Cheap Girls: A Short Story

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Wearing full camouflage: jacket, pants and cap, did little good. Merle was still detectable crossing the kitchen. Behind him, a trail of waffled muddy prints revealed the recent crossing of linoleum by a human. He turned to study the tracks, then shrugged, flipped the burlap bag he was carrying toward the sink, and returned to the entry to kick off his boots.

The sack twitched.

He ignored it.

It twitched again, then flopped over and began to writhe toward the door.

He trapped it with a toe and slid it back.

His brother Dwayne watched from the living room, refusing to acknowledge either Merle or the bag. He was angry.

It was Merle who insisted on spending Saturday morning cleaning the duplex. It was Merle who made plans without consulting Dwayne then while Dwayne held up his end, wandered off on some, typically Merle, errand.

The sack squirmed again.

Dwayne could no longer ignore it.

“Merle, your – bag – is - moving.”

“Yep”

“Why is the bag moving?”

His brother reached into the sack and pulled out two rather upset chickens.

Feathers flew.

Dwayne looked up to where God lives, and asked silently “Why me?”

Holding up the chickens, Merle announced proudly “Barbecue tonight”

Dwayne shook his head, “We got a freezer full of meat, got venison, got duck, got rabbit, got squirrel what do we need with live chickens?”

“They're fresh”

“Uh-huh”

“The girls downstairs are coming up for supper and I'm barbecuing chicken for us all tonight.”

“Not gonna happen'

“You don’t like chicken?”

“Chicken, I like, the girls, I don't.”

“Well, I like Candy and she’s not coming up without Alice, and Alice’s not coming up if it’s just me and Candy.”. He said this while dispatching both chickens with a flick of his wrists. More feathers flew.

“Count me out.”

“I need you, Dwayne”

Slice, a chicken head bounced out of the sink onto a pile of dishes.

Merle began plucking.

The window above the sink breathed an autumn wind sending a storm of swirling feathers gusting across the kitchen into the living room. Dwayne began to frantically bat them back into the kitchen.

Merle grabbed the other chicken.

More feathers, more wind, and more white floating into the living room where Dwayne sacrificed his morning to clean.

That was it.

Dwayne grabbed his coat “Geez Merle, you're a slob, you know that? Me, I’m out of here.”

“Be back by six.”

“No, outta here, means I'm outta here for good, like moving out.”

“Do what you gotta do. Just be here by six.”

It was a hard decision to move, but Dwayne had made it months ago. He just lacked the courage to tell his brother. Getting into a fight is just what he needed to break the news.

They had lived together for a long time. When they moved into the duplex, Dwayne was a just a kid and looking back, so was Merle. Dwayne always looked up to him, always treated him like the father they should have had. But that was a long time ago, eight years since their mother's boyfriends kicked them out.

Now Dwayne was grown, and going places. He managed a Subway Shop and Merle was going nowhere. He still worked in the same grease pit at Quickie Oil Change where he worked when he dropped out of high school.

But that job paid the bills.

Dwayne owed his brother and he knew it, but that did not mean he had to live with him. Still it was hard to walk away from all their time together. He always figured it would take a woman to part him from his brother, but in the end it was just a couple of hens

Dwayne pointed in disdain toward the first floor. “Not interested in cheap tricks”

“You damned right they’re ‘cheap’. That’s the point, Tiger.”

“You don’t get it; sometimes cheap cost the most.”

“Yeah, yeah, but I got a chance with Candy.”

“So?”

“So you ain't screwing it up.”

“Alright, I’ll see you later, but hey, it might impress Candy if you cleaned up a bit.”

***

The girls slapped up the stairs in their plastic flip-flops shortly after six and of course Merle hadn’t touched a thing.

A chicken head continued to stare from the mound of dishes teetering on the kitchen counter. The floor bore the same boot prints it did earlier and white drifts of feathers still outlined every windward edge of the living room. But the girls didn't mind.

They didn't seem to be mindful of much at all.

They perched on the couch, shivering in their thin shorts and skimpy cotton tops, with knees pressed modestly together, snapping their gum and chattering, expecting to be fed and entertained.

Merle did his best, trying to cover for Dwayne’s lack of enthusiasm. He served up his chicken, distributed bottled beer all around and snuggled up to Candy.

He tried to converse, but mostly he just stared.

She didn’t seem to mind that at all; everything he said or did was so cute and clever. A couple of times, she told him as much as she adjusted the errant strap that kept slipping off her freckled shoulder.

She fluffed her explosion of red hair, pouted and posed, giggled and jiggled. She pretty much had Merle.

Alice was not so lively. She sat with her head tilted to one side drinking in Dwayne with her big brown eyes. She was not unhappy, bored, or disinterested; rather she sat and stared with all the peace and patience of a cocker spaniel. One could say she was a girl easily entertained,

The foursome munched chicken and stacked empties with few words passing between them.

The high point of the evening’s conversation came when Merle leaned into Candy and leered “I like your top where’d you get it?”

“At Yonkers” she giggled “but I bet it ain’t the top your interested in”

This elicited the first interaction of the evening from Alice, she giggled. Candy giggled, then they both giggled and Candy said something about Merle being “a dog”.

“Oh God!!” Dwayne moaned to himself. He was too sober for this.

Desperate he turned to Alice “You wanna drink? We got Vodka.”

“Sure” she chirped, relieved that Dwayne was finally catching on.

He fled into the kitchen to rummage through the cupboard with Alice heeling behind him.

Sticking his head under the sink, as much to avoid Alice as to search for the booze box, Dwayne missed the initial roar of four thousand pounds of boy toy bouncing into the backyard.

It overshot the gravel parking pad, skidding across the lawn to within a couple feet of the back stoop before rocking to a halt. The driver dethroned from the cab and relieved himself against the side of the house.

“Uh-oh” blinked Alice.

“What?” Dwayne blinked back.

The guy banged into the entryway.

BOOM!! He kicked against the girls back door.

BOOM!! Glasses rattled on the coffee table

A belligerent male voice echoed up the stairway “Candy, open the god damned door!”

Candy startled, recognizing the voice.

She eyed the front door -- seeking an avenue of escape then she looked kinda of sad, then a little goofy to make light of it. “I gotta go downstairs for a few minutes.”

Alice looked frightened.

Dwayne stepped into the back stairway. The guy was about twice Candy’s age and red-faced drunk. He had collapsed against the wall across from the girl's apartment, kicking at their back door.

Eying Dwayne, he snapped “You got a freak’n problem?”

The guy was short and thick, with a massive gut and a boozy belligerence. His dark curly hair shone with drunken sweat and the skin of his face and arms glowed in the dank yellow of the hall light.

Dwayne was about to show him what his freak'n problem was when Candy slipped by, clip-clopping down the stairs; bleating apologies to the brothers, to the drunk, and to Alice.

She stooped to help the guy up but he pushed her away, hard.

“Who’s that pussy?’ the guy accused, pointing at Dwayne.

“Just my neighbor, you don’t have to worry about him.”

“No shit, I don’t”

Candy quickly popped the door open and dragged him in before the brothers, now standing on the landing, could respond. She stuck her head back out, fixing a pleading eye on Merle. “I know what he wants; I’ll be up in a bit.”

Merle couldn’t be brushed aside so easily, he started down the stairs but Alice grabbed him, “Don’t, she’ll take care of Karl.”

“I’ll give her five minutes.”

Downstairs, Karl bellowed and thrashed, trying to escalate every word, every action into a fight with Candy. He accused; she assured. He shouted; she soothed. The more she pleaded for peace, the more the booze raged and he made it known he wasn’t going to settle down until he tore into something.

Merle waited out three of his five minutes, then snatched up the aluminum bat he kept behind the door and took the stairs, six steps to the stride, before vanishing into the girl’s apartment. The door had been left unlatched.

A few moments later, Karl’s roar ended abruptly with the twang of a bat hitting a home run. Then the only sound coming from below was the pinging of heat in the radiators.

After a while the girl’s door opened gently. Candy eased her way out, closed the door, and clopped quietly up the stairs. Halfway up, she motioned for Dwayne and Alice to follow her downstairs.

At the door, Merle announced matter-of-factly. “I had to whack that guy. Pretty much caved his skull in.”

Alice nodded in approval.

“Shit” was all Dwayne could come up with. He kept repeating it.

Merle was far more annoyed at Dwayne than worried about a homicide, “Settle down” he told him, “We got work to do.”

“’We’? 'We'? We are calling the cops.”

“No we’re not.”

“then what are ‘we’ going to do?”

“You’re the brain, figure it out. You see a weapon for Karl? You see marks on Candy? On me? Looks like a jealous fight, nothing more.”

“How’re you going to make it look any different?”

“I'm not. We're driving up to Centerville. There's a well. You know the spot where we hunt grouse? Karl’s going down that well and his truck is going out into the neighborhoods where it won’t last long. – And Dwayne, the way I see it, you got two choices, call the cops, or gimme a hand.”

Dwayne gave him a hand.

They stuffed Karl into an old sleeping bag and lay him in the back of Merle’s old Suburban. He looked peaceful there, much like a soundless drunk sleeping off a binge.

***

A light autumn rain blackened the night. It came with a strong wind flaring wisps of mist across the beam of their headlights as they drove north. Still the night was warm for that time of year, and the old truck ran well.

Merle drove, leaning slightly toward the windshield, his features lit by the green glow of the instrument pane. He appeared perfectly relaxed, almost happy. That bothered Dwayne more than anything else.

“Jesus Merle, Why'd have to whack him so hard?”

“He needed it.”

“You coulda kicked his ass.”

“Then what?”

“Whaddya mean, then what?”

“Gotta clean up a few things before Candy and I can settle in with each other.”

“Does she know this?”

“Haven't discussed it with her.”

Merle said nothing more. Leaning further into the night, he hummed an unrecognizable tune, and drove on.

A few miles south of Centerville near the junction of Hwy 18, a brown DNR sign marked the beginning of the Carlos Avery Game Preserve. Here, fewer blue-white yard lamps blinked in the distance. The trees grew thicker and buffeted by wind leaned further over the road. Grass and brush encroached the shoulders of the highway, and Merle eased off on the gas in anticipation.

He studied the ditches, waiting for movement. When it came, it came in a flash of white from right to left, scurrying for the safety of the far ditch. Merle swerved hard into the oncoming lane.

TUD!

He stomped the brakes, fishtailing onto the shoulder.

Dwayne started screaming at him but Merle paid him no mind. He set the parking brake and walked back to where he clipped a rabbit.

He found it, and it was big.

Grinning, he held it up for Dwayne to see then hunkered down by the side of the road for field dressing with the buck knife he always carried for just such a purpose.

It didn’t take him long, but as he walked back to the station wagon, headlights flickered in the tree tops. A car approached; the hissing of tires building, its headlamps growing stronger, bouncing on the uneven road, then it slowed and flicked on red and blue flashing lights.

The cop didn't do anything immediately. He waited in his squad while Merle stood in the road like an idiot holding up his dressed rabbit. Apparently, he was running a license plate check, when it was complete, he stepped from the squad; hand on the butt of his gun. He said something to Merle. Merle replied.

The cop shook his head and laughed. He said something else. Merle wiped off the knife and put it back into his pocket. He gave the cop his driver’s license, and waited on the road while the cop read it in the shine of his flashlight.

The cop followed him back to the Suburban.

“He wants to see my proof of insurance” Merle whispered as he slid across the driver’s seat to open the glove compartment. The cop stood back darting his flashlight into the interior of the truck.

“Who’s sleeping beauty?” he asked lighting up the body in the back.

“Don’t wake him up” Merle told the cop.

“I want to see his ID, and yours too” pointing at Dwayne.”

“Look” Merle said pointing to Karl, “I can get his ID, but let’s not wake him up.”

The cop didn't like that “Wake him up.”

“He’s my dad.” Merle told him, “ and he’s a mean drunk. If you wake him, he’s going to start swinging. I’d rather not deal with that.”

The cop tipped his head to talk into his shoulder radio.

“Whoa, hold up there. He’s going away as it is”

The cop stared Merle down, but he wasn’t talking into his radio anymore.

“We're taking him to Hazelwood. He’s going in for treatment.”

“So”

“So what’s the difference? You wake him, he fights with a cop, he gets locked up – well, he’s going away for a month as it is.”

The cop was not going to be told what to do. “Wake him”

Merle raised his hands in resignation, backing off. “Okay, if that’s what you want. You wanna wake him or should I?”

The cop rapped on the rear window with his flashlight.

Getting no response he banged louder.

“You wake him” he told Merle.

Merle put his hands up again. “Ain’t my turn”

He looked at Dwayne “you wake him bro’”

“I’m not going to wake him.” Dwayne protested.

A fresh wind gusted down the road blowing wet leaves off the trees and bringing a wave of white rain with it. The cop's shoulder radio began to squawk about another incident. He bent into the chill, shivered, and growing weary of the cold, shook his head “Get out of here – and don’t be poaching rabbits with your truck, okay?”

“Okay”

***

They found the road near Centerville leading back into an old building site. The well was easy to find. They were able to drive right up it. The old boards covering the hole yielded without protest, and Karl slipped soundlessly into the ground. Other than the cop, the whole operation went so slick, they almost felt practiced when they were done.

They did what they had to do – and Dwayne had held up his end. Now there was no question about moving out.

He found a place on the far east side, a small one room apartment with shared bath and shared kitchen but it was full of people just like Dwayne who, though just as messy as Merle, didn’t butcher game in the sink.

He knew he should have done this long ago, but then he owed Merle, now that debt was paid.

Merle didn’t see it that way though; he called Dwayne late one Saturday a few weeks after he moved out.

“How you doing Bro’?”

“Fine”

“I need your help.”

“Count me out.”

“I had to whack another of Candy's ' boy friends'.”

Dwayne was too stunned to speak.

“Don't worry, this's the last one.”

Silence.

“And Dwayne, you need to get to know Alice better. She really likes you.”

© Greg Schiller, 2007

Author: Greg Schiller