Suzie’s House 103: Contemplation

Joseph and Sean a red haired, Irish brothers who live on the edge of the law. Near the beginning of Suzie’s House, Joseph shot Vin to keep him from catching Sean in a planned hit-and-run accident. Much later Sean goes into Suzie’s House where Vin lives intending to kill him and the FBI agent Drew. Suzie drops him by whacking him in the head with a cast iron pan. Now Sean had been captured, but Joseph is still at large.

Joseph sat in between the docks and the bathrooms with his back against a tree and played mumblety-peg. It was a dangerous thing to do, sitting there where anyone could see him and pitching the knife between his feet over and again. Even though the dark of night helped hide what he was doing, the decorative lights along the paths were bright enough to show the color of his hair. He could be identified.

Maybe that would be for the best. He no longer knew what to do with himself. He had never thought too deeply about the future and what it might hold for himself. For as long as he could remember, all his thoughts and schemes had centered on getting through the next few month, or days, or sometimes only the next few minutes. It kept him alive, but to what purpose?

When he first learned Sean had been arrested, he’d immediately begun to plan a jail break. He found out where Sean was being held and cased the joint. He’d talked to a few people who might be able to help, even approached a lawyer, though he’d considered that very risky when he knew he was also a wanted man.

Not only was nothing he tried likely to do any good, he couldn’t muster the anger, or excitement, or anything else that would see him through. He didn’t care anymore.

Not that he didn’t care about Sean. But Sean, the idiot, had made his own bed. What was he thinking to walk into the lions den with nothing but a Barretta? For a job like that, you had to carry at least a sub machine gun.

To be felled by a frying pan. Joseph shook his head in wonder, then yanked the knife from the chewed-up ground between his feet. What had his brother been thinking?

Probably nothing. Sean was very good at not thinking. And Joseph was tired of doing the thinking for him.

Yet, he wasn’t going to cut and run. For one thing, where would he go? The only place in the world that held anything of any meaning for him was wherever his brother was. If he were to run, no matter how stupid Sean got, what would that make Joseph?

No one. Without his honor he was no one.

Turn himself in?

The knife clipped the side of his shoe on it’s way into the ground. Sloppy, that. Far too sloppy to be forgiven. Even if the subtle shake of his hand were caused by the image of cold, hard walls closing in on him, the bars of a cage marking him as no better than an animal.

Right. No prison for him. If he could help it, no prison for Sean either.

So then, he was back planning a jail break. Wonderful. Just who was he going to have to kill to accomplish it?

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