Chris Offutt - The Good Brother

“That’s outside, Joe.”

“Where?”

“Toward the back pasture.”

“Put the kids in the tub.”

“What?”

“It’ll protect them.”

He withdrew the.38 from the nylon holster on his belt and went to the mud room. He found a towel in a corner and wrapped one end around the pistol and placed the other in his mouth. He peered through the window. As he turned his head, the pistol moved with him like a snout. The pasture was empty. Wind cleared smoke from the air, and the sky shone like the waters of a lake. When his eyes burned, he reminded himself to blink.

The shadows of the treeline stretched along the grass of the pasture. His bad knee began to ache and he shifted his weight. He was hungry. Metallic voices issued from the radio down the hall. Joe strained to recall the gunshots, hoping to gauge their caliber, but the memory eluded him. He wondered if they had been a signal to a team that was preparing to attack the house.

Joe shook his head to concentrate on the pasture. Lines of smoke rippled along the distant peaks. A man left the woods and ran toward the house. Joe leveled the pistol sights at the man’s chest. His hand swayed back and forth as the strained muscles of his arm began to quiver. He steadied the gun and inhaled. He wanted to wait until he was certain of his target. The man was close, running very fast, and Joe recognized Johnny.

Joe leaned against the wall, his legs trembling, the pistol aimed at the ceiling. Johnny slammed the door open. He was panting. Mucus ran from his nose. His shirt was gone and deep scratches covered his body. He opened his mouth, but could not talk. He began to shiver.

“It’s all right,” Joe yelled. “It’s Johnny.”

Joe led him through the house to the kitchen. Johnny held his hand on the wall as he walked, like a man with unsure legs. He was wearing an empty holster with the end tied to his thigh. Botree met them at the table and helped ease Johnny to a chair. She talked in a low murmur, more a constant soothing tone than speech. She used a wet cloth to clean blood and dirt from Johnny’s wounds. His face twitched, the muscles jumping. She applied disinfectant, working down his chest, along his arms to his hands, and Joe remembered the gentle efficiency of her hands. She gave Johnny two of Joe’s leftover pain pills.

She sent Joe for a blanket and he walked through the house, trying to comprehend the events of the day. Coop sat immobile as stone before the CB and scanner, flanked by shelves of skull and bone. Joe peeked in the bathroom, where Abilene slept in the tub. Beside him, Dallas was hunched over an Etch-A-Sketch, duplicating the posture of Coop and his radio. The sky through the tiny window was bright blue, as if a panel of dyed deerhide was stretched within the frame.

At the kitchen table Johnny was drinking coffee, and Joe wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. Color had returned to Johnny’s face. Botree sat beside him. Joe felt as if he were watching them from a great distance. They seemed like strangers with whom he was forced to share a table at a busy diner.

“What happened?” he said.

“There’s Feds all over out there,” Johnny said. “They’re wearing armored vests and helmets. They got M-i6s, radios, and Jeeps. I mean there’s an army.”

“But you got past.” Botree’s voice was soothing and warm, as if talking to her kids. “You came home.”

“We got to tell Owen. They got helicopters, Botree. Black helicopters, just like Frank said.”

“We heard the shooting,” Botree said. “Were they shooting at you?”

“No,” Johnny said, his voice a low moan.

He looked at his injured hands, which were beginning to swell. The steady sound of static came from the door to Coop’s room. A voice spoke briefly and after a few seconds, they could hear Frank’s voice reciting coordinates for an airstrike, daring the Feds to attack. Joe rose and closed the curtains.

“Is someone out there?” Botree said to Johnny. “By the house?”

“No.”

“Was there?”

Johnny nodded.

“Is that who shot?”

Johnny shook his head. He moved his hand to the empty holster. He looked from Botree to Joe and back to his sister. He began to talk, each word separate and precise, like a man who’d discovered the power of speech.

“Somebody was hiding in the woods,” he said, “I was moving quiet like Owen taught me. I couldn’t see who, but I figured it was one of those Feds. An ATF or FBI, or whoever they got out there. One of the spies they sent out. I guess he heard me because he turned around and aimed a rifle at me. I already had my gun out. I don’t know how it got in my hand. I was scared, but I didn’t want to do him like I done Joe. I was too scared to be yellow this time. I shot him three times. He fell down, but he wasn’t a Fed. All he had was a little.22 rifle. He wasn’t no older than me. Oh, Botree, what’d I do?”

His head sagged forward and his shoulders rose as he began to sob, Botree continued to stroke his hair. Joe went to the sink for water and drank several glasses in succession. He hated Orben. He hated Rodale, He hated himself.

At the table, Botree placed her hand on Johnny’s arm.

“What happened to your clothes?” she said.

“I dragged him to the river and threw him in. My shirt and jacket were bloody and I threw them in, too.”

“Where’s your gun?”

“In the river.”

The hum of voices rose and fell in Coop’s room like locusts. Dallas and Abilene were yelling from the bathroom. Joe’s anger lent his mind a focus that he hadn’t known since leaving home.

“Listen to me,” Joe said. “You did everything right. If you’d not shot, he’d have killed you. You got to look at it real hard. You’re no good to any of us dead, especially your little girl.”

“I’m no good, all right,” Johnny said.

“That’s not true,” Joe said. “You were smart. You got rid of everything and came home. The family needs you.”

Joe walked around the table, aware that Johnny and Botree were watching him. His knee hurt but it was a reminder that he couldn’t give up. He’d gotten himself safely out of Kentucky, and now he was trapped in another battle that wasn’t his.

“Johnny,” he said, “I want you to lie on the couch for a while. Botree, give the kids more toys and books, whatever it takes to keep them in the tub. Tell them it’s a boat or something. Do you have the key to the rifle cabinet?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to open it, and check the rifles and ammunition. We’ve got to keep the kids away from them, but it can’t be locked. Are there any illegal rifles here?”

“Not in the house,” she said. “There’s ten buried outside in PVC pipe.”

“Nothing else?”

“No. You’re not digging them up, are you?”

“I don’t want anything around here that we can get put in jail over. No grenades or Mini-14s.”

“There’s nothing like that inside.”

“Good. Use the CB to see if the roadblock is set up south of here, too.”

Botree left the room and Joe helped Johnny move to the couch. Moonlight slid through the slit where the curtains met. Johnny’s voice was husky from medication.

“You know what Coop did on the Fourth of July when we were kids?”

Joe shook his head.

“He put a half stick of dynamite under the anvil and blew it sky-high. I looked forward to it all winter. Then in summer I’d wait for Christmas. Coop used to climb up on the roof on Christmas Eve, He’d stomp around and yell ‘Ho, ho, ho’ in the middle of the night,”

Johnny’s chest swelled in a sigh, prolonged and weary. He closed his eyes.

“I wish that damn Frank had never come back around.”

Joe tucked the blanket beneath Johnny’s chin as his mother had for him. Dusk turned the sky orange with smoke as shadows joined to form the night. Botree stood beside him at a window.