#im a big fan of making drayton sad for some reason

[ofthehands]

Day 5- The Saw is Family

@texas-chainsaw-fanworks

A short, somewhat angsty story accompanying day 2's drawing. Word count of ~2,500, Warnings for referenced miscarriage/infant mortality, premature birth/ related complications, referenced animal death, general Sawyer family brand awfulness, and canon character death.

Mange

Drayton was the only child of the Sawyer family. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. He was the only living child. The only one who made it past a few days. Momma always wanted another, talked on and on about wanting another, wanting a girl, maybe, wanting twins. But it just wasn’t meant to be. No one knew why the babies got sick like they did, or why Drayton hadn’t. But they did. And that was that, for thirty years. 

And then, suddenly, Drayton’s whole life got all fucked up. Momma was pregnant again. That wasn’t so much of a surprise. Drayton didn’t think much of it. She talked the whole time she was pregnant about how healthy her baby was, how much it kicked and wriggled, how big and strong it must be. Pa joked it was finally the twins she wanted. Drayton had a deep, unshakable belief that this would be like the others. Grandpa wouldn’t say it, but he seemed to agree. He came home one evening with an empty shoe box. Grandpa didn’t say anything about it, but Momma sure did. She started cursing and screaming and when Grandpa didn’t react to all that she had a fight with Pa about it. Drayton stayed out of the way. Kept his head down. It would be over in a few months anyways. 

It was twins. Two little twin boys- Paul and Robert Sawyer. Drayton would never admit it to Momma, but when they were born he wished she had miscarried. Losing the little twins she always wanted would be so hard on her. Pa advised her not to name them, not until a week had passed, but the moment she held them she had other ideas. She called Drayton in, to look at his brothers. He refused to hold them. They were small. Feisty, wriggling around and kicking at each other much more energy than most of the others before them. But they were too small. Still too small. 

“Whadda you think, Drayton?” she asked. “Aren’t they just the cutest babies you ever met?”

“They kinda look like wet hairless squirrels.” Pa smacked Drayton upside the head since Momma was too tired to do it herself.

“Well, these wet hairless squirrels are your baby brothers, and you’re gonna be nice to them, you hear?” 

“Yes Ma’am.” Drayton didn’t think this would last very long. 

Drayton refused to hold them. Again, and again, and again. Momma had already gone and got herself attached. He didn’t want to. Especially not to Paul. The twins seemed alright for three days. Then Paul got sick. They had no way of knowing what was wrong, and no way of affording medicine. In Drayton’s mind, that was that. Death loomed over the family. There was a feeling of knowing between them all, an impending sense of doom even Momma seemed to sense. Though maybe that was because Pa, Grandma, and Drayton had taken a liking to Robert. Robert was the bigger and stronger of the two. And sometimes Drayton thought he might make it. Which was strange. All his life he had been an only child. And now he might have a little brother to look after. He felt something about that, something kinda like fear and a whole lot like love. It was odd. 

But odder yet, was how Grandpa was handling the whole situation. 

Grandpa was the head of the family. He took care of everybody. And because of that, and the harsh life the Sawyers had been cursed into, he was a brutal realist. He had brought home a shoe box to bury the boys in before the family even knew there were two of them. And yet, regardless, when nobody else would fool with him, Grandpa started trying to take care of Paul. Paul didn’t latch on right, wouldn’t suckle. So Grandpa wetted a towel with milk and tried dripping it into his little mouth. Paul would shake and shiver, like he was cold all the time. So Grandpa bundled the little boy tight to his chest, so he could be warm. Paul would stay up all night crying. So Grandpa stayed up just about all night bouncing him, and shushing him, and taking care of him like little Paul was his own son. Like Paul had a chance. 

Paul lived to be two weeks old. Then he got sicker. 

So Grandpa buckled down and worked even harder and longer hours until they could afford to take him to the doctor. Then, when the medicine cost too much, and there was just no more work to be done- Grandpa slaughtered the pharmacist and stole it. Nobody understood why he did all that, when it seemed to everyone like Paul was just going to die. But he did it. And Paul lived. 

The twins were three months old. Which was longer than any of the others had made it. Except for Drayton. Momma was convinced it was meant to be- that the twins were here to stay. Grandma tried to be kind. Pa didn’t try so hard. Drayton saw what they saw too, but he didn’t say anything. Momma tried to convince herself they only had reservations because the boys were small. Which they were, both boys were thin and boney. Paul was the littler one of the two. Grandma started calling him little Nubbins, and it stuck. It was endearing, in a way, and that only made Drayton more tense. He didn’t want to get too endeared to those boys. Not when it still seemed so certain they wouldn’t make it long. The twins had health problems. They weren’t sick- not really- they were just born weak and small. Momma had figured they were born earlier than they should have been, and that was all that was wrong. But it seemed more and more like a lot of things were wrong. 

When they were born, they both had splotchy red and pink faces. Drayton just figured that was how a newborn was meant to look. And no one else had gotten concerned. Until it didn’t go away. Both the boys had a clear mark, right across their faces on opposite sides. Nubbins’ was bigger. Grandma insisted it was a birthmark, and Drayton had no reason not to believe her. But Pa thought otherwise. He swore up and down it was a disease, just another thing wrong with those boys. Both of them had breathing problems. Nubbins’ was worse. Sometimes he just outright stopped breathing, though he always seemed to pick back up again. They both got cold quick too. Drayton hadn’t seen a healthy newborn, so he hadn’t realized it, but they were both born skinny, which he guessed was why they got cold so quick- but it was hard to help them sometimes. The most the family could really do was cuddle them and hope. They were lucky the boys were born in the spring. They needed as much time as they could get before winter hit. Drayton worried they wouldn’t make it past winter. 

They had made it longer than Drayton expected. But they couldn’t be described as healthy. So Drayton kept his distance. Not out of fear of catching anything- but out of fear the pain of losing them would be too much for him the way it always was for Momma. They didn’t need two people out of commission. It was a little tense, with Momma, but Drayton figured the rest of the family understood. 

Until Grandpa pulled him aside for a talk. 

"Drayton! Boy! C’mhere!” Grandpa called. Drayton only barely heard him through the open kitchen window. He had been working on a stolen car in the yard. Drayton figured that was what Grandpa was yelling about. Drayton was the most skilled with cars out of the family. 

“Yeah, Grandad?” Drayton called. It was the evening, and he was trying to help Grandma with dinner, but it was unwise to ignore Grandpa. Grandpa called again, and Drayton sighed. He cleaned his hands and put his apron on the rack, heading out to meet him. Grandpa was working on a white truck, trying to bang a dent out of it, or something like that. Drayton walked over to meet him. “Yeah?” 

“Sit with me.” He gestured towards an upside down bucket, and Drayton did as he was told.  

“What’s the matter with it?” Drayton asked. Grandpa smacked it once, and the dent popped back out right on cue. 

“Nothin’ now. Not what I wanted you for.” Oh fuck. “What’s the problem with you and your brothers?” Grandpa asked. 

“What? Ain’t no problem, sir.”

“Bullshit. You won’t so much as look at ‘em.” 

“I take care of ‘em- make sure they’re fed and changed and all that.”

“Sure you do, but you don’t treat ‘em right.”

“Treat ‘em right?”

“It’s like they ain’t family to you.” Oh. Drayton was a little taken aback. He had been distant from them, sure, but he was just being reasonable about it. The twins likely wouldn’t survive, and keeping them alive would strain the family beyond their means. Eventually one of them would get too sick. And Drayton would have to put him down in that shoe box and go to work the next day. He didn’t hate his brothers- not by any means- he was just doing what he figured was smart. 

“I’m just… I’m tryin’ not to get attached is all. Just… The boys don’t seem right to me.”

“Yeah. Them boys ain’t right. Your little brothers is… They a bit slow. But they ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’ll make sure of that.” Drayton paused. 

“ I- I don’t mean any disrespect askin’-”

“You better not,” Grandpa said with a chuckle, half kidding and half threatening. 

“But why do you care so much about them boys? You- You never been the soft type.” It just didn’t seem… right for Grandpa. He was realistic. Blunt to a fault sometimes. And he had never looked particularly kindly on the weak. Drayton didn’t dare bring it up, but he remembered distinctively and vividly when he was a boy no more than five, that Grandpa had brought him out to see a possum hit on the road. Though he was naturally a little morbidly curious about it, he hadn’t understood why Grandpa showed him the body till he flipped it over with his boot. There, on the underside, were six live baby possums. Drayton was excited, thought they might could do something, or help, till Grandpa told him flat those babies were going to die. It upset little Drayton- still a little soft on animals then, thanks to Momma- so much that he started to cry. Grandpa told him to shut it, and explained it to him simple. The babies were too weak to live on their own. Too unlucky. And so they would die. That was the way the world worked. For animals and for people. Grandpa didn’t seem to remember that lesson. But oh God, Drayton did. That was why he never let the family know when he was sick- why he never told any of them how often he felt faint or became aware of his heart pounding furiously against his ribs- why he worked so damn hard to say everything properly when his big front teeth gave him a lisp. It made no sense to him that now that the twins had been born being weak was alright. 

“Well I… It’s my job. To take care of the family. Little Nubbins he.. He needed some extra help. I think… I think those boys might always need extra help.” 

“Yeah but-”

“Family is the most important thing in the world. You know that? There is nothin’ you should ever put before family. I… I wish I had… I been hard on you. I been hard on you because my job is gonna be your job one day. You need to take care of those boys, you hear?” Grandpa said. “Don’t you ever let nothin’ happen to those boys.”

“Why… Why ain’t you tellin’ this to Pa?” Drayton asked. Grandpa seemed far away, focused on something Drayton couldn’t see, face drawn tight. 

“Your Pa is… He… I’m tellin’ you ‘cause I know you’ll listen,” Grandpa settled on. “Drayton… you promise me, right now, that you won’t let nothin’ happen to those boys. Promise.”

“I promise,” Drayton said. 

“Alright… And go play nice wit’ ‘em in front of your mother- she thinks you’re gonna eat ‘em one of these days.” 

Drayton went inside. Everything felt different. He couldn’t explain it, but there was a threshold he had crossed and he couldn’t go back. He could never go back. He found his Momma pretty quick. She was feeding the babies, trying to get them to settle down a little before the rest of the family had their dinner. Little Bobby was sleeping. Nubbins wasn’t throwing a fit, but he was awake. He looked a little more alert than he usually did. Momma jumped a little when she realized Drayton had come into the room. 

“Oh uh-”

“Can I hold ‘em?” Drayton asked. 

“Little Bobby?”

“Both of ‘em,” Drayton said. Momma smiled, and Drayton tried smiling too. She passed the babies to him carefully, one in each arm. Momma ran off to get her camera, wanting a picture of her boys all together. Little Nubbins made a noise, and Drayton looked down at him. He had big, curious, dark eyes. A similar deep brown to Drayton’s own. Nubbins was looking at him, smiling softly. Drayton locked eyes with his little brother, and let the sense of dread that built up in his chest wash over him. He promised to protect that little boy, and he would. 

Or at least he tried. 

He really, really wanted to say he tried. 

He had done his best to raise his brothers when everything fell apart. Momma died a few years later. She gave birth to another little boy, and then she just faded. That baby was sicker than the twins, and Pa just up and left. Said there was nothing left for him there. Grandma was next, dying only a few years later, and Grandpa faded fast after that- not quite dying, but not living either. Drayton did his very best to raise them. He promised he was going to take care of them. 

But, as he walked out onto the hot asphalt and looked down at his little brother, he was struck dumb with the awareness that he had failed. Nubbins looked up at him. There was no light in those curious dark eyes. He just wasn’t there anymore. Nubbins was curled on his side. Like he was hurtin’. Like he was roadkill. Drayton kneeled down with him, and put a hand on his shoulder. Like he thought he might wake him up. But he didn’t stir. He wasn’t going to. Drayton thought about the very first time he held him. And he almost laughed. At that moment, he had felt it. He knew he was going to bury those boys. And he was right. He didn’t get to live with those boys by his side. He just got enough time to get attached to them. So it would hurt when he lost them too. 

What a rotten, rotten life.