The Broken King

by Brian Panowich

  Buckley squeezed his lips together and twisted an imaginary key in front of them. Hal shifted the truck into gear and headed away from the glow of orange light in the rearview.

  When they arrived at the Southern Ridge by Johnson’s Gap, the two of them silently dug a hole, and dumped the remains of the man Buckley accused of stripping copper from one of the family’s old stills into it. Buckley had actually stolen the copper himself for some off-the-books cash and Halford was sure his father knew that. This ridiculous grave digging was punishment. Not just for Buckley ripping off their own copper or for killing a man innocent of the crime, but for Halford’s having known it, too, and not taken the responsibility of dealing with it. They tossed the tightly bound hamburger man into the shallow grave and scraped dander and leaves from the frost-covered forest floor to obscure him. The order was followed. It was half-assed, but it was followed. Hal would come back and take care of it proper after the storm passed. He pulled the collar of his coat in tight around his neck and looked at his frail wild-eyed younger brother who truly believed he’d done nothing wrong.

  “You know, something, Buckley, one of these days, it’s going to be you. You’re the one that’s going to get us all killed.”

  “Whatever.” Buckley didn’t even look up at his brother. He scratched at his arms and then at the base of his skull. “Let’s go.”

  Halford stared at his brother. He knew that what he just said to him wasn’t true. Buckley was a fuck-up but his bullshit was trivial. It could be smelled coming for miles. Their father stopped caring about Buckley the minute he sold his soul to the dope. He was weak. He might get himself killed, but not the family. He wasn’t the one they needed to worry about. Hal adjusted his hat and thought about everything he’d said in the truck a few minutes ago—about Clayton. That was something to worry about because it was all true. Even if he didn’t know it. Hal did. And their father did, too. That was the real reason Gareth wanted to know Clayton’s every move. Even on a night like this. It wasn’t about his health, it was more about how he handled himself. How did he measure up to his oldest brother? “Damn you, Clayton,” Halford mumbled to himself.

  Buckley blew warm breath into cupped hands. “C’mon, Hal. Unlock the truck, man. Let’s get in and get this over with.”

  Halford ignored him. He looked north over the hood of the truck toward the orange light he’d seen earlier. It seemed bigger now and it was definitely coming from the direction of their house. To hell with Deddy’s order, Halford was going back. Clayton would have to get through this night on his own and Halford was sure he would. He was also sure that he and his baby brother would have their time. He wished it weren’t so, but this was Bull Mountain, and wishes don’t count for shit up here. Halford unlocked the truck as the first drop of rain hit his cheek. He looked up at the pitch-black sky and wiped at his face. Here it comes, he thought. Here it comes.

  Read on for a sneak peak of Like Lions

  coming from St. Martin’s Minotaur in April 2019.

  Copyright 2019

  PROLOGUE

  Bull Mountain, Georgia

  1972

  Annette memorized every board in the floor. It had taken her months to get the pattern right. She knew which slats creaked and moaned when she stepped on them, so she was careful to keep her bare feet only on the few that were nailed down tight. Those particular strips of seasoned oak had become her partners in crime. She’d let them become her friends. She trusted them not to betray her. She couldn’t say the same about anyone or anything else. Still, she was cautious, because this was her first attempt to navigate the route in the dark. She counted to ten every time she eased her weight down on each of them, and stepped in a slow-motion zigzag pattern down the main hall of the house.

  She passed the room shared by her two oldest boys. Maybe after tonight, the constant bickering between the two of them about who deserved the top bunk would finally stop. That thought was a small attempt at making herself feel better about what she was about to do. She paused at the boys’ door and listened to the slightly broken snore brought on by her middle son’s deviated septum. She remembered the day he earned that lump of mangled cartilage. His father was none too pleased when the boy spilled a can of paint in the barn. He was four. She leaned on the solid wood of the doorjamb—another tested accomplice in her crime—and allowed her son’s nasal breathing to break her heart just enough to steal her own breath, but not enough for her to make any sounds of her own or shed any tears. Her tears had dried up a long time ago. She placed two fingers on her lips and then gently placed the goodbye kiss on the door.

  She looked down and sought out the next board in the pattern and then the next. She moved as slow and fluid as molasses. Several minutes later, she arrived at the last door on her left. She paused, quiet as a thief, feeling as though she deserved the title. She gently tucked the dollar-store gym shoes she’d been holding tight into her armpit. She’d fished them out of a dumpster down in Waymore a few weeks ago on one of her unchaperoned trips to the valley and hidden them under the bridal chest in her closet. They were men’s shoes and two sizes too big, but they would keep her feet safe from any thorns or bramble on the forest floor outside—safer than anything she’d been allowed to own. She let her hand rest on the tarnished brass of the bedroom’s doorknob. Still moving at a snail’s pace, she took nearly a full minute to turn the knob enough for the metal tooth of the lock to clear the latch. She had oiled the hinges early yesterday morning, so the door moved without so much as a whisper. That door had also become part of her crime; she took her time inching it open. The baby was sleeping. Annette crossed the moonlit room, still careful of each practiced footfall, and watched her youngest son’s chest rise and fall in his crib. The sight of him was enough for her to find out she did still have the ability to cry. As she stood above the crib, her tears began to swell behind the dark pockets of skin that circled her eyes. She was sure they would come. She was also sure they would be the end of her. Her tears. The salt of them would blur her vision and cause her to misstep, or a small, involuntary sniffle would ring out like a siren in the dead quiet of the house. Her inability to quell her emotion would be what got her caught. It would be what got her killed.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was thinking too much. She needed to move. Moonlight shone through some curtains she’d made from an old bed sheet, and the blue light turned the baby’s rusty-red hair into shiny copper wire. She leaned in and used the back of her hand to smooth the thin strands over his fragile skull, and then quickly scooped him up in her arms and pulled him into her chest. Her movement was awkward and fast and she almost dropped one of the shoes she’d been carrying. In that moment, her heart pounded so hard it rippled through her every muscle. She stood with her eyes closed and squeezed down on the shoe between her elbow and her hip. She stayed frozen like that until she felt herself breathe again. She repositioned the shoe under her arm and held the baby tight to her as he stirred awake.

  “Shhh,” she whispered with a voice barely audible. “I’ve got you.”

  Comforted by the warmth and safety of his mother, the baby fell back into dream without so much as a coo. This was the only thing left to chance. It was the only thing she couldn’t plan for. Her infant son’s reaction to her could have ended it all right there, but her son, her perfect baby boy, would not be her downfall tonight. Two of her sons had already been lost to her, stolen from her. She’d watched over the years, helpless, as this place had laid claim to them. She thought that maybe when the boys got a little age on them, they would show some spark of her in them, but there was nothing. Nothing was growing inside their hearts but the same pitch-black void that had already taken her husband, his father, and so many of his family before him.

  But not you. Annette cupped the infant’s fuzzy copper head. I can still save you. We can save each other.

  She eased back from the crib, and slipped out of the room as quietly as she’d entered, leaving the door open for moon
light to spill into the hall and light her way to the front door—to the woods—and on to a new life.

  Annette had been stealing money from her husband over the past several months—just a few dollars here and there. Rolls of rubber-banded cash, and loose stacks of tens and twenty-dollar bills lay all over the house at all times, so she was certain the small amounts she’d slipped up her sleeve, or tucked down her bra while cleaning up would never be noticed. She’d wrapped her escape fund in a red hair-tie, and buried it in a jelly jar near a cluster of sweet gums out by the edge of the clearing. She’d also stashed a little bread and salted deer meat wrapped in plastic wrap, and a wool blanket for the baby in case the weather shifted, but it was dry and hot tonight. She wouldn’t need it. That was good. It meant less to carry.

  The front door opened with the same oiled ease as the baby’s bedroom door. There were no locks for her to open. They were there, but they were never needed. No one dared come in this house. The house stayed sealed tight by fear, and that fear kept any intruders from entertaining the idea of coming in. It also kept Annette from thinking of leaving. She slowly pushed at the screen door. The normal loud click of the door’s latch had been silenced by the small strip of duct tape. She’d put it there before going to bed. It was a risky move and could’ve been discovered, but she had no choice. That latch clicking open at this time of night might as well have been Gabriel’s horn. She even heard the phantom echo of it in her head as she pressed on the wire mesh. She’d never be able to forget that sound, no matter how far away from it she got. That sound would always haunt her. It was the sound of a prison cell being shut each night. Locking her in with the very thing that kept everyone else out.

  Once she was on the porch, in the pitch-black shadow of the overhang, she eased the door back into the frame, and then took two wide sideways paces to the solid brick at the front of the steps. Just past the yard and the clearing in front of her was the life she’d been dreaming of for almost a decade. A life she had meticulously plotted into existence. It would be a life for her and her son somewhere far away from the blood and anger that was her world. She felt the cool air chill the sweat on her neck and she allowed herself another deep breath. When she caught the sweet smell of tobacco and corn whiskey mixed in with the night breeze, a sheet of ice instantly formed in the spaces between her skin and bone.

  No.

  She closed her eyes and listened. She heard nothing but crickets. There was nothing else, but she didn’t have to hear him to know he was there. She just knew.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and held the baby as tight as she could. Her body stayed still but her mind went frantic. She prayed for God to make it a trick of her imagination. She begged him.

  God said run.

  She couldn’t move, and in that instant of hesitation, there was no more God to speak of, just the smooth click of the hammer on her husband’s revolver.

  “Is it another man?” she heard him say from the darkness behind her.

  She still couldn’t move, not even to flinch. She couldn’t speak. The ice on her bones spread to her blood, turning it to a heavy slush. The pine trees on the other side of the clearing swayed in slow motion as the distance between them and her tripled. She couldn’t even close her eyes to blink, despite their being dry and cold.

  “I asked you a question, woman.”

  She knew he wouldn’t prompt her a third time. She found her voice and spoke honestly.

  “No.”

  “Is it because I hit you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  She wanted to lie but she knew it was pointless. She said nothing.

  “You know it took you almost ten minutes to get down the hallway. I was falling asleep out here.”

  “I—”

  “If you’re thinking of opening that mouth with the intention of lying to me, ‘Nette, then this shit is gonna get uglier than it already is. So I’m gonna ask you again. Where do you think you’re going?”

  Annette looked down at her son and accepted the reality of the moment. “Away.”

  “Away where?”

  “Just away. Away from you.”

  “Turn your ass around.” His voice was low and filled with the wet gravel. Annette’s body loosened and she did as she was told. Her husband sat in the pine rocker on the porch. He’d made it for her the first time she’d gotten pregnant. He was shrouded in the darkness of the overhang, completely invisible, until he was ready to be seen. When he stood, the first thing she saw was the flash of silver in his left hand. She’d already heard that Colt come to life a moment ago, and now she could see it hanging there by his hip like a steel glove—a natural extension of his hand. Annette knew that hand well—how hard and unforgiving it could be. She could make him out now. He was shirtless and barefoot. All he wore was a pair of work pants he’d grabbed from the bedroom floor.

  “While you were creepin’ the halls in there, I saw that tape you put on the screen door. Smart. You always were really fuckin’ smart. I loved that about you. Sharp as a tack.” He was already talking about her in the past tense. “I knew this shit was coming. Yesterday you had the whole house smellin’ like WD-40, so I knew you were ready to make your move. You oiled every door in the house—every hinge. I’m guessing you put that shit on everything so I wouldn’t be able to tell it was just to cover your way out. That was smart, too, but that’s what fucked you.”

  She couldn’t see his face but she knew he was smiling. He spoke so casually that it made her feel sick.

  “See, if you hadn’t greased up the back door along with all the rest of them, then you might’a heard me comin’ through it after you got out the bed.” He stepped forward and backed Annette completely off the porch. “That way you could’a run.”

  “Just wait,” she said, putting up an open palm to ward off the oncoming slap, but Gareth didn’t raise a hand to her. He just grinned at her and stepped off the porch. She could see all of him now in the moonlight. His pale skin lit up and she could see every cut line of muscle in his chest and every vein in his arms. The light was so bright she could read her name tattooed over his left nipple—over where his heart was, he told her once. She remembered that same night he beat her with a rolled-up magazine for not wanting to get one to match. That was the night she decided to leave him. That was almost ten years ago.

  “You lookin’ to be free of me, Annette?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “‘Cause you don’t love me no more? Is that it?”

  “No, Gareth. I don’t.” She was surprised that it was so easy to say, and could tell it stung him to hear it, the way his upper lip curled. Anger was always his response to pain. She regretted saying it, so she tried to soften it. “Just let us go, Gareth, please. I’ll disappear and never bother you again.” Gareth’s lip curl loosened and became that half-smile she’d learned to hate.

  “I am gonna let you go, Annette. That’s a promise.” He looked down at the silver Colt.

  “Don’t do this, Gareth. Find some mercy in your heart. I’m your wife. You loved me once, didn’t you? You can just walk away. You can let us walk away.”

  “My wife?” Gareth chewed on the word. “That means ‘til death do us part, ‘Nette. Right? That was a promise we made. Wasn’t it? You remember that?”

  Thin tears had begun to streak Annette’s face. “Yes.”

  Gareth lifted the gun and trained it on his wife.

  “Gareth, wait.”

  “Shut up.” He took another step and held the Colt just a few inches from her face.

  “Wait,” she said again.

  “I said shut up. I don’t want to hear one more word. Did you really think I would ever allow this to happen? Are you really that stupid? You thought you could just take my son, and I would let you do it?”

  “He’s our son,” she said. She almost sounded ashamed. She looked down at her bare feet in the wet grass as Gareth pushed the silver Colt even closer to her face.

  “Get on
your knees.”

  “Gareth, please.”

  “Now.” The wet gravel returned to his throat.

  This is how it ends, she thought. He’s going to kill me right here, right now. She would be rolled into a canvas tarp, tossed into a truck bed, and hauled off to some remote human landfill out by the Southern Ridge. “Do what you have to do, Gareth, just please don’t hurt our son.”

  “Hurt our son?” Gareth laughed and it was genuine. He made a show of looking around the property. “You’re the one who just took him out of the safest place on this mountain. You’re the one who was about to take him into those woods with nothing but a blanket and, oh, wait…”—Gareth dug into his pocket and tossed a wad of money on the ground —”… a blanket and $340 that you stole from me.” The cash wasn’t in the jelly jar anymore but it was still wrapped in the red hair-tie Annette put around it before she buried it. Gareth let that revelation sink in, as Annette’s eyes turned to dull glass. The reality of what that fold of money meant broke any spirit she had left.

  He knew. He’d always known. She’d never had a chance.

  Her legs went weak and she fell to her knees without being told again, but the fall jarred the baby. He woke and struggled against her, but she didn’t loosen her hold. She stared down at his tiny round face, a face that would someday look just like the man standing in front of her with a gun and felt a bittersweet rush of peace that at least she would not be alive to see the transformation. She took strength from that and looked up at her husband. She wanted to tell him how the flames of hell were waiting to roast his bones, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Not once she saw her middle son, Buckley, standing just a few feet behind his father. He was wearing one of his father’s T-shirts. It hung past his knees, and draped over one pale, boney shoulder. He was almost seven and showed no sign of fear out there in the dark—just curiosity. Annette wiped at the river of salt and tears pouring down her face and tried to sound like the boy’s mother, and not a broken mess.