by Chris Offutt
He decided to march across the lawn, knock twice, enter, and hug her. The moment he placed his hand on the lever of the truck door, he was riven by a fear deeper than any he’d experienced in combat. He turned the key, put the truck in gear, and drove to the cabin. For hours he lay on the narrow cot wishing he had a bottle of bourbon. He’d heard that time heals all wounds, which he knew to be a lie. Time didn’t heal anything, it made you forget. Whiskey accelerated the process. Sleep eluded him until he imagined lying in his own bed in his own home beside Peggy.
Chapter Five
Shifty Kissick made her bed every morning, careful not to let the pillows rest on each other lest such a sight be too suggestive of sexual conduct. Though her husband had been dead nearly ten years she still maintained the habit. She’d had five kids, including one daughter who’d moved to Michigan when her husband got a job at a Ford plant. The family visited Shifty once a year but she couldn’t make sense of her grandchildren’s refusal to leave the house. They preferred to sit on the couch and watch each other play games on tiny flat screens.
During their last visit Shifty had placed a few tufts of grass in three jars and perforated the lids. With cookies as a bribe, she gathered her grandchildren outdoors at dusk, caught a lightning bug, put it in a jar, and gave it to the youngest girl. The two older boys began chasing the erratic bugs around the yard and Shifty remembered watching her sons do the same. When the hind end of the lightning bug glowed, her boys pinched it off and smeared the bioluminescence on their faces. They jumped at her in the dark and she pretended to be scared. It was a fond memory and she hoped her grandkids would try the same trick with her. To encourage them, Shifty squeezed the green glowing substance onto her fingers and dabbed her nose with a dainty gesture. The kids immediately released their lightning bugs and fled into the house. One boy was crying. “It’s a living thing,” he said. “You killed a living thing.”
He didn’t trust his grandmother for a day then forgot about it, but Shifty never trusted him again. She was irritated with her daughter for raising such children. She didn’t even know what kind they were—city kids, she reckoned. Next they’d be stealing hubcaps and carrying switchblades.
For the most part Shifty enjoyed having the house to herself. She’d lived with her father until she was twenty-two and got married, then moved in with her husband. Shifty had never lived alone before and liked it. She could lie in bed and eat a roast beef sandwich if she wanted to. Neighbor women urged her to get a pet. She staunchly refused. Shifty had spent her life taking care of others—her father, her husband, the daughter who betrayed her by fleeing, and her four sons. She wasn’t about to fool with a cat or a dog. She had, however, adopted a stray chicken and taught it to walk backward.
Her peace and solitude shattered when her youngest sons arrived, first one then the second. The older two boys were lost to her—one to the graveyard and the other stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. For a while she worried about him in California with all those serial killers and vegetarians but she figured a Marine could take care of himself.
After tidying the house she opened the windows to air the rooms. She went outside and talked to Sparky but the chicken was in a bad mood and refused to cooperate. Shifty didn’t mind, birds were moody in general. She would be, too, if her life was spent pecking at the dirt. A television program about ostriches had recently made her sad, trying to imagine the forlorn life of a flightless bird. With a great deal of chaotic effort, even Sparky could hurl herself onto a tree branch for safety. People ate ostriches—the TV said they were best cooked rare. All Shifty could think about was slaughter. She’d wrung the necks of many chickens but that would be impossible with an ostrich. Then you’d have to pluck the thing.
A plume of dust rose on the road and she heard the engine, an old truck in her opinion. A stepside pickup came into view, veering to avoid the low boughs of a crabapple tree. She knew the truck but couldn’t recall whose it was. The driver stopped and got out. Unlike most men he wasn’t wearing a cap and his hair was very short, uneven as if he’d trimmed it himself. He wore a short sleeve shirt that could stand a wash. He looked rough as a cob, badly needing a shave.
“Hidy, Mrs. Kissick,” the man said. “I’m Jimmy Hardin’s boy, Mick.”
“That your daddy’s truck?”
“Sure was. And his daddy’s before that. You might’ve knowed my papaw.”
“Heard of him. Can’t say we met. I did know your daddy a long time back. You favor him some.”
She looked Mick over, appreciating that he held his ground, waiting politely for an invitation onto her land.
“Catch that feller yet?” she said.
“Uh, who’s that, ma’am?”
“Guy who stole your razor!”
He rubbed his stubbled jaw. She chuckled, then laughed.
“Ain’t heard that one in a while,” he said.
“Come on up to the porch. You want some coffee?”
Mick nodded and crossed the yard, alert to a dog but all he saw was a chicken walking backward.
“Your yard bird always do that?” he said.
“No, she don’t. Might be showing off for company.”
Shifty gestured to a nylon-slatted lawn chair with a TV remote control duct-taped to the arm. She went in the house, the screen door banging once, then settling shut, a sound she’d always liked.
The old chair creaked as Mick sat and stretched his legs, boot heels on the floor. The porch had a view of the dirt road, a line of weeds marking the creek, and the steep hill beyond the water. A breeze carried the scent of mountain mint from the side. The chicken had walked around the house and Mick wondered if it was back there practicing backflips.
Shifty set two cups of coffee on a small table between the chairs.
“Bet you’re wondering about that TV clicker,” she said.
“Hard to lose this way.”
“That’s right,” she said. “When my boys are home they make a mess of everything. I got tired of digging for it in the couch.”
“Your son is more or less why I’m here.”
“Which one?”
“Uh, well,” Mick hesitated. “Your second boy, I reckon.”
“Oh,” she said. “Fuckin’ Barney. He ain’t here right now.”
“You call him that, too?”
“We’re a nickname family. You know Shifty’s not my real name, either. It’s Camille Littleton, then I got married and my husband started in calling me Shifty because the only clothes I had were shifts my mother made. Now we got Cricket, Jimbo, Junebug, Sheetrock, Doodle, and Rickets.”
“Rickets. Ain’t that a disease?”
“Yeah, but he never had it. Just born bow-legged.”
Mick sipped his coffee and grimaced. It must have been percolating all morning. He felt it hit his guts and begin bickering with the leftover whiskey. A wave of nausea passed over him followed by a sudden sheen of perspiration that covered his body.
“You smell that?” Shifty said.
“I believe it’s me, ma’am. Drank a little too much whiskey a couple of nights ago.”
“Thought so,” she said. “It’s not unpleasurable to me. My husband had the same smell on Sunday morning. My boys stink of marijuana most of the time. Do you smoke that stuff?”
“I tried it, yes. Didn’t care for it. Made me nervous. Anybody else got relaxed and cheerful but not me.”
“It gave me a headache.”
“Maybe yours was just weak.”
“That’s what Fuckin’ Barney said. But I never went for it again. I don’t know when he’ll be back but you can set here and drink coffee with me all day. Is he in trouble?”
“I ain’t the law, ma’am.”
“Your sister is.”
Mick nodded, aware of her intent gaze. He attempted another sip. The coffee made his eyes water and he gave up. Shifty went in the house and returned with a small plate.
“Leftover sausage and biscuit from breakfast,” she said. “You
need to put a bottom to your belly. I like my coffee strong.”
Mick ate, savoring the homemade biscuit and pork patty, then wiped his hands on his pants.
“What do you want my son for?” she said.
“A woman got killed on Choctaw a few nights ago and your son went up there. Maybe he saw a car. Them bigwigs in Rocksalt are on my sister over it.”
“I’ll tell him,” she said. “Did you ever have you a nickname?”
“In boot camp, we all did. It ain’t appropriate for me to say in front of a lady.”
“I appreciate that,” she said. “Been a while since I got treated with any respect.”
“Thank you for the biscuit. It’s the best I ever ate.”
She smiled, erasing years of age. This was a woman who’d laughed a lot at one time and he hoped she still did. Mick stood.
“This is a pretty place,” he said.
“Lived here most of my life. Went to Lexington once for a Wildcats game. Didn’t like it.”
“They lose?”
“No, they won. But I wasn’t the only one who went that night. All them people in one place did me the way you said marijuana did you. I got real nervous.”
He finished the last of the coffee, feeling it sizzle along his limbs. He stood, nodded to her, and went to his truck. She watched it vanish around the curve. Him coming up here was no good, she thought. No damn good at all. She went in the house and called her son to warn him.
Chapter Six
A few miles down the blacktop, Mick slowed for a man walking, then steered around him and stopped. Nobody hitchhiked in the hills. If a man was walking it meant he needed a ride because the journey was too long to cut through the woods. The man opened the door and climbed into the truck. He was a few years younger than Mick, wearing boots, jeans, and a workshirt buttoned at the cuff. The man kept his head turned, looking out the window as if shy.
“I’m Mick Hardin.”
“I’ve knowed Hardins,” the man said. “Went to school with one, Linda.”
“That’s my sister.”
“Heard she’s the sheriff now.”
“Yep.”
“Must come in handy if you get wild.”
“It might,” Mick said. “I ain’t tested it yet.”
“Saving up?”
“Reckon. No sense in wasting it. Who’s your people?”
“I’m a Mullins. Bowling on the other side.”
“Where you headed?”
“Up the road a piece. Third holler down, make a right.”
Mick nodded. The road followed a creek strewn with trash clinging to the lower limbs of trees, deposited by high water from the last big storm. Most of the Mullinses he knew lived deep in the hills on high ridges. Such a location typically meant a strong desire to be away from town. Then again, they might be Melungeon people descended from the earliest inhabitants who already lived in the hills when Daniel Boone arrived. Nobody called them Melungeons any more, not even themselves, but the families were considered disreputable. Mick hadn’t found that to be true. It was more a case of simple prejudice.
The man lifted his chin to point at the dirt lane that entered a holler and Mick slowed to make the turn. The road flattened through a stand of poplars that had been snapped by wind.
“Never did see an old poplar,” Mick said.
“Worse tree in the woods. No good for burning or building. Ain’t worth the trouble of logging them out. Storm knocks them down and then you got the work of clearing it.”
“Other trees must like them. Or birds, one.”
“Yeah, everything’s got a reason if God put it here. Thing I think about is ticks. What are they good for?”
“Well,” Mick said, “possums eat ticks. But I don’t reckon they live on them.”
“I like possums,” Mullins said. “They’re a funny animal. They got a pecker that splits in two at the end. I heard they fuck a lady possum in the nose and she sneezes out babies in her pouch.”
Mick nodded. He’d loved that story as a kid and still did, despite knowing it wasn’t true. He didn’t want to get into it with Mullins. Disagreements like that had a way of getting out of hand in the hills, leading to a fistfight or gunplay.
He drove through a creek bed that was wet from the recent rains, rounded a curve up a hill and came to a house with a low front porch. One corner had a hickory post that supported the tin roof. The post on the opposite corner was missing. In its place was a mule with all four legs tightly tied to eyebolts screwed into the porch floor. A chain latched to the bridle kept the mule’s head immobile. On its back was a wooden chair held in an upright position by a flank cinch. The chair’s top rail supported the end of the porch.
Mick stopped the truck to prevent spooking the mule.
“Well,” he said. “Never seen nothing like that.”
“It’s temporary.”
“Do you use that chair for a saddle?”
“No, the mule came that way.”
“What do you mean?” Mick said.
“My sister’s got a boy courting her who likes to drink. Last night he run his car onto the porch and knocked the strut off. His daddy brought the mule over this morning. The chair was already on him. He said he’d bring a new post later.”
“What’s its name?”
“Jo-Jo.”
“Give you any trouble?”
“No, I reckon he thinks it’s better than working. Only bad thing is that son of a bitch can piss like a horse. Mom hates it.”
Mick chuckled and Mullins joined in as if seeing the mule for the first time. They sat in the truck cab laughing like teenagers. Mullins opened the door and climbed out.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said.
“That mule don’t look too comfortable.”
“I’d say not.”
“Maybe you can fix the porch.”
“I’m a logger,” Mullins said, “not a carpenter.”
“Got any tools?”
“Hammer and nails, couple of screwdrivers and wrenches, same as any man.”
“Measuring tape?”
“Naw, it broke.”
“Can you find me a piece of rope?” Mick said. “Maybe ten feet long or more. And something to stand on.”
Mullins nodded and walked to the house, giving the mule’s back end a wide berth. Mick went to the porch. He stroked the mule’s sweaty neck, sending a tremble throughout its body. The chain rattled and Jo-Jo’s muscles strained against the hobbles. Mullins brought a coiled length of cotton rope outside. In his other hand he carried an old wooden milk crate from Spring Grove Dairy.
“Talk to him,” Mick said.
“What do I say?”
“It don’t matter. We got to keep him calm, so how you talk means more than what you say. Think of it like a horse that ain’t full broke yet and you got to get a bridle on him. Talk quiet and steady.”
Mick placed the crate beside the mule and stood on it.
“I had me a map once,” Mullins said to the mule. “It was a good size piece of paper folded up. Red lines and blue lines and tiny print. Right here wasn’t there, so I got rid of it. I figure the map didn’t matter. The land knowed where the hills are at. North is Ohio, then some lakes and Canada. Out west somewhere is Lexington. You’re lucky, Jo-Jo. You don’t need a map. All you do is go straight, turn around, and come back. Then do it again.”
Mick held one end of the rope to the porch ceiling and let the rest slowly uncoil. The mule quivered, its hooves stubbing the oak slats. Mick knew he was in a vulnerable position but believed the restraints would hold.
“Hey,” Mick said softly. “Get that rope and hold it where it touches the floor. Don’t pull it too tight. Cotton will stretch and throw us off.”
“How tight’s too tight?”
“Just hold it easy.”
Mullins squatted to follow instructions. Mick climbed off the crate, opened his pocketknife, and cut the rope at the edge of the porch.
“Want me to keep on talki
ng to him?” Mullins said.
“No. Go get your chainsaw.”
Mullins stood, his face brightening under the familiarity of the task. He left and returned carrying a McCulloch chainsaw with a twenty-inch bar, oil glistening on the chain.
“Gassed up and sharp,” he said. “But I ain’t butchering that mule.”
“Good to hear. Let’s get in the truck.”
They drove through the creek and along the dirt road to the line of broken poplar. Mick eyeballed several trees, settling on one that was straight and not too stout. He used the rope to measure the appropriate length, then told Mullins to trim the small branches and cut both ends flat. Mullins went to work, handling the chainsaw as if it weighed no more than a pencil. Mullins finished, pleased with himself. Mick rechecked the length with the rope and they loaded the denuded tree in the bed of his pickup and went back to the house. Jo-Jo hadn’t moved.
“You favor a McCulloch over them other chainsaws?” Mick said.
“Never had no other. I started in using these because of a radio ad when I was a kid. It was on that Swap Shop show. Remember?”
“Maybe,” Mick said. “How’d it go?”
He recalled it well but wanted to hear the jingle. Mullins jumped right into it:
“There is a reason why
Everybody wants to buy
At Monarch Supply
In Rocksalt …
McCulloch chainsaw!”
The advertisement had ended with the sound of a chainsaw starting, two mighty roars then the whine as it bit into a log. Mullins duplicated it as best he could and they laughed. A pair of starlings startled by human song angled away to a field by the house.
“Porch time,” Mick said.
They carried the tree to the porch and positioned it behind the mule, out of kick range. Mick tipped it to the bottom of the two-by-six that supported the ceiling.
“Anybody else home?” Mick said.
“Mom and Dad.”
“Go tell them not to come out here for a while.”
Mullins did as he was told and returned. Mick was looking over the peculiarities of the mule harnessed to the porch, trying to decide the sequence of action. Each had risks of getting kicked. He unstrapped the hobble below the fetlocks on the front legs. The mule shifted, spreading its legs, and tried to rear its head but the chain held. Its back hooves shifted on the scarred slats, leaving fresh gouges.