Kingdom Come
Lynda never stole anything before Kingdom Come. She remembers every chance that she had the ability to, in fifth grade when she forgot her lunch, the cubbies in the small room paneled with wood where they hung their coats was full of sack lunches. She remembers running her fingers over the brown paper before grabbing her coat and trying to cross the street to the gas station to by a bag of chips. An adult had had grabbed her and brought her back in. She remembers the time in freshman year when she worked a school charity event selling tiny plastic cups of pink lemonade for two bucks each. She was left alone the whole time and the till was sitting open on her lap the whole night. She had thought about taking the hair band off the limp ponytail and strapping a few curled fives to her ankles before the end of the night, but she didn’t and shut the cold metal box up for the person running the even to retrieve the next day.
But this was her senior year and at her Uncle Cole’s place three nights ago she saw Kingdom Come sitting there like a relic from a dead civilization. Cole had invited Sam and herself over for a night to finally meet his new wife. His new wife was twenty eight and had lived on the East Coast before shipping out to Chicago. Lynda never really cared for Cole or the way he spoke around you, instead of at you, as if he were dictating instead of conversing; so when he turned back from the living room to the kithcen and began to tell his young wife and Sam about the new water heater that he had installed all by himself two weeks before, all by himself, without even the set of wrenches the pair had given him last Christmas, Lynda took off her shoes and stared at the weapon.
Kingdom Come was a bat, the last remnant of her Uncle’s “gold days” as he called it, bartending biker clubs in the Memphis area. He told stories of how he used it to chase out anyone who would try to sneak drinks or feed them to minors, “But there’s only so many I could swing at,” was his line. It was a was quarter shorter than baseball regulation, with black friction tape around the handle and enough sealing wax (the kind used to weatherproof decks) that it added a solid inch to its circumference. Hidden in the milky whiteness of the wax were the faces of coins: quarters and half-dollar pieces with JFK’s face on them, added for weight and stopping power.
Her thin hands were quick when they plucked up the bat and brought up dust like flies jumping off in the light from the bay window. She ran a hand over the gnarled head of Kingdom Come and wondered if at any point Cole had actually used it to “beat a bastard to Kingdom Come”. That’s how it got its name, Cole wasn’t much using imagination. She ran a thumb over a spot of caked dust, pivoted on her left foot and let the bat drop down into her bag, and it fit into the darkness of textbooks and gym clothes like nothing, like she had never taken it.
When she zipped ever everything closed she imagined that her Father’s tired frame, or Cole’s gaunt form would be there, maybe the two of them together, eyeing her angrily, but it was only ghosts, and from where she crouched she couldn’t hear the joke but saw the shadow of Cole’s young wife laugh against the canary yellow of the kitchen wall.
Lynda ate the young wife’s food and wondered all night if her father would comment about the past, their college days in Tennessee, a past job, maybe if he kept drinking, her mother. But he didn’t, which was good, because if he did than Cole would be prompted to tell another story and every story ended in the “gold days”. Sam didn’t seem to want to talk all night, and left the new happy family to it. He only perked up when the young wife smiled at Lynda and asked,
“So, Lyn-you don’t mind if I call you that? We’re family now, so, Lyn, how’s school? Good, I hope.”
And while Lynda chewed through a thick piece of gristle Sam looked up from his food and half smiled. “She got a scholarship for track to U of I. It’s not everything, but its not bad.” Lynda swallowed and didn’t take in the small smile hanging on Sam’s face.
“It’s good. I’m still running.” Said Lynda. And this was how the rest of the night went.
For three days Kingdom Come sat in her bag, it was Friday when they’d had the dinner and now on Sunday, Lynda had buried her prize and the bag beneath her bed for the few days, expecting each phone call that brought Sam up and to the kitchen would be Cole, his pale lips to the receiving screaming that someone had taken Kingdom Come. But each day was the voiceless contractor that Sam had named “Jag-Off” and they would talk like two toddlers about to tumble onto the woodchips.
She caught, “How many more days am I going to get a call saying their isn’t any work? Should I just sleep until six tomorrow and see if you need me?” as her hands went for the canvas but she closed her probing fingers and slung herself back up, then off the bed. It wasn’t time yet, Lynda was sure of that. She left Kingdom where it laid and went out of her room and into her Father’s room, a blanched white that still held the fumes of fresh paint. The only bit of color were the purple sheets and a watercolor done by an old friend of Sam and his father. Lynda always wondered how much color could fit in such a small square, especially on her father, the artist depicting him with cherry lips and a shade of green for a his eyes that didn’t seem correct, a bit too deep. Her mind was on the closet though and she opened it to see the three sets of paint flecked overalls that had always been in there. She reached in, feeling through sweaters and rain slickers till her fingertips felt something cold and textured and with seven great tugs spilled it out onto the cream carpet. It was a trunk, it went up to her knee and was made of thick wood stained deep with a dark polish that gave it a rub of purple to the eye in sunlight. It belonged to Sadie, and she dragged it by a wicker handle on its thick side, leaving a furrow behind her to the door, into the hallway, toward her room.
Her arms failed her as she tried to get it through the doorway into her room and she slipped and landed on her ass. Her father appeared on the other side of the doorway, done speaking with his employer. He wore no expression as he watched her get back up.
“I didn’t know you wanted any of it.” He worked his jaw like the words were coming at strange angles, like maybe they were too big or too small. “I told you last month you could take anything you wanted.”
Lynda took a step forward and let a knee fall over the trunk. “I think I’m going to take it.”
“All of it.” Lynda could see from the look of his face that he had meant it as a question but it came out flat. “The plan was to get rid of it soon.”
She finally caught his eye and played with a smile, it was a gesture, an olive branch that she was hoping he would take and he did. He smiled and she could see the capped tooth that was a shade bluer than the rest of his teeth, but his brows still held a bit of worry.
“If you think you want some of it, that’s fine. Let me know what you don’t want. I think I’m going to give the rest to Coral, to make Cole happy.”
“Hmmm.” Was the affirmation that she gave back and they were floating again, still holding a smile each until they parted and she hefted the trunk into her room. It was set at the foot of her bed, it stuck out wider than the frame by a good few inches on either side, but Lynda didn’t mind the space it took up.
She thought her father looked more excited than he had been in a while, and she had felt it too, and wondered if it was the trunk as she bent down at the waist and laid her palms over the surface of the trunk to see if she could find some kind of static spark to hit her or feel some kind of deep heat emanating.
--
(I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing. And I feel bad about it.)
Three hours later neither of the two eat dinner and Lynda leaves through the front with her bag and Kingdom Come. She hadn’t opened the trunk yet, truly. She had popped the latch down with her thumb and lifted it enough to get an arm inside, but just an arm. The air inside sprung up and she remembered rainy summer days, the clammy smell always reminding her of an old house of a relative she couldn’t remember where it would always rain, their whole house smelled like it, rain, and still air. She had reached inside probed around, something had told her not to look directly inside again, not for a fear, but for timing, this was a cheat what she was doing, reaching inside early. She wasn’t supposed to do this yet. So her fingers skimmed along the surfaces inside and she had to wiggle them to keep the blood flowing it was so cold. She found something smooth, round, with edges that flared out in strange directions. She thought it was maybe an earring or a brooch, something she had never seen Sadie wear, but she pulled out a glass eye. They had a moment, Lynda and the glass eye, staring at one another, and the gaze that it gave her said that “it was okay, it knew what she was doing, and it was fine.” And she slipped it into the front pocket of her sweatshirt. The lid closed and the Rain house smell still filled her room as she made it to the car parked in the drive.
The early evening sun caught the crushed front side panel as she popped the door open and the smell of cheap cherry potpourri and suburban weed hit came up easy.
“You tell your Dad this time?”
“No,” said Lynda, and she knew Rosie would be okay with it. Rosie was okay with most of the things that they did together and in her mind was a supportive cousin. They hadn’t been keeping a regiment of driving every Thursday after Sadie left.
“Is he going to get mad?” Rosie says, and cranes her neck back, leaning and pouring onto the space between the two of them. She has the seat pulled back and her arms are near straight at the wheel because of her size, and she has to drop her shoulder and lean hard to see out the back. Rosie is the daughter of Cole’s first wife, and they divorced coming on ten years ago. She has always been big, but with now five months out of her mother’s home, Lynda has noted the shift of living on her own, something she hasn’t been able to say to her yet.
“How were classes this week?” Lynda throws out, and with blind hands fishes out the pack of cigarettes from the darkness of the glove box. They get down the drive and she hands one to Rosie, who takes it between her fingers and lights it, then gets Lynda, and she heads North up McKinley hooking only her thumbs on the steering wheel and fingers out like letting the nails air dry.
“Same shit as last week,” she takes a quick drag and then spits the smoke out the side of her mouth. “I’m in community college, what the fuck do you think I’m going to say? ‘Oh Lyn, I’m having so much fun learning how to be a substi-fucking-tute teacher. You should join up, you’d love it, its like high school but now every one has given up and works at Denny’s.” She sweetens the air in the car enough with her joke to even knock a laugh out of Lynda. They talk about what the past week has brought up, and Lynda mentions the dinner at Cole’s place.
“Yeah? He called my Mom last week to brag about his water heater, she tried to keep him on long enough to bitch about the months he still owes for alimony, but he hung up.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” Says Lynda, and the car rolls past the little league baseball diamond that keeps its lights on all night and a parked cop car watches them roll past.
Rosie shifts in her seat and takes the long strand of dyed red hair and sets it just behind her ear.
“You know that bat he has?”
“Yeah,” and something seems to rattle in the bag by Lynda’s feet.
“He used that to kick Mom and me out. I don’t remember it, I was fucking six or something, but he took a swing at my mom. Bet he didn’t tell you that.” And she takes a long drag before she speaks again. “Makes you wonder why he still has it.”
And it feels like acute vibrations are pouring up the bones of her leg, a drumbeat.
“He doesn’t” Lynda shifts in her seat and brings the bag to her lap. “I do.”
“You took fucking Kingdom Come? How the fuck did you manage that?” Rosie is near hoping in her seat. She pulls over to the curb and paws at Lynda’s bony shoulder. “Do you have it, is it in the bag.”
A car passes by on the opposite side of the road and lights up the smile on Rosie’s face like a full moon. Lynda nods and reaches over with her right hand to unzip the bag. Kingdom is wrapped in an old t-shirt like an old artifact and when she uncovers it a new smell invades the place, a chemical stink, like neutral bath salts that seems to dry up the air. Where her hands touch the bat the skin feels chapped, like it still isn’t right. Rosie starts to speak excitedly but Lynda doesn’t pick up until a few sentences in.
“I’d like to walk up to his fucking place and throw it through his front window. I’d rubberband a note to the ugly fucking thing like they do in crime movies. ‘Fuck you from Rosie and Claire’ in big fucking letters.” There, that sentence, that seemed right.
“Let’s go over there.” Says Lynda and stuffs it into the bag. There’s a buzzing now, with the shakes, and it feels wrong to keep it in her lap so she drops it to the floor.
“Why? I wasn’t serious. You want to give it back or something?” She flicks the butt of a long dead cigarette out the window and looks at her side view for oncoming traffic.
“No, I want to do what you said.”
--
The plastic deer’s head broke like a Christmas ornament against a brick wall from the weight of Kingdom’s swing. Lynda thought it could only be Kingdom’s swing, couldn’t be hers, she had never managed to do any kind of damage like that before. She swung at a garden gnome and it exploded. Took a swing at a sapling and cracked it in half. Rosie is leaning against her car and biting the elastic on her sleeves to keep from laughing from the outrageousness. She’s Lynda’s giggling cheerleader. With three low swipes she uproots a sixteen tulips, and with a few kicks scatters them across the lawn. Her biceps feel a sharp ache from even lifting now, but she’s still swinging. A solid shot sends a white picket into a neighbor’s yard and a dog begins to bark. Lynda misses her first attempt and has to jump in order to take out a bird feeder, it spits up seed and plastic like a two month old jack-o-lantern. And Lynda feels right about this. She usually doesn’t feel right about a lot of things, track is one, taking the trunk was another, but mostly she goes through life feeling like something might be wrong. But not this, something about tearing up Cole’s lawn has a good and right feeling, and even though her muscles are pulling taughter and taughter she hefts it up to her shoulder and gets ready for Rosie’s fuck you. She stands beneath the front bay window, there’s no light, and the dog’s bark gets louder.
“There’s a fucking dog.” Is all that Rosie shouts before Lynda turns to the sound of a german sherpard prowling through the empty wicket and into the yard. It body shifts low and moves towards Lynda, and there’s that tingle again, running down her arm and into the ground.
“Stop.” Says Lynda, and the dog stops, with one paw raised in the air. She’s holding Kingdom in the air like a conductor’s baton. “Go back.” And the dog pivots back and away. It pauses before the open fence once to turn at look at Rosie, who picks herself up off the hood of the car, but Lynda says again, “Go back.” Pointing with Kingdom, and the dog does.
“Holy shit.” Mumbles Rosie as Lynda hustles back to the car.
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