Daniel Woodrell - The Outlaw Album - Stories

Morrow went down the steps, waving dust away, and approached the car. He could see four heads inside. “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

The music was silenced. The engine ticked. The front doors squeaked when slowly opened. The driver said, “You cussin’ at me?” Both men were tattooed in script and held machetes with arms that were stark and taut—long hair, narrow faces. The groans of women carried from the backseat. “I’ma cut you up’n down for cussin’ me in front of bitches.”

The other raised his machete, said, “We’ll both of us cut on him.”

The campers had quieted but stood watching, unmoving witnesses powdered by dust, and Morrow backed toward the front steps of the store. He said, “Just drive away. Get in and drive away.”

“Not ’til I hack me a piece of you to take along.”

“I’ve asked you to leave.”

“That might mean shit to somebody, but…”

On the top step Morrow paused. His legs felt softened at the joints and waggled a little, and something inside had plunged. When he raised his hand toward the advancing men his fingers shook. “Just get,” he said, but they kept coming, though not quickly, unsteady in their own legs, too. Royce eased up from behind and handed Morrow his bird gun, a twenty-gauge pump meant for quail and dove. He said, “Them boys are Langans—they ain’t playactin’—you might need to shoot the two of ’em.”

The women climbed from the beater and stood beside it, the elder subdued and expectant of the worst, the younger dark and expressionless, staring at Morrow. He looked back and could not believe how pretty her eyes were—what color is that?—then couldn’t believe he’d noticed. He abruptly fired into the air while yet lost in her eyes and presence, and said, “One more step.”

The men halted at the sound, looked at each other, laughed ’til they bent in the middle and had to lean together. The machetes fell to ground. The driver turned to the staring girl. “Toss me keys to the trunk.”

Royce said, “Don’t let them open that trunk. You won’t want that.”

“You open that trunk and I’ll kill you.” Morrow didn’t know where these words were coming from, but he let them come, hoped for them to continue, wondered where they’d been all his life. He could feel her watching. “I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

The girl bent into the car and took the keys with her as she walked toward the bridge in plastic sandals and a dress that didn’t fit her body or the season. She did not speak, but looked back at Morrow twice, glancing over her shoulder. She had muddy hands and unbridled hair, and her face suggested she’d yet to be pleasantly surprised by life.

The men stood beside the car, and the driver said, “Man, I’m diggin’ your hole already in my head.”

“Just don’t move.”

“I hope it’s dug to fit you, ’cause you’re goin’ to be dead in it a long time.”

“Lower your voice; you’re scaring the children.”

When the sheriff appeared at the top of the hill the driver fled into the woods. The other man sat on the dust and held his hands behind his back. The sheriff took charge, called the man by name as he hooked him into cuffs. The women gave short statements of no value, and the sheriff removed three long guns and a dynamite stick from the trunk before he let them drive away. He sidled near, hat in hand, and warned Morrow in whispers. As the sheriff and his prisoner departed, the crowd of campers burst into applause for Morrow, sincere clapping and broad smiles, before returning to their tents while telling slightly or largely different versions of what they’d all just seen.

The woods had grown dark and Morrow went inside, rested the shotgun against a handy wall. He began to shake in every limb and had to sit down. Kids stood in the doorway staring at him. He kneeled behind the counter and puked below the cash register.

Royce went to the utility closet and selected a mop. He stood in the shadow cast by the buffalo head on the wall, then shoved the mop into the mess and began to swab. He said, “Langan’ll probably scramble over to his grandma’s house. That’s where he usually goes to hide. He may well have forgot about you by the time he gets there. But maybe not.”

“You go on home,” Morrow said. He stood and took the mop into his own hands. “I’ve got it.”

That night he paced near the big window, watching for the man, keeping his bird gun near. Whenever headlights passed the store, he opened the door for a clear view. He paced and kept a lookout for the man, but was thinking of the girl, the girl he’d seen long ago and the girl he’d seen in the dust. Somehow they became the same girl; there was a blending of then and now, her and her, and a combination of fresh excitement and release kept Morrow awake until at dawn he leaned the shotgun against the tree his robe hung from, and dove into the river to swim upstream.

If they ever catch who took my daughter, I’ll probably know him. Maybe I’ve known him all my life; maybe he’s only a familiar face and name. I might have given him credit at the store, let his tab ride till next Friday or the one after, carried groceries to the car for his wife, cut two pounds from a chub of bologna and shaved it paper-thin the way he likes. Maybe he leans on the counter and repeats his favorite jokes, and I laugh at the right parts while recalling the sound of his mitt snapping shut when he shagged fly balls long ago.

I suspect everybody around here and nobody special.

At the opening of each deer season I hope this time she’ll be found. Eleven hunts have come and gone now, and others have been stumbled across in culverts, under old plywood, wrapped carefully in white sheets, and piled over with leaves, but not my girl. This is rough country, though, steep hills, rocky bottoms, hard ground to walk on, gloomy from the trees, and she could be ten feet away as three hunters pass and they’d all miss her. She might lie somewhere else, I guess, under a barn or the freshest patch of concrete in a bachelor’s basement, but that’s not how it comes to me. I can hear wind in the trees and limbs tapping limbs and feel rain.

She disappeared only a quarter mile down our road, taken out of the churchyard where she was mowing the grass, putting a few bucks in her pocket for Saturday night. There are exactly three homes between ours and the church and no strangers in any of them. The lawn mower was still running, blatting and fuming untended beside the tall stone church, until the nearest neighbor noticed the annoying noise no longer moved to and fro and looked from a window. She’d’ve turned seventeen in a month. There’s never been another sign of her.

Sometimes I’ll be at the cash register and catch somebody looking at me in a sort of funny way, at such a slant as to appear sneaky, or with lips curled too high on one end, and think, Is that him? Is he watching me sack groceries and gloating? Does that shifty glance say I fucked your daughter, Henry, from every which angle that felt good to me, then choked the light from her pretty eyes and put her…Should I grab him now while he’s handy and beat on him till he tells me where I can rake her bones together?

At some point every old friend sensed my suspicion aim their way and several couldn’t get over that moment of recognition, even after my suspicion rotated to the next ol’ buddy, or slightly creepy cousin, that mailman with the pencil mustache. There was no blood, no hair strands snatched loose in a fight or torn bits of her blouse, and she was a strong girl, so he had a gun to her head or she trusted him enough to go sit in his truck a minute, hang out, sip a soda. That brings everybody I know into the picture.