Caleb

I guess I owe God a favor.

One round from shotgun to spine takes three seconds to send a guy like me halfway to heaven. Seven came and went, and there was no bullet in my back, just a little girl in my arms, sobbing stains into my skin.

I whipped my head around in the dark and the cracks between the window boards lit up in a headlight sunrise. Thirty-minutes was enough to bring out the pigs. They’re quick when you threaten them, slow when you need help.

Everybody under our roof needed a hand, but we were past the point of asking, and Anderson wasn’t coming to talk.

Bad news was fast on its feet. The cops were quick to the trigger. Before any of us could get our heads around what was happening, two bullets shattered the wood from the outside and sent a thousand splinters flying our way, each one catching the light off the cop car high beams like dust in the sun.

On any other night, in any other place, it would’ve been beautiful, but there was nothing beautiful about this place anymore.

I stood in the dark, no more than a couple feet away from what was left of my family, trying to figure out why I was still breathing, while bullets broke through the window boards.

The four of us knew what was coming. A quick shutter and twang of the heartstrings, and all that numbness we’d gotten so good at pretending we felt, leaked down the insides of our jeans.

The room got so loud I went deaf to the gunfire, but the quiet didn't take away the fear. I couldn't breathe ‘cause of it, and I kept having this feeling that it would get under my skin and split me into pieces if I didn't keep it in check.

I froze up. Like the same sorry kid who pissed himself every time his father took off his belt. That was the man I was now. That's what I boiled down to after seventeen years—less than nothing.

But if there was any comfort in that truth, it was scrawled all over my brothers’ faces, each of them gray and empty in the half-dark. We were all the same men then, wearing our broken masks while we soaked through our clothes.

Half a minute into the shootout, some big shot pig called out a ceasefire over the police radios. Once he screamed at his dogs and muzzled their teeth, silence fell down on top of us again and covered the whole fifty-acres of our place ‘til a hard, ugly crash, broke everything into pieces.

Cillian’s shotgun hit the floor. He'd never dropped a weapon in his life. Wasn’t like him to be careless. Wasn’t like him to miss an easy shot either. I turned back to where he’d been standing and saw Liam alone—his face twisted up worse than the barbed wire he’d left tangled around the room.

He stared at me, pupils wider than I'd ever seen and choked up all of a sudden. Liam couldn’t keep his eyes off the dark space on the floor near his feet.

Couldn’t make out what he was looking at—wasn’t sure if I wanted to—but I stood there for a long time, staring at what I hoped was nothing, waiting for the helicopter searchlights to clear out the shadows.

Red and blue flares spilled over the floorboards and Cillian lay there looking like he’d fallen five stories from his feet to the ground, sprawled out and squirming. I thought he was messing around. Faking being gunned down like he used to when we were kids.

He never turned down a good game of Cops and Robbers. You know the popguns and corks kind? He loved all that. Me and Marcus would go after him, shooting wood bullets like crazy. He'd laugh whenever he got hit, just stop everything and roll around on the rug, giggling like a loon.

The kid thought getting caught was a gas and never minded a little cork in his gut ‘cause he loved the chase so much. Some games you hope never catch up with people.

I'd never seen Cillian so white. I'd never seen him look at anybody else for answers a day in his life, but he had Marcus's shirt bunched up so tight in his grip he could've ripped it clean off if he pulled any harder. Marcus couldn't do anything but try to keep him still.

Marcus didn't want anybody to know that he didn't know what the hell to do. He had to keep it cool, keep his head on straight, keep that bullshit expression on his face neutral even though all of it was a goddamn lie. He couldn’t fix a bullet wound.

Some son-of-a-bitch had put a hole in Cillian's belly big enough to have him choking on his own blood. His screaming was worse than anything. I heard it louder than everything else, and the shock from it hit me hard enough to break skin.

I had this idea that Cillian was gonna get up and start laughing like always, pointing his boney fingers in all our faces ‘cause we'd worried about him for nothing.

We'd blink and there wouldn't be any police, any press, any trouble, and Hailey would be a dream I wouldn't remember. There wouldn't have been a dirty deal, Anderson would've been a nobody and Ma wouldn't be dead.

Cillian wouldn't be dying.

Maybe he'd be alright. If he quit squirming around and bleeding all over the place, the cops could come in, take Hailey, and get him to a hospital. They never should’ve shot anybody. Cillian wasn’t a threat to anyone but me.

They should’ve waited. They should’ve asked questions. They didn't even try.

Liam sat on his knees watching everything pan out like he knew the situation was too bad to make a difference. He wasn't listening to the cops screaming at us to come outside, demanding that we let Hailey go, he was somewhere else.

Somewhere bad.

I tried not to think about the last time he got like this, ‘cause thinking about that meant thinking about Ma. That time, a pair of white coats showed up and told him she was dying, and he knew he couldn’t fix it, and I knew he couldn’t fix it.

He had that same sorry goddamn look on his face then like he did now. I remembered it clearer than anything. Bad news was always the easiest to read.

The room flashed blue again, and the red flower bud on the belly of Cillian’s t-shirt sprouted into an ugly purple stain bigger than Marcus’s hands could cover. A helicopter spotlight burst in through the rafters, and for a minute, everything seemed clean in the glow, like we were new again.

But Cillian went rigid, stiff as a starched shirt, and I didn't breathe for the couple seconds he was like that. I didn't know what to do if he'd disappeared all of a sudden, just up and left us without saying a word. I couldn’t deal with a situation like that again. Not right now—maybe not ever.

When the lights passed over, Cillian screamed out like he’d lost his mind. I couldn’t see shit in the dark, but the commotion scared me so bad I thought about running—just taking Hailey and running out into the woods behind the house.

But getting your own blood out of your system wasn’t that easy—even if I wanted it to be.

Marcus kept shouting at me to help him, and all that neutral crap he'd tried to keep up melted right off his face. I kept staring at his hands, both were wrist deep in Cillian’s blood. Wrist deep and he kept pressing down like he could stop the bleeding.

There was so much—blood and screaming. That's all there was. We were the livestock in a living breathing slaughterhouse, and I was gonna have to watch everybody die while the cops closed in.

The man on the loudspeaker outside said there wouldn't be anymore shooting if we came quietly. Liam wouldn’t do that if they begged him.

He wouldn't even look at Cillian who kept reaching out for him over and over. There wasn't any sympathy left in Liam, just quiet rage. I felt it. He didn't move from where he was, didn't pay any mind to anyone else, just sat on his heels cradling Rusty’s pistol.

Marcus shouted at me to come over and help him like I could change things. I barely had it in me to walk across the room. I wouldn't go if Cillian didn't call me. Getting shot didn't mean he’d had changed his mind about killing me or wanting to.

He'd called out for everyone else in the room but me, begging for someone to stop the pain, to put out the fire in his belly, but no one could. Marcus screamed for me a third time, and I stepped forward against my gut. As weak as he was, Cillian lifted his hand up to stop me from taking a second.

        “Don’t let him near me,” he said.

All the spit in my mouth dried up, but I kept walking—one foot after the other ‘til I found myself kneeling over my brother with both hands gripped around his, whether he wanted me there or not.

Cillian didn't fight me for long. He’d lost too much blood to put up much of a fuss. He looked up at me, eyes glazed and dull like he'd been out in the heat too long.

        "You're a damned idiot, Caleb, not knowing how to read me backwards."

Maybe he was delirious; maybe he'd started talking nonsense the way people do when they know they don't have very long. But when he dug his nails into my hand for the first time since I'd held it, I understood him.

This is how we knew each other, this is how we understood ourselves—living and dying through the pain.

        "Looks like real bullets are a little tougher than corks huh, Cal? Don't look so sorry for me, I'll be up in a minute and we'll play again. Close your eyes and start counting. I'll be gone before you know it."

I looked up at Marcus with so many tears in my eyes I couldn’t see straight. He felt the same way I did—useless and small. Cillian's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat ‘til he spattered blood through his teeth.

His grip loosened a little, and I held on to his hand harder, hoping he wouldn't feel any less strong or proud than he was when he could stand on his own.

       "You better come look for me, Caleb. Don't be long now, or I'll get scared you won't find me," he cocked his head over and grinned, a tired, labored grin, his eyes glassy with tears this time.

        "You'll come lookin’, won't you?" He asked.

        “You know I will,” I hardly sounded like myself anymore but I held it together so he wouldn’t get scared.

        “Atta’ boy, Caleb. Atta’ boy.”

Bang.

A gunshot fired out in the dark, sounded too close to have come from outside. Cillian’s head kicked back so violently his body nearly flew out of my hands.

Marcus made this sound all of a sudden, something in between a scream and a groan, something loud, dark, and broken. He howled like grief was the only thing he knew how to feel, the only thing he could feel anymore.

I turned back to look at Cillian, but Marcus grabbed me and shoved my face into his chest before I could move. Took him a long time to get any breath back into is lungs but once he did, he put his mouth so close to my ear I could feel the heat. He wanted me to listen, I didn’t know if I wanted to.

        “There’s a cattle tunnel underneath the house. You can get in through a hole in the ground near the front door where Liam chopped up the floorboards.”

I slammed my arms into his chest, pushing to get enough room between us so I could see Cillian. Marcus didn’t move. He reached up and slapped me hard enough to get me to stop struggling. I didn’t realize I’d been crying as much as I had ‘til his hand came away wet and dirty.

       “Just tell me he’s alright and I’ll go.”

My voice broke into pieces like it did when I was fifteen.

        “Don’t worry about Cillian, just worry about you. I’m not trying to see you killed, Caleb, I’m trying to get you outta here. Jump down into that hole near where the bunks used to be and crawl ‘til you reach the other side. It feeds out a couple miles away from Dad’s. Do what you want after that, but I want you and her gone, and I want you safe, you hear me?”

Footsteps scuffled behind us.

        “There’s no time left for talking, Marcus, step out of the way or I’ll shoot you earlier than I’d hoped,” Liam whispered.

He cocked Rusty’s gun and shoved the barrel into the back of Marcus’s head. The memory of what he’d done to me in the cold room kicked around in my stomach ‘til it made me sick.

        “Take care of Anderson, Liam. That’s what this is about, not Caleb,” Marcus said.

The fear in Marcus’s voice grated against my ears. Liam was too far gone for either of us to reason with him. He wasn’t our brother anymore, just a shadow of our father.

        “Certainly,” Liam said.

He moved the gun away from Marcus, pointed it directly at Hailey’s head, and fired twice. The gunshots sent her scrambling across the broken up floorboards, over the barbed wire, towards the front of the house.

Marcus tried knocking Liam off his feet before he could take another shot, but Liam threw his elbow into Marcus’s nose before he could stop him. Marcus tripped backwards and crashed onto the floor, his hands cupped over his face, while he tried to keep the blood from seeping through his fingers.

The clicks from the police loading their guns outside the house sounded louder than rain beating down on a tin roof. One of the helicopters outside shined a spotlight down on Hailey from the holes above her in the rafters.

She looked at me through the light, and every time I blinked I thought she’d disappear, but she didn’t. She stayed where she was, still and quiet, even though the pigs were screaming at her from all sides. The SWAT guys moved in closer to the windows.

I heard their feet in the gravel and smelled the dusty stink of their sweat seeping out of their uniforms. Liam was still   standing in the center of the room with Rusty’s gun in his hands, twirling it around his fingers like a toy.

The house went black again. Marcus shouted at me to run, and I did, one foot after the other, blind as a bat across the living room hoping to find my way to Hailey before the light did.

The cops bashed in the window boards, hoping to get themselves and their spotlights inside so they could see who was left to target.

I tripped over a shattered dresser lying on the ground mid-sprint. My foot snagged on something soft—a pile of my clothes sticking out of one of the broken drawers. I grabbed what I could carry and kept running.

A flashlight peaked into the house and lit up Hailey’s face again. She looked at me, her eyes brighter than the spotlights, and I reached out for her, confident that I’d make it ahead of anyone else. I didn’t.

Liam’s gun fired through the chaos and my legs went numb. I wasn’t hit, but Hailey’s eyes darted over to mine terrified like Cillian’s had been. But I didn’t want to think about Cillian, or bullets, or how all the things I knew were breaking apart.

I wanted the fear written on her face to disappear, for the violence to die away as fast as it had fallen on us, and to shut my eyes and forget about consequences. But terror had its fingers wrapped around my throat, and I was too afraid of what would follow to keep my eyes steady on Hailey.

She’d be fine, maybe the gunfire had spooked her, but she’d be alright. She’d shake the panic and get her color back like always. But Hailey stayed stiffer than stone, barely breathing, while her skin turned gray.

She reached up and cupped her hands over the side of her neck ‘til bright red blood spilled through. She called out to me, quieter than a whisper, and then fell straight down through the floorboards.

I sprinted after her, moving so fast I tore the skin on my legs to pieces on the barbed wire. Two-way gunfire broke out on either side of me, but I was alright with dying trying to keep my promises.

I stopped short of the hole she’d disappeared into, and looked back at Marcus lying all too still on the floor, Liam firing at the police pouring into the house, and Cillian lying in the kitchen covered in shadows.

The darkest parts of my spirit screamed, loud enough for grief to drown out everything, quiet enough so no one would hear.

I fell back on my heels, into the dark, and prayed to whatever fragments of God were left in me that something aside from pain would be waiting at the bottom of things, something beautiful and unbroken—like an angel in the shadows.