by Chris Offutt
Little Elvis wanted bad to be a man and I started thinking on all the things that’s got a smell to them. Grasshopper piss for one. Polecats and rotten eggs. Road kill, too, but I didn’t feel like fooling with dead stuff. A boy that used to live down here did, and the state took him for cutting them animals up. He made his sister show me her thing once if I’d give him a bat my daddy killed that got in the house. After seeing her poon, I wanted that bat back. I just know he cut it up.
The only other thing I could think of was the toilet shack, which Granny called the White House. She planted honeysuckle around it to cut the smell but it drew mud daubers big as tree frogs. Me and Little Elvis went to the woods mostly. He used poison vine to wipe with once and never did wipe again after.
A month ago, I had to go bad and it was nighttime, with the moon not up yet. I sneaked out to a pine where the dead brown needles below was soft and would cover the smell up. Daddy was off fox hunting and everybody else in the world was asleep but me and it felt fine, just fine, being in the woods alone at dark. Then the hunting dogs got on my trail and started howling. I had to climb that pine, getting stickered by needles every branch. Dogs were barking below the tree, trying to claw their way up the trunk. There’s not a dog in all creation that climbs trees. That’s why trees are here, Daddy said, to give varmints somewhere to get away to.
Them dogs wouldn’t leave and I had to do my business so bad it was hurting. I got scared it would back up in me like a culvert in a storm. What I did was just go ahead and go. First I pulled my pants down and kindly hung on to the tree and let my hind end aim through limbs I wouldn’t have to climb back down on. I cut loose and the dogs jumped like somebody’d set them on fire. They were catching it in the air and eating it and then jumping again. Pretty soon they were fighting over scraps and I couldn’t get my pants up on account of needing both hands to hold on to the tree with.
The men were coming out the ridge and I heard them arguing over whose dog was at the lead, and whose fox it was. Somebody shined a flashlight on me while the others pointed guns. They started laughing. One man said to Daddy, “I told you that dog was a shit-eating dog, he’s treed your boy.”
Daddy stepped right up to the man and said, “You wouldn’t say such if I weren’t on parole.” Daddy put his gun down and looked around at all the men and said, “If he shoots me, tell the law I didn’t have a gun.” Then he hauled off and hit that man square in the face and knocked him back in the brush.
Daddy started kicking dogs off the tree trunk until there wasn’t none left. The men were cussing, trying to sort dogs out. The man who Daddy had hit was whopper-jawed and he had his rifle in both hands pointed at Daddy. Daddy put his arms up. The other men were backing away. Daddy turned to the tree real slow, looked at me, and said, “Let go, damn it.” I didn’t want to, but I did. Pine branches scraped my face half clean off and Daddy caught me. He turned back to the man, holding me in front of him. The gun was aimed right at me.
“Your own boy,” the man said.
He turned his gun and shot Daddy’s dog. He went into the woods and he was gone, and all the others were gone, and Daddy let me down and we stood there in the dark while the hound dog sound got further away until there wasn’t nothing to be heard since that shot scared everything in the woods. Daddy’s best dog was dead, its throat blown out. He made me promise not to tell Granny how the dog got killed.
Because Little Elvis wanted to be a man, I took him out to the White House and we hung our feet down through the hole. He sang, “We’re stinking our feet like old dead meat,” over and over. Mud daubers had tunneled a nest in a high corner and I seen them but it was too late. They landed on Little Elvis’s head and started biting and he tried to run, but forgot he was stinking his feet and fell through the hole. He grabbed hold of my legs. Then the mud daubers were on me and I screamed for Granny. She came out and said later she’d thought one of us had an eye poked out from all the hollering. She saw me half down the toilet hole and took me by the arm like I was laundry. Granny worked past me to snatch Little Elvis by the hair and haul him up, his head one red bump from mud dauber bites and his feet stinking all the way past his knees. Granny about busted the White House roof off laughing. She said Daddy fell in once when he was a boy, and Little Elvis thought that made it ok.
“In here?” he said. “Daddy fell in here?”
“No, it was a different place,” Granny said.
What they did back then was move the White House when the hole filled up and she said Daddy’s old hole was over where the turnips were growing now. Little Elvis got the idea that Daddy’s feet stunk from turnips. He stomped them all summer, not leaving none to eat, and groundhogs got the mush. He’d lay in the dirt and sing, “Daddy’s feet don’t get burn up ’cause he mashed them in a turnip.” The only way of keeping him out of the garden was tying him to the door but Granny’s hands were too stiff and twisty for making good knots. I turned him loose every day.
By now we called Granny the fuck-you-bitch to her face because she locked us outside till dark, then made us take our clothes off and hose each other down before we could eat supper. We weren’t allowed to wear anything in the house because of the dirt. All summer our shirt and pants laid outside overnight. Some mornings, we found Daddy laying out there, too. His head hurt so bad he had me water him with the hose. Little Elvis would sniff at Daddy’s boots so he’d know man-smell against the time he was one. Daddy said we were a damn sure pair of stand-up boys.
When the sun moved over the ridge, he crawled to shade and along noon he’d light a cigarette and talk to us. “Shoot to kill,” he said, “never wound. Fold a three-flush after five. Don’t give women gifts. Always throw the first punch.” Stuff like that he’d tell us, useful stuff that we were supposed to never let go of. I didn’t, but Little Elvis can’t remember much from day to day except food. Once he forgot how to ride a bike and I had to learn him all over again.
One day we found Daddy asleep in a car behind the house. He let us help him take it apart, and we threw hubcaps, headlights, and bumpers in the river. He unscrewed a quarter panel and put me and Little Elvis to tearing it up with tire tools. We beat and scratched until the car was stripped down like a go-cart and you could see how the gears worked. We broke all the glass out, too. Daddy stuck the big pieces in the back of his truck and drove away.
He came back with half-melted ice cream cones from Rocksalt and we ate what was left of them, looking at the car. Daddy said we could make a dune buggy of it. He’d drive us anywhere we wanted to go—wherever, we’d just go with sleeping bags, fishing rods, and night crawlers. We’d see the world living on fish and ice cream. And siphoning gas at night.
While we sat there watching the river, two police cars came to block our road. A big bald-headed cop told Daddy to sit on the grass while the short cop talked on a radio. Daddy didn’t say nothing, he just sat. Two more cars showed up, not police cars but regular cars. The men weren’t wearing cop suits but they acted like they were, and when one took his coat off against the heat, he had a pistol on a strap that went over his shoulders. He put the jacket back on when the bugs got to him. They’re bad on the river but they don’t bother me and Little Elvis because Daddy said we’re river rats and mosquitoes know better than to fool with us.
The two cops who weren’t cops had clipboards. They looked that car up and down with me watching and Little Elvis out front riding his bike and singing, “Police car squashed my daddy, police car squashed my daddy.” He rode in a circle, which he’s not good at, and kept wrecking until Daddy took him in his lap.
The man with the hid gun said, “It looks like the car all right.” Then he asked me how long it was here.
“What,” I said, “the river?”
He didn’t like me saying that, which was fine by me because I didn’t like him telling Daddy to sit under the tree. Not even Granny tells him what to do.
“We need a warrant,” the other man said. “Nothing that kid says will do us any good.”
&nb
sp; He smiled at me the way I’ve seen teachers smile when they think I done something bad and they’re pretending it ain’t bad so I’ll talk about it and they can give me a paddling. I got twelve licks once. Six for saying thank you when the teacher said I was wise, and six more for laughing after the first six licks. I had to laugh because I couldn’t cry in front of everybody. Daddy said river rats never cry.
The men who weren’t cops had that look on their face, like they wanted to give me a paddling but didn’t have the reason yet.
“How long’s this car been here, son?” the smiling one said.
I looked at him and then at the car, and I could hear Little Elvis singing.
“I ain’t your son,” I said.
The other man shook his head.
“That’s my car,” I said. “I’m putting it together. Daddy ain’t helping or nothing. We’re aiming to dune-buggy it on out of here.”
One man laughed but the second one got that teacher look again, like he finally had his reason for a whipping.
“There’s not a dune for a thousand miles any direction from here,” he said.
When I told the funny-talked lady all this she said that’s what she meant about precocious, how telling the cops that lie was precocious. I didn’t like her knowing right off it was a lie because when Daddy heard me say it, he said it was the pure truth. The bald cop pulled out handcuffs and the short one said, “Not in front of his kids.”
They made Daddy get in the back seat of the police car. They drove through the yard to the road, leaving big tracks in the grass and I wrecked my bicycle trying to catch up, bent the rim bad. I pushed it back to Little Elvis, who was sitting with his bike in a big mud hole. When I couldn’t get him to come out, I sat down with him. We smeared mud on our faces and planned to break Daddy out and they’d not know who it was because of the mud.
The funny-talked lady grinned over that and said, “Some people don’t always cooperate with people who can help. I hope you’re not one of them.”
I didn’t say nothing and she asked if there was anything I needed. I’d never thought I needed anything but if she was asking, maybe there was. So I said, “To get Little Elvis back from the place the state put him.”
I missed hearing him sing those songs even if they were dumb as ditch water. Many’s the time I tried to make some up but they never came out right. Daddy always did say I sang like a combination lock, no key. It was Little Elvis who got the talent in our family, which was ok with me.
I wouldn’t mind too bad talking to Daddy over that tore-up car business either. The owner was the same man whose dog treed me and who Daddy knocked down. I was the one who had to go and climb that pine and get the dog killed, Daddy locked up, and Little Elvis took.
I reckon Mommy’d never run off if I hadn’t busted in on her and that neighbor man one night when I couldn’t sleep for the racket they were raising. I screamed out, “You ain’t my daddy.” He looked at me back over his shoulder from where he was hunkered down in the middle of the bed like picking worms off tobacco and said, “Damn sure ain’t, runt.” He kicked me full in the head barefoot. Then he slapped Mommy in the jaw and I seen her naked buried under him with her hair in her face, and her eyes crazy.
“Go on and get,” she said to me.
I ran out of the house, into the dark and way up a hillside. I didn’t tell the funny-talked lady what it was I done up there that night, because what I done was hold off crying every which way. Jabbing a locust thorn in my hand worked best. Then Mommy and the man was gone and me and Little Elvis got moved to Granny’s house, and Daddy was home for a summer. It was a good summer, too.
The funny-talked lady hugged me right then, just reached out and yanked me to her new-smelling flannel shirt and held me against her body. I tried to squirm away but it didn’t do any good. She started in crying and that seemed like a good time to try and get a look down her shirtfront. After a while she said there was hope for me, she could save me. I told her I didn’t want to be saved. Granny got saved four times, the last after Daddy went back to La Grange. Getting saved meant smiling at all the people who didn’t like you, and they smiled back like they did.
The funny-talked lady closed her eyes and said she didn’t mean church saved, there was more than one type of that, too. She said my test scores showed potential. I asked about Little Elvis. She didn’t say anything and I could tell it was over not wanting to lie, because I used to do Granny the same way until finally I just went ahead and lied without the not wanting to getting in the way.
“What about him?” I said. “What about him?”
She put her hands on my shoulders and leaned her head to mine and looked right at me and talked quiet.
“You’re it,” she said. “You got all the potential for both of you. I’m afraid your brother is slow.”
There’s boys like that at school but Little Elvis wasn’t like them. They’re big and mean and can’t even zip their own fly.
“You lie!” I yelled out, and tried to smack her, aiming for her face but only got her arm. She caught me and hugged me tight again, just like Mommy did the neighbor man when he hit her, and I did my best to look down her shirt until finally I gave it up. I just went and gave up everything and started crying. If they could take my daddy and my brother, they might as well take me away, too.
She turned loose of me and didn’t say nothing but drove me on out the road to Granny’s. She said she’d come by tomorrow. She tried to laugh, and said she’d bring some bug spray. I got out and walked in the tracks the tow truck had made dragging Daddy’s borrowed car away. I couldn’t stop thinking on Little Elvis, and I tried to make up a song about him but it wouldn’t take. I went down on the riverbank and looked at the place where we’d thrown pieces of the car in at. There was nothing but river, not a rat in sight. I sat there till a mile past dark.
AUNT GRANNY LITH
Beth stood in shadows behind her nearest neighbor’s house, listening to her husband’s drunken laugh. Every fall was the same. Spring rain and summer sun gave a fine field of ear; late frost sweetened the crop. Casey traded half the liquor he made for supplies, and sold enough to fix the truck. His two-week bender brought him to Lil’s.
Beth jerked the back door open and stepped through the cramped kitchen to the living room. Casey was slumped on the couch, a mason jar in his hand.
“Hell’s bells,” Lil said. “Will you look at what the dogs drug in.”
“Want a seat?” Casey said.
“I’m not here on invite,” Beth said.
“You sure to God ain’t,” said Lil.
“You know what I come for.”
“Not selling Tupperware, I don’t reckon.” Lil tapped cigarette ash to the floor. “You ain’t got much say in my house. Best be leaving while you still yet can.”
“Have a drink, Beth,” said Casey. “It’s the awfullest good I ever did run.”
“You got the jar lid?” Beth said,
“Somewheres.”
“Put it on tight.”
He patted his shirt pockets, then searched his pants. Lil scooted to the edge of the couch, her knees bent, ready to spring. She took a long pull on her cigarette. Her voice was sandstone harsh.
“Casey just might be tired of you.”
“If you feel froggy,” Beth said, “jump.”
Lil flicked the lit cigarette at Beth and leaped from the couch, fingers hooked into claws. One hand twisted Beth’s black hair. Both women stumbled across the room, knocking the stovepipe loose from the flue. Creosote dust drifted the air. Lil snatched the poker, slammed it hard against Beth’s hip. Beth staggered, the low groan in her chest shifting to a growl. She spat in Lil’s face, cocked her fist, swung. Her knuckles split against Lil’s face and the poker clattered across the floor. Lil swayed like a tree at the final saw cut, mouth open, blank eyes blinking. As she fell, Beth gripped a handful of her long red hair and yanked. The hair tore loose, several strands still clinging to a chunk of scalp. Lil’s head bounced
. Her jaw was swollen and bloody.
“You won’t bushwhack no drunks for a while,” Beth said. “Leastways not mine,”
She shoved the hair in her pocket and turned to Casey on the couch. His mouth hung open, his eyes half shut. She realized that he wouldn’t have been much good to Lil, anyway. Beth yanked his shirt.
“Beth,” he said.
“I’m here.”
“My money’s on you to clean her plow.”
“Help me get you up.”
“I can’t get no upper.”
Beth dragged him to the edge of the couch. Casey braced his arm around her shoulder, and she helped him out the front door. He pushed her aside. “You follow the hard way,” he said, and tipped into the darkness, rolling down the slope, laughing and grunting. His arm smacked the truck door. “First here,” he yelled. “Beth’s on shotgun!”
She limped down the hill in moonlight glowing through the trees. Casey was a dark mound leaning against the truck. She rapped his nose with her fist.
“Pretty good lick,” he said.
“Try and puke.”
Casey shoved a finger down his throat.
When he finished, he wiped his mouth against the truck, and Beth coaxed him into the cab. She drove along the twin-rut road above the creek. Asleep against the dashboard, Casey looked angelic, his hands fisted into clubs. His face was broad as a coal shovel. A hard bump knocked Casey against her and he jerked the steering wheel. The pickup crashed down the hill, bounced over limestone, and plunged into the creek. Bullfrogs abruptly stopped their roaring.
Beth lit a match and leaned to Casey, who snored on the floorboards, short, thick arms pillowing his head. She opened the door and sank her foot into mud. The night sky was spattered white with stars. She found Orion and began walking just left of his lowest sword-star, ignoring the throbbing of her hip. Moonlight glistened on animal prints tipped by frost in the hardened mud. She followed the game path two miles to her property, bridled the mule, and draped Casey’s logging chains over its back.
