Yardwork (3 page)

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.