Glass Boys Read online

  Lewis looked across the table at Roy, shook his head as Roy licked the outside of his glass. With a teasing scowl, he said, “Someone got to try to fix you, my son.”

  “Only thing that’s going to fix me, now, is a good woman.”

  “And where’s you going to find a woman willing to take on that type of labor?”

  “What type of labor?”

  “You, that’s what.”

  “They be lining up once I puts my sign out.”

  “Yeah, clamoring for cruel and unusual punishment. She’d have to have some awful strong stomach on her.”

  “Some broads go in for that.”

  “The only broad that’s going to fall for your charms, now, is Nellie.”

  “Oh, yes,” Roy reached down, rubbed Nellie’s head with vigorous strokes. Leaned and poured an ounce into Nellie’s water, and she hoisted her fat trunk off the floor, clicked a few steps, lapped. “That’s all you’ll be having, too, Miss Nellie. Don’t you be looking for more. We’re the ones wants to be slobbering around on all fours. You’re already there.”

  “How come is it,” Lewis said as he glanced at the tools in front of the sink, “that you’ll borrow something broken just so you can fix it, but you can’t do a tap ’round the house?” Head leaning towards the drain.

  Roy crossed his eyes, cracked the second bottle. “Who needs a woman, Lew-Lew, when I got you?”

  THE RUNT. Where was the goddamned runt when there was work to be done?

  Eli Fagan looked up, scanned his fields, the grassy backyard. No sign of the child. Then, as he continued to work, the hammer came down onto his thumb. He cursed, threw the hammer, squeezed his pulsing digit inside his fist. Bloody Christ. All morning he’d spent hauling old felt strips from the roof of his barn, and now he was trying to get proper shingles in place before the rain arrived. But the work was hampered by the afternoon heat—the shingles were sticking together, and he could see his boot prints in the softened asphalt. His shirt clung to his sweaty back, salt blinded him. Made his hands unreliable. And now, because of the godforsaken runt, his thumb wanted to explode.

  He didn’t ask for the runt. The child came with his wife. Eli had married her quickly, and there had never been any mention of a boy. She said he must’ve known, but he didn’t. Unless he’d been so inebriated over the course of their courting, he failed to remember. No matter how much warm whiskey was skipping through his veins, wouldn’t a man remember something as significant as that? A child? He decided his wife had tricked him, and that should not surprise him. After all, his wife came from Split Rock, a crotch hole of a town an hour north of Knife’s Point. There were sayings about the quality of girls from Split Rock, crude sayings, and Eli wouldn’t repeat them. Cursed himself for not heeding them. Cursed himself for rushing head long, letting his infantile desire for a warm meal and soft flesh overpower him.

  Spending every day on a farm, Eli knew what was normal, what was right, and that boy was about as unnatural as a beast with two assholes. He watched his wife taking care of him, bathing his scrawny body and scraping a comb through his feather hair, and the very sight of it made Eli twitch. When she fed the child honest meals, smaller servings of what actually appeared on Eli’s own plate, well, that made him angry. Eli sensed there was something bent inside the boy’s head, and he had to insist by way of a few smacks that the boy never look him straight in the eye. When his wife once stood behind the boy, hands on his shoulders, and said, “He is your son, now,” Eli reached for a junk of wood, threatened to strike her. Frightened her enough to shut her up. There was no way in hell he’d take on that boy. Make him a Fagan.

  Eli sat back onto the roof, wiped his handkerchief across his forehead. He felt the urge to put his throbbing thumb into his mouth, but wouldn’t dream of actually doing it. During the summer months, it was tough to get much good out of the boy, but if Eli hollered loud enough, knocked him between his shoulder blades a few times, the boy occasionally carried a few pounds of his own weight. Lately, though, the boy had been disappearing. Every afternoon that was halfway fit for working, he was nowhere to be found. At first, he’d wander off for fifteen or twenty minutes, and Eli would assume he was lingering in the toilet. He was prone to that. Or hidden around the side of the house, chewing on a large wad of paper stuffed into his cheek. He was prone to that, too. But nearly three hours had passed since he saw the boy jamming two halves of a sandwich into his face at once. And Eli very nearly went after him then, put the boots to him, for such a brazen display of gluttony.

  Eli stood again on the roof of his barn, one leg up, one leg straight, put his uninjured hand to his eyes to block the sun. “Boy!” he hollered. “Boy! You get your skinny arse up here.” But the runt did not appear. He did discover his wife, though. Through the open door of the house, he could see her yanking open cupboard drawers in the kitchen, sliding stuff off the counters, slamming the drawers shut with her hip. He hated that, the mounds of hidden clutter. Could feel it when he walked into his own home, orderly on the surface, dirt beneath. He called to her. “Hey, Missus! Hey!” She glanced up, quickly slipped out of his line of vision, and Eli watched the door creak closed as though a ghostly hand was pushing it.

  Eli crouched, opened his fist, saw a purple mess beneath. Took a knife from his pocket, flicked open the blade, steadied his thumb and stabbed the nail. Pressed and twisted. Blood seeped up through the slit, and the pressure released. He would lose the nail, no doubt about it. He sighed, licked away the blood, and then something caught his eye. In the slanting afternoon sunlight, Eli spotted a trampled line of grass. A paler green of bent blades. Leading across the backyard and into a clump of overgrown dogwood bushes. A sure path, and Eli knew he’d find the runt at the end of it. Probably wasting time, playing in the stream. Fury made him light-headed. He dog-crawled backwards off the roof, lumbered down the ladder, and made his way across the yard. Followed the narrow trail into the coolness of the woods. Towards the tinkling water.

  MINDS STUNNED BY the contents of the second bottle, decency dissolved and replaced by something visceral, something that wanted to hunt. The boys were out, Lewis no longer reluctant, slogging behind Roy and his straying stomach. His gut on two legs. With wobbly strides, they waded through Wilf Stone’s field of vegetables, leaving a trail of torn cabbage leaves, uprooted heads. Once his legs were freed, Roy toppled headlong into the spindly potato stalks, and as he righted himself he tugged on a plant, beige globes popping out from the soil. Plucking one up, Roy jammed it into his mouth, crunched down on raw potato, dirt, and pebbles.

  “That’s theeevery,” Lewis slurred as he fell hard on his knees.

  “’Tis, Cunts-stu-bul.”

  Swaying, Lewis jabbed an authoritative index finger in the air. “Let you off with warr-ing,” he managed before he sat back, slapped his thigh, mouth hanging wide open, soundless laughter banging about against his teeth.

  Sprayed beige chunks, hands gripping his knees, crumpled over. “C’mon, Lew-see, ’ress me. Ah-ress me.”

  “That I ’llows, you l’il fucker. T’row you slammer. Swallowa key.”

  Lewis lunged forward, coiled his arms around Roy’s legs, and the two of them tripped, rolled, crushing the fluffy tops of a row of carrots.

  “Fuh you-self.” Roy yanked a carrot from the earth, held it like a dirty dagger, pretended to stab Lewis in the neck. Then, bit the tip, sputtered, “Whassup, Doc? You’re a ’appy wabbit?”

  Lewis curled onto his side. Joy pulled all of his muscles inwards, and for a moment he imagined he was a caterpillar, enormous godly finger stroking his belly. Oh, so good it felt to be free. Free. Just for these instants, floating high above new born responsibility, toes skimming the surface of sober expectation. Just he and his brother and all this foggy air and blurry horizons and spin-top antics. Angling his cheek, he stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth, edging, edging, touching. Soil coating his lips, and he exhaled. The earth was still there. Still beneath his cheek. Strong and ready for w
hen the whirling stopped, when his body would once again be at rest.

  “Up and out,” Roy bellowed as he booted Lewis in the back. “Needs find you lass. Kiss that. Lips’s softer an dirt.”

  Lewis swiped the specks from his mouth and cheeks, crawled onto all fours, then up again, lumbering forward. Side to side, gravity drunk. Up on the gravel road, they rolled along in the heat of the late afternoon sun. Roy’s chest was bare, his shirt lost somewhere along the way. Limping, one boot now missing, black sock sliding down over the pasty skin of his heel.

  “You smell sum-um?” Nose rooting the air above him, huffing, nostrils flaring.

  Lewis swaggered alongside him. “Sssmoke.”

  “Meat. Burning. Meat.”

  “Chri. Some nose on. Jus’ smoke.”

  “Gone, buddy. Starved. Eat my fuckeen boots.”

  “Only got a one.”

  “Tongue the tongue.” Eureka moment, and Roy struck Lewis with his fist. Lewis faltered, righted himself. “Lez go.”

  “Nuts, my son. I idn’t go Eli Fagan’s. Apt to shoot you come through the woods. Say you fuckin’ moose.”

  “Ah, c’mon. Nab a bite him.”

  Something in Lewis alerted him to the fact that staying away from town was a wiser choice, and he did not protest. Trailing close behind his brother, he tumbled down over the embankment, across the mucky ditch and through the woods. His limbs burned with boozy ammunition, face unaware of the damp whipping boughs. Roy like a banshee in the near distance, loping along, swinging from low lying branches, body flying through the cool air. One bare foot flashing in the shadows, stomping onto slippery exposed roots, soft moss.

  They were about to pull off the greatest heist ever. Lewis could picture it all, and he could barely contain the electricity that had crept into his marrow. First, enter yard, then wrestle man, steal meat, bound off into the woods, canines clamped down on juicy reward. But before Lewis reached the edge of the woods, Roy had already burst out of the brush, and into Eli Fagan’s backyard. Panting, Lewis stopped, wrapped his arms around the bubbly trunk of a fat spruce, laughter firing out from his cannon chest, legs weakening, as he watched Roy charge towards the smoking barrel where Eli stood. His blood shot eyes watering, his diaphragm hiccuped inside his chest, and he leaned, tried to catch his breath.

  Sensibilities smashed, the brothers were unable to clearly see what was happening in this backyard. They did not notice young Garrett Glass’s face, the pink welt that caused his left eyelids to kiss, purplish bruise that spidered out from his cheekbone. Or that Eli Fagan’s wife was holding her diminutive son firmly by the straps of his wet overalls, and that he fought her, writhing, gnashing his teeth. They did not see her catch his wrist, twisting, his knees buckling until he squatted down, subdued, on a worn hump of grass. They did not heed her face, lips pale, eyes numbed and drowning inside their sockets, how her rake hand leapt to cover her mouth when Roy and Lewis appeared at the edge of their yard. They failed to see the fragments of broken black plastic, the shards of glass from a shattered pickle jar, lying in the grass near Eli Fagan’s feet. Or that he was stabbing his arm into smoke and flame, poking, poking, deep into the rusting barrel with a sharp kitchen utensil. They did not know he was deafened by the crackling, the snaps and pops, and they never sensed the depth of his anger, how it cranked his shoulders up, how it enabled him to drive his hand into ripping fire without feeling a single pinch of pain.

  Arms flailing, an exchange of some sort when Roy reached Eli. Lewis could not make out what was being said. The words, after bumbling across the yard, were distorted and watery. As Lewis watched, the two men seemed to embrace, hold each other for a moment, like old friends. But when Lewis caught sight of Eli’s face, it was hot poker red. And then Eli shifted, and Lewis saw Roy’s face, his features pulled back in a strange sort of smile. Then, an altogether different sound showering down from up above. A sound a young deer might make, if shot, but only wounded. Lewis scanned the woods, then looked towards his brother, whose head was arced backwards now, searing cry erupting from his mouth. Hands to his bare stomach, and brightness tumbling from somewhere beneath his fingers.

  Mind shocked sober, body slower to respond, Lewis stumbled across the yard, falling forward, knuckles grazing spots of grass, then gravel. He caught his brother as he collapsed, back bowed, pinning Lewis to the ground. “Jesus Christ. Help him,” Lewis tried, but the phrases were trapped beneath his tongue, sounding nothing like they should. Thin liquid poured down over Roy’s abdomen, belly button filled, fish-stained jeans soaked, soil drinking. Lewis cranked his neck, looked this way and that. Eli and his wife were gone, and Garrett, the boy, was beside the barrel, eyes slit by smoke, trying to hook something out with a serving fork. Hugging Roy as best he could, Lewis tried to whisper into his ear, “Shush, shush. Someone’s coming for you. Someone’s coming. Going to be alright.” Wrapping his arms around Roy’s waist, Lewis moved his hands over his brother’s muscle and skin and thick pelt of fat. As he gripped, two fingers slipped into a hot opening in Roy’s flesh. He’d located the source of the rapid blood loss. Lewis pressed hard, tried to plug the hole. But it was a useless consummation.

  3

  THE AIR INSIDE the courthouse was cold, and smelled of paper and wood. Lewis sat in a hard-backed chair, fingers knotted together in his lap, rib cage shivering and sweating inside his dress coat. “I don’t care what he says. I know what he did.” Fourteen months Lewis had waited for this day, and he was struggling to stay seated.

  “But did you actually see him commit this act?”

  Lewis mumbled. “I saw.”

  “Okay.” The lawyer paused. “I will rephrase my question. Do you remember? Do you remember seeing your brother die?”

  “I was there.” He let his nails bite the backs of his hands. “I was right there.”

  “Yes, sir. That is not in dispute.” The lawyer stood directly behind Eli Fagan, then leaned forward, gripped Eli’s shoulders, continued. “But is there anything you can tell us that contradicts the sequence of events put forth by this gentleman? That what happened so long ago was an accident. An accident. An honest and tragic mistake.”

  “A man is dead.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He knows what he did.”

  “Your opinion, Constable Trench.” The lawyer released his hold on Eli, clapped his hands lightly. “Forgive me for saying so, but in this particular case, that doesn’t count.”

  ON THE STONE steps of the courthouse, Lewis heard statements like a loudspeaker bellowing inside his head.

  “Might’ve had a fighting chance,” Dr. Doke had testified. “If he hadn’t of been so inebriated. Potato whiskey. With a substance like that, there’s no telling the alcohol content of what you’re consuming.”

  “Not a good start, Constable Trench,” Eli Fagan’s lawyer said calmly. “Not a good start to your career.”

  Then, the judge. “This is not just a man’s life here, but that of a family. Mr. Fagan has demonstrated he is a hardworking individual, and a dedicated husband and father to his wife, his stepson, and his newborn daughter. I accept Mr. Fagan’s testimony. That Mr. Trench and his brother, Constable Trench, trespassed onto his property. In an inebriated state, Mr. Trench accosted Mr. Fagan, and following a brief tussle, Mr. Trench fell upon the tool Mr. Fagan was utilizing at that time. Furthermore, I accept Mr. Fagan’s plea that in no way did he intend to cause bodily harm to Mr. Trench.” The judge licked the tips of his fingers, turned a page. “While the loss of life is no doubt tragic, further destruction of this family would only serve to compound the misfortune. Moving forward, you both need to return to your homes in Knife’s Point, live side by side as neighbors, find some way to forge a peace between you. And begin again.”

  Lewis waited as Eli Fagan emerged through the doors, taking each step with a heavy foot. His gray suit was snug and covered in pills, and the legs of his trousers rested an inch above his ankles, revealing mismatched socks. Underneath the over sized collar
of his shirt screamed a gaudy tie, bright and, Lewis thought, disrespectful. Lewis had never known much about Eli, other than his reputation for being a son of a bitch. But Lewis had stared at him so long and hard in the courthouse that he could describe everything about the man now. How his hand twitched whenever a lawyer spoke Roy’s name, how a dozen coarse hairs curled out of his ear holes, how he turned the ridged base of his empty water glass around and around, clinking it against the wooden table. Lewis saw him as a dog, fighting against being caged.

  “I hope you rots in hell,” Lewis said quietly through clenched teeth. “The entire load of you.”

  Eli stopped. Turned towards the swinging doors of the courthouse. His wife paused there, wispy and stern, a fat bundle splayed in her arms. But Eli didn’t appear to notice her or the new baby. Instead he seemed to focus on the boy, his stepson Garrett Glass, already standing on the steps, gnawing at his cuticles, spitting. The boy squinted, but did not stare back. He had grown so quickly, torn away from his boyishness, almost overnight. Lewis watched as Garrett touched a shadow of hair creeping along his jawline, twisted a few of the longer strands between his fingers.

  “Needn’t worry,” Eli said, and he coughed, wiped his shiny forehead with a handkerchief. “We will, Constable Trench. We will.”

  4

  DRIVING IN A rattling pickup with his mother and stepfather, Garrett Glass was on his way home. They were heading north, away from the city, away from the courthouse, back to their farm in Knife’s Point. He was perched on the hump in the cab between his parents, his damp body jiggling even when the pavement was smooth. Garrett kept a hand cupped over his mouth, could smell dirty metal on his skin. If he threw up now, Eli would certainly pull over, kick open a door, toss him out onto the dirt shoulder, and tear on over the highway. No flicker of brake lights. Garrett swallowed constantly, kept his head turned away from Eli, and scanned the rocks and barrens and clumps of straggly trees. Imagined how he would survive if the acid and the mangled French fries spewed onto the worn floor below.