by Ania Ahlborn
Someone yelled in the not-so-far distance, though Michael couldn’t make out the words over the girl’s constant wail.
When he hefted the rock up over his head, she stopped fighting, as if suddenly coming to terms with her fate. He was caught off guard by her stillness. Her face was red and puffy with tears, the bags beneath her eyes now horrible black bruises, her teeth smeared with blood. And yet somehow, at that very moment, she struck him as angelic—a beautiful girl who probably looked a lot like Momma had when she had been that young. The girl stared up at Michael with a look that left him dumbfounded, as though she was seeing God.
“Why are you doing this?” she whimpered.
Michael’s chest constricted. His fingers tightened around the stone. He wanted to explain that it wasn’t him, that he had no choice. But all he could manage was: “Because I’ve got to.”
And then he brought the rock down against her head.
Wade and Rebel crested the hill just as the stone rolled from Michael’s grasp and onto the ground.
“Shit!” Reb spit out, charging forward. “What’re you tryin’ to do, kill her?” He shoved Michael away from the girl with an impatient hand, leaned down, and pressed two fingers against her neck to feel for a pulse. A moment later, he shot Michael an aggravated look. “You’re lucky,” he murmured. “You think you let her run far enough?”
Wade’s hand fell onto Michael’s shoulder. That distant look was still in his eyes, but three words rolled smoothly off his tongue: “Good job, son.” He patted Michael on the shoulder, then turned to make his way back to the house.
Michael watched him go before casting a look at his brother. When their gazes met, Reb rolled his eyes at their old man’s back.
“Goddamn loon,” Reb muttered. “Bring her back.” He stepped away from the unconscious girl. “And you better hope Claudine don’t care you’re bringin’ her back half-dead neither. I ain’t taking blame for this.” He sidestepped Michael to follow their father, murmuring beneath his breath.
Michael looked back at the girl splayed out on the forest floor. Her breathing was shallow but steady. He had knocked her out pretty good, but there was no telling how long she’d stay under.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, then he hefted her onto his shoulders.
The next time he’d be alone with her they’d be down in the cellar.
The next time he’d see her, she’d be undeniably dead.
2
* * *
MICHAEL WAS SPRAYING down the cellar floor with a garden hose when Reb appeared at the top of the stairs. Diverting his attention from the spirals of watery red that circled a rusty drain in the floor, Michael looked up at his older brother. The narrow stairwell that flanked the sagging wooden steps shadowed Reb’s hard, angular features. Michael had never said so before, but Reb looked a lot like a bird—the kind that used their hooked beaks to pick apart roadkill. A vulture, especially when he glared, and that was something Reb did a lot.
Rebel crossed his arms over his chest. His stance reeked of impatience, as if to suggest that Michael was taking way too long with this girl—first with the rundown, and now the disposal.
“Are you done or what?” he asked.
Michael gave the floor a final once-over with the hose and hung it on a metal hook jutting out of the wall, the spray attachment dripping onto a concrete floor.
“Pretty much,” Michael said. “What’s goin’ on?”
“We’re goin’ on a run,” Reb told him. “Hurry up.” He was trying to sound casual, but Michael picked it up in his tone. They hadn’t gone on a booze run in nearly a week. Reb was drying out.
“Gimme a minute,” Michael told him. “Just gotta lock up.” He wiped his cold, wet hands on the front of his jeans and stomped his boots against the floor to shake off some of the water that had soaked into the leather. Reb ducked out of the storm cellar without offering any help . . . something he didn’t do for anyone. Sometimes Michael got the feeling that Rebel only spent time with him because he was fast enough to outrun any gas station clerk in West Virginia. Because when it came to true friendship, Michael had caught his brother rolling his eyes a hundred thousand times, as though Michael was the stupidest, most annoying person in the whole entire world. Misty called it sibling rivalry, and while Michael didn’t know exactly what that was, he sure didn’t like how it felt.
Climbing the creaky wooden staircase, Michael surfaced from underground. He needed to change out of his wet clothes. Crunching leaves beneath his boots, he let the propped-open storm doors fall shut with a crash, then slid the deadbolt into place. He hooked a padlock through a metal loop to secure the room below, then turned to go inside. The hose water had made his hands so cold that his fingers ached. But the blast of a car horn stopped him short before he could make it inside. Rebel hung out the window of the Delta. His left arm swept across the ugly metallic-brown paint while his right clung to the steering wheel. Reb had spotted the car at a junkyard near Lewisburg the year before. He and Michael had stolen it right off the lot, towed it out of there with Wade’s old pickup truck. A bloodhound barked at them to stop, but the old boy never did make a move to protect his master’s property. That dog was smart. It hadn’t been willing to put in the effort it would take to defend little more than four bald tires and a pile of scrap. The Morrow boys had spent the rest of the night scratching VIN numbers off of body panels with chisels and screwdrivers. And while the Delta was in sorry shape at the time, Reb thought that it was a real find. A jewel among junk. All it needed was a little polish to make it shine.
“Where you goin’?” Rebel called out.
“To change,” Michael shot back, hooking a thumb toward the farmhouse behind him.
“Man, you couldn’t change if your life depended on it. Let’s go.”
Michael grimaced, but rather than arguing that his socks were squishing between his toes, he changed direction and wandered toward the car instead. Settling into the passenger seat, he sighed. They’d have to drive a good twenty miles one way to get to a suitable hit. As Rebel liked to say, you don’t shit where you sleep.
• • •
The gas station sign read MOE’S, written across a metal awning that hung over two lonely pumps. A sign out front advertised 1.15REG for a gallon of gas and ICE COLD DRINKS in capital letters, some of them crooked and ready to fall off the marquee. Reb made a couple of passes before pulling around the side of the building. It was a small, middle-of-nowhere stop that serviced maybe a dozen customers per day—tired, wayward strangers in need of a frosty TaB and a Hostess CupCake.
Michael slid out of the car, grabbing an old sweatshirt out of the backseat as he went. Pulling it on, he zipped it up and pushed his hands into the pockets across his stomach. He was trying to look casual as he took the corner and stepped across the bank of windows at the front of the store. A little bell chimed overhead when he pulled open the door.
The guy behind the cash register regarded him with disinterest. A Flash Gordon rerun playing on his rabbit-eared television kept him distracted from what was more than likely his first customer of the day. The cashier looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, though it was hard to tell with that bushy Paul Bunyan beard. He hunched his square shoulders forward as he sat on his stool, peering at the TV so intently that it looked more like he was studying the show than watching it for fun.
Michael avoided eye contact as he wandered down the center aisle. Chips and pretzels were to his right. Cans of motor oil and replacement fan belts to his left. He veered right when he reached the wall cooler at the back of the store. The hard liquor was on an end cap across from the Pabst and Schlitz. There wasn’t much to choose from, but Reb didn’t care what it was as long as it got him drunk. In shitkicker stores like this one, it didn’t pay to be picky.
Michael cast a wary look back at the cashier, his right hand catching a bottle of Jim Beam by its neck. He turned his back to the register and made like he was considering which beer to
buy while he slid the bottle beneath his baggy sweatshirt. Michael was rail thin; at six two, he weighed less than 175 pounds. The bottle-in-the-sweatshirt trick usually paid off because it left him ample room to work with. A bigger guy would have looked like he had grown a block-shaped stomach tumor since entering the place. But on Michael, it looked like nothing more than a lot of fabric on a long-haired yokel in a backwoods store.
He started to make his way to the front, his heart pounding in his throat despite the fact that he’d done the exact same thing dozens of times before. An old guy had once pulled a gun on him. When Michael made a break for it, he found the double barrel of a shotgun pointed right at his chest. He still didn’t understand how he had made it out of there alive. The guy could have shot him in the back as Michael ran across the parking lot with Reb’s liberated bottle of scotch clamped in his fist, but the old guy had spared him, maybe because he’d caught a glimpse of his reluctance, or maybe because he didn’t want to deal with a dead body that day. Parked just a few yards from the front plate-glass windows, Reb had seen everything. As soon as Michael had leapt into the car, Reb slammed his foot on the gas and they flew down the highway. They had both sat in stunned silence for a good half mile before Reb burst into a fit of maniacal laughter. Michael hadn’t been able to help himself; he joined in too, despite having nearly lost his life over a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red.
The cashier looked up from Flash Gordon and straightened his shoulders, readying himself for a ring-up, but Michael’s hands were empty. Michael slowed his steps, tried for a smile.
“Sorry,” he said. “You ain’t got what I need.”
“Oh no?” The cashier tipped his head to the side, his gaze only wavering when the chocolate brown Olds slowly rolled past one of the gas pumps. Reb’s head turned a full ninety degrees to see what was happening inside. That’s when a flash of realization crossed the cashier’s face.
Michael should have made his break right then, but something made him hesitate. They locked eyes. Michael tried his damnedest to look innocent as the cashier’s gaze wandered along the faded cotton of his sweatshirt.
“Bit warm for that, ya think?” he asked.
“Depends on where you’re from,” Michael countered. A sweatshirt in the dead of a West Virginian summer wasn’t a big deal when you lived in hell.
The cashier tipped his head to the right, as if confused by Michael’s response. That split second of befuddlement gave Michael the chance he was waiting for. He lunged toward the door. But the cashier was quicker than he looked. He launched himself off his stool and bolted around the counter as Michael neared the exit. The cashier was fast, but his stocky build left him clumsy. He clipped a display of plastic travel mugs—a dozen of them went clattering to the floor—and then pulled a Wile E. Coyote, his legs pumping like a cartoon beneath him as he stumbled, trying not to break his own neck. Michael used the man’s momentary loss of footing to his advantage. He darted out of the building, the bottle of whiskey now in full view.
Reb had rolled the Olds to the far end of the lot and parked alongside the road that would take them away from the scene of the crime. Michael scrambled for the car, his arms pumping hard, the sweatshirt feeling like it was made out of lead. The amber liquid in the bottle caught the sunlight, its shadow giving the illusion of him wielding a crystal club. The car began to roll again, slowly at first, ready for him to jump in, Dukes of Hazzard–style. After so many runs, he had perfected the move. All he needed was an open window. In and out, nice and easy.
He wasn’t more than five yards from escape when he began to relax. His racing heartbeat started to settle despite his full-on sprint. The cashier was in pursuit, but a good fifty feet behind him. No doubt he’d be left to shake his fist in the air as the two punk thieves disappeared down the road, Reb hooting and wailing with his head jutting out the driver-side window.
Except the closer Michael got to the Delta, the faster it rolled. What was supposed to be an easy five-mile-per-hour head start was suddenly double that, then triple. Still at a full sprint, he watched the car blast down the road without him, leaving him to choke on a cloud of road dust. Stunned, Michael slowed his run. He forgot that the cashier was still behind him until the guy crashed into his shoulder, linebacker style. Michael stumbled, and for a terrifying moment, the cashier had him by the sleeve. Michael jerked his arm out of the cashier’s grasp and swung the bottle of Jim Beam, clipping the guy’s jaw. The guy stumbled backward in surprise. He let go of Michael’s shirt and nearly tripped over his own feet as he pressed his hand to his face, momentarily dazzled by pain. In that fleeting moment of freedom, Michael turned and booked it down the side of the road like an Olympic long-distance runner. He only hoped to God the guy didn’t jump in his car and try to track him down.
Michael ran for about a quarter mile before he saw the Delta on the side of the highway. The parking lights were on, and the tailpipe rattled in time with the engine. Michael looked behind him as he gulped in air. The cashier had either given up or was getting his car. Regardless, he was out of sight, and Michael was confident enough to slow to a jog.
The closer he got to the Oldsmobile, the angrier he was. He could see Rebel through the rear window, sitting behind the wheel as casual as ever, puffing on a Lucky Strike. Michael clenched his jaw as he stepped around the car, peeled his sweatshirt off, and opened the passenger door. He retook his seat. But before he could gather up the courage to lay into his brother for the shit he just pulled, Reb smirked at his indignant expression.
“Sorry,” he said, breathing out a chest full of smoke. “I guess my foot slipped.” Reb reached over and grabbed the bottle by its neck, yanking it out of Michael’s grasp. “But good job,” he told him, his eyes going dark. “Son.”
Michael looked away, staring out the window into the trees that flanked the quiet highway. He resisted temptation, didn’t dare give Rebel the satisfaction of standing up for himself. It would only give him more ammunition. They’d get home, and he’d spout off about how Michael had spoken out of turn, how he was forgetting his place. Michael wouldn’t be able to sleep for days, terrified of his bedroom door swinging open in the middle of the night, afraid that Rebel would fill the doorway with his silhouette, demanding that Michael get up so they could take a little field trip into the woods.
“Oh, what?” Reb asked sharply. “Suddenly you can’t take a goddamn joke?”
Michael refused to respond, waiting for the car to start rolling. He was on the verge of protesting their stillness, ready to insist that the guy back at the gas station could pull onto the highway and roll up next to them within a minute or two. Maybe then he’d cock a sawed-off shotgun and blow them both away with a single trigger pull. But Michael didn’t say that either. He was too distracted by his own imagination, black thoughts flooding in. It would have been nice to see a spark of true emotion upon his brother’s face for once. It would have been novel to see a spark of terror light up his eyes—the same kind of terror he so often forced Michael to see on the faces of all those nameless girls. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, getting his head blown off, as long as Rebel would be just as dead as him.
“Whatever,” Reb mumbled, shifting the car into drive and slamming his foot against the gas. The Delta fishtailed onto the asphalt. “Not like Daddy wouldn’t bail your ass out if you did get caught.”
Michael bit the inside of his bottom lip to keep quiet. The idea of Wade springing him out of jail gave him a jolt of satisfaction. He knew that if it were Rebel, Wade would let him stew in the pen for at least a day or two. Michael hoped he was Wade’s favorite, if only to get back at Reb for being so damn unappreciative.
• • •
Rebel caught Michael by the arm just after pulling the emergency brake into place. Michael’s door was already open. He was desperate for some space. But Reb’s fingers clamped hard around his wrist and his eyes narrowed into that vulture glare.
“I feel like I shouldn’t have to remind you,” h
e said, “but I will since you’re so fuckin’ retarded. You talk and you’re dead.”
Michael twisted his arm out of his brother’s grasp, but he remained inside the car, his eyes fixed on his hands. Whether he was Wade’s favorite or not, Michael belonged to Rebel. Nobody would so much as bat an eyelash at Reb’s decision regarding Michael’s future, or the lack thereof.
Reb snorted, as though miffed by his brother’s lack of response, then grabbed his bottle of Jim Beam and shoved his way out of the car. When Michael failed to move, Reb ducked his head back into the vehicle and spit out: “Get outta my ride, dipshit.”
Michael slid out of the passenger seat, grabbed his sweatshirt, and walked toward the house. His feet were cold, his socks still damp from the basement cleanup. He fingered a gold loop inside his pocket. He had forgotten all about it until he shoved his hands into his jeans. The girl hadn’t had much jewelry, just a single ring around the middle finger of her right hand.
Wade and Misty Dawn were sitting at the kitchen table while Momma seared meat on the stove. They all turned to look at Michael when he stepped into the house, then they turned back to their respective tasks. Momma’s kitchen knives glinted in the musty light. Wade had laid them out in a straight line, arranged from largest to smallest upon a stained tea towel. Wade drew one of the blades across the surface of the whetstone he held in his left hand. The hiss of metal against rock mingled with the sizzle of frying food. Misty was working on a new macramé project. Currently, she was wild about making plant hangers and wall decorations. She’d knotted together a belt to wear with her various hippie skirts and had recently completed a hobo bag with tassels so long they nearly swept the ground when she walked. Michael approached the table, pulled the ring from his pocket, and covertly dropped it into Misty’s lap. Her eyes lit up, but she said nothing. Rather, she moved her macramé over it and continued to work.