Daniel Woodrell - The Outlaw Album - Stories

I dove again. People riding inner tubes went by overhead, casting squat shadows that roamed over the bottom rocks and stretched with distance. Legs looked so white and puffed from underneath, with bubbles attaching to the flesh like blisters, and voices arrived as deep blurry barks.

Ma said, “When does this happen?”

“While he waits to hear about goin’ back,” Mary said. The sun was halfway west and shined at a slant that broke around her. Her face was shaded faint but the skin on her neck glowed at the sides. “I’ll get it right this time. I’ve learned some things I couldn’t’ve guessed at before.”

Joe and Nora stood still in a trickle of river, bare feet sinking into the gravel bed, staring at me, faces empty, holding themselves in tight. Mary saw and kicked water at them so they’d know it was okay to seem happy just now. They tried.

Mary unloaded a picnic onto a blanket in the shade, beer chilling in the river.

Ma said to me, “You sure this is good news?” Her eyes were mournful and ringed, like those of a hunted thing that has decided to stop running. I would paint her soon. Her chest had been cut away from her first, both sides, but she fell sick in other parts, too, and the sick didn’t rest; it prowled her body, salting her with ruin you couldn’t see in her face for a good long while. Now the ruin just stares out at me, all the time, from those eyes that know about hope and that body that can’t offer any. She leaned my way and whispered, “It’s your life, son.”

“I just don’t care to make big decisions anymore.”

“That is one.”

“Let’s act happy.”

“That’s another.”

I fell on the river and went inside. The water ran chest deep, and I spread over the rocky bottom and found a big one to cling to. There were all these tiny tatters of different debris rushing past near the bottom and the rushing was all I heard. I clung to the bottom, my feet rising behind and touching air while my hands held steady on the slickened old stone and kept me from spinning downstream. I held and held to the rock and forgot about breathing, sunk into that choice spot between breathing and not ever breathing, between raising up to walk on the bank and picnic or staying under to join that debris already lost to the rushing.

Stink from the cow took over the air. The cow was screaming again, screaming stink, a brown dirge of stink like the dead scream always. Ma and me stood on the cliff with our noses pinched against the loud stink and squinted our eyes, too. Ma’s trying to act spry so she can help. She’s wearing rubber mud boots and a long dress with no waistline and no pattern in the cloth. A big yellow sun hat shades her face.

Neither of us wants the cow kicked to the river below, to dump such ruin into the clean water, so we decide to haul it up the cliff with three ropes. I’ve backed the truck near the edge, and Ma swears she can work a clutch and drive just fine, no problem. I tied my ropes to the truck, cinched one around me snug, and led the other two down to the sideways tree. There were shrubs to grab at on the cliff face, untrustworthy roots and clumps of stranded weeds, and I tossed my feet at them to slow my falling. The sideways tree was sturdy and the cow oozed. Flying things had got the eyes, the lips and ears, the soft easy meat anything left dead in the open serves up first. I had to sit astride the cow to get the ropes looped around, the first under the front legs, the next under the back, and thickened death-juices leaked from the cow onto my jeans and shirt. I gave Ma a wave and me and the cow scraped the dusty cliff and flew up together, meat and meat under the sky, hooves whirling, boots whirling, one head down, one head raised, one spinning smell.

Ma helps me unlash and says, “You’re nuts to go back.”

“They cleared me for goin’, Ma.”

Ma drove and the cow slid across the pasture to the grassless place, and I untied it. My clothes stunk past cleaning, and I flung them off, shirt first, then jeans, and went about in my skivvies and started tossing stuff from the trash heap into the burn circle. The pile grew, and grew tall enough for a ten-foot flame to rise from household trash, old plywood, a tangle of blowdown, hedge trimmings, a busted headboard and stained mattress I couldn’t recall. I was near naked in the world and sweating, bending to drop matches, encourage the flames, scorch that stink away. Ma watched me, looking at my tats some, not too impressed by the pictures, I knew, but mostly studying the long ragged divot torn top to bottom on my back and wondering what invention made that wound.

“She found out how much you’re worth dead.”

“Where?”

“She’s been askin’ folks all around.”

We stood close together fireside, watching the cow burn in the circle as the sun sank. The cow only slightly thinned, but the brain-housing unit was soon laid bare and white atop deep glowing coals. Hooves cracked in the heat. Full dark made fire seem the center of all things. A breeze raised little flames that wiggled in the eye sockets and stuck a long tongue of fire lapping from the mouth. Ma’n me stared silently ’til the tree frogs went quiet and owls came out to fly. We left the cow at peace finally in the embers, started toward the house, walking slowly through the spreading weeds of our garden plot where nothing got planted this year.

Pelham came awake one night to find a naked man standing over his bed, growling. There was little light in the bedroom, but he could see one arm of the man from his shoulder to his wrist, a grim tattoo of something burning, a pale suggestion of bared teeth and taut lips. The growling was menacing and confused, with shrill rises, deep ferocity giving way to brief keening trills, a mangle of tones. Jill woke, too, looked at the man, then rolled from bed and fled screaming toward the next room. Pelham reached for the light on the nightstand but his fingers rattled a plate that shouldn’t have been there, and on the plate there lay a knife. The man stood still at the bottom of the bed, noisy and tall, a looming shadow inside the house that Pelham had to stand and fight, do what he could, stall for time and let Jill run, hide somewhere, since she must be what he’s after—why else would he be naked? But the man made no move to chase her, and didn’t lunge or leap onto Pelham like he could’ve, either, didn’t take control and clobber him senseless, but only stood there growling with his arms at his sides, hands held low, and Pelham quick got to him with the blade, planted steel in his chest. A popping sound came from inside the man’s ribs, and Pelham expected to be sliced in return now, maybe shot, but the man missed somehow, so close but he missed, and Pelham whipped in another stab and there came that plonk sound of striking a knothole hammering a nail, and the blade hung up in the ribs. The growls were weaker and calmer as Pelham twisted the blade, weaker and calmer, then the man’s arms collapsed onto Pelham, damp hands clasping Pelham’s shoulders as if to steady himself, hold himself upright, prevent himself from falling, and blood jumped from the chest wound, ran warm down Pelham’s belly. The ribs let the knife loose of a sudden and the overhead light flicked on as Pelham aimed the blade and he saw the man in a bright clear flash, a big handsome kid, shaved head, too many tats, his chest hole leaking breath and bubbling blood, but his hand didn’t halt. The kid’s neck burst open beneath his chin, Jill screamed again, hot flung blood in the eyes blinded Pelham as the kid’s arms squeezed about him, hugged him near, hugged him as they both fell to the floor and fell apart.

Blind yet, eyeballs rolling in the warm puddling, Pelham groped for a bedsheet. The kid’s bare feet were slapping the wood floor, slapping down hard like he was clambering to the crest of a hill that wasn’t there. Pelham blotted the blood from his eyes. Jill was weeping. The kid soon stilled, blue eyes open, footprints in red all around his body. The wind inside him escaped from ass and mouth. He never had said a word.