My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  He would do things differently this time.

  He’d awakened the following morning with a knot on his head that made his brain feel like it had been flattened by a steamroller. He looked around outside for his gun and couldn’t find it, but the Taser was in the neighbor’s hedges. He went inside the house and drank water and took four Tylenol, and went to sleep.

  He woke at noon and lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. A dull ache filled him, the residual pain of a body continually fed poison. He wanted a joint to smooth things over. A cup of coffee and a joint and a beer. Between the three of them, his body would find the chemical it craved.

  Then he thought of Stipe. How he’d placed his hand on Cory’s shoulder. How his voice had softened. The most powerful man in Buncombe County had seen something in him worth saving, and the moment was like being in church. Guilt. Hope. Work. Stipe had told the truth. Cory was destroying himself, and if he didn’t get a handle on his addictions, it didn’t matter how hard he tried to do anything else. He was sabotaging himself.

  Cory rose from bed. His head throbbed and he stood with his hand on the headboard for a full minute while his blood pressure evened out. He couldn’t continue like this. He felt like an old man.

  Shame washed through him. Disgust.

  Discipline. Cory closed his eyes, embraced the pain. I will beat you, he said. He thought of Mae, saw her in her uncle’s embrace. Cory needed discipline to right his life and save his kids. He owed it to them. He’d been a coward too long. He would face himself, and when he had control, he would face his enemy.

  Cory swallowed two more Tylenol and three glasses of water. He was parched. He reached for a pack of Marlboros and withdrew one. Stuck it in his mouth and lit it.

  He inhaled smoke.

  This is the shit that is destroying me.

  He stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray.

  He needed to go away. He could go to Baltimore, where he had contacts…

  He shook his head and the headache stabbed. Wrong decision.

  “My troubles are right here.”

  He squeezed the pack of Marlboros in his hand. He crumpled the box and worked his fingers back and forth, grinding the cigarettes inside. When the box was a ball and the aroma of the tobacco rich, he dumped the contents in the toilet and flushed.

  Cory returned to his room and pulled a shoebox from under the bed. He’d never had to find a crafty way to hide his drugs because his parents never looked. He opened the box, removed a plastic baggie of pot, and took it to the bathroom.

  He was being rash, but he also knew from the silence of the little voice that this was right. Drugs were killing him, not just his body but his mind and his hope of ever amounting to anything. Drugs were his perennial retreat. Drugs were cowardice incarnate. He dumped the baggie into the toilet and flushed.

  Still in his boxers, Cory grabbed his keys, walked down the steps, exited the house, and opened his truck. He pulled a leather satchel from under the seat and carried it to the bathroom.

  He stopped. Wouldn’t he be better off selling it, and then being done with it? At least get his investment back? He only had a few hundred dollars, and this bag was worth a couple thousand. The little voice said no. One by one, Cory emptied pill bottles and baggies into the toilet.

  That was going to be one stoned septic system. He smiled.

  He had faced himself. He was learning self-control. Once he reined in his mind, he would revisit Stipe’s recommendations. He’d think things through, but one way or the other Mae and Baer Creighton were over.

  He’d show Stipe he was serious. Cory had just the right idea.

  Chapter Thirty One

  Them dogfighters got the law with em. No way Horace Smylie’ll turn on his friends. That ain’t how the bloodsport clique works. It’s an invitation-only affair, and if you ain’t got a ticket stamped by six of your daddy’s cousins saying you’re salt of the earth, death-lovin and blood-lovin and prone to keep mum, you won’t ever be part of the club. They operate in secret because most folks—even being liars and cheats—recognize pure-ass evil. These dogfight men’ll say dogs is born to fight, that they crave squaring off agin another dog and seeing who’s best. They’ll say it happens every day in the wild, and most wolves don’t die from old age, but other wolves.

  I’ve had a bellyful thinking about what Fred endured in the pit so these men could guffaw and place bets and see life destroyed. And that—whether the dogs want to fight or not—makes it evil.

  I been thinking on Larry, and how my past with Ruth has got things mixed up. She was with both of us, back and forth. I did wrong by Larry, strictly speaking. But you can’t turn your back on family like Larry did—you can’t show disgust for where you come from without showing disgust for who you come with.

  Ruth went back and forth. She had Mae and I took the house from her and Larry.

  After, I went out and found the house they was renting. It was evening and Larry was at college. I give the door a knock. Stand there with a clump of lazy Susans wilting in my hand. Ruth answers the door but won’t take the chain off, so I’m looking at her through a two-inch gap.

  “I’m going to win you back,” I say.

  “You got to let things end.”

  “Hell I do. If it’s money you and your daddy got to have, I’ll get it.”

  “Don’t matter if you do. I’m married. I’m a mother.”

  Sure as shit she was.

  I had a hunch I could make money off my talent. Knew a fella from working the gas station. Lou Debenker. Drank beers and shot stick at the bar and he was working some insurance racket, said he drove around all day and collected money off people, and only thing he did was ask each one if it was time to buy more insurance, every week when he saw em. He’d get the neighbors’ names and sell the insurance to them too. Product sold itself, Lou said, if a salesman had the knack. Company paid for miles and he got money off the sales, and best, they was no limit on the dough he could make. Lou gulped from his beer bottle and arched his eyebrows high to demonstrate the concept.

  Only thing, they was electric all through me. Lou didn’t have no red in him, so I let it go. I figured the juice was coming somewhere else.

  I always thought they had to be a way to turn my curse into advantage, instead of being the dumbass that couldn’t lie to save his life, and had to be shut in a room with nobody near just to keep a job.

  Lou introduced his boss, a sideways guy playing pool the next table over. Permanent red coming outta him. He was the source of the juice. He didn’t mean harm—some folks broadcast they’s liars and cheats, and that almost makes em honest. Lou’s boss was listening and said he’d give me a job on the spot if I’d ask every man in the bar if he needed life insurance.

  Sounded easy enough. I go to the first five six guys and each either looks or says “piss off.” Next says no, but his eyes flash red and I get a shock. In them days shocks was live-wire hot. I said, “I think you do need life insurance, and it’s been eating at you. Come talk to my buddy over here and he’ll set you up so you can sleep at night.”

  Day later boss shows me the ropes. Every time I ask if a man needs the insurance, and he says no but lights red, I push ‘til he’s honest, and that does the trick. The insurance didn’t cost but a couple dollars a month, sometimes less. A man’d look at his wife and kids, and time his eyes got back to me they’d be red and he’d be done for. I’d trick him into taking care his family.

  After a few months selling more insurance than the whole office, I had a pile of money and the kind of prospects Ruth’s daddy could appreciate. I had snappy clothes and fields of green in my billfold. Went to see Ruth while Larry was gone again and she looked through the two-inch door gap.

  “You can’t come here,” she said.

  Her eyes glowed.

  I about shit myself. Thought my curse failed—she was all the time honest and randy, and I didn’t figure she was honest because our desires was congruent ‘til I thought on it a decade. One time
, one big-assed lie. But just because you know a person got deceit festering in they heart, you don’t know which exact words is the lie. I didn’t arrive at her real lie ‘til long after.

  “I got money,” I said. “Look at this.” I opened my wallet and stood there like a fool. Might as well have had a fedora with a flamingo feather. Boots with my pant legs tucked in.

  “You rob a bank?”

  “I sell life insurance. Setting records every day.”

  “You’re a life insurance salesman?”

  “Ruth, you ain’t got no call flipping back to Larry. Don’t you get it?”

  She slammed the door. Locked it.

  That was that. Didn’t matter if I had money. Had to get it the right way—either inherit from somebody else or have a sit-on-your-ass job looking down on everybody. I quit my insurance job and went to see Gunter Stroh. After that I put my money into a still, and a few hundred pound of corn, wheat, barley, yeast, and sugar. I wrapped my tie around a spruce pole and made a torch, and used it to light the first fire under my boiler.

  Thinking of Ruth in them days don’t come close to taking the ache off her being dead. I give up on people, but I never give up on Ruth. If I’d done that, life would have been hopeless.

  Now I lost Ruth I got to face the truth. Evil is everywhere. She had it too. She lied.

  I know what I need to know to feel right about killing.

  I hope to hell Larry’s at the next fight. I’ll kill him for watching Fred and countless other dogs slashed to ribbon—but he’ll deserve it even more for what he done to Ruth.

  It was Cory stole Fred. Got the right color truck, took it for a wash so the tailgate was all clean after that night. Stipe paid him to find bait dogs and somehow he knew about mine. He knew about the Hun blind—that musta been him smokin’ dope in there and couldn’t shoot for shit.

  Cory’s flat got it coming—him and every other man goes to them fights. The men who pay money to keep the institution alive. The men who bet on it. The men who hoot and holler. The man who staged the fights. The whole crew. The ugliness goes on and on. So I know what I know and I feel positively sanctified about the killing to come.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Cory Smylie was sober.

  The first day was easy. His ill feeling reinforced his commitment. He kept his goals foremost in his mind, and found that when he needed to focus his self-control he thought not of putting Mae in her place, but of Baer. Destroying Baer Creighton was the glue that kept Cory coherent.

  With every decision from taking a leak to eating a hot dog, Cory asked, “Does this make me stronger?”

  Without chemicals corrupting his thought process he felt grounded. The right path was easy to spot and simple to walk. Self-control was the ultimate thrill and revenge upon Baer Creighton was a compass point keeping his heading perfect.

  But on the second day his thinking grew hazy. His thoughts were nebulous. He couldn’t concentrate and every challenge left him frustrated. He tore the cereal box because the assholes at Post used too much fucking glue. His parents had been gone for days at his mother’s business expo in Baltimore and no one had done the dishes, and he had to wash a cereal bowl and a spoon. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing—probably deputies wanting to question him again, or worse, his lame-ass father wanting answers on an attempted break-in.

  Man, could he use a joint.

  But each time the little voice squeaked to his rescue, and every time he listened the voice grew stronger. More adamant.

  In high school he’d wrestled. Long before he tried dope, he’d subjected himself to grueling practices and grew intoxicated on the heady achievement of producing sweat. Sitting with his mind spinning out of control, what he desired more than anything was to exert himself and feel blood rush. His lungs fill with air. His muscles respond with strength. He wanted to sweat.

  Almost desperate, he threw on a pair of shorts and running shoes. He wrapped on a Velcro wristwatch.

  He’d see how much he’d slipped. See how far he had to go.

  Cory started out fast. His body hadn’t felt this good for a long time. Adrenaline shot through him. His legs were pistons and his arms worked back and forth like locomotive rods.

  Within a minute his lungs were on fire. His legs grew wobbly. He eased his stride and looked at his watch, gasping. Two minutes. He used to run for an hour at a time, fast. Way faster than this. He glanced at his watch again and looked up to see a cute girl jogging toward him. He grinned and his toe caught an uneven sidewalk slab. He urged his right leg way forward to stop his fall but his leg didn’t hear. His muscles failed. Cory flew against a hedge and rolled back to the cement.

  He sat on the sidewalk with his elbows on his knees. His eyes rimmed with tears. The cute girl trotted by and he was too ashamed to watch her wiggle.

  And then he got up and smacked the dust from his ass. He picked a thorn from his palm and resumed his run. He wouldn’t attempt a full hour, but he owed it to himself to try. What else was he going to do? Smoke a joint? His anger for Baer Creighton swelled.

  Hell no.

  Cory Smylie hadn’t felt this kind of emotional stability, such cold blankness, for years. Every action resulted from thinking things through. He had time and commitment.

  Cory crinkled the cash in his pants pocket. He’d taken every stashed dollar. He’d pored over every detail of his plan. He knew how to get close. He knew those woods almost as well as Creighton. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes as last time.

  He had been crazy to think that while he was high, drunk, and short on sleep he could outwit an animal like Creighton. He was lucky to have failed, for if he had been successful he would have returned home with the murder weapon. He’d seen CSI. Mae would have thrown the spotlight on him and the police would have matched the rifle.

  But not this time.

  He stood behind a glass counter at Frankenmuth’s Big Sports studying a row of Cold War–era rifles. He’d driven to Charlotte. In case there were cameras in the store, Cory wore a stick-on mustache. He’d dyed his hair black and covered most of it with a Carolina Panthers baseball cap.

  He scanned the racks back and forth but his gaze kept drifting to a 1953 Soviet-made AK-47. The rifle looked rugged, and from what Cory had heard, it was universally renowned for durability.

  “It’s a great rifle,” the heavyset man in plaid said. He found a key from a ring of fifty and removed the rifle from the rack. He handed it across the glass counter. “What’ll you use it for?”

  “Targets.”

  “Any distance?”

  “Two hundred yards.”

  “Well, it’s a good gun.”

  Cory heard a subtle change in tone. “But?”

  “AK’s are known for standing up to abuse. That’s because they’re manufactured sloppy. You could charge it, shove a handful of dirt into the bolt housing, and it’d still cycle the next round, and the next. They’re indestructible, but all that sloppiness costs you, especially on a fifty-year-old rifle. Hell, you could bolt this thing to an iron table and not shoot a ten-inch group at two hundred yards.”

  Cory nodded. “So what’s better?”

  “Damn near anything, if you want accuracy.” He lifted the AK from Cory’s hands, replaced it in the rack and removed another weathered rifle. This one was clearly older and had seen more use. The stock extended to the end of the barrel and the bolt handle stuck straight out the side. The man passed the rifle to Cory. “Take this Mauser. Fine German engineering. By the time they made this in 1898, they’d already had thirty-plus years to work out the bugs. Open the bolt.”

  Cory did.

  “See how tight that is? No play at all. Smooth action. Now slam it home.”

  Cory slapped the bolt handle forward and down, a liquid action. The rifle balanced in his hands and the smell was rich like metal and oil. “This accurate?”

  “Oh hell yeah. Two hundred yards is short-range. I hunt deer with one of these and bagged a ten-point at four hundred. They sa
y they’re accurate to a thousand yards. Way more than the average shooter’d know what to do with.”

  “Right,” Cory said. “How much?”

  “This one? We got a sale going on today. One ninety-nine. I’ll make you a sweet deal on two.”

  “One will do the job.”

  Cory passed the Gleason interstate exit. He’d spent the two-hour drive from Charlotte dreaming of his Mauser’s recoil and hoping it would be robust. He’d bought four boxes of ammunition and everything he’d need to sight in the rifle and become fluent with its mechanics. He had two hours before dark.

  His ears rang. They’d been ringing all day, but he hadn’t realized it until he slowed coming off the Old Fort exit. His body missed drugs, but his soul was greedy for the coherence of sobriety. The tightly-wound daftness of physical withdrawal would pass. Too bad. The heightened lucidity was really helping make his priorities clear.

  Sykes Range was a dues-paying club located a few miles from a church-and-crossroads community north of Old Fort, ten winding miles down the mountain from Gleason. It consisted of a small cabin attached to a fifty-foot indoor pistol range. The range only permitted members to use the indoor facility. Outside, they’d removed a wide swath of trees from the mountain approach. Rough-sawn posts and fence rails were spaced fifty, one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred yards away. Each splintered and riddled with holes.

  Locals used the outdoor range as they pleased, usually sighting in their rifles before each buck season. Cory had visited the range several times the year he graduated high school, and had a sense for its pace. With almost a month before regular deer season, he was unlikely to encounter other shooters.

  But he had to be prudent. He motored over the gravel driveway and rehearsed the vernacular that would prevent him from arousing suspicion. “Coming in a little high last season. Thought I’d bring it in. What you shooting?”