by Chris Offutt
A steady breeze crossed the top of the hill. Hickory limbs scraped each other, a sound that made Virgil edgy. He refused to turn and look. Nothing was there but rock, dirt, and trees, with boxed bones below the surface. He stood beside the grave. Etched into the rock was his brother’s name. It occurred to Virgil that carving the names of the dead was a strange job.
He’d only cried once, after seeing the expression on his mother’s face at losing a son. His tears had been for her. Now, six months later, Virgil could feel his own grief rising through him.
“Fuck you,” he said. “You son of a bitch. Look at you now. Goddam fucking dead. Fuck you, Boyd, Fuck you.”
The words clogged his throat until he couldn’t speak. His shoulders rose and fell. Somewhere deep inside was the instinct to shut it off, not so much like turning a faucet but more like doubling a hose to choke his sorrow. When the sounds coming out of him ran down, Virgil stood and began kicking the granite headstone. He kicked until his foot hurt. Steel-toed boots were better for the job and he laughed at himself for thinking that way. Boyd had always made fun of the practical turn to Virgil’s mind. His face was cold from tears. He began to walk.
At the top of the hill were the oldest graves, surrounded by white oaks. Dry leaves crackled beneath his boots. The gravestones were standing at a tilt and grown with moss, the earth sunk before them. One had been broken and repaired. Lines of rust ran down the stone from the bolts that held it together. The grass was very green and Virgil didn’t like to think why. A flicker flew by, cutting scallops in the air. Dusk was coming on. Virgil wished he was the one who’d died. If he had, Boyd would already be locked up for having killed Rodale. He wouldn’t have let six months go by.
A young maple grew in a corner, out of place among the old hardwoods. In the shade beneath it was a plain marker. The dates were seven years apart, a child. Virgil stared at the small grave for a long time. He didn’t recognize the name, and he wondered if the parents still lived in the county. He felt another layer of sadness, not for himself, but for them. Their boy was taken away and there was nothing they could do. It was worse than his situation.
Virgil began to cry again. He dropped to his knees and let all the tears he’d ever forbidden move through him and out of him and into the earth. He cried until he gagged and his body wanted to retch. He squelched that urge, then let that happen, too. It smelted of coffee and whisky. He continued to gag until bile filled his mouth and ran over his chin. He lay on the soft ground and pressed his head to the earth and struggled to control his breathing. There was nothing else in him to come out.
He lay there a long time and slowly realized that he’d been asleep. He was cold. The sun was sliding behind the western hills, sending a red fan of light across the ridge. The liquid scent of pine carried across the road. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the marker above the child’s grave.
In the dim light he could Just make out the name carved into the headstone.
JOSEPH TILLER
He stared at it for a long time. The faint glimmer of an idea began at the border of his mind, then raced over him like heat, followed by an exhilarated terror. He felt something shift within him, an alignment of body and mind. The idea was both terrible and great, and he shivered at its enormity.
7
* * *
The following day Virgil called in sick for the rest of the week. Lying was easier than he expected because people wanted to believe what they were told. At the post office, he caught a ride to town and retrieved his car. He bought a U.S. atlas and spent the rest of the day in his trailer studying maps. Lexington was a hundred miles away, a place he’d never been.
He wrote down everything he could think of about his idea until he’d covered several pages with scrawled notes. Slowly he began forming a plan. He hadn’t applied himself with such diligence since college and he liked it. He was good at it. He felt as if he were assembling a jigsaw puzzle and making the pieces as well. The biggest problem was money. He wasn’t sure how people went about getting it, aside from incremental raises in pay.
He rose early and drove to Frankfort. The governor’s mansion was very big and Virgil figured he must have a good-sized family. In front of the capitol was a large floral clock that lent a lovely scent to the air. Its hands were longer than he was tall, and he wondered how many people actually visited the clock to check the time.
Main Street held a few businesses that were competing with a new mall. In a secondhand store he bought a typewriter. Several black people were in the store and he tried not to stare, never having seen any before. He wanted to move near for a better look, but was afraid to, and didn’t know why. They ignored him and he wondered if it was deliberate. He decided not, since they probably saw plenty of white people.
He received directions to the Bureau of Records and walked up its granite steps, wondering how many men were employed merely to clear them of snow in winter. Beyond glass doors a sign warned of video surveillance. He turned around and went down the steps to his car.
He drove east, working on the problem in his head. He couldn’t get a post office box in another name without identification, but he couldn’t get the identification without a post office box. It reminded him of looking for work as a kid. He was caught in a similar crossfire between experience and a job, unable to get one without the other. The solution then had been to lie, telling the boss that he’d painted houses with his uncle the year before. Virgil was hired, and spent the first month hoping nobody noticed that he barely knew which end of the brush to hold.
An abrupt thought caused him to swerve into the breakdown lane. He steered back to the road. In Lexington he bought a city map and studied it in a diner. The waitress gave him directions to the police station. New Circle Road wrapped the city like a lasso and he missed his exit and became lost in a maze of streets. Two hours later, he arrived at police headquarters, a mile from the diner.
He sat in the car for a long time, working out all the details in his head. Horns honked around him. Automobile exhaust mixed with the heat and the general smell of a city—many humans compressed into a small space. There were no trees on the street. He tucked his wallet in the glovebox and left the car. It was the first time he’d locked a vehicle in his life.
The air inside the police station smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke, cut with industrial cleaning fluid. There was a gauntlet of two benches filled with a variety of people. At the end of the tiled lane was a window behind which sat an old man in uniform. Virgil approached slowly. He was sweating.
The old cop looked at him. Unsure of procedure, Virgil stayed quiet.
“What?” the cop said.
“My wallet,” Virgil said.
“Your wallet.”
“It was stolen.”
The cop shuffled through papers for the correct form.
“Okay. Stolen wallet. Name?”
“What?”
“Name. What’s your name?”
“joe Tiller,” Virgil whispered.
“What?”
“Joe Tiller.”
“Address?”
“Five-twenty South Avenue.”
“Go on.”
“What?” Virgil said.
“What town?”
“Here.”
“Phone?”
“No phone.”
“Description of the wallet.”
“Brown.”
“Tri-fold or bi-fold.”
“Regular, you know.”
“Okay, bi-fold. Contents?”
“Forty dollars. Some pictures. All my ID.”
“Type of ID?”
“Driver’s license, birth certificate, Social Security card.”
“Okay. If we hear anything, we’ll mail you a card.”
“What about until then?”
“Search the area where it was stolen. Look in garbage cans and dumpsters. They usually get rid of it fast and keep the money.”
“No, I mean, for ID.”
“
That’s not a police matter.”
“What do I do?”
“You’ll have to apply for new,”
“Can you give me something that says my wallet was stolen?”
“I can give you a copy of this form. It’ll be a few minutes. Take a seat.”
Virgil found a place on the bench. It was nicked and greasy, carved by pocketknives. Two children sat on the dirty floor in front of their mother. She was wearing large sunglasses, and beneath them Virgil could see the swellings on her face. She kept one arm stiff to her body. People dozed against the wall. Others stared at the floor or at the space in front of them.
Boyd had always said that the best lie was to tell the truth in a way that made the listener believe it was false. Next was to keep your lies very close to reality. Virgil was veering far from either course and it worried him. He’d never been in a police station and thought it would be nicer. He expected a squad of policemen to arrest him at any moment. They knew he was lying. They’d searched his car and found his wallet. He became aware of a yelling voice, and people were looking his way. The old cop was staring at him. He stood in a panic, ready to ran.
“Mr, Tiller,” the old cop called. “Mr. Tiller.”
Virgil crossed the room and the cop handed him a photocopy of the police report. Outside he leaned against a light pole and forced himself to breathe slowly. Lying was easy. Finding his car took half an hour. In the woods he could locate a tree he’d touched years ago, but in Lexington he was immediately lost. He’d seen deer stumble across a road at night, stunned by car headlights, and he felt the same sense of bewilderment.
He was hungry, but he had one more stop. He climbed another set of steps and waited in line at the post office. The male clerks wore ties, and he chuckled at the thought of Zephaniah in one. He prepared in his mind what he was going to say.
“I’m sorry,” the man behind the counter said. “You must have two forms of ID to rent a box.”
“My wallet got stolen,” Virgil said. “I have a check from my old job coming, and I got to have somewhere for them to send it.”
“Use a friend’s address.”
“Don’t know nobody.”
“How about where you’re staying, then.”
“Ain’t got a place yet. That’s just it. I can’t get one until I get the check, and I can’t get the check until I get a mailing address.”
“Well, buddy, you’re in a hole of water got no deep to it.” He lowered his voice. Virgil recognized an accent from the eastern end of the state. “Was me, I’d go to one of them mail services.”
“Mail service?”
“Yeah, they got them now. It’s like a post office but it’s private.”
Virgil found a listing in the phone book and drove to the storefront business. He told the clerk about the check from his last job and offered six months’ advance rent on a mailbox. The man gave him a set of keys, thin metal slivers that would open his future.
“Thank you, Mr. Tiller,” he said as Virgil left.
He drove home along the interstate, remembering its construction when he was a child. It had employed many men, but when the site surpassed a commuting distance of three hours, men who’d worked a decade were suddenly jobless. Their children were half-raised, their homes partially paid off. The federal government had followed the mineral companies in creating a boom-or-bust economy with a disposable workforce.
The road east went through the lovely rolling land of Lexington’s horse farms. Wind rippled the bluegrass as if it were the sea. There was a villa that resembled something from Mexico, and farther along, an actual stone castle. The land began its hilly ascent in Montgomery County, where the Pottsdale Escarpment jutted from the earth, marking the geological boundary of the Appalachians. Beyond that lay the disorganized terrain that was Virgil’s country.
Night had come to the hills by the time he reached Rocksalt. Its few traffic lights blinked yellow. There would never be a New Circle Road here because the hills pressed too close, leaving room for only three streets that crossed town. The night air was sweet and rich. Stars spread like dust above the treeline. He drove up the dirt road of his home hill.
Virgil wrote a letter requesting a copy of the birth certificate for Joe Tiller, He typed it, using the mailbox in Lexington as a return address. If he dropped it into a public mailbox in town, it would get trucked to Lexington and postmarked there. When he finished, he burned the handwritten original outside. A glowing wafer of ash wafted into the night sky.
He went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Everything was much bigger than he was and he’d barely begun. He was impressed by his undertaking until he considered the reason. He lay grimly immobile for a long time while his mind continued to work, He wasn’t sure how to shut it off. That posed a fresh problem and he chuckled at the absurdity of applying his mind to the problem of turning off his mind. It was like asking a lawyer to sue himself, or a killer to kill himself.
Through the small bedroom window he saw the moon and he remembered a song his mother sang to him about the moon seeing him through the old oak tree. He wished he were there. He wished he could live on the moon in his father’s old log cabin. It had holes in the walls the diameter of a rifle barrel, bored in strategic locations during the Civil War. Once inside, he could live until his water and ammo ran out. He’d heard that a man could live on bananas and milk. He’d need a cow and a banana tree, And a ton of ammunition.
8
* * *
July went by in a blur of heat. Virgil moved through the month with ease, maintaining a smooth distance from his family and the men at work. Taylor was nervous around him the first few days, but Virgil bore him no ill will.
On a scorching Saturday, he drove to Lexington and parked near the mailbox rental business. He waited until the lobby was empty and walked in swiftly. The door opened behind him and he knew with absolute certainty that a policeman had entered to arrest him. A woman checked her mail and left. He opened the drawer and withdrew the official envelope that lay inside. His hands were trembling as he sat in the car with the birth certificate of Joseph Edward Tiller.
Virgil stared at the paper until the words blended together. He folded the document four times and slipped it in his sock. He pulled onto New Circle Road and got off at a mall that included a hotel and a large bookstore. Virgil had never been in a mall. It seemed like a world turned inside out. The outer walls had store names and a locked door, while the windows faced the interior. Large trees grew indoors. The air was bad and there was no sunlight. A large platform held a map and Virgil considered it strange that a map was necessary for the indoors. He couldn’t imagine a worse place to spend time.
At a department store, he bought a duffel bag and a wallet. He went into a restaurant with tables that held napkins in metal rings. The room was empty of people. A woman in a short dress walked toward him.
“Just one?” she said.
Virgil nodded and she led him to the only dirty table in the room. He hadn’t been to a restaurant of this caliber and he wondered if all the other tables were reserved. After a few minutes, the woman returned. She told him the specials and asked if he had any questions.
“Is there a big crowd coming?” he said.
“No. Lunch rush is over.”
“Working with a short crew today, are you?”
The woman shook her head in a brisk fashion that made her earrings sway. Her face bore an expression of distaste.
“Then how come you put me at a dirty table?”
Her vision flicked rapidly over his clothes.
“Would you like another?” she said.
“Yes.”
She turned away and Virgil knew that he was to follow her. She stopped at a fresh table, its turquoise linen spotless, a flower placed in a slender glass. The woman was waiting for Virgil to sit, and he understood that she disapproved of how he dressed. He walked away, wishing he could leave tracks of mud.
He left the mall and searched for his car in the immense
lot. Regardless of the birth certificate and the wallets and all his plans, a stranger had recognized him for what he was. He’d like to see how that woman would fare in the woods. He sat in the car, becoming more and more angry until he realized with devastating intensity that he was also mad at himself. The woman’s disdain for him had made him crave her. He was angry with his own desire.
At the far end of the parking lot was a phone booth from which he stole the Lexington phone book. He was becoming everything he had been raised against—a thief, a liar, ashamed of his background.
He drove to the Social Security Administration. After a long wait he sat beside a cluttered desk across from a woman who appeared sad.
“Need me a Social Security card, I reckon,” he said.
“A replacement?”
“No. Just a card. You know, for work.”
“A new card?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ve never applied for a card before?”
“No, ma’am. Nobody in my family ever did.”
“I see. And you’re from?”
“Pick County.”
“I see.”
Her expression was the same as the woman’s in the restaurant. He decided to use it to his advantage, like finding enemy ammunition that fit your weapon.
“Have you held a job before?” she said.
“No, ma’am. I mean, I ain’t lazy. I’ve worked plenty, but on our own land. Then Daddy died and we everyone had to hunt work. I got on at one of them horse farms you’uns got here. Stable hand. They said they couldn’t pay me less’n I had me a Social Security card.”
“All right,” she said. “You fill this out and we can get started.”
She passed him a pen and a clipboard with a form. He held them without moving, the way he’d seen illiterate men at the post office act.