The candle cast light where she’d seen only shadows yesterday. She lifted a jar of nails from the workbench, revealing a coffee can of rusted wrenches behind it. A dirt-filled pail balanced haphazardly on a mason’s trowel, half over the edge. Rust thick as paint covered everything.
She climbed the stairs.
“Jacob, I’d like for you to open the basement door outside, get some air downstairs.”
“Pap says keep it closed. Don’t want snakes or mice in the basement.”
“Do snakes eat mice?”
“Yeah.”
“Then open the door and trust the world to work the way the Lord made it.”
Jacob looked at Deet.
“Stretch a few boards from the barn across the bottom of the doorway, and nothing will get in,” Deet said. “Right, Ma?”
She punched his arm. His eyebrows cut low—a look that on other boys preceded pulling pigtails. She scowled. “Jacob, get the boards like Deet said. And Deet, I don’t appreciate your tone.”
The telephone rang. Emeline paced to the stand by the kitchen entrance and watched. It clanged again; she lifted the handset to her ear.
“Yes?”
The operator connected.
“Emeline? This is Nancy Denny. Are you all right, dear?”
“Of course. We made a fire last night.”
“Don’t tell me about it. I rang because a young man stopped by church this morning. A sweet, clean-cut young man. It was the strangest thing; he asked right out if I knew a place to lease.”
“Uh, you don’t say?”
“You’d be prudent to set aside some money for yourself. He’s clean cut. He shaved.”
“What’s his name?”
“Bradley Chambers. He graduated from Walnut in ‘52, and went straight to the war. Korea. Now he works at London Cleaners.”
Emeline’s free hand fell to her belly. “Where does he live now?”
“He’s staying at the Dubois Young Men’s Christian Association—until he finds a place.”
“I can’t. He sounds nice, but I can’t.”
“I told him I’d show him your place if you didn’t object.”
“I object! Nancy, I haven’t even got my things out.”
“Who else are you going to find? Why, it’s like the Lord is dropping him in your lap. Pastor Denny is driving to fetch you right now. Things are difficult, with your Papa just passed—but you’re not making any sense. Run off and marry Angus Hardgrave. You’re his fourth wife! You ought to be going to movies and eating hamburgers. Wasn’t three years ago you were playing hula-hoop.”
“It’s a funny thing. Pastor’s wife not understanding when a girl wants to be obedient to the Lord.”
“The Lord told you to marry Angus Hardgrave?
“He did.”
“Pray again. You misunderstood.”
“Did you say Pastor Denny is coming here?”
“Left ten minutes ago. I thought you’d be delighted.”
“Oh, Nancy; this is too soon.”
“Did you know Bradley in school?”
“He was several grades ahead of me, and he was terrible.”
“Well, wars change men. What harm can come from meeting him?”
Emeline pressed her abdomen. “You’d have to know Brad Chambers.”
Eight
Small talk failed. Pastor Denny regarded her with a quiet sideways glance as he turned onto the driveway of Emeline’s house and parked behind a red and white Fairlane. Nancy stood on the porch, partially eclipsing the rigid figure of a man with black hair and a brow that looked run over by a harrow. Emeline inhaled, twisted and searched the driveway behind. She opened the car door.
Nancy flew down the steps and hugged her. She pressed her cheek to Emeline’s and rubbed her back. “Are you okay, dear?”
“I’m fine.”
Chambers rested his elbows on the side rail; a careful smile balanced on his lips. He looked like he had that night, black shoes, blue jeans, white shirt. She could almost smell his cologne from here, could almost feel his knees riving hers, his thudding pulse, his—
He studied her in return. His eyes bore the appreciation of a cattleman judging a blue-ribbon calf.
“Mister Chambers, we have a misunderstanding. I won’t be leasing the house.”
“Miss—Hardgrave, is it? All I need is a room, and Mrs. Denny was polite enough to show me that you have some rooms with no one in them.”
“You’ve been in my house?” She stepped closer. “Nancy and I didn’t communicate very well. I must have left her with the impression I’d be receptive to a boarder. I am not. Especially to a man—”
“You and me should talk inside—”
“Maybe you should—”
Nancy touched her shoulder. “It can’t hurt to talk to him, Emeline.”
“Oh, I’ll talk to him.” She climbed the steps. Chambers followed her inside and closed the door. “I saw you in the woods, yesterday,” she said.
“Only ‘cause I wanted you to.”
Emeline peeked through a lace-curtained window. Outside, Pastor Denny sat in his car and Nancy leaned on the fender and searched for something inside her purse. Chambers crept behind Emeline. “I thought we had a nice time together.”
She turned, clasped his head in both hands and pressed her jaw to his. She bit his lower lip and pulled back. That’s what it was like a month ago. Pain. Fear. He grunted, hit her shoulders. Opened his mouth. She shoved him away. “It wasn’t a nice time, Brad.”
He seized her arms. “You’re mine, Emeline. You said so. You don’t think I can forget all that?” Blood appeared at his bottom lip.
“I said that before—”
“Before I made you mine. I’m not letting you go.”
“You have to. Or you’ll deal with my husband. You think you’re the meanest person you ever met, but you don’t know Angus Hardgrave.”
Chambers released her.
She stepped backward.
“What if I bend you over right here with the preacher outside? Huh?” He dropped his hand to his belt, pressed toward her.
She swung her open hand and misjudged the distance. Her palm connected like a punch; Chambers touched his jaw and spat blood to the counter top. He advanced two steps, cocked his arm. Emeline stood beside the window, arm lifted as if to shatter glass.
“Oh, you’re clever little cunt, Emeline.” He pushed the curtain aside. “Clever from the get-go. Well, I’m not letting you get away.”
“I’m Mrs. Angus Hardgrave. Get out of my house.”
“This ain’t over by a damn stretch.” Chambers opened the door and slammed it behind him.
Emeline watched through the window. Chambers stalked to his car and if he said anything to Nancy, Emeline didn’t see. The Fairlane’s rear tires sprayed rocks as the car fishtailed down the driveway.
Nine
Dim lights make black suits and dresses look the blacker. I’m in Groesly’s Funeral parlor, shuffling toward the line. Ahead is a closed casket made of red oak, a photo on its lid.
I knock a nub of dried blood from my chin. Face itches from shaving soap. It wasn’t enough that Emeline drug me here; she drug me to the bathroom first and tried to shave me with a straight razor. Times, I don’t know where the steel in her spine comes from. I took the blade from her and shaving out of sorts, nicked the cleft on my chin.
Voices quiet as I near and buzz when I pass. The McClellan clan spreads over Walnut and Jefferson counties and every one of them is here. They stare. I’ll pay my respects to Mitch and leave—and it’ll be the last I owe my youth companion, the long dead Larry McClellan. That’s more than the rest of the clan wants. Our families have a history that won’t die, even when we do.
The most recent flare up was in 1916. Mitch’s father Jonah McClellan, a seven-foot giant, downed a shot of rye at a town pub and vowed he’d destroy the Hardgraves. By then, Jonah had created a rural pussy empire. He brought organized harlotry from the cities to the towns,
and had a system of brothels with all the clout and protection of the ones he’d studied in Pittsburgh. His girls worked four towns. He sold women first, and if his patron thirsted for something to make the rest of his life more palatable, Jonah sold him a jug of home-stilled whiskey. The recipe was a secret, and involved walnuts from the tree I cut and sold to Margulies.
Jonah McClellan’s big triumph in the feud came when my grandfather’s black sheep daughter, my aunt Elsa Hardgrave, moved to Dubois and spread her gizzy at Jonah’s bidding. Jonah disappeared shortly after word got out, and there wasn’t a soul in Walnut County didn’t suspect my grandpap dispatched him. Jonah’s body remains undiscovered.
When I was a boy the clans speculated Larry and me being friends would end the old days. The Hardgraves were in decline anyway, me being the last. The McClellans spread like weeds. But when Larry died, no one believed I shoved his intestines back in him and cried like a woman. There’s something changes when you see a man cut up and dying like that, and though part of you carries on and blubbers, the saner part gets real cold.
Ahead in the box rests the bones and flesh of a man I didn’t like and never forgave. A man who raised the coward I lost my eye trying to save. Leave the bastard alone...
Widow McClellan sits on a wooden chair at the head of the casket. A small girl hugs her. A man, woman, and a boy wait by the box. They study the black and white photo, and the boy points at me. His mother swipes his hand and stares. His father touches the photo and turns.
I’ve never seen them, but the McClellan type is familiar. Their faces are narrow, more angles than curves; lips thin and brows high. They’re tall, like their grandfather, and like me. Other people turn.
“Here to pay respects, like you,” I say, and scratch my neck. The room is silent. Emeline squeezes my hand. She’s got a lot of sand in her guts but her face telegraphs fear as more and more eyes flit from my face to the widow.
I study their looks and it dawns on me these men and women are not angry.
The widow observes her kin, follows their faces to me. Her white brows drop as she focuses, then her forehead tightens and her jaw goes slack. She wobbles to her feet and steps toward me, arm open toward me. Her face changes a thousand times until she stands two feet away, looking up. She reaches; her hand cups my jaw. She shakes her head.
“No.” she says.
She drops. I clutch her shoulders and she slips to her knees.
“Hey!” someone shouts.
They think I’ve dropped her. I stagger with bent knees and back and leave her on the chair. Family throngs beside her.
A man jerks my shoulder. His fist connects sideways with my head. I catch myself on the casket. The photo topples into my hands. I wipe my nose and bloody the frame. It’s Mitch, with twenty fewer years and a clean shave.
I recognize my face in his. Cleft chin; cleft nose.
From behind, Emeline wraps her arms around the man who struck me. I study the photo. The closest McClellans understand the truth that shook the widow to her core and yanked the floor beneath me. “Leave the bastard alone,” Mitch said all them years ago. I look from the photo to the men and women and to the photo again.
I had a beard so long I forgot my face.
Three men hold Emeline’s arms and shoulders. She struggles and as silence retakes the room they release her.
My hand shakes. I return the photo to the casket. I don’t know that I’ll find peace without a little whiskey and a conversation with the walnut on Devil’s Elbow. Get some shit straight.
Ten
My neck is stiff as a horse’s hardon and my shoulders are cinched up from a full day of hoisting pipe, throwing chain, running the cathead. I’m the motorman and work for Merle, the driller. Sunup to sundown. Twelve hours of my best labor, earning dimes on the boss man’s dollars so some Oil City asshole can eat prime rib and pour brandy from cut glass.
So now I’m McClellan? Don’t mean a damn thing. Hoot Hardgrave, the man that raised me, was a malingering broke back and I almost wanted to be one of the other clan anyway. Least Jonah McClellan had stones.
I lean against the rig, wipe grime from my fingers and take a pinch of Copenhagen.
Karl, the derrickman, scoots down the ladder and looses a clump of dirt that shatters on a rung and rains like brown hail. The mudman, a drifter from Alberta we call Sarge says, “Gimme a rub, eh?”
“Buy your own fuckin rub, eh?”
Merle approaches from the clutch. “You want to see them pits, tonight?”
I shrug. “Where?”
“Ten mile off. My brother-in-law organizes everything.”
I follow Merle on Route 322 through forest and farmland and turn on 257 to Seneca. We chug ten minutes on a narrower road, then five more on pair of tire ruts cut through black mud, screwing counter-balance around the hill. The sun sets through a hemlock canopy. Land turns gray. Finally the road opens to a hollow with orange lanterns hanging from low branches. I park alongside Merle between three-foot hemlock trunks.
A score of men shoot the shit, swat deerflies, drink whiskey, smoke corncob pipes. Merle says “hello” to someone and wanders away. I scope my surroundings.
An enclosure stands at the center of the assembly with walls made of discarded oak pallets, held vertical by steel spikes driven into the ground. Two pallets pivot like doors at opposite sides; the rubber cords that secure them hang loose. The earth in the middle is bare and stinks as if blood and perpetual shade keep the dirt raw and festering.
A man in leather gloves leans against the bed of a pickup. I nod; he dips his eyes. A metal crate sits in the bed. I lean close and study the silent dog inside. It has a head like a pit viper, broad and strong, and a red nose.
“He ain’t very big,” I say.
“Ain’t seen you around.”
“Which dog’s he matched with?”
“Bilrod’s shepherd. You was smart, you’d put your money on Killer, here.”
“What’s he weigh?”
“Sixty.”
“And the shepherd?”
“Look for yourself.”
I read Killer’s lines. His hips are narrow and his shoulders broad; his chest is muscled like a bulldog’s; a scar traverses his top right shoulder to lower left. His chest trembles and his eyes look stone mad. He presses his nose against the mesh and his whine drops to a railroad rumble. My neck hair stands. His eyes sit flat in his head and he stares like he could murder me through the wire if he tried hard enough, and shit if I ever saw a dog looked so smart I almost believed him. I appreciate that same shit, Killer, yes I do.
Yes I do.
“How old’s this fella?”
“Two.”
“Kinda young?”
“This is his third match. You only git a third when you win your second.”
Truck headlights approach single file on the trail and park between trees. Never seen so many men in the same wood. I search out the next pickup with a crate. Owner’s away. Behind the wooden slats is another pit, smaller than Killer, also got a red nose. A white splotch on his chest interrupts his brindle coat. He’s familiar. He lays curled in the back of the crate, unmindful of the excitement. Mid-step to the next truck, I stop and pursue a thought. Will the brindle’s lack of enthusiasm predict how much fight he brings to the ring? I’ll remember that splotch.
The next crate holds a grizzled German shepherd that looks about a hundred and twenty pounds with a scarred grey muzzle, ragged flaps for ears, and coal beads for eyes.
I cant my head and listen. Of the men, motors, and dogs, the dogs are the quietest, maybe like soldiers figuring the generals will immortalize their battlefront courage with rear-echelon words. I rap the cage and the shepherd snarls, but when I fail to further aggravate him, he sniffs toward the fight circle and ignores me.
“You don’t want to be doin’ that,” Merle says, approaching from my blind side.
“You don’t want to surprise me from that side,” I say.
“These boys prot
ect their dogs better’n their women. Time you meet Charlie—he makes book.”
“I’m watching tonight.” I spit.
“Suit yourself. We start in a bit. Boys from Oil City bringing dogs in; must have got lost. Charlie sent his kid out the main road to fetch them.”
I nod at the shepherd. “What’s a fighting dog like that go for?”
“You say fighting dog, but you’re looking at a big-boned Nazi-dog. Shepherds don’t know shit about fighting. You couldn’t give me one. Now, you take a pit bull pup from a champ like Thunder, that red nose in the GMC step side—he got a white patch—a pup in that line will fetch seventy-five dollars.”
“For a dog.”
“Pit bulls ain’t dogs. They know more about war in their little toes than a platoon of jarheads like you knows in your whole body. They’re pit bulls—bred to hang from a bull’s nose while the butcher slits his throat and bleeds him. Takes a lot of game for a sixty-pound dog to latch on to a fifteen-hundred pound bull and hang by his teeth. Stones the size of cannonballs. Lookit the jaws on them sonsabitches. They lock; takes a breaking stick to bust them loose. And they don’t feel pain.”
“Still. Seventy-five dollars for a dog?”
“If he wins, you make fifty times that betting on him, then studding him. Now, that’s a champion. Charlie don’t even fight Thunder any more, just brings him out here to show him off.”
“What’s your cut?”
“I don’t make no cut. However—Charlie is taking bids for the pick of the next litter, due shortly.”
I follow Merle to his truck; Merle drops the tailgate and we sit. “Where’s your dog?” I say.
“He’s a face-licking puss. These fellas breed killers. Any one of them would murder my pup inside a minute.”
Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her Page 5
