A Portion for Foxes

by Daniel Mitchell

  "But the pills help. And the counselor. I think she'll get past this soon. God willing."

  "God willing," I echoed. God's will is a pretty strange thing sometimes.

  I turned to look him in the eye, the light from the window full in my face, all the secrets I'd managed to hide in the dim living room laid bare for a man who knew where to look. After a few seconds, he nodded weakly. In his eyes was an expression I couldn't quite read. It wasn't acceptance or pride but both somehow, along with something else I couldn't put a name to—sorrow, maybe. He looked out at the yard for several seconds.

  "I’m sorry, boy. Some things, I hoped you’d never know.”

  The first fat drops of rain spotted the dust in the yard.

  We watched in silence, unseeing.

  “Supposed to storm hard later. According to the weatherman," he said at last.

  I looked down at my hands where they gripped the rail too tightly, my knuckles bunched and knotted, and forced them to relax.

  "Catfish should be biting. Storm always riles them up," I said.

  "You think you got time to go fishing with your pappy?"

  I thought about wind on waves and red eyes in the darkness and the sound of breaking bones. I knew what he expected me to say.

  "No. I'm sorry. I’m not up to fishing, Dad.”

  "Hmm. Well, how about ice cream? You still like ice cream?"

  I looked at him and saw the sorrow in his eyes, the questions he couldn’t bring himself to ask because he already knew the answers better than I did.

  "Yeah, Dad. Ice cream I can do."

  He jumped up and hurried to the screen door. "I think there's even a little apple pie left. I’ll have your momma heat it up. Hard to beat hot apple pie and ice cream."

  I gave him the smile he needed and looked back at the beckoning darkness.

  The rain fell faster, thicker, pounding the yard to mud. In the distance, lightning flashed on the Arbuckles, dancing from one ridge to the next, moving slowly toward the river, toward the graves. One was old and decorated, one new and unblemished.

  I pictured the grave I’d never seen, somewhere on Lake Texoma, Mike’s grave. It was alone and unmarked, forgotten in the cold sand. We’d gone looking, but Randy couldn’t seem to find the right place, or he just didn’t want to.

  I waited until the screen door slammed behind Dad before walking out into the yard, mixing my tears with the rain.

  Epilogue

  By the time sixth period was over, I was getting twitchy, so I decided to leave early and slipped out the back door of the high school. A gate and guard had been added at the parking lot entrance, but no one seemed to notice when I drove up to the ag barn, turned left behind the fence around the football field, and a hundred yards later, bumped through the bar ditch and onto the highway heading north. I doubted Coach Jones would bother taking roll or turn me in for skipping last period if he did. I’d only showed up twice in the past two weeks, and he hadn’t busted me yet. Once I’d convinced him I wasn’t going to play football anymore, he left me to myself. Even if somebody noticed, in the worst-case scenario, I would get detention, and I had somewhere more important to be. Turning off the stereo, I headed for the back roads, angling north then west, avoiding Ardmore entirely.

  From a scenic pullout high in the Arbuckles just off I-35, I could faintly see Ardmore far to the south. From twenty miles away, it was almost pretty, the same as most cities from a distance. The truth only shows up close. Worse places existed, I guessed, but I generally hated any town big enough to need stoplights—too much concrete and too many wannabe gangsters for anybody sane to ever call it home.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  Randy stood looking off over the hills to the west. He still had a faint yellow-green bruise on his forehead but seemed to have recovered otherwise.

  “Well, the feds showed up with a warrant, a week too late. They found Richard’s backup stash: three pounds of meth, fifty thousand dollars, and a pipe bomb in a box in the bottom of the pond. They confiscated everything, even the lawnmower. Turns out none of it was in Richard’s name. Half of it was stolen. Hell, they even took the dogs.”

  “Why aren’t you in jail?”

  “Oh, they took me in—cuffs and all—but I’m a kid, remember? Wanted to put me in juvie till I called Richard’s lawyer. Hinted I knew a few things. He had me out in two hours, so they dumped me in a foster home. That lasted about five minutes after my new parents went to bed. Then I bounced.”

  I glanced pointedly at the new motorcycle he’d shown up on. It was the biggest Harley I’d ever seen. Everything from the tank to the rims and even the engine was powder-coated satin black with deep gray-and-red accents. His helmet was painted to match. I’d heard the rumble of the motor a couple of minutes before he was actually in sight. It sounded like a school bus with a sore throat. I was willing to bet the paint job alone cost more than my truck. I looked back at him and raised an eyebrow.

  “They found Richard’s stash but not Jesse’s,” he said. “Figured I could treat myself just a little before I left town.”

  Then he smiled, really smiled. I’d never seen him actually look happy before, and I couldn’t help smiling too.

  “Got someplace special in mind?”

  “Always wanted to see the Rockies. Figured I’d follow them to Canada. After that, who knows, but you can bet your balls I’ll never come back here. I've had enough Oklahoma.”

  “Haven’t we all?” I said and stuck my hand out.

  Randy just looked at it, his smile fading a bit.

  “We’re cool, Sam, but we ain’t that cool,” he said. “I know they had it coming. Some nights, I wanted to do it myself, but they were still my brothers. Richard was a complete bastard, but Jesse was good to me. Sometimes. He took that asshole Indian that did it with him, or we wouldn’t be talking right now. Be best if you and me never see each other again.”

  I nodded slowly but didn’t say anything. I wanted to tell him I was the only reason Joseph and Taye hadn’t tossed him into the river after Richard and Old Nick, but I knew that wouldn’t change anything. He looked happy, maybe for the first time in his whole damn life. That was enough.

  Randy walked over to his new ride, zipped up his leather jacket, and slipped on the helmet before throwing a leg over and roaring off without a backward glance.

  #########

  Our reputation for custom furniture had spread all the way to Dallas thanks to an interior decorator Joseph had met someplace. We were demanding ridiculous prices and getting them. I was beginning to think I had a career in woodworking, if I wanted it, since Joseph was spending more time in the woods or the ice chest than the shop. Some days, he never left the porch. I decided to talk to him about it one night, but when I walked up, he was snoring and holding a tiny beaded moccasin in his lap. It was baby sized. I threw a blanket over him and went back to work. I figured he was entitled to his demons. Sometimes, they were all a person had left.

  I finished sanding and sealing the last of the inlay on an oak dining table just before dawn, swept up my mess, and walked out into the yard to look at the stars. I liked working at night. I didn’t dream as much when I slept in the light.

  Stretching the ache from my back and hands, I listened to the wind in the oaks and tried not to think. When I could see the outline of the trees against the moonless sky, I slipped off my boots and threw several bottles of beer and some ice into a small, collapsible cooler. Then I slipped the carrying strap over my shoulder and started down the trail.

  I picked some red and yellow wildflowers as I walked. Two miles and half an hour later, I lay them at the foot of the redbud tree over Talia’s grave before clearing away stray leaves and grass then doing the same for the new grave beside it. The gravel was a little fresher, a little grayer, and the dogwood we’d planted at the end was still too small to be considered a tree, really. It was more of a scraggly bush, but it would grow, given time and care.

  Considering how things had t
urned out, we thought that was the best place to lay Devin to rest so that he could watch over his sister forever. He’d killed Jesse, but Richard had put one round through his chest and several more through his head that night. Then he took a knife to the body. I wasn’t sure how many stab wounds there were. I stopped counting after thirty.

  We’d carefully wrapped what was left of him in an old quilt, and Taye dug the grave himself. He refused to let us help and sat with it for three days before Joseph convinced him to go home to his woman, but he visited Devin often. He only rarely stopped by the cabin, but the dogwood was always freshly watered, with a new feather or bit of beadwork hanging from its spindly limbs, and no weed was allowed to grow over his brother.

  Joseph said he buried Jesse and the others shallow so the hogs could find them. I preferred not knowing where.

  I spent most of the morning near the graves at the edge of the cliff, as I often did. I hung my bare feet over the drop and watched the river flow by in the endless path some science teacher had told me about once, the water cycle. That was really the only thing I remembered from that class.

  Someplace to the north, clouds formed, rain fell, and the runoff joined several small creeks and streams that eventually came together, flowing over red dirt and clay all the way to Lake Texoma. There it joined the Red River, heading for the Mississippi, and eventually wound up in the Gulf of Mexico before evaporating back into the sky, floating north with the next warm front, and starting the whole trip all over again from a million little hills and streams. Forever.

  That was like life in a way. Everything flowed along just fine most years. Then came a storm that caused a flood. The river filled with trash and trees that piled up at every bend for a thousand miles, taking out bridges, houses, and lives. Sooner or later, the weather cleared, the river dropped back into its banks, and things got peaceful again, as though it’d never happened. Given enough time, only the old folks would remember the killer flood in their teens—the year it just wouldn’t stop raining and the water tried to take all they loved. The fear and loss faded away for most folks, leaving just a bad year in a river of memory that was mostly calm and peaceful.

  The smart ones, though, always knew another flood was coming, and they stayed ready, one eye on the sky and one on the water. They would never forget the year of the flood.

  But some of them really wished they could.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a book is such a magical, exhausting experience, and it would never have happened alone. Thank you to my mother for introducing me to the wonders of the Ardmore Library Bookmobile in 1975. Thank you to my wife and children for all the long hours they endure when I’m lost in the keyboard. Thank you to my writer friends Charlie Stella, Kelly Stone Gamble, and Darren Rome Leo for invaluable advice and support that kept me from going mad in the process.

  A special thank you to the Mountain View MFA program, where the first draft of A Portion for Foxes was born, and my amazing mentors there, Merle Drown, Katherine Towler, Mitch Wieland, and Wiley Cash. They each taught me more about style and great writing than I knew existed. Thank you to the thousands of amazing writers I’ve been obsessed with over the decades. Thank you to my many high school students who read earlier versions and helped me stay excited about the journey. Thank you to Lynn McNamee, Sara Gardiner, Kelly Reed, Ericka Lucke Dean, and all the wonderful people at Red Adept who gave me a chance and polished the novel into reality.

  Last, but certainly not least, thank you, God, for giving me the talent and opportunity to become a real novelist at last.

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  About the Author

  Seduced by the book mobile at an early age, Daniel Mitchell grew up in a family composed equally of outdoorsmen and teachers. He worked a variety of jobs, from lifeguard stands to loading docks, once stage managed the Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival, and spent some time in the oilfield, building pipelines and perfecting the art of properly chosen expletives.

  For the last few decades, he’s been a public-school teacher of English and science in Oklahoma, Australia, and Alaska. Happily married and the father of two children as shockingly attractive and intelligent as their mother, he holds a BA in English and an MFA in Fiction.

  Read more at Daniel Mitchell’s site.

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