“How’s school?” Van asked.
“How’s school?”
“Yeah, how’s school!” Van said. “What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with asking about school?”
“It’s boring.”
“School?” Van asked.
“The question!” Birdie said. “Well, and school too.”
Van smiled and pointed to an old oak that had been struck by lightning out in the pasture. “Storm got it good.” It was split right down the middle, a jagged black scar slicing down the trunk. “How’s English? What you reading?”
“Thoreau,” Birdie said. “So that’s good.”
“Onie helping you?”
“Helping me with what? I can read.”
“Thoreau’s her favorite,” Van said.
“Thoreau’s everybody’s favorite.”
“True.” He nodded. His face looked tired. Everything about him looked tired. He had lost weight and his cheeks had become sunken and looked more and more like Dale than himself. He had lost all his verve, just like his trees had lost theirs. “You know his mother brought him donuts every Sunday?” Van kept his eyes on the road.
“Whose mother?”
“Thoreau’s.”
“She did not!” Birdie said. They hit a bump, and she bounced hard off the seat, then grabbed the handle above the passenger window.
“She did!” A hint of animation came back to his face, obviously pleased that he had told her something she didn’t know. He drummed on the steering wheel. “That right there is why Onie was the best English teacher.”
“Because she crushes your idols?”
“How is that crushing your idols?”
“It’s hardly living deliberately if you’re sucking down a jelly roll your mommy brought you every week.”
“How is it not?” Van looked at her, baffled. A hint defensive too. “Live your ideals and whatnot, but take the help when it comes along. You gotta grab at your opportunities!”
“A donut is not an opportunity!”
“Who says?” Van shouted.
“I say!”
Van smiled, forever impressed by her feistiness. “Who’s teaching English this year?”
“Meyer.” She gripped the handle tighter at another bump and cocked her head to prevent a concussion.
“And he’s coaching football too?” Van asked.
“He calls him H.D. Thorough,” Birdie said.
“And he ain’t jokin’, is he?”
“He ain’t jokin’.”
Van shook his head. Birdie shook hers too. A joint lamentation of all the poor rural kids deprived of Transcendentalism during football season. This exchange seemed to restore the normalcy between them, and they rode in silence on the roller coaster of the back roads until they came across a small black Datsun stuck in the ditch at a sharp turn in the road in part of the woods Birdie had rarely seen. Dale’s truck was parked on the road behind it, and Dale and another man sat on the tailgate. The dark-haired man she had seen before with Bradley. The one Bradley worried was taking his work.
Van hooked the chains to the back of the man’s truck. He slid some two-by-fours underneath the tires. Van gassed his truck, while Dale and the other man pushed the little Datsun backward until it emerged from the mud.
It was one of the few times she had seen Dale exert physical effort, and the hog trapper, though obviously a product of the country with his hat and boots, did not acknowledge her presence like most gentlemen did. He did not stick out his hand or take off his hat. He barely made eye contact, an oddity given the over-politeness of country men toward women of any age, especially given that her daddy had just pulled him out of a ditch.
“What’s wrong with that man?” Birdie asked when they both got back in the truck.
“I dunno. He’s friends with Dale?” he said. “Why I didn’t want you to come.”
“You shoulda stopped me.”
Van raised his eyebrows.
She smiled and looked out the window. She was struck by the brassiness of the dead trees. They were so red against the green ones they appeared to be on fire. Their land had turned to hell.
“That was the man Bradley and I saw you with the other day,” Birdie said. “Bradley thought you were mad at him since you didn’t let him work.”
“You and Bradley got a thing going?”
Birdie looked at him aghast.
“What? You could do worse than him. Hard worker, nice boy…real nice boy.”
“Dad, no…we’re not…no…” She shook her head and willed the blood to go back into her face. “But you’re not gonna fire him, right?”
“Why would I do that?”
“You didn’t want Bradley coming along the other day. Just thought maybe—”
“I would never fire him.”
“Then what’s Dale and that other guy doing that Bradley can’t?”
Van didn’t answer. They rode in silence until Van, as if he still had a conversation going on in his head, said, “A man like that is too desperate for money.” But Birdie didn’t know if he was talking about Bradley or the other men.
When they got back to the house, Birdie finished supper while Van tinkered in the shed.
“Where’d y’all go?” Onie asked.
“Helped Dale pull some guy out of the mud.” The steam off the greens stung Birdie’s face.
Onie shook her head, a shock of concern coming over her. “Black truck?”
“Yes.”
“Your daddy trusts too many people,” Onie said.
“What’s that mean?”
“What I said.”
“Who is he?” Birdie asked.
“His name is Tommy Jones, if you must know,” Onie said, but Birdie would not remember this.
***
The morning that Van would die, around the time that the game warden asked Randy Mayhill for his badge, Birdie rushed to her truck to leave for school. She was late for the twenty-minute drive into town, but she had Walden in her bag and a biscuit so hot in her hand that she had to wrap it in a paper towel. The butter had bled through the towel and was dripping in a golden river down her wrist. Van scuttled out behind her, also late, and also with a biscuit in his mouth.
“Van!” Onie shouted at him from the garden.
Birdie remembered the moment vividly now, another memory shaken loose, more details coming into focus. She watched from the truck.
Onie was on her knees, a trowel in her hand, and she clawed at the dirt like it had wronged her. She looked dramatic, as if in a movie. "As God is my witness…" all Scarlett O’Hara and whatnot. “Van!”
“I got men waiting on me!” Van yelled back. He waved the biscuit out his truck window. “Home tonight!”
Onie sat in the dirt and watched her son drive off, a black Datsun waiting at the end of the driveway, following Van to work for the day.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Gabby Grayson had called Mayhill superstitious once. When they had worked together, she had read him the Houston Post’s horoscope every morning while they drank their first cup of coffee, and to this day, when he drank coffee, he had the undeniable feeling that something was missing—like drinking it black when you’re used to having it with cream. He was missing someone to tell him how his day was going to go.
“Libra. Oooooh…you’ll be lucky in love, Sheriff!” Gabby had cheered.
Mayhill would avoid her eyes completely and will the red that snaked his neck like a noose to fade.
“Aquarius,” Gabby read on. “Ugh! You’ll make sound decisions? Tell that to the divorce lawyer! Ha! Let’s trade, Randy!” She put down the newspaper, her lipstick leaving a mark on the cup the color of a crabapple.
Now, Mayhill’s superstition was alive and well as he picked out his outfit for his reckoning with Dale. Three days ago, four buzzards had brought him luck. He had known it when he saw them. What was the statute of limitations on buzzard luck? Was he
still operating under their goodwill? Had Dale seen the buzzards too? If so, how exactly did that work?
His jeans from three days ago had not been washed—in fact, he’d worn them the entire three days, they were that comfortable—so they would offer looseness and flexibility, but they were also smeared with Kool-Aid and hog’s blood, the pink note still tucked in his back pocket. Still, he decided that the litheness of his broken-in jeans would be an asset tonight should he have to run. He was slow enough as it was, and he needed every advantage. He would wear the shirt from last night—now forever marked as a relic of luck—because Gabby Grayson had held his hand. He wrapped his knee tightly in an ACE Bandage.
Another game-time choice: he decided to wear a bulletproof vest. The vest had stood stiffly in his closet like a decapitated torso, and he knew he should return it to the sheriff’s office since it was technically county property, but the county never asked for it, so he never felt inclined to return it. He had packed it up with his pictures and maps. The irony was not lost on him: a vest given to protect him though he had never fired a shot or dodged anything but the occasional spit. It had been an entirely useless garment.
The vest was gray and of medium thickness. He took it off the hanger and worked his thick arms into the holes. It didn’t fit, the vest meant for a leaner male specimen, so he inhaled and fastened the zipper underneath his gut. The zipper would latch, but it would not zip up more than a few tortured inches, so the front flaps of the vest flopped open like pages of a book, functioning like a visual runway to guide any future bullets safely into his heart. But his back would be safe and so were parts of his sides. It was something.
He opened the gun safe. He needed a lucky one, and this was easy, his own .357, the same one Dale had used on Van, and so it made sense to him. It was poetic. He slid it into the holster on his belt. An energy was in the air, and Mayhill shifted from foot to foot, antsy. The dogs picked up on it too, seemingly unable to get comfortable. Much circling, much circling. Much repositioning as dogs do, only to get up and circle again. It wasn’t even a full moon, yet the hairs on the back of his neck stood pole-straight.
He felt the definitive presence of someone else in the house, to the point that he quickly turned on all the lights and checked the rooms. No one was there. No one is there, Randy! But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the house felt claustrophobically small all of a sudden, as if it were packed with people, packed with a past.
“Birdie?” he said, a quiet voice coming from him. “Bradley?”
He stuck his head outside and looked at the trap (empty). Off the porch, deep in the dark, he saw a few hogs, and so he waved his hat to scatter them away. Then he closed the gate to the trap because he didn’t want to bother with it. Lord knew he didn’t need the meat. “Hello? Birdie?” He wondered if Birdie was back at the house with Onie yet. He walked to the kitchen and picked up the phone to call Onie, but then put the handset back on the receiver.
He patted his dogs goodbye and took a quick look in the mirror, his eye puffy and black but healing nicely, and stepped out into the night.
***
Mayhill pulled his truck into the ditch and cut his headlights about a quarter mile from Dale’s trailer. He had driven slowly so that his truck made as little noise as possible, no scraping potholes to give him away before he even had his chance. When he got out, he held the door firmly and pressed it closed until he could hear it latch, and even that sent a crack of sound through the woods he was certain would alert Dale to his presence.
He clenched his gun and walked slowly down the road to Dale’s until he saw the trailer’s dim yellow lights sparkle through the pines. He steadied his breath. Mayhill stayed near the tree line and walked quickly across Dale’s excuse of a lawn, and then turned abruptly, gun drawn, and stood with his back against Dale’s trailer. Mayhill crouched down as he skulked around the edge, as if Dale might jump from behind the pokeweed.
Dale’s dog trotted up to him, and anger welled up in Mayhill again. Skinny dog out at night. The poor dog would get killed sooner or later. Mayhill had prepared for the dog because God is always in the details, and Mayhill was downright holy in this regard. He pulled a few strips of jerky out of his pocket, and the dog gobbled them up and licked Mayhill’s hand. “Stay,” Mayhill whispered. He scratched him behind his white ears and then side-stepped to the front of the trailer.
Dale’s truck was not there.
But this didn’t mean anything necessarily. Their operation was near here, he was sure. Perhaps the truck was parked there. Perhaps Bradley had it.
The plan was simple: Mayhill would knock, and then he would shoot. Knock and shoot. Knock-shoot. Knock-shoot. It echoed like a mantra in his head. Mayhill wouldn’t touch anything. He’d drive away slowly and calmly into the night, no doubt taking Dale’s dog with him. No one would ever know.
He held his gun firmly and walked up the concrete stairs, which Mayhill was thankful didn’t squeak like wooden ones. At the door, he turned slightly to the side and stretched out his arms. He inhaled deeply and steadied the gun. Then he knocked loudly on the door with his left hand. Mayhill clenched his jaw.
Lord, please forgive me for what I am about to do.
But nothing happened. Nobody answered. Ten seconds, thirty seconds, forty seconds. Nobody. He leaned his ear close to the door. No shuffling around inside, no footsteps. He looked behind him. Dale’s dog watched him from the bottom of the steps.
Mayhill breathed in again and knocked even more loudly again.
Again, nothing. A minute, two minutes. No sound. Then Mayhill turned and looked out at Dale’s property and out at the shed behind his house.
“Shit.” Mayhill dropped the gun to his side.
It was then that Mayhill heard the low grumble of a truck. He hurried down the stairs and hid in the dark beside Dale’s trailer. The dog followed and stood next to him in the dark. Mayhill fed him another piece of meat, anticipating that Dale’s truck would turn into the driveway any second. The sound was moving closer, the engine growing louder, but no lights were coming through the trees. He moved to the corner and looked in all directions for the hint of headlights. Surely, the sound was not coming through the thicket. No truck could maneuver back there.
Just then, movement in front of him. Mayhill’s eyes struggled to adjust. A black truck, camouflaged entirely, blinking in and out of the trees along the road. Headlights off and going much too slowly, stealthily. Just like Mayhill had moved a short time before.
Mayhill started off toward his truck. The dog trotted behind him.
“Stay,” he told Dale’s dog. “I’ll come back for you.” And by the end of the story, Randy Mayhill most certainly would. But the dog looked away as if he didn’t believe him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Mayhill again cut off his headlights, this time about a half mile from the trailhead where he had followed the Datsun’s tracks through the mud. Really, Mayhill liked this option better, confronting Dale where he had dared to trespass. There was a symmetry to these things, a poetry.
With a black wall of woods to his right and a black wall of woods to his left, he thought of Bradley and what it must have been like to work here in the blackness. Had it been thrilling like this moment, the scorched summer air filling your lungs like water? Or had it been frightening, him forever on edge, like watching a horror movie on repeat?
He stepped through the curtain of the woods. The trees could make you feel claustrophobic, or they could be like a blanket that insulated you from the rest of the world. He understood then how Van might have felt invincible in his woods, where his daddy and granddaddy had worked, that nothing bad could ever happen there, the invisible hand of immortality infusing him with false confidence. Van hadn’t been crazy. He had felt too safe.
The forest was inordinately quiet but alive—a sleeping giant pulsing with energy. In the blackness, with the canopy hovering six stories above him, he felt almost as if he were hall
ucinating. Tree after tree, hypnotic.
—You’re a good man. Onie’s voice bellowed in his head.
—You treat life like hand-to-hand combat. Van’s voice popped from the thicket.
A chorus of voices in his brain worthy of Macbeth.
“Shut up!” Mayhill whispered.
—Who’s the one going crazy?
Mayhill stepped quietly through the thicket. He pushed through a lattice of broken branches, edging his belly through, the jagged sticks tearing at his arms and legs. A branch poked him in the back, but through the vest, it felt like a stiff finger.
“What were you thinking, Van?” He had never said the words out loud, though he had thought them a thousand times. He stepped over a large fallen branch. Van had died not too far from here. It was a terrible thought, but instead of spooking him, the idea comforted him somehow. Right then, a bird—an owl maybe—flew overhead and rustled the pine needles. “Goddammit, Van, I’m not falling for your shit.”
—I didn’t say anything.
Mayhill heard movement. Hogs. He approached a small clearing, and the hogs seemed to turn and follow—an organism moving along with him—because animals did that with Mayhill. Still, the blood on his jeans from days before—wouldn’t that have repelled them? But the Kool-Aid! Mayhill had an army, which made him nervous. He worried about drawing extra attention, but perhaps it was genius! The hogs with him, an auditory camouflage. Suddenly apprehensive, he tugged at his vest to close up the gap, the base of the zipper digging hard into his gut.
He kept walking and tried to ignore the feeling, the voices in his head. Perhaps he really was going crazy. Perhaps that’s what happened to Van: the kaleidoscope of the woods made him nuts.
Then he heard voices, real ones this time. A few more steps, and he saw the faintest light. A small camping lantern lit the scene in the clearing up ahead. Two chairs. A pop-up tent deflated on the ground, as if it were being packed up. Dale’s head. Bradley’s head. Bradley! Alive! Fifty hogs rooted to the left of him. Mayhill crouched low. He stopped to watch, and he touched his gun.
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