“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.
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.