Kings of the Earth: A Novel (13 page)
Read Kings of the Earth: A Novel Online
Authors: Jon Clinch
Tags: #Fiction - General, #Brothers, #Family Life, #General, #Literary, #American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, #Fiction, #Rural families
Lester
D
AMN THE MULE
and damn the road and damn his going out on it. Damn the cold. Damn the busted tree. Damn everything done and undone. Damn those boys being woman-raised now, and that middle one left unfixed.
Preston
I
DON’T KNOW
why we brought him on home. Nobody there had any use for him that way.
Ruth
H
OURS PASS AND SNOW FALLS
, clinging to the blood-stiff coat and covering it, making of the dead man an old sailor salt-caked and mast-mounted. The wind whips and the sky goes dim, and none but the mad would be out. Ghoulish gray weather into which the schoolhouse pours its homebound charges.
It is in this light that the boys find their father.
Pent up all day, they have exploded from the schoolhouse door and scattered down the farm roads like shot. The empty world offers them no resistance. Up the hill they come, slowed not even by the slope, until the first—Audie, that is, the middle—makes his discovery. White on white on white. He knows his father before the others do. He knows the hump of the mule and the half-sunken wreck of the wagon. He knows that everything he knows has changed. He begins shivering but not from the cold, and his running takes on a new urgency.
The boys clutch and grasp at their father to no avail. Nothing comes loose. Not the chain about his chest and not the broken singletree thrust into his shoulder. Not even so much as his hat. Frustrated and heartbroken, they lave him in tears that only fall and freeze.
They debate who should go for help. Creed is the fastest. Vernon is the oldest. Audie is the least trustworthy with details. Creed is all for someone’s keeping their father company as long as he is not the one do to it. Vernon believes it is his own duty to deliver this news. Audie has claim on the discovery and is owed something for it. But in the end it is a flannel coat that forces their decision. Audie’s is the warmest of the three, so he will stay behind. He waits by a snowdrift until his brothers are out of sight and then he climbs up the cold curve of the mule’s flank and presses himself against his chained and riven father. Shivering from the cold. Shaking from his nature. Awaiting revelation.
Preston
W
INTER CAME
and I guess they finally gave up. I heard the hammering clean through the plate-glass window. Sound travels in the cold. Margaret and I were finishing up our coffee before we went to church. I drained my cup and rinsed it out in the sink and got my overcoat and put my galoshes on. People in those days wore galoshes. Overshoes. They buckled up the front and you tucked your dress pants into them. I went out and started the car and walked on down to see what those boys were up to.
They were in the barn, going through the wall where it met the house. That’s where the jakes was. They had an ax and a pry bar and an old two-man saw from somewhere with one of the handles busted off. I don’t know where they ever got that. It must have been in the hayloft or somewhere from back when Lester had the place or even before. When the original owner took down the trees the first time, however long ago that was. Before this land was even farmed. Anyhow, between that big saw and the ax and the pry bar, they were just manhandling things. Busting everything down with no rhyme or reason. Studs and all. You never saw demolition until you saw those three at it.
I sized things up quick and I hollered at them to stop and they did. I nearly asked why they didn’t just go through the house if they wanted to get at the facilities but then I remembered. Ruth’s old room. That place was either holy to them or haunted, I never knew which. Maybe both. So they had the idea of going this way instead.
Those boys looked like a bunch of cavemen. Even filthier than usual, what with the dry rot from the siding and the cow manure that’d built up on the walls and whatnot. They stood there in a half-circle looking fit to tear down anything you might build, just for the contrariness of it. Just because they could. I went over and pointed out a couple of uprights they’d exposed and said they’d best leave them right where they were unless they wanted the house to fall down. Maybe the barn too. Vernon said how would they get into the toilet with them in the way and Audie said he thought he could make the squeeze all right. He didn’t mind. Creed looked at me. He didn’t say a word, he just looked at me since he knew I’d have an idea. He was the smart one because he recognized there were things he didn’t know.
I marked those uprights with a mechanical pencil I keep. I just put big
X
’s all up and down so they couldn’t miss them. I said you leave these alone for now and when I get back from church we’ll figure something out. I marked some other places on the barn wall too, where I didn’t want them to go beyond. Then I heard Margaret slam her car door and I went out. I made a note to myself to stop at the lumberyard on the way home and pick up a sack of lime to throw into that pit. I’d lived alongside those boys since I was twelve years old, but I couldn’t get my mind around how bad that jakes was going to smell when they got it opened up. It was going to set some kind of new world record.
I left my galoshes in the car once we got to church. I’d already ruined the floor mats but I didn’t see any point in bringing cow manure into God’s house, not that I guess he cares much himself. He invented cow manure right about the time he invented cows. But he’s got some followers around here who’ll complain about the littlest thing.
I was raised up to expect Sunday dinner and Margaret was raised up the same way. I don’t mean supper. I mean having your main meal right after church. We don’t always eat at home, though. A big Sunday dinner is a lot to cook for two people and I don’t care to burden Margaret unless her heart’s in it. As a rule we don’t go anyplace fancy. We like the Dineraunt on Madison Street in Cassius or Valentino’s on the road to Utica. If the weather’s poor or we’re in a hurry we come straight back and just swing by the Homestead over in Madison. It’s on the way and the food’s good and they don’t rob you. The Rotary meets there is one way you can tell. I gave up Rotary a long while back but if those cheapskates meet in a place it’s generally all right. That’s one thing I learned.
We were in a hurry that day on account of the boys. We stopped at the yard and got a sack of lime—two sacks—and I hosed off my boots and the plastic floor mats before we went any farther. I sprinkled a little lime around down there too, just for Margaret’s benefit. You don’t stay married without paying attention to that kind of thing. There’s little signs.
We swung by the Homestead and parked. The parking lot goes around both sides of the building and our side was pretty near empty, but I didn’t guess it would stay that way for long. They make a chicken and biscuits platter on Sundays that I don’t know what their secret is but a person just can’t make anything close to it at home. No offense to Margaret. I think they must use that broaster they keep in the back. I had my mouth all set for it.
We went in the side door by the nice dining room where the Rotary meets, not the old section up front, which is the original diner they expanded from and still looks it. The tables weren’t set up back there yet so we went on around. We went around past the restrooms, and right there at the counter in front of us sat the Proctor boys, big as life. There was nobody near them for twenty feet in any direction. To tell the whole truth I saw one little old couple come in by the storm door and catch sight of them and turn right away, right back to their car. The woman had a cane and all and she was having a little trouble walking on the ice but they quit and went somewhere else instead of staying there with those three.
I don’t believe the boys had been to the Homestead before, although I know I’d spoken highly of the chicken and biscuits platter. That’s what Creed and Vernon were having. Audie was having a Limburger cheese sandwich on rye bread with onions, which is another thing that’ll drive people away. Thick slices of a Wampsville red onion on top of cheese that smells like a dead man’s armpit. Margaret and I greeted them kindly and went on over to the other side of the room. The waitress came and I promised her a good tip to make up for the lost business and she laughed. That saved her an apology, I guess.
The boys finished about the time our meal came. They raised their hands to Margaret and me and filed out grinning. Audie was patting his stomach. He looked full up and happy. The waitress took their plates away and wadded up their place mats and scrubbed the counter and sprayed it with Lysol. She had a boy come out and run a wet mop over the floor while she went around and sprayed the stools. When she was done with that she held the can up high and let loose a few good long shots of it into the air just to make sure. She came over by us and asked if we’d please cover up our meals with a napkin so she could fumigate some more but I said don’t bother. It was all right. That platter of chicken and biscuits smelled just like ambrosia.
Creed
I
N THE BARN
Preston stopped us and made us hold off but that was all right because we got to have a nice lunch. He told us before we should go there and we never went. It was a good place though. It turned out he was following us around and a little after we got back home he come on over. Audie took a nap and I waited with Vernon till he come. Audie was in the stall snoring. Preston didn’t ask where he was. He had a tape measure and we got started cutting wood and then Audie sneezed and Preston found out where he was all right. He laughed like Audie done it as a trick. We all laughed. Audie roused up and come over scratching.
Preston
T
HE SMELL WASN’T ANYWHERE
near as bad as I’d thought it’d be but I spread a little lime around anyway. Emptied one bag right down the hole just in case. Everything was all dried out good down there. It looked like a display in a museum, showing how the Egyptians did their business a million years ago. Once we were done with that we cut a header out of barn board and doubled it and toe-nailed it to the uprights. We did the same on the inside. Then we went up two feet and did it again just because we could. Reinforced it left and right. Found some old lumber that was straight enough and cut four jack studs and scabbed them on. I didn’t want that house falling down or the barn either. You never know how those old places were put up but you can bet they made them better than they make them now. I was counting on that.
I don’t think I breathed for a whole minute when we sawed through the uprights, but everything held just fine. To this day nothing wobbles any worse than it ever did. We took the wood and nailed it on alongside the jack studs while Audie went in and out through the empty hole like he was doing magic.
I said I’d bring a door from the lumberyard but they didn’t care for one. They had an old plastic shower curtain they hung up on nails. I guess it served their purposes all right. To my mind a door would have been a big improvement. It would have made all the difference in the world. The jakes being right there in the barn with no more divider than a transparent shower curtain, a man had no reason to think himself any better than a beast.
Donna
A
COUPLE OF TROOPERS
found her at the nurses’ station on the third floor, where the mood was somber. It takes something serious to lower the spirits of a group like that, but a death in the family will do it. The troopers picked up on the mood and were even less expressive in their manner than usual, nearly to the point of a kind of negative affectation. “My brother always loved
Dragnet
reruns,” she told them as they went into an examining room together, “and I’m starting to feel like I’m on one.”
“We’re sorry, ma’am,” said one of the troopers. He meant it but he didn’t mean it the way it came out.
Mainly they wanted to know about Vernon’s relationships with his brothers. She said his relationships were fine although they weren’t exactly ordinary. They asked what she meant by that and she said her brothers stuck together in a way that most people don’t anymore. A way that most people probably can’t even imagine. Whether it was from their close relations or from the demands of farm life or from something else, something more primitive, she didn’t know. Sometimes she thought they had a kind of group consciousness, if that made any sense.