by David Joy
The barbed wire was into his stomach before he even knew a fence was there, and when he hung against the wire, his abs seized, and that pain in his ribs froze him for a second. But he just took a step back and untangled his camouflage shirt from the barb. He grabbed hold of a thin birch and put his boot onto the wire, hopped the fence, and crept into the field. There were no horses or cows that he could see in the pasture, but they might’ve been there. The field was waist-high with oat grass, and Aiden kept to the edge of the woods until he’d reached the far side.
The locust post tying the fence together shook in his hand as he stepped up onto the barbed wire, the line swaying beneath him, and crossed onto the property. He was almost to the house now. He could see the lowboy trailer in the yard with an old mustard-colored CAT trackhoe chained down to the wooden bed. He could see the aboveground pool on the other side of the trailer, the busted-up shed just across the yard near the cars in the driveway. The night was nearly still aside from a slight breeze, but despite the coolness of the air, Aiden sweated all over. He skulked to the side of the house and stood with his back against the clapboards, the porch just around the corner. The television was loud and he could hear the words muffled through the walls. He knew who he was looking for was just on the other side.
Turning the corner, Aiden slunk onto the edge of the porch and spun his legs onto the planks. He crawled from there until he was beside the window, his cheek almost flush against the shutter as he lifted his head past the sill and peered inside. The man he was looking for was right there in front of him. Leland Bumgarner was on the far end of the couch with his eyes focused on something Aiden couldn’t see. The television must have been against the front wall, just past the window and past the door, somewhere on the other side from where Aiden was prowling. Leland wore a pair of blue jeans plastered with dried concrete. His shirt was off, and Aiden could see some dark tattoo on the left side of his chest, some shape he couldn’t make out. There was a cross inked from his shoulder down his arm, and he was spinning a gold can of Miller High Life on his knee, his bare feet kicked onto the table in front of him.
The youngest boy was in pajamas with blue pants and long blue sleeves on a white shirt that had a picture of Spider Man swinging through a city on the front. The boy had his feet toward his father and was lying down on the couch with his head in his mother’s lap. Karen was at the other end of the couch and she was running her fingers through the boy’s hair. A pair of shorts rode high on her legs, the boy’s head against her bare skin, and she wore a tank top that hugged tight to her chest. Behind her at the dining room table, the older boy had his head braced in one hand and scribbled with a pencil on a loose sheet of paper, a textbook open and spread in front of him.
Aiden’s first thought was how perfect they all looked. It was as if he were peering through a window into everything he’d ever wanted. What if he’d been the one to date Karen in high school? What if this was his family, if she’d been his wife and those had been his boys, or even if he’d just grown up in a family like that? Some folks just didn’t realize how good they had it. Some people had every fucking thing in the world and took it all for granted. Leland was one of those people. He’d always had it all and it filled Aiden with anger. Leland Bumgarner was the reason everything had gone so badly. Leland Bumgarner was the reason the world fell apart.
Aiden clenched the rifle so tightly that his hands felt numb. Leland turned up his beer and sucked back the last drops of Miller before he crunched the can in his fist and stood from the couch. He hovered there for a second and rubbed circles around his stomach with his empty hand, watching the television, waiting for the break to commercial. The sound of some woman selling a facial scrub on the television was clear as day through the wall. Aiden watched as Leland headed into the dining room and then the kitchen, all of his movements visible across the open floor plan of the house.
Leland tossed the empty can into the trash by the cabinets and swung open the door of the refrigerator to grab another beer. When he came back and sat down and popped the top and threw back that can for another swig, Aiden would bust through the front door and fire the first shot before Leland had time to lower his head. After that, he would swing the gun and fire the second shot into Karen. He would have to. She would recognize him. He couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her as he pulled the trigger so he’d close his eyes and squeeze. The boys would be running by then and they’d tear off into the back of the house into their rooms. There’d be so much happening and they’d be so filled with terror that there would be no way they’d get a good luck at him, no way they’d be able to give an accurate description.
Leland stepped off the tile into the dining room and walked up behind his oldest son. He stared down at what the boy was doing and said something that Aiden couldn’t make out, and the boy looked up at his father and scrunched a funny face. Leland said something else, then tousled the boy’s hair and jumped away. The boy reared back and threw the pencil at his father, and Leland braced like he was about to be hit by a train. When the pencil bounced off Leland’s stomach, the two of them laughed and Leland headed back toward the couch while the older boy scuttled across the floor to pick up his pencil.
Leland was still laughing and smiling when he got back to the couch. He set his beer down on the coffee table and hovered over the smaller boy, who still lay across the cushions with his head in his mother’s lap. Karen looked up at her husband and the boy started to grin as Leland lifted his hands over his head with his fingers gnarled like claws. All of a sudden he sprang down on his son and dug his hands into the child’s ribs. The boy immediately tightened into a ball and writhed with laughter, his head rolling in his mother’s lap, his legs pedaling against the air. Aiden rose to his feet.
Something Aiden had never remembered until right then flooded his mind and consumed him. He could not have been more than five or six years old. His father had come home early from work and Aiden was out in the yard rolling a Tonka dump truck across the bumpy ground. When he was little, he played with that truck every day, no telling how much dirt he moved, the yellow all but gone from rain and snow and sun. His father came barreling across the grass, and before Aiden even had time to look up he was in the air. His father scooped him from the ground and swung him up into the sky, letting go of his body. All of his weight seemed to rush into his chest as he flew upward, Aiden just floating there for a moment before falling back into his father’s hands. When he came down, his father laid Aiden onto his back in the grass and tickled him until he couldn’t breathe. Aiden thought in that moment that a boy could die of laughter. He believed that a child could literally suffocate from happiness. These were things he had never thought of since. These were feelings he had forgotten until right then.
He was startled by where he was and what he was doing. He knew then that he could not go through with it. For all his faults, Leland Bumgarner seemed to be a good father. Despite what he’d done to Aiden and Thad, Leland loved his sons. If Aiden pulled the trigger, he would fulfill the nightmare that had haunted him his entire life. He’d be setting those two boys up to be just like him. He would become his father. Aiden couldn’t imagine anyone else having to see what he’d seen, having to see what he couldn’t stop seeing. He could hear that voice just like in his dream, that voice declaring that, “In the end, blood always tells,” but for the first time he knew that it didn’t have to be that way. These things weren’t set in stone. A man had choices. Aiden had a choice and he needed to leave. He needed to turn around and leave. And as all those thoughts rushed over him, Aiden was standing directly in front of the window. The boy was still laughing and Leland was still giving him fits and Aiden looked over at Karen, that simple turn of his head being some visible thing that she must’ve seen, because right then their eyes met and her eyes widened and her mouth opened slowly. She started pushing herself off the couch.
“Leland,” she said, her husband paying her no attention.
“Leland! There’s someone on the porch!”
Leland Bumgarner let go of his son and turned toward his wife almost confusedly before he looked over his shoulder. Aiden met his eyes, and while he knew that Leland could see him standing there, he didn’t know whether or not Leland could make out his face in such darkness. The minute their eyes met, Aiden took off running across the porch. He jumped into the yard and that pain surged into his ribs and he almost fell from how bad it hurt, but only stumbled and cut around the back of the house because that was the nearest place to find trees, the nearest place he could hide. The field that stretched to the side of the house seemed so empty and so vast that he knew he didn’t stand a chance of making it out the way he’d come. He needed to find some new way out, so he shot up the hillside where the root cellar was buried and broke through the brush and the trees until he was in something so thick that everything was snapping around him, limbs and vines and bushes beating against him, and still, farther he ran. He didn’t stop until he had crested the slope and had found some ledge of flat ground, where he hit the dirt. He looked down and saw the lights flick on at the corners of the house. Leland’s yard was illuminated as he made his way into the backyard with a shotgun in his hands.
Aiden lay out of breath where he could see but not be seen, trying his best not to breathe, to keep entirely still. He watched as Leland stood at the base of the hill and scanned the trees to make sense of shadows and darkness. Aiden waited there a long time, scared to move. Leland seemed to be listening for a sound, some small crack of a twig snapping beneath a footstep, to give him a sign of where the person had gone, to give him some place at which to draw his aim. But Aiden did not move. He stayed put until his breathing slowed and only the sounds of the night remained. There was no time too great. Aiden crouched there waiting. He had no place to go and had already seen forever.
EPILOGUE
Heavy rains all season stopped the mountains from ever seeing much color that fall, just a dull yellow fading to brown, then gone. The trees were empty now and had been for weeks. It was early November and the world as Aiden McCall had always known it was no more.
He’d driven to Sylva to pick up some things he needed: some lamp oil, stove matches, and a tarpaulin to fix the hole rusted in the roof, a carton of cigarettes, and a fifth of Travelers Club that was marked down. Dented cans of Dinty Moore beef stew were on sale, so Aiden stocked up with about twenty cans of that and some potted meat and a sack of potatoes and onions. He grabbed a pack of salt-cured ham, then a loaf of bread, and some Duke’s to make mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch. The bread was the only thing that wouldn’t keep, but the mice had been getting into stuff anyways, so he’d have to eat it quickly whether the mold got to it or not. Aiden didn’t mind sharing with the field mice. They were almost like pets. But he did wish they’d stick to a single slice or two rather than nibbling the corners off every piece in the bag. If they kept that up, he’d probably have to set traps.
There were only a few hundred dollars left from the cash they’d found at Wayne Bryson’s, but he’d yet to spend any of the money April gave him. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, and when everything was packed and she was just about to drive away, she shoved a wad of money into his hand. They stared at each other for a long time and didn’t say anything. Looking at her, he could tell she had just as many thoughts running through her mind as he had in his, but there wasn’t time to say what needed said, and maybe there weren’t even words. They both knew it was the last time they’d ever see each other. Aiden was the one who finally broke the silence. He told her he loved her. She smiled and told him good-bye. Then she was gone.
There were five thousand dollars in hundreds. He’d counted the money at least once a day. It was enough to get out of Jackson County and put him up for three or four months until he found a job or the money ran out, whatever happened first. He was going to go to Asheville like he’d planned and make a go of it. He didn’t know how things would pan out, but he knew he had to leave. There were still just a few things he had to do first.
He drove past the logging road that wound up the mountain to Sugar Creek Gap and headed farther up Charleys Creek like he’d done a thousand times before. He could almost see the property from the road, but pulled in and drove up like he still lived there. This time he stopped short and just sat and looked at what was left. The trailer had been smashed into a pile of warped metal and dirtied pink insulation, jagged scraps of two-by-fours and heaps of trash. Whoever had bought the place had hired someone with a dozer to tear the single-wide to pieces. It was probably cheaper to haul scrap than move the trailer in one piece, and that appeared to be what they were going to do, but for now it was just a mound of crumpled metal and wood.
Up the hill, only a few sections of framed walls remained standing, the posts and beams black and crumbling into coals. The rest of the house had burned into cinders that still smoldered in places, little trails of smoke wavering out of ashen rubble. The people who bought the place had donated the home to the fire department for a training exercise for the firemen and a tax write-off for themselves. A bunch of young boys in turnout gear with shit-eating grins had lit the fire and watched everything Aiden ever knew burn to the ground.
April had said the people who bought the place were going to plant Christmas trees. There wasn’t any money in Christmas tree farming, especially not on a place this size and especially not when the people growing the trees didn’t know poplar from piss oak. There was no chance in hell they’d ever succeed. Aiden figured they’d never be able to grow anything at all on that ground. From everything he’d ever witnessed, the place bore hardship. But the more he sat there and thought, the more he came to realize that maybe a place couldn’t be cursed, maybe only people could, and maybe that’s why there’d never been a goddamn thing worked out for him, Thad, or April. Perhaps God just had it out for certain folks and he’d been born one of the unlucky ones. So maybe those people would be able to grow those trees after all. Maybe they’d be just fine.
The locust rail fence he’d laid around April’s property was still there and the radio tower stood with its metal frame piercing the sky. He and Thad had spent entire summers listening to country out of Nashville or the rock-and-roll sets students at the university in Cullowhee spun some nights when they had the air. He and Thad used to sit on the porch and drink cold beer and smoke cigarettes and stare off into nothing with the only sound between them that crystal-clear music humming down from above and coursing through the speakers without even a tick of static.
Aiden wondered what April would have thought about the place now, the place she’d spent some twenty years of her life, demolished into ruin. He wondered where she had gone when she packed the few things she wanted and drove away. He hadn’t asked her and she hadn’t told, and he wondered if she’d gone to Tybee Island like she’d always talked about or maybe someplace different entirely. There was no way to know now, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. He liked to think that there would have been some sort of sorrow in her heart to see the place like this, that maybe, despite all of what had happened, there was a tiny piece of sentimentality she held for this place, if nothing else a single good memory that made her smile when she thought about it.
But when he was honest, he knew how stupid it was to think anything like that. That’s the thing about growing older in a place, is that eventually all the things remembered are torn down and replaced with something new. Most people get nostalgic, but to miss something that was gone was to have loved something that had been there in the first place. There’d been nothing here for her to love. The fact that the house was gone would make it easier to forget, and, in time, maybe it would be as if the place had never existed at all.
He lit a cigarette and backed down the drive onto Charleys Creek. He headed back the way he’d come, and this time, when he reached the old logging road that twisted up the mountain to Sugar Creek Gap, he hung a right and headed up
the gravel. About halfway up the mountain, the trail to Bee Rock cut through the trees to the right and he thought about Thad camping there when he was little. He thought about how Thad had always sworn up and down that he was Cherokee and how he’d caked himself in mud and run around carving spears and arrows and bows, and setting booby traps. One time Thad got a head full of lice from sticking feathers he plucked off a dead crow he found on the side of the road into his hair, and he had to slather his head with turpentine and petroleum jelly to kill the bugs. A redheaded Indian. That son of a bitch was a sight.
When the road peaked out at Sugar Creek Gap, Aiden parked and walked over to the clearing where a view stretched until the farthest mountains were nothing but hazy blue curves on the edge of the horizon. There were only a few hours left of daylight, but the overcast skies kept the mountains in a dim gloom even with the sun having yet to sink. A crow cawed from somewhere behind him and Aiden turned just in time to see three of them burst out of the black balsams and sail down into the valley in search of a new place to light. That stand of balsams was where it all began.
Under the trees, he kicked at the roots with the toe of his boot and knelt just as he had so many years before. He could remember not knowing Thad was there until he spoke. He could remember Thad pulling that crumpled centerfold from his Velcro wallet and spreading it right there on the ground and that moment of them joking back and forth being the happiest he ever felt in his life. That was the day that Thad Broom went from being a friend to something closer than blood kin. It wasn’t like having a brother or a father. What Thad became was something new entirely, something that the world had yet to name.
