Thad repeated the same thing multiple times before Aiden ever threw the Ranchero in park: “I know I didn’t leave the door open.” Whatever was used to pry into Thad’s trailer had bent the top corner of the thin metal door like a dog-eared book page. Aiden imagined whoever broke in just reached inside, unlatched the lock, and turned the doorknob after that. Neither of them said a word when they walked inside, and they certainly didn’t speak once they saw the dog.
Loretta Lynn had a sixteen-inch flathead screwdriver pinning her lifeless body to the plywood table in front of the couch. The wood was muddied with blood, but the way her paws had raked and finger-painted the puddle meant she hadn’t died right away.
Thad collapsed to his knees beside the table, his upper half hunched limp over the only thing that had made him smile for two years. He looked too shocked to cry. He didn’t make one sound. Aiden wasn’t even sure if Thad was breathing, and he wanted to walk up to him, put his hand on Thad’s shoulder, but that moment felt like glass. That moment felt like any movement at all would shatter the whole world into a million fucking pieces.
The ratty couch with yellow flowers had been flipped onto its back, its cushions strewn about, with one balanced in an angle against the wall like the start of a little kid’s lean-to. Past the living room into the kitchen, cabinet doors stood at various angles, everything inside ransacked and piled into a broken heap of dishes and glass, the shards dusted with cornmeal and slopped with spent cooking grease. A dust devil of fruit flies whirled up from the pile when Aiden scuffed through, but there was no absence of places to light, and in a split second the air was still.
Aiden peeked into Thad’s bedroom at the far end of the trailer, but it was hard to tell whether the room was ripped apart or just how he’d left it. Navy-blue sheets bunched away from one corner of the mattress, the dark sheets splotched with dried gray stains. The bed was slung sideways, dirty clothes strewn carelessly about the room. Gun magazine centerfolds were taped to the wall. Drawers were ripped from the rails of the dresser. The closet emptied into a mixed mound of filth.
Down the barrel of the trailer, Thad was still hovering over Loretta Lynn’s body. He was motionless, but the potential for him to ignite was packed in his gunpowder stare. Gravel spun beneath tires outside, just a dark blue blur as April’s sedan shot past the open doorway, and that sound pulled the trigger.
By the time Aiden made it onto the porch, Thad was halfway up the hill. April was out of the car and slammed the passenger-side door with her free hand, a paint roller and tray balanced under her other arm. Cocked to the side by the gallon of paint she was carrying, she evened the load between her hands, but dropped it all when she saw her front door standing open. Her tabby cat, Mittens, wandered onto the stoop and circled lazily, back arched as he ran his body along the door frame. Thad was almost to the house, his fast pace and raised shoulders hinting that when he got there something bad was going to happen. Aiden took off after them and Thad followed his mother into the house just as Aiden crested the hilltop. When Aiden made it inside, they were already screaming.
“My house is ripped to shreds, Thad. Don’t you think if I was here I would have done something?” April stood in the living room with her arms raised over the mess. Light yellow paint had dried in her hair, speckled her black tank top and loose-fitting carpenter’s pants. She turned and looked around the littered floor. “I’d like to kill whoever did this to my house.”
“Well, where were you?” he screamed.
“I went to get paint.”
“Paint?”
“I needed more paint, Thad. Is that hard for you to understand?”
“You and this house.”
“This house is all I’ve got. This house, Thad, is torn all to shit and I guaran-goddamn-tee it was some no-account you was running around with did it.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said I’ll bet you a million dollars this had something to do with those skanks you had piled in that trailer last night.”
“Just shut the fuck up!”
“No, Thad. No. I won’t shut the fuck up. I won’t shut up and you know why? Do you have any idea why?”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you why. Look around, Thad. They broke my entire collection.” April kicked at a broken figurine that used to sit on one of the shelves by the door. The knickknack shelves were smashed into jagged wooden scraps. The chalk statues were shattered over the carpet. “I’ve been collecting those my whole life. My mama and daddy gave me some of those when I was a little girl. You have any idea how much that collection meant to me?”
“Your collection?” Thad moved toward his mother.
“Can you really not understand what I’m saying?”
“Your collection?” He was almost to her.
“My—”
Before April could get another word out of her mouth, Thad grabbed hold of her face, mashed her cheeks and lips together in his hand. He kept forward until she was on the floor and he was on top of her, her eyes and mug still scrunched into a wrinkled wad in his hand like some chubby kid making faces. “They killed my dog!” Thad was screaming down at his mother words that broke apart and pelted her face. “They killed my fucking dog, you dumb bitch!”
Aiden loped forward and tackled Thad away from his mother, the two of them rolling into a knotted melee on the floor beside her. They wrestled around for a minute or two before Thad’s rage gave him the upper hand. His knees dug into Aiden’s ribs as he hammered square into Aiden’s forehead. Thad brained Aiden again, and that second one dazed him for a moment, but when a clear thought came, it crashed like a meteor and lit Aiden afire. That’s when Aiden rolled Thad onto his back and pinned his arms behind his head. Thad was trying to knee Aiden in his kidneys, trying to climb his way up his body, and it took almost a minute before he spent, that tantrum finally fizzling, him just heaving for air on the floor.
When it was over, Aiden twisted off and let go of Thad’s wrists.
Thad spun to his feet and walked to the open doorway. He turned to face them. April sat beside Aiden with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head buried and sobbing. “Fuck you, Aiden,” Thad said. His features were hidden in shadow, the world glowing white behind him. April looked up from her arms with her face sunken with tears. “Fuck you both,” Thad said as he shook his head, turned, and melted into the sunlight with his mother and best friend speechless on the floor.