He held his hands up in front of him. “Hey man, I was just asking. I got beer too. I ain’t judging.”
“Different song than you was singing yesterday then,” Jeptha said, finishing off the sixth beer and feeling, finally, a calm begin to creep over him.
“I wasn’t judging then either. I’m your friend.”
Jeptha was silent. He kept seeing Bobby and Deanna walk over that fence and try to pretend like they hadn’t gone behind his back. The beer was helping, but it wasn’t ever going to get rid of it. He was screwed. He’d never be able to make a good life for Lucy.
“Bobby and Deanna went on, bought that land across the road. Didn’t even bother to tell me. So now, our farm is huge, but I only got a third of a third of it.”
“Oh, hell. That sucks. Is that why …” Cody said, looking down at the beer.
“Seemed like the only thing I could do.”
Cody shrugged. “Guess so.”
HUNTING WAS SLOW business, and today was no exception. Four hours after Cody climbed up into the stand, they’d seen one doe, who’d scampered as soon as the wind shifted in her direction. The only thing they’d bagged was enough beer to leave Jeptha comfortably drunk and Cody buzzed. As dusk came on, Cody packed up.
“You going?” Jeptha asked.
“Ain’t nothing coming out tonight,” Cody said. “Besides we gotta go play.”
“What?”
“It’s Friday. We got the gig at Judy’s tonight?”
“Oh, shit. Right.”
“You’ll be there? Judy’s getting pissed you keep missing. Frankly, man, it’s startin’ to annoy me too.”
“That’s about all I hear these days … I’ll be there,” Jeptha said, popping open the second-to-last beer in his case. He shook his head. Judy was one more person on the long list of people making him angry.
“Sure you don’t want to come with me? I’ll give you a ride.”
“Get on out of here, Cody. I’m fine.”
“I’ll see you there. Right?”
“I’ll be there. You don’t need to babysit me.”
“All right, man. Mind you don’t shoot me on the way down the hill.”
Thirty minutes later, the sun was nearly gone, the case was empty, and Jeptha was getting cold. He moved to grab up some of the cans around his feet when he heard something move in the brush, something big. He paused for a minute, thinking it was Cody come back for something, but then that buck, the huge fourteen-pointer, stepped proudly out of the woods, his antlers flashing white against the darkened ground. Jeptha watched him—all his anger with his family and his life raging in his chest as he saw an animal walk with more pride than Jeptha had ever had. He lifted his rifle and sighted through the scope, the deer’s shoulder moving up and down in the crosshairs as Jeptha’s hands swayed with beer. He took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.
The shot wasn’t even close. The deer didn’t dart away like every other deer in the world would have. Instead, the buck eyed Jeptha with a still, haughty look in which Jeptha could only read disdain before slowly and majestically picking his way into the brush and disappearing from view.
22
LUCY CHECKED THE DOOR every five minutes starting at seven o’clock. She’d been nervous leaving Jeptha after the morning at the playground. She knew he was in a dangerous place, all shaky and needing—not wanting—a drink. But she’d said her piece, told him this was his last chance. She didn’t know if he could see it through, but she hoped so. For now, though, she’d settle for him showing up for tonight’s gig, and they’d go from there.
At 7:30, the door opened, and Cody banged into the doorjamb as he walked through it. She waited for Jeptha to follow after, but the door stayed closed. She watched as he set his banjo down and started setting up—he dropped the mic three times before he finally got it in the stand and then accidentally kicked his banjo off the chair where he’d laid it down. When he laughed, she knew he was drunk.
“Jeptha coming?” she asked him. Cody looked down at her from the stage and instantly sobered up.
“He said he was, Lucy. I swear.”
She nodded and bit down on her bottom lip so hard it bled. There weren’t words for how pissed she was.
“He like you? Drunk?”
Cody wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Y’all can get your own damn drinks tonight. Don’t seem like you’re going to need one, but if you do, don’t you dare ask me for it,” she hissed.
JEPTHA NEVER SHOWED. She stopped looking after the first set. If any part of her had any doubts about this being his last chance, it was gone. This was it. She was terrifyingly angry at Jeptha, but also at herself. She hated herself for all of it. For getting in the car to have drunken sex with him two years ago, for telling him about the baby afterward, for letting herself fall in love with him, but most of all, for the naïve belief that she couldn’t let go of—the notion that having a family might mean something, that having a kid together could correct someone’s basic personality, could change his DNA.
“You can go on, Lucy,” Judy said at 11:30. The bar had quieted down, and Lucy was trying to keep her tears at bay by cleaning. All she wanted to do was hold Jared, hear his little breaths against her neck, and pack up everything.
“You sure?”
“I got this. Go on. I’m sorry, about Jep—well, I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Lucy choked out. She grabbed her bag, tapping the spot on the bar in front of Delnor on her way out to let him know that he, at least, was forgiven.
LouEllen was still up, watching TV when Lucy came through the door.
“How is he?” Lucy asked.
“He’s fine. He was tired tonight.”
Lucy nodded and put her hand on LouEllen’s shoulder on her way to Jared’s room. She eased the door open and stood over him in the crib. He slept like a bomb had gone off: on his back, his arms over his head and his legs splayed. But his chest rose with a regularity that Lucy always found comforting to watch. She could hear his little nose bring air in and then whistle it forcefully back out. Finally, when she couldn’t stand not holding him another second, she eased her hands under him and picked him up. He stirred and mewed for a second, like a kitten might. She settled him on her chest in the chair and rocked back and forth, singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” until he settled back into a deep sleep.
“It’s you and me,” she whispered to him. “Just you and Mama. And that’s enough.” For the first time, she heard the truth of those words. Her family was this baby. He was all she needed. She’d been a fool to look for more.
Lucy looked up and saw LouEllen silhouetted against the crack of the door. “And LouEllen too,” Lucy whispered. She heard LouEllen laugh softly behind her.
“You gonna take him tonight, or do y’all want to stay here?” LouEllen whispered.
“I’m going take him home tonight. But we’ll be back tomorrow, if that’s okay. Then I’ll figure out what to do next.”
“You sure?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “It’s time.”
23
JEPTHA VAGUELY REMEMBERED GETTING out of the tree stand, although it seemed to have been a much more rapid descent than it should have been. He remembered getting to his car and realizing he’d forgotten the box of bullets for his gun but deciding to leave it. And he sort of remembered driving thirty minutes out of his way, all the way to the county line, to buy a handle of whiskey, but he didn’t remember drinking some of it while he drove down the highway, or pulling into his driveway past 1:00 in the morning, or hitting his dad’s car again. And he certainly didn’t remember passing out, the bottle in one hand and his rifle in the other. All he knew for sure when he woke up with the sun beating down on him was that he was drunk, still pissed, and felt for the first time like he knew what people meant when they talked about hitting rock bottom.
The sun hurt his brain where it came through the one eye that had actually opened when he commanded it to. He closed them both again to
make the world stop spinning. Then he pawed at them, trying to get the sleep out, but found his eyelashes on one side were matted together. Once he’d cleared the debris, he rolled his head over to one side and saw his dad’s car off the blocks again. He was home. That much, at least, was good. He thought of Lucy, of the damage he’d done. The memory of the buck from last night pierced his drunken haze. That look. It was the same one he was sure Lucy would give him when he saw her. Neither one had any use for the man Jeptha was. Nor should they.
He eased himself out of the car, offering God a silent thank you for allowing him to do so without falling in a heap on the ground. He was still wearing his camo long john shirt and a pair of jeans. He stood and stretched, then ducked back in to grab his gun. His bibs were in the trunk. He got them out, raised them to his nose, and quickly threw them up near the stairs to his trailer. They stunk to high heaven. No deer would come within five hundred yards of him wearing those. He’d have to go to the Laundromat later.
Walking back to his car, he heard voices down by Deanna’s house. He squinted in that direction and saw Deanna and Bobby talking with a man in a suit. It took him a minute to realize it was Lawyer Tom, who’d represented him on a drunk driving charge four years ago. Jeptha still owed him money. Jeptha was sober enough to realize the lawyer hadn’t come out on a Saturday for an old closed case like his. He was out for the land deal—they were probably closing today, those cheating sons of bitches.
Jeptha stalked down the hill, wishing as he did that Crystal Gayle was there to lean against. She always helped him stay in a straight line. He knew he was weaving from side to side but couldn’t help himself. All that mattered was getting there, telling this lawyer what was going on.
“What are y’all doing?” Jeptha asked when he was close enough.
The three turned toward him suddenly, so occupied in their talk they hadn’t even seen he was coming. He noticed Lawyer Tom stepped quickly out of the way.
“What are you doing with that?” Bobby asked, nodding at Jeptha’s hand.
Jeptha looked down, surprised to see he still had his gun in his hand. It was unloaded, he was sure of it, even if he didn’t distinctly remember doing it, but still, he put the butt down in the grass and held the barrel up to the sky.
“Went hunting yesterday. Just cleaning up,” he said. “What are you doing here, Mr. Jenkins?”
“Seeing if we can close this deal today.”
“You mean the land across the street? The land what they bought without letting me know?”
“I … I don’t know about that. I’m just here to figure out the paperwork.”
“You’re doing it, huh?” Jeptha asked Bobby.
Bobby was silent.
“We don’t owe you nothing, Jeptha,” Deanna spat. “I don’t know why you think we were supposed to cut you in on this. Everybody in town knows you don’t have money to pay for it. We’re supposed to give it to you free? The world don’t work like that.”
“Interesting you mention free. The thing I can’t figure is where you’re getting the cash from,” Jeptha said. “I mean, you said the tobacco barely cleared nothing this year. And I can’t figure that neither.” Jeptha turned to the lawyer. “You know anything about that, Lawyer Tom?”
He held up his hands in front of him. “Now, Jeptha, I don’t know anything about y’all’s family dealings. I just know Bobby’s waiting on his check from RJR for eighteen …”
Jeptha was listening to him and watching Bobby shake his head back and forth more and more violently. Finally, the lawyer saw it. His voice trailed off.
“Eighteen, huh?” Jeptha said, rounding on Bobby until he was up in his face. “Your share is eighteen thousand dollars? And what’d you say mine was gonna be again—about three thousand dollars?”
Jeptha’s anger was all-consuming. He knew in his bones they’d been cheating him, knew he deserved more for all that work, knew it couldn’t be right to be so broke after breaking his back working on that damn field all spring and summer. And here, finally, was the proof. He waved his hands around, the rifle coming with him.
“Whoa, Jeptha!” the lawyer said, his hands up again as he ducked his head.
“Don’t talk to me like some damn animal needing to be broke. I don’t need to be reined in,” Jeptha yelled.
“Why don’t you put the gun down?” the lawyer said.
“It ain’t loaded. You think I’m an idiot? That I’d be out here waving around a loaded gun?”
He raised his eyebrows and held Jeptha’s gaze, the look on his face making it clear he had no doubt Jeptha was capable of waving around a loaded weapon. Finally, he looked to Bobby and said, “Seems like y’all got some stuff to figure out here. I’m gonna head on.”
“Yeah, Lawyer Tom, why don’t you? We got more than a few things to talk about,” Jeptha said.
“Bobby, I’ll see you later. Jeptha, be careful.”
As soon as Lawyer Tom had driven down the driveway, Jeptha rounded on his siblings. “Eighteen thousand dollars, Bobby? How’d you manage that? And, Deanna, how much did you get? You came out in the field, what, once?”
“You got your fair share, Jeptha,” Deanna said.
“Deanna, you wouldn’t know a fair share if it bit you in the ass. You’ve never even touched a tobacco leaf, and you still get twenty-five percent.”
“I put up this land—it’s part mine,” she said, her red-taloned hand jutting out from her hip.
“What else would you do with it?”
“Sell it, if I had my way. I only keep it so y’all can farm on it.”
“Yeah, I can see how it must be real tough to stay out here collecting rent for doing nothing.”
“Jeptha, the only one out here doing nothing is you. And you know what? For your information, I get forty percent. I put up the down payment on the land next door, and I make the payments to the bank so this place doesn’t get sold out from under us. How’s that for a fair share?”
“Deanna, hush,” Bobby said quietly.
“Forty? Forty?” Jeptha was dumbfounded. He had never in a million years imagined that Deanna got any more than twenty-five percent of what they made each year.
“So, what … Bobby and I split the other sixty?” Bobby still hadn’t looked up from the ground, still hadn’t made eye contact with Jeptha. For a guy who used to talk a lot of game, he’d been silent as a mouse these last few minutes.
“Bobby …” Jeptha said, a note of pleading creeping into his voice. He expected this of Deanna, but of Bobby? He knew they weren’t close, but he felt betrayed by his brother. “I got a wife, a kid.”
“Jeptha, you are dumb as a rock. Y’all don’t split that. Bobby takes the other fifty. You get ten. And that’s only ’cause Bobby argued we should. I voted for nothing,” Deanna said.
Ten percent. That’s all his brain could see. 1-0. He got next to nothing out of a farm that he broke his back for. Ten percent was why his wife had to kill herself working all damn day, why his son lived in hand-me-downs, why they stretched out his diaper changes for as long as they could. Far as Jeptha could tell, ten percent was why his life was total shit. His eyes were full of tears, his throat too choked to speak.
He picked up his gun, careless with it now, too angry to even care. “Y’all is as bad a people as I’ve ever met. You’re lucky this gun ain’t loaded, or I’d shoot you myself.”
Jeptha turned away from them and walked right into one of the kids’ bikes, abandoned hastily on the grass. Sober, he’d have been able to save himself, but drunk and angry as he was, he couldn’t stop the fall. He went flying, the gun too, and as he face-planted into the grass, he heard a crack near his head, a shot from his apparently still-loaded rifle flying out wild over the farm.
24
LUCY HAD WOKEN UP with a smile on her face. Her decision was made. It was time to say goodbye to the vision of family she’d been toting around for too many years to count. She stretched in bed and turned over to look at her phone, only to see it
was 7:30 and Jared was still asleep, or at least quiet. She felt better then about coming home last night. He got to sleep in his own bed one last time, and she could pack up her stuff and, most importantly, say goodbye to Jeptha. She didn’t have to do that, but she wanted to. She was oddly unfazed by the confrontation that was coming, as unpleasant as she knew it would be. She was ready. It was time for her to be her own family—her and Jared. She thought of Knoxville then, a dream that had seemed impossible a year ago, but for some reason now felt back in her reach. If she wanted to go to college, she’d have to go. She and Jared would make it work, somehow.
She had expected to see Jeptha passed out on the couch when she came into the kitchen, but he wasn’t there. Instead, Jared was paging through a book she’d left in his crib, talking to himself.
“Mama!” Jared yelled, tossing his book aside and quickly pulling himself up. He held his arms out to her. “Mama, Mama, Mama!”
She picked him up and held him against her. He tucked his curly little head into her neck and rested it there, his breath soft against her shoulder.
“Hey, buddy,” she murmured. “You ready for our big day?”
“Mama,” Jared answered.
“I’m gonna take that as an okay,” she said and took him into the bathroom with her, where she turned on the water. It was her last shower in this house, the last time she’d be in this bathroom, where her son was born. She swallowed back tears, tracing the dog-shaped image on the fake marble that had gotten her through labor. It had never occurred to her that it’d be hard to say good-bye to this space, with its broken accordion door, tilted toilet, and tiny shower, but there it was. You can miss anything, even a shitty little trailer bathroom, if given enough time and memories.
Before she stepped behind the curtain, she said, “Mama’s gonna get a shower. I’ll be right out. Then we’ll pack our stuff, say goodbye to Daddy, and go.”
“Oh!” he said.
“That’s right! Go.”
The day called for celebrating. She poured a larger-than-usual dot of her orange shampoo into her palm and breathed in the scent before rubbing it into her hair. She peeked out at Jared, her hair piled on top of her head, and said, “Boo!” He laughed. She hid again and poked her head back out.
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