Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,18
didn’t either. He just liked telling him he looked like a fucking retard.
“The skinnier the better, ain’t that right Cleave?” Earl went on. “That’s what you always say. Leave them fat meats to the pretty boys who can pay someone to change the bearings and seals every year. That’s what you always say, Cleave.” He burped, a loud, maggoty one smelling of food left in the sun for a few days. “And he don’t got no sense using a stick shift. Not for a big old slophole like that. Am I right, Cleave? Am I right?”
Cleavon grunted but said nothing to his brother. On the screen a young fella began wading into the waist-deep muck to attach a tow strap to the truck’s front hook. Suddenly the picture hiccupped, then went haywire, flickering all over the place.
“For fuck’s sake!” Cleavon said.
“It’s all right, Cleave,” Earl said. “You just gotta leave it for a bit, is what you gotta do.”
Cleavon eased himself to his feet and crossed the room, delicately, like he was walking on egg shells, one hand pressed to his forehead. He smacked the top of the TV, the headache making him hit it harder than he’d intended.
“Hey!” Earl said. “That ain’t helping—”
“Shut it,” Cleavon growled. He began fiddling with the rabbit-ear antennae. “Get the light, Earl, I can’t see shit in the dark.”
Earl set his beer on the floor, which his gorilla arms reached sitting like he was. Then he heaved his monstrous bulk out of the recliner, which sprang back and forth with what might have been joy. He lumbered across the room, burping once again, and hit the light switch. The sixty-watt bulb dangling from the socket where their parents’ chandelier used to hang blinked on.
Cleavon fiddled with the antennae for a full minute, but all he managed to do was wake his fucking headache. Grimacing, he tore the rabbit ears loose and tossed them across the room.
“Hey, Cleave, why’d you do that?” Earl said, going to pick them up. “That’s not helping, throwing them like that. How’s that helping? You gonna break them. And you break them, and that’s it, they just won’t work.”
“Shut the fuck up, Earl,” Cleavon snapped. “I’m in no mind for your bullshitting right now. I been in the garage all day, I’m beat to shit, and also, I got a headache like a motherfucker. So shut the fuck up with your bullshitting.” He went to the cooler, rubbing his forehead. There were no beers left. Four empties sat in a line next to Earl’s recliner. “You drank all the beer, Earl?”
“I did not, Cleave,” Earl said. “We shared them. They were sitting there, we were sharing them.”
“I had two, you had four. That don’t sound like sharing to me. That sounds like you having twice as much as me, you fat shit.”
“I wasn’t counting.” Earl shrugged his big shoulders. “Besides, I got them, didn’t I? I went to the shed, I told you, I said, the TV got a signal, some monster truck racing, you wanna watch it, have some beers. Then I filled up the cooler with ice and a six pack. You didn’t do nothing but come in here and sit down—”
“Aw, shut up, Earl,” Cleavon said. He left the den and went down the hallway to the kitchen. The headache felt like a drill behind his eyes. While he’d been sitting in the recliner, it had almost faded to nothing. But all that fussing around with the TV had pissed it off, and it was drilling like a sonofabitch now.
He stepped into the kitchen and stopped at the sight of the Corn Flakes scattered on the floor, the soured milk puddled on the countertop. “Floyd!” he shouted, then cringed as the headache drilled deeper. “Floyd!”
There was no answer. Cleavon expect one either. Floyd was deaf as a fencepost and had been that way for a good ten years now. You wouldn’t believe what happened to the stupid fuck. Cleavon didn’t at first. He could still see Floyd as clearly as if it were yesterday, come stumbling back to the farm, clothes torn, blood pouring down his face, looking like he’d gone insane. But he and Earl had never changed their story, not once, so Cleavon believed it happened the way they’d said it happened.
Floyd and Earl had been hunting rabbits. What they’d do, they’d catch one of the rabbits in a trap, tie a stick of dynamite around it, light the wick, and let it go. Nine