Chris Offutt - The Good Brother

He didn’t answer.

“Your mom told me about Troy coming up here.”

“Don’t say nothing to nobody.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “All this is a hard one on your mom.”

“I know it.”

“And for you, too, Virge.”

Starlight slipped between tree limbs and glowed across the yard. Abigail had a quality that always made him feel less of a man, and he suddenly knew what it was. Abigail was happy, and he resented it. He felt as if they were in seventh grade again, trying to outmaneuver each other for the one thing they both wanted — a kiss. When it finally happened he pressed his lips so hard against hers that he mashed his nose and couldn’t breathe. She whispered for him to open his mouth, and he realized that she knew more than he did.

“Troy coming up here was wrong,” she said.

“Well, it wasn’t right.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“Not exactly.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Virgil.”

“I know you don’t. This whole thing has got me messed up. Right and wrong are gone. Nobody cares about that anymore, not even the sheriff.”

“You do,” Abigail said. “I know you do.”

“It’d be easier if I didn’t. People might leave me alone.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I don’t mean you.”

They didn’t speak for a few minutes. The swinging chain made a steady rasp. A dog barked over the hill, its cry rising up the hollow and fading along the ridge.

“I have some good news, anyway,” Abigail said.

“That’d be a switch.”

“I got a promotion and a raise.”

Virgil didn’t know what to say, She already drew a bigger paycheck than he did.

“Well,” she said. “Aren’t you going to ask me how much?”

“How much?”

“Enough to get into a house with some land. We could use your money for fixing up.”

“Fixing what up?”

“You know, box in a porch if we needed extra bedrooms or something.”

Virgil wondered what the cutoff age was to join the army. He knew a lot of boys who had gone years ago but he couldn’t see the point if there wasn’t a war.

“It’s just something to think on,” she said. “I thought maybe it’d be better than this other,”

“I’m about run out of thinking.”

“I understand. I know how that is. I got the same way up in Ohio. You hit a certain place and there’s nothing left but doing.”

“I ain’t there yet. I’m more in between.”

“I want you to know something, Virgil. You have to hear me on this. Whichever way you go, I’m with you. I’m there. You do whatever you need to do — for yourself. Don’t matter to me. I’m on your side.”

Virgil nodded.

“I got to get on down the road,” she said. “Tell your mom I said good night.”

She rose awkwardly from the swing, setting it in sideways motion. She leaned to kiss him and left. The big engine spewed exhaust that stayed in the air after her red taillights vanished among the trees.

She wasn’t against it, which meant she was for it. Abigail was trying to play cagey, but tonight was the first time she’d been direct about children. Perhaps she was trying to snare him when he was preoccupied with other matters — murder or marry, like a judge who tells a drunk to do the time or take the cure. He wondered if she would continue to love him if he became a killer; it wasn’t as if he could quit and change back, like giving up liquor.

A half moon hung low above the hills, its light washing away the surrounding stars. The hills were black and the woods were blacker and the hollow below was blackest of all. Virgil had always been able to see well at night. It was more recognition than actual sight, the ability to know forms by their silhouette. Most people treated night the same as day only with less light, which was a mistake. The secret to darkness was not to blunder about, but to look carefully at what was there.

Marlon came onto the porch, trailed by Sara’s voice saying, “Shut that door behind you tight.”

Moths the size of a man’s hand battered the screen. Marlon lit a cigarette, handling the matches in a deft fashion. Both men were quiet. Marlon cast a field about him that made people uneasy, but Virgil was accustomed to it.

“Sara send you out here?” Virgil said.

“Yep.”

“They tell you about Troy?”

“He’s so crooked he screws his britches on.”

“Whole thing’s about eat my head up. Marl.”

A soft rain spattered the tree leaves and moved across the night. The evening air became damp.

“Some rain,” Virgil said. “We could use a gully washer.”

“Way them women talk we can always use more of something.”

“Full of plans, ain’t they.”

“For other people,” Marlon said. “They’ll lay their ears back like a cat eating, and knock you down with talk. A man can’t pay that much mind. It’s like weeding a garden to me.”

“How’s that?”

“just pick what to listen at.”

“Wish I could, Marl. That’s a gift.”

“Not really.”

“I’m stuck with hearing all of it.”

“Make your head go crazy that way.”

“I ain’t that far from it. You know what I’d really like, I’d like to be left alone.”

“Get that long enough and you’ll not like it.”

“Maybe so. Is there anything you’d like, Marlon?”

“Learn to weld.”

“Weld?”

“Open me up a muffler shop.”

Virgil nodded, wishing he was as clearheaded and free of guile as his brother-in-law. Marlon was loyal and hardworking, and there was no higher compliment in the county.

“Let me ask you something,” Marlon said. “Ever notice how an oak’ll hold on to a fall leaf through winter?”

“Now that you say it, yes.”

“That old tree not wanting to turn loose of a dead leaf. Something to think on, Virge.”

Marlon went in the house and a few minutes later came out with Sara. They said good night and got into Marlon’s truck, sitting very close on the bench seat. In the brief flash of the domelight, they looked as they had five years ago, leaving on a date. They were a little bigger now, including the truck.

Moonglow lay over the darkened land. Virgil recalled evenings he’d stood with Boyd on the porch, trying to watch darkness arrive, Boyd had thought that each molecule of air became darker and, like watching snow accumulate, you could witness the actual blackening of the sky.

Virgil could not leave without telling his mother good night, but if he sat outside long enough, she would go to bed and he’d be free to go. She came to the door. Interior light spread her shadow across the porch, diffused by the screen. Her hair was pulled to the back of her head in a bun the color of ash. Virgil knew that she would wait there until she was invited out. He’d seen it with his father many times.

“Come on out, Mom.”

“Well, if you’re wanting company.”

“Always yours.”

“I ain’t a-caring, then.”

She stepped onto the porch and quickly pulled the door shut. She sat in her chair, picked up the fly swatter that lay beside it, and placed it in her lap.

“I shouldn’t ort to have set,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ll get up.”

“I’ll start to get worried the day I find you sleeping there in the morning.”

“You remember the time Sara’s first cat got up in the yard oak and she started crying.”

“We was all just kids,” Virgil said.

“Boyd, he told her to hush up, that cat would come down and he could prove it.”

“I don’t remember that part.”

“Oh, yes. He said you could walk these hills a hundred years and there’d be one thing you’d never find — a cat skeleton in a tree.”