The Good Brother

6

Virgil opened his eyes to a monstrous thirst. He could not bear the light. He closed his lids and let time move around him.

Something jabbed his leg. A man was kicking him and he thought it was his brother waking him for school.

“You hurt?” the kicking man said.

Virgil’s slow awareness that he wasn’t dreaming sent a sliver of fear along his spine. Knots of memory exploded in his head. He was unable to move his arm. He looked at the shirtless man, who continued to kick him.

“Don’t,” Virgil said.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing. Just sleeping.”

“This your place?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure you ain’t hurt now.”

“Can’t move my arm.”

“Hell, you’re jammed up against the woodpile.” The man extended a hand. “Here.”

Virgil took it and the man pulled until Virgil was able to sit. His head spun with such pain that it felt detached from his body, and he wondered if he’d been struck in the face. He looked at the man and remembered his name.

“I feel rode hard and put up wet,” Arlow said. “We didn’t have a wreck or nothing, did we?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. Did I drive?”

“No.”

“Good. One more pop and I lose my license.”

Sunlight slid through the tangled tree limbs overhead. The scent of honeysuckle came on a breeze. Virgil knew he needed to get up, but wasn’t sure he could make it. He felt poisoned and beat up. He began the slow operation of standing, trying to keep his head level. His body swayed and he wanted to hold something for balance, but there was only Arlow.

“A short beer would fix us right up.” Arlow said.

“I ain’t drinking no more.”

Virgil clung to the doorjamb as he entered the trailer, ashamed of the weakness in his limbs. He filled a glass with water and drank.

“I’m going to lay down,” he said.

“How do I get out of here?”

“They’s not but one road off this hill.”

“We’ll see ya, buddy. Old Morgan’s a case, ain’t he.”

The memory of Morgan’s story flared in Virgil’s head like a blowtorch. He gripped the sink and stared at the faucet.

“Goddam son of a bitch!” Arlow yelled from outside. “There’s a fucking possum in my truck! You got ary a gun?”

Virgil nodded but an eruption of pain stopped the motion. It hurt to move his eyes.

“Rifle’s no good this close,” Arlow said. “I might could use some help if you’re able.”

Virgil moved to the door and looked at the three steps with dread. Arlow had his hand on the truck door handle. In one quick motion he jerked the door open, slipped and fell, and began scooting backwards. He circled the truck and looked at the immobile animal.

“Sick, ain’t it,” he said. “Might be rabies. Good thing I seen it. Jeezum Crow, it could have got me.”

“It ain’t real,” Virgil said.

“Damn sure is.”

“It’s dead, Arlow.” Virgil began to laugh and tried to stop because it made his head hurt. “It’s stuffed.”

Arlow leaned to study the possum through the safety of the windshield.

“By God if it ain’t,” he said. “Now where the hell did that nasty thing come from?”

“Morgan.”

“Ain’t nobody else fool enough to stuff a damn possum.” He opened the passenger door and kicked it across the bench seat and out the driver’s side, “There, by God. It’s yours now.” He laughed, then turned his head and retched a stream into the dirt. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“About time,” he said. “I been waiting on that all morning. You ort to, too.”

He got in the truck and slammed the doors and started the engine. He leaned out his window. “Keep your ass wiped,” he said. Rock and dirt flew from his rear tires as he drove down the road, honking the horn. The possum lay on its side in the yard. A blue fly veered past it to Arlow’s vomit soaking into the earth.

Virgil took four aspirin and stumbled to his room and lay on his bed. He wondered if it was possible to die from a hangover.

When he awoke he felt better but not muck The smell of alcohol rose from his skin. He stepped into the shower and hunched beneath the hot water spraying the back of his neck. As soon as he left the bathroom he felt worse. He returned to the shower’s comfort until the water turned cold.

He drank coffee on the trailer steps, staring at the stuffed possum. It didn’t know it was dead. Only the living cared, but the way Virgil felt, he didn’t care enough. Knots of grass made green patches in the sloped yard’s clay dirt. The sun hung above the western hills. He hoped no one came visiting because he was embarrassed to be seen. He stepped into the woods.

Two cardinals flashed low through the brush, and Virgil turned his head to watch, scraping his face on a tree limb. He preferred its sharp pain to the dull thud inside his head. He circled a blackberry patch and went downslope to a low ridge. He was sweating inside his clothes. The effort to negotiate the woods made him forget how bad he felt, but he could feel the liquor tearing at him. His eyes were dry and heavy. His head hurt.

He reached a low ridge, very narrow with no trees. On the ground lay a variety of feathers. Pale bones poked from the leaves. Beneath an evergreen was a gray owl pellet the size of a crow’s egg. Virgil was in a hunting zone. It was an ideal place for an owl to kill whatever animal came along.

The shadows opened to light and he headed for it, moving through a wall of pine that covered him with the smell of sap. The heavy woods ended at the ridgeline that marked the boundary of what everyone called “company land.” It was owned by the mineral company that had left holes in the hills forty years before. The land was routinely logged. Younger men had begun growing marijuana on it. Virgil remembered having come here years back with Boyd, hunting a Christmas tree for their grade school. They had shared a pair of gloves, one apiece, each keeping the bared hand in a pocket. Boyd used a shotgun to blast the tree down. They dragged it to their school and walked home through the early darkness. Wind blew cold along the ridge. High hills ringed the gray sky, treetops aiming at the stars. Like many mountain families, they had an artificial tree, a sign of town sophistication. Boyd said people who lived in cities preferred real trees.

Now Virgil was squinting down the hill, seeking evidence of the tree they’d taken twenty years back. The crimson light of afternoon sliced into the eastern hillside, moving slowly along the ridge. When the sun reached the top, it would be full dark in the hollow, like the bottom of a well. Climbing the hill gained an extra hour of daylight.

At the top, the land opened from its steep-walled maze to the Blizzard Cemetery. Virgil and Boyd had come to the graveyard as kids to smoke cigars, then cigarettes, and eventually dope. They’d dared each other into the graveyard. Boyd had gone first. He always did — first down a snowy slope on a car hood, first to get thrown from an unbroken pony, first to ride a mini-bike up a homemade ramp. Now he was first dead.

Virgil crossed the road in the immense silence of the hilltop and climbed the fence into the cemetery. Gnawed acorns lay beneath the oaks. He hadn’t been back since the funeral but he walked straight to the grave, approaching from an angle so he wouldn’t have to read the name on the stone. The earth was still slightly humped. Wired to the marker was a bouquet of plastic flowers that Boyd would have hated. Beside it was their father’s grave.

A steady breeze crossed the top of the hill. Hickory limbs scraped each other, a sound that made Virgil edgy. He refused to turn and look. Nothing was there but rock, dirt, and trees, with boxed bones below the surface. He stood beside the grave. Etched into the rock was his brother’s name. It occurred to Virgil that carving the names of the dead was a strange job.

He’d only cried once, after seeing the expression on his mother’s face at losing a son. His tears had been for her. Now, six months later, Virgil could feel his own grief rising through him.

“Fuck you,” he said. “You son of a bitch. Look at you now. Goddam fucking dead. Fuck you, Boyd, Fuck you.”

The words clogged his throat until he couldn’t speak. His shoulders rose and fell. Somewhere deep inside was the instinct to shut it off, not so much like turning a faucet but more like doubling a hose to choke his sorrow. When the sounds coming out of him ran down, Virgil stood and began kicking the granite headstone. He kicked until his foot hurt. Steel-toed boots were better for the job and he laughed at himself for thinking that way. Boyd had always made fun of the practical turn to Virgil’s mind. His face was cold from tears. He began to walk.

At the top of the hill were the oldest graves, surrounded by white oaks. Dry leaves crackled beneath his boots. The gravestones were standing at a tilt and grown with moss, the earth sunk before them. One had been broken and repaired. Lines of rust ran down the stone from the bolts that held it together. The grass was very green and Virgil didn’t like to think why. A flicker flew by, cutting scallops in the air. Dusk was coming on. Virgil wished he was the one who’d died. If he had, Boyd would already be locked up for having killed Rodale. He wouldn’t have let six months go by.

A young maple grew in a corner, out of place among the old hardwoods. In the shade beneath it was a plain marker. The dates were seven years apart, a child. Virgil stared at the small grave for a long time. He didn’t recognize the name, and he wondered if the parents still lived in the county. He felt another layer of sadness, not for himself, but for them. Their boy was taken away and there was nothing they could do. It was worse than his situation.

Virgil began to cry again. He dropped to his knees and let all the tears he’d ever forbidden move through him and out of him and into the earth. He cried until he gagged and his body wanted to retch. He squelched that urge, then let that happen, too. It smelted of coffee and whisky. He continued to gag until bile filled his mouth and ran over his chin. He lay on the soft ground and pressed his head to the earth and struggled to control his breathing. There was nothing else in him to come out.

He lay there a long time and slowly realized that he’d been asleep. He was cold. The sun was sliding behind the western hills, sending a red fan of light across the ridge. The liquid scent of pine carried across the road. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the marker above the child’s grave.

In the dim light he could Just make out the name carved into the headstone.

JOSEPH TILLER

He stared at it for a long time. The faint glimmer of an idea began at the border of his mind, then raced over him like heat, followed by an exhilarated terror. He felt something shift within him, an alignment of body and mind. The idea was both terrible and great, and he shivered at its enormity.