Free Lamentation by Joe Clifford Page A

impassioned plea from Adam Lombardi, who said he “hoped this senseless killing would be the wake-up call Ashton needed” to close down the truck stop, which he called “a bad influence and an eyesore.” Which was the response you’d expect. It was no secret what took place at the truck stop, but that didn’t mean folks wanted it shoved in their faces, either.
    I fielded phone calls and questions for the rest of the morning and on through the afternoon. Turley bugged me a couple times. Charlie rang to see how I was holding up. Word had even drifted down to my aunt and uncle in Concord. Though they’d distanced themselves from Chris a while ago, they were still concerned. The only person I wanted to talk to was Jenny, but it was never her on the line, and I was still too angry and prideful to call her. When I went to the market around lunchtime to stock up on beer, I felt everyone staring at me, probably due to my own paranoia. I was anxious to get back to my place and hole up, which made me feel like a prisoner. Finally, I powered down my cell, took the landline off the hook, pulled the blinds, dragged a six-packto the couch, and cracked open a cold one. I glugged it down. Then I cracked another.

    Ashton wasn’t some hick town. We had two supermarkets, a movie theater showing up to three new releases at a time, four pizza and grinder shops, a McDonald’s and an Arby’s, two banks, a credit union, a barber, a stylist, two dentists, and a Dairy Queen that closed every fall. Plus several liquor stores. Even a football field for the high school. But Ashton was still small enough that everybody knew everybody’s business, which made life a lot rougher when you had a brother like mine.
    I was eight years old when my parents died. I should’ve had more than enough time to put the loss behind me. Only I hadn’t. The tragedy was woven into my very person, like cigarette smoke on a cable-knit after a long night at the bar. I couldn’t put the accident behind me because small-town innuendo wouldn’t let me, and I knew this latest fiasco with Chris would only grease the rumor mill wheels. Turley wasn’t the only one. Everyone had heard that goddamn story, and even when people didn’t bring it up, you could still tell they were thinking it, which made it just as bad. Sometimes what
isn’t
said can be every bit as damning as what
is
.
    For a while, it was just Chris and I living in the house. He had a good job at Hank Miller’s garage. Chris was a pro when it came to fixing cars. Wasn’t a motor he couldn’t put back together blindfolded. He’d had a shot to attend college on a wrestling scholarship, but he stuck around. He stuck around, in part, to help take care of me, which is something you don’t forget, no matter how bad someone turns out.
    That Chris and our father had fought so much publicly didn’t help the situation. They were always at each other’s throats. Once, at a wrestling meet, they had to be physically separated. Another time, they got into a shoving match in the DQ parking lot. Chris was messing with drugs even then. Mostly pot, I think. Hash. Acid. I hated being in the middle of it. Like our mom, I steered clear and tried not to pick sides. Maybe I was a coward. What did I really know? Like the drowning story, I couldn’t trust my own memories. Chris never wanted to talk aboutit, except to call the old man an asshole, and there was no point poking that dog now. We were way past the talking stage.
    All kinds of shit happens when your parents die and you’re still a kid—executors, creditors, social services, mortgages and banks, court orders, insurance claims—a bureaucratic nightmare that neither Chris nor I had been equipped to handle, not that it should’ve been my responsibility at all.
    I didn’t blame my brother. He’d done his best. He was just a kid out of high school, and he’d always been off somewhat, head screwy, easily rattled. Chris began drinking more, getting high more,