The Good Brother

2

Five days a week Virgil drove to Rocksalt for work, crossing water at hard turns as the road followed Clay Creek through the hills. In summer the creek dried. Men filled trucks with the flat rock and hauled it to dirt roads. Spring rains returned the rock to the creek.

The road’s official name was County 218, but everyone called it The Road. If they needed to be specific, people referred to it as The Main Road. It had two directions — toward town, and away from town. Every turnoff was a dead-end hollow.

Virgil pulled into the parking lot for maintenance workers at Rocksalt Community College. He left the keys in the ignition to keep from losing them. On one side of the lot were the blue trucks that the crew bosses drove. They were promoted from the crew and usually held the job until death or retirement. Men on salary wore a blue uniform with their first name sewn above the pocket. Virgil was due. Since working full time, he’d put in one year as a utility man, floating from job to job, and three years on the garbage truck. He hoped for a promotion by spring. Virgil dearly wanted his name on a shirt.

The cars in the lot were ten to twenty years old and American-made. They sat low on one side or high on the other. Mufflers hung by wires. Some cars had cardboard taped in place of missing windows. Several were two-toned from salvaged doors, hoods, and quarter-panels that matched the make and model but not the color. The back seats were filled with tools and toys.

Virgil joined a crowd of men in caps who circled a car, drinking coffee from thermos cups and smoking cigarettes. A pup sat on cardboard in the front seat. Rundell Day leaned against the hood. Hair grew from his ears like gulley brush.

“By God, boys,” said a man, “that’s one set-up pup, ain’t it.”

“I had his job I’d quit mine,” said another.

“I’d not give a man two hundred dollars for a pup,” said another.

“That ain’t just any old dog you’re looking at. Hey Rundell, what’s it do for that kind of money? Tricks? Roll over? Punch the clock for you, what?”

“It’ll flat tree,” Rundell said.

“Shit, that dog couldn’t tree a leaf.”

“I ain’t for sure that is a dog, boys. My opinion, that’s a possum in a dog suit.”

“It might have some possum to it.”

“Boys, I don’t know, now. I believe what it looks like ain’t possum a-tall. Take a good long gander now. See them ears. See that mouth hanging open whopper-jawed. Boys, if you was to ask me, that’s one dog looks a lot like Rundell Day,”

“Shoot, I see it.”

“What are you doing, Rundell? Trying to get your kin on the job? Best take it in to see the Big Boss, ain’t you.”

“It’s a dog,” Rundell said. “And it’ll out tree ary a dog you fellers got.”

“Boys, watch out now. Rundell says it’s a dog.”

“Can he guarantee it?”

“Two-hundred-dollar dog ort to live in a tree.”

“I got a three-legged dog that’ll out-tree that pup.”

“By God, there’s something to brag on. A man keeps a three-legged dog around.”

“It’s the kids’ dog. Old lady won’t let me kill it.”

“What else won’t she let you do?”

“She don’t much care.”

“Listen at him. His own wife don’t care. By God, mine was to hear me say that, she’d cut every ball on me off.”

“She’d not need but a butter knife.”

“Time is it?”

“It’s time.”

The men began moving toward the main building where the time clock was. Rundell opened the passenger door and the pup sprang to him, paws sliding on the vinyl seat. Rundell leaned his face for the pup to lick.

“You be good, now,” Rundell said. “Don’t you pay no attention to them boys. You’re a good old dog, yes sir, a good old dog.”

He kissed the dog on the face and locked the door. He and Virgil walked across the lot. Surrounding the town were high hills, their tops in mist.

“You really give two hundred for it?” Virgil said.

“Why, no.”

“What did you give for it, Rundell?”

“You in the dog buying business?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll tell you, Virge, but don’t say nothing. I found that pup on the road this morning.”

“Just giving them something to think on?”

“When I go to sell it, I’ll get a hundred and they’ll think it’s a real deal.”

They opened the blue door of the maintenance building. The men were strung in a line down the hall, at the end of which hung the time clock. It ticked and the first man dipped his card into the slot and went out the door. The line moved forward.

As each man left the building, he went to the crew shop where the boss assigned the day’s work. The hierarchy placed electricians at the top, followed by carpenters, painters, landscapers, and garbagemen. Off to the side and on their own were the custodians of individual buildings, quiet men who moved slowly, ignored by students and faculty. Virgil headed for the garbage dock. He cut through the main building instead of going around, walked down a hall, and came out a seldom-used door. He closed it very quietly. He stepped around the corner and stomped his feet. Two men turned quickly, half-rising from their seats. Footsteps from that direction could only mean the Big Boss.

“Don’t get up, boys,” Virgil said. “I know you all are studying on important stuff.”

Rundell spat coffee. “I wish to hell you’d not do that, Virge. Damn near woke Dewey here up.”

“I ain’t asleep,” Dewey said.

“You were asleep and you know it. You’re the only man I ever seen who can sleep standing up.”

“I don’t talk the wax out of a man’s ears,” Dewey said. “Now let me alone.”

Virgil opened the door to the garbage crew’s tiny office. Inside was a desk, three chairs, and an industrial coffee machine that had been salvaged from the trash. He filled a styrofoam cup and went outside.

“You’re on wheel, Virge,” Rundell said.

Rundell had run the garbage crew for twenty-three years and divided all aspects of the work equally. Four men could fit in the cab of the truck, and each week they rotated among driver, cabman, outside man, and gearshift man. Rundell was set to retire in a year and he’d marked Virgil as his successor.

“Where’s Taylor at?” Virgil said.

“Ain’t here yet,” Dewey said.

“I can see that. But is he on the job?”

“Well.” Dewey gave him a sly look. “His card got punched.”

“Then we got to wait on that sorry son of a bitch.”

“He’ll be here.”

“Now I ain’t trying to tell you what to do, Dewey,” Rundell said. “But you’d best watch punching him in that way. If you know he’s coming late, it ain’t nothing. But that Taylor, he’s likely to be in the jailhouse as in the bed. Get caught fooling with his card and you’re out of a job. I’ve seen it happen, boys. More than once.”

Across the back of the lot, Taylor came slipping through the gate.

“Look yonder,” Virgil said. “If it ain’t the old girl hisself. Watch this.”

He ducked into the office and hid all the styrofoam cups but one. He used a finishing nail to make a series of small holes around its brim and set the cup by the coffee machine.

Taylor came slowly across the lot, walking in a stiff way to keep his head level. His clothes were wrinkled and dirty. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and his lips were cracked.

“Boys,” he said. “Somebody shoot me. I can’t stand this no longer.”

He went in the office and closed the door. He kept a half-pint of whisky inside, but as long as Rundell didn’t see a man drinking on the job, he could deny it. Taylor came out of the office upright. The whisky had given his face some color, his eyes a little life. “Who’s got a smoke?” he said. Dewey tossed him a cigarette and Taylor put it in his mouth and pulled out a Zippo. He leaned his head away and tilted the lighter at an angle opposite his head. The flame shot six inches into the air. Taylor sucked hard and capped the lighter. “My hat on fire?”

The men chuckled and shook their heads.

“Boys,” he said. “I feel like I been shot at and missed, shit at and hit.”

He sipped the coffee. It came out of the holes onto his chin and a few seconds passed before he registered the burn. “Goddam you son of a blue-balled bitches. Every one of you!”

He jerked the cup away from his face, sloshing coffee onto his hand. He passed it quickly to his other hand, but held on to the coffee because of the whisky he’d dumped in it. He lifted the cup and bit off part of the rim to get rid of the holes. He spat the styrofoam and drank, lifting his eyebrows to Rundell over the cup.

“What are we waiting on?” he said. “Time to hit a lick, ain’t it.”

Dewey smiled, dark gaps speckling his mouth where teeth should be. Rundell clamped his lips like two bricks because his laugh was a high-pitched giggle that embarrassed him. Taylor choked his laughter off, lifting his hand to his forehead, his face twisted from the pain.

“Don’t,” he said. “Damn it. You boys are harder on a man than a preacher. I knew I shouldn’t have come in.”

“Why did you?” Virgil said.

“Hell, I wrecked my car last night. I woke up still in the ditch and I was closer to work than the house. I just come in for a drink to feel better.”

The men laughed on the cement dock, blowing white gusts of breath into the chilly air. The sun showed above the eastern hill. After a few minutes, they began drifting toward the truck. Virgil climbed behind the wheel, marveling at the way they moved as a group with no clear sign from Rundell, like a flock of geese. Other crew bosses had rituals that told everyone it was time, such as looking at a watch, or standing, or simply a nod. With Rundell it was an attitude. He assumed an air of resignation, as if he didn’t want to be the one to say, but he had to, which prevented him from having to speak at all.

Virgil used his old driver’s license to clear frost from the inside of the windshield. The dashboard was covered with items of potential value that the men had found in the trash, including a headless Barbie doll and a one-legged GI Joe that Taylor put into sexual positions. Virgil shifted to first and the truck jerked forward.

Taylor finished his coffee. He held the brim with his teeth so that the cup covered his nose and mouth. He nuzzled Dewey, grunting like a hog. Dewey slapped the cup away, flinging coffee dregs through the cab.

“Goddam it, Dewdrop,” said Taylor. “You got something against hogs?”

“No. Just that you ain’t one’s all.”

“You saying I ain’t a hog?”

Dewey nodded.

“Then what am I?”

“You know what you are.”

“He’s a cuckolder,” Rundell said.

“Did you call me a cuckolder?” Taylor said.

“Sure did.”

“Think I ort to let him get away with that, Dewey? Calling me a cuckolder, by God.”

“I don’t know,” Dewey said. “Maybe not if he called you it twice.”

“He’s a cuckolder,” Rundell said.

“He done it,” Taylor said.

“I’d not let him call you three cuckolders,” Dewey said. “He’s lucky it ain’t me he’s calling one. I ain’t never held nobody’s but my own.”

“No,” Virgil said. “The world’s lucky you ain’t one.”

“What is one anyhow?” Taylor said.

“Well,” Rundell said. “A cuckolder is what you’re give up to be half the time.”

“Hell, it must mean drink whisky,” Taylor said.

“No,” Rundell said. “It more or less means a man who fucks another man’s wife.”

Virgil rounded a curve and junk slid along the dashboard. Last year’s leaves still clung to the hardwoods, while the maples were beginning to bud. Ground fog rose as if drawn by a fan.

“Well,” Virgil said. “Nobody here’s married except Rundell, and I’d say Taylor ain’t got him worried too bad.”

“That’s right,” Rundell said. “The old lady’d shoot him for looking at her funny.”

“What does she use to shoot with?” Taylor said.

“Ever what’s laying handy.”

“Good woman,” Taylor said. “They mostly favor them small calibers that ain’t good for naught but beer cans and squirrel.”

“You know why that is?” Rundell said.

“Weaker sex takes a puny pistol, I guess.”

“For a man says he knows as many women as you do, you sure don’t know a lot about them.”

“What are you saying?”

“Reason women shoot little guns,” Rundell said, “is it’s men who teach them to shoot. Not many a man wants to give his woman a gun that’ll put him down. Me, I trust my wife and she can handle any gun in the county.”

Virgil turned at a long building that housed married students. A narrow lane behind it held rows of overflowing garbage cans. The men left the truck and Virgil eased forward until Dewey signaled him to stop. He and Taylor emptied cans into the hopper.

Rundell walked ahead of the truck, checking the garbage for buckets of paint and old motor oil, neither of which they picked up. His primary job was to set the pace. This was dependent on the condition of the men — the worse off they were, the faster the pace. The trick, he’d explained to Virgil, was in figuring out how to cover your own ass while covering the men’s, too. That was the whole key to being crew boss, he’d said, that and making them work.

Virgil had spent two years taking courses while working part-time at maintenance, but hadn’t fit in with the students. An hour after sitting in a classroom, he’d be on his knees in front of the same building, painting the curb yellow. The majority of students came from the surrounding counties and tried to conceal their hill-bred traits, a doomed enterprise since everyone recognized not only the habits but the attempts to hide them. Virgil’s presence was a reminder of what they wanted to leave behind.

His decision to quit school and stay in garbage perplexed everyone. What Virgil enjoyed was that no trash man could pretend he was more than what he was. Education was like a posthole digger, a good tool, very expensive, but worthless unless you needed pestholes dug.

Rundell was moving fast and it wasn’t just because of Taylor being drunk. Emptying dumpsters was the sole chore for the day, which meant the sooner they finished, the sooner they could loaf. Garbage was impossible to fake like other jobs, because once it was picked up, you were done. As Dewey said, “If folk don’t want to put out their garbage, you can’t stop them.”

People left the apartment building for school. Each time a woman drove past, Taylor smiled and waved, but couldn’t draw a glance. An old Nova went past, its big engine rumbling. A suspension kit had been added and the back end rocked gently over dips in the gravel road. Chrome mags flashed silver inside each tire.

“A loud-looker, ain’t she,” Taylor said.

“Wonder what’s under the hood.”

“I was talking about the driver,” Taylor said. “I’d eat a mile of her shit just to see where it came from. Wouldn’t you?”

“Don’t reckon.”

“Why? You got something against eating shit?”

“More or less.”

“What are you, stuck up?”

“Yeah,” said Virgil, “I’m the first stuck-up garbageman to ever walk the earth.”

“There wasn’t nothing snobby about your brother. You ever hear about the time me and him went to the bootlegger for a couple of half-pints?”

Virgil shook his head. This was the first time that Taylor had talked about Boyd since the funeral. Virgil knew they’d buddied all over the hills for a spell. Boyd had a way of using people up. He ran with a man until he’d out-wilded him, then he’d go on to the next restless boy from the darkest hollow or longest ridge. Every season he extended his range, like an animal hunting food. His former running buddies included the incarcerated, the dead, and the recently religious.

Taylor talked around his cigarette.

“It was me and Boyd and another boy name of Hack Johnson. Nobody much liked Hack on account of him dropping a tree on a man while they was logging. But Boyd, he just never went in the woods with him. I was up front with Hack. Boyd sat in the back with a brand-new coonhound that Hack was afraid to leave at home and get stole.

“We pulled up to the bootlegger and around the comer come the biggest German shepherd you ever did see. Blacker than the ace of spades. Hollering to beat hell. It was jumping at the window, tearing at the side of the car. That coonhound went right back at it. It was standing in Boyd’s lap, just filling the car with racket. I thought the window was going to bust out.

“We didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t get our whisky with that dog out there, Boyd told Hack to let the dogs fight, but Hack said no. Said that dog had cost him a hundred bucks and a good.38 to boot, and he wished he had that pistol now, he’d shoot that shepherd. He asked if me or Boyd had a gun but we didn’t.

“After a while, that coonhound started slowing down its barking in the back seat. So did the shepherd. When the coonhound stopped, the shepherd went back to the bootlegger. I looked back to see what made it stop, and there set Boyd jacking that dog off. Calmed it right down, by God. I started laughing, but Hack, he got mad. Said it would rain the dog for breeding.

“Ol’ Boyd, he got mad right back. Told Hack, he said, ‘Go fetch that fucking whisky before I have to reach up there and do you like this dog.’ Well, Hack jumped out of that car like he’d got set on fire. He came back with the whisky and Boyd said to put that dog in the trunk. Hack didn’t want to. Boyd told him now that he’d gotten a taste for dog, he might just want some more, and Hack started driving fast, saying let’s get away from that shepherd first. He pulled over at the first wide spot. That coonhound was laying in a circle asleep and there set Boyd with half his liquor gone already. He had that big grin on him. Hack picked up his dog and Boyd looked at it and said ‘Bye, honey’ and Hack got so tickled he like to dropped that damn dog. He put it in the trunk.

“We finished that whisky and went and got some more and drove all over hell and back and finally Hack asked Boyd what made him think to jack that dog off. Boyd, he just sat there a minute. ‘Give me a cigarette and I’ll say,’ he told Hack. Hack was the only one with smokes left and he didn’t like to give them up. He’d served two years in the pen over killing that man with a tree and the only change in him when he come out was getting stingy with a cigarette. Well, he gave me and Boyd both one and that was like a flat miracle for Hack.

“Boyd opened his second pint and threw the lid out the window. He took a pull. He lit that cigarette. Said one time he’d been over to Mount Sterling drinking in a rough little bar and there was a boy wanted to fight him something awful. The boy was bad drunk. Nobody liked him. Said this old boy just kept swinging and missing and staggering, and Boyd hit him a couple of times but it was like hitting a cow. Didn’t do no good. Then the boy got a lick in and made Boyd mad, Boyd, he picked up a beer bottle by the neck and busted it and held the jagged part out at the guy. The bartender came up then and said to Boyd, ‘Hey, there’s people in here barefoot’ Boyd set the busted glass down and somebody took the little drunk outside. Boyd said he couldn’t sit down because he’d got a hard-on like a prybar jammed in sideways and hung on his underwear. Said when that dog started barking, he remembered all that. It just made sense to help the dog out that way.

“We ended up wrecking that night. Run into the creek and not a one hurt. Killed the dog, though. Drowned it. Hack never did blame your brother. He knowed it wasn’t Boyd’s fault, same as Hack falling a tree on that man wasn’t no fault of his.”

Taylor stood by like a clock run down from all the talking. His clothes didn’t fit right and he was moving inside them, his body twitching like a horse shaking off flies. There was a lit cigarette in his month and he started to light it again. The pupils of both his eyes were big.

“What are you on?” Virgil said. “Trucker pills?”

“You want some?”

Virgil shook his head.

“Boyd didn’t like speed either,” Taylor said. “He was an acid man. You know what he said to me once. Said ‘I want to improve reality, not see more of it.’ Best buddy I had. Crazier than a three-bailed tomcat.”

Virgil drove to the next dormitory on their route and waited for the crash of garbage cans. About ten men had told him that Boyd was their best buddy. At first Virgil thought it was just what got said when a man died, but after a while he understood that they really meant it. Boyd’s directness endeared him to people who’d become accustomed to being discarded, but he’d never had a best friend. The closest was Virgil when they were kids, and that was an accident they’d both got stuck with.

They’d shared a long, narrow room in the attic of their parents’ house. Virgil thought monsters lived up there, and Boyd always went first, racing up the steps to the light switch, spinning rapidly at the head of the stairs to dispel the monsters and ensure his brother’s safe passage. Even then, Virgil had been glad that Boyd was the oldest and such chores fell to him.

After their father died of emphysema brought on by a lifetime of breathing coal dust beneath the earth, Boyd had never held a regular job. He stayed at home with their mother. It was as if there were two Boyds. One obeyed his mother, hauling water and splitting stove-wood, supplying fresh meat in fall and fish in summer. The other Boyd existed away from the house. He never came home drunk, bloody, hung over, or mad.

The sun moved into the lane of sky between the hills, spreading heat along the hollow. Rundell increased the pace in order to finish before breaking to eat. Like hunters, the men functioned best on empty bellies.

In midafternoon, Virgil drove off campus to the Dairy Queen on the edge of town. Taylor drank pop and ordered French fries for Dewey as a reward for having punched his timecard. The other men ate sandwiches brought from home. They sat at a picnic table in the warm sun, watching the occasional car go by. Beside them trees grew at angles from the steep-sloped hill. A dove called.

“You know,” Taylor said, “my mamaw could hear an owl of the night and tell you who was going to die and when. She was part Choctaw,”

“Which part?” Rundell said.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” Rundell said. “I never worked with a man yet who didn’t claim to be part Indian. How about you, Dewey?”

“My papaw always said he had a little Indian in him,” Dewey said. “When I was a kid, I begged him to show him to me.”

The sound of an engine grew louder. The men looked toward the road, where a pickup stopped abruptly, its tires leaving long skid marks on the blacktop. The driver poked his arm, from the window, fired a pistol three times in their direction, and drove away.

“What in the Sam Hill?” Rundell said.

“Oh, shit,” Dewey said.

“Anybody know that truck?” Virgil said.

“Warning shots,” Taylor said.

“Had to be,” Rundell said. “I can throw a rock straighter than he shoots.”

“By God,” Dewey said, “he’s lucky he ain’t killed me. I’d a killed him back, by God.”

“Boys,” Taylor said, “I reckon I know what all that was over, and don’t none of you’uns have a thing to worry on.”

“Who does?” Virgil said. “You?”

Taylor ran his tongue behind his lower lip, making it swell like a fuzz worm. He lifted his cap and settled it back to his head, clamping hair from his eyes.

“Yup,” he said. “I carried a girl of his off like a cat does a kitten up to Jeff Mountain. Reckon I was lucky not to get her drawers down.”

“Goddam, Taylor,” Rundell said. “I don’t know what to think about a man gets his work buddies shot at and sets there eating lunch big as day,”

“Yeah,” Dewey said. He shoved his meal off the table to the ground. “Them bullets took the belly timber plumb out of me.”

“You ain’t going to eat that?” Taylor said.

“I couldn’t eat pie right now.”

“You act like you was town-raised.”

Taylor retrieved the container of French fries from the dirt. He picked through them like a carpenter gleaning lumber, holding them to the light, tossing some aside, keeping the good ones. When he chewed, the bill of his cap moved up and down.

“We ort to find another hiding place,” Rundell said. “Getting shot at sort of hurts this one awhile.”

“How about the ballfield,” Virgil said.

“Ag farm,” Dewey said.

“Freshman girls’ dorm,” Taylor said.

They debated their favorite places to park the truck and wait out the day until Rundell made the decision and they went to the landfill. At the end of the shift they drove back to their loading dock, where the Big Boss appeared as if dumped from a boot.

“Got a call from the sheriff,” he said. “Said shots got fired at the Dairy Queen. Said you and your men were there. Said it was oh-two-hundred in the after-damn-noon.”

“We took a late lunch,” Rundell said.

“Who was it shooting?”

“None of my men.”

“Where were you?”

“Outside eating.”

“How many men are at work on this crew?”

“Oh,” Rundell said, “about half.”

No one spoke. Each man found something to study — his boots, his hands, the hilltops beyond the lot. The Big Boss finally chuckled.

“I don’t believe the Dairy Queen is a suitable place for lunch,” he said.

Rundell nodded and the Big Boss walked away with one hand clasping the other behind his back. He reminded Virgil of a kid trying to hide a cigarette. As soon as he was gone, Taylor spat.

“Short little fucker, ain’t he,” he said.

“You best keep your timecard in good shape,” Rundell said. “He’ll be watching us now.”

“He can go to hell. I never met a boss I liked.”

“He ain’t near bad as most,” Rundell said, “You’re the first I ever heard of who got shot at on the fob. Maybe you should ask for hazard pay.”

“We all should,” Virgil said. “I don’t need no bullets hitting me. How about you, Dewey?”

“I done been shot once,” Dewey said. “Bullet cut a crease in me big enough to lay a finger in.”

“Where at?” Virgil said.

“In the ass,” Taylor shouted. “Go ahead, Virgil. Lay your finger in it.”

Expecting retribution, Taylor backstepped rapidly and stumbled into the cement block wall, “Damn it, boys,” he said. “Just when I get over my damn hangover, I have to go and make my head hurt again. You’re right, Rundell. Just working with me is a hazard on my own-self.”

The men laughed and Rundell rose from the loading dock. As one, they walked around the building to punch their timecards.