The Weight of This World

by David Joy

  “You’re one to talk,” he said angrily.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means for someone who sat around getting the shit kicked out of her her whole life, that’s the pot calling the kettle—”

  “Don’t start that.”

  “I’m just saying. You want to talk about doing something for yourself.”

  “You ain’t got a clue why I made the choices I made.” There was a slight smirk on her face as she shook her head. “Now, I don’t want to fight with you. Not tonight.”

  She had been sleeping in the bed she made for a long time. It hadn’t started off as a choice. When she kept her mouth closed the way she’d been told to do, her parents disowned her. It was shameful enough for a girl that age to get knocked up when she wasn’t married, but it was unforgivable the way she kept that secret. Her parents left Little Canada and there April was, just a kid with a kid, so when George Trantham came along and offered some kind of out, she took it, partly for her and partly for Thad. Waiting on folks at Waffle House wasn’t any sort of living, and so maybe she did have to take things that no woman deserved to take from that asshole, but it beat scraping by. April didn’t want to think about that, though. She was tired.

  Settling her head against his chest, April ran her hand across his stomach and asked Aiden if he could go anywhere on earth where it would be, but he didn’t know. He was wide awake, but it didn’t take her long to doze off against him, her mind washing back and forth between consciousness and dream. Aiden ran his fingers through her hair, and that felt nice, and she slipped further to sleep. In one of the last flashes of thought before she drifted off, she shifted her head against him until she was comfortable and asked, “What about if you could have anything in this world, what would you want, sweet one?” He didn’t answer right away and she was quickly dreaming.

  “Family,” he finally said. “Family.”

  But she was already asleep. She never heard a word.

  (11)

  Half an hour into fucking Julie Dietz for the fourth time that night, Thad knew he could keep on driving into that train wreck until the cows came home and it wasn’t going to do him a lick of good. Those first two times he came easy, but by the third go he was pounding Julie Dietz more out of sheer boredom than anything else. And, looking down on her now, listening to her wheeze and moan like some dying animal, Thad was pretty sure this was a wasted effort.

  A low blue glow came through the curtains and it wouldn’t be long before the sun was up. Thad stared at the wall and tried to conjure some image that would get him off, but that sunlight had made him lose focus. He turned back to Julie, who squirmed beneath him. She clenched the sheets in her fists behind her and shook her head wildly as her rib-slatted torso contorted away from the mattress. He thought for a second that, given the right circumstances, she could’ve been pretty, but the dope had eaten her alive. Thinking that, he just felt sorry for her so he pulled out altogether and left her lying on the bed.

  In the living room, Meredith was sprawled on the couch staring at the ceiling, but wallowed up when Thad came into the room. She squinted her eyes, then opened them wide, as if to try and decide if Thad was real or just some redheaded hallucination. Thad shook his head and wandered into the kitchen. He opened one of the cabinets and reached behind a bag of cornmeal to where he’d hidden a Slim Jim beef jerky from Aiden a few weeks back. He wasn’t so much hungry as just knew he needed to eat something. Thad peeled the wrapper back, bit the beef stick between his teeth like he was chomping a cigar, and slapped the cabinet door closed.

  “Where the hell was you hiding them?” Meredith shouted. She’d just lit a cigarette and tossed the pack and lighter onto the table in front of the couch before leaning back to get comfortable.

  “I ain’t have but one,” Thad said.

  “You got any more?”

  “You deaf or something?” Thad stood there looking confused. He could hear Julie blowing her nose in the bathroom as he chewed a bite and loped into the living room. He grabbed his pack of cigarettes from the table and tried to shake one loose, but the pack was empty. “You smoke every cigarette I had?” Thad asked.

  Meredith just sat there with a look on her face like so-what-the-fuck-if-I-did and took a long drag.

  “You better hope to God there’s another pack out in the car,” he said, slipping his feet into his boots by the table before heading for the door.

  There was a slight chill in the air outside even though it was the middle of August. Thad headed down the steps and tromped across dew-covered grass to where Aiden’s Ranchero was parked in the yard. They always kept a carton of cigarettes slid under the bench seat, but there weren’t any left, so Thad checked the packs littered around the floorboard and came up empty. There wasn’t a thing in that car but an ashtray piled high with stubbed-out butts and one half-smoked Doral 100 that Aiden had left burning when he went into the Sylva Roses a month before. Stale as hell, but it’d do, he thought. Thad lit what was left with a lighter on the dash, slammed the car door, and headed back inside.

  Julie Dietz stood in her underwear by the edge of the couch with twisted wads of toilet paper shoved into her nose. Thad walked in right in the middle of something, both Julie and Meredith going still as stone with eyes wide when he barged through the front door. Julie had just handed something to Meredith as Thad came in, and now Meredith was doing everything she could to keep it cupped in her hand so that he couldn’t see.

  “What are you doing, baby?” Julie asked, and as Thad turned to face her he caught Meredith, out of the corner of his eye, try to slip whatever she was holding into the waistline of her boxers.

  When Thad looked over at Meredith, he could see the corner of the bag of dope peaking out of her waistline. He turned to the table to try and find the one thing he’d need, but it wasn’t there.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” Julie asked.

  And all of a sudden Thad remembered that he’d taken that revolver into the bedroom to be on the safe side. Aiden was right all along. A man couldn’t trust a soul in this world.

  (12)

  The first shot sounded right outside the house. Aiden had been staring at the ceiling all night and was delirious as he threw back the shades to April’s bedroom window and saw Thad standing in his boots and underwear on the porch of his trailer waving the long, shiny revolver above his head like he was flagging traffic. Julie Dietz and the fat girl were in the yard. Julie was doing her damnedest to pull clothes over her bones, while Thad yelled something too muffled to make out from inside the house. April had just gotten up and was in the shower singing “My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy” at the top of her lungs.

  The gun’s report had barely finished bouncing around the cove when Aiden came onto the stoop. The second shot hit the ground like artillery just to the right of Meredith’s feet, and Aiden heard the bullet whiz up past April’s house and bury in the hillside by the radio tower.

  That’s when Julie Dietz rushed Thad. She made it up two steps before he kicked her right square in the stomach and sent her sliding on her side across dew-covered grass. His boot came off as he kicked, and though she coughed like she just might hurl, Julie Dietz crawled in a frenzy, grabbed Thad’s boot from the base of the steps, and threw it out into the yard. That’s when the third shot came. Grass and dirt clods blew up just on the far side of where Julie Dietz stood. She twisted and grabbed her left arm.

  The bullet must’ve winged her because she didn’t go down, but she screamed, “You shot me! You shot me!”

  “Next one’s between the eyes!”

  Loretta Lynn was on the porch beside Thad and she yapped as loud as the rest of them. Julie kept screaming, “You shot me! You shot me!” and Loretta Lynn darted down the steps, bit into Julie’s ankle, and started to tug at her leg like a rope. Julie punted Thad’s dog into the side of the trailer, and Loretta Lynn thudded against the aluminu
m like a dirty snowball. The pup limped back onto the porch, panting so hard that it looked like she might trip over her own tongue. The dog had one burst in her and was spent.

  Aiden knew Thad wouldn’t have exploded so violently if Julie Dietz had stabbed April thirty-seven times in the stomach with a shiv, but the fact that she’d touched Loretta Lynn pushed him over. He marched down the steps and into the yard in nothing but that yellow-tinged underwear. Hobbling with one untied boot, he rose and sank with each set of strides. She cowered just as he hammered the barrel of that pistol across the side of her face. She was on the ground and he straddled her around the rib cage, slapped his empty hand back and forth about her face as if he were shooing flies. Julie’s head flipped side to side with no restraint. She was unconscious.

  Aiden had almost forgotten about Meredith until then. The girl had the size for middle linebacker at any school in the SEC, and when she blindsided Thad in the back, he howled in pain. The two of them rolled around in the grass for a second or two before she mounted him and rammed him again with her shoulder as he tried to regain ground.

  Thad no longer had the gun. Meredith had knocked the revolver loose when she tackled him. From where he stood, Aiden couldn’t see it, but the revolver had to be on the ground somewhere near where Julie lay cold in the yard. Up until then, he’d kind of enjoyed watching it unfold. He’d warned Thad to tell those girls to shove off and Thad hadn’t listened. But the fact that the gun was no longer in his hands left the door open to disaster. The fact that any minute Julie Dietz could come to and find that revolver right beside her with two more shells to give meant things could turn ugly fast. It wouldn’t take but one squeeze of the trigger to field-dress him, leave his brains and blood dripping down the side of that trailer like rust stains running from screws.

  Meredith hammered away at Thad’s face as Aiden started barefoot down the hill. Damp grass squished between his toes and his heels sank into the soft ground that rose between the trailer and house. The driveway cut a wide switchback around the hill, but he walked that slope at least twice a day, having long since scored a trail into the ground. He was almost down the bank when Julie Dietz squirmed on her back like a waking baby. She rolled onto her side and found the revolver within reach. Julie took the gun in both hands as she staggered to her feet, and Aiden jumped the split rail fence and rushed to catch her.

  Slowly making her way to where Thad was being pounded, Julie aimed as best she could, and Aiden got to her just before she reached them. He grabbed hold of her wrists and lifted the gun into the sky. She pulled the trigger and a bullet fired off into the fog, the barrel hammering back into her forehead, her wrists too small to handle the recoil. Digging his fingers into the tendons of her wrist, Aiden forced her grip loose. He took control of the revolver, shoved her to the ground, drew sights where she lay, and told her to stay put. Tears and blood streamed down her face. Her left eye had already begun to swell, a mound of tight, shiny flesh along that whole side. Blood ran down her arm where the bullet had grazed her. Fear turned her into a statue.

  Aiden walked behind Meredith and pressed the barrel into the base of her skull. “That’s enough,” he said. She clobbered Thad once more across the face and Aiden jabbed the barrel into the soft place at the tip of her spine. The click of the revolver being cocked froze her solid. “I said that’s enough.”

  Her hands pressed into Thad’s shoulders, pinning him to the ground, and she stayed there panting until Aiden told her to rise. He thought it amazing how slow people moved when a gun is aimed at them. She came off the ground and he kept his distance in case she got stupid. Aiden ordered Meredith to stand beside Julie, and Meredith did as she was told. Thad was on his hands and knees beside him.

  “The two of you need to just get the hell on out of here,” Aiden said. No one spoke another word. He just motioned down the drive with the pistol.

  Julie Dietz spit a thick line of blood in front of her, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, the whole left side of her face swollen ripe as a purple tomato. Meredith was still sucking air. They both turned and trod down the gravel. The fog held tight to the mountain and the morning sun shone like a flashlight through smoke. Aiden never took the gun off of them until they disappeared behind the laurels hedging the drive.

  “What the hell happened?” Aiden asked.

  “That scraggly bitch was trying to steal what was left of that gram you give me.” Thad was resting on his knees, trying to brush the grass from his arms and shoulders. He winced and rubbed at his back. “She gave it to that fat one and that fat one shoved it down her britches.”

  “That girl was giving you a run for your money.” Aiden started to laugh and Thad stuck out his jaw with anger.

  “Well, goddamn, that bitch had me by a hundred pounds. Easy.”

  “That she did.”

  “That Julie hit me in the back with a frying pan when I was inside. I’m telling you I can’t hardly get up.”

  “She hit you with a frying pan?”

  “Why, yes. Goddamn cast iron,” Thad said. He stood up and walked over to where his boot lay at the base of the trailer, and Loretta Lynn hopped down the steps to stand at his side. “Then when that fat’n hit me . . .” Thad stood there shaking his head and rubbing at the base of his back. “I’m telling you my back is about to give out.”

  Aiden reached into his pants pocket and drew out his pack of smokes. He lit one and started to laugh.

  “It ain’t funny.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Aiden held out his pack of cigarettes and offered one to Thad. “You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty damn funny.”

  “What?” Thad took one of the USA Golds and bit the filter between his teeth.

  “That girl having you on the ground about to beat your ass.” Aiden laughed so hard he could hardly get the words out. “I told you those two were trouble.”

  “Well, you was right, by God.” Thad huffed through his nose and smiled as he shook his head. He walked over to the steps and sat down on the edge of the porch. Loretta Lynn put her front paws on his leg and leaned up toward his face to get him to pet her. “Did you ever talk to Leland?” Thad asked.

  “Yeah,” Aiden said.

  And the two of them just sat there smoking cigarettes as the sun burned off the morning.

  (13)

  Two bare-chested boys with muddied elbows and scabbed knees wrestled each other on a lopsided trampoline missing a third of its springs in Leland Bumgarner’s front yard. The older boy had the little one by at least twenty pounds and was wringing a headlock deep into his kid brother’s neck. But what the little one lacked in size he made up for with sheer meanness. He trudged forward with bare feet kneading into the trampoline till his older brother back-stepped onto a drooping crescent of mesh, the two of them collapsing into the mud like a trapdoor had just opened beneath them.

  “Cut that shit out now,” Leland hollered from the porch, “before one of you breaks something we can’t afford to fix.” Leland’s brow held his eyes in shadow. The two boys cut the horseplay long enough to offer a quick “Yes, sir,” before going back to pushing one another when their father refocused on sharpening a lawn mower blade with a bastard-cut mill file.

  Leland Bumgarner could sell ice to an Eskimo, or fire in hell. He’d always been that way. Growing up, him, Aiden, and Thad all rode the same school bus, and Leland would talk kids out of the best things their miserable lives offered. If a kid got a new Case XX for his birthday—carbon blade, jigged bone handle, the whole nine—Leland would dicker that son of a bitch out of it with nothing more than a busted flashlight, always something dopey. He had a way of convincing folks that what they had wasn’t nearly as good as what he could give them, and someone who has that type of magic-bean salesmanship always has the upper hand. That’s why Leland came to mind when Aiden thought about selling the dope and medicine.

  Leland crinkled an empty
can of Milwaukee’s Best in his fist and tossed it onto the steps. He sat on the edge of the porch and kicked his heels against shabby lattice that fenced off dusty clay beneath the house. He pulled a few strokes down a goatee that hung to his chest, a habit he repeated over and over when he was in thought, then set back into filing the lawn mower blade without even acknowledging that Aiden and Thad were there.

  “How you doing, Leland?” Aiden asked.

  “Without,” he said, not looking up as he made another pass with the file.

  The screen door swung open and slapped against the clapboard house as Karen Bumgarner tramped onto the porch past where her husband sat and down the steps into the yard where Aiden and Thad stood. She slid her arm into the leather handles of her pocketbook and flung the heavy bag over her shoulder. Karen had always been the prettiest girl they grew up with, all of the boys hell bent on taking her out. Somehow or another, Leland won, and they all believed he must’ve conned her.

  Karen stopped in the yard halfway between Leland and Aiden. Two children and a life she never meant for had worn her down, but she was still gorgeous. She cocked her hip to the side, a fat bottom sitting ripe in tight pink shorts, thick legs as brown as tung-oiled walnut from hours spent in the tanning bed. Her hair was short and dyed black with blond streaks, a hairdo that all the girls were wearing but which made no sense to men who dodged skunks with their pickups nearly every time they drove.

  “I’m going into town to get some groceries. You need anything?” she asked.

  “A carton of smokes and some beer.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” Leland said. He still hadn’t looked up.

  Karen spun away from him, sighed under her breath, and rolled her eyes.

  “You going to take the boys with you?” Leland asked.

  Karen looked over to where their sons were killing each other. The older one was holding his kid brother upside down, then dropped to his knees and pile-drove the little one’s head into the ground, his neck surely breaking on impact. Karen didn’t even blink. “You keep an eye on ’em.”