Chris Offutt - Kentucky Straight - Stories

Mercer jerked his head to the bulldozer. “Old Bob’s here.”

“Late,” his brother said. He unleashed a stream of tobacco juice that dissipated rapidly in the rain. “He best not be too bad off.”

“You know he is,” said one of the men, unfolding upward from his squat. “Old Bob gets so drunk he takes back things he never stole.”

Everyone grinned and the man repeated himself, drawing another round of headshakes and laughter. Eight years before, these same men dug Old Bob out of a caved-in mine a mile away. In one hand he held a long splinter of strut wood he’d yanked from his face. Its sharp end spindled his eyeball. The company gave him a bulldozer with a loose track and three cylinders that didn’t hit. After the mines were empty and the company gone, Old Bob owned the only dozer in the hills. A good swap, people said. He’d traded up.

Old Bob staggered through the mud, bandy-legged from a decade’s habit of staying upright while drunk. He jerked his head like a crow to see with his one good eye.

“Hidy, by God! Think it’ll rain?”

“Don’t know,” said a man. “But it sure missed a good chance to if it don’t.”

Aaron used a blunt finger to search behind his jaw for strings of tobacco. He flung them to the ground and slipped a fresh chew in his mouth.

“Reckon you can pull her out?” he said.

Old Bob stared at the trailer jammed in the mud of the wet clay slope. A heavy chain ran to the tow truck. It was mired deep as the trailer. The truck driver lowered himself from the cab, holding tightly to the door. He slipped on the soap-slick ground and fell, skidding sideways down the hill. He plunged to his knees in the rushing water of the ditch.

“Look out, boys,” Old Bob said. “He’s a-looking for a dance partner.”

The driver forced a grin as he slogged across the road.

“I’m Mr. Richards,” he said. “You the dozer man?”

“Ain’t needing one, are you?”

“Might could.”

Old Bob leaned forward and twitched his head. Strands of shiny wet hair clung to his face in diagonal strips. He peeled one back and sucked its tip.

“Richards,” he said. “Same as Dick, ain’t it. You the boss of this here outfit?”

Old Bob howled, his clothes flapping like birch bark flayed by wind. The men hid sly grins, looking up the hill or at their boots, having learned from the mines never to anger a foreman.

Richards breathed through his mouth to keep rain from his nose. Only white people bought new mobile homes, trading an old one for down payment. Richards was running out of blacks to buy his used trailers. The hill people were his next market and he had to be careful.

“They say you work a dozer like a borrowed mule,” Richards said. “Ready to hit a lick?”

Old Bob poked out his lower lip and shook his head.

“Not yet, I ain’t. Got to get myself lubed a little more.” He reeled to face the bulldozer. A man-shape hanging within the roll cage rocked and swayed. “Hey, Bobby, toss me that bottle here!” Old Bob grinned at the men and focused his single eye on Mr. Richards.

“My boy was born lamed-up but his eyes are good. He’s the one does the seeing for me. I’d say Dick here could use a boy walking for him, way he come off that hillside.”

Old Bob showed his teeth and strutted to the bulldozer. The men followed, eager for heat against the hissing rain. Richards kicked mud from his boot.

“Where’s Coe at?” he said. “Hey, Coe!”

“In the truck,” Mercer said. “I’ll get him.”

Mercer walked past the men sharing whiskey and damp cigarettes cupped in palms. The bulldozer clattered on idle. “Save me a taste,” he said to the men.

Coe rolled the window down, releasing cigarette smoke that faded into the fog. Mercer wondered why he stayed alone in the truck. A man only did that if he was trying to avoid a fight, but Coe worked hard and didn’t say much.

“Boss man’s wanting you,” Mercer said.

“Don’t that figure. Him and that dozer feller get into it already?”

“Old Bob’s half drunk is all.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Coe said. “I could stand a snort myself, day like this.”

“Might not be none left.”

“Not for me, anyhow.” He rolled up his window and left the truck. “Rain ain’t let up a hair.”

“No,” Mercer said. “But it’s only water.”

Mud sucked at their boots beneath the dark tunnel of tree limbs. The wind had stilled. Rain dropped straight from the sky as if following ropes to the earth. When Mercer and Coe passed the bulldozer, the men hushed and stared. Coe scuttled sideways up the muddy slope.

The bank’s lower section had slid a few feet to block the ditch. Backwash flowed across the road, cutting new troughs to the creek below, and Mercer knew the bank might not hold past dark. One of the men passed Mercer the pint. With three fingers lost to a chain saw, the man’s hand made a C-clamp around the flat bottle. An inch of corn liquor sloshed the bottom.

Old Bob settled onto the bulldozer’s seat. Behind him, propped in the roll cage with crippled legs dangling, was his son Bobby — Bobby the Finder. He could spot a snake fifty yards away and label birds above the farthest ridge. In spring, Old Bob carried him like a sack of feed corn while Bobby’s forked dowsing rod jumped and quivered. Of twenty-seven wells dug where Bobby said, twenty-five hit underground springs. Everyone blamed Old Bob for the two mistakes. He was drunk and didn’t walk straight.

The dozer rattled up the slope, steel tracks flipping bricks of mud. Rainwater rushed to fill the ladder-shaped prints. Bobby hung like a scarecrow, yelling directions. The dozer moved easily over the mud as Old Bob maneuvered it to the truck. Coe fastened a tow chain to the bulldozer’s hitch. Richards gunned the truck, spattering mud. The chain rose taut and the bulldozer reared like a cornered bear until Old Bob released the tension. The machine slammed back to earth, spraying Coe with a sheet of yellow mud. The dozer tugged again, and the truck’s twin rear wheels spun. Each abrupt motion jerked Bobby hanging from the roll bar. The straining truck suddenly jumped up the hillside and rain gushed into the hole. Clay dirt held it like a bowl. The men watched mud float in the yellow water.

Old Bob dragged the truck in a tight circle. He saluted the men in the road, who punched each other’s soggy arms. Richards leaned from the truck window, his mouth raging in a shout that was lost to the sound of dozer and rain. Old Bob made another pass of the narrow ridge and in a final sharp turn, he whipped the truck sideways, slinging great waves of mud into its open window. The tow truck stalled. Old Bob cut the bulldozer to a rumbling throb and waved at the men. The wet woods were black behind him. He sat alone on the rattling dozer.

“Where’s Bobby?” Mercer said.

“Ain’t he up there?” said a man.

“Well, he ain’t gone far,” said another. “Grandmaw can outrun him and she’s dead.”

The men watched Richards wave his hands and point to the rear of the truck. Old Bob eased to the muddy ground.

“Never seen him off that dozer on a job,” someone said. “Track probably come off.”

The men crossed the road to climb the hill. Aaron waited behind, spitting over his shoulder. This was his land and his trailer. He would stay clear of mud.

Cold rain streamed Mercer’s face as he climbed a grassy bank untouched by plow or dozer. He circled the mud-flecked trailer, staying on the high furrow between tire tracks. Coe stood at the trailer’s corner, head raised to a waterfall pouring off the roof. He wiped mud from his face.

“You aiming to shave next?” Mercer said.

Coe stiffened. He stepped forward, anger fading as he saw the offered whiskey.