"Darkness or Light," by Bill Baber

 

[Originally published at Close to the Bone Publishing, November 2013.]

There’s no way to say for sure that I would have killed Bobby Ray Lomax if I wasn’t drunk; maybe alcohol provided me with the courage I needed to shoot him. As far as a motive? I’ll get to that in a little while. But I did it and I have no regrets, so there it is.

When I saw Lucinda in the hospital, she was still alive, barely clinging to the last thread of life, about to let go and fall into the final abyss. She looked nothing like the beautiful girl she had once been. Her face was destroyed almost beyond recognition. I leaned over the bed and softly kissed the side of her head.

“I’ll take care of this,” I told her. “Ain’t no way he’ll get away with it. And Baby, I’m so sorry I didn’t fix it sooner.”

There were tears running down my cheeks as I put my hand on top of hers. Just a brief moment later she was gone. It wasn’t long before I was on a stool at McAdoo’s Tavern pounding double shots of Early Times.

It was just me now. I had been the oldest. All of them but me had run away from the nightmare we had grown up in. Meth got Carla. Jimmy was killed in Afghanistan, and Lucinda got Bobby Ray. I’m not sure there is a difference between nightmares and broken dreams. I am sure my brother and sisters dreamt of some better life, at least of something that approached normal. But all they got was their own kind of hell.

Daddy was a mean man. I’m guessing that if I worked underground in semi-darkness, breathing black dust, I might be mean too. But there was no excuse for the things he did. He’d come home from a day in the mine—after stopping at McAdoo’s—and start in on Mama. He’d beat on her and then start on us. By the time I turned fourteen, I started to stand up to him. Mama was all soft and good. The only thing I ever got from Daddy was a belt, the back of a hand or fists when I started fighting back.

One night he had Mama on the floor, left arm pressed against her throat, punching her face with his right hand. We all screamed for him to stop. He looked up, his face red with rage and said,

“Every one of y’all is gettin’ a whippin’ next.”

I took the poker from alongside the fireplace. I think at first I only meant to hit him once. Just to get him to leave Mama alone. But then I couldn’t stop. I stood over him and swung like I was chopping wood and kept up until there was a hole in his head and I could no longer hear the coal dust rattle in his lungs.

The state sent me away until I was twenty-one. Mama died while I was gone. When I got home, Carla was so far gone there was no saving her. Jimmy was overseas and Lucinda was living with Bobby Ray. She was just seventeen. It seems that by trying to protect us all, I let everyone down. I couldn’t help but think if I hadn’t got sent off I might have at least made it different for my sisters. As far as Jimmy, well you tell me what’s a worse hell—war or a coal mine?

I remember the night I heard Lucinda’s tires on the gravel in front of the house. I met her outside. There was blood around her nose and mouth and when we got inside, I could see that her eyes were black.

Bobby Ray was a miner and a mean man too. When I got to his singlewide, I pounded on the door. He opened it wearing clothes black from the mine, a cigarette in his mouth and a beer in his hand.

“What the hell do you want here, Donald?” he said.

“You ever hit her again and I will kill you,” was my reply.

He laughed a mean, cruel laugh, then threw the beer can in my face. His punches knocked me to the ground. He added a kick to my ribs.

“You ever come ’round here again and I’ll kill you. Just remember that.”

Then, he laughed at me again.

***

After leaving McAdoo’s, I stopped at home to get Daddy’s old Colt. It was in a shoebox in the closet wrapped in oilcloth. I checked to see that it was loaded, then headed for Bobby Ray’s trailer. It was snowing lightly as I headed out Combs Flat Road. I remember thinking that the whiteness of the snow was the first clean, pure thing I had seen in a very long time.

I pulled my truck right up to the front step of his trailer with the high-beams on. He opened the door before I could even get out. He was drunk too. I guess he couldn’t see with the light in his eyes.

“Who the hell’s there?” he slurred.

“She’s dead you bastard. Now I’m goin’ to kill you, just like I promised.”

I shot him. This time I didn’t give him a chance to laugh.

So there it is, preacher. My confession and no I ain’t asking any God for forgiveness. Like I said, no regrets, they can slip that needle in me now.

There’s either going to be darkness or light. If it’s light, I’ll see Mama and them again and it might be like a dream come true. And if it’s dark, all I’ll see is Daddy and Bobby Ray.

And I’m prepared to kill them both all over again.

Bill Baber’s writing has appeared at Crime sites across the web and in print anthologies—most notably from Shotgun Honey, Gutter Books, Dead Guns Press, Close to the Bone and Authors on the Air Press—and has garnered Derringer Award and Best of the Net nominations. A book of his poetry, Where the Wind Comes to Play, was published in 2011. He lives with his wife and a spoiled dog in Tucson, Az. on the edge of the desert and sometimes just on the edge.

Amazon.com: Bill Baber: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

Bill Baber – Close To The Bone Publishing (close2thebone.co.uk)