The dogs in the fight circle pull from each other and watch outside the pallets. One sits on his haunches and the other sniffs along the bottom the wood. Some kind of mystification going on, and the dogs ken it. They’s stuck like me, outside the deluded group and not making any sense of it.
Off to the edge, the pastor’s doubled over, yacking up his guts beside a tree trunk. “Woohoo,” he says, and splashes his boots.
A man drops not five feet from me. Don’t recognize the back of his head.
Pete Bleau walks with his arms stretched in front and his grin creeps closer and closer to fear. Men wander into the woods. Most groups, every man’s aware of the others, and if you watch, they all sway together. One gets closer, the other backs; the whole group breathes together. But now they’s each alone and separate. They’s no coordination between them. Each man’s stoned in his own world. Lost.
Stipe falls square on his ass. Looks like a mule right after a two-by-four got his attention. He faces me and his bony brow wrinkles like it takes all the concentration he got, but he sees me and knows all this means I tossed him over the ledge. I went one farther. They’s no such thing as impunity, and he just drank justice. “You!” he says.
“Me.”
He smiles at me then his brow contorts. Eyes go buggy.
“I cain’t see!” Stipe yells. Got a hand raised in the air like some church lady filled with the Ghost. “I’m blind! Cain’t see!”
Even as he says it, all four jugs is upended and dumping poison into one man or another. One of them jugs gurgles into Larry’s piehole. Adam’s apple bobbing like it’s Halloween.
“Blind!” Stipe yells, then laughs. “Shit? This for real?”
A man lowers the jug from his mouth and says, “Open your eyes.”
“Fuck.”
He folds over.
Pete Bleau’s legs rabbit-shudder. His face twitches. Eyes on nothing.
The dogs peer through the gaps. I keep my eyes on them. Rest of this makes me sick.
These men thought mercy was dropping a half-mauled dog in a field. How many other dog bones is spread through these woods? How many of these men go home and beat they women, poke they kids? This whole clique’s a bunch of evil-ass heathen and if they got to die so be it, but I’ll watch something else.
They hack. Cough.
Wail.
“Oh, Lord!” Pastor Jenkins says. “Lord have mercy!”
I look to the sky for the Lord.
Then I look back at Stipe. He’s on his side, throwing up. Each burst weaker than the last, each grunt more pathetic. Clawing the ground and kicking back and forth with his feet in smaller and smaller arcs. He moans and whimpers and I bet none the dogs he killed died like such a wretched coward. Looking at Stipe is a painful thing but I miss Fred so much I can’t pull my eyes away ‘til Stipe don’t shake anymore. He don’t move at all and his eyes is wide open. I want to bust the fuckers and let em run—but the misery all around comes screaming and squealing back into my brain and shakes me loose.
Larry’s crawled a few feet from the pit. He’s half to his truck. I kneel beside him. “You know this’s the end, brother. Why’d you go and drink that shit after I told Pete not to?”
He stops clawing the ground. His eyes is blank and bloody. I pass my hand in front of his face and he don’t flinch.
“You blind, Larry? That it?”
He smiles.
I been chewed up over it for so many years I don’t know what words to use. So I say, “Why’d you take my daughter from me?”
He wheezes. Inhales best he can. “I… come home from school… got Ruth back… ”
“Easy, now.”
“I’m a mule, Baer. Sterile since you crushed my nuts that day after school.”
I drop back on my ass. They’s men all around crying to God, ’cept Larry. “Why’d she go with you?”
“I took her. I couldn’t have a kid. You took that from me. So I took yours.”
His leg goes stiff, straight like a kick. Arm seizes up at his chest. Whole body rocks and shakes, and his crotch goes dark with piss.
I touch his elbow. He yells, but weak. Pure pain.
All these men got to suffer.
“Why’d you take Fred? Just tell me that, Larry.”
His eyes tremble in they sockets and his drumskin face is pulled back. He’s close.
I seize his hand. “Why’d you take Fred, brother?”
He whispers, “To hurt you.”
I grab Smith. Close my eyes and exhale deep. Try to get a compass point leads out all this crazy evil, mine and all these men’s, but the needle spins and spins and I don’t know if the right thing’s a bullet in his head or one in mine. Larry suffers. Though he got it coming for all the shit he did to me and Fred and Ruth and Mae, I done some shit to him, too. All this suffering here—all these men got it someplace else, first, ’fore they dished it on these dogs. The compass needle spins because they’s no way out, no way to do right when everybody’s compromised. You can look any direction but the dreamwoods is all around.
Larry groans. He shakes. He’s seized up but the death won’t come. His face is a frozen mask and his arms and legs is straight. All that’s left is for them archangels to throw his ass in a tree.
I press the Smith barrel to Larry’s temple.
Chapter Forty Four
He shakes and drools, got his eyes turned back in his head. This’s the brother that called our mother a whore, electrocuted me, gave me a life of visions and juice. Stole my girl. Stole my daughter. Stole my dog and fought him, and left him for dead where I scrounged apples every fall the last twenty years. He’s tried to murder me deeper’n the way I’m about to kill him—tried to murder whatever soul I got.
I shake at the thought of pulling the trigger. He’ll die without, and it’ll be from my hand either way. Blowing his brains into the mud would be a favor but I can’t do it.
Larry moans.
I got to end this. I stand Smith perpendicular to Larry’s temple.
“Halt!”
I search the darkness.
“Halt, you!”
A man steps from the shadows with a pistol on me. One of the archangels. I pull Smith back, point at the sky, spin it to my holster. I stand. The man steps closer. His buddy’s out there, covering him.
“Who’re you?”
“Law.”
Only a couple men moan. The rest is gone to the dream-land. Bodies contorted with pain, flexed and taut, faces scarred with horror. Men with straight limbs, so many ornaments ready to be hung from a tree.
“Higher law?” I say.
“FBI.”
The other archangel comes from behind a tree. He dumps his pistol into a holster.
“Good of you to come,” I say. “But the work’s done.”
“You made it quick at that.”
“You saw me try and stop it.”
“You the one got his ass beat two weeks ago?”
I nod.
“And two weeks before that? Fell out the tree?”
I nod again.
“Why you keep coming back? You ain’t part of this group.”
“You seen it. They stole my dog and left him blind.”
“You did this for a dog?”
“Fred.”
One looks at the other. “You’re under arrest. I’ll want that Smith ’n Wesson.”
“I bet.”
Larry seizes up stiff, his arms and legs like boards. He shakes and inhales slow like his lungs is a thimble already half fulla blood. He lets out the air and it carries a faint moan. He’s still.
My brother is dead.
“Think these boys got some bad likker,” the lawman says.
“Maybe.”
“Something I can’t understand,” he says. He waves to the trucks, the crates. “What were you going to do with all these dogs? Kill them?”
“Got ten pound of hamburg in the woods, with sleep medicine. Thought that would mellow them out ‘til I got em home
.
“You planned to take all these dogs?”
“Where’s the moral in leaving them to die in wood crates?”
“Where’s the moral in killing fifteen men? No trial? No defense?”
I’m tired of yammering but I got to take a shot at making them understand. “All around us is dead men. Look at the lantern glow up in the trees—makes this whole place a cathedral. You got the circle there like an altar. These men come to the last service at the church of death, and they was struck down by the oldest law. An eye for an eye.”
They look at me like I farted a goat. They don’t see the dreamland, just death.
Ah, hell. I’m ready to go—except for Stinky Joe. He’ll wait all night at the cave. Sometime tomorrow he’ll figure he’s got to fend for himself, and he’ll sniff around after something to eat. He’ll smell the paper bag carried the hamburg, and prob’ly spend a few hours learning I didn’t leave it for him. Day after tomorrow he might figure the carton of eggs is fair game, and the cheese, and the bag of Alpo dry. Beyond that, he’ll have nothing.
He’ll be on his own, looking for a master who won’t throw him in a pit.
“You boys prepared to shoot me in the back?”
“The back, the front. You’re coming with us.” He pulls his pistol but his eyes glow red and electric zips through me.
The other is silent.
“You better work on him. He’s going to shoot me.”
I turn my back and take one step.
“Mister, you walk and I’ll fill you with holes.”
No he won’t. Not him. “Bullshit. You know these men got what they had coming.”
I tramp into the dark. Behind me, dry leaves shuffle. “Freeze! You!” More rustling leaves. I got electric on my arms. But no bullets.
Ten paces.
Fifteen.
I break left and trot fast, scamper into trees. I raise an arm and rush on.
A pistol fires. “Halt!”
I keep on like a doe I remember, got away and blended in.
Can’t help but see them deaths as the work of something beyond me. I stilled the wood likker rich enough to kill, and had murder in my heart every minute, though I didn’t know I’d do it ‘til I done it. Court of law, I’m flat guilty. But if and when I answer before the Lord, I’ll tell him straight up. I wanted to go the other way. Events worked agin me, and that’s how I mean it was a little beyond me.
But in this world I killed em and it might satisfy Fred to know.
Mae’s my baby. Confirmed.
What the hell’s a man do with that? Now that I know?
Ruth, alive? Yeah, and stuck on me. To hell with her. All this time I lied to myself about her being honest because if I didn’t then all of us was liars. But they’s no starting new and no avoiding the truth. We all lie.
My stomach goes tight and my throat’s hot with bile. I choke it back once—the vomit charges again and I puke on a tree. I’m a cold-blooded killer.
Even a killer needs a drink. I rinse my mouth with crick water. It’s good and clean, and I drink like I’m empty and never had water. Top it off from my flask of Turkey.
I get in the truck and head back to the old still site for two buckets of gold. I pass my driveway and a car sits in moonlight. Down the road I pull over without hitting the brakes and kill the lights.
I get out, slip my hand to Smith. Tramp toward the burned house, down a gulley and up the other side. They’s a rodent, something in the brush, but nothing else.
I’ve been at the yard at night plenty times, but never since the house burned. Looks like a place to stretch a blanket and stargaze.
Moonlight glints off metal and glass in the drive, but most of the car’s in shadows. I circle left along the yard, keep my body agin a backdrop of brush ‘til I get the car lined with the opening to the road and the field beyond.
Figure sits on the hood.
I point Smith. Walk straight.
“Who’s there? Baer? That you?”
A woman’s voice. Mae?
“Mae?” I tramp fast. Into the clearing. She won’t believe but I’m going to tell her I’m her daddy. I come out the shadow and into moonlight.
The car is shaped wrong. It’s a chrome boat from the seventies.
No electric, no red.
“Hey, Baer,” she says.
Ten feet off, I stop.
“It’s me,” Ruth says. “The stars are beautiful tonight.”
I’m still. Mouth tastes like yack again.
“What you want, Ruth?”
“I—”
Holster Smith. Hands on my hips.
“I—I’m sorry. That’s what I want. I’m here to say I’m sorry.”
“For Mae?”
“You know—know—about Mae?”
“You carried her ten month.”
“Yes. I’m sorry about Mae too. I guess Larry told you everything.”
“Didn’t have to. You think I didn’t see you at the house that time? You got my baby in your arms and standing plain as day saying they was no way we’d ever be together? Saying my baby was his? I could hardly stand to look at you.”
“Well, if you knew—”
“What? Why pester you twenty-eight years?”
She nods. “Why?”
“I already give up on everybody else.”
She slumps. Her smile is a flower got splashed in mud. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to go, but shit if I can take very much of this.
“You were such a wild man.”
I turn half away.
“Going fast in your Nova. All souped up. Windows down. You still got that car? Is that it on blocks over there? I saw it with my headlights pulling in and I’ve been remembering things two hours now.”
“You getting by, Ruth? Okay for money?”
“Daddy takes care of me, what the alimony don’t.”
I got a lump in my throat. “You here? For real?”
“For real,” Ruth says. “Looks like you need a place to stay.”
I look at the stars because they’s there, convenient.
“I thought it might be time… ” She pats the car hood. “I thought we’d ride somewhere. Ride all night and all day, until we come someplace pretty and quiet. Like you put in your letter.”
I murdered fifteen men. I got no house. No still. I got a daughter and a lot of money. I got my talent.
“Go home, Ruth.”
“Home.”
“I’m calling quits.”
I walk away. I can’t ignore the lie and I surely can’t forgive it. All mankind can go to hell. Way I see it I got two obligations. I’ll take care of both and then bust out of Dodge.
“Baer?”
I stop. “Yeah?”
“Write.”
I study her a long minute, then head for the truck. Grab an ax from behind the seat. Ruth backs out the drive in her old piece of metal. Her headlights flash off the ax blade.
Hand at my brow to ward off low branches, I head for the gold tree. They was in it together. Stipe, Larry, Cory Smylie, Pete Bleau—all the time I spent trying to figure who murdered Fred was wasted. They all wanted a piece of what was mine. Stipe wanted my operation. Larry wanted revenge. Pete wanted to be lazy. And Cory Smylie…
Sometimes you don’t know exactly why you hate somebody. Maybe he did a hundred little detestable things over a long while, and in total they earn disgust for the whole man. Maybe Cory had it in for me like that. Maybe it’s my simple ways, or looking out for my baby girl, or knocking that pistol to his head. Then Stipe saw he was eager, and give him money to take a couple shots at me.
Shit.
If I’m leaving, I better disassemble them mantraps at the Hun site so some kid don’t wander in and get his guts tore out. Though I’m edgy approaching those traps in moonlight. Armed with ax and Smith I trek toward the Hun machine gun nest.
I step easy and slow, around the side, like when the sniper shots was coming at me two week ago. I stop and listen. The night
is blank, almost no light, almost no sound. I look for red eyes but see none. I hear myself more than anything—the voice in my head says this is the end of the line. You done some pure-ass evil, killing all those men, and you can’t blame it on God. He didn’t make the likker.
They call it poetic justice when the bad guy is foiled by his own evil plans. That in mind, I tramp through the dark to my mantraps.
“You out there, Cory?”
I stop. Listen. Keep walking.
Fifty yard out, I creep slow. Ax in my left hand, Smith in my right. I stop, set down the ax, wipe my hand dry on my leg. Resume, each footfall gentle as I can on brittle October leaves. ’Cept for me the woods is silent. They’s so damned much death all around. Bodies in trees. Bodies everydamn place. I hear them boys calling out, saying they’s blind, and in pain. Hear em call out to God. See blind eyes searching. Open hands feeling, reaching for some unknown guide to take em home.
I stalk from tree to tree, pause. Hide. Lurk. Look. C’mon, Cory Smylie, I know you’re hiding. I’m hunting you. My heart’s about to pound a hole through my chest. My ears hear the seashell whoosh of blood, mingled with a ring sounds like too much coffee. I raise my pistol hand and wipe sweat from my brow. The Hun nest is twenty feet out; I come from the side.
I hear a faint tap sound—tink, tink, tink.
I lock up. I’m out in the open. Point Smith this way and that. I know I’m going to see a flash and feel a bolt of pain. I know it. It’s God’s way of business—he’s going to strike me down. Evil is round and I got no impunity.
Tink, tink.
It’s with the breeze.
I exhale hard. To hell with this. I got to reach down and find a pair. I tramp ahead. Fire into the Hun cave. Fire again. I head right to it, not on the trail, close under the rocks.
“I’m coming for you, Cory! It’s quits this time. It’s over to-night!”
My Brother's Destroyer Page 27
