Chris Offutt - The Good Brother

“They was one last man I wanted took care of and then I set down in this holler. They ain’t exactly big gobs of people know I’m over in here. Your brother was one. He was like a son to me. But he don’t know what I told you.

“I know what you’re thinking on doing and I know why. You’d best be stout is all I can say. The doing ain’t easy, but it’s the living after that’s hard. I’ve set here and studied on it plenty. They’s better ways to live a life than always on lookout.”

Morgan lifted his concealed right arm and placed the barrel of a revolver against Virgil’s forehead. The motion was smooth and very fast, the metal cold against Virgil’s skin. Virgil stopped breathing. He wanted to swallow but was afraid his face would move and Morgan would fire.

“The thing about killing,” Morgan said, “it makes you worry about getting killed. Just remember, there’ll be somebody to track you down. You’ll have to kill again and it don’t get no easier. You just get better at it.”

He lowered his arm and tucked the pistol from sight, moving with the cunning of an animal. Morgan’s face glistened from water that had leaked from his eyes. It ran into the creases of his face like rain hitting gullies on a hillside.

Virgil moved to the door and breathed the sweet air of the woods, listening to the silence. The hills surrounded him like a box. The sky was a black slab etched with stars. He wondered how many shallow graves lay in the earth nearby.

The path curved into the woods and he stopped to let his eyes work out where he was. The light from Morgan’s house was gone. He followed the darker color of the path and slowed when moon-glow glinted off the truck. Arlow’s head was tipped against the door, his eyes closed. Air whistled from his mouth. The stuffed possum stood on the seat beside him.

Virgil pushed him across the seat and backed to the fork, where he turned around. Morgan’s story had worn him to a nubbin. The whisky was coming on him like a landslide and he wanted to go home. His trailer was eight miles away by the woods, twenty by road. The bottle held three fingers of whisky and he drank half, feeling it revive him. Dust blew in the windows and settled on his eyebrows. He turned from the hollow onto The Road and the warm night air rushed against his face. He remembered Boyd’s first car wreck, when he was fourteen. He’d run an old Dodge into the creek. “That damn car,” he told their father, “it just laid down, on me.” It became a family joke — if you tripped and fell, it wasn’t your fault, your boots just laid down on you.

At his trailer, Virgil dragged Arlow onto the couch that spanned the narrow wall. He left the possum in the truck. He went out the back door and sat on a log and looked into the woods. He finished the last of the bourbon. He had no idea what he wanted to do, but he was pretty sure what he didn’t want to do. If he could pile that up on one side of his mind, he could sniff out whatever was left over.

He flung the empty bottle up the hill. Everything came back to killing Rodale and that made him sick. He didn’t even hunt. What he wanted was his father’s cabin and to be left alone. He’d marry Abigail and have a mess of kids and get his name on a shirt.

He stretched on his back in the dirt and looked at the sly. The moon was gone. Its absence made more stars visible, as if they’d come from hiding. When he was a kid, Boyd told him that stars were holes in the land’s roof and the moon was the gap where an old stove flue had poked through. Clouds were shingles that got blown around. A rainbow was an exposed rafter.

Virgil opened his eyes to a monstrous thirst. He could not bear the light. He closed his lids and let time move around him.

Something jabbed his leg. A man was kicking him and he thought it was his brother waking him for school.

“You hurt?” the kicking man said.

Virgil’s slow awareness that he wasn’t dreaming sent a sliver of fear along his spine. Knots of memory exploded in his head. He was unable to move his arm. He looked at the shirtless man, who continued to kick him.

“Don’t,” Virgil said.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing. Just sleeping.”

“This your place?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure you ain’t hurt now.”

“Can’t move my arm.”

“Hell, you’re jammed up against the woodpile.” The man extended a hand. “Here.”

Virgil took it and the man pulled until Virgil was able to sit. His head spun with such pain that it felt detached from his body, and he wondered if he’d been struck in the face. He looked at the man and remembered his name.

“I feel rode hard and put up wet,” Arlow said. “We didn’t have a wreck or nothing, did we?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. Did I drive?”

“No.”

“Good. One more pop and I lose my license.”

Sunlight slid through the tangled tree limbs overhead. The scent of honeysuckle came on a breeze. Virgil knew he needed to get up, but wasn’t sure he could make it. He felt poisoned and beat up. He began the slow operation of standing, trying to keep his head level. His body swayed and he wanted to hold something for balance, but there was only Arlow.

“A short beer would fix us right up.” Arlow said.

“I ain’t drinking no more.”

Virgil clung to the doorjamb as he entered the trailer, ashamed of the weakness in his limbs. He filled a glass with water and drank.

“I’m going to lay down,” he said.

“How do I get out of here?”

“They’s not but one road off this hill.”

“We’ll see ya, buddy. Old Morgan’s a case, ain’t he.”

The memory of Morgan’s story flared in Virgil’s head like a blowtorch. He gripped the sink and stared at the faucet.

“Goddam son of a bitch!” Arlow yelled from outside. “There’s a fucking possum in my truck! You got ary a gun?”

Virgil nodded but an eruption of pain stopped the motion. It hurt to move his eyes.

“Rifle’s no good this close,” Arlow said. “I might could use some help if you’re able.”

Virgil moved to the door and looked at the three steps with dread. Arlow had his hand on the truck door handle. In one quick motion he jerked the door open, slipped and fell, and began scooting backwards. He circled the truck and looked at the immobile animal.

“Sick, ain’t it,” he said. “Might be rabies. Good thing I seen it. Jeezum Crow, it could have got me.”

“It ain’t real,” Virgil said.

“Damn sure is.”

“It’s dead, Arlow.” Virgil began to laugh and tried to stop because it made his head hurt. “It’s stuffed.”

Arlow leaned to study the possum through the safety of the windshield.

“By God if it ain’t,” he said. “Now where the hell did that nasty thing come from?”

“Morgan.”

“Ain’t nobody else fool enough to stuff a damn possum.” He opened the passenger door and kicked it across the bench seat and out the driver’s side, “There, by God. It’s yours now.” He laughed, then turned his head and retched a stream into the dirt. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“About time,” he said. “I been waiting on that all morning. You ort to, too.”

He got in the truck and slammed the doors and started the engine. He leaned out his window. “Keep your ass wiped,” he said. Rock and dirt flew from his rear tires as he drove down the road, honking the horn. The possum lay on its side in the yard. A blue fly veered past it to Arlow’s vomit soaking into the earth.

Virgil took four aspirin and stumbled to his room and lay on his bed. He wondered if it was possible to die from a hangover.

When he awoke he felt better but not muck The smell of alcohol rose from his skin. He stepped into the shower and hunched beneath the hot water spraying the back of his neck. As soon as he left the bathroom he felt worse. He returned to the shower’s comfort until the water turned cold.