by David Joy
Calvin looked at the family gathered under the shade of the graveside tent. Darl’s sister, Marla, sat beside her mother with mascara running down her cheeks like wetted ink. Her husband was beside her with one hand gripped around his wife’s knee, the other stroking the back of their little girl, who balanced on his leg with her thumb in her mouth. Their three boys were in the seats beside them, their eyes emptied by sorrow and wonder. Marla looked like Darl, the same long face. They had sharp noses and thick eyebrows like their mother, thin lips that always seemed sunk by sadness or anger. Their father had been a short, spindly man with arms that seemed too long for his body. His eyes were the color of sky, and thinking about him right then—how none of his features found their way into his children—Calvin could still see the thick veins that rose from his forearms and ran along his biceps like vines. The old man had been tough as a pine knot, partly because he’d had to be, and maybe that was what carried down, that toughness. And maybe that was enough.
“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption,” the preacher read. “Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
Changed. That was as good a word as any. Nothing would ever be the same now. It couldn’t be, and maybe that was the only certainty anymore.
A slight movement to his left caught his attention and Calvin turned to see his mother pressing a wadded tissue to the corners of her eyes. She wore black slacks and a dark silk blouse with shoulder pads, her flat silver hair brushed evenly to each side of her face so that it stretched to her stomach. He’d held it together until then, but there was something about looking at his own mother that hit him harder than the rest of it. He started to cry and before long he was weeping. His father turned to face him, his arm at the small of his wife’s back, and Calvin saw his eyes melt with tears, though his old man would not let them fall, could not let them fall, because men didn’t cry, and Calvin understood that. Seeing how close his father came was enough to justify his own tears; and when he felt Angie’s father put a hand on his shoulder, Calvin fell apart. The most complex things said between men were often not spoken at all.
He did not move while the funeral went on and he did not move when it ended. Gradually those who gathered made their way down to their cars, and one by one, they left. In a few minutes, workers came up the narrow gravel road in a beaten cream-colored Ford with shovels loaded in the back. They studied him and Calvin thought he recognized the younger of the two as the brother of a Collins boy he’d worked with one winter at a tree farm in Tuckasegee.
The two men rolled back the fake-grass mat that had hidden the fill dirt from the family. They filled the grave a spade at a time, joking back and forth about something Calvin couldn’t make out from where he stood. It took them a little more than an hour. The men were sticky with sweat, their khaki work shirts dark at their backs. The older one hoisted a jumping jack from the bed of the truck to compact the dirt on the grave. When the job was finished, they watched him as they drove away—incapable of understanding why he’d stayed. There was something inside that told him he had to see it through, that he couldn’t leave until it was finished; but now that it was, he found it hard to walk away.
A hand grazing the back of his arm startled him and Calvin turned to find Angie with sunlight filling her eyes green as bottle glass. Her cheeks and nose were dotted with light orange freckles.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Calvin said. “Yeah. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She leaned in to kiss him. “Okay.”
Calvin watched her walk away, the wind blowing her sundress tight to her hip, her blond hair whipping about like licks of fire. A thinly knit navy sweater covered her arms, and her cowboy boots cut Vs on her calves. She was the reason he would bear this secret even if it haunted him the rest of his life. Angie was all he’d ever wanted and all he had now, and somehow he knew that could still be enough, that a man couldn’t ask for anything more than that. Maybe this is the only way the world is even, he thought. Maybe it takes this kind of suffering to have everything you always wanted.
Across the road, a murmuration of starlings rose like a bruise from yellowed field. The birds twisted into the sky, flashed in blooms of black, then disappeared as quickly as they’d shown. Their path blinked against the mountainside and Calvin tried his best to follow them until they were too far away to see. A piece of scripture kept repeating in his mind, something the preacher had read minutes before. Four words played in his head over and over, but he could not remember what came before or after. There were only four words, and he knew not their meaning.
Death is swallowed up.
SEVENTEEN
Dwayne grabbed a bucked section of locust and stood it on a grayed poplar stump that had been used to bust wood for a decade. Holding the weight of the go-devil near the head with one hand, he gripped the bottom of the handle with his other, dropped the top hand as he came over his shoulder, and cracked the log in two with little effort at all. He tossed the wood aside, guzzled down what was left of a Busch heavy by his feet, crumpled the empty can in his fist, and reached for another log.
He was building a mountain of firewood and empty beer cans on a grassless patch of yard in front of the house. The sky was low and gray, but it hadn’t rained. A strong breeze every now and again rattled rust-colored leaves on the ground around him. A faded and color-muddled tattoo of a skull wearing a cowboy hat with two pistols crossed over a Confederate flag swelled on the left side of his chest as he panted for air with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Sweat rolled down his back and chest and soaked the waist of a navy pair of Dickies, so that the fabric darkened almost black.
The house had been built a room at a time from scrap wood salvaged and stolen. Nothing here was permanent and as each addition rotted away, a new one was hammered together from plywood and bent nails off another side so that slowly, through decades, the five-room shanty shifted around the property like a droplet of water following the path of least resistance. Red Brewer was no carpenter. Chicken coops were built better. So were doghouses. But this place had been the roof over their heads and had kept the rain off the Brewer clan’s backs all Dwayne’s miserable life.
Buzzards filled the trees around the house the same as they had for the past six months. Sometime early spring, wakes of birds came circling over the ridgeline in orbits of ten or twelve and lit on every limb there was to be had on the hill above the house. Since then, they’d never left. Every day the birds sat high in the oaks, glaring down on this tiny piece of land. Thick limbs bowed beneath their weight so that one’s movement shifted the balance of them all and each had to flap a few strokes to regain its perch. As the sun rose each morning, one buzzard would spread its wings, hold them open and let the light burn the dew from its feathers. Another bird would join the first, and then another and another until the birds appeared like some black-winged crucifixion roosted in the trees.
At first, Dwayne was convinced they were a sign of wickedness to come, an omen. He’d never seen anything like it. Crows, sure, but not buzzards, not like that, not in all his life. After six months, though, they were something else in the background, something he wouldn’t have paid attention to at all if not for the sound of their wings whipping about the air while he split the winter’s cord. Down the drive, he could hear a car coming toward him, and that sound caught him off guard because no one came here. At the bottom of the driveway, a dozen NO TRESPASSING and PRIVATE PROPERTY signs nailed to trees made the owner’s intentions clear. A white tin sign rusted, and buckshot on the mailbox post was hand-painted to read TRESPASSERS MAKE FINE TROPHIES in uneven letters.
Holding the go-devil one-handed by his
side, he took a long drag off his cigarette and waited for the car to show through the trees. The Crown Vic was unmarked, but a set of white strobes by the headlights pegged it for the law. Dwayne squeezed the neck of the maul handle until his fist was bloodless and white. He didn’t wait for the car to reach him. He barreled straight toward it. And as he came to the driver’s side, he bent down and peered in with a peculiar intensity. The window came down and Dwayne met the driver’s eyes.
“Dwayne Brewer?”
“This is private property.”
“I’m with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.”
“And like I said, this is private property.”
“That doesn’t matter, Mr. Brewer.”
“How’s that?”
“Because I don’t need permission or a warrant to come up a driveway to the front of a house. Besides, I’m here to ask a couple questions about an active investigation. So you can call down to the office if you’d like, but they’ll tell you exactly what I’m telling you.”
“What investigation?”
“Why don’t you let me pull on up and we’ll talk.”
Dwayne didn’t answer, but the detective didn’t wait for permission. He rolled up his window as he pulled forward, then parked behind Dwayne’s Buick and stepped out.
“I’m Detective Michael Stillwell.” He held out his hand and Dwayne glanced down at it then back up to his eyes.
“I don’t much give a shit who you are,” Dwayne said. “Tell me why you’re here.” The last of the cigarette burned down into the filter and he tossed the butt into the yard, then went for another beer from an opened case by the woodpile. He cracked the top and sucked the foam from the mouth of the can, traded hands and slung what spilled from his fingers. Setting the beer on the ground, he turned back to his work.
“I’m here investigating the death of Darl Moody.”
“Who?” Dwayne asked with a puzzled look before splitting the log before him.
“Darl Moody,” the detective said.
“Don’t know him.”
“So you don’t know anything about what happened to him?”
“Why would I?” Dwayne bent and placed another log on the stump.
“Figured you might’ve read something about it in the paper.”
“That liberal-ass rag ain’t fit for shit but lining bird cages. I wouldn’t even use it for kindling.”
“Look,” Stillwell chided. “I’ll get right on with it, because I can tell you ain’t much on me and I’m coming to that same feeling about you the longer I stand here.”
Dwayne dropped the head of the maul to the ground and balanced himself against the butt of the handle like he was leaning against a cane.
“A man named Coon Coward told me you went by his house looking for your brother.”
“What about it?”
“He said you and him looked at some pictures off a game camera he had in the woods, and that some of those pictures were of Darl Moody.”
“I don’t know if that’s right or not.”
“What do you mean? Either they were or they weren’t.”
“I don’t know who was in them pictures, and like I told you, I don’t give a shit. It might’ve been that old boy you’re looking for or it might’ve been Randy fucking Travis. Either way, it wasn’t what I come for and so it didn’t make a bit of difference to me.”
“And what had you come for, Mr. Brewer?”
“The old man told you.” Dwayne picked up the go-devil and swung it hard into the next log, the split sections kicking off into the yard like shrapnel. “I come for my brother.”
“Why would your brother have been there?”
“I’m sure the old man told you that, too.”
“Just in case he didn’t, why don’t you tell me?”
“Ginseng.” Dwayne grabbed the beer from the ground and took a long sip that spilled from the corners of his mouth and dribbled off his chin. “My brother was after that old man’s ginseng.”
“So’d you find him?”
“No,” Dwayne said. “Ain’t been home yet. I don’t know where he’s run off to.”
“Whereabouts does your brother live?”
“Right up the road a ways. Head of Allens Branch. There’s a whole bunch of mailboxes there at the bottom and one reads ‘Brewer’ and he’s up at the very top there in my grandparents’ old place.”
“And you said you haven’t seen him for how long?”
“You know, the longer I sit here answering your questions the more I’m coming to wonder just what in the fuck you’re doing here.” Dwayne dropped the maul to the ground and walked over close to the detective, trying to force a sign of weakness, but there was no visible change in emotion or stance.
“I told you why I’m here, Mr. Brewer.”
“No, you told me you’re investigating what happened to some old boy I ain’t ever heard of, and what exactly that has to do with me or my brother ain’t been said.”
A low growl in the distance grew louder and louder as it came, until a heavy torrent of rain swept the trees and was on top of them. Neither moved from where he stood. They each squinted a bit as the rain washed over their brows, but for a few seconds they floated there scowling at one another like they were about to fistfight. The water was cold against Dwayne’s bare skin, but he hardly felt anything at all.
“I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Brewer,” Stillwell said, extending his hand into the small gap between them, and again Dwayne only glanced down at his offering without a word.
The detective climbed into his car and backed unhurriedly into the yard. Dwayne shifted his stance as the car curved around the woodpile so that he faced him until the taillights disappeared into the haze of rain and descended cloud. The air was smoky and Dwayne shook the water from his face like a dog, then snatched the maul from the mud.
A heat rose in his chest till it boiled in his eyes, his ears humming with anger. On the stump, he set the next piece and came down hard, grunting as the locust splintered in two. He grabbed the next log and stood it on end, and imagined Stillwell’s face on the sawn end of wood as he came down. The rain poured around him and steamed from his shoulders as he took another bucked section, imagined Darl Moody’s face. Coon Coward came next and then Calvin Hooper and then he chopped them further into pieces, working until there was no more wood before him.
When the pile was split, he came down hard into the wood, the go-devil a dull thud scarring the rooted stump. The anger grew and Dwayne Brewer swung again and again until the wood was crosshatched with marks from the maul’s heavy edge. His muscles burned and he swung until his arms wore completely out, and when he could no longer lift the weight he laughed hysterically at how his body failed him. He collapsed to the ground and lay flat on his back. Harder and harder the rain came down, but he did not seek shelter.
EIGHTEEN
The rain that had started the day before continued through the night, so that by morning the jobsite was slopped. Forecasts showed the weather breaking up by evening, but it would be a day or two before they could get back to work. For once, Calvin Hooper didn’t mind. There’d been so much going on that he’d gotten behind on everything at home: the woodpile, sealing a mouse hole in the cupboard, changing the oil in his rig.
An open outbuilding his grandfather’d built from warped pine planks and rusted tin he salvaged from a derelict barn stood behind the house. The old man had used the place to keep rain off his tractor, but nowadays Calvin used the cover to work on cars. He had his white Ford Super Duty up on a set of rhino ramps. Lying flat on the packed dirt floor, he pulled the pin on an oil drain valve he’d installed on the pan after stripping the old plug with a cheap socket set he bought from a man on the side of the highway. The valve made the job easier and cut down on the mess fifteen quarts of 15W-40 could make. He opened the valve and the oil ran a black
line into the container. While he waited, he stretched his hands and listened to the rain beat against the tin.
Someone came into the shed and as he rolled to look he could see two sets of feet: a pair of men’s slacks covered the necks of black ankle-high boots that zipped up the sides, and two heavyset, liver-spotted legs, black leather flats scuffed and worn down to nothing. Calvin scooted out from under the truck, and Michael Stillwell offered his hand to help him from the ground. Sharon Moody stood behind Stillwell in a black T-shirt and a wool skirt with a plastic grocery bag tied over her head to shield her hair from the rain. Calvin stared at her, at how her face contorted into something halfway between smiling and crying. He pushed himself to his feet, dusted the dirt from his pants and his shoulders, then reached for a shop towel to wipe his hands.
Darl’s mother came forward, and before Calvin could warn her he was dirty she had her arms wrapped around him and her face buried in his chest like he was the last thing in the world to hold on to. Only five days had passed since she laid her son in the ground, almost a week more since she’d gotten word of how Calvin found him. Calvin put his arms around her, careful not to get oil on the back of her shirt, and the two of them stood there for a long time tilting back and forth like they were slow dancing. Stillwell seemed like he was trying to read what was happening and that ate Calvin up. If Darl’s mother weren’t right there in his arms, he would’ve clobbered that boy right in his fucking nose.
Calvin felt her relax against him and Mrs. Moody pulled back and wiped the sides of her eyes with her fist. She grinned flatly and reached up with an open hand to pat the side of Calvin’s face. The pain and loss was written in her eyes like words on a wall. Seeing it and knowing there was nothing to be said or done to change it twisted Calvin’s heart and he had to look away to hold his composure. The light was gray outside and the rain made the house seem to shake behind it, and he watched the rain come down until the feeling passed.
