by Frank Bill
Above them, they were surrounded by shadows of wood and limestone. It was here that Gutt Alcorn would lie in burial. Dorn and Horace rolled his shape into the hole that ran as deep as the father was tall. Man and boy stood damp and stinking. Tips, palms, and complexions smudged and printed by soil. They covered Gutt until there was no more dirt to fill the hole. No words of hymnal were spoken to send Gutt to his Maker or absolve his connection to the world he’d once known. Only the trounce of distancing soles to earth as the Widow wandered back up the steep hill to set her traps for skunk with the father and son following behind her. Climbing back to the top of the meteor-like hole. Lungs burned while their bodies began to feel the loss of energy. The crash from being amped up on violent happenings.
Once the Widow’s traps had been set in a location where she’d watched such critters trespass, Horace and Van Dorn followed her back through the woods, trampling over limbs that cracked and popped, noticing the sound of a river was nearby; each thought of running toward it, jumping in to feel a relief from the mossy film that covered their hides.
Van Dorn was spent but knew the night was not coming to an end as the Widow spoke. “Dark’ll only last so long. We need to get back on the road, dump the GTO.”
Van Dorn replied before his father. “We can then call it a night?”
And Horace said, “We may never know day nor night again. At least not in the normal sense.”
To Van Dorn, the Widow replied, “Yes, we may call it a night after the car has been dumped far from everyone’s eyes.” She stopped, held the lantern to Horace’s damp and salty face. “All things will come to pass with time, trust me. Was nothing so hard as losing my provider.”
Van Dorn and Horace followed the Widow out to Tucker’s Lake in the GTO, where they wiped the car clean of any prints, left the GTO with the keys in the ignition, returned to the Widow’s home with the gray of morning cast upon them. Offering Horace and Van Dorn shelter. A place to bathe, eat, and lay their heads. They stripped themselves of garment. Saturated cotton and denim with fuel. Ignited their clothing within a burn barrel. Showered and dressed in fresh garments.
In the kitchen, the Widow prepared breakfast while the two men sat at the kitchen table that was covered by a white cloth. Glass salt and pepper shakers sat in the table’s center, each the size and shape of a large goose egg with a lime-green lid. Horace was fidgeting, his nerves needing to be numbed from all that had taken place.
The Widow stood over the pearl-tinted stove, blue and orange flame heated the bottom of a black cast-iron skillet where she spooned a ceramic-colored mixture of bacon and beef fat from a used mayonnaise jar. A dozen eggs lay in a pink carton about the counter where she picked up the oval shapes, one at a time, cracked them open, and dropped the clear goo with yolk into the skillet, where it popped and sizzled.
“What brought you and your boy to English?”
“Wanted a look at what we’d not seen in some time.”
“Not seen?”
“We been on the road. Far from here. Was salvaging for a living. Kinda lost my reasons, being rooted in the county when the wife skipped out on me and my boy, then the economy went to snuff.” Horace looked to Van Dorn with deranged bloodshot eyes and finished with “We’d been gone long enough, decided to come back.”
“Seems many a folk has lost they way in these times. Can remember when one could always find work. It ain’t that way no more. Between jobs drying up, meth, heroin, and opiate addiction, people’s dead ’fore they even know it.” The Widow went silent, then said, “Never said what your names was?”
“I’m Horace Riesing. My boy’s named Van Dorn.”
“Well, Horace and Van Dorn, how you two like your eggs?”
The Widow asked this as though nothing had occurred. “Soft in the center,” Van Dorn said.
Horace balled his hand into a mallet. Unable to take the unacknowledged weight of what the past forty-eight hours had seized his conscience with, he brought the fist down on the table’s center. Rattled the shakers. Van Dorn sat as though time had quit. Wanted to reach out. Clasp his father into a hug. Let him know things were as okay as they could be. That they had each other.
“A man has been murdered by my hands,” Horace shouted. “Buried by me and my boy. And you ask how we want our eggs?”
The Widow swallowed hard, ignored Horace’s words. “How many you two want?”
Van Dorn’s eyes bugged to the size of cue balls. Starved and knowing his father would not answer until he was free of what they’d been accomplices to, Van Dorn spoke for them each.
“Let’s start with the dozen.”
Angered, Horace said, “Don’t be a pig, boy.”
“He’s fine. Just me out here and I got a mess of hens. Mess of milk from my few cows and pounds of meat in the freezer. Two of you’s safe here. After breakfast you can get some shut-eye. Decide what you wanna do when you wake.”
“Dammit, Widow, what’s your angle in this taking of another’s existence?”
The Widow turned to Horace and said, “No angle. I take kindly for what you done. My brothers-in-law have belittled me since my husband’s passing. And even before with their snide ways. Though it’s wrong, I feel no qualms nor pity for what happened to Gutt. Don’t know how many times I wished his and the others’ deaths. Only thing I’m sorry for is that it was you and your son who had to do it. But what’s done is done.” She paused, turned back to the cast iron, flipped the eggs onto a plate covered by towel paper to absorb the discoloration of grease, cracked several more eggs into the skillet. And she finished with, “In these woods the rules can be shaped how I see fit, not how they see fit.”
And then it came, the one thing Horace needed to find his calm. “Got any sauce?”
“Kind of sauce?”
“Only kind they is, that which is rendered from mash and rye or wheat, corn, and barley.”
The Widow flipped the eggs as they crisped brown and whited on one side and she told Horace, “They’s a half gallon of Maker’s below the sink. Glasses is above. Help yourself.”
Standing, Horace stepped to the sink. Bent down, slid the curtain back that doubled as cabinet doors, where he found not a single bottle of bourbon but five half-gallon bottles. He grabbed one. Reached to the upper cabinet, pulled three clear glasses from it. Went back to the table, where he twisted the red lid that matched his eyes from the squared bottle and poured himself three fingers of ginger-colored liquid, then three for Van Dorn and the Widow.
He sneered at Van Dorn, nodded to the glass. “To help you sleep.” Then to the Widow he said, “I poured you a taste.”
“I cannot drink this early. I have a store to run. Traps to check. Things to tend.”
Horace sucked his glass empty, then reached for the Widow’s glass, took a sip, and asked, “How did your fella find his end?”
Glancing to the ceiling, the Widow thought for a second and then spoke. “On his way home from cutting wood. Had our other Chevy’s bed weighted full. Brakes went out when he was traveling down the gravel curves of Rothrock Mill Road, hit a tree head-on. All them ricks come through the cab. Crushed him. Died in an instant.” The Widow paused, then asked, “How about you, your wife?”
“It was the dope. Lost her to the meth and the opiates.”
“Some say a madness is coming to the land. If you follow scripture, it sure seems like end-times.”
“Scripture or not, madness is here. Me and Dorn seen the lives of the working scattered throughout the states we haunted, hoboing, camping in tents along streams, vacant homes no longer able to be afforded. Seeing the young who’ve no skill. Why I’ve raised Dorn in the old ways. Taught him some thieving. He can use his hands and his mind. I seen this foolishness coming long ago, when he’s about five we bought us a TV. Next thing I know we’s going to the grocery and he wants different types of cereal with each trip, not ’cause he likes them, ’cause he sees these commercials advertising different trinkets in the boxes.”
Dorn cut in with “Father takes our TV out into the field with his twelve-gauge, shoots it. Blows the tube to shards.”
Fried eggs with their greased whites lay piled on a large plate while the Widow dropped slithers of bacon into the skillet. In another cast-iron skillet, diced potatoes the size of silver dollars fried with hunks of onion and specks of pepper. The smells fed Dorn’s and Horace’s senses. Turning to Horace as he filled his glass once more, the Widow told him, “They’s no TV in this home, only a radio and an eight-track player. No need to worry. But this madness we speak of, me and Alex knew of a man who lived on down around the county forest, some say he’s crazed ’cause he says that he sees things before they occur. Sometimes in visions. Other times in dreams. Claims we should all be prepping for a wave of bad. Some say he’s a prophet, others a drunk with a warped tongue.” The Widow paused as the food popped and she took in the shadow that rattled her back door’s glass. “Shit, it’s Dillard.”
Van Dorn asked, “Who’s Dillard?”
“Gutt and Alex’s older brother.”
Like Dorn’s father, Dillard Alcorn was thick in size, hands similar to extra-large snow gloves, a tattooed frame similar to a shadow of a Mack truck, only it wasn’t a shadow. It was a man built from labor and hard living with auger-bit eyes that screwed into your mind and forced you to look the opposite direction if you were weak in the orbs and yellow backed.
When the Widow opened the door, Dillard towered over her, seeing a man and his boy who’d not been seen before at his sister-in-law’s home. He registered this information, brought his attention back to the Widow. Telling her, “Gutt never come home last night.”
“And this concerns me how?”
“You know I’s keeping a short leash on him since his release. His nose void of dirt. He’s family. Something your half-breed ass is still part of regardless of my baby bro’s passing.”
“Ain’t seen hide nor hair one.”
“He’s to have met me at Lisa’s last night in Corydon. But told me he’d something he needed to take up with you first.”
“Didn’t take nothing with me. You check with those he takes commerce with?”
“That I did, but he’s not been seen.”
Dillard was no fool. Knew something was amiss. Eyed Horace and Van Dorn.
“Who might be your company?”
“Those’d be my acquaintances.”
Gripping the inner jamb of the doorway, Dillard started to push past the Widow and questioned her as she blocked his passage. “Not gonna offer your brother-in-law an invite to your home? An introducing to your guests? Them flavors of breakfast is tempting my taste buds after being out all night looking for Gutt.”
The Widow laughed. Clamped strong to the jamb with both hands and said, “Only time you come around is to nose into my affairs of living, seeing as Alex is no longer alive. Don’t think I’m in the mood for your company nor introductions on this morning.”
Dillard was still eyeing Horace and Dorn; Horace impaled him with his eyes, the bourbon offering extra fuel to his cockiness, and Dillard asked, “Wouldn’t be the ones’d lost they direction, would it? Elmer says he came by the mart, seen you speaking with some folks and you wouldn’t open up for him to buy some smokes.”
Not veering his view from the doorway, Horace grabbed his bourbon. Sipped it and said, “Why don’t you ask us who we are?”
Rage glazed Dillard’s stubbled jawline. As he pressed his chest forward, the Widow’s grip broke from the jamb. Teetered her back. She sensed the cockfight that was brewing. Reached at the slab of door. Began to rear it closed, mashing Dillard’s fingers. “Maybe they is, maybe they is not. It’s my business, not yours or Elmer’s.”
Dillard sized up the situation. Saved the fight for another time. Pulled his hands away from the doorway, took a step backward. Watched the opening shrink while eye-fucking Horace and said, “Remember this, Widow, you’d not have a pot to piss in if it weren’t for my baby bro or the blood that birthed him.”
With that the door hinged shut.
NOW
Morning came with the threat of sounds, busted and splintered lumber. Feet trampled floorboards, heavy and weighted. Followed by the voices of men, muffled and foreign.
From the green military cot, Van Dorn rose already dressed in a knurled T-shirt and denim work pants stained by the drudge of days in search of food. Booted feet planted to the fungus floor of the basement. Hunger was a twisting pang for sustenance even after eating every cut of meat from the skillet the night before. Then digging into his memory. Memories brought on by the killing of three men with familiar engravings from his past but upon whom they’d been engraved, he could not place as it was unclear, fogged in his memory.
Gotta leave this place, Van Dorn told himself. Trying to rouse the grogginess of sleep from his frame. Pulling the .45-caliber Colt from beneath his pillow, sliding it into his holster. Still unable to shake the familiar face of the Sheldon girl being caged with those women and their young, Dorn grabbed the lever-action .30-30. Slung it over his frame. Stiffness fired about his muscles from the fall and fight of yesterday’s actions.
Snakes lay coiled in corners and about the floor like land mines ready to be detonated, but not by Dorn. For reasons unknown they’d always navigated to him like protective pets.
Making his way to the back wall of shelving where a metallic gun safe stood, door ajar, he wondered how many were upstairs, wondered if those from yesterday had tracked him. Pulling a backpack from one of the wooden shoals, raking supplies into it from the safe: Ammunition. Ohio Blue Tip Matches. Binoculars. Compass. Dorn slung it over his back. The tick of his heart was equal to an early-morning pot of coffee as he counted the steps of feet overhead, stomping from room to room, knowing that regardless of who it was he’d stayed in this home too long. Been fortunate not to have been raided or discovered long before now. Knowing that movement willed progression. Stagnation willed death.
Moving in a blistering rush across the fault-cracked floor to the slab of cedar that led outside, Dorn cursed himself, knowing he should’ve taken to the land long ago in search of others similar to him and his father and the Widow. Frontier types who understood their terrain. How to live from it. But then there was that fear of those who kill and rob you of all your worth.
Before the dollar had failed, and folks walked away from their jobs, formed militias across the United States to take out the power grids—after following the actions of the Disgruntled Americans—took a stand and told their government that they’d had enough, houses around him had turned to camps or rentals for getaways that never came. Beyond these homes within the valleys and back roads he sometimes hunted, he began to view men and women who went into hiding in cellars, embedded themselves into the earth, bunkered by soil and leaves. Folks who were scared. Dorn had spoken with some within those first weeks. They’d not wanted to risk lives. Traveling into town as others had and never returned. Hopes were that someone or something, be it county, state, government, or military, would come for them, offer answers. But after too many months, no one had. Only scavengers, militias, and the horde had made their way throughout the land more and more, reaping it of its commerce.
Grabbing the door handle, Dorn glanced to the corner. Made out the shape and the familiar scent of fuel. Listened to the ransacking going on from room to room. And voices that did not speak clearly.
Reaching down, Dorn grabbed the can of gas. Removed the cap, thought of the Sheldon girl. Of going catfishing late night down on the Blue River. Pouring fuel into a lantern that lay behind them on the gritty bank. Glow of a half-moon cast down upon the calm of water. Trees hung overhead. Lines baited, weighed down by sinkers with triple hooks and chicken livers. Fishing the current’s bottom till the zigzag came, Sheldon jerking the rod opposite the pull and tug of the fish. Her arms lean but strong as a boy’s until she fell in. Dorn dropped his pole. There was a panic at first. His struggle to help her. Hands holding her. Splash of water from limbs. “Stan
d up,” he’d told her. “Stand up.” And when she wouldn’t he grabbed her hips, pulled her upright. The river level stopping at her denim knees. Laughter reddened her face in the moonlight. Locks wet. Her shirt soaked. Braless. Van Dorn turned his eyes away from the shapes beneath, trying to be respectful. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” Sheldon told him. “I’m a girl. You’re a boy. There’s an attraction.”
Van Dorn thought of her and the others starved of hope and he knew what he had to do. Began dousing everything. Floor. Shelves. Walls. Stairs. He’d find these men and the women and children they’d taken, and he’d free them by whatever means necessary.
Overhead, the bedroom where Horace and the Widow lay was entered. Accented muffles hollered, “Goddamn, they’s dead! Rotted!”
Dorn stood by the door that led to his freedom from the house. Dug a match from the box in his pack. Waited. Listened to the footfalls approaching. The basement door was busted from its hinges, bobsledded down the stringer of stairs.
Dorn knew it was now or never. Clamped his eyes shut. Listened to his heart pump one jab after another into his breastbone as the soles of boots descended the stringers. Purging. One at a time. Dorn remembered what his grandfather Claude had told him of soldierin’ when getting rabid on vodka. He’d served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Hide of one leg whittled and gnawed by shrapnel. Begged as he did to have the limb removed, the doctors would not. The man was old-school badass. Would sit sucking down one glass after another, spilling stories of traveling in small units. Before initiating combat, he and his men sat, studied their enemy. Discovered who was commanding, killed him first, and the others scattered and fell by brass, bayonet, or grenade. They were run down, hunted, and eliminated.
Opening his eyes, he flicked the match against the zipper of his jeans. Inhaled the sulfur flame ignition. Met the eyes of the man who led the others down the steps. Lifted his weapon. Dorn tossed the match to the floor. Turned. Flung the door open. Gave more air to the combustion of flames. Stepped out into the daylight, where black dirt-specked vehicles were scattered about the property. Off in the distance stood the blur of the figure with tattoos comic-booking his face, a crown of thorns haloing his temples, and the Sheldon girl within his grip.