Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

“Orren Laudermilk, you get away from the road.”

He turns to see his father coming up from the riverbed, the canebrake behind him burning alive with red fire. His father coughs as he walks, waving the smoke from his face. Jumping from the fence, Orr wipes at his pant legs and opens his palm. The pink ball of shrew uncurls itself. It sniffs, raising its head, sizing him up maybe. He rolls the tail softly between his fingers.

“What you got there?” His daddy brushes his fist with the hat.

“Nothing.” He puts his hand in his pocket.

“You don’t look no better, all ghost white.” Orr’s daddy presses his forehead with the back of his hand. “Warm as toast. Can’t be pox. Can’t be.” His daddy feels the air for moisture with his fingers. “We need rain before our grass goes brown. And you can make yourself useful even when you’re sickly.” He points toward the hogs and pigs behind the fence, scattered about on their bellies and sides in the yard. Pink muddy mounds of belch and snore. “It’ll be fall before long, and your time to kill. We’ll do it together, I promise. But you need to pick the pig.”

Orr nods some, Yessir.

“Look at me.”

Orr looks.

“Your mother’d be in hearty agreement. No good reason to be afraid of killing.” His father motions toward the yard.

“Yessir.” He looks at the pigs, not sure what it will mean to pick a pig. Picking’s not the same thing as killing, he knows that much. He nods toward the wagon up the road, and says, “Where they off to?” A sour spark fills him up, thinking what other kinds of places in the world there are.

“Oh, I can guess right, I bet.” His father’s face is broken with lines like tree bark. “You done the luck jars yet?” He yawns. “Put them with the soap. I filled a bag with every last bar. With any luck we’ll sell all of it. Don’t you leave it till morning. I’m leaving early and you’re not well enough for travel.”

“I never get to go into town.”

“Plenty to do right here.”

A wagon passes with a thin man in the driver’s seat wearing bright red suspenders. The man nods.

Orr and his father keep their ground.

A young lady stands in the back of the wagon, her face shadowed by a bright yellow bonnet.

“Come on now,” his father shouts at the wagon. “You all scaring my hogs!”

She walks toward the edge of the wagon, looking almost like she’ll jump if she gets the chance. She says, “It’s gonna be a glory day, and you all should join us tomorrow. We can dance with Him in His presence.” She shakes herself like she’s been doused with cold water. “You know about Heaven and hellfire, boy?”

Orr looks up at his Daddy, closing shut his hand in his pocket.

“We’re not particular, and you don’t talk to my son,” his daddy says as the lady in the wagon rides off. A bell makes a high, clean racket in the evening. “Makes no odds,” he says, looking at Orr. “Put them luck jars in the wagon, could fetch as much as three dollars apiece. Should be a good morning with all these folks going up.”

Some men on horseback come galloping. Orr moves closer to the path. The horse legs work feverishly, tossing up dirt clods and lime shards. He’s not so scared and he blocks his face from the dust as steam rises from the nostrils of the horses, their wet mucus shining.

“Get over here,” his father says. “Before you get yourself walked on.”

He turns back and stands beside his father as the men ride by.

Trees vein the blue dusk, and a sudden flutter like sheets of rustling paper comes from the slow-burning cane. He looks back that way, at the cave in the hill by the bank rocks, and the bats come rushing out of it, spat from a sick mouth, almost eclipsing the orange leaves of fire. The dizzy in his head drives the wet chill on his skin.

“Fire’s about done,” his father says, walking back toward the canebrake. “And you all keep moving now,” he says louder.

Orr watches his father scoop up his hat from the river and toss water at the fire. He pulls his hand from his pocket, opens it, and he can barely see the shrew in the evening light. He pulls a sharpened piece of cane wood from another pocket. He stares until his eyes see better. Not so sure he can do it, kill a pig. He turns toward the river, and his father pulling down the cane char. The moon is out somewhere, making a cold glow over and through the woods. He looks up, can’t find it. He looks down where now he sees the shrew nuzzling. He once watched his father sever the head of a deer with a rusted saw. They never let him see his mother’s body. Already a year now without her. He pushes at the shrew with the cane blade and looks back at his father hacking at the grasses. He stabs lightly at the shrew’s belly, seeing how far he can push without breaking the soft pink skin.

“Get those jars in the wagon, Orr. I’ve got an early morning.”

He wipes away a cold sweat from his warm face. It makes a dark spot on his sleeve. He presses the blade against the shrew’s soft tail as it bustles on its back like an upturned bug. The shrew squeals. He turns away, his small body bucking with revulsion. Bitters from his stomach spit up into his throat. Sometimes he naps with the hogs. Pig bellies are round and tough like leather. He slaps at a fly on his neck, and again he pokes the tip of the blade into the soft belly of the shrew.

“Why you dawdling? You need to get in bed.” His daddy comes up beside him again.

“I’m going, I’m going. There’s still light left.”

His father kicks a rock toward the path. “Dammit, Orr.” He points at the hill beyond the path, where a large black sow, the oldest, freely grazes on the hill. “Get her in the yard. Now.”

Orr rolls the cane back and forth between his fingers. Another wagon coming. “Why there so many wagons?”

His father bends and picks a stone from the grass. “Un-neighborlies telling us all what’s what. God don’t play particular and neither should we.” He throws the stone and hits the wagon broadside, the rider turns abruptly. “You’re breaking up stones from my path!”

His daddy says, “They used to come around some, and knocking on your door. But I haven’t seen them out this way since before your mother’s gone. Must be a camp meeting up north some.”

A lone rider approaches and slows, pulling up his reins, rubbing noises as they tighten around his gloves. He lets a rider go on beside him, and says, “You all should join us riverside tomorrow. A glory day and these years are glory years! We’re living in the Lord’s last century now!” He removes his hat and shows a smooth bald head. The man looks up. “These days are Last Days, and Heaven and Hell are hungry.”

Orr looks back at his father.

His father says, “Get moving out of my land.”

The rider smiles. “My scalp is clean like my conscience. And I’ll see you tomorrow yet. No staying away, I hear. You best bring your boy when the Lord comes calling.” He stands in his saddle and slaps at the neck of his horse, galloping off.

His daddy says, “Let’s just hope these folks got dollars in their pockets. Ladies do like soap, all kinds.”

“Where they all headed?”

His father studies him, and then says, “You see all around? Take a good look.”

Orr looks.

“All the God we need and church, too.” His father shows the wood, and the river. “All of this is mine. And yours. God’s, too, if there is one. And it don’t cost a penny from your pocket.”

Orr nods his head: makes sense.

“Your inheritance, boy. Good land to work, and the character of your mother. May not be much, but it’s yours.” His father looks around the farm. “This is everything.”

“Yessir.”