My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  The bowed tree stopped its ascent and the wire ceased ripping his groin.

  Cory straightened his arm and finding it functional, slipped his hand into his pants. His balls were intact. He exhaled.

  He’d fallen into a trap, but he’d survive. He was wet and sticky and bleeding, but he hadn’t lost the family jewels. This wasn’t a disaster. He rested, gathering his thoughts. He was hurt bad. He tried to calm his racing heart. He’d think it through.

  He’d stepped into a trap. Where was the next? He glanced above and saw only tree limbs. He felt woozy. His leg was warm, and his groin, and as he rested the blood soaked into his shirt.

  He tried to drag himself forward and then rested. Where was he going?

  He would wait a moment and get his bearings. But it was growing difficult to think. As his mind succumbed to blackness, he considered the great artery in his thigh that ran close to his groin. He couldn’t remember the name.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Burly left his Suburban parked on my drive with the keys in the ignition. I grab a pair of leather gloves from the shed and plow the vehicle through a mess of briars down into the wood.

  I need supplies.

  I stuff a handful of coins in my pocket. I leave the bucket of gold in the trunk of the Nova on blocks. It don’t close, but who the hell’d look?

  I take the lantern from the still site, roll my bag and gather a few things into a duffel and bring everything to the shed.

  The lantern is empty. Mostly I burn a homemade blend of gasoline and triple-stilled shine. I land the lantern on the workbench and grab a fuel can from the dirt floor. An ax hangs on the wall. The blade gleams. A tool like that would hack a dog-fighting man into pieces so small the worms and flies wouldn’t have any work at all, just a big-assed country buffet.

  I run my fingers across the ax head’s edge and then look at that jug of special lantern fuel. The idea that’s nagged me since the night I found Fred comes back, and I got no other path.

  Reckon I walk like somebody feels guilty, continual looking back over a slumped shoulder. But they ain’t no other way when you just capped two men and know society ain’t likely to see things your way. I head for Millany’s. By the sun, I got plenty of time. I cut through the woods and avoid the road most the way. Project’ll take days, weeks maybe—but I got to start while the anger’s hot, and before the law shows up asking about that fire and finds a couple men died of bullet holes. I take the long way around each field. In town I keep to second streets.

  Millany’s door says CLOSED. I beat on it. He lives upstairs. “Come on down, you old goat.” I rap ‘til a light goes on inside the shop.

  He arrives behind the glass, shaking his head. Opens the door. “Can’t you read? I’m closed.”

  “I can read. I just got business, and since you ass rape me each time we trade, I figured you’d be game.”

  “How much business?”

  I follow him inside and drop a handful of coins on his counter. Pull two more out the bottom my pocket.

  “Nine? Shit, Baer; I don’t keep that kind of cash in here.”

  “Let’s go the bank.”

  “What the hell kind of ‘business’ you into?”

  “Guess maybe you heard they hit my still?”

  “It don’t take eight grand to build a still, Baer.”

  “No. No it don’t, at that.”

  He looks at me. “You ain’t saying any more than that, are you?”

  “Let’s go to the bank.”

  I got eight thousand, three hundred and twenty-five dollar in my pocket. I leave Millany shaking his head. Slap him on the shoulder. I got a Ted Nugent song playin’ in my mind. Don’t recall a single damn word but the guitar is like swordplay and keeps me focused.

  The sign says Big Ted Lombo’s restaurant has a brick oven. They serve pizza and red wine. Family-type folks clear out at night and the goons get together. I ain’t had pizza in a long damn time.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I want pizza. Onions and pepperoni.”

  “Small pizza?”

  “Biggest you got. Extra cheese.”

  “Eighteen bucks.”

  “Go ahead and cook one up. And I want to talk to Big Ted.”

  “What for?”

  “If telling you’d do the trick I wouldn’t ask for Big Ted.”

  The kid looks to a goon posted by an arched door. The goon nods.

  “Big Ted’s in back.”

  “Baer, how you doon?”

  “You said you got a friend up Merrimon sells cars.”

  “Yeah—I call him right now. What you looking for?”

  “Get him on the phone. You do me a favor and I won’t forget it. Tell him to bring the best three-thousand-dollar one-ton truck he’s got. Tell him to bring it to you—like it’s you that’s buying it. You do that for me, Big Ted?”

  His smile falters. One eye narrows. He chews the end of his cigar. “Yeah. Fuck yeah.” He lifts his phone and drives fat fingers to the keys.

  “Guilio, dis what I need. It’s Ted, motherfucker. Lissen…”

  Left Big Ted thirty-one C-notes, one for the favor. In an hour I’ll have a truck that runs decent. Meantime I need tools. They’s a body shop a half-mile east of town. I walk. Cheese in my belly’s like a bucket of river mud.

  Garage sits between 70 and Old Highway 70, thirty yards behind. Everything between is blacktop, and covered in beat-up Volkswagen buses abandoned after a hundred round trips to San Francisco.

  Some wrench-monkey with a pierced lip and three-tone hair looks from under the hood of a Dodge Intrepid. “Help you?”

  “I’m looking Gatchell.”

  “Who?”

  “The owner.”

  “I own this place.”

  “What happened to Gatchell?”

  “I bought it from Norton.”

  “Guess it’s been a while since I paid attention.”

  “I do good work. What are you driving?”

  “That ain’t why I’m here. I’m looking for an acetylene torch and a box of tools. Got cash right now.”

  “Yeah, well… I use what I got. Sorry, mister.”

  “You can buy new.”

  “So can you.”

  I look at him and he looks at me. “Ahggh.” Piss on him.

  “Mister?”

  I turn. “What?”

  “Why don’t you check Craigslist?”

  “Don’t know him.”

  He smiles. The fucker smiles like we’s friends. He knows me, wants to help. Dips his hands in a tub of orange lava at the sink. “I take it you’re not connected to the Internet.”

  “That’s mighty astute.”

  “Why don’t you pull the pipe wrench out of your ass? Check this out.”

  He grins. I grin. He eyes my Smith. He sure as hell whacked my buttons but I don’t got any electric or red and I kinda got a soft spot for a smartass in a grease garage. Shit if I don’t think I’m looking at an honest man. He steps into an office space, got a computer facing the door. “Come on in. Don’t mind the mess. I spend my energy fixing cars, not cleaning up.”

  I step inside. Check behind the door for the boogeyman, something.

  “See?” he says. He taps some buttons and the screen flashes a white page.

  “See what?”

  He points. “This is Craigslist. This is an ad from someone in Swannanoa with a torch for sale. That’s the picture. Two fifty, condition like new. Call the number.” He dials the phone.

  I take the receiver. “Yeah. I want that torch you got.”

  “Two fifty.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Like new.”

  “Hey, who is this?”

  “Frank.”

  “Buzzard?”

  “That’s right. Who’s this?”

  “Baer Creighton.”

  “No shit? Creighton?”

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Joe Stipe wiped sweat from his brow. He leaned on the hood of Burly W
orley’s Suburban, which had been driven into the weeds and over a steep bank. If not for the tracks through the grass the vehicle would have remained hidden.

  Close to the driver-side door a deputy held a flannel shirt to a bloodhound’s nose.

  A car door slammed. Stipe looked over the slope toward Creighton’s driveway. Chief Smylie approached from his car. He strode with a scowl on his face. Stipe spat and looked back to the dog.

  The deputy pulled away the flannel shirt and said, “Let’s go find ’im!”

  The bloodhound bounded away, baying. Stipe wiped the side of his mouth.

  Smylie stopped at the edge of the yard. “You mind telling me what the hell’s going on?”

  Stipe regarded him. “Lots going on, Horace.”

  “I come home and right off there’s a message you’ve taken over the Gleason police. I don’t appreciate that.”

  “Somebody had to get them off their asses.”

  “My deputies dream of working a big case, so there wasn’t anybody sitting on his ass.”

  “I needed a man with a dog. I got one.”

  “All right. That’s that. So what the hell is going on? What’s this?”

  “Burly’s truck.”

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe your man with the dog can show us.”

  “Since I been gone, Brown’s house burned. Creighton’s place burned. I hear Burly and Ernie Gadwal are missing. And where the hell’s Creighton?”

  Stipe pushed off from the Suburban’s hood and walked downhill in the direction of the baying dog. The deputy had already passed from view. “Come on. Let’s see about Burly first.”

  Stipe had a bad feeling. Burly wouldn’t likely drive his truck across Creighton’s yard, wreck it halfways in the woods and abandon it. Nor would a crafty bastard like Ernie go into hiding. Even if he’d screwed up, he’d be around trying to turn it into a new advantage.

  And Creighton—he’d never gotten around to declaring war like he promised, but this looked like it might be a beginning.

  Stipe weighed the possibilities. If all three were dead, a host of problems would disappear, and the less he told Smylie the better. Men settle scores all the time. Things tie up neat. But if there were any loose strings, if any of the three was unaccounted for, Stipe would have to manage the situation. It wouldn’t do to have investigators outside his influence digging into who had threatened to have someone killed in front of a dozen men. Nor would it do to have a chickenshit police chief concluding he knew enough to bend Stipe to his chickenshit will.

  The situation was on the verge of becoming tenuous.

  The easiest way to keep the problem local was to account for each man quickly and ensure that only men within Stipe’s sphere knew anything at all.

  Stipe heard Smylie’s feet strike dry leaves behind him.

  “What’s going on with the Brown place? You part of that?”

  Stipe turned. “How the hell can a man be part of a lightning strike?”

  “We haven’t had a storm in a month. What about Creighton? Kind of funny, him not being around.”

  “How’s it funny?”

  “Makes a man—an officer of the law—wonder.”

  Stipe stopped walking and faced Smylie. “Since when do you give a shit about Creighton? Or anything else until I tell you to give a shit about it?”

  Smylie was silent.

  The hound stopped baying and a shout carried through the forest. Stipe headed for the sound. The up-and-down slippery terrain taxed his lungs. After a few dozen yards Stipe braced his palm to a tree and stooped while his lungs heaved. Smylie went ahead. When Stipe’s strength returned he started off again. Minutes later he reached the deputy, Smylie, and the bloodhound.

  At their feet were two bodies. Only two.

  No one spoke. The cause of death was apparent. Blood had solidified and the afternoon sun had brought out black flies. The two men’s tangled legs looked like the supports of a collapsed building.

  Neither man was armed.

  Stipe shook his head. Burly had been a decent man. Followed orders. In the short time he’d been in Stipe’s employ he’d demonstrated loyalty. He’d had a lot of potential uses. Ernie—he hadn’t been trustworthy at all, but he’d had his uses too. Stipe felt robbed.

  The deputy glanced at Smylie, then fixed on Stipe. “Who do you suppose did it?”

  “I’d bet it’s the man who’s missing and we ain’t found a body for. Just my two cents.”

  Smylie nodded. “That’s right. Creighton.”

  Stipe squatted beside the hound. His knees dropped to the leaves and he scratched between the dog’s ears. “You ready to work? I got a big-ass job for you.”

  The dog wagged his tail.

  Stipe said, “Travis, I want you to head over to that tarp by the busted-up still we passed, back by the house. Get this hound after Creighton and don’t stop ‘til you have a prisoner or a body. I’d prefer the latter.”

  Travis glanced at Smylie as he turned to comply. Smylie shook his head. “Hold on a minute.”

  Travis bent to the hound and leashed him. He looked again to Stipe and was waved away.

  “Walk with me a minute, Horace.” Stipe rocked to his feet, took a half-minute extending his knees. “You and me need to come to an understanding.”

  “You’re damn right we do. You can’t—”

  “I’ve never gotten on with men who tell me what I can’t do. Keep your mouth closed for the next two minutes while I set the table. I got your balls in a vise, and I’m going to squeeze ‘til they pop or you tell me what I need to hear.”

  “How you figure?”

  “This is about that stupid-assed boy of yours.”

  “What’s he got to do with Creighton, or any of this?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing. But there’s a heap you don’t know about what he is involved with that I’m sure you don’t want making its way to various law enforcement organizations. We’re talking Feds. DEA. FBI. He’s earned ten years in prison just with what I know right now. I ain’t even dug. Yet.”

  Smylie was silent.

  “All that comes out, I don’t see how you keep your job enforcing Gleason’s laws. Not when you can’t run your own damn house.”

  “He’s lazy is all. He’s at school right now.”

  “My money’s on him being in Baltimore the same time as you, right under your nose, picking up a truckload of dope.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “After the DEA shoves a microscope up your ass, we’ll talk about what I know and don’t know.”

  “You’re the one got him into all that.”

  Stipe lurched into Smylie, grabbed his shoulders, shoved him against a hemlock. “I tried to talk him out of it. I busted him over the head with a two-by-four to get his attention. You know what else he did while you was gone? Kidnapped his kids with a gun! Father needs a gun to get his kids, he ain’t a father. You ought to be quiet as a church mouse and instead you run your mouth like you got an opinion means something. Shut the fuck up and think for ten seconds. I get what I want or you and your high self-esteem family goes straight the fuck down.”

  The police chief drew his hands into fists. He glared. Stepped back from Stipe and wiped spittle from his cheek. “All right. What you after?”

  Stipe lifted his arm, closed with Smylie and draped his arm across his shoulder. “I’m glad you come around. We work this together, we both come out smelling like a rose. Now, you’re in charge of your operation. Not me. You’ll have to call me with updates so our men don’t overlap and waste effort. And I want you to handle this in-house. Deploy every man on tracking Baer Creighton, and when you find him, you turn him over to me.”

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  It’s darker’n shit. Guess it’s late enough to head out.

  I let the fire die to a wick of orange and sit on a big rock don’t get warm no matter how long my ass incubates it. Cave at my back, I look downslope. Nothing sou
nds right but it’s my first night here in thirty year. I been seeing ravens in the trees, shadows moving about like werewolves. Ghosts in my head, already. Burly and his taco dog friend. I think on Fred being dead, and Ruth most likely dead too. I think on Larry and Stipe, and Cory Smylie.

  This is my new homestead, time being. Got a bucket of gold in the back of the cave, in a little hole off the side. Cleaned away all them bones and rotted blankets. Made a bed of spruce for shits and giggles.

  But I ain’t shit or giggled.

  I don’t like being in a cave. Plug one hole, you got yourself a grave.

  I camped here for weeks with Gunter Stroh back after I quit life insurance. He let me have the front of the cave where it was cold and he slept in back. Told me about a situation called the Weimar Republic—then he was a Nazi, then he was a new socialist, then he jumped a ship and came here and was an old man just wanted left alone. All he knew was the work he did in the Kraut army. He had a knack for chemistry.

  He worked hard and built a reputation as the finest stiller in the state, and I come along right when he was afraid all his ways would die with him. I didn’t tell nobody but word got out after Gunter died. People said my shine was like his. Wasn’t long ‘til I couldn’t make enough.

  Gunter liked to sit nights and sip from different jugs and comment on what made each distinct. Some you could taste dirt, if you tried. Apples bought from Brown was growed out of red dirt, and tasted like iron, whereas you buy from down Henderson you’re liable to get wine so clayed up you got to chew it.

  He was old as Lincoln’s grandmum and walked with a hickory stick, and his joints give him trouble ‘til he likkered em up. Sometimes he lost track of years. Right before the end he’d ramble about the art of stillin and call me Heinrich. I’d know he was seeing his earliest days. He talked about how to shave the wood and cook it, and bust out them chemicals with acid. Then he’d kind of wake up and his eyes narrowed like he come out of a dream and didn’t know what he’d said. That was right before the end.

  Truck’s parked a half-mile off—I followed a log road ‘til it give out. Ain’t no particular trail leads there. I get turned around and got to reorient by the stars and a crick that winds back and forth, more confused than I am.