But he wouldn’t respond. He knew Grace would be thinking about Soap Sally, the brain-damaged boogeywoman Mama told them about to get them to be good. You better stop it, or Soap Sally’ll come get you tonight. Soap Sally had needle-fingers that she stabbed little kids with.
“Kyyyyyyyle!”
Kyle would throw a dirt clod over to the left to distract and frighten her.
“Please, Kyyyyyyyyyyle!”
He would time it so that he would reveal himself only at the last possible moment, only when he was certain her little mind couldn’t take another second of the fear, that she would crumple and her brain would just split, irrevocably scarring her. And then he would reach out from right behind her, touching the back of her neck, fingers slithering like a snake. Or poking like needles.
And he’d revel in the scream.
Years later, when Kyle thought back on these times, he would think, Jesus, I was a bastard.
HE WOULD RATHER HAVE BEEN PLAYING
with Jason and Wade, but his older brothers had their own worlds to explore and didn’t want Kyle tagging along. It was Wade and Jason. And Kyle and Grace. Simple as that.
There were three bedrooms in their brick ranch-style house—one for their parents, one for Grace, and one for the three boys. Kyle slept with Jason in Jason’s bed. And at some point, as Jason entered his teenage years, Jason bribed Kyle with a nightly nickel to go sleep in Grace’s bed. Looking back, Kyle could hardly blame him—he was a teenager after all. And, frankly, Kyle wet the bed more nights than not. He supposed few boys of Jason’s age would care too much to wake up in a pool of someone else’s urine. Wade wet the bed too. More so than Kyle. For them to share a bed would have been a disaster. Pee would have cascaded over the rubber mattress cover and warped the wood floor beneath.
But Kyle gladly took Jason’s nickel. His bed was a twin, and the two of them just barely fit in it. And Jason’s growing body pushed Kyle’s small frame to the floor many nights. Grace slept in a full-size bed. Why their parents never noticed the discrepancy of a teenager and a ten-year-old sharing the narrow rectangle of a twin bed versus putting a seven-year-old in the vast expanse of a full-size was just one of those family mysteries that would never be addressed to anybody’s satisfaction.
THE SLEEPING ARRANGEMENT WAS THE
beginning of the pattern that was set for their sibling relationships. Wade and Jason simply did not want their little brother to enter their secret existence.
Tree houses were built and camouflaged high in treetops—elaborate constructions with trapdoors and drop-down ladders made of knotted rope that could be pulled high and away from Kyle’s outstretched hands. And should those outstretched hands linger too long, the tree house was stocked with weapons of Jason’s creation—slingshot rifles powered by the industrial six-foot-long rubber bands their father brought home from his job as a mail handler. The rubber bands were used to secure mail pallets. They were incredibly strong and seemingly had no breaking point no matter how far they were stretched. The rubber band could power a slingshot rifle (constructed from just the right tree branch) with such force that an acorn shot from one could easily bring down a bird, or shatter a squirrel’s skull. Or leave a welt on Kyle’s back for three days.
Jason also constructed a gun—a real gun—from a bicycle spoke. He took a spoke, unscrewed the tiny metal cap at one end and packed match-head shavings (or black powder from a firecracker) into the little hollow cavity of the metal cap. He would then screw the cap back in reverse so that the hollow end was now pointing out. Then he would bend the opposite end of the spoke into a grip handle like a revolver. Last, Jason would find a BB pellet or tiny rock and jam it down into the hollow powder-packed cavity. Once prepared, the cap end was held over a candle flame or a lit match until the powder ignited and shot the tiny rock with enough force to pierce flesh.
Kyle spied from afar. Later that summer he followed them over a two-mile trek through the woods behind their house to the sandy banks of Sweetwater Creek. The trip to get there had been a long and scary one for Kyle. He had never ventured that far on foot in his entire life. It was a fine line of keeping up with them and, at the same time, not being caught following them. Luckily, Kyle’s systematic terrorization of Grace in the cornfields had honed his abilities of tracking and concealment to a razor sharp degree.
He stayed behind and watched from the edge of the woods as they entered an open, sunny space. The pine needle surface gave way not to the hard packed red dirt and clay Kyle was used to seeing, but rather the ground swelled up to a sandy, loamy bank. Jason and Wade crested the embankment and disappeared, down, out of Kyle’s sight. He waited a minute, knowing that the open space would make him a target easily spotted—and leaving himself open to God knows what type of devious and elaborate punishment Jason might construct with no parents within earshot to rein him in.
JASON WAS SMART. HE WAS THE MASTER-
mind behind the forts, the tunnels, the handmade weapons. And often those weapons were used as punishment against his little brother for following him and Wade. Jason—and it was always Jason—came up with elaborate, sometimes Goldbergian, punishments. Wade was his drone, not the instigator. Jason was brilliant in a Fu Manchu manner.
Once, Jason and Wade took Kyle out into the cow pasture that lay just beyond the cornfields. It was a good ways out. First through the cornfield that abutted their driveway, then under the tangled barbed wire fence that enclosed the cow pasture. They headed for a shade tree oasis on the far side of the pasture. Kyle noted that both Jason and Wade would steal quick glances over their shoulders, as though they thought they were being followed. Then he realized that they were just watching out for Buddy the bull.
Buddy was a massive Holstein, old and grizzled with yellowed horns, and known far and wide for his ill temper. At least two thousand pounds, Buddy would charge any interlopers in his pasture. But he was old and spent most days dozing on his feet. One only had to be vigilant and very quiet to ensure safe passage.
The summer before, a group of local teens made a Saturday afternoon sport of it, a weekly poor-man’s running of the bulls. It was Patrick Sewell (being the county chairman’s son, Patrick felt he could do anything he damn well pleased—and he was mostly right), Patrick’s younger brother, the facially disfigured Joel, and Patrick’s two disciples: Scotty Clonts and Darl Graybeal. They would gather in the middle of the pasture and drink beer—growing progressively louder until Buddy took notice. From that point it became a game of chicken. The cluster of teens would watch as Buddy first took notice, then worked his way slyly toward them. Buddy would munch at the grass or move along the barbed wire fence as though something on the other side had caught his attention—all the while making his way almost imperceptibly toward the interlopers.
But they knew what Buddy was working up to, and they would giggle nervously and finish up their beers. The bull’s movements would grow steadily more intent, more obvious. The shambling steps became a trot, then a gallop, then a full-blown charge. And the teens would huddle even tighter, eyeing each other to see who was chicken, who would be the first to break ranks. Once the circle was broken, once the survival instincts of one sane member of the group finally overrode social conformity, the group would scatter like a perfect break shot in a game of pool.
From the scattering, the massive bull would pick his victim— maybe he chose by vicinity, or maybe some primitive instinct allowed the bull to instantly identify the weakest one. Buddy was old, a hulking, lumbering, gnarled nightmare. And the teens always managed to hop or scuttle under the rusty barbed wire fence well ahead of him. Until the day Darl Graybeal stepped in a gopher hole. If Darl hadn’t been the one that Buddy had chosen to pursue, it wouldn’t have mattered. He could have crawled under the fence to safety while Buddy charged one of the others. But Darl was the one Buddy had singled out.
He’d been teasing the bull, playing cat-and-mouse around the trunk of a massive oak. Darl had just made his break from the tree, and w
as dashing wildly but confidently for the fence. The others were cheering him on from their safe havens on the other side of the barbed wire. The boy reveled in the attention. But then his foot came down in the hole, and the cheering stopped. The snapping sound as Darl’s ankle broke was loud enough for everyone to hear. As was the scream that directly followed.
The others later agreed that what came next seemed to occur in slow motion. The boy made it back up to his knees, and—everyone also agreed—if he’d just simply rolled to one side or the other, he’d have been okay, it would have bought him time to evade the bull, to at least get back to the relative safety of the oak tree. But that’s not what Darl did. He tried to stand and the pain from his ankle caused him to immediately sink back down to his knees. Two thousand pounds of Buddy the Bull caught him square in the back. The horns didn’t gore him, they didn’t pierce his skin, but the force of the blow broke his spinal column. The crack was far louder than the ankle break had been. Darl didn’t get back up or move at all. (He in fact never moved again—except for being able to blink his eyes, an ability that he used for the rest of his life to communicate in Morse code.)
The lack of movement probably saved his life. While the boy lay motionless, Buddy sniffed him. Darl, conscious through it all, could feel warm, slimy stringers of slobber and mucus from the bull’s mouth and nose grease his bare arms and neck. Patrick, Joel, and Scotty watched, not believing this had happened to one of their own. But it had. And after a few more nudges, the bull was satisfied that this particular interloper would move no more (and he was right). Buddy finally headed off for the green pond to quench his thirst after this hot work, but first he seemed to gaze at the shocked teenagers, a sullen, proud look to his dark eyes, as though daring them to try him again.
The teens waited a solid thirty minutes before entering the pasture and retrieving their fallen friend. They lifted his broken body over the fence, and laid him in the vinyl backseat of Patrick’s Chevy Malibu. Three times on the way to the hospital, they had to pull over and reposition Darl because the boy’s limp, yielding body slid off the seat at every turn. After the fourth time, they just left his crumpled form on the floorboard, and by the time they got to the hospital, they’d agreed upon a story that centered around the three of them trying to talk Darl out of his foolhardy intention of testing the bull, but Darl just wouldn’t listen to reason, and they suspected he might have been drinking beer before they met up with him. Scotty Clonts threw in that last bit about the beer, and they all nodded in unison at the perfection of the story. Darl listened to them from the floorboard, and he knew that in their position, he would have done the same.
DARL GRAYBEAL’S SHATTERED SPINAL
column was very much on Kyle’s mind on the day of “the experiment.” Jason and Wade took Kyle as far as the stagnant green pond that was concealed under a ring of towering weeping willow trees. The trees were massive with long thick cascading curtains of greenery. They gave dense shade. The green pond itself was dark and clotted with algae. Like a noxious soup, the green flotsam simmered as it gave off fetid bubbles of oxygen, the bubbles often trapped under the thick layer of scum that floated on top. It was where the cows drank.
Kyle was delighted to be included in whatever grand adventure his brothers might have in mind. Once at the green pond, Jason sat him down at the trunk of a willow tree and explained that they wanted to perform an experiment. He thus produced two rough strands of hemp rope. He lashed Kyle’s legs together at the ankles. Kyle didn’t protest. Again, he was just so very happy to be a part of their adventure. He would go along with anything to be included. The second piece of rope secured his hands behind his back. The hemp fibers were scratchy and bit into his wrists.
“Okay. We’re gonna do a little experiment. You want to?”
Kyle nodded his head.
“Let’s see if you can make it back home before Buddy gets you.”
Kyle nodded again. This was crazy, but not overly so. The key was discretion. Kyle looked over his shoulder and saw Buddy dozing in a far corner under the shade of a mimosa bough. They had yet to draw his attention, and even if they had, Buddy was wont to sidle up to his targets, taking his time and edging closer, ever closer before striking. Kyle was safe unless he did something foolish.
Jason gave him a curt nod, and Wade pulled a single Black Cat firecracker and a kitchen match out of his jeans pocket. They must have been saving the firecracker for a long time. It looked pretty beat-up, its gray fuse kinked and frayed. Wade struck the match on a rock. In a single fluid motion, he lit the fuse and tossed the firecracker.
Jason and Wade were off, running at full speed before the Black Cat landed. In the open field, the report was like a rifle shot, seeming to echo even though there were no barriers to bounce sound. Kyle looked across the pasture and saw the bull was looking directly at him. He let out a single, aggressive bellow. Then Buddy’s bowels let loose, and a river of fecal matter pooled into a brown patty the consistency of loose oatmeal at his rear hoofs. Kyle was too far away to hear the splatting sound.
Buddy was an intact bull, and even at this distance, Kyle could see the pendulum of his considerable reproductive apparatus swing heavily beneath him as he lumbered into motion.
Kyle could play dead, he had done that before, and it always worked, but instinctively he knew that this time it wouldn’t. The firecracker had been too loud, too threatening. And Buddy had already marked him. And he was not wasting time with his sly sidling routine. Buddy was not attempting to camouflage his intentions; he was heading straight for Kyle.
Kyle still had time. Buddy was old. It took him a while to get his considerable mass moving at speed. Kyle leapt to his feet and hopped. With his hands and feet tied, hopping was all that he could do. Kyle hopped toward the fence, amazed at the progress adrenaline was helping him to make, but Buddy was building up speed. Good speed. Looking over his shoulder, Kyle saw him taking great, earthshaking bounds, slavering and snorting in rage. He judged the distance to the fence versus Buddy’s looming progress, and realized that it was just not possible to get out of this without severe injury. He was going to be gored and possibly trampled.
He hopped faster—looked like a boy on an invisible pogo stick—but still he knew it was useless. It was a race hopelessly lost.
“Kyyyyyle!”
It was Grace, but in his mad hopping dash, he couldn’t spot her. “Kyyyyyyle!”
And then he caught the glint of shining metal off to one side. It was Wonder Woman’s bullet-deflecting bracelets. Grace was waving Wonder Woman over her head and calling his name to get his attention.
To his left, the pasture sloped sharply downward to the woods. At the bottom of the slope, there was Grace, behind the fence. She was now bent over, pulling on the lowest strand of the barbed wire, lifting it to give Kyle easy passage. Daddy-Bob had strung the fence with five levels of wire, the first level only six inches off the ground, so that it was almost impossible to get under the fence without someone there to lift the bottom strand.
Kyle could now feel the vibrations of Buddy’s hoofs shaking the ground. He kept hopping, knowing it was useless, that he could not win, but that he must make a choice. The fence line straight ahead of Kyle that bordered the cornfield was at least fifty yards closer than the line to his left, and their innumerable forays into the pasture had created a divot at that spot where it was possible to get under the fence alone, but even then, it was a slow, painstaking process to carefully wriggle under it without being cut on the rusty barbs.
“Kyyyyyyle!”
He hopped like a startled rabbit, able to feel the ground vibrate from Buddy’s presence even while in midjump. A mad bellow exploded in his ears, and Kyle felt hot breath and slobber on his neck.
Kyle broke to his left. Buddy was not able to turn his freight train of speeding bulk in kind, but he made a deft curve and would easily intersect with Kyle ten yards from the fence—there was just no way Kyle could move any faster. It was over. There was nowh
ere to hide. Kyle was caught.
And then it came to him. Instead of struggling to keep his balance on the steep hill, Kyle dropped to his side and rolled. The rope binding his limbs worked to his advantage. It held his body in a tight cylinder as Kyle rolled with amazing, scary speed to the bottom of the hill. Each revolution of his body allowed him a stop-motion snapshot of Grace at the bottom. He saw her using every shred of her strength to lift the taut bottom wire high enough and wide enough to give him safe passage—but never letting go of Wonder Woman. For the rest of his life, Kyle would be able to clearly recall her beautiful little girl’s face grimaced with exertion. Why had he been such a shit to her? She was his best friend. She was good and true.
And Kyle rolled deftly under the fence, not even nicked by the sharp barbs of steel. Rolling, Kyle took Grace’s legs out from under her like a bowling pin, and she landed on top of him, laughing. They laughed together, Kyle almost hysterical, with Wonder Woman pinned between them.
After that, Grace was his Wonder Woman. She was his best friend. It was going to be him and her. They would have their own coteries. Their own adventures. Their own secrets.
They watched Buddy trample his way toward them, unable to alter his homicidal charge, and for a moment Grace and Kyle thought it had all been pyrrhic effort, as Buddy was surely going to come right through the fence and trample them both. But he was able to divert himself before hitting the fence with full force; in his turn he brushed the fence, causing it to bow out under his weight. And he bellowed in frustration and pain as the barbs caught his flesh, rending it in three long ragged streaks.
Daddy-Bob knew the value of a dollar, and no part of an animal ever went to waste. Years later, after Buddy had died of simple old age, a young married couple from Atlanta looking to furnish their first home would be standing in a Havertys furniture showroom listening intently as a salesman extolled the beauty of a sectional leather couch. The salesman would point out the fine grain of the leather as he ran his fingers along a triptych of imperfections and say that this natural scarring from the animal’s life gave the leather character.
At the End of the Road Page 3