The Good Brother

5

Car lights came around the curve and Virgil stuck his thumb out, squinting against the harsh flare of light, A pickup braked to a stop, and the driver leaned his head out the window.

“Can you drink a cold one?” he said.

“Yeah,” Virgil said.

“Get in, then.”

Virgil climbed inside the cab. A bedsheet covered the seat, the comers tucked beneath the springs. The driver wasn’t wearing a shirt. He handed Virgil a can of beer.

“You’re the first damn hitchhiker ever I did see.”

“First time I done it,” Virgil said.

“By God, my brother-in-law hitched four miles to the store, and like to never heard the end of it from the family.”

“How come?”

“They took it as him putting a stranger ahead of kin.”

“Well.”

“Hatingest folks in all creation. Ain’t two good ones to the whole bunch. That’s why I’m celebrating.”

He mashed the accelerator and left twin streaks of rubber on the road. The rear fishtailed before slowing at Pig Berry curve. Beer spilled on Virgil’s clothes.

“You best watch,” Virgil said. “The law sets up here a lot.”

“A man wants to drive fast, it’s his business. What’s your name anyhow.”

“Virgil Caudill.”

“They’s gobs of you all, ain’t they.”

“Around here there is.”

“I’m Arlow Atkins. From Pick County. Ain’t got a smoke, do you?”

“Not on me,” Virgil said. “What are we celebrating?”

“I quit my wife tonight.”

“For good?”

“I hope to God for good. Know what she done this time?”

“No.”

“Cut the fingertips out of my gloves. Left them laying in a pile like deer sign by the couch.”

“What over?”

“Porch steps.”

“Were you supposed to fix them?”

“No,” Arlow said. “I gave them away.”

“Gave away the porch steps?”

“They was concrete block, stacked. First my brother needed one, then my cousin, and my nephew. Didn’t take too long before they was gone.”

“A man can always get block.”

“That’s what I told my wife. She said yes, but did everybody have to get them off us.”

They crossed the creek and entered a hard curve. Car parts lay scattered down the creek from previous wrecks. The truck tires skipped but held to the blacktop, and they were out of the curve and hurtling down a straight stretch. Arlow tossed his empty can out the window.

“Reach me another,” he said to Virgil. “And take one for your ownself.”

“Where you headed anyhow?”

“Just running the roads. You got anywhere to be?” Virgil shook his head. He pulled an unopened half-pint from his pocket.

“You don’t care to take a drink of whisky, do you?”

“By God,” Arlow said. “I knowed they was a reason I stopped for you, I guess you’ll light up one of them, left-handed cigarettes next.”

“I don’t reckon.”

Virgil drank the neck and shoulders out of the bottle and passed it to Arlow, The outside air was black. Boyd had lived like this all his life and for the first time Virgil understood how a man could get in the habit. It was fun and there was a sense of freedom and risk, the anticipation of an unknown outcome.

Arlow swerved to avoid a raccoon crossing the road. “Ever think how a coon is close to human?” he said. “They got hands and they wash everything they eat first.”

“It ain’t something I ever worried much over.”

“You think a coon or possum eats more?”

“A coon my opinion.”

“Possum.”

“A coon’s belly is bigger,” Virgil said. “You can tell by looking.”

“Ever see in a possum’s mouth?”

“I’m proud to say I ain’t.”

“Well, you ort to. They got about a hundred teeth.”

“They don’t done it,”

“Damn straight,” Arlow said. “One was to bite you, you’d know it. A possum will fiat pour the teeth to you.”

“That don’t mean its belly holds more. They’s many a coon the size of a dog.”

“Any more of that whisky left?”

Virgil handed him the bottle. Arlow took a drink while simultaneously downshifting for a curve, flicking a cigarette out the window, and adjusting the beer between his thighs. Virgil drank some beer and felt like spitting. They were past the turnoff to his house, near the county line.

“How do you know so much on possum teeth?” he said.

“Took me a good long gander at one stuffed.”

“A trophy possum. There’s something I’d like to see.”

Arlow stomped the brake pedal and the tires squealed. Virgil lost his beer. His forearms hit the dashboard and he could feel debris from under the seat bounce against his boots. The truck stopped sideways in the road. Arlow was standing on the brake pedal, his body arched over the steering wheel.

“That makes my pecker hard,” Arlow said. “Don’t it you?”

He spun the car around and headed the way they’d come.

“We ain’t going to town, are we,” Virgil said.

“I thought you wanted to see a stuffed possum.”

“Where’s it at?”

“Third hollow past the next wide place. We’ll go see old man Morgan. You know him?”

“I’ve heard tell.”

They turned onto a dirt road that forked several times and narrowed to one lane with weeds growing in the middle. Tree limbs laced overhead, blotting stars and moon. There was no ditch. The wooded hills slanted into the sky on both sides of the road. Arlow pumped the clutch for traction.

“Got to keep her in Granny gear,” he said.

The hollow tightened until the road became a path and the rear tires spun. Arlow cut the engine and honked the horn twice, the sound hanging in the darkness. They left the truck and walked the path. Branches snagged their clothes. The hum of locust filled the air, rising and falling at different intervals, surrounding them but always at a distance. The path opened into a clearing where the dark shape of a house sat among white oaks. A glow of light came from a window.

“Hey, Morgan,” Arlow yelled. “It’s Catfish Atkins’ boy, Arlow. I got a buddy here, but I’m coming up by myself.” He turned to Virgil and spoke in a normal voice. “Stay here a minute. He’s bad to be squirrelly.”

He crossed the glade and yelled again before stepping on the porch and into the house. Virgil didn’t feel drunk but knew he was. The whisky kept him awake and gave his mind a clarity that he enjoyed.

Arlow yelled through the night and Virgil walked up the slope. The back of the house was tucked tight to the hillside while the front porch was supported by stacked rock. Virgil climbed uneven steps to the porch. The door hung at a tilt from a broken hinge. An old man sat by a cold woodstove. He held a knife in one hand and a small piece of wood in the other. Crescents of shaved wood covered his lap.

“Hidy, by God,” he said. “Whose boy are you?”

“Darly Caudill’s second boy, Virgil.”

“Best tell me your papaw, then. They’s more Caudills than dogs in these parts.”

“Zale.”

“Did he marry Augselle Sparks from up on Clay Creek?”

“Yup.”

“Shoot, I know your whole line. Set yourself down. I been low in my gears and can’t get up. I heard you’uns coming a mile away. Sound moves up here like a tunnel. This holler’s so narrow I got to break day with a hammer.”

Virgil sat on an ancient crate turned black from handling. Arlow turned a metal kitchen chair backwards so that his forearms rested on its laddered back. The man’s knife blade flashed like a bird’s beak in a corn crib. His face was brown and there were bugs in his hair.

When he finished working, he stropped his knife on a boot heel and put it away. He held a piece of wood that was two inches long and a half inch wide, the long end tapered like the bill of a duck. The other end was fat and blunt, with a notch to one side. It resembled the triggering device to a homemade rabbit trap. He passed it to Virgil.

“I’ll give you it if you can call it true.” Morgan said.

“Some kind of hook.”

“No.”

“Whistle.”

“Ain’t got no blower to her.”

No matter how Virgil turned the wood, it looked like a piece of scrap that somebody had whittled to pass the time.

“It ain’t nothing,” he said.

“Sure it is. Let me see your belt a minute.”

Virgil removed his belt and passed it to Morgan, who slipped the belt’s edge into the notch on the piece of wood. He placed the flat end of the wood on the tip of his forefinger. He didn’t hold the wood, but let it extend from his hand like a claw. It should have fallen to the earth, yet it remained in space, the leather curling like a locust seed-pod. He lifted the belt from the notch and the little piece of wood dropped to the ground.

“What is it?” Virgil said.

“Belt balancer.”

“What’s it do?”

“Balances belts.”

“How’s it work?”

“Just like that. You keep it.”

Virgil slipped the piece of wood in his pocket and ran his belt through the loops. His mouth was dry.

“Tell me something that ain’t true,” Morgan said. “I’d whole lot rather a man lie to me than tell the truth. Know why?”

Virgil shook his head.

“Makes a man feel good to lie.”

“Well,” Virgil said.

“Ain’t everybody who can help a man feel good about hisself. So let me hear a lie.”

“I ain’t drunk,” Virgil said.

The old man leaned back and laughed. Virgil offered the half-pint.

“Ain’t much of a drinker, are ye. Still yet got the lid.”

He unscrewed the lid and tossed it on the floor.

“Never did like brown. Ain’t got the kick of white. Old boy I used to know ran liquor that you’d better be standing on level ground to drink.”

He tipped his head and trickled the liquor in his mouth. His eyes were closed. He didn’t swallow for nearly a minute. His Adam’s apple worked and he opened his eyes.

“Boys,” he said. “I used to have blue eyes and a red dick. Now I got red eyes and a blue dick.”

Morgan passed the bottle to Virgil and placed his hands on the chair arms as if they were tools stored on a shelf. His ears and nose were long. Behind him, a plank bookshelf held several tiny pieces of carved wood.

“How come you never went to bigger whittling?” Virgil said.

“Ain’t got the learning. I know a half-inch and a quarter, but not no more. Got to eyeball it after that.”

“Nothing to it,” Virgil said. “Just keep cutting each measure in half. Split a quarter and you got eighths. Half that is sixteenths.”

Morgan’s shoulders rose and fell.

“Can’t get her,” he said. “Just can’t.”

“Where’s old Duke at?” Arlow said.

“Got murdered,” Morgan said.

“Why that dog wouldn’t bite a biscuit. Who’d kill it?”

“Red Stumper done it.”

“You aim to do anything?”

“Kill his dog back, I reckon.”

“He ain’t got one,” Arlow said.

“What kind of man don’t keep a dog?”

“Kind that shoots them, I guess.”

“What’s he got? Rooster? Billy goat?”

“Nothing. He lives alone.”

Virgil drank from the bottle. He wasn’t afraid to Mil Rodale, he was afraid of where it might lead. The trouble might run for years and would cease to be specific. The meanest men in both families would continue shooting simply out of habit.

Morgan and Arlow were talking about what kind of winter was ahead and how to read the signs. Boyd never predicted, but accepted each day’s fate. If it rained a week straight, he’d say the water made all the colors brighter. If there was no sun, he’d talk about how much further you could see without the glare. Winter was a good time to learn how the land was made. Virgil wondered what his brother would say about being dead.

“Well,” Boyd might say, “a man ain’t got to worry with warm clothes, eating meals, or getting sleep. Being dead’s freer than when I was living.”

“It ain’t doing me any goddam good,” Virgil said.

“What,” Arlow said.

Virgil blinked at Arlow and Morgan, who were looking at him as if waiting. The room seemed to close in on him.

“Nothing,” Virgil said. “Just talking to myself.”

“Makes good sense to me,” Morgan said.

Virgil stood, swaying slightly.

“We ort to let Morgan go to bed.”

“No need to rush off,” Morgan said.

“Where’s that possum at?” Arlow said. “Me and him’s got a bet on its teeth. You didn’t eat that, did you,”

“I’ve ate my share, boys. Time was, these hills was hunted so bad folks raised possum for meat. I’ve eat owl once and grateful for it.”

“Owl?”

“Ain’t supposed to, you know.”

“Why’s that?”

“On account of it eating meat. Same with cat or man. They ain’t fit.”

“Owl gets pretty good sized, don’t it.”

“Ain’t hardly no meat to it. Biggest part of them is head and the rest voice. Kindly greasy, like a coon. A one of you boys ever eat lobster?”

Arlow and Virgil shook their heads.

“Me neither, but I seen pictures. They’re pretty much a crawdad growed to the size of a squirrel and covered over with a shell. By God, it was one hungry son of a bitch who thought to eat that goddam thing. And after all the work put into it, they ain’t no more meat than a baby rabbit. Well, owl’s about the same. I drawed the line at dog. Guess I got to know too many. Squirrel’s my best.”

“Why’s that?” Arlow said.

“Quick and easy, I reckon.”

“Over in England,” Virgil said, “they don’t eat squirrel.”

“Why’s that?”

“They say a squirrel’s kin to a rat.”

“Well,” Morgan said, “it might have some rat to it. It gets around like a rat, and it sure as hell chews stuff up like a rat. But I’d say it’s fourth or fifth cousin. About like them Rodales.”

Morgan was staring hard at Virgil, his eyes narrowed to folded slits. Virgil didn’t move.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with getting shut of a aggravation like that. Best way is to kill it off leaf, limb, and root. But you got to be ready for the work, same as that boy who ate the first lobster. They ain’t no easy to it. More than that, you got to be ready for afterwards. That’s the hard part.”

“What are you talking about?” Arlow said, “Killing rats is easy as rolling off a whore.” He repeated himself and laughed again until the sound sputtered out. The silence confused him and he finished his beer. “Where’d you say that possum was?”

Morgan tipped his head to indicate the rear of the house, Arlow stepped into the darkness, cursing as he bumped walls.

Virgil felt as if a hole had opened in his mind and he wasn’t sure if stuff was leaking out or coming in. He felt sober. The old man kept his vision locked on Virgil’s face. It was the first time anyone had mentioned Boyd to him without sympathy or expectation. Morgan’s tone had been practical, as if discussing the best way to keep deer out of a garden.

Arlow staggered through the narrow house carrying a stuffed possum with its mouth open in a snarl Its feet were nailed to a board.

“See there,” Arlow said. “Bet my thumb there’s more than a hundred teeth in its mouth.”

“I’ll not take that bet,”

“Arlie-boy,” Morgan said, “That’s your possum now. You can have it.”

“Now, no. You can’t give a thing like this up. Ain’t too many, my opinion. Might be worth something.”

“Take and put it in the truck, Arlie-boy. Then you set and wait for your buddy here. He’ll be down directly.”

“They ain’t nothing I’ve got to give you back.”

“You give me plenty, you just don’t know it. Now hush and go. Wait on Caudill, here.”

“Thank you. I mean it. Thank you.”

Arlow cradled the possum to his chest as if it were a sack of eggs and went outside. The call of a bobwhite came through the door. Virgil felt nervous alone with Morgan.

“I’m fixing to tell you something I ain’t told a soul in nigh forty years,” Morgan said.

He closed his eyes and began to talk, slowly at first, as if he were a man who’d just learned how to use his voice.

“Used to, they made firebrick from the clay herebouts. Brickyard’s been shut down a long time but my daddy worked at it. They was a union war. Not like in the coal fields, but over who was going to run things — the AFL or the CIO. They’re joined up now. Back then they was enemies.

“My daddy, he was on the CIO side. He’d moved here for work and his buddies had went CIO. They had themselves a gunfight at Hay’s Crossing. Two AFLs was pinned down by more CIOs than you could count. They was all young and it was big fan, shooting all day and pissing on the gun barrels to keep them cool. One boy got sent home for food, ammo, and whisky. Daddy said it was the prettiest day in a month.

“Long on to dark, one AFL boy tore the bottom off his T-shirt and stuck it on a stick. Hollered that he was give out on fighting. The CIOs could have the union. He just wanted to go home and eat his supper. Well, nobody shot or said nothing. He come out of the brush scratched up and waving that flag, and got shot twice and went down like a stuck hog. As forehanded a man ever walked these hillsides. He lived but limped.

“My daddy, he got the blame on account of not having no kin living here. That way it was just him and not a whole gang to fight. It was best for everybody but us. Daddy saw he didn’t have no choice, and let it stick, but he told me he never done it.

“Somebody bushwhacked Daddy walking to work. Shot him right square in the same leg as the AFL boy. Now they both limped. Folks said you could see one coming and you’d not know which it was till he was foil on you. Things got back to peaceable after that. It was the AFL boy’s father who done the shooting and everybody knowed it, even Daddy, but he let it go. He got religion. They was too many to go up against anyhow. Daddy said it was the price of moving into a place where you didn’t know nobody. Said he had a good job and his family was happy. It was just me. They’d tried to have more kids but something was seized up in Mommy’s forks.

“Daddy, he took me out to the woods and learned me how to shoot pistol, riflegun, and scattergun. Daddy said he didn’t ever want me to be crippled up. Said a crippled man wasn’t worth the extra dirt his leg dragged. Said it wasn’t religion that kept him from getting that bunch back, it was being a coward. Not even Mommy knowed that.

“Then he’d beat me with the stick he walked with, tear me up one side and down the other. If I was to try and run, he’d laugh and say nobody ran from a gimp but a chicken. Said he was beating me so I’d not be yellow like him. Said he’d quit the day I just stood there and let him do it. He’d know I was brave.

“Then a bad thing happened, the worst thing. He got blood poison and the doctor cut his leg off. Took four men to hold him, but it was too late. That poison was in him like a snake. He died.

“Well, I practiced shooting every day for nigh a year. Then I had me a growth spurt. I was sixteen and ort to have been sniffing girls out, but I never. Nobody had ever liked us. I didn’t have nary a friend and Mommy stayed at the house. They hated us for not leaving. We reminded them of what they were — a whole creek full of liars.

“I didn’t know that then. All I knew was what it felt like to grow up a stranger. I decided to give them a reason to hate me and do what Daddy should have done. He never had the chance to see how brave his beating made me.

“I worked it all out in my head. If I was to go on a shooting spree, they’d damn sure know it was me, and they’d get me. What I done was not do a damn thing different. I went to school. I chopped wood and hauled water for Mommy. I worked in the garden and every now and again I killed me a man. Nobody knew who it was. They was all scared and they took to suspicioning each other, the same way I’d lived my whole life. They laid the blame off on first one then the other. About the time they was ready to shoot somebody, I’d Mil another man and the whole thing would start again. By God, I was proud. I ain’t no more, but I was swelled up then like a poisoned pup. It was the first time I ever felt like I belonged there.

“They was one last man I wanted took care of and then I set down in this holler. They ain’t exactly big gobs of people know I’m over in here. Your brother was one. He was like a son to me. But he don’t know what I told you.

“I know what you’re thinking on doing and I know why. You’d best be stout is all I can say. The doing ain’t easy, but it’s the living after that’s hard. I’ve set here and studied on it plenty. They’s better ways to live a life than always on lookout.”

Morgan lifted his concealed right arm and placed the barrel of a revolver against Virgil’s forehead. The motion was smooth and very fast, the metal cold against Virgil’s skin. Virgil stopped breathing. He wanted to swallow but was afraid his face would move and Morgan would fire.

“The thing about killing,” Morgan said, “it makes you worry about getting killed. Just remember, there’ll be somebody to track you down. You’ll have to kill again and it don’t get no easier. You just get better at it.”

He lowered his arm and tucked the pistol from sight, moving with the cunning of an animal. Morgan’s face glistened from water that had leaked from his eyes. It ran into the creases of his face like rain hitting gullies on a hillside.

Virgil moved to the door and breathed the sweet air of the woods, listening to the silence. The hills surrounded him like a box. The sky was a black slab etched with stars. He wondered how many shallow graves lay in the earth nearby.

The path curved into the woods and he stopped to let his eyes work out where he was. The light from Morgan’s house was gone. He followed the darker color of the path and slowed when moon-glow glinted off the truck. Arlow’s head was tipped against the door, his eyes closed. Air whistled from his mouth. The stuffed possum stood on the seat beside him.

Virgil pushed him across the seat and backed to the fork, where he turned around. Morgan’s story had worn him to a nubbin. The whisky was coming on him like a landslide and he wanted to go home. His trailer was eight miles away by the woods, twenty by road. The bottle held three fingers of whisky and he drank half, feeling it revive him. Dust blew in the windows and settled on his eyebrows. He turned from the hollow onto The Road and the warm night air rushed against his face. He remembered Boyd’s first car wreck, when he was fourteen. He’d run an old Dodge into the creek. “That damn car,” he told their father, “it just laid down, on me.” It became a family joke — if you tripped and fell, it wasn’t your fault, your boots just laid down on you.

At his trailer, Virgil dragged Arlow onto the couch that spanned the narrow wall. He left the possum in the truck. He went out the back door and sat on a log and looked into the woods. He finished the last of the bourbon. He had no idea what he wanted to do, but he was pretty sure what he didn’t want to do. If he could pile that up on one side of his mind, he could sniff out whatever was left over.

He flung the empty bottle up the hill. Everything came back to killing Rodale and that made him sick. He didn’t even hunt. What he wanted was his father’s cabin and to be left alone. He’d marry Abigail and have a mess of kids and get his name on a shirt.

He stretched on his back in the dirt and looked at the sly. The moon was gone. Its absence made more stars visible, as if they’d come from hiding. When he was a kid, Boyd told him that stars were holes in the land’s roof and the moon was the gap where an old stove flue had poked through. Clouds were shingles that got blown around. A rainbow was an exposed rafter.