My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  I meet Mercer’s eyes. He’s a young feller, stocky like a log of firewood, and his small bald head sits atop like a bead of bird shit. I let my arms drift to my sides and check inside the tarp. “Mister Mercer, I hope to hell you didn’t shoot my dog.”

  Fred’s head lifts above the diesel turbine crate. His ears is up.

  One of Mercer’s boys points his rifle at Fred.

  “Mister, that dog’s half dead as it is. Blind as a bat and can’t walk for shit. If you got to be afraid of somebody, point the damn rifle at me.”

  He obliges.

  I tromp to Fred and whisper as I come. His tail beats the crate.

  “You’re under arrest, Mister Creighton. You know how this goes. You’re coming with us.”

  I kneel at Fred. “You all right, stud? These knotheads shoot you?”

  I run my hands over his coat. Look at the crate for BB holes. Fred makes a couple throat sounds and I’m so damn happy I kiss him.

  I face the men. “Guess you prob’ly don’t like me wearing this.”

  With my index finger and thumb, I dangle the Smith from my hip and step it to the closest fella. He takes it without changing his law enforcement scowl.

  “Mercer—this the standard deal, right?”

  “You work with us? We book you today. Judge fines you tomorrow, you rebuild this copper contraption tomorrow night.”

  “Fair enough. Let me feed Fred and get him covered. Don’t want him to freeze.”

  Mercer nods.

  Under the tarp I figure I may as well plan on nothing he said coming true. I fill Fred’s dish with three eggs, and use my saucepan for another bowl, and fill it with dry dog food.

  “One more thing,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “Lemme run over the house.”

  “Looks like you got everything you own here.”

  “Look here, Mister Mercer. I didn’t run. Give you my gun. Just asking a little help.”

  “Roy—you done with the still?”

  “Yup.”

  “C’mon, Mister Creighton. Lessgo.”

  I lead through the wood to the back of my house. “I got to go inside.”

  Mercer follows, alone. I stand before the rack. All total, they’s a hundred gallon or more, and some is special blends, corn, wheat, barley, but flavored with fruit. Makes fruit whiskey, if you can noodle that. Mercer’s eyes shift along the rows and he looks thirsty as hell.

  “What the shit?” I say.

  “We had to hit you,” Mercer says.

  “Hadta?”

  “When Chief Smylie hisself phones in the tip, it trumps.”

  “Chief Smylie, huh?” I grab a jug and wipe the dust from the shoulder.

  “What you doing?” he says. “You can’t have likker in jail.”

  I shake my head. “Later on, why don’t you come back and help yourself to a couple jugs? Special stuff’s on the end. See this ‘G’—that’s grape. You got plum here, strawberry, apple, pear.”

  “I’da thought ‘P’ woulda been for peaches.”

  “Don’t do peaches.”

  “Peach’d be nice.”

  “Fuck peaches. We good?”

  “We good.”

  Jail cell’s down a hall, not like the Western movies where you sit and jaw at your jailer.

  Chuck Preston (I knew his daddy but shit if I knew Chuck got this old this fast) leads me down the hall in cuffs, for show, though they’s nobody around and if I could brain him I’d walk clean across the county ’fore anyone figured they was a jailbreak. But that ain’t how we do things. The code is simple. They come on a stiller and he sees ’em, he got the right to run. They make mincemeat of his operation and don’t come back for a while. But they bust him and he don’t fight. They’s no sense shooting the lawman when all he’ll do is put you in jail a night or two. The biggest pain in the ass, either way, is they smash the still beyond the restorative skills of even the handiest hillbilly.

  Well, I don’t got to explain turning myself in. I let em keep shooting, they was liable to poke a hole in Fred.

  Mercer took the jug I carried out the house. I chose plum—the only jug in the whole basement with the liquor stamp on it. They’s a lot of stillers in these parts and the judge is liable to’ve run across all sorts of bribes, but plum is an unusual fruit and not many stillers have the patience to tinge a gallon with it. In all I’d say apples is the most common. You get to strawberries or plums and you’re dealing with high-dollar shit.

  Any judge’d know that.

  Also picked plum because it has a little something else in it—and how that something else come to be is a story any Carolina judge’d appreciate.

  Chuck Preston slams the door behind me and I think I’d prefer one of the old-style jails with bars where you can see the hall outside. With bars, they’s a border and you can see freedom on the other side and keep it fresh in mind. But nowadays they don’t want men remembering liberty; the jail’s made out of blocks, and instead of bars and a hallway where free men walk, they’s a cement wall and a thick metal door painted light brown like a rich woman’s pants. Can’t see through it, and they’s no independence to think about.

  I sit on the bunk sixty, seventy years, and they finally shut the light off. I think of Fred, and wonder if some animal smells him and knows he can’t hardly defend himself. We got coyotes now, and a pack’d give a blind dog trouble, pit bull or not.

  I think on Mae and her crazyass words. If she believed what she said, that Ruth was in love with me, she don’t know her mother. But she didn’t believe them words. She was pink before she said em.

  What would I do if it was true?

  Sitting in a jail cell, I ain’t doing a helluva lot about anything. I can ponder the future, but without a blade or spoon or chisel or hacksaw, I ain’t in control. Least I got the sense to close my eyes and wander a bit. Sitting in the cell, stretching out on the bench and folding my hands into a pillow, I got to let go of the whole world, just for tonight. I can’t save Fred from here. I can’t make sure them dogfighting sons a bitches don’t steal some other dog and fight him into hamburger. In this cell, most I can do is get my mind right.

  I think on Ruth and ask what I’d do if she was in love with me. Real love, like neither of us ever knew.

  I’d prob’ly take her hand. I’d put it in both of mine for a long while, and I’d try to smell her hair without her knowing what I was up to. Wait for the air to carry the scent. And once I got that perfume and I had her hands all warm and used to mine, why that’s when I’d slip to her elbow and bury my face in her hair and breathe it in so deep—

  But that’s a bunch of shit. Mae’s out her mind. And the rock-bottom truth is, I don’t know what the hell I feel for Ruth. All I been doing is writing letters and wishing I was still young enough to enjoy getting laid in the back of a Nova.

  Stretched on the jailhouse bunk, without the stars or the trees whispering back and forth or the crick keeping somber time, I get sleepy quick. All the stuff that’d make my heart beat fast and fill me with worry is gone, stuck on the other side the wall.

  Yeah, this is Stipe’s doing. Back and forth, each time worse.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  They’ve trucked me to the courthouse in Asheville and brung me through the back, where the court connects the jail. My nose runs with the morning nip. I ain’t dressed for cold weather any better’n I was yesterday afternoon. I wipe my schnoz on my sleeve and it leaves a streak, and that’s all I need, having the judge see that streak turned into a silver crust flashing sunlight at him.

  Us criminals sit on a wood bench. We six is a surly lot. More whiskers and hair than all the rest of Asheville, now it’s booming yuppies. I know Buck Hedgecock, down on the end, last in line, but he ain’t sober enough to recognize me. The fella between us folds and unfolds an Allis-Chalmers cap. His first time in court, I can tell.

  Worst thing about sitting next these boys is I know soon as they get close to talking—soon as they start f
ormulating all they damned lies, it’ll feel like they slapped me in the electric chair. Soon as they start thinking their horseshit stories.

  And the body stink’s like being dipped in mash.

  A man in a crumpled suit—a pudgy pecker of a man—shuffles to the man on the other end of the bench and says, “Charlie Crystal?”

  “Thass right.”

  “You guilty or not?”

  “Who the hell’re you?”

  “Public defender.”

  “I ain’t done nothing.”

  “Right. Okay. Not guilty. You got any proof?”

  “That the way it works these days?”

  “Well, that’s the county attorney over there, and he’s got nine witnesses ready to swear you were drunk and smashed six windows on Merrimon last night. You want to say you didn’t, you might have some evidence that goes against his.”

  “I got my rights. I want a trial. Jury and all, like the Constitution says.”

  “You see that bench? In a minute, Judge Omar Bradley Hickory’s going to climb up there, and you’ll think you’re looking at God. You’ll want to piss yourself. My advice? Say you did it and you’re consumed with remorse. Judge Hickory will give you a fine, order restitution, and send you home.”

  “I could use a dose o’ restitution.”

  Ruth.

  Mae said Ruth was still hung up on me. Wouldn’t that be a barrel a titties?

  Don’t feel good leaving Fred like I did, but circumstances in this world is rough, no matter intentions. I don’t begrudge folk doing they jobs, and if I can’t get out of this on account of men of sublime integrity, then that’s the way it goes. But I got a considerable problem with the sons a bitches made it agin the law for a man to sell homemade hooch. If I take apples and make em drinkable, and other folk is thirsty for apples, I oughta make money. It’s crystal fuckin’ clear. Don’t see how it’s different from a man cuts a tree into boards, or another digs coal out the ground, or oil. They act like rednecks is ignorant and likker’s evil, but if that was the case, I wouldn’t be able to sell a hundred gallon a week, peak season.

  Naw. Bottom line, they decided long ago to pick one thing a lot of people want and won’t ever do without, and tax the living shit out of it. Comes to it, Judge Omar Bradley Hickory’ll get an earful. It’ll be the first unvarnished truth he hears all day.

  If it comes to it. But I’ll stick with the plan, until.

  Cueball Mercer comes in. I can’t see his hand from my angle. He damnwell better’ve brought that jug. He meets my look and dips his head.

  Defender stands above me with empty eyes, as if the real courtroom work’s lofty and beyond. He’s got the look of a man wouldn’t notice a red ant chewing his ear at a picnic; he’s just looking at the sky thinking on the sanctity of the law.

  “Baer Creighton.”

  “I surely done it, but the law’s fulla shit. How I plead that?”

  “That falls under ‘guilty.’”

  “Fair enough. Can I go first?”

  “Judge Hickory will follow the docket.”

  *

  “You sure he’s gone?” Burly said.

  “I watched Mercer haul him away.” Ernie shifted sideways in the Suburban seat. Burly was behind the wheel. They were approaching Baer’s house. Ernie’s gaze dipped to the knife on Burly’s hip. He’d been uncomfortable since he’d climbed into the Suburban. If he’d seen the Bowie knife, he wouldn’t have gotten in.

  “Good,” Burly said. “You look at the still? Cut up pretty nice?”

  “More than that. Lot more.”

  Burly slowed as Baer Creighton’s house came up on the left. He looked out the window and Ernie noted the corded muscles in Burly’s neck. The house was unchanged.

  “We ought to burn it down,” Ernie said.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Stipe don’t like freelancers. You’ve already made him uncomfortable.”

  Ernie thought of Creighton’s still site, which he’d visited right after the revenue boys hauled Creighton away. “Didn’t I give him good information? Isn’t that what friendship is all about?”

  “Yeah.” Burly swung the wheel to the right and the Suburban plowed over the grassy drive of the Brown farm. He parked. They sat a moment, both leaning forward, studying the house. “Thing of it is, Stipe don’t trust nobody. So you come and say you been following his enemy and got an idea, and suggest bad things… how does he know you’re not setting him up?”

  “Come on, Burly. You know me. Didn’t you tell him I’m okay?”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know you too well either.”

  Burly opened the door and stepped outside. Ernie followed and they walked toward the house together.

  Stipe being suspicious was bad news. Ernie had been too excited, maybe too aggressive in his approach. He said, “Then why are you even here?”

  “How do you know Stipe didn’t already have things in motion?”

  Ernie stopped and Burly kept walking. The Bowie knife slapped his thigh with each stride. Ernie hurried to catch up. “I’m just trying to help the guy out. Man in his shoes needs information, and I wanted him to see I can get it for him.”

  “Everybody knows Creighton’s been robbing the Brown farm since the old man died.”

  “Well, I got to ask again. Why are we here?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “Maybe. You didn’t think you’d make the man wonder? Show up at his house and tell him how to kill his enemy? You got to be real close to a man ’fore you suggest murder.”

  “And you’re supposed to keep an eye on me? That it?”

  “Maybe.”

  Ernie considered the ramifications. He imagined what the Bowie knife might feel like dragged across his throat. “Does he like my plan? Because I’ll do it. That way it was all my idea and everything. He didn’t know anything. I’ll cover my own tracks and that’s that.”

  Burly faced Ernie. He rested his palm on his knife. “What’s your angle?”

  Ernie stepped back. “No angle.” His mind raced. Burly was a big man. If he lunged and managed to grab him, Ernie was as good as dead. But if he could keep a few feet away until he could think things through…

  There was the gold in the tree, but he didn’t want to dangle that in front of Burly just yet. Not now, when he could no longer trust him. He decided on the truth.

  “No angle,” Ernie said. “Shit, Burly. I want what you got. You rub elbows with the man who controls everything worthwhile in the county. He runs the dogs, and he’s bought about every still. Stipe’s the swingin’ dick and I didn’t think it would do any harm to do him a favor.”

  Burly pulled his knife.

  Ernie took another step backward.

  Burly pressed the blade into a house wallboard and angled the blade downward, popping free a wood chip. He snapped it off and turned it over in his hand, then tossed it to Ernie.

  “Awful dry.”

  Burly kicked yellow grass growing close to the house, then walked along the side and turned the corner. Ernie trailed him, but stopped before rounding. He listened until the sound of Burly’s feet rustling the grass grew distant, then eased past the edge.

  “So how long’s it going to take for Creighton to come over and steal every piece of copper out this house?” Burly said.

  “He’s got to get out of jail first.”

  “He’ll get three days.”

  “Then he’ll be here that night.”

  “You know Creighton’s ways that well, huh?” Burly said.

  “He’ll be here that night. He’s as cheap as they come. He won’t spend a penny if he can help it. You wouldn’t believe what he does with—”

  Burly stopped at the next corner, peered for a long while at the other side, and drew his hand across the baked and splintered wood. “You come get me when he shows up. And here on out, you got information for Stipe, run it through me first.”

  *

  Judge Omar Bradley
Hickory’s no slouch. Been up there fifteen minute and found two men guilty. Another’s back in jail, pending word on his sanity, and the other two’s out a thousand bucks each, and got to go to the anonymous alcoholics, and do a hundred hours community service. Hickory looks like a grade-school textbook picture of the abolitionist John Brown—white hair and a scowl built into his forehead. I heard cowboy boots clonk when he come in.

  Only thing is, when these other fellas stood and lied to the judge, I didn’t feel hardly a thing. Couldn’t scope they eyes on account they heads was turned, but I’d have thought me being sober as a skunk and sitting right next em, I’d have felt sparks.

  Bailiff says my name and the defender says, “Guilty, Judge.”

  “Creighton. Says here you run a still out of Gleason.”

  “That’s right. Say, Judge? You remember Lou Creighton?”

  “No. He kin of yours?”

  “Uncle.”

  “He a stiller, too?”

  “If he was, he’d be a good one. Mostly he just tells stories.”

  “Stories, huh?”

  “You ever hear the one ’bout Mabel Kinney? Down Old Fort?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

  “Well this old girl could still. Had her an operation size of the Daniel Distillery, all in her tobacco barn. Everyone drank likker here to Boston preferred the Kinney label—and she charged double.”

  “I’ve heard of Kinney.”

  “She was in the barn bossing orders—and I can tell all this because you law fellers put her in jail and she died there, so I ain’t breaking the code—well she was in the barn snapping orders and she was supposed to be a right bitch about t’bakka.”

  “This is pertinent to the proceedings, of course?”

  “If you like your likker stories, it sure as hell is.”

  “Do I look bemused, Mister Creighton?”

  “Well, I don’t know. If you look that way all the time, I’d say no.”