by A. M. Goetz
“Sorry, man. I’m sorry. You hurting?” Concern, and maybe a little bit of fear was in his voice.
I groaned again, couldn’t help it. “Body feels crooked as a dog’s hind leg.” I muttered, trying to open both eyes, but one was all crusted shut with something I’d probably rather not know what it was.
He snorted then, and I entertained my half-blind self thinking about how I’d know that snort anywhere. If I ever had to pick my brother out of a lineup, even in the pitch black, I’d just tell ‘em to make each guy snort. I’d recognize that noise that come out of Bo ever’ damned time. I should tell him maybe. Something like, ‘Hey man, you ever kill somebody or steal something in front of witnesses, don’t ever snort, okay?’
“Yeah, well,” Bo interrupted my musing, “that old fat bastard beat the snot outta you. What was his problem anyway?” I heard the sound of the cooking can being settled down on a fire. It popped and crackled something fierce like ash, wet ash maybe. And that’s how I knew it had rained while I was out.
“Had a pansy suit and a ugly wife.” I struggled to sit up, my whole left side not cooperating. “Kid was cute though.” I tried to laugh, but it came out weird. Something was wrong with my mouth too, and my hand went there automatically.
“Yeah, don’t laugh. Your jaw’s all jacked up.” Bo was pouring water in the can, and it was quiet a minute while he fixed whatever he was fixing, and I felt around my face to see if it was all still there. “What the hell was you dreaming anyway?” He asked finally. “Sounded bad.”
My head immediately returned to my dream, and I sat quiet for a bit, trying to remember it all. “How long?” I asked, stalling. Bo would know I meant, how long was I out this time.
There was silence for a long time, then Bo spoke up, reluctant to tell me, I guess. “Day and a half this time.”
I stopped feeling around at that, cause that meant it was one of the bad ones. I’d been gone as long as three days before, but only once, and that was when Merle was being especially Merle and using his lighter. I hadn’t checked out that long in over a year at least. Sorta didn’t know what to say to that. It was bad news for sure. Once I got past the shock, I tried to laugh it off. “Ain’t no crazy like Ashkettle Crazy.” I said, grinning, or at least I think I was.
But Bo wasn’t having it. “Shit ain’t funny. Shoulda took you to a hospital. Would’a if you hadn’t woke up today.”
And then I was sure glad I’d woke up today, ‘cause if a guy in a country store could get that freaked out by the way I looked and smelt, I couldn’t fathom how a whole emergency room full of doctors and nurses would react. They’d likely strap me down to a table and hit me with a garden hose ‘fore any one of ‘em would get close enough to lay a bandage on.
I sighed. “Ain’t no use worrying over it none. Cain’t help when it happens. Ain’t no fixing it. Ain’t no fixing me.” I felt around a little bit, and then a wet rag was placed in my hand. I went to work on whatever it was holding my eye shut.
“You ain’t broke.” I head Bo say softly. “We’ll figure it out. Always do.”
And I stayed quiet at that ‘cause I knew he was lying, but it wasn’t a mean kind of lie like the ones Merle told. It was just Bo trying to talk hisself out of worrying. I got that. I felt bad. Seemed like all Bo did was worry, and all he ever worried about was me. I got the worst of the gunk glue off my face and pried my eye open.
“Whatcha making?” I asked, suddenly so hungry I could barely stand it.
“Got a rabbit.” Bo offered, nodded toward the rock where he’d skinned it. He’d shoved the spit down it and was working on setting up the forked sticks in the fire to hold it. My mouth started watering before my brain could tell it to shut up.
I wondered about that. “Safe to eat a rabbit? Ain’t that cold out yet.”
Bo shrugged. “Had a few frosts. Anyways, I’d eat him if he come with a warning sign taped to his head. Just that hungry.”
I nodded, satisfied. Then I remembered Bo’s phone call.
“So, Jane okay?”
He looked up then, and I seen worry in his eyes. He nodded. “Yeah, she’s okay. Had news though.”
I perked right up at that. I loved gossip better’n any woman. “What?”
“They had Merle in jail.” He said, cutting his eyes at me.
“What? Why?” Merle never got caught out, not once in all the years we’d knew him.
“Jane says they started looking for Beth, and it led ‘em right to Pop’s kitchen. Said her purse was still stuck down in the couch cushions. They sprayed stuff to look for blood, and the kitchen lit up like Christmas.”
I nodded. “Luminol. They find her body in the pond?”
Bo shook his head, looking at me strange. “General consensus is he killed us too.”
That one rocked me back. They thought we was dead.
“Why they think that?”
“Ran the blood. Came back Beth’s mixed with yours. Guess mine was in there somehow too, maybe from two weeks ago still.”
That’d be the time Merle come at my eye with the screwdriver, and Bo crashed into him and knocked him clean out the screen door. Funny as hell, but Bo, he took a hell of a whipping for it later. Hell, if they wanted to count us dead, all they’d have to run is Merle’s belt. It had DNA from every Ashkettle in the house on it, including Sonny’s old beagle.
“Jane says they’re dragging the pond. They’ll find Beth sooner or later.”
I thought about that then, how it would feel to know Merle was behind bars for good. “Think they’ll keep him?”
Bo was stalling, I could tell. It was taking him way too long to git the rabbit on the fire. He was fumbling around with the sticks like he’d never handled a sassafras twig before.
Finally, he said what he’d been hiding, and I almost wished he hadn’t.
“He’s already out. McAllisters bailed him, and he lit out of town.”
“Tell anyone where he was going?” I asked, suddenly feeling a little sick.
Bo looked at me like I was that China plate from Pop’s cupboard – the one with all the fine cracks that we’d always had to handle real gentle to keep it from exploding all over itself.
“Jane said New York. He told McAllisters he was going to New York.”
20
“North Fork should be just up ahead.” Bo squinted at the map. He looked up, grinning. “Pop’s cabin has got to be close around here.”
I grinned back, picturing Sonny sacked out across an old cot nailed into the wall. I had a vague recollection of Pop’s old cabin, but not much else. It was just images that sort of lingered in the back of my mind – snow, a sparkling clean window surrounded by weathered wood, maybe a chimney. Couldn’t remember much else. Bo said it was ‘cause I’d only ever been there once in my life. I remembered a bed though. It was hewn right from logs and tacked to the wall. Had strings criss crossed along the underneath instead of a box spring, and a soft, cozy mattress. Must have spent a lot of time in that bed for it to be so clear in my mind when the rest of the place was just foggy images. I said as much, and Bo grinned again.
“You was sick as hound dog ate chocolate that time.” He clarified for me. “If you got out of that bed, I cain’t remember it.”
“Guess that explains it then.” I agreed, sticking out a leg and tripping him as he went by. He went down like a sack of rocks, and I cracked right up.
“Asshole.” Bo complained, brushing hisself off and continuing on. “Next time some fat fuck lays into you behind a dumpster, see if I give a shit.”
“I will.” I said, patting him on the back. “You will.”
“No way. You’re on your own, Mighty Mouth.”
I snickered again then felt a little bit bad when I seen Bo was limping. I was about to make him sit so I could have a look when something moved up ahead of us on the trail. Bo seen it at the same time and held out a hand to stop me, and we both dropped to crouches. We was both jumpy as newborn colts since we’d heard Merle was hea
ding our way. Bo was ahead of me and had the better view so I didn’t know at first why all the tension went out of him like a balloon leaking air. At first I thought he’d seen Merle and just give up, just like that. But then he turned sideways, and I saw the shit-eating grin, and that’s when I knew.
Sonny.
Part III: Sonny
21
The words of that sheriff kept rolling around in my head, giving me no relief. The boys was dead. Merle had finally done what he’d been threatening to do for years. When I’d first made that call, picked up a pay phone and called Lyle back home, and he’d told me Merle was in jail. I was happy for about one heartbeat; then he said the rest.
When I was done vomiting in the dust, I’d called the sheriff next.
Murderer. Bastard was in jail for murder, Beth’s murder, Bo and Dack ...
Son of a bitch killed my brothers – the only people left on this planet I ever gave a damn about, and them both just kids too.
He run me off that last day with exactly that threat. Said if I didn’t leave right then, he’d kill ‘em both slow before the day was out.
So I’d left. It just about killed me, but I left. Left the boys behind with that psycho ‘cause he said he wouldn’t ever touch ‘em again if I did and ‘cause I needed a plan to git ‘em away.
And then he went and killed ‘em both anyway, and I could see it, how it went down. It would have started with Dack. Merle would have started in on Dack, started hitting him, belting him maybe, and Bo, he’d jump in, put hisself in the way so Merle couldn’t get to Dack without going straight through him. And that’s what Merle woulda done – gone straight through. Lyle said they found blood, lots of it, in Pop’s kitchen.
When I hung up that phone, I come straight here. I’d found this place months ago, on the way to the cabin, and right away, it give me peace. Just something about how the wind blowed through big, towering white cedars and set the tops of ‘em to shaking – it was just something bigger than myself, I guess. Kinda made all the bullshit seem small, put it all in perspective. And this was the Boquet River. This was Bo’s river. I could sit here at the base of these falls and think about my brothers, in these mountains and remember how it once was, and how I’d always thought that, someday, it’d be again. In a lot of ways, this river, it was like us.
The Boquet started innocent, way up in the Dix Mountains and run, unsuspecting, down into the Champlain Valley.
But early on, the river starts bucking up against stones and boulders, and it has to fight real hard to keep going. And all along the way, it’s falling. From the Dix Range to Lake Champlain, it drops thousands of feet, and I think maybe that’s where I was at right now.
Over the falls.
And swear to God, I didn’t know whether I was gonna still be treading water come morning or if I’d break all to pieces on the rocks at the bottom.
Never fell this far before, not even when they told us Pop was dead. Not even when I seen his dead body with my own eyes and not even when Merle landed on us like a bucket of copperheads, and me just a kid, and the boys just babies.
Nothing ever felt like this. Felt like I couldn’t breathe, wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I was the oldest. I shoulda done something. Shoulda killed Merle myself that first time he went after Dack. Never shoulda let that pass. Shoulda picked up a second rock and bashed his stupid, thick skull in.
Shoulda’ killed him. Wish’d I had. Wish’d I hadn’t been so fucking scared of everything every fucking day.
But Pop always said, piss in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills up first.
Wishing was useless. I was gonna kill Merle though. It was the first thing come to my mind when Lyle told me what he done. And I sat there, on that rock by the Boquet, watching the water be pulled over the falls and thrash and struggle in the mess at the bottom before just giving up and being dragged off downstream. I had my knife in one hand and my strop in the other, and all I thought about was the ways I’d make him hurt. I worked my knife up and down the strop, making it thinner, sleeker, sharper while I thought on it. I’d do it in the kitchen too, just like he done my brothers. I couldn’t give ‘em anything but regret now, but by God, I could give ‘em that.
And then I heard a twig snap downstream and looked up, and there them shitheads was, the two of ‘em, grinning like they just stole candy. And Dack was all beat to hell, and he wore some kind of God-awful rag on his head, but he was on his feet at least. And Bo, he looked full of piss and vinegar just like always, and I stood up so fast I lost my balance and fell ass over teakettle right into the river, and as I choked and sputtered and swore, I heard my brothers laughing like crazy people.
Ashkettle crazy. It echoed off the mountain like gunshots, and tickled the white cedars til they was laughing too. And even that poor, tuckered-out water picked up the joke and gurgled more than it should have as I dragged myself to land and my two brothers fell down beside me, still grinning too hard to speak.
And that was no surprise. We was Ashkettles. Only one of us ever did do words too good.
22
“Cain’t believe ya’ll are here.” I said later, once we’d got all the girly hugs and shit out of the way. I was glad they was alive, but a closer look at ‘em and I still wanted to kill Merle. Dack was beat to hell. Couldn’t even give the kid a hug without him yelping like a whipped pup. And Bo was just plumb wore out. Kid looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, and when we finally got time to talk, I realized that was a pretty fair assessment.
He was keeping hisself up nights, standing guard. We was five hundred miles from that ugly son of a bitch, and he still had us all scared as little kids. Shit was getting old.
But I gathered ‘em both up, and pointed ‘em in the direction of the cabin, and we talked as we walked – me and my brothers. And just thinking on that after what Lyle told me felt damn surreal. Knew I looked like a damned fool, but I couldn’t stop grinning.
We followed my trail in, easy as pie, and then that was another thing to worry about. Bo said Merle was coming for Dack, and the path I’d made just by living and hunting and fishing all around the cabin made it real easy to find. There was an old access road in, too, that stopped about a hundred feet from the cabin. I’d used it to haul in lumber and supplies. That was alright though, cause if that ugly bastard come for Dack, he was gonna find me first, and I knew Bo felt the same way.
Three for the price of one – it’d be a bargain old Merle would never forgit, and I half-hoped he was stupid enough to come up here and confront us. We was on home turf here. The woods was ours, and in it, we was stronger. The forest had always invited us in and wrapped itself right around us. But Merle, he’d always took just whatever he wanted from the land, anytime he wanted to. He’d shoot game and take the parts he needed and leave the rest lay to rot in the sun.
I was pretty damned sure Mother Nature wouldn’t be wrapping nothing comforting around Merle.
I was thinking all this when we come up on the place I’d started calling home almost a year back, and the boys stopped short, jaws dropping.
“What?” I asked, trying to act like I didn’t know.
They was both quiet a minute, but then Dack spoke up, which surprised the hell out of me. Dack had stopped participating in life at least a good half-decade ago.
“S’bigger than I thought it’d be.” He wondered, dropping his pack down slow and gazing up at the cabin that looked more like a real house now.
And Bo, he looked at me sharp-like. He knew; I could see it in the way his eyes got all narrow. “You done this.” He said, nodding. “You son of a bitch. How the hell did you do that?” He dropped his old pack down beside Dack’s and stood just gawking.
I grinned then, couldn’t help myself. It’d taken months, but I’d finally turned that old one-room cabin into a genuine house with a bathroom and everything. Place belonged to me, lock, stock and barrel. Pop told me once he had it in a trust for me til I turned 21 – and he had a lawyer
taking care of the property taxes from an account he set up years ago. The account was nigh on empty by the time I showed up to claim it, but there was enough left to make the last year’s tax payment, and then it all switched over to me, which meant it switched over to us.
We had three bedrooms now – just little – but they had doors instead of those ugly sheets Merle made us hang up after he’d broke all the ones Pop had. It was still rough, and the walls inside was still mostly just partitions, but it looked okay on the outside. I’d paid more attention to get the outside looking decent ‘cause I didn’t bother to git the permits. We was hell and gone from anyone that’d ever pass by, but still – I wanted the place looking tight if some tax assessor ever showed up.
“How ...?” Dack offered again, stepping up on the porch that wrapped around one side just like a real porch should. He bounced up and down a bit. “Ain’t even rickety or nothing.” He said, and smiled, and I damned near fainted from the shock of it. Off to the side, I heard Bo snicker.
“Hard to get used to, ain’t it? Does that shit all the time now.”
And I wanted to tease the kid, but suddenly there was something in my eye, and I had to turn around and git it out. Felt like a damned fool again, but the kid saved me.
“Bo! Come check it out!” He crowed, “Got doors and everything!”
Doors was important to Ashkettles, I guessed.
“Thank God.” Bo claimed, climbing up the steps and peering inside. “Ain’t gotta be surprised by your junk no more on my way to get a beer in the kitchen.”
And the kid giggled. Swear to God, he really giggled. “Didn’t know you was looking, or I’d a put a bow on him for ya.”