Boxes



  Boxes

  By Belea T. Keeney

  Visit jms-books.com for more information

  Copyright 2011 Belea T. Keeney

  ISBN: 978-1-61152-120-7

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  Cover Credits: Adadurov

  Used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  Cover Design: J.M. Snyder

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

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  Boxes

  By Belea T. Keeney

  Sunday morning, barely dawn and a month out of Raiford. The house around him was still; only the buzz of cicadas hummed through the open windows. Hector Lugo sipped on his café con leche, grateful for its frothy burn in his throat. He poured another cup and made himself go back up the stairs.

  At the end of the hall, his father’s room waited for him.

  “I haven’t touched anything in there,” Juliana told him. “You do it. I just can’t.”

  His father’s room had waited for him for over two years. Two years since his Dad died, standing behind the counter in his little grocery store. Two years since Hector had beaten Dennis Fulton’s face into a bloody pulp just for being one of the gangbangers, never mind that Dennis hadn’t been directly involved in the robbery. Two years of hard time in the Florida penal system. Hector rested one hand on the doorknob.

  His father’s cadenced voice in his head, gentle, his Cuban accent still heavy.

  Keep you nose clean.

  The door opened with a squeak of its hinges. Hector stood at the threshold, looking for ghosts.

  Dusty violet curtains hung at the windows. Hector noticed for the first time how shabby the bedspread was; the light blue chenille was frayed and worn bare in some places. Two flattened pillows lay like small dead things near the headboard.

  Hector stepped inside the room and took a deep breath. The room wasn’t much bigger than his cell had been.

  He put down his coffee and trailed his fingers over items on the dresser. His father’s leather-covered box still lay open where Hector had rifled through it long ago. Hector had looked for insurance papers, a checkbook, a deed to the house, anything that would be proof of an estate. His father’s wedding ring was still there, one pair of cufflinks, a silver cross and a few old photos of his mother.

  Inside the box, the cross gleamed.

  He picked up the photos and thumbed through them. They had faded. In one, a red dress his mother wore was now pink; in another, golden cowboy chaps on his own once-chubby legs were yellow. He wore a ridiculous cowboy hat on his head and a baby-toothed smile.

  That must have been Halloween, when I was, what? Four? Five? Mom was still alive.

  His mother died when he was six, just before Christmas, not long after Juliana was born. He could still remember her but it was a strain after twenty years. He could see the thick black hair she always wore in a French-twist, feel the rough cotton of her skirts. Mumaw. He remembered hours with her in the kitchen downstairs as she baked. Her brown sugar cookies were his favorite.

  Dad got quiet after she died. He changed. No more Batman games.

  Hector had loved the re-runs of Batman he watched on TV. After his bath at night, sometimes his father would let him wear one of his clean T-shirts. “Grown up clothes for my grown up boy.” The shirt dangled like a dress from Hector’s toddler body but it felt like a cape. The cape of a super hero, a fighter, a protector. He would hum the silly show’s theme song, run from the bed’s headboard and leap, flying into the air.

  All those years, he never dropped me.

  Hector opened the dresser drawers and tugged out the clothes. He stacked a half dozen piles on the bed before noticing how stained and worn the cotton shirts were, that the pants were ragged.

  I can’t give these away, they look terrible.

  He unfolded one faded shirt with a Lugo’s Market logo on its breast. The once-wine shirt had bleached to a sickly brown-red, like blood.

  It looks so small.

  But it couldn’t be. It was his father’s size, he remembered his Dad wearing it the week before…And his father was a big guy.

  Hector turned and looked in the dresser’s mirror. He held up the shirt to his own chest. The sleeves dangled just inside his shoulders, the outline of his body clearly visible beyond the fabric. He could never wear it.

  Dad wasn’t a big guy, I just thought he was.

  Clear-headed beyond his grief, he could see his father now. A man of average height, a tad too much belly, hairline receding, hands always dirty and rough. A man who worked hard to keep things together, with too little education. A fierce economy always nipping at his heels, and two children to raise alone.

  Hector pulled the shirt up to his face and breathed in. He couldn’t smell anything beyond the musty scent of the dresser drawers.

  The tears came anyway.

  * * * *

  A few minutes later, he heard the floor creak as Juliana headed towards the bathroom. He hurriedly wiped his face with the shirt, wishing he had closed the door behind him. The toilet flushed and Juliana stood in the doorway.

  “How’s it going?” Her voice was sleep-rasped and froggy.

  “Fine.” He motioned to the piles of clothes, the closet door open. “Are the boxes downstairs?”

  “Yeah, they’re in the dining room. Want me to bring them up?”

  “Sure.” He glanced around the room. “You should go through some of this yourself, take what you want.”

  Juliana crossed her arms, her back stiff. “I don’t want any of it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It just means I don’t want it.” Juliana shrugged, a sulky dismissal. “It was stupid, the way he died. He never should have fought those robbers. He was stupid.”

  Hector’s mouth dropped open. “What? What did you just say?” He came around the bed, one fist clenched around a pair of socks. His vision fluttered red in front of him, heated.

  “Look where it got him! Where it got us, Hector. He left us alone, it was stupid.” Her arms flailed as the hot words spilled out of her mouth. “That frigging store, I’m so sick of hearing about it.”

  His teeth snapped on his tongue; he tasted blood, thick and salty. Juliana backed up to the door, alarm in her face. Her chin quivered.

  It hit Hector all at once; he really saw Juliana for the first time in two years. She had grown up, her body curved and vulnerable. She wasn’t just a kid sister teasing her older brother anymore; this was a woman facing an angry man, a man who could hurt her.

  She’s afraid of me.

  “Please.” He held out a trembling hand. “Don’t look at me like that. I’d never hurt you. Juliana, please.” He looked at his hands, hands that had nearly killed Dennis Fulton.

  “Screw you, Hector!” She slapped his arm so hard it stung. She turned too fast, bumped in
to the doorway, hit the wall with her palms, then ran down the stairs. Hector heard the front door open, then the screen door slam.

  Hector stood there, mouth agape.

  What the hell was that all about?

  He clumped down the stairs and brought the empty boxes up from the dining room.

  * * * *

  Church bells rang out and startled him. The nine o’clock service starting. He’d packed up three boxes, filled them with clothes, some work boots, a few belts. He figured the Salvation Army would take it. The other stuff would go in the trash.

  Now that he was older, he could understand why his father had grown drawn and quiet. More often than not, his father had shushed him and pushed him away when Hector wanted to play. He learned to sit quietly and varoom with his toy cars as his father rocked Juliana back and forth in her nursery. Once he looked up and saw his father crying, tears dripping on Juliana’s face.

  His father kept the store going, somehow, kept the house going, somehow, and raised the two of them. A series of tenants moved in and out of the apartment in the backyard. By the time he was ten years old, Hector watched Juliana after school once his Dad brought her home from church daycare. He learned to cook beans and rice and pollo and could make a passable flan, for a kid.

  On Sundays, the only day the store was closed, the three of them spent countless hours in the garage. Hector grew to love the rickety building, the soft click of a socket wrench, learning about cars from his Dad. They began doing tune-ups and oil changes for folks in the neighborhood to make a little extra cash.

  When he turned sixteen, his Dad presented Hector with a full mechanics toolbox, bright red, five feet tall, filled with gleaming equipment. Hector remembered the yellow Mac box truck that pulled up to the store every Friday, collecting payments.

  And now it was his turn to pay. He’d signed a mortgage for the house while he was in Raiford, gotten enough to get Juliana back into the junior college full time.

  I can keep this going, I can do it. Let Juliana finish school, get her out of this place. Someplace better.

  He was nearly finished with the room. He piled the cardboard boxes by the door. Hector went back to the small closet, pushed through cheap metal hangers that clanged against his shoulders and tugged down the three cigar boxes he’d been hoping to find. These he wanted, even if Juliana didn’t.

  The boxes had made the journey from Cuba with the family in the early sixties. His people, constrained by Castro, free in Florida.

  The boxes themselves were empty, still beautiful. One was hand-painted, a rich brown with bright red cigar bands dancing on the edges. Another was lush teal with yellow flowers and it smelled strongly of cigar; a thick apple scent filled the closet when Hector opened it. The third had small figures of men carrying tobacco on their backs; the deep orange faded to pale tangerine. It must have been sitting in the sun at one time.

  That one’s my favorite.

  He put the cigar boxes on the dresser and looked around. He saw his reflection in the mirror, his bulk filled the glass.

  Time for this to be my room.

  Church bells pealed again in the distance.

  THE END

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  ABOUT BELEA T. KEENEY

  Belea T. Keeney was born and raised in the balmy tropics of Florida and still dreams of velvet-humid nights, the smell of orange blossoms, and the croak of alligators. Her writing has appeared in Florida Horror: Dark Tales from the Sunshine State, The Beast Within, Sniplits, Boundoff, WordKnot, along with many other outlets. Her stories have placed in the Writers in Paradise Short Story competition, the 2010 Florida Review Editor's Choice Award, the 2007 Left Coast Writing Contest, and the 2011 Saints & Sinners Literary Festival. She works as an editor and spends her time off collecting caladiums, feeding birds, and, of course, reading. For more information, visit beleakeeney.com.

  ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC

  Founded in 2010, JMS Books LLC is owned and operated by author J.M. Snyder. We publish a variety of genres, including gay erotic romance, fantasy, young adult, poetry, and nonfiction. Short stories and novellas are available as e-books and compiled into single-author print anthologies, while any story over 30k in length is available in both print and e-book formats. Visit us at jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!