Bruce Blake

YARDWORK

Smashwords Edition

Tim made a special trip to buy the shovel he used to bury the nameless man. It was easy: an older lady in a blue vest directed him to the proper aisle without a second thought. A fifteen-year-old buying a spade doesn’t raise concern in anyone; it’s not like purchasing a gun or a hunting knife, though a shovel could be as deadly. But the shovel didn’t kill the man, Tim merely used it to dig holes to put bits and pieces of him in, a task for which it was made.

In the end, his father’s garden shears finally killed the nameless man.

The man probably had a name, everyone did, but Tim didn’t care to know it, didn’t ask or wonder about it. The moment he found the man sleeping in the shed, recovering from the abuse of whatever substance he’d imbibed to put him in that state, Tim decided the less he knew about the man, the better. If the need to call him anything arose, maybe it would be ‘opportunity’.

When Tim opened the shed door, it creaked on its rusted hinges like it always did. Autumn sun streamed in, splashing across the rough surface of the poorly-laid cement floor. Dust motes stirred and spider webs shimmered. In the rafters, the remnants of a nest poked out over the edge of an unpainted beam, but no birds lived in it anymore, he’d taken care of them in the spring, their tiny, brittle bones long since carried away by neighbourhood cats. The rake hung between two spikes Tim’s father drove into the wall a couple of years ago in an attempt to keep things tidy. The man lay curled on the floor below it.

“Hello?” Tim stood in the doorway, his shadow falling across the floor, touching the prone man. “Mister?”

No answer. He took a step closer and the smell hit. Besides the shed’s usual smell of must and fertilizer, he caught a whiff of the acidic stench of fresh puke, and beneath it, shit. Tim put his hand over his nose and mouth, blocking the smell.

“Are you all right, mister?”

The man didn’t so much as twitch. Tim held his breath, listening. Yes, there it was: the slow rhythm of his breathing. Alive — not in good shape, probably, but alive. Two more steps brought the boy halfway across the shed, his eyes adjusting to the poor light. The man lay on his side, facing the wall, a tattered overcoat on his shoulders. The feet protruding from beneath the long coat wore boots wrapped with duct tape to hold them together.

A shiver of excitement stirred in Tim’s chest.

“Tim, are you going to rake those friggin’ leaves or what?”

A lawn chair on the deck provided Tim’s father an ideal spot to situate himself — beer in hand — to watch his favorite sport: his oldest son doing yard work. Tim poked his head out of the doorway to make sure his old man hadn’t gotten up to see about the hold up. He hadn’t, of course. It would take a lot more than impatience for him to put down his beer and remove his ass from the plastic cushion of the recliner-chair.

“Sorry, Dad. I knocked over the recycling. Just got to clean it up and I’ll be right out.”

His father grunted, took another swig of MGD, and grabbed the newspaper from where it lay on the deck beside him, using the delay to browse its pages for fodder for tonight’s dinner table diatribe. Tim went back into the shed and crossed to the rusted steel shelves his father installed as part of the clean up job. On the first three shelves, a variety of gardening tools and implements — many of them unused — lay arrayed in orderly rows awaiting their opportunity to shine while his father’s worn spank mags stuffed the bottom shelf full. He easily found the length of rope and roll of duct tape for which he searched. Finally, his father’s fastidious nature — a disposition only displayed in the interior of the shed — came in handy.

The man was passed out and unlikely to awaken for a while. Tim knew this because he’d seen his father in a similar state enough times, but he crept toward the man anyway, taking no chances. He crouched at his side, pulled out a strip of tape and used his teeth to tear it off the roll, then spit the gluey taste out of his mouth. The smell of the man threatened to overpower him as he leaned in to press the piece of tape over his mouth: puke and shit and booze. His finger brushed the stubble of the man’s cheek; it scratched against his hand. He jerked away.

Still no movement.

Tim unwound the loop of rope as he wondered what would happen if the man heaved again with his mouth taped closed. Would it kill him? Or did only rock stars die choking on their own vomit? This man was clearly not a rock star, so maybe he’d be okay. It’d be better if it didn’t play out that way, but what the hell. He knotted the rope around the man’s ankles, using two fingers to grip the ragged hem of his pants and lift his leg as he wound it around then tied it off. The other end of the rope he snaked behind an exposed stud and fastened the man’s wrists, effectively hog tying him to the wall. The man let out a snort while Tim wound the rope around his wrists, halting the teen’s breath and stopping his fingers mid-knot, but it turned out to be no more than a snore.

Tim finished the job, stood and took a step back to admire his work. He’d learned a lot in the two months he’d stuck in boy scouts before they kicked him out for lighting things on fire. The man wouldn’t be able to free himself of those knots. He didn’t remember which was which — sheepshank, square knot, fisherman’s knot — it didn’t matter, as long as they held.

“Tim, what the fuck are you doing in there? These leaves aren’t going to rake themselves.”

“Coming,” he shouted back trying to sound like the enthusiastic, helpful son — an act he always put on though not always convincingly. He stared at the man for a few seconds, excitement and anticipation swirling in his stomach, tingling his limbs. His dick stirred in his pants the way it did when he broke the twittering birds into pieces, the way no female ever made it stir.

“Do I have to come in and drag you out?”

A dose of scalding rage doused Tim’s arousal. The man shifted a little and farted: a long wet sound making Tim grimace. He grabbed the rake from its place on the wall before the odor found his nostrils, then planted a solid kick in the man’s lower back, imagining his father lying bound on the floor instead of some homeless man.

The man still didn’t move.

* * *

Tim purposely abandoned the rake in the middle of the lawn so he’d have an excuse to go back into the shed after dinner. His father wouldn’t let one of his precious implements — precious, though he never used them himself — remain outside overnight. Rust belonged on shelves and hinges but deserved no place on a man’s tools.

“What’s going on with you?”

He raised his eyes from his half-eaten dinner where he’d been log-rolling limp asparagus from one side of the plate to the other and looked at his mother. The corners of her mouth tugged up into the sad half-smile: the closest she managed these days to an expression of happiness.

“Nothing,” Tim said fidgeting to the other corner of his chair for the hundredth time. “Just enjoying dinner, Ma.”

To punctuate his statement, he popped a chunk of over-cooked roast into his mouth, chewed it with visible effort, then followed it up with a fork full of lumpy mashed potatoes.

“Don’t patronize your mother,” his father grumbled behind the sports section. “Eat your fucking dinner.”

Tim fought to keep from fidgeting right off his chair, occupying himself with thoughts of what it would be like for the man to wake and find himself bound. He played it over and over in his mind, a different scenario each time as he struggled to finish the almost-inedible meal. First, he pictured the man terrified, eyes wide and staring, screams bulging the duct tape sticking his lips together. Then he imagined him angry, thrashing against the ropes, banging his head on the wall in an effort to get free. Finally, Tim pictured the man delighted, happy the boy had played right into his trap.

The thought sent a thrill shivering down Tim’s spine.

With the last fragment of tough meat still torturing his teeth and tongue, Tim slid off the chair, stacked his dishes beside the sink and headed for the door.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” A piece of asparagus flew out of his father’s mouth and landed on the dinner table as he spoke. Everyone pretended they didn’t notice. Tim’s soles squeaked on the linoleum as he skidded to a halt.

“To finish the yard work,” he said with a nervous smile.

“You got to do the dishes first.”

“But I did the raking, Dad. It’s Kyle’s turn for dishes.”

His father lowered his fork and fixed Tim with a ‘don’t-fuck-with-me’ look. “Do as I tell you.”

Tim opened his mouth to protest but the scrape of his father’s chair pushing away from the table killed any objection before it emerged. He needed no more threat than the sound of chair legs on floor: if his father was willing to get up, things wouldn’t go well for Tim. He hung his head and slouched to the sink, cleared dishes from the bottom and wiped out the garbage collected in the drain: potato peelings, coffee grounds, left over rice and chicken rinsed from someone’s lunch plate. The Palmolive bottle wheezed a last gasp of liquid soap into the running water as the rest of the family finished their meals and piled their dishes on the counter beside him. Kyle — a year younger but two inches taller and ten pounds heavier; built more like their father where Tim developed a slight and dainty frame like their mother — cleared their father’s plate for him, provoking a grunt of thanks. He smirked, whispered ‘pussy’ in Tim’s ear and prodded him in the ribs with his elbow as he set the plate down. Tim frowned but kept his mouth shut.

Forget the bastard, he told himself. Get the dishes done. Then the fun begins.

Their mother rose and excused herself, headed for the worn chair in the living room which provided her haven. She’d sit there for the evening pretending to read a book or knitting a sweater which she never seemed to finish while their father watched reality t.v. and news programs. Occasionally, he’d curse what he saw but neither of them would speak other than when he commanded her to get him another beer. She’d do it without protest. Kyle made a beeline for the basement stairs, making for the Nintendo Wii meant for the boys to share but which Tim rarely touched.

“Go finish the yard work.”

The muscles in Tim’s arms and legs froze, turning him into a statue, a half-washed plate in one hand, the other hand dipped in the water, rinsing the washcloth. Kyle stopped, teetering on the edge of the top stair.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Your brother’s doing the woman’s work.”

“But he—”

“No buts, Kyle. My rake can’t stay out there all night.”

Panic jarred loose Tim’s paralysis. He let the plate slide into the sink with a clunk and faced the other two, his throat tight.

“It’s okay, Dad. I’ll do it.”

“Like hell you will. You’re a lazy little shit. You always forget.”

“I won’t forget. I started the job, I’ll finish it.”

His father glared at him over top of the paper. He pushed his chair away, folded the newspaper and set it on the table, then stood. His belt made a hissing sound as he pulled it through the loops of his pants and set it menacingly on the table beside the paper. Another time, the implicit threat would have made Tim nervous, scared, but not tonight. No way he’d forget to go back to the shed.

“Bring me a beer, Kyle. Your sister will put the rake away.”

He slouched out of the kitchen and down the hall to the living room where he’d sit on the chair close enough to their mother’s she’d be able to hear him speak but not close enough to touch. It would be no more than ten minutes before he drifted into his after-dinner nap. Tim turned back to the sink, intent on finishing his chore quickly so he could get back to his secret in the shed. Kyle went to the refrigerator and plucked a bottle of beer off the shelf in the door then crept up behind Tim. He jammed the long neck of the bottle painfully into his older brother’s ass and leaned toward his ear.

“Fag-boy.”

He gave the bottle another push making Tim flinch, then took it out. As he crossed the kitchen, Kyle twisted the cap off and flicked it over his shoulder. It hit Tim in the forehead and fell into the sink with a plop. The muscles in Tim’s jaw bulged as his back teeth ground together; a pulse beat at his temples.

He held his tongue and finished the dishes.

* * *

The man’s eyes didn’t show surprise when they finally opened to see Tim squatting beside him, not at first, anyway. They appeared bleary, unfocused, the eyes of a man with a monstrous hangover.

“What are you doing here?”

Tim kept his tone conversational if not friendly. No point in scaring the man: not yet. The man’s cheeks bulged as he attempted to speak, unaware of the gag across his mouth. This fact still didn’t seem to startle him. He shrugged in reply instead.

“You don’t belong here.”

The man looked at him but made no move to comment. Tim reached around and pulled out of his back pocket the pair of shears used for pruning small branches. They normally sat on the shelf a couple of feet away and he had no reason for them to be in his pocket, but he liked the dramatic effect. The man strained to see what his captor held, head wobbling on his neck like it weighed too much for him to hold. Tim moved to show him. The sight of the shears cleared some of the glazed look from his eyes.

“Should I let you go?”

Tim released the shear’s safety clasp and they popped open. He fit its jaws around the rope, feigning an offer to cut it, to free the man.

“Would you leave if I did? Would you go back where you came?”

The man nodded and the action seemed to sap all his strength. His head sagged to the floor, clunking against the concrete. His eyelids fluttered, eyes spinning circles, searching to find focus. The teen leaned in closer to allow their gazes to meet. It took a second for the man’s to settle in. When it did, Tim saw some recognition of his situation beginning to dawn; that realization brought the thrill back to his stomach, bile to the back of his throat. His expression transformed into a sneer.

“I don’t think so.”

Tim moved the sheers away from the rope and grabbed the man’s bound hands. With his thumb and index finger, he wrestled one of the man’s pinkies out of the pack of digits. The man watched, eyes wide and nostrils flared, until the sharp edge brushed the skin of his finger, then he thrashed away. His movement drew blood from his finger and an exasperated sigh from Tim.

“Come on, now. You didn’t think I was going to hurt you, did you?”

A muffled, strangled sound like the lament of a distant fog horn caught behind the duct tape covering the man’s mouth. He thrashed and wiggled, his bound feet kicking against the side of the shed. If the noise kept up long, Tim’s father would soon be drawn out of his chair to seek out the cause of the racket.

“Be quiet, for fuck’s sake.”

Tim leaned his weight on the man’s legs, attempting to pin them, but fear must have given him strength. Where seconds before he didn’t have enough to support his head, now Tim couldn’t contain his thrashing. The oft-repaired boots slammed against the wooden wall, the impact echoing in the small structure, Tim expecting each sound to draw his father one step further out of the after-dinner nap, then eventually to his feet and finally out the door to the back yard.

“Stop it.”

The flat side of the sheers hit the man’s head hard enough to leave an impression of the safety latch on his temple, though not hard enough to knock him unconscious. It knocked the fight out of him, nonetheless.

“No more of that,” Tim grunted reaching across the man to grasp the rope fastening him to the wall. A thin line of blood trickled down the man’s forehead toward his ear, its red path capturing Tim’s attention. The teen stopped, reached a shaking hand out and touched the small wound with the tip of his middle finger. The man flinched.

“You’re bleeding,” Tim said raising the blood-dabbed finger toward his face. The urge to put the tip of his finger into his mouth, to taste the man’s life, made him run his tongue across his parted lips. He inched the finger toward his mouth, saliva flooding his tongue in anticipation, but stopped. He didn’t know where this man had been, no concept of his habits or what diseases he carried like a sewer rat. Tim hastily wiped his finger on the man’s grubby coat: likely not the first blood stain to grace its surface.

With the impulse passed, he returned his attention to the job of tightening the ropes to keep the man’s noise-making to a minimum. The man might get away if he untied him, so instead Tim took up the slack by tying more knots, these ones of a type appearing in no boy scout handbook: improvised, ungainly, but effective.

“There.”

Tim leaned back on his haunches to examine his work. The man’s hands and feet were bound directly together, making his body into the shape of a bow, his appendages in turn tied tight against the wall allowing for no movement. “That should hold you.”

The man stared, his breath drawn in short, sharp bursts. Whatever substance brought him here in the first place, then clouded his senses as it left his system, was gone. Fear, anger, helplessness replaced it, all showing plainly in his rheumy eyes. The birds and the squirrels and the Albertsons’ dog didn’t show emotions like this and they brought an excitement to Tim he’d never felt before. His hand shook as he picked up the sheers, but not because of nerves. His breath shortened, but not due to anxiety. A shiver ran up his spine, but not in fear. They felt good — all of them. And he liked it.

He reached for the man’s pinkie again, but this time he clenched both hands into fists. Tim couldn’t blame him: he’d have done the same thing. It didn’t irk him in the least. He brought the handle of the sheers down sharply on the man’s wrist and his fist popped open like an expertly shucked oyster. Tim grabbed his little finger before it went back into hiding.

“Don’t worry.” Tim smiled in the comforting manner his father used on him when he was about to lie to him. “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you.”

Tim slid the blades of the sheers around the finger. The man’s body stiffened and he squirmed to get away, but the ropes held tight. Snot bubbled out of his nose with the force of his breathing; his head banged against the floor. Tim’s jaw tightened, ready for the effort of cutting through flesh and tendon and bone as he squeezed the handles of the sheers.

The finger came off more easily than he’d expected.

* * *

Tim knelt down at the edge of the flower garden, the dampness of the moist earth at its edge soaking into the knees of his jeans. With his right hand, he dug into the soil, dirt clogging the space under fingernails in need of trimming a week ago. In his other hand he held his prize tight in his fist. Luckily, the man lost consciousness with the pain of having his finger amputated, so only the chirp of crickets and the whoosh of his own pulse in his ears interrupted the quiet night. Tim excavated a hole three inches wide by five inches long and six inches deep: big enough to conceal his trophy but an easy enough job to dig it up again should he want to see what state it was in.

With the mini trench complete, he rocked back, sitting on his feet, and held the finger out in front of him, examining it as best the darkness allowed. He studied the finger nail chewed ragged, the dirt-clogged fingerprint, the wrinkles at the knuckles now caked with blood. He spun it in his fingers, considering it from every angle the way a prospector might have assessed a new-found nugget. He breathed deep through his nose, caught the scent of the fresh-turned earth, of decaying leaves and fresh cut lawn, and, he imagined, the coppery scent of blood.

“Tim?”

His father’s voice and its proximity so close behind him startled Tim into dropping the finger. His eyes followed its path as if it tumbled to the ground in slow motion, watching it come to rest on the small pile of dirt beside his makeshift grave.

“What the fuck are you doing out here? How long does it take to put away a goddamn rake?”

“Nothing.” Tim’s heart felt as though it had climbed into his throat, clogging it. His eyes remained on the finger and he wondered if his father saw it but didn’t realize what it was. “I… I found a bulb lying around and I was planting it.”

“Yeah right. I better not find out you been sneaking my magazines in the shed, jerking off again.”

Anger flared in Tim. Three years ago his father caught him with his dick in his hand and a Hustler spread out on the floor of the shed and he wouldn’t let him forget it. Women didn’t do it for Tim, he’d done it because he thought teenage boys were supposed to do such things. His true fantasies were far different than other boys’: bloodier, more violent.

The sound of his father’s feet moving in the grass flushed the anger out of him, replaced it with panic at the surety he would check inside the shed to see if any of his magazines were ruined with his sons ejaculate.

“No, Dad. I swear. I haven’t touched your mags.”

“Better fucking not.”

The steps halted and Tim noticed the slur in his father’s voice. Drunkenness made him lazier then usual: he wouldn’t waste the time going into the shed when more beer awaited him inside the house. Tim let out his breath and looked over his shoulder at his father, reassuring him he hadn’t been masturbating, but the flat of the man’s hand catching him in the side of the head, setting his ear ringing, stopped him.

“Get your ass inside.”

His father’s footsteps retreated across the lawn and Tim knelt by the garden choked with rage and grief. Once more, the asshole ruined one of the great moments of his life.

He plucked the finger out of the pile, dropped it in the hole, and unceremoniously covered it with dirt.

* * *

The next day, the temperature dropped another degree toward winter but the sun still shone. Tim stood in the middle of the back lawn with the blue plastic tarpaulin folded into a two by two square tucked under his arm. His father left for work hours ago, his mother likely went down the street to see Mr. Perry where she disappeared a couple of times a week: everyone pretended they didn’t know about her visits, but sometimes cheeks are turned to preserve the status quo. Kyle was at school, where Tim should have been at ten-thirty in the morning on a Monday, but the anticipation, all those hours of listening to teachers he hated while he fidgeted in his chair, fantasizing about taking the nameless man apart, would have been too much for him. He strode across the lawn, noticing a few leaves from the neighbours maple had made their way into their backyard. His father would complain about them later, cursing the bastards who lived next door, then make Tim rake again.

At the shed door, he stopped, stared at the flaking paint as though he might look hard enough to see through it at the man inside, spy on him without his knowledge. He shifted one foot to the other, the tarp crinkling under his arm with the movement. Removing the man’s finger produced more blood than expected, so he needed to take precautions to keep from making too much mess this time.

This time, he planned to remove more than a finger.

He breathed deep to settle the tickle of excitement and nausea brewing in the bottom of his gut and wondered if a surgeon felt similarly before carving into a patient. He closed his eyes and let the breeze which would deposit more leaves in his yard, bringing with them more yard work, play across his face, calming him, bringing him the peace he needed to do his work. When he’d settled it to a dull ache, he opened his eyes again, reached out and pushed the door open. The squeak of the hinges and the sun flooding the small building made the man lying bound on the floor tense, his body going rigid. He writhed, struggling to look over his shoulder. Tim caught the man’s eye, saw his wild look of desperation and stepped through the door. The shed smelled worse than before, multiplied by more excrement and hours of fermentation.

“Good morning,” Tim said conversationally. He tasted the shit on his tongue. “We don’t have too much time. Shall we get started?”

The bound man’s cheeks bulged against the duct tape across his mouth; the hinges screamed for him as Tim kicked the door shut.

* * *

It was close to one-thirty by the time Tim returned with his newly purchased spade. The dismemberment took longer than expected — the human body proved tougher to dismantle in some spots than had been the finger, even using an axe and saw after the shears did their work — and he’d needed to shower off the blood and rinse out the tub before going to make his purchase. He looked at his watch again as the key slid into the lock on the front door.

He’d have to hurry, but he should still have time before Mom finished fucking Mr. Perry. They liked to take their time about it, lay in bed together and act like a happily married couple; in love instead of trapped in shitty relationships and desperate for attention. Tim knew they did this because he’d watched them before: Mr. Perry’s bedroom was on the ground floor.

“Hi, Mom. I’m home,” he called, just-in-case. “School let out early today.”

He peeked around the corner into the living room: empty. No sounds anywhere in the house, so he took a couple of steps down the hallway, spade held behind him.

“Mom?”

No answer.

Good.

He locked the door and hurried down the hall toward the back door. On his way through the kitchen, he glanced out the window. His body carried on for two steps before what he saw rectified itself in his brain and he came to a stop, his sneaker squeaking on the linoleum floor. He stood for a second, eyes darting but looking at nothing, before he backed up the couple of steps and looked out the window again to confirm what couldn’t possibly be.

The shed door stood open.

All the blood drained out of Tim’s head leaving his cheeks flushed and his brain feeling bloated with air the way his stomach did when he ate soup too fast. He ran back through his actions from the time he finished cutting the man into pieces.

Did I close the door?

Of course he did: he’d been extra careful because of the blood on his hands and then, after his shower and before he went to buy the shovel, he’d double checked to make sure no bloody fingerprints were left behind. No, the door had definitely been closed.

Tim’s mind raced, covering off possibilities. A decade-worth of zombie movies came to mind first. He envisioned the man’s severed body parts inching their way across the uneven concrete floor toward each other, rejoining the body into a hideous parody of itself.

Not possible.

He looked at his watch again: still more than an hour before Kyle finished school and a few more before his father would be home. That left his mother, but she never went in the shed. What, then?

Maybe one of the neighbours saw him and called the cops.

He looked over his shoulder toward the front door. No, he’d have seen the cop cars parked on the street. Tim chewed the inside of his cheek with his back teeth, the muscles in his jaw flexing and releasing as he thought what to do, his weight rocking back and forth between his front foot, leaning toward the back door, and his rear foot, leaning toward the front. The pull of the shed — of the pieces of man hidden inside — won out. He rushed to the back door, stopping with his hand on the door knob as he strained to see through the white lace curtain draped across its window without moving it and alerting anyone who might be watching.

He thought he saw a figure inside the dim shed.

The lock clicked as Tim opened the door: he sucked breath in through his teeth, worried the sound would give him away. No reaction from the shed, in fact, if someone was inside, he couldn’t see them anymore. He crept across the deck and eased himself down onto the lawn, careful to avoid the dried leaves scattered across the grass in greater amounts than when he left. As he approached the doorway, the figure standing in the center of the shed, back to the door, became clear. The person was a couple of inches taller than him and wearing a faded denim jacket and black pants. Tim moved closer, the long handle of the spade banging against the door frame as he did.

Kyle turned his head to look at him.

“What the fuck?”

His brother looked back to the item which held his attention. Tim stood on his toes to look over his shoulder and follow his gaze to the blue tarp lying along the back wall: one edge had fallen or been pulled open and a hand no longer attached to an arm showed underneath, dead finger pointing in accusation. The feeling in Tim’s gut exploded through him, electrifying his limbs, threatening to spew from his mouth.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“I—”

Kyle pivoted toward him, face ashen, and Tim saw the button of his pants undone, the zipper down, and one of their father’s porno mags dangling open in his left hand. A sense of satisfaction clawed its way in amongst the fear and anger and excitement and shame jumbling through Tim.

I caught you. I caught you.

“What are you talking about?” The calmness in his voice surprised even Tim.

“What do you mean ‘what am I talking about’? I’m talking about that.” Kyle jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the tarp and Tim giggled at the appropriateness of the expression given how he’d found his brother.

“What?”

Tim took a step into the shed, stopped a few feet from his younger brother.

“The tarp, you idiot.” The pitch and volume of Kyle’s voice rose, pinching into a girlish tone. “The body. The blood.”

“Oh my God.”

“‘Don’t play stupid with me. I know what you did to the Albertsons’ dog. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.” Still calm, maybe too calm.

“Then why do you have that?”

Tim looked at the shovel in his right hand, held it out in front of him, the spade end at eye level. “This?”

“Yes, you fucking moron, that.”

Tim shrugged. “For this.”

The flat side of the spade smashed Kyle’s nose, catching him off guard. He dropped the suddenly forgotten issue of Hustler to the floor and raised both his hands to his face. The second blow caught him in the right temple sending him sprawling to the floor on top of the spread-legged centerfold. He lay there unable to move, blood leaking out of his nose onto the concrete and flowing from the gash in the side of his head into his eye. Tim knelt beside his brother.

“Who’s the pussy now?”

Blood bubbled on Kyle’s lips, spattering across the floor. Tim stood, leaned the shovel against the wall by the rake hanging between two spikes, and went to the set of rusty shelves. He grabbed the roll of duct tape which had seen more use in the last couple of days than it had for years, and a dirty wooden stake once used to prop up a long-dead tomato plant, and went back to his brother.

Kyle’s eyes spun in their sockets, unable to find focus, as Tim tore a strip of duct tape off the roll and pressed it across his blood-covered lips. His body twitched. Tim grinned. He pulled the skin mag from under Kyle’s cheek, flipped it open to a picture of a large, erect cock, a woman kneeling before it reverentially, a look of awe on her face, and set the magazine on the floor by his brother’s face. Kyle’s eyes moved briefly toward the picture.

“Who’s the fag-boy now, Kyle?”

Tim walked around behind his brother, grabbed the waist band of his already loosened pants and underwear in one fist and tugged them down. He brandished the wooden stake in the other hand.

“Who’s the fag-boy now?”

* * *

Tim’s eyes kept straying out the window to the door of the shed as he stood at the sink washing the dinner dishes. His shoulders and arms burned from scrubbing cement and turning earth, but he still hadn’t buried everything. Two-and-a-half feet down, a layer of clay too thick and hard for a person of Tim’s stature underlay the topsoil. He disposed of all of the nameless man in small bits and parcels — hopefully deep enough the neighbourhood animals wouldn’t dig him up before he did a proper job — but the task of reducing his brother to manageable pieces and planting him in the flower bed had taken too long. More than half of him still lay wrapped in the blue tarp in the corner of the shed, awaiting Tim to skip school again and give him a hasty burial. He plucked a dish from the sink and swirled the dishcloth absently across its surface, catching a glimpse of reddish-brown dirt caked under his fingernail in spite of having showered three times. He smiled tiredly. He’d sleep well tonight.

“Where the fuck is that boy?”

His father’s voice boomed from the living room, drowning out the local news. Tim pictured his mother’s answer: a slight shrug of her shoulders and a small, high-pitched sound at the back of her throat as she didn’t look up from her magazine or knitting pattern. The lack of real response would serve to further anger her husband: likely the reason she responded in such manner.

Tim put the plate in the draining rack and grabbed a handful of cutlery from the bottom of the sink and set to scrubbing them individually. When he next glanced out toward the shed, he saw the reflection of his father standing behind him.

“Where’s your brother?”

Tim shrugged. “I don’t know, dad.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, really. I—”

“You’re covering for him. What kind of shit is he up to?”

“I don’t—”

The impact of the man’s hand contacting the side of his head made Tim bite his tongue.

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” his father slurred. “Where is your brother? If you don’t tell me, you’ll get the licking for both of you.”

Tim bit down on his back teeth, gripped the edge of the counter hard enough with both hands to make his knuckles go white. He couldn’t let emotion overcome him, not when the job remained unfinished. If his father found out, he’d not only call the cops, he’d beat him within an inch of his life. He had to stay calm until everything was done. He thought of the nameless man, of his blood, of all those secrets hidden inside which only Tim had seen.

The second time his old man cuffed him, it started Tim’s head pounding.

“Where is he?”

Tim raised his eyes, looked out the window. A gust of wind swirled leaves across the lawn, threw them against the door of the shed, telling him what to do.

“The shed,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I think I saw him go into the shed.”

Tim saw his father’s reflection in the window, saw the way his expression moved from confusion to disappointment, then anger. Where Tim had been a letdown with his slight frame, disdain of sports and lack of friends, Kyle was the proverbial chip off the old block. For him to be going against their father’s wishes, to be flaunting his authority, must have been devastating. Tim suppressed a smile.

“That little fucker.”

He rushed to the back door, pulled on the knob and his hand slipped off, then tried again. Tim pulled his hands out of the dirty dish water and its limp bubbles, wiped them on his pants as he followed his father into the backyard, their feet kicking up dried maple leaves and sending them eddying across the lawn. In his rage and drunkenness, his father didn’t notice the spade leaning against the side of the shed beside the door, normally a punishable offence regardless of the fact the shovel didn’t belong to him. He threw the door open, reeled into the dark shed with his eldest son two steps behind. By the time he found the string attached to the overhead light and pulled it, Tim already had the shovel held in front of him in both hands.

When the light came on, his father stood for a few seconds, probably confused by the emptiness of the shed save for the tarp lying on the floor at the back: an item which shouldn’t have been there. Tim watched his shoulders sag as rage dissipated, but he knew it would be short-lived. His father’s anger never disappeared: it needed to be vented. With bits and pieces of Kyle wrapped neatly in the tarp, there was only one other place for his ire to find release. The muscles in Tim’s arms tightened.

“Kyle’s not in here. What the fuck are you playing at?” His father didn’t turn around.

“He’s here.” Tim kept his voice level, masking the excitement building in his gut, flooding his groin. “He’s hiding.”

His father’s head moved right to left, scanning the small building: no place to hide save for under the misplaced tarp and it wasn’t big enough for a boy Kyle’s size. He moved forward and pushed at it with the tow of his socked foot. Definitely something underneath, so he bent over and pulled back a corner of the blue plastic. It took almost fifteen seconds for him to fully understand what he saw. When he did, he whirled toward his older son, his face twisted with rage.

The shovel hit him square in the face before he said a word.

* * *

Two hours passed before Tim’s mother showed up at the back door, her slight frame silhouetted against the kitchen light.

“Timmy? What are you doing?”

Tim paused leaning on the handle of the spade, its tip stuck in the dirt. He would have liked the hole to be deeper, but the damn clay seemed intent on preventing him from digging an adequate grave. It would have to do.

“Just getting rid of some garbage, Mom.”

For a long minute, the woman didn’t say anything. Tim held his breath, waiting for her reaction. He didn’t want her to come across the yard and see, didn’t want her to have to go in the hole, too, though part of him wanted to bring her out here, show her what he’d done. What good was there in doing such fine work if he gave no one the opportunity to admire it?

His mother stood a few seconds, arms crossed in front of her chest, protecting herself against the chilly night, then glanced over her shoulder as if someone inside had called her. She looked back at her son.

“Well, don’t stay out too long, it’s getting cold.”

Tim let out his breath but, as she moved away from the door, panic exploded in his chest. Once he covered the hole with dirt, no one would ever see what he did; no one would ever know what he was capable of.

“Mom?”

She stopped and came back to the doorway. Even from across the yard, he saw her shiver. He wondered if it was because of the cold or if she sensed something different about her older son, something dangerous and wonderful.

“What?”

“Can you come here for a minute? I’ve got something to show you.”

A few seconds passed as she decided.

“Let me get my shoes on. I’ll be right there.”

Both hands resting on the end of the shovel’s handle, Tim set his chin on top of his hands and looked down into the hole. His father’s slack face showed through the dirt, soil clogging his ear and smeared around the ragged edge of his neck where the hack saw had taken it from his body. In the dark, Tim found it easy to imagine his flaccid visage frozen in an expression of surprise, both at what he had done and the fact he was capable of doing it. His eldest son had proven far more gifted than he’d ever thought and he would wear that expression of surprise forever. All the way to Hell.

Tim smiled.

About the Author:

Bruce Blake lives in a small town on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. When pressing issues like shovelling snow and building igloos don’t take up his spare time, Bruce can be found taking the dog sled to the nearest cafe to work on his short stories and novels.

Actually, Chemainus, B.C. is only a couple hours north of Seattle, Wash., where more rain is seen than snow. Bruce is the father of two and trophy husband of burlesque diva Miss Rosie Bitts. He spends too much time working a traditional job and not enough time writing but hopes to change all that soon.

Discover other titles by Bruce Blake at Smashwords.com:

Another Man’s Shoes

Walk on Water

Wave Songs

Boulder

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Copyright

Copyright 2010 Bruce Blake

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Content

Bruce Blake
YARDWORK
Smashwords Edition

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