Treeborne

by Caleb Johnson

  Pud closed the book on his finger and said, “Daddy took care of them.”

  “What’d he do?”

  Pud promised to show her soon as she got out. “But you got to be careful.”

  “How come you to care?”

  “Because I like you.”

  The sheriff was catching on to Pud’s crush too. Later that same evening he mentioned to Janie how Pud Ward sure was a good boy. “I’m glad to see him out for football,” the sheriff said. “Spells trouble for a town when your biggest boys don’t go out for football no more.” The sheriff got up and opened the window. Lit a cigarette and halfheartedly blew smoke outside. He patted his heart then loosed his belt buckle and sat down again. “What Ricky Birdsong done to you and your aunt was wrong.”

  “It was us,” Janie said.

  The sheriff inhaled, shook his head. “Listen,” he said to her, “you ain’t got to protect nobody Sister. You hear?”

  * * *

  Janie was let go on a Saturday. She knew this because her daddy picked her up on his day off—unless that had changed too.

  “What ought we do Sister?”

  “Go fishing,” she said.

  First they stopped at The Fencepost and bought two greasy cheeseburgers fixed with mustard and pickles and onions, and a sack of fries. Then they drove over at the Quik-Stop and bought a dozen raw chicken livers. They ate the burgers and fries during the drive out at De Soto Lake. The radio on and the windows down, grit swirling up from the floorboard. Pedro Hannah was going on about the Conquistadors. Night before, Jon D. Crews had outscored Painted Bluff High School by hisself in the team’s first win of the season.

  Ren parked near the water and left the switch on so they could listen to the radio while they fished. Janie reached into the cold gelatinous blood and hooked a liver onto her line. Ren did the same. Neither said a word about this being the exact spot they were fishing when the call came that Maybelle had died. The lake had dropped several feet since then, exposing pink and red and orange bands in the sandrock. Janie flicked the pole and her line sailed out across the lake. The liver plunked, a red-and-white bobber marking the spot.

  “Your aunt and uncle sure are ready to see you,” Ren said. “Tam’s done got herself a movie camera, been recording everything.” He kept on talking about his sister’s new hobby for a moment. “Uncle Luth,” he said, “he’s still sleeping down at the veterans’ hall for now. Can’t wait for you to see our new camper though Sister.”

  “What new camper?”

  “Mine and yours,” he said. “Got it parked right uphill from the fishpond, and you and—”

  “What about our house?”

  “Oh, we don’t need that big-old place. Just me and you.”

  “What about Momma?”

  Ren began reeling in his line. “Think I lost my bait,” he said. He grabbed the line and checked. “Nope, still there.”

  “What about Momma?”

  “Listen, this don’t mean me and your momma don’t love you.” He cast his line. “Sometimes … Your momma just needed to, she needed to rest. To go away for a little bit. It don’t mean she don’t love us Sister.”

  Lie, he thought. It did too. At least it meant Nita did not love him. He would move on. Already had in some respects. Tammy, his momma’s will, the land. Christ he was mad for a minute. But he moved on. The money did not matter. Ren made a decent living with The Authority. Piece of paper with his name on it surely did not matter. He’d seen that belief shattered many times over. So why was he hurt, why angry, when he found out his momma had left all of The Seven to Tammy? Jealousy, pride. Something else. Like finding out you did not belong, you were not who you thought. This jarred Ren to the center of his being, to what churchfolks called the soul. He loved Tammy. The fear and panic and worry felt those days her missing caused him to lose eleven pounds. Then Sister too. When they realized the girl was missing Ren felt helpless in a way he did not know a grown man could feel. Tammy, he knew, was being no more vindictive than was her nature, lording this mess with the land over him and Luth only because it made her feel proud. We’re all born with particulars. He would love Tammy however she was. His sibling duty. He’d go on doing it no matter what. With their daddy and momma gone, with Luth, well, with Nita now living in Tennessee, Tammy and Ren had each other. And Sister. Thank Lord, he thought, we still got Sister.

  He vowed to never lay blame on his daughter, but Janie’s disappearance had severed the last rotten fabric of Ren and Nita’s marriage. For years Nita and Ren had picked and pulled at the frays rather than do the careful work of threading a needle. The town had reacted to Janie missing by hosting prayer vigils in front of the school, on the football field, in the square where De Soto stood. Ren and Nita were paralyzed those days. The sheriff didn’t want him part of the search anyhow, which felt like an accusation of his failure as a father. An accusation Nita herself was quick to point out. Ren quit going down at The Fencepost because of how folks acted when he showed up. He could only sit at the house watching Nita eat pound cake after pound cake, ice cream, peanut brittle, and seethe to hisself as they awaited word of their daughter’s whereabouts.

  One of the last times Ren went to The Fencepost he nearly smashed a jar half-filled with peach jelly upside Frank Tolbert’s head. Frank sat at the next booth over, reading the Times-Journal, which had a story about Janie on the front page every day her missing. Frank had closed the paper and, in Ren’s opinion, chuckled at the wrong time.

  “Just say it, you fucking coward!” Ren hollered, grabbing the jar as he stood up from the booth.

  Frank leaned back and raised his hands. He looked around the dining room, eyes saying, Y’all see this, right?

  Orville Knight escorted Ren out onto the sidewalk before anything else could happen. “Walk it off,” he said.

  Ren jabbed his hands into his pockets and stalked down the street to Gene’s Pawn & Gun. No idea why he went there. The shop was empty, except for Cookie Simpson. She smiled from behind the register. Can I help you? Ren knew right away that Cookie could help, and she did several times those weeks Janie was missing—on a desk in the back room where Gene Kilgore played solitaire and counted money on the rare day he bothered coming in to work. Nita had found out about Cookie before she left town for her cousin Bennie’s cabin in the Smokies the day after Janie was found. She said she couldn’t love Ren knowing he’d been stuck up inside of another woman. He almost felt noble giving her a good reason to leave.

  The camper he bought was silver—and Janie hated it from the start. You had to tiptoe or else the whole thing rocked. No foundation. Geronimo buried his leavings in the underneath space, despite Janie running the cat off time and again. She wondered how her daddy could do this? Sometimes she’d stare at him stooped over inside their new tiny home and think to herself, I wish you’d just die. It was ugly, she knew, but that’s the way the girl felt.

  First chance she got Janie went over at The Peach Pit to see Jon D. Crews. His motorcycle wasn’t where he usually parked it. From across the orchardfield Buckshot spotted Janie and ran thataway. She was as glad to see the dog as anybody since she’d been back. She lay down in the grass and let him flop on her chest and lick her forehead. She asked Buckshot where Jon D. was, and the fool dog sat up, cocked his head, then took off to show her.

  Jon D. Crews looked like he’d been stretched between two tractors. His skin darker, arms thicker from football workouts. He’d let his hair grow long for a boy. If not for the freckles thrown across his face, Janie might of wondered was it truly him.

  “I’m back,” she said. “Come by to see you.”

  “All your hair’s gone.”

  “Cut it.”

  “Looks weird,” Jon D. said.

  “Where’s your motorcycle at?”

  “Daddy sold it.”

  “How come?”

  “We saw you in the paper,” Jon D. said. “I saved them. Don’t know when I’ll have time to give them to you though. I’m on the Conq
uistadors now.”

  “Pud told me.”

  “Can you see yet?”

  “Doc says I won’t never be able to.”

  Jon D. squatted down and scratched Buckshot on the hip. The dog kicked and unrolled his tongue. “Well, I’m supposed to be working.”

  “Where’s Lee at?”

  “Over at Poarch County visiting Ricky Birdsong.”

  “Want to go down at The Washout when you’re through?”

  “I got football,” Jon D. said.

  “Who cares?”

  “I do,” he said. “Janie, you can’t just come back here like nothing ever happened. I ain’t even sure I want to be your friend no more.”

  * * *

  Janie tried to put Jon D.’s words out of mind by helping her daddy clear brush from around the fishpond. Ren aimed to drain the pond then restock it with bass. He dug through the earthen dam, and they watched years of sludgy brown pondwater running off into a holler. September had proved a hot and dry month. What water remained in the pond soon evaporated. Prowling its muddy bottom Janie found oodles of dope bottles, fishing lures hung up on petrified stumps and limbs. She kept some of these, cleaned them up and set them next to the two halves of Crusoe on the windowsill above where she slept.

  Otherwise she spent her time spying on her aunt Tammy, who seemed only to be able to stand viewing life through the lens of her new camera. They’d exchanged barely a word since Janie’d come home. The camera made little ten-twelve-second movies. Set the lens then crank a silver key to start the motor, pull the key and the camera made a sound kin to spinning bicycle spokes as film ran off its spool. The spool itself no larger than a good-size biscuit. Wooten had surprised Tammy with a playback machine. Sometimes Janie watched her aunt watching her movies projected up onto a wall inside the partially finished house. After Tammy was found, Orville Knight and others had spent long days on The Seven helping Wooten get the house in moving-in shape.

  One day at school Pud Ward slipped Janie a note asking if she’d come to the ball game that Friday. She wrote back, Show me and I will.

  The next day they got in his pickup truck—Crusoe on the seat between them—and drove south beyond the Elberta River. It was early morning, a cloudy fall day that made shadows jittery and fleeting. She didn’t ask where they were going, and Pud didn’t offer to tell. She’d prepared herself for whatever she might see.

  In Bankhead Pud pulled into his daddy’s used-car lot and killed the engine. He got out and Janie followed, leaving Crusoe in the cab. A glare made it difficult to see inside the showroom. When a cloud shifted, absolving the windowglass of its opacity, there stood Goodnight wearing a damn skirt and blouse. Look at her, Janie thought. Goodnight disappeared in back then returned with a pot of fresh coffee for when the salesmen arrived. Mornings devoted to drinking hot sludge and jawing about what was in the paper.

  “See,” Pud said. “Told you Daddy took care of it.”

  Goodnight noticed them standing outside and unlocked the door. “Hey lovebirds.”

  “Ah,” Pud said.

  “What y’all doing down thisaway?”

  “Ricky Birdsong got arrested,” Janie said.

  “Uh-huh,” Goodnight said, smiling. “Why don’t y’all come in.”

  She poured coffee. Pud asked how she liked working at the car lot. “He’s been good to me,” Goodnight said. “I shouldn’t complain.”

  They talked a while longer. The conversation sounded to Janie’s ear like one meant to come off as mature. Pud and Goodnight were acting as if far longer than one month and two weeks had passed. Summer had ended—and what with it? Janie didn’t understand how they could leave the past alone. She heard the last-surviving snake dry-rattle in the glass tank. Her inclination was to pick at the past till it scarred.

  Pud eventually excused hisself to the bathroom, leaving the girls alone. Janie figured this her chance to get some truth.

  “Here,” Goodnight said, digging through her purse, “I got something for you.” She checked to see if Pud was still in the bathroom. “Make sure he puts this on.” Goodnight shoved a square of gold foil into Janie’s hand. The girl felt a squishy rubber ring inside the package. “Don’t let him do it unless he does, hear?”

  After visiting with Goodnight, Pud and Janie walked across the road to The Bird’s Nest. The restaurant was empty. They sat down and ordered pancakes and runny eggs. Pud broke his yolks and swirled them with the syrup. They drank more coffee. Janie still had so many questions. Like, was Goodnight brainwashed? Slowly, coal miners arrived from the owl shift. Their skin and the green longsleeved shirts they wore sparkled black with grit. Several of the miners acknowledged Pud Ward as they came back from washing their hands and faces. Before long every table was full.

  She and Pud were waiting, but Janie wasn’t sure what for till Lyle Crews walked through the door. She knew it was him, but couldn’t believe his face, sooty except for white circles around red-lined eyes, nor the gut pushing against his shirt. Can’t be, she thought. Lyle looked much older—a fate worse than others Janie’d imagined befalling him.

  “Looks like you seen a ghost babygirl,” he said, pulling out the chair next to Pud and patting the fat boy’s back. He took a wad of tobacco from his mouth, wrapped it in a napkin and wiped his hand on his britches. “How’s Bubba doing?”

  “Might make All-State,” Pud said of Jon D. “Team’s a piece of shit though.”

  “You still playing?”

  Pud said he was. Lyle ordered black coffee and white toast smeared with peach jelly. When it came he ate as if somebody might take the plate before he finished.

  “Y’all see Goodnight?”

  “For just a minute,” Pud said.

  “Heard they sent Ricky over at Poarch County.”

  Lyle continued talking. He said Ricky Birdsong was always doomed. Might be true, Janie thought, but we didn’t help. She remembered how Ricky looked the day they kidnapped her aunt. Eager, like he was fixing to join a game. They’d used him just like everybody else had, moved on. Eventually Lyle slid a couple coins onto the table and stood up.

  “Well I need to sleep,” he said. “Got me on this owl shift. It was good seeing y’all though. Tell Bubba I wish I could get time off to come watch him play.”

  “It ain’t right,” Janie said.

  “What ain’t babygirl?”

  “You know it ought to be us,” she said.

  Lyle came around the table and put a hand on her shoulder. “You might as well get that idea out of your little head,” he said. Then, staring across the table at Pud Ward: “Everybody got what they deserved, ain’t that right?”

  She Could of Done Worse

  1958

  It would be a wet winter, Tammy could tell. She hated admitting it, but, like her momma, she was sensitive to the weather. The rain started in October. Some days nothing but a pissy-old drizzle, others it looked like strings dangling from a ripped seam. The aboveground pool they’d moved onto The Seven overflowed, the fishpond spilled its banks. Tammy figured most of the fish Ren’d stocked had swam away, some maybe making it down the holler to Dismal Creek. The ground between her and Wooten’s new house, which they’d somehow finished enough to move in, and the camper she’d convinced her brother to park out by their momma and daddy’s gravesite flooded knee-deep in places. Ren was busy as Hernando de Soto Lake rose against the dam’s backside. One day Tammy waded out to the camper to check on Sister and the girl wasn’t inside. She found her sitting with the dirt boy at Hugh and Maybelle’s gravesite.

  “You’ll catch a cold,” Tammy said.

  Janie looked up, tucked wet black hair behind her ears then turned back toward the weeping headmarker.

  “I don’t want nothing but the year I died on mine,” Tammy said, kneeling next to the girl.

  “What for?”

  “So nobody won’t know how old I was.” Tammy cackled. The girl did not.

  “How old are you?”

  “Old, Sister,” Tammy sai
d. “Now come on and get out of this rain.”

  They sat in rocking chairs on the front porch of the new house and stared out across the flooded property. Tammy pointed and said, “Lake Treeborne.” Sister did not laugh at this joke either. She was turning into a solemn young woman—not unlike how Tammy herself used to be. And look at her now. The life Tammy lived a horrid betrayal of the one she’d wanted. What about palm trees, the Pacific Ocean? Traded Hollywood for a house and a husband who now spent all his time building a workshop where he aimed to repair boat motors and small engines. At least business’ll be good, she thought. If this rain keeps up, folks’ll need boats to get around.

  “Men are fools Sister,” she said.

  The girl didn’t respond. She sipped coffee and pushed off the porchboards with her rubber wading boots. Her legs needed shaving, but Tammy refrained from saying so. The girl had become sensitive about her looks. Her hair was growing back unevenly, but nothing could be done except wait and let it.

  “You’ll learn one of these days.”

  The girl made a sound to let her aunt know she hadn’t gone deaf and dumb. Much of Janie’s communication was limited to this. Took her a month being back to speak more than a word or two to Tammy. The girl was lonesome, spending all her time fooling with putting that dirt doll back together. Inside Janie, Tammy just knew, things that needed saying were boiling so badly. A runaway, her momma gone. Now first love. That’s right, a runaway. Tammy knew. It was a lot for anybody, let alone thirteen-going-on-fourteen.

  “That Pud Ward’s a big boy,” she said. “So is Woot. I reckon we just like them thataway don’t we Sister?”

  Janie could not hide her surprise this time. She buried her face in the coffee cup she held with two hands.

  Tammy grinned, pleased at getting the reaction. “You ain’t got to be embarrassed with me,” she said.

  “I ain’t.”