Thin Strand

A blast of stale, artificial air hit me as I pushed open the grimy, glass door of the all-night gas station. That, and the smell of those little taquitos filled with buffalo chicken that I knew had been sitting on the heater for way too long. It didn’t stop me from wondering if I should buy one. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t just another stop for a late-night snack and a fill-up, but the beginning of a long and painful detour.

“Cola, peanut butter cups, gas,” I muttered to myself so I wouldn’t forget. “Cola, peanut butter cups, gas.”

I wandered the shelves, picking up what had been asked of me, probably spending a little too long looking into the fridges at the back of the store before settling on what I wanted. I grabbed an energy drink – the can covered in bolts of lightning that I hoped would shock some kind of life back into me – and I picked out a bag of jerky before I made it to the counter.

The woman there, lids heavy and bubblegum smacking, took the items and slowly rang them up.

“Can I, uh,” I hesitated, looking into the hot case. “Can I also get two of those buffalo chicken things?”

“Uh-huh.”

I was going to regret it later. Her eyes followed me up and down as I ran my hands through my hair, looking out the window at the truck. A moth flew into the window, desperately trying to escape.

“The Eagles, huh? You a fan?”

“What?” I turned back to her, only hearing half of what she said.

“The Eagles.” She pointed to my jacket. “Football?”

“Oh, no – I mean, yeah, I love the team, but I play for them.”

“Is that all for you?”

“Can I also get forty on pump eight?”

Soon, I pushed my way back out of the store and returned to the truck, where the gas nozzle went in and the obnoxious, too-bright-for-that-time-of-night ads blared from the small screen at the pump. I bounced my heel in agitation, thinking over my next move. This was going to be one hell of an uncomfortable drive.

After the pump had finished, I climbed back into the truck, the chassis rocking from my weight, and slid into the seat. After buckling my seatbelt, I let out a long sigh and then pulled the peanut butter cups from my jacket pocket, holding them up.

“What? They didn’t have Resse’s?”

I threw the peanut butter cups at my brother, who flinched as they hit him, and started the car. The tin can hissed as the energy drink opened, and I pulled out of the gas station. “Just be grateful I’m not dragging you behind the truck.”

The drive out of town dragged on, painful and slow. I wolfed down the buffalo chicken whatevers that I had purchased and guzzled the energy drink like it was my lifeblood. An hour passed and my brother reached forward to turn on the radio. I turned it off.

“Wow, you’re really in a bad mood,” he said.

“A bad mood?” The truck jerked a little as I looked at him, snapping my head to the side. “Oh-ho, you think this is a bad mood?”

“Look, we’re fixing it.”

“You can’t just fix this.”

“It’ll grow back.”

I slammed on my brakes and wrenched the truck off the side of the highway and onto the shoulder. My brother’s gut jumped into his throat as he gripped the seat and the door, his seatbelt locking up. He cried out and I took a breath as other cars zipped past me on the highway.

“God!” he spat. “What’s your problem?”

“You gave my girlfriend a buzz cut in her sleep.”

My brother considered what I had said for just a moment and nodded. “It was funny, though.”

“It wasn’t,” I emphasized. “It was a hack job done with garden sheers.”

“I’m an artist.”

“If you don’t shut your mouth, I—”

“You’ll what?”

I threw the car back into drive and peeled out onto the highway again, punching it up to speed. I ground my teeth together and pounded the rest of my energy drink. It wouldn’t be long before we finally got to the edge of Rapid City, where we were supposed to meet two of my brother’s friends at God knew what hour in the morning. I was genuinely surprised that he had arranged something at such short notice, but I also presumed that the threat of me beating his face into the asphalt was enough of a motivator.

“Did you tell Dad?” he asked me after a long and uncomfortable silence.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He’d only make things worse. You have to remember that you’re eighteen now. My girlfriend’s dad was thinking about pressing charges. You could get chucked into prison for assault. It’s pretty goddamn serious.”

My brother merely shrugged. “Prison would be better than the house.”

“You’re stupid if you think that. Dad’s… rough, but you wouldn’t survive a day in prison.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I do know you. You just need to keep your head on straight and stop doing shit like this.”

“Don’t lecture me,” he spat and turned his gaze to the window, curling up onto the seat. Then, he crossed his arms, closing himself off to the world.

We pulled up on an empty street to an unassuming hair salon where a dozen creepy, blank faces stared out of the front window behind bars. Each blank-faced head donned wigs of every color, texture, and length – a sign we were in the right place.

“They must have attempted a hairy escape,” my brother joked under his breath as he slid out of the car, having to practically jump out due to his height. My boots hit the sidewalk and he pointed around the back down an alleyway between storefronts. “They said to call them when we got here.”

He tapped his foot, pacing back and forth, phone to his ear until – after the third try – someone finally picked up the phone.

“And?” I pressed.

“They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

Two dark-haired, bearded men arrived in a lowrider thirty minutes later, and one of them gave my brother a hug and a hearty handshake. “So, you say you need a wig.”

“I don’t need just a wig. I need the best wig,” my brother expressed.

“Brock,” one of the strangers said, extending a hand to me. I took it, finding he had a surprisingly strong grip. “You could use some beard oil.”

I passed my hand over my ginger beard and scrunched my eyebrows. Rude.

“Dimitri,” said the other.

“If you have something in blonde, that would be prefect,” my brother continued. “And long.”

“I have something. Come inside.” Brock unlocked the store and the fluorescent light buzzed to life, casting an eerie, green glow onto all the creepy mannequins. I hesitantly followed them inside, and Brock took my brother into a back room while I waited awkwardly with Dimitri in the front.

The silence was… palpable.

“So, uh… wigs.” I rocked back and forth on my heels, my hands buried in the pocket of my team jacket.

“Yup,” was all Dimitri said.

“How did you, uh…”

“My family’s been doing this for centuries. All the wigs are one hundred percent human hair, the finest quality you can get in the country.”

“That’s…” I looked around at the hundreds of wigs on the walls. “That’s a lot of hair.”

“Football, huh?”

“College scholarship.”

“Right.”

My brother finally emerged from the back room with the longest wig I had ever seen, wavy and more gold than corn silk. It caught the light as though it sparkled, and he grinned as if he had made everything better. My mind flashed to my girlfriend’s face after I had rushed to her house, mascara streaming down cheeks and beautiful, blonde hair cropped close to her head as if she were nothing but a farm animal. This in no way made it better.

“What do you think of this one?” My brother held the wig up to me and swiveled it back and forth on the mannequin head it rested on, the individual, wavy strands catching the light.

“It’s fine,” was all I said.

“That’ll run you a hundred and fifty dollars,” Brock stated.

My brother and I both froze, gazing at him. A hundred and fifty dollars was more than I bargained for.

“How about a friends and family discount?” my brother haggled.

“How about you pay us for our quality work. We’ve done enough ‘favors’ for you already.”

My brother had the habit of stealing my father’s car and tearing off at odd hours on the weekend, so I could only imagine what Brock meant.

After grumbling and rummaging around in his pockets, my brother produced a debit card, and the two wigmakers rang him up at the counter. It looked painful for him to let go of that much money, but I could only hope that it was as painful as seeing yourself with a butchered haircut… or more.

The wigmakers packaged up the wig, folding it stuffed with paper to help it keep its shape, and handed the paper bag to me.

“Don’t come back here,” Dimitri sneered. “I told you, this is the last time.”

With the coldness of complete strangers, not business owners, the two of them pushed us out of their shop, locking the door behind us. The faintest drizzling of morning dew began to trickle down as I started to make my way to my side of the truck. The chassis rocked again as I sat and placed the bag between my brother and I on the seat. It took me a minute to feel like I wanted to start the car. I had driven all damn night to force him to make up for what he had done, and I was tired. The energy drink had not wiped away the sleepiness, merely made my body feel like it moved faster, and my hands trembled a little from the jolt.

“Hey,” my brother started.

I looked at him.

“Are you… are you going to start the car?”

The key turned in the ignition and the engine roared to life.

“At least this wig is going to cover one hell of a ‘hair-raising’ fashion crime.”

As I was just about to shift the car into drive, I threw it back into park. “Get out.”

“What?” My brother looked absolutely stunned.

“I said get out of my goddamned truck.”

When he didn’t comply, I got out and threw open his door. With one forceful yank, I jerked him from his seat and tossed him onto the pavement.

“You can’t just leave me here!” he spat. “Wall is over an hour away!”

“Guess you’re walking.”

To my surprise, he stood and raised his fists at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“You’re not leaving me here.”

“Whatever.”

I turned my back on him, and I shouldn’t have. He took a swing – albeit a weak one – at the back of my head. It clipped me and I stumbled forward, tripping into the truck door. With as much balance as I could muster, I turned to face him again and barely ducked in time as his fist soared over my head. Within moments, we were going at each other in the street. I recognized that while I had mass and strength, he was much faster than me. He struck me again and again in my chest and torso, dancing around me when I tried to grab him.

“Stop!” I yelled out, trying to grapple him.

He landed another good hit on my side and finally my fist connected. A crack echoed down the empty street and my brother slid across the pavement. When he raised himself from the asphalt, his arms trembling, he turned to me. Blood dribbled down his lip and onto his shirt, staining the falcon motif there. I had probably broken his nose.

Despite this, he stood and drew a hunting knife from his belt, pointing it at me.

“Seriously, stop,” I commanded.

“It was a joke.”

“Well, it wasn’t funny,” I hissed. “Put the knife away.”

He lunged at me, and I stepped out of the way of the tip of the blade like a matador. This storm had been brewing all night, for months really, so it did not surprise me that he had decided to fight me.

“You don’t have to do this,” I tried to reason with him. “Seriously, just get in the car. I’m sorry.”

“You’re just like Dad!”

I paused for just a moment and realized the mistake I had made. I didn’t even think about it like that. He was right. I didn’t fall very far from my father’s tree. We both tended to be hot-headed, and when I got upset, I reacted violently and without thinking. Threatening to leave him there was a little mean of me, but I was upset. The last time he had made my dad that mad, my father had left him on the side of the road in Montana and my brother at sixteen had been forced to figure out how to get home. Threatening that kind of consequence had probably driven in an old and infected thorn.

In my moment of regret, he stabbed me in the leg with his hunting knife. I hollered out in pain and stumbled against the bed of my truck, gripping it to keep myself upright. Without thinking, I reached back into the bed into a toolbox and grabbed the first thing that I could find. Like a baseball batter, I swung the thing, which happened to be a metal sledgehammer. The head of it connected with my brother’s arm, and another earthshattering, thunderous crack sounded in my head. My brother crumbled to the ground, whimpering out like a hurt dog, and curled up in the road.

“Oh, shit. Shit.” I stumbled to my knees and reached to lift him up, but decided it was for the best to leave him there. “Are you okay?”

“Why would you do that, Thor?” he shuddered, tears streaming down his face, as he cradled his arm.

“I’m so, so sorry.” I couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

After a moment of heavy breathing and fighting tears, my brother stood and wobbled his way over to the car door. I had broken his dominant arm, but he was still able to slam the truck door closed with his right.

I froze. What had I done? His hunting knife lay in the dirt where it had fallen when I hit him, and I picked it up, wiping my blood off it with my t-shirt. I stepped into the vehicle shortly after, taking a moment to process what had happened. Finally, I handed him his knife and he, with as much effort as he could muster, shoved it into his belt again.

“Where… where should I…” I began.

“Just take me home.”

“You need to go to the hospital.”

“I said take me home. Your girlfriend better like this stupid wig. It wasn’t worth it.”

I started the engine and turned the truck around, heading back toward the highway.

“Why did you do it?” I eventually asked. My leg stung, and I could feel the blood that had trickled down underneath my jeans start to dry. He hadn’t shoved the knife that far into my leg, but it had been far enough.

“Do what?”

“Cut her hair off?”

All my brother did was shrug.

“You don’t have anything to say for yourself about it?”

“She’s a jerk. She’s mean to me.”

“It’s not enough of a reason to do something like that.”

“I’m not talking about it anymore.”

And with that, he shut down like always, gazing out at the sun rising in front of us. I pulled down the sunshade and reached for my sunglasses above my head. Now my father certainly was going to ask questions. What was I going to tell him? That my brother fell? And then I would have to explain where we were all night. At a bar? I’d get in trouble because my brother was underage, but I’d rather get in trouble for that than the mess that was the situation with my girlfriend’s hair.

Perhaps I had overreacted. When my girlfriend had called me in the middle of the night, sobbing and hysterical, it had shot my temper through the roof. My brother had been on such thin ice lately. He kept pushing everyone in the family, and I didn’t know how to get him to stop. His relationship with my father was wearing thin, and I didn’t know how much longer I could protect him.

I felt like I was failing as a brother. Was I? No amount of effort that I put in seemed to pull my brother up from the pit he was in, and the rope consistently slipped from my hands, no matter how strong they were. Eventually, it would break like a frayed strand of hair, and there was nothing, it seemed, that I could do to stop it.

I looked at Loki, my lips dry from the thrill of the fight. “Hey…”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I mean it.”

Loki met my eyes. So blue. My entire family had brown eyes, and his were as icy as a frozen lake. “Me too.”

A little betrayal lingered there. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I hadn’t just broken his arm. Something else had broken, too. The sun peeked through a cloud, beams twinkling. Endless brown, dead grass extended to the horizon. Maybe one day I could patch the family together. At the very least, I had to try.