It took me three years to bring him down, but in the end it was worth it.
She never knew that I was behind it. That for the preceding three years I’d silently waged my campaign against him, writing anonymous letters, warning various officials that he had to be watched, investigated, that he said violent things, urged people to violence, that he was the leader of a secret society pledged to destroy everything the rest of us held dear. By using bits of information gathered from my wife, I kept them informed about his every move so that agents could be sent to look and listen. He was arrogant and smug, and he had his real father’s confidence that he could get away with anything. I knew it was just a matter of time before he’d say or do something for which he could be arrested.
I did all of that, but she never knew, never had the slightest hint that I was orchestrating his destruction. I realised just how fully I had deceived her only a few minutes after they’d finally peeled her away from his dead body and took it away to prepare it for burial. We were walking down the hill together, away from the place where they’d hung him, my wife muttering about how terrible it was, about how brutally the mob had taunted and reviled him. Such people could always be stirred up against someone like our son, she said, a “true visionary,” as she called him, who’d never had a chance against them.
I answered her sharply. “He was a fraud,” I said. “He didn’t have the answer to anything.”
She shook her head, stopped, and turned back toward the hill. It was not only the place where they’d executed him, but also the place where we’d first made love, an irony I’d found delicious as they’d led him to the execution site, his eyes wandering and disoriented, as if he’d never expected anything so terrible to happen to him, as if he were like his real father, wealthy and irresponsible, beyond the fate of ordinary men.
A wave of malicious bitterness swept over me. “He got what he deserved,” I blurted out.
She seemed hardly to hear me, her eyes still fixed on the hill, as if the secret of his fate were written on its rocky slope. “No one told me it would be like this,” she said. “That I would lose him in this way.”
I grasped her arm and tugged her on down the hill. “A mother is never prepared for what happens to her child,” I said. “You just have to accept it, that’s all.”
She nodded slowly, perhaps accepting it, then walked on down the hill with me. Once at home, she lay down on her bed. From the adjoining room, I could hear her weeping softly, but I had no more words for her, so I simply left her to her grief.
Night had begun to fall, but the storm that had swept through earlier that day had passed, leaving a clear blue twilight in its wake. I walked to the window and looked out. Far away, I could see the hill where he’d been brought low at last. It struck me that even in the last moments of his life, he’d tried to get at me just one more time. In my mind I could see him glaring down at me, goading me in exactly the way he had before I’d kicked him out of the house, emphasizing the word ‘Father’ when he’d finally spoken to me. He’d known very well that this was the last time he’d ever talk to me. That’s why he’d made such a production of it, staring right into my eyes, lifting his voice over the noise of the mob so that everybody would be sure to hear him. He’d been determined to demonstrate his defiance, his bitterness, the depth of his loathing for me. Even so, he’d been clever enough to pretend that it was the mob he cared about. But I knew that his whole purpose had been to humiliate me one last time by addressing me directly. “Father,” he’d said in that hateful tone of his, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Vicki Hendricks
I’d read an early copy of ‘Miami Purity’ by Vicki Hendricks and it made an impression. It is dark and sexy and violent-the ultimate female noir novel. When it came time to ask authors for a story, I thought, Now, that Vicki Hendricks knows something about revenge! She agreed to provide a story and it’s a good one, laced with firsthand knowledge of the area and of boats. This story was written by the light of a kerosene lamp in the same location as the one described here.
Until recently, the author lived on a sailboat in south Florida with two cats and two ferrets. I don’t know if she ever had been involved with anyone like the fellow in this story, but if she had, you’d like to think that the real-life model came to a bad end.
West End
Kyle switched hands on the tiller and gave Regina his used toothpick. She looked at the frayed end and flipped the pick into the Atlantic.
“Regina, you know we only have half a pack left. I wanted you to put that back in the galley to save for tomorrow.”
“Sorry, Kyle, I thought it was finished. I can do without my share.”
“There was one end left. Just ask if you’re not sure. Always ask. Remember that.”
He turned his head the other way and she saluted. He looked so distinguished with his graying hair curling from under his hat, but he never lightened up on her sailing education. They had been sailing the Spring Fling together for the last six years of their marriage. Kyle was a sailor above all else, even when the idea of owning a boat had just been a twinkle in his eye.
“Nice turn of the bilge,” he’d said to her the first time they slept together, when she was just nineteen, nearly twenty years in the past. At the time she didn’t know he was comparing the shape of her buttocks to the hull of a sailboat.
He turned back to face her. “Do me a favour. Go down in the cabin.” He looked off to port.
“And do what?”
“Go down and I’ll tell you when you get there.”
She felt a retort like backwash in her throat but swallowed it. She turned to step down the companionway steps.
“Regina!”
“What?”
“Oh, I thought you were going to walk down forward instead of backward,” he said.
“Don’t you think I know anything?”
He didn’t answer, was staring off into the horizon again.
“Okay. I’m waiting. Kyle?”
“Go into the forward starboard locker on the second shelf toward midships.”
“And?”
“Get the little black leather case and find my fingernail clippers.”
“Why didn’t you just ask for the clippers? I know where you keep them.”
No answer.
She didn’t expect one. She took the clippers up and pressed them into his hand.
“Now take the tiller. Keep the compass on ninety degrees.”
“Gotcha, Skipper.”
Regina took the smooth varnished tiller and held it gently with two fingers as Kyle had shown her again and again. She shifted her eyes from the compass to the top of the mast to check the wind vane. They were sailing on a run, straight downwind, with the jib to port and the main to starboard. It was going to be tricky to keep the boat on course and the sails filled. She didn’t want to jibe. Even in these light conditions, Kyle would have a fit. The Pearson forty-two-footer was their only child.
Kyle put his head down and began working on his nail.
Regina was sailing well, keeping the course, barely moving the tiller. She’d found the groove.
Kyle said he needed to go down to take off his foul-weather gear and get into some lighter clothes.
“Fine, honey,” she said. “I’ve got it.”
He stepped below and she filled herself with fresh salty air. She looked at the small islands in the distance, Carter Cays. They only had three miles to go until they could anchor for the night and make a nice conch chowder for dinner. Conch. Conch had become her favourite seafood. She remembered the conch fritters she’d had at the Star Bar in West End a few days before.