Authors: Daniel Woodrell
Megan said, “If he’s been runnin’ on crank for a day or two, you should just leave, honey. Don’t try’n make sense to him when he’s like that, ’cause he just can’t do it behind that much shit.”
“I know Little Arthur. He knows me. I got to find Dad.”
The door opened and Little Arthur smiled at Ree and said, “I knew it—I been in your dreams, ain’t I?”
“She’s lookin’ for Jessup—you seen him?”
“You mean she ain’t lookin’ for me? Ain’t you really lookin’ for
me,
Ruthie?”
“It’s Ree, you asshole. And I’m only out to find Dad.”
“Asshole? Hmmm. Now, I
like
a girl that calls me bad names, like her a lot, like her a whole precious bunch, right up ’til I don’t like her none at all no more. That’s always a weepy fuckin’ time when that time happens.” Little Arthur was a little-man mix of swagger and tongue, with a trailing history of deeds that vouched for his posture. He had a mess of dark hair and dark bristly eyes, with sparse curly whiskers and bitter teeth. Even without crank in his blood he always seemed cocked, poised to split in a flash from wherever he stood. He wore a couple of checked shirts, one tucked, one open, and a black pistol grip showed above his belt buckle. “Come in, ladies—or’re you leavin’, Meg?”
“Think maybe I’ll stay a bit. Kind of cold.”
“Suit yourself. Sit anywhere.”
The house smelled of old beer, old grease, old smoke. No fresh light made it through the windows at this time of day and it was as shadowed as a sinkhole. The main room was long but narrow and a big square table had to be edged past to go from one side to the other. Pie pans had been used as ashtrays and sat full of butts on the table, the floor, both windowsills. A glistening pump shotgun lay broken open across the table.
Megan sat on an edge of the table and Little Arthur did the same. Ree skinnied past them to stand near a window and said, “This don’t gotta take long, man. I need to find Dad and thought maybe you’d been seein’ him, maybe you two had got up to stuff together again.”
“Nope. Not since in the spring, babe. At y’all’s place.”
When he said “spring” Ree turned away, looked out the window onto the gray view. Dad had let Little Arthur, Haslam Tankersly, and two Miltons, Spider and Whoop, lay low at the house for a springtime weekend. Dope of many kinds and an air of excitement came with them. Little Arthur helped Ree make sandwiches for lunch once, and seemed sort of cute going about it, then gave her a handful of mushrooms to eat, saying they’d make fried baloney taste the way gold looks, and she ate them.
“You ain’t seen him nowhere since then?”
“Huh-uh.”
“He kept leavin’ the house goin’ someplace, though—you don’t know where?”
“Got cat shit in your ears, girl?”
When the mushrooms took hold she sensed some of the gods calling to her from inside her own chest and followed their urging outside into the yard and up the sunny slope into the trees. She felt all gooey, gooey with the slobbered love of various gods gathered within, and smiling full-time went about the woods looking to collect butterflies and pet them until they gave milk, or maybe roll in dirt until she felt China through her skin.
“I’ve got to find him—he signed over all we got to go his bond. If he runs, we’ll be livin’ in the fields like fuckin’ dogs, man.”
“If I see the dude, I’ll tell him that. But I ain’t seen him for quite a spell now.”
He’d come along behind her on the slope, and they’d bounced smiles off each other in the forest shade for a bit, then he’d hugged her to the ground and she’d felt a tremendous melting of herself, a leaking from one shape into some other form, and she’d been turned about by his hugs to kneel, and her skirt flipped up and Little Arthur knelt to join in her puddling embrace of gods and wonder.
“I got them two boys and Mom to tend, man. I need that house to help.”
Little Arthur tapped a cigarette loose from a pack and struck a match.
Megan said, “Oh, good lord, baby girl—your daddy left
you
to do all that?”
“He had to, the way things go, you know.”
“But all by yourself?”
Little Arthur said, “Maybe he met him a gal and went off to Memphis. He liked Memphis, I remember. That street there, all the ol’-timey boogie music’n shit. Or,
wait,
where else was it he liked? Texas! He had a real hard-on for Texas. Probly went to Texas, that’s all. Or Montana—or someplace else cowboy boots look right in.”
Ree never mentioned the god goo moment kneeling in the forest and he didn’t, either. If not for her ripped panties she might not have later been sure it happened at all. She likely could’ve buried Little Arthur before the next sunset if she’d merely held those panties out to Dad and let a tear fall.
She said, “He’s got other shoes, man.”
“Then maybe he’s wearin’ ’em just about anywhere, babe—wanna snout some crank?”
“Nope.”
“Blow some smoke?”
“Nope.”
Little Arthur crushed his cigarette in the pie pan on the table and stood.
“Then I guess I got nothin’ for you, babe. There’s the door. Don’t y’all bust your sweet asses goin’ down that slickery hill.”
Ree and Megan left together, picked their way down the steep slickery hill without sharing words. The dogs had waited on them and crashed about their legs as they stepped through snow and slid on ice, hands slapping against tree trunks for balance. At the bottom Megan grabbed Ree’s shoulder, stopped her, pulled her close.
“That’s sure a bad boat you been left in, ain’t it?”
Ree pulled away stumbling and slipped flush to the snow. She landed with her knees splayed, skirt blown above her reddened legs, head bowed. She used both hands to raise a vast heaping of snow she mashed into her face. She blubbered her lips against the cold and rubbed her face roughly. When she lowered her hands melt and snow clung to her eyelashes, eyebrows, nostrils, lips. She said, “I’m startin’ to think maybe I
do
know what the whole goddam deal is now—somebody killed Dad, and everybody knows it but me.”
“Get up from there.”
“He promised he’d be back with plenty for us all, but he’s a promiser.”
“Baby girl, I feel for you, I do, but don’t do your figurin’ sittin’ in snow.” Megan sighed, glanced at the near windows, then bent and hooked her arms under Ree’s, pulled her to her feet, brushed snow from her skirt and legs. “Come on now—stand up.”
“He’s a goddam promiser. He’ll promise anything that sets him loose.”
They walked together along the unplowed road.
“Don’t tell nobody it was me told you this, okay? But, the way I’m gettin’ it is, you’re goin’ to have to go up the hill’n ask for a talk with Thump Milton.”
“Thump Milton?”
“You’re goin’ to have to go up the hill’n hope he’ll talk with you—he generally won’t.”
“Oh, no, no. No. That man, he scares me way more’n the rest.”
“Well, scared’s not a bad way to be about him, neither, hon. He’s my own granpaw, been around him all my life, but I still try’n make damn sure I don’t ever piss him off none. I’ve seen what happens. Be real careful you don’t say I sent you, but he’s the one who could know an answer for you. Thump’s the one who could.”
Megan’s eyes were suddenly stuffed with water, a bulging of tears, or maybe she needed to sneeze mighty hard, sniffle. They walked on along the Hawkfall road, steps sinking into white, and Megan would not look up again until they reached her house and halted. She put an arm across Ree’s shoulder, raised her other hand to point beyond the meadow of old fallen walls, up the hill to a clenched house of dun stones circled by bare trees. She said, “It’s been this way with our people forever, goddam it.
For-
fuckin’
-ever
. You go see Thump. Go up there’n knock gentle on his door, and wait.”
C
LOUDS LOOKED
to be splitting on distant peaks, dark rolling bolts torn around the mountaintops to patch the blue sky with grim. Frosty wet began to fall, not as flakes nor rain but as tiny white wads that burst as drops landing and froze a sudden glaze atop the snow. The bringing wind rattled the forest, shook limb against limb, and a wild tapping noise carried all about. Now and then a shaking limb gave up and split from the trunk to land below with a sound like a final grunt.
Ree crossed the meadow of old fallen walls, climbed uphill to Thump Milton’s, but did not need to knock. A woman waited for her as she came into the yard. The woman stood on her doorstep wearing an apron over a print dress with short sleeves, rubbing her hands together, watching Ree draw near. The woman was past the middle of her years but looked pink in her cheeks, robust, with white hair brushed high into an airy poof and sprayed to stay there. She was burly, stout-boned, and flesh rolled when she moved. She said, “You’ve got the wrong place, I expect. Who might you be?”
Chickens were making a racket in a long low building across the yard. There was a light on inside the coop and footsteps had crushed the snow flat between there and the back door of the house. The house had been made without any frivolous stones of lighthearted colors, but was entirely deep-hued and sober. A short roof covered the woman in the doorway.
“I’m a Dolly.” Ree’s green hood was growing heavy from the wet and molding to her skull while the wind chased her skirt around her chapping legs and her eyes squinted against the spattering weather. “My dad’s Jessup Dolly. I’m Ree.”
“Which Jessup would that be?”
“From Rathlin Valley. Teardrop’s brother. I mean Haslam’s. Teardrop was born a Haslam.”
“I believe I know who Teardrop is. That’d make your Jessup the man who married the pretty Bromont girl.”
“That’s right—Mom used to be Connie Bromont.”
“Jack’s littlest sister. I knew Jack.” The woman gestured for Ree to come up onto the steps, under the roof. She pulled the hood away from Ree’s head, looked into her face. “You ain’t here for trouble, are you? ’Cause one of my nephews is Buster Leroy, and didn’t he shoot your daddy one time?”
“Yes’m, but that ain’t got nothin’ to do with me. They settled all that theirselves, I think.”
“Shootin’ him likely settled it. What is it you want?”
“Ma’am, I got a real bad need to talk with Thump Milton.”
“Ach! Ach! Get away, girl. Away!”
“I need to, I really, really, need to, ma’am. Please—I
am a Dolly!
Some of our blood at least is the same. That’s s’posed to
mean
somethin’—ain’t that what is always said?”
The woman stalled at the mention of shared blood, sighed, crossed her arms and pressed her lips together. She reached to touch Ree’s hair, appreciated the cool dampness through her fingertips, then laid the back of her hand to Ree’s winter-blushed cheek. She said, “Ain’t you got no men could do this?”
“I can’t wait that long.”
“Well, he don’t ever talk no more’n he has to, you understand that? He don’t talk too direct when he does talk, neither. He says things so you ought to know what he means, but if you don’t, he’ll just leave it that way. And even when he does talk, he won’t talk much to women.”
“You could say I’m still a girl.”
The woman smiled sadly, touched Ree’s face again.
“I expect I won’t. He’ll see you for himself. You go wait in the yard somewheres by that coop and I’ll tell him you’re here.”
There was no good sheltering spot beside the coop. A twin-trunked mimosa grew near the wall to raise a spot of windbreak and Ree crouched to the dry side of the double trunk. She crouched with her skirt dropped to ground, making a squat tent with herself as the pole. Chickens fussed inside the heated coop and melt grew an outline of ice low along the walls. The mimosa blocked direct wind, but swirls hit Ree from both sides and the bursting white wads of weather cast a mist over her that soon froze.
After most of an hour she saw a different face at the window. The woman had looked at her a few times but now the curtain eased open on a long-jawed man’s face with an iron-shaded spade beard and careful fingers on the curtain. The curtain closed so subtly Ree questioned whether it had truly been open or had she wished it open and sold the wish to her eyes.
Rime of frost thickened where breath fell onto her chest.
Sleet crackled down, laid a cold sheen across everything. The afternoon sky dimmed and lights from the house carried into the yard as gleamings stretched by skidding across the ice. Tree limbs fattened with gathered silver and drooped. Dogs went home to crawl under porches.
The woman came back outside wearing a black overcoat and hat, and walked in loose harrumphing galoshes. She came into the yard but not near. She said, “He ain’t likely to have time for you, child.”
“I’ve
got
to talk to him.”
“Nope. Talkin’ just causes witnesses, and he don’t want for any of those.”
“I’ll wait.”
“You need to get yourself on home.”
“I’ll make that man weary of me out here waitin’. I’ve just got to talk to him.”
The woman started to say something, then shook her head and returned to the house.
Ree sat chilled inside her squat tent. To occupy her mind, she decided to name all the Miltons: Thump, Blond, Catfish, Spider, Whoop, Rooster, Scrap . . . Lefty, Dog, Punch, Pinkeye, Momsy . . . Cotton, Hog-jaw, Ten Penny, Peashot . . . enough. Enough Miltons. To have but a few male names in use was a tactic held over from the olden knacker ways, the ways that had been set aside during the time of Haslam, Fruit of Belief, but returned to heartily after the great bitterness erupted and the sacred walls tumbled to nothing. Let any sheriff or similar nabob try to keep official accounts on the Dolly men when so many were named Milton, Haslam, Arthur or Jessup. The Arthurs and Jessups were the fewest, not more than five apiece, probably, and the Haslams amounted to double the Arthurs or Jessups. But the great name of the Dollys was Milton, and at least two dozen Miltons moved about in Ree’s world. If you named a son Milton it was a decision that attempted to chart the life he’d live before he even stepped into it, for among Dollys the name carried expectations and history. Some names could rise to walk many paths in many directions, but Jessups, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path to the shadowed place, live and die in keeping with those bloodline customs fiercest held.