Next of Kin #5

The distance between two points increases over time, father and sons, drift across the atmosphere. Brothers lose touch with brothers, until memories are the only pictures that piece their dispersing atoms back together. Sealing one more second in time before they refract like a stained glass window, blurry and beautiful, all at the same time. This morning will mark the anniversary, the anniversary of two people dying.

Shayne arrives at the Mint Mart, the sun is shining with such an intensity that his palms are sweaty. He places the key into the lock, twists and feels it release against his body. The café is clean and sparkles under the light,
he begins to clear the front of shop. There is an envelope strewn onto the counter, it reads,

‘ahava sheyli’ my love.

It was was another payment to Elanah or his son, both the loves of his life, only second to his love for his country and his unwillingness to watch it burn to the ground. Shayne thought about Johnny wrapped up in bed between the white sheets, like the paper money held in the envelope, both waiting for the whiteness to grant them another chance. The remainder of the alcohol churning in his stomach until it is no longer there.

This thought made Shayne shake with rage, his father had threatened to kill him and nearly succeeded with killing his brother. When Texan woke up, his head still drowning in spirits he had taken himself to bed. Bypassing Shayne and Johnny spread across the kitchen tiles like a compass pointing to their doorway and Shayne had dreamed the same dream he had dreamt for the first year after Ana left. She returned flinging her bags down onto the marble tiling, took her boys between her arms and lowered them into the car, the hot flash of the engine against their flesh. The skyline like a pool of unleaded diesel. He had woken gripping Johnny, the print of his fingertips forming tyre tracks across his skin.

Texan has left more money than usual under the fringe magnet, Shayne grabbed the dollars and threw them into his mother’s box. He had been saving but it was nowhere near enough. He had to face that his mother was not the angel that he had pictured as a boy, but a women, who was as caged in Lock Haven as they were with Texan, with had no intention of returning to her former life.

Reece arrived in the car park, Shayne looked out through the shutter. It was early morning and yet the sun was already high, today it would only get hotter. Reece was not alone beside him was a young man with olive skin, mid-twenties and a skinny frame. He had a scar which ran down the right side of his face, which has just visible under the white light of the sun. This man was Darius, he had been doing occasional shifts at the petrol store when Reece was off. Reece had mentioned that he had left Israel too and that he had no other family currently in the states, he said that he was all he had and that he would help in any way he could. And Shayne believed him, Darius was like another son for Azreal, a second chance to be a father.

Darius was confident when Reece was around, but if it was just him and Shayne he was look around un-content as though he was viewing America for the first time. Reece was setting up meetings trying to extend Darius’s work visa for an extension, the pain of maybe losing another son to Israel, until he can no longer remember his face, along with his girlfriend’s, his mum’s and his country.

His accent was still pungent, although he knew American well.

“ Shall I lock up Shayne? Save you the trouble.” His azure blue eyes gleamed as he spoke.

“No, it’s early yet.” As Shayne replied he saw that Darius was nervously tapping the counter, “Why don’t you ring Reece, see what’s happening with your visa?”

His body seemed to instantly relax,

“Thanks mate, I’ll see.” The word 'see' was almost sung, he smiled, the motion sincere and appreciative.

His body trailed off into the darkness of the office and left Shayne alone with only the beeping of the telephone, his fingertips reciting Reece’s number like a lifeline. Shayne couldn’t bare the idea of returning home, Texan simply had no idea of the pain or danger which he had inflicted on Johnny, he had nothing but dreams and reality crossing other until he did not know which was real.

What would happen if Johnny told Texan that he was the one that drunk his whisky, he wondered if he would care or whether rage would cull his sympathy and guilt would dissolve into gin. He questioned what would happen to himself, but mostly the fate of Johnny. Texan holding his rifle and pointing at his two boys as they tried to disappear into the darkness. But that was a risk that they would have to take, he had been dodging the bullets of his father ambushing love for seventeen years, staring down the barrel every time Johnny called Shayne 'Pop'.