{"id":15383,"date":"2012-09-06T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T04:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=15383"},"modified":"2012-09-06T09:34:50","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T13:34:50","slug":"pillar-of-fire-by-dan-oshea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2012\/09\/06\/pillar-of-fire-by-dan-oshea\/","title":{"rendered":"“Pillar Of Fire,” By Dan O’Shea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Greetings Terriblemindites. Or is it Terribleminders? Just Wendigos? I dunno. Chuck, you wanna help me out on the salutation here? No, huh? Own my own I guess.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I got this book deal from Exhibit A<\/a>. That\u2019s the crime imprint at Angry Robot, the folks who delivered your pal Chucky\u2019s Blackbirds and Mockingbirds bloody and screaming into an unsuspecting world, so you know they have impeccable taste. They\u2019ll be publishing my first two novels, Penance and Mammon. Penance is set to hit in April of 2013, Mammon a year or so later.<\/p>\n

Both thrillers are set in Chicago, and both draw on its politics, history and culture of corruption, but with a national, sometimes even international, flavor. You can learn more at the Penance page<\/a> on my blog, or at my author or book page over at Exhibit A<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As devoted Terribleminds readers, you all know that writers have to do more than write. We have to be part storyteller, part carnival barker, part pimp, part shameless whore.\u00a0 Books ain\u2019t gonna sell themselves, and the halcyon days when publishers loaded authors onto chartered jets full of free booze and book groupies for well-oiled national tours, those days are deader than Strom Thurmond\u2019s nutsack. (It\u2019s a requirement for any Terribleminds guest blogger to use at least one previously unpublished profanity. Sorry, that\u2019s the best I could do.)<\/p>\n

So, to gin up a little interest in my forthcoming debut, I\u2019ve written a series of short stories delving into the earlier lives of the characters from my novels. See, most of these guys, they ain\u2019t kids. They\u2019ve been around some funny-shaped blocks, most of them in questionable neighborhoods. Penance may be my first novel, but it\u2019s not their first or only story. I figure I\u2019ll salt the interwebs with these stories and, if folks like them, well then maybe they\u2019ll pony up come book time. (There are a couple stories out there already \u2013 The Old Rules, in Shots Crime & Thriller e-zine<\/a> over across the pond, and A Wonderful Country at Shotgun Honey<\/a>, right here in the good old US of A.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the plan, anyway.<\/p>\n

So here you go, your very own Penance preview story. Hope you like it. And if you have any questions, comments, whatever, I\u2019ll be checking Chuckie\u2019s comment box and I\u2019ll be sure to chime in.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Pillar of Fire<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Lynch family story from the world of Penance<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Dan O\u2019Shea<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

April 5, 1968, The Austin neighborhood, Chicago, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated.<\/p>\n

Chicago was in flames.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this over some nigger trouble maker who got what he deserved,\u201d eight-year-old John Lynch said at dinner, just him and his mother, his Dad out, Lynch trying to sound tough, trying to sound like the man of the house, the man his father had charged him to be.<\/p>\n

Nigger trouble maker who got what he deserved. That\u2019s what he\u2019d heard from Mrs. Carney that afternoon when he\u2019d gone across the hall to play with Mike, the Carney\u2019s being the only place his mom would let him go right now, wouldn\u2019t let him leave the building. Mr. Carney was a fireman. He was out, too. Something soothing in Mrs. Carney\u2019s anger, in her dismissive contempt, a sense that the evil had been identified, contained, that everyone knew what had to be done.<\/p>\n

Lynch\u2019s father was a cop. He\u2019d been out since the trouble began, home only once that morning for less than an hour, just time to shower and change, not even eating, just taking a sandwich with him. Lynch had run to hug him when he walked in the door. His father had smelled of smoke and his face and clothes were smudged with soot. He had blood on his shirt. He coughed, spit a blackened wad into the kitchen sink, ran the water, washed it down the drain, took Lynch by the shoulders. \u00a0\u201cYou take care of your mother, Johnny. I need a man in the house.\u201d Then a weak smile as he stripped off his suit coat, the shirt almost black underneath. His father disappeared into the bathroom.<\/p>\n

When John Lynch spoke, his mother\u2019s head shuddered, she blinked, looked up from her plate, her eyes angry, then her right hand flashed out, slapping Lynch hard across the cheek.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo we say nigger in this house?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Lynch said, rubbing his face, almost tearing up, holding that back. \u201cBut Mrs. Carney said – \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs that who you want to be? A parrot for someone else\u2019s tongue, somebody with no backbone, with no right or wrong in you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat about Lucy?\u00a0 Are you going to call her a nigger?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucy was the colored lady who helped with the cleaning once a week.\u00a0 Miss Lucy to Lynch.\u00a0 She always smiled, would sing sometimes while she scrubbed floors. But she always seemed sad somehow, sad and thin and tired.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d\u00a0 Lynch scared a little. His dad would go upside his head, but his mom never did.<\/p>\n

She let out a long sigh, then she reached out, rubbed Lynch\u2019s cheek where she had struck him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry, Johnny.\u00a0 I shouldn\u2019t have done that.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t bear to hear my own son talk like that, not in my house, not right now, not with all this going on, with your father out there\u00a0 because of it.\u201d\u00a0 She started to cry, stopped, standing, putting her hands to her face, her head shaking back and forth, and excused herself, locking the bathroom door.<\/p>\n

Through the door, Lynch could hear her sobs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Detective Sergeant Declan Lynch, wiped absently at his shirt, and then shook his head at the futility of it. What wasn\u2019t black was gray, and none of it would ever be white again. The suit, too, he was sure, was ruined, soaked though with smoke and sweat and filth. Wondered about the chances he could put in for the cost of the suit.<\/p>\n

Everybody was out, the uniforms with their usual teams, detectives getting assigned what was left. They\u2019d given Lynch a mess of kids just out of the academy, half of them ready to piss themselves, the other half itching to shoot anything that moved. Heard more glass breaking from up around the corner.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnderson, Miller and O\u2019Leary, head up around the corner. Got anybody up there, chase them into the alley. You other two, come with me, we\u2019ll block the back. And Miller?\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller was holding his .38 along his leg.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah Sarge?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKeep your gun in your fuckin\u2019 holster unless somebody starts shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want me to go easy on these niggers?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, Lynch thought to himself, that attitude, that\u2019s going to help. \u201cI don\u2019t want you shooting down any alleys that I\u2019m standing at the other end of, dickhead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller holstered the revolver.<\/p>\n

Lynch and two of the newbies rounded the back of the building to where the alley let out just as the first of four Negro kids, this one running full tilt, approached, the kid juking right, then trying to cut left between Lynch and the wall. Lynch dropped his shoulder and drove off his toes, tackling the kid into the brick wall, the kid dropping, rolling on the ground, holding his left arm.<\/p>\n

Two of the other kids pulled up, stopping, but the fourth kid shot past one of the rookies, fast little bastard, angling across the parking lot across the street. Miller stepped up next to Lynch, his gun out again, raising it to take a shot. Lynch jerked Miller\u2019s arm down, yanked the .38 out of his hand, jabbed Miller hard in the guy with a finger.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I tell you about your damn gun?\u201d Lynch growled.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s getting away!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, and you\u2019re gonna shoot him why exactly?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFleeing, resisting –\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you see him doing that gave you cause to stop him, besides running down the alley?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got looters all over the place out here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see him looting? See any of these guys carrying anything? That guy you\u2019re gonna shoot, think he\u2019s making that kind of time carrying a TV or something?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, you heard the mayor. Shoot to kill, shoot to maim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch shook his head. \u201cI got news for you, Miller, big mess like this, once we get the genie back in the bottle, we\u2019re gonna have lawyers crawling all over everything. Gonna have reporters looking for stories. And it won\u2019t be Hurley\u2019s slug they dig out of that kid\u2019s back. Won\u2019t be Hurley up on charges. It\u2019ll be you. Every civil rights type on earth screaming for your neck. Riots\u2019ll be all calmed down, Hurley not needing to be a hard ass anymore, so he\u2019ll start in on how Chicago police are held to the highest standards. How, if there\u2019s a bad apple, then we gotta have it out. And you\u2019ll find your ass down in Joliet, doin\u2019 a nice stretch with some of the same guys we\u2019re locking up this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d Miller puffing up, \u201cthey\u2019re breaking the curfew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch grabbed the front of Miller\u2019s uniform shirt, pulling him close. \u201cListen, asshole. You end up downstate showing your ass to every brother in the joint, I don\u2019t give a shit. But you\u2019re under my command right now, you little fuck. I tell you to do something, that\u2019s a goddamn order. Disobey another one, I\u2019m going to hurt you bad. We clear?\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller swallowed. \u201cWe\u2019re clear Sarge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another one of the rookies, kid named Starshak, was squatted down next to the kid Lynch had bounced off the wall, checking on him. Starshak helped the kid to his feet, the kid holding his left arm tight to his side. Shoulder probably, might have separated that.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou make it home with the arm?\u201d Lynch said to the kid. The kid nodded. Lynch turned to the other two. \u201cYou dumb fucks get your friend home. I see you hanging around again, I\u2019ll shoot you myself.\u201d\u00a0 The three kids took off at a trot, best they could manage with the one guy holding is arm to his side.<\/p>\n

Lynch felt a little burn on his left hand, looked down. He\u2019d ripped the knuckles open on his left hand taking the kid into the wall. He wiped the hand absently across the front of his shirt, leaving a smear of blood in the ash and soot.<\/p>\n

It was getting dark. The streetlights were out, all the power in the area out now, the only light coming from the fire gutting the building across Madison at the north end of the alley. The firelight guttered across the soot-streaked white faces of the five young cops, making them look like savages.<\/p>\n

A gunshot to the east, maybe a block away.\u00a0 Lynch handed the revolver back to Miller.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to take that away from you again, I\u2019m gonna crack your skull with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller just nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cOK, we\u2019re heading up to the north end of the alley, gonna take a peek, see what the shooting is. Probably one of ours, so keep your pants zipped. Stick close to the walls, stay out of the light. I\u2019ve got point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch got in front, led the cops up the alley. Walking point, Jesus. Hadn\u2019t walked point since he crossed the Rhine in \u201945.<\/p>\n

This was going to get worse before it got better.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He was not in danger. John Lynch clung to the thought like an article of faith as he peered out his bedroom window, looking east toward the lake.<\/p>\n

The fires seemed to burn all the way to the horizon, the flames throbbing out of the shattered walls and broken windows of a hundred buildings, two hundred buildings, the fire lighting the bottoms of the low clouds, like both the earth and sky were on fire, like they would burn forever. Pulsing blue and red and white lights from fire trucks and police cars strobed in every street, sometimes bright and clear, sometimes flashing inside a bank of smoke like neon lightning inside a cloud. Even through the window, Lynch could smell soot, ash. Even through the window, he could hear the sirens, hundreds of sirens, could hear gunshots, even hear shouts sometimes. It was horror beyond young Lynch\u2019s imagining.<\/p>\n

Monsignor Connor, when he got worked up during a sermon, would warn about the lake of fire, and now it seemed like the lake of fire was lapping at Lynch\u2019s doorstep, like hell had broken its bounds and flooded the earth and heaven had lost all dominion.<\/p>\n

Lynch knew his father was out there. Out among the flames and the sirens and the gunshots.<\/p>\n

Lynch was safe because his father was out there, that he could believe the way he believed that the dry wafer he received on his tongue every Sunday was truly the body of his savior. Believe because he was told to believe, had always been told to believe, and because he had never questioned.<\/p>\n

But he could not believe his father was safe, no matter what his mother said. He knew the cost of the flesh in the wafer, knew that salvation was always paid for with innocent blood.<\/p>\n

He heard voices from the living room of the apartment, heard a man\u2019s voice, his father\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

Lynch bolted from his bed, ran down the hall, stopped dead in the archway that lead into the living room. Not his father, his Uncle Rusty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere he is, the man of the house himself,\u201d the big man said, brushing a wave of red hair from his forehead. \u201cI was just telling your mother it\u2019s been too long since we had a proper visit. So grab some things quick. I\u2019m gonna take you up to my place for a couple days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch looking to his mother, his mother nodding, smiling, her face different in a way Lynch had never seen. He had seen her worried, seen her angry. But never this. Never false and fragile and hollow.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, are you coming too?\u201d<\/p>\n

She smiled wider, but there was no smile wide enough to hide this lie. His mother didn\u2019t even like Rusty, didn\u2019t like his foul language, his drinking, his varied lady friends. \u201cYou men don\u2019t need a woman around spoiling your fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I have school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rusty let out a low laugh. \u201cThe sisters can get by without you for a day or two.\u201d<\/p>\n

So they had closed the schools. No way his mother would let him skip school. That made the fires seem even more sinister, like they were a force of nature, like the blizzard last January that dumped two feet of snow on the city, the only other time the nuns had closed the school. First ice, now fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour father will need a good meal when he gets home,\u201d his mother said. \u201cYou go on with Uncle Rusty. Have a holiday.\u201d<\/p>\n

A holiday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I want to see Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uncle Rusty rubbed his head roughly, taking his shoulder to turn him toward his room, to get his things.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you will soon enough boy. Soon enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to scare you, Johnny, and I hope you\u2019re old enough, but I want you to see this. I want you to remember this.\u201d\u00a0 Two days later,\u00a0 Lynch\u2019s father, driving a blue-and-white Chicago police cruiser east down Roosevelt, cutting over to Madison, driving away from their apartment and toward downtown, through the haze of smoke that was finally thinning after hanging black and angry on the horizon for the last three days.<\/p>\n

Everything Lynch remembered about the neighborhood was gone. Building after building burned out, some scorched to empty shells, some just charred rubble. The signs were torn off most of the buildings, the windows where the names of each establishment had been carefully stenciled all broken out, but Lynch could tell where they were by looking at the stuff spilling out of the shattered doors. Where the cardboard box was broken open on the curb, the red and white cans of soup spilling out \u2013 that used to be Walt\u2019s Grocery.\u00a0 A plaid jacket, still on its hanger, dangling upside down, caught on a piece of metal jutting from a torn-out window frame \u2013 that was Schwartz\u2019s Menswear, where his mother would take him every August to buy the navy pants he had to wear for school. The shell of a TV, shards of glass ringing the void of its ruined picture tube like the teeth of a hungry thing, smashed on the sidewalk outside Austin Electronics. Lynch and his friends used to stop there after school on May afternoons, September afternoons, stand on the sidewalk, watch through the window, watch the Cubs on WGN on the big console set that was always on display, see what the score was before they headed home. Two blocks ahead, a fire truck angled into the street, hoses out, the fireman pouring water onto a lot filled with smoldering rubble.<\/p>\n

At every intersection, soldiers milled around Jeeps with machine guns mounted on the backs.\u00a0 His Dad\u2019s cruiser was the only car moving on Madison.\u00a0 Besides cops and soldiers and fireman, there were hardly any people around.\u00a0 Lynch saw a colored lady holding a small girl by the hand walking one way, and then stopping, and then walking the other, like she didn\u2019t know where to go anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeen some places looked like this in Europe, during the war,\u201d his Dad said.\u00a0 \u201cTowns we\u2019d go through where there\u2019d been fighting.\u00a0 I never thought I see it again.\u00a0 Sure as hell never thought I see it here.\u201d<\/p>\n

His father seeming to talk to himself, his voice different, saying hell in front of his son, something he\u2019d never done before.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre those soldiers?\u201d Lynch asked, pointing toward one of the jeeps.<\/p>\n

\u201cNational Guard,\u201d said his Dad.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re soldiers that can help us out sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch thought of his Dad, and the other cops he\u2019d seen, all giants to him, unafraid, ready for anything. And he tried to imagine a world where they needed help.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s over, right?\u201d Lynch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, mostly over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they\u2019ll fix everything?\u201d<\/p>\n

A pause from his father, Lynch hanging on it suspended. He knew his Dad talked different around Uncle Rusty, around the other cops, knew he watched his language around the house, around Lynch, around his mother. But he wasn\u2019t a man to measure his words. What he had to say, he said. Finally this.<\/p>\n

\u201cI dunno, Johnny.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

They drove another few blocks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the people that did this, they were bad, right, right Dad?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them were. Some of them were just angry. Some of them just got caught up in it. The race thing, it\u2019s an old evil Johnny, coming to the end of its time. Evil never gives up easy. Evil always dies ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n

In June, they moved to the northwest side, as close to the edge of the city as they could get. It was fifteen years before Lynch set foot in the old neighborhood again. They hadn\u2019t fixed everything. They\u2019d barely fixed anything. The fires had long burned out, but heaven had not regained dominion.<\/p>\n

Lynch seeing it the same way he had the last time, through the windows of a Chicago PD cruiser, his father long dead now, Lynch behind the wheel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings Terriblemindites. Or is it Terribleminders? Just Wendigos? I dunno. Chuck, you wanna help me out on the salutation here? No, huh? Own my own I guess. Anyway, I got this book deal from Exhibit A. That\u2019s the crime imprint at Angry Robot, the folks who delivered your pal Chucky\u2019s Blackbirds and Mockingbirds bloody and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-407","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15383"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15399,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15383\/revisions\/15399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}