Fall Back Down When I Die

by Joe Wilkins

  That summer, though, the drought came crashing down, the sky wide and cloudless, the heat cranking up day after day. Not a lick of precipitation all June—just virga, those ropes of dry rain that fell with most every afternoon thunderstorm but burned off before they hit the ground. In July they fought two lightning fires, one of which charred half a section of their best range land.

  Even as the grassy ashes of the second fire cooled, Wendell’s father woke him in the night. They drove without headlights deep into the south pasture, parked above a dry cutbank, and scrambled down into the dark coulee, where the government fence, for the contortions of the land, was already loose, the wooden posts as wobbly as rotten teeth. With Wendell’s baseball bat they beat the posts clean out of the ground, then took a pair of fencing pliers and snipped a couple of wires. It might look like elk had run through and knocked the fence all to hell. If the sheep were pushed even a little, they would find the break tomorrow. That way, his father explained, the woollies would get a week or so of good grass and water on government land, what used to be their land, what ought yet to be their land, before he and Wendell would pretend to notice, herd the sheep back in, and patch up the break. Then they’d find another bad stretch of fence a few days later and do it all again.

  His old man was loose and happy on the drive back, cutting half-doughnuts in the dusty road, singing snatches of that Tennessee Ernie Ford song he liked: You load sixteen tons, what d’you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. He whipped his empty Rainier out the window and reached under the seat for another. He cracked it open and sucked at the foam. He winked, offered Wendell a drink. Wendell held the can to his lips, the beer fizzy and wild in his mouth. He couldn’t square it. He knew he should be happy, but he was embarrassed. It reminded him of Macbeth. Of how wrong things could go. You don’t just go around doing what you want in the night.

  A third of a mile on from the junk coulee, they came to the property shooting range—just a waist-high sandrock to lean over fifty paces from an earthen bank onto which Wendell had pinned clean paper targets using pine branches. He breathed and fired and, depending on where the bullet landed, used a dime to click the scopes on the .243 and the 30.06 up or down, left or right, slowly zeroing them in. Rowdy watched it all and didn’t put his fingers in his ears for the blasts, didn’t even flinch. Didn’t, Wendell noticed, do that thing with his fingers on his cheeks either.

  Once the rifles were sighted in, he showed the boy how to firm the butt up against his shoulder, told him how to breathe and let the sights drift into alignment, and he let Rowdy pop off a few shots with the .22. His first couple of attempts were wild—the shots cracked and zinged through the sandrocks—yet he hit the target more times than he missed. One shot landed just up and to the right of the bull’s-eye.

  Wendell squatted down, his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  —Look at that. You’re a Newman, all right. A damn natural.

  Rowdy looked at the .22 in his hands. Then again at the target.

  Wendell walked out to the earthen bank and pulled out the two pine branches pinning the paper down and bore the ragged target back to Rowdy.

  —Here you go, he said. Take this as a memento. And a challenge. Maybe next time you’ll have a couple there in the red.

  The boy handed the .22 to Wendell and took the paper. He held it to his face and peered through a shot hole right up at Wendell. Then made a popping sound, something like the .22. It was the first noise Wendell had heard him make other than his screaming in the field, and it sounded natural, just the sound a boy ought to make.

  —That’s right, Mr. Sharpshooter. Now, let’s head on back. I’m about ready for some chicken noodle.

  Still peering through the target, Rowdy spun on his heel and marched back through the sage and dry grass, back toward the trailer.

  —Pewwhg! Pewwhg! The boy made the noise again.

  —That’s right, Wendell repeated.

  He liked the high, scratchy sound of Rowdy’s voice. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder as they walked. The social worker was coming out again on Saturday to see how Rowdy was doing, to see if he was ready to start school. Wendell thought he was, though he thought, too, that he’d better get the trailer cleaned up and pick up a load of groceries to stock the fridge with when he was in Billings tomorrow.

  Billings. Lacy’s sentencing. He hadn’t said a thing about it to Rowdy, hadn’t much wanted to think about it himself. Wendell figured the boy wouldn’t mind spending the day with Carol again, as much as he loved those gummy worms she always had. But he still didn’t want to go, though he knew he ought to.

  Rowdy ran ahead of him, out from under his touch, and for a moment Wendell didn’t know what to do with his left hand, which felt strange as a wing in the dry, piney air. He stuffed his empty hand into his jeans pocket, hefted the rifles farther up his right shoulder, and followed the boy on home.

  Verl

  Day Seven of the New Dispensation

  If you saw five minutes ago a lean sonofabitch with a patchy beard scrabbling down a rocky ridge right in the smack dab middle of the Bull Mountains you’d have seen me boy. It makes hard going but I am sticking to the rocks in case they have dogs out or trackers who are worth a shit bucket. Seven days. If I have figured right. Which even for the running those first hours and nights I think I have. A full week of freedom. Day Seven of the New Dispensation. Which is what I am calling it. Dispensation means a new man in charge. I learned that at school. Learn what tools they will teach you boy but learn around the tools too. There is more out here in the mountains. Where your old dad is King.

  The sky is coal dark now and no good for scrabbling around so a bit ago I sat down and began to write and thought this might be the place for sleep. This is not the place. Way off in the distance I shit you not I can see the highway. You wouldn’t think you could be so far out in the Bulls and still see it. But there it is. Yellow drops of light edging the distance. I will go deeper into the mountains this night.

  Later

  Here in the night boy I hear things.

  At my back the rocks. Before me a dark slope of sage and dry grass. And voices out there in the dark. Goddamn.

  Maybe it is I hope some trick of the mountains. God I hope it is and they are miles off. The way coyotes sit themselves down to yip such that their calls sound through the canyons.

  The moon this night enough to cast a shadow but I see nothing.

  I hear them. I hold my rifle close.

  Later

  If this is to be it boy know I love you. Which I ought to have said to you when I was with you. You tell your mother too. She might yet be mad at me for what I’ve gone and done but you tell her. I am sorry about all this but there is a right way to live and a wrong way and never shall they meet. Never. Know this in your boy’s heart and let it grow bright as this moonlight.

  I will lift myself up now and go away from here. Into the night. The mountains.

  Gillian

  TAVIN WASN’T IN SCHOOL THE NEXT THREE DAYS, BUT EARLY FRIDAY morning, with a day to spare before he could be failed, there he was in Mrs. Barnes’s social studies classroom. Gillian could hardly believe it. Through the open classroom door she watched as the boy stared at the open workbook on his desk, fists mashed into his cheeks, then squinted up at the board. A shadow, a darker spot of sunburn maybe, was splashed across the right side of the boy’s jaw and down his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his T-shirt.

  Dust-shot light fell from the high bank of rectangle windows above the blue lockers. Gillian’s shoes squeaked on the scrubbed linoleum as she headed for Kent’s office. She had a chance here, a real chance. The thrill and lift of it reminded her of her first years of teaching, when she was right out of college, those bright, crystalline moments when things in the classroom were going so well, when what you were doing without a doubt mattered—but Kent swung his glasses off his face and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if even the suggestion of meeting with the boy gave hi
m a headache.

  Kent Leslie was a florid, fleshy, well-dressed man whose carriage suggested he had more than a little money in the bank. Outside of Billings, the only city in the entire eastern half of the state, wage jobs were hard to come by, save minimum-wage gigs at interstate gas stations or seasonal work with the highway department or, of course, farmwork, which often paid less than minimum but sometimes came with room and board. A teacher’s salary, by contrast, was a comfortable living, and a principal’s salary, well, even with his divorce, that was enough to make Kent Leslie—like Glen Hougen and a couple of other landowners with sufficient oil or coal under their acres to bankroll their ranching habits—royalty in the greater Bull Mountain area.

  Kent clicked his tongue and scooted back in his chair, fumbling for something in his desk drawer. Gillian waited, studied the pictures on his desk. One of Kent standing in a mountain stream, holding a gaping trout and grinning maniacally. Another of Kent at the state Principal of the Year celebration, where he had been a finalist, though he hadn’t won. A couple of family photos as well, which Gillian thought spoke well of the man: Kent, ex-wife, and three daughters at Mount Rushmore, at Disneyland, in front of the massive brick fireplace in their home on the bluff above the Yellowstone, the home that now belonged to Kent’s ex-wife. Hung on the wall behind his desk were three enormous oak-framed pictures, each featuring one of his blond, big-haired daughters’ senior photos. Poor things—they were all just about as homely as their mother.

  Kent finally extracted a flat red tin and popped the lid, his fingers, despite his size, trim and sure. He held a little white mint delicately and, when Gillian declined his offer, tossed the mint into his mouth and slid the drawer shut with a bang.

  —All right, he said, here’s the deal. I appreciate you looking out for the school. A body is a body is a body, and God knows we need every body we can get, but you said something about the stepdad not being especially hot on education—right?

  Kent paused and worked the mint around his mouth, his hands in the air before him.

  —We can lose one and be fine, he continued, but what if we push too hard and this stepdad pulls his kid out and makes a stink and gets his redneck neighbors on his side, and a bunch of other families send their kids over to Delphia too—or, worse, start homeschooling? There’s more than a few right here in town who think the same way. This whole Tea Party thing is downright scary. We elect a new president, and not two months later they’re marching on Washington? Not even giving the man a chance. I mean, they want to get rid of the whole Department of Education! They’re nuts! Completely nuts! But that’s what we’re dealing with here. Let’s back off on this one.

  Kent leaned back in his chair and threw one thick leg over the other, looking rather pleased with his reasoning. After his divorce last year, he’d asked Gillian out to dinner a couple of times. She had gone but kept her distance, kept things professional, friendly. Yet she wasn’t above making him remember why he’d asked in the first place. She ran her hand through her hair, lifting the black wave of it behind her ear.

  —I’m not thinking a body is a body is a body, she said. I’m thinking about Tavin. It’s in the boy’s best interest to stay in school. You’d think so too if you’d seen the stepdad’s place. It’s a mess. Who knows what he does to make ends meet. Maybe he gets a little CRP. Probably sells some of the deer and elk he poaches. Tavin needs to know that’s not all the world has to offer.

  Kent sagged forward, the great balloon of him losing air. She smoothed the front of her blouse. She had him now.

  —Damn it, Gillian Houlton, why do you have to be right all the time?

  —Just the way I’m made, I guess.

  —You are well made. That is a fact.

  She rolled her eyes at him but let the awkwardness of the remark pass without comment. She’d had a nice time when they went out. She liked Kent. She did.

  —Okay, he said now, let’s do it like this. Have the kid in, ask him how school’s going, but don’t push him on anything. Just see what he says. Sound good?

  —Sure, I’ll follow your lead.

  —Well, I don’t believe that for a second. But it’s nice to hear.

  Gillian had known he was big—had even joked with a fellow teacher that it must be all the growth hormones and antibiotics in the beef these kids eat—but still, standing to the side of Kent’s desk, her back pressed into a shelf of old yearbooks, she was unprepared for the ovoid, hulking, vaguely armpit-smelling slab of boy-child filling the doorway. Tavin wore black sneakers, blue jeans, and a T-shirt with a picture of a prairie dog in a rifle’s crosshairs on the front; on the back, that same prairie dog, still framed in the same crosshairs, but now blown into red, meaty pieces. The boy stood there, scratched his head, and sniffed.

  Kent motioned to the chair by the door, and Tavin sat, slumping way down. Kent sat too and smiled and gee-whizzed awhile with the boy, who grunted in response, still scratching his stubbled, sunburned head. A scrape, Gillian decided. That was what hung on the boy’s face and neck, the skin bruised to yellow at the edges, riven here and there with lines of scarring white and pink and, right along the jaw, in the center of the scrape, a dark splash of scab. Tavin shrugged in response to Kent’s questions, and the colors along his jaw and neck twisted and rippled.

  Tavin allowed that he wasn’t doing so well in English, but he liked science, he said. They were looking at animals and plants and their systems. Ecosystems, he clarified.

  Kent nodded along enthusiastically.

  —Well, that’s great! We’re certainly lucky to live in a place like eastern Montana, aren’t we? Ecosystems right out our front doors! The Yellowstone, and the Bulls, and the deer and elk and coyotes and whatnot.

  Tavin scowled, scratched hard at his head, the burned skin flaking.

  —We’ve just looked at the desert. And the ocean. I never thought about it, like, right here in the Bulls.

  Before Kent could comment, Gillian cut him off.

  —Tavin, I’m glad you’re enjoying science. That’s exciting. I used to teach it. We should definitely keep that interest in mind. You’re a bright kid. As and Bs up until this year.

  Kent leaned forward, ready to resume control of the conversation, but Gillian kept on. Science might lead him to new, exciting things, she said. Maybe he could study metallurgy and be a welder. Or electronics and be a computer technician. Or work with diesel engines. Ideas and jobs he hadn’t even considered.

  —The key, she said, is you’ll need to keep applying yourself in school. And that means you’ll need to be in school. Do you know how many days you’ve missed already this year?

  Tavin sank farther into his seat, his gaze going flat and level.

  —Nine. That’s almost two weeks of classes. Your teachers tell me you’re already pretty far behind.

  She waited for either Kent or Tavin to say something, but Kent, apparently conceding that he’d lost this one, leaned back and pursed his lips. Tavin picked at the dirt and dead skin beneath his fingernails.

  Gillian meant to wrap it up, to say something at once supportive and challenging, let the boy think on it, but as she started speaking, she saw again that hunting jacket, and in her mind’s eye the dark stain at the bottom ran and dripped, thin ribbons of blood unwinding, pooling, rising around the three of them and spilling out the door—until she wasn’t talking to Tavin anymore. She was talking to Brian, the boy’s stepfather, and to all the other entitled, ignorant, violent men out there in the mountains, the ones who thought the whole of eastern Montana was somehow theirs to do with as they pleased, who conveniently forgot that their great-grandfathers were the ones given free land in the first place, that their grandfathers were the ones who had caused the dust bowl, that their grandfathers and fathers had poisoned the rivers and nearly decimated the elk, antelope, and grouse populations, and that the federal government had stepped in every step of the way—from rural electrification to cheap government grazing leases to generous rental agreements—
to pay for this ridiculous way of life they were always going on about. She was tired of it. Save Billings, the whole of eastern Montana was a sinkhole for taxpayer dollars, a sick swirl of environmental degradation, lack of education, liquor, methamphetamine, and broken families. And people like her, the real working people, schoolteachers and social workers and BLM agents, were the ones who had to try to clean this mess up.

  She leaned in close, her words sharp.

  —The state limit is ten absences, she said. For the entire year. You miss even one more day, your teachers could fail you. No questions asked.

  Tavin flushed, his face twisting, hardening. She’d gone too far. She tried to backpedal.

  —I don’t think they’d want to do that, but I’m saying—

  —I don’t give a fuck what you’re saying, lady. Or what the state has to say. Or—

  Kent leaned forward, pointed his thick finger right at the boy.

  —You need to put the brakes on that right there, son. There’s no room for that kind of language in here.

  Tavin looked from Kent to Gillian, Gillian to Kent. Then he stood, reached out, and, in one motion, as he turned to push his way out the door, swept the framed photos off Kent’s desk, sending the glass shattering to the floor.

  When did she begin to distrust the shadows, the mouths of stars? When did she begin to fear the suck of mud, a cracked branch, the unsteady breath of the night wind?