact words were that he didn’t want no ‘nigger faggot raising his blood’.” Perkins winced and looked at the three men. “And, um, which one of you was he talking about?”

Deacon and Andrew met eyes and smirked. “I don’t actually know,” Deacon said on a reluctant chuckle. “Drew, any ideas?” Andrew’s chuckle was a little less reluctant. “I don’t know, sir—you are kind of tan.”

Crick shook his head violently. “It’s not funny,” he said, feeling a surprising amount of anger after the fact. “What made him think he could come here and do this? I’ve got legal custody of Parry and Benny—he was trespassing and kidnapping. What would be going through his teeny-assed-pea-brain?”

Officer Perkins cleared his throat. “I can answer that,” he said, nodding to Jon as he came in. “Is Mr. Coats a church-going man?” 300

“Christ yes,” Crick responded.

“Well there’s a tent revival going on in that vacant field out by Elverta. There was a guy out there yesterday going off about the evils of miscegenation and homosexuality and the usual—probably lit a fire under his ass and made him feel empowered.”

“I’m surprised you all didn’t have a chapter out there yourselves,” Jon said dryly, situating himself by the counter near Deacon and Crick.

Deacon said, “Easy there, cowboy. Officer Perkins has been fairly decent to us.”

“Yeah,” Benny acknowledged irritably, “but we all remember the last one.”

Officer Perkins had the grace to flush. “I’m sorry about that. You need to know we’re not all like that. I really would like to be a friend here, all right?”

Jon nodded, considering him carefully. “Well that would all depend on whether or not you’re going to arrest Deacon here for protecting his family.”

Officer Perkins looked down at his notepad and shrugged. “I’m thinking that’s a big ‘no’. Although it will depend on how badly Mr. Coats was injured—did Mr. Winters use more force than necessary to stop the crime?”

“If the bastard got into the car by himself, I’d call that a big ‘no’ as well,” Crick snapped, and Deacon put a restraining hand on his arm. Crick looked down and saw Deacon’s knuckles, taped together with butterfly bandages and covered in gauze, and got mad all over again.

“I honestly don’t remember,” Deacon said, and there was something odd about his voice, something remote and alien, that reminded Crick of the day his father died or the moment Crick told him about the Army.

“I’ve… that’s weird. He just… he needed to let go of the baby, that’s all.” Suddenly Deacon was the center of attention, the place he least liked to be. “I’ve got to….” He swallowed and flushed again. “Are we done, Officer?” he asked, and Crick could see the effort it took for him to focus on the question.

“Yes, sir. I think we are.”

Deacon nodded and shook his hand again. “This here’s Jon Leavens—he’s a friend of the family, and he helps us with legal stuff. If you need to arrest me, give us a call so Jon can arrange bail.” Keeping Promise Rock

“You’re awfully casual about that,” Perkins said dryly, and Deacon shrugged.

“At least this time I’ll probably be awake when you all pound down my door.” And with that, he started padding—barefoot and still bare-chested—for the mudroom, making to go outside that way.

“Deacon, where are you going?” Crick asked as Deacon put his hand on the knob to go outside.

“I’ve got to go shift the hay,” he said tersely, and Andrew rolled his eyes.

“Well, that was something we were going to do today,” he muttered as the door slammed, and Crick leaned back against the counter and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“It’s hot. He’ll get tired of that in an hour,” he muttered. It was true—they were having a heat wave early into June, and it was probably going to hit one hundred and five that day. They could afford to give him some space to work off his stress—he sounded like he needed it—but…

God. Crick hated that tone of voice. He hated hearing the complete separation between Deacon’s emotions and his reason. He really hated the fact that nothing short of an emotional meltdown could break through that alien ice wall that Deacon had just slammed up between himself and the world.

Officer Perkins watched him go with raised eyebrows. “That is either the most laid-back man or the most tightly wound man I have ever met.”

“Why?” Jon asked, dumping out Crick’s tepid coffee and stealing the mug for his own. “What’d Crick do now?”

“Saved the ranch,” Benny grunted. “But it was the way he did it that sucked.”

“The ranch is in trouble?” the young sheriff asked, looking hopefully at the coffee, and Jon poured him some—probably out of a sense of guilt for saying something nasty, Crick figured.

“From the same fuckers you’re supposed to be out arresting,” Jon told him dryly, handing a plain brown mug to the guy. “They keep spreading bullshit about ‘horse AIDS’ to the town, and people won’t let Deacon break their horses. Which is a shame—it’s the thing he was born to do.”

Perkins nodded thanks for the coffee and took an appreciative sip.

“Don’t worry. There’s a whole other carload of people in uniform 302

checking the hospitals and the address you gave us over the phone. But your buddy there—he sure does take your family seriously,” he said to Crick, and Crick shook his head.

“It’s his family—we… we just sort of gather around him, like satellites. He… he just burns that bright, you know?” Crick blushed, and Jon sent him a crooked smile.

“Pretty much,” Jon agreed. “So, Crick, how’d you save the ranch?” Crick grunted. “Joined our bank accounts. Do you have any idea how much money was in my college fund?”

Jon nodded. “Yes I do, dumbshit—do you have any idea how much it meant to him that you could still go?”

Crick shook his head, feeling the rightness of this even as he said it.

“I don’t get to go away to college. Not after what I did to him. I don’t want to go, not anymore. If Deacon’s life is here, so’s mine. I can draw anywhere. Deacon can only make his living on a horse ranch.” Jon shook his head and put a hand on Crick’s shoulder. “I might forgive you yet, jerk-off.”

Crick accepted the sentiment—and the hand—and Officer Perkins interrupted his train of worry about what was going through Deacon’s head by saying, “What do you draw?”

Crick laughed a little. “Anything I want.”

“But mostly Deacon,” Benny inserted dryly, and Crick blushed.

“I miss that sketchbook,” he confessed.

“Where is it?” Benny asked, and Crick fought the temptation to put his face in his hands and groan.

“Probably at Lisa’s parents’… oh, God. I should go talk to them.

They’re up in Seattle… now that I’m almost fully functional again, I owe them a visit, don’t I?” He did—he must. He wasn’t sure if it was written in the soldier’s handbook or something, but he’d been the last person to see their daughter alive, and he’d been her best friend and confidant for over a year. They’d want to talk to him. He knew that if he’d never come home, he would have wanted Lisa to come talk to Deacon.

“I don’t know, Crick,” Benny said soberly. “I think that’s between you and your heart, you know?”

“Who’s Lisa?” Officer Perkins asked, and the entire family looked at him at the same time.

“She was my ambulance driver in Iraq,” Crick said, feeling it all over again. “What are you still doing here?” The guy blushed. “I….” He laughed self-consciously and made to leave. “I’m sorry. I… I just…I moved here about a month ago. You’re like the nicest family I’ve met here….”