Chicken (14 page)

The ground slopes away, gently, not something I see so much as something I’ll feel in my calves and feet when I’ve reached the Ditch. Giant pines shoot straight as lasers toward the sky, branches finally sprouting ten or so feet up their plated trunks and quivering under the relentless, scampering feet of God-only-know-how-many squirrels rushing, rushing, rushing to finish their errands before the hottest part of the day. Their constant chatter is scolding, not friendly, always telling some other squirrel or resting bird to get out of their way. Sometimes fights break out between squirrels, but the birds almost always obey, exploding through the leaves like tiny fireworks filling the woods with flashes of red, white, and blue. 

I turn around. My shoulders are going up and down, up and down as my lungs pump hissing breaths from my stupid, snotty nose. I wipe it on my sleeve. I can’t see the trailer through the heavy curtain of cedars, not even a flash of sunlight on the metal siding. Some afternoons, coming back from Sister Bonnie’s, I stand here for a minute and pretend there’s a real home waiting for me out there. I’d run through the sprinkler to cool down, and then kick my boots off outside beautiful white French doors. I’d hop in the shower and the hot water my aching muscles crave would last for way more than three minutes. Afterwards, I’d flop down on the big, pillowy couch and shiver under the air conditioner. But right now, I don’t feel like pretending, right now I feel like seeing things how they really are. As soon as that thought crosses my mind I realize how stupid it is because what am I doing right now if not pretending that Mama will call me back if I just keep waiting?

“Arrrgh!” I spin around, kicking up leaves with one foot and then the other, stomping on a fat, white mushroom for good measure.

It’s a quarter mile from here to Sister Bonnie’s with no real path to follow, just a trail of mashed pine needles made by my own clomping boots. I hold the plate of soggy pancakes close to my chest, flailing my free hand out in front of me to knock down any spider webs strung up between the trees, all the time scanning for copperheads camouflaged in clumps of brown needles and rotting leaves. My syrup attracts an entourage of bees, which makes me think of honey, which makes me think of bears. The surrounding mountains fill up with city-slickers this time of year, most of ’em dumb enough to throw food at a black bear. It’s not unheard of for one of them spoiled brutes to show up down here, demanding the same hand-outs, taking by force anything that isn’t freely given. 

I come to a great big hickory and lean my back against its flaky, furrowed bark. I unfold my plate and shovel the pancakes into my mouth, gagging a little on their cold mushiness but managing to choke them down. I scrape up as much syrup as I can and then lick it off my fingers, running my tongue down between my knuckles in a manner that would surely inspire obscene comments if Tyler Mathis were here. At least they’d be about the right sort of private parts this time.

The hair on the back of my neck prickles, and for one awful second I think maybe Mathis really is out here, but something primal kicks in, tells me humans, even nasty ones, don’t make each other feel quite like that. I don’t move anything but my eyes, inspecting every shadow, stump, and rock. Nothing. I shift my head to the left, then to the right. Nothing behind me. At least nothing as big and visible as bear. My heart hammers, pushing hot, delicious blood through the fragile veins in my wrists, my knee pits, my neck as I think of other toothy things it might be. 

Coyotes sing up and down the Ditch almost every evening, and Sister Bonnie caught a little bobcat in her possum trap last fall. Brother Hank was on the road so she let Brant take care of it. He wanted me to ride along out to the lake to let it go, but Mama said no, this family can’t afford any more broken bones. But coyotes and bobcats and really even bears won’t bother a person much unless something’s made them crazy. 

There’s only one animal in these woods that’s all-the-time crazy and that’s those infamous Arkansas hogs. Not the sports team, but the real thing. Big, nasty feral pigs with yellow tusks and an appetite for anything they find on the ground—eggs, rodents, injured birds, even newborn fawns. And twelve-year-old boys in sleeping bags if Brant Mitchell is telling the truth about his scars. 

A squirrel screeches and a fat, green hickory nut bounces off my shoulder. Before I know it I’m ten feet away from the tree, rubbing my arm and looking back at one very angry rodent. I laugh as that uneasy feeling sheds right off. The squirrel runs back and forth along the branch, shaking its bushy tail. I make my apologies and hurry on my way.

The woods get darker near the bottom of the slope as pines give way to more oaks and hickories. The Ditch appears beyond their massive, kudzu-covered trunks, a thick black shadow brushed across the forest floor, slowly gaining depth as my eyes adjust. I guess they know what they’re talking about when they say it used to be a river, but this section looks to me like the track of some enormous, prehistoric snake. The slope levels off, and I head east until I come to the tangle of upturned roots that tells me where to cross.

Sister Bonnie says these roots belonged to a tree that laid across the Ditch for over twenty years. Her son and Brother Mackey used it as a bridge to visit their friend who lived in my trailer back then. But the flood that took Caleb tore through this area so hard and so fast it smashed the trunk into splinters, swept everything but this stump away forever.  

I’ve asked Daddy to help me build a bridge, but he’s too busy or too sore or too uninterested in spending time on things I actually need. Sister Bonnie says I should ask Brother Hank to help me sometime when he’s home from the road, but I barely know him. What I really want to do is ask Brant, but there’d be no way to keep him from seeing where I live. It’s one thing for him to know I’m poor but something else entirely for him to see what that means. 

The Ditch isn’t that wide here. If I were Brant, I could run and jump. But I’m not Brant so the only way across is down and back up. I impale my sticky plate on a sharp stob, and I lower myself backward over the edge. There’s no slope to the walls, but plenty of thick roots and strong saplings jut from the black earth. It feels good to get out of my head, focus on my body, one foot after another, finding roots or toe-holds I’ve made before, getting mud up under my fingernails. 

A twig snaps.

My sneaker skids off a rock. I catch hold of a too-slender fern. Little green leaves break loose and sink into the shadows below. I slam my shoe down on the rock I missed, press my whole body against the damp wall. 

My left fingers are jammed into the dirt, and my right knuckles go white around the little fern. I lick my lips, taste maple syrup, fresh sweat, and old mud. Deep breath, Casper. You only have to be the chicken when other people are watching. Not here. You do this every day. Just keep moving your feet. 

Unbidden images of Peter walking on water pop into my head, how he could do it as long as he believed he could, but when he didn’t believe, he sank. It turned out okay because Jesus was there to catch him, so I picture Jesus at the bottom of the Ditch, having snapped that twig as he moved into position to save me. His arms are outstretched, a big white smile shining out of his beard. I pull my fingers out of the dirt, reaching for some new hold. 

That’s when all the prayers come flooding in, splintering me like that old tree. Night after night, month after month, never any change, never any relief, never a moment where I touch Hannah’s hip and feel anything. And now Jesus is gone and the twig-snapping thing in the shadows is Caleb Courts and his left eye hangs out on a coiled string. My left fingers slip, stripping the fern—  

I land in the black slush at the bottom of the Ditch, fern leaves fluttering onto my breathless chest. I stare at my skid marks on the dirt wall, at the bare branch bobbing like its angry that I stole its clothes. I lift my head and look at my body sprawled out in the muck, half expecting to see my tailbone poking through my guts. No such luck.

I suck hot, sticky air through my mouth—big, shuddering gulps that taste like the smell of Mama’s kitchen-scrap mulch. When I’ve finally filled my lungs up again, I groan. Roll over on my side and clutch my butt. I somehow managed to land in two whole inches of water the Ditch hasn’t yet swallowed. Brant’s shoes and jeans and shirt are soaked. I reach up and peel rotten leaves off my neck, grateful they aren’t leeches. 

I have to get up, get to work, but as I’m angling my elbow out from under me to push myself up, I just—get stuck. Not in the mud or anything. It’s like my arm folds backward under my head, and my cheek settles on my wrist, and I’m just here, stuck. A scene pops into my head, from a movie I loved when I was a little kid. There’s this old dog and he’s fallen into a pit and he tries to get up, but he just can’t. He’s done. He tells his friends to leave him and go home. This is where his story ends. I could be that dog. You don’t need a flood to drown. Two inches of water and enough willpower can achieve the same effect.

And what if I wanted to?

Brant. Last night.

And what if I wanted to?

Impossible. A rhetorical device.

And what if I wanted to?

My muscles revive, bunching up underneath me, shoving me upright with a shout. I shake myself off just like that old dog must have done because the movie ended with him alive, clean and dry, running to the arms of his boy. 

The devil meets me at the green gate, pushing his long black face into my chest as soon as I walk through. I wrap my arms around his head and nuzzle my face in the coarse hair between his ears, which is dangerous because if he startles he might break my nose. His impatient snort splatters grassy froth all over my shirt. I pat the slab of his neck, push him away. 

“Sorry, buddy. I know I’m late.” 

His name is Shetan, an old Arabic name for the devil, but Sister Bonnie doesn’t know that. Her son told her it meant “Like the Wind,” and there’s a chance he really believed that, I guess, but more likely, he took the name from The Black Stallion books, knowing exactly what it meant, but also knowing there was no way his Pentecostal parents would let him name a horse after the Prince of Darkness. Knowing this makes me feel like we’re part of a secret club even though we’ve never met.

It’s not far to the house and the little sheet metal barn where I do most of my work, but I climb onto the wooden fence rail and cluck my tongue. Shetan turns his broadside to me and I grin. We’ve worked all summer on this. I grab the ridge of his withers and sling my leg over his back. His normally smooth coat is spiked into a hundred little brown shark fins from rolling in the mud. He jabs a hoof into the damp earth and shakes his tangled mane. He’s hungry, but I make him wait, running my hands along either side of his neck until his muscles stop twitching. 

Shetan’s mane falls to the right, but there’s one little bunch on his withers that flops left and I wrap it around my fist. A squeeze from my knees and he takes off. A harder squeeze and he trots. Some people hate the trot, but I don’t mind. I’m not going to risk anything faster in this wet field. It’s jarring, sure, but also invigorating. I tip my face to the sun, let the hot breeze rake the leaves from my hair. Walking through life on my own two feet, hardly anything makes sense, but none of it matters up here. I’m just part of the horse, and horses don’t worry if their feelings are right or wrong. They just feel.

Sister Bonnie and Brother Hank live in a little white farmhouse with a wrap-around porch. The back side has two dormered windows on the roof that open right onto the shingles, and I envy the life their son must have led, slipping out whenever he liked to look at the stars and maybe even climb down that big oak tree with its branches tickling the gutters. I don’t ask much about him because he’s never around and I think it would make Sister Bonnie sad. But I’m pretty sure sneaking out is something that he did. If he didn’t, he wasn’t as cool as his horse has led me to believe.

The yellow back door opens and Sister Bonnie steps out, waving. She’s dressed in light blue mom jeans and a pink, tiny-checkered shirt. She’s wearing a floppy sun hat over her tight new perm. I tug on his mane and Shetan slows down as we near the smaller green gate that leads to the back yard. Pygmy goats trip over each other as they scramble out of the long metal trough where they eat and sleep. Shetan stops at the gate, bangs his nose against it. 

“Good morning, Casper.” Sister Bonnie sips from a glass of iced tea. 

“Morning, Sister Bonnie. Sorry I’m late.”

I climb from Shetan’s back onto the gate and hop down into the yard. A slinky border collie pops out from a hole in the lattice under the porch, runs right up and pokes her nose in my crotch.

“Debbie! Bad dog!” Sister Bonnie sets her glass on the peeling porch rail and comes down the steps, clapping her hands.

I laugh, pushing the dog’s butt into a sit. “She’s fine.”

Still, Sister Bonnie marches across the yellow grass in her white Keds, takes Debbie by the collar, and drags her onto the porch. Points a finger in her sharp little face and orders her to stay put. Debbie sweeps her tail across the blue boards of the porch, stirring up a cloud of dust and cat hair.  Sister Bonnie boasts an impressive collection of half-wild cats, three of which are lounging on the squashed and fading yellow cushions of the old metal glider sitting underneath the kitchen window. Brant would love it here. 

Sister Bonnie rests her palm on Debbie’s narrow, pointy skull. “Maybe you could sweep the porch when you’re done with your regular chores? It just kills my back these days.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I try to discreetly pluck the muddy wedgie that Shetan’s backbone gave me. 

But Sister Bonnie has already noticed the black streaks on my blue jeans, the layer of mud drying on Brant’s shoes. “Casper, did you fall into the Ditch?”

“I lost my grip. The roots are slick.”

“Did you hurt anything?”

“It was just a few feet. I’m fine. Just wet.”

She takes her glass off the porch rail, blows a tiny sweat bee off the rim. “Do you need some dry clothes? I might be able to rustle up something of my son’s. If you don’t mind partying like it’s 1999.”