Claude went to his knees in the mud breathing hard. It’s went in gear somehow, he said.
Drew looked. No it ain’t.
It ain’t going anywhere else, either, Tyler said.
Claude began to curse the truck. There on his knees in the mud swearing he seemed like a penitent praying to a god of blasphemy. After a time he ceased but remained sitting in the mud with the rain channeling through his sparse hair and the eggsized bald spot he’d so carefully combed over bared to the elements.
I got to think, he said. I’m not whupped yet. Go in the house and warm. I’ll think of somethin here directly. He raised the bottle aloft to the winter light and drank and set it carefully in the mud, wallowing out a hole with the bottom of the jar to prevent its overturning.
The serried warm gloom of the house. This is the last goddamn time I’m changin clothes today, Drew said. I’ve got me a good mind to just go back to bed and start all over.
When they came back through the curtained doorway to the front room, Claudelle said, Let me try to find you somethin of Daddy’s to put on.
He stood steaming before the fire. There’s no need of it, he said. I’d just get them wet. I’m going back out and see if I can help him do whatever it is he thinks of doing to the truck. Did your mama ever make any coffee?
She just shook her head.
When he’d warmed awhile and judged he’d soaked up enough heat to hold him against the cold he went back out. He met Claude coming up the slope but Claude didn’t speak or otherwise acknowledge his presence. Tyler noticed that the level of liquid in the jar had fallen and Claude seemed to list slightly as he slogged through the mud. For lack of anything better to do Tyler followed him to the barn.
By the time he caught up in the hall of the barn Claude had a bridle slung over his arm and was opening the door to a stall off the strawstrewn hall of the barn. Tyler could hear a heavy stamping behind the door. Here, Stannybogus, Claude was calling into the haysmelling dark. A horse’s head appeared in the widening crack, and when it did Claude grasped its mane with a fist twisted in it, and the horse tossed its head and Tyler could see it was blind in one eye. He shook his head and went back out into the rain and down the hill to the truck. After some time Claude came stumbling down the grade leading the horse and carrying a board in his free hand. He laid aside the board and hitched the horse to the bumper of the truck and took up the slab and turned to wink at Tyler.
When the board slammed the horse’s rump its one good eye walled fearfully and it leapt against the traces with bunched muscles, simultaneously lashing out with its hind legs. Its right hoof caught Claude a glancing blow on the thigh and he collapsed into the mud, thrashing about and trying to rise. The horse had fallen to its knees leaving great raw slashes in the fresh mud and it was frantically trying to regainpurchase before the board could fall again. It veered right and left, rolling its good eye to see then lunged again and for an elongated moment the chains held and it stood straining and vibratory with nervous tremors rippling its hide and when the traces broke it lost its footing and fell again.
From the porch the woman was yelling something the wind stole and Claude was rolling around in the mud clutching his thigh, face contorted in histrionic anguish. Crazed so all over with mud and lightly furred with straw he looked like the luckless victim of some peculiar catastrophe whose survival lay in grave doubt. Graver still, for the woman had left the porch and was approaching with long purposeful strides.
The horse was running in great sliding lopes around the hillside with the singletree randomly banging the ground and each time it did the horse redoubled its speed toward the edge of the woods. They looked good to Tyler too.
I got to get on, Claude, he said. I’ll see you.
Claude just shook his head and wiped his cheek, leaving in the wake of his hand a slash of mud. Boy, I ever need anymore back luck, I aim to look you up and wear you like a charm on a watch fob. You draw misfortune like shit draws flies.
Tyler knelt in the mud before Claude. There’s a man looking for me named Granville Sutter, and he may come here. I just don’t know. If he does, don’t fool with him. Don’t even let him in. He’s crazy.
You bring the son of a bitch on. After the day I’ve had and it not over yet, nobody’s goin to come on my own land and jerk me around.
Tyler rose and went on up the hill. Meeting the woman he gave her a wide berth and she shot him a look of fearful godspeed and he went on to the porch. The girl met him there. She had a folded coat in her arms and a brown paper bag with the top rolled down.
It’s Daddy’s old army coat. Try not to let him see it.
I think he’s got other things on his mind. I guess I better get on.
I guess you had. Mama’s pretty mad. I fixed you a little lunch, some bread and jelly was all I could find. And some coffee. I don’t reckon you’ll have any trouble findin water to make it.
Thanks a lot.
Bring that coat back. It’s Daddy’s old World War coat, and he wouldn’t take nothin for it. You are comin back, ain’t you?
You know I am, he said. Even your mama couldn’t keep me run off.
I just hope you ain’t lyin about it. I wished Daddy hadn’t stayed up all night stumblin around. I wished we’d of done it knowin we’d get caught. I’ve just got a bad feelin I ain’t never goin to see you again.
I’ll turn up.
No, you won’t. Give me somethin of yours to keep.
Do what? He looked about. All there was was the gun.
Anything of yours to remember you by.
He laid the coat and bag down and untied the thong from the arrowhead amulet and handed it to her. She tied it about her throat and tucked the arrowhead into the top of her dress. Her face was touched with an inexplicable sorrow. I don’t even know your first name, she said.
It’s Kenneth.
Well. Bye, Kenneth. Be careful.
You be careful. If a man shows up around here and asksabout me, you head out. If you have to go out a window or whatever. Just stay out of his way.
What in the world are you talkin about?
He picked up the folded coat and the bag and the rifle from against the porch stanchion. It’s a long story and you wouldn’t believe it anyway. Just do what I asked you. He raised a hand in farewell and went back into the rain.
He angled toward the barn and figured to come out of the hollow back onto the roadbed. He had a thought for the tarp, but he could hear angry voices from the vicinity of the truck. When he had the barn between himself and the house, he unfolded the coat. It was emblazoned with the insignia of old wars long won or lost, and when he wrapped it round him there was room enough for a companion had he had one, but it was thick wool and very warm.
He went through the dripping brush skirting a wetweather stream boiling up from a mossy shrine and up a rocky incline and through a curtain of blackjack onto the road. He trudged on. The rain did not abate. The day drew on gray and somber and when dusk fell you could not have told the exact moment it did so. The light just faded by immeasurable increments until ultimately he was walking in darkness.
Sometime in the night he met a horseman. He’d been walking on half asleep, stumbling with a wooden gait, and the horseman was almost upon him before he recognized the sound of steel shoes on the packed earth roadbed. There was a bend in the road ahead and the rider just beyond and without even thinking he veered off down an embankmentand crouched in a thicket of winter huckleberry bushes till the rider should pass. When he passed he passed above him with the sound of steel on stone and the creak of the saddle and Tyler could see the smoking breath of the black horse and the rider pale and indistinct like some underimagined protagonist in a fever dream. Horse and rider diminished into the foggy rain and the mist muffled the slow clop of hoofbeats. There was a sharp pain in his chest and he realized he’d been holding his breath. He exhaled in a pale plume of steam and hunkered there in the winter huckleberries. He was shivering from more than the cold. He fought an almost overpowering urge to flee crazed and directionless into the fog that drifted between the dark boles of the trees. He didn’t know if it was Sutter or not and he didn’t know if it was real or he had dreamed it but he knew that something dread had passed over him in the night and gone on.
