The trashman nodded and Ray went in the house for money. The trashman tucked the cash in his shirt pocket without counting it. He flipped his cigarette in the yard.
“Franklin run me off for that once,” the trashman said.
“What?”
“Throwing a butt in his yard.”
“Don’t doubt it,” Ray said. He aimed the rifle up the hillside. “He’s run me off a few times, too.”
The trashman thought that was funny.
“Run you off,” he said. “Your own daddy.”
Ray let his face turn blank and cold, staring at the man until he backed the truck down the drive and out the ridge. Ray fired several times at the stump, adjusting the sight to correct the slight pull to the left. He aimed at the milkweed pod. It exploded in a burst of feathery white that drifted on the breeze.
In Detroit he went to a bar after work where other Kentuckians drank. Ray had met his wife there. She was from Hazel Park, a neighborhood so full of Appalachians it was called Hazel-tucky. Her parents had headed north for work in the sixties. Having grown up with stories of the hills, she’d been enthusiastic about her return until winter in the cold house. They slept on a couchbed with an electric blanket. There was a separate control for each side of the blanket and Ray kept the heat low on her side, hoping she’d roll his way in the night. Instead, she wore long johns. At the first sign of spring, she called a cousin who came for her. Ray didn’t blame her. He only wished she’d talked to him first.
He went inside and called his father’s house. After several rings, his father grunted into the phone.
“I just bought a rifle,” Ray said. “A repeater. Want to come and try it?”
“I don’t know,” his father said.
After a long silence, Ray said good-bye and kicked the phone across the floor. He figured his father would view the call as weakness. Franklin had not visited Ray since he’d been back, although they lived on the same hill, at opposite ridges.
Ray looked through the window at tufts of grass struggling in the clay dirt. It was his dirt and his grass and his house. The dream of all Kentuckians in Detroit was to come home for good. Now that he was back, he realized that people here wanted to be left alone. There was more community at the Chrysler plant than on his home hill.
Ten minutes after the phone call, Ray was surprised to see his father climb the gravel driveway and stop at the boundary ditch. The sun pushed Franklin’s shadow across the yard. He wore a hat, long coat, and boots. He was carrying a rifle. Ray shook his head. He should have figured his father would visit if he could come armed.
Ray slipped ten rounds into the ammo slot and tipped the rifle, hearing the bullets slide down the track. He chambered a final slug and clicked the dull red button to lock the trigger. He went outside. Franklin stared at him from the property’s edge, and Ray realized that he was waiting for a greeting. This was Ray’s land. It was on him to speak first.
A dog began barking along the ridge. Another answered from down the hill. Ray recognized each voice, knew their owners. A crow called from the tree line. Franklin and Ray watched each other as the hounds continued to bark.
“Dogs,” Ray said.
“Ought to be shot.”
“There’s a flat spot on top of the hill,” Ray said. “It’s a good place for us.”
He tipped his head to an old logging trail thick with horseweed, and waited for his father. Franklin went around the woodpile. He picked up the hatchet.
“Shouldn’t ought to leave this laying around,” he said. “Somebody might get hurt.”
He held the hatchet in front of his face as if aiming at Ray. In a swift motion, Franklin sank the blade into a log and stepped past his son. He began to climb the hill, grunting with effort.
Ray left the path for a shortcut. He crossed the ditch and used saplings to pull himself up the slope. Sawbriars raked his clothes, bit into his arms and legs. He was snared and his father was already nearing the top. It would take time to work himself free, or he could plunge forward and hope none stabbed too deep. Ray swept his arm at an angle against the thorns. A thick briar whipped the air and tore his jaw. Squatting, he wiggled like a pup beneath the interlaced overhang and crawled out.
His father leaned on a knee, his breath coming hard. Behind him a nuthatch walked headfirst down a pine trunk. Woodsmoke drifted the air. The dogs were quiet.
“Looks like you got waylaid,” Franklin said.
Ray touched the welt and wiped blood on his pants.
“Just briars is all.”
Ray walked to the end of the clearing where a caved-in pony pen sat among walnut trees. He placed four nuts on a rotted board, wondering if his father’s rifle was loaded. The wind moved sassafras smell along the ridge. A gust rippled Franklin’s overcoat and he pushed it awkwardly, reminding Ray of a woman holding down a skirt. He could not recall ever seeing his father anywhere but in his own house or yard. Now, against the barren hillside, Franklin looked vulnerable.
“Headaches staying gone?” Ray said.
“Yes. How’s your wife?”
“All right, I guess.”
“Not too dirty?”
Ray frowned. His father had always been extremely polite about his daughter-in-law. When Ray brought her to visit, he’d picked lint from her clothes and complimented her hair.
“She needing a shower?” Franklin said.
“Couple more weeks and the bathroom’ll be done. Everything takes longer than I think.”
“Tell her to come over and get cleaned up.”
Ray waited for the invitation to include him, but his father was checking his rifle, and Ray understood that he wasn’t really welcome. The house he’d grown up in was no longer home. The whole hill had changed. Town water meant anybody could shove a trailer out a ridge. It was the same as a city, but Detroit was more honest. It didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was — a place where a man could get shot over nothing.
Ray placed an open box of ammunition on a stump. Franklin tugged the bolt and slipped a bullet from his pocket into the breech. A thread clung to the exposed lead.
“Use mine,” Ray said. “Copper casing’ll keep your barrel from nastying itself up.”
“Stayed gone five years and still yet talking like a hillbilly.”
“Beats a redneck.”
“What’s wrong with that? A man who works the land gets sunburnt. My dad’s neck was red his whole life.”
Franklin looked across the hollow at the pink dogwood dotting the early spring woods. A red-tailed hawk soared beyond a far ridge.
“You and my dad,” Franklin said. “You two would’ve killed each other. See that hawk. He could shoot those out of the air with an army pistol.”
“Hard shot.”
“He could throw a hatchet like a tomahawk. Make it stick right where he wanted. Said he learned it off his granddaddy, who’d fought that way.”
“Pretty tough.”
“No, he was what they call a late homosexual. He never liked me much.”
Ray followed the hawk’s flight above the hill. He didn’t believe his father. Franklin’s dad had died young, and it occurred to Ray that since Franklin had never been an adult son, maybe he didn’t know how to deal with his own.
“What makes you say that about him?” Ray said.
“Right before he died,” Franklin said, “he started in wearing flowerdy shirts and going to town at night. Somebody sent roses to the funeral home. There wasn’t no card.”
“Maybe he had a girlfriend.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Franklin said. “I ain’t nothing but the middleman.”
“You’re more than that.”
“If you’d stayed gone, I wouldn’t have to be anybody.”
Franklin brought the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The sudden noise echoed between the hills and faded down the hollow. Pieces of shattered walnut flew into the brush. He ejected the shell, slipped a fresh bullet in, and shot the second nut.