by Brian Hodge
When I asked him why he wanted to tie his sister to a chair like that, he said something about teaching her who’s boss. I didn’t mention it at the time, but it seemed pretty damn obvious who was boss, and it wasn’t him. No sense in pointing it out to him; it’d be like kicking a man when he’s down. But tying up his sister, it was such a strange thing to want to do.
We found the deer the winter after that. We were at my parent’s vacation house, and it was dead down by the lake. It had flies on it, and maggots and stuff. We poked it with sticks and dared each other to touch it. I wouldn’t touch it, though. It seemed like it’d be against God to touch a dead creature for fun.
Mikey stared at the dead deer for a long, long time. He stayed with it, even after I got bored and went back into the house to play video games. We had the old Atari back then; we thought it was really cool. While I was playing Missile Command or Yars’ Revenge, Mikey was outside totally dismantling that deer. The next time I saw it, he had taken it completely apart and arranged the bones in a weird design in the snow. It was a lady deer, a doe. There were no antlers, which Mikey said was a drag. He found some sticks and tried to tie them to the skull, but they wouldn’t stay on.
I probably should have told someone about it then. You don’t know these things when you’re a little kid. Everything seems weird and normal at once at that age. You just don’t know what’s crazy behavior and what’s totally fine. People in the Bible got up to some crazy shit, and when you’re a kid they tell you it’s all okay. Cain and Abel killed animals for sacrifice; maybe touching a dead deer wasn’t really so bad.
Mikey’s mom eventually found his stash of detective magazines. I knew he’d gotten in trouble, so I wasn’t really surprised when we went swimming and I saw his back. Long welts that looked like they’d been made by a wide leather belt. Though that kind of thing never happened around my house, it was normal for Mikey. Nobody said or did anything. Pastor Simms said family authority was God’s authority. It sounds unbelievable by today’s standards, that everyone would know about a boy getting beaten and not say anything. I can assure you it happened all the time back then. People seemed to value privacy more than anything, and where domestic violence was concerned, minding their own business was everyone’s favorite hobby.
So, every now and again, Mikey would take a lashing at his mother’s hands and emerge ashamed and marred, hiding what must already have been a growing anger. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out, that if you’re beaten that many times for just regular, normal stuff, eventually you’re gonna wanna take it out on someone. Nobody should have been surprised, is what I’m saying. If you ask them, though, everyone will say they were.
Chapter Four
(Mikey)
Change for the Bus
I’m exhausted by the time I roll off that poor, dead girl. It’s a sad, sad shame it had to come to this. All she had to do was kiss me like she loved me; why won’t they ever just do it? Am I so terrible?
I start to dress her up again, but her pants are all cut up. Luckily, I have a box of clothes on hand. There’s the shirt from the redheaded girl who cried for her daddy, and shoes, socks and jeans from the other little blonde. The soft, yielding brassiere from the heathen hooker. The little black girl’s yellow sundress. A few more things; I don’t think I remember how they all got here. That pretty yellow sundress would probably look best on her. It’s not really the right season for it, but she won’t complain.
I wrap her tiny body in one of the blankets from the closet. They’re running out of blankets here, and I make a mental note to buy more. I can just imagine them all coming up here, wondering why someone would steal the blankets and leave everything else.
When my little lady is all ready to go, I clean up the rest of the house and remove all traces of our time together. Her unripped clothes go in the box, which goes in the closet under a pile of fishing gear and the Christmas decorations they just took down for the year. Then I vacuum the floors and dump the dirt from the vacuum bag in the blanket with the girl. Got to keep the place tidy; it’s not my house, after all.
We drive down a bunch of twisty dirt roads that eventually lead to the highway. She’s as lousy at conversation as she was on the way up here. Girls just aren’t interested in guys like me, I guess. Maybe I need a better car. Girls like nice cars.
Before we get to the exit ramp, I make a left down a little dirt road with that Direct TV satellite, and a truck for sale on the corner. It’s not a very nice truck, but at least it’s American. People who drive gook cars piss me off. You’d think people would understand by now how important buying American is to the economy. People buying gook cars is probably why I still have such a shitty job after all this time.
Forgetting it doesn’t work, I flip on the radio. I think I hit it a few weeks ago when I was thinking about something that made me mad. All at once I realize I’m alone in the car with a dead thing. It’s horrible when you think about it, though I usually don’t. They say the body is like a shell after death, but I can tell you, these girls are far from empty inside. They’re full of guts and bones and wet things and yellow stuff and a bunch of things I had no idea I’d find there. Animals are simpler on the inside; they make more sense. Nothing about women makes sense to me, not even their insides.
I don’t see a single car as we pull into the swampy area between two farms. In the distance I can see cows coming in for their morning milking. The sun is rising behind them and it looks nice, in a Saturday Evening Post sort of way. It would be easier to unload the girls if I put them in the trunk. But nobody, anywhere, would want to ride in the trunk. After all, this is a sad occasion and not a fraternity prank, where you drive around all night with drunks in your trunk just for laughs. The death of this lovely young woman is no laughing matter. I pull her gently from the back seat and place her lovingly in the icy, swampy earth.
She floats there for a minute, the yellow sundress fanning out behind her in the snow. The soft ice cracks underneath her and her bottom slides downward. She sticks for a minute, and I nudge her with my foot, finally using my boot to push her under the ice. I kick some snow over her and wonder what she would think if she suddenly woke up. I know deep down that she won’t wake up; she can’t. Although, there was that one who woke up for a little while. Man, she screamed more than anything. You’d have thought she was being burned alive, all the noise she was making. Such drama, these girls.
I reach into my pocket and take out one of my old bus tokens. I never use them anymore, now that I have this car. I drop it next to her, so if she does wake up, she’ll be able to get home. I do that for all of them, but not one has made it home yet. I laugh at my own funniness and continue to watch her sink into the icy marsh, covered in plants and snow.
After a few minutes I can’t see her anymore. I’m trying to remember her name. I’m almost sure she told me at the movie theatre. She wanted to call her mom and tell her she was getting a ride home with me. I told her it wouldn’t be necessary, since it would only take me a quick second to drive her back to her mother’s house. You’d think a kid her age wouldn’t fall for that, but there you are.
My stroke of genius was picking her up in the employee parking lot. There’s a door that leads from the theatre’s left EXIT sign into the parking lot, which nobody is in except at open and close. It was totally deserted when she got into my car. Not a single person could possibly have seen her. I tell myself this again and again because my hands are shaking so badly I can barely drive this piece-of-shit car.
I really want a cheeseburger, but I’m afraid the guilt will be all over me again. Like that time after the heathen hooker, when I had blood on me and walked right into a bar. Luckily, it was the kind of bar where nobody cares if you walk in looking like you’ve been in a fight. In fact, someone bought me a beer that day. I thought that was pretty nice. I liked being the guy who got the free beer for a change. I try not to drink too much, though; girls don’t like it when you’re sloppy drunk, and there ar
e much better ways to relieve stress.
Chapter Five
(Mama)
Good for Nothin’
My little Pooter was a good boy. Not the brightest bulb in the bush, but he was a very good boy. Read his Bible every day before bed, said his prayers, and minded his mama. What else can God ask of a little boy, any boy? We started calling him Pooter when he was just a baby. Name always stuck. He didn’t like it one bit when he got older, but he came out of my womb. I birthed him and I’ll call him what I like.
With any son you get some problems. He had that heathen friend with the harlot mother. I didn’t like my little Pooter going over there so much. He picked up bad habits from that boy. Why, once I found a whole stack of those filthy, sinful murder magazines in my boy’s room. Can you imagine? A little boy with such things? And he told me he could read what he wanted because he was in high school now. I tell you, I almost lost my religion givin’ that boy a whoopin’. Sometimes a firm strap across the backside is the only thing today’s children will listen to.
Michael, for being such a good boy, had a lot of problems growing up. First, he was always needing a whoopin’ for something or another. That boy just did not listen to his mama sometimes. He’d fidget in church, fold the pages in his hymnal—all kinds of disruptive things during service. Then he’d want to play outside with his little heathen friends and go to school with them and every other thing.
I didn’t want my Pooter to go to a government school like they have these days. My Pooter still wet his bed sometimes, and the other kids would’ve made fun of him powerful bad at school. He wanted to go, but mama knows best. A little boy can’t know how mean and evil schoolchildren can be. I’ve already been through school, and I know they can be just horrible.
His sister was another one. It’s my own fault for not giving her a biblical name. Kids are like cookie dough that way. You have to press and struggle and work God into them so they’ll always have Him in their hearts. If you don’t, they crumble, with all the sin inside them and none of Jesus’ love to hold them together. I’ve seen it happen.
Jeanette was the one we let go to government school. Full of heathens, it was. Pledging to flags and every other crazy thing. I should have pulled her out of there the minute she came home talking about scientists finding fossils of giant, scaly monsters that lived before Jesus. Can you imagine telling children such evil lies? How do they expect anyone to believe in the Bible when they’re spouting such nonsense? Against my better judgment, her father’s judgment, actually, we let her stay. After he died I wished I hadn’t listened to him. He never knew what the Sam Hill he was talking about anyway.
When I came home from the market, and Jeanette was screaming and raving about her brother trying to tie her to a chair, I knew. I knew she’d been strutting herself around in those fancy new outfits she never should have been allowed to buy. I knew she was tormenting her poor, simple brother into madness. Vile strumpet, right from my own belly. Can you imagine it? By the time I was through with that girl, that thump she put on Pooter’s eye looked like a paper cut. She hollered like always, but it’s my job to teach them how to live. And my job to discipline them when it needs meetin’ out.
Wasn’t long after that Jeanette left us for good. Best thing for us really; she was unsaveable. Didn’t want any part in the church or the readin’s; I never met a girl so hell-bent against bein’ saved. But that was my Jeanette. We never saw her again after she left. Pooter and me, we stayed in our little town, where people respected privacy and treated each other right. But for a few nosy neighbors and some uninvited guests, this town was very good to us. A good place to raise up a dutiful son.
Michael’s father died while the two of them were out for the hunt. All the men went to get a deer in November. You were hardly a man unless you got a deer to bring home for cooking. In the old days, a family’d go hungry if no one got a deer. Not so much these days, but still important for a boy to go. Makes a boy into a man, my husband used to say.
Pooter was the only one who hadn’t got a deer yet in his eleventh year. That’s a little old not to be shootin’ anything, and his father was dead set on getting him out in the woods. I never interfered with men’s business, but I can tell you that my obedient boy cried like a baby when he was told he was going hunting. You’d think a boy’d be happy about missing school to hunt in the wilderness. Northern Michigan wasn’t so much wilderness as it was a bit o’ woods, but plenty of deer all the same. My boy wanted none of it, and he cried. I don’t think I need to explain how his father handled that. We can’t have a son crying when it’s time to do something all little boys have to grow up and do. They came back in the house, both of ‘em hectic and red, looking like they mighta got into a fistfight. I knew they didn’t. Michael would’ve cut his arm off before he’d raise a fist to his father. His father had no such restraint. Restraint didn’t really run in his family … funny thing how my little Pooter had so much when his daddy had so little. Musta got it from my side.
Anyway, Michael came outta the woods alone the morning after they went in. White as a ghost, he was. His daddy was dead, shot in the side of the head from “pretty far away.”
Nobody ever found out where the shot came from. Hunting accidents like that happen every year, and they just don’t know who causes them or how to punish them. Most times the cops just rope off the area, ask a few questions, and go on home. Nobody wants to make a big fuss about a hunting accident. Bad for the tourist trade. Lots of people come in from outta town for the hunting. We can’t be scaring them off just because of an accident.
Michael bounced back to his old self like I don’t know what. It was so nice having him around, being the man of the house after his harlot sister left us to go whoring in the city. Pooter was always such a good, good boy.
Chapter Six
(Mikey)
Take my Wife, Please
Damayanti already had two kids when I married her. Most men wouldn’t be so cool about raising another man’s children, especially a foreigner’s. But I was okay with it. A beautiful woman with two beautiful daughters—what’s not to like? Long hair, long legs, tiny feet and big boobs, just what any man is looking for in a wife. People even joked that she was only marrying me for citizenship. Funny motherfuckers, no?
I proposed after knowing her for about eight months. Usually I wouldn’t wait so long, but like I said, a foreigner with one of those dots on her head. She told me what it meant once, but I forget.
You can never be too careful with those types. English wasn’t Dami’s first language, which was no good for her getting a job and all. I didn’t want her working anyway. Woman with a husband and kids ought to stay home and tend to the house and children. That’s what MY mother did. I turned out pretty good, if I do say so. Dami was always cool with that.
The daughters kept their last name from before I knew them. Pretty little girls, sweet as can be. Good in school, smart and all, making grades, playing sports, doing all the things young kids do. All their little girlfriends would come over and play. It was a nice arrangement. I didn’t even mind keeping an eye on them when Dami was out shopping and such.
Everything was fine with the girls until they started to grow tits. Made them into real, serious teases. Chandra, the older one, started walking around in these T-shirts. I guess she always wore T-shirts, but it’s totally different when they have real boobs under ‘em. All perky and nice, she wasn’t even wearing a bra under there. I tried for the longest time not to look, but finally I told her mother that Chandra needed to cover her little titties up so no one could see them. Dami looked at me like I was a fucking child molester. Me! I’m the one who told her to cover up, so I don’t see how I can be the bad guy. Anyway, I finally had to tell her myself. She started wearing baggy shirts after that. I gave her money to buy some bras, but her mother didn’t like that either. I thought women loved shopping for clothes. There’s no figuring them sometimes.
I like to have a couple of beers when I
get home from work. I didn’t think it was so bad to ask the kids to bring me a beer, but Dami went all apeshit about that too. If she’d had her way, we wouldn’t have had any booze in the house at all. I think she could’ve stood to relax, but if I didn’t do what she said, she got this look like I was the Devil and wouldn’t talk to me for hours. It was really fucked up when she did that; I hated it. It was just easier to do what she wanted. A lot of guys would say that made me pussy-whipped, but those guys probably aren’t getting any from their wives. One nice thing about those foreign chicks, they believe it’s their wifely duty to put out whenever the husband says.
I used to get Dami to put out for me fairly often. We even watched some porn together. Then she started wanting me to try all this weird Voodoo or Hindu or some kind of religious sex. Like religion and sex even go together. Gross. Before I knew it, what should have been regular sex for me turned into an all-night exercise in trying to get her off. She made everything so damn difficult with her needs and wants; sex became a total pain in the ass.
Once, some of the girl’s little friends were staying the night at our place. I thought it might be funny to let them have a few beers. If you drink in front of your kids and don’t let them drink, they’re gonna think you’re a hypocrite, right? They won’t listen to anything you say after that. Really, me letting them drink was a favor to Dami.
There were five girls in all. Chandra and Durga (our two), their two little blonde friends, and a cute girl with short, red hair and freckles named Meg. The beer made them silly and giggly. They had a pillow fight, just like in that movie where the frat guy is watching the coeds from a ladder. And the ladder falls down and he barely cares because of all the hot tits and ass he just saw. You can’t even imagine how beautiful it was, all those lovely young girls giggling and rolling around in their nightclothes. Finally I had to go in the bathroom and jack myself off. I figured if I woke my wife up for sex she’d suspect something. What kind of guy needs to have sex after watching his daughters in a pillow fight? Chandra wasn’t a little girl anymore. I came three times; then I was relaxed enough to go to bed.
