Disintegration

by Scott Nicholson

  Then Joshua was gone, leaving Renee looking from the paper in her hand to the Wells family portrait on the wall. After a moment, she slipped the paper in the pocket of her pants suit and ran through the house, her heels clattering on the hardwood floor. The front door slammed, and the deadbolt was locked by the time she reached it. Through a glass pane in the door she could see Jacob's truck and her car, both with their hoods up.

  She ran through the living room and kitchen and fumbled with the old-fashioned lock on the back door, throwing the door open. Jacob stood on the back step, his arms apart. From each of his hands, a nest of wires dangled like dead snakes.

  "He cut our ignition wires," Jacob said. "This is just like him."

  "I saw him, Jake."

  Jacob's eyes narrowed and shifted back and forth in their sockets. "Where?"

  "Inside. He wants more money. I thought we were done with him."

  "I told you he was crazy. Gets it from his daddy."

  "He said to ask you about your mother. And his kid."

  Jacob flung the wires to the ground and pushed past her into the house. His feet rumbled up the stairs, then he shouted Joshua's name. She followed him, afraid that Joshua would jump out of the shadows and hold a knife to her throat. She should have known they couldn't buy their way back to a perfect world, especially after what had happened to Mattie and Christine.

  Renee had entered the Wells world, had been seduced by the promise of power. But she thought she could change him, salvage him. Even after the accidents.

  Love could work miracles. Love could heal all wounds. Love could patch the broken places inside Jacob. But, first, she had to get him far away from Joshua, at whatever price.

  She had reached the foot of the stairs when Jacob appeared on the top landing, his face nearly unrecognizable in the darkness. His hands twitched at his sides. "He's not here," he said.

  "I told you, he ran out the front. He was bleeding, Jake. Did you beat him up?"

  "How could I ever hurt my dear brother?" Jacob descended, taking one slow step after another. "My own flesh and blood. I'd just as soon kill myself."

  "Jake?"

  He continued his descent, steady, sure, retracing the path down which his mother had fallen to her death. Fallen, or pushed? What if Joshua were telling the truth? How much could she trust Jacob?

  A test. Love passed all its tests in a perfect world.

  "I know about Carlita."

  Jacob stopped and hovered above her, close enough that she could see the corners of his lips curl upward. "You wouldn't understand. They never do."

  "Jake?"

  He continued down the stairs, a funeral march, eyes vacant. "He's at the camp. With her."

  Renee grabbed his sleeve as he passed. "Let's just go. We can walk if we have to. It's only a mile to the highway."

  His words shifted into an accent she'd never heard him use before. "What's owed got to be paid. It's the Wells way."

  "He told me to ask you about his kid. But Carlita told me she couldn't have kids."

  "She don't know nothing. A dumbfuck beaner who spreads her legs for any gringo with a grin and a dollar."

  "Do you love her?" She tugged at his arm, but his gaze was fixed out the door, beyond the world outside, staring into a land that no one else was allowed to visit.

  "Joshua don't," Jacob said. "He loves himself. That's just the way he is."

  "I don't give a damn about Joshua. All I care about is us."

  "There ain't no 'us,' honey. There's only you and me and him and her."

  He shoved away from her grasp and headed out of the dank house into the sunshine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The cemetery on the ridge was thick with weeds and briars, the graves untended, the markers askew. It was fenced with locust posts, and guinea hens had scratched in the dirt around the stones. A few sprigs of honey locust rose along the fence line, old field succession that would one day reclaim this neglected ground. Jacob's grandmother and grandfather had been buried there, along with his father's only brother. The Wells family hadn't owned this land long enough to lay out a decent array of corpses. The ones under this soil were linked only by DNA, with dust and decay their common denominator.

  Jacob stopped by the fence to catch his breath. He read the names of the two largest stones, which stood side by side in the center of the plot. Warren Harding Wells and Nancy Elizabeth Wells. He had rarely thought of his mother as someone with a name. Having a name might have made her more human and real to him. Maybe Joshua wouldn't have killed her if she had been "Nancy Wells" instead of "Mother."

  He was glad that Christine and Mattie weren't buried here. Bad enough to be polluted by Wells blood without having to spend eternity among them. The cemetery had enough room for a dozen more, and no doubt Warren Wells had harbored dreams of his sons one day resting together at his feet. The deviant division of Nancy's egg would have come full circle and made its final reunion.

  Jacob looked back at the house. Renee was trying to start her car, the engine turning over with dry disinterest. She'd probably look for the cell phone, too. They never understood, and they never took your word for it, either.

  He looked at the barn, where Joshua might be laying in ambush. The barn door hung askew, one of the rollers broken, and the hayloft opening was as black as winter sin. Joshua might be able to secure a weapon, a hatchet or scythe, some rusted remnant of the Christmas tree enterprise. Joshua might get weak and kill him, just when Jacob was about to give him back his birthright.

  No, Joshua was as desperate for resolution as Jacob was, and the deal could only go down in one place-the shabby camp where it had begun.

  The guinea hens emerged from the trees at the edge of the pasture, expecting to be fed. They were striped like granite, with rippling bands of dark blue and light gray. Some ancestral memory kept them lingering around the barn, raising their broods, fleeing the occasional fox or red-tailed hawk. They had staked out their territory, and not even the scent of the man who had once slaughtered their kind would roust them.

  Guineas were stupid, and Jacob hated all stupid creatures. He knew he should get to the camp, because Carlita would be waiting.

  Renee was now hurrying toward him, coming up the rise, her dress shoes slowing her down. He waited until she was close enough so that he could hear her shouts, then he turned from the cemetery. She had never been to this part of the farm, and he didn't want to lose her. Joshua would never forgive him if Renee missed all the fun.

  The slope grew uneven beneath his feet, the trail eroded since the days when cattle had made their way to the barn from far pastures. The sun was heading down toward the tops of the mountains, over where Tennessee and North Carolina collided in monstrous, rocky waves and the autumn trees screamed red and yellow as if on fire. Jacob could smell his own sweat, the crisp acid of dying oak leaves, and rabbit tobacco. Joshua didn't deserve this place.

  He turned once to see Renee cresting the hill behind him, now rid of her shoes. Her hair trailed behind her, golden in the late-afternoon sun. No wonder Joshua loved her so. She was an ideal, a floating dream image of womanhood, someone who was loyal and stable and strong. A woman who could build a better man. She understood what it meant to be a Wells.

  Well, most of it.

  He reached the first of the Fraser firs, Christmas trees that were too deformed for market and had been left to grow wild. They threw long shadows as he ran between the rows, stumps of harvested trees dotting the hillside. Briars tore at his pants legs, and he knew Renee would have trouble following with her bare feet. He considered stopping, letting her catch up, but the roofs of the migrant camp were below him now, the tottering shed from where he'd first watched Carlita and Joshua, the land giving way to a sheer drop behind the mobile homes, falling away to the river. The blackened ruins of two fire-gutted trailers stood near the ledge, shards of ragged alloy spiking toward the sky.

  The road to the camp ran parallel to the river, twin tracks of brown dirt b
ounded by oaks and white pines. A narrow, wobbly bridge spanned the river, leading to the tree fields and upper pastures. Jacob had driven the road many times, and had walked it many more, the long way home. All those nights spent following Joshua, watching as Carlita surrendered herself, wrapped her brown limbs around him and shouted his name.

  Joshua.

  That had been the problem. She'd always called out "Joshua."

  He picked up the pace, excited now. Soon she wouldn't call him "Joshua" any more.

  The rusty, green Chevy was parked in front of the last mobile home. No doubt, Carlita was cleaning the cut on Joshua's face, kissing his brow and telling him it would soon be over. His loco brother would bother him no more. They would be away from this place, wealthy, and then they could live as they were meant.

  The grin felt like it was splitting his face. It wasn't easy being a Wells, becoming a Wells. But the end was near. He would get all the good things he deserved.

  Jacob gained speed as he ran down the slope, his legs rejuvenated. Time seemed to fall away, and he was sixteen again, the hills lush with trees, a thread of campfire smoke rising from the migrant camp, bacon in the wind. It was the day after their birthday, and both of the boys had taken their driver's tests and gotten their licenses. Joshua said they should celebrate, said he had a special present for his favorite brother. He told Jacob to come by the camp that afternoon. There was a green bow on the shed door, and when he opened the door, heart like a jackhammer in his chest, he heard the grunting in the shadows, the frantic whisper of his brother's name, then laughter. Joshua lay on top of Carlita, his skin pale against her brownness, the hay strewn around them as they wallowed, the air thick with dust. Joshua groaned and pushed himself to his knees, looked at his brother in the doorway.

  "Happy birthday to us," he said.

  And sixteen-year-old Jacob took a step inside, fumbling for the buttons on his shirt. Carlita didn't rise, just lay on her back and smiled, her breasts lifting with her breath, the dark patch between her spread legs glistening in the half-light. Jacob's trembling fingers finally managed to free the shirt, and he shucked his shoes, and he was approaching her, unbuckling his belt, wondering if he could do it with his little brother watching, when the back of his head erupted in a thunderclap of red agony.

  The thirty-three-year-old Jacob rubbed his head now, remembering the dull throb, the rising from the gray mist to find himself on his stomach on the dirt floor of the shed. An ax handle lay beside him. His clothes were scattered, his pants around his knees, his wallet gone. Joshua had stolen his driver's license, and Jacob had never gotten it back.

  He now reached the camp and moved past the Chevy, peering through the tinted window to make sure the key was in the ignition. Carlita would want to make a fast getaway. That's the way women were, especially when they wanted to rip out a man's heart and show it to him while it was still beating, laughing all the while.

  They would be in the last mobile home, the one with the faded silver stripe down the side and translucent polyvinyl taped over the windows.

  The door was unlocked. He looked back up the hill and saw Renee's silhouette against the sundown. If she didn't fall, she'd be right on time. He yanked open the door. "Joshua!"

  Joshua and Carlita sat on a couch in the dark living room. The couch looked to have been inhabited by rats, with cotton dribbling from its stitches. A brick propped up one corner. Carlita was leaning into Joshua, and he had his arm around her.

  "Let's go, Carlita," Jacob said. "He's got his."

  "Not so fast," Joshua said. "Two more million."

  "You can get it from Renee."

  "You ain't much of a horse trader, are you?"

  "I just want it over with."

  Carlita looked at him with those maddening brown eyes. "Why do you bring that crazy woman into this, Joshua?"

  "Nothing for you to worry about. We're just giving you what you wanted all these years."

  "I want to go back to Tennessee."

  "Get in the car, then," Jacob said.

  Carlita looked at Joshua, who squeezed her shoulder and lifted his arm from her body. He gave her a little shove. "You heard your husband. You promised to honor and obey, till death do us part."

  Carlita stood, her breasts swaying beneath her shirt, her ripeness in defiance of time and truth. Jacob licked his lips. He wondered how much she had changed, if she was still as moist and frantic as she had been that long-ago night of the trade. She'd lived hard in the meantime, and Jacob planned to let her live harder. Much harder.

  "How you going to do her?" Joshua asked him.

  "By accident, the way we always do it. I figure the river. It was dark, she slipped, hit her head on the rocks."

  "Too bad you can't burn her up, huh?" Joshua's stained grin was like that of an opossum's in a chicken house.

  "Don't want to push my luck," Jacob said.

  "You'll get all kinds of sympathy for your loss. If you get away with it."

  "I don't like this," Carlita said to Josh. "I thought we take the money and go home."

  "Jake and me, we made a new deal." Joshua took a long swallow from the bottle in his lap. "I get the house and money, the fancy stuff. I get his good life, and he gets mine. I finally get to be a Wells, and he gets… well, he gets what he wants."

  "He gets your life?" Carlita shook her head. "You have no life."

  Jacob was aroused by the memory of her writhing under him, panting and urgent then pushing him over to climb on top, then accepting him from behind, from the side, demanding, hungry, a wild thing that Renee could never be. Opening up parts of himself that he didn't know existed. She had made him feel alive. She had made him want to kill.

  Jacob smiled and took her by the wrist. "Get in the car."

  "The gas mileage sucks," Joshua said. "And don't drive drunk because the tag's expired. You ain't got enough money to bail yourself out of jail."

  "We'll manage," Jacob said. "We'll get by on love, right, Carlita?"

  "You're both loco," she said.

  He pulled her to the doorway. Carlita slapped at his arm, eyes imploring Joshua to help her. She spat at Jacob, a wad of her saliva sticking to his pink cheek before beginning a slow crawl down his face. "Let me go, pig."

  "Just head on along," Joshua said. "After a month or two, you won't even know the difference. Jacob will never do it as good as me, but hey, you never noticed before."

  "Before?"

  Jacob grinned. "Didn't you wonder about that night?"

  "Which night?"

  Joshua hoisted his tall boy of Budweiser and showed the bobbing knot of his neck as he swallowed. "Ten years ago. When we first made the trade."

  Jacob dragged Carlita to the door, but her legs collapsed and she became dead weight. The mobile home shook with their struggle, teetering on its cinder block pillars. Renee's voice came from outside, calling Jacob.

  "Now for my part of the deal," Joshua said. He rose from the couch, staggering, eyes bright and red. He tossed his Budweiser can into the corner of the living room, stirring a cockroach. His belch tainted the air as he pushed past Jacob and Carlita. "Here I am, honey," he called.

  Jacob wrapped his arms around Carlita and hauled her outside. She grabbed the door jamb, kicking her feet, but Jacob could hardly feel the blows against his shin. Her fingernails skreeched against the metalworks of the door, then he yanked her free.

  Renee had reached the Chevy and leaned against it, catching her breath. Her hair was tangled, the knees of her pants torn and the bare skin stitched with blood and briars.

  "Come on inside, honey," Joshua said to her. "We got a lot to talk about."

  "Jacob?" She twisted her head in confusion.

  "What?" Joshua said.

  Jacob still loved her, in a strange way, and he almost regretted what he'd have to do. But she'd wanted to be a Wells, she'd signed up for the company plan, and she was worth two million dollars dead.

  Sometimes that's just the way it went. Sometimes you were wor
th more dead than alive.

  Just ask Mattie.

  Jacob dragged Carlita to the Chevy. She elbowed him in the side, and he fought an urge to slap her. That's what Joshua would do, slap her silly and throw her down on the ground. He wasn't Joshua. Not yet.

  Renee grabbed him, trying to pull him away from Carlita. "Leave her alone."

  Jacob shrugged away from her grip and flung the driver's-side door open. Held by only one arm, Carlita squirmed free and spun, spittle flying from her mouth, fists raised in front of her. Jacob closed on her, cornered her between the mobile home and the toolshed. He backed her toward the shed. She dodged to the left, but he tackled her and they wrestled on the ground.

  "You stinking bastard," Carlita said, her blows raining on his back with the sound like that of a dull drum.

  "Jacob!" Renee called, but Joshua held her now. She writhed against him, much like she probably had when Joshua was planting the seed that became Mattie.

  Enraged by the memory, Jacob picked up Carlita and shoved her into the toolshed, then slammed the door and snapped the hasp.

  "Jake!" Renee screamed. "Help me."

  "Right here, babe," Joshua said, laughing as he pinned her against the Chevy, obviously enjoying the contact as she squirmed beneath him.

  "You're crazy," she said to him. "What have you done to Jacob?"

  "I let him be himself," Joshua said. "That's something you never did."

  "How the hell do you know what I did or didn't do?"

  Joshua reached into his back pocket and pulled out a handheld tape recorder. He pressed a button and thumbed up the volume. The hiss of the tape drowned out the roar of the river below then came Jacob's voice, compressed and flattened, but recognizable, eerily similar to the voice of the Rock Star Barbie.

  "It's the only way, honey," Jacob said on the tape. "The fire will start downstairs. When the alarm goes off, I'll get Mattie and we'll meet you outside. That way no one will suspect anything."

  Jacob approached the Chevy and smiled as Renee's voice came on the tape: "I'm worried, Jake."