Chapter 5 - The Shattered Smoker
When I turned down the gravel road leading to our family's two-story farmhouse outside Marshfield, the scene looked like a low-budget disaster movie.
The heavy, black barrel smoker—the famous five-hundred-dollar trophy Donnie had bragged about for six years—lay on its side in the tall ditch grass, its iron lid bent open like a broken jaw. Bags of hickory wood chips were scattered across the gravel, torn open and spilling their contents in the breeze.
Donnie's lifted pickup was parked crookedly near the red barn. Donnie was standing by the tailgate, his face blotchy and red, screaming at Dad, who was standing on the porch holding Donnie’s set of golf clubs and two duffel bags.
"You're an ungrateful old bastard!" Donnie yelled, his voice cracking with rage. "I worked that dirty cheese plant for seven years! I busted my back on those concrete floors while you treated me like dirt! So what if I took a few months off? I had savings!"
"You didn't have savings!" Dad roared back, his voice echoing off the silos. "Your mother looked at the joint credit card statements while you were asleep in your truck! You took four thousand dollars out of our home equity line to pay your truck note and pretend you were getting paychecks!"
I stepped out of my truck, shutting the door firmly. The sound made both of them freeze.
Donnie spun around, locking eyes with me. If looks could light gasoline on fire, my truck would have exploded on the spot.
"There he is," Donnie spat, pointing a shaking finger at me. "The golden boy! The rat! You couldn't just take that job in Stevens Point, could you? You had to stay and poison Ernie against me! You had to steal my supervisor spot!"
I walked up the gravel driveway with my hands in my pockets, stopping six feet from Donnie. I didn't raise my voice. I didn't ball my fists. I just looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time in years.
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He looked soft. He looked terrified. The swaggering, arrogant older brother who had shoved me into lockers and told me I was lucky to scrub his packaging lines had evaporated. In his place was a thirty-one-year-old child who had never once faced the consequence of an honest mistake.
"I didn't steal anything from you, Donnie," I said, my voice steady as an anvil. "Ernie fired you because you couldn't be bothered to wipe down line four. You ruined two thousand pounds of product and tried to cost an old man his pension. You got yourself fired. I just stopped fixing your mess."
