Chapter 2

“Good then. Just don’t be surprised when I check on you out at your uncle’s place. There’s a den of bears causing havoc out there. Plus, the coyotes are heavy this year. It can be a dangerous place for a city boy like you.”

“It’s good to know you’re protecting and serving, Officer Rexington.”

“Just doing my job.”

A black radio on his left shoulder chirped and beeped. “Duty calls, Dalton. You be careful out there at the lake and mind the speeding on our roads. We don’t take kindly to city slickers driving crazy in these parts.” He tipped his head in a simple goodbye and walked away.

“Yes, sir, Officer.”

I watched him in the review mirror as he walked back to his white-and-blue cruiser behind me. His ass clenched in the navy pants, bulbous and very much like a shelf. Probably one of the hottest bottoms I had seen in years.

I listened to him speak into his small radio, connecting to his Channing base and being the cop he probably enjoyed being.

* * * *

I drove through a set of deep woods, down into a valley, up a few hills, and cradled Lake Erie to my left. My uncle’s cabin sat approximately five miles away from civilization, except for one neighbor to the west of the residence. Snow and thin February ice covered the dirt road. It had been a hard winter, and the trees looked freezing cold, barren of life, useless to the world in producing oxygen to breathe. Wind kicked up, blowing funnels of snow around me as the Mazda traveled the remaining mile to the cabin. Ghostly howling circled the Mazda, welcoming me away from the city and into its winter grip.

The five-room cabin (living room, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms) stood exactly where I remembered it. My last visit to see Uncle Michael had been during middle school. Pine trees circled the log structure’s wide front. The blue-green, tempestuous lake provided a picturesque backdrop. The hard-packed dirt driveway led up to the cabin’s front stoop, and two windows looked out at me from the one-story building, questioning my arrival. The cabin appeared as barren as its surrounding trees. There were no garden gnomes decorating the sleeping gardens. No tire swing to the right of the property, ready for use. I didn’t see logs used as seats positioned around the empty fire pit. The cabin and its property seemed as if it had died along with my uncle, leaving a wasteland behind, instead of good memories.

A firm cold swept along the back of my neck as I walked from the parked Mazda to the cabin’s front door.

Mother had made me a key to the place, bitching at me, “You’re to go up there and get the job done. Then you come home. I don’t want you to create a wreck of things while you’re there. Make a swift and productive visit, Dalton. Do you understand me?”

I understood many things about Cecile Brewer-Prie, finding her pushy, opinionated, direct, and annoying most of the time. Nothing remotely kind had exited her mouth that I could remember. My father left her twenty years ago and lived on the West Coast with a family of Mormons, somewhere in the hills of Los Angeles. She had behaved badly with him, treating him more like a child than a man, and scared him away.

As for my three older sisters (Denice, Deidra, and Darby), they wanted nothing to do with our mother. They stayed clear of her, objecting to any type of “normal” relationship with the sixty-five-year-old woman for fear of Cecile doing damage in their lives by prying, asking too many questions, and judging their ways of life. She dismissed her daughters as sinful and unsatisfactory women.

I must admit, it made me cumbersomely sad to know I, alone, tolerated Mother. Youngest children sometimes get the brunt of things, I guessed. Plus, my gender, the only boy of four children, had something to do with the fact that Mother relied on me as her familial confidant. Being gay only enhanced my position as her emotional caregiver, stereotypically speaking and thinking, of course.

Bottom line: I became stuckwith Cecile, her best friend since no one in my family wanted anything to do with her. More bottom line: sometimes you get to do the fucking, and sometimes you get fucked.

Unfortunately, I became the winner of my latter statement. Damn.

Mother’s relationship with her older brother, Michael Brewer, hadn’t been healthy by any means. They’d fought regularly about politics, the weather, sporting events, religion, their parents when they were alive, Michael’s novels—Mother called them irritating and pieces of drivel—and just about everything two people could discuss.

Although they’d been close as children, I couldn’t recall a single day in my entire life when Michael and Cecile ever got along. Never. Cecile admitted to me once, some few years ago, that she loathed Michael, calling him insatiable, a hooligan, and strung out on marijuana.