Chapter 1

Chapter 1

August thought that he could watch football year-round. It would get in the way of his life, he knew, but it would be a good way to spend any extra time. He saw his older brothers coming toward him and moved over so that they could squeeze in beside him. There wasn't really enough room for all three of them, but they'd make it work. The way the game was going, he didn't expect them to be sitting much, either.

"Who's out?" August was handed a chili dog while he answered Locke's question. "That's not yours. Unless you've changed your mind about hot stuff." Trading chili dogs with his brother, he bit into the messy dog that was his and moaned.

"The cheerleaders are doing a bang-up job. Locke and I could hear them all the way to the concession stand. That's the way to cheer on the town." Dusty handed him a wad of napkins and told his brothers that Carol was still out sick. She was their neighbor's daughter.

August agreed as he finished off his second dog that the cheerleaders seemed to be keeping people pumped up. There was soda, too, but he only drank water. He was actually waiting for them to make fun of him when Locke started yelling and standing up. It looked like a touchdown for the home team.

"What do you think the score would be if'n you were out there, Locke? Do you think…oh wait, you never got to play your senior year, did you? Something about cheating." Stanley Cooper crossed his arms over his chest after taunting Locke. August looked at his brother and waited. There would be bloodshed if Locke reacted, and it would be all over Stanley Cooper. "Did you cheat or not? That's the question, isn't it?"

"You know as well as everyone around us that there was no one cheating. And I'd appreciate it, Cooper, if you didn't bring it up every time you saw me. It was nearly ten years ago. Move on with the rest of us." Cooper asked Locke if he was telling him what to do. "I wouldn't do that. Not me. But I think that people are sick to death of you bringing it up every time there is a game and you see me."

"Yeah, sit down and shut your trap, Cooper. We're trying to have a good time here, and you're messing it up." There were other members of the crowd telling Stanley to shut his mouth, but it either didn't get through to him, or he was still the stubborn ass he'd been all his life. "He's right. You do this every single time. Get over yourself. The game was over the moment that you went out on the field. Clumsy toss, my ass."

When Stanley took a swing at Locke, all he did was duck down enough so that his fist went wide. And because of him being a couple of steps up and behind them in the bleacher, it knocked him off his feet, and he started to tumble. If not for the quick thinking of Locke, the man would have gone over the back of the fence, and since it was a parking lot back there, he would have more than likely been hurt badly. Or dead if he'd gone head first.

"Get your hands off me, you cheating bastard." Locke did let the man go, but he also held on long enough for him to have gotten his balance. Stan's wife, Darlington, grabbed her husband by his high school jacket that he still wore to every game and told him to sit down. She did this through clenched teeth, and it must have impressed Stan enough that he sat down and shut his trap.

After that, the game got boring as the home team scored an impressive fifty-four unanswered points in the second quarter. They called the game at the beginning of the fourth quarter when the score was a very lopsided seventy-two to zero. This was the last team they played to make it to the playoffs.

As they were leaving, Darlington asked if she could speak to Locke. He agreed so long as his brothers could be there, too. She sort of laughed, telling him he'd be a fool to trust anyone named Cooper.

"You've probably heard that old man Coop is dying. He wanted to know if you'd come by and see him soon. I don't think he has much longer to go, Locke. The doc only gave him six months, but I think he's not even going to be that long." He said that he would. He liked Mr. Cooper. "And he does enjoy having a game of chess with you, too. I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

After making arrangements to meet up at the house at one, the three of them headed home. They were all slow to go, having no desire to go home and listen to their father bellowing about this or that. He was another mean bastard, and no one, especially them, wanted to be around him anymore. He wondered, too, if anyone had wanted to be around him at any point in his life.

Dad was just where they had left him. Sitting in front of the television with the volume up about as loud as it would go with a beer can in each hand. No one said anything to him, but when they went into the kitchen, Zander and Demitrius joined them. He asked where Knox was.

"He left about an hour after you three left for the game. He and Dad got into it again, and he said he was gone. I have no idea what that means, but he left here with a duffle." Locke sat on the counter; he had a look of concern on his face. While he and Dusty talked about the game, August was surprised when Locke didn't join in with the story of Stan.

"I need to talk to you guys. Out back." They nodded. It was the only place that they felt safe from their dad hearing them. Also, none of the neighbors could either. August didn't think there was a nosier group of people than the ones that lived around them. When they'd been younger and had been plotting and planning, something they had done a great deal, Locke had built them a makeshift house that was complete with electricity. It powered up not just the light that swung in the middle of the ceiling but also the small compact fridge that was forever filled with bottles of water. "Someone needs to get in touch with Knox. He needs to be here, too."

While they waiting on their brother, they talked about Stan and his problem with their oldest brother. Stanley had accused Locke of copying his work from a test, and it took them a week to figure out that every answer on Locke's test was correct and Stan had barely spelled his name correctly, putting in a d instead of a l and that should have been the end of it.

But their dad wanted Locke to be tossed out of school as well. No doubt to hold that over his head and make him work twice as hard around the house. The house, even for as old as it was, was neat and clean, with the exception of the area right around their dad and his bedroom. No one ever went in there.

Their dad had told the school board that Locke had always been a cheater and that they should have kicked him out of school a long time ago. Because of their dad, Locke had missed the final game that year, causing the team to lose and the championship was lost to them. Locke had never spoken a word to their father to this day.

When Knox showed up, Locke looked at the cut that was on his forehead and asked him if he was all right. He wasn't. Anyone could see that. But getting into a fight, most of the time with fists or knives, was a nearly daily thing with their father. Today hadn't been any different, August thought sadly.

"You guys remember about six months ago, maybe a little less, when the Powerball lottery winnings were up well over fifty-six billion?" They all laughed and told their oldest brother, who could forget that. "There was only one winner to it. They got all six numbers correct. It was us. We won." No one moved when his brother said that.

As they sat there, all August could think about was what a person would do if they won that much money. Getting out of this town was all he wanted to do, and he was sure that the rest of them wanted to do it as well. He asked Locke if he was having fun with them.

"No. You know me and money. I don't kid around. We won all six numbers on the sheet that I always play. Our birth dates. The power ball number was another twenty-three, which accounted for Demitrus and Knox having the same birthdate." Still, none of them moved. "It took me this long to get the money distributed to us in a way that no one knows about us being the winners. I thought that this way, we could go on with our lives quietly until we found out what we wanted to do with ourselves."

He looked around the little room and then back at Knox. August didn't know what to think when Locke looked at each of them one at a time. It was tempting to believe him but also very frightening. More so, it being scary.

"There will be no more hitting on us. We don't have to go without anymore when the bastard in there gets it in his head to rob us while he's out. A nice car that starts every time you turn the engine over. There are—"

"Wait. You're not kidding, are you?" Locke shook his head and smiled at him. "What do you mean it took a while for you to get the money? Don't you get one of those giant checks with—I believe you need to start over. Right with the fact that we won."

"We did. All of it. And since it's so much, we'll never have to work another day in our lives if we don't want to. I don't know that I will be able to just sit around. I'd be afraid of becoming our dad. But whatever we need, we can get it. However, and this is important, we don't tell anyone that not only did we win the money but how much. That sort of money will make people dangerous to be around. Not even the bastard will know." Zander asked if they could move away. "Yes. But I have a plan for that. We just leave. No packing. No forwarding address, nothing that can be traced back to where we are. Just go out of the house like we normally do to go to work, one at a time tomorrow, and never look back. If you take something, dad will have it in his head that we robbed him, and he'll send the police after us. To be honest, I can't think of a single thing to take with me when we leave. It's all worthless if it means us having to deal with people. Especially the old bastard."

It took them nearly an hour to get around to being happy about it. Then another telling them they'd won and to get it through their thick heads, that the money was just waiting for them to collect it. Locke also told them of the plan he had and what he'd done to get it moving.

"There is a nice used van just outside of town that I've been making payments on since forever, it seems. The attorney told me not to get anything new if we didn't want people to put two and two together. Buying a new car at this stage would send off warning signs that something is different for us. Besides, I have a feeling that the old bastard would be taking it to wreck it just to be a fucking dick." They all agreed with him. "Good. We're just going to get into the van and drive away. Nothing to hold us back. But once we leave, we can't ever return because someone, anyone again, will figure it out. Am I being paranoid? Yes, yes, I am. But unless we want to be broke within a year, this is the plan that we have to stick with. Unless you have another plan. I'm all ears."

"But we don't get in the van together, right? I mean, that would make them…I'm glad I watched all those murder shows when we were kids. All right. We'll each pick a place to meet at, slip out the window there or back door, and disappear." They all agreed that was the best course of action to take. Just simply be gone. "Park the van someplace where there aren't any cameras that would see us showing up and getting in."

"I already have the spot picked out. It'll be at Old Man Coop's house. I'll be there tomorrow playing chess. He doesn't have any neighbors that can see his house. And he doesn't have any cameras near him to see the van pulling into his drive. I'm going to go and play some chess with him tomorrow at one. Everyone makes their way to the van, and when I leave, no one will be the wiser."

They all agreed, and when they parted ways, their dad was coming out of the house with his gun in his hands. Screaming at him to put it away when all of a sudden, shots were fired. Not knowing if anyone was hit, August dropped to the ground with the rest of them.

~*~

Locke didn't think that things could get any worse than they were right now. But he was fearful of saying that out loud because as surely as he did, it would test him. Sitting up on the gurney that he'd been brought to the hospital in, Locke could see that his blood pressure had mellowed out, and his heart was no longer racing.

He'd been more terrified of his brothers being hurt than himself, and that was why, after the police arrived, he started feeling a little woozy. Thankfully, his brothers were there to make sure he didn't hit his head when he fainted. Or was it passed out when you were a man? He didn't care. Locke was just happy to be able to be able to be released soon.

"Dad has been arrested. I didn't know if you would have remembered that or not." Locke told Demitrus that it was the last thing that he remembered. "Of course, he was saying that you shot him first, though he doesn't have a single bullet hole in him. I wish we had been armed. He wouldn't be a pain in the ass anymore."

"This doesn't change anything, does it? I mean, we're still going to leave, right?" Demitrus told him that it was something that they all still wanted to do. "Good. We still need to be sneaky. People will talk if we were to have a van in the driveway while the bastard it in jail. That would lead to troubles that we don't need."

That night, Locke didn't sleep well. Going over the plan over and over in his head made him too antsy to sleep. Everything that could happen had been gone over in his head, and he was still missing things, he knew.

Like his brothers, he didn't dare write things down. They'd been caught by their dad when he found the notes that they'd written about all the things that they knew he was doing—like stealing meat from the grocery store by making them put them in their clothing. Since then, they kept everything in their head. Someone would find it, and it would all be for nothing. He didn't have any trouble remembering things. A teacher had told him one time that he had a gifted mind. Locke thought that it was a curse because of all the things that he'd gone through in his life had been right there where he could remember them. Finally dozing off just as the sun was coming up, Locke would be glad to get going.

After his breakfast tray was taken away, he waited for the doctor to see him. After he was released, he had several things that he had to do before getting the van to the place they'd agreed on. It was still early enough for him to meet up with Mr. Coop, and he was excited about that. As soon as he was released, Demetrius showed up to take him home. In actuality, he dropped him off at the place the van was, and he kept driving home like he had him in the car with him.

Driving toward Mr. Coop's house, he thought about the elderly man. The fact that he'd sired his son bogged his mind. There couldn't have been two more unlikely people that were blood relatives than the two of them. He would miss him more than anything. And he was sure that if he told him that he was leaving for good, he'd be a ‘tickled pink' as he could be. Coop hated his father—most people did, but Coop hated him more than most.

"Took her right in front of me." Coop had always said that his father had snatched his girlfriend while she'd been in the bathroom at the prom with him. "The poor thing. She knew that I would have married her even though you're not my son. But you'd of not have known that by me. I would have treated you just the same as I would have any other baby that we were to have. I think on that a lot, you know. Me and your momma having you six boys. I miss her something terrible."

"I do as well." Everyone in town thought that their mother had died. She was alive and living in a California town that no one had ever heard of, enjoying her life. She'd told him when she'd left that he wasn't to contact her ever. The Bastard would have found out, and that would have been the end of it for her life. So, while they knew where their mother was, no one had ever reached out to her in all these years. Nor had she contacted them. For all he knew, she could be gone, and they'd not know a thing about it.

They played two games of chess together. He won both of them, but it wasn't the winning that made it fun; it was the fact that they loved talking over a good game. When Coop sat back in his wheel chair, he looked at him with a funny smile. He asked him what was going on.

"You have a bit of a smile on your face. Even when I was taking your men, you had this particular look about you. You're leaving, aren't you?" Locke didn't have any words to say as he was so shocked. "Thank goodness. I thought I was going to have to beat the daylights out of you six to get you going. You going to be all right?"

"Yes. We have a plan. In fact, the six of us are going to be meeting up here to get into the van just down from your house and take off. We didn't take anything with us either. Just leaving the way that my mom did." Coop asked him if she ever contacted them. "No. When she left, she made me promise that we'd never seek her out. But to allow her this time to be on her own. I think it was hard on her, leaving the way that she did."

"I'm sure that it was. Your Mom, she did you all right by leaving when and how she did. Couldn't have been easy either, what with your daddy beating the seven of you all the time." He nodded. "You need anything, young man? Some money? I don't have a lot, but you can have all that I have. You might as well take it. My son will anyway when he finds it. I tell you, Locke, I think that my son and your daddy were cut from the same mean piece of cloth."

Locke was tempted to tell Coop that they'd won the Powerball money. But he didn't have any idea if the man would spill the beans while being beaten up by his son. Hugging the older man when he was ready to go, he shed a few tears as he got into the van that his brothers were already in. It would be just fine, he kept telling himself.

The drive wasn't too bad, but his shoulder was hurting him a little. When one of his brothers took over, he was glad to sit in the back and take a nap. The six of them had put where they wanted to go into a hat to decide where to go. When he drew out the first one, he wasn't the least bit surprised to find that they were going to go to Tennessee. A place that they'd visited a time or two when growing up.

"You think that he'll figure it out?" He asked Zander what he meant. "Dad. Sorry. Do you think that Dad will figure out that we've left? I can see him throwing a fit about not having us there to wait on him. To be honest with you, Locke, I'm terrified that he'll come after us."

"I am, too. But the thing is, he doesn't have any income with the six of us gone. Not only can't he afford gas money, but he also doesn't have a car. Thankfully. And it's not like we're kids anymore. Grown adults that finally left the house. I'm wondering how long it will take him to realize that we're gone. I'm thinking a couple of days. He'll think that we're at work for at least a day."

"That's what Dusty said. That he wouldn't have his head out of his ass long enough to notice that six grown men have left him all alone." They both laughed. "I can see him taking a week. Like you said, he'll just think that we're at work and missing us so that he can knock us around. I'd love to see his face when he figures out that we've left."

"Here." Locke handed his brother his brand new cell phone. They all had them now. "This is set up to see the living room as well as the kitchen. I didn't want to get too many things changed out at the house, but I thought that we should see what he was about."

After giving the rest of them the password as well as the login, they each loaded it onto their phone. Realizing that he was still in jail, they'd not see anything, which was a bummer, but they were all having fun just being able to see their home from this far away. They pulled into Kentucky around two in the morning and decided that they'd take a hotel for the rest of the night. Using cash made him nervous, but it would have been more difficult to trace them if he had decided to look into it.

The next morning, Locke was happy to see that everyone was in better spirits. He knew that he was. Just being able to get away for the little bit of time they'd been gone was making them all feel like they were doing the right thing. He hoped so. A great deal was riding on them being able to make a clean break from the bastard.

When they were nearing Tennessee, he took his turn driving. They decided that they'd not go to the touristy area and find a place they could stay at until it was safe. Christ, would he ever think that anywhere was safe again? He hoped so. There was a lot riding on the fact that they were living on the edge until they figured out that their father had given up on finding them.

While they were eating breakfast at the hotel, he realized that they were all talking and joking around. It was an enjoyable time, one that he hoped would be around more often. Getting his waffle cooked up, Christ, was there anything better than a fresh waffle? He wasn't sure he wanted to know. He told them that he was glad that they were all together in this.

Going out to the van, having shopped for clothing last night at the local store, they were able to be cleaned up and wash the last of their hometown off of them. It felt strange to have new clothing on. Locke couldn't remember a time when he had something that hadn't been taken out of the local used clothing shop and fit him. He was sure if he asked his brothers, they'd say the same thing. Going out to the van, they all loaded up, and he started it.

Nothing. Not only would it not turn over but there wasn't a sound that he could hear going on. Ready to give up, the engine turned over, and he was thrilled. He was worried, however, that he'd gotten a lemon, and they were too far from home to go back on the man who had sold it to him.

They were going through a little town just on the edge of the Kentucky-Tennessee border when it died. Barely able to get it pulled off the road, he was able to get it off the side of the road before it was done. The smoke coming out from the hood frightened him a little, but he took in deep breaths and let it out while he tried to figure out what he was going to do now. He was thankful that no one asked him what had happened. It was hard enough for him to keep calm.

"Young man." He was standing in front of the van with the hood up when someone spoke to him. "Oh my, that looks bad. But I was wondering if I could persuade you to give me a hand."

"Yes, ma'am, I can do that. I'm thinking that I have plenty of time now that my vehicle has died." She grinned at him as he went into the huge house that he'd not noticed until now. "My goodness, this is a wonderful place. Can my brothers come in as well?"

"Why my yes. The more the merrier." He entered her home while his brothers got out of the van. Going into the house took him back in time. The antebellum of old was the perfect description for the lovely three-story home. "I had this tin on my counter all my life, and now it's way up there on the cabinet. I don't know who might have done that. I'm much too short to have done it on my own. I'm thinking my son has emptied it and put it up there, so I'd not notice. Of course, I'm going to notice. It's my house."

The tin was indeed empty. She didn't seem to be upset; she was more resigned to the fact that he'd stolen from her again. He and his brothers tidied up the kitchen. It wasn't dirty but very messy. He even loaded the dishwasher of all the things that he found. It was running when they settled in the living room.

"I tell you, young man—What is your name? You might well have told me, but I've been a little upset today." He told her his name and introduced her to his brothers. The vacuum, a very old-fashioned one, fired up, and he knew that one of his brothers was cleaning up the other room. "Oh my, I don't know if that's been swept in a long time. The stupid thing is too heavy for me to cart around."

"It's no problem. If I may be so bold, what is your name." She laughed. Not like the dainty woman she was, but like she'd just heard the best joke ever, and it caught her off guard. Or, he thought, something like a hyena. It was a toss-up to figure out which. It was then that Knox brought in some tea that he said he'd unearthed under the pile of dishes. "Do you live here alone, Ms. Grable?"

"Yes, I do. Usually, I can get around well, but I had me a little tumble trying to get the tin down a few days ago. Stupid son of mine, William Grable, he won't lift a finger to help his own mother out. I think he's disappointed that I've not died yet. I'm going to outlive him if I can. But he's not getting a thing from me when I do pass. This house is going to be donated to the city and more than likely torn down for something totally inappropriate and costly. Stupid townspeople are chomping at the bit, too, waiting for me to die. But they can't do that. I've put it in the will. If they do, then the house will rot here for all I care."

The seven of them decided to have dinner together. Going into town, a short walking distance from the house, Knox picked up things to grill out for their dinner. That was another thing that he'd never had. Was some grilled food that was made especially for them. While getting out things to go with the burgers and hot dogs, he noticed that her refrigerator was devoid of anything but a couple of half bottles of salad dressing. He called his brother and told him what to get. The least that they could do was fill up her fridge for her after allowing them to rest in her home.