ZPD 8.17 and a half

Been a while… I know.  I’ve tried a few times to sit down and write this out, but it’s a particularly difficult portion to write.  I have to re-state the warning on content here.  If you are at all disturbed by violence, or sex, or a combination of those things, then you may not wish to read this.

This is really 8.18, but only half of it… so the next half is coming.  I’m so close to done.

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"Looks like I win" I told him.

"Hmm."

Marshall’s face was stuck in a frown as he stared down at his losing fist.  He breathed out slowly and slumped against the wall, sliding down into a sitting position, landing awkwardly.

"How old are you again?" he asked.

"Eighteen".

"You have to kill anybody yet?"

I flinched at his question.  Technically, I hadn’t stuck around long enough to check for a pulse, but I knew the answer must be yes.  I nodded at him.

"That sucks." He said, "You’re younger than I was even."

"Were you in the military?"

"Ha!  No.  Me?  Tripper maybe.  He’s the type.  Straight back, and no moments rest.  I just got drunk one night and ran over some old man.  I was Twenty."

Marshall didn’t lift his eyes from his knees while he spoke.  His story was full of shocks like this, but he wasn’t saying it to scare me.  It’s possible I was the first one to hear his story without being there to judge.

Marshall Redgrave was the eldest of 3 siblings.  He didn’t know his real mother, as his father tended to prefer an open door policy when it came to women.  He never told me his fathers name, but apparently he was a hard worker and tried to instill that value in his sons.  Mostly by beating them with things within his reach as it was told to me.  They lived on a ranch in those days, and Marshall learned to drive and work on engines at an early age.

When Marshall was 13 years old, his father got drunk watching a football game.  Jesse at 4 years old, walked in front of the television set and tried licking the screen as the home team was fumbling the ball.  Their dad threw his half full beer at the toddler, and Marshall decided he needed to do something about it.  He got a wrench from the garage, and came at his father from behind while he was still watching the game.  His first hit was too soft though, and Marshall got his arm broke in two places after that.

He spent the rest of his childhood fighting his father in one way or another.  Protecting his siblings from the beatings they were likely to get, he’d make sure that he was twice as likely to be the target of their fathers abuse.  The police knew him by name by the time he was 15.  He was in and out of youth detention, weeks at a time, but always ready to start another fire if need be.  Then, at twenty years old, he made the wrong call.  He got drunk, went out looking for trouble, and completely missed seeing the elderly man at a crosswalk.  His sentencing was swift.  The judge was only too happy to throw the book at him, and Marshall Redgrave was locked away 10 years for manslaughter.  

"Prison.  Man, I thought that was hell.  It was full of criminals.  Some bad men.  Really bad men.  I wasn’t a bad man.  I didn’t belong there."

He served his time, reading books, and giving himself a small education in accounting.  No one came to visit for the first few years until Allie (Marshall’s half-sister, the third and middle sibling between he and Jesse) came to tell him that she’d run away and Jesse had come with her.  Their father did come looking for her though.

"He came right up to the door, ya know.  Knockin on it, and trying the handle to get in at the same time.  Then Jesse answers the door with a scattergun pointed right in his face."  Marshall smiled as he told me this.  "Stupid kid."

Their father never came back again though, and when Marshall got out, the three were reunited.  He opened up a mechanic shop, and they did pretty well.  Marshall tells me he never broke the law on purpose again, though he had to keep his eyes on Jesse most of the time.  The kid had developed quite the chip on his shoulder.  He liked to impress his friends by driving reckless, and fighting anyone willing to throw down.  Recreational drugs were cheap if you knew the right people, and Jesse always did.  Those were the circles he moved in.  The police showed up a few times, pushing pictures around and asking about organized crime.

"Can’t even blame them really.  We looked like a crime family.  I was fresh out of prison.  My brother was mixing round with every dealer in the province, and our books were spotless.  Nothing more suspicious than a mechanic with proper accounts.  Jesus, we’re lucky they didn’t try to raid us every week."

I laughed softly at that, but he was already moving on.

"That brings us to about ten days ago.  Jesse brought home some friends."

These friends were the usual.  Junkies.  They were just rich enough to afford the habit, and keep wearing nice clothes.  Allie didn’t like them much, and was usually vocal about it.  One named Ty was always trying to flirt with her, but never got anywhere.

"I met the guy once.  Thought himself a real gangster, since his parents let him drive the BMW.  There were so many of his kind.  Even Jesse was a little like that, but don’t you breathe a word of that to him.  I don’t need a gun in my face.  Not again."

The details are short, but at some point Jesse left the house.  When he came home, Ty was carnally assaulting his sister.

"…" Marshall’s voice went quiet, as if he had lost the breath to speak.

"I’m sorry."  It was all I could say.

"I am too.  I’m sorry for her.  I’m sorry for Jesse.  I’m sorry for you.  For this whole world.  It’s gone down the drain."

"What happened?  If you don’t mind me asking."

Marshall’s eyes came back to meet mine for the first time since the stories beginning.

"The only thing that could have happened.  Jesse pulled Ty off her, and killed him."

It sent a shiver down my spine.  There was no speech of how Jesse was attacked after pulling the man away.  There was no excuse made for the drugs the man might have been on.  I knew he was sorry that his half brother and sister had to experience this.  But something in the way he told it, made me think he was more sorry not to have been the one to wring the attackers neck with his own hands.