by Joe Meno
“How much is it?” I could tell he was standing there thinking, wanting to just take the knife and run.
“That knife there is thirty-six dollars,” Pete said. “Same as it was last week and the one before that. Hand it back now.” He opened his white palm for Pill to return it. My brother kind of panicked and looked over his shoulder at me. His eyes flashed with fury and hope.
He needed to do something. He held the knife in his sweaty palm, staring down at its shiny metal blades.
“All right now, son, hand it back.”
Pill looked back over his shoulder at me again. His face was all white. He was truly panicked. Pete leaned closer, his gray shadow looming across my brother’s sweaty face. I kept waiting for Pill to flick the knife open and then run off, but he didn’t do a thing. He just sort of sighed and handed the knife back, then slunk right out of the store. I followed, shaking my head.
“Whadya give it back for?” I asked, still kind of trembling myself.
“Shut your trap.” He turned and stared back at the store.
He was just standing there, his face looking all serious. His cheeks were just beginning to get tiny black whiskers, loose and wild; he glanced out into the street, holding in his breath like he was about to cry. There was something behind his eyes that was stormy-blue and gray. They got real thin as he clenched his fists at his side. He looked me right in the face, not saying a word. He turned and faced the display of brown push brooms there on sale, nodding slowly.
I could hear that sound of the Zippo flicking open, metal against metal, and then: Snapppppp!!!!!!!!!
Without another word, he lit the brooms on fire. Their shiny bristles lit up like grass, sizzling and shrinking until they were all aflame, crackling orange and yellow in the silver garbage can they were standing in.
“What in the hell?!” I could hear Pete holler from inside, as the fire began eating up the broom heads and handles. My brother took off, skidding down the sidewalk and out into the street. In the only sign of camaraderie I would show, I kicked over one of the lawn mowers and started running too. He was a lot faster than me. Heck, he was older and taller. My breath hurt in my chest as I ran, trying not to let out a cry.
“Hey!” I heard someone yell from behind. “Hey you, come back here!” Maybe it was Pete from the hardware store or maybe it was someone else. I didn’t know. I wasn’t about to turn and look. My breath was barely coming and my belly was hurting and my lungs felt like they were on fire, and I guess I felt like bawling right there. My brother turned down an alley and grabbed me by my sweatshirt. We dodged down another alley and over a wire fence and ran toward home, covered in sweat. We didn’t say a goddamn word, even when we made it to the yellow field that led back toward the trailer park. Pill stopped running, huffing hard; he hunched over and dropped his hands to his knees to breathe. His forehead was all covered in sweat and his lips were full of spit. His face was all red. He wiped his mouth and stood up, coughing a little. His eyes were nearly running with tears.
We walked across the field, crossing down to the road; nothing settled in my mind much except how scared my older brother had looked after he had done it, and that made me feel even worse. He was as scared as me, all right. Maybe because he had never lit anything like that on fire before—I mean, not somewhere public like that, while people were just standing inside watching. Even when he burned that kid’s porch down, it was all deserted and no one was really around. Lighting a fire right in the middle of town in the middle of the day, that was arson, plain and simple. I looked at his face again. It was still pale and white.
“That was really great,” I tried to mumble.
He didn’t offer any sort of reply. He pulled his blue stocking cap down and looked back over his shoulder to see if anyone was coming after us. He suddenly looked a lot older to me. “Don’t talk about it now,” he grunted. “Don’t mention it again or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
I shrugged my shoulders and walked beside him and spit. Nothing made any damn sense to me anymore.
And then it got a whole lot worse.
Before we reached the rows of motor homes, a white squad car barreled down in front of us, skidding to a stop just a few feet from where we were walking along the side of the road.
I don’t think there’s anything you can say that accurately describes what you feel at a moment like that, other than doomed. The squad car’s lights were flashing, its siren screeching, the engine hollering with steam. Pill let out a yelp and began to run again, traversing the weeds, down into the culvert along the side of the road, but the deputy was too quick. He hopped out of his car, passed me, and caught hold of the back of Pill’s shirt. He knocked my brother to the ground and held him there, then pointed to me and said: “Stay where you are, you little asshole.”
My face felt all hot—I was scared as hell. I had never had a police officer swear at me before and I don’t think Pill had either, not even when he lit that hedge on fire in Duluth. The police there had just sat us both down in front of our mother and French and talked about responsibility. No one—no policeman, I mean—had ever knocked my brother down and called me a little asshole before. I was pretty terrified, I guess.
I watched as my brother wrestled around in a thick pile of dirt and leaves, flailing his thin arms. He tried to kick the man in the belly, pulling himself to his feet to run again, but the deputy turned and cracked him in the nose with the back of his hand. My brother didn’t utter a goddamn cry, he just held his nose and kept kicking; the two of them, my brother and the deputy, both kind of snarled and had the same dumb look in their black eyes—anger. Not just anger, but frustration, frustration that didn’t have anything to do with each other or the goddamn fire at the hardware store, I suddenly thought. In that moment, it seemed to me like my brother and the deputy were exactly the same. They had both been cheated out of something they thought they had deserved maybe. They both figured they could get away with lying and cheating, but they both knew they were doomed. That’s how my brother looked, lying there on his back. Already doomed.
The deputy finally slapped a pair of thick silver handcuffs on my brother’s wrists and yanked him to his feet by the back of his shirt. Pill’s nose began to bleed a little from one of his nostrils. He looked pathetic. The deputy pulled that beautiful silver lighter out of Pill’s shirt pocket and shoved us both into the backseat of the squad car, then slammed the doors shut. He fell back into his driver’s seat, coughing a little. I kind of hoped I would die just then, and I watched as the deputy turned around to face us.
“It looks like you both have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Go to hell,” my brother murmured, but it didn’t sound brave at all, it sounded almost like a cry, like he was ready to buckle. The blood on his nose didn’t help him look any tougher either. Me, I didn’t say a word. I was already thinking. I thought I could blame my dumb older brother for most of it, except the part where I knocked the lawn mower over and ran, and even then I was deliberating whether my mom and this policeman might believe it was all just an accident, like maybe I hadn’t known what Pill was going to do and I had maybe tripped over the lawn mower accidentally.
The deputy switched off his siren and asked us where we lived and Pill mumbled it out, and then he drove us toward the trailer park slow as hell, maybe trying to rattle us, I guess. He unrolled his window and lit up a smoke. He let the gray cloud rise from his mouth and drift up, real cool and relaxed, like he was in some movie, starring him of course. I didn’t like this deputy at all. He pulled into the trailer park, right between our motor home and Mrs. Garnier’s, and by then we knew he knew everything and we were done for.
He turned around in the front seat and stared at us, shaking his head.
“So you think you can just go and destroy other people’s property and run off like a bunch of cowards, huh?”
We were done for, all right.
“We didn’t light nothing,” my brother kind of mumbled to himself. He sure
was out of it. I don’t know. Maybe it had nothing to do with the fire, maybe he was just so sick of being disbelieved and caught and treated like a liar and troublemaker. His eyes kind of welled up with tears and his face got all hot and red as he turned toward the car window. We had lit the can of brooms on fire, the deputy knew we had done it, but my brother couldn’t let it go, he wouldn’t let anyone accuse him of anything, whether it was true or not, even if they had the evidence right there in their hand. That’s the real problem with lying: You never do know when you’re telling the truth or not.
“I got three different folks that said you did it. And this lighter here, which all of them can identify.”
“Screw off,” my brother grunted.
I guess there was no hope, no hope for either of us. I thought about coming clean and spitting it all out, finally snitching on my brother, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Maybe the deputy would think I was innocent, just a tagalong, but my mother would know the truth and punish us both for sure. I could already feel the red-hot length of French’s belt against my hide. I could already hear my mother’s hot crying wallowing in my ears. My lips began to tremble. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth and let it all out in one horrible flush of snot and tears.
“He did it,” I choked out. “My brother did it. He said he’d kill me if I told anyone. Honest. He said he was gonna kill me if I told. Please don’t tell our folks. Please. He won’t ever light nothing on fire again. I swear. I swear. Please don’t tell our folks.”
Pill shook his head in disgust. He stared at me without saying a word, and I knew right then he hated me for sure. Maybe the whole idea of stealing something had been his to begin with, but I had gone along with him because I wanted to see him get away with it, and maybe that wasn’t as bad as what he did, but I knew telling on someone was just about the lowest thing you could do. I had buckled. I had turned on my own brother. I would deserve my punishment because I was a snitch. I was a tattletale. I was a blabbermouth.
“Now ain’t the time to cry, son,” the deputy mumbled to me over his shoulder. “No time to cry when you go around doing stupid things like that.”
He took a long drag, then opened the car door and led us out and on up to our front porch. He knocked on the screen door just once with a big white fist.
“Hello. Sheriff’s Department!” he hollered.
French answered the door in a pair of brown pants and a dirty T-shirt. He shook his head as he caught sight of the both of us, my brother in handcuffs with a bloody nose and me crying like a baby; my God, after all of my mother’s warnings and French’s nodding and frowning along with her for support, they had both been right. We were no good. We were headed straight for the pen.
The deputy flicked his cigarette out into the gray darkness and spoke: “Looks like your boys here got themselves into some trouble.”
I watched as my mother appeared at the door, staring over French’s shoulder.
“What happened? What did you do now?” she shouted.
“We didn’t do a damn thing!” Pill blurted out.
Deputy Lubbock let out a snicker. “Heh-heh, it looks like these boys here lit a fire outside the hardware store in town. I caught ’em with the evidence, red-handed.”
“A fire?” my mother shouted. “Another fire?” She stepped from behind French and smacked me hard on the side of my face. That’s something you don’t ever want to feel, getting smacked in the face by your own mother in front of a stranger and all.
“Pete at the hardware store said he won’t press any charges, though I tried to convince him otherwise. He said as long as these boys don’t come near the store again and they repay what they owe, he’d be willing to let it go.”
“Owe? What do ya mean, owe?” my brother shouted.
“Pete said it was in the neighborhood of three hundred dollars or so.”
“Three hundred dollars! We didn’t even light the damn fire!”
“You best find a way to learn these boys the difference between right and wrong, or the next time I might be forced to teach them myself. And believe me, you don’t want to have to learn it from me.”
Deputy Lubbock slipped his key into the silver handcuffs and turned Pill free, shoving him a little.
“We will, officer,” French said with a nod, gripping Pill by his shirt.
“I want my lighter back,” Pill grunted through some tears. He stared hard right into that deputy’s eyes and didn’t look away.
“That’s official evidence now, son,” the deputy said. “I’d keep any lighters or matches out of this boy’s reach.”
My mother and French nodded.
The deputy hopped back in his squad car and tore away, kicking up gravel and dust as he went. My mother and French shoved us inside and gave us each a whipping before we could explain anything about the knife or the deputy or the hardware store. French held me by my arm and whacked me with his belt hard on my behind without me saying another goddamn word. Then he did the same to Pill, who just stood still and didn’t cry like me, gritting his teeth a little as the belt hit his behind with a thick smack. The worst part was the look on French’s face: It was stern and serious, but sad and disappointed as hell. He winced with every swing, looking like he was about ready to start crying too. He held me by my shoulder afterwards and looked into my face.
“This is it, boys, this is the last fire you start, understand?”
I nodded, clearing the tears out of my eyes. Pill stayed completely still. His eyes were all hard and black and mean.
“You’re both gonna end up in prison or the morgue pulling shit like that, you hear?”
I nodded again, trying to ignore my sore bottom-side. My mother was in the bathroom crying, maybe mumbling the rosary through her sobs, probably praying for both our worthless souls.
French looked at my brother sternly. “Pill, you’re going to get a job to pay back what you owe.”
“A job? Where am I supposed to get a job?”
“The Pig Pen. I got a fella on my line at work who knows the manager. I’ll give him a call about it right now.”
“I’m not working at some stupid grocery store,” Pill muttered.
“Yes, you will,” French replied. “And you’re going to pay back every cent that you owe.”
After that, French sent me and my brother to our room so fast that I still didn’t have a chance to say a single word. Our damn room didn’t seem any different than the prison or the morgue, I guess. Any way it went, it was like we were still both trapped. My brother laid in the top bunk, not uttering a sound, his face red as hell. I laid there too, beneath him, knowing how mad he was—not at my mother or French, or the deputy or Pete, or even the whole crummy town we both always counted on blaming—but me. Me. My brother was sore as hell at me and it had all happened before I could really think what I was trying to do or say. I had turned on my only brother and it hadn’t done me any good anyway. I laid in my bed looking up, and reached out my hand to where my brother’s weight made the dull blue bunk sag above. There was nothing there but the plastic skin of the old blue bed-liner. I could hear him breathing. I could hear him hating me, lying beneath his soft white sheets. I started crying again, holding my face in the pillow so he wouldn’t hear. I guess maybe I tried so hard to think of something funny to say and nearly said it, but then the words were all gone and I just laid there, making sounds to myself like a prayer.
the glass eye
A couple of weeks later, it still kind of felt like the world was ending. Because I had snitched on him, my older brother refused to talk to me. I would sit next to him when was watching TV or follow him into our room and ask him how his job at the Pig Pen was, but he would just give me a dirty look and then go back to ignoring me. He was sorting through his collection of skin mags one day and I decided to maybe peruse them too, when he looked at me and said: “Don’t touch any of my goddamn things.” I guess he had every right to be mad. I had turned my back on him just to try to get out of trouble.
And no matter how many times I tried to apologize, he just sneered and turned away, shaking his head to himself. I had hurt him worse than I had ever hurt anyone. He was my brother, my only brother, and now I had no one in that crummy town to talk to. I barely got to see him anymore, anyway. He worked nearly every day after school at the Pig Pen supermarket, trying to pay back the damage he had done to the hardware store. The rest of his checks went straight into a savings account my mother had helped him set up. He would stare at the little booklet, watching the numbers slowly adding up. And there was a pile of nudie magazines that kept growing, filling a whole shelf in Pill’s dresser. My mother didn’t go in our room anymore; she would stack our clean clothes outside our bedroom door. No one talked about the fire at the hardware store, neither my mom nor French. It occurred to me that if Pill had just gotten a job in the first place, he could have bought that knife instead of lighting those brooms and starting all the trouble that ended with him ignoring me. But I don’t think he ever really caught on to that. He was still quietly stealing cigarettes and candy and nudie books, and then one afternoon I noticed him shove a greasy-green wad of cash into his pocket when he headed to school. After a few weeks of near silence, nothing had changed except the warnings he gave me.
“Stay away from my shit,” was all he would grunt now before he walked away. That was me and my older brother.
The only other person I’d even bother talking to, Lottie, had been grounded for a month, having gotten in trouble for stealing that beautiful glass eye. During school, we would write each other notes and draw pictures of monsters no one else had ever invented half-tiger/half-vampire, or a Mud-Man, or a creature that was part cheetah, part lizard, part boy—but after school she wasn’t allowed out of her house. By then all of the other kids in class had heard of the fire at the hardware store and no one would speak to me, let alone shoot marbles or have a spitting contest or even share a smoke.
