Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

by Clayton Lindemuth

  The girl was there, the blonde. Ruth Jackson, the snotty daughter of the Asheville judge.

  “What you get yourself into?” Larry said, kneeling at his back. “Come on, get up.”

  “You heard what Burly said,” Baer said.

  “My office, Creighton.” Principal Doolittle pointed the way, as if Baer hadn’t had a dozen visits in the last month. “This is the last time.”

  “You’re out permanent? Permanent?” Larry said.

  They walked home. Baer dragged his feet, kicked loose rocks.

  “‘Expelled’, Doolittle said.”

  “Why you always starting shit?”

  “You heard what Burly said about Ma. Why wasn’t you in there with me?”

  “Because she is a whore.”

  Both boys were skeletons with skin stretched by growth spurts into gangly knots of knees and elbows. Larry had Baer in size, but not moxie.

  Larry had been acting acutely aware of their poverty; every disdainful smirk on another kid’s face aroused shame on his. His pants ended before reaching his ankles. His wrists extended beyond his sleeves and he’d taken the habit of rolling them, even in winter. He talked of wealth and mused out loud that his penchant for mathematics might carry him beyond his beginnings. Larry watched the cliques that roamed as units, intimidating like stampeding cattle—and Baer knew Larry wanted to join them.

  Ever aloof, Baer saw the herd and scoffed at its noise.

  Their father worked in Asheville but lived with another woman and took his earnings to her. Their mother sewed, cleaned, catered.

  And performed other services to put food on the table.

  “She ain’t a whore, damn you! She’s your mother!”

  Baer swung. His fist glanced Larry’s shoulder, smashed into his ear. Baer connected shoulder to shoulder and drove Larry to the field. On the ground, he landed a punch to Larry’s gut before his brother wrestled sideways. Larry jumped to his feet with a pocketknife in his hand. Baer led with a left before Larry could open the blade. Caught Larry in the nose.

  He stood dazed. Baer brought another. Larry fell, but not without grasping Baer’s shirt and dragging him along.

  On the ground Larry used his weight advantage to straddle Baer. Pinned, Baer brought his knee up hard.

  Larry toppled to the side, hands cupped over his groin. His mouth was open like he wanted to speak or breathe and could do neither.

  “You heard him say it, and you know she ain’t,” Baer said. “And even if she was you got to stand up for her. Asshole.”

  Mother didn’t understand why her boys were always at sixes and sevens. Baer made sure she didn’t know why they’d fought this time. They’d entered the house sullen, bruised and bleeding. Mother trotted from the kitchen and cuffed each.

  “What the sam hell happened?”

  Neither brother responded. Larry, leaning forward and breathing shallowly, eased into a seat at a desk closest the door. Baer dropped Larry’s books in front of him.

  “Fine. You got homework? Sit and do your homework.”

  “Ain’t got any,” Baer said.

  “Sit at that desk and read something,” Mother said. “Here, read this.”

  “The Constitution? Again?”

  She pointed.

  Baer turned on a lamp with a green dome and a brass base, the only item in the house that suggested money. He opened the pamphlet to “We the People.”

  Larry remained hunched with his hands at his groin, showing immense concentration.

  The brothers sat at opposite sides of the room with a glass-topped coffee table between. A painting of no particular ocean hung on the wall above Baer. Mother returned to the kitchen and trussed a chicken.

  Baer read until his eyes flitted ahead, skipping words, lines; his hands joined the revolt and flipped two pages at a time. Three. Behind, Larry mumbled and growled. Whimpered. Baer closed the pamphlet. Mother appeared.

  “Where you think you’re going?”

  “Take a piss.”

  She grimaced.

  “What?”

  “You come right back.”

  He entered the bathroom and stood above the bowl. At the bottom of the water, colored the same yellow as the stained porcelain, lay a rubber. He flushed the toilet and urinated into clean water. Rinsed his hands and splashed water into his eyes. Came out wiping his hands on his pants—

  The lamp was off.

  Larry watched, mouth flat, eyes hollow. Baer returned his glazed look and lifted the cord from the floor below the outlet.

  “Thought you was supposed to be the grown-up,” Baer said. “Asshole.”

  He shoved the plug into the socket—thinking as he did that the cord felt shaved to bare copper.

  Electric flashed through him. He crashed backward on the coffee table; the thick glass held but the legs collapsed. He quivered on the floor, eyes open, unseeing. His lungs shook and his heart rippled. He was aware, detached.

  A dormant cluster of cells awoke deep within a corner of his mind.

  Mother beat his chest with paired fists.

  Baer batted her arms. “Ma!” he choked. “You’re going to kill me!”

  She rocked back and sat on her legs, skirt crumpled above her knees. He saw rug burns.

  “Oh baby,” Mother said. She took his hand.

  Electricity trickled through him as if from the room, like he was an antenna.

  She got to her feet and stalked to the lamp. Lifted the unplugged cord at the base, hand over hand like a rope. She studied the burned plug where it met the cord.

  “It’s been whittled down,” she said.

  Baer watched her eyes fall on him, then shift to Larry.

  Baer felt the shock again, strong.

  “I didn’t do it,” Larry said. His eyes pulsed red. He collapsed. “My balls are like lemons.”

  Mother drove her sons to the hospital. They watched Baer a few hours and released him.

  *

  First time I saw the red light in a fella’s eyes was after Larry tried to electrocute me.

  The glow wasn’t particularly strong, but my sense of it was. Whether I get the electric first or the red depends on if I’m standing next to the liar, or can’t see his eyes.

  That’s all I know about my curse, except it started when I beat Larry’s ass and he tried to murder me for it. After that it was hard to trust folks when I could see they was all the time deceiving.

  S’pose I’m like a rat. Every time I try to cross the cage they shock the shit out of me.

  The curse wanes with age and drink. Sometimes I think it’s gone on account of me not seeing anybody for a week, and then someone shows up for likker and I know I still got it.

  The curse wanes with age and drink. Sometimes I think it’s gone on account of me not seeing anybody for a week, and then someone shows up for likker and I know I still got it.

  Everybody lies, and I see every one.

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