Child of God (9 page)

He had gone about a quarter mile before he stopped again. He stood there in the middle of the road staring straight ahead. Well kiss my ass, he said. He started back up the road. Then he started to run.

When he got to the car it was still chugging over and Ballard was out of breath and sucking long scoops of cold air down his throat into his seared lungs. He jerked open the door and climbed in and reached over the back seat and tugged at the dead man’s trousers until he got to the back pocket and reached in and got hold of his wallet. He lifted it out and opened it. Family pictures within the little yellowed glassine windows. He took out a thin sheaf of bills and counted
them. Eighteen dollars. He folded the money and stuck it in his pocket and put the wallet back in the man’s trousers and climbed back out of the car and shut the door. He took the money out of his pocket and counted it again. He started to pick up the rifle but he paused and then climbed back into the car again.

He looked along the floor in the back and he looked along the seat and he felt under the bodies. Then he looked in the front. Her purse was on the floor by the side of the seat there. He opened it and took out her changepurse and opened it and took out a small handful of silver and two wadded dollar bills. He rummaged through the purse and took the lipstick and rouge and put them in his pocket and snapped the purse closed and sat there with it in his lap for a minute. Then he saw the glovebox in the dashboard. He reached and pushed the button and it fell open. Inside were papers and a flashlight and a pint bottle of bonded whiskey. Ballard fetched out the bottle and held it up. It was two thirds full. He closed the glovebox and climbed from the car and put the bottle in his pocket and shut the car door. He looked in at the girl once again and then he started down the road. He’d not gone but a few steps before he stopped and came back. He opened the car door and reached in and turned on the radio. Tuesday night we’ll be at the Bulls Gap School, said the radio. Ballard shut the door and went on down the road. After a while he stopped and took out the bottle and drank and then he went on again.

He was almost to the roadfork at the foot of the mountain before he fetched up the final time. He turned around and looked back up the road. He squatted in the road and set the butt of the rifle down and gripping the forestock in both hands he rested his chin on one wrist. He spat. He looked at the sky. After a while he stood up and started back up the road. A hawk was riding the wind above the mountainside, turning the sun whitely from panel and underwing. It came about, flared, rode up. Ballard was hurrying up the road. His stomach was empty and tight.

I
N THE AFTERNOON HE WENT
back for the rifle and the squirrels. He put the squirrels in his shirt and checked the breech of the rifle to see it was loaded and went on up the mountain.

When he came out through the stark winter woods above the turnaround the car was still there. The motor had stopped running. He squatted on his heels and watched. It was very quiet. He could hear the radio faintly below him. After a while he stood and spat and took a last survey of the scene and went back down the mountain.

In the morning when the black saplings stood like knives in the mist on the mountainside two boys came across the lot and entered the house where Ballard lay
huddled in his blanket on the floor by the dead fire. The dead girl lay in the other room away from the heat for keeping.

They stood in the door. Ballard reared up with eyes walled and howled them out backward and half falling into the yard.

What the hell do you want? he yelled.

They stood in the yard. One had a rifle and one a homemade bow. This here’s Charles’s cousin, said the one with the rifle. You cain’t run him off. We’s told we could hunt here.

Ballard looked at the cousin. Get on and hunt then, he said.

Come on, Aaron, said the one with the rifle.

Aaron gave Ballard a grudging look and they went on across the yard.

You better stay away from here, called Ballard from the porch. He was shivering there in the cold. That’s what you all better do.

When they had gone from sight in the dry weeds one of them called back something but Ballard could not make it out. He stood in the door where they’d stood and he looked into the room to see could he repeat with his own eyes what they’d seen. Nothing was certain. She lay beneath rags. He went in and built the fire back and squatted before it cursing.

When he came in from the barn he was dragging a crude homemade ladder and he took it into the room where the girl lay and raised the end of it up through a small square hole in the ceiling and climbed up and
poked his head into the attic. The shake roof lay in a crazy jigsaw against the winter sky and in the checkered gloom he could make out a few old boxes filled with dusty mason jars. He climbed up and cleared a place on the loose loft floorboards and dusted them off with some rags and went back down again.

She was too heavy for him. He paused halfway up the ladder with one hand on the top rung and the other around the dead girl’s waist where she dangled in the ripped and rudely sutured nightgown and then he descended again. He tried holding her around the neck. He got no farther. He sat on the floor with her, his breath exploding whitely in the cold of the room. Then he went out to the barn again.

He came in with some old lengths of plowline and sat before the fire and pieced them. Then he went in and fitted the rope about the waist of the pale cadaver and ascended the ladder with the other end. She rose slumpshouldered from the floor with her hair all down and began to bump slowly up the ladder. Halfway up she paused, dangling. Then she began to rise again.

W
HEN HE GOT HOME WITH
the dead girl it was midmorning. He had carried her on his shoulder for a mile before he gave out altogether. The two of them lying in the leaves in the woods. Ballard breathing quietly in the cold air. He hid the rifle and the squirrels in a windrow of black leaves beneath a ledge of limestone and struggled up with the girl and started off again.

He came down through the woods by the back of the house and through the wild grass and dead weeds past the barn and shouldered her through the narrow doorway and went in and laid her on the mattress and covered her. Then he went out with the axe.

He came in with an armload of firewood and got a fire going in the hearth and sat before it and rested. Then he turned to the girl. He took off all her clothes and looked at her, inspecting her body carefully, as if
he would see how she were made. He went outside and looked in through the window at her lying naked before the fire. When he came back in he unbuckled his trousers and stepped out of them and laid next to her. He pulled the blanket over them.

H
E HAD MADE THE SQUIRRELS
into a kind of stew with turnips and he set what was left of it before the fire to warm. After he had eaten he took the rifle up into the attic and left it and he took the ladder out and stood it by the back of the house. Then he went out to the road and started toward town.

Few cars passed. Ballard walking in the gray roadside grass among the beercans and trash did not even look up. It had grown colder and he was almost blue when he reached Sevierville three hours later.

Ballard shopping. Before a dry goods store where in the window a crude wood manikin headless and mounted on a pole wore a blowsy red dress.

He made several passes through the notions and dry
goods, his hands on the money in his pockets. A salesgirl who stood with her arms crossed hugging her shoulders leaned to him as he passed.

Can I hep ye? she said.

I ain’t looked good yet, said Ballard.

He made another sortie among the counters of lingerie, his eyes slightly wild as if in terror of the flimsy pastel garments there. When he came past the salesgirl again he put his hands in his rear pockets and tossed his head casually toward the display window. How much is that there red dress out front, he said.

She looked toward the front of the store and put her hand to her mouth for remembering. It’s five ninety-eight, she said. Then she shook her head up and down. Yes. Five ninety-eight.

I’ll take it, said Ballard.

The salesgirl unleaned herself from the counter. She and Ballard were about the same height. She said: What size did you need?

Ballard looked at her. Size, he said.

Did you know her size?

He rubbed his jaw. He’d never seen the girl standing up. He looked at the salesgirl. I don’t know what size she takes, he said.

Well how big is she?

I don’t believe she’s big as you.

Do you know how much she weighs?

She’ll weigh a hunnerd pound or better.

The girl looked at him sort of funny. She must be just small, she said.

She ain’t real big.

They’re over here, said the girl, leading the way.

They went creaking across the oiled wooden floors to a dress rack assembled out of galvanized waterpipe and the salesgirl fanned the hangers back and pulled out the red dress and held it up. This here’s a seven, she said. I’d say it would fit her unless she’s just teeninecy.

Okay, said Ballard.

She can swap it if it don’t fit.

Okay.

She folded the dress across her arm. Was there anything else? she said.

Yeah, said Ballard. She needs some other stuff too.

The girl waited.

She needs some things to go with it.

What all does she need? the girl said.

She needs some drawers, Ballard blurted out.

The girl coughed into her fist and turned and went back up the aisle, Ballard behind, his face afire.

They stood at the counter he’d been studying all along from out of his eyecorner and the girl tapped her fingers on the little glass rail, looking past him. He stood with his hands still crammed in his rear pockets and his elbows out.

They’s all these here, said the girl, taking a pencil from behind her ear and running it over the counter rail.

You got any black ones?

She rummaged through the stacks and came up with a pair of black ones with pink bows.

I’ll take em, said Ballard. And one of them there. She looked to where he was pointing. A slip? she said.

Yeah.

She moved along the counter. Here’s a pretty red one, she said. Would go pretty with this dress.

Red? said Ballard.

She held it up.

I’ll take that, said Ballard.

What else now? she said.

I don’t know, said Ballard, casting his eye over the counter.

Does she need a bra?

No. You ain’t got them drawers in the red have ye?