“You all know a Wilson Graves?” he said. “I found his wallet on the sidewalk. I bet he’s wondering, Now where the heck has that thing got to?” The guy couldn’t even let himself cuss. Virgil. Virgil studied the narrow cone of road in the headlights and kept up a steady chatter. “Sure do hope they’ll take me on over at that new plant. You see signs everywhere: Hire a Vet! I sure do like this place. You all are some of the friendliest people a fellow could meet.”
Levon would not return Byard’s look. He drove far out of town along the river. The river was high, a wetter than usual summer after that early drought, a still wetter fall settling in, and Virgil Grundy was bouncing along, happy between Byard and Levon, smiling into the dark of the road.
Levon parked the truck smack in the middle of the bridge and all three got out. He put an arm over the stranger’s shoulder and said, “This here’s where all of us hung out in high school, after the football game or whatever.”
“Those were the days,” Virgil said. He almost had a twinkle in his eye, poor bastard. He was filling in memories he did not own, as if he were one of them. This bridge is where Byard’s wife said Yes, or maybe it was, Well, all right. Like, what did she have to lose?
“Hey, Virgil, you ever bungee jump?” Levon said it as though it just occurred to him, and without waiting for an answer he was rooting around the bed of the truck. He pulled out the rope bag and started shaking all the equipment onto the ground, the clamps, grabs, foot ascenders, carabiners. The brand-new tree harness Gil just bought for the big job over at the city park, twenty sick elms that have to come down next week.
“That’s no play-toy, Levon,” Byard said, but Levon paid no mind. He started dressing Virgil up.
“This bungee? It don’t feel all that stretchy,” Virgil said with a giggle that made him sound like a ten-year-old girl. “I’m not much for heights.”
The whine in the stranger’s voice for a split second made Byard not sorry for what his brother was doing, and Byard recognized that thing he once believed he could hack out of himself, like a foul and useless organ. That thing he believed he could leave behind in Cementville, if he could get far enough away. And his foolish belief that Canada would be far enough.
Levon said, “Oh, you can’t necessarily feel a difference, man, between bungee and plain old rope.” He pulled Virgil’s dirty bandanna out of his pack, started wrapping it around his head.
“Wait a minute,” Virgil said. “This part of it?”
“Shit yes, man! Makes the rush that much better. You can’t bungee without the blindfold.” Levon laughed deep and sincere like that was something everybody ought to know. He helped Virgil up onto the railing, his skinny calves twitching under the filthy jeans. Levon grabbed a length of winching chain from the back of the truck and wrapped it around both Virgil’s legs, then hooked it onto the harness.
“Levon,” Byard said, still wanting to believe this was another of those practical jokes, the not-funny ones. Somebody needed to teach his brother the difference between funny and not funny. The soft whimpering sounds coming from the stranger reminded Byard of a rabid dog he once watched his mother shoot. And in that instant, he remembered the gun. Byard slipped it from the pocket of Levon’s jacket. The gun was some fifty years old. Byard didn’t even know if it was loaded. Levon turned, just the head, looked at Byard, and gave Virgil a shove off the railing.
There was no scream, only a faint Yieee! He hit headfirst, the blade of the stranger’s body so thin he scarcely made a splash.
Byard continued to hold the gun on his brother.
“We’d better pull him up, Byard.” Levon’s eyes did not flicker, and he stood there, his hollow stare more horrible even than the silence below the bridge. He started to reach for the rope.
“Leave him be, or I swear to God I will kill you.” Byard felt himself swaying there on the bridge, even though he was certain he was no longer drunk. He wanted to look into his brother’s face and see a piece of remorse, or something resembling it anyway, behind the unflickering eyes. Levon’s mouth seemed lower in his face, somehow, than it was just a day or two ago. Lips set like concrete slabs. Surely there must have been a time when he was not poison. Poisoned.
Levon walked toward him, his hand out. Byard gave him the gun. He clapped Byard on the shoulder. “You had me going there for a minute, little brother.” He wrapped the rope around his fist and pulled until Virgil’s limp form hung over the railing. Together they lifted him and stretched him out on the bridge. He was light, might weigh a hundred twenty, hundred thirty at the most. Byard loosened the chain and ropes and pulled the spanking new tree harness off the skinny wet butt. Virgil Grundy’s face was a color not associated with human flesh. The lips hung flabby and blue.
Levon looked at Byard, aghast.
“This equipment goddamn better be dry come Monday morning,” Byard muttered, his voice breaking.
Levon grabbed him by the shoulder. “The motherfucker is dead! Now what? Mister World Traveler, what are we supposed to do with a dead fucking body?”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before,” Byard said. “Besides, who was it crowing about keeping the streets clear of trash?”
Levon leaned against the rail. A sound came from deep in him, bled out like a cougar scream, like the rebel yells they had let fly through the woods as boys. He stood gripping the railing for a while. His back still to Byard, his shoulders jerked with a mirthless chuckle.
“I got to hand it to you.” Levon turned to face Byard and shook a cigarette out of his pack. His hands trembled too much to light it so he tucked it unlit behind his ear. “You really looked like you were about to shoot me.” He bent and picked up the body and cradled it in his arms. He lifted it up like a sacrifice to a vengeful god then chucked it over the railing. He pulled Virgil Grundy’s bicycle from the truck, gave the frame three or four powerful kicks, and slammed it into the bridge abutment. Streaks of shit-green scribbled across the concrete.
Levon inhaled deeply, let out a sigh, himself again.
“People don’t know how to say it, Byard, but they’re grateful. We got to take care of our town, don’t we?” Then he drew himself up straight as though standing at attention, hand stiff at his forehead in a salute. He pursed his big lips together and hummed a few bars of Taps in the direction of Virgil’s watery grave. Arlene always said Levon inherited their Uncle Johnny’s singing voice.
Byard remembered the strange haunting song Levon sang at Augrey’s service just before the pallbearers took her out to the burial ground. It was one of those nearly forgotten mountain arias that could be taken as a hymn of mourning or a paean to love that must be released: Fly away little pretty bird / And pretty you’ll always stay / Fly far beyond the dark mountain / To where you’ll be free ever more.
Levon stared into the muddy river now as if transfixed.
The two of them sat on the side of the bridge dangling their legs the way they did when they were squirts. Levon struck a match across the scabbed iron rail and let it fall toward the water, momentarily providing a swath of dim light. He was the one to break the silence.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
Byard didn’t answer.
“Jimmy Smith’s wife,” Levon said. “You?”
Byard could feel his brother’s eyes searching him. He imagined Levon breathing in a new respect for him, a new fear. Giang Smith had been easy; the look on her face was one of gratitude. Byard understood how she felt, that particular sorrow of people who know they can never really find home again. It was Augrey who fought. But their little sister wasn’t suffering anymore. Byard had helped her go with something of her pure and precious heart intact, her beautiful white skin still unblemished by the afflictions of this godless world. And he had saved her from Levon too, hadn’t he?
“Police believe the deceased struck the abutment with his bicycle while driving intoxicated sometime early Saturday,” Levon intoned in the melodious announcer voice that used to crack Byard up when th
ey were kids. He gave the stranger’s backpack and bike over to the dark with his good left arm. The splash was distant, weak. It was raining hard now and the river was creeping out of its banks. The bicycle folded into the churning water like walnuts in chocolate cake batter. Byard would have given an arm or an eyeball, almost anything to be somewhere, anywhere else.
IT IS OUT OF HIM. He has fed the truth of himself to himself, and the truth of Levon to the sheriff. Yes, brother, he thinks, it is up to us to rid our town of all that is tearing it down.
Byard writes the last line of the story that ought to put his brother away: I am sorry I will not be here to confirm the identity of the man whose body will wash up on the riverbank. And Sheriff, I do apologize that I will not be able to testify in what I hope and pray will be a successful murder conviction against my brother.
He folds the letter into his pocket, returns Martha’s notepad and pencil to the telephone drawer. From the bedroom come the sounds of his wife waking up, opening and shutting the bureau drawers. Byard pictures her looking in the mirror, brushing her hair.
He will sit with MaLou at the breakfast table this morning, the map spread out in front of them. He will give her time to forget she is pissed at him for being out late with Levon.
And when the moment is right he will stroke her forearm with one finger and he will say, “We’re good, aren’t we, Baby?”
Then they will plot the route they will take out of here.
SEVENTEEN
It is fall, and yet Wanda still hoes. She had only planted a quarter of what she and her mother would have put out a few years ago, but it is still more than she can possibly eat, and more than a single woman can keep looking decent, too. Not that anyone would notice. It is rare for anybody but Carl and his niece and Katherine Juell to make the slow crawl up Crooked Creek Road now.
At first, after Loretta’s funeral, Wanda had a steady stream of visitors. Simple curiosity—she wasn’t fooling herself. People thought she was crazy, trying to keep a garden. What with your new circumstances, they would say, as though she had contracted some rare disease. But now she has not seen even June and Charlene Cahill for weeks.
“It has to be pretty bad when you are too strange for June and Charlene,” Wanda says to Jimbo. She has tied the mule to a post at the edge of the garden and is letting him have at the old vegetable marrows in the compost bin. October’s harvest moon is rising in the clear blue sky. First frost will be here before she can blink, and Wanda herself is perplexed as to why she bothers hoeing. She doesn’t mind admitting she’s a bit daft.
The new deep-freeze is stocked with vegetables and a side of beef she split with Katherine Juell. There is blackberry jam from Charlene, and whole-wheat flour and plenty of cornmeal in Tupperware tubs in the pantry. The hens will lay the occasional egg, and Carl will bring her anything she wants from the A&P, if she asks him. They have rekindled the old friendship, or whatever this new thing is. It’s nice, having him around again. If Wanda plays her cards right, she will not have to come down off this hill for a year. Who knows, come spring she may even get some sheep. Dig Loretta’s spinning wheel out from under all the junk in the meat house. She has no encumbrances. Wanda can do anything she wants to do.
A car’s whine rises from below, the familiar sound of Katherine Juell’s station wagon struggling up the steep gravel road. Wanda and Katherine have developed an odd friendship, falling into a casual pattern of afternoon get-togethers over a cup of coffee. Wanda takes credit for convincing Carl’s sister-in-law that he is a big, peculiar oaf and nothing more. That spending half a life institutionalized would make an oddball out of anyone. That Katherine should keep Carl around, and who knows, maybe someday Wanda will take him off her hands.
Katherine gets out, dragging a couple of grocery sacks off the front seat and slamming the car door with her foot. The two women walk toward the farmhouse together. Inside, Wanda heaves another log into the Fisher Mama Bear stove—the only extravagance since her inheritance—and shuts its cast-iron door. Katherine sets her bags on the table while Wanda spoons instant coffee into two waiting mugs. She takes a steaming kettle from the stove.
“I swear I am going to buy you a percolator myself, Wanda.” Katherine slips out of a light jacket and eases herself into a chair. She pulls a long flat box out of one sack and pushes it across the table.
“I found this. Under Maureen’s bed.”
Wanda lifts the lid of the box. “Maureen has been playing with a Ouija board? Who is she after talking to?”
“I have no idea where she got such a thing.” Katherine looks out the window toward her own house across the valley as if worried her daughter might be spying on them. “Do you know, I caught her leaving the house Saturday morning wearing fishnet hose? Said she was meeting friends downtown. She’s gotten in with this crowd at school, apparently they’re kids that belong to the new families that moved here with the paper plant. Top-brass people, managers and so forth. I used to be concerned that Maureen had no friends, and now these girls—loud, disrespectful, spoiled . . . I’ve been so consumed with worry over Billy—but I tell you, that girl is giving me a run for my money. Oh, listen to me. It’s just normal teenage stuff.” She shakes her head and taps her fingers on the table as if summoning herself back into the room. She pushes the Ouija board nearer to Wanda. “It’s silliness. Of course you can’t talk to dead people . . .”
The two women shift under the weight of mutual grief.
“Katherine, you aren’t thinking . . .?”
“Why not?” Katherine’s eyes are glistening, and Wanda, out of respect, casts her own eyes to the table. She reaches over and rubs Katherine’s arm.
Wanda unfolds and studies the board for a minute. She holds the plastic pointer and glances at Katherine. She cannot gauge from the tense line of Katherine’s mouth whether she is serious about this, whether her friend really believes they can summon dead soldiers or murdered girls. Billy is still at the veterans hospital in Louisville, and while Katherine does seem confident that he’s getting better, she also seems to want to swallow the burden of all the town’s grief into herself. Wanda feels bad that she hasn’t been able to bring herself to go with Katherine and visit him. She has told Katherine that her own condition—even named it aloud for her friend—is improving too, and soon she will ride into Louisville and walk into the VA hospital. She will sit and talk with Billy Juell and wish him good health.
She folds the Ouija board back into the box.
Katherine hugs her arms tight to herself, but the fire blazes and crackles in the cast-iron stove in the corner, maybe even a little too hot for real comfort.
“I’m thinking about taking a trip!” Wanda says brightly. The way Katherine raises an eyebrow reminds Wanda eerily of her own mother. “London, I think. For starters.”
“For starters—Wanda Slidell!”
“Can you feature me even saying such a thing?” How Wanda wants to believe this to be true. But she feels the shrill disbelief in her voice. She clears her throat, puts a hand over her chest, regains control. “Lots of libraries. I think my grandmother fancied the idea of me surrounded by all those dead poets. Maybe you could come with me. You and Maureen. Our little chronicler.” A sense of floating, a momentary dizziness, weaves in and out of her undulating threads of thought, visions of this new translation of who she is now, the woman of the world her grandmother envisioned, and somehow Wanda rights herself, the floating sensation gone. She has the sense of alighting in her chair by the window like a homing pigeon who always knows the way back.
They sip their coffee in silence for a bit.
“I expect I won’t be going anywhere for a good long while,” Katherine says. “I’m waiting. You know. For Billy to get home. And I’ve got Maureen, she’s really becoming a handful—” she comes as close to a laugh as Wanda has seen from her, making Wanda think that perhaps Katherine is glad to have a somewhat surly, perfectly normal teenager around the house. “And, well, there are too many animals to
feed to think about going anywhere. Willis is talking about buying a horse!”
Katherine seems to lose herself for a while in the flame flickering through the stove’s glass door. “They want to watch him a while longer. It really is the best place for him. At least he’s safe there.” Katherine tries to smile. “Willis and I, we’ll go on.”
“That husband of yours doing okay?”
“He isn’t the kind to grieve out loud. You just know the sadness by the way he doesn’t look at anything straight on.”
“Men,” Wanda says.
Outside the kitchen window, one of the barn cats startles a flock of grackles that had settled in Wanda’s straggling autumn garden. The birds shoot into the air as one winged body against a field of blue.
THE SUN IS GOING DOWN, setting fire to the sprawling cement plant in the center of town. Wanda walks out to Weeping Rock and sits, gathering her skirt around her legs. When she was small, she and Poose would sit on the outcropping overlooking Cementville and watch the evening clouds roll into the valley. Poose would make up stories about the gargantuan structure that stretched like a bony reptile over the valley floor, how it had once been a great dragon, but a good witch had turned it into a cement factory so the people could have jobs. Only he and Wanda knew, Poose said.
“Not even Mother?” Wanda had asked him.
“Not even your mother. You and me, we’re the only ones brave enough to stand the knowledge that a spirit walks this land,” Poose would always say. Then he would sing in his good clear tenor, a different song for every night of the summer. That showed Wanda how many, many songs he knew.
“Look at me, Poose,” Wanda says out loud. Jimbo brays softly at the sound of the name he still remembers.
AFTERWORD
On the night of June 19, 1969, a thunderstorm fell hard on a hillside fire support base in Vietnam. The base was shared by a platoon of infantrymen from the 101st Airborne Division of Fort Campbell and National Guardsmen of Battery C, 2nd Battalion, 138th Artillery from Bardstown, Kentucky. The storm’s racket provided the cover needed by the North Vietnamese Army to overrun Fire Base Tomahawk. Using rocket-propelled grenades and satchel charges, which they threw into the bunkers where American soldiers slept, the NVA managed to destroy four of the six Howitzers belonging to Battery C. When the fighting was over, the Battery had lost nine men. Nelson County, of which Bardstown is the county seat, had a population of around 30,000 in the 1960s. During the Vietnam War, the county suffered the highest per capita loss of any community in the United States.*
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