by Chris Offutt
“Any dessert?” Marlon said.
“Not tonight,” Sara said. She patted her hips. “I don’t need no extra.”
“Just more to love,” Marlon said.
“Kids sure packs the weight on,” Sara said. “You all fixing to have any, Ab?”
Virgil could feel heat rush to his face. Abigail pitched her voice slightly higher in order to appear casual.
“We haven’t done any talking along those lines.”
Marlon was clearly confused. He looked from Virgil to Abigail and back. “You all go and get married?”
“No,” Virgil said. “Folks do that for different reasons.”
“I was pregnant,” Sara said.
“Sara!” her mother said.
“Well, I was. The whole hill knowed of it. I told Virgil first, before Marlon even. If our family’s got secrets, you can’t prove it by me.”
“She always did talk worser than, a jaybird,” their mother said.
“Nobody’s pregnant,” Virgil said. “Unless it’s you.”
“We’re done, ain’t that right, Marlon, I’m thinking on getting my tubes tied.”
“Sara,” their mother said, “you’re at the table,”
“It’s on TV, Mama. And I ain’t no jaybird, either, I’m the only liberated woman on the creek. I cuss in my own home and Marlon don’t care if I do.”
“Around here,” their mother said, “they ain’t no liberated nothing. Why, even these old hills got laws put to them anymore,”
“My opinion,” Virgil said, “Abigail’s on the liberated side. She works and takes care of her own car.”
“And lives alone,” Sara said.
“That’s right,” Virgil said. “But she don’t go around talking about getting herself spayed, either,”
“Leastways, I’m thinking on doing something I should.”
“Meaning I ain’t. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Take it any way you want.”
Virgil stood and went outside, leaving a tense silence behind him. The sky was gray between the hills. He wondered what kind of person his family thought he was. Perhaps they’d never had him right. He realized with a terrible twist in his chest that they wanted him to be like Boyd.
He lay on his back and studied the sky. The Milky Way spread overhead like the partial covering of spring frost. Some stars were so far away that by the time the light got to him, they’d already burned out. Boyd was like that. Even dead, he still threw energy into the hills.
Darkness grew at the head of the hollow and filtered down the creek. The air between the trees closed. He stood and kicked one of Boyd’s old liquor bottle lids. It rolled in a circle like a crippled dog. A hundred years from now some kid would find the cap and make up its history. Virgil wished he could invent a new history for himself, or even better, a future.
The screen door rasped and he recognized Sara’s tread on the porch.
“Hey, Virgie,” she said.
He waited in the dark. He’d discovered long ago that the less talking he did around his sister, the more he learned.
“You out here pouting?” she said.
There was nothing for him in that except bait. He stayed quiet.
“Now, Virgie, honey. It ain’t but us now. We got to get along.”
A whippoorwill’s call floated along the ridge. Sara moved into the yard.
“I should have been born a man,” she said. “Then you could knock the shit out of me and everything’d be fine.”
“That’s easy talk,” Virgil said. He immediately regretted having spoken.
“I know what’s right.”
“You don’t know the first thing about it.”
“I’ve laid awake many a night thinking on it.”
“Me, too,” Virgil said. “I ain’t a murderer.”
“That ain’t what it is.”
“The hell it ain’t, Sara. That’s exactly what it is. You know it, Mommy knows it, even that damn Troy knows it.”
“If you don’t,” she said, “I know someone who will.”
“You’d do that, wouldn’t you. Just throw Marlon away. A man with four kids.”
“You heard what Troy said.”
“I ain’t talking about the law.”
“The rest of them Rodales, you mean. Well, you never can tell. Maybe they’re more like you.”
“You’re full of talk, Sara. You know that? You just sit in your house, watch TV, and not do a goddam thing else. Just talk. You’re the same as you always were only now you got Marlon and the kids to run. Well, you ain’t the boss of me, Sara. Get that in your head.”
“I thought maybe you’d want Marlon to help you out, is all. You always let Boyd do the doing for you before.”
“That’s not what I want. I don’t want nothing like that.”
“All right. Marlon don’t know about any of this anyhow.”
“No, I don’t reckon he would.”
“Ain’t no sense in you getting stubbed up over it, either. I was thinking of you. Trying to spare you.”
A dove called through the woods.
“I guess it’s good you ain’t a man,” Virgil said. “I don’t believe I’d like you much if you were.”
“Maybe not But liking never had much place in this family. All we ever did was love.”
“And the best of us is gone.”
“That’s the way it always is, ain’t it. The biggest tree gets hit by lightning, and bugs chew the prettiest flower. It’s the way of the world.”
“If it’s so natural, then how come you’re wanting me to do something about it.”
“Because that’s natural, too.”
She had answered gently, as if speaking to a lover or a child. She stepped into the house, boards creaking beneath her feet. The night enveloped him like a tent. A barred owl called, his favorite bird, and “Virgil mimicked the sound. Boyd had taught him to follow the rhythm of “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all,” as he made the sound, ending with a throaty gurgle. The owl refused to return the cry.
The woods were silent until the first squeak of cricket, followed by young frogs in the creek below and the rising drone of cicadas. He inhaled the heavy scent of summer earth, a loamy musk that settled over him like a caul. He was home.
Abigail sat in the swing at the end of the porch. He hadn’t heard her leave the house. He joined her and the chain creaked as their knees touched. In the dim light from the house, he could see the silhouette of her powerful chin. It was like a handle for her head. He wondered if she appreciated any of his features as much as he enjoyed that chin.
“Virge.” Her voice was low and calm.
He didn’t answer.
“Your mom told me about Troy coming up here.”
“Don’t say nothing to nobody.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “All this is a hard one on your mom.”
“I know it.”
“And for you, too, Virge.”
Starlight slipped between tree limbs and glowed across the yard. Abigail had a quality that always made him feel less of a man, and he suddenly knew what it was. Abigail was happy, and he resented it. He felt as if they were in seventh grade again, trying to outmaneuver each other for the one thing they both wanted—a kiss. When it finally happened he pressed his lips so hard against hers that he mashed his nose and couldn’t breathe. She whispered for him to open his mouth, and he realized that she knew more than he did.
“Troy coming up here was wrong,” she said.
“Well, it wasn’t right.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“Not exactly.”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Virgil.”
“I know you don’t. This whole thing has got me messed up. Right and wrong are gone. Nobody cares about that anymore, not even the sheriff.”
“You do,” Abigail said. “I know you do.”
“It’d be easier if I didn’t. People might leave me alone.”
&
nbsp; “Is that what you want?”
“I don’t mean you.”
They didn’t speak for a few minutes. The swinging chain made a steady rasp. A dog barked over the hill, its cry rising up the hollow and fading along the ridge.
“I have some good news, anyway,” Abigail said.
“That’d be a switch.”
“I got a promotion and a raise.”
Virgil didn’t know what to say, She already drew a bigger paycheck than he did.
“Well,” she said. “Aren’t you going to ask me how much?”
“How much?”
“Enough to get into a house with some land. We could use your money for fixing up.”
“Fixing what up?”
“You know, box in a porch if we needed extra bedrooms or something.”
Virgil wondered what the cutoff age was to join the army. He knew a lot of boys who had gone years ago but he couldn’t see the point if there wasn’t a war.
“It’s just something to think on,” she said. “I thought maybe it’d be better than this other,”
“I’m about run out of thinking.”
“I understand. I know how that is. I got the same way up in Ohio. You hit a certain place and there’s nothing left but doing.”
“I ain’t there yet. I’m more in between.”
“I want you to know something, Virgil. You have to hear me on this. Whichever way you go, I’m with you. I’m there. You do whatever you need to do—for yourself. Don’t matter to me. I’m on your side.”
Virgil nodded.
“I got to get on down the road,” she said. “Tell your mom I said good night.”
She rose awkwardly from the swing, setting it in sideways motion. She leaned to kiss him and left. The big engine spewed exhaust that stayed in the air after her red taillights vanished among the trees.
She wasn’t against it, which meant she was for it. Abigail was trying to play cagey, but tonight was the first time she’d been direct about children. Perhaps she was trying to snare him when he was preoccupied with other matters—murder or marry, like a judge who tells a drunk to do the time or take the cure. He wondered if she would continue to love him if he became a killer; it wasn’t as if he could quit and change back, like giving up liquor.
A half moon hung low above the hills, its light washing away the surrounding stars. The hills were black and the woods were blacker and the hollow below was blackest of all. Virgil had always been able to see well at night. It was more recognition than actual sight, the ability to know forms by their silhouette. Most people treated night the same as day only with less light, which was a mistake. The secret to darkness was not to blunder about, but to look carefully at what was there.
Marlon came onto the porch, trailed by Sara’s voice saying, “Shut that door behind you tight.”
Moths the size of a man’s hand battered the screen. Marlon lit a cigarette, handling the matches in a deft fashion. Both men were quiet. Marlon cast a field about him that made people uneasy, but Virgil was accustomed to it.
“Sara send you out here?” Virgil said.
“Yep.”
“They tell you about Troy?”
“He’s so crooked he screws his britches on.”
“Whole thing’s about eat my head up. Marl.”
A soft rain spattered the tree leaves and moved across the night. The evening air became damp.
“Some rain,” Virgil said. “We could use a gully washer.”
“Way them women talk we can always use more of something.”
“Full of plans, ain’t they.”
“For other people,” Marlon said. “They’ll lay their ears back like a cat eating, and knock you down with talk. A man can’t pay that much mind. It’s like weeding a garden to me.”
“How’s that?”
“just pick what to listen at.”
“Wish I could, Marl. That’s a gift.”
“Not really.”
“I’m stuck with hearing all of it.”
“Make your head go crazy that way.”
“I ain’t that far from it. You know what I’d really like, I’d like to be left alone.”
“Get that long enough and you’ll not like it.”
“Maybe so. Is there anything you’d like, Marlon?”
“Learn to weld.”
“Weld?”
“Open me up a muffler shop.”
Virgil nodded, wishing he was as clearheaded and free of guile as his brother-in-law. Marlon was loyal and hardworking, and there was no higher compliment in the county.
“Let me ask you something,” Marlon said. “Ever notice how an oak’ll hold on to a fall leaf through winter?”
“Now that you say it, yes.”
“That old tree not wanting to turn loose of a dead leaf. Something to think on, Virge.”
Marlon went in the house and a few minutes later came out with Sara. They said good night and got into Marlon’s truck, sitting very close on the bench seat. In the brief flash of the domelight, they looked as they had five years ago, leaving on a date. They were a little bigger now, including the truck.
Moonglow lay over the darkened land. Virgil recalled evenings he’d stood with Boyd on the porch, trying to watch darkness arrive, Boyd had thought that each molecule of air became darker and, like watching snow accumulate, you could witness the actual blackening of the sky.
Virgil could not leave without telling his mother good night, but if he sat outside long enough, she would go to bed and he’d be free to go. She came to the door. Interior light spread her shadow across the porch, diffused by the screen. Her hair was pulled to the back of her head in a bun the color of ash. Virgil knew that she would wait there until she was invited out. He’d seen it with his father many times.
“Come on out, Mom.”
“Well, if you’re wanting company.”
“Always yours.”
“I ain’t a-caring, then.”
She stepped onto the porch and quickly pulled the door shut. She sat in her chair, picked up the fly swatter that lay beside it, and placed it in her lap.
“I shouldn’t ort to have set,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ll get up.”
“I’ll start to get worried the day I find you sleeping there in the morning.”
“You remember the time Sara’s first cat got up in the yard oak and she started crying.”
“We was all just kids,” Virgil said.
“Boyd, he told her to hush up, that cat would come down and he could prove it.”
“I don’t remember that part.”
“Oh, yes. He said you could walk these hills a hundred years and there’d be one thing you’d never find—a cat skeleton in a tree.”
“That sounds like how he’d think.”
A chimney swift flew in an arc away from the house. The air cooled. The night had softened, as if settling into itself until dawn.
“You know your daddy weren’t no coward.”
“No.”
“It took more spine to go under them hills than it ever did to stand up to a bully. They ain’t a miner who ain’t brave.”
“I know.”
“Boyd never understood that. He seen your daddy take mouth off other men and walk away cold. Boyd thought your daddy less for it. It hurt your daddy, but it hurt Boyd more.”
“It would.”
“You’re a cross between both.”
“I always thought I was more like Daddy.”
“No. Boyd’s temper is worse, but you got more anger in you. My fault I reckon.”
“No sense worrying about it now, Mom.”
“Maybe not. All depends on what use a body’s got for packing anger around.”
“Not too much, I don’t reckon.”
“At the right rime it can be handy as a pocket on a shirt.”
“It never was for Boyd.”
“I ain’t talking about him.”
Virgil suddenly knew what she meant. The steady creaking of the swing�
��s chains stopped. He stared into the night. It seemed to him as if his body were a shell that his mind had fled, and he was observing the proceedings from some distance. Two people sat on a porch. Their world was not vast.
“Marlon is a good boy,” his mother said, “but a blind man can see through him. A part of me always wished Sara had married Troy. Tonight was the first I ever was glad of her not. You understand why, don’t you.”
“I might,” Virgil had hopes one way, but the biggest part of him had fears the other. “I don’t know.”
“After Troy come up here the way he done, it would look pretty bad later if he was married in.”
The roof of Virgil’s mouth was dry and he was breathing through his mouth, trying to take deep drinks of the night. There was a certain point at the bottom of his lungs that needed oxygen. He stood, and when the swing bumped the back of his knees, he nearly fell. He began to tremble. He steadied himself against a porch strut and stepped off the porch. His mother was a dark lump in the shadow of the porch.
The moon was gone and clouds blocked the stars. He walked into the darkness. The road made a sharp climbing curve to his trailer at the end of the ridge, surrounded by trees. He sat on the bottom step. He was cold but the air was warm. His clothes wrapped his body, and skin was just a bag that stretched to hold different sizes of people. Inside they were the same bunch of bones.
4
* * *
Divorce Court sat beside Clay Creek in the widest hollow of the county, A network of gravel lanes held a hundred identical trailers that Rocksalt Community College rented to older students, many of them divorced. Virgil and the garbage crew had worked hard all morning. Gravel dust rose in their wake and settled over every surface like hoarfrost. Mist trailed above the creek that bordered the road.
Beyond Divorce Court, separated by a few trees and a rail fence, was the old drive-in movie lot. During its final summer of operation, the owner had showed X-rated movies. Cars jammed the lot. Everyone had come to see naked flesh twenty-five feet high gyrating among the dark hills. The first week, four cars ran off the road as they drove by. There were nine wrecks the following week, including two preachers and a nun from the new hospital. The movie got held over, and was known as the nun-wrecker. X-rated movies were eventually banned and the movie screen poked like a giant tombstone between the hills.