Kings Of The Earth Part 3

"She did a fine job."

"Just say that."

"I will."

Creed pressed the starter once and nothing happened and he pressed it again and nothing happened and then on the third try it kicked in.

Preston.

IF THEY'D HAD any common sense they'd have waited awhile to close off that room, but common sense was never their strong suit. I was up at the graveside for the service and I stayed to help put her in the ground. It was just the three boys and Donna and DeAlton and Margaret and me, along with a cousin of DeAlton's from over in Valley Mills. The eight of us and the reverend. He was a nice enough young fellow although I don't guess he had a lot of funeral work under his belt yet, and a good deal of what he had to say sounded like he'd gotten it out of a textbook. Like he was just filling in the blanks. Then again he didn't have much to work with. any common sense they'd have waited awhile to close off that room, but common sense was never their strong suit. I was up at the graveside for the service and I stayed to help put her in the ground. It was just the three boys and Donna and DeAlton and Margaret and me, along with a cousin of DeAlton's from over in Valley Mills. The eight of us and the reverend. He was a nice enough young fellow although I don't guess he had a lot of funeral work under his belt yet, and a good deal of what he had to say sounded like he'd gotten it out of a textbook. Like he was just filling in the blanks. Then again he didn't have much to work with.

Audie was quiet the whole time. He stood alongside his sister and she held his hand. I kept my eye on him and I made up my mind that he wasn't certain as to who was inside the box. I think he had a picture of his mother in his mind and it didn't include her lying underneath a coffin lid. After the reverend said his piece he held his Bible to his chest and started in on "Blest Be the Tie That Binds" and we joined in, Donna and Margaret and me. The boys tried to help but kept coming in late. There isn't a strong voice among them anyway. DeAlton just looked at the ground. I don't know about his cousin. I didn't look his way.

I'd helped Vernon and Creed lay out ropes under the box and we used them to lift it up a little bit and edge it over and let it on down. One of the ropes got snagged under the box and gave us a little trouble and I'd have just left it down there if it'd been up to me, but those boys were always great believers in waste not want not. Audie went down for it and came up grinning like a boy who'd caught a snake. He looked young.

We had a little reception on the screen porch out back. You could about see the grave from there for one thing. And anyhow you didn't necessarily want to spend much time in a closed room with those boys no matter what the occasion was. Margaret set out baloney sandwiches cut up small and macaroni salad and baked beans and a white cake. She put that last under a little screen tent she had that folded up like a parasol when you didn't need it, even though the porch already had screens. She set out some lemonade too. I'd told her earlier in the day that I was afraid the cake might make things a little too festive but the boys didn't seem to get that impression. They went at it like a pack of wolves. DeAlton's cousin ate a little piece of a sandwich and headed on home but the reverend stayed. He didn't have a wedding ring on his hand so he was probably figuring this would do him for supper. That's what Margaret said later. She guessed he lived from one potluck dinner to another, and this one was as good as the next. He didn't push the church on us any.

After a while we wrapped up the leavings in tinfoil and the boys took them home. If it'd been anybody else I guess we'd just let them take the plates and bring them back when they were done. Margaret said they ought to get at the baloney and the macaroni salad and the baked beans right off because they wouldn't keep in this heat. The cake would last but there wasn't much of it. They thanked her kindly and went off satisfied. Say what you want, those boys were brought up to be gracious. You can't take that away from them.

DeAlton went back to work and Donna went home and the reverend left too. It seemed to me there was a good deal more awkwardness over all those good-byes than there had been up at the grave, I guess because the parties involved were all still among the living. Plus up there the reverend was in charge of things and he knew exactly how it was supposed to be done, step by step, even if he did get it out of a book. Afterward it's every man for himself.

They went down to the house and I sat with Margaret on the porch. The trash needed emptying but I didn't get at it right away. We hadn't done all that much, but we were about worn out. A funeral will do that to you no matter how old you are and we weren't old then. Not yet. We sat side by side and watched them go down the hill and across the little bit of pasture toward the house. Vernon gave his tinfoil to Creed and went around back where the old school bus was that they kept full of turkeys, and Creed and Audie went into the barn. I didn't know if they would keep going into the house but I figured they wouldn't because they'd have work to do in the barn the same as always.

It wasn't until I heard Audie carrying on that I knew they'd kept going into the house. Why Creed couldn't have waited to get the hasp mounted on her bedroom door I can't say. There's such a thing as a decent interval. Why he had to have Audie work on it I don't know either.

Creed.

HE'S A GOOD WORKER but he wouldn't do that job. Preston come and give him some white cake and that calmed him down and then I done it myself. but he wouldn't do that job. Preston come and give him some white cake and that calmed him down and then I done it myself.

1990.

Del.

I HATED LIKE ANYTHING HATED LIKE ANYTHING to see them go put up that yellow tape. I knew it had to be done, but I hated to see it happen and I hated that I couldn't do anything to prevent it. You reach a point, though, beyond which it's all procedure. Some men take comfort in that but I don't. Maybe I will one day, but I don't now. to see them go put up that yellow tape. I knew it had to be done, but I hated to see it happen and I hated that I couldn't do anything to prevent it. You reach a point, though, beyond which it's all procedure. Some men take comfort in that but I don't. Maybe I will one day, but I don't now.

What were they going to find? Those three men lived there cheek by jowl all their lives and the place hadn't been cleaned in forever. There were fingerprints on that headboard older than I am. If you looked hard enough you'd find fingerprints of dead people. And I don't mean Vernon either. I mean the old couple, what were their names, Lester and Ruth. The parents.

The only evidence, if you could call it that, was on the body. I never noticed it myself, but I'm no doctor. The sister didn't notice it either even though I had her look. At least she didn't say. The medical examiner did his job, though, and what I took for sunburn turned out in his opinion to be sunburn and something else on top of that or rather underneath it. Burst blood vessels. Petechiae Petechiae is the word he used. The blood vessels break from pressure, which can indicate asphyxiation. Strangling. You'd see them on the cheeks and on the neck and in the eyeb.a.l.l.s, and Vernon had them in all three places. I don't know. They can burst from coughing too, as I understand it. And maybe a million other things. It's plain that Vernon wasn't a well man to begin with. So I don't know. I think you'd have to have more than that to go on. But the medical examiner saw what he saw and they had to go out there and put up that yellow tape, regardless of what I thought. It was procedure. Plain and simple. is the word he used. The blood vessels break from pressure, which can indicate asphyxiation. Strangling. You'd see them on the cheeks and on the neck and in the eyeb.a.l.l.s, and Vernon had them in all three places. I don't know. They can burst from coughing too, as I understand it. And maybe a million other things. It's plain that Vernon wasn't a well man to begin with. So I don't know. I think you'd have to have more than that to go on. But the medical examiner saw what he saw and they had to go out there and put up that yellow tape, regardless of what I thought. It was procedure. Plain and simple.

Donna.

VERNON ONCE DREAMED his own death. He dreamed it one night in the bed with his brothers, and all the next day it would give him no peace. It hung in his mind like the lace curtain in the front window in the summertime, always in motion, never revealing itself entirely, flickering around the edges of his mind. It showed itself over and over, different parts of it in different orders, troubling stark snippets of black menace that would not let go. He saw himself dead in the bed and he saw one of his own brothers arrested and charged. He could not be sure which. It varied. He saw himself alive at bedtime in the comfort of his usual valley and he saw himself not waking up. He never saw himself dying but he saw himself dead. Dead with a brother on either side of him, the younger to one side and the youngest to the other, one of them to blame in the eyes of the law. his own death. He dreamed it one night in the bed with his brothers, and all the next day it would give him no peace. It hung in his mind like the lace curtain in the front window in the summertime, always in motion, never revealing itself entirely, flickering around the edges of his mind. It showed itself over and over, different parts of it in different orders, troubling stark snippets of black menace that would not let go. He saw himself dead in the bed and he saw one of his own brothers arrested and charged. He could not be sure which. It varied. He saw himself alive at bedtime in the comfort of his usual valley and he saw himself not waking up. He never saw himself dying but he saw himself dead. Dead with a brother on either side of him, the younger to one side and the youngest to the other, one of them to blame in the eyes of the law.

Because he could not shake the dream, he shared it. He sat on the overstuffed chair that was his by right of seniority and he gathered his brothers onto the porch and he told them. One said, "It weren't me." So did the other. The first said it was the cancer. Had Vernon known the Judas if a Judas there was, it would have been easier but no more satisfactory.

"One way or the other I'm going soon," he said with an air of resignation and boding, and they offered no argument. He sat plucking bits of cotton batting from the chair and rolling it into pellets between his fingers. "Maybe I'll take a gun and shoot myself. Get it over with. Save you boys the trouble."

His youngest brother, Creed, said he would help by hiding the gun if he wanted. He would do whatever was required.

"Don't worry about that," said Vernon. "There won't be no need to hide it. As long as I go during the daytime, you'll be all right."

It is in the nature of visions to be communicated. Vernon told Preston Hatch, who told Donna because she had a right to know. She told DeAlton and a few people on her shift at the hospital, and before long it was everywhere. Those brothers of hers. Who knew where they got their ideas. Certain individuals decided maybe they got them from one another, and that Vernon was doomed.

If the yellow tape was meant to prohibit contamination, it was put up years too late. Its only functions now were those of superst.i.tion and formality. The two troopers from Ca.s.sius who strung it up and the forensics technician from Syracuse who gave them a hand with it began their day with a cold professional air, but when the work was done they would go home to their families gla.s.sy-eyed and incredulous. Not one would describe what he had seen.

The bedsheets were yellow and brown, perhaps more so in the middle where Vernon slept but not by much. They smelled like ammonia and sulfur and cats, and when the men tried removing them they stuck to the mattress and pulled loose fiber by fiber, making a thin high tearing sound of disintegration. They separated and billowed into clouds that lifted slowly and hung in the air. The men coughed and were glad for their masks, sifting tatters of linen through their fingers and thinking about mummies. In the end they took the whole mattress.

The floorboards by the broken refrigerator, along the wall beyond which stood the jakes, were damp and rotted down to a soft mulch. A yellow haze of mold grew on it. The side of the refrigerator was mossy. The man from Syracuse said his Boy Scout training must be failing him because he'd been given to understand that moss grew on the north sides of trees and this was the east. One of the troopers suggested that maybe the conventional wisdom didn't apply to iceboxes. A coffee tin stood alongside the bed for a spittoon. Good to the last drop Good to the last drop, said one of the troopers as he lifted it up. Another tin, the very mate to it but older, lay upset beneath the bed with its contents spilled like black varnish. Insects had died in the spreading tongue of it and they lay there still. On the far bedpost sat a cracked gla.s.s containing a quarter-inch of something that looked like turpentine and smelled the same. They dusted it and they took a sample of its contents in a vial. A plastic ashtray from the Olcott Tavern in Ca.s.sius sat on the table alongside a stack of ancient seed catalogs and girlie magazines. There were ashes in it and spent kitchen matches and a cigarette b.u.t.t that had no filter and was twisted up tight around itself and skewered on a piece of copper wire. They took that too.

Preston.

THE TROOPERS WENT THROUGH that place like thieves. There wasn't any justice in it. Those Proctor boys don't own much and half of what they own those fellows took. They took the mattress, for crying out loud. I don't know where they're supposed to sleep but I suppose it doesn't matter since they're not supposed to go in the house. I guess the barn. that place like thieves. There wasn't any justice in it. Those Proctor boys don't own much and half of what they own those fellows took. They took the mattress, for crying out loud. I don't know where they're supposed to sleep but I suppose it doesn't matter since they're not supposed to go in the house. I guess the barn.

Who knows when they'll come take the tape down. I saw Audie come in from the field and stick his head inside the barn but Creed wasn't there so he walked right on around to the front porch and lifted the tape and went on in. He doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know anything about tape, not that kind or any other kind. I suppose maybe he's seen them use it on Rockford Rockford or somewhere but that doesn't mean he understands it. To him that tape's just a decoration. He probably thinks it's the Fourth of July. or somewhere but that doesn't mean he understands it. To him that tape's just a decoration. He probably thinks it's the Fourth of July.

Tom didn't have but two uncles left and in spite of that I hadn't seen him around. He was never much for coming by their place when he was growing up. I think I understood that. They were alien to him. Just one generation away and they were like a tribe of cannibals to that boy, even though his own mother had come up among them. I'd blame it on DeAlton but I don't think that's entirely fair either. DeAlton always knew his way around a farmyard, even though you might not know it to look at him. First on that onion farm of his father's and then selling for Dobson. He'd go from one place to the next like the Fuller Brush man, but with a trunkful of milking equipment instead of brushes. He kept coveralls in the trunk and he'd pull them on right over his suit and tie, and a pair of old Red Wing boots that he'd probably worn for digging onions back before he got his own ideas. A man makes use of what he owns and where he's been, and DeAlton was no different that way. He never could sell a thing to those Proctor boys, though. Not that they had two nickels to rub together. They did everything just the way Lester did before them and they never made any complaint. I don't think they even knew the world had changed.

The last few years have been different, at least in the summertime. I mean with regards to Tom coming around and all. Ever since he's been grown up and working he's been out to the farm a couple three times a week. Sometimes more. Sometimes to visit and sometimes not. It's none of my business what he's up to. I know that. It was none of my business when Creed built that whiskey still after he came home from Korea either, not until he needed help sweating a little copper pipe and I had a blowtorch I knew how to use. My father'd taught me. I'd never even touched that particular blowtorch before then. It was old stock that we'd brought home from the lumberyard when something new came in and n.o.body wanted the old. It was still sealed up in the box until Creed decided he'd start making whiskey or whatever you'd call it. He needed some other help too and I gave it to him. More than he asked for. The crawl s.p.a.ce is still full of that old junk. I ought to have a yard sale one of these days.

Del.

THEY WRAPPED THAT MATTRESS up in plastic and left it in the hall outside the lab, but you still couldn't stand to go anywhere near it. People complained. I'm told that the guard outside the morgue, which is down the hallway a little bit and around the corner, just plain refused to sit at his desk as long as it was out there. He propped open the door and dragged that old metal desk right into the morgue proper and shut the door behind him. He snaked the phone line in and did his business there. He said he was more comfortable a.s.sociating with the newly deceased than with that mattress, and I don't blame him. up in plastic and left it in the hall outside the lab, but you still couldn't stand to go anywhere near it. People complained. I'm told that the guard outside the morgue, which is down the hallway a little bit and around the corner, just plain refused to sit at his desk as long as it was out there. He propped open the door and dragged that old metal desk right into the morgue proper and shut the door behind him. He snaked the phone line in and did his business there. He said he was more comfortable a.s.sociating with the newly deceased than with that mattress, and I don't blame him.

I'd guess he got an eyeful when the medical examiner worked on Vernon, but I couldn't say with any certainty. I've seen the preliminary report but I didn't notice any mention of a witness.

The technicians finally caved in and took samples and bagged them up and hauled the mattress back outside. Somebody got the duty of returning it to the farm. I can't say who. The crime scene is still sealed, so they probably just stuck it in the barn. Crime scene. I still don't know about that. I've read the report but I still don't know. I don't know that you ever do.

Audie.

WHEN IT'S HOT that old red rooster starts itching. He woke me up in the night and rolled me right on over. I saw we were in the barn by the light through the walls and I didn't mind too much. It was different. Creed wouldn't let us sleep in the house on account of the tape. He said the tape was supposed to keep us out but I said it couldn't keep me out and I showed him but he pulled me back so I guess it worked. When we came down from the pasture at milking time we found the mattress leaning on a fence post over by Preston's. There was a cat sniffing around it because she'd never seen a mattress out there against the fence post before and neither had I. I thought maybe the other things they took might end up out there just like it. The ashtray they took and the blanket and the gla.s.s and Vernon's coat and so forth. Just lying around in the gra.s.s for us to find. I didn't tell Creed. We put the mattress in the barn and slept on it there and when the sun came up I looked over by Preston's but there wasn't anything else. That trooper came to visit later and he was loaded up with questions but I didn't have any time for him as long as he wouldn't let me sleep in my own house. that old red rooster starts itching. He woke me up in the night and rolled me right on over. I saw we were in the barn by the light through the walls and I didn't mind too much. It was different. Creed wouldn't let us sleep in the house on account of the tape. He said the tape was supposed to keep us out but I said it couldn't keep me out and I showed him but he pulled me back so I guess it worked. When we came down from the pasture at milking time we found the mattress leaning on a fence post over by Preston's. There was a cat sniffing around it because she'd never seen a mattress out there against the fence post before and neither had I. I thought maybe the other things they took might end up out there just like it. The ashtray they took and the blanket and the gla.s.s and Vernon's coat and so forth. Just lying around in the gra.s.s for us to find. I didn't tell Creed. We put the mattress in the barn and slept on it there and when the sun came up I looked over by Preston's but there wasn't anything else. That trooper came to visit later and he was loaded up with questions but I didn't have any time for him as long as he wouldn't let me sleep in my own house.

1938.

Preston.

THIS HAPPENED WHEN Lester was still alive. He didn't go the same way his wife Ruth did, or like Vernon did either for that matter. Cancer couldn't get him. He was too hard. Then again maybe it could've and he just didn't live long enough, but either way he worked like a mule right up to the end. It took an awful lot to kill him. Lester was still alive. He didn't go the same way his wife Ruth did, or like Vernon did either for that matter. Cancer couldn't get him. He was too hard. Then again maybe it could've and he just didn't live long enough, but either way he worked like a mule right up to the end. It took an awful lot to kill him.

This was when he was still around, though. I was a senior in high school and those three boys looked awful young to me, but G.o.d bless them they did men's work. Vernon particularly, although I don't know why I say that. I guess because whenever Lester didn't have him running, his brothers did. He always had Creed to amuse and he always had Audie to occupy. You'd think a boy would take some pleasure in that but I'm not sure he did. I'm not sure he could.

Everybody knew you couldn't trust Audie with anything sharp, but Vernon had ideas of his own. He had a jackknife with a blade about four or five inches long. He always kept it sharp. How I heard it later was he took Audie and laid the back of his hand flat down on the lid of a milk can and he took that jackknife and opened up the blade and held the point of it to the palm of Audie's hand and pulled. Just pulled on it in a straight line as nice as you please, pressing down gently all the while, as if he was drawing a picture or something, until the blade sank in a little and started making its cut and the blood came. Audie watched it come for a second like it was a magic trick or like the red was coming out of the point of the jackknife instead of from him-like it was a fountain pen, even though he didn't know the first thing about fountain pens and he doesn't to this day-until Vernon picked up the tip and showed him what was what. Audie felt the sting and he saw the cut and he began howling right off. It seemed like he didn't realize he was hurt until then. I must have been in school at the time or else I'd have heard him holler and come running. I don't know if Lester heard him or if he was up in the fields somewhere, but the result was the same. The old man kept his distance like always. He'd have whipped Vernon if he'd found out.

Vernon knew what he was up to. If anybody else had stuck Audie that way, it would have been what they call the end of a beautiful friendship. Then again n.o.body else would have thought to do it. But anyhow no power on earth could diminish Audie's admiration for his big brother. Not even something that an ordinary person would take for cruelty. It wasn't normal, but you had to respect it. Vernon had Audie wipe off that cut on his pant leg or somewhere and he shushed him and he took him over to the woodpile. They picked out some sticks of wood and went back over to the porch and sat down. Vernon pulled out the knife again and Audie took one look at it and started to shake all over but Vernon calmed him down. He took the knife to the wood and cut. I guess he had a talent for that kind of thing although he never showed it but that once. He'd spied an old barn cat sitting on the fence and he pointed it out to Audie and then he whittled up the very likeness of that old tom faster than you could blink. I still have that carving, is how I know. It sits on my mantelpiece to this day. Now that Vernon's gone I don't guess he'll be doing any more of them. It's a collector's item.

He shut the knife and he set the little wooden cat on the porch rail, and they admired it the two of them. A minute went by and he picked up another piece of wood and gave it to Audie. He opened the knife and he tried to give that to him too but Audie turned away and started to shake so he had to quit for a little. They just sat and admired the wooden cat, with the knife lying there on the board floor between them. After a while he picked up the knife again and took the carving off the rail and made some little improvement to it. Maybe he cut in the slits for the whiskers. I don't know. Then when he was done he tried handing the knife over again and this time Audie took hold of it. He took hold of it like it was a live bird or something on that order but he took hold of it all the same. I don't think he's ever let it go since. The lathe came later and he's just as cautious with that.

Not that he's ever gotten much good at it for all the time he's put in. He never did have much of an eye, to tell you the truth, and now that he's three-quarters blind it's worse. But he keeps at it. He'll still do a cat sometimes or a sheep that you can make out but the rest could be anything. Some folks like it. There's a shop over in Clinton that keeps two or three of them right out on the counter and you can't tell what they are but they've got pretty good prices on them. Margaret dragged me over there and the gal running it had a sign up saying they were antiques, and I had to set her straight. I reminded her how honesty is the best policy. What she calls them these days is folk art.

Every now and then somebody'll come out here and watch those whirligigs spinning away in the yard like they're visiting some kind of an open-air museum. Sometimes they'll give Audie a little money if he'll part with one. They don't give him much, but he doesn't need much. He won't part with that dog one I don't guess, but he'd part with most of the others if you asked nice enough. I've seen cars here with plates from New Jersey, Ohio. I don't know where people find out about it but they do. The whole yardful of those things just creaking away, and it all started with that knife cut on the palm of his hand on the milk can lid. You could say it's just one more thing he owes his brother Vernon. That's how he'd put it, I think. Just one more thing he owes his dead brother.

Ruth PRESTON H HATCH COMES HOME with a girl. She isn't a pretty girl, but Preston isn't a handsome boy either. She is from a good family in town and she radiates the certainty that she is something special and that Preston is privileged to be courting her. She carries herself in a fastidious way and she holds her head erect and her nose elevated and she keeps her face composed into a supercilious mask, even during moments of repose, as if to offset the failed dull frustration of her ordinariness. Her name is Margaret Willbanks, and she is taller than Preston by a head, and by and by she will marry him. with a girl. She isn't a pretty girl, but Preston isn't a handsome boy either. She is from a good family in town and she radiates the certainty that she is something special and that Preston is privileged to be courting her. She carries herself in a fastidious way and she holds her head erect and her nose elevated and she keeps her face composed into a supercilious mask, even during moments of repose, as if to offset the failed dull frustration of her ordinariness. Her name is Margaret Willbanks, and she is taller than Preston by a head, and by and by she will marry him.

Her visits begin in the springtime. The days are not yet long but they are getting longer and the world is greening. She and Preston sit on the porch and he admires her and she ignores him utterly and smokes Chesterfield cigarettes, one after another, to ward off the warm pasture stink already rising on every hand. Preston has a little tenor banjo that he plays for her amus.e.m.e.nt, and the looks that pa.s.s across her face suggest that she does not know whether to be amused by it or appalled. Preston keeps his eyes on the fret board and does not notice either way. He plays pretty well, but he will give it up and lose the knack once they get engaged. "After she'd taken the bait," he will say, "I was able to quit fishing." And Margaret will roll her eyes.

His banjo music draws the boys from the farm next door and Margaret's presence draws them too. Vernon nearing the edge of manhood and Audie right behind him as usual, in both chronology and position. After they finish their ch.o.r.es they leave the barnyard and cross the narrow dirt lane to the Hatch property and stroll up the gravel driveway as nonchalant as a pair of boulevardiers. Six-year-old Creed overtakes them sometimes, his feet clapping up a flurry of dust. He knows where they are headed even if they like to pretend that they do not. Then the three of them slouch against the side of the elevated porch with their backs to Preston and Margaret and their hats tilted down over their eyes, sucking on stems of new gra.s.s, listening as the mysteries of music and romance unfold all at once.

"The Three Chevaliers," Preston calls them under his breath, having taken Margaret to see that debonair Frenchman in The Beloved Vagabond The Beloved Vagabond and desiring to continue harvesting the benefits. and desiring to continue harvesting the benefits.

The Three Chevaliers are always caked with cow manure and they smell worse up close than the fields do at a distance, so Margaret scowls in their direction no matter what Preston calls them. Sometimes she catches Vernon shooting her sly looks from beneath his cap, which gives her the w.i.l.l.i.e.s. He does not seem to be modestly appraising her as a boy from the town would, but evaluating her in a kind of raw and strictly material way instead. As if a.s.sessing her market value. For milk or meat or reproduction. There is an animal quality to the looks he gives her, and as she endures them she wonders if this kind of thing might underlie every single impulse in the civilized world. Even the innocent glances that she receives from boys in the town. She wonders why she keeps coming out here, and then she lights a Chesterfield and looks over at sweet, homely Preston and catches the near-swoon in his eyes and wonders no more.

The truth is that the boys don't know much about women. They have their mother and their little sister, Donna, and the teachers at school, but beyond these their world is a kind of male fortress. To them Margaret looks like royalty, as inaccessible as she is incomprehensible. Like their mother and their father she smokes cigarettes, but she smokes pristine store-bought Chesterfields instead of rolling her own and that only adds to her mystery. Vernon slips one of them from her pack one afternoon when she has gone inside to use the facilities. He slips it from the pack where it lies open on the railing and he slides it into the breast pocket of his overalls just as nice as you please. n.o.body sees, not even his brothers. Later he goes up into the woods and smokes it down to the filter but he does not think much of it. He does not think much of the kind his parents smoke either, but at least they've never made him feel that he is having to draw the smoke through a stopper. In the end he concludes that the best thing about Margaret is the power of her lungs.

The Three Chevaliers bring little Donna with them one afternoon. Whether they think she might enjoy the music or just mean her as a distraction is long past knowing. She is two years old and mobile. She is as filthy as her brothers, but for reasons of her own. As they leave the barnyard, Vernon tries wrangling her into his arms but she kicks loose and will submit only to holding Audie's hand as they cross the little dirt lane. She follows the sound of the banjo music like a scenting hound and climbs onto the porch and makes a try for Margaret's lap, but Margaret rebuffs her.

Vernon.

WE ALL DONE IT TOGETHER. I took the cigarette and Audie pulled a hair from the horse's tail and I sent Creed into the house for a darning needle. I seen a cigarette explode in the funny papers once but I don't know where you'd get a thing like that. Something would blow up a cigarette. That weren't the idea anyhow. I seen Margaret didn't like our smell and she didn't like our sister either so I thought maybe she ought to smell something worse. We took that cigarette and strung the needle with horsehair and run it right down through the middle of it like running it down a pipe. We run it through and back three or four times I think. I trimmed the loose ends of it with my knife. Audie was pretty good with the knife but I didn't want to take no chances that he'd cut himself or cut that cigarette or crush it down or bleed on it or something like that. Ruin it some way. Then where would we be. We'd have to start over.

Audie.

VERNON HAD BROWN FINGERS against the white. He said he had to be careful how he handled that cigarette but he had brown fingers against the white of it and some of the dirt rubbed off and I thought we were done for but it didn't turn out that way. She was watching Preston and listening to that banjo music of his and she didn't notice. She just took it and lit it right up. She didn't look. against the white. He said he had to be careful how he handled that cigarette but he had brown fingers against the white of it and some of the dirt rubbed off and I thought we were done for but it didn't turn out that way. She was watching Preston and listening to that banjo music of his and she didn't notice. She just took it and lit it right up. She didn't look.

Vernon.

I SLID THE CIGARETTE SLID THE CIGARETTE back in the pack just the same way I took it out. We stood against the porch and waited. I did anyway. I waited. Me and Creed. Audie turned to see what Margaret was up to but I give him a slap and he come back around. Then he seen the way I was just standing there against the porch like always and he copied me at it. He stood there with his back against the porch waiting. He was shaking some because he couldn't tell what was going to happen next. I asked Preston would he play that song my brother likes and he said your brother Audie and I said yes that brother my brother Audie and he played the song. "Turkey in the Straw" I think. It set Audie's feet moving and calmed him down some. About halfway through I heard her strike a match and that was that. Audie always did love "Turkey in the Straw." back in the pack just the same way I took it out. We stood against the porch and waited. I did anyway. I waited. Me and Creed. Audie turned to see what Margaret was up to but I give him a slap and he come back around. Then he seen the way I was just standing there against the porch like always and he copied me at it. He stood there with his back against the porch waiting. He was shaking some because he couldn't tell what was going to happen next. I asked Preston would he play that song my brother likes and he said your brother Audie and I said yes that brother my brother Audie and he played the song. "Turkey in the Straw" I think. It set Audie's feet moving and calmed him down some. About halfway through I heard her strike a match and that was that. Audie always did love "Turkey in the Straw."

Margaret.

THEY WERE JUST BOYS. We were all just children, really, although Preston and I surely didn't think so at the time. Why should we? A year later we'd be an old married couple. Another year after that, he'd be in France.

I don't think the Proctor boys liked my intruding into their world. I was an outsider. A foreigner. A girl girl, frankly. They weren't any more comfortable around girls then than they are around women now. So they punished me by putting that horsehair in my cigarette and letting me smoke it. That's the way I always understood it. Perhaps there was less to it than that. But everything's open to interpretation, isn't it?

Good heavens, it's a wonder I kept on smoking after that day. It's definitely a wonder I ever went back to Preston's parents' house. If he hadn't taken my side and run those boys off, I don't believe I would have. And then where would I be?

My understanding is that the boys got a good scolding from their mother, but that's as far as it went. I'll bet their father had a good laugh over the whole thing. I was sick to my stomach for two days, and I'll bet he had a good laugh at my expense.

1965.

Audie.

WE NEVER BUILT anything much but we sure could tear down. My brother Vernon with the sledgehammer and Creed with the crowbar and me collecting the nails that fell out. They were those old square ones, black iron. You can't get those old square nails anymore but here they came falling down and bouncing in the plaster dust and there I was collecting them up. That was my job. My brother Vernon gave it to me. The nails left little trails where they bounced. Some of them were still in the uprights or the lath or both and those I had to pull out with the claw hammer. It was broken but I made it work all right. My pockets got full and the one with the hole in it leaked nails down my pant leg and right on out. You can't get hold of those old square iron nails anymore and I liked the look of them. I could put them to use. anything much but we sure could tear down. My brother Vernon with the sledgehammer and Creed with the crowbar and me collecting the nails that fell out. They were those old square ones, black iron. You can't get those old square nails anymore but here they came falling down and bouncing in the plaster dust and there I was collecting them up. That was my job. My brother Vernon gave it to me. The nails left little trails where they bounced. Some of them were still in the uprights or the lath or both and those I had to pull out with the claw hammer. It was broken but I made it work all right. My pockets got full and the one with the hole in it leaked nails down my pant leg and right on out. You can't get hold of those old square iron nails anymore and I liked the look of them. I could put them to use.

Tom.

HE WAS A FASTIDIOUS BOY, happiest in the round of his own regular habits, and nothing about the Carversville farm interested him. Not the green fields that lay around it and not the hard mechanics of working it. The animals were the worst. The scratching of a hen on the board floor of the front room would drive him into the yard. The low, wet rooting of a hog made his gorge rise. From the chickens to the sheep to the weary old workhorse, every one of the animals seemed to him inscrutable, treacherous. He hated even the harmless dog, Skip, a mottled mongrel of uncertain heritage and vague origin. Boys may like dogs as a rule, but Tom had no time for Skip.

His father brought him, to demonstrate how far they'd come. To demonstrate it to himself, to the boy, and perhaps to his wife as well. Maybe even to the brothers, although they didn't seem to care much about anything other than the work that lay in front of them. DeAlton loved bringing Tom with his white tennis shoes and his neat dungarees and his spotless T-shirt out to the place where it all began. The place where his mother had come from.

"Do you know what grows best on a farm like this?" he asked Tom as the three of them turned off the main drag from Ca.s.sius and started up the dirt lane. "Opportunity!"

Tom sat and looked out the window, panicky and wide-eyed. The Hatch place next door looked ordinary enough, but he didn't trust it. It looked like a house that had been plucked from a regular street in town by a tornado or something and then dropped down way out here in the fields all queer and disorienting. It made him think of The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz, which in turn made him remember the flickering image of the Wicked Witch of the West cackling in the storm outside Dorothy's window. Both times he'd seen that movie, he was deeply relieved when things finally settled down and the color came on and Dorothy wasn't in Kansas anymore. He thought Kansas looked like Carversville.

"Yes, sir," said DeAlton. "A place like this grows opportunity like weeds. Opportunity to improve yourself, for one thing. Why, just look at your mother!"

She shifted the plate of cookies she had riding on her lap. "You know," she said to her husband, "I'd think a place like this might even present the opportunity to sell a milking machine, don't you? Provided a person made a little effort." She surely knew that this wasn't true, but it was a topic that never failed to deflate him a little.

DeAlton rolled up his window against the rising dust and Tom did the same. DeAlton hit the gas and the car flew over a couple of b.u.mps and he yanked the wheel hard and spun it into the yard. "We've come a long way," he said as he hit the brakes. "And I don't mean just up from town."

Vernon put a thin blanket on the horse and tied a rope around her neck. They didn't own a saddle and they never had. It would have taken an unusual sort of saddle to fit this particular beast, with her abrupt swayback and her weak shoulders and her bloated stomach that seemed to be getting worse. He guessed maybe she had cancer too or was getting it. There was still plenty of use left in her all the same. Say what you want about her conformation, she had Percheron blood somewhere and she would be a long time losing her strength.

The boy inquired about her name and the uncle told him that he could give her one if he wanted. They'd never seen the need. Tom put a little thought into it but decided he'd leave well enough alone. Instead he stood perfectly still in the corner of the barn, as if by not moving he could prolong this moment of disengagement. Make it last until it was time to go home. He watched milky light pour in through the cracks between the boards. He watched dust motes and chaff rise up and take to the air like spooks. It all got in his nose and made him sneeze. Vernon laughed-a sound like a horse-and he said the mare was ready if Tom still wanted that ride. He had never said he'd wanted it but he moved toward the horse anyhow, and as he did Audie materialized from around an edge of the track door without ever opening it wide enough for a cat to pa.s.s through. Vernon indicated Tom and gave Audie the rope and told him not to hang himself with it.

Tom approached the mare as if he were approaching a bomb. As if his uncle were holding a detonator instead of a length of rope. Audie put the rope in between his teeth and bent down and made a step from his hands, and thus he helped Tom climb onto the mare. Before they left the barn Audie reached into his pocket and drew out the better part of one of Donna's cookies, oatmeal raisin with a dusting of lint and silage and G.o.d knew what else. Smiling through his whiskers, he offered it to his nephew. "No, thanks," said Tom, thinking that what looked like a raisin might be almost anything.