Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

And in closing the drawer, happened to glance out the back window. The yard sloped gradually uphill toward a low, massive shadow in the distance. Roy knew what it was even though he couldn’t really make it out: a barn, one of those cantilevered barns found only in these parts. This half sighting did things to his memory that the house had not. Whatever those things were, whatever was stirring, hadn’t risen to the surface before Roy saw a chink of light, the kind of narrow ray that might escape between cracks in old barn siding.

Roy left the house, started up the sloping backyard, more of a field, really, with stubbly vegetation and the shells of several cars. A strange sound came and went, a sound Roy couldn’t identify until it had gone: the beating wings of some heavy bird flying over his head. He glanced up, saw no bird, just the moon, so big and clear, its stony nature apparent. He came to the barn. Yes, one of those east Tennessee barns, as he had thought, and yes, a chink between the weathered planks. Roy put his eye to it.

His gaze swept almost unseeing past many things in the shadows-a tilted tractor missing one wheel, a battered demolition derby car with Sonny J written on the driver’s door, trailing flames, a set of drums, with Sonny J on the bass-and locked on the man in the center of the barn. The man, a big shirtless man with hair falling to his shoulders, had his back to Roy and was busy with something in front of him. At first, Roy couldn’t tell what that something was; then the man raised his arm and Roy saw it was a deer, hanging by its hind feet from the rafters. The man’s arm slashed down-only then did Roy see the knife-and the deer’s white belly split apart, spilling gore. A surprising amount of gore; at least, the man was surprised: he said, “Goddamn,” and spun around. Too late: Roy saw blood all over his thick chest, and a splotch or two on his face. At the same moment, the man’s eyes went right to the chink in the wall. Roy jerked back, as though he was afraid, but what was there to be afraid of? His memory, down at the bottom in the earliest part, was already making connections. They were cousins. Roy walked around the barn to the big double doors, said, “Sonny?” and pulled them open. “Sonny Junior?”

Maybe not. “Who the hell are you?” said the man, the knife not quite still in his hand, as though it had a pulse of its own.

“Roy.”

“Roy?” A moment or two, and then a smile spread across the man’s face. “Son of a bitch.” He came forward, almost trotting, shifted the knife-the blade must have been a foot long-to his left hand, offered the right to Roy. They shook hands, not the horizontal business handshake that Roy was used to, but the vertical kind he’d seen on the streets, a handshake in the arm-wrestling position. “Ain’t this the living end?” Sonny Junior said, not letting go. “Talk about a blast from the past.”

“How many years has it been?” Roy said.

“Don’t want to know,” said Sonny Junior, gazing down at Roy. Sonny Junior was about two inches taller, and in better shape than Roy had been on his best day. “Lookin’ good, Roy. Lookin’ real successful.” His expression changed. “Uh-oh,” he said. “You being here-did Uncle Roy… is Uncle Roy… gone?”

“He’s made a recovery.”

Sonny Junior shook his head. “Tough old bastard. Let me guess-he got you to come out here for booze.”

“You know him pretty well.”

“And Cheetos,” Sonny Junior said. “The Cheetos you can get away with. The booze they’re gonna confiscate unless you’re real smart.”

“I wasn’t going to bring him the booze anyway.”

Sonny Junior’s eyebrows went up; there were scars over both of them. “Why the hell not?”

“It’s his liver, Sonny.”

“So?” There was a pause. Then Sonny Junior flashed that smile again, patted Roy on the back, said, “Hell, you’re probably right, Roy. But there’s nothing to keep us two from throwing one back now, is there?”

“I’m not much of a drinker.”

“We’re not gettin’ wasted, Roy. It’s just a how-d’you-do, is all.”

Roy realized he was being rude. “A drink sounds good.”

“Now you’re talking,” said Sonny Junior, laying his hand, a big, heavy hand, on Roy’s back and guiding him into the barn. “Sorry if I was a little sharp there at first, Roy. I reckoned maybe you’d be one of them assholes from fish and game.”

“How come?”

“How come, Roy? Ain’t exactly hunting season, now is it?”

Roy hadn’t thought of that.

“But the truth is I’m innocent as a newborn babe. This critter was the victim of an unfortunate road accident up near Turtletown. I just happened to be the first lucky motorist on the scene.”

Roy found himself gazing at the big eyes of the deer; he had the crazy idea they were trying to tell him something.

“Do much huntin’, Roy?”

“No.” The truth was he’d never hunted in his life, never even fired a gun.

“Then this might interest you,” Sonny Junior said. He reached deep in the carcass, rooted around, and tore out a fist-sized bloody gobbet that Roy couldn’t make sense of at first, and then realized was a baby deer, tiny but perfectly formed. “Probably worth a few bucks,” Sonny Junior said.

“How’s that?”

“Up at the college. Genetic research.” Sonny Junior held up the fetus, gazed at it for a moment, then dropped it in a trash barrel. “Vodka all right? I got vodka and maybe whiskey.”

Roy saw a sleeping bag on a bare mattress in the cantilevered section. “You live here?”

“From time to time,” Sonny Junior said. “Need space for all my stuff. Want to see some of it?”

“Some of what?”

“My stuff, Roy.”

“Sure.”

Sonny Junior paused, bit his lip. “Shit, Roy.”

“What?”

“Family. What’s more important?” For a moment, Roy thought Sonny Junior was going to give him a hug. Instead, he opened a cooler, took out a bottle of vodka topped with one of those measuring spouts they use in bars, poured several measures into two paper cups, added water and a few spoonfuls of Tang powder. “Here’s to family.”

They touched paper cups. “What’s our relationship, exactly, Sonny?”

Sonny Junior paused, drink halfway to his lips, looked sad. “Ordinary circumstances, we’d of growed up together, Roy. We’re first cousins, you and me. Your daddy and my ma were brother and sister.”

“Were?”

“She passed.”

“Sorry.”

“Long time ago,” said Sonny Junior. “She had what Uncle Roy’s got, but worse.”

Roy didn’t know whether he meant liver disease, a drinking problem, or both. “What about your father?”

“Big Sonny? He’s gone too. Succumbed of an unlucky chain of events, down in Angola.”

“The prison?”

“What else they got down there?”

Sonny Junior took Roy by the arm, led him across the floor. “This here’s my last demolition derby car. Came second in it at the Waycross Fourth of July Invitational a few years back.”

“Still racing?” Roy wasn’t sure if racing was the term, but he couldn’t think of another.

“No money in it, Roy, believe it or not. Now over here, these rockets is what’s left from the fireworks stand I had up by Maryville. And this is my drum kit. We got a band plays once a week, once a month now, at a bar in Gatlinburg.” He sat down on the stool, picked up the sticks, started into something thunderous. Sweat popped out on his skin almost at once, sweat that mixed with drying deer blood, forming pink droplets on his chest. A crash of cymbals; silence. Sonny Junior beamed. “Recognize that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“The break from ‘Friends in Low Places,’ adapted a bit by myself.”