Growing up Cody

Chapter 11 - Smurf

Smurf knows her boys are lying, but what are they hiding she wonders, she heads to find her eldest son, Pope will tell her. She enters his room, which is sparsely decorated, and compulsively organized, the lights are out.

She knocks, "Andrew, are you in here?"

No answer, she checks his attached bathroom, it's empty too. So she heads towards the garage, hoping to find him there. Once in the garage she hears the hose running in the driveway. She walks outside to find him hosing out the back of the family pickup truck, the water running off is discolored. She approaches the truck, "Andrew, baby, can you tell me what happened, your brothers fed me some load of crap story about tourists beating up Deran. Come on put the hose down and tell me what really happened." He looked up at her, "it happened like they said." Said Pope, who was now wrapping the hose back up.

"Bullshit Pope, now tell me what happened. Now!" Smurf's anger is palpable. Pope hangs the hose up and walks over to the tailgate of the truck where Smurf is standing, inspecting it.

"You know baby, you really should bleach it if that's blood like I would be willing to bet. You gonna tell me whose blood it is."
Pope leans up against the retaining wall that forms the far side of the driveway, "I can't, ask Baz, or Deran." He says not looking at Smurf.

"Baby, you know they won't tell me the truth, you are my good boy, just tell me, who was bleeding in my truck." She has moved so she's leaning against the wall very close to him.

"It's Ray's, somehow his drunk ass got into it with Deran, the kid held his own, he only got hurt from falling off his bike, Ray busted his head pretty bad so we dumped him at the ER, I never told you." Smurf puts her head on his shoulder, "it's ok you know I would have found out anyway, it's better you stay my good boy, I'm glad you told me the truth. Now go ahead and get a shower and get some sleep, please, baby." She stands kisses him and struts back across the driveway and into the house.

Pope follows behind her, he watches her go into the kitchen, he goes into his bedroom and closes the door.

Smurf leaves the driveway with her thoughts racing, 'why was Ray back? What does this mean for Baz? How can she protect her boys? ' all this on top of all the other things racing around her head. 'Where were Catherine's parents? What was going on with Julia? How come it felt like she was losing control?' She heads straight for the kitchen and pours herself a drink before heading out to her favorite lounge chair she lights a cigarette and sips her drink. She can hear her kids laughing and talking in the living room, such great sounds. She loves these sounds, but is aware that the older they get the less they spend together. Some time passes and her drink needs refilling, when as if by magic, Baz appears in one of the many sliding doors. '"Baz baby, can you get me a refill, please"

He nods and heads into the kitchen returning with a drink for smurf and a bottle of Jack Daniels and an empty glass. He hands Smurf her drink, then places the empty glass on the side table, he sits on the end of Smurf's chair and pours himself a glass of Jack. He shakes his head and takes a long drink from his glass.

"So, Pope told you, I'm guessing" he won't look at her.

'Yes, Baz; Andrew told me, but you should have told me. Did you know he was back?" She asks putting a hand on his arm, he shrugs her hand off, putting his head in his hands.

"I swear Smurf I had no clue, I thought he was still locked up in Lodi. But it was him, I didn't even realize it until Deran told us. We got there all we saw was this huge guy on top of Deran who was covered in blood." Baz gets quiet, he's crying, Smurf sat up and put her arm around his shoulder,

"there, there baby it's ok, you know I would never let him hurt you ever again."

He's still crying "I know that, but when I saw Deran I was so mad, if Deran hadn't yelled Pope and I would have killed him, and I didn't even know it was him, but once I knew I stopped, I didn't want to hurt him." He stands, "I mean how fucked up is that after all the shit he pulled on me. How much he hurt me, for fun. And I couldn't even hurt him. I mean what the fuck!" He's angry.

"Barry it's normal, it means you are human. It means he can't hurt you anymore. Come sit down have another drink." She pours him another drink, "come on baby, let's talk."

Baz downs the drink and sits down again, "Smurf, did YOU know that he was out? That he was back?"

"No Barry I didn't know, and tomorrow I'm going to be calling a special friend of mine, who I pay good money, so I know things like this, so my family doesn't get hurt. But now that we know he is back, he will not hurt you. I promise. Do you know if he had any ID on him?" She lights a cigarette and sits back in her chair again.

Baz shakes his head, "I don't know Smurf, I didn't even check, we were so freaked out by the whole situation, we just dumped him at the door."

"See this is what I keep telling you, you have to keep your head in these situations, stay calm and think. If you panic or freak out you forget the simple shit, did anyone see you at the hospital?"
You can see the frustration on his face, "I don't know, dammit how could I be so stupid. I'm done." He grabs his empty glass and the bottle and heads inside.

Once in the kitchen, he see Catherine has fallen asleep on the sofa, and everyone else has left the living room. He looks down the hall towards Julia's room, he can see soft light coming out from under her door, he stops thinks for a minute, then turns and heads the opposite direction to his room. He turns on his light, quickly undresses and gets into bed.

Smurf watches Baz as he walks inside, he stops in the kitchen. She sees him start walking towards the back of the house, probably to go to Julia's room. Then suddenly he changes direction and heads to his own room.

Smurf finishes her cigarette, stubs it out in the ashtray and heads inside herself. She cleans up a few dirty dishes in the kitchen, then notices Catherine asleep on the sofa, she quietly approaches her, and carefully places a blanket over her. She has a lot of questions to figure out in the morning.

These issues should not be surprises, why does she pay people to keep her updated when they fail to do so.

She checks on all her children. Deran and Craig were playing video games in Craig's room. Julia was sleeping peacefully on top of her covers, Smurf covers her with a blanket before turning off her music and lights. Pope was sitting on his bed, staring out the window, she said "good night " and closed his door. And at Baz's door she heard the shower on so she turned off the pool lights double checked that the alarm was set before heading to her bedroom.

Once in her room, she pulled the door shut, then opened her closet and removed a suitcase from behind some shoe boxes, opened it. It was full of guns which she removed one by one from the suitcase laying them out onto her bed. Making sure each gun was properly loaded, she placed a shotgun under her bed and stashed several handguns around her room, before loading the remaining guns back into the suitcase and stowing the suitcase back in her closet.
She thinks to herself, "better safe than sorry." Before crawling into bed and going to sleep.

*********************************
Vote and comment below please and thank you