Exeunt
Title: Exeunt
Author: JoJo (solosundance aka innocentculprit)
Characters: John, Sam, Dean, OMC
Genre: Gen, pre-Stanford
Rating: Teen
Wordcount: 3,028
Summary: A lonely old man watches Sam Winchester leave his family
“Hot enough for you?”
It was a dumb, jackass question. Just came right out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Someone was sitting on the front steps to my left, pulling on a bottle of beer. It was my left-hand neighbor, name of John Winchester. He lowered the bottle to his knee when I spoke.
Heck, it was meant to be kind of jokey, handing an easy invite into conversation for a man who, in my experience, didn’t talk much.
“Tell you,” I went on, because maybe he needed just that bit extra encouragement, “I’m melting here. Thermostat’s bust. And no hope of air-con in these shitty rat-traps. Old lady Morrison keeled over and died of it Tuesday, you hear that?”
“Hey Larry,” was all he said and wiped a hand over his face. Down over his rough beard.
Well, I carried on. Still couldn’t seem to help myself, even all these years after Iris walked out on me because she couldn’t stand a man who never stopped jawing. “They say it’s broke all records. I don’t know. Guess I must be used to it. Bin here twenty-five years and I don’t know what records they’re even talking about. I mean, who needs records anyhow? It’s just hot and no point even saying it’s too hot to stand because what all other choice is there, know what I mean?”
“Long time in one place,” Winchester commented, not much interested, just borderline polite.
“Yep, long time in one shitty rat-trap.” Guess that was all the invitation I needed. I came right out of my door, moving a bag of trash with one foot, dared a more personal question. “Both the boys out, huh?”
Winchester nodded, tipping up the bottle again, swallowing loudly.
So, he didn’t want to talk. He was happy being alone, should have known by now. I looked up at the sky, thick and heavy with night-time clouds, trapping in the heat, pressing down on our heads. Layers of sound drifted up the street, a background hum of noise from the interstate that flew over the neighborhood, some sirens wailing behind the hum. Then I looked at my neighbor, who in these times of trouble I thought I really ought to know, but whose every muscle and sinew was signaling desire to be left the fuck alone.
Not that he was much of a neighbor.
They’d been in the house next door just about six months, him and his two sons, having come from who knew where. Seemed to me that they found the rat-traps some kind of luxury pad. Didn’t introduce themselves, left me to do that. Would nod or say hello but never stopped to talk except maybe one time when we was all outside in the dead of night and the fire trucks were hosing down the laundromat on the corner that went up in flames. They’d seemed right at home with the dark and the burning smell. Most relaxed I ever saw them. Stood there in a tight little knot with their arms folded and the light of the fire on their faces. Never let on to me what their business was, although they were in and out at all hours of the day and night sometimes, or away altogether, or just inside, the three of them. It was something you maybe wouldn’t want the neighbors to know. I guess I got that.
“Specting’em home late?” I tried. “Those boys?”
Winchester drained his bottle, set it down like a little soldier in a line with about six others outside his door. He levered himself to standing, apparently thinking carefully before making a response. Eventually he just turned a half-smile in my direction, raised one hand and said, “’Night, Larry,” before turning and disappearing up the steps and through the door. The screen slapped shut.
Well, I wasn’t really surprised, but disappointed as usual. Seeing there was not much else to do different, I took a turn along the street, deposited my bag of trash in the garbage can on the corner next to the burned-out laundromat, and then walked back. There was one light on in their front room, the sound of the TV drifting through net curtains. I did what I do most evenings in this heat. Fetched a soda and my cigarettes and came and sat on my chair on the porch, pushed back into the shadows so I can see without being seen. You get some choice characters wandering up and down round here sometimes and I don’t want to be noticed by any of them.
Half a can of soda in, and a car came ambling up the street. A taxi-cab, old-style Ford Taurus. It stopped two doors down and a tall figure got out the back, leaned in the driver’s window for a second and then stood up, looking towards the lit window and the net curtains. He let the car drive away and still stood there, apparently frozen to the spot.
It was the younger Winchester boy, name of Sam. Probably the quietest of the three of them, a dark, floppy-haired kid. I didn’t know for sure, but I had him down as a good student. They all three of them got a book thing going, but I saw this kid scribbling once or twice out here on the steps, a pile of foolscap on his knees. He had those kind of restless eyes too. Learning eyes, you know? Knowing eyes. When he started to walk towards the house and his face was momentarily illuminated by a streetlight, I could see he wasn’t one bit glad to be home.
Didn’t blame him. Never felt like running right in myself - shitty rat-traps, too dark and broken-down. Too full of memories.
Up the steps he went, not noticing me.
So now, I sit out here a lot. If they see me, Sam and his father always do the same thing, a kind of tight nod. The other brother might say something, like “How you doing, Larry?” as he strides up the steps but I never think he wants an answer. Tonight Sam’s eyes didn’t stray from the door he was approaching. He came up his steps carefully and deliberately, hesitated a heartbeat with his hand raised to the screen, then pulled it open. Once again the screen door slapped shut.
I finished my soda and lit up another smoke. All was quiet for about ten minutes. Then came the sound of raised voices. There are these poky little alleys running between all the houses here but we’re pretty much all squished together and if there’s any yelling going on you can generally hear it loud and clear. The Winchesters I’d describe as quiet. They talked a lot but I never heard what they said. They didn’t play music, they didn’t have visitors, and they kept the TV on low. All I could really tell now was that John and Sam were being combative. Sam’s voice sounded the louder, which surprised me. After a while it went quiet again. There was the sound of pots clanking. Water flushing. More voices, restrained this time.
Time to make my exit and go sweat in my box all night.
As I was just inside my own hallway the screen crashed open next door. Sam Winchester came striding out on to the porch. His head swung my way just enough to make me stay where I was, one hand holding my screen to stop it slapping shut. Shit but I didn’t want him to see me. Specially when his father’s voice followed him out, yelling from just inside their door.
“I’m warning you, Sam!”
Sam threw a big duffle and a bag of books down the steps on to the sidewalk with a thump and swung back to face the house. I only needed to crick my neck a little to see John coming outside. He looked my way too and I just froze, shrank myself back in the shadows, willing them to hide me, keep hiding me.
“You’re what?” Sam said. He was standing with his hands on his hips, looking like he didn’t know how he’d ever come to be in this position. There was a creak of the screen being pushed slowly.
“This ends here, Sammy.”
“It’s Sam,” Sam said. He was a kid and a grown man both at once and I could tell that he didn’t know which one to go with.
“Why don’t you come back in, ‘stead of walking out while I’m talking to you?”
Sam’s head wagged from side to side. “I’ve got nothing more to say, Dad, you’ve seen the letter. It’s a done deal.”
“So the hell with us, huh?”
“No, Dad, we’ve been through this already... for Christ’s sake ...”
“This is just about you, right?”
“Dad, you’ve got Dean. He gets it, what we do. I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it.”
John exploded into laughter. Boy but I didn’t like the sound of that, and I didn’t like what he said next. Filled me with all kinds of foreboding, made me wonder all about that trunk full of weird shit I’d glimpsed once.
“You don’t escape it by going to college, Sammy! It’s all still out there. All you do is leave us light.”
“It’s Sam.”
“Fuck that!”
“Just calm down, Dad.”
Yeah, that was what I wanted. Both of them to calm down and go back in the house, carry on bitching about their big deal inside. I could tell it was a big deal, too. I dropped out of school when I was sixteen and my dad never got over it. This seemed kind of the opposite though.
Sam swung his head away from the house for a second, attention caught by another car approaching up the street at unseemly speed. Jesus, now I was surrounded. That was the other Winchester boy coming, the older one, in his noisy, Batman car. The boy that gave me goddamn palpitations every time I glimpsed the pistol stuffed in the waist of his jeans.
John, right out on the porch now, gesticulated at the car. It practically shifted on the spot as the driver got out and slammed the door. “So I guess Dean knows all about this shit, does he?”
Sam’s voice notched down, came out dry. “Nope.”
“Knows all about what shit?” Dean asked as he came loping up from the sidewalk. He was a big enough guy too, but a shortstop compared to Sam. Hair clipped to his skull, almost a buzzcut. Scruffy. And not a student. Definitely not that.
“Your brother says he’s leaving.”
“The hell he... ” began Dean, and then held John’s eyes for a second before turning them slowly on to Sam.
John made a slight gesture. He reminded me of my own father then - conducting me and my brother George through arguments like we was instruments in his own little orchestra. “Tell him then, Sam. Tell Dean what’s going down.”
“Sam?”
“I’m going to Stanford, Dean. I’m taking up the place.”
There was pride and fear in spades in that statement. There was also a hanging silence. John still looked like he was ready to throw something. Sam had his shoulders squared, his chin up, like nothing was going to stand in his way. He already had his eyes on the big prize and who was I to say he didn’t damn well deserve it.
“The hell you are,” said Dean, a half-laugh of defeat in his voice.
“I’m leaving tonight.”
Seemed hard to fathom, but I figured Dean really hadn’t known what was coming. I figured the brotherly chat about this just never happened. There’d been no whispering the whole thing out like George and me had done before I went in and told Dad I was going to get a job.
Sure, I’d seen them shoulder to shoulder on the steps with a beer before - last time about a week ago - and they hadn’t talked much, just seemed content to sit there together. But something about the way they sat, the lack of space between them... I’d have laid a wager that any big shit would have been a shared big shit.
Seemed I was wrong.
Dean looked like he’d just taken a kick to the belly. He stood where he was, in between his dad and his brother, and he looked like he was going to throw up right there on the sidewalk.
John seemed to set his face a certain way, like he’d decided. He held up his hands. “All right then, but it’s going to go down like this - if you’re going, you can just stay gone. You hear me?”
Dean stared at his father like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Couldn’t process it. Sam was a bit thrown by that, too. His face worked. He clenched his big fists down by his thighs. John’s eyes were gleaming in the dark like a big tiger’s.
“Fine,” Sam said eventually.
“Come on now, Sam,” Dean said, his voice a little hitched, a little desperate. “Don’t be like that. Dad doesn’t mean...”
“Butt out of this, Dean!” The Tiger snapped at him. “This is not your fight. Your brother’s getting at me, not at you.”
“What does that ever mean?” Sam choked out, “I’m not getting at anybody, Dad! I’m taking up a college place and they’ve given it me because I’m good. I’m smart. And this is what I do.”
“Go do it then, I don’t give a fuck,” John said, and turned inside, slamming shut the screen door so it shuddered on its rusty hinges.
“Me either!” Sam shouted after him.
“Sam...” Dean said, like he had a headache coming on.
“You heard Dad,” Sam said to him, and so dismissively that I winced. “Butt out. Not your fight.”
“Sam, come on, don’t do this. Talk to me.”
Sam had picked up his duffle and the bag of books. He held out a hand to ward his brother off and despite the toughness of his stance, his voice, reckon I could see the gleam of a different kind of emotion in his eyes. On that was rocking him where he stood. “I gotta go, Dean. I gotta get away from... this. Here’s my chance, right here. No way I’m not going, man.”
Dean’s head dropped and stayed dropped as Sam passed him on the steps. Dean didn’t move, just let Sam’s shoulder bump him to get by. Yet another car was trundling up the street and this one was another taxi cab. Junior didn’t give a backward glance, emotion or no emotion. Just walked out strong towards the cab and when it stopped for him, he opened the back door and slunk in.
Dean remained where he was on the steps, head bowed, and didn’t even look up as the taxi did a big circle in the road and accelerated away.
I shifted my weight just a tad because I couldn’t hold the frozen position anymore. Tried to move backwards, let my door go as quietly as possible. But before I could move at all, John came stomping out his front door again, still in shirtsleeves, a jacket slung over one arm.
“Dad ... “ Dean said in a scratchy voice, but there wasn’t going to be any more conversation.
“We have to leave early in the morning.” John was clipped, brooking no dissent. “Make sure you’re ready to go at five.”
“Yessir,” Dean mumbled. He sounded like the words were killing him but there was no way he couldn’t say them, a well-trained grunt responding to an order he didn’t understand. I kind of felt the blood run cold across my back to hear it.
John pattered down the steps and turned up the street in the opposite direction to the one the cab had just left. Dean stood looking after him, quite on his own.
Couldn’t read his face, not really. Just knew that whatever he felt about all this, it was agony.
Shit, I’ve been a father, a son. A brother.
“Hey, Dean,” I said, and let go my screen door with a clear slap.
His head turned and his eyes focused on me straight away. Straight away he knew I’d been there all along. He knew I’d heard. He knew why I’d stayed. He knew it all.
“Larry,” he said. “It’s hot.”
“Hot as hell,” I agreed.
“You doing OK? I heard about old lady Morrison.” His voice was a little uneven, but he was looking me right in the eye. “You need anything?”
“No, no thank you, son. Good of you to ask.”
He seemed embarrassed by the thanks. I held out my pack of cigarettes, shook a couple out, and he walked over, up my steps and took one. I found him a light and he stood there looking up at the sky as he smoked it. After a long time he said, “Sam’s pretty smart.”
“Smart as paint looks like,” I said. “Smart enough to come back.”
Dean slung me a rueful half-smile, not believing that, and knowing I didn’t entirely believe it either. He backed off down the steps, dropped his cigarette end and twisted the toe of his boot around and around on it.
“Well I gotta go,” he said. “Early start.”
“You just take it easy,” I told him, thinking of his pistol, his brother’s eyes, the trunk full of junk.
“You too, Larry.” He dug his hands in his pockets, stumped up his own steps. Just before he went inside he looked over his shoulder, nodded at me. “I’m sorry.”
Lord save us, the boy would have made a home here, if he’d been able, I was sure of it. Shitty rat-trap or not.
The screen door clicked shut and that was that.
That hot summer would carry on breaking records. I knew I wouldn’t see Dean, his brother or his father again, would have put money on it. Maybe that’s what the boy was sorry about.
So yeah. I’m not one for truisms but I know this much.
Everybody leaves.
-ends -
Author: JoJo (solosundance aka innocentculprit)
Characters: John, Sam, Dean, OMC
Genre: Gen, pre-Stanford
Rating: Teen
Wordcount: 3,028
Summary: A lonely old man watches Sam Winchester leave his family
“Hot enough for you?”
It was a dumb, jackass question. Just came right out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Someone was sitting on the front steps to my left, pulling on a bottle of beer. It was my left-hand neighbor, name of John Winchester. He lowered the bottle to his knee when I spoke.
Heck, it was meant to be kind of jokey, handing an easy invite into conversation for a man who, in my experience, didn’t talk much.
“Tell you,” I went on, because maybe he needed just that bit extra encouragement, “I’m melting here. Thermostat’s bust. And no hope of air-con in these shitty rat-traps. Old lady Morrison keeled over and died of it Tuesday, you hear that?”
“Hey Larry,” was all he said and wiped a hand over his face. Down over his rough beard.
Well, I carried on. Still couldn’t seem to help myself, even all these years after Iris walked out on me because she couldn’t stand a man who never stopped jawing. “They say it’s broke all records. I don’t know. Guess I must be used to it. Bin here twenty-five years and I don’t know what records they’re even talking about. I mean, who needs records anyhow? It’s just hot and no point even saying it’s too hot to stand because what all other choice is there, know what I mean?”
“Long time in one place,” Winchester commented, not much interested, just borderline polite.
“Yep, long time in one shitty rat-trap.” Guess that was all the invitation I needed. I came right out of my door, moving a bag of trash with one foot, dared a more personal question. “Both the boys out, huh?”
Winchester nodded, tipping up the bottle again, swallowing loudly.
So, he didn’t want to talk. He was happy being alone, should have known by now. I looked up at the sky, thick and heavy with night-time clouds, trapping in the heat, pressing down on our heads. Layers of sound drifted up the street, a background hum of noise from the interstate that flew over the neighborhood, some sirens wailing behind the hum. Then I looked at my neighbor, who in these times of trouble I thought I really ought to know, but whose every muscle and sinew was signaling desire to be left the fuck alone.
Not that he was much of a neighbor.
They’d been in the house next door just about six months, him and his two sons, having come from who knew where. Seemed to me that they found the rat-traps some kind of luxury pad. Didn’t introduce themselves, left me to do that. Would nod or say hello but never stopped to talk except maybe one time when we was all outside in the dead of night and the fire trucks were hosing down the laundromat on the corner that went up in flames. They’d seemed right at home with the dark and the burning smell. Most relaxed I ever saw them. Stood there in a tight little knot with their arms folded and the light of the fire on their faces. Never let on to me what their business was, although they were in and out at all hours of the day and night sometimes, or away altogether, or just inside, the three of them. It was something you maybe wouldn’t want the neighbors to know. I guess I got that.
“Specting’em home late?” I tried. “Those boys?”
Winchester drained his bottle, set it down like a little soldier in a line with about six others outside his door. He levered himself to standing, apparently thinking carefully before making a response. Eventually he just turned a half-smile in my direction, raised one hand and said, “’Night, Larry,” before turning and disappearing up the steps and through the door. The screen slapped shut.
Well, I wasn’t really surprised, but disappointed as usual. Seeing there was not much else to do different, I took a turn along the street, deposited my bag of trash in the garbage can on the corner next to the burned-out laundromat, and then walked back. There was one light on in their front room, the sound of the TV drifting through net curtains. I did what I do most evenings in this heat. Fetched a soda and my cigarettes and came and sat on my chair on the porch, pushed back into the shadows so I can see without being seen. You get some choice characters wandering up and down round here sometimes and I don’t want to be noticed by any of them.
Half a can of soda in, and a car came ambling up the street. A taxi-cab, old-style Ford Taurus. It stopped two doors down and a tall figure got out the back, leaned in the driver’s window for a second and then stood up, looking towards the lit window and the net curtains. He let the car drive away and still stood there, apparently frozen to the spot.
It was the younger Winchester boy, name of Sam. Probably the quietest of the three of them, a dark, floppy-haired kid. I didn’t know for sure, but I had him down as a good student. They all three of them got a book thing going, but I saw this kid scribbling once or twice out here on the steps, a pile of foolscap on his knees. He had those kind of restless eyes too. Learning eyes, you know? Knowing eyes. When he started to walk towards the house and his face was momentarily illuminated by a streetlight, I could see he wasn’t one bit glad to be home.
Didn’t blame him. Never felt like running right in myself - shitty rat-traps, too dark and broken-down. Too full of memories.
Up the steps he went, not noticing me.
So now, I sit out here a lot. If they see me, Sam and his father always do the same thing, a kind of tight nod. The other brother might say something, like “How you doing, Larry?” as he strides up the steps but I never think he wants an answer. Tonight Sam’s eyes didn’t stray from the door he was approaching. He came up his steps carefully and deliberately, hesitated a heartbeat with his hand raised to the screen, then pulled it open. Once again the screen door slapped shut.
I finished my soda and lit up another smoke. All was quiet for about ten minutes. Then came the sound of raised voices. There are these poky little alleys running between all the houses here but we’re pretty much all squished together and if there’s any yelling going on you can generally hear it loud and clear. The Winchesters I’d describe as quiet. They talked a lot but I never heard what they said. They didn’t play music, they didn’t have visitors, and they kept the TV on low. All I could really tell now was that John and Sam were being combative. Sam’s voice sounded the louder, which surprised me. After a while it went quiet again. There was the sound of pots clanking. Water flushing. More voices, restrained this time.
Time to make my exit and go sweat in my box all night.
As I was just inside my own hallway the screen crashed open next door. Sam Winchester came striding out on to the porch. His head swung my way just enough to make me stay where I was, one hand holding my screen to stop it slapping shut. Shit but I didn’t want him to see me. Specially when his father’s voice followed him out, yelling from just inside their door.
“I’m warning you, Sam!”
Sam threw a big duffle and a bag of books down the steps on to the sidewalk with a thump and swung back to face the house. I only needed to crick my neck a little to see John coming outside. He looked my way too and I just froze, shrank myself back in the shadows, willing them to hide me, keep hiding me.
“You’re what?” Sam said. He was standing with his hands on his hips, looking like he didn’t know how he’d ever come to be in this position. There was a creak of the screen being pushed slowly.
“This ends here, Sammy.”
“It’s Sam,” Sam said. He was a kid and a grown man both at once and I could tell that he didn’t know which one to go with.
“Why don’t you come back in, ‘stead of walking out while I’m talking to you?”
Sam’s head wagged from side to side. “I’ve got nothing more to say, Dad, you’ve seen the letter. It’s a done deal.”
“So the hell with us, huh?”
“No, Dad, we’ve been through this already... for Christ’s sake ...”
“This is just about you, right?”
“Dad, you’ve got Dean. He gets it, what we do. I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it.”
John exploded into laughter. Boy but I didn’t like the sound of that, and I didn’t like what he said next. Filled me with all kinds of foreboding, made me wonder all about that trunk full of weird shit I’d glimpsed once.
“You don’t escape it by going to college, Sammy! It’s all still out there. All you do is leave us light.”
“It’s Sam.”
“Fuck that!”
“Just calm down, Dad.”
Yeah, that was what I wanted. Both of them to calm down and go back in the house, carry on bitching about their big deal inside. I could tell it was a big deal, too. I dropped out of school when I was sixteen and my dad never got over it. This seemed kind of the opposite though.
Sam swung his head away from the house for a second, attention caught by another car approaching up the street at unseemly speed. Jesus, now I was surrounded. That was the other Winchester boy coming, the older one, in his noisy, Batman car. The boy that gave me goddamn palpitations every time I glimpsed the pistol stuffed in the waist of his jeans.
John, right out on the porch now, gesticulated at the car. It practically shifted on the spot as the driver got out and slammed the door. “So I guess Dean knows all about this shit, does he?”
Sam’s voice notched down, came out dry. “Nope.”
“Knows all about what shit?” Dean asked as he came loping up from the sidewalk. He was a big enough guy too, but a shortstop compared to Sam. Hair clipped to his skull, almost a buzzcut. Scruffy. And not a student. Definitely not that.
“Your brother says he’s leaving.”
“The hell he... ” began Dean, and then held John’s eyes for a second before turning them slowly on to Sam.
John made a slight gesture. He reminded me of my own father then - conducting me and my brother George through arguments like we was instruments in his own little orchestra. “Tell him then, Sam. Tell Dean what’s going down.”
“Sam?”
“I’m going to Stanford, Dean. I’m taking up the place.”
There was pride and fear in spades in that statement. There was also a hanging silence. John still looked like he was ready to throw something. Sam had his shoulders squared, his chin up, like nothing was going to stand in his way. He already had his eyes on the big prize and who was I to say he didn’t damn well deserve it.
“The hell you are,” said Dean, a half-laugh of defeat in his voice.
“I’m leaving tonight.”
Seemed hard to fathom, but I figured Dean really hadn’t known what was coming. I figured the brotherly chat about this just never happened. There’d been no whispering the whole thing out like George and me had done before I went in and told Dad I was going to get a job.
Sure, I’d seen them shoulder to shoulder on the steps with a beer before - last time about a week ago - and they hadn’t talked much, just seemed content to sit there together. But something about the way they sat, the lack of space between them... I’d have laid a wager that any big shit would have been a shared big shit.
Seemed I was wrong.
Dean looked like he’d just taken a kick to the belly. He stood where he was, in between his dad and his brother, and he looked like he was going to throw up right there on the sidewalk.
John seemed to set his face a certain way, like he’d decided. He held up his hands. “All right then, but it’s going to go down like this - if you’re going, you can just stay gone. You hear me?”
Dean stared at his father like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Couldn’t process it. Sam was a bit thrown by that, too. His face worked. He clenched his big fists down by his thighs. John’s eyes were gleaming in the dark like a big tiger’s.
“Fine,” Sam said eventually.
“Come on now, Sam,” Dean said, his voice a little hitched, a little desperate. “Don’t be like that. Dad doesn’t mean...”
“Butt out of this, Dean!” The Tiger snapped at him. “This is not your fight. Your brother’s getting at me, not at you.”
“What does that ever mean?” Sam choked out, “I’m not getting at anybody, Dad! I’m taking up a college place and they’ve given it me because I’m good. I’m smart. And this is what I do.”
“Go do it then, I don’t give a fuck,” John said, and turned inside, slamming shut the screen door so it shuddered on its rusty hinges.
“Me either!” Sam shouted after him.
“Sam...” Dean said, like he had a headache coming on.
“You heard Dad,” Sam said to him, and so dismissively that I winced. “Butt out. Not your fight.”
“Sam, come on, don’t do this. Talk to me.”
Sam had picked up his duffle and the bag of books. He held out a hand to ward his brother off and despite the toughness of his stance, his voice, reckon I could see the gleam of a different kind of emotion in his eyes. On that was rocking him where he stood. “I gotta go, Dean. I gotta get away from... this. Here’s my chance, right here. No way I’m not going, man.”
Dean’s head dropped and stayed dropped as Sam passed him on the steps. Dean didn’t move, just let Sam’s shoulder bump him to get by. Yet another car was trundling up the street and this one was another taxi cab. Junior didn’t give a backward glance, emotion or no emotion. Just walked out strong towards the cab and when it stopped for him, he opened the back door and slunk in.
Dean remained where he was on the steps, head bowed, and didn’t even look up as the taxi did a big circle in the road and accelerated away.
I shifted my weight just a tad because I couldn’t hold the frozen position anymore. Tried to move backwards, let my door go as quietly as possible. But before I could move at all, John came stomping out his front door again, still in shirtsleeves, a jacket slung over one arm.
“Dad ... “ Dean said in a scratchy voice, but there wasn’t going to be any more conversation.
“We have to leave early in the morning.” John was clipped, brooking no dissent. “Make sure you’re ready to go at five.”
“Yessir,” Dean mumbled. He sounded like the words were killing him but there was no way he couldn’t say them, a well-trained grunt responding to an order he didn’t understand. I kind of felt the blood run cold across my back to hear it.
John pattered down the steps and turned up the street in the opposite direction to the one the cab had just left. Dean stood looking after him, quite on his own.
Couldn’t read his face, not really. Just knew that whatever he felt about all this, it was agony.
Shit, I’ve been a father, a son. A brother.
“Hey, Dean,” I said, and let go my screen door with a clear slap.
His head turned and his eyes focused on me straight away. Straight away he knew I’d been there all along. He knew I’d heard. He knew why I’d stayed. He knew it all.
“Larry,” he said. “It’s hot.”
“Hot as hell,” I agreed.
“You doing OK? I heard about old lady Morrison.” His voice was a little uneven, but he was looking me right in the eye. “You need anything?”
“No, no thank you, son. Good of you to ask.”
He seemed embarrassed by the thanks. I held out my pack of cigarettes, shook a couple out, and he walked over, up my steps and took one. I found him a light and he stood there looking up at the sky as he smoked it. After a long time he said, “Sam’s pretty smart.”
“Smart as paint looks like,” I said. “Smart enough to come back.”
Dean slung me a rueful half-smile, not believing that, and knowing I didn’t entirely believe it either. He backed off down the steps, dropped his cigarette end and twisted the toe of his boot around and around on it.
“Well I gotta go,” he said. “Early start.”
“You just take it easy,” I told him, thinking of his pistol, his brother’s eyes, the trunk full of junk.
“You too, Larry.” He dug his hands in his pockets, stumped up his own steps. Just before he went inside he looked over his shoulder, nodded at me. “I’m sorry.”
Lord save us, the boy would have made a home here, if he’d been able, I was sure of it. Shitty rat-trap or not.
The screen door clicked shut and that was that.
That hot summer would carry on breaking records. I knew I wouldn’t see Dean, his brother or his father again, would have put money on it. Maybe that’s what the boy was sorry about.
So yeah. I’m not one for truisms but I know this much.
Everybody leaves.
-ends -