Stories: All-New Tales

“Yeah. I seen rain aplenty, and one comes up like this, it’s traveling through. That cloud will cry its eyes out and move on, promise you. It ain’t even got no lightnin’ with it.”

As if in response to Deel’s words it began to rain. No lightning and no thunder, but the wind picked up and the rain was thick and cold.

“I know a good place ahead,” Tom said. “We can get under a tree there, and there’s a log to sit on. I even killed a couple possums there.”

They found the log under the tree, sat down and waited. The tree was an oak and it was old and big and had broad limbs and thick leaves that spread out like a canvas. The leaves kept Deel and Tom almost dry.

“That dog’s done gone off deep in the woods,” Deel said, and laid the shotgun against the log and put his hands on his knees.

“He gets a possum, you’ll hear him. He sounds like a trumpet.”

Tom shifted the .22 across his lap and looked at Deel, who was lost in thought. “Sometimes,” Deel said, “when we was over there, it would rain, and we’d be in trenches, waiting for somethin’ to happen, and the trenches would flood with water, and there was big ole rats that would swim in it, and we was so hungry from time to time, we killed them and ate them.”

“Rats?”

“They’re same as squirrels. They don’t taste as good, though. But a squirrel ain’t nothin’ but a tree rat.”

“Yeah? You sure?”

“I am.”

Tom shifted on the log, and when he did Deel turned toward him. Tom still had the .22 lying across his lap, but when Deel looked, the barrel was raised in his direction. Deel started to say somethin’, like, “Hey, watch what you’re doin’,” but in that instant he knew what he should have known all along. Tom was going to kill him. He had always planned to kill him. From the day Mary Lou had met him in the field on horseback, they were anticipating the rattle of his dead bones. It’s why they had kept him from town. He was already thought dead, and if no one thought different, there was no crime to consider.

“I knew and I didn’t know,” Deel said.

“I got to, Deel. It ain’t nothin’ personal. I like you fine. You been good to me. But I got to do it. She’s worth me doin’ somethin’ like this…Ain’t no use reaching for that shotgun, I got you sighted; twenty-two ain’t much, but it’s enough.”

“Winston,” Deel said, “he ain’t my boy, is he?”

“No.”

“He’s got a birthmark on his face, and I remember now when you was younger, I seen that same birthmark. I forgot but now I remember. It’s under your hair, ain’t it?”

Tom didn’t say anything. He had scooted back on the log. This put him out from under the edge of the oak canopy, and the rain was washing over his hat and plastering his long hair to the sides of his face.

“You was with my wife back then, when you was eighteen, and I didn’t even suspect it,” Deel said, and smiled as if he thought there was humor in it. “I figured you for a big kid and nothin’ more.”

“You’re too old for her,” Tom said, sighting down the rifle. “And you didn’t never give her no real attention. I been with her mostly since you left. I just happened to be gone when you come home. Hell, Deel, I got clothes in the trunk there, and you didn’t even see ’em. You might know the weather, but you damn sure don’t know women, and you don’t know men.”

“I don’t want to know them, so sometimes I don’t know what I know. And men and women, they ain’t all that different…You ever killed a man, Tom?”

“You’ll be my first.”

Deel looked at Tom, who was looking at him along the length of the .22.

“It ain’t no easy thing to live with, even if you don’t know the man,” Deel said. “Me, I killed plenty. They come to see me when I close my eyes. Them I actually seen die, and them I imagined died.”

“Don’t give me no booger stories. I don’t reckon you’re gonna come see me when you’re dead. I don’t reckon that at all.”

It had grown dark because of the rain, and Tom’s shape was just a shape. Deel couldn’t see his features.

“Tom—”

The .22 barked. The bullet struck Deel in the head. He tumbled over the log and fell where there was rain in his face. He thought just before he dropped down into darkness: It’s so cool and clean.

DEEL LOOKED OVER THE edge of the trench where there was a slab of metal with a slot to look through. All he could see was darkness except when the lightning ripped a strip in the sky and the countryside lit up. Thunder banged so loudly he couldn’t tell the difference between it and cannon fire, which was also banging away, dropping great explosions near the breast works and into the zigzagging trench, throwing men left and right like dolls.