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Sadie Blue don’t look my way on purpose, but she don’t have to. I settle for crumbs when it come to that girl and don’t have a scrap of pride. She sunk a hook in my heart without paying attention is what she done. Then Roy up and married her nine years later. Me and the boys know he don’t deserve a angel like Sadie. He bet he could marry her, and he did. He knew I wanted that girl for myself but he married her anyway. She carries his baby now.
These days, Sadie still makes my heart swell. If Roy catches me pining, he’ll deliver punishment cause Roy don’t share. I don’t cross him, but I ain’t proud at what I do instead. I chop away at Sadie’s soft side. Snicker when Roy leaves his mark on her so he don’t think I’m sweet on his wife. We take all her lightness and snuff it out.
At the end of the day, I leave Roy’s place empty. I walk down the worn path through the woods to my trailer and the kudzu what lays heavy on my roof and hangs over the edge and creeps toward my open windows.
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Thursday morning, I sleep in late on my swaybacked mattress and flat pillow that gives me little comfort. The rain peppers the rusty awning and seeps into my dream bout Sadie Blue, naked and willing. In the half-light of that dream, she wears a odd kinda smile I never seen before. Maybe it’s for me. Maybe she’s glad she’s my girl now. Maybe she forgives me for what I done to her. Maybe she knows it was all for show.
“Billy, you in there?” a man’s voice comes from a distance and pulls me back from Sadie’s arms. A flat hand hits the window frame near my head. I open my eyes, and Roy looks in on me through the ripped screen. Wet hair sticks to his head like a black helmet.
“Interrupting somethin?” he asks with a crooked grin.
“Gall dang it, Roy!” I sit up and pull my hand outta my britches. I got a wet spot at my crotch. “Ain’t nobody here.”
Roy’s raspy laugh ends in a hacking cough that doubles him over. He hocks up a wad and spits into the weeds. “Come on. We gotta go.”
I step in my boots. “Where we going?” I grab a stale donut off the counter and my hat. I don’t break my stride walking out the door into the rain. Roy’s halfway cross the clearing.
“Where we going?” I ask again and hustle two steps to Roy’s long one.
He grunts but don’t say.
A loud clap of thunder rattles the trees. Rain comes down hard on the leaves, sounding like buckshot falling outta gunmetal clouds. We trudge single file in quiet through the woods to the truck. He drives and I got thinking time.
I been following Roy Tupkin since we was boys. We was birthed into neighboring hollers with mamas who loved men more than babies. Over the past dozen years, I been Roy’s best friend, likely his only friend. I witnessed stuff that shoulda been punished with the heavy hand of the law. Roy snaps quick. Sows wild seeds and dark fear. There was crazy fun, too, but it all had to do with likker and guns and Roy’s hot temper.
Roy Tupkin was always bigger than me by a head at least. When he was twelve, he already had hair in his pits and fuzz on his chin. I looked up to him cause he stuck up for me when he don’t have to.
It started on a winter night when we was kids and he come up on me bout froze in the front yard, me wearing Mama’s slip and my skivvies. I was on the puny side like now, with doughy skin and washed-out eyes that stay runny. One of Mama’s boyfriends caught me smelling on her silkies, looking for sweetness. That man made me strip in all my paleness and put that slip on. All the time he laughed and his cagey eyes looked at me hard enough to bruise my heart.
Mama said, “Larry, don’t mess with my boy. He don’t mean nothin by it.”
Larry don’t look at Mama. He don’t see the pinch between her faded eyes and the pouty cracks in her painted lips. Still, she let him push me into the frosty yard and lock the door.
Roy come up on me bawling. Saw me leaning up against the side of the trailer, me in a baby-blue slip. He don’t ask questions. He banged on Mama’s door like he had a right to, and when the old man opened it with a huff, Roy beat on him with fists so fast they blurred like a train rushing by inches from your nose. Beat him in the belly. Kicked him in the balls, then broke his nose. Pushed his sorry ass out the door and into the yard where he sprawled facedown in the cold dirt and stayed put.
I run inside and locked the door, bug-eyed and outta breath from the fight, my white skin splotchy red from the cold. Roy laughed easy like it won’t nothing. He don’t even wash his bloody knuckles.
From then on Roy Tupkin was my bodyguard without me asking. His shadow was long. I don’t cast one of my own.
I asked once, “Why you do what you do for me, Roy?”
“Cause we family, you little shit. Besides…now I own your sorry ass.”
Well, we won’t family, but I don’t argue with Roy. I was mostly grateful for Roy. My life’s bigger cause of him but not always better. If I had my rathers, I’d settle down, stop drinking, get a job, and come home to Sadie Blue every night.
I could do that.
If I had a right to.
If things was different.
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Roy parks on a old roadbed, grabs a canvas satchel from in back, and we hike a mile in. Could drive closer, but we don’t want to leave tracks. When we near our still, Roy says, “Somebody’s poking round.”
“Who?”
“Don’t matter who. Only matters we got warned. Nobody messes with what’s mine.”
Roy spits, then spills the contents of the sack. The metal traps clank at his feet. Dried blood and pieces of skin and fur are still in the jagged teeth.
“Roy, traps don’t make sense. You catch somebody, they don’t die right off. They get caught, they get mad. They stay right here where you get the blame.”
The big man chuckles. “The still ain’t staying here. We moving it. Gonna leave behind some presents for the nosy.”
I say, “More than crappy revenuers come this way. What if Pooter or Earl come by? Or the delivery boy? You want their pain on your conscience?” My voice goes higher again.
“Sharpen them stakes, Billy. There’s gonna be more than traps when they come back.”
The rest of the morning, we plant danger for the unsuspecting. After noon, we take apart the still, load carts, and move deeper in the mountains. A camouflage tarp gets tied between trees for overhead protection till we build a proper roof. Pipes get connected. Tracks covered. Bush screens set. A new trail remembered. When we’re done, we walk the woods by moonlight, make it back to the truck, then Roy drops me off. I stumble home bone weary.
I’m too tired to dream of Sadie.
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