My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Got my thumb out. Not too awful damn safe, hitching, but I got my Smith back when they cut me free this morning, and now that Stipe and Smylie smashed my still I figure we’re even. Time being.

  Fred’ll need a half-hour of story-telling and lie-swapping to get his mind straight after all that shooting. I been thinking on Fred, and Stipe too. Chief Smylie called in the tip that got my still busted. What’d motivate Smylie now, other’n Stipe?

  What I don’t know is where things sit, morals and all. Mae said violence don’t solve anything. One man do something wicked and the other comes back with something wickeder. Back and forth. It don’t stop ‘til one man gets hurt so bad he quits. Or can do nothing more. As things sit, Stipe and me is about square. If I called it quits and got on about my life, maybe he’d call it quits too. I don’t like what he done to Fred, but I guarundamntee he don’t like what I done to his champ.

  Just thoughts.

  Two days looking at a wall. Lot of time with no likker. Things that was clear in one light look sketchy under a sixty-watt bulb. I come after Stipe ‘cause he’s pure-ass evil, and had a hand in Fred’s situation. But I’m no closer to knowing who tossed Fred in the weeds. Other thing’s got me is how I can be ratshit sober and hardly tell when a couple crooks tell a judge they’s innocent. I got a little juice, but wasn’t as strong as even the other night, when I fell out the tree.

  The feeling is strong only when I remember what it used to be. At this rate it might be gone in a week, and I still don’t have the truth on Fred or Ruth.

  They’s always been a connection with the likker. I kept myself sloshed mostly to hold the curse at bay. Now the likker’s just about got my skill stamped out right when I need to know who the hell has it in for me. Often thought I wouldn’t miss the curse at all. I’d rather not know everyone around me was a liar—it might be good enough just to suspect it. But the liars I’m up agin is more than mere liars. They’s evil, and I almost think it makes sense to quit the likker and see if I can’t hang onto my talent.

  How’ll it be, first time I see a man and don’t know if he’s fulla shit?

  Sunshine looks good but I bet Fred ain’t too happy. I hope he got in my foodsack but he never been one to neb. I get home I’ll cook him some eggs and Alpo; he likes that. Maybe get on his good side again.

  My feet is about peeking through my shoe leather, and if they was any cornfields ’long the road I’d raid one of em. Gleason coming up and I’m hungry enough to eat the grime out a muffler and wash it down with antifreeze. Course a nip of shine’d taste better.

  I shortcut town on the north side. I don’t need to run into no one. All this walking after that beating I took, and that festering slice out my shoulder, and sleeping on a cold jail bunk—I’m like a clock losing ten second a minute.

  Less’n a mile from home. Old Fred—I can see him now, sorta, head above the crate and perking an ear. He got a gift, lets him know long before he hears feet crushing through the leaves or smells a man’s armpits.

  Come up on the still site from the woods and things is disorienting. Everything chopped and hacked, mash barrels tipped. Flies everywhere buzzing. Air is still and quiet, and smells like stale fire. Big stale fire. Old fire.

  “Hey, stud. Guess who’s home? I got some lies to swap. That’s for damn—”

  Fred?

  Step into a cloud of flies under the tarp. He’s in his crate, covered in rolling black shiny wings. I swat ’em, smack ’em, shout at em. Run my fingers over Fred’s coat.

  He couldn’t have starved in three days. No way.

  “Fred?”

  They’s blood matted under his head and now I see a bullet hole done it.

  “Fred!”

  Somebody shot Fred through the scab was his eye.

  I toss up my guts. Fall over in it and lay on the ground. I listen to the woods and every critter knows disaster’s come. Every critter’s silent, holed up, spooked off. Nary a bird’s got the stones to chirp.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Ernie and Burly had been waiting for hours in a copse of apple trees, parked between dead blackberry brambles. They sat in Burly’s Suburban on a hill overlooking plowed-over fields that stretched like a rolling, mile-wide lake, Brown’s decrepit farm an isthmus halfway across. Adjacent a tiny recess across the road was Baer Creighton’s burned house.

  Like Ernie had promised, he’d sought Burly as soon as he’d seen Baer return from jail. The two hauled ass back to stake out the Brown farm in case Baer made his move. So far, he hadn’t.

  After an hour of waiting in near silence, Burly said, “I thought you said he was ready to go to Brown’s.”

  “He might have gone while I came to get you.”

  “Or he might not go at all. I’ve got work to do. You see him getting ready to redo his still, come get me. If not, neither me nor Stipe has the patience for games. It’ll be Plan B—a bullet in the head.”

  Burly had left and now just Ernie remained, waiting in his own car. How was he to know when a man was getting ready to redo his still? It wasn’t like a light bulb went off over his head that could be spotted from a half mile away through a hundred yards of forest. But Burly was agitated, and had made clear that the plan Ernie had pitched to Stipe was too elaborate for Burly’s taste. He would rather sneak to Creighton’s camp, pop him in the head, carry him across the road, and dispose of him that way. The only thing gained by waiting on Creighton was that Burly wouldn’t have to get blood on his clothes.

  Ernie watched through binoculars. Hours passed and he dared himself to sneak closer. He walked the dirt road toward Creighton’s house and then eased into the woods. Creighton was distraught. His dog was dead—a little freelance work Ernie knew Stipe would appreciate, even if Burly couldn’t see the poetry of it.

  Creighton would be off his guard.

  Ernie had his binoculars and could safely watch from a distance. He approached a little at a time and when Creighton’s camp was barely visible between trunks, Ernie found a hidden spot to recline against a tree and watch.

  Ernie considered Burly’s distaste for the operation. It was the best evidence that Stipe liked it. There was nothing else strong enough to compel Burly to do anything.

  Plan A was much more poetic than Plan B, but it wouldn’t matter in the end. Ernie would watch Creighton until he made his move. If he wandered off, Ernie would follow. If he had loose stools, Ernie would know.

  Whether Creighton walked to Brown’s or was carried there, he would go and not return.

  *

  The stench of burned wood and metal lies heavy on the ground.

  My house is a charred shipwreck shoved into a basement. Ashes. Burned two day ago at least, judging by the trickles of smoke and the black jutting boards. Burned shortly after my still was busted and I was hauled to jail. Maybe burned the same time Fred died.

  October leaves flutter yellow and red, lazy, and when they land it’s just me amid all this ruin.

  I’m going to burn you down.

  Stipe let the shed stand. I grab a shovel. Head back to the still site. I look in on Fred almost like I’ll find it was all a bad dream, but as soon as I see him I recognize part of the smell of rotted mash and stale wood ashes is dead Fred.

  My knees go weak and I steady myself agin the shovel, dry-eyed but so godawful broke inside I could die.

  Only been three day but it looks I been gone a year, and the woods is taking over. Hundred years, none of this’ll matter. But it’ll take every fucking minute to wear off.

  I meditate on my knees by the crate, hands on wood wore round by four generations of man’s best friend. I look to the dirt beside the diesel turbine crate as if any tracks might help me cipher how Fred spent his time. They’s enough paw prints I’ll never know which was last. Down by the crick, they’s prints at the edge. He was comfortable getting his own water, and I been letting him build his confidence. Don’t know which boot prints belong to Cueball Mercer and his boys, o
r which go with whoever finished Fred. They’s one set of prints looks like they belong to a kid, they’s so small.

  A few feet from the fire circle I plunge the shovel into the dirt. This is where Fred’ll rest, right in the middle of everything he loved. I jump on the back of the shovel and work it back and forth, and pull out the first big clump of black dirt. I stab the ground again and hit a root. I stab and stab and find the root’s cut and I’m still stabbing.

  Tearing out dirt is violent, satisfying work but I got to reel in the anger and make it work for me. I got to set that shovelful down in a pile, not fling it off through the wood.

  Three feet long and two wide. Four deep. I wrap Fred in his wool blanket. Climb down the hole. Kiss his cold nose and squeeze him like to bring him back. They’s a scream in my head but my throat’s silent. They’s rage in my eyes but they’s closed. I’m calm and slow but my soul’ s jumpin up and down like to go to war.

  Goodbye you old son of a bitch. I love ya.

  Fred don’t say anything back.

  I lower him to the bottom. Backfill, and tamp the ground.

  I talk to the congregated woods. “Fred was good people. Some dogs is like cats, all prissy and fuck you all the time. But Fred was the kind of fella who’d give you a smooch just for the hell of it. He’d say the damnedest things, just as you was thinking the same. And he never begged. He was as self-respecting a dog as ever was.”

  I got to fight hard not to dig him up and hug the son of a bitch one more time.

  I’m going to burn you down.

  I shake the voice out my head.

  I got my Smith. Even checked to make sure they gimme back my bullets. I trek into the woods.

  Head up a hollow that curves into the side of a no name mountain. In twenty minute I’m two mile from Gleason. Every step carries me someplace more remote’n the last. No one comes this way. Used to think if I ever got totally fed up and had to disappear ten years, I’d hide out here. Following the crick back to a trickle over a couple flat rocks, a cave sets two-thirds up the mountain, looking over a grade. Man could sit and shoot squirrel all day. Maybe buck or bear, if he had a mind.

  Or anything else wanders by.

  They’s maple trees all over; a man’d have all the sugar he’d need.

  Oaks drop acorns like rain. Hickory and walnut, too. They’s fish down the stream and a glade where the sunlight pokes through and a man could grow potatoes and leeks.

  Out front the cave, they’s a chunk of metal all busted to hell and rusted.

  This is where Gunter Stroh taught me to make shine.

  He used to brood on his fire, rifle in reach. He’d lean and pitch wood under the boiler and his mouth’d water soon’s he heard the tinkle-rattle, the hiss coming out the copper. He’d smack his lips and spit, and his shaking hands would steady.

  Long gone.

  I used to come back this way with Fred.

  I wander inside the cave and poke around. They’s a mess of rotted blankets, moldy threads. Bones from some animal, likely not a man. Maybe a cougar called this place home, though I ain’t seen cougar in thirty years.

  With the house a pit of embers and the still cut up, and Fred… this cave has all the solitude a man could want.

  I stumble down the hill.

  Time I hit the flat ground, the stream’s a bona fide crick, with pools deep enough for trout. I circle east, sweep the woods.

  I call “Fred!” and listen. My voice just goes off to nowhere, and I half-expect Fred hears me on the other side.

  Time to put the plan back on rails. The plan I thought of that very first night, when I set one mash barrel aside from the rest.

  I got that tree fulla gold. They’s the one bucket hanging from the nylon cord, but they’s two more dropped inside, full. I set that money aside and if this ain’t a rainy day I don’t know what is. Time to fetch an ax.

  I ease off my pace coming up on the still site. I stand in the middle next to Fred’s grave. Thirsty. Kind of blank in the head. I set for the house.

  Come up from the backside, like always, except now they’s nothing between me and the road. House is level, collapsed in the basement. Smoke wanders across the ground, looking for answers. Roof’s fell in. Shingles burned clean away. Only thing left is pieces of timber look like chunks of firewood at the campfire edge. Wood juts up, sides black and white with ash.

  At the back foundation corner I circle to the basement. The door’s burned away. This must’ve been the hottest part by a long stretch. All them jugs of hundred-sixty proof likker is puddles of glass on the cement floor. This’s prob’ly where they started the fire. Loaded the pickup—they white pickup—with likker and busted the rest open, and tossed a match, and skedaddled quick.

  I hoped maybe a jug survived the heat.

  Back at the still site, I strip to my skivvies and grab a towel and soap.

  Brook water’s liquid ice. At the edge I kneel naked on a rock and scrub my pants and shirt and skivvies and socks like they did in the Bible. I hang drippy clothes from a dead hemlock branch and tiptoe into the water, careful on slippery rocks.

  Fuck the tub. I got to feel something.

  At the middle the water’s only a foot or so deep; I sit on a smooth, flat rock and soap up, and splash my pits, and get my privates. Dick’s shrunk like the cap on a ballpoint pen. Nads all up inside, huddled tight with my ribs, saying he’s lost his fucking mind. Again.

  Ribs say, Naw, I got word from his heart. That’s rage.

  Can’t stand but three minute and it feels like three years. I dry off so cold my guts rattle. I climb in my sleeping bag and zip it over my head.

  Peek at all that busted metal, and the empty turbine crate.

  I don’t think I ever been quite so licked.

  I wake and it’s night. Late enough they’s no crickets from the house, echoing through. No fireflies wandering in—but it’s been weeks since they had the run of the place.

  They’s no sound in the crate, no Fred snoring.

  Climb out the bag naked and cold and drag the diesel turbine crate on top the fresh dirt mound off the side a camp. Grab a lighter from the tarp and set them blankets aflame. Huddle on the ground and watch the orange and blue.

  I’m going to burn you down.

  Yeah? I’m going to fucking kill you.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  I got to piss and my arm pressed groundside’s asleep and tingly. Sun’s out and the birds’ve come back. Got a little food here but most was in the house. Got some eggs. I cook em.

  It’s quiet without Fred.

  Time’s getting on for ending all this. Fight’s in a week and I think it’s divine providence the Lord made me a stiller.

  I got a powerful thirst and water don’t touch it.

  Pete Bleau’s in his truck.

  Once in a bleau moon someone comes up while I’m at the house anyway. Just so happens I ain’t got a house now. I’m looking at ashes.

  This ain’t Pete’s day for likker.

  Meet him at the truck. His look says he ain’t trustworthy but they’s no red, no juice, and some folks just look shifty.

  “Had a visit this morning,” he says.

  “That so.”

  “Huck Barrow.”

  “Why don’t that surprise me?”

  “Said they busted the still.”

  “They?”

  “Revenue.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And Barrow said I’d want to run my business through him. They was willing to sell for six a jug.”

  “What a deal.”

  “This ain’t the first Barrow’s been after me.”

  “I know.”

  “Thought I ought to tell you. When you be back in operation?”

  “Ain’t thought ’bout it.”

  “You know I got to find a supply.”

  “I know it.”

  “I been saying for years I’d move twice as much, if you’d make it. Maybe this is an opportunity, Baer. You put in a modern
operation. Double the size your boiler and run it twice as much. Shit, I got people clear to Philly buy whatever you make. Them shot houses is rip-roaring, what with the economics in the shitter for good.”

  “All that’s true.”

  “You want me to wait on you to get your operation up again?”

  I think of the decision I made when I first found Fred, and rededicated myself to last night. Park a pile of hell on Stipe’s front porch, then drive ‘til I find someplace nice, and stop there. I can see the road. Dotted line flashes under the hood. Trees zing by. Wind blows through open windows—maybe even with snow outside.

  “Don’t think I’ll set up anytime soon, Pete. But I appreciate you stopping by. They steal your dog yet?”

  “He’s laying on the seat. Hey boy.” The Shepherd stands. Bleau says, “He don’t go out the house except to shit, and that’s with me watching.”

  “Bet he likes that.”

  “Take care, Baer.”

  He leaves and I’m stuck with a bunch of ashes.

  I sit beside chunks of still and copper. Part of me wants to red things up.

  I made a living with that still for years and years; all the time avoided the revenuers by working with a select group of men, a dozen drinkers and a couple wholesalers who moved my stuff to shot houses. They always said they’d take whatever I made, they was such demand from migrant labor down south, and continual opportunities in D.C. and Philly. I never did it to get rich, just to live the way I wanted.

  Now they’s no way in particular I want to live.

  Can’t go back to them days, and even if I fixed up a new still and found a new pit bull pup, it’d never measure up. I got a sick feeling like a traitor even thinking it. All these chunks of copper is an affront to the eyes, but the rest of me wants this place to stay like this ‘til kingdom come. Let the woods reclaim it, like that busted still at the cave.