WYATT – AGE NINE
“Nine points!” I yelled, lifting the board above my head.
“Nine!” She made a face as she came out of the water, as she grabbed a towel to dry her hair. “That was a prefect ten!”
“Noooooo.” I shook my head and pointed to the pool. “You were slow on the second turn. So nine points.”
“Me, slow?” She threw her towel back on her chair.
“Yes, you.” I nodded, standing tall.
We eyed each other down for a long time. And the moment I saw her mouth turn up, I made a run for it.
“No running, Mommy!” I laughed and yelled at her.
“If I make the rules,” her arms wrapped around me like an octopus as I tried to run, she started to tickle me, “I can break the rules!”
“Stop!” I giggled, trying to wiggle away, but she picked me up.
“I’ll give you a prefect ten!” She was holding me so tight, I could feel when she jumped.
“No—” I closed my eyes and my mouth. The water pulled us down, and when she let go, I opened my eyes under the water. Everything was blue. The bubbles in the water floated up, and I could see her look back at me. Her black hair floating behind her, she smiled at me, reaching over to me, but I swam away from her. Like she showed me, I cut through the water. I almost made to the other side, but my chest hurt, forcing me to swim up for air.
“Five points!”
“Huh?” I asked her, wiping my nose and eyes.
She didn’t look at me. She just floated on her back, looking up at the painted ceilings. “Five is half of ten. And you held your breath for half as long as you should have.”
I frowned. “I should get at least eight.”
“Why would you get an eight when you gave me a nine for swimming perfectly, but slow….in fact you deserve a two on that scale.” She made water angels with her arms.
“Mommy!”
She laughed at me, and because it was only us, her laugh echoed. I swam closer and copied her, floating on my back, too.
“Why do you like being in the water so much?” I asked her, looking at the painted sky.
“Hmm…,” she replied at first. “Because it can kill you.”
“What?” I moved too fast and started to sink. But I didn’t care. Standing up straight in the water, I looked at her again…and she was still floating. “You like being in the water because it kills you?”
“No. Not me. Nothing kills me, but me. I swim because water can kill other people.” She closed her eyes. “I remember my mother, grandmamma Aviela, and I were in an accident, and I got stuck in the ocean. For a little bit after that I was scared of the water. So my father, your grandpapa Orlando, would force me to swim.”
“That’s bad! Why do something that you don’t like?”
She made another face. “Do you think it’s bad that I made you learn how to swim, Wyatt?”
“No, but…” I frowned, not sure how to explain it. “But every kid needs to learn how to swim.”
“Why?”
“Cause then they don’t get hurt if they fall in the water. But if you knew how to swim already, why did grandpapa still make you?”
“Because not swimming out of fear is worse than not swimming at all,” she whispered gently to me. I had to swim a little to keep near her. “People fear things they can’t control.”
“You can’t control the water, Mommy.”
She frowned, her eyes finally opening, but she still didn’t look at me. “Wyatt, don’t think like normal people think. Normal people are mediocre. Think like me, like your father, like a Callahan. You never have to control water. Water, air, fire, dirt. It’s all irrelevant. None of those things care about you. They do not change course for you. Normal people try avoid or fight those things. But I know, and now you know, you are above the water, the air, the fire, and the dirt. The most important element is you. If someone dragged me to the bottom of this pool, would you be scared?”
“No.”
“Why?”
I didn’t need to think about it. It was an easy question. “Because you can hold your breath for a really, really, really long time! You’d get down there and punch ‘em for grabbing you, then swim right back.”
She smiled wide. “Exactly. Normal people would fight the water, try to fight to get back up…why? Because they are scared people. Scared they aren’t strong enough or smart enough to make it out alive. But me? I know no matter what, no matter where I am, I will survive that moment. I like swimming because it reminds me that I don’t fear what kills others, because I am not like any other. I rise and thrive in anything and everything. Does that answer your question?”
I nodded, and she grinned. “Good. Now first person to reach the bottom and come back up gets homemade strawberry vanilla ice cream.”
“ME!” I dunked into the water.
I swam and swam, deeper and deeper…toward the darkness at the bottom.
WYATT – NOW
“You totally cheated!” I yelled at the toothless seven year old in front of me. Well, she wasn’t toothless. She was only missing her two front teeth, but the gap was so big that when she smiled, as the little cheater was doing now, I could see inside her mouth, which pretty much made her toothless.
“I’m not a cheater!” She giggled, as did the other girls around her.
“Okay,” I raised my hand to pause their laugh fest. “There are four Draw Four cards in an Uno deck.” I lifted the card in the middle of the pile and held it up for them. “This is the sixth Draw Four you girls have put down against me. The math doesn’t add up. Someone is cheating.”
“OR…,” Little Miss Pigtails, who sat to the left of Little Miss Toothless, said loudly, rising to her feet to defend her friend, “that card got mixed in with the other Uno deck. Stuff happens!” She shrugged.
I narrowed my eyes at the lot of them, and they only laughed at me more. Miss Bossy Skirt, who sat on the right of Little Miss Toothless, got up as well, “I don’t wanna play with someone who thinks we’re cheaters.”
She crossed her arms at me, causing the other girls to get up too, in open rebellion, crossing their arms in unity. Can you believe this shit? Seven year olds, a whole gang of them, temperamental with me?
“You leave the game and you lose automatically. Making me the winner. And you a loser. Losers don’t get more sugar cookies. Sorry.” I said with a smile, crossing my arms and leaning back in my chair.
All the girls looked at her nervously. Miss Bossy Skirt pouted at me, her face getting all round. She looked like she was about to cry. Her bottom lip even quivered. And I knew then these little truants had done this to some other poor schmuck before.
Where did girls learn to do this?
“You’re mean,” Little Miss Freckles said with a pout, her voice the softest of the Little Miss collection.
I gasped and looked over my shoulder. Greyson was trying his best not to pay attention to any of us, out of fear of laughing. “Greyson, am I mean?”
“Most definitely,” he replied, nodding.
“See! Even your…what are you anyway?” Miss Toothless asked.
“Yeah, you’re kinda creeping me out here, dude.” Miss Pigtails agreed, tilting her head to the side, making her pigtails fall lopsided.
All of their attention focused in on him, and I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I laughed so hard tears pooled at the corner of my eyes.
“Ladies,” I finally regained composure. “While I’m sure something sketchy is up with this card game, I’m going to let it slide, because I haven’t laughed so well in a long time. Just don’t cheat again, hear me?”
“Fine.” Miss Freckles and Toothless replied in unison, to the dismay of their two other friends.
I snapped my fingers. “I knew it!”
“Not fair, you tricked them!” Miss Bossy Skirt snapped, pointing back at me.
“Not fair, you cheated,” I said in the same high-pitched voice, even shaking my head like her.
She made a fist and squinted her eyes at me, making me laugh again. For some reason, she reminded me of an angry Miss Piggy.
“Oh…” I shook my head at them, looking over to Greyson, “Creepy dude, go to the kitchen and tell them to bring out more sugar cookies for my deceitful little friends.”
“Thank you!” They all chirped, reminding me again that they were seven and most likely didn’t know what deceitful meant and just heard “sugar cookies.”
Greyson shook his head at me, but didn’t argue or grumble about his new nickname. He made his way toward the double doors of the O.S., but not before nodding to a few other guards around, making themselves useful with the staff.
“How many of these guys do you have, too?” Miss Pigtails questioned when another guard stepped up in Greyson’s place.
“Forget him,” I lifted the card for them to see again. “Who have you all tricked with these cards?”
None of them answered.
“I said never cheat against me. I never said you had to stop cheating others,” I reminded them, leaning in to whisper, “the kitchen staff?”
Toothless shook her head, grinning. “No, they won’t play with us anymore. We play the boys for their stuff.”
“They lose all the time, but still play us.” Freckles said with a giggle.
All of them grinned like little fiends. I glanced over to the boys in the corner playing videogames. I wasn’t sure if I should weep for them or laugh at how dumb they were.
“You can’t tell them just because you’re a boy, too,” Miss Bossy Skirt said as she pointed at me. She was really working that index finger of hers today.
“Scouts honor,” I said, raising my hand.
“What is that?” Miss Pigtails questioned.
What? “Scouts honor? Like the Boy Scouts?”
Their faces were blank.
“Mary!”
At the sound of the older woman’s voice, the pigtails of Miss Pigtails, aka Mary, spun in the air.
“Mommy!” She grinned happily as she ran to her mother.
One by one, all the girls ran back to their parents as I spun the card in my hand, leaning back in my chair to watch them. The O.S. center functioned as daycare during holidays and every other Monday for parents who had to work. On Mondays, there could be upward of eighty children in the O.S. center, if not more. It was still early in day. But as it was Indigenous Peoples Day, school was closed, meaning there were only forty or so, plus those still here from the church bombing.
“Wyatt,” a woman I did not know, but Irish I could tell, nodded to me. She was the first to step up to the table where I sat. She was short with long, thick red-brown hair. She stood proud and, from the looks of it, had the respect of the few other Irishmen behind her.
It was odd to me how they gave her space, allowing her to approach me…no, allowing her to stand for them. My mother used to say that the Irish mob knew they were backward, liked that they were backward, and would most likely try to stay backward. Tradition in the mob was simple. Women were there for two things: to fuck and to have kids with. So to see this woman send her daughter off and sit at the table with me was kind of humorous. My mother would have been annoyed for sure. They respected my mother because they feared her and my father. But as I looked around, it seemed that they respected this woman, and that was that.
“How is your brother?” She asked me gently…like a mother would.
“My apologies, who are you?” I asked her.
“Oh right, you’re the son who left. I’m Maeve Granuaile Gore-Booth,” she replied with a smile. “You can call me Ms. Granuaile or Ms. Gore-Booth.”
“I just want to make sure I heard you correctly,” I said, placing the cards down on the table. “You want me to call you either Ms. Granuaile, who was historically the Pirate Queen of Connacht and head of the O’Malley Clan, or Ms. Gore-Booth, who was revolutionary nationalist Constance Georgine Gore-Booth? You want me to choose between two former female heroines of Ireland to address you?”
With a smile that never left her face, she shrugged. “We cannot help who we are named after. That is my name. What can I say? My parents had high hopes for me. I’m glad to know your mother taught you so much about Irish history.”
“Yes, Ms. Bridget, my mother believed her children should have a well-rounded education, and as for my brother, he’s had better weeks.”
The smile on her face dropped. But she didn’t lose her composure, nor did I. “Well, Wyatt, we got a message from your brother saying he wished to speak with us.”
It was funny…no. Not funny, pathetic really, how she tried to deflect to the Irish men who now stood behind her. There was more than two dozen, a few more coming. They all stood back, emotionless but tense. Their eyes wandered around the auditorium. All of them waiting for Ethan.
“Do you know when he will arrive, or is he already here?” Her eyes darted around quickly.
I shrugged. “I, like you, work for my brother. He asked me to be here. I’m here.”
Her blue eyes narrowed at me. “Is that what you’ve been doing in Boston? Working? And here we all thought you were enjoying the spoils of all that fancy education. The glory of being a doctor by day, jet-setter by night. I hear your sister is going to be a real-life princess now? My god, how fortunate you Callahans are!”
I nodded. “Yes, well, there are ups and downs. My sister-in-law was just murdered yesterday.”
“Yes, how sad, if we had gotten a funeral announcement, maybe we would have sent flowers. Then again, she was part of your family, so briefly that many of us didn’t get to know her… What bad luck she had. It was almost like she used to torture our people in Boston, and then was thrown to the side when she was no longer needed by your family.”
By her tone and the very words that left her mouth, I knew then that the lie I’d shared with Greyson this morning had reached her. Which made me wonder, what else leaked out from our house to her ears? How much did they know about our home?
“Everybody is needed. Ivy was especially. Ethan is heartbroken.” It was the truth. But more than a few of them scuffed, rolled their eyes, or simply shook their heads. Bravo, Ethan, they truly think you are a heartless bastard.
“Then we should hold off on this meeting…my daughter has school in the morning—”
“Maeve, what is the rush? School is still going to be there.” In walked a man I did know yet. He was the younger brother to Savino Moretti, the man Dona killed, uncle and godfather to Klarissa Moretti, the woman Ethan had Ivy kill.
“Emilio, I wasn’t aware you’d be here,” Maeve, who at this point I’d only called Bridget, said to him as he pulled out a chair at my table and sat down. His hairy hand reached into a wrinkled shirt and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“Why wouldn’t I be here, Maeve? The boss asked me to be. Or does he have to meet with us Italians now separately?” he questioned, smacking the pack of cigarettes on the table before pulling one out and lifting it to his lips. He turned his head to the side, and one of the men who came with him lit it.
There were Irish here…but there were still enough Italians that you could feel the tension between both groups about to erupt. They were spilt. Irish to my left. Italians to my right. Even the kids who were behind me were spilt. A few of them were saying hi to the kids who had come with their parents to this meeting…but no more than that.
“I was merely making small talk, Emilio,” Ms. Bridget said with a fake smile and nodded to him.
Emilio grunted a reply with the cigarette in his mouth before looking over to me. “You’re taller than I remember.”
“It has been four years,” I replied. “Though it should have only been two weeks. Neither of you were at my welcome home party…should I take that personally?”
“Let me think,” he replied, taking a long drag of his smoke. “Should I take your sister and brother’s actions against my family personally?”
I shrugged, leaning back in my seat. “That depends…do you really want to accept traitors as family? I hope not. That would make you a traitor, too, Emilio.”
He turned to glare at me, his teeth snarling. “Savino, I could understand but Klarissa…she was no FUCKING traitor!”
“Language!” I shook my finger at him and then nodded to the back of me. “Children are here. I was hoping to have a diplomatic conversation with all of you here.”
“You?” Ms. Bridget questioned and pushed further. “You called this meeting, not your brother?”
“I did.”
She shook her head, getting up. “I don’t have time for this.”
Emilio scuffed, rising from his chair. “Look, kid, if your brother really wants to talk, he knows where to find us, okay?”
I nodded to him and watched as they all prepared to leave, but when the first person in the back pushed to open the door, it didn’t budge. I watched as they tried a few times, even moving to the other set of the doors before truly realizing they were locked in.
“What is this?” Bridget snapped, spinning back to look at me. Her red hair whipped to the side with her. “Do you really think you can lock us in here, and we’ll all just be forced to work out our differences?”
“Kid,” Emilio sighed, “when has locking up hothead Irishmen and hot-blooded Italians together ever worked out?”
“It worked for my parents,” I replied with a smile. “After all, here I am half hothead and half hot-blooded. I’m so hot I’m fireproof.”
“This isn’t a game!” Bridget hissed back at me. “Let us out, or you and your seven guards will learn the cruel realities of mob-on-mob violence.”
“Oh… mob-on-mob violence…,” I repeated, nodded. “I like it. That is what I’m going to call today. A lesson on mob-on-mob violence—”
“Wyatt!—” She was cut off by the screams of the kids behind me as they ran like a hoard of white sheep to their parents and families. I could feel the heat of the fire behind me. I could hear the sparks from their videogame and the television as they combusted. But best of all, I could see the orange flames reflected on their faces, in their eyes as the fire spread. Like the little bugs they were, they couldn’t look away from the light. Their necks snapped left to right as they watched the flames spread to the right wall and then to the left, and then toward the ground.
The closer the flames got to them all, the more they could feel the heat, inhaling the smoke, the more their panic set in. The children began to cry.
“MOMMY! MOMMY!” Poor little Miss Pigtails screamed as the flames surrounded her, blocking her path in every direction.
“MARY! SWEETHEART!” Bridget screamed, moving forward toward her daughter.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” I said, reaching into my suit jacket pocket before kicking my feet onto the table, grabbing the eye drops, and using them to wet my eyes.
“You did this!” Bridget yelled at me. I blinked a few times and looked over her again. She’d gotten a few people’s attention, Emilio’s for one, but everyone else…everyone else devolved into the ruthless, self-serving beasts they really were. Pushing one another out of the way to reach the door that wouldn’t budge an inch. They tried kicking the door down. Throwing their bodies into it. Betting against the glass.
“Yes, I did do this. Beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked her. “No one cares about who’s Irish and who’s Italian. No one cares about who killed whom…they just want to save themselves.”
“Little cunt.” Emilio marched toward me. But before he could get any closer, I shot at his ankles, and he fell to his feet right in front of me. Sitting up straighter before he keeled over, I grabbed a fist full of his black hair, holding his head up. Pressing the hot gun to his eye.
“Would you like to know how many strikes you have left?” I asked him, digging the gun deeper into his eye socket. “Let me take this moment to educate you. You are the brother of a traitor, the uncle of a snake. That’s two strikes. You should have come in here not on your motherfucking knees but on your stomach, praying that you didn’t end up in the ground with the rest of the Moretti family. Instead you decided to ignore me. Then you sat at my table without my fucking permission, in my fucking community center. To add insult upon insult upon injury, you called me ‘kid’ TWICE! DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING KID TO YOU?”
He clenched his mouth closed, sweat rolling down his face.
“That was a question, Emilio. I want an answer, Emilio.”
“WYATT! MY DAUGHTER—”
I looked to the right as she came closer, screaming at me. “I’m currently having a discussion with Emilio, Bridget. You want me to keep having this discussion…because when I stop, I’m going to have tell you, your daughter can burn to a black crisp in front of my eyes, and I would absofuckinlutely do NOTHING to save her!”
Her eyes widened. Her head snapped back to where her daughter was coughing on her knees. Bridget rushed to her, but in doing so, she triggered the springs I had wired caused the fire to spread more. Her daughter screamed as the flames burned the sides of her arms and face.
“MARY!”
I looked back at Emilio, shaking my head. “I tried to warn her, didn’t I? Now, where were we?”
His reply was to take the knife he’d been hiding and try to stab me, but his grip was loose. The knife fell to floor beside me. He began breathing harder.
“Do you know why you’re sweating so hard?” I asked him, knowing he couldn’t answer. His pupils were already dilated. “It’s not the fire. It’s not the heat. I’m sure that has made a little impact. Even I’m getting a bit warm. But the true reason is because I laced my bullets. The drugs right now are confusing your whole nervous system. So when I do this,” I pushed the gun into his eye socket…causing him to inhale sharply, “it feels like someone is squeezing your lungs, right? Isn’t it cool? The things medical science can do nowadays, right?”
He tried to breathe but only ended up coughing due to the smoke.
“My brother wanted to kill you off and be done with your family for good. Luckily for you, he was too busy at the time. That is how insignificant you are. Now I’m going to tell him not to worry.”
“Get…it…over…w—”
I moved the gun down to his shoulder, pulling the trigger…watching as he gritted his teeth. “You still don’t understand, Emilio. You do not make the rules. You do not command me, and you sure as all mighty fuck don’t tell me what do. Don’t worry…by the time I finish with you, you won’t sleep, eat, or even shit without asking for my permission. So get used to this position, you’re my dog now.”
Letting go, I watched as he fell over onto his side. I rose from my chair, looking at the flames around me. Watching as more than a few of the younger children, weaker women, and less healthy men fell to their knees, putting their hands over their mouths, or tried to keep children calm. A few of them even began to pray. Meticulously walking on every other tile, then the third on the left and one up, until I got to where Bridget sobbed, her hands burned and bloody as she held on to her also burnt and bloody daughter…the pain must have been so bad the poor girl passed out, but not before wetting herself.
“So mothers really will walk through fire for their children,” I said, looking down at Bridget.
The tears rolled down her face as she looked up to me.
“You devil!” she said in Irish
“You haven’t seen anything yet, Bridget,” I responded in Irish before turning my attention to any person still conscious or not withering on the ground in pain. Pulling out my phone, I dialed in the code. Suddenly, the fire prevention vents sprung to life, sucking the chemicals, fumes, and visible smoke—which was mostly carbon, tar, oils, and ash—out while the sprinklers showered every single square inch with water. The fire wires I’d set in place now off.
As the water beat down on me, soaking every inch of my clothes, I said to them all loudly, “Let this be a reminder to all of you! Whatever your anger is, whatever your issues are, you PLEDGED LOYALITY! So I, and my family, shall demand loyalty! Italian, Irish I don’t give a sweet Mary mother of fuck!” I walked through the maze of their bodies as they sobbed, heading to the front of the door. “You will be loyal. Because this is no longer a ‘I-burn-you-with-me’ relationship. It’s now a ‘I-don’t-fucking-burn-but-you-cock-munching-bastards-still-do’ relationship! My family climbed to the top, but we never stopped preparing for you at the bottom. We don’t need you anymore. You aren’t the only families or people who want our support. We chose you, we kept choosing you, we defended and provided for you because WE’RE BLOOD OR KIN! If that no longer means what we have always thought it to mean…then we will destroy you all.”
At the doors, I didn’t even have to reach out and touch them. At the push of the button, all the doors sprang open. At the push of another button, I lifted the phone to my ear.
“Thank you, Commissioner McCoy, Chief Mataka, you can send them now.” Hanging up, I turned back to them as I stepped aside. “Well, you all are free to go. Thank you so much for making time to hear me out. I look forward to our next get together.”