by Larry Brown
“How much you got?” the old man said. He was taking it off her knee and counting it. “Eight dollars? You got any more?” She shook her head.
He got up immediately, his leg forgotten, and put the bills in his pocket.
“I’ll go on over to the store,” he said. “See what I can buy.”
Gary got up. “Let me go with you,” he said.
“Ain’t no need for you to go. I can do it.”
“Go with him, Gary,” Fay said, nudging him.
“Just stay here. I’ll be back after while.”
“You gonna get some gas?” Gary said.
“Gas? What for?”
“For that wasp nest.”
Wade shook his head, already starting off. “I ain’t got nothin to carry it in.”
“We gonna have to rob that wasp nest before we can stay in there.”
“Well, if I find a jar to bring it back in I’ll buy some.” They stood and watched him stagger away through the hot woods. When he was out of hearing Fay turned on her mother.
“What’d you give him all that money for? He ain’t gonna do nothin but catch a ride to town and buy whiskey with it.”
“Leave her alone,” Gary said. “She don’t need you fussin at her.”
At nine that night they were gathered around a small fire in the middle of the yard, mute in the thunderous din of crickets. The grasses and weeds were beginning to look like a bedding ground. They were cooking a meal of pork and beans in opened cans, and the old man was halfway through a bottle of Old Crow. They had foraged for firewood and had a pile nearby.
The faces around the fire were pinched, the eyes a little big, a little dazed with hunger. They sat and watched the blaze burn the paper off the cans. When the beans began to sizzle, the woman stooped painfully on her bad hip and reached for the cans with a rag wrapped around her hand. Clotted strings of hair hung from her head. She took five paper plates, set them out on the ground, and dumped the beans onto them, shaking them as she went, the way a person might put out dog food for a pet. She dumped the largest portion into the plate intended for the old man.
The breadwinner was sitting crosslegged on the ravaged grass, the whiskey upright in the hole his legs formed. He was weaving a home-rolled cigarette back and forth from his lips, eyes bleary, red as fire. He was more than a little drunk. His head and chest would slump forward, then he’d jerk erect, his eyes sleepy. Grimed and furtive hands reached out for the plates quietly, took them back and drew away from the fire into darker regions of the yard. The old woman took two small bites and then rose and scraped the rest of her food into the boy’s plate.
The fire grew dimmer. The plate of beans before the old man steamed but he didn’t notice. A candlefly bored crazily in out of the night and landed in the hot sauce, struggled briefly and was still. The old man’s head went lower and lower onto his chest until the only thing they could see was the stained gray hat over the bib of his overalls. He snuffled, made some noise. His chest rose and fell. They watched him like wolves. The fire cracked and popped and white bits of ash fell away from the tree limbs burning in the coals. Sparks rose fragile and dying, orange as coon eyes in the gloom. The ash crumbled and the fading light threw darker shadows still. The old man toppled over slowly, a bit at a time like a rotten tree giving way, until the whiskey lay spilling between his legs. They watched him for a few minutes and then they got up and went to the fire and took his plate and carried it away into the dark.
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 1993 by Larry Brown. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from On Fire first appeared in The North American Review. Sections of an early manuscript version of it appeared in The Oxford American.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for a previous edition of this work.
E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-808-8
ALSO BY LARRY BROWN
FICTION
Facing the Music
Dirty Work
Big Bad Love
Joe
Father and Son
Fay
The Rabbit Factory
A Miracle of Catfish
NONFICTION
Billy Ray’s Farm
