Compound Fracture: Chapters 11-14

They live in rural Twist Creek, half an hour out.

Mamaw ushers me inside.

“They find who did it?” Papaw drawls eventually, hands folded across his big belly.

Our insurance won’t do a damned thing, so I’m planning to get the billing center phone number from Amanda to haggle it down to something that won’t bankrupt us.

Mom says Sadie and she with a cold finality, so long as I’m not in the room.

Tweezer to lift the suture knot away from the skin, scissors to cut, then pull out.

There’s a whole spectrum of reactions to coming out.

I had some good excuses for why I was unemployed, at first: no driver’s license, no time for Mom to ferry me around and, you know, jobs are tight when we’re all hoarding a few to make rent.

The other dishie thought it was funny to pick on me, I’d get snapped at for incomprehensible mistakes, and suddenly I was being held to rules nobody would or even could explain.

It’s hot and muggy and loud, and sometimes I pull eleven-hour shifts on the weekend, but it’s good.

Even though we’re in a lull between lunch and dinner, it don’t mean that Big Kelly’s ain’t hectic.

A cook is yelling at a waitress, “When I say hot, I fucking mean hot” — someone has Metallica playing on their phone, tinny like they’ve jammed it into a container as a makeshift speaker — dirty cups hit a metal counter — silverware clatters, the industrial fans whir, a plate drops and breaks.

One of the cooks points towards the shoddy back room.

I stop in front of the back door — the noise of the kitchen is muted here, the humidity less intense — and stuff my usual paycheck envelope into my back pocket.

He’s frail and lanky, not a scrap of muscle on the bone, with chewed-on nails and a mouth that’s always in the shape of a smile even when he ain’t smiling.

I grab the heavy metal door, wrench it back, and smash it into Eddie’s face.

When the wind blows, the trees above us move, casting dapples of light across his pale face.

I’m an Abernathy, and this looks like retaliation.

I grab Eddie under the arms, letting his bloody head loll across my shirt because it’s better than dragging it across the gravel, and pull him to the dumpster corral.

I don’t have the wherewithal to register the slipup of my name.

The blood is mostly gone, but it’s all I can see: the tiny little specks settled into the porous material.

I say, “As long as you’re willing to trespass.”

It amplifies the dripping of condensation but muffles the sound of our footsteps.

I’m about to continue, give some wider context, because I’m never really sure how much anyone actually knows about the calamity — we ain’t taught about it, and it’s a touchy subject around here — but I stop.

I walk up to the haphazard barrier — long chunks of wood fashioned into a makeshift fence, held together with rope and rusty nails.