“Not since we got back from Iraq,” Erik said, stepping up to join Jamie beside the window.
“After being there for a week,” Jamie said, “you wish it would snow.”
“Like Canada.”
“Or Europe.”
“You were in Europe?” Dakota asked.
“We stopped off over there for a fuel run,” Jamie said. “Right, Erik? Or was that somewhere else?”
“I think that was the Netherlands,” Erik frowned. “I can’t remember. I was so jet-lagged that I could hardly keep my eyes open.”
“I remember now,” Jamie chuckled. “You had the same problem on the way back.”
“I threw up.”
“On me, no less.”
Dakota raised a hand to hide his chuckle. Erik offered the same look regardless. “I don’t do well with planes. Seriously.”
“You don’t do well with anything,” Jamie howled, slapping his thigh before falling back from the window. “You got sick in the jeeps, in the tanks. Hell, you even got sick in the cars over there.”
“It’s a fucking desert you prick! What did you expect?”
“He’s always had a problem with moving beyond the speed of foot,” Jamie said, nudging Dakota’s side and leaning in as though he were about to reveal a secret. “He can’t even sit in a swing without hurling.”
“Fuck you,” Erik laughed, lifting his middle finger.
“What’s going on?” Desmond asked, stepping out of the hallway in boxers and an undershirt.
“Nothing,” Jamie said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I heard yelling and wasn’t sure,” the boy said.
“Weren’t sure about what?” Erik asked, narrowing his eyes.
“It reminded me of the way my parents used to fight.”
No one spoke as the boy made his way to the couch beneath the expansive southern window and seated himself on it. The laughter now gone from the air, Dakota cast a glance first at Jamie, whose expression seemed to be chipping away by the second, then at Erik, whose mouth simply melted from its frown into a neutral position. Ian, meanwhile, appeared troubled, as his usually cold eyes seemed lighter than they normally did.
“Sorry,” Erik mumbled, breaking the silence everyone else seemed afraid to. “You never told us about that.”
“It’s not your fault,” Desmond said.
“I feel your pain, bud,” Ian said, stepping forward to join Desmond on the couch. “My parents used to fight all the time.”
“About what?”
“About my father for not being home more often, about my grades, about my friends and how I was running with the wrong crowd.”
“They were probably worried about you getting into a gang,” Erik said. “Guess it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“I got dragged into it because I was a pussy, not because I’m Mexican.”
“I wasn’t insinuating that.”
Ian settled back onto the couch. “That’s a touchy subject.”
“I should’ve worded that more carefully.”
“It’s ok. Besides, I shouldn’t have snapped at you anyway. I just took a lot of shit back home and I’m still bothered about it.”
“You never mentioned where you came from,” Dakota said, sitting down on the edge of the couch.
“I was born in the States, but spent half of my life in Mexico. Thirteen years. Thirteen fucking years.”
“How come your family didn’t stay there?” Desmond asked.
“Gangbangers kept jumping my dad,” Ian said. “Funny…we left Mexico to get away from that and we go right back into it when we got here.”
“That’s when you moved to the MRS,” Dakota said.
“The what?” Desmond frowned.
“The MRS—Mount Rushmore State. It’s a South Dakota thing.”
“Anyhow,” Ian said, “like I was saying, we moved to South Dakota when I was thirteen and I got the same kind of shit I got in Mexico. I’d get picked on for being half Mexican, get ridiculed for not being ‘a real Mexican,’ and asked if I was in a gang or if I planned on being in one from everyone, including teachers, which is why I snapped at you.”
“It’s understandable,” Erik said.
“You wouldn’t believe the names I’d get called.”
“I can only imagine,” Dakota said.
“Beaner, poncho, greaser, wetback. Hell, they even called me a guero because of my skin, which pissed me off because it was always used in a negative way. So, to get back to my point—whenever I wasn’t getting harassed for being a Mexican, not being enough of one or being asked if I was in a gang, I’d sit at home and listen to my parents fight.”
“What’d they fight about?” Desmond asked.
“Like I said earlier—my dad being gone, money, my grades. That kind of shit.”
“Did your parents split?” Dakota asked.
“Happened when I was fifteen. Mom caught Dad with some bimbo bitch with fake tits and kicked him out. They divorced almost immediately.”
“That had to be hard,” Jamie commiserated. “It sucks growing up without a dad.”
“I could care less about that asshole,” Ian growled, eyes once again chilling. “What pissed me off was what the assholes started doing to my mom.”
“What assholes?”
“The fucking white guys who chased my mom because she was Mexican. They’d start hanging around the house after my dad left and would do one of two things—try to get with her because she was now ‘free real estate’ or call her a whore.”
“I’m guessing this didn’t end well,” Erik said.
“I beat one of the fuckers up when he got all touchy-feely on her when I was walking home from school, said he’d kill me if he ever saw me again. I got so fucking fed up with all of it that I just wanted to leave her alone.”
“Did you,” Dakota paused. “I mean, is this when you joined the gang?”
“No. This was after I started beating up the guys who jerked my mom around and after I got jumped for protecting her.”
No one said anything. Even Desmond, whose problem had since transgressed into Ian’s own revelation, remained silent, his issues long placed behind him in order to let Ian speak.
“I got beat up one night coming home from a friend’s,” Ian said, leaning forward to brace his hands between his knees. “Four or five guys. One of them came at me with a switchblade, slashed my arm, then stabbed me in the leg. I ended up fighting two of them off before these two big guys came up, wrestled them off of me, then bashed the one’s face in with his brass knuckles. They ran off like a bunch of pussies.”
“Are those the guys you were running with?” Dakota asked.
“The guys who shot at you and Steve. Yup. That was them.” Ian tilted his head up to look at Dakota, then turned his attention toward the mantle and big screen TV ahead of him. “I’ll admit it, they were good guys, guys I considered friends. Hell, they saved my life, but they’re better off dead, especially when they started killing people that didn’t deserve it.”
“No rest for the wicked,” Jamie said.
“None at all,” Ian nodded. “Anyhow, the rest of my story is pretty simple, no ‘Ian quests to fight the dragon’ Disney shit. The guys offered me a place with them, they initiated me, then they got rid of anyone who gave me or my family shit, starting with the assholes who fucked with my mom. Needless to say, word got around. Fast.”
“The words on your shoulder,” Desmond said. “The K.R.D. What is that?”
Desmond reached up to rub the raised black ink on his shoulder. “My gang.”
“What does it stand for.”
“Kill…” Ian sighed. “Rape. Destroy.”
Again, everyone was silent.
“In the end,” Ian continued, looking up at everyone in the room, “shit worked out. I ran with them, I got caught in a stint, I went to jail and they watched my mom’s back the whole time I was there. That stuff doesn’t much matter, and to be perfectly honest, it’s not something I want to share with anyone, but when I got out and the world ended, they stuck with me until the very end. Few people do that.”