A death to be righted, a name to be reborn. Memories shall burn tonight, as an old mystery is solved that stretches all the way back to the Great Lakes.
This work contains CWs for: Deadnaming, transphobia, and the discussions of violent acts.
And His Name Was… by xexnoncores
Every family has a black sheep in it, don’t they?
Some gamble, others are gay, a few run off with the circus. You know the types. The ones your parents scoff at when you mention the name, who don’t get invited to the family reunions. The people without pictures on anyone’s walls, without scrapbooks of their childhoods, without fond memories to toss around a roaring campfire.
For my relatives, the black sheep was my great aunt.
Supposedly, she was a gangster.
Now, now, I know what you’re thinking. Trust me, I have asked every question you think you want to ask and then some. I asked them when I was six, I asked them when I was fifteen, I asked them all twice again at twenty-three, and now since I’ve inherited the family cemetery, I stand here before those unanswered siren calls, wondering. Aching, even. For an unbleached answer, a clean, untwisted answer, an answer as simple as warm summer day, unyielding in its own nature.
Great aunt Fiona Derringer was not what you would call a model citizen. My grandmother was too young to remember her face, but she was old enough to remember that she ran away when she was nine. Off to Chicago, on some train probably, away from Detroit and my own great-grandmother. Nobody heard from her again until she turned up dead at thirty-nine in 1938, her body found torched in a Ford Model A at the scene of a massive, bloody shootout of which no one could name any perpetrators.
That alone should tell you enough about what kind of life she lived out there, but even with that, I’m still not sure where the gangster rumors came from. I don’t think my mom or any of her siblings believed it, honestly—but my grandmother loathed to speak about the matter. She loathed to speak Fiona’s name at all when it came time to gather ‘round with her brothers and reminisce about the old days—she pretended that she didn’t exist when asked about, staring into the soul of whoever broached the subject as if she was capable of summoning the Mariana Trench itself.
I’ve exhausted practically every avenue I can think of trying to find the truth. First it was books about Chicago, about the names of notable gangsters and their spouses, and when that yielded nothing, I called in for records. Apparently you can just ask the state of Illinois to send you copies of old public documents if you claim you’re doing research, which…technically, I was.
No dice. Which, I mean, I figured. Our family is of Irish-American descent, so there was no way she was running with Al Capone back then. It was the North Side Gang or bust, and guess what—nothing there on her either. There weren’t even any spouses with last names close to Derringer.
I gave up the search until a wild number of summers later, I met this guy who was actually from Chicago, who talked about some conspiracy theory-type clubs he’d attended while at university. Apparently, it’s a collective delusion among certain people of the city that there was a third gang running around, a gang who called themselves the Chicago Spirit. They were united not by ethnicity but by the ability to do magic, to turn people inside out, to enchant their tommy-guns with flame sigils and their dice with numbers nobody could read but themselves.
He told me about it like it was all real. About its leader named Richard Chappell, and the apparition he used to do his bidding, Mr. Night. About the grimoires and pyromantic silver bullets the Chicago Spirit would stash beneath their bars during the Prohibition Era, ready for whenever the police decided to raid them. This wasn’t even mentioning their snitch dungeons that he swore they hid in the bellies of rats; all one had to do was bite you and soon you found yourself whisked away to the worst place in you and your next door neighbor’s life.
I entertained it as a bunch of mythologizing nonsense (because hey, what big city doesn’t have a few urban legends?) until he said that name I had been looking for.
“The last underboss, his name was Derringer. After Wheels and Sawteeth you had Derringer, a firebrand of a magician who was notorious for burning people alive the Spirit didn’t like. Some say he could magic fire so hot it burned even while it was rain—”
“I’m sorry, what was that name?”
“Derringer? Charles Derringer?”
“Was he ever married?”
“Don’t think so.”
It was then when I knew I had been the ultimate fool. I had gotten my hopes up so much that I was asking this random guy telling me silly stories if my great aunt was involved in this ruckus somehow, as if she married a man with the same last name as her. Because of course that couldn’t have been just a coincidence, right? It couldn’t have been just a cruel twist of fate, there to taunt me and one of the few times I’d ever dared to dream?
Ugh. I can’t believe people believe in that kind of inane silliness.
And I can’t believe for a moment I’d let myself give in to the temptation, either.
So that’s the story. A bunch of unsubstantiated rumors floating around a family of, for all intents and purposes, pretty boringly average people who most likely made up something about my great aunt to amuse themselves. None of that really surprises me, given how gossipy our family reunions are and how my mother’s generation went from Irish-American to white Southerners in record time. Everyone wants something exciting to talk about when they’re out toiling where the lumber is, so the jokes at Fiona’s nonexistent expense are all that’s left of her besides her tombstone just a quarter-mile south of my house.
But sometimes I still wonder though. I wonder about her when I think about missing things, about unknown things. About the concept of never finding someone again. I wonder about her as I grow older than her, older than she ever got the chance to be—and what I wonder eventually boils down to a simple question as I wash my dishes and put myself to bed every night.
How can someone, once a beloved daughter with a name so beautiful, be lost to the sands of history forever?
Why would God allow such a thing?
…I say that like I pray as much as I should, haha.
July 21st, 2002
The rain pounds as the sky howls. Adelina Kristine Derringer sighs as she shoves her way through her front door, gritting sour teeth as humid warmth sticks to her thick raincoat, red hair, and peachy skin.
A thunderstorm in Mississippi isn’t something anyone is likely to forget anytime soon. It starts off slow, like a rumbling tide, until suddenly, it heaves itself through bloated pine trees from the bottom up. Before you know it, you’re soaked, and when you’re soaked, your body is indistinguishable from the water.
With a heavy groan she places her umbrella aside, taking off her layers as she hangs her purse up. The mail is clutched firmly within her arms still, damp at a few edges but otherwise unharmed.
God, what a day. So many calls, and she spilled her lunch in the hallway. As if that wasn’t enough, a fight broke out soon after that at the town hall steps. The poor mayor’s son—they still didn’t know why it happened, or if he’d make a full recovery. It was an even bigger shame nobody could describe the assailant—the only consistent detail anyone remembered were his pale eyes that looked like dead perch.
And Adelina swore she saw someone in the family cemetery as she pulled her car into her driveway…
Ugh.
All of that makes her glad her desk is deep within the office and not near the front anymore. Being promoted from receptionist seven years ago had been the most exciting and meaningful mobility in her entire career, and every day she found a new reason to be grateful for it. Everyday she found a new way to forget God for just a little bit more until she remembered Him again at dinner-time prayer, feeling the guilt accordingly until it too was forgotten.
…That’s right, she needs to put dinner on the stove. And read her mail.
Ah, her mail. She’s still glad it wasn’t ruined. God forbid she get some kind of bill or voucher that might mean something and it just ends up—
Ends up—
…Wait, what was that?
She stops. She’s halfway across the kitchen.
Her gaze snags on something in that pile of white paper, all bleached like whitewashed tombs. A blue envelope in the middle of it all, so vivid and cutting like the ink it was colored with could cast the most wicked of curses.
…Where did that come from? That…wasn’t there a minute ago…
The more she watches it, the more it seems to glow. The more it seems to glow with a kind of silent malice, moving when she did like it had a face where its return address should have been. Like it had a singular canyon of pseudo-human likeness squashed and rolled into a singular plane of faces, both definitions folding into each other like she was losing her mind, losing her mind, losing her mind—
…Is she losing her mind?
She can’t tear her gaze away.
When she holds it in her hands, she wants to pretend it’s all in her imagination. When she runs her thumbs over the edges, she feels like she should expect a knock at the door from someone who does not exist.
…What the hell is going on?
Why the hell does she keep getting letters like this?
This is the fourth one she’s received so far. Two came just last week—who was sending these? Why? Why did they compel her to look, to investigate? How was that even possible? By what power were they performing such miracles?
Was this…? Was this…?
And yet despite her fear, something else bubbles up in her chest.
Something else spills over as Adelina’s heart pounds in her throat and her spit goes chalky, dry, her teeth peeling at her lip as she frantically flips that paper over and over and over again.
This…is the most exciting thing to happen to her in the last few years.
Was it wrong to feel…elatement at something like this? Over a sensation that wanted to seize and kill you?
Over something new to shake up your routine, to be interesting where nobody else could see it?
Stupid Stockholm syndrome, she thinks as she brings herself back down to reality. Over the real possibility someone could hurt her with whatever this was, and mostly likely was planning to do just that.
So she does with this letter as she did all the previous: it goes into her shredder without a word, and she turns the stove on with no hesitation.
The thunder cracks outside with a shearing roar. She ignores it as sheets of wet pound against the sides of her house, against the backdrop of ambient habits and their shadowy, lulling trappings.
Stalks of celery are prepped to bleed as a pot of broth is readied quickly—and just as they get into position, there’s a knock at the door.
…How did I hear that? she asks herself quietly. The rain almost asks the same question.
She decides to ignore it, cleaving some tomatoes in two. Bright red juices spill all over the cutting board as the knock comes again, echoing throughout the bones of the pale birch floorboards like night descending upon hapless roadkill.
Silence. She pauses, her heart clawing at her chest like crazy.
It is louder than any disaster could possibly hope to be. Maybe even louder than God.
There’s no way any of this is real— She has to be making this up from the weird experience she had twelve minutes ago. There’s no way this priority of noise is possible—no normal person would ever be able to hear their heartbeat over a thunderstorm.
She tepidly, hesitantly, with shaking hands and near tears in her eyes, goes back to her meal until she hears a crash.
Screaming internally, she rushes to the door. Somehow, the rain stops just as she flings it open, an ugly gash of sunlight filleting through bloated clouds as she swerves her eyes around to assess the source of the noise.
“My—!”
Oh no.
“My car—!”
No, no, no, no, no—!!!
With a screech, she trips over herself. Tears singe her eyes as she empties her vocal chords and her feet pound against soggy ground. She forced herself back up with little hesitation, adrenaline burning her legs and her chest against the cacophony of noise rattling through the once still country air.
What the fuck is happening?! She buries wet, dirty nails into her head. No time to care about the mud caking them, smearing her palms and her pants—she doesn’t fucking care anymore, she can’t possibly care anymore—things have gotten too out of hand now. Too out of hand now. Things are going south too fucking fast at this point, too fucking fast, too fucking fa—!
Her scattered breathing hooks her in the throat as a silhouette moves out of the corner of her eye.
It moves like an anglerfish in freshwater, slow and lugging.
With shaking legs, she presses herself up against the car door. The keys are in her house. Peeling nail polish flakes into gray automotive paint as a voice gutturally sounds out, a hook to a line, to her her instincts that have all frozen up in this very moment and are contemplating both death and the fact if she is to die here, she should have bothered to wash her car last week like she promised herself.
“Adelina Derringer?”
A man built like a trawler strolls into view from the shadows. Seems like the sun and rain couldn’t make up their minds on whether to hide him or not, because the clouds are halfway opaque so high above.
His eyes are pale like a dead bass. White, glassy, and lolling, despite their pinpoint pupils that could stick like needles.
She doesn’t respond.
“Now, don’t make this difficult for me,” he grumbles. “I’ve already been tryin’ to find yous for a while.”
“What the hell do you want with me?” she spits, nearly biting her own tongue in the process.
The man smiles for a second, slyly but not at all shyly, revealing a mouth full of what looks like broken pieces of…shrapnel? Some of it glitters, most of it doesn’t, but what can cuts like nylon netting rubbed against blistered skin.
“So ya can talk. Good.” He laughs like he’s told a joke. “Was afraid yous lost the ability to speak at all, given how hard ya can disappear.”
Adelina shudders. What kind of accent was that? It was thick, almost too thick for her to understand, but it sounded American. Definitely not Southern with the way the vowels were pronounced, but still American. Maybe Midwestern? Bostonian?
She has no weapon. She’s not sure how much good that would do her anyway, but her hands ache for something. Anything. Stranger danger had finally come for her—Mother was right in that a gun was probably the most valuable thing a person could carry around. If she had a shotgun, this guy wouldn’t be an issue—
“You gonna sit there like a gutted carp?” He approaches her now. “Lighten up lady, I only’s got a simple request for you. And then I take my leave.”
“I’m not doing shit,” Adelina spits. She can’t back up any further into the car than this. “You trashed my vehicle, didn’t you? You’re going to have to pay for that.”
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” he replies with shrugged shoulders. “But you’re going to listen to what I have to say first, capiche?”
His eyes narrow like sea buoys, the ones Adelina saw when she was visiting Florida that single time in her youth. For her thirteenth birthday, her parents scrapped together some money to take her to the beach. Told her the salt and fish would refresh her mind, because every good kid’s dream was to go to the seashore for vacation.
She wasn’t terribly fond of the water. It always acted like it knew too much.
“…I ain’t listening to you,” she says, knowing that such language wasn’t proper, but it’s far too late to care for that shit anymore. “Leave before I call the police.”
“Make me,” is all he says, leaning up against the one unbroken door behind her, like he planned this all along. “I dare ya.”
Adelina stares, dumbfounded and quivering. The temptation to take the biggest piece of glass at her feet and shove it in his eyes is tempting, but she took self defense classes ages ago. No point in being stupid when you can’t remember any of what you once learned.
“…Are you the man who’s been sending me those weird letters?” she croaks. Her legs knock together still.
“So you did get them,” he replies with another grin. Adelina shivers, wanting to put her face in her hands, but she feels like if she did that she’d be chopped into pieces. Can’t let someone like this out of her sight, even for her own natural weakness.
“Wh-Why?” she sputters with a gasp. Hot tears choke her eyes, blurring what little she understood already. “Wh-Why me? Why torment me? Have I done something wrong in God’s eyes to d-deserve this?”
“I ain’t trying to torment ya, lady. I only wanted yer attention.”
“You broke my car windows!” she screeches.
“And it finally brought us together, no? Not my fault you ignored me otherwise.”
“You’re a monster!”
He shrugs. “I’ve heard that one a lot. Look, if ya want me out of your hair, do me a favor and just listen to something I need. Then I’ll be on my merry way.”
“Fuck off.” Adelina slumps to the ground, grabbing the biggest piece of soaked white gravel that she can find. If she dies here, at least let it not be without some kind of pathetic resistance. Some kind of effort, some kind of struggle, even though she’s not used to the latter much at all.
“Ay yai yai—” he grumbles, rolling his eyes and putting his head in his hands to mumble. “Charles, did none of them inherit your bravery?”
Adelina cocks her head, feeling like she recognizes that name from somewhere.
“…Look,” the man says, taking his hands off his temples and looking down at her. Deep creases run into both his knuckles and forehead like he’s lived and seen far too much for one lifetime. “…I’s ain’t here to do much. It took me a pretty penny to find you, and I’d like to gets back to where I came from. The faster ya help me, the faster I’ll run on out of here, and that means we’ll never see each other again.”
“…Promise?” That came out like a child asking to tell someone a secret at a birthday party.
Why did she agree to that so quickly? Was she being stupid again, an easily excited starling who got the flutters from merely the idea of a worm’s existence?
He was awful…but something in her gut told her that someone like him wouldn’t show restraint without the best of reasons.
Can she trust herself that much…?
The man scowls. “Ugh—yes. Promise.”
Adelina waits for a few moments, simply staring again at him. By now, the clouds have almost completely covered the sun, but not so much that they’re threatening torrents again. Only some light showers, if that at all.
She gets up with some undignified impunity and scowls, dusting her clothes off. Her low heels crunch wet glass as she takes a deep breath, biting her lip but not wanting to show anything to him of pertinence.
“…Tell me what you want.”
Spoken like a command, as if this stranger would care. But the posturing is not for him.
A solemn look casts over his face. “Finally. Come with me.”
“Tell me your name first,” Adelina says, pointing. “It’s rude to introduce yourself to a lady without your name.”
He stares at her this time. His mouth twists into a nasty, frustrated wince with a hint of a laugh as those shrapnel teeth flash again.
“…Call me Sawteeth, lady.”
Sawteeth…? Adelina thinks. What kind of name is that?
But there’s no time for questions now. Without a word, the two begin walking. Adelina trails behind nearly exactly two yards behind Sawteeth, noting thick scars along his hairy arms and the back of his head. They look like knives dragged over and lacerated, split along thick veins that have healed over far too well.
She finds herself staring so deeply into those canvases of violence that she doesn’t notice they’ve been taken to the cemetery. He quickly begins sounding off buried names, counting headstones.
“William, Declan, Saoirse, Finn…”
Perking up, her eyes widen. “Wait, why are we here?”
The family cemetery. Adelina didn’t entirely know how she felt inheriting this when it was first given to her; it came with the plot of land handed down from some people her father knew that were so obviously bad in their bloodied stories—however a favor was a favor. Her father was good at knowing many people and what they had that he needed to ensure his children had the best they could get.
Adelina wasn’t familiar with the history of the South, and didn’t entirely want to. But somehow, there was a foreboding sense of loss impressing upon her as the wide open horizons and unending pines pressed upon her that something was wrong, that some kind of haunting was about to begin, and she was going to have to take it.
Guess there was a price with free land, after all.
“…Lorcan, Aisling…”
He’s counting the family headstones. These are the Derringer family as they’ve been scattered throughout America, all having migrated here in some form to find their final place of rest.
“…Fiona.”
…Fiona…?
The moment that name is said, Sawteeth puts his hands into his temples and heaves a deep, rocky sigh.
“…Goddammit…”
Adelina perks up like she’s not done in many years. “Mister, what do you want with Fiona?”
Sawteeth shakes his head and ignores her. Instead, he takes a grayed handkerchief from his pocket and makes a gesture that looks like he’s praying the rosary, but is more esoteric. More spiraling. Some parts of it looks like he’s creating a large “C”, an “S” swirling deep in its gut.
“…Forgive me for letting your old lady get to ya first, Charles…”
When he puts the cloth away, Adelina can only stare at Fiona’s headstone. Something about it emanates frigidly, like a volley of slugs against the nauseating petrichor of pine resin. The world spins slower the longer she stares at it, memories of her youth flooding back in waves of searching, discovery, disappointment and intrigue.
Her father tended these stones when she was young, at least for a little while. He lived like everyone else, never mentioning anything about Fiona—but she wasn’t the only one. He lived his life almost like he didn’t want to think about anyone buried, much less himself and the possibility he’d be in the ground eventually.
It’s a strange fact thinking back on now, for a man so insistent on family history being congregated in one place.
“…Were you…a family friend of hers?”
Her breath catches in her throat. She doesn’t know whether to be excited or bravely brace herself for disappointment. It’s been so long since someone mentioned Fiona with any semblance of tact or confidence…
Sawteeth only shakes his head. His fists clutch in a manner Adelina remembers her best friend in school flinched at. Men always closed their fists before hitting girls, that’s what she told her. She saw her father do it all the time, even though he never hit anyone.
“…Did you…know our family perhaps?”
“Quiet,” he snaps.
Adelina freezes.
She watches as a grief she doesn’t understand slides across his greasy face, in both tears, sweat and a grinding jaw that makes her ears want to bleed. Biting down on her lip, she scoots away, raising her voice to hopefully rise above whatever all of that was.
“…You have to tell me what’s going on,” she murmurs. “How you know Fiona—nobody knew anything about her—”
“Shut up. That’s not what he’s called.”
Adelina stops. “…I’m sorry…what?”
He clicks his tongue sharply. “I’m not repeating myself. That’s not what he’s called.”
“Excuse me?”
She watches with an open mouth as Sawteeth sighs deeply and puts his hands on the headstone. His patchy hands wander over the engraved letters quietly, minutely, until he punches it with zero hesitation.
Marble pieces go flying without cause or reservation.
“What the—!”
Sawteeth glares at her. This time Adelina doesn’t hesitate to take up arms against him—she grabs an all-too-handily placed shovel that her brother had left here a while ago. It was meant for some kind of prank, some kind she can’t remember.
“That’s it!” she screeches. “I have had it with you!”
She raises the shovel high above her head while Sawteeth snarls, but does not back off. Instead, he snickers as that rusty concave bevel glimmers lukewarmly in the sun, its face uneager and tepid as indicated by Adelina’s shaking muscles.
The dirt in Mississippi has enough iron. It does not need more blood to stain it redder.
“Not explaining anything—!” A huff and a puff. “Sending me dumb fucking—bullshit and then punching a headstone after I was so nice and didn’t call the police when you—! When you—!”
“You wanna hit me with that shovel?” he asks. “Go on. I’d like to see you try. Show me how angry ya can get, after I was so nice to ya.”
She pauses. The air is electric, sizzling with humidity.
There’s a flash of consideration across her face, but in the end, she relents to her own nature and lowers the shovel. No telling what could become of her if she gave into what made people criminals…
She had to be better than that. She was a woman, a proper woman, and she wasn’t going to…wasn’t going to…
“Pathetic,” is all Sawteeth says, spitting at her feet and going back to heaving out the headstone.
It’s then when Adelina finds her frustration reaching a popping point.
Her eyes narrow. Her chest seizes, her hands gnashing into the patchy rust of that cold handle. Before she knows it, before she can register how the tension in her legs and arms are winding, gnawing frustration into her tipping point, she smacks the edges of the shovel against Sawteeth’s head.
She will never forget that sound. She will never forget how the sound of skull and skin crackling is, how brain matter sounds splattering against moist grass.
All of those awful sensations hover in her mind for a second before eyes widen and she drops the shovel like a piece of heirloom crystal.
Screaming. All that is left of her is screaming when she realizes what she’s done, enough to wake the owls and crows from the treetops.
She screams so loudly that she falls over herself before she even looks at the body. She knows what she did, after all—there is no need to face the sin when she knows the guilt. All she can do is scream through hot tears, unable to think clearly, unable to process how her body is feeling and physically still here when she is struggling to believe she is worth anything at all.
There’s nobody for miles to hear her, to give witness to her first murder, her first unforgivable transgression that she will surely go to jail to, disappointing everyone the way Aunt Fiona did.
Now she will surely be the one the family will forget, her tomb the only memory of her name. Her stupid, awful, stained name.
The same way Aunt Fiona exists to them now.
Dirt cakes her fingernails as she claws her hands into the earth and curses at God. For giving her this criminal man, this horrid man upon which there was no other outcome for him except for her to be tested and fail, because she is not a good enough Christian yet. She is not a good enough Christian and will never be, because she failed in the most critical moment.
She falls onto her knees and begins babbling a prayer. Some prayer she doesn’t not understand, nor does she want to. Her heart is evil now, obviously, so her prayers must be too, but it’s all she can think to do.
A pair of boots hit the soft grass as she murmurs amen and contemplates grief in endless halfway house-shaped forms.
“First time killin’ someone missy?”
Somehow she finds it within her to screech louder and flinch so hard she slams her head into the back of another headstone.
“Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefu—”
That was going to leave a nasty bruise.
Sawteeth laughs. “Did you like it?”
She gulps a breath. “YOU SHOULD BE DEAD!”
He laughs. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told a dozen or so times. But ya can’t really keep someone like me down.”
Adelina sniffles. It’s hard for her to focus with her muscles grinding hot like broken gears.
“…What are you?” is all she can stammer out. “A-Are you a devil?”
“Nah,” he replies, cracking his knuckles. “Those lot are awful, just plain awful I tell ya.”
Adelina blinks. “Th-Then what are you?”
Tears well up in her eyes as her brain works quadruple overtime to comprehend everything that happened since the house. Time has since stopped passing in her mind at this point, instead replaced by a series of events after events after events after events, over and over and over again, until she’s here now, and time is passing again—
She wipes her face with her hand, and Sawteeth narrows his eyes at her.
“…You’re a proper pain in the ass, aren’t ya? Askin’ so many questions like ya would know what to do with what I would tell yous.”
“W-Well,” she stutters. “I don’t even think I know what to do with what I do know. Like how you—you…”
She looks at where she swears the shovel hit him. All that exists there is a large, faint patch of white, somehow more uneven than his pallid skin tone already was.
“…Get up, lady,” he says. “Pretty redheads like you shouldn’t be yelling so damn much,” Sawteeth snarls. “Neither should ya pretend to be so offended over someone you clearly don’t know.”
“W-Who—Fiona?!”
Sawteeth shakes his head. “…Not what he was called. That…”
He looks over solemnly at the gravestone. Somberness on his face is like a still, dying river—he looks out of breath, deprived of oxygen on a mud bank while the sun continues to burn down without care or reservation.
“That’s why I’m here. To honor him, to fight a wrong.”
The two stew in silence as Adelina gets up and brushes herself off. There’s more dust on her than she thought from what a storm came through earlier, but the dirt of Mississippi was always hungry. Always looking for its next meal, the next feet to walk upon it.
She stares at what is left of Fiona’s headstone. The name is almost completely gone now with how much he’s crushed it.
“…If you explain to me—” she starts, unsure of where she will find herself finishing. “Who my aunt is…”
Deep breath. Her heart pounds in her ears.
“…I’ll let you do as you wish.”
Sawteeth turns to her with a nasty glare in his eyes, barbed as iron hooks. Adelina gets the impression he’s not used to being told what to do, especially by a woman, but he’ll just have to get over that. He’ll just have to get over himself, because she’s already gone through too much herself, too much to lose now, to turn tail and cower like the scared little kid she was always told she was when she was younger…
“…What did they say?” he asks. Almost as if he’s careful to avoid specific phrases now.
“Fiona?”
“As you knew her.”
Adelina cocks her head at that, but continues anyway. “…Not much. I…Nobody really in the family really talked about her, whether they knew her or not.”
“That’s it?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.
“Well, n-no…but, uh, what else was said about her was almost…stupid, I guess. Impossible, stupid, silly things people made up just to entertain themsel—”
“Missy,” Sawteeth interrupts her. “Ya downed me with a shovel, but here I am alive in the flesh. Do I look like I don’t know a good tall tale or two?”
Oh, so I did actually kill him, Adelina thinks, a shiver running down her spine. But she continues, because there’s no time to ruminate on that now.
“…Someone in the family talked about her being a…gangster. Like a real flesh and blood one.”
Silence. Sawteeth takes a deep breath, clicking his tongue before turning back to the headstone.
“…Yeah, that’s it. Charles was—yeah.”
Wait, seriously? Adelina thinks.
“You keep…saying that,” she stammers, still in minor shock. “That name. Charles. Why?”
Part of her wants to protest, but at this point, what good was that going to do? How much had resistance given her already with him?
Sawteeth leans up against the stone ridge of the cemetery. Originally, Adelina was going to put in iron gates here, but she didn’t like the idea of them tarnishing in the elements. Despite the fact she didn’t want this place at first, she eventually dove into the mindset of making sure everything here stayed forever. That whatever happened, there would be a mark of the Derringers on the land’s skin, whether it wanted it or not.
That came with her getting older, becoming what she considered a “real” adult. Past the legal mark and into her thirties, which were slowly creeping into her forties now.
This cemetery was a symbol of their family’s resilience, after all. Maybe not deserved in every aspect, but bruising bygones were healed bygones at this point.
Sawteeth purses his lips together, blood dribbling from his mouth that he refuses to wince and wipe off, even as he opens his mouth.
“…I’m fulfillin’ a wish of his. Charles, I mean. That…name you call him, I assume it’s why he wanted to get away from his old lady.”
Adelina blinks. “You…assume? And…old lady? You mean…my great-grandmother?”
Sawteeth shrugs. “What else would he mean? And since I know you’re gonna run yer mouth—no, I don’t know why. At least, not enough to satisfy ya, I imagine. I just know she was a crone, and we ended up with Charles at some point ‘cause our boss was impressed by how he could lob a fireball.”
Adelina has to keep herself from smiling. Smiling partially because what just come from Sawteeth’s mouth sounds so inane that it could make her laugh, but, well, what other explanations were there?
When the mundane failed you, didn’t God ask you to believe in miracles?
“…Your boss?”
“Chappell,” Sawteeth replies.
“That’s it?” Adelina is beaming.
Sawteeth can only snarl. “Look—lady—”
“Uh uh, no way mister—” she snaps back, pumping her foot into the earth. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to know all of this? About my great-aunt Fiona? Decades. Decades. Ever since I was a little girl—”
“Yeah, well, you can die with your questions, because I’d like for this to be over with,” he replies gruffly, returning his hands to desecrate that speckled granite. “I’m not in the mood to relive old times—”
Adelina narrows his eyes at him. She watches closely as he heaves up the headstone effortlessly and places it down flat on the ground.
Why aren’t you telling me about his—no, her name? Is there some kind of secret I’m missing? Some delusion you’re not letting go?
But this can’t be a delusion. No, there was too much magic for this name to not be real.
Still…how?
Is…was…she…
The gears begin turning in Adelina’s head as to what is really going on. But they’re slow, dreadfully slow, as nobody’s told her about people doing this kind of thing before.
For better, or for worse.
When Sawteeth produces a hammer, Adelina finds her voice again.
“…Did…um…”
He looks back at her as her dress blows uneasily in the wind.
She needs to find some way to spite him. Some way to drag his attention back to her. Respect be damned now; her curiosity was going to have its pound of flesh whether God wanted it or not.
“…Do you think uh, ‘Charles’ would have wanted to be buried in a dress?”
Sawteeth stops.
Adelina knows she’s got him on the hook now. “…It’s a tradition of every Derringer woman to be buried in a white dress. Uh, my great-grandmother’s mother started that, we think, so—”
“Lady, are you trying to spit on his memory here?”
His tone of voice sounds almost…brutish. Enforcing, but of what boundary she can’t tell. But is there a hint of…is it jadedness? Obviously mixed in with grief, so what else? That wretched thing was never alone to any party it showed up to.
“…I’m only speaking the truth,” she replies. “You insist on her being a man, so I’m just letting you know what she really was.”
Something in Adelina doesn’t feel right saying those words aloud, but…she can’t really think of any other way to make Sawteeth listen. When in doubt, play to the other side, use what they believed against them. That’s what her brothers always did with her poor grandmother anyway.
“…If you’re just here to destroy a headstone, sadly I’ve got to tell you that I’m going to replace it. The family comes here every few years, and a bunch of broken rock is going to make me look bad. I’ll look like a slob, not taking care of what I’m supposed to.”
She looks out towards her car. It’s not that far, but it’s a ways enough away that she can’t see Sawteeth’s footprints anymore.
“…So if you tell me who ‘he’ is—”
She grabs the shovel and defiantly approaches him, a determined look etched firmly into her face and guts.
“…I’ll give you the whole body. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? You can do whatever you want with her after.”
Silence.
…
God, was that a stupid proposition?
She bites her own lip as she holds her stiff pose, not watching Sawteeth get up to saunter behind her.
The air is thick as he sighs, running his hands down his face.
“…Do you have a lighter with you, miss?”
Her breath catches in her throat. “…I-I don’t smoke.”
“That’s not what I asked—”
“I can get one from the house,” she blurts. “Are you saying you’ll—?!”
Sawteeth waves her off as she whirls around to look at him with wet, vulnerable eyes.
“Sheesh, don’t make this a fuckin’ ordeal—!” He shakes his head, huffing and putting a palm to his face. “…But yes. I was actually gonna do that when you weren’t lookin’, but if you’re offering—”
“Great. Start now.”
He rolls his eyes.
“Get a lighter first. Then we’ll talk.”
Adelina didn’t recall herself capable of running so fast. Nor did she understand why she didn’t second-guess herself rummaging through her kitchen supplies and drawers, looking for the small, dinky lighter she kept for candles she was given at Christmases that she swore she needed to light. She didn’t mean to forget.
When she gets back to Sawteeth, the rest of the afternoon is a blur, except in small pockets of lucidity.
Apparently, it was all true, and then some. “Charles” Tiffany Derringer was one of the sub-bosses of the Chicago Spirit, assigned to handle most of the day-to-day magic and the components that required. This was in addition to running rings of men, dogs and extortion bloodier than a butchered cow—Sawteeth’s reminiscing on how fiery Charles’ temper was quickly became the only thing keeping Adelina sane through the intense gravedigging that was wearing down on her faster and faster.
But it all slips by in an instant when he talks. When he talks about ‘snitch dungeons’, about Charles being a womanizer so shameless even the Devil would blush. When he rambles on about turf wars over factory owners and restaurants abound all over Chicago, over someone named “Mr. Night” who kept a watchful eye on operations behind Chappell’s back, behind everyone’s back—nobody liked that. He didn’t explain why.
Adelina got the impression he was the worst of them all, somehow. Even with a name like that…it stopped sounding like something out of a nursery rhyme when it was accompanied by descriptions of children and their fathers being turned inside out.
It’s all of these things tickling and feeding her starving curiosity as she digs, as Sawteeth digs with her. (Apparently there was a second shovel). Perhaps what tickles her the most is that Charles even changed his middle name too (to the Spirit, it was ‘Ferris’)—Sawteeth jokes when he realizes that truth that the only reason he didn’t let go of his surname was because it matched a pistol he really liked. A nice and shiny Remington Model 95 that he carried around with him everywhere that shot magic incendiary bullets.
Who knew magic and lead went so well together?
“So how did he manage to pretend for so long?”
They’ve hit the casket. It’s made of lacquered wood.
“I wouldn’t call it ‘pretend’—” Sawteeth replies. “Charles walked and talked like any other man of the Spirit did.”
“Well, you know what I mean—” Adelina looks up and wonders if she should get out of the hole. “Like…how did nobody find out? There’s no way men back then would’ve listened to a woman on anything—”
He can only sigh, grunting as he pulls out the casket from under his feet and sets it against the side of the dug trench.
The dirt stains his hands almost like blood would.
“…We never talked about it. He wasn’t even the one to tell me—Chappell did. Said Charles was a wee lass he found wreaking havoc and setting cars on fire with his bare hands, burning his hair off when it got too long—he told me that when I rode up the ranks. It was a secret I was to tell nobody if I wanted to remain in one piece for longer than a few minutes.”
Adelina pauses. The mental image takes a second to register in her mind. It has to slide into place with a good many gears and greased clicks before it fully registers and fills her.
She frowns, thinking of her youth, which meant a lot of haircuts at the salon with her mother. Her expression furrows deeper thinking of how heavy a secret like that must have been. To be a man in a position of power like that, as a father or a mayor would—was that why Fiona did it? Was that why she ran away and died like that?
Adelina would be remiss to lie and say she didn’t wonder what the other side of life was like. Boys and girls were more equal than ever these days, but not back then. How many women dreamed of taking their husband’s place in the household? Dreamed of being painters, politicians, physicists, all those things women were told they couldn’t do?
…But that doesn’t settle all the pieces into place. What kind of woman would want to subject herself to manhood willingly? That was the biggest roadblock, even if things were perfectly equal. It was so much work. So much work to jive with the boys, with the duties men were supposed to have, and that wasn't mentioning they just had no sense of fashion. None at all!
What kind of woman would want to give up skirts and heels willingly? If you became a man, there was no going back.
“…Did you know h-him at all?”
Sawteeth picks up a piece from the shattered headstone and places it in the indent of the casket’s carved cross.
“…I wasn’t as close to him as I should’ve been. He and Wheels got along better.”
“…Wheels?”
“Our accountant. Called that ‘cause Chappell first found him as a car mechanic out in Armor Square,” Sawteeth replies, taking more rocks and laying them all flattest side down at every vertex of indentation on the casket’s face. “…Yes, we needed one. Everyone needs a numbers guy.”
Adelina blinks. “…Of all people, he was friends with your accountant?” Even if everyone needed them, they were still respectable in her eyes. “How…How did that happen?”
No response. She watches with bated breath as Sawteeth takes some black powder from his hands and scatters it all over the dull wood.
Maybe his patience is up.
…No. Something is dying in his eyes.
Something is dying that has been dead for a long time.
“…Dunno. They were just…close. Wheels worked with everyone who had their arms in supply lines, so he and Derringer were always in each other’s offices.”
“…M-My great—uh, they swapped offices?”
Sawteeth shrugs. “I just know Charles spent a lot of time in Wheels’ chair. They eventually started killin’ for each other…”
He clicks his tongue striking a match against something she doesn’t see. Before she can speak again, a cascade of white, red and black flames roar, howling skyward like wolves upon a buffalo, a coyote upon an injured calf.
Everything slows to a crawl as her eyes fixate on those lights, watching the edges of manifestations she doesn’t know how to even halfway process. There are faces in the fire, spilt teeth and strewn guts—there is a silhouette of darkness smothering it all, choking some body which is somehow free now, somehow free despite death, despite violence, despite now being technically nameless.
Nameless…
…No. Adelina is wrong there.
Charles Derringer was not nameless. It was right there in the letters, in the fire, in his death, in his inevitability.
An inevitability of invisibility, sewn hewn against a tapestry of corpses and grey skies. Of bruised knuckles, blistered skin, automatic guns and moonshine staining so deeply that it would not come out, even in a memory of a memory that doesn’t belong to anyone of his blood.
There is a violence in the way the fire devours the casket. The way it devours his bones. The way it chars and gnaws on tendons, ribs, every angle of the skull, cracking and splitting them in two with a force descended from a heaven unheard of by priests and deacons.
It is a deserved violence, a holy and unmaking violence; it is a wretched, sincere sidestep swing of flames never before witnessed by this soil or the trees which depend on this ground. Every second spent alight is a second spent dancing, a second spent shimmying with a crowd while the world teeters on the edge of rust, ruin, and rain in a city where the wind and lakes carried people away just as much as they gave them life.
Death, destruction, racketeering, blackmail. But in the same breath was a man who enjoyed life knowing tomorrow was likely going to be the last day—wasn’t that kind of living beautiful when it was free? When there was nobody to tell you who to be, when all you had to be was yourself?
The fire is just not because he lived as a man, but because he lived as a sinful one. And loved every second of it, too.
Adelina doesn’t know what she’s feeling by the time the light dies out. By the time the overwhelming melancholy has washed over her, the residue in her heart sticky like a guilty pleasure.
Except there is no guilt here. There is only a hole where she thinks it should be.
“…He’s gone,” she whispers quietly.
Sawteeth says nothing. He looks want to light a cigarette, but there is already enough smoke in the air. The pine trees are getting antsy, the iron sky somber.
As the humidity returns, it sticks to the both of them like a second skin.
All is quiet now.
Sawteeth wipes his eyes and breathes with an unsteady rhythm.
“…I don’t know,” he says, like it’s the greatest regret of his life, and it probably is. “There’s—There’s so much I should have known—so much I should have asked…but we weren’t a couple of school kids, y’know? I wasn’t someone…I wasn’t…”
Adelina’s face softens, watching Sawteeth mull through his emotions that wear all at once on his face, especially in the eyes. She didn’t know how old he was because of the (as she guessed it) immortality, but whatever the answer to that question was, it didn’t stop her from being reminded of her dad. Of the men in her family, the other half of the Derringers.
None of them liked crying in front of others. Boys don’t get close to each other, boys don’t cry, boys don’t gossip like girls do over Sunday brunch.
What did he want to know? What did he think he lost? Was it a friend, a colleague, someone he admired, or something above those things? What did the violence of their work make them, just as much as it clearly and hideously unmade them?
Sawteeth wipes his eyes and walks towards the edge of the cemetery. But before he leaves, he turns around.
“…Thanks,” he says quietly, gruffly. But something has broken inside of him in a way Adelina wants to help, but knows she likely can’t. That past is too far gone now.
“…You’re welcome,” she replies.
“I appreciate your guts, lady. I imagine I’m looking at something similar to what Chappell did when he first picked up Charles.”
“Haha, thanks,” she responds nervously. “…Did you get the chance to…honor him as well?”
Sawteeth sighs, looking at the ground. Eventually, he shakes his head.
“…No. I was too mangled by the time that limey got to Chappell—”
“Limey?” Adelina cocks her head.
“British merchant from out of town. He was the one who put the Spirit down, sent even Night of all people running—”
She puts a hand to her mouth in astonishment. “…Was that who killed Charles as well?”
He nods. But his face goes so dark and despondent that Adelina doesn’t press for more details. His mouth is bleeding from frowning so much, the nails and glass shards breaking into his skin like sacrificial knives.
“…I chased him down for years. His corpse, I mean. ‘C-Cause I was never…”
He pauses, collecting himself.
“…I was never gonna be able to do something like this for Chappell. When everythin’ was cavin’ in, when that ugly bastard Brit was chasin’ us, Charles told me if his old lady found his bones I had to go and destroy whatever they’d done for him. He wanted his body to be lit like a wildfire, you see, like the fires that roared on the West Coast. I think he dreamed of causing ‘em or somethin’, ‘cause he said if he made it out of the Spirit…”
Adelina watches with tears in her own eyes at Sawteeth crying. Wiping his with his thumb, he recomposes himself quickly, but it’s clear it’s still bubbling over.
“…I think he wanted to live out there. Wanted to live on the beach where they had plenty of girls, tans, and booze. Or maybe I’m confusing him with Wheels…”
“Wheels? Why?”
Sawteeth nods. “Yeah. I always saw ‘im with postcards from all over America on his desk. Dunno what he did with ‘em, or if it was some numbers magic I never knew ‘bout. Guy was crazy with that shit.”
“…Do you know what happened to him?” Adelina asks diminutively, deep breaths in her body and soul. “Did he get a funeral?”
Sawteeth goes deathly quiet again, but it’s not for long. “…No. I never heard of a body bein’ found. It scares me what coulda been, honestly—that, that crazy bastard—”
He takes a deep breath to compose himself for a moment. A mountain finally breaking in half.
“…I dunno. He—that rat took so many of the Spirit in ways I didn’t think was p-possible—”
Adelina stares with long, wide eyes as the silence knifes and shivs the both of them in cold, humid blood.
The summer couldn’t hold a candle to the emotions swirling between them now.
“…A-Ah, s-so he’s probably at the bottom of Lake M-Michigan, yeah?” she stutters.
She doesn’t know why she made that joke all of a sudden. Was that even a good joke? What they called “dark humor”? Her mother always considered such things sacrilegious and crude.
But Sawteeth smiles. He smiles in a way that looks like he almost has real teeth for a second.
“…Hah, would be fittin’! I always thought he deserved that much, yeah? She’s a beautiful body of water.”
Adelina smiles with him. She smiles with him as they both laugh over that, laugh like they’ve known each other, like there aren’t fading memories which have burned tonight. Like untold history wasn’t just put to glorious rest, into the past of a bloody, moonshine soaked veneer that howls to the empty Mississippi sky for wherever it gets to call home now.
Not everyone gets happy endings. Some deserve that, some don’t. What fewer deserve is a lack of closure, a lack of completeness.
The unfortunate reality is that closure is most often what dies with a name, most often what dies with a past smeared in anything less than a clean slate. And by the nature of rot, of humanity, of imperfection, selfishness, society, and ego—most will never find closure. Those who do will suffer for it, and most likely find that the journey was worth less than the destination, or that the destination itself had faded into the sands of time.
What fades as the sun goes down, as Sawteeth leaves with a wave and Adelina stares at a massive pile of soot where there was once a memory of a person is…something more than melancholy. Something less than unfathomable sorrow.
It’s a gaze into the abyss of where a person once was, unable to fit the pieces together. The corners are missing, some of the middle parts are broken, ripped in half. Others have been singed beyond recognition, or gotten too wet to carry their own weight.
There’s still so much she wants to know. There’s still so much she wanted to ask him. But the look in his eyes, the trembling tenor in his voice. He really did want to leave the Chicago Spirit behind, leave behind the ghost of photographs in black and white.
Where would he go? Adelina didn’t grow up with much fantasy as a kid, but if he was immortal, well, he seemed to be rather young for such, despite everything. How was an American immortal going to live? What was he going to see?
She looks back to the soot. The remains of her great uncle…
…He was gone, forever now.
…
No.
No, he existed.
Charles Derringer existed…
And that was all he needed the world to know.
August 27th, 2002
“I’m sorry, sir. Our records indicate Ms. Adelina left the office a while ago and moved up north.”
“H-How long? W-Where?”
The woman sighs. “…Mm, I don’t feel comfortable telling you that. Your number is coming from… look, I don’t mean to be rude, but you feel like some kind of scammer. Are you even from America? Goodbye!”
Hogarth grits his teeth, kicking his desk as the dial-tone echoes throughout his empty office. Lights flash and flicker over his face as he grits his teeth, tries to remain calm—he’s only got thirty minutes left on the clock anyway.
Nobody at Marshall, Carter and Dark works on shifts. Like they’re underpaid tech workers who care about the exact hours. But Hogarth still likes to pretend after all these years because it rubs just the smallest grain off his bosses’ patience, a grain he’ll have back under their feet in no time when he delivers them something they yet again will thank him and be grateful for…
God, was he dreaming? That was his last lead. This girl was his last lead—she had the name, she had the right name, same family line as him—
In the dark he hears a deep voice all the way down from below.
“…Conducting personal research with company resources again, Mr. Cartwright?”
Hogarth rolls his eyes and pretends he doesn’t hear Percival Darke standing at the doorway like he’s got somewhere to be.
“…I gave you everything you needed for the week, and then some,” he replies coolly. “Do you want me to twiddle my thumbs while I wait for the computers to crunch the other half of the numbers?”
“I expected you to have given up this silly charade seventy years ago,” he replies with an accent Hogarth registers now, in the pain of being so deep beneath his objective, as so British it was wearing a crown and jewels. “Chasing ghosts doesn’t look good on you.”
“It’s not long before I join them,” he quips back, as a black python with blue eyes slithers onto his back and begins sleeping soundly.
“Goodness, is eighty more years really so short to you? And after all I did—”
“…Leave, Percival,” Hogarth replies, almost wanting to snap at him. His words are digging knives into him he doesn’t have the absinthe for tonight. The doubts are creeping in, on whether he had the right girl, if she was a false positive, but no, no, he knows, he knows—she had to be—
“…Please.”
Percival’s eyes still cut through the darkness after all these years. No matter how tough Hogarth postured in his lack of aging, no matter how useful he made himself or how much he thought he knew, his eyes always cut like unfriendly forks against a lamb’s skin.
He watches him roll those forks, clicking his tongue before turning heel.
“…I want you out of here in two hours. Ruprecht has to go home early, Amos as well. Understand?”
Hogarth smiles. Delightful to see Percival annoyed again, in record time for this week as well. It’s good he has learned not to leave him alone, lest he…
“…Alright, I promise. And I’ll bring blackberry parfaits for everyone tomorrow, just to make up for my—” He waves his hands like he’s making a child’s rainbow.
“Snafu, that so reminds you of your ugly history.”
That got an eyeroll out of him for sure. But Percival’s favorite desserts were all blackberry, so Hogarth knew he wasn’t going to say no to a gift like that. That was the fun part of giving gifts for his co-workers—he got to remind them how much he knew about them, whether they liked that or not.
He almost feels like he’s got the upper hand in the conversation until Percival grins so smugly he might as well have run five orphans over.
“Oh of course, I’d be delighted by that, Mr. Wheels. Make sure to bring enough for everyone twice over, yes?”
The door is shut so fast that there is nothing to say as the darkness envelops everything, every button, panel, pencil, and paper.
Hogarth sighs, rubbing his temples, wishing sometimes his money could buy him the luxury of being forgotten. Percival’s voice was sticking in his head more and more these days, the more he tried to remember the past, the more he felt compelled towards a point in time he continually found the best reasons to regret.
That yes back in ‘38 hardly felt worth it anymore. Nothing had felt like home since then, no matter how big or decorated his cage became.
Maybe it was time to try and find Sawteeth next…
There had to have been at least something Percival couldn’t destroy…that time couldn’t destroy…
Right?