Stories (2011) (122 page)

Deel used an axe to clear the new trees, and that afternoon,
at the dinner table, he asked Mary Lou what had happened to the mule.

“Died,” Mary Lou said. “She was old when you left, and she
just got older. We ate it when it died.”

“Waste not, want not,” Deel said.

“Way we saw it,” she said.

“You ain’t been farmin’, how’d you make it?”

“Tom brought us some goods now and then, fish he caught,
vegetables from his place. A squirrel or two. We raised a hog and smoked the
meat, had our own garden.”

“How are Tom’s parents?”

“His father drank himself to death and his mother just up
and died.”

Deel nodded. “She was always sickly, and her husband was a
lot older than her…I’m older than you. But not by that much. He was what?
Fifteen years? I’m…Well, let me see. I’m ten.”

She didn’t respond. He had hoped for some kind of
confirmation that his ten-year gap was nothing, that it was okay. But she said
nothing.

“I’m glad Tom was around,” Deel said.

“He was a help,” she said.

After a while, Deel said, “Things are gonna change. You
ain’t got to take no one’s charity no more. Tomorrow, I’m gonna go into town,
see I can buy some seed, and find a mule. I got some muster-out pay. It ain’t
much, but it’s enough to get us started. Winston here goes in with me, we might
see we can get him some candy of some sort.”

“I like peppermint,” the boy said.

“There you go,” Deel said.

“You ought not do that so soon back,” Mary Lou said.
“There’s still time before the fall plantin’. You should hunt like you used to,
or fish for a few days…You could take Winston here with you. You deserve time
off.”

“Guess another couple of days ain’t gonna hurt nothin’. We
could all use some time gettin’ reacquainted.”

* * * *

Next afternoon when Deel came back from the creek with
Winston, they had a couple of fish on a wet cord, and Winston carried them
slung over his back so that they dangled down like ornaments and made his shirt
damp. They were small but good perch and the boy had caught them, and in the
process, shown the first real excitement Deel had seen from him. The sunlight
played over their scales as they bounced against Winston’s back. Deel, walking
slightly behind Winston, watched the fish carefully. He watched them slowly
dying, out of the water, gasping for air. He couldn’t help but want to take
them back to the creek and let them go. He had seen injured men gasp like that,
on the field, in the trenches. They had seemed like fish that only needed to be
put in water.

As they neared the house, Deel saw a rider coming their way,
and he saw Mary Lou walking out from the house to meet him.

Mary Lou went up to the man and the man leaned out of the
saddle, and they spoke, and then Mary Lou took hold of the saddle with one hand
and walked with the horse toward the house. When she saw Deel and Winston
coming, she let go of the saddle and walked beside the horse. The man on the
horse was tall and lean with black hair that hung down to his shoulders. It was
like a waterfall of ink tumbling out from under his slouched, gray hat.

As they came closer together, the man on the horse raised
his hand in greeting. At that moment the boy yelled out, “Tom!” and darted
across the field toward the horse, the fish flapping.

* * * *

They sat at the kitchen table. Deel and Mary Lou and Winston
and Tom Smites. Tom’s mother had been half Chickasaw, and he seemed to have
gathered up all her coloring, along with his Swedish father’s great height and
broad build. He looked like some kind of forest god. His hair hung over the
sides of his face, and his skin was walnut colored and smooth and he had
balanced features and big hands and feet. He had his hat on his knee.

The boy sat very close to Tom. Mary Lou sat at the table,
her hands out in front of her, resting on the planks. She had her head turned
toward Tom.

Deel said, “I got to thank you for helpin’ my family out.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to thank. You used to take me huntin’ and
fishin’ all the time. My daddy didn’t do that sort of thing. He was a farmer and
a hog raiser and a drunk. You done good by me.”

“Thanks again for helpin’.”

“I wanted to help out. Didn’t have no trouble doin’ it.”

“You got a family of your own now, I reckon.”

“Not yet. I break horses and run me a few cows and hogs and
chickens, grow me a pretty good-size garden, but I ain’t growin’ a family. Not
yet. I hear from Mary Lou you need a plow mule and some seed.”

Deel looked at her. She had told him all that in the short
time she had walked beside his horse. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He
wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to know what he needed or didn’t need.

“Yeah. I want to buy a mule and some seed.”

“Well, now. I got a horse that’s broke to plow. He ain’t as
good as a mule, but I could let him go cheap, real cheap. And I got more seed
than I know what to do with. It would save you a trip into town.”

“I sort of thought I might like to go to town,” Deel said.

“Yeah, well, sure. But I can get those things for you.”

“I wanted to take Winston here to the store and get him some
candy.”

Tom grinned. “Now, that is a good idea, but so happens, I
was in town this mornin’, and—”

Tom produced a brown paper from his shirt pocket and laid it
out on the table and carefully pulled the paper loose, revealing two short
pieces of peppermint.

Winston looked at Tom. “Is that for me?”

“It is.”

“You just take one now, Winston, and have it after dinner,”
Mary Lou said. “You save that other piece for tomorrow. It’ll give you
somethin’ to look forward to.”

“That was mighty nice of you, Tom,” Deel said.

“You should stay for lunch,” Mary Lou said. “Deel and
Winston caught a couple of fish, and I got some potatoes. I can fry them up.”

“Why that’s a nice offer,” Tom said. “And on account of it,
I’ll clean the fish.”

* * * *

The next few days passed with Tom coming out to bring the
horse and the seed, and coming back the next day with some plow parts Deel
needed. Deel began to think he would never get to town, and now he wasn’t so
sure he wanted to go. Tom was far more comfortable with his family than he was
and he was jealous of that and wanted to stay with them and find his place. Tom
and Mary Lou talked about all manner of things, and quite comfortably, and the
boy had lost all interest in the bow. In fact, Deel had found it and the arrows
out under a tree near where the woods firmed up. He took it and put it in the
smokehouse. The air was dry in there and it would cure better, though he was
uncertain the boy would ever have anything to do with it.

Deel plowed a half-dozen acres of the flowers under, and the
next day Tom came out with a wagonload of cured chicken shit, and helped him
shovel it across the broken ground. Deel plowed it under and Tom helped Deel
plant peas and beans for the fall crop, some hills of yellow crookneck squash,
and a few mounds of watermelon and cantaloupe seed.

That evening they were sitting out in front of the house,
Deel in the cane rocker and Tom in a kitchen chair. The boy sat on the ground
near Tom and twisted a stick in the dirt. The only light came from the open
door of the house, from the lamp inside. When Deel looked over his shoulder, he
saw Mary Lou at the washbasin again, doing the dishes, wiggling her ass. Tom
looked in that direction once, then looked at Deel, then looked away at the
sky, as if memorizing the positions of the stars.

Tom said, “You and me ain’t been huntin’ since well before
you left.”

“You came around a lot then, didn’t you?” Deel said.

Tom nodded. “I always felt better here than at home. Mama
and Daddy fought all the time.”

“I’m sorry about your parents.”

“Well,” Tom said, “everyone’s got a time to die, you know.
It can be in all kinds of ways, but sometimes it’s just time and you just got
to embrace it.”

“I reckon that’s true.”

“What say you and me go huntin’?” Tom said, “I ain’t had any
possum meat in ages.”

“I never did like possum,” Deel said. “Too greasy.”

“You ain’t fixed ’em right. That’s one thing I can do, fix
up a possum good. ’Course, best way is catch one and pen it and feed it corn
for a week or so, then kill it. Meat’s better that way, firmer. But I’d settle
for shootin’ one, showin’ you how to get rid of that gamey taste with some
vinegar and such, cook it up with some sweet potatoes. I got more sweet
potatoes than I know what to do with.”

“Deel likes sweet potatoes,” Mary Lou said.

Deel turned. She stood in the doorway drying her hands on a
dish towel. She said, “That ought to be a good idea, Deel. Goin’ huntin’. I
wouldn’t mind learnin’ how to cook up a possum right. You and Tom ought to go,
like the old days.”

“I ain’t had no sweet potatoes in years,” Deel said.

“All the more reason,” Tom said.

The boy said, “I want to go.”

“That’d be all right,” Tom said, “but you know, I think this
time I’d like for just me and Deel to go. When I was a kid, he taught me about
them woods, and I’d like to go with him, for old time’s sake. That all right
with you, Winston?”

Winston didn’t act like it was all right, but he said, “I
guess.”

* * * *

That night Deel lay beside Mary Lou and said, “I like Tom,
but I was thinkin’ maybe we could somehow get it so he don’t come around so
much.”

“Oh?”

“I know Winston looks up to him, and I don’t mind that, but
I need to get to know Winston again…Hell, I didn’t ever know him. And I need to
get to know you…I owe you some time, Mary Lou. The right kind of time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Deel. The right
kind of time?”

Deel thought for a while, tried to find the right phrasing.
He knew what he felt, but saying it was a different matter. “I know you ended
up with me because I seemed better than some was askin’. Turned out I wasn’t
quite the catch you thought. But we got to find what we need, Mary Lou.”

“What we need?”

“Love. We ain’t never found love.”

She lay silent.

“I just think,” Deel said, “we ought to have our own time
together before we start havin’ Tom around so much. You understand what I’m
sayin’, right?”

“I guess so.”

“I don’t even feel like I’m proper home yet. I ain’t been to
town or told nobody I’m back.”

“Who you missin’?”

Deel thought about that for a long time. “Ain’t nobody but
you and Winston that I missed, but I need to get some things back to normal…I
need to make connections so I can set up some credit at the store, maybe some
farm trade for things we need next year. But mostly, I just want to be here
with you so we can talk. You and Tom talk a lot. I wish we could talk like
that. We need to learn how to talk.”

“Tom’s easy to talk to. He’s a talker. He can talk about
anything and make it seem like somethin’, but when he’s through, he ain’t said
nothin’…You never was a talker before, Deel, so why now?”

“I want to hear what you got to say, and I want you to hear
what I got to say, even if we ain’t talkin’ about nothin’ but seed catalogs or
pass the beans, or I need some more firewood or stop snoring. Most anything
that’s got normal about it. So, thing is, I don’t want Tom around so much. I
want us to have some time with just you and me and Winston, that’s all I’m
sayin’.”

Deel felt the bed move. He turned to look, and in the dark
he saw that Mary Lou was pulling her gown up above her breasts. Her pubic hair
looked thick in the dark and her breasts were full and round and inviting.

She said, “Maybe tonight we could get started on knowing
each other better.”

His mouth was dry. All he could say was, “All right.”

His hands trembled as he unbuttoned his union suit at the
crotch and she spread her legs and he climbed on top of her. It only took a
moment before he exploded.

“Oh, God,” he said, and collapsed on her, trying to support
his weight on his elbows.

“How was that?” she said. “I feel all right?”

“Fine, but I got done too quick. Oh, girl, it’s been so
long. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. It don’t mean nothin’.” She patted him
stiffly on the back and then twisted a little so that he’d know she wanted him
off her.

“I could do better,” he said.

“Tomorrow night.”

“Me and Tom, we’re huntin’ tomorrow night. He’s bringin’ a
dog, and we’re gettin’ a possum.”

“That’s right…Night after.”

“All right, then,” Deel said. “All right, then.”

He lay back on the bed and buttoned himself up and tried to
decide if he felt better or worse. There had been relief, but no fire. She
might as well have been a hole in the mattress.

* * * *

Tom brought a bitch dog with him and a .22 rifle and a
croaker sack. Deel gathered up his double barrel from out of the closet and
took it out of its leather sheath coated in oil and found it to be in very good
condition. He brought it and a sling bag of shells outside. The shells were
old, but he had no cause to doubt their ability. They had been stored along
with the gun, dry and contained.

The sky was clear and the stars were out and the moon looked
like a carved chunk of fresh lye soap, but it was bright, so bright you could
see the ground clearly. The boy was in bed, and Deel and Tom and Mary Lou stood
out in front of the house and looked at the night.

Mary Lou said to Tom, “You watch after him, Tom.”

“I will,” Tom said.

“Make sure he’s taken care of,” she said.

“I’ll take care of him.”

Deel and Tom had just started walking toward the woods when
they were distracted by a shadow. An owl came diving down toward the field.
They saw the bird scoop up a fat mouse and fly away with it. The dog chased the
owl’s shadow as it cruised along the ground.