Rusty Knob

by Erica Chilson

  Momma’s barely forty but looks nearing seventy compared to Rusty Knob’s townsfolk. Withered skin wrinkled around her eyes, a mouth puckered from taking drag after drag off her smokes, and a yellow tint to her skin and hair from the toxins in her bloodstream. Judging by Willa, Momma must have been a beautiful woman before she allowed Daddy to ruin her– before she ruined herself. We all got Daddy’s clear blue eyes and Momma’s sandy curls. It turns my stomach to see such a waste of life– to look at my parents.

  “Hayley and Hayden?” I glance in the sink to make sure I see three dirty plates that ordinarily I’d be scrubbing before I settled in for the night. I breathe a sigh of relief that Momma fed her grandchildren at some point today.

  Punching his boney thigh, “War better git his own damn house!” Daddy starts in on his nightly drunken rant. “I ain’t gonna feed none of his goddamned brats. Someone should have drowned Willa’s. Hayden’s gonna be a murderer, just like his daddy… and Hayley’s gonna be a bad wife, just like her momma. I ain’t got no more money to take care of you multiplying ingrates.”

  “Yeah, I hear ya,” I mutter, hiding the disgust in my voice. I channel the patience of a saint.

  I hope you fucking drown in your beer, you goddamned bastard!

  Feed us? The deer meat in Momma’s belly was one I poached last week when the kids were starve-gutted. I could have gone to jail if I was caught. Once the carcass was dragged onto our land, I was safe. No one, especially the authorities, will cross a boundary line. Daddy and Warren will shoot trespassers on sight, even if they have a warrant.

  “Payday, ain’t it?” Daddy grunts out, turning his palm over, asking for what little cash I might have left. Wiggling his fingers like a hungry fish, he catches the involuntary flash of loathing that crosses my face. “I’ma start chargin’ yer ingrate ass rent, boy. Yer livin’ up ‘ere in the lap a luxury, got food in yer belly ‘n a roof over yer head, ‘n ya give me that goddamned look?”

  I slowly walk backward toward the twins, keeping Daddy in my line of sight. Next to me, Momma’s disinterested. “I made five hours this week. Just enough to put gas in the tank to make my way to the Holler. I have nothing more to give ya.”

  Daddy’s getting agitated, but not nearly as agitated as I am. “Maybe ya better git yer ass back to work, son. Ya need ta pay yer own way if ya plan on stayin’ in dis house. While yer at it, tell Mr. I ‘ave more money than God, Royce Kennedy, he’s late on his child support.”

  “Child support?” My voice twists with anger. “Royce isn’t their daddy.” I close my eyes, mind spinning out of control. “Pay my way?” I pay all of the bills. I’m the person who fills the fridge with food for the twins since Daddy uses the food stamps and sells the food for cash. Daddy drinks his disability and Willa shoots up her welfare. Momma’s smoking whatever money Warren gives her.

  Vein in my head throbbing, fists clenched at my side, I almost killed myself earlier tonight just so I wouldn’t have to walk away and leave them behind. “I’m done,” I announce, my words slipping back into proper English. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be living here anymore. It’s time I’m on my own way.”

  Leaning forward, Daddy places his beer on the floor by his side, which means he means business. “Using those fancy words like the world God give ya ain’t good ‘nuff. You think yer shit don’t stink like the rest a us?”

  I’m frozen in fear, worried I’ll have to defend myself for the first time in my life, knowing I would put my daddy in the hospital. “I’m a grown man now,” is my only reply.

  “That ain’t it,” Daddy snarls, face transforming into that of a monster. His paper-thin skin stretches over bladelike cheekbones as his lips form cutting words. “If it weren’t fer yer blue eyes, I’d think yer momma was running on me with a townie ‘round the time you were made. Nothin’ I ever did was good ‘nuff fer ya. Always turning up yer nose at the food I put on the table. Always out in the yard trying to mow the lawn, trying to fix shit and clean the house. Couldn’t leave good ‘nuff alone, as the way God intended. If I wanted a winder fixed, I’d have fixed it.”

  My rope snaps. “I’m not going to apologize for mending a window when it was snowing inside the house, when I knew you’d never get around to fixing it. You have no idea how ridiculous you sound, do you? You have no idea how goddamned ignorant you are. My wanting a different life doesn’t have a cocksucking thing to do with you.”

  “Don’t disrespect yer daddy like that,” Momma speaks up because Daddy is speechless. Her words soothe him some, but they weren’t said out of respect. It was my mother’s defense mechanism. If Daddy unhinges, everyone in this house will become his target.

  I don’t know if my conscience will survive leaving my momma behind, but I know I won’t live long if I don’t leave. Warren’s right. Momma did this to herself. But I can’t blame her as she didn’t know any different. But then again, neither does Daddy. Why is it I know better, then? Explain that.

  “You don’t need to worry about feeding anyone but yourselves. You’ll have nobody bleeding you dry, and every cent you earn can be spent on you and Momma.” They earn no money is what will plague me for the rest of my days. But maybe they will use the money the government gives them in the way it was intended.

  Hell freezes over. Santa Claus fits down nonexistent chimneys and passes out gifts to the Gillettes for the first time in our lives. The Easter Bunny shits out chocolate eggs and leaves them in a basket like a happy yet demented version of a litter box. Daddy stops drinking and Momma stops smoking, and I finally get some feeling in my dick.

  Yeah, ain’t none of that happening. “Good luck,” I mutter as I back up toward my bedroom door.

  “Is it Christmas?” Daddy turns sarcastic, thinking I’m joking.

  “I’m serious.” I turn my back on my parents, knowing none of Daddy’s triggers have been tripped. “Warren and Willa left for parts unknown. I’m going to go in my room and remove Hayden and Hayley from this house, and you’re not going to stop me. Got it?”

  “Don’t ever come back, ya ungrateful ingrates!” Daddy shouts at my back as I enter my bedroom. It takes everything in me not to shout back that ungrateful and ingrate means the same thing.

  Escape Hatch

  I shut the door behind me, securing the tattered blanket over the opening to keep the stink and sound from infecting our private space. Nothing short of a shotgun could stop Daddy’s bellows right now.

  For seventeen years, there has been an imaginary boundary line between my safe haven and the rest of Gillette Holler. Once I passed the threshold, nothing could harm me. It was a bullshit lie I made up in my mind, but it was how I survived the night to meet the next morning.

  It makes me sick to see that the twins have adopted my survival strategy. They are precious, and shouldn’t have to use this room and me as their lifeline against an abusive, Crypt Keeper-looking drunk and his abused and even more abusive hag of a wife and their zombiefied mother.

  Gillette Holler is for the dead– those dead inside and out.

  Once, a long, long time ago… Warren, Willa, and I were innocent children. We were pink-skinned, bright-eyed, and curious yet unafraid. That was snuffed out by our parents and the situations they created. I already see how the first six years of Hayden and Hayley’s lives are infecting them, and it stops tonight.

  Willa, not quite herself since she was torn from us when she was a child-bride, had the good sense to pass her kids off to me when she returned to Gillette Holler. I’m big and strong enough to protect them, but smart enough to use my words instead of violence to do the job. I was thirteen when the twins became my responsibility, vowing they would have the childhood I never received.

  I’ve worked hard to fix our hundred square feet of privacy. My olive drab cot is from the Army and Navy store. It’s draped with the patchwork blanket Penny and I made in Home Economics back in eighth grade. The bare-bulb ceramic lamp, which I found tossed in a townie’s yard with a FREE sign on it, is resting on the sma
ll table I nabbed from the side yard. I sanded the table down and put a whitewash on it, same as with the dresser I bartered from one of Warren’s buddies. The dresser is filled with tiny clothes I bought for the twins at secondhand shops, with the bottom drawer filled with little kid books, while the top holds my school books and basketball trophies. The walls are covered in the colored pages of activity books and cute drawings from the time since the twins could hold a crayon. There’s a scattering of stuffed animals and toys I got at the Salvation Army to take the sting of violent words and the stench of broken dreams from wafting in from the rest of the shack.

  Our room isn’t anything to look at, but I’m proud of it. It’s clean because I’ve taught the kids to pick up after themselves– something they pretend not to know, instinctively knowing Daddy would see them as budding ingrates who think their shit don’t stink because they don’t want to wallow in their own filth like swine.

  Our floor is covered with the recycled carpet Bren’s dad gave me when he replaced the carpeting in his rental house. Royce Kennedy is going to be our savior once again.

  From the Holler, Royce’s daddy and wife passed away in a tragic car fire when something electrical went on the fritz. Ford issued a recall to save countless lives, leaving a little boy without a momma– Bren. Royce took the insurance money and the insanely huge settlement and put it back into Rusty Knob. He created jobs to employ laborers who want to work. Every time a family leaves the area, Royce buys their home, and then houses those who will respect his property and give back to the community.

  The townies love Royce Kennedy, and the rest of Rusty Knob loathes him, calling him a traitor for bettering himself. My boss is always saying he sees something in me, something he sees in himself. He’s tried to get me to quit the Circle K, even knowing why I worked there, wanting me to come work for him fulltime while still going to school and playing basketball. Every Sunday he begs me not to take the kids away from him, saying he’d give us all a better life if only I’d let him.

  I always tell Royce blood is thicker than water, and he always counters with how the twins are the only blood Bren and he has left.

  I hadn’t realized I had that backward. If you care for someone, then you should want them to better themselves. Staying stagnate, or worse, lowering yourself to another’s level, is not loyalty. Loyalty is rising above it all, and taking those who can’t help themselves with you.

  “Uncle Wynn?” Hayden’s sleep-slurred voice fills the room. His tiny paws rub at his closed eyelids. “Is Papaw going to hit you again?”

  “Nah, little feller.” I kneel down beside the rickety toddler bed that Hayden and Hayley are squeezed into. I bought the bed at a yard sale a few years back, but they’ve both since grown out of it. I work all week to pay for Daddy’s beer, and all weekend to pay for whatever bills I can swing. When the kids get out of this bed, it will be the last time they touch it.

  My fingers flutter through my nephew’s wild curls, and he smiles through his sleepiness. I reach over to nuzzle at my niece’s hair, finding uneven, chopped off curls. But when moving the strands reveals something much viler, I nearly careen into the living room and beat my parents to death.

  Whatever happened while I was at work tonight is why Warren and Willa got out of Dodge and Daddy was so passive when I insulted him to his face.

  I bite back the need to clench my fists. My voice is light, but the words squeeze between gritted teeth. “What happened to Sissy’s cheek?” I run a light fingertip along the blooming bruise, not wanting to wake the little girl just yet.

  “Papaw and Mamaw were fighting over how Sissy didn’t have faggot hair because she’s a girl. I don’t know what faggot hair is, but Sissy’s hair ain’t no different than the girls in our class.”

  “There is no such thing as faggot hair, Hayden. I never want you to use that word again, unless you’re repeating something someone said. If another kid uses it, tell them it’s not nice.”

  “I promise,” he vows with determination.

  “Good. What happened next?”

  “Mamaw thought Sissy was me, and she don’t take no backtalk. I kept screaming for Mamaw to look at me– to see me –so was Papaw. Momma and Uncle Warren walked in during the tussle, and Sissy fell on the floor into a pile of her hair.”

  I can’t look away from Hayley’s bruised cheek and shorn off hair. “What did your momma do?”

  “She got real furious, and started hitting Mamaw in the back. She got backhanded real good by Papaw. Uncle Warren dragged her out of the house after he told us to go to bed. Sissy and I stood by the door a-listening, and we overheared him telling Mamaw and Papaw that they better agree to anything you said, or else he’s gonna burn Gillette Holler to the ground.”

  “Well, that explains so much,” I mutter to myself. “I need to make a phone call, and while I do, I need you to sit here real quiet-like. Okay?”

  “Kay,” Hayden whispers, laying his head down next to his sister’s, and then he pretends to go to sleep.

  I move my cot to the side, drop to my knees, peel the carpet back, and then pry a wedged floorboard up. Beneath that is my secret cubbyhole. I pocket all the cash I have hiding, and then I palm my cellphone. I flip the lid open with my thumb, and then I turn it on. Royce had bought me a burner phone, making me promise to show the kids how to find it and use it.

  I’ve never had a reason to use it until tonight.

  I press the green button after I scroll through the contacts, only finding a single phone number listed. I stare at my six-year-old niece and nephew as they pretend to sleep as the call goes through.

  “Wynn?” Royce’s voice comes muffled, followed by a cuss. “It’s two in the morning. Did something happen?”

  “Shit! Sorry,” I rasp out, feeling like a heel because I woke him. “I know you don’t get much sleep as it is. I didn’t think before I called.”

  “Forget it.” The sound of rustling fabric reverberates through the phone. “Whatcha need, Wynn?”

  “That job offer still on the table, the one with a place to rest my head?”

  “Always. I take it something major happened to change your mind, eh?”

  “You could say it’s been an interesting night– almost my last one.”

  “Who? Tell me who tried to hurt you!” Voice stiff with fury, “Wynn, I mean it. Tell me!”

  I spit out the truth before I can stop myself. “Me. I couldn’t take it anymore. Warren stealing my ammo changed my outlook on life. Seeing Hayley’s hair shorn off by my momma was a wakeup call. But the bruise on Hayley’s tiny cheek from an elbow jab is what made me say the hell with them. I know you’ll want us at your house, but I’m not comfortable with that.”

  “Christ,” Royce hisses. “I have a few places open right now, but I have a few conditions.”

  “I know. I have to quit the Circle K, keep up my grade-point-average so I don’t lose my scholarship, continue to go to off-season practice so I’m fit for the university team, work for you the rest of the time, graduate, and I’m not to support any able-bodied males over the age of eighteen.”

  Royce’s stance is that even though I act like a man and he treats me like one, I’m still a kid. I can help anyone younger than me, but I’m never to help a man who can help himself. My boss is in his late thirties, and he refuses to help any of the men in town older than him unless they are open to change. Royce says you shouldn’t try to teach an ignorant, old dog new tricks when you could take the effort to make a real difference to someone who not only needs it but wants it.

  “Damn straight, Skippy,” Royce says with a chuckle. “I love how you pay attention. Wish my kid wasn’t deaf.”

  “You’re Bren’s daddy; he ain’t gonna listen to you. No way. No how. I’ll admit, he’s a pain in the ass, but he’s just confused.”

  A rough throat clearing vibrates my ears, letting me know Royce knows what I’m hinting at even though not a soul has ever whispered the truth. “I need to decide where to put you. How many
are leaving Gillette Holler?

  “Three are leaving Gillette, but we’re picking one up in Franklin Holler on our way to town. It’s just me and the twins, and Penny ‘cuz her momma is pressuring her to move out. She’s carrying Warren’s kid now– her momma’s ploy to get her hitched and out of her hair.”

  “Goddamned, ignorant assholes!” Royce sputters a few more choice cuss words before calming down. “What the hell happened to Warren? Why isn’t he taking care of his own mess? And you are not leaving Willa behind with those deadbeats you call parents.” Royce’s voice quivers with rage. “I mean it, Wynn. The only reason I haven’t stepped in before now is because I knew you were keeping an eye on Willa and her kids.”

  Royce feels responsible for my sister because it was his brother who married and brutalized Willa, and Royce was the one to stop it. The man he tore off my sister, the man who was inside her, never made it to trial. He was found dead a few days later from an apparent hunting accident. If Willa’s ex-husband ever gets out of the pen, he’ll have an accident too.

  After everything settled down, Royce offered me a job, paying me outrageously as long as I paid the bills and put food in his kin’s belly. In a way, he was using me while helping me. He wanted to make sure his money got to its intended target without being wasted on my parents.

  “Warren is on a Willa mission. They peeled out of Gillette Holler about an hour ago for destinations unknown. I’m sure we’ll be hearing from them sooner rather than later. Warren said he was doing what he was doing to keep Willa alive.”

  Royce is quiet for so long that I have to ask, “You still there, boss?”

  “Yeah…” His breath shudders out. “When Willa was in the hospital, I asked her to move in with me. Bren was only thirteen and he needed a momma, and the twins were toddlers who needed a daddy. I told Willa I’d take care of her– protect her –and I wasn’t looking for anything else in return. Even then she was just a child, not much older than my own son is now. I just wanted to keep her and my niece and nephew safe.” Another deep shuddering breath. “I failed.”