Teeth clenched to force back the emotions that always tried to insinuate their way into the forefront of his mind whenever he remembered his lost sister, Luke climbed the small rise where the bare earth narrowed to a single trail that wound unsteadily through a short stretch of wild untended grass. The woodshed was narrow, and old, the wood bleached by the sun so it was a mottled white, with patches of gray. In the rapidly fading light, it looked leprous, with yellow light around the edges. The door bent outward at the bottom like a well-turned page, and as he approached, that splintered corner scraped dirt and the door swung wide with a sound like rocks tumbling down a hollow pipe.
Luke stopped in his tracks.
Though not a large man, Papa-In-Gray cut an imposing figure. In daylight, his skin was the same shade as the door that was now swinging away from him. In town, he was respected, but it was respect borne of fear. At home, among his kin, things were not much different. Now, in the gloom, beneath his angular, inverted triangle of a face, the chin topped with a peppering of silver stubble, Papa wore a dirty brown apron, which Luke himself had made for him from the skin of one of the men they had caught the summer before. Strands of blue nylon rope had been looped through holes at the top corners of the apron, the holes ringed by steel washers to stop the rope from sawing through, keeping the rough rectangle in place, and also, as was the case now, to conceal the wearer’s nakedness.
Grim-faced, Papa raised his right hand. In it, he held the head of one of the youths—the one the girl had called ‘Stu’, which the family had found amusing since they figured this was most likely going to be the way he ended up. His blonde hair, though matted with filth now, still managed to retain a healthy look death had denied the rest of his body. The tanned handsome face of which Luke had found himself mildly envious, was no longer so handsome, slackened now by the pain that had ushered it into death. The eyes were closed, pale brows arched, the thick-lipped mouth open slightly, as if starting a sentence that would forever remain unspoken. Papa-in-Gray very rarely did a sloppy job with the carcasses and this one was no different. The machete had made a good straight cut through the boy’s neck, and no bone or flesh protruded from the wound.
“A good’un,” Papa said now, in his gravelly voice. “Who took the girl?”
Luke couldn’t meet his gaze as he spoke, so instead he stared at the ground. “Big red truck came and picked ’er off the road. Two niggers—one old, one young it looked like. They made off with her. Headin’ east.”
Behind his father, Luke glimpsed the rest of the boy’s naked body, splayed out on the worktable in the shed underneath a single bare light bulb. His hands and feet were gone, and his chest had been opened and excavated, the organs collected in a rusty bucket on the floor. As Luke tried to get a better look, Papa surprised him by tossing the severed head in his direction. Caught off guard, it hit Luke in the chest and he was knocked back a step. With a grunt, he staggered, feet splayed, and quickly righted himself, grabbing with his crooked fingers a handful of the boy’s hair just seconds before it hit the ground, a development he knew would not have impressed his father.
As if anything ever would.
Exhaling heavily, Luke straightened and clutched the head to his chest. Papa-in-Gray nodded, but it was not a gesture of satisfaction, rather confirmation that his disdain for Luke was justified, and no one would ever convince him otherwise.
“Take it,” the old man said, wiping bloodstained hands on the apron. The flesh seemed to soak it in. “We’re bringin’ it with us. Tell the others to get themselves a piece of those kids each’n load ’em up.”
Though Luke wasn’t sure why they were bringing along pieces of the dead kids, he knew better than to question Papa’s instructions.
“All right,” he said, and waited.
“Tell Aaron bring the truck ’round, and make sure all you boys got yer knives.” He looked over Luke’s shoulder. “Get movin’.”
Luke started to say something, but Papa turned his back on him, and in two short steps was back inside the shed, the door swinging shut behind him.
As he stood there, the rain still pattering on his shoulders, the severed head gripped firmly by its hair, Luke felt overcome by bitterness toward the old man, who, ever since that day in the clearing with Susanna, had shown no affection, or respect toward him, not even a little. Worse, the old bastard had never once sat him down to explain why he’d done what he’d done to his sister, why they couldn’t have just let her go, or maybe tried to talk some sense into her. No, he’d left that task to Momma-in-Bed, and he suspected, at the back of his mind, that all she’d done was make excuses because she wasn’t rightly sure herself, no matter what she’d said about the poison in his seed. Neither one of his parents had grieved for her.
Luke turned away, and looked from the head to the semicircle of bodies huddled around the fire—his brothers, still eating, Matt’s skin draped like an animal hide across a battered old workhorse between them and the four ramshackle sheds they used for the Men of the World. Luke hadn’t given them the order to keep the skin for Momma. They had known, most likely because one or more of them had been listening at the window when Momma said it, and they’d worked quickly. For one brief moment, a flame ignited inside him, hot enough to make tears of shame and hurt blur his vision. He imagined them crouched down beneath that dirt-smeared glass, their heads bowed as they listened to the story of cold-blooded murder, his part in it, and the warning he was given. They would have heard the fear in his voice that only surfaced when Momma or Papa threatened him. They would have heard it all, and hurried to deny him the one command he could use to reinstate his authority over them. Then they’d watched him—he had felt their stares on his back as sure as the rain—through the smoke and heat from their meal, as he’d picked his way toward Papa’s shed. And they would have known he would find even less warmth up there, a fact confirmed by their father’s sudden tossing of the severed head, done, Luke guessed, to entertain his other, more faithful sons. In fumbling it, Luke had given them all exactly what they’d wanted.
As he approached them now, he forced a crooked smile. They looked up expectantly, blood and fat smeared across their faces.
“You been cryin’?” Aaron asked tonelessly.
Luke shook his head. Not crying, he wanted to say. Just ’memberin’ how much I hate that kin-killin’ son of a bitch. But he would never say such a thing, no matter how true it might be. To say it aloud would be to condemn himself, for he had no doubt that as soon as the words left his mouth, Papa would hear them. And a blade would cut those words in the same swing that took Luke’s head off at the shoulders. His brothers would mourn him without weeping, devour his flesh without hesitation, and promptly forget he’d ever existed, like they seem to have done with Susanna and now Matt, their gentle brother, who would be remembered only for today, and only when the taste of him rolled back up their throats. So instead he took a deep breath, watched as Joshua and Isaac stared curiously at the head in their brother’s hands, and delivered the instructions his father had given to him.