Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories Read online

  “Yes, suh.”

  The farmer nodded and let his gaze drift toward the barn a moment before resettling on the youth.

  “The Colonel got red hair, has he?”

  “You know the Colonel?” the youth asked.

  “Naw, just his sort,” the farmer answered. “You call him Colonel. Is he off to the war?”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “And he is a Colonel, I mean rank?”

  “Yes, suh,” the youth answered. “The Colonel got him up a whole regiment to take north with him.”

  “A whole regiment, you say.”

  “Yes, suh.”

  The white man spat and wiped a shirtsleeve across his mouth.

  “I done my damnedest to keep my boy from it,” he said.

  “There’s places up here conscripters would nary have found him, but he set out over to Tennessee anyway. You know the last thing I told him?” The fugitives waited. “I told him if he got in the thick of it, look for them what hid behind the lines with fancy uniforms and plumes in their hats. Them’s the ones to shoot, I said, cause it’s them sons of bitches started this thing. That boy could drop a squirrel at fifty yards. I hope he kilt a couple of them.”

  The older fugitive hesitated, then spoke.

  “He fight for Mr. Lincoln, do he?”

  “Not no more,” the farmer said.

  To the west, the land rose blue and jagged. The older fugitive let his eyes settle on the mountains before turning back to the farmer. The youth settled a boot toe into the grass, scuffed a small indentation. They waited as they had always waited for a white man, be it overseer, owner, now this farmer, to finish his say and dismiss them.

  “The Colonel,” the farmer asked, “he up in Virginia now?”

  “Yes, suh,” the older fugitive said, “least as I know.”

  “Up near Richmond,” the youth added. “That’s what the Miss’s cook heard.”

  The farmer nodded.

  “Black niggers to do his work and now white niggers to do his fighting,” he said.

  The sun was full overhead now. Sweat beads glistened on the white man’s brow but he did not raise a hand to wipe them away. The youth cleared his throat while staring at the scuff mark he’d made on the ground. The farmer looked only at the older fugitive now.

  “I need you to understand something and there’s nary a way to understand it without the telling,” the farmer said to the other man. “Them days after we got the word, I’d wake of the night and Dorcie wouldn’t be next to me. I’d find her sitting on the porch, just staring at the dark. Then one night I woke up and she wasn’t on the porch. I found her here in this barn.”

  The farmer paused, as if to allow some comment, but none came.

  “Me and Dorcie got three daughters alive and healthy and their young ones is too. You’d figure that would’ve been enough for her. You’d think it harder on a father to lose his onliest son, knowing there’d be never a one to carry on the family name after you ain’t around no more. But he was the youngest, and womenfolk near always make a fuss over a come-late baby. That rope there in the barn,” the farmer said, lifting a Barlow knife from his overall pocket. “I’ve left it dangling all these months ’cause I pondered it for my ownself, but every time I made ready to use it something stopped me.”

  The farmer nodded at a ball of twine by the stable door and tossed the knife to the older fugitive.

  “Cut off a piece of that twine nigh long as your arm.”

  The fugitive freed the blade from the elk-bone casing. He stepped into the barn’s deep shadow and cut the twine. The farmer motioned with the flintlock.

  “Tie his hands behind his back.”

  The other man hesitated.

  “If you want to get to Tennessee,” the farmer said, “you got to do what I tell you.”

  “I don’t like none of this,” the youth muttered, but he did not resist as his companion wrapped the rope twice around his wrists and secured it with a knot.

  “Toss me my Barlow,” the farmer said.

  The older fugitive did, and the farmer slipped the knife into his front pocket.

  “All right then,” the farmer said, and nodded at the tote.

  “You got fire?”

  “Got flint,” the other man said.

  The farmer nodded and removed a thin piece of paper from his pocket.

  “Bible paper. It’s all I had.” The older fugitive took the proffered paper and unfolded it.

  “That X is us here,” the farmer said, and pointed at a mountain to the west. “Head cross this ridge and toward that mountain. You hit a trail just before it and head right. There comes a creek soon and you go up it till it peters out. Climb a bit more and you’ll see a valley. You made it then.”

  “And him?” the man said of the youth.

  “Ain’t your concern.”

  “It kindly is,” the man said.

  “Go on now and you’ll be in Tennessee come nightfall.”

  The youth’s shoulders were shaking. He looked at his companion and then at the white man.

  “You got no cause to tie me up,” the youth said. “I ain’t gonna be no trouble. You tell him, Viticus.”

  “He’d not be much bother to take with me,” the older fugitive said. “I promised his momma I’d look after him.”

  “You make the same promise to his father?” the farmer said and let his eyes settle on the older fugitive’s shoulder. “From the looks of that scar, I’d notion you to be glad I’m doing it. I’d think every time you looked at that red hair of his you’d want to kill him yourself.”

  The two men met each other’s eyes but neither spoke.

  “I didn’t mean to hide from you,” the youth said, his breathing short and fast now. “I just seen that gun and got rabbity.”

  “Go on now,” the farmer told the older fugitive.

  Two hours later he came to the creek. The burlap tote hung over one shoulder and the lantern hung from the other. He began the climb. The angled ground was slick and he grabbed rhododendron branches to keep from tumbling back down.

  There was no shingle or handbill proclaiming he’d entered Tennessee, but when he crested the mountain and the valley lay before him, he saw a wooden building below, next to it a pole waving the flag of Lincoln. He stood there in the late-afternoon light, absorbing the valley’s expansiveness after days in the mountains. The land rippled out and appeared to reach all the way to where the sun and earth merged. He shifted the twine so it didn’t rub the ridge of scar. Something furrowed his brow a few moments. Then he moved on and did not look back.

  THOSE WHO are DEAD are ONLY NOW FORGIVEN

  The Shackleford house was haunted. In the skittering of leaves across its rotting porch, locals heard the whispered misery of ghosts. Footsteps creaked on stair boards and sobs filtered through walls. An Atlanta developer had planned to raze the house and turn the thirty acres into a retirement village. Then the economy flatlined.

  The house continued to fold in on itself and the meandering dirt drive became rough as a logging trail. So we’ll be completely alone, Lauren had told Jody. When Jody mentioned the ghost stories, Lauren told him she’d take care of that. Leave us the hell alone, she said loudly each time they stepped inside. They’d let their eyes adjust to the house’s gloaming, listening for something other than their own breathing, then spread the sleeping bag on the floor, sometimes in a bedroom but as often in the front room. He and Lauren would undress and slide into the sleeping bag and whatever chill the old house held was vanquished by the heat of their bodies.

  Lauren had always spoken her mind. You’re not afraid to show you are intelligent, most boys from out in the county are, Lauren had told him in their first class together. She’d asked what Jody wanted to major in at college and he said engineering. Education, she answered when asked the same question. Ninth grade was when students from upper Haywood were bused to Canton to attend the county’s high school. Unlike the other boys he’d grown up with, Jody didn’t fill
a seat in the school’s vocational wing. Instead, he entered classrooms where most of the students came from town. Their parents weren’t necessarily wealthy, but they’d grown up in families where college was an expectation. As Lauren said, he’d not been afraid to show his intelligence, but first only when called on. Then he’d begun raising his hand, occasionally answering a question even Lauren couldn’t answer. The teachers had encouraged him, and by spring he and Lauren both were being recommended for summer programs at Chapel Hill and Duke for low-income students.

  The boys he rode the bus with no longer invited him on hunting and fishing trips. Soon they didn’t bother to speak. During the long bus trip to and from school, Jody saw them staring at the books he withdrew from his backpack, not just ones for class but books Lauren passed on, tattered paperbacks of The Catcher in the Rye and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, books from the library on astronomy and religion. It was an act of betrayal to some. One morning near the school year’s end Billy Rankin tripped Jody in the cafeteria, sent him and his tray sprawling to the floor. Billy outweighed him by fifty pounds and Jody would have done nothing if Lauren hadn’t been with him. He went after Billy, driving him onto the linoleum, praying a teacher would break it up quick. But it was Lauren who got to them first. By the time a teacher intervened, Lauren had broken off two fingernails shredding Billy’s left cheek.

  As he left the blacktop, Jody found the dirt drive more traveled than a year ago. Less broom sedge sprouted in the packed dirt, and fresh tire prints braided the road. What’s left of her is at the Shackleford place, Trey, Lauren’s brother, had finally told Jody. The dirt road straightened and climbed upward. Oak trees purpled with wisteria lined both sides. Dogwoods huddled in the understory, a few last blossoms clinging to their branches. The drive curved and the trees fell away. Bedsprings appeared in a ditch, beside them a shattered porcelain toilet and a washing machine. The debris looked like a tornado’s aftermath.

  Each time they’d driven here their senior year, Lauren had leaned into Jody’s shoulder, her hand on his thigh. Those moments had been as good as the actual lovemaking—hours alone yet awaiting them. Afterward, they stayed in the sleeping bag and made plans for what they’d do once Jody graduated from college. We’ll live in a warm faraway place like Costa Rica, Lauren would say. When he said it was too bad they’d taken French, Lauren answered that learning another new language would only make it better.

  More debris lay scattered on the drive and in the ditches—beer and soft drink cans, plastic garbage bags spilling contents like burst piñatas. One last curve and the Shackleford place rose before him. Next to the porch, a battered Ford Taurus appeared not so much parked as stalled in the wheel-high grass. The house’s front door stood open as if he were expected.

  Jody stepped onto the porch but lingered in the doorway. First he saw the TV set inside the fireplace. A rock band filled the screen but the sound was off. Shoved close to the fireplace was a bright-red couch, occupied, three faces materializing in the dusty light. The odor of meth singed the air as Jody stepped inside. Mixed and cooked by Lauren, he knew. In high school Billy and Katie Lynn hadn’t attempted Chemistry I, much less the advanced courses he and Lauren passed with A’s.

  “Come to get the good feeling with us, Mr. College?” Billy asked.

  “No,” Jody said, standing beside Lauren now. Billy pointed to a felt-lined church collection plate on the floor, among its sparse coins and bills a glass pipe and baggie.

  “Well, you can at least make an offering.” Katie Lynn laughed, her voice dry and harsh.

  “Come on, buddy, have a seat,” Billy said, making room. “We can have us a regular high school reunion.”

  Jody stared at Lauren. Five months had passed since he’d last seen her. He was unsure which unsettled him more, how much beauty she’d lost or how much remained.

  “I think he’s still sweet on you, girl,” Katie Lynn said. Lauren looked up, her eyes glassy.

  “You still sweet on me, Jody?”

  He studied the room’s demented furnishings. A couch and TV but no tables or chairs, the floor awash with everything from candy wrappers to a tangle of multihued Christmas lights. In a corner were some of Lauren’s books, The World’s Great Religions, Absalom, Absalom, a poetry anthology. Her computer too, its screen cracked. An orange extension cord snaked around the couch and disappeared into the kitchen. A generator, Jody realized, now hearing the machine’s hum.

  “Get the fire going, Billy,” Lauren said, “so it’ll be cozier.” He changed the disk in the DVD player and orange flames flickered on the screen. Billy’s linebacker shoulders were bony now, his chest sunken.

  “Want me to turn up the sound?” Billy asked.

  Lauren nodded and the fireplace crackled and hissed.

  “We got room for you,” Katie Lynn said, patting a space between her and Lauren, but Jody remained standing.

  “I want you to go with me,” Jody said.

  “Go where, baby?” Lauren asked.

  “Back home.”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Lauren said. “Bad girls don’t get to go home. They don’t even get prayed for, at least that’s what Trey says.”

  “Then go with me to Raleigh. We’ll get an apartment.”

  “He wants to save you from us trashy folks,” Katie Lynn said, “but we ain’t so bad. That collection plate, we didn’t break into church and steal it. Billy bought it at the flea market.”

  “You ought to save us from Lauren,” Billy said. “She does the cooking around here, and just look at us. We’re shucking off weight like Frosty the Snowman.”

  “Save us, Jody,” Katie Lynn said. “We’re melting. We’re melting.”

  “Come outside with me,” Jody said.

  Lauren followed him onto the porch. In the afternoon light he saw the yellow tinge and wondered if they were using needles too. Hepatitis was common from what he’d read on the internet. Lauren’s jeans hung loose on her hips, her teeth nubbed and discolored.

  “No one would tell me where you were,” Jody said. “At least you could have.”

  “This is the land beyond the cell phone or internet,” Lauren said. “Isn’t it nice that there are a few places left where that’s true?”

  “You could have called from town,” Jody said. “Didn’t you think about what it was like for me, not knowing where you were, if you were okay?”

  “Maybe I was thinking of you,” Lauren said, averting her eyes. “But you’ve found me. Mission accomplished so now you can move on.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Jody asked.

  The question sounded lame, like something out of a book or movie Lauren would mock.

  “Oh, you know me,” Lauren said. “I’ve never been much for delayed gratification. I find what feels good and dive right in.”

  “This feels good,” Jody said, “living out here with those two?”

  “It allows me what I need to feel good.”

  “What will you do when you can’t get what you need?” Jody asked. “What happens then?”

  “The Lord provides,” Lauren said softly. “Isn’t that what we learned in church? Has being around all those atheist professors caused you to lose your faith, Jody, like Reverend Wilkinson’s wife warned us about in Sunday school?” Lauren moved closer, leaned her head lightly against his chest though her arms stayed at her sides. He smelled the meth-soured clothes, the unwashed skin and hair.

  “Does being here bring back good memories?” Lauren asked.

  When Jody didn’t answer, she pulled her head away. Smiling, she raised her hand to his cheek. The hand was warm, blood pulsing through it yet.

  “It does for me,” Lauren said, and withdrew her hand. “You know I would have called or e-mailed, baby, but out here there’s no signal.”

  “Come with me right now; don’t even go back in there,” Jody said. “You don’t have to pack a thing. I’ve got money to buy you clothes, whatever else. We’ll go straight to Raleigh right now.”

/>   “I can’t leave, baby,” Lauren said.

  “Yes, you can,” Jody said. “You’re the one who showed me how to.”

  Katie Lynn came to the door.

  “We need you to do some cooking, hon.”

  “Okay,” Lauren said, and turned back to Jody. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  Lauren paused in the doorway. “You probably shouldn’t,” she said, and went on inside.

  Jody got back in the truck and drove toward town. If we make good enough grades, we can leave here, Lauren had told him. For the first three years of high school, he and Lauren made A’s in the college-prep classes. They shared the academic awards, though Lauren could have won them all if she’d wanted to. Their junior year, she made the highest SAT score in the school. That summer Lauren cashiered at Wal-Mart while Jody worked with his sister and mother at the poultry plant. He used the money for a down payment on the pickup. They’d pile it with belongings when he and Lauren left Canton for college.

  In the fall of their senior year, Lauren completed the financial-aid forms Ms. Trexler, the guidance counselor, gave them. Lauren and Jody continued to work afternoons and Saturdays, making money for what the scholarships wouldn’t cover. Then one day in November Lauren told him she’d changed her mind. When neither he nor Ms. Trexler could sway her, Jody told her it was okay, that an engineer made good money, enough for them both. All Lauren had to do was wait four years and they could leave Canton forever, leave a life where checkbooks never quite balanced and repo men and pawnbrokers loomed one turn of bad luck away. Jody had watched other classmates, including many in college prep, enter such a life with an impatient fatalism. They got pregnant or arrested or simply dropped out. Some boys, more defiant, filled the junkyards with crushed metal. Crosses garlanded with flowers and keepsakes marked roadsides where they’d died. You could see it coming in the smirking yearbook photos they left behind.

  Soon after he’d left for college, Lauren got fired for cursing a customer and took work at the poultry plant. Jody drove back to Canton once a month. Though phone calls and e-mails kept them connected, it seemed forever before Christmas break arrived. That first night back home, he’d picked Lauren up at her mother’s house and they had gone to a party. Jody expected alcohol and marijuana, some pills. What surprised him was the meth, and how casually Lauren took the offered pipe. When Billy asked if Jody wanted to try it, he shook his head. Once back at school their e-mails and phone conversations became fewer, shorter. He’d seen Lauren only once, in late January.