Fair Enough
by Anthony Neil Smith
Country Noir
I stood outside in the dry grass and tall weeds, waiting for Lionel to shoot our grandfather so we could leave. I don't know what made me think he could get it right, since he can't even walk straight without tripping-up every few steps. It was chilly out, late fall, too breezy for me. I stared at the beige trailer with the three wooden steps that led to the door Lionel had just opened and walked through. Grandpa Jesse's truck sat angled in the yard by a pile of old lumber from what had been the family home.
Lionel didn't want to shoot him, but I convinced him he should. I made up his mind: "You're going to walk inside, shoot him in the head, and then we're getting back to Baton Rouge as quick as we can. We'll say we were a hundred miles away when it happened. They'll never know." After sunset, we drove to Eunice, where we both grew up and where Grandpa Jesse still lived.
My cousin Lionel hated the old man, too, but not as much as I did. He wasn't smart enough for that. Grandpa was a miserable drunk who told everybody he was a veteran of the Korean War even though his whole family knew he'd been an Army cook in Japan who never saw battle. Just a mess line and huge vats of spaghetti sauce or soup or gravy.
"Yeah, Jesse, tell us about Korea one more time," was all anyone had to say to Grandpa, and he'd be off on stories his friends told him about combat--like he was there at all--and his second wife would look away ashamed.
She got sick of him and went back to Utah a few months ago. He changed the will then, cut out the second wife and left it all to Lionel. Changed it that way to spite me and Aunt Lori and my dad, Jesse's only son.
The crickets were spinning outside the trailer. Cars passed on a road behind the trees, so I could hear them but not see. I brushed through the cloud of gnats around my head. I had parked my car on the other side of the woods, and we walked half a mile, my cousin lumbering behind me, trying to keep up with my long steps. He was almost a foot shorter than me, but much thicker in his shoulders and chest. Lionel spouted off "what-ifs" and I told him no one would hear or know or care. The closest house was a five minute walk from the trailer. The road was cut so drivers got to see only trees and mailboxes. Most of the houses out here sat at the ends of long red clay and gravel driveways surrounded by woods.
I told Lionel, "You shoot him in the head--just once. Hold the barrel close, right here." I pointed two fingers at my temple, angled back so I was aiming for the center of the brain. "The soft spot, see?"
He nodded and fiddled with the gun in his big stumpy hands. I had picked up the .38 snubby from a garage sale a month ago. The owner didn't care about background checks. He just wanted cash. I had been patient. I thought Grandpa, sick as he had been recently, might die before we got our chance, and that would've been better, but it was just a flu bug and he got over it.
Lionel had been in the house a couple of minutes; it felt like an hour. I stood still as I could, hands in the pockets of my windbreaker. I felt tingling on my legs under my jeans, looked down and saw hundreds of ants swarming me. I yelped, caught a breath and stomped my feet, slapped my legs. Black ants, not the biting kind, but it was the nastiest feeling to have them crawling all over like I was just another old oak.
The shot came from inside. Lionel flew out the door and fell off the rickety steps on his face. He pushed himself up, and I met him halfway.
"What happened? You do it?"
"I shot him," Lionel said. "Missed his head. I turned--"
"Is he dead?"
"Naw. I just woke him up. I was scared to get too close. Shot him in the leg, high up. Maybe his balls."
I wanted to yell at him, but figured that would make it harder. He was almost crying, anyway. "Give me the gun, quick."
"I couldn't keep my eyes open. When I shot it, I turned and shut my eyes, and it must've jerked away."
"Don't worry about it. Give me the gun. Stay here."
I took the revolver and climbed the steps to the trailer door. That was another mistake Grandpa Jesse made because of that woman, his second wife. After marrying her, he tore down the family house and moved into a mobile home instead. No more Christmas get-togethers at the home place. My dad had wanted to restore the house, had already drawn up the plans, now in a drawer in his study collecting dust, along with a list of price estimates on woods, reinforcements, paint.
Grandpa knew Dad's plans, but tore the place down anyway for the sheer joy of watching it crush his son's dreams, because his second wife didn't want to live in a musty old house. He thought he was teaching us a lesson: Life's not fair.
I pulled the screen door, which was stuck in the frame, so I pulled harder and felt it bend a little before it snapped out and shook. The other door was open, pushed in, and all the lights in the living room were out. I saw the green plastic recliner, close to me, a puddle of blood in the seat and slipping off onto the floor. A trail of it on the carpet led past the coffee table to the TV across the room, then got wider as it spread down the hall to Grandpa Jesse's bedroom. There was a stack of old TV Guides on a dinner tray by the chair, and a plastic bottle of root beer on its side, soaking the magazines.
I followed the trail down the hall with slow steps even though I needed to be done with it quickly. Maybe I wanted to surprise him, not even let him see it was me. If he knew, he might look at me and say, "Yeah, now you've got it, see? Life's not fair at all."
The bedroom door was open. The trail curved around the unmade queen-sized bed to the side I couldn't see, but I heard Grandpa's grumbling and heavy breathing. There was a heavy odor of old meat and aftershave. The mirror on the closet door was cracked in the middle. I stepped over the trail until I saw him propped against the box springs, his yellow hair a sweaty tangle, smeared with blood where he'd wiped his hand across. The phone was on the bed behind him.
Grandpa Jesse pressed his palms into the hole, high on his inside left thigh, that was still leaking through the spaces between his fingers. He turned his head towards me and grunched his eyebrows.
"Why'd you send that moron in here anyway? You should've known he'd screw up," he said.
"I didn't think it would be so hard for him. It was supposed to look sloppy anyway."
"Sloppy, messy. Just what I expected from the both of you."
I don't know why I didn't shoot him right then. Maybe I wanted him to admit that for once in my life, he could say I did something good, didn't give up. Got away with it.
"They won't even know I was here. Lionel will be the one."
"Look at you. How much stuff have you touched in here? What about the gun? What about the door? What about your car, or getting rid of Lionel? You just think you're in the clear. You ain't even halfway there."
"I've got it all sorted out." I looked at his phone, still on the hook, not bloody at all. "Didn't call an ambulance?"
He heaved his shoulders up, cringed, then grunted. "Why bother? Soon as I saw him, I knew I was a goner. Dead. It's over. See what I mean? Like I've always told you boys, 'Life's not--'"
I fired twice, both into his face. It wasn't pretty. I stepped carefully over the trail again, wiped the gun grips and door handle with a handkerchief. Then I made my way out of the trailer, down the steps and back to Lionel, who sat on the ground with his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around tightly.
I reached down to him. "We're done here."
* * * * *
Lionel was crying before we made it to the car. I looked him over on the way to make sure he didn't get any blood on him. I planned on driving about five miles to finish this. We got into my Buick and pulled away.
"What's momma going to say? What about Uncle Vic?"
"Dad won't care," I said. I gave him the gun back. He held it loosely in his lap. Three bullets left. "Your mom, now, I think she might be sad, knowing you've done this. Think you can face her again?"
He shook his head. "What am I going to do?"
"Are you going to tell? Is that what you're thinking?"
He thought about it, and I searched for a spot to pull over. We were passing sugar cane fields, tall stalks in thick rows as far as I could see. I needed to find a narrow dirt road that turned into one of them, someplace not very deep, but it had to be hidden from the main road. I slowed down, hoping the few cars behind me would pass around, get on out of the way. They did.
"I think we should tell," Lionel said. He spoke low, solemn. I could've laughed.
"You know what'll happen when you tell? When you say it was my fault? I'll tell them you're lying. I'll say you did it on your own. What can you prove? I'll say, 'My cousin, he's slow in the head--'"
"Hey--"
"'--you mean to say Lionel drove over there and shot our grandfather? I'm shocked.'" I was grinning then.
"You wouldn't do that."
"Why not? You know what jail is like, Lionel? That's where you'll go, sit in a tiny cell, and get raped and beat up and maybe killed, and that's just while waiting to be executed."
Lionel held the gun tighter, but I reached over and gripped the barrel, pulled it away from him. I found the road I needed and turned off, drove maybe ten yards in. It was red clay with two grooves worn from other tires, sugar cane stalks crowding us on both sides. I stopped the car, switched it off, and looked at Lionel. "You'll be the shame of this whole family, and you'll break your mother's heart."
"No. Momma will always love me."
"Love the child who killed her dad? She'll be sorry she ever brought you into this world. Get out of the car."
We opened the doors. I pointed ahead of us, and we walked ten more feet. Lionel was a wreck, trembling all over, full of self-disgust, just like I wanted him to be. I pulled the folded notebook paper and pen out of my pocket, tossed them on the ground in front of Lionel.
"Get down on your knees and write this note," I told him. He went down on one, shaking his head the whole time, tears leaking freely.
"Write that you're sorry for killing your Grandpa Jesse, and that you killed yourself to save your momma from the shame."
He looked up into my face after lifting the pen off the clay. "Killed myself?"
"You're sorry for the trouble you've caused. You killed him for being so hateful to you and your mom. Sign your name, then I'll shoot you in the head."
If I could get back to Baton Rouge in time, I'd be free, not a speck of evidence to ever tie me to it. Lionel would have inherited it all. It would pass down to his mother. I had talked to a couple of attorney friends about it already. It looked like either she'd get everything, or it would be divided among the family. That's okay. I'm sure something could be worked out for my dad to get the land and rebuild.
But I didn't count on Lionel standing up just then. "I won't write that."
"It's the only way, Lionel. Either this or jail. Lethal injection. You hate needles, remember?"
He huffed and turned red in the face. "You're the one killed him. You're the one wanted me to do it most. I did it for you, and look how you treat me now. Going to lie about me, going to lie to Momma. I come all this way to kill myself? You're the killer. Why don't you do it?"
"You idiot," I wanted the protection of the car, thin as that was. It wasn't supposed to happen like that. Lionel had never questioned me before. I backed up very slowly, two-handed the gun. "You don't understand. I tried to explain it to you, and you still don't understand, Lionel. You don't have the choice. I'm saving you from Hell, cousin!"
Lionel rushed me, grabbed my hands before I could get a shot off. He twisted my wrists, and I fell backwards across the hood of the car. And the gun went off, muffled, and I thought my gut was on fire. I stared straight up, the stalks seemed to close in on top of me. My cousin let go of me, and I slid off the hood. Lionel knelt beside me, lifting my head, telling me how sorry he was.
"That's okay, Lionel. No problem. Look, take me to a hospital, can you do that? Help me up."
"I'm a killer now. I'll go to jail for sure."
"No, you'll be fine. I'll take care of you. Help me up."
He stuck the gun barrel inside his mouth and blew his brains out. He slumped over me, and I fought to push his dead weight off before I suffocated.
When I was free, I rolled over on my side. I could only live if I could stand up, walk out of there. Maybe it didn't matter if I lived, as long as I could make it back to Grandpa Jesse's trailer. It took a while, but I got to my feet, surprised at how much blood I'd lost, dizzy and hungry, only to collapse behind the car. Thinking, How damned unfair...
The End

Anthony Neil Smith is a fiction editor with Mississippi Review Web and co-editor of Plots With Guns. His work has been featured in Blue Murder, Nafarious - Tales of Mystery, Barcelona Review, 12 Gauge Review, Thrilling Detective, Exquisite Corpse, and others. He is is from the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
This is the second story written by Anthony Neil Smith to appear in Judas ... his first, The Dealbreaker, appeared in the inaugural issue.