My mom made it to her bedroom, locked the door, and started screaming that she was calling the police this time. Marcus didn’t retreat. He beat on the bathroom door, screaming for Merrill to come out and face him like a man. I had absolutely no clue until that day—in fact, I had never suspected it in the least—but my increasingly distant big brother, the one who was so busy breaking all of the rules, was secretly a motherfucking superhero (excuse my language).
The police never arrived. Our brand-new bishop did. Even with her life at stake, my mom still couldn’t bring herself to break the “Lord’s rules.” And much like the former bishop had when my biological father dipped his crane into his first cousin’s oil well, this spongy new bishop blamed my mother for Merrill’s misbehavior, prescribing the same softball solutions for this new, life-threatening situation. I can still hear that bishop’s seemingly requisite sedate LDS tone—like I’d imagine water torture sounding—as he asked my mom, “What…is it…that you…say…or do…that triggers this…reaction…in your husband…Sister Black?”
But there was no way to answer that question. Merrill’s anger was like lightning. It struck when, where, and how it liked. And now this new sponge of a man was not only “strongly encouraging” us not to seek refuge in the law but also blaming my mom for Merrill’s latest attempted murder. And if that wasn’t enough fun for one blessed afternoon, he told my mom she couldn’t leave Merrill. “This was…the choice…you made….Heavenly Father…has blessed your union…in a temple…and now…it is youuuur…responsibility…to make this work.”
The bishop’s flaccid tone and tempo were as maddening as his ultimately dangerous message. But Marcus and I now understood what this man refused to acknowledge: that our lives were truly in danger. We knew we could no longer depend on our church for help. But we’d also bought into the idea that the law couldn’t be trusted. So without a church or state to save us, we began privately planning a show of our own—an old-fashioned show of Texan justice.
III
Rule number one in our state: don’t mess with Texas. And as far as my brothers and I were concerned, we were Texans, and that meant outsiders shouldn’t mess with us. Despite being smaller than most boys my age, by 1984, under my mother’s loving guidance and tough example, I had grown Texas strong. Where I grew up, a man might employ physical punishment in an attempt to make his boys stronger but never to weaken them. A belt to the butt to teach a child a lesson was commonplace, but to blacken a wife’s or son’s eye because you couldn’t hold your booze or control your own temper was beyond the pale. We felt sure that Merrill was an imposter of a man, and certain that he was an invader, an outsider. And because our church wasn’t going to bring Merrill to justice, and because they wouldn’t let us call the cops, “Fuck it,” sixteen-year-old Marcus said, holding a sawed-off .22 rifle in one hand and a pump-action pellet gun in the other, “we’ll do it our own fuckin’ selves.”
Hidden among the white plastic barrels of wheat the Mormon Church “encouraged” us to stock up on in order to prepare for the forthcoming apocalypse, Marcus and I tried Merrill in absentia. One by one, we reviewed his crimes: the black eyes, the bloodied noses, his terrible glasses, the time he told me what constipation meant, the humiliation he subjected us to when he cheaped out and bought an avocado-green hatchback, the way he slurped his hot beverages. Guilty. On all counts. Marcus handed down Merrill’s sentence: “Death.” That seemed a bit harsh to me. Marcus looked me in the eyes. “If we only injure him, he’ll come back from the hospital even angrier and kill us all. It’s him or us.” He was right. This was the only way. Death it was.
Like most of the other kids who wore all black, Marcus was in auto shop class in high school. That meant he knew most every way there was to smoke dope, and a bit more each day about what made cars work. He would grow increasingly fascinated with both subjects. So that night, after Merrill got home and we’d wolfed down our mom’s meat loaf and green beans, Marcus and I snuck out to the garage. I stood guard. He crawled under Merrill’s hideous green car with a pair of metal clippers. I heard a ping of metal snapping, which I prayed only my sensitive ears could discern. Then, before my heart had a chance to quicken, Marcus was done. He cleaned his fingerprints off the clippers with a rag, and we went to bed.
Neither of us slept. By this time the next day, we would be murderers. Now the question was whether anyone would find out it was us, and if they did, whether we would face electrocution, lethal injection, or a firing squad. Despite those concerns, Marcus and I took honest-to-God comfort that night in knowing Todd would never get hit, and that our mom would soon be safe again.
The next morning, Merrill sat with us at breakfast and sipped on his hot lemon water. A long slurp followed by a loud gulp and a vocal “Ahhh.” Merrill was an infuriating noise-making machine. Slurp. Gulp. “Ahhhh!” Again and again. A rage boiled up in me every time I heard it. A few more sips and “ahhhh”s and all doubts were erased. Merrill Black had to perish.
After breakfast, we heard the electric garage door open. We heard Merrill reverse his old clunker out and the garage door close. I looked at Marcus, who suddenly seemed a bit concerned. He steeled himself. “Might take a while for the brake fluid to drain out. Might happen now. Might happen on his way home. But it’s gonna happen.”
That night, Merrill got home just fine and right on time. He never once mentioned a problem with his car. He was even in a rare manic good mood—his good-mood days being the only thing more terrifying than his bad-mood ones. He wanted attention, lots of it. He put on faces and voices and did the most idiotic dances to try to get it. This made his unexpected survival all the more annoying. What had gone wrong? Had Marcus clipped something completely unnecessary? Or had Merrill found the snipped line and fixed it, and this was all an act? Marcus convinced me of the latter theory: “He found where I cut the brakes, and now he’s pretending to be in a good mood so no one thinks it’s him when he kills us all.” He took a breath. “We have to do it again. But we have to do it right this time. A direct hit.” I was already complicit. I had no choice but to agree.
After a round of particularly puffed up slurps, gulps, and “ahhh”s the next morning, Merrill revealed he was going into work a little later than usual because he had a “big meeting” with his commanding officer that day. Marcus worried that Merrill was setting a trap. We said our goodbyes earlier than usual, pulled on our backpacks, and walked out the door. But instead of joining the huddle at the bus stop down the block, we hid between a pair of massive bushes to see if Merrill would pull out of the garage. He didn’t.
The school bus arrived, a few kids got on, and the driver waited for a suspiciously long time before pulling away. My heart was racing now. Marcus was stone cold. Mimicking every Green Beret, FBI, CIA, or James Bond film we’d ever seen, Marcus and I snuck along the sides of houses, hopped fences, and made our way back to our own backyard, sight unseen.
My mom had once told me that the narrow, foot-deep trench between our fence and the surface of our lawn was a precaution in case of flash floods, but when Marcus dipped his hand down into it, he pulled up his .22 rifle and a pump-action pellet gun. He’d planned ahead. Now he chose the pellet gun because it was quieter. “Five pumps hurt like hell. Ten pumps and it’s lethal.”
We crept up to the wooden side gate and waited. After what felt like hours, we heard the garage door begin to open. Marcus pumped the pellet gun until it was filled with so much air it couldn’t be pumped again. Then he held his breath to steady his aim, just as he’d been taught in Boy Scouts. The garage door started to close, and through a gap between a fence post and the gate’s hinges, we could just see Merrill pulling his green car into the street. Marcus took aim at Merrill’s head but chickened out. It turned out he was incapable of outright murder, so he aimed at the car’s gas tank instead and took his first shot. Pow! The shot was so loud in my ears, I was sure the cops would be blazing our w
ay any second. But I’d heard no impact. Marcus looked at me. I shook my head. He had missed. He pumped like mad: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. He aimed at the gas tank again, then pow! Plink! This time I heard the impact of metal on metal, but there was no explosion like when movie bullets met movie gas tanks. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. The car was quickly pulling away now. So out of desperation, Marcus took aim at a rear tire. Pow! But the car vanished down the street, seemingly unharmed. We sat there together, breathless.
When Marcus finally spoke, an unfamiliar resignation had replaced his rage. “Maybe a tire blows going up the street, maybe it blows on the freeway when he’s going sixty miles an hour and he crashes into a retaining wall and dies in a fireball, or…maybe it’s us who God wants dead.” That hit home. That very thought had crossed my mind many a time. “This is in His hands now,” Marcus finished. Marcus was so cool—so tough, so dramatic, brave, and butch. Regardless of how this turned out, I already felt I owed him my life. I knew we owed him my mom’s. And as I watched him rebury his weapons, I wondered if I might ever grow up to be anything like him.
My mom came home from work first that night and got right to making dinner: Hamburger Helper with canned creamed corn on the side. I knew how to brown the ground beef, so I volunteered to help. Feeling the guilt of our second attempted murder in as many days, I was putting on my best angelic act. Marcus was locked in his room blaring “Bitchin’ Camaro” off the Dead Milkmen album my mom hated, and watching his window for Merrill’s return. It was already well past the hour Merrill usually walked in and there was no sign of him. When dinner was ready, he still wasn’t home. Marcus could hardly believe it. We’d done it. The monster was dead. Now we just had to wait for the gory details to hit the newspapers and pray we wouldn’t be fingered for his demise.
We sat around the table together, a little family of four again, enjoying our Hamburger Helper and sweet creamed corn without the monster’s slurping, without fear of physical attack. Yes, we were destined for poverty again, but we were happy to pay that price for peace.
Then we heard it: the garage door opening and Merrill’s car pulling in. Our hearts sank as one. Panicked, Marcus tried to split to his room, but my mom stopped him. It was his turn to do the dishes. The chores sheet clearly said so. Then Merrill walked in. In his dress blues, he looked taller than ever and far too alive. His head wasn’t bloody; there had been no car crash. His hands weren’t dirty; he hadn’t changed a tire. If our fate was truly up to God now, God had turned His back on us. There would be no deliverance.
I sat frozen. Merrill took the chair across from me and did the same. I looked up, dared to survey him. Physically he was fine, but something didn’t seem right. When he finally spoke, he tried his best to force his whining voice into a monotone akin to our bishop’s—a uniquely Mormon attempt to convey composure and fortitude. “Guys…I’m afraid that…well…I have bad news.”
He couldn’t make eye contact. “I didn’t get it…I didn’t get the promotion.”
My mom tried her best to act surprised, but it was a piss-poor performance. Who could blame her? Merrill was in the computer-programming department of the air force, but, not yet out of elementary school, I could already do laps around him on our Commodore 64. Aside from being abusive, Merrill was also an imbecile. Still, my mom offered him a sincere “I’m really sorry, honey.” Then, perhaps as disappointed as we were that he’d interrupted our one peaceful dinner in three years, she sharpened her invisible dagger and asked, “And when is your next review?”
That stung, and she knew it. Everyone knew she had gotten a promotion and a raise at every single one of her reviews. So Merrill didn’t answer that question. He couldn’t. He was too busy counting to ten, the way the bishop had taught him to when he thought he might punch one of us in the teeth. “One, two, three, four, five, six…”
Marcus finished rinsing the dishes at lightning speed, started the dishwasher, and began creeping his way out of the kitchen as casually as possible. He was halfway to the safety of his bedroom when we all heard it—the oh-so-magical strand of words that came tumbling out of Merrill’s terrible lips like summer honey:
“My commanding officer is…sending me…for six months…to an air force base in Seoul, Korea.”
Marcus stopped in his tracks. Anne took a breath. The hair on my arms stood up.
Perhaps God didn’t want us all to die after all.
CHAPTER 9
Hungry Devils
Marcus may have seemed impenetrably tough to most, but he had at least one soft spot that I knew of, and it was as tender as soft spots come: our mom. She, in turn, treasured Marcus’s care, and seemed incapable of seeing his faults: his poor school performance, his pyromania, his smoking and drug use. The rest of us warned and worried as he nearly burned our house down time and again, but blinded by the good in her firstborn, she couldn’t see or smell any of the tough stuff.
I treasured my big brother too. I wanted (though most often failed) to win his approval. I often wished I shared his best qualities: his creativity, his strength, and his fearlessness. So I perked up when he crawled into the comforter-constructed tent I’d built between Todd’s and my beds in our shared bedroom.
“Come with me,” he said.
“I’m busy,” I replied, embarrassed to have been caught still building tents at eleven years old.
“Playing house?” It was an accusation, not a question, and I knew better than to answer it too directly.
“It’s a fort, not a house.”
Normally he would have harassed me for playing housewife, but he wanted something, so he went easy. “Come on. I need your help.” This was new. I liked it.
Wildly out of character, Marcus wanted to ace a homework assignment for his Judson High School biology class. This was the same punk kid who’d only ever labored enough to get Cs and Ds so the school would pass him up another grade with his long-haired cohorts. He didn’t “give two shits” about his future. He was a self-defined loser, rocker, stoner whose only long-term goal was to get a job at McDonald’s so he could buy weed and put enough gas in Merrill’s crappy green car to drive as far from responsibility as possible.
But Marcus’s latest homework assignment was a bug collection. He was supposed to capture, then freeze-to-kill every species he could find, shove a pin through the bodies, tack them into a provided cardboard display box, and label them accurately. Done and dusted. Marcus wasn’t on the hunt for the ladybugs and butterflies the rest of his classmates were, though; he was after the most frightening bugs central Texas had to offer—the prize devils—and let me tell you, central Texas is home to some of the scariest six-, eight-, and hundred-legged monsters there are. Now he’d recruited Todd and me to be his soldiers on this mission.
Each afternoon for the next week, we ventured down to the edge of Farmers Lake, crawled into forbidden storm-drain pipes, and walked out into the cow fields. If there was an abandoned barn or shed, we trespassed, always armed with a small green fish-tank net and several empty margarine containers with lids—our version of bug prisons. No problem, I thought. I loved bugs. Except for spiders. And unfortunately we soon came across plenty of those—some furry, others glossy black with splashes of yellow and red across the bulbs of their backs. And now Marcus demanded I catch them all alive. He didn’t want their bodies crushed before they were frozen and preserved. And though these spiders scared me, I dared not run. The shame of being called a chickenshit would have been worse than venom. That’s how Texas boys think.
So when we found a massive black, red, and yellow monster perched in the center of a giant web between a wooden fence and an old tin shed, my job was to hold a margarine container’s lid in front of it while Marcus snuck up from behind and pushed the container through the web, around the eight-legged creature, and then hopefully right into the lid in my hand. But if he missed my lid, I knew full well that t
he spider would be on my face.
Trembling inside, I stayed tough as Texas outside. Todd watched with a grin, not nearly as afraid as I was but too short to hold the lid high enough. I slowly moved my lid toward the spider, and that’s when all of us realized how much bigger this thing was than we’d guessed from afar. It was barely going to fit in our container. Marcus talked in a steady, quiet tone to keep me calm as he coached me into place, and then, wisely, he didn’t hesitate. He pushed the container hard toward the spider and me, and before I could leap out of their way, the container was around the beast’s body, and both met my lid. Marcus pushed the container hard against my hand until it snapped shut. I stood there holding the sealed plastic prison, the spider flailing inside. It felt more like a crab than a bug. Marcus coolly took the container from me and walked it home, proud, victorious, the conqueror of monsters.
Marcus popped his specimens in their respective containers into the freezer to die. Then one by one, he drove pins through their shells and guts, and down into the big cardboard display box the school had provided. A scientist herself, our mom reveled in his newfound curiosity, so she helped him make all of the proper labels. His was a collection straight out of hell, but inarguably a masterpiece. As with anything Marcus actually put his mind to, he aced it. When he’d learned to draw, he’d proven himself the best artist in school. When he’d taken drama to get out of gym class, he’d won every leading role and genuine applause. But the second Marcus aced anything, he also immediately judged it to be “pansy shit” and quit it. So now he decided one giant spider wasn’t enough of a crowning achievement. He wanted something even bigger. That prize arrived the night before his project was due. Signaling its arrival was a shriek from our kitchen.
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