Free Poison Tongue by Nash Summers Page B

turned toward me. I could tell by the expression on his face that this was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now—telling me about his family. Yet he did so anyway.
    “I was born a county over,” he said, “but we came to live here when I was just a kid. It was me and my mama most of the time. The old man was never around. Mama always made up excuses for him. I didn’t believe her. Looking back now, I wish I had pretended to believe them, for her sake.”
    He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. “I saw her lying there, blood all over. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open. I knew she was dead the moment I saw her.
    “A man was crouched down next to her, leaning over her, looking at her, his hand at her waist. I don’t remember if I thought anything besides ‘That’s the man who killed my mama.’ And then he looked up and saw me.
    “I was a fuckin’ kid, Levi. A damn kid. But I was the man of the house and I knew how to protect myself, even if I hadn’t been there to protect her. We kept a shotgun behind the chair in the living room. I was standing right next to it. When I grabbed it and cocked it in my hands, it felt like the most normal thing in the entire world.
    “He screamed something, shot up, put his hand out. I dunno what he said. I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about him to this day. I thought he was the man who’d killed my mama. He came toward me. I don’t know if it was panic or instinct or fear, but I pulled that trigger. Not once did I ever think about not pulling that trigger. Not for a second did I recognize him.”
    I leaned back against the arm of the sofa and looked at the man who was bleeding out in front of me. After all these years, he was still dying from this. I couldn’t tell if it was from the guilt of pulling that trigger or the guilt of not being able to be there to save her, but I knew as well as I knew that the sky was blue that this was killing him.
    “And it was your dad,” I said, my eyes not leaving his face.
    “I didn’t know it was him,” he replied softly. “I hadn’t seen him in almost a year. And even then I barely remembered what he looked like. He was never around. Even when the sheriff and his boys showed up and asked me if I knew who that man was, I told them I didn’t. And it was true.”
    “But no one believed you?”
    “I got in trouble as a kid. I knew the sheriff on a first-name basis. I fucked around, I messed up a lot, made stupid choices. Only thing the old man ever said to me was how big of a disappointment I turned out to be.”
    I furrowed my brow. “I don’t get why they’d still hold that against you if it had been an accident. You were a kid.”
    He smiled sadly as he looked down at his hands. “Daddy was a cop. He could also be a mean son of a bitch, but he was a cop.”
    “Did you have any other family?”
    “An aunt, not that that made the whole mess any better. She’s my dad’s adopted sister. Lived up in Baton Rouge, but came down as soon as she heard. Only met her a handful of times before that. Never saw her again after that day.
    “I’ll never forget the look in her eyes when the sheriff told her what I’d done. Her eyes became blank—not dark—just… blank. The last words out of her mouth to me were a curse. She cursed me to forever be followed by darkness.
    “I was at her house one time—couldn’t have been more than seven years old. Always hated going there almost as much as she hated me being there. I wandered into the spare bedroom this one time, found boxes of books, strange jars on shelves full of shit that smelled like something dead. These books had pictures in them I didn’t understand. My mama found me and snatched the books away when she caught me looking. Said I was never to go back into that room and never look at those books again.”
    Monroe leaned back and scratched the back of his neck. “I’d never really put much thought into it until I was older and thought maybe there was a