Out of the Woods: Stories

Target Practice

Ray set a log on the chopping block and swung the heavy maul. The seasoned ash split easily. He switched to the hatchet and cut thin strips of kindling that curved around knots and fell to the ground. The effort loosened a tension that had become habit since his return to the hills. He’d left Kentucky several years ago and now he wished he’d stayed on the assembly line at the Chrysler plant in Detroit.

The house didn’t have a bathroom and his wood-stove leaked smoke indoors. The clay dirt wouldn’t hold a garden. His wife had left him and Ray was too embarrassed to tell anyone.

A truck ground into a lower gear and Ray recognized the sound of the trashman’s pickup. Once a month everyone on the hill left money in a jar on top of their garbage cans. Ray’s father, Franklin, was the only person who made the trashman walk to his house and ask him for the money.

Three years back, Franklin quit work and began staying at home. His wife was dead. A neighbor brought him groceries. Twice a day he went outside to chop wood, though he had a gas furnace. Split cordwood was stacked high around his house. He hadn’t been off the hill in three years. As the neighbors said, Franklin had a funny turn to him.

The trash truck sprayed gravel climbing the steep bank of Ray’s driveway. Ray dropped the hatchet and walked to the pickup.

“Chopping wood?” the trashman said.

“Can’t get enough.”

“Hear ol’ Franklin’s got a regular sawmill full.”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “I’m planning to raid him the first dark night.”

The trashman laughed and showed Ray a semiautomatic rifle. It was old and plain.

“You’ll need this,” he said. “Swapped a dog for a VCR and got this to boot. Take twenty for it.”

Ray shook his head.

“Here,” the trashman said, “see how it shoots.”

Ray took the rifle. He opened the breech and saw a bullet. He was truly home — a man he barely knew had passed him a loaded weapon.

The trashman pointed at the slope behind the house.

“Hit that stump up yonder,” he said.

Ray peered down the barrel. He put the stump in the sight and squeezed the trigger. The rifle made a sharp crack and in the same second a bullet smacked the poplar stump. Birds lifted from the brush and sound stopped. Ray suddenly wanted the gun.

“Don’t know if I got twenty,” Ray said.

“Clean it up and it’s a forty-dollar gun.”

“See that milkweed pod?”

The trashman nodded, a barely perceptible move of his head. Ray aimed and deliberately missed.

“Sights ain’t right,” he said. “Give you ten.”

The trashman spat in the dirt. He took the gun, climbed in his truck, and started the engine. He jerked his chin to Ray.

“Take fifteen,” the trashman said.

“Throw in some shells?”

The trashman nodded and Ray went in the house for money. The trashman tucked the cash in his shirt pocket without counting it. He flipped his cigarette in the yard.

“Franklin run me off for that once,” the trashman said.

“What?”

“Throwing a butt in his yard.”

“Don’t doubt it,” Ray said. He aimed the rifle up the hillside. “He’s run me off a few times, too.”

The trashman thought that was funny.

“Run you off,” he said. “Your own daddy.”

Ray let his face turn blank and cold, staring at the man until he backed the truck down the drive and out the ridge. Ray fired several times at the stump, adjusting the sight to correct the slight pull to the left. He aimed at the milkweed pod. It exploded in a burst of feathery white that drifted on the breeze.

In Detroit he went to a bar after work where other Kentuckians drank. Ray had met his wife there. She was from Hazel Park, a neighborhood so full of Appalachians it was called Hazel-tucky. Her parents had headed north for work in the sixties. Having grown up with stories of the hills, she’d been enthusiastic about her return until winter in the cold house. They slept on a couchbed with an electric blanket. There was a separate control for each side of the blanket and Ray kept the heat low on her side, hoping she’d roll his way in the night. Instead, she wore long johns. At the first sign of spring, she called a cousin who came for her. Ray didn’t blame her. He only wished she’d talked to him first.

He went inside and called his father’s house. After several rings, his father grunted into the phone.

“I just bought a rifle,” Ray said. “A repeater. Want to come and try it?”

“I don’t know,” his father said.

After a long silence, Ray said good-bye and kicked the phone across the floor. He figured his father would view the call as weakness. Franklin had not visited Ray since he’d been back, although they lived on the same hill, at opposite ridges.

Ray looked through the window at tufts of grass struggling in the clay dirt. It was his dirt and his grass and his house. The dream of all Kentuckians in Detroit was to come home for good. Now that he was back, he realized that people here wanted to be left alone. There was more community at the Chrysler plant than on his home hill.

Ten minutes after the phone call, Ray was surprised to see his father climb the gravel driveway and stop at the boundary ditch. The sun pushed Franklin’s shadow across the yard. He wore a hat, long coat, and boots. He was carrying a rifle. Ray shook his head. He should have figured his father would visit if he could come armed.

Ray slipped ten rounds into the ammo slot and tipped the rifle, hearing the bullets slide down the track. He chambered a final slug and clicked the dull red button to lock the trigger. He went outside. Franklin stared at him from the property’s edge, and Ray realized that he was waiting for a greeting. This was Ray’s land. It was on him to speak first.

A dog began barking along the ridge. Another answered from down the hill. Ray recognized each voice, knew their owners. A crow called from the tree line. Franklin and Ray watched each other as the hounds continued to bark.

“Dogs,” Ray said.

“Ought to be shot.”

“There’s a flat spot on top of the hill,” Ray said. “It’s a good place for us.”

He tipped his head to an old logging trail thick with horseweed, and waited for his father. Franklin went around the woodpile. He picked up the hatchet.

“Shouldn’t ought to leave this laying around,” he said. “Somebody might get hurt.”

He held the hatchet in front of his face as if aiming at Ray. In a swift motion, Franklin sank the blade into a log and stepped past his son. He began to climb the hill, grunting with effort.

Ray left the path for a shortcut. He crossed the ditch and used saplings to pull himself up the slope. Sawbriars raked his clothes, bit into his arms and legs. He was snared and his father was already nearing the top. It would take time to work himself free, or he could plunge forward and hope none stabbed too deep. Ray swept his arm at an angle against the thorns. A thick briar whipped the air and tore his jaw. Squatting, he wiggled like a pup beneath the interlaced overhang and crawled out.

His father leaned on a knee, his breath coming hard. Behind him a nuthatch walked headfirst down a pine trunk. Woodsmoke drifted the air. The dogs were quiet.

“Looks like you got waylaid,” Franklin said.

Ray touched the welt and wiped blood on his pants.

“Just briars is all.”

Ray walked to the end of the clearing where a caved-in pony pen sat among walnut trees. He placed four nuts on a rotted board, wondering if his father’s rifle was loaded. The wind moved sassafras smell along the ridge. A gust rippled Franklin’s overcoat and he pushed it awkwardly, reminding Ray of a woman holding down a skirt. He could not recall ever seeing his father anywhere but in his own house or yard. Now, against the barren hillside, Franklin looked vulnerable.

“Headaches staying gone?” Ray said.

“Yes. How’s your wife?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Not too dirty?”

Ray frowned. His father had always been extremely polite about his daughter-in-law. When Ray brought her to visit, he’d picked lint from her clothes and complimented her hair.

“She needing a shower?” Franklin said.

“Couple more weeks and the bathroom’ll be done. Everything takes longer than I think.”

“Tell her to come over and get cleaned up.”

Ray waited for the invitation to include him, but his father was checking his rifle, and Ray understood that he wasn’t really welcome. The house he’d grown up in was no longer home. The whole hill had changed. Town water meant anybody could shove a trailer out a ridge. It was the same as a city, but Detroit was more honest. It didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was — a place where a man could get shot over nothing.

Ray placed an open box of ammunition on a stump. Franklin tugged the bolt and slipped a bullet from his pocket into the breech. A thread clung to the exposed lead.

“Use mine,” Ray said. “Copper casing’ll keep your barrel from nastying itself up.”

“Stayed gone five years and still yet talking like a hillbilly.”

“Beats a redneck.”

“What’s wrong with that? A man who works the land gets sunburnt. My dad’s neck was red his whole life.”

Franklin looked across the hollow at the pink dogwood dotting the early spring woods. A red-tailed hawk soared beyond a far ridge.

“You and my dad,” Franklin said. “You two would’ve killed each other. See that hawk. He could shoot those out of the air with an army pistol.”

“Hard shot.”

“He could throw a hatchet like a tomahawk. Make it stick right where he wanted. Said he learned it off his granddaddy, who’d fought that way.”

“Pretty tough.”

“No, he was what they call a late homosexual. He never liked me much.”

Ray followed the hawk’s flight above the hill. He didn’t believe his father. Franklin’s dad had died young, and it occurred to Ray that since Franklin had never been an adult son, maybe he didn’t know how to deal with his own.

“What makes you say that about him?” Ray said.

“Right before he died,” Franklin said, “he started in wearing flowerdy shirts and going to town at night. Somebody sent roses to the funeral home. There wasn’t no card.”

“Maybe he had a girlfriend.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Franklin said. “I ain’t nothing but the middleman.”

“You’re more than that.”

“If you’d stayed gone, I wouldn’t have to be anybody.”

Franklin brought the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The sudden noise echoed between the hills and faded down the hollow. Pieces of shattered walnut flew into the brush. He ejected the shell, slipped a fresh bullet in, and shot the second nut.

“Your shot,” he said.

Ray nodded, surprised by Franklin’s accuracy and the ease with which he handled the gun. The streaked barrel needed blueing, and the burnished walnut stock would be hard to find these days. Franklin kept it behind a door, wrapped in plastic, with a glove covering the barrel’s end. Ray had assumed it was a relic, not a tool Franklin could still use.

Ray centered the wedge in the near sight’s notch. He relaxed his shoulders, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. At the breath’s end, he tightened his finger on the trigger. The walnut vanished in a shower of shell. The automatic action ejected the spent cartridge and forced another bullet into the chamber. Ray aimed with care. The barrel swayed and he moved it too far, then overcompensated the other way. His hands were sweaty. He lowered the rifle and blinked into the woods, focusing on the buds of a crab apple tree. A breeze carried its scent his way. Ray raised the rifle, aimed, and shot. Nutshell scattered in the bushes.

He went across the clearing and placed more nuts on the board. As he walked back to his father, Franklin upended the rifle and slipped the barrel in his mouth. He held it steady, looking down the sights in reverse. He hunched his shoulders and bowed his back to accommodate the weapon’s length.

Ray knew he couldn’t get to him in time. If he made a grab for the rifle, he’d knock his father’s teeth out, and Franklin would get mad about that. Ray was struck by a sudden, terrible thought — a shotgun was better for the job.

Franklin inhaled through his nose. He closed his eyes and slowly let his breath go into the gun. His cheeks sank as he blew. He took another breath and did it again. He lowered the rifle and offered it to Ray.

“Barrel’s clean now,” Franklin said.

Ray crossed the ground to him. As they switched rifles, there was a brief moment when Ray held each gun. He wanted to run down the hill and throw them in the creek. Instead, he released the rifle, unable to resist his father’s pull.

“Never shot an automatic before,” Franklin said.

He sighted on the first walnut and fired rapidly eight times. Each shot made a quick noise that echoed along the ridge in one long sound until the trigger clicked against the empty chamber. Franklin’s face was flushed. He was smiling.

“Always wanted to do that,” he said.

Ray aimed his father’s heavier gun. The walnut faded into the mud and seemed to move. He lowered the rifle and shut his eyes, still seeing the gun in his father’s mouth. Ray wondered if Franklin had done it just to rattle his aim. When Ray opened his eyes, his father was waiting and Ray shot too fast. The walnut didn’t stir.

“I never miss with that,” Franklin said. “It was my dad’s gun and his dad’s before that.”

“With any luck,” Ray said, “all my children will be girls.”

“I wasn’t that lucky.”

“Neither was your dad.”

“No,” Franklin said. “Our family’s full of hard-luck fathers. You know how mine died?”

“Stroke, you always said.”

“No. He ate his gun.”

His voice was casual, as if they were discussing weather. Every time Franklin talked about his dad, he told a different story. Ray had stopped trying to figure out the truth.

They traded rifles and reloaded. Ray decided to tell him that his wife was gone. They were in similar shape — the last men in their family, living alone on the hill.

“I’m glad you came over,” Ray said. “Why do you stay away from me?”

“Because you act like my dad.”

“I ain’t him.”

“You can hurt me just as bad.”

“I won’t,” Ray said.

“You don’t know that.”

Franklin stared at his son. Ray knew that his father would never look away, that if Ray didn’t break the stare, they’d stay there until dark. Ray grinned and turned his body. He didn’t stop looking at his father, but slowly pivoted until he was out of sight.

Franklin began walking downhill, his coat flaring behind his stiff back. Ray knew he was very angry. He followed him off the ridge, wondering why things between them had to go bad so fast. When Ray went north, Franklin had criticized him for leaving Kentucky, and Ray thought that buying property and coming home married would make his father like him. Instead, Franklin told him it was stupid to throw away a good job in Detroit.

Mist blurred the ragged seam where the treeline met the sky. This was the highest spot on the hill. It belonged to Ray. He thought he should be proud. Instead, he missed the Chrysler plant. It was dangerous and dirty, but Ray always knew where he stood with people. He could get his old job back. The guys on the line would be glad to see him.

Franklin was standing behind the woodpile at the bottom of the hill. Ray decided to tell him that his wife had left, and that he was leaving, too. When he came within sound range, Franklin spun very fast, the barrel of his rifle pointing at his son. Ray fired twice. The first bullet went wide but the second one made a hole in the part of his father’s coat that covered his chest.

Ray felt hot but his skin was cold.

Franklin stepped forward. There was an expression of respect on his face, almost as if he approved of his son. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees. He braced his arms on the chopping block. His eyes were clear as glass.

“My daddy made me kneel on rocks,” he said.

He slowly slumped over the chopping block. His hat fell off. The top of his head held a bald spot that was a perfect circle of cleared skin, bright pink. Ray realized that he’d never seen it from above. His own hair was thinning in the same place, following the same pattern. Ray remembered a man with a knife who had tried to rob him outside a bar in Detroit. He’d fought the guy and kept his wallet, and everyone at work told him how stupid it was. Ray had agreed, but he’d reacted without thinking, the same as now.

His father looked as though he was resting, like a child who’d fallen asleep with his head on a table. His shoulders were rising and falling as he breathed. Ray didn’t think there was enough blood to have hit an artery. It wasn’t so bad.

The sound of an engine carried along the ridge, getting louder as the trash truck’s tires spun a rut in the driveway. The trashman leaned out the window. The woodpile blocked his view of Franklin.

“Figured that racket was you,” he said.

Ray nodded. The trashman rubbed his jaw and sucked his lower lip between his teeth. His voice was casual.

“If you want, there’s other stuff I can get. Shotguns. Pistols and such. They might run you more than that rifle. How about a belt buckle with a derringer that clips on and off it? Never know when you need a belly gun.”

Ray considered asking the trashman to help him with Franklin, but decided against it. Assistance from outside the family was the kind of thing that his father would resent. He might hold it against Ray later.

The truck backed down the driveway and Ray hoped the trashman didn’t think his silence was rude. He went in the house for towels to wrap his father’s wound. It was high on his chest, a clean hole. The bleeding had already begun to slow.

Ray drove his car around the woodpile, got out, and studied the situation. It would be easier with a four-door. He could borrow one from his neighbor but he didn’t want to leave his father that long.

He held Franklin under the armpits and gently moved him into the car. Twice he had to go around, climb in the driver’s side, and tug on him. As he circled the car, Ray realized that he’d never touched his father before. He couldn’t remember a hug from him or even a squeeze of his shoulder.

He finally got him wedged inside. Blood was coming from under the towels. It had gotten on Ray’s hands and he wiped them on his pants. He sat in the driver’s seat and rested. Franklin’s face was relaxed, his mouth slightly open. He seemed younger. Ray looked at him for a long time, seeing the pores, the lines beside his mouth, the sagging skin beneath his eyes. It was the first time he had ever looked at his father without being afraid.

Ray loved him.