Down 'N' Derby

  Copyright @Lila Felix 2013

  This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved, including resale rights: you are not allowed to give or sell this book to anyone else.

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  “Or bid me love, and I will give

  A loving heart to thee.

  A heart as soft, a heart as kind,

  A heart as sound and free

  As in the whole world thou canst find,

  That heart I’ll give to thee.

  Bid that heart stay, and it will stay

  To honour thy decree;

  Or bid it languish quite away,

  And’t shall do so for thee.”

  Robert Herrick

  Chapter 1

  Maddox Fitzgerald Black

  The lamest thing ever was standing here looking out the window like Juli-freakin’-ette waiting for Nixon. And he knew my sense of humor. If he got out of the car and pulled some Romeo drama hands—I would end him.

  They say that between the hours of two a.m. and four a.m. are the hours that most people are in the REM cycle of their sleep. It’s the time that soldiers attacked during the night, it’s the time that authors clicked their keyboards, the time thieves struck, and it’s the time that Nixon was asked to be at my house so I could get the Hell out of here before my mom could rip me a new asshole.

  She would figure it out eventually. Especially since most of my research was photocopied and left purposefully on top of my bed sans exact locations. I hated to break her heart but I had to know. It was eating me alive not to know for sure that he was an asshole. I wanted him to be a bastard like me. I wanted him to be some stuck up rich guy with a teen girl fetish because at least that would make some sense as to why my mom had to go through everything she did alone. Because hating him was the only way I could get through this and move on.

  And Chase—in my head I called him Chase now. He was Chase when Owen and Falcon made faces and expressions that copied him exactly. He was Chase when he slapped my back and called me son. He was Chase when I looked into his green eyes and saw Owen’s or when I looked at his face and saw Falcon. I called him Dad to his face but it wasn’t without choking. Not because he wasn’t a fantastic dad, because he was. But my own hang-ups wouldn’t let him be mine.

  And Owen and Falcon—this whole thing would tear them up but that couldn’t be helped. That’s what happens when you keep huge secrets from your family. In my heart, Owen and Falcon would always be my brothers and my best friends. I don’t remember a time or a memory from my childhood that doesn’t include them. But they were just childhood memories. Faded, cloudy, twisted thoughts that I now analyzed and tried to subdue because of the lies they were built upon.

  I had completed my last task for my family before I left. I made sure the secret honeymoon Reed was planning for Falcon was booked. They would get married while I was gone, I guess. But no one knew that yet.

  Nixon pulled up right on time and I threw my canvas duffel in the back of his beat up Land Rover. He watched the house, because if we were caught this early in the game his ass was ground meat just like mine was.

  “Be sure about this, Mad. There’s no going back after we start this thing.” Nixon didn’t understand but he supported me anyway. He didn’t get why I needed this more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life, but I did. It plagued my thoughts and had become an obsession. The scenarios played on a reel in my head, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the flat out fanatical.

  “Just drive man, we’ve talked about this.” I said and pulled out a journal that contained names, addresses, and maps. I had coordinated this trip with such detail because I couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong. I needed this to end right, for my own sanity.

  “What direction?” I showed him the state name on my list and he looked up at me in disbelief. “That far North? Man, I bet they don’t even have good sweet tea. Ok, “He put the SUV into drive, “Hold on to your ass.”

  We passed the mailbox whose golden stuck-on letters read ‘Black’ and I had a moment of regret, only for my brothers. But I couldn’t bear to face them when they found out, when they were told by the woman we’d trusted all of our lives—I wasn’t their brother at all.

  Chapter 2

  Reed

  The lady across the street made a grave mistake by opening her garage yesterday. I swore I saw at least eighty boxes of Girl Scout Cookies over there just waiting for me. And then she closed it. Doesn’t she know my everlasting craving for cookies? I tried to get a stick from the yard and say “Comehereium Cookiosa” but it didn’t work. And has she sent her daughters over here to sell them to me? No.

  Freakin’ Girl Scouts.

  I’m in trouble. I’m in so deep that I’m looking through shit shaded lenses. If one of them looks at me point blank and asks whether or not I’ve heard from him, I’m dead. Because I don’t think I could bold faced lie to them. Hiding something was one thing but openly lying to my family was another. I understood all of those months in which Falcon hid the house thing from me. It hurt my heart to lie to Falcon, to Nellie, to all of them. I justified it to myself saying that even if they knew where he was, he would still go through with finding his dad. But I knew the truth, I was a dirty liar. This whole thing was tough. Mostly, because Falcon would be hurt beyond belief. But Mad made me swear. It’s that fine line we all rode on. I would never expect Falcon to tell me Nellie’s secrets. I’m sure those two gossipers had plenty of stories and I didn’t expect for him to tell me a single one.

  Mad was in Arkansas the first time he called me. It was the time he made me swear on my parents’ dead souls that I wouldn’t tell. I have this tiny black and white marbled notebook that I write down where he calls from and the phone number; then I deleted it from my phone. God help me if Nellie actually takes the time to look at her phone records. The second time he called it was from Oak Grove, Arkansas. I snuck on my laptop and Googled the location. Nixon also called me once. He whispered, so I assumed Mad didn’t know. They had made it to Missouri and were stopping for the night. I kept track of it for my sanity and for safety’s sake. God forbid if something happened to him, I would at least know where he was last.

  Falcon felt horrible. He blamed himself for Mad leaving. He gave Mad five thousand dollars as a graduation present and we assumed that was the money which funded his trip. He beat himself up about it more and more every day. I think Mad assumed we would all move on. I don’t know how he could’ve underestimated how much we loved him. He was our clown and he made us all happy. Owen was the brawn, Falcon was the brains and Mad was the clown. He was just as important as anyone else. I cried for hours and hours on the night he left after Sylvia called everyone.

  Falcon and I were supposed to get married in a couple of weeks but without Mad, we both refused. It just wouldn’t be right. Falcon would never vow to marry me without all of his brothers beside him and I didn’t blame him one bit. No matter what Sylvia said or even what Mad said; he was Falcon’s brother. My future husband held me as I cried for my wedding, for his lost brother, for Sylvia’s heartache, for my best friend.

  And Owen and Nellie—they had finally decided to start trying for another baby. But now that Maddox was gone, it was like our whole world stopped. Plus, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to get pregnant ever again. But I was the only one who knew that.

  Chase was practically comatose. He stood in the kitchen looking out of the window while Sylvia explained to us why Mad was gone. She started the story twenty
years prior…

  Chapter 3

  Maddox

  I love Nixon, don’t get me wrong. But his car smells like fried onions stuffed in a dirty sock and rolled in not-so-fresh shrimp. I may or may not have stuck air fresheners under the seats when we were at a gas station. Now it smells like onions, socks and shrimp covered by a lovely bed of flowers. Fantastic.

  We used to live in a smaller home, a little cottage type place. When we moved from that home to that home we—they own now, I was about nine. I helped carry in the smaller boxes back and forth from the truck to the new house. Owen and Falcon rooted through the boxes, trying to find their stuff and unload it first. I was handed a cube shaped box with instructions for it to go to my mom’s bedroom. When I got there, I plopped it on the mattresses that still lay in the floor since my dad hadn’t had a chance to put their bed up yet. The box bounced and even at that young age, I knew something was changing in my life. The bouncing happened in slow motion and to most kids the cards and papers which flowed out would be insignificant. Thank God for me, they weren’t. My eyes were drawn to a violet colored notecard and I opened it. It was in feminine cursive writing and as I skimmed down the body of the letter, not really paying attention, my eyes focused on the words ‘my son’ and stopped. I glanced down to the bottom of the letter, signed by Sela. I re-read the note again. It was to the point and quick. She wanted Sylvia to promise to take care of her son. As it hit me, my mom walked into the room. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that she had been calling me for a while but I was too engrossed in what I was doing.

  She walked into the room and knelt in front of me.

  “Momma, this letter is for you from Aunt Sela but Aunt Sela is dead.” She moved to take the note from me but I wouldn’t let her.

  “No Momma, tell me what happened to her baby. She says you need to take care of her baby.” She got up and shut the door and the next time she tried to take the note from me, I let her.

  “Maddox, you know that I love you and I loved Aunt Sela. She was my twin sister, did you know that?” I nodded.

  “Sela was very sick before she got pregnant. She had diabetes, she’d had it for years and it made her very weak. And soon after she had her baby she died. Her baby boy was five months old when she died and I took him to raise as my son.” She moved closer, “Maddox, that baby was you. Aunt Sela gave birth to you, but you are my son.”

  “Mad, snap out of it.” I wiped my palms on my jeans and made a noise similar to a deflating tire. “Nix, I’m not in it. But I need to pee and I’m hungry.”

  “Yeah, what’s her name?” I looked at Nixon like he was out of his mind. “Her name is Mom, you punk. I’ve got things other than chicks in my mind.”

  He flicked on his blinker and pulled over at the next exit. Every exit ran together—gas stations, truck stops, fast food joints and casinos. We parked at a truck stop. We walked in and sat at a sticky booth. The waitress looked unhappy to say the least.

  “What’s it gonna be, sugar?” She sat in the booth next to me as she spoke and I moved over. I didn’t know if she was here to stay or she just needed to take a load off.

  Nixon didn’t miss a beat. “I need a burger with pepper jack and onion rings.” He put the menu down and caught my glare. He widened his eyes in a ‘what?’ motion.

  “Um, yeah, I’ll have the same. Thank you.” She wrote it down but didn’t immediately move and I started to get the twitch. It always started in my fingers. I got it the first time my mom hugged me after she told me the truth. Over the years I’d learned to hide it well from those I loved and it’s what kept me from getting in too much trouble with girls. It wasn’t just girls either. Anytime anyone touched me, I got twitchy. For me it was parallel to leg spasms but it happened when someone got too close, physically. It was as if bugs or ants started crawling under my skin when someone got too close. Nixon and Reed were the only ones who knew about it. Reed said it was a defense mechanism. Like spikes on a porcupine but I was sure that porcupine was grateful for his spikes. I was not as grateful as he. I hated it. It’s why I ran through girls so fast. After a few dates, and for some at the end of the first date, they started getting handsy. Even hand holding freaked me out. I knew that Owen and Falcon thought I was trying to be some kind of player but actually the opposite was true. I was simply trying to find a girl who didn’t make my skin crawl.

  She finally got out of the booth and Nixon shook his head at me. Once I only thought of Nixon as that cousin I saw on holidays and birthday parties but in the past year he has really been more of a friend. He was the best kind of friend. I didn’t have to explain and re-explain every damned thing to him. He already knew. He knew what I was talking about when I made suit references about Falcon and he knew I was talking about Owen when I called him Pec Nectar. He was the childhood friend that everyone needs.

  Reed was the new friend. And I needed her friendship equally as much as I did Nixon’s. She didn’t know all the history and details so her take on everything was from a fresh perspective. And she didn’t just assume things; she asked me what I thought about stuff. And I loved her for the simple reason that she loved Falcon. And now she was keeping my secrets. I didn’t ask her any questions when I called and she didn’t ask any of me. I told her I was fine, I was eating and we were safe and then I hung up. She was my tie to home.

  Nixon had a map spread out on the table and a marker in his hand. “We’ve got twelve more hours to Nebraska. Look, Ruby, Nebraska. We can sleep there and then go to Omaha from here.” I nodded as the waitress clanked the two plates on the table before us. Nixon told her he needed ketchup. The guy lived on ketchup. When we were kids he’d put it on his eggs, his grits—I saw him make a ketchup sandwich one time. He swears that never happened but Owen saw it too.

  And there it is again—another one of those freakin’ memories. I couldn’t escape them and every time I thought of one I obsessed over it. I looked for details in each memory, something that made it obvious to me how different we were. But the thing was, I couldn’t find it. In every memory there was no difference between us. We looked similar except for our eye color. Owen’s were green, Falcon’s were brown and mine—I had one of each one brown and one green, like no one.

  The thump, thump of the bottom of the ketchup bottle broke my thoughts.

  “How much ketchup are you gonna put on those onion rings? It looks like you’re bludgeoning them.”

  “Shut up and eat, King of the Road.”

  We finished eating and got back in the Rover. Twelve more hours until Ruby, Nebraska and a couple of days until my first lead on my dad.

  Chapter 4

  Reed

  I’m a Lysol sniffer. Seriously. There’s nothing better in the world than walking into a doctor or dentist office and smelling disinfectant. And don’t tell, but I always steal tongue depressors. Always.

  Nellie had to hold my hand the entire time. I may have squeezed it harder than necessary when she ‘awwwed’ for the third time.

  “Ow, damn that hurts, Reed.” She fussed at me and shook her hand out.

  “Well, stop making goo goo noises,” I snapped back at her.

  “But he’s gonna love it. Seriously, I wanna see his face when he sees it for the first time.”

  I turned my head slowly towards her, giving her time to process what she’d just said. “You really want to be there the first time he sees it?”

  She still hadn’t gotten it. Then she snapped her head towards me. There it is, welcome to reality, Nellie.

  “Oh my stars, no! Nevermind, eeww, I do not want to be there. I can’t believe I just said that. I’m such a sleeve.”

  “A sleeve?” I asked.

  “A pervert, a creeper—you know a sleeve.”

  “Damn it Nellie, quit making up shit. That one doesn’t even make sense.” Even the tattoo artist was laughing now.

  This tattoo would remain Nellie’s and my secret until my wedding night. Which is why it was kinda creepy for Nellie to want to s
ee Falcon’s face when he first saw it.

  “I like it. I think I’m gonna keep that one.” She made a curt ‘hmm’ sound, satisfied with her new word.

  I rolled my eyes and continued to bear the pricking. It was so going to be worth the pain. He asked that I not get his name as a tattoo when I first expressed interest in getting inked. So, this technically wasn’t his name but damn it was close enough. I didn’t care anyway, he was branded on my heart, might as well be branded on my body.

  We got done and my side felt squishy with the Vaseline and plastic wrap plastered to me. I took four of the blue pills Nellie gave me so Falcon wouldn’t notice I was in any kind of pain. I didn’t want him to know yet. Hopefully Mad would come back soon. If not, I was gonna have to tell Falcon. Hopefully the stubborn jackass would come back on his own. I understood; I did. I felt better after finding my aunt, but it wasn’t crucial to my sanity. But Mad has crossed that line long ago. Finding his biological dad was a ball and chain he drug around for almost a decade. For his own peace of mind, he needed to know.

  We had a girls’ night planned with Sylvia since she had been a ghost of her former self since Mad left. He wasn’t angry with her, that much I knew. I think he isolated himself from us because he thought we would be angry with him—and that just pissed us off more. He should know better. Hell, I would bet my left pinkie toe that if he had just talked to the family about it Falcon and Owen would have gone along with them, helped him find his Dad.

  But no, he was being an asshole about it.

  Nellie and I stopped by the grocery store for junk food. Sylvia had taken to eating everything in sight since Mad left and tonight we were gonna help her. My phone rang on the chip aisle and I answered it.

  “Hello?” I answered sweetly, since on the other line was my sweetness.

  “Poppy, I’ve decided to become a ninja, find Mad and then we can get married sooner but there’s one problem.” I giggled, knowing this playful voice of his was saved only for me.