The Wettest County in the World (20 page)

Do you hear it? Jack shouted above the din.

What? Forrest said.

The ripping sound built into something methodical, mechanical, and the ground began to vibrate. Not again, Jack thought.

Howard tipped up his jar and drained the last few inches, his throat working hard, two, three gulps. Jesus, Jack thought, no man can do that!

Howard’s hat lay on the table beside his heavy forearms. The crown of his head a thinning swirl of muddy hair glistening with oil and sweat. Howard held the glass in front of him for a moment, then smashed it on the table, his palm coming down flat. Forrest blinked languidly and Jack felt the floor lurch under his feet and he wanted to flee, he wanted out of that house. Howard raised his hand and appeared to contemplate the bloody shards of glass that peppered his palm.

A bearded man leaning against the wall with heavy-lidded eyes nodded his head in time to the grinding music and when Jack caught his eye he gave an almost imperceptible nod of recognition.

Yes, there it is. You hear it, son.

There was a pause, when everything seemed to hold still, then Howard pushed out his chair, gained an unsteady crouch, gave Jack a tight smile, then went face-first through the table, splitting it cleanly into two parts. Howard floundered there on the floor in the detritus of broken glass, splintered wood, and cigarette butts. People standing near the table jumped back, cursing, and gave him wide berth as he rolled on the floor. Forrest picked up Howard’s hat and stepping to his back clapped it onto his square head, grabbed two handfuls of Howard’s shirt, and helped him to his knees. The kitchen was clearing out, people all busting for the door, cursing loudly, tripping on the debris, crunching through broken glass. Forrest kept his grip on Howard and pushed him through the back door, screen slamming against the side of the house with a crack.

Outside it was pitch-dark beyond the shaft of light that came from the kitchen door and Jack felt with his hands till he found Forrest’s shirt and followed his brothers into the yard. The ripping noise was still above him, falling from the sky and the ground seemed to lurch like an earthquake under his feet. A large oak rose up out of the black, the silver-flaked bark glowing, and Howard leaned against the tree and began to retch. Inside the house people were shouting and as his eyes adjusted Jack saw the color of the sky had gone deep blue and clear and a single star showed just above the stubbled fields that spread from the yard.

A group of men came spilling out of the kitchen and they boiled around the brothers. Jack stood with his hand on Howard’s back and Forrest stood in front of them both as the men gathered. Light from the window fell on Howard’s face and Jack saw the crimson strings that hung from his mouth. Then Howard’s body rippled and he vomited a gush of blood that seemed to come straight from his enormous horse heart. A man with no shirt on was screaming obscenities at them, his oiled torso gleaming. The other men gathered behind him. Jack’s feet were on fire and when he looked down he saw his shoes were covered with Howard’s blood.

You got no damn respect!

The crowd surged toward them; the men were incensed, incoherent, ravenously drunk, and Jack could tell the crowd wanted some action and would push the shirtless man into it. They urged him on and the shirtless man grinned and pulled out a short straight razor from his boot.

Cut that got damn cracker!

He crouched low and half circled Forrest. The straight razor was flipped open and the rounded blade flashed as the shirtless man waved it back and forth in almost feminine flicking motions of his wrist. Forrest stood straight, his hands at his sides, and Jack could see his shoulders settle and relax.

Then Forrest brought up his left hand very slowly, reaching for the brim of his hat. When he got his fingers around the brim he carefully took it off, then with a casual flick he sent it tumbling off into the darkness. A beat after the hat left his hand, Forrest’s shoulders dipped slightly and his right hand shot out straight from the shoulder, his body torquing like a coiled spring, catching the shirtless man square in the teeth and making a
tink
sound that Jack would never forget.

The shirtless man’s hands flew up in surprise and he went back sprawling into the crowd that parted as he fell. The set of iron knuckles hung loosely from Forrest’s fingers, a fine spray of blood covering his hand and forearm. The men shouted as one with the blow but then seemed struck with silence, backing away. Jack felt a presence at his back and it was Howard, upright, his face a gruesome horror of blood and bile, his eyes mere slits. He was grinning.

Howard stepped next to Forrest and the crowd of men melted back into the dark, some running back into the house. Jefferson Deshazo stood there, his chest heaving. He exchanged a look with Forrest, who still stood in the same spot, the knuckles dangling, and in those seconds some transaction was made between them. Forrest nodded and Jefferson turned and went back to the house, corralling the women and children who gathered at the door, peering into the dark. To Jack it seemed the roaring sound coming from above was building into something like a scream. The shirtless man lay quietly in the grass, his arms stretched out, still holding the razor, his mouth a gory hole. Jack could see bits of shattered teeth flecking his red lips. Kneeling in the soft grass next to the unconscious man, Jack closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears to blot out the sound.

T
HE BANKS OF
Blackwater Creek lay bare like a skirt lifted over old bones; thickened, sprawling root systems desperate for water snaked out of the bank and ran back into the flaking earth. The high walls of the narrow valley were shot through with blanched trees, nearly half of the leaves turning already, blotches of red and yellow amongst the green. Jack and Bertha stood watching the dark waters, now a trickle choked with birch leaves, their broad palms mottled orange and gold. Bertha stirred the leaves with a stick.

It’s like autumn in August, she said. Seems out of place.

’Bacca won’t come up in this heat, Jack said.

Bertha nodded. Jack could tell that unlike most people he knew she did not share the nearly unconscious association of weather with what was in the field, the progress of the season with the cash crop. This was something they had in common.

The last of the rain, in early April, gave way to the long waste of drought, blazing blue skies, cloudless, sparkling with dust. The early shoots withered in a matter of weeks, the bony cattle following the thin licks up the creek beds, planting their muzzles deep in any soft patch of mud. Fish crowded in the deep eddies and boys waded in to grab mud cats and carp with their hands. Headlights sweeping over a field at night found them alive with glowing eyes as packs of deer came down from the mountains desperate for water, parched and defiant. The old superstitions raised their hoary heads and traveling through stands of woods in Franklin County that summer you would occasionally find a snake hanging from a tree, nailed by the head, an ancient appeal to the wood gods to bring the rains back. Fields of yellow, stunted tobacco with untopped blooms covered the county. Red clay surged to the surface through the scattered weeds, the powder rising into the air on no wind at all, like transpiration, the dry sucking up the dry, and so a fine silt of clay was worn in every crease, in the eyes of dogs, in the skillets of fatback and pintos. A matter of minutes after you swept the floor clean you could draw in it with your finger. Men stood with their hands in their pockets, heads low, scuffing their boots, dreaming of sudden, angry cloudbursts. They knew when the tobacco died the shooting would begin. By August even the children grew quiet, beyond listless, and wandered down to the dry creeks in small groups, daydreaming of ice. In the summer of 1930 women all over the southern part of the state of Virginia stood in their dusty kitchens and wept.

Jack and Bertha sat under a stand of chestnut trees that leaned far out over the water. Mud turtles lay in a row along the roots. Bertha gazed at the water and Jack was relieved that she seemed content to sit quietly with him, watching the leaves fall into the water and the sky over the mountain grow purple with the coming evening. Jack’s car sat in the field of red clover and fescue behind them, the engine ticking in the heat. Jack wanted to take them someplace in Rocky Mount or Roanoke but Bertha suggested they sit by the branch of Blackwater Creek that ran through a stretch of the Minnix farm.

Right about where you parked the car? Bertha said. When I was a girl my sister and I once planted twenty pounds of corn in that spot. Daddy said we could go swimming when we were done planting the corn. So we planted it.

Guess you didn’t get away with it, Jack said.

Until fall we did. Anyway, we got to go swimming. A day a lot like this.

Jack eyed her calves, ensconced in her knee-high socks, tucked into her riding britches, a slightly rumpled white blouse damp with sweat. Her low brown shoes were soft and worn through with creases.

You want to go swimmin’ now? he asked.

I don’t think so.

He’d hoped he’d make her blush. Instead she regarded the water thoughtfully.

You go to church regular, Jack?

Wouldn’t say regular.

What sort?

My mother used to take us to Snow Creek Baptist when I was young. I guess I haven’t been back in a while.

Jack pulled at the tufts of johnson grass that bordered the creek, making a small pile by his knee.

That must have been hard on you, Bertha said.

What?

Your mother.

Oh, Jack said. Yeah.

Along with your sisters.

Jack eyed the notch cut into the mountain for the new power lines that stretched through the northern part of the county. Fireflies blinking in the woods along the creek bank and above a keyhole in the dark-blue sky. Jack had a brief memory of his sisters, their bodies stretched out on the floor side by side. His mother, her face covered with a quilt. Emmy sitting on the floor in the kitchen crying, her face slick with tears, her mouth stretched into a gaping howl.

What other kinds of instruments can you play? Jack asked

Oh, I can play just about anything with strings. Mostly mandolin, fiddle, banjolin. Played on a piano a few times too, at the Ruritan club in Roanoke.

Thought Dunkards believed you shouldn’t play music, Jack said.

Bertha smiled to herself.

Not everyone. Some folks don’t like it. But Daddy lets us play. Most in my family play something. When we were growing up my grandfather gave us all instruments. After a while my sisters stopped playin’, so I just started playing all their instruments too. You like music?

Shoot. Yeah, I do.

When Bertha laughed Jack saw a flash and realized then that she rarely showed her teeth. Her eyeteeth top and bottom bore down into sharp points, cantilevered slightly toward the center.

Play anything? Bertha asked.

Naw, Jack said, we never had anything like that. I probably wouldn’t have played them if we had. I prefer listening, dancing. My brother Forrest has a radio and he can pick up the shows out of Wheeling and other places. I’m goin’ to get myself one soon.

You like our church service? Bertha said.

Sure.

Didn’t seem like it.

Well, it’s a funny thing, Jack said. It was the music. It sounded nice at first. Not like regular Baptist church singing, but still nice, the way the voices…well, you know. Then it kinda changed up on me. I could hear each person there singing, one at a time. Like I could separate them.

I think I know what you mean, Bertha said. I hear that sometimes too. When I’m playing, usually. I can pick out what everyone is playing.

I was drunk, you know, Jack said.

I know it, she said. It don’t change nothin’. You still heard what you heard. I hear music in my head even when there isn’t any. Do you?

I guess so, Jack said.

They were quiet for a while as the night came on; the low moan of the creek on the bank, the rising swell of crickets building from the thickets of chigger weed. He started to think of his brothers, the dying crop in the field. While his father could absorb the loss with his income from the store, Howard could not. Forrest would have to agree to make larger runs, but now Jack found himself thinking he would rather things remained the way they were. The images of that night at the Deshazo house rose up in his mind, the gruesome spectacle of Howard, the shattered man’s face, the way Forrest moved with such languid ease. That sound from the attic like the movement of rusty stars.

I quit drinking, Jack said. I won’t touch another drop.

Really?

At your church that night, Jack said. Like I was saying, the music was sounding…real good. Like nothing I heard before. But then it changed again. It seemed like—like the roof was coming off, like the air above my head was being…torn. Like thunder there in the church. Just kept getting louder.

Must have been that liquor, don’t you think?

Maybe, Jack said. But I don’t know. I’d been drunk before plenty and never had that problem. But the worst was when I started seeing things. Like your grandfather? When the preachers came toward me? He had…a sword coming outta his mouth. That’s when I ran.

A sword?

After a few moments Bertha let out a weary laugh.

That’s like…some kind of vision.

Maybe I was crazy, Jack said. Maybe I
am
crazy. Wait a second, I got something for you.

Jack hustled over to the car and returned with a large wrapped package.

I didn’t know exactly what size an’ all, Jack said, but they said they’d alter ’em however you want.

The package was covered with gold tissue paper. Bertha picked at the string around the package.

Jack, she said, I don’t think this is a good thing.

Jus’ open it.

Inside there were three dresses made of silk and satin, one with a fur trim, a purse covered with beaded scrollwork, two long embroidered scarves, and a set of silk handkerchiefs. She held each up and then placed them back on the tissue paper. The dresses were brilliant splashes of color against the parched ground, long and finely made. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

Don’t you like them?

It don’t matter if I like them, she said. I can’t take these things.

The money don’t matter, Jack said. I got plenty and these didn’t make a dent in what I got.

Bertha sat back and crossed her arms.

Put them away, she said. Please wrap them back up. Please!

Jack clumsily gathered the things and balled them in the paper and retied the string.

Just wanted to give you something nice, he said. What’s the problem?

Bertha wiped her face with fingers, composing herself.

Just where do you think, she said, I would wear something like that?

I dunno.

You think I could go back
home
wearing all that…those things?

Don’t you like them?

It don’t matter if I
like
them, Jack, I got no place to
wear
them, okay?

The creek water was now black, stretching around the bend and into a dark tunnel of trees like an open mouth. Jack felt the wide space of the field at his back. He looked at his grass-stained fingers.

I’ll take you somewhere, Jack said. I’ll take you somewhere that clothes like that are what you wear every day.

What makes you think, Bertha said, that I
want
that?

Bertha gazed up at the darkening sky. A milky band of stars stretched over the creek and the mountain. Hell, Jack thought, now what?

They were quiet for some time. Jack could feel the presence of the woman lying next to him in the johnson grass like a giant star in the ground. He felt suddenly naked and he shivered despite the evening heat. No taking it back now, he thought.

You hear some music right now? Bertha asked.

Sure.

How’s it sound?

Oh, it sounds all right, Jack said.