Truth's Consequence, A Braji Short Tale Read online

a cloth over his face, you know, so the dirt..." He should not have said dirt. He should not have mentioned that. "So anyway, so it wouldn't get in his eyes?" Why is he asking? Why does he want them to say something so badly? "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry." Snot was running into his mouth. He wiped it with the back of his arm.

  Mister Taylor shook his head. His eyes looked clear for the first time since he had introduced himself. "Thank you." He helped his ex-wife up from the chair.

  Kraut watched them go. He really needed a drink.

  Six weeks ago he had sat across this table from Keavin Tyler Taylor's parents. Now he stared across at Bryan Browne and wondered how he was going to get through this a second time. They said this would help his recovery. He had waited and waited. They said he'd feel better if he told the truth, got it off his conscience. But it was not off his conscience. It sat on his chest and made it hard to breathe. His heart hurt and the coin was not providing its comfort today.

  "K. So, you know we was all in Special Detail together, right?"

  Bryan made a little flip of a hand gesture. Patience was hard won in the joint. But his patience was being tried.

  "So, by then, it was just us, um, six of us. Frenchi and the Freak, they pretty much just stayed with the adults, in that barracks, you know? So it was just us, me and the little ones, four of us, in the bunker. That's where we stayed. We had to stick together like Mr. Phil told us from the go. We stuck together pretty good. The little ones, they was always in trouble, you know, little stuff, but they was good kids really. Everybody loved Chaka specially because he was so cute and little and all?"

  Bryan shifted his position and sighed. He threw one elbow over the back of his chair, the other arm stretched out on the table. The corner of his mouth jerked downward.

  Kraut swallowed bile. The raised words on the coin were rough under his fingers as he rubbed it. A cold beer would help a lot right now. It was always easier to talk after a drink or three. But they said he would feel better after he did this. "Jinxe was another one of my kids. I called him Quicksilver but that was just what we called him cause he was so fast nobody could get a hand on him. But his name was Jinxe. Well, it is Jinxe still; he's not dead. He was real sick. He almost died. I mean real sick. Ok, he ended up in a coma and stuff. I mean, I didn't know he was going to end up in a coma but I knew he was real sick. We gave him like every drug you could imagine." Kraut stopped. He glanced up at the mirror and wondered if they were writing that down. "Anyway, he was real sick. We didn't know what was wrong with him. He's got hemophilia. We didn't know it though, just knew he was real sick.

  Bryan Browne sighed again and sat back in his chair letting both hands rest on the table in front of him. Kraut glanced at his hands. He had bluish tattoos at his wrists and on the backs of his hands. They were hard to see against his dark skin. Kraut wanted to see them clearer but he was afraid of appearing to stare. He scratched a nonexistent itch and thought about running out the door. "We um, we were kind of the pawnshop for the whole camp. Can you imagine? I mean, like we was buying and selling everything and anything. Everybody came to us, the older boys, gang bangers, girls, barracks big shots, even the guards, everybody. We was the Grand Central Station of deals. But here's the thing, you got people that want stuff, they don't care how you got to get it. If you don't, they get mad, you know? So we had this thing we figured out. We was running this scam thing going on. The guards, they was slow on the uptake so we got away with it for a long time. And really, a lot of them knew what we was doing. They knew from the go. We was doing it from day one. It wasn't some great big secret or something. We was stealing drugs and stuff from the hospital and stuff. But really, they was buying it too. So it wasn't like they didn't know what we was doing and really cared or anything. They didn't care for the whole three years, not really. Sometimes they'd get a little mad cause we took too much or took something they had marked for themselves or something. But then, I'd just give it back or they'd rough the place up or something but really, no big deal." He glanced up at the mirror. Patrick Henry Fitts was behind that window. He would lay odds Fitts would be asking him questions about the drugs later today.

  Bryan cleaned under one nail. He understood such things. Kraut was getting one of those headaches he got lately where the sound of his own heart banged in time with the ache in his skull. In the old days he would soothe the ache with a bit of something brown with a worm at the bottom. He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. "So it was getting kind of crazy at the end there, you know, the last days before what happened. So we kind of laid off doing that for a while, especially since Jinxe was so sick. So this guard comes in one day hollering and making a big freaking show and he's like, 'I know it was you.' I was yelling back at him and stuff but it wasn't working. He kept saying how he was going to make sure we all got executed or something stupid like that. Like anybody ever got executed for some dumb shit like that. So I was really kind of thinking he was just a dumb cog and our gich would straighten it out and stuff."

  "Gitch?" Bryan Browne's voice was smooth and manly.

  "Uh, yeah, guard in charge, gich. Anyway, our gich usually handled stuff like that so we usually didn't get punished the way other kids did. If we was going to get beat, it would be off scene, like he'd handle it himself behind the barracks or something, you know? Because we were Special Detail. So I wasn't all that worried about it. So he starts demanding I tell him who it was that did some job, I don't know cause we hadn't actually done one in a while. But I figured he had us on something we had done a while ago and our gich would have to do some talking. He was getting madder and madder. Then he says, 'Well, I know it was your kids cause it's always the same ones.' And he starts grabbing kids like he was going to do something. So I was like, 'Oh crap, he's going to hurt Jinxe.' You know, he was sick and all. I didn't want him to hurt Jinxe. So I just go, 'Here, take these two, it was them.' It wasn't really. I mean, I don't know who it was because we hadn't even done a job in like days or maybe longer than that. But I couldn't let him take Jinxe." Kraut's headache was worse. His words were tumbling out faster than he could think. His heart was pounding and his breathing was trying to keep up. The world had sped up and Kraut was not in control any more. He had not spoken about Chaka since the day it happened. He hadn't spoken his name or allowed himself to think about it. Now it was pouring out of him and it would not stop. He squeezed the coin so it dug into his fingers.

  "I didn't know. I didn't know they was going to do that. I picked him because he wasn't sick, that's all. I didn't know."

  Bryan's eyes narrowed. Kraut wondered if the faces behind the window were noticing the way the muscles in Bryan's arms were bunching under his jacket. He wondered if they could see the change in his expression.

  He fought to keep the world from spinning around. "They took him, took them both. I went right away to find the gich. I aint stupid. I wasn't waiting for them to decide what to do. I went to go get the gich, like he always said. He said, 'Anything happens with my boys, you come get me and I'll take care of it.' So I did. But I couldn't find him. They said he wasn't around, that he left. That's crazy right? How can you leave? He couldn't just leave. That's crazy. I tried to find Frenchi or somebody to help. But everybody was gone or something. It was just like, nobody wanted to hear it. I mean, I..." He remembered the guards shoving him down the stairs, punching him, telling him it was over now, there would be no more protection for Special Detail. He had not understood then. He was not sure he understood now. But something had changed. And Chaka and Johnny were in the adult barracks and no good came of kids in the adult barracks. But they wouldn't let him in. "I swear to God, I tried. I swear to God. I didn't mean anything bad to happen to him."

  Bryan's jaw was clenched, the little muscles of his face jumping. But he maintained the same casual pose. The faces in the mirror would never have time to react if he jumped across the table and smashed those powerful fists into Kraut's head.

  "I don't know. It was crazy. They wouldn
't let me go with them. They held me back. Everybody was watching. So they made a big production and stuff. I couldn't believe everybody just stood there and let them do it. Nobody said anything. Nobody tried to stop them. I was fighting with the guards and stuff. But I aint nobody. I can't fight no guards. And none of the other rat kids seemed to care. They just stood there and the guards, they pulled these big old trucks around." He gasped for air. The trucks. His trucks. "I fixed those trucks. I worked on them. I was proud of those trucks. Those were my babies man. I worked on them all the time. They couldn't have kept them trucks running without me!"

  Bryan did not understand about the trucks. He did not care about the trucks.

  "The guards pulled them trucks around and everybody just stood there and watched them do it. I was screaming at them. I was like, 'Do something Duke, do something.' But nobody did nothing. They just stood there and let them tie them kids to those trucks." Kraut gasped but there was not enough air in the room to fill his paralyzed lungs. His heart was hurting. God how it hurt. "They killed my kids and everybody just stood there and let them do it. Nobody