by Joe Meno
The farmland having been recently harrowed. The plow marks stretching out infinitely in all directions, the upturned earth reeking of musty growth and decay, the fields sodded with manure. All of it like a ripe wound. A fistula of stalk, metal, seed, excrement, and dirt.
An apple core on the dashboard, a crumpled pack of cigarettes, a half-drunk bottle of whiskey, three plastic bottles of Coca-Cola, all purchased from a twenty-four-hour Quik-E-Mart. The songs of Hank Williams, like an accusation, echoing from the AM band, then fading.
Over the plains, leaving the farmlands of Indiana behind, the highway darting past slowly rising hillocks, thatches of woods, the flatland of the Midwest giving over to the slanted, unsteady ground of northern Kentucky. Then farther still, the road signs marking their approach toward Louisville, a smallish city, a half-dozen skyscrapers reigning over a crooked skyline, the billboards promising food and gas and somewhere to rest for a moment but the older brother shaking his head, keeping the accelerator pressed flat with the edge of his boot, the younger brother silent, watching another city pass before his eyes, then the land once again growing flat, the deciduous woods cropping all along the newly paved highway, the radio once more losing its reception, the younger brother listening to the static for a moment, the static the sound of his conscience now, his clouded mind, then switching the radio off, the noise of the truck’s engine and the trailer rattling behind them the only distraction to his troubling thoughts.
The guns they had gotten rid of as soon as they were out of town, ditching them in Deer Creek, standing beside the long metal railing, the older brother wiping them down with a red oil rag from the truck, then tossing each one over, watching them vanish into the slowly moving stream.
It was past three o’clock in the a.m. now, going on four, Friday, the first of September, and the cab of the pickup had begun to stink like the cage of two animals, the sweat of their bodies, the unchanged clothes, the discarded wrappers of candy bars and empty soda pop bottles—all gave a particularly unpleasant crookedness to the air inside. The younger brother noticed it and took it to be a sign of the mistake they had made. He lifted the collar of his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose, then leaned his head against the vibrating window, once again trying to sleep.
The older brother drove on steadily, amusing himself with a toothpick.
_________________
Although Rick West preferred pussy for breakfast, this was fine, this was all right. He said as much out loud, leaning over the counter at the greasy truck stop; the runny eggs and coagulated sausage gravy and biscuits stared back up at him, looking like slop. The waitress—peroxide blond, black roots, dark eyebrows, fake beauty mark, with smudged lipstick and a man’s name tattooed on the side of her neck in blue-black ink—did not seem upset by the remark. She set down the plate, itched at her nude-colored nylon, and went off to refill somebody’s coffee. The truckers on either side of Rick—both independent operators—chuckled a little, though not too loudly, as they were regular customers, the little truck stop near the Arkansas–Tennessee border being the only one around here with clean showers. Rick looked down at the plate of food once more, then over at the waitress, and began to dig in, shoveling forkfuls into his gaping mouth, exaggerating his pleasure with a low, vulgar moan. He made sure to keep his narrow, well-trimmed black mustache clean, dabbing at his upper lip with the corner of the paper napkin so as not to appear uncouth. When he let out another moan, the waitress—a big girl somewhere in her forties, a single mother, definitely divorced—shot him a dirty look, then immediately smiled a little, shaking her head at the man’s coarseness. Rick was handsome-looking in a black Western shirt and black jeans, hair slicked with pomade, silver bolo tied about his sturdy neck. Beside him, on the counter, sat a white Stetson hat, the band having recently been replaced. Rick groaned with pleasure again and the waitress rolled her eyes, her smile widening even more. It was the smile, in response to his offensive antics—her eyes half-lidded, partly amused, partly embarrassed—that told Rick West all he would ever need to know.
“You’re wasting your time on that one,” the large trucker beside Rick whispered. “She got two kids. And a husband in and out of stir.”
Rick grinned, turning to see the trucker’s face. It was wide and red with uneven blotches. “I appreciate the information,” he said, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with the edge of the paper napkin again. “But she ain’t my kind,” he called out a little too loudly, the words rising above the clatter and din of the other dishes being served. The waitress grimaced, shaking her head, jotting down someone else’s order, hurrying back to pick up a hot plate from the line.
When he had eaten as much of the eggs and biscuits as he could—the taste of it piling up like vomit in the back of his throat—he peered down at the check, calculated a generous tip, pulled the bills from his wallet, and offered both the check and the cash to the dark-eyed woman as she floated past. She sped behind the front counter, handed the money and check to the hostess near the door, went and got some elderly couple’s drink order, sped back to the hostess who had made her change, then bustled around to where Rick was sitting. She placed the odd dollar bills and change in front of where his two large hairy hands were folded. She began to speed off again when Rick lifted a finger and motioned in her direction. “Can I get a receipt, please? Hate to bother you but I’m on business.” The woman sighed, still with a smile, hurried back to the hostess’s station, grabbed Rick’s receipt, and plunked it down in front of him. He nodded, thanked the woman, finished his coffee, and slid the receipt into his front pocket. Then he stood and approached the end of the counter, where the waitress was now taking a quick break, sucking orange juice through a straw. Rick reached into the front pocket of his dark jeans and then held his hand up to the glittery-eyed waitress. He slowly opened his fingers, revealing a motel room key with a forest-green plastic key chain resting in the center of his palm.
“How about you and I go watch some dirty movies?”
* * *
After the breakfast shift was over, Rick knelt above the woman, her hands and feet bound behind her back with nylon—the string having been cut from the motel room’s gaudy flowered curtains—a pillow sheet pulled over her head, knotted along the side. He raised his hand back and smacked the woman’s posterior playfully, then less so, again and again until it was red, welted, the woman screaming out, the sound muffled by the pillowsack, the flickering light of the cable television casting lurid shadows on the woman’s bare skin; there was the sound of some other woman, an actress moaning in pleasure, jerking her head back and forth in nearly the same motion as this woman’s own, though the waitress’ screams rang out dully with anger and then pain; behind her, somewhere floating above the bed, there was the expressionless glare of Rick West’s face, the hardness in his dark brown eyes, a slight sneer on his lips, the flat, enormous hand rising up and down, up and down, over and over again, until it became a fist.
_________________
The grandfather lay prostrate on the cement floor of the chicken coop, the birds upset by his presence at this late hour and making their discomfort known, cackling, scratching, fluttering about, though even in his debility he did not once take the flung feathers to be those of angels or any other supernatural power. The two Percocet the boy had brought him were now working to great effect. What ached were his bones, all of them, and the back of his head—which was lying on his balled-up shirt, the firmness of the concrete floor pressing up hard against the base of his skull. The boy was somewhere inside the house again. The grandfather glanced around to be sure he was alone before he tried to turn on his side, letting out a low moan. He placed the first two fingers of his right hand up against the wound on his shoulder. It seemed the bullet had passed clean through the bone and gristle. What he could feel when he felt anything was a dull soreness, as if he had fallen from some great height and landed on his back. When he heard his grandson charging out the back of the house, the broken hinge causing
the screen door to slam with its ugly rattle, he tried to steel himself, closing his eyes, breathing slowly and deeply, so as not to frighten the boy again.
“Gramps?” the grandson murmured anxiously, crossing the gravel back lot, then kneeling beside him. “You doing okay?”
The grandfather nodded. The boy checked the wound once more, switching out a bloody dish towel for a clean one. “Dr. Milborne’s on his way over,” the boy said. “He told me he’d be here before you got thoughtful.”
“Huh?”
“I dunno. I asked him what I should do and he just said he’d be here before you got thoughtful.”
The grandfather blinked, then turned his head, watching a black-and-white-speckled Silver Sussex, a hen, its red combs angrily engorged, red eyes aglow. As he started to drift off, he began to consider the animal was his own vanity mocking him with its cawing; then he thought perhaps it was his overwhelming sense of defeat; and then finally, as his eyelids went to fluttering, he realized it was the simple, contemptible voice of outrage.
* * *
By the time the sun broke, they were one hour south and east of Louisville, on the outer edges of Lexington. They had gotten lost once, then talked to a fellow at a gas station and decided to turn around. There was supposed to be a road sign somewhere marking their exit but they could not find it. They drove on, around the circumference of the small Southern city, the older brother still behind the wheel, his pallid, sweating face growing more and more tense, brown eyebrows pointing down over his glaring red eyes.
“Fuck. This is astounding. This is why these people lost the Civil War. It’s in the way they think. Look at it. I mean, they have the psychological predisposition of tragedy. There are no proper fucking road signs anywhere. Why would you need road signs if you already knew you were going to be lost before you got anywhere?”
The younger brother did not respond. He had said very little in the last few hours, his face growing increasingly severe. “This is how they pinch you,” he finally had the courage to blurt out.
The older brother’s eyes twitched, the corner of his lip too. “You don’t ever mention that word again while I’m in your vicinity, do you understand? Do you? I’ve beaten the shit out of guys for less.”
“What?”
“Do you have any understanding about the power of the mind? What you’re able to summon in high-stress situations? Example: a hundred-pound woman who lifts her car off the body of her child. Example: an infantryman who saves an entire platoon through a sudden surge of strength.”
“That’s the same example.”
“Example: Mind control. Hypnotism. Telepathy. Certain individuals who are able to communicate with each other through the power of their thoughts, and through these same thoughts they are able to ascertain their own future. I once met a Muslim, inside, who did everybody’s fortunes, even the warden’s.”
“Bullshit.”
“What do you know? All you’ve seen are the same four walls you’ve looked at since you were a little shit. I’ve been to the coast, man. I’ve looked out at the ocean and seen the face of God. The Devil. What I learned is it’s the same face, whether you want to believe that or not.”
“Whatever.”
“Your problem, little brother, is that your whole personality is based on fear of success. You thrive on failure.”
“How do I thrive on failure?”
“Example: you’re a grown man who works at a pet store. Example: you live at your mother’s. Example: you screw teenage girls.”
“So? None of that stuff is bad.”
“It’s all bad, brother. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t something more pathological with you. Like a blood virus. Like the failure’s infected your brain. The sense of being defeated, I mean. I tell you: I am glad to find I don’t share it.”
“I just don’t want to keep driving around. We got out-of-state plates and all. And you haven’t gone under the speed limit since we left town.”
“Only criminals do the speed limit. That is a well-known and timeworn fact.”
“Ha.”
And then, as if they had been summoned directly by the younger brother’s worst fears, a pair of cherry-colored lights flashed in the rearview mirror dangling on the side of the truck; a police cruiser galloped to chase speed directly behind them.
“This is a perfect example of the power of pessimism,” the older brother hissed, pounding the steering wheel. “I want you to remember this moment for as long as you live. Because it is completely possible to telepathically control your own destiny. Most people only use it in the negative. Like you. So I want you to remember this. Because this, this is why you are who you are,” he growled.
“What do we do?”
The older brother engaged the right blinker and began to pull over, the gravel kicking up against the underside of the silver trailer. The pickup ached to a halt.
“I want you to imagine you are already a ghost. Because if you speak, you say anything, even once, I will fucking kill you first.”
Gilby slid down in the seat, averting his eyes from the police officer’s approach.
“I think you need to behold the power of the enlightened mind,” the older brother whispered. Reaching down into his boot, he slowly retrieved a short-handled knife.
The state trooper, a bulky guy with a blond mustache, wearing the familiar mirrored glasses and tan uniform, slowly walked toward the cab, pausing beside the trailer, turning to glance inside, whistling a few bars of some old-time melody. And then he was at the driver’s-side window, leaning in with his weight on husky forearms, a charming smile pleating his face.
“Morning, gentlemen.”
“Morning.”
“Come down from Indiana?”
“We did,” the older brother answered, almost too quickly.
“Whereabouts?”
“Indianapolis. Its local environs.”
“I was just up there last weekend with the wife.”
“You don’t say.”
“Visiting her family.”
“Hm.”
“Reason I stopped you all this morning—you’re supposed to have brake lights on that trailer.”
“Why, Gilby, did you hear? The good man here says that we’ve seemed to have forgotten to connect the taillights.”
Gilby just nodded, afraid to turn his head, certain his brother was going to stab the poor trooper in his neck if he so much as breathed too loudly. There was something wrong, something deeply wrong with him. Ever since California. It was like he was a villain out of some old black-and-white horror film. Vincent Price. Or the other one. Karloff. Whoever played Frankenstein.
“We’ll be sure to make the appropriate connections at the next rest stop, officer.”
“Don’t give it another thought. I’ll do it for you right now.”
“You needn’t put yourself through the trouble.”
“Don’t be silly. Only doing my job. You mind watching for traffic though?”
The older brother slowly nodded once, slipped the silver weapon into his palm, and leaned over to open the door.
Do not stab him. Do not stab him. Please, Lord. Do not stab him.
The trooper, porcine, was soon on his hands and knees, crawling beneath the rear of the truck, his fat-wrinkled neck pink with sweat, huffing a little as he worked. Cars flashed past every few minutes, their shadows darkening the police officer’s face. Gilby decided he, too, would climb out of the truck, for as he watched from the rearview mirror, it was becoming clear that Edward was now making a number of final calculations, trying to decide how to best murder the patrolman.
The trooper was on his back, the fleshy gap of his neck plainly visible, ghost-white, pocked with stubble and some sort of shaving rash, as he whistled to himself, connecting the two sets of wires beneath the rear bumper of the pickup. The older brother was crouching beside the cop, sweating profusely, lost in an argument with himself, chewing his lips. His right hand was clenched at his side, hold
ing the short-handled knife, turning white. A few tears ran from the corner of the older brother’s eyes, the pupils darting back and forth, as if he was at the height of some serious prayer. Gilby stood there, hovering beside him, trying to silently arouse his attention, but the older brother was gone, lost in his mind now, the knife twisting at his side, neck muscles straining, nose having begun to run.
“Just one more,” the cop muttered, starting on his whistling again.
Gilby began to shake his head violently back and forth, No, no, no, no, but either his older brother could not or did not want to see. He observed a single nerve, some vein that had begun to throb at the side of his brother’s forehead, turn bright blue, the eyes still tearing up, the teeth busy picking at his own skin.
“No,” Gilby finally whispered, but with his soft, helpless tone of voice, he was easily ignored. “Edward . . . don’t.”
For a split second, the older brother glanced up at him, his face seized by terror, strained by something otherworldly, something possibly demonic, the tears running down his cheeks, the knife now flashing out in the open, bright silver, then dull again, as it wavered in the morning sunlight.
“Almost there,” the trooper chirped, his fat neck bulging beneath his formless chin.
The older brother, having settled whatever awful dispute had consumed his thoughts, began to raise the short, curved knife. Gilby, panicked, seeing the vicious intent in his older brother’s eyes, trembled there momentarily before finally gathering the spit and words to blurt out, “It’s not our horse . . .”
The trooper, with a smudge of grease on his wide, white cheek, squinted, pulling his face into the sunlight. “How’s that?”
