Kentucky Straight: Stories

by Chris Offutt

  Mom never said a word after she heard what the fight was over. Warren came by the next night.

  “I got one at the creek and the other at the head of Bobcat Holler,” he said. “They’ll not talk that way no more.”

  “Whip them pretty bad?”

  “They knowed they was in a fight.”

  Warren’d taken a lick or two in the jaw, and his neck vein was puffed out again. A railroad tie won’t knock him over.

  “You still getting that GED?” he said.

  “Friday.”

  “I’m getting me a TV that runs on batteries.”

  “What for?”

  “To sit and look at.”

  “Same with me, Warren. Same with me.”

  He pushed his fingers at a swollen place below his cheekbone. His shoulders sagged. “I’ll fight for you, Junior. And for Daddy, too. But I never could figure what either of you ever was up to.”

  He went outside and opened the truck door with his thumbs. The knuckles of both hands were split, and bending his fingers would open the scabs. One was already leaking a little. He started the truck in second gear so he wouldn’t have to shift, and drove away with his palms. I watched him till the dust settled back to the road.

  On Friday I walked the ridgeline above the creek all the way to town. Rocksalt lay in a wide bottom between the hills. I’d never seen it from above and it looked pretty small, nothing to be afraid of. I went down the slope, crossed the creek, and stepped onto the sidewalk. For a long time I stood in front of the test center. I could leave now and never know if I passed or flunked. Either one scared me. I opened the door and looked in.

  “Congratulations,” said the lady.

  She handed me a state certificate saying I’d achieved a high school degree. My name was written in black ink. Below it was a gold seal and the governor’s signature.

  “I have a job application for you,” she said. “It isn’t a promise of work but you qualify now. Employment is the next step out.”

  “All I wanted was this.”

  “Not a job?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She sighed and looked down, rubbing her eyes. She leaned against the doorjamb. “Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said.

  “None of us do,” I said. “Most people around here are just waiting to die.”

  “That’s not funny, Junior.”

  “No, but what’s funny is, everybody gets up awful early anyhow.”

  “I like to sleep late,” she said.

  She was still smiling when I shut the door behind me. I’d come as close as a man could get to finishing school and it didn’t feel half bad. At the edge of town I looked back at the row of two-story buildings. Dad used to say a smart man wouldn’t bother with town, but now I knew he was wrong. Anybody can go there any time. Town’s just a bunch of people living together in the only wide place between the hills.

  I left the road and walked through horseweed to the creek bank. It was a good way to find pop bottles and I still owed the state fifteen dollars.

  HOUSE RAISING

  Rain chewed fresh gullies in the ridge road, turning the hard clay dirt to a yellow paste. The ditch overflowed and gray air blurred the low horizon. Dripping leaves hung limp and heavy.

  “It’ll pass,” Mercer said.

  Coe lit a cigarette and opened the pickup window an inch. Pellets of rain spattered his shoulder. The top of the windshield was breath-fogged from an hour of waiting and watching the rain. The truck cab smelled dog wet.

  “Hope how soon that dozer comes,” Mercer said. “You?”

  Coe didn’t answer. Finger marks of mud streaked the brim of his cap. He was from out of the county, where Mercer’s brother had bought a used mobile home. Earlier that morning, Coe and his boss had the trailer hauled halfway up the slope when rain turned the fresh-cleared earth to swamp. The trailer sank past the axles. The tow truck buried its rear tires, trying to pull the trailer free. Neighbor men who’d come to watch laughed and laughed. They were waiting for the wet earth to pitch the trailer down the hill into the creek. Maybe the tow truck would follow, like a bluetick chained to a dog box. The men would wait all day for that. It was worth the rain and chill.

  “This ain’t bad,” Mercer said. “Setting in a truck for pay. How long you had this job?”

  “Three months.”

  “Like it?”

  “No.”

  “If it was me, I’d like it,” Mercer said. “How come you don’t?”

  Shifting wind drilled water against the roof. Coe tossed his cigarette out the window, where rain slammed it down and gutted it. Coe watched the tobacco and paper vanish, wondering how people could live on vertical land. No sky. No river. Nothing but shacks, mud, and woods so dense Coe couldn’t see past the tree line. The midday air was dark as dusk. He’d heard that every hillbilly had one leg shorter than the other from years of walking on the slant.

  “Before this,” Coe said, “had me a job six years on a horse farm.”

  “Good work if you can get it.”

  “Not too awful bad. Helped the vet till my wife’s cousin died. Told the big boss I was going to the funeral and he said not to come back.”

  “First cousin?”

  Coe nodded.

  “What’d you do?”

  “Went.”

  “Got to stand by family,” Mercer said. “Man like that ain’t worth working for.”

  “No,” Coe said. He twisted against the truck door to face Mercer full on. “But some people don’t like niggers.”

  Mercer leaned forward, squinting, head cocked.

  “Hear that dozer,” he said. “Halfway up the hill, my opinion.” He looked at the water drenching the land. “Some people don’t like nothing.”

  Two rain-dark figures rode the rumbling bulldozer to the top of the hill; Coe waved it out the ridge and followed in the truck. The dozer punched black smoke into the mist as it stopped beside an old hickory. Several men squatted beneath the tree, their arms extended, elbows propped on bony knees. They waited in the rain as if it was sun, oblivious to the wet and the cold. Water glazed their faces to a uniform mask.

  Only Mercer’s brother stood. Aaron weighed three hundred pounds and was freshly married. For two weeks Mercer had helped him clear a narrow strip of Crosscut Ridge for Aaron’s new home. They widened a game path to a road and chain-sawed trees to stovewood chunks. They plowed a trailer-size notch into the hill, and buried a culvert for draining sewage to the creek. Jagged teeth of limestone protruded from the stripped land.

  Mercer slammed the pickup door and walked through the dim fog. The men watched, wondering what Mercer had learned in the truck. They’d never ask but would wait instead, wait a month or a year until Mercer brought it up himself. Then they’d hear the truth, not a story tainted by the asking.

  Mercer jerked his head to the bulldozer. “Old Bob’s here.”

  “Late,” his brother said. He unleashed a stream of tobacco juice that dissipated rapidly in the rain. “He best not be too bad off.”

  “You know he is,” said one of the men, unfolding upward from his squat. “Old Bob gets so drunk he takes back things he never stole.”

  Everyone grinned and the man repeated himself, drawing another round of headshakes and laughter. Eight years before, these same men dug Old Bob out of a caved-in mine a mile away. In one hand he held a long splinter of strut wood he’d yanked from his face. Its sharp end spindled his eyeball. The company gave him a bulldozer with a loose track and three cylinders that didn’t hit. After the mines were empty and the company gone, Old Bob owned the only dozer in the hills. A good swap, people said. He’d traded up.

  Old Bob staggered through the mud, bandy-legged from a decade’s habit of staying upright while drunk. He jerked his head like a crow to see with his one good eye.

  “Hidy, by God! Think it’ll rain?”

  “Don’t know,” said a man. “But it sure missed a good chance to if it don’t.”

  Aa
ron used a blunt finger to search behind his jaw for strings of tobacco. He flung them to the ground and slipped a fresh chew in his mouth.

  “Reckon you can pull her out?” he said.

  Old Bob stared at the trailer jammed in the mud of the wet clay slope. A heavy chain ran to the tow truck. It was mired deep as the trailer. The truck driver lowered himself from the cab, holding tightly to the door. He slipped on the soap-slick ground and fell, skidding sideways down the hill. He plunged to his knees in the rushing water of the ditch.

  “Look out, boys,” Old Bob said. “He’s a-looking for a dance partner.”

  The driver forced a grin as he slogged across the road.

  “I’m Mr. Richards,” he said. “You the dozer man?”

  “Ain’t needing one, are you?”

  “Might could.”

  Old Bob leaned forward and twitched his head. Strands of shiny wet hair clung to his face in diagonal strips. He peeled one back and sucked its tip.

  “Richards,” he said. “Same as Dick, ain’t it. You the boss of this here outfit?”

  Old Bob howled, his clothes flapping like birch bark flayed by wind. The men hid sly grins, looking up the hill or at their boots, having learned from the mines never to anger a foreman.

  Richards breathed through his mouth to keep rain from his nose. Only white people bought new mobile homes, trading an old one for down payment. Richards was running out of blacks to buy his used trailers. The hill people were his next market and he had to be careful.

  “They say you work a dozer like a borrowed mule,” Richards said. “Ready to hit a lick?”

  Old Bob poked out his lower lip and shook his head.

  “Not yet, I ain’t. Got to get myself lubed a little more.” He reeled to face the bulldozer. A man-shape hanging within the roll cage rocked and swayed. “Hey, Bobby, toss me that bottle here!” Old Bob grinned at the men and focused his single eye on Mr. Richards.

  “My boy was born lamed-up but his eyes are good. He’s the one does the seeing for me. I’d say Dick here could use a boy walking for him, way he come off that hillside.”

  Old Bob showed his teeth and strutted to the bulldozer. The men followed, eager for heat against the hissing rain. Richards kicked mud from his boot.

  “Where’s Coe at?” he said. “Hey, Coe!”

  “In the truck,” Mercer said. “I’ll get him.”

  Mercer walked past the men sharing whiskey and damp cigarettes cupped in palms. The bulldozer clattered on idle. “Save me a taste,” he said to the men.

  Coe rolled the window down, releasing cigarette smoke that faded into the fog. Mercer wondered why he stayed alone in the truck. A man only did that if he was trying to avoid a fight, but Coe worked hard and didn’t say much.

  “Boss man’s wanting you,” Mercer said.

  “Don’t that figure. Him and that dozer feller get into it already?”

  “Old Bob’s half drunk is all.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” Coe said. “I could stand a snort myself, day like this.”

  “Might not be none left.”

  “Not for me, anyhow.” He rolled up his window and left the truck. “Rain ain’t let up a hair.”

  “No,” Mercer said. “But it’s only water.”

  Mud sucked at their boots beneath the dark tunnel of tree limbs. The wind had stilled. Rain dropped straight from the sky as if following ropes to the earth. When Mercer and Coe passed the bulldozer, the men hushed and stared. Coe scuttled sideways up the muddy slope.

  The bank’s lower section had slid a few feet to block the ditch. Backwash flowed across the road, cutting new troughs to the creek below, and Mercer knew the bank might not hold past dark. One of the men passed Mercer the pint. With three fingers lost to a chain saw, the man’s hand made a C-clamp around the flat bottle. An inch of corn liquor sloshed the bottom.

  Old Bob settled onto the bulldozer’s seat. Behind him, propped in the roll cage with crippled legs dangling, was his son Bobby—Bobby the Finder. He could spot a snake fifty yards away and label birds above the farthest ridge. In spring, Old Bob carried him like a sack of feed corn while Bobby’s forked dowsing rod jumped and quivered. Of twenty-seven wells dug where Bobby said, twenty-five hit underground springs. Everyone blamed Old Bob for the two mistakes. He was drunk and didn’t walk straight.

  The dozer rattled up the slope, steel tracks flipping bricks of mud. Rainwater rushed to fill the ladder-shaped prints. Bobby hung like a scarecrow, yelling directions. The dozer moved easily over the mud as Old Bob maneuvered it to the truck. Coe fastened a tow chain to the bulldozer’s hitch. Richards gunned the truck, spattering mud. The chain rose taut and the bulldozer reared like a cornered bear until Old Bob released the tension. The machine slammed back to earth, spraying Coe with a sheet of yellow mud. The dozer tugged again, and the truck’s twin rear wheels spun. Each abrupt motion jerked Bobby hanging from the roll bar. The straining truck suddenly jumped up the hillside and rain gushed into the hole. Clay dirt held it like a bowl. The men watched mud float in the yellow water.

  Old Bob dragged the truck in a tight circle. He saluted the men in the road, who punched each other’s soggy arms. Richards leaned from the truck window, his mouth raging in a shout that was lost to the sound of dozer and rain. Old Bob made another pass of the narrow ridge and in a final sharp turn, he whipped the truck sideways, slinging great waves of mud into its open window. The tow truck stalled. Old Bob cut the bulldozer to a rumbling throb and waved at the men. The wet woods were black behind him. He sat alone on the rattling dozer.

  “Where’s Bobby?” Mercer said.

  “Ain’t he up there?” said a man.

  “Well, he ain’t gone far,” said another. “Grandmaw can outrun him and she’s dead.”

  The men watched Richards wave his hands and point to the rear of the truck. Old Bob eased to the muddy ground.

  “Never seen him off that dozer on a job,” someone said. “Track probably come off.”

  The men crossed the road to climb the hill. Aaron waited behind, spitting over his shoulder. This was his land and his trailer. He would stay clear of mud.

  Cold rain streamed Mercer’s face as he climbed a grassy bank untouched by plow or dozer. He circled the mud-flecked trailer, staying on the high furrow between tire tracks. Coe stood at the trailer’s corner, head raised to a waterfall pouring off the roof. He wiped mud from his face.

  “You aiming to shave next?” Mercer said.

  Coe stiffened. He stepped forward, anger fading as he saw the offered whiskey.

  “Save me some,” Mercer said, and tossed the bottle.

  Coe caught it, uncapped the pint, and took a quick pull. He closed his eyes at the cool burn.

  “That dozer man’s dumb as dirt,” he said.

  “Boy of his is all right,” Mercer said. “Can’t say how he got that way, but he did.”

  “The son don’t have to be the pa.”

  “Around here, he mostly is.”

  “You people got it bad as us.”

  “Maybe,” Mercer said. “I never knowed nobody else.”

  They looked away from each other as raindrops pocked the mud. Coe stared into the mist, thinking that he’d been wrong, that these people had it worse. Coe knew how black folks were. He knew how they got that way, and who to blame. The hillbillies didn’t.

  They stood without speaking until Coe saw the men appear in the fog and approach the tow truck.

  “Something done went wrong,” Coe said.

  They crossed the mud to the men squatting around the truck’s rear end. Bobby lay on his back, legs pinned beneath the truck’s doubled tires. His eyes were wide and he was shivering. Rain pooled in the creases of his clothes.

  “You hurt bad?” Old Bob asked.

  “Can’t tell,” Bobby said. “Never did feel nothing down there.” He coughed and a red bubble formed at his mouth. “Get me up.”

  “Swing that dozer around,” Richards said to Old Bob. “If I drive, the tires
will spin on him. You’ve got to haul that truck off nice and slow.” His voice lowered. “No more tricks, you damn fool.”

  Old Bob stumbled to the bulldozer, slowed by the weight of mud on his boots. He turned and yelled. “Hey, by God, where’s that whiskey?”

  Coe held the bottle up.

  “Hell with it,” Old Bob said.

  “Suits me,” said Mercer.

  He yanked the bottle from Coe’s hand and drained the last of the clear liquor. The men stared, surprised that Mercer would drink after Coe.

  The tow truck lurched a few yards, dappling everyone with mud. Bobby’s ruined knee spurted a red arc. Then another. And another. The men watched, bewildered and afraid. They had slaughtered hogs in autumn and field-dressed deer in the woods. They’d seen mangled men dragged from the mines—crushed, turned blue from lack of oxygen, charred by a shaft fire. But none had watched a man slowly die.

  “Goddam it,” Old Bob yelled. He jumped from the bulldozer. “That’s my goddam boy!”

  He knelt and grabbed Bobby’s knee. The severed leg slid away. It bobbed in the hole where Bobby lay, and turned the water pink. A long sharp rim of rock jutted from the mud below Bobby’s stump.

  “We got to do something!” Old Bob said. His eyehole held a thumb-sized wedge of clay.

  “Not much a body can do,” said a man.

  “Tourniquet won’t do no good,” said another.

  The rest nodded around him. They’d all lost kin; it couldn’t be helped. Coe shouldered through the men and knelt in the mud. He pressed his hand against the open wound.

  “We need a rope or piece of harness,” Coe said. “I worked alongside a horse doc nigh six year.”

  Old Bob knocked Coe’s arm away. “Reach for him again and you’ll draw back a nub!”

  Blood spouted the air twice before Coe stopped it with his palm. His other hand held Old Bob back.

  “Watch what you’re doing there,” said one of the men. His voice was low and hard and the others moved to him. They waited in the cold gray rain, ready to back the man they knew.

  Bobby leaned forward and saw the space where his leg should be. He fell back laughing a high-pitched cry. “Chop off the other one,” he said. “I don’t need them either one.”