1

It began with a perfect plan. Shape-wise we had a circle, a simple uncomplicated curve to guide us comfortably from one thing to another, an easy predictable ride promising a natural progression from A to B, C and D, and so on until we reached our destination. But somewhere down that smooth line, I think around F, it all went pear-shaped.

     I had warned Kenny before it all started but he wouldn’t listen.

     You’ll n–never pull it off, I told him. Kenny’s only response was to burp.

Shirtless, he lounged on the sofa, drinking rum. In between swallows he grinned and pulled at his chest hair; to show how relaxed he felt, he drummed a beat on his stomach with his fingers.

     What are you worried about? Kenny laughed, seeing I stood there with an anxious frown on my face. I’ve thought this thing through.

     This statement did nothing to alleviate my fears. Indeed, excepting Uncle Clem, there was nothing I ever really feared more than Kenny’s way of thinking things through.

     You can’t just k–kidnap people, I said, trying to sound firm. Of course, it didn’t work. In those days, whenever I was upset, my stutter just became worse. Y–you just c–can’t.

     Kenny frowned. Suspending the beat, he clicked his spurs and flicked back his sombrero. Fixing me with a stare, he raised his eyebrow and held it there until I apologized. Then he slapped me on the shoulder and went back to drinking. A brief silence followed during which I corresponded with God while Kenny lay there contemplating his favorite tree just visible out of the kitchen window. The moment passed when Kenny cackled, the shrill sound reminding me of our mum, who also had liked to laze about in her underwear.

     Indeed, looking at Kenny sprawled across the sofa, I really saw her tipping the bottle, her toothless mouth gaping wide and her cackle ringing in my ears.

     Mum left us a long time ago. For a while, I missed her. I wrote to her a lot, always signing Kenny’s name next to mine until one day he sprung me. He punched me in the face, and when I reeled backwards, he punched me in the stomach. As I lay on the lino, choking on the blood gushing out my nose, the consequences of my subterfuge became painfully clear: Kenny was seriously pissed off. He stood over me a while looking grim, looking as if he couldn’t decide what to do next, but eventually he bent to my ear and whispered, his words appearing in front of my eyes like skywriting. If you ever sign my name again, I will do to you things Uncle Clem wouldn’t dream about. The words faded and I promised myself I would never mention mum again. Still, I thought about her from time to time, especially on days like today when Kenny hogged the sofa, drinking and cackling, and looking like a bloated toad.

     What are you staring at, you turd? Kenny suddenly asked, noticing that I hadn’t cleared the table. Snapping out of my reverie, I jumped to it. Meanwhile, Kenny continued drinking and when he was done, he threw the empty bottle out of the window. It hit the roof of the crapper and broke into pieces. At the sound, Kenny snapped his fingers. Seeing his mood was darkening, I quickly dropped to my knees and gently, carefully eased off his boots. Feeling more comfortable, Kenny stretched out and soon fell asleep.

     I sat quietly by his side, watching over him. As he lay there sleeping, my brother looked to me as innocent as a newborn babe dreaming of good things to come. Relaxed, his face looked peaceful, the scars, the dents and the bumps barely visible; it was as if his real face came out of hiding, showing Kenny the way he was on the inside, a kind, generous and big-hearted man. Seeing him like this, I wished everybody could. However, deep down I knew people would always see Kenny only from the outside.

     Of course, on the outside things are always a bit complicated. I had known from the beginning I should have handled everything differently. I should have talked to someone other than God, but the thing is, there truly was no one else. As far as I can remember, we had always lived alone. And I mean alone, with no other people around.

     Pristine Mountain, population three, we used to joke, but it was true. Nobody ever came to see us. When I was little, I thought that people didn’t come because they couldn’t find our cottage hidden in the woods, but as I grew older I realized that people didn’t come because they didn’t want to know us. And who could blame them? After all, we were dirt poor, our mother was a drunk, and Kenny a dangerous psychotic beast best left alone. Accordingly, people avoided us like the plague. Even the cops let us be. Only once, when mum was still around, they came to make enquiries after the truck stop down the road from us burned down, but they were dead wrong. Still, they accused Kenny and they wanted to take him away, but Kenny barricaded us in the house and there was a bit of a siege. At first, the cops spoke to him through a funnel; however, as Kenny wouldn’t budge, eventually they took out their weapons. 

     Kenny stood his ground. Sixteen years old and just four feet two inches high, he looked to me as powerful as God. The very image of brute force, Kenny faced the enemy in all his compact glory, standing motionless under the window. Of course, he had meant to fill the frame with his menacing pose, but being bootless, he had just managed to show the top of his sombrero. Nevertheless, he was terrifying to behold. His trusty sling in one hand and a full beer bottle in the other, Kenny roared at the fat cop who was in charge: come get me, Shorty! All hell broke loose.

     When the cops charged, mum and I hid behind the kitchen sofa. Kenny, however, remained at the window, dodging bullets and giving as good as he got. From behind the couch we watched his every move, feeling very proud. Mum especially was deeply stirred. She fell into reminiscing about Kenny’s dad, alleging Kenny had the same irresistible charisma, the kind of animal allure that made women swoon. She also claimed that she really missed him. This I strictly did not believe because when sober, mum maintained that Kenny’s dad had been nothing but a loser. During the siege, though, mum kept drinking.

     Takes after his dad, she slobbered, watching her firstborn slinging bottles through the window, and you could see just how pleased she was. Although I shared in her happiness, I hoped her claims weren’t true because Kenny’s dad had left us two weeks after coming out of jail, taking our television and the car. Mum had tried to stop him. She jumped on the bonnet and aimed her shotgun at him telling him to leave our things alone, but he just grabbed the gun by the barrel and knocked her out. Then he left and we never saw him again. Still, mum had a soft spot for Kenny all those years.

     Anyway, all this happened a long time ago. The siege had ended after the cops had busted every window in the house. Just as they were about to storm, new evidence surfaced implicating the owner of the shop, and the cops redirected their investigation, leaving us to sift through the debris in peace.

     For a while our life went on quite as we were used to. Kenny kept his job in town, collecting garbage for the council, and mum stayed home looking after the house. Well, she was supposed to but she could never manage it, so it fell to me to do the housework after school. Still, we were happy until my dad came to live with us. Not long after he came, Kenny left. I didn’t blame him; it was for the best, seeing father never took to him. He could just tolerate me, father said, but this tolerance did not extend to Kenny who got the strap fairly regularly. After Kenny left, I copped it because father said I was an ugly bastard and he was sick of looking at me. But then one night he broke my arm, accidentally, and by the time the cops brought me back from the hospital, he was gone. Then mum started corresponding with Noah. They fell in love and she moved out of town to be closer to him because he still had a couple of years before parole. So then I was truly alone and I was scared because Uncle Clem kept coming over. After a while I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I tracked Kenny down and he came back to take care of me. Of course, when Kenny returned Uncle Clem stopped coming and nobody’s seen him since.

     From then on we lived very well. I mean, we weren’t rich or anything, but we enjoyed being together and doing whatever we wanted. Well, Kenny did what he wanted, and I did whatever he wanted me to do. This was a perfect arrangement for us. Of course, at times Kenny could be harsh, even unreasonable, but to tell the truth, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I always knew that whatever decisions Kenny made, he made with good intentions, wanting only the best for me, and for that I was grateful.

     After he got rid of Uncle Clem, Kenny got a job at the truck stop which by then had been revamped and put under new management. Kenny’s job was to put petrol into people’s cars. He also cleaned their windshields and pumped their tires, but only if they asked, and this suited him fine. Turning on the charm, Kenny told everyone there were waterfalls in the mountains. Pleased they’d cottoned onto something that was not in the brochure, the tourists always left a couple of bucks, especially after Kenny told them the waterfalls were pristine, like really clear water which nobody was allowed to see, and he gave directions. Sometimes people came back to complain because, of course, they never found them waterfalls, but Kenny never gave any money back. At any rate, nobody ever asked. I guess they could see it would have been pointless.

     Four years went by in this fashion, each year much the same as the last. Then, just before last summer when I turned fourteen, Kenny took me out of school and got me a job at the truck stop too. I didn’t like it at first, chiefly because I missed the library, but as the months went by, I changed my mind. After all, my leaving school had always been only a matter of time.

     I had never been any good at school work. During lessons I preferred to do my own thing, either staring out the window or reading novels under my desk. Initially, reading hadn’t been frowned upon, but when it came out that I only read paperbacks about the wild wild west, it was agreed my needs would be better served in Special Ed. Things did not get any better there. I tried to pay attention, but somehow I could never get Uncle Clem out of my head. I kept thinking about how much I hated him and what it would take to kill him. Yes, every day when I sat at my desk gazing into the sunshine, I imagined his death.

     The manner of his demise varied, depending on what I was reading at the time. One day he would be hanged, another time he’d die from a gunshot to the heart or lie wounded in the middle of the prairie, bleeding to death like a stuck pig. I liked him to suffer. Some days I felt so inspired I had to kill him three or four times throughout the day, even at lunch, which I spent alone in the library. But Uncle Clem aside, school for me had always been a trial. My teachers considered me feeble-minded and my peers a weirdo to be avoided at all costs. Whenever I approached people, they scurried away like squirrels, or else I was shooed away as if I were a mangy dog. In class I sat alone and as I never said a word, what with my reading under the desk and not being asked an opinion, eventually people forgot I was there and stopped seeing me altogether. Given the situation, Kenny’s decision to terminate my painful existence there was a blessing. The fact was, I never liked anybody from town and they plainly didn’t like me because nobody ever questioned why I stopped coming.

     From the first day I started work at the truck stop, I felt happier. I was in the kitchen mainly, washing dishes, but sometimes I was allowed behind the counter and this I liked because I could see Kenny outside, working the tourists over. It was there the Idea first occurred to him.

     That day I was out front selling pies. We were busy and Kenny was in good form bamboozling the tourists; at the end of our shift, he had cleared twenty five bucks. We used the money to buy a box of wine and some beef jerky on the way home. We were really happy; it wasn’t often we could afford treats. Kenny especially was feeling on top of the world. In the truck, he kept talking footy and slapping me on the back good-naturedly all the way up the mountain. He asked me about my day and even listened to my replies, wearing such an interested expression that I got suspicious and began to wonder a bit; the last time Kenny had shown such spirits, he finished up in the watch house. He had thrashed Uncle Clem, and although that had been a good thing, there was some unpleasantness. Kenny got arrested and it looked likely he was going to jail, but Uncle Clem couldn’t be persuaded to press charges so the cops had had no choice but to let Kenny go. Of course Kenny gloated, lording it over me, laughing at my fears of losing him and saying he had always known he’d come up trumps. Seeing him so happy, I had gone along with it, pretending I agreed, but deep down I felt wretched, being certain he had just had a lucky escape. And now I was getting the same sinking feeling, that dreaded knot in the stomach telling me that something wasn’t right.

     When we got home, Kenny’s good mood continued. Feeling exhilarated, he decided to have a soak; he sat in the bath with the door open, farting under water and cracking jokes while I prepared dinner. Everything was going well, I had the food ready by the time Kenny called me in to dry his back. I fetched his robe and his slippers, and then we sat down to our regular Sunday feed: beans and sausages and creamy potato mash. It was then Kenny made his announcement.

     We’re going to kidnap a rich woman, Kenny announced as I carefully ladled the hot beans into his bowl. We’ll clean up! He banged his spoon triumphantly on the table, grinning from ear to ear.

     Truly, at first I didn’t know what to say. Having heard a lot of crap from Kenny in my life, I only sighed, keeping my face devoid of all expression. But then as Kenny persevered with the grin, beaming at me expectantly, I ventured to express my doubt.

     You’ll never pull it off.  

     In response Kenny cuffed me, telling me to shut up and listen.

     It’ll be a piece of cake, Kenny proclaimed confidently, tucking into his mash. She’s home alone all day. He began to talk about his plan, speaking and eating at the same time, and I had trouble keeping up; he certainly wasn’t making much sense to me. Indeed, Kenny was very much on edge. He tore at his sausages and shoveled the beans into his mouth at an extraordinary speed, shouting and gesticulating, and all the while he never took his eyes off me, gauging my reaction. I tried to look happy but on the inside I felt only dread, which I hoped to keep contained, but eventually some of that dread showed on the surface because all of a sudden Kenny stopped dead in his tracks and rolled his eyes. Clearly he was frustrated with me because he sighed and banged his fist on the table so hard that the dishes shook, and then he ordered me to get him a pencil. I quickly fetched it while Kenny snorted at me to show his contempt, but I knew the worst was over because he began drawing the plan on the tablecloth which, luckily for me, happened to be the paper the butcher used to wrap our sausages in.

     He drew the house fairly accurately, I must say. I knew the place from way back when I had a job delivering real estate pamphlets, and I thought Kenny’s sketch was very lifelike. One got the feeling of space and light and fresh air through all those big floor-length windows and the wide porch. I told Kenny they had a pool at the back but he cuffed me again, growling that he wasn’t going to get bogged down in details. He gestured for me to sit down so I quickly cleared the dishes and put a bottle of rum on the table.

     Kenny took a swig and tapped the end of his spoon on the butcher paper right in the middle of the driveway on our blueprint, thus indicating that he was ready for dessert. I served the sweets which, as usual, were the leftover cheesecake I got from work on Sundays because they didn’t like to keep it past seven days.

     I carved the pie, outwardly keeping calm but on the inside I was growing seriously worried because I could see that Kenny had his mind made up. I knew I didn’t want to do it, but I also knew that no matter what, I would always stand by him. He was the only family I had left and he had always done the right thing by me.

     I asked him if the woman was wealthy.

     The husband’s loaded, Kenny replied, chewing furiously.

     How do you know?

     Kenny frowned. I knew he was displeased that I had the nerve to question him, but I was too anxious to think clearly.

     They’re worth a bundle, that’s all you need to know, Kenny eventually mumbled, making a sudden movement towards me. Thinking a cuff was coming, I ducked, and when Kenny saw me ducking, he laughed. He had only wanted a toothpick. I scurried off to get one. While Kenny picked his teeth, I opened the box of wine and then we sat around talking. Kenny was in good humor. Several times he playfully tweaked my ear, saying that I was an ugly bastard but even so he was going to make me rich, and I should stop worrying about not having a girlfriend.

     I didn’t say a word. I never liked to talk about that. Kenny, however, mentioned it every time he brought a girl home, so a long time ago I developed a strategy, which was to turn a deaf ear. Usually Kenny never noticed my discomfort, and the night he came up with the plan was no exception. Ignoring my pensive mood, he offered to play cards with me and left me some of the cheesecake, and even though things did not progress like we planned, I remember that night fondly.