“Girl, I been lookin’, and…”
“I’ll find him.”
Baskin waited a moment for another word to be spoken, then shook his head and walked to the top step, turned to look at her again, shrugged and started down. Dollys lugging meat paused to watch him, openly staring. Blond Milton, Sonya, Catfish Milton, Betsy and the rest. He waved to them and none moved a twitch in response. He said, “That’d be the best thing, girl. Make sure your daddy gets the gravity of this deal.”
Chapter 4
NEAR DUSK the snow let up. The wood of the house tightened in the cold and creaked and both boys had scratchy throats. Their chests jumped pumping out coughs. They had sniffles and voices becoming froggy from sickness. Ree sat them on couch cushions laid beside the potbelly, under the hanging clothes, and threw a quilt over them.
“I told the both of you to put your goddam stocking hats on, didn’t I? Didn’t I say that?”
Mom’s evening pills did not tamp her as far down inside herself as the morning pills did. She did not stumble so wretchedly after concepts that squirted away from her time and again, but had occasional evening thoughts come complete and sit on her tongue to be said, and as the sun faded from a day she might release a few sentences of helpful chat or even lend a hand in the kitchen. She said, “There’s whiskey hid in a ol’ boot on my closet floor. Any honey anywhere?”
The whiskey was Jessup’s, kept hidden from the boys, and Ree fetched it from the old boot. She had to stand on a chair to find a long-forgotten honey jar on a high shelf. The jar held an inch or two of crystallizing honey. She poured whiskey on the honey, then said, “This enough?”
“A dollop more. Stir it good.”
Ree stirred with a tablespoon until the crystals dissolved in bourbon, then raised a gob and held it to Sonny’s mouth.
“Swallow. All of it.”
Then came Harold’s turn, and as he swallowed somebody knocked on the door. Ree glanced at Mom, who got up from her rocker and shuffled away into her dark room without turning on a light. Ree went to the door and opened it with her boot wedged behind as a stopper should a stopper be needed.
“Oh. Hey, Sonya. Come in, why not.”
Sonya carried a large cardboard box that had venison on a long bone jutting above the rim. Sonya was heavy and round, with gray hair and fogged glasses. She had four children grown and gone and a husband who still looked good to plenty of gals in these hills and knew it, so she could never banish suspicion from her face. Blond Milton stood fairly high amongst the Dollys and Ree knew he’d shared some hours on the sly with Mom years back, hurtful hours that Sonya had yet to forgive.
“Didn’t want you-all to fear we’d forgot you for good.” Sonya set the box on a chair. She clasped her hands and peered into the shadows of the house, noted the mess. Her nose wrinkled, her brows arched. There was a snap sermon said in the way she held her hands clasped against her bosom. “Got meat for you. Canned stuff. Some butter and such.”
“We can use it.”
“How’s your mom gettin’ to be?”
“Not better.”
The laundry hung dry and the boys coughed.
“You poor thing. I’ll have Betsy’s Milton haul across a rick of wood for you-all. Looks like your pile’s burned low. We seen the law was over here talkin’ to you this after.”
“He’s huntin’ for Dad. Dad’s got a court day next week.”
“Huntin’ Jessup, is he?” Sonya lowered her glasses and looked up at Ree. “You know where he’s at?”
“No.”
“No? Well. Well, then, you didn’t have nothin’ to tell him. Did you?”
“Wouldn’t never tell if I did.”
“Oh, we know that.” Sonya turned to the door, opened it on the cold night, paused. “If Jessup’s court day ain’t ’til next week, I kind of wonder why was the law out huntin’ him for a talk today? Wonder why that would be.”
Sonya did not wait for a response, but spun outside while pulling the door shut and quickly descended the steps. Ree stared from a window until Sonya reached the narrow footbridge and crossed the creek. She picked up the box. Her arms went around it and her hands locked. Good smells long lost to this kitchen returned with the box and spread as she carried it to the counter. Sonny and Harold hacked, sniffed, snorted, but shot up together from beneath the quilt and rushed to the food. They opened sacks, hefted cans, kept croaking, “Oh, boy, oh, boy.”
Ree saw four days inside that box. Four days free from hunger or worrying about hunger returning at daybreak, maybe five. She said, “I’ll be fixin’ deer stew tonight. That sound good? Both of you two need to watch how I make it. Hear me? I mean it. Haul them chairs over here and stand on ’em with your eyes peeled and watch every goddam thing I do. Learn how I make it, then you both’ll know.”
Chapter 5
SHE’D START with Uncle Teardrop, though Uncle Teardrop scared her. He lived three miles down the creek but she walked on the railroad tracks. Snow covered the tracks and made humps over the rails and the twin humps guided her. She broke her own trail through the snow and booted the miles from her path. The morning sky was gray and crouching, the wind had snap and drew water to her eyes. She wore a green hooded sweatshirt and Mamaw’s black coat. Ree nearly always wore a dress or skirt, but with combat boots, and the skirt this day was a bluish plaid. Her knees kicked free of the plaid when she threw her long legs forward and stomped the snow.
The world seemed huddled and hushed and her crunching steps cracked loud as ax whacks. As she crunched past houses built on yon slopes yard dogs barked faintly from under porches but none came into the cold to make a run at her and flash teeth. Smoke poured from every chimney and was promptly flattened east by the wind. There was deer sign trod below trestles that stood over the creek and thin ice clung around rocks in the shallows. Where the creek forked she left the tracks and walked uphill through deeper snow beside an old pioneer fencerow made of piled stones.
Uncle Teardrop’s place sat beyond one daunting ridge and up a narrow draw. The house had been built small but extra bedrooms and box windows and other ideas had been added on by different residents who’d had hammers and leftover wood. There always seemed to be walls covered by black tarpaper standing alone for months and months waiting for more walls and a roof to come along and complete a room. Stovepipes angled from the house on every which side.
Three dogs that were a mess of hunting breeds lived under the big screened deck. Ree had known them since they were pups and called out as she reached the yard and they came to sniff her nethers and wag welcome. They barked, jumped, and slapped tongues at her until Victoria opened the main door.
She said, “Somebody dead?”
“Not that I heard.”
“You walked over in this nasty crud just for a visit, dear? You must be purty awful lonely.”
“I’m lookin’ for Dad. I got to run him down, and quick.”
That certain women who did not seem desperate or crazy could be so deeply attracted to Uncle Teardrop confused and frightened Ree. He was a nightmare to look at but he’d torn through a fistful of appealing wives. Victoria had once been number three and was now number five. She was a tall blunt-boned woman made lush in her sections with long auburn hair she usually wore rolled up into a heavy wobbly bun. She had a closet that held no jeans or slacks but was stuffed with dresses old and new and most of Ree’s things had first been worn by her. In winter Victoria was given to reading gardening books and seed catalogues and at spring planting she disdained the commonplace Big Boy or Early Girl tomatoes in favor of exotic international strains she got by mail and doted on and always tasted like a mouthful of far pretty lands.
“Well, then, come on in, kiddo. Shake off the chill. Jessup ain’t here, but coffee’s hot.” Victoria held the door for Ree. Victoria smelled wonderful up close, like she always did, some scent she had that when smelled went into the blood like dope and left you near woozy. She looked good and smelled good and Ree favored her over any
other Dolly woman but Mom. “Teardrop mightn’t be up yet, so let’s keep it down ’til he is.”
They sat at the eating table. A skylight had been cut into the ceiling and leaked rainwater from the low corners sometimes but helped a lot to brighten the room. Ree could see through the house to the front door and over to the rear door and noted that a long gun stood ready beside both. A silver pistol and clip rested in a nut bowl on the lazy Susan centered upon the table. Beside the pistol there was a big bag of pot and a pretty big bag of crank.
Victoria said, “Ree, I forget—you take it black, or with cream?”
“With cream when there is any.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
They hunched over the table and sipped. A cuckoo clock chirped nine times. Record albums lined along the floor went nearly the complete length of a wall. There was a fancy-looking sound system on a bookshelf, plus a four-foot rack of CDs. The furniture was mostly wooden, country-type stuff. One piece was a big round cushioned chair on a sapling frame that you sat in the exact middle of like you were squatted inside a bloomed flower. Swirly-patterned lavender cloth from Arabia was tacked to a wall as decoration.
“The law came by. That Baskin one. He said if Dad don’t show for his court day next week we got to move out of the house. Dad signed it over to go his bond. They’ll take the place from us. And the timber acres, too. Victoria, I really, really got to run Dad to ground and get him to show.”
Uncle Teardrop stood stretching in the bedroom doorway and said, “You ought not do that.” He wore a white T-shirt and plum sweatpants stuffed into untied boots. He was a nudge over six feet tall but had fidgeted his weight way down and become all muscle wires and bone knobs with a sunken belly. “Don’t go runnin’ after Jessup.” Teardrop sat at the table. “Coffee.” He rapped his fingers to the tabletop and made a hoofbeat rhythm. “What’s this shit all about, anyhow?”
“I got to find Dad’n make sure he shows in court.”
“That’s a man’s personal choice, little girl. That’s not somethin’ you oughta be buttin’ your smarty nose into. Show or don’t show, that choice is up to the one that’s goin’ to jail to make. Not you.”
Uncle Teardrop was Jessup’s elder and had been a crank chef longer but he’d had a lab go wrong and it had eaten the left ear off his head and burned a savage melted scar down his neck to the middle of his back. There wasn’t enough ear nub remaining to hang sunglasses on. The hair around the ear was gone, too, and the scar on his neck showed above his collar. Three blue teardrops done in jailhouse ink fell in a row from the corner of the eye on his scarred side. Folks said the teardrops meant he’d three times done grisly prison deeds that needed doing but didn’t need to be gabbed about. They said the teardrops told you everything you had to know about the man and the lost ear just repeated it. He generally tried to sit with his melted side to the wall.
Ree said, “Come on, you know where he’s at, don’t you?”
“And where a man’s at ain’t necessarily for you to know, neither.”
“But, do you—”
“Ain’t seen him.”
Teardrop stared at Ree with a flat expression of finality and Victoria jumped in between them, asking, “How’s your mom?”
Ree tried to hold Teardrop’s gaze but blinked uncontrollably. It was like staring at something fanged and coiled from too close without a stick in hand.
“Not better.”
“And the boys?”
Ree broke and looked down, scared and slumping.
“A little pindlin’ but not pukey sick,” she said. She looked to her lap and her clenched hands and drove her fingernails into her palms, gouging fiercely, raising pink crescents on her milk skin, then turned toward Uncle Teardrop and leaned desperately his way. “Could he be runnin’ with Little Arthur and them again? You think? That bunch from Hawkfall? Should I look for him around there?”
Teardrop raised his hand and drew it back to smack her and let fly but diverted the smacking hand inches from Ree’s face to the nut bowl. His fingers dove rattling into the nuts, beneath the silver pistol, and lifted it from the lazy Susan. He bounced the weapon on his flat palm as though judging the weight with his hand for a scale, sighed, then ran a finger gently along the barrel to brush away grains of salt.
“Don’t you, nor nobody else, neither, ever go down around Hawkfall askin’ them people shit about stuff they ain’t offerin’ to talk about. That’s a real good way to end up et by hogs, or wishin’ you was. You ain’t no silly-assed town girl. You know better’n that foolishness.”
“But we’re all related, ain’t we?”
“Our relations get watered kinda thin between this valley here and Hawkfall. It’s better’n bein’ a foreigner or town people, but it ain’t nowhere near the same as bein’ from Hawkfall.”
Victoria said, “You know all those people down there, Teardrop. You could ask.”
“Shut up.”
“I just mean, none of them’s goin’ to be in a great big hurry to tangle with you, neither. If Jessup’s over there, Ree needs to see him. Bad.”
“I said shut up once already, with my mouth.”
Ree felt bogged and forlorn, doomed to a spreading swamp of hateful obligations. There would be no ready fix or answer or help. She felt like crying but wouldn’t. She could be beat with a garden rake and never cry and had proved that twice before Mamaw saw an unsmiling angel pointing from the treetops at dusk and quit the bottle. She would never cry where her tears might be seen and counted against her. “Jesus-fuckin’-Christ, Dad’s your only little brother!”
“You think I forgot that?” He grabbed the clip and slammed it into the pistol, then ejected it and tossed pistol and clip back into the nut bowl. He made a fist with his right hand and rubbed it with his left. “Jessup’n me run together for nigh on forty years—but I don’t know where he’s at, and I ain’t goin’ to go around askin’ after him, neither.”
Ree knew better than to say another word, but was going to anyhow, when Victoria grabbed her hand and held it, squeezed, then said, “Now, when is it you was tellin’ me you’ll be old enough to join the army?”
“Next birthday.”
“Then you’ll be off from here?”
“I hope.”
“Good for you. Good deal. But, what’ll the boys and—”
Teardrop lurched from his chair and snatched Ree by the hair and pulled her head hard his way and yanked back so her throat was bared and her face pointed up. He ran his eyes into her like a serpent down a hole, made her feel his slither in her heart and guts, made her tremble. He jerked her head one way and another, then pressed a hand around her windpipe and held her still. He leaned his face to hers from above and nuzzled his melt against her cheek, nuzzled up and down, then slid his lips to her forehead, kissed her once and let go. He picked up the crank bag from the lazy Susan. He held it toward the skylight and shook the bag while looking closely at the shifting powder. He carried the bag toward the bedroom and Victoria motioned Ree to sit still, then slowly followed him. She pulled the door shut and whispered something. A talk with two voices started low and calm but soon one voice raised alone and spoke several tart muffled sentences. Ree could not follow any words through the wall. There was a lull of silence more uncomfortable than the tart sentences had been. Victoria came back, head lowered, blowing her nose into a pale blue tissue.
“Teardrop says you best keep your ass real close to the willows, dear.” She dropped fifty dollars in tens on the tabletop and fanned the bills. “He hopes this helps. Want me to roll a doobie for your walk?”
Chapter 6
SHE TOOK to pausing more often to study on things that weren’t usually of interest. She sniffed the air like it might somehow have changed flavors and looked closely at the stone fencerow, touched the stones and hefted a few, held them to her face, saw a rabbit that didn’t try to run until she laughed at it, smelled Victoria on her sleeves and hunkered atop a stump to think. She spread her skirt taut a
cross her knees and tucked the extra under her legs. Those stones had probably been piled by direct ancestors and for a long while she tried to conjure their pioneer lives and think if she saw parts of their lives showing in her own. With her eyes closed she could call them near, see those olden Dolly kin who had so many bones that broke, broke and mended, broke and mended wrong, so they limped through life on the bad-mend bones for year upon year until falling dead in a single evening from something that sounded wet in the lungs. The men came to mind as mostly idle between nights of running wild or time in the pen, cooking moon and gathering around the spout, with ears chewed, fingers chopped, arms shot away, and no apologies grunted ever. The women came to mind bigger, closer, with their lonely eyes and homely yellow teeth, mouths clamped against smiles, working in the hot fields from can to can’t, hands tattered rough as dry cobs, lips cracked all winter, a white dress for marrying, a black dress for burying, and Ree nodded yup. Yup.
The sky lay dark and low so a hawk circling overhead floated in and out of clouds. The wind heaved and knocked the hood from her head. That hawk was riding the heaving wind looking to kill something. Looking to snatch something, rip it bloody, chew the tasty parts, let the bones drop.
Dad could be anywhere.
Dad might think he had reasons to be most anywhere or do most anything, even if the reasons seemed ridiculous in the morning.
One night when Ree was still a bantling Dad had gotten crossways with Buster Leroy Dolly and been shot in the chest clear out by Twin Forks River. He was electric on crank, thrilled to have been shot, and instead of driving to a doctor he drove thirty miles to West Table and the Tiny Spot Tavern to show his assembled buddies the glamorous bullet hole and the blood bubbling. He collapsed grinning and the drunks carried him to the town hospital and nobody thought he’d live to see noon until he did.