My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  But the right thing to her daddy was bound to be different, and that’s what had her bollixed.

  I come up with a plan to handle Preston Forsyth Jackson. This was deep in Larry’s semester at college—November, memory serves. I’d been paying attention and learning at the garage. Wasn’t anything with an engine and wheels I couldn’t fix, and I was affable with anyone could talk gasoline and metal. Made a friend of a trucker passed through every week and I had an idea I could make a career move with his help.

  I drove my Nova to the city and tracked down the company he worked for. Got a mechanic job and come home to tell Ruth.

  The still site is quiet except Fred grumbles, I know it’s you.

  I cover Fred with a blanket, scratch his ribs. I’m as ready for the bedroll as I ever been, but I got one more errand. The river rocks I heat for the bathtub is cold as the ground. Fire’s long dead. I start another. Time I come back, them stones’ll be suitable.

  I told Ruth I had a job. She looked at the floor.

  “What is it, now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, shit. I’ll tell you about my new job.”

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  It was all a scare, she said. A misunderstanding.

  Fred says, You want to keep the mumbling to a minimum? Trying to sleep.

  “I don’t feel so good, Fred.”

  Know just how you feel, Fred says. Just one thing. Did you learn what you went to learn? Is the plan going to work?

  I nod. “Think so.”

  Do you have the balls to do it?

  I think of Burly, and not being ready to shoot him. “I don’t have a single clue.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’m busted good and if I’d feel any better in the sleepsack that’s where I’d be. But a fella don’t rise to a lofty height such as mine without uncommon dedication. I stretch my bruised muscles and drink away the aches. Add a couple heavy logs to the fire.

  So they liked your likker? Fred says.

  “They surely did.”

  Didn’t you know that from the last time they beat your ass?

  “I get mad. And they didn’t beat my ass. I fell out a tree.”

  If good men didn’t get mad, it’d just be the bad ones, Fred says.

  “You said a mouthful. I’ll be back after bit.”

  Cory Smylie lives in a good part of town, up on Ketchum Street. I would’ve got in his face before going to the fight but them fights is only one night a week, and Cory’s always a shithead. He ain’t moved out his folks’ house so I’ll catch him somewhere else.

  They’s a black feller name of Harry runs a shot house on a hill in Swannanoa; serves booze all night. Used to buy my likker before Fletcher Rose sold his cheaper. I visited a couple times and Cory was there, on account the women, or maybe selling drugs. It’s a long shot, but worth a walk. If not, I’ll catch him when he comes home.

  Every muscle I got’s backsassing each step.

  The shot house sits atop a wooded hill. Houses date to this being the rich neck of the wood, and they’s practically mansions. But the yards ain’t been tended in decades, and scrub trees grow right up next the houses. Feels like walking through the woods with a town dropped in the middle, and nary a tree cut to make room.

  It’s deep after midnight. A car moves slow up the hill, cigar cherry inside. People in the back seat got big hair. Giggles.

  Men take women up the hill, get em sloshed and then go back down the hill. At two bucks a shot, these customers get a deal. You put my shine or someone like Fletcher Rose—that son of a bitch makes good shine—put his squeezins agin house likker at a regular bar, and ours is twice as potent for half the cost. Tastes like a gulp of bonfire; numbs pipes from smile to shithole.

  Women say it goes straight to the gizzy.

  Car parks outside a small cabin with an open door. The joint’s packed, though they ain’t four five cars outside. Smoke hangs at the ceiling and voices carry fifty feet. A pinball machine lets out a bunch of pings and zaps. Men bullshit on the step. They’s a pinkish glow from every eye in the joint.

  I wade in.

  The men and women is black and white, all sitting ass-deep in deceit. Floor’s wood. Walls got no paint. They’s no windows, and barely enough room to wedge an elbow. I look over the faces but Cory ain’t here. His truck ain’t outside and Cory Smylie ain’t got the ambition to walk five mile.

  I recognize a couple faces, no one I want to talk to. But Harry waves, and waves again, with vigor. The throng blocks me and Harry nods at the door. He slips out the back and meets me at the steps.

  “Some kin’a sales call?” he says.

  “Lookin’ somebody.”

  “Whodat?”

  “Cory Smylie. White kid. Ain’t worth a can of owl shit.”

  “I know’im. Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I see he ain’t here. Still getting your shit from Fletcher?”

  “Thassaight.”

  “Had a couple yourself t’night… ”

  “Uh-huh.” He slaps my arm and bends over, laughing, and his eyes glow on the white-lie setting. He pulls my arm with the strength of a mechanic. Takes me into darkness.

  “You bes’ watch your back.”

  He’s suddenly sober.

  “Yeah?”

  “Stipe’s boy Barrow been out twice, last two week. Fust was t’ see if I bought from you. I says no. He leave. Week later, he come back and says, ‘Okay, who does buy from ’im?’ You know sometimes you can tell a puhson got they ill will going on? Get the sense he’s looking t’ get uuugly?”

  “Know what you mean.”

  “Well, Barrow got his uuugly on. That mean Stipe do too.”

  “’Preciate you, Harry.”

  “All right. Let’s have us a drink. You drink Fletch’s shit?”

  He leads me into the shot house from the back. Grabs a jug from twenty under the bar. Fills a glass and like the good people he is ignores my handful of money. I gulp the fire.

  “Next you see Fletcher Rose, you shake his hand for me.”

  “One more,” Harry says.

  I oblige so I don’t insult the man. While he ain’t looking I drop my money on the floor behind the bar. Slap his shoulder and he winks. He does the drunk act good but he drinks like a stiller and I know he’s fulla shit. I slip out.

  If brains was leather I couldn’t saddle a junebug. They’s enough places Cory Smylie could be, I was foolish coming here. But they’s one place a can of shit always winds up, and that’s floating in the sewer he calls home. I reckon it’s two more mile. Plenty of time to think on who stole Fred.

  My flesh-and-blood brother and me’s been right assholes about one thing or the other most our lives. But the dust settled twenty some year ago, last I talked with Ruth. No reason for Larry to strike up a feud now.

  Cory Smylie? Been years since I wanted to shoot his window on account of the deer, and I don’t ken he knew what I thought on the deal. Fred was gone before I dropped Cory to get the fifty-spot back for Mae, so anything he done was out the blue, a crime of opportunity. Just looking for a dog and saw mine. Maybe thought Fred was bait.

  Stipe?

  He’s behind things all right. But it’s the volition I’m after. I want to know the first man to conceive of Fred in a fight circle. That’s the son of a bitch I want to say howdy to.

  Years ago I come from the woods to a blaring horn to find three men in the drive. I never had nothing to do with Stipe. Knew he was a businessman, but not much more, and didn’t learn these boys was working for him ‘til later.

  “We’re buyin’ you out,” one said. It was Huck Barrow, a fella with a neck as red as his eyes.

  “You ain’t buying shit.” I walked away.

  I heard the bang of a bitch pistol. Little fella on the side had a twenty-two caliber pointing at the sky, and wore a grin liable to split his head at the ears.

  “Better work on your aim.”

  He pointed at my head, and Barrow said, “Not ye
t, Willie.” His face glowed hot. I got the juice all through me and I figured, it’s been a good ride, but it’s over. One of them little bullets’ll make clam soup outta brain. He said, “We got the money to make it square. We buy your inventory. The rig, the customers. You’ll come work for us.”

  “Don’t think so.”

  I headed away thinking I’d feel a bullet dance into me quick, and I hoped old lugnut was sharp enough to hit the back of my head in the middle. But I reached the house with-out dying and by the time I got a rifle through the window, they was gone.

  Subsequent, I carried Smith walking to the edge of camp to take a piss.

  Shot house Harry’s story about Barrow asking questions don’t surprise me in context. You make a good thing and somebody’ll try and take it. But this going on the same time as Fred winding up in Stipe’s fights challenges the way I understand coincidence.

  Long-ass walk. Without the nourishment of those four shots of Fletcher’s finest, I’d be out of likker and aching like a somebody. As it is, I got two flask to hold me.

  Headlights splash like water from a bucket. First thought—I want to jump in the woods and haul ass. After Stipe’s last promise, I’m maybe more jittery than a regular moonshiner ought to be. The vehicle passes. Ahead fifty yards the brake lights flash. White reverse lights, and a Cadillac truck revs back.

  Stipe don’t pay his boys that good, but I’m wary and the hair on my arms stands. Not the juice… just old-fashioned distrust. I don’t generally associate with folks who ain’t got the sense to buy a regular Chevy, or at minimum a Ford. I ease to the driver’s side. Window zips down. Cigarette glows.

  “That you, Baer?”

  I exhale. “In the flesh come down from the mountain.”

  “Howya doon? Get in.” He pops the door open and the dome light goes on.

  I circle behind and climb in. Big Ted Lombo’s across the seat. One of those fellas makes it his business to know everybody.

  Larry does his books.

  “How’s the restaurant business, Big Ted?”

  “People got to eat. How’s your business?”

  “People drink whether they eat or not. What brings you out, middle the night?” I fish my flask and offer it. “This’s special stuff. Plum shine.”

  “Plum? Brandy?”

  “Nah, shine. Corn, barley, and wheat. Double-stilled, then a touch of plum brandy. Tastes better’n plum gasoline.”

  “Never had neither.”

  “Take my word on both.”

  He grabs the flask. Spins the cap with his thumb.

  “Keep both eyes on the road. You’ll want to close em.”

  He gulps and the truck drifts to the white line. “Fuck.”

  “Ain’t it good?”

  He wheezes. “Coupla friends got a card game. You know Mickey, right? And Franky? I tell em every week I be there, but I got the rest’rant, yeah? So they start late for me.”

  “Appreciate the lift.”

  “Why ain’t you got a car? I got a friend make you a deal. You know Guilio Salandra gots the Dodge dealership on Merrimon? I tell him ‘Make my friend a deal,’ you get anything you want at cost. I make the call tomorrow.”

  “Don’t make it yet, Big Ted. Got to save up, you know.”

  He nods. I crack the window. I never seen a vehicle with so many fucking lights and dials. The air’s a helluva lot cooler now that I’m moving fast through it.

  “So what’s this crazy shit you doon?”

  “Which crazy shit, Big Ted?”

  “Fight the other night. An’ that thing with Stipe’s dog.”

  “Saw the lights. Truck come out the woods where they’s nothing but scrub, and in my line o’ work, a fella wants to know his competition.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You go them fights much?”

  “Nah. Once, twice. Don’t like violence.”

  He looks sideways. A white-lie rose color comes from his eyes. He laughs.

  Got a question stuck in my mouth: You know who stole my white pit and fought him a couple weeks back? But Big Ted plays all sides. He’d sure as shit tell me, and before sunup he’d tell who he told on, like I had the info and slipped and told him what I was thinking. I’d be no farther ahead, but I’d be in debt.

  My flask’s in his hand resting on the shifter. Thinking I’ll make a grab and he upends it again. We’s a mile out of town, and past the turn for the quickest route to Cory Smylie.

  Big Ted beats his chest and hands over the flask. I weigh it.

  “You keep them eyes peeled to the road, Ted. Put as much likker in your gas tank as you put in your gullet, you’d roll into Hickory before you need a fill-up.”

  “That’s good stuff. You know, I could move some. I got friends always lookin hooch like that.”

  We enter Gleason. “Where you going?”

  I grab the handle. “Here’s fine.” He swings to the curb. I pop the door, and in the light his face is flat.

  “You don’t want to go back to them fights, Baer.”

  “No?”

  “None of my business, getting mixed in family… situations. But that crew out there’s heard bad things about you long enough, some’s bound to’ve stuck.”

  “Larry?”

  He shrugs.

  “Thanks, Big Ted. You give em hell at that poker table.”

  I close the door like a pussy and it don’t latch, and I got to do it again. Inside, Big Ted’s got a cell phone in his hand. He pulls off as the dome light fades.

  I tramp back the other way and mostly out of town cut right. The clock in the Cadillac truck said it was two thirty-eight. Normal bars’ve stopped serving, and I’m thinking I’d have had more luck waiting at Harry’s shot house.

  Cory Smylie’ll come back to Mom and Dad’s, though.

  It ain’t a mile. His F-150’s gone from the drive. A minivan sits next a Blazer. Opposite the Kenny place the houses is none too thick, with maple windrows between. Not dense enough to hide a man in the day, but shadows is deep at night. I’m warmed up after the walk to the house, but sitting next a tree in the middle of the night, the cold presses in. I work flask number two ‘til it’s gone.

  Lights.

  The vehicle passes the Smylie drive and I think of me when I was Cory’s age. Spent all them years wishing things was different with Ruth—wishing I didn’t have my talent, my brother, my nature.

  By and by I let my head droop.

  A door clunks. The F-150’s in the drive, nose to the road. I’m awake like I run a mile. From the man’s shape it’s Cory Smylie. Got that muscle-bound slump to his shoulders, and walks like a pimp. He makes it to the tailgate and parks an elbow on the side. He’s messed up.

  I come out the shadows. Pull Smith, come up on him from his back right, while he’s hunched. Glide over dewy grass and he’s gagging on puke. I’m right behind, but I wait ‘til he’s done yakking on his tire.

  He climbs back up the side of his truck and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. He coughs. I grab his right arm and lever it behind his back. Press Smith to his head.

  “Whoa—whoa,” he says. “Dude. What’s going on?”

  I smell his upchuck.

  “I got your attention?”

  “You got it.” He coughs.

  I cock the Smith. “You mark my words. You listening?”

  “Easy now… I’m listening.” He shakes, but he’s learning sobriety.

  “You touch Mae again. You see Mae again. You think of Mae again, I murder you. It’s that simple. Savvy?”

  “I get it.”

  I smash the butt to his head.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mae leaned toward her crummy sixteen-inch computer monitor, attached to a machine running Windows 98, connected to the Internet via a 56K modem, and reread the sentence she’d just penned.

  Thick.

  She glanced at Bree and Morgan sitting too close to the television. Or had they changed that whole thing about sitting too close to the television?


  She’d made mistakes. This MBA program could give her a fresh start in a different town where every bachelor didn’t already know she had three kids by a dope-peddling loser named Cory Smylie. Cory had been a freshman-year-of-community-college disaster that years later still hung around her life like a noose. He had dimples, was boyish and troubled, and only used his brooding smile to get laid. (But it always worked, damn him.) Sure, he’d reformed after being busted. But he still didn’t have a job and he managed to make his truck payments.

  How would it work when Morgan and Bree were twelve and ten? Would Cory make them push product at the playground?

  The question opened an interesting supply chain management topic, maybe a parenthetical diversion for her Age Diversity in the Workforce paper, due in eleven hours—which she’d wing after having sleep-read the assignments and fudged sentience through most of the discussion forums, like usual, because she was always exhausted and the kids demanded perpetual attention.

  Mae glanced at Bree and Morgan, on the floor, and at Joseph, asleep on the couch. He was like a dog, sort of, always asleep on the couch. Always. As if he had a problem.

  She went to him, touched his back, felt his shallow breaths. They were always shallow.

  Bree twisted from the television and smiled at her, silently. Adoringly. Mae slipped to her knees and pulled Bree in, then collapsed with her beside Morgan, and they snuggled on the floor while an offensively bland cartoon reviewed how to count from one to ten.

  Bree buried her nose at Mae’s side and giggled. Mae squeezed her. “Mommy has to get back to work,” she said. “I love you.”

  She’d matriculated to the Penn State online MBA, shocked at having been accepted to one of the few programs that fetched starry-eyed recruiters. But looking at her two-hundred-dollar second-hand computer, set off beautifully by the water stained wallpaper, she wondered if forty-seven thousand dollars of debt, right now, made sense. Would she graduate and be unable to find a job because she lived in shitty two-stoplight Gleason, North Carolina?

  She wanted a fresh start, away from Cory Smylie. Sure, she could pack the Tercel and head into the sunset, spending all the money she saved by clothing her children at Goodwill and feeding them with food stamps and getting their medical care from the government. She’d reach Charlotte on the first tank of gas, and then Research Triangle Park with the second. And then she’d be broke.