Gun Shy(2)

After setting the jar down, I splashed cool water on my face. The pipes inside the well made the water smell of metal sometimes, and today, especially so. Eyes itching considerably less, I turned off the water and reached for my jar.

I took an extra long drink of water. I can still taste it now, all these years later. Straight away I knew that something wasn’t right. The taste of rot and pennies filled my mouth, and I almost gagged.

What the …?

I held the clear jar up to the thin streak of sunlight coming through a crack in my homemade curtains. The water was a dirty rust color, still opaque, but stained like someone had taken a dropper of red ink and squeezed it into the liquid.

I looked at the small mirror I’d hung above the basin. My face looked kind of dirty, too. I grabbed an old T-shirt and wiped my face dry as best I could, Rox’s barking reaching fever pitch.

The fucking dog. The fucking well. Fucking all of it. I was so tired of living with shit that didn’t work properly, trash pieced together from more trash. When people looked at us, I know that’s what they saw — pieced together trash.

When I left Gun Creek, I was getting Cassie and I a real house. One with rooms and curtains and a real bathroom. A house without wheels underneath, without foam to seal up the fucking gaps. A house with a proper front door, painted her favorite color, blue.

Winter might have been months gone, but the mornings here still chilled your bones. I hopped into a pair of jeans and threw on a hoodie, unlocking and opening the door as quietly as I could. It creaked in response. I made a mental note to get oil for the hinges.

Rox wagged her tail, curling her body sideways as she made her way towards me, her head and her back end pointing at me as she did her dog version of an excited crab walk.

“Hey, girl,” I murmured, putting my palm out for her. She licked it, right in the center, and when she pulled her pink tongue away, the skin there turned cold.

“What’s up, Rox?” I asked quietly, scratching behind her ear. Rox was a mutt, motley-colored and missing one eye, but she was sharp as a tack. She whined a little, running off in the direction of the well.

I had to check the damned thing anyway. Might as well follow her lead. I backed up a few steps, slipping back inside to grab a flashlight from the ledge I’d built next to the door. Stupid well was always clogging up. That’s the thing about living illegally on land you don’t own — water isn’t exactly an automatic thing to come by, even when you live right near a creek.

I picked my way down the stony sand path that led to the well, the dirty taste still in my mouth. I zipped my hoodie up over my chilled skin as I walked, my feet complaining loudly. Should’ve worn my boots, I thought, but I was too lazy to turn back.

I was three steps away from the well when I heard a twig snap behind me. I jumped, turning quickly, gripping my Maglite tightly and bracing.

Oh. Damn. I saw Cass, shielding her eyes from the flashlight I was shining in her direction as she stood, bleary-eyed and wearing my old snow jacket over the oversized football jersey of mine she insisted on sleeping in. She’d slipped her feet into my boots, far too big for her, so when she walked she had to kind of drag her feet.

“Hey,” I said softly. Sometimes it made my chest hurt when I thought about how much I loved her. Especially in the morning, when she was tired and warm and bleary-eyed.

“Come back to bed,” she murmured, her voice still full of sleep.

She looked fucking adorable. I didn’t want to be out fixing the well. I wanted to be back in bed with her.

I walked over to her, Rox momentarily forgotten. “The well’s backed up again,” I said, planting a kiss on her cheek. She turned her face, going for the lips, but I leaned back, covering my mouth.

“No,” I said, jerking my thumb back toward the well. “I’m pretty sure I just drank dead mouse water.” I didn’t mention that it was probably something bigger than a mouse. Girls hate stuff like that.

“Eww,” Cass said, wrinkling her nose up. “Brush your teeth before you get the plague or something.”

I laughed, turning back to the well. Fifty feet or so and I was there, bracing myself and holding my breath as I lifted up the lid. The water had been fine the day before, so the dead thing must have been pretty recent.

I folded the heavy wooden lid back on its hinge and peered inside. The sides of the well were made from stone, and cold stale air rose up to greet my face. I shivered, my flashlight landing on something large and unmoving as Cass came to a standstill beside me.

Shit.

It wasn’t a mouse. It wasn’t a raccoon, either. It might be a fucking dog. A small calf. I thought of my younger brothers, little band of shitheads they could be, and wondered what accident they’d tried to hide in the well.

Course, when you were six or seven years old, you didn’t understand that by killing animals from neighboring farms, you were marking yourself as a potential serial killer. The triplets, we called them, because there were three of them. Matty was five, Richie was six, and Beau was seven. They loved to break shit, kill shit, steal shit, and then lie about it.

My mom excelled at breeding. She’d really hit her stride when she met the triplets’ father and banged out three in as many years before he OD’d in her bed and she left his corpse tangled in her bedsheets for three days thinking he was asleep.

My mom was fucking crazy.

Hence having my own makeshift room, as far away from her as I could get.