The Shack: An Angry Man

"If she puts up with you, I don't see how the hell I could make her life worse."

"Shut up." I pushed her ahead of me.

Sheree smiled as we walked in. "Whatchadoin?"

"My niece here needs to use the shower in your office."

Sheree narrowed her eyes at me, but pulled the office key on a huge block of wood out from under the counter. She started to hand it to me hesitantly, but I waved her off. "I'd rather you showed her where it was."

Sheree looked a little relieved. "I will."

I looked at the girl. "Remember what I said. Don't start any trouble."

She grimaced and gave a sarcastic salute. "Yes, sir."

Sheree walked her to the back, then, a few moments later, came back out. "She's not really your niece, is she?"

"She's my ex-wife's daughter. She ran away and I had to go pick her up. She can't slip out back there, can she?"

"Not unless she can squeeze through the half inch steel mesh bolted over the windows. Family's always a pain in the ass. I've had to post bail for my cousin Shelly about five times. She never pays me back." She paused, puzzled. "I didn't think you were on speaking terms with your ex."

"Yeah, I'm not, and it's just been one of those fu... damn days."

Sheree reached over and touched my hand. "We did have a rough start this morning, didn't we?"

I could see something besides sympathy in her eyes and felt, for a second, that maybe the day wasn't total shit. Then the door dinged behind me.

"Hey, Sheree, I need a can of Skoal."

Sheree rolled her eyes. I looked back over my shoulder at Ronnie Pelton. He looked at me and grinned "Hey, Junkman, you look like shit. Run into a door?"

I watched him push up to the counter and his cologne washed over me as he leered down Sheree's top while she fished out a can of Skoal. "Great knockers. Better'n the Grand Canyon."

I looked down at his work boots, spattered in white paint.

It'd just been one of those fucking days. Sometimes it doesn't pay to get out of bed. For anybody.

I grabbed the back of his head and slammed his face onto the counter as hard as I could, then kicked the side of his knee so that it folded inward.

He began to scream, but as he fell I slammed his face into the counter edge again, knocking him out cold.

I let him crumple to the floor as Sheree stood up straight and leaned over to watch him drop with one eyebrow raised. "Wow. If you're defending my honor now, you best plan on hanging out here a lot. These jugs of mine attract a lot of attention." She looked at him carefully, studying the pool of blood spreading out from his flattened nose. "At least till word gets out anyways. You don't do things halfway, do you?"

"It's not that..." I caught a disappointed look flash across her face. "Not all that anyway. Shithead here is one the idiots that robbed us this morning."

"You sure?"

I pulled the back of his jacket up and pulled the Glock 19 out of his waistband, cleared it and dropped it on the counter. "Same boots, same shitty dollar store cologne, same damn gun."

Sheree nodded, picked up the phone and began dialing. Too many numbers for 9-1-1. "Hey Ed? Yeah, your cousin Ronnie? He's the sonovabitch that robbed us this morning. Same gun, same boots, same cologne. He'll be here, Les just kicked the shit out of him. It'll be a while 'fore he wakes up. Yeah, I'll tell him. Family is a pain in the ass."

She hung the phone up. "Big Ed'll be over here in 'bout fifteen minutes to take Ronnie for a little talk. Says you can have a free soda if you want."

Delaney walked out of the office and leaned over to see what Sheree was looking at. She stared at the guy on the floor then looked up at me. "Jesus Christ! Do you think you could actually go a whole fucking hour without beating somebody up, and maybe, just maybe, not burning or shooting something?" She turned to Sheree. "You should know he has really, really, serious anger issues."

Sheree smiled at her with syrupy sweetness. "No man is perfect, Honey. They need women to keep them on the right path." She turned towards me. "Speaking of which... this morning, I got the impression you were about to ask me out on a date."

"I was going to ask you what you were doing on Friday."

"Well, lookitthat, my schedule is open." She looked over at Delaney. "Men can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes. I was fixin' to hit him over the head and drag him back to my cave if he didn't take the hint or couldn't get the words out."

Delaney giggled, sounding, for a change, like a kid. "I'll try to remember that."

I looked at both of them. "Is that part of what they teach girls when they take them out of class in sixth grade?"

They both started giggling at that.

A few minutes later, Big Ed finally arrived with a couple of his kids, both of them every bit as big as he was; he shook his head at us as his kids dragged a still-unconscious Ronnie to their truck. "Family is a pain in the ass."

Sheree, watching Delaney eat her third hot dog and sipping her Coke, smiled. "Sometimes."

****

There was an almost comfortable silence as we went along the final leg of our route, but eventually Delaney reached over and tapped my arm.

"I know mom took everything from you while you were in the hospital. I know it's bullshit, but she makes it sound like some kind of escape from Alcatraz. How did she get you to let them take Tara and Tiffany?"

"I never even saw her or the girls after I got out of the hospital. She had Chuck keep filing protective orders against me. Under the Lautenburg amendment, if you're under a protective order you can't have access to a gun. For some medical personnel, that isn't a big deal but in Special Forces, it is. I didn't have the money to fight it since she'd taken everything, and it looked like I was going to end up thrown out of the Army and lose my pension if I didn't cooperate. Besides..." I stopped, I wasn't sure if I should tell her the truth.

"'Besides' what?"

"I was really angry."

"You're not angry now?"

"Not compared to then, I was losing control, drinking too damn much, taking pills I shouldn't have been. I was dreaming of killing her and Chuck all the time. Too much."

"It sounds like she deserved it."

"Tara and Tiffany wouldn't have had any family then. I still wouldn't have felt any better. Besides, if I did, you wouldn't be here. And today would have been boring as hell."

She looked at me and quirked her mouth in a half-smile. "Even if I peed in your car?"

"You handled it better than most would have. You didn't pass out, you didn't throw up and you didn't grab my arm while I was driving."

"I kind of thought that might get us killed."

"That's pretty clear thinking for a kid off the short bus. I've seen trained soldiers do worse."

She smiled and straightened up. "Not bad for one of the stupid kids, huh?"

"Damn good, actually. You just have to learn to stay frosty. Don't let your emotions take over and tell you what to do. Think things through and respond, don't just react. It took me thirty-five years to figure that out and I still fuck it up."

"Stay frosty? I can do that. I just wish I was smarter."

"So you can't read real well. So-the-fuck-what? Get books on audio. Even the little library here has tons of them. Just keep looking at things differently until you figure out how to get what you want."

She nodded and set her jaw as her parents' ridiculously oversized house came into sight.

As we got out of the car, I pointed at her. "Remember what I said. I don't want to have to come looking for you again, Thugbunny."

She smirked. "I like that. 'Thugbunny.'"

"Are you ready?"

"Thugbunny says, 'Fuck it.'"

I leaned on the doorbell.

"She hates it when people do that."

"I know."

The door opened and Charlotte looked us over.

"Got something of yours, Charli."

She winced at my old nickname for her. "Delaney, get in here."

Delaney marched through, scowling at her, then Charlotte tried to close the door on me. I caught it and pushed it open enough to stagger her back so I could step through. "Forgetting something?"

She tried to look innocent. "Oh, that. I simply don't know where it might be. I will have to get back to you about it some time."

It was perfectly clear she had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Past her, I could see a number of well dressed women sitting in chairs in her very proper sitting room. The only two I recognized were Tiffany and Tara, who watched me disdainfully. No doubt, they were here to be respectable witnesses to any violence on my part. I watched Delaney disappear into the next room.

I glared at her and hissed. "You gotta be fucking kidding me. I did what you wanted."

"Charles isn't home, but I will have him see if he can find it when he does get here." She said it loudly, politely, but the smug look on her face said everything that needed said.

"It's okay, Mom, I found it for you." Delaney cheerfully announced from the archway. "It was in the safe in the study, right next to your jewelry." I saw confused looks directed at Charlotte by Tara and Tiffany. Whatever Charlotte had told them wasn't holding water right now.

Delaney walked towards us, holding up the wooden case I'd made for the gun back when I was in high school. "This is it, isn't it?" Charlotte gawped at her, speechless for a damn change.

I opened the case and ran my fingertips along the weapon. "Twelve notches for Pops on Iwo Jima, four for Dad in the A Shau, and six for me in Mogadishu."

Delaney looked at the .45 in wonder, then up at me. "I hope it was worth it."

I looked in her eyes. "I think you just might be."

****

Some days it's just hard to get out of bed. Someone pounded on the door and I extracted myself from Sheree, trying not wake her up. She'd come home with me after our date a few weeks ago, and never really quite got around to leaving. I was frankly hopeful that she never would.

I couldn't even remember her deciding to move in. She seemed to be able to talk me into just about anything. She'd even talked me into donating time at the local clinic. I decided to be honest about my worries about the drugs and she promised me she'd help me keep on the right path. She'd winked and leaned way forward and said. "I can make you feel better than any pill ever invented." She'd gone right ahead and proven that.

I looked down at her fondly, then pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and opened the door.

Delaney was stretched to her full height, what there was of it, arms crossed over her chest and a pair of work gloves dangling from her belt, one boot up on a full duffle bag.

She pulled the brim of her Budweiser bucket hat up a bit. "Ready for work, Boss."

"What the fuck are you doing here? That crazy bitch will find a way to put me in prison for this."

"The 'crazy bitch' is sitting in her car at the front gate to the yard. She's convinced you were serious when you said you'd shoot her if she came onto your property again. I told her she was probably right, what with your anger issues and all. She's dropping me off with you, at least until the election is over in November."

"Really?"

"She has enough problems without me around. I talked to Tiffany and Tara, and they are asking her some questions she doesn't want to answer about what happened. I told them to call you, but I don't know if they have the balls. She has formal paperwork, a power of attorney, health insurance and everything."

I could see the nose of the gold Lexus at the front gate. "I just got a registered letter from Tara yesterday. I guess she and Tiffany want to hear my side of things sometime."

I looked her over. Loose work jeans, steel toe boots, a black T-shirt and a crazy grin. "Damn, I didn't think they had it in them."

I sighed. "What's your plan?"

"I'll work for you, we can figure out some kind of school thing, maybe homeschooling."

"Homeschooling?"

"As long as you include a lot of metal shop." She looked over to her left. "Is that what I think it is over there?"

I followed her stare. "It's what's left of a '58 Plymouth Fury. Not much left but the body."

Her eyes widened. "Like in the movie 'Christine'? I'll need a car when I'm sixteen, you know. Unless you want me hanging out with boys to get rides."

"I think it's pretty obvious you aren't a very good judge when it comes to boys."

She rolled her eyes. "Look who's talking. You actually married that crazy bitch. Talk about short bus stupid."

"Good point, but it'll take a lot of work to get that running."

"From what you said, you started with less when you built your Cobra. Besides, I think we'll have time."

I looked down at her duffle bag. "What'd you do?"

"Showed up at one of Dad's press conferences in my T-shirt." She gestured to her black T-shirt; it had a craft paint homemade logo on it of a crude fucked-up looking stick figure rabbit in a sideways hat and the saying "Thugbunny Says Fuck It!" on it. She turned around and I could see "Full Retard" across her shoulders.

She smirked. "And I told them I'd keep doing it unless they let stay here and work for you this summer."

"They couldn't just take your T-shirt away?"

"I told them I made twenty more."

"Really?"

"Yeah, but I really only made five. I ran out of paint. My last T-shirt says 'Princess Glittersparkle Says Suck My.'" She shrugged.

Sheree came up behind me and leaned over my shoulder, pressing herself against my back. She stretched against me sensually. "Let me help her get her stuff back to that back bedroom, it'll be her room. You go get the papers."

Delaney giggled. "You figured out how to deal with his anger issues, didn't you?"

Sheree winked at her. "Just workin' with what the Almighty gave me."

I walked down steps, trying to shoot them a glare, but from the way they were grinning at me, it didn't work very well.

Charlotte kept looking straight forward as I came up to her car.

"Charles wasn't very happy about losing that gun."

"Tell him to grow a pair of balls, shoot some bad guys and carve his own notches. Shouldn't be taking shit that doesn't belong to him."

"He's a collector, he's not like you."

"Lucky you. How's this gonna work?"

"Sign the papers and file them. Just keep her off of CNN. She's too much for us to deal with right now. We'll see after the election." She refused to look at me.

She was lying, I could tell. She had no intention of ever taking Delaney back if she could avoid it, and I almost called her on it.

Almost.

It didn't seem fair to Delaney. She wasn't just another dramatic teenage girl wanting attention. She'd never fit in Charles and Charlotte's world because she'd never be good enough for them. They wanted perfect little show ponies for their perfect world.

I looked though the stack of papers Charlotte shoved through the gap at the top of the slightly rolled down window. She hated this, I could tell she felt like she'd lost, and she really, really, hated losing to me.

She didn't know the half of it. The Sheriff had recorded our discussion in the interview room and given me a copy, pointing out how bad it would look for an aspiring politician to not only be screwing a wounded soldier's wife, but stealing from him while he was in the hospital. It certainly wouldn't paint Charlotte in a very pleasant light, either.

It was a huge risk on his part. He was trusting me not to use it unless I had to, since it would likely put him in real trouble. He'd be retiring in a few years, though.

Sheree, in turn, pointed out how everybody was talking about Charles eventually ending up as Governor and mentioned that timing was everything. With her help, I could be patient.

Tucked in the back of the packet were the papers I knew I'd find. It probably would have cost a fortune to get it done if he wasn't a full partner at a law firm. All I had to do was sign on one line, file the papers, and I'd have full guardianship until Delaney turned eighteen. I decided right then I could be patient for a while. It'd be five years before Delaney turned eighteen and I already knew I wasn't going to give her up. Maybe, if things worked out, I could give Tara and Tiffany a preview of the video so they'd know the truth.

Sheree and Delaney had already gone inside. I nodded wordlessly to Charlotte, whether she saw it or not, then turned and walked back to the trailer. I couldn't help but smile.

Sure Delaney was fucked up. Maybe she was as fucked up as I was; but the sign did say "Salvage," after all.

*****

Post Production notes:

I have to thank my wife, aka The Missus, she actually came up with the plot for this story. At almost midnight, on a weeknight, about a week ago. So we did the logical thing and stayed up late, framing it out and figuring out characters.

The high-speed drift turn and bootlegger can be performed as described in a rear wheel drive, manual transmission car with a low center of gravity. Be very careful, start very slow with plenty of space if you are trying these for the first time. Expect to end up off the road a time or two until you get the hang of it. You may very well wreck your car, so take that into account. We took the Missus's Mustang out to a gravel quarry to remind ourselves of how to do this.

The Mustang Cobra is a nod to StangStar06, whose stories have provided so many of us with enjoyable hours of reading.