My writing style is kind of a flow of consciousness, so sometimes I jump around in telling Merle's story. He is knocking on my brain telling me I forgot something. The fly on the wall had to get the group's misunderstanding of Merle out and bring it to a head; popping it like a huge disgusting boil. Daryl has been working this tantrum up for a while. Glen and Rick are well meaning but both kind of idiotic with the socioeconomic arrogance that they don't know that they have. Merle and Daryl both are quite aware of it. It's pretty aggravating to them. As always AMC owns the playground I'm playing in. I'm just climbing on the monkey bars with Merle and Daryl waiting for me in an embarrassed silence. Who found the reference to guardians to the galaxy?
Roadmap to the Dixons
Daryl's POV
(Now)
As Merle and I stand watch in the tower, enjoying our companionable silence, watching for danger, watching my new so called family going about their duties. I wonder if my pain-in-the-ass brother will ever make a place for himself. Will he heal and thrive, go on runs again; be able to hunt & fight and get back to his old ornery self? I watch him as he fiddles with his pistol, wincing lightly as he twists and moves, shifting position as he watches. My nose itches as the ripe combination of his scent of unwashed sweat, old blood, & whiskey (where did he find that?) overwhelms the constant stench of increasingly rotten walkers. I feel the late summer sunshine dusting my skin as I consider telling him about what the others assumed about him. I defended him, setting them straight and blowing the top off of our collective graveyard of buried memories. My thoughts reel back 3 weeks earlier, when he was still unconscious and fighting for his life.
(BEFORE)
I don't talk much about my upbringing, Dixons aren't cuddly and we don't give a damn about what we feel. What's the use of that, it don't help you survive. Only strength helps you tough it out in a hardscrabble existence not designed for kids. Merle instilled this in me; he taught me to think and helped me survive on my own, even if I was way too young for it.
One moment I was calmly eating with the people that I consider a newfound family, not blood but nearly as important; the next I am literally seeing red trying to rip Rick's and Glen's heads off simultaneously. I couldn't believe what I heard and the callousness that I would believe from my brother but not from them.
I planned on having a quiet dinner with my friends, outside of Merle the most important people in the world to me. Dixon luck being what it is of course that didn't exactly end well.
"Hey man how ya holding up (Rick slurs his words as he and Glen join me at the table both swaying gently like leaves in the wind)"
"Jus fine, Merle's down there snoring his fool ass off, surprised he hasn't sucked a blanket up his nose yet."
They both fall down giggling
"What the hell is wrong with you two, y'all stoned?"
Rick answers through suppressed impaired giggles
"Ya got us, yer brother was right. There were drugs hidden, but it was inside a toilet. We were having trouble with the plumbing and out comes a soapbox full of weed. College boy here (Glen smiles proudly) rolled it up and damn its good stuff".
(Stoned Laughter)
"We even gave half of it to Hershel to help your brother or whoever"
"Don't ya even think of giving that shit to my brother he's the cleanest he's been in 20 damn years, he's gonna have to tolerate his pain on his own"
Glen shrugs "Okay man whatever you say. Your brother surprised me by trying to end that fucking psychopath".
"Ya man he was brave, he was trying to do the right thing, trying to make shit up to us. He never does shit like that; he's always been fucking impulsive. Y'all would never know it but he's really smart; just too busy getting in his own way".
Sotto voce
"(Ask him)"
"(No you ask him)"
"(he's gonna lose his shit)"
"(Nah, he's cool)"
"WHAT! Are you fuckheads whisperin about? Shit you gotta sleep that shit off y'all are idiots like this"
"We gotta bet" slurs Rick
"Yer not gonna like it just stupid shit" adds Glen
"WHAT I'm gonna bust yer heads together if ya keep actin like this".
"Okay man just don't get upset, we just want to know about your scars. We assumed it was Merle but now that we saw Merle when Hershel was treating him; it doesn't make sense".
Glen is stoned but apparently has a death wish even raising the subject & Rick joins in similarly clueless.
"Glen thinks that Merle beat you and gave you your scars after whoever hurt him was done, like shit rolling down hill".
Rick leans across the table clueless as to how dangerous and personal this subject is.
"I thought he got outta control on drugs and beat you. You never talked about him much. Seems like a shitty brother. I saw situations like yours when I was a sheriff. He's pretty messed up, he probably felt bad though".
"So which is it?" Glen adds
I saw red just red. I jumped up across the table, connecting with the underside of Rick's jaw snapping his head up and propelling him off the picnic table backwards, surprising Glen who due to his drugged state was too slow getting up and I punched him hard in the eye and simultaneously in the ribs.
I kicked Rick's feet out from underneath him dropping him again onto the concrete and I jump him pummeling his ribs and folding him up around a fist to the gut.
"Y'all are fucked up; I get it but don't ever tell me what you think you know about my own brother. You don't get to make assumptions about him. I know he can be shitty. But get this through your head. He's my brother and my kin I would give my life for him like he almost done for me. You fuckers left him to die and didn't give a shit about him. If he weren't my brother you would never have considered going back for him. You only helped him because he was MY brother?"
I'm sitting on Ricks chest, staring at him as I talk nearly nose to nose; now I get up and start pacing like an agitated bull.
"You both just don't get it. All these issues you think he had with the group are because ya'll abandoned him to die on a hot rooftop in Atlanta in fucking summer. He had to rescue himself because y'all were too shit scared to rescue him like he deserved. Were you there when my Daddy was fucked up on drugs beating the shit out of my momma? Merle comes and picks a fight with the asshole so she can scoop me up and get me the hell out of there."
Rick and Glen are now goggling at me like a pair of stoned goldfish, never seeing me so red hot and talking so damn much. But it's pent up in me and now I can't stop.
"Did you know he took a bullet through the side in Granada when he was a Marine, damn lucky that time too? He was and is a fucking hero; and that was long before he was ever in the military. Did you know that the reason he ended up getting kicked out? A black officer told him that no cracker ass redneck needs a promotion just because he got shot. No matter that he was the best sharpshooter they had. That's why the Marines wanted him in the first place, because he was the best shot, even under pressure."
"That's why he beat the shit outta that asshole; of course the fact that the officer was wrong didn't matter none, because my brother is a cracker ass redneck. So they took everything he earned and gave him 16 months in the brig. How is that for thanking him for being a fucking patriotic hero, nearly giving his life for this country and still unappreciated?"
I squat down and pull Glen up by the shirt to look me in the eye. I watch his mortified distress, wincing more from embarrassment then from the beating I gave him, still with his air knocked out of him, mercifully silent.
"You fuckheads have known me for what a year and you saw Merle at his worst, after he was taking drugs nonstop for a month. He was in the city with y'all to get more. That's why he went nuts; ya didn't know him at all sober. Were y'all there at Christmas when my Daddy locked us outside in the snow and Merle broke into our own house slicing up his arm? Then Daddy takes a swing at me and Merle steps in; turns out there was a knife in daddy's hand, stabbed him in the leg too."
"How about when I was 7 and poured all the moonshine out replacing it with water; Merle took my beating with a belt buckle that time that's why his back was fucked up. It sliced him to ribbons, his blood was everywhere; he screamed at me to run. My momma called the cops for once and you know what my Daddy said? Do Ya?"
"Ya think you know me? Than what did my Daddy do? He blamed it on Merle said it was in self fucking defense. Merle was only 15. He missed a week of school that time".
"How about his jaw and his nose, do you know why they are crooked? It's because I had crappy grades. I was 9 and Merle came home from juvie early for Mommas funeral. Daddy punched me and broke my ribs and my arm. Merle defended me and Daddy smashed his face in. He beat Daddy so bad he nearly died; smashed his hand and wrist doing it; he needed surgery to put his knuckles back together. It were the first time I went to the hospital. All three of us were there that night & Merle never came home again. He went to juvie and then he joined the Marines after he healed. He thought that children's services would protect me; he thought I didn't have scars. He never knew the truth until we left together from Woodbury. That's why he went on that crazy suicide run. He thought he failed me, but it was never his job to take care of me."
I drop him like a handful of poison ivy and sit on the ground with them while they get their wind back, now they are groaning, rubbing their sore spots, bruises already rising up like reanimated walkers. They look to be coming down from their high and they think my brother is an asshole when stoned. Just another double standard!
"Daryl, I'm. . ."
"No, I'm not done Rick."
"Think about this if you know me so well. I was born when he was only 8; he failed a year of school when I was little. This from someone who learned himself to read when he got into my Daddy's porno mags at the age of 4. When Daddy figured out Merle could read better than he could, he broke his hand so he couldn't hold a book or a pencil. He was 4, and no one helped him like he helped me – No one! Who do you think took care of him when he was little? Mama tried but she was always working. She couldn't protect him, neither could our grandfather. That's why he was a scarred up mess before I was even born. He took care of me when I was a baby, missed school so he could make sure I ate, was clean and so they wouldn't beat me when I cried. I wasn't his responsibility but he did it anyway. In another family he would have played sports and gone to college probably on a scholarship. He was that fucking smart."
"Daryl Im . . . "
"No just fuck off. I don't even believe that you could have a bet on that. What's wrong with you fuckheads? Merle nearly died and got the worst beating and injuries of his life and this is what you still think of him. If you like me and think of me as a brother like you often say Rick, y'all better start thinking of him as a brother too, because he and I are connected. He saved my life more times than I can tell. Now get out of my way before you really get hurt. And think of how y'all are going to make this up to him. . . And to me."
I start to storm away wanting to get back to sit next to my gravely injured unconscious brother; who at least is honest in his owning up to being an asshole (and proud of it). But I gotta finish it, cementing their need to make this up to both my brother and me.
"What I really don't fucking get. Is how you could even consider this after what he just put himself through? Don't ya know we're all losers? We've all lost by now. He nearly died protecting me and you because I care about you. You know before he left. He said that everybody but me looks at him like he's the devil. He might put up a front but don't believe for a second that shit like that doesn't bother him because it does. He just doesn't know how to say it, so he usually does something to show it. How could you even think that he ever hurt me, you stupid Assholes!?"
"Don't even try to talk to me now. Merle is down there fighting for his life and you're making bets! What the hell is in your head? Other than Pot and stupid choices I mean."
I storm off seeing red ignoring the two embarrassed fuckheads and their stupid mealy mouthed apologies. I care for everybody here but Merle still shows them up, putting his life on the line for those that only talk to him or consider him when there is dirty work to be done. It's time that they see him for who he really is . . . my impulsive . . . brilliant . . . asshole of a brother. He's spirited, with snarky humor, always confident, never lets his thoughts show, never allows himself to acknowledge wanting more, never understanding how to really talk to people.
Pushing them away by offending them is always so much easier than showing his inner workings. My brother the undervalued jerk. They just don't get us, how could they, most of them had it pretty easy before. The way we show our affection for one another is not typical of brothers. Yet, as the fucked up Dixons, our bond is in some ways tighter. We've always had to be survivors. He couldn't be loving; he was working too hard at trying to survive and teaching me how to as well. Deep as a bottomless well is my wonderful but crappy brother, Merle.
