Chris Offutt - Kentucky Straight - Stories

“I’m not Grandpaw,” William had said. “And you’re not me.”

Tools rattled in the truck bed as William drove up the hill and out Crosscut Ridge to his house. Three dogs chased through the dust, jumping at the pickup. William squatted, pushing his fingers in the fur behind each dog’s ears. He found several ticks, their bodies stretched tight like kernels of white com. He twisted one free and squeezed it between thumb and finger. The tick burst in a spray of dark blood.

The heavy scent of venison stew drifted from the house, and William wondered how many meals were left on the doe. His daughters needed more meat. Inside, his wife, Connie, held the baby on her hip. Sarah sat on the floor, banging a spoon against a pot. Ruth rushed to her father.

“How many’d you get?” she said.

“Eight,” William said. “Three off Blackie. Two off Hubcap. So how many ticks off Duke?”

She grunted over stubby fingers. Connie turned and pushed stray hair behind an ear. Afternoon sun washed her skin, softening the shadows below her eyes.

“How’s town?” she said.

“About done.”

“Take your clothes off before you set down.”

“I’ll take them off,” he said, thinking of Miriam.

Five kinds of paneling formed the bedroom’s tight walls. His favorite depicted a scene of three grouse flying over tall grass. He scanned as if hunting and decided it would take a twenty-gauge with a cylinder bore. From the right position, a man could bring down all three birds. He studied a mirror with taped cracks. White plaster powder coated his face, and he resembled his father except for the color of the dust. William thought of the bathroom Connie wanted. Either that or a trailer, she had said. William was afraid she’d rather move to town.

In the living room, he sat on the end of the couch. Clear plastic covered the other half. As they paid if off, Connie exposed the vinyl in small increments, slicing the plastic with a kitchen knife. William understood that this was a display of her thrift — she deserved indoor plumbing. Town water was nine miles away and moving closer every day. He waved to the crew each morning on his way to Rocksalt, envious of their steady work. To add a bathroom, he needed three times the money from last year’s tobacco crop, but the auction brought less every fall.

Connie called him to eat and he walked to the table, watching his daughters rinse their hands in an old lard bucket. Roofing tar plugged a hole in the bottom. The girls laughed around the pail hauled from the well at the end of the ridge. Splashed water clung to their blond hair.

After supper, William slipped into his hunting jacket that smelled of earth and game. He pulled a rifle from the closet and checked the breech. Walnut whorls patterned the stock in light and dark. It had belonged to his father, and his grandfather. William often wondered who he’d give it to. He dropped some bullets in a pocket.

“Going out the ridge,” he said.

“If I didn’t know better,” Connie said, “I’d think you had a woman out there.”

“What I got is better.” He forced a grin. “Back by dark.”

“Watch for snakes. They’re bad this year.”

The dogs followed him as he climbed the hill, gauging fallen trees for winter firewood. Overlapping shadows flowed across the forest floor. When he neared a hickory, the hounds began to whine, their dark eyes showing fear. He loaded the rifle and the dogs ran yelping back to the house. He recalled his grandfather’s voice, telling William moonshine stories as a boy.

“You take your dogs to a tree where you don’t want them to follow you no more,” the old man had said. “Let each dog smell of the gun. Then you kill one. The rest ain’t much count for hunting after that, but they’ll not lead the law to a still. I done it many a time.”

William stepped around the hickory to stand above his dog’s small grave. King had been old and slow, nearly blind, his favorite. He nodded to the humped earth and walked deeper into the woods. The land crested to a plateau of three hills where two ridges tapered down to the creek. He headed east, away from people, and eased down the hill to a lower ridge. He followed it to a limestone cliff and circled the rocks to a narrow hollow. At its end, he climbed onto a low knob ringed by hills. He listened carefully in each direction. A mourning dove moaned and high leaves brushed on a breeze. He hunched over, eyes intent on the ground. He saw a boot print and tensed his hands on the rifle.

The track was his own from before.

William topped the knob and grinned. Planted on ten-inch centers stood fifty-one hemp plants gently rocking in the breeze. William had never smoked hemp. It simply grew, the same as com his grandfather had used for mash. Like ginseng and tobacco, hemp had become a valuable weed. Town people would buy a load and he’d sell it cheap. All he wanted were bathroom fixtures, two hundred feet of PVC pipe, and a mirror for Connie.

He walked through his garden, breaking off weak branches and pulling new shoots. He turned the leaves to check for worms. After pruning he leaned against a sycamore and listened to a whippoorwill wail into the surrounding hardwood hills. William knew hemp was safer than moonshine because the knob belonged to the mine company. A new law allowed the state to steal family land with hemp on it, but the government had always left big coal operators alone. Most of the companies came from out of state, and except for bribes in Frankfort, the money went out of state, too. William’s father had said that was the reason Kentucky had such weak reclamation laws.

Of five miners working illegally during the oil embargo, three went to prison, one got rich, and thirty tons of earth fell on William’s father. Everyone on the hill helped dig him out. After the funeral William worked town construction for three months. Instead of drinking with the other men after work, he saved his money and bought his own tools. When the job ended he was laid off while everyone else moved to another site. The foreman said that he didn’t mix well. William sold his tools for half of what he’d paid and began searching the hills for wild hemp to transplant on the hidden knob.

Saw briers rattled over the hill. William twitched his head, aiming his ears in that direction. The steady sound was loud enough for large game. He climbed down the back of the knob and circled the downwind side, placing each foot carefully to avoid the noise of leaf or fallen limb. Only a fawn would wander into briers. Its mother would be near. William flicked off the rifle’s safety.

At the edge of the woods, he knelt behind an oak and sniffed sassafras blending with pine sap. The whippoorwill’s cry was very loud, a warning. William leaned his head and rifle around the tree. His vision skipped along the ridge to the base of the knob and slowly up the steep bank. Sweat trickled down his sides. A man stood thirty yards away at the lip of the knob. Hemp plants swayed above his head.

William peered through the scope of his grandfather’s gun. He lowered the rifle past the man’s face to the center of his chest and leaned against the tree to steady his aim, knowing the hills would swallow the sound. He inhaled, and let the air out slow and careful.

The man turned in a small circle, gazing around the hills. William breathed normally again. He would not rush a killing shot. The man limped to a sapling and climbed over the knob, panting like a chased fox. With trembling hands he pulled his pants leg to the knee. William moved the scope to the man’s bare calf. In the center of a dark swelling were two red puncture marks.

William pivoted around the oak and locked the safety behind the trigger. In three days, he could pretend to find the man and drag him out of the woods. The man would never remember the hemp. He’d lose his leg and not return.