Country Dark

by Chris Offutt

  He opened his eyes without realizing he’d closed them and saw a boy standing on the steps, eyes wide.

  “Shiny,” he said, “is that you?”

  The boy ran to him, wrapping his small arms around his father’s leg. Tucker placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. The three of them stood, swaying slightly. Tucker relaxed his grip.

  “Where’s Big Billy,” he said. “Where’s Jo?”

  “She’s sick,” Rhonda said.

  “Bad sick?”

  “No, she’s in her flowers.”

  “How can that be? She ain’t but what, eleven?”

  “Just shy of thirteen,” Rhonda said. “It’s about right.”

  Tucker frowned. He’d left a girl who’d become a woman. The baby boy was three feet tall with a grin full of teeth. Tucker felt momentarily dizzy.

  “Big Billy,” he said. “Where is he?”

  “Shiny,” Rhonda said. “Go check on Jo. Take her some water and stay in your room.”

  Tucker nodded once to his son, who reluctantly left. Rhonda walked to the couch and sat.

  “A lot’s happened,” she said. “Most not good.”

  “Where’s Big Billy?”

  “The state took him. The babies, too. I didn’t have no choice.”

  “Who?” he said. “Who did it?”

  “I don’t know. One was a doctor. I never seen the rest of them before.”

  “It wasn’t that woman used to come?”

  “No, she quit. Then after four years, a couple of new ones showed up. The next spring they come and took Big Billy and the girls. I set here and let them, Tucker. I let them carry my babies off. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  He felt bewildered, as if he inhabited someone else’s life. The battered furnishings were familiar but not the contour of the walls, the layout of the house. In prison he’d led a kind of semi-life and now he was a stranger in his own home. He left the house. His favorite spot was five miles away by car, three if he walked. He entered the woods and climbed the slope where it met the ridge. Tucker walked in a fury, not seeing the leaves or hearing the birds, his woods skills rusty from years of concrete. He couldn’t focus his mind. He felt betrayed and trapped. He’d abandoned his family and this was the penalty—losing four kids. His stomach churned as if controlled by a mechanical crank. Sweat coated him. He began removing his clothes—jacket, shirt, and undershirt—and flung them into the woods. At the top of the ridgeline above his old house, he began a slow descent and went unerringly to his spot.

  Leaves covered the rock. He kicked aside the brush, panting from exertion, having smoked too much with little exercise for five years. He sat on the rock. His spot. Nothing had changed here. He removed his boots and socks, then his pants. His body continued to feel aflame. Carefully placing the pistol in a boot, he collected the decayed leaves and earth in his hands and rubbed the cool loam on his skin. A thorn ripped a gash that he didn’t feel. His body was far away from his mind. He leaned back and stared at a patch of sky through the intertwining limbs. Nothing made sense. He sat for an hour without moving, then stood abruptly, put on his boots, and carried his pistol down the hill to the edge of the woods.

  The old house he’d spent months repairing fourteen years before stood as he remembered it, now with a new roof. The old porch had been torn away and replaced by one with brick posts and steps. The yard was bigger, the grass cropped and uniform. The woods behind the house were clear-cut. White gravel covered the driveway, ending in an oblong area bordered with old railroad ties. The pines he’d planted as a winter windbreak had quadrupled in height.

  When they’d traded houses, Beanpole and his wife had moved nearer to their grandkids. Tucker didn’t know who lived here now. He experienced a sudden impulse to walk down there and shoot everyone inside, then lie down and sleep. But he had no means of getting away, and worse, he was naked. He climbed back to his spot and sat on the rock while daylight faded. He could stay here until he died of thirst. He could shoot himself in the head. He could climb higher on the hill and leap off the tunnel cut and land on the railroad track. No, no, and no. Beanpole owed him ten thousand dollars. He put on his clothes and walked back to his family in the darkness.

  Jo was still resting. Unsure and awkward, Tucker stood beside her bed for several minutes, then leaned down to kiss her forehead. She awakened and hugged his neck. He patted her shoulder. She released him and he went downstairs and sat with Shiny on the porch, pointing out constellations. Shiny wanted to know the difference between stars and planets and moons.

  “All the same, I reckon,” Tucker said. “They’re up there and we’re down here. They ain’t no roads either direction.”

  “At school they said a dog went up in space. A Russian dog.”

  “Communists are all dogs. They’ll go anywhere. But they’re afraid of folks in these hills.”

  “Is that what your gun’s for? Communist dogs?”

  “No. I got used to carrying one in Korea.”

  “Daddy, you been all over, ain’t you.”

  “Mount Sterling twice. Once to Lexington. Where you been to, Shiny?”

  “Morehead,” Shiny said.

  “Nowhere else?”

  “Molton Holler. Lower Lick Creek. Bearskin Holler.”

  “Son, that’s a big bunch more than I went to when I was your age. You’re a regular traveling man.”

  “I ain’t a man yet.”

  “No, but you will be.”

  Shiny scratched a swollen spot on his arm. It was red with a tiny dot in the middle.

  “What’s that,” Tucker said.

  “Hornet. They’s a nest over the hill. Big as a basketball.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Did when it bit me but not no more. Now it’s just itchy.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Shiny offered his arm and Tucker moved to the porch light. The stinger was gone. Either it had never been in his arm or Shiny’s body had already pushed it out.

  “Your mom put anything on it?” Tucker said.

  “No. I didn’t tell her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She told me to stay away from them. But I like how the nest looks.”

  “You best get to bed,” Tucker said. “She’ll have my hide if I keep you up late.”

  Shiny went upstairs and lay in bed, head turned to the window and the glimmer of stars. The house was quiet. He knew he’d remember this day the rest of his life. He’d driven a truck and his daddy was home.

  On the porch Tucker lit a cigarette. Rhonda brought coffee for both of them and they sat in the darkness. She inhaled deeply, having missed his smell.

  “Somebody’s living in our old house,” he said.

  “Beanpole sold it. They say it looks nice.”

  “Work’s been put to it.”

  “You mad at me?”

  “No,” he said. “It ain’t your fault about them kids.”

  Rhonda closed her eyes and leaned against him, relieved. She’d feared this day since the state took the babies and now it was almost over.

  “Where they got them living at?” Tucker said.

  Rhonda went in the house and brought back copies of the forms she’d signed. Big Billy was at a medical facility in Frankfort and the girls lived in a group home in Lexington.

  “We’ll go see them,” Tucker said.

  “I’d like that.”

  “What’d the state people tell you?”

  “Said the kids could get what they needed there. The right food and medicine. There’s doctors for them.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Said I wasn’t working and you were in prison.”

  “Plenty of families like that.”

  “I told them,” Rhonda said. “They said we didn’t have the income to take care of them.”

  “Beanpole been giving you money?” he said.

  “His wife ain’t missed once. Forty a week. I didn’t tell the state people. I’ve deviled myself wondering if I should�
��ve.”

  “No,” Tucker said. “It’s best you never. It’d make a bigger mess. Whole thing could have come out. Then I’d never get my money off him.”

  The Milky Way made a blizzard of stars in the narrow gap between the hills. A whip-poor-will called, its shrill sound close to the house.

  “Where’s the dogs?” Tucker said.

  “Run off or died, one.”

  They sat, sipping coffee and talking as the night grew darker, the air chilled, and birdsong ceased. Occasionally Rhonda took a drag off Tucker’s cigarette.

  “How’s Jo getting along?” he said.

  “Tired. But she’s glad you’re back. Shiny, too.”

  “He’s got a hornet bite on his arm.”

  “Big nest of them up the hill by the house. I ain’t been able to get rid of them.”

  “I will,” Tucker said. “I’m back now. I’ll take care of things.”

  Within two hours he learned what had occurred in his absence. It amounted to very little—car wrecks, shootings, births and deaths, who got religion and who’d backslid. Abruptly he felt tired, as if the passage of time had accumulated in storage and flung itself over him. He was thirty years old and felt sixty. Did that mean at sixty he’d feel ninety, or would it be doubled to one hundred twenty? He pondered that, then asked Rhonda.

  She giggled and they went inside and undressed in the bedroom. For a long time they lay side by side, both nervous but afraid of voicing fear. They slept. Dawn lifted the darkness to a veil of gray light imbued with birdsong. He caressed her and she stirred toward him, eyes opening in surprise. They touched each other slowly then rattled the bed as they always had, eradicating the years of terrible separation.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the morning Shiny lay in bed with the sheets pulled tight to his chin. He remembered that his father was home and moved quietly across the narrow hall to Jo’s room. She lay propped on several pillows, reading books lent by her teachers. They never gave Shiny books though he tried to do extra well in school so the state wouldn’t take him away. He went downstairs to the kitchen.

  Shiny was sitting on the edge of a wooden chair, eating an apple and drinking water, when he heard an unfamiliar tread and saw his father. Shiny stopped chewing, suddenly afraid without knowing why. He offered the apple. His father squinted at him, took the apple, and nibbled rapidly while holding two fingers behind his head like rabbit ears. Shiny laughed and they began duplicating various animals, copying their sounds and styles of eating. Tucker was snuffling the worn linoleum like a pig when Jo and Rhonda came into the room. Tucker reared back on his feet, still crouching, and crowed like a rooster until Jo smiled. He circled her like a cat, meowing and rubbing his body against her legs. Jo laughed and laughed.

  Tucker stood. “You going to school today?” he said.

  Jo looked at her mother.

  “She might need a few days more,” Rhonda said. “Best she lay on the couch and rest.”

  “Today is a house holiday,” Tucker said. “Shiny stays home, too. We’ll set and watch TV all day. But first I’ll make some breakfast.”

  “No,” Rhonda said. “I’ll make breakfast. You can scrub potatoes and chop a few onions. Your idea of bacon is about like salty bark.”

  “Did you say bark?”

  Tucker looked at his son and barked like a dog. Shiny began howling as if he were a beagle chasing a rabbit. After breakfast, Tucker repaired the flat tires on the car, re-gapped the spark plugs, cleaned the starter, and tightened the wires. He and Shiny drove to a garage and bought a new air filter. Shiny sat without talking and Tucker understood that the boy was more like him than he knew. On the way home, he stopped for a bottle of pop and drove to a wide place beside the creek. They sat in the shade of a willow with fronds long enough to drift in the ripples.

  “Good place to fish,” Tucker said. “You ever go?”

  “No. I wanted to.”

  “But there wasn’t nobody to take you, right?”

  Shiny nodded.

  “Well, I’m back now. We’ll get you a rod and reel, hunt us up some nightcrawlers, and I’ll teach you how.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “Nope. Hard part’s getting the hook out of the fish. It’s easy to cut your hand. But I’ll show you how. There’s a trick to it.”

  Shiny nodded. He finished his bottle of pop and tossed it into the creek. They watched it get hung on a tree root and slowly fill with water. Tucker threw a rock at it, deliberately missing.

  “You try,” he said.

  Shiny hurled a rock that went wide. He picked up another one.

  “Here,” Tucker said, “give this one a shot.”

  He handed his son a rock.

  “Is it a special one?” Shiny said.

  “Not really. But some are better for throwing. You want one that’s kindly round-shaped, like a baseball but not as big. It’ll go straight. Heavy is better than light, too. You don’t want it to veer off.”

  Shiny’s throw came closer to the bottle. He searched for rocks similar to the one his father had given him. After six more tries, he hit the bottle, and laughed.

  “You know a lot, Daddy,” he said.

  “I listen and watch, same as you.”

  “At school they said you was in a pen.”

  “I was.”

  “Like a hog pen?”

  “No. It’s short for penitentiary. But it was like a hog pen, only with walls instead of wire fence.”

  “Is it the same as prison?”

  “Yes. Did the kids say that, too?”

  Shiny nodded.

  “They said only bad people are in prison.”

  “You worried that I’m bad?” Tucker said.

  “No.” Shiny’s voice was quick and he looked away.

  “Son, there’s all kinds of people in the pen. Good and bad. Most are just unlucky.”

  “Which one was you?”

  “I was a little bit of all three, so in between. Most people are.”

  “In between good and bad?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How can you be in between luck?”

  “Everybody is most of the time. People don’t know they’re lucky till the bad luck comes along.”

  Shiny frowned and threw a rock.

  “Why’d you go to the prison pen?” he said.

  “They got me for selling beer.”

  “At the bootlegger?”

  “You know about that?”

  “It’s on the county line. A lot of the kids’ daddies go over there.”

  “They talk about that in first grade?” Tucker said.

  “I’m in second.”

  “Oh. Well, right. You’re not a first-grader anymore. And I’m not in prison anymore. We’re right here.”

  “Are you going to stay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I still yet got to take you fishing. And there’s more to learn about rocks. You ever hear of skipping one across water?”

  “No.”

  “That’ll be next. We need a wider creek. Or a pond.”

  “I know where there’s a pond supposed to be at.”

  Tucker nodded and went to the car. Shiny followed him, trying to copy the way his father walked, the tilt of his shoulders. They drove home and spent the rest of the day drowsing in the front room, watching TV with a fuzzy black-and-white picture. Shiny asked why the commercials were for places in West Virginia.

  “We’re so far back in the hills,” Tucker said, “we get TV from out of state.”

  Encouraged, Shiny asked dozens of questions that his father patiently answered. Rhonda’s favorite soap opera came on and she made everyone hush. The reception began to fade. Tucker went outside to turn the antennae attached to a pole until the picture improved. The sound faded to a hum. Shiny stood in the door and relayed information between his father and mother. Rhonda said she’d rather hear what the people were saying because she already knew what they looked like.
Tucker adjusted the antennae again to retrieve the sound. A hornet veered past him, a sentry, and he wondered how far the nest was from the house.

  Later, when a cowboy show came on, Tucker switched reception to a good picture, explaining that what they said never mattered, but you had to know the color of each man’s hat. At the end, the cowboy in the white hat always won.

  “My hat’s green,” Shiny said. “What color is yours, Daddy?”

  “Never much wore one. My hair’s thick enough to shed water. About like a duck.”

  “But if you did, what color would it be?”

  “Reckon I’d go with green, same as you.”

  The answer satisfied the boy, filling him with a sense of pride. He asked more questions until Rhonda shushed him.

  Jo felt a little better but was still tired. She felt grateful that her father was home, though she wished he were seeing her at her best. She worried that her best was behind her now. A future of being fat and achy seemed awful. Her mother said it meant she was on her way to having kids of her own, and Jo kept that thought in place.

  After the kids went to bed, Rhonda joined Tucker on the porch. The air had cooled enough for her to wear a sweater. They drank weak coffee, watching shadows join to form the night. During his time in prison she’d tried to trace the route that led to her situation, and in doing so wound up blaming everyone: her father for dying, Uncle Boot for his selfish desire, Tucker for showing up when he did, the state for taking her kids, Beanpole for sending her husband to the pen. Mainly she blamed herself for not fighting hard enough to protect her children.