Kentucky Straight: Stories

by Chris Offutt

  “About done.”

  “Take your clothes off before you set down.”

  “I’ll take them off,” he said, thinking of Miriam.

  Five kinds of paneling formed the bedroom’s tight walls. His favorite depicted a scene of three grouse flying over tall grass. He scanned as if hunting and decided it would take a twenty-gauge with a cylinder bore. From the right position, a man could bring down all three birds. He studied a mirror with taped cracks. White plaster powder coated his face, and he resembled his father except for the color of the dust. William thought of the bathroom Connie wanted. Either that or a trailer, she had said. William was afraid she’d rather move to town.

  In the living room, he sat on the end of the couch. Clear plastic covered the other half. As they paid if off, Connie exposed the vinyl in small increments, slicing the plastic with a kitchen knife. William understood that this was a display of her thrift—she deserved indoor plumbing. Town water was nine miles away and moving closer every day. He waved to the crew each morning on his way to Rocksalt, envious of their steady work. To add a bathroom, he needed three times the money from last year’s tobacco crop, but the auction brought less every fall.

  Connie called him to eat and he walked to the table, watching his daughters rinse their hands in an old lard bucket. Roofing tar plugged a hole in the bottom. The girls laughed around the pail hauled from the well at the end of the ridge. Splashed water clung to their blond hair.

  After supper, William slipped into his hunting jacket that smelled of earth and game. He pulled a rifle from the closet and checked the breech. Walnut whorls patterned the stock in light and dark. It had belonged to his father, and his grandfather. William often wondered who he’d give it to. He dropped some bullets in a pocket.

  “Going out the ridge,” he said.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Connie said, “I’d think you had a woman out there.”

  “What I got is better.” He forced a grin. “Back by dark.”

  “Watch for snakes. They’re bad this year.”

  The dogs followed him as he climbed the hill, gauging fallen trees for winter firewood. Overlapping shadows flowed across the forest floor. When he neared a hickory, the hounds began to whine, their dark eyes showing fear. He loaded the rifle and the dogs ran yelping back to the house. He recalled his grandfather’s voice, telling William moonshine stories as a boy.

  “You take your dogs to a tree where you don’t want them to follow you no more,” the old man had said. “Let each dog smell of the gun. Then you kill one. The rest ain’t much count for hunting after that, but they’ll not lead the law to a still. I done it many a time.”

  William stepped around the hickory to stand above his dog’s small grave. King had been old and slow, nearly blind, his favorite. He nodded to the humped earth and walked deeper into the woods. The land crested to a plateau of three hills where two ridges tapered down to the creek. He headed east, away from people, and eased down the hill to a lower ridge. He followed it to a limestone cliff and circled the rocks to a narrow hollow. At its end, he climbed onto a low knob ringed by hills. He listened carefully in each direction. A mourning dove moaned and high leaves brushed on a breeze. He hunched over, eyes intent on the ground. He saw a boot print and tensed his hands on the rifle.

  The track was his own from before.

  William topped the knob and grinned. Planted on ten-inch centers stood fifty-one hemp plants gently rocking in the breeze. William had never smoked hemp. It simply grew, the same as com his grandfather had used for mash. Like ginseng and tobacco, hemp had become a valuable weed. Town people would buy a load and he’d sell it cheap. All he wanted were bathroom fixtures, two hundred feet of PVC pipe, and a mirror for Connie.

  He walked through his garden, breaking off weak branches and pulling new shoots. He turned the leaves to check for worms. After pruning he leaned against a sycamore and listened to a whippoorwill wail into the surrounding hardwood hills. William knew hemp was safer than moonshine because the knob belonged to the mine company. A new law allowed the state to steal family land with hemp on it, but the government had always left big coal operators alone. Most of the companies came from out of state, and except for bribes in Frankfort, the money went out of state, too. William’s father had said that was the reason Kentucky had such weak reclamation laws.

  Of five miners working illegally during the oil embargo, three went to prison, one got rich, and thirty tons of earth fell on William’s father. Everyone on the hill helped dig him out. After the funeral William worked town construction for three months. Instead of drinking with the other men after work, he saved his money and bought his own tools. When the job ended he was laid off while everyone else moved to another site. The foreman said that he didn’t mix well. William sold his tools for half of what he’d paid and began searching the hills for wild hemp to transplant on the hidden knob.

  Saw briers rattled over the hill. William twitched his head, aiming his ears in that direction. The steady sound was loud enough for large game. He climbed down the back of the knob and circled the downwind side, placing each foot carefully to avoid the noise of leaf or fallen limb. Only a fawn would wander into briers. Its mother would be near. William flicked off the rifle’s safety.

  At the edge of the woods, he knelt behind an oak and sniffed sassafras blending with pine sap. The whippoorwill’s cry was very loud, a warning. William leaned his head and rifle around the tree. His vision skipped along the ridge to the base of the knob and slowly up the steep bank. Sweat trickled down his sides. A man stood thirty yards away at the lip of the knob. Hemp plants swayed above his head.

  William peered through the scope of his grandfather’s gun. He lowered the rifle past the man’s face to the center of his chest and leaned against the tree to steady his aim, knowing the hills would swallow the sound. He inhaled, and let the air out slow and careful.

  The man turned in a small circle, gazing around the hills. William breathed normally again. He would not rush a killing shot. The man limped to a sapling and climbed over the knob, panting like a chased fox. With trembling hands he pulled his pants leg to the knee. William moved the scope to the man’s bare calf. In the center of a dark swelling were two red puncture marks.

  William pivoted around the oak and locked the safety behind the trigger. In three days, he could pretend to find the man and drag him out of the woods. The man would never remember the hemp. He’d lose his leg and not return.

  The sun began its final slide behind the far hill when William stood, propped his rifle over his shoulder, and stepped into the deep shade of the woods. Connie expected him home by now. Their daughters would be in bed and he and Connie would lie on the couch and make silent love so as not to wake them. William glanced at the dimming sky and wished he hadn’t seen the snake-bit leg. Now he couldn’t shoot the man, and worse, he couldn’t just walk away.

  William moved down the bank and climbed the knob, forcing himself not to look at the hemp. The man was small and wiry and William was surprised that he was so young. His eyes were wide as bottle caps.

  “Copperhead got me,” said the man.

  “Big or little?”

  “Big.”

  “You’re lucky. Babies are the worst.”

  “Lucky,” said the man.

  William opened his pocketknife and sliced the man’s pants along the seam.

  “Got a lighter?” William said.

  The man slid a sweaty hand into his pocket and handed William a blue book of matches. On its cover the coal company’s name was embossed in gold.

  “I just work for them,” the man said. “I don’t own it.”

  “Shut up.”

  William lit a match and passed the knife blade through the flame. The shiny metal blackened. He straddled the man’s thigh and made a short, deep slit in his calf. He lifted the knife and turned his wrist to cut again. The two lines crossed at one of the holes left by the snake. William pressed his mouth to the wound. Sucked air
squeaked, and liquid filled his mouth. He turned his head to spit and repeated the process on the other hole. William cut a patch from the man’s shirttail and covered the wound, tying it with strips of cloth. The man lay on his back, cheek against the dirt. Vomit pooled beside his face.

  William spat until his mouth was dry, then ran his tongue along his gums to check for sores. He knew he’d swallowed some but that didn’t matter; stomach acid was stronger than venom. The man rustled dead leaves, struggling to sit.

  “What’d they send you for?” William said. “They done mined this land out.”

  “Just running tests.”

  “Up here?”

  “No. When the snake hit me, I came this way. Figured I’d build a fire and somebody’d see it.”

  “You’d do that, wouldn’t you. You’d burn the woods down.”

  “Nothing here but some kind of horseweed.”

  The moon rose above the hemp as if towed by the setting sun. The man’s clothes were ripped from briars. A gold band glinted on his left hand, and William wondered if he had kids.

  “Live in town?” William said.

  “All my life,” the man said. “We’d like to move out, but I don’t know.”

  “It ain’t easy around here.”

  “Neither is town. Prices are high as a cat’s back.”

  William reached for his rifle and stood. The man stopped talking, eyes growing wide again. He leaned back, breathing hard. William emptied the rifle of bullets, pulled the man to his feet, and handed him the gun.

  “Use this to walk with,” William said. “You parked on the fire road?”

  The man nodded.

  “Try not to bang the scope.”

  He led the man across the knob and down the back slope into the woods. Tree frogs ceased their noise. Night came over the eastern hills, passed the men, and seeped along the ridge. Starlight spread through open sky. At the foot of the hill, William squatted to drink from the creek. He waited for the man to thrash through heavy growth along the bank.

  “Think I ought to wash my leg?” the man said.

  “This water might not be the cleanest on account of the mines.”

  “Then why are you drinking it?”

  “All we got,” William said. “Ever notice how town water always tastes like pipe?”

  “Never did,” said the man. “What’s your name?”

  William stood quickly. “Got a mile to go, uphill.”

  He began following the creek past tree roots slithering down the bank. A bobwhite call floated through the trees. William remembered that his father and grandfather had walked this creek home from the mines, and he was suddenly glad he’d had no sons. The responsibility of land would end with him. Men’s lives ran in bursts of work, drink, and quick death, while women wore down slow and steady, like a riverbank at a sharp curve. He’d urge his daughters to move, but they’d probably stay and give him grandsons. One day William would be old and telling a boy about helping a coal man who didn’t deserve it. He wondered what the state would find to outlaw in his grandsons’ time.

  An hour later, William and the man reached the pickup parked on the one-lane fire road. The late-model truck had new tires, high shocks, and the coal company name on each door.

  “I can make it from here,” the man said.

  “Nice truck.”

  “Only reason I took the damn job,” the man said. “Free gas and a company truck. It runs better than I do.” He patted the hood. “What do I owe you?”

  William shook his head and looked away. He checked the rifle scope and wiped moisture from the barrel. The man climbed into the cab.

  “That wasn’t horseweed up there, was it?” the man said.

  “I don’t know,” William said. “I don’t raise horses.”

  “Far as I know,” the man said, “you don’t raise a thing.”

  He started the truck, drifting exhaust along the ridge. Headlights splayed through the trees as he backed along the narrow road. When the engine faded, the sounds of night began again.

  William moved through darkness, following the creek. At the fork, he climbed the hill to Crosscut Ridge. He felt momentarily glad that his grandfather and father were dead and unable to know he’d helped the man live. His father would have left the man snake-bit, and his grandfather would have shot him. If William’s own grandson understood his decision, he’d give the rifle to the boy.

  He chuckled to himself, thirty-two years old and talking to an unborn child. After his grandfather died, he’d once heard his father late at night, telling the old man about the landing on the moon. His father swore that TV people had invented it for money. The proof, he whispered into the darkness, was that nobody ever went back.

  Connie was asleep when William came home. He sat on the bed and spoke in her ear, promising a mirror with a built-in light for the bathroom. She wiggled naked across his lap. Moonlight gleamed through the window, outlining his hand along her hip. She unbuttoned his shirt and he remembered Miriam. He tightened his eyes to erase her from his mind. His father filled the gap. He stood tall and coal-dirty, holding a dinner bucket and helmet. Connie kissed William’s neck and brushed her fingers along his back. He thought of Miriam again, and this time let her stay. His father had been smiling. The big seam he’d found would make the family rich.

  OLD OF THE MOON

  Cody told everyone within range how wicked he’d been for thirty years of his life. He carried a pistol. He drank a pint of whiskey every day. He once tied a man to a hickory tree with old barbed wire and stole his boots.

  “I left him skunk-bait and barefooted,” Cody would say. “I was straight flat bad back then, but not no more.”

  He’d clear his throat as if to spit, then quietly use a handkerchief and tell about a mare he’d won in an all-night card game. He was riding home at dawn when a summer storm dappled the road dust. The horse veered to shelter beneath a silver maple. Cody broke a switch and beat the mare’s back legs until it stepped onto the muddy trail. Lightning shot from a thunderhead and struck the horse. The mare slowly toppled, its body black and stiff, pinning Cody to the road. When the storm passed he watched steam rise from the mare’s hide.

  The next day Cody shaved his beard, gave away his rifle, three pistols, two quarts of liquor, and nine decks of greasy cards. He quit cigarettes and coffee. He joined the Clay Creek Church of God. When the pastor died, Cody offered to fill in. Within a month, he’d doubled the small congregation by offering himself as proof of the Lord’s work. “If a grade-A son of a bitch like me can get saved,” he told people, “you can, too.” Cody still had the same hard eyes, but where they used to be mean as a bear, now they looked like he could tame one.

  In early spring, he carried a small red Bible east along a dirt road humped in the middle by weeds. Every mile, he nailed fliers to trees, advertising his first tent revival. The woods closed in, narrowing the road to a path that led to Tar Cutler’s house. Tar was old as stone. He lived in a section of woods that people were afraid of, near Shawnee Rock, and was related to half the county. He’d fired shots at VISTA workers, census takers, and tax men. Tar hadn’t been to church since the preachers had given up the Old Testament for the New, and Cody figured if he could save a sinner like Tar, all his kin would join the church.

  At the top of the hill Cody walked among the shadowed hardwood trees. He had a flashlight but wanted to save the batteries for the night walk back. The air chilled, smelling of rain. Tar’s house threw shade down the hill, blending with the darkness of the woods. Cody shouted but no one answered. He stomped the porch in case Tar was going deaf, yelled again, and opened the door. A terrible smell rushed out, the nauseating sweet stench of rotten meat. Cody didn’t want to go inside, but felt he had to in case it was a dead dog that Tar hadn’t buried yet. He covered his nose and stepped into an empty kitchen. Spiderwebs spanned the room corners. Tar was lying in his bed, eyes closed, a half-smile on his face. His shoulder and arm had been gnawed by rats.

  Cody
spat on the floor, angry at having come all this way for nothing. Without Tar’s relatives, the revival would be a flop. The same people would come who always went to church: old people afraid of death, single women with kids, and men trying to please their wives. Cody suddenly grinned. He would tell everyone that just before Tar died, he’d been saved.

  Cody dragged a chair beside the bed, surprised to find a tape recorder lying on the blanket. Tar had no phone, plumbing, or electricity, and he wouldn’t own a tape recorder. Cody blew the dust away. Through the clear plastic window he could see a tape. Since Tar couldn’t read or write, Cody thought the tape might be a will. Maybe old Tar had money buried somewhere he wouldn’t mind donating to the church.

  He carried the recorder to the porch, rewound the cassette, and pressed the play button. The tape recorder hissed. A man cleared his throat, whinnied a laugh, and said hello. Furniture scraped the floor. The voice began talking, shaky at first, then with more confidence. Cody held the tape recorder in his lap and listened to Tar Cutler speak.

  I’m sitting in the bedroom of a house I built fifty-nine years ago. The only color to the hills is pine. We had one snow that mostly melted off, but there’s some places the sun won’t reach, shade strips running east, where snow lays like rope. You can hear sound a long ways off. The end of this ridge has always had my people living on it and I’m the last. My wife died and my kids left. I used to have a truck but I burnt the clutch out using it to plow my garden.

  Worst thing I ever did was outlive my wife. Women live hard here. It ain’t that men have it easy, I got a brother had a tree fall on him logging the woods, but women just don’t get the off-time a man does. Anymore, there’s not much left for me but waiting on winter, then waiting on spring. Time piles up like brush. You burn it in the fall and all you remember are the glowing cinders. I got ash heaps everywhere I look.

  A road was built twenty-six years ago and instead of hauling things in, it took coal out. When the mines shut, my sons left to find work. Then my girls went off hunting husbands on account of all the boys gone. Now they want me to teach their kids the olden ways, who our family is, and how we lived. Thing is, I ain’t aiming to leave. I visited my second daughter once, up in Ohio, and it didn’t suit me long. She gave me a tape recorder and extra batteries. Said to send them tapes. Telling ain’t hardly the same with no kids to listen at me, but here goes anyhow. I wasn’t born yet, but many a winter night I’ve listened to my grandpaw tell this by the fire. He heard it off his daddy back before the Silver War.