“Who’s the fag-boy now, Kyle?”
Tim walked around behind his brother, grabbed the waist band of his already loosened pants and underwear in one fist and tugged them down. He brandished the wooden stake in the other hand.
“Who’s the fag-boy now?”
Tim’s eyes kept straying out the window to the door of the shed as he stood at the sink washing the dinner dishes. His shoulders and arms burned from scrubbing cement and turning earth, but he still hadn’t buried everything. Two-and-a-half feet down, a layer of clay too thick and hard for a person of Tim’s stature underlay the topsoil. He disposed of all of the nameless man in small bits and parcels — hopefully deep enough the neighbourhood animals wouldn’t dig him up before he did a proper job — but the task of reducing his brother to manageable pieces and planting him in the flower bed had taken too long. More than half of him still lay wrapped in the blue tarp in the corner of the shed, awaiting Tim to skip school again and give him a hasty burial. He plucked a dish from the sink and swirled the dishcloth absently across its surface, catching a glimpse of reddish-brown dirt caked under his fingernail in spite of having showered three times. He smiled tiredly. He’d sleep well tonight.
“Where the fuck is that boy?”
His father’s voice boomed from the living room, drowning out the local news. Tim pictured his mother’s answer: a slight shrug of her shoulders and a small, high-pitched sound at the back of her throat as she didn’t look up from her magazine or knitting pattern. The lack of real response would serve to further anger her husband: likely the reason she responded in such manner.
Tim put the plate in the draining rack and grabbed a handful of cutlery from the bottom of the sink and set to scrubbing them individually. When he next glanced out toward the shed, he saw the reflection of his father standing behind him.
“Where’s your brother?”
Tim shrugged. “I don’t know, dad.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, really. I—”
“You’re covering for him. What kind of shit is he up to?”
“I don’t—”
The impact of the man’s hand contacting the side of his head made Tim bite his tongue.
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” his father slurred. “Where is your brother? If you don’t tell me, you’ll get the licking for both of you.”
Tim bit down on his back teeth, gripped the edge of the counter hard enough with both hands to make his knuckles go white. He couldn’t let emotion overcome him, not when the job remained unfinished. If his father found out, he’d not only call the cops, he’d beat him within an inch of his life. He had to stay calm until everything was done. He thought of the nameless man, of his blood, of all those secrets hidden inside which only Tim had seen.
The second time his old man cuffed him, it started Tim’s head pounding.
“Where is he?”
Tim raised his eyes, looked out the window. A gust of wind swirled leaves across the lawn, threw them against the door of the shed, telling him what to do.
“The shed,” he whispered.
“What?”
“I think I saw him go into the shed.”
Tim saw his father’s reflection in the window, saw the way his expression moved from confusion to disappointment, then anger. Where Tim had been a letdown with his slight frame, disdain of sports and lack of friends, Kyle was the proverbial chip off the old block. For him to be going against their father’s wishes, to be flaunting his authority, must have been devastating. Tim suppressed a smile.
“That little fucker.”
He rushed to the back door, pulled on the knob and his hand slipped off, then tried again. Tim pulled his hands out of the dirty dish water and its limp bubbles, wiped them on his pants as he followed his father into the backyard, their feet kicking up dried maple leaves and sending them eddying across the lawn. In his rage and drunkenness, his father didn’t notice the spade leaning against the side of the shed beside the door, normally a punishable offence regardless of the fact the shovel didn’t belong to him. He threw the door open, reeled into the dark shed with his eldest son two steps behind. By the time he found the string attached to the overhead light and pulled it, Tim already had the shovel held in front of him in both hands.
When the light came on, his father stood for a few seconds, probably confused by the emptiness of the shed save for the tarp lying on the floor at the back: an item which shouldn’t have been there. Tim watched his shoulders sag as rage dissipated, but he knew it would be short-lived. His father’s anger never disappeared: it needed to be vented. With bits and pieces of Kyle wrapped neatly in the tarp, there was only one other place for his ire to find release. The muscles in Tim’s arms tightened.
“Kyle’s not in here. What the fuck are you playing at?” His father didn’t turn around.
“He’s here.” Tim kept his voice level, masking the excitement building in his gut, flooding his groin. “He’s hiding.”
His father’s head moved right to left, scanning the small building: no place to hide save for under the misplaced tarp and it wasn’t big enough for a boy Kyle’s size. He moved forward and pushed at it with the tow of his socked foot. Definitely something underneath, so he bent over and pulled back a corner of the blue plastic. It took almost fifteen seconds for him to fully understand what he saw. When he did, he whirled toward his older son, his face twisted with rage.
The shovel hit him square in the face before he said a word.
Two hours passed before Tim’s mother showed up at the back door, her slight frame silhouetted against the kitchen light.
“Timmy? What are you doing?”
Tim paused leaning on the handle of the spade, its tip stuck in the dirt. He would have liked the hole to be deeper, but the damn clay seemed intent on preventing him from digging an adequate grave. It would have to do.
“Just getting rid of some garbage, Mom.”
For a long minute, the woman didn’t say anything. Tim held his breath, waiting for her reaction. He didn’t want her to come across the yard and see, didn’t want her to have to go in the hole, too, though part of him wanted to bring her out here, show her what he’d done. What good was there in doing such fine work if he gave no one the opportunity to admire it?
His mother stood a few seconds, arms crossed in front of her chest, protecting herself against the chilly night, then glanced over her shoulder as if someone inside had called her. She looked back at her son.
“Well, don’t stay out too long, it’s getting cold.”
Tim let out his breath but, as she moved away from the door, panic exploded in his chest. Once he covered the hole with dirt, no one would ever see what he did; no one would ever know what he was capable of.
“Mom?”
She stopped and came back to the doorway. Even from across the yard, he saw her shiver. He wondered if it was because of the cold or if she sensed something different about her older son, something dangerous and wonderful.
“What?”
“Can you come here for a minute? I’ve got something to show you.”
A few seconds passed as she decided.
“Let me get my shoes on. I’ll be right there.”
Both hands resting on the end of the shovel’s handle, Tim set his chin on top of his hands and looked down into the hole. His father’s slack face showed through the dirt, soil clogging his ear and smeared around the ragged edge of his neck where the hack saw had taken it from his body. In the dark, Tim found it easy to imagine his flaccid visage frozen in an expression of surprise, both at what he had done and the fact he was capable of doing it. His eldest son had proven far more gifted than he’d ever thought and he would wear that expression of surprise forever. All the way to Hell.