The Good Brother

3

A fierce hailstorm in May marked the boundary between spring and summer. Ice fell from the sky in blurs of white that beat tobacco beds to shreds. The storm’s passage left hailstones pooled in low spots of the earth. A few hours later the sun returned and summer began. Kentucky turned thick and heavy with green, as if the world weighed more.

At his mother’s house, Virgil entered the old smokehouse that was now a shed. The faint smell of pork still emanated from the dark walls. On an oily workbench sat a car battery, the head of a rake, and a pan full of nuts and screws. Scrap lumber leaned in a corner. He dragged the mower into the yard, jerked the cord, and the engine settled into a steady cycle. The muffler rattled against the engine housing. When Virgil tried to tighten the muffler, it came off in his hand. The threads were stripped. He figured Boyd had some private technique to keep it fastened, a wire in the right spot, or a delicate turn of the threaded end. He found wire in the shed and spent thirty minutes rigging the muffler in place.

The afternoon sun lay above the humped horizon of the hills. Virgil heard a car with an automatic transmission coming up the hill. The sound faded into the curve at the top, then increased along his mother’s ridge. The county sheriff parked at the property’s edge and strode across the high grass. Troy wore an official hat and jacket with a badge, although the rest of his clothes were casual. The last time he had visited was six years ago, courting Sara.

“Hidy, Virge,” he said.

“Troy.” Virgil nodded once in greeting. “Any news?”

The sheriff shook his head.

“Your mom home?”

“She stays home, Troy. Don’t hardly go nowhere but church. Sara takes her.”

“I’ve seen that before,” Troy said. “I’m not much of a churchgoer myself.”

“No.”

“Me and your brother, we ran together some.”

“You were pretty wild before the badge.”

“Yeah, buddy. I always remember Boyd telling me what Jesus said to the hillbillies before he died.”

“What?”

“ ‘Don’t do nothing till I get back.’ ”

Troy looked up the hillside, where road dust settled onto the brush, forming a patina over each leaf. He wiped his forehead and spat.

“You sure you can’t just talk to me,” Virgil said. “And let Mommy alone.”

Troy stared into the treeline. His tone of voice shifted, as if backing away.

“It’s got to be her. Official.”

Virgil led him up the plank steps and across the rain-grayed porch. In the front room of the small house a bare bulb lit framed photographs of Boyd and their father. On the other walls hung pictures of Sara, Marlon, and their children. There would be no pictures of Virgil until he produced kids or died.

Sara came into the room, blocking light from the kitchen.

“I warn you, Troy,” she said. “I ain’t going peaceable.”

The sheriff laughed.

“How Debbie could stand being married to a man mean as you I don’t know,” Sara said. “Has she had that baby yet?”

“Three more weeks, Sara. She’s doing fine.”

“And you?”

“Same.”

“I meant about having kids.”

“Don’t bother me,” Troy said. “I told her we’d quit whenever she wanted.”

“Sounds like you changed some.”

Troy’s face turned red and he closed his mouth. When he spoke, his voice had shifted again, as if he’d stepped behind an invisible wall.

“I’m here to see your mom, Sara. Need to talk to her direct. You all can be present, but it’s got to be her.”

Sara looked quickly at Virgil, who shrugged. She brought their mother into the front room.

“Mrs. Caudill,” Troy said.

“Hidy, Troy. You’re too late. She’s been married nigh five years.”

“Could be I’m up to court you this time.”

Her face softened briefly.

“Law says one at a time, Troy. You get the divorce, then come back.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He removed his hat. “I just wanted to tell you that the investigation is open and ongoing. At this time we have no suspects. We have no evidence and no weapon. What we have got is more rumor than an oak’s got acorns, and it all points to a man named Billy Rodale. He’s been questioned. He denies it. There’s nothing I can do.”

The sheriff slowed his words, careful to look only at Virgil’s mother.

“No one is willing to testify, Mrs. Caudill. You know how it is. People keep their mouths shut in a situation like this. If something happened to Rodale, people would stay quiet on that, too. If there’s no witness or weapon, I couldn’t do nothing about him, either. The person who did it would probably not get hisself caught.”

He stood and held his hat in both hands.

“I’m speaking for myself now, Mrs. Caudill. I feel terrible about it. All of it. But the law can’t do a thing.”

Virgil followed him to the porch. The sheriff avoided his eyes as he walked across the yard. He drove out the ridge and Virgil watched the road dust rise like smoke.

In the house, Sara and his mother sat on the couch. No one spoke. Virgil saw in their eyes what they wanted him to do. He left the house.

He started the mower and worked slowly because the grass was high, lifting the front wheels to prevent stalling. He mowed steadily, following the pattern he’d learned from his father — mark the perimeter first, then work inside it. He’d learned to paint a wall the same way. He wondered where the urge came from to delineate the edges of everything, to make maps and build fences.

He eased the mower along the edge of the hill, swerving instinctively for a tree that wasn’t there. He wondered if someone had cut it down, but there was no stump. Sweat stung his eyes and his wet shirt clung to his back. He got his bearings, which seemed ridiculous in his own yard, and saw the tree. It was in front of him, four feet over the hill, surrounded by ground cover. The tree was bigger but he recognized the angle of its growth. As a child he had pushed the mower on the other side of the tree, but now there was no grass near. He was stunned to realize that the hill was falling slowly away.

He shut off the mower and rested in shade. The raucous sound of the engine had hushed the birds, and the abrupt silence made his ears ring. The acrid smell of the septic tank drifted on a breeze. If the very earth could shift, anything could.

The sound of a car engine drew his attention, and he placed it as Abigail’s big Ford. He’d known Abigail all his life. They’d dated in high school but she had married the star quarterback of Eldridge County High and moved to Ohio. He drank and beat her, a secret she’d kept until the day she arrived at her mother’s house with a carload of belongings. She’d taken a two-year course in accounting and now worked in the payroll department of Rocksalt Community College.

For the past four years, everyone in Blizzard figured she and Virgil would get married. Virgil went along with the idea. She would marry him if he asked, and they’d talked about it in an oblique fashion, but he didn’t ask. He couldn’t, although he wanted to. He wouldn’t ask until he knew what held him back in the first place.

He tightened the muffler and returned the lawnmower to the shed. A bobwhite emitted its three-note call. He inhaled the scent of dusk, the coming dew. Katydids creaked like old bedsprings. Lightning bugs made a trail of yellow specks in the dimming air. He and Boyd used to wait until they blinked, then pull their bodies apart and smear the glowing mush on their faces.

Virgil leaned against the back door, dreading entry and supper. From inside came the rising laughter of Abigail, his sister, and his mother. It struck him that half his life happened when he wasn’t around. While he washed his hands for supper, Marlon arrived, having left the kids at an aunt’s house. Virgil stood in the kitchen door and watched him with the women. Marlon had more of a place in the house than Virgil did.

Sara noticed Virgil in the doorway.

“There he is,” she said. “Poop-head’s here.”

“Yard mowed?” Abigail said.

“You know the hill’s going over the hill out there.”

“No,” Abigail said. “I didn’t know that.”

Everyone waited for him to continue.

“This house,” Virgil said, “is a good six feet closer to the edge of the hill than it used to be.”

Marlon stomped on the floor, frowning as he gauged the walls.

“Foundations ain’t twisted,” he said, “or the windowglass’d be broke. I’d say the house’ll last awhile yet.”

“But will the hill?” Virgil said.

He sat at the metal-rimmed formica table. The ceramic salt and pepper shakers were a hen and rooster that leaned against each other.

“You sure get funny thinking in that head of yours,” Sara said. “Reckon when the hill went over? Last night?”

“No. Sort of slow and steady for twenty years.”

“We all been going over it for twenty years.”

“Yes,” their mother said, “and it’ll be going over us for many a year more.”

Abigail removed a tray of cornbread from the oven. The smell washed through the room like mist.

“Glad I ain’t from off,” she said. “People from off don’t know how to do.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sara said. “You’re the only one here who’s left out of here.”

“Worst thing I ever did was leave.”

“Well, you came back. I know one man’s glad of it.”

Sara looked at Virgil with an expectant expression.

“I’m real glad,” he said.

“Set and eat,” their mother said. “You’uns put a bottom to your stomach.”

They gathered at the table, which held pieces of fried chicken lying on the brown paper of a grocery bag. The heavy plates were veined by a network of fine cracks. They ate without talk, as if at work, and Virgil remembered that the back and neck had been his father’s favorite pieces. The family rule was that whoever ate them also received the delicacies — liver, heart, and gizzard. Everyone took a second piece and Virgil’s mother served the neck to Marlon. Virgil wished he were in his trailer eating a frozen pot pie.

“Any dessert?” Marlon said.

“Not tonight,” Sara said. She patted her hips. “I don’t need no extra.”

“Just more to love,” Marlon said.

“Kids sure packs the weight on,” Sara said. “You all fixing to have any, Ab?”

Virgil could feel heat rush to his face. Abigail pitched her voice slightly higher in order to appear casual.

“We haven’t done any talking along those lines.”

Marlon was clearly confused. He looked from Virgil to Abigail and back. “You all go and get married?”

“No,” Virgil said. “Folks do that for different reasons.”

“I was pregnant,” Sara said.

“Sara!” her mother said.

“Well, I was. The whole hill knowed of it. I told Virgil first, before Marlon even. If our family’s got secrets, you can’t prove it by me.”

“She always did talk worser than, a jaybird,” their mother said.

“Nobody’s pregnant,” Virgil said. “Unless it’s you.”

“We’re done, ain’t that right, Marlon, I’m thinking on getting my tubes tied.”

“Sara,” their mother said, “you’re at the table,”

“It’s on TV, Mama. And I ain’t no jaybird, either, I’m the only liberated woman on the creek. I cuss in my own home and Marlon don’t care if I do.”

“Around here,” their mother said, “they ain’t no liberated nothing. Why, even these old hills got laws put to them anymore,”

“My opinion,” Virgil said, “Abigail’s on the liberated side. She works and takes care of her own car.”

“And lives alone,” Sara said.

“That’s right,” Virgil said. “But she don’t go around talking about getting herself spayed, either,”

“Leastways, I’m thinking on doing something I should.”

“Meaning I ain’t. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Take it any way you want.”

Virgil stood and went outside, leaving a tense silence behind him. The sky was gray between the hills. He wondered what kind of person his family thought he was. Perhaps they’d never had him right. He realized with a terrible twist in his chest that they wanted him to be like Boyd.

He lay on his back and studied the sky. The Milky Way spread overhead like the partial covering of spring frost. Some stars were so far away that by the time the light got to him, they’d already burned out. Boyd was like that. Even dead, he still threw energy into the hills.

Darkness grew at the head of the hollow and filtered down the creek. The air between the trees closed. He stood and kicked one of Boyd’s old liquor bottle lids. It rolled in a circle like a crippled dog. A hundred years from now some kid would find the cap and make up its history. Virgil wished he could invent a new history for himself, or even better, a future.

The screen door rasped and he recognized Sara’s tread on the porch.

“Hey, Virgie,” she said.

He waited in the dark. He’d discovered long ago that the less talking he did around his sister, the more he learned.

“You out here pouting?” she said.

There was nothing for him in that except bait. He stayed quiet.

“Now, Virgie, honey. It ain’t but us now. We got to get along.”

A whippoorwill’s call floated along the ridge. Sara moved into the yard.

“I should have been born a man,” she said. “Then you could knock the shit out of me and everything’d be fine.”

“That’s easy talk,” Virgil said. He immediately regretted having spoken.

“I know what’s right.”

“You don’t know the first thing about it.”

“I’ve laid awake many a night thinking on it.”

“Me, too,” Virgil said. “I ain’t a murderer.”

“That ain’t what it is.”

“The hell it ain’t, Sara. That’s exactly what it is. You know it, Mommy knows it, even that damn Troy knows it.”

“If you don’t,” she said, “I know someone who will.”

“You’d do that, wouldn’t you. Just throw Marlon away. A man with four kids.”

“You heard what Troy said.”

“I ain’t talking about the law.”

“The rest of them Rodales, you mean. Well, you never can tell. Maybe they’re more like you.”

“You’re full of talk, Sara. You know that? You just sit in your house, watch TV, and not do a goddam thing else. Just talk. You’re the same as you always were only now you got Marlon and the kids to run. Well, you ain’t the boss of me, Sara. Get that in your head.”

“I thought maybe you’d want Marlon to help you out, is all. You always let Boyd do the doing for you before.”

“That’s not what I want. I don’t want nothing like that.”

“All right. Marlon don’t know about any of this anyhow.”

“No, I don’t reckon he would.”

“Ain’t no sense in you getting stubbed up over it, either. I was thinking of you. Trying to spare you.”

A dove called through the woods.

“I guess it’s good you ain’t a man,” Virgil said. “I don’t believe I’d like you much if you were.”

“Maybe not But liking never had much place in this family. All we ever did was love.”

“And the best of us is gone.”

“That’s the way it always is, ain’t it. The biggest tree gets hit by lightning, and bugs chew the prettiest flower. It’s the way of the world.”

“If it’s so natural, then how come you’re wanting me to do something about it.”

“Because that’s natural, too.”

She had answered gently, as if speaking to a lover or a child. She stepped into the house, boards creaking beneath her feet. The night enveloped him like a tent. A barred owl called, his favorite bird, and “Virgil mimicked the sound. Boyd had taught him to follow the rhythm of “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all,” as he made the sound, ending with a throaty gurgle. The owl refused to return the cry.

The woods were silent until the first squeak of cricket, followed by young frogs in the creek below and the rising drone of cicadas. He inhaled the heavy scent of summer earth, a loamy musk that settled over him like a caul. He was home.

Abigail sat in the swing at the end of the porch. He hadn’t heard her leave the house. He joined her and the chain creaked as their knees touched. In the dim light from the house, he could see the silhouette of her powerful chin. It was like a handle for her head. He wondered if she appreciated any of his features as much as he enjoyed that chin.

“Virge.” Her voice was low and calm.

He didn’t answer.

“Your mom told me about Troy coming up here.”

“Don’t say nothing to nobody.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “All this is a hard one on your mom.”

“I know it.”

“And for you, too, Virge.”

Starlight slipped between tree limbs and glowed across the yard. Abigail had a quality that always made him feel less of a man, and he suddenly knew what it was. Abigail was happy, and he resented it. He felt as if they were in seventh grade again, trying to outmaneuver each other for the one thing they both wanted — a kiss. When it finally happened he pressed his lips so hard against hers that he mashed his nose and couldn’t breathe. She whispered for him to open his mouth, and he realized that she knew more than he did.

“Troy coming up here was wrong,” she said.

“Well, it wasn’t right.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“Not exactly.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Virgil.”

“I know you don’t. This whole thing has got me messed up. Right and wrong are gone. Nobody cares about that anymore, not even the sheriff.”

“You do,” Abigail said. “I know you do.”

“It’d be easier if I didn’t. People might leave me alone.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I don’t mean you.”

They didn’t speak for a few minutes. The swinging chain made a steady rasp. A dog barked over the hill, its cry rising up the hollow and fading along the ridge.

“I have some good news, anyway,” Abigail said.

“That’d be a switch.”

“I got a promotion and a raise.”

Virgil didn’t know what to say, She already drew a bigger paycheck than he did.

“Well,” she said. “Aren’t you going to ask me how much?”

“How much?”

“Enough to get into a house with some land. We could use your money for fixing up.”

“Fixing what up?”

“You know, box in a porch if we needed extra bedrooms or something.”

Virgil wondered what the cutoff age was to join the army. He knew a lot of boys who had gone years ago but he couldn’t see the point if there wasn’t a war.

“It’s just something to think on,” she said. “I thought maybe it’d be better than this other,”

“I’m about run out of thinking.”

“I understand. I know how that is. I got the same way up in Ohio. You hit a certain place and there’s nothing left but doing.”

“I ain’t there yet. I’m more in between.”

“I want you to know something, Virgil. You have to hear me on this. Whichever way you go, I’m with you. I’m there. You do whatever you need to do — for yourself. Don’t matter to me. I’m on your side.”

Virgil nodded.

“I got to get on down the road,” she said. “Tell your mom I said good night.”

She rose awkwardly from the swing, setting it in sideways motion. She leaned to kiss him and left. The big engine spewed exhaust that stayed in the air after her red taillights vanished among the trees.

She wasn’t against it, which meant she was for it. Abigail was trying to play cagey, but tonight was the first time she’d been direct about children. Perhaps she was trying to snare him when he was preoccupied with other matters — murder or marry, like a judge who tells a drunk to do the time or take the cure. He wondered if she would continue to love him if he became a killer; it wasn’t as if he could quit and change back, like giving up liquor.

A half moon hung low above the hills, its light washing away the surrounding stars. The hills were black and the woods were blacker and the hollow below was blackest of all. Virgil had always been able to see well at night. It was more recognition than actual sight, the ability to know forms by their silhouette. Most people treated night the same as day only with less light, which was a mistake. The secret to darkness was not to blunder about, but to look carefully at what was there.

Marlon came onto the porch, trailed by Sara’s voice saying, “Shut that door behind you tight.”

Moths the size of a man’s hand battered the screen. Marlon lit a cigarette, handling the matches in a deft fashion. Both men were quiet. Marlon cast a field about him that made people uneasy, but Virgil was accustomed to it.

“Sara send you out here?” Virgil said.

“Yep.”

“They tell you about Troy?”

“He’s so crooked he screws his britches on.”

“Whole thing’s about eat my head up. Marl.”

A soft rain spattered the tree leaves and moved across the night. The evening air became damp.

“Some rain,” Virgil said. “We could use a gully washer.”

“Way them women talk we can always use more of something.”

“Full of plans, ain’t they.”

“For other people,” Marlon said. “They’ll lay their ears back like a cat eating, and knock you down with talk. A man can’t pay that much mind. It’s like weeding a garden to me.”

“How’s that?”

“just pick what to listen at.”

“Wish I could, Marl. That’s a gift.”

“Not really.”

“I’m stuck with hearing all of it.”

“Make your head go crazy that way.”

“I ain’t that far from it. You know what I’d really like, I’d like to be left alone.”

“Get that long enough and you’ll not like it.”

“Maybe so. Is there anything you’d like, Marlon?”

“Learn to weld.”

“Weld?”

“Open me up a muffler shop.”

Virgil nodded, wishing he was as clearheaded and free of guile as his brother-in-law. Marlon was loyal and hardworking, and there was no higher compliment in the county.

“Let me ask you something,” Marlon said. “Ever notice how an oak’ll hold on to a fall leaf through winter?”

“Now that you say it, yes.”

“That old tree not wanting to turn loose of a dead leaf. Something to think on, Virge.”

Marlon went in the house and a few minutes later came out with Sara. They said good night and got into Marlon’s truck, sitting very close on the bench seat. In the brief flash of the domelight, they looked as they had five years ago, leaving on a date. They were a little bigger now, including the truck.

Moonglow lay over the darkened land. Virgil recalled evenings he’d stood with Boyd on the porch, trying to watch darkness arrive, Boyd had thought that each molecule of air became darker and, like watching snow accumulate, you could witness the actual blackening of the sky.

Virgil could not leave without telling his mother good night, but if he sat outside long enough, she would go to bed and he’d be free to go. She came to the door. Interior light spread her shadow across the porch, diffused by the screen. Her hair was pulled to the back of her head in a bun the color of ash. Virgil knew that she would wait there until she was invited out. He’d seen it with his father many times.

“Come on out, Mom.”

“Well, if you’re wanting company.”

“Always yours.”

“I ain’t a-caring, then.”

She stepped onto the porch and quickly pulled the door shut. She sat in her chair, picked up the fly swatter that lay beside it, and placed it in her lap.

“I shouldn’t ort to have set,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ll get up.”

“I’ll start to get worried the day I find you sleeping there in the morning.”

“You remember the time Sara’s first cat got up in the yard oak and she started crying.”

“We was all just kids,” Virgil said.

“Boyd, he told her to hush up, that cat would come down and he could prove it.”

“I don’t remember that part.”

“Oh, yes. He said you could walk these hills a hundred years and there’d be one thing you’d never find — a cat skeleton in a tree.”

“That sounds like how he’d think.”

A chimney swift flew in an arc away from the house. The air cooled. The night had softened, as if settling into itself until dawn.

“You know your daddy weren’t no coward.”

“No.”

“It took more spine to go under them hills than it ever did to stand up to a bully. They ain’t a miner who ain’t brave.”

“I know.”

“Boyd never understood that. He seen your daddy take mouth off other men and walk away cold. Boyd thought your daddy less for it. It hurt your daddy, but it hurt Boyd more.”

“It would.”

“You’re a cross between both.”

“I always thought I was more like Daddy.”

“No. Boyd’s temper is worse, but you got more anger in you. My fault I reckon.”

“No sense worrying about it now, Mom.”

“Maybe not. All depends on what use a body’s got for packing anger around.”

“Not too much, I don’t reckon.”

“At the right rime it can be handy as a pocket on a shirt.”

“It never was for Boyd.”

“I ain’t talking about him.”

Virgil suddenly knew what she meant. The steady creaking of the swing’s chains stopped. He stared into the night. It seemed to him as if his body were a shell that his mind had fled, and he was observing the proceedings from some distance. Two people sat on a porch. Their world was not vast.

“Marlon is a good boy,” his mother said, “but a blind man can see through him. A part of me always wished Sara had married Troy. Tonight was the first I ever was glad of her not. You understand why, don’t you.”

“I might,” Virgil had hopes one way, but the biggest part of him had fears the other. “I don’t know.”

“After Troy come up here the way he done, it would look pretty bad later if he was married in.”

The roof of Virgil’s mouth was dry and he was breathing through his mouth, trying to take deep drinks of the night. There was a certain point at the bottom of his lungs that needed oxygen. He stood, and when the swing bumped the back of his knees, he nearly fell. He began to tremble. He steadied himself against a porch strut and stepped off the porch. His mother was a dark lump in the shadow of the porch.

The moon was gone and clouds blocked the stars. He walked into the darkness. The road made a sharp climbing curve to his trailer at the end of the ridge, surrounded by trees. He sat on the bottom step. He was cold but the air was warm. His clothes wrapped his body, and skin was just a bag that stretched to hold different sizes of people. Inside they were the same bunch of bones.