Kentucky Straight: Stories

by Chris Offutt

  Thirty years before, Casey’s first wife died the day after they were married. She’d been walking the property, scouting a garden place, and Casey found her beneath a tree with a broken branch piercing her face. It ran through her eye and into her brain. Casey married again. His second wife suffered a broken neck at the bottom of a steep cliff. Casey began carrying a pistol in his hip pocket, walking with an arm trailed back, hand hovering over the gun. He looked like a sideways-running dog.

  A year later, while checking his crawdad traps on Lick Fork Creek, he saw Beth dipping water to carry home. Her denim workshirt clung to her body in damp patches. He offered to haul the buckets and she refused. The next day he came to court her on the front porch. Beth was the only daughter, the last child at home. Casey was the first man who ever made her laugh. When he left, Beth’s mother came outside to sit on an upended washtub. Nomey built a cigarette, curled the end of her pants leg, flicked ashes into the cuff.

  “What in case he wants to marry me?” Beth said.

  “His people stick by theirs.”

  “They say he’s hexed. Two wives done died on him.”

  “That boy’s had a run of bad,” Nomey said. “But he ain’t full to blame.”

  “What is?”

  “Hard telling.”

  “It still yet scares me.”

  Nomey gave Beth a piece of black moly root that she wore on a strip of leather tight above her hips. Two months later Beth announced her wedding. The local preacher refused to marry them, saying that he’d already sent two virgins to the grave and wouldn’t risk another. Casey hired a preacher from Rocksalt.

  Both families crowded the church. Two armed men guarded the door, and two more roamed the dusty parking lot. After the ceremony, several women stayed to pray for Beth, while the men escorted the newlyweds to the small house Casey had built. Beth’s brothers carefully searched the house, the chicken house, and the hog pen. She watched them leave at dusk, firing guns into the woods. Casey’s arm circled her waist.

  “Whatever you want,” he said. “It’s yours. I got enough put by for a TV set.”

  “I got what I want,” Beth said.

  “You stay right by me, hear. There’s a shotgun by the door and a pistol at the bed.” He patted the buck knife on his hip. “This don’t ever come off either.”

  Beth tipped her head and moved her mouth to his. She stood on her toes until he lifted. Her knees gripped him and he carried her through the living room to the small bed. They rattled it together for a long time.

  After Casey was asleep, Beth felt the coarse of his beard stubble. She didn’t know when it had grown. He’d shaved for the wedding, and his face had been smooth when they’d entered the house. She remembered her father’s beard pricking her face when she was a child. She hadn’t known him well before he died. Now she felt as if she knew him better.

  She lay on her side admiring the dim outlines of her new house. She couldn’t get used to the idea of being married. Nomey had told her it meant being loyal—to a certain point. If he hit her, he lost his claim. If he didn’t come home once in a while, Beth could do the same, but she had to be careful. That sort of thing was harder for women than men. Nomey chuckled then and said that most things were, and that’s why women were smarter than men. Beth had nodded, not quite understanding.

  She rose from bed and looked through the window at the toilet shack above the creek. Come spring she’d lay flat rocks along the path and plant flowers. Beyond the shadowed hulk of a car, its rusted rims on cinder blocks, Beth saw someone scurry into the woods. She left the house and trailed the person to the head of the hollow, where the figure climbed an animal trail slanting up the slope and out the ridge. Beth followed half a mile before crouching behind a poplar to peek over the tree’s lowest crotch. Sweat stung the brier scrapes on her face.

  A nighthawk swooped to a halt on the ground. The figure bent, cooing to the bird. It was a small woman with ragged clothes, long hair, and shoulders that crooked forward. She crawled past the bird to a large log lying on the earth. She slipped into its hollow opening and the bird sat in front. The sky behind was empty.

  Beth backtracked through the woods to the house. Casey was gone. An hour later the front door crashed open. He stood in the doorway, squinting against the light, his shotgun aimed at Beth, his other hand holding the pistol.

  “Beth,” he grunted.

  He pointed the shotgun at the ceiling, carefully thumbing the hammers down. He slid the pistol in a jacket pocket.

  “I ought to wear you out,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you not to go nowhere.”

  “I saw her, Casey. I followed her.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Casey stared through the window, his shotgun poised.

  “She’s gone,” Beth said. “Crawled into an old hollow log up on Flatgap Ridge. I thought she was a ghost.”

  “She might be.”

  “You know her?”

  “Hope not.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Tell me what you seen, Beth.”

  She sat in a rocking chair built by her grandfather, the wedding gift from her mother. She pushed the chair back and forth to form the rhythm for her words. When she finished, Casey’s face was white as birch. His arm veins swelled from squeezing the shotgun, trying to stop the tremble of his hands.

  “I thought she was dead,” Casey said.

  “Who is she?”

  Casey leaned the shotgun beside the door and sat on the bed. He rubbed his face.

  “The way it was went like this,” he said. “Me and Duck Sparker were playing hide-and-seek twenty years ago. It was my turn to hunt. Duck wasn’t never too hard to find because he hid in bushes, behind a tree, or in a rock hole. One time he’d been hid for a spell out Flatgap. I saw his hand hanging out of a big old log, same one you seen, I guess. It’s been there since my daddy’s time.”

  “I had me a ring whittled out of a buckeye with my initials carved on it and I thought to pull a rusty on Duck. I sneaked up to the log and put that ring on his finger. ‘I take you as my wife,’ I said, ‘til death do us part.’ Well Duck didn’t say nothing and I thought he’d fell asleep while hiding. I banged that log and said, ‘Wake up and kiss your husband!’ The hand moved and an arm followed it out and I seen it wasn’t Duck but a little dried-up woman, old as the hills. Her face was awful. She said, ‘I’ll wait on you.’

  “I ran like a scalded pup and never told nobody, not even Duck.”

  Casey’s voice melted into the stillness of the room. Dawn crawled above the farthest ridge and the outside air was day again. Songbirds filled the woods with sound.

  “Only thing ever scared me was snakes,” he said. “And I’ve killed my share. But I’m afraid now, Beth. Bad off afraid.”

  “I’ll talk to Nomey this evening. You should sleep.”

  Casey nodded. He tucked the pistol beneath his pillow and hid the knife in the blankets. “I’ll lay on the outside, Beth.”

  They awoke past noon, pressed tight together, and walked to her mother’s. He split firewood while Beth told Nomey what had happened in the night.

  “He wants to burn that log,” Beth said. “Set a punk fire and smoke her out like a varmint.”

  Her mother’s face set hard into a frown. A striped engineer’s hat covered her head.

  “I’d not do that,” Nomey said. “She might take a notion to do the same to you. Only one woman got the power to be that mean, but I thought the buzzards had her by now.”

  “You act like you know her.”

  “Honey, I do,” her mother said. “That woman fetched me into this world.”

  “Who?”

  “The last granny-woman in these parts. She caught three hundred babies on this creek. It got close to your time, she’d be waiting in the woods. You could smell her pipe smoke. When the baby started, she’d walk right in the house with nary a word said. Just go to work. She stopped birthing after that hospital got built in Roc
ksalt. She got withered up like a blight hit her, and disappeared off creation. But sometimes you could smell that pipe strong, like burning cedar chips.

  “People said she left her homeplace and went up Flatgap. Long time back, they quarried rock out of a cave up there and when weather pushed down, her fire smoke hung in the trees. I reckon she’s still living in that cave. That log just hides the cave hole.”

  Dusk slipped along the creek, filtering through the trees. Beth rolled a cigarette and held the gumless flap for her mother to lick. Nomey split a wooden match, flared half to light the cigarette, tucked the other piece into her cap.

  “It’s unreckoning what she might do,” Nomey said. “She never did have a man or kids of her own. Best be nice by her, keep her close.”

  “How?”

  “Two ways, and you ought to pray the first way works. Take and leave food at the mouth of that log ever so often. Not so much she’ll think you’re begging or buying, and not too little either. Three, four ears of corn’d be good. Don’t say nothing and don’t be scared. Just walk up bold and leave it.”

  “What’s the other way?”

  “A whole lot worse.” She raised her voice. “Casey! You come in here.”

  Boots clumped and the door banged. “Chopped enough wood for a month of Sundays,” he said.

  “You’re mine now,” Nomey said, “over marrying Beth.”

  Casey nodded, looking at the floor.

  “You listen at me on this. Stay away from Flatgap and leave them guns at the house. You hear me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “There’s more to it than you think. I know you’re fierce, but this takes another kind. You’ll have to be stouter than you ever was. You’ve got to do what me and Beth tells you.”

  “I will.”

  “You swear?”

  “I ain’t broke my word yet.”

  Nomey dug in a pocket for a chunk of moly root. “Make a hole in this and wear it,” she said. “Now you’uns get home.”

  For a year, Beth left garden vegetables by the log’s mouth. At fall slaughter she took hog; in winter, fresh venison. She missed her cycle and two months later her belly showed. When Casey came home from clearing timber, Beth’s eyes were shy. “I’ve got a secret,” she said. “I’m filled with us.”

  Casey’s beard opened in a smile. He hugged her, then released her, frowning. “Did that hurt?”

  “You can’t squeeze it out that easy. It ain’t no bigger than a radish.”

  They slept with their hands together on Beth’s middle. In the morning Casey left to plow while Beth moved through the house, planning for her child. She opened the kitchen window. A breeze carried birdsong in the house, followed by the pungent scent of burnt cedar. She squeezed the moly root and prayed.

  The pipe smoke smell grew stronger every day. After a week, she went to her mother’s house and returned by midday. Nomey was right, the other way was worse than bad. Beth waited until the first day of the next full moon, then walked out Flatgap Ridge. Beyond it lay the massive shadow of Shawnee Rock. Beth stopped at the end of the ridge, face damp, fingers clenched. The log opening was dark as night.

  “Aunt Granny Lith,” Beth said. “I’m calling your name. I want my family left alone. You think we’re married to the same man, but we ain’t. He lives with me. I’ll send him here tonight and you’ll have a man for one night, not no more. You’re too old to be a wife but you won’t die like you were born. You got my word.”

  Beth stroked her swelling belly and watched a sparrow chase a jay. She turned damp leaves beneath the tree and rooted in the earth. An inch below the surface lay a chestnut with a finger-sized hole. It was brittle, nearly rotten. Beth felt the baby kick.

  After supper she told Casey about the cedar smell, what Nomey had said they had to do, and the visit to the log on Flatgap Ridge. Casey finished his salad of wild ramps and cress. His voice was gentle.

  “I don’t know much on a woman pregnant,” he said, “but I’ve heard it makes your mind take to spinning. Were you sick this morning?”

  “You got to go up on Flatgap tonight, by yourself.”

  “Won’t.”

  “You leave your clothes by the log and you crawl right inside there. It opens to an old cave.”

  “Ain’t about to.”

  “Remember what Nomey said. You got to listen and do what we say. It’s for the baby, your daughter.”

  Casey laid his fork down and straightened his back in the maple chair. His thick-knuckled hands pressed the table.

  “A girl?”

  “Nomey took a token on it.”

  “A token! I’m sick of tokens, Beth. That’s all you two can do. Give a man an old piece of root and take his pistol. Go out in the woods and dicker with a log. That ain’t my way, Beth. Someone crosses me, I stay crossed. I plow, hunt, and chop. I work, by God. I work!”

  “Tokens work, too.”

  “I never seen one.”

  “It’s knowing more than seeing.”

  “You ain’t the only one knows things. My daddy run animals out of the garden all his life. You can’t ask a rabbit to leave your lettuce alone. You got to kill it.”

  Casey tore a sleeve from his shirt. He lifted a jug of kerosene and stuffed the sleeve in the narrow mouth. He grabbed a fistful of matches from the stove.

  “Won’t do no good,” Beth said. “Even a groundhog’s got two or three back doors.”

  “She ain’t no groundhog.”

  “You’ll just make her mad.”

  “We’ll be square, then.”

  Casey lifted his shotgun and went outside. Beth heard a crash of shattering glass, then the shotgun’s roar. Before the echo faded, he fired the other barrel. Ejected shells bounced against the porch. Two more blasts came and Casey stepped inside, bleeding from his forehead.

  “Missed,” he said.

  “Was it her?”

  “Biggest nighthawk I ever did see. First step off the porch, it flew at my head. I dropped the coal oil and busted it.” He wiped his face and licked the blood. “Never knew a bird to act that way before.”

  “Come here, Casey.” Her voice was low and calm. “I got something to show you.”

  She rolled the chestnut ring across the table. Casey picked it up carefully. Carved into the shell were his initials.

  “Where’d you get this from?”

  “Her.”

  “It ain’t right, me going up there.”

  “You got to.”

  “You’re my wife.”

  “That’s why I can say.”

  “It’s against everything.”

  “Not if I tell you to.”

  “I can’t.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “That don’t make it right.”

  “You gave your word.”

  Casey smashed the chestnut with his fist. He pounded the shell to tiny pieces, swept them to the floor.

  “I can fix your shirt,” Beth said.

  “Me, too.” Casey ripped the other sleeve away. “Nothing wrong with it now.”

  She embraced him, rocking and moaning low in her throat. At dusk he left the house. The air was white as day from the moon bloated full above the ridge. Beth watched him walk into the night, the first time she’d seen him without a gun.

  She melted lye on the stove, stirred in hog tallow and crumbled sage. She ground the broken chestnut and sprinkled the powder in a pot. After it cooled, she coated the tin bottom of a washtub with the mixture and began heating water, waiting without sleep for his return.

  Dawn’s light angled through the trees, changing dew to ground fog rising from the hollow. Beth stiffened at a sound on the porch. Casey entered, swaying and shirtless. Nail marks gashed his shoulders and dark clots clung to his chest. He shuffled across the floor in unlaced boots.

  “Don’t look at me,” he said.

  He threw his pants outside while she poured scalding water in the washtub. Casey crouched in the steam, hugging his knees while Beth scr
ubbed his body raw. She helped him to bed, where he lay two weeks, chilled and quaking with fever. Nomey came to dress his wounds and fill the house with the smell of snakeroot tea. They changed the sweat-soaked sheets every morning and night.

  On the fifteenth day, Casey opened calm eyes.

  “Beth,” he said.

  “I’m here.”

  He slept again and Nomey left. The next day he sat wrapped in a quilt by the stove.

  “Got any tobacco on you?” he said.

  “You don’t smoke, Casey.”

  “I’m starting.”

  She found some butts her mother had left and rolled him a fresh one. When half was gone, he spoke.

  “She begged me, Beth. She flat out begged me.”

  “She shouldn’t have.”

  “No, not that. After that. She begged me after.”

  “What?”

  “To kill her.”

  He inhaled, watching the smoke stream into the air like water. The cigarette fell. He lowered his face to his hands and cried for a long time.

  Beth tethered the mule on the creek bank, walked down to the pickup, and tumbled Casey to the ground. She used a crowbar to pry the seat loose from the truck. She tied him to the seat and hooked the logging chain to a rusty spring. At the top of the hill, she broke a willow switch and whipped the mule. Muscles rippled beneath its hide. Each nostril puffed mist and saliva foamed from its mouth.

  “Pull,” Beth yelled again and again.

  The mule lurched slowly forward. When the seat reached the top of the ridge, Beth wedged a shoulder under Casey’s crotch, and lifted him across the animal’s back. She tied his wrist to an ankle, knotting the rope tight against the mule’s belly. Her clothes were damp with sweat. Casey and the animal formed a black seamless shape in the darkness of the woods. Beth led the mule down the hollow and up the creek. At the wide place where she’d first met Casey, she tossed Lil’s hair into the water, and watched it swirl away.

  She unloaded him onto the porch and threw a quilt over him. Casey curled on his side, tucking hands between his knees, his breath coming in ragged snorts. Beth undressed and cleaned the bruised wound on her hip. Her face was scratched and her feet ached. She lay in bed, wishing the long night all those years ago had been this easy. It had broken a part of Casey and graveled him up pretty bad. She didn’t think about it often but when she did, she knew that what they’d done was right. Their four girls were proof enough, grown now, and gone.