raised by wolves

Now, I think, is a good time to tell you a little bit about my past.

My earliest memory is of looking up from a small bed, bundled up in foul smelling blankets at a man with a bald head and thin silver spectacles. This was the priest at a church-run orphanage far away on the outskirts of town. That is where I was raised. I tried my best to do good by the priest and the nuns who brought me up, but it always seemed as though the path of sin was one I was predisposed to. The priest would beat me frequently for my transgressions. He would tell me that it was in my blood to do wrong, that nothing more could be expected from the abandoned son of a whore.

When my growth spurt hit, the priest realized he would not be able to control me with beatings any more and turned me out into the world to make my way on my own. I’d like to think that I figured things out pretty quickly. A lot of it was because I was lucky enough to have met The Boss. He found me one December night, cold, thin, hungry, robbing a sandwich cart. He took me in and let me run errands for him. A few years later I started doing proper work for him. A few years later, well…Here we are.

I never knew my parents, and I never much cared to. And now, this woman is telling me she’s my mother, and my head is spinning. It feels like someone has stabbed me in the heart with a giant corkscrew and just keeps twisting. My mouth goes dry. My ears start to ring.

“Nice try, lady. Now give me one good reason not to shoot you for trespassing.”

I draw the hammer back on the gun and the woman yelps.

“Arthur, no! Please, you’ve got to believe me! Please! Here, look!” she motions frantically towards the shattered picture frame on the floor. “The picture, please, Arthur, look at it.”

Her eyes are wide and scared and bloodshot and desperate. I look at the picture frame, then back at those bloodshot gray eyes. I tell her to pick it up. Slowly.

“And stop calling me Arthur. My name is Legs.”

She swallows hard and bends down, very, very slowly to pick up the picture frame. She plucks the photo out of the shattered glass. Very, very slowly, she puts her hand out to me with the photo between her first two fingers. I take it and move back. I keep my gun trained on her. I look at the photo.

In it is a young couple, a man and a woman. The woman is holding an ugly baby. The man has slicked-back, greasy looking black hair. The woman is wearing big dark sunglasses and a scarf around her head. The baby is drooling like an imbecile.

It’s her. The woman in the photo is the woman behind the desk, but I would guess roughly twenty five years ago. The man is The Boss. The baby is me.

I drop the photo.

“You see?” the woman whimpers. “Oh, Arthur, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry. I know you can’t forgive me…I don’t expect you to. What I’ve done is terrible, what has happened to you is terrible…Oh, Arthur, I know you won’t ever forgive me, but you’ve got to let me try!”

I really might throw up. The coffee isn’t sitting well.

“Shut up,” I say. It’s not a request. “If you open your mouth again without me telling you to, I’m going to shoot you. Do you understand?”

Her lips tremble. She covers her mouth with her hand and nods. I bend down and pick up the photo. I sit down across from her at the desk. I force myself to look at the photo again. It could be a fake. That drooling baby could be anyone. But I know. The way when you hear a bell ring, like a big church bell, loud and strong and solid and beautiful and true, the way you can feel it like a physical force, like a wave washing over you at the beach. I know it’s real. I know it’s me and The Boss and this woman who claims she’s my mother. But I can’t be certain.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her finally. “Keep it short,” I add. I crumple the photo up and put it in my jacket’s inside pocket. I lift the gun up, reminding her I’ve got it pointed at her when she hesitates before answering. “Today,” I tell her. She swallows hard.

“I…I don’t know what I’m doing here. I came to find you, I suppose. I don’t know why I thought you’d be here. Woman’s intuition, I guess.”

She’s lying.

“How did you know where my key was?” I ask and all the color goes out of her again. She’s thinking.

“I—I’ve been watching you. Since the funeral. I saw you at the funeral and I saw you talking to that dog, Lusky, and I knew something was wrong. I followed you. I saw you reach up and grab the key one night and then I came here tonight. I used one of the trash cans around the back to reach it. I’m sorry. It’s there, on the desk,” she says and points. There’s my key on the corner of the desk. I reach over and put it in my pocket, then sit back in the chair, which creaks unabashedly under my weight.

My head is starting to clear.

“Nice try,” I tell her. “Lying to me is not a good way to keep yourself from getting shot. I haven’t been here since the night The Boss got shot. You didn’t follow me anywhere after the funeral. If you’ve been watching me, it’s since before The Boss got shot. So, how long?”

It’s a lovely feeling, making someone’s lie come falling down all around them. She looks like she’s trapped behind a crumbling dam.

“Arthur, please, I just—” she starts.

“Stop calling me Arthur,” I interrupt. “You don’t know me. You don’t get to say my name like it doesn’t matter. Now how long?”

She swallows hard and says: “Not long. Two weeks, maybe.”

“What are you actually doing here?”

She hesitates. The wheels are spinning.

“The truth,” I tell her. “Or I shoot you. I ain’t had a mother in twenty five years. You’re just more mess to clean up to me, no matter who you claim to be.”

“I know about the deal you made with Lusky, and I know about the deal Lusky made with Cosmo. I came to tell you that you’re walking into a trap. The deal isn’t like Lusky said. And I know you have problems with things like reading, especially legal documents, so I know you never would have found it on your own. The deal’s bad. There are bi-lines and sub-clauses. By declaring yourself the next of kin under the false name Lusky got you, you’re also signing a waiver stating that if anything should happen to you, Lusky is named as the sole benefactor. He gets you to sign the papers, then he snuffs you and takes over. You’re going to be signing over everything Cosmo worked for for the last three decades if you go to that office tomorrow morning and sign those papers. I came to convince you not to do it, because you can do it without Lusky.”

I’m not quite sure what she means.

“You are the next of kin, Arthur. You’re Cosmo’s son. You’re my son. I have the DNA tests to prove it. You don’t need the fake papers Lusky gave you to claim the inheritance. All you need to do is show up.”

A chill runs up my spine. I have to remind myself to breathe. I look at this woman, claiming to be my mother. I’ve never had to deal with this kind of a situation before. I feel my head getting clouded.

On a small array of video screens, the closed-circuit surveillance system wired into The Boss’s office, I see movement. Two cars have just pulled up around the back. I remember that I left the back door wide open. I can’t believe how dumb I am.

I’m on my feet.

“Are they yours?” I ask the woman, gesturing at the small monitor with my gun. She whirls around and looks at the screen, then back at me and shakes her head. I nod.

“We should leave.”