Read Online Nothing Short of Dying by Erik Storey - Free Book Online

I’ll walk back to the junkyard. Anything I forgot?”
    â€œWhy are we leaving the truck at the yard?”
    â€œIt needs to be fixed. And the Feds have my plates. Juan said his cousin has a car we can use. I’ll trade him the car I’ll be taking from Little Dick’s crew. While we’re gone Juan said someone would fix my truck. Make sense?”
    Allie nodded. We hopped off the truck. As I watched her settle into the front seat, she turned and called out through the open window. “Hey, Barr.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI know this is just business as usual for you, but don’t get yourself killed and leave me alone in a junkyard, okay?”
    â€œI’ll see you soon,” I said confidently.
    My smile faded when the truck rumbled out of sight. I didn’t like this situation. And the incident with the elk had rattled me. It was getting harder and harder to run headlong into violent, potentially illegal situations. When people were being spit on, I could separate the work from myself, like I had in Africa and South America. When people killed others for no reason, it was easy to side with the underdog and help. That was simple. But in those situations I hadn’t been personally involved. Sure, the outcomes of those little tussles could have put me in the ground, but I’d never worried about that.
    But now I had a legitimate reason to care about the outcome. I had a family member who was counting on me—a sister who, when we were little, had been my best friend and confidant. A sister who’d been in trouble before when I wasthe only one around to help. I thought back to the week after Ski had knocked me out and Jen had told me he was starting to touch her.
    SHE’D GONE MUTE FOR THE week. Mom must have known why, on some level, but she wouldn’t admit that either she or Ski had anything to do with it. I knew better. And I was going to make sure it never happened again.
    Two days after I was knocked unconscious, Ski and Mom had a rowdy night and were still in bed, both snoring with hangovers at 10:00 a.m. That morning, I soaked a rag in gasoline, sneaked out to Ski’s Trans Am, and jammed it into the gas tank. Then I went back inside and washed my hands, listening to make sure Ski and Mom weren’t awake. No change in the buzz saws. I checked Jen’s room, but the door wouldn’t open. I found out later that she’d pushed her dresser against the door.
    Hurrying, I stole a Pall Mall from Ski’s pants in the broken kitchen, grabbed a pack of firecrackers, and went back outside. Carefully, I cut a small hole in the rag and made a foot-long string of fuse pulled from the firecrackers. I wrapped one end around the cigarette and one end through the hole and around the rag, making sure it would stay, and put a Bic to the Pall Mall. The breeze was light, and puffed the red end enough to keep it lit. I went back inside.
    I’d practiced using this type of fuse with Juan, blazing gas cans when we were up in the hills the summer before, and I knew that I had about ten minutes. So I used anger to push away the fear and opened Mom’s door. I ignored the naked bodies on the bed, and said, loud enough to wake them, “Mom, I’m hungry.”
    Ski came off the bed first, threw a right into my teeth that sent me into the closet door, kicked me when I fell, then threw his pants on and left. Over his shoulder he yelled, “You need to control your shitty brats. I’m out.” Mom cried, but was either too drunk or too broken to come to my aid. I was a fast healer, and I wasn’t too worried about the beating. I was, however, worried about my miscalculation.
    I’d planned for Ski to stay awhile, see his car on fire, wonder how I could do it when I was still inside, and run away scared. Instead, I read in the paper the next day that a man with a hard-to-pronounce last name had suffered severe burns on half his body when his Pontiac had