Deadfall Read online

  They’d just entered the Portland city limits when Cory asked him for the second time who this partner was. “You know of him,” Benny said. “But you’ll meet him soon enough and don’t fret, you’ll like him jus’ fine.”

  Well, we met your partner, Cory thought as he followed Ty into the Gas Mart, and I don’t see any good coming from it.

  They ate their corn dogs plus an order of jalapeño nachos without talking while the cashier with earbuds hummed and mopped around them.

  Finished with his second corn dog, Cory said, “I think I know who he is.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember where Dad met Mom?”

  “At a bar in Seattle.”

  Cory smiled. “A bar” was how the story went, but he and Ty both knew what kind of bar it was. “Do you remember who introduced them?”

  “A friend of Dad’s. He worked at the bar with Mom.”

  “He was one of the bouncers. Mom said he got jailed for almost killing a patron that was hitting on one of the girls. Dad said that’s what the manager told the police, but it was really for some other thing. He never told us what that other thing was. But he did say that this guy was the biggest baddest mofo he’d ever seen, hands down. And…” Cory watched Ty dip a nacho into cheese. “He said this guy cut off the tip of his finger just to prove he could do it.”

  Ty paused, mid-dip. “Oh shit. Now I remember. He’s that guy?”

  “Yup.”

  After an hour and a half the clerk told them they needed to buy something or move on. With no money left, they walked back to the motel. Tirk’s truck was still there. Room 115 was dark. Ty used the spare key to open the door. The TV was on, an old Western playing black and white on the screen. In the dim light they took in all the empty cans, the whiskey bottle sideways on the floor and the air still thick with smoke from cigarettes and weed. Tirk was gone, so was Benny.

  Ty found a note on the toilet seat.

  Don’t wait up. Stay off my bed.

  Ty nodded to the other bed, said, “Rock-paper-scissors?”

  Cory said, “Sure.”

  Ty won, scissors cut paper. He pulled the bedspread off the bed and gave it to Cory.

  “Do I at least get the pillow?” Cory asked.

  Ty said, “Use Benny’s. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  Cory took the pillow. Turned off the TV. Realized he hadn’t brushed his teeth, that all his stuff was at the home they no longer had. “We should’ve bought toothpaste and brushes instead of the nachos,” he said.

  Ty said, “Use your finger. That’s what I did.”

  All Cory wanted to do was sleep. To put this day behind him. He lowered himself to the floor, curled up under a bedspread that smelled like cigarette butts and old sweat. He tried not to think about the crusted stains on the carpet underneath him.

  Ty said, “Yo. How is it down there?”

  “I can’t hear you,” Cory answered. “There’s a cockroach in my ear.”

  The brothers laughed themselves to sleep.

  TANUM CREEK

  NOW

  10

  We hike in a tight line without talking, Ty in front scanning the ground with his headlamp, then the girl, then me lighting up the ground for her. The terrain below the wreck is just as steep and cluttered as it was coming down from the road. I think how impossible this would be if I was still fat. Ty leads us around rocks and over blowdowns. I’ve seen him play football enough to know when he’s hurt, and it looks like he’s favoring his left ankle. That probably happened on his mad dash down from the car. The girl’s canvas sneakers are worthless on the slick pine needles and rain-soaked mud underneath. She can’t afford to fall on her bad arm, so each step is carefully placed, plus there’s me with the backpack that seems to catch on every branch and twig.

  Meanwhile there’s this nagging drumbeat in the back of my head. I can’t stop thinking that I hear the driver’s footsteps behind me and that I have a big red target on my back. I wonder if the mess kit in my pack could stop a bullet.

  After a few minutes Ty stops at the top of a particularly steep section strewn with deadfall. His beam doesn’t reach the bottom. He turns ninety degrees and, keeping his left ankle on the uphill slope, works his way down sideways, grabbing on to branches and bushes as he goes. The girl with only one good arm seems to know this part will be a problem. She turns, looks up at me, takes two cautious steps, slips on the wet pine needles, and lands on her right side. She slides a couple feet before stopping when her foot lodges against a rock. I’m afraid she’ll cry out in pain, but she keeps it in. All I hear is a soft moan—it’s the first sound she’s made since we cut the zip ties. I walk down to her, offer my still-bleeding hand, and help her up. It’s a struggle to get her up because of the steep angle. Her hand, slick with mud and still shaking from the fall, grips mine and we descend the remaining sixty feet together. Ty is waiting for us at the bottom. The slope is gentle here, almost flat. Ty starts walking, gets about four steps. There’s a massive KA-THUMP!

  We stop, turn around, and stare at the source. The sky is lit up by a bright orange glow rising above the trees. It reminds me of another dark night and I fight off the chill.

  Ty whispers, “Was that the wreck?”

  “Probably.”

  “Tying up loose ends?”

  “Yup.”

  He says to the girl, “Can you move any faster?”

  A beat. She nods. But it’s not very convincing.

  “Good. ’Cause otherwise we were gonna leave your ass.”

  He flashes a smile like it was a joke.

  I’m not so sure.

  PORTLAND, OR.

  THIRTEEN MONTHS AGO

  11

  Benny pulled the T&B Towing Inc. truck into the driveway of a small two-story home set back in trees and bordered on three sides by tall, dense hedges. He switched off the engine, lit a Camel, and said, “There she is, boys. What d’ya think?”

  “Think about what?” Ty asked.

  “Our new address.”

  Cory peered out the window. After two weeks in Motel Hell and three months in a one-bedroom apartment where Benny rarely slept alone, this wasn’t much of an upgrade. The exterior paint was peeling so bad it looked like the home had diseased skin. A detached one-car garage at the end of the driveway had two broken windows and the front porch was one loose nail from collapsing. Everything seemed to sag or droop or lean, like the house just wanted to die. Cory didn’t have a good view of the backyard, but he could see weeds littered with garbage and two mattresses stacked against a decaying green sofa. Despite its flaws, this place was bigger than their old apartment—and the odds of catching a random bullet seemed a whole lot less likely.

  Ty said, “We’re moving here?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What high school is it?”

  “Don’t know, don’t matter.”

  “We’re pretty close to Jefferson,” Cory said.

  “Jefferson?” Ty said, nearly spitting the name. “Their football team isn’t even ranked in the top twenty in the state.”

  “So you turn ’em around.”

  “I have a game on Friday. You can’t do this to me. Not again. Coach Nelson won’t—”

  “I called Coach Nelson this morning. Told him he’s gonna have to find a different running back.”

  Ty hesitated. “What did he say?”

  Benny lit his cigarette and opened the door. “He said turn in your uniform or you lose your deposit.”

  Benny, trailing smoke, led them to the front door. He turned the knob like he knew it would open and they walked in. The stench of rotted flesh nearly dropped Cory to his knees. There was clothing scattered on the floor and draped over furniture, at least a half dozen fist-size holes in the drywall, and two bowls of mold-covered sludge on a coffee table next to a hash pipe and a People magazine with half the cover burned off. He wondered about the circumstances that could bring someone to leave a house in this state.

  Ty said to Benny
, “You’re moving us into a crack house?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Benny said. “Job one is to find the source of that smell. You guys check upstairs, I’ll look down here. If there’s a body don’t mess with it till I call Tirk.”

  Cory and Ty climbed the stairs, Cory dreading each step. The electricity wasn’t working, so the only light came from a web-clouded window at the top of the stairs. They stood on the landing for a minute, looked down a short hall with three doors in a row, the middle one closed. The rooms with open doors had two mattresses on the floor with the crumpled bedding still on them. Each room had a small closet, which they also checked. Lots of junkie trash all around, including a couple used syringes, but nothing dead other than flies on windowsills. The middle door opened to a bathroom. It reeked, but it wasn’t rotting meat. Ty was about to look behind the closed shower curtain when Benny yelled up from the foot of the stairs, “Found it. Git your asses down here. I’m gonna need some help.”

  Benny was in the kitchen facing the oven. “Open ’er up,” he said. “Take a look at what’s for dinner.” At first Cory thought it was a baby with a bandana around its neck. A little baby, all gray and mushy and collapsing inward. Then he saw a pointy ear and counted four legs instead of two. He almost added his vomit to the stench.

  Ty said, “Is that a pig?”

  “Bingo,” Benny said. “A little potbellied pig.” He shook his head. “Looks like someone wanted baby backs. C’mon. Let’s move ’er out so we can start enjoying our fine new home.”

  Cory found two shovels in the garage. They wrapped the carcass in a bedsheet from upstairs and dragged it to a distant corner of the backyard. While he and Ty dug a hole deep enough to keep the skunks out, Benny headed for a shed about twenty feet from the back porch. He used a key on his chain to open a heavy-duty padlock, and closed the door behind him. Cory heard a dead bolt slam home. Benny emerged five minutes later, relocked the door, then joined the boys as Ty kicked the pig carcass into the hole. They covered it with dirt.

  Benny said, “Time to go. I got places to be.”

  They returned to the truck, climbed inside, and Benny cranked the engine. His phone rang as he backed out of the driveway. “Yeah,” Benny said. Then after a beat, “They’re right here beside me.” Benny pulled a K-turn on the road, headed west, and said, “Your previous tenants dumped concrete in the toilets and we found a rotting pig carcass in the oven. How’s that for problems?” He listened again. “It’s all provisioned like you said. We’re good to go.” Cory heard Tirk’s barrel-deep voice on the phone, but could only make out a couple of sentence fragments. One being up the delivery and the other the client expects. After a minute of listening, Benny frowned and said, “Man, that’s a big fucking change of plans!…Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll be at the warehouse by ten…. Don’t worry about me…. You…you…you just tell him to do his part, I’ll do mine!” He slammed his phone on the dash, muttered something under his breath, tapped out a cigarette, and lit it.

  On I-84 headed back to the apartment, Benny outlined his renovation plans for the house starting with a new oven and three beds. He’d pick up some furniture and kitchen shit at Goodwill, find a plumber to deal with the concrete in the toilets. They’d do the drywall repair and interior painting themselves. Then come spring he’d shore up the front porch, replace the rotted wood, then scrape and paint the fucker top to bottom. “Any questions?” he said.

  Cory said, “If we found a body in the house, why did you want to call Tirk first?”

  “Being one of his rentals, I’d expect he’d have an opinion on the subject.”

  Cory decided if they did find a body, Tirk’s solution would be to dig a bigger hole. He said, “Just to be clear, we’re renting the house from Tirk?”

  “How much clearer do I need to make it?”

  “For how much?”

  “An’ why is that your concern?”

  “I’m just wondering.”

  “Me too,” Ty said.

  “Let’s jus’ say we have a side arrangement.”

  Ty said, “What kind of side arrangement?”

  “My inclination is to say it’s a none-of-your-damn-business kind of side arrangement. But since we’re having a sharing moment an’ I’m in a generous mood—this here’s a rent-to-buy situation. We do the repairs, he’ll apply our labor to the purchase price.”

  “And you trust him?” Cory said.

  “You best watch that tone, son. The less you sound like your mom the better.”

  “But it’s a shithole,” Ty said. “Even the junkies bailed on it.”

  “Maybe on the outside. But her bones are good. We keep at it an’ she’ll be fixed up by Thanksgiving. Then we’ll have us a feast fit for kings!”

  Ty said, “Just like Stumptown. That never happened.”

  “We’ll get there someday. I’ve just been busy makin’ us a life.”

  Silence descended on them as Benny slowed for traffic. Flares closed one lane. A quarter mile later they saw a wrecked Porsche 911 sideways next to an SUV with the front end crushed. Police and ambulance lights strobed in the dimming light.

  Benny said, “See. Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Business is pickin’ up. An’ boys, it’s about to get a shitload better.”

  Ty snorted. “A shitload?”

  “In that neighborhood.”

  “Why? What does Tirk have you doing now?”

  As they passed the two wrecks a stretcher was being loaded into the back of the ambulance. Instead of answering Ty’s question, Benny said, “Like I keep sayin’, praise the Lord for California drivers an’ their fancy-ass cars.”

  There was one feature to the house that Benny hadn’t mentioned. Cory didn’t know why, and he preferred to keep it that way. But two blocks from their apartment, Ty said, “Want to know what I liked best about the crack house?”

  Benny popped a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “I’m listenin’.”

  “The shed.”

  Benny blew smoke against the windshield, said nothing.

  Cory willed Ty to drop it there, but he knew that wouldn’t happen.

  Ty smiled at Benny. “I’m thinking we could stay in the shed while you remodel the house.”

  After a beat, Benny said, “Only one person goes in there, an’ that person’s me.”

  “What about Tirk?” Ty said.

  Benny stopped at the intersection a half block before their apartment building. He looked at Ty. “Your finger’s on a button you do not wanna push. Are we clear?” He stomped on the gas.

  Ty just smiled.

  Benny swung into the apartment parking lot, pulled up to their spot, and drilled Ty with both eyes firing. “I said are we FUCKIN’ CLEAR?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not good enough. Exactly how clear are we?”

  “As a fuckin’ bell.”

  “That’s right. An’ that’s how she stays.” His tone softened but his eyes did not. “Now I got affairs to attend to, so don’t expect me till late.”

  “How late?” Cory asked.

  “Depends on how things go. Somewhere between midnight and sunup. Can you scrape up enough dinner money for Domino’s?”

  “Probably.”

  “All right. When I get back I want all your shit packed and the place cleaned. We need the deposit money, so don’t do a half-assed job. Move-out day’s tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Ty kicked the floorboard. “But I have a game!”

  “Not no more you don’t.”

  “This is total bullsh—”

  “The whining stops now! You hear me? I already gave my notice. The new renters move in on Sunday. An’ that’s the final word on that subject.”

  They climbed out. Ty slammed the door. Benny roared away.

  Watching him leave, Cory said, “What warehouse was he talking about on the phone earlier?”

  Ty’s focus was somewhere else. His eyes, narrowed down to slits, were on the taillights as they disappeared around a corner. Cory wai
ted with him for a minute, then softly said, “I’ll call Domino’s.” He climbed the stairs to their second-floor apartment, keyed the door open, sat on the couch that had been his bed for too long, and surveyed the soul-sucking mess he and Ty would have to clean tonight, figured there were three Hefty bags just in empties. Cory punched up Domino’s on his phone, ordered a medium cheese since there wasn’t enough change for pepperoni plus a dollar tip. He saw his chemistry book on the kitchen table and thought about doing his assignment, but didn’t figure there was a point. Then he felt the urge to call his mother, couldn’t push it away, and scrolled down through his contacts till he found her name. Not because he didn’t know her number. Because he wanted to see the contact there, make sure it hadn’t been deleted like it was from Ty’s phone. He hovered his thumb over the call button, but knew the result would be no different than the last twenty times he tried. Three beeps, then a message saying, This number is no longer in service. He put down the phone, switched on the TV and the PS4, slipped on his headphones. He was ready for virtual reality to replace the smothering truth of here and now.

  When the pizza guy arrived thirty minutes later, Ty was still outside. A soft rain was falling. Ty hadn’t moved an inch. Cory watched him from the window while chewing a slice of pizza, considered bringing him a slice but decided Ty had a different kind of hunger. Instead, Cory thought of the house and Benny’s plans to fix it up. Yeah, there were all kinds of disappointments lining up on that horizon. With Tirk involved it could go sideways and fast. But Benny seemed determined to make it work. The thought of having his own space, a place to get away from Ty’s constant training. Away from Benny’s smoking, from his stumbling in at two a.m. with some drunk woman wearing too much perfume bumping into the couch and falling on him and giggling on her way to Benny’s bedroom followed by thirty minutes of moaning through the wall three feet away. He was way past ready to leave all that behind. Then maybe he’d be able to have actual friends with actual names instead of toadztool and durk_sqrtr. They’d come over to play Bloodborne on the sixty-inch Vizio Benny said they’d get, or just hang out watching Walking Dead reruns on Netflix. Just do the stuff he heard other kids talk about.