“What happened to Merle?”
“He managed to get his big ass off the ground and to his folks’ house, but he was all messed up. He had to be holed up at the hospital down in Waymore for damn near two weeks. The poor bastard almost died. We didn’t get to see him until way after, but even then he had tubes and shit runnin’ out of him to drain the pus, and his eyes were swollen shut. He never did talk right again. We felt bad, ’cause of runnin’ and all, but damn, what were we supposed to do?”
“That’s messed up,” Clayton said.
“Yeah, well, we handled it the next day. Once we found out Merle was in the hospital, we headed back up to the Southern Ridge to clear those suckers out. I mean, that was our spot. We hung out there. A bunch of hornets weren’t gonna just build a nest and sting up our friends. We were there first. You understand what I’m saying?” Hal shot a stern look at his little brother to reinforce the question, and awareness spilled over Clayton like a bucket of well water. He nodded. They weren’t just talking about hornets.
“We marched our happy asses into the woods, and sure as shit, we found the nest hanging in a hollowed-out pine tree probably right over where Big Merle tried to take a piss. We brought a can of gas to torch the thing, but it was way too high for any of us to reach, so Buckley’s crazy ass starts dousing the whole damn tree. We could’ve burned the whole mountain down—dumb-ass kids—but we didn’t know no better. Scabby Mike lit that bitch up, and it took off faster than all get-out.”
“The whole tree?”
“The whole tree. We just sat back and watched it burn. When the fire took to the hornet’s nest, I swear I could hear ’em screamin’. Whistlin’ like fireworks. It felt good to hear them burn like that.”
“Then what happened?”
“Deddy saw the smoke from the house and him and Jimbo Cartwright come haulin’ ass out there. We cut a break to contain it and managed to get the fire out before it spread.”
“Was he mad?” Clayton immediately regretted asking that question.
“Well, goddamn, Clayton, what do you think? Hell, yeah, he was mad. I toted a legendary ass-whuppin’ that night. So did Buckley.” He paused again, then brought his voice down. “But I gotta tell you, little brother, it was worth it. It was worth it to hear those little bastards screaming.”
Clayton forced down the rest of his beer and tossed the can on the floorboard like his brother had done. Hal stopped the truck and cut off the parking lights. He popped open the last beer and downed it in three huge gulps. His belch was hearty, loud, and long. Clayton wished he could burp like that.
“We gotta walk from here,” Hal said. He grabbed his shotgun, racked it, and quietly got out of the truck. Clayton followed suit. He thought maybe he’d been here before with Deddy, but couldn’t be sure in the dark. This part of the mountain was peppered with stills, but a lot of them were in disrepair. Ever since the focus had shifted to the crops under the northern face, this area was tended to less and less. It wasn’t abandoned, just not a priority.
They walked about a quarter mile into the woods before they could see the dim light of a campfire through the trees.
“Hey, Hal,” Clayton said. “Whatever happened to Big Merle? I haven’t seen him around for a while. Did his family move off the mountain?”
“He’s dead,” Hal said. “Buckley beat him to death with a piece of stove wood and dropped him in a hole. Fat bastard wasn’t happy with his place in the pecking order—got greedy. It happens. Now be quiet, we got a job to do.”
Hal crept silently through the trees toward the glow of the fire, and Clayton mimicked his every move. The closer they got, the quieter Hal moved until even Clayton could barely hear him from only a few feet away. When they were close enough, Clayton could see it was one of Deddy’s stills, one that was supposed to be decommissioned. It wasn’t. They stopped at a cluster of pine trees and watched a blond-haired man with a patchy beard stoke a fire under a massive copper boiler. The heat coming off the barrels felt good on Clayton’s face after the long hike through the cold woods. He tugged at Hal’s shirt to get his attention, and Hal leaned in close.
“There’s only one,” Clayton whispered. “That’s good, right?”
“It’s good, but it ain’t the one we want.”
“So, what do we do?”
“What do you do when you can’t reach a hornet’s nest?”