by Chris Offutt
“They’ll not bother you no more,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“Them people here today.”
“I couldn’t stand to lose my little ones.”
“I know it,” he said. “Ain’t nobody taking them.”
She wept a few minutes, the longest time in years, and he felt the wetness against his face, understanding that she felt relief, not sorrow. That diner woman was brave but Rhonda was tough as a buffalo, and these few seconds of crying filled him with lust. He began moving inside her again and afterward she dropped into sleep like a bucket down a well.
He rose and tugged his pants on and went to the living room. He moved a chair beside the crib and tucked his finger into Big Billy’s small curled hand. He wondered if his son dreamed. His own dreams were nightmares of combat, but Big Billy had spent all his life in this room. He had nothing to dream about except lying in bed.
Tucker propped an arm on the rung of the crib, pressed his forehead to the maple rail, and spoke.
“Won’t be long and you’ll be growed up enough to go fishing. We’ll use crawdads for bait. They got two little pincers and they run backward. Fish love them like a bee loves a flower. You take and jab one on a hook, and it’ll get hit by all manner of fish. The trick is to pull one pincer off. It’ll still fight but not much and the fish’ll hit it harder. They’s some to cut both pincers off but that don’t seem right to me. I’d hate to be done that way. The golden rule is made out of gold so you can keep track of it even at night and it goes for everything down to a crawdad.
“My daddy, he grew us a garden that raccoons got into. Daddy got tired of them messing his garden up, eating the best. What he done was decide that half the garden was for him and the other half for raccoons. He run a string around the garden and hung tin cans that’d rattle if they got touched. Then he slept out there with a twenty-two and when them cans woke him up, he’d look to see where the coon was. If it was on the coon’s side of the garden Daddy let him alone. But if ary a coon came over on Daddy’s side, he shot it. Next day he’d skin it out and hang its hide on a stick. He done that two or three times a week. Them coons figured out which was their side of the garden and stayed out of Daddy’s.
“Every animal I ever knowed is a big bunch smarter than folks think they are. We walk around on our hind legs and can do things like drive a car but that don’t make us special. For one thing, we can’t fly. I mean we can in a airplane but I seen them wreck. Ain’t a bird in its whole life ever got hurt landing. I’d like to see that, wouldn’t you? Some big old crow coming down to eat a run-over squirrel on the road and not getting it right and crash-landing in the ditch. When you get old enough, you and me’ll go out and set us some crow bait on the road and wait till it happens. I’ll teach you how to roll a cigarette while we’re waiting. A man’s got to learn that or he won’t never have no way of knowing how good a store-bought is. I got a line on getting a tobacco bed from the state for a cash crop. If you help me with it, you’ll get some of the auction money for your ownself.
“Running shine is a hard way to make an easy living and they ain’t no better feeling than outfoxing a lawman. One time I was running heavy and full. A deputy was set up waiting and pulled in right behind me and I floored it, was flying low. I never let up on that gas pedal. Went through two crossroads with no trouble, hit me a dirt road shortcut I knew about, and slung the gravel-rock. That deputy stayed on me. I could see his lights but I knowed about a tight turn coming up. I hit it hard, sliding sideways, hoping not to blow a tire. That old rig did me right and I bounced up on two side wheels and fishtailed my ass back on the road and made it to a old wood bridge nobody used no more on account of rotten struts. I stopped halfway over the river. I was out of the state and my heart was jumping around inside my clothes like a squirrel in a pillow sack. I got out and checked the tires. Two rims was bent and I’d lost some tie rods. I figured I could make it to a filling station where a feller I knew would fix me up and keep quiet about it.
“That deputy car came over the bridge and stopped right behind me. He got out, biggest man I ever did see. Some kind of giant. He lit hisself a cigarette and looked at me a spell. I knowed I was safe from him as a lawman, but not as a regular man. He could kick my ass so high I’d have to pull my shirt up to take a shit. What he done was lean on my car and tell me they had a new steering called rack-and-pinion that would keep me out of the ditch line. I asked what did he care for, and he said he thought I wasn’t going to make it on that curve. His job was to stop the runners but he didn’t want nobody dying on him. We got to talking. He had had four kids and worked another job, and only got assigned shine duty twice a month. I asked if he knew when he was working next. We sat right there on that bridge and worked us out a deal. I got to drive through his county when he was on duty. We didn’t tell each other our names, but we shook hands and I always called him Flattop off the funny pages. He was all right. He was a family man first, lawman second, and when you have kids of your own, you’ll be the same way, my opinion. He got killed in a shoot-out and I had to find me a new way across the river.
“Son, I’m getting plumb wore down from the past week and have to hit the sack here in a minute. But they’s one more thing I been meaning to tell you. It’s about squirrels. Took me a long time to figure out how smart they are. Many’s the acorn I found with two little holes in the same place. Same size holes, same place on the nut. I started opening them nuts up. Them holes were right where the meatiest part of the nut was at. Squirrels know it. I matched them holes to a squirrel’s teeth. It was a perfect fit. They figured out where to bite that nut to get the most. And right now, up in some oak tree in the woods, they’s a daddy squirrel telling his boy how to do it. Same as me and you. Daddy loves you, Big Billy. Daddy loves you.”
He kissed his son and went to bed. Rhonda pressed herself to Tucker and slid her feet between his, glad he was home. Their bodies warmed each other.
Upstairs Jo lay curled on her side, knees pulled to her chest. Her daddy’s voice downstairs had awakened her. He talked to Big Billy every night. She looked at the small section of night sky visible through the top of her window. Once she’d seen a falling star and her mother told her it was an angel smiling. The flash of light was too quick for Jo to smile back and she worried that she’d been rude. She watched for the angel’s return, afraid she’d upset it into staying away. As her eyelids closed, she thought about the calendar Hattie would bring her. Maybe angels liked ponds, too.
1965
Chapter Seven
The southerners who’d moved to Ohio and Michigan for jobs preferred the moonshine of home, and Beanpole’s business thrived from all the runs to the north. Tucker and the other drivers returned with cases of government whiskey that Beanpole bootlegged by the half pint in dry counties. He secretly funded every political campaign and donated to many churches. His web of bribery spanned two states and included sheriffs, mayors, police officers, jailers, magistrates, two doctors, three judges, and several ministers. He’d never been arrested.
In his spare time, Beanpole fooled with dogs—raising, breeding, and trading them. He made sure they were dewormed and free of mange, their coats glossy and eyes bright. Periodically he cleared them of ticks. His wife said if he’d treated their children the way he treated dogs, the kids would’ve turned out better and not moved so far away. Beanpole didn’t respond. They had four daughters who did what girls did—get courted by lunkheads, marry the worst of the lot, and visit on Sundays with a passel of little lunkheads. The kids had moved because of his occupation as an outlaw, not poor fathering on his part. He didn’t think nine miles was all that far away anyway.
A year ago he watched a Jack Russell tear into a possum’s tail, which had the long skinny appearance of a snake. The dog took a deep hold, shredding the meat and hair. Most dogs leaped about barking, careful to remain out of striking range of a snake, a trait that displayed good sense. Beanpole caught a garter snake and threw it into a wall
ed pen with the Jack. The terrier tore it to pieces. Beanpole thought long and hard about matters, then traded four truck tires, a Bowie knife, and six boxes of thirty-eight-caliber cartridges for a pair of purebred German shepherd pups. He theorized that a crossbreed with the Jack Russells would make an ideal snake dog—the shepherd half would corral the serpents, and the Jack part would take over, willing to burrow into the earth after its prey. He planned on selling them and had a name picked out: Viper Wipers.
He contacted a buddy who made a living from selling rattlesnakes to Pentecostals that needed them for church services. Beanpole bought the man’s extras, nonvenomous snakes that wandered into his traps. He spent months training the shepherd pups to treat snakes like their own private flock, an elaborate undertaking with carefully designed pens. It hadn’t worked out as well as he’d hoped—the pups tried to play with the snakes, then barked for hours until both groups resolved to ignore each other.
When the adult shepherd went into heat, Beanpole put her in a pen with a male Jack Russell. The funniest thing he’d ever seen on God’s green earth was the little Jack humping on a dog four times its size. Afterward, the shepherd retaliated with a vicious attack. Beanpole wasn’t quick enough to separate them and the Jack sustained a wound so severe he had to put the dog down. He considered it a good sign. The eventual crossbred pups had a fearless father and a ferocious mother.
Beanpole had married early and well, and still loved his wife. She’d started out big and wore weight well, only her feet and hands still small. Beanpole didn’t mind—he weighed three hundred fifty pounds himself. Despite advancing into their forties and being grandparents, they still made the feather tick bust a seam once or twice a month, last night being one. As a result, Angela was in a cheery mood at breakfast. They ate eggs and side meat, mopping the grease with cathead biscuits, washing it down with coffee strong enough to float a rock. He tried to assume a pleasant tone, knowing she’d recognize it for what it was—a precursor to something she wouldn’t like.
“You got anybody to go visit today?” he said.
“Why? Some fancy lady from Morehead coming by?”
“Now, no,” he said, playing along. “But if you stood gone through the evening I might could squeeze one in.”
“Ain’t you done squeezed out yet?”
“I am,” he said. “I surely am. You seen to that last night.”
“I’ll not have that talk at the table.”
He nodded and sipped coffee. He’d never fully comprehended what was allowed at the table and what was not.
“I got to see a man today,” he said.
“Here?”
He nodded.
“I don’t like that,” she said. “Not one bit.”
He sipped coffee. She’d grown up with brothers rough as cobs and twice witnessed gunfights, one in the house and another in the yard. He’d sworn years ago never to bring his business home.
“It’s a tricky situation,” he said.
“Say it’s tricky.”
“Yeah-huh,” he said. “Not bad tricky. But not easy, either. I got to work something out that might take a spell of talking. I don’t want to meet in the woods.”
“He from here?”
Beanpole nodded.
“Why not go to his house, then?” she said.
“Well,” he said, then tapered off, feeling bad about not telling her the why, and worse for the reason.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Say you can’t?”
“Can’t do it.”
He looked away from her face, still lovely in the light. Patience had always been her chief virtue, and his business had certainly put it to trial, but at times he thought Angela’s patience could grind a man down as sure as sandy water.
She heaved a sigh of disapproval, wondering if last night’s antics had been deliberately calculated to soften her up. If so, it worked. Her husband was the smartest man she’d ever met, as smart as her, which was unusual. He’d never struck her or the babies, kept food on the table and gave each daughter a down payment on land. Angela drove her own car, the only woman at church who did. She sat with the sick, cooked for the bereaved, and drove old folks to the town doctor. Generating goodwill was her contribution to her husband’s business. Anybody could get angry and tip off the law. The problem was that the law would tell Beanpole, forcing him to retaliate, which would start trouble for everyone.
“I’ll find somewhere to go,” she said. “Is they anybody in particular I ort to stay away from today?”
“Naw,” he said. “It ain’t like that.”
“That’s a blessing.”
“I appreciate it.”
Angela stacked the dishes noisily, and gave him a quick sharp look that meant he was to wash them in her absence, even though she’d have to wash them again later. If he intended to run her out of her own home, he’d pay a price. She changed clothes, hearing water in the sink, and when she returned to the kitchen the plates lay damp and shiny on an old cotton towel, not as dirty as she’d expected. Angela found him sitting on the porch, staring at the sky with no more care than a bluebird in a bush. She patted his shoulder.
“Don’t get shot, Ananias,” she said.
“Ain’t as bad as all that.”
“You don’t know.”
“Maybe not, but I’m pretty sure.”
“All right then.”
He considered himself damn lucky in the wife department, even if she did call him by his given name. After she drove away, grim-faced before the dire responsibility of the steering wheel, he armed himself with a revolver. He loaded a shotgun and set it just inside the doorway, out of sight but easily reachable. He sat on the porch to wait. The house was pleasantly quiet, the shaded porch still chilly at midday. An hour later he heard the engine of a vehicle. As the truck swung into view, the driver honked twice to alert the house. Beanpole peered at the windshield to make sure there was only one man.
After Tucker’s last run to northern Ohio, he’d dutifully left the money with an intermediary, Beanpole’s second cousin, a grass widow who smoked a pipe. She told Tucker that Beanpole wanted to see him on Friday. For the next two days, Tucker wondered what he wanted. Maybe a new run-route to Chicago or Pittsburgh. Or maybe the sons-of-bitches in West Virginia were encroaching into Kentucky and trouble was coming. Tucker carried his gun and knife just in case.
The flat part of the yard beside Beanpole’s house had a gravel parking area, an extravagance Tucker had never seen outside of town. Shingles covered the roof instead of the usual tarpaper. The yard held a wooden swing suspended from a yoked scaffold. On the porch Beanpole sat in a rocking chair reinforced by wire against his weight.
Tucker stepped from the cab amid a cacophony of penned dogs that howled their warnings. Nobody could sneak up on Beanpole’s house. Tucker stood in front of his truck and faced the house. With slow and deliberate movements, he removed a Lucky from his shirt pocket and lit it with the other hand. He tucked the Zippo away and let both arms dangle, showing empty hands. A slight breeze blew the cigarette smoke back in his face. He squinted, keeping them open as he watched Beanpole. In Korea he’d seen men die in the time of a single blink.
“You coming up here?” Beanpole said.
“Not yet, no.”
“What are you waiting on, a letter from the governor?”
Beanpole gushed out the stream of laughter he used to put folks at ease. Tucker didn’t react. Beanpole let his mirth subside, remembering that Tucker’s job placed him in contact with strangers who might be robbers, killers, or hijackers. Beanpole rose and stepped to the edge of the porch. He carefully placed both his big-knuckled hands on the railing.
Tucker nodded once and walked to the house, flicking the focus of his vision between Beanpole’s eyes and his hands. Both men knew the other was armed, and each was aware that the other knew it, too. But one would have to draw first. Tucker flicked his cigarette away. He kicked the bottom plank of the oak steps to remove dust from his
boots, a sign of respect, even though he had no intention of entering the house.
“Anybody else here?” he said.
“Old lady’s off I don’t know where.”
“They a man up in the woods drawed down on me right now?”
“If they was,” Beanpole said, “I wouldn’t tell you, would I?”
“No, but if you lied, I’d know.”
“You can cipher out a man lying?”
Tucker nodded. Beanpole studied on that, wondering if it was true. Maybe Tucker’s funny-colored eyes gave him an extra ability.
“All right,” Beanpole said. He patted the enormous belly swelling the front flap of his overalls. “This here ain’t fat, it’s a shed for my tool. Now which one’s a lie?”
“You not being fat.”
“Well, you got me, Tuck. You damn sure do. Caught me lying like a rug. Now why don’t you come up here and set down.”
Tucker remained in the yard, gauging angles. Beanpole had the advantage of elevation, but he’d have to shoot over the railing, which would slow him down and throw off his aim. Tucker figured he could fire from his hip before Beanpole had a chance.
“I’m all right where I’m at,” Tucker said.
“They’s something we need to talk about.”
