Free House of Skin by Jonathan Janz

Barlow went left.
    Gloom spread over them. Paul was unnerved by the stillness pervading the woods. May was nearing, which meant the forest should have been teeming with life. Instead, the air here had a funereal quality that reminded him of winter, of dead things.
    Moving even with the sheriff, he glanced at Barlow’s profile to read what was going on behind the man’s knitted brow.
    “What did you mean earlier?” Paul asked to break the silence.
    Barlow watched his feet stepping over packed dirt, an occasional root. He extended a big hand, his fingers brushing over tree trunks and bushes. Distantly, he heard a harsh flutter of leaves and the death cry of some small animal as a hawk snapped its backbone.
    “What did you mean when you talked about the reason for not liking me?” Paul asked.
    “I heard you the first time.”  
    “Well?”  
    “What do you know about your uncle?”  
    Paul regarded the path. “I know my family hated him. Especially my grandparents. My grandpa left Shadeland when he was still in his twenties.”  
    “Did you ever hear why?”  
    “No,” he said, “not really. Nothing specific, I mean. They just treated the subject like it was taboo. We weren’t to mention it, so we didn’t.”
    “Why do you think that is?” Barlow asked, leading him.
    Feeling the branches snicking against his flannel shirt, Paul stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets. “I wouldn’t know that. That’s how my family is. They don’t talk about certain things and they don’t talk about why they don’t talk about them.”
    “If he were in my family, I wouldn’t claim him either.”
    “Are you going to tell me why, or are we going to talk in code all night?”  
    The sheriff stopped and turned his back to him. Thinking they were setting off from the path, Paul moved to follow him when he heard the sound of Barlow’s zipper. Urine patted the ground, steam rising up from the muddied soil. Paul stood there, hands in pockets, and wished he had to pee as well, share in the moment. Instead, he moved down the path a couple of paces to give the sheriff room to do his thing. He heard Barlow finish, zip up.
    The sheriff said, “Your uncle was the most despicable man I’ve ever met.”  
    Paul laughed, a forced sound in the quiet forest. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
    “If anything, it’s an understatement.”  
    “What did he do that was so terrible?”
    “You name it.”
    Paul stopped. “Why didn’t you arrest him then?”  
    “I wasn’t sheriff until Myles Carver was in his late sixties. By that time most of what he’d done was in the past.”
    “You haven’t even told me what he did.”
    Barlow appeared to think. Then, he said, “I’ll tell you one story I heard. One of many. Then you can decide for yourself. Some of the things I know are true because I witnessed them. Other things I only heard about, but the people who told them to me, for the most part, are people I trust. Ralph Trask, the old doctor who’s down at the nursing home now, he’s the one who told me this story. He was a couple of years younger than Myles, so he’d know.” He glanced at Paul. “And before you doubt Trask’s credibility, write him off as a crazy old coot, keep in mind he was fifteen years younger when he told me this, and he’s still perfectly lucid.”  
    It was full night now. The April chill lay hard on the forest.
    The sheriff got moving and continued: “This was a long time ago, years and years before I was born. Back then, as you’re probably aware, some schools had different grades grouped together, so that the older ones sat in the same room with the younger ones. Your uncle was young, twelve or thirteen. Samantha Hargrove was four or five years his senior, but for some reason, she liked him.”  
    Paul thought he heard bitterness in the sheriff’s voice as he went on: “Even in his older years, women thought Myles was a good-looking man. He wasn’t the kind of guy other guys liked. I