Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (5 page)

"I’m sorry," I said, shifting uncomfortably on the couch, mouth running dry. "Wouldn’t you have done the same? I mean, I didn’t know —"

"Trying to put me in your shoes won’t work." He walked to the record player and lifted the needle. The cabin now in absolute silence, he moved to the center of the living room.

"You fucked up, Andy. I told you just bring clothes and toiletries, and you brought a gun and a box of bullets." He spoke casually, as though we lounged on a back porch, smoking cigars.

"When you don’t follow my instructions, that hurts both of us, and the only thing I can think of to do is show you that not following them isn’t in your best interest." He opened the cylinder of the .357 and showed me five empty chambers. "You fucked up once, so we’ll load one bullet." He took a round from his pocket and slipped it into a chamber.

I grew sick with fear. "Orson, you can’t."

"Andy-Andy-Andy. You never tell a man with a loaded weapon what to do." He spun the cylinder, flipped it back into the gun, and cocked the hammer. "Let me explain how this punishes me also, because I don’t want you to think I’m doing this just for kicks.

"I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to bring you out here, and if your luck suddenly runs out and the twenty percent chance of this bullet being in the hot chamber bites your ass, I’ve done a lot of work for nothing. But I’m willing to take that chance to teach you a lesson about following my instructions."

When he pointed the gun at my chest, I uselessly held out my hands. He squeezed the trigger — click — and took a bite of his apple. I could hardly breathe, and as I buried my face in my hands, Orson put the record back on. The music started again, and he snapped his fingers to the offbeat, smiling warmly at me as he returned to the couch. When he’d removed the round from the chamber, he set the gun on the floor and plopped back down beside me. A wave of nausea watered my mouth, and I thought I might be sick.

Holy fucking shit, he’s out of his goddamned mind. I’m going to die. I’m alone in a desert with a psychopath who is my brother. My fucking brother.

"Andy, you’re free to roam the house now, and the desert. The shed outside is off-limits, and I’m gonna lock your door every night when you go to bed. You can quit pissing in the bowl. Shower at the well by the outhouse. It’s cold, but you’ll get used to it. The electricity comes from a new generator out back, but I’ve been too busy to put in plumbing."

"May I use the outhouse now?" I asked, scarcely able to muster my voice.

"Sure. Always let me know when you leave. I don’t ever want to have to come find you."

Still shaking, I crossed the room and opened the door to sunlight ripening upon the russet wilderness. I shivered, girding the white bathrobe I’d worn for the last two days more snugly around my waist. When I reached back to shut the door, Orson stood in the threshold.

"I have missed you," he said.

I looked at him, and for a second he was vulnerable, like the brother I’d loved when we were young. His eyes pleaded for something, but I was in no condition to consider what they wanted.

"Who was she?" I asked.

He knew damn well who I meant, but he said nothing. We just stared at each other, a connection kindling that had lain dormant almost to its death. There remained combustible matter between us. I wasn’t going to wait for him to close the door, so I turned away to walk down into the chilled dirt.

"Andy," he said, and I stopped on the steps, but I didn’t look back. "Just a waitress."

6

I stood on the rickety front porch, in the shadow of a tin roof supported by rotten four-by-fours. A strong, steady breeze blew in from the desert, carrying the sweet, piquant smell of sagebrush, scorched earth, and flowers unknown to me.

Four wobbly rocking chairs, two on either side of the door, swayed imperceptibly, but I sat down on the steps and shoved my bare feet into shaded dirt, still cool where it escaped the sun. My eyes wandered along the northern horizon, a mass of foothills and mountains. At least thirty miles away, there was no texture to their slopes. Only hunter green at the lower elevations, denoting evergreen forests, then shattered gray rock, then cloudlike glacier fields that would never melt.

Sixty yards off the left side of the porch stood a large shed. It looked hastily built and new, its tin roof and smooth boards of yellow pine glowing in the sinking sun. A chain was wrapped snakelike around the latch that connected the double doors. Tire tracks led straight to the shed.

A mile or so beyond, the desert rose several hundred feet to a ridge of rusty bluffs that extended south, sloping gently back to the desert floor. Scraggy junipers lined the top, their jagged silhouettes blackening against the sky.

Since dawn, I’d been trying to read Machiavelli in my room. Hot and unable to concentrate on anything except how I might escape, I’d come outside looking for relief in a breeze. But even in the wind, sweat stung my eyes, moistening my skin and hair. Inside, I heard another jazz record — such an eerie sound track to this empty desert, the music so full, effecting thoughts of crowded New York City clubs and people crammed into compact spaces. Normally, I despise crowds and proximity, but now the claustrophobic confines of a raucous nightclub seemed comforting.

I sat on the steps for the better part of an hour, watching the desert turn scarlet beneath the sun. My mind blanked, and I became so engrossed in the perpetuation of mindlessness that I started when the front door squeaked open behind me. Orson’s boots clunked hollowly against the wood.

"Will you be hungry soon?" he asked. The rumble of his scratchy voice caused my stomach to flutter. I couldn’t accept that we were together again. His presence still horrified me.

"Yes."

"I thought I’d grill a couple of steaks," he said, and I could tell he was smiling, hoping I’d be impressed. I wondered if he were trying to make up for nearly killing me. As children, whenever we fought, he’d always try to win me back with gifts, flattery, or, as in this case, food. "You want a drink?"

God yes.

I turned around and looked up at him. "If you’ve got it, Jack Daniel’s would be nice."

He walked back inside and returned with an unopened fifth of that blessed Tennessee whiskey. It was the best moment of my day, like a small piece of home, and my heart leapt. Cracking the black
seal
, I took a long swill, closing my eyes as the oaken fire burned down my throat. In that second, as the whiskey singed my empty stomach, I could’ve been on my deck, alone, getting shit-faced in the glory of a Carolina evening.

I offered the bottle to Orson, but he declined. He walked around the corner of the cabin and dragged a grill back with him. After lighting the charcoal, he walked inside and returned carrying a plate with two ridiculously thick red filets mignons, salted and peppered. As he stepped past me, he held the plate down and said, "Pour a little of that whiskey on the meat."

I drenched them in sour mash, and Orson tossed the tenderloin rounds on the grill, where they flamed for a couple of seconds. He came and sat beside me, and as the fuzziness of the whiskey set in, we listened to the steaks sizzle and watched the sunset redden, like old friends.

When the steaks were cooked, we took our plates onto the front porch, where a flimsy table stood on one side. Orson lit two candles with a silver Zippo, and we consumed our dinner in silence. I couldn’t help thinking as I sat across from him, You aren’t that monster I saw on the desert last night. That is how I sit here without trembling or weeping, because somehow I know that cannot be you. You are just Orson. My brother. My blue-eyed twin. I see you as a boy, a sweet, innocuous boy. Not that thing on the desert. Not that demon.

As the last shallow sunbeams retreated below the purple horizon, an ominous feeling took hold of me. The presence of light had afforded me a sense of control, but now, in darkness, I felt defenseless again. For this reason, I hadn’t touched the whiskey after my initial buzz, fearing inebriation could be dangerous here. The silence at the table unnerved me, too. We’d been sitting for twenty minutes without a word, but I wasn’t going to speak. What would I say to him?

Orson had been staring into his plate, but now his eyes fixed on me. He cleared his throat.

"Andy," he said. "You remember Mr. Hamby?"

I couldn’t suppress it. A smile found my lips for the first time in days.

"Want me to tell it like you never heard it before?" Orson asked.

When I nodded, he leaned forward in his chair, blithe, wide-eyed, a born storyteller.

"When we were kids, we’d go several times a year up into the countryside north of Winston-Salem to stay with
Grandmom
. Granddad was dead, and she liked the company. So how old were we when this happened? Nine maybe? We’ll say nine so…"

You feel like Orson, and I know, I hope it won’t last, but Christ, you feel like my brother in this moment.

"And
Grandmom’s
house was next to this apple orchard. Joe Hamby’s orchard. He was a widower, so he lived by himself. It was early autumn, and schools and church groups would come for the day to Hamby’s orchard to pick apples and pumpkins, and buy cider and take hayrides.

"Well, since this orchard backed right up against
Grandmom’s
property, we couldn’t resist sneaking over there. We’d steal apples, climb on his tractors, play in the mountains of hay he stored in his barns. But Hamby was a real bastard about trespassers, so we’d have to go at night. We’d wait till
Grandmom
went to sleep, and we’d sneak out of that creaky farmhouse.

"All right, so this one particular October night, we slip outside about nine o’clock and hop the fence into the orchard. I remember the moon’s very full, and it’s not cold yet, but the crickets and tree frogs are gone, so the night is very still and very quiet. It’s near the peak of harvest. Some of the apples have soured, but most are perfect, and we stroll through the orchard, eating these ripened sun-warmed beauties, just having a helluva time.

"Now Hamby owned a couple hundred acres, and on the farthest corner of his land, there was this pumpkin patch we’d heard about but never had the balls to go there. Well, this night was one of those nights when we felt invincible. So we reach the end of the orchard and see these big orange pumpkins in the moonlight. Remember, Hamby had won some blue ribbons for his pumpkins at the state fair. He grew these monstrous hundred-pound freaks of nature.

"We can see his house a ways up the tractor path, and all the lights are off, so we race each other into the pumpkin patch, our eyes peeled for one of those hundred-pounders. Finally, we collapse in the middle of the patch, laughing, out of breath."

Orson smiled. I did, too. We knew what was coming. "Suddenly, just a few yards away, we hear this loud groan: ‘I LOVE my orange pussy!’ "

I guffawed, felt the whiskey burn my sinuses.

"Scared us shitless," he said. "We turn and see Mr. Hamby draped over this huge pumpkin the size of one of those Galápagos Island sea turtles. He’s got his overalls down around his ankles, and boy he’s humping this thing in the moonlight. Just talking up a storm, smacking it like he’s smacking a bare ass, and stopping every now and then to take a swig from his jar of peach brandy.

"Of course we’re mortified, and don’t realize he’s obliviously drunk. We think he’ll see us and chase us if we try to run home, so we lay down in the dirt and wait for him to finish up and go home. Well, eventually he finishes…with that pumpkin, pulls up his overalls, and goes looking for another. The next one’s smaller, and after he’s bored a hole in it with his auger, he drops to his knees and starts riding this one. We watch him fuck five pumpkins before he passes out dead drunk. Then we run back through the orchard toward
Grandmom’s
, sick on apples and…"

I see us on that brisk autumn night, as vividly as I see us sitting here now, climbing back over that wooden fence, both wearing overalls and matching long-sleeved turtlenecks. We wanted to be identical then. Told everyone we were, and we looked it, too. Does that bond still have a pulse?

I had tears in my eyes when he finished. The sound of our laughter moved me, and I allowed myself to look freely into his face, surveying the space behind his eyes. But the fingernail marks across his cheek started that woman’s god-awful screaming inside my head again, and I lost the comfort of the moment, and the ease with which I’d remained in his presence for the last half hour. Orson discerned the change, and his gaze left me for the black empty desert all around us.

A gust extinguished the candles, leaving us in darkness. Now the last intimation of purple was exposed against the western horizon, but it blackened the moment I saw it. The sky filled with stars — millions more than in the polluted eastern skies. Even on the clearest nights above Lake Norman, the stars appear fuzzy, as if dimmed behind diaphanous chiffon. Here they shone upon the desert like tiny moons, and many streaked across the sky.