“Got my eye on one. Let’s get inside.”
She opens the screen door and stops. I bump into her ass and get a vision like I pissed on a hot fence—see her hands bound and eyes like headlights when you turn em off and they glow for another second or two.
Emeline eases inside and takes it in. A Philco radio stands against the outer wall, with three chairs arranged in a semi-circle. Beyond the chairs, the opposite wall is a built-in bookshelf, loaded with the same books that educated the likes of Thomas Jefferson. She glances at a stone fireplace with a mantle clock and a Sharps rifle mounted above. She steps into the kitchen, where the chimney forms part of the wall.
“Snug come winter,” I say. “Forgot the dishes. Let me carry this case upstairs and I’ll get you stationed.”
“How does one man have so many dishes?” She unfolds her hand toward plates stacked lopsided on the table; to the sink, where four cast iron pans rust half submerged. “And all of them dirty?” She views the whole grand sweep; cornbread crusts, fish bones, dried mashed potatoes, then she opens the screenless window above the sink and shoos black flies.
“Kitchen needs a woman’s touch.”
I head up the stairs with her suitcase.
Jacob rambles up the porch steps and enters the house as I near the top of the stairs. He’s in bare feet and dirty pants that stop short of his ankles. He stands as high as Emeline’s breast, and looks like an eight-year-old beat with a grow-stick. A streak of mud crosses his face like a battle scar.
“You Emeline?”
“I’m Emeline.” She looks at me with a half smile, eyes bright for the unexpected… but holds her look with me long enough to say this ain’t what she bargained for. I continue up the stairs as she faces Jacob. “What’s your name?”
“Jacob.”
“You live nearby?
He snorts. “Course. Me an’ Deet.”
I rest the suitcase at the top of the stairwell and step back down. “This is Jake. Deet’s in the field. Come upstairs and see where you’re situated.”
Jacob says, “Mitch McClellan blowed his head off.”
“If I had a head like his, I’d want rid of it.”
Emeline glances at me, kneels, takes Jacob’s hands. “How do you know?”
It’s been half a year since a woman touched him. Jacob looks to me. “I seen him.”
“Child,” she says, and embraces him. Jacob watches me, arms limp at his side. I’m thinking I should’ve drained the dishwater to get rid of some of the smell. Jacob pulls his head back from her.
“What’d you see, boy?” I say.
“I was fishing. I heard the shotgun.”
“Where was you fishing?”
“West a bit.”
The west side of the lake curls around with a clear eyeshot of the walnut tree. “See him do it?”
Jacob nods. “He sat down to whittle. I didn’t pay him no mind. He’s always there—when you ain’t around.”
“Why ain’t you ever said so?”
“This’s the first he blowed his head off.” Jacob pushes away from Emeline and goes to the refrigerator.
Emeline brushes back hair that’s fallen to her nose. I lead her up creaky steps to a hickory hallway that ain’t seen oil soap in six months, turn into the last bedroom and put her bag in the closet. “There’s space in the top two dresser drawers. You’ll want to change before you start supper. I’ll get things red up, and tonight we’ll sit at the lake with a bottle.”
“Were you going to tell me you have two sons?”
“I said something about that last night.”
She sits on the edge of the bed and the springs twang. “Seems like a man ought to tell a woman he’s got two kids before he marries her.” She flattens a fold in the quilt. “Though Jacob looks like a fine boy.”
“Dumb as a frog in cold water. Got his momma’s brains.”
“Where is she?”
I feel the cords in my neck all stiff. I think of bones and teeth and human frailty.
“I didn’t mean to snoop. I should have expected surprises. We didn’t exactly take our time.”
I nod. I could take her wrists and have her, but I want to let it build.
“Don’t fret about the kitchen,” she says. “I’ll clean it. I’ll just be a few minutes.
Three
I fetch a mess of rope and a doublebladed axe from the barn. I crafted the handle a year ago—hardened hickory sapwood over fire, shaped it with a drawknife, paid special attention to the bump of shoulder below the head. I sanded until the grain was slick and rubbed it daily with linseed oil until the finish glowed, then locked the twin-bladed head with a wedge. Homemade haft stretches a foot longer than stock from the store. I stand six-four, and if the bit has a razor edge I’ll sever three-inch maple in a single swing.
Crossing the house again I linger by the porch and look into the kitchen through the window Emeline left open. Jacob sits at the table chewing bread smeared with apple jam.
“How old are you, Jacob?” Emeline says.
“Eight.”
“Did your Papa tell you who I am?”
“My new momma.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“We need a woman for dishes and laundry. And other needs.”
Emeline takes in the kitchen. I have electricity—and not many in the country do, with the Eisenhower program only ramping up. She draws water at the tap. Townsfolk ’ve had hot water forever, but not out here. She lifts a black telephone from its cradle, prominent beside the kitchen entry. Her home in Walnut don’t have a telephone. She said her old man had one at the Farmall dealership but wanted his house quiet. After he sold the business they went without. She holds the handset to her ear and the corners of her mouth move up.
Her smile fades as she replaces the telephone, steps to the stove and wipes it. She peers at the grease smudge on her finger, the floor, the walls, hutch. She opens a pantry door and pulls a lanyard from a bulb at the rafters. I circle to the other window. All at once she’s dragging a stool from below the bottom shelf, climbing it, elbows flapping, rearranging Campbell’s soup and a bag of beans.
She slams a can into the shelf a half dozen times and Jacob jumps out of his skin.
“Jacob honey, I need you to get me a grocery bag or something.”
“What for?”
“I said so.”
“I mean, what you want to put in it?”
“Mice.”
“Just give them to me.” He holds cupped hands above his head.
“They’re bloody, Jacob.”
“Aw c’mon. Let me have em. Please?”
She lowers a fuzzy nest of leaves and string, swallows like to hold back bile, and places the nest in Jacob’s hands. “Toss them in the field.”
“I wanna fish with em.”
“Do that, then. Jacob? Where’s the broom? Mop?”
“The cellar.” He runs out the door.
She touches her belly and leans against the doorjamb a long minute with her eyes clamped shut, like she’s already out of breath. Got a lot of work ahead, to be short on breath now. She wipes her eyes and I puzzle until Jacob leaps the steps and takes off toward the barn.
“Hey!”
Jacob spins. I wave him closer and he holds up his prize, an adult and four hairless, blind, smashed baby mice. I tousle his hair. “Get outta here, little shithead.”
Figured Sheriff Heilbrun would have been up to the house by now. He ain’t come so I head down the trail to the lake. He faces the walnut on his haunches and I get a thought in the back of my mind that the walnut knows all about death, and if I ever knew as much as that walnut I’d know too damn much.
Heilbrun always looks tense on account of his narrow, high shoulders, but it could be his proximity to the walnut throwing him off. Or maybe it’s the axe in my hand, and rope in the other.
The walnut tree don’t look any worse for a shotgun blast but that’s ‘cause Mitch’s head took the brunt. From forty yards
the only thing looks different is a gallon jug on its side. Mitch’s body’s already moved. Heilbrun stands as I near. His look goes to my axe and he opens his mouth and I answer.
“Gonna gather some brush for a fire.”
He nods to the ground in front of his knees where Mitch McClellan ended his life. “Ugly,” he says.
There’s a mess of blood and brains on the bark and the ground. To the side where Mitch pitched over the grass and leaves are almost black. Flies buzz around us, brought in by the blood.
Lot of history on the Devil’s Elbow.
Heilbrun holds a Y-shaped sprig in his fingers, maybe a half-inch in diameter and eight inches long. He raises it to eye level. “Whittled this right here. There’s shavings on the ground, spread out. Probly leaned on the tree, and the shavings fell to his belly. Then he slumps over, and all these chips fall to the side.”
“What is it?” I listen but don’t hardly hear. The dirt calls me from twenty feet away. I get a notion I’m liable to start talking and not know a damn thing I’m saying. This ground’s had a lot of death on it. The tree, the graves. Other history, before my time.
He pokes the sprig toward me. “Used it to depress the trigger.”
“Pretty clear suicide?”
“Where was you about four hours ago?”
“Church. Got married.”
“No shit? Again?”
Married again? Again? Why, we ain’t twenty feet from the last. Meanwhile I can almost feel Emeline’s hot skin, and can almost taste the salt on her neck, and I got Heilbrun talking like he knows more than he knows. I want her neck in my hand and her wrist in the other. I reach to the walnut and plant my hand firm, and wait until I’m all easy-does-it, and Heilbrun smiles. I got a picture come to me from the tree but this ain’t the time, sheriff eyeballing me. I can make out a photograph of myself a ways off and then I see Emeline’s ass got a man’s hand on it.
“Real happy for you,” Heilbrun says.
I loose my hand from the tree and the vision’s gone. This ain’t like the others—but I never let go so fast ‘cause the damn sheriff was next to me before.
“Real happy,” Heilbrun says again. His look is peculiar and I suppose mine is too.
“I’ll be seein’ you.” I leave him there.
Four
Devil’s Elbow is a small knob formed by a hillside creek that empties to Lake Oniasont. Name’s a hundred fifty years old and amounts to a clever way to say things at the elbow ain’t the same as elsewhere. Devil’s Elbow shapes what goes on around it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fallen angel himself coaxed the shotgun into Mitch’s hands, and lullabied his ears full of music.
I harvest firewood here every summer and now collect dried brush from the refuse. I clean brush from branches, rest the poles on a stump, and chop four-foot lengths. A loose pile grows to the side and when it stands two feet I sit on a flat stump and rejuvenate on Wild Turkey.
The house’s fallen to disrepair since Lucy Mae ain’t been around, but her nonstop clucking got on my nerves. Discovering Emeline and negotiating a wedding in a single week was genius, and I wish I could claim it, but the idea come to me sitting in the walnut tree. Since I took to sitting in the tree things’ve been looking up whichever way I look. Last week at the derrick, Merle invited me to a dog fight. He’s been cagey for years but last week came around.
“You ought to see em go. Those pits’s some game sonsabitches; I tell you, they don’t even quit when they’re dead. They jaws lock.”
Next fight’s tomorrow after work. “Don’t think I’ll be interested,” I said.
“I cleaned up. Bet on this red nose. Went in with five, came home with ten.”
“Don’t have the money to lose.” Played Merle like a fiddle.
I look at the logs. A deer fly stings my neck. I swat, touch the bite with a whiskeyed fingertip. Fools like Merle make here-and-there money betting on fights. Smart man makes all-the-time money betting on the betters. By uncanny coincidence I got money the same time I got an invitation. Believe I’ll investigate these fights.
Another gulp of Turkey in my belly and I fill my arms with firewood. Cross the stream on a series of flat rocks and emerge on Devil’s Elbow near the walnut tree, thirty yards below the rotted stump of the senior tree I sold to Emeline’s father a decade ago. I pass leaves with Mitch McClellan’s blood, the bark with his brains and a chunk of skullcap with hair.
This surviving tree descended from the one I cut. A hundred years ago, some wily walnut escaped harvest by squirrel or man. The junior tree stands forty feet tall, full and round. The trunk splits into two heavy limbs. As a boy I curled in the crook and watched fish snap at bugs floating on the water. Through the years the walnut on Devil’s Elbow has become a sort of oracle. Some of my best ideas, like courting Emeline, seeped into my head while I was cradled in the branches.
I stand at the lake’s cobbled shore just beyond the walnut’s shadow. There’s sweat on my neck and my hair sticks. The tree wants me to deflower Emeline nearby. Wants me to keep a hand on the bark while I take her, or better, wants me to take her on its leaned-back limb. I know this like I know the sky is blue. My arms are full of wood and I think, I’m indebted, but I don’t want to poke her where my neighbor just blew his brains out.
To the west a knoll ends with a steep bank. I follow the rocky waterline and toss my armload of scrub and return for another. Ten minutes later I drop a second armful to the pile, arrange the smallest sprigs into a teepee and fill it with tinder of dry grass and twigs. The sun stands midway between zenith and horizon. I make a final trip for my bottle of Turkey and stop at the walnut.
I can’t smell anything. Copenhagen dulls the olfactory—but I figure ripe blood would cut through. I climb to my sloping perch on the horizontal branch and stretch my back against the bark. I drink, fold my arms at my belly, close my eyes.
Things are turning around, for damn sure. At forty-six I don’t have a whole lot of time and can’t say what I want it for. But I do have a dream, and I’ve struggled closer to it with each wife and year. Every time I sit in the tree I can see it clear as day.
White fence along the road, my house coated in fresh paint, maybe a foundation set in bricks instead of fieldstones. A double layer of red paint on the barn, all the missing boards filled in, a pasture spread far off to the right, replacing twenty acres of forest. And finally, by the walnut tree, a gazebo where I’ll smoke a pipe and bark orders at an Irish foreman. He’ll come to me with fear on his face, bowed like a page. I’ll sit on a rocker, fishing pole, loyal dog at my side. Irish’ll say, “Mister Hardgrave, sir, all four hundred head are fed, sir, and you’ll have sixty smokin’ hogs come fall.” I’ll wave and he’ll shamble away. In a just world, I’d have been born in a city and I’d have gone to college. In this world, I didn’t know what college was ‘til it was too late. Before I earned the G.I. Bill I’d married an American fraulein who pooped out a son and named him Dietrich while I was off fighting the Hun.
The walnut tree groans in a breeze and I feel an image coming. It builds up a swirl of colors that don’t make sense, and then resolves like a vacuum cleaner’s just sucked out the fuzzy. These pictures don’t last long and I’ve learned to pay attention. It seems like things are fulminating and somehow my role is important.
I see a photo of myself, but like I never lost my eye. I see a bloody brute of a dog wearing an eye patch. There’s Deet, touching Emeline’s hip like it’s all he can do not to lay her on the table.
And I see a red and white Fairlane tooling on gravel.
Five
“Pap, Pap!” Jacob runs down the trail from the house. I roll off the limb and land in a clump. “Miss Emeline’s got the Sharps!”
I rub my elbow.
“Says there’s a man in the woods!”
“A man?”
“Got a bead on him right now.”
I brush my legs, press a fist to my eye and gouge away the bleary.
“Pap, you got to come now
!”
“Hold your cussed horses.”
Jacob’s already turned and running back to the house. I walk. Emeline shouts “Angus!” from inside. At the porch steps I scan the tree line beyond the barn, the rippling corn, the orchard. I step inside. Emeline’s got a rifle through the window over the sink, aimed at the pasture to the left of the barn.
“You shoot a milker, I’ll beat you ugly. What’s going on?”
“There!” she says, “Do you see him?”
Outside there’s not a damn thing. Not a damn thing. I stand back, take in the kitchen. She’s begun her work, starting with the cupboards, counters, stove. Soapy dishwater fills the sink. Emeline blows hair from her eyes and swabs her brow with her sleeve.
“That Sharps is just as liable to blow up in your face as fire downrange. It don’t go off the wall. Now who is it you see?”
“A man. With black hair.”
“Probly the sheriff, or one of his crew.” I lift the rifle from her hands, step to the living room, and replace it on the mounts above the mantle. “This fella you saw. He on the other side of the pasture?”
“By that gray stump,” she says.
Back at her side, I crane forward. Blink.
“He must have slipped into the woods while you were coming. Aren’t you going to run him off?”
I rough my hair.
“He could be in the barn by this time.”
“Don’t know what he’d want in the barn.” I face her. “What color clothes he have on?”
“Blue jeans, I think. A white shirt.”
“C’mon, Jake. Let’s take a look.”
“Aren’t you going to take a rifle?” Emeline backs from the window, out of sight.
I kick driveway dust and part from Jacob at the pasture, throw my leg over the barbed wire fence, plod toward the stump. Jacob scurries on the driveway. Cattle graze a few yards off. Ahead in the woods a white-tail’s ass flashes as he bounds away. My back to the house, I take a leak. Jockey my trousers, wave to Jacob.
A minute passes before I’m back at the house. Emeline’s got a shooting stance, elbows on the kitchen table, legs braced wide, aiming the Sharps at the cellar door.
Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her Page 3