Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

by Clayton Lindemuth

“Just like stain.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know it’s making your teeth black?”

  “No shit?”

  “None. You got the boiler? That’s the hardest to find.”

  I regard him and then watch Deet on the barn roof, his head turned to the side as if keeping the porch in his peripheral sight. Chambers finishes his drink.

  Jacob emerges from the bottom floor of the barn with a tin pail dangling from his hand, shoulder bent with the weight, and carries it to the dog pens. “Boiler’s nothing but a barrel.”

  Chambers nods toward the barn. “What you got in the pens?”

  “Dog from a fight t’ other week—and another.”

  “Another? A breeder?”

  “You gonna tell me you know blood sport too?”

  “Maybe. Let me take a look.”

  I waive. “Have at it. I’m staying here.”

  Chambers walks to the kennels. I sip. Chambers knows more than he lets on—knows something about dogs. Knows something about stilling shine. You don’t know the language without knowing the art. Chambers braces his hands at the top of the kennel and leans close to the wire. The pit bulls are silent. I shift forward. Drink. Chambers moves to the side, hunkers low for a look at the dogs’ bellies. He sticks his finger through the chicken wire, looks back at me and shakes his head.

  Minute later Chambers sits on the porch. “The bitch—she ain’t mean, but that don’t matter. You can make any dog mean. But you can’t spice a dog’s genes, and you can’t make a coward game.”

  I drink. “Just like men.”

  Chambers nods. “That bitch—she’s got some nice lines. Lot of lungs, loose skin at the neck. You want that. I didn’t stick my hand in to open her jaw and get a look at her mouth, but I’ll wager she’s sound.”

  I grin. “Just about what I thought.”

  “She’s also hot.”

  “Time to let her get friendly with Rebel.”

  “Well, that’s the rub. That cripple ain’t worth a damn, as a fighter. He might whup ass on a collie—or spook a prowler, but he’s no fighter. See him lick my finger?”

  “That’s Jake lovin’ on him every day. Flat ruin a dog.”

  “That’s true, but Rebel musta been the runt, or something. Breed him, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  “Fact is, I saw him fight. He didn’t quit for nothing. Passed out, and still clamped on the other pit’s neck like he’d die before he’d let up. Ain’t nobody knows a game dog till he sees him in a ring.”

  “Well, that’s game, and if you saw it you saw it. Personally, I wouldn’t give a turnip’s titty for a game dog. You seen men in France, just like I saw in Korea. Some of us got mean enough to do what we had to. Figured we’d sort out our minds later, if we lived that long. And some saw the blood and gore and killing and didn’t have the stomach to save themselves. I seen men like that dog—that’d lick a gook’s finger, if he offered.”

  “Maybe.” I slouch. “You got some opinions.”

  “My daddy fought pits, ‘fore he died. I know them dogs. I don’t give two hoots for a game dog. I want a winner. A mean sumbitch, ain’t afraid to shred another. Men talk game like it’s more important than teeth. No sir, Mister Hardgrave. You give me a mean, fightin’ mad pit—I’ll take him over a game no-quitter every day of the week. The game dog won’t quit, but he’ll sure as hell die.”

  “Why don’t you come by Tuesday? Say, five?”

  Finished feeding the dogs, Jacob circled the barn, the field, the house, and found a station at the corner by the spruce tree within earshot of Angus and the fellow in the red and white car. The ground dampened his behind.

  Jacob considered running the canning jars behind the house, through the cornfield and behind the barn. While he weighed this alternate route’s merits, Angus and Chambers closed their conversation. A car ignition sounded, and Angus tramped inside the house. Jacob crawled to the edge of the porch. Deet hammered on the barn roof.

  Jacob stepped back from the siding, looked at Emeline’s second story window, and each of the others. They reflected trees and clouds. He’d have to assume no one watched. He ran to the huckleberry thicket, grabbed the Ball jars, and followed a long, circuitous path through the orchard to the barn’s lower level. He shushed Rebel at the kennel. The hogs grunted; the corncrib was empty.

  Heavy black flies swarmed in the stairway to the second floor; he couldn’t swat with his hands covered in Ball jars. They landed on his face, his hair; Jacob rested two quart glasses on the stairwell, beat back the flies, and eased the door open. At the back corner, across the bay filled with shop tools, partly visible from where Deet worked, eleven jugs of walnut whiskey stood at attention like black-uniformed soldiers. Jacob slunk onto the main bay, pressed his back to the wall and looked at the roof. The loft blocked him from Deet’s view. Stepping sideways, Jacob circled the shop’s perimeter, his eyes fixed on the location of Deet’s hammering. When it became apparent Deet wouldn’t be able to see him, even if he dangled his head into the opening, Jacob stole to the back corner.

  He tested each gallon jug. Too weak to break the rust seal on the first, second….sixth, seventh. Finally one cap spun beneath his fingers. He emptied the jug into the four Ball jars, capping each one tightly before pouring the next. Above, Deet smacked nails through the roof boards. The jug empty, Jacob swapped it for the first and then stood with his hand to his chin. Pap would most likely start at one end or the other—but which end? Jacob wiped sweaty hands on his trouser bottoms, then swapped the first, empty jug, for the fifth.

  He peered through a knothole at the house. Pap was inside. Least he wasn’t on the porch.

  One at a time, Jacob carried the canning jars to the loft and stashed all four vertically between bales of hay. Reconsidering, he carried one back to the shop level, retraced his route along the wall, and cached it on the bottom floor in a dark cubby behind the cast iron bathtub he’d need to fill with corn. That left just one thing.

  The walnut tree, the presence, had provided the insight. Below the workbench, cans of walnut stain, cherry stain, acetone, turpentine, denatured alcohol, and linseed oil collected dust. Mixed together, they’d look and probly smell like walnut whiskey.

  Might even taste like it.

  Thirty One

  Deet nailed weathered boards to new oak rafters on the barn roof. The sun beat his shoulders a shade of bronze and the sweat that collected at his brow dropped like fat rain to the parched planks. He pinched the bridge of his nose and his eyes stung with salt.

  Angus’s altercation with Pitlake replayed like a movie in his mind. Even with one arm, Angus was a scrappy bastard. Seeing it play out again, the same tide rushed through Deet. If Pitlake would have faced Angus, rifle and all, Deet knew he would have joined the fray. That was the problem. Everything about this place was the problem.

  Living here prompted bad decisions.

  Angus was bound to lose the Farmall. If Pitlake owned the property, it shouldn’t have been part of the Margulies estate. Simple honesty weighed on Pitlake’s side.

  Deet sat on the roof and absorbed a birds-eye view of the farm. The scope took him aback. To his right, a listless cornfield. Beyond, a wick of forest obscured the widow McClellan’s house. Following leftward, the Hardgrave farmhouse withstood another summer with twenty-year-old paint, and beyond, Lake Oniasant was calm as a mud puddle. His circumstances had a beauty from height that wasn’t conceivable from the ground.

  Other land, farther out, would be as beautiful. It was time to go.

  Deet sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, conflicted.

  In an effort to bring more money to the household, he had encouraged Angus to distill liquor. The old family business allured with mystery and profit, but any progress that direction would deepen his subservience to Angus. The wood shop, which he dreamed of owning, was ill gotten.

  And Emeline? Another nugget of temptation, and only his most fanciful imagination could concoct a happy endin
g. He rested his chin on his knee. She made worse decisions than him.

  Surely the southern states offered green land and opportunities for a man wanting to build something, and willing to pay in sweat and pain. Maybe one of those states had a beautiful woman waiting for him. An unmarried woman. North Carolina was famous for furniture factories.

  The knapsack under his bed still held everything he’d need, minus the two dollars he’d spent on hamburgers. He wouldn’t need to slaughter the animals if Emeline would be around to keep them. Resolved, he stood. He’d head out after dark. Every day he waited would make the decision more difficult.

  Deet looked toward the sun, checked his pocket watch. Emeline’s appointment with Doctor Fleming commenced in a half hour. Glancing over the edge of the barn roof, he saw the Farmall and the wagon with a soft bed of loose hay. He laughed. May as well take the truck. Angus wouldn’t be driving. He climbed down the ladder and a minute later, stood at the living room entrance. Emeline rested on the couch and Angus sat at the kitchen table, hunched over a glass.

  “Em, you ready to go?”

  She glanced at the kitchen and nodded.

  “Where?” Angus said.

  “Thought I’d take her to the doctor in the truck.”

  “You know,” Angus said, “it’s been—shit—what? Three days since I lost my arm. Feels like I shoved the stump in a nest of hornets. You ain’t once volunteered to take me to the doctor.”

  “You want to come along?”

  “That ain’t the cussed point.”

  “You don’t have an ornery somebody saying you can’t go, like she does. Where’s the truck key?”

  “Take the tractor.”

  “Doesn’t make sense to take the tractor. That Pitlake fella’s looking for trouble. The Ford’s sitting out front, and you sure as hell ain’t going anywhere.”

  “I don’t know what you two got going on, but it ain’t gonna be in my truck.”

  Emeline perked on the sofa. “What did you say?”

  “I don’t know.” Angus fixed his eye on Deet. “You want to take her, fine. But not in my truck.”

  “We’ll take the tractor,” Emeline said. “It’ll be fine.”

  Deet gritted his teeth. Backed away. Outside he hitched the trailer and pulled the Farmall in front of the house. He filled his arms with blankets from the linen closet. Standing in the hay, he whipped them open and dropped them one by one, aware of Emeline watching on the porch, leaning on the crutch he’d made.

  “I appreciate you taking me to the doctor,” she said.

  “It’s nothing.” Deet carried her down the steps and placed her on the edge bale. “Can you get into the middle on your own?”

  “I think I can manage.”

  She held him as he slipped away and her lips grazed his retreating shoulder. Was he confused? Deet studied her sun-shrunken pupils, the tinge of redness splotched on her cheek. “What’s wrong with you?”

  He jumped to the tractor seat, throttled up. The tractor lurched and he steered along the edge of the driveway. He pulled onto the road with a wide turn, barely slowing.

  “You lost a bale!” Emeline cried.

  He looked. She’d braced her arms wide on the bales and splayed her legs. At the rear of the trailer, a bale had fallen to the middle of the road, thirty yards back. He slammed the throttle leftward. The engine settled; he tramped the clutch, disengaged the gear, locked the brake.

  The bale prickled his forearms and thighs; he tossed it the last ten feet and avoided meeting her eyes while he secured it behind a walnut slat.

  He strode past her.

  “Deet! What is the matter?”

  He jumped on the tractor and resumed toward Walnut. Pushed the throttle all the way to the right.

  “What’s the matter?” he slammed his hand to the wheel and the tractor jerked.

  She wanted to play games. There’d be jobs in Pittsburg, if he couldn’t make it to North Carolina. That’s what his buddies always said when they dreamed of getting away—back when he had buddies, before Angus indentured him. The steel mills could always use a body. He imagined the smelters and smoke he’d seen in school textbooks, the noise of clattering pipes, orange sparks from the welders.

  Tonight.

  Her back to the tractor, Emeline brushed tangles of hair from her face then spread her arms wide on the bales for balance. A familiar stand of trees passed on the right; she turned and the dust blew into her face. Deet never drove so fast. She closed her eyes and tried to retreat to a point of clarity in her mind.

  The Lord would protect her from the waxing evil around her. He would. But it would be good stewardship to ask Doctor Fleming to give her a stronger cast—in case the Lord should need her to flee.

  The tractor slowed. Town. She watched Deet, erect in the seat, shoulders jutting square. He was angry with her now, but if she believed Doctor Fleming, Deet’s anger resulted from not possessing her. He had the same inclinations as other men, and they made him drive like a fool, but at least he didn’t grab her hair and alley-oop her to a cave. Or to a car seat. He humored her with respect, which was a step better than having none at all.

  How would things have been different if Deet had driven by, instead of Brad?

  Chambers and Angus went about their conquests with urgency. Brad pinned her to the seat, smothered her, bit her lip. Angus pressed forward, one moment pointing out Mars, the next, tying her wrists and ankles and ramming through her pubic tangle.

  She had avoided Chambers and after a few days discovered he prowled at her home, mirrored her movements in town, laid siege to her window at night. He threw pebbles at the glass and stared at her when she peeked in the darkness. He jiggled the door handles. He climbed the tree by the porch.

  Of course the Lord had said to marry Angus.

  Chambers claimed her. Angus owned her. And her heart softened for the boy-man on the tractor. What of her, though—with a baby in her belly? How could she feed it? What could be more the Lord’s doing than providing her a decent man who wanted to work all the time, and only stopped to take her to the doctor, or buy a cheeseburger? How could the Lord desire that she be with Angus? It looked more like the workings of chance and stupidity than the Lord Almighty. She felt like it was almost blasphemy to pray at all.

  Deet stopped the tractor in front of Doctor Fleming’s, jumped from the seat and offered a flat smile. “Let me help you down.” He climbed aboard and stooped; she threw her arm over his shoulder.

  “Don’t be angry, Deet.”

  “It ain’t a choice.”

  Doctor Fleming opened the door. “What is this?” Fleming indicated the cast with the belt wrapped for support. “I already had it secure with the ace bandage.”

  “I have to get around,” she said, and wished she had prepared more convincing words.

  Deet angled her through the first door, navigated the ante-room and pushed open the second door with his back. He rested her on the table. “I’ll be outside.”

  Fleming closed the door, shuffled beside her.

  “You haven’t taken my advice.”

  “You have to give me a stronger cast.”

  “Too early.” Gently, he lifted her leg. He loosened the leather belt, separated the split cast, secured her ankle with his hand. He eased off the cast. She stared at his erratic hair-part, widening to baldness. He looked under the cast, glanced at her face.

  “Don’t move.” He sniffled candidly and peered close at the bandage. She leaned closer. The wound was tingly-numb, purple from knee to ankle, but the flesh was beginning to seal.

  “Improvement,” he said. “The fracture has set, but this redness tells me the infection will come back if we are not careful. Feel how warm?” He pressed her fingertips to the skin bordering the wound.

  Dr. Fleming daubed her leg from ankle to knee with a mildly soapy washcloth, and again with a wet one. As her skin dried, he opened the cast under the light, wiped it out, dried it with a towel, then sprinkled cornstarch inside.
>
  “Another shot of penicillin today, and this cast goes back on for another week. If the infection passes, I’ll give you a heavy cast, and you can resume your domestic duties. Somewhat.”

  “Can’t you give me a thicker cast now?”

  “The ossification is delicate. I don’t want to encourage you to put your weight on it. If you rebreak your leg, you’ll limp the rest of your life. A week isn’t so long, is it?”

  “But I need to get about the house—and I’m already—”

  He shook his head sideways.

  “I have a baby to think about.”

  Fleming froze, frowned. “Congratulations, I hope. But no.”

  Jacob said, “Gonna shuck corn for the hogs, Pap.”

  “I want you to do something.” Angus sat on the Adirondack chair, his head resting against the back. “Corner of the barn, I got a row of jugs. I want you to bring em to me. Every one.”

  Jacob nodded.

  “I want you to take em downstairs, where it’s cool all the time.”

  “On the floor?”

  “Nah. Take them suitcases to the burn barrel. Put the jugs on the rack.”

  “Yessir.”

  “You ain’t much, Jake, but you’re the best of the lot. Then bring me that old Remington single-shot twenty two—the one without a shoulder plate—and a box of shells.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Get on now. ’Fore your respect and adoration piss me off.”

  Jacob ran to the barn, surveyed the line of jugs. He reached for the first, paused, stood over the fourth and fifth. The color was off; the dust didn’t match. What if Angus wanted to look at them? Or noticed four of the same color and then the fifth was off? Better to take the miscolored one first. Jacob breathed deep, slipped his thumbs through the neck loops and carried the fourth and fifth jugs across the barn, the meadow. Up the steps.

  Angus watched. Tipped his cup sideways.

  Jacob stretched his step.

  “Hold up. I want a porch jug. Tired of walking to the hutch. Gimme that damn jug.”

  Jacob put the fifth on the floor and handed his father the fourth.