Horrible Harvest

Setting next to Daddy is like setting next to a rattlesnake. It ain’t just terrifying. It makes you think about all the wrong you done in your life that brung you to the occasion of finding yourself set next to a rattlesnake. I was far too young to have done that much wrong.

This favor he was about to do for Mr. Miller was the most parental thing he’d ever done. In his mind. He was about to teach his boys the art of brutality towards others. His thinking was that there ain’t no other way to move up in this world than using cruelty and violence to get there. His daddy give him lessons on it, a bottle at a time, but he never took his teachings outside the family. Truth was, Daddy didn’t ever feel more connected to his boys than he did at that moment. The Tennyson name finally meant something and it’d have a legacy.

The murmur of drunkards drifted from the forest ahead. An amber glow of light stretched along our sightline and poked out between the trees.

The clank and clatter of the wagons was pert near the only contribution of sounds to the surrounding woods until that moment. When Galtville give up its location with such a cluttered spectacle of noise and light, Daddy finally found the mood to speak.

“You think you got a piss-poor life, boy.”

“No, sir.”

“That wasn’t a question. I know you think you got it hard. A mean Daddy. Labors from day to day, week to week, year to year. You get no rest from bad times, is what you think. You’re about to see how bad times could be if it weren’t for your daddy. You know this, the folks of Galtville, you’d be one of them without me. I saved you from this. Our farm. It ain’t much, but it’s a way up. And boy, I guarantee, you won’t never love your daddy more after this here night. Gratitude will be mine.”

Two men grappled at the entrance to Galtville. The glow from the ramshackle encampment swallowed them. They was just shadows beating on one another. It didn’t hide their fury. I swear on all that is holy, I could hear bones break and teeth shatter. One fella was felled by the other, but the rage didn’t die out. The beating continued. Even with the one fella all the way dead, he was beat down to hell itself.

We pulled the rigs to a stop under a huddle of trees. Galtville was built from a collection of most things you’d find the woods or garbage heap. Wood, fabric, tin sheets, animal bones, could be bones of the otherwise variety, too. It was poorly thrown together structures that come to a circle and backed up against a thick patch of forest. Nothing more than a rats nest when you get down to it. There at the front of it was this archway made of sticks and bones with some old drunks skull at the top with a hand painted sign above it that said, “Drink. Dance. Die.”

Daddy jumped from the wagon. “Augustus and me, we’ll be making our way inside.”

Douglas gripped the reins and give them a nervous squeeze. “I still ain’t clear what we’re doing.”

“We’re clearing up some trouble.”

“With who?”

“Don’t worry who. I know who. You ain’t got but one job. Charles.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Grab you a rifle and ammo and scoot around the back there.”

“Sir?”

“What didn’t you understand, boy?”

“What am I to do around back?”

“Shoot anyone who comes your way.”

Silence.

“You let anyone get on by, you’ll have hell to pay, and I’m the devil who’ll come to collect. Douglas, anyone comes out the front, you’ll shoot them.”

No reply.

“You hear me, boy?”

“I hear you. Yes, sir. It’s just that we know a good number of folks that hole up in Galtville.”

“Don’t make any of ‘em worth a damn.”

I give Douglas and Charles a look.

“This ain’t nothing but pulling weeds, boys. Our riches grow the more no-account Galtville crackers we yank from this Earth. This here ain’t nothing but farm business, and you boys know what farm business is, don’t you?”

We didn’t give no reply.

“Farm business is whatever the hell I say it is, and you’ll do whatever the hell I say to do. Ain’t no more complicated than that.” He opened the crate. “Charles, you remember what I told you?”

“There’ll be hell to pay, and you’re the devil who’ll come to collect?”

“That’s right. Choose your rifle. Load up. Take two. Ammo for both.” To me. “Guns’ll weigh you down to a nub, boy. You best take a couple three-four sticks of dynamite. Careful now. Open flames all about Galtville. Don’t get too close to so much as a flicker of fire. Douglas, you’re the best shot among us. If there ain’t a pile of dead at the entrance when this here thing is done, I’ll know you was holding back.”

We all loaded up as instructed.

“I know you boys got your doubts but let me tell you something about killing another. I done enough of it to know its place. Its sway. Ain’t nothing truly owned in this world except when you kill a man. You take a man’s life. You own his last breath. That moment belongs to you. That’s power, boys. It’s the only kind of power a man like Cameron Miller respects. He’ll lick our boots to give us riches after what we do here tonight. Your daddy knows that much about how the world works. Trust me.”

We was all too damn afraid of Daddy to give him any trust.