by David Joy
Now that Thad was gone, it wasn’t so much sorrow that Aiden felt as disbelief. Every single day, he found himself looking around and waiting, listening for the sound of Thad’s voice, wondering what Thad was doing, thinking Thad had just run off into the woods for a while. Then he’d remember and there was this confusion that accompanied that first second of remembering. It would take him a second or two to recognize that Thad was gone. There would be no coming back.
He drove into the valley where Sugar Creek Gap meandered its way down the backside of Rich Mountain into Caney Fork. The road wasn’t kept up like it was when he was younger. Back then a man could’ve driven a Cadillac from Charleys Creek to Caney Fork, but nowadays the road was washed out and rutted. Curves were washboarded into rippled gravel. The state had come in and dug boulders off the hillside and dropped them into the road so that people couldn’t even pass all the way from one side to the other by vehicle anymore. Nothing was like it had been. Everything was suddenly changing.
The bottle of whiskey sloshed around on the other side of the bench seat and he leaned over to grab it, almost running off the high side of the road when he did. He opened the bottle and took a slug, wiped his chin with the back of his hand, and screwed the cap back down. He was thinking about all of the things he’d never know about Thad, what had happened while Thad was deployed, and how what he’d seen and the things he’d done had become something physical that he had to carry through this world. Aiden wondered what it must have felt like to grow up in a place where you saw your mother every single day of your life, and you always knew that no matter what you did or how hard you tried she would never love you. It was no wonder Thad had hated her, and though Aiden had lost both of his parents so early, he almost imagined it would be worse to live with that constant reminder.
At the same time, Thad had never known the reason for April being the way that she was, and now Aiden did. Knowing what had happened to April and how her son was a living, breathing reminder of that memory wasn’t something that justified how she’d treated him, but it did explain it. There were so many horrible things they had buried inside themselves, all of the memories that had come to govern their lives. He found himself wishing that he could have been the one to bear it all. He wished that he could have taken all of the bad in this world and piled it onto himself so that he would have been the only one to ever know that kind of suffering.
Just up ahead, the boulders blocked him from driving any farther. A four-wheel trail cut off to the right, where a small creek ran under the road through a culvert, the black stone streambed stretching from there and stacking a cobbled streak of rock up the mountain. Aiden steered onto the trail and pulled up a few hundred feet to where the cut dead-ended into a thick stand of rhododendron, its green leaves rolled up like cigarettes in the cold. He parked and climbed out of the car, grabbed the carbine from the toolbox in the back, then spread the tarpaulin onto the ground. He kept the tarp folded into a square and loaded all of his supplies onto it. When everything was there, he pulled the four corners of the tarp into his hand and slung the load over his shoulder with one hand, the rifle by his side in the other. From there, a game trail led a little over a mile to the camp.
There must’ve come a time when people gave up on those shanties at the hunting camp, because it was obvious no one had been there for years when he first went back. None of the buildings were worth living in anymore, but he took scraps from here and there and fixed up the shack farthest from the road as best he could. He stepped onto the rotten porch planks of the place he’d been living. A busted screen door with chicken wire at the bottom and a torn piece of mesh screen hanging down from the top opened to a heavier door with nine windowpanes, only two rectangles of glass unbroken. He set the rifle standing on the porch with the barrel balanced against the door frame, kept the tarp over his shoulder, and entered. The man inside was just how Aiden left him.
Samuel Mathis was tied to a metal folding chair with his feet tucked behind the crossbar running between the front legs. His ankles were bound with rope that continued behind to where his wrists hung from the empty space between the chair back and seat. His wrists were wound tightly with the same rope, and from there the cord spun around his chest so that the metal folding chair had become a part of his body, something inseparable from him. If he moved at all, he would fall, and he had, many times those first few days, though now he seemed to have given up and just sat there hunched over, huffing through his nose, his mouth duct-taped shut. The left side of Samuel’s face was so swollen that his eye seemed nothing more than a black slit cut across a plum. He was covered with blood that had dried almost black in his hair, down his face and neck.
Aiden set the tarp down by the door and started to unload the supplies. He took the cans of stew beef and the loaf of bread, the mayonnaise, the salt-cured ham, the potatoes, and onions and he put all of those things on a counter that stretched from the door along the front wall. He grabbed the carton of cigarettes and whiskey, the lamp oil and the kitchen matches, and put them on a small card table beside Samuel in the center of the room. It had looked like it might rain, or maybe even snow outside, but it was starting to get dark now and he figured it was too late to climb onto the roof and try to secure the tarp over the hole that had rusted through the tin. He bought one of the largest tarps the store had, and was planning to just stretch it all the way over the eave so that water couldn’t run beneath and seep inside. The chinking on the board shack was rotted through so that the walls did little to stop the wind. It was cold outside and getting colder. He could feel the air blowing through and he wished that there was a stove to burn wood and keep warm, but there wasn’t. The first snow had come a few days before and it would not be long until more.
A glass lamp was on the table and he removed the globe to fill the base with oil. When the lamp was filled, Aiden struck one of the kitchen matches and lit the tattered wick into a tall flame that licked at the air before he dialed the fire down into a low, steady glow. He lit a cigarette as the match burned into his fingers, drew a few swigs of whiskey from the bottle of Travelers Club, and blew a trail of smoke into Samuel’s face. A wind howled through the valley and straight through the shack, and Aiden shivered with how cold the world had become. Winter was almost upon him, and he no longer wished to stay. He would keep Samuel alive a bit longer, maybe a day or two, maybe a week. He still wasn’t sure, but what he did know was that killing Samuel Mathis would prick a pinhole in the darkness. When it was over, he would bury him and there’d be a glint of light in this wicked world because of something he’d done.
Nightfall came on and the last bit of daylight filtered through the windows. In a few minutes, the only light to be had would be that which he made. Aiden turned up the bottle and drank until the whiskey washed over him. He studied the way Samuel Mathis looked, the way he breathed, the way his eyes seemed to be begging Aiden to end it. Everyone was begging for the end. But not yet, Aiden thought. Hold off just a little bit longer. He was not quite ready to be alone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Ace and George for pouring me a drink when I was lying in the mud. To Terry McCall for riding and smiling and laughing. To A. J. for holding off on the eviction. To the North Carolina Arts Council for believing I was something other than a bumbling drunkard. And, most important, to my agent, Julia Kenny; editor, Sara Minnich; and the entire team at Putnam, without whom my work would be illegible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Joy’s first novel, Where All Light Tends to Go, debuted to great acclaim and was named an Edgar finalist for Best First Novel. His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, and he is the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey. Joy lives in Webster, North Carolina.
david-joy.com
facebook.com/DavidJoyAuthor
twitter.com/DavidJoy_Author
What’s next on
your readi
ng list?
Discover your next
great read!
* * *
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
