My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  But finding a new place to rent? Covering old debts that were due and perpetually threatening her carefully protected credit score, ruining the possibility of a business loan when she finished school? Was she going about everything wrong? Should she start a business now, without school? The only place was hiring was Cory’s Pharmaceuticals.

  She sat at the computer. Hold on, she thought, until everything comes together. Lots of moving parts.

  Outside, a door slammed. Cory?

  “God,” she said. She looked at the clock. “Turn down the television. Turn it off!”

  “What?” Morgan said.

  “Do as I say! Turn it off now! Hush! Pretend we’re not here. Let’s play a game!”

  At the door she peered through the fisheye lens.

  “Who is it?” Morgan said.

  “Uh, wow. It’s your grandmother.”

  Mae studied her mother. Ruth had lived in Mars Hill since the divorce and though only thirty miles distant, Mae hadn’t seen her in several years. The last time they were together was an awkward, manless Christmas. Mae had taken the girls to Mars Hill for a supper of ham (roasted with a single clove pressed into each cube) and baked sweet potatoes. Sparse conversation flirted at the edge of meaningful, but never penetrated it.

  “How’s Dad? Do you talk to him? Do you like the ham? I wish I could afford better.”

  Mae held the front door open, mindful of blocking Bree from bolting outside. In a fractured moment she took in her mother’s face: a countenance that had aged decades in mere years; hair that had turned gray; crow’s feet that had morphed into dinosaur tracks.

  “Hello,” Ruth said. Her brow became pensive and her lips formed a tightly drawn smile.

  “Come in, Mom… come in!” Mae backed away from the door, glanced at her computer table, the barely begun mid-term paper. All that white. So few words. So much research.

  “I didn’t call,” Ruth said. She stared across the living room, disconcertingly beyond Mae.

  “You should have called. I’d have made something.” Mae shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I’ll make coffee.”

  Ruth followed her into the kitchen. Mae glanced at the grime on the shield above the stove. Did her mother see it? Or was she looking at the jelly bonded to the kitchen table, underneath a scattering of salt.

  “My, look at that.”

  Mae turned with a can of Folgers in hand.

  Ruth studied the open cupboard. “You come into good fortune?” Ruth opened the refrigerator, the freezer. A cabinet. She closed one cupboard and opened the next. “Look at this. Canned chicken and turkey? Soup? There must be thirty cans of soup. Did WIC buy all this food? Or did Cory? You still with Cory?”

  Mae filled a coffee pot with tap water. “No.”

  “Why? He turned out all right, didn’t he?”

  “Mom, why’d you come? What’s wrong?”

  Ruth dragged a chair from the table. Her eyes were focused on something a hundred feet beyond the wallpaper. “This table is like the one I had growing up, fifteen years after aluminum was the rage. It’s Larry and me. We’re having problems.”

  “You’ve been divorced eight years.”

  “I need to talk to you about your father.”

  The first scent of coffee sifted through the air. Mae leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. “You know he doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “There are things you don’t know. That I want to tell you, now.”

  “Was it the milkman?”

  “Don’t joke. This is hard enough.”

  “Have a cookie.”

  *

  Joe Stipe drove a GM double-axle with a step side. He had a red, white, and blue bug deflector and a black POW-MIA bumper sticker. For his sixty-first birthday his wife had hired a local artist to airbrush an eagle on the tailgate. In her eyes, Stipe was a small businessman carrying the weight of the world on his tax-bearing shoulders. It was only right that the eagle proclaim his patriotic superiority to anyone following him. Hell, he probably paid their rightful share of taxes, along with half their neighbors.

  Stipe felt no need to correct his wife for considering him a hero, but he did find the eagle a little ostentatious.

  “Don’t forget to pick up an apple pie at the grocery,” she’d said this morning.

  Stipe drove slowly, a little detached, unharried by the Honda Civic riding his bumper. The car swerved across the center line only to be stymied by an oncoming pickup. It veered to the other lane again but backed off in the face of a blind curve on a hill. Stipe checked his side mirror and his rearview. The Civic was completely hidden behind the GM’s tailgate.

  Stipe thought of the pistol tucked under the seat. He tramped the brake and waited for the thud. Tires squealed. The Civic squirted into the passing lane and with a zip-rattle sound raced ahead. The car sat too low to grant a view of the driver, but Stipe noted the plate. 2FST4U.

  “Little shithead.”

  The car zoomed around a bend, and when the tinny exhaust faded Stipe was alone with his thoughts, elbow out the window.

  He was going to see Chief Smylie and had a feeling he might have to lean on him. Smylie was fond of Baer Creighton’s whiskey.

  Of the half-dozen men in the county who stilled moonshine, Creighton was the acknowledged maestro. Stipe had been to Creighton’s still six years before, after his man Huck Barrow had failed to convince Creighton to join Stipe’s cartel. Stipe went to tell Creighton he would either join or be beaten out of the business.

  Creighton wasn’t there—only his dog. Stipe had sized up Creighton’s operation in a single glance. It was a boiler and a copper tube.

  Stipe got the feeling Creighton was like a pool hustler using a warped house cue against a yuppie with a five-hundred-dollar stick… and kicking his ass all over the table.

  Stipe had pried information from tightlipped stillers as they folded their operations into his. Creighton’s expertise resulted from his indenture to an old master. Gunter Stroh had worked for the German government in World War I as a chemist refining the manufacture of wood alcohol. He had immigrated to the United States in the sixties and had taken Creighton as an apprentice in the early seventies, while Stipe was off fighting a war. Stroh had taught Creighton well, and when the old master died, Creighton took his place.

  Creighton was known to dump imperfect shine into the dirt rather than sell it and despoil his name.

  Topping Creighton’s quality was out of the question. The only option was to help him arrive at a new understanding of his best interest. Through his proxy, Stipe had made Creighton the same offer as he had all the other local stillers. They’d enjoy ostensible autonomy, distribute through him, and receive monopolistic price controls. Stipe would skim a portion of the enhanced revenue and everyone would be happy.

  When Stipe went to visit Creighton he had anticipated offering two stark alternatives: join, or be priced out of business. Though he failed to meet Creighton he decided to fire a warning shot. He lowered the cartel’s prices, and quickly learned that most of Creighton’s buyers were as happy with what he charged as they were with what he produced. Creighton had the better monopoly: brand loyalty.

  Years passed and Creighton enjoyed prosperity at Stipe’s expense. Whenever Stipe upped the cartel’s prices, the overflow went to Creighton, which forced Stipe to continually lowball. He was not gaining the riches his scheme rightfully promised. This last round of manipulation was designed to bend Creighton until bones snapped, and if he didn’t relent, break him in two.

  From Creighton’s behavior with the dogs, Stipe suspected Creighton would end up dead. He all but sealed that fate when he killed Achilles.

  Men grew attached to dogs. Stipe had been fond of Achilles; the way he moved across a fight ring was something to behold. Whirling, flipping—he was an acrobat. The dog was wily from experience. Achilles was a brute, and sure to be the founding stone of a new line of champions. Stipe loved him. But what the hell was lovable ab
out Creighton’s wretched coward? Dog turned tail. No gameness at all. In fact, the fight was so lame the men lost interest. It would have been an embarrassment to any organizer. Stipe had ended the match early so the men wouldn’t leave. There was no way to compare a dog as miserable as Creighton’s to a warrior like Achilles.

  Stipe had passed over Achilles when the bitch Medusa had gone into heat, waiting to afford Achilles more time to pile up exploits. The more he accumulated, the greater the value of his eventual progeny. Besides, Achilles was in no real danger. Stipe organized the fights. There were only a handful of animals of Achilles’s ability, and Stipe could easily ensure they never met.

  But Stipe had never considered the possibility that Creighton would sneak into the compound some night and put a bullet in Achilles’s head. There would be costs associated with muscling Creighton, but his retribution had decimated Stipe’s plans, and it was an affront.

  In having Creighton’s dog stolen, fought, and abandoned almost dead, Stipe had a singular purpose: convince Creighton that the only alternative to absolute destruction was to join the cartel. To convince a man like Creighton, Stipe knew he had to be willing to go all the way.

  He just didn’t anticipate Creighton would make him equally pleased with either outcome.

  In visiting Chief Smylie, Stipe would set the conclusion in motion.

  Creighton’s habits were his weakness.

  Stipe pulled into an empty space beside Chief Smylie’s Suburban.

  If Smylie had a problem accommodating Stipe’s request, well, he’d throw in a choice pick from Medusa’s next litter. Stipe shook his head. He wouldn’t be losing much. And if that didn’t work, maybe it was time for Smylie to learn of his son’s connections in Baltimore and Washington, and the risks he was taking.

  So often, good business was just a matter of reminding men what they had to lose.

  *

  Mae wondered if she could complete her midterm paper in her mind so when Ruth left she could type it out and be done.

  Ruth huddled over the table’s edge, picking at a nub of dried jelly. “Imagine you were the prettiest girl in school. Everyone wanted to talk to you and every boy wanted to hold your hand. Teachers expected you to be as smart as you were beautiful. Imagine not having the IQ to go with your looks.”

  Mae stroked her index fingernail, picked a skin tag below the cuticle. “I thought you came to talk about Dad.”

  “Your grandfather wanted me to marry rich. You know the thing about boys destined to become rich? They carried slide rules and never had the nerve to ask a girl out.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “So I was at the dance one night and George asked me to the floor. He took my hand and it was like… you know how you get when your stomach just ripples, and you… the song changed to a slow one right as we were walking out on the floor.”

  Mae nodded.

  “George put his hands on my waist. Back then they said you had to have enough space for a cat between you. I pulled him to me and he had a stiffy. I was in love.”

  “With George?”

  “Uh-huh. But only until Bobby… but it was Mickey that got me in trouble. Every class has a Mickey.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “Oh, no. Not at sixteen. Miss Lockwood and Mister Phelps—chaperones—saw me walk off the dance floor with Mickey an hour before the dance ended. We made out in the band room—be patient, Mae; I’m trying to give you the whole picture. So like I said, I was dumb. I never understood the things some boys wanted to talk about. Larry was a halfway point—barely acceptable to my father, and not as terrible as the ones he really wanted me to end up with.”

  “Did you know Baer then?”

  “Baer… ”

  “There’s a nerve.”

  Ruth glanced at the coffee pot. “That’s been done five minutes.”

  Mae filled two mugs and placed one before Ruth.

  “Sugar, dear.”

  “What about Baer? Why the nerve?” Mae opened two cupboards.

  “Baer… we were mixed up at the same time as Larry and me.”

  “How does that happen?”

  “It’s what I was saying. After catching me in the band room, Dad wrote a list of boys I was allowed to date.”

  “How did he know which boys to choose?”

  “Anybody from the country club who had a son, clean down to seventh grade. He told their fathers I was available. Every one ugly as a toad’s ass. Imagine, forced to pick and choose from the slide-rule boys.”

  “So how far did it go with Baer?”

  Ruth held her mug in both hands as if warming them. “Baer comes later in the story. My father was hell bent on matching me with the right young Republican. There was R-R-R-Ro-Rodger. Even knowing he was supposed to ask me out, and I was supposed to say yes, he couldn’t get the words from his mouth in one piece. I said, ‘N-n-n-no.’ John took me parking and I was riding the cotton pony. I got him all hot and bothered and told him to take me home or I’d scream rape.”

  “Jeez, Mom.”

  “Was I supposed to let him have his way?”

  “Never mind.”

  “So Larry asked me out. He was a jock with a brain. He played every sport but was best at football. He was the quarterback. He took the academic classes so he could go to college. And when I had to sell my father on him, that’s what I told him.”

  Mae took her mug to the sink and dumped the remainder. She leaned against the counter, glanced into the other room at her computer monitor.

  “What’s that look?” Ruth said. “I didn’t come here to have you judge me. You need to know all this, and I’m being honest. Even when it hurts. So don’t you dare judge me.” Ruth wiped salt from the table into her hand.

  “The sink,” Mae said. “What are you doing here, Mom?”

  “Can I go on?” Ruth stood. “I could tell Larry was attached to me right away. It wasn’t our fourth date at the lookout until he blurted he intended to marry me. I wanted to go to college, where Dad couldn’t dictate the clothes I wore, the people I saw, the dances I went to. Of course, Dad knew all that and made me volunteer for the district attorney at nights, so I’d be around the young attorneys. He said it would teach me to recognize industry in a man. That’s what a girl wants.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Ruth wrinkled her brow. “I went with Larry all my senior year.”

  “Exclusively?”

  “Sure. Mostly.”

  “Who’d you cheat on Dad with?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. They didn’t mean anything.”

  “Neither did Dad. Is that it?”

  “Of course he did. Don’t you understand? I needed to be wild. Larry went to college at Chapel Hill. We were engaged, but Dad was after me to date the country club boys, and he only put up with Larry because he was the quarterback and wore glasses.”

  “Was Baer the one you… one of the ones?”

  “Baer. I didn’t even know him until Larry went away to school. I mean, I’d seen him, but he was booted out of school for being a tough guy. He was built like a wire nail. All taut when he walked, like he had pistols on his hips and a horse under his ass.” Ruth grinned. “Wait.” She jumped from her chair and trotted from the kitchen, out the front door.

  Mae looked at the empty chair. All these years with nothing but a phone call here and there, and then this information dump right when she had no time.

  Outside, a car door slammed. Mae watched the entrance to the living room. Ruth entered with one hand on her chest and the other holding a pocketbook.

  “Look at this.” Ruth opened the flap, dug out a plastic photo book, and flipped to a black-and-white of a smirking kid with defiant eyes and slicked hair.

  Mae gazed into Baer’s eyes in that single, camera-frozen moment. She understood his mind from the wrinkle on his brow. School was rotten. The next kid in line, flipping him off, was a shithead. The teacher in the classroom to which he’d return was an idiot.

  “Do you
have a picture of Dad?”

  “That photo’s from the year they expelled Baer. It was the only picture he had of himself when I asked, maybe four years later.”

  Mae lifted her gaze from Baer. “Are you saying you cheated on Dad with Baer? Is that what all this truth is about? I’m supposed to understand because he was cute?”

  “I’m trying to give you a whole lot more than ‘he was cute.’ When Larry went to college, I was kind of promised to him—”

  “Did Dad think you were waiting for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you wear an engagement ring?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I’ll bet Dad thought it was.”

  “You use words and you have no idea what they mean. Listen to me. Please?”

  Mae looked at the photo again. The smirk. “If I’d have gone to school with Baer, I’d have been kicking asses right beside him.”

  “I always saw that. About you.”

  Mae remembered a night a decade before, when her mother and father’s marriage ended. Mae had crept out of her room to eavesdrop on the accusations and denials. Larry knew Ruth’s heart had always been elsewhere. Ruth denied everything. Larry had waited until Mae was almost independent and he no longer had to abide his wife.

  Mae bit her tongue.

  “I can see it on your face. If I was so crafty with men back then, how did I ever get on with Baer? That’s the point. I wasn’t dishonest. I was a flirt. I was outrageous. I saw a boy I wanted and I went after him. I let it all hang out. I was the one that was honest through all of this—with Larry, with Baer, with every guy I ever went with. I belonged to nobody, and they should have known. I was true.”

  “So you did whatever you wanted, and if they didn’t figure out they couldn’t trust you, it was their fault.”