Burning Bright

by Ron Rash

  Parson didn’t reply. He left the trailer and trudged back through the snow, the can heavy and awkward, his breath quick white heaves. Not so different from those mornings he’d carried a gallon pail of warm milk from barn to house. Even as a child he’d wanted to leave this place. Never loved it the way Ray had. Inoculated.

  Parson set the can on the lowered tailgate and perched himself on it as well. He took the lighter and cigarettes from his coat pocket and stared at the house while he smoked. Kindling and logs brought from the woodshed littered the porch. No attempt had been made to stack it.

  It would be easy to do, Parson told himself. No one had stirred when he’d driven up and parked five yards from the front door. No one had even peeked out a window. He could step up on the porch and soak the logs and kindling with kerosene, then go around back and pour the rest on the back door. Then Hawkins would put it down as just another meth explosion caused by some punk who couldn’t pass high school chemistry. And if others were in there, they were people quite willing to scare two old folks out of their home. No worse than setting fire to a woodpile infested with copperheads. Parson finished his cigarette and flicked it toward the house, a quick hiss as snow quenched the smoldering butt.

  He eased off the tailgate and stepped onto the porch, tried the doorknob, and when it turned, stepped into the front room. A dying fire glowed in the hearth. The room had been stripped of anything that could be sold, the only furnishing left a couch pulled up by the fireplace. Even wallpaper had been torn off a wall. The odor of meth infiltrated everything, coated the walls and floor.

  Danny and a girl Parson didn’t know lay on the couch, a quilt thrown over them. Their clothes were worn and dirty and smelled as if lifted from a Dumpster. As Parson moved toward the couch he stepped over rotting sandwich scraps in paper sacks, candy wrappers, spills from soft drinks. If human shit had been on the floor he would not have been surprised.

  “Who is he?” the girl asked Danny.

  “A man who’s owed twenty dollars,” Parson said.

  Danny sat up slowly, the girl as well, black stringy hair, flesh whittled away by the meth. Parson looked for something that might set her apart from the dozen or so similar women he saw each week. It took a few moments but he found one thing, a blue four-leaf clover tattooed on her forearm. Parson looked into her dead eyes and saw no indication luck had found her.

  “Got tired of stealing from your parents, did you?” Parson asked his nephew.

  “What are you talking about?” Danny said.

  His eyes were light blue, similar to the girl’s eyes, bright but at the same time dead. A memory of elementary school came to Parson of colorful insects pinned and enclosed beneath glass.

  “That shotgun you stole.”

  Danny smiled but kept his mouth closed. Some vanity still left in him, Parson mused, remembering how the boy had preened even as a child, a comb at the ready in his shirt pocket, nice clothes.

  “I didn’t figure him to miss it much,” Danny said. “That gas station he owns does good enough business for him to buy another.”

  “You’re damn lucky it’s me telling you and not the sheriff, though he’ll be up here soon as the roads are clear.”

  Danny looked at the dying fire as if he spoke to it, not Parson.

  “So why did you show up? I know it’s not to warn me Hawkins is coming.”

  “Because I want my twenty dollars,” Parson said.

  “I don’t have your twenty dollars,” Danny said.

  “Then you’re going to pay me another way.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “By getting in the truck,” Parson said. “I’m taking your sorry ass to the bus station. One-way ticket to Atlanta.”

  “What if I don’t want to do that?” Danny said.

  There had been a time the boy could have made that comment formidable, for he’d been broad-shouldered and stout, an all-county tight end, but he’d shucked off fifty pounds, the muscles melted away same as his teeth. Parson didn’t even bother showing him the revolver.

  “Well, you can wait here until the sheriff comes and hauls your worthless ass off to jail.”

  Danny stared at the fire. The girl reached out her hand, let it settle on Danny’s forearm. The room was utterly quiet except for a few crackles and pops from the fire. No time ticked on the fireboard. Parson had bought the Franklin clock from Danny two months ago. He’d thought briefly of keeping it himself but had resold it to the antiques dealer in Asheville.

  “If I get arrested then it’s an embarrassment to you. Is that the reason?” Danny asked.

  “The reason for what?” Parson replied.

  “That you’re acting like you give a damn about me.”

  Parson didn’t answer, and for almost a full minute no one spoke. It was the girl who finally broke the silence.

  “What about me?”

  “I’ll buy you a ticket or let you out in Asheville,” Parson said. “But you’re not staying here.”

  “We can’t go nowhere without our drugs,” the girl said.

  “Get them then.”

  She went into the kitchen and came back with a brown paper bag, its top half folded over and crumpled.

  “Hey,” she said when Parson took it from her.

  “I’ll give it back when you’re boarding the bus,” he said.

  Danny looked to be contemplating something and Parson wondered if he might have a knife on him, possibly a revolver of his own, but when Danny stood up, hands empty, no handle jutted from his pocket.

  “Get your coats on,” Parson said. “You’ll be riding in the back.”

  “It’s too cold,” the girl said.

  “No colder than that trailer,” Parson said.

  Danny paused as he put on a denim jacket.

  “So you went out there first.”

  “Yes,” Parson said.

  A few moments passed before Danny spoke.

  “I didn’t make them go out there. They got scared by some guys that were here last week.” Danny sneered then, something Parson suspected the boy had probably practiced in front of mirror. “I check on them more than you do,” he said.

  “Let’s go,” Parson said. He dangled the paper bag in front of Danny and the girl, then took the revolver out of his pocket. “I’ve got both of these, just in case you think you might try something.”

  They went outside. The snow still fell hard, the way back down to the county road now only a white absence of trees. Danny and the girl stood by the truck’s tailgate, but they didn’t get in. Danny nodded at the paper bag in Parson’s left hand.

  “At least give us some so we can stand the cold.”

  Parson opened the bag, took out one of the baggies. He had no idea if one was enough for the both of them or not. He threw the packet into the truck bed and watched Danny and the girl climb in after it. No different than you’d do for two hounds with a dog biscuit, Parson thought, shoving the kerosene can farther inside and hitching the tailgate.

  He got in the truck and cranked the engine, drove slowly down the drive. Once on the county road he turned left and began the fifteen-mile trip to Sylva. Danny and the girl huddled against the back window, their heads and Parson’s separated by a quarter inch of glass. Their proximity made the cab feel claustrophobic, especially when he heard the girl’s muffled crying. Parson turned on the radio, the one station he could pick up promising a foot of snow by nightfall. Then a song he hadn’t heard in thirty years, Ernest Tubb’s “Walking the Floor Over You.” Halfway down Brushy Mountain the road made a quick veer and plunge. Danny and the girl slid across the bed and banged against the tailgate. A few moments later, when the road leveled out, Danny pounded the window with his fist, but Parson didn’t look back. He just turned up the radio.

  At the bus station, Danny and the girl sat on a bench while Parson bought the tickets. The Atlanta bus wasn’t due for an hour so Parson waited across the room from them. The girl had a busted lip, probably from sliding into the tailga
te. She dabbed her mouth with a Kleenex, then stared a long time at the blood on the tissue. Danny was agitated, hands restless, constantly shifting on the bench as though unable to find a comfortable position. He finally got up and came over to where Parson sat, stood before him.

  “You never liked me, did you?” Danny said.

  Parson looked up at the boy, for though in his twenties Danny was still a boy, would die a boy, Parson believed.

  “No, I guess not,” Parson said.

  “What’s happened to me,” Danny said. “It ain’t all my fault.”

  “I keep hearing that.”

  “There’s no good jobs in this county. You can’t make a living farming no more. If there’d been something for me, a good job I mean.”

  “I hear there’s lots of jobs in Atlanta,” Parson said. “It’s booming down there, so you’re headed to the land of no excuses.”

  “I don’t want to go down there.” Danny paused. “I’ll die there.”

  “What you’re using will kill you here same as Atlanta. At least down there you won’t take your momma and daddy with you.”

  “You’ve never cared much for them before, especially Momma. How come you to care now?”

  Parson thought about the question, mulled over several possible answers.

  “I guess because no one else does,” he finally said.

  When the bus came, Parson walked with them to the loading platform. He gave the girl the bag and the tickets, then watched the bus groan out from under the awning and head south. There would be several stops before Atlanta, but Danny and the girl would stay aboard because of a promised two hundred dollars sent via Western Union. A promise Parson would not keep.

  The Winn-Dixie shelves were emptied of milk and bread but enough of all else remained to fill four grocery bags. Parson stopped at Steve Jackson’s gas station and filled the kerosene can. Neither man mentioned the shotgun now reracked against the pickup’s back window. The trip back to Chestnut Cove was slower, more snow on the roads, the visibility less as what dim light the day had left drained into the high mountains to the west. Dark by five, he knew, and it was already past four. After the truck slid a second time, spun, and stopped precariously close to a drop-off, Parson stayed in first or second gear. A trip of thirty minutes in good weather took him an hour.

  When he got to the farmhouse, Parson took a flashlight from the dash, carried the groceries into the kitchen. He brought the kerosene into the farmhouse as well, then walked down to the trailer and went inside. The heater’s metal wick still glowed orange. Parson cut it off so the metal would cool.

  He shone the light on the bed. They were huddled together, Martha’s head tucked under Ray’s chin, his arms enclosing hers. They were asleep and seemed at peace. Parson felt regret in waking them and for a few minutes did not. He brought a chair from the front room and placed it by the foot of the bed. He waited. Martha woke first. The room was dark and shadowy but she sensed his presence, turned and looked at him. She shifted to see him better and Ray’s eyes opened as well.

  “You can go back to the house now,” Parson said.

  They only stared back at him.

  “He’s gone,” Parson said. “And he won’t come back. There will be no reason for his friends to come either.”

  Martha stirred now, sat up in the bed.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Parson said. “He and his girlfriend wanted to go to Atlanta and I drove them to the bus station.”

  Martha didn’t look like she believed him. She got slowly out of the bed and Ray did as well. They put on their shoes, then moved tentatively to the trailer’s door, seemingly with little pleasure. They hesitated.

  “Go on,” Parson said. “I’ll bring the heater.”

  Parson went and got the kerosene heater. He stooped and lifted it slowly, careful to use his legs instead of his back. Little fuel remained in it, so it wasn’t heavy, just awkward. When he came into the front room, his brother and sister-in-law still stood inside the door.

  “Hold the door open,” he told Ray, “so I can get this thing outside.”

  Parson got the heater down the steps and carried it the rest of the way. Once inside the farmhouse he set it near the hearth, filled the tank, and turned it on. He and Ray gathered logs and kindling off the front porch and got a good flame going in the fireplace. The flue wasn’t drawing as it should. By the time Parson had adjusted it a smoky odor filled the room, but that was a better smell than the meth. The three of them sat on the couch and unwrapped the sandwiches. They did not speak even when they’d finished, just stared at the hearth as flame shadows trembled on the walls. Parson thought what an old human feeling this must be, how ten thousand years ago people would have done the same thing on a cold night, would have eaten, then settled before the fire, looked into it and found peace, knowing they’d survived the day and now could rest.

  Martha began snoring softly and Parson grew sleepy as well. He roused himself, looked over at his brother, whose eyes still watched the fire. Ray didn’t look sleepy, just lost in thought.

  Parson got up and stood before the hearth, let the heat soak into his clothes and skin before going out into the cold. He took the revolver from his pocket and gave it to Ray.

  “In case any of Danny’s friends give you any trouble,” Parson said. “I’ll get your power turned back on in the morning.”

  Martha awoke with a start. For a few moments she seemed not to know where she was.

  “You ain’t thinking of driving back to Tuckasegee tonight?” Ray asked. “The roads will be dangerous.”

  “I’ll be all right. My jeep can handle them.”

  “I still wish you wouldn’t go,” Ray said. “You ain’t slept under this roof for near forty years. That’s too long.”

  “Not tonight,” Parson said.

  Ray shook his head.

  “I never thought things could ever get like this,” he said. “The world, I just don’t understand it no more.”

  Martha spoke.

  “Did Danny say where he’d be staying?”

  “No,” Parson said, and turned to leave.

  “I’d rather be in that trailer tonight and knowing he was in this house. Knowing where he is, if he’s alive or dead,” she said as Parson reached for the doorknob. “You had no right.”

  Parson walked out to the jeep. It took a few tries but the engine turned over and he made his way down the drive. Only flurries glanced the windshield now. Parson drove slowly and several times had to stop and get out to find the road among the white blankness. Once out of Chestnut Cove, he made better time, but it was after midnight when he got back to Tuckasegee. His alarm clock was set for seven thirty. Parson reset it for eight thirty. If he was late opening, a few minutes or even an hour, it wouldn’t matter. Whatever time he showed up, they’d still be there.

  DEAD CONFEDERATES

  I never cared for Wesley Davidson when he was alive and seeing him beside me laid out dead didn’t much change that. Knowing a man for years and feeling hardly anything in his passing might make you think poorly of me, but the hard truth is had you known Wesley you’d probably feel the same. You might do what I done—shovel dirt on him with not so much as a mumble of a prayer. Bury him under a tombstone with another man’s name on it, another man’s birth and dying day chipped in the marble, me and an old man all of the living ever to know that was where Wesley Davidson laid in the ground.

  “I’ve a notion you’re needing some extra money,” Wesley says two weeks earlier at work, which isn’t a big secret since the whole road crew’s in the DOT parking lot that afternoon when the bank man comes by to chat about my overdrawn account, saying he’s sorry my momma’s in the hospital with no insurance but if I don’t get him some money soon he’ll be taking my truck. Soon as the bank man leaves Wesley saunters up to me.

  I act like I haven’t heard him, because like I said I never cared much for Wesley. He’s a big talker but little else, always s
hucking his work off on the rest of us. A stout man, six foot tall and three hundred easy, a big old sow belly that sways side to side when he takes a notion to work. But that’s a sight you seldom see, because he mainly leans on a shovel or lays in the shade asleep. His uncle’s the road crew boss, and he lets Wesley do about what he wants, including come in late, the rest of us all clocked in and ready to pull out while Wesley’s Ford Ranger is pulling in, a big rebel flag decal covering the back window. Wesley’s always been big into that Confederate stuff, wearing a CSA belt buckle, rebel flag tattoo on his arm. He wears a gray CSA cap too, wears it on the job. There’s no black guys on our crew, only a handful in the whole county, but you’re still not supposed to wear that kind of thing. But with his uncle running the show Wesley gets away with it.

  “You want to make some easy money or not?” he says to me later at our lunch break. He grunts and sits down in the shade beside me while I get my sandwich and apple from my lunch box. Wesley’s got three Hardee’s sausage biscuits in a bag and scarfs them down in about thirty seconds, then lights a cigarette. I don’t smoke myself and don’t cotton much to the smelling of it when I’m eating. I could tell him so, could tell him I like eating my lunch alone if he’d not noticed, but getting on Wesley’s bad side would just get me on my boss’s bad side as well. It’s more than just that, though. I’m willing to listen to anyone who could help me get some money.

  “What you got in mind?” I say.

  He points to his CSA belt buckle.

  “You know what one of them’s worth, a real one?”

  “No,” I say, though I figure maybe fifty or a hundred dollars.

  Wesley pulls out two wadded-up catalog pages from his back pocket.

  “Look here,” he says and points at a picture of a belt buckle and the number below it. “Eighteen hundred dollars,” he says and moves his finger down the paper. “Twenty-four hundred. Twelve hundred. Four thousand.” He holds his finger there for a few seconds. “Four thousand,” saying it again. He shoves the other page in my face. It’s filled with buttons that fetch two hundred to a thousand dollars apiece.