The dawn drew frosty breath from Earl’s lungs. It was supposed to be one of the coldest spells, ever, in this neck of the woods. Happy valley was usually blessed with sunshine in abundance. Weather, normally expected for the area in early November sometimes included shorts. This definitely was not one of those times.

By Earl’s standards it wasn’t really cold either. He had at different times in his life tasted the cold Sam McGee sought to avoid in his famous cremation. This was a measly ten degrees below zero, not forty. Earl had heard tree trunks crack like rifle shots during minus forty five Celsius. The now legendary valley ‘Oh three, deep freeze,’ as cold spells went, wasn’t hardly worth talking about in Earl’s experience. This area had not seen these temperatures since the last ice age, though.

A gremlin with a cold, hard spirit had ensconced itself in the pump shack, located close to the now nearly frozen stream. This stream had never iced over in living memory, or so the locals claimed. Earl trudged wearily back to the leaky little house, a jug of ice water in his frozen hands. The jug had almost cost him a swim in the chilly waters.

Earl had been trying to break the ice near the bank when he slipped and fell, face first, sticking his arm into the very hole he had been chopping. His now drenched clothes had begun to freeze. Earl was torn between returning to the house and its warm, wood fire and the pump shack, where sat the reluctant pump needing a prime for one more try. It had been eight days since water had trickled through the ancient plumbing of the run down farm house.

Earl’s partner in crime, Dave would surely be snoring. Dave was a “crack o’ noon” kind of guy. To Earl, Dave’s daily drinking had become a heavy cross to bear. Earl thought that Dave was totally useless. His only competent act was the snapping of Budweiser pull tabs, which he accomplished with a practiced flurry. The stacks of empties cluttering the basement steps were testimony to his level of expertise.

Piles of drywall, construction rubbish and sundry garbage blocked access to the sadly neglected farm house on the ridge. Strangely satisfying, the sight of chaos and carnage mirrored Earl’s perception of Dave’s soul. This enlightenment had challenged Earl to look at himself. He had been off the sauce for three months now. The money was tight anyways, as Earl was still awaiting payment for the crop. Out of cash, low on patience and high on fury, Earl trudged to the balky, frozen, water works.

One more try, then he would face the snoring, bloated carcass of his buddy barring tranquility by the fire. Earl didn’t anticipate success with the water system, he knew what the problem was. The pipes in this locality had been laid too shallow to escape the reach of the record cold snap. An ancient, often resurrected pump had been replaced by Dave. As expected by Earl, though, the installation was poorly done and several connections leaked.

The shack housing this sad system needed repair to keep the cold out. Proper heat sources needed to be installed in a spot where the heat wouldn’t dissipate uselessly. All of this was Dave’s responsibility, not Earl’s. After all this was Dave’s property, the fact so often having been ‘lorded’ over Earl by Dave during the summer long drunken celebration. Earl had shared in the first week of the reverie, but when the laughter turned to violent threats, he had quit drinking.

Earl had been made painfully aware of this fact as Dave lorded it over him. The “Lardlord” was what Earl called Dave now. A total lack of respect marked their relationship. Earl wished he hadn’t debased himself by partnering up with this looser. Dave regarded Earl as a serf to his role as the matrix/high financier. Earl was determined to let Dave choke on his own lack of talent.

It happened that Dave was on, what Earl hoped was the last downward, alcohol induced, spiral dive of a small WCB settlement for a work related injury. Someone had told Earl that the last twenty thousand dribbling through ones fingers always hurt the most. Earl was sure that this was the case here. Dave was trying hard to deaden the pain.

Earl and Dave had partnered up only four short months ago. It had been a mix of dysfunctional dependency and greed that united the two former friends. The love of hang gliding had introduced them earlier in life. Now, neither one of them left the ground.

The pump ran on, failing to pressure up the leaky, frozen system. Earl was too tired and frustrated to curse. Cold wet clothes began to wear on him and he closed the ill fitting door to the pump shack. Abandoning the project, he trudged slowly back to the house.

The wood stove had gone cold with no one present to stoke its hungry belly. Snoring rumbled from upstairs like distant thunder. Earl’s ex-buddy slept, coma like, his body seeking to recover from the self inflicted abuse. Dave was at a stage where skirmishes of daily recovery fought a losing battle with the King of beers. The King’s forces had captured Dave’s soul and were almost finished drowning it. Dave was so impaired between the effects of that long ago fall/head injury and the alcohol that he was beyond reason. There would be no stopping him now, until the very last case of Budweiser was purchased with the last of the dwindling funds.

Earl figured that it was only a matter of months before the property would again be on the market. This was worth waiting for, Dave’s ruin would give Earl the last laugh. Earl had smiled every time the thought crossed his mind. The pain of Dave’s crash would repay the bastard for his lack of respect and rip-offs in the first few months, during which Dave had crushed Earl‘s dreams. Dave had reneged on every part of the deal, the work, the financial details, the very spirit of the partnership, due to his non-stop drunkenness.

The flames had left the hungry heater a long time ago. It was cold to the touch. Earl would have to start from scratch. His soaked clothing needed to be removed in the now freezing house. Cold fury clung resentfully to Earl’s damp body. Dave slept on, aware of only self inflicted physical pain. The agony of financial ruin was still being kept at bay by the daily cycles of poisonous self destruction and recovery.

Dave fancied himself a compassionate, caring, even sensitive human being. He asserted confidently as he did most things, that life is all thought. True to his understanding of life, Dave could think himself virtuous, even if in reality he was being anal. The King had bestowed on him the powers of virtual selectivity and infinite imaginative lebensraum. Dave stayed insulated from reality and the shock of life with the help of a fluid envelope providing a foamy cushion. His body was bloated from poor diet, near zero exercise and copious amounts of alcohol.

All that aside, Dave reverted often to physical pushing and bullying, no doubt thinking himself a formidable adversary, due respect, as if Jell-O counted for any thing. Dave never let reality intrude into his vision of himself, failing to see that Earl would not be impressed with the strength of someone who could not tighten pipe joints. This belligerence usually happened when Dave had trouble standing or walking without bumping into things.

Earl had learned to ignore it most times, now that he had quit drinking. There was no reason to fear this dumb drunken ox. Earl could handle Dave and didn’t like to resort to violence unless in self defense. That, too, was something that could be confused, thought Earl. After all what type of injury would be the dividing line between a desire to protect oneself and the craving to slap the snot out of this idiot? Does a black eye, a broken nose, or, say, a cracked rib constitute the fine line? Does tolerating a complete abrogation of every part the agreement require the other party to come up with their end? Does someone just give away their share of the property, dream-owned for almost three years, because the other party tears up the agreement unilaterally, for no just cause?

“We’ll see,” said Earl to himself, a smile cracking his unwashed lips, the taste of guarantied, eventual, revenge already sweet. No matter which way the stupid fool turned, he’d choke. Earl was sure that if Dave tried to keep the property the bank would repossess it sooner or later. Dave was physically beyond work with a nonexistent employment record to underscore the fact. Amazingly Dave was an electrician, yet he couldn’t wire a three way switch, didn’t know enough to fill the brand new hot water tank with water before turning on the breaker. Dave blithely thought, in drunken serenity that all that mattered was the ticket, that no level of competence was necessary. Earl smiled again, even when the cold of the room gripped his nuts.

“Ya, right, any employer wants to pay some lazy fool who can’t wire a three way switch, thirty bucks an hour.”

Earl laughed out loud at that one. Then he broke into prolonged hysterical laughter, venting his frustration at being chained to this fat f*ck, who wished to climb on Earl’s back like a huge grinning gargoyle.

Dave stirred groggily, annoyed at the intrusion into his successful dreams. The time was ten thirty and the Lardlord was still owed his required hour and a half of shut eye. Earl had thought that he would deny the lazy fool of that pleasure today.

It was difficult, but loud radio, sundry banging and hammering, the throwing of firewood all contributed to the task of annoying Dave into a state of semi awareness. When he finally rolled out of bed and came downstairs, Dave, as always, considered himself to be the wronged party, never once allowing reason to enter the equation.

“What the frig do you want from me, Jerk?” Dave said as he belligerently strode into Earl’s space. The fire had just begun to catch and things were heating up. Earl stepped back keeping all avenues open.

“Get your friggin' paws off me!” yelled Earl still trying to wake the drunk up.

Dave’s eyes remained unfocussed, a sure sign that he wasn’t fully conscious. His breath stank of beer, while his unwashed body just stank. He loosened his grip but remained close giving forth that threatening killer look, to no avail. Earl also stinking of eleven unwashed days glared back.

Earl had him by the balls, but that was no great achievement. The crop had gone out through Earl’s connection while Dave lay drunk, away at mom’s place. He was over four days late to look after the house at that point. The pipes in the house would have burst had it not been for Earl’s unappreciated efforts. As it was, the well system had frozen. Dave on return, after a forty eight hour drunken trip to cover the seven hour drive, wanted Earl out of the house, and so it went until that morning. Earl was at his limit. Dave was, as always, impaired and there was no water in the cold house.

His expected slice of the twenty elbow crop kept Dave from the worst of his excesses, at that point. The longing to shut Earl up and smash his ugly face having been subdued reluctantly. Dave knew when to keep himself under control for his own gain. This told Earl that last summer was an honest expression of Dave’s true feelings. Dave had thought that he had had Earl by the balls and was happy to increase the voltage when the other suffered, for no reason except the pleasure of it. Drunk, or not, Dave’s behavior had been deliberate and premeditated.

Earl fancied himself a writer, although he had never been published. Smoking a joint and writing was one of Earl’s favorite pastimes. He had been keeping a journal throughout the summer, sporadically. A novel that had lingered for almost six months, untouched, began to receive his attention again. For the last two days, though, Earl had been in the grip of a creative mania that seemed to extract his first good short story, effortlessly.

The tale was about something personal, so Earl had vented his deepest feelings. He had been inspired by his present predicament. The short story was almost a factual account of what had been going down in his life at that very moment. His only concession to fiction proved his undoing.

When Earl next left his laptop, for another go at the pump, Dave sat down to read the work. The lively tale took Dave more than an hour to assimilate, his hurt brain forcing a slow perusal.

Earl had been busy with the pump one more time. While he worked on in dry clothes, he rewrote the last few scenes in his mind. The partner obviously representing Earl had lost his balance and flipped out on Dave and killed him in a vicious attack. In writing this scene Earl had gone to painful lengths, flinging about the goriest of details, venting his deepest anger. The next scene dealt with the aftermath during which the bumbling local police missed some important clues, having been diverted by Earl’s clever misdirection. The last chapter involved a court scene where the judge set Earl free. The story then closed with Earls secret desire to own the property. When the tale ended Earl had purchased his dream property from Dave’s estate for a song and lived happily ever after.

Earl finally gave up with the pump after another hour and a half. He trudged up the hill from the pump house fully absorbed by his writing. Perhaps he’d try High Times to publish it. He felt that this would be his first work to be published, it was that good. Head down, deep in thought, Earl walked into the house.

Dave was there to greet him. As Earl rounded the corner into the kitchen, the sloughing axe bit deep into his midsection. Some time after the second blow to the head and before the third, Earl’s last thought was, that he had provided Dave with a perfect self defense alibi. Earl’s story would be published after all, as evidence.