by Neil Gaiman
Deel used an axe to clear the new trees, and that afternoon, at the dinner table, he asked Mary Lou what had happened to the mule.
“Died,” Mary Lou said. “She was old when you left, and she just got older. We ate it when it died.”
“Waste not, want not,” Deel said.
“Way we saw it,” she said.
“You ain’t been farmin’, how’d you make it?”
“Tom brought us some goods now and then, fish he caught, vegetables from his place. A squirrel or two. We raised a hog and smoked the meat, had our own garden.”
“How are Tom’s parents?”
“His father drank himself to death and his mother just up and died.”
Deel nodded. “She was always sickly, and her husband was a lot older than her…I’m older than you. But not by that much. He was what? Fifteen years? I’m…Well, let me see. I’m ten.”
She didn’t respond. He had hoped for some kind of confirmation that his ten-year gap was nothing, that it was okay. But she said nothing.
“I’m glad Tom was around,” Deel said.
“He was a help,” she said.
After a while, Deel said, “Things are gonna change. You ain’t got to take no one’s charity no more. Tomorrow, I’m gonna go into town, see I can buy some seed, and find a mule. I got some muster-out pay. It ain’t much, but it’s enough to get us started. Winston here goes in with me, we might see we can get him some candy of some sort.”
“I like peppermint,” the boy said.
“There you go,” Deel said.
“You ought not do that so soon back,” Mary Lou said. “There’s still time before the fall plantin’. You should hunt like you used to, or fish for a few days…You could take Winston here with you. You deserve time off.”
“Guess another couple of days ain’t gonna hurt nothin’. We could all use some time gettin’ reacquainted.”
NEXT AFTERNOON WHEN DEEL came back from the creek with Winston, they had a couple of fish on a wet cord, and Winston carried them slung over his back so that they dangled down like ornaments and made his shirt damp. They were small but good perch and the boy had caught them, and in the process, shown the first real excitement Deel had seen from him. The sunlight played over their scales as they bounced against Winston’s back. Deel, walking slightly behind Winston, watched the fish carefully. He watched them slowly dying, out of the water, gasping for air. He couldn’t help but want to take them back to the creek and let them go. He had seen injured men gasp like that, on the field, in the trenches. They had seemed like fish that only needed to be put in water.
As they neared the house, Deel saw a rider coming their way, and he saw Mary Lou walking out from the house to meet him.
Mary Lou went up to the man and the man leaned out of the saddle, and they spoke, and then Mary Lou took hold of the saddle with one hand and walked with the horse toward the house. When she saw Deel and Winston coming, she let go of the saddle and walked beside the horse. The man on the horse was tall and lean with black hair that hung down to his shoulders. It was like a waterfall of ink tumbling out from under his slouched, gray hat.
As they came closer together, the man on the horse raised his hand in greeting. At that moment the boy yelled out, “Tom!” and darted across the field toward the horse, the fish flapping.
THEY SAT AT THE kitchen table. Deel and Mary Lou and Winston and Tom Smites. Tom’s mother had been half Chickasaw, and he seemed to have gathered up all her coloring, along with his Swedish father’s great height and broad build. He looked like some kind of forest god. His hair hung over the sides of his face, and his skin was walnut colored and smooth and he had balanced features and big hands and feet. He had his hat on his knee.
The boy sat very close to Tom. Mary Lou sat at the table, her hands out in front of her, resting on the planks. She had her head turned toward Tom.
Deel said, “I got to thank you for helpin’ my family out.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to thank. You used to take me huntin’ and fishin’ all the time. My daddy didn’t do that sort of thing. He was a farmer and a hog raiser and a drunk. You done good by me.”
“Thanks again for helpin’.”
“I wanted to help out. Didn’t have no trouble doin’ it.”
“You got a family of your own now, I reckon.”
“Not yet. I break horses and run me a few cows and hogs and chickens, grow me a pretty good-size garden, but I ain’t growin’ a family. Not yet. I hear from Mary Lou you need a plow mule and some seed.”
Deel looked at her. She had told him all that in the short time she had walked beside his horse. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to know what he needed or didn’t need.
“Yeah. I want to buy a mule and some seed.”
“Well, now. I got a horse that’s broke to plow. He ain’t as good as a mule, but I could let him go cheap, real cheap. And I got more seed than I know what to do with. It would save you a trip into town.”
“I sort of thought I might like to go to town,” Deel said.
“Yeah, well, sure. But I can get those things for you.”
“I wanted to take Winston here to the store and get him some candy.”
Tom grinned. “Now, that is a good idea, but so happens, I was in town this mornin’, and—”
Tom produced a brown paper from his shirt pocket and laid it out on the table and carefully pulled the paper loose, revealing two short pieces of peppermint.
Winston looked at Tom. “Is that for me?”
“It is.”
“You just take one now, Winston, and have it after dinner,” Mary Lou said. “You save that other piece for tomorrow. It’ll give you somethin’ to look forward to.”
“That was mighty nice of you, Tom,” Deel said.
“You should stay for lunch,” Mary Lou said. “Deel and Winston caught a couple of fish, and I got some potatoes. I can fry them up.”
“Why that’s a nice offer,” Tom said. “And on account of it, I’ll clean the fish.”
THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed with Tom coming out to bring the horse and the seed, and coming back the next day with some plow parts Deel needed. Deel began to think he would never get to town, and now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to go. Tom was far more comfortable with his family than he was and he was jealous of that and wanted to stay with them and find his place. Tom and Mary Lou talked about all manner of things, and quite comfortably, and the boy had lost all interest in the bow. In fact, Deel had found it and the arrows out under a tree near where the woods firmed up. He took it and put it in the smokehouse. The air was dry in there and it would cure better, though he was uncertain the boy would ever have anything to do with it.
Deel plowed a half-dozen acres of the flowers under, and the next day Tom came out with a wagonload of cured chicken shit, and helped him shovel it across the broken ground. Deel plowed it under and Tom helped Deel plant peas and beans for the fall crop, some hills of yellow crookneck squash, and a few mounds of watermelon and cantaloupe seed.
That evening they were sitting out in front of the house, Deel in the cane rocker and Tom in a kitchen chair. The boy sat on the ground near Tom and twisted a stick in the dirt. The only light came from the open door of the house, from the lamp inside. When Deel looked over his shoulder, he saw Mary Lou at the washbasin again, doing the dishes, wiggling her ass. Tom looked in that direction once, then looked at Deel, then looked away at the sky, as if memorizing the positions of the stars.
Tom said, “You and me ain’t been huntin’ since well before you left.”
“You came around a lot then, didn’t you?” Deel said.
Tom nodded. “I always felt better here than at home. Mama and Daddy fought all the time.”
“I’m sorry about your parents.”
“Well,” Tom said, “everyone’s got a time to die, you know. It can be in all kinds of ways, but sometimes it’s just time and you just got to embrace it.”
“I reckon that’s tru
e.”
“What say you and me go huntin’?” Tom said, “I ain’t had any possum meat in ages.”
“I never did like possum,” Deel said. “Too greasy.”
“You ain’t fixed ’em right. That’s one thing I can do, fix up a possum good. ’Course, best way is catch one and pen it and feed it corn for a week or so, then kill it. Meat’s better that way, firmer. But I’d settle for shootin’ one, showin’ you how to get rid of that gamey taste with some vinegar and such, cook it up with some sweet potatoes. I got more sweet potatoes than I know what to do with.”
“Deel likes sweet potatoes,” Mary Lou said.
Deel turned. She stood in the doorway drying her hands on a dish towel. She said, “That ought to be a good idea, Deel. Goin’ huntin’. I wouldn’t mind learnin’ how to cook up a possum right. You and Tom ought to go, like the old days.”
“I ain’t had no sweet potatoes in years,” Deel said.
“All the more reason,” Tom said.
The boy said, “I want to go.”
“That’d be all right,” Tom said, “but you know, I think this time I’d like for just me and Deel to go. When I was a kid, he taught me about them woods, and I’d like to go with him, for old time’s sake. That all right with you, Winston?”
Winston didn’t act like it was all right, but he said, “I guess.”
THAT NIGHT DEEL LAY beside Mary Lou and said, “I like Tom, but I was thinkin’ maybe we could somehow get it so he don’t come around so much.”
“Oh?”
“I know Winston looks up to him, and I don’t mind that, but I need to get to know Winston again…Hell, I didn’t ever know him. And I need to get to know you…I owe you some time, Mary Lou. The right kind of time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Deel. The right kind of time?”
Deel thought for a while, tried to find the right phrasing. He knew what he felt, but saying it was a different matter. “I know you ended up with me because I seemed better than some was askin’. Turned out I wasn’t quite the catch you thought. But we got to find what we need, Mary Lou.”
“What we need?”
“Love. We ain’t never found love.”
She lay silent.
“I just think,” Deel said, “we ought to have our own time together before we start havin’ Tom around so much. You understand what I’m sayin’, right?”
“I guess so.”
“I don’t even feel like I’m proper home yet. I ain’t been to town or told nobody I’m back.”
“Who you missin’?”
Deel thought about that for a long time. “Ain’t nobody but you and Winston that I missed, but I need to get some things back to normal…I need to make connections so I can set up some credit at the store, maybe some farm trade for things we need next year. But mostly, I just want to be here with you so we can talk. You and Tom talk a lot. I wish we could talk like that. We need to learn how to talk.”
“Tom’s easy to talk to. He’s a talker. He can talk about anything and make it seem like somethin’, but when he’s through, he ain’t said nothin’…You never was a talker before, Deel, so why now?”
“I want to hear what you got to say, and I want you to hear what I got to say, even if we ain’t talkin’ about nothin’ but seed catalogs or pass the beans, or I need some more firewood or stop snoring. Most anything that’s got normal about it. So, thing is, I don’t want Tom around so much. I want us to have some time with just you and me and Winston, that’s all I’m sayin’.”
Deel felt the bed move. He turned to look, and in the dark he saw that Mary Lou was pulling her gown up above her breasts. Her pubic hair looked thick in the dark and her breasts were full and round and inviting.
She said, “Maybe tonight we could get started on knowing each other better.”
His mouth was dry. All he could say was, “All right.”
His hands trembled as he unbuttoned his union suit at the crotch and she spread her legs and he climbed on top of her. It only took a moment before he exploded.
“Oh, God,” he said, and collapsed on her, trying to support his weight on his elbows.
“How was that?” she said. “I feel all right?”
“Fine, but I got done too quick. Oh, girl, it’s been so long. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. It don’t mean nothin’.” She patted him stiffly on the back and then twisted a little so that he’d know she wanted him off her.
“I could do better,” he said.
“Tomorrow night.”
“Me and Tom, we’re huntin’ tomorrow night. He’s bringin’ a dog, and we’re gettin’ a possum.”
“That’s right…Night after.”
“All right, then,” Deel said. “All right, then.”
He lay back on the bed and buttoned himself up and tried to decide if he felt better or worse. There had been relief, but no fire. She might as well have been a hole in the mattress.
TOM BROUGHT A BITCH dog with him and a .22 rifle and a croaker sack. Deel gathered up his double barrel from out of the closet and took it out of its leather sheath coated in oil and found it to be in very good condition. He brought it and a sling bag of shells outside. The shells were old, but he had no cause to doubt their ability. They had been stored along with the gun, dry and contained.
The sky was clear and the stars were out and the moon looked like a carved chunk of fresh lye soap, but it was bright, so bright you could see the ground clearly. The boy was in bed, and Deel and Tom and Mary Lou stood out in front of the house and looked at the night.
Mary Lou said to Tom, “You watch after him, Tom.”
“I will,” Tom said.
“Make sure he’s taken care of,” she said.
“I’ll take care of him.”
Deel and Tom had just started walking toward the woods when they were distracted by a shadow. An owl came diving down toward the field. They saw the bird scoop up a fat mouse and fly away with it. The dog chased the owl’s shadow as it cruised along the ground.
As they watched the owl climb into the bright sky and fly toward the woods, Tom said, “Ain’t nothin’ certain in life, is it?”
“Especially if you’re a mouse,” Deel said.
“Life can be cruel,” Tom said.
“Wasn’t no cruelty in that,” Deel said. “That was survival. The owl was hungry. Men ain’t like that. They ain’t like other things, ’cept maybe ants.”
“Ants?”
“Ants and man make war ’cause they can. Man makes all kinds of proclamations and speeches and gives reasons and such, but at the bottom of it, we just do it ’cause we want to and can.”
“That’s a hard way to talk,” Tom said.
“Man ain’t happy till he kills everything in his path and cuts down everything that grows. He sees something wild and beautiful and wants to hold it down and stab it, punish it ’cause it’s wild. Beauty draws him to it, and then he kills it.”
“Deel, you got some strange thinkin’,” Tom said.
“Reckon I do.”
“We’re gonna kill so as to have somethin’ to eat, but unlike the owl, we ain’t eatin’ no mouse. We’re having us a big, fat possum and we’re gonna cook it with sweet potatoes.”
They watched as the dog ran on ahead of them, into the dark line of the trees.
WHEN THEY GOT TO the edge of the woods the shadows of the trees fell over them, and then they were inside the woods, and it was dark in places with gaps of light where the limbs were thin. They moved toward the gaps and found a trail and walked down it. As they went, the light faded, and Deel looked up. A dark cloud had blown in.
Tom said, “Hell, looks like it’s gonna rain. That came out of nowhere.”
“It’s a runnin’ rain,” Deel said. “It’ll blow in and spit water and blow out before you can find a place to get dry.”
“Think so?”
“Yeah. I seen rain aplenty, and one comes up like this, it’s traveling through. That
cloud will cry its eyes out and move on, promise you. It ain’t even got no lightnin’ with it.”
As if in response to Deel’s words it began to rain. No lightning and no thunder, but the wind picked up and the rain was thick and cold.
“I know a good place ahead,” Tom said. “We can get under a tree there, and there’s a log to sit on. I even killed a couple possums there.”
They found the log under the tree, sat down and waited. The tree was an oak and it was old and big and had broad limbs and thick leaves that spread out like a canvas. The leaves kept Deel and Tom almost dry.
“That dog’s done gone off deep in the woods,” Deel said, and laid the shotgun against the log and put his hands on his knees.
“He gets a possum, you’ll hear him. He sounds like a trumpet.”
Tom shifted the .22 across his lap and looked at Deel, who was lost in thought. “Sometimes,” Deel said, “when we was over there, it would rain, and we’d be in trenches, waiting for somethin’ to happen, and the trenches would flood with water, and there was big ole rats that would swim in it, and we was so hungry from time to time, we killed them and ate them.”
“Rats?”
“They’re same as squirrels. They don’t taste as good, though. But a squirrel ain’t nothin’ but a tree rat.”
“Yeah? You sure?”
“I am.”
Tom shifted on the log, and when he did Deel turned toward him. Tom still had the .22 lying across his lap, but when Deel looked, the barrel was raised in his direction. Deel started to say somethin’, like, “Hey, watch what you’re doin’,” but in that instant he knew what he should have known all along. Tom was going to kill him. He had always planned to kill him. From the day Mary Lou had met him in the field on horseback, they were anticipating the rattle of his dead bones. It’s why they had kept him from town. He was already thought dead, and if no one thought different, there was no crime to consider.
“I knew and I didn’t know,” Deel said.
“I got to, Deel. It ain’t nothin’ personal. I like you fine. You been good to me. But I got to do it. She’s worth me doin’ somethin’ like this…Ain’t no use reaching for that shotgun, I got you sighted; twenty-two ain’t much, but it’s enough.”