The Killing Hills

by Chris Offutt

  “Easy now, Jo-Jo,” he said. “Won’t be long now.”

  “Hope he don’t piss,” Mullins said. “He’ll about drown me.”

  Mick moved to the side of the porch and squatted. A steel clip held the harness chained to an eyebolt on the porch foundation. Mick leaned forward and released the chain. The mule whipped its head sideways and bit Mick in the forearm. He fell backward off the porch and rolled across the grass, smearing blood on his shirt. He stood and inspected the wound. It wasn’t that bad, but not that good, either.

  Mullins was laughing.

  “That thing get vaccinated?” Mick said.

  “I don’t know. It ain’t mine.”

  “I’ll need to know. They carry rabies.”

  The specter of rabies halted Mullins’s laugh like a door slammed shut. He nodded rapidly.

  “Get some coal oil and duct tape,” Mick said.

  Mullins went to a shed and returned with a gallon jug lacking a label, half filled with orange liquid. Mick poured kerosene over the wound to clean it, then wrapped his T-shirt around his forearm, and secured it with duct tape. At least it didn’t need stitches. Mick had been shot and stabbed, sustained a broken nose and cracked ribs, and carried shrapnel in his leg, but a mule bite was a first.

  He stood at the edge of the porch beside the mule’s back legs. The shackled pasterns were strapped to the floor with thick leather that was tied in a knot.

  “I need a cornknife,” he said.

  Mullins hurried away and returned with the two-foot blade.

  “Get back,” Mick said. “I ain’t sure what’ll happen and I don’t want to fight a mule.”

  He lifted the cornknife and chopped the hobble strap in two. The mule stood for a moment as if not quite comprehending its own freedom, then kicked each leg backward and leaped off the porch. The chair tipped sideways and shattered against a tree. Jo-Jo ran across the yard, jumped a rail fence, and disappeared into the woods. The roof sagged but the new poplar post kept it in place. Mick toenailed the post in place with eight-penny nails, the best Mullins could offer.

  “I thank you,” Mullins said. “Why’d you do all this? Feel sorry for Jo-Jo?”

  “Look at it this way. If that mule had stayed hooked up to your porch too long, it wouldn’t be no good for work. The father would blame his boy. Then the boy would come back around here mad at you. Likely to do something nobody wants. You’d have to do something back to him. Then my sister would get mixed up and somebody’s setting in the jailhouse. So, no, it ain’t necessarily for Jo-Jo, but the good of everybody.”

  “You think all them thoughts out when you seen the mule?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “Damn, son, you’re smart, ain’t you?”

  “Not smart enough to not get bit.”

  Mick drove to the house of the man who owned the mule, surprised to learn that he lived the next holler down. Jo-Jo was already in his own yard and Mick decided to stay in the truck. The neighbor man was short-waisted with powerful arms, and walked with a limp. He had vaccination papers from the vet, which relieved both of them.

  Mick drove out of the holler. A crow in a sycamore tracked his progress as if on recon for the other birds. The road wove through the lush woods beside milkweed and Queen Anne’s lace bent from heat. Aside from his throbbing arm, it was a pretty good morning in the hills.

  Chapter Seven

  Linda sat in her office waiting for the twenty-year-old fax machine to rattle its way through a document at two minutes per page. The phone system was push-button and the computers were so old and big they occupied a third of the desk space. Most of the county equipment was military surplus including an armored truck weighing twenty tons that had cracked the concrete parking lot upon delivery. So far its only use had been at a charity event in which groups of men competed to pull it with rope.

  Until this week she’d enjoyed her private time in the office, its spartan decor of desk, filing cabinets, Kentucky flag, and a portrait of whichever nitwit had bought his way into the governor’s job. She kept it tidy and organized. No personal items on display. The office had a door—a big deal in a small municipality—that she kept open most of the time. At night she locked it, always taking one final fond look at the brass plate with her name on it. Now she had a dead body and pretty much hated everything about the job.

  Her first week as sheriff she’d appointed Johnny Boy Tolliver as deputy. Due to a long and violent feud, the Tollivers had gotten off to a rough start a hundred years ago, but his branch was more or less accepted by the fifth generation. Johnny Boy could talk to anyone at any time about any subject. This trait was a boon in a culture that was suspicious of a female sheriff. Most surprising to her was the resistance from older women who didn’t trust Linda any more than the men did. That didn’t make sense but neither did waiting on an antique fax machine to emit sheets of paper as glossy as magazine pages.

  Johnny Boy was lurking around the main part of the sheriff’s office, walking past her door now and again, like a hunting dog letting her know he was raring to go. At least he didn’t whine like a hound, but he did talk too much as a human. The fax machine stuttered and clanked, then stopped altogether, a sheet of torn paper poking out like a flag of surrender. Linda cursed and yelled for Johnny Boy, who appeared in her doorway with sudden alacrity.

  “What happened,” he said. “Fax get hair balls? Maybe I can take a look. Sometimes I can fix things. Today might be the day. Good thing I’m in a fixing mood.”

  “I’m going over there.”

  “Want me to stay here?” His voice had a hopeful tone. “Man the phones? Anything could happen, you know.”

  “No, you better come and hear it, too.”

  She called her brother and asked him to meet them at the coroner’s. Mick grunted and ended the call. Par for the course, she thought, knowing he’d be there. Linda and Johnny Boy drove two miles to a funeral home that doubled as the county coroner’s office. Johnny Boy was silent and she was grateful. He didn’t like funeral homes. Nobody really did, but his trepidation veered into the fearful. He believed every superstition that came down the pike.

  On the way they met heavy traffic which explained why the coroner had sent a fax. A proliferation of cars in Rocksalt could only mean a funeral unless it was Saturday morning and the kids were playing organized soccer. The parking lot held a few cars clustered near the entrance, spaces reserved for the family of the deceased. She parked and stayed in the car. The last thing anyone needed was a sheriff at a service. People would talk. Her predecessor had often waited in ambush to serve a summons, knowing that a funeral brought everyone in the family, even the fiercest outlaws hiding in the woods.

  “Who died?” she said.

  “One of them Fatkins boys,” Johnny Boy said.

  “Ain’t they young for it?”

  “They’re getting down to the younger ones. Eight kids and five dead already. Heart attack and he ain’t but forty-six years old. Left four kids and six grandbabies. He worked up in Lexington putting in culverts. I’d say three hours of driving and eight hours in the mud got to him. He done that for twenty-three years. His third heart attack, too.”

  “You got a head for numbers, Johnny Boy.”

  “Always was good at math,” he said. “And I like to read obituaries. All kinds of information in them.”

  “Which one was it who died?” she said.

  “Face.”

  “Who names their kid that?”

  “Well, the Fatkins, that’s who,” Johnny Boy said. “You know the rest of the country lives longer than us. Or we die younger.”

  “What?”

  “Life span,” he said. “Everywhere else, folks live a little bit longer every year. Our lives are getting shorter on average. Ain’t nowhere else in the country that’s happening. Twenty years ago the life span here was longer.”

  “The hills are killing us.”

  People began emerging from the double doors, moving slowly, a few child
ren running toward cars. A couple of teenage boys appeared from behind the building, probably back there sneaking cigarettes. Last to leave was the mother, supported on either side by younger women. Linda watched the Fatkins family drive away. Mick’s truck rolled into the lot and parked beside her, the window rolled down.

  “Perfect timing,” she said to Mick.

  “I was waiting out on the road.”

  “That little grassy place?” Johnny Boy said. “It’s a good spot all right. You can see across that field. Ponies in there sometimes and sunflowers. I seen a flat cloud once that was a half mile long and skinny as a fence rail. Like a white stripe on the sky.”

  Mick rolled his window up and Linda told her deputy to hush. The three of them walked across the blacktop, fresh by the looks of it, yellow stripes still gleaming. The funeral home was broad with a high peak like a shingled pyramid. Up the hill behind it was a long building painted white. The flat roof had a sign that ran its entire length with the word MOTEL in seven-foot letters. Next door was a fast-food place that specialized in deep fried goods.

  “That’s new,” Linda said to Mick. “Our first motel.”

  “Eat, sleep, and die,” he said. “All in a convenient location.”

  “What happened to your arm?”

  “Mule bite.”

  “Lucky it wasn’t a snapping turtle,” Johnny Boy said. “They won’t let go till thunder hits. Sometimes you have to wait a week for a storm. Is that duct tape? Might not be sanitary. Want me to take a look at it? I took a course in field medicine up in Frankfort. Learned all manner of thing.”

  “Can you do anything about him?” Mick said.

  “Not really,” Linda said.

  “Hey,” Johnny Boy said. “I know y’all are brother and sister but you don’t have to talk about me like I’m somewhere else. I’m standing right here.”

  “We know that,” Linda said.

  Inside, she led them through the foyer and down a corridor past the empty viewing room. They passed a small office where a woman was entering calculations into an old-time adding machine. Her hair was swept up so tightly it served as a face-lift. Johnny Boy moved in a furtive manner then waved to her eagerly as if grateful for seeing a live person. They went to the back and knocked on a door with a sign:

  MARQUIS SLEDGE III, FUNERAL DIRECTOR

  Four plush chairs stood against the wall. The Sledges had buried everyone’s people for fifty years, a family business founded when the grandfather returned from Vietnam with mortuary skills, a deepened belief in Christianity, and a desire to serve the community. As with all small towns, rumor and gossip was rampant about an undertaker. Due to Mr. Sledge’s commitment to family and church, the usual unsavory stories faded to nothing. One persisted—an odd one in Linda’s book—people said there was another Marquis Sledge, an African-American who ran a funeral home in Memphis.

  The local Mr. Sledge died and his son took over, serving as County Coroner for thirty years. When Marquis Junior retired, his son ran unopposed for the position. His first change was to eliminate a form of advertising people didn’t like—congratulatory notices to parents of newborns. They were unpleasant reminders that the baby would eventually die and the Sledges wanted their business.

  The door opened and Marquis stepped out wearing a deliberately inexpensive suit with black shoes. His expression shifted from appropriately dolorous to slightly rueful.

  “Sorry to send a fax,” he said.

  “The machine gave out before I could read it,” Linda said. “Thought I’d just come over and get it straight. Hate to interrupt a funeral.”

  “I’m done for the day,” Marquis said. “That Fatkins family has some bad luck.”

  “They’ll be asking for a discount,” Linda said.

  “Already gave them one.”

  “You know Johnny Boy,” she said. “This is my brother Mick.”

  Marquis nodded to both men, having learned from his father never to offer a hand for a shake. Nobody liked to touch a mortician. Mick startled him by sticking his hand out. Johnny Boy stared at the floor.

  Marquis led them down the hall where he unlocked a heavy steel door and gave them nitrile gloves. In the center of the room stood a metal table beside a counter full of specialized tools. Johnny Boy stared at them, swallowed hard, and looked away. Marquis folded back the corner of a sheet to reveal a woman’s head propped on a rubber block.

  “Cause of death was asphyxiation,” he said and pointed to discoloration on the neck. “Cyanosis is present.”

  “Turning blue,” Linda translated for Johnny Boy.

  “Right,” Marquis said. “No ligature marks. Nothing to indicate strangulation by the hands.”

  “Defensive wounds?” Mick said.

  “None.”

  “There’s something else,” Marquis said.

  Johnny Boy’s frown distorted his face into a look of horror. His breath was coming in quick short bursts. Marquis stared at the deputy and spoke in a firm voice.

  “Don’t you get sick in here, you hear?”

  Johnny Boy’s head twitched in a nod. Linda wondered if he was going to faint. His loose jeans prevented her from seeing if he’d locked his knees to stay upright. She pushed a work chair on casters toward him. He sat and placed a small trash can on his lap.

  “She’d had sexual intercourse,” Marquis said.

  “Rape?” Linda said.

  “Hard to say. Even consensual, it can result in some tearing of tissue, maybe bleeding. That’s present. But it’s not clear if the sex was forced.”

  Johnny Boy gagged into the trash can.

  “Gosh darn it,” Marquis said.

  “Any semen?” Mick said.

  “No trace whatsoever. No DNA. Abrasions on her body are all postmortem. Probably from falling down the hill.”

  “Could she have been killed then moved up there?” Mick said.

  “There’s always a chance,” Marquis said. “But doubtful. The postmortem wounds occurred soon after death. My best guess is she died on that ridge, before, during, or after sex.”

  Johnny Boy retched and Linda pushed the chair into the hall. When she returned, Marquis had exposed the dead woman’s hands. Mick was examing the nails, two broken, one cracked, the rest intact.

  “No skin cells under her nails,” Marquis said.

  “Could be she knew the killer,” Linda said.

  “Anything else?” Marquis said. “I’ve got paperwork and cleanup.”

  “No,” Linda said. “Thanks for squeezing this in.”

  Marquis nodded solemnly and Mick wondered if he practiced serious expressions in front of a mirror.

  “One thing,” Mick said. “If you could keep that sex angle to yourself, it might help us.”

  “I keep everything to myself,” Marquis said.

  Mick and Linda left. In the parking lot, they could see Johnny Boy leaning against the police vehicle holding his stomach, his face blanched. Linda asked her brother to meet them at the sheriff’s office.

  “No, thanks,” Mick said. “You tend to Johnny Boy. What’s wrong with him? He’s seen bodies before.”

  “He’s afraid of ghosts. Thinks a funeral home is full of them.”

  “People don’t die in there.”

  “I told him that,” she said. “What’d Fuckin’ Barney have to say?”

  “He wasn’t home. His mom’s all right.”

  “What happened to your arm? I mean for real.”

  “Like I said, a mule. Ain’t worth going into. Them Mullinses.”

  “Which bunch?” she said.

  “Off Little Perry Road, way up a holler.”

  “They’re shirttail cousins of ours.”

  “Already knew that,” he said.

  “To hell you did.”

  “In the service I had access to all kinds of info. One day I looked up our family tree. A monkey shit on my face.”

  Linda laughed, a spontaneous eruption as if a water balloon exploded, dousing them both with merriment.
Mick grinned at his sister. She didn’t laugh enough. He recalled daylong efforts at drawing a giggle out of her when they were kids. She still laughed the same way, a sudden burst. It lightened her mood but afterward she hardened up more as if vulnerability cost something on an invisible tally sheet.

  “How’s Peggy?” she said.

  “Stay out of it.”

  Mick got in his truck and drove away. Linda watched him, wondering if she’d gone too far.

  Chapter Eight

  Johnny Boy sat in the official vehicle, having mostly recovered from his nausea. Between dead bodies, ghosts, the undertaker, and Linda’s hard-ass brother, he needed the icy comfort of a Dr Pepper. A mini-fridge at the office contained three bottles. Linda climbed into the car.

  “Did you hear everything Marquis said?” she said.

  “You mean the sex stuff?”

  “Yeah. What do you make of it?”

  “I can’t talk about that.”

  “Because I’m a woman?”

  He nodded and looked out the window. The weathered posts of a wire fence flashed past in gray blurs that reminded him of ghosts. He turned back to the windshield and focused on a large cloud above the hill.

  “We are law enforcement professionals, Johnny Boy. You best remember that. If we have to talk about a man getting his peter bit off by a rattlesnake, we do.”

  Linda pressed the accelerator to the floor and the SUV shot forward as if flung from a slingshot. She smiled to herself. Johnny Boy couldn’t abide speed unless he was driving, some kind of control thing, she figured. He grabbed a support handle above the door. A quarter-mile of fresh blacktop stretched ahead and Johnny Boy’s back pressed hard against the seat, his face set in a grimace. They reached the town limits and drove to the sheriff’s office. A car she didn’t recognize was parked in the lot, a Lexus with Fayette County plates.