Nop's Trials

by Donald McCaig

  “Nop is gone. Why can’t Dad realize that?”

  Beverly thought Lewis was changing, that he was caught between what he’d been and what he was to become. Softly she said, “It’s real important to him, Penny. I’m not sure I’d want him to quit before he’d tried everything he could.”

  But Penny was shaking her head, exasperated, before Beverly had finished. “I don’t think you understand. Me and Mark—we’re about ready to give up on Dad. I don’t think we can keep on living here with Dad treating him like he does. Mark was studying ag science, Ma. He grew up in the Future Farmers. He knows things. He could be a good farmer. But Dad won’t give him a chance. Yesterday, they stopped at Crossroads Exxon for a Coke. Dad wouldn’t let Mark pay for it. ‘You’re too poor,’ that’s what Dad said to him. Ma, we’re not that poor.”

  It was late when Lewis and Mark finally got in and later still when they finished feeding and crawled into bed. The next morning, quite early, they drove out again and by nine o’clock they were bumping past the sign that said END STATE MAINTENANCE at the head of Sally Gap.

  “I hope Sheriff Lohr is right,” Mark said.

  “Uh-huh. Would you look at that pile of trash? This’d be a gold mine for the recyclers. I suppose if you pulled that trash heap away, the whole shack would fall in.”

  “Who lives here?”

  “I don’t know. One of Grady’s kin. Lester maybe. I don’t know many of the Gumms. Used to see them at the dances when I was a younger man but not anymore. Couple years back Grady came by, wanted to drive our river bottom during hunting season, and I let him.”

  “That backhoe’s old enough for the Smithsonian. Damn these ruts!”

  “Oh, it’s a bad road all right. That’s Grady’s place up ahead, the mobile home with the addition on the back. Those are his dogs.”

  “I don’t see Nop.”

  “Well, it was a long shot. Sheriff Lohr told us that. He said Lester Gumm had been talking about a stockdog and then denied everything. We followed up thinner leads than this one.”

  They pulled up scanning the pack of barking dogs. “Bear dogs, coon dogs. I don’t see no Border Collies. Man who’ll keep a dog in one of those hollow gum doghouses will do anything. Look at that Norwegian bitch. Now there’s a cross dog if I ever seen one. No. Don’t get out of the truck. It ain’t good manners until somebody invites us to step down.”

  One of Grady’s youngest came out of the addition. Smudged T-shirt and loaded diapers. The boy had a thumb in his mouth and eyed the strangers warily.

  “Why don’t you honk your horn?”

  “Oh, Grady knows we’re here. He’s just deciding whether he wants to come talk to us or not. We might wait out in this yard all day.”

  Another young ’un squeezed through the door and stood next to the first. A little older, wearing too-short corduroy pants, no socks above his runover tennis shoes.

  “Don’t that boy know it’s cold out here?” Mark asked.

  “Roll down your window and ask him if his daddy’s home.”

  Mark did. The kids stayed mum as statues. The older slipped back inside. Couldn’t see much through the door crack except a piece of fabric, might have been the end of a coverlet or a blanket.

  Grady Gumm emerged wearing an oil-stained jacket and one of those sports fisherman’s caps with the extremely long bill and braided hatcord.

  He looked them over, quite expressionless. He spat tobacco juice in the yard. He looked them over again.

  He slapped his youngest on the butt. “Get inside now. You got stink in your drawers, boy.”

  Still sucking his thumb, the boy disappeared. Grady walked around the front of the truck. “Mornin’, Lewis. I wasn’t sure it was you behind the wheel. I never met this other fellow.”

  “Mornin’.”

  “You think it’ll ever warm up? Seems to me it’s been awful chilly. Winter’s supposed to have quit us by now.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You get all your lambs yet?”

  “Oh my, yes. Our lambs come in January and February. We’re about ready to take a load to market.”

  “Uh-huh.” Grady spat again.

  “This here’s my son-in-law, Mark Hilyer.”

  Grady nodded. “Hilyer. That’s not a name I’m familiar with.”

  “Mark’s from Ohio. Where’d you say?”

  “Columbus. That’s where I was born.”

  “Right good farms out in Ohio.” Grady could be polite as long as anyone.

  “Grady, I been meanin’ to ask you about a dog.”

  Grady’s broad grin. “Well hell, Lewis. You know me. Ain’t nothin’ I’d rather do than talk dogs. Now I got me a real fine Walker coonhound I been wantin’ to sell. That bitch over there, second to last doghouse. That’s her. I’d keep her but I already got one litter off her and I’m gonna keep a couple pups.”

  “No,” Lewis said, “my coon-hunting days are done. That’s a sport for young men, traipsing through the woods all night.”

  Grady ran his hands through his hair. He picked at the chrome strip on the side of Lewis’s pickup. “You know,” he said, “I like a Ford truck. You got the F-250 three-quarter ton, same as my blue truck. ’Course you don’t have the four-wheel drive.”

  “Grady, I don’t know if you heard, but I lost me a good stockdog on Christmas day. Best young dog I ever owned. Now that dog’s worth five hundred dollars to me and I wouldn’t be asking too many questions were I to get it back. Black-and-white dog. Here, I got a picture of him. That’s my wife, Beverly, standing by the dog. Dog answers to ‘Nop.’”

  Grady’s smile was strained. “Five hundred dollars. Whooee, that’s a powerful sum. I’ll let you have the Walker coon dog for fifty.”

  “I don’t believe I’d be interested in any coonhound,” Lewis said. He got out of the truck, just like he’d been invited, and Mark followed suit.

  “Man, don’t you love to hear coon dogs cry,” Grady said, backing a step.

  “Sheriff Lohr says Lester might know something about my dog. I surely would like to get that dog back.”

  Grady puffed up his chest and cheeks. His hands clenched at his sides. “If it’s Lester you want, maybe you better talk to Lester.”

  Lewis turned around. Lester’d come up pretty quiet, just like he was stalking after deer, and the rifle in his hand would have done for any deer, sure enough.

  Lewis breathed in. Lewis put both hands on his hips.

  Lester pasted on a smile that somewhat overlapped his lips. “Groundhogs,” he said.

  “Groundhogs ain’t out yet,” Lewis said. “End of the month you’ll start seeing your groundhogs.” Lewis took a deliberate step toward Lester, then another.

  Like a hockey player, Mark Hilyer bumped the older man out of line. Mark got in front and stuck out his hand. “I believe that’s a genuine antique gun you got there. Mind if I take a look at it?”

  Relieved, Lester gave up the rifle without a murmur. “It’s an old thing, sure enough. Grandpap brought it back from the Spanish War, the Teddy Roosevelt war. I been meaning to put a scope on it but ain’t got around to it yet.”

  Mark read the barrel. US ARMY ORD. KRAG CAL. 45-70. “It’s an old-timer all right. I’ll bet you’ve killed yourself some deer with this.”

  “I expect I have,” Lester replied modestly.

  Grady went to the cage and peered at Sourball. He spat a stream of tobacco into the dog’s face and Sourball attacked the wire that confined her.

  Lewis had been pumping himself up to take that rifle away from Lester, so he was white and his hands shook a little. He walked away from the dogs to the far side of his pickup and leaned against the fender.

  Mark said to Lester, “You know, maybe you and me ought to talk this over. About the dog and all.” Mark never looked to see how Lewis was taking it. Mark never lifted his eyes off Lester’s face.

  Lester’s grin was odd shaped. Lester didn’t have too many teeth but the ones he did have were strong and yellow.
r />   Grady Gumm shook the wire cage; Sourball’s barking got louder.

  When Mark returned his rifle, Lester looked embarrassed. “Okay,” he said. “Why don’t we go up to my house. That way you can see all our dogs and satisfy yourself we ain’t got yours. What was its name?”

  “Nop. Black-and-white Border Collie.”

  Lester led the way up the hollow, hopping the ice-encrusted mud puddles, and Mark followed right behind. Lester skirted the great pile of garbage outside his shack. The tiny yard had room enough for his rust-spotted Datsun and the motorcycle he was trying to get ready for the summer. Lester never was any great shakes as a mechanic but never let that stop him.

  “You kids get on back in the house,” he hollered and two scruffy-looking young ’uns vanished.

  Lester’s coon dog was chained in front of a plywood doghouse.

  “This is the only dog I got,” Lester said. “Unless you want to look at the house dogs my wife keeps.”

  Mark smiled. Didn’t say anything.

  When he couldn’t stand the silence anymore, Lester Gumm yelled for his wife to bring Trixie and Pug out of the house. He added, “Move your lazy butt, woman.”

  Sounds of a scuffle from inside. The walls of that shack were not much thicker than cardboard and anything said inside was audible outside just as clear.

  A fat woman came to the door with two fat pug dogs clutched in her arms. “What you want these dogs for?” she asked. “These dogs are my dogs.” She kissed one of the pug dogs on the ear. The dog panted.

  “Now that’s all our dogs,” Lester said. “These two and my coon dog, Jim.” He capped his triumph with a smirk. “What you say your dog looked like?”

  Mark felt very tired. He looked away at the spindly timber that lined the slope, at the pile of garbage, at the peeling asphalt shingles on the side of the shack, at the doghouse. He didn’t want to look at Lester.

  “Go on, woman. Go on back inside. You can take my rifle too. I just hope the house is clean for a change, in case this man here wants to search it.”

  Mark didn’t want to search the house. Didn’t want to look for Lewis’s dog anymore, any place. Since Christmas Lewis and Mark had been down most of the unpaved roads in three counties looking for Nop without luck. Beverly and Penny had handled all the lambing, lambed out better than eight hundred ewes, with no help though they had two strong men on the farm who might have lifted a hand if they hadn’t been so … preoccupied.

  And though the two had spent hours together in the cab of that truck—knew what the other took in his coffee—knew how the other acted when tired at the end of a day—knew how each other smelled—nothing had changed between them. They’d got themselves stuck in the mold of who they’d been.

  Mark extracted a home-rolled cigarette from the crush-proof box that served him as a cigarette case. The odd jobs he’d found had kept him in tobacco and Penny’s baby shower had provided baby necessaries, but Mark didn’t know where he was going to come up with money for the hospital when the baby came.

  Respecting the appeal in Lester’s eyes, Mark extracted a second cigarette and Lester cupped his hands for the light. “Obliged,” he said. “Old Lewis Burkholder, he gets real hot. I thought we were gonna tangle down here.”

  “Lewis’s got a temper. I expect Grady Gumm’s got a temper too.”

  Lester laughed knowingly.

  Mark had hoped to learn something from Lester. He’d hoped to show Lewis a thing or two. The trees on the hill were smoke gray. Lazily, the coon dog thumped at his ear.

  Mark felt a tingle at the base of his spine. His mouth went dry, so he had to moisten his lips to speak and still he sounded funny. “Jim. The dog’s name is Jim, you said.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  When Mark knelt, the dog came right up to him, belly crawling like a dog that’s been often beaten. Mark tugged the dog’s floppy ears. Hunkered over the dog, Mark turned the dog’s terribly familiar broad yellow collar around in his hands. Trembling, he noted the twisted rivets that had once held Nop’s name tag and dog license.

  He scratched the dog’s ears and murmured something soothing and unbuckled the collar. His skin felt tight, the arm hairs coiled up like springs.

  That quick, he dangled the collar in Lester’s face. “What’d you do with Lewis’s dog?”

  Lester had completely forgotten the collar. His habits favored silence, but the evidence of that collar was right before his eyes, the torn rivets where Grady Gumm had used the wire cutters that cold December day. Lester stuttered. “I d-don’t know nothing.”

  Mark might have explained how he bought the collar himself, how the little leather shop would certainly identify it, but he had enough sense to keep mum. He simply swung the collar, like the object was proof positive. “That dog was worth a lot of money,” Mark said. “More money than many an automobile. Man who stole that dog will go to prison.”

  Lester had lipped his cigarette and now he threw it down and picked tobacco flecks off his lip.

  “J-j-j-jesus,” he said. “It was just a dog.”

  “You killed Nop then?”

  “No. We never!” Lester blurted.

  Mark didn’t let up for a minute. Elaborately he pocketed the collar like it was all the evidence needed to convict. “When I take this collar to Lewis, he won’t mess around. He’ll bring it right to the sheriff. ’Course, if you was to give me Lewis’s dog, I’d keep quiet.”

  “Grady … Grady’d kill me.” Lester wished things would slow. If things slowed, he knew he’d do better.

  “I don’t care about Grady. Don’t care about you. I’d guess Lewis Burkholder’s dog is dead.”

  It was all too quick. “I never heard he was,” Lester said because that was about as noncommital as he could say.

  “Nop’s alive?”

  “I never heard otherwise.”

  Mark wanted to shake the truth out of Lester, but Lester had been shook before and no truth had fallen out of him. Lester achieved a certain calm, even a certain dignity. He set his lips tight. “I don’t want to spend no more time on the Law than I have already, but I don’t reckon I have a choice. If you’re gonna give that collar to the sheriff, I hope you give me time to say good-bye to my family.”

  The fat woman and her two yippy dogs, Lester’s scruffy kids. Mark had a moment of sympathy for Lester’s life. Mark lit up another cigarette. He put the crush-proof box back in his pocket, ignoring the appeal in Lester’s eyes. “Old Lewis and Old Grady. Just the same. Only room for one he-bull on their stomping ground. Shame to be goin’ to jail this time of year. Couple weeks, the redbuds will be flowering and the dogwoods. I’ll give you this collar if you give me a lead about Nop.”

  Mark took the collar from his pocket. He dangled it, like bait.

  Lester stuck his right hand behind his back so he wouldn’t snatch. He wanted to say something. He didn’t want to get Grady in trouble. His brain slewed from side to side like a drunken pickup on a gravel road.

  “There’s a man in Ohio.” Lester stopped, like he was counting his words, or listening for their echo.

  Mark kept still, except he had the rolled-up collar cupped in his hands and was pressing his hands together like pressure could generate something.

  “This man in Ohio don’t love Lewis Burkholder.”

  Lester’s glance asked Mark if he’d said enough. Mark kept still.

  “Doug Whitenaur, of Monte Verde Heights, Ohio.” Lester Gumm’s lips locked up. He stuck out one dirty hand for Nop’s Christmas collar.

  SIX

  False Witness

  There is no good road through West Virginia—none. The best you can do is catch bits and pieces of interstate, always under construction. Non-interstates are twisty mountain roads where you can’t do better than 30 mph unless you opt for the wider highways where you can tailgate the coal haulers while battering your vehicle to scrap on the broken pavement, ducking potholes that have swallowed small cars whole.

  Lewis spun the
radio dial seeking the noon farm report but all he got was canned news or rock-and-roll. He didn’t have an ear for any kind of music.

  Lewis had a load of five-hundred-pound black-and-white calves going to Lebanon, Ohio, which was just north of Whitenaur’s home. From time to time a calf would kick the side of the stock trailer—bang.

  Lewis coughed. The road climbed into the Alleghenies and Lewis downshifted into third, coughed again. “I been wonderin’,” Lewis said quietly, “why you gave that collar back to that Lester Gumm. Me, I would have kept it.”

  The rurr of the tires. Lewis went down to second for a sharp turn, upshifted again.

  “Why?”

  “How do you know he didn’t lie to you?”

  “It was a dog collar. You know how many dog collars they make every year?”

  “But it was Nop’s collar. You bought it from that leather worker yourself.”

  “Uh-huh. Would you have kept it to hold over him?”

  They passed a sign for the L & J Diner, Elkton, West Virginia. “That’s the best eatin’ between here and Nitro,” Lewis said. He upshifted, downshifted, upshifted again. “Don’t reckon I would have,” he said. “It’s like most of the advice I give: be harder than me, be tougher. I want for you and Penny to have a good life. You’re gonna have to find steady work.”

  “Sometimes I wondered about that.”

  “Wondered about what?”

  “Sometimes it seemed like you would have been happier if I was to run off and Penny abort the baby.”

  Lewis swerved onto the shoulder. The trailer tilted when the smaller wheels hit the softer ground. Lewis pressed steadily with his brake foot and bit his lower lip and steered carefully until he was on asphalt again.

  Mark’s knuckles were white on the door latch, but his voice was steady. “I been thinkin’, Lewis, me and Penny might just move on down the road. We been livin’ off your hospitality since September now. And”—he grinned—”all good things got to come to an end.”

  They both stayed silent through Elkton. Neither of them was particularly hungry and they gave the L & J diner a miss.

  Fifty miles and eighty minutes deeper in the mountains, they stopped for gas. Forty gallons filled the regular tank and the saddle tank. Fifty-two dollars and change. The truck had burned a quart of oil.