Where All Light Tends to Go (3 page)

The camp sat way back in a dark, damp holler between Walnut Creek and Ellijay. Though a full moon had kept the road nearly lit enough to ride without headlights for most of the drive, soon as the pavement ended and dusty gravel swept into the mountains, there wasn’t an ounce of moonlight that made it through the trees. The old logging roads saw little upkeep anymore, and it wasn’t a place many ventured without a good four-wheel-drive and a chainsaw.

I’d been there hundreds of times through the years, and in the days before rich folks went to preserving this and preserving that, Daddy and I would spend many a night at the camp during open seasons for hog and bear. That’s really all the camp was good for, keeping folks dry and from freezing when the weather snuck in, but it was hardly good enough for that anymore. The shack was dilapidated and caving, just skeletal remains of curved gray planks and rusted tin.

I could tell the boys were already inside. A rectangle of thin light around the door and a few sparse beams shooting through holes in the roof were all that shone in the darkness. I made my way down to the camp on a path cut through laurels. The sound of a small stream bubbled up from behind the shack, but I could hear them talking inside.

Robbie Douglas was cinched down with wire thin as guitar strings binding his arms and legs to a metal folding chair. Blood ran from his forearms where the wire had sliced clean when he, at one point or another, tried to yank free. He was sitting there calm as a beat dog now, his shirt off and bare chest riddled with burns where the boys had pressed their cigarette butts. Despite his body giving out on him, Robbie’s mouth was in a constant struggle to detach itself from his jaw. Bug-eyed and vicious, his stare took on a wildness I’d only ever seen in a coon’s eyes after a night spent in a trap.

“Where the hell have you been?” Jeremy spoke first. It was just him and his brother, Gerald, there in the room with Robbie. The brothers spent their days working for Daddy at the shop. Both of them were certified mechanics to make the whole deal look pretty official. Really, though, there’d never been much of anything official about Jeremy Cabe aside from a few mug shots. He was a skinny little cuss with cold blue eyes, a mustache that never seemed to grow ripe sprigging over his lips. Those wiry, wide-eyed types often proved the most dangerous men, and that’s what it was about Jeremy Cabe that made me uneasy. He always had a glint in his eye like if you didn’t believe what he was saying he’d prove it right that fucking second.

“Tree must’ve fallen after you came through. I had to saw my way in here,” I said.

“This son of a bitch gave us a hell of a time! Spit all over my work shirt and scratched the hell out of Gerald’s eye!” Jeremy looked down at his navy blue work shirt and rubbed at a smeared white splotch that looked like a cum stain above his name patch.

I could barely distinguish Gerald’s face as he stood in the far corner of the room behind the chair. A small lantern was set on a makeshift table beside Jeremy and a 315,000-candela spotlight was propped on the floor and angled directly into Robbie’s eyes. Gerald stood in a shadow cast by Robbie, but I could still make out a dark red line running sharply from the corner of his eye down into his beard. He was the type of man that wouldn’t say boo to a goose, and other than those blue eyes, the brothers looked absolutely nothing alike. Gerald was as big around as a forked hemlock and always wore a set of suspenders clamped to his britches with a T-shirt just short enough to allow his belly to fold over his belt buckle. He kept a tangled mat of hair stuffed under a Joy Dog Food trucker cap, and had a grisly beard wiring from his face. But as intimidating as he was, it was Jeremy you had to keep an eye on.

“Calm the fuck down, Jeremy. Looks like y’all handled yourselves just fine without too much blood to show for it.”

“Calm down hell! If it wasn’t for your daddy, we’d have this son of a bitch buried down deep in an old asbestos mine or somewhere! I be damned if anybody’s going to be calm!”

“Judging by the cigarette butts on the floor and these burns all up and down his chest, I’d say you’re about even.” I tried to sound tough and calm, and as the words came out of my mouth, I thought I’d done a pretty damn good job. Daddy wanted me to be a man and it was things like this that made you one. Truth was I hadn’t ever taken part in anything like this. Truth was, shit like this didn’t come up too often. For the most part business was smooth, and folks had enough respect or fear or whatever you call it for Daddy to never let it come to this. I was scared shitless. “Has he said anything yet?”

“He’s said a whole lot of shit, but that’s it, just a bunch of bullshit. Ain’t said a fucking useful word.”

Gerald still hadn’t spoken, but walked over and stood directly behind Robbie. Gerald’s belly was almost close enough to rest on top of Robbie’s head.

“I’ve already told y’all I ain’t got nothing to say, I ain’t said nothing to nobody and that’s it, that’s all there is to it.” Robbie spoke fast and it was hard to unravel the words with his jaw racking in that way as he chewed on the same invisible thing that kept Mama’s teeth sawing.

“If you haven’t said anything to anyone, then that’s good,” I said. “That’s good, Robbie. But the problem is we heard a little different. Problem is that person you talked to is someone my father has known for a long, long time.”

Robbie had gone under the radar for months. He didn’t come around too often and maybe that’s why none of us knew how hard that crystal had him. If Daddy’d known, it wouldn’t have come to this. But Daddy hadn’t known, and it took Robbie getting the deputies called on him while he tried to steal a stereo and television from his own folks before Daddy found out. Robbie hadn’t ever been deep. He’d never made runs, never even seen the dope the Mexicans were bringing in nowadays. He’d been on the payroll for a long time, though, driving in different rigs for high-price oil changes and such, and he had a pretty good idea of how it all worked. When the deputies had taken him in, it was a bull on the payroll, a “family friend” as Daddy called them, who conducted the interview. Without even a line of questioning building up to it, Robbie went to spilling beans that shouldn’t be spilled.

He’d been up for nearly a week at that point and was starting to come down. That coming down was always the hardest, it seemed, and when the hole got deep, folks lashed for any rope they could find to drag themselves out. That’s what separated the crankers from any other type of drug addict I’d ever been around. Folks on pills or cocaine or methadone or any other kind of dope could hold it together when they were in that hole. I’d done everything under the sun and never had any mind to start snitching. Crank, on the other hand, seemed to bring on a certain paranoia. After a week or so running that high, no dreams to let you regain any sort of grasp that you ever had, the mind starts going places that minds oughtn’t go. After that, those lips’ll say just about anything to get back some sort of clarity. That’s why Robbie was here. That’s why this had to be done. If he told one, he’d tell them all, and there wasn’t any way of knowing who those others might be. Some dogs had to be put to sleep.

“What in the fuck are you talking about, Jacob, you know me and I’ve known you for a long time now, hell, your daddy has known me for a long time, and I ain’t ever been nothing but good to none of y’all, and now you’re going to treat me like this, saying I said something to somebody, and I ain’t said nothing.” All of that rambling left him out of breath, but Robbie sat still from the waist down. It was his neck and head that were in a constant wrestling match, his head wanting to spin off like a top.

“You said something all right.” I knelt down and tilted the spotlight out of his eyes and beamed it onto his chest so that he could look me square while I approached. His scruffy, thin face jittered, but those big dark eyes that were popping hung on to me as I spoke. “It’s not a question of whether or not you said
something
. We know you said
something
. What we need to know is who all you said it to.”

I don’t know if it was me moving closer or Robbie finally being able to see something other than white light that triggered it, but at that moment he convulsed every which way with those wires cutting into him like razor blades. “I ain’t said nothing!” he screamed over and over, the blood pooling on the floor now as the wires cut deeper and the blood ran down and dripped from his elbows and fingertips.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jeremy rush forward and Gerald start back-stepping fast, and before I knew what the hell was happening, Jeremy had splashed something all over Robbie’s face and the screams electrified the room. It was like Jeremy had just run a high-voltage line into that little old shack and all of a sudden everything was bright. Robbie was screaming till the veins bulged out of his neck, and after four or five of those screams that bellowed till there was no air left for fuel, the skin on his face started whitening and peeling off like wetted tissue. I was a hunk of granite during all of that commotion. I couldn’t have moved to step away from the gallows. But Gerald moseyed casually across the room and grabbed a tin pail from the corner. There was no hurry in his step while he strolled, nor when he dumped what must’ve been water overtop Robbie’s head.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Wasn’t saying nothing,” Jeremy said. He had a wild look about him, like a kid that had just slapped a frog against the concrete. “Had to kick it up.”

“No, I mean what the fuck was that? What the fuck was that you threw on him?”

“Acid, man. Sulfuric acid a buddy of mine swiped from the paper plant over there in Canton.” Jeremy let into a loud whooping holler that rose above the screams for a second or two, and then he started laughing like he’d just witnessed the funniest thing he’d ever seen. His brother never said a word, nor did his facial expression change. I could feel my face turn. I could feel it still souring as the smell swept over me.

“Well, who the fuck told you to do that? Who the fuck told you to bring that in here in the first place?” I was looking dead at Jeremy now, but he still had that smirk on his face. He had a leather work glove over the hand he’d thrown it with, and even that was starting to burn as a few drops of acid crept along the side of the pint jar he’d used to contain it. “Did my daddy tell you to bring that shit? Did my daddy ask you to handle it?”

I could see that the mention of my father and what he might do for something like this forced Jeremy’s hand.

“Sorry, man. It’s just, it’s just he wasn’t saying a goddamn thing. Bullshit. Bullshit was all he’d said and that ain’t going to cut it.” The funny smirk on Jeremy’s face turned sinister. “Your daddy asked us to get to the bottom of it, and he ain’t saying shit.”

Robbie Douglas was still screaming, and if his eyes had held any tears to cry, they would have poured, but the skin was peeling where those eyes used to sit. He was still shaking hard in that chair, those wires still cutting, and none of us said a word until his body gave out and all that was left was heavy lifting and falling in his chest.

“Now, Robbie, you know me as good as anyone and you know it’s not like me to sit and let this happen.” I put aside the toughness and went back to what I knew. “You need to tell me who else you talked to so that I can make it stop.”

“I done told you, I ain’t said nothing to nobody, no time, and it wouldn’t matter if I had ’cause y’all are going to kill me one way or another, and I know it, and I’d rather it happen now, right now, right this fucking second.”

Jeremy ran forward again and splashed another jar full of acid against Robbie’s face before I ever knew it was coming, and that meanness, the sheer meanness of what Jeremy did, seemed to spark a trail of gasoline straight to his brother. Gerald pulled out a curved skinning knife with a gut hook angled back from the end of the blade. There was a dangerous look in his eyes, a vicious calmness as if he knew he would not only keep pace with his brother’s actions, but also try to top him. He loped forward and yanked that knife back hard just above Robbie’s collarbone. The screaming let loose again, and I pulled a revolver Daddy had given me in case things went awry from the back of my jeans and pointed dead between Jeremy’s eyes.

“I told you it wasn’t your place!” I tried to yell over the screams, but my voice seemed muted, like my lips opened and closed but no sound came out. “I told you Daddy sent me to handle this!”

Jeremy didn’t say a word. He just stared down the dark hole of that barrel and kept his mouth shut, but out of the corner of my eye, I caught Gerald easing out from behind Robbie, face peeling, blood dumping out of his shoulder, and screaming. I mean screaming. I turned the gun on Gerald and backed myself into the closest corner I could find to where I could see both Cabe brothers at once. Gerald knelt down and wiped his blade against Robbie’s pants leg, and sheathed the knife to his hip.

“Ain’t no need for us turning on one another!” Jeremy hollered. “Nothing good’s going to come of it!” And as Jeremy spoke that second sentence, the screaming stopped and all of a sudden his words were loud and clear.

The three of us looked over at Robbie, his head fallen down to his chest, and that heavy rising and falling going slack. His breathing shallowed over the next few minutes, and none of us said a word. One last big wheezy huff and then all of a sudden he was as still as water freezing. Silent.

—

THE LOGGING ROAD
ended at the start of a creek bed where the first bits of water seeped from bedrock. There was a sparse clearing in the trees, and the moon filtered through to set the small stream flickering with light.

“There’s a bluff on over that hill, but we’ll have to drag him to there,” Jeremy said.

The brothers had wrapped the body in a tarp, loaded it into the bed of my pickup, and tailed close behind up the logging road until there was no place left to drive. Daddy’d always said that at the end of the long, cold day the only thing that mattered was who you could really trust. I knew I couldn’t trust either of those Cabe brothers as far as I could throw them, so I crammed that snub nose down the back of my britches and stepped out into the night.