Widow's Run

by TG Wolff

  Once, when Nole was a child, his father had made him a bullroarer, out of a piece of horn and a thong. And he had wound it and pulled it, wound it and pulled it, all day long, fascinated by the strange elasticity that came not from rawhide or horn, but from their interaction with his own hands as he pulled outward and felt the toy draw back the other way, against him. And then he would draw it out again and let it pull him back, like a surge and release, flow and counterflow, as though all the rigid, hard things in the world had become elastic and were tugging and swaying, accompanied by a deep sonorous hum. And what he recalled most vividly was lying in his bed, that night, and he could feel the movement still, in his hands, sore and blistered from the rub of the thong, but still seeming to draw and strain and give back in to the thrumming of the bullroarer, moving through the middle night of sleep, dream, roll and turn.

  And the next day Nole had been out in the barn, where his father had sent him to fetch gloves and fence wire. And he had pulled the bullroarer from his overalls and begun the hummed play. And forgotten the errand and his father and the world itself. Until the man had crashed through the door, shouting his name, and had snatched up the thong from his hands, unthreaded the piece of horn, and thrown it all out the bright square of the doorway. “Now you get to work,” he’d said. And then cursed—“goddam thing”—not cursing the boy, but the bullroarer, the toy he had made himself, for his boy’s amusement.

  Nole thought of that moment, as he lay stretched out on the trail. Goddam thing, his father had said, and flung away his own gift, made with the man’s own hands, from the things around the farm, the bone and the rawhide, and given to his son, who found it all so wondrous and magical, the stretch and rebound, blur and thrum. And stood now, empty-handed and surprised, in the cold floating dust of the barn.

  Some time later, thirty minutes or an hour, Nole uncurled himself from the chill ground and stood, rubbing his elbows and knees where the hot sting of his fall needled the skin. Down the hill, beyond the screen of woods, the stream rumpled and slapped. He tensed, hearing a sound like a whistle, then relaxed, hearing the echo of creeksound off the hillsides. He stretched his arms over his head, realizing he was stiff and sore, as though he’d been climbing a mountain or pitching hay all day long. “’Stead of killin’ Daddy,” he said, aloud. He felt a wash of regret followed by a blotting of bitterness and anger. He turned, tucking pistol into waistband, and walked slowly up the trail, back to the lane, past the still horse, to where he could see the looming bulk of the house across the way. Behind it and off to the left leaned the pale blur he knew was the shed. He looked again at the huge house and its turret, a picture cut from a magazine and pasted against the black scrapbook paper of the sky. “His goddam house,” he said, aloud again. “His wife. His reward.” He sniffed. “I reckon I finally showed him.” He turned toward the shed. “Hell,” he said, dismissively. “Get on up.”

  So he retraced his steps, across the soft grass of the lawn surrounding the big house, bigger than anything in this county, outside of town anyway, and everybody wondered what four people could find to do to fill up a house that large, when most folks raised families of ten or twelve or even more in their little places, put together out of chink and daub and fresh boards from the sawmill, still smelling of the hot blade and slapped up in some impossible extra time between setting out and suckering and threshing, canning, cutting, grading. And hog killing. It’s cold enough to kill hogs. Cold enough…He went on by the house without looking up at it, straight and deliberate, back through the muck around the shed and into the door.

  The lamp was still lit, throwing an amber wave over the interior. It looked to him like a place he had never seen before, and he found himself actually searching its fifteen-by-fifteen-foot space as though he were looking for some small object—a coin or a flat pick, fallen out of his pocket—and not anything the size of a dead man. But his eyes gradually stopped wandering and settled on the bulk, in darkly stained overalls, humped and twisted over the remains of the pine chair, blood dropping thickly from a shattered rowel.

  “What in hell’s he got a chair out here for anyhow?” he said.

  There was a lot of blood, very dark, as though deep holes had been torn in the scene—the packed dirt floor, what was left of the chair. The body itself glinted slightly around a great torn blackness in its very center.

  “Deader’n hell,” he said. “Deader’n hell.”

  And suddenly he found he was crying. He felt no real sadness, felt hardly anything at all, except the run of tears down his face.

  He stooped and grabbed the dead man’s leg, pulling it to pivot the body around. Then he picked up both feet, kicking away the dripping remains of the chair, and began dragging his father’s body across the shed toward the door.

  It took all of an hour for him to wrestle the lifeless form through the mud and over the grassy sward. He stopped every once in awhile and let tears fall, the way a man will sometimes turn his face up to feel the falling rain. Then he shook off sensation and went back to work, pulling the dead man along, around to the front of the house. When he reached the porch steps, he let the feet fall free. They hit the boards of the steps with a resonant THOOM that caused him to start and rub his hands nervously up and down along the hips of his dark pants. He wiped a sleeve across his wet face, then he sat on the steps. He rose and pulled the awkward, heavy pistol from his waist. He sat again, laying the cooling pistol on the wooden step beside him. He was breathing heavily. The body was sprawled out, arms above its head, feet resting incongruously on the second step of the porch riser. Nole looked at it, felt an urge to cry again. No, he thought. He ruined everything. The son of a bitch. He hacked wetly and spat directly on his father’s body, stood up and took the feet once more. He pulled them around, pivoting the body again, walking the legs down the steps and around, so the head now faced the house. He moved along to the steps and then bent and lurched the body upward, holding it beneath the arms.

  Drawing the body up the steps was a matter of hefting and shrugging the weight as high as possible and then heaving it, tossing it down and upward. Then bending, hooking the armpits again, hefting and heaving again. His hands were sticky with blood by the time he had the body solidly on the porch. He stepped back down three stairs and sat, again, catching his breath, rubbing cold sticky hands along his rough thighs.

  He thought of fights he’d had as a young boy, the fists swinging wildly and striking into a thin, bony young body, just like his own, but belonging to any one of any number of boys from these hills. He would be shouting with fury, trying to hurt the other, teeth clenched tight, fists swinging, frustrated that his puny arms could only do so little damage, feeling the terrible purple explosion when fist connected with nose. He remembered realizing, later, that this had been, in fact, murderous rage, and that he had been prohibited from committing actual homicide only by lack of size and weight. So this is what it feels like to want to kill someone, he had thought, remembering the frustration, the need to push harder and crueler than he actually could, the gritted teeth.

  But it wasn’t like that at all, this actual act, this murder. He had felt no rage, no clenching, pushing need. As if it had been somebody else, not Nole Darlen: some stranger who happened by and decided—just passing the time, he supposed—to kill this man. It had been like an afterthought, almost casual, the finger tightening on the trigger. And that was all there was. And this was murder?

  “Well, well,” he said.

  He stood again, walked to the heavy front door and opened it, swung it in. He couldn’t have said why he was doing all this, dragging his father’s murdered body back to the house. Perhaps he felt the mansion itself was the only fitting memorial to the man. Or perhaps he had some obscure impulse to compose the scene for those who might find it. He couldn’t have said.

  He returned to the body and went to work, lifting the feet again this time, and drawing the body across the porch and over the threshold, into the dark hallw
ay. Again he let the legs fall, and this time they made a lighter thlack against the polished hardwood floor. He turned and opened a door on his left, across from the big, curving walnut staircase. Bent again, lifted legs again, and drew the form into the small side room, where he dragged the body around again, again head-forward. Hooked armpits and hefted again, raising and throw-dropping the bloody corpse onto the narrow bed. Rubbed hands again on overalls and stepped back out into the hall. He pushed the room door shut, and walked back outside, to the front steps. He stepped down, slightly dazed, until his feet touched ground. Then he lowered himself, sitting on the second step, and stared vacantly at the pale light just visible over the hill to the east, toward the Hobbes place.

  ii.

  Burlton Hobbes had been dreaming, but knew it was a gunshot even before he came fully awake. He sat abruptly up in bed as the last skewing echoes dropped over the hills.

  “What in the name…” he said and drew himself the rest of the way out of bed, scrabbling for lamp and matches.

  “Burr-el,” his wife muttered, stretching an arm out across his side of the bed, searching, still asleep.

  “Maydie, git up outen bed. I done heard a gunshot yonder.”

  “Hmmm?” she said.

  “Maydie. Git on up. They’s somebody a’shootin’ a gun yonder.”

  “A gun?” she said, rolling away, struggling to remain asleep. “What? A gun? I don’t hear nothin’.”

  He fumbled a match from the box, struck it on the wall, and lit the tallow candle by the bed. The room threw itself into shape around the couple and the bed: a heavy, carved dresser, with a pale lace runner on its top, a series of homespun frocks hanging from hooks on the side wall, the silver-blue glazed warp reflected off the window’s waved surface. Just visible in the doorway, snuffing curiously from the darkened hall, a dog’s long muzzle appeared.

  Burlton had already drawn up his overalls, bunched and tucked the tail of his nightshirt into the waist, and hooked them up. He moved into the doorway, his body’s momentum turning the dog ahead of him. “’Tchout, Hoover,” he said. The dog was a pale blur leading him through the short back hall.

  “Put some shoes on, Burl,” his wife muttered. But he was already out the door. “Heavenly days, Burl.” Then, a whisper, “Hush, you’ll wake the young uns.”

  He left the house, the dog snuffing and scampering ahead of him, into the deep night, thinking, It’s a sight colder’n I’d thought. Well, now, that gunshot’d carry right far in this cold. No tellin’ where it mayt’ve gone off. But now, what in hell is anybody firin’ off a gun this time of night? Must be plumb midnight. Ain’t huntin’ nothin’ at midnight, leastways not without dogs. Just kids raisin’ hell, I reckon. Billy Wade and me, we’d go out of a night and shoot a time or two, just to hear it go pop. Surely she isn’t…It couldn’t have nothin’ to do with her…

  My lord, it’s been a rough day, with all that tellin’ Maydie, tryin’ to tell. Who’d ever imagined such a thing? I be durned. Well. I’d like to catch that boy at somethin’ over here, give him a taste of what he give Jem. I was just talkin’ about that to Rose, today. Yesterday. What a terr’ble thing.

  I don’t know. I don’t know but what this is all fixin’ to get worse and worse.

  Well. Nothin’ goin’ on out here. Just some kids, I reckon. I’ll just clomber up and see what’s to see and go on back to bed. It’s colder ’n a pump handle out here.

  He topped the curve of the hill and looked across at the big house, its peaked roofline at his eye level. He squatted, buttocks to heels, and watched the grainy dark landscape, surveying the rich man’s property. He felt no envy or anger, but he couldn’t escape a certain curiosity each time he looked upon the incongruous size of the dwelling. Ain’t it strange that she mayt’ve lived right there? Right over the hill? But look at that durn place. Enough for a army of folks. What in hell anybody need with a place like that?

  He’d had this same conversation two years ago, at the diner across from the tobacco warehouse, where he’d just laid out his crop. Three of them, sitting stiffly at the bare wood table, eating chili and cornbread. Drinking buttermilk.

  “This here’s the best damn part of farmin,’ I’d say,” Donny Gooden said, and wiped his sleeve across his reddened mouth.

  “Good chili, ain’t it?” Burlton said. He took up a piece of cornbread and broke it into his glass of buttermilk. Pushed it around slowly with his spoon. “You think it’s worth all that work out in the patch, all year long, raisin’ a crop takes you thirteen month to get up?”

  “May not be worth it, but it’s a hell of a sight better than doin’ all that work and not gettin’ the chili, now, ain’t it?” Donny had said.

  “I’d a heap druther stay to home and not do the work,” said Tom Gooden. “Chili or no chili.”

  “I reckon,” Burlton said, eating the sodden cornbread, the milk dribbling down his chin.

  The door skreyed open and a thin man in overalls entered. He was wall-eyed, and this gave the left side of his face a bulging, glaring, slightly mad expression, while, on the right, he appeared genially intelligent. Although he worked shifts at the paper mill, he seemed comfortable with the farmers, drawn to them, and he usually found his way to the warehouse at auction time, where he could be seen moving lazily about, talking, telling stories, passing on the news, which he seemed to know more precisely, and more thoroughly, than most. Burlton knew him about as well as the others, which was to say he saw him with the season, and, also like the others, was pleased when he appeared.

  “Haddy, Hogeye,” Donny said.

  “Haddy, boys,” Hogeye said. “You all doin’ all right?”

  “All right as gettin’ right,” said Burlton. “No more than usual.”

  “That cornbread looks like home,” Hogeye said, sliding up a rope-seated chair. “I believe I’ll have me a chunk.”

  Through the streaked picture window the men watched a new yellow automobile roll up to the warehouse and swing in diagonally to park. The mules and horses shuddered and stamped. Then, as though on some command, or practiced drill, they slid haunches to the side and dropped their ears back, standing stock still.

  “Who the hell…” said Tom.

  “Darlen. Carl Darlen. Who the hell else? That ain’t no Ford,” Hogeye said. The car’s rear door swung open and a tall man in an ecru linen suit unfurled himself. He stood, looking vaguely about the street. Pulled something out of his pocket. From that distance they couldn’t see what it was until they saw him dip his head into cupped hands and saw the blue smoke from the cigarette.

  “What’s he doin’ into town? Oughten’t he to be out to Blair’s Creek a’buildin’ another mansion house, maybe to put his chickens in?” said Tom. “Why the hell he build such a big house anyways? Ain’t got a goddam thing to put in it but his own little family. Anyhow, you look down inside that ice cream suit and he’s just a damn farm boy like the rest of us.”

  “Maybe his wife made him to do it,” Donny said. “Wouldn’t be the first time a man’s wife done…”

  “She didn’t have nothin’ to do with it,” Burlton said, sharply. “Weren’t none of her. Besides…”

  They turned and looked at him, quizzically.

  “That’s all right, now, keep your shirt on, Burl,” Donny said.

  “Well, now I suppose he had to do somethin’ with all that money,” said Hogeye. “Didn’t he? Don’t you figure? First off, he finds hisself with half the land in the Holston Valley, just a’fallin’ into his lap when his daddy dies, and what’s he a’goin’ to do with it? It’s too big to farm and it’s done already been timbered right down to the ground. He mayt could wait and give it to his kids, except he ain’t got but two, and one of’’em’s a girl and the other one, Nole, he ain’t interested in nothin’ sets as still as a piece of land does. If he can’t bet on it nor dance with it nor throw it down his throat, he ain’t a’goin’ to want it, is he?

  “So here comes the
se couple of big shots with a bank in each pocket, talkin’ all about the magic city and how this here town’ll be the cradle of the new South and all such. And they’s pleased to represent the whatchallit development corporation and they’s all a fixin’ to give him more money’n he’s ever dreamed of just to get the title to that river bottom where they’s a’goin’ to build two or three of them magical factories.

  “But I believe they found out they was wrong on one count. It weren’t more money’n he’d ever dreamed of. Because he refused to sell. So I believe he was already a’dreamin’ of a heap more money’n what they’d put in that first offer, now, weren’t he? I bet them big shots thought, here’s a hick, we can hand him a shiny penny and he’ll reckon it’s a whole dollar. So ain’t no point in payin’ this hayseed any more than he wants to take, now is there? So I reckon they kindly low-balled him on that offer, thinkin’ he’d snup it up and they’d have their factory and most of both of them banks still a’rattlin’ around in they pockets. But he fooled them.

  “Yessir. He just says, ‘Thank you kindly, but I believe I’ll just set still on this here acreage until a feller comes along with a offer that’s worth spendin’ five or ten seconds of my precious time a’thinkin’ it over.’ And then he sets back and waited on them to notch her up a mite more.

  “And when they come back right away and tried to give him almost twice what they done offered at first, well he knowed then how much that there land mayt be worth. So he just said, ‘Thank ye kindly,’ again and set back and waited some more. It must’ve felt like growin’ punkins to him: nothin’ much to do but just set there on the porch and watch ’em vine out and bud up and they’ll just keep on a’gettin’ bigger and bigger, until you got more punkins than you could thow a cat at. Like all he had to do was set around and that money’d just keep on gettin’ bigger, until he had more of it than he had punkins even. More’n he knowed what he was a’goin’ to do with it.