“You want me to bring more coffee?” Jacob said.
“Nah, fuck off.”
“Yes sir.”
The front door was open, the kitchen empty. Only fifteen feet and a screen door separated him from Angus. The bottom cabinet held the whiskey. He looked to the basement stairwell. If he waited, he’d have plenty, but he’d think clearer with a nip right now. He turned on the water faucet and grabbed a glass. At the hutch, he rapped the base of the glass to the floor as he popped open the sticky cabinet door.
“What the hell you doing?”
“Drink of water; want me to bring you a glass?”
“Quiet! I got the nerves today.”
“Yes sir, Pap.” He turned the faucet off and padded back to the hutch, knelt, poured a half-glass, and gingerly situated the jug back in the cabinet, with the thumb ring out and to the left, like he found it. He eased the door to where it stuck.
Since they’d found rattlers in the potato cellar last summer, climbing down the stairwell was a dark and damp terror. Jacob closed the door behind him and stood in absolute darkness. He sipped whiskey, swung his arm ahead, and stepped. The air grew colder, wetter, and he heard only the creaking stairs and the air passing through his nose with each breath. He counted steps and at ten, reached on his tiptoes and groped until he found a thin cord and a knot. He pulled and a yellow light bulb glowed.
A grimy combination of damp dust and mold caked the Ball jars. He’d have to wash them, but the only water source in the basement was a crack in the mortar.
One at a time, careful his feet didn’t drum the stairs, he carried the jars to the top and left them on the side where only the most wayward foot might strike them. On the fifth trip, he gathered four rings and seals, pulled the lanyard, and crept back to the kitchen door.
Jacob finished his glass of whiskey, listened, and grew bolder still. He transferred the canning jars to the bottom corner of the closet. He filled the sink with soapy water, washed the breakfast dishes, and one by one, interspersed the Ball jars between.
Emeline struggled to her knees and stretched across the bed. She clasped her hands. All right, Lord. Where are you? Ask, ask, ask? I’ve been asking. I’ve been knocking.
She lifted herself until the bed corner pressed her abdomen, and imagined the outline of a baby pressing outward, growing. She’d noticed little changes, a slight increase in the heft of her breasts, the small swell of her belly.
I know I deceived him. I know it. You don’t have to tell me that, Lord. I know it.
And what was she going to do about Deet? Doctor Fleming—as if he was an angel sent from the Lord—had warned her, but that was like finding a ten-year-old firebug standing in charred rubble and warning him about matches.
I do not encourage him!
She lifted her head, unclasped her hands, looked at the same old things. The broken clock. The wall with no pictures. The open closet, with nothing more than the clothes she’d arrived with on her wedding day. She traced her fingertips across a threadbare quilt, imagined shivering through frosty February nights, and drove the thought away.
I sip piss-warm coffee and watch tree leaves flicker. Giant cloud slugs closer on the horizon, and if it goes any slower I’ll get a rifle and shoot it. I’ve had more bed rest the last two days than any time since the war. I have to do something, anything, but when I stand, my legs feel like the bones are gone and I’m walking on marrow.
My shoulder hollow is tender the way a man’s sack might be tender if he slapped it on a stump and pounded it with a chunk of granite. Even the arm that ain’t there hurts.
I was careless on the oilrig, a fool to hurry—like when I lost my eye, after Normandy. Woke in a pool of upchuck with Top Bouldin’s boot in my ass. After a letter from Adolfina.
To be fair and honest I don’t always have the best judgment. I need a shot of walnut shine.
My thoughts turn to the crinkle of bills in my pants pocket—everything’ll have to be in my right pocket, now. The money’ll need to last ‘til something else comes along. I got money saved, but nobody knows it. The farm will sustain us, but funds to carry on with day-to-day living, the electricity, the phone, gasoline, farm supplies, feed—all that needs to come from somewhere else. Let these fuckin parasites put in sixteen-hour workdays.
Lookit that punk on the barn roof, Deet, smirking a hundred yards away. I know what’s going on. I was young; I felt my oats. There’s a fresh woman in the house—with all the edgy gaiety, the vaginal perfume, somber and urgent as a full moon. Deet smells her, yearns for her.
Deet wants my woman and I want my whiskey.
I rock back and forth as I gather myself from the recess of the Adirondack chair, brace my weight against the wide arm slat and rise on wobbly legs. After a few seconds feeling faint my heart starts pounding and I get a little blood in my head and I feel all right. I cross the lot toward the barn. The dogs see me coming.
“What do you want, hunh?” I lob a small stone, but without my left arm as a counterweight, the rock shoots wide and bounces from the pen. Rebel barks reproof. Bitch in the next kennel is quiet.
“Shut up!” I cup my hand to my ear. The noise jabs; my spine tingles. I press my ear to my shoulder and clamp the other with my hand, move on to the truck. The jug on the floor is empty; I tip it and a black crescent of whiskey lines the bottom corner. I heft it to my mouth and wait as the last drop eases down the jug.
Deet watches from the barn roof.
I toss the jug. Inside the barn, twelve more line the wall at the back left corner. I carry the first to the shop workbench, wipe grime from the cap and neck, buff a yellow square of light on the jug’s shoulder. Now we’re talking.
How the fuck to open it?
Jacob heard his old man’s feet shuffle across the porch floor. He watched from the window as Angus walked to the Ford and then the barn.
Deet worked at the edge of the barn roof with his back to the house. Emeline was upstairs. Jacob slipped his fingers through the mouths of four jars and hurried to the screen door. He glanced upstairs and imagined he heard a Bible page turning, then outside to the shop entrance at the barn. He stepped onto the porch. Deet was climbing down the ladder. The screen door smacked closed. Jacob froze, exposed with a Ball jar on each wrist like a swollen glass hoof. Deet was half way to the ground. Jacob ran the length of the porch and leaped over the lakeside end. His heels dug skid marks as he slid feet first; he scurried back to the porch and peered over.
Deet stood at the foot of the ladder, facing the house. He brought his forearm to his brow and entered the barn.
Jacob hid the jars in a huckleberry bush, thirty feet down slope.
I twist the cap and the jug turns so I drop it in the bench vise. Two dowels set a foot apart balance the threaded center spindle. I turn the handle until the jaws expand eight inches, then rest the jug between. I snug the jaws and twist the cap.
The warm whiskey burns like a gulp of glowing embers; a nutty, gasoline heat lingers. I gulp, rest the jug on the table, wipe my mouth with my sleeve. I work one thing at a time, no conservation of motion. No synchronization. No left hand anticipating and setting the scene for the right. Losing an arm feels like losing half my brain too.
Deet fills his apron with roofing nails at the bench.
“You ain’t done with that roof yet?”
“Why don’t you climb up and give me a hand?”
“Best watch your tongue. I only got one arm but I know what to do with it. And I been watching you.”
“Well, I seen you.”
A truck pulls in front of the house. Deet twists. “You expecting company?”
I look through the open bay. A man steps out holding a large book under his arm; he slams the truck door with his boot.
“Who’s that?”
“That’s the fella said the Farmall was his.”
I look at my jug of whiskey. “Tell him I ain’t here.”
“Tell him yourself.”
I swat at Deet but
he’s already backed away. He circles outside to the ladder and watches from the third rung as I lope across the lot. I get dizzy with being steamed but he won’t know. He’s climbed the porch steps and looks at the lake.
“What the hell you want?” I plant a fist on my hip at the center of the turning circle, just beyond the stacks of lumber Deet’s disassembled from the barn roof.
The man turns. “I’m here to collect a piece of property belongs to me.”
“And who the hell are you?”
“Jeb Pitlake. I own the Farmall—”
“You own shit.” I step closer.
“I got the proof right here, Mr. Hardgrave, and I’d hoped we could settle this amicably.”
“How ‘bout I get the shotgun out the house? That amical enough?”
“Don’t get excited, now. Just take a look at my ledger and you’ll see I bought that white tractor you got down by the chicken coops—I bought that when I bought the dealership. It’s plain as day.”
“Bullshit.”
“I matched the serial number when your son had it in town. That’s my tractor.”
“When you buy the dealership? Forty-seven?”
“That’s right.”
“And you just now figured out you never laid eyes on your tractor ‘til you saw mine?”
“Well, see, that tractor can’t be white. Farmall won’t allow it—that’s a display tractor. I knew I had one on the books, look here,” he opens the ledger and points. I stay ten feet away so I don’t knock his fuckin head off. “This line right here, and then right here, don’t you want to see this—” he tabs to another page, “and every year after. I’ve been carrying that property the whole time.”
“You’re some kinda thief.” A flicker of motion on the porch, behind Pitlake, draws my eye. Jacob holds a rifle behind the screen door.
“My only recourse is the courthouse.”
“I think I’m gonna shoot you.”
“You’ll lose more than just the tractor if I have to sue you.”
I cross him and climb the steps. Jacob opens the screen.
Pitlake hurries to his truck. “You’re crazy.”
Jacob meets me on the porch and I swipe the rifle from his outstretched hands. I swing the lever like an old west cowboy, flip the rifle and step forward, loaded and aiming from the hip. I ratchet the hammer and squeeze the trigger. The 30-30 barks and jumps. The bullet goes high. Pitlake spins tires in reverse down the lane. I cycle a fresh round, point into the rising dust, and squeeze off another shot.
Deet watched Angus resume his Adirondack seat and rest the rifle across his knees. He still tingled from the excitement. Standing on the ladder, watching his besotted father give Pitlake hell, He’d been ready to join the fight.
On Pitlake’s side.
He crawled over the edge and stood on a heavy crossbeam. A slight breeze cooled his skin and he looked at the ground twenty-five feet below. He’d squared the new oak beams a few days before and fixed them to the cross-supports yesterday. This morning he added salvaged boards, starting at the apex. Facing down slope, he’d lost his balance and nearly rolled into the barn—a dozen-foot fall to the loft—before realizing he should start at the bottom and rip the last boards on the table saw.
He looked across his shoulder and saw he rifle leaning on the porch rail. Angus went inside the house.
Deet knelt and resumed where he’d run out of nails, and his eye drifted to the wood shop below. There was a set of tools that could mean a different kind of future for a man like him—a future that beat working a field under an angry sun, or shoveling shit from a pig stall. Or hammering nails into a barn roof.
“I’d take a barn like this,” he said aloud. “Sell the animals, the hay, the corn. Spread the shit in the garden, where Em could grow flowers and tomatoes. Fill all that empty space with wood. Hang a big sign out by the road, Hardgrave Hardwood Furniture.”
He shook his head. “Emeline could cut those pig-shit flowers every year, and put them on her first husband’s grave.”
“Don’t get into this on your own, you hear?” Looking at Jacob, I nod at a Mickey Mouse glass with a half-inch of walnut whiskey at the bottom. Poising the jug to the tipping point with the strength of my remaining hand, and tickled as shit to find the strength at all, I half-fill a second glass.
A car door clanks outside. I put the jug on the bottom hutch shelf and close the cabinet door.
“Finish that up.”
Jake empties the glass in an extended swallow.
Outside, Brad Chambers leans on the hood of his car. He looks up to Deet pounding nails on the roof.
I ruffle Jacob’s hair and with my hand on his shoulder guide him to the screen door. I kneel and lock onto the boy’s sloshed eyes. “You done good this morning, backing me up with the rifle, you hear? You always got to back me up. That’s how a Hardgrave does it.”
Jacob nods.
“Get your chores done early and maybe I’ll tell you a story about where this shine comes from. All right. Git.”
Jacob leaps the steps, stumbles, flops in the dirt. Chambers brays. I step onto the porch. Jacob brushes his knees and limps to the barn, and his head turns as he passes Chambers and I see a scowl to make a father proud.
“What happened to your arm, Mister Hardgrave?”
“You bring rent?”
“That’s right.”
“Hand it over. Be on your way.”
“I got no particular hurry.” Chambers fishes crumpled bills from his jeans.
“That’s a full month due.”
Chambers climbs the steps and passes money to me.
“I seen boys with limbs blown off,” Chambers says. “Them gooks was something. Mile after mile of em, mortar rounds like rain, and their officers didn’t give a hidy-ho if they was hitting their own, so long as they was hitting ours too. I seen boys—I’ll never forget.” He drops his chin to his chest.
“Yeah, well them krauts wasn’t no slouches neither,” I say.
“No they wasn’t. You getting by all right? Need anything from town, an extra hand about the place? Looks like you had trouble with the storm this week.”
“Blowed that whole corner section to the ground. Deet’ll have it fixed today.”
“You want to sit for a minute, Mister Hardgrave? Injured man needs rest. You can’t let everybody force you back to work so soon.”
“Don’t I know it?” I sit.
Chambers tests the porch rail for sturdiness and leans. “What happened?”
“Just an accident at the derrick. God forsaken company. Broke equipment, dangerous configurations. If I start bitching now, I’ll never finish.”
“A man’s got to look after himself, these days.”
“That’s hard when everyone wants a piece of you, and can’t think for their damn selves.” I thrust my chin toward the barn. “That one wouldn’t pull his head out his ass if he was fartin’ fire.”
“I was you, I’d drive him down to the recruiting station. Make him a man.”
“He’d get himself killed or maimed, and hell, I only got one arm; I need his sorry ass here. Turn him into a man myself.”
Chambers shifts. “How’s your wife? Can’t be too easy getting around on a busted leg.”
“She’s alive.”
I sit deeper in the Adirondack, rub the eye patch strap on my left side, which requires a twisting motion that jostles my stump against the chair’s arm. Hurts like torture. I smack my hand on the arm slat. Blink a quarter pint of water from my eye. “What happened at the house with Em?”
“I was upstairs and she came charging in. Hell, I didn’t know she was your missus; I just heard noise. I come out the bathroom ready to tear into someone, and she let out a yell and fell down the steps. That’s the honest-to-God truth. I ran down to help her. Bone was clean through the skin.”
“That right?”
“Clean through. I ran and got Doc Fleming. That leg of hers was an awful mess. But who wants a woman for her leg
s, right? Say, you mind if I get a drink of water ‘fore I take off?”
“Kitchen’s on the right.”
Chambers enters the house.
“I’ll do you one better,” I call.
I wait a moment, and fail to hear any goings-on in the house due to the steady thudding of hammer and nail at the barn.
“I say I’ll do you one better!”
I stand, look inside. Behind the screen, Chambers comes toward me. “You want water while I’m at it?”
“Fetch the jug from the base of the hutch. My glass is on the table.”
Chambers returns, sniffs the opening. “Wood stain or whiskey?”
“Bit o’ both.”
Chambers covers the bottom of his glass with fluid and brings the rim to his lips. He brings the glass down, empty.
“I know you want more.”
“Damn! That’s a spiteful drink.”
“Takes a minute to grow on you. Have another.”
Chambers pours an inch in the glass. “You—whew.” He pounds his chest and coughs. “You ‘still this?”
“Nah. But I could.”
Chambers grins.
“Ain’t a bad idea,” I say. “With bumper crops flooding the market, a fella’d work like a dog and go broke. Lowest prices in twenty years. There’s hooch houses in town paying good money for squeezin’s like this.”
“Tastes like walnuts. What gives it the bite?”
“Them walnuts come from a tree right over the knoll by the lake.”
“Well, I don’t know. Walnut oil looks like linseed or any other. It ain’t black.”
“The black comes from the rind.”
Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her Page 18