The Broken King

by Brian Panowich

  “It never should’ve come to this, Annette.”

  He took a seat on a stack of wood pallets that had been pushed up against the barn’s wall and pulled a jar of shine from a crate on the floor. He unscrewed the lid and took a deep pull of the corn whiskey. The chill inside him dispersed like a tree full of sparrows. He sipped again, and spit, his bottom lip gone numb from the hundred and fifty proof white lightning. That uncomfortable burn always brought him somewhere better than where he was. He rubbed the remnants of shine and tobacco spittle from his beard. He closed his eyes and took a moment to let the whiskey finish disposing of his ex-wife’s ghost as the wind whistled outside. Every few seconds a faint slap from a loose shutter banged over at the main house. If his timing had been off during that moment of cleansing, or the whistling and banging outside weren’t aligned just right, then he might have missed the soft scuffle from behind the huge boxes of supplies across the barn. But Gareth didn’t miss it. He heard it clear as day. He supposed Annette wanted him to hear it.

  He shook his head.

  More flies on dogshit.

  He thought back on the padlock and the loosed chain, and how it only took Buckley a few seconds to get those tools. It must’ve already been jimmied before he got the shovels, and that fool didn’t even notice. Halford or Clayton would never have let that detail slide. Without setting down the jar of shine, Gareth eased his other hand toward the ’71 Colt on his hip.

  “Please don’t do that, Mr. Burroughs.” Twin barrels emerged from the shadows. “Just toss that pistol over here real slow-like.”

  “Not gonna happen, son.”

  “Then you picked tonight to die, old man.”

  “Nope, that was you. You’re the one that already decided what’s what. You knew the minute I came in here you had a decision to make, and you done made it, so you’d best go on and get to it.”

  Nothing but silence came from behind that barrel. Whoever it was hadn’t come here to kill, or the killing would have already started. Gareth eased up some and kept talking.

  “All right then, son, since we got us a minute, let me tell you something about what you’re holding. I’m thinkin’ from the make of that barrel and the shape of the sites, that’s a Remington 12-gauge—pumper most likely. Am I right?”

  No answer.

  “Well, we can at least agree it ain’t no pussy’s gun. That fucker kicks like a mule, and if it’s filled with buckshot then it almost guarantees you’ll put me down without a lick of talent. No skill required. You ain’t got to do shit but point it in my general direction and squeeze, but—” Gareth paused and hitched a shiteater’s smile toward the darkness. “—It sure makes one hell of a big boom.”

  “You damn right it does.” The voice was timid. “You best hope you don’t hear it.”

  “You best hope my boys don’t hear it, is all I’m saying.”

  “Who you fuckin’ wit’, old man? They gone. I sat right here and listened to both ‘a them high-tail it out of here.”

  Gareth slowly lifted the shine to his lips and sipped. He still couldn’t see the gunman’s face, but he guessed it was a kid by the voice—all pitchy and whiny.

  “You hope it was ‘them’, don’t you?”

  “I ain’t takin’ the bait, old man.”

  “I’m just sayin’. Are you sure they both took off, or is one of them still right outside keeping warm by that burn barrel? Maybe wondering what’s taking me so long?”

  The man with the shotgun stepped out of the darkness and Gareth was not surprised at all that he didn’t know him. He was right about the voice, too. It was just some kid, unremarkable in every way. His dirty face, all cocky and full of false confidence, was no different than the hundred others that come before him—just another fly to swat off the shit-pile.

  “Stop tryin’ to bullshit your way outta this, old man. I done already heard y’all. You told them both to go and they both went. Besides, you being you and all, wouldn’t have trusted a tweeker like the one that just come in here to do anything by hisself, or you’re even dumber than I thought.”

  Gareth considered that and almost nodded in agreement. “Well, I reckon you got it all worked out, then.”

  “I reckon I do.”

  “So, what’s your name, son?”

  “Don’t matter what my name is, but you wanna know what does matter?”

  “What’s that?”

  “How about how easy I got into this barn? Or how easy I got this gun in your face? I thought you was supposed to be untouchable. That’s what people are always sayin’. Gareth Burroughs is some kinda boogie man around here, but shit, look atcha’, sitting there sippin’ hooch, and talking to yourself. You don’t look too scary to me. Annette? Is that your old lady? She run out on you and you’re still pissin’ and moanin’ about it? Damn, that’s pretty sad. Some clam leaves you, and you gotta be deddy to two complete psychos. Game over, Mr. Boogie man. Your time is up.”

  Gareth said worse things about Annette himself, but this punk talking about her like that fired his blood up. He kept it in. Anger wasn’t the way to play this. The boy was a talker and the chatty ones almost always hang themselves. “You may be right, boy.”

  “You’re damn right, I’m right.”

  “But you got one thing wrong.”

  “And what would that be?”

  Gareth took another sip from the jar and this time he kept a nice firm grip on the glass, “I’ve got three,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “You said I was Deddy to two boys. I’m sayin’ I got three.”

  “And I suppose next you’re gonna tell me the third is waiting right outside. Is that it?”

  “No, he’s not. He’s over at the house.”

  Silence behind the gun, and there it was, that flash of doubt that separated players from the played. Gareth smiled. No one ever does all their homework.

  “So go ahead. Pull on me, son. I’ll be dead, but I can promise you that you’ll never leave this barn to tell the story.”

  The boy just stood silent. Gareth knew he was trying to remember what he heard them talking about a few minutes ago. They mentioned another brother.

  The loose shutter outside banged against the house again, and the noise paired with the kid’s doubt gave Gareth the opening he was waiting for. He flung the jar of whiskey at the kid who instinctively swatted at it with the barrel of the shotgun. That’s all the distraction a draw like Gareth Burroughs needed. His Colt was out and cocked before the kid even knew what had just happened. The boy froze solid. Now he really looked his age—sixteen, younger maybe. He slowly lowered the shotgun.

  Gareth’s eyes sank back in his head, and turned coal black. “Are you afraid of the boogie man now, son?”

  “Mr. Burroughs…”

  “Oh, it’s Mister Burroughs now. Why don’t we skip the ass-kissin’ and get straight to the part about who sent you?” For a second, Gareth thought the boy was going to spill it without being asked a second time. He was as soft as a coon’s tail. Gareth almost laughed but that’s when everything went white—and then full black. The scoop shovel smacked the old man hard across the back of his skull. He dropped to the floor, two hundred pounds of deadweight. His head hit the fresh poured concrete slab with a hollow knock, and his shiny revolver slid across the floor, disappearing under one of the new galvanized steel tables.

  “He almost killed you, dummy,” the man holding the shovel said.

  “I had him.”

  “Really? And at what point of him getting the drop on you, did you ‘have’ him?”

  “At this point right here.” The kid pressed the barrel of the shotgun into the soft flesh of Gareth Burroughs cheek. “Say goodbye, old man.”

  “No.” The shovel man said, slapping the barrel away from Gareth’s face.

  “He was right. The blast will be too loud and we ain’t scoped out the house.”

  “That third fella really might be in there?”

  The older man just stared at the b
oy. “No, son, his third boy is Clayton Burroughs, the Sheriff of Waymore Valley. How do you not know that?”

  The kid just stared back trying to think of an answer. The older man spared him the pain. “The County Sheriff isn’t in his outlaw father’s house sippin’ hot cocoa, but any other one of this old man’s people could be—Jimbo, Ernie Pruitt, or that big black joker, Valentine. Who knows? Let’s just do what we come here to do, and get gone.”

  “Are you shittin’ me, here? We’re just gonna torch the barn? We got us a chance to kill Gareth fuckin’ Burroughs. That’s a golden ticket. We’ll be goddamn legends.”

  The older man leaned the shovel against the wall, squatted down to get a look at an unconscious old man. It was a sight few people ever got to see. The patriarch of Bull Mountain, helpless, his jaw gaped open on the dusty cement floor, a goose-egg rising like a biscuit on the back of his head. The man sat there a second, cocked his head and tried hard to see the feared and respected figurehead of North Georgia’s most notorious bloodline, but he couldn’t. He just saw an old man laid out in the dirt—simple and sad. After a quick glance around the room, the man stood, and picked up one of the jerry cans. “Let’s just do what we’re suppose to do, and torch this place.”

  “And what about him? What if he wakes up and makes it out?”

  “He won’t.”

  The older man twisted open the lid on the can and dumped half the contents onto Gareth. It smelled like cat piss. “We torch him, too.”

  The kid smiled. He picked up another fuel can, and then the two of them emptied the rest of the chemicals over the tables and equipment, dosing the pallets and the walls as well. Once they were outside, one toss of a lit Zippo, and the chemical soaked dirt lit up like a fuse. It only took seconds for the barn that Johnson Burroughs built in 1882 as a stable for Cherokee Paints and Palominos to become a fully engulfed inferno.

  Even as his clothes caught fire, Gareth remained unconscious. It wasn’t until his hair and beard caught the flame that the intense heat shot him awake. His skin immediately began to char, and blister. He tried to roll, and cover his face, but the chemicals his killers had covered him in made the burning impossible to escape. He barely moved a few inches, before the pain paralyzed him. He couldn’t move or see.

  But he could scream.

  Gareth Burroughs screamed, and his scream was a foreign sound to the world he’d created. Gareth had never screamed before. Never like this. After nearly seven decades of systematically numbing himself to every variation of pain this world had to offer, he believed he was immune to the concept, but as his flesh began to sizzle and split and the fat underneath began to liquefy, it was clear he’d known nothing about pain, nothing at all. He screamed like a newborn being pulled by force from the comfort of the womb.

  In the moment before the intense heat caused his eyes to burst like tomato red water balloons, he saw hundreds of detailed faces flicker through his madness—details his brain had not allowed him to process until these last few seconds on earth. As the fire claimed his entire body, he was bombarded with these details. Every outline of every shrieking mouth, every scar, freckle, mark, or blemish, every slow decent into hell that played out on every face of every man he’d ever watched burn or burned himself. He’d felt nothing when they died screaming, nothing but morbid fascination, and even that faded after the first few. Now, in this fury of white-hot needles that spun and bored into his every pore, he knew why he’d been numb. He was meant to feel it all right now.

  “Come on, son. Let’s go.”

  The kid with the shotgun picked up his Zippo from the dirt and stuffed it in his pocket. He scratched at the sprout of blonde hair just starting to form a teenage beard on his chin and let the flames dance in the reflection of his icy blue eyes. He propped the gun over his shoulder and stared at the fire until his father prompted him again.

  “I said, let’s go, Danny.”

  “Okay, paw. I’m coming. I can’t wait to tell—”

  The older man cut him off, turned him around forcefully by the shoulders and locked eyes with him. “Hear me, boy, and hear me good. You ain’t gonna tell nobody. Not a goddamn soul. Do you understand me?”

  “But, Paw.” The boy tried to wiggle out of the man’s powerful grip but failed to shake free. The man pulled him in closer. “No buts. Not a word. I’m serious about this.” He spoke with sharp edged syllables. Not—a—damn—word.” He tightened his grip. “No one can ever find out we were here. You have no idea the kind of hell you’ll bring down on me—on us—if what we just did comes back around. Now tell me you understand.”

  The boy pulled away, finally breaking free but he nodded. “Fine,” he said.

  “No. Tell me you understand. Say the words.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good, now go.” The older man watched the boy take to the trail they came in on, the light of the fire on his back finally giving way to the shadow of the wood. He knew the boy would keep quiet. He’d never known his son to be a liar, but he also knew silence wouldn’t keep them safe forever. He knew it in his bones. The men who called this mountain home wouldn’t let something like this stand. It may take some time, years if they were lucky—but the old man knew that eventually, there would be a reckoning.

  * * *

  “I don’t know why Deddy even gives a shit about that little prick.”

  “Because he’s our brother, Buckley.”

  “Not to me he ain’t. C’mon, Hal, we both know it was his whining’ ass that run Mama off, and then he goes and straight up betrays us. He took a big steaming dump all over the family, and Deddy still takes up for him. I just don’t get it. Hell, don’t know why we put up with it.”

  Halford took his eyes off the road for a moment and watched Buckley wiggle restless in his seat. “To be honest, Buck, I don’t see how we put up with you, and Clayton was just a baby when Mama took off, so stop talking outta your ass.” He swallowed a cheek full of tobacco juice. It was too damn cold to roll the window down and spit.

  “You keep tellin’ yourself that, Hal, but as for why Deddy puts up with me? I’ll tell you why. It’s ‘cause I earn my keep. I’m loyal. That’s why. Clayton walking out and putting on that traitor’s badge like some kinda bitch is ten times worse. Come on, Hal, he pissed all over our name. There ain’t nothing worse than that. Nothing. Nada. Not shit.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “I know so,” Buckley chewed at his raw bottom lip.

  Halford put his eyes back on the road but caught something in the rearview mirror and stopped the truck. He pulled over near a ravine less than a mile shy of where Gareth had instructed them to go. He hard shifted into park and got out, leaving the engine running, and the heat blasting. A soft orange glow from the north was beginning to show through the tree line.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “I dunno,” Buckley said, barely interested. “Who cares? Come on, it’s freezing.”

  “That might be coming from the house. It’s the same direction.”

  Buckley climbed out from the truck and looked back. “No way. We’re miles from the house. That’s a lot closer. It’s a bonfire or something. Damn, Hal. Let’s go. I’m freezing my nuts off.”

  “Who lights a bonfire before an ice storm?”

  “I dunno. Other people freezing their nuts off?”

  “Do you even know what causes an ice storm, Buckley?”

  “Um, Ice? Seriously, Hal, who gives a shit? Look over here.” Buckley scooted a foot or so over to the small ravine. “This gap is perfect. We can dump this prick right here.”

  “Rain, dumbass. Freezing rain causes everything to ice over.”

  “Halford—I—don’t—care. Let’s dump this guy down that crack and go home.”

  Halford took a look. “No, That’s not what Deddy wanted. Get in.”

  “C’mon Hal, it’s fuckin’ cold.”

  “So get in the fuckin’ truck, Buckley.”

  Buckley got in and slammed
the door. “You’re such a follower, Hal. Deddy says ‘Jump,’ and you jump right over and suck his dick. You need to take charge for once.”

  Hal climbed into the truck and swung his arm over the seat. He grabbed his little brother by his coat, and yanked him up completely off his ass. He pulled Buckley toward him until they were so close their beards touched. “If you take one more fuckin’ shot at me, you disrespectful little weasel, I will snap both your goddamn arms and throw you in that fuckin’ ravine. I’m sick of your mouth runnin’ a mile a minute about shit you don’t know nothing about. That body back there goes in the dirt, and then we are going to see to it that our little brother survives the night, who, by the way, badge or no badge, is ten times the man you think you are.”

  Buckley just glared at his brother. “And so I guess that makes us Clayton’s babysitters then?”

  Halford tossed Buckley back hard across the seat and he slammed into the door. “That’s what Deddy said he wanted, and so that’s what we’re gonna do. Now shut your fuckin’ mouth.”