Radioman (A 2/19th Spinoff) - Complete

Wolfshead

I'd slept badly, leaving me with a crick in my neck. Aine had spent nearly a half hour working the knocks out of my shoulders and neck with her strong fingers before I was finally able to move my head without pain. After she had made me breakfast she had gone in to take a luxurious bubblebath, the lather so thick you could probably walk on it, and left me to clean up the kitchen.

It was nice to do dishes. Scrub the cast iron before setting it on the stove to cure. Wash each glass carefully. Same with the plates. Wash then dry and polish the silverware till it shines. Each dish, glass, and utensil put away in the correct place. Close the cabinets, drain the sink, wipe down the sink and counters.

It was easy to lose myself in details. Keep from thinking about what had happened last night. How, for the first time in my life, I hadn't let Gail or Dave bully me into doing what they want.

Which left the question: Why did they want the house so badly?

I mean, it was just a house. According to tax assayers office, as of 1985, it had been assessed as having a value of $28,500. Hell, the mortgage payments on it, if I still owed money on it, would be like $350. A half month's pay. Dave worked at the mill, which meant it was about a third of his pay.

So why the hell did they want it so bad?

I recalled how I had seen it. Clothes everywhere. Dirty dishes, fast food and candy wrappers, empty beer and soda containers, cigarette butts on the carpet, a pile of ash and cigarette butts next to my father's Laz-E-Boy chair, torn furniture, battered and rusting appliances.

A flop house.

Little had changed since I was a kid.

So why did Gail want it so bad.

Because she does, dumbass. Nobody has ever denied her anything

Stillwater's voice.

Could that be it? Occam's Razor straight through to the fact she was a spoiled brat who had married me in rebellion to her wealthy parents? Who now was cut off from all of her family's finances, and had to make it on what Dave earned and on what she could slice away from other people with her cunning?

It made sense.

I sighed, the door to the garage opening without even a squeak.

Tools were on the racks. My father had often let people trade him tools they stole to him for heroin or, if we're perfectly honest, a few minutes or even a night with my mother.

I tossed the dirty dishrags into the laundry hamper beside the big industrial strength washer machine that I didn't recognize of having ever been there before.

I wandered over the bench with all the power tools on the peg boards and stared at the tools. When I'd seen them last, most of them had been rusting junk. Now they were cleaned, properly greased or oiled, and looked almost showcase new.

PROPERTY OF JOHN MCCALLISTER

That was on several tools. Curious, I checked the majority of the tools.

Hell, even the big rollaway cabinet had the cleaned tools inside, with the name of the owner engraved on half the tools and the cabinet itself.

I sighed and went back into the house. I grabbed the phone book and a chair, and moved it to in front of the first bench. I went back in, grabbed myself a beer and my smokes, and headed back in.

It took me nearly thirty minutes to write down all the names. Nearly forty people. I went through the phone book, copying down their phone numbers by each name, then sighed, looking around at the garage.