Whiskey

by Bruce Holbert

  Smoker continued his Wednesdays with them. He delivered the tavern news to Andre and to Claire a housebroken blue heeler pup. The dog slept on her pillow and watched Andre with unblinking eyes.

  The week following, Smoker cooked elk sausage and eggs. Afterward, Andre rinsed the dishes. He listened to Claire’s laughter. In the entryway where neither could see him, Andre watched the dog battle Smoker’s coat sleeve. Smoker tugged enough to elicit a growl. Next to them, Claire tucked her feet under her. Her color had improved and the skin on her face no longer appeared slack. The dog rested a moment then Smoker tapped Claire’s wrist like he was danger itself, and the dog lit into him and broke skin before Claire could encourage a retreat.

  Andre recalled the two of them dancing in the tavern last New Year’s Eve. Smoker requested permission and Andre was pleased to give it. His brother had been bucket man in the wet T-shirt contest an hour before, but dancing with Claire in the darkened room, he looked stately. Andre had seen it then as a pleasant moment, one as much his own as Smoker’s or Claire’s.

  That night Claire kissed his neck then his forehead. She was attired in her panties and his T-shirt, white with pockets because he preferred those without for himself. She parted the bedding then enveloped it around her. On her nightstand were framed photographs in two rows, mostly of himself and her, though one was Smoker displaying a trophy deer rack. Andre lurched enough for Claire to start. He wiped all save Smoker from the flat surface.

  “What’s gotten into you?” she asked.

  He steered her hips until she couldn’t see him. She turned to argue, and he slapped her haunches then twisted her hair and aimed her head at the photograph. He touched her mouth with his free hand, and she kissed his fingers and sucked them. They made damp streaks and traveled to her nipples. Her back muscles fluttered and her shoulders folded into his chest. He thrust his fingers inside her then his erect self and listened to her screech and cry.

  The next morning, he left for work before first light. His students greeted him, but he didn’t reply. He printed an assignment on the board that they could never finish in his hour. Through the window, he studied the cloudy sky and, under it, the passing traffic and crossing guards returning from their morning escorts. Andre held the position as a kid. The teachers made him lieutenant, which meant he got to boss three others. Smoker was two years behind and wouldn’t attend the morning meetings, so he was never considered. At an assembly near the end of the year, the principal awarded Andre a silver badge for completing the year with honors. It had been lost long since between his father’s and mother’s houses.

  After school, Claire took Andre in the stairwell, barely allowing the door to shut. Before bed, she backed into him on the couch, reaching behind herself to undo his belt. When she turned, he studied her face’s fine bones but failed to recognize her.

  The following day, Andre issued tests to every class. His students prodded him for hints, which, as a rule, he offered, but this day he volunteered none and told them they knew what he knew. His break, the teachers’ room was empty and he spent his preparation time correcting. On the wall, Claire’s school box held a month’s mail, mostly catalogues and memos from the district; he’d been afraid to disturb the contents until after she’d passed, then doubly so when he knew she didn’t. Below, the label’s raised letters held her first name followed by his own surname. It appeared to be spelled incorrectly but he could not find the mistake.

  He left school as soon as class ended. In his driveway Smoker’s truck rested, idling. When Smoker recognized Andre, he set the emergency brake and stepped from the cab. He extinguished his cigarette and pointed to his chin. “You better hit me till I quit getting up.”

  Andre walked past without answering. In the living room, Claire stood, dressed.

  “My brother’s in the driveway.”

  “Ignore him.”

  “Seems a little late for that.”

  “It’s a little late for a lot of things, goddamn you.” She shook her head then held it with both hands and cried. “It wasn’t good.” She fought to catch her breath. “Don’t leave,” she whispered. “Not now.”

  “I won’t,” he told her.

  “Let’s have another baby,” Claire said.

  Andre nodded. “Sure,” he said. “We’ll have a baby.”

  He filled a tall glass with the whiskey he’d hid from himself in the top cabinet and went outside to drink it. Claire didn’t follow. North were the reservation’s mountains and the country the river broke through. He sat staring at it. Later, the stars cleared above him. He blinked his lids until his eyes grew too murky to see through, leaving him blind and awake until, eventually, he was not. Morning, the light stunned him, and for a moment he forgot why he was there at all.

  13

  EXODUS

  August 1991

  Bird had wrapped both arms around Calvin, who steered past the camper to the house. If she recognized the truck, she didn’t let on. Calvin halted the scooter with his feet, then propped the kickstand. Calvin helped her down and Bird took his hand. He whistled and Smoker and Harold hastened to the porch. The mounted light left them in sharp relief. Andre lifted the rifle and peered through his scope. Calvin remained opposite the others, his back to Andre. Bird, though, ran to the steps toward Harold until she recognized Smoker next to him.

  “Get in the rig, honey,” Smoker said. “Time to go home.”

  She lowered her head. Harold disappeared inside and returned with her coloring book and a can filled with crayons. He offered them to her, but she shook her head no.

  Smoker extended his good hand and Bird took it. He limped toward the truck, Bird in tow, examining his bloody pant leg. Suddenly Calvin grabbed her other hand and tugged. Bird danced on her toes to keep from splitting in two.

  “The money!” Calvin shouted. He pulled with both hands. Smoker nearly tipped but held on. The money was in a gym bag behind the truck seat. Andre waited for Smoker to say so. He put the scope on them.

  “Calvin!” Harold shouted. Calvin let go of the girl, but he thrust his rifle butt across Smoker’s nose. Bird scampered for the truck.

  Calvin glared at Smoker. “Where’s your brother?”

  “I don’t know,” Smoker replied. He looked at his blood-spattered shirt.

  Perched atop his rock, Andre watched through the riflescope. He’d neglected the bear until he heard bushes thrash and branches pop. The grade’s thick underbrush quivered then a lower portion did the same. The dogs sounded. Andre lifted his rifle and shot three times, lifting the dirt under each animal until they retreated into the dark woods.

  The bear shambled into the light, roared then bent and shat. Bird peeked through the truck window. Smoker reached for his belt and pistol. Andre found Calvin just as Calvin shoved his rifle barrel into Smoker’s ear. Andre squeezed the trigger. Calvin’s cap jumped. His skull peppered Harold with blood and bone.

  Harold stroked the bloody hair out of Calvin’s eyes.

  “We never done nothing to you. Not one thing,” Harold shouted.

  “Get clear,” Andre warned.

  Harold wobbled into the shadows toward the barn. He lifted a bicycle from its rack and pedaled out of the light and Andre let him go.

  Smoker gimped to the truck, broken several places. The bear bawled and pawed a knot on his temple. Smoker and Andre dragged Calvin’s body into the camper. The bear followed as Bird looked on. Inside the cab, Smoker stuffed his nose with napkins and added another bandage to his ass. For his finger there was no medicine. Bird stroked his hand with hers. Andre took the wheel. The bewildered bear peered out the windows and Calvin banged across the narrow floor at every turn.

  The truck struggled over the road out and turned when Andre figured they had discovered one more traveled. He didn’t know why Smoker chose not to part with the money. Perhaps he thought he could manage both; perhaps he was tired of trading what wasn’t his; perhaps, too, he simply forgot.

  LAMENTATIONS

  Ja
nuary 1988

  The light shone on Smoker’s face from his brother’s half-curtained bedroom window. The rest kept to the shadows, as in movies.

  “You look like a Greek god,” Claire said. She lay naked beneath the sheets. Smoker had pulled on his underwear.

  “Which one?”

  Claire stared at the ceiling a moment. “Apollo, maybe,” she said.

  “He sleep with his brother’s wife?”

  She sighed. “They slept with their sisters even.”

  “I’d fit right in.”

  Smoker fished his cigarettes from his shirt on the floor and lit one, then let loose a smoky cloud.

  “What god’s he?”

  “Hephaestus,” she said. “His mother tossed him off Mount Olympus when he was born and crippled him. Work was all he was good for. He made Achilles’s armor.”

  Smoker stabbed the cigarette into the dregs of his brother’s morning coffee. The butt and ashes floated. A newspaper folded to the crossword lay next to the cup.

  “Between a buck and two. That’s Adams.”

  “There’s a pen in the drawer,” Claire told him.

  “He might recognize the handwriting.”

  “He’s not that observant.”

  “That’s a little unkind, ain’t it?” he said.

  “Seems we’re both open for some criticism where he’s concerned.” Claire propped herself on a pillow, revealing one smallish breast, the nipple as brown and unremarkable as the rest of her.

  Smoker wrote in the word.

  “I’m not stupid and I don’t confuse truth with fantasy,” Claire said. “This,” she patted the bed, “wasn’t love. You don’t have to chase me off with a list of my husband’s virtues.”

  “Truth what you want?” Smoker asked. “Truth is I wouldn’t’ve given you much consideration if you hadn’t been married to him.”

  “It seems that would be the one reason not to,” she said.

  “Seems.” Smoker studied the crossword and tapped the pen against the paper. On Claire’s nightstand were pill bottles in a line and a half-empty water glass. “How is your health?” he asked.

  Claire laughed.

  “You are going to live, I assume,” Smoker said.

  “The doctors think so.” Claire collected her clothes. Smoker watched her twist her socks on and fit each breast into its bra cup, then reach behind her back for the clasp. She unrolled her underwear and slipped it over her thighs, then buttoned her blouse, hands moving together like children’s fingers playing the spider-in-the-waterspout game.

  “You ever see anything die?”

  “Houseflies.”

  “Then you never killed anything?”

  “Houseflies,” she said again.

  “Something that could live ten, twenty years if you didn’t.”

  “No,” Claire said.

  “It don’t die right off.”

  “Dress, if he scares you,” Claire said.

  “He don’t scare me. He scare you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Then scared isn’t what I’m talking about, is it?”

  Claire had put the crossword in her lap. She chewed on a pen and counted squares, then slowly tore it into confetti over the garbage pail. Smoker lit another cigarette. He offered the butt end to Claire. She dragged then hacked out a lungful of smoke.

  “What’d you take it for, then?” Smoker asked her.

  Claire didn’t reply. Anybody not smoking thought cigarettes settled something in a person when they really just welcomed you to what was unsettled.

  “I could put a seven-millimeter round into an elk or deer heart eight times out of ten. Blow it to pieces. They’re still breathing and kicking, working to get loose.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Claire said.

  “I am,” Smoker admitted. “Let me try again. The deer or elk. It’s kicking and foaming.”

  “Does your story have a point?”

  “Animal ain’t ever been as alive as when it is dying.”

  “That how you see this?” Claire asked. “You and me shooting a bullet into him.”

  Smoker shook his head. “Andre’s been gutshot from birth.”

  “And now?”

  Smoker shrugged. “It seemed humane to finish him.”

  Claire laughed.

  “What?” Smoker asked.

  “Your humanity.”

  “You think this is playing my brother false?” Smoker asked. “I found you out.”

  “You really believe he’d see it like that?” Claire asked.

  “He will.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Because I know he’s more than work and thrown off a mountain.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “To him or you?”

  “It was unfair of me to say. I didn’t mean it.”

  “How come you said it, then? How come you undressed when I did?”

  “It was unfair of you to come here,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t see no gun against your noggin.”

  “You want my guilt just to cover up your own,” Claire said.

  “Nope,” Smoker said. “He’s done the feeling for the both of us. Made two stops at the confession box every week. Said double Hail Marys. I’ve always been sorry I couldn’t return the favor.”

  “Why this then?” Claire patted the bed. “Why me when there’s a line a block long for your attentions.”

  “I guess I been mad about it, too.”

  Smoker could stare a woman skittish or gaze one bold. The most beautiful in town unburdened themselves to him in long quiet talks until they felt like they owed him. The next day they’d come around grinning and wearing tight clothes, everybody in the place knowing why.

  “I just wanted it clear,” she said. “I wanted to know, not guess.”

  “Well, it figure now?”

  “Yes,” Claire told him. “But not the way I worried.” Claire looked at the cigarette still in her hand. “My husband is all I want.”

  “But you lacked faith.”

  “All right,” she whispered. “I lacked faith. But now I don’t.” Claire took his T-shirt and socks from the floor and set them next to his jeans. “He’ll be home soon,” she said. “You want him to know?”

  “He already knows,” Smoker told her.

  He watched her ash drop to the carpet and smolder. He was barefoot and let it be. Outside, a passing car disturbed the gravel. Smoker pulled his white T-shirt over his head. Claire handed him his pants and shoes.

  “Hurry,” she said. “Please. Hurry please.”

  14

  EXODUS

  August 1991

  Andre recognized trees and sky in the flat headlight beams. Hours passed. He watched for following lights and saw none. They ran out of road near dawn. A creek trickled across their path, sand on both banks. It was in its summer track, shallow and clear over a gravel bed and less than two feet deep. Andre and Smoker stopped and drank from it, then found a Styrofoam cup in the floor’s trash and filled it for Bird. Andre dished out a handful of aspirin and Bird fed them to Smoker who lapped the pills from her hand like an animal. She had said nothing since the mountain and Andre wondered if she’d surrendered speech for good. Smoker patted her head and she looked up at him with only doubt.

  Nothing remained but to cross the creek. Andre turned in the wheel hubs and shifted the truck into four-wheel drive. Water splashed the grille. Andre could hear it against the metal undercarriage. He opened the door to check if the exhaust was submerged. The motor coughed and he dropped the gas feed hard, jumping to higher ground. They drove the opposite bank fifty yards south, for no reason other than that the truck ended up pointed that direction, then rocked through a manageable break into a field and onto a road that led around one mountain then another and returned them to pavement. Smoker slept. Bird counted his breaths; Andre watched her mouth in the mirror. The radio played songs from the fifties and sixties.

  Hours later, Smoker as
ked, “What day is it?”

  “The day after yesterday,” Andre said. He caught himself in the rearview mirror. It was his own face staring back, not some wicked stranger.

  He no longer knew how to construct a reflection that didn’t include regret, and his brother, though he whistled by the graveyard admirably, handled such matters by simply not looking. Andre knew the earth would continue twirling them. He wondered if it stopped suddenly and reversed itself, if that would be a kind of forgetting he could do. He saw himself spitting whiskey into a glass, then pouring it in the bottle under the bar, then the hospital machines that sucked the last poison from Claire and the doctors feeding the child medicine until it was blood and fluid and free of them. He saw he and Claire unmeeting, even he and Smoker unfastened, his mother’s ovum and dad’s seeds uncoupling until the slate was clean and he was where he could place each safely where they needed to be.

  The highway looped between a cavalry fort and campground where the Spokane River met the reservoir. It climbed again into more wheat, reservation ranches, where the tillable soil remained wedged between the rock and draws that held pine stands too thick to hew and be profitable. They passed Fruitland—three houses and an abandoned service station—and drove onto an unimproved gravel road along a creek bed into a flat above. There Andre unhitched a wire gate and followed a rutted dirt track against the wheat’s edge. The sky had blued and the day warmed. They halted behind a piece of basalt and an enormous bull pine. Dark, he and Smoker dragged Calvin half a mile to a fallow dip. There they dug a grave seven feet deep in the soft earth and interred him.

  Andre discovered a tractor, keys in it, as was most farmers’ habit. He started it and lifted the cultivator so as not to cross its careful loops. At the grave, he dropped the hinges and turned the earth in the same concentric pattern covering their work only twice, recognizing that his conscience not his common sense pressed him to make another turn, and a thousand turns would never satisfy that portion of his mind.

  The evening sun spilled across the river bend before they returned to the car and he and Smoker and Bird repeated their path the opposite direction, then bearing north and east to the Gifford Ferry through Inchelium and into the Okanogan Mountains and the reservation and finally back to the coulee.