Bull Mountain(16)

“No, really,” Clayton insisted, “I did get stung once. It was only one and I killed it when I stepped on it, but I thought my foot was going to swell up like a watermelon.”

Hal killed his beer and slung the can onto the floorboard at Clayton’s feet. “Did you know that hornets will attack you for no reason? Not like a yellow jacket, or a bumblebee like the one you stepped on.”

Clayton didn’t argue.

“Bees will mind their own business if you do the same by them, but a f*ckin’ hornet? You could just be walking by a nest and those ornery bastards will chase you down. Did you know that?”

“Uh-uh,” Clayton said, shaking his head. He had no idea why his brother was talking about hornets, but he didn’t much care, either. Hal never really talked to Clayton at all, so he was enjoying having a little of his attention. The brothers were born ten years apart, with Buckley born slap between them, so they didn’t have that much in common. Besides, Hal was normally too busy with the crops higher up the mountain to be fooling with his kid brother. Clayton understood that. Business first. But ever since Clayton turned twelve and Deddy started letting him help out on runs, Hal didn’t really pay Clayton no mind. This conversation was probably the most Hal had ever said to him at one time. Clayton liked to think maybe it meant Hal was starting to see him as a man—a brother. That thought made Clayton sit about a foot taller in his seat.

Hal pulled the Ford pickup onto a pig path anyone who wasn’t from around here would have missed. It wasn’t so much a road as it was two channels of dirt cut into the dander and weeds by the tires of trucks much like this one. Clayton rolled up his window to keep overgrown brush and tree limbs from whipping him in the face, and Hal cut the truck’s headlights down to the orange parking lights. Clayton could barely make out the road in the moonlight, but that didn’t slow his brother down a bit. He just hauled ass through the dark like he’d done it a hundred times before.

“You remember Big Merle?” Hal said.

“Sure,” Clayton said, gripping the armrest with white knuckles. “He was that fat kid that used to come get schoolin’ from Miss Adel before she died.”

“Yeah, not that it mattered, no amount of schoolin’ would help that fat f*ck. He was as dumb as a sack of hammers.” Hal grabbed another beer from the six-pack on the seat between them and peeled the pop-top off with his teeth. “Anyway, he may have been a dumb-shit, but he was still a buddy. A good buddy. The fella would do just about anything you asked without a bitch or complaint.” Hal handed the open beer to Clayton, who beamed and eagerly grabbed it with both hands. Hal let a brief smile escape before he popped open another beer for himself. “Anyways,” Hal said, “when we was kids, a few of us were out by the Southern Ridge, shooting at squirrels—me, Buckley, Scabby Mike, and Big Merle. He was a fat shit even then. It was the year Deddy bought me that shitty .22 rifle. I think you got that gun now.”

Clayton said he did. He didn’t tell him that the gun was his prize possession because it used to be Hal’s. Instead he took a sip of warm beer and did his best not to gag. It tasted like swamp water.

“We were having a pretty good time,” Hal said, “just dickin’ around, and Big Merle says he needs to take a piss, so he bolts into the woods. If it were me, I’da just whipped it out right there, but Merle was pee-shy. Little pecker, I guess. Anyway, a few minutes later he comes barreling out of the woods, trying to yank his pants up, screaming like a banshee. Wailing like I ain’t never heard before.” Hal paused and took a sip of his own beer. Clayton watched his brother remember back on what sounded like a fond memory.

“Hornets?” Clayton said.

“Yeah, buddy. Hornets. A whole damn swarm of ’em. He only got a few feet out of the woods before he toppled over. There must have been hundreds of ’em on his ass.”

“What’d y’all do?”

Hal looked at Clayton like he had just asked the dumbest question ever asked. “We ran like hell, is what we did. I ran so goddamn fast I thought my heart was gonna explode, and I didn’t stop ’til I was inside the hunting cabin up near Johnson’s Gap.”

“Dang,” Clayton said, “that’s far.”

“I know, right?”

“What happened to Merle?”

“He managed to get his big ass off the ground and to his folks’ house, but he was all messed up. He had to be holed up at the hospital down in Waymore for damn near two weeks. The poor bastard almost died. We didn’t get to see him until way after, but even then he had tubes and shit runnin’ out of him to drain the pus, and his eyes were swollen shut. He never did talk right again. We felt bad, ’cause of runnin’ and all, but damn, what were we supposed to do?”

“That’s messed up,” Clayton said.

“Yeah, well, we handled it the next day. Once we found out Merle was in the hospital, we headed back up to the Southern Ridge to clear those suckers out. I mean, that was our spot. We hung out there. A bunch of hornets weren’t gonna just build a nest and sting up our friends. We were there first. You understand what I’m saying?” Hal shot a stern look at his little brother to reinforce the question, and awareness spilled over Clayton like a bucket of well water. He nodded. They weren’t just talking about hornets.

“We marched our happy asses into the woods, and sure as shit, we found the nest hanging in a hollowed-out pine tree probably right over where Big Merle tried to take a piss. We brought a can of gas to torch the thing, but it was way too high for any of us to reach, so Buckley’s crazy ass starts dousing the whole damn tree. We could’ve burned the whole mountain down—dumb-ass kids—but we didn’t know no better. Scabby Mike lit that bitch up, and it took off faster than all get-out.”