“Where’d you come from?” he said. “You ain’t lost, are you?”
“No sir.” He pointed. “I live right over yonder.”
The man squatted and picked up a twig.
“Over yonder where? There ain’t nothin but woods back in there that I know of.”
Gary put his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground for a moment.
“We just live back in the woods over there. In this old log house. Where’s that snake they killed?”
“Right there. Ain’t he a nice one?”
Gary stepped closer and looked at it, a smashed loop of muscle as thick as his wrist slowly ebbing toward death in the torn leaves.
“Them hands said it was a highland moccasin but I asked em what was a highland moccasin doing down here in the lowlands. I’da hated to stepped on him.”
“I would, too.”
“You sure you not lost?”
“I’m just walkin around,” Gary said. “I seen them fellers when they killed that snake. I saw a big old coon in a tree back up yonder a while ago.”
“You did?”
“Saw a deer while ago, too.”
The man nodded and didn’t say anything else.
“What are y’all doin, cuttin wood?”
The man looked up. He shook his head.
“We deadnin timber. I ain’t figured out where your house is yet. There ain’t no houses back in here that I know of.”
Gary pointed to the bluff. “It’s back straight in through there, over about three or four hills.”
“Yeah? Is it close to the highway over there?”
The boy thought and nodded his head slowly.
“Sort of. They’s this road, this dirt road you go up and it’s another road you cut off of and it goes up beside this big bottom where they got some beans planted. It’s this old house sets up on top of this hill with a bunch of pine trees around it.”
“Oh,” the man said. “Who you rentin it from?”
The question seemed innocent but the boy didn’t know what to say. He scratched his head.
“Well. We ain’t really rentin it I don’t guess. We just sort of stayin in it till we find us a place to live.”
“We?”
“Yessir. My mama and my daddy and my two sisters. And me,” he added. “Y’all kill these trees?”
“Yeah. We inject em. You see them guns they had?”
“Yessir.”
“See where they’ve cut these? Look right here.”
The boy walked over beside him. The tree he leaned against had cuts all around the base, and something like thin molasses dripped from the cuts.
“Poison,” the man said. “You got that gun you inject it with. Then in about a week it’ll start to die.”
“What for?”
“Weyerhauser land. They kill the timber off so they can come in and plant pine trees on it. Next winter we’ll come over here and put out little pines on it. All this’ll die and be on the ground in about six or eight years.”
“Why?”
The man looked at him as if he didn’t have any sense at all.
“Well, this ain’t good enough timber to log it. It’s just scrub stuff, so all they want to do is get rid of what’s on it so they can put pines on it.” He unleaned himself from the tree. “I got to get on and see about these hands. They’ll set down if I don’t stay right on their ass.”
He’d already turned away to go before it all came together for the boy.
“I’ll see you,” the man said.
“Them guys work for you?” Gary said.
The man stopped and looked back. “Yeah. You don’t want to work, do you?”
The boy took three anxious steps forward. “Yessir. I need a job. My daddy needs one, too.”
“Your daddy? How old’s your daddy?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and he didn’t. “But I want to work even if he don’t. I need a job bad.”
The man pulled his pants up slightly and coughed into his hand. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen. I’m just little for my age. When you want me to start? I can start right now if you want me to.”
“Well,” he said, considering. He looked at his watch. “You could get a whole day in if you started now. You want to?”
“Yessir. Just tell me what to do.”
“You don’t need to go back and tell your daddy?”
“Nosir. They all asleep, anyway.”
“All right, then. Come on over here.”
They walked across the floor of the woods maybe sixty feet and stopped beside a line of trees already injected. The man pointed.
“See this here? Where these trees done been poisoned? What’s your name, anyway?”
“Gary Jones.”
“My name’s Joe Ransom. You got a Social Security card?”
“Nosir. I ain’t never had one.”
“You ever worked anywhere before?”
“Yessir.”
“Where?”
“Lots of places. I picked a lot of produce. We been in Texas pickin tomaters but we left, Daddy said cause of the wetbacks. But I’ve worked all over. Georgia and Florida. I pulled watermelons in Georgia last year.”
“I don’t guess you’re scared of work, then. I’ll tell you what I do, now. I pay a day’s pay for a day’s work. We start in about six and quit at one or two. If we work to dinner and get rained out I pay for a whole day. That sound fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” said the boy.
“All right, then. Just get on this line of trees and you can see where they’ve come this mornin. It’s probably close to a half mile or so back to my truck. Stay on this outside line where they’ve injected and you can’t miss it. You’ll come out on a road over yonder and they’s a big yellow dozer up on this bank. Go to the right, two or three hundred yards and you’ll see my pickup. Old GMC. And the guns and stuff’s in the back. They got a top that just screws on. Get you one and fill it up with poison and then come on back down through here just like you went out and you’ll catch up with us somewhere. You got all that?”
The boy had already started off. “Yessir.”
“You ain’t gonna get lost, are you?”
“Nosir. I hope not.” He started running.
“And bring one of those jugs of poison back with you.”
“All right,” he called back.
“We’ll need it before we get through with this round,” Joe shouted after him. He heard the boy answer back, some word, and the sound of his feet rapidly diminishing through the woods. Then he was gone. It was the first time he’d ever hired a hand who didn’t ask what he paid.
Joe was asleep on the couch one Saturday afternoon when his daughter woke him up, knocking on the door. He got up and let her in and cleaned clothes off a chair and told her to sit down. He moved the whiskey bottle to the side of the couch after he saw her looking at it.
“I just thought I’d come by and see you,” she said. “See how you are.”
“Aw, I’m all right. I talked to your mama other day up at the post office. I tried to get her to go eat lunch with me and she wouldn’t do it. I don’t know what she’s got against me.”
“She ain’t got anything against you.”
He didn’t agree with that but he nodded anyway. He was still sleepy and knew he probably looked bad. He lit a cigarette and sat back.
“You still smoke?” he said.
“Not much. The doctor said whatever you smoke or drink the baby gets too, so I just about quit.”
He drew one leg up on the couch and rubbed his face.
“Yeah, I guess that’s right. You listen to him. Take care of yourself. How much longer you got to go?”
She smiled for the first time, this child who had grown up so quickly in other houses with him, the one whose only defense against the things in him had been kindness and which kindness he felt he’d never repaid, never could.
“Five or six more weeks. I got the day marked on my calenda
r. If it’s a boy we gonna name it after you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.”
“Well, that’s good.” He didn’t know what to say to her now, never knew now. “That’s good,” he said again.
“Mama said you told her you’d been doin real good lately. Said you told her you hadn’t even been out anywhere in two weeks.”
He nodded without looking at her, but she was looking at the bottle.
“I’m gonna fix me a drink,” he said. He got up and made one and brought it back to the couch. They sat uneasily in the room, in awkward silence that lasted while he tried to think of things to say.
“She gave me some of that money you gave her. She gave me seventy-five dollars. I bought some baby clothes and stuff. Some diapers.”
“You better have plenty of them.”
“I got two dozen.”
“You better get four dozen.”
“Mama said you wouldn’t never change our diapers.”
“Well. That’s right.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t want to, I guess.”
He bent forward on the couch and held the glass with both hands. It was hard for him to meet her eyes. She remembered him as being too busy for her and her brother. When they cried he never heard. Charlotte was the one who took care of them and raised them, Charlotte was the one they cried for when they were sick. Not him. It was never him.
“You know she still loves you, don’t you?”
The questions were in her eyes that she wouldn’t ask, had never asked. Why did you do the way you did? Why did you run us all away?
“She don’t love me,” he said. “I don’t blame her. She’s give me enough chances. Maybe she’ll find her somebody that can take care of her.”
“She won’t. She’s afraid to.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“I don’t.”
“She’s afraid you’d kill him.”
He tried to laugh it off, but his face felt as if it might crack. He shook his head and finally looked at the floor.
“That ain’t what’s stoppin her. She knows better than that.”
“But you might. You know you might. I know how you can be when you get mad.” She paused. “Or drunk. I’m sorry, Daddy. But it’s true.”
“Listen. Your mama can do what she wants to. I ain’t married to her no more. If she wants to remarry I won’t say a word. Is she wantin to?”
“She ain’t even had a date. Anybody that knows you won’t date her.”
“Is that what she said?”
“I know that myself.”
“Well.” He turned the glass in his hands, feeling the weight of her gaze on him. “Y’all don’t know everything.”
“I know you,” she said.
“You sound just like your mama. Y’all ain’t happy if you ain’t fussin at me.”
“I ain’t fussin at you,” she said, and he was startled to see that she was close to tears. Her eyes were wet and her mouth had set up that little trembling just like Charlotte’s always had when she’d been forced to gather the strength to stand up to him in the past.
“Goddamn, don’t start in cryin.”
“I ain’t cryin.”
“You fixin to.”
She didn’t wipe at her eyes. She kept her hands clenched in her lap, her fingers twisted together.
“I didn’t come out here to fuss at you. I came to see you cause I miss you. I just wanted to see if you were taking care of yourself.”
“I’m okay,” he said, and he took another sip from his glass. “Y’all don’t need to worry about me.”
“You know if you’d stop drinking she’d take you back.”
He shook his head.
“We done been through all that. I quit drinking one time and carried her up to Memphis, to this nice restaurant up there. I ordered one beer and she like to had a goddamn hissy. I hadn’t had nothin to drink in two months. Hadn’t touched a drop. And then she wanted to make a big scene over one beer. I told her to just get her ass up and go get in the car. I was try in hard but that wasn’t good enough for her. Ain’t nobody gonna run my life for me. You don’t know what I’ve had to put up with.”
“I know what she’s had to put up with.”
“Yeah?”
“I growed up in it. She’s tried.”
He settled back on the couch and slumped down and looked out the window, rattling the ice gently in the glass. How could he explain it to her? “I know she’s tried. You can’t live with somebody for twenty years and not know em like I know her. She’s a big churchgoer and I ain’t. She don’t like to be around anybody drinkin, don’t even like to smell it. I drink and I like to drink. That’s it. If you have to argue with somebody day in and day out you’re gonna get sick of livin with em. I don’t care how much you love em. You can’t fight all the time and not have it do somethin to you. There ain’t nobody who can live like that. Me and your mama can’t.”
He stopped and shook his head. They could talk it over and over and it wouldn’t change anything. She wasn’t coming back. Nothing was ever going to change. He didn’t know what Theresa wanted to come over here and start talking about it for. All it did was make him feel worse.
‘Are you happy by yourself?”
“I’m used to it,” he said. “That don’t mean I like it. I can come and go when I get ready, and they don’t nobody say nothin to me. Y’all wouldn’t be here now even if we’d stayed together. When have you seen Randy?”
She smiled slightly and then winced as the baby kicked inside her. She grabbed her stomach and eased herself back, drew in her breath sharply.
“He kickin you?”
“Whew. Yeah.” She smiled weakly. “He don’t usually kick in the daytime. Mostly it’s at night when I lay down. I’m all right. Can I get a drink of water or something?”
“Yeah, sure, what you want?” He set his drink on the floor and got up quickly and went to the icebox.
“Just anything,” she said.
“You want some Coke? I got some orange juice or I can make you a cup of coffee.”
“Just some juice if you got it.”
He filled a glass with orange juice and brought it to her. He sat back down across from her and watched her drink it.
“You sure you ain’t gonna have twins?”
“It’s just a big baby, the doctor said.”
“Say you ain’t seen Randy?”
“Yessir. He come over to the house the other night and eat supper with us. Mama cooked us some steaks out on the grill and he worked on her sink some. He had to put one of them traps or whatever under there. And fixed the lock on her door. He didn’t have a whole lot to say to me. I guess he ain’t never got used to the idea yet. I guess he’s ashamed of me.”
“Well,” he said. It was all he could think of to say. He knew she was probably right. He was almost glad his mother and daddy weren’t alive to see this happening. Randy hadn’t killed the boy and that was something to be thankful for, that he wasn’t in the pen over it.
“I might still get married some time,” she said. “This ain’t the first time it ever happened to anybody, and it won’t be the last.”
“First time it ever happened to one of mine,” he said.
“It’s my baby. It ain’t yours.”
“It’s your decision.”
“That’s right.”
“If you want to keep it it’s up to you. But it’s gonna be rough on the kid and one of these days he’s gonna ask you why. If it’s a boy he’s gonna have to learn how to fight. You know what other kids’ll call him.”
“I’ve done thought of all that.”
“Have you?”
“I have. Me and Mama’s talked about it. I can get a job later on. I want to go back to school later on. You can’t get no kind of a decent job around here without an education. I used to couldn’t see that. I see it now.”