Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

by Tom Franklin

  Silas had been watching the sky.

  LARRY FINISHED THE grass just before noon, and for lunch his mother made him a potted meat and mayo sandwich with saltines on the side. He read a comic book at the table while he ate then drained his glass of Coke and thanked her and got his.33 from the gun cabinet in the hall and two boxes of cartridges and Stephen King’s short story collection Night Shift and, at the front door, called, “I’m going outside,” and let the screen door bang behind him, feeling her coming out behind him, watching him. As always, he headed toward Cindy’s house to throw her off, shoulder-strapped the Marlin and walked down along the road. Once around the bend he doubled back, went east.

  Because Silas had started playing baseball at school, Larry worried that he was losing him. He’d invited him to his house once, and they’d played in the barn and Silas had cut the grass, but he knew the black boy wouldn’t do that again. Maybe he could take him back through the woods, toward Cindy’s house. She’d been his secret, but maybe it was time to share her.

  Half an hour later he knelt at the edge of the woods, rifle unshouldered. From across the field he watched Silas standing on a pile of dirt he’d mounded behind the cabin. He looked back over his shoulder toward Larry, who ducked before he realized Silas was just checking an imaginary runner on first. Then he raised both his hands to his chest and kicked up one leg and fired a streak of gray toward the tree sixty feet away. Larry was impressed at the thwack the ball made when it bounced off the trunk and rolled back. Silas was already charging to scoop the baseball bare-handed out of the weeds and pretend to throw it back in Larry’s direction, as fluid a move as an Atlanta Brave on the television.

  His mother’s car was nowhere in sight, which meant she was working. Around the cabin the field that had been so dead and gray in winter was now greening, butterflies doddering over the goldenrod and orb spiders centered in their webs like the pupils of eyes.

  Back on the mound, Silas checked runners on first and second before he pitched and then he did it all again. Larry sat back against a tree and picked beggar’s lice off his socks and pants. He’d hear the thump the ball made then maybe a grunt or hoot from Silas but soon he’d opened Night Shift to one of his favorite stories, “The Mangler.”

  When he looked up, Silas was standing over him, his chest rising and falling. “You spying?”

  Larry closed his book. He saw the cat a few feet behind Silas and realized it had probably smelled him and come over, Silas following it.

  “No.” Larry shrugged and got to his feet and looked down at the rifle. “I just come to see you but you was busy throwing.”

  Silas watched him. He still held his baseball and Larry wondered did he steal it from school.

  Silas looked back toward his mound, the tree. “I bet I can throw seventy, eighty miles a hour,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Larry said. “It looked real fast from here.”

  “What you reading?”

  Larry held the book up. Its cover showed a human hand with eyes in the palm and on the fingers. Some of the hand and fingers were wrapped in gauze like a mummy.

  Silas said. “Is it scary?”

  Larry told him about “The Mangler,” describing in great detail the scene when the detectives go to visit the girl who cuts her finger on the laundry machine. If the detectives’ far-fetched theory is accurate, a freakish confluence of events caused the machine nicknamed “the Mangler” to become possessed by a demon. The last piece in the puzzle, Larry told Silas, is the blood of a virgin. So the cops finally ask the girl: “Are you a virgin?” “I’m saving myself for my husband,” she tells them. By then it’s too late, and the Mangler is coming for them all.

  Silas frowned. “What’s a virgin?”

  “Somebody that hadn’t ever had intercourse.”

  “Intercourse? You mean somebody ain’t never been fucked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me another one.” Silas said. By now they were walking, the rifle strapped to Larry’s back, Silas grinding his baseball into his palm.

  He told about “Jerusalem’s Lot” and told how it was a precursor to King’s novel Salem’s Lot.

  “That’s the one I was reading that first day I met you. When we picked yall up. You remember?”

  “I don’t remember no book.”

  Larry shrugged.

  “Where we going anyway?” Silas asked. “I don’t want to go to your house.”

  They were in the woods a quarter mile from Larry’s barn, skirting it and heading toward the Walker place.

  “I want to show you something,” Larry said. “Somebody.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “A girl?”

  “A real pretty one.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Our closest neighbor,” Larry said. “Her stepdaddy, Cecil, he’s a funny man, always doing crazy things.”

  “Crazy how?”

  Larry stopped, Silas behind him, and began to tell about the New Year’s Eve a couple of years before when the Walkers had come over and Carl had brought a bunch of fireworks. Trying to pause when his father did, Larry told how the mothers were in the house talking and cooking a chicken and Larry, Cindy, Carl, and Cecil were outside with the fireworks. Both men were drunk and it was one of the happiest memories Larry had, yellow and red smoke bombs, Roman candles, even Cindy, usually so aloof, laughing as Cecil goofed off and held his fizzing bottle rockets in his hand, one or two exploding before he threw them, which had everybody laughing as he shook his hand, burnt black and smoking. He had a bundle sticking out of his coat pocket, fuse ends up, and he’d quick-draw them and light them and fling them out. Carl wasn’t shooting, just watching from the porch steps with his beer and cigarette.

  Cecil lit another with a kitchen match and let it sizzle. Cindy was a few feet away, fourteen years old and with pigtails, squatting in blue jeans and a sweater beside her Coke bottle holding a cigarette lighter to a rocket of her own.

  “Hey, Cin,” Cecil said, and when she looked up he flicked the lit bottle rocket at her.

  She shrieked and jumped aside as it zipped past her and blew up in the field.

  “Cecil you mean,” she said as he quick-drew another and lit it, flicking it at her.

  “Dance!” he yelled, like a gunslinger shooting at her feet.

  “You gone deafen that girl,” Carl called. “Or blind her one.”

  Larry stepped back, behind Cecil, and watched as he lit another and let it fly at her.

  This time it did hit her as she ran away from him, out into the darkness. It exploded against her back and she screamed, Carl starting down off the steps and Larry heading out to see if she was okay. In a panic, glancing back toward the house, Cecil dropped his match. Cindy was crying and the women came out onto the porch just in time to see that she was fine; it had bounced off her and exploded in the grass.

  But the match Cecil dropped had landed in his coat pocket where the bottle rockets were, him so drunk he just looked around and said, “Something’s burning.”

  “It’s your coat, Cecil,” Larry said, pointing.

  Cecil raised his arm and looked down as the first bottle rocket hissed out of his pocket into the air, bang. Then another. He flung his arm back and yelled as another flew out, and another, his coat ablaze now, the sound Larry heard his father laughing as Cecil began to run, yelling, beating at his coat and more rockets taking off. Then Cindy was laughing and Larry was and even the women, Shelia covering her mouth with both hands as Cecil wrenched off the coat still spraying its fireworks and began to stomp it, laughing himself now, falling, Larry laughing now, telling it.

  But not Silas.

  Larry had heard Carl tell the story before and have the men at his shop howling, Cecil hardest of all, in stitches, nodding that yep, it was true, he’d burnt up his own damn coat, plus got in Dutch with the old lady, but Silas never broke a smile.

  “Sound more mean than crazy,” he said. “I don’t know if I w
ant to go see a man like that.”

  Larry tugged his sleeve. “Come on.”

  As they got closer to the edge of the woods that bordered the Walker property, Larry put a finger to his lips and knelt and began to creep. Behind, Silas did the same. They were coming up an incline and just before the house came in sight Larry lay flat on his belly. Silas hesitated, as if he didn’t want to mess up his clothes, but finally lay alongside Larry and together they peered out of the woods. Fifty yards away, the Walker house was a dirty, uneven rectangle with a series of ill-planned additions covered in black tar paper curling at the edges. Between two of the rooms was a rudimentary deck and here was where Cindy often sunbathed.

  Today, though, Cecil stood on the deck with Carl himself.

  “That’s your daddy,” Silas said. “What’s he doing there?”

  Larry had no idea.

  Carl was smoking a cigarette and talking the way he did at his shop and drinking a bottle of beer, Cecil listening. He had sawyered in the mill until he hurt his back and now he got a small disability, which he used for beer and cigarettes.

  “Let’s go,” Larry whispered. He began to slide back.

  “Hang on.” Silas grabbed his arm. “We snuck this far. Maybe that girl’ll come out.”

  They waited, huddled on the ground. Larry caught a word now and again as they matched each other beer for beer and seemed fairly drunk when Cindy finally burst out onto the deck.

  Larry froze in the leaves.

  They watched as Cindy stood on the porch wrapped in a small towel with another one turbaned on her head. She was arguing with Cecil, one arm waving in the air and the other clenching her towel at her chest.

  She raised her voice. “Momma said I could go!”

  Her mother, Larry knew, worked evenings at the tie factory over in east Fulsom.

  “What you say her name was?” Silas whispered. “I seen her at school.”

  “Cindy.”

  She was getting madder on the deck, raising her voice.

  Cecil leaned over and nudged Carl and reached out and tugged at Cindy’s towel. She slapped Cecil’s hand but he held on and pulled harder, Carl laughing, rising from his seat on the steps to stand leaning against the rail, a better view, more cleavage, half her bosom showing.

  “Cecil!” Cindy shrieked. “Let go! I’ll tell Momma!”

  He murmured something, clinging to the towel. He winked at Carl who was scratching his cheek and taking a long pull from his beer, Cindy’s towel inching up her thigh and down her chest as she slapped at Cecil’s hand.

  Silas was out of the leaves and halfway across the yard, brushing dirt from his knees, before Larry realized he was gone from his side. Striding away, he seemed taller than he had when they’d met.

  Still frozen, Larry watched Silas walk up to the two drunk white men on the porch, both speechless at his appearance.

  “Yall leave that girl alone,” he said.

  Cecil let go of Cindy and she cinched up her towel and stood watching the black boy down in their yard, as speechless as everybody else, then she turned and went inside, the door slamming behind her.

  The noise startled Cecil. “Who you, boy?”

  But Silas was walking, around the deck and house, heading for the road.

  “Wait,” Carl was saying. “Hey, boy!” He came down the steps with his bottle and circled the house but Silas had sprinted away, gone for good.

  Larry began to inch down the land in the rustling leaves like a reptile and lay breathing hard at the bottom. He was about to rise with his rifle and trudge home when, above him, Carl stepped into the tree line. He stood gazing about, maybe looking to see were there more black boys in the woods, and Larry lay flat, thankful for his camouflage. Carl kinked his hip and unzipped his fly and reached into his pants. Larry looked away as his father hosed out piss that crackled in the dry leaves like a fire. When he finished he stood a moment.

  “Hey, Carl!”

  It was Cecil.

  “Any more natives down yonder? Don’t get stobbed by no spear.”

  When Larry opened his eyes his father was gone from the top of the hill.

  HE FOUND SILAS flinging his baseball at a stout magnolia and fielding the returns.

  “Thanks for helping her,” he said.

  Silas wound up and threw into the tree. Instead of fielding, he let the ball die in the weeds. “You always spying on people,” he said.

  “I don’t spy.”

  “You ever take that girl on a date?”

  Larry didn’t answer.

  “You wasn’t gone help her.”

  “I wanted to.”

  Silas watched him a moment, then got his ball and began to walk toward home and Larry followed. It was cooler in the woods and they crunched over the leaves and ducked branches. At one point when the brush cleared Silas sprinted ahead and turned, still running, and pivoted and threw the baseball back toward Larry. Larry reached for it but closed his eyes and missed and it bounced behind him and disappeared.

  “Shit,” Silas said.

  He hurried past Larry and began looking for the ball.

  LARRY KNEW SOMETHING was wrong when he walked in the back door, on his way to place the.33 in its green velvet slot in the gun cabinet in the hall.

  Carl sidestepped out of the kitchen to face him.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Larry willed himself to walk toward his father, who seized him by his sleeve and dragged him into the living room. He took the rifle from Larry.

  “Where’s my Marlin?”

  Larry looked down at his hands.

  “Get it,” his father said.

  Larry didn’t move.

  “Boy.”

  “I ain’t got it, Daddy.”

  “ ‘Ain’t got it, Daddy.’ ”

  “Yes, sir. I mean no, sir.”

  Larry’s mother was behind them now. “Carl,” she said.

  Carl held up his finger to her and looked at his son. “Where’s my dad-blame rifle, boy?”

  Larry was kneading his fingers. “I let my friend use it.”

  “Friend,” his father said. “I didn’t know you had none.”

  “Carl-”

  “Ina Jean, this boy’s subcontracting out my firearms. I want to know who it is. Well?”

  Larry didn’t answer.

  “I ain’t asking again.”

  “That boy we picked up.”

  “What boy?”

  “Silas.”

  “Silas,” his father said. “Silas that nigger boy?”

  “Carl.”

  His father moved his face so close Larry could smell beer and cigarettes, and in that moment he knew that Carl had seen him at the bottom of the hill. “Just a dad-blame minute. You give my gun to your nigger friend?”

  “Carl, stop it.”

  He looked at his wife pointing her finger.

  “Carl Ott, I said stop it right now.”

  His father let Larry’s sleeve go. “Maybe you right. You want to have em over for dinner after church?”

  “You’re-” she said, “you’re just-”

  “Tomorrow,” Carl told Larry. “Tomorrow first thing you get your ass out there where they’re squatting and get my god dang Marlin back. Is that clear, boy?”

  “Carl, your language.”

  “Ina Jean, this is not the time.”

  “Then when is? How long they gone live there, Carl?”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “It ain’t proper.”

  Larry had wedged himself into the corner behind his father’s chair.

  “Proper,” his father said.

  “If they don’t leave,” his mother said, “then me and Larry are. Tonight.”

  For a moment it seemed his father might laugh, then he just shook his head. “Don’t tempt me,” he said.

  “Carl,” she whispered.

  He flapped a hand at Larry. “When you able to come out of the corner-”

  “Carl.”

  “Just g
et the gun back,” he said through his teeth. “Whether you’re here tomorrow or not.”

  He went up the hall to the front and banged opened the screen door and went onto the porch and the screen door closed slowly in his wake.

  “Carl,” she called, following him, peering through the screen. “Where you going? ”

  From behind the chair, Larry couldn’t hear what he said.

  THAT NIGHT, AS she had every night of his life, his mother came into his room and sat on his bed. He was facing the wall and didn’t turn around, even when he felt her hand, its familiar odor of dish soap, rest on his shoulder.

  “Larry?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Son?”

  During his attacks of asthma, she’d stayed up with him as he struggled to breathe-nights were worse-rubbing Vicks on his chest, and they’d prayed together for the asthma to go away. When her rooster began to crow he’d know the long nights were nearly over. In first grade he’d told her how he asked Shelly Salter to marry him, sent her a note with two boxes drawn at the bottom, check yes or no. She’d checked no. “Silly girl,” his mother had said, rubbing his chest. “Good-looking boy like you? If I wasn’t your mother I’d set my cap for you.” In second grade, the year he’d begun to stutter, he told her how the kids laughed at him and she’d prayed the stuttering would go away. It hadn’t. The asthma either. Both got worse. In the third grade the class read aloud and Larry dreaded reading days. When he stuttered the other boys laughed and his teacher thought he was doing it on purpose and fussed at him. “It’s my reading day tomorrow,” he’d say as his mother sat on his bed. “Lord,” she would pray, “thank You for Your grace. Please help Larry read good tomorrow, take that stuttering away, and please help his breathing tonight, and send him a special friend, Lord, one just for him.” Eventually the prayers worked, but on a delayed schedule. “God’s timing,” his mother said, “is His own.” The stuttering stopped late in the fourth grade, almost overnight, and only rarely recurred. His asthma subsided gradually, gone entirely by the end of the summer before sixth grade. And then Silas had come. A friend. Silas, who was the first answered prayer he couldn’t tell her about, knowing that the chilly mother who’d given Silas and Alice Jones those coats would return, that she would do something to make them leave the cabin in the woods. Now her prayer had become, “Dear Lord, thank You for Your grace, and thank You for healing Larry’s stuttering and his asthma. Please send him a special friend, one just for him.”