The Outlaw Album: Stories

            It was coming up on Halloween when I first caught my baby’s eyes following me across the room. Then it got to where every time I spun around quick, his eyes were on me, and not on my face, neither. Uncle was yet alive inside that big old baby, and his eyes was wanting what babies don’t even know about. When he raised a hand to swat a fly, I peed down my legs and ran around inside the house bumping every wall. Come morning I shoved him to the paved road and around to the hill and down to the bridge. The air hung gray and cool and I could see fish in the water, still in the flow with their noses pointed upstream. I wheeled Uncle to the far edge of the bridge, where a drunk in a truck had torn away the railing, and pushed him to the edge. I dabbed the slobber rag to his mouth, then looked into his eyes and saw how babies do change so fast. I tossed the slobber rag into the river and it made a small shadow over the fish before the current whisked it past. I’d been making him well; now I needed to make him right.

            My baby ain’t meant for this world.

Twin Forks

            Morrow wondered if he might soon die because of a beautiful girl from his teens he’d never had the nerve to approach. This thought preoccupied him as he collected fees from campers at dusk and watched shadows on the hillsides for odd patterns, shifty movements, studied parked cars he wasn’t sure he recognized, or looked into new faces for any intimation of treachery. He walked about quickly but fought the urge to assume a crouch when crossing open spaces. He was most concerned about ambush when he collected coins from the campground laundry and had his back to the door, or helped beach a canoe that arrived as the gloaming settled. Sometimes he made himself a target at twilight on the riverbank while looking downstream toward Spawt Mill, where in a single summery moment she became fixed in his desires as the perfection of skin and laughter he would always yearn for, but on that day overwhelmed his senses, left him wordless and ashamed.

            The sheriff had said, “You probably should’ve shot him while you could do it legal and get it over with. He might be back for you, or you might not ever see him again, who knows with meth-heads. But you surely will want to be ready if ever he does come around for you, and that could be at any time from now on.” Morrow had two employees, and after five days the younger one, a man named Sky, quit, saying, “I got a bunch of kids, man—I can’t take the risk he’ll shoot me thinkin’ I’m you.”

            “I understand. Thanks for staying with me as long as you have.”

            December past, when Morrow was shown the property, the seller had been present on the grounds and having a meltdown. He wore a long, rough overcoat and walked to each campsite with a target pistol in hand, shouting lamentations as he fired farewell bullets at trees and picnic tables. He said, “I guess God don’t want me to have this place. I guess God’s got other plans for me. I guess…” The pop-pops of the pistol seemed small, muted by the forest and the river, but his words were loud and his confusion painful to hear. Morrow winced whenever the man spoke. The realtor, Nan Colvin, a young countrywoman with ruddled mud on her boots and a no-fuss hairstyle, said, “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be seeing this.” She took Morrow’s arm and walked him away from the store, onto the one-lane bridge abutting the property. They stood near the center, leaning on the heavy iron railing to admire the river, a river fed by springs and running clear and cold, fifty-six degrees year-round. The seller had wandered farther, past the canoe racks and beyond sight, but was still shooting, shouting, possibly weeping. “He’s such a good churchgoing man, you know, that he wouldn’t sell beer, not at all. Not a can, not a bottle. Nor cigarettes. It’s a real principled stand to take, I guess, somethin’ folks ought to admire, but beer is about forty percent of sales on the river. He’s broke now.”

            “Things happen for a reason.”

            “You think?”

            “I used to come here as a kid.”

            “Is that so? Must’ve been extra wonderful back then, I bet, huh?”

            Morrow was down from Nebraska, escaping fresh memories by chasing after old ones, looking for something that might spark his blood awake, make it hop lively in his veins again. Nan had read his e-mails with care and selected this property for him, and he liked everything about the place—the steep hillsides of forest stripped for winter, the dour gray rock bluffs crouched near the river, the lonesome mumble of the passing wind, and these untamed people who shot at things to so plainly announce their sorrow.

            She said, “I know this seems kind of wild out here.”

            “That’s what I always liked about it.”

            “He’ll listen to any offer.”