Ok sorry this was not a very fast update! I tried to add in a sentence and ended up re-writing most of the chapter. I'm still not sure if I totally hate it, getting the back story into this is hard. Thanks for the reviews I'm glad there is still a few people reading after my slack updates! Now for some father-son time ...


Tim stood out on the hotel balcony, drinking whisky from the fridge bar, smoke from his cigarette drifting into the sky. The moon was full and high in the sky, but it was the street below he was watching.

He'd always liked the city at night. The orange and red hues of light and the shadowed places in between.

They'd arrived back late after dinner and his boys had showered and gone to bed, but still Tim wasn't surprised to hear the sliding door behind him opening.

"Can't sleep, Jay?" he asked, not having to turn around to see. His oldest son was easy to predict. He'd been silent on the drive home, but Tim could sense the tension simmering in him.

"Not tired," Jay said, coming to stand by his side. He folded his arms over the railing and stared down into the street. Then he straightened. Turned to look at Tim.

"Can I have a cigarette?"

His boy could still surprise him it turned out.

"You taken up smoking since we got here?"

"Started months ago. I smoke at school, after practice. All the time."

He was watching Tim, his stare bold. You don't know everything after all, it said.

"Well, you can buy your own."

Tim dragged on his own cigarette while Jay stood before him, watching and waiting. He was a little amused but he didn't let it show. If Jay's idea of rebelling was smoking he could deal with it. He'd ran a whole gang of teenage boys in his day.

"You know your gonna fuck your football up if you keep it up," he added.

He watched the stiff set of Jay's shoulders. The baleful eyes. He was pissed off, and he knew it was nothing to do with cigarettes.

"But it's alright for you, huh?"

"I don't care to play football," Tim said. "If you got something to say, then say it."

Jay let out a short breath. He turned so his back was against the railing, not looking at Tim now. As he got older Tim could feel him pushing away from him, yet always drawing back.

"How'd your brother die?" he asked.

"A fight, I've told you."

"You said he got jumped by a bunch of guys."

"He did. You know this Jay."

"Was it to do with you and him selling drugs?"

Jay had never been one to fail to make a connection. Tim should have been meaner to the kid, so he'd want to avoid him instead of starting conversation with him.

"It was a feud between us and some boys from another neighborhood," Tim said. If Jay was half as smart as he thought he was he'd understand.

"A feud?"

"You know, thinking we owned our streets, they owned theirs."

Their streets. He remembered the pride they'd felt. Those streets of run down houses and ragged kids.

"Like a gang, dad?"

"You could call it that. The boys come from the neighborhood near ours. It was me they wanted."

"They wanted to kill you?"

"They could have tried." So many times he'd wished it had been him they'd found that day when they drove through the streets, hunting for revenge. Tim would have found a way through, no matter how outnumbered. He always did.

"Why?" Jay asked.

Tim didn't think he could really explain. It was a story entwined in a hundred others. It was the story of every boy born on those streets.

"The night we almost got busted selling cops, I beat up one of their crew. It wasn't nothing personal, just needed to make the cops look my way so Curly could make it out with the dope."

He sipped the whisky, remembering the heat of that night. The adrenalin pumping in him, his fist crunching against the other boys face.

"But they saw it as disrespect, understand?"

Jay nodded. If there was one thing boys understood no matter where they were from it was the notion of respect.

"They got your brother to get back at you?" Jay said. His stance had relaxed, he stood close by Tim, looking up at him.

"It was never ending, just went around. We got them, they got us."

"There was three of them, right?" Jay asked. He knew the story, he'd heard a watered down version of it. But Tim could see the reality of it sinking in as Jay looked down over the dark and empty street below them.

Imagining Curly, at once surrounded and all alone. Tim could picture it like Jay never could have. The white t shirt and blue jeans Curly had been wearing that day. The stiff walk as he left the house in anger. The bone handled knife he'd have drawn when the River King's pulled alongside him.

He'd been close enough to home he could have turned and ran, maybe he would have made it back. Except he would never have turned and ran. Never have ran back to Tim for help.

"They all go to prison?"

"Two of 'em did. Got fifteen years."

"That all? Not exactly just a fight if he was outnumbered?"

Jay was frowning, the new truth settling over the old.

"They claimed it in self defense. He pulled a knife. Course he fucking did, there was three of them."

"What about the other one?"

"He walked. Said he never touched him. Gave evidence against the other two, must have cut a deal. He was the only one over eighteen."

"The other guys took the rap?"

"They never said nothing. They were just dumb fucking kids. He was the president, he put them to it, gave the word."

Those kids would be grown men now. He wondered if they looked back on their young selves and regretted the blind loyalty for a meaningless cause. If they regretted anything.

"That's bullshit!"

Jay was more astounded than Tim had ever been at the injustice of it.

"It's how it was here. It was just a fight, just another dead hood. Worth less than shit to the law."

Jay drummed his fingers against the rail, shifting his weight again. Tim almost wanted to give him a cigarette after all, to give him something to do with all the restless energy he could see burning up in him.

"How come you never told me this?"

"It's all in the past, Jay."

"But it's not," Jay said. "You still miss him."

Tim drained the rest of the whisky. He watched the lights blink off down at the bar where Sylvia worked. Midnight. If he went down there he might catch her as she left. Might press her up against the side of a car like he had one night after Dallas died.

He had a girlfriend back in Odessa, but that world felt disconnected from this.

When he looked at his fourteen year old son it was like looking back at his brother, seeing the life ahead of him, the unwalked path. He missed his brother and he missed what never was, what might have been. That other life where Curly had lived.

XXX

The sun was barely risen, the hotel room still dark. Tim showered with the lights off, standing in the warm darkness. After he was dressed he sat down on Jay's side of the bed and shook him awake.

"What?" Jay mumbled, opening bleary eyes. He pulled himself up on an elbow and glared at Tim.

"Is it even morning?"

"Almost. Listen, I got to go up to the hospital, Angela just called."

"Now?" Jay asked. "It ain't even light out."

"You can stay here."

His boys didn't need to watch someone die. It was something which stayed with you all your days.

Jay sighed and rubbed a fist over his eyes.

"Your mom not so good?"

Tim could see the realization sinking in for him what it meant when the hospital called you to come in before light.

"Seems not," Tim said. It wasn't even six yet but unlike Jay he felt wide awake. Had ever since the ringing of the phone had snapped him out of sleep.

He pulled a couple of bills out and put them down on the bedside table.

"You two stay here until I get back. You can go out for breakfast at that diner down the end of the street, spend the change at the arcade if you want. And don't buy fucking cigarettes."

Jay gave him a half smile.

"I don't really smoke that much, dad," he said. "I mean, I did like a couple of times. I was just ..." His words trailed off.

"Trying to piss me off?" Tim suggested.

Jay reached over to grab the money Tim had put down.

"What if you ain't back by lunch time?" he asked.

Tim bristled at the expectant tone. He was sure there'd never been a day he'd demanded his mother feed him. As long as he could remember he'd never had a thing he didn't take for himself.

He wanted his son to be tough, to handle himself, but he didn't want him out stealing shit either. He handed him another bill.

"If I am back before lunch you better not have spent it," he warned.

Jay nodded.

"Won't be long I hope," Tim said, then paused at the realization of what he was saying. Hoping for his mother to be dead faster.

When he was a kid he spent many a night wishing his stepfather dead. He contemplated various ways of setting him up for it. Tampering with his brakes. Tripping him down the stairs when he left the house drunk. It was a heart attack in the end, several years after Tim left. More quick and painless than anything he'd planned for him.

Jay looked at him with solemn eyes, the belligerence gone from him. He chewed his lip, ran his finger across the edge of the sheet.

"Don't worry about Jesse, I'll take care of him," he said after a minute.

Tim could see him searching for words of consolation and coming up with what he knew Tim would rather hear. His talks with his sons usually fell to the practical.

"I'll call you later," he said. He figured they didn't need I love yous and all that TV shit anyway. They knew he did.