Erron had been around long enough to have overheard many a sad tale; tragedy was something of a fact of life for those fortunate enough to have not become one themselves yet. It was only a matter of time for most, if not all of them in the end. From what Erron had been able to gather from his ma, back when she'd still been lucid enough to be furious with him and honest with it, he drew breath only by the grace of god because it surely hadn't been her doing. His pa weren't divine, no matter how faithfully his ma had worshiped the ground he tread upon.
He wondered what it might've been like to have been that boy, wanted and beloved, his passing mourned.
It was an unsettling thought that stirred the sediment of brackish water that’d lived within him since the incident; rippled outward like alligator spines breaching the surface. Erron pulled sharply off his smoke, the smoldering red ember crackling bright before he pulled it free of his lips to idly thumb the tobacco flakes at the other end of it. "Job went wrong down south," he announced, his jaw flexing with resurgent tension. "Kid wasn’t supposed to be there. I look up and sure as shit there she is, whiter than a sheet, watchin’ me beat her daddy fer some reprobate in a suit’s protection money. I wasn’t there to kill 'im — just knock him around some, give him somethin’ to think about, somethin’ to fear next time. Easy money.”
“She didn’t know that. She didn’t know nothin’ but her daddy’s blood on my hands,” Erron licked his teeth like a snarling wolf, his breath the hiss of a sidewinder between them as he recalled the rage that’d filled him up and wouldn’t let him go. “So I turned tail and knocked that lyin’ sonuvabitch’s teeth out instead and then I just kept punchin’ from Saint Denis all the way to Annesburg.”
“Ain’t no hands like that fit fer touchin’ babies,” his head lolled lazily along the wall to look at Arthur sidelong, the fight in him exorcised like a curl of cigarette smoke between his lips. “But at least I can go to my pine box knowin’ I ain’t that kind of monster.”
my god, these two fools
He wondered what it might've been like to have been that boy, wanted and beloved, his passing mourned.
It was an unsettling thought that stirred the sediment of brackish water that’d lived within him since the incident; rippled outward like alligator spines breaching the surface. Erron pulled sharply off his smoke, the smoldering red ember crackling bright before he pulled it free of his lips to idly thumb the tobacco flakes at the other end of it. "Job went wrong down south," he announced, his jaw flexing with resurgent tension. "Kid wasn’t supposed to be there. I look up and sure as shit there she is, whiter than a sheet, watchin’ me beat her daddy fer some reprobate in a suit’s protection money. I wasn’t there to kill 'im — just knock him around some, give him somethin’ to think about, somethin’ to fear next time. Easy money.”
“She didn’t know that. She didn’t know nothin’ but her daddy’s blood on my hands,” Erron licked his teeth like a snarling wolf, his breath the hiss of a sidewinder between them as he recalled the rage that’d filled him up and wouldn’t let him go. “So I turned tail and knocked that lyin’ sonuvabitch’s teeth out instead and then I just kept punchin’ from Saint Denis all the way to Annesburg.”
“Ain’t no hands like that fit fer touchin’ babies,” his head lolled lazily along the wall to look at Arthur sidelong, the fight in him exorcised like a curl of cigarette smoke between his lips. “But at least I can go to my pine box knowin’ I ain’t that kind of monster.”