by A. M. Goetz
A lot of the stories we told Dack about Pop was centered around food, probably ‘cause we was always starving when we shared ‘em. But we had other good memories of the man who’d raised us that didn’t focus on his cooking skills. It was Pop who taught Sonny how to fish, and it was Sonny who taught me. Years later, I’d thread the grasshoppers onto Dack’s hook when his pole was bigger than he was and help him reel in stringers full of bass and trout.
And it was Pop who taught Sonny to drive by taking him out on the old dirt backroads and letting him experiment. Sonny said Pop called it “getting the wind just right under his sails.”
Pop taught me and Sonny a lot before he ended up shot dead in the fall woods like a turkey, and me and Sonny, we passed as much of his wisdom as we could remember onto Dack.
7
Dack was asleep with his mouth open and his head vibrating against the glass of the passenger window when the old Monte Carlo suddenly stopped shifting down. We was laboring up a small incline, just south of the New York line when the car went out of gear all together and just drifted to a stop. I steered her over to the shoulder, engine still running, and run through all her gears.
Nothing.
Maybe it was just time for the ancient transmission to give out, but damned if it didn’t feel like a big, fucking chunk of sky.
Figured.
I reached a hand over and jostled Dack awake.
“What?” He come to looking sleepy, his eyes all squinty, and dried drool making a crusty trail down one side of his chin. I couldn’t help laughing at him.
“Time to wake up there, Sleeping Ugly.” I joshed him. “Car’s done.” I turned off the ignition and flopped back in the seat, deflated.
Dack’s face instantly morphed into panic. “Hunh? What’s wrong?”
“Transmission.” I sighed. “She’s history.” I rubbed the steering wheel. She’d been a good, steady ride. Well, ‘til now anyways.
Dack was silent, and I looked over to git his reaction, and I felt my stomach plummet. Kid was white as death. Looked like a corpse sitting there. Had this look on his face like someone done told him he had about 40 minutes left to live.
“What?” I prodded. “Why you sitting there looking like that?”
Dack swallowed, skittish. He looked over at me, and it was pretty obvious he was scared shitless. He just shrugged and tried to smile. But when it come out more like a grimace. I knew something was up.
I studied the kid, pushing back a sinking feeling. Something was going on with him.
“Tell me.” I said softly, treating him like a spooked horse. “You look like you’re gonna puke again.”
“Ain’t gonna puke.” He shook his head.
But he wasn’t gonna tell me neither. I could see it in his eyes. Kid was scared, so scared he was barely reining it in, but I’d have to wait to find out why til he was good and ready to tell me, I guessed.
“We gonna walk from here?”
I nodded cause I didn’t have any other plan. I pulled out my map and seen we was close to a hiking trail, so we piled out of the car and grabbed our camping gear from her trunk.
I was handing Dack his old, worn gloves, when he stopped and shot me this haunted look. “You think we could push it off into the woods?”
And I knew then. He was scared Merle was gonna come looking. It was ridiculous, considering the lazy bastard couldn’t bring hisself to roll off the couch most days. But one look at Dack’s face, and I couldn’t refuse. It was Dack had the most to lose if Merle did show his ugly face after all.
He had every right to be terrified.
Damned if I wouldn’t do just about anything to git that look off his face, even if it meant gitting a hernia from pushing my big beast an eighth of a mile into the woods next to the road and covering it in branches we pulled off the trees nearby.
When we was done, it was good and hid, and I took the license plate off and shoved it down inside my pack for good measure. Some hunter’d find it for sure, and then the cops would run the VIN, and it’d come right back to Bo Ashkettle of Fulton County, but we’d be hell and gone from here by then.
And Dack, he was able to relax again, once we was done. We walked back to the road to see, and all that was left was faint tire tracks in the long grass, and those would be gone by morning, once the dew came and went. He grinned over at me then, to say thanks, and I rolled my eyes like guys do to hide what I was really feeling. And we slipped off into the woods, searching for that trail. It’d be a sight easier to walk in by trail than it would be to cut through the brush, safer too. I didn’t know the hunting season in New York, but I was pretty sure something was in, probably bow hunting at least, and I sure didn’t want to see us git shot by some city guy thinking we was white tails. I dug around in my kit for two blaze-orange toboggans and handed one to Dack. We pulled ‘em on and headed off in the direction of the closest leg of trail.
8
There’d been this big mound of dirt in the woods behind Pop’s house left over from when Pop’s pop first cleared the land. Been there so long that grass and bushes and trees had grown up around it and over it, and it was a funny sort of shape for a pile of dirt, like the head of a rattlesnake, maybe.
Sonny though, first time he seen it, he knew right away that it was really shaped more like a monster. And I guess that was a warning of things to come – how my 7-year-old brother knew what monsters looked like – but once he said it, it was all we could see. We christened the place Monster Head, and we started playing there when Dack was just a toddler. Pop sometimes came with us and helped us figure out which trees and plants we could handle and eat and which ones we had to give a wide berth. He’d hold a squirming, chubby Dack in his arms and help him reach up high to touch the flowers that bloomed on the dogwood and locust trees, and he’d sit him down on his knee, low to the ground, and help little fat hands pluck teaberry leaves for chewing. Monster Head was where I learned all about poison oak and ivy, and it’s where Sonny would eventually share with me some of the more interesting facts of life. Later, after Pop passed on, my brothers and me would continue to visit Monster Head and play there every day we could on those days when Dack wasn’t hurting too bad to make the climb.
I felt close to Pop when I stepped up on that makeshift plateau of dirt and weeds and thistles, like maybe his spirit was somewhere whispering through the trees high above us.
When we was littler, we’d tie pieces of string from poplars to maples, and we’d pull wild ramps and clovers up by their roots and hang ‘em on the strings to dry. The weeds would feed us through fictional tornadoes and hurricanes and the occasional apocalypse that threatened the end of the world. And they’d give us strength to battle ferocious, wild dogs that cleverly disguised themselves as aging, limping beagles named Pancho and Alexander.
Later, after Sonny left, the place became a hideout. It was where we run off to in the middle of the night after Merle had doled out a new punishment. It was where I kept old blankets and pink-iced cookies in plastic bags for those times when I knew we’d need them. There was a deep gully just behind the right eye socket of Monster Head, and I’d push Dack down into it, slide in behind him and pull the old wool blanket over both of us, scooting leaves up and over the top for camouflage. I’d lay there entwined with Dack, him stinking like sweat and fear and blood, and we’d listen to Merle stagger drunkenly out the door and clop around on Pop’s porch, screaming out everything he was gonna do to us if we didn’t show ourselves. More often than not, he’d fire off a round or two of Pop’s old hunting rifle, which was why I always made sure we was good and low to the ground as soon as we could get there. He never came looking though.
Seemed the old split spindles of the front porch railing and the sagging steps they surrounded was the bars of a cage that kept Merle in when he was drunk off his gourd. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wished, more than once, that I could find a way for Dack to carry that ugly railing around with him for the rest of his life.
9
“Go git me a pine knot.” I instructed, as I finished arranging the small pile of twigs I’d found into a teepee and glanced over at Dack expectantly. He shot a blank stare my way but shuffled to his feet and wandered off into the woods anyway.
I felt a twinge of remorse. It’d been a hell of a long day for me, and I wasn’t the one with the bald patches all over my scalp and the cracked ribs. Dack had to be feeling like hammered shit, but ever the Ashkettle, he hid it well. I vowed to let him settle in when he got back. I’d find us something to eat and a nice flat place to pitch the tent. We needed a fire first though. Pop had taught us well, and I knew what bear tracks looked like. I’d first started seeing ‘em when we was just a few hundred feet from the road. Made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. That bear knew we was here the second we stepped out of my old Chevy. He’d have smelled us at two miles or more, probably, and he’d hear us long before he ever seen us. I had eyes on the woods and eyes on Dack while I arranged the dry grass and bark around the base of the teepee I’d made, and Dack was on alert too. He emerged from the tree line with a formidable pine knot in his arms and paused, turning to stare behind him. Apparently satisfied that death wasn’t lurking just out of sight, he stepped, smiling, into our makeshift campsite and handed me the surprisingly light piece of ant-covered wood.
“See him?” I asked, discreetly brushing ants off my arms and setting the pine knot aside til I was ready for it.
Dack shook his head, glanced up at the sky that was rapidly fading to dark gray and took a deep, hitching breath like he was sucking in life itself.
“What’s wrong?”
Dack smiled, “Nothing. Just smells good out here. I forgot.”
I grinned. “Smells like ice-skating.”
Dack nodded. “Wish we had marshmallows.”
“Yeah,” I snorted, “Smokey would love ‘em.”
Dack settled gingerly down beside me, knees crossed, rubbing the top of his thigh, “I wouldn’t save him any.”
“He’s tired anyway. Torpor’s coming.”
“Hungry though.” Dack noted. “He’d like Jane’s jerky.”
“I wouldn’t save him any.”
Dack snorted, rubbed cold hands together, drawing my eyes to his poor gloves.
“You need new gloves.”
Dack looked down at the gloves that was more holes than leather and grinned, “First thing I’m gonna buy ...” He started.
“... if my fucking ship don’t sink on the way to the port.” I finished, chuckling. Sonny’d always had a big long list of first things he was gonna get us when that mysterious boatload of money arrived at the docks with Ashkettle painted on the side in gold letters. He was gonna get us expensive sheets – the kind that didn’t pill up with those little lint balls that made us itch like crazy. And he was gonna buy a real door for the bathroom instead of just the one curtain that hung crooked and let everyone in the living room see your ass every time the breeze from the oscillating fan cycled ‘round. He was a man of high ideals, our brother, and I pictured him even now – tucked away in Pop’s old camping cabin, wrapped up in sheets so sweet even his rancid feet couldn’t ruin ‘em. I said as much to Dack, and he chuckled.
“Them’d be some sheets then.”
Funny, we’d never been rich by any standards, but when Pop was alive, we’d had enough. Even in the months after, when it was just me and Dack and Sonny, we could always stretch Sonny’s paycheck from the factory to meet our needs. I couldn’t quite remember exactly when that changed, but I guessed it was about the time Merle moved hisself in. He found the checkbook Sonny kept hidden and dragged my brother off to the bank to have his own name added to the account. That’s when the sheets began wearing out, and the bathroom door fell off and wasn’t none of us worried too much about it. It was hard to git excited about lint balls and bare asses when you was scared your kid brother would be dead by Sunday.
Still, Sonny held onto those memories of better days, and I envied that. I couldn’t do it. I’d tried, but with every beating and every gun shot over our heads and every broken mirror splintering into shards around us, the good times just got farther and farther away like those dreams that make you wake up feeling good ‘til they fade into the horror of reality.
Right up until the day Merle run him off, I think Sonny could still see the big picture. But for Dack and me, especially once we was all alone with Merle, the world just got smaller and smaller, and we shrunk right along with it. It was hard to have any kind of hope in that situation.
Here and now, in these woods though, I thought I was seeing a glimpse of something in my little brother that looked a whole lot like it, and I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
God, it was beautiful.
10
I woke up slow to birds chattering in the trees above us. For things that should have flown far south by now, they surely was vocal. Junkos, probably, or chickadees – fall and winter birds that apparently liked the cold days of northeast winters.
Crazy things.
If I had wings, I’d have been gone long ago, gone someplace warmer, someplace safer, someplace lonely enough that nobody but my brothers could ever find me. I rolled over to look for Dack and found him across the way – on the other side of our campfire that was now little more than just a lazy spiral of smoke on the breeze. Dack was out cold, lying curled up on his side and cradling his ribs protectively with an arm even in his sleep.
But on his face he wore a smile.
I couldn’t remember the last time Dack had smiled in his sleep. Back when he was just a kid, maybe. Mostly, he slept in fits and woke up in starts – instantly alert and on the defensive.
This morning, though, he looked peaceful, and I sent a silent prayer to heaven that he could have more mornings like this one.
I lay there, my head propped on one elbow and just took in the woods around me. The sky was streaked a bright pink and blue – sunrise – which pegged it at around 7 am, and a slight wind rattled the leaves left browning on the locust trees.
We’d slept in, I guess. Felt good, too. It’d been such a mild night, and we’d been so exhausted, we hadn’t even set up the tent. It lay in a misshapen mound, still in the bag at Dack’s feet, and a chipmunk hunkered atop it, tilting its head and staring at me in curiosity for a moment before scurrying away over the stump of an old dead elm.
I chuckled, stretching out my tired bones and wiggling my toes inside my warm sleeping bag. I was too comfortable to move, and the woods was quiet with just the occasional twig-snap of a deer searching for breakfast and the chirps of contented birds eager to begin their day.
I wanted to linger, but I wanted to get the fire going again too. It was chilly this morning, and I was hungry. That probably meant Dack was ravenous. Poor kid had tossed up most of what he’d eaten yesterday morning, and he hadn’t had much afterward. We’d meant to stop and fill the trunk with food, but the car had died before we’d had the chance. That left us with Jane’s jerky and just what we could forage until we run across a store where we could load up our packs with portable supplies.
Looking around me, I saw a few greens we could pull up, and there was walnuts everywhere, but they’d at least need to be roasted for hours or, even better, dried for weeks before they’d taste the way they was supposed to. I rose and tossed a few handfuls down by the stream’s edge anyway. Later, Dack and I could hull ‘em and rinse ‘em, and then we’d toss ‘em in the fire for a few hours and see what happened. But if we wanted breakfast, looked like it was jerky and greens. I got out the big tin can we used as a cooking pot when we camped, rinsed it in the creek and filled it a quarter full with water. I pulled up what I could find – mostly wild ramps—and shoved ‘em down inside, and then I built the fire back up nice and hot around the can to let ‘em simmer. God only knew what it’d taste like, but soup was always good when you felt bad, and I hoped it’d give Dack a little pick-me-up when he woke up and smelled it cooking.
I made sur
e the fire was going good and the water starting to heat up before I headed off into the woods to answer nature’s call, but I wasn’t gone for more than a few minutes when I heard Dack calling for me.
“Here.” I yelled back, in case he thought he’d lost me, and the thought made me chuckle. I zipped up and headed back down to the stream to wash up. I could see our campsite from here, and Dack was sitting up, still in his sleeping bag, hair wild all over his head before he pulled Al’s bandana discreetly down over his scalp and his orange toboggan on over that. He leaned back on his hands then and tossed his head back. Eye’s closed, he breathed deep and smiled.
I swear I’d seen more smiles come out of my brother in the last three days than ever since I’d known him. Guess the fresh mountain air agreed with him or something.
“What am I smelling?” Dack asked without opening his eyes as he heard me trudge back into camp.
“Soup.” I said, taking a cursory sniff. Damn. It smelled amazing. Smelled better than it’d taste, no doubt, with no salt or pepper to season it.
Dack raised up and stared inquiringly into the fire. “Soup? Where’d you git soup?”
I shrugged then, not wanting to get the kid’s hopes too high. “Just greens. Don’t congratulate me til you taste it cause there ain’t no salt or pepper.” I looked him over. “How’re the ribs today?”