Chris Offutt - The Good Brother

Botree offered to take him fishing. They rose early and drove the mud-spattered ranch rig to a dirt road heading south. Owen and Johnny watched the boys. An overnight snow lay like shredded lace against the red rock slopes.

“I can’t believe it snowed in summer,” Joe said.

“When I was a girl, it snowed in July.”

“At least August’s safe.”

“Coop said they got snowbound in August when he was a kid. They wore long underwear all year long.”

“Must be hard on kids in winter.”

“Winter’s hard on everything.”

“I mean school,” Joe said. “I had to walk up and down a hill every day for twelve years.”

“I don’t see having that problem.”

“The school bus come all the way out to the ranch?”

“No,” Botree said. “I’ll be home schooling.”

“What’s that?”

“Teaching them at home. They’re already off to a good start. Dallas knows the alphabet and can count to a hundred.”

“You won’t send those boys to school?”

Botree shook her head.

“Don’t the state get on you?”

“Not here,” she said. “A lot of people do it. You’d be surprised.”

“How come?”

“Freedom to learn, Joe. School doesn’t have anything to do with learning anymore.”

“It doesn’t?”

“You take a puppy and you train it for a month. Then you put it on a bus fall of other puppies. When it comes back home it starts shitting in the house again.”

“You lost me already.”

“Schools aren’t educating kids, Joe. They’re raising them. That’s my job.”

“Teaching is the school’s job. Teachers go to college for it. They’re trained, like any work.”

“Trained to make kids shut up and sit down,” Botree said. “They have class until the bell rings, then it’s time to stop. That doesn’t have anything to do with learning.”

“Keeping your kids out of school doesn’t sound that great to me.”

“If I sent them, it would make me a hypocrite.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s supported by taxes, which I don’t believe in paying.”

“This is a state road.” Joe said, “Does driving it make you a hypocrite, too?”

Botree swerved to avoid a rough spot. “Tax money working hard there.”

“I tell you what,” Joe said. “It’s pretty easy not to believe in something. Do you have a driver’s license?”

“No.”

“How about a telephone?”

“No.”

“Reckon your kids don’t believe in brushing their teeth or taking baths.”

“You leave them out of this.”

Along the river, rock bluffs glinted orange and green, laced with crevices like dark veins. Botree stopped for gas. The attendant wore a cap emblazoned with the emblem of the Buffalo Bills and carried a pistol on his hip. Leaning behind the counter was a military rifle gleaming with oil. Botree paid and left.

“It’s still the Wild West out here, ain’t it?” Joe said.

“Not really. All those guys were from the East — Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp. Billy the Kid was from New York. Families back East sent their crazy sons out here. That lawless time only lasted about twenty years.”

“Still pretty wild to me.”

“Only for somebody like Johnny. He believes that Code of the West stuff. It’s a big crock, but you can’t tell any of them.”

“Them?”

“All the young boys,” Botree said. “The worst is when they start trying to be outlaws because they think outlaws are cool. They can’t rob trains or rustle cattle anymore, so the only thing left is moving drugs.”

“You know a lot about it.”

“Don’t take much to know. Over half the people locked up are in for drugs, including Dallas’s daddy. That leaves the real outlaws free.”

“If a drug dealer ain’t an outlaw, what is?”

“Killer. Rapist. Robber. People who like to hurt people.”

“Are you saying they don’t lock them up?”

“I’m saying half of them go free because the cells are already filled with guys who picked the wrong drug.”

“Well, what’s the right drug?”

“Alcohol, or cigarettes.”

“Look, Botree. The way you talk and all, I guess it makes me think you might be a dope addict or something.”

The truck weaved from her laughter. She lifted her foot from the accelerator and straightened the wheel, still laughing.

“No,” she said. “I don’t even smoke or drink.”

“Then what’s this all about?”

“Making something illegal doesn’t stop people from doing it, it Just turns them into criminals. Laws should protect us from bad people. Nothing else. If they protect us from ourselves, they hurt freedom.”

Joe was astonished not only by Botree’s words but also by her vehemence. He had never spoken with such conviction about anything, not even his work or family. What she said made a certain sense but he couldn’t put the bootlegger at home in the same category as a town drug dealer.

“All I know,” Joe said, “you all sure got a funny way of being free. Don’t pay taxes or get a driver’s license. Coop don’t believe in daylight saving time, and you don’t believe in schools. What’s Owen against?”

“Gun laws, mainly.”

“So’s that guy at the gas station. That looked like some kind of machine gun he had.”

“No, it was an AR-15.”

“Reckon you’re a gun expert, too.”

“It’s made by Colt. The civilian model of an M-16. The only difference is it doesn’t have the full-auto lever. Takes the same ammunition as an M-16,”

“And what’s that?”

“Two twenty-three caliber in a thirty-round magazine.”

She rounded a curve and the river valley opened before them, like a fan. An eagle dove at an osprey that carried a fish. The osprey dropped the fish and the eagle caught it in midair and glided to a bare tree limb.

“What’s so special about Frank’s place?” Joe said.

“Who told you about that?”

“Your brother.”

“If it was Owen, you’d know what was special. So it must have been Johnny and he let something slip.”

“You know your brothers all right.”

“If this has to stand between us, there’s nothing we can do. I can’t tell you about Frank.”

“Can’t or won’t.”

“It’s all the same, Joe.”

“Why?”

“Because I won’t have a hand in it, that’s why. Ask Owen. Coop’ll ran on till you don’t know what he’s talking about, and no telling what Johnny might say.”

“What do you say?”

“I have a few things to say, but not yet.”

“When, then?”

“Depends on you.”

“Now you’re talking just like the rest of your family, out of the side of your mouth. I’m tired of that, Botree. I don’t mean to fight, I just want straight talk.”

“I never met a man yet who didn’t like to fight. They like to tell me what to wear, what to do, where to go, and what to say.”

The low sound of distant thunder drifted over the river. Snow made a white skullcap on each mountain peak.

“You all know a lot about me,” Joe said.

“Right,” she said. “That business at the barn.”

“Did I pass?”

“It’s not that way.”

“And this is my reward?”

“You got it backward, Joe. Just like every man I ever met. This isn’t your reward, mister. This is a damn date.”

She pressed the accelerator. Tools and supplies banged in the back and Joe thought of Taylor driving the trash truck, careening through campus. Dewey and Rundell followed in his thoughts. He quickly blocked them, off as if building a wall, but Marlon, Sara, and his mother rushed over it. Each attempt to keep someone out brought a new person in. When Abigail appeared, everyone left, and he knew that he’d been trying to prevent her memory all along.