'I been watching you all afternoon,' he says. 'Never had twins.' I’m not sure what he means. He has a northern accent, and a deep voice that rumbles when he speaks, like a growling animal. His breath is rancid, smoky, and sated with alcohol. 'Eenie, meanie, minie, moe. Catch a tiger by her toe. If she hollers, let her go. Eenie, meanie, minie, moe.' He points a thick grease-stained index finger into Orson’s chest. I’m getting ready to ask what he’s doing, when a fist I never see coming catches me clean across the jaw.
I come to consciousness with the side of my face in the water, my vision blurred, and Orson moaning.
'Keep crying like that, boy,' the man says, winded. 'That’s nice. Real nice.'
My sight clears, but I don’t understand why Orson is on his knees in the water, with the man draped over him, his enormous villous legs pressed up against the back of Orson’s hairless thighs. His olive pants and underwear pulled down around his black boots, the man hugs him tightly as they rock back and forth.
'Hot damn,' the man whispers. 'Oh, good God.' Orson screeches. He sounds like our cocker spaniel puppy, and still I don’t understand.
The man and Orson look at me at the same instant and see that I’m conscious and curious. Orson shakes his head and sobs harder. I cry, too.
'Boy,' the man says to me, his face slick with sweat. 'Don’t you move. I’ll twist your brother’s little neck off and roll it like a bowling ball.'
So I lie there with my face in the water, watching the man moan. He closes his eyes and starts hugging Orson faster and faster. As he comes, he bites Orson’s shoulder through a blue T-shirt, and my brother howls.
The man looks so happy. 'Ah! Ahh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhhhhh!'
Willard pulls out and Orson collapses into the water. There’s blood all over my brother’s ass. It runs down the backs of his legs. He lies in the water, half-naked, too stunned to cry or even pull up his pants. Willard takes a cigarette from his breast pocket and lights it.
'You’re a sweet piece,' he says, reaching down toward my brother, who’s still curled up in the water. Orson screams.
I sit up against the concrete wall. It’s no longer hailing, and Willard stumbles through the water toward me, his pants still down around his ankles. I’ve never seen a man’s erection before, and though beginning to fade, it’s ungodly huge. He stops in front of me.
'I can’t love you like I did him,' he says, dragging on the cigarette. 'Ever sucked on a dick?' I shake my head, and he steps into me. My jaw is swollen, but I forget the pain when I smell him. He holds himself in his hand and brushes it against my cheek.
'You put that in your mouth, boy, or I’ll twist your head off.'
Tears slide down my cheeks. 'I can’t. I can’t do it.'
'Boy, you take that now. And you do me good. Like you mean it. And mind those braces.'
The moist bulbous head of his cock touches my lips, and I take it for a full minute.
A grapefruit-size rock drops beside me into the water, and Willard staggers back into the opposite wall and sinks down into a sitting position in the water. He’s dazed, and I don’t understand what’s happened until I see Orson’s hand lift the rock back out of the water.
Because Willard is holding his left temple, he never sees Orson wind up again. The rock strikes him dead in the face this time, and I hear the fracture of bone. The man’s face is purple now, rearranged. On his hands and knees, he struggles toward the mouth of the tunnel. Taking the rock again, Orson mounts him, like we used to ride on our father’s back, and brings the granite down into the man’s skull. Willard sustains four blows before his arms give out.
With both hands, Orson lifts the rock up high and dashes the man’s head out like a piece of soft fruit. When he’s finished, he turns to me, still astride Willard, his face speckled with blood and pulp.
'Wanna hit him some?' he asks, though there isn’t much left to hit.
'No.'
He lobs the rock into the pool and comes over and sits down beside me. I lean over and vomit. When I sit back up, I ask him, 'What’d he do to you?'
'Put his thing in my butt.'
'Why?'
'I don’t know. Look at what else.' Orson shows me his tiny penis. There’s a blister on the end, and it makes me cry to see it.
I walk over to Willard and roll him over. He doesn’t have a face. His skull reminds me of a cracked watermelon shell. I find the soggy pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. The lighter’s inside the pack, so I take it, along with one cigarette, and sit back down beside my brother. Lighting the cigarette, I pull down my pants and brand myself.
'We’re still the same,' I say, whimpering as the pain comes on.
Willard Bass was a fly buffet when the dogs found him. Though our parents forbade us from playing in the woods for the remainder of the summer, they never seemed to notice that their sons had been hollowed.
It’s funny. I don’t remember forgetting.
Silence reigned for a long time after Orson finished. The darkness inside the car became complete, and the storm raged on.
'Guess you think that explains a lot,' I said.
'No. You want to know what I think? I think if you and I had never gone into that tunnel, we’d still be in this desert. I am not who I am because I was raped when I was twelve. Willard Bass was just gas on my fire. When will you see it?'
'What?'
'What’s really in you.'
'I do see it, Orson.'
'And?'
'And I hate it. I fear it. I respect it. And if I thought for a moment it could ever control me, I’d put a gun in my mouth. Time for your injection.'
33
WHEN I woke up, I didn’t hear the wind. The clock read 10:00 A.M. Orson was breathing heavily, and though I shook him, he wouldn’t stir.
It had grown uncomfortably hot inside the car, so I shut the vents. I turned the windshield wipers on, and they knocked off a wedge of snow. The sun shone into the front seat with eye-splitting brilliance.
The snow depth had risen above the hood, and as I stared out across the white desert, I saw only an occasional tangle of mature sagebrush poking up through the snow. The sky was orchid blue.
I saw a white ridge several miles ahead, and I wondered if it was the same one that rose behind the cabin and the shed.
Watching my brother sleep in the passenger seat, I felt a knot swell in my stomach. Bastard. I’d dreamed about Willard Bass making me take it. The rage lingered, festering in my gut, and the more I shunned it, the more it swelled. He should not have done that to me.
'Orson, wake up!' I slapped his face, and his eyes opened.
'Oh my,' he mumbled, sitting up. 'There’s three feet on the ground.' Orson cracked his neck. 'Roll down my window.' A clump of snow fell onto Orson’s lap as the glass lowered into the door. 'I see the cabin,' he said.
'Where?'
'Two black specks on the horizon.'
I squinted through the passenger window. 'Are you sure that’s it?'
'There isn’t another structure within fifteen miles.'
'How far is it?'
'A mile or two.'
