The Good Side of Bad

Joshua Landers
jdlanders@gmail.com








The Good Side of Bad



My brother pushes the point of the gun in Dad’s back and says, “Open your eyes.”
The sun’s coming up and smoke’s all around. Leafless trees on top of the mountain, their trunks gray as burning coals. The scrub brush and chaparral burned to a hard black surface. The jacuzzi is half full, a couple of household buckets I’d used to put out the initial flames floating barrel side on the surface of the water.
“See this?” my brother says. He kicks the back of Dad’s legs and knocks him down to all fours. Then goes and stands next to the patio furniture, throws a plastic recliner near Dad’s head. Ashes swirl around them.
I blink, thousands of exploding black stars. Hear my brother start to cry, choke it back. Dad struggles to open the sliding glass door leading into the kitchen, crawls halfway inside. My brother kicks him to the tile, puts his foot between his shoulder blades and flattens him.
“Freddy,” I say. “Don’t”
The toe of his shoe digging in, the shaky barrel of the gun against Dad’s head, he says, “You did this.”

I picked my brother up from the bus station last night. He called me the day before, said his wife needed a break from him. I’d been drinking at the Turkey Inn, watching coverage of the county wide fires burning homes in the inland sections of San Diego, desperate people hosing off roofs while flames punched back fences.
“Only a matter of time,” the bartender said.
I nodded and finished my beer.
I showed up half an hour late, saw Freddy curled up on a bench next to the station. I honked and pulled in the loading zone, flashed my high beams and stuck my head out.
“Trouble in paradise?” I said.
He sat up and shaded his hands in front of his face.
“What’re you doing?” I said. “Get in.”
He leaned the seat back, closed his eyes.
“No bags?” I said.
He pulled his hood on, crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t need any.”
We drove and parked in the overgrown end zone of the old high school football field, the goal post scabbed with rust, the uprights bent. We watched the aura of the fire closing in on our town, sparks rising above the tree line.
“Dad’s throwing a party,” I said. “If you wanna go.”
Freddy spiked the empty fifth of whiskey he was drinking on the track circling the field.
“I didn’t know you drank,” I said.
He slipped a full one out from inside his jacket and said, “You don’t know everything.”
I let him drive the back roads to Dad’s house. He seemed to remember most of the curves winding around the mountain, the sharp turns. Repositioned the rearview and kept the speedometer under thirty. Cops had always been pricks around here.
“Nothing’s changed,” he said.
He parked at the bottom of the driveway.
“We got an Arby’s,” I said.
Freddy put his elbow out the window, chewed his nails, and grabbed the whiskey. Hard to believe he had a wife and a kid up north in Fresno, another one on the way.
He checked the rearview and took a quick pull from the bottle. Set the brake and removed the keys from the ignition.
“You talk to him a lot?”
I looked at his face. Leaner. Tighter. Hadn’t seen him in more than three years, and he’d let his hair grow over his ears. Sideburns that’d once been clean cut at the temple now curled and blended in with overgrown hair on his cheeks.
“No,” I said, and smiled. “Living with him is enough.”
Freddy laid an arm across the top of the seat and looked up at the house. The moon filtered orange through the smoke. The lights from outlying parts of town hazy throughout the rest of the valley.
Muffled thumps of music came from inside the house, women laughing somewhere. The porch light turned on and a couple of people staggered out. Freddy took his wallet from his pocket and set it on his lap, flipped it open and thumbed through pictures he kept in it.
I turned on the dome light and leaned next to him, looked at a wallet size of his son and wife, posing with Mom and the Fresno State bulldog. The kid and the mascot the only things smiling.
He handed it over.
His wife, a woman I’ve never met in person, not looking at the camera but not looking away either. Their son’s bowl headed hair half covered by the mascot’s paw. And Mom glancing side eyed at the camera, her lips fixed in a tight line, a couple of fingers holding onto the boy’s shoulders, the same face she seemed to wear in every picture I’d ever seen of her.
“So,” I said. “What happened?”
Freddy parted his lips but didn’t say anything. Then closed the wallet and put it in the glove box. I tried to hand it back to him. He eyed the picture gripped by my thumb and forefinger.
“Keep it,” he said, and pushed my hand away. He draped his wrists over the steering wheel and stared at the dash. I slid the picture in my front pocket.
“They ever coming down?” I said.
Freddy pinched the bridge of his nose. He ran his palm in circles on his forehead, leaving a red splotch on his skin, and turned to me.
“They’ll need you to go visit.”

The kitchen’s on fire, smoke rising in thick arms and spreading gray across the ceiling. I flap my jacket at the flames burning the bottom of the tablecloth, take a shoe off and slap at the curtains over the window. I get a face full of smoke and stumble next to Freddy. He holds the gun loose in his fingers.
“The fuck you doing?” I say.
Dad’s crawling down the hallway, naked, one hand rolled inside a beach towel. Blood’s matted in his belly hair and has dried in zigzag patterns on his shins, dotted on his feet.
Freddy tightens his grip on the gun and stands over him. Kicks him in the side so that he rolls on his back, hovers the barrel over his crotch. Toggles Dad’s dick with it.
“You like that?” he says, and his voice cracks. “Feel good, motherfucker?”
Dad flips over and army crawls, but Freddy steps on the back of his knee. Slaps his ass and sticks the barrel so deep in his crack that Dad coughs.
“Sick,” Freddy says. “Filthy.”
I look down at Dad. His face pressed against the floor, lips working. His toes scraping the carpet.
Freddy slaps him with the gun again and says, “Dirty, dirty, dirty.”
Dad’s head rises, his eyes wide and chlorine burn red. I try to say something, kneel next to him, but my knees lock when Freddy cocks the gun. Shades his other hand above the barrel.
He reaches in his pocket. Tosses me the car keys.
Says, “You don’t want to see this.”

Sirens whined in the distance. The fire crested over the mountain.
Freddy asked me for a cigarette and my lighter, although I’d never seen him smoke. He slid the cigarette behind his ear and rolled sparks from the lighter, flipped it between his fingers. Kept flipping it then put it in his pocket.
Dad stepped onto the porch, a towel wrapped around his waist, his head moving in and out of the security light above the door.
Freddy pointed and said, “Is that him?”
I nodded.
Somewhere above a bomber droned. The people standing outside looked up, howled, the women pulling the collars of their shirts below their cleavage.
Dad pumped his beer in the air when the silver flash of the plane banked over the roof.
“You ain’t fucking up my night,” he said, crushed his can and threw it in the yard.
Wing lights flitted up the mountain behind the house, and I could see the plane’s silhouette against the fire.
Freddy lowered in his seat, his face close to the steering wheel.
“Does he know I’m here?” he said, and turned off the dome light. He stared off at the neighboring houses up the street, the overgrown field across the way, through the back window, and said, “Does anybody?”
I popped the handle and pushed the door open with my knee.
“Who gives a shit?” I pinched his nipple. “You’re still soft.”

“This isn’t happening.”
I step over Dad and he crawls behind me.
“This isn’t happening,” Dad says again, and grips the bottom of my sweatshirt.
Freddy drives the gun to my chest.
“Move,” he says.
I straighten my arms out, fingers splayed.
“Hold on,” I say. “It’s me.”
He grabs one of my wrists and pulls me toward him. Presses the tip of the gun to my cheekbone, what feels like a hollow pipe digging in.
“Come on,” I say. “Just a minute. Think what you’re doing.”
He wraps a hand around my throat. My fingers graze his shirt, his chest. He clamps his jaw and resets his finger over the trigger.
“Don’t make me,” he says, and squeezes harder.
“Wait,” I say. “It’s me. It’s me.”

Three in the morning and static crackled out of the speakers.
Dad and his friends were in the jacuzzi on the back patio, steam fogging the outside of the sliding glass door leading outside. He’d bought the jacuzzi the day Mom and Freddy moved to Fresno, charged it on one of his credit cards.
Nobody noticed us come in. I recognized some of Dad’s friends from certain jobs we’d had. Cement guys, bulldozer operators. Grunts. The women I recognized from other parties. Some of them looked like they could be in construction.
I turned off the radio and went to the kitchen. Freddy sat on the couch and pressed a hand against his forehead.
“Drink?” I said, and pulled a bottle of vodka from the freezer. Broke ice in two glasses.
Another plane flew overhead. I looked out the kitchen window and saw Dad stand up. His boxers were plastered to his thighs, and one of the women sitting next to him pulled them down. Everybody laughed, and he reached into the water. His boxers bubbled on the surface and he climbed out, didn’t bother to cover himself with a towel. Went to the large metal bucket he’d filled with Keystone Ice earlier that morning.
I watched the bomber fly over the tree line and disappear.
Dad shotgunned a beer, then shook another one and poured a foaming line on the edge of the concrete.
“Now we’re safe,” he said, and laughed.
I smiled and brought the drinks to the coffee table, set the bottle between the glasses.
“Wanna go outside?” I said.
Freddy walked down the hallway, looked at the few pictures hanging on the wall that Mom hadn’t taken with her. One of me in Pop Warner, one of him on Dad’s shoulders before I was born, standing on some jetty in Ocean Beach. Freddy’s toothy grin, his hands pushing the bill of Dad’s hat over his face.
He took the picture down and sat on the arm of the couch, laid it on his lap.
“Look at your face,” I said, and tapped the frame. “You two look good together.”
I laughed.
Freddy breathed hard through his nose, slapped my hand away and flipped the picture over.
“It was never good,” he said, and swiped the picture off his lap. It landed face up on the carpet and he stomped the glass with his heel. “Never.”
He rubbed fingertips at his temples. The same thing he used to do before he got an asthma attack when he was younger.
“You okay?” I said.
He took another breath and held it in his cheeks. Let it explode out his lips.
“How many people are out there?” he said.
I looked on the patio, could see the glow of Dad’s ass through the steam on the door.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Eight, maybe.”
He stared at the TV. The sound was off, but a reporter stood in front of a smoking field. Firefighters walked behind her. A ticker scrolled at the bottom of the screen, warnings, areas being evacuated. It listed sections of the county, northern beaches, valleys, cities and towns east of I-5.
“Jesus,” I said when I saw our town listed. “All the times we wanted to burn this place down.”
I tongued a piece of ice in my mouth, elbowed Freddy in the hip and said, “Looks like we won’t get the chance.”
Freddy faced me, and it looked like he might start crying.
“What now?” I said.
Ever since Mom and Dad got divorced, before I started fourth grade, Freddy cried at everything. When Dad picked me up from my visits, he cried. I came back the next weekend, he swung open the door and cried.
They’d rented an apartment down the hill in El Cajon. Mom said she still wanted to be close to me while my brother finished up junior high, started high school.
“Bullshit,” Dad had said. “Just a way for her to keep tabs.”
Freddy would hug me tight around the neck when I came in, kiss my ear hole with a loud echoed smack, then say, “You miss your old Freddy Bear?”
What I called him when I first started talking.
The reporter was interviewing some old woman who clutched a wet cat in her arms, pressed a knuckle at the corner of each of her eyes. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. The camera switched to a live shot of the fire about to jump a road somewhere in Escondido. Flames stitching low off the asphalt. Then back to the old lady again. The reporter put a hand on the old woman’s shoulder and the woman cried harder.
“Get over it,” I said, and took a drink. Held the liquor in my mouth until it stopped burning.
Freddy pushed himself up from the couch. Picked up his glass and drained it to the ice. Dropped it to the carpet and clenched the bottle under his arm. He walked through the kitchen and stood in front of the sliding glass door.
“Go easy,” I said. “He hasn’t seen you in a long time.”
Taking a deep breath, Freddy twisted the cap off the vodka and set it sideways on the counter, let it pool and spread across the vinyl tile. He brought my lighter out from his pocket and lit it.
“What’re you doing?” I said, and a jagged line of blue flame spread across the floor.
He slid the door open. Steam clouded into the kitchen. I sat on the edge of the couch cushions and set my drink down. The people in the jacuzzi turned around, the women fixed their wet hair, the men sucked down their beers and hung their arms over the sides. Dad faced Freddy and his eyes popped open. He smiled and said something about how different Freddy looked, almost like a real man.
Dad spread his arms and took a few steps toward Freddy.
“Shit,” he said, motioning him closer with his fingers. “Can’t your old man get a hug?”
His pubic hair a dark patch against his pale skin.
Freddy stepped out on the patio. He lifted the back of his shirt, pulled a gun from his waistline. Before Dad dropped his hands, Freddy brought the gun up and shot through one of them. A blast that startled me to my feet.
Someone screamed, and people toppled over the sides of the jacuzzi. Crouched, bear crawled, then sprinted naked through the ice plant in the backyard and disappeared around the side of the house. Tires squealing, engines accelerating. Several more shots, I couldn’t tell if they hit anything.
I ran to the back door, saw Dad wriggling in the fetal position on the wet concrete. Blood spray painted over his skin, dripping from him in thin ribbons. His hand clenched tight to his chest as if he was cold.
“What the hell?” I said.
Freddy turned around, his mouth loose and open, eyes half closed. He reached into his pants pockets and fingered more bullets into the chamber of the gun. I grabbed for the handle on the door, but stepped back as the flames on the tile rose.

Smoke swirls and Freddy coughs, drops his head and hacks. Rubs the back of his eyes with his free hand and pulls the gun away from my face. He circles the coffee table and knocks the side of the gun off his head. Punches the walls, the entertainment center.
“Why didn’t you leave?” he says, and hits himself with the gun again. “Stupid.”
Dad yanks me backwards, and I almost trip over him. I stand him up by the armpits, try and carry him to my bedroom. He slips away and I bear hug him before he falls to the floor. He’s heavier than me, and we spin together in an awkward dance. I straighten him and he clutches me, rests his forehead on my chest, blood prints all over my sweatshirt.
“Michael,” he says. “Michael.”
I squeeze the back of his neck, his eyes pinched, fluttering. His head bobs.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s okay.”
Something pops in the kitchen, shatters. The flames are burning through the cabinets and one of them falls off the wall and breaks in two over the tile.
“Stupid,” Freddy says. “Stupid.”
He stops and checks the chamber of the gun, parts the blinds on the living room window. Rolls phlegm through his throat, spits to the carpet, and stands with his back to us, motionless.
I balance Dad at arm’s length and his head drops.
“Wake up,” I say, and slap him across the face. His eyes flap open, and for a second he looks clear, conscious.
“Go,” I say, and nudge him down the hallway. “Run.”
Freddy looks over his shoulder, then rushes across the room.
Dad drops face flat to the carpet.
Freddy lifts the collar of his shirt over his nose and shoves my head back into the wall with the barrel of the gun. Brings it to my forehead and twists it sideways.
“Come on, Freddy,” I say. “It’s me.”
Try and say something more but smoke goes into my lungs.
“It’s me.”
Hisses of breath, like a slow leaking tire, break through Dad’s lips. Freddy steps back and the shirt slips from his face. He kicks Dad’s side.
“Shut up,” he says.
Dad doesn’t move.
“I think he’s dying,” I say.
Freddy looks down at him, places the hand holding the gun on top of his own head. Fans away the smoke with his arm and clears his throat. Looks into the backyard.
“He’ll never die.” He drops his arms to his side. “Not ever.”
The gun dangles from a few of his fingers.
“Then let him go,” I say, and reach for it. “Let him go.”
Freddy flinches and back hands me. I stumble to the wall, and he turns my head by pressing the gun to my temple. My skin feels like it’s about to break, his squinting face an arm’s length away.
“No,” I say.
Sunlight’s coming through the kitchen window and I can hear helicopters blade through the air, roars of engines and sirens, people’s voices. The curtains on the kitchen window are burnt to hanging threads, and I can see the smoke rising from the mountain behind our house, mixture of white and gray floating up toward the low cruising airplanes.
Freddy begins sobbing, lowers the gun and bends over. Wrinkles Dad’s neck with it, taps the point off the back of his head.
I choke out a cough, rub my temple. Stare at him.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say.
He stands and flattens his hand over my face. Squishes my nose, my lips. The warm smell of smoke and sweat on his skin. He sticks the gun under my chin and I tighten my jaw. Tears welt at the corners of his eyes, roll down his face in separate paths. His chin dimples, lips quiver. Low words bumble out of him.
“I have to.”
I wait for the snap of the hammer.
“I can’t shake it,” he says.
I breathe in and hold it, close my eyes and listen to the sounds the world makes when I’m not there. I open my mouth.
“It’s me, Freddy Bear.”
The gun grazes my eyelid. Parts of the gun rattle and I can feel it on and off again against my eyelashes. Freddy’s hand at my neck.
“You should’ve left when you had the chance,” he says.

I remember the first weekend I visited Mom and Freddy. Freddy had told me he just got hair down there. He pulled me into the bathroom, thumbed down the front of his shorts. Before I could shade my eyes, I saw a few curly hairs rising above the band of his underwear.
“Sick, huh?” he said.
Mom was still at work when I tried to call Dad later that day. It was the one rule she gave me, don’t call him while I visited. Ever.
Freddy ripped the receiver out of my hand and unhooked the line. Set the phone on top of the refrigerator where I couldn’t reach it.
“You can’t call him,” he said.
I started to cry, missing Dad, my room. My things.
“It’s stupid here,” I said. “You’re stupid.”
I ran into the room Freddy and I shared. Dropped face first on the inflatable mattress I slept on.
It was nighttime when I palmed the screen off the window, put on the pair of sunglasses Dad had gotten me with one of his meals at Carl’s Jr. Looking at myself in the reflection of the window, the fluorescent orange arms over my temples, wrapped behind my ears, frames that hid half my face, I thought I looked older.
I climbed onto the window sill, hung my legs out. Freddy rolled over in bed, sat up bare chested and sniffled.
“What’re you doing?” he said.
Mom was in the living room, yelling at Dad over the phone. Freddy had told her what I’d done, and she called him right away.
“Going home,” I said.
Something thumped off the wall, and I heard Mom walking around the apartment.
Freddy kicked the blankets off his legs, draped them over the side of the bed. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“Don’t.”
Footsteps came down the hallway. I slipped into the weeds surrounding the apartment complex.
The door opened and Mom leaned against the jamb, turned on the light.
She looked at Freddy, down at the empty inflatable bed. She crossed her arms over her chest, bubbled out her cheeks and glared at me.
“What’re you doing?” she said.
I shrugged my shoulders and put my arms up on the sill.
“Come back in here.”
I shook my head.
She fluttered her lips and stepped forward. The phone rang and Freddy looked at her, the two of them stared at each other. It kept ringing. Every time I thought it might stop, it rang again.
“If you want to live with him,” she said. “Fine. Just go.”
She slammed the door behind her. The phone stopped ringing, and I could hear her muffled voice sprawl on and on.
Freddy stood up and leaned his stomach against the sill. He got on his knees, eye-level.
“You can sleep in my bed,” he said. His eyes were streaked with red lightning, lashes wet and separated in bundled strands. He said crying helped put him to sleep.
“I don’t want to,” I said. “It’s no fun here.”
I pushed the glasses up my nose.
He leaned down and pressed his forehead against mine, cool with sweat, his breath mixing in with my own.
“You should stay,” he said, and placed a hand on my arm. “Dad’s no good.”
I pulled away. Freddy reached for me but I slapped his hand down. He started crying harder, saying, no, no, over and over again.
“I’m going,” I said, and stepped backwards over the weeds.
Freddy spread the tears over his face with the bend of his arm. Straightened up and stared at me. We stood that way for a long time.
Then he said, “Fine,” and motioned me away with his hands. “But Freddy Bear can’t protect you anymore.”
He shut the window and turned off the light.