Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

“After that man,” said Martha.

“Why?” asked the children.

“Because he has taken a child and he was the man who killed your father, Mary.”

“John was not my father.”

“Yes, he was,” said Martha. “He raised you. He was a father to you. He made us a home. He was a good man who did not cross lines. He should be avenged.”

“How do you know it was that man?” said Mary.

“I feel it,” said Martha.

“Don’t go,” said the boy.

“I am going,” said Martha. “You will do as fine without me as you did with me.”

“It’s not true,” said Mary.

“What is a venge?” said the boy.

“Stay hidden,” said Martha, “and keep yourselves protected.”

To this day, Brooke did not know why his brother returned when he did. He’d had no reason to. Their business was finished and they had not had much love for one another growing up, outside of the unavoidable amount that came with the need to know yourself a little better and have some camaraderie over the miseries of your particular childhood. It goes without saying that their father was a rough man. They had not known their mother. From Brooke’s earliest memory, Sugar had been a boy and their father had treated him as such. It was not until they were old enough to ride horses and kill snakes with traps that Brooke identified Sugar’s body as being different from his own. And it was only a short while later that he began to develop an urge toward those differences. They had a white room. A cluttered white room that was used for no particular purpose other than storage. It held the sunlight like a lamp. The windows sagged and spiders hung in the panes. Sugar was gentle then, but his father took that from them. Their father toughened both of the boys until they were mean and capable. To the best of Brooke’s knowledge, that man was Sugar’s first. Brooke had found them in that cluttered white room. Everything had some bit of the man’s blood on it. Every object in the room announced what the boy had done and that they were now alone and without a plan for how to proceed. There was a knife in Sugar’s hand and he was crying. His hand was as thickly covered as the blade it held. They buried their father where they buried men and women who wandered beyond their fence, just beneath the apple trees behind the house. It was a fertile yard. They had not cleaned the white room but had sealed it off and let it stand. Years passed. They knew how to farm. They knew how to trade. They made do. Most people did not ask about their father. He was not well liked. One man came asking, claiming the man owed him some money for a pony the boys did not know, and had heard nothing of. It seemed like a lie. A pony. What use would their father have for a single pony? Men were always talking to them about ponies, as if it were the only thing boys knew or had any interest in. Sugar had gone wild at this point, and would scream until whatever it was that was setting him off changed in some way. Sugar set to screaming at the man who came asking about the money for the pony and Sugar moved the man down the hill and down the road with the screaming he did. The man protested and tried to stand strong but there was something wild and frightening about Sugar in that mood and it would have taken a very strong and confident person to stand against him. This man was too full of flinches. He did not come back after he was finally gone. One night, years into their life together on the farm, for no obvious reason, Sugar showed Brooke what their father had liked to do to him. They got along, the brothers. They worked in equal measure. Their days were not particularly difficult to get through. There was no purpose to any of what they were doing outside of getting it done and having enough to do it all again the next day. They lived like lizards. Or the way apples keep coming back and falling to the earth. They sat on the porch sometimes and drank grain alcohol and did not say much. When they did what their father had liked to do, Brooke sometimes worried that Sugar would kill him. He would vow never to do it again. But he always did it again, whenever the urge came — which was fairly regular — until the day the barn burned and they lost their house. They lost their minds a bit that night too. There was no way of knowing how the fire started. A lamp in the barn, maybe, and a cow or a fox or a gust of wind. It didn’t matter. It mattered that the house lit and the fire spread and it was dry and had been dry and everything had just been begging to burn. They took two horses and rode to town. There was no fire there. So they went back and brought some of it to town with them. Torches made out of tools from the barn. They were not good boys. They were on the cusp of becoming not good men. It was a small town and the people had not expected the kind of evil every man is capable of, if he has a partner and the right state of mind. They brought the town down around them as the fire had brought down their barn and their home and any claims they had to a legacy or permanence. People died, but Brooke did not know how many people. More than he could think to count, it was likely. They screamed and came spilling out of the buildings. One man was diligent enough with the well and bucket to keep the fire from spreading to his front porch for a time. There were houses scattered in the countryside that bled out from the edges of the town, but Brooke and Sugar did not bother with the glut. There had been no plan and they were not clinical in their state, so they finished the edges of what they’d started and left the town for the wilderness. They rode for several days before Sugar split. It had been at least two since they could last smell the smoke. Sugar made whatever kind of noise he wanted packing his bag and saddling his horse, but offered no farewell or any other proper acknowledgment of what was soon to pass between them. Still, there was no attempt to hide his actions or intent. Rather than rising to join him or chase after him or even demand that he explain himself, Brooke had simply watched his brother go and figured that was the end of it. When Sugar finally returned years later — much in the fashion that he had left — Brooke only noticed one discernible difference. Sugar didn’t scream anymore.

And Martha left. They called after her but she did not flinch. She found a gelding in the same stable the killer had pulled from. She was not a fan of bareback but had no time for saddling. She nudged the horse’s shoulders, delicately directing him over to a crate that would give her the height she needed to mount him with little additional effort. She took the ride slowly at first, letting the horse get a sense of her body and getting her own sense of the way the horse would respond when she shifted her weight. She was not experienced, but the horse was understanding and patient. After a few moments, she dug in and set off down the path in pursuit of the killer.

The baby would not stop crying. Sugar did not know what to do or where to go because he did not know the territory. Here, the trees were shorter than the ones he’d known, thicker and closer together. You could not ride fast through these woods. They were heading higher and higher up between the mountain ridges on either side. It was getting colder. There was a body hanging from a tree overhead and Sugar passed beneath it slowly. He did not recognize the clothing or the man. He felt then that this was what they had planned for him all along. There would be no ceremony to his end. He held the baby against him and tried to warm it. He could make out faint ruts hardened into the dirt, and he tried his best to follow them. It would not hurt him to linger outside a populated area, though he would need to establish a safe distance. His mind was not working as it normally did. He could not focus with the child crying. He was overrun with thoughts unrelated to the matters at hand.