Salt Pillars

Chapter 14

Cole had grown up in Crystal Pines trailer park, same as Goofy and Fat-Boy. They were his neighbors and in a small town like this, they were all considered trash. The boys returned to the trailer park earlier in the week. Cole said that he needed to retrieve some supplies — this usually meant drugs. The others also wanted to go there for their own personal reasons. Gabe hadn't lived in that particular neighborhood, but he understood what it meant to be considered white-trash and wanted to go along.

From the exterior, The Trailer Park appeared to be a simple place, like a quaint getaway in the 1950's. Low-set plaster walls surrounded the community, the entry had a bright sign with flowery colors and a smiling little sun next to the words: Crystal Pines. Most of the trailers were older models, built in the late 70's and 80's, with rusted tan colors and faded green awnings.

Cole ditched the group near the community swimming pool. Instructing everyone to meet back there in an hour, he returned home to his grandma's trailer.

Her mobile home was no different than the rest, except that it was slightly more beaten up and rusted out, and the rear rested raised up on cinder blocks where there had been two flat tires for over a decade.

The smell of death was thick when he entered. The source was not far to be found; his grandmother, Muriel's corpse was the culprit. She was fused to her favorite sofa and her brown cat, Winston, was fused to her lap. It was as though time had been frozen and captured, as Cole had always known it; with Muriel sitting on the sofa watching the Price is Right with that mangy cat curled up on her lap. That's how she had lived, and that's how she had died, and that's how she remained still — after her death. Only now, thousands of small flies nested upon her face, climbing in and around her sinuses, their maggots feasting on her rot.

The trailer was compartmentalized in such a way that Muriel's room was the farthest back, separated by a thin wall from the room in which Cole had shared a stacked bunk bed with his older brother Russell. The wall was so thin that they could hear every wheeze, grunt, fart, and snore that the old lady made while she slept at night, which was a constant assortment of different noises that kept them awake. Likewise, they weren't allowed to so much as sneeze at night without being bitched at.

What Cole had come to this place for was hidden in a compartment behind his own bunk's post. There was a shoebox with multiple baggies inside that contained various drugs.

Cole lay on his bed to smoke a joint, staring up at his brother, Russ's bunk above him. It was empty. Russ had moved out while Cole was incarcerated, and Cole hadn't seen him since.

How Cole had envied the top bunk when they were children, but as they grew older, he had lost interest in it and so did Russ, yet Russ kept it just the same. Even though it was a nuisance to climb the ladder and a bit absurd for a seventeen year old to sleep on a bunk bed at all, Russ still made the effort to climb it every night. It was his little mountain to be king of and just one more way to lord his dominance over Cole.

Cole could still hear his brother's voice in his head, pressuring him to do whatever illegal thing he himself was too afraid to do at the time, saying, "Don't be little bitch Rushel." 'Rushel' being the nickname that Russ had given to Cole while mocking his childhood speech impediment; by the way that Cole would pronounce Russell using an s-h instead of s-s.

Cole didn't know where his older brother had gone. He hadn't heard from him in the two years since Cole had gotten busted. Even as much as Russ had antagonized him growing up and the fact that it was Russ's fault that Cole was in that warehouse with those drugs in the first place, Cole still didn't rat him out.

He spent nine months of his life with those animals on that slave ranch getting yelled at by drill sergeants and getting his ass kicked by older boys, but never turned on his big brother. After all that, he returned home to learn that Russ had left town without so much as a thank you.