My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Finally I’m sitting in the seat of a 1998 F-150 that stinks like they emptied a bottle of new smell on the seats. I twist the ignition and sit with the lights off. Swing through a few radio stations. Listen to the jabbermouths yammer about some war or other and turn the thing off.

  I surely wish I’d turned around this truck in the daylight.

  I get out and scout behind me. Rocks and logs and trees. But down a ways is a space between the hemlock. Back inside I put her in reverse. Tranny grinds like somebody pitched a chunk of metal inside a turbine. I jiggle the shifter and she seats.

  Back, back. Swing her around. Do-si-do.

  I stumbled on an odd place years back. Take North Fork Road and eventually a turnoff leads to a thirty-acre stretch of strip-mined land where they backfilled the deep dirt over the topsoil. Nothing grows but clumps of switchgrass. Place is always barren and cold, and corroded chunks of industrial metal litter the ground like flint arrowheads.

  They left behind a bulldozer, more rust than paint. An International, built in the sixties I reckon. Got a radiator sits up front and a fuel tank behind the seat. I got a box of tools and a torch wants to take em home.

  These bolts take more WD-40 than I take likker. I bust the rusted sons a bitches and pull out the fuel tank. It’ll hold maybe thirty gallon. I sever the fuel line and sit the tank in the truck. Got me a boiler.

  Now for the work.

  Hood comes off with just a little elbow grease, but it only covers the top, not the sides or the front. Sides is bolted on with lumps of rust fused to the frame. I chisel em off. Radiator mounts is fixed with half-inch bolts set back in under where I can’t get a hammer, and while I study the radiator I see this won’t work at all. Maybe if I was making elderberry brandy—but my condenser’ll have to pull the weight. Man makes this kind of likker, he’s got to coax every last drop. This radiator’s all gummed up. I’d need ten feet of tube out the backside just to catch what steam the radiator let pass. Don’t know what I was thinking.

  But I got the cooker.

  Odds of Stipe appreciating me poking around his garage at two in the morning is nil. But when I shot that Achilles dog I saw he had a row of oil drums lined on the garage back wall, and since he called the law and they filled my mash barrels with holes, he owes me.

  I kill the headlights and drive within two hundred yard. Stipe’s put up a chain-link fence. I get out and look along the line and see nobody. I figured Stipe would have added security, but this is just a fence. Whole joint’s closed up, lights off. Only sound comes from nothing at all.

  In the truck I head for the gate. It’s got a padlock. I happen to have a torch.

  In five minute I drive in easy like I’m supposed to be here. Head around back. The dog crates is maybe thirty yards off, and I imagine they’s some noses pressed agin the link fence right now. I tap three fifty-five-gallon oil barrels before I find one empty. I hoist it to the truck bed and test the rest. The last in the row is mostly empty. I spill the gritty oil on the dirt and chuck the barrel to the bed of my truck. Two’ll do the job.

  I’m driving out and the front porch light goes on at the house.

  By the time I get them barrels and the dozer fuel tank to the cave, it’s light. I head back out.

  I could find all the copper I want at Maple’s Hardware in Gleason, but by now Maple knows my still’s been hit and I don’t want to answer questions. So I take 70 to Asheville and swing into the Home Depot. It’s a big box, maybe two hundred thousand square mile. Need a helicopter to get from the lumber to the cinder blocks. Contractors everywhere look as haggard as me. I walk the edge of the aisles ‘til I find plumbing.

  I take two packs of fifty-foot copper coils inside a cardboard box. Grab a couple sleeves, solder, flux, a brush. A handful of connecting fixtures and a bunch of associated plumbing shit. I don’t want to come back.

  I take two five-gallon metal buckets, empty, and one five-gallon bucket of acetone, full. I spot six-quart packs of battery acid. I’ll need ten.

  Wait. These fuckers don’t got lye.

  I pick up thirty pound total from three grocers, and a heavy scrub brush and a straw broom at the last.

  Cashier lady handles the lye and looks funny.

  “Soap,” I say. “Don’t have time to strain my ash box.”

  Lady nods with all the polite she can muster, which ain’t much.

  I drive back to the trail that gets me close to the cave. It takes four trips, filling the duffel with as much as my back can handle. I stow supplies in the cave, acid and lye far apart, and head back down the hill.

  I drive out to Stu Caldwell’s cabinet shop. “Need a truckload of pine sawdust.”

  “Pine?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t keep pine sawdust.”

  “What if we just took a couple boards and run em through your planer there, and I took all the shavings out that cyclone?”

  He looks at the planer, a twenty-inch Delta from maybe 1950. His eyes follow the four-inch vacuum duct to the ceiling and over to the double cyclone, a vacuum that sucks like ten million hookers workin one knob.

  “That’s a little strange, Baer.”

  “What?”

  “What you want with all that sawdust?”

  He can’t see my red. I lie. “Planting tomatoes come spring. Want to get that pH down. You know.”

  “Uh-huh. A truckload.”

  “Well, I bet you heard they busted my still?”

  He nods. Getting right wary.

  “I’m going straight. They’s nothing so tasty as a tomato; figure I’ll plant a couple acre.”

  “Tomato… wine?”

  I grin.

  “Can’t you just take the sawdust I already got?”

  “What is it?”

  “White oak.”

  “Nah, nah. That’d never do. See, I don’t want them ’maters smelling like cat piss.”

  “Well shit, Baer. I’m in the middle of a job here. I can’t just buzz a truckload of pine into sawdust, for chrissakes.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “And then I got all this downtime. Why don’t you pick up a planer at the Home Depot?”

  Now I got a truckload of pine boards, a planer, a shovel, an electric generator, and a ten-gallon can of gasoline. All from the Home Depot. I haul em up to the cave and take a bite out a cold hamburger. I bought a bag of twenty Whoppers to hold me a couple day, but I don’t think I’ll eat more’n one. Not while all these trees got such tasty bark.

  Takes an hour with the acetone and scrub brush to get the drums clean and rolled back up the hill from the crick. Another hour to cut a hole in the bottom side of each, and mount a mesh cone inside, and a water spigot on the outside.

  I dig a hole, top off the generator, and rest it inside. Stretch a tarp across the ground and sit the planer on a corner. Start the generator, plug in the planer, and pass through boards, taking a sixteenth off each pass.

  Them shavings look like snow, then drifts. Pine smells like Ma just mopped the floor.

  By and by the planer gets hot and I shut it down. While it cools, I build two platforms out of flat rocks from the crick bed twenty feet downhill. Shaped like circles with a gap in the front. Time I get them rocks arranged and the gaps packed with mud, the planer’s cool. I sit a fifty-fiver on each foundation, then gather all them shavings from the tarp, and fill the first fifty-five gallon drum. Start buzzing boards again.

  I fill the second drum and it’s dusk. I’m hungry enough to scrape bug shit off a window, and after a bite of cold Whopper I chuck the burger and the bag with eighteen more. I surely miss my old still site and wholesome food like cabbage. But this setup ain’t permanent. I don’t see this operation taking more’n a week.

  I fill each barrel with crick water and eighteen quarts of battery acid. Mix that shit up good. Cover the barrels with strips of board too thin to run through the planer, and build a small fire inside the cave near my sleep sack. Pile a few logs nearby and settle in the b
ag. Bones pop as my back settles. I’m just about wiped out, but I never felt more purpose.

  Stipe’s right on the edge and I’m six inches farther out. That’s what I think, heading into sleep. I’m six inches off the cliff.

  What the hell…

  Big old wet nose on my face, sniffing, grunting.

  Fred?

  He whines…

  Fred!

  I try and throw my arms around him and the sleeping bag holds me back. I unzip it from inside and Fred licks my face and eyes and I kiss him back, but he moves too fast to plant one firm. My lips hit his teeth.

  “C’mere, you game son of a bitch!”

  I get my arms out. The fire’s dead and all the woods is silent beneath the husky sound of Fred slopping up my hair, the nylon bag zooshing with each motion. I throw a hug across his chest and pull him easy, and nuzzle into his neck.

  “I love ya, Fred, God I love ya!”

  He says I love you too, but I ain’t Fred.

  “Huh?” I mash the grime out of my eyes and adjust to the morning light. “Stinky Joe?”

  It’s the dog that jumped the fight circle that night and dashed off into the woods. He wags his tail, and that shakes his ass, and that shakes his whole body.

  “I thought you was Fred.”

  Stinky Joe grins. It’s all good, he says. Fuck it.

  “You hungry? You had any food to eat?”

  He mumbles something.

  It’s cold enough for frost and in my skivvies I’m a garden of goose pimples. I grab an eighteen pack of eggs. Dump a couple cups of dog chow in Fred’s bowl—I took it because I’m a sentimental fool—and crack four eggs. Since it’s getting cold out I got a block of New York extra sharp in the bag; I crumble some on top.

  “You want a soda, something?”

  Stinky Joe’s got his head canted like he’s looking past me. I look out the cave entrance. Grab Smith in one hand and carry Fred’s chow bowl in the other. Damned if my feet ain’t a couple of ice blocks. I look out on the hillside and nary a thing moves. But they’s about fifteen shredded Whopper wrappers spread all downhill.

  “I’m glad you liked em.” I head back and crawl in the bag for some heat. “C’mere.” I reach to Fred’s chow bowl and rest it on the dirt beside my bag. Stinky Joe dives in and finishes in three mouthfuls.

  I sit up and Stinky Joe wiggles close, head low and ass high, like a pup knows I’m the rootinest tootinest dog on the porch. I grab him tight and drag him onto my sleeping bag, and he settles with his head on my lap. I’m ’bout to freeze. I pull the tail end of the bag over my shoulder like a toga, and we sit and talk like old friends.

  “Where you been?”

  Out in the woods. Nosed my way to a place seemed safe, from the sound and smell of it. Didn’t have shit to eat—and I woulda. Then Stinky Joe says, You don’t seem too chipper.

  “Well, that’s on account of Ruth.”

  Ruth?

  “She’s dead. Larry killed her.”

  Stinky Joe pauses, deep in thought. Larry. Well I don’t know Ruth but it don’t surprise me hearing Larry done her, the way him and his boys done me. I thought he was up to no good.

  “Why didn’t you find me at the camp and tell me? Maybe I coulda saved her.”

  I thought on that, but you scared me good. You was drunk.

  “Well, shit. Hey, listen… my nuts is about to freeze and bust into little pieces. Lemme bring you a blanket over, and once I get inside this bag we can keep talking.”

  Sounds good, Stinky Joe says. He looks ready to shake apart if he don’t get loved on.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  I lift a half-sheet of plywood from the first mash drum and stand back from a noxious blast. I look back at Stinky Joe. It’s been two day slow cooking in chemicals on top a bed of coals. All that’s left is to enjoy the mundane work of vengeance.

  Insects that got inside float on top. I dip a stripped oak pole through the foam, into disintegrated pine fibers. I dump in a plastic container of lye. Stir with the oak pole.

  The brew fizzes and froths. More acid yet. The reaction eases and I empty another container. I add lye until finally the fizzing ceases.

  I look around the ground. Glance at Stinky Joe.

  I dip my finger into the mash. Swirl it around and realize either the acid or the lye could’ve burned off my finger—but they’s balanced.

  “That’s lucky.”

  Heading up to the cave, I wipe my finger on my pants. I grab a saucepan, clean it in the creek, and ladle a few inches of mash. I crumble yeast into the pan, stir it with a stick. Watch. The familiar smell rises, and a layer of bubbles foams at the top. I’ll give it a few minutes. Meantime I neutralize the second barrel.

  I recheck the yeast—still alive, still foaming. Working hard. I dump the mix into the first barrel, add five pounds of yeast, and then test the second.

  I convert the old International crawler’s fuel tank into a boiler and situate it down by the creek. With the torch I fashion a doubler from the acetone can I emptied cleaning the fifty-five gallon drums. Rig a five-gallon bucket under a two-foot waterfall in the crick and run the copper coil through the bucket. Tube sticks out halfway down the bucket, goes two feet to a flat rock, and that’s where I’ll have a jug waiting.

  Then I twiddle my thumbs and wait on the mash to ferment. Day after day.

  Each night I carry a ragged washcloth to the stream and use a small pool like a sink. The rough cloth feels good. In spite of the cold I wash—sometimes so hard it’s like I want to scrub off my whole life and send it floating downstream. Then I take what’s left of me and step into fresh clothes. I linger at the stream before heading back to the cave, and then sit by the fire ‘til it wanes. I listen to the trees. Pet Stinky Joe. Rub sleep from my eyes. All the while thinking they’s no way to wash away what I am, what I done, what I’m about to do.

  I stay awake late because each night I dream of corpses in trees. Each night I travel deeper on the trail. Close in on morbid terrain. Look in on death.

  But each morning when the sun comes up I keep on.

  I drop a cinnamon curl to the bottom of each gallon jug. It’ll work like the worm at the bottom of a fifth of mescal—give the fuckers a goal.

  First run, I put a five-gallon bucket at the copper’s output end. The sqeezins will come out low-alcohol, and it won’t be until I run them through a few times, even with the doubler, that they get any potency. I put two more buckets beside it.

  I hold another bucket at the spigot on the first fifty-fiver, twist the knob and frothy, rank mash rushes out. I pour the mash into the boiler, back and forth until the boiler’s three-quarter full. Can’t touch the mash. Shit gets in through the skin, too.

  “What you think of that, Stinky Joe?”

  Stinky Joe’s mum.

  I sit on a log and gaze into the night sky. Prop my chin on my hands, elbows on my knees, and close my eyes. Burning logs pop. Steam spits through the tubes. The crick gurgles. The never-ending rumble of near-boiling mash—them sounds encourage thoughts that skirt agin the bare edge of divine justice. In a tooth-for-a-tooth way.

  The first condensate spurts from the copper. I rock to my feet and kneel at the bucket. Dangerous to be so close… can’t touch the shit directly. But I can’t resist dipping my nose and whiffing the piney product. Smells like Ajax.

  I’ll tell em it’s gin.

  Chapter Forty

  I don’t believe it, but Stinky Joe snores like Fred. Wakes me out of a godawful dream.

  I sleep again and wake to Stinky Joe nosing around his bowl. It’s dark out the cave front without a hint of gray. I fix some Alpo, eggs and cheddar. Before I sleep Stinky Joe comes back and licks my face, and that Alpo don’t smell bad with cheese. I didn’t eat last night, and without my usual likker treatment my stomach feels like an empty swimming pool somebody tossed an apple core in, and that was supposed to fill it. Come dawn I’ll eat everything cached in the cave, and then hit the ABC for some store-bought lik
ker. Yessir.

  Can’t sleep now Stinky Joe’s got me woke. Today’s the day I been waiting.

  I lay thinking all kind of thoughts. Missing Ruth, thinking it’d be all right if I woke to her licking my face like Stinky Joe.

  I lay in the sack ‘til dawn turns the black woods gray. Climb out the bag, don my clothes. Grab crackers, apple, cheese, take my thirty-thirty and slip into the woods. They’s a thicket grows down by the crick. I sit under a low-hanging hemlock and watch the sun turn everything into color.

  That’d be something to wake to. Maybe not Ruth slobbering like Stinky Joe, but a nibble’d be nice. A soft sound with a powder smell. Don’t take long ‘til a doe comes along with her nose close to the ground. She stops—got my scent—and does this up and down thing with her head. She knows I’m here and her heart’s got to be pounding. She steps forward and swings her head like to catch me in a false move.

  I’m still.

  I watch and she’s beautiful. Liquid lines, and I can almost see lashes and mascara. Her ears flick. She leaps, stops.

  I shift my weight ever so slight; get the posture; slip off the safety.

  She steps away and I ease up the thirty-thirty. Line the sights on the back her head. She won’t feel nothing.

  Her ears twitch. Her tail’s high—she’s a little puckered, a little tense.

  I keep the rifle trained though my hands tremble and the cold air blurs my eyes. A cool trickle spills down my cheek, one then the other, and the tremor in my hands moves to my arms. She’s got one hell of an innocent position in the grand scheme. One day not long ago she was a fawn with spots, and just kind of growed into a world where armed shitheads like me hide in trees.

  I think on Fred, lying there with a hole in his scabbed eye socket, and I close my eyes and can’t breathe for the hate and pain. The best deer’s got no personality compared to the worst dog. It ought to be easy. I blink five six times and half-hope she’ll see, but the doe is motionless. I slide my finger up and down the trigger. Death, in such a small act.