Burning Bright

by Ron Rash

  Sitting beside Hubert is his best friend, Joe Don Byers, formally Yusef Byers before he had his first name legally changed. While it seems every white male between fourteen and twenty-five is trying to look and act black, Joe Don is going the opposite way, a twenty-three-year-old black man trying to be a Skoal-dipping, country-music-listening good ole boy. But like the white kids with their ball caps turned sideways and pants hanging halfway down their asses, Joe Don can’t quite pull it off. The hubcap-sized belt buckle and snakeskin boots pass muster, but he wears his Stetson low over his right eye, the brim’s rakish tilt making him look more like a cross-dressing pimp than a cowboy. His truck is another giveaway, a Toyota two-wheel drive with four mud grips and a Dale Earnhardt sticker on the back windshield, unaware that any true Earnhardt fan would rather ride a lawn mower than drive anything other than a Chevy.

  On the opposite side of the bar, Rodney is taking whatever people hand him—crumpled bills, handfuls of nickels and dimes, payroll checks, wedding rings, wristwatches. One time a guy offered a gold filling he’d dug out of his mouth with a pocketknife. Rodney didn’t even blink.

  Watching him operate, it’s easy to believe Rodney’s simply an updated version of Flem Snopes, the kind of guy whose first successful business venture is showing photos of his naked sister to his junior high peers. But that’s not the case at all. Rodney graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in social work. He wanted to make the world better, but, according to Rodney, the world wasn’t interested.

  His career as a social worker ended the same week it began. Rodney had borrowed a church bus to take some of Columbia’s disadvantaged youth to a Braves game. Halfway to Atlanta the teenagers mutinied. They beat Rodney with a tire iron, took his money and clothes, and left him naked and bleeding in a ditch. A week later, the same day Rodney got out of the hospital, the bus was found half submerged in the Okefenokee Swamp. It took another month to round up the youths, several of whom had procured entry-level positions in a Miami drug cartel.

  Rodney says running The Last Chance is a philosophical statement. Above the cash register he’s plastered one of those Darwinian bumper stickers with the fish outline and four evolving legs. Rodney’s drawn a speech bubble in front of the fish’s mouth. Exterminate the brutes, the fish says.

  Advice Rodney seems to have taken to heart. There’s only one mixed drink in The Last Chance, what Rodney calls the Terminator. It’s six ounces of Jack Daniel’s and six ounces of Surrey County moonshine and six ounces of Sam’s Choice tomato juice. Some customers claim a dash of lighter fluid is added for good measure. No one, not even Hubert, has ever drunk more than three of these and remained standing. It usually takes only two to put the drinkers onto the floor, tomato juice dribbling down their chins like they’ve been shot in the mouth.

  When we finish “Roarin’” only three or four people clap. A lot of the crowd doesn’t know the song or, for that matter, who Gary Stewart was. Radio and Music Television have anesthetized them to the degree that they can’t recognize the real thing, even when it comes from their own gene pool.

  And speaking of gene pools, I suddenly see Everette Evans, the man that, to my immense regret, is twenty-five percent of the genetic makeup of my son. He’s standing in the doorway, a camcorder in his hands. Everette lingers on Hubert a few seconds, then the various casualties of the evening before finally honing in on me.

  I lay down the guitar and make my way toward the entrance. Everette’s still filming until I’m right up on him. He jerks the camera down to waist level and points it at me like it’s an Uzi.

  “What are you up to, Everette?” I say.

  He grins at me, though it’s one of those grins that is one part malice and one part nervous, like a politician being asked to explain a hundred thousand dollars in small bills he recently deposited in the bank.

  “We’re just getting some additional evidence as to your parental fitness.”

  “I don’t see no we,” I say. “Just one old meddling fool who, if he still had one, should have his ass kicked.”

  “Don’t you be threatening me, Devon,” Everette says. “I might just start this camcorder up again and get some more incriminating evidence.”

  “And I just might take that camcorder and perform a colonoscopy on you with it. Your daughter doesn’t seem to have a problem spending the money I make here.”

  “What’s the problem, Devon?” Hubert says, walking over from the bar.

  “This man’s working for National Geographic,” I tell Hubert. “They’re doing a show on primitive societies, claiming people like us are the missing link between apes and humans.”

  “That’s a lie,” Everette says, his eyes on Hubert’s ball bat.

  “And that’s only part of what this footage is for,” I say. “This asshole’s selling what the Geographic doesn’t want to the Moral Majority. They’ll shut this place down like it’s a toxic waste site.”

  “We don’t allow no filming in here,” Hubert says, taking the camcorder from Everette’s hands.

  Hubert jerks out the tape and douses it with the half-drunk Terminator he’s been sipping. Hubert strikes a match and drops the tape on the floor. In five seconds the tape looks like black Jell-O.

  Everette starts backing out the door.

  “You ain’t heard the last of this, Devon,” he vows.

  Rodney lifts a bullhorn from under the bar and announces it’s one forty-five and anybody who wants a last drink had better get it now. There are few takers, most customers now lacking money or consciousness. I’m thinking to finish up with Steve Earle’s “Graveyard Shift” and Dwight Yoakam’s “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” but the drunk who’s been using a pool of vomit for a pillow the last hour lifts his head. He fumbles a lighter out of his pocket and flicks it on.

  “Free Bird,” he grunts, and lays his head back in the vomit.

  And I’m thinking, why not. Ronnie Van Zant didn’t have the talent of Gary Stewart or Steve Earle or Dwight Yoakam, but he did what he could with what he had. Skynyrd never pruned their Southern musical roots to give them “national appeal,” and that gave their music, whatever else its failings, an honesty and an edge.

  So I take out the slide from my jean pocket and start that long wailing solo for probably the millionth time in my life. I’m on automatic pilot, letting my fingers take care of business while my mind roams elsewhere.

  Heads rise from tables and stare my way. Conversations stop. Couples arguing or groping each other pause as well. And this is the way it always is, as though Van Zant somehow found a conduit into the collective unconscious of his race. Whatever it is, they become serious and reflective. Maybe it’s just the music’s slow surging build. Or maybe something more—a yearning for the kind of freedom Van Zant’s lyrics deal with, a recognition of the human need to lay their burdens down. And maybe, for a few moments, being connected to the music and lyrics enough to actually feel unshackled, free and in flight.

  As I finish “Free Bird” Rodney cuts on every light in the building, including some high-beam John Deere tractor lights he’s rigged on the ceiling. It’s like the last scene in a vampire movie. People start wailing and whimpering. They cover their eyes, crawl under tables, and ultimately—and this is the goal—scurry toward the door and out into the dark, dragging the passed-out and knocked-out with them.

  I’m off the clock now, but I don’t take off my guitar and unplug the amp. Instead, I play the opening chords to Elvis Costello’s “Waiting for the End of the World.” Costello has tried to be the second coming of Perry Como of late, but his first two albums were pure rage and heartbreak. Those first nights after my wife and child left, I listened to Costello and it helped. Not much, but at least a little.

  Hal is draped over his drum set, passed out, and Bobo is headed out the door with the big woman in the purple jumpsuit. Sammy’s still on the floor so I’m flying solo.

  I can’t remember all the lyrics, so except for the refrain it’s like I’m
speaking in tongues, but it’s two A.M. in western Carolina, and not much of anything makes sense. All you can do is pick up your guitar and play. Which is what I’m doing. I’m laying down some mean guitar licks, and though I’m not much of a singer I’m giving all I got, and although The Last Chance is almost completely empty now that’s okay as well because I’m merging the primal and existential and I’ve cranked up the volume so loud empty beer bottles are vibrating off tables and the tractor beams are pulsing like strobe lights and whatever rough beast is asleep out there in the dark is getting its wake-up call and I’m ready and waiting for whatever it’s got.

  LINCOLNITES

  Lily sat on the porch, the day’s plowing done and her year-old child asleep in his crib. In her hands, the long steel needles clicked together and spread apart in a rhythmic sparring as yarn slowly unspooled from the deep pocket of her gingham dress, became part of the coverlet draped over her knees. Except for the occasional glance down the valley, Lily kept her eyes closed. She inhaled the aroma of fresh-turned earth and dogwood blossoms. She listened to the bees humming around their box. Like the fluttering she’d begun to feel in her stomach, all bespoke the return of life after a hard winter. Lily thought again of the Washington newspaper Ethan had brought with him when he’d come back from Tennessee on his Christmas furlough, how it said the war would be over by summer. Ethan had thought even sooner, claiming soon as the roads were passable Grant would take Richmond and it would be done. Good as over now, he’d told her, but Ethan had still slept in the root cellar every night of the furlough and stayed inside during the day, his haversack and rifle by the back door, because Confederates came up the valley from Boone looking for Lincolnites like Ethan.

  She felt the afternoon light on her face, soothing as the hum of the bees. It was good to finally be sitting, only her hands working, the child she’d set in the shade as she’d plowed now nursed and asleep. After a few more minutes, Lily allowed her hands to rest as well, laying the foot-long needles lengthways on her lap. Reason enough to be tired, she figured, a day breaking ground with a bull-tongue plow and draft horse. Soon enough the young one would wake and she’d have to suckle him again, then fix herself something to eat as well. After that she’d need to feed the chickens and hide the horse in the woods above the spring. Lily felt the flutter again deep in her belly and knew it was another reason for her tiredness. She laid a hand on her stomach and felt the slight curve. She counted the months since Ethan’s furlough and figured she’d be rounding the homespun of her dress in another month.

  Lily looked down the valley to where the old Boone toll road followed Middlefork Creek. Her eyes closed once more as she mulled over names for the coming child, thinking about how her own birthday was also in September and that by then Ethan would be home for good and they’d be a family again, the both of them young enough not to be broken by the hardships of the last two years. Lily made a picture in her mind of her and Ethan and the young ones all together, the crops she’d planted ripe and proud in the field, the apple tree’s branches sagging with fruit.

  When she opened her eyes, the Confederate was in the yard. He must have figured she’d be watching the road because he’d come down Goshen Mountain instead, emerging from a thick stand of birch trees he’d followed down the creek. It was too late to hide the horse and gather the chickens into the root cellar, too late to go get the butcher knife and conceal it in her dress pocket, so Lily just watched him approach, a musket in his right hand and a tote sack in the left. He wore a threadbare butternut jacket and a cap. A strip of cowhide held up a pair of ragged wool trousers. Only the boots looked new. Lily knew the man those boots had belonged to, and she knew the hickory tree where they’d left the rest of him dangling, not only a rope around his neck but also a cedar shingle with the word Lincolnite burned into the wood.

  The Confederate grinned as he stepped into the yard. He raised a finger and thumb to the cap, but his eyes were on the chickens scratching for worms behind the barn, the draft horse in the pasture. He looked to be about forty, though in these times people often looked older than they were, even children. The Confederate wore his cap brim tilted high, his face tanned to the hue of cured tobacco. Not the way a farmer would wear a hat or cap. The gaunt face and loose-fitting trousers made clear what the tote sack was for. Lily hoped a couple of chickens were enough for him, but the boots did not reassure her of that.

  “Afternoon,” he said, letting his gaze settle on Lily briefly before looking westward toward Grandfather Mountain. “Looks to be some rain coming, maybe by full dark.”

  “Take what chickens you want,” Lily said. “I’ll help you catch them.”

  “I plan on that,” he said.

  The man raised his left forearm and wiped sweat off his brow, the tote sack briefly covering his face. As he lowered his arm, his grin had been replaced with a seeming sobriety.

  “But it’s also my sworn duty to requisition that draft horse for the cause.”

  “For the cause,” Lily said, meeting his eyes, “like them boots you’re wearing.”

  The Confederate set a boot onto the porch step as though to better examine it.

  “These boots wasn’t requisitioned. Traded my best piece of rope for them, but I’m of a mind you already know that.” He raised his eyes and looked at Lily. “That neighbor of yours wasn’t as careful on his furlough as your husband.”

  Lily studied the man’s face, a familiarity behind the scraggly beard and the hard unflinching gaze. She thought back to the time a man or woman from up here could go into Boone. A time when disagreement over what politicians did down in Raleigh would be settled in this county with, at worst, clenched fists.

  “You used to work at Old Man Mast’s store, didn’t you?” Lily said.

  “I did,” the Confederate said.

  “My daddy used to trade with you. One time when I was with him you give me and my sister a peppermint.”

  The man’s eyes didn’t soften, but something in his face seemed to let go a little, just for a moment.

  “Old Mast didn’t like me doing that, but it was a small enough thing to do for the chaps.”

  For a few moments he didn’t say anything else, maybe thinking back to that time, maybe not.

  “Your name was Mr. Vaughn,” Lily said. “I remember that now.”

  The Confederate nodded.

  “It still is,” he said, “my name being Vaughn, I mean.” He paused. “But that don’t change nothing in the here and now, though, does it?”

  “No,” Lily replied. “I guess it don’t.”

  “So I’ll be taking the horse,” Vaughn said, “lest you got something to barter for it, maybe some of that Yankee money they pay your man with over in Tennessee? We might could make us a trade for some of that.”

  “There ain’t no money here,” Lily said, telling the truth because what money they had she’d sewn in Ethan’s coat lining. Safer there than anywhere on the farm, she’d told Ethan before he left, but he’d agreed only after she’d also sewn his name and where to send his body on the coat’s side pocket. Ethan’s older brother had done the same, the two of them vowing to get the other’s coat home if not the body.

  “I guess I better get to it then,” Vaughn said, “try to beat this rain back to Boone.”

  He turned from her, whistling “Dixie” as he walked toward the pasture, almost to the split-rail fence when Lily told him she had something to trade for the horse.

  “What would that be?” Vaughn asked.

  Lily lifted the ball of thread off her lap and placed it on the porch’s puncheon floor, then set the half-finished coverlet on the floor as well. As she got up from the chair, her hands smoothed the gingham around her hips. Lily stepped to the porch edge and freed the braid so her blonde hair fell loose on her neck and shoulders.

  “You know my meaning,” she said.

  Vaughn stepped onto the porch, not speaking as he did so. To look her over, Lily knew. She sucked in her stomach slightly to conceal h
er condition, though his knowing she was with child might make it better for him. A man could think that way in these times, she thought. Lily watched as Vaughn silently mulled over his choices, including the choice he’d surely come to by now that he could just as easily have her and the horse both.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Nineteen,” Vaughn said, though whether this was or wasn’t in her favor she did not know. He looked west again toward Grandfather Mountain and studied the sky before glancing down the valley at the toll road.

  Okay,” he finally said, and nodded toward the front door. “Let’s you and me go inside.”

  “Not in the cabin,” Lily answered. “My young one’s in there.”

  For a moment she thought Vaughn would insist, but he didn’t.

  “Where then?”

  “The root cellar. It’s got a pallet we can lay on.”

  Vaughn’s chin lifted, his eyes seeming to focus on something behind Lily and the chair.

  “I reckon we’ll know where to look for your man next time, won’t we?” When Lily didn’t respond, Vaughn offered a smile that looked almost friendly. “Lead on,” he said.

  Vaughn followed her around the cabin, past the bee box and chopping block and the old root cellar, the one they’d used before the war. They followed the faintest path through a thicket of rhododendron until it ended abruptly on a hillside. Lily cleared away the green-leaved rhododendron branches she replaced each week and unlatched a square wooden door. The hinges creaked as the entrance yawned open, the root cellar’s damp earthy odor mingling with the smell of the dogwood blossoms. The afternoon sun revealed an earthen floor lined with jars of vegetables and honey, at the center a pallet and quilt. There were no steps, just a three-foot drop.

  “And you think me stupid enough to go in there first?” Vaughn said.