Stories of Breece D'J Pancake (13 page)

“I done it,” Reva said to Jackie, who stood on the step in front of her. She looked up on the porch to her husband. “I done a awful thing, T.”

“C’mon, git up’ar,” Jackie said, grabbing her arm to help her up. His huge head hid the moon, and, when she cried against him, the fire. He smelled like coal and whiskey.

I
N
the silence between darkness and light, Skeevy awakened, sick from the dream. He rolled over, feeling his head for bumps. There were only a few, but his bones ached from being hit with chairs and his bloody knuckles stuck to the sheets. The shack was dark and hollow as a cistern, and he heard his voice say, “Bund.”

The dream had been too real, too much like the real fight with Bund, and he wondered if he had really tried to kill his best friend. His mother begged him to quit boxing when they brought punchy Bund home from the hospital. “Scrap if’n you gotta,” she had said, touching the bandage over Skeevy’s eye, “but don’t you never wear no bandages again. Don’t never hurt nobody again.”

Trudy mumbled softly in her own dreams, and he slipped from under the covers slowly, trying not to make the springs squeak. He felt empty talking to her, and did not want to be there when she woke up. He dressed and crept to the refrigerator. There was only some rabbit left; still, it was wild meat, and he had to have it.

Outside, a glow from the east was filtering through the fog and turning the ridge pink. Skeevy knew Purserville was across that hill, but he knew the glow could not be from their lights. He started up the western hill toward Clayton wishing he was farther away from Hurricane, from Bund.

As he crested the first knoll, he looked back to the hollow, where he knew Trudy was still sleeping, and far beyond the horizon, where he knew Bund would be sitting on a Coke case in front of the Gulf station begging change, his tongue hanging limp. Skeevy felt his gut skin, and he figured it was just a case of the flux.

At the strip mine, Skeevy sat on a boulder and ate cold rabbit as he looked down on the roofs of Clayton: the company store, company church, company houses, all shiny with fog-wet tin. He saw a miner steal a length of chain from the machine shop where Skeevy worked during the week, promised himself to report it, and forgot it as quickly. Around the houses, he could see where the wives had planted flowers, but the plants were all dead or dying from the constant shower of coal dust.

Just outside of town, across the macadam from the Free Will Church, was The Car, a wheelless dining car left behind after the timber played out. The hulk gleamed like a mussel shell in the Sunday sun.

Skeevy threw his rabbit bones in the brush for the dogs to find, wiped his hands on his jeans, and went down the mountain toward The Car. As he crossed the bottle-cap-strewn pavement of the diner’s lot he looked back to where he had sat. The mountain looked like an apple core in the high sun.

Inside, the diner still smelled of sweat and blood from the fight the night before. He shoved the slotted windows open and wondered how ten strong men could find room to fight in The Car. He rubbed his knuckles and smiled. He yawned in the doorway while he waited for the coffee-maker, and through the fog saw Trudy’s yellow pantsuit coming down the road.

“Where you been?” he asked.

“You’re a’kiddin’ me, Skeevy Kelly.” She came through the lot smiling, and hooked her arm around him. “You don’t show me no respect. Just up an’ leave without a good-mornin’ kiss.”

“I bet you respect real good. I’d respect you till you couldn’t walk.”

“You’re a’kiddin’ again. What you want to do today?”

“Bootleg.”

“Stop a’kiddin’.”

“I ain’t, Trudy. I gotta work for Corey,” he said, watching her pout.

“Them ol’ chicken-fights…”

“Well, stick around and talk to Ellen.”

“Last time that happened, I ended up smellin’ like a hamburger.” Skeevy laughed, and she hugged him. “I’ll go visit the preacher or somethin’.”

“You watch out that ‘somethin’ ain’t about like that,” he said, measuring off a length with his arm. She knocked his hand down and started toward the road, until he could only see her yellow slacks pumping through the fog. He liked her, but she made him feel fat and lazy.

“Hey, Trudy,” he shouted.

“What?” came from the foggy road.

“Get respected,” he said, and heard “I swan to goodness…” sigh out of the mist.

A clatter came from the church across the road as two drunken miners dusted themselves down the wooden steps and drifted up the road toward the houses.

Skeevy took two cups from the shelf, filled them, and crossed the road to the church. There was only a shadow of light seeping through the painted window. The old deacon was sweeping bottles from between the pews, talking softly to himself as the glass clanked in empty toasts.

“Here, Cephus.” He offered the heavy mug. “Ain’t good to start without it.”

The skinny old man kept to his chore until the mug grew too heavy for Skeevy and he set it on the pew.

“They had a real brawl,” Skeevy offered again.

“Ain’t right, drinkin’ in a church.” The old man looked up from his work, his brown eyes catching the hazy light. He took up his coffee and leaned on his broom. “How many?” he asked, blowing steam from his brew.

“Even ’nough. ’Bout twenty-five to a side.”

“Oooowee,” the old man crooned. “Let’s get outa here. Lord’s abotherin’ me for marvelin’ at the devil’s work.”

Once outside, Skeevy noticed how the old man stood straighter, making an effort, grimacing with pain in his back.

“Who won?” Cephus asked.

“Clayton, I reckon. C’mon, I gotta show you a sight.”

They crossed the blacktop to the abandoned mill basement beside the diner. There, with its wheels in the air, lay Jim Gibson’s pickup truck.

“Five Clayton boys just flipped her in there.”

“Damn” was all Cephus could say.

“Nobody in her, but she made one hell of a racket.”

“I reckon so.” He looked at Skeevy’s knuckles.

Skeevy rubbed his hands against his jeans. “Aw, I just tapped a couple when they got bothersome. Those boys fight too serious.”

“I usta could,” Cephus said, looking back to the murdered truck.

Skeevy looked to the yellow pines on the western hills: the way the light hit them reminded him of grouse-hunting with Bund, of pairing off in the half-day under the woven branches, of the funny human noises the birds made before they flew, and how their necks were always broken when you picked them up.

“You chorin’ the juice today?” Cephus kept looking at the truck.

“Sure. Where’s the cockfight?”

“I figger they’ll meet-up someplace or another,” he said, handing Skeevy the cup with “ ’Preciate it” as he started for the church. Skeevy side-glanced at the old man to see if his posture drooped, but it did not.

He returned to the diner, plugged in the overplayed jukebox, and threw a few punches at his shadow. He felt tired, and only fried one cheeseburger for breakfast.

Because the woman’s back was toward him, Skeevy kept looking at the soft brown scoops of hair. It was clean. Occasionally the man with her would glance at Skeevy to see if he was listening. Being outsiders, they shouted in whispers over their coffee.

Tom and Ellen Corey pulled up in their truck. Ellen’s head was thrown back with laughter. Before coming in, they reviewed the upended truck in the neighboring basement. Ellen kept laughing at her short husband as they entered, keeping to the upper side of the counter and away from the customers.

As he leaned over the counter to catch Corey’s whispers, Skeevy noticed how Corey’s blue eyes were surrounded by white. He had seen the same look in threatened horses.

“Jeb Simpkin’s barn,” he whispered. “One o’clock.”

“Okay.”

“Was he all right when he left?” Corey asked.

“Who?”

Skeevy kept his face straight while Ellen sputtered beside him, her hand over her mouth. The outsiders were listening.

“Gibson, dammit. How hard did I lay him?”

“Too hard. You used the club, remember?”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” said Skeevy as Ellen broke out laughing.

Skeevy took the keys and went to the Coreys’ truck. Across the road, children, women, and old people were shuffling to church. Rev. Jackson and the deacon greeted them at the door, shaking hands. Cephus shot Skeevy a crude salute, and Skeevy made the okay sign as he climbed into the cab. He wondered if Cephus could see it.

As the truck rumbled down the blacktop, Skeevy leaned back behind the wheel, letting his eyes sag, and he could feel his belly bouncing with the jolts of the truck. He took the revolver from beneath the seat, and watched the roadside for groundhogs to shoot. Between the diner and Corey’s coal-dust driveway he saw nothing.

From the cellar of Corey’s house he loaded the truck with pint cases of Jack Daniel’s and Old Crow: four-dollar bottles that would sell for eight at the cockfight. When he first came to Clayton, he had hated bourbon. He noticed the flies were out, and in Hurricane they would be crawling quietly on Bund’s tongue. He opened a case, took a bottle, and drank off half of it. Before the burning stopped, he was at Simpkin’s barn, and could hear the chickens screaming.

Warts Hall, a cockfighter from Clayton, came from the barn with a stranger, catching Skeevy as he finished the pint.

“Got any left?” Warts asked. His face was speckled with small cancers.

“More than you can handle,” said Skeevy, throwing back the blanket covering the cases. Warts took out two Crows, handing Skeevy a twenty.

“Kindy high, ain’t it?” the stranger asked, seeing the change.

“This here’s Benny the Punk from Purserville.”

“Just a Pursie?” Skeevy asked.

Benny looked as if to lunge.

“Well,” Skeevy continued, “I don’t put no price on it.”

The Punk pretended to read the label on his bottle.

Gibson came out of the barn and Skeevy sidestepped to the cab where the revolver was hidden.

“Got one for me, Skeev?” Gibson asked.

“Sure,” Skeevy answered, moving to the truck bed. “I reckon I forgot my cigarettes.”

Gibson offered one from his pack and Skeevy took it, handing the man the bottle and pocketing the cash. He noticed the yellow circle around Gibson’s eye and temple where the club had met him. Gibson stood drinking as Skeevy counted cases and pretended to be confused.

“Where’s the mick?” Gibson asked.

Skeevy turned back smiling. “Ain’t got no idy.”

“You see him, you tell him I’m alookin’.”

“Sure.”

The Punk followed Gibson back into the barn, where the gamecocks were crowing.

A wind was rising, pushing the clouds out of the hollow and high over head. Cally, Jeb’s daughter, stood on the high front porch of the farmhouse. Skeevy watched her watching him. He had heard Jeb talk of her at work and knew she had been to college in Huntington; he believed Trudy when she said college girls were all looking for rich boys. He watched her clomp down the steps in chunky wooden shoes, and as she crossed the yard between them, he saw how everything from the curve of her hair to the fit of her jeans was too perfect. She looked like the girls he had seen in
Playboy,
and he knew even if she stood beside him, he couldn’t have her.

“Your name’s Kelly, isn’t it?” Her voice was just like the rest of her.

“Yeah,” he said, not wanting to say his first name. He knew she would laugh.

“Mom said you were related to Machine Gun Kelly…”

He pulled a case out onto the tailgate as if to unload it, wishing somebody had shot the bastard the day he was born.

“He was a cousin of mine—second or third—ever’body’s sort of ashamed of him. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout him.”

“I thought you might know something. I’m doing a paper on him for Psych.”

“Say what?”

“A paper for Psychology.”

Skeevy wondered if she collected maniacs the way men collect gamecocks. He hoisted the case. “Comin’ to the main?” he asked.

“Gross.”

“They don’t have to fight if they don’t want to,” he smiled, carrying the case inside. Seeing Cally standing at the door, he went back for another. She followed him slowly on her chunky shoes.

“Where do you live?” Cally asked.

“In the holler ’twixt Purserville an’ Clayton.”

She looked puzzled. “But there’s nothing there.”

“Sure,” he said, and wondered if she would add him alongside his cousin in her collection.

They watched as Cephus’s truck bounced through the creek and climbed, dripping, up to the barn. Cephus rushed in without speaking, and Skeevy left Cally standing as he followed with another case. When he came out, Corey had her cornered.

“Gibson’s lookin’ for you,” he said to Corey.

“Been talkin’ ’bout that very thing to Cally, here—”

“All Mr. Gibson wants is to restore his dignity,” she interrupted.