by Glenn Taylor
On the three-quarter turn, the last of the bribed jockeys wheeled wide and dropped from second to fourth. He bumped the bald jockey on his way, pushing him from contention. That left three. Tuna Melt was the superior equine. The only question was who would place and who would show.
“C’mon, you fucking midgets,” Fury said. He held binoculars to his eyes.
The two jockeys Fury watched were middle-aged farmhands. Their horses were broken-down fillies at glue factory’s gate. Odds were 20 and 30 to 1. But none of that mattered if First Edition didn’t pass Heav’nly King in the next two seconds.
Tuna Melt led gate to wire and won by six lengths. At 9 to 1, she’d pay out nicely. Place and show were too close to call. They were going to a photo finish.
Willy watched Fury slam his binoculars into the bag. It sounded as if the glass cracked. “Please please please,” Fury was saying, his head bowed, his fingers laced in prayer.
When the results went official, Fury leapt from his seat, punched the air and hollered “Thank you Jesus!” First Edition had placed by the tip of her flaring nostril. Fury sat down and gathered himself. Went silent for a moment. “This is a big one,” he told Willy.
They went back to the windows and collected using the same stagger and disguise method they’d employed to bet.
In all, with the boys’ winnings and what he cleared through his local bookie, Erm left Charles Town that Friday with almost ten grand.
“Not bad for a day’s work,” he told the boys as they pulled onto Middleway Pike. At the last stoplight in town, Erm peeled off two hundred for each of them and passed the bills to the backseat. They were already loose on beer he’d bought them at the ABC store. “Here,” he said when he handed Willy the cash. “Maybe you’ll get your prick wet.”
By midnight, both boys were passed out drunk. Erm took his time driving through Charleston. Kanawha Boulevard was quiet. He could smell the river.
He parked the Cadillac in an empty Shoney’s parking lot. The headlights of a passing car reflected off the restaurant window. The blacktop was rain-slicked.
Erm looked at the two boys in the rearview. Willy snored.
He checked his watch. Charlie Ball was late.
The white Impala rolled up at a quarter to one. Charlie stopped with a jerk in the space next to Erm and waved a hand. There was a woman in the backseat.
Erm got out of his own car and into the Impala. A fifth of whiskey sat upright on the seat, and the upholstery stank of sweat. Charlie Ball was dead drunk. The woman in the backseat was not his wife. This one was blond, young. She was asleep, her bra straps loose around her biceps, her mouth open.
“You play it pretty loose for public servant, don’t you, Charlie?” Erm said.
Charlie smiled and unscrewed the top of his whiskey. He knocked back a big one. “Erm, I want you to meet Ginger,” he said. He whistled. Ginger didn’t stir, so he whistled again, louder. She opened her eyes.
Erm looked at the young woman, spoke his customary line. “How do you do?”
She said, “How do we do? We do it dog style so we can both see the television.”
The two men laughed hard. Charlie could scarcely stop. “Hot damn, she’s got a mouth, doesn’t she?” he said.
She licked her dry lips, looked at Erm, and said, “That’s how we do.” She picked up her pocketbook and rooted for cigarettes.
Erm watched her fall back asleep before she could get her cigarette lit. It rested between her fingers, twitched a little. He turned and looked out the front windshield. A giant statue of a boy was atop the restaurant. He hoisted a hamburger. Fat Boy was written across his shirt. Erm wanted to point out his likeness to Charlie. “I’ve got your money,” he said.
Charlie nodded. “You’re a smart Italian man.”
Erm pulled the old leather envelope from his inside pocket and unzipped it. Handed over twenty grand in hundreds, rubber-banded.
Charlie thumbed the edges. He winked at Erm, put the money in his own inside pocket. “This is good land,” he said. “Good for horse racing.”
Erm didn’t care that Charlie knew nothing of tracks and dirt pack and leveling terrain. He was a politician, and like the rest of them, he would push gambling on the hayseeds because he knew there was money in it. Come payday, they’d line up at the betting windows.
Erm stuck his hand out for the shake. Charlie took it. The grip made him cringe, and when he looked Erm in the eyes, he knew he’d made a mistake.
“Okay, so,” Charlie said. He looked away and cleared his throat.
“Shorty Maynard’s got the original deed. That acreage is more than we thought, and I don’t believe Shorty’ll have any trouble getting his name on all of it. The developers are in line to—”
“You told me that none of this land cuts into Ledford’s property.” Erm took his hand off the door latch.
Charlie tried to sharpen up. “Oh no, of course not,” he said. He smiled, looked back at Ginger.
Erm opened the door and stepped out. “Sit tight a minute,” he said. Charlie took deep breaths and watched Erm open the big Cadillac door. He leaned across the seat for something on the floor. Charlie saw two figures asleep in the back, but he couldn’t tell who they were. He began to panic.
Erm returned and stood at the Impala’s open passenger window with his hand in his jacket. He stuck his face in and gave Charlie the eye. He pulled a box of cigars out fast. Charlie flinched. “Be a good boy, Charlie,” Erm said.
Before he drove away, he called, “Get a neck strap and hand those out at the legislature.”
FEBRUARY 1967
EVERYTHING WAS ABOUT to change.
Four men stood inside the rusted fence of the Bonecutter burying ground. Ledford, Staples, Dimple, and Wimpy. Staples had called the graveside meeting, and none of them knew why. They feared he was losing his mind.
Their eyes squinted to read the dark etchings. Hand-carved names like Gertrude, Della, Woodrow, dark-mossed rock lined by water. Their years marked another time: 1801…1864.
Ledford thought of the headstones of his mother and father and brother, imagined them grown over with weeds. After they went in the ground, he’d visited the gravesite only once in his life, at fourteen. A terrible feeling had come over him, and he never went back.
“I’ve left detailed instructions with my brother Bob,” Staples said. He wore a toboggan knitted by Rachel. It was pulled low over his ears and eyebrows. He hadn’t been out of bed in a while. “I wish to be buried right there,” he said, pointing to a corner.
The Bonecutter brothers registered no reaction at first. Then, both men nodded. That was fine with them.
Staples turned to Ledford. “I already told you about my desk drawer, haven’t I?”
“Yes, you have.”
Staples turned to the brothers. “Somethin in there for him,” he told them. “I want him to take heed of me, dead or not.” He smiled and pointed his pipe at Ledford. It was always in his hand in those days, always empty. He stuck it in his teeth and kept it there a while, unlit but comfortable.
Ledford nodded. Looked away. Staples seemed so old to him. His skin was drained—no sap left. “Let’s get you inside,” Ledford said.
It had gotten cold.
A black sedan came down the road. It was new, shiny. The four of them watched it pull to a stop at the gate, plates reading C of E before the number, blue on white. Two men stepped out in overcoats. They waved.
The goats had gotten loose again, and they ran straight for the tall man. He jumped onto the hood of his car like he’d never seen a goat before.
Dimple laughed. He and Wimpy walked over, and the other two followed.
The men had documents with them. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, they read. Acquisition, Relocation. The tall one with the mole on his cheek said, “We wanted to give you some time to ponder all this before we put notice in the newspapers.”
Congress had approved it. The Corps of Engineers was stepping in the way of all the floods. They
were going to build a dam at Lavalette and back up the forks of Twelvepole Creek. They were going to make a 2,000-acre lake.
“Marrowbone Creek don’t flood but once ever two years,” Dimple said. “And when it does, we manage just fine.”
The short one nodded. His fedora was loose on his head. “I hear you,” he said. “But this is mandatory acquisition we’re talking about. You won’t have to clear out for a couple years, but come ’69, well…” He didn’t elaborate.
Wimpy wore an odd expression. “Are you tellin’ us that Marrowbone will be underwater?” he asked.
“Yessir, that’s what I’m telling you.”
Staples said, “I worked for the Conservation Corps.” He grunted. Stifled a cough and tried to stand straight.
Ledford had him by the arm.
Two thoughts were in Ledford’s mind. The first was that it was twenty degrees and he ought to get Staples back indoors. The other was that he liked the thought of Marrowbone underwater.
“What about our kin?” Dimple looked back to the burying ground. For him, everything depended on how the two men answered this question.
The short one took off his hat and held it in both hands at his waist. “Well, yessir,” he said. “We would be happy to cover cost of excavation and reburial, make that an easy process for you.”
Dimple said, “I’d just as soon leave em where they are.”
Staples nodded his head. “Under a lake,” he said. He patted Dimple on the shoulder and laughed. “I always wanted to be buried at sea, but I reckon a lake’s close enough.”
The short one cleared his throat and looked at the tall one, who shrugged and put in a stick of gum. The short one said, “I’m sure we could work something out Mr. Bonecutter.”
Staples started coughing and Ledford led him away.
Wimpy watched them go. He’d seen neither surprise nor anger on their faces at news of the damming of Twelvepole Creek. Wimpy wondered if Ledford felt what he did about Marrowbone. He wondered if the younger man regarded the chimney stack every morning like he did, knowing it didn’t belong, and knowing, deeper down, that maybe none of them belonged.
The goats had walked clear up the main road. A direct, steady amble, as if they’d planned it. When they were almost out of eyeshot, they turned and stared at Wimpy.
He knew they’d wanted to run for years, and now was as good a time as any to let them go. He waved a hand.
JUNE 1967
THE MARROWBONE ACTION GROUP was meeting at seven inside the community center. There was to be discussion of the coming dam and lake, and a vote had been ordered to oust Noah Ball from the poverty commission. Nobody had seen Noah in months. Word was he would make a run for state senator in a year’s time. The Ball cousins wanted two districts to rule.
It would be a tough row to hoe. In the year since the interim elections, things had changed. The New York Times had gotten wind of Wayne County. They ran an article about local corruption and called it “The War on the War on Poverty.” Don Staples was quoted: “The politicians and the businessmen can holler communist plot all they want to. We got a different name for it. Poor Power is what we call it.” Walter Cronkite mentioned Marrowbone on his show, ran a full minute of footage showing the factory and the community center and the gym. Stretch Hayes’ silhouette was right there on national television—through the open gym window, you could see him shadowboxing. There was mention of Douglass High School in town, which was slated to become a community center of its own. Cronkite had said, “Theirs is not a movement for rural whites alone.” The Charleston Gazette ran Harold’s law school graduation speech. He’d finished first in his class. He spoke of the CIP and Smalley’s Cafeteria. He spoke of the power of lawful resistance.
The state road commission and the board of education took note of the attention. Marrowbone was real. Up at Poke Branch, the state rebuilt two swinging bridges. Knob Drop Road was patched and paved, and a guardrail was put in at dead man’s curve. School buses started running deep into hollers.
For a short while, it seemed that the energy they’d found in Alabama would come back again. There had even been talk of a visit by Martin Luther King, whose Southern Christian Leadership Conference had noted Marrowbone’s work.
But nothing much had truly changed. Staples had finally gone to the doctor, where he heard the word he’d been waiting for. Cancer. The war in Vietnam went on, and the poor stayed poor. Noah Ball may have been peeking at the world through his mortuary curtains, but Charlie was out working overtime, lining pockets and buying votes.
He’d been talking to Shorty Maynard about how to shut Marrowbone down for good. He wanted to own that land before the government bought it up. Charlie had gambled away the land development money, Erm’s included.
Marble sales were down. The cost of natural gas was up. The factory’s chimney stack needed a good cleaning.
Ledford watched the smoke cloud through the community center window. His shinbone was acting up. It was as if the pain came from inside the bone, an angry shrapnel souvenir that the Navy doc at Espiritu Santo had missed all those years ago. He propped it on a folding chair and checked his watch. Inside an hour, there wouldn’t be any empty seat in the place.
He told Orb to rub his leg a while.
The television was on. They’d raised it, a ten-brick stack underneath. The newsman spoke on Vietnam like he did every night. Cue cards. Numbers instead of names.
Harold opened chairs and set them in a line. Herchel pushed a broom double-time, a cigarette stuck in his lips. Jerry taped a cord to the floor and switched on the microphone. He tapped it to the tune of “Oil It Up and Go.”
Ledford told Orb to shut off the television. “What about Gunsmoke at seven-thirty?” Orb asked. Puberty had changed his voice.
Ledford shook his head no and stood up. He winced. “We’re having a meeting in here Son. Go on over to the chapel to watch,” he said. He pointed his finger at Orb. “Spend a little time with Staples, like you used to. Dying man needs company boy, you hear?”
Orb heard. “And don’t turn the old man’s set on till Andy Griffith,” Ledford said, and headed for the door. There was a good bit on his mind. In an hour, he’d be telling the people that he had no answers for them. That when the government told you they were flooding you out, maybe there weren’t answers anymore.
Outside, it was humid. The creek was low.
The gym door opened and Willy stepped out. His handwraps hung loose at the wrist. He was shirtless. Behind him, Josephine Maynard stuck her head out the door and hollered that Huntington girls were no-good whores. She spat on the ground and stepped back in the gym. Willy walked for the creek. He didn’t return his father’s wave.
Stretch Hayes stood in the gym doorway and made a gesture to console Josephine. “He’s just young,” he told her. “You give him some time, he’ll come back to you.”
Over at Herchel and Jerry’s, Bendy was packing up the last of her things. She pushed open the screen door with her backside, spotted Willy coming. “I never step foot on this land again!” she screamed at him. She had an Army duffel slung over her shoulder and a knife block in her hands. The little metal handles glinted in the sun.
Out back in Herchel’s garden, Willy knelt and smelled the marijuana plants. They were a good foot shorter than the stickweeds around them and from far off they looked like rattlesnake ferns. Willy had been picking at the camouflaged buds for four years. He knew that Herchel knew he did it, but neither had ever said a word.
At the big garden, Mary walked the rows, her mother trailing behind. Each woman had her hands clasped in back, head bowed to the ground. They were inspecting, eyeballing leaf holes. Categorizing by size and shape, discerning what manner of critter had been into the seedlings this time.
“Slugs are feasting,” Rachel said.
Mary nodded. She took note of yellow-edged mustard greens and ugly broccoli stalks. “We need Mrs. Wells and her death traps,” she said. Mary thought of Harold then. She looked
to the chicken coop. It was quiet, a thin swirl of dust along the gate. The clouds above covered the sun and Mary shut her eyes and imagined Harold was there, walking the grounds in his undershirt, wise beyond his years.
“Is this cat poop?” Rachel asked.
“No.” Mary walked on down the row, her eyes unfocused, her bare feet marking a trail.
They passed each other at the middle. Rachel regarded her daughter. “Are you all right Mary?” she asked. Rachel’s head was cocked, her eyes squinted.
“I’m fine.”
Twice in the last week, Rachel had peered through the keyhole of Mary’s bedroom door. Each time, she could make out the top of her head, so still where she sat on the floor. Next to her, the projector ran, its rolling clicks a dull lullaby. Its beam cast a picture on the far wall. Rachel could only make out bits and pieces. Orb mouthing “Amazing Grace” onstage. Staples on his soapbox. Harold, smiling.
Mary bent next to a cabbage seedling and took a handful of salt from her gardening belt. There were holes along its front, the potato sack material unraveling. There was no need for pepper any longer. The cats had abandoned Marrowbone. Mary held the salt over a fat brown slug. She opened her fist and the salt poured in a thin line across its back. The slug twisted into a U shape, its feelers reaching for its tail. Mary poured the rest and watched the slug’s sheen disappear, replaced by a thick film of white.
Her mother stood above her, watching. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” Mary said.
Above the Cut, high on the ridge, Dimple and Wimpy bellied dirt and passed the binoculars back and forth. They were watching Shorty Maynard, who was two hundred yards off. He stood on top of Big Shoe Rock and looked through his own binoculars at something down below. It was the third time in two weeks they’d seen him spy.
“What’s he trained on?” Dimple said.
“Can’t tell.” Wimpy was hungry. He sighed, rubbed his sore neck. At the clearing, Shorty decided to have one more look before calling it a day. He rolled the wheel with his pointer finger and watched Ledford step back into the community center. Chickens darted across the lawn, chased by a dog. He rolled it again and watched his daughter step from the boxing gym. She was moving funny. Shooting her arms like something had upset her. Josephine had a flair for the dramatic.