Ashkettle Crazy

by A. M. Goetz

  Bo rolled his eyes. “Good luck finding one small enough.”

  Dack shrugged, the devil in his eye,“I don’t know. Didn’t hear Jane complaining, and she seen more o’me last week than you have recently.

  “She was fixing you up, you little shit.” Bo mentioned, stepping inside. “I guess I gotta explain the difference. We gotta have that talk about the birds and the bees now, little brother?”

  And Dack grinned, “Naw, Jane took care of it.” He teased, and ducked when Bo’s fist came flying out in a fake jab.

  “Think I liked you better when you was mute, asshole.”

  And I stood on the steps and watched the two idiots. Hadn’t seen ‘em in months, and both of ‘em scrawny as stray cats, but I never thought it’d be a permanent separation. Not til Lyle told me what he did. Think I had whiplash from this day, but if that’s what it was, I wasn’t complaining. Seemed whiplash felt an awful lot like happiness.

  23

  “What’s this?” Bo stood sniffing the pot I had bubbling on a back burner.

  “Chili.”

  His eyes went big, and I could just about see how hungry he was. Pretty sure if the kid was naked, we’d see right through him to the other side of the room.

  “You know we was coming or something?” Chili was Bo’s favorite from way back, and he was sorta right about that. Making that chili was something I done before I ever talked to the sheriff back in Fulton County. Gave me something to do with my hands, and made me think on better times. I used Pop’s recipe to make it – the one with real onions and tomatoes in it. Had venison in it too.

  I shrugged, “Musta, I guess. Anyways, if you hadn’t, I was coming for you.”

  “You was?” Dack spoke up from the table, sporting a milk mustache. Soon as I’d herded ‘em in the house, I’d sat Dack down with a big glass of milk and a box of lunch cakes. He’d worked his way through half the box so far.

  I nodded. “Had plans to come break you both out. They changed a little after talking to Lyle, but I’da come, either way.”

  Bo settled down beside Dack and snagged a cake. “How was you planning to break us out?” He stuffed the thing in his mouth whole.

  “Know a guy.” I said mysteriously, knowing the suspense would kill them both. Sure enough, they both started squawking at the same time.

  “Who?” Dack asked.

  “What guy?” Bo demanded at the same time, crumbs exploding out of his mouth like shrapnel.

  I chuckled. “Got a guy who does that – breaks people out of bad situations. Usually, he nabs people from those religious cults, and once he got a kid away from a parent who wasn’t supposed to have him.

  Dack nodded around his lunch cake like he knew just what I was talking about. Kid probably did too. Always was the sharpest tool in the shed.

  I kept on. “We was coming to git you two. I done paid him and all. We was just waiting on his partner to get back from Alabama. Planned it for next weekend.

  “Well that sucks.” Bo noted. “Git your money back?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t matter none. Just wanted you here, and you are, so that’s what matters.” I said and meant it.

  “I gotta bedroom?” Dack piped up, wiping his mustache on the back of his hand.

  I nodded, joshing him. “We got napkins for that. This ain’t no barn.”

  Dack knew I was kidding ‘im. He just grinned, teeth speckled black with crumbs, “I got sleeves.”

  Bo snorted, “Merle wouldn’t spend a dollar on a roll of paper towels unless he could wrap ‘em and smoke ‘em.” He looked at me, joking, “You gonna kick us out if we act like slobs?”

  I stood up, nodded to Dack, “Wipe your damned faces on hundred dollar bills if you want, long as you stick around.”

  Dack stood up, grinning like a damned fool. He come at me with his arms out. “Hug me, man.”

  I made a manly gesture of sidestepping him so he wouldn’t see how much I really wanted to. “Don’t get all handsy. This ain’t junior high. I look like fucking Amy Lee Ramsey?”

  That stopped him, horrified, in his tracks, and I had to laugh out loud at the look of panic on his face.

  “Not funny, man.”

  Bo spoke up, “She wanted to have his babies.”

  “Well, I think that’d been real cute. You and Amy Lee and a shitload of little Dacks running all over creation.”

  “What if they looked like Amy Lee?” Bo offered up, innocent, and I seen Dack shiver.

  I stepped back and pretended to study my youngest brother, “Well, maybe they’d git your mustache at least. Hers was too damned bushy.”

  “Fuck you, man.” Dack responded, popping me a sad-looking middle finger that was too skinny to be any kind of threat.

  “That’s what Amy Lee said.” Bo added, and we both cracked up.

  “Fine,” Dack said, tossing open the door to the first room. “Biggest room is mine.” He stood studying it for a minute, then strode to the second one. “What’s in here?” And when he shoved that one open, the evening sun came streaming in like a spotlight, and tree leaves danced all around in happy shadows on the board floor. I saw my brother smile.

  “This one.” He said softly. “This one is mine.” He stood still, looking enchanted as a little girl, but then he stepped back and glanced sort of sheepish, first at me and then at Bo. “I mean, you know. Unless one of you wants it.”

  I glanced at Bo, and caught him shaking his head. He met my eyes over Dack’s head and we exchanged a silent message.

  Bo come up behind and stared over Dack’s shoulder, acting disinterested. “Nah ... looks like a girl’s room to me.” He shoulder-bumped the kid gently. “You should fit right in.”

  And Dack, he was already planning ahead. “Think I got room for a bookcase.” He said, reverent. “Ain’t had a bookcase in forever.”

  “Ain’t had a chance to git no beds or nothing yet.” I apologized. Took up all my time fixing up the place. Got a job in town too.

  Bo nodded, looking interested. “They hiring?”

  “Might be. I can find out.”

  “Me too?” Dack spoke up. “I can help out.”

  I nodded, knowing I’d never let my sixteen-year-old brother work in a barroom, but no use telling that right now. I’d find a way for him to help out; that just wasn’t it. “Maybe.”

  Dack went out and fetched his pack, brought it inside and spread his bedroll on the floor. He used the pack as a pillow and lay down, kicking off boots that looked like they belonged to a man twice his height.

  “Where’d you git the shitkickers?”

  “Al Gentry. Jane said he don’t wear ‘em no more. Only wears bedroom slippers everywhere he goes.” Dack said, giving up a yawn so big it had to hurt.

  “Cause he don’t go nowhere.” Bo added. “Man’s a hermit.”

  “Tired.” Dack said, yawning again. “Wake me when the chili’s done?” He closed his eyes, and I swear, he went out just like that. I turned raised eyebrows to Bo, and he grinned, shaking his head.

  “Kid can sleep.”

  “That he can.” I said, studying the picture he made. Dack had placed his bedroll right in the middle of the green shadow leaves, and they flitted across his face and what was left of his hair, and made him look like an elf or something. Kid had always been delicate, but now he looked downright starved. And there wasn’t hardly a single place on him that wasn’t bruised or scabbed over. Wanted to cry just thinking about it.

  “He’ll wake up screaming though.” Bo added, quiet. “Every damned time.”

  I nodded, remembering. “Hope he stops having them night terrors. Maybe he will now. He’s safe.” I pulled the door closed, and Bo was right there, crowding me. Before I thought much about it, I pulled him close and hugged him tight. I thumped him on the back twice for good measure and let him go. “You both are.”

  24

  “What the hell happened to his hair?”

  “Merle. What do you think happened? Bastard flung him around the room
by it. Every time a chunk came out, he grabbed on at another place.” Bo studied me over his chili. We’d debated waking Dack, but then decided he needed the rest. The chili would keep, and besides, it got better, the longer it set. “Lyle tell you about Beth?”

  I nodded. That one hurt. Beth had been a nice lady. She’d done what she could to help us, but she was only one person, and Merle was a force to go up against.

  “Dack seen it happen. Seen ‘em dump the body. He can tell where she is.”

  I looked up, “Them? Who?”

  “McAllisters. Way Dack told it, Merle snapped Beth’s neck, and Shaw and Shane, they helped him drag her out and sink her in the pond.”

  I felt sick at that revelation. Dack had to have been next on the list that night. This one had been too damned close. Bo was thinking it too, apparently.

  “It was close that night, you know? They told me if I left early again, not to come back. I needed that job.”

  I nodded. Jobs was jobs and brothers was brothers, and there wasn’t no comparison.

  “Glad I did, though. Kid was bleeding pretty bad when I found him. Took him to Jane’s, and she fixed him up. Again.”

  “So what all’s wrong, other than his head?”

  Bo shrugged. “Jane wrapped up his ribs, and he was bruised from his chest to the tops of his thighs from Merle kicking and stomping on him. She put on some liniment.”

  I took a drink of my beer to wash the cuss words back.

  Bo shrugged. “Dack said he sorta went out again, but he remembered Merle stomping on him. I guess that’s where he landed. Then we got most of the way here, and some old fart shoved him out behind a dumpster at a store and wailed on him til I stopped it.”

  I stared. Fucking Ashkettle luck. Put the three of us in an ocean with a thousand other people, and two would git shark-bit.

  Bo had something else to say too; I could tell. He got all shifty eyed and concentrating too hard on his chili.

  “What?” I nudged. “Tell me.”

  “Dack said, when Merle was throwing him around, he was saying how Beth was crazy. How it was her own fault she was dead.”

  “Sounds just like Merle.”

  “And Dack, you know, he was agreeing with everything, trying to keep hisself alive.”

  I nodded. Whatever Bo had to say, it wasn’t gonna be good. He never hedged like this.

  “And so ... then ... then he asked Dack if him murdering Beth brought back memories of ... you know ... the night Pop died.”

  I sat up straighter, frowning.

  “Dack said it sounded like maybe Merle was the one ... the one killed Pop. Like Merle killed him, and Dack seen it. Merle started talking about how Pop had been crazy too. How he’d been gonna turn Merle in for poaching and git him locked up for three years and fine him $15,000. Asked Dack to say Pop was crazy too and that he’d got hisself killed just like Beth had done. Said Dack had seen it. Asked him if he realized Pop was crazy too. Told him he had no choice.”

  I shoved back from the table and stood up then, sick to my stomach. Merle’d taken Pop away from us, and made Dack watch. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d moved right in and spent the next seven years torturing the kid into not telling.

  “I will so kill that son of a bitch. Bastard is a dead man walking now,” I snarled, then felt bad ‘cause Bo pushed back his chili without eating the rest, and just kinda sat there hunched over, skinny arms wrapped up around hisself. And the kid needed food, as much of it as he could git. I should’a waited to ask him what happened that last night. I made myself calm down. “Go on and eat. Cain’t do nothing about it right now, and you git any skinnier, I can use you as a straw.”

  “Ain’t hungry no more.” Bo muttered.

  And I was about to argue the point, but then it didn’t matter no more cause Dack was screaming from the bedroom like someone was killing him, and we was tripping over each other to git in there.

  25

  I flung the door open, and Dack was up against a corner of the wall, eyes wide open in terror, his hands pulling at the neck of his shirt like something was choking him. He was crying, tears streaming down his face like sweat, and me and Bo could tell he was still asleep.

  We landed on either side of him, and Bo tugged him gentle into his arms and sat there rocking him easy. I thought at first the kid would fight, being locked up in a dream that bad, but he went willingly and let Bo comfort him. I sort of awkwardly rubbed the kid on the back ‘cause I didn’t know what else to do. Bo had always been the one to put Dack back to pieces after Merle done tore him apart. I was mostly the one helped Bo.

  “I’m here, man.” I heard Bo mumbling over and over. “You hear me, Dack? I’m here. Sonny’s here, and we ain’t going nowhere. You’re safe, kiddo.”

  “I’m ... I cain’t breathe.” I heard Dack whisper, desperate.

  “Cause you’re crying too hard. You gotta calm down.” Bo replied, like it was a normal day, and he was telling Dack how to tie a shoe or something.

  “H-head hurts, t-too.”

  Bo brought a hand up and petted what was left of the kid’s hair. “I know it does. It won’t much longer. It’s healing up nice.” He sort of tucked Dack in under his chin, holding the kid’s head snug to his chest, and it calmed him.

  I recognized the move. It was one Pop had used on me whenever a bee got me or when I accidentally saw more of Pop’s job than I should’ve. He used it that time we walked up on that chicken house that Shaw had lit up. The poor chickens was still smoldering, and the wind that day smelled like a combination of forest fire, Sunday dinner and vomit. Pop had lost his supper right there on the ground in front of me soon as he seen it. Never could eat chicken after that day, Pop neither.

  For a no-nonsense kinda guy, Pop had sure had a sensitive stomach.

  Dack too, apparently, cause I saw him suddenly try to push Bo away, and then he was retching, his poor, skinny body heaving with a vengeance, and up came all them lunch cakes all over his jeans and Bo’s jeans.

  I’d forgotten that, how Dack had a tendency to puke up most everything he ate.

  Poor kid’s eyes landed on me then, terrified. I guess he thought I’d be mad he puked on my floor or something, and my gut clenched. Merle had him trained to expect a beating over every little thing that happened.

  “I’m s-sorry. I’ll c-clean it up, Sonny.” He whined while his body was still heaving. “Couldn’t help it.”

  I was about to tell him it didn’t matter none, but Bo beat me to it.

  “Sonny don’t care none. He ain’t mad. Just git it all out. Better out than in. Make you feel better.” He said in that same, low voice that sounded like music.

  “I’ll get some towels.” I offered, trying to find a way to be useful. Them two was thick as thieves. Always had been. And it give me comfort to know they could help each other that way.

  I slipped out to find a couple raggedy towels. Only had about four, but that should do. Had a mop in the bathroom too, and a bucket. Grabbed ‘em both and headed back in, steeling myself for vomit duty. I started on their jeans, pushing the worst of the debris off onto the floor and marveled at how Bo didn’t even seem to notice he was sitting there covering in used lunch cakes and milk.

  Dack did though. He took one look at what come off Bo’s jeans and onto the floor and hid his face in his brother’s chest. He let go this pitiful whine that ended in sobs.

  “I’m sorry, Bo. I ... I ... didn’t m-mean ...”

  But Bo cut him off. “Can it, man. It ain’t nothing. Sonny’s got a shower back there. I seen it. Ain’t nothing that ain’t gonna wash off. You need to let go, go ahead. Git it all up. I don’t care.”

  Then it was quiet for a bit while Dack got hisself under control and Bo kept on with his petting and shushing. I got the worst of the mess off the boys and away from ‘em and tossed the towels in the bucket. Wasn’t much else I could do til I got ‘em both out of the way.

  “You wanna talk about it?” I heard Bo ask quietly. “It was pr
etty bad, I guess?”

  Dack nodded, his face still plastered to Bo’s shirt front.

  “Go ahead.” I offered, gentle as I could. “We’re listening.”

  It took some time, but Dack finally unstuck hisself from Bo’s shirt and leaned back against the wall. I thought about trying to get him into a shower before we got too far into it, but I was afraid we’d lose the moment, and he’d clam up. I let it be – let Dack tell it in his own time and his own way, even if his way was covered in vomit and smelling like somebody’s outhouse.

  Dack drew up his knees, wincing at the effort, but I guess he felt safer all curled in on hisself like that. He buried his face in them, and we had to lean in to hear ‘im once he started talking.

  “I ... I think maybe I’m remembering ... you know ... what h-happened with Pop.”

  Bo’s eyes met mine, and there was a look in ‘em I couldn’t decipher. Mighta been fury. Mighta been hurt. Likely it was both. “Go on.” He prompted.

  “I was in the woods, and I was all alone except for this ... this elk. He was huge, and his rack was huge, and I was riding on his back. He was carrying me along, and I was little. My hands was ... they was all fat with short fingers like I was a little kid or something.”

  We both nodded like Dack was watching. Habit, I guess.

  “I was kinda scared and wondering where everybody was. It was getting dark, and I didn’t recognize the woods.”

  Dack took a shuddering breath, raised his head and stared off at the far wall, remembering.

  “There was this tree coming up, and it was all black and scary, and I didn’t wanna walk under it. Think I was afraid it’d fall on me or something, but the elk just kept walking, and we started passing under it, and then I felt something land on the elk’s back behind me. It’d jumped from the tree, and it was sitting right behind me, and it was alive cause it’s breath was all hot on my neck.” Dack’s voice began shaking.

  “And the elk, it just went crazy when the thing landed on it. Started bucking and tossing and trying to throw it off ‘cause it hurt, I guess. The thing reached around in front of me to hold on, and its hand and its arm was made of fire. And I ... I tried to jump off, but I couldn’t. The thing was ... it was ... kind of pulling me in. Pulling me inside it. Parts of me was being sucked inside the thing, and I was burning up.”