Kings of the Earth: A Novel (23 page)

Donna

H
E DID NOT HAVE
even that little bit of blood work done. Nothing his sister could say would change his mind. He came home and told his brothers that after a complete going over from top to bottom Dr. Franklin had decided that he had cancer and that he would need the same blood treatment their mother had endured through all those terrible years. “It didn’t do her no good and I ain’t going to let him try it on me,” he said. “I ain’t going to let him get started.” He sat in the overstuffed chair on the front porch and he sucked on a horehound drop and he plucked cotton batting and he said that he believed he would do better against the cancer by holding on to his blood than by dribbling it out a little bit at a time, and his brothers thought that he just might be onto something.

There was a commercial on television for some kind of health-food diet, and each time it aired he dropped whatever he was doing. He had it memorized from front to back, all sixty seconds of it right down to the music (which he whistled through his teeth while he was at the milking) and the rapid-fire legal disclaimers (which echoed in his mind as he lay awake in bed trying to swallow around that lump). He dreamed without ceasing of how his life would improve if only he could afford to buy the products advertised during that hectic televised minute—some kind of natural supplements and supercharged vitamin pills—and one day he spied Preston sitting on his screen porch and he went to him.

Preston had retired from his father’s business but he still went in most days. The fellow he sold it to didn’t mind, although sometimes he wished that he and the old-timers who came in to chew the fat with him would adjourn to someplace other than his service desk. The seasonal area, maybe, where he’d put in a line of picnic tables and lawn furniture that they could test out. Or McDonald’s, where the rest of the geriatric crowd went. But then they’d have had to pay for their coffee instead of drinking his for free all morning long. Nonetheless he knew there was a world of experience floating around in those old gray heads, a regular encyclopedia of homegrown construction, and if a person was working through a knotty bit of plumbing repair or framing work or whatever, he could do worse than to show up here and seek their wisdom. If he were in really deep trouble, he should make sure to bring doughnuts.

Preston was home from the lumberyard now, and napping on the couch when Vernon came over. Vernon stood on the ground alongside the screen porch and said his neighbor’s name, not going up the two steps or even knocking from down where he was. Preston opened his eyes just a slit and saw him there outside the screen, deferential as ever, one of those famous Three Chevaliers of old. Vernon coughed and cleared his throat and coughed again, and Preston came fully awake. Sitting up and telling him to come on in.

The farmer sat on a hard chair just inside the door. Margaret kept a pair of them there and although the reason was never made plain—she hated to think of the Proctor boys’ shit-stained coveralls coming in contact with her upholstered furniture, even though the stuff out here had passed through the house and would be on its way to the Salvation Army soon enough—he seemed to prefer the hard chair anyway. He settled into it with his boots squared before him on the board floor. He may as well have been at the milking. “I been to the doctor,” he began.

“I heard.” Preston rubbed the back of his neck.

“I guess I can’t keep nothing a secret.”

“Your sister told Margaret,” said Preston.

Vernon nodded and pinched his lips between what teeth remained in his head.

“She also told her you won’t have your tests done.”

“I guess that’d be my business,” said Vernon.

“Tell you the truth, what she actually said is you’re a stubborn old mule. That’s your whole family’s business.”

Vernon explained his belief that the medical community would fail him as surely as it had failed his mother. He said further that he couldn’t exactly afford the latest in medical care anyhow and Preston said he understood from Donna that there might be fewer problems in that department than he’d think, with Medicaid and all. Vernon grunted. He sat for a minute. Margaret was running the vacuum cleaner in the house and both men listened to her work.

After a while Vernon brought it up: “I been considering them supplements.”

Preston had heard everything, but not this. “Supplements.”

“All-natural vitamin supplements.”

“All-natural.”

Vernon nodded. “All-natural. They come in a powder. You mix a little in with your water or your coffee. Your Tang.”

“For Christ’s sake,” said Preston. “If you want to go all-natural, you’d better quit drinking Tang. A glass of orange juice’ll do you more good than a glass of that Tang with a spoonful of some all-natural whatever mixed up in it.”

Vernon chewed his lip, abashed.

“There’s nothing all-natural about Tang. You think they drink that shit in outer space because it’s natural? They drink it because it lasts forever without benefit of refrigeration.” Margaret was drawing nearer with the vacuum cleaner, and he raised his voice over the whine of it. “Have you been watching the television?”

“I seen this show all about vitamins.”

“You turn it right off. You forget about it. They just want your money.”

“It’s what they call an all-natural supplement,” said Vernon.

“It’s pure snake oil,” said Preston. “There’s nothing in the world more natural than leaf tobacco, and look where that gets a person. If you don’t mind my saying, look where it got your mother. If I were you I’d drink a little more orange juice and watch a little less television. And I’d keep my money in my pocket where it belongs.”

Which left Vernon without a dream in the world to trust.

Tom

T
HE SKIES OF
N
OVEMBER
had been low and gray but until now the snow had mostly held off, leaving the landscape a barren and windblown waste. Such patches of white as there were, hidden in the deep woods and pushed up alongside the roadways, were withered and pockmarked and cancerous-looking. Gunshots of wind howled in hard gusts over the high fields, and the leafless trees offered no resistance. Now and then a black bird would shoot past the window of Tom’s father’s station wagon, crying, propelled by wind and by its own impulse to vacate this place of comfort withheld.

The drive from town was one hill after another and the view from the top was always the same. Muted shades of brown and gray. Shorn fields encroaching on wind-ravaged farmhouses, not so much as a chained dog visible. A countryside full of that same old homegrown desolation. They saw no other cars. The wind tore wood smoke from farmhouse chimneys and sometimes Tom could smell it for a second as they went past. It smelled like his uncles’ house. His father asked if he’d remembered his mittens and he reached into his pockets to produce them. It was warm in the car and it smelled like Thanksgiving and he didn’t think he’d be needing mittens. He knew there was a shortcut from out here in Carversville to his grandmother’s onion farm in Wampsville, but he wasn’t sure where it was. His father knew all these back roads.

They climbed the last hill to the farm and saw smoke coming not just from the chimney but from a big fire in the yard. Wind yanked at the smoke, and they turned up the dirt lane and went toward the fire. His uncles’ silhouettes were visible against the moving smoke and visible within it. Tom thought they were crazy to be outdoors, but then again he didn’t blame them. Their house offered so little comfort. They were doing some kind of work in the barnyard, Audie throwing scrap wood onto the bonfire and Vernon emptying a bucket of water into a vat already steaming over the coals and Creed yanking angrily at the block and tackle that hung from the beam over the hayloft door. Smoke and pale steam and the cry of metal gone rusty. They looked like devils, fiercely industrious.

Tom’s father said he hadn’t seen this coming but he guessed they’d arrived just about in time. “You take this platter into the house and come right on back,” he said. “This is going to be educational. You’ll be able to write a school report on this.
What I Did on My Thanksgiving Vacation.”

Tom ran off and slipped into the house with the red rooster gleaming darkly on the stove and slid the platter onto the kitchen table and came running back. His father was leaning against the car and he leaned beside him, hugging himself against the cold. Thinking he was missing the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade for this. They were supposed to have a giant Snoopy balloon this year and everything. The World War One Flying Ace, aloft on his doghouse.

Audie had given off stoking the fire and was just now disappearing behind the shed, dragging a rope. Vernon was spreading canvas tarpaulins on the cold ground. Creed had gotten the block and tackle unstuck and was arranging a big wooden worktable they’d moved out into the yard from the barn. There were knives laid out on it and shears and big bent scrapers that looked like tools meant for performing dentistry on a race of giants.

Audie emerged from behind the shed backward, pulling a spotted hog. The hog didn’t want to come and it weighed a good bit more than he did but he was determined. Slowly he mastered it. The ground was frozen solid and slick in places and he used it to his advantage, placing his feet with care and yanking on the rope when the hog’s hooves were gathered over particularly perilous and glassy spots. Eventually the resistance drained out of the beast and it came along doglike. As if this were its own idea after all.

The hog was curious about the bonfire and curious about the table and curious about everything. It cocked a gleaming demonic eye toward the snapping flames and thrust its snout under the first tarp it came to. Whuffling, raising up the canvas with its hot breath. Audie yanked hard to keep it moving toward where Vernon and Creed stood holding two ends of the rope that hung down from the block and tackle. Creed had tied a loop of chain to his end and Vernon was poised as if to climb his, reaching up. They stood waiting, wordlessly urging their brother on.

“You much for bacon?” DeAlton asked his son.

No answer.

“I just love it myself. I can’t ever seem to get enough.”

Tom breathed through an open mouth, pushing out pale smoke into the smoky air. He took his arms from around himself and reached down toward his pockets for his mittens but missed and kept on going instead, entranced and mindless, as Audie drew near to his brothers. The boy tensed and held his arms flat to his sides and pushed back against the car door with his shoulders and his hands. His fingers and his palms were damp with dread, and in the cold they stuck to the frozen door a little. Flesh against ungiving metal.

Audie brought the hog near to his brothers and Creed slipped the chain over one hind leg and drew it tight. Audie dropped the useless rope and hastened without a word to Vernon’s side. Creed stepped away backward, toward the table, around buckets of lye and ash and a barrel half full of salt. His movements had about them a strange disembodied grace. Vernon stood on tiptoe and hove on the dangling rope and as he reached the bottom of his stroke Audie stretched up and grabbed on above him and he hove in turn and thus they went on straining, hand over hand, a pair of old salts raising sail. Up went the hog, thrashing. Deceived, furious, disoriented, it screamed but not for long. Creed rolled back his sleeve and took up a straight knife and stepped toward the beast’s swaying bulk like a duelist or a dancer, and with one thrust he drove the blade beneath the breastbone to sever the unseen artery. He drew back his hand and his arm red. Vernon tied off the rope. Audie watched, vibrating. The hog lived briefly while its hot blood drained away, spattering and streaming, pooling onto the frozen dirt and warming it and merging with it. Creed dipped boiling water from the vat and sat the dipper on the table and let it cool a little and then poured it out over his red arm and rolled his sleeve back down, satisfied. There would be some waiting now.

DeAlton tipped his hat to his brothers-in-law and said he’d love to stay all day, but they had to get going. They were expected over at the Wampsville Waldorf. He said he would pass their greetings on to their sister.