Diamond in the Rough

Avoiding Krista Coughlin was like trying to avoid the inevitable. For days she had walked around in a sour mood, slamming doors and snapping at everyone who looked at her the wrong way. Of course this was all down to Doug, who didn't want anything to do with her. She blames him for not wanting her instead of taking responsibility for her own actions.

Doug pulls on a freshly laundered t-shirt and grabs the keys to his truck. He tries to be as quiet as possible as he goes downstairs, the creaky floorboards a dead give a way when you were trying to sneak around. He can hear Krista talking in a singy voice to Shyne, something about eating up breakfast so she can be big and strong like her daddy. Doug tries his best not to march in there and tell Krista to cut it the fuck out. He knows that she is aware of him standing in the hallway. A guilt trip he wasn't going to fall for. He concludes that she probably doesn't know who the father is anyway.

During Doug's bad days, he and Krista would drink and get high from the moment they woke up until they passed out or had wild sex on the sofa in the living room. Every so often he revisits those days in his mind and thinks to himself, wondering if those bad days were the real him or if the real him is who he is now.

He walks down the street with his hands jammed into his pockets, his eyes fixed to the sidewalk he had marched up and down years ago.
These are the same streets he had wandered desperately searching for his mother, pinning up missing posters to every telegraph pole and boarded up window. He had prayed that one day she would walk back into his life, maybe with a new family in tow and be his mother, but with every passing year he realised that she was never coming back. In his teens, Doug watched his only remaining parent go to jail.

Doug was left to his own devices and pretty much lived with Jem Coughlin and his family. He grew up with them, ate his meals with them and shared his dreams and worries with them. The Coughlin's were by no means a normal family, but they accepted him regardless of whatever was going on. Jem's father had been murdered when he was a boy, found dead in an alleyway with a bullet in his skull. They never did catch who did it, but they everyone knew that old man Coughlin was in something deeper than he had ever had been before and it got him killed.

Jem vowed he would kill the son of a bitch who killed his dad, if he ever found who did it.

His mother had raised Krista and Jem as best as she could, a drunk and an addict, using the money she earned selling herself to put food on the table. Their upbringing was rough, the bigger kids always looking down at them until Jem flattened them in a rage. His reputation always gave people something to think about.
Sadly, while Jem was in Walpole in the third year of his nine year stretch, she died. He never even got to attend her funeral or say goodbye to her. He hated himself for that and took it out on a guy who eye-balled him in the shower.
Doug sends a loving thought up to Miriam Coughlin, for all she has ever done for him.

***

Jem drums his fingers on the bar top in rhythm to the U2 song that's playing on the jukebox. He lazily looks around the bar and realises that the place is pretty much empty except for a few girls and guys who are keeping themselves to themselves in the corner. They aren't local and are acting like they are a cut above everyone else which pisses him off. They aren't the kind of people who normally drink in the tap.

A hand clamps down on Jem's shoulder and he turns to the person behind him, his fist clenched and ready to knock the person into next week. His snarling expression softens when he sees Doug standing there.

"What'll it be MacCray?" Tony, the owner of the Tap asks. He's a big guy with a shiny bald head that's covered in scars, his knuckles matching.

"Soda and lime." Doug throws down a five on the sticky bar.

Jem jumps back up onto the bar stool and watches the strangers over his shoulder. They are laughing and joking.

"When's the next job?" Jem asks, his eyes narrowing on the group of strangers. They are really starting to piss him off with their loud laughing and snobby attitudes.

"Not for a while. The heat's turned up on everybody." Doug replies and takes a drink. "You remember Mickey Brisbane, right? "

Jem nods.

"Remember how he got busted and sent down for 10 'cause he robbed some tourists" Doug explains."He's out"

"Brisbane's an asshole anyway. He's a dumb fuck who thought he could gun his way outta a tight place. The fucker thinks with his dick"" Jem replies and grabs his crotch, emphasising his point.

He and Mickey Brisbane had never seen eye to eye on the odd occasion they met and always ending in Jem towering over him, his face a bloody mess.

"He brought the heat here while you were inside and some of it never left. The fed's have some task force for guys like us. Fucking asshole" Doug takes a drink.

Jem can certainly agree on that one.

"Whatever happened to that school kid he raped?"

Doug tries to remember the exact details, but this had happened years ago

"Someone said the kid killed herself. Found out she was pregnant with his kid"

Jem swallows a mouthful of his beer.
Mickey Brisbane had gone to school with them, the year above and even then everyone knew he was a creepy bastard. The boys hated his guts and the girls shied away from him like a disease.

"He's been bailed out to some motel" Doug says.

"He'll do it again" Jem answers seriously.

Doug knows exactly where this is going and for some odd reason he's been thinking the exact same. The girl Brisbane had raped and practically murdered is the daughter of a well respected man, a local man they both knew of. Someone who had put work their way in the past when they were in the process of finding themselves in the big bag world.

"Think so?" Doug replies. "Alright, let's go teach this asshole a lesson"