Chris Offutt: Kentucky Straight: Stories

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“Then you’re among the living.” She sighed and looked into the woods. “You stay close by the house today.”

“How come?”

“Just feel it’s all. There’s a prayer meeting tonight and I want you to go with me. You hear?”

Vaughn nodded, staring at the ground as his mother went in the house. She didn’t attend church often, had never forced him to join. Maybe tonight Lije would go, too. They’d sit together and everyone would know Lije was his grandfather.

The sudden absence of sound lifted Vaughn’s head to the empty sky. He peered into dark brush between the trees. A red-tailed hawk lofted from a gum tree and glided through the open limbs of the ridge. Vaughn crossed the yard and entered the woods. Autumn was all around him.

The dry rustle of leaves drew Vaughn up the steep ridge slope and down the hill. He stopped at a creek twisting through cudweed in the dark hollow. A frog splashed into the creek. Vaughn turned, and another frog leaped from the bank. The shifting tendrils of a willow swayed apart, releasing sun shafts from its shade. Vaughn moved to the light, stepped through the willow’s overhang, and stood below an outcrop of shale. Clear water gushed through a gap in the rock. Above it, Lije was sitting cross-legged in the sun, his face strained and lichen gray. Vaughn climbed the slippery cliff and squatted beside him.

“You’re good,” Lije said. “Come straight here without no maundering about. Didn’t tucker me too bad, a-towing you.”

His eyes were filmy and his voice came faint. A vine held his long hair back. Vaughn breathed through his mouth to avoid the smell. Lije grinned.

“Fox piss,” he said. “Cuts man-stink awful good. Slept in an old den last night. Got you something, too.”

He opened a belt pouch and withdrew a shiny piece of quartz.

“Shooting star,” he said. “Seen it fall last night. Points all busted off when it hit. Ever saw one?”

“Yup.”

“You take and hold this up tonight and see if it don’t match them others. A fell star ain’t easy to get.”

Vaughn had learned in school that stars were gas balls a billion miles away. Quartz lay thick in the hills and it glittered in the sandstone creek beds. Vaughn wondered just how crazy his grandfather was.

“I brought some breakfast,” Vaughn said.

“Done ate berries and such. Went dryland fishing but the frost beat me out.”

“You really my grandpaw?”

“Found me, didn’t you.”

“Maw said you were in some kind of state place.”

“I let them keep me till the time came.”

“She said people think you’re a devil.”

“You go by that?”

Vaughn slowly shook his head. He wasn’t certain what he believed but knew that sitting here was right. Lije stood, leaning on Vaughn. He coughed and spat, and continued to cough a thick, wet sludge. He stepped to the cliff edge and jumped. A sapling eased him to the earth. Vaughn slid sideways down the loose rock face and followed the limping man into the woods.

“We going fishing?” Vaughn said.

“No.”

“Where we headed for?”

“The where ain’t much count against the how. We’re not just traipsing these hills, boy. We’re walking with the woods.”

Vaughn remembered his mother’s warning to stay near the house. If he was going back, now was the time. He’d come to the creek often but had never crossed it, and could get home easily from here. The woods didn’t scare Vaughn except at night, when his mother said spirits roved.

Vaughn followed Lije deeper into the woods. No matter who the man was, he was still a grown-up and Vaughn knew he’d be safe. Lije plucked a long, dusky feather from the brush. “This way,” he said, and moved east. A hundred yards away, he found a second feather. Lije glided through the woods, dipping a shoulder and bending a knee to avoid low limbs, moving like a shadow. Vaughn plodded behind, his face marked by thorn and branch.

Their route shifted with each new feather as they traveled beyond the logged-out land and into older woods near Shawnee Rock. Giant trees crowded together, casting dark shade. Lije headed east, away from the afternoon sun slicing the woods. The man wasn’t talking and Vaughn had never been this far from home. If he turned back, he’d be lost.

An hour later, Lije lifted an arm and tipped his fingers. Vaughn moved to him, smelling the buckskin musk and odor of fox. The woods air chilled.

“Feathers done,” Lije whispered. “Deer now.”

Where, Vaughn thought.

Lije aimed his chin at the ridgeline. “Other side yonder.” He squatted. “Sign,” Lije muttered. “Spy it.”

Vaughn mentally divided the earth into lanes and searched each row carefully. Weeds pushed through rotting leaves. A cicada shell lay beside pale nut shavings left by a squirrel.

“Don’t look for nothing,” Lije said. “The nose and ears is first cousin to the eyes.”

Vaughn closed his eyes and imagined a deer weaving along the hollow and up the ridge. It moved slowly, chewing shrub, alert to sound. The buck looked directly at Vaughn with black eyes, very old. It held the stare a long time, then turned away.

Vaughn opened his eyes. In the forest floor before him lay a narrow path of bent grass and dead leaves turned damp-side up. He stared hard and the trail faded, becoming the bottom of the woods.

“I saw it,” Vaughn said.

“Boatman can’t help but to.”

“It’s gone now.”

“Because you’re looking again.”

Lije limped up the slope, bent from the waist, following sign. He coughed steadily. Vaughn closed his eyes and the deer appeared before him. When he opened them, Lije’s buckskinned body moved along the trail. They eased down a steep bank to the soft ground of a rain gully. Lije followed the creek twenty yards before moving upslope to the next fold of land. The setting sun was on their backs.

In a basin laced with squawroot, Lije stood erect. He turned in a slow circle, eyes closed and arms extended, his fingertips quivering in the silent woods. His mouth hung slack. A deep breath forced his wet cough.

“He’s pranking with me,” Lije said. “Doubled on us or hid, one.”

“Could be anywhere.”

“But he ain’t.” Lije’s whisper was weak. “There’s only one place he’s at and that’s wherever he is.” His fingers squeezed Vaughn. “Where’d he go, Boatman?”

“Over that ridge.” Vaughn pointed without thought.

“How do you know?”

“Don’t.”

“But you know.”

Vaughn nodded.

“What else?” Lije said.

“Something’s behind us.”

“What?”

“Can’t rightly say.”

“You feared?”

“No.”

“It’s your shadow’s shadow then.”

Lije coughed and began limping up the ridge. Vaughn looked into the dark silence of the woods and realized that night was an hour away and his mother would be mad. She’d spend all evening telling the picture of Jesus what an evil boy she had. When he came home, she’d make him kneel on stones.

Vaughn climbed the hill and stood beside Lije. The fading sunshine flung their shadows over the land. Lije’s outline flowed across the earth, disappearing between two huge and ancient oaks. They were seven feet apart, too close for trees their size. Vaughn’s shadow ended halfway to the oaks.

“There it is,” Lije said.

“The deer?”

“No. Deer’s one led us here. Him and the hawk. That there’s the go-over place.”

The twin oaks rose like massive legs, their branches twining overhead, blocking sky. Between the trees lay a sunken strip of earth. The arching stems of Solomon’s-seal formed a boundary to the dark space beneath the oaks. Lije walked down the hill into his shadow. Beyond the steep surrounding hillsides were the crests of further hills that melted into the dusk. Crickets began their sunset creaking. Lije was halfway down the hill when Vaughn saw movement to his left.