Near Canaan

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “I didn’t hear that,” said Jack, thrusting the bottle at Buddy’s glass.

  Again, the silence while the three drank.

  “Time,” said Rupe.

  “Not yet,” said Jack.

  “Shitfire,” said Rupe. It’s ten of. We gonna be late.”

  “Simmer down,” said Jack. “I’ll put the glasses inside.”

  “What’re you nannying around in there for?” Rupe called through the screen door, swaying with drunken belligerence.

  “All done,” said Jack, coming back out. “Let’s go.”

  From the back of the pickup, Buddy watched the moon bump over the trees. He’d made a motion to climb into the cab before they started off; but the other two would have none of it.

  “Need room for the gun,” said Rupe.

  “And the bourbon,” said Jack.

  “You ride in the back,” said Rupe, getting in the passenger side and slamming the door.

  Buddy had gotten into the back obediently, figuring they were probably just used to riding alone in the cab together, and the prospect of a third person made them uncomfortable. Now, as the truck went over a dip, he took a firm grip on the side panel, shivering in the wind.

  “This ain’t the way,” shouted Rupe, leaning out of the cab to look, his words tearing back to Buddy.

  Jack was driving, and they’d already run up over two curbs on the way. Now they were on an unpaved, unlit road passing between dense banks of growth. Tree branches reached under Buddy’s collar and pulled at his hair. Panicked, he pushed them away.

  Finally, the truck stopped.

  “Where are we?” asked Buddy, sitting up.

  “Shh,” said Jack. “We’re here. Webb’s place.”

  Rupe was already out of his seat. He carried the rifle loosely across his body, one hand under the muzzle, as though it were a pet.

  “It’s over there,” whispered Jack.

  They were at the edge of a heavily wooded area. Sighting along Jack’s arm, Buddy could just see it: a small dark shape emerging from the darker shapes of trees.

  “It’s just a shack,” he said.

  “Shack for a shithead,” said Rupe, belching.

  “Are you sure he’s even home?” asked Buddy.

  “He’s there,” said Rupe.

  “There aren’t any lights on or anything,” said Buddy.

  Jack just looked at him.

  “No power lines either,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Buddy.

  Rupe’s gait was unsteady as he came around the back of the truck. He hitched up his pants and set off toward the house. “Y’all stay here,” he said. “Won’t take long.”

  “It’s really dark,” said Buddy, anxiously. “Can he see to hit anything?”

  “Not likely,” was the reply.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Buddy. “He might hit us by mistake.”

  “Yup,” said Jack.

  Buddy scrunched down in the back of the pickup, feeling the cold metal along his body through his clothes.

  “That’s the way,” said Jack. “Keep your head down.” He sounded amused.

  They waited like that, five, fifteen, twenty minutes. All the time, Buddy expected to hear the shot, perhaps a cry of pain, Rupe crashing back through the bushes.

  No sound.

  “Jack,” said Buddy, sitting up again, just as the sound of gunfire burst at them. “Jesus,” he said, ducking down again, cowering, face against the truck bed.

  It was difficult to count them, muddled as he was; the echoes and the fear mixed in together. There might have been three shots, and there might have been five. Then silence. Then another volley. Silence again; and then Jack was shaking him.

  “Guess that’ll do it,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “What?” said Buddy. “Um,” he said, unsure how to phrase his unwillingness. “They’re shooting at each other over there.”

  “Come on,” said Jack, and against his better judgment Buddy hauled himself out of the truck and dropped to the ground. His joints stiff with cold and waiting, he followed Jack into the brush, listening for every noise, feeling a vague absence in his midsection, as though his pelvis had melted away. They walked for a few minutes; the noise of crackling twigs was terrific.

  “What if we run into him, um, Webb?” asked Buddy. “I mean, should we be creeping around like this? It’s kind of dangerous, sneaking up between two armed men.”

  “True,” said Jack, but he kept right on going.

  They reached the house without mishap, and began to circle it slowly, clockwise, moving out in a spiral.

  “Rupe,” Buddy called softly, every now and then, his voice coming out feeble.

  Jack said nothing. They kept a distance between them of about fifteen feet, circling, circling, with the trees passing between, taking them out of view of one another for minutes at a time. Buddy, now running a cold sweat, strained his eyes at the darkness, opening them wide. He listened for every noise—was it Jack, or Rupe, or Webb? Or just a woods animal, flushed out by the gunfire?

  This must be what war was like, thought Buddy. Darkness; uncertainty; senses enhanced by terror. I could die in this place. How many young men must have formed that sentence in their minds on the murky battlefields of history? Formed it in English, German, French, Vietnamese? I don’t want to die here. Another lonely midnight soldier thought. What had made him do this? Pride? Sheer recklessness? Stupidity.

  Buddy tripped and went down. He landed on something soft; as he scrambled to his feet, it groaned and moved.

  “Jack,” he nearly shrieked. “Oh my God, Jack.” He heard Jack coming, over the crackling brush. “It’s Rupe, oh my God, they’ve shot him.”

  It was almost more frightening than being alone, to see the hasty dark shape blotting out the silent shapes behind, moving swiftly, an irregular patch of darkness, not obviously human or friendly. A few feet away, the shape became Jack, and knelt beside the body.

  “He’s not dead,” said Buddy. “He’s not dead yet, he made a noise. He’s just lying there, oh,” he babbled. “I fell right on him.”

  “Take a leg,” said Jack, rising.

  Buddy couldn’t move for a moment, but then he had taken a leg and then the two of them were dragging Rupe, over the branches, through the dirt, all the way back to the truck. When they got there, Jack waited patiently while Buddy vomited in a clump of bushes.

  “Help me get him in the back,” Jack said, when Buddy had stopped heaving and was standing again, shaking.

  Another superhuman effort; for a while, it seemed like they wouldn’t succeed in transfering Rupe’s huge bulk to the flat bed of the truck. But then he was up there, with his trouser cuffs rucked up above his knees from the dragging, and mud and twigs in his beard.

  Jack turned away from the truck, heading back toward the woods.

  “Where are you going?” asked Buddy, the last word high and cracked.

  “Get the rifle,” said Jack.

  “Fuck the rifle,” said Buddy, wildly. “Fuck the rifle. He’s been shot, he might die, fuck the rifle.”

  “Nossir,” said Jack. “He’d never forgive me for leaving his gun out all night.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” said Buddy, but Jack was gone.

  Buddy stood rigid by the pickup, unable to look at Rupe again, afraid to see the damage, the blood, remembering another gunshot wound, another death. A few minutes later, Jack came out of the trees again, carrying the rifle.

  “Let’s go,” said Buddy, but Jack climbed into the back of the truck, and knelt by Rupe. Buddy could hear the sound of cloth on cloth. “What are you doing?” he asked, nearly hysterical.

  “He’d want to die with his gun,” said Jack, solemnly. “It ain’t his best, but it’s his favorite.”

  “This is insane,” said Buddy, his teeth chattering, the tears starting. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital.”

  Jack leaned close to Rupe, turning his head as though listening for something.

  �
�Oh, God,” said Buddy, trembling, not able to look, his face wet now, with frustration and fear. “How bad is it?” he whispered.

  “Bad,” said Jack.

  “Where …” said Buddy, but couldn’t finish. He heard a wheezing noise. Was Jack crying?

  “Well,” said Jack, getting down from the truckbed, shutting the gate. “He’ll be hungover as hell tomorrow.” He turned, and Buddy saw that he was laughing. Laughing. “He ain’t dying, son,” said Jack. “Jes drunk.” He laid a hand on Buddy’s shoulder. “Don’t get into a fuss.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Buddy.

  “Get in,” said Jack, going to the driver’s side. Automatically, Buddy obeyed, climbing into the cab, fastening his seatbelt while Jack started up the engine. “The only shot old Rupe had tonight,” said Jack, turning on the headlights, “was bourbon.”

  “How’d you know?” asked Buddy, finally. “There were so many gunshots,” he said.

  “Happens about once a month,” said Jack, backing up. “Rupe gets to thinking somebody’s messed with Tillie or Peg. He loves those dogs.”

  “Has he ever shot anybody?”

  “Naw,” said Rupe. “Came close once.” He smiled. “Before I learned to keep him drinking till midnight. He’s big but he can’t handle his liquor.” He reached down to the floorboards, searching, and brought up the bourbon bottle. “Usually he doesn’t even get a shot off,” he said, untwisting the cap with one hand, taking a drink. “Most of the time he passes out on the way, or in the fields somewhere, and I load him back into the truck, drive him home, walk from there. It ain’t far. He never remembers it.”

  They were on the road now.

  “Tell you though, this time had me worried,” said Jack. “He took a long time to drop.”

  There was a silence, while Buddy absorbed the reality of the situation: nobody was shot, nobody was dying. It was all part of some weird routine, a drunk backwoods vigilante, wandering at midnight through a tolerant populace.

  “I guess you think it’s pretty funny,” said Buddy, finally. “How scared I was.”

  “You’d guess wrong,” said Jack, pleasantly. “I didn’t bring you to laugh at.” He swung the truck easily along the curves of the road—had he been drunk at all? wondered Buddy. “Every year puts another ten pounds on old Rupe,” said Jack. “Used to could throw him right over my shoulder. Now I’m older, he’s bigger. An extra hand is welcome on the midnight round.” The road ahead warmed a little, warning of an approaching car; he tapped his foot on the high-beam pedal just as the car heaved up into view. In the light from the oncoming headlamps, Buddy could see the thin unsmiling set of Jack’s lips.

  “It ain’t no joke, son,” he said. “It’s hard work.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Twins

  BUDDY WAS LOOKING grey on Tuesday, in Stokes’s. Jack was looking pleased with himself.

  “Boy’s been raising a little hell,” he told Wallace, darting a glance at me.

  Buddy didn’t have the air of one who’d been out all night, and proud of it. He looked vaguely ashamed, and estranged, and sat in a corner of the bar, holding his beer bottle in a lax grip. I went over to him.

  “Where’s your,” I gestured, “camera?”

  He raised dull eyes to me.

  “Left it at Jack’s,” he said. “I think it makes people uncomfortable.”

  “You figured that out,” I said.

  “Stupid,” said Buddy. “I should be carrying it everywhere. That way I don’t miss anything. But I seem to miss everything anyway.”

  “Go easy on yourself,” I told him. “Everyone needs a vacation. And you haven’t,” I hesitated, “missed so much. I hear you,” I took a swallow of beer. “Been talking to the whole town.”

  “The town’s been talking to me,” said Buddy.

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” he said.

  “Cheer up,” I said. “Even old,” I paused. “Pennebaker puts the damn camera down sometimes.”

  He looked startled. “How—” he began, and then subsided. “Oh, forget it. Everybody knows everything around here. Except me.”

  “Now, now,” I said. “We don’t know everything. Just a hell of a lot,” I smiled, “more than you think.”

  Long after the honeymoon, Joan and I were self-absorbed: we spent a good bit of time merely being married, and seemed to have little attention for much else. We socialized minimally: Jack and Paula came to supper once a week, and sometimes we went to another couple’s house. But mostly we concentrated on each other, and for a while, I hardly noticed Beth’s relative absence in our life. I saw her from afar, and heard the occasional talk. I guessed that she was still running with that same crowd from the Trough; I recalled the party she’d given, and how she’d changed. When I thought of her, it was with a mental shrug: I didn’t imagine we’d have much to say to one another now. Thinking it over, I wondered if there ever really had been anything much between Beth and me, apart from some wartime summer walks. At one time I had thought there was; some kind of alliance, whatever kind of alliance might have been possible between an awkward boy and a slightly older, smarter girl. I felt then as though we understood each other, Beth and I, and that I knew her better than Jack.

  But I accepted her diminishing presence in my life. It was too bad, how life had a way of separating people; but marriage, after all, sets you up for the small kingdom of family. Outside friendships drain off, like smaller tributaries to a great river during a drought. The weak shall perish.

  It was unusual, therefore, for Beth to telephone. She did exactly that, three years into our marriage, after a long silence.

  “What did she want?” I asked Joan, when she rejoined me in the living room.

  “Lunch on Saturday,” she said, curling into the arm I held out to her.

  “That’s nice,” I said. “Here or there?”

  “Neither,” she said, smiling that smile that women use when they are amused by male stupidity. “Girls only this time. Shopping and lunch downtown.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “I won’t go if you don’t want me to,” she said, taking my palm in both of her hands.

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s all right with me.” After a pause, I added, “Tell her hello.”

  The two women managed to see one another fairly often after that, meeting once a week in the afternoon, and at intervals repeating their shopping Saturdays. I was a little curious about their friendship; they had been friends before me, I knew, but to my mind they were unlikely companions.

  “What do you all do together?” I asked Joan, one Saturday. “Look at you; you’re exhausted.”

  “We shop,” she said. “And talk. Mostly talk,” she said, and laughed.

  “What in the world can you all find to talk about for—” I looked at my watch “—four hours?”

  “This and that,” said Joan. She looked at me. “Jealous?”

  “I’m just trying to understand,” I said.

  “Well, what do you talk about at Stokes’s? Between beers, I mean.” A gentle poke at my drinking.

  “Nothing much,” I said. “Baseball.”

  “Think of it as our baseball,” she said.

  But that couldn’t be it. I knew what Joan didn’t: that men’s talk was aimless and filler, that it provided a semblance of companionship, but left one deeply hollow. It was more the being together than the talking, and I never felt comfortable with other men. So maybe it was just me who left Stokes’s with a hungriness and confusion.

  “We tell each other things,” said Joan, seeing that I was unsatisfied. “Things we don’t share with anyone else.”

  “Do you talk about me?” I asked.

  “Now that would be telling,” said my wife.

  Rick Beller, having let me in on his secret, now assumed great friendship between us.

  “You want in?” he
asked one day.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t ask just anybody.”

  “I know,” I said. “I” and I stopped. “Guess I’ll make my money the hard way.”

  “Chicken, eh?” he asked, with understanding. “Listen. Don’t tell him I told, but Cafferty’s in. He’s a smart guy, wouldn’t do anything risky.”

  I inspected Cafferty from across the room. Unaware of my attention, he was absorbed in his paperwork. He has a pleasantly honest face and open manner; I was surprised to hear of his involvement in Beller’s shady dealings.

  “If your feet warm up, let me know,” said Rick, casually.

  When I ran into Beth downtown, I hadn’t seen her in nearly four months. She had changed again; I was startled by the heaviness in her face, the deep circles under her eyes.

  “Say hey, G.I.,” she said, smiling up at me.

  “How’ve you been?” I asked.

  “Nothing happening,” she said, but then there seemed to be too much to tell about, and so we went to get a cup of coffee. When it was served, we seemed to have run out of things to say, and there was an embarrassed little silence.

  “How’s Bill?” I asked, at the same time Beth said, “How’s Jack?”

  “He’s fine,” I told her.

  “Of course,” she said, making a face.

  “And how’s Bill?” I repeated.

  “Great,” she said. “I’m thinking of divorcing him.” Seeing my face, she said, “Now why do I do that. Always telling you everything straight out and shocking you.”

  “I’m not shocked,” I said, though I was.

  “Well, hell,” said Beth. “Fooey on this stuff,” she said, pushing away the coffee. “I need a beer for this.”

  I beckoned the waiter over and ordered one, and when the bottle arrived Beth picked it up, ignoring the glass, and took a drink.

  “I don’t know what was in my head that weekend,” she said. “Honestly. To think I could be happy with Billy Crawford.”

  “You’re not happy?” I said.

  “I can’t stand him,” she said. “To be fair, he can’t stand me either. I don’t know what he thought I was, but he seems awful disappointed now.”

  “Then he’s crazy,” I said.