Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

The man says for him to put his hands behind his back and take three steps backward slow and then sit down.

Something tells Vandine he does this, he’s a dead man. Something else in him has the courage to say, Fuck that I ain’t moving from my truck.

Now the kid’s eyes are the ones wide as dollar coins — whether it’s that the man is about to shoot him or the kid is just scared of what Vandine might try — and it wilts Vandine’s courage, the boy does, and Vandine says, All right all right, I’m a do what you say.

The man comes around front of Vandine, pistol trained on him. Vandine gets a good look at him. Hair that’s been hacked away to see by, but otherwise long like gray stalks of straw. A blue bandana gone to black from moisture and ash mixing into a thin wet layer of concrete over his nose and mouth, a bushy beard under it. Same red eyes as the kid, same ashy, tattered clothes. The man stifles a cough. Chokes it back.

The boy sacks the soup and the Coke.

Vandine volunteers he’s got some paper filter masks there under the bench seat, the kid’s probably seen ’em, they can have ’em. The man says to shut up. The kid’s watching the father, the pistol in his hand.

The man asks, How many are left?

Vandine says the box hasn’t been opened yet.

I asked you how many are left goddamnit.

Vandine shook his head, ran his finger around the lip of his beer can.

“How many what?” Pete asked.

Vandine wiped his nose with his sleeve and said, “People. He’s asking how many people. He thinks there’s been a nuclear war.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I wish I was, because he didn’t believe me. He asks why I’m up there. I tell him to get a logging truck, he says, Bullshit , he says, you got a bug-out place up here. Says things about martial law and where are the tanks and troop transports.”

“Jesus,” Pete said.

“I remember there’s a newspaper on the seat. I tell him to have a look for himself.”

Vandine polished off his second can of beer, stood, and crushed it with his logging boot.

“What’d he say when he saw?”

“He didn’t see. My partner shoved the paper under the seat and they didn’t see it and wouldn’t look for it.” Vandine was at the hard part. He toed the can on the ground in front of him. “So then he gave his pistol to the kid.” He looked Pete in the eye. “He told him to shoot me.” Pete looked Vandine up and down, as though a gunshot wound would still be in evidence.

Vandine gazed off into the woods at a rusted trailer and broken sawhorses overgrown with lichen. A metal garbage can lid nailed to a tree and rusted and shot to hell.

“The kid come out of the truck and he’s shaking and pointing the gun at me. And I’m saying to his old man, Come on now, you don’t need to do this, he’s just a boy. .. Things of that nature.

“The boy, he was shivering — he’s scared shitless like me — and I’m thinking maybe I got a chance to, you know, close on him and, I dunno, take the gun… but the old man has him nearby and I see he’s got his hand on his other holster too.”

Vandine squatted down on his haunches and began to draw idly in the dirt with the side of the can.

“A person can imagine begging for his life. And beg, I fucking did. And I’ll allow that I was pretty cowardly in some of the things I said to this man and his son.”

“You weren’t a coward,” Pete said. “You were trying to stay alive.”

“It wasn’t any pleasure to discover that I would behave this way.” Vandine pitched the can spinning like a saucer into the woods. “In any case,” he said, “that’s not why I called you. I called you because of the boy. I’m a fuckup. But… I can’t imagine a man making his boy kill someone for nothing.”

Vandine reached for another beer, closed his hand around it. Again Pete waited for him to continue. But he did not. It occurred to Pete that Vandine and the boy had both been thrust into this horrible situation of Pearl’s making. How there was nothing either one of them could do about it.

“So the kid, did he—”

“He shot at me.”

“He missed.”

“From ten feet. I don’t know if it was on purpose or it was too much gun for him or the good Lord or what. But I didn’t get killed.”

“What about Pearl, didn’t he—?”

Vandine held up his hand for Pete to quiet down.

“Next thing I know I’m half-deaf and throwing up, and when I finally get my head together, I see the old man and the kid running off into the woods.”

Vandine stood, pitched his freshly empty can aside, and sat on the bucket.

“It was like some goddamned test. I wonder if the point wasn’t even to kill me. Like that Old Testament story, the father who has to kill his son—”

“Abraham.”

“Yup, Abraham.”

Vandine opened the beer and squeezed the pull tab in his fist. He regarded the cut the pull tab had put into his skin, and smiled dimly.

“Do you know where they are?” Pete asked.

“I was going to ask you that.”

“This was up Tickle Crick.” Vandine drank and nodded and snorted at some amusing thought.

“What?”

“You sure you want to go mess with this guy?” he asked.

Pete leaned back against the jamb of the shed and ran his hands over his face.

“No, I’m not sure of that. I’m not sure of that at all.”

The farmer rose before dawn and went out to chores. A broken chevron of geese honked in the high white air of morning, and he thought he might go down to the bottoms with the shotgun. The dog dancing at the sight of him in his rubber waders. He put the shotgun on the table, dropping shells into the pocket of his wool jacket.

“Thought I might head down the bottoms with the shotgun,” he said.

His wife was making breakfast. She scraped his eggs between two pieces of toast and handed the plate to him. Told him she had that appointment at eleven. He nodded, already working a bite of the dry toast and egg in his mouth, taking a swig of coffee to wash it back. He put the open shotgun in the crook of his arm, let out the dog ahead of him, and softly closed the door like he was already down in the low land by the water.

He crossed the field as the sun struck the tips of the Bitterroots and down through the chokecherry and water birch to the path that led to the long pond where he kept a permanent blind. The dog bounded through the brake of wild raspberry and, snuffling at the soil, tore off into the trees.

He whistled for the animal when it didn’t come back. Listened, whistled again. The dog barked. He set off into the trees.

He smelled smoke. Goddamned kids. Beer cans would be all over up there. He climbed the hill through the stand to the little clearing just off the dirt road. The dog bounded back to him and dropped a laceless hightop tennis shoe marked up in neon colors on the grass.

“Go on,” he said, and the dog tore up the hill ahead of him. The farmer was panting and hot when he reached the summit. Charred grass around a circle of ashes and a few glowing embers where the kids had a fire but didn’t even bother to dig a hole or make a ring of rocks. No beer cans to speak of, but, curiously, three plastic honey bears around in the dirt. And, so quiet it startled him to see, a young person sat on a log with his pants around his ankles, his head between his knees, hands palms up on the dirt in front of him. As if in a mortal bowel movement. The dog sniffed around his trousers.

The farmer set the shotgun against the tree and picked up a honey bear and held it up against a spot of sky. About half full of clear liquid. He sniffed at the nipple on the top. Alcohol. But something else.