THE COMEBACK OF ALARICK

Sept. 1998

Young and belligerent, seventeen-year-old Jordan stood with his arms crossed around his body as he faced off with his father at the Baleria International Airport.

"I just said that I do not want to go. I will not go. You can't make me," he repeated, as he had been doing in the past five days since his father had informed him that he was leaving the country for his maternal uncle's place in Rova.

Stupid Rova that he heard they don't speak English. How was he supposed to survive there? How would he cope? How would he make friends? Was he supposed to leave his friends here to go make friends with sheep on his uncle's ranch? Who still does ranching as a full-time occupation anyway? Stupid ranch! Stupid cows! Stupid Unc... No, he couldn't really call his uncle stupid; even though he did not know the man well enough, he had been nice enough to him the last time he and his family came to Baleria.

When his mother died. Jordan had been nine years old then, and Maman had been sick for a long time before his father told him one day when he came back from school that his mother was now resting with God.

"I do not want her to rest with God; I want her here!" was the first thing he shouted before he ran upstairs to check on the bed that his mother had laid on for months without going out while her body was racked with coughs and the doctor was always coming and going till people could almost believe that the man lived in their house. Maman was nowhere to be found. Jordan still relived the way he had run down the stairs, hitting his legs against the door of his father's study as he shouted, "Where is Maman?"

"The undertaker already took her away. They will take care of her body, then we can go see her later before the burial," his Parpa had replied in his deep voice as he raised his head from the correspondence he was penning.

"How could he even think of work at the moment?" was the paramount thought on Jordan's mind as he stalked out of his father's study and slammed the door with all the fury of a nine-year-old. That was when he realized that his toe was bleeding, but he did not care as he trailed his bloody footstep back to his mother's room. Not even when Molly, their resident housekeeper, cook, and caregiver, called him, did he answer. He slammed the door of his mother's room and went back to lock it from the inside before curling on the spot where his mother had lain for months. He folded his body tightly as he curled up on the bed. He hated his father at that moment for the fact that he couldn't even feel the heat of his mother on the bed again. He hated Molly because the stale scent that he had come to attach to his mother couldn't even be detected on the sheet, no matter how much he inhaled deeply. All he could breathe in was the scent of lavender and soap. He had curled up there and refused to stand up when he heard Molly's voice calling him to come and eat something first.

"How dare she?"

He curled up without answering as he heard the knock on the door, even after hearing the heavy steps of his father on the staircase.

Not until his father said, "Jordan, get up and open the door. The undertaker just called. We can go see her now," he said.

He ran to the door and flung it open, and with a sulky look, he demanded, "Where is she?"

He did not stop hating his father till they got to the nondescript-looking establishment of the undertaker. Nor did he let go of his anger until they were shown to the no-frills room where his mother's body was placed in the coffin on a slab.

As he was about to rush in, his father laid a hand on his shoulder. Jordan looked at the man in annoyance.

"Are you sure?" Parpa asked, and that was when Jordan saw what he had been too angry before to see on his father's face. His eyes were red-rimmed like he had been crying, and grief weighed down the corners of his mouth, making his moustache look droopy.

Jordan nodded, and his father patted his shoulder before telling him to go ahead as she followed slowly behind.

Maman looked like she was sleeping. She seemed more at peace than she had been in the past few months that he had watched her deteriorate from the beautiful woman that everybody praised to the shell of her former self.

Mama," Jordan whispered, as if she could answer him. Maman, are you okay now? Maman, are your lungs no longer bad?" Jordan felt his father's presence behind him even before he felt his hands on his shoulder.

Jordan," his father called, and his voice caught.

"Parpa, is she fine now?" Jordan asked while looking at his mother's hand, which was always clutched around one handkerchief or another as she placed the material against her mouth whenever she was coughing. The hand lay passively against her waist now, and they seemed to be resting from all those works too, just as his mother was.

He heard his father sigh before he said, "Yes, Jordan. She is fine now. She is at peace with God, and she no longer feels all that pain. Where she would..." he cleared his throat. "Where she could smile again and look down at you in happiness as she watched you grow happily. She will want you to be happy. That was what she said. For all of us to be happy"

Jordan turned back sharply to look up at his father, and he caught the tears that fell from his father's eyes before the man quickly swiped them off with the back of his palm when he saw his son looking.

"Is that what she wanted, Parpa? For me to be happy? For us to be happy?" he asked, and his father nodded.

"Then, Parpa, don't cry," he said as he hugged his father's waist.

Jordan had started crying in earnest on their way back to the house. He cried while he finally accepted to eat the toast Molly had made for him. He cried when his father finally realized that he had hurt his toes when Molly said she found trails of blood when she came upstairs to call him. He cried as his father disinfected the cut for him and bandaged it. He cried himself to sleep.

He was still sleeping when he felt his bed depressed, and he woke up to see the stocky man that came for him seated at the foot of his bed.

"Who are you?" Jordan had said as he sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

"That breaks my heart," the man said to him with a small smile as his scraggly beard seemed to be dancing as he spoke "To think my nephew does not know me," he said as he stood up, his frame blocking the ray of light that shone into the room through the window. "I am your Uncle Law. The last time I saw you, you were so small, so you might not remember me."

Jordan had a vague memory of the face. Not much, but he knew that the face was devoid of the beard then.

Uncle Law and his wife, whom Jordan had learned he was to call Aunt Nubia, spent some days with them with their squalling bald baby, Chione. They were nice to Jordan, and Uncle Law told him a lot of things that he had not known about his mother. Aunt Nubia even let him hold the baby.

That was a million years ago. Jordan thought as he stood his ground in the airport. How was he supposed to leave everything here and go and live with them? How could he leave his soccer team, his almost-girlfriend Peina, and his father, who wanted nothing to do with him anymore, and go to a county that was about 5501 miles away from Baleria?

He had calculated it for God's sake. He might even spend the whole day on the damn plane.

"I won't go," he repeated.

Bassie Alarick looked at his son, and he knew that his belligerence stemmed more from fear of the unknown than anything else.

Bassie would not want to send his son to anyone if he had another choice, as the boy was all he had left of Edrice, his love, but the country was becoming more and more dangerous by the day. He had to send the boy out before he grew up around the influences that were already penetrating everywhere in the state. Just yesterday, his friend's lastborn left home to join one of them after he had been scolded for being spotted among them. No, he couldn't watch his beloved son get embroiled in things like that, even if he would miss him. The boy had to go away while they tried to find solutions to the vermin that seemed to have infested their country.

He firmed his voice and raised Jordan's passport. "You are going, and that is that. I would not repeat myself nor try to explain why you have to leave for you."

Jordan snorted, "I know you are sending me away because you are scared. I am not a scaredy cat, and I am not..."

The announcer announced onboarding.

Jordan looked at his father's face, and he knew that he was totally serious. There was no way he would allow him to go back home today.

He soothed the pain in his heart and put on his tough boy exterior as he snatched the passport from his father's hand. "I don't need you to go with me. I know the way. I don't need you at all. Mother would have never sent me away if she was still alive."

His father's tired-looking face filled with pain, as it always did whenever anyone mentioned Edrice. Jordan," his father whispered.

Jordan looked away from the man's face. Now was not the time to feel sorry for his father. The man was not feeling sorry for him. Yet he couldn't help but note how much older his father had gotten. It was as if he had grown twice as fast since his mother died eight years ago. People mistook Bassie for Jordan's grandfather.

Jordan sighed as he turned back to his father. "Just so you know, I hate this, and I do not like you right now," he said.

Bassie smiled as he opened his arms to his son. "I know, my son. I know"

Jordan reluctantly went to his father, and the man enveloped him in a tight hug before he released him and turned him towards the gate, saying, "Go now, my son. You don't want to miss your flight."

"I would rather do that," he said as he looked back at his dad and saw the telltale wetness in his eyes. He forgot all his anger and frustrations for the moment as he said, "I love you, Parpa."

Bassie couldn't hold back his tears as he replied, "I love you too, son. We will see each other again soon."

Bassie Alarick had no idea how soon it would be as he watched the security officers check his son and pass him on. He waved until the boy disappeared through the gate.

He sighed in relief, despite the void in his heart.

Now that the boy was gone. There are things to do.

February 2010

Jordan Alarick brought his head sharply out of his wardrobe, where he had been arranging the clothes he intended to take with him. He had not started packing yet, but he wanted to get everything ready and in its place so he could do his packing in one fell swoop. It had become a force of habit; one couldn't expect anything less from a man who had made his way steadily up to the highest rank in the county police department at such a young age.

He knew that it was also a force of habit that made him jerk when he heard the shuffling sound in the hallway. He rubbed the part of his head that he had rammed against the upper part of his wardrobe as he straightened sharply. Jordan smiled as he heard hushed whispers from the hallway, and he knew who could be the source of those. Well... sources, if one wanted to be particular.

He placed his hand against his waist as he called out, "I know you are there."

Total silence.

He changed his tone to a menacing one as he said, "If you don't show yourself and surrender, I will start shooting. One..."

"Pfft, you will never shoot us," came a young male voice from behind her.

Jordan's smile widened as he heard a female groan before she said in a chiding tone as he heard a smacking sound, "Oh, kill me." He could imagine his cousin smacking her forehead as she rolled her eyes at her twin as he heard, "Good job Hen, now he knows that we are the ones, stupid."

"He already knows that we are the ones!" Her brother retorted, "And I am not stupid; you are!"

"Who is stupid?" He heard feet shuffling, and he could picture perfectly what was going on. Now she was trying to get her hands on him, and he was running while taunting her.

"Fu-kay-na! Fuka! Fuka! Fuka!" her brother replied.

"I swear let me..."

Jordan opened the door, and the scenario he saw made him burst out in laughter. Fukayna was about to remove one of her shoes, and she stood with her leg suspended in the air as she looked at him, while Henley had his hand in his air as he poked his tongue out at his sister with his feet ready to take flight the moment she removed her shoe.

"At the risk of you two killing yourselves at my door, do come right in," Jordan announced breezily.

"Hello, Jordan," Fukayna said as she abandoned the task of killing her brother for the moment and smiled at him.

"He is the Sheriff now; you should call him sheriff. Who is the stupid one now?" Henley rolled his eyes at his sister.

Jordan smiled as he saw that the boy had finally perfected it. His sister had tormented him so much with her eye-rolling that he had vowed to learn how to do it. Jordan had caught him practicing it in the mirror the other day, and he had made him promise to keep it a secret.

"I would not hear the end of it from that girl," he had groaned. That girl is his sister.

Jordan had promised him, and then he joined him to practice, and he told him that you can never have too much skill as a Sheriff, and the skill might come in handy when he wanted to deal with recalcitrant deputies. The two of them ended up doubling in laughter when Jordan compared them to a pair of owls who had something stuck in their eyes and were trying to get it out. Henley had requested a rank in the police department if the eye-rolling worked on the deputies, as that would mean he had contributed to the force. Jordan never did learn his eye-rolling, but he could see now that the kid had been hard at work.

His sister did not appreciate it, though, as she narrowed her eyes at him and said, "He is no longer the Sheriff, idiot. He resigned! I wouldn't expect you to remember a thing about that though, you dunce."

Henley stuck out his tongue again "You are the dunce."

"Who are you calling?" she asked. She reached for the shoe again.

Jordan sighed theatrically "Kids, kids. As our genius here said, I have already resigned, and I am not willing to mop up anybody's blood. If you want to kill him, Fuka, do it elsewhere. Bye..."

"No wait, wait." Fukayna, who was closer to the door, quickly raised her hand to it to stop him as Jordan said as if to close the door, "I can kill him later; let us come in."

"As if," Jordan heard her brother mutter as he let go of the door and entered.

The two of them forgot their food for a while as they stood side by side with their eyes on every other place but him. He knew they had something to say, and if they were being this reluctant to say it out, they probably thought he would refuse, and if they could have thought of that, it is probably something that he would refuse as they almost always get their way around him.

"Now I am growing fanciful," he thought as he looked at them sideways and saw Fukayna twirl the belt of her dress as she went to his collections. He couldn't remember when he started, but he had never outgrown his collection of comic books. He had the latest and the oldest of his favorite series, Rajun." Rajun had been popular back at Baleria, and he had thought he would not be able to get them here in Rova, but he had been wrong. Rajun was universal. Fukayna had shown interest in them, and he intended to leave these for her and send her the latest series from time to time.

Where he was going, he doubted if he would have the time for comics anyway. Maybe it was time to outgrow some things; he had bigger things to deal with.

He sighed again and reminded himself that he had promised to take his mind off any morbid thoughts for the remainder of the days he had to use with the family that he had come to love and cherish in the past twelve years.

He turned his mind back to the kids behind him.

Eleven-year-old Fukayna and Henley had arrived in the world shortly after he came to stay with their parents.

Angry with his dad for sending him to what he termed the middle of nowhere back then, proving difficult with his uncle just so he could send him back, and pretending that his eighth-year-old cousin Chione was beneath his notice. He was, after all, too cool to allow a girl to hang around him.

They had arrived, filling the not-so-bustling household with their energy.

His aunt had called him to hold them when he was leaning against the door jamb, posing like he didn't give a care in the world.

He moved closer to them, and they blinked those impossibly clear eyes at him. Then, as if by agreement, they both held on to his little fingers and stole his heart.

He had never remained the same.

"Take us with you," the two of them shouted in unison, jolting him out of his thoughts.

Well, he had not been expecting that.

Jordan looked at his two solemn-looking cousins, and he realized that they were serious. He closed his wardrobe and came to sit down on his bed. They both swerved to face him.

"I am sorry, kids. I wish I could, but I can't."

"Why? Is it because you have serious business to attend to? We won't disturb you at all." Henley said, then he continued before Jordan could reply, "Remember how I used to follow you to the Sheriff's office here? Even deputy Sheriff Shedrack allowed me to use the radio in the new car the other day. I could be your deputy back in your country."

"What do you mean by you could? I thought we were asking for the two of us, you dunce," his sister hissed at him.

Henley stuck his tongue out at her before facing Jordan C'mon, Jordan, let's go with you."

"Even if you do not want to take this dumb head with you, you can just take me, and we will leave him behind," Fukayna pitched her campaign.

"Fuka, you are bad!" Henley said she was aggrieved.

"Are you two disturbing my cousin Jordan with your plans? I mean, the plan where you intend to follow him to Baleria and never come back?"

"Chione! How did you know that?" Fukayna asked in surprise as she turned back to her sister.

"Because I heard you two hatching your incredible plans of how you could make it big in Baleria, of course."

"You were eavesdropping, weren't you?" Henley asked Chione, and before she could reply, he said to his twin in a stage whisper, "She was eavesdropping on us."

Fukayna rolled her eyes and folded her arms as she faced her sister with a signature glare that seemed to be the main thing she directed at anyone who displeased her these days.

Chione laughed and left where she stood, leaning against the door, as she wagged her finger at Fukayna. "Na na, baby sister, you don't want to try that on me. That could only work on Hen here," she said as she bent down and kissed her sister's cheek. Fukayna, who was trying hard not to laugh, turned up her nose with a comical miffed expression: "But for me, sister, it ain't going to work." Chione ruffled her hair, and she squealed.

"Chione! Now you will make Mother run her brush through it again," Fukayna said as she tried to affect her serious expression again.

Ah, ah, you look like a scarecrow!" Henley, who would not pass up any opportunity to rib his sister, laughed as he pointed at her. Fukayna's unruly hair had never learned to stay in place, no matter the brushing.

"Did you hear that? I swear I am going to..." His miffed sister made her remove her shoe again, and Henley ran out with a singsong of "Scarecrow, Scarecrow!"

Fukayna stopped her attempt at removing her shoe as she ran after him. "I am going to break your head!"

"Well, since you all are going to kill each other," Chione raised her voice so they could hear her, and their footsteps paused. "I guess that meant that I do not have to deliver the message of the Cook regarding a certain apple pie with your names on it. Great, more for me!" she said cheerily as she winked at Jordan in anticipation of their reaction, which came fast enough.

"No, way!" and he could be heard running.

"Don't you dare start without me!" Fukayna followed as their sounds faded.

Chione dusted her hand theatrically "That was so easy."

"That never fails." Jordan shook his head. "Those two should have been named apple and pie."

"They left you be, didn't they? I am sure they would realize in no time, and one of them, certainly Fukayna, would realize what I did. Especially when they realize that there was no pie at all."

Jordan laughed, "What? The Cook never said anything."

Chione blinked innocently as she batted her lashes. "I saved them from killing each other, didn't I?"

"They are coming for you, you know?"

"I would be long gone. No frogs in my bed would work this time around."

They both laughed as Jordan remembered a time last year when the twins had decided to get back at Chione for something she had collected from them. The genius twins had thought putting a frog in her bed would be the perfect revenge.

Well, they had not thought of the part where the frog would not stay calmly on the bed until their sister got in and got scared. They released the frog, and not only did he not stay put; he jumped and landed in Fukayna's hair and refused to hop off. Henley's attempt to get it off had only made the amphibian burrow deeper into his sister's hair.

Jordan looked at Chione, and they both laughed out loud at the memory. He had never heard Fukayna scream as much as she did that evening.

"Do you really have to go?" Chione blurted out, and immediately they stopped laughing. She had apparently come to his room to persuade him as well. His aunt had tried twice this week already. Before and after he resigned from the force.

"Not you too, Chi," Jordan replied.

Chione Alfrez had grown from the squalling baby he saw for the first time when her parents brought her home. There was nothing of the eight-year-old shy kid that Jordan had thought was too cool to be seen in her company when he first arrived. His cousin had grown into a beautiful young woman who had men turning their heads whenever they went out together.

Jordan once joked about getting a long stick to ward off her long line of admirers. It had been his cousin who had dumped her initial dream of being a model, which she was already showing promise for with her poise and confidence. She had been the first high school girl to be signed by a popular magazine, Rova. When she dumped what most had thought would be her lifelong career and made her opinion known to her family that she wanted to enroll in the police academy in Selon just like Jordan, they were all surprised.

Well, all except Jordan, who knew how interested his cousin had been in learning everything he would deem necessary to tell her about the force. Even he had thought she was just curious, but then she had shown her determination by getting the form herself, and her parents had reluctantly supported her. His aunt still talks about it to this day, saying that it was Jordan who influenced her with his achievements and cop talks.

Twenty-year-old Chione looked at Jordan's ruggedly handsome face and knew that she would terribly miss him "I know, I know Ma has been on your case for the past week now, and even though Da wouldn't say much, I could hear him talking to her about how this place and he meant the whole town wouldn't be the same without you."

Jordan didn't like the serious look on his cousin's face, and in a bid to lighten the mood, he grinned, "What is it with you and eavesdropping?"

Chione shrugged with a small smile "You can't blame me. It is not my fault that people talk like this in this place."

"Oh yeah, you mean the way the girl who professed undying love to me was also talking loud the other day?" he reminded her as his smile widened.

Chione rolled her eyes just as her sister had done earlier. "Peonia is a dunce; you would die of boredom or your brain would just lick out through your ears," she grinned unapologetically. She really should stop walking so quietly, and people should stop talking so loud.

"I know what you are doing, Jordan," she said as she sobered again.

That almost worked. "What am I doing, genius?"

"Trying to get my mind off the main reason I am here won't work. Ask my buddies in the academy."

"Any chance those buddies could be particularly close male buddies?" He teased as he wiggled his eyes at her.

"Pfft. Guys are idiots," she snorted.

"Hey! A representative of the species right here!" he said comically

"You are doing it again," she accused.

He knew what she was talking about: "I am..."

"Are you going back because you suspect foul play?"

Jordan looked sharply at her.