Chris Offutt: The Good Brother

“What are you on?” Virgil said. “Trucker pills?”

“You want some?”

Virgil shook his head.

“Boyd didn’t like speed either,” Taylor said. “He was an acid man. You know what he said to me once. Said ‘I want to improve reality, not see more of it.’ Best buddy I had. Crazier than a three-bailed tomcat.”

Virgil drove to the next dormitory on their route and waited for the crash of garbage cans. About ten men had told him that Boyd was their best buddy. At first Virgil thought it was just what got said when a man died, but after a while he understood that they really meant it. Boyd’s directness endeared him to people who’d become accustomed to being discarded, but he’d never had a best friend. The closest was Virgil when they were kids, and that was an accident they’d both got stuck with.

They’d shared a long, narrow room in the attic of their parents’ house. Virgil thought monsters lived up there, and Boyd always went first, racing up the steps to the light switch, spinning rapidly at the head of the stairs to dispel the monsters and ensure his brother’s safe passage. Even then, Virgil had been glad that Boyd was the oldest and such chores fell to him.

After their father died of emphysema brought on by a lifetime of breathing coal dust beneath the earth, Boyd had never held a regular job. He stayed at home with their mother. It was as if there were two Boyds. One obeyed his mother, hauling water and splitting stove-wood, supplying fresh meat in fall and fish in summer. The other Boyd existed away from the house. He never came home drunk, bloody, hung over, or mad.

The sun moved into the lane of sky between the hills, spreading heat along the hollow. Rundell increased the pace in order to finish before breaking to eat. Like hunters, the men functioned best on empty bellies.

In midafternoon, Virgil drove off campus to the Dairy Queen on the edge of town. Taylor drank pop and ordered French fries for Dewey as a reward for having punched his timecard. The other men ate sandwiches brought from home. They sat at a picnic table in the warm sun, watching the occasional car go by. Beside them trees grew at angles from the steep-sloped hill. A dove called.

“You know,” Taylor said, “my mamaw could hear an owl of the night and tell you who was going to die and when. She was part Choctaw,”

“Which part?” Rundell said.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” Rundell said. “I never worked with a man yet who didn’t claim to be part Indian. How about you, Dewey?”

“My papaw always said he had a little Indian in him,” Dewey said. “When I was a kid, I begged him to show him to me.”

The sound of an engine grew louder. The men looked toward the road, where a pickup stopped abruptly, its tires leaving long skid marks on the blacktop. The driver poked his arm, from the window, fired a pistol three times in their direction, and drove away.

“What in the Sam Hill?” Rundell said.

“Oh, shit,” Dewey said.

“Anybody know that truck?” Virgil said.

“Warning shots,” Taylor said.

“Had to be,” Rundell said. “I can throw a rock straighter than he shoots.”

“By God,” Dewey said, “he’s lucky he ain’t killed me. I’d a killed him back, by God.”

“Boys,” Taylor said, “I reckon I know what all that was over, and don’t none of you’uns have a thing to worry on.”

“Who does?” Virgil said. “You?”

Taylor ran his tongue behind his lower lip, making it swell like a fuzz worm. He lifted his cap and settled it back to his head, clamping hair from his eyes.

“Yup,” he said. “I carried a girl of his off like a cat does a kitten up to Jeff Mountain. Reckon I was lucky not to get her drawers down.”

“Goddam, Taylor,” Rundell said. “I don’t know what to think about a man gets his work buddies shot at and sets there eating lunch big as day,”

“Yeah,” Dewey said. He shoved his meal off the table to the ground. “Them bullets took the belly timber plumb out of me.”

“You ain’t going to eat that?” Taylor said.

“I couldn’t eat pie right now.”

“You act like you was town-raised.”

Taylor retrieved the container of French fries from the dirt. He picked through them like a carpenter gleaning lumber, holding them to the light, tossing some aside, keeping the good ones. When he chewed, the bill of his cap moved up and down.

“We ort to find another hiding place,” Rundell said. “Getting shot at sort of hurts this one awhile.”

“How about the ballfield,” Virgil said.

“Ag farm,” Dewey said.

“Freshman girls’ dorm,” Taylor said.

They debated their favorite places to park the truck and wait out the day until Rundell made the decision and they went to the landfill. At the end of the shift they drove back to their loading dock, where the Big Boss appeared as if dumped from a boot.

“Got a call from the sheriff,” he said. “Said shots got fired at the Dairy Queen. Said you and your men were there. Said it was oh-two-hundred in the after-damn-noon.”

“We took a late lunch,” Rundell said.

“Who was it shooting?”

“None of my men.”

“Where were you?”

“Outside eating.”

“How many men are at work on this crew?”

“Oh,” Rundell said, “about half.”

No one spoke. Each man found something to study — his boots, his hands, the hilltops beyond the lot. The Big Boss finally chuckled.

“I don’t believe the Dairy Queen is a suitable place for lunch,” he said.

Rundell nodded and the Big Boss walked away with one hand clasping the other behind his back. He reminded Virgil of a kid trying to hide a cigarette. As soon as he was gone, Taylor spat.

“Short little fucker, ain’t he,” he said.

“You best keep your timecard in good shape,” Rundell said. “He’ll be watching us now.”

“He can go to hell. I never met a boss I liked.”

“He ain’t near bad as most,” Rundell said, “You’re the first I ever heard of who got shot at on the fob. Maybe you should ask for hazard pay.”

“We all should,” Virgil said. “I don’t need no bullets hitting me. How about you, Dewey?”

“I done been shot once,” Dewey said. “Bullet cut a crease in me big enough to lay a finger in.”

“Where at?” Virgil said.

“In the ass,” Taylor shouted. “Go ahead, Virgil. Lay your finger in it.”

Expecting retribution, Taylor backstepped rapidly and stumbled into the cement block wall, “Damn it, boys,” he said. “Just when I get over my damn hangover, I have to go and make my head hurt again. You’re right, Rundell. Just working with me is a hazard on my own-self.”

The men laughed and Rundell rose from the loading dock. As one, they walked around the building to punch their timecards.

Afierce hailstorm in May marked the boundary between spring and summer. Ice fell from the sky in blurs of white that beat tobacco beds to shreds. The storm’s passage left hailstones pooled in low spots of the earth. A few hours later the sun returned and summer began. Kentucky turned thick and heavy with green, as if the world weighed more.

At his mother’s house, Virgil entered the old smokehouse that was now a shed. The faint smell of pork still emanated from the dark walls. On an oily workbench sat a car battery, the head of a rake, and a pan full of nuts and screws. Scrap lumber leaned in a corner. He dragged the mower into the yard, jerked the cord, and the engine settled into a steady cycle. The muffler rattled against the engine housing. When Virgil tried to tighten the muffler, it came off in his hand. The threads were stripped. He figured Boyd had some private technique to keep it fastened, a wire in the right spot, or a delicate turn of the threaded end. He found wire in the shed and spent thirty minutes rigging the muffler in place.