What doesnt kill you, p.1
What Doesn't Kill You, page 1
What Doesn't Kill You
Ken Brosky
Timber Ghost Press
What Doesn't Kill You
What Doesn't Kill You is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Copyright © 2023
Published by Timber Ghost Press
Printed in the United States of America
Edited by: Beverly Bernard
Cover Art and Design by: Don Noble of Rooster Republic Press
Interior Design: Timber Ghost Press
Print ISBN: 979-8-9883040-0-5
www.TimberGhostPress.com
For the survivors.
Contents
1. Hubris
2. Homecoming
3. Through the Shadows
4. Prayers for the Dead
5. Research
6. Two Lines
7. Shady Pines
8. Snowed-In
9. Friendship
10. No Answers
11. Cast-Offs
12. The Gift
13. Tracks
14. Through a Glass Darkly
15. Due Process
16. Flee
17. Emma’s Story
18. Into the Cold
19. Dripping with It
20. Escape Plans
21. No Research Here
22. Test Them All
23. Decisions
24. Death
25. More Decisions
26. Servant
27. Temptation
28. Direction
29. Consumed
30. Family
31. Unlikely, Unexpected
32. One Last Chance
33. Peace, At Last
34. The Deal
35. Reunion
36. Endings
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Hubris
“Easy now,” Leo says into his walkie. His warm breath escapes in a cloud. Twenty feet in front of him, the crane’s wires have grown taut. The winch groans as the red shipping container is lifted off the train car. He flexes his fingers against the fabric of his gloves to get some feeling back into them. He’s been outside too long this afternoon, filling forty-eight hoppers with 11.9-protein grain one at a time as the temperature has dropped and the clouds have rolled in.
“Nervous?” asks the woman in white.
Leo gives her a friendly smile. “No ma’am. This little crane’s got a lot of muscle.”
“I meant about the storm. You’ve been glancing up at the sky every few minutes since I arrived.”
“That obvious?” When she doesn’t respond, he shrugs. “Just would rather get on the road before the snow starts falling. I don’t like driving in blizzards.”
“You don’t live here in Seven Sisters?”
He laughs. “No.”
The crane begins to slowly carry the container away from the train to a space on the concrete that the company normally keeps clear for trailer trucks. Before he started working here, Leo never knew how complex grain storage truly was. He thought you collected harvested grain, dumped it into one of the tall steel grain bins that loom over the little town, and then called it a day. But grain needs to be at a certain moisture level. It needs to contain a certain level of protein. Deliveries need to go out all winter to local beef and dairy farmers.
And rats. You gotta stay on top of the rat problem.
“Has anyone ever told you why this town is named Seven Sisters?” the woman asks.
“Nope.” Then, into his walkie: “Angel, swing it another ten feet away from the track before you bring it down. We’re gonna need to plow this whole lot tomorrow morning.”
“It was founded by seven mothers,” says the woman.
“Sisters?” Leo asks absently. The container has begun to turn ever so slightly, straining the wires. They won’t snap, but it’ll take years off their lives. Wire can be so fucking finnicky. He learned that on his property when he tried to install an electric fence for a few hogs. Bend twelve-gauge wire one way, let it curl too many times, and it snaps like a twig. Should have done his research on that shit—low-tensile aluminum wire is garbage.
“They weren’t blood relatives,” says the woman. “They were just… bonded by motherhood. This grain elevator”—she points over Leo’s shoulder to the building he’d like to be inside right now—“used to be a single bin, tallest in the entire state of Wisconsin.”
Leo knows part of this story. The CEO hammers it home at every mandatory work event. A little family business, barely surviving until the railroad wanted to lay a track west. John Carpenter sold a tract of his family land to the railroad company for a steep discount. In exchange, he simply asked for them to build a second track that ran right up to the original grain bin. During World War II, lots of farmers were encouraged to grow wheat. They would take it here to Carpenter Feed where it could be stored and then transported by rail.
After World War II, Mr. Carpenter took all his life’s savings and bought a state-of-the-art storage facility. Around the time Leo was born—twenty-seven years ago—Carpenter Feed was storing six-hundred tons of feed every year. That number has grown ever since.
“And Carpenter Feed has been Wisconsin’s top-rated feed for forty years,” Johnny Carpenter III finishes every time he gives his spiel, usually standing behind the backdrop of Carpenter Feed’s twelve massive steel grain bins, prairie skyscrapers that loom so large, they cast long shadows over half the town of Seven Sisters in the afternoon.
What Johnny Carpenter III—grandson of John Carpenter—never mentions is the company’s origins. If this woman is right, then one of the original seven mothers owned the land. Must not have done anything with it, Leo muses. Sometimes, it takes a man with a vision to get things done. He knows that kind of opinion isn’t “politically correct,” but damn it he’s pretty sure he’s right. It’s no secret that Carpenter Feed is struggling. When did that start? Same time the Carpenter family started letting the daughters and sisters get involved in the family business.
“So, do you live here?” he asks her. He’s curious now. About her. About this shipment of hers that arrived on a rail car that normally has only grain hoppers.
The woman inhales deeply through her nose. “Years ago, I called this town home.”
He watches her expression change ever so slightly. She’s pretty for a woman in her fifties, he guesses. She’s supposed to be a big deal out in California; she has to be if she’s able to pay for transport of a shipping container like this.
But if this woman’s a big deal, why no plastic surgery? Leo thought every woman in California did that. But this woman’s fine lines… she almost wears them like a badge of honor. Has every right to, he supposes. The lines are shallow and thin. They’re right at the corners of her eyes and signify decades of laughs. Leo’s mom just hit fifty, and she sure as hell doesn’t look as vibrant as this woman. Leo’s mom smokes, though. This woman definitely doesn’t smoke. She smells like vanilla.
“You don’t believe me,” she states.
Leo shifts feet. Damn, his toes are getting cold. The shipping container is taking forever to be lowered to the ground. The crane’s winch has begun to moan louder, fighting the weight. What’s Johnny Carpenter gonna say if the crane breaks down? He had to have approved this whole nonsense. Carpenter runs a tight ship. Hates paying overtime. Hates deviating from scheduled tasks. This woman must have tossed him a brick of cash to arrange this.
“No offense, but you seem too good for this town.” He nods to her white overcoat, which has sheepskin trim and a heavy hood. Silver buttons run down in a brilliant line. The gray fur of the trim looks expensive. It’s not the kind of fur Leo used to trim off the disgusting sheep on his uncle’s farm when he was a kid.
The woman nods beyond the train track. There’s a narrow road with a pair of houses and a single tavern called Mike’s. Past that is Old Highway 55, the main east-west road that leads out of town in two directions. “When I was growing up, Old Highway 55 was just Highway 55.”
The container touches the ground. Leo watches Angel hop out of the crane and climb the container to unhook the wires.
“Careful!” he shouts. “If an ambulance has to come all the way out here to pick your ass up—”
“The blizzard, yes,” Angel mutters, barely audible over the bitter wind that suddenly picks up. “Thank you for worrying, Mom.”
As if on cue, the first few snowflakes begin to fall from the sky. Light and thin. They melt the moment they touch Leo’s warm cheeks. He used to hate winter as a child. Outdoor chores were the worst, especially feeding the cows. His feet always got so cold in the mud boots, no matter how many pairs of socks he wore. When it snowed, he would have to trudge the entire length of the long driveway to get to the main road so the school bus could pick him up. His dad never salted anywhere around the house because he thought it was a waste of money. Leo’s entire childhood timeline could be traced like a constellation between injuries caused by slipping on the ice.
“It’s just a storm,” says the woman.
He looks at her. Her wavy brown hair is streaked with bolts of silver, flaked by snow. She’s studying him with her dark green eyes. Was his concern really so obvious?
“I don’t like driving in storms.”
She nods. One hand leaves the safety of a pocket—she’s wearing coal-black leather gloves—to point down the road. “My parents made me help out at the little post office on fifty-five when I was a teenager. Cleaning and stocking supplies. One day, though, the mail carrier and his supervisor were out sick. I decided to do the mail delivery. I thought, how hard could it be? I made it one block before slipping on a patch of ice and fracturing my wrist.”
“Been there,” Leo mutters. He watches Angel gracefully hop off the container. “Ten out of ten, my man.”
Angel walks over to them. Behind him, the train has begun moving. It’ll head west from here, through the Driftless Area, into Iowa, to move thousands of tons of feed to another facility to be distributed to hundreds of farming operations.
“You need anything else?” he asks.
The woman shakes her head.
Angel looks at Leo. Leo looks at her. She’s watching the last few train cars pass the tracks that intersect the road leading back to Old Highway 55. Fastest way out of this shitty little town.
“Uh,” he says.
She turns back to him. Jesus, does she have to look at him like that? Like she’s trying to crack him open?
“You got a plan for this thing?” he asks, gesturing to the container.
“I do.”
“You know you’re not gonna get a trailer out here this afternoon, right?” He checks his phone. “It’s almost four o’clock.”
“I don’t need a trailer,” she says. “This container is staying right here.”
Angel makes a face. He’ll be the one plowing around it tomorrow after the blizzard has passed. The parking lot is already narrow enough. John Carpenter the First should have moved his entire facility back another fifty feet from the tracks if he’d had any sense.
Two feet of snow, if the meteorologists are right. Three feet if they’re wrong.
“Look, I know you paid Mr. Carpenter a lot of money to get this thing here,” Leo says.
The woman gives him a wry smile.
“And I know for a fact that it wasn’t cheap to get a container put on a train full of grain cars,” he continues.
“Well wagons, you mean.”
He grimaces. He’d used “grain cars” because he was sure she wouldn’t know the correct term. “So, I’m just offering out of the kindness of my heart. If you have something in there that you need to get out, I’ll give you half an hour of my time.”
Angel makes another face. He’s here all night. Last thing he wants to do is waste time out here helping some rich lady unload her valuables.
“That’s a very kind gesture,” she says. “But it’s not necessary.”
“Can I ask what it is?” Leo holds up a hand. “You don’t gotta say. It just seems like an expensive hassle.”
“It’s a gift to the town,” says the woman. She pulls a key from her overcoat and uses it to unlock the door at two points. “A statue.”
“Oh.” Is that it? Seems like the kind of thing that could be shipped via FedEx, he thinks.
She turns and motions with her head to the tavern. “Does Mike Brown still tend the bar?”
“Every night,” Leo says.
“Does he still make a dynamite Bloody Mary?”
Leo shrugs absently. Now he’s wondering what the statue looks like. It’s gotta be a person, right? One of the original seven sisters, maybe? Or all of them lined up in a neat row?
“I’ll just have to find out myself, then,” she announces. “Thank you for your help. And please give Mr. Carpenter my thanks as well. I know this was a headache.”
Leo watches her cross the tracks. She walks gracefully down the center of the road, the heels of her black boots kicking up dry snowflakes like wisps of smoke. It’s not coming down hard yet, but Leo can feel the pressure change in his head. He’s always been sensitive to changing pressure systems. This is going to be a helluva storm.
“Let’s look,” Angel says.
“Wait ‘til she’s in the bar.”
“It’s not a statue. I’ll bet money on that.”
Leo doesn’t say anything. The woman has turned toward Mike’s, a two-story brownstone wedged between a pair of old houses with dirty trucks parked in their driveways. She’d better hope the regulars stay home tonight. They’re rowdy and unpredictable in the best of times. Won’t matter if she grew up here or not—all they’ll see is a woman flaunting her wealth. The people in Seven Sisters are bottom-of-the-barrel shit, Leo thinks.
Just as she reaches the front door of the tavern, the streetlights blink on. Old lamps hanging from rotten gray pine shining a dull orange onto a cracked street. It’s easy to lose the last light during winter in Wisconsin.
Angel nudges him.
“Yeah,” he says.
They walk over to the front of the container. Leo tugs on the latches one at a time, feeling the ice-cold steel through his gloves.
Together, they swing the door open. The inside of the container is dark, expansive. Empty.
No. There’s something near the back.
They pull out their phones, shining the lights.
It is a statue.
They step inside. Their boots thump on the steel floor. Leo feels his heart go cold. The statue is a thin figure, a woman with small breasts, down on one knee, both hands gently touching the floor with long fingers. Bones seem to jut out from her elbows. The back is curved, the spine violently exposed through the dark green flesh. Is it bronze, maybe? Looks like the color of the Statue of Liberty.
But the head. It takes a moment for Leo to process it. Because it’s not a head at all. It’s a beehive. Not the cartoonish kind that looks like an egg—this hive is longer, oval-shaped, made of blades of flattened honeycomb that grow larger in the center. The layers remind Leo of the old radiator in his grade school.
Only this hive is white. Organic, not part of the statue. It’s as if a colony of bees found this statue and decided the head was a perfect place to build a home. Then, layer by layer, they did just that.
“What a fucking waste of money,” Leo mutters. “If that old lady really wanted to help this town, she’d have put a bomb in here. Blow the whole place to Kingdom Come, put everyone here out of their misery.”
“Don’t get closer,” Angel warns.
Leo glares at him. “Man. It’s twenty degrees outside. There’s no bees.”
He taps the hive a couple times to show. Nothing happens. No bees emerge.
But something catches the light from his phone. There, near the bottom of the hive: a drop of honey.
Leo pulls his glove off. He plucks the solid bead of gold from the hive’s exterior. He holds it up and they both shine their light on it.
“Don’t eat it,” Angel warns.
“Honey never goes bad.” Leo pops it in his mouth. Lets it melt on his tongue. It’s some of the worst honey he’s ever tasted.
“I’m going back to work,” Angel says.
Leo walks with him back to the entrance, wondering why the woman in white would give such a strange statue to the town. Must be one of those artsy-fartsy types. Everyone in California loves art.
He turns off his phone’s light. There’s a new text message from his wife with a grocery list. Absolutely not. He should have been gone an hour ago. The snow’s picking up. It’s time to go home. The kids can eat Spaghetti-O’s tonight. He’s tired. He’s sick of working outside, and his socks are bunching up in his boots because he accidentally grabbed an old pair from his drawer this morning. An old pair that he should have thrown away a year ago.
He’s about to close the door when he realizes Angel isn’t with him.
“Hey,” he says, glancing around the container.
Nothing.
He tries to peer into the container, but it’s grown too dark to distinguish the shadows deep inside. “Hey. Come on, man.”
No answer.
“Come on,” he calls. “I wanna go home. Stop goofing around.”
Nothing.
Leo curses and turns his phone’s light back on. Just as he’s bringing it up, Angel appears from the darkness with a scream. Leo cries out and drops his phone, stumbling back and landing ass-first onto the cold pavement.
