Sublime Messages

Twelve, A

After the gruesome demise of their younger brother, the Kirk boys continued life much as they always had, earning whatever income they could in precarious manners and whittling away their free time with drugs and booze and women. For a while, they tried to get involved with whatever business the Hernandez sisters carried out, but their haphazard and lax methods were far too big a liability for any intelligent person to risk. So instead, for the most part, they fought one another and moved in and out of jail. Jace—the middle one—spent a few years in prison for a string of B&E's; Cal worked for some time at Annabelle's bar, and rumor had it she paid him under the table in more ways than one. The neighborhood around the brothers, the one where Whit and Ruby Rouge had spent their childhoods, slowly dwindled, whether from the presumed wild animal or cartel attacks that plagued them or from the remaining inhabitants deciding to move elsewhere. In short, life carried on for the Kirk brothers much as it always had, regardless of the shifting dynamics around them, so when Ruby showed up at their door one dusky evening nearly five years after they'd last seen her, nothing about the situation seemed much to phase them.

A young woman now by all accounts, Ruby Rouge looked nearly the same as they'd remembered, with the exception of her choice of attire. Still the long, unkempt, dirty blonde hair (though now nesting itself into thick dreads), still the sun-tanned face and thick dark eyebrows, still the scrappy height and form though her layers of ill-fitting ivory skirt and tank and cardigan dwarfed her figure within. The only thing really different about her was the stoicism that controlled her features; her face betrayed no emotion whatsoever as she stood on the rickety steps looking at Jace, the one who'd opened the door.

"Fuck you want?" he asked, curling an ugly lip under the orange mustache he'd tried to grow. In one hand, he held a Coors Light, and he leaned against the doorframe as casually as if he'd been expecting her.

Ruby impercetipbly tightened her fingers, which she held clasped in front of her, focused on the recent scar under his eye in attempt to steady her nerves. "I'm here with a message from my Daddy," she said firmly.

Jace scrunched up his face, looked her up and down, spit something to the side, off the stairs and into the gravel. "Ol' Beau? Haven't seen him around in forever. Ain't seen you around, neither, come to think on it. Figured you were dead or run off."

"You want to talk about a job or not?"

He finished off his beer and threw the can somewhere into the encroaching darkness. "Don't get fresh with me, little girl." The screen door he held open squealed as he shifted his position. "You go back and tell your daddy we don't want shit from him."

"Let me talk to Cal."

"Cal ain't here."

Ruby crossed her arms against her chest; she felt braver that way. She'd killed a man for Christ's sake—why did the stupid Kirks scare her? "Yes he is. I see his rusty-ass truck over there." She couldn't keep herself from reverting; she wasn't The Messenger's Daughter, here, but Ruby Rouge, ignorant trailer mutt.

"It's my truck, now, and you don't get the fuck outta here, I'll bend you over the front seat and make you regret it."

Before she could start trembling and reveal her anger, two figures stepped up behind her. They'd been hovering around the side of the mobile home, listening, and they knew their cue. Dressed in dark clothing, each of the young men hid their faces under balaclavas, and each held a semi-automatic. Their appearance at Ruby's back had an immediate and expected impact on Jace's attitude. He darted his small eyes back and forth between the armed strangers, and then he lifted a hand palm-out in a gesture of acquiescence.

"Let me get my brother," he said. "Just, wait here—"

"Don't move." Ruby ordered, gloating inwardly yet wishing she hadn't needed the help. "Just call for him."