Well Enough

Part.1

Logan.

It was late. After 3:00 A.M. Only another two hours to go before his alarm would go off, heralding in yet another day of thankless work. It was his flip phone that had roused him. It had been buzzing incessantly for some time now. Logan wasn’t fully awake as he rolled from his right side onto his back. Away from the nightstand and away from the monetary disturbance. His mind still sticky with indistinct dreams he never quite remembered, like cobwebs you were never certain were there to begin. The half-conscious state left just enough room for a notion to slip through—a misgiving, really. The one he had been sensing with great unease and pushing to back of his mind for months now, perhaps longer. Afraid to allow it admittance, it waited for a time like this. Just before he awoke—just behind the mental list of the day’s tasks, the recollection of bills still needing to be paid, the vacancy of his savings account, the truck he loved and should probably sell for something mor economic. This morning, the notion found its way to the forefront of his mind and introduced itself.

Maybe this is not enough?

Logan’s own life—it had been good enough for him. He had tried not to let the things that damaged his little sister and older siblings during their childhood, damage him as well. So, like everything else uncomfortable for him, he pushed dismal and obscure things down, into depths he dared not go. He wasn’t familiar with Nietzsche, but even he knew well enough not to be a man who sought out darkness or who questioned his own humanity. He chose to see in black and white and took things as they came—good or bad. He didn’t necessarily believe in the evil of man but regarded it as a source of their actions. He accepted the idea of God and of Satan and avoided situations that would cause him the obligation of guilt. But that was as far as his belief system took him. He didn’t need it to go any further. To give him purpose, like other people did. And he didn’t need anger to drive him to be a better person. His siblings had enough guilt and anger to share. They even seemed to revel in it, wear it, be proud of it. Logan wanted no share. “Water off a duck’s back.” That’s what he’d say about things that would send the others in a tizzy. He was built different than them. Maybe because he didn’t feel connected to that part of their childhood? He couldn’t (wouldn’t) process mom’s slow demise. Or dad’s explosive volatility. Where his siblings felt what his little sister called “imposter syndrome” out there in the world, he felt comfort; in fact, Logan felt safest in the camouflage of vapidity.

But unlike others, Logan never felt he had anything to lose. Not before her. Not before Zoe. And not like Jessica. And she resented him for that. Jessica did. She resented that he had taken from her years that she could have spent preparing her for her adult life that were meant to be spent figuring things out. Herself out.

She had always put education first—until him. That’s one of the things that had drawn Logan to her, actually—her intelligence, ambition, her purpose. He hadn’t understood or felt purpose before her. And he didn’t know at the time that he complicated hers. He knew what he knew in his adolescent approach to love. That she was the ‘one’ (literally the only one) and might have continued to be had they stayed together. Because Logan was that uncomplicated. He was so uncomplicated that he thought she felt the same. But how could she? She was sixteen when they met. The same age as his little sister.

Jessica couldn’t keep her head straight during the whirlwind of their relationship. She wasn’t like him. Things didn’t fall into her lap. Nothing was happenstance. She worked for where she had gotten in school. In the community. She had appearances to keep up, church to attend, her mom’s confidence to sustain and convince she could handle everything. Friends to emulate. But that was changing.

First, her GPA dropped. There was no scholarship or family money to get her into the expensive universities her friends were attending. And she had lost her mother’s trust with the misuse of her time, the broken curfews, the all-to-obvious broken promise of abstinence until marriage. What was left was ‘making the worst of it’ as Jessica called it. But, paradoxically, had never felt more beautiful or thriven. On fire.

Something had awoken in her, and fuck it was exhilarating. Until now, she had been the good girl. The church girl. The smart girl. The sensible girl. Never sensual. Never the one to elicit attention from anyone, really. It wasn’t until recently that she had traded her oversized hair bow for high-waisted bell-bottoms and crochet halter tops, courtesy of her elder sister (the beauty of the family), married at eighteen, and now pregnant with her first child. Her sister and mother had always been at odds. Lisa never did anything right, and Jessica worshipped that. She wanted more of this—more than just another predictable outcome—gold star for another achievement. Another goal obtained—set by someone else. Everything had a ceiling she was discovering. So, what was the point?

Jessica took a job at the farm and feed mill on the outskirts of town to help pay for university That’s where she met Ben. She had known him in passing—it was only a town of fifteen-hundred people, after all. He was a friend of Logan’s. Not a close one, but in fringe. He was tall. Sweet. Pale. Cute. Funny. A shock of dark hair. The attraction between them was immediate. It was as if someone had thrown her into a basin of ice-cold water—the startling realization that it wasn’t just Logan she had been attracted to. It was the opportunity and license to fail. The potential and exhilaration to crash—to sabotage. To make mistakes and take consequences as they came. She had decided—against her mother’s wishes—she was going to take a semester off after high school. She’d go to parties. Try new things. Fuck. And not any of it with Logan. For, if she was going to burn for her own choices, then she would burn asunder.

He was barely into his twenties when he got her pregnant. Jessica. Now his ex. The first ex he ever had. His first real love—first girl. First person he truly disappointed. It was a one-night stand. She was high. He was drunk. She said she missed it. The sex. Being loved.

He thought if he convinced her, she would stay with him. They would be a family. She did keep It. He convinced her to keep It—It now being Zoe. But he didn’t keep Jessica.

Jessica had found Jesus again. She was back in church and, therefore, her mother’s favor. And along with God’s blessings came a man to redeem her tarnished character. A good man. A suitable man. A man who could provide. A man complete with a good, Christian upbringing, stable background, a family business, and no testosterone…but a man, nonetheless.

On the bright side, Zoe—the best thing to ever happen to him to that point. She had his bright, blue eyes. And her mother’s pale complexion, quiet nature, thick hair, and disappointment in him.

She had been “daddy’s girl” just up until the novelty of father/daughter weekends wore off and the existentialism of teenage-hood took its place. She had grown to resent him for the long hours. For the regret her mother carried. The disdain she exuded and overflowed onto the girl for reminding her of him. But Zoe mostly resented him for not being the dad that her stepfather had the resources to be. And it became worse after her stepsister was born. The ‘golden-child’. The child Jessica always wanted. Born with intent. Coddled. Fawned over by her parents. She now knew her own mother’s obsession with herself and disdain for Lisa. She didn’t want to admit it—but she understood.

Jessica: love of Logan’s life, a stay-at-home mother of his daughter, living less than six miles from him at this very moment, playing house (happily) in the bed of another man. “Ironic.” Is that the word? His little sister would give him shit for not knowing that answer.

Zoe, a daughter whose only tie to him was a surname that barely made it onto the birth certificate. Zoe, the daughter whose only fatherly support was a paper trail of child support. Zoe, who never saw her dad due to his work schedule and her mother’s incessant plot to cut him out of their lives.

He had never planned on going to college. He had never planned on anything. Everything he had just somehow ‘showed up’—offered itself in one way or another, then left the same way. Like “water off a duck’s back.” And this is what Logan had to show for his time here so far.

Maybe this is not enough?

He rolled onto his left side to stare at her in the dark. Even now he lay beside a beautiful woman who just ‘showed up’. And somehow, they had been living together for the last four years. They met on the job. He as a dispatcher for a logistics company. Her—working in poultry. It was hot at first. Like everything is in new relationships. But they both had been dumped and neither were much for playing games, so it made sense to stay together even when things kinda became flat. It was easy even. Monetarily appreciable. He watched the shape of her. The soft swell of her abdomen against the light of the window. Featureless.

In the dark he could still tell you that her skin was olive, as were her eyes. Her features were pointed and fine, whereas Jessica’s had been soft and rounded. Younger that Jessica by a few years. He could tell you this woman was a hard worker. Her favorite food is anything made with potatoes. Hates broccoli. Doesn’t like spice. Salt is a flavor. That she didn’t believe in any god except for the one that put that food on the table. Can bow hunt better than any man outside himself that he’d ever met. Loves Dukes of Hazard but had never seen Star Wars and didn’t need to.

What he couldn’t tell you is how she felt the day her little sister died in a car accident when she was just sixteen. Or how every miscarriage Logan and she had been through had changed her. He couldn’t tell you what her favorite season was or if autumn ushered in, for her, a feeling of excitement and change, or if brought up anxiety of the cold, dull solitude that it would soon be winter.

Shannon had always been a woman to him. Never a girl, like Jessica. He didn’t watch her grow up and then plateau into the person she was now. She had just always been ‘this’. Honest, loyal, predictable, hardworking. Salt of the earth. But bland. A shape in the dark against a window bright with moonlight.

Logan’s phone began to buzz furiously again. Shannon rolled away.

“Who the fuck.”

“It’s my brother.”

It wasn’t a question. And she was already asleep.

Logan crept into the kitchen of their doublewide. A gift from his boss. It wasn’t nice. It had a leak under the tub and the floor was soft in there. He had even stepped through it a time or two before he put down particleboard, just to cover up the issue. There were other usual things like mice, non-working outlets, poor insulation. But his boss let him do whatever he wanted with the place, as well as the property immediately surrounding the modular home. And it was rent-free—which made it good enough to stay.

“Hello?”

“Logan!”

It was Shamus, of course, the self-proclaimed black sheep of the family—a designation he fought their youngest sister for back and forth like a championship title belt with reckless acts that embarrassed the whole family, most especially the non-immediate ones. Both were brooding and aloof, but the difference between the two of them was that she couldn’t care less about what anyone thought of her—least of all family. And incidentally—that was what Shamus cared about most. Especially the opinion of their maternal grandparents. Nothing... nothing—was more important than family to Shamus. The Black Sheep were two sides of the same, cold coin—sedition and contrition—spent the same way. Worthless.

“Logan! I’m mom. I’m om my wayt pick oo up…” he was speaking unintelligibly. Slowly. It wasn’t unusual except Logan lived in Arkansas and Shamus had moved back to Nebraska.

Logan diagnosed the danger right way—Shamus was having an episode. “We gotta get mom. Mom doesn’t want be there, Logan…”

“Shamus! Stop! Where are you? Where is Carol?”

“Carol…” he repeatedly it with disdain. “Pffffttt…bish.”

Shamus.

Connie—Shamus’ second wife. A native American woman he had met in Nebraska after his divorce from Cherilee. Shamus had met Cherilee in Nebraska as well. A young, single mom. She was intelligent. She spoke Spanish as a second language. She had a beautiful smile. A beautiful singing voice. Loved music. Loved having fun.

So, when Shamus’ mother moved to Arkansas with Logan and their youngest sister, and he had decided to go too—he invited her. She refused. She wanted to stay near her parents, even though they had been disappointed in her for years as she had forsaken the path of the Jehovah’s Witness for the love of the man before Shamus. And she had lived a sheltered life until she had gotten pregnant with her daughter. She was doing relatively well on her own. Her parents were starting to talk to her again. Then she got pregnant with Shamus’ child, and she was on her own again.

For twenty-six years, she had never left the state. She had fucked only two men (counting Shamus) and ended up pregnant. Twice now. She never even wanted children, before her daughter, especially not out of wedlock… Realizing this might be her only chance to redeem herself as a woman, she agreed to go with him. On one condition. So, they married. And had four more children. But Arkansas was not easy on her. She often felt alone. She and Shamus fought frequently. She hadn’t any family nor many friends there. She gained weight. Being a mother of five small children, all born within proximity of one another was difficult at best. She hadn’t even fully matured. And no matter how hard she tried; she could not gain the approval of Shamus’ mother. She was even jealous of the relationship he had with his mother. She had never experienced that with her own—it was alien to her.

And for Logan and Shamus’ mom—it wasn’t that she didn’t like Cherilee. It wasn’t the fact that Cherilee (virtually) shared her namesake which that made things confusing at a very intimate level amongst family gatherings, mailing services, and had become a trite and sometimes inappropriate joke amongst friends. And it wasn’t even entirely that Cherilee didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, or that she had no passion for cooking, or was placating towards Cher in what was become a noxious exchange of barely friendly natter. It was that Cherilee didn’t love her son, Shamus. Not in the way she knew he deserved. Cherilee loved him in the way that was good enough for her…and for whatever reason, that is all that Shamus thought he’d come to deserve. Because on a regular basis, whether she realized she was doing it or not, Cherilee, blamed Shamus for her dissatisfaction with her own life—from which the course of trajectory had been set well ahead of his presence in it. But without anyone else to take responsibility for the roles unfilled by her daughter’s father and her own parents, Shamus was obligated to take those on.

Therefore, when Cherilee started taking her lunch breaks at home every day instead of with him at the poultry plant were they both worked to have “me time,” Shamus understood. It wasn’t until the rumors did Shamus become suspicious and need to see for himself.

Three times in his life would Shamus have a mental breakdown—that Logan knew of. Three times would he burn it all down, not calculating well the aftermath of that decision or how it would alter his and his children’s path from then on.

The time Shamus was roped into driving his mother to Nebraska from California was the first time Logan knew of. The man Shamus had come to see as his own father—best friend even—was battering his mother and the children they shared. Imprisoned in their home. He was forced to be the one who drove the car his brother-in-law had donated for their escape. The truth was it wasn’t just Cher, Logan, and their baby sister Maxine and her husband were trying to save. It was Shamus too. King had gotten him onto heroin. And Shamus didn’t take well to detox. The moment he could, he left. He was an adult after all. He made his way all the way back to The King of California.

Shamus doesn’t remember much about his second turn in California, away from his family, and alone with King and whatever cohorts, whores, and enemies King chose to medicate, lay, or betray in that moment. Because of this, Shamus often found himself prey to manipulation and coercion with dangerous conclusions. This is how he contracted Hepatitis C from his stand-in father figure—a disease that would take partial claim of King’s life before he ended it. A disease Shamus, himself, would barely survive.

Teresa flipped her hair back and rubbed her nose hard. King didn’t have the best cocaine. But he had a lot of it. And a lot more recently now that he had hired her and Shamus to cut it. Teresa was King’s longtime mistress—a woman King had been seeing concurrently while he kept Cher hostage and now that Cher was gone, she was his main squeeze.

Shamus felt guilty when he was around Teresa. He didn’t even like the woman, really. But wherever King, there she was. And always ready to party.

“Oh my God is that good!”

It wasn’t. But Shamus doubted Teresa would know what good coke was.

“Can you, please, do that somewhere else? I have a test tomorrow!” Teresa’s daughter screamed.

“Then go study in the room, Amber! God! You’re like an old woman!” Teresa laughed.

“I would but it smells like shit in there because you and your friends partied in there all last night! Remember?? You made me sleep on the couch! And that midget kept trying to touch me!”

Teresa started cackling. Shamus probably hated her laugh as much as daughter did.

“He’s not a midget! He lost his legs!” she was laughing so hard, she started coughing.

“Please, Mom! It’s important!”

Her eyes met Shamus’. Begging. She reminded him of Maxine, his younger sister. He recalled the many times she begged King and his friends for the same courtesy. He felt bad for her. Ashamed.

“Come on. Let’s go.” Shamus said, standing up.

“What?” Teresa asked, taking a sip of her beer, and still coughing.

“I’ll buy your drinks.”

“But King isn’t here…”

“Come on.”

He ushered Teresa up off the couch and toward the door. Before shutting it, he caught Amber’s gaze. She mouthed the words ‘thank you’. He closed the door.

King had become suddenly absent, though this was not necessarily unusual for him. He often disappeared for days at a time. But this would be the first time they went out together without him. Teresa convinced Shamus to go to their regular dive. She wanted to go there because she knew the other girls would stay away. He was hers tonight.

She had always had a thing for him. His fine, pale features, dark hair, and dimples typically brought women to him like flies to shit. Before Shamus had disappeared to Nebraska with his bitch mom, Teresa had often gone out with he and King and often she threatened the younger women with glares from afar. A while ago, she had even followed one woman into the bathroom, introduced herself, then the woman’s face to the mirror. Yes. Tonight, he was hers. And everyone there knew it.

They stayed until close; all the while Teresa plying him with alcohol until he needed to be carried to her little Mazda.

When they arrived back at her place, she parked in front of the beige stucco, two-story four-plex in a shit part of town. She shut off the ignition to her car. Teresa leaned back against the driver door, lit a cigarette, and puffed on it while she stared at him. He leaned back against the passenger door, fought bleary vision to see her. The orange streetlight that cut across the lower half of her face helped. She was smiling. Smoke leaking from the crevices of her teeth. Like a dragon. He returned her smile.

“What?” he asked coyly.

“Oh nothing.” She blew smoke. “You. I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“How could I stay away? This is where the party is at.” He jested.

They were flirting. He realized this. But his inhibitions were null.

“I hope that’s not all you came back for.” She opened her legs slightly.

Her ditzy, floral, babydoll dress barely covered her skinny, tan thighs as it was. Her lap was shadowed by the dashboard of the sedan.

She was probably an attractive woman once, he thought. Before the drugs and premature aging. Before the sun had taken its own tax.

“Come here.”

“Where?”

She sat forward, reached across the console, and grabbed the front of his short sleeve button-up. Teresa pulled him almost into her lap. Shamus grasped the dash to support himself, the stick shift boring a hole in his sternum while she shoved her lips against his. She was salty. He’d always remember that. Her other hand grabbed at his belt buckle—a commemoration trophy of sorts for his first year in California. King had bought it for him at the Tuolumne County fair. It was reservation silver. With a Native American Thunderbird in the center, inlayed with turquoise and coral. It was precious to him. He thought of King seeing him now, in this moment, with mild apprehension—if not fear. King was generous, but on his own terms. This wasn’t even his fault, but he knew that wouldn’t matter. If he caught them…

This wasn’t the first time a woman, even an older woman, had forced herself on him. Nor was it even a rare occurrence; in fact, the woman he had lost his virginity to a friend of his mothers. He was fourteen. He was thirty-seven. He never saw it coming. He had just flushed the toilet when she opened the door of the bathroom and closed it behind her. Much like Teresa, she grabbed him. He didn’t even get to zip after taking a piss. It was over in a matter of minutes. Maybe seconds. It was his first time after all. Then she left as abruptly as she burst in. Never said a word. And neither did he. When he emerged from the bathroom, she was sitting on the couch with his mom cackling about something on the television—smoking menthols and drinking screwdrivers. Ash all over the dark lacquer of the coffee table.

Mom never knew. Of course. And he never talked about it. To anyone. Not even to brag. Not necessarily because it made him feel depraved, or harmed, or because it was technically statutory rape. He just didn’t want the attention or fuss or to be seen as any more different than he already felt that he was. Things just went on as if nothing had happened. And it never did again. She had gone right back to never even acknowledging his presence like any other adult friend of his mother’s. Women are scary.

And that’s just what he was thinking now as Teresa unskillfully searched the inside of his mouth with her tongue. Even still, it wasn’t the worst kiss Shamus had ever had. He pushed her back to get some air back into his lungs.

“Woah-ho-ho! I’ve already had my tonsils removed. Thank you!”

She slumped backwards and bit her lip while smiling. He had sobered up some and thought that the lighting wasn’t doing her any favors in this moment.

“And here I thought I was the drunk one. We should get you upstairs.” He offered.

“Oh. I like the sound of that.” She giggled again as she put a foot up on the console.

Somehow, she had lost her sandal, and her toes were quickly edging across his thigh toward his groin.

“Alright you. Let’s get out of this car.” He reached over down by the car’s pedals and retrieved her missing sandal.

Teresa pushed Shamus against the door of her apartment.

“Quiet! Shhhh!” she giggled. “My daughter is asleep.”

She pressed herself against him.

“Come inside.”

“I should go home.”

“Nooooo. Come in and party with me.”

He knew what she meant. He weighed the pros and cons as she hugged onto im and swayed back and forth, humming. The yellow glow of her porch light was uncomfortably bright. She didn’t seem to mind the insects that bounced off them as they stood there. Flying termites, mosquito eaters, earwigs on the stucco. Then again, Teresa might be the world’s largest mosquito as he was sure the hickey she was working on was drawing blood.

Suddenly, Shamus saw someone standing in the dark of the courtyard. Staring. He slowly unattached Teresa from his neck but she wasn’t coming off easily so without thinking he shoved her. A little harder than he should have, gentler than he’d have liked to.

“Hey!” he yelled at the watcher. “Who is that?”

He walked slowly towards them.

“Shamus, who…”

“Shh!”

“You need something, buddy?”

The watcher didn’t move. His eyes large and bright against darkness. All of the courtyard was soaked in the yellow glow of the courtyard lampposts except one corner. The very corner the stranger stood in. Shamus kept his possessed gaze, approaching more and more slowly the more apprehensive he became. He stopped ten yards from the figure and felt that was enough. He could still only make out the man’s eyes, but Shamus could tell the watcher was taller by several inches.

“Listen. You…”

The man’s eyes disappeared for a moment and it startled Shamus, who took a step back. It somehow increased his overall sense of danger and unease.

“You need to get out of here.” Adding more fierceness to his voice, incidentally, caused him to appear more scared.

“Shamus, come back, please.” Teresa was sobering up in the situation as well.

He motioned for her to stay back.

“Look, guy,” He started toward the man again, “I’m getting pretty fucking sick and tired of this hide and go…”

Suddenly, the darkness flickered to light and Shamus stalled. He was five feet away from a lamppost that he swore used to a man suddenly. And face to face with the biggest moth he had ever seen. It was so beautiful, Shamus marveled. Yet he still felt terrified. Exposed. Still unable to unlock his eyes or move. He started to shake. His eyes filling with tears.

Teresa burst into laughter, jolting him back to reality. The massive insect slowly closed its wings, obscuring the eyes of its wings. Shamus’ functions came back to him. He wiped his eyes with his wrist.

“That’s the biggest fucking bug I’ve ever seen!” Teresa was unexpectedly right behind him now.

“Fucking hell! I was about to shit britches!” he said, making light of his own mortal terror he felt moments before.

“Let’s get high.” Teresa said.

The apartment was dim as they entered. Laughing at themselves and shushing one another. They searched for the living room light switch that seemed to change locations every time they drank.

“Shhhhhh…!” Teresa giggled drunkenly. “She’s going to yell at us again!”

She found the light. She put her hands over her mouth and snorted.

“Oh, shit! Turn it back off!”

Shamus flipped the switch again.

“What?”

“She’s asleep at the table!” she laughed.

Amber was slumped over her books. Only her shoulders visible above the yellow, floral vinyl covered chair.

“Aw, poor baby. I’m gonna scare her.”

Shamus scanned the room. He felt that unease again. The stove hood light was on, but the rest of the house was dark. He wondered if Amber didn’t intend to sleep in the bedroom, why hadn’t she chosen the couch again? Teresa crept toward Amber, looking back at him and giggling.

“Come on, Teresa, don’t.”

“Shh!”

She crouched low behind her.

“Time. For. Bed!”

She sprung up and grabbed Amber from behind. Teresa’s cheek was sticky as it touched the back of Amber’s neck. For that’s all there was. The chrome edges of the, once cream-colored, Formica table held a perfectly still pool of her daughter’s blood.

Teresa’s hoarse screams filled the night as Shamus approached the table from the side, giving it as wide a berth as possible in the small apartment. Teresa had collapsed to the floor and crawled to the loveseat where she crouched against its backside.

“My baby! My baby!” She skreiched repeatedly. Her voice filled with fear, anger, remorse.

Shamus stared at the inside of the girl’s neck wondering how this could be real. He leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. He felt both glad, and alone, that his family was miles away in Nebraska.

"I want to go home."

Part 3.

Brothers in Crime.

…to be Continued.

J.M.Liles ©️2024