Ron Rash - Burning Bright

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Nineteen.”

“Nineteen,” Vaughn said, though whether this was or wasn’t in her favor she did not know. He looked west again toward Grandfather Mountain and studied the sky before glancing down the valley at the toll road.

Okay,” he finally said, and nodded toward the front door. “Let’s you and me go inside.”

“Not in the cabin,” Lily answered. “My young one’s in there.”

For a moment she thought Vaughn would insist, but he didn’t.

“Where then?”

“The root cellar. It’s got a pallet we can lay on.”

Vaughn’s chin lifted, his eyes seeming to focus on something behind Lily and the chair.

“I reckon we’ll know where to look for your man next time, won’t we?” When Lily didn’t respond, Vaughn offered a smile that looked almost friendly. “Lead on,” he said.

Vaughn followed her around the cabin, past the bee box and chopping block and the old root cellar, the one they’d used before the war. They followed the faintest path through a thicket of rhododendron until it ended abruptly on a hillside. Lily cleared away the green-leaved rhododendron branches she replaced each week and unlatched a square wooden door. The hinges creaked as the entrance yawned open, the root cellar’s damp earthy odor mingling with the smell of the dogwood blossoms. The afternoon sun revealed an earthen floor lined with jars of vegetables and honey, at the center a pallet and quilt. There were no steps, just a three-foot drop.

“And you think me stupid enough to go in there first?” Vaughn said.

“I’ll go in first,” Lily answered, and sat down in the entrance, dangling one foot until it touched the packed earth. She held to the door frame and eased herself inside, crouching low, trying not to think how she might be stepping into her own grave. The corn shucks rasped beneath her as she settled on the pallet.

“We could do it as easy up here,” Vaughn said, peering at her from the entrance. “It’s good as some old spider hole.”

“I ain’t going to dirty myself rooting around on the ground,” Lily said.

She thought he’d leave the musket outside, but instead Vaughn buckled his knees and leaned, set his left hand on a beam. As he shifted his body to enter, Lily took the metal needles from her dress pocket and laid them behind her.

Vaughn set his rifle against the earthen wall and hunched to take off his coat and unknot the strip of cowhide around his pants. The sunlight made his face appear dark and featureless as if in silhouette. As he moved closer, Lily shifted to the left side of the mattress to make room for him. Lily smelled tobacco on his breath as he pulled his shirt up to his chest and lay down on his back, fingers already fumbling to free his trouser buttons. His sunken belly was so white compared to his face and drab clothing it seemed to glow in the strained light. Lily took one of the needles into her hand. She thought of the hog she’d slaughtered last January, remembering how the liver wrapped itself around the stomach, like a saddle. Not so much difference in a hog’s guts and a man’s, she’d heard one time.

“Shuck off that dress or raise it,” Vaughn said, his fingers on the last button. “I ain’t got time to dawdle.”

“All right,” Lily said, hiking up her hem before kneeling beside him.

She reached behind and grasped the needle. When Vaughn placed his thumbs between cloth and hips to pull down his trousers, Lily raised her right arm and fell forward, her left palm set against the needle’s rounded stem so the steel wouldn’t slip through her fingers. She plunged the steel as deep as she could. When the needle stalled a moment on the backbone, Lily pushed harder and the needle point scraped past bone and went the rest of the way through. She felt the smooth skin of Vaughn’s belly and flattened both palms over the needle’s stem. Pin him to the floor if you can, she told herself, pushing out the air in Vaughn’s stomach as the needle point pierced the root cellar’s packed dirt.

Vaughn’s hands stayed on his trousers a moment longer, as though not yet registering what had happened. Lily scrambled to the entrance while Vaughn shifted his forearms and slowly raised his head. He stared at the needle’s rounded stem that pressed into his flesh like a misplaced button. His legs pulled inward toward his hips, but he seemed unable to move his midsection, as if the needle had indeed pinned him to the floor. Lily took the rifle and set it outside, then pulled herself out of the hole as Vaughn loosed a long lowing moan.

She watched from above, waiting to see if she’d need to figure out how to use the musket. After almost a minute, Vaughn’s mouth grimaced, the teeth locking together like a dog tearing meat. He pushed himself backward with his forearms until he was able to slump his head and shoulders against the dirt wall. Lily could hear his breaths and see the rise of his chest. His eyes moved, looking her way now. Lily did not know if Vaughn could actually see her. He raised his right hand a few inches off the root cellar’s floor, palm upward as he stretched his arm toward the entrance, as if to catch what light leaked in from the world. Lily closed and latched the cellar door, covered the entrance with the rhododendron branches before walking back to the cabin.

The child was awake and fretting. Lily went to the crib but before taking up the boy she pulled back the bedding and removed the butcher knife, placed it in her dress pocket. She nursed the child and then fixed herself a supper of cornbread and beans. As Lily ate, she wondered if the Confederate had told anyone in Boone where he was headed. Maybe, but probably he wouldn’t have said which particular farm, wouldn’t have known himself which one until he found something to take. Ponder something else, she told herself, and thought again of names for the coming child. Girl names, because Granny Triplett had already rubbed Lily’s belly and told her this one would be a girl. Lily said those she’d considered out loud and again settled on Mary, because it would be the one to match her boy’s name.

After she’d cleared the table and changed the child’s swaddlings, Lily set him in the crib and went outside, scattering shell corn for the chickens before walking back through the rhododendron to the root cellar. There was less light now, and when she peered though the slats in the wood door she could see just enough to make out Vaughn’s body slumped against the earthen wall. Lily watched several minutes for any sign of movement, listened for a moan, a sigh, the exhalation of a breath. Only then did she slowly unlatch the door. Lily opened it a few inches at a time until she could see clearly. Vaughn’s chin rested on his chest, his legs splayed out before him. The needle was still in his stomach, every bit as deep as before. His face was white as his belly now, bleached looking. She quietly closed the door and latched it softly, as if a noise might startle Vaughn back to life. Lily gathered the rhododendron branches and concealed the entrance.

She sat on the porch with the child and watched the dark settle in the valley. A last barn swallow swept low across the pasture and into the barn as the first drops of rain began to fall, soft and hesitant at first, then less so. Lily went inside, taking the coverlet and yarn with her. She lit the lamp and nursed the child a last time and put him back in the crib. The supper fire still smoldered in the hearth, giving some warmth against the evening’s chill. It was the time of evening when she’d usually knit some more, but since she couldn’t do that tonight Lily took the newspaper from under the mattress and sat down at the table. She read the article again about the war being over by summer, stumbling over a few words that she didn’t know. When she came to the word Abraham , she glanced over at the crib. Not too long before I can call him by his name to anyone, Lily told herself.