Monday - Chapter 3
Grady Perlson, an inmate at Starks Prison, tells a personal story of family tragedy and dark forces in the Louisiana bayou.
New to The Road Cain Walks? See the Table of Contents to start the first chapter.
Between Leavenworth and Pine Haven, Grady Perlson had plenty of time to figure out the precise moment his world stopped making sense. The way his life tangled in briers, it happened when his daddy added some of himself to his momma and named what came out Grady. When Joe Richards showed up and asked, he settled on a day when a single choice could have prevented everything.
Grady struggled for the words, picking at his fingers and tracing the table’s wood grain with his eyes. He’d never told anyone what happened in Creek Hollow—never had a chance—but when he remembered, his mouth opened and the story fell out.
On the last day of sixth grade, as the bell rang and the other kids ran screaming into a world without teachers, Grady took his time to be last. When the school became a ghost town, he passed the playground and baseball field but didn’t breathe easily until he crossed the stretch of grass behind them.
Every day, Grady trudged to the same break in the fence near Mr. Lebeau’s horse pasture, where his older brother Henry always waited with a cigarette dangling from his lips. When school resumed, Grady would be across town at the junior high, walking home on paved roads instead of down train tracks and Louisiana backwoods.
A sharp whistle jerked Grady’s head around. Three boys had followed him from the school. Tuck Marshall chewed a grain stalk as blond as his hair, the two on each side of him—Mike Douchet and Bobby DeWalt—resembling hired goons who’d long grown bored of this game.
Back before Grady’s size made people think twice about messing with him, he was a pudgy child who stood an inch taller than the rest of his class. He didn’t have a chance of outrunning any of them, but panic made him try.
Tuck had a three-foot head start, but Mike Douchet was already on the radar of Creek High’s football coach. When his feet hit the ground, it sounded like one of Lebeau’s horses loose and charging. He closed the distance and passed Tuck, driving a shoulder into Grady’s back.
Grady brought his hands up to avoid landing on his face.
Tuck took his time catching up. In his last lazy steps, he spit the grain stalk to the ground. “Know what my daddy told me, retard? He said you passed sixth grade, but I gotta do it all over. They said I was dumber than you, and you know what he done? Pulled off his belt in front of everyone and striped my back. That sound fair? You breeze through school ‘cause everyone feels sorry for you, but we gotta do all the work?”
When Grady didn’t answer, Tuck scowled. “I’m talking to you, dummy.”
Bobby kicked Grady in the ribs so hard it pushed out his air. Tuck’s kick hit him in the face. The taste of salt and metal ran between Grady’s teeth, blood dripping over the backs of his hands. Whimpering, he shut his eyes and waited for it to be over.
With a shove, Mike rolled Grady onto his back. Tuck sat on his chest and slapped a cheek.
“Stay home this summer, retard. I catch one sight of your drooling face, I’ll kill you.”
“You gonna kill him?”
Leaves rustled at the fence. Something hit the ground hard. A shape passed over Grady and took Tuck with it, a trace of sweet Vitalis lingering in the air. Grady propped on his elbows to watch his brother haul the bully away by his shirt collar.
Mike and Bobby scattered, Henry staring after them until Tuck struggled. Bending, he grabbed Tuck’s throat and squeezed, his hair a slick mess over his forehead. “I’ve warned you. Leave him alone or you don’t walk away next time. I ever hear you threaten to kill him again—”
With his free hand, Henry slid a thumbnail across his throat. “You get me?”
Tuck’s eyes went wide, his face red as tomato sauce and hair a mess of spaghetti around it. At his short nod, Henry pointed toward the distant shapes of Mike and Bobby and let him go. “Get out of here.”
With a gasping cough, Tuck bounced to his feet and scrambled away, pawing the tall grass to keep his balance.
Henry went to Grady and plopped on the ground. “Put a saddle on that boy, he’d win the Kentucky Derby.”
Grady pressed his lip and examined the red dot on his finger. More blood had dripped on his shirt, which meant it wouldn’t be his last beating that day. Even so, he said, “Thanks.”
With a lop-sided smile, Henry watched Tuck catch up to his friends. “Wouldn’t feel like summer without it.”
Henry helped Grady up and draped an arm across his shoulder as they went to the break in the fence. Beyond it, they followed the train tracks.
“Do I drool?” Grady asked, balancing on the left rail.
“Is your shirt wet?”
Grady patted his chest. The Louisiana sun had dried the blood to a smear of brown. “No.”
“Then probably not.”
Lighting a cigarette, Henry let it hang from the corner of his mouth like James Dean. He slid a foot forward in the gravel with a wiggle of its heel. With a long drag, he blew smoke at Grady. “On your mark. Get set.”
“Go!” Grady pushed past, pumping his arms.
The race ended at the long trestle over a stretch of swamp a mile behind their house. Henry panted and strained as if trying to catch up but let Grady win in the same dramatic way he always did. Grady loved him for it. They wasted time tossing rocks into the water and then slid down the graveled hill and into the woods at Tracker Arnaud’s property line.
Near toothless and missing his right arm from the elbow down, Arnaud lived in a shack in the center of a thirty-acre plot, his alligator farm on one side and the dock for his swamp tours on the other. The whole place was surrounded by bear traps to keep any gators from escaping.
Grady and Henry focused on their feet as they made slow progress past the gator pen’s concrete walls and headed for the dock.
With a tour group around him, Arnaud untethered an air boat from its mooring and kicked it out into the swamp. The guide on board let the boat drift a few feet before cranking its engine, the chutter spinning the giant propeller to skip his group of five tourists over the water. Tracker watched it go and then limped to his own boat, waving his group to follow. As he wiped his face, he turned to Henry and Grady.
“Ya’ll gone to dat tree?” With a broad smile, Tracker glanced between the boys, working a knot with one hand. Five days a week throughout the school year, he gave the same speech.
“Dat place full of de bad hoodoo. Oak so evil, it ooze out de bark. Dat why it so black. Black as de negroes hung from dem branches, dem dat don’t get no rest. Dey families burn it to set dey souls free, but dat don’t work. Dat next morning it stood as mean and ugly as ever. Dat spirit live dere is stronger and darker dan de hearts of dose men who pray for its power. Hoodoo priests.”
Arnaud spit the last words at the ground and gave the woods a slow scan, as if a swamp priest might sneak up on them. The ones Grady knew were just like anybody else. Sure they didn’t believe in Jesus and His disciples, and instead of dressing up nice, they came in ragged clothes, but Grady’s mama used to say it wasn’t a good Christian’s place to judge. Grady didn’t know if Tracker was a good Christian. He didn’t go to church either, but neither had any Perlson since their mama died.
“You see dem wit dey faces painted like Deat himself, you holla now. You hear?”
The story did its job. All five tourists sitting in Arnaud’s boat, two couples and a little girl, stared into the trees. When the girl looked a little too upset, like she might beg her parents to leave, Tracker stepped into the boat and leaned close.
“Don’t worry none, pretty girl. I ain’t met a single one of dem fools I couldn’t scare off by saying de Lord’s name. Dese boys here, dey my designated guardians. Gone up to dat tree and make sure de coast clear.”
Smiling brightly, the girl gave the brothers a sweet little wave. Grady returned it with an awkward one of his own, Henry swooping a dramatic bow like a fairy tale prince. The girl reacted the way most women did, with a blush in her cheeks and shy tilt of her head.
“Okay, boys.” Arnaud kicked the boat away from the dock and sat down in the captain’s chair. As the propeller whipped ripples over the water, he raised his stump.
The Perlson brothers waved back and rounded the bank to where the land angled to a small island. On it, a tall black oak sprouted like a massive hand pushing from the ground, its palm cupped toward the sky and fingers twisted into a claw. A half-rotten bridge connected the island to the woods. According to Arnaud, it was there before he was born, though it was impossible to know when he told the truth. Still, when the boards creaked and the bridge leaned, Grady believed.
As Grady prepared to cross, Henry grabbed his arm and pointed to the tree. A man knelt at the trunk, scraping away bark with a knife. The work kept a steady rhythm he joined with the deep bass of a song.
“Oh mother tell your children
not to do what I have done.
Spend your life in sin and misery
in the House of the Rising Sun.”
The brothers called him Jonathan, but he never told them his last name—an understandable precaution as one slip of their tongues might drop a rope around his neck. His face was as dark as the tree, his faded blue overalls strapped over a sweat-stained t-shirt.
Jonathan beamed as Grady and Henry crossed the bridge. “Mr. Grady and Mr. Henry. I was wondering if you boys were gonna show today.”
“You waiting on us?” Henry asked.
“Naw. Nothing like that. I was just thinking it was about time for you to come by.”
“Grady had to take care of some bullies out by Lebeau’s pasture.”
Tilting his head back, Jonathan peered down his nose. “Better them than me.”
“You see Tracker?” Grady asked.
“Sure did. You know what he shouted as he came through?”
Both brothers shook their heads.
“‘There’s one now!’ I’m not sure how to take that.”
“He got his tour all worked up over voodoo,” Henry said.
“Figures. Beats what I thought he meant.”
“Tracker wouldn’t say nothing like that,” Grady said.
“I’m not so sure. He might not mean it, but that man knows how to make money. He’d say anything for the right price.”
Jonathan capped the small glass vial of bark and folded his knife, putting both into the front pocket of his overalls. As he stood, he winced at the creak of his knees. “I’m starting to sound like this old tree.”
As Jonathan passed by, he patted Henry and Grady on their shoulders and limped to the old bridge. “You boys be careful here today. Something’s got this tree’s energy all tangled up. I’m not so sure if that’s good or bad.”
With a wave, Jonathan stepped between the trees and let the branches snap back behind him, a shuffle of leaves marking his path.
Grady directed a worried glance up through the oak’s twisted limbs. “What do you think that means?”
Dropping among the roots, Henry leaned back against the tree. “Nothing. Same with every religion. Wind blows a certain way, you gotta explain it. Things can’t just be things.”
It sounded like something their daddy would say, forgetting how Jesus and the angels were as much a part of their mama as the flutter in her eyelids when she laughed. Grady tried to pick his own way through the scripture but lost his place enough times he’d about memorized the first few chapters of Genesis, at least to the “begats” and “begots.”
They sat in silence within the near-perfect ring of dead grass around the oak’s trunk, the constant scratch of cicada song lulling Henry toward sleep.
Grady picked at the dried blood between his fingers. When he dropped his hands between his legs, he glanced at his brother. “I miss her.”
“Me too. Don’t think about it. It’ll go away.”
It was easier said than done that time of year. On every one of Job’s birthdays, someone wandered off to be alone. His special day had become an annual re-enactment of their mama’s funeral.
Grady pressed on. “Tomorrow’s gonna be hard.”
“Always is.”
Tugging at the grass, Grady just went for it. “Job’s never had a real birthday party.”
Henry stretched his arms and stood, offering a hand to help Grady up. “We should head home. Less we give Diane to bitch about, the better.”
Crossing the bridge to the trail, Grady picked over his words and stammered them. “You think she’ll die like Mama did?”
“You ought not talk like that. It’s a terrible thing to wish anybody dead. Even her.”
Grady frowned at his feet. “Sorry.”
“Besides, Daddy told me God takes the good people and leaves the bad to suffer. If that’s true, we’ll be stuck with her till we get out of Creek Hollow.”
“She said I’m too stupid to leave.”
Lips drawn tight to his teeth, Henry stopped. “She said that? You listen to me—you ain’t too stupid for anything. Don’t let nobody tell you different.”
Grady sighed. “You’re supposed to say that.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll take you with me when I go.”
“Promise?”
With a decisive nod, Henry continued down the trail. “You know I do.”
Grady followed. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Can we start bringing Job to the tree with us?”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to leave him with her anymore. He needs us.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I want to give him a real party tomorrow too.”
With a sharp laugh, Henry shook his head. “Cake and ice cream and all that? Where we gonna get the money?”
“I’ve got some saved. We could each put in half.”
“Now you want to spend my money too?”
“He ain’t ever had nothing like that. It’s not like we’ve gotta do it every year.”
Henry sighed. “I’ll give you the money when we get home.”
With a hard swallow, Grady pressed on. “Can you go get the stuff?”
“Why?”
“Tuck Marshall.”
As they rounded the last curve before their backyard, Henry glared at Grady. “I’m teaching you to fight that little fucker this summer.”
Henry stomped ahead. “Balloons and streamers. I’m not going broke for this shit.”
“Thank you.”
“Thanks nothing. I ain’t puttin’ up half, but I’ll cover what you can’t.”
As stubborn as their daddy, Henry wouldn’t give in unless he liked the idea. With a smile, Grady caught up to walk beside him into their yard.
On the kitchen steps, Job sat playing with a toy car. The ’57 Chevy was painted powder blue, the engine rumbling with the vibration of his lips. Orange flames once blazed across its doors, but the paint peeled a long time ago.
The car used to be Grady’s. His mama took him to Jeffers’s Dime Shop one Saturday to pay the electric bill, her belly swollen with Job. He’d be born in another week. She’d be gone. Grady had wandered to the shelf where the car sat at a slant, its headlights pointed at him. His mother said to bring it to the register. It was the last thing she bought him, the most important thing he owned until a few months ago, when Job woke crying about how he never met his mama. Grady gave him the car and called it a special gift from her.
The car slid sideways over the steps with Job’s squeal, a smile brightening his face as his brothers approached. Toy in hand, he rushed into the tall grass and tried to tackle Grady, who snatched him up and swung him over his shoulder.
Henry raised Job’s shirt and tickled him. “Wiggle and you fall.”
When Job’s squirming gasps grew sharp, Grady set him back on his feet.
“What’s for dinner, G.I. Joe?” Henry asked.
Sticking his tongue out, Job retched. “Shit stew.”
With a proud smile, Henry squeezed Job’s shoulder. “Don’t let Daddy hear you say that.”
“I won’t.”
Henry stuck his hand out, pinkie extended. “Swear?”
Wrapping his own little finger around Henry’s, Job nodded. “Swear.”
Henry was first into the kitchen, Job ahead of Grady. It gave him plenty of time to hide his sharp cringe at his first whiff of dinner. Not shit but close. His best guess was that Diane had boiled their daddy’s old socks.
She stood at the stove, stirring the foul concoction with her dreaded wooden spoon. The apron strained against an hourglass shape most people only saw in movies, another blonde bombshell like Marilyn Monroe. A different life might have found her in Hollywood, but in Creek Hollow, she slapped the spoon twice against the rim of the pot and dropped it to the counter. With a long drag of her cigarette, she stared at the boys with unmistakable disinterest.
Then she saw Grady’s shirt.
Snatching up the spoon, Diane pointed it at the dried blood. “What is that?”
Henry looked back at Grady with a sympathetic wince, but Grady nodded toward the living room. If Henry wanted to make it back by suppertime, he needed to go. With a short nod of his own, Henry went straight for the stairs.
Grady pushed the back door closed. “Blood.”
“You think we got a money tree out behind the shed?”
He fixed his attention on the floor between them. “No ma’am.”
“Then you must think I’ve got a closet full of shirts upstairs.”
“No ma’am.”
Diane stirred the pot some more, her spoon hitting the sides with a muffled thump. When Henry bounded back downstairs, Grady looked to the front door.
Henry gave a brief, apologetic wave and left him as Diane said through clenched teeth, “Hold out your hand.”
Trembling, Grady did as he was told. Steam curled from Diane’s spoon when she pulled it from the pot. She held it out for him to see and then slapped his knuckles hard. The pain was sharp and sudden like his bones broke, the remnants of scalding water leaving a lingering burn. When Grady cried out, Job sobbed upstairs.
As Diane dropped the spoon back into the pot, she lit another cigarette. “Don’t let me see you again until supper.”
Hand tucked to his stomach, Grady went upstairs to find Job and tell him it was okay. He was okay. It was over. He changed his bloody shirt and brought a deck of cards to Job’s room. They sat on the floor and played Go-Fish.
“Henry said he was meeting some girl,” Job said, giggling with a hand over his mouth.
Grady nodded as he dealt the cards. It was a better lie than anything he’d have come up with.
Two hours later, Roger Perlson’s car sputtered into the driveway. Grady imagined his grunt as he swiped the rolled-up newspaper from the ankle-high grass and scanned the yard, one hand scratching his head. The door downstairs opened and closed. Diane called them down to supper, her voice sweet now that their daddy was around.
When Grady stepped into the kitchen, Diane shot him a warning glare, not that it would do him any good to tell. His word would be against hers, and Henry said she had the tiebreaker between her legs.
Roger sat at the table behind his newspaper, his hair high and tight like he wore it in Korea. He cleared his throat as Grady and Job joined him.
“This summer, you boys are gonna help your mama around the house. No whining or complaining. Start with that yard out front, but do anything else she tells you. You hear me?”
“Yes sir,” Grady answered.
“Henry?” Roger peered over his paper and then glanced to Grady. “Where’s your brother?”
With a bright smile, Job kicked his feet under his chair. “He’s out with a girl.”
Roger’s mouth curled a proud smile. “That true?”
Henry should have been back. Something must have happened to him, but Grady hated to ruin his daddy’s good mood, rare as it was. So he nodded.
Roger mused and disappeared behind his newspaper. “How about that?”
After dinner, Grady slipped outside to the kitchen steps. It had been three hours. Henry could have walked around all of Creek Hollow twice and still been home in time to help with the dishes. He stared across the yard, into the trees. No one else knew where his brother really went. That left it up to him to say something.
An odd silence settled among the trees as Grady sat thinking. The birds stopped chirping across the sky, squirrels quit chittering on their branches. Something wrong grew in the shadows, hidden well enough he couldn’t identify it. But he felt it.
A moan came from somewhere in the dark—a deep mournful sound that lasted several seconds, so loud Grady couldn’t believe no one came out to investigate. He’d almost convinced himself he imagined it when a figure stumbled forward.
The boy bounced from tree to tree like a drunk on a Saturday night, a wide tear down the front of his shirt. His left leg dragged in jeans torn to strips along his thigh as he crossed the back yard with wide, glazed eyes. He made it halfway to the house before Grady realized it was Henry.
Though his jaw pumped, no words came from Henry’s mouth. He raised on his toes and spread his arms as if trying to fly, then flopped forward onto his face. The impact brought Grady to his feet, but Henry rolled onto his back to croak a laugh at the sky.
Grady approached with tentative steps and looked down into his brother’s face. Both eyes swam in total black, their voids deep enough to swallow someone stupid enough to wander too close. To be safe, Grady stepped back. Henry blinked, his eyes returning to their usual blue with a low, steady chuckle.
“You look like you saw the Devil. Ain’t you gonna help me up?”
It took all of Grady’s will to force out his hand. Henry pulled himself to his feet with a groan that evolved into his typical lop-sided smile. He reached for Grady’s shoulder, his smile fading at his brother’s flinch. Catching a handful of Grady’s hair, Henry twisted his head.
“Tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you.”
Henry’s other hand darted to Grady’s forehead, his thumb and pinkie squeezing his temples until the pressure forced him to his knees. He’d never hurt Grady before. Never tried. He was the bully beater, the Tuck chaser, but as Henry’s fingernails dug in, he didn’t seem to care about the pain he caused. “Swear or I’ll kill you now.”
As soon as Grady nodded, the pressure stopped. Henry took his hand away and folded all of its fingers except the pinkie. Without any choice, Grady wrapped his around it.
The intensity dissolved from Henry’s face, his eyes sagging to match the heavy slump of his arms. He rocked on his heels, half-asleep, and mussed Grady’s hair. “You okay?”
“What happened to you?”
Henry had no apparent clue what Grady meant. He followed his brother’s eyes to the tear in his shirt and frowned, running a hand over the rips in his jeans. “Shit. I need a favor.”
Grady went inside and upstairs, hoping neither his daddy nor Diane picked that specific time to ask what he was doing. Job was still in his bath, so he went to Henry’s room first, easing the door shut. He took a clean t-shirt and jeans from the dresser and slid open the window to toss down the clothes.
When Job ran across the hall in his robe, Grady crept to the bathroom. He soaked a towel and brought it to Henry’s window, the weight hitting the ground like a gunshot. It froze Henry in midstep across the yard, but no one said a word downstairs. Towel in hand, Henry waved at Grady and receded into the shadows to clean up.
Grady went to his bedroom and cut off the light. He got in bed on top of the sheets and listened for the bang of the kitchen’s screen door and muffled voices as Henry made up a story about his date. But the lie didn’t hide party supplies for Job’s birthday. Instead of balloons and streamers, he’d carried something else from the woods, something that grew more terrible the longer Grady remembered its dark, empty eyes.
Worry drove away sleep, Grady sitting up to stare at the door. His brother’s steps plodded down the hall and stopped outside his room, two brief shadows interrupting the strip of light above the floor. Grady held his breath, convinced even a measured exhale would give him away. The floorboards eventually creaked and shadows slipped away, the heavy steps moving on to Henry’s room.
As Henry’s door clicked shut, Grady dropped back to stare at the ceiling. A spastic shiver traveled his spine and hands clenched as fear took hold, relishing all the moments he’d deprived it. Henry’s drunken stumble and deep foreign laugh. His hand’s painful grip and the threat that came with it.
By his racing thoughts, Grady doubted he’d sleep a second, but his blinks inevitably slowed until one lasted for hours. He surged awake with a hand pressed to his mouth, fingers pinching his nostrils shut. At first, he didn’t know where he was, the shape bending over him a silhouette in the window’s dim light. He struggled and shoved hard, rocking the shadow against his dresser. It froze with the thump of the impact, cursing in Henry’s voice.
With one hand raised in surrender and the other pressing a finger to his lips, Henry came forward. “What’s the big idea? I was just waking you up.”
Rubbing his eyes, Grady sat up. “You coulda shook me.”
“I tried that.”
“The sun ain’t even up.”
“You’re the one who wanted today to be special. But if you want to call it off—”
Grady flopped back with a grunt. “It’s too early.”
Near the bedroom door, a floorboard creaked. In the sparse moonlight, a shorter shadow leaned against the wall. Henry woke Job first. Early or not, they’d never get him back to bed.
Forcing himself to stand, Grady yawned. “Fine. I’m up.”
The three brothers snuck down the hall and past the last bedroom on the left, their daddy’s snores loud through the door. Job missed a step halfway down the stairs and slipped forward, Grady snagging his shirt to tug him upright. The rusted hinges of the kitchen’s screen door stood as their final obstacle, but Henry managed it open and shut with barely a squeak.
Half-asleep, Job and Grady followed Henry across the backyard to the trail. When they were far enough down it to see nothing but woods, Job looked around with a sudden wariness. “Where are we going?”
“We’re almost there,” Henry answered without looking back.
When the trail opened up at the swamp, Job stared at the large oak with his arms limp at his side. Streamers dangled from the limbs with a balloon tied around the end of each. The tree resembled a carnival ride, missing only flashing lights and organ music. How many times had Henry climbed up and down to get it all done? If nothing else, it explained why he came home so late without decorations. With another hour or two of sleep, Grady might even have laughed.
Job whispered a soft breath. “Whoa.”
“Happy birthday.” Beaming, Henry put a hand on Job’s shoulder and steered him to the bridge. Job kept his attention on the oak’s sprawling branches until his neck craned back.
Grady stared at the drifting streamers, their color a mystery in the pale light. It was another reason they should have waited, but he didn’t bring it up, instead revisiting what happened last night. Had that all been part of the act? He wouldn’t put it past Henry to play a trick on him as payment for the party. Half-convinced, he followed his brothers to the island. Under the oak, he squatted beside Job.
“This is where we go every day. From now on, we want you to come with us.”
Job’s face brightened. “I don’t have to stay with Diane anymore?”
Grady shook his head with a soft smile.
Throwing his arms around Grady’s neck, Job squeezed.
With his hands on Job’s waist, Grady tried to stand but stumbled. He caught himself on the trunk, his hand planted firmly on its black bark. A jolt ran through his fingers as if he’d touched an electric fence, the current both pulling and forcing him away. As he shook his hand in the air to get the feeling back, he remembered what Jonathan said.
Something’s got this tree’s energy all tangled up. I’m not so sure if that’s good or bad.
Grady set Job down, his little brother eyeing him with a curious concern. Before he could ask what was wrong, Henry stepped between them.
“Time to climb.”
With a short step back, Job looked at Henry like he was crazy. “Climb that?”
The electric buzz faded, but a stranger sensation settled in the back of Grady’s head, a nagging tightness he tried to shake away. He turned from the tree to face Henry. “I never said he had to climb.”
“I do. That’s the deal. He don’t want to, we take him back home.”
Job protested with a stomp. “No!”
Henry waited for Grady’s answer.
After a moment to consider it, Grady shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”
With his hands open at his sides, Henry shrugged. “That your decision?”
Eyes flared and desperate, Job grabbed Grady’s wrist. “Don’t make me go back there with her.”
Considering his little brother, Grady whispered. “Okay.”
As Job crept to the tree, he drew a deep, nervous breath. He wrapped his arms around the trunk with no clue what came next. His first step onto the bark slid him down hard. Behind him, Henry laughed.
Job looked back with a frown. “How do I do it?”
Henry pointed to Grady. “Let him go first to show you how it’s done.”
Trading places with Job, Grady stepped onto a clump of the oak’s roots. He raised his arms and jumped, kicking off the trunk to grab the lowest limb.
“Go on ahead,” Henry said. “We’ll need room.”
Grady climbed two branches as Henry ushered Job to the roots and lifted him. With his arms wrapped around the first limb, Job pressed his face to the wood.
“Hold on tight.” Henry stepped back and left Job dangling, his tiny legs kicking in a brief panic. Bounding onto the branch, Henry grabbed Job’s hands and pulled him up.
Job straddled the limb and glanced down, his face pale. He was already high enough to do worse than bruise a knee or twist his ankle if he fell. When he looked into the silent, unreadable expression on Henry’s face, he took a deep breath and climbed to the next branch.
With slow but steady progress, Job’s first real obstacle waited on the other side of the trunk. The gap between two limbs would be impossible without Henry’s help. Calling for him to wait, Henry swung out over the space and draped his legs across the limb like a trapeze artist.
Job whined. “It’s too far.”
“Just grab my hands and I’ll swing you.”
“Swing?”
“You’ve come this far.”
“I can’t do it.”
“You can or you wait here.”
Clinging to the trunk, Job cried out. “Don’t leave me.”
“Then you have to trust me.”
Tears streamed Job’s cheeks, but he extended a hand over the gap. Henry swung toward him, their fingers meeting before slipping apart. He beckoned Job to lean further and grabbed his wrists to pull him into the empty air.
Kicking, Job screeched. Henry laughed as he swung him, his smile sharp and sadistic, but it didn’t disturb Grady nearly as bad as the return of the black void in his eyes.
Job clung to Henry’s wrists, sobbing.
“Stop it!” Grady shouted, his breath catching as Henry opened his hands.
Flailing, Job dropped, his scream cutting the air. His head smacked a limb and flipped his body over before he crashed to the ground. Arms and legs spread across the white grass, he went silent.
Henry descended the tree fast. When Grady reached the ground, he dropped to his knees beside his still brother, a hand hovering above Job’s wet, tangled hair. The neck was twisted, his face at an awkward angle toward the swamp. His mouth hung open as if he’d been interrupted midsentence, teeth stained with drying blood.
Something welled in Grady until he was afraid he’d explode if he didn’t let it out. With a sob, he doubled over on the ground and gagged.
Henry’s voice strained. “I lost my grip. It was an accident.”
“You meant to do it. I saw it in your eyes.”
“Keep saying stuff like that, they’ll send me away. You want to be stuck with Diane all your life? Just you in that house with nothing between you and her but a wooden spoon? Daddy will blame you as much as me. Even if he won’t say it, you’ll see it when he looks at you. But go ahead and tell them. I won’t argue.”
Tears came, though Grady didn’t want them. “Why did you do this?”
“Because I had to.”
Sighing, Henry squatted beside Grady and pulled him to sit. He clamped a hand on his forehead like he did the night before, the world spinning to a slow blur as an empty feeling spread across Grady’s chest. Henry and the tree. Job and the grass. Twisting like a tornado. Spinning until he couldn’t focus.
Voices shouted from the trail as Roger and Diane came to find out what all the yelling was about. Through the winds whipping through Grady’s mind, he remembered the Bible, his last connection to his dead mama. She used to read him stories, one about the brothers Cain and Abel. He never understood why Cain killed his brother. When he asked, she’d said sometimes people hurt each other, their reasons amounting to nothing but words.
Henry used some of those words to lie to their daddy. There were no accusations. No demands for an explanation. In place of any of that, Roger Perlson cried for the first time in six years. The sound drew closer until Grady’s daddy stood beside him.
Whether or not anyone listened, Grady whispered a word before he slipped into darkness.
“Cain.”
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