Authors: Bret Lott
He was closer now, and I thought maybe I could see his face, some kind of grin on it, barely lit by the tiny jewel of orange on the
cigar. He looked either way again, leaned forward in the saddle, back again.
“But the headless hunter didn’t squeal before he went, and I admire him for that.” He let out another laugh, shook his head. “Son of a bitch winked at me just before I did it. A man after my own heart. Then pop, he’s gone, my job to shovel him up, haul him over to Hungry Neck, and prop up that sign at his feet, see what happens and when.” He laughed. “And I’m getting paid for all this!”
Mom was shivering full on now, her breath hard and sharp in my ear. Still he heard nothing, no movements at all in these woods, so he knew we were here, somewhere. He knew. And talking was a way to flush us out.
He shook the reins, the horse moved toward us, and now I could hear Jeb breathing, head down, then up. “The bargain I cut with the main man is to see to it Mrs. Constance Dupree got taken care of too. And the funny thing is, she didn’t squeal, neither.” The horse came toward us a few more feet, Thigpen looking one way and the other, that cigar there in his mouth. “She didn’t squeal. Weird one, that bitch. Didn’t complain word one, once she figured out what her now dead hubby’s request was. Checked herself in to the Rantowles Motel, me out in the car, watching to make sure she didn’t pull anything on me. Then she just walked right into the room, wrapped that electrical cord round the shower rung and her neck both. All’s I had to do was watch her step off the edge of the tub.” He paused, slowly shook his head. “Can’t say she winked at me. But she was smiling, looking at me just before she took that little step, and then her eyes commenced to bulging out big, her tongue too.” He gave out another laugh. “Quite a charge, I tell you, watching a woman do that to herself. I see now how that Kevorkian fuck gets his kicks.”
Unc was trembling now, both my hands on his shoulders, and I could feel my throat welling up hard, felt my eyes going wet and my heart pounding too loud for all this, all this. That was the night she’d come to me, that was the night she’d told me she loved Unc, that was the night she’d told me to cherish my momma.
My mom, behind me, shivered too, us here and almost dead. Us, here.
“Y’all got to move sometime,” Thigpen shouted now. “You got to move sometime, might as well be now.” He put his boots to the horse, and the horse moved toward us again, now ten feet off, and I knew he could hear my heart pounding.
“But them two was out of the ordinary, them not squealing on me,” he said, and pulled hard on the cigar. He was close enough now to where I could see his eyes and nose when the tip flared, there above us, silhouetted by the night behind and around him, the pale light off that moon above us all. He brought down the cigar, let out the smoke. “Most of them go squealing away. Kind of like the sound a woman’ll make when you’re poking her good.” He put the cigar back up. “Now, ain’t that right, Leland?”
Unc still trembled, and Mom trembled, and my heart banged loud enough to be heard a mile away, and the horse brought down his head, held it low a moment: Jeb smelled us.
“Just like that sound a woman makes when you’re poking her good, and she’s wailing like it’s hurting her too much but there ain’t a chance in hell she wants you to stop.” He pulled on the cigar again, took it out. He put his hands to the pommel, leaned forward, the leather creaking.
Jeb shook his head.
“Maybe ol’ Constance used to give out that squeal I was hoping for, Leland, back when you was poking her for sport.” He settled himself back into the saddle. “Or maybe,” he said, and gave a short laugh, “that’s the kind of squeal Eugenie give out one night a long long time ago.”
Unc was breathing hard now, Mom still on the edge of whimpering, and now she pushed herself into me even closer than before, and I felt her chin on my shoulder, heard her breaths quick in and out, and felt the heat of her breath, too, right there at my ear.
She whispered, “Huger, no.”
They were next to nothing, words maybe I didn’t really hear.
“Hey, Huger!” Thigpen shouted now, “Huger, you know-it-all shit, I’ll wager I know something you don’t!”
“No, Huger, no,” Mom whispered.
Unc stopped breathing, stopped trembling. He reached with his hand up to my hand on his shoulder. It was cold, that hand.
But I was watching Thigpen, there in the dark.
Something was happening.
“Huger,” Thigpen said, no longer shouting. He gave Jeb a small kick, and he came even closer, Jeb’s front hooves almost close enough to touch.
“Huger Dillard,” he said, even quieter now, “this here news I’m going to let you in on is what you call dead-man talk. Words just between us, not meant for nobody else.” He paused. “Dead-man talk. You tell, you’re dead.” He chuckled again, stopped the horse. “But I guess that point is moot. You’re dead any way you cut it.” He stopped the horse, and I could hear in the quiet him draw in on the cigar, let it out.
He said, “Ain’t you ever wondered why your auntie burned herself alive, and why your daddy hauled ass out of Dodge not too long after?”
Here was Jeb’s head again, down at the ground. I couldn’t see Thigpen anymore for how close he was. Only Jeb’s hooves, his head, looking at us.
And now it was me trembling, me breathing hard, me falling deeper into this hole under a log, this hole of my life, because there was something happening here, Unc with a cold hand on mine, Mom pressed into me and whispering words I wasn’t sure were words at all, maybe dreams of words circling me, circling me like that buzzard’d circled the body of Charles Middleton Simons, M.D., good riddance to bad rubbish, that dead body leading me finally here to solve a problem I’d not wanted to solve my entire life: why my daddy left me and Mom and Unc here at Hungry Neck. Added now was the news my Aunt Sarah killed herself, the burning of Unc’s house never explained to me, a mystery neither my mom
nor Unc ever thought to make clear to me. Only that she’d died, Unc injured for life.
She killed herself, my Sarah
, Unc’d said at that house in Mount Pleasant. Their home.
It’s my own greed made her do it
, he’d said.
My own
.
My mom and dad, howling at each other out to the kitchen.
Leland, Eugenie.
And me.
Something I’d known before I even knew. But something I never wanted to know.
“Huger,” Thigpen said, nearly in a whisper. Jeb’s head shot up, and I couldn’t see him at all anymore, just his legs, four stalks in the darkness, a darkness closing around me, closing and closing as tight around my heart as what I knew, finally, was coming next.
What was happening, and had already happened.
Who I was. No news at all.
“Huger, if your momma’s at all like most every fuck I ever had, the night Leland give it to her she squealed like a rabbit in a trap.”
“Huger,” Mom whispered again, then cried, air out of her like knives into my back, my neck.
“Imagine that, Huger: your momma and your uncle fucking to beat the band, making what turned out to be you, you little shit. A love child. Kind of makes you think twice on that word
bastard
now, don’t it?”
Unc clutched my hand in his.
The world went tighter, the hole I could see out of, this thin slip of night, going smaller and smaller.
“Huger Dillard,” Thigpen said. “Bastard child of Eugenie and her husband’s brother, Leland Dillard.”
What I’d known, and never knew.
I broke my hand free of Unc’s, pushed at him and pushed over him and to that hole closing down over me now, before me only the legs of this horse, and then the horse reared, and I was out of that hole, my own legs kicking against Unc behind me, and I could taste
my heart pounding in my throat, the source of all the dark red metal on earth in my throat and pounding, and the horse reared higher, whinnied, and now I was standing, above me this horse, Tommy Thigpen falling back in the saddle, startled, one hand with the reins, the other with the shotgun, and I saw his eyes as clear as any day, saw him looking down at me, saw the cigar fall from his lips, saw that mouth turn into a smile, all this while the horse reared up, all of this in the dark, all of this surrounded by trees and stars and this night, and I jumped at him, grabbed his arm, the one Patrick’d shot, and pulled at him, pulled at him, because I wanted to kill him.
He screamed out when I pulled that arm, lost his balance a moment while the horse came down for the first time, and he dropped the shotgun.
“Huger!” Mom cried out from behind me, and even in this instant of all things happening I didn’t recognize the word as meaning anything I could know.
And the horse reared again, this time higher, and I held hard Thigpen’s arm, pulled at him, pulled at him, while he still tried to hold on to the saddle, and I could feel my feet off the ground, me hanging on to only that arm, him hanging on to the pommel and trying to stay on, the horse turning and turning, and then I reached high as I could, and punched his arm, punched it again and again, felt the bone through the flesh of his arm, felt the wet cloth of the jacket, felt this all, and heard, too, his own scream, a low-pitched growl, and I heard only then, too, the sound I made: my mouth was open wide, screaming out of me all the air my lungs could hold.
Finally he pulled that arm free of me, and I fell to the ground, my feet gone from beneath me, and I was on my back, Jeb reared up above me, above him those stars, and then he came down, Thigpen now with a hand to the inside of his coat and fumbling, Jeb’s hooves an inch from my legs, and here was the glint of moonlight off the steel of another gun, him leaning toward me, his good arm raised, the one I pulled slack at his side like a man’s arm hanging from a pickup window: dead, hanging.
He brought the gun up, the horse still scared, jangled up and
dancing, aware of his hooves too close to me, Thigpen jostled and trying to get a bead.
It didn’t matter. The gun, these stars, the ground beneath me.
Huger Dillard. Bastard son of a blind uncle and a mother who figured she could run from whatever truth of her life the trailer at Hungry Neck reminded her of every day.
Me. The truth of what I reminded her of every day.
Me. Nobody.
“Go ahead,” I said up to Thigpen, and I meant it.
“My pleasure,” Thigpen said, and smiled again, the gun out at me hard and straight.
“Yah!”
Unc shouted from the other side of him, and I heard a hard slap, saw Jeb rear up again, Thigpen lose his balance again, then Jeb charge off and away.
“Yah!”
Unc shouted again there in the dark, his head turned to the sound of hoofbeats away from us, and I turned, saw Thigpen in his saddle, facing us, the gun up, the dead arm still slack at his side, the reins given up for him bent on killing us rather than gain control of the horse.
He was aiming at Unc.
And Unc had to know this, had to know Thigpen would go first for him, no matter the horse was at a full gallop away from us, and no matter Unc was blind.
But Unc only stood there, hands to his hips, like he was waiting to get hit. Like there was nothing left for him but this.
He was my father.
I stood and rushed him, tackled him flat out and heard the pistol fire, heard the split of sound the bullet made into the log, heard another shot and another, me rolling with Unc and rolling in the brush of this clearing.
Then came a hard and heavy chunk of sound, sharp and cold, with it and inside it a cry out of Thigpen, a shriek of pain, and I looked up, saw the horse already swallowed by the woods, saw, too, the live-oak branch he must’ve passed under, that sharp piece of sound Thigpen slamming into it, turned in his saddle and firing on us.
I lay back down, still holding Unc, him and me both breathing hard. All I could hear now was a horse galloping away from us.
I pushed him away, pushed him, heard him whisper, “Huger,” and then I was on my knees, looking back where Jeb’s sounds grew fainter and fainter.
Only then did I feel the wet on my face, feel the tears coming out of me and streaming now, my breaths too quick in and out, and I knew I was crying, and that I needed to kill this man, Tommy Thigpen, and that I had to get away from Unc and away from Mom.
Unc was beside me, breathing hard. He took my arm, whispered, “We have to go. We have to get Eugenie and go.”
I shook him off, swallowed down a breath and turned, stepped away from him.
He looked for me, his head weaving like it did when he wasn’t sure what might happen next, or who it was coming near to him.
Here were those white marble eyes, small pieces of moonlight in his face and in the dark.
Who was he?
He put his hand up, whispered, “Huger?”
What did this word
father
mean?
The horse’s gallop was gone now, the night sounds back: treetops moving in the wind up there.
But then, beneath that sound, came Mom’s crying, and I looked to the log, saw she hadn’t come out.
Unc turned to the sound, too, looked back to me. He said, “You got to get her, Huger. We got to go.” He took in a breath, let it out. “I’m sorry, Huger.”
“You get her,” I said, and took another step back.
“Huger, we have to—”
“You get her!” I shouted. “You get her!” and I took another step away.
Unc stood there a moment, that hand out to me, the air between us filled with the muffled cries of my mother, and then that hand dropped, and he turned, made his way toward the log, felt along the trunk a few feet, then squatted, reached in.
“Come on, Eugenie,” he whispered. “It’ll be all right, girl. Come on.”
I turned from them, felt my jaw tight, felt the wet on my face, my heart still pounding but that pounding now a hollow sound, nothing in me, and I looked up, saw shimmer in my tears the thin stars up there, that moon, saw it dance in a way I had no control over. Just dancing, shimmering.
“He’ll be back,” Unc whispered to Mom. “Just give me your hand, Eugenie. Give me your hand.”
Still she cried, a sound as soft as the wind in these trees, but sharp enough to cut through them in the same moment. My mom, crying, and I turned, my eyes to the sky, searching.