LITMIR.BIZ

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It’s a bright late autumn day and Cole sidles around the back of the building with CD—a slide guitarist and, in his deep night hours, self-styled composer of advertising jingles who would never admit he is bound forever to a career as laborer—to share a spliff. They burn one down while sharing little in speech, Cooter grunting and humming in appreciation of the herb, both lost in their heads and staring at the high brick wall of the cemetery that backs against the firehouse, and at the clacking bamboo stalks that crane over the edge as though to peer at them.

      “You don’t need me to tell you,” CD holds up the jay in one hand and points to it with the other like he’s shilling in some commercial, “but this shit here is money if you want it. You get this off your brother? Wait, no. What am I thinking, man.”

      Cole shuffles his feet, smiles. CD’s eyes are bloated into pillows like a soft change purse slit down the middle.

      “I used to get my stuff off him all the time back in the day,” he says. “Sorry he aint around no more. Bet you’re sick of hearing people telling you that.”

      “Only thing I’m sick of is people asking if I know where he’s off to. I don’t.”

      “‘Where he’s off to?’” CD pinches two keys together to clamp the roach, head shaking and lips at work on silent words.

      “What.”

      “What nothing. But I mean where’re you seeing the question here? He tried to rob Mister Greuel is what I hear. Don’t tell me I’m thinking different from what everybody else’s saying already.”

      Above them, the bamboo stalks clack and shush in a breeze they cannot feel in the narrow space between the walls. The movement is sudden enough that Cole’s eyes dart up to see if some creature has landed there, something wild come to inspect them, but there’s nothing but greenery. “People talk just to talk,” Cole says.

      “This is true. Suit yourself, little man. I wouldn’t want that ton of shit on my shoulders, neither. Must be awful on your momma, though.”

      A shoe scuffs pavement around the corner. Cooter pops the smoldering roach into his mouth and winces as he swallows, both of them turning to see Orval beaming, snapping his suspenders over his great belly as he berates CD as a slacker not worth half the bad pay he gets. “Man I thought I’d gone crazy and was seeing things but I just checked with the measure and CD, you got crown molding set where the chair rail’s supposed to be, you useless teahead.”

      “Nah, that can not be the case,” CD says, grabbing the tape measure Orval holds out. “Bull-ee-she-ite,” he says again, backing away to Orval’s laughs with head nodding with emphasis.

      “Baby, I shit you not. You may commence taking that crap down, I aint cutting again till the room’s ready.”

      “Who made you straw boss?”

      “Who told you that you’re a carpenter?”

      His merry eyes follow CD as he approaches, waiting for the man’s eyes to meet his own, but Cooter thumps him shoulder to shoulder to knock him out of his way, lips working in disbelief. It’s not Cole’s fault; he hands up what CD asks for. He keeps still, listening to the breezy brattle in the bamboo, like the tick of an irregular clock.

      “Don’t listen to that yahoo,” Orval says. “He’s just pissed to be knocked back down to quarry buys without your bro around.”

      “How’s an old guy like you know about the quarry?”

      He picks two smokes from his pack and offers one, lighting it for him. They lean against opposite walls, sharing the same view of red brick not three feet before their faces. “Well James Cole, I guess when I fell off the truck yesterday my people were already talking about it.”

      “You think CD’s speaking true?”

      “I don’t believe CD himself knows he’s speaking truth or not half the time. I’ve made it this long believing only half of what I see and none of what I hear. Greuel and Arley aint the worst. One time I was so deep into Arley on bad bets, I thought for certain my days were few. But those boys think. They know you can’t pay money back from Hades.”

      “Yeah, well. My brother’s in a different business.”

      “I know your brother’s business and I’ll tell you it don’t matter, all business is money business. You go your own way, James Cole. The bone truth is Fleece Skaggs took off or he’s under the river. Either way it’s not on you. Remember that.”

      He had asked his brother: You ever wonder at how lakers seem like they’re in on one big secret? I walk these woods and wave hello to people and I wonder, What’s the story there? How’d they end up here instead of somewhere else? You got the Akins place, and Boyle Akins went nuts and killed his wife and even all the dogs. Only time I ever seen police lights in Lake Holloway. What happened in that house, why’d he go nuts like that? Or you pass the Kelso’s and there’s the old man with his glass eye out, turning the thing over in his one hand because the left hand’s gone, and the side of his face looks melted. How did he lose his eye and his hand? What happened to his face? You can’t ask, and no one ever tells you.

      Fleece said he didn’t know but he could guess. Then he said he didn’t care. Later he added he’d heard Boyle Akins ran too long on his own crank. But to most of Cole’s questions he said, It’s their story, not mine.

      So why did Bethel get shot? Cole asked. That’s your story, isn’t it?

      Fleece rolled his eyes over his brother as he would an empty room he was about to exit. His hands played with his butterfly knife, an all-metal Spiderco Spiderfly, flipping it open in the air and then catching it again, creating a fine percussive rhythm with the repetition.

       You think too much, pup.

       Don’t you want to know? Don’t you care?

       I care enough not to go look for any more trouble than what already finds me.

      He lost interest in the knife and flipped it shut and tapped it down into his shirt pocket. He kept his hand over the pocket, palm flat like a shield to cover his heart, looking as though he were swearing an oath if not for the fact that Fleece never pledged allegiance to anything but his own desires.

       Sure I’d like to know, sometimes. But what’s the knowing worth? Bethel Skaggs was a hard mean skinny little fucker, a real son of a bitch. Look at Momma—you think she got that way on her own? Hell no, that’s my so-called dad still giving it to her every day.

      His palm slid from his heart to his thigh, sliding further to the knee and back, uncertain where to go without the knife to trick.

      Not sure it even matters much, who exactly did the deed, he said. Knowing who wouldn’t explain why. Could’ve been the last thing his killer wanted to do.

      Or he could have loved every second of it, Cole said. He was whistling, after. I remember.

      You got the way you feel, and you got what you want people to think you feel, Fleece said.

      Now his hands found their purpose, searching his jeans for the one-hitter box. It was in the breast pocket of his jacket, and he fixed a pinch into the pipe. Say he loved every second of it. Say he sits alone and gloats over each detail of that day and how he got away with killing Bethel Skaggs. What’s changed now? Would we be better off with Bethel alive?

      Cole thought, I would have grown up with you, but he knew these words were nothing his brother wanted to hear. He watched the tendril of a flat cloud break away and dissipate into empty sky before admitting he didn’t know if they’d be better off with Bethel alive or no.

      The thing is this, Fleece said. The only way to know the truth of a story is you got to go through the whole story yourself.

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