Descent

by Tim Johnston

  “You’d better come look,” she said.

  He got to his feet and went to her and they both looked out.

  Six of them over there on Emmet’s porch. Three boys, two girls, and Emmet. All but Emmet holding beers. Two of the boys and one of the girls sat on the steps while above them in the rockers like lord and lady sat Billy and the Gatskill girl, the rockers close so she could keep her fingers in Billy’s hair. The El Camino was parked before them in the dirt, the beat pumping from the open windows like blood.

  “There’s your hootenanny,” Maria said.

  Emmet stood in the light from the screen door, one hand yet on the latch, his white hair wild on his head. He had taken the time to pull coveralls over his pajamas and to put on his old brogans though not to lace them. With his free hand he gestured toward the El Camino and spoke to Billy, and Billy said something in reply over his shoulder, and the others ducked their heads in laughter.

  Grant raised his watch to his face. “Almost midnight,” he said. “Your daughter will be home soon.”

  Maria stared at him in the dark. “This is a good time for me to go, you’re thinking?”

  “No, probably not. But—”

  Something was happening over there; Emmet was crossing the porch. He took two steps down between young hips before Billy stood from the rocker and seized him by the upper arm. Emmet looked in amazement at the hand on his arm and then into his son’s face. His glasses flashed blue in the farm light.

  Maria took Grant’s wrist and said his name.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Hold on.”

  “He’s going to hurt him.”

  “Hold on.”

  Billy said something to Emmet and Emmet said something back and then Billy was hauling him back up the steps by the arm. Emmet dug at his son’s fingers and planted his feet but with a modest tug Billy yanked him off balance and got him clomping pitifully toward the screen door. Billy opened the door and guided the old man through and shut it again. They stood staring at each other through the screen. Then Emmet turned away and his shadow on the porch floor grew small, and then it was gone. Billy took his seat again to cheers and raised bottles.

  “I’ll be right back,” Grant said.

  “Grant, we should call someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Sheriff Joe.”

  “He’s way up there in the mountains.”

  “Then Sheriff Dave down here.”

  Grant opened a drawer and began rooting through batteries and old tin flashlights.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing.” He stood and slipped the cartridges into his pocket.

  “Grant, you know what he did to that Haley boy.”

  “I heard about it.” He went out the door and down the steps, and the old dog came out from under the porch and limped along behind him.

  “Evening, neighbor,” Billy said, hailing him from the rocker. “Everyone, this here is Grant, the old man’s hired gun, as it were. Grant, this here is everyone.”

  The young people raised their beers and bid him good evening.

  “And you brought my dog too, I see. Where’s he been hiding you girl, huh? Get on up here. Get up here girl. Come on now.” Billy leaned forward in the rocker and the black leather jacket, hangered on the high chairback behind him, stirred like wings.

  The dog lowered to her belly and flattened her ears.

  “God damn it,” said Billy, slapping his thigh.

  “Let her be, Billy.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Grant.”

  “She’s just a scared old dog.”

  “She’s my scared old dog. Now get up here girl goddammit before I come down there and get you.”

  Grant turned to look at the dog. She looked up and he made a shooing motion and she rose to all fours and slipped away into the dark.

  “There goes your dog, Billy,” said one of the boys on the step. A lank and pimpled boy with a cigarette in his grin.

  Billy stared at him until the boy’s grin collapsed and he looked away.

  “I think maybe you better call it a night, Billy,” Grant said. “I don’t think your dad can sleep with all this. And fact is neither can I.”

  “Really,” said Billy. “I didn’t think you had sleeping in mind, Grant.”

  “That’s that waitress’s car,” said the pimpled boy. “The one what’s got that nigger daughter.”

  Grant stepped up closer to the boy. He was truly a boy, younger than Billy by perhaps ten years. They were all younger, including the Gatskill girl. “You need to watch your mouth, son.”

  “Is that right, Dad?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Shit, Vernon, that is right,” said Billy. “You talk like your dad fucked his sister and out you popped whistling Dixie.” There was laughter, and Vernon bared his bad teeth and said, “Hilarious, Billy.”

  “I’m going inside for a minute,” Grant said. “I’d appreciate it if you all went on home like I asked.”

  “I am home, Grant,” Billy said. “And there’s your irony: this wouldn’t even be happening if my old house over there weren’t otherwise occupied.”

  Grant glanced back at the ranch house. The kitchen window a dark and featureless square in its face.

  “There’s nothing to do about that tonight,” he said.

  “No,” said Billy. “I agree with you there.”

  Grant went up the steps and on inside and climbed the stairs. Emmet was in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed. He appeared to be giving great thought to his boots, down there on his feet. Grant sat beside him, raising a faint cry from the coils.

  “I’m sorry if they woke you, Grant.”

  “Oh, I was up.”

  “They got no respect. Not one speck of it.”

  “Em. Maybe we should make a phone call.”

  Emmet looked up, his eyes behind the lenses bleary in their folds. “Who the hell to?”

  “Maybe Joe needs to know about this.”

  “I ain’t doing that, Grant. I ain’t calling one brother on the other. I told you that before.” He shook his head. “These kids will get tired in a bit and go home.”

  “It doesn’t look that way to me, Em. Looks to me like they’re gonna make a show of it, especially now that I’ve come over.”

  Emmet ran a hand over his face. “Who is that boy? I don’t even know who that boy is.”

  They sat there, the beat from the El Camino like a heartbeat in the bed. Old sunken bed of marriage where the old man went on sleeping year after year on the side nearest the door.

  “Where do you keep that shotgun, Em?”

  “That what?”

  “Just for show.”

  Emmet looked at him. Then he flung a hand toward the closet.

  Grant found the softcase and set it on the bed and unzipped it, releasing a smell of walnut and steel and gun oil. It was an old Remington 20-gauge side by side.

  “You know how to handle that?”

  “I used to have one not too different. It was my dad’s. Angela wouldn’t have it in the house once the kids got older.” He unbreeched the barrels and sighted the bores and snapped the barrels back. “You took good care of this,” he said, but the old man didn’t seem to hear him.

  GRANT WENT DOWN THE porch steps and reached into the El Camino and turned the key, killing the engine and the music. The chromium tailpipe shuddered out a final blue cloud and was still.

  “Fuck me,” the pimpled boy said, “the hired gun’s got a gun.”

  “What are you up to, Grant?” said Billy.

  “I asked you to call it a night and now I’m not asking.”

  “Did that old man put you up to this?”

  “No, he was against it.”

  “Well, what do you intend to do, shoot us?”

  “No. I’m going to shoot the tire on one of these cars. After that, if you’re still here, I’m going to shoot another one. If I have to buy new tires tomorrow I will, but tonight the party’
s over.”

  “How we gonna leave if you shoot our tires?”

  “Shut up, Vernon. Grant, I don’t believe you’ve got any ammo in that old gal.”

  “You’re right about that.” He thumbed the lever and broke the shotgun, chambered two red shells and snapped the gun shut again.

  “All right,” said Billy. “There’s phase one. But I guess we’re going to have to see phase two before these negotiations go any further.”

  “Jesus, Billy,” said the girl on the steps. “Let’s just go somewheres else before this old man does something crazy.”

  “Sit down and shut up, Christine.”

  “These aren’t negotiations, Billy,” Grant said. “This is what’s going to happen next if you go on sitting there.” His voice was even, his chest calm. He thought about that as Billy lifted his cigarette to his lips and crossed a black boot over his knee. Billy tugged the hair under his lower lip, that shapeless brown tuft. Then he nodded, and Grant stepped around the El Camino and raised the gun on the front tire of a battered GMC pickup and with the stub of his forefinger squeezed the forward trigger. The gun kicked and a flap of rubber flew from the tire in a gaseous cloud and the truck buckled like a stricken horse and swallows burst from the spruce and wheeled amid the stars while the boom echoed away in the hills. The night air bittered at once with the smell of cordite and the rubber tang of old tire air.

  “You shot my tire,” said Vernon, rising. “You fucking whackjob.”

  Grant took a step and raised the gun on the toylike tire of a small red Honda.

  “Billy!” cried the girl on the steps, and Billy laughed and said, “All right, all right.” He put his cigarette in his lips and gave a few claps. He stood from the rocker and offered a hand to the Gatskill girl. “Time to go, those who can.”

  “What about my goddam truck, God damn it?”

  “You heard the man, Vernon. Said he’d get you a new tire tomorrow, and you’ve already seen he’s a man of his word so quit your crying and get in

  the car.”

  As the young people loaded into the El Camino and the Honda, Grant looked at the stars. The patternless bright birdshot of ancient, monstrous bodies. Forces unthinkable. Passing him, Billy stopped and looked beyond him, peering into the dark foothills. He squinted as if he saw something out there and spoke: “What the hell—?”

  Grant didn’t turn to look, and Billy dropped his cigarette and ground it into the dirt with the toe of his boot.

  “Thought I saw somebody,” Billy said. He looked up into Grant’s eyes. “But there ain’t nobody out there. Is there, Grant?” He winked, and tossing the leather jacket ahead of him onto the Gatskill girl’s lap he swung down into the El Camino.

  Taillights withdrew into the night. Grant stood with the Remington on his shoulder, the weight of the barrels, the shapely walnut grip, the warm triggers, the slam of the stock yet playing in his bones—all a strange pleasure to him.

  Emmet stood at the screen door, one hand on the handle as if he were making up his mind whether to step out into the dark or latch the door against it. Grant held the old man’s eyes a moment, then he turned and began to walk back to the ranch house. A black shape separated from the shadow of the spruce and slid along the ground toward him and became the old dog at his heels, half crippled in her hips, panting softly, halting suddenly when Grant halted: there was movement at the ranch house, someone passing through the dark square of the kitchen window. A woman. She came back and remained there in the frame of the window, doing something with her hands, preparing something, as if she belonged there.

  Grant stood beside the spruce with the gun in his hands, the dog quietly panting. He looked to the north and made out the shape of the mountains by their erasure of the stars along the base of the sky. In his dreams she was running—always running. Her heart strong and her feet sure, never stumbling, never tiring, mile upon mile, coming down like water. He looked to the north and he began to speak, as he did every night. He began to speak and the old dog stopped panting and grew alert, cocking her ears to the dark.

  24

  She was running well, her stride long and light, her feet rolling loose through their landings, her lungs working hard but not too hard and her heart like a liquid clock in her chest. And while part of her mind roamed through her body this way—observing, evaluating, adjusting—the greater and forward part processed the messages of the run as she received them through her narrowed senses: the sound of soles on packed cinder and the sound of many lungs; the smell of dew in the April grass and the good petroleum stink of the sun-heated track; the blurred cheering faces of a Saturday morning beyond the blade of vision that was the length of lane before her, the next few meters of track, her own shadow there, black and soundless and one step ahead, always one step ahead, goading her on until it was just the two of them, far ahead of the others who had nothing left to run for now but just to finish—second, third, what did it matter?

  And she was gaining; she was hard on this shadow’s heels as they banked into the final turn, ready to open her stride and take the race away, just take it, without mercy or apology, like taking a boyfriend—Whoosh, mine now, not yours! She ran without fear or effort, a strong, leggy girl of eighteen, an undefeated girl, with nothing before her but more races and more life and the never-ending love of her family, and hers for them, a family who waited beyond the finish line to collect her once again, to claim her in pride and love and take her off for breakfast. She ran and it was like a dream of running under the spring sun, and the day was so beautiful and her heart was so full that she hardly noticed the shadow when it returned, darkening the cinder ahead as if she’d rounded another bend, though she hadn’t. Her heart pounding, legs pounding, giving everything, everything, and it wasn’t enough, the shadow held its lead, it stretched, and she watched in dismay as it—parted. Severed itself foot by foot from her own feet and fled down the track untethered, uncatchable, gone.

  And from that, to a scene that should be the dream but isn’t—this dark, rough space of raw plank walls and low plank ceiling, dark floor of thick timber where small life comes and goes through the gaps. A room of such squareness and sameness it might roll like a toy block and do just as well, wall as ceiling, ceiling as floor, and she blinks heavily, the light and colors of the race leaving her, sunlight leaving her, wind and speed leaving her, the heat and smell and heartbeats of the other girls—all gone, and the only arms that wait to claim her are the arms that took her, without apology or mercy, just took her, from the mountain.

  Part II

  25

  A few miles outside of a small town on the eastern half of Nebraska, some two hundred miles yet from the river border, the boy switched on his hazards and pulled over on the pitched shoulder, stepped out, and went around to the passenger’s side and found the rear tire nearly flat. He had gassed up in the small town and now he looked back that way.

  “Forgot to check your tires, Dudley.”

  He pulled his jacket from the cab and put it on and got a cigarette lit and stood looking out over the land. In the wires of the near fencing, tumbleweeds trembled like living things, and beyond the fence the land combed away in a vast litter of bleached and severed cornstalks. Late February, he thought. Maybe March. To the west a darker scrim of gray sky swept the ground, rain or snow, coming along, its smell already there, and looking out over the whole shelterless world he wondered what you would do or where you would go if you were out there on foot with nothing but the clothes you wore, alone in that emptiness when the storm came. It was what he always wondered, plains or mountains or desert.

  He was now eighteen. She would be twenty-one.

  He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it and considered the truck, its stance on the pitched shoulder, and seeing no way to improve it he set the parking brake and freed the jack and the tire iron from their clamps behind the seat and got to work. He set the tire iron on a lug and bore down on it, and bore down on it harder, but to no effect. Some weeks
back at a small station near the Mexican border he’d had the tires rotated by a man who had reset the lugs with his pneumatic driver and charged him ten dollars.

  He reseated the iron and taking hold of the Chevy’s bed rail he stepped onto the thin bar and eased down his weight, until the iron twisted off and rang on the shoulder. He crouched and found three edges of the lug smoothed over with small thin forelocks of steel.

  Nice, Dudley. What’s your next trick?

  As my father liked to say, his father would say, enacting some sly mechanical solution, even a monkey knows the value of a stick.

  The first drops of rain began drumming the bed of the truck. A single drop burst coldly on the back of his neck, and then the rest of it came hissing over the road behind him and he braced as if for a blow and it was on him, drilling his head and shaping out the truck in a violent riddling and blackening the road as it went.

  He leaned into the cab and unlatched the buckle on the kitbag and as he did so he looked through the fogged rear window and saw a figure coming toward him in the rain, alone and as gray as the rain itself. He swiped the glass with his hand and watched the figure come on, his progress casual, thumbs hooked under the straps of his backpack, stains of rain-soak along the shoulders of his jacket.

  “What in the hell,” the boy said.

  He came away from the cab with the big twenty-ounce Estwing, and he got down on his knees again and seated the iron on a lug and held it there with his left hand and cocked the hammer back and brought it down squarely on the bar but with no result other than a wild, electric jolt in the bones of his left hand. He raised the hammer and brought it down again, and another time, and once more before he looked up into the pelting rain and into the face of the young man who had come up behind him on the shoulder and stopped there, rain dripping from the bill of his cap, regarding the boy through round unreflecting lenses. To the boy in that instant the young man seemed older than he by several good years; but to the young man the same was true of the boy before him on the shoulder with the big one-piece hammer.

  Without unhooking his thumb from the backpack strap the young man opened his hand and said Hola, and the boy nodded and said Hola back.