My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Hickory smiles flat. “You were saying she was a right bitch.”

  “So one of her boys has a mouth of chaw and he don’t think she’s looking. He lets a spit loose on a floorboard knot-hole, in the corner where he always does. Mabel Kinney sees this big ol’ string of goop out his mouth, and comes stomping over. Says the habit’s disgusting and foul and if any of that spit ever got in the whiskey mash, it’d be the end of her.”

  “This a true story?”

  “Well I don’t got to say that fella with the chaw was Uncle Lou. Surprised he didn’t mention it hisself.”

  “Go on. Lou spat on the floor.”

  “Mabel lit into him—beating, pulling hair, pushing and shoving. Lou was a firecracker ’bout my size. Way he tells it, he’s about to lay into her, since she was more man’n woman anyway, and he blurted out, ‘I’ll spit my whole chaw in that whiskey mash, and you won’t do a damn thing ’bout it.’ He shoves loose, starts edging to the vat. Mabel looks at the rafters like for God to intervene, and sees old t’bakka leaves hanging from the beams. She goes pale as piss and hollers, ‘Eu-fucking-reka!’ She bosses Lou and some other kid up there to fetch down them t’bakka leaves. She throws the t’bakka in the mash and that’s how come, soon as a feller tries Kinney Shine, he’s stuck on it like he smoked a pack of Camels.”

  Hickory shakes his head. “Addictive, huh?”

  “Judge, I don’t mean to be impertinent, but I thought you might like a jug of them squeezins. Mercer, you got that jug?”

  Hickory shifts. Eyebrows float.

  “Now judge, this ain’t illegal shine at all. You can see the stamp from the likker board. They only sold fifty-seven them stamps since they been out, and I bought the first twenty. I’d surely appreciate if you’d take that jug as a token of my appreciation of the court, and the fine job y’all do.”

  “Bailiff, bring me that jug.”

  Bailiff takes the jug from Mercer and carries it. Judge Hickory bites the cork and pries it loose. He sniffs.

  “This tastes bad, I’m holding you in contempt.”

  “I hope you’re a rye man, Judge, because that’s rye whiskey with a touch a t’bakka.”

  Hickory upends the jug. Adam’s apple rises and falls one solitary time. The jug hits the bench top with a thud. Hickory beats his chest. Coughs like his voice is gone. Waits. Coughs again.

  “Creighton, you innocent or guilty of the charges today?”

  “Guilty, but the law’s fulla shit, Judge.”

  “Well, it’s our law, and we stick to it. Stand up, Creighton.”

  I stand. He’s a stern old shit, and like the public defender said, I want to piss myself.

  “I’m finding you guilty, Creighton. Sentence is a three-thousand-dollar fine. One year imprisonment.”

  His hand moves to the jug. I can’t breathe.

  “You have any more of this?”

  “What I don’t got, I can make.”

  “Sentence reduced to three days minus time served. But you still owe me three grand. Bailiff—”

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Cory Smylie was forty-five minutes away from Gleason in the sticks outside of Hendersonville. He drove his F-150 slowly past a house. His lights were off. His windows were down. A large black dog bayed and strained at the end of a chain attached to a doghouse. Probably a Labrador; it was at the edge of the yard about thirty feet from the house. Closer than Cory liked, but doable. He drove until a wedge of woods blocked his view, coasted to a stop, and turned off the engine.

  Cory lit a joint and sucked in the smoke while the dog barked.

  The routine was predictable. In a minute, the porch light would flash on. The door would open. A man would curse in his underwear, scream the dog’s name, and slam the door. The light would go off and maybe the dog would shut up. It wouldn’t matter, because the man wouldn’t come back within two minutes. That was all the time Cory needed.

  He gripped a Taser he’d stolen from his father. The inept clown had actually asked Cory if he’d seen it. Gee, Pop, what would I want with a Taser? His mother, always quick to mount Cory’s defense, suggested a few deputies had probably absconded with it and took turns shooting each other while they were drinking beer at the hunting lodge.

  The Taser was comfortable in his hand. He’d come to know the weapon intimately.

  This was his first stop of the night. He reached for the door handle and paused. Yeah. He was forgetting something. He switched his dome light to the middle position so the light wouldn’t turn on, and then stepped outside.

  The Labrador still barked, although being cursed by his master had stifled his enthusiasm. Cory crept along the road, still sheltered by the woods. He sucked a final hit from the joint and tossed it to the pavement.

  Cory turned along the lawn’s edge. The dog let out a volley of sharp barks.

  Dogs were tricky. They moved fast. Cory had learned to wait until he was right on them before firing. This Lab was big and ornery. Cory grinned. He could do anything.

  The Lab went silent. Cory walked closer. He was twenty feet away, too far for the Taser. The dog dropped his head. He growled and stepped toward Cory.

  “That’s right, fuckhead. You come to me.”

  Cory raised the Taser and sighted along the top. It was always easier to shoot a dog broadside, but they rarely afforded the opportunity. Dogs liked to face danger head-on.

  Cory continued walking. “Hey, fuckhead. That’s right. It’s all good.”

  The distance was right.

  The Lab launched. The chain jangled and the dog sailed toward him. Whoa, Cory thought. Teeth glinted. Cory adjusted his aim and jerked the trigger.

  The dog kept flying.

  Cory missed. The dog bowled him to the ground. Cory raised his arms to shield his throat and the Lab bit his wrist, then darted past his arms and snapped just shy of his face. Cory pushed back. Swung his arm to his side and with all his might shoved the Taser into the Lab’s side.

  The contact points blasted fifty thousand volts.

  The Labrador grunted and shuddered and collapsed. Cory rolled to his feet and when he had his balance he kicked the quivering dog in the ribs.

  “Don’t die, Fuckhead. You ain’t worth shit dead.”

  Cory put away the Taser and rushed the dog in his arms to his truck.

  Fucking animals. Cory slammed the window in the back of the cab and turned on the radio to drown the growls and whimpers coming from the crates in the bed of his F-150. He’d been prowling the outskirts of Hendersonville half the night. There had to be a better way.

  He’d “adopted” several dogs from each shelter in Buncombe and Henderson Counties. Each facility was more than eager to have him take the animals, but they wanted seventy bucks apiece. “To spay or neuter.”

  “Well, these two won’t need neutered. I’ll do it.”

  That didn’t go over.

  At seventy bucks a dog, with Stipe paying anywhere from twenty to a hundred depending on the animal, Cory would do better working at McDonald’s.

  Plus, how many times could he go back to the same shelter? He’d already taken two, sometimes three dogs from each. Any more and they’d grow suspicious. He’d surfed the Internet and found a woman operating a nonprofit called Adopt-A-Friend, and had taken two Rottweilers off her hands. Stipe had payed two hundred for the pair, leaving Cory a profit of sixty dollars. Cory scoured the web but hadn’t found any other organizations like Adopt-A-Friend.

  Afterward he’d staked out a couple kennels. There were hundreds listed in the phone directory. The problem was they were all surrounded by chain-link fences and had scores of maddened and desperate dogs inside. Stealing one would raise such a ruckus he’d end up in a shootout.

  The only option left was cruising the streets at night listening for barking dogs, and tazing them.

  What he needed was a contact inside a shelter, someone to slip him animals out the back. Unless he came up with a story. Maybe if he paid some college geek to set up a we
bsite, and posted photos of animals up for adoption, he could make it look like that Adopt-A-Friend site. He’d splatter rainbows and hearts all over it and the shelters would give him all the animals he needed.

  Cory shook his head. What was he wasting his time for? The real money was in drugs, not stealing dogs for Joe Stipe. His plan had been to use the work as a stepping stone, like starting out in the mail room. Eventually he’d prove himself and advance deeper into Stipe’s organization.

  Drugs, he thought. He’d make a hundred bucks an hour, not a night.

  But if the drug world offered real money, it also exposed him to real risk. He’d already served time, and another strike would mean he didn’t get out of prison until he was forty. Asshole judges were cracking down. Plus, you never knew when some city kingpin would go batshit and whack you. You wanted to play in the underworld, you had to be comfortable living on a razor’s edge.

  Stipe offered a different path. Cory would enjoy the powerful man’s protection and rise through the ranks while Stipe took the risks. Cory only had to be the muscle. He’d take what he knew of how city operators handled business and surprise the shit out of the sleepy bumpkins in Gleason.

  Cory imagined himself as one of Stipe’s lieutenants. Stipe asking his opinion on a difficult matter, nodding gravely at Cory’s advice, and saying, “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t see any way out of it.”

  “You’re the best I got. You handle it, son.”

  That’s what he’d say. Cory would nod. “It’s going to cost money.”

  That beat the hell out of some Columbian slitting his throat with a machete.

  Approaching Stipe’s trucking compound, Cory slowed. Stipe had hired a crew to build a chain-link fence around the entire place. Fresh dirt piles were tamped around the posts, and a pickup with tools was parked where work had ceased for the evening, just beyond a newly installed gate across the drive. Cory stopped.

  “How the fuck do I get in?”

  Cory jumped out of the cab, leaving the engine running and the headlights on. He looked inside the compound to the mechanic’s garage, and to the house, set back off to the right side. Though it was after two a.m., lights were still on inside both.

  Stipe had never given him a phone number, insisting that face-to-face communication was all they’d ever need.

  A dog growled from inside one of the wooden crates in the bed of his truck. Cory slammed his palm on the top of the crate. “Shut up, Meat!”

  “You there!”

  Cory raised his hands. He turned his head and saw a man on the other side of the cab, on the inside of the fence, with a rifle aimed from his shoulder. Security?

  “Who are you?” the man said.

  “Cory. Here to see Mr. Stipe.” The man’s build looked familiar. He was big, with a belly. “That you, Worley?”

  The man slung his rifle over his shoulder and swaggered in front of the headlights. It was Burly Worley after all—the man who’d asked Stipe for a job that night at the fight. Sourcing bait dogs wasn’t Hollywood, but it sure as fuck beat rent-a-cop security.

  Worley produced a key and opened a padlock. He swung the gate open. “You know where to take them?”

  “Yeah.” Cory snorted. He hopped into the truck and drove inside.

  “Let’s see what you got,” Stipe said. His eyes were watery and he smelled of alcohol, though he hadn’t brought a drink outside. He’d come out of the house as Cory pulled in, as if he’d been up waiting. Cory stopped the vehicle and met Stipe at the front porch steps. Stipe was a huge man and walked slowly. Cory followed a pace behind.

  “Got a big-ass Labrador, a boxer, a pit, and two of them little wiener dogs.”

  “Two chew toys—and did you say a pit?”

  “A bitch.”

  “Which crate? Let me see her.”

  Cory opened the cab and withdrew a long flashlight, also courtesy of the Gleason police, and directed the light beam at the crate closest to the cab. The white-and-brown dog snarled, though she remained mostly hidden by the crate slats.

  “You put her in a pen by herself,” Stipe said.

  “You ought to see her. She’s a blockhead. Beefy as hell. Top-dollar dog.”

  Stipe grunted, moved sideways and leaned closer. “No bloodline, boy. What, you thought I’d breed her?”

  Cory shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “The breed is just the starting point. You need years of pairing only the gamest champions. You have to cull weakness from the line for twenty generations before you arrive at a dog that’ll never turn and have the physical traits. The big lungs, the thick neck, the speed. You don’t just start off with some mutt.”

  Cory allowed the light beam to drift.

  “Give me that light.” Stipe snatched the flashlight from Cory’s hand.

  “What?”

  Stipe pressed against the bed and placed the flashlight between the slats.

  “That’s your pit, huh?”

  Cory looked. “That’s her.”

  “That’s an American Bulldog, you dumb shit.”

  “Looks the same.”

  “Dumb shit.” Stipe shined the light into the other crates one by one, grunting at each. Finally he handed the light to Cory and drew out his wallet. “I’ll give you a hundred for the whole lot.”

  A hundred. Cory thought of taking the money, wadding it, and shoving it down Stipe’s fat throat. Instead he leaned against the F-150. No, he’d take the money. He’d haul ass tonight to Baltimore and connect with some people he knew, and in two days he turn that hundred into a thousand.

  “What?” Stipe said. “You got a different opinion?”

  “I have to do better than that.”

  “Maybe you do, but a hundred dollars is a favor. You don’t like it, take them back where you got them.”

  “I got bills. I got kids.”

  “I know you do. Funny time for you to tell me about that.”

  “What?”

  “Come here smellin’ of reefer, eyes like two mud puddles. Kids at their mother’s, and you don’t have a clue what she’s doing, do you?”

  “This time of night she’s in bed.”

  “Yeah, Cory. But with who?”

  “Who?”

  “Like you give a shit. Mother of your children involved in the worst kind of sin. Your kids growing up in a house with pure evil. Very hand of Satan rules that house, and you’d rather smoke dope and steal dogs for a living. And you don’t even take that serious enough to learn the difference between a Bulldog and a pit bull. Only thing the same is half the fucking name.”

  Stipe offered a hundred-dollar bill. Cory grabbed it.

  “Pull these brutes to the back and get them unloaded. Pick up another set of crates—”

  “Who’s Mae with?”

  Stipe stared. “You don’t want to know. Just give you another thing to snivel about when you go home.”

  “Who?”

  “A man wants to make sure a woman stays his, he got to put a chunk of metal and a rock on her hand. He got to get a job, Cory. He wants to raise a nest of children he’s got to work from sunup to sundown. That don’t sound like you. That’s hard work. Fact is, you turned your back on your responsibilities and it don’t matter who she’s with.”

  Cory withered. Stipe was watching him through narrow, appraising eyes.

  “It’s her uncle nailing her, you dumb shit. Her uncle.”

  “Baer?”

  “Same man knocked you cold that night in your driveway. But you was too drunk to notice. Tell you anything about her feelings for you?”

  Blood rushed in Cory’s brain.

  “Take these animals to the back.”

  Cory remained leaning against the vehicle and lifted his head enough to watch the big man amble away. He sensed a crisis—that this moment was meant to be something more. He’d always thought of himself as a kid, a boy. He’d never wanted to be a man, never wanted to take the title and all that came with it. But this moment of truth was more imp
ortant than standing before a judge being sentenced to three years. This was more important than the first phone call he made on the day of his release, or the first joint he smoked that afternoon.

  Cory stepped uncertainly from the truck and it felt good. It was a departure. He felt radical. He would either shrivel from life or he would seize it.

  “Stipe!”

  Cory hurried after him. Stipe stopped.

  “You got to bring me in. I’ll get these dogs if that’s what you want. I’ll get on my belly and low-crawl across that lot if that’s what you tell me. I’ll go put a bullet in Baer Creighton’s head. But you got to tell me what to do. You got to help me get all this shit right.”

  Stipe exhaled. He studied Cory, then resumed toward the house.

  Cory jumped into his path. “I’m serious. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

  Stipe latched onto a handrail and swung his ass onto the steps. “Sit down.”

  Cory sat and placed his elbows on his knees. His head drooped. He closed his eyes and his mind swam. It was like being ten years old and being in church, surrounded by God, and defenseless.

  “I got a spy,” Stipe said. “He watches Creighton all the time. He was there when you got stoned and shot all over the woods, and damn near got yourself killed.”

  “I got a bad habit. A real bad habit.”

  “It’s who you are, deep down. You’re a coward.”

  Cory nodded. He brushed his forearm to his eyes.

  “Being a coward means you only fight somebody when you can sneak up behind him, and you never fight yourself or your worst demons because you can never get the drop on them. You think I’d have the truck company, a wife, grandkids, a few million in the bank, if I’d followed every foul instinct? If I never met my own weak heart head-on?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Hell no. Self-discipline is how you get somewhere. It’s the first law. It’s like starting with the right kind of dog. There’s a lot of work afterward, but discipline is where you start.”

  “What do I do?”

  Stipe shook his head. He rested his hand on Cory’s shoulder. “Get off the drugs. Get your mind right. Take them kids out of that house of sin, and let me see you three times in a row without bloodshot eyes. Show me you’re serious, and we’ll figure out where you go from there.”