My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  He shined the light through the window and tilted his head toward Mae, revealing a cultivated, professional frown.

  Randy inspected the front seat. He held the light steady, probably studying the console, the floor. Hoping to find drugs, if she had to guess. He stepped around the front, passed the driver’s door, and again blasted the light into the back.

  Mae wilted. I have the gun because I have kids. No. I have kids; I have a gun. Of course I have a gun. I have kids. God.

  Randy returned to the Caprice and opened the door. “You want to hand me the keys?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Just give me the damn keys.”

  She dug in her purse. They were at the bottom of the center compartment, but she missed them three times. Pulled out a plastic packet of tissue. A maxi. Chapstick. He’d seen the rifle; why else come back?

  “Randy, what are you doing? Don’t you want to go home, go to sleep?”

  “Night shift. The keys. Or are you finally coming around?”

  She passed him the keys.

  “Stay put,” he said.

  Randy left the door open and walked back to the Tercel. He opened the driver’s door. Reached back and unlocked the rear, and opened it from outside. He waved her forward.

  Mae approached.

  “You been robbed.”

  Randy stepped aside and Mae looked through the open door.

  “I distinctly recollect a blanket on the back seat. It had a bunch of ducks and whatnot. Daffy and that. I got powers of observation, you might say. This vehicle’s the site of a crime, Mae. We’re going back to the station—”

  “Over a blanket? Who gives a shit about a blanket?” She snatched her keys from his hand and saw his grin. “That’s bullshit, Randy. Asshole.”

  She slammed the rear door. Jumped into the driver’s seat.

  “You drive safe, sugar.”

  She screeched into the first driveway. Snapped the shifter to reverse. Calm. Now. The blanket gone—and the rifle with it. Baer had the kids—had to have the kids.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Sunlight breaks through trees, leaves fussing like cornhusks rubbing in a breeze. I ain’t slept but a couple winks; spent most the night keeping the fire hot enough to melt lead. The girls never been in the woods at night, didn’t like it a bit. Every deer or fox or who knows what wandered by in the dark, they eyes got big and white. Every story they ever heard about bears eating kids come back to em. Bree stood and pointed into the black, gutsy but trembling.

  “The Boogeyman!”

  “What’s the Boogeyman?” says me.

  “He’s made of boogers.”

  “Well, I’d be afraid of a monster made of boogers too.”

  Didn’t calm her none, so I went to the Boogeyman, a clump of scrub oak. I give it a shake and she screamed. Next it was goblins and trolls and, good shit, it never ended. I’m bleary-eyed and sober, not the best combination.

  We bust camp first light. I cut the blanket in two pieces and wrap each girl in half, like they’s Arabian princesses. That’s what I tell em. I got Joseph in one arm, Cory’s pistol in my pants, my rifle in my hand, and Smith on my hip. A single flask of shine and I’d take all comers.

  The kids follow. They’s so beautiful it puts the woods and sunlight to shame.

  On and on. They ain’t used to trekking and the going’s slow. We avoid roads, mostly follow trail cut by four-wheelers and dirt bikes.

  “I’m tired,” Bree says.

  “I’m hungry,” Morgan says.

  Joseph sleeps. Now and again I feel along his neck, down into his chest. He stays warm tucked in my coat and arm, but the girls…

  “I’m tired,” Bree says.

  “C’mere.” I go down on my knees. “You see down there?” I point the rifle. “See them houses? That’s yours on the end. See your car out front? That means your momma’s home, waiting on you. We got another ten, fifteen minute and we’ll be there, and you can raid the kitchen. I’m sure Mae’ll cook some breakfast. Can you make it down the hill?”

  Bree yawns. “My feet hurt.”

  “It’s just a little farther,” Morgan says.

  “That’s right. A little more.”

  I walk a few steps. Turn. She ain’t moved. “This’s the plan.” I pass Joseph to Morgan. Take the rifle, eject the cartridge, and ease the lever closed with my finger in the breech. Pass the rifle to Bree. “It’s empty,” I say, and show her the cartridge. Slip it in my pocket. She takes the rifle. “All right, Bree. Climb on my back.”

  I get down on my knees and she boards me like a horse, holding the rifle in front of my neck, pressed agin my throat so I can’t breathe. I got one her legs hooked in my right arm, and take Joseph back from Morgan with my left.

  “We ready?”

  “Giddyup,” Bree says.

  We get to the house and I’m ready for a stretch on the dirt with my eyes shut. I put Bree down on the front yard. Morgan’s already run to the house and Mae throws the door open before she hits the steps.

  “Oh baby.” She sweeps up Morgan and races down the steps for Bree.

  “Ought to get you out of town while matters settle.”

  “I can’t reach Mom. I’ve been calling all night and morning and can’t reach her.”

  “Uh.”

  “It’s been three days now. I tried to call her yesterday, before all this. Something’s happened, I know it.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “We talked the other day. Last week. About everything. About her, and you, and Larry. She said they’d been fighting and he’d threatened to come hurt me.”

  “Hurt you.”

  Mae puts Morgan and Bree on the ground. “Go inside. Hurry.” She waits a second. “Mom’s in trouble.” Mae takes Joseph from me, checks his vitals. Temperature and heart-beat. Color. “I’m worried sick. I know he’s done something to her. She doesn’t stay out all night.”

  “You got your car keys?”

  She tosses em. I chamber a round in Cory’s nine. Hand it to her. “Pull the hammer back this way. Release the safe here. Squeeze the trigger and whatever you hit won’t be there no more.”

  I’m in Mae’s Tercel again—a chunk of highly fuel-efficient rust, spring-mounted on four bald tires. Shimmies like a fat girl’s ass between forty-five and sixty, but smoothes out at seventy.

  Mars Hill sits way north of Asheville. Got a little college, a bunch of houses, a few businesses. Only been here a few times—the last ten year ago after Ruth divorced Larry. I caught word from a fella I sold likker to, Job Harding. He did me a favor and dug into her address. Every likker drinker wants a stiller in his debt. Wasn’t much digging, it turned out. Him and Ruth lived on the same block.

  I couldn’t believe Ruth and Larry parted, so I snuck to Mars Hill and scoped her house. Saw her once, purty as ever. I ducked behind a tree and made sure she never saw me.

  Been sending letters ever since.

  Memory serves, I follow the main drag to the end of town and watch for a left. It ain’t the road on her address because they’s a turn after that. I get mixed up and drive back and forth a half-dozen times, left and right a couple more, and see Tilson Drive. Must’ve writ “Tilson” two thousand times, front and center on two thousand envelopes.

  There. I stand beside the Tercel and stare. Ragged and overgrown, shingles falling in rusted eaves. A lightning rod leans sideway at the roof apex.

  “She’s gone,” a man says.

  I didn’t see him coming. His features is plain. Honest.

  “Ain’t seen her in a week,” he says. “Say, you seen a Collie wander by? Dumb shit just up and disappeared last night.”

  “Nah, I ain’t seen your dog.”

  Chapter Thirty

  One day years back Job Harding came after a bunch of jugs and said they’d be his last. He was giving up the life and these ten cases was for personal consumption, to last ‘til the day he died. I said if he got to the final jug and still felt spry, he’d
better drink it all at once.

  He lived on the same block as Ruth, but looking from one home to the next, I don’t know which. Houses is dense like most the town was done and the builders already tipped a few jugs, and the foreman scratched his nuts and said, “We need space for five more houses.” All these towns is just houses wherever somebody bought a chunk of land and threw together some sticks. They’s a testament to the freedom to screw things up. That’s why they’s so comfortable.

  I scan the street back and forth and try to picture Job Harding’s pickup. It was an American model… an S-10. He used to brag it had a Camaro engine. It was dark green and he had chrome mags on the stupid thing, and these psychedelic green plastic jiggies on his windshield wipers.

  That’s the whole nineties, right there.

  I pass a house and another. No names on the mailboxes, just numbers. No vehicles in the drives. Comes to it I’ll beat on every door.

  End of the street I look back the way I come and the next road over, through a windrow of scrub and trees. Weather-beaten houses got one foot in the grave. Eaves coming loose, shingles in disrepair, paint cracked or mostly flaked off. Big old gaps between cement blocks. Some of these folks don’t enjoy lawn work and I don’t blame em. Big tufts of grass by the trees, along fences and foundations. They’s grass all around a beat-up S-10…

  I’m tromping straight for the door, realize it’s the back of his house and he’ll meet me with a gun. Circle up front.

  “Job!” I beat the door with the side of my hand. “Job!”

  The door rattles in its frame; I give it another pound. The door gaps open—

  “—the sam hell’s going on?”

  “Job! Where’s Ruth?”

  He opens the door a bit more. “Hunh?”

  He’s thinking so hard his eyes is crossed.

  “Job! It’s Baer Creighton, out Gleason. You remember?”

  “Baer.”

  “You remember. You bought the likker. Job?”

  “Bought the likker. Right. Bought the likker.”

  He don’t know whether to scratch his watch or wind his ass.

  “How you doing?” Job says.

  “You remember ten year back, you told me Ruth Jackson lived a couple houses down? I’m looking for her.”

  His brows tighten. “Poor girl.”

  “How’s that? Where is she?”

  “Prob’ly in the ground, halfway to Pisgah. Who knows?”

  “Why… why you say that?”

  His eyes widen. “Oh! You’re Baer Creighton… out Gleason way!”

  “That’s right, Job. What happened to Ruth?”

  He exhales a long breath. Slumps to the jamb. “Larry Creighton happened to her.”

  “He take her away?”

  “He beat on her, is what he did. I saw through the back winda, here. His truck was in the drive, and since I know the history, I watched close. Cracked the winda, case I could hear anything.”

  “What do you mean, you know the history?”

  “Oh, goin’ way back when she moved out here. She told me all of it. Woman loved to talk. Loved it. And when Larry started coming around again a few weeks back, I paid attention. Hell, half the time he’d park down the street and never get out—just sit there in the truck smokin’ cigarettes. This last time he went in the house. I sat on the commode all of twenty minute. Then he comes out, and she comes out, and she’s hitting him all over. Just angry as a hive o’ hornets. He’s got his arms up and she’s thumping him any which ways. She screaming gibberish and he’s shouting back. Then he reaches one arm way back like this, I swear to you, Baer, just like this. He curls that hand into a fist, and comes around. Clocks her to the ground, and she just lays there.”

  I look behind me and to my side. Nowhere to sit, and my legs is about give out. I don’t get a single shock and his eyes is plain white. “You saw all that?”

  “Every bit of it. Larry looked all around, see if anyone was watching, and put her in his truck. You know how it is when a body’s just a body and they ain’t no person in it. Arms and feet dangling.”

  Cement comes up to my knees, then my hands. I swing my ass below me. My head tingles and my ears rush with noise. My mind steadies and I sit on the cold cement a minute. I think of Mae saying Ruth still had a thing for me after all these years. I should have gone and found her five years ago. Ten years ago. Hell, I did find her. I should have come out from behind that tree and said I’ll take you now, and we’ll never look back. We got twenty thirty years left—let’s run out west and spend em together.

  That letter I mailed her today—I don’t think I ever before said we could go away like that.

  I breathe and for a few seconds that’s all I can do. “What kind of law you got around here? You tell ’em?”

  “I told em.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “They didn’t believe me. They went over and knocked on her door, said she was out getting groceries. Walking her cat. I said she don’t got a cat and they walked off while I was talking at em. One stayed in his car there at her house for a half-hour, then he left too. Ain’t been back.”

  Ruth’s door is locked. I beat on it and glass panes rattle. I wait on the step and think maybe she’s coming to the door right now. If she answers… if she swings the door open right now, what’ll I say?

  I rap again with a little less gumption. Look at the lawn and imagine Larry walloping Ruth like Job said. See her fall, knocked out. Knocked dead. And him carrying her into his truck. This back-and-forth with Larry—all these pieces start to fit a little better. I come poking around and talk to Eve, and maybe Eve says I come on to her, like any scorned woman might. So he looks at his hand, decides to raise me. I’ll take your dog and the only woman you ever give a shit for. This won’t stop until Larry and me throw down the cards and go sideways out the window.

  I try the doorknob again. Job’s on his front step, shaking his head, talking.

  My coat sleeve’s good and stiff. I smash my elbow through the lower pane. Rips my jacket and pinches the skin. I reach through and feel for the lock and in a couple seconds I’m looking over Ruth’s living room. Coffee table, sofa, small television with rabbit ears. Telephone on the end table… I can see her curled on the couch with the phone, talking with Mae about all the crazy shit women talk about, and it pisses me off. She was supposed to be my woman, and that was supposed to be my life—seeing her yammering all day and night, and me having to go to the other side of the house for a moment’s peace. That was mine.

  They’s the kitchen beyond; I should’ve had the last thirty years of her banging pots and pans and roasting whole chickens. Thirty years of sneaking up behind her and giving her a squeeze.

  “Ruth?”

  My voice checks the rooms and echoes back empty-handed.

  I breathe in deep and catch a cinnamon scent. I glance things over. If I don’t get the full scope of this house, and miss something that might tell me what happened, I’ll spend the rest of my years with another kind of guilt.

  In her bedroom is a bureau with frilly things that smell nice. I pull each drawer and push it closed without molesting anything. They’s a photo of Mae on the nightstand. One pillow on the bed. Closet with clothes, extra shoes at the bottom. ’Bout a thousand. I look at her desk, with a mirror and lights above. An antique-painted monstrosity with a box of makeup looks like a tackle box of fishing lures. All of it, everything, is stuff a woman would take if she was leaving for a while, and it’s the best evidence old Job saw what he saw.

  I check the bathroom. Toothbrush in a cup.

  Kitchen’s fulla food… not a lot, but assorted. She was partial to Spam.

  I’m back to the living room and on the coffee table spot a letter I missed the first time through. It’s one of the handful I sent last week, opened, letter partly out the envelope. They’s a shoebox fulla letters under the sofa.

  I lift the box and thumb across the tops. In order, by date.

  Job’s still on his
stoop. I head at him and he says, “Find anything?”

  “Where’s the police, this town?”

  “Twenty-eight Main. That’ll be the north end.”

  Six minutes I’m there. Step inside and smell burnt coffee. By the look, the day shift is accustomed to nothing going on. College kids might keep the night crew busy, but this town walks like it’s got a stick in its ass, so maybe not.

  “Help you?” the man says. He’s got a beard and no mustache. Eyes lidded like a frog’s, and feet propped on the corner of his desk.

  “Fella named Job Harding reported a woman missing a couple day back. Ruth Jackson.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, she’s still missing.”

  He studies me. “Guess we can file a report.”

  “Thought maybe you’d get off your ass and look for her.”

  He drops his feet off the desk but don’t trouble to rise. “Last I looked, there was no reason to suspect any foul play. She just up and went somewhere.” He squints. “You got different information?”

  “She ain’t where she always is.”

  “You a member of the family?”

  “No.”

  “Well then who are you?”

  “Never mind.” I back out the door.

  “Hey!”

  I get in the car and head out of town.

  *

  It was clear to Cory Smylie that Stipe had been correct. The foundation was self-control. He’d screwed up because he’d been intoxicated. He’d humiliated himself again. He hadn’t been able to think, and a millisecond after a decision, he’d known it was wrong. Yet he pushed through reckless thinking and moment by moment his situation worsened. He should have known Baer Creighton would mount a rescue. Creighton was Mae’s hero. He should have foreseen a police response—his father was the police chief. Instead of being guided by slow anger and being painstaking in his planning, Cory had been guided by rage and planned not at all. He’d been high. So much for invincibility.

  The humiliation was real. He owned the respect of no man in the county. His kids feared him. His woman chose to screw her flesh and blood over him. Stipe had surely heard of the night’s misadventures and by now had written him off as a failure. He’d done it to himself.