Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 149301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
“Kage, what’s on your mind right now, baby?” He didn’t respond. “Maybe you just need a hug.” They smiled at one another. “You know, since you were a little boy, you’d give the best hugs. You were so affectionate… so smart… but easy to write someone off.” He hung his head. “If you felt let down by a friend, or someone you cared about, you had the type of rage in you that would make an erupting volcano stop mid-flow and bow down in awe.
“You’d turn vengeful. You could hold a grudge like no other. And then you became violent… that’s why initially I had agreed to put you in the hospital. I regret that now.” Mama’s eyes sheened over. She shook her head. “That wasn’t the answer. You needed help, yes, but not like that. The way they did you… abused you! Said you were improving, but they had you so drugged up you were droolin’, strapped to that damn chair when I came by. I tried to take you outta there, but my father insisted you stay. Finish treatment. I cursed him that day. The last visit was the worst. I yanked you out of there myself and pulled my pistol on that nurse!” He recalled that all too well. “You won’t tell me what they did, and I ’spose it doesn’t matter now—the damage is done.” A tear streamed her face. “I’m so sorry, Kage. I am so, so sorry.”
“Mama, it’s funny you bring that up. Roman and I were talkin’ the other day, and he was saying how he was mad at Aunt Bonnie for when he, Dakota and Jordan were in foster care ’cause of Uncle Reeves addictions. My situation was different. I had done somethin’ to make you think I wasn’t right in the head. Cause and effect. I wasn’t crazy then, and I ain’t crazy now, but I know how it looked, and it looked real bad. I don’t blame you, and you keep apologizing, year after year, for the same thing. It wasn’t your fault. Places like that are supposed to help. They didn’t. They’re shut down now.” He shrugged.
“Thank God.” She shook her head.
“I understood, even back then, that when someone tries to kill someone else, including when the perpetrator is a child, that person might be troubled and need to see a counselor. I tried to kill my grandfather, and I was serious about it. That is the end result. Regardless of how controlling and fucked up Grandpa is, I understood then, and I understand now: he was still your father. You didn’t want him to die, nor did you want me taken away. You were in a pickle. I remember you cryin’ at the door when they put me in the back of the ambulance. I ain’t never blame you, Mama… not even once.”
She nodded and wiped a tear away.
“Things change. People grow up. I was a kid. I had a lot going on in my head. My father was some local legend, an underground celebrity of sorts, and I felt like I could never live up to Kane’s name.”
“Really? What made you think you had to?” Mama seemed genuinely surprised.
“Everyone it seemed, your friends that is, wanted me to be just like him, but I couldn’t… I was ME.” He pointed to himself. “They’d check me out and say: look, he tall as hell, just like his daddy! Look, he walks just like Kane! He sounds just like Kane! He got his mama’s eyes, but Kane’s hair and nose… on and on and on. I was just a kid who was tryna understand the world, and why I never quite fit into the one that I was trying to squeeze my big ass in. I didn’t get why I could learn things so quickly on one hand, but on the other, I was what they now call socially awkward. Folks didn’t like how I didn’t show a lot of emotion. It made ’em uncomfortable. I didn’t think I was socially awkward until my cousins started tellin’ me things like, ‘Hey Kage, it’s wrong to choke people out who say dumb shit, no matter how mad they make you.’ Or ‘If you like a girl, it’s better to bring her flowers instead of a dead duck she can cook for her dinner, Kage.” They both chuckled at that. “Mama, I care. I just show it differently. Sometimes… sometimes I wish I didn’t care though. It would make things easier.”
Mama got up and sat beside him, rubbing his back. She smelled like Jergens lotion and Patchouli.
“Kage, there was a time when you would have never admitted that to me, or to anyone, really. You’ve come a long way.”
He nodded in agreement.
“You mentioned wantin’ a grandbaby.”
“Yeah, I do!” her eyes got big, as if he were about to tell her a due date.