But nothing yet disturbs the gentle strum of rain on road, the tramp-tramp-tramp of my soggy boots, the delicate pitterpatter of four dogfeet at my heels. I shift the bag to the other shoulder, readjust the uncomfortable but comforting gun in my belt, its muzzle aimed at my groin, and tramp on past a cornstubble field, a silent Massy-Ferguson hitched to a rusty disk plow, a park of noble white oaks beyond a meandering pasture stream. A lovely farm. A marginal farm, sustained by faith not economics. The owner probably makes his basic living in a chemical plant, a coal mine, a power station.
The road slants downhill through the trees, joins a two-lane asphalt road in the valley between the high ridges. Here the trees are leafing out—the old familiar pale green of linwood and gum, sycamore and sassafras and locust. It looks like home. And there, beyond a fenced-in pasture containing a few long-legged milk cows, on the far side of an ocher-colored creek, is a railway.
The sight does my heart good. Two gleaming tracks on gray ties laid on a bed of black cinders winding under the trees northeast toward Shawnee and Stump Creek. Toward Honey Hollow and home.
Sound of wheels on the asphalt road. I slink aside into the dogwood, squat down with my duffel bag and wait. A car passes, whizzing down the road. A second appears, slowing to turn up the dirt road that I’ve been walking. No insignia on the door panel but a whiptail radio antenna rises from the trunk lid and the man at the wheel wears a tight gray shirt with badge and shoulder patch. The law has been called. And me innocent as a babe. Innocent of any crimes but poverty, vagrancy, concealed weapon, possession of hard drugs and absolutely no identification. No money in my pockets, no I.D. on my person—imagine what the local rurales would make of that. Refer them to Will Lightcap? Who’s he? they’d say. Never heard of him. Will lives in a different valley, a different county, fifty sixty miles away.
No, I’d best stay off the roads from here on. Minimize human contact. I can see myself getting backed into a corner, feeling trapped, all too easily pulling this heavy instrument of murder from my belt. What would I have to lose?
The rain drizzles down, a gray mist filling the valley. I look for a bridge across that creek, a road to the railroad. Waiting, looking, feeling internal troubles stirring about, I open my kit and swallow one nausea tab. Make it two. Followed, after a moment’s hesitation—got to try to keep alert—by one tiny Demerol.
Now, before we float and wobble into dreamland, got to find a way across yonder crick. I stare up and down the valley, searching. Two cars, a pickup truck, go by. Then a caravan of four giant coal trucks races past, beating hell out of the blacktop.
In each direction I see fenced-in pasture fields, ragged woods, broken-back barns beside canted old two-story farmhouses with that familiar vacant look. Keeping to the brush above the road, I head up-valley toward the nearest group of farm buildings. A dirt lane leads between fields toward a flat wooden bridge over the creek. I watch another pair of automobiles pass, then slide down the mudbank, jog across the asphalt and slip like a fox down the narrow sideroad. Safe; I stagger forward into the mist.
A sleek automobile sneaks up behind me, pulls alongside and halts. The whiptail quivers. The man in the tight gray shirt studies my eyes.
I lower my bag to the mud. My jacket is buttoned over the gun but I’m conscious of the bulge beneath—like a man with a badly swollen spleen. The splenetic type.
He stares. I wait. End of the road for Lightcap. (They’ll never take me alive, I think, half believing it.)
“How you doing, buddy?”
Buddy—that means comrade, companion, fellow soldier. Honorary brother. But of course he doesn’t mean it. Wouldn’t know the meaning. “Just a-walkin’ along,” I reply.
He considers my answer, looking me over carefully. His face is fat, rosy, smug, with little pink-blue porcine eyes. Greasy slicked-back hair and a pencil-thin mustache on his upper lip. Red ears, a double chin, and a hog’s belly squeezed beneath the steering wheel. Another inbred degenerate hillbilly. Marginal I.Q. and the morality of a Ku Klux Klansman. God knows I know his type. The backwoods cop. A native redneck bully with a gun on his hip and an automatic shotgun in the rack behind his left shoulder. He looks to be about my age. But I must look older.
“Where you headed?”
“Shawnee.”
“You got a long walk. Folks there?”
“Yep.”
“Why don’t you phone them?”
An intelligent question. I pause and say, “I’d rather walk.”
He seems to understand. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “The road’s behind you.”
“I’m gonna walk the railroad. It’s shorter.”
He considers my words, watching me. “You look too sick to walk. What you got in that duffel bag?”
“A bedroll and some medicine.”
“Any food?”
“Sure. I have food.”
He eyes me with disbelief. “You look like you ain’t had a square meal in a week. Your dog looks better than you do. You have any money?”
“I’ve got a few bucks.”
He stares at me. A weak embarrassed smile appears on his face. “You’re lying, buddy. Here—” He opens the metal lunchbucket beside him on the seat, takes out two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, a greenish banana and a tiny round fruit pie encased in clear plastic. “You eat this,” he says, pushing the stuff at me through his open window. I hesitate. “Go on, take it.”
I take it. “Thanks.”
He grins. “Don’t thank me, thank my old lady.” He shifts his patrol car into reverse—no space for a one-eighty on this road—half turns in his seat, looking out the rear window, and roars back to the paved road, wheels throwing mud.
The dog and I sit down on the bridge over the creek. I give Sollie the sandwiches: meat loaf with mayo and lettuce clapped inside sliced Wonder Bread. Nausea: I have no appetite but force myself to eat the gluey little pie; maybe the sugar will boost me on. We save the banana for future use, get up and start down the railroad.
The rain has stopped, a pale sun glows dim on the western sky above this deep and narrow Appalachian valley. We trudge onward, tie after tie, every step a small victory.
Pleasant final dreams. I dream as I walk. The air seems warmer now. I smell the fragrance of warm creosote, of damp trillium, Juneberry and ground ivy blooming on the ditchbanks. I hear the trickle of running water in the ditch, gurgling out of the culverts. I pass an upright concrete post beside the tracks, the letter W engraved upon its head. Whistle sign—road crossing around that next bend. I walk and dream as I walk of Wilma Fetterman climbing the school-bus steps. Of Donna Shoemaker turning cartwheels. Of the first two-base hit I got off Tony Kovalchick and of Red Ginter’s last home run. I remember Mary and the backseat of the Hudson Terraplane. I remember Sally Buterbaugh who worked as a maid in the Shawnee Hotel the summer I was bellhop there, the perfume of her little room on the top floor, the way she looked as she lay on her bed wearing only a satin slip and lacy bra: Come on in, Henry. Close the door, Henry.
A locomotive whistles behind me. I stumble into the ditch dragging the duffel bag. A short freight thunders past, horn blaring, trailing a hot wind, black smoke, dancing leaves. A brakeman sits at the side window of a yellow caboose. Without a glance my way he tosses out a cigarette package. I pick it up: two Camel cigarettes and a book of matches stuck inside the cellophane wrapper. Bless the man. I must be nearing home. Even the brakemen, even the sheriff’s deputies, are being generous as giants.
I give one cigarette to Solstice, the other to myself. Beggars’ democracy. She swallows hers in one gulp, I strike a match and smoke mine. I’d prefer a cigar. Cautiously I save the matches, sealing them inside the foil of the empty pack. We come to a road crossing. I pause.
There’s a little town to the west less than a mile away. I see a white church steeple with clock, a paved road with traffic, the bright red-and-yellow signs of a Shell gasoline station. I smell woodsmoke and think of Stump Creek, Will’s house, the swe
et suggestion of suppertime. There will be a public telephone over there, if not at the gas station then at the general store. Could hide my bag here, saunter into the village like a regular freeborn American citizen, learn the name of the place, make that one simple phone call. Collect, naturally. Sit down on the churchyard fence and wait. Will, he’d come. He’d take the call and he’d come. What choice would he have? I ain’t heavy I’m his brother, the poor unlucky slob. Stump Creek cannot be more than a two-or three-hour drive from here.
I stash the duffel bag in the elderberry bushes and walk toward the town. We come to a bridge over the creek. I lean on the rail and gaze down at the rushing, muddy waters. I remember McKinley Morganfield. Got my mojo workin’, he would sing.
My dog sits beside me, watching the flood below, waiting. The creek is flowing north. Joyous, exultant, spring-flood waters streaming toward the Buckhannon River, the mighty Monongahela. Who was Buckhannon? I don’t know but with a name like that he must have been a distinguished man. And Mononga-hela, now there’s a name to scare the deerskin britches off Buck Buckhannon himself. Mononga, Shawnee chieftain, warrior, deerslayer, husband of twenty squaws, father of Tecumseh, ally of King George, his lodge festooned with many a black-, brown-, yellow-and red-haired scalp.
The dog waits. We ponder the racing waters. The sun has dropped behind the western ridge. A yellow glow clarifies the texture of the forest crowning the crest line. It’s about four P.M. in Tucson now; the paloverdes are turning golden with flowers; scorpions rustle over the sand; the inferno of desert summer lies only a few weeks off.
About that phone call. I look again at the little town strung along the county road, rooftops and steeple showing above the trees. Some of those unhooded mercury-vapor yardlights, activated automatically by sundown, have begun to glare through the twilight. For five hundred thousand years the human race survived without those things; now they’re everywhere, from Point Barrow to Tierra del Fuego. The brighter the lights the greater the fear. The peace of sunset, evening star, moonrise and starlight, of fireflies and soft lamps has become one more privilege of the rich.
Shall we make that telephone call?
I debate the matter in my head, hands on the bridge rail, knowing full well that I’ve already decided. The water rushes beneath. If we had a canoe, a johnboat, a Boston whaler, even a little rubber raft…I shift my feet. The dog waits, watching me.
“Let’s go, Sollie.”
We return to the iron road, the railroad, picking up my duffel on the way. This bag gets heavier by the mile. Maybe tomorrow, I think, opening the medical kit, I’ll hang this thing too on a sapling deep in the forest. I swallow a Dilaudid (derived from laudanum derived from opium) this time, not feeling too good. What I really need is a drink of water. And an intravenous dinner. I’m dehydrated from that bout of puking and diarrhea last night. Nausea, most discouraging of emotions, keeps haunting my stomach. I’ll probably lose the deputy’s chemical pie before evening becomes night. I swallow more Phenergan tablets for the nausea, dip my hands in the running ditch beside the tracks and drink as much of the cold iron-flavored water as I can keep down.
Hoist the duffel bag to shoulder. Crank nose, belly, petcock and toes to the northeast. Push left foot forward. Place weight on left foot. Push right foot forward. Weight on right. Each step an arrested fall, an averted accident, a postponed disaster. The inconvenient interval between the ties does not help. I shift to the cinders on the shoulder of the roadbed but that too makes awkward walking: the cinders are loose, rough, uneven beneath my foot. But even so it’s better than walking the highway where grease-slick steel sharks screech past your elbow every two-three minutes. The railroad these days is what the American country road used to be: a quiet lane winding through the forest, following the riverside and contours of the hills—not gashing through them. Nobody bothers you on the railway, nobody watches, nobody worries about your business there.
The Appalachian twilight deepens about me. The hoot owl calls again from the dripping woods. Frogs clank in the bogs along the creek, tree toads chant among the willows. The sky above resembles a blanket of purple wool. Not a star in sight. More rain a-comin’ for sure. Got to find shelter soon. The railway bridges the creek ahead but a railway bridge makes a leaky roof.
The railroad passes behind a coal-mining town. I see the rows of company houses lining the single street, each two-story box weathered to matching shades of gray and rust. Autos, pickup trucks, motorcycles stand parallel to the housefronts. Vapor lights burn blue-white in the gloaming, mimicking the blue glow of TV in the windows.
Kids are yelling on the sidewalks—not many. I smell burned olive oil, refried grease, smoking garbage. On a field between town and coal-loading tipple lies the ghost of a baseball diamond: open bleachers, a backstop cage of chickenwire, the dugouts behind each baseline, the bare infield black with coal dust, a gray-green outfield with cindery warning track and board fence advertising CHURCH’S AUTO REPAIR, BOGGS’ FUNERAL HOME, HIRES’ ROOT BEER, SUTTON’S FORD, GRESAK’S TAVERN, IRON CITY PILSENER, PEPSI-COLA BOTTLING CO., HINTON’S HARDWARE…
Sky leaking again. The track winds out of town past the riprap of junked cars shoring up the banks of the creek, through another swamp, past a strip mine and quarry, into the comforting dark of the woods again. But the trees are leaking too. Raindrops trickle from the beak of my cap. And then I spot a covered bridge spanning the creek. I go on, descend a weedy bank, crawl through a barbed wire fence and drag myself and bedroll beneath the sheltering stone abutment of the bridge.
Even in the dark I can see that others have camped here before me: the stone is black from the smoke of campfires. I drop my bag, scrape a hole in the dirt and build a tiny fire of beer-bottle labels and sassafras twigs. Small fire in a hole, deep under base of bridge, means less chance of being observed. I warm my hands at the fire, unroll the sleeping bag on the dirt, tug off my wet warped boots and slide socks-first into the sack.
The bleak but consoling rain falls on the shingled roof of the bridge, drips through the planking of the roadway, slides down spiderwebs and crossbeams, spatters drop by drop into craters in the mud and dust.
II
The dog lies prone between the rails, stretched out on cinder and tie, unwilling to move.
I talk to her, command her, bark at her, lift her to her feet and drag her a few steps forward—nothing works. She subsides once more to her belly, closing her eyes. Flies buzz about her ears and nose.
Again I pull the revolver from my belt, thumb back the hammer, place the muzzle to her forehead. I shut my eyes and begin to squeeze the trigger.
Again I fail. Can’t quite do it.
“Goddamnit dog, what do you want from me?”
No response. Sollie lies in the filtered sunshine, wheezing slowly, eyes leaking a yellow matter, ribs gaunt beneath her dull and useless hide.
Don’t feel too good myself. More pills less relief with each passing day. At least I’ve got enough bullets in the gun for both of us and that’s some consolation.
Damn worthless stinking ugly mongrel mutt….
Insults don’t help. She won’t move. Cursing, I drag the duffel bag containing my bedroll down the slope of the roadbed and into the woods. I take out the green banana, my supply of pills and capsules and hang the bag to another bent-over birch. How will I find this when we return? If we return. I don’t know and I don’t care.
Back on the tracks I pick up my dying dog—she smells like buzzard meat already—and hold her in my arms like a baby. She’s nothing but bone and skin, light as a puppy. I put her down, take off my jacket and make a neat hobo’s bindle of my remaining supplies: the loaded .357, the packet of medicines, the banana, tying everything in a tight ball with the jacket’s sleeves. I push the end of my walking stick through the knot and balance the bindle on my shoulder. The bindle stiff is ready.
Now the dog. I pick her up under my left arm. The smell is sickening. We step forward. Left foot, right foot, hay foot, straw foot
. Ten feet, twenty feet, forty feet, eighty…
Can’t take the smell. Can’t handle the double load. I’m breathing hard already. If I’m not careful I’m gonna throw up again and there’s nothing in my stomach but tatters of liver, biliary duct, pancreas, gall bladder. Nor any strength left in either arm. I let the dog drop. She flops to the cinders without complaint.
I sit on the rail and talk to Sollie, saying goodbye. I review our years together, the good times and the bad, and apologize for leaving her now. She consents, too tired to care anymore. I drag her to the ditch on the left, where water runs over the dead leaves and mud. Here she can drink if she wants it. Before the vultures come, the black bear or the bobcat, whatever it may be—neighborhood dogs most likely—that finally terminates her canine existence. Would be the merciful thing, the decent humane thing, to put one of my hollow-point .357s through her brain. But I’ve tried that. I lack the courage to be so kind.
I climb the embankment, pick up my stick and bundle, stagger on. The railway curves before me. At the far end of the turn I look back. Solstice still lies in the ditch, nose down, limp as the dead.
I walk on, no longer a we, searching my heart for a sense of regret. Hard to locate. That dog is better off than I am, damn her lousy mangy flea-bit tick-sucked worm-riddled fungoid carcass, let her die in peace. Pax vobiscum.
I stop. Now that I’m free of that deadweight dog maybe I should go back for my bedroll? No. Too far. The idea of retracing my steps for even a hundred feet seems too wearisome and tragic even for thought. Let it hang.
But I turn back. Sure enough, as I’ve half expected, that dog has crawled from the ditch back up on the railway and is dragging herself along from sleeper to sleeper, spike to spike, nose fastened to my spoor. I walk past her without a word. She halts, watching. I retrieve my duffel bag and return to the dog between the rails, pack her into the bag and lurch on down the track. Stupid, I know, but maybe she’ll suffocate in there, die quietly, quickly. Then I’ll dump her in the ditch for good. For eternity. Life is a dog and then you die? No no, life is a joyous dance through daffodils beneath cerulean blue skies. And then? Then what? I forget. I forget what happens next.