Today on Midwest Weird: “Destroying Angels” by Russell Brakefield.
Russell Brakefield is the author of Field Recordings (Wayne State University Press), My Modest Blindness (Autofocus Books) and Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West (Wayne State University Press). He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Like the story? Listen to our interview with Russell!
Midwest Weird is an audio literary magazine from Broads and Books Productions. We’re the home of weird fiction and nonfiction by Midwestern writers.
Submit your own work to Midwest Weird at www.midwestweird.com!
Episode Transcript:
This is Midwest Weird, an audio literary magazine from Broads and Books Productions.
We’re the home of weird fiction and nonfiction by Midwestern writers.
Today’s episode: A short story by Russell Brakefield, titled “Destroying Angels.” Read by the author.
On Friday afternoon Kate was cut early from her day shift at the Velvet Cup, but instead of going home to her husband and young son Oscar, she bellied up to the bar alone and ordered two Bud Lights and a long pour of Canadian Hunter, her tip apron slung over her back like a clutch of arrows.
The bar was empty except Kate and the bartender Dewey and old Jim Croc in the corner. Kate drank her beer and stared at the broken TV set above the bar. She tried to imagine a show she’d want to watch, were the TV working, but couldn’t think of anything. She could barely remember the last time she’d watched something that wasn’t crammed full of brightly colored shapes and remixed nursery songs. She took another swig and traced the corners of the label. A George Strait song ended on the old jukebox. The machine clattered and clicked, and Travis
Tritt started singing “It’s A Great Day to Be Alive.” Kate was about to ask Dewey to unplug the thing when the mushroom hunter walked in.
“This ok?” he said, already taking the stool beside her.
“Do what you want,” said Kate.
“Nick,” he said, extending a solid, saw-dust dotted forearm.
“Kate,” she said, and though she rolled her eyes, her stomach rolled too; her stomach flopped like a fish trying to make its way back to water.
Kate turned back to her beer and tried to haul up a bucket of guilt full enough to force herself to settle up and go home. She pictured her son Oscar, swaddled in his dinosaur pajamas, his tiny footsies. But then her thoughts shifted to her husband Jasper, to the fight they would have when she got there, a string of fights that seemed to extend backward and forward through time like a trout line dotted with rusty hooks and lures. She pictured her live-in mother Clara, padding addled circles around the sunroom. She slugged her beer and motioned to Dewey behind the bar.
“One more then?” said Dewey. He cleared her empty and ran a rag across the splintered bar top.
She put a fiver on the counter. “One more then.”
Dewey came back with another beer and a whiskey for Nick. “You know Nick?” he said, setting the drinks down in front of them.
“We just met,” said Kate.
“Lucky you,” said Dewey.
Nick put his hands up in surrender. “I’m just here to drink. Same as anyone.”
“Sure.” Dewey leaned genially on the bar top in front of them and pulled out his phone, scrolling with pudgy fingers. “Weather says big rains tonight and tomorrow. Morels will be up.”
“Not for you,” said Nick. “Early bird gets the mushroom.” He leaned towards Kate. “Ever seen Dewey up before ten? If you have, I’ll buy your next beer.”
“Whatever,” said Dewey. “You can have old Ray’s spot anyways. I’ll get a half a pound out under my oak tree, and I won’t even have to wake up ass crack of dawn.”
Nick turned to Kate. “You ever been mushrooming?” He half whispered it like it was a lurid proposition.
“Can’t say I have.”
Nick smacked his fist into his palm. “Oh man. Missing out.” He whistled dramatically. “I used to cut trees out west. Oregon coast? These Michigan mushrooms got nothing on that stuff. Our weeks off we’d walk out under the big trees and hunt. Some days we’d come back with trash bags full of hen of the woods and turkey tail. We found psilocybin as big as my
palm.” Nick held out his big, rough hand to show her. “We made a lot of money that year just on the mushrooms. One guy got a truffle pig.”
“Truffle pig?”
“Like a hunting dog,” he said. “But for mushrooms. And a pig.”
“Huh,” said Kate.
The old landline by the register rang, and Dewey wandered down the bar to answer it, leaving her and Nick alone.
“So what do you think?” Nick spun his tumbler on its wet ring on the bar top.
“Of what?”
“Mushrooming.” Nick laughed. “Uncle Ray lets me hunt on his property. You know where the trout farms are? Up near the river?” He leaned towards her on his stool. “I can show you. Rainy morning in the woods? Mist hanging low in the trees? Mushroom and trout feast after?” He smiled, his big eyes narrowing, crinkling at the corners. “Could be very romantic.”
Kate laughed uncomfortably. She continued to be shocked at how few men looked for wedding rings, or how few cared. “I’m married.” She held up her hand. “Sorry.”
“Bring him along!” said Nick. No hesitation.
“I also have a kid,” said Kate.
“Bring the kid too! Mushroom hunting is family friendly.”
“Oscar’s only eighteen months.”
“Ah yeah,” said Nick, and looked down into his drink. “A little young.”
They sat in silence, drinking. Kate thought about what her Saturday would look like, sans mushrooms: cleaning the house, bundling Oscar to go for a short, rainy walk, then home to unbundle him all over again, rummy with mom, garish cartoons on the living room TV, leftovers for dinner, enough wine to fall asleep, Jasper’s too-bright book light keeping her up.
“I guess Mom could watch him,” she said, keeping eye contact with her Bud Light. “If it’s only a few hours.”
Nick smiled and lifted his drink. Kate tapped her bottle against his glass.
The next morning Kate and Jasper left little Oscar with her mother and drove out to the address scrawled on the stained bar napkin in Kate’s purse. They bounced over the potholed two-lane, past the bird sanctuary and past the abandoned golf course, Kate behind the wheel and Jasper slugging from a travel mug in the passenger seat. The sun just barely peeked up above the rows of white cedar and pine on the horizon. Ghoulish fog lifted off the conifer swamp lining the county road to the south. Kate slowed to read a faded street sign, squinting. “I think we’ve gone too far,” she said and doubled back.
Jasper bobbed and weaved in the passenger seat, staring out the windows. His neatly coiffed brown hair, too carefully combed for a day in the woods, brushed the roof of the car as they rattled up the long dirt road past thinning farmhouses and clapboard ranchers. Kate had to
look around his massive Adam’s apple to find their next turn.
Jasper had taken very little convincing when Kate brought up the idea the previous night. He had once, in what seemed now like a different geologic age, briefly attended a doctoral program for botany. He tended a fledgling vegetable garden in their backyard every summer. He thought of himself as a back to the lander, even though he ordered his grow lamps
and chicken wire and even his seeds off the internet, even though he’d quit the Ph.D. after two semesters and now did something Kate didn’t understand for a tech company whose name she always forgot.
And Kate, in her proposition, had also omitted quite a few details about the mushroom hunter. She had left out Nick’s movie star eyes and beefy forearms, had not mentioned his advances or the way he’d made her stomach fish flop. When she’d suggested the trip, she’d simply said “some old local from the bar,” leaving Jasper to make up his own mind about who was leading them out into the woods.
The dirt road dead ended at a small, single-story rambler. Beyond the house stood a battered green sign blocking the old log road, a warning about trespassing in the trout hatchery. Kate pulled the car into the drive and parked. She could see Nick leaning against the railing on the house’s raised porch. Next to him sat an older man and a mutty German Shepard
with a dark patch of fur around his eye like he’d been fist fighting. The dog stood and gave a few sharp barks. The old man stood too and put his hand in the air. He slumped a little on his left side, his grey beard tangling in the straps of his overalls. Jasper hummed the notes to “Dueling Banjos.”
“Stop it,” said Kate, and got out of the car.
On the porch, Nick greeted Jasper with the same big smile he’d given Kate the day before. “Nick.”
“Jasper.”
“So glad you guys decided to come.” Nick swayed, letting his weight rock back and forth on the porch’s railing. “We didn’t get as much rain as they were saying. Hope I didn’t promise you anything more than I can deliver” He winked at Kate.
Jasper squinted. He looked from Nick to the old man and then to Kate. His mouth parted like he was about to speak, but he just cleared his throat instead.
“Thanks for letting us tag along,” said Kate.
“Ida,” said Nick and pointed to the dog, who’d gone back to sleep at the old man’s feet. “And that’s Uncle Ray.”
The old man sat back down and lit a cigarette. “Don’t get lost out there,” he said, staring out at the woods across the road.
“He’s not coming?” Jasper said. He looked at Kate.
No one answered. Kate put her hand on Jasper’s shoulder. Steady.
“I’ll be taxing you on the way back though,” said Uncle Ray. “Twenty-five percent, if you find anything at all.”
Ida shook out her ears and rearranged herself again at the man’s feet.
Jasper wouldn’t let go of Kate’s hand as they followed Nick into the thick woods across the road. Kate hadn’t expected a confrontation—Jasper had never been that guy, had never been one to enter any into conflict at all if he could help it—but as they walked deeper into the
forest, she realized maybe part of her had wanted some reaction, maybe part of her had wanted something more out of him than this dark resentment she knew so well. Instead, they trudged on in silence, listening to Nick name tree species and point out where you could find the best hunting spots. Ida ran alongside, furrowing out forest rodents
and sniffing through the leaves and long grass.
At one point Jasper tugged at Kate’s hand and they fell back a few steps. He whispered at her through gritted teeth. “What are you trying to do here?”
“What are you talking about?” she said, though she wasn’t sure either.
“You didn’t give me all the facts.”
This was a phrase Jasper used constantly, whenever he felt Kate had misled him in some way. “You didn’t give me all the facts” could mean that she’d left something off the grocery list or that she’d had an illicit affair three years ago and was just now coming clean.
“You wanted to come. I thought it would be something interesting. Why are you upset?”
“You know why I’m upset.”
“Settle down,” Kate said. She looked ahead at Nick “He’s an interesting person. Fuck me for wanting to do something different for once. Can’t I want to do something adventurous with an adventurous person without having ulterior motives?”
“OK back there?” shouted Nick.
Kate broke free of Jasper’s grip and tramped forward, closing the gap between her and the mushroom hunter.
They trekked through the woods for nearly two hours, scraping at the wet underbrush, clawing up patches of moss and dead leaves without finding a thing. Not one grizzled brown cap in sight. Not even a whiff of a mushroom. All the while, Nick punctuated their walk with expert
advice about finding mushrooms: Start with tree roots. Dead leaves are your best friend. They like the rain, but you won’t find anything if the soil’s too wet. If you find one, stop where you are! Mushrooms are like people—they’re obsessed with coupling.
Eventually, Nick stopped in a small clearing. The rain had quit, and an eerie mist hung in the air, the wind colored a wet grey green. Nick looked around as if he’d gotten them lost, as if this was all new to him. “Hmm,” he said.
Jasper had been quiet up to this point, giving Kate occasional dark glances, kicking at the dirt and weeds half-heartedly whenever they stopped to hunt. “Is this usually how you do it?”
“It’s not a science as much as it is an art,” said Nick, stooping down to part a bed of dead leaves.
“Well, we’ve been out here all morning,” said Jasper. “I’m beginning to doubt the canvas.” He looked around him. “And the artist.”
“Don’t be rude,” said Kate.
Nick stood up and took a step towards Jasper. “Like I said before, not as much rain as they called for. Sometimes they just don’t pop.”
“If you say so,” said Jasper. He stared back at Nick.
Nick turned and spit into the wind. “Didn’t you say you had some experience? Some schooling? Maybe you know to look for something I don’t?”
The two men stood glaring at each other. Kate stood beside them, slightly set apart, dewy patches of alder and trout lily dousing the bottoms of her jeans. Her right hand twitched. She imagined what it might look like for Jasper to throw a punch, then what it might look like for him to take a punch. Jasper took a step towards Nick. Kate flinched, but then Jasper stepped past him and stooped down to the ground instead. He studied the earth beneath him intently, then rummaged wildly through the grass and leaves, but what he pulled up was just a dirty rock and not a mushroom at all. The three of them stared at the muddy hunk of limestone in his hand.
“Shit,” said Nick. He turned to Kate and grinned. “Mushroom hunting, right?” He slapped Jasper on the back like they were old friends. Jasper stood and stared at the rock in his hand. Ida barked and barked in the distance.
“How about this,” said Nick, pulling his backpack around in front of him. “It’s still early right, and warming up? And I’ve always said, if you can’t find the fun, make it yourself.”
He fumbled through his backpack and pulled out what looked to Kate like a plastic baggie full of dirt. He held it up like he’d just foraged it from the grass beneath them and not from his mangy backpack.
“Psilocybin. Philosopher’s stones. Shroomies.” Nick opened the bag and sniffed. “What do you guys think?”
Kate started to refuse, but Jasper cut her off.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yep. Let’s do that.” He cocked back his arm and tossed the rock in a high arc across the field. Ida took off after it. He stepped past Kate and outstretched his palm.
“How much should I take?”
“Alright Jasper! My man.” Nick slapped him on the back again: all’s forgiven, new old buds. He pulled a clump of mushrooms from the baggie and sprinkled it into John’s palm. “That should set you up.” He turned. “Kate?”
Kate’s cheeks were flushed from windburn or embarrassment or both. Jasper had hardly taken an Advil in the ten years they’d been together. He scolded her constantly about her drinking. “No. Not for me,” she said. “Jasper are you sure?”
But Jasper had already stuffed the mushrooms into his mouth. Nick put his own wad in and pulled out a bottle of neon blue Gatorade. He took a swig and handed it to Jasper. Jasper took a sip and gasped. “What the fuck?”
“Vodka,” said Nick. “Perfect pairing. Boomers, Grey Goose, Arctic Blast.” He laughed.
Kate watched the two of them stand in the clearing sucking down vodka Gatorade and chewing like giraffes. The morning’s dark clouds had drifted off and the sun poked through, the air starting to loosen around them. In the distance, Ida pounced after something in the high grass. She barked and barked. A few morning songbirds erupted from the pine stand behind them. In the distance, the sound of water. The day had turned beautiful, Kate realized. Beautiful and dreadful.
“Should we go to the river?” asked Nick, already heading south.
“Definitely,” said Jasper. “Adventure on, adventure man.” He shot Kate a glance, then jogged to catch up, leaving her alone in the clearing.
As they bushwhacked deeper into the woods, Nick and Jasper began to stumble and weave. Nick let out hoots and hollers and occasionally broke into an off-key rendition of “Friends In Low Places.” Jasper followed, not speaking but clearing his throat loudly and repeatedly as he walked. Kate trudged behind them, studying her hiking boots, trying to will the
two men to stay upright and alive in front of her.
They walked a long time this way, listening for the river. The two men in front, Kate behind. Then, at some point, she lost sight of them in the dense woods, their heads disappearing into the foliage. At first, she followed Ida, who looped back every twenty yards or so and barked expectantly. Catch up. Catch up. But then her tail disappeared too into the
thicket of trees and shrubs and Kate was truly alone.
“Jasper,” she called but got no response. She called again and then again, louder.
“Nick!” she tried. She even tried calling the dog, though Ida didn’t seem like a dog that had ever learned to come on command.
She kept moving towards the sound of the river, stopping every few steps to call out for them. At some point, her annoyance turned to panic, a fear that she’d get turned around and lost, that she’d be in these woods forever. Scenes from a series of low-budget disaster movies flashed through her mind. The guy who had to cut off his arm. The woman forced to swim for days in the middle of the ocean. Kate picked up her pace. She yelled Jasper’s name again and again. She broke into a run.
Just before her panic overtook her completely, she fell through a thicket and found herself at the river. She stumbled a little, then caught herself and stepped back away from the edge. The river moved fast below, the banks blown over, the water roiling. And there, in the
shallow ravine beside the water, were her two stoned companions, crouching in the mud beside a fallen tree, staring in silence at the twisting brown water.
“Kate!” said Jasper when he noticed her behind them on the bank. He stood and waved as if they were much further apart than they were. “Kate!” he said again. He smiled, his eyes gleaming. His hair was clumped on one side, his clothes muddy and twisted like he’d fallen over.
“I was calling your name,” said Kate. She sat on her butt and scooted down the bank to join them on the rocky beach.
“Look what we found,” said Jasper. “He waved a plastic Meijer bag at her. “Mushrooms.” He laughed, then coughed, then laughed again. He was looking at her without looking at her, his huge pupils just floating inside his head. “There were hundreds of them, no thousands! Just up over the ridge there.”
Nick stood too and waved his own bulging grocery bag. “I knew they were out here somewhere. Just needed a perspective shift I guess.” He tried to high-five Jasper but couldn’t get his attention. He shrugged at Kate. “We’re going swimming.”
“No,” said Kate, surprising herself; the panicked single syllable sounded like one she’d use if Oscar was walking towards an open flame. “No,” she said again, softer. “That’s a bad idea.”
“We’re going swimming,” said Jasper, as if Nick hadn’t just said it.
Kate grabbed Jasper’s arm. “This is a bad idea. It’s cold. The water’s fast.”
Jasper laughed. “It’s ok Kate. It’s an adventure remember?” The malice from earlier had drifted from his voice. “Are you coming?”
Kate looked down at the fast brown water, the rocky banks, the broken logs and bundles of fishing line and old coke cans. “There’s no way I’m getting in that,” she said. No way she was taking her clothes off in front of either of these men right now. "Jasper,” she said, but he and Nick were already stripping and tossing their clothes on the rocky beach.
From the bank, Kate watched the two naked men wade into the rushing water. Nick walked a few steps and dove under, breaking the brown-grey threads with a graceful dive. He came up five or so yards downstream, the current carrying him quickly. He pumped out some
clumsy breaststrokes, fighting back against the current toward the spot where he’d dove. Then he turned onto his back and whooped, letting the current take hold of him again. Kate watched him drift away, following the bend in the river. On the bank above, Ida ran back and forth barking wildly. Her high-pitched yelps echoed through the trees.
Jasper followed. He walked like a baby animal or a hunting bird, placing one foot gingerly in front of the other on the slippery river rocks. He giggled at first, then got quiet concentrating. He stepped slowly out into deeper water, his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. “Wait,” he shouted to Nick, but really to the river, which pushed around his ankles, then his calves, then his thighs. He rearranged himself, trying to get a steady foothold to dive.
“Jasper,” said Kate, but he did not seem to hear her. He was a thousand miles away and unhooked from himself completely.
In the middle of the river he placed his right foot onto a raised piece of slate and put his hands in front of him like an Olympic swimmer readying for the starting gun. He stepped forward, but then his left foot slipped, and he went down hard. One moment he was preparing to dive, the next he was flailing in the water, fighting against the current, falling beneath the surface and struggling to come up again.
Kate rushed down the bank and tossed her backpack off, readying to dive in after him. But just as quickly as he’d gone under, he came up again, in a shallow rifle just a few yards downstream. He stood gingerly and steadied himself, then pulled himself up the bank by the branch of a large birch tree. And just like that he was back on land, breathing heavily, a smear of dark blood around his cheek from a stone or log he’d caught on beneath the current. He let himself fall against the bank and lay there. He wiped at the gash beneath his eye like an animal pawing away an insect.
Kate crouched beside him and put her hand on his neck. He recoiled at her touch, but then fell limp against her, his head on her shoulder. He smelled wet and rotten, like a fish or a mushroom. His naked body shivered against hers. He curled into her like they were on the
couch or reading together in bed, their old language coming back to them. Kate pushed the blood away from the cut on his cheek. Not deep. Not serious. She pressed the sleeve of her shirt against it and stroked his wet hair, and the two of them sat in silence, listening. Nick had
disappeared somewhere downstream. All that was left of him was an echo of Ida barking in the distance.
When they got back to the road, Uncle Ray still sat smoking on the porch. Kate tried to head straight for the car, but he called after them.
“Hey,” he said, then “hey you!”
Kate walked reluctantly to the porch, Jasper trailing behind, wet and shivering.
“You lose Nick?” said Uncle Ray.
“He was in the river.”
“Damn idiot.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Well, let me see then.” Uncle Ray reached over the railing. Kate nudged Jasper, who was staring off into space.
Jasper looked at Uncle Ray. “Oh,” he said, then handed him the bulging Meijer bags. Uncle Ray dumped the bundle of dewy mushrooms onto the porch boards. He waved through the mushrooms, making piles here and there. He let out little grunts and whistles as he worked. Finally, he picked up four mushrooms and held them out for Kate to see.
“These,” he said.
“What?” Kate stared at the four shriveled storm clouds in his palm.
“These are the ones that won’t kill you. Everything else there is poison. I’ll have to burn the lot so Ida don’t eat them and keel over.”
“What?” Jasper had snapped back to reality. “That can’t be right.”
“Damn sure is,” said Uncle Ray. “These here are false morels. You can tell by the way the cap sits. And these here are called destroying angels. Name should tell you all you need to know with those guys. Sure trip to county health if you eat any of those.”
Jasper put his knuckles in his eyes and then looked back down at the piles of mushrooms on the porch. “But Nick said…”
“Nick’s a damn idiot. Like I said.” Uncle Ray set the four good mushrooms aside and swept the others back up into the bag.
“But,” Jasper said.
“Let’s just go.” Kate grabbed his hand and turned back to the car.
“Well take these at least,” said Uncle Ray. “These here are real. Genuine. Safe as can be.” He picked up the four shriveled morels. He set one on the railing and dumped the other three into Jasper’s hand. “Not quite dinner, but I’d never say no to a mushroom in butter.”
Jasper peered down at the mushrooms. Kate watched him process this information, recalibrate the day. “But,” he said again, then he leaned over and puked in the grass beside the porch.
At home, Oscar was napping. Kate’s mother too, wrapped in a shall on the wicker couch on the screened-in porch, a space heater humming a ghost song at her feet. Kate went straight to the bathroom and made the shower as hot as it would go. When she stepped in, she still felt the sensation of walking, her feet sinking into the muddy forest floor. An echo of the day pulsed through her limbs, through her brain.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, a wave of food smell smacked her in the face, the scent of butter and burnt soil hanging in the air. She put on her robe and walked through the living room into the kitchen. Near the stove, still wearing his wet clothes, Jasper leaned
over a sizzling cast iron pan. He stared down into the pan as if it were a crystal ball or some other dark talisman. He moved a wooden spoon in slow circles, turning with deliberate, tender strokes. River water dripped from his hair and mixed with the three sautéed mushrooms, which
sputtered and bloomed and wept in their bed of golden butter. Oscar slept on in the nursery, dreaming of who knows what. Kate’s mother was still wrapped in her dementia dreams on the porch. And at the back of the house, warm and dry, their own bed would be waiting for them, after the feast.
Russell Brakefield is the author of Field Recordings from Wayne State University Press, My Modest Blindness from Autofocus Books, and Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West from Wayne State University Press. He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Watch for an upcoming bonus episode where we chat with Russell about this story, writing, latest obsessions, and more.
We’ll be back in two weeks with more weird stories.
If you like what you hear, subscribe, like and review the show.
And if you want your fiction or nonfiction to appear on Midwest Weird, send us your work! Read the show notes for a submission link.
Thanks for joining us. And stay weird.