The Evening Road

by Laird Hunt

  “Let’s take it,” I said.

  “You serious, Ottie Lee?” said Dale.

  “I am,” I said.

  “She looks serious to me,” said Bud.

  “Lord almighty,” said Pops.

  “Now you sound like them,” I said, my eye on the young woman, who had turned her thoughts back up into the air and wasn’t looking my way anymore.

  The old man didn’t say a word, didn’t even bother to spit again. The women didn’t say another word either. They all four stood silent next to their water jug as Bud got the wagon turned, and they were silent as we loaded ourselves up and drove off. Some of that silence got carried up along on the empty parts of the wagon benches but after a minute the air got going around us and swept it away.

  Pops whined and mumbled after we took the wagon and wouldn’t sit up on the benches with us like we told him he should. He sat cross-legged in the back rocking this way and that and talking to himself loud enough for us all to hear. He talked about his church and his country and about Abraham Lincoln, of all things, just like that old man at Ryansville had. He talked about how he wasn’t saying cornflowers wasn’t cornflowers and cornsilks wasn’t cornsilks but he had served in the war and seen cornflowers fresh up out of Africa battle the kaiser with their bare hands and American cornflowers stand up to fight when no one else would. Dale sat on the benches with us but made it clear he was on Pops’s side of the affair. Going to a lynching of clear criminals was one thing, he said, but stealing a wagon and its mule from folks not bothering anyone was another.

  “Borrowing,” said Bud.

  “Oh, that was borrowing, not stealing, excuse me, I misunderstood,” said Dale.

  Pops said that if he had been younger and didn’t have his goiter he’d have stopped it but that he wasn’t young and had his goiter. That goiter troubled him something pretty awful. It was the devil’s torment, pure and simple. Made it so he couldn’t sleep most nights.

  “I thought you had that goiter taken care of,” said Bud.

  “What?” said Pops.

  “Even if I agree with you on the matter of principle, you ain’t got a goiter anymore; been five years now is what he said,” said Dale.

  Pops snorted. He said even if his goiter was gone he was still troubled by it when he swallowed and no one ought to have taken a wagon and left folks trying to get to a prayer vigil to set in the dark by the side of the road.

  “Dark’s good for praying. I do my best praying after dark,” said Bud.

  “What praying do you ever do?” I said.

  “I pray plenty,” said Bud.

  I started to say something else then thought of him sitting there bawling about his wife and daughter and kept it to myself.

  Behind us Pops belched and this made Bud start to laugh but then he remembered that he didn’t have anything to drink. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

  “Shoulda drunk some of that good cornflower water before you stole the wagon,” Dale said.

  “Wagon you’re riding in, husband,” I said to Dale.

  “Not that kind of thirsty,” Bud said. “Pops, you thirsty?” he called.

  “What did you say?” said Pops.

  “Did your hearing contraption stop working?”

  “Works fine.”

  “Well, I said are you thirsty?”

  “Could be.”

  “Could be or are?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to a sip,” said Dale. “Even if what happened back there was wrong.”

  “No one said you had to climb up and ride,” I said.

  “Oh, you think I should have stayed back there with them?”

  “I’m just saying you had a choice. We all had a choice.”

  “Yes, we did. Every one of us.” Dale looked long at me when he said this.

  I looked back and said, “Are we going to Marvel or aren’t we?”

  “Maybe this piece of hocus-pocus will show us the way.” Bud had the reins in his lap and his hands on what I leaned over and thought first was a painting then saw was some kind of a map. It had been rolled up and was now curled in at its four bent edges. Bud said he had found it on the wagon floor.

  “Looks like I might have mussed it some. It’s got symbols and markings on it. And all those pictures. Look at that. I’m surprised there aren’t witches and brooms.”

  I told him to hand it over to me so he could drive and I could get a look and he said he didn’t want to be holding it anyway and gave it straight over. Dale leaned in close for a look too. Pops kept to himself in the back and grumbled. It was handmade, no doubting that. Done on something like butcher paper. Had little pictures of cornflowers and cornroots pasted all around its edges. Pictures cut out of newspapers and magazines and pasted on careful. It was decorated all over the rest of it with shiny green and gold and red and blue and silver and purple and black paint. I thought maybe there was more colors hiding on it but you couldn’t see it that well.

  “Is there a lantern on this wagon?” I asked.

  “Lantern, hell,” Bud said.

  Dale pulled a box of matches out of his pocket and struck one on the wagon seat.

  He held it cupped and close, and my eyes went around the paper’s edge, first around the frame of photographs, little faces stern and smiling both, then around the next area where it had North, East, West, and so on painted in a pretty hand and each its own color. There was some towns scattered deeper in like Carlsboro and Oil City and Cherryton and Margaretville. But there weren’t any roads or lanes marked. The damnedest thing. Just the river, a twisting black ribbon across the whole of it. The first match went out and Dale struck another and I leaned in again and saw there were black dots speckled here and there next to the towns and not next to them. Dale tapped at a couple of these dots with the little finger of his match hand and I told him to quit and he told me he would tap on it if he goddamn well pleased.

  “That’s the spirit,” Bud said.

  “Mind your own, Bud,” I said back.

  Bud said something about how it was him had found the nasty thing and he would say what he wanted and take it back too, all of which I ignored, while Dale gave the map one more big tap, right at its middle. At that middle was another photograph, of a courthouse, and under it was the word Marvel painted in purple letters. The match Dale was holding went out and when it did he turned away to spit over the side of the wagon, but he also lit another match and held it out to the side for me while he pretended to look out at the countryside. The little flame flickered so I grabbed his wrist and guided it where I wanted. Cupped it and leaned in close. I leaned in and took a good hard gulp of breath and held it because now I could see what I hadn’t first seen, which was that there was silvery lines heading back and forth across the middle of the page. They went from one black dot to another and they all met up at Marvel. The longer I looked the smarter the silvery lines shined up. Looked like a fierce-headed blazon shining bright, just like I had been seeing it all afternoon, and here it was pouring even just out of a piece of paper, even just out of a name.

  “Marvel’s all lit up on this map!” I said.

  “Map of what, though, is what I’m wondering and who in hell are all those cornflowers,” said Dale, who had quit his considerations of the dark and lit another match and turned back.

  “There’s cornroots there too and it’s the countryside,” I whispered, suddenly feeling small as a girl down a well. “It’s right here. It’s all around us.”

  “That’s some cornflower magic-making, I’m telling you,” Bud said. “They’re looking to magic Marvel down. Head off the lynching. Set those boys free and who knows what all. ’Course, it won’t work here in God’s country. Lord, I’d toss that thing.”

  “Those were Christian people, not any kind of magic-makers,” Pops called up from the back.

  “It’s just a map. Someone’s map.” My voice was back to snapping strong again. “I wish I knew what it was for.”

  “It’s a map about those black dots. Tho
se lines go from dot to dot,” Dale said.

  It was true. The silvery lines weren’t coming out of Marvel; they were cutting straight through. Didn’t make it shine up for me any the less.

  “Makes me think about the underground railroads they had around here. Did you know they had the rails running all around here?”

  “Everyone knows that and I’m telling you, that’s a spell-caster’s map. Burn it would be best. Set your match to it, Dale.”

  “It’s a painting, pure and simple, is what it is. It’s like art. Whoever made it had a good hand. I’d put it on my wall. We ought to bring it back to the folks it belongs to. Along with this wagon,” said Pops, who had leaned up close enough to look over my shoulder.

  “Why’s a map got to be for anything?” I said.

  “It’s for getting somewhere or it’s not a map. Lend me one of those matches, friend Dale, and I’ll burn it,” said Bud.

  “That’s just jackass talk,” said Pops.

  “You want to say that again?” said Bud.

  “Hee-haw!” said Pops.

  “No one’s burning anything,” I said, rolling the paper back up and shoving it down on the seat between me and Dale.

  “Anyway, I know a place just up the road,” said Bud after he had cast a glance or two over his shoulder at Pops, who had gone back to his spot.

  I gazed up the lane. While we had been studying the map, the moon had taken a cloud and the countryside had gone about pitch-black and I couldn’t see a thing.

  “Like that store you knew about earlier,” I said.

  “Well, maybe my spot is on that map of yours, why don’t you check? Let it lead the way.”

  “I thought it was your map.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “You can give it back when you return this wagon you borrowed. Just like Pops suggested,” said Dale.

  Bud spit and clicked his tongue. “A good old boy keeps a still in his shed. Just up over there yonder. He’ll sell us a jar.”

  So the mule trotted on and the wagon bumped down the dark lane and a half mile later we took a turn and the turn took us to a house ought to have been, speaking of burning, torched off the earth a long time ago. There was a man on the porch of this house sitting on a swing under a lantern and in his hands he held a piece of rope. When we drove up he held up his piece of rope and gave out a whoop. Bud whooped back.

  “Going to be a lynching up the road!” said the man.

  “Where we’re heading, by God!” said Bud.

  “But you got thirsty on the way and come to see me,” said the man.

  “Yessiree,” said Pops, who somehow or other had found his way without my knowing it back up onto the bench beside Dale.

  “Well, come on down from the wagon and I’ll line you boys up. Lady too if she likes it.”

  The man pushed up off the swing and grabbed a crutch and you could see that he was missing a foot.

  “Farming accident,” whispered Bud. “He’s got a wife somewhere around here if she ain’t dead.”

  The man was so filthy he looked like he’d rolled around in bacon grease then taken a long nap under the tail of a sick cow. He led us back to a shed out in some high grass behind his rotting house. The shed wasn’t in much better shape. It had developed a lean and about the only thing keeping it from falling over on its side was a shrub mulberry grown all out of control. My father had had a shed about like this out back of the house where he had gone to heave or howl and beat his sorry head against the walls.

  “I hear them Marvel cornflowers dishonored twenty-five women,” the man said as he crutched ahead of us.

  “What I heard too,” said Bud.

  The man hadn’t let go of his piece of rope and when he spoke he waved the end of it around. The end was frayed and wet-looking, like he had been chewing on it. I expect he had. He had a rusty still in a corner of the shed and a row of mason jars filled with cloudy hooch.

  “I’m giving out a show-day discount to any who buys two.”

  “I’m in,” said Pops.

  “Two’ll do,” said Bud.

  “Give him my money, Ottie Lee,” said Dale.

  “Ottie Lee?” said the man, looking up at me.

  “Ottie Lee done scraped her knee,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  They all laughed loud enough to bring the shed down. As a matter of fact, thinking this choice thought, I stepped outside while they were still chortling and taking their first drinks and leaned against the side of the shed and pushed out hard as I could with my legs but alas on me, the rotten structure held. They always do. So I left them to their chortling and went back around to the front of the house and retrieved the map and got myself settled next to the mule.

  I talked to the mule awhile but the mule fell asleep while I was addressing it. I let this bother me some for a minute and accordingly gave the beast a whack or two with the map on its meaty flanks but it didn’t wake. There had been a mule liked to lounge along the other side of the fencerow at the Spitzers’ and I had visited it a good deal. Remembering this—remembering going out to see it after I’d been whipped or some such for forgetting to comb my hair or wetting my bed or singing too loud or singing too low or leaving dirty dishes or getting the others to do my work for me—I laid my head on that sleeping mule’s meaty shoulder and spoke to it. I spoke to it about this and about that. I spoke to it about what I still planned to say to Candy Perkins when I saw her at the show. I spoke to it about that big fat Sassy pig of Dale’s and how I couldn’t hardly wait until she was bacon and we could have the money she brought and I could tell Bud and his bonuses to go to hell. I spoke to it about those idiots out there drinking in the shed. I unrolled the map and moved my eyes around it as I spoke, went from face to face, let my eyes ride along the silvery lines, skitter across its surface, and land on its other side. In the light coming off the house I could see the black dots were rectangles. I counted twenty-six of them. The silvery lines had been painted straight as sharp-pulled thread. I turned the map this way and that as I looked, and as it moved in the light, it sparked and shone. So I spoke to the mule about those bright specks I’d seen as I walked along thinking I was looking out of Sally Gunner’s angel-runner eyes. How I thought I had seen them again the minute before I hadn’t told Bud we shouldn’t steal from those poor cornflowers. I told the mule maybe I had seen those lights and maybe I hadn’t. But here I was looking at that map and maybe seeing them again. “I’m looking for my Pearl,” had said the woman in her overcoat sitting in my chair in the front room. She had looked very slowly over at me when she said it. She had no teeth, false or real. She could have been forty or a hundred. There must have been a light rain come up because there was water dripping off her heavy coat and the water drops on the wood floor glittered and shone.

  I didn’t make much out of the map beyond my own thoughts and memories but I spoke to the mule for a good while. Every now and again it would flick its ear at something that was troubling its mule dreams. As a girl paying my calls on the mule by the Spitzers’, I had wished I had ears that could flick. Legs that could gallop. Hooves that could kick. I asked the mule I was leaning against if it knew what the map meant. Just a hint would do. I was ready for a clear road, I told it. That was when I heard the door open on the old house.

  “They’ll be at it all night if he gets his way with them.” It was an ancient woman, a not much cleaner counterpart to the cripple entertaining the boys out back.

  “I expect,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “Boys are out here every night of the week and he knows how to keep them going. Right now he’ll be showing them how to tie a noose.”

  “A noose?”

  “He knows all the knots.”

  “Well, then, he ought to be over at Marvel.”

  “Maybe so, maybe so.” The woman had sat down a minute on the porch swing but now she stood up again and leaned back against the front door. “But I’ll tell you what,” she said, “he ain’t going nowhere tonight
.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Like I’d carved it in stone.”

  “Like you’d chopped it out with a chisel.”

  “Hit it hard with a hammer.”

  “Sewed it up with some thick thread.”

  We had a laugh together and then we both settled down.

  “What’s that you’re studying?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, that’s some shiny nothing, leastways that’s how it looks from over here.”

  “It’s colorful anyway,” I said. “It came with the wagon. It’s a map. Well, some kind of a map.”

  “Ain’t that your wagon?”

  “We borrowed it. For the evening. To get us to Marvel.” As I said it, I rolled up the map and put it on the bench. Then, afraid some breeze might blow it or some night bird might steal it, I set it down on the wagon floor.

  “You don’t need a map to get to Marvel.”

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you? It’s taking us a while.”

  “Which one of them are you with? Fellow had the reins?”

  “What makes you think I’m with any of them?”

  “You’re with one of them.”

  “Did you just wink when you said that?”

  “I won’t deny it.”

  “The little one with the yellow hair.”

  The old woman looked at her nails, smiled at something about them or about me standing out in her yard looking more jackass than the mule.

  “I’d of guessed the big one driving the wagon,” she said, “that’s some piece of fellow. I’d like to have me some of that beef stacked up over there yonder in my icebox.”

  I kind of cocked my head but didn’t say anything. The old woman said, “Come on over here so I can get a better look at you.”

  “What for?”

  She had pushed herself off the front door and come forward. She wore glasses and a pink frock. Or pink was what color it was supposed to be.

  “You see that sign,” she said, pointing up at the eaves.