Pilot

Fifteen hundred twisted miles of flat packed tarmac was stretched behind them like the liquid smooth scales of a long black snake, curved round the humps and mounds of puckered land covered with nothing but trees and grey-green forest. The air outside had been muggy warm, weighted clouds promising relief only when they let the rain fall, and for over twenty five hours they’d watched the grey sky and power lines overhead.

Near dawn, when the forest floor was thick with sticky mist and the air hazy, the car bumped up into a yellow and red painted gas station that promised twenty four-hour service. The station was bathed in the neon glow from the neighboring motel, red bricked with grungy old curtains hanging in each window. The lot out front housed a truck and some crappy car probably as old as the building, but it was as good a place as any.

One door slammed. the broad, egg headed man at the gas stations register glancing up from his glossy, six paged spread of a topless Billy Piper for a second to see if any hot, blonde ass was about to walk in, maybe with enough cleavage to be more interesting than the 2D girl he’d been making friends with for half the night.

His eyes fell back to the page as no playboy bunny stepped out of the sleek black car, but a tall young man who shifted over to the gas pump with his shoulders bent. A second man slipped from the passenger door, speaking over the roof to the other before sauntering across the fuel stained tarmac to the yellow lit store and cash register.

Sweat shone on his forehead, evident staining the front of his shirt in a deep v and dripping down his temple form his hairline. The weather had been slightly muggy the last few days, pressure building beneath the clouds and making AC a benefit inside buildings and cars, but it wasn’t that hot, not enough to make a person sweat the way he was.

The cashier set down his magazine, slipping it under the counter while he watched the customer. He was only glancing over chocolate bars and junk food, shifting from foot to foot and looking out the widow towards the car every now and then, but something made the bald man suspicious.

A Hershey’s bar, two packs of salt and vinegar chips, ginger ale and a bottle of vodka were dropped to the counter, The man digging a credit card out of a pocket then slapping it down on the counter. He shifted again, clearing his throat and looking back out to the car where the other guy was now waiting against the hood. “Number four.”

A frown tugged down the bald mans thin lips and he squared his shoulders, dragging the card through the slot. There was dark bruise on the customer’s right cheek bone that nearly disguised the circles beneath his eyes, and his skin was tight, mouth taunt, muscles tensed. The cahier noticed that he didn’t look at one spot for more than a few seconds, eyes shifting sideways, constantly cradling his right arm close to his body, supported by his left hand on his elbow. “Credit or savings?”

“Uh- credit thanks.”

There was stubble on his cheeks, shadowed along the underside of a smooth cut jaw, Adams apple bobbing as he swallowed. He seemed to struggle with tapping in the pin code with a badly scared left hand, but the cashier watched the green ‘confirmed’ flash up on his computer screen before he bundled the guys’ junk food into a plastic bag and shoved it over the counter.

From the car Harlem watched as Lee walked back across the tarmac, a stubborn set to his jaw when he dumped the small amount of food on the bonnet and fished out a liter bottle of ginger ale. He tried to open it with one hand, fingers shaking and breathing off, until Harlem snapped open the cap and handed it back. Lee glared at him, half turning away as he chugged back almost half the bottle, re-capped it awkwardly then threw it to the side for Harlem to deal with.

The car doors slammed again, plastic rustling as Harlem set their small amount of supplies in the backseat without a word, relocating their car to the mostly empty motel lot, his fingers tight on the wheel and eyes mostly on Lee in the seat beside him.

He’d sat through almost twenty five hours of driving without a word passed between them, just watching Lee chug back ginger ale and pain killers while whatever music Lee chose blasted out the stereo. They were both exhausted, fueled by cringingly loud music. And bottles of Gatorade that now rolled around empty at their feet.

Lee was the first out the car, leaving Harlem to grunt over the two duffle bags in the backseat as he went to pay for a room. Three nights, far enough away from Salem that they felt safe enough to sleep at night. He was so ready for sleep in a proper bed after a full day and night trapped in that tiny car, nodding in fits and starts as Harlem glared out the front window. They got room number nine on Lee’s request, because though a gypsy woman had said that neither luck nor fate would ever apply to him, he considered it his lucky number. Good things always came in nines.

Outside Harlem had made a pack-mule of himself, straining under the weight of four bags that crisscrossed each other over his shoulders. Their weight put pressure on his nerve points, building a pain up the back of his neck and behind his eyes, but he bit back words when he watched Lee sway dangerously by the motel room door, shuddering breath shaking his lungs before he stabbed the key into the lock and followed the door through.

It was the typical motel setup. Two crappy single beds with off-white sheets stretched taut across likely-to-be-lumpy mattresses, the ceilings stained by cigarette smoke and the carpet probably grimy underneath their boots. They tracked their own dirt into the room, clumps of dry mud that flaked form the side of their boots, dirt and soil from Salem.

Ignoring the idle thought, Harlem dumped the bags, looking up abruptly when Lee staggered, catching himself against the wall with his left hand and a thud. He seemed to be about to pass out, pale and shaking, ragged breaths sounding painful as they whistled through his lips. Lee’s right arm still hung limp at his side, and Harlem knew he should have fixed it as soon as he got his chance. Lee had insisted they moved on, his eyes constantly flicking to the rearview mirrors as he mumbled an ‘I’m fine, just give me more pain killers. I’m fine.’

“Why the hell did you leave your arm like that for so long?” It was half hissed, Harlem picking his way across the room to stand in front of Lee and taking hold of his injured arm. Lee winced in pain, teeth clenching and his eyes squeezing closed, but there was no way he’d move.

“It wasn’t really a top priority okay? I’ve dealt with worse.”

“But you need your arm, dickhead; you can’t shoot with your left hand.” He said.

“Fucked if I can’t!” Lee spat, turning angry eyes up to Harlem, his good hand fisting at his side.

“Whatever man, this is going to hurt.”

Without warning Harlem twisted, an ugly popping sound hitting his ears before Lee ripped himself away, left hand clutching to his right arm as he cried out. Lee half doubled over; whimpering in pain before he lashed out at the drywall, his boot smashing into it so hard it cracked and buckled inwards, paint flaking away. “Fuckin. Bastard. Fuck. Argh!”

“I warned you.” Harlem turned away, hiding his guilt at making Lee whimper like a child as he shifted the duffels. Three next to Lee’s bed, one by his own. “Take your pills, drink your vodka and go to sleep, I need to shower.”

“Not before me, asshole!” Lee sounded like an enraged wolf, snarling savagely before he grabbed the smallest of his three bags with his left hand and yanked it into the bathroom before Harlem had a chance to move, slamming the door behind him.

Harlem flopped onto the mattress, springs shifting and groaning beneath his weight as he lay and listened to Lee move around behind a closed door. It was a long while before the water began to run and he guessed it was because Lee had trouble getting his shirt off, what with his dislocated shoulder and all. He couldn’t help but feel bad about that. He rolled to lean over the side of the bed and dig out the vodka and pain killers he’d mentioned earlier. Setting them on the small bedside table between their beds, where they were sheltered by a cheese yellow lampshade.

He smelt like sweat and fear, the leather seats in the car and ginger ale he’d accidentally spilled over himself. It had made his skin unpleasantly sticky for hours afterwards, and Lee would have been pissed if he was conscious enough to realize that Harlem had taken his drink. Instead he sat with his head against the window, half curled in on himself, face strained. Harlem had even been able to see the muscles quivering across his arms and back, sweat streaking down his neck. A few times Lee had actually lost consciousness, pained moans muffled by the cars roaring engine and the blasting music Lee had force fed the CD player the second Salem was out of sight.

When the bathroom door swung open and Lee emerge in a cloud of steam, Harlem had just been drifting off to some badly needed sleep. He snapped awake when the doors handle hit the dry wood wall, looking up to a beaten looking Lee dressed in black slacks, bag and towel in his left hand. His short blonde hair was wet and dark, clumped and sticking up because he’d towel dried it. The shower had done nothing for him, other than wash away the dirt which had clung to his skin for the past 25 hours, revealing how drawn he looked, the bags beneath his eyes, and Lee still couldn’t completely hide the pain he was in, even if he tried.

Harlem sat, watching Lee dump the stuff and snatch his pills and vodka, downing the two.

“Why did Dad do it?” Harlem asked, scratching his thigh, tired and feeling extremely dirty underneath his clothes. Now wasn’t the best time to talk but he had to ask, needed to know what was going on.

“Well, he’s not my dad is he? How the fuck should I know.” Lee snapped, recapping the now nearly empty bottle of vodka with a brave face. It still hurt to move his arm, he would need to bind it.

“I just thought that since-“

“You thought wrong, okay? I have no clue what fucked up shit was going through his head. I don’t want to be here.”

He was a little surprised to hear that, but looking at Lee now, the lines between his eyes, tense muscles and mouth pulled into a permanent grimace, he coould partially understand. They certainly hadn’t left Salem with happy memories.

Lee sighed, raking fingers through his hair and turning towards the bed, leaving Harlem to watch his pale shoulders. “Just take a shower and go to sleep.”

Harlem shook his head, picking himself up off the mattress and grabbing one of Lee’s duffles. “Don’t be such as ass; you think I want to be here either?” Neither of them had fled from their hometown just because it was fun. Harlem could be back in his dorm right now, sleeping rather than digging out bandages to bind Lee’s arm in some rotten motel in a whole other state.

“Come here, let me do your arm.”

Lee growled quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose but turning anyway, allowing Harlem to gently lift his arm into a sling then bind his shoulder with thick plied bandages. It would be uncomfortable to sleep in, but he didn’t really have much of a choice.

“You didn’t have to do this.” Lee said as Harlem fastened the bandages, his eyes on the other side of the room. The worst thing was that he actually sounded annoyed, angry that Harlem hadn’t just left him. “I didn’t ask you for anything.”

Harlem snorted, tempted to yank the bandage just to show Lee who was in whose power right now. “What, you think I was just going to leave you with them? After everything?”

“Shut up, okay? I don’t want to hear your bullshit.” Lee pulled away. It must have hurt his arm, but Harlem was completely cut away from seeing any of his pain because Lee turned his back once again. Harlem snorted, spinning to his own bed and shoving the duffle to the floor. “Oh fuck you. Stop acting like such a martyr, no one had anything to gain from you…”

“From me dying?” he half turned his right arm away from Harlem in unconscious self defense. He raised one eyebrow, watching Harlem for a second before snorting dismissively. “Yeah sure, believe what you want.”

“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean? Dad wouldn’t have done anything at all if he wanted to hurt you…he just. You know him Lee!” Harlem hit his pillow, grinding out the words with both anger and pleading. “What would he have to gain from….”

“From bringing me back?” Lee snapped, his back still turned to Harlem. Lee could see the muscles tense and shaking over his shoulders and back. His arm was definitely still hurting him, and he was angry. Really bloody angry. Harlem had seen that rage before, watched Lee see red and let his fists fly. That anger had never been directed at him before. “Fucked if I know….why did you let him do it?:

“How was I supposed to know?” Harlem snapped back.

“He’s nuts, even you can figure that out.”

Harlem grunted, snatched a towel form his duffle and slammed the bathroom door behind him.

***

It was dark in the motel room when he got out of the shower, morning light spilling through the bathroom window to illuminate a square inside the model room. Lee was lying on his back and he threw his left hand over his face as the light fell over him, and Harlem could see the faint sheen of sweat across his skin once more, lips parted and his breath shivering between them. He was still in pain, despite the pills and vodka, and though Harlem felt almost guilty, he had to speak, closing the bathroom door behind him and dropping onto the bed.

“He’s not crazy. He might seem it, but he’s not.”

Lee was silent for a long moment, enough time for Harlem to close his eyes and believe he wasn’t getting an answer, but finally he heard the other bed shift, Lee’s footsteps across the floor and his own mattress sinking as Lee sat down. Peeling back his eyelids, he watched Lee’s face in the dark, the shadows beneath his cheekbones and around his eye sockets, the bones beneath his skin. He couldn’t see the bruises like this, but Lee still looked sick and drained and agonized, nothing at all like he’d been only five days ago.

Lee linked their left hands together, and he didn’t have to see or feel to know the raised lines on their palms. His fingers curled automatically over Lee’s knuckles, familiar lumps and scars meeting, carved into their skin, circles over five points on both the upper and lower sides of their hands. A pentacle he’d had for as long as he could remember, deep gouged scars that would remain until the day he died.

“You were eight Harlem, he used a nail gun. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

He blinked, his hand tightening around Lee’s, the scars on their skin matched line for line. “What, you regret it?” and it wasn’t what Lee had said that made him sound injured, rather what he hadn’t.

Lee remained quiet, a thin beam of light from the curtains filled with swirling dust motes fracturing across wolf silver irises, and not for the first time Harlem thought his eyes looked like the inside of an ice cube. He realized then that something was going on in Lee’s mind that he didn’t understand, because for the first time something had happened to Lee that was outside of his experience.

“Daniel is nuts.” Lee said again, his mouth pulling back into an angry line as he yanked his palm away and moved to his own bed. “And when he dies he’s going to hell for what he’s done to me.”

“So are you now, you know.”

“Wonderful. We can burn together.”

***

The tree stump beneath their sweaty palms had too many rings so count, its outer edge warped and curved, and they knelt between the remainder of thick tangled roots. It would have been a magnificent tree before it had been cut down, and the circle of dried pine needles and unpromising sandy earth surrounding it were existing proof. Its canopy had been broad and forgiving, but now only harsh sunlight glared down, crisping any native fauna that tried to grow and inspiring a sheen of sweat on the two boys and young man that made the clearing their temporary home.

Lee and Harlem knelt opposite each other over the tree stump, their left hands rested flat against the uneven wood surface, and both sets of eyes turned to Daniel as he rooted through a tool box, moisture running down his temple from dark hair.

They were all dirty with dust and grime form the hike out here, packs full of camping supplies dumped beneath the pine trees at the edge of the clearing.

At eleven, Lee was tall for his age, blonde hair cropped military short, resulting in the tops of his ears burning red form sun exposure. His grey eyes were narrowed under the glare; freckled nose wrinkled faintly and chapped lips parted. He was gangly for a preteen, lean muscle already visible where his dirty white tank top hung off his thin frame, revealing freckles across bony shoulder, high cheekbones exposed to full sunlight.

This was all in great contrast to Harlem, who still held his puppy fat, doe brown eyes shielded from the sunlight by waves of soft brown hair and long, dark eyelashes. Harlem’s skin tanned, rounded cheeks unblemished and full, soft lips drawn between his teeth, much unlike Lee.

They both watched in silence as Daniel rose from where he crouched over a dented red tool box, thick and stained nylon rope dangling in his dark, calloused fingers. He dropped to his knees on another face of the tree trunk and smiled at the boys, white teeth flashing in the sunlight amongst days of dark stubble.

“Okay Lee, you’re the older boy here, so I want you to come sit next to Harlem and take his left hand with your left hand, okay?”

Lee nodded, his expression static as he shifted in the sand, hot grains filling his shoes and burning his knees where the denim had worn thin, he took Harlem’s hand as instructed.

Daniel carefully aligned their palms and fingers, matching them together despite the difference in size, then using the nylon he bound them around their wrist and each finger.

“Now, you boys both understand how important this is don’t you?” Daniel said, his dark eyes flickering from his son to Lee expectantly. Harlem nodded with a smile, shifting closer to Lee at his side. Lee simply nodded.

Insects buzzed around them, a permanent hum in the hot air that would have otherwise been silent. None of the trio spoke, not even Harlem, who continued to watch his father curiously while Lee watched the five dots on the back of his palm, ones that Daniel had put there with a permanent marker after taking careful measurements of both Lee and Harlem’s hands.

There was no one to hear Harlem crying after Daniel stapled their hands together with a nail gun, successfully pinning them to the tree stump. It took him an hour to remove their hands form the tree without separating them from five strategically placed nails that bound them together. It took another hour to measure out and carve perfect pentacles around the five bloody points while Lee bit back his own pain and soothed little Harlem, kissing his tear streaked cheeks and comforting him.

They camped for a whole month to let the wounds heal over and scar, where they scavenged, hunted and survived together, until finally Daniel had said. “You boys are brothers now, and as long as one of you lives, so will the other.”

For the next eleven years of their lives Lee Caden and Harlem Moore wore gloves on their left hands.

Note:

‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ is my newest ‘big’ project. Chapters should be approximately 18 Word pages + and updates should happen either every two weeks or every month, depending on what life decides to throw at me and my level of motivation.

Thanks to anyone who read this first chapter. I’d really appreciate it if you’d give me some feedback. Liked it? Hated it? Tell me what I did wrong?

Thanks to my wonderful Beta Dorkie for making this as wallop as print perfect as it can get.