Mercy

A crooked smile and a half-hearted hug was all Billie Joe received from his elder son once he’d written him a check for one thousand dollars. Scrawled with a tremulous, unsteady hand were the irreversible sequence of letters and numbers that gave Joey Armstrong permission to wreak havoc on what little may or may not have been left of his father’s bank account, death wish complete and sealed with a nearly illegible signature. As if to exemplify how guilty the old bastard felt about enabling his son’s ravenous drug addiction, silent tears trickled from eyes sodden with inexplicable grief while an alarmingly content Joey wrapped his arms around him in a hasty embrace, check clutched victoriously in hand. In seconds, he was slinking from the room, nearly giddy at the prospect of being momentarily wealthy according to his fellow homeless man’s standards. He certainly was not going out to buy the items he claimed to need for the sake of his child’s wellbeing, but for a moment, it appeared to me that Billie Joe was convincing himself otherwise to keep from breaking down completely. It was easier that way, for no parent could ever willingly witness their child being irrevocably torn from their lives without feeling as if their very souls were being extricated through their eyes with every crestfallen tear. Instead, they visualize the departure as one of many that life inescapably hurls at every damned person on this earth, giving them only hope of their child’s safe return to cling on to if any chance of sanity was to be salvaged from such a painful separation. The old man was sheltering himself from an inevitable collapse of composure somewhere down the line, preferably without his two sons, an infant, and a virtual stranger as spectators to his miserable display of emotional anguish. Billie was saving his parental agony for me…because everyone knew what was bound to happen once the junkies slammed that front door, fleeing the premises before Billie Joe gained the sense to change his mind.

We were never going to see them alive again.

After receiving a nod from Joey that ordered her to follow him, Maggie rose from her precious rocking chair. She hovered in front of Billie, tap-dancing around a method in which to properly thank her child’s grandfather for his reluctant generosity, and quickly decided that an affectionate response would do. On tiptoe, Maggie planted an idle kiss on his ashen, coarse cheek while her fingers ghosted upon a tattooed arm for balance. Though she barely touched him, it was evident through the scream in his eyes that something concealed within her touch was absolutely unbearable. With a flashy grin and a giggle, she too removed her presence from the house without once looking at her son.

Their ignorant merriment at being freed brought about a morbidly satisfying image dancing through my mind of the pair gleefully skipping into a lake of fire, dreadfully unaware that every decision they made following the abandonment of their infant would ultimately drive the final nails into each of their eager coffins. It was, after all, their deserved fate.

To give Billie Joe ample time for the truth to mercilessly sink its teeth into his purposefully naïve state, Jakob and I made ourselves scarce by creating a makeshift bed for the unconscious Phoenix to rest upon. Not a word was exchanged, yet we both knew that remaining inactive in the old man’s presence could bring about a potential outburst, showering his lingering outrage down upon us for doing nothing while there was a dying child in our midst. In fear of being the targets of an unnecessary verbal lashing, we went to work in delicately boxing blankets inside a barricade of pillows we found in a closet next to the bedroom. I wasn’t of much assistance seeing as any subtle movement I made could wake the child snuggled within my arms, though I made sure to place my hand upon the blankets to test how well they masked the uncomfortable wooden floors below. With an appreciative nod at Jakob’s handiwork, I placed Phoenix inside his acting bed to slumber peacefully while his apprehensive guardians discussed just where the fuck to go from there.

Unwittingly amplifying my mounting uncertainty, Jakob whispered, “What now?”

I stifled a grunt as I pulled myself up from the ground before sighing, “I think…we need to go buy formula and diapers and clothes for the baby. Your brother obviously has no intentions of coming back.”

“I know…I can’t believe Dad gave him the money. Is he trying to get Joe killed?” Jakob murmured, evidently distraught.

“I’m not sure, but I do know that he had a reason for it. He wouldn’t just give those two money without having some sort of explanation behind it,” I offered, wondering vaguely if my limited knowledge of the old man’s personality was even accurate enough to be considered valid.

Jakob paused for a moment, chewing over my answer in search of an adequate response of his own. After a moment, he muttered, “I think he wanted them to leave the baby with us.”

“I do too. At least this way Phoenix has a legitimate chance of living passed his first year…fucking Christ, do we actually have to call him that?” I groaned, realizing that if the child was now in our custody, not a single one of us would be able to keep a straight face while referring to him by his own name. It was simply too absurd to take seriously…and if he survived? Fuck, that poor bastard would be brutalized for having such a ridiculous name.

“Shit, I hope not. I highly doubt Joey or his slut even bothered to fill out a birth certificate for the kid because you know they wouldn’t’ve risked having it in a hospital. It’d be too easy for them to get arrested there,” Jakob pointed out, both our expressions lightening in spite of the grim situation. At least we were able to permanently eradicate the infant’s bizarre name.

“You two better get your asses movin’ before the little one wakes up ‘n’ decides he’s hungry,” a soft voice suggested, startling Jakob and me into silence. Cautiously, the pair of us turned to face Billie Joe, hoping to determine solely from his semblance if he was stable enough to be left alone. Unfortunately enough, the expression he wore was disquietingly void of any emotion. It was as if the mere act of coming home to a family tragedy had effectively broken his spirit, and the only evidence at any hint of life veiled beneath his phantasmal facade was the ruined neck of his guitar, shaking in the hands of a quavering grip.

As an afterthought, Billie demanded, “How long was Joey ‘n’ that girl livin’ here, anyways?”

“He told me they broke in two weeks ago. After he sold the car they’d been living in,” Jakob explained, eyes downcast. He was ashamed of his brother and the way he’d made everyone trust that he and Maggie would surely hit rock bottom if they received no money from Billie Joe. Quite the contrary, Joey wanted the extra grand to ensure a clean getaway without having to come groveling back at the embarrassing point in time where he actually had been hooking for money. Either that or the junkies had pissed off a lot of people who settled their qualms through homicide or generous compensation. Joey and Maggie seemed far too cowardly to take the noble route and go down swinging, so instead they swindled everyone unfortunate enough to have been sucked into their bullshit and left them without a second thought.

Hell, they probably would have sold Phoenix if a client would have promised them a pretty penny.

“That little bastard did fuck me over,” the old man growled, teeth clenched to keep himself from screaming.

“How did you not see that coming?” I gasped, satiric astonishment encoded within each worried line of my face, every skeptical syllable of my voice. Billie Joe’s shocked pretense was no longer necessary considering both his younger son and I knew full well of his regrettable predisposition to verbal sadism. Damned if he didn’t have an endless stream of profanities prepared to drown us all regarding the gratuitously caged resentment he felt for Joey, yet he still felt the need to cling to his artificial naïveté. Perhaps it was easier to swallow that way, knowing he had successfully raised an addict, for disbelief left a sliver of a chance for blame to reside within someone else’s slighted conscience.

Ignorance allowed the old bastard to peel himself away from the tragedy as an innocent victim rather than an enabling failure of a parent.

Billie granted my inquiry with a wounded stare, fingers absently toying with the marred remains of an electric guitar, as he attempted to wordlessly convey some sort of response to my lapse into sarcastic incredulity. It was an impossible endeavor due to my lack of his self-proclaimed psychic abilities, and within a second of that fact wafting through my mind, he growled, “Oh, I knew. I knew the goddamn minute he said the kid’s name was Phoenix, but y’know what? I ain’t stupid. If that sonuvabitch tries cashin’ that check, the cops’ll be after ‘im faster’n he’ll have the chance to piss ‘imself. Now go. Find ‘nuff to keep my gran’baby alive ‘til we figure out what the fuck we’re gonna do with ‘im.”

“Fine. You just keep being a secretive little asshole until we get back. C’mon, Mike, let’s go,” Jakob snapped, sending his father one final glare before he grasped my wrist and began to lead me away. I wanted to say something, to plant a contrite kiss upon the old man’s lips and sob out my apologies for everything he’d been through, but Jakob was hell-bent upon ripping himself away from his father’s piercing stare as quickly as possible.

I refused to break eye contact with Billie Joe as I was whisked away and speculated whether or not he perceived the regret swirling through the depths of my mind, and I swore I saw him curtly nod, as if to convince me of his forgiveness, before Jakob dragged my body out through the front door.

…though it may have merely been wishful thinking on my part. It was always impossible to pinpoint exactly what was reeling about in that unpredictable spirit of his.

Tearing me from my inner monologue, Jakob pulled me to face him prior to giving either of us the chance of sinking into his waiting vehicle. Urgently, he whispered, “There’s something I need to show you before we head into town. I…I think I know why that check won’t clear if Joe tries to cash it.”