Stories (2011) (123 page)

As they watched the owl climb into the bright sky and fly
toward the woods, Tom said, “Ain’t nothin’ certain in life, is it?”

“Especially if you’re a mouse,” Deel said.

“Life can be cruel,” Tom said.

“Wasn’t no cruelty in that,” Deel said. “That was survival.
The owl was hungry. Men ain’t like that. They ain’t like other things, ’cept
maybe ants.”

“Ants?”

“Ants and man make war ’cause they can. Man makes all kinds
of proclamations and speeches and gives reasons and such, but at the bottom of
it, we just do it ’cause we want to and can.”

“That’s a hard way to talk,” Tom said.

“Man ain’t happy till he kills everything in his path and
cuts down everything that grows. He sees something wild and beautiful and wants
to hold it down and stab it, punish it ’cause it’s wild. Beauty draws him to
it, and then he kills it.”

“Deel, you got some strange thinkin’,” Tom said.

“Reckon I do.”

“We’re gonna kill so as to have somethin’ to eat, but unlike
the owl, we ain’t eatin’ no mouse. We’re having us a big, fat possum and we’re
gonna cook it with sweet potatoes.”

They watched as the dog ran on ahead of them, into the dark
line of the trees.

* * * *

When they got to the edge of the woods the shadows of the
trees fell over them, and then they were inside the woods, and it was dark in
places with gaps of light where the limbs were thin. They moved toward the gaps
and found a trail and walked down it. As they went, the light faded, and Deel
looked up. A dark cloud had blown in.

Tom said, “Hell, looks like it’s gonna rain. That came out
of nowhere.”

“It’s a runnin’ rain,” Deel said. “It’ll blow in and spit
water and blow out before you can find a place to get dry.”

“Think so?”

“Yeah. I seen rain aplenty, and one comes up like this, it’s
traveling through. That cloud will cry its eyes out and move on, promise you.
It ain’t even got no lightnin’ with it.”

As if in response to Deel’s words it began to rain. No
lightning and no thunder, but the wind picked up and the rain was thick and
cold.

“I know a good place ahead,” Tom said. “We can get under a
tree there, and there’s a log to sit on. I even killed a couple possums there.”

They found the log under the tree, sat down and waited. The
tree was an oak and it was old and big and had broad limbs and thick leaves
that spread out like a canvas. The leaves kept Deel and Tom almost dry.

“That dog’s done gone off deep in the woods,” Deel said, and
laid the shotgun against the log and put his hands on his knees.

“He gets a possum, you’ll hear him. He sounds like a
trumpet.”

Tom shifted the .22 across his lap and looked at Deel, who
was lost in thought. “Sometimes,” Deel said, “when we was over there, it would
rain, and we’d be in trenches, waiting for somethin’ to happen, and the
trenches would flood with water, and there was big ole rats that would swim in
it, and we was so hungry from time to time, we killed them and ate them.”

“Rats?”

“They’re same as squirrels. They don’t taste as good,
though. But a squirrel ain’t nothin’ but a tree rat.”

“Yeah? You sure?”

“I am.”

Tom shifted on the log, and when he did Deel turned toward
him. Tom still had the .22 lying across his lap, but when Deel looked, the
barrel was raised in his direction. Deel started to say somethin’, like, “Hey,
watch what you’re doin’,” but in that instant he knew what he should have known
all along. Tom was going to kill him. He had always planned to kill him. From
the day Mary Lou had met him in the field on horseback, they were anticipating
the rattle of his dead bones. It’s why they had kept him from town. He was
already thought dead, and if no one thought different, there was no crime to
consider.

“I knew and I didn’t know,” Deel said.

“I got to, Deel. It ain’t nothin’ personal. I like you fine.
You been good to me. But I got to do it. She’s worth me doin’ somethin’ like
this…Ain’t no use reaching for that shotgun, I got you sighted; twenty two
ain’t much, but it’s enough.”

“Winston,” Deel said, “he ain’t my boy, is he?”

“No.”

“He’s got a birthmark on his face, and I remember now when
you was younger, I seen that same birthmark. I forgot but now I remember. It’s
under your hair, ain’t it?”

Tom didn’t say anything. He had scooted back on the log.
This put him out from under the edge of the oak canopy, and the rain was
washing over his hat and plastering his long hair to the sides of his face.

“You was with my wife back then, when you was eighteen, and
I didn’t even suspect it,” Deel said, and smiled as if he thought there was
humor in it. “I figured you for a big kid and nothin’ more.”

“You’re too old for her,” Tom said, sighting down the rifle.
“And you didn’t never give her no real attention. I been with her mostly since
you left. I just happened to be gone when you come home. Hell, Deel, I got
clothes in the trunk there, and you didn’t even see ’em. You might know the
weather, but you damn sure don’t know women, and you don’t know men.”

“I don’t want to know them, so sometimes I don’t know what I
know. And men and women, they ain’t all that different…You ever killed a man,
Tom?”

“You’ll be my first.”

Deel looked at Tom, who was looking at him along the length
of the .22.

“It ain’t no easy thing to live with, even if you don’t know
the man,” Deel said. “Me, I killed plenty. They come to see me when I close my
eyes. Them I actually seen die, and them I imagined died.”

“Don’t give me no booger stories. I don’t reckon you’re
gonna come see me when you’re dead. I don’t reckon that at all.”

It had grown dark because of the rain, and Tom’s shape was
just a shape. Deel couldn’t see his features.

“Tom—”

The .22 barked. The bullet struck Deel in the head. He
tumbled over the log and fell where there was rain in his face. He thought just
before he dropped down into darkness: It’s so cool and clean.

* * * *

Deel looked over the edge of the trench where there was a
slab of metal with a slot to look through. All he could see was darkness except
when the lightning ripped a strip in the sky and the countryside lit up.
Thunder banged so loudly he couldn’t tell the difference between it and cannon
fire, which was also banging away, dropping great explosions near the breast
works and into the zigzagging trench, throwing men left and right like dolls.

Then he saw shapes. They moved across the field like a
column of ghosts. In one great run they came, closer and closer. He poked his
rifle through the slot and took half-ass aim and then the command came and he
fired. Machine guns began to burp. The field lit up with their constant red
pops. The shapes began to fall. The faces of those in front of the rushing line
brightened when the machine guns snapped, making their features devil red. When
the lightning flashed they seemed to vibrate across the field. The cannons
roared and thunder rumbled and the machine guns coughed and the rifles cracked
and men screamed.

Then the remainder of the Germans were across the field and
over the trench ramifications and down into the trenches themselves.
Hand-to-hand fighting began. Deel fought with his bayonet. He jabbed at a
German soldier so small his shoulders failed to fill out his uniform. As the
German hung on the thrust of Deel’s blade, clutched at the rifle barrel, flares
blazed along the length of the trench, and in that moment Deel saw the
soldier’s chin had bits of blond fuzz on it. The expression the kid wore was
that of someone who had just realized this was not a glorious game after all.

And then Deel coughed.

He coughed and began to choke. He tried to lift up, but
couldn’t, at first. Then he sat up and the mud dripped off him and the rain
pounded him. He spat dirt from his mouth and gasped at the air. The rain washed
his face clean and pushed his hair down over his forehead. He was uncertain how
long he sat there in the rain, but in time, the rain stopped. His head hurt. He
lifted his hand to it and came away with his fingers covered in blood. He felt
again, pushing his hair aside. There was a groove across his forehead. The shot
hadn’t hit him solid; it had cut a path across the front of his head. He had
bled a lot, but now the bleeding had stopped. The mud in the grave had filled
the wound and plugged it. The shallow grave had most likely been dug earlier in
the day. It had all been planned out, but the rain was unexpected. The rain
made the dirt damp, and in the dark Tom had not covered him well enough. Not
deep enough. Not firm enough. And his nose was free. He could breathe. The
ground was soft and it couldn’t hold him. He had merely sat up and the dirt had
fallen aside.

Deel tried to pull himself out of the grave, but was too
weak, so he twisted in the loose dirt and lay with his face against the ground.
When he was strong enough to lift his head, the rain had passed, the clouds had
sailed away, and the moon was bright.

Deel worked himself out of the grave and crawled across the
ground toward the log where he and Tom had sat. His shotgun was lying behind
the log where it had fallen. Tom had either forgotten the gun or didn’t care.
Deel was too weak to pick it up.

Deel managed himself onto the log and sat there, his head
held down, watching the ground. As he did, a snake crawled over his boots and
twisted its way into the darkness of the woods. Deel reached down and picked up
the shotgun. It was damp and cold. He opened it and the shells popped out. He
didn’t try to find them in the dark. He lifted the barrel, poked it toward the
moonlight, and looked through it. Clear. No dirt in the barrels. He didn’t try
to find the two shells that had popped free. He loaded two fresh ones from his
ammo bag. He took a deep breath. He picked up some damp leaves and pressed them
against the wound and they stuck. He stood up. He staggered toward his house,
the blood-stuck leaves decorating his forehead as if he were some kind of
forest god.

* * * *

It was not long before the stagger became a walk. Deel broke free of the woods
and onto the paththat crossed the field. With the rain gone it was bright again
and a light wind had begun to blow. The earth smelled rich, the way it had that
night in France when it rained and the lightning flashed and the soldiers came
and the damp smell of the earth blended with the biting smell of gunpowder and
the odor of death.

He walked until he could see the house, dark like blight in
the center of the field. The house appeared extremely small then, smaller than
before; it was as if all that had ever mattered to him continued to shrink. The
bitch dog came out to meet him but he ignored her. She slunk off and trotted
toward the trees he had left behind.

He came to the door, and then his foot was kicking against
it. The door cracked and creaked and slammed loudly backward. Then Deel was
inside, walking fast. He came to the bedroom door, and it was open. He went
through. The window was up and the room was full of moonlight, so brilliant he
could see clearly, and what he saw was Tom and Mary Lou lying together in
mid-act, and in that moment he thought of his brief time with her and how she
had let him have her so as not to talk about Tom anymore. He thought about how
she had given herself to protect what she had with Tom.

Something moved inside Deel and he recognized it as the core
of what man was. He stared at them and they saw him and froze in action. Mary
Lou said, “No,” and Tom leaped up from between her legs, all the way to his
feet. Naked as nature, he stood for a moment in the middle of the bed, and then
plunged through the open window like a fox down a hole. Deel raised the shotgun
and fired and took out part of the windowsill, but Tom was out and away. Mary
Lou screamed. She threw her legs to the side of the bed and made as if to
stand, but couldn’t. Her legs were too weak. She sat back down and started

yelling his name. Something called from deep inside Deel, a
long call, deep and dark and certain. A bloody leaf dripped off his forehead.
He raised the shotgun and fired. The shot tore into her breast and knocked her
sliding across the bed, pushing the back of her head against the wall beneath
the window.

Deel stood looking at her. Her eyes were open, her mouth
slightly parted. He watched her hair and the sheets turn dark.

He broke open the shotgun and reloaded the double barrel
from his ammo sack and went to the door across the way, the door to the small
room that was the boy’s. He kicked it open. When he came in, the boy, wearing
his nightshirt, was crawling through the window. He shot at him, but the best
he might have done was riddle the bottom of his feet with pellets. Like his
father, Winston was quick through a hole.

Deel stepped briskly to the open window and looked out. The
boy was crossing the moonlit field like a jackrabbit, running toward a dark
stretch of woods in the direction of town. Deel climbed through the window and
began to stride after the boy. And then he saw Tom. Tom was off to the right,
running toward where there used to be a deep ravine and a blackberry growth.
Deel went after him. He began to trot. He could imagine himself with the other
soldiers crossing a field, waiting for a bullet to end it all.

Deel began to close in. Being barefoot was working against
Tom. He was limping. Deel thought that Tom’s feet were most likely full of
grass burrs and were wounded by stones. Tom’s moon shadow stumbled and rose, as
if it were his soul trying to separate itself from its host.

The ravine and the blackberry bushes were still there. Tom
came to the ravine, found a break in the vines, and went over the side of it
and down. Deel came shortly after, dropped into the ravine. It was damp there
and smelled fresh from the recent rain. Deel saw Tom scrambling up the other
side of the ravine, into the dark rise of blackberry bushes on the far side. He
strode after him, and when he came to the spot where Tom had gone, he saw Tom
was hung in the berry vines. The vines had twisted around his arms and head and
they held him as surely as if he were nailed there. The more Tom struggled, the
harder the thorns bit and the better the vines held him. Tom twisted and rolled
and soon he was facing in the direction of Deel, hanging just above him on the bank
of the ravine, supported by the blackberry vines, one arm outstretched, the
other pinned against his abdomen, wrapped up like a Christmas present from
nature, a gift to what man and the ants liked to do best. He was breathing
heavily.