Brother (11 page)

He was eleven and the Morrows were on their way back from their yearly visit to the county fair. Ray had spotted the tent on the way over, and he banged the back window of the truck to get his father's attention. Wade raised a hand as if to tell the boy to hold his horses. The vehicle rambled onto the dirt shoulder and Momma and Wade slid out of the cab while the Morrow kids bounded out of the truck bed. Ray was the first to step under the tent's scalloped vinyl canopy, those red-and-white stripes making him think of candy canes and circus clowns. The setting sun gave the glossy shrink-wrapped packages of bottle rockets and aerial repeaters a mystical glow.

Ray didn't know he was going to steal anything until he saw the box of bright-red balls marked
CHINA CHERRIES
. Had they been black and five times larger, they'd have been straight out of a cartoon. Ray shot a look over his shoulder. His siblings had gathered around a table display featuring enormous variety packs. It was the wimpy stuff that the fireworks manufacturers tried to pawn off as “fun for the whole family,” but all you ended up with was a bunch of duds and a headache from all the smoke. Two men worked the tent, both of them distracted. One was packing things up at the far end of the pavilion. The other was chatting up Momma and Wade, probably crossing his fingers for one final sale. Ray looked back at the box of cherry bombs, grabbed one in each hand, and shoved them into his pockets.

Wade ended up splurging on a pack of sparklers for Michael and the girls, which Ray had zero interest in. Wade deemed everything else as too expensive. “It's like settin' good money on fire,” he had complained. “We may as well sit on the back porch and light dollar bills.” Ray normally would have whined, but he kept quiet and tried not to draw attention to himself while the cherry bombs sat lumpy in his pockets. He kept his hands perfectly positioned against his legs and idly wandered back to the truck. If he had tried to be any more casual, he would have been kicking at the dirt and whistling the jingle from the
Andy Griffith Show
.

He did his damnedest to be patient, but patience didn't come easy to ten-year-old boys. He managed to hold out for two whole days before stepping into the backyard, nervous but casual. Lauralynn was fussing over her rabbits. Misty Dawn was sitting in the sunshine on a ratty old blanket. She was brushing the hair of a naked baby doll with a missing arm—the kind that opened and closed its eyes depending on how you held it. Michael was skirting the trees, hunting for beetles or worms or bird feathers. Ray squared his shoulders and crossed the yard to meet his brother along the edge of the woods.

“Hey, Mikey,” he said. “Got somethin' for ya.” Ray ducked behind Wade's tool shed, motioning for Michael to follow.

Michael dropped what he was doing and ran after his big brother, a wide smile spread across his six-year-old face. “Whaddya got?” he asked, excited to see what Ray would produce out of the depths of his front pocket. Ray pulled out one of the bombs, holding it for Michael to see.

“Candy?” Michael asked, wide-eyed.

“No, dummy, it's a firework. Got it for your birthday.”

“Really?” Michael's face lit up with excitement. The Morrows didn't know when Michael's birthday really was, so they had switched it to the anniversary of his arrival instead. It was coming up on three years since Ray had brought home the wailing, blubbering kid who had told them he was four.

“Hold out your hand,” Ray instructed. Michael did as he was told, and Ray placed the bright-red sphere in his brother's small palm. “This is a special firework,” he explained. “I'm gonna light the fuse, and when I do you gotta cup it like this.” Ray put his hands together as if holding a bird. Michael mimicked him. “And when it goes off, you're gonna get a real big surprise, see? But you gotta hold on to it, otherwise it ain't gonna work.”

“Is it gonna be cool?” Michael asked.

Ray fished a lighter he'd stolen from the kitchen out of his back pocket.

“Oh yeah,” he said with a grin. “It's gonna be
great
. You'll never forget it.” Kind of like how he'd never really forgotten Lauralynn holding ­Michael in that fun house, how Ray had vanished, so easily replaced.

He sparked a flame at the top of the old BIC lighter and leaned in, lighting the cherry bomb's one-inch fuse. It caught and began to smoke as Michael stood there with a smile, cupping the explosive just as Ray had told him to.

“Now don't move,” Ray told him as he backed away, light-headed with the sudden rush of adrenaline. This was it—it was really going to happen. That cherry bomb was going to go off, and it was going to blow that stupid kid's hands clean off. Hell, maybe it would tear his arms off entirely. Maybe the blast would be so strong that it would obliterate half his face and blind him in the process. Ray grinned to himself, knowing that ­Michael wouldn't be seeing the inside of a hospital no matter how bad it was. Momma and Wade didn't believe in doctors. They said hospitals asked too many questions and doctors stole people's money. When Ray had fallen out of a tree and broken his arm at Michael's age, Wade had slapped a couple of scraps of wood together and made a hillbilly splint. Breaking his arm had hurt, but it hadn't been all bad. The pain had won Ray his first taste of whiskey. For the two months he wore that wooden arm around, he could take swigs of booze anytime he wanted, no questions asked.

But Michael would need more than liquor for this. He'd need a miracle, and even that wasn't guaranteed to save his life. He'd bleed out quick. He might even be dead before Wade and Momma figured out where the bang had come from.

Ray narrowed his eyes as the fuse burned down toward Michael's hands. Lauralynn would be upset—it was the only thought that nearly convinced him that this plan was a bad one. But Lauralynn would get over it. She was strong. Ray would get her another kid if she wanted—a girl this time . . . someone who wouldn't step on his toes.

Ray turned his head away from Michael for a moment to look back at Lauralynn and her rabbit cage. But rather than seeing his sister and her bunnies, he saw Wade coming up fast. In his anticipation, he hadn't bothered to check where Wade and Momma were, and Wade had been not more than ten feet away, inside the shed.

Wade shoved Ray to the side so hard that the boy went skidding onto his ass. He watched his father grab Michael's hands, pluck the bomb out of his palms, and chuck the firework into the trees. The thing exploded with a massive
BOOM!
before it ever hit the ground, sending a few branches of a dead pine flying to the forest floor. Michael jumped at the noise. He stared into the woods with wide, startled eyes, then looked to Wade with confusion.

“But I was supposed to hold on to it,” he said. “That was mine!”

Ray winced and began to scramble to his feet to avoid whatever was coming to him, but he wasn't quick enough. Wade came up behind him, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and shoved him inside the tool shed. That's where he proceeded to beat the hell out of him with the buckle-end of his belt. He beat him so badly that by the end of it, Ray couldn't tell if it hurt anymore. He left that shed with the back of his shirt bloodied and the seat of his jeans so numb he could hardly walk straight. When he hobbled past Momma on the back porch, she didn't say a word. She didn't even bother looking up from the string beans she was working on, snapping the ends off with the flick of a wrist, much like the way Ray wanted to snap Michael's scrawny neck.

Ray had to crawl up the stairs to get to his room, and when he finally reached the top, his lips pulled back in a sneer. He resented the fact that his bedroom had been split in two, one side for him, the other for the kid he'd nearly wiped off the face of the earth. Pulling himself into the room, he looked out the window, rage boiling the blood in his veins. One story below, Michael was surrounded by his siblings and father. Lauralynn had wrapped her arms around him in her usual protective embrace. Even Wade was squatting in empathy, bringing himself down to Michael's line of sight. Ray never got that kind of attention. When he broke his arm, Wade told him to suck it up and Lauralynn's doting tapered off after a few days.

Later that day, Wade raided Ray's side of the room and came up with the second stolen bomb. When he found it, he raised his arm over his head, ready to lay into his firstborn again. But he had shown mercy when he saw the blood on the back of Ray's shirt. Had it been Momma, compassion wouldn't have entered the equation.

The next morning, Ray gritted his teeth as he watched Wade and Michael stick that cherry bomb into the hollow of a pine and blow it sky high.
His
dad.
His
bomb. His stupid little brother clapping his hands like a gleeful idiot while Ray sat upstairs, locked in his room. Forgotten.

T
HE BEDROOM DOOR
swung open so fast it hit the back wall with a loud crack. Michael jerked awake. His gaze fell onto Rebel's silhouette. His brother appeared to be fully dressed despite it still being dark outside. “Get up,” he said, and he didn't sound amused.

“What time is it?” Michael murmured, his throat still too dry with sleep to project much more than a croaky whisper.

“You think it matters?” Reb stepped inside the room and jerked Michael's blanket off of his legs. “I said
get up
.”

Michael sat up and shoved wild, slept-in strands of hair behind his ears. He imagined himself to look like a seventies rock-band reject, groggy and disheveled, nothing but hair and a sloppy, beat-up face.

“Get dressed,” Ray told him. “We're takin' a little trip.”

Michael got to his feet, but he had to catch himself on the wall the moment he left his mattress. His head spun, still not quite recovered from the blows Reb had dealt him hours before. The ache in his jaw had metastasized into a killer headache, one that throbbed white-hot with every whoosh of his pulse. But there was no time to consider the gnawing ache that continued to squirm behind his eyes. Rebel was in a mood, and when Reb was moody, Michael did whatever the hell he was told.

He grabbed his discarded jeans off the floor and pulled them on as his brother loomed over the simple pine desk beside Michael's window. It was old and had been in that room for as long as Michael could remember, having belonged to Lauralynn before Momma sent her off to North Carolina. If Reb had awoken anyone else, they weren't making themselves known. The house remained silent.

Michael shoved his bare feet into his boots and pulled his unruly hair back with the rubber band from around his wrist. He looked up just in time to catch Reb pushing his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket.

“I'm ready,” Michael said. It had taken him all of sixty seconds to pull himself out of bed and prepare for whatever it was Rebel had planned. But despite Michael's haste, Reb still grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him out of the room like a disobedient child. Michael was surprised Reb didn't throw him down the stairs as they descended to the first floor. Reb had pushed him down that staircase a few times in the past. Once, after Reb had a barn burner of a fight with Wade, he had launched Michael off the top riser, and Michael went tumbling down the stairs like a sack of meat. It was a wonder he hadn't broken his neck—no doubt Rebel's intent. Momma had rushed to see what all the ruckus was about, only to scold her eldest son from the bottom of the staircase.
You break this house and I'll make you rebuild it with your two bare hands, Ray!
And then she had shot ­Michael a look and told him to
Get up off of that floor
before returning to her TV show.

Still groggy with sleep, Michael nearly lost his footing on the back porch steps. The deep blue of the sky suggested it was three, maybe four in the morning. Despite the heat of those blazing summer days, it still felt crisp at that hour. The air was always better when the world was sleeping. It made it easier to breathe.

Rebel pushed Michael toward the Delta and peeled away from the dozing farmhouse in a blast of loose gravel and dirt. Michael stared at the house in the side view mirror as the Olds­mobile bounced down the rutted dirt road two miles shy of the highway. The house looked haunted in the darkness, pale moonlight reflecting off its front windows. The cold white glint of light gave the weatherworn clapboards an almost iridescent silver sheen. The farmhouse had belonged to Wade's mom and dad once, grandparents Michael had never met because they were long dead by the time he came around. Sometimes it made him wonder about his adoptive father and how it had been for Wade as a boy. He wondered what room Wade had and whether he had been happy or sad. But Michael never had the nerve to ask and always settled on sadness. He couldn't imagine anyone being happy in that house. Anytime he heard laughter inside, it seemed as though the rooms sucked up the sound and squelched it beneath a veil of discolored wallpaper. If that house were alive, it would feed on happiness and breathe out nothing but screaming and hate.

Just before the house disappeared from view, Misty Dawn's light clicked on. If she'd gotten up to check what was going on, she was too late, which was for the best.

They drove for nearly an hour before Rebel turned onto another road and followed the winding path deep into Appalachia. The endless twists and turns and the thick darkness that lay heavy over the landscape was disorienting. It made ­Michael sick with nerves. When Reb finally pulled over and told ­Michael to get out, his anxiety rose to a panicky, fevered pitch, but he climbed out anyway.

Something about this entire scenario felt so wrong, yet so familiar. When he spotted Reb pulling an old shovel out of the Delta's trunk, Michael was overwhelmed by a sickening sense of déjà vu. He'd been here before, wherever
here
was. He'd seen that look in Reb's eyes in his nightmares—a single recurring dream he'd been having for the past fifteen years. ­Michael opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. He usually loved the forest, but now the smell of pine and sap made his skin prickle with nauseous apprehension. He would have traded anything to be back in his bed, the fresh scent of nature replaced by stale sheets and dusty floors.