Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Fred growls.

  “It’s me, you fucking brute.”

  Fred’s in shadows under the tarp. His tail taps the diesel turbine shipping crate he sleeps in. I hammered over the nails and reinforced the corners with small blocks, and it’s been home to four generations. If I was to pick the hairs between the boards, they’d be white like Fred, red like George, brown like Loretta, and brindle like Phil. All relations of his, though I couldn’t name the begats.

  His voice turns quiet.

  He’s got words and I got words and we know each other well enough to talk without losing hardly anything to translation. He knew it was me tramping into camp when I was a half mile out, most likely. He only growled to show disapproval, and now it’s done, he can go back to sleep.

  Poor son of a bitch needs it.

  Fred’s one of them pit bulls they like to fight so much.

  It was October third, the night that cleaved summer and fall. I gathered apples at the Brown place across the road in an orchard strangled in grapevine and hauled buckets back and forth to my still. Farmer Brown died a dozen years back and no one claimed the property. I was thinking on Fred, how uncommon he is, how he’d yammer for hours on any manner of subjects. He’d been missing three days.

  Neighbor farmers tilled the fields. I’d scrounged inside the house a dozen times, stripped some plumbing and recoppered my still, and helped myself to a few shingles—the loose ones at the edges. I stole Brown’s cast-iron bathtub and hauled it on his wheelbarrow to the brook below my camp. Then I carted enough lumber to build a platform above the mud and strike a post for a small mirror off’n Brown’s wall. Every night ’fore I turn in I scoop crick water into the tub, and haul a leather satchel of stones from the fire pit to take away the chill.

  I stole all that but me and Brown was tight and hell, he’s dead.

  They was a full moon that October third night but the clouds kept it smothered. I came around the house hauling two buckets of apples and headlamps flashed from the forest a half mile off, bright like God Almighty made em on the spot. They turned on the dirt road headed my way.

  I know them woods. Nothing there save a logger’s doubletrack that curves around a side hill where Joe Weintraub cut the hemlock to let the hardwood grow in. Seven year ago. Lost money on it, he said.

  The headlights came closer. Truck had a regular gasoline engine, not diesel. Swung onto the driveway.

  I dropped my buckets and dove. Headlights passed above. I crawled a dozen feet and scanned over the grass. The vehicle reversed, swung onto the yard, lurched forward and stopped. I couldn’t scope the make but the truck was full-size, white or silver. The left side of the tailgate glowed like a layer of dirt was wiped clean.

  A man jumped from the driver’s side, dropped the tailgate and pitched a white ghost, maybe a burlap sack of grain to the weeds beside the driveway. The door slammed, the engine roared and the rear wheels spat dirt.

  I waited.

  Taillights disappeared around the bend toward town. I dusted my sleeves and knees, grabbed a couple spilled apples. I looked at the white clump beside the driveway, then back at the house, then to the hill where the truck came from.

  Couldn’t pull my eyes from the ghost. It took the shape of a small body, hips, shoulder.

  I hurried, then stood with buckets straining my forearms and shoulders. Fred was slicked in blood, had a dark slash across his chest. Caked blood blacked his eye and his neck was splotchy. Blood smell cut the whiskey numb in my mouth and I could almost taste Fred’s bleeding. Could almost taste my dead dog.

  I dropped to my knees. Fred growled—he said, I’m alive you son of a bitch but you got to do something ’cause I’m pretty well whupped.

  I looked at the moon, shifted my shadow off Fred and catalogued the wounds. None looked fatal but he was almost dead. Them slashes was moist but the bleeding’d stopped—most sopped in his coat. He’d likely been defeated by running out of air. Temporary suffocation. Maybe they’d called the fight out of boredom.

  I looked to the road where the truck come out. Headlights glowed single file in the forest. Stipe and his boys. I vowed right then every one of em would meet a cruel end.

  I carried Fred in my arms with his feet straight up and his head agin my shoulder and now and again dropped a kiss on his muzzle. It maybe pissed him off but that was okay. Give him a reason to stay alive. “You’re some kind of ugly,” I said, and Fred said, They’s no cure for stupid either.

  My house is across the road from Brown’s. I don’t go there but to store my likker in the basement. I put Fred on the kitchen table. Struck a match, lit a kerosene lantern that cast a wicked shadow on the wall. It was the first time I was in the house and didn’t ponder what Ruth touched last. Where she last stood. What she thought while she was standing there. Almost thirty year ago.

  I moved the lantern close to Fred’s head. His eyes was broke open and red.

  I stood there looking at him. Wondered if I was man enough to put him down, if I had to.

  Fred said, How ’bout you murder the evil cowards threw me in that ring instead?

  “You’re going to mend,” I said. “But I got work to do.”

  I carried the lantern back down the hall to the medicine closet. Filled my arms with cleaners, antiseptics, bandages. Set em on the table by Fred. In the big bedroom I dug up a pink tackle box sewing kit.

  My hands shook. I found a jug of corn whiskey and gulped. Spent three minutes putting thread in the needle. I cupped my hand and poured a half-shot of shine, then shifted to Fred’s side and held my hand over the big slash across his chest. Dripped whiskey on it.

  Fred growled.

  I emptied my hand into the cut and touched the ragged edge. “You hang in there a little while and I’ll patch you up right. Yessir.”

  I touched my wet fingers to the clots and clumps of dirt stuck to his coat near the wound. Gash put me in mind of a cut of meat from the butcher. I grabbed a clean cloth from a drawer, a bucket from under the sink. Went to the well out front and worked it ‘til cool water splashed, then washed my hands and filled the bucket.

  Inside, I held a soaked rag to the gaping cut. Fred’s throat rumbled but he understood if only one creature on the planet gave a shit for him it was me.

  I worked the cloth across ratty knots and clumps of blood. I soaked the rag in the bucket again and dripped water into the slash. Crust adhered to the edges like scorched meat to the bottom of a skillet, but the water worked it loose.

  “I’m going to find who stole you,” I said.

  Fred said, Uh-huh.

  “And they’s going to be an eye for an eye come out of it.”

  Fred’s a survivor and he’s spent the last two week growing stronger. I step under the tarp and hunker beside him. “You doing good tonight?”

  Fred sleeps with his head on the left and his body curled to the right. I scratch between his ears, careful the scabs. I want to look over his cuts and slashes, his smashed-in eyes—but it’s night and I settle for feeling his busted body. Lot of heat from the slash across his chest.

  I pop the cork from a jug, cup my hand, pour a little. Work the wound. Fred growls—that hurts you ignorant bastard—and I say, “Easy, Fred. You know I love you.”

  I work shine into every wound save his eyes. Both is smashed so bad I shake when I look at em. Black jelly starting to scab. He sleeps with that mess agin the blankets like to get infected, but he about took off my hand last I daubed likker on his sockets. I’ll check again come morning.

  I got to see about the mash before I wash off the day’s stink.

  Anything with sugar makes shine. Fermented grain or fruit—apples, plums, strawberries—keeps the air stinky sweet. I lift the plywood lid from the first fifty-five gallon drum. Smell washes over me so thick it almost sticks to my clothes. The mash is apples and pears from dead Farmer Brown’s orchard. These big yellow apples got so much sugar you don’t have to add any to the mash. Just a cake of yeast and in almost no time you got
to still or you’ll have thirty gallon of vinegar.

  Men don’t pay near as much on vinegar.

  I lift the lid on each barrel. They’s three of corn, and it takes longer. Different mechanics entirely. Them sugars is bound up tight. Got to cook the mash and stir it, keep it agitated, and if something goes wrong you got to add a five-pound bag of Pillsbury cane—but no more’n one. Two bags and you’re in sugarpop territory. The men that drink sugarpop’ll come for your ass, once they get over the evilest headaches they ever had.

  The final fifty-fiver sits a dozen yards from the rest. It’s empty, but I got an idea for it.

  They’s no sound but whispers from trees and water rolling over rocks at the brook a few yards into the dark. I gather smooth oval crick stones from the fire—anything but sandstone. They’s still warm, but not hot. Tonight’s bath won’t be a slow soak. I roll em into a leather sack and tote em to the tub. Rest em easy on the bottom. I skim crick water into a five-gallon bucket.

  I got something in mind for that barrel, is why it’s away from the rest. Something Stipe and his boys won’t like.

  Stipe and his boys sure appreciate shine, though.

  Two

  Joe Stipe sucked in the sweet smells of battle. The last match had taken forty-five minutes, and even the victorious dog was barely upright. Stipe tucked his thumbs under his waistband. The deepest scent was the earth. The ground was black with centuries of accumulated humus, matter once alive and now dead. The scent of trees hung above that, then sweet engine exhaust as revelers fired their trucks and motored off.

  Stipe stepped to the pit and leaned against an oak shipping pallet standing on end that formed part of the ring’s perimeter. His most trusted employees were breaking down the fight circle, lifting pallets vertically over the steel pickets that held them erect. They’d leave the pickets—this circle had many fights left before the dogs wouldn’t willingly enter. Stipe’s men guffawed as they retold moments from the night’s spectacle.

  How Achilles had turned and placed his stunning career in jeopardy. The men had gasped. He’d never been a coward. But his turn quickly became a spin, a feint; Achilles had whirled around his opponent in a flash of teeth and fury. He’d snapped his jaws to the other’s neck and the move proved the winning gambit. For the next twenty-five minutes he never released, and the men watched in silent awe until his opponent finally wheezed, trembled, and died. Far from being a coward, Achilles had demonstrated that his bravery matched his cunning. He would someday be a grand champion. It was worth reliving a dozen times, from every conceivable viewpoint.

  Stipe listened to his men and smiled.

  He studied the ground where Achilles’s opponent had bled. The dog’s bladder and sphincter had released. The odors were still there, trampled into the black dirt. Stipe’s nostrils flared and he thought for a moment he detected the very evidence of Achilles’s inspirational performance. He released his breath and leaned closer, inhaled deeper, savoring the stink.

  That was the last scent. Death.

  Stipe was alone with his three closest workers and two hangers-on. Lou Royal, Stan Lucas, and Mitch Freeman disassembled the fight ring. In minutes the pallets would be stacked four high on the beds of three trucks so as to remain below the bed walls. Although insulated by the attendance of local police chief Horace Smylie, Stipe insisted his operation remain clandestine. Girly men—and there were a lot of them around Asheville—would raise a stink. Until a man stood beside the ring and felt adrenaline gallop through his veins, he wouldn’t understand the service Stipe provided.

  A fourth man, Ernie Gadwal, loitered at the edge of the lantern light. He was half Stipe’s height and possessed a weasely aura, always lurking, always spying. He wanted a piece of the action but had nothing to offer.

  A fifth man, Burly Worley, stood with his hands crossed at his groin. Stipe knew Worley, going back years and years.

  “You staying out late,” Stipe said.

  “Wanted to bend your ear.”

  “Have at it.”

  “I got myself unemployed. Didn’t know if you could use any help at the garage. Hell, driving even?”

  Stipe shook his head. “Shit, that’s rough. I feel for you. I’m full up on help.”

  “And the other sort of help?”

  “I don’t think you play as rough as these boys.” Stipe noticed Stan had stopped lifting a pallet long enough to grin.

  “Thanks.” Burly turned.

  “Hold up, now.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shit. Just hold up is all I’m saying. I’m thinking.”

  Burly Worley had a wife and a son and you could be damn sure Burly would raise him right. Burly was the kind of man who wasn’t happy unless he went to bed tired and broken from a hard day’s labor, and no smart organization turned its back on help like that. Burly had the ethic, and in the modern age of pussified men, it made sense to hire him on principle and build a job underneath him.

  “I don’t have anything,” Stipe said. “But I want to think on this. How long you been without work?”

  “Two months.”

  “Sign up for the unemployment, did you?”

  Burly scowled.

  Stipe extracted a fifty from his pocket. “For now, help Stan and the boys red up. Come see me at the garage tomorrow. I’ll think of something.”

  Burly looked at Stipe’s hand almost as if to reject the money. A battle played out on his face. Pride fought duty, and his wife and son won. Burly grabbed the bill, nodded to Stipe, and spun to the other men.

  Stipe watched him for a moment. Burly was an example of an honest American, raised with decent principles, getting screwed by the system. He was tough, ornery, and prideful, and probably said meaningful prayers every night. Not like these others Stipe saw around town, the girly men.

  Even in Gleason, city ways had crept in. Gentlemanly behavior aroused more dirty looks than thank-yous. It demeaned a gal; as if she couldn’t open the door herself. And correcting a woman was equally obtuse—what right did any man have to correct a woman? Whether they’d read the Good Book or not the fact remained that the order of things was written: these girly men were failing their divine charge. Children weren’t merely tolerated, they were coddled. Self esteem was more important than competence. Rights were more important than achievements. Even the last sanctuary of manhood, a Sunday football game, failed against the universal assault on masculinity. Enviro-whackos selling cars. Sitcoms featuring dull men and dominant women. Nowhere in society except Stipe’s fight ring could men go for a truly gritty thrill. Nothing else filled men’s nostrils with the rich odor of blood. Nothing fulfilled their innate lust for carnage. Stipe alone was willing to battle for the old ways.

  Stipe noticed Burly Worley staring toward the remaining trucks. Stipe turned.

  Cory Smylie sat on a tailgate, hands on his knees, head low like a calculating dog. Cory had a wrestler’s build, thick shoulders atop a wiry frame. His smooth face and greasy hair combed to a duck’s ass in the back. Put Cory in a t-shirt and fold a deck of Marlboros into his shoulder, you’d never know he was a half-century removed from his atavistic decade of choice.

  His father was Horace Smylie, Gleason police chief. Cory had been raised by a modern woman and a spineless man, and neither had the inclination or gumption to keep him on a short leash, set some boundaries, by God. Cory had enjoyed every toy, pursued every whim, had been guaranteed the world owed him his dreams. Stipe could tell just to look at him. That’s what the schools taught nowadays. Cory was a perfect example of modern flawed thinking.

  Since taking an interest in him, Stipe had learned Cory’s history from his father, and his present from other men in their mutual orbit. Stipe knew things Chief Smylie didn’t.

  Cory had rejected higher education. When economic realities slammed him to the dirt, he’d chosen the easiest path. He used connections forged as the child of a well-traveled mother and began a small-time hook and crook operation. He stole. He sold drugs. He lived
for intoxication. And then he lived in jail. His father knew most of what had landed him in the slammer, and being a Christian who believed in second chances, Chief Smylie had waged a personal campaign to get him accepted at UNC Asheville. But Chief Smylie was unaware that his son didn’t attend classes and only set foot on the university grounds to deliver drugs.

  Cory Smylie was irredeemable, but given the vastness of Stipe’s enterprise, odd jobs presented that were uniquely suited to irredeemable men.

  Cory had adequately performed his recent assignments, and unlike Burly Worley, Stipe didn’t care if Cory Smylie ended up dead or in jail or just plain disappeared. However, although Cory’s general demeanor was arrogance and entitlement, if Stipe could turn Cory into a man he’d be striking a blow for mankind.

  Thinking of his problem with Baer, Stipe lifted his arm and stepped toward Smylie as if to take him under wing.

  “Tell me. You got an eye for the rifle?”

  Three

  “What the fuck’d you say?” Baer stepped into the group—they were all in Larry’s grade, a year ahead. They were the boys Larry jawed about getting in with. They were cool.

  Burly Worley said, “You heard me—”

  Baer launched, swung left and right. Connected with skull and jaw, and as he reared for a third swift blow one of the other boys grabbed his arm. Another joined with a knee to his groin. Baer doubled over and a fourth boy drove him to the floor with an elbow to his shoulder.

  They were beside the lockers, twenty feet from the principal’s office.

  Boys shouted and cursed. Girls screamed and wilted. Inched closer. That blonde Larry was all crazy about leaned against a wall locker, shifted sideways for an unobstructed view.

  Baer absorbed kicks at the bottom of the pile. Burly Worley sat on Baer’s ass and pummeled his kidneys. Baer spat blood, struggled to breathe. At last only Burly was hitting him, in the same section of his back over and over. His stomach turned. Kids shouted. The blows ceased and the crowd parted. Baer rolled to his side and stared at patent leather shoes and cuffed trousers. Principal Doolittle had lifted Burly by his lapels and slammed him into a locker.