That’s How I Roll

ven with all that, the Beast still might have gotten off with only a few years. The DA about threw a fit over it, but the judge told the jury they could consider lesser charges. He read a whole list of them: manslaughter, involuntary homicide … even felonious assault, which sounded like nothing more serious than a slap on the face.

If the Beast had admitted he’d just plain shot Rory-Anne, it might have come out differently. If he’d said he was so drunk he hardly remembered that whole night, the jury might well have believed him.

It’s not that anyone liked him, but, in their eyes, there would have been a lot of truth being told in any story the Beast could make up. The men knew what kind of temper he had, especially when he was drunk. And the women, well, they knew all about Rory-Anne.

The Beast knew I wasn’t ever going to tell anyone about what he’d been doing to Rory-Anne for all those years. How could I? If he had told some sad story about how his wife had run off and left him to raise Rory-Anne all on his own, and she had just gone wild after that, he knew I wouldn’t call him a liar.

He knew if I disputed his story it would be just the same as telling the whole town the truth about me and Tory-boy. Folks may have suspicioned, but I’d never allow them to turn that suspicion into truth out of my own mouth.

Maybe the Beast was scared they’d finally start looking for his wife’s body. Or … Well, I’ll never know why, but he got right up on the stand and insisted he was stone-cold sober the night it happened.

He still swore he’d just been trying to stop Rory-Anne from killing me with that butcher knife. He told the whole courtroom that all he’d done was try to protect his crippled son from that crazy, drunken whore.

But all the while he was telling that pack of lies, he never stopped glaring at me. The whole courtroom could see those vile threats flash, as if someone was striking his flinty eyes with a piece of steel.

he State always has to go first, so the Beast had already heard Tory-boy and me tell the jury a different account entirely. But he stayed stuck to his story, as if he couldn’t get that seed I had planted out of his head.

Just like I could never get the seed he planted in Rory-Anne out of my body.

ith Rory-Anne dead, I was in charge. Before, even though me and Tory-boy each got Disability checks, they came to her—that’s how they do it with children. But Rory-Anne touched those checks just long enough to sign them over to the Beast.

Probably another reason he’d never killed us.

Or maybe he thought Rory-Anne would do it for him. She’d thrown knives at me more than once—it really drove her crazy whenever I would try to keep her off Tory-boy.

But even though the government considered me disabled, there wasn’t a soul in town who thought there was anything wrong with my mind. So, with the Beast and Rory-Anne gone, both checks came to me directly.

Maybe they bent a law a little bit to do that; I’m not exactly sure. I know they made me what they call an “emancipated minor” before the Beast was even put on trial. But they didn’t stop there; they made me Tory-boy’s legal guardian as well.

The judge said that was only right, seeing as I was the only family he had, what with my mother gone, my sister dead, and my father sure to be in prison for life … if he got lucky.

“The whole town knows you raised that child since he was born, Esau,” he said. Talking to me direct, not even glancing at that “Rural Services” lawyer who was supposed to be helping me. She was an outsider. We didn’t need any such people telling us how to take care of our own business.

“We’re all proud of the job you’ve done. Tory’s never been a bit of trouble to anyone. And, you know, some of those … slower ones, they can fall in with the wrong crowd. But this court is satisfied that if there’s one person he minds it’s you.”

That was true. Nobody ever did deny that. Not even the Beast.

knew the first thing we had to do was get some money. Magic be damned, that shack would always hold memories Tory-boy might not be able to deal with.

Getting money turned out to be easier than I thought. Once I started really concentrating on doing it, that is.

Every night, after Tory-boy fell asleep, I went back to science. Spina bifida isn’t so rare as you might think. Not everyone who’s born with it has to be in a wheelchair. It depends on what type you have.

Turns out, I had drawn the shortest straw. When the vertebrae don’t form correctly, a little sac filled with fluid extends through an opening in the spine. That’s called “myelomeningocele.” It can hit just about anywhere along your spine, so I guess it was lucky for me that it happened at the lowest point—because anything below that point is never going to work the way it should.

If Rory-Anne hadn’t been convinced they’d give her all kinds of drugs, I probably wouldn’t have been born in a hospital. That’s all that saved me. They even had to put a shunt in my head to drain the fluid buildup. I still have the scar from that, but that’s the only sign I carry. Above the waist, I mean.

I know they’d told Rory-Anne I was what they call an “at-risk” baby, but she never once brought me back to the hospital until that time she burned me and got scared.

Every time I came across something that said aftercare was critical for babies born with spina bifida, I wondered why the County had never sent anyone around to check. But then I remembered the Beast. If those social workers wanted to come and have a look at me, they’d need to bring the cops with them. I guess it wasn’t worth all that trouble. Not for someone like me, anyway.

So I grew up not being able to really use any part of my body from the end of my spine on down. I accepted that. Just like I accepted the jolts of pain that shot the length of my left leg all the way into my central nervous system.

I say “accepted,” but that came slow. The first time, I was about nine years old, and that pain blast filled me with terror. I thought I was dying. Worse, I thought of what would happen to Tory-boy without me to protect him.

But then it stopped. Snap! Just like that. As if the very thought of Tory-boy being hurt drove the Devil of that pain right back down to Hell, where it belonged.

It wasn’t until I started looking for ways to get more money for me and Tory-boy to be safe that I read about how some folks with the exact same disease I had could actually feel something below the waist, too.

That comforted me considerably. It confirmed what I knew in my own mind—what I had felt wasn’t this “phantom pain” thing some of the books talked about. It was as real as the disease itself.

I was thankful for that knowledge. I understood how things were always going to be. I knew if I couldn’t control my own mind, I’d never be able to control anything at all.

So my curse wasn’t unique like I’d once thought—others had my exact same condition. I had kin I’d never meet. Brothers and sisters who were sort of semi-paralyzed but could still feel pain, same as me. Born bad, both ways. As if we’d all been at the same table, all rolled the dice together. And thrown snake eyes.

But I didn’t want to “share” in some therapy group. I didn’t need advice on learning to “cope.” I had responsibilities. And now that I knew others with my condition could feel pain, I knew there was a way for me and Tory-boy both.

All I needed was the money to pay what it would cost.

Truth was, most of the time I hardly felt anything at all. And when that pain would spike, I’d just breathe real slow and think about how good a child Tory-boy was. I learned to drop so deep into that thought that when I opened my eyes the pain would be gone.

Dr. Harris never said a word when I kept telling him I needed more and more of those painkillers. All opiates are dose-related, so it was only natural that what blocked the pain would lose its power over time.

It wasn’t any problem at all for me to get a permanent scrip for heavier and heavier hits of OxyContin, with another for morphine-by-injection, and then still another for the Fentanyl transdermals, for when the terrible pain in my withered legs got so unbearable that I had to have some medication going constantly.

Dr. Harris didn’t even blink. No surprise there. That’s what folks said about him—he hated pain like it was his personal enemy. That shouldn’t be an unusual thing, but it is. There are plenty of doctors around here who’re so scared of the DEA that they wouldn’t give Vicodin to a man dying of bone cancer.

The pharmacist never raised an eyebrow at all the scrips I kept handing over. And if the Internet stores had any problem, they never told me about it.

The only pain all that stuff actually killed was the pain of poverty. The drugs brought in a steady supply of cash. People who wanted to get high could crush the OxyC into a powder and snort it, or pour it into a shot of whiskey. The Fentanyl could be boiled right out of the patches. And the morphine even came with its own supply of clean needles.

The way we worked it was like this: anyone who wanted drugs would leave the money in the mailbox at the end of our lane, then push the button inside the plastic box right underneath it. I built that box so the button would stay dry, no matter what the weather.

When I saw the light flash inside our place, I’d send Tory-boy to walk on down, pick up the cash, and bring it back to me.

I could always tell by the amount what was wanted, but some people left notes anyway. Whenever that happened, I’d tell Tory-boy to take it all back—the money and the note. The way I reasoned it, everybody knew my rates, so I treated any note like it was the Law, trying to trap me.

People knew I had to have a sizable amount of drugs on hand to fill those orders, but even with all the junkies we have around here, none of them even thought about ripping off my stash.

Dope fiends risk their lives every time they stick a needle in their veins or snort something up their noses. A risk, not a certainty—they’re not the same thing. For all I know, risk is part of the jolt addicts are always chasing.

Trying to break into our place wouldn’t be a risk; there was no doubt about the outcome.

Our three pit bulls are brothers from the same litter. We got them from Donna Belle Parsons, down at the shelter. Some piece of trash had thrown a pit bull bitch out the window of a moving car. They probably figured she was all bred out.

Their stupidity is what saved our dogs. That bitch was not only pregnant when they dumped her, she was tough enough to stay alive almost six more weeks. Once she delivered, she closed her eyes and went to sleep, her last fight finally over.

Donna Belle Parsons wouldn’t have let most folks take more than one pup, especially those not even weaned. She harbored a deep, abiding hatred for dogfighters.

There’s a number of bunchers in these parts. That’s what they call men who go around grabbing dogs any way they can, so they can sell them to the dogfighters to use as training meat for their killers. Miss Parsons could smell a buncher at a hundred yards. If one came into her shelter, he was putting his life on the line.

That’s not talk, that’s fact. Donna Belle Parsons kept a pistol behind the counter. Tommy Joe Knowles still walks with a limp because he’d thought she wouldn’t use it.

I’ve noticed that men make that mistake about women all the time. Donna Belle Parsons was a tall, shapely woman, with a real pretty face and a sweet, soft voice. But the only reason Tommy Joe walks with a limp is because she hadn’t aimed that pistol of hers at his thick head.

’d shown Tory-boy how to hold the little bottle for the pups, and he got real good at it. Now they’re almost three years old. And if anybody or anything except me or Tory-boy came near our shack, they’d rip it apart, tearing off pieces like I’d seen those sharks do on TV.

It might be another pit who got loose from one of the dog-fighters’ pens, might be a cat who should have had more sense, might be a sheriff, might be a preacher—to our dogs, it wouldn’t make any difference. Cross their line and you’d end up a shredded corpse.

They didn’t act like that because they were mean—they were just doing their job. Tory-boy loved those dogs. He named them One, Two, and Three.

Tory-boy was always patting them and cuddling them like they were big toys. That was the original reason I wanted to get pit bulls: most people think they’re just plain vicious, like it’s in their blood. It’s true enough that people have been breeding them since forever to be vicious, but that’s vicious to other dogs, not to people.

You ever try and get near a dog that’s been hit by a car? Even though all you want is to help that dog, he’ll snap at you like a viper. Not a pit bull. If they were like that, how could people who fight them handle them down in the pit? How could they patch them up in the middle of a fight and send them right back to the scratch line?

Tory-boy didn’t know how strong he was. So, when he started begging me for a puppy, I was afraid that he’d break one in half just petting it. That’s why I got him pups that were real strong themselves. I’d seen other pit bulls around little kids. Watched the kids pull their tails, squeeze them hard enough to crack a rib, even poke them in the eye … but those dogs acted like they didn’t even feel it.

Turns out, I needn’t have bothered. Once I showed Tory-boy how, he hand-raised those pups. We fed them the best food, made sure they had all their shots, sheepskin blankets to sleep on, rawhide to gnaw on. Everything they wanted in life, it was me and Tory-boy who gave it to them. They reasoned it out the way animals do—anybody who threatened us was threatening them.

Our dogs weren’t the kind you want to threaten. A bully might be dangerous, but a protector is deadly.

We never locked our door. It was only plywood anyway. The dogs always let us know when anyone was near. Just a quiet little growling, deep in their throats, with the hair raised on the backs of their necks. Anytime they’d get like that, we’d all just sit and wait. Me, Tory-boy, and the dogs, all together in the dark.

But after a while, the dogs would lie down and make another little sound. A different one. Probably telling each other how disappointed they were.

t wasn’t only drugs that kept money coming in. Tory-boy just got stronger and stronger. He could work like two mules, so there was always some extra cash anytime we might need it.

And before long, I was doing work for certain people. After that, it was just a matter of building our money until we had all we needed to make my plans come true. All my plans, even the exit one.

ot a day passed but that I didn’t do some kind of work with Tory-boy, and he got pretty good at most things. As long as he didn’t speak up, people usually just took him for quiet. And when he was wheeling me around to see different people, I would do all the talking. Not to disguise anything—to teach Tory-boy more about the kind of answers you give to certain questions.

And manners. I was known for my manners; everyone said what a gentleman I was. I wanted them to say the same about Tory-boy, and I know he copied me every way he could think of.

By the time he was fifteen, Tory-boy was such an outright ox that the high-school football coach paid us a visit. That was right after I won a hundred dollars from Jasper Murdle when Tory-boy lifted the back end of Jasper’s old Chevy right off the ground like it was a box of cereal.

The coach told me not to worry about Tory-boy’s grades, never mind his IQ—all that kind of thing could be taken care of. He told me what Tory’s contribution to the team would mean to the whole town. I tried to stay polite, but the man made it more and more difficult.

He was so determined that I had to put in some real work to make him understand that there was no way to put Tory-boy out on a field with boys slamming into each other. Sooner or later, Tory-boy would cripple someone, or even kill them, and then the whole story would come out. Did the coach want to be the one to explain how a straight-A student couldn’t read or write?

was almost thirty-four when the State finally executed him. A lot of folks praised Jesus when they got the news. I may be no match for them in church attendance, but they were putting the credit where it didn’t belong. I was the one who had truly slain the Beast.

I was so proud that day. With him gone, I thought I’d made Tory-boy safe forever.

We’d had our own house for some time by then. Not a trailer, a for-real house, with a nice porch, a fine roof, and plenty of room. There was even a special bathroom built for me.

Our house sat on more than ten acres of ground, too. Most of it wasn’t cleared, and there wasn’t any fence around it that you could see. But anybody who stumbled across the first electrical barrier would see the flashing red lights and get their message.

That message spread. It got so we wouldn’t see that flash for months at a time.

Not many folks around here pay cash for a house, but they all gossip. I didn’t want extra attention, so I took out a mortgage, 10 percent down. Those payments came right out of the bank account, too, along with the property taxes and the insurance. Hardly made a dent.

e didn’t need the “our place” spell anymore. Tory-boy always felt safe now. The Beast would never come back, never torment him again.

They’d taken him away for killing Rory-Anne. The “guilty” verdict, that was expected. But it was the Beast’s own testimony that had brought it all the way up to Murder One.

When that happens, they hold another trial to decide what happens to the defendant. That’s how I knew all about that “penalty phase” thing before I ever faced it myself, so many years later.

Once it was a sure thing that the Beast was going to be caged for a long time—the lightest Murder One sentence here is life without parole—it seemed like half the people in town had some story to tell about him.

If ever a man needed killing, it was him. They all said that, one way or another. A few actually said those very words.

Of course, none of those cowards had ever said so out loud before that day.

It was the first time anyone could remember that Pastor Booker didn’t testify in such a case. You could always count on him to talk about how some killer found Jesus while he was awaiting his sentence. He’d always say every man was worthy of a chance to redeem himself, even behind bars.

Pastor Booker not speaking up for the Beast, that was the same as him saying he’d finally found a man who was past even God’s forgiveness.

The Beast had the right to put on his own witnesses, too. That was as valuable to him as the right to drink a glass of cyanide.

The jury stayed out just long enough to make it look as if they’d actually considered the matter. When they came back, they carried the death penalty along with them.

he Beast lasted a long time before they finally put him down. I remember the first appeal. The DA called me and told me about it—some kind of challenge to Tory-boy’s testimony, claiming he wasn’t competent to testify.

When the DA asked me to come down to his office a few months later, it was only so he could crow in front of an audience. He showed me where the appeals court wrote that the “thorough and objective questioning of the child by the trial judge” prior to allowing Tory-boy to testify was sufficient. More than sufficient.

They made that last part real clear. I didn’t have to be a lawyer to understand what they meant by the “overwhelming weight of the evidence.” Even if Tory-boy had never said a word, there were enough reasons to find the Beast guilty a dozen times over. And not a single one to spare his life.

I had stopped worrying about the Beast a long time ago. I knew he was already dying, no matter how any of his appeals might turn out. They’d already taken him off the Row and moved him to the prison hospital.

The way I heard it, there was this cat that had the run of the Row. He didn’t belong to any particular prisoner, but most of them saved up treats for him, made toys for him to play with, patted him every chance they got. Always proving to that cat that they were worthy of being his friend.

Somehow, the Beast lured the cat to come into his cell. A few minutes later, he threw the cat’s dead body out through the bars, its head twisted so bad it had about come off.

None of that was in the newspapers, but it came to me from a very reliable source.

A few weeks after that happened, the Beast started screaming in the middle of the night. The guards let him carry on for a few hours, until morning, when the prison doctor made his regular rounds.

The doctor couldn’t find anything, so they took him over to the clinic for X-rays. Still nothing, so they threw him back in his cell.

But the Beast kept running a real high fever. Even the painkillers couldn’t calm him down. After a while, he couldn’t even take food; they had to keep him alive with an IV tube.

Finally, they took him to an outside hospital, under heavy guard. They knocked him out and opened him up, but what they called “exploratory surgery” came up with more questions than answers.

It was all very mysterious. The Beast’s whole intestinal tract was lacerated—“as if the patient had swallowed finely ground glass,” one report said—and he also had certain symptoms of septic shock you could only get from being poisoned. But the Beast had eaten exactly the same meal as everyone else on the Row the night he took sick.

No responsible party was ever identified.

I know all that last part because the Beast’s lawyers had made an application for a pardon, on compassionate grounds. They said he was barely alive, in constant pain, too weak to be a danger to anyone.

The DA showed me a copy of the pardon application. This time he wasn’t boasting; he wanted my opinion, he said. I knew what he really wanted without him having to say a word. He needed me to write out that me and Tory-boy were still terrified of the Beast.

I could do that, easy enough. But, seeing as I was there anyway, I asked the DA if he believed the Beast was too weak to pull a trigger.

He liked that so much he put it into the thick stack of papers he filed against letting the Beast out on any grounds. The State put him in the Death House to die—die healthy, die sick, made no difference in the eyes of the law.

But the Beast’s lawyers kept on trying, right up to the night the prison changed what they’d been sending down that IV tube.

hen he was just a child, some of the kids would do cruel things to Tory-boy. Not just torment him; some of what they did was downright evil, done for its own sake. Most of the time, I would wheel myself over and talk to the other kids’ folks, usually their mothers.

By the time I arrived, anyone could see how much effort I’d had to put in to make the trip. And I was always polite and respectful when asking their help.

I made sure they understood I knew I couldn’t take the chance of telling the Beast. Not that anyone thought he cared about his children—he just never needed much of an excuse to hurt people, and that they knew real well.

Most of the time, the kid who’d been doing things to Tory-boy, he’d get a whipping, and the promise of more to come if he ever did it again. Decent people don’t hold with picking on a little boy who isn’t right in his head.

After the Beast first got sent away, I didn’t have the implied threat of his violence going for me. Still, I was usually successful. But not every time. So I had to learn how to fix such things myself.

That turned out to be not so difficult as you might imagine. Folks around here put a lot of stock in signs. Omens. “Portents” is what the elders called them.

So, when things kept happening to the parents of kids who tormented Tory-boy, people started talking.

There was plenty for them to talk about. It was no secret that I loved my little brother. That much was fact. God knows Esau Till has got him one powerful mind, people would say. But maybe he had other powers, too: casting spells, hexing, putting the evil eye on someone.

I know what Mrs. Birdsong said about me. She’s over one hundred years old, folks say. That’s a woman you listen to when she speaks. The way it was told to me, what she said was:

“Satan cursed that poor boy, crippling him so bad like he is. And that wasn’t the only cross Esau has had to bear. But he never turned his back on the Lord. Nobody ever knew him to feel sorry for himself, or ask for pity. And look how he raised that brother of his all by himself. That’s a good man there. God and Satan, they’re always at war. God can’t undo Satan’s work, but He can grant the strength to overcome it, if you’re worthy. So it could be that God Himself blessed Esau with powers. Everyone knows how smart that boy is. You think that’s an accident? Maybe he’s even smart enough to use some of Satan’s own spells on those who do him wrong.”

remember one of those parents that something truly terrible happened to. He was a short, stocky man with big arms and cruel eyes. When I told him his two sons had made Tory-boy eat dirt in front of everyone, he said if that big-head little brother of mine couldn’t take care of himself, that wasn’t his problem—nobody was going to tell him how to raise his own kids. “That father of yours ain’t around no more, crip. So just wheel yourself on out of here.”

When they found that man, his face was split all the way through. That can happen when the brake on your chainsaw fails—it can kick right back on you, still spinning all those killer steel teeth.

People just shook their heads. Had to happen sooner or later, they said. Everyone knew that man was an idiot with machinery. Probably been drinking, too.

fter a while, nobody tried to tell Tory-boy to eat dirt anymore. Maybe some did believe I had hexing power. But what stopped them dead in their tracks was that Tory-boy’s strength was just enormous. Nobody knew its limits, and that was something they damn sure didn’t want to find out for themselves.

ater on, instead of tormenting Tory-boy, different people would ask him about going along on some kind of crime with them. And he’d always say the same thing: “I got to ask my brother.”

Anyone with a drop of sense would leave it at that. But, one time, some fool just had to say, “What you got to ask that cripple for? Is he your momma?”

The very second those words came out of his mouth, the other men who’d been standing around jumped out of the way. And kept on running.

When the police came to see him in the hospital, the dumb-mouth joker proved he wasn’t a total fool. He told them he’d been so wasted on shine and pills that all he remembered was falling off that rock ledge.

I guess he realized that getting beat up, that’s something that can happen a lot of times in a man’s life. Getting killed, that only happens once.

hortly after that, I became a kind of permanent employee of certain people. From then on, all Tory-boy had to say was he had to ask his brother first. His brother, Esau.

Anyone who heard Tory-boy say my name, they knew that they were standing in a minefield. And that the only way out was to back out.

That was because the people I did various things for needed me for those things. That was my place in the world, doing those things. Murderous things.

The people I did work for knew they would lose my services if anything ever happened to Tory-boy. So they’d spread the word. Spread it wide, deep, and thick. If you even asked Tory-boy to get involved in something that might get him locked up, that was the same as asking for very serious trouble from some very serious people.

Those people didn’t do that as a favor to me. They weren’t the kind to do favors for free, and I would never have allowed myself to be obligated by asking them.

The way they thought was always the same, and it always applied to every situation. They’d reason it out like this: if Tory-boy ever got himself arrested, who knew what he might tell the Law, a simpleminded boy like him?

So they kind of looked at people threatening Tory-boy the same way our dogs would. If anyone hurt Tory-boy, there was no guessing to be done—they knew what I’d do. And they didn’t want me doing it.

That wasn’t out of regard for me; they were just watching out for themselves. They knew I was a professional, and part of that is being extremely careful—it might take me weeks just to put a plan together. But killing someone who hurt my brother, they knew I couldn’t wait on that. Worse, they knew I wouldn’t care what it cost, or who got hurt in the bargain.

They’d seen that for themselves, the first time we ever met. The time I put in my job application.

y plan finally came true. That’s because it was a plan. Not some dream, not some prayer, some actual thing I made happen all on my own.

I knew this the same way I knew about my balance. If you wanted to think the spirits spoke to me, I wouldn’t call you a liar.

We had to get our own piece of ground. Bought and paid for, cash money. No landlord means no rent—no rent means no excuses to stop by.

Tory-boy didn’t really understand why our own land made us safer. As far as he was concerned, as long as the Beast couldn’t get inside, a trailer was as good as a palace.

I didn’t have any real use for the library anymore, not with the Internet. But I still went over there at least once a week.

I could have asked myself why, but I was afraid of the answer I’d get.

A man has obligations. Some he asks for, some he gets put on him. Tory-boy, there never was any choice: if I didn’t raise him, he wouldn’t get raised.

I had to be honest with myself. Had to admit that, somehow, I always knew. When you’re birthed out of your own sister—when her father is your father, too—you know you’re not going to come out right.

Not you, not your life, not nothing.

So I just worked Tory-boy even harder. Sat him in front of our big-screen and made him watch the news with me, hear how people said things.

He always wanted to please me, and he never got bored, so he was coming along, little by little. It got to the point where I wasn’t worried about people knowing he wasn’t right the minute he opened his mouth.

One of the most valuable things I taught him was that he never had to say much—in any crowd, there’s always someone who wants to do most of the talking.

But no matter how much work I put into Tory-boy, I stayed worried over how he’d handle life on his own. And I knew the day was coming when he’d have to do that.

accepted the burden and vowed to shoulder it. I knew if I ever fell down Tory-boy would hit the ground right after me.

And I knew I couldn’t carry him the full distance. I didn’t know when the day would come, but the knowledge that it was coming drove me on. The closer I got to that day, the harder I drove.

No matter what, I had to get Tory-boy ready to live on his own. The doctors told me I wasn’t going to have a long life. Not even with the right diet, no smoking, the exercising Tory-boy loved helping me with. Under the best of circumstances, I shouldn’t count on ever seeing fifty.

But Tory-boy would. And he’d spend the rest of his life in this hard, hard place. Even the coal they dig out of the ground is hard: anthracite, not the soft bituminous kind that doesn’t fight the pickax for every chunk. Bituminous burns better, too. You’d think, the harder you have to work for something, the more valuable it would be. But that’s just not true. Not around here, anyway.

There’s a Klan, but it’s not much. Mostly old men who tell wild stories about the things they used to do.

Nobody really listens. Not because folks necessarily disagree with them, but because it doesn’t take long for the stories to get as old as the men telling them.

Hate comes easy … and it’s a lot easier than working. But you won’t hear any scare-stories about illegal immigrants in this part of the country. Who’d want to come here? This whole place is just one big prison. Some get sentenced to hard labor, some have it easier, but everyone serves the same term: life.

Even the church people don’t think about getting out, just about getting by. Like I said, that’s got a special meaning around here. And the church people, they do a lot of nice things for folks while they’re waiting for … whatever they believe is coming to them, I guess.

There’s a number of ways you can get respected in these parts. I don’t mean feared—that’s as easy as grabbing a red-hot weld with your bare hand. Holding on to it, that’s another story.

You make people scared enough of you, those same people will watch you get shot down in the street and swear on the Bible that they never saw a thing.

Some of them might even be the shooters.

Fear can make a man run home. But he might be running home to fetch his rifle.

Keeping your word, that’s how to get respect. But if you look deep enough, you can see that’s not one bit different from being feared. A man known for always keeping his word, if he says he’s going to get you, you respect his word by being scared.

Everybody will claim they respect any woman who’s a regular at church, but they don’t mean a lying word of what comes out of their mouths when they say it.

A woman like Miss Jayne Dyson, nobody respects her out in public. But men who wouldn’t say “good morning” to her face are the same ones who knock on her door at night.

I never would act like that. I’d be the worst kind of hypocrite if I did. Who knows better than me that a person can’t always choose their own path? It’s how you walk that path that makes you worthy … or not.

So, when Tory-boy got to the right age—I didn’t need a calendar to tell me that; I could see it rising in him—I helped get him ready for that, too.

I could never be sure what Tory-boy had seen when he was just a small child, and I couldn’t have the Beast be his teacher. So I paid Miss Jayne Dyson to show him what to do, and how to do it right.

he first time I visited her house, I think she was kind of, I don’t know, shocked to see me.

“You’re Esau Till, aren’t you?”

“Yes …”

“Well, yes what?”

“I was going to say ‘ma’am,’ but I didn’t realize you’d be so young. And I don’t know you to be calling you by your first name.”

“You’re Esau Till, all right,” she said. “Folks don’t have manners like yours anymore. But that is what folks say about you, that you’re a true gentleman. Well, you better come in quick, before those nasty old crows across the way start making up stories.”

I rolled myself into her parlor. It was real nice, a lot nicer than any home I’d been in myself. She was walking ahead of me, twitching her hips like I’d seen mares do when they’re in season.

“You want a little—”

She turned around. Her face was blushing so bright I could see it even in the dim light. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was going to say … I mean, just out of habit …”

“I understand,” I told her. Even though I had no idea what had made her turn red like she had, I’ve found saying those two words pretty much always works to calm a person when they’re upset.

She told me she’d be a lot more comfortable if I’d call her Jayne, instead of Miss Dyson. I said I’d do that proudly, if she’d do the same for me.

Then she said she knew me without ever actually meeting me, so she kind of guessed I knew her, too. Knew what she was known for, she meant.

I allowed that I did, but I made sure I didn’t talk to her like she was … well, what folks said she was.

I explained why I needed Tory-boy to be educated. I wanted him to learn to treat a woman properly, and I hoped she would help me with that. I did warn her: a young man like him might not know his own strength, especially when he got himself … excited.

“Oh, I heard that. I know he’s not right in the—”

She saw me looking at her; stopped in her tracks. “Now I truly apologize,” she said. “I’m ashamed of myself. You didn’t come here judging me, and I’ve got no call judging you or yours.”

“Tory-boy’s not wise in some ways,” I told her, meaning I accepted her apology and it was already gone from my mind. “I hoped you’d help me make him wiser than most in some others.”

She smiled at that. That smile, it was so sweet I knew it for a true thing.

iss Jayne Dyson did a very fine job. I know she did; I know it for a fact. It took a number of visits, but after she was done, Tory-boy not only always had girlfriends, but he never beat on any of them, not once, no matter how they acted.

He never talked nasty to them, either. He knew words could cut like whips. Worse, even. So he always treated his girls like ladies, even when they didn’t deserve it.

It turned out that Miss Jayne Dyson, she was a lady. Who else but a real lady would have put so much valuable knowledge inside my little brother?

I will never forget the day as long as I live. The day Tory-boy taught me something. Oh, what a proud, shining moment that had been for him.

“Esau, did you know that if you treat a girl like a lady, if she really believes you think of her that way—like a lady, I mean—well, you can actually turn her into one!? It’s like casting a spell. And you know what else, Esau? I can cast that spell. Me. I never thought I could ever do something like that.”

“You mean, you didn’t believe you could do something like that.”

“I … Oh, gee, Esau. I get it. I really get it. What Miss Jayne taught me, it wasn’t just about girls, right?”

“It’s about everything, Tory-boy. How many times have I told you that you’re a lot smarter than folks think you are?”

“You’re always saying that, Esau.”

“And I believe it, too. So that makes it … Tell me, Tory-boy, what does that make it?”

“It makes it … true! You cast a spell, but it didn’t take, because I didn’t believe you believed it yourself. I thought you were just being nice to me, like always.”

“But now you know, right?”

“I do. I do, for real.”

“I would never lie to you, Tory-boy. Never.”

He sat down on the floor right next to me and started crying. I patted him like I always did when he was upset, but that time, I knew he was crying for joy.

was really encouraged by such things. I guess, deep down, I was hoping Tory-boy would find himself a girl with real smarts. A girl he could marry, and then they’d take care of each other. He could bring in all the money they’d ever need—I’d already made sure of that—and she could help him with some of the stuff he couldn’t handle so well.

But any girl from around here smart enough to do that kind of thing was smart enough to get out. And never come back.

ory-boy’s mind was always at ease. I kept it that way by surrounding him with knowledge he could have and hold. He knew I’d always fix anything, always keep him safe. Always love him.

I got a lawyer to draw up the papers. A legal trust, so Tory-boy would be taken care of for the rest of his life. I even named the lawyer as the trustee, so he would be the man who paid any bills that might come up. He was also to make sure Tory-boy got whatever else he needed, from bribing a lawman to drawing up a deed.

The lawyer I used, he was a young man. His father and his father before him had been lawyers, too. Now all three of their names were on the shingle, but only him and his father were still alive.

I wasn’t worried about that lawyer trying to cheat Tory-boy. His father handled cases for the people I did all that work for, and I was confident he’d passed what that meant along to his son.

If that lawyer ever cheated Tory-boy, if he ever failed on his promises, he was never going to be able to start his car. Or pick up his telephone. Or stand near a window.

He’d never know how or when, but something would be coming for him; he could count on that.

If I was still around, I’d handle it myself. I had a hundred ways to do that. And if I wasn’t, then those people I had worked for, their part would be a man with black pantyhose over his face, black latex gloves on his hands, holding a double-barreled sawed-off, with a pistol in his pocket for finishing off his job. The people I had done all that work for, their part was to make that lawyer’s ending dead sure.

I didn’t care if that ever happened. All I needed was for that lawyer to believe it would.

I had plenty on his father, too. When I told him just a little bit of that, he got real anxious. But I calmed him right down. I made him understand I wasn’t selling; I was buying.

All those things I told him, they weren’t any kind of blackmail; I was just making a payment on Tory-boy’s life-insurance policy.

Tory-boy had more than one of those. Which was kind of the point of me talking to that lawyer at all.

As long as Tory-boy stayed protected, it would be as if I had never died. I’d still be with him, keeping him safe.

e had a car, too. A van, with a lift for my chair. Tory-boy could drive real well. His coordination was damn near perfect. He just couldn’t … make decisions, I guess is the best way to put it.

So I made the decisions for us both. Anytime I had to deliver one of the devices I made, Tory-boy would always be right there with me. I didn’t need him for protection—and I’d never let him carry a firearm—I just didn’t like leaving him alone.

The people I delivered things to were bad men, but I never felt even a little tremor of fear when I was around them. They were always going to need more of the things I made. And they knew I’d never say a word about them to anybody, ever.

They knew what my word was worth to them. And what their lives were worth to me if they didn’t keep theirs.

So I wanted to make sure they knew Tory-boy’s face. Had it memorized.

suppose it would be fair to say I was a criminal myself way before I started working for criminals. I was selling those drugs, wasn’t I? I knew what drugs did to folks. I’d seen people—kids, even—turn themselves into … things. They’d stop being human. Lie to their friends, steal from their own families. Sell their blood and their bodies. Take anything; give up everything.

Drugs. You die from them; you die for them. Either way, you’re dead. I knew all that, but it never caused me to hesitate a second.

So maybe it wasn’t only my lower half that didn’t feel much of anything. Maybe my conscience was like that, too. Not dead, but … frozen, I guess. Frozen beyond any heat they have on this planet.

I think that was it. From the first time I showed those people what I was capable of, I’d known what I was going to be doing with the rest of my life.

There wasn’t anything else. I used to fantasize about what it would be like if we could put my brain into Tory-boy’s body. One of us would have to die to make that happen … but neither one would ever know which one had.

If that fantasy could actually happen, it wouldn’t matter even if we did know. Tory-boy would die for me without thinking about it. The only difference between us is that I would think about it. But I’d still do it.

Fantasy. Wish. Dream. Whatever I called it, I knew it wasn’t ever going to happen.

couldn’t help noticing how women denied Miss Webb the respect properly due her. Not because she tried to come in here and change things. She never did that; all she ever wanted to do was make things better. No, those women withheld their respect because Miss Webb never got married, that’s why. A lady in her position, she didn’t have the option of just taking up with a man. You expect that from trash, but not from someone who got themselves an education.

“Nice-looking woman like she is,” they’d say, “she doesn’t have a man, you know what that means.”

In one way, Jayne Dyson and Miss Webb were like sisters. They both showed proud. Never looked away, never let on they’d even heard the whispers. Always kept their backs straight and their heads high.

Jayne Dyson and Miss Webb, they wrapped themselves in their own self-respect, and no amount of nasty little whispering was ever going to crack those stone walls they put up.

Maybe that’s how they found their balance, just as I had.

I really and truly cared for Jayne Dyson. Respected her, too. And even before I was grown, I had loved different women for different reasons—like Mrs. Slater, for helping me raise Tory-boy.

But for myself, for me as a man, Miss Webb was the only woman I ever loved.

eople are always talking about how you have to make your own way in this world. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Make it on your own.

They’ll look at the TV hanging in a corner of some bar when it’s showing a black kid being handcuffed. They’ll tell each other that it’s niggers on Welfare that are ruining this country.

But the checks they get, the ones they drink up every month, those get called County Aid, or Disability, or Unemployment … anything but Welfare.

Grocery stores would go broke if they wouldn’t take food stamps in exchange for cigarettes or beer.

People blame their lives on anyone but themselves. Where we live, if you want something better in life, you have to take some risks. Maybe that’s why the Klan never got any traction around here. People might sympathize, they might even use the same words, but they weren’t going to spend their own money to support it.

For me, it wasn’t a real choice. I needed something better if I was going to keep Tory-boy safe. We were both collecting Disability. For-real Disability, not the “I hurt my back at work” kind.

Ours was going to keep coming forever. It wasn’t ever going to stop, no more than I was likely to start running marathons or Tory-boy to get a college scholarship.

Those Disability checks wouldn’t be going away, but I was. And without me to guide things, no matter how much money I could put aside, it would never be enough to keep Tory-boy safe.

iss Webb would always be on me to use my mind. I could go to college, she’d tell me. And it wouldn’t cost me a cent. Just to make her feel better, I took this test she had sent away for. But when she got back the results, that only made her more determined.

So, one day when there was only the two of us in the library, I asked her if I might speak with her.

She looked at me kind of funny. I guess it did sound strange—I always spoke with her. But she got up from behind her desk and walked over to a far corner. Then she took down a big book from a high shelf—one I’d never be able to reach on my own—and laid it open on the table. If anyone walked in, it would look like the most natural thing in the world for us to be talking about that book.

I took that for understanding, so I asked her to please sit down. Sit next to me.

I told her then. I told her everything. I had to do that; it was only right. I just couldn’t bear to keep on disappointing her, and the only way to tell her why I would do a thing like that was to tell her the truth.

My truth was a long list of Nevers.

Never leave this place; never go to college; never accomplish anything the world would recognize.

And the worst of them all: never become a man worthy of her respect.

I told her why this had to be. I even told her what I’d been doing to make sure Tory-boy would always be safe.

I stripped it right down to the bone, so there was no misunderstanding: I’d have to do wrong to make things right. I’d been doing wrong, and I was going to have to do more. A lot more. A lot worse, too.

I don’t know what I expected, but Miss Webb breaking into tears wasn’t on that list. I reached for the fresh-clean handkerchief I always carry with me, but she already had her own out.

She stopped crying after a little bit. Dried her tears off her cheeks … but they stayed in her eyes.

“I understand, Esau.”

“I know I shouldn’t have said anything to you. I know I don’t have that right. But …”

“Then why did you?”

“Two reasons,” I told her. “One is that I’m forever indebted to you. I know I don’t come around as much as I once did, and I couldn’t have you thinking I didn’t want to come. With this Internet we have now, I can do so much research.…”

My voice trailed off like a dying man’s breath.

Miss Webb looked at me, and she wouldn’t drop her eyes. Blue eyes, she had. But not the blue-jean eyes some around here have—a lighter shade. I wouldn’t know the name for that color, or even if it had one. “You said two reasons,” she reminded me.

“I … I don’t feel right about the other one.”

“Why, Esau? After what you just told me, what could there be left?”

“Telling you that would be the same as telling you what it was. The reason, I mean.”

“And you don’t have that reason anymore?”

“Oh, no. That’s mine, and that’s forever. I’ll have it until the day I die. Even after, maybe. What I’m saying is just what I said before. I’ve got a reason, but I don’t have any right to it.”

“Esau, you’re a grown man now, not a child.”

“I’m half a grown man.”

“Not to me, you’re not. You’re more man than anyone I ever knew. A man takes responsibility. Takes it and keeps true to it. No matter what it might cost him.”

That’s when I learned Miss Webb’s first name.

Evangeline.

I learned that right after those eyes of hers finally made me admit that I loved her.

hen you’re known to be a criminal, crime comes looking for you. One day, Tory-boy came into the house. All he said was that Sammy Blue was waiting outside the gate. Sammy didn’t want to buy anything; he just wanted to talk to me about something.

Sammy Blue knew I sold drugs, but that was all he knew. He didn’t have a clue about the real work I did, or who I did it for. There was no way for him to have known I was just about ready to get out of the drug business. I’d only sold the drugs when I had no other way to get the money I needed for my plan. But, now that I did, drug dealing was too much risk for too little gain.

But I knew what Sammy Blue did for his money—there weren’t too many around here that didn’t. So, before I went outside, I put my pistol under the blanket I always kept over my lap.

Tory-boy saw me do that. He knew what it meant. When he came with me to the gate, he wasn’t just pushing my wheelchair. The dogs were quiet, but they glared at Sammy Blue hard enough to burn holes through him.

I met Sammy Blue at the gate. I ignored the hand he offered me to shake. I wasn’t inviting him to pass through, and he wasn’t crazy enough to push the gate open without permission. There were a lot of rumors about what would happen to anyone who put their hands on that heavy wrought iron without getting the okay from me first. Every one of them true.

“Esau, I drove over here—”

“The dogs aren’t for sale,” I cut him off. “And they’re not going in one of your matches, either.”

“You haven’t heard my offer,” he said, smiling like the two-faced, forked-tongue snake that he was.

“You don’t have any offer to make me. Those are Tory-boy’s dogs. He doesn’t want them sold. He doesn’t want them hurt. He doesn’t want to breed them to anything of yours. What my brother wants is for his dogs to stay here. With him.”

“Come on, Esau. You’re the one in charge here. What’s it matter what that—?”

I couldn’t let him finish that sentence. Whatever Sammy Blue had intended on saying died in his throat when he heard the sound of the hammer being pulled back. Maybe I didn’t have legs that worked, but my arms and hands are potent weapons. They got built up from all the years of them doing the work they had to do—before Tory-boy came along, and even more later, from taking care of him. Then it was those exercises, all those weights Tory-boy did with me every day. That’s how I taught him to count, and now it was a habit. One he cherished.

I held that Colt Python .357 in my left hand. It stayed as cold and steady as the steel it was made from.

“Don’t say another word,” I told Sammy Blue. “And don’t come back. I so much as see you around here, you’re dead where you stand.”

Later, I explained to Tory-boy that Sammy Blue hadn’t followed the rules about the drugs we sold, so I had run him off.

Tory-boy knew I could do that—he’d seen it for himself enough times, even if he couldn’t understand how I did it—so I didn’t have to explain things any deeper than I had.

If I’d’ve told my baby brother what Sammy Blue had wanted to do with his dogs, Tory-boy would’ve walked through the gate, pulled Sammy Blue apart, and tossed the pieces back over the fence. That way, we wouldn’t have to bother with burying him.

I couldn’t have allowed that. Sammy Blue had too many cop friends—he couldn’t have stayed in business otherwise. Like I said, the dogfighting was no secret. Sammy Blue’s operation generated cash that went straight to the Law—it was such small potatoes that neither of the two mobs that ran things around here was tapping it for a cut.

n fact, that was the biggest problem with the cops around this way—they weren’t as picky as the gang bosses. “Small-time greedy” is how we say it.

One day, the light started flashing in the house. Tory-boy went outside to check for money in the mailbox. But when he came back, I could see he was troubled.

“There’s a man out there, Esau. A man in a suit.”

“Did he say anything?” I knew Tory-boy could repeat things word for word, provided they weren’t too long, or hadn’t been said too long ago.

“He said: ‘Would you ask Mr. Till if I could have a few minutes of his time?’ ”

I knew when Tory-boy spoke like that, slow and careful, each word separate, he was as accurate as any tape recorder.

It was good that it had been such a nice warm day. Tory-boy had the dogs trained to let someone through the gate if he told them to. That way I could use the side yard for any conversations I might want to have.

But there wasn’t any way the dogs would let a stranger into our house. It was their house, too. That’s where they slept. If a leaf fell off a tree in the night, they’d all jump up. No barking, but I could tell by their cocked ears and the fur on their backs that they were ready.

I met the man outside, in the spot that got the most sun. In the nice weather, me and Tory-boy kept a little table and a couple of chairs out there. He especially loved it when it was just the two of us.

If you were to drive by, you’d just see two men, sitting back and sipping some lemonade while they talked. From that perspective, we both looked like a couple of pals shooting the breeze. Maybe that’s what he liked the best of all.

But that day, Tory-boy stayed over with the dogs. He was always protecting me. If he saw anything bad happen, I knew he’d rush that man in the suit like a charging bull. I also knew the dogs would get to that man faster than Tory-boy ever could.

And that the sight of a gun pointed their way wouldn’t have meant a thing to any of them.

So the man could … Well, he could do just about anything he wanted to me. But he’d never leave our property alive, and he looked smart enough to know that.

He had real manners on him, too. Before he took the seat across from me, he said, “My name is R. T. Speck, Mr. Till. I’m a police officer.” If standing with his back to Tory-boy and the dogs caused him any worry, he didn’t show it.

He held out his hand, and we shook.

“Please have a seat, sir,” I told him.

That “sir” wasn’t politeness—it was to tell him that I wasn’t going to be telling him anything else.

“Would you happen to know a young man by the name of Lonnie Manes, Mr. Till?”

“No, sir,” I said. It was the truth.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “We caught this boy—Lonnie Manes, I’m talking about now—we caught him breaking into Henderson’s.”

Henderson’s was what folks called the pharmacy, after the man who’d started it, a long time ago. His name wasn’t on the door anymore—the pharmacy had been taken over by one of those big chains a while back—but it was still “Henderson’s” to us.

“That boy is about as stupid as they come. If there’s one place in town that has top-quality security, it’d be Henderson’s. They’ve even got a central-station alarm in there.”

I stayed quiet, but I was secretly proud that this cop showed me respect by not explaining what kind of alarm that was.

“He was after the drugs, of course,” the cop said, like saying water is wet. “We caught him walking out the back door with a whole sackful of stuff.”

I didn’t say anything, but I used my body position to tell him to go on talking. He hadn’t driven all the way out here to give me a news report.

“I’m sure you know how police work is done, Mr. Till. I—” He stopped in his tracks, realizing he’d stepped over a line, but he covered up quick: “I mean, from television and all.”

I nodded. Even smiled just a little, letting him know I wasn’t offended.

“We told Lonnie that he’d been carrying enough drugs in that sack to send him down to the penitentiary for the rest of his natural life. Before we were even finished telling him that, he was telling us about everything he could think of. Everything that might make us go easier on him, I mean.”

I just watched the man. The sunlight was strong on his face, and I could see he was older than I’d first thought. I could see right through his eyes, all the way into his brain. My silence was bothering him, so he was considering. Thinking about what to do next.

“You mind?” he said, holding up a pack of cigarettes.

“It doesn’t bother me outdoors,” I told him, “but I appreciate your courtesy.”

He seemed grateful I’d said that. Took him a long time to get his smoke going, even though there wasn’t a breath of wind that day.

Finally, he said, “Lonnie gave you up.”

I made my whole face puzzled. “I don’t understand,” I told the cop. “I already said I didn’t even know a person by that name.”

“The drugs,” the cop said, as if having to say it made him sad. “He told us how the whole operation works. Your operation, I’m talking about now.”

“I haven’t been operated on since—”

That was going too far. I knew it, and I’d done it deliberately.

The man’s face got darker. “Your drug operation,” he said, colder now. “We know all about that mailbox at the end of your lane. The button. The phone calls to arrange the pickups. Everything. I’d wager, if we were to search your house right now, we’d find enough drugs—”

“Medications,” I chopped off his threat. “Anything you’d find in there would come with prescriptions. Legal prescriptions.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I took a look for myself?”

“I don’t suppose I could stop you,” I said, looking over at Tory-boy. He was standing as rigid as a rock, holding the release lever for the chains. One and Two were standing as well. Three was lying down. They were all staring at the cop’s back. “If you’ll just let me take a quick look at your warrant, I’ll be happy to—”

“That offends me, Mr. Till. I wouldn’t come out here with a warrant. That’s your home there; I wouldn’t expect to go inside unless I was invited. And I wouldn’t want anyone else to, either.”

“I appreciate that. Then what do you want?”

“I already explained that, I thought. Like I said, Lonnie Manes told us everything. We could sit out in those woods with surveillance cameras for ten years and we’d never see you with any drugs.…”

He let his voice trail off, so he wouldn’t have to say the threat out loud. Tory-boy. If they came and grabbed him, it wouldn’t end right. There was no way it could.

“What do you want?” I said again. The cop didn’t know his words had just gotten me out of the drug business forever. But he had to know that the limb he’d climbed out on was fixing to snap.

“Lonnie was arrested late last night. That’s why I look so raggedy—haven’t even had a chance to shave this morning. I’m the only one who took his statement. I’m considered to be real good at talking with people.”

“I can see why,” I said to him. “But I’m still confused, sir. What exactly do you want?”

“There’s no call for looking at me like you are, Mr. Till. What do I want? I’ll tell you, right out: I want us to be friends. That’s why I had Lonnie write out his statement on separate pieces of paper. What I mean is, separate pieces of paper for each person he informed on. And those pages, they aren’t numbered.

“Being entirely truthful with you, Lonnie didn’t have all that much. That’s because Lonnie isn’t much. A punk like him, he’s not what you’d call a man of his word. You can never be sure when he’s telling the truth. Here, see for yourself,” he said, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his suit coat.

It was in ignorant scrawl, just the way someone like Lonnie would write it. But a college graduate couldn’t have written a clearer account of how our drug business worked. Had worked, that is.

“You’re right,” I told the cop. “There isn’t a word of truth in all this scribble.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” he said, when I went to hand it back. “That pack of lies isn’t worth a plugged nickel. Might even backfire on the DA if he tried to use Lonnie as a prosecution witness. Put a piece of trash like him in front of a jury, they’re not likely to believe a word that comes out of his mouth.”

“I can see how that might be true.”

“No disrespect, but I don’t think you do, Mr. Till. I told you, I came here hoping to be friends.”

“A man can’t have enough friends.”

“Isn’t that the truth?”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” I said. “And I don’t suppose there’s any reason why a man couldn’t be your friend and sell you an insurance policy, too.”

“Now, that’s your reputation proving itself, Mr. Till. Folks say you’re the smartest man around.”

“Would the premiums on this policy be weekly or monthly?”

“I do think monthly would be best. No reason for me to come all the way out here so often.”

“How much?”

“Well, I guess it depends on the amount of coverage you’d be wanting.”

“I think I’d want the maximum,” I said to him. “The full family plan. After all, you never know when something’s going to happen, do you? Why only buy fire insurance, when a flood’s just as likely?”

“That could end up being a very expensive policy, I have to tell you,” he said. “For that kind of coverage, the salesman has to split his commission with his supervisors. All the way up to the top, actually.”

“I understand. But that’s what insurance is, right? It can’t stop things from happening; it just covers you if they do. Life insurance won’t stop a man from dying, but it will help his family carry on without him.”

“That’s true.”

“Some folks, they pay insurance on their house for thirty years, and nothing ever touches it. Instead of being upset about all those premiums they paid, my thinking is they should be grateful nothing ever did happen.”

“That’s the way I look at it myself.”

“It just comes down to men being reasonable with each other,” I said. “If the premiums get too high, well, then, a man can’t afford them, and he lets the policy lapse. On the other hand, if the premiums are too low, the insurance company can’t make a living.”

The cop stubbed out his cigarette on the ground. Then he took out a little plastic bag, the kind with tops that seal themselves closed, and put the butt inside. It went into his pocket. There’s a dozen reasons he could have done that. None of them mattered to me.

“A thousand,” he said.

“Once a month?”

“Once a month.”

“And that’s for full coverage? For me and my family? Against anything that might happen to cause either of us any problem with your company?”

“Absolutely total.”

“Fair enough,” I said, reaching over to shake his hand.

He held on to my hand. Dropped his voice to a whisper. “Folks say you carry a magnum in that left armrest of your chair. Man’s got a right to do that. But you won’t mind if I look for myself?”

I let go of his hand, leaned back in my chair, and flipped both armrests open.

The cop found the magnum, all right. But he didn’t find the tape recorder I knew he was really looking for.

What he did see was about five thousand in hundreds. Plus some of those little packets of alcohol, bandages, stuff that a cripple like me might need.

“You mind?” he said.

I knew what he wanted. Let him feel all over my body, even lift the blanket off my legs.

“I apologize if I offended you,” he said. “But you understand—”

“I do understand. And you understand as well. That’s all that righteous folks need to make a contract: an understanding between themselves. When one man gives his word to another, it has to mean at least as much as anything you could write down on a piece of paper.”

“You have got my respect, sir.”

“Mutual.”

“I’ll be back—”

“One month from today,” I told him, handing over a thousand in nice crisp bills, pretending that I didn’t see the look of surprise on his face.

hat cop drove off, satisfied that we had an understanding between us. We had an understanding, all right. But that’s not the same as a partnership.

Which he’d learn only if he did something a lot stupider than Lonnie Manes ever dreamed of. That’s when he’d find out that searching me for a tape recorder had been a waste of time.

Around these parts, the one thing nobody is surprised to see on your house is a satellite dish. All the time we were in the yard, talking, that dish was zeroed in on us. When I played back the recording, it was as clear as high-def TV can be. And the sound quality was as good as in an opera house.

I saved it to my hard drive, then I sent it to my coded box, just in case.

If that cop ever turned on me, he’d end up putting his own gun in his mouth. Even if he needed some help to do it.

ike I said, I was already out of the drug business the second that cop had opened his mouth. But I had my plans, and having a tape of him not only taking a bribe, but outright admitting he had to cut a whole lot of higher-ranking cops in on such a take, that could be well worth the money.

The insurance money, I’m saying.

wo different mobs pretty much had things around here all divided up between them: gambling joints, strip clubs, loan-sharking, protection coverage, and, of course, the tax collections.

The white-lightning guys were even smaller potatoes than the dogfighters, but that’s not why they never paid taxes. There’s folks around here who’ll tell you there’s nothing like shine—hits you harder than anything you could buy in a bar. But there was no real money to be made from it, and the only men still in the business, they were old men.

And those old men, they kept to the old ways, too. They were very seriously opposed to paying tax. Didn’t matter who came collecting. Racketeer or lawman, he might well be buried on the same ground he was dumb enough to cross without permission. If you wanted to visit, the only way to make sure you’d be leaving would be to leave their business alone.

For the two mobs, the dividing line was where County Road 22 crossed Route 76. It was as clear as a border crossing with armed guards: 22 ran north and south, and each mob had its own side, east or west. If you wanted to set up an operation, what you paid was the same on either side, but who you paid was determined by where you wanted to set up shop.

There was some poaching, of course. Not enough to start a full-scale war, but more than enough to get more than a few men killed over the years.

Whoever crossed the line, the mob they came from would always say they were freelancing. That’s what stopped things from ever getting out of hand. Even if one mob knew the other one was behind the poaching, they didn’t have to take all-out vengeance to hold their pride.

Around here, vengeance and pride are mated so close they can’t be separated. If someone does something to you and you don’t get back at them, nobody thinks too much of you. It’s even worse if someone does something to your family and you let it go. Then you couldn’t hold your head up ever again, not even in church.

oachers, that’s one thing. But outsiders, there’s a whole different story. Actually, it was outsiders who showed me the way I could make enough money to keep me and Tory-boy safe.

Maybe that’s an excuse, I don’t know. It’s what I felt at the time, but maybe there was something else driving me. That frozen conscience, it could have been. Or all that studying I did early on, about how to kill the Beast. But I never speculate on what I can’t change.

The real truth is that the Disability alone would have kept us safe. Add the money from selling my painkillers, that would have done it, easy. But our drug business was doomed even before that lawman showed up and sold me that insurance policy.

What I always told myself was that all I needed was to have money put away. But, inside me, I knew there never could be enough, not without me around to make it work.

That lawman’s visit kind of changed my perspective. He started me thinking about getting my hands on so much money that it could push buttons on its own—like setting an alarm clock, or programming a computer.

I thought about that a lot.

he outsiders who opened the door for me were a motorcycle gang. They set up shop on the East Side, in an old airplane hangar. At one time, that hangar was used to house small aircraft, and have work done on them, too. There was a landing strip and everything. But when more and more people got used to being out of work, that business had starved to death.

Later, some company had tried to set up their own airline. Just four-seaters, going over the mountains once a morning, returning that same night. But it didn’t take, so they took off themselves, leaving the building there, just rusting out.

I guess this motorcycle gang—MM-13, they called themselves—had just moved into the empty space.

At first, you hardly noticed them. They never bothered anybody when they rode through town, and they didn’t often do that. They didn’t tear up any of the bars, they didn’t try and muscle in on any of the strip joints.

Not only did they behave themselves, they always spent some money, too.

But then they started a meth lab.

t first, the meth had a hard time making a real impact. It seemed like it just wasn’t going to take hold. But as time went by, more and more junkies switched over to it. Maybe because it was new, but more likely because it was so cheap compared with any other stuff.

The bikers were about as mobile as you could get, so they sold on both sides of the line. They were too smart to refuse whenever they would run into a tax collector from one of the mobs, but that would only happen by accident—they didn’t have regular routes, and they didn’t sell out of any one place.

Even if a deal could have been struck, it was impossible to figure out how much the bikers should be paying—they made the meth themselves, so there was no import risk. And they could make it cheap—the street price was so low even the longtime dope fiends were moving over to it.

Anyone could see a showdown was brewing. When the bikers rode into town, there was never more than a dozen or so of them. But if you looked close, you could see it wasn’t the same dozen. And more and more bikers were moving into that same hangar.

he reason the bar was called the DMZ was because it was the one place where both mobs felt safe. Just west of 22, but the West Side mob never claimed it. There had to be some neutral ground, some place the bosses could get together—especially if there was an election coming up. And the only way to make a spot truly neutral was to split the take from it.

So the DMZ paid both sides, but no more than if they were paying just one. The gangs split that money, and put it around that if you started any trouble in there, you were on your own.

Even if somebody got themselves killed in the DMZ, any vengeance was strictly left up to their own people, not their mob.

Getting the bosses to both come there and meet with me—now, that was tricky. But there was no choice about it. I had to put my proposition to the bosses themselves, not go through any message takers.

So I left the exact same word with each mob. I knew they’d check me out first, and that was fine. They’d learn two things: Esau Till might be a crippled man, but he was a man of his word. And he was not only a for-real outlaw—he was smart. Real smart.

he boss of the East Side was Everett Lansdale. He looked like a man in his fifties who took care of his body—one look at his face and you’d see why he thought that necessary.

Jackhammer Judakowski ran the West Side. He was an older guy, pretty well larded—but only a fool would judge his character by his body instead of those ice chips he had for eyes.

I didn’t know Judakowski’s real name. Around here, folks would say “his Christian name,” no matter if he’d never been baptized, or even set foot in a church.

There were a dozen different accounts as to where the “Jackhammer” had come from. One thing I learned, if you want the true history of something, you can’t pay attention to what people say today; you have to talk to people that were around at the time.

Another thing I know: old folks don’t get a lot of company.

Every time I’d have Tory-boy drive me over to where Mr. Barnes lived, he was always glad for the visit. It was from listening to other old folks that I knew what he’d been called back in the day: Big John Barnes.

The church people came by his place every day with a hot meal. Otherwise, he couldn’t have taken care of himself. The church kind of kept up his house, too.

His back was bent pretty bad; he had to stay stooped over all the time. His legs were gone, too. His wheelchair was a lot fancier than mine. More like a little electric scooter, actually. The Medicare people paid for it.

I tried to get by there no less than once a month. I’d sit and talk with him, while Tory-boy took care of anything around his house that needed fixing. The first time Mr. Barnes saw Tory-boy go after some high weeds with a machete, his mouth just dropped open in amazement. “Damn me,” he said, “that young man works like the Grim Reaper when he’s taking heads.”

“Tory-boy is some kind of strong,” I agreed.

“I’m not talking about strong, son. You could see that much just looking at the size of him. What I meant was how he’s so … relentless, the way he goes about it. That’s the only word I can think of. That brother of yours, you give him a job to do, he is not going to stop until he’s done.”

“No matter what the task,” I agreed, again.

“Am I boring you, son?” he asked. He never failed to ask me that. And I’d tell him the pure truth: that I loved learning above all else, and I was learning from him. He searched my eyes for truth, every time. Always got the same answer, too.

It took a while, but I finally got the story of how Judakowski came to be called “Jackhammer.” I thought it would be some kind of mining story, but Mr. Barnes put the lie to that one. “That boy did it himself. Just started calling himself by that name. When he would be introduced, he’d say his name was Judakowski—Jackhammer Judakowski.

“After a while, it just stuck. You know how, when a man looks the part, he gets the chance to play that part? He does that good enough, a name he gives himself can end up sticking to him like it was on his birth record.

“Of course, the best kind of name to carry is one you didn’t make up for yourself. It’d be one people decided to call you, all on their own.”

“Like ‘Big John’?”

The old man wiped at his eyes. “That was true,” he said, real soft. “That was true once.”

“I know that, sir. Everybody says it.”

He looked at me for a long minute. Then he asked, “And what do they call you, son?”

“You know how people around here are.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, I know. Nasty and mean in their hearts, some of them. But not all, son. Not all. Never forget that.”

“No, sir.”

“You still haven’t told me what names they—”

“ ‘Crip,’ that’s one. And ‘Half-Man.’ And—”

He held up a big callused hand like a traffic cop telling me to stop. “They called me ‘Big John’ because that’s what I was. A big man, name of John. It fit, so it held. For a long time, anyway. What would you want folks to call you, son? ‘Brains’—now, that would fit.

“Kind of funny, when you think on it. Anyone who wouldn’t call you by a name that truly fit, it’d be the same as naming themselves. You know, something like ‘Retard,’ or”—I was looking down, but I could feel his eyes burning at me—“ ‘Half-Wit.’ ”

I looked up. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“What do you want folks to call you?” he insisted. “Not just to your face, either.”

“Esau,” I told him. “Esau Till.”

“Mark me,” the old man said. “The day will come when folks will all be calling you by that name, son. And by no other.”

ou’d think a man named Judakowski wouldn’t hold much sway around here. It was a foreigner’s name, and folks put great stock into how far back your name went. Far back local, I mean—not far back like European royalty or anything like that.

Lansdale, now, that was a name that carried weight. His father had been a prizefighter before the War. That was his last fight—one he never came back from. And that counted heavy around here, too.

What opened doors for Jackhammer Judakowski had nothing to do with his own family trail—a Polish name can trace back only so far around here. But nobody would ever be looked down on for having a Polish name, either—not in a part of the world where the name Yablonski is held sacred.

A man who died for his people.

Tony Boyle had been head of the UMW. And the United Mine Workers may have done some violent stuff, but that was only to force mine owners to allow the union in.

People knew that, and they stayed with it. Even when a whole mob had backhoed out a pit, thrown the owner in, and filled it up again—this was down in Tennessee—the jury had acquitted them all.

It might have gone on like that, but when a mine blew up in West Virginia, the truth came out. Boyle had personally told everyone that mine was union-certified, with a perfect safety record. But when the inspectors—federal inspectors—dug through the wreckage and found a slew of major safety violations, there was only one possible explanation: Boyle had been getting paid under the table to sell out the miners.

And it couldn’t have been for just that one mine.

That’s when Yablonski challenged Boyle for leadership of the union. He called Boyle’s men nothing but a gang of thugs, and he promised to return the union to the miners.

When he lost that election, Yablonski said it had been rigged. I don’t mean some whispering in a tavern; he said it right out loud, for all to hear.

He was getting ready to go to court to challenge the election results when Boyle had him murdered. And not just Yablonski, but his wife and daughter, too. When the murder team came calling, everyone in the house had to go. No witnesses.

That made it worse. Much worse. Folks who normally wouldn’t spit on the Law let them past the wall of silence just long enough to say a few things.

The people Boyle had hired to do that job, one of them had been by Yablonski’s house before, scouting. But Yablonski knew he was living under the gun, so he’d written down the license number of that stranger’s car.

One by one, they all got caught. The more they talked, the higher the trail climbed. Nobody wanted to chance the Death House.

Their testimony was overpowering. One of them, a girl, I believe, she even had a photograph of the man who had done the hiring shaking hands with Boyle.

After all that, Boyle still only pulled a life sentence. Didn’t matter, really—he died in prison.

He would have died even if the jury had acquitted him, and he knew it. Probably why he tried to kill himself. With pills, like the miserable coward he was.

Ask anyone around here and they’ll tell you: if Joe Yablonski had lived to be President of the United Mine Workers, things would be different today. They believe that the same way others believe in Jesus. Held that faith just as strong.

Maybe even stronger, now that I think on it. The only way folks could know Christ had died for them would be to read something written down maybe thousands of years ago … and believe nobody had tampered with it since.

But to know Joe Yablonski had died for them, all they had to do was read the newspapers. Or listen to someone who was around at the time.

You can’t find a living person who claims to have met Jesus in person. Not outside an asylum, anyway. But there’s plenty still around who’d met Joe Yablonski. Some who knew him personally. Even some who had been close to him.

And they all tell it the same way.

nce I worked out what I needed—once I decided that there was no other way to get it—the die was cast.

I chose those last words with care, as you’ll see.

On the day that started it all, Tory-boy wheeled me through the door of the DMZ, then went back to the van and waited. Just like I told him.

It was broad daylight, and the parking lot was almost empty, but Tory-boy didn’t question why I wanted him to park so far away from the front. It did take quite a bit of work to get him to accept the other part, which was: if I didn’t wheel myself out of that building, he was to get himself home first, and then call a number I’d made him memorize.

It wasn’t a number I could program into his phone, and that puzzled him some, but he proved to me he had it in his head.

And he didn’t question why I asked him to recite me that number, over and over again. Or why I asked him to recite it one more time before I rolled myself off.

I made sure not to look back. If I didn’t return, I wanted Tory-boy to have the image of how much I loved him showing on my face forever.

nce inside, I used my hands to get myself over to a big table where both bosses were sitting, each one in between two of his own men. The empty space across from them was for me; they knew I wouldn’t need a chair.

“You each got a note from me,” I said, polite but not nervous; it was too late for that. “And by now, you know you each got the same note. I’m not playing one side against the other, and I never would. But I know you’ve got at least one problem you share. A new problem. And I’m the man who could make that problem go away.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Lansdale asked. There was nothing hiding underneath his voice; he sounded like a man asking a reasonable question. Which, considering the circumstances, it was.

“For money,” I told him. Told them both, actually.

“How much money?” Judakowski asked, showing me the difference between the two bosses as clear as if he wrote it on a blackboard.

“That’s not important right now,” I told them both. “That’s because I don’t want to just solve this one problem for you. What I want is steady work, the kind of work either of you might need doing. Never for one against the other, though.”

“The kind of work that solves problems?”

“Yes, sir,” I said to Lansdale. I could see Judakowski nod out of the corner of my eye, but when he turned to me, his voice was hard.

“You didn’t come here for some friendly conversation.”

“No, I came because I can fix the problem you both have,” I said, letting a little iron into my own voice. “That problem is a motorcycle gang. They call themselves MM-13, which is a name nobody ever heard of. So it’s probably not any kind of national club, just a bunch of men using the motorcycles as cover. My best guess is that the ‘M’ stands for ‘money.’ And the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, that’s an ‘M’ as well. Money-Money-Money—that about sums them up.

“Now, I may be speculating on that, but I’m sure of this: they’re cooking up crank in that old hangar, and it’s cutting into your business. Both your businesses. Meth is cheap to make. So they can sell it cheap, and still turn a fine profit.

“That’s why that gang keeps adding reinforcements. They know, sooner or later, you’ve got to come for them. Neither of you is the kind of man who lets someone take anything away from you.”

“There’s somewhere around forty of them there already,” Judakowski said. I could hear the tiny trickle of interest as it seeped into his voice. “Plenty of military stuff, too.”

Lansdale didn’t ask him where he got that information. But he didn’t argue with it, either.

My turn: “Like I said, that’s the kind of problem I can fix.”

“How would you be doing that?” Lansdale asked. His voice was as polite as mine. Respectful, even.

“I can make it disappear.”

“The man asked you how,” Judakowski said. Now his tone was back to where it had started. But it wasn’t me he was playing top-dog games with; it was Lansdale.

I sat there for a few seconds, deciding. Then I told them: “I can blow it up. The whole hangar, with all of them inside.”

“What’re you gonna do, wheel yourself up to the front door and toss in a grenade?” Judakowski said, not even pretending respect.

“Even a grenade wouldn’t blow that whole thing up,” Lansdale put in, as if Judakowski’s crack had been an honest question. “You’d need dynamite, something like that. So how would you get that much explosive inside their place?”

“You know that big empty barn about a mile or so south of here? That farm that got foreclosed on about a year ago?”

They both nodded.

“If you take me out there, I’ll show you.”

“Planting dynamite in some empty barn—”

“I don’t think that’s what this man wants to show us,” Lansdale said.

“Count me out,” Judakowski said. “I got better things to do than wheel some crip around to watch a show.”

“No, you don’t,” I told him.

“You know who you’re talking to?” one of Judakowski’s men said to me. He was a big guy with eyes squeezed tiny from all their surrounding flesh.

One of Lansdale’s men—I later learned his name was Eugene—slid his right hand into the pocket of his jacket, like he was feeling around for his cigarettes.

“It doesn’t matter who I’m talking to,” I said to the whole table. “I can’t have one of you thinking I work for the other one—I know how that story would end. So either you both agree to let me show you what I can do at the barn, or everybody’s story ends that same way.”

“Now you’re gonna blow this whole place up?” Judakowski kind of sneer-laughed.

“See for yourself,” I said. Then I pulled up the right armrest on my chair.

Lansdale moved his head an inch or so. The man to his right got up and walked over to where I was sitting.

“It’s … it’s packed with dynamite, boss.”

Before anyone could say anything, I closed the armrest. Then I said, “The other side’s packed just as deep. Enough explosive to send this whole place into orbit.”

“And you’re saying … you’re telling us, we don’t go along to see this little ‘demonstration’ of yours, you’ll blow us all up, yourself included?” Judakowski said.

“That is what I’m saying,” I told him.

“You’re bluffing. How do we know it even is dynamite you’ve got in there?”

In a way, that was funny. I’d only used dynamite because it was something any of them would recognize on sight—I can cause a bigger explosion with stuff I could fit into a pack of cigarettes. But all I said was, “You know my name. I’m a man of my word. Always. Ask anyone. And I need money. Not just a payment; I need a supply of money coming in, steady. You, both of you, you’re my only path to that.

“When I say ‘need,’ that’s just what I mean. If I can’t get what I need, I’m not going to be able to protect my brother after I’m gone.

“I know what’s going to happen to me. That can’t be avoided. And it’ll be coming along soon enough. From where I sit—and, yes, I know what that means, too—if I can’t protect my baby brother, my time might just as well come right now.

“I mean no disrespect, but if you think you’re looking at a man who fears death, you’re not looking close enough.

“So it’s down to one word. ‘Yes’—we take a ride together and I show you what I can do. ‘No’—we all go out together. And you won’t like that ride.”

It was quiet for a long minute.

“I say ‘yes.’ ” Lansdale spoke first. Right then I knew he was the more dangerous of the two—Judakowski didn’t want to lose face; Lansdale didn’t want to lose lives.

didn’t care if they saw Tory-boy driving me away. I wanted them to know him by face anyway—that was part of my plan.

When Tory-boy stopped the van, a car pulled up on either side of it. And a few more behind.

Probably just out of habit on their part—I didn’t need any reminders that I had put myself all-in.

After Tory-boy wheeled me out to the ground, it was my show. “How far away from that barn you think we are?” I asked the only two men who counted.

“It’s a good quarter-mile,” Lansdale said, shading his eyes as he looked across the field.

“That far enough away, or you want to move back?”

“Move back,” Judakowski said. I could tell he was saying it just to be saying something, but it didn’t matter. Not to me, and not to Lansdale, either—I could see that right away.

“How far do you want?”

“Back to that clutch of trees,” he said, pointing.

I nodded to Tory-boy. That was our signal for him to push my chair. It was rough ground, hard to navigate. I could have done it myself easily, but there was no value in letting them see how strong my arms were.

He pushed me over to where Judakowski had pointed, then turned my chair around. I took out my range finder. Before I dialed in the coordinates, I held up this thing that looked like one of those mini tape recorders with a little propeller built into it. I’d built it for checking wind speed and direction, and it was never a tick off.

I wasn’t in a hurry, but I wasn’t stalling, either. I think they could tell that by the way they all stood ringed around behind me. Off to the sides, quiet as tombstones.

“Watch,” I told them all, even though I could tell they’d never once taken their eyes off me.

I removed a model airplane from under the left armrest of my chair. I made sure the propeller spun as easy as if it was housed in light-oiled Teflon—which it was. Then I started the motor. The little airplane buzzed in my hand like an angry wasp.

I let it go.

The plane rose almost straight up, then arced and went into a dive, so fast you could barely follow it.

They all watched as my invention hit the barn. And then they couldn’t see anything but a red-and-orange fireball rising right up out of the ground.

Fire in the hole, everyone around here has seen something like that. Or at least what it leaves behind.

But when the fireball smoke cleared this time, there was nothing to see. Nothing at all.

One of Lansdale’s men ran over to where the barn had been. He was a big, heavy-built man, but he moved at a nice trot, covered ground fast. When he came back, he wasn’t a bit short of breath.

“There’s a hole in the ground big enough to bury a fleet of semis, boss.”

Lansdale looked down at me. I mean that physical, not personal. I don’t know if he’d looked down on me as a man before that day, but I knew he’d never do it from then on. None of them ever would.

“That big hangar those bikers took over, it’s not really theirs. Doesn’t belong to them, so they can’t go to the County for utilities,” I told him. “Probably running all their electric off a generator. Heating a place that size, they’ve got to be using a lot of propane tanks.”

“So it’d look like—”

“Yes, that’s right,” I cut him off. “And everyone knows about meth labs. The way they’re put together, they blow up all the time.”

That was the beginning of the steady employment I’d bet my life to get.

always tried to keep the two bosses separated as much as possible. Not just in my mind, but from each other. Men like that would always stay suspicious of each other—my only goal was to keep them from getting suspicious of me.

Even though there was a world of difference between Lansdale and Judakowski, they were both in the same business, and killing was part of that business. They weren’t killers for hire, but they wouldn’t draw the line short of that mark if you interfered in their cash flow.

Either one would have you killed in a heartbeat, but only if you forced them to.

In fact, that was one of their business cards: a reputation for killing anyone who crossed them. That’s a reputation you can only get from passing the same test a number of times. There’s always wolves watching the campfire, smelling that meat cooking.

But, like I said, they weren’t a bit alike. Two people can do the exact same thing; it’s only when they have a choice about it that you know the truth about who they really are.

here was an understanding between us: either one could summon me anytime, but they could only send a message, never a messenger. Nobody could come to our house. Anyone who did that, he’d be coming as a stranger. And treated like one.

One night, I was called over to the DMZ, which meant both of them needed something done. I had Tory-boy roll me inside right across from them. Then he took up his post, standing a little behind me, like always.

Before anyone even started talking about the job, one of Judakowski’s men got up and walked around behind us, probably looking to get himself a drink from the side bar. I didn’t see how it happened, but I did see that man suddenly go flying across the room like a big sack of flour tossed down from a truck.

He hit the wall so hard his neck twisted. You could see he wouldn’t be getting up on his own. Probably wouldn’t even want to.

Three of Judakowski’s men jumped up. I saw Lansdale shake his head “no.” Just in time—Eugene already had his hand in his jacket pocket.

By then, I’d learned that Eugene didn’t smoke. Didn’t carry a gun, either. But I’d seen him work, and I knew what he’d been reaching for. One night, two men got off their bar stools at the same time. They started to walk over to Lansdale’s table. Slow and casual, but anyone in our line of work could see what they intended.

It was like Eugene just disappeared from his chair and rematerialized standing on the floor. By then, one of the men had pulled a heavy length of chain from inside his sleeve, and the other was bringing up a pistol.

Eugene left them both on the floor, paralyzed. They’d started bleeding out before either one realized he’d been cut.

I didn’t see any signal from Judakowski, but his men all sat right down. Not even pretending they were sorry to be doing it, either.

Then it went quiet. I reached back and patted Tory-boy, making sure he’d stay still.

Finally, Judakowski said, “That Roddrick boy, he always had cement for brains.”

Lansdale nodded, as if he was agreeing with Judakowski’s wisdom.

That was a nice touch. Just right. Swept any pride issue right off the table.

Judakowski turned to his own men. “How many times have we seen that fucking moron pull that same stunt? He had—what?—fifty damn feet of room to walk in, but, no, he just had to pull his shoulder-bump number on the … on Esau’s brother. Yeah, good fucking luck with that.”

“Tory-boy just thought he was shielding me,” I said, taking even more of the pressure out of the situation.

Judakowski’s men were like he was: hard and strong, no doubt … but way too prideful. Seeing how they acted that time, that’s what taught me that ego would always be the unseen enemy in any room they entered.

I was grateful for that knowledge. A man’s ego can be a real weakness. And the worst kind of weakness is one you don’t know you have. Like a man who thinks four-wheel drive works on ice.

“Damn!” Judakowski said. “What would he do if he thought someone was actually going after you?”

“Anything,” Lansdale answered, watching me close as he spoke. “Any damn thing at all.”

I nodded. It was the truth. But the unseen enemy that infected all Judakowski’s men surfaced anyway.

“You think he could turn a bullet?” one of them said. That branded him as the kind of man who always has to say something, when even a born fool would know it was the wrong time to say anything at all.

He’d put his sneer-question to me, but it was Lansdale who answered again, all the time keeping his voice as calm as if he’d been asked directions to the highway. “Turn one, no,” Lansdale said. “But a bullet wouldn’t stop him, either. Shoot that young man when he’s already coming at you, that’d be like giving Eugene a butter knife and locking him in a cage with that Chainsaw Massacre guy. Eugene might get himself sliced up some, but old Leatherface wouldn’t be the one walking out.”

“You know a lot about him, do you?” Judakowski said to Lansdale. Everyone knew he wasn’t talking about Eugene.

“I know what happened to the Lawrence boy,” Lansdale said. “You know, that dimwit the cops found with his spine snapped?”

“Tree fell on him, right?” Judakowski said.

“That’s what the coroner ruled,” Lansdale half-answered him. Smiling just a little bit now, like he and Judakowski were sharing a private joke.

I remembered that day. I don’t know how much money might have been bet. Or maybe the whole thing was nothing more than trying to show off for some girl. I’ve seen men die over less.

What had happened was that the Lawrence boy just walked up to me and dumped over my wheelchair. Same way the Beast used to.

Maybe Tory-boy still had a memory of that, or maybe he just couldn’t have anyone hurt me. I never asked him why he snatched the Lawrence boy up in his two hands, held him way up high, and broke him across his knee like a stick of dry kindling.

Everybody scattered as though they were running from a burning building.

I wasted a few precious minutes convincing Tory-boy he had to go back to our place and wait for me. He didn’t want to leave me out there all alone, and he couldn’t figure out how I could get home without him driving me. I knew he’d obey me, but I wouldn’t resort to that. I never let him see the urgency I was feeling, just stayed calm and reasonable, soothing him with my voice. He finally drove off.

Took me another hour to get people over there to drag the Lawrence boy into the right spot, close to that big dead-inside oak, then to loop chains around the tree and pull it down.

I paid well for that work. The men I called expected that, just as I expected them to forget they’d done it.

“That true?” Judakowski asked me. He didn’t like Lansdale knowing anything he didn’t know himself.

“I only know what people say,” I answered. “And you know how some people’ll say all kinds of things, just to be talking.”

I think Judakowski understood what I was telling him. In fact, I’m sure of it, because, instead of getting belligerent, he just said, “Your brother’s got some temper.”

“Tory doesn’t have any temper at all,” I told him. “He’s the same as any man—you act like you’re fixing to hurt his kin, he’s going to hurt you first.”

“What if he makes a mistake about that?” Judakowski said, watching me close, knowing he was baiting me about Tory-boy not being known for his intelligence.

I swallowed the bait and spit out the hook at the same time. “It might be he could do that,” I said, shaking my head a little, like the thought made me a little sad. “Wouldn’t change anything, though.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. If your brother were to make that kind of mistake, the man he makes the mistake on, might be he’d have kin, too.”

“I don’t believe there’s anyone around here who’d take it that way,” I brushed off the threat. “Folks know Tory-boy’s judgment might not be so good, so they always cut him some slack.”

“Is that right?” Judakowski said. It wasn’t a question, not with the sharp edge he put on it.

“They know me, too,” I went on, like Judakowski hadn’t spoken at all. “They know my brother would never hurt anyone out of meanness, so I’ve got a right to expect them not to blame him for making a mistake.”

“You do, huh?”

“Yes, I do. People know my brother, so that should guide their conduct. People know me, so that should guide their conduct as well. If anything ever was to happen to my brother, they know I wouldn’t have to be nearby to settle that score.”

“Hell, everybody knows that,” Lansdale said. Not to back me up, to push Judakowski away from crossing the line. Giving him an out.

Now, that’s a truly dangerous man, I remember thinking at the time.

I was never proved wrong on that.