My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  The fellow on the left is hid but the one on the right is in the open. I throw elbow and ass left and grab a new sight picture. He skirts toward a tree. I lead him a couple inches and fire. The bullet catches his shoulder and he spins. I cycle another and pull the stock tight to my shoulder. The third man fires and the bullet zips by so close I want to comb my hair with the new part. I fire at the second man again and he goes down.

  Dust falls like snow. I look up where the bullet hit and dirt falls in my eye. The more I blink the scratchier it gets. I wriggle back from the entrance and rub the heel of my hand to my eye. Grind a bit and the water cleans it out. I look deeper in the cave. They’s a dark line on the cave floor where Stinky Joe squirted piss. He’s in back trying to nose into my sleeping bag.

  Now I got the exact situation I didn’t want. I got a man out front liable to see me before I see him. I got a tangent—I know which direction to look, but if I do it’s with the knowledge he might drill a bullet in my head.

  I wriggle to the back of the cave. Stinky Joe shakes. I scratch his head and it’s like giving him permission to come apart. He shivers deep and pisses all over my sleeping bag. He’s forgot how to use his words.

  “This’ll be over in two minutes, Stinky Joe.”

  He nods but he can’t hold my eye.

  I pull Smith and check the cylinder. Full. I draw back the hammer. In my left hand is the rifle. I cock it too. I stand, then squat to test my knees. I twist a couple times and rotate my shoulders. All right—I’m loose by God here goes.

  I run.

  Just before the cave entrance I fire the rifle. I’m in the light. I hope it made him duck. I point the Smith on the tangent I remember and pull the trigger. Glimpse a man huddled behind a fallen log. I dive to the fire circle and claw behind the sitting boulder. A bullet zings off the rock and a fragment stings my leg.

  That log he’s behind is rotted pine. Hell, bears’ve clawed it for grubs. Still behind the boulder, I get on my knees and rest the rifle easy over the top. I pop up my head for a quick look. He’s hid. I holster Smith and take up the rifle. Sight on the dead log where I think he is, and fire. I cycle another and fire again at the same spot. I do it again and again and again. Each shot blasts out a bit more log. Finally I’m out of bullets and I can see a hole through the log. It only took twenty seconds. I hope he was dumb enough to stay put.

  I leave the rifle and draw Smith and start walking. Got a two-handed grip and the hammer’s back. I got five more bullets to end this mess, then I’ll have to reload. I stop and listen. The forest is quiet. Hair stands on the back of my neck. It ain’t the electric; my hair stands because these woods is filled with dead mean. We’s all dead, one way or the other. I come to the log and let Smith lead over the top.

  I got him.

  The last man dies with no dignity at all, hid behind a rotted log. He’s one of Stipe’s lugnuts all right. I got lucky and blasted out half his neck. Blood everydamnwhere. He’s still got the rifle grip in his hand.

  I leave him and find the next body—the first fellow I shot. He fell back with his legs crumpled beneath him. Whether he’s in heaven or hell, it can’t be comfortable.

  The final body belongs to the man I winged then shot a second time. His face snarls. His eyes stare. His arms and legs is straight and stiff and all I’d have to do is tie him to a tree and I’d be in dreamland.

  Never been exactly spiritual, but I can’t shake that dream. All them bodies. Woods that looked like this or any other. I’m wide awake and feel like I’m still asleep. And just like in a dream where sometimes you know the real horror’s about to start, and you can’t wake, you can’t move, you can’t scream for help—you just lay paralyzed seeing red eyes and feeling the juice—that’s here and now. The horror’s around the bend.

  Chapter Forty Three

  Dark comes on the woods quick. Even under the big silver moon, distance vanishes and things up close get gray. The night goes from warm to cold. My fingers feel it first. I turtle my hands inside my sleeves.

  I parked the truck deep off a side trail on the logging road leads to Stipe’s fight circle. Got all my likker up close.

  A hundred yards off, men stand wood shipping pallets on edge and pound metal stakes in the ground to hold ’em—they’s the six-foot jobs used to string barbed wire. They’ve moved the fight circle left twenty feet. Must be the stink of rotted blood and gut grime gets on they nerves.

  Man carries a stepladder inside the circle and hangs a wire jig on a limb. Fetches an orange-glowing lantern and suspends it, then several more. My stomach growls and I ease my flask north about eighteen inches, take a gurgle. I’ve carted five jugs, trusting the men won’t notice the likker’s discoloration. Not in the lanterns’ half-light, anyway.

  I study them jugs and think how Fred’s eyes looked the night I found him.

  Headlights cut through the woods, pointed my way. Evening’s thick enough they can’t see me, but I shrink anyway. This situation has me feeling I got to lay low, and I don’t like it a damn bit. Like I’m wrong exacting revenge on Fred’s behalf.

  Accourse, it’s no good introducing logic in the middle of a tactical situation. I got to keep my bearings. Keep the dreamland at bay.

  A line of headlights arrives through the dusk. That’ll be Stipe and his perverts. One by one they turn off they headlights and crawl past me in the twilight. The hatred fills me. These boys watched Fred get rent. Ahead is a small meadow where a giant hemlock fell and left a hole clear to the sky. Moonlight pours in and the trucks drive through it. Red, brown, brown, gray, white…

  Tailgate is light on the left and a little darker on the right.

  Something smoldering in my belly goes aflame.

  That’s him… that’s Cory. That’s the very pickup that hauled Fred to this fight circle and then hauled him out. I draw Smith. Aim on the back window, left side. I pressure the play out the trigger. I grit my teeth and see Fred with that bullet hole in his eye under a haze of black flies. But I ease on the trigger and holster Smith.

  I picked a better way to end all this.

  Man backs a truck close the circle, drops the tailgate and lands a jug on it. ’Nother fellow stands two sawhorses off the side with a sheet of plywood as a table. More jugs. Moths flap at the lanterns and bats chase em.

  I creep closer.

  Men drink and laugh. Larry’s in the group with Pete Bleau.

  Larry. I’m about to kill flesh-and-blood Larry. The one who give me the electric curse, the one who stole Ruth, and more than that, stole Mae. Made Ruth lie. And after all these years killed her.

  I recognize the other faces but don’t see Cory Smylie. I count twelve fellas and eight trucks. Maybe a couple brothers, a couple father-son, pass-the-sport-through-the-generations kind of instruction. Another reason to nip this shit right here. Man grabs a jug, wipes the mouth with his sleeve and drinks. But any man so uptight he got to wipe the mouth on a jug of shine—he ain’t drunk enough.

  A shadow crosses front of the moon and things go deep gray except over the fight circle, lit in lanterns.

  Larry walks to a truck and opens the driver-side door, leans deep inside. He comes out with a fifth of store-bought likker and the cloud that crossed the moon cuts it loose. Everything’s silver again—like the night I found Fred—and that truck, the tailgate cuts a glow on the left side. He’s in Cory’s truck—but Cory ain’t here.

  Unless—

  I slink as close as I can get without entering the lantern light. I crouch and study with eyes that don’t believe a damn word the picture says.

  That’s Larry’s F-150.

  Larry stole Fred.

  I fall back on my ass and snap a twig.

  No one minds me. They all drink. Every last one finds likker and gulps. Whoops and war cries cut through the woods and I speculate every animal around’s already bugged out, save the ones in crates got no choice.

  It was Larry. I can’t quite ken it.

  A pair of men don’t seem so
thirsty as the rest; don’t tip the jug quite so far, or so long. They walk straight, no swagger. Got the faintest smidge of red I ever saw, like a star that disappears the longer you look.

  The two circulate. One slaps a regular’s back and carries on like they’s deep buddies. Conversation ends and the other turns away, and the two red-eyes share a sober look like actors out of character.

  These the two I saw in town, and again driving away.

  I watch it all and struggle to get my mind around the fact Larry stole Fred.

  Stipe finds the center of the group and looks about. He’s slow to talk. A man stands beside him jawin and Stipe keeps his eyes to the trees beyond the men. He turns like he knows something’s always behind him.

  Two jugs of special likker in each hand, one in my elbow crook, I sneak closer, staying low and hid. Stipe raises his arm toward the two that’s separate, and they nod. The revelers whoop. These boys come from someplace else, but this’s my show and I’m vouching for ’em—that’s what Stipe says.

  I keep my eyes on the likker jugs they got everywhere. Larry’s hitting it hard.

  Scanning faces one more time, they’s another one missing. No Sheriff Smylie.

  I move closer.

  “Let’s get this shit rolling,” Stipe says. “First off is Norm and Jeb. You boys gotcher dogs ready? Bring em out.”

  Men move. They avoid the side of the woods where previous fights was and cluster mostly on the other, with the trucks and the sawhorse table. I got vantage without getting up a tree. They’s already acting drunk, talking shit and back-slapping.

  The men hush. Jeb leads his animal with a stick leash into the pit. Every man with money’s already looked over the dogs but now they lean in close and study dog lines like they’s chicken guts on a plate, tell which animal gets his ass licked.

  I carry my five jugs. Sneak while I’m in the dark, and closer I get, straighter I stand. I expect every second some lugnut’s gonna club me with a ball bat, but something mystical’s going on. Stipe’s surely got security, but it ain’t just me here alone. I know it.

  The men stare at the dogs in the circle and shout at first blood. I ease beside Pastor Jenkins. I land four jugs on the sawhorse table. Move the fifth to my hand. Jenkins eyes the jugs like they’s naked titties. Finally he looks away.

  “Never figured why you come here,” Pastor Jenkins says.

  “That’s a question I’d never guess from you.”

  “Rough men need a rough sport. And the Lord says to go to the sinners.”

  “Well, Pastor, you’re damn sure with us.”

  Jenkins frowns, looks into the crowd. Behind and between men, the silhouette of a fighting dog jumps. Jenkins glances at the jugs. “Stipe got you on likker duty, I see.”

  “Yeah. Get a load of the spirit.”

  Jenkins’s eyes expand like he just realized it’s me he’s talking to. He opens his mouth like to shout a warning—but he stops. Lost his will, maybe. Gets all bug-eyed looking at me, and I unscrew the cap on each my four jugs. Pastor moves his hands to his mouth and his eyes is full of alarm. I grab the jug was on the table before I come, and stow it under the platform. Tip it over with my boot.

  Larry ain’t three feet away, but he ain’t seen me. He’s got the focus only comes with a good drunk; his eyes bulge and his face is drum skin tight. Ready to shout encouragement to a slave canine gladiator. Least he don’t pay me no mind.

  Stipes’s got tunnel vision. His brow is furrowed and he looks past me to the trees like he saw the same dream as me. He’s lost among corpses and smells and the cold. I’m here but the professed man of God is the only one who can see me. And the Lord’s sealed his lips.

  I keep my hat low and my mouth zipped. Though everything tells me to turn tail, I stay and imagine all them bodies suspended from trees by they spines, and everything’s silent. I see each of these men, the gay face that he wears right now froze into his squawking, silent death mask as he dangles from gray tree limbs.

  I understand it all. I’m the instrument. These boys made a bigger enemy than old Baer Creighton. I could gather my jugs and run and they’d still manage to drink em down. Nothing in the world could stop these men from the end they got coming.

  I step back. Too spooky; too many things coming together and I don’t have my wits. I’ll wait in the trees—

  “Hey!”

  It’s Larry. He steps closer but no one pays him any mind.

  “You never learn,” he says.

  “Hey, asshole.” I look him over and he’s never looked worse. Got the rings under his eyes that come from distress, nights drinking booze and days of cigarettes and coffee. Slumped like he worked a sixteen-hour shift shoveling shit out an elephant stall.

  Hate crosses behind his eyes, but no red. I don’t get electric from nobody here, but Larry’s looking like his rage’ll be enough to deal with. Least we’re at everybody’s back.

  I lift my last jug and show him.

  I glance around the men. They’s riled up watching dogs, shouting and calling names. But it’s just uncanny how nobody knows or gives a shit I’m here. I sense them two fellas I saw in town’s got something to do with it. They move like archangels, calm and all-seeing.

  Larry growls. Throws his fist.

  He’s had a couple drinks. I swing the jug and clock his temple. He follows through, off balance, and I shove him. Ride him down. I drop the jug. He’s face down on the forest floor and I jab his shoulder, his neck. That’s for Fred, you bastard. That’s for—well, let’s keep this about Fred.

  I got one of his arms pinned under my knee but his other’s free; he pushes off and topples me. I lunge back and punch his cheek and glance another off his skull. His brow’s crinkled. I’m ready to go round and round, but he’s gone from drunk crazy-mad to drunk goofy-sorry. Looks like a ten-year-old ready to cry. His arms, holding me back, go weak. I sneak another punch and his teeth cut my knuckles.

  The men shout and holler. I look but every one’s got his head turned to the dog circle, where two animals with no past and no reason to hate have at the fruit of it.

  “You stole Fred, you son of a bitch.”

  He takes another punch, no resistance. His eyes is wet.

  “You killed Ruth… ” I pull back my fist.

  “Didn’t kill Ruth.”

  His eyes is in the trees, loopy. Blood on his lips and nose, eye socket. His lungs heave.

  I pop him.

  “What?”

  He spits blood sideways. “Didn’t kill Ruth.”

  I grab his shirt with both fists. We’s eye to eye, ten inches apart. He sees I’m about to bust total apeshit—least he better see it. Ruth, alive?

  “You killed her.”

  “I should have thirty years ago, when she had your baby. That’s when I should have killed her.”

  “Where’s Ruth—you took her! Where is she?”

  “Took her to her father’s. She got a call while I was there. Home said he was dying.”

  “Neighbor said you hit her, on the lawn.”

  “She twisted her ankle. I caught her.”

  Nothing’s right in my head. Nothing makes sense. I’m stuck without words or thoughts to string together. This’s about Fred, not Ruth. Larry done some shit to her and that’s the truth, but that’s a separate matter between him and God. I got no standing.

  All these years, it’s been me that stole her first, and he got the right to steal her back if he could, and I don’t grudge him that. Now he killed her and that’s another story—or he didn’t kill her and that’s got my head mixed up—but what him and these boys did to Fred and a thousand other dogs is enough to seal they ends, far as I’m concerned. Ruth don’t have a damn thing to do with it.

  I look up and Pete Bleau gulps from a jug of wood likker.

  I blink. Time is froze. Something flip-flops in me. I’ve had enough of the killing and the dying. Already I’ve had enough. It’s the corpses in the trees. I’m weary of it.

  “No!”
/>
  I wriggle off Larry. My legs is weak and my mind’s half-blank but I dive into Pete. “Spit! Spit it out!”

  He coughs.

  “Stick your finger down your throat!”

  I put my hand in his mouth and the son of a bitch bites. I pop him quick. He stares. The likker’s hit him.

  Someone takes a jug. Another. Some other has the third. All these men is dead men and whether it’s God or me doing it I’m sick of it. Sick of Ruth and Stipe and Cory. Sick of a life seeing deceit in good and bad people alike. I got nowhere to run without seeing bodies in trees, and just like in the dream I can’t shout, I can’t move, I can’t wake.

  Don’t drink that!

  Did I even say it? “That’s poison!”

  The dogs wage battle.

  I rush to the stinking ugly ground of the former fight circle, scoop a handful of shitty bloody pissy mud, and ten steps later tackle drunk Pete Bleau, rip the jug from his lips, and smack a fistful of shit in his mouth. He twists and wrestles and I shove as much of that shit between his teeth as he’ll take.

  His eyes is in a pleasant place.

  Then Pete retches. Coughs and gags and vomit busts out. Still he smiles. I drip his bile and dead dog shit, all in a stew of cinnamon-flavored wood alcohol. Pete falls flat back and I look up and the other four jugs is each at some man’s mouth, and they’s no way I can get enough shit in these boys to make em yack up that poison.

  It’s out of my hands.

  These little fights with Larry and Pete—it’s like the other men see but don’t care, or look but don’t see. They drink from the jugs and pass them around.

  “Smooth!” one says.

  “Tastes real good. Real clean,” says another.

  “Gimme that jug.”

  The dogs fight. Grunt. Wheeze. Sounds arrive through the hoopla, but every body and thing sounds the same.

  I ain’t seen them two boys that kept themselves separate, like they’s archangels only appear when they want. Angels of death, maybe. My jugs circulate from one pair of hands to the next. A man gulps as much as he can stand and they’s another grabbing at the jug for his fill. On and on. Wood likker don’t take long, and in a handful of minutes they’s passed the jugs back and forth and all around and every man’s had enough to blind a whale or drop a horse.