Winter's Bone

doorways, her eyes closed and her lips silently saying stuff that added churchy oomph to the powers of the smoke. She smoked away haints so the house could feel cleansed of lingering angers and pains and bad ideas that clung to old shadows soaked into the walls. She waved smoke to make the house well so she could get well, and while the house freshly stank of sage the wellness spread from the walls to her tummy, and the next morning she did not puke or void wet gushes. By noon she was sipping vodka from a coffee cup.

“You still bad on the bottle?”

“No. No. I give that up. It’s just beer nowadays, and some of this.”

The pipe crossed the room a few times while the man watching television snored and Ned slept. Smoke curled toward the ceiling and spread into a calm flat layer below the light. April said, “Right around when he was arrested this last time, me’n Jessup had a little rekindle happen. I’d started seein’ Hubert in there months before. He’s a good man’n we’re meant for each other and all, I guess, but your dad always did tickle me extra, don’t you know. Jessup’n me run across each other by total accident out at the trout place by Rockbridge, and he got me to laughin’ so happy things rekindled for a day or two, then he was gone again. Saw hide nor hair for a spell, but about, maybe, three or four weeks back, I had stopped at Cruikshank’s Tap on the state line, and he was in there drinkin’. He was with three fellas who looked a little rougher even than Jessup usually looked. They didn’t look to be havin’ no fun, either, nor wantin’ to.”

“Was one of them three a crusty little bastard?”

“They all were pretty crusty-lookin’.”

“Dad say anything?”

“That’s what has made me feel so hinky’n blue since—he looked square at me but acted like he didn’t know me, never seen me before. They were leavin’ in a knot and I stood in the way at the door, but he went brushin’ past me without even a nod. Somethin’ ugly was up with them fellas. Somethin’ real wrong was goin’ on, and since then I’ve gone over it and over it in my head and think I finally get why he didn’t even nod my way. He was protectin’ me, see, by ignorin’ me. That’s when I understood your dad had loved me. I understood it from how he’d looked away.”

17

ROCKS HELD long by the hillside slipped loose in the melt and scattered downhill to flatten one corner of a hog-pen fence, and fifty hogs roused in the night and shoved through the sudden gap onto the road. The hogs were big and curious and rooted over to the bridge and stood there, blocking traffic. The Twin Forks River rushed along cold and black but streaked yellow, danced upon brightly by headlights. Three or four vehicles had been forced to stop on either side of the bridge. A farmer and his wife with flashlights and sticks and one dog were trying to turn the hogs around and herd them back through the gap in the fence.

Gail said, “Remember when we were little? When Catfish Milton kept hogs, and they told us to go feed ’em corn once, but we didn’t understand how hogs with no hands could ever manage to eat corn straight from the cob, so you’n me hunkered our dumb asses down’n rubbed the kernels off of all them cobs? Remember that?”

“Yup.”

“We thought we were showin’ good sense. My fingers hurt a month, it seemed like.”

“They laughed at us a long time for that day.”

The truck was first in line on the south side of the bridge. The hogs were big grunting humps milling about the bridge and road shoulder. A couple of drivers had gotten out to help the farmer and his wife, but the hogs smelled something fresh in the night and were not easily turned around. Ned began to cry and Gail said, “Him needs some suck, don’t him? Him’s hungry for milk and Momma’s late givin’ him his nipple.”

“You goin’ to nurse him right here?”

“Why not? I don’t seem to make milk like I should oughta, but what milk I make him gets, and him’s hungry now.”

Gail unbuttoned her blouse and pulled the front wide. She undid her bra and let it dangle to her belly. She raised Ned from the basket and his little pink mouth clamped onto a nipple. Ree leaned forward to look closely at the baby’s lips sucking and the heavy bare breasts, and said, “Man, them peaches got big!”

“They ain’t goin’ to stay that way.”

“I feel like a fuckin’ carpenter’s dream, lookin’ at them things!”

“They’ll poof down again before too long.”

“You should get you a picture while they last.”

“I guess I probly should. They can flatten out pretty bad once they poof back down.”

Ree watched Gail hold Ned as closely as anyone could ever be held, feed him supper from a part of her own body, and saw in them a living picture illustrating one kind of future. The looming expected kind of future and not one she wanted. Ned’s baby mouth sucked and sucked on that nipple like he was fixing to drain Gail to the dregs. She said, “I reckon I’ll go’n help kick them hogs off the road. We’ll be settin’ here all night, the way it’s goin’.”

“Don’t let ’em eat you.”

“I doubt I taste all that sweet.”

The hogs were boiling about the bridge, grunting to the far end, then being chased back with sticks. They shrieked when whacked and raced briefly in any direction, slamming one another, slamming the rails, knocking various people to ground. Ree edged across the bridge and began to shoo the hogs, sooey, sooey! toward the gap in the fence. So many headlights shining from both sides of the bridge made it difficult to see clearly. Squealing hump shadows rushed about between the beams. Ree stood near the black rail and when she felt humps bumping her legs or passing near she gave them the boot and more loud shooing. Once the bridge had been cleared a couple of leader hogs finally waddled down from the road and through the gap and others followed.

The farmer watched the hogs going back into the pen, swabbed sweat from his face with a sleeve, sighed, then said, “For cripes sake! There’s two run out on the bridge again.”

Ree said, “I’ll get up there behind ’em and aim ’em this way for you.”

“It’d sure be a help if you could, missy.”

The fleeing hogs were halted by the small circle of folks standing at the north end of the bridge. Their hooves skidded on the road surface. They came to a complete stop and stood there looking into the many blinding headlight beams. The people were smoking and laughing, joking about the great bounty of free hams and sides of bacon that had been running around available in the night without anybody grabbing so much as a hock to haul home. The hogs moved slowly to the bridge rail and walked toward a spot where no people stood. Ree saw their plan and loped ahead of them, turned about and kicked limply at their snouts. “Sooey! Sooey thataway!”

It was the sound of the motor that caused her to look over her shoulder. She’d spent so many long days and longer nights of her life listening for that motor, had so many bursts of relief upon finally hearing that certain memorized rattle and squeak of Dad’s Capri coming down the rut road to the house, that her body and spirit responded automatically to the sound. Wings beat in her tummy and her eyes squinted searching into the various lights. There were now seven or eight vehicles on the north side and she wended through the thicket of beams, hands held to shade her eyes, toward the imprinted rattle and squeak of the family car. She waved her arms overhead, gesturing into the maze of headlights. The hogs followed her off the bridge and she paid them no mind, but began to move quickly along the line of vehicles, waving her hands all the while. She positioned herself to be easily recognized, stood tall facing north, and saw the Capri at the rear of the line as it backed up, turned about in a hurry, and sped away uphill along the road toward Bawbee.

Ree stared briefly after the twin red taillights as they climbed the hill, the red easily visible against the night and general white of the landscape. She breathed hesitant shallow breaths watching the red dots climb, then raced back across the bridge, combat boots drumming hard on the old iron, and yanked the truck door. Gail was bent over the bench seat fussing with a diaper from the blue bag while she tried to change Ned. She had yet to button her blouse or clean his behind and he lay in yellow poop while her breasts swayed above his face. She looked up when the door flew open so violently, and said, “What?”