Chapter 17

Hunter

It was just like old times.

I couldn’t even try to count the number of bottles Deacon and I had shared over the years. It started when we were fourteen, back in school. We’d both ended up in detention for working over some kids one day.

Deacon had been walking down the hall, minding his own business, when some uppity rich boy put the shoulder to him just to be a prick. Apparently, Deacon had gotten a handjob from this prick’s girlfriend and he didn’t think that was appropriate behavior. Maybe the son of a bitch should have taken better care of her. Or maybe he should have realized we were fourteen fucking years old and that all that shit didn’t matter. In any case, as if that little display wasn’t enough to send Deacon flying off the handle, the poor bastard decided to inform him that his mother was a whore, and his old man, a worthless drunk. Now, that’s not to say these things weren’t both true. Deacon’s pop was a piece of shit and his ma had fucked her way around town, but it was one thing for that to be the truth and another to bring it up. He knew it, no one had to remind him.

I rounded the corner of the hall just in time to see Deacon head-butt the mouthy fucker, kick out his knee, and teach him some manners with his fists. We were still young and, like me, Deacon blacked out most people around him save whoever he was focused on at the time. I noticed this when I saw one of rich boy’s jock friends rush Deacon from behind. Another was getting ready to sucker punch him.

Rich fucks never had any balls. They couldn’t look you in the eye, they were just too scared to really do anything. I knew it was none of my business and I could see Deacon could handle himself just fine, but at the same time I wasn’t about to let these fucks get a leg up like that. That and it was a chance for me to use my God given talents, plus I was still seething from taking a before school ass kicking from my old man. Seemed as good a time as any to blow off some steam and take a couple of rich boys down a notch. Win-win.

A teacher and a janitor pulled us off the helpless bastards before we did any real damage, but it was the beginning of a long and rewarding friendship for Deacon and me. That was the first time Deacon and I went to war together. It certainly wouldn’t be the last, but it solidified us as two motherfuckers you didn’t dare cross. If you went after one, you got the other, regardless of whether you had issue with him or not. It was trouble enough having one of us on your bad side. You sure as shit didn’t want us both.

That day in detention we blew out as soon as the teacher left the room and pounded down a bottle of whiskey Deacon had taken off his old man. We didn’t say much and that suited us just fine. We were cut from the same cloth and in that moment both of us knew that we had someone who had our back, no questions asked.

We developed a bond over our mutual need for violence, whiskey, and women and used them as fuel to forget the shit cards we got dealt.

His family was just as shitty as mine except those miserable cunts were actually his blood. I don’t know what’s worse, being born into that or just ending up there. Either way, it’s what we both were stuck with and we spent most of our young lives chasing girls, getting fucked up, and scrapping whoever was stupid enough to bother us.

Deacon moved out of his home as soon as he turned sixteen and dropped out of school to work. He lied about his age and got a job on the nightshift at a factory. He felt good to be away from his folks and was already succeeding far beyond his old man. He had watched his father fuck up job after job and just never give a shit. The old man would take his frustrations about his whore wife and his poverty out on his son until the son knocked his ass out one day.

Fucking fathers.

Sometimes they needed a good lesson more than their kids, and sometimes they learned the hard way.

It was around this same time that my old man discovered there was a use for me other than a punching bag when he came in drunk. That’s when I started in the Donnelly family business. I was happy to have the old man off my ass, and apparently he was happy to have someone with little to no conscience under his thumb to handle the parts of his business he didn’t want to touch. I went to school less and less and eventually got the family to agree to pay me for my handy work if I moved out and took care of myself.

Deacon went the straight and narrow and I got sucked deeper down below, but at least we were out on our own. We didn’t see each other as much, but whenever we did, you could guarantee there would be brown liquor and a fucking brawl, even if it was just the two of us. We were brothers in the truest sense of the word and the closest thing to family either of us had ever known. When one of us got in the shit, the other threw himself right in after, without giving it a second thought. He went to war for me, I went to war for him, and we’d down a few bottles of beer as we stepped over the bodies and left the bloodied battlefield.

It was just the way it was and always would be. Ever since that brawl in the ninth fucking grade.

I hate to say this because it makes me sound like a sentimental fuck, but I loved Deacon. He was the brother I never had. I wouldn’t have made it through my teenage years without his having my back. That’s the truth.