Joey lifts his chin in my direction. “Who’s she?”
“No one you’ll ever know,” I growl. “She’s freedom and salvation. She’s a new kind of future.”
“Come to rub it in my face?” he sneers. “That you’re so much better off without us? Clean, fat as fuck, with a pretty girl?”
I shake my head. “No. I just had to come back here and…” I shrug. “Stay what I gotta say. Look the past in the eye and know that I’ve beaten it.”
“Always did think you were better than us,” Rico grumbles. “Never said it, but I felt it.”
“I’m not. I don’t think that.” I frown, shrug. “Well, maybe I do, and maybe I am, in a way. I got clean. I have a job. I have a place to live. I have friends—brothers. People who care about me and won’t let me do shit that’ll fuck me up. You’re family. You guys oughta have been that for me. But you weren’t. You pulled me down into your shit, in this…darkness.” I gesture at the house. “Sell the land. Get real jobs. Get off the sauce and off all the other shit. Start over. Do better—bebetter.”
“I ain’t sellin’ shit,” Joey snaps. “Family been born here, lived here, and died here for four generations. Ain’t much but it’s my home.” He spits into the dirt, like Eddie did. “And besides, this land ain’t worth shit to anyone else.”
“I’m just sayin’. You can do more than whatever it is you do here.”
Joey drops his cigarette butt to the dirt, grinds it out with his bare heel, plucks a soft pack from his shorts pocket and lights another, swaggering a few steps closer to me; I can smell the booze on him from ten feet away. “Listen, boy. You found Jesus or some shit, good for you. You got clean. You’re healthy, you got a girl. Good for you. Happy for you. But fuck off with your opinions on my life.” He glances over his shoulder at the house, then back at me. “Yeah, Eddie’s got a problem. But that’s his problem andmyproblem, not yours. I wanna drink and smoke myself to death, what’s it to you? You’re about to drive off and never come back, now that you said your piece.” He pulls from the cigarette, blows it out of his nostrils, speaking as he does so. “You needed to come here and prove to yourself that you…what? That you won? Well, boy, you won. Good for you. This is our life, and you ain’t gotta like it.”
“I ain’t judgin’ you—” I start.
“I don’t much give a fuck if you are or not.” He taps ash off. “Look. You need forgiveness? Be forgiven. You need to give forgiveness, well, you done gave it. For me, for Eddie, for Rico. Great. Thanks. But don’t sit there and preach at me, all right? You go live your life, and feel good about yourself knowing you made more of yourself than us.”
I sigh. “Uncle Joey…”
He turns away. “Wait a second. Got somethin’ for you.” He vanishes into the house with a creak of springs and a slam, appearing a minute or so later with a file box, a thick cardboard box used to store papers. “Your aunt Lu passed a few months ago. Cancer. Your dad was close to her, exchanged letters with her up till he got himself killed. When she passed, your cousin Angie brought this by, figurin’ I may know how to get it to you. It’s some letters and photographs and shit. Personal shit from your dad and ma.”
I take it from him, finding it heavier than expected. My heart pounds as I prop it on my hip and tug the lid off—within are piles of envelopes, a few dozen of them, along with a haphazard pile of photographs…I see Mom, Dad, myself as a little kid. There’s an old Zippo lighter, a tarnished gold ring on a thin, cheap silver chain. A framed photograph of Mom, Dad, and me, from a Walmart photo booth or something like that.
My eyes burn. “I…thanks, Uncle Joey. When they were killed, their shit was sold or impounded or lost in the shuffle when the apartment was repossessed. I never was able to get anything of theirs. Not one damn thing.”
He nods. “Well, there ya go. Whole box of shit.” He taps ash, sucks smoke, exhales, spits. “Your dad was the best of us. Shoulda been somethin’. That no-good drug-addled bitch drug him down, got him killed. He loved her, even though he knew it was some toxic-ass shit she was mixing him up in. You deserved better.”
Coming from Uncle Joey…that’s some harsh criticism.
“She loved him, and me.”
He nods. “I know it. But I figure after what you been through, you know that sometimes, that ain’t enough. Wasn’t enough for her. You’re stronger. You got away.” He slugs my shoulder. “Get outta here, Chance. Leave us in the rear view. Be what your dad never got to be. I know you mean well. But…” He shakes his head, glances at Rico, who’s been by the front door this whole time, silently watching and listening. “You got your path, we got ours.”
“Eddie’s gonna die, Joey,” I say. “You gotta know that.”
He nods. “I do. We don’t cook no more.” Ash, inhale, exhale. “I done tried it all. Kicked him out a bunch of times, after you vanished. He’s been arrested, even tried rehab once, which damn near bankrupted me.” A shake of his head. “He won’t never kick it. So, all’s I can do is…be there. He chose his path. I can’t change that. Rico can’t. You sure as fuck can’t. Don’t like it, but it’s better he’s here with family who gives a shit about him. I can try to keep him alive as long as possible. But I know, sooner or later, I’m gonna find him done gone and croaked. Breaks my damn heart, boy. Breaks my damn heart.”
I shake my head. “That shit is pure evil, Joey.”
“I know it. God almighty, do I know it.” Joey flicks the butt to the dirt and grinds it out, pulls another and puts it to his lips, but doesn’t light it. “Now go on. Git. Take that pretty girl you got there and go love on her. Thomas has been keepin’ up the place on Kaua’i for you, yeah?”
I nod—I guess he does know I own it. Which doesn’t surprise me all that much, really. “Yeah. That’s where we’re going next.”
He nods. “Good. Glad it’s being taken care of.” He eyes me. “When he’s gone…I’d like to put him to rest out there. Next to my ma, and my Connie, God rest her.”
Connie—my aunt, his wife, who was killed in a car accident when the boys were little.
I nod. “Sure. Course. He should rest with family.”
“God willin’, it’ll be a while, yet.”
I palm the back of my neck. “I’m not sure what I was expecting from you, Uncle Joey, but I gotta say you’ve kinda surprised me.”
He rasps a hoarse chuckle. “I’m not all bad.” His eyes go haunted. “And…watchin’ Eddie has…” He shakes his head, pulls the unlit cigarette from his mouth and toys with it, staring at it rather than meeting my eyes. “And knowing that he got you on that poison?” Another shake of his head. “Coulda killed him, and I did whup him, after you disappeared. Thought for sure you was dead.”
