The Outlaw Album: Stories

            In his sick final years Grandpa Humphries sold the pasture, the cornfields, the wooded hillocks and ridges, sold every acre but the two that made a lawn for the house. He’d feared he might live closer to forever than predicted and need those dollars to find rest in his mind. Harky kneels to our old ground and rubs his hands through the sodden leaves, pushing them aside, making one tiny clearing after another, looking for nubs, withered blades of green. His breath puffs signals that don’t last. Dead grasses fly to his clothes and cling. Dirt buries beneath his fingernails. He’s in high spirits for a man who knows that his parole will be revoked in about an hour, maybe two. There’s a pint bottle in his jacket and he stands up for a ruminative chug, but it is empty except for a few drops that are slow reaching his lips. He looks around the ground, studies trees he might know from years before, but doesn’t spot any old acquaintances, and moves on farther behind the hill. He just can’t find Granny-what’s-her-name’s flowers during this cold season.

            The path is steep and vague in spots, barely there, with a few crashed trees to be crawled across or jumped. Running these woods Harky is feeling redeemed in his bones, raised in his heart, a much better son now than he was before dawn. We’d often hunted this land together when down from the city during holidays, boys afield in joyous pursuit of the small and wild, sharing our single-shot Sears twenty-two, avoiding the tensions in the house for hours at a stretch. I’d pop squirrels from limbs, since they have more taste, but Harky favored rabbits because they were easier to skin. When snow had fallen over the meadows, he’d delight in tracking bunnies at dawn, stealthily following paw prints as they made circles easy to follow, then track the same paw prints around again, and again, never caring that if he just waited where he started the rabbits would circle back within range and offer themselves to his aim: “But tracking is the fun part!” The air on the ridge is cold and smacks of fire, and when I make the turn at the crest, the pinnacle suddenly revealed, Harky is sitting calmly on a large slab rock watching the flames in the valley. That fog of hair drapes past where his ass meets the slab and dangles. The bat stood upright between his legs, black end down.

            He said, “Think he’ll be happy now?”

            “You didn’t get far.”

            “I knew they’d send you—bring any whisky?”

            The seal hadn’t been cracked on the bottle I handed to him. He busted the whisky open and swallowed a big peaty breakfast, released a deep groan of appreciation, and dropped the cap into his pocket. I sat on the slab beside him. The mess of smoke below had grown. Deputies were standing in the road, and the volunteer fire department was arriving in pickups, little cars, dusty vans, and the one official fire truck they kept ready at Bing Plimmer’s gas station.

            “Is that house fully involved?”

            Two men in waders dragged a hose toward the river, hunching away from the jumping heat. The deputies in the street seemed excited and were gathering around our mother, but she’s an old hand at this and stands still, with her arms folded, and listens without argument. Harky’s parole would be violated any minute now.

            “I think that’s what they call it.”

            “Then it might still burn down flat.”

            “The man’ll only build it back again with insurance money. Maybe bigger.”

            “But not in time.”

            “He might live longer than you think.”

            “No. He’ll die seein’ the river where it’s supposed to be again.”

            Those distant faces so tiny in the valley turned together and stared roughly in our direction. Harky laughed at them, pointed with his fist, and thumped the ball bat to ground. The fire seemed to be winning. Gordon Mather Adams looked to be weeping. Mother had been angry since the foundation was poured, the first nail driven, and clapped her hands with gusto as the hot ruin spread. A sheriff’s car began to roll down the sloped road alongside the field. I swatted my brother on the knee and stood.

            “Let’s get deeper into the woods,” I said. “Make it harder for them.”

            “You want to run with me?”

            He passed the bottle, and I said, “You’ll be gone a long time this time, Harky.”

            “Ahh, I have friends in the slams, baby brother, so don’t worry.” He raised from the slab and shuffled his feet, then sat again and pulled the boot and sock from his wet foot. The skin looked red. He wrung the sock until droplets fell, then pulled it on damp and laced up. He stood, happy with himself and smiling at the smoke in the sky, the voices all excited in the distance. “I could use a new little TV. With better color. And headphones.”

            Two walls were coming down. They folded inward and smashed across smoldering furniture and seared appliances, sparks bursting and riding the heat. The flames were renewed by the falling and frolicked. One more wall to fall and father could die upstairs with the river back in his eyes.

            I gave Harky the bottle, wiped my lips dry. “Today’s got to be worth a party.”