Kin

growing steadily colder.

“Why’s he smilin’?” one of the boys asked.

“I expect he’s acceptin’ his fate.”

Get this one last thing done, Wellman told himself, but his own thoughts sounded distant, a voice heard calling from beyond the hills. Then: “One last…thing,” he said aloud. It was not until he drew in a sudden breath and forced his eyes wide that he realized they’d been shut. His vision wavered, the figures around him blurry and indistinct as if seen through billowing sheets of plastic. He clenched his teeth, and willed his hand to bring the gun up. Miraculously, for it felt as if it existed independently of him, it obeyed, though the gun seemed to have increased in weight and size.

“Well lookit that,” Pa said, and chuckled.

“Best step back, Pa.”

The man’s tone darkened. “And you best watch who you’re advisin’, Aaron.”

Wellman gasped as a bolt of pain shot through him. For a moment he thought he’d been stabbed again, but realized as it ebbed away that it was merely an involuntary spasm, his body protesting the systematic shutdown of its component parts.

Papa-In-Gray’s face was mere inches from his own.

Wellman straightened his arm and aimed the gun point blank at the man’s right eye.

Knives found his throat. The twins, he suspected, on either side of him, their hands small as they brushed his chin.

“Easy boys. He ain’t shootin’ nobody.”

“But Pa—”

“Get in the truck.”

Wellman drew back the hammer. The ratcheting click sounded impossibly loud. The only sound in the world. The boys tensed.

“You heard me, now get movin’ dammit,” Papa commanded.

Wellman felt their reluctance as they moved away, heard their footsteps crunching gravel, the truck doors opening and closing again. Then it was just silence, one shadow, and the gun.

“You change your mind, old man?” Papa asked. “Fixin’ to go out a hero?”

Wellman’s eyes were starting to close, the shades on his evening coming down to usher in endless night. He jerked himself back to consciousness and muttered a curse.

“Go ahead,” Pa told him, leaning in so the gun was pressed beneath his eye. “Pull the trigger. God might forgive you for doin’ what you thought was right while the pain had you addled. And I ain’t scared none. You might say I’m awful curious about what’s waitin’ for me up there.”

“Let her go. Please. She never hurt you.”

“She kilt my boy’s what she did to me.”

“She was… Just… let her go. She’s suffered enough.”

“Only reason you gotta stake in this is ’cuz you got in the way, ol’ man. What happens to her ain’t none of your concern. Shouldn’t’ve wasted your time on her.”

“You’ll burn in Hell,” Wellman whispered, his breath whistling from his mouth. Shuddering, he put as much pressure on the gun as he could muster, digging it into the flesh beneath the other man’s eye. “You’ll burn for what you’ve done. And someday… someone will stop you.”

“Oh?”

“People like you…” He grunted as another bolt of pain shot through him. “Monsters like you…don’t last long. Someone will put an end to this.”

Pa sounded as if he was smiling, but his face was nothing but darkness. “But not you?”

“No.” Wellman drew a breath he was afraid would be his last. He was wracked with pain, every muscle contracting, making it an effort to breathe, to think, to see… “No,” he said. “Not me.”

With the last of his strength, he swung his hand to the left and pulled the trigger. Pa jerked back with a grunt, one hand clamped over his ear as he spun away. The gun kicked in the doctor’s hand, sending a shock of pain up his arm and he almost dropped it. But he brought the weapon up one last time, tightened his quivering grip, and pulled the trigger again, and again, even after he could no longer see, and the sound of the bullets leaving the gun was a distant echo.

* * *

The truck bucked and dropped low on the right side, the headlights tilting, sliding away from their father and the dying doctor before coming to a halt at a crooked angle. The windshield shattered, scattering glass, and from the back seat Joshua gasped as a bullet sheared off a piece of his right ear and punched a small hole in the rear window, starring but not breaking it.

“That son of a bitch,” Aaron roared, jerking on the door handle. “He got the goddamn tire.” Then he was out and running, door swinging wide, the knife held at his side in a fist so white it could have been sculpted from limestone.

“You all right?” Luke asked quietly, his eyes on the mirror and his younger brother’s pained expression.

Joshua nodded, one hand cupping his bloody ear.

Isaac shoved the newly vacated driver seat forward and filed out with Joshua at his heels. They slammed the door hard behind them as if they had sensed Luke wasn’t going to follow.

They were right.

Instead he sat still, and watched, absently picking fragments of glass from his hair and brushing them from his clothes. The cuts on his face stung where the shrapnel from the windshield had punctured the skin, but he was only barely aware of them. The tender area on his left cheek hurt more, even though the pain was no more potent than the nicks made by the glass. Shame made his face fill with blood and throb with the impotency of anger. He should have lashed back at the old man, snapped his bones and torn his flesh. There had been time. But he had just stood there in shock, overwhelmed by the dawning of what this new development would mean to his family.

The old man caught Luke a good one, he imagined them muttering to each other as they grinned up at their father, who would shake his head in disappointment. Should’ve seen that comin’ a mile away. Boy’s gettin’ slower’n a dog in the summertime. And y’all know what needs to be done when a dog ain’t no good no more don’tcha?

Panic lodged in his throat at the image of them turning as one to look at him wherever he stood waiting for their verdict.

We do, Pa.

Doubt delayed him, one clammy hand slippery against the door handle. These people were all he had. They were all he knew, and maybe at the back of it all he was getting too far ahead of himself. There was no doubt that Pa had no time for him, but would he go so far as to end his life? Over this?

Out in the yard, Pa was rising. Like Joshua, who stood by his side, nudging the doctor with his foot, he had one hand over his ear. Luke had seen the doctor move the gun away from his father’s face and pull the trigger, shooting out the tire, and while Aaron had cursed and ducked, Luke had stayed where he was, watching until the moment the windshield exploded, hoping against hope that one of those bullets would tear through his brain, curing it of confusion and fear once and for all, or that the doctor would save at least one round for Papa.

It was a terrible thought and one he couldn’t help but feel guilty for, and yet up until Pa had risen just a moment ago, proving he was still alive, Luke had prayed the man was dead and out of their lives forever. Now he watched as Aaron plucked the gun from the doctor’s hand and checked the chamber. “Ain’t got but one bullet left,” he told their father.

One bullet, Luke thought. F’only he’d used it. F’only Aaron’d use it now. But his brother would never do such a thing. Aaron would forever be loyal to their father, whether out of fear or respect was unknown, and it hardly mattered. Aaron had watched Susanna die. Despite his apparent concern back at the Lowell farm, he would not intervene should Pa decided to kill Luke. It would be their father’s will, and that will was as good as God’s own for them. They served and did not question, and it was something Luke, despite his own years of faithful service, had never understood. If not for Momma-In-Bed’s words, he might never have comprehended why they did the things they did, and the confusion and inner conflict of emotions that had manifested itself in those days after his sister’s death might have driven him mad, or forced him