by A. M. Goetz
Dack fell silent as he took stock of hisself. Two or three deep breaths later, he responded. “Not too bad. Still got a crick, but it’s easier to breathe now.” He reached down and opened the zipper on his bag, freeing his legs. “Slept good, I think.”
I nodded, understanding. “Me too. Must be something in the air.”
My brother winced a little, raising hisself gracefully from the ground, wrecked ribs and all.
“Where you going?” I called after him, my mind automatically switching over to worry.
“Gotta drain the pipe. You mind?” I could only see the back of his head, but I could practically hear the eye roll.
“Yeah? Well, don’t git lost.” I shot back lamely, wondering when I’d gotten so bad at smart-assed comebacks.
Dack’s middle finger flipped high was his only response, and I snickered as I leaned in to check on the breakfast I’d concocted. I took a deep inhale of what smelled like the start of a promising day.
Thrown together, for sure, but promising nonetheless.
11
I hollered when I hauled a nice-sized brown trout from the swollen depths of the stream, triumphant “Beat that, shithead!” I glanced gleefully over at the kid.
The smirk on Dack’s face matched my own as he stared hungrily at the big fish that would nicely feed us both this night. “Looks good enough to eat.” He stated, pulling in his own line that had remained stubbornly empty for a good three hours. We’d just resigned ourselves to more jerky when I finally got a bite. Dack reached for his hook and caught the sluggish nightcrawler in one hand, dropping it in the dirt where it could wriggle away to nurse its wounds and maybe survive to see another day.
“Be good with some velvet stems.” Dack said out of the blue, and I caught my breath.
“Why? You see some?”
“Think so. You can tell, right? I’d hate to survive a shitload of Merle just to die ugly out here, killed by fungus.
I nodded. “Yeah, I can. Why? You cain’t? You’re slipping, man.”
Dack shrugged. “Maybe. Not sure. It’s been awhile.”
I left the trout struggling on the string and pitched the makeshift rod aside. “Show me.” I instructed, holding my trophy up to the light. “Ain’t he handsome?”
“He could look like hammered dog shit for all I care.” Dack commented crudely, “So long as he tastes good.”
“He will the way I cook him up.” I said, trying to snag Dack in a choke hold. “Lead on.”
Dack wrestled hisself out of my reach, calling me a few choice words he musta picked up from Merle, and led us back to the same fallen elm that this morning’s chipmunk had hurtled.
And there they was, big as life. A whole long line of fall mushrooms, brown-orange and slimy from the recent rain, and they made my mouth water just looking.”
“Oh, you’re going to look so good in our frying pan.” I promised, as I carefully plucked them down to the root.
And they did. I tossed them in late, during those last few seconds before lifting it from the coals, just like Pop showed me, and they cooked perfectly. It was just like camping with Pop all over again, and while I took care of dinner, Dack swept an area of the forest floor clean and flat and pitched the tent. He spread our bags inside, and we settled down comfortable by the fire, eating our delicate dinner with greasy fingers and just enjoying the night. The sky lit up with the long moon and pinpoint stars, and the breeze was cool but not uncomfortably so, and I swear, I coulda stayed right where we was for the rest of my life and been perfectly content.
And Dack, he must have been feeling it too ‘cause it was after we’d eat our fill and washed our hands and settled back by the fire that he bit his lip and come clean about that night.
He spoke right up, fearless, or so it seemed to me, and I’ll never forgit the way he told it.
Part II: Dack
12
“Beth was there ... you know, that night.” I blurted out of the blue. I don’t know why I done it. I’d promised myself I’d keep quiet about what Merle and them McAllisters done, but one second I was chewing on a twig, laying back and staring at the night sky, and the next there was all these words bubbling out of me from someplace I didn’t even know was there.
I heard Bo stir. Saw him roll over and face me once I started talking, and I knew I had his full attention.
I appreciated that, but I hated it a little too.
I hadn’t wanted Bo to know any of it, at least not more than what he seen with his own two eyes. I knew Bo, and he was a good guy, and he hurt when he saw other people hurting, especially me or Sonny.
Mostly me, though.
Bo had looked out for me all my life, even after Merle come. He took my beatings more than once, and it damn near killed him that time Merle made him hit me in the face over and over.
I never told nobody, but Bo cried for days after that. Every time he come face-to-face with me and see what he done, he’d bolt off the back porch and head for the woods, and when he come back, his face would be all ruddy and his eyes swollen and red.
I didn’t blame my brother. I wasn’t his fault. It was Merle’s.
But Bo had this protective streak in him that came straight from Pop, to hear Sonny tell it. I, myself, didn’t remember too much about our old man, but Bo and Sonny made sure to talk about him all the time, and I felt like I did. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if what I knew was my own memories of the man or just ones that my brothers had planted.
Bo though, he lived his life like it was his higher purpose to look out for me, like he was a knight in some king’s army, and I was the chosen one he was sent to protect.
Sonny said Pop was protective just like that. He’d been protective of Mom, and he was protective of us when we was babies. And he sure did try and protect the mountains that surrounded us and the things that lived in ‘em. Guess that’s how he ended up a game warden.
He was protecting things.
Didn’t hardly seem fair his need to take care of everything and everybody was what got him shot.
But anyway, that’s where Bo got it from, and it’s the reason I didn’t want have to come clean about what Merle done.
It was just my damned fool mouth that had other plans, I guess. Even worse, once the words got started, I couldn’t stop ‘em. They was like a river flowing out of me and into Bo, and I hated myself for laying all that on him.
“Beth?” Bo repeated, surprise in his voice, and I nodded,
“Yeah. She ... you know. She come by. I guess to check on us.” Beth lived across the field, and she stopped in from time-to-time to check in on me and Bo, see if we was okay. I think she knew what was going on in Pop’s house, but she had a kid of her own to worry about, and her husband was dead, so she was scared to git herself too involved.
“Merle let her in?” Bo asked, still shocked.
Usually, Merle’d just let her beat on the door til she got tired and left. Or, he’d send me to answer, and tell her to go away ‘cause everything was fine. She’d bring us food sometimes – a casserole or dessert or something, and I bet she was a good cook ‘cause it always looked delicious. Merle, though, he’d always gobble it right down soon as she stepped off the porch. She’d a stopped all that cooking, I bet, if she’d a knew she was just slopping a hog.
I shrugged and snapped the twig in two that I was gnawing on.
Bo made a little sound of encouragement, so I went on.
“Beth, she brought groceries and tried to make us dinner. But it just made Merle mad ‘cause when he got to the kitchen, I heard him bitching about why was there three plates on the table. Said he wasn’t feeding no retarded little bastard and no whore at his dead brother’s table.”
I stopped then ‘cause I could feel the rage blistering off Bo. Merle was always calling me mean names like that – bastard, dumbass, too dumb to live. He’d started on that the day he come. Never said nothing like that about Sonny or Bo. Just me. And after a time, it started feeling like it was true.
“What’d she say?” Bo asked after a while.
I smiled, then. Couldn’t help myself. “She said she’d be damned if she’d let some lazy, redneck asshole who didn’t have a job or a dime to his name call her a whore.” I heard Bo snort then, and I chuckled too. I sobered up real quick though at the thought of what come after.
“I heard him hit her.” I admitted. “Hard. I heard her scream, and then I busted through the kitchen door and pulled him off her.”
Bo sat up. “You shoulda just run, Dack.”
I sat up too, shrugged. “Couldn’t. Pop wouldn’t have. You and Sonny – you’d have helped her, or tried to.” I met his eyes. “She was always trying to help us.”
I saw the truth dawn in Bo’s eyes then. He knew I was right. No way he’d have ever walked away from Merle hitting an innocent woman. We was Ashkettles. Didn’t mean much now, maybe, but it had once.
“So what happened then?”
I took a breath. It hurt to talk about it. I’d tried, really tried, to help Beth.
“I pulled Merle off her and told her to run, but Merle, he come around with an elbow and socked me between the eyes. And Beth, she swore at him when he did that. She said she knew he was abusing me, but he wouldn’t be hurting me right in front of her. She grabbed a plate off the table and bashed it over his head, and I heard him roar. Couldn’t see much ‘cause my eyes was watering so bad from the elbow. But I heard her snatch the plate, and then I heard it break everywhere and heard Merle holler.” I stopped there, picturing it. That night was probably the second worst night of my life, and I hated rehashing the thing.
But Bo wasn’t letting me off the hook. “And?” He asked, all riled up.
“And,” I continued, trying to keep my voice from hitching. I shrugged. “And he killed her. Got around behind her and kind of just grabbed her up and snapped her neck like a tree branch.” I took a shuddering breath. “He let go, and she did this sort of slither thing to the floor, and her eyes was still looking at me all surprised.”
I sat still for a minute, thinking on it. Then I looked up and caught the look of horror on Bo’s face, and that done it. Next thing I knew, I was off in the grass, puking.
13
I stayed there in the tall grass until I got it all out, but the guilt was still eating away at me. I never meant to lay that all on Bo. I couldn’t bring myself to look over at him, ‘cause I knew he was hurting just as much as me, maybe more. He was probably scared too. I sure was.
After a little bit, I felt a hand on my shoulder and just shook my head. I wasn’t ready to face my brother just yet. But Bo had other plans.
“Come on.” He said, tugging at me easy. “Come turn in. Rest some, and we can talk about it more tomorrow.”
I nodded without meaning it, and Bo read me like one of Pop’s hunting guides. He sat right down beside me and beside the puke and rubbed a hand up and down my arm.
“It ain’t your fault, Dack. You know that, right? You tried.”
I nodded again without meaning it, and Bo just sighed. “Hell of a life.” I heard him murmur, and I snorted.
“Ain’t it though?”
Bo sighed again. “I’d tell you it’s gonna be okay, but you seeing the whole thing ... he ain’t gonna let that go, Dack. He’ll come after.”
“I know.” I said, and damned if the heaves didn’t start back up again at the thought of what Merle would do to me if he ever found me.
Of what he’d do to Bo for taking me and running like that. I was sick at the thought, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.
“Let the bastard come.” Bo suddenly said, meanest I ever heard him. “I’ll kill the sonofabitch myself before he ever gits hands on you again.”
I pulled myself up and away from the puke, and stood looking down at Bo. “There’s something else too.” I said, trying to find the courage to say what I’d rather die than tell Bo.
But Bo, he just nodded like he was expecting it.
I stood looking down at him and trying to make my mind work and my mouth say the words, but nothing was coming out. I knew what Merle told me was gonna hurt Bo – hurt him more than what Merle did to me even – and that was substantial.
He sat looking up, patient as always, waiting for me to work my way around what I needed to say.
I folded myself back down into the grass beside him again to buy time and sat with my shoulder bumping up against his. He didn’t pull away. Bo never pulled away from me when I crowded his space. I think he knew I needed the comfort or something. I took a deep breath.
“I think ...” I paused, unable to go on.
“Shit, or git off the potty.” Bo said suddenly, making me shoot snot out my nose. I sobered up quick though.
“I think ... I think he’s the one shot Pop, and I think I seen him do it.”
14
When we was kids, Bo used to fight me for television rights on weekends. My favorite cartoon was on opposite his favorite cop show, and back then, he was gonna be a cop when he growed up, so he won hands down. I was always only going to be bionic. And anyways, I didn’t mind so much. It made me feel growed up to sit on the couch between Sonny and Bo and eat corn chips and drink from my own tall, glass bottle of soda that felt like it was big as me.
Pop was pretty careful what I watched and when I watched it, but I’d sit side-by-side with my brothers on the couch and watch Undercover Cop take on the bad guys week after week. Pop had meetins on Sunday nights, and Bo and Sonny would smuggle me downstairs just before he left, and they’d make sure to send me back up before he got home.
It was funny, Pop always taught us to look out for each other, and most of my memories from when I was really young starred both my brothers. Even though they was older and had interests of their own, I never remember a time when either one of ‘em rejected me. I was always right there in the thick of things, watching television and drinking soda, which was why, when Merle hit me broadside with that revelation that night, I had a hard time believing it. I’d been alone, he said – all alone.
After he killed Beth, and she lay on our kitchen floor with her head at an odd angle, and her eyes still wide open in surprise and two delicate gold chains at her neck hopelessly tangled, Merle’s mean eyes cut to me, and he grinned. I’ll never forgit it. It was about the ugliest thing I ever seen. He wiped the spit and blood from his face with the back of his hand and glared down at me where I was still sprawled in the corner and hurting from his elbow jab.
“Bring back memories, boy?” He’d asked, eyes wild. Merle was high on white powder, and I could see flecks of it caught in his mustache and dusting the underside of his nose.
When I didn’t answer, he’d reached down and grabbed me by my hair, yanking out a clump or two as he flung me around by it. He bounced me off the kitchen door first and then into the cabinets. And when that clump of hair come out, and he lost his grip on me, he just grabbed on at another spot. He pushed me up against the wall, the phone digging into my back, and crushed his ugly face into mine.
“See that? That’s crazy right there. She was crazy. Near as crazy as your old man, right? You seen that, right? She was crazy?”
I remember nodding desperately, sure for certain this was the night Merle was gonna make good on his threat to finally kill me, and all I could think about was Bo and how he’d be home before Merle could get the mess cleaned up. He’d see me, in whatever sorry state Merle left me in, and that’d be it then. Bo would never git over that. Not in a million years.
So I nodded. I agreed with him that Beth had been crazy. Crazy for making his dinner and crazy for thinking that me and her was invited. Crazy for talking back to him and crazy for defending me. I agreed. She was crazy all right – crazy as a soup sandwich. She was dead, and it was her own fucking fault. I agreed with every word that come out of Merle’s mouth. I had to. I did it for Bo.
But then Merle had started on about how Pop had been crazy too – crazy to think he was gonna bust Merle for always shooting game out of sea
son. Crazy to threaten Merle with a $15,000 fine and three years in prison. Pop had been just as crazy as Beth and that’s what had got him killed too, and I remembered, right? I seen it, right? I remembered how Merle’d had no choice?
And I froze up then. I stopped agreeing with everything Merle said ‘cause it sounded like he was the one killed Pop, and like maybe I’d seen it happen.
I guess I had one of my spells then, ‘cause I just sort of faded out on him. I could feel him throwing me around the room and stomping down on my ribs, but it was far away like it was happening to someone else. And when he finally left me lying in the corner where he’d found me, I remember seeing him wrestle with Beth’s body and try to drag it out the front door, but he was too high, and she was dead weight, even though there was nothing to her at all. I heard him on the phone with Shane McAllister, and that’s when I knew I had to move. I shifted over onto my belly and crawl-dragged myself out the back door while Merle was on the phone. Outside, I pulled myself up using the old iron ring Pop had bolted to the side of the house by the hand pump. Pop had always had a clean towel hanging there for when one or the other of us came out of the woods and needed to wash the day off our hands and feet before we come in. The ring was ancient and rusty now, and it held the decayed carcass of a rabbit Merle had shot and left to rot in the sun instead of a fresh towel. I didn’t care one bit. I wrapped one shaking hand right around that poor stinking rabbit, pulled myself to my feet and shuffled off into the shadows to wait for Bo.
And while I was hiding, I seen ‘em drag poor Beth down the steps and wrap her in the couch cover. They tied twine around her and loaded rocks into a pillowcase and tied it to the twine. They dragged her down to the pond’s edge then, and I heard Pop’s motorboat roar to life. It took them a good hour to get rid of Beth before they come stomping back up the path looking for me. By that time, I was up on the porch and hiding behind Pop’s old mattress that Merle had filled with fleas before he’d had Sonny drag it outside and lean it, standing up, behind the swing. I didn’t think Merle would look for me there ‘cause he was afraid of the fleas, and it was as close to the driveway as I could git without being seen.