The Wettest County in the World (28 page)

A
FEW YEARS LATER
Forrest was at his sawmill camp in a section of deep wood near Smith Mountain overseeing the loading of a long trailer. The camp sat in a depression among a circular set of ridges, the road a steep switchback. The camp was being run by a man whom Forrest had hired, but Forrest still came by the camp regular, particularly on loading and transport days, although he was withdrawn from the operation in a way that made him a somewhat shadowy presence. A hand would be working a crosscut saw or planing boards and turn to see his angular form standing in the sunlight grove, the stippled scar running across his neck.

A stand of twenty-foot mature oak trunks was cleaned and stacked and strapped for transit, to be pulled out of the hollow with a donkey-engine tractor with track wheels. On the first switchback he walked beside the trailer with some other men to monitor the pitch and roll as the tractor lurched up the hill. The elevation rocked the trailer and on the second turn a sound tore through the air like a herd of wind animals and there was a pause, the logs seeming to vibrate, then they tumbled in that awful slow way off the low side of the trailer.

M
EN WHO
saw it said he didn’t even make an attempt to get out of the way; rather Forrest flipped his hat aside with a cursory movement and turned to face the rolling tons of wood that came for him.

B
UT
F
ORREST
was not done. They arrested Whit Boitnott, the same man Forrest had cast out years before from his camp. He was hired the day before by the unknowing manager. Whit cut the main straps along the high side, in full view of some other men, and when taken in he refused to say a thing other than it was an accident. While Forrest lay in the Rocky Mount Hospital for three months encased in plaster the charges against Whit Boitnott were dropped to reckless endangerment and he was sentenced to just three weeks with good behavior, all on the orders of the commonwealth’s attorney, Carter Lee.

F
ORREST LAY
like a totem in the hospital bed, wound in plaster from head to toe, eyeholes and two straws in his nose for breathing, iron rods strapped to his limbs, lashed down to prevent shifting or struggling. For the first few weeks Forrest wouldn’t say a thing, wouldn’t respond to anyone. Maggie was there most often in the evenings, smoking and gazing out the window, blowing long plumes against the glass. During the day she ran the station, with Everett Dillon working the fuel pumps. Forrest was unconscious much of the time, and when awake he lay silent, his gray eyes merely staring at the ceiling, blinking.

One afternoon Bertha and Jack sat quietly in his room, looking out the window at the tall wooded rise of Grassy Hill, Forrest sleeping soundly behind them. Jack’s hand was cupped loosely over hers, and he gave her fingers a squeeze occasionally.

It wasn’t for nothing, Bertha said. Like the hymns of the next world.

She looked back at Forrest, lying straight out like a dead man, then fixed Jack with her eyes.

In heaven, she said, the afterlife, they’ll be singing about this world. That’s what my grandfather says. All the stories, all of our lives, will be sung like hymns. That’s how we’ll remember them. That’s why it all means something. The problem is that we have to live in this world first, we have to bear it.

She took up his hand, smiling slightly to herself. At that moment it seemed to Jack that some uncomprehending part of the world had broken open, and his love for her, somehow amplified and deepened by the chain of events, came shining into the room.

O
NE EVENING
during the second month, Jack was at the hospital just as Maggie was preparing to leave. As he stood in the doorway he saw her run her hands over Forrest’s plaster shell of a head, tracing over the lump of his nose, his chin, and down around his neck. She seemed to track the line of his scar with her fingers, moving back and forth as she gazed into his eyes. Jack could see his brother staring back at her, blinking hard. On the bedside table Maggie had placed a picture of the two of them, standing in front of the Blackwater station, Forrest with his hands on his hips, Maggie’s face impassive, her mouth a grim line. Next to the picture lay a small lump of moldy wood, a knotted swirl that faintly resembled a figure.

L
OOK HERE
, Forrest said to Jack one day at the hospital. Something you oughta know.

After two months he was still swathed from head to toe in plaster. The fractures in his skull were healing and soon he would have his face free, but for now he still peered out from the worn eyeholes, rimmed with caked dirt and sweat, his mouth hole a ragged orifice stained with food, drink, and spittle.

Jack was sitting on a chair reading softly from the Bible, something Bertha introduced and Forrest seemed to enjoy, and the two of them had spent hours like this, Jack droning on through the long days and into the night, Forrest staring hard-eyed at the ceiling, the faint rustle of his shifting skin under the plaster. Maggie stayed with him through most nights, running the station during the day with Everett and Jack’s help.

Jack set the Bible down in his lap, blinking his eyes from the strain. The bedside lamp was weak and the sky darkening quickly through the windows.

Before Maggie gets here, Forrest said.

His voice was thickened and he worked his cracked lips. Jack bent slightly toward him as he often struggled to speak clearly. He could see some kind of alarming intensity in his brother’s eyes.

Should I get someone, Jack said. Are you hurtin’?

Forrest’s chapped lips bent ever so slightly at the corners. The squeak of shoes in the hall, and Forrest cut his eyes to the open door, a slot of flat light.

That night at the County Line, Forrest said, it was Maggie that pulled me out.

She was there?

Forrest closed his eyes and squeezed them with some effort and to Jack it seemed like his body was vibrating in the husk of plaster, like some kind of molting insect spinning a new skin.

After they got me down, Forrest said, she was in there, inside the restaurant. I heard her screaming. While I was lying in the lot. I couldn’t understand what it was. It didn’t make any sense to me.

Forrest opened his eyes and gazed at Jack, his eyes warm and round. A burning clot began to form in Jack’s chest. He couldn’t imagine the sound. Maggie was not a creature who would scream.

She wouldn’t ever tell me, Forrest said, what happened in there while I was lying in the lot, bleeding.

Jack nodded, gripping the Bible in his lap.

When we got to the hospital, Forrest said, I got out and walked in.

Why didn’t you just tell ’em?

Forrest let out a dry chuckle that turned into a hacking cough. When it settled he smiled at the ceiling, pleased with himself.

Hell, Forrest said. I thought I was
dead.

Well, Jack said. I guess I have something to tell you too.

I
T WAS CLOSE
to midnight when the heavy knock came at Jack’s door. Bertha was asleep in the bed, the baby dozing by her side, blowing small iridescent bubbles of saliva with his steady breathing. Jack was lying there in the dark, listening to the sound of their lungs filling. The knock was strong, and for a moment Jack remembered the sound of George Brodie’s anguished midnight visit. He had wished many times that they had never answered.

He shot up in bed, Bertha clutching his arm.

Lord, Jack!

The baby coughed and whined.

Jack slipped on his trousers. The .22 was on the rack over the fireplace. The creaking of feet on the porch floorboards. The door bolt was sound and Jack stood to the side to catch a peek through the window. A tall figure in a long coat and hat stood facing the closed door. Forrest. Jack lit the oil lamp and opened the door. Behind Forrest, Jack could make out the bulky form of Howard standing in the dark yard.

You were right, Forrest said. We know where they are.

Once the call is answered, Jack thought as he struggled into his coat, it can’t ever be made right again.

I
N
F
ORREST’S
’32 V8 Ford driving north Howard sighed and took a jar from the floorboard, spun the lid off, and flicked it out the window into the rushing night. He pulled on it a few times, heavy, desperate swallows that brought water to his eyes. A shotgun lay angled across his lap, and on the seat a box of shells. As he drove Forrest took a pistol from under the seat and without looking handed it back to Jack. It was his .38 with the squeeze-grip trigger.

Don’t take it out, Forrest said to the windshield, unless you plan on using it. You throw it on someone you best empty it.

Jack slipped the gun into his coat pocket and a surge of bile gripped his chest like a vise. Howard passed back a jar and Jack took a couple big gulps and felt it loosen his chest and bowels. He wiped his forehead on his coat sleeve and the deep smear of sweat surprised him. The car quickly filled with the sour scent of men perspiring. Watching the back of Forrest’s head Jack knew that there wasn’t anything he could refuse his brother. At the same time, he felt like there needed to be some kind of signal that it was his time. He wasn’t ready. The car rattled over the rutted road, the headlights stabbing out trees around the bend. Howard’s face was placid, his eyes half closed, and this gave Jack some comfort.

They drove west across the county for nearly an hour and stopped at a filling station on the eastern edge of Franklin County, near Calloway, a place Jack had never been before. Though it was already past midnight there were eight cars parked in the lot and in the upstairs room there was a light shining through thin curtains. Forrest swung the car smartly around to the back of the building with the headlights off.

They could hear music and laughter from the upstairs window. Jack tried to pick out the tune but couldn’t place it. In the front passenger seat Howard held the shotgun, one hand around the cold, greasy barrel and the other loosely on the trigger guard, tapping it lightly to the tune. Jack passed the jar back up to him and he took another deep drink before passing it to Forrest.

The dusty shaft of light from the upper window wavered as men passed before it, flashing shapes over the windshield and the trees beyond. Jack felt the sky lift over his head and knew that it was opening up, like a smooth road cut through the mountains, the way easy and straight. Howard seemed to settle in his seat. Forrest watched the door of the station.

J
ACK THOUGHT
of candlelight, the warm stove, his sisters winding his fingers with string, their quiet, secret language. His mother holding him tight while outside in the cold a bonfire blazed. His sisters lying side by side on the floor in a neat row, his mother’s face covered with a quilt.

Howard was thinking about something Jack said one night around the fire at the lumber camp:
Forrest would never die by another man’s hand.
They were drunk and it was late, the deep woods black and open like a field, and sometimes around the small sphere of fire Jack felt like making statements that matched his grand sense of the world.

Forrest thinks, Jack said, that the world is all one thing, but he’s wrong.

I’ve seen it, he said, what lies beneath the earth, and it’s a terrible and beautiful thing.

Howard enjoyed listening to him struggle with the words, Jack’s eyes laced with such sincerity that it was difficult to look away.

Howard felt a dull ache in his ribs and he shifted in the seat. He thought of Lucy and his daughter, growing and becoming an agile creature in the woods. He would stay away from the card games and put some money away and maybe next year get a job up in Martinsville at the textile plant. Things would change for him. The world outside the window blurred. The car felt like a promontory by which the rest of the hills and trees and clouds passed with terrifying speed. Howard took another drink, looked through the muddy windshield, and saw the far distance, the land beyond this one, and holding the shotgun across his lap he thought he must feel like the ancient oaks deep in the forest, looking over the canopy into the sun with their toes buried deep into the heart of the earth. It would hold.

A
FTER AN HOUR
men began to file out of the front of the filling station, some talking and laughing as they went to their cars, others quiet with their hats pulled low and the shuffling gait of men who had lost money. The noise from the upstairs window grew quiet, just the sound of the crackling radio and the occasional grunt of furniture on the floorboards. When only two cars remained in the front lot Forrest nodded to Howard and the three men got out of the car. Howard slipped the shotgun under his long coat and patted his pockets, feeling for the extra shells. Forrest checked the load in his pistol, glancing at the upper window.

You set, Jack? Forrest said through his teeth.

He spun the cylinder of his pistol.

This will be quick, so stay close.

Jack nodded. His heart throbbed in his chest as they rounded the building toward the front.

Howard will go in hard, Forrest whispered. He will take the first man, you come in quick with that pistol out and throw it on the second man good. No mistake, right up against his eyeball, you hear? He moves wrong, you squeeze and keep squeezin’.

Jack put his hand on the slick wooden grip of the pistol in his pocket. Was it too slippery? Could he swing it out and point it true? It was quiet and Jack watched the white space of the open door, the plank stairs going up. His underclothes were soaked through with sweat and his crotch itched with damp heat.

The radio tune wavered in the light wind and for a moment became clear and Jack found it. Bertha played it often at home on the banjolin, singing softly to his son, her voice as true as Sarah Carter’s:

His brothers silently mounted the steps of the porch. They stood in the doorway, Howard with the shotgun at his hip pointed up the stairs, ducking his head under to look up, Forrest gazing at Jack with a blank look. Three simple steps but he could not make his feet climb. He was rooted, as if the ground had shifted and pinched his legs in place. Jack knew Forrest was watching him and waiting, and he fumbled with the slippery pistol in his pocket, as if he were looking for something, a flash of light, a remembered song, and he gestured helplessly.

After a moment Forrest flicked his head back toward the car. Howard glanced back, just for a second, then Jack watched his brothers ascend the stairs.

Jack got behind the wheel and took the pistol out of his pocket. The entire weapon was slick with his body grease and he tossed it onto the seat, disgusted. There was a sharp crunching of gravel and Jack saw a man burst out of the front of the station, running from the front door to a car. Jack fumbled for the pistol and pointed it awkwardly through the windshield. The running man had no coat and hat and he didn’t look back as he struggled into his car and tried to start it, the starter motor squealing several times; then the car fired up and spun out of the lot into the road and Jack looked back up to the upstairs window. Jack could make out Forrest’s voice speaking low and straight and a chair or table was thrown to the ground and the sounds of a quick, desperate struggle. It was quiet again for a few moments and then a powerful, sharp sound that Jack took to be the discharge of a shotgun, but as it echoed out over the lot it was clear it was the high, strangled scream of a man. Jack felt his eyes bulging in his face and he cursed and slapped the wheel.

Good God! he thought. God…what is it?

The scream continued on for a full minute, starting higher then dropping and becoming clotted. The sound crowded Jack’s mind and he stared through the windshield trying to focus on the red dirt and gravel in the headlights, the tall pines along the road. Howard was stepping off the porch, shotgun in one hand and a small paper sack in the other. He walked to the car and got in the back, setting the sack on the seat beside him, and Jack could see that the sack was wet and stained at the bottom. Howard broke the shotgun and checked the load, then pulled his coat around him and leaned back. Howard’s eyes looked bright and watery but his body seemed relaxed and he said nothing.

Forrest walked slowly in front of the headlights and around to the passenger side. Sounds of ragged sobbing rang out across the lot, the awful sound of a grown man weeping. Standing outside of the car Forrest bent down and picked up some dirt and rubbed his hands together quickly, like you might do on a cold morning in the field. He got into the car and nodded to Jack who pulled into the road and headed east, going slowly at first because the night seemed so impossibly dark and the lights of the car a single straw of color. He heard the rattle of Howard opening a jar in the back. The breath of his brothers filled the car and Jack could smell the corn whiskey mixed with another scent, the heady, sweet smell of birthing cattle in a winter barn or the steaming scalding trough when a hog was gutted and lowered. Howard flipped the jar lid out the window and off into the woods and Jack pushed the throttle and drove faster into the dark mountains.