Struggle On Home

Chapter Two

The courthouse was a grim building, all severe corners and sweaty grey walls. Abel Clark was sat on a hard slat bench in a corridor where the AC drooled rust-coloured water onto the floor beneath it, waiting to hear how the rest of his life would turn out. He had his mother perched on one side of him and a lawyer on the other.

K.C. Anderson was slumped on the same bench a little further along. He had his stepdad with him. Pat Anderson did not so much sit on the bench as hover just above it, he was so tense. From time to time he would glance at K.C., breathe hard through his nose and look away.

Abel had been hating himself for a while now. He had always been heavyset, and there had been a time when this hadn't bothered him, but just then he was hyperaware of his own grotesquerie. He thought that his backside was protruding through the gaps in between the slats, that the suit he had been coerced into for the sentencing was straining to keep his bulk in check. He felt bloated, obscene, like a deformed animal found rotting in a swamp.

It had been a year since K.C. had loosed two bullets into the girl scouts. The miracle, everyone said later, was that no-one had died, or even gotten hurt. K.C. had been too drunk, his lawyer had argued at the trial, to hit the broadside of a barn from ten feet away. They had managed to plead down from attempted murder to felonious assault. The day that had happened, Abel (in low spirits at the unanimous declaration of his guilt) had asked his lawyer what the difference was.

"Oh, about forty years," she'd replied, not looking at him. Abel had a suspicion that she didn't like him or K.C. very much.

Stupid bitch. Always frowning and taking notes, which made him paranoid that he was saying the wrong thing. And it was cruel of the judge to make K.C. state his real name in front of a whole bunch of people.

Carrie Katelyn. A mix-up at the birth registry office; K.C.'s birth father not hearing the details of an important phone call right and deciding to name his baby daughter himself, after his mother and youngest sister. Quite a shock, getting back to the hospital to find a brand-new baby boy and a wife ready to eat him alive. They couldn't change it, so they switched the initials around and called him K.C.

Abel hadn't known that before.

He wondered what else he didn't know about his former best friend.

Former, of course, because they hadn't seen each other once over the past year. Their parents had kept them both imprisoned at home, driving them to and from lawyer and court appointments and nowhere else. K.C. must have gone a little crazy, all cooped up like that.

He remembered his narrow face contorting as he finally accepted defeat and confessed his name. He remembered also the snickers from the public gallery and the stenographer, the sharp shoulders slumping when they were done.

No matter what had happened, K.C. was his friend. Abel was all he had, the only person whose eyes didn't slide away like droplets of oil as he worked his way through his school-sanctioned prescriptions every lunchtime.

He didn't blame him for what had happened, even though it was mostly his fault. He concentrated on his own part in it, as outlined by the prosecutor: he'd supplied the gun, albeit with no intention to fire it at schoolchildren. He'd stood by as K.C. had readied it for shooting, pulling back the hammer and settling into a hunter's mindset. He'd made no effort to stop him, or help the panic-stricken kids. K.C. had the lion's share of the responsibility, but Abel carried most of the guilt.

He hadn't seen him for months. The pain of missing him was constant and inescapable, an arthritis of the soul. It was torture to be here with him and not talk to him. It was cruel, and filled Abel's head with maddening screenplays of all the things he'd say to K.C. if he only had the chance. For now, though, he had to content himself with looking at him. It was possible that he would never do so again.

K.C.'s hair had been tamed from an uneven crop of spikes to a military buzzcut, possibly at the behest of his stepfather. His face was washed out, paler than it used to be, but his eyes were the same extraordinary shade of blue that reminded Abel of electricity. They bulged from his head, as though pushed out by the intensity of the thoughts behind them.

His hands, which lay meek and still in his lap, were bonier than Abel remembered, and the muscles in his neck were slack, invisible. The only clue that it was still K.C. was the way his right foot danced a frenetic little jig on its own, a turkey on a hot plate. Yes, he was indeed K.C., Abel's K.C., his favourite person on Earth.

The intercom crackled. The bile simmering in Abel's stomach began a slow, ineroxable rise towards his mouth.

"Would all those involved in Anderson and Clark versus Iowa return to Courtroom One, please?" an invisible woman buzzed. She sounded like an astronaut checking in from Alpha Centauri.

Abel heaved his awful, bloated corpse off the bench. Sorry, Bench, he thought. Sorry I made you hold me up like that. Further down along, K.C. was helped to his feet by his stepfather. Someone had gone to the trouble of convincing him to wear a suit. It was grey, and covered in short brown hairs. It looked itchy. Abel turned his head away from it as the ragged little group made their way down the damp corridor to Courtroom One.

——

"Boys, I've overseen about five hundred criminal justice cases in my life," Judge Neal boomed. He sounded, K.C. thought, like God. "This is, without a whisper of doubt, the worst one so far, and I hope that I will never have to say that again."

He paused. K.C. felt his eyes boring into the top of his head. A shudder rolled through him and kept his eyes on the floor.

"Mr. Anderson, if you don't look up this very minute, I'll have you on contempt charges before you can say jump."

K.C. lifted his head. He stared into the sun.

"You could say that we're a little spoilt here in Fertility Springs," Neal growled. "If you were both from Uptown or something I could understand it. There'd be a mitigating factor. But I've read your files I've gotten statements from your parents, and it seems that you two come from the best backgrounds a pair of kids could ask for." He shook his head.

"I say that we're spoilt in this town because, excluding Uptown, we have the lowest crime rates in the county. We're not used to this sort of....hooliganism. Well, a year ago we lost that innocence, courtesy of yourselves."

He leant forward a little. Abel let out a reedy, throaty groan.

"I wish I could sentence you both to life in prison, but I got an entire judicial system behind me saying that I can't do that yet. So I'm going to wait until the day you don't miss a shot, the day you both end up cowering in front of me like you are now.

"I have read the pre-sentence report, and I have listened to the sentencing arguments of both your attorney and the State's attorney. Having been found guilty by the jury, I will now sentence you.

"The pre-sentence report recommends that you both spend no less that five years in prison. I accept this recommendation"-K.C.'s blood turned into hot grease-"and, as I can legally do so, I am also handing down an eight thousand dollar fine, payable upon the expiration of the custodial term. I hereby sentence you to five years in the custody of the Iowa Department of Corrections for five years. You have the right to appeal this sentence, but please note that your rights are limited and you must file a notice of your attempt to appeal within thirty days. Your attorney can help you with this filing."

It was as quick and as lethal as an earthquake. Judge Neal lifted the gavel up like an axe and let it fall once, twice, severing them both forever.

"Court adjourned."