Chris Offutt - The Good Brother

He drank coffee on the trailer steps, staring at the stuffed possum. It didn’t know it was dead. Only the living cared, but the way Virgil felt, he didn’t care enough. Knots of grass made green patches in the sloped yard’s clay dirt. The sun hung above the western hills. He hoped no one came visiting because he was embarrassed to be seen. He stepped into the woods.

Two cardinals flashed low through the brush, and Virgil turned his head to watch, scraping his face on a tree limb. He preferred its sharp pain to the dull thud inside his head. He circled a blackberry patch and went downslope to a low ridge. He was sweating inside his clothes. The effort to negotiate the woods made him forget how bad he felt, but he could feel the liquor tearing at him. His eyes were dry and heavy. His head hurt.

He reached a low ridge, very narrow with no trees. On the ground lay a variety of feathers. Pale bones poked from the leaves. Beneath an evergreen was a gray owl pellet the size of a crow’s egg. Virgil was in a hunting zone. It was an ideal place for an owl to kill whatever animal came along.

The shadows opened to light and he headed for it, moving through a wall of pine that covered him with the smell of sap. The heavy woods ended at the ridgeline that marked the boundary of what everyone called “company land.” It was owned by the mineral company that had left holes in the hills forty years before. The land was routinely logged. Younger men had begun growing marijuana on it. Virgil remembered having come here years back with Boyd, hunting a Christmas tree for their grade school. They had shared a pair of gloves, one apiece, each keeping the bared hand in a pocket. Boyd used a shotgun to blast the tree down. They dragged it to their school and walked home through the early darkness. Wind blew cold along the ridge. High hills ringed the gray sky, treetops aiming at the stars. Like many mountain families, they had an artificial tree, a sign of town sophistication. Boyd said people who lived in cities preferred real trees.

Now Virgil was squinting down the hill, seeking evidence of the tree they’d taken twenty years back. The crimson light of afternoon sliced into the eastern hillside, moving slowly along the ridge. When the sun reached the top, it would be full dark in the hollow, like the bottom of a well. Climbing the hill gained an extra hour of daylight.

At the top, the land opened from its steep-walled maze to the Blizzard Cemetery. Virgil and Boyd had come to the graveyard as kids to smoke cigars, then cigarettes, and eventually dope. They’d dared each other into the graveyard. Boyd had gone first. He always did — first down a snowy slope on a car hood, first to get thrown from an unbroken pony, first to ride a mini-bike up a homemade ramp. Now he was first dead.

Virgil crossed the road in the immense silence of the hilltop and climbed the fence into the cemetery. Gnawed acorns lay beneath the oaks. He hadn’t been back since the funeral but he walked straight to the grave, approaching from an angle so he wouldn’t have to read the name on the stone. The earth was still slightly humped. Wired to the marker was a bouquet of plastic flowers that Boyd would have hated. Beside it was their father’s grave.

A steady breeze crossed the top of the hill. Hickory limbs scraped each other, a sound that made Virgil edgy. He refused to turn and look. Nothing was there but rock, dirt, and trees, with boxed bones below the surface. He stood beside the grave. Etched into the rock was his brother’s name. It occurred to Virgil that carving the names of the dead was a strange job.

He’d only cried once, after seeing the expression on his mother’s face at losing a son. His tears had been for her. Now, six months later, Virgil could feel his own grief rising through him.

“Fuck you,” he said. “You son of a bitch. Look at you now. Goddam fucking dead. Fuck you, Boyd, Fuck you.”

The words clogged his throat until he couldn’t speak. His shoulders rose and fell. Somewhere deep inside was the instinct to shut it off, not so much like turning a faucet but more like doubling a hose to choke his sorrow. When the sounds coming out of him ran down, Virgil stood and began kicking the granite headstone. He kicked until his foot hurt. Steel-toed boots were better for the job and he laughed at himself for thinking that way. Boyd had always made fun of the practical turn to Virgil’s mind. His face was cold from tears. He began to walk.

At the top of the hill were the oldest graves, surrounded by white oaks. Dry leaves crackled beneath his boots. The gravestones were standing at a tilt and grown with moss, the earth sunk before them. One had been broken and repaired. Lines of rust ran down the stone from the bolts that held it together. The grass was very green and Virgil didn’t like to think why. A flicker flew by, cutting scallops in the air. Dusk was coming on. Virgil wished he was the one who’d died. If he had, Boyd would already be locked up for having killed Rodale. He wouldn’t have let six months go by.

A young maple grew in a corner, out of place among the old hardwoods. In the shade beneath it was a plain marker. The dates were seven years apart, a child. Virgil stared at the small grave for a long time. He didn’t recognize the name, and he wondered if the parents still lived in the county. He felt another layer of sadness, not for himself, but for them. Their boy was taken away and there was nothing they could do. It was worse than his situation.

Virgil began to cry again. He dropped to his knees and let all the tears he’d ever forbidden move through him and out of him and into the earth. He cried until he gagged and his body wanted to retch. He squelched that urge, then let that happen, too. It smelted of coffee and whisky. He continued to gag until bile filled his mouth and ran over his chin. He lay on the soft ground and pressed his head to the earth and struggled to control his breathing. There was nothing else in him to come out.

He lay there a long time and slowly realized that he’d been asleep. He was cold. The sun was sliding behind the western hills, sending a red fan of light across the ridge. The liquid scent of pine carried across the road. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the marker above the child’s grave.

In the dim light he could Just make out the name carved into the headstone.

JOSEPH TILLER

He stared at it for a long time. The faint glimmer of an idea began at the border of his mind, then raced over him like heat, followed by an exhilarated terror. He felt something shift within him, an alignment of body and mind. The idea was both terrible and great, and he shivered at its enormity.

The following day Virgil called in sick for the rest of the week. Lying was easier than he expected because people wanted to believe what they were told. At the post office, he caught a ride to town and retrieved his car. He bought a U.S. atlas and spent the rest of the day in his trailer studying maps. Lexington was a hundred miles away, a place he’d never been.

He wrote down everything he could think of about his idea until he’d covered several pages with scrawled notes. Slowly he began forming a plan. He hadn’t applied himself with such diligence since college and he liked it. He was good at it. He felt as if he were assembling a jigsaw puzzle and making the pieces as well. The biggest problem was money. He wasn’t sure how people went about getting it, aside from incremental raises in pay.

He rose early and drove to Frankfort. The governor’s mansion was very big and Virgil figured he must have a good-sized family. In front of the capitol was a large floral clock that lent a lovely scent to the air. Its hands were longer than he was tall, and he wondered how many people actually visited the clock to check the time.