The Good Brother Page 3

  “We ended up wrecking that night. Run into the creek and not a one hurt. Killed the dog, though. Drowned it. Hack never did blame your brother. He knowed it wasn’t Boyd’s fault, same as Hack falling a tree on that man wasn’t no fault of his.”

  Taylor stood by like a clock run down from all the talking. His clothes didn’t fit right and he was moving inside them, his body twitching like a horse shaking off flies. There was a lit cigarette in his month and he started to light it again. The pupils of both his eyes were big.

  “What are you on?” Virgil said. “Trucker pills?”

  “You want some?”

  Virgil shook his head.

  “Boyd didn’t like speed either,” Taylor said. “He was an acid man. You know what he said to me once. Said ‘I want to improve reality, not see more of it.’ Best buddy I had. Crazier than a three-bailed tomcat.”

  Virgil drove to the next dormitory on their route and waited for the crash of garbage cans. About ten men had told him that Boyd was their best buddy. At first Virgil thought it was just what got said when a man died, but after a while he understood that they really meant it. Boyd’s directness endeared him to people who’d become accustomed to being discarded, but he’d never had a best friend. The closest was Virgil when they were kids, and that was an accident they’d both got stuck with.

  They’d shared a long, narrow room in the attic of their parents’ house. Virgil thought monsters lived up there, and Boyd always went first, racing up the steps to the light switch, spinning rapidly at the head of the stairs to dispel the monsters and ensure his brother’s safe passage. Even then, Virgil had been glad that Boyd was the oldest and such chores fell to him.

  After their father died of emphysema brought on by a lifetime of breathing coal dust beneath the earth, Boyd had never held a regular job. He stayed at home with their mother. It was as if there were two Boyds. One obeyed his mother, hauling water and splitting stove-wood, supplying fresh meat in fall and fish in summer. The other Boyd existed away from the house. He never came home drunk, bloody, hung over, or mad.

  The sun moved into the lane of sky between the hills, spreading heat along the hollow. Rundell increased the pace in order to finish before breaking to eat. Like hunters, the men functioned best on empty bellies.

  In midafternoon, Virgil drove off campus to the Dairy Queen on the edge of town. Taylor drank pop and ordered French fries for Dewey as a reward for having punched his timecard. The other men ate sandwiches brought from home. They sat at a picnic table in the warm sun, watching the occasional car go by. Beside them trees grew at angles from the steep-sloped hill. A dove called.

  “You know,” Taylor said, “my mamaw could hear an owl of the night and tell you who was going to die and when. She was part Choctaw,”

  “Which part?” Rundell said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do,” Rundell said. “I never worked with a man yet who didn’t claim to be part Indian. How about you, Dewey?”

  “My papaw always said he had a little Indian in him,” Dewey said. “When I was a kid, I begged him to show him to me.”

  The sound of an engine grew louder. The men looked toward the road, where a pickup stopped abruptly, its tires leaving long skid marks on the blacktop. The driver poked his arm, from the window, fired a pistol three times in their direction, and drove away.

  “What in the Sam Hill?” Rundell said.

  “Oh, shit,” Dewey said.

  “Anybody know that truck?” Virgil said.

  “Warning shots,” Taylor said.

  “Had to be,” Rundell said. “I can throw a rock straighter than he shoots.”

  “By God,” Dewey said, “he’s lucky he ain’t killed me. I’d a killed him back, by God.”

  “Boys,” Taylor said, “I reckon I know what all that was over, and don’t none of you’uns have a thing to worry on.”

  “Who does?” Virgil said. “You?”

  Taylor ran his tongue behind his lower lip, making it swell like a fuzz worm. He lifted his cap and settled it back to his head, clamping hair from his eyes.

  “Yup,” he said. “I carried a girl of his off like a cat does a kitten up to Jeff Mountain. Reckon I was lucky not to get her drawers down.”

  “Goddam, Taylor,” Rundell said. “I don’t know what to think about a man gets his work buddies shot at and sets there eating lunch big as day,”

  “Yeah,” Dewey said. He shoved his meal off the table to the ground. “Them bullets took the belly timber plumb out of me.”

  “You ain’t going to eat that?” Taylor said.

  “I couldn’t eat pie right now.”

  “You act like you was town-raised.”

  Taylor retrieved the container of French fries from the dirt. He picked through them like a carpenter gleaning lumber, holding them to the light, tossing some aside, keeping the good ones. When he chewed, the bill of his cap moved up and down.

  “We ort to find another hiding place,” Rundell said. “Getting shot at sort of hurts this one awhile.”

  “How about the ballfield,” Virgil said.

  “Ag farm,” Dewey said.

  “Freshman girls’ dorm,” Taylor said.

  They debated their favorite places to park the truck and wait out the day until Rundell made the decision and they went to the landfill. At the end of the shift they drove back to their loading dock, where the Big Boss appeared as if dumped from a boot.

  “Got a call from the sheriff,” he said. “Said shots got fired at the Dairy Queen. Said you and your men were there. Said it was oh-two-hundred in the after-damn-noon.”

  “We took a late lunch,” Rundell said.

  “Who was it shooting?”

  “None of my men.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Outside eating.”

  “How many men are at work on this crew?”

  “Oh,” Rundell said, “about half.”

  No one spoke. Each man found something to study—his boots, his hands, the hilltops beyond the lot. The Big Boss finally chuckled.

  “I don’t believe the Dairy Queen is a suitable place for lunch,” he said.

  Rundell nodded and the Big Boss walked away with one hand clasping the other behind his back. He reminded Virgil of a kid trying to hide a cigarette. As soon as he was gone, Taylor spat.

  “Short little fucker, ain’t he,” he said.

  “You best keep your timecard in good shape,” Rundell said. “He’ll be watching us now.”

  “He can go to hell. I never met a boss I liked.”

  “He ain’t near bad as most,” Rundell said, “You’re the first I ever heard of who got shot at on the fob. Maybe you should ask for hazard pay.”

  “We all should,” Virgil said. “I don’t need no bullets hitting me. How about you, Dewey?”

  “I done been shot once,” Dewey said. “Bullet cut a crease in me big enough to lay a finger in.”

  “Where at?” Virgil said.

  “In the ass,” Taylor shouted. “Go ahead, Virgil. Lay your finger in it.”

  Expecting retribution, Taylor backstepped rapidly and stumbled into the cement block wall, “Damn it, boys,” he said. “Just when I get over my damn hangover, I have to go and make my head hurt again. You’re right, Rundell. Just working with me is a hazard on my own-self.”

  The men laughed and Rundell rose from the loading dock. As one, they walked around the building to punch their timecards.

  3

  * * *

  A fierce hailstorm in May marked the boundary between spring and summer. Ice fell from the sky in blurs of white that beat tobacco beds to shreds. The storm’s passage left hailstones pooled in low spots of the earth. A few hours later the sun returned and summer began. Kentucky turned thick and heavy with green, as if the world weighed more.

  At his mother’s house, Virgil entered the old smokehouse that was now a shed. The faint smell of pork still emanated from the dark walls. On an oily workbench sat a car batt
ery, the head of a rake, and a pan full of nuts and screws. Scrap lumber leaned in a corner. He dragged the mower into the yard, jerked the cord, and the engine settled into a steady cycle. The muffler rattled against the engine housing. When Virgil tried to tighten the muffler, it came off in his hand. The threads were stripped. He figured Boyd had some private technique to keep it fastened, a wire in the right spot, or a delicate turn of the threaded end. He found wire in the shed and spent thirty minutes rigging the muffler in place.

  The afternoon sun lay above the humped horizon of the hills. Virgil heard a car with an automatic transmission coming up the hill. The sound faded into the curve at the top, then increased along his mother’s ridge. The county sheriff parked at the property’s edge and strode across the high grass. Troy wore an official hat and jacket with a badge, although the rest of his clothes were casual. The last time he had visited was six years ago, courting Sara.

  “Hidy, Virge,” he said.

  “Troy.” Virgil nodded once in greeting. “Any news?”

  The sheriff shook his head.

  “Your mom home?”

  “She stays home, Troy. Don’t hardly go nowhere but church. Sara takes her.”

  “I’ve seen that before,” Troy said. “I’m not much of a churchgoer myself.”

  “No.”

  “Me and your brother, we ran together some.”

  “You were pretty wild before the badge.”

  “Yeah, buddy. I always remember Boyd telling me what Jesus said to the hillbillies before he died.”

  “What?”

  “ ‘Don’t do nothing till I get back.’ ”

  Troy looked up the hillside, where road dust settled onto the brush, forming a patina over each leaf. He wiped his forehead and spat.

  “You sure you can’t just talk to me,” Virgil said. “And let Mommy alone.”

  Troy stared into the treeline. His tone of voice shifted, as if backing away.

  “It’s got to be her. Official.”

  Virgil led him up the plank steps and across the rain-grayed porch. In the front room of the small house a bare bulb lit framed photographs of Boyd and their father. On the other walls hung pictures of Sara, Marlon, and their children. There would be no pictures of Virgil until he produced kids or died.

  Sara came into the room, blocking light from the kitchen.

  “I warn you, Troy,” she said. “I ain’t going peaceable.”

  The sheriff laughed.

  “How Debbie could stand being married to a man mean as you I don’t know,” Sara said. “Has she had that baby yet?”

  “Three more weeks, Sara. She’s doing fine.”

  “And you?”

  “Same.”

  “I meant about having kids.”

  “Don’t bother me,” Troy said. “I told her we’d quit whenever she wanted.”

  “Sounds like you changed some.”

  Troy’s face turned red and he closed his mouth. When he spoke, his voice had shifted again, as if he’d stepped behind an invisible wall.

  “I’m here to see your mom, Sara. Need to talk to her direct. You all can be present, but it’s got to be her.”

  Sara looked quickly at Virgil, who shrugged. She brought their mother into the front room.

  “Mrs. Caudill,” Troy said.

  “Hidy, Troy. You’re too late. She’s been married nigh five years.”

  “Could be I’m up to court you this time.”

  Her face softened briefly.

  “Law says one at a time, Troy. You get the divorce, then come back.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He removed his hat. “I just wanted to tell you that the investigation is open and ongoing. At this time we have no suspects. We have no evidence and no weapon. What we have got is more rumor than an oak’s got acorns, and it all points to a man named Billy Rodale. He’s been questioned. He denies it. There’s nothing I can do.”

  The sheriff slowed his words, careful to look only at Virgil’s mother.

  “No one is willing to testify, Mrs. Caudill. You know how it is. People keep their mouths shut in a situation like this. If something happened to Rodale, people would stay quiet on that, too. If there’s no witness or weapon, I couldn’t do nothing about him, either. The person who did it would probably not get hisself caught.”

  He stood and held his hat in both hands.

  “I’m speaking for myself now, Mrs. Caudill. I feel terrible about it. All of it. But the law can’t do a thing.”

  Virgil followed him to the porch. The sheriff avoided his eyes as he walked across the yard. He drove out the ridge and Virgil watched the road dust rise like smoke.

  In the house, Sara and his mother sat on the couch. No one spoke. Virgil saw in their eyes what they wanted him to do. He left the house.

  He started the mower and worked slowly because the grass was high, lifting the front wheels to prevent stalling. He mowed steadily, following the pattern he’d learned from his father—mark the perimeter first, then work inside it. He’d learned to paint a wall the same way. He wondered where the urge came from to delineate the edges of everything, to make maps and build fences.

  He eased the mower along the edge of the hill, swerving instinctively for a tree that wasn’t there. He wondered if someone had cut it down, but there was no stump. Sweat stung his eyes and his wet shirt clung to his back. He got his bearings, which seemed ridiculous in his own yard, and saw the tree. It was in front of him, four feet over the hill, surrounded by ground cover. The tree was bigger but he recognized the angle of its growth. As a child he had pushed the mower on the other side of the tree, but now there was no grass near. He was stunned to realize that the hill was falling slowly away.

  He shut off the mower and rested in shade. The raucous sound of the engine had hushed the birds, and the abrupt silence made his ears ring. The acrid smell of the septic tank drifted on a breeze. If the very earth could shift, anything could.

  The sound of a car engine drew his attention, and he placed it as Abigail’s big Ford. He’d known Abigail all his life. They’d dated in high school but she had married the star quarterback of Eldridge County High and moved to Ohio. He drank and beat her, a secret she’d kept until the day she arrived at her mother’s house with a carload of belongings. She’d taken a two-year course in accounting and now worked in the payroll department of Rocksalt Community College.

  For the past four years, everyone in Blizzard figured she and Virgil would get married. Virgil went along with the idea. She would marry him if he asked, and they’d talked about it in an oblique fashion, but he didn’t ask. He couldn’t, although he wanted to. He wouldn’t ask until he knew what held him back in the first place.

  He tightened the muffler and returned the lawnmower to the shed. A bobwhite emitted its three-note call. He inhaled the scent of dusk, the coming dew. Katydids creaked like old bedsprings. Lightning bugs made a trail of yellow specks in the dimming air. He and Boyd used to wait until they blinked, then pull their bodies apart and smear the glowing mush on their faces.

  Virgil leaned against the back door, dreading entry and supper. From inside came the rising laughter of Abigail, his sister, and his mother. It struck him that half his life happened when he wasn’t around. While he washed his hands for supper, Marlon arrived, having left the kids at an aunt’s house. Virgil stood in the kitchen door and watched him with the women. Marlon had more of a place in the house than Virgil did.

  Sara noticed Virgil in the doorway.

  “There he is,” she said. “Poop-head’s here.”

  “Yard mowed?” Abigail said.

  “You know the hill’s going over the hill out there.”

  “No,” Abigail said. “I didn’t know that.”

  Everyone waited for him to continue.

  “This house,” Virgil said, “is a good six feet closer to the edge of the hill than it used to be.”

  Marlon stomped on the floor, frowning as he gauged the walls.

  “Foundations ain’t twist
ed,” he said, “or the windowglass’d be broke. I’d say the house’ll last awhile yet.”

  “But will the hill?” Virgil said.

  He sat at the metal-rimmed formica table. The ceramic salt and pepper shakers were a hen and rooster that leaned against each other.

  “You sure get funny thinking in that head of yours,” Sara said. “Reckon when the hill went over? Last night?”

  “No. Sort of slow and steady for twenty years.”

  “We all been going over it for twenty years.”

  “Yes,” their mother said, “and it’ll be going over us for many a year more.”

  Abigail removed a tray of cornbread from the oven. The smell washed through the room like mist.

  “Glad I ain’t from off,” she said. “People from off don’t know how to do.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Sara said. “You’re the only one here who’s left out of here.”

  “Worst thing I ever did was leave.”

  “Well, you came back. I know one man’s glad of it.”

  Sara looked at Virgil with an expectant expression.

  “I’m real glad,” he said.

  “Set and eat,” their mother said. “You’uns put a bottom to your stomach.”

  They gathered at the table, which held pieces of fried chicken lying on the brown paper of a grocery bag. The heavy plates were veined by a network of fine cracks. They ate without talk, as if at work, and Virgil remembered that the back and neck had been his father’s favorite pieces. The family rule was that whoever ate them also received the delicacies—liver, heart, and gizzard. Everyone took a second piece and Virgil’s mother served the neck to Marlon. Virgil wished he were in his trailer eating a frozen pot pie.