The Outlaw Album: Stories

            “You got trouble?”

            “Not for long.”

            I could hear inside his mind better now, too, since my return, the roundelay of sounds amok in the head—swift ripping sounds, human whimpers behind the door, that distant banjo striking notes curved so sharp only one ear can hear them and the other gets suspicious. I hoped not to ever again submit to the demands of such sounds, but I don’t make that kind of promise to myself anymore.

            Sleepy says, “You know any Wallaces?”

            “From where?”

            “From over toward West Table, on the Dorta road. Those ones.”

            “In school there were some, from by Bawbee, that dairy.”

            “These ain’t related to those.”

            “Their cheese hardly melts.”

            “That’s not the ones I mean.”

            “I don’t, then.”

            “Good. That’ll make it easy on you if they act up silly and start a fight.”

            Staff at the gate told me my life is all day-by-day from here on out.

            At a certain spot he backed the truck a few feet onto a gravel road running to the head of a thin trail that led into the public forest, around Sulphur Ridge, then dropped to the Twin Forks River. On private land across the blacktop and down in a swale there was a nice red barn, well-kept and big, beside a huge pen of hogs dusting their skin in the sunshine. Up the slope beyond sat a white house of beaming windows, with fancy railings edging the porch, gray double doors to the root cellar slanted against the near wall, a swing chair on hair ropes hanging from a stooped tree in the yard. Past the house there stretched a long field of bright, gangly corn, then there was a scant line of trees, and behind them another field of a different crop that hadn’t done much sprouting yet.

            Sleepy said, “Ol’ boy’s got him some fat acres, don’t he?”

            “Good dirt.”

            “That means plenty.”

            Sleepy slouched in his seat and watched the house across the road, smoking cigarettes and punching the radio dial all over the place, seeking tunes he liked but finally giving up. In the quiet you could hear car tires sing low notes on the hard road while nearby birds tried to thwart the song with quick little trills. A burly beer truck passed, grunting slow toward Mountain View, the side painted with a tall picture of beer in a glass, beaded and beckoning, and Sleepy chuckled, then said, “Whatta you think?”

            “I must abstain from alcohol and other stimulants.”

            “They haul ’em warm, anyhow.”

            We sat there until the sun was announcing the lunch hour in the sky, and from behind us there came a sound on the gravel, a sweet crunching, two boys on bicycles, both in blue jeans and T-shirts of several colors wrung together, sweating brightly. Wide hats hid their hair, big shades hid their eyes. They rolled to the pavement, looked up and down the blacktop like they were waiting on someone coming to get them, then turned their bikes about and pedaled back to the trailhead. Their feet were clamped to the pedals, and the bikes were the kind meant for mountainsides and rock creek beds. Both boys nodded at the truck, and one wore a nice necklace featuring a circled silver thing that sent the sun rays back at me spinning.

            Sleepy said, “Oh, my—look at them wheels. That kind costs plenty. ”

            “Is that one’s hair yellow?”

            “Them boys look like they’d be easy—but there’s the man now, going up to the house for his eats.”

            “Those hats hid the colors.”

            “I won’t show my gun ’til they show theirs.”

            The lane in is narrow, with separated wheel ruts coated by white chat and a taller mohawk of grass between. Every passing tire spreads the chat a bit more and deepens the ruts likewise. The farmer steps onto the porch as Sleepy drives near. Through the screen door I can see a woman of wife age, and a grown son in shadow behind the screen. Sleepy and the farmer lock eyes a minute with the engine running, then Sleepy turns the key. He says, “Stand in the yard, there, and look decent unless I call you over.”

            “I have been instructed and will comply.”

            I take my stand by the tailgate and wait. Chickens range about the yard, flapping and pecking, murmuring to each other, the kind with red leggings and sharp clucks. Sleepy and the farmer meet on the porch, and the wife steps out while the son lingers on the other side of the door to be nearer the shotgun rack, I imagine. That swing chair on hair ropes is just for show, it seems, and couldn’t hold much weight, the hair being loose and rotted, ready to snap. The wife is a pretty lady but doesn’t look too good just now—pale, hands at her sides, like she’s expecting to see her world flipped wrong way up and dropped on its head at any instant now. Her lipstick is perfect even on lips shaking that way. The farmer is trying to speak back, but pretty soon he stops and Sleepy leans close to him and keeps talking. Young corn smell is coming strong across the yard, with the smell of turned dirt, and chickens. That son opens the door and stands in the way of it closing.

            He’s the shiny boy my sleep sent to me. Yellow hair is quite clearly boiling bubbles on his head.