Free Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens

and sorrow. But when he finally understood, though it was beyond understanding, that someone had gone to Addy, his Addy, and defiled her and now she had a baby coming and wasruined, Chester Monk lost his soul. He had a flash in his head and a picture of Big Zach Heron stumbling out the door of Shadds’ house on Fowell Street. In that instant, he knew.
    When Chester lifted his face and trained his fire eyes on the bigger man, Heron could see that he knew. It did not occur to Chester to share the truth with L’il Leam. The only thing that came to Chester’s mind was that Zach Heron would die for what he’d done.
    With an animal roar, his long blade primed, the boy attacked the man, seeking his heart or liver or lung. L’il Leam, not knowing that Chester was the friend and Zach Heron the fiend, jumped into the melee to wrest the knife from Chester’s hand.
    To explain the struggle of the man and two boys is to describe the chase of an eddy, or the melding of sand into glass, or the frenzy of wild dogs shredding one of their own. It was one set upon another, set upon another, thrashing and stabbing, biting and clawing, shouting and gasping and finally rolling back toward the river.
    In the end it was silent and still and the moon felt safe to come out again. Zach Heron lay crumpled on the ground, a small twig stranded in the cave of his nostril and twenty-four stab wounds patterned on his huge dead body. Chester sat soaked and freezing on the river’s edge, looking down into the deep murky water.
    Chester’d heard the splash when L’il Leam fell and left Zach Heron bleeding on the riverbank to dive in afterhim. He couldn’t see anything under the surface. He rose for a gasp of air and went back under, and up he came and back down again, but he couldn’t find Addy’s brother in the black water, and after a while, he was too cold to keep looking. He didn’t have to wonder what happened because he knew.
    L’il Leam’s arms had been broken in the clash of bodies, his legs were weak and bruised. He’d fallen and stumbled into the cold grim river and was unable to rise back to the surface. The poor wrong boy floated down to the bottom and got lost among the sunk jalopies and wasted whisky. Chester couldn’t believe, though he knew it to be true, that that was the last of L’il Leam, who had more courage than most grown men, and such goodness that Birdie Brown chose him alone to love. Chester wished he still believed in Heaven, so he’d have a place to put his small, dead friend.
    Remillard had seen many things in his day and understood men’s rage too well, so when the Frenchman pulled his automobile down to the river a short time later, he was not shocked by what he saw, only concerned for his friend Noir Gross. Chester tried to explain, but what had happened was indescribable. He could only say how he ached at the loss of L’il Leam and wasn’t sorry he killed Zach Heron after what he’d done, and that he had to return to Rusholme and explain it all to Addy himself.
    Remillard knew, even as he said this, that Chester could never return to Rusholme and never explain what hadhappened to anyone. He’d go to prison when the police found Zach Heron’s body, and if L’il Leam ever drifted back, he’d be blamed for that death too. Remillard looked at him squarely. “Mon ami, you must go.”
    Tears came to Chester’s eyes but he would not let them pass. “Addy…?”
    Remillard understood because he knew of Chester’s love for the girl back home, and he was sorry for his young friend. “C’est fini. It cannot be, Chester. Better for her to think you are dead. You must go. Go now before the Patrol comes by. First help me dump this pig in the water.”
    Each man took a huge foot and dragged the animal to the river. Together they rolled him in and were soaked by the great splash. Chester shuddered,