The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

by Christopher Scotton

  Miner’s eyes.

  Chapter 9

  THE DEAD MULE

  Kevin, out of bed,” Pops yelled that Friday from the bottom step. “We’ve got two calls today and only half a morning to do them.” I rolled onto the worn pine floor Pops had laid himself years ago; washed, dressed, and hustled down the hall, stopping quietly at my mother’s door. We had been in Medgar exactly four weeks and she had made no progress, standing, as she was, alone in the room, in her robe, mulling over the faded Glassville Rotary Club banner on the wall and the ballerina music box that had belonged to her mother, the hair ribbon holder and the ribbons washed by the years into a sepia rainbow, the ceramic bowl she made in pottery class and the three dried rose heads it held. These, and the many other favors and trifles a girl keeps to hand, all of it suspended in the room like a box of time. She reached for one of her old charcoals of Main Street, then pulled back as if it was electrified. I couldn’t look at her anymore and continued to the kitchen.

  “We’ve got a full schedule, so eat some cereal quick and meet me in the truck,” Pops said and disappeared out the kitchen door and into the vet shed. I gulped my Cheerios and was in the cab before him.

  For three weeks Pops had been taking me on calls around the county, and I was beginning to feel a confidence that only comes from doing—a familiarity of task that allowed me to assist without being asked.

  I knew to hand him the pick instead of the nippers when examining pony hoof; I instinctively reached for the antiseptic spray after suture tie-off; I automatically locked my legs around a goat head when he was checking for blowfly. It seemed Pops was actually starting to depend on me, actually starting to need me.

  “First stop, Beaver Hollow,” he said as he backed carefully into the deserted street. We drove through town, then after a few miles, turned left on Route 27, then onto a dirt road that snaked through a thick hollow.

  The woods were empty for the first mile, until we began passing disturbing signs of life: the hood of an ancient truck, holes buckshot through it; sculptures of rusted metal tubes from an old swing set; a naked baby doll with an arm missing; a discarded washer with the wringers still attached; an old four-footed tub filled with rusted chains; kitchen trash everywhere; someone’s dirty underwear.

  “Who are we seeing up here?”

  “Senator Budget’s lame mule.”

  The road suddenly became a cul-de-sac servicing seven houses in competing degrees of disrepair. Chickens guarded the apron to the first three houses and skittered a safe distance as we rolled past. Dogs and goats ambled about, eyeing us and offering lackadaisical barks and bleats. The houses were a throw of mobile homes, trailers, double-wides, and prefabs. Dotted between them was a collection of cars and tractors that seemed arrayed in order of breakdown. Rusted burn barrels smoldered with yesterday’s garbage. Four satellite dishes, like giant meadow spoor, brought the world to Beaver Hollow. A mob of dirty, half-naked children ran shoeless into the road.

  “It doesn’t look like a senator lives here.”

  Pops laughed. “Senator is only his first name. One of his brothers is named Governor. I guess I can’t fault his father for having high expectations.”

  We pulled into the driveway of a blockish, one-story prefab, too square to be called a mobile home, too simple to be called anything else. Broken wrought-iron rail around the front porch. Rusted chain-link fence, fencing nothing in particular. Behind his house by the barn were two decayed cars from the sixties. An engine rusted on the ground; milkweed and a sapling grew through one of the engine voids. A huge sycamore tree shaded most of the backyard. A brown wirehaired hound was tied to a poplar out front.

  Pops put his arm on the seat top and turned to me. “One thing you have to understand about the Budgets; they aren’t like the rest of us. Most people in Missi County are simple country folk—hardworking, some education, God-fearing. The Budget clan is different.”

  “How are they different? Don’t they work hard?”

  “How can I explain this?” Pops thought for a moment. “The Budgets generally don’t go to school past the tenth grade; they live off the land, get handouts, and work the mines and odd jobs to make up the rest. They’ve been living in this hollow for almost one hundred years, marrying each other and having each other’s babies. The gene pool is getting a bit shallow.”

  We exited the truck and walked up to the house. An obese woman in a dirty pink tank top and light blue stretch polyester shorts sat shoeless on the front porch reading the Weekly World News and straining an aluminum lawn chair to its absolute limits. Her upper arms were the size of salted hams, her head like a pumpkin on a stump.

  The porch was choked with old appliances: a broken air-conditioning unit; the shell of an old TV; a cracked cooler; a refrigerator without a door, everything stacked inside it.

  “Morning, Lucille,” Pops said on the second step. “Sen asked me to come by and look at your mule.”

  She considered us for a moment and turned to the open front window as much as her considerable neck would allow, cigarette clenched safely in the right side of her mouth. “Sen,” she yelled, “Dr. Peebles’s here,” and went back to her magazine. No response from the house. She pulled the cigarette out of her mouth, turned even farther. “Sen! Git out here.” Still no response. “Damn him,” she said to herself and threw the magazine on the floor, slowly pushing up from the chair. It rose with her, sticking to her skin for the first ten inches, then clattered back to the porch. She turned and waddled into the house mumbling, the back of her cordwood thighs crosshatched in red welts from the chair. Knees rubbing soundlessly together with each step, lubricated by sweat. Pops leaned against the wrought-iron rail as I looked over at the dog under the tree.

  “I’m comin, woman… you watch your lip,” came a menacing aside from Sen Budget before he burst through the screen door and into the morning sunshine, closing one eye to the light.

  He was small. A head shorter than Pops, with pallid skin, highlighted by black, greasy hair, freshly combed for company. His high pockmarked cheeks and hard-cut chin dissolved into dingy gray from relentless stubble. A jutting Adam’s apple. Pops said Sen’s older brothers had bullied the humor from him long ago, leaving runt bones covered in thin skin. Eyes as warm as the black glass in a stuffed buck head.

  “Mornin, Dr. Peebles.”

  “Morning, Sen, how’s your mule?”

  “Poorly. Broke her leg in a gopher hole haulin trees over Hintons Creek. Almost had to shoot her right there.”

  “Well, let’s see what we can do.” We walked around to the back of the house near a squat barn where the mule was sitting forlornly on its hindquarters, broken foot held slightly off the ground. Two naked girls no older than four were playing in the dirty water of an inflatable wading pool under the sycamore. Pops felt the break. The mule jerked its foot away.

  “Mr. Budget, may I use your bathroom?” I said, suddenly realizing I had forgotten to pee in the morning’s rush.

  His black eyes considered me for the first time. “Down the hall past the livin room,” he said. I ran up the back steps and into the filthy kitchen. Stacks of dishes competed for sink space. The overflow covered the faded Formica countertop, crisscrossed with knife cuts. A ring of garbage spilled around a fifty-gallon trash can.

  I hurried through the brown-paneled living room, down the brown-paneled hall, and pushed into the first brown door on the left.

  It was the smell that hit me first. Even before I realized that I was in the wrong room, it was the smell. Old. Unwashed and unwanted as dog-pissed newspaper brought up from a damp basement.

  An emaciated man with sunken cheeks and chiseled eyes lay on the narrow bed in the room, a patchwork throw pulled up to his chest, arms pinned beneath, edges tucked tight under the mattress. A tube ran from each nostril. Oxygen bottle and a soiled bedpan on the floor by the bed. His eyes were closed, mouth half-open in a terrible gape. Chest laboring infantlike breaths, quiet and quick. He opened his eyes slowly and tur
ned to me, mouth still ajar.

  He was tired. I could tell just breathing made him tired. His collarbones competed with his Adam’s apple for unnatural distinction. Sen Budget’s Adam’s apple.

  I was statued, unable to back out of the room or even explain my mistake. He continued watching me. Plastic flowers in a beer pitcher on the windowsill; Rorschach-stained window shade pulled down behind it. Peeling wallpaper in the corner and a worn maroon shag carpet, the shags burring like clotted blood.

  “Um… the bathroom. I… I thought it was in here.”

  He continued to stare at me, breathing small and soft so as not to waste his dwindling allotment of air. I backed slowly out of the room; his eyes followed me in a helpless gaze until they were gently closed by the door. I found the bathroom with its old toilet. Rust ring in the bowl and sink. I peed, flushed, and tiptoed past the mistaken door, feeling his eyes on me still.

  Miner’s eyes.

  “What the fuck you doin here, homo?” It was Tilroy, the fat bully from two weeks ago at the tree house. He was shirtless in his bedroom doorframe, pink stretch marks feathering the sides of his dough belly.

  I froze, felt like I’d been caught rifling a secret closet. “Nothing, I was just going to the bathroom,” I stammered. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here, fuckface.”

  “I’m just helping my grandfather; he’s looking at a hurt mule,” I added. That seemed to soften Tilroy just a little.

  “Agnes?”

  “Who?”

  “The mule, dipshit. Agnes. You’re here to fix her?”

  “Uh, yeah. My grandfather does the fixing—I’m his assistant, though,” I said proudly.

  His black eyes seemed to gather up light, his face relaxed, and his voice became plaintive, hopeful. “She broke her leg an it’s all kinds a painful. Your grandaddy’s gotta fix her. He’s good, ain’t he?”

  “He’s the absolute best.”

  Tilroy’s smile was a nearly imperceptible upward twitch. “You wanna see my crossbow pistol?” He motioned for me to follow him into his bedroom.

  I hesitated. “I think I’d better get back outside. My grandfather may need my help.”

  “It’ll jus take a second. I ain’t gonna shoot you or nuthin.” He chuckled in a way that offered me no assurance.

  I looked down the brown-paneled hall to see if Pops had come looking for me, then followed him into the bedroom. The room was Spartan, with a simple single bed pushed against the wall, a dirty coiled rug on gray particle-board floor. A work desk at the foot of the bed fashioned from cut plywood laid across two sawhorses. The walls were covered in black-and-white heavy-metal music posters: Slayer, Metallica, Dokken. As I moved closer I could see that the posters were charcoal and pencil drawings, not photographs.

  “Where did you get all these drawings?”

  “You like Slayer?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “I copied that one from a picture I saw in Metal Head.” He pointed to the Metallica drawing. “That’s from the album with ‘The Four Horsemen.’ ”

  “You drew all these?”

  He nodded. The workmanship and detail in the drawings were truly spectacular. It was hard to tell them from a photograph.

  “Who taught you how to draw like this?” I asked with a half laugh. I was amazed and perplexed that such talent was housed in the same mind as the bully I knew.

  “Nobody taught me nuthin. I jus do it.”

  “Seriously, these are really, really good.”

  “These ain’t even the best. Hang on.”

  He moved to the closet and pulled back the curtain, then knelt, digging into the far corner under a pile of clothes. He stood and turned slowly around. He was holding a long, thin metal box, the size of two briefcases. He put it on the worktable, unbuckled the hasps, and gently opened the lid. Inside was a full array of pencils, brushes, pastels, paints, every bit of art gear imaginable, perfectly ordered in row upon row. The bounty of art supplies seemed completely out of place among the meager surroundings. In a sleeve in the top he gingerly pulled out a large pencil drawing. It was a picture-perfect rendition of the inside of Miss Janey’s, with Mr. Paul standing in front of the bank of cutting stations, arms crossed, smiling wide.

  “Wow, it looks exactly like him.”

  Tilroy was beaming now, his face inviting. “He got me this artist set so I tole him I’d draw him up. Gonna make it all color an stuff. Maybe he’ll hang it up the shop. That would be cool… professional sorta.” He gently brushed a cluster of dust off the drawing.

  “Man, you should go to art school or something.”

  “That’s what Mr. Paul says. He even talked to my daddy bout it.” Tilroy looked down at the drawing again and the smile left him; his eyes went cold. “I ain’t gonna go, though. Art school is for pussies.”

  We were awkwardly silent now. Finally I said, “Look, I really gotta get back to my grandfather. He probably needs my help.” I started to drift out of the room. Tilroy was still standing at the table running his fingers gently down the line of colored pencils. “I’m gonna go outside now,” I said again. But he was already off somewhere to a world where art supply suitcases were celebrated and husky, awkward kids didn’t have to kill deer or race cars or say nigger or get whipped. “I’m gonna…” I stepped through the door and ran down the hall out into the thick morning.

  Pops was explaining the mule’s prognosis to Sen Budget. His hand chopped at the air for emphasis. “The cast would stay on for eight weeks, then just a splint for another four. She’ll be able to walk, but her hauling days are over.”

  Sen rubbed the back of his neck. The mule was still on its hindquarters, holding the broken foot in the air like a begging dog.

  “That ain’t gonna do. A mule what can’t haul ain’t much good, now, is she?”

  “No, Sen, I don’t suppose she is.”

  He grabbed the halter rope from the dirt and pulled the mule toward the barn. The mule refused. He pulled again and the mule dug deeper. A third time, with muscle. The mule didn’t move. Sen threw the rope down, mumbled something to himself, and walked purposefully toward the house and into the kitchen door. Pops watched him, puzzled. Thirty seconds later, he bounded from the door, walking stiffly toward us, his right arm taut as wire, big-barreled handgun hanging down past his knee. Lucille banged out after him, leaning against the iron rail, arm slabs taking the bright sun. Tilroy came out right after her. The two girls stopped playing in the pool and turned to see what was going on.

  I stood frozen as Sen clipped up to the crippled mule and put the long gun to her temple. Pops acted fast, grabbing me by the collar suddenly and jerking me from the line of the shot just as Sen pulled the trigger. The boom of the gun sent us both jumping. The bullet passed through the mule’s head, sending it sideways and breaking the only windowpane left in the barn. The gun recoiled past his right ear.

  Agnes shook her head as if a fly was buzzing it; blood fauceted from both holes. She placed her hooves on the ground for balance, then jerked her broken foot up, causing the good leg to slide slowly forward until she was prone in the dirt with the good leg splayed out front and the bad leg tucked under her body. Chin in a spreading blood pool; dust floating on the blood like miniature sailboats.

  The girls, standing now, held each other and wailed. I looked over at Tilroy, whose mouth was an O, eyes popped, hands on his shaking head. His face went scarlet.

  It was the first time I had ever seen any animal killed; it fascinated and frightened me at once. The air had taken on the consistency of water, and everyone’s movements seemed checked by the new aerodynamics.

  Sen watched the mule bleed, gun still at his ear. He brought the barrel down slowly, readying for another shot, when Pops stepped forward and wrenched it from his hand.

  “I think we’ve had enough gunplay for one morning.” Pops was in a boiling rage, his ears red. He pushed Sen back and emptied the remaining bullets from the gun and tucked the weapon into his
waistband.

  “Hey, you can’t just take a man’s gun like that. It’s my mule an I’ll do as I please.”

  Pops’ ears went white. “You goddamn idiot, you almost shot my grandson. Now you will do as I please. Go tend to your daughters.”

  “Don’t you be lettin that stand, Sen Budget,” Lucille bellowed from the back porch. She huffed off the steps into the dirt and wombled toward us. “Who the hell you think you is anyway, comin in here takin my husbin’s gun like that?” The girls began crying a fresh chorus.

  “Lucille, this is my bidness,” Sen barked.

  “Like hell it’s your bidness—my daddy give you that gun.” She turned to Pops. “Give me the gun, now.” Left hand planted on her substantial hip, the other held palm up to Pops.

  “Ma’am, you’ll get no such thing. You can pick the gun up at Sheriff Binner’s tomorrow. Kevin, let’s go.” Pops turned and strode to the truck. I followed quickly. Lucille stalked after us. The wirehaired hound yapped disapproval at the commotion.

  Tilroy came running over to his father, his face still flecked with scarlet, tears freshly wiped on his shirt. “Whoa, Daddy, that was cool.” His voice was a pitch higher than usual. “I ain’t never seen nuthin drop like that.”

  His father regarded him coolly, then smiled and gave him a high five. “I thought you were gonna be a pussy again.”

  Tilroy shook his head and blinked back tears, then shook his head again.

  Mrs. Budget began to rail into Pops. “You think you’re bettern everybody else; well, I’m callin the sheriff, is what I’m doin. That’s right, you get the hell outta here. This ain’t Russia—we got us rights.”

  Pops was silent and angry as we pulled onto the dirt road that led out of the Hollow with Lucille Budget’s tirade fading into the trees.

  “Pops, I mean, he just shot her! Right there in front of us. Shouldn’t we call the police or something? I mean, he shouldn’t be allowed to just do that. Should he?”