The Next(48)

     



 

Okay...Okay …

I turned around to dig my arm down between the back of the couch toward  the floor where Paul had hidden our Swiss Army knives. My hand hit the  carpet and padded left, then right …

They're gone!

For the first time since we'd arrived, I'd wished Grandfather was home. Not out playing poker … poker …

I knew nothing about poker except for the games Kenny Rogers played in  The Gambler, which I'd watched only by digging in the itchy pink  insulation in the narrow attic crawl space and carving out a quarter  inch hole in our parents' bedroom ceiling to watch their television.  Aside from this covert operation, television was almost completely  restricted. I knew what it meant to bluff.

I took a breath, swallowed, and opened my mouth.

In as confident a voice as I could muster I said, "I've got a knife."

The red cigar glow stopped ten feet away from our bed.

We held the blind faceoff for seconds.

"Bathroom," I whispered into Paul's ear as softly and as distinctly as possible.

Paul was crouched in fetal position against the back of the bed,  frightened as a tiny cornered mouse, but as soon I grabbed his hand, his  body rallied with blind bravery-no questions asked. Together, palm in  palm, we rushed the cigar glow.

I approximated where his stomach would be and plowed through using my  pointed elbow as a battery ram. I hit his body and felt the hard belly  of a senior citizen in exceptional shape. It rebounded towards the  counter, and I heard the thump of his back hit it. I tripped, hit the  floor, regained my footing, and continued the dash down the hall. We  entered the bathroom. I slammed the door closed, and …

There was no lock!

I'd locked the door only yesterday when I'd taken a dump. Now it was  gone! But we didn't have time to ascertain the reason. I opened the  window and hefted my brother through.

Suddenly the bathroom door burst open. The light flicked on.

Paul stood outside looking in, watching Graves approach me.

"Run, Paul!" I screamed.

"No!"

"Run!" I ordered as firmly as I could before I felt a strong bony hand  cuff my mouth and pull me backwards. The man somehow incapacitated my  arms with his other hand and dragged me backwards back into the hall. I  dug in my heels, dragging against the floor as hard as I could. Suddenly  I was heaved like a rag doll into the darkness of the living room. I  twisted in order to brace for whatever I would impact. The pullout bed  hit my shin. I heard a snap and felt an excruciating sharp pain dart up  like lightning into my skull as my shinbone splintered.

I could hardly register the pain before I was flipped over onto my back  forcefully. I felt Graves mount me, pinning all four of my limbs,  leaving me completely incapacitated. As much as I thrashed around, he  held me tight against the thin mattress. I bucked my hips wildly until I  felt my pelvis slap into his. Graves' hardness was protruding through  his pants.

"Stop," he whispered, "Stop, or I'll tear it off."

Huh? Tear what off?

Then I felt his teeth surround my ear.

I froze.

I started crying.

His belly and pelvis movement softened from violent pistoning to a  rolling undulation against me. I became aware of all the subtle things  Graves was doing to me. His grip on my wrists was like handcuffs, but  his thumbs were tenderly stroking my skin. His teeth rested  threateningly on my ear, but his tongue softly probed into my ear hole.  His nipples were erect, grazing across mine with the slightest friction.  His breath was hot and moist and drifted from his mouth into my ear  like a whisper. His lips puckered and slid to my lips. He pressed  against them with a soft wet suction.

"How's that feel?" he asked gutturally, a puff of cigar breath entering my nostrils. "Huh? Like how that feels?"

My stomach churned, just as it had when the blond boy did this to me. I  became nauseous, with a knot of deer meat, hot dogs, and beans expanding  upward like an inflating balloon. It occurred to me that I could escape  from Graves' pinning just as I had from the blond boy beneath the tree …

Suddenly the living room light flicked on.

Paul stood in the kitchen, a rifle butted against his shoulder and his eye pressed against the scope. He was targeting Graves.

Graves, bent his head around to look at the kid with the rifle and grinned, cocksure as a motherfucker.

"Takes a man to take a man, boy," he said.

Graves kept his eye trained on my skinny brother in his white underwear  holding a rifle horizontally as best he could in his trembling arms.  Graves licked his lips as he eyed Paul and muttered, "Looks like you're  as ready as I am, kid."

Paul's underwear was tenting outward, fully erect. He looked down. His  face turned red. He started gushing tears. He looked right into my eyes  for help-scared, ashamed, confused, and mortified.         

     



 

I did not have the presence of mind to assure Paul that his reaction was  natural. Perhaps it wasn't. I had no understanding of the sexual  conditioning of Paul's twelve-year-old noggin given my own youth. More  tragically, I did not understand years later that our inability to  address his erection would create a rift we'd never even be able to  acknowledge.

"You're gonna like this," grumbled Graves toward Paul with a pleasure that rumbled from his soul, his gut, and his groin.

Paul cocked the rifle. In spite of his fright, a summer of training had  reinforced his ability to prep for a firing so many times that he was  able to cock that rifle assuredly and swiftly without even removing his  eye from the scope.

I had to stop Paul from committing a crime that he'd regret for the rest  of his life. But as I was about to scream at Paul to stop, I felt  Graves grab hold of the waistband of my thin underwear and rip them off  my body.

Graves leathery lips smothered mine, his tongue prying his way onto the  other side of my teeth. My arms tightened like rods and my fists  clenched, locked down hard into the mattress. The metal springs of the  pull out bed cut through the fabric and sprang into the air. I tried to  pull my groin away from him, but his battery would not let up.

Suddenly Graves lifted his head.

Paul had put the barrel of the rifle against Graves' skull. His face was  no longer that of a frightened child. He was full of a fury I'd seen  before from only one other. He was full of our father's fury.

Even more blood curdling, Paul was not looking at Graves' eyes. Paul was  objectifying his target as he would any varmint, raccoon, or deer, and  stripping it in his mind of life for a more efficient, systematic kill.  Just as he had been trained every day for a summer.

"Paul! No! Put it down!" I shouted loudly.

Click.

The bullet thundered into Graves' head, then exited the other side and  continued through the back of the couch and into the wall. Blood  spattered across the radius of the room, the white walls sprayed with  droplets on all sides. Blood stung my eyes and dotted the taste buds of  my open mouth.

I felt the immediate freeing of my limbs as Graves lay dead on top of  me. I kneed his groin upwards with all my strength and pushed his body  off of me. I wiped the sweat, tears, and blood from my eyes.

Paul was no longer in sight.

I put my weight on my good leg and hopped down the hall. My other shin  surged with pain. Paul was in the closet, wiping down the barrel of the  rifle with his white underwear in a nervous thoroughness.

His voice was high-pitched and sincere as he asked, "Do you think Grandfather will be angry at me for using his rifle?"

Grandfather's rank superior lay on our bed with his brains blown out,  and Paul was worried about returning his rifles without a blemish. I  realized how natural this reaction was for Paul. Our Father's punishment  had never fit the crime, and often wasn't even related. When we once  dog-sat a relative's Irish setter for three days, we quickly learned  that the only way to keep Father from blaming us for dog shit left on  the road and going off the deep end with the silver snake buckle belt on  our asses was by cleaning every pile of dog shit we encountered whether  or not she made it. We picked up eighty-four piles of shit over those  three days and continued picking up shit for months after just in case.  This was the underlying fear that prevented us from waking our father up  even when the neighborhood was burning down. The same fear that caused  Paul to worry as much about the cleanliness of the rifle as the bloody  dusting of a neighbor.

I rested my hand on his shoulder and was about to reassure the focused  boy when I saw our shiny red Swiss Army knives right in front of our  noses on the shelf.

Why would Grandfather hide our knives here?

We heard the crunching of gravel as a car pulled into the driveway.

Paul looked up at me with alarm.

He pulled me out of the closet and closed the door, but he had no keys  to lock it. That's when it occurred to me … how the hell had Paul opened  the closet to begin with? The deadbolt was not broken into. The frame  was not splintered. The door must have been unlocked! By the same token,  how had Graves entered the trailer in the first place? We had not  entered or exited the front door at all since Grandfather left, having  jumped through the bathroom window.