Daniel Woodrell - The Outlaw Album - Stories

“He got different. He was always kind of lonely, you know, not so sure how he stood in the world, always lookin’ for somehow to measure himself, prove somethin’, figure what size of man he was. Could be he found out and it broke him.”

“Randall—why me?”

“You know, he was plenty spooky sometimes—that stare, the hours’n hours when he wouldn’t talk. I could see he was hurtin’ in some way I never had to know, and he drank vodka in bed of a mornin’ with his boots on and took other stuff, too, right there in the house. So, anyhow, one time I went in there while he stared at the ceiling with his boots on the sheets, and asked him, ‘Son, you want to talk about it?’ And he looks at me like he ain’t certain sure we’ve met before, but he says, ‘Will do, bro. Here’s all your main answers: Yes. I lost count. Like tossin’ a bucket of chili into a fan. Pick up all you can, shovel the rest.’”

“There it is.” That very phrase took Pelham back to a time of rain. He screwed the cap onto the bottle and stood. He stretched his legs and turned upstream. He didn’t want to tremble facing Randall. He jumped from the rocks and crouched at the water’s edge, dunked his head and the cold sluiced through him and soaked his neck, drained down his spine. “Whiskey came a little early for me today.”

“Me, too.”

“Let’s go.”

That night Pelham taped his own boot camp photo onto the refrigerator, side by side with Junior’s. Jill looked into the teenage face of her husband and asked, “Is that even you? You looked like that?”

His head was shaved, skin lightly reddened, hat set too squarely, a slight bruise puffed beneath his left eye, expression flat and unblinking.

“For a while, there, I looked exactly that way.”

“Huh. I thought everybody was against Vietnam back then. That’s all you ever hear about, anyhow. ‘Hell no, we won’t go,’ that sort of stuff.”

“That wasn’t our neighborhood.”

He studied the two faces and drank a beer, then another. Jill was mostly at the counter, chopping chicken parts to marinate for guests coming by tomorrow. Citrus and garlic smells were strong. He could see something happening to both faces, that relinquishing of who you’d been replaced by reflexive obedience, a new familiarity with exhaustion. They’d grill dinner and avoid this topic, probably, maybe drink too much just to hear the laughter. He wouldn’t want guests to notice the photos, so he pulled them from the refrigerator, careful not to tear the edges, and held both in his hands. He switched the photos from one hand to the other, then back again. Jill became curious and stepped near, smelling of tomorrow, and looked over his shoulder.

“ Why did you join again?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer.

Pelham stepped outside, onto the wooden deck. A big moon cut shadows from everything and flung them around. He laid the photos on a lawn chair, then pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on top of them. Then he slipped from his shoes, dropped his jeans and skivvies, and stood naked near the rail. He leaned on the wood, tried an experimental little growl. The next growl was more sincere; the one after that was louder. Pelham stood upright and breathed deeply, spread his arms wide, growled and growled toward the perimeter, inviting shadows to cross his yard.

“Hon?”

When she comes over it is in a rattly old thing. Color yellow it got white-ring tires that rhyme the way round and the exhaust has slipped loose and is dragging sparks from it. There are stickers from the many funny places she been to on the bumper and two or three of her ideas are pasted on the fenders. A band-aid that look just like a band-aid only it is a monster has been momma’d onto the hood like the rattly old thing got some child sore in the motor.

Now this official had mailed us a note that tell Wilma who is the woman who is my wife and me that this lady wants to visit. It seems she teach Cecil something useful at the prison.

The door flings out and she squats up out of the car coming my way. I have posted myself in the yard and she come straight at me smiling. Over her shoulder is a strap that holds up a big purse made of the sort of pale weeds they have in native lands I never saw.

She call me Mister McCoy right off like who I am is that clear-cut. Her name Frieda Buell she go on then flap out a hand for me to shake. I give her palm a little rub and tell her she is welcome.

When I see that sits with her good I tell her to come into the house.

That is something she would love to do she tells me.

This is a remark I don’t believe so I stand back and inventory her. She is young with shaggy blond hair but she knows something about painting her face as she has done it smashing well. Her shirt is red and puffy and her shoes have heels that tell me walking is not a thing she practices over much. Her britches are pale and slicked onto her booty like they started as steam puffs.

The porch has sunk down so it hunkers a distance in front of the house. I ask her to be careful and she is. Inside I give her the good chair but I keep standing.

Right away I tell her I want to know what this about.

What it is about is a lulu. My son Cecil is a gifted man she says. He has a talent that puts a rareness to the world or something along those lines.

Cecil? Cecil a thief I tell her. And not that sly a one neither.

Once was she says. No more.

Always was. My mind is made up on that. But what’s got me puzzled is what is this rareness he puts to the world or whatever?

Poetry is her answer. She reach her hand that has been overdone with various rings into the big purse and pulls out a booklet. She says Cecil has written it and the critics have claimed him as a natural in ability.

I take the booklet in my hands. It is of thick dry paper and the cover says “Dark Among the Grays” by Cecil McCoy. That is him all right I say. Tell me do this somehow line him up early for parole?

It could she says. She trying to face me bold enough but her eyes is playing hooky on her face and going places besides my own. She been teaching him for two years she says and what he has is a gift like she never seen before.

Gift I say. A gift is not like Cecil.

May I have the book she asks. I hand it to her. She opens it to a middle page. Like this listen to this. She begin to read to me from what apparently Cecil my son has written out. The name of it is “Soaring” and it is a string of words that say a bird is floating above the junkyard and has spotted a hot glowing old wreck below only the breeze sucks him down and he can’t help but land in it. When she done reading the thing she look up at me like I should maybe be ridiculous with pleasure. I can’t tell but that is my sense.

Is that the first chapter or what I want to know.

She lets out one of them whistly breaths that means I might overmatch her patience. These are poems of his life on the street she tells me. But they are brimful of accurate thoughts for all. Yet grounded in the tough streets of this area.

They have junkyards everywhere is my comeback to her.

But the bird Mister McCoy. The bird is soaring over death which is an old car wreck. The poet is wanting to be that white bird winging it free above death. What it really signifies is that Cecil want to be let off from having to die. That is the point of it she says.

Now to me this point is obvious but I feel sad for a second about Cecil. Two things he never going to be is a white bird.

Read on I suggest.

She slides out a smile for me that lets me know I’m catching on. Then she turn the book to another page. This was in some big-time poetry magazine she says. Then she read. The words of this one are about a situation I recognize. The poet has ripped off his momma’s paycheck to pay back some bad dudes he ain’t related to.