Ben did not like his name. Not his whole name. Just the first name that his mother saddled him with. It would have been alright if he could have passed it off as Ben. It was a white boy's name but it was not pretentious or precious. He had learned to fight - to properly fight - over the name his mother had given him. She had called him Bendicion Spanish for blessing. It was anything but. It was not a typical Mexican name. But, she told him, his father had insisted. His father had named him but hadn't had the decency to stick around to have his ass properly kicked.
Ben had told his mother this once and she had smiled just to the point of laughter and looked up at him with eyes alight. He loved that look when he played football in little Crosby, TX. He loved it when he walked across the stage as Valedictorian at the University of Houston. That look was his then. When he talked of kicking out his father's teeth? He could tell that look wasn't his then.
He had been haunted by that look. And the idea it shouted. His father was invincible to her. Even when he finished basic. Even when he completed SEAL training. Even when the whole world knew some of the things he had done without ever knowing his name - he knew that look really belonged to the absent man. He could never hate her for that. Never.
She had limped from house to house cleaning up after old white women who always looked at her with disdain. Even the other Mexican women who worked for Ms. Wetta looked at her like she was... less. But she had never let him see any bitterness. She made his life rich and full. She was strict. Grades mattered. Manners were expected. Meekness was valued. Honesty above all.
He had only seen her enraged once. He had beaten Billy McKinnon to within an inch of his life. Not really. But he had broken a rib and split his lip and gossip was that one testicle was swollen enough that they thought he might lose it. Billy had been 15 at the time. A bully. A head taller than all the rest of his age and lacking something. He was handsome and charming and a dark haired white boy of dark skin that the bigotry of the time only made handsome on a white boy. Ben didn't know it at the time but later he learned that Billy was a sociopath. All he knew when he was 11 was that there was no way in hell he was giving up his lunch money.
His mother had been in a rage when she found out. She had driven him up to the McKinnon house out in the Woodlands and made him stand there in his best clothes and apologize to Billy while his family stood there smug and oh so comfortable in their... life.
He did like she wanted. He had apologized. But he saw it. It was in Billy's eyes. There was no shame there. Or fear. Or concern. Or acceptance. Or even anger. Everyone had always been vaguely uneasy around Billy. Ben had seen it on the day he apologized while in his Sunday best. Billy was not quite human. Not human in the way that empathy or compassion or concern made a person human. Ben knew that Billy, left to his own devices would kill him some day. And it would not be a quick way to death. It would be a savored thing.
Ben waited until he was sent to the Baptist Summer Retreat in August - his mother had such high hopes. He stole a car of one of the counselors and drove back to Houston. He stripped naked and jumped the fence of Billy's house. He climbed up from the front porch to the roof and made his way to the window of Billy's room. He rapped on the window. Again. And again. He paused to hear. Rapped again. He paused to hear. Motion. Someone trying to be quiet on wooden floors of an ancient house that was built before Santayana slaughtered history at the Alamo.
Billy stuck his head out. He looked to his right. Ben waited until he looked back to his left. Billy saw him. He saw him. His eyes saw him. Light travels that fast. He saw Ben. By the time the message got to his brain, by the time Billy knew he had seen Ben, Billy was dead. The ice pick had pierced the left eye and found the brain. Ben had rolled his wrist like he was Zorro even though he wasn't sure he had to. His mama never knew anything about that.
But Ms. Wetta - she had asked him about it at the interview. She had pointed out that his alibi wasn't really an alibi. It was just something for lazy law enforcement to miss. She said that was something only a child could get away with. Not something that would work for a full grown man. Especially one so accomplished as he. Ben had been working for Clear Skies for three years at that point. Counting his time with the SEALS, he had spent 7 years in the sand box.
While they sat she pointed out all the ways his murder of Billy McKinnon could have fallen apart, He sat uncomfortably while his back itched like fire ants had made a meal of him. He thought he had given nothing away and then she had commented on it. He had protested when she had told him to remove his coat and his shirt. But, inevitably, he sat before her in the bandages that had brought him home.
"So the burns are true." she had said. "Is the rest of it true?"
The ambush. The explosion. The roads blocked off and everything burning around him. The three other Humvies on fire and men pouring out of them and taking fire. His fifty cal there above him, haloed in flames. Standing in the fire. Hearing the skin on back and arms sizzle as moisture is driven out by heat. Firing. The whole time firing. Deciding pain was not enough. Deciding agony was fuel. Deciding to keep firing until everything that could hide a shooter was rubble. Deciding to kill everything to save your few. Deciding to die to save your few. Waking up in agony. Waking to nurses and doctors pealing away the dead and burnt to get to the quick below. Waking to scream.
"It's all true."
She had hired him on the spot. He had started as her body guard. He had started ignorant. As ignorant as a man of his intelligence could be. She had a good handle on him though. She told him just before or just as he was figuring things out. It was an illusion he had never decided to see though. Truth and honesty.
That made him nervous now. Ginger had been missing for weeks. It had already been weeks when they realized that both sources on the island had gone silent. It had taken another week to get out to the island and confirm that all the locals thought that Old Vincent and his girlfriend and his bartender had died in a boating accident miles off shore. He had lost another two weeks trying to track the old man down on his own. The man now had over a 90 day head start and Ben had no choice but to go to Ms. Wetta with the news.
She had talked to him more than once about pride. This conversation was going to be painful. Every lesson she had ever tried to teach about humility - every single one - had just proven useless. She had told him about sitting at a table chasing a straight when the aces had him beat. Now he had to face her with all his chips in the center and that frigging deuce was never coming.
He walked in to the room with the long windows and waited for her to turn from the bar. She fixed him with those green eyes. She was older than his mother and looked 15 years younger. He had never let himself dwell on it. But she would look at him some times after what you would have thought were too many drinks... She caught his breath at all the wrong moments.
He had never been scared of her. She looked at him. He cleared his throat. "We have a problem."
End Chapter 20.
