Rusty Knob Read online

  I stare after Warren as he helps his asshole, bastard of a father into the shack, all the while feeling guilty that social services failed to recognize the truth while they left a kid who is being abused in every way possible with his abuser. The state has taken Wynn away a few times, and they always give him back. With me, granddaddy had two interviews and lost me permanently, and all he ever did was call me a faggot.

  “Where’d everybody go?” I finally notice the soothing sound of chopping wood ceased when Wynn’s voice hit my ears. I ignore the way he makes me feel as a new set of emotions come over me.

  Wynn looks at me funny, tiny lips twisting up at the corners like my expression is confusing him. He narrows his eyes as I fight the urge to pull him into my arms, heft him over my shoulder, and run… run and never fucking come back to this shithole.

  I take a few steps forward to do just that, but then I realize Wynn would probably struggle, and he’s a lot stronger than I am. “Do you need some help? I’m not too proud to admit I can’t swing an axe ‘cuz my dad didn’t get a chance to teach me, but I can stack wood with the best of ‘em.”

  “Thank you,” Wynn says brightly, like I just gave him a present that’s been on his wish list and he never expected to get it. “Warren was gonna help, but…” He parts his calloused hands– hands that look older than mine already. “I don’t mind stacking too. Warren always puts the wood willy-nilly, and then the stack tumbles over. Daddy says to just leave it where it lies, but I like how it looks orderly in a nice stack.”

  “Me too,” I whisper, getting a bit choked up. I never want to see the innocent light die out in Wynn’s eyes. It’s too precious. “Chaos gives me a headache.”

  “Yes!” Wynn squeals, sounding like his age for once. “It’s like my eyes just go from one thing to the next, making me feel nutty. I like to see stuff where it goes.”

  “I’m sorry you have to live here, then,” I mutter underneath my breath. “Let’s get a move on. I do believe Warren took off with the excuse of getting us a drink.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Wynn runs his hands through his mop of curls, and I ignore the strike of longing that bursts in my chest. Something changed in me. I still think the kid is gorgeous, delicious, but I’d rather keep him safe. I want to protect him, cherish him. I never want to take from Wynn something he’s not willing to give.

  The label of pervert slips from my soul, replacing it are ones that would make my dad proud: Protector. Mentor. Friend.

  I reach down for a piece of wood, and then start on creating a solid foundation for a stack. By the fourth piece, I decide I’m going to start using protein powder and lifting weights with Royce. By the tenth piece, I’m sweating buckets, which thankfully cancels out the intoxicating scent of Wynn’s hormone-laced skin. By the fifteenth piece, I’m hoping gloves materialize from the sky. By the twentieth piece, I’m getting poked in the shoulder.

  “Silly, it’s hot out,” Wynn reminds me, like I don’t freaking feel the Sun melting me into a puddle of worthlessness. He gives a hard tug on my shirt. “I don’t wear much ‘cuz it’s hot outside. If Momma wouldn’t bitch, I’d just wear my skivvies to keep my nuts cool. So take your shirts off and put these on.” A pair of leather gloves hits me upside the head.

  “Um…” I stand here like an idiot with my mouth gaping open, gloves forgotten at my feet.

  “You’re funny,” Wynn thinks I’m playing with him. God, he’s so innocent. I want to eat him alive. “You must be hot and tired, not thinking straight… Here, let me help you.”

  Frozen in place, my mind goes on vacation when Wynn’s fingers start tugging at my shirts, pulling them up at the waist. My skin flushes bright red when my hip bones show over the top of my jeans, and then I get more embarrassed when Wynn’s eyes take in my hollow stomach and boney chest.

  Wynn makes a panicked sound in the back of his throat– a cross between a gasp and the baying of a wounded animal. “What’d I do? I didn’t even move? How’d I hurt you? Oh, God! What’s wrong?” I ramble more and more insane questions as Wynn stands still, blue eyes bulging from his skull like a terrified rabbit.

  From one blink to the next, those innocent eyes fill with tears, then Wynn’s tearing across the yard. “Warren! Warren! Help! Something’s wrong with me!!!” The boy’s shrieks of terror will fill my nightmares for years to come. “Help me! I’m dying! I need the hospital. Fix it! W-A-R-R-E-N!” Wynn screams a death knell. “My dick broke!”

  My legs crumple beneath me. My ass lands on a piece of wood, but the bruise doesn’t even register in with my brain. I bust out laughing hysterically. I shake my head back and forth, feeling no shame for the negative thoughts that scroll on repeat.

  “Serves you right, you little shit. You broke me… only fair I return the favor.” I fall backward, resting my head on a log. I stare up to the sky, marveling over the ridiculousness of the situation. “Holy fuck!”

  A dark cloud passes overhead, blocking out the Sun. “Holy fuck is right, asshole.” Warren kicks my thigh. His face is twisted in anger. His eyes are damp with unshed tears. But his lips are curved with wry amusement. “I just had to explain to my baby brother that his cock wasn’t broken, and then I had to show him how to take care of business. Pretty sure he’s more confused than ever.”

  Putting up my hands to ward off the oncoming violence, “I didn’t touch him,” I promise. “Honest.”

  “I know. I was walking out here from the house when Wynn lost his shit.” Warren kicks my thigh again. “Are you gay? I always thought you were.”

  Every muscle in my body clenches. “Yeah.”

  Voice tight with silent rage, “Your dick likes my brother?”

  “Yeah, but I ain’t doing anything about it.” I go with honesty for once. “I’m ignoring it. I just started feeling protective over the little shit, and the peckerwood goes and gets hard because of me. Fucked. Up.”

  “Is Wynn gay?” Warren asks so quietly I have to lean upright to hear him.

  “Yeah, but Wynn doesn’t understand.” I warn, “So don’t pressure him, don’t tell anybody, and don’t tell him.”

  “Has he always been?”

  Now it’s my turn to get angry. “I didn’t turn your baby brother gay, asshole!” I jump to my feet, ready to destroy a twelve-year friendship. “I didn’t even know I was gay until the little cock tease started wearing hot pants around me. And I’m not gonna tell Wynn he’s gay until he figures it out on his own. We’re born this way, not made! So deal and back the fuck off!”

  Warren takes two steps back, face twisted up with shock. He shakes his head back and forth a few times to clear his thoughts, and I worry the stocky bastard is going to murder me with his bare hands. And then he starts laughing.

  “You should have seen his face!” Warren howls with laughter. “Wynn was crying, terrified with his dick pointing at the ceiling. God, I remember my first wood. My dick became my best friend. And here my brother is, looking like his dick betrayed him.” Warren clutches his side, trying to abate his laughter, and then his eyes change to rage. “Touch him, and I’ll cut your nuts off. Go near Wynn’s ass, even if he asks for it, and I’ll gut you.”

  Sighing, I roll my eyes. I tug my shirt back into place, not allowing Warren to see my bony stomach. Then I ignore his bullshit by bending down to continue stacking Wynn’s woodpile. The boy deserves to have a day off to celebrate the terror of his first erection.

  Warren begins pacing around me as I work, confused that I didn’t play into his bullshit, but he doesn’t help. By the time I get three rows stacked, he’s getting agitated. “I promise not to touch him–”

  “Thank you,” Warren cuts me off.

  “I promise not to touch Wynn until he’s an adult. If he comes to me, I’m not going to be able to say no. You gotta understand what I mean. I see the way you look at Wynn’s little girlfriend.” I go in for the kill. “She even bled yet?”

  Warren falls to the ground like I swept his legs out from beneath him. “God,�
� he drawls. “Those little shits are so delicious. Makes me feel like a pervert. All I can think about is corrupting Penny…” He lies on the ground with his eyes shut, but then one blue peeper squints up at me. “Yeah, she started bleeding a couple years ago. I thought we should wait, but I doubt I can make it. She’s teasing the fuck out of me.”

  “You’re sick,” I snarl, getting pissed. “Just because I looked, never meant I planned on touching.”

  “Penny’s a year older than Wynn, for your information… and like you’ll wait for Wynn to turn eighteen.” Warren rolls his eyes at me. “Like you plan on waiting for him.”

  My lips twist into an evil smirk. “You owe me a puppy if I’m still a virgin at twenty-one.”

  “God, I’d rather be ridden hard and buy my own dog.” Warren cackles.

  “Make it a pug. I always wanted a dog,” I murmur. “You owe me your blessing if I wait until Wynn comes to me… and a thousand bucks if I last until he’s a legal adult.”

  “Deal.” Warren reaches forward to shake my hand. “Wynn’s my brother, that’s why I’m going along with this. But I’m not in on this deal when it comes to Penny. I’ll be lucky to last another month with her rubbing her ass all over me.”

  “Pervert,” I mutter with a smirk.

  Warren says with a wink, “Takes one to know one.”

  “Takes what to know what?” Wynn pops out of nowhere, looking like a perky puppy. His hair is damp from a shower. He’s now wearing a pair of sweatpants because the bat in his pants still hasn’t gone soft, and I doubt it would fit in his cut-offs.

  “You must really, really want that pug,” Warren reminds me smugly. I turn away with a wince and a groan.

  Wynn’s excited voice reaches out to me. “You’re getting a puppy?”

  “For both your sakes, you better hope he doesn’t,” Warren mutters underneath his breath.

  •Late Spring•

  Present Day

  Wynn Gillette

  “Winnie the Pooh!” Penny’s strained voice flows to me amongst the chaos. Every door in the school is emptying students into the hallway. Kids’ voices from seventh to twelfth grade meld into an anxious stew of angst. Shoving and taunting, the two sides of Rusty Knob High are obvious: Hillbillies versus Townies.

  We live in a constant state of violence, ignorance, resentment, oppression, intolerance, and hatred. We do it to ourselves by not letting go of the past and by thinking too little of ourselves. The townies don’t think themselves better, at least not all of them.

  My eyes flick around wildly, looking exactly five feet in the air for one of my best friends. But that’s not what has me in protector-mode. Penny is my brother’s girlfriend, and he’ll murder me in my sleep if I let anything happen to her during school hours.

  My heart picks up double-time when I don’t spot her. Last week, one of my townie buddies made an offhand comment to Penny. She told my brother, Warren, to get a rise out of him. Our fathers’ bad blood lives on in their sons, and their sons’ sons. The resentment is thick, and the violence is real. Penny was playing a game for attention, and it almost cost Bren his life.

  Warren had no problem showing up in Bren’s bedroom to issue a warning. I hate violence, and I bridge the gap between the townies and the hillbillies. If I hadn’t been there to stop my brother, I have no idea what would have happened.

  “Down here!” Penny releases a giggle when I spot her on the floor, trying to grab at a scattering of papers. The girl is immature, no different than the rest of our kin, and she doesn’t know any better. But on a daily basis, I want to smack the shit out of Penny to teach her a lesson, and then I want to give her a big hug.

  I slide to my knees, shouting over the din of a hundred excited idiots. “That’s not your term paper, is it?” Not that it matters none, seeing as how Penny will never graduate, even if she is as sharp as a tack and has the potential to make a difference in this world. Penny wasn’t raised to do anything but create another generation of children who mind their elders and do as they were told, even when it’s wrong.

  I don’t think like my kin, so they think me arrogant. I befriend anyone worth knowing– doesn’t matter if they are a little one or a papaw. I don’t drink. I don’t fight. I don’t screw. I study hard, play basketball harder, and work the hardest. My daddy says I think my shit don’t stink. But I live in the Hollers, so the townies can’t accept me as one of their own, either. I’m in the middle, with neither side knowing what to do with me. Since I’m smart, athletic, big, pretty, and a pacifist, they don’t know whether they want to respect me and listen to me, or shun me because I’m different.

  I swat at a pair of Chucks before they leave a footprint on the title page of Penny’s term paper. With a rough yank, I manage to get a handful of pages from beneath a filthy pair of Timberlands.

  “My term paper? Ya think?” Giving attitude, Penny sits on her heels, blowing out a deep breath. Her ginger bangs billow, revealing her big, brown puppy dog eyes. Then her bangs fall back into place, hiding her eyes from my view. “Some dumb fuck shoved me when the bell rang, and… WHOOPS!” She flings her tiny hands in the air while pulling a face.

  “Figures,” I mumble as I get on my hands and knees, hunting for the rest of Penny’s term paper. I lost faith in our fellow man around the age of two when I was able to think for myself.

  I punch some tool in the thigh when he won’t budge. “What the fuck, man–” Bren’s insult is cut short when he notices who punched him. “Sorry, man. How about I help ya, Wynn?”

  “Yeah, why don’t ya?” I go back to rescuing Penny, laughing underneath my breath when Bren drops to the ground next to me, all the while grunting and pushing people out of the way.

  I like Bren Kennedy, even if I was told not to because he rejected his roots in the hollers by living in town. He’s one of the good ones I befriended, even if he acts like an ass most of the time. In a way, we’re related by marriage. My sister married into the Kennedy family, with my niece and nephew being Bren’s cousins. Everyone from the hollers are kin some way or another. Plus, Bren’s dad is my weekend boss. Royce would kick my behind if I wasn’t nice to his son.

  “Wynn said to pick up the papers!” Bren shouts into the crowd, clapping his large paws above his head. “So you better fucking pick up the papers! Hop to it!”

  I pause to tell Bren thanks, and I even mean it. Students scatter like cockroaches in the light. Some run to the exits like the fires of Hell are licking at their heels, while others drop to the ground to help out. My faith in humanity returns when every single member of our basketball team– all townies –gets down on their hands and knees to help the hillbilly princess, while our own leave us to fend for ourselves. Bren starts checking out page numbers and begins methodically putting the papers in order.

  There are a few sayings in West Virginia that still hold true.

  There is no I in team.

  Blood is thicker than water.

  If you can’t make them love you, make them fear you instead.

  I am a member of their team, and Penny is going to be my blood, so she is helped because of me. Everybody loves Wynn Gillette, whether they want to or not. It’s impossible to bully the kid who will help you out after you spit in his face, especially when he grew to be six foot two. They’re not all my biggest fans, and some can be belligerent about it, but they do as they’re told.

  “How many pages, Penn?” Bren is concentrating really hard on putting the pages to rights as our buddies shove more paper at him. The same boy who called Penny a rotten twat licker last week is now being helpful. Waking up to my brother standing over his sleeping form has made Bren leery around Penny.

  Breathlessly grabbing for three months of hard work, Penny releases an ironic laugh. “Thanks, Bren.” Her eyes flick in my direction, asking for backup. “Just so ya know, I’ve never licked a twat in my life. If you think pussy can rot, you’ve been dealing with the wrong type of pussy.”

  Bren’s eyeing me now, but I sit with
patience, happy Penny has every single page of her term paper in working order. “Aahhhaaahhhaa… I like you, Penn!” Bren uses my shoulder to push himself to his feet. But as he rises, he whispers in my ear, voice quivering with fear. “Wynn, you make sure you tell Warren I was nice to his girl. I don’t want no more visits in the middle of the night.”

  “We’re even,” I state with a nod. “All’s forgiven.”

  I don’t release a laugh until after Bren and our boys flee the bitchy hillbilly princess. My brother, Warren, visited Bren in the middle of the night with a shotgun to his forehead. If I hadn’t been the angel resting on the devil’s shoulder that night, the trigger might have been pulled over something ridiculous. Which is why I want out of this godforsaken town.

  Since that night, Bren’s been the sweetest feller, because I know he pissed his bed from fright. I also know a few more of Bren’s secrets, and he has an inkling I know them, too. I get more respect by keeping my trap shut than from the fear I will spill it.

  Everybody loves Wynn Gillette because he’s the angel on Warren Gillette’s shoulder. If you can’t make them love you, make them fear you instead. The residents of Rusty Knob are fearful I won’t meet a girl before I graduate. They’re praying a girl will make me stay in town and keep my blood in order.

  They couldn’t be more wrong.

  “All set, Penny?” I eye her over, making sure she’s put to rights without a scratch on her. Penny releases a relieved laugh while hugging her paper to her chest. I lean forward and give her a quick kiss to the forehead.

  The bitch glares burn the back of my neck, drawing a red flush up my cheeks. I turn to witness three furious girls whispering in hushed tones. I roll my eyes, drawing Penny to her feet, knowing I just put a different sort of target on her back.

  I love Penny, attitude and drama included. Doing right by her makes me feel warm inside. What kind of man would I be if I walked by when someone was in need? I have the ability to help, and it makes me feel good when I do. The girls of Rusty Knob don’t understand that I care for Penny because she’s a human being, not because I’m itching to get into her underpants.