THUGLIT Issue One

Spill Site by Matthew C. Funk

Big Dan got the bad news from Eric Delacey, his Service Manager, just as a knock hammered his front door. He lowered the cell-Delacey still booming on about the spill site-and shot a look across his living room. Rain hit hard enough to almost dent the windows. He hoped it would wash away whoever was knocking.

“So how bad is bad, Eric?”

“About as bad as it gets. Storm’s taken the waste right over our levees. Twenty years of dumping is pouring right for the lot.”

'For the lot' meant for Big Dan’s house, right next door. He blew air through his broke-veined nose to clear the pinch in his chest. It didn’t help. Neither did the knocking.

Big Dan considered switching his den light off. The knocker might get the message.

“EPA going to get involved in this?”

“You kidding me? We’ll be lucky if the showroom isn’t a swimming pool of ethylene glycol and sulfuric acid.”

Turning off the lamp turned the knocking into a slamming.

“So how do we contain this, Eric?”

Silence. For the hundredth time this year, Big Dan wondered why he bothered paying apes like Delacey. If he could run the Chevy dealership himself, they’d all be out on their dumb asses.

“Call me back when you have a fucking answer.” Big Dan hung up. He lumbered to the door, worked both deadbolts and yanked open the oversized knob.

The roar of the storm barged in, bringing water by the bucket to spatter his slippers. It hazed the figure into a ghost. For a moment, Big Dan could have sworn he was looking at his daughter, Andrea, from decades back.

But Andrea knew better than to visit.

“Who’re you?” His tone left no question that the answer would only piss him off more.

“Papa,” the girl said, forcing a smile while the rest of her shivered in a soaked-through hoodie, water pouring up from inside her Vans. “It’s Darlene.”

“Darly?” Big Dan was surprised to feel the brick in his chest soften. The sensation was like a wish he’d long forgotten being answered. He nearly smiled. “What the hell are you doing out in this weather?”

“I’m on my own now,” she said, tucking hands embedded in her sweatshirt pockets tighter about her middle. “Mama and I had a parting of the ways.”

Big Dan grunted. The kid was probably looking for charity, ducking out on her welfare mother for a taste of her grandpa the dealership owner’s wealth.

Still, Darly could be a welcome distraction. Ten years parted left a lot of catching up to do. Besides, anything that would rile Andrea suited him fine.

“Come on in, then,” Big Dan said, waving her on. He considered wrapping an arm around her willow-branch body, something to soothe that shivering, but thought better. It would only soak them both. “Kick your shoes off, though.”

She did. Big Dan scowled to see a dark rainbow of chemicals fringing their soles. The rogue’s gallery of toxic waste Delacey had listed echoed: Carburetor cleaner, transmission fluid, battery acid, antifreeze, oil.

All headed out of the Mississippi mire to swamp his business. His house. Him.

Big Dan gave a wistful look across the street to where the dealership sign should have glowed. The storm had stolen the power, but he imagined it, lit and looming bigger than one of those faggy euro coupes. Potter Chevrolet of Wiggins-a declaration of dominance over his plot of land.

He slammed the door rather than look at the flood swallowing that land a moment longer.

Darly was pivoting, taking in Big Dan’s den with baby-doll eyes wide under the seaweed fringe of her black-dyed hair. He ate up her awe-her wonder at the garfish with its prehistoric snarl jutting over the mantle, the out-sized furniture of imported leather and antique wood, the clusters of photos, fleur-de-lis and American flags.

He’d enjoy his castle as long as he could. To hell with the doubters-his dead wife, his pastor, the Sheriff. It was fucking great to be the king.

“So, Darly,” he said, clasping her shoulder and steering her shocked face around for his stare to savor. “Tell me how your bitch of a mother is.”

The photo albums were all organized, but Big Dan yanked them from the cupboards and stacked them on his teak coffee table. They tiered in towers, forty years of family memories and booming business. It reminded him of the Norman fortresses he used to model out of hub cabs behind his old man’s scrapyard.

“We don’t really have to do this, Papa,” Darly said, “if you need to sleep, I mean.”

He turned to her and sipped Dewar’s through his smile. It felt odd to smile without bitterness on the backs of his teeth. The whole sensation-genuine happiness-felt odd, a warm softness running from his neck to his bulging belly, like the filling of a birthday cake.

“I’m a night owl and an early bird both, Darly, don’t you worry.” He put a canny bend in his grin. The girl mirrored it. Big Dan figured this apple fell right onto the roots of the tree.

“Okay, then.” She perked her plucked eyebrows. “Think I could have a scotch, though?”

He chuckled in time with a wagging finger. The girl had his guts, too.

Her hair was dark, but Big Dan bet there’d be his rye-colored roots under the dye. Her jaw was slender, but her chin had the same die-cut square. Her sharp eyes, her hard brow, her high cheeks-all pieces of his mirror turned into something beautiful.

“You’ll settle with that coffee, kiddo.”

Darly shrugged and rubbed her arm. She’d insisted on keeping the hoodie on. Big Dan insisted she at least change into dry jeans, for the sake of his couch if nothing else. He wondered if she’d kept her damp panties on or went bare.

Was that wrong to wonder about his granddaughter? Big Dan smirked to himself as he sorted out an album. As if he gave a tin shit about “wrong.”

“Here we go,” he said, raising up from popping knees and ambling over to Darly with the album. “2002. Your last visit, right?”

“I was six, so, yeah, I guess so.” She fixed a hopeful look on him. “Is Grandma in this one?”

He nodded. They paged through it. Image after image of his wife, his pairs of sons and daughters, his four grandkids. They huddled together on picnic tables at the park ground on the 4th of July, stood before the Christmas tree’s glister, crammed around the Thanksgiving spread. Every picture gleamed with tight smiles and flashbulb happiness.

Dan didn’t look at the smiles. He studied the eyes. He wanted to run his fingertip over their hard pebbles; rub them like Braille to feel if a hidden story could be read.

“Everybody looks so happy,” Darly said, sober and slouched. “When did things go bad?”

“When they grew up and quit listening,” Big Dan said. He flipped pages faster. “And when your grandmother died.”

The truth was that things were always kind of bad. Big Dan and his wife, Allie, had tried to set the kids right. He’d spared no expense and no punishment.

The slightest show of weakness in these kids-bad grades, poor performance on the field, teenage romance-and he’d get the whole family to make fun of them. The tape recorders in their bedrooms and the late-night spying discovered their secrets and gave him grounds to correct them with beatings. And every time he got back talk, he’d lock them in the basement. Hell, he’d forgotten Andrea down there for a day and a half one time.

All that discipline, and still they’d broken bad. Turned sneaky. Gone bitter. Given up.

Big Dan shut the album and grabbed another at random off the stack. He flipped through, not exchanging a word with Darly.

“Everything looks so pretty,” Darly said, hands clasped in her jacket pockets again. “Guess that’s what money gets you: A lot of pretty.”

That’s all she said. And that was fine by Big Dan. It was enough to know she understood-knew what was necessary in life and what his family had given up.

Andrea gave up on everything but an endless course of scumbag baby daddies. Chrissie, she was a sour old maid at 35 with love only for cats and self-cutting. Dan Junior and Dick, they were in and out of the pen, the church and the poorhouse.

How he’d fought for those kids. Fought without compromise or remorse.

All they did was fight back.

He slapped the album closed midway and tossed it back on the table. A belt of scotch only made the cramped burn in him worse.

All that fighting, and now the only thing he had left-his Chevy store, his sign and his castle by the lake-would be lost to him.

The storm slammed the windows like the laughter of the mob. The chemicals had slipped their stink through his window seals. The burn in him just sank deeper no matter how long he drank.

Darly lifted it with a touch of his hand.

He set down the glass and found her eyes waiting. They were carved wise like his, but wanton. Interest glowed through their weary cores.

“Can we look at another?”

“I got a better idea,” Big Dan said, before he even really knew what it was.

“What’s that?”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Where?” The eagerness snuck into her lips and stretched them wide.

“New Orleans.”

“Really?” She giggled. Big Dan felt like giggling too. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt like that. Probably some time before his old man began to use the buckle of the belt to whip him with, and that was his first memory-stretched onto the stove, his nose against burner soot, as the iron gouged his bare ass.

“Yeah, let’s get out there and settle in.”

“But this place is so nice.”

Big Dan waved that away. “We’ll find another nice place. This place is done for.”

She didn’t take a moment to think-just nodded. Enthusiasm lunged Big Dan to his feet without even feeling his knees ache. He didn’t leave Darly’s eyes.

There was hope and youth enough there for the both of them-the bright breed of youth that still believed in flight and fresh starts.

“I’ll pack my things,” he said, tipping her chin with a finger. She lifted her grin, crooked little teeth showing. “You get drinks and snacks for the road.”

He wouldn’t bring much. Enough to live on until New Orleans.

Living was what this was about-getting out from the toxic flood, the tonnage of the business, the wreck of his family.

Darly skipped to the kitchen as if the pounding of the storm were less than just a nightmare.

Big Dan studied his razor before tossing it into the sink.

He’d give up shaving awhile. Go bearded on a fishing boat, reeling in catfish and gar and perch with Darly reading a romance novel by the beer cooler.

Besides, it was his old man’s razor.

He’d bring the toothpaste but leave the cologne. Bring the dog tags but leave the cufflinks. Bring the watch he’d bought with his first paycheck but ditch the engagement bracelet from Allie.

He dropped Allie’s perfume into his Dopp kit for Darly, though.

She reminded him more of his late wife with every heartbeat: Her spirit, her wit, her girlish manner. Allie had been two years younger than Darly when they married, but the teen had a bounce to her that the burden of growing up under Andrea’s tyranny hadn’t crushed. It had only gone clever.

Big Dan appreciated that cleverness as he looked himself over in the mirror, popping the collar of his Polo shirt. He was plenty clever, too. Always had been. Having to get around his fucker of a father gave him the smarts and drive to seize what he wanted no matter what.

He left the dealership keys on his bedside table. Potter Chevy had been won hard: Cutthroat deals. Backstabbing marketing. Backroom nights passing cash into the hands of the fat bastards on the zoning boards, the town council and the inspection office.

It was all worthless now. The flood of the spill sites saw to that.

Time to liquidate.

He crammed the Dopp into a satchel bloated with his safe’s six-figure cash supply, slid into his work boots and turned out the light on ten pairs of Italian loafers.

It made him want to whistle Dixie as he sauntered for the kitchen to meet Darly.

He spotted Chrissie instead.

Big Dan frowned. It was impossible not to when one saw Chrissie-the woman’s worry lines had taken a washboard to her face. Anything that might’ve been pretty about her was sagged like a saddlebag.

Her scowl was turned to Darly. She gave her dad a flick of her eyes. They were fixed on the.357 in Darly’s hand.

“Chris?” Big Dan said. The frosting feeling in his chest soured and sank heavy. It made him aware of the air choked by stinging chemical from the spill. “What’s going on?”

Darly swung the gun at him. Something struggled unsaid behind the stitch of her lips. The affectionate interest in her eyes was now a desperate hunger.

“She shot Andrea is what’s going on,” Chrissie said, a lifetime of Benson & Hedges croaking her tone. “Shot her own mother. Put her in a coma.”

“Shut up,” Darly said, snapping the Magnum back at Chrissie.

“Might’ve killed her. Might’ve killed her own mother.”

“Shut up!”

“Darly,” Big Dan began. The gun’s aim cut him off, almost swayed him. His body felt like brick, head like a balloon, chest burning.

“I came here to tell you because you must’ve changed your damn phone number on us again,” Chrissie said. Big Dan ignored her. He cared only for his granddaughter, beautiful and rabid, and for getting out with her.

“Darly, we can still work this out,” he said, forcing his legs forward. They managed one step. It made the women flinch.

“How? Lawyers?” Darly smiled, all sweet poison. “You’d lose.”

“We can just get out of here,” Big Dan said, demanding another step but failing.

“Are you serious?” Chrissie yelled. “She shot Andrea, Pa! She’s going to prison!”

“I’d take care of you,” Big Dan said.

Darly’s stare softened. He stepped toward it.

Softness only survived a moment. The blaze came back to her eyes, hotter than before, with pain fueling it.

“I’ve heard that before,” Darly said, smile twitching as something in her fractured, “from my bitch of a mother.”

Big Dan reached. Darly’s gun boomed.

He came to after a long instant like snipped film. His cheek was on the Milanese tile. His body felt like someone else’s.

The stink of cordite, car fluid, and the sweet penny smell of blood stained everything he breathed.

Chrissie lay a few feet away, eyes gaping like the fist-sized hole in her throat. He could hear the front door open. The storm howled in Darly’s exit.

Big Dan gathered his breaths. Each had to be wrestled in. Each brought more strength. He collected enough to try taking his feet.

It took half a minute-shoving his palms into the blood gumming the floor, bending his knees, head screaming like it had when his Pa lashed him.

He fell.

He breathed deep twice.

He fought up again.

Big Dan’s house wheeled around him as he went upright and staggered for the door. He let it spin. He let his nerves scream and collapse. He had to get to Darly.

She was escape. Life. Salvation for them both.

The rain embraced him with a beating: Punched his head. Pushed his shoulders. Yelled into the pits of his ears.

He wouldn’t let his old man beat him this time-the girl was still in sight.

Darly jogged ahead through toxic mire that gripped over her ankles. She’d made it to Chrissie’s Toyota truck parked under the Potter Chevy sign. Big Dan failed to call out, lungs filled with caulk.

She fumbled at the lock.

He forced shuffle after shuffle through the sludge, until his boot hit highway tarmac.

She wrenched the door open.

He drove himself faster.

She was haloed by the interior light, face bright as a baby photo, eyes just like his.

He fought words out.

“Darly! Take me with you!”

The fight robbed his wind. His next step faltered. His knees broke the flood mire, buckled on the highway, pitched him forward.

Darly looked back in time to watch Big Dan fall.

He watched, face half in the muck, as she slid into the Toyota without pausing and started it up.

He tried to watch her drive away. Tried harder than he ever had at anything. Needed to see if she at least looked back.

The flood rose to shut his open eyes.