by Greg Barth
“She’s doing okay. Asks about you now and again. If I’ve heard anything.”
“What do you tell her?”
“Oh, you know. I tell her I ain’t heard nothing from you in a while. Tell her you’re probably an accountant or something out there in the city, down Tennessee somewhere.”
“Oh, Jesus,” I said.
“Well, what am I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that I’m not some kind of fucking accountant. Do you even know what an accountant is?”
“Sure I do,” he said. “They keep them office jobs in the cities.”
“Which is exactly what I do not do,” I said.
“Well what am I supposed to say? That you’re one of those girls that can’t keep it in your pants?”
“Really, Dad? Just listen to yourself.”
“Tell me you don’t sell yourself.”
I sat at the table, drinking coffee, smoking a Winston and I thought about my life. I rubbed at the swastika tattoo on my forearm. Trash is what it screamed at me. I wanted to rip it off of my arm, skin and all.
I sipped at my coffee and nibbled at a strip of bacon, and I thought about growing up in this trailer. I remembered how my mother drank herself to death when I was nine. I could picture her face, she was pretty, but I couldn’t remember what her voice sounded like. I remembered smoking my first joint with my dad and a friend of his when I was eleven. I was wearing cowboy boots, denim shorts, and a black Hank Williams Jr. t-shirt (The Pressure Is On) at the time. We had sat on the couch together, passing the joint.
I thought about many of the other things that had happened to me in that place that my mind had just stopped turning to a very long time ago. As the memories flashed through my head, I started to cry. I’m not proud of it, but nothing I could do would stop the tears from coming. I cried silently, and, in spite of all the physical pain I already felt, I thought about cutting myself. I wanted to do that more than ever before.
EIGHT
The days passed. We talked little; instead we spent the time in comfortable silence, drinking, smoking, snorting pills, and watching TV. We did talk some but not about anything significant. I re-read some of the old romance novels in my bedroom, mostly Harlequin Blaze titles, and some of the magazines he had lying about. Swank became a quick favorite. Lesbian Licks had some decent articles too.
I began to eat more, not a lot more but at least a few bites each day. I relied on the walker less and less with each passing day. My legs grew stronger.
I missed doctor’s appointments, but I didn’t give a shit. Everything was already stitched or screwed back in place and held together with scar tissue. My vision would never be perfect, but it was near enough.
When my refills ran out, I might regret it, but for now I wanted to stay away from the city.
Dad took the car to the junkyard to get the driver’s side window replaced. He vacuumed out the glass and sprayed the carpet to prevent mold from growing inside from where it had been exposed to the elements.
I reconnected with Jennifer. She worked days at the diner, Chilton’s, which was just a window on the corner of a convenience store and DVD rental joint. People ordered their food at the window and waited in the parking lot in their cars or at the nearby picnic tables while Jennifer grilled or deep-fried and then bagged up the food.
We went riding together in her car in the evenings. Some nights we’d take in a movie at the theater, others we would just park down by the river bank and get baked on some good hydro that her boyfriend dealt. She liked to lace it up with whatever we had and roll amp joints. It was pretty good.
Some nights we would go up on the top of the mountain to the bluegrass jamboree. It was a steel building with a fiberglass roof. Live music was played and draft beer was sold in plastic cups. As the beer took effect, the music got better. Toes were stepped on, and babies were made in the parking lot (Jennifer told me stories—lots of our former schoolmates had wound up preggers right there.) Bluegrass was how the old men drew crowds with their fiddling and banjo playing while their grandsons sold the other kind of grass and pills from the parking lot out back.
The beer was okay, and the bluegrass was incredible.
My first night there a nice teenage kid asked me to dance with him. I hobbled out onto the edge of the floor and stood holding the sides of my walker and shook my head drunkenly while the band played “The Last Old Shovel” by the Louvin Brothers. The boy was tall and lanky, wearing jeans, boots, and a flannel shirt. He kicked up his heels nicely while I tried my best not to look stupid.
Jennifer and I managed to get plenty stoned there, but we also managed to evade the pesky baby-making goings on in the parking lot.
Jennifer hadn’t married yet and she had no kids. J.P., her boyfriend, was older than her and had spent a couple of years in Iraq. He was in some kind of Special Forces unit and had seen lots of action. He then contracted out as private security and stayed in Iraq a few more months. He had to get out of there after a colleague of his was killed. He came back with a pile of cash and solid connections. He bought his way into the drug trade in that part of Kentucky.
To hear him tell it, drugs were the fucking bee’s knees in Eastern Kentucky at the time.
J.P. had grown his blonde hair out long and wore a full beard. His arms were tattooed, and he had hard, thick muscles.
J.P. liked to fish. He fished for smallmouth bass and panfish during the day and catfish at night.
I was fascinated with watching him fish.
One afternoon, while Jennifer and I sat on a blanket under a tree on the bank, he stood in the midst of the river, water up to his knees. He cast an old Rooster Tail spinner with a copper blade into the calm water under the shade of a willow tree against the opposite bank. It made a faint plop as it hit the water. Rings rippled out over the surface of the water. He let it sink for a cool second then gave his spinning reel a single crank to get the spinner blade turning, a flash of copper in the underwater sunlight. Skill was required to land large fish with the lightweight tackle that J.P. used.
He pulled the spinner through the water slowly and suddenly the dark, greenish surface of the river roiled in an explosive blast of bright white as a smallmouth bass took the spinner. His rod tip bent nearly double with the weight of the fish and its fight for life. The reel screamed with the drag tension being released as the large fish pulled away.
J.P. played the fish with the rod while allowing it to peel line off the reel, tiring the fish with his light tackle. He didn’t get in a hurry. Once the fish had worn down, he cranked it in with his reel, keeping the tip of the rod high in the air. When the fish was close enough, he reached his hand in the water and pulled it out by its lower lip. The smallmouth bass was a good eighteen inches in length.
It was the closest thing I’d ever seen to a Hemingway novel in real life. J.P. was that kind of guy.
He ran a stringer through the fish’s gills and tied it to the river bank. It was now prey for the fillet knife and skillet later that evening.
I sat and watched as he brought in several fish this way while I nursed my bottle of bourbon. It was impressive. Never mind that I did not want to eat the fish.
He built a small fire in a stone-circled fire pit and let it burn down to coals. He arranged the skillet so that it was next to the hot coals. He filleted the fish and fried them up right there in a cast-iron skillet on the river bank. The fish sizzled in hot grease until they were flakey white with the touch of a fork.
Jennifer was lucky to have a man like this interested in her.
I never caught a fish in my life. I didn’t have a license, and I didn’t want one. I had a fucked up view on such things at the time, and I felt that somehow the state would deem me unworthy of even a fishing license.
The Game Warden came by that evening and asked if we were catching anything. Jennifer and I were nowhere near the fishing rods. J.P. took out his fishing license and handed it to the warden. The Game Warden inspected the l
icense and handed it back over. J.P. told him about the action with the smallmouth bass. While J.P. talked with the Game Warden, I felt fear in the pit of my stomach. Being around any kind of authority always made me feel as though I’d been caught doing something wrong.
That night, J.P. set lines of heavy tackle baited with raw chicken liver on treble hooks. The river was deep and wide at our spot. He built up the campfire with old, creosote-soaked railroad ties. A Coleman lantern added extra light.
Some nights he would catch monstrous catfish weighing in at up to thirty pounds, but this night was quiet with little action. Jenn and I passed the bottle back and forth under the moonlight and talked about our good times.
“So what got you all scarred up, Little Bit,” J.P. asked as he rolled up a joint.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” I said. “Some guys.”
“They fucked you up proper?”
“They said I had it coming.” A shooting star streaked the night sky.
“Guys that like to rough up girls are always saying shit like that.” He licked the rolling paper to seal it.
“They had strong feelings about it.”
“Well, in my book, you’re a good girl, Selena.”
“They didn’t seem to notice,” I said.
“You want me to come help you kick some ass? Probably feel good to even the score.” He lit the joint and took a long draw from it. He held the smoke in his lungs. He closed his eyes. He turned his face to the cool night breeze.
“I honestly don’t even know who they are,” I said. He passed me the joint.
After a long moment, he released the smoke. “We could find them. I guarantee it.”
“What would we do when we found them?” I passed the joint to Jennifer, and she took a long hit.
“Shove a gun in their faces and blow their shitty lives away, that’s what.”
“Keep dreaming,” I said.
The joint came back to him. J.P. took a deep hit and held the smoke.
“He could do it,” Jennifer said.
“This ain’t Iraq,” I said.
J.P. let out his breath. “We could do it, Little Bit. It ain’t all that different here when it comes to things like that. Just look at what they did to you. They got away with it, didn’t they?”
I thought about it. They had in fact gotten away with it. It was like nobody gave a shit.
“You ever want to, you just let me know,” J.P. said.
“We’d get caught.” There was my fear of authority again.
“If we planned it right, odds are we could get away with it.”
I laughed at him. “You’re stoned.”
“You’re right,” he said and grinned at me.
NINE
My dad had an outbuilding filled with my grandfather’s things that he had left behind when he passed.
Dad took me out there one afternoon and I stood at the door drinking a can of beer while he fished around through the mess.
“Here it is,” he said beaming. He held up my grandpa’s old cane and handed it to me.
I hefted it in my hand. “Nice.”
He stepped out of the shed, put the lock back on the door, and snapped it shut.
“You’re not steady enough yet to go without anything, but I think you can ditch that walker you got.”
“Fuck yeah,” I said.
“We’ll have to cut it down some. Your grandpa was a bit taller than you are.”
A thought occurred to me. “You still have his old guns?”
“In the house. I don’t keep them out here or they’d get stolen.”
“Figured you would’ve sold them by now.”
“Thought about it many times,” he said. “Day comes I need something real bad, I probably will.”
“What kind are they?”
“Shotguns mostly. Dad was a bird hunter.”
“Think they still work?”
“The guns? Yeah, they should. Nothing wrong with them.”
“Teach me to shoot,” I said.
***
Dad reached a couple of long guns out of his closet. “These were his everyday use guns,” he said. He handed me one.
God it was long and heavy.
“They look the same,” I said.
“That’s because they are. Both are Savage-Stevens model 311a 12 gauge double-barrels. He got them both from the Western Auto catalog back in the ‘50s.”
“Damn, these are old.”
“They’ll work fine. These was all cast and made in the USA. We’ve gotta clean them up some first.”
“Why did he have two of the same kind?”
“He got one for his brother—they was twins, you know—the same time he bought his. Aunt Ruthie gave it back to him after your great uncle Don died from the rock fall in the mines.”
“It’s got two triggers,” I said.
“Well, it’s got two barrels too. One trigger for each. You could even shoot both at once if you wanted to. But trust me, you don’t want to.”
He showed me how to open the breech of the shotguns by pressing the lever in the back with my thumb and pushing open the hinge that exposed the twin chambers. He explained how to load the shells and how the shell ejector worked to remove the spent shells.
He lined up some shells on an end table and cut a couple of them open, spilling the beads of shot from the plastic shell casings. I learned the difference between bird shot, small game shot, buck shot, pumpkin balls, slugs, and three-inch magnums.
We cleaned the insides of the barrels and applied a thin coat of oil on the outer metal parts.
“Now, hold it up like you’re going to shoot something.”
I put the stock under my armpit and raised the barrel.
“Not like that,” he said. “You put the stock against your shoulder like this.” He repositioned the stock.
I tried holding the barrels steady, but it was too heavy and unwieldy.
“Hate to say it,” he said. “But if you’re ever going to fire these things, I’ll need to cut them down to coach-gun length.”
“What do you mean?”
“A coach gun is a double barrel that’s got barrels only about 18 inches long. More for up close work than for bird hunting. Good for self-defense.”
“These are way too long.”
“Saw about foot or more off the barrel length, cut down the butt stock by about an inch and a half. Should be about right for somebody your size. Nothing we can do about the distance between the curved grip and the triggers, but your fingers are long enough.”
We took the shotguns outside to a work shed he had in back. He took the barrels off of both shotguns. He took the first one and placed it in his vice, breech end up. He was careful to put rubber strips between the barrels and the metal jaws of the vice. He took a small, yellow bubble level and aligned the gun barrel in such a way that it was perfectly vertical. He then cut through both barrels and the rib in between with a hacksaw that he held even with the top of the vice. Once the barrels were shortened, he smoothed off the metal burrs on the end of the barrels with a fine-tooth file.
He twisted off the bead in the center of the rib between the barrels. The bead was used for sighting. He drilled a small hole into the rib of the shortened barrel, tapped it, then twisted it back in place.
He repeated the same process with the other gun.
He then removed the plastic butt-stock caps with a screwdriver. He used a loud table saw to cut through the back end of both hardwood stocks. He did some quick work with some sandpaper then re-attached the plastic caps on the ends of the shortened stocks.
He put everything back together and handed one over to me. “Now try it.“
I took the shotgun, put the stock against my shoulder and brought up the double barrels. “That’s more like it,” I said. “I have a lot more control now. It feels natural.”
He handed me a box of shells. “We’ll start you off with some number 6 shot.”
We went out into the yard. He
placed a gallon-sized milk jug filled with water on top of an old fence post.
I opened the breech of one of the shotguns and slipped shells into each of the two barrels. I closed the breech.
“How do I cock it?” I said.
“Easy there. It’s already cocked. Flip the safety off when you’re ready.”
The milk jug was only about thirty feet away. “Okay, what do I do?”
“Hold it up like I showed you.”
I did.
“Slip the safety off.”
I did.
He yelled at the dogs to get out of the way.
“Now, here’s the most important part. Look down the barrel and line it up with your target. Put the front bead dead center on it. Don’t flinch. Don’t close your eyes. Don’t cringe. Just hold steady, force your eyes to stay open, and gently squeeze the first trigger.”
I did.
The sound of the shotgun was deafening. The gun leaped in my hands and the butt slammed back into my shoulder with a force I didn’t expect. Every surgical screw, nut, and bolt in my body rattled. Fortunately my new plastic facial structure held up. And my new ass was fine too, thank you.
The best part, though, was what happened to the milk jug. I did exactly like my dad said. I concentrated, kept my eyes open the whole time, no flinching. The milk jug collapsed inward in the front and exploded outward to the back and sides, water flying in every direction.
The shotgun blast just ripped that fucker all to pieces.
The dogs ran off into the woods, not out of fear, but in an excited urge to hunt.
“You sure as hell busted it, girl,” Dad said.
My ears were ringing, but I could hear him fine.
“I’m not sure if I wouldn’t rather be standing in front of this thing than behind it,” I said.
“You get used to the kick,” he said. “It becomes part of it. The main thing is to direct the recoil straight to your shoulder. Keep it level.”
I raised the shotgun again and aimed at the remains of the milk jug, now on the ground. I fired and hit with my second shot just as I had with my first.
The kick didn’t seem as bad that time.
