by Larry Brown
He stopped out at the mailbox to see if the mail had run. It hadn’t, or maybe the mail girl just hadn’t brought him anything today. Most of the time it was circulars and stuff from Home Depot anyway. He got back in the car and turned left out of his drive and headed up the dirt road toward Old Dallas. There weren’t many people who lived back in there anymore. Most of them were in the graveyard now, under the old cedars.
He kind of wished he had Peter Rabbit with him, but he didn’t want to make him walk that far since he was just a puppy. There would be plenty of long walks soon enough. He’d get him a squirrel skin before long. Maybe within the next day or two.
It was as pretty a morning as he’d seen, driving the big Buick, dust rolling out behind him. It needed some shocks bad. And that damn perfume. He’d be glad when he got out of this son of a bitch. But there was stuff to look at. Some of the leaves were starting to turn and they stood out in little yellow and orange specks in the green walls of trees around him. People didn’t fish around here much in the winter. If he was lucky nobody would find him until spring. If he was real lucky nobody would ever find him at all.
He drove slowly, and he didn’t meet anybody, but the hot light in the dash came on and flickered and then went back out. That bad head gasket. He didn’t care. He’d leave the son of a bitch on the side of the road if he had to.
But it kept on going. Once in a while the hot light would flicker, and then go back off. He finished the first beer and opened the second one. It wasn’t nearly as cold as the first one had been, and the third one would surely be worse. It didn’t matter. He had some more at home. He lit one of his Swishers and drove to a place high in the hills and stopped the car to see if he could smell it yet. And there it was, unmistakable, just like it was every year, in this one spot, at this time of year: the almost overpowering scent of a vast field of marijuana somewhere out there in the wooded hills beyond the ditch. He figured they had it under a tent. He sat there and breathed it in. It smelled like some good shit. And he sure would have liked to have some of it. But not enough to walk out there in the woods trying to find where it was growing. Oh no. A man could get killed like that.
He turned in on a road where a crazy old white man lived in a trailer, somebody who walked up and down the roads all day picking up aluminum cans. But he didn’t go down that far. On a flat piece of land at the top of a hill he left the road and bulldozed the Buick over young pines and oaks that snapped upright again behind him and he stopped the car at the edge of a draw that overlooked a couple of thousand acres of pines. He put it in Park and got out. Sage grass was turning brown around him and he took a piss beside the open door, listening to the motor running. He looked up and saw a couple of red-tailed hawks soaring. He took the last puff off the Swisher and then stomped it into the ground.
She’d get over it. Might take her a while. She’d just have to understand that Pappy knows best.
He finished the second beer and reached in for the third one and set it in the sage grass behind his feet. He reached into the car and set one of the bricks on top of the gas pedal and the motor revved up. He set the second brick on top of the first one and the motor noise rose to a mild howl. He could tell that it was missing a little.
He’d always been quick and nimble in the same way that small fighters are always the fastest. He reached in for the gearshift and pulled it down into Drive and snatched his arm back. The Buick left with a lurch and careened down the hill, bouncing over fallen logs and smashing sweet gum saplings down, dust rising from the dusty ground. He saw the whole thing rise two feet into the air, and then it launched itself out into open space, and for one brief moment he saw the foam dice hanging from the rearview mirror swaying. Then the car went out of sight, and there was just the sound of the motor racing, until it landed down there somewhere with a thunderous crash, and a plume of dust rose up, and a lone tall pine shook so hard that some of its needles fell.
He turned around and picked up the beer. The hawks were still sailing like ships. He took off the gloves and stuck them into his back pocket, then cut a small tree and went back up to where the tire tracks were, and started brushing them out. He’d seen that in a movie one time.
He took his rifle from behind the door the next morning before daybreak, and shut Peter Rabbit up in the house again. He sprayed some Off! on his arms and face and slipped some cartridges from a box on his dresser into his pants pocket. He went out the back door and told the other dogs to go back when they tried to follow him. They returned to their beds under the house.
He knew the land so well he didn’t have to see. The only thing he was worried about was maybe stepping on a snake in the darkness. They were still crawling in these last warm days. He made his way down the hill to the pasture fence where a couple of scrubby orange cows stood with Y-shaped yokes around their necks. The yokes were made from small trees he’d cut and they were the only way to keep them from jumping the fence. All their ribs were showing beneath their ragged hides. Riddled with worms. Not worth eating. Not worth anything. They were almost good enough to be the kind they made potted meat from.
He went around the fence down to the corner and slipped through the wire and across the rocky pasture and out the other side. The timber out there was big and old, beeches, white oaks and red oaks, the scaly-barked hickories already standing among the hulled fragments of their nuts. He started to stop under one of them, but he knew an even better place and headed on to it. Dawn was almost ready to break, and in the distance he saw the paling light against the trees to the east. He loaded the gun and put the safety on. It was just a single shot, a gun from Sears, Roebuck & Company forty years ago. He’d paid twelve dollars for it new. He had a rubber baby nipple with an X cut into it in his pocket and he slipped the nipple over the muzzle of the rifle, just in front of the sight.
The creek had dropped to a trickle and he crossed it quietly, stepping softly on the shattered little stones. He eased up the hill and treaded on the soft moss that lined the banks like carpet, and he settled to rest against a giant beech that held holes in its massive trunk. Squirrel houses full of squirrels.
Already some of them were walking about on their limbs, shaking droplets of dew to the leaves around him. But it wasn’t light enough to shoot. He held his head still and watched them jump and climb. He heard one on the ground. Then another. Others were barking in the distance.
He sat perfectly still and watched one come headfirst down a tree, its tail arched over its back. It barked at him, dim thing in the woods walking on two legs sitting so still now. He never moved.
The mosquitoes flew close to him but he didn’t flinch. He hated their whining noise. Lying in the black bunks down on the prison farm he’d hated them then, too. Radios playing in the darkness. Men screaming for God knew why. Out there beyond the fields where thousands of acres of corn and peas and cotton were growing, the twelve-foot fences stood topped with razor wire, and he’d never thought of trying to run. He’d just decided not to get caught again. But it had taken him two trips down there to learn his lesson. Some things were like that. Some things you had to do twice to understand that they wouldn’t work. He knew now what did: stay away from the white man unless he had something you needed.
They were starting to move everywhere now. The branches were moving and the woods were filled with nests and they were barking at each other in the growing light. He slipped the safety off and raised the rifle a little in his arms, waiting for the shot he knew would eventually come. He only wanted one for now, mostly for the skin. But he’d eat it, too. He wouldn’t waste it. He didn’t waste much of anything.
He saw a couple of them walking a grapevine that ran up into an old post oak and he raised the rifle and sighted on them. But they were too far away. And moving too fast. He heard one up in the tree above him, and then he heard it jump, and by looking up without moving his head much he saw it run out on a limb and stop. It wasn’t over twenty feet above him, and the light was still not good, but he ra
ised the rifle and sighted along the barrel. He lined up the little notch in the rear with the thin brass-beaded post on the front and held it on the squirrel’s head. It ran forward three feet and stopped. Then it jumped to the off side of the tree and ran up it. He saw its tail in a glimpse here and there. Then it was gone.
Off in the distance he could hear a car or truck coming down the road. He wanted a smoke but knew he had to wait. The light was getting stronger all the time and he wondered how long she’d stay gone. And where would she go? Far as he knew she didn’t have any place to go. No place but back home.
He kept sitting there and waiting for the right shot. Two climbed into the tree he was sitting under, but he didn’t turn his head to see where they went. Most of them were heading to a big hickory just down the hill and he began to wish he’d sat down closer to it. Or that he’d brought his shotgun. He just hated to shoot it down here since it was so loud. They were pretty tame and he wanted to keep them that way. If you could bring a .22 and kill one or two or three or four and pick them up quietly and then leave quietly, you could come back the next morning and do the same thing. They got wild when you made too much noise and hunted them too hard.
The sun was still twenty minutes away from rising above the woods beyond him when one stuck its head around the side of a white oak in front of him and sat there. He fastened the sights on its head and held his breath and pulled the trigger slowly. The rifle made a faint spat no louder than a small stick snapping and the squirrel dropped and fell. For a moment there was silence. A branch swished and drops of dew fell. He sat there for a few more minutes, until they got to jumping and barking again, and then he got up slowly and walked very quietly over to the base of the white oak and bent over and picked it up. In his black and corded hand he nestled its warm and furry little body. Pink brains drooped in a cluster from one ear. On a fat teat low on its belly a single drop of milk stood beaded like a pearl.
51
She didn’t answer the door on the first knock this time. She didn’t rush up the hall wearing a sexy red negligee either. Jimmy’s daddy wasn’t surprised. Jimmy’s daddy had to stand out there and wait. The porch light was off and it was already dark. The days were so much shorter now. Football games on all the time. Pretty soon they’d set the time back and then it would be dark by five o’clock. He had a beer in his hand and he didn’t know what the hell he was doing down here again. It wasn’t going to help anything. But he just felt like he needed to come see her. He felt like it was the least he could do. And it was so hard to talk to her at the plant. All those people watching. Probably whispering behind their backs.
He’d been working on his ’55 earlier in the afternoon, and it was cool enough that he’d worn a long-sleeved flannel shirt. He had on a clean one now. Her car was sitting beside the house, so he guessed she was home. He knocked again. He’d had to put a new belt on his generator and they’d had a hard time finding the proper one at AutoZone, and Rusty had taken off this afternoon, they said, so Jimmy’s daddy had walked up and down the aisles and looked at spark plugs and oil filters and floor mats while he was waiting for them to find the belt. And that wasn’t a bad thing to have to do. It was good to keep up with all the new products you wished you could afford. He wished he had enough money to buy whatever he wanted, to take one of those yellow plastic baskets at the front door and walk all over the whole store and load it up with Armor All, and GOJO, and STP, and that stuff you used to get bugs and road tar off the bumper, and socket sets, and Turtle Wax, and new windshield wiper blades, and anything else you needed. It didn’t look like he was going to be able to afford those Keystone mags from Gateway now. Johnette had been forced to take out another personal loan with her bank to pay for Jimmy’s teeth since he was going to need more dental work. And she was talking about maybe taking a part-time job, maybe calling down to Taylor Grocery to see if they needed anybody else to wait tables on the weekends. He hated for her to have to do that. But it might be for the best. Hell. Health insurance kept going up. Groceries. Everything kept going up except his paycheck.
A car came slowly up the street and Jimmy’s daddy hid his beer in front of him in case it was a cop. He was almost broke from having to pay the fine for having beer in a dry county over at New Albany. He’d even been wondering if maybe he needed to sell the ’55 and get something else. It always had something going wrong with it and he spent about half his off time working on it. And half his money buying parts for it. They loved seeing him come in up at AutoZone. He’d fixed no telling how many things on it already. It was hard on water pumps for some reason, and the brushes kept wearing out in the generator. And it took a couple of hours to take it off and disassemble it and put new brushes in, and then put it back on, hook the belts back up. It had some kind of electrical problem in it somewhere that caused it to blow fuses pretty often, and sometimes he didn’t know what to do to it and could waste a whole afternoon out there in the gravel in front of the trailer messing with it. But he had to have a ride to work every morning. He had to have something he could depend on. He’d noticed that Johnette’s little Toyota never gave her a minute’s trouble. But he didn’t like driving something that came from Japan. It didn’t seem American.
He knocked again and he heard something, he couldn’t tell what it was. He guessed he needed to get on home after he talked to Lacey for a while. He wanted to see how she was doing. And find out what she was going to do. He’d been thinking about it every day, at work and when he was riding around, and he couldn’t see any way around her getting an abortion. It was the only thing that made any sense. It was the only thing that would undo what had been done. Get rid of it. People did it all the time. It wasn’t like it was anything new.
Through the curtain he saw her coming down the hall. He lifted his beer and took another sip. He didn’t really know what to say to her. He guessed he’d wait and see how it went. He hoped it would go okay, but he was afraid it wouldn’t. He was afraid she’d start crying again.
He saw her wipe at her eyes before she opened the door. She swung it back and pushed open the screen door and stood there in a short kimono he’d seen her wear before. It was made from black silk and it had red dragons on it and he liked the feel of it. There was no doubt that she’d already been crying. Her eyes were red. He stood there waiting.
“Hey,” she said. Sniffled.
“Hey,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “How you doing?”
“I’m doing all right,” she said real softly. And: “Come on in.”
“You want a beer?” he said.
“They’s still some here,” she said. He caught the screen door with his hand and went on in, and she stood there and waited and then shut the other door behind him. He thought maybe she’d kiss him, but she didn’t. She just turned and started back down the hall. Her house was old and huge and she’d told him once that it was almost paid for. He followed her back to the kitchen, watching her sturdy legs. She opened the refrigerator door and turned to him.
“You need anything?” she said.
“I’m good,” he said. He lifted his beer. He started to walk over there and kiss her, but he didn’t know if she wanted that or not. It was hard to tell what kind of mood she was in. She reached in for a bottle of orange juice and set it on the table.
“Just let me get me some juice,” she said. “Then we can go in my bedroom and talk. You sure you don’t want me to fix you something? I got some good bourbon.”
“Aw yeah?” Jimmy’s daddy said. “You got any Coke?”
“I got plenty of Coke,” she said. And then she walked to him with her lower lip quivering and she put her arms around him. He had to set his beer on the table so that he could put his arms around her. He could feel her breasts shaking against him and it caused him to start getting hard. This, too, had been in the back of his mind all the time. For days. At work. Riding the roads. Lying in his bed at night next to Johnette. Twisting on a greasy bolt with his head up under a Towmotor and thinking about John Wayne P
ayne. […]
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said, and Jimmy’s daddy stood there holding her and rubbing her back. She turned her mouth up and kissed him and slipped his cap off. He heard it hit the floor. And then his hands went to her breasts and she started breathing harder and touching him. […] And in just a few minutes they were back in her bedroom with their clothes off fucking their brains out and she was telling him to come, that it wouldn’t hurt anything now, that she wanted to feel him come inside her, that she needed it. Needed him. And at that moment, he needed her, too. Or at least he needed whatever she wanted to give him. Maybe for the last time. Much later she put her kimono back on and he put his pants and T-shirt back on and she mixed him a drink in the kitchen. It was a little after ten. Probably time for him to get on. Where was he going to say he’d been this time? It got old, having to think up lies. It was almost more trouble than it was worth. It didn’t seem that way before. But it always did after.
From a chair at the kitchen table he watched her tip the bourbon over the ice cubes in the glass. She had those old-timey ice trays made from aluminum, with a handle built in to break the ice loose. She reached for a Coke from the refrigerator, which looked like a pretty new one. She had lots of nice things in her house. She had nice furniture and a nice stereo, and her freezer and refrigerator were always full of good things to eat. She’d made him some spaghetti once, the best he’d ever had. With buttered garlic bread. He’d wanted to ask her if she knew how to make chili but had held off. He’d told her once about his mama and his daddy cooking chitterlings in the kitchen and she said she’d always liked hers fried.
She’d made the drink in a tall water glass and now she brought it to him and set it down beside him. She pushed an ashtray close to him.
“Thanks,” he said, and took a sip from the drink. It was good, too. Just right.
“You want to set in here or go up to the living room?” she said.