In the open and unfiltered light Jacob could see things about the pastor that the old photograph had betrayed. His face was angled and split like a slab of broken sidewalk. Deep lines climbed from his jawbone across his cheeks and settled into a furrow on his brow, and his aging eyelids had become swollen and too heavy for themselves. He had kept his shape, was stiff and tall as the oldest tree and when he moved the air around him trailed about slowly, as it will over a beaten highway or out from the steel skin of a burning furnace. He gave Jefferson his hat and drew a pockmarked cigarette case from the waistband of his trousers and Jacob noticed that his shirtsleeves were fastened with blood-red cufflinks. He tapped the bottom of a cigarette on the case, a wealthy man's move, and rolled its filter between his lips before lighting it. Drew in and exhaled the heavy smoke across the room toward the painting of Christ. He searched around for a place to tip his ash. Jefferson handed him the cup from which he'd been drinking. Thorne sat on the edge of the bed and looked down into the cup, a leftover swallow of cool coffee and the gray crumbs of burnt tobacco gliding along it. When he ashed into it he rested the cigarette on its lip and waited a beat, anticipating, before he flicked the filter and listened to the sizzle. Smoky air ambled up to the light bulb and circled round it like the birth of a storm.
His lips were thin and white, those of a thirsty man and with flecks of dried skin scratching against themselves when he spoke. “What a hell of a thing here,” he said, pulling one leg up across the other. He drew on his cigarette and dropped what was left into the cup. “A hell of a thing. What you say, Jefferson, this feller fell out of the sky, that right?”
“So to speak,” said Jefferson. His arms were tight around Suzanne's waist. She was quiet; Jacob hadn't realized she'd been behind him.
Thorne turned to regard Jacob, the pitiful thing, confused, fingers gripping and releasing the bedclothes. “Good thing those boys come along when they did,” he said.
“I'm grateful,” said Jacob.
“Oh, I'd say I would be, too.” Thorne turned back to face out toward the room and held his hands out flat in front of himself. “If God didn't have His hand in it, may I be struck dead where I stand.” He chuckled. “Sit. Stand. You get me. Anyhow. We heard you hollering the other night from clear across to here. Horrible thing to have to listen to.”
Jacob lifted his legs and made to swing them over the other edge of the bed. “Like I say, I'm grateful, Pastor. These two folks have been nothing but good to me. I'll go back and get -” He grunted sharply when Thorne's hand came down on his shoulder and pulled him back onto the mattress.
“Stick around for a bit,” Thorne said. “One more night, get you some breakfast, let Suzanne draw you up a bath in the morning. Seems to me you still got a problem worth fixing. You're eating on a porch that ain't yours, sleeping in a house that ain't yours. Those are things desperate men do. You leave here like this you'll just go on and be a desperate man somewhere else.”
Jacob's neck quivered where Thorne's thumb had gripped it. When the pastor released him, Jacob stood quickly, wheeled around, his heartbeat quickening and his head warming through with anger.
“You're curious, ain't you, son?” said Thorne, swinging his legs onto the bed and crossing his boots at the foot of it. He flashed half a smile. “Why are we tucked back out here?” He locked his dusty fingers into themselves and laid them on his chest and closed his eyes. “You want to know more about my daughter, don't you, Jacob?”
Jacob let his hands come down to his sides. “I hardly even know your daughter,” he said.
“Oh, you know her, son,” said Thorne. “You know her. My daughter is your middle school sweetheart, she's the ghost of your grandmother, she's your dead wife. She's the reason your world goes round.” He opened his eyes. “That damned girl is proof of God and of the Devil himself.”
He got up and motioned toward the bed. “Rest,” he said. “Tomorrow is not a bottomless well. I'll come up to Pop's place around four, four thirty. We'll walk to church together.”
Jacob drew in a chestful of shabby air and didn't exhale until Thorne had said his goodnights to Jefferson and Suzanne and the screen door had banged shut behind him. The pastor went across the front yard whistling.
Suzanne came into the bedroom some time after Thorne had gone with a stack of washed sheets, a blanket, a fresh pillowcase. “These are yours,” she said. It was the first time Jacob had heard her speak. Her voice was soft and shaking. She had a wire crucifix strung between her breasts on a length of black fishing line.
When Jacob stood she stripped the bed quickly and threw the old blankets in the corner of the room. He helped her stretch the sheets across the mattress and held the pillowcase open for her. When they were done she put her hands on the hips of her apron and blew air out of the corner of her mouth toward the stray hairs falling over her forehead. She didn't pick up her feet when she came across to him, but stood on her tiptoes and stretched her neck to reach the side of his face. “The most disgusting man that ever lived just wiped his boots on this bed,” she whispered. “It was me, I'd consider sleeping on the floor.”
Jacob lay still in the bed as the dark of the night turned over into the next day. He could make out animals coming awake in the blue morning. The joints in the house slowly warming, spreading themselves. Before the sun was full out, he heard what he knew were Suzanne's tiny feet moving in the kitchen beyond the door. He heard the hinges of the oven. He heard Jefferson out on the porch, thought he might be stretching out legs that were still sleeping and coughing up the remnants of a wet night in the mountains. Liam and Emily Grace were up with the sunlight and their energy came full shortly after it. He heard Suzanne trying to quiet them without speaking loudly herself and he told himself to thank her, thank her for quietly saving his life, before he left her house that morning and drove his truck out of the woods.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Chapter Eleven
The dark sweat of the night came on and Jacob lay bulging in the center of the bed. He heard children scrambling across the floor in the room past the wall, their dry heels scratching across the hardwood and their fingers clawing at the tabletop, and sometime he kicked his legs around and stood and his broken ribs sank down into his abdomen. When he opened the door and came to the center the children - a raw, unwashed boy of eight or nine, and a hairless girl, slightly older - stopped and stared like before them was a dead man, the sliding cheeks and broken blood vessels. He leaned into the jamb and winced.
Jefferson sat a stack of plates in the sink and pulled the children close in to his hips. “Jacob,” he said, “this here is Liam.” He tugged at the boy’s shirt collar and pushed him playfully out of the way. “And this little lamb is Emily Grace.” He ran the palm of his hand over her bald head like it was a natural thing.
“Hello,” Jacob said, bowing his head to one and then the other.
“Jacob’s hurt himself pretty good,” said Jefferson. “Took a good fall out of the… tree. Fell out a tree.” He winked at Jacob.
“No, I didn’t,” said Jacob.
“Uh, Jacob, my friend, what say we, uh, step outside?” Jefferson said. Jacob followed him to the door and they came out onto a porch covered in old furniture, debris, evidence that animals had been around. “My boy Liam. He watched a man die over t' the church this past summer. Real violent, this guy. Scraped up the floor with his fingernails, eyes popping in and out of their sockets. It's been hard on him. Death isn't an easy thing.”
Jacob put his hands in his pockets and suppressed a cough. He looked at Jefferson's eyes and tilted his head. “Did you know him?”
“Who's that?”
“The guy that died. Got bitten by a snake, did he?” He didn't move his eyes.
“That he did. And yes, we knew him. He was Liam and Emily Grace's grandfather. Well, step-grandfather, anyhow.” He poked the tip of his boot at a bag of garbage, leaned his hands on the rail. “Copperhead bit him in the chin. Hung on for dear life for thirty seconds or so before Liam grabbed him by the tail and chucked him across the room.” He made a swinging motion with his arm to simulate what the boy had done.
“Got what he deserved, you think?”
Jefferson pushed off the rail and stood with his arms folded in front of himself. He looked out at the pink moon and licked his lips. “Jake,” he said, “we've saved your life here, son. That ain't cause of no religion and it ain't cause of no god. It's just what a person does for someone else. I'm aware that you've had some dealing with Sadler, and I know you talked to Lee. Them boys brought you here is good friends with him, and they knew you, too. So you know what we preach here. But you don't know about it. Not a lick. You talk to a beautiful girl and who knows what she tells you. But you don't know a lick. How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six. Well. Dinner's ready, then.”
Suzanne's hair stuck to her forehead by sweat and by time gone unwashed. She had set a worn oak table with bowls of corn, potatoes, braised meat of some sort, butter, fresh rolls. The children lifted heavy clay plates and heaped them tall, passed them around the circle. Their mother was quiet, beautiful, bashful in a way that drew attention to her. She took off her apron before she sat down, smoothed her hair into a long ponytail that came close to sweeping across the floor.
“What were you doing in a tree, Mister Jacob?” said the boy, Liam. He took giant bites of meat and potatoes.
“Do you reckon he's too old to be up in a tree, son?” Jefferson said, turning and winking at Jacob again.
“Yep.”
Jefferson started to say something, opened his mouth with a smack, but Jacob intervened. “Trees are great places to sit and think, Liam,” he said. “You have to be careful, though – more careful than I was, you know.” He chuckled.
The boy laughed, too. His mother had washed the mud off his face. “I climb trees like a monkey can.”
“I believe that's true, Liam. When I was your age, I did, too. Now I climb trees like... like an elephant.” Jacob looked toward Suzanne, who smiled into the collar of her dress.
A man who called himself Doctor Wesley came by the house near the end of the evening. He wore a plaid shirt and tan trousers and reeked of cigarettes. A stethoscope hung around his flabby neck. He came into the bedroom where Jacob had returned for an uncomfortable while after dinner and sat beside him on the bed. Jefferson stood in the doorway, arms folded.
The old man stuck his fingers into Jacob's chest and Jacob coughed a raspy, burning cough and crinkled in pain. Wesley touched around Jacob's bare chest with the stethoscope and moved it down onto his belly.
When Wesley spoke, his voice came out like a wind through dead branches. “He can walk. He can eat. He can talk. Don't want him driving. Don't want him running. Don't want him lifting no heavy rocks or nothin' or choppin' wood or nothin' like that.”
Jefferson nodded. “Damn. I got a pile of bricks out back needs sorted.”
Wesley did not have the appearance of a man who'd ever been amused. He looked at Jacob. “Don't.”
Jacob smiled. “You got it, doc.”
Suzanne slid in beside Jefferson on the balls of her stocking feet. She held his arm with both hands and whispered something into his ear. He nodded.
“Excuse me for a minute, there, Doctor Wesley,” he said. “Jacob, you hang tight. Someone's here to see you, I do believe.”
The man's face was covered in the shadow of a cowboy hat when he stepped into the sick room. He wore a plaid shirt with pearl buttons and tight black pants, clean and pressed. His black snakeskin boots were polished to a fine sheen. His belt was fastened with a silver buckle that bore the imprint of a cross. When he took his hat off, his eyes came out like a dragon's. His sharp cheeks stretched upward into a smile and he crossed his hat in front of his belly. He was the monster that Jacob had seen in the picture at the trailer. “Hello, Jacob,” he said. “I'm Pastor Jim Thorne.”
Jefferson sat a stack of plates in the sink and pulled the children close in to his hips. “Jacob,” he said, “this here is Liam.” He tugged at the boy’s shirt collar and pushed him playfully out of the way. “And this little lamb is Emily Grace.” He ran the palm of his hand over her bald head like it was a natural thing.
“Hello,” Jacob said, bowing his head to one and then the other.
“Jacob’s hurt himself pretty good,” said Jefferson. “Took a good fall out of the… tree. Fell out a tree.” He winked at Jacob.
“No, I didn’t,” said Jacob.
“Uh, Jacob, my friend, what say we, uh, step outside?” Jefferson said. Jacob followed him to the door and they came out onto a porch covered in old furniture, debris, evidence that animals had been around. “My boy Liam. He watched a man die over t' the church this past summer. Real violent, this guy. Scraped up the floor with his fingernails, eyes popping in and out of their sockets. It's been hard on him. Death isn't an easy thing.”
Jacob put his hands in his pockets and suppressed a cough. He looked at Jefferson's eyes and tilted his head. “Did you know him?”
“Who's that?”
“The guy that died. Got bitten by a snake, did he?” He didn't move his eyes.
“That he did. And yes, we knew him. He was Liam and Emily Grace's grandfather. Well, step-grandfather, anyhow.” He poked the tip of his boot at a bag of garbage, leaned his hands on the rail. “Copperhead bit him in the chin. Hung on for dear life for thirty seconds or so before Liam grabbed him by the tail and chucked him across the room.” He made a swinging motion with his arm to simulate what the boy had done.
“Got what he deserved, you think?”
Jefferson pushed off the rail and stood with his arms folded in front of himself. He looked out at the pink moon and licked his lips. “Jake,” he said, “we've saved your life here, son. That ain't cause of no religion and it ain't cause of no god. It's just what a person does for someone else. I'm aware that you've had some dealing with Sadler, and I know you talked to Lee. Them boys brought you here is good friends with him, and they knew you, too. So you know what we preach here. But you don't know about it. Not a lick. You talk to a beautiful girl and who knows what she tells you. But you don't know a lick. How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six. Well. Dinner's ready, then.”
Suzanne's hair stuck to her forehead by sweat and by time gone unwashed. She had set a worn oak table with bowls of corn, potatoes, braised meat of some sort, butter, fresh rolls. The children lifted heavy clay plates and heaped them tall, passed them around the circle. Their mother was quiet, beautiful, bashful in a way that drew attention to her. She took off her apron before she sat down, smoothed her hair into a long ponytail that came close to sweeping across the floor.
“What were you doing in a tree, Mister Jacob?” said the boy, Liam. He took giant bites of meat and potatoes.
“Do you reckon he's too old to be up in a tree, son?” Jefferson said, turning and winking at Jacob again.
“Yep.”
Jefferson started to say something, opened his mouth with a smack, but Jacob intervened. “Trees are great places to sit and think, Liam,” he said. “You have to be careful, though – more careful than I was, you know.” He chuckled.
The boy laughed, too. His mother had washed the mud off his face. “I climb trees like a monkey can.”
“I believe that's true, Liam. When I was your age, I did, too. Now I climb trees like... like an elephant.” Jacob looked toward Suzanne, who smiled into the collar of her dress.
A man who called himself Doctor Wesley came by the house near the end of the evening. He wore a plaid shirt and tan trousers and reeked of cigarettes. A stethoscope hung around his flabby neck. He came into the bedroom where Jacob had returned for an uncomfortable while after dinner and sat beside him on the bed. Jefferson stood in the doorway, arms folded.
The old man stuck his fingers into Jacob's chest and Jacob coughed a raspy, burning cough and crinkled in pain. Wesley touched around Jacob's bare chest with the stethoscope and moved it down onto his belly.
When Wesley spoke, his voice came out like a wind through dead branches. “He can walk. He can eat. He can talk. Don't want him driving. Don't want him running. Don't want him lifting no heavy rocks or nothin' or choppin' wood or nothin' like that.”
Jefferson nodded. “Damn. I got a pile of bricks out back needs sorted.”
Wesley did not have the appearance of a man who'd ever been amused. He looked at Jacob. “Don't.”
Jacob smiled. “You got it, doc.”
Suzanne slid in beside Jefferson on the balls of her stocking feet. She held his arm with both hands and whispered something into his ear. He nodded.
“Excuse me for a minute, there, Doctor Wesley,” he said. “Jacob, you hang tight. Someone's here to see you, I do believe.”
The man's face was covered in the shadow of a cowboy hat when he stepped into the sick room. He wore a plaid shirt with pearl buttons and tight black pants, clean and pressed. His black snakeskin boots were polished to a fine sheen. His belt was fastened with a silver buckle that bore the imprint of a cross. When he took his hat off, his eyes came out like a dragon's. His sharp cheeks stretched upward into a smile and he crossed his hat in front of his belly. He was the monster that Jacob had seen in the picture at the trailer. “Hello, Jacob,” he said. “I'm Pastor Jim Thorne.”
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Chapter Ten
A light bulb swung from its wire in the center of the room and when he first woke up he stared at it, a dirty orange glow, the filaments like the burning wings of a moth in the center, and he scratched at the edges of the mattress he’d been laid down on. He tried to move his head but it was wedged in place. The room smelled like camp smoke and dust and old bedclothes.
When he pulled in breath his chest burned and made a sound like crinkled newspaper and his nose was full of bits of dried blood that shifted and whistled and he could see the salty crumbles of teardrops at the corners of his eyes. He could move his legs. He could move his arms but it hurt. There was a yellowed picture of Jesus Christ on the wall in front of him, a painting of the thin white man with a rough-shorn beard and bony, brittle fingers. His hands were pressed together and his eyes were on the bed where Jacob lay. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. His cheeks were white and sunken in toward his teeth.
People moved on the other side of the wall behind him. Boots scuffling down a hallway, the commotion of grocery day or a father home from work. He heard a man and a woman talking, but their words muddied and died in the space between the walls. He tried to make noise with his mouth and it came out in a raspy spiral and absorbed into the wooden paneling. He was the kind of thirsty that would make water taste like peach juice.
“…just ain’t sure Jim needs to know, is all,” said the man, who opened the door behind the bed and stopped halfway. “Well, good lord God.” He came and stood beside Jacob and slid the contraption that was holding his head still – three boards nailed together in the shape of an unfinished picture frame – away. “You are an ugly creature.” The light above him blacked out his face. “My name’s Jefferson. Sorry about those,” he said, holding up the boards. “Thought your neck might a been broke.”
Jacob licked his lips and groaned. He could taste his breath. He guessed he must have been unconscious for quite some time. “Do you have water?” he said, moving his head from side to side.
“Yeah. I got water. You figure you’d be good to swaller it?”
Jacob nodded his chin. Jefferson left and came back with a pitcher and told Jacob to open up wide. He tipped the spout over Jacob’s head and spilled water down over his face, some of it to his mouth, some of it to his hair. It soaked the bed and filled Jacob’s eyes. He blinked and squeezed it out like medication. He raised his hand to signal enough.
“So,” Jefferson said. His voice was severe, burnt. He set the pitcher on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed beside Jacob’s bare feet. “Them boys said you was practicing a little self-help up the fire tower.” He had a thick beard and hair swiped to the side of his head with a generous combful of pomade. His red cheeks overlapped his eyes when he squinted in a grin. “Something I should know, since you going to be staying here for a bit?”
“Why?” said Jacob. He didn’t have much air to put into his speech.
“Why what? Why you staying or why do I give a good hoot about your broke ribs?”
Jacob turned his head slowly away. “I should be with my wife.” He started to cry, but his body lost interest in it.
“We’d try to get in touch with her, but we ain’t got no idea who you are.”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh.” Jefferson wrapped his stubby, padded fingers around Jacob’s ankle. “Well, that explains a little bit, don’t it.” He told Jacob to stay put and stood up and went back out into the hall.
There was a box fan in the window past the foot of the bed that was blowing chilly evening air into Jacob’s mouth. He took hold of his pant legs and used his arms to pull his feet to the floor and sat on the side of the mattress, rubbing the homemade dressing wrapped around his chest and abdomen. He breathed in strong and it hurt like a shotgun blast. He felt a little death each time he moved. He tried to reach the wooden floor with his toes.
Jefferson came back in with a plate of food and Jacob was facing the wall, staring at the picture of Jesus. He had his hands flat against the paneling and set out a constant growl - low and quiet, like a dog protecting his meat.
“You know him yourself?” said Jefferson. He laid the plate on the bed. “Food.”
“Nobody’s known him for a couple thousand years,” whispered Jacob. He turned and walked toward the plate. Cubes of meat. Potatoes. Carrots, shining with butter and covered in black pepper.
“I see. A non-believer, so to speak. You’re that type. That’s okay. I heard you once. All the same, in these hills it might do you some good to try and pretend he’s the real deal, so to speak.”
Jacob picked up the food with his fingers and chewed on the meat with his mouth open like an animal. It burned when it slid down his throat, felt like knuckles pressing against his lungs.
“There’s a fork there, young man.”
Jacob looked at it, lying on the bed where the plate had been. He used it because he’d been asked, but resented that it took him longer to get the food into his mouth. “Where am I?” he asked finally, swiping at his lips with the back of his wrist.
Jefferson drew a triangle on the bed with his finger and pointed to where the top had been. “Fire tower,” he said. “About a half mile northeast a here.” He pointed to one side. “That trailer you been shacked up in, the Thorne place.” His eyes went to the ceiling, just a second, a glance at the light bulb, but it happened. He pointed at the other side. “Here. A half mile or so from either one. Triangle.” He held his hands up and made a triangle with his fingers. “Like such.”
“How long?”
“This is your second evening here. Them boys drug you by in their truck last night, I’d say four, four thirty. Suzanne had some codeines left in the basket, dentist trip, and we dumped a couple down you with some milk. Didn’t hear nothing from you till just now. Figure you got at least two cracked ribs, some bruises, a real bad one where your belt buckle was. You cain’t see it, but you got a black eye” - he pointed at the right side of Jacob’s face - “from landing on that pistol you had with you. You’re a lucky sonofagun it didn’t blow your head clear off.”
When he pulled in breath his chest burned and made a sound like crinkled newspaper and his nose was full of bits of dried blood that shifted and whistled and he could see the salty crumbles of teardrops at the corners of his eyes. He could move his legs. He could move his arms but it hurt. There was a yellowed picture of Jesus Christ on the wall in front of him, a painting of the thin white man with a rough-shorn beard and bony, brittle fingers. His hands were pressed together and his eyes were on the bed where Jacob lay. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. His cheeks were white and sunken in toward his teeth.
People moved on the other side of the wall behind him. Boots scuffling down a hallway, the commotion of grocery day or a father home from work. He heard a man and a woman talking, but their words muddied and died in the space between the walls. He tried to make noise with his mouth and it came out in a raspy spiral and absorbed into the wooden paneling. He was the kind of thirsty that would make water taste like peach juice.
“…just ain’t sure Jim needs to know, is all,” said the man, who opened the door behind the bed and stopped halfway. “Well, good lord God.” He came and stood beside Jacob and slid the contraption that was holding his head still – three boards nailed together in the shape of an unfinished picture frame – away. “You are an ugly creature.” The light above him blacked out his face. “My name’s Jefferson. Sorry about those,” he said, holding up the boards. “Thought your neck might a been broke.”
Jacob licked his lips and groaned. He could taste his breath. He guessed he must have been unconscious for quite some time. “Do you have water?” he said, moving his head from side to side.
“Yeah. I got water. You figure you’d be good to swaller it?”
Jacob nodded his chin. Jefferson left and came back with a pitcher and told Jacob to open up wide. He tipped the spout over Jacob’s head and spilled water down over his face, some of it to his mouth, some of it to his hair. It soaked the bed and filled Jacob’s eyes. He blinked and squeezed it out like medication. He raised his hand to signal enough.
“So,” Jefferson said. His voice was severe, burnt. He set the pitcher on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed beside Jacob’s bare feet. “Them boys said you was practicing a little self-help up the fire tower.” He had a thick beard and hair swiped to the side of his head with a generous combful of pomade. His red cheeks overlapped his eyes when he squinted in a grin. “Something I should know, since you going to be staying here for a bit?”
“Why?” said Jacob. He didn’t have much air to put into his speech.
“Why what? Why you staying or why do I give a good hoot about your broke ribs?”
Jacob turned his head slowly away. “I should be with my wife.” He started to cry, but his body lost interest in it.
“We’d try to get in touch with her, but we ain’t got no idea who you are.”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh.” Jefferson wrapped his stubby, padded fingers around Jacob’s ankle. “Well, that explains a little bit, don’t it.” He told Jacob to stay put and stood up and went back out into the hall.
There was a box fan in the window past the foot of the bed that was blowing chilly evening air into Jacob’s mouth. He took hold of his pant legs and used his arms to pull his feet to the floor and sat on the side of the mattress, rubbing the homemade dressing wrapped around his chest and abdomen. He breathed in strong and it hurt like a shotgun blast. He felt a little death each time he moved. He tried to reach the wooden floor with his toes.
Jefferson came back in with a plate of food and Jacob was facing the wall, staring at the picture of Jesus. He had his hands flat against the paneling and set out a constant growl - low and quiet, like a dog protecting his meat.
“You know him yourself?” said Jefferson. He laid the plate on the bed. “Food.”
“Nobody’s known him for a couple thousand years,” whispered Jacob. He turned and walked toward the plate. Cubes of meat. Potatoes. Carrots, shining with butter and covered in black pepper.
“I see. A non-believer, so to speak. You’re that type. That’s okay. I heard you once. All the same, in these hills it might do you some good to try and pretend he’s the real deal, so to speak.”
Jacob picked up the food with his fingers and chewed on the meat with his mouth open like an animal. It burned when it slid down his throat, felt like knuckles pressing against his lungs.
“There’s a fork there, young man.”
Jacob looked at it, lying on the bed where the plate had been. He used it because he’d been asked, but resented that it took him longer to get the food into his mouth. “Where am I?” he asked finally, swiping at his lips with the back of his wrist.
Jefferson drew a triangle on the bed with his finger and pointed to where the top had been. “Fire tower,” he said. “About a half mile northeast a here.” He pointed to one side. “That trailer you been shacked up in, the Thorne place.” His eyes went to the ceiling, just a second, a glance at the light bulb, but it happened. He pointed at the other side. “Here. A half mile or so from either one. Triangle.” He held his hands up and made a triangle with his fingers. “Like such.”
“How long?”
“This is your second evening here. Them boys drug you by in their truck last night, I’d say four, four thirty. Suzanne had some codeines left in the basket, dentist trip, and we dumped a couple down you with some milk. Didn’t hear nothing from you till just now. Figure you got at least two cracked ribs, some bruises, a real bad one where your belt buckle was. You cain’t see it, but you got a black eye” - he pointed at the right side of Jacob’s face - “from landing on that pistol you had with you. You’re a lucky sonofagun it didn’t blow your head clear off.”
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Second Interlude
They went to Shepherdstown when Jessica decided she was going to study photography. They rented an aching white clapboard house that Jacob busied himself with fixing for discounted rent and they lived off of loans and ate mouthfuls of macaroni. Jessica took pictures of everything – the fence Jacob was halfway-finished painting, the shadow from the open pantry door on the bubbled linoleum in the kitchen, a withered orange that Jacob had chucked out into the grass. The sun in Shepherdstown was open and brutal. He spent the summers with his shirt tucked into the back pocket of his jeans.
She got work at Arby’s and lost all the weight she could lose before he told her he was getting scared. So she ate more. Leveled out. She would pull the same stunt over and over during their time together. Drop. Gain. Drop. Level out.
He made a name for himself as a handyman, rescuing diamond earrings from sinks and teaching Shepherd professors how to use their lawn mowers. He built out a couple of decks with the teenage boy next door and split the money with him. The middle-aged Jewish woman who lived across the street watched him with the weedeater from her living room window.
Sometimes the gas in the stove went out. He fixed it. Sometimes the gutters would pop off the side of the house. He would fix them. Sometimes Jessica’s nose would start bleeding and he’d hold a washrag against her face and tell her to hold your head back, goddammit Jess stop tilting.
They lived in Shepherdstown for a couple of years and Jessica changed her major from photography to English to psychology to photography. She asked him to write stream of consciousness paragraphs on the backs of sandwich bags and she took them to the coffee shop and held her forehead up with her fingertips and tried to understand what was going on in his brain. She lost interest. She took pictures of him shaving. She took pictures of him eating macaroni.
She graduated with a fine arts degree and took a job in Lewisburg taking pictures of rich people eating out for the chamber of commerce. Jacob found work with an old friend who was doing commercial contracting. He mixed concrete and smoothed it out across grids of rebar. He bought six packs and finished them in one sitting. In her extra time Jessica hung sheets in the spare bedroom and set up collapsible tables and developed pictures of the tree in the backyard and of her feet in mud puddles.
She got work at Arby’s and lost all the weight she could lose before he told her he was getting scared. So she ate more. Leveled out. She would pull the same stunt over and over during their time together. Drop. Gain. Drop. Level out.
He made a name for himself as a handyman, rescuing diamond earrings from sinks and teaching Shepherd professors how to use their lawn mowers. He built out a couple of decks with the teenage boy next door and split the money with him. The middle-aged Jewish woman who lived across the street watched him with the weedeater from her living room window.
Sometimes the gas in the stove went out. He fixed it. Sometimes the gutters would pop off the side of the house. He would fix them. Sometimes Jessica’s nose would start bleeding and he’d hold a washrag against her face and tell her to hold your head back, goddammit Jess stop tilting.
They lived in Shepherdstown for a couple of years and Jessica changed her major from photography to English to psychology to photography. She asked him to write stream of consciousness paragraphs on the backs of sandwich bags and she took them to the coffee shop and held her forehead up with her fingertips and tried to understand what was going on in his brain. She lost interest. She took pictures of him shaving. She took pictures of him eating macaroni.
She graduated with a fine arts degree and took a job in Lewisburg taking pictures of rich people eating out for the chamber of commerce. Jacob found work with an old friend who was doing commercial contracting. He mixed concrete and smoothed it out across grids of rebar. He bought six packs and finished them in one sitting. In her extra time Jessica hung sheets in the spare bedroom and set up collapsible tables and developed pictures of the tree in the backyard and of her feet in mud puddles.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Chapter Nine
The trail to the fire tower started at a stone wall, only partly broken, that defended nothing from anything. Its foot was pushed up against a gnarled stump, hollowed and splintered by years of makeshift campfires. Whitetail hunters. High school kids with clean leather boots dropping candy wrappers and watching soda bottles melt. The other side of the wall trailed off near the edge of a bluff that dropped down into the river. Three years ago, Jacob had perched his shoe on this stump and tugged at its laces and slid his finger into his sock to make sure the ring was still there. Jess took pictures of the water and knelt down on her knees to take pictures up the side of the slope. She took pictures of rocks. She took pictures of glacial detritus shoved back into a cave by wind and snowmelt and deluge. She took a picture of Jacob’s hands pulling at his shoestrings.
Jacob put his hands in his vest pockets and walked the length of the wall. His mind churned furiously, as minds will when they know for sure they can recall something but can’t find it, can’t find it, and he wanted badly to remember their conversation that day – if it was normal, if it was nervous, if it had even existed. He reached out to pull an orange oak leaf from a low-hanging branch. He snapped it off and looked for holes in its flesh. He looked at his watch.
He passed the place where they’d made short, uncomfortable love, between a rutted section of the trail and a patch of yellow poplar saplings. She’d led him away by the pocket of his jeans and leaned back against the mother tree and pulled him to her cold, dry face, and when it was over he pulled his pants back on and looked nervously down either direction of the trail and she said, “Baby. Honey. God pauses the world for these kinds of things.” A couple of the saplings had survived and were still there and came to his belt buckle. He moved on.
They ate lunch on a boulder that had made a crater when it crashed down from the mountaintop. He asked her to marry him at three thirty.
It had been colder a few days ago when he’d doubled around the trail on his way to the tower. The wind had been fiercer, better aimed. At the time, this walk was one to be avoided. Today was different. Today was the day. Jess died three years and five days from the day she’d told him she would be his wife forever. His five days were up. Today was the day.
The sod around the tower was softer still from last night’s rain. Jacob slid from one footfall to the other and grabbed a rung of the ladder and swung his hip around and planted the other foot to keep from plunging legs-first into the Greenbrier. Jess was afraid of heights, deathly scared, she trembled when she stood on stools, and when she’d tried to climb this ladder, ignoring the caution signs, ignoring the weakness in the wood, he’d had to grab her butt and push her to the next step from underneath.
The open window had let the rain in. The floor was dark brown, chewed up, musty. New green algae snaked back and forth across the unfinished pine planks. He sat all the same.
“I lived for you,” he said to himself. He took the .44 from his waist and slid his fingers over its barrel, the fresh oil came off on his hands, smelled like Hoppes, and he set it on the ledge beside him and let his feet dangle over the side. He put his palms together like a couple would hold hands, tried to get back to the sensation of holding a woman, of feeling the strength of Jess’s squeeze. He tried to remember the thickness of her lips and the color of her eyes. He tried to remember her stomach and her knees and her nipples and her breath. He looked at his watch and set his intertwined fingers in his lap calmly and slouched his back and breathed and breathed and breathed.
The boys were listening to Johnny Cash when they came up on the man with a pistol in his mouth. He was sitting with his legs crisscrossed over the side of the doorframe of the fire tower and both his hands on the butt of a revolver that was clenched between his front teeth. His thumbs were both pressed against the trigger. They pulled the black, rusted pickup to the side of the trail a few hundred feet up the way and its expired license plate swung back and forth on one screw. One of them turned the music off while the other stepped out of the truck and leaned on the open doorframe.
“Hey there, mister, what you fixing to do?” he shouted. His voice was high-pitched. He was just a kid.
Jacob hadn’t heard them coming down. He let the .44 ease away from his lips and looked down on them, heavy, viscid tears staining his cheeks white and falling down into his mouth. His eyes were red like melted metal. He snorted and brought the gun to his temple and pulled back the hammer.
“Uh, uh, don’t go doing nothing stupid,” said the other boy. The two of them looked at each other uncomfortably, their muscles tensing, their legs readying for a run. “Come on down off there, what say?”
“Just throw that gun down first,” said the first boy, nodding at his friend.
“Yeah, throw that gun down first. Holy shit.”
Jacob pressed the gun’s muzzle deep into the flesh of his head and screamed so terribly that the scratches in his throat came back in echo. His mouth open so wide his dry lips stretched and cracked and watery blood coated his tongue. His eyes closed so tight he felt them pinching against his cheekbones. The boys started backwards, one of them ducking behind his open door and the other backtracking around the bed of the pickup. Both of them slid down into a crouch.
When his breath was gone and the mountains finished repeating his shout, Jacob, trembling, rocking, his head hanging, dropped the gun to the ground beneath the tower. He wiped at his eyes with his fingertips and looked at the boys and looked at his watch. “God damn you people,” he said, “God damn you, I’m late. God damn you.” Then he doubled over on himself, his sobbing jerking his entire body up and down, and he fell. The boys started toward him while he was still moving, and they heard his ribs crackle when he landed at the feet of the tower. His fingers splayed and contracted in the mud.
Jacob put his hands in his vest pockets and walked the length of the wall. His mind churned furiously, as minds will when they know for sure they can recall something but can’t find it, can’t find it, and he wanted badly to remember their conversation that day – if it was normal, if it was nervous, if it had even existed. He reached out to pull an orange oak leaf from a low-hanging branch. He snapped it off and looked for holes in its flesh. He looked at his watch.
He passed the place where they’d made short, uncomfortable love, between a rutted section of the trail and a patch of yellow poplar saplings. She’d led him away by the pocket of his jeans and leaned back against the mother tree and pulled him to her cold, dry face, and when it was over he pulled his pants back on and looked nervously down either direction of the trail and she said, “Baby. Honey. God pauses the world for these kinds of things.” A couple of the saplings had survived and were still there and came to his belt buckle. He moved on.
They ate lunch on a boulder that had made a crater when it crashed down from the mountaintop. He asked her to marry him at three thirty.
It had been colder a few days ago when he’d doubled around the trail on his way to the tower. The wind had been fiercer, better aimed. At the time, this walk was one to be avoided. Today was different. Today was the day. Jess died three years and five days from the day she’d told him she would be his wife forever. His five days were up. Today was the day.
The sod around the tower was softer still from last night’s rain. Jacob slid from one footfall to the other and grabbed a rung of the ladder and swung his hip around and planted the other foot to keep from plunging legs-first into the Greenbrier. Jess was afraid of heights, deathly scared, she trembled when she stood on stools, and when she’d tried to climb this ladder, ignoring the caution signs, ignoring the weakness in the wood, he’d had to grab her butt and push her to the next step from underneath.
The open window had let the rain in. The floor was dark brown, chewed up, musty. New green algae snaked back and forth across the unfinished pine planks. He sat all the same.
“I lived for you,” he said to himself. He took the .44 from his waist and slid his fingers over its barrel, the fresh oil came off on his hands, smelled like Hoppes, and he set it on the ledge beside him and let his feet dangle over the side. He put his palms together like a couple would hold hands, tried to get back to the sensation of holding a woman, of feeling the strength of Jess’s squeeze. He tried to remember the thickness of her lips and the color of her eyes. He tried to remember her stomach and her knees and her nipples and her breath. He looked at his watch and set his intertwined fingers in his lap calmly and slouched his back and breathed and breathed and breathed.
The boys were listening to Johnny Cash when they came up on the man with a pistol in his mouth. He was sitting with his legs crisscrossed over the side of the doorframe of the fire tower and both his hands on the butt of a revolver that was clenched between his front teeth. His thumbs were both pressed against the trigger. They pulled the black, rusted pickup to the side of the trail a few hundred feet up the way and its expired license plate swung back and forth on one screw. One of them turned the music off while the other stepped out of the truck and leaned on the open doorframe.
“Hey there, mister, what you fixing to do?” he shouted. His voice was high-pitched. He was just a kid.
Jacob hadn’t heard them coming down. He let the .44 ease away from his lips and looked down on them, heavy, viscid tears staining his cheeks white and falling down into his mouth. His eyes were red like melted metal. He snorted and brought the gun to his temple and pulled back the hammer.
“Uh, uh, don’t go doing nothing stupid,” said the other boy. The two of them looked at each other uncomfortably, their muscles tensing, their legs readying for a run. “Come on down off there, what say?”
“Just throw that gun down first,” said the first boy, nodding at his friend.
“Yeah, throw that gun down first. Holy shit.”
Jacob pressed the gun’s muzzle deep into the flesh of his head and screamed so terribly that the scratches in his throat came back in echo. His mouth open so wide his dry lips stretched and cracked and watery blood coated his tongue. His eyes closed so tight he felt them pinching against his cheekbones. The boys started backwards, one of them ducking behind his open door and the other backtracking around the bed of the pickup. Both of them slid down into a crouch.
When his breath was gone and the mountains finished repeating his shout, Jacob, trembling, rocking, his head hanging, dropped the gun to the ground beneath the tower. He wiped at his eyes with his fingertips and looked at the boys and looked at his watch. “God damn you people,” he said, “God damn you, I’m late. God damn you.” Then he doubled over on himself, his sobbing jerking his entire body up and down, and he fell. The boys started toward him while he was still moving, and they heard his ribs crackle when he landed at the feet of the tower. His fingers splayed and contracted in the mud.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Chapter Eight
After a while, he went inside and clicked on the battery-powered lantern and set it on the railing of the stoop so its thick white light spilled over the better part of the front yard and died, floating, when it reached the heat of the fire. The girl talked about growing up in the hills, being home-schooled by a member of her father’s congregation, a thick old man called Lenny Burr, who had lost sight in one of his eyes when he drank methanol from a hard-up lady’s still, and of her brother’s struggle for an independent way of thinking.
“Independent from our daddy,” she said. She’d struggled on the word independent, had started it as better and gone back. “They don’t get along so well. You know, he still lives down the house and still comes to church and they still hunt together here and there, but it ain’t rare for one or the both of them to come back black and blue.”
When Jacob sat back down it started raining. Thick, tumbling drops of rain. The fire tipped and hissed like a man in chains, and Sadler stood up and jerked her hood over her head and took off running toward the house.
“The truck,” Jacob called after her. “Go for the truck. There’s no place to be in there.” Her sweatshirt pulled up her back and he watched a thin trail of rainwater slide down a line of hairs on her spine and into the waist of her jeans. She scratched at the handle of the truck and jerked it open and dove inside head-first. He jogged up after her, not in any kind of hurry. It had been years since he’d been rained on. He got in and tried to wick the water from his hair.
“Has Lee ever been down off this hill?” he asked her. He dug in the cup holder and found his keys, turned them in the ignition until a cloud of chilly air hit them both in the neck.
“Yeah, of course. He went to junior high school for a couple of years.” She fumbled with the heater knobs, cranked them both to max.
“No way a school bus came out this far.”
She laughed. “No, I don’t think one ever will. He stayed with the Butlers during the week. They live down Renick. Old folks lost their only son in Iraq. The first Iraq. But no, he turned sixteen, dropped right back out. Says growing up with Daddy means you’ve got the genes in you to always know better’n everybody else.” She looked out the window. The rain came and pelted the muddy road, puddles filling and dispatching into the grass. “I reckon he does, too, most times.”
There was a bruise on the back of her neck that he only saw when she turned on the dome light and opened the mirror on the shade and wiped her damp hair back from her forehead. He wanted to ask her about her father and if she ever fought with him too, but he thought better. Could have come from anywhere. Could have fallen off a rock. It wasn’t his business. He didn’t even know her. He didn’t know anything.
The way she moved reminded him of Casey Sheets, a girl he knew in high school, the first one he’d ever tested the L-word out on. Her motions had been graced, but forceful, like she’d been rehearsing everything she ever said and did for years and years just for when the right time came to use them. Her jaw flexed and jerked when she talked. When the heater started working, pearls of sweat sank onto Sadler’s lip as she melted through stories about how she found Bluebeard in a pile of snow after he bounced off the back of a four-wheeler, about how she jogged after the hunter, holding the scruff of the dying dog’s neck in her fingers, about how nobody ever came back looking for him and it’d been six years and they still hadn’t, about Lee being so good a swimmer that he could grab her ankles in knee-deep water and she wouldn’t see him either coming or going, about the time her father had asked her to cut his hair and she’d cut a notch in the top of his ear with a pair of pinking shears.
“What’s it like?” he said.
She stopped talking, took the interruption like its answer had been the next thing on her mind. “What’s what like?”
“Your church. Growing up with a pastor for a daddy. Growing up with, I don’t know, Davy Crockett for a brother?”
She rubbed her forearm furiously on the leg of her jeans. “Poison ivy,” she said. “All day, every day. What’s it like. Well, it’s a lot of singing and dancing. A lot of praising Jesus. Awful lot of that. Daddy’s like any other person’s daddy, I guess. And Lee – well, I’ve got a soft spot in me for a man who can dress a deer right there on the spot where he shot him.”
“Don’t you touch snakes?” he said. It was all he knew about Pentecostals, that it wasn’t all of them but that some of them drank poison and danced with snakes in their arms.
She turned her head to him and looked at him like she did the first time she saw him, down by the river, a hawk who’d finally found its prey but didn’t remember what to do with its instincts. “I have to go now,” she said. “Daddy’ll be getting out of church.”
He turned the engine over. She didn’t deny the ride, but she didn’t say anything else. The rain came like it would come for another forty days.
She lived in a part of the hollow that couldn’t sustain a typical type of road, not even a gravel one. They left the path he’d come in on and turned down toward the river and rolled through cracks in the earth that a man could lay down in. The skinny, naked branches of blackberry bushes scraped down the doors and down the sides of the bed.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
“You got that right,” she whispered back. It was the first thing she’d said in a long while. When she needed him to turn, she’d stretched her bony index finger towards where.
Her house was brown and damp and shoved up against a piece of earth so ugly that not even the clamor of the rainstorm could camouflage its waste. Mining spill. An abandoned excavation. The grayest skies hung over this angle in the mountains. A great wall of orange clay rose up behind it and came over it like a dam that held back the unrelenting forest as best it could.
“Come in easy,” she said. “Daddy and his yard, you know.”
He leaned in and rested his chin on the top of the steering wheel. “Huh. Yeah. I see that.” A brownish light came on and lit the pillars on the porch. “Listen, I’m, uh, I didn’t mean to seem, you know—"
“Don’t be so serious,” she said, unlatching the door and swinging her foot down into the mud. “We’re friends. Friends fuck with each other.”
“Independent from our daddy,” she said. She’d struggled on the word independent, had started it as better and gone back. “They don’t get along so well. You know, he still lives down the house and still comes to church and they still hunt together here and there, but it ain’t rare for one or the both of them to come back black and blue.”
When Jacob sat back down it started raining. Thick, tumbling drops of rain. The fire tipped and hissed like a man in chains, and Sadler stood up and jerked her hood over her head and took off running toward the house.
“The truck,” Jacob called after her. “Go for the truck. There’s no place to be in there.” Her sweatshirt pulled up her back and he watched a thin trail of rainwater slide down a line of hairs on her spine and into the waist of her jeans. She scratched at the handle of the truck and jerked it open and dove inside head-first. He jogged up after her, not in any kind of hurry. It had been years since he’d been rained on. He got in and tried to wick the water from his hair.
“Has Lee ever been down off this hill?” he asked her. He dug in the cup holder and found his keys, turned them in the ignition until a cloud of chilly air hit them both in the neck.
“Yeah, of course. He went to junior high school for a couple of years.” She fumbled with the heater knobs, cranked them both to max.
“No way a school bus came out this far.”
She laughed. “No, I don’t think one ever will. He stayed with the Butlers during the week. They live down Renick. Old folks lost their only son in Iraq. The first Iraq. But no, he turned sixteen, dropped right back out. Says growing up with Daddy means you’ve got the genes in you to always know better’n everybody else.” She looked out the window. The rain came and pelted the muddy road, puddles filling and dispatching into the grass. “I reckon he does, too, most times.”
There was a bruise on the back of her neck that he only saw when she turned on the dome light and opened the mirror on the shade and wiped her damp hair back from her forehead. He wanted to ask her about her father and if she ever fought with him too, but he thought better. Could have come from anywhere. Could have fallen off a rock. It wasn’t his business. He didn’t even know her. He didn’t know anything.
The way she moved reminded him of Casey Sheets, a girl he knew in high school, the first one he’d ever tested the L-word out on. Her motions had been graced, but forceful, like she’d been rehearsing everything she ever said and did for years and years just for when the right time came to use them. Her jaw flexed and jerked when she talked. When the heater started working, pearls of sweat sank onto Sadler’s lip as she melted through stories about how she found Bluebeard in a pile of snow after he bounced off the back of a four-wheeler, about how she jogged after the hunter, holding the scruff of the dying dog’s neck in her fingers, about how nobody ever came back looking for him and it’d been six years and they still hadn’t, about Lee being so good a swimmer that he could grab her ankles in knee-deep water and she wouldn’t see him either coming or going, about the time her father had asked her to cut his hair and she’d cut a notch in the top of his ear with a pair of pinking shears.
“What’s it like?” he said.
She stopped talking, took the interruption like its answer had been the next thing on her mind. “What’s what like?”
“Your church. Growing up with a pastor for a daddy. Growing up with, I don’t know, Davy Crockett for a brother?”
She rubbed her forearm furiously on the leg of her jeans. “Poison ivy,” she said. “All day, every day. What’s it like. Well, it’s a lot of singing and dancing. A lot of praising Jesus. Awful lot of that. Daddy’s like any other person’s daddy, I guess. And Lee – well, I’ve got a soft spot in me for a man who can dress a deer right there on the spot where he shot him.”
“Don’t you touch snakes?” he said. It was all he knew about Pentecostals, that it wasn’t all of them but that some of them drank poison and danced with snakes in their arms.
She turned her head to him and looked at him like she did the first time she saw him, down by the river, a hawk who’d finally found its prey but didn’t remember what to do with its instincts. “I have to go now,” she said. “Daddy’ll be getting out of church.”
He turned the engine over. She didn’t deny the ride, but she didn’t say anything else. The rain came like it would come for another forty days.
She lived in a part of the hollow that couldn’t sustain a typical type of road, not even a gravel one. They left the path he’d come in on and turned down toward the river and rolled through cracks in the earth that a man could lay down in. The skinny, naked branches of blackberry bushes scraped down the doors and down the sides of the bed.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
“You got that right,” she whispered back. It was the first thing she’d said in a long while. When she needed him to turn, she’d stretched her bony index finger towards where.
Her house was brown and damp and shoved up against a piece of earth so ugly that not even the clamor of the rainstorm could camouflage its waste. Mining spill. An abandoned excavation. The grayest skies hung over this angle in the mountains. A great wall of orange clay rose up behind it and came over it like a dam that held back the unrelenting forest as best it could.
“Come in easy,” she said. “Daddy and his yard, you know.”
He leaned in and rested his chin on the top of the steering wheel. “Huh. Yeah. I see that.” A brownish light came on and lit the pillars on the porch. “Listen, I’m, uh, I didn’t mean to seem, you know—"
“Don’t be so serious,” she said, unlatching the door and swinging her foot down into the mud. “We’re friends. Friends fuck with each other.”
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Chapter Seven
A mile or so downriver there was a small waterfall that pushed the current around two sides of a diamond-shaped island and on off toward the New at Hinton. Jacob set his pack down at the foot of it and took off his boots and rolled up his jeans and waded in, the cold shock setting his feet quick around the stones at the water’s bottom and drawing his hands in across his crotch, and he tracked the brown leaves hitching lazily down their course to become sediment in some other part of the world.
He threw rocks at floating sticks and pretended they were battleships. Jess had taken fondly to this game. You have to get three direct hits before the ship leaves your sight, or your base will be destroyed. She marveled at his aim. He lost himself trying to throw rocks at things.
When he came back up into the brush and set about walking back toward the trailer, he thought about what kind of people made their homes in woods like this. He’d heard of people who found the hills fertile enough and of sufficient cover to run their drug operations there. Small-timers, by any measure, who sold their weed to teenagers in Lewisburg and Beckley and White Sulphur Springs. They lived in decent log houses with old hot tubs and gardens in the front yards.
All up and down the river, small settlements had emerged where there was land enough between the cliffs and the water to build cottages. Some of the three-room lofts stood on stilts and some of them hung over the current and almost all of them flooded once a year. Their owners came in on one-lane roads and parked and rode their ATVs around in the hills and canoed from one side of the river to the other with their children or their older, less adventurous wives. They called their tiny plots of land “camps” and on Sunday evenings they drove back to Roanoke or Charlottesville.
There was none of that here, though, where the river came so close up on the mountainside that the wake of it would wet the trunks of the trees. Even here was too far out for the pot runners, who wouldn’t be inconvenienced to drive any further than Coleman’s Cliffs or Friars Hill. They knew everyone knew they were out there, they knew everyone knew what they did for a living, but they paid their taxes, and that was saying a lot in Greenbrier County. This place was something totally different. A different sort of hideout. A more desperate kind of fugitive would have taken this land.
The girl showed up again in the evening while Jacob was outside rebuilding his fire. He threw the bits of the aquarium into the makeshift fire ring he’d built from pieces of cinder block and larger rocks that had rolled down against the back of the house. The fire lit her from the knees up, and he could see she was wearing jeans and an old blue sweater. Her blond hair was wrapped around in a bun that set tight at the back of her head. He stopped poking at the fire, threw his stick into it, and slapped his hands together to clear them of soot. She looked clean and rigid. Her cheekbones caught more firelight than the rest of her face.
“Howdy, stranger,” he said.
“Lee told me he almost killed you. I came up to make sure you weren’t bleedin’ out in a corner somewhere.” She smiled and tucked a stray clump of hair behind her ear.
“Where you coming from?”
“Service just ended. Everybody else is still down at the house, but I figured I’d slip a short bath and go for a walk. They’re playing music. Will be all night.”
He asked her what kind of services they held in the Charismatic faith.
She looked away and put her hands on her hips and came back around to him and breathed deeply through the wood smoke and the crisp air. She smiled. “Like nothin’ you ever seen.”
When he looked at her, he saw a communion of different parts from different people he had once known. It was as though her face was continually, but gradually, shifting, that her eyes would be Jessica’s eyes one minute and his mother’s the next, that her long, bony hand brushing her hair away would be his grandfather’s hand, smoothing his mustache across his lip with the back of a wetted thumb. While the fire flicked across her, he saw a thousand vague differences in who this girl was or might have been and she was everyone he’d ever loved and he knew it.
“Pastor Thorne asked about you this evening,” she said.
“What about?”
“Wanted to know who was squatting up here, so I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, I told him that you were a lonely man with a broke heart, and that you needed a little of God’s country to set your mind at ease, and you couldn’t hardly set up a hammock in the middle of October.” She stuck the palms of her hands out over the orange fire, gripped her long fingers into fists and stretched them back out like a magician. “He says as long as you don’t mess around with nothin’ and you keep relatively quiet, you can stay as long as you need.”
She helped him drag the bench seat out of the back of the truck and they set it on the lawn in front of the fire and they put their feet on the cinder block ring and watched the wingtip lights of planes ferrying unknown travelers from one place on this side of the Appalachians to the next place on the other side. He folded his hands on his chest and she kept hers in her lap, fingers intertwined. He asked her how come she’d ended up out here in this mess of ferns and moss and poison oak.
“My daddy moved us out here just after Lee was born. I was seven. We used to live in the town of Jolo, which there ain’t nothing really there except a little post office and a set of railroad tracks they don’t use no more. But I went to regular school for three years, I had enough time to make some friends, go to sleepovers, and I saw a couple of movies in Princeton, which is something my daddy never knew nothing about. We came out here after my momma died of a heart attack. She was forty-six years old.” Her head was nodded down on her chest and her gaze shot out at the tips of the flames. When Jacob looked at her he saw the fire dancing back and forth across her eyes. She looked hypnotized, like a beast in a trance, a pitiful angel who could see through the night and come out in daylight while the world behind her slept.
He threw rocks at floating sticks and pretended they were battleships. Jess had taken fondly to this game. You have to get three direct hits before the ship leaves your sight, or your base will be destroyed. She marveled at his aim. He lost himself trying to throw rocks at things.
When he came back up into the brush and set about walking back toward the trailer, he thought about what kind of people made their homes in woods like this. He’d heard of people who found the hills fertile enough and of sufficient cover to run their drug operations there. Small-timers, by any measure, who sold their weed to teenagers in Lewisburg and Beckley and White Sulphur Springs. They lived in decent log houses with old hot tubs and gardens in the front yards.
All up and down the river, small settlements had emerged where there was land enough between the cliffs and the water to build cottages. Some of the three-room lofts stood on stilts and some of them hung over the current and almost all of them flooded once a year. Their owners came in on one-lane roads and parked and rode their ATVs around in the hills and canoed from one side of the river to the other with their children or their older, less adventurous wives. They called their tiny plots of land “camps” and on Sunday evenings they drove back to Roanoke or Charlottesville.
There was none of that here, though, where the river came so close up on the mountainside that the wake of it would wet the trunks of the trees. Even here was too far out for the pot runners, who wouldn’t be inconvenienced to drive any further than Coleman’s Cliffs or Friars Hill. They knew everyone knew they were out there, they knew everyone knew what they did for a living, but they paid their taxes, and that was saying a lot in Greenbrier County. This place was something totally different. A different sort of hideout. A more desperate kind of fugitive would have taken this land.
The girl showed up again in the evening while Jacob was outside rebuilding his fire. He threw the bits of the aquarium into the makeshift fire ring he’d built from pieces of cinder block and larger rocks that had rolled down against the back of the house. The fire lit her from the knees up, and he could see she was wearing jeans and an old blue sweater. Her blond hair was wrapped around in a bun that set tight at the back of her head. He stopped poking at the fire, threw his stick into it, and slapped his hands together to clear them of soot. She looked clean and rigid. Her cheekbones caught more firelight than the rest of her face.
“Howdy, stranger,” he said.
“Lee told me he almost killed you. I came up to make sure you weren’t bleedin’ out in a corner somewhere.” She smiled and tucked a stray clump of hair behind her ear.
“Where you coming from?”
“Service just ended. Everybody else is still down at the house, but I figured I’d slip a short bath and go for a walk. They’re playing music. Will be all night.”
He asked her what kind of services they held in the Charismatic faith.
She looked away and put her hands on her hips and came back around to him and breathed deeply through the wood smoke and the crisp air. She smiled. “Like nothin’ you ever seen.”
When he looked at her, he saw a communion of different parts from different people he had once known. It was as though her face was continually, but gradually, shifting, that her eyes would be Jessica’s eyes one minute and his mother’s the next, that her long, bony hand brushing her hair away would be his grandfather’s hand, smoothing his mustache across his lip with the back of a wetted thumb. While the fire flicked across her, he saw a thousand vague differences in who this girl was or might have been and she was everyone he’d ever loved and he knew it.
“Pastor Thorne asked about you this evening,” she said.
“What about?”
“Wanted to know who was squatting up here, so I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, I told him that you were a lonely man with a broke heart, and that you needed a little of God’s country to set your mind at ease, and you couldn’t hardly set up a hammock in the middle of October.” She stuck the palms of her hands out over the orange fire, gripped her long fingers into fists and stretched them back out like a magician. “He says as long as you don’t mess around with nothin’ and you keep relatively quiet, you can stay as long as you need.”
She helped him drag the bench seat out of the back of the truck and they set it on the lawn in front of the fire and they put their feet on the cinder block ring and watched the wingtip lights of planes ferrying unknown travelers from one place on this side of the Appalachians to the next place on the other side. He folded his hands on his chest and she kept hers in her lap, fingers intertwined. He asked her how come she’d ended up out here in this mess of ferns and moss and poison oak.
“My daddy moved us out here just after Lee was born. I was seven. We used to live in the town of Jolo, which there ain’t nothing really there except a little post office and a set of railroad tracks they don’t use no more. But I went to regular school for three years, I had enough time to make some friends, go to sleepovers, and I saw a couple of movies in Princeton, which is something my daddy never knew nothing about. We came out here after my momma died of a heart attack. She was forty-six years old.” Her head was nodded down on her chest and her gaze shot out at the tips of the flames. When Jacob looked at her he saw the fire dancing back and forth across her eyes. She looked hypnotized, like a beast in a trance, a pitiful angel who could see through the night and come out in daylight while the world behind her slept.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Chapter Six
The boy’s chest expanded with strength and collapsed back in on itself and his cheeks were damp and shining. He stared back at Jacob, who faced him sideways, whose gun shook in his hand as he brought it back down to his hip.
“Take a step back from that window,” said Jacob. The boy Lee did as he was told and Jacob licked the sweat from his lip. “Now take another,” he said.
When the boy took the second step his boot crushed into the pile of serpent bones and glass shards and the skeletons cracking made a sound like tearing denim. He bent and lifted a rack of ribs between two fingers, brought it close to his face and tossed it back down. “This the cage that was inside there?”
“It is. How do you know this house?”
The boy's eyes went to his shotgun laying in the brush, then to the pistol in Jacob’s hand, and then up and around the eaves and the spouts that hung from the loose gutters. “Used to spend a lot of time here,” he said. “Lived here once. It’s mine now, and you’re intruding.”
Jacob could see the woods getting brighter behind the boy and down over the side of the hill. His eyes were adjusting to the soft moonlight, and he saw more of the boy’s features than he could before. His chest looked strong and thick, as did his arms, and though his face looked young under a dirty ball cap, Jacob guessed he was in his middle teens and had probably lived his life running loudly through these trees.
“You the one that’s been shooting through the wall?”
“When I saw someone was here I figured the old man had come back and I been trying to kill that feller for years and years. I figured if he’s in there, he’s settin’ right there at that kitchen table, drinking, always like that he was drinking, and I could blow his head off without ever even havin’ to look at him.”
Jacob came down off the porch and walked partway across the yard in his bare feet. He pointed his gun at the boy again and told him to pick his shotgun up and take out the shells and put them in his pocket. Again the boy did as he was told. He left the barrels broken open and rested the weapon in the bend of his elbow.
“You haven’t been back here in a while?” Jacob said.
“No, I don’t come back here unless I have to.”
“Just the last couple of days?”
“Like I said already. This used to be my granddaddy’s place. The man was the devil himself. When he run away we figured he died somewhere up in the hills and the buzzards carried off his pickins. When I seen your truck in the road I thought maybe he’s alive after all, come back to get something he forgot.” The boy had a way of leading his eyes around the limbs of the trees, like he was registering the direction of the wind or smelling someone’s wood smoke and trying to figure where it came from. “What business do you have here?”
“Are you kin to the girl that runs around here with a yellow dog?” asked Jacob. He couldn’t remember her name.
“That’s my sister, Sadler. And Bluebeard. Her mutt. You meet her?”
“In a manner of speaking. She came up to me down by the river and let herself in to the house. Said it was her grandparents’ place.”
The boy considered it. He spit on the ground at his feet. “I’m surprised she wanted in. If Sadler knows a hell, she knows it as this spot right here.”
Jacob let the boy come into the trailer and stood in the living room, the chill of the autumn night tensing his skin, while the boy looked at the buckshot holes in the wall of the kitchen. The moon came in through them, straw-thin lengths of light that crisscrossed right where a man’s head would have been had he been sitting at the table. “Damn shame you wasn’t him,” said the boy. “Go on and put some clothes on. I ain’t going to shoot you tonight.”
When Jacob came back down the hall, the boy was crouched in the living room floor, weeping. His shotgun sat beside him. He was sifting through the stack of pictures that Sadler had left on top of the busted television. His jaw clenched and his forehead shook like his mind was moving through time faster than his body was. Jacob stood in the entryway and stayed still.
“You see this man right here?” the boy said finally. He held a picture up so Jacob could see it and held his finger beside the man in the corner. “This is my father. He grew up here.” The man he was pointing at was the one with the military haircut, the one who clutched the Bible, who Sadler had identified as Thorne. “The son of the devil.”
Jacob took the picture and looked the man over again. He wore thick black glasses and dark shoes. He was clean shaven. Jacob brought the picture closer to his face and realized the man’s trousers were unbuttoned. “I only intend to stay for a bit,” Jacob said, handing the picture back. The boy arranged the rest and set them back on top of the television and wiped his face off with the sleeve of his shirt. Jacob said, “I have reason to be here. I’d be obliged if you’d take it for what it is.”
The boy sniffled and stood.
“There’s a fire tower a half mile from here across the mountain,” said Jacob.
“I know it. Hunt squirrels from off there.”
“It’s where I asked my wife to marry me. She died.”
“I won’t give you any trouble,” the boy said. “But if I was running from grief, this ain’t the spot I’d have come to.”
The boy walked out into the oncoming morning, the pink and red fire burning somewhere out in the wilderness. His shotgun was tucked in the crook of his elbow. A few hundred feet down the road, he turned to spit and adjusted his cap.
Jacob went to the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out the penny sock and counted the change inside. He wondered if it had been the old couple’s savings. He counted fourteen dollars and sixty-six cents.
“Take a step back from that window,” said Jacob. The boy Lee did as he was told and Jacob licked the sweat from his lip. “Now take another,” he said.
When the boy took the second step his boot crushed into the pile of serpent bones and glass shards and the skeletons cracking made a sound like tearing denim. He bent and lifted a rack of ribs between two fingers, brought it close to his face and tossed it back down. “This the cage that was inside there?”
“It is. How do you know this house?”
The boy's eyes went to his shotgun laying in the brush, then to the pistol in Jacob’s hand, and then up and around the eaves and the spouts that hung from the loose gutters. “Used to spend a lot of time here,” he said. “Lived here once. It’s mine now, and you’re intruding.”
Jacob could see the woods getting brighter behind the boy and down over the side of the hill. His eyes were adjusting to the soft moonlight, and he saw more of the boy’s features than he could before. His chest looked strong and thick, as did his arms, and though his face looked young under a dirty ball cap, Jacob guessed he was in his middle teens and had probably lived his life running loudly through these trees.
“You the one that’s been shooting through the wall?”
“When I saw someone was here I figured the old man had come back and I been trying to kill that feller for years and years. I figured if he’s in there, he’s settin’ right there at that kitchen table, drinking, always like that he was drinking, and I could blow his head off without ever even havin’ to look at him.”
Jacob came down off the porch and walked partway across the yard in his bare feet. He pointed his gun at the boy again and told him to pick his shotgun up and take out the shells and put them in his pocket. Again the boy did as he was told. He left the barrels broken open and rested the weapon in the bend of his elbow.
“You haven’t been back here in a while?” Jacob said.
“No, I don’t come back here unless I have to.”
“Just the last couple of days?”
“Like I said already. This used to be my granddaddy’s place. The man was the devil himself. When he run away we figured he died somewhere up in the hills and the buzzards carried off his pickins. When I seen your truck in the road I thought maybe he’s alive after all, come back to get something he forgot.” The boy had a way of leading his eyes around the limbs of the trees, like he was registering the direction of the wind or smelling someone’s wood smoke and trying to figure where it came from. “What business do you have here?”
“Are you kin to the girl that runs around here with a yellow dog?” asked Jacob. He couldn’t remember her name.
“That’s my sister, Sadler. And Bluebeard. Her mutt. You meet her?”
“In a manner of speaking. She came up to me down by the river and let herself in to the house. Said it was her grandparents’ place.”
The boy considered it. He spit on the ground at his feet. “I’m surprised she wanted in. If Sadler knows a hell, she knows it as this spot right here.”
Jacob let the boy come into the trailer and stood in the living room, the chill of the autumn night tensing his skin, while the boy looked at the buckshot holes in the wall of the kitchen. The moon came in through them, straw-thin lengths of light that crisscrossed right where a man’s head would have been had he been sitting at the table. “Damn shame you wasn’t him,” said the boy. “Go on and put some clothes on. I ain’t going to shoot you tonight.”
When Jacob came back down the hall, the boy was crouched in the living room floor, weeping. His shotgun sat beside him. He was sifting through the stack of pictures that Sadler had left on top of the busted television. His jaw clenched and his forehead shook like his mind was moving through time faster than his body was. Jacob stood in the entryway and stayed still.
“You see this man right here?” the boy said finally. He held a picture up so Jacob could see it and held his finger beside the man in the corner. “This is my father. He grew up here.” The man he was pointing at was the one with the military haircut, the one who clutched the Bible, who Sadler had identified as Thorne. “The son of the devil.”
Jacob took the picture and looked the man over again. He wore thick black glasses and dark shoes. He was clean shaven. Jacob brought the picture closer to his face and realized the man’s trousers were unbuttoned. “I only intend to stay for a bit,” Jacob said, handing the picture back. The boy arranged the rest and set them back on top of the television and wiped his face off with the sleeve of his shirt. Jacob said, “I have reason to be here. I’d be obliged if you’d take it for what it is.”
The boy sniffled and stood.
“There’s a fire tower a half mile from here across the mountain,” said Jacob.
“I know it. Hunt squirrels from off there.”
“It’s where I asked my wife to marry me. She died.”
“I won’t give you any trouble,” the boy said. “But if I was running from grief, this ain’t the spot I’d have come to.”
The boy walked out into the oncoming morning, the pink and red fire burning somewhere out in the wilderness. His shotgun was tucked in the crook of his elbow. A few hundred feet down the road, he turned to spit and adjusted his cap.
Jacob went to the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out the penny sock and counted the change inside. He wondered if it had been the old couple’s savings. He counted fourteen dollars and sixty-six cents.
Interlude
They held Jessica’s wake in the basement of her parents’ house. Her alcoholic uncles, dried out from the sun and with faces full of three days’ stubble, came to shake Jacob’s hand and to hug Amy, Jessica’s mother, who spent the evening sitting on a cinder block in the darker corner of the room. She looked like Jessica. The women had shared a nose, gently sloped and wide at the bottom, and they had shared eyes, green on the outside and grey in the middle. Jacob couldn’t bring himself to console her. Jessica’s father was the only man in the room who gave the appearance that he was prepared for what had happened to his daughter. He was framed like a stout building and shook the hand of everyone who came down the swaying wooden stairs. A couple of times he even managed to draw a thin smile across his face.
Her parents had opened Jessica’s room so that her friends and family could remember the way she used to live. It was immaculately clean, and Jacob knew that it wasn’t Amy who’d kept it that way. Jessica had taken great pains to live a life of order, up to the day she died. Her Pirates tickets were arranged neatly under the glass of her desktop, the pillows on her bed in order from largest to smallest, moving away from the wall. A thin pair of socks with dogs catching Frisbees draped over the cushion of a chair in the corner. He remembered that, out at the farm, she’d folded the blanket she was laying with when the paramedics knocked on their front door.
A light weight came down on his arm. Amy’s hand slid down his wrist and she put her thin fingers in his hand. Her face was black, her cheeks, and her hair fell limp down her neck. She squeezed his hand hard. “What are you going to do, Jake?” she said. Her voice was like an old record, quiet and brittle and popping.
He looked away from her and up the stairs and blinked away tears. “I’m going to go home, Amy,” he said.
They left out opened bottles of wine and piled up pre-cooked shrimp and toothpicks. Someone had brought a dog with them and it slept underneath the stairs, tethered to the railing. Jacob shifted on alternating feet and left his hands sweating in his pockets while the world of people who knew and loved his dead wife swirled around him in fast-forward.
Her parents had opened Jessica’s room so that her friends and family could remember the way she used to live. It was immaculately clean, and Jacob knew that it wasn’t Amy who’d kept it that way. Jessica had taken great pains to live a life of order, up to the day she died. Her Pirates tickets were arranged neatly under the glass of her desktop, the pillows on her bed in order from largest to smallest, moving away from the wall. A thin pair of socks with dogs catching Frisbees draped over the cushion of a chair in the corner. He remembered that, out at the farm, she’d folded the blanket she was laying with when the paramedics knocked on their front door.
A light weight came down on his arm. Amy’s hand slid down his wrist and she put her thin fingers in his hand. Her face was black, her cheeks, and her hair fell limp down her neck. She squeezed his hand hard. “What are you going to do, Jake?” she said. Her voice was like an old record, quiet and brittle and popping.
He looked away from her and up the stairs and blinked away tears. “I’m going to go home, Amy,” he said.
They left out opened bottles of wine and piled up pre-cooked shrimp and toothpicks. Someone had brought a dog with them and it slept underneath the stairs, tethered to the railing. Jacob shifted on alternating feet and left his hands sweating in his pockets while the world of people who knew and loved his dead wife swirled around him in fast-forward.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Chapter Five
The girl took the dog by the scruff of his neck and sent him trotting down the road, kicking up dust in the noontime sun. She came down off the porch and made to follow him before she turned and said, “I ain’t the only one that knows you’re here, Jacob. Let that be known to you.”
He kept his hands on his hips and stretched his toes over the side of the step he was on and didn’t answer her. He watched her walk away. She still hadn’t put on her shoes, but her dress had dried to the point that it came away from her hips and almost covered her cracking ankles. Her hair flailed at wide angles like she’d just come away from a solid night of sleeping on her back. When she went around the bend a hundred or so yards down the way and he was satisfied she wasn’t going to change her mind and come back up, he coughed and spit in the yard and turned back into the house.
He’d been afraid for two days to come near enough to the overgrown fish tank against the back wall of the living room to see into it more clearly. It dispensed an odor of ammonia against the paneling and out into the room, and the sides were caked so darkly with mildew that all he could make out inside were the edges of sticks jagging and scratching at the smothering shit that blacked out the interior. He found a reasonably clean dishrag underneath the sink and tore it into a pair of strips, tied them together at the ends and wrapped the whole thing around his mouth and nostrils and stuck his tongue between two layers to prove to himself that he could breathe from his mouth if he had to. Then he propped the front door open with a screwdriver, crouched to wrap his arms around the tank, and wedged his way outside. He threw the whole apparatus out onto the lawn. The glass shattered and its dust wound up from the grass like smoke.
He saw the bones of a snake cocked oddly, like a snapped cable, before he got to the bulk of the mess, where the bones of a half dozen more wrapped around each other, the mottled leftovers of the harem of the devil. He picked one up by the head and knew then that they were all the remains of copperheads, common around here, but deadly, loathed. He pitched it back to the ground and its fangs caught in the leaves of a sapling tree and swayed there like a hanged man in a decent wind. There were no plastic caves to decorate the tank, no fake trees or lava rocks. Just the sticks and the bones, the filthy, stinking bones.
The rest of the afternoon he fortified the trailer as best he could by setting bottles behind the doors and wedging sticks into the window frames. He moved the mattress back to the bedroom, where he’d found it, away from the kitchen and the direct line of fire between its side wall and the living room floor. It was wetter and darker in the bedroom, but it could possibly be more defensible – when he went to sleep at night he’d shove the chest of drawers in front of the door and tuck the pistol under his pillow. When he went back to the kitchen he kicked the buckshot into a corner and for the first time he was nervous enough to think about leaving, but he knew he couldn’t.
He had trouble sleeping. He thought about the girl, Sadler, her wet hair and her dress with the sunflowers on its neck, her mountain accent and her sharp, hawkish eyes. He thought about his dead wife, about her arms crossed around her own chest and her thin eyelids covering her dead white eyes. If only those eyelids would flutter, he thought, and we could go back to the days and weeks before. At the burial the priest had said “If God is for us, who is against us?” Romans chapter eight, verse thirty-one. For the first couple hours of darkness, he sat cross-legged, leaning against the wall, holding the barrel of the revolver with the fingertips of one hand and the handle with the palm of the other.
That night the forest exploded with gunfire and Jacob woke with his pillow covering his head and the muzzle of the .44 aimed at the bridge of his nose. He rose to his knees and grabbed it and cocked it in one motion. Another shot, and what sounded like aluminum cans rattling in the kitchen. He pulled the stick out of the window frame, figuring the shooting was coming from the opposite side of the trailer, and opened the window a couple of inches. Another shot. He tried to swallow enough spit to wet his throat to the point where he could yell out. When he did, all he could think to say was, “Stop, goddammit, stop!”
He sunk to his tailbone and tried to pull his head back away from the window, the pistol shaking and drawn up beside his ear. The woods paused a beat, were still, and the voice of a boy called out, “Who’s in there?”
“Just stop shooting,” Jacob called back. His voices came back a dozen at a time from down the river valley. “Don’t fucking kill me.” He realized he was crying, weeping, and his whole body was pulling in on itself like an explosion desperate for oxygen.
“I ain’t shooting no more. What’re you doing up in there?”
Jacob licked tears off his top lip and chuckled, nervous to the point of falling apart. “Trying to get some sleep,” he said.
The boy in the woods stopped talking for a bit, but Jacob could hear kindling snapping under his footsteps as he came up the footpath from the road and across the face of the trailer. Quietly, quickly, Jacob planted the heels of his hands and vaulted himself across the mattress and opened the door and crouched in the hall. From there he saw the double barrels of a shotgun, the oily blue steel glinting in the moonlight, as the boy slid them between the bedroom window’s sill and the bottom of the sash. Jacob came down the hall in his boxer shorts and turned toward the entryway. He felt himself drawing in air and felt it disperse across his chest and he sucked snot back into his nose and swung the door open and stepped out onto the cold white stoop and aimed the gun directly at the young boy’s head. They were close enough to each other that a shot from either of their weapons would knock both of them from their feet.
The boy turned and looked at Jacob in his underwear, took both of his hands from the shotgun and it dangled there until it came loose from its wedge and slid to the ground, resting for a second on the butt of its stock before it fell over into the leaves. “You’re trespassing,” he said. He looked so young, so young. When Jacob didn’t speak, when he didn’t move, the boy sucked in a breath and cried, “My name’s Lee, and this is my goddamn house.”
He kept his hands on his hips and stretched his toes over the side of the step he was on and didn’t answer her. He watched her walk away. She still hadn’t put on her shoes, but her dress had dried to the point that it came away from her hips and almost covered her cracking ankles. Her hair flailed at wide angles like she’d just come away from a solid night of sleeping on her back. When she went around the bend a hundred or so yards down the way and he was satisfied she wasn’t going to change her mind and come back up, he coughed and spit in the yard and turned back into the house.
He’d been afraid for two days to come near enough to the overgrown fish tank against the back wall of the living room to see into it more clearly. It dispensed an odor of ammonia against the paneling and out into the room, and the sides were caked so darkly with mildew that all he could make out inside were the edges of sticks jagging and scratching at the smothering shit that blacked out the interior. He found a reasonably clean dishrag underneath the sink and tore it into a pair of strips, tied them together at the ends and wrapped the whole thing around his mouth and nostrils and stuck his tongue between two layers to prove to himself that he could breathe from his mouth if he had to. Then he propped the front door open with a screwdriver, crouched to wrap his arms around the tank, and wedged his way outside. He threw the whole apparatus out onto the lawn. The glass shattered and its dust wound up from the grass like smoke.
He saw the bones of a snake cocked oddly, like a snapped cable, before he got to the bulk of the mess, where the bones of a half dozen more wrapped around each other, the mottled leftovers of the harem of the devil. He picked one up by the head and knew then that they were all the remains of copperheads, common around here, but deadly, loathed. He pitched it back to the ground and its fangs caught in the leaves of a sapling tree and swayed there like a hanged man in a decent wind. There were no plastic caves to decorate the tank, no fake trees or lava rocks. Just the sticks and the bones, the filthy, stinking bones.
The rest of the afternoon he fortified the trailer as best he could by setting bottles behind the doors and wedging sticks into the window frames. He moved the mattress back to the bedroom, where he’d found it, away from the kitchen and the direct line of fire between its side wall and the living room floor. It was wetter and darker in the bedroom, but it could possibly be more defensible – when he went to sleep at night he’d shove the chest of drawers in front of the door and tuck the pistol under his pillow. When he went back to the kitchen he kicked the buckshot into a corner and for the first time he was nervous enough to think about leaving, but he knew he couldn’t.
He had trouble sleeping. He thought about the girl, Sadler, her wet hair and her dress with the sunflowers on its neck, her mountain accent and her sharp, hawkish eyes. He thought about his dead wife, about her arms crossed around her own chest and her thin eyelids covering her dead white eyes. If only those eyelids would flutter, he thought, and we could go back to the days and weeks before. At the burial the priest had said “If God is for us, who is against us?” Romans chapter eight, verse thirty-one. For the first couple hours of darkness, he sat cross-legged, leaning against the wall, holding the barrel of the revolver with the fingertips of one hand and the handle with the palm of the other.
That night the forest exploded with gunfire and Jacob woke with his pillow covering his head and the muzzle of the .44 aimed at the bridge of his nose. He rose to his knees and grabbed it and cocked it in one motion. Another shot, and what sounded like aluminum cans rattling in the kitchen. He pulled the stick out of the window frame, figuring the shooting was coming from the opposite side of the trailer, and opened the window a couple of inches. Another shot. He tried to swallow enough spit to wet his throat to the point where he could yell out. When he did, all he could think to say was, “Stop, goddammit, stop!”
He sunk to his tailbone and tried to pull his head back away from the window, the pistol shaking and drawn up beside his ear. The woods paused a beat, were still, and the voice of a boy called out, “Who’s in there?”
“Just stop shooting,” Jacob called back. His voices came back a dozen at a time from down the river valley. “Don’t fucking kill me.” He realized he was crying, weeping, and his whole body was pulling in on itself like an explosion desperate for oxygen.
“I ain’t shooting no more. What’re you doing up in there?”
Jacob licked tears off his top lip and chuckled, nervous to the point of falling apart. “Trying to get some sleep,” he said.
The boy in the woods stopped talking for a bit, but Jacob could hear kindling snapping under his footsteps as he came up the footpath from the road and across the face of the trailer. Quietly, quickly, Jacob planted the heels of his hands and vaulted himself across the mattress and opened the door and crouched in the hall. From there he saw the double barrels of a shotgun, the oily blue steel glinting in the moonlight, as the boy slid them between the bedroom window’s sill and the bottom of the sash. Jacob came down the hall in his boxer shorts and turned toward the entryway. He felt himself drawing in air and felt it disperse across his chest and he sucked snot back into his nose and swung the door open and stepped out onto the cold white stoop and aimed the gun directly at the young boy’s head. They were close enough to each other that a shot from either of their weapons would knock both of them from their feet.
The boy turned and looked at Jacob in his underwear, took both of his hands from the shotgun and it dangled there until it came loose from its wedge and slid to the ground, resting for a second on the butt of its stock before it fell over into the leaves. “You’re trespassing,” he said. He looked so young, so young. When Jacob didn’t speak, when he didn’t move, the boy sucked in a breath and cried, “My name’s Lee, and this is my goddamn house.”
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