Chris Offutt - Kentucky Straight - Stories

“How?”

“Two ways, and you ought to pray the first way works. Take and leave food at the mouth of that log ever so often. Not so much she’ll think you’re begging or buying, and not too little either. Three, four ears of corn’d be good. Don’t say nothing and don’t be scared. Just walk up bold and leave it.”

“What’s the other way?”

“A whole lot worse.” She raised her voice. “Casey! You come in here.”

Boots clumped and the door banged. “Chopped enough wood for a month of Sundays,” he said.

“You’re mine now,” Nomey said, “over marrying Beth.”

Casey nodded, looking at the floor.

“You listen at me on this. Stay away from Flatgap and leave them guns at the house. You hear me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“There’s more to it than you think. I know you’re fierce, but this takes another kind. You’ll have to be stouter than you ever was. You’ve got to do what me and Beth tells you.”

“I will.”

“You swear?”

“I ain’t broke my word yet.”

Nomey dug in a pocket for a chunk of moly root. “Make a hole in this and wear it,” she said. “Now you’uns get home.”

For a year, Beth left garden vegetables by the log’s mouth. At fall slaughter she took hog; in winter, fresh venison. She missed her cycle and two months later her belly showed. When Casey came home from clearing timber, Beth’s eyes were shy. “I’ve got a secret,” she said. “I’m filled with us.”

Casey’s beard opened in a smile. He hugged her, then released her, frowning. “Did that hurt?”

“You can’t squeeze it out that easy. It ain’t no bigger than a radish.”

They slept with their hands together on Beth’s middle. In the morning Casey left to plow while Beth moved through the house, planning for her child. She opened the kitchen window. A breeze carried birdsong in the house, followed by the pungent scent of burnt cedar. She squeezed the moly root and prayed.

The pipe smoke smell grew stronger every day. After a week, she went to her mother’s house and returned by midday. Nomey was right, the other way was worse than bad. Beth waited until the first day of the next full moon, then walked out Flatgap Ridge. Beyond it lay the massive shadow of Shawnee Rock. Beth stopped at the end of the ridge, face damp, fingers clenched. The log opening was dark as night.

“Aunt Granny Lith,” Beth said. “I’m calling your name. I want my family left alone. You think we’re married to the same man, but we ain’t. He lives with me. I’ll send him here tonight and you’ll have a man for one night, not no more. You’re too old to be a wife but you won’t die like you were born. You got my word.”

Beth stroked her swelling belly and watched a sparrow chase a jay. She turned damp leaves beneath the tree and rooted in the earth. An inch below the surface lay a chestnut with a finger-sized hole. It was brittle, nearly rotten. Beth felt the baby kick.

After supper she told Casey about the cedar smell, what Nomey had said they had to do, and the visit to the log on Flatgap Ridge. Casey finished his salad of wild ramps and cress. His voice was gentle.

“I don’t know much on a woman pregnant,” he said, “but I’ve heard it makes your mind take to spinning. Were you sick this morning?”

“You got to go up on Flatgap tonight, by yourself.”

“Won’t.”

“You leave your clothes by the log and you crawl right inside there. It opens to an old cave.”

“Ain’t about to.”

“Remember what Nomey said. You got to listen and do what we say. It’s for the baby, your daughter.”

Casey laid his fork down and straightened his back in the maple chair. His thick-knuckled hands pressed the table.

“A girl?”

“Nomey took a token on it.”

“A token! I’m sick of tokens, Beth. That’s all you two can do. Give a man an old piece of root and take his pistol. Go out in the woods and dicker with a log. That ain’t my way, Beth. Someone crosses me, I stay crossed. I plow, hunt, and chop. I work, by God. I work!”

“Tokens work, too.”

“I never seen one.”

“It’s knowing more than seeing.”

“You ain’t the only one knows things. My daddy run animals out of the garden all his life. You can’t ask a rabbit to leave your lettuce alone. You got to kill it.”

Casey tore a sleeve from his shirt. He lifted a jug of kerosene and stuffed the sleeve in the narrow mouth. He grabbed a fistful of matches from the stove.

“Won’t do no good,” Beth said. “Even a groundhog’s got two or three back doors.”

“She ain’t no groundhog.”

“You’ll just make her mad.”

“We’ll be square, then.”

Casey lifted his shotgun and went outside. Beth heard a crash of shattering glass, then the shotgun’s roar. Before the echo faded, he fired the other barrel. Ejected shells bounced against the porch. Two more blasts came and Casey stepped inside, bleeding from his forehead.

“Missed,” he said.

“Was it her?”

“Biggest nighthawk I ever did see. First step off the porch, it flew at my head. I dropped the coal oil and busted it.” He wiped his face and licked the blood. “Never knew a bird to act that way before.”

“Come here, Casey.” Her voice was low and calm. “I got something to show you.”

She rolled the chestnut ring across the table. Casey picked it up carefully. Carved into the shell were his initials.

“Where’d you get this from?”

“Her.”

“It ain’t right, me going up there.”

“You got to.”

“You’re my wife.”

“That’s why I can say.”

“It’s against everything.”

“Not if I tell you to.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s the only way.”

“That don’t make it right.”

“You gave your word.”

Casey smashed the chestnut with his fist. He pounded the shell to tiny pieces, swept them to the floor.

“I can fix your shirt,” Beth said.

“Me, too.” Casey ripped the other sleeve away. “Nothing wrong with it now.”

She embraced him, rocking and moaning low in her throat. At dusk he left the house. The air was white as day from the moon bloated full above the ridge. Beth watched him walk into the night, the first time she’d seen him without a gun.

She melted lye on the stove, stirred in hog tallow and crumbled sage. She ground the broken chestnut and sprinkled the powder in a pot. After it cooled, she coated the tin bottom of a washtub with the mixture and began heating water, waiting without sleep for his return.

Dawn’s light angled through the trees, changing dew to ground fog rising from the hollow. Beth stiffened at a sound on the porch. Casey entered, swaying and shirtless. Nail marks gashed his shoulders and dark clots clung to his chest. He shuffled across the floor in unlaced boots.

“Don’t look at me,” he said.

He threw his pants outside while she poured scalding water in the washtub. Casey crouched in the steam, hugging his knees while Beth scrubbed his body raw. She helped him to bed, where he lay two weeks, chilled and quaking with fever. Nomey came to dress his wounds and fill the house with the smell of snakeroot tea. They changed the sweat-soaked sheets every morning and night.

On the fifteenth day, Casey opened calm eyes.

“Beth,” he said.

“I’m here.”

He slept again and Nomey left. The next day he sat wrapped in a quilt by the stove.

“Got any tobacco on you?” he said.

“You don’t smoke, Casey.”

“I’m starting.”

She found some butts her mother had left and rolled him a fresh one. When half was gone, he spoke.

“She begged me, Beth. She flat out begged me.”

“She shouldn’t have.”