Nathan Coulter (17 page)

After we got warmed up Uncle Burley and Big Ellis and I played two games of straight pool, and Uncle Burley won both of them. The games lasted a long time. All three of us were out of practice, and we were missing easy shots; but after he won the second game Uncle Burley said he guessed he might as well quit since the competition was so poor.

We went back to the stove and talked again. You couldn't remember how the conversation started, or figure out why it should have got to where it was from the last subject you could remember. Now and then somebody buttoned his coat and left. And others came in, letting a cold draft through the door with them, and stood with us at the stove and smoked and talked. The talk shifted from weather to jokes to crops. The wind muffled at the corners of the building. The sound of the fire whipped in the stove like a flag.

Mushmouth Montgomery came in and stood by himself at the counter, eating cheese and crackers; the conversation slowed and hesitated as we turned to look at him and looked away. Since Chicken Little's drowning Mushmouth's face had changed—had turned hollow and blank as if his eyes had given up seeing. And in my memory of him Chicken Little's face had changed the same way; I couldn't remember how he'd looked when he was alive. Mushmouth's face burdened us and quieted us as if we were seeing Chicken Little's ghost. He didn't stay in the poolroom long, and when he left the talk hurried again.

After a while we heard laughter and commotion in the street, and we went out to see what was happening. A crowd of men and boys had gathered at the edge of the sidewalk. They'd caught a stray dog and were tying a roman candle to his tail.

One of them lit the fuse and they turned him loose. The dog ran up the street with the roman candle fizzing behind him, shooting red and yellow and blue balls of fire under his tail. He stopped two or three times
before he was out of sight and tried to catch his tail in his teeth, but then another ball of fire would hit him and send him howling off again. Everybody stood there on the sidewalk and laughed. I hated to think of anything being treated that way, and I was sorry I saw it. But every time one of those colored balls of fire flew out and hit the dog under the tail I had to laugh too. The idea of it was funny, and if it hadn't hurt the dog it would have been all right.

As the crowd began to break up and go back into the stores we saw Brother coming across the street.

“Well, I'll swear,” Uncle Burley said. “Look who's here.”

We shook hands and laughed and clapped each other on the back. Uncle Burley caught Brother in his arms and held him off the ground, hugging him.

I hadn't realized until then how much I'd missed him. I couldn't think of anything glad enough to say.

Uncle Burley put Brother down. “How're you doing, old boy?”

“All right,” Brother said.

We went into the poolroom and drank a Coke together while Brother told us about himself. Since he left home he'd been working for a man named Whitlow who owned a farm on the other side of the county. He said that Mr. Whitlow and his wife had treated him kindly, and they had fixed a room in their house for him. Mr. Whitlow had hired him to work by day through the fall and winter and had promised a crop of his own for the next year.

“Well, you've got a good place,” Uncle Burley said. “I'm glad to hear it.”

When we'd finished our Cokes we sat on a bench behind the stove and talked some more. Uncle Burley and I were relieved to have found Brother and to know he was all right. It felt familiar and good to be there with him, and I hated for the afternoon to pass.

We spoke of Daddy, and Brother didn't seem to be mad at him anymore; but he said that he didn't intend to come back to live with us. He wanted to stay on his own. He was saving his money and planning to buy a farm for himself.

He asked how Grandma and Grandpa were, and we talked about them
for a while. And Uncle Burley and I told him how we were getting along in our work.

Finally Brother said it was time for him to start home. We walked along with him to where Mr. Whitlow's car was parked. The sun was nearly down and there was more chill to the wind.

Uncle Burley turned his collar up and looked at the sky. “It's going to be a coon hunting night,” he said.

Mr. Whitlow was standing beside his car when we got there; Brother introduced us and we stood around and talked a while with him. He told us that he thought he was lucky to find as good a hand as Brother, and that we'd be welcome at his house any time we wanted to come and visit. We promised we'd be over before long and we made Brother promise to come to see us.

“Write to your grandma,” Uncle Burley said.

They got into the car and drove away, and we were sad to see them go.

On our way home we went around by Daddy's house to tell him our news. Nobody had mentioned Brother to him since their fight, and I felt embarrassed about it now. I dreaded it a little.

It was dark when we came into his yard, and a light was on in the kitchen. We went around the house and called to him from the back door. He answered us and we went in. He was sitting at the table with his supper dishes empty in front of him, eating a piece of corn bread. We pulled out chairs and sat down; and Uncle Burley began telling him about Brother, where he was and what he was doing and what his plans were and what kind of people he was living with. Daddy didn't say anything while Uncle Burley was talking. He sat there looking at his plate and taking a bite off the corn bread now and then.

When Uncle Burley had finished I said, “He's not mad at you anymore.”

And then Daddy cried. He didn't say that he was glad Brother wasn't mad at him, or that he was sorry for their fight. He just sat there, looking at his plate and chewing on a bite of corn bread, with tears running down his cheeks.

I could have cried myself. Brother was gone, and he wouldn't be back. And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the
way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves. And if we'd been other people it wouldn't have mattered. If we'd been Mushmouth or Jig Pendleton or that dog with the roman candle tied to his tail, it would have been the same; we'd have had to suffer whatever it was that they suffered because they were themselves. And there was nothing anybody could do but let it happen.

We left Daddy sitting at the table and started home.

“It's bad,” Uncle Burley said. “It's bad.” After a minute he said, “We're going to have a fair night. Let's you and me hunt a while.”

We hurried through our chores and went to the house. Grandma had supper waiting for us when we came into the kitchen, and Grandpa had already finished eating and turned his chair to the stove. We ate, and Uncle Burley told them we'd seen Brother. They listened while he told them all that Brother had told us.

When he quit talking Grandma said, “And he's not coming home?”

“No,” Uncle Burley said.

Grandpa got up then and went into the living room. And Grandma filled the dishpan with water and set it on the stove.

“We thought we'd hunt tonight,” Uncle Burley told her.

She nodded, keeping her face turned away from us.

Uncle Burley went upstairs and got his rifle and flashlight and I lit the lantern. We went out the back door and called the dogs. They came, wagging their tails and whining, knowing when they saw the rifle in Uncle Burley's hands that we were going to hunt. There were two of them—Sawbuck and Joe. Uncle Burley let them rear against him. He rubbed their faces and spoke their names.

We walked down the hill toward the woods on the river bluff. Behind us the walls of the house were dark; the lighted windows shone as if they were floating and might twist or slant or change places. On the next ridge a light was still burning in Daddy's house.

When we came to the brow of the hill and saw the house lights scattered through the river bottoms, it wasn't the place of daytime or our
memories, but only a distance filled up with night where a few lights burned, the woods and the hunt dividing us from them.

“Well,” Uncle Burley said, “they'll grieve in this old land until you'd think they were going to live on it forever, then grieve some more because they know damn well they're not going to live on it forever. And nothing'll stop them but a six-foot hole.”

When we went into the woods the dogs trotted off ahead of us, and we walked in the room of light the lantern made, our shadows striding tall against the trunks of the trees. The light was an island, drifting until the dogs would strike a track and give us a direction.

We walked slowly, stopping now and then to listen, moving along the face of the bluff toward the creek valley. After a while Joe bayed a time or two down near the creek. And then the quietness settled around us again and we heard the wind in the tops of the trees. We climbed higher on the bluff so we could hear better, and went on toward the point where the creek valley came into the valley of the river. We crossed the point and climbed down to the edge of the woods on the other side, then squatted on our heels by the lantern and listened to the dogs.

First one of them and then the other crossed the trail and bayed, then lost it, and the quiet came down into the valley again.

Uncle Burley shifted his feet a little, and his hunched shadow swayed against the trees behind him. “They may finally straighten it out.”

The dogs worked the trail until it got warm, and then they bayed up the hillside across the valley, running fast and mouthing at every jump, their voices hacking through the dark.

“That sounds more like it,” Uncle Burley said.

We started down the hill, taking our time and listening. When we got to the creek bottom the dogs had gone almost out of earshot. We stood still for a few minutes, straining to hear them above the sound of our breath.

“They're treed, aren't they?” I said.

“If they're not they're good liars,” Uncle Burley said.

They'd followed a draw out of the bottom all the way to the top of the bluff; and we went up after them, climbing where the streambed stair-stepped down the hill.

We found them treed at a thick-trunked old hickory on the side of the draw. Uncle Burley leaned the rifle against a stump and turned the flashlight up into the branches. We walked around the tree, searching until we saw the coon sitting humpbacked in the fork of a long limb, his eyes glowing in the light.

“There's plenty of limbs all the way up,” Uncle Burley said. “You can climb up and shake him out, and we'll let one of the dogs have him.”

I set the lantern down and climbed, feeling my way up in the dark while Uncle Burley held the light on the coon. The dogs whined and barked, trotting back and forth under the tree.

I got to the limb where the coon was and eased out on it, holding to the limb above my head. Uncle Burley caught Sawbuck by the collar and moved down the hill. He called Joe into the place where the coon would fall, and I shook the limb.

Joe was on the coon by the time he hit the ground, and they went growling and snarling down the slope toward Uncle Burley. He held the light on them, following them where they rolled and fought in the leaves. The ground was too steep for Joe to get a foothold, and the coon was having a fairly easy time of it. He'd wrapped himself around Joe's head, and Joe couldn't stand up long enough to shake him loose. Sawbuck howled and reared against the collar, trying to get into the fight; and Uncle Burley slid and plunged after him, trying to hold him out of it. The coon kept his hold on Joe's head as if he'd decided to spend the night there; and Joe bucked and rolled and somersaulted through the underbrush, the leaves flying up around them. Sawbuck jerked Uncle Burley off balance, and the two of them scrambled in with Joe and the coon. I saw Uncle Burley's hat fly off, and then the beam of his flashlight began switching around so fast that I couldn't tell what was happening. I could only hear them crashing farther down the hillside, Uncle Burley yelling, and the dogs growling, and the coon hissing and snarling—the beam of light flickering and darting this way and that through the trees like lightning flashes.

Then the light steadied and I saw Uncle Burley dragging Sawbuck out of the fight. Joe caught the coon behind the forelegs and held. That was all of it.

“Whoo,” Uncle Burley said.

He picked up the coon and found his hat, then turned the light up into the tree to help me down. The dogs trotted off into the woods again. Uncle Burley slung the coon over his shoulder and I took the rifle and lantern; we climbed to the top of the bluff and started across the ridge.

We were walking parallel to the river again, the valley dark on our left, and three or four miles behind us a few lights were still burning in town. It was easier walking on the ridge, and there were a lot of stars. But the wind was strong up there, and cold. We could hear it moving through the grass and rattling in the woods below us.