My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  I move a few feet and Burly Worley stays beside me, half watching me, half the goings-on.

  A truck engine starts and reverse lights flash. The vehicle stops shy of the pit and with the engine running and exhaust tumbling along the ground, the driver gets out and drags a big wood dog pen from the front of the bed to the tailgate. Inside, between the slats, a pair of feral eyes glows. It’s the first time I ever detected a dog that was a liar.

  “That Panzer?” I say.

  Burly says, “That’s him.”

  “I’ll bet he’s a tricky bastard.”

  “How’d you know?”

  The dog’s master pulls a long handle like fits a hoe from the truck bed. It’s got rope looped at the end, comes all the way up the handle. Tool’s purpose is evident—lasso the dog’s head, cinch the rope tight, and maybe the handle will keep him far enough he can’t chew off your nuts. The man bends to the crate door, unfixes a latch and cracks it ajar. He works the handle back and forth, muttering. I watch Panzer through the slats and shadows. Dog shifts sideways like a ghost, white and gone, there and no more, and finally his owner says, “All right, easy, boy. Easy now.”

  Panzer’s every inch a fighter. His eyes glow like backlit blood and he keeps his head low. He shifts back and forth, like it’s him agin the whole world and he’ll keep us off guard by moving around. Muscle ripples under his coat, and his neck’s bigger’n his ass. He’s a brute.

  Stinky Joe shrinks against the opposite side of the ring. His master stands beside him, not even bothering to put him on a rope. I wonder if that’s how Fred looked—disoriented, scared at the smell of arena mud and the stench of booze coming out men’s pores.

  Panzer leaps from the bed of the truck and his master hops down with him. Men part as the dog approaches, eyes already fixed through the dog ring pallet slats on the quivering beast at the far side.

  “Five to one against Stinky Joe,” Stipe barks.

  I wonder who’d name a fighting dog that. Call him Artillery, or Bullets, or Bone Crusher. Or Achilles, like that devil I killed. Stinky faces Panzer and drops his head low. The men hush and Stinky Joe’s growl trips across the ground.

  He’s backed agin a wall and his enemy comes.

  I think of Fred, mauled and blind, and the Smith on my hip feels like the better way to go. But if I can be patient, I got something in mind that’ll make these fellas feel like God dropped em deep in the Old Testament.

  I scan faces one by one, curious that Cory Smylie ain’t here, nor flesh-and-blood Larry. Stipe tell em to lay low? These boys got something more planned for old Baer? Was stealing my dog the beginning of something a thousand times bigger, and do these boys think they’s the ones delivering justice, now that Baer brought his bullets?

  Good questions when surrounded by men packing pistols and knives, gulping a hundred-sixty proof shine. Burly watches the dogs, then me. He’s been tasked with keeping track of me but he’d rather keep his eyes on the action in the pit.

  Standing center pit, Stipe works mud off one boot with the toe of the other. “All right, five to one against Stinky. Last takers?”

  The men is quiet.

  “All right,” Stipe says. He exits the circle and hovers at the edge with one arm raised. Panzer’s owner has his forearm across the dog’s breast—he’s removed the pole and rope contraption. Since he’s been in the pit, Panzer’s been solely occupied spooking Stinky Joe. Stinky’s searching for escape between gaps in the pallets.

  Stipe drops his arm.

  Panzer leaps across the ten-foot circle.

  I turn. Burly has his gaze on the fight. I work away from the pen, unminded. Men jostle closer.

  I can’t see the fight but from the growls and yelps, low-tenored and breathy, I imagine what’s going on. Back among the trucks I look at the tailgates for any seem brighter on the left than right. They’s one with wide tires, but it’s got dark paint.

  A shout comes from the pit and I look back. The men boo and cuss and Stinky Joe flashes past me. He’s jumped the wall and the little I know about these boys says Stinky better put a serious stretch between him and them. And never find his way home.

  Burly figures out he lost sight of me and spins a full circle, looking. He shoots me an ugly look and starts working back to me.

  Stipe pays money to the winners and says, “Time for King George and Gravy. Dogs to the ring! King George is a seven-time winner, undefeated. Never turned—not once in all his fights. King George is fighting in place of Achilles. You all know what happened there. Gravy… this is his first fight in this circle, but he’s got two wins down outside of Charlotte. You can tell by his size he’s going to give King George a mess of trouble. Three to one, King George. Who’s in?”

  Is Gravy like Fred? Like Stinky Joe? Some bullshit name and bullshit history in some bullshit town?

  What bullshit name they give Fred?

  I gulp shine from my flask and yank my Smith. Point at the moon and pull the trigger. Smith barks and flame flashes.

  Men halt. Stipe stares. Burly’s five feet away and I point at him. He steps back a half-dozen feet.

  “You boys is a bunch of assholes.”

  Chuckles.

  “Shut the hell up,” Lucky Jim Graves says.

  I point Smith at him. “Hey, unlucky. Want to play a game?”

  Murmurs die. Eyes flash red like a pack of evil wolves in the dark. But they’s no deceit yet, and the color fades.

  “I don’t know which of you recall a dog from last month. White pit didn’t have the sense to hop the pen like Stinky Joe. But one you sons a bitches fought him.” I point the Smith at Jenkins, the pastor. Then Lou Buzzard. Then George from the lumberyard. Come to a stop on Stipe. “Who was it?”

  Stipe spits. “You sore ’bout a dog? A coward dog? You murder my champ and cost me real money, but I don’t get stupid.”

  I keep Smith trained on Stipe’s triple-chinned head. I didn’t think before pulling it and I don’t have an inkling of what to do. But if I put the gun away, these boys’ll beat my ass silly.

  George from the wood mill emerges from the group with his hands in the air and confusion on his face. “What’s this about, Baer?” His eyes is plain; wants to be the honest broker. He eases close. Reaches toward my left shoulder.

  I shift aside.

  “Don’t think I can make it plainer. Who tossed my dog in this ring?”

  “Put that piece away, ’fore someone takes you serious,” Stipe says.

  All this time and I ain’t seen a bit of red anywhere, nor felt a single zap. I step back and listen to the sounds behind me. Leaves in a breeze.

  I lift the barrel and squeeze off another above Stipe. He jumps, snarls.

  “You’re good as dead,” Stipe says.

  Eyes glow. All at once, every damn one of ’em, like I riled a nest of demons.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Footsteps rush from behind. Something like a sledgehammer drops on my gun arm and my hand’s empty. Arms around my shoulders; men wrestle me down. More boys rush up. Kicks to my legs and guts. A boot catches my shoulder blade. I reach on the ground and can’t find Smith, and a heel stomps my hand. Boot in the mouth. I taste blood.

  I got to get home.

  Home’s where I got a solution—but I relish the honesty in a groin kick, the alley tactics. They hate me and act with all the integrity they got, and their plain-dealing is nice for a change. I curl my knees tight to my chest but a couple kicks to by back have my muscles in a knot. These boys ain’t letting up.

  “Enough!”

  The kicking stops. Men part. Stipe stands close.

  “Get up, Baer.”

  Feels like every bone I got is busted, but it’s the muscles doing the complaining. Burly bends over and yanks me upright.

  “I brought you sons a bitches a jug.”

  “I don’t got to tell you not to come back,” Stipe says. “I don’t got to mention next time you come prowling around here or my house or my dogs or anydamn thing asso
ciated with me—”

  He censors himself. His eyes is hot and his brow tight. He looks across the watching men and something passes between him and Burly, who’s taken three steps back and leans agin a black Suburban next to a table with a lantern. Bumper sticker says, DEPENDS ON THE DEFINITION OF TREASON.

  I spot my Smith a couple feet away. Grab it and pull the hammer back with my thumb. They eyes is normal; just they faces is flushed. I point Smith toward ’em, wave it back and forth. But before I grabbed it they was already a dozen men with guns in they hands.

  Burly Worley’s gone.

  “You already proved you’re an idiot, Baer.” Stipe says. “Put that away and don’t ever come back.”

  “I come here to give you boys a chance. This shit ends tonight. No more fights around these parts. Or I’ll murder every fucking one of you.”

  I point at the sky. Ease the hammer forward. The air’s thick and humid and the breeze is cold. Moths around the lanterns have scampered off. I catch one man’s eyes after another. Work to my feet and back away from the group. Snatch a quick look behind.

  Every muscle I got screams but I don’t have any new teeth marks in me and I got a clear conscience. I give these boys the chance to get right. I called out they evil, and delivered my message.

  I’m a hundred yards out and it’s darker now than when I set out a couple hours ago. One of them kicks to my noggin’s messed with my vision. Each step reminds me next time I won’t give a bunch of assholes the benefit of the doubt.

  I keep a hand up deflecting branches from my eyes and feel along slow with my feet. The forest floor’s irregular. I slip and catch myself on all fours. Pause a second with the silence. Look up to a moon perched on a beech limb.

  A plodding noise comes along from behind. Crunches through leaves and twigs like it don’t give a royal damn who hears. Black bear, like me, headed away from the fight circle. Had his fill of watching beasts and smelling blood. He ain’t but a dozen yards off, and looks like a big black chunk of motion. He’s like a tank bowling over scrub.

  A stick snaps thirty, forty feet off, back the way I come.

  I stay crouched and search the dark forms. Tree trunks is solid black voids and the space between is gray with silver frost on the moon side. They’s a shape like another bear coming, few steps then pauses, few steps more.

  But this one’s upright.

  He’s homed on the bear, thinking it’s me. It’s Burly Worley. Has to be. He’s got a pistol in his hand, but ain’t got it aimed.

  I reach back slow without rustling a single brittle leaf and pull Smith. I had time I’d dig a hole, fill it with spikes, slather em in people shit. Stretch a line across right in front, ankle high. Fix a knife to a sapling and bend it back like a two-hundred-pound bow, set with a figure-four catch. They’s many ways to fuck with a man in a dark wood. But as he’s coming now I got twenty second, and then it’s plain old Smith.

  Ten feet.

  He stops, lifts his pistol arm and points. He sniffs. Ahead, the bear stumbles into a log and thrashes it, from the sound. I hear his sniffing nose pressed in the rotted wood. Maybe he’s looking grubs for a midnight snack.

  I can almost feel Burly’s confusion.

  Burly’s so close I can smell him. He prob’ly lives in a house but don’t bathe regular—a lot of folk don’t.

  Now that I look steady I see the bear again. He’s a big son of a gun—you got the dog bears and the hog bears, some with high bellies and some with low bellies. This fella’s a hog bear. Even still, black bear generally don’t want nothing to do with people.

  You want trouble with one, you got to make it.

  Burly sidesteps like to circle the brute up ahead, and shifts two feet toward me. He’s got his face pointed forward and ain’t even looked my way. I make a noise he’ll spook and shoot me, I know it. He’s looking forward, but they’s a red glow about his eyes.

  I lighten the load on one foot and a leaf crinkles.

  Burly faces me—swings his gun arm level and pointed at my head. He had me all along. “Hello, Baer.”

  “Hey, Burly. Doing all right tonight?”

  “Better’n you.” He steps closer. Places his pistol barrel to my temple.

  I can feel the cold metal through my hair. “I don’t think you’ll miss. You want to give me just a fucking inch? A half-inch?”

  He eases off. “Let’s go. Nice and easy. Don’t trip, don’t jump. I might get scared and shoot you.”

  “I guess Stipe sent you out to put me down, huh? That it?”

  “Nah, just to have a conversation. Let’s both back away from that black bear, and maybe we’ll talk a bit.”

  “Let me ask one thing.”

  “Move, dammit. Nice and easy.”

  “Do you feel the red coming out your eyes? Tingle like you drug your feet over carpet and you know you’re going to give somebody a shock?”

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “No? Because it gives you away.”

  I got my gun hand halfways aimed at the bear; it don’t take but a subtle move to pull the nose higher. I point at his ass, best I can, and squeeze the trigger. The muzzle flashes orange and I spin away from Burly’s barrel, knock his hand with my elbow. I jump to the closest tree and start scrambling. The bear grunts and swings our way. He’s coming quick and Burly’s standing still. I claw up a six-inch smooth-bark tree, maybe elm. It’s slippy and each time I gain a foot I slide back half. About ready to give out, I reach the lowest limb and get a hold.

  And drop Smith.

  That bear is right close. Burly faces him. Steps backward. He talks low-voiced and guttural like he’s had run-ins with bears before. “You got a funny smell, baby,” he says. It don’t matter his words; bears don’t speak English like dogs. It’s all in the tone. Burly’s playing it right.

  I spot his gun on the ground. I must’ve knocked it from his hand.

  Black bear stands on his hind legs, waving his head back and forth, only ten feet off. With the breeze agin him he can’t smell worth a shit, and bears is halfways blind. So he steps closer.

  Burly knows bears like any country boy knows bears. He can’t turn his back, and he don’t want to kneel for his gun. Holding a black bear at bay is a matter of not losing your cool.

  “You stay back, you ignorant, overgrown hog,” Burly says, low as he can. “Why don’t you shoot him for me, Baer? Shoot him in the head this time.”

  “You best watch I don’t call him in.”

  If that black bear wanted to charge, he’d have done it after I shot him.

  I’m thinking I missed, and only startled him. He’s mighty inquisitive—most would have run off after a surprise like that. He’ll go on his way once he’s satisfied Burly ain’t a threat or food. And then it’ll be Burly and me again. My gun sits not three feet from his.

  That bear takes off, Burly’s got two guns, I’m up a tree, and bullets climb trees faster’n bears.

  Black bear lowers to all fours, begins a lumbering turn sideways.

  I let go my tree limb, silent. Right arm high, coming down hard with my elbow. Burly swings his noggin at me and I catch his temple with my elbow. He’s surprised dumb. I land on my feet. He staggers and grunts. The bear scoots away a few yards into the black night. I swing with my fist and clock Burly in the temple.

  He drops to the ground and sighs from his throat long and slow. The noise has a groan of voice in it, like an animal been shot, or like his whole body froze up.

  One of them sounds that make you think you gone too far.

  I kick his boot.

  Burly Worley ain’t moved nor made a sound in five minute. Got one leg folded under the other, and his gun arm under his back. I stand shaking with I don’t know what, adrenaline maybe, as I think through the logic of retribution. If a man does you ill, setting things right means giving back the same, and a little more for punishment. Burly’s part of the group that left Fred for dead, and deserves to be dead. But him deserving it and me puttin
g him in the ground? My mind ain’t made the leap yet.

  I point Smith at his head and get on my knees. Lean on one arm and stick the muzzle against his temple. He so much as twitch at me, his head’ll meet that beech in pieces.

  I park my ear above his nose and listen.

  “Come on, Burly.”

  I smell whiskey. He looses a tiny sigh.

  I ease back but I keep Smith ready to bark an order or two. Burly mumbles and I’m just about sure half of his problem is all the whiskey he drunk, not the popknot I put on his skull.

  I don’t think I been next to somebody sleeping since Ruth and me fell asleep in the back seat.

  Burly Worley’ll be fine, so long as he wakes before that bear gets hungry. But I never heard of a bear that eats asshole, so he’ll be all right.

  I wait ten more minute and Burly starts to snore. I’ll be damned if I’m going to babysit any more of this. I set off slow so my feet don’t rouse him.

  I follow the crick bank, careful not to slip. The water’s eaten away dirt and sometimes walking too close you get a squishy feel. But that’s where the deer path goes, and I follow it because the brush gets thick elsewhere.

  Ruth and me was a thing all right. While Larry was off at school we fooled around every night she could get away, but it got tougher as the weeks went on. Her daddy was hell bent on Ruth being a trophy wife, and nobody but some law-school boy set on ambulance chasing or politics was good enough. He must’ve had in the back of his head some greaser was boffing his daughter. She had to get clever to see me.

  Well one day she came with a faceful of tears. Crazy like the world come to an end.

  “What is it? Let’s scrog. You’ll feel better.”

  She turned her shoulder. “I’m pregnant.”

  I trip on a tree root and my knee catches a rock right where I landed on my binoculars a couple day back, but I’m hip-deep in memories. They wasn’t a feeling in the world like Ruth telling me she was knocked up. That baby meant we’d end up together. Doing the right thing lined up pretty well with my life’s ambition. I’d marry her and bust my ass to keep her happy.