THUGLIT Issue Ten

by Ed Kurtz

  I put my hand inside his strong grip. I remember recoiling a little bit, realizing he was hurting my hand. He stared through me as we shook. It was as if he knew every dirty thought, every bad thing I had ever done or wanted to do, and it didn't impress him much.

  He let my hand go and I dropped it to my side. It was stinging.

  "Well, me and your uncle gotta go have a talk. We'll be out in a minute," Dad said. He walked into the den and my uncle followed without another word. I sidled up to my mom and sat in the chair on her left side.

  "So that's Uncle Skunk, huh?" was the best statement I could muster.

  "He's a monster. Did your dad tell you about the carnival? He nearly killed those boys, and I bet his heart rate never got over 86 beats per minute. And that’s what I know firsthand. The other stories are worse. The whole family knows he's a thug. I heard he threw battery acid in a man's face for five hundred dollars. There's another story about him robbing the same check-cashing place twice. In the same day. He doesn’t deserve anything from Irene's estate," my mom said between puffs.

  I was left with no retort. I got up and bounded up the stairs. I went to the bathroom instead of my bedroom. I didn’t need to use the facilities. I was going to eavesdrop.

  The den was right below the bathroom, and through a quirk of architecture, there was a vent that carried heat through the walls of the den and the bathroom. Some HVAC worker must have forgotten to insulate the shaft. You could sit on the toilet and listen to a conversation in the den as clear as day. I wasn't sure if my parents knew about this auditory dumbwaiter. Most of the time what you heard was as boring as a C-SPAN broadcast.

  I had a feeling today would be different. At first I sat there on the toilet feeling slightly foolish. It was weird sitting there without my pants down around my ankles. Suddenly my father's voice reverberated through the vent in the floor.

  "I'm in trouble, Skunk. I fucked up and I need your help. Your specific kind of help," my dad said. His voice had a ragged edge to it like a rusty razor.

  "I thought you needed me to sign some papers," Skunk said. His voice sounded like he gargled with battery acid when he wasn't tossing it into someone's face.

  "That…that was a lie. Shit, Skunk—I needed you here and I had to explain it to Marcie."

  "You real good at lying, Ronnie. Always was. What you need, big brother?" Skunk said

  "Skunk—Cliff Notes version—I got some friends. Or I thought they were friends. We…um…we had parties. Parties where people came in with one person and slipped off with another."

  "Swing parties," Skunk said. His voice held no inflection. He could have been discussing the medical benefits of eating wheat germ.

  "Yes, well, I mean…I'm kinda well-known in the community. I'm married. Marcie doesn't know anything about this. I would go with my secretary. Oh God this is awful. About a month ago I went to a party and a week later a video showed up on my desk. I'm on it. Me and the secretary and another woman. You can see that it's a fucking orgy. Then my bitch of a secretary comes in smiling like a Cheshire cat and says she wants fifty thousand dollars or she mails the video to my wife and the Pittsville Gazette and the Virginia Realtor's Association and the Better Business Bureau and anybody else she can think of. Jesus. I can't go to the cops. Nobody can know about this," my dad whined.

  "So what you wanting me to do, Ronnie? You want her to go on a trip and not come back?" Skunk asked.

  "Oh God no! No…I mean, couldn't you just—I mean, rough her up a little? Get all the copies of the tape and just make sure she understands this isn't a good idea. I mean, can you do that? Can you help me Skunk? I am going to lose everything if this gets out. Pittsville isn't Richmond. This tape gets out, I won't be able to sell a goddamned dog house. Marcie will fucking leave me. She will take my son…oh God!" I heard sobs come up from the vent in the floor.

  "Ronnie, stop it. Just stop it. I will talk to this girl. I will break two of her fingers so she know I'm not playing. You just keep it together. Where she live?" Skunk said. His voice had a small trace of emotion in it this time.

  "Aw, Skunk, thank you! Thank you!" my dad was effusive in his gratitude.

  "You my brother," was all Skunk said.

  I sat there stunned. Everything I had heard was so far beyond my capacity to process that for a few moments I was paralyzed. Without warning, a wave of nausea washed over me. I spun around, dropped to my knees and held my head over the toilet bowl. After a few minutes, the nausea passed. The shock of hearing my dad confess to being a swinger who was being blackmailed didn't fade as quickly.

  I came downstairs taking the steps two at a time. I was going to jump in my car and just drive. Facing my mom was not an option. If I saw her, I feared everything I had just heard would fall out of my mouth. I sailed out the door and jogged to my car.

  Skunk was standing by his own car looking down at a piece of paper. He shook his head once then folded the paper as he put it in his pocket. I froze. I didn't know what, if anything, I should or could say to him. I stood there looking at him like he was an escaped lion instead of my uncle. For a second, neither one of us said anything. Then he spoke.

  "You look like your mama. Don't look like Ronnie at all."

  "Did you really break a dude’s arm for cutting in line?" The question just rolled off my tongue. To this day I swear I hadn't planned to say anything. It just bubbled up from the cauldron of my despair over my father's betrayal. Skunk made a sharp barking sound that I guess passed for laughter.

  "Your daddy tell you I did that cuz they cut in line?" he asked.

  "Yeah."

  "There was more to it than that. But that ain't none of your business," he said and turned to get in his car.

  "What was my grandfather like?" I asked. Again it was like an invisible ventriloquist was speaking for me. Skunk got in his car closed the door. Then he rolled down the window.

  "When I was eight years old, he tied me to a chair and burned me with a curling iron. To get rid of the demons in me. Then he split my head open with a straight razor to let the demon escape. I got this white streak, he got a trip to the state hospital. My mama was on the stroll and your daddy's mama took me in for a while. That's what he was like," Skunk said. He started his hoopty and drove out of our driveway.

  I wouldn't see Skunk again for a week. The sting of my dad's betrayal started to dissipate. When you are young, wounds tend to heal quickly.

  The following Friday found me crashed out on the couch watching MTV. This was back when they still played videos. Actually good videos that had some correlation to the song you heard on the radio. I was just chilling and enjoying another lazy summer day when the phone rang. I didn't even make an attempt to answer it. Dad got it on the second ring. He was standing in the kitchen.

  "Yeah, tonight. She will be at the address I gave you. Okay. Just a little bit…okay," he said in clipped tones. He hung the phone up then stood there for a few minutes. Then he picked it up again and made a call.

  "Tonight. Be there by 8pm. No later. Yes. Make sure…okay." He hung the phone up again. I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at my dad. He had that sly smile on his face.

  "What?" he said, catching my looks at him.

  "Nothing, Dad." I lay back down and waited for The Real World to come on.

  Mom was working the night shift that weekend. I loafed around the house most of the day while she slept. Dad went to the office and then came back around 5pm. He came over to the couch and poked me in the ribs.

  "Hey wanna go catch a movie? Just me and you."

  "Um, yeah, I guess. What you wanna see?"

  "Your pick kiddo. We haven't hung out in awhile. Come on, get up before you permanently bond with the sofa," he said with a laugh.

  "Yeah, it was a part of my plan to get famous. Be the first man-couch in history. I'd host my own talk-show where the guests sit on me as I interview them."

  "Get up, smartass. Let's go," my dad said smiling.

  We had a good time th
at night. We laughed and joked. Dad put me in a headlock when we left the theater. I don't remember what movie we saw, but I do remember it was a comedy. We would have precious few reasons to smile after that night.

  We returned to our house around 10pm. Mom was long gone and wouldn't be back until six the next morning. It would just be me and Dad the rest of the night. We pulled up to a dark, unlit house. The night was moonless. We got out and Dad opened the door with his key. Just before we entered the living room, I knew someone was in the house. Someone was sitting in our house in the dark. I could feel it and the hackles on the back of my neck stood up like soldiers at attention. My dad turned to say something to me when a light came on in the living room.

  Sitting in the recliner was Skunk.

  His face was bathed in the pale sickly yellow light of my mom's touch lamp. He had a bruise over his right eye and there were a few drops of blood on his lip and nose. He wore his black t-shirt and jeans again, but the jacket was missing from his ensemble. He sat there, leisurely tapping his foot. In his right hand was a big black pistol.

  Dad stopped in his tracks.

  "Hey Ronnie." Skunk casually pointed the gun in our direction. "Why don't you and the boy come have a seat. We need to talk."

  "Skunk…what happened? You didn't do something stupid did you?" my dad asked. His voice was even and calm. Calm like the surface of a mountain lake. Calm in an eerie way. A calm that didn't acknowledge a man sitting in our house pointing a gun at us.

  "Ronnie, come sit down or I'm going to shoot you in your knee. I'm not playing even just a little bit."

  "Come on, kiddo. It's going to be alright. Just let's do what he says," my dad said out the side of his mouth. I guess I was too shocked to be scared. I just followed him, and we sat in the Queen Anne chair and the ottoman respectively. Skunk leaned forward and pointed the gun at my dad.

  "You gonna ask me did I do something stupid? I guess I did. I trusted you again. I got a scanner in my car. Did you know that?"

  "What does that have to do with anything?" Dad asked.

  "It means, when I was on my way over to talk to the girl you said had you by the balls, I heard a deputy for this fine county tell his dispatch he was going to check out a disturbance on 5574 Larksburgh Lane. Same place you said your girl was staying. Only thing…I hadn't even got there yet. So that made me think. I parked about a mile away from Larksburgh Lane. I walked up the road a piece and guess what I saw?"

  "I don't know, Skunk," my dad said evenly.

  "Well I'm a tell you. Off the side of the road, hidden behind some trees and bushes, was a police car. If I had been driving, I never would have seen him—but he would have seen me. I would have went down that lane, knocked on the door, and before I knew it, police would have been up on me. They would put me down and then radio for backup. That why he told dispatch where he was going. I'm a two-strike felon. It wouldn't have been hard to make the case I was up to no good. Perfect way to get rid of me, huh Ronnie? The only thing is why? You called me for my help. I was in Richmond leaving you and yours alone. So I eased up to Johnny Law and I asked him a couple of things. It took some persuading but he finally opened up."

  Skunk never took his eyes from my dad's face. He reached in his front pants pocket and pulled out a small package. He tossed it to my dad who caught it deftly.

  Dad recoiled and dropped the package. It was a human finger wrapped in clear plastic wrap—with a wedding ring still attached. A man's finger.

  "Oh, for God's sake Skunk, what have you done?" Dad screamed. Skunk cocked the hammer on his pistol.

  “Glad to know I'm worth twenty-five thousand dollars. That's what you was going to pay Deputy Dawg to get rid of me. But that's just a drop in the bucket to you since Aunt Irene died, ain’t it?"

  Dad didn't speak.

  "I remember Aunt Irene. She was our father's sister. She was nice. She didn't have no kids. Her husband had been some big deal at a shipping company. So I guess she left us—her only living kin—some money. How much Ronnie? How much?"

  Dad just sat there as mute as the Sphinx. Then he took a deep breath and sighed. "Just over a million dollars. To be split evenly," he whispered.

  "That's what the woman was blackmailing you for?" I sputtered. They both snapped their heads in my direction.

  "What…were you eavesdropping?" my dad growled at me. I had never seen him look at me with such ferocity.

  "I was in the bathroom. The vent carries stuff from the den to the toilet. I was just sitting there," I said meekly. "So you're not cheating on Mom?" I half-whispered.

  Skunk let out a harsh bark. "Oh, he cheating on your mama. That's real. Only thing is, he the one throwing the parties. Him and Johnny Law that was waiting for me. They throw the parties and then they the ones do the blackmailing. Boy, your daddy here is damn near running this county. He a goddamn Al Capone of pussy. Got that cute little secretary getting herself filmed with the County Administrator and Commonwealth Attorney. That's how your dad gets all the zoning permits he want for all the building he doing. And with all that, you was still too greedy to share with your brother." Skunk shook his head reproachfully.

  "Skunk. You leave us alone and I will split it just like Aunt Irene wanted. Right down the middle. Just walk out the door Skunk. Nobody has to get hurt."

  "Somebody already been hurt, Ronnie," Skunk said.

  "I can talk to Deputy Mumford," Dad said. He was staring a hole in Skunk's face.

  "I was talking bout me," Skunk whispered.

  My dad didn't respond to that statement.

  "You always been greedy. And you always had me to bail you out. Hey boy, you know that story about me fucking them fellas up at the carnival? You know the real reason I was in town? Your daddy here owed them boys some money for some powder. He couldn't pay up, so he asked his crazy brother to come and fuck them up. Yeah. I'm always bailing you out. And deep down inside you think you better than me don't you? But we more alike than you care to admit."

  "I'm NOTHING LIKE YOU!" Dad yelled.

  Skunk smiled. "Yeah you are. We both animals. You a rat and I'm a cobra," Skunk said.

  "What the hell does that mean?" Dad asked.

  "Well, a cobra is a cold-blooded killer. He goes about his business and don't make excuses for what he doing. A rat is a dirty, nasty little fucker hiding in the dark stealing when ain't nobody looking, spreading his disease but always seeming to survive. That's what I mean, big brother," Skunk said coldly.

  "So you got it all figured out huh?" my dad said. His hands were dancing on his thighs.

  "Well naw, I didn't really figure it all out on my own. Deputy there helped. Funny how somebody feel like talking after you break they fingers and cut them off. He was telling me everything by the time I got to the wedding ring."

  My dad furrowed his brow. "What did you do with Jack?" he asked.

  "Oh the deputy? He downstairs in the basement. Me and you and the boy bout to go see him," Skunk said in a good-natured tone.

  "Huh? What the fuck you talking about? You brought him to my house? Are you crazy?"

  "Watch you mouth, Ronnie. Watch you mouth. Now we going to go down here to this basement. Come on now," Skunk said. He stood and pointed his pistol at me and my dad. I couldn't move. All I could do was stare at that gun. It was like it filled my whole field of vision, obscuring everything else.

  "Skunk…why is he in the basement?" my dad asked.

  "Come on big brother. We bout to finish things now," was his cryptic reply. We walked to the kitchen and then through the door that led to the cellar. One swinging light bulb fought valiantly against the inky darkness. I remember the sound of the steps creaking as we descended the stairs. My dad first, then me, then Skunk.

  In the middle of the cellar was Deputy Mumford. He was sitting in a metal folding chair, one of many my parents kept for garden parties and barbecues. His hands were tied behind his back and his feet were tied to the legs. A thin piece of wire was around his neck like a garrote, the t
wo ends wrapped around the barrel of a sawed-off pump. The shotgun dangled down his back like a deadly ponytail.

  I couldn't see his face but I could see the knot sitting on the back of his head. The chair sat on top of a plastic tarp that snaked across the floor and up the wall like a white-trash tapestry that had been taped carefully to the wall.

  "Tonight you do your own dirty work. After tonight you just like me. You going to do right by me from now on," Skunk said. His voice was tight, sounding like his teeth were clenched.

  At first my dad didn't seem to understand. He looked at Deputy Mumford, then over his shoulder at Skunk, then back to the deputy. Finally it hit him. His shoulders drooped and he dropped his head.

  "I…I can't do that. No, I won't do that," he stammered.

  "Oh you going to do it. Or I'm going to shoot the boy here in his knees. Then I'm going to shoot him in his hands. Then I'm going to shoot him in shoulders. He going to get the Irish six-pack if you don't walk over there and do what I tell you," Skunk said calmly.

  Deputy Mumford started groaning from the chair.

  "God, Skunk! Just stop all this. I will give you your half of the money. Just stop all this!"

  Quick as a cat, Skunk was around me and behind my dad. He clipped him in the head with the butt of the pistol. Dad dropped to one knee.

  "You think this bout money? You tried to kill me. I've eaten at your mama's house. I played "race car" with you on our bikes. You taught me how to tie my fucking shoes. This ain't bout the goddam money, Ronnie! Not for me it ain't. Now you gonna do what I say. And yes, I will take my half of the money. But this right here. This bout you getting dirty for once. This make sure you never try to get me killed again. Now get up and go over there. And I swear to God if you don't, your boy here going to know pain so bad he will beg to go to Hell for a vacation. Get up. Now."