The Birth of Bane (5 page)

He had grown up
dirt poor, slightly malnourished and verbally abused by his
mother’s many boyfriends. (I don’t call her my grandmother, because
I never knew the woman. She died many years before I was born.) I
think because he was often berated and downtrodden as a kid, he was
obsessed with making something of himself in order to claw his way
out of the
barrio
. Unfortunately for
him, he wasn’t particularly adept at learning and having the lesson
stick. Though he tried hard, his lack of ability, and his temper,
always got in the way.

He’d never admit
it, but it was my mother who corrected his papers. It was my mother
who stood up late with him combing through his curriculum, again
and again, until he’d retained enough to pass his mid-terms or his
final exams. While she stayed home and took care of us, he got his
degrees, he got his certifications and now, all the hard work was
paying off. Only it was paying off for him and only him. The rest
of us were suddenly beneath him, because, by God, he had a
degree!

It used to be a
big deal to me until I realized just about everyone and their
grandmother had a degree of some sort, so the super-smart man I
envisioned turned out to be no more than a windbag, jam-packed with
bullshit.

By the time we
were looking to move and he was detailing the cost down to the very
last cent, he was an Onsite Corporate Controller for one of the big
Hollywood studios. In a nutshell, it meant he was the guy, during
the production of any given film, who wrote the checks and made
sure all of the day-to-day expenses were paid. That was why he was
so often away on business.

Anyhow, I
digress.

We sat in his
study, all four us, fidgeting and hungry until he realized he could
make a sizable profit off the house on the hill and then, and only
then, did he stand and say, “Ok, we’ll move.”

Of course, he
couldn’t say just it and still be the Leonard Favor we all knew.
There was always one more stipulation to be mandated and on that
day there was no exception to that unsaid rule.

“
But,” he began,
“no one gets attached to the house. We’re only going to stay there
until the remodeling is completed. When it is done, were going to
put it up for sale. We’ll be out of there faster than any of you
can blink. Do you understand?” He looked directly at my mom.
“Pillar?”

Silence.

We kids shared
uncaring glances, shrugging our shoulders. We could’ve cared less.
We were hungry. That was all that mattered to us.

My mother though
had a gleam in the corner of her eye, but stayed otherwise silent.
I would’ve missed it, if she hadn’t let it slip into a squint, a
slight pinching about the eyes. It could’ve been construed as
innocuous, but coupled with that gleam, it was anything but. She
had glared at him. It was the first time I had ever seen her do
anything like it when the subject of her ire was my father. This
wasn’t her. She was always so subdued and soft-spoken. Where had
this newfound wellspring of backbone come from?

He had stayed
quiet for a bit as well. Then seemed to realize we were all staring
back at him. He waved his hands at us. “Get the hell out of here!
You’re crowding me!”

Well, what the
fuck, you were the one that held us hostage in the first place!
Shit, make up your freakin’ mind,
I thought as I rushed out of the room, feeling like I’d just
been released from prison.

Th
at was how things were
with my dad – weird.

*****

They were about
to get even weirder.

*****

About a week
before the big move, my father got called to cover a movie being
filmed in Central America and left my mother in charge with no more
than a rising of a single eyebrow. I’m pretty sure he volunteered
to go, because, if there was one thing Leonard Favor abhorred, it
was manual labor. He’d run from it like a drunk girl from a gang of
horny football players.

In all honesty,
though, I don’t think my mom gave a damn. She was walking on air,
flittering from one stack of boxes to the next, singing and
chirping like some gigantic cockatiel. We all watched her with
bemused expressions. We had never seen such optimism and happiness
in her. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world, though the
move was going to prove difficult. Not only did we have to scrub
the rental house we were leaving spotless, we were going to have to
do the same thing for our new home as well.

True to his
nature, Freddie had left us a little house-warming gift that needed
immediate attention or we were going to have a rat infestation
within a few weeks. Three months’ worth of trash, used condoms and
various disposable drug paraphernalia would probably attract
vampires for all we knew. At least, he hadn’t peed on the walls or
stuck boogers in the door locks. A thing we’d seen at one of my
aunt’s rentals years before. So there was some solace to be had. Or
maybe we were just lucky he wasn’t a very imaginative sort of
guy.

By the second to
last day at our old house, we had finished cleaning and packing,
and were ready.

We had started
early the following morning, taking a decent-sized load in my
mother’s Chrysler LaBaron, consisting mostly of our personal
belongings. They were the items we’d be using over the course of
next week, which my mother had budgeted as our “move-in” time -
clothes, underwear, socks, toiletries and towels – all the
necessities to survive seven straight days of work. A solid week of
slavery with only one day’s rest before us kids all went back to
school. Yeah, we were cutting it close.

The rest of our
“stuff” was coming with the movers who weren’t expected to arrive
on Lincoln Drive until the early afternoon. This gave us around
five hours to get the house on the hill in some semblance of order.
And boy, did we ever need it.

As Jessie had
told us, months before, the house was large.

On the ground
floor was the formal dining room upon entry with the living room
off to the left within which was the great hearth. To the right of
the front door, opposite the living room, was the kitchen and
beyond that was the enclosed back porch. The porch itself had doors
leading to both the front and back yards, so it was technically on
the side of the house, but my mother had termed it such and the
name had stuck. The stairs to the second floor began there as well.
They were a narrow and somewhat curved halfway up, because the
passage had to circumvent a crawlspace that had been in place prior
to the building of the second floor.

Further back
into the first floor, relative to the front door from left to
right, was the sunroom, which was the only way to reach the deck on
the north side of the house. This was attained by going through a
set of sliding glass doors leading outside. In the front room,
there were only windows. The very ones we had gazed out when we’d
first seen the property. Attached to the sunroom was the Master
Bedroom, a small, squarish hallway leading to the bathroom and
another bedroom, nestled in the far southeastern corner of the
edifice.

The second floor
was nearly as roomy as the one below it. It had a library/study, a
rumpus room complete with game-board carpeting, a bathroom, a linen
closet and two more bedrooms. There was also a mini- or secondary
master suite with its’ own three-quarter bath and walk-in closet
attached. All of it was accessed by an east/west hall branching
from the top of the stairs, which turned due north at its’ eastern
terminus. From there the hall led to another flight of stairs up to
the attic.

The attic was
probably the “coolest” attic I’d ever seen, not that I’ve seen
many. Still, it was an incredibly organized affair, stocked with
shelving, placed to maximize the space and was immaculate,
especially when juxtaposed alongside the mess Freddie had left for
us downstairs. It was easy to walk through, accessibility to the
umpteenth degree, a perfect place for storage as well as a great
room to play tag with its’ semi-darkness and meandering
throughways.

It was also a
nice private locale for some serious making out. Of which my
girlfriend and I would later discover when our desire for privacy
was at its’ peak and our urge to quench it was unrivaled. Its’
seclusion was unparalleled…

There was also a
basement, finished with cinder-block, moisture-treated walls and a
concrete floor. It was mostly empty with a few age-old odds and
ends strewn here and there. There was really nothing noteworthy
down there, except for a fully functional, pot-belly furnace, circa
the 1920’s. This one though had been modernized with an analog
pressure system and a complex electric, valve mechanism that kept
everything running smoothly and the house sufficiently warm during
the winter months by literally warming the walls, from the inside
out.

A workshop-sized
toolshed fronted the back house, where lived our tenant. The small
apartment-like structure was a one-bedroom, one bath bungalow with
a small living room and kitchen. It was a perfect bachelor pad and
was currently occupied by one such man, Bruce Hastings, a
thirty-something hippy who, at the time, owned and operated nearly
five hundred beehives throughout northeastern Los Angeles. If there
was an empty, unincorporated hill or patch of land about, there was
a fairly good chance Bruce had one of his hives in
residence.

He has since
grown his business into somewhat of a honey empire, stretching
across most of the Southeast.

He had come
around from the back when we arrived that morning, all smiles and
barefoot. The soles of his feet pounding hard upon the unforgiving
concrete of the front yard patio, though he didn’t seem to notice.
He wore a pair of old jeans without a belt, so they hung to his
narrow hips. He had on an ancient flannel shirt, halfway unbuttoned
and covered in sawdust. He had sandy-blonde hair. He wore it long,
all the way down to his waist, pulled back in a classic ponytail.
Upon his nose were a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, scratched and
scuffed, dotted with sawdust as well.

“
Hiya, Pillar!”
he had called loudly, making sure he got my mother’s attention from
afar, so he wouldn’t startle her.

My mom had
looked up from the suitcases she was caring, her eyes had been
stuck fast to the ground from the exertion. Immediately, she
brightened. “Bruce! How are you doing?” She was so enthusiastic,
she was borderline bubbly.

He beamed back.
“I’m doing quite well, thank you. I decided to get a jump on some
repairs before you guys got here, so I could help if you needed an
extra pair of hands.” He seemed to notice he was nearly covered in
sawdust and began to swipe at his garments.

My mother sighed
gratefully. “Oh gosh, would that be too much to ask of a tenant? I
mean, I’ve only been your landlord for less than a
week.”

Bruce seemed to
mull over the situation, though his eyes sparkled the entire time.
“How about we chalk it up to me offering my assistance, and forget
the whole landlord slash tenant rigmarole.”

My mother
laughed, probably too loudly, but none of us kids would begrudge
her. Not on this day. This day belonged to her. She was just so
happy.

From then on, we
got serious about the tasks before us. My mother and Bruce got
about the common areas of the ground floor, while I and my siblings
went out in search of our bedrooms.

Valerie took the
bedroom closest to the master suite on the first floor. For some
reason she wouldn’t explain, she was still more than a little
unnerved about living in the house. So, she chose to sleep as close
to our parents as she possibly could, which placed her in the
downstairs bedroom directly off the dining room. Since she’d always
been a private sort of individual, I was somewhat surprised she’d
chose to stay in a more “public” area of the house than the
upstairs, which was the case for Eli and I.

Before anyone
could even think to call dibs, I called-out that the second floor
mini-suite was mine. Of course, Valerie didn’t care and Eli just
wanted to have a room in the “big kids” portion of the house, so he
took one adjacent to the one I’d chosen.

At first, there
was reluctance in my mom’s eyes. I could see she wanted Eli to take
the downstairs bedroom, closest to hers, but Eli would have nothing
of it. He even beamed when Valerie balked at the idea of switching
with our younger brother and sleeping upstairs. My mother hadn’t
slept far from my baby brother since he’d been born; thus, the
thought him being on another floor during the night must’ve made
her leery.

So, I explained
to her that we’d be sharing a walk-in closet, so if anything
happened to Elijah – bad dream, had to get up to pee and couldn’t
find his way, etc. – I would be there to help.

She smiled at
me, grateful knowing I was a short walk and two doorways away. My
comment had made her feel better. “I guess I can’t keep him from
growing up, huh?” she had said, acquiescing.

I bobbed my head
in agreement.

Moms,
right?

It was hours
later and I heard Eli in our shared, walk-in closet. I was hopeful
he was hanging his clothes on the hangars I provided for him and
wasn’t playing around, which he was wont to do if a given task
proved boring.