Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories (31 page)

Boyd walked into the backyard. The scarlet oak’s leaves caught the day’s last light.
Lambent
, that was the word for it, Boyd thought, like red wine raised to candlelight. He slowly raised his gaze but did not see the bird. He clapped his hands together, so hard his palms burned. Something dark lifted out of the tallest limb, hung above the tree a moment, then resettled.

In the living room, Allison and her schoolbooks lay sprawled in front of the hearth. When Boyd leaned to kiss her he felt the fire’s warmth on her face. Laura sat on the couch, writing month-end checks.

“How is Jennifer?” he asked when he came into the kitchen.

Laura set the checkbook aside.

“No better. Janice called and said she was going to keep her home again tomorrow.”

“Did she take her back to the doctor?”

“Yes. The doctor gave her some antibiotics and took a strep culture.”

Allison twisted her body and turned to Boyd.

“You need to cut us some more wood this weekend, Daddy. There are only a few big logs left.”

Boyd nodded and let his eyes settle on the fire. Laura had wanted to switch to gas logs. Just like turning a TV on and off, that easy, his wife had said, and a lot less messy. Boyd had argued the expense, especially since the wood he cut was free, but it was more than that. Cutting the wood, stacking, and finally burning it gave him pleasure, work that, unlike so much of what he did at his job, was tactile, somehow more real.

Boyd was staring at the hearth when he spoke.

“I think Jennifer needs to see somebody else, somebody besides a family doctor.”

“Why do you think that, Daddy?” Allison asked.

“Because I think she’s real sick.”

“But she can’t miss Halloween,” Allison said. “We’re both going to be ghosts.”

“How can you know that?” Laura asked. “You haven’t even seen her.”

“I just know.”

Laura was about to say something else, then hesitated.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Laura said.

He waited until after supper to knock on the Colemans’ door. Laura had told him not to go, but Boyd went anyway. Jim Coleman opened the door. Boyd stood before a man he suddenly realized he knew hardly anything about. He didn’t know how many siblings Jim Coleman had or what kind of neighborhood in Chicago he’d grown up in or if he’d ever held a shotgun or hoe in his hand. He did not know if Jim Coleman had once been a churchgoer or had always spent his Sunday mornings working in his garage or yard.

“I’ve come to check on Jennifer,” Boyd said.

“She’s sleeping,” Jim answered.

“I’d still like to see her, if you don’t mind,” Boyd said, and showed Jim a sheet of paper. “I had Allison write down what they did in class today. She’d be disappointed if I didn’t deliver this.”

For a moment Boyd thought he would say no, but Jim Coleman stepped aside.

“Come in then.”

He followed Jim down the hallway and up the stairs to Jennifer’s bedroom. The girl lay in her bed, the sheets pulled up to her neck. Sweat had matted the child’s hair, made her face a shiny paleness, like porcelain. In a few moments Janice joined them. She pressed her palm against Jennifer’s forehead and let it linger as though bestowing a blessing.

“What was her temperature the last time you checked?” Boyd asked.

“One hundred and two. It goes up in the evening.”

“And it’s been four days now?”

“Yes,” Janice said. “Four days and four nights. I let her go to school Friday. I probably shouldn’t have.”

Boyd looked at Jennifer. He tried to put himself in her parents’ situation. He tried to imagine what words could connect what he’d witnessed in Madison County to some part of their experience in Chicago or Raleigh. But there were no such words. What he had learned in the North Carolina mountains was untranslatable to the Colemans.

“I think you need to get her to the hospital,” Boyd said.

“But the doctor says as soon as the antibiotics kick in she’ll be fine,” Janice said.

“You need to get her to the hospital,” Boyd said again.

“How can you know that?” Janice asked. “You’re not a doctor.”

“When I was a boy, I saw someone sick like this.” Boyd hesitated. “That person died.”

“Doctor Underwood said she’d be fine,” Jim said, “that plenty of kids have had this. He’s seen her twice.”

“You’re scaring me,” Janice said.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” Boyd said. “Please take Jennifer to the hospital. Will you do that?”

Janice turned to her husband.

“Why is he saying these things?”

“You need to leave,” Jim Coleman said.

“Please,” Boyd said. “I know what I’m talking about.”

“Leave. Leave now,” Jim Coleman said.

Boyd walked back into his own yard. For a few minutes he stood there. The owl did not call but he knew it roosted in the scarlet oak, waiting.

“Janice just called and she’s royally pissed off.” Laura told him when he entered the house. “I told you not to go over there. They think you’re mentally disturbed, maybe even dangerous.”

Laura sat on the couch, and she motioned for Boyd to sit down also.

“Where’s Allison?” Boyd asked.

“I put her to bed,” Laura said. “You know, you’re upsetting Allison as well as the Colemans. You’re upsetting me too. Tell me what this is about, Boyd.”

For half an hour he tried to explain. When Boyd finished his wife placed one of her hands over his.

“I know where you grew up that people, uneducated people, believed such things,” Laura said. “But you don’t live in Madison County anymore, and you are educated. Maybe there is an owl out back. I haven’t heard it, but I’ll concede it could be out there. But even so it’s an
owl
, nothing more.”

Laura squeezed his hand.

“I’m getting you an appointment with Doctor Harmon. He’ll prescribe some Ambien so you can get some rest, maybe something else for the anxiety.”

Later that night Boyd lay in bed, waiting for the owl to call. An hour passed on the red digits of the alarm clock and he tried to muster hope that the bird had left. He finally fell asleep for a few minutes, long enough to dream about his grandfather. They were in Madison County, in the farmhouse. Boyd was in the front room by himself, waiting though he didn’t know what for. Finally, the old man came out of his bedroom, dressed in his brogans and overalls, a sweat rag in his back pocket.

The corpse bird’s call roused him from the dream. Boyd put on pants and shoes and a sweatshirt. He took a flashlight from the kitchen drawer and went into the basement to get the chain saw. The machine was almost forty years old, a relic, heavy and cumbersome, its teeth dulled by decades of use. But it still ran well enough to keep them in firewood.

Boyd filled the gas tank and checked the spark plug and chain lube. The chain saw had belonged to his grandfather, had been used by the old man to cull trees from his farm for firewood. Boyd had often gone into the woods with him, helped load the logs and kindling into his grandfather’s battered pickup. After the old man’s health had not allowed him to use it anymore, he’d given it to Boyd. Two decades had passed before he found a use for it. A coworker owned some thirty acres near Cary and offered Boyd all the free wood he wanted as long as the trees were dead and Boyd cut them himself.

Outside, the air was sharp and clear. The stars seemed more defined, closer. A bright-orange harvest moon rose in the west. He clicked on the flashlight and let its beam trace the upper limbs until he saw it. Despite being bathed in light, the corpse bird did not stir. Rigid as a gravestone, Boyd thought. The unblinking yellow eyes stared toward the Colemans’ house, and Boyd knew these were the same eyes that had fixed themselves on his grandfather.

Boyd laid the flashlight on the grass, its beam aimed at the scarlet oak’s trunk. He pulled the cord and the machine trembled to life. Its vibration shook his whole upper body. Boyd stepped close to the tree, extending his arms, the machine’s weight tensing his biceps and forearms.

The scrub trees on his co-worker’s land had come down quickly and easily. But he’d never cut a tree the size of the scarlet oak. A few bark shards flew out as the blade hit the tree, then the blade skittered down the trunk until Boyd pulled it away and tried again.

It took eight attempts before he made the beginnings of a wedge in the tree. He was breathing hard, the weight of the saw straining his arms, back, and even his legs as he steadied not only himself but the machine. He angled the blade as best he could to widen the wedge. By the time he finished the first side, sawdust and sweat stung his eyes. His heart banged against his ribs as if caged.

Boyd thought about resting a minute but when he looked back at his house and the Colemans’, he saw lights on. He carried the saw to the other side of the trunk. Three times the blade hit the bark before finally making a cut. Boyd glanced behind him again and saw Jim Coleman coming across the yard, his mouth open and arms gesturing.

Boyd eased the throttle and let the chain saw idle.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Jim shouted.

“What’s got to be done,” Boyd said.

“I’ve got a sick daughter.”

“I know that,” Boyd said.

Jim Coleman reached a hand out as though to wrest the chain saw from Boyd’s hand. Boyd shoved the throttle and waved the blade between him and Jim Coleman.

“I’m calling the police,” Jim Coleman shouted.

Laura was outside now as well. She and Jim Coleman spoke to one another a few moments before Jim went into his house. When Laura approached Boyd screamed at her to stay away. Boyd made a final thrust deep into the tree’s heart. He dropped the saw and stepped back. The oak wavered a moment, then came crashing down. As it fell, something beaked and winged passed near Boyd’s face. He picked up the flashlight and shone it on the bird as it flew away. The corpse bird crossed over the vacant lot and disappeared into the darkness it had been summoned from. Boyd sat down on the scarlet oak’s stump, clicked off the flashlight.

His wife and neighbor stood beside each other in the Colemans’ backyard. They spoke softly, as though Boyd were a wild animal they didn’t want to reveal their presence to.

Soon blue lights splashed against the sides of the two houses. Other neighbors joined Jim Coleman and Laura in the backyard. The policeman talked to Laura a few moments. She nodded once and turned in Boyd’s direction, her face wet with tears. The policeman spoke into a walky-talky and then started walking toward Boyd, handcuffs clinking in the policeman’s hands. Boyd stood up and held his arms out before him, both palms upturned, like a man who’s just set something free.

I
never cared for Wesley Davidson when he was alive and seeing him beside me laid out dead didn’t much change that. Knowing a man for years and feeling hardly anything in his passing might make you think poorly of me, but the hard truth of it is had you known Wesley you’d probably feel the same. You might do what I done—shovel dirt on him with not so much as a mumble of a prayer. Bury him under a tombstone with another man’s name on it, another man’s birth and dying day chipped in the marble, me and an old man all of the living ever to know that was where Wesley Davidson laid in the ground.

“I’ve a notion you’re needing some extra money,” Wesley says two weeks earlier at work, which isn’t a big secret since the whole road crew’s in the DOT parking lot that afternoon when the bank man comes by to chat about my overdrawn account, saying he’s sorry my momma’s in the hospital with no insurance but if I don’t get him some money soon he’ll be taking my truck. Soon as the bank man leaves Wesley saunters up to me.

I act like I haven’t heard him, because like I said I never cared much for Wesley. He’s a big talker but little else, always shucking his work off on the rest of us. A stout man, six foot tall and three hundred easy, a big old sow belly that sways side to side when he takes a notion to work. But that’s a sight you seldom see, because he mainly leans on a shovel or lays in the shade asleep. His uncle’s the road crew boss, and he lets Wesley do about what he wants, including come in late, the rest of us all clocked in and ready to pull out while Wesley’s Ford Ranger is pulling in, a big rebel flag decal covering the back window. Wesley’s always been big into that Confederate stuff, wearing a CSA belt buckle, rebel flag tattoo on his arm. He wears a gray CSA cap too, wears it on the job. There’s no black guys on our crew, only a handful in the whole county, but you’re still not supposed to wear that kind of thing. But with his uncle running the show Wesley gets away with it.

“You want to make some easy money or not?” he says to me later at our lunch break.

He grunts and sits down in the shade beside me while I get my sandwich and apple from my lunch box. Wesley’s got three Hardee’s sausage biscuits in a bag and scarfs them down in about thirty seconds, then lights a cigarette. I don’t smoke myself and don’t cotton much to the smelling of it when I’m eating. I could tell him so, could tell him I like eating my lunch alone if he’d not noticed, but getting on Wesley’s bad side would just get me on my boss’s bad side as well. It’s more than just that, though. I’m willing to listen to anyone who could help me get some money.

“What you got in mind?” I say.

He points to his CSA belt buckle.

“You know what one of them’s worth, a real one?”

“No,” I say, though I figure maybe fifty or a hundred dollars.

Wesley pulls out two wadded-up catalog pages from his back pocket.

“Look here,” he says and points at a picture of a belt buckle and the number below it. “Eighteen hundred dollars,” he says and moves his finger down the paper. “Twenty-four hundred. Twelve hundred. Four thousand.” He holds his finger there for a few seconds. “Four thousand,” saying it again. He shoves the other page in my face. It’s filled with buttons that fetch two hundred to a thousand dollars apiece.

“I’d of not thought they’d bring that much,” I say.

“I’ll not even tell you what a sword brings. You’d piss your pants if I did.”

“So what’s that have to do with me getting some money?”

“Cause I know where we can find such things as this,” Wesley says, shaking the paper at me. “Find them where they ain’t been all rusted up so’s they’ll be all the more pricey. You help and you get twenty-five percent.”