Chris Offutt - The Good Brother

“You ain’t from there.”

“No.”

“Who’s your people?”

“Caudill.”

“Which bunch?”

“Biggest is the yellow-headed bunch. We ain’t the holler Caudills, if that’s what you want to know. We might be kin five or six grand-maws back, but I don’t claim it. My mother was a Cabe.”

“I’ve knowed many a Cabe.”

Her slight nod sent a ripple through the wattles of flesh below her chin.

“Could I might have a little water?” Virgil said.

“Drink all ye want.” She pushed the bucket to the edge of the porch with her foot. “You’ll have to open your shirtfront when you do it.”

Virgil unbuttoned his shirt. The dipper was stobbed in three places by whittled pegs. He eased it into the water to avoid bugs that floated on the surface. The woman leaned forward to study his torso as he drank.

“I suspicioned you for a haunt walking out of the woods that way, but you ain’t one I don’t reckon. Water drains right out of a haunt.”

“It does.”

“Did you not know that?”

Virgil shook his head.

“They’re awful bad to be dodgy, a haunt is. They stick like bark to a tree. Got to be nice by it, get that haunt so it forgets what it is. Then you catch it in a dry gourd. Wax gourd’s best, A gourd goes to rattling, it’s the haunt trying to out. See there.”

She pointed across the earth, the gesture setting to motion the hammocks of flesh below her arm. Four gourds dangled like skulls from a coffee tree. They were small and blanched by weather. Beyond them stood the dark woods.

“You’re the first man ever to come up here a-wanting water,” she said.

“I had in mind something else.”

“Did you.” She placed her hand on the pistol. “And what was that?”

“Whisky.”

“Whisky’s against the law.”

“I’m Boyd’s brother, Virgil.”

The woman lifted her hand from the gun. Her toothless grin was a stretched knothole.

“That damn Boyd was a case,” she said. “I heard he’s gone under.”

Virgil nodded.

“I’ll miss him,” she said. “Now, Little Boyd, what do you want and how much? I got brown liquor and white.”

“Half-pint of ever what he drank.”

“I stocked Maker’s Mark for him. Never sold it to nobody else. You sure you don’t want more?”

“No.”

“No you ain’t sure, or no you don’t want no more.”

“One’s good.”

“It wasn’t nothing for your brother to come up here four times a night. I’d leave bottles hid for him in a paper poke. He’d stick money in the poke and go on. That way I’d get me some sleep.”

She stepped inside and Virgil wondered where the pistol went. He hadn’t seen it disappear. She came from the house carrying three half-pints of bourbon. Red wax covered their lids. She leaned on the porch rail and passed them over, her shoulders humped around her zinc-colored head, making it look small. She waved away his offered money.

“That ain’t something you have to do,” Virgil said.

“Hush up and take it.”

Virgil slipped two bottles in his jacket pocket and opened the third.

“Whoa now, Little Boyd,” she said. “I only got one rule — no drinking on the property. That was my daddy’s law and his daddy’s before that.”

“This place was always your all’s?”

“No, my daddy, he was from down to Bell County. Kept a still under the house with the chimney running up through the floor and into the flue. That house set right on the state line. If the Tennessee law come on him, he’d just go over to the Kentucky room. And if the Kentucky law got after him, why he’d step into the Tennessee side. They got in cahoots on him once, and that’s when he come up here.”

The folds of her dress sagged heavily below her right hip. There was a hole in the fabric surrounded by a dark burn and Virgil realized where the pistol was hidden.

“By God, I’m going to break Daddy’s rule,” she said. “Just talking about that son of a bitch makes me want to.”

She went in the house and came back with a jar of white liquor.

“Here’s to Boyd,” she said. “The whole county’s lucky he never got religion. Take a month of Sundays to get him saved.”

She drank half the jar off while Virgil took a small sip. She wiped her mouth and spat off the porch.

“Boyd was different,” she said. “You couldn’t tell if it was something missing or extra. He scared people, but there wasn’t no man more loved on this creek. That’s what got him killed, my opinion. Men wanted to be his buddy and women wanted him their way. He was like a new paint job on a car — you just had to run a screwdriver over it. People wanted him dead and didn’t even know it till he was. He never followed a rule one.”

She took a long drink from the jar. The liquor didn’t seem to affect her. Brush rattled behind Virgil and he spun, expecting to see a haunt funneling from one of the gourds, A tall man with a big head stepped from the woods. A cap clamped long black hair from his eyes. Most of his teeth were gone. A blacksnake twined his arm like a vine.

“Hidy,” he said to Virgil, “I’m Ospie Brownlow’s first boy, Ospie Brownlow.” He grinned at the woman. “Moses got a rabbit, Mommy. He done it slicker’n owl grease.”

“Give him here,”

He proffered the snake and it moved from his arm to hers, briefly encircling them in a dark nexus before it dropped to her lap. Its lower jaw hung slack, still unhinged from swallowing its prey.

The woman found a lump the size of a softball several inches behind its head. She placed both feet on the tail, wrapped her hands around its body behind the lump, and squeezed. When she’d gained some slack, she brought her lower hand behind the lump and squeezed again. The snake lunged at her but its lower jaw was useless. Sweat gleamed along her brow and slid down her softly whiskered jaw. She held the snake upright in her lap, its head knobbing the end. Slowly her hands moved up, forcing the lump through the snake’s gullet. She closed her eyes, jaw tight, chin tipped back. In a powerful motion, she jerked from the snake a pale clot of fur that thumped to the floor.

The woman was breathing fast and heavy. Her arms hung at her sides, legs splayed wide. The rabbit lay in a crushed heap, bits of bone splitting the reddened fur. It was flat as a mitten.

“Take and wash that good,” she said to Ospie. “Then skin it out. Ain’t nothing wrong with the meat.”

He picked up the dead rabbit casually, as though it was something misplaced, and walked around the house.

“I purely do like rabbit,” she said. “Ospie, he ain’t safe with a gun and I can’t see good to shoot except up close. Could use a man to hunt if they was one wanted to.”

The blacksnake slithered to the edge of the porch and dropped to the ground. Virgil drank from the bottle, letting the quick burn quell the nausea that churned his guts. Many people kept a blacksnake to hold down rats in a barn, but he’d never heard of one that provided meat.

“Your brother brought me game,” the woman said. “Fetched Ospie some boots once, too.”

She motioned for Virgil to come close to the porch. She leaned over the bowed rail and lowered her voice. A gray film covered her eyes, thicker on one than the other.

“I never told the sheriff nothing,” she said. “He came sniffing around after Boyd got killed. Wanted to know if he bought off me, who he come with, and whatnot. I know who killed Boyd, but I never said a word. Ain’t aiming to get in your way.”

Virgil turned away, wanting the safety of the woods.

“Hey, Little Boyd,” the woman called. “You’re doing the right thing by laying back. Let that boy think he’s safe, then pick your time. I never liked a Rodale, their family tree don’t fork,”