The Glassbreaker Goes Home (The King Henry Tapes), page 5
“Ain’t cut myself yet, so there’s that,” King Henry grunted back.
As the pile of greasy tortillas grew, Old Man Price tried again, “Haven’t heard from you much these last few months. Never hear from you a whole lot, but . . . a drought even by our standards, I suppose you’d call it.”
Was a time King Henry tried to check up on his dad at least twice a week, shitty ten minute calls about nothing but sports or the like, but still . . . he tried. Only with the lead up to the Guild Vault job, well . . . he was plenty distracted.
Want to be distracted now, instead of having this conversation. Only no one was around to help sidetrack it. Marge, Val, and Susan were all out back placing knives and forks and such. Setting the table, that what normal folk called it? Whatever they were doing, they weren’t in the fucking kitchen. Just him and his dad . . .
Can’t a fucker just brood for a bit? Really, ain’t I had to do enough emotional shit today? I’ve almost fucking cried twice! And the fucking stupid ass baby hasn’t even showed up yet!
“Then you call last week telling me you found your sister,” Old Man Price went for Try Number Thrice, “that was a shock, Boy. Mighty big shock! Good one . . . but, still not over it. Thought she was gone . . . alive, mind you, but having her own family by now for sure. Never thought I’d see her again. After Marge helped me and I . . . I started making amends, I prayed for it more than I did anything else. To talk and ask forgiveness, yes, but just to see her! Never thought I would . . . and there she was today. I don’t deserve it, Boy, but thank you so much. When you have kids, you’ll understand. Know you won’t make the same mistakes I did. You’re . . . you’re a good man, King.”
And the fucking stupid ass baby hasn’t even showed up yet!
“Yeah . . . Susan’s back,” was all King Henry dared say on the subject.
Old Man Price was the one to grunt now. “Then, few days ago you call me asking if we can have dinner. Got yourself some old girlfriend back I’ve never met, not living in Fresno no more, not working at your comic shop, convinced Jordan to finally bring her husband around too . . . that’s a lot of change out of the blue, Boy. That what you been busy with, finding your sister?”
King Henry Price did hate lying. Would’ve been so easy . . . but he just couldn’t do it. “Nah, I stumbled across her while busy with something else. Just . . . lucked out, Dad. As for JoJo, I’m sure she wants to see Susan as much as you do.”
“Never have been told what her husband is like,” Old Man Price grumbled in irritation. “Though given the clothes and the jewelry she wears now, man must have money. Horatio Vega . . . I barely know his name! You remember what happened last dinner when I mentioned him. Was I judging the man? No! Yet she . . . girl acts like she’s still thirteen most the time. Married and with a newborn now . . . how that happen? I’m scared for her, King. Know you had your troubles, but you were an angel compared to your sister.”
Oh, just . . . fuck you, universe. Somehow King Henry manned up, “Listen, Dad: I’ve been worried for JoJo too, but both of us got to accept it’s her life. Like you said, she’s married and she’s got a kid. Never been a fan of Vega, but compared to the guys she dated when she was thirteen? Well, guess he ain’t that bad. Yeah, he loves talking. Yeah, he’ll spin words so fast your head hurts. Yeah, he’s an old school godfather type and you don’t want your sister married to that guy, but she is married to him and—whatever he is—he loves her. Really loves her. Adores her. He even helped with the whole Susan thing, just cuz JoJo asked. So . . . give him a shot, okay? And I ain’t talking about with great grandpa’s Korean War M1 you keep in your closet.”
That tortilla got fried extra crispy. “Well, I promised Marge I wouldn’t start a fight with her . . . or with him. Don’t want to. With anyone anymore. Too much fighting in my life and it never did me any good. Brought out the worst in me even. You, you’re the fighter, King. Seems to work for you, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe it is. Maybe it ain’t. Ask me again in a decade,” King Henry grumbled.
Old Man Price chuckled at that, having seen quite a few decades now. “Me . . . I’m just a worker. Should’ve learned that quicker, would’ve tackled my problems differently. Would’ve still lost your mom, but not you kids along with her. Ah, seeing Susan was good for me, Boy. Gives me hope this might not be the last of these dinners! You really just stumbled across her, huh? Don’t know if I believe that. My girl . . . my girl’s back . . .”
“She, uh, been okay around you?” King Henry asked, very much ignoring the tears rimming his father’s eyes. Had to be the onions. Explained everything. Val was probably chopping them before we talked and Dad was chopping them before he got the door and I’m chopping them now. That’s it . . . fucking onions, what a bunch of assholes.
“Same as I remember her. Grown, of course. Should’ve warned me she looks so much like your mother! But then . . . there’s a nice thought in that, ain’t it? My Abby living on in all of you kids?” Old Man Price clicked off the stove. “Hurts, Boy, but feels good at the same time. She did have a slip mentioning some tamale recipe she learned from a lady died during the Depression. I assume that’s what you were talking about when you said she heard people ain’t there?”
“That would be it. Sorry, Dad, I know—”
Old Man Price put a hand up. “If it’s her, I’ll do anything to deal with it, I just need to get used to it. She’s still up and about, means she’s doing a lot better than your mother did. You took her to a doctor, right? It’s the same thing?”
“Yeah, it’s uh . . . same prognosis, different symptoms.”
Silence as Old Man Price patted down the tortillas and King Henry finished with his condiment bowls.
“Stumbled across her,” Old Man Price mused aloud.
“What I said, ain’t it?” King Henry instantly got defensive.
“About two weeks ago.”
“Point being?”
“Point being you once told me Susan was up near Seattle and two weeks ago was about the time they had that huge accident up that way, wasn’t it? One of them small coastal towns . . . gas line and a water main blew, killed a whole bunch of people. Big news stories on it for days.”
“Eureka,” King Henry forced out.
“That’s the one,” his dad agreed while checking the oven timer. “I ain’t stupid, ya know. Not smart and not complicated, I admit—that’s you, King! So smart I don’t know where it could’ve come from, not even from your Mom, and complicated . . . I’ll never figure you out. Me? I settle for not stupid. I was happy with my life—even with the injury taking away my college ride—happy as can be until your mother got sick . . . then I did a lot I regret. Outside of that, working in the warehouse, day after day? About the perfect job for a man like me. Good American workingman job. Proud job.
“Still . . . simple. So . . . being simple, I shrugged away a lot. Your mom getting sick. You going off to that school for all those years. You running those businesses all seem to have themselves something else going on, and every single one of them got blown up or shot at or set on fire. Thought you might be the gangster, not that JoJo married one. Still, I shrugged it all off, kept my mouth shut. He’s alive, I thought, good enough. Never imagined you’d see twenty at one point, but that school helped you do it. Now though . . . your sister’s got the same sickness your mom did and well, that girlfriend of yours is about as out of your league as any I ever seen. Thought your mom was out of mine, but damn, Boy! What’s she do again?”
No way to describe Val’s work that wasn’t suspicious. “Works for Ceinwyn Dale. Finding exceptional students.”
Old Man Price grinned, maybe not as predatory as his son always did, but with something lurking in his eyes. “Now there’s a name mixed up with all the trouble surrounding this family, ain’t it?”
As always, King Henry felt the need to defend Ceinwyn. “A name kept that trouble from being a lot worse, even more than the school did.”
Old Man Price opened the oven, pulling out the enchilada trays one by one. Made the hot kitchen even worse, new AC or not. “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. But . . . I started thinking maybe there was some extra information out there made all the weirdness add up. Make a woman and her daughter go crazy. Make a school up in the mountains be necessary. Make a girl like Valentine be sweet on a Price, no matter he’s my boy or not.”
Fuck me, he knows, King Henry thought in pure terror. Maybe didn’t know, but could guess at something. It’s Fate paying me back for egging on T-Bone until he spilled the beans about the Mancy to his parents, ain’t it? The Bonnies both took it relatively well and a First-Gen mancer did have the right to inform their parents about their power, but . . . King Henry never thought he’d be one of them. Like his dad said, Joe Price was the kind of man didn’t think deeply about stuff like this, the perfect cog: turning away for hours at his warehouse, happy with a simple life.
Outside of his dad . . . everyone in his life already knew.
Probably due to how little of his life remained from before the Asylum.
Like Val so expertly deciphered, that bedroom had very little to do with the man King Henry Price had become.
“It’s a long conversation,” King Henry eventually warned. “A long conversation that’ll make you look at the world and your own children in a very different way.”
“Not for tonight then,” Old Man Price decided. “But one day? Soon?”
Never felt more trapped in his whole life. He couldn’t say ‘no’ after everything that had happened. “Sure. Maybe . . . maybe I’ll have Val help.”
“She already tell her parents then?”
“Told ‘em. I might have . . . helped her show them.”
Old Man Price chuckled. “Always nice to let a woman have her revenge. Just tell me one thing, okay?”
Images of a Jenga tower exploding filled King Henry’s head. “If it doesn’t lead to that long conversation, sure.”
“I was happy you were alive. Now, I need more. So . . . are you okay?” Old Man Price asked solemnly.
King Henry grinned and his was assuredly predatory, just like always. “In over my head a bit, but got Val to help with that too.”
“Not like that, King,” Old Man Price corrected, frustrated. “Are you okay? You ain’t . . . in danger like your sister? Or your mom?”
Are you going mad?
“No, Dad.”
He was found. He was taught.
Even if he wasn’t, your son is a Maximus. He doesn’t go mad. The Mancy is his destiny, so he may teach it to others. He is the escape valve that’s kept the Divine Court from ever really attempting to exterminate his kind.
He is the Glassbreaker and he has come home.
Before Old Man Price could say anything else or ask another question, the doorbell rang ominously.
And now the fucking stupid ass baby shows up!
Babies, Still the Worst Idea Ever
You know the problem with babies?
No, wait, hear me out.
The problem with babies, is . . .
Actually there’s a lot of them. First of all, their shit looks too much like honey mustard and I love me some honey mustard. Only every time I squirt it out on a Fresno Fair corndog, know what I’m thinking? Wow, that looks exactly like fucking baby shit!
That’s fucking wrong.
That’s so fucking wrong.
Babies be ruining the Fresno Fair. I mean, to be fair—pun, bitches—the Fresno Fair has sucked my entire life. But, at least no one’s died in a couple years, ya know? And where else you gonna get a deep-fried Oreo bar covered in chocolate? Chocolate, which also looks like baby shit. Baby shit, ruining chocolate too!
Really, the problem with baby shit is that there’s so damn much of it. In fact, babies start saving up their shit before they even have their own asshole to shit with. Think about what that first shit must be like. That’s a nine month shit in waiting. I haven’t seen it myself, cuz I ain’t a weirdo randomly hanging out in delivery rooms, but I hear rumors. Liquid tar from the depths of blackest Hell type rumors.
I’m telling ya, if I ever hypothetically had a kid with Val, given all the spicy foods she eats, I think that child’s first shit might be the worst shit of all time. Like the baby shit equivalent of xenomorph acid blood. Shit that will burn through the floor, all the way to the basement. And then society expects me to take that thing home and raise it as my own for eighteen years? You believe that? That’s bullshit!
But ya know the real problem with babies?
Yeah, really.
Keep up with me, people.
That whole baby shit conversation was just like a sub-rant, wasn’t it? Like . . . this rant’s vanguard if you will. Like the serfs the Mongols pushed before their armies to take some arrows in the face or maybe even in the balls.
I mean, baby shit in and of itself is up there. Like, Top Five maybe. But it ain’t the biggest problem with babies. It ain’t the fucking horde, if you will.
The biggest problem with babies is that once there’s a baby, everything in its entire sphere is about the fucking baby. Sure I ain’t the first man ranted about this, but it needs to be said as often as possible. Babies make everything about babies. Look at this baby! Look at it some more! Baby, baby, baby! Why don’t you have a baby? Are you going to get a baby? You should get your own baby!
You know how many great lives and stories babies have ruined?
All of them!
Including this one!
“You might want to stop snarling,” Val suggested over her shoulder.
Babies! he thought one last time, futilely wishing that the screaming ball of flesh and farts would spontaneously disintegrate just the way Obadiah Paine had.
His nephew.
King Henry Price had a nephew.
What.
The.
Fuck?
Had one for a few days now, what with JoJo going into labor and all that, but there was the only proof of the results you’d ever require: a newborn baby. Little bastard caught them all by surprise, coming a couple weeks earlier than he was supposed to. I think. Maybe a few weeks. Or only one week. Listen . . . I’m a bad uncle, okay?
Nicholas Vega, that was the little bastard’s name. Yeah, yeah, he ain’t technically a bastard. But he’s half Price so we all know he’s gonna act like one, don’t we? Let out a wail first thing stepping through Shithole Price’s threshold, that’s for sure. JoJo held him in her arms, glowing for once in her life.
Barely saw his sister in her these days. Whatever struggle she’d had before, childbirth had set her life on its course. Most of that Price coding got overwritten by the Queen of the Coyotes. Be damned if I let the Lady do the same with me even if I am on the Learning Council!
Hard for even King Henry to think about that now, or anything but just the sight before him. JoJo and Nick. Nick Vega. Had the name of an action hero. Named after Vega’s father. Dead father. Dead father and some dead brothers. The fact no one ever asked for details about what happened to them told you all you needed to know.
Shot, stabbed, and maybe even barbequed.
Little Nicholas, at least, was looking healthy. Small too. Wrapped up in a blanket, covered head to toe in baby pajamas, but still small. Was that the size they were supposed to be? Fit in JoJo’s arms easy enough. Arms thick with gold bracelets; fingers graced equally in golden rings. All dressed up. Had on a stylish evening dress too and there wasn’t even a hint of bag under either of her eyes.
How many servants you got watching over you day and night, you little bastard?
No servants now. Just momma and dada. Not even Sharp, the Eternal Order werepython Vega always had guarding him. King Henry did notice the man in question standing alert outside, back against the doorway and eyes on the road. Also noticed a couple of SUVs parked on that same road, one filled with Coyote Nation goons, the other with just a driver. They’d neatly boxed in the Asylum Borg fleet car that King Henry had arrived in.
Did that on purpose, didn’t you, Vega? Never admit it, but know you did, you two-faced smiling fucktard. Vega might have come up aces at Eureka and King Henry might not bad talk the man to his father, might not even despise him quite as much as when they first met, but that didn’t mean King Henry would ever completely trust Horatio Vega.
Cuz the minute I do, that’s when he’s gonna fuck me royal.
Just look at him. All teeth. More teeth than Ceinwyn Dale. Takes effort and practice to smile that wide and not make it creepy. Was still all gleaming politician and upright businessman, especially as he basked in fatherhood. Just another veneer for him to cover up the fangs and the fur. Like the smile on his face, like the creaseless, perfect suit he wore, especially like his handshake. Even expecting it, the perfection of that handshake could still make all the lizard-brain circuits inside your head relax, get you ready to rollover for a Vega tummy rub.
Didn’t help that King Henry felt like he was dreaming.
Everyone around him was so happy.
It had to be a dream.
A type of dream so foreign to him he even had trouble categorizing it. Not a nightmare being eaten by a dragon or some unspeakable beast without form. Not a lust-filled rager with tits and pussy galore. Not one of them frustration dreams where you just couldn’t quite do some oh so simple task, like the garbage bag kept falling out of your hands. No mind twister, where everything got mixed up and prophetic. A sweet dream, was that it? Was this overflow of feeling what people wished on each other every night?
Who the fuck would want this every night? Feel like parts of me are going to burst . . . I knew it would just get worse when the baby got here!
The women rushed forward to mob JoJo and Nick. Even Val. Though King Henry couldn’t help but note a hesitance in her that often wasn’t present. Don’t care what your nickname is, you ain’t gonna make the kid combust, Boomworm.
JoJo smiled at Val’s presence and after a second offered the baby up. Could see the reluctance in JoJo, a lot of animal instincts at work there and not just werecoyote. When Val sidestepped the bundle and Marge spread her arms wide, another emotion joined the fray. You aren’t my mother, JoJo’s quick glare said before she forced it away and also forced the baby over. Marge’s face lit up like someone who just won the lottery, Val content to view Nick from over her shoulder.
