THUGLIT Issue Sixteen

by Devon Robbins

  "Man, relax. You get soft in your old age," said Eddy. He took a sip of his sparkling water and listened to how young Neil sounded. So far away and fragile no matter what. Eddy liked that. He tried to make his comedy do that, but he knew it was impossible. Comedy didn't do anything pure. It was the opposite of pure. It was the destruction of it.

  Dean stepped out of the bathroom with the water still running.

  "OK, I get the candles man. But vanilla bean?"

  Eddy smiled. "A groupie, man. She liked my jokes. You want to see her tits? She sent me a text."

  "No," said Dean and he came into the living room and sat.

  Eddy didn't make eye contact with him or watch him come in. He thought that'd be too gay, though it was all on a spectrum anyway. Eddy understood that, and knew they were both straight, but there had been a certain sexual vibe and heightened tension all night. The protector/man-in-distress dynamic. Eddy felt the same thing for his therapist.

  Dean seemed to get comfortable listening to the music. He opened the sparkling water and set his pistol next to the can. They listened to the music a little while longer as the tub continued to fill.

  "Let me just hear the rest of this album," said Eddy.

  "I'll give you to the end of the song."

  "It was a just a joke," said Eddy.

  "It wasn't just a joke," said Dean.

  Eddy thought about that, and Dean might've been right. He couldn't tell anymore. He tried to take this moment in and look back on his life, but he saw nothing, so he tried to bring himself present, but all he could think about was how the sparkling water wasn't his favorite and he wished he'd chosen a longer song.

  "What about my cats?" asked Eddy.

  "Betsy said she'd take them."

  Eddy took a sip of sparkling water. He hated raspberry. "The joke wasn't even about Piccarelli."

  "I know," said Dean, who was tapping his finger to the impossibly slow drawl of the music. He wasn't in time, Eddy noticed.

  "It was about more than that."

  "All your jokes are."

  "Yet, you're here."

  "Yet, I'm here."

  "Who was the guy?"

  "Just a guy. Shit life. Shit job. We're not sure." Dean drank from his water as Eddy waited for more. "Just a guy," Dean clarified.

  Eddy tapped the can and a little deadened ring resonated out its mouth. "Those are my guys," he said.

  That Time

  by Scott Loring Sanders

  "Bloody. That's all I'm saying. I want something bloody."

  "Fine, I hear you," said Jerry, pushing away from the table. "I'll see what he's got in the garage."

  Jerry was deep in his own thoughts, unaware that Doreen watched him as he headed toward the door. Unaware that she watched his thigh muscles beneath his snug, faded jeans, watched his cell phone in his front pocket rise and fall with his gait, watched how the tail of his untucked flannel wavered. He didn't see her raise a bottle of Bud and take a slug while holding a butcher knife in the other hand. He didn't notice her turn back to the counter and lop the head off a yellow onion.

  His father's garage looked exactly the same as it had back when Jerry lived there nearly ten years ago. Piece-of-shit push mower against the wall, one of the handles bound together with a twisted coat hanger. Broken-handled shovel, broken-handled garden rake, nearly broken-handled maul, all grouped in the corner. Jerry ran his fingers along the edge of the homemade workbench, avoiding the piles of magazines, plastic wire-nuts, rusted pliers, ancient yellowed owner's manuals ranging in scope from an Amana Radarange to the piece of shit lawnmower to the very box freezer he currently headed toward. He stepped over oil stains spread out on the smooth concrete like a murder scene, sand and sawdust sprinkled hither-and-dither to soak up the evidence. "Jesus Christ," he mumbled, "my inheritance." He realized if Doreen had thought the attic was cluttered, well, she hadn't seen anything yet.

  Was it bad that he felt bitter? That he resented having to clean out the house of all the crap his father had never bothered with? His father probably knowing all along that he'd die someday in a drunken crash, slamming his truck into a telephone pole along a road he'd traveled back from the bar thousands of times—and because of this premonition, had found that to be the perfect excuse not to tidy the place?

  Just like Walker Stiles to think only of himself. Walker had often made it clear to Jerry that he thought of him not so much as a son but as a liability. When Jerry was about to graduate high school, he'd shakily brought up the idea of college with his father. "College?" said Walker. "And you want me to pay for it? The eighteen-year full ride I gave you wasn't enough? You want more school? Damn, man, I couldn't wait to finish and get the hell on with my life when I was your age."

  The freezer now stood before him, waist-high, as long and boxy as a picnic table, and as Jerry approached, he thought about the graduation present his father had actually given him. Not money for community college, no. Instead, a half-full bottle of Maker's Mark and a quarter ounce of dirt weed he'd grown in a drainage ditch on a neighbor's property.

  So here he was now, trying to get his dead father's house in order. A few days after the funeral, the realtor had told Jerry to clean up the home—get it spic-and-span, because there was a prospective buyer, a Yankee, who was looking for exactly such a place. "Floyd County's cup," said the realtor, "is starting to runneth over with such characters." Meaning, the buyer was one of those guys from up North with money, wanting some land and a cabin for the few times a year he might come to Virginia to shoot a deer or two. Maybe a turkey if he got real lucky.

  Speaking of which, Doreen wanted some venison for a pot of chili. One thing Walker Stiles was always dependable for was a freezer chock-full of meat, mainly because he shot deer practically year-round. The term "hunting season" wasn't something Walker had ever adhered to. Buck or doe, fall, winter, or spring, he didn't give a damn. He'd pulled into the driveway one June night, smiling and half-drunk as he pointed to the pickup bed for Jerry to see. Lying on a ratty blanket was a dead fawn, its neck snapped back, its white spots easily discernable. "Just threw the headlights and stuck the nine mil out the window," he'd laughed. "Didn't even have to get out of the truck."

  "You interrupted my studying for this? I've got an exam tomorrow." Jerry had turned and walked off.

  "What the hell's up your ass? You all of the sudden don't eat meat? You magically," he said, snapping his fingers, "turned into one of those hippie vegetarians or something?"

  Jerry opened the freezer lid, expecting it to be piled high with a hundred pounds of venison. Packages wrapped tightly in butcher's paper, black marker indicating what was what: hamburger, steaks, tenderloin. But there was less than twenty pounds inside. Just beneath the layer of frozen meat was a blue tarp, one Jerry immediately recognized. It had been sitting out back for what seemed like forever, covering an engine block from a Mustang that Walker had never gotten around to rebuilding. It seemed oddly out of place. Why the hell would a tarp be taking up valuable space in the box freezer?

  Jerry cleared away some of the venison until he managed to get a good hold on one end of the tarp. He wriggled it, trying to unstick it from the ice crystals lining the walls. The cold burned his hand, biting into it as he squeezed the plastic. Something was wrapped inside. Something heavy. Something he couldn't possibly lift without using both hands and, even then, he'd have to throw his back into it.

  "Oh my God," a voice yelled from behind. Jerry's skin prickled as he slammed the lid. "Would you look at all this?"

  "Jesus, Doreen, you scared the hell out of me."

  "It's this goddamned garage you should be scared of. Look at all this shit. It'll take us a week. I think your dad was a hoarder, Jer. I swear on the Holy Bible itself, I think he might've been."

  "Yeah, maybe," he said. His pulse wiggled uncomfortably in his throat.

  "You find my venison or not? I mean, how long's it take? Onions and garlic are all chopped, but I need some meat."

  Jerr
y reopened the freezer and quickly snatched a couple of packages, then banged the lid shut. "Here you go," he said, forcing a smile. He held one in each hand and playfully shook them like a set of maracas. "Dinner's on Pops."

  From Jerry's perspective, his relationship with his father had been more or less normal. Whatever that meant. It was their normal anyway. Walker drank some, went down to the Pine Tavern after work most nights, but nothing crazy. He'd always fed Jerry, roof over the head, the whole nine yards. Sure he was an asshole sometimes, but what father wasn't? So he sold a little weed on the side, poached some deer, but Jerry had never necessarily thought of him as a bad man. He was gruff, yes. Blunt, yes. A bit rough around the edges, no doubt—but he wasn't evil or cruel. Had always been responsible, never missed a bill payment as far as Jerry was aware. He'd kept a steady job, the same one for over twenty-five years. Most importantly, he'd been good to Jerry's mother, had treated her like a queen mostly. Other than when she'd passed away, their lives had gone along reasonably well. Of course, there was That Time. That's the way Jerry always thought of it. That Time.

  He'd been fourteen, almost fifteen, his mom dead six or seven years by then. It had been a Saturday morning when he'd heard a knock at the door. He was on the couch, eating cereal and watching SportsCenter, his dad still asleep after coming in much later than usual the night before.

  Jerry got up, set his bowl on the table, and opened the door. Two uniformed police officers stood there.

  "Hey, son," said the shorter of the two. "Your dad around?"

  Jerry gulped, a partially chewed Cheerio stuck in his teeth. His face got hot, and his left foot scratched the top of his right. "He's still sleeping." He rubbed at his neck, felt moisture collecting on his fine hairs. "You want me to wake him?"

  The short cop nodded. "You better go ahead and do that, son. Just tell him we got a couple questions. Nothing for you to be worried about, okay?" The cop smiled disingenuously, showed his teeth, and Jerry got nervous.

  He closed the door, leaving the officers on the porch, and then wasn't sure he'd done the right thing. Should he have asked them in? Left the door ajar? He almost turned around before deciding against it. Everything in his mind felt fuzzy. For some reason he recalled his mother's final night. Those tubes in her arms. That weird cap on her head where all her hair used to be. Her cheeks so withdrawn, she looked like a Buchenwald survivor. He'd seen the pictures in school. Adults who'd changed into children, children who'd transformed into adults. His mother, one of those adult-children, his mother who couldn't control her bowels and shat diarrhea on the floor or in the bed toward the very end.

  As he climbed the stairs to the loft, he felt a faint embrace, almost like his mother was holding his hand, similar to that squeeze she'd given him before she fell asleep for the last time, not able to actually verbalize a goodbye.

  "Pops, wake up." Jerry touched his dad's shoulder, shifted him slightly. Walker grunted. "Pops, get up."

  His father suddenly sprang to attention as if pulled out of a nightmare. He looked to his right, to his left, confused. "What the hell're you doing?"

  "There's two cops downstairs. They told me to wake you."

  "Jesus," his father muttered, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand. And then, as if he'd just heard Jerry, "Wait, what? Cops?"

  "Yeah, downstairs."

  "In our house? You let them in the house?" Walker threw back the covers and scrambled out of bed, fully naked. His half-erect penis waggled back and forth, and Jerry turned away in disgust. Crumpled jeans lay on the floor, boxer shorts crammed inside. Walker grabbed the jeans, then hesitated as if remembering something. He tossed them into an overflowing hamper as he hurried around the room, his member still flopping willy-nilly. "What the fuck, Jeremiah? Why'd you let the cops in here?"

  Jerry had turned away, avoiding his father's wiry nakedness. "They're on the front porch, not in the house."

  Walker pulled a clean pair of boxers from the top drawer, dancing from foot to foot as he worked them on. "What do they want? What the hell did they say?"

  "I don't know." Jerry dislodged a soggy Cheerio clump from the pit of his molar. "Just wanted to talk to you. Did you do something you shouldn't've?"

  "What? No. No, I didn't do nothing. Shit, boy, c'mon," said Walker. He had a fresh pair of jeans and a tee shirt on. His hair was short, nearly a buzz cut, so he looked more-or-less presentable. Jerry saw the gears grinding in his father's head, working overtime, spinning fast, the teeth clicking, the entire network of his brain running hot. "It's probably nothing. Do me a favor," he said, nodding toward the corner, "and get a load of laundry going. Once…once I'm done talking with them, we need to get this house straight. It's been over a month without a good scrub."

  "Yes, sir," said Jerry as he brushed past and went toward the hamper.

  His father headed downstairs, barefoot.

  In the laundry room, as Jerry loaded the clothes, he noticed the gunk on the cuffs of the wadded jeans. Mud it looked like. Mud with bits of weeds and grass packed in. Cockleburs clinging to the shins. Not exactly what you'd normally pick up at the Pine Tavern. Or on a late shift at the die casting factory.

  The cops didn't take Walker down for questioning, though a few days later they did. Walker played the whole thing off, telling Jerry that apparently a pickup similar to his had been spotted in the area where that kid had gone missing. Not a kid really, a twenty-one year old who'd been at the tavern the same night Walker had. "Don't even remember seeing him," his dad had said. "Shit, the Pine was packed that night. Anyway, they asked me questions, just like they did to everyone. No biggie."

  "Why was there mud on your jeans?" asked Jerry. It had just come out that way, without thought. Bluntly. His father started to reply then didn't bother. He simply walked off. Nothing was ever mentioned about the missing guy again.

  That Time had been over ten years ago, and Jerry now recalled his boyish reasoning for never talking about it or going to the authorities. If the cops couldn't prove anything—and that was their damn job—then why should he get involved? Since they never arrested his dad, that meant he'd had nothing to do with it. But Jerry's true motive for staying silent was far more practical.

  He'd already lost his mother. What would happen to him if he lost his father too? Jerry lay in bed, thinking about That Time as Doreen drunkenly rasped next to him. He'd made a point to feed her a couple extra beers. When he was sure she wouldn't wake until morning, he slipped out. A sickening roiling filled his gut. Was it possible that it was only deer shanks wrapped up in that tarp? Some larger chunks his father had never gotten around to butchering? Not likely; no hunter worth his salt would ever preserve meat that way. Jerry had a strong suspicion he wasn't going to like what he found in that freezer.

  The icy air rushed over his face, smacking him awake. Beneath the packages of meat, the blue tarp almost glowed. For an instant, when he'd first opened the lid, he'd half-expected the tarp to be gone. Even hoped it might be. But when he reached into the depths of the freezer and grasped the cold, hard plastic and felt the resistance of that very real weight, that very real heft, reality settled in.

  What he knew for certain was that whatever was concealed, it most definitely wasn't the kid who'd gone missing ten years ago during That Time. Because that guy's body had been found a month after he disappeared, along the banks of the Little River. He hadn't drowned. Instead, he'd been strangled with something. No one had ever been charged.

  What investigators had never seemed to figure out, but what Jerry thought of the very same day the body was discovered was this: the far outskirts of their property—the nearly fifty mountainous acres Walker had inherited from his own daddy—that land joined the east bank of the Little River two miles or so upstream from where the body was found. From their house, it wasn't easy to get to the river, but there was a vague trail. A trail his father's riding mower and pull-behind cart could've certainly navigated. It meandered through pine woods, then through hardwoods of oak and
hickory, then a marshy bog where only skunk cabbage and jack-in-the-pulpit grew. Jerry had sometimes hiked to the river to go smallmouth fishing, but once that boy's body was found, he'd never ventured there again.

  The tarp crumpled and crinkled like wrapping paper. The fluorescents hummed above, one of the tubes pulsing as it strained to catch, the gas nearly spent and causing the garage to flicker in an eerie pall of purple light.

  "Goddamnit," he said in a self-reprimand, "man-up and just open it already."

  The loose edge of the tarp wasn't visible, so Jerry tried to roll it over as if flipping a giant blue burrito. He strained and twisted, his out-of-shape back muscles fighting in resistance, ready to rebel with spasms. But he kept heaving until he rotated the tarp within the freezer's confines. A series of grommets were spaced out in two-foot intervals, the metal eyelets frosted over.

  The end Jerry had been pulling on was now popping out of the freezer, resembling the tail of a fat fish too large for a cooler. He squeezed his hands into agonizing fists, then stuffed them beneath opposite armpits, the bitter cold gnawing his fingers.

  On the workbench, Jerry located a pair of gardening gloves. He slipped them on, wishing for several reasons he'd thought of that in the first place. What was he about to get into? Did fingerprints show on frozen plastic? Oh, absolutely; he had no doubt of that. In fact, he could already see vague smudges in the frost.

  He pulled the tarp edge with effort, as if unraveling a fine cigar. It didn't take long before an opening showed, and after another tug, a dark patch appeared. Jerry's insides screamed and ached. His breath increased dramatically, coming in quick, hyperventilating spurts. It was hair—shoulder-length hair—pulled into a ponytail and held with an elastic Scrunchie. A woman, no question about it, her eyeshadow an indeterminate color in the poor lighting, her cheeks pale with tiny crystals prickling the skin. High cheekbones, sharp nose, bloated lips. A string of frozen blood ran from the corner of her mouth and along her cheek before disappearing behind her ear, the lobe pierced many times over with tiny silver hoops. Maybe a dozen of them. Jerry couldn't tell if she'd been pretty or not.