“How was that?” she said. “I feel all right?”
“Fine, but I got done too quick. Oh, girl, it’s been so long. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. It don’t mean nothin’.” She patted him stiffly on the back and then twisted a little so that he’d know she wanted him off her.
“I could do better,” he said.
“Tomorrow night.”
“Me and Tom, we’re huntin’ tomorrow night. He’s bringin’ a dog, and we’re gettin’ a possum.”
“That’s right…Night after.”
“All right, then,” Deel said. “All right, then.”
He lay back on the bed and buttoned himself up and tried to decide if he felt better or worse. There had been relief, but no fire. She might as well have been a hole in the mattress.
TOM BROUGHT A BITCH dog with him and a.22 rifle and a croaker sack. Deel gathered up his double barrel from out of the closet and took it out of its leather sheath coated in oil and found it to be in very good condition. He brought it and a sling bag of shells outside. The shells were old, but he had no cause to doubt their ability. They had been stored along with the gun, dry and contained.
The sky was clear and the stars were out and the moon looked like a carved chunk of fresh lye soap, but it was bright, so bright you could see the ground clearly. The boy was in bed, and Deel and Tom and Mary Lou stood out in front of the house and looked at the night.
Mary Lou said to Tom, “You watch after him, Tom.”
“I will,” Tom said.
“Make sure he’s taken care of,” she said.
“I’ll take care of him.”
Deel and Tom had just started walking toward the woods when they were distracted by a shadow. An owl came diving down toward the field. They saw the bird scoop up a fat mouse and fly away with it. The dog chased the owl’s shadow as it cruised along the ground.
As they watched the owl climb into the bright sky and fly toward the woods, Tom said, “Ain’t nothin’ certain in life, is it?”
“Especially if you’re a mouse,” Deel said.
“Life can be cruel,” Tom said.
“Wasn’t no cruelty in that,” Deel said. “That was survival. The owl was hungry. Men ain’t like that. They ain’t like other things, ’cept maybe ants.”
“Ants?”
“Ants and man make war ’cause they can. Man makes all kinds of proclamations and speeches and gives reasons and such, but at the bottom of it, we just do it ’cause we want to and can.”
“That’s a hard way to talk,” Tom said.
“Man ain’t happy till he kills everything in his path and cuts down everything that grows. He sees something wild and beautiful and wants to hold it down and stab it, punish it ’cause it’s wild. Beauty draws him to it, and then he kills it.”
“Deel, you got some strange thinkin’,” Tom said.
“Reckon I do.”
“We’re gonna kill so as to have somethin’ to eat, but unlike the owl, we ain’t eatin’ no mouse. We’re having us a big, fat possum and we’re gonna cook it with sweet potatoes.”
They watched as the dog ran on ahead of them, into the dark line of the trees.
WHEN THEY GOT TO the edge of the woods the shadows of the trees fell over them, and then they were inside the woods, and it was dark in places with gaps of light where the limbs were thin. They moved toward the gaps and found a trail and walked down it. As they went, the light faded, and Deel looked up. A dark cloud had blown in.
Tom said, “Hell, looks like it’s gonna rain. That came out of nowhere.”
“It’s a runnin’ rain,” Deel said. “It’ll blow in and spit water and blow out before you can find a place to get dry.”
“Think so?”
“Yeah. I seen rain aplenty, and one comes up like this, it’s traveling through. That cloud will cry its eyes out and move on, promise you. It ain’t even got no lightnin’ with it.”
As if in response to Deel’s words it began to rain. No lightning and no thunder, but the wind picked up and the rain was thick and cold.
“I know a good place ahead,” Tom said. “We can get under a tree there, and there’s a log to sit on. I even killed a couple possums there.”
They found the log under the tree, sat down and waited. The tree was an oak and it was old and big and had broad limbs and thick leaves that spread out like a canvas. The leaves kept Deel and Tom almost dry.
“That dog’s done gone off deep in the woods,” Deel said, and laid the shotgun against the log and put his hands on his knees.
“He gets a possum, you’ll hear him. He sounds like a trumpet.”
Tom shifted the.22 across his lap and looked at Deel, who was lost in thought. “Sometimes,” Deel said, “when we was over there, it would rain, and we’d be in trenches, waiting for somethin’ to happen, and the trenches would flood with water, and there was big ole rats that would swim in it, and we was so hungry from time to time, we killed them and ate them.”
“Rats?”
“They’re same as squirrels. They don’t taste as good, though. But a squirrel ain’t nothin’ but a tree rat.”
“Yeah? You sure?”
“I am.”
Tom shifted on the log, and when he did Deel turned toward him. Tom still had the.22 lying across his lap, but when Deel looked, the barrel was raised in his direction. Deel started to say somethin’, like, “Hey, watch what you’re doin’,” but in that instant he knew what he should have known all along. Tom was going to kill him. He had always planned to kill him. From the day Mary Lou had met him in the field on horseback, they were anticipating the rattle of his dead bones. It’s why they had kept him from town. He was already thought dead, and if no one thought different, there was no crime to consider.
“I knew and I didn’t know,” Deel said.
“I got to, Deel. It ain’t nothin’ personal. I like you fine. You been good to me. But I got to do it. She’s worth me doin’ somethin’ like this…Ain’t no use reaching for that shotgun, I got you sighted; twenty-two ain’t much, but it’s enough.”
“Winston,” Deel said, “he ain’t my boy, is he?”
“No.”
“He’s got a birthmark on his face, and I remember now when you was younger, I seen that same birthmark. I forgot but now I remember. It’s under your hair, ain’t it?”
Tom didn’t say anything. He had scooted back on the log. This put him out from under the edge of the oak canopy, and the rain was washing over his hat and plastering his long hair to the sides of his face.
“You was with my wife back then, when you was eighteen, and I didn’t even suspect it,” Deel said, and smiled as if he thought there was humor in it. “I figured you for a big kid and nothin’ more.”
“You’re too old for her,” Tom said, sighting down the rifle. “And you didn’t never give her no real attention. I been with her mostly since you left. I just happened to be gone when you come home. Hell, Deel, I got clothes in the trunk there, and you didn’t even see ’em. You might know the weather, but you damn sure don’t know women, and you don’t know men.”
“I don’t want to know them, so sometimes I don’t know what I know. And men and women, they ain’t all that different…You ever killed a man, Tom?”
“You’ll be my first.”
Deel looked at Tom, who was looking at him along the length of the.22.
“It ain’t no easy thing to live with, even if you don’t know the man,” Deel said. “Me, I killed plenty. They come to see me when I close my eyes. Them I actually seen die, and them I imagined died.”
“Don’t give me no booger stories. I don’t reckon you’re gonna come see me when you’re dead. I don’t reckon
