Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

What were you doing up there?

Just taking in the view, Mrs. Pearl. Could you get that light off my face?

You’re not allowed up there.

Why the hell not?

I don’t know you.

My name is Joe Stacks.

Are you saved, Mr. Stacks?

Saved?

Saved by the Lord?

Oh yes. Of course.

I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you are who you say you are.

I don’t know what to say to that.

Don’t be going around the property. You stay at that trailer.

She traipses away to the house, tells the kids who must be sentried there to go on in, get back to bed.

In a few days, Ruffin returns, in high psychotic spirits as usual. He’s brought a used chain saw and a splitter and also a few sawhorses for some undisclosed project.

What’s all this?

Firewood.

This is the first Ruffin’s mentioned anything about it.

Maybe we should wait until Jeremiah gets back.

The fuck for. I have bills, you know. I need this firewood money to get liquid. Cover my nut for winter, we get cracking.

I dunno.

Ruffin asks what the hell did Stacks think he was up here to do? Drink beer and live free? This is how Stacks is gonna cover his rent on the Airstream.

That next morning, Ruffin’s gone and Stacks goes to work. He gets after the deadfall, but it’s wet through and some of it downright mucky inside, all the rain they’ve been having. For about a day and a half, he’s clearing out the useless wet wood and then he starts the standing tamarack. He’s cutting rounds when he feels someone near. Pearl’s old lady yelling at him from ten feet away. He kills the chain saw.

Who said you could cut down our trees?

She’s holding one cowboy boot that came off in the meadow and is shaking the mud out of it.

Ruffin leased it from Jeremiah.

Cutting down our trees isn’t part of the lease.

That’s not what he said. I was sitting right here with your husband when he and Bob were talking—

When you two were feeding him beer, you mean.

She yanks her boot back on, stomps her foot into it.

Look, Bob said for me to do it to pay my rent. He comes back and sees I haven’t done it. ..

She’s already turned around and started back up to the house. Pinkerton has no idea what that means, should he stop or not. She just goes.

It’s about suppertime anyway. He eats a can of chili and observes the children running around the house and then going in for dinner. There’s good couple hours of light left. He figures he’ll get after it again. The tree is already down. Might as well cut the rounds. Maybe talk to her tomorrow. Maybe see about finding Ruffin and squaring all this with him. Hell, the Pearls can have the firewood for their winter. It’s just one log.

So he’s got a barrowful of rounds and is dumping them on the high ground near the trailer for splitting. Something claps him on the eardrum real good. Sarah Pearl’s open palm. She swings again. He catches her arm and she flings the other one, and he pushes her over a round into a spot of muck, and then she’s up again, and he’s saying he’s sorry, he didn’t mean to push her, and he’s trying to stammer out an explanation—

Stars. Tears of light.

He’s tumbled against the trailer, sliding along the siding. Everything keeling. He rights himself as the trailer window just over his head shatters. Something rattles around the countertops inside. He looks up as something nails him in the shoulder. It was the boy, throwing rocks. The eldest. Jacob. The other boy trudging with difficulty through the meadow, and Sarah Pearl, she ain’t calling off her son, and Pinkerton doesn’t know what to say or do. And does she know this. Does she know he won’t hurt the boy.

Of course she doesn’t. Or the bitch is crazy, doesn’t care what happens to her kids.

He doesn’t hear what he says until he sees Sarah and the boys hear him, their mouths and eyes gape wide: I’m going in my trailer for my goddamn gun.

Sarah Pearl runs for the house like he’d drawn down on them already. He isn’t even sure if his pistol is in the trailer or down at the drive in his truck with half of his other things, but she tears off through the meadow with her boys like he’s firing at them.

He should go. This very moment.

Stacks would go.

But Pinkerton, he’s jammed up. He feels like he must stay, must wait until Pearl gets back, and make everything okay. Fuck the case. If he just sticks out this rough patch, he can make it square with Pearl.

Pinkerton steps inside the trailer. He’s in there a minute, then a while, then it’s sunset, then it’s dark and there are no lights on at the house. Now leaving seems impossible. Fact is, he’s afraid to go outside. If he’s honest with himself. Are they watching him. Is she watching him. Are they outside right now. He can’t hear a thing. Just the owl and the stream and the sighing trees. The moths kissing the screen. He locks the door and closes the curtains. Finds his pistol in his bag and beds down with it. He’ll go in the morning.

His sleep is so light it’s some smallness of sleep, some rumor of sleep.

He can hear the boy — somehow the footfall sounds like a boy coming through the grass and nettles at the backside of the trailer. Pinkerton moves just as the glass crashes and he’s crouched behind the counter as it rains down. He fires out the window, up into the sky from his position on the floor in the glass. There’s a moment in the wake of the shot where all he hears is the ring and the fade of it. There’s a stone on the floor. One of the kids is throwing rocks. Again.

He yells that he doesn’t want any trouble, that he’ll leave in the morning.

The metal teapot caroms off the stove to the floor and pisses the carpet. The report of the gun that Sarah or one of the children shoots echoes off the mountains. Kids playing little Indians on the high ground. He thinks of carbines and face paint and warbonnets.

Another bullet hole appears in the wall near the ceiling. He can see a single night star just off center in it.

Another.

They are shooting at the trailer.

They are going to kill him.

He grabs the jacklight off the counter and flips it on. He leaps out the front door and holding it level with his pistol, sweeps the nearby area for anyone and then around the meadow. Nobody. He fires in the air and throws the light as hard as he can in the direction opposite the one he’s running — to the truck — as gunfire erupts from the house. He dives in and starts the pickup and bounds across the meadow in pitch-black. Trees rear up and he hits the brakes and then pulls on the lights and turns and guns the engine spitting mud. He still gets turned around and nearly high-centered on the zigzag out but then, his heart racing, he finally bounds through the brush onto the dirt road.

Pinkerton touched crumbs of piecrust onto his finger and licked them off and burped silently into his fist. It was night now and had taken him an hour to eat the slice of pie and tell the story.

“Was anybody hurt?”

“Hurt? No. I didn’t fire at anyone. I just wanted to get out of there.”

“So you’re sure none of the kids or their mother was hurt?”

“No. Of course not. I was trying to avoid anyone getting hurt. That’s why we arrested everybody. Ruffin was bound to go up and catch hell for what happened with me—”

“Waitaminute. You arrested everyone?”

“Pearl and his wife, yes.” Pinkerton looked at his hands a moment. “I was still thinking that if they just gave us something, just a name, I could make it all go away.”