Category: Fiction

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Sartoris Thanksgiving

In a his article “Cooked Books” (The New Yorker, April 9, 2007), Adam Gopnik points out that there are four kinds of food in books: “Food that is served by an author to characters who are not expected to taste it; food that is served by an author to characters in order to show who they are; food that an author cooks for characters in order to eat it with them; and, last (and most recent), food that an author cooks for characters but actually serves to the reader.”

Faulkner falls solidly into the second category, a writer who uses food to show who his characters are, as does (unsurprisingly) a French writer who influenced the Mississippian very much, Marcel Proust.  “Proust seems so full of food—crushed strawberries and madeleines, tisanes and champagne—that entire recipe books have been extracted from his texts,” Gopnik says. “Proust will say that someone is eating a meal of gigot with sauce béarnaise, but he seldom says that the character had a delicious meal of gigot with sauce béarnaise—although he will extend his adjectives to the weather, or the view. He uses food as a sign of something else.”

This is precisely what Faulkner does with the Thanksgiving meal at the Sartoris home in Flags in the Dust, his first novel to be set in Yoknapatawpha County (called “Yocona”). Written in 1927, the novel was rejected by his publisher, but it was released in a drastically edited version as Sartoris in 1929. The full manuscript was finally restored and published under the editorial direction of Douglas Day in 1973. The novel is set just after World War I and focuses on the once-powerful, aristocratic Sartoris in decline, clinging to the vestiges of affluence. Here Faulkner describes their Thanksgiving table:

. . . Simon appeared again, with Isom in procession now, and for the next five minutes they moved steadily between kitchen and dining room with a roast turkey and a cured ham and a dish of quail and another of squirrel, and a baked ‘possum in a bed of sweet potatoes; and Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes, and squash and pickled beets and rice and hominy, and hot biscuits and beaten biscuits and long thin sticks of cornbread and strawberry and pear preserves, and quince and apple jelly, and blackberry jam and stewed cranberries. Then they ceased talking for a while and really ate, glancing now and then across the table at one another in a rosy glow of amicability and steamy odors. From time to time Isom entered with hot bread . . . and then Simon brought in pies of three kinds, and a small, deadly plum pudding, and a cake baked cunningly with whiskey and nuts and fruit and treacherous and fatal as sin; and at last, with an air sibylline and gravely profound, a bottle of port.” (Flags in the Dust, Random House, 1973, p. 281)

The meal is lorded over by the family patriarch, Bayard Sartoris II, who is soon to die as well as his son, Bayard III, leaving the few remaining members of the once proud and powerful Sartoris family destitute.

Old Bayard’s attempts to maintain the family’s traditional high standards are exemplified by this meal, which is indeed a groaning board with plentiful meats and game, vegetables and breads, sweets and condiments. The inclusion of stewed cranberries, somewhat of a luxury item at the time, stands out. Towards the end, adjectives begin to cluster as they tend to do in Faulkner, and the final, “sibylline and gravely profound” presentation of port lends a dark, ceremonial  coda.

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Snipe Season

Will and Scott met in a dusty New Orleans bar on a wet November afternoon and shortly fell into a discussion of favored bridge abutments in surrounding states.

Neither in fact were vagrants, both family men: Will an attorney, Scott a businessman, both Mississippians in NOLA for the wedding of mutual friends, Will the bride’s, Scott the groom’s. In time they found ethanol and automobiles in common too, but not hunting. Scott had never taken the field for game.

“Let me take you hunting,” Will said.

“Okay,” said Scott. “For what?”

Will looked him dead in the eye and said, “Snipe.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m serious,” Will said.

. . . . . . . . . .

They left Jackson in the darkest dawn, drove through for coffee and biscuits, then went up 49 watching the earth settle, fall away and go somewhere else.

Clambering from the truck with gear, they sank ankle-deep in muck, slugged first to one patch of mud just above the pooled water to another atoll of broken grasses, the Delta sky pushing distance to the rim of a tall lens, bringing all else into focus, amplifying sound. The rattles of the brittle grass echoed into the distance, across the river, all over the world. The mud was as old Egypt, richer than sin itself.

That close to the river, earth is a matter of water–making it, shaping it, teaching it–letting earth absorb all light, all air, all crisp, cold and fragile, brushed with a thin brittle crust on a  bitter morning.

Furrowed and churned, the field was a mummified of pale brittle stems that collapsed hither and thither, hiding muck, confusing footwork and sheltering snipe, the being itself, a will-o’-the-wisp the very color of winter—white, grey and black fading to or from indiscriminate brown, beige or buff in indifferent patterns on insignificant substance—a bird of earth without place in air where it seeks in fits to find a place and–failing, furtive–rushes back to the tussocks.

. . . . . . .  . . .

“Here we go,” Will said, stepping into the muck and pointing out into the water-mirrored field. “The birds hide up in piles of grass near water. They flush easy, so ease up before you move in.” The grass in front of them rustled and set alight two birds, translucent in the sun trailing faint alarms before they lit in another field.

“Can’t even see them mid-air,” Scott said. “They’re too light and grey.”

Will grinned. The sky was a blinding blue that dribbled down in pools and puddles. The only wind blew way above under a small cool sun, moving shadows of blades, leaves and stems. They walked, guns at their hips, talking to fill the void.

. . . . . . . . . .

“You don’t talk much about over there.”

“Not a lot to say,” Scott said. “It wouldn’t make sense to you.”

“Does it have to? Did it to you?

“Some of it did.” Beside them a clump of cattail folded brown and enclosed exploded into a busy ball of air. Scott crouched and shot, the sound bouncing across the field, the bird falling, twisting, one wing reaching for lift.

Will found the winged bird, wrung its neck, put it in the sack on his shoulder and said, “I want to know what it’s like to kill someone.”

“Why? You gonna kill somebody?”

Will grinned. “Maybe. Maybe I just want to know what it feels like to point a gun at a man and pull the trigger and watch him fall.”

“They weren’t men,” Scott said. “Not to me. They weren’t even enemies. They were just things in the distance. Dark shapes that moved. I never killed anyone. I just shot things and watched them fall.”

“But didn’t they shoot at you?”

“Yes, dammit! Sure they did. You know they did, and I got hit, too!” Scott said.

“I didn’t know that,” Will said.

“In the fucking back,” Scott said. “Shattered my shoulder blade. It’s a steel plate now. Went right through. Bled like a motherfucker.”

“Can I see the scar?”

“It’s too cold to take my shirt off, man,” Scott laughed.

“You don’t have to. Just let me feel it,” Will said.

Scott stopped walking and rubbed the tears off his face. He cradled his gun in the crook of his left arm and with his right unzipped his jacket. “It’s on the left side,” he said.

Will took the glove off his right hand, turned and moved his hand into the jacket, beneath the shirt to the skin, the hair, gently probing, pausing, feeling.

“That’s not it,” Scott said, “That’s my . . .”

“I know what it is,” Will said.

“Up,” Scott said, “There.”

“Yes. Does it still hurt?”

“No,” Scott said. “Not any more. It’s still tender, but you’re not hurting me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Will said. “I just wanted to feel the scar.”

“You’re not hurting me, Will.”

“It’s okay, Scott. It’s okay. Why don’t we call it a day, have a couple of drinks on the way home?”

. . . . . . . . . .

They moved towards the ruts atop the dam that passed for a road, their steps less measured, more insistent, no longer stalking, but in pursuit, the sinking sun reddening, silhouetting the distance, a glittering planet punctuating the blueprint heavens.

They climbed into the truck. Will cranked it up and turned on the lights.

“We can grab a bottle and go to Smitty’s cabin on the Big Black. I’ll call Beth and tell her to call Ann,” Will said. “We’ll tell them we didn’t kill anything, be home tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Scott said, wiping tears from his face. “I’m just tired.”

“I know you are,” Will said.

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The Ibbur

Sylvia’s annual acquiescence to the local ladies’ committee’s request that she show her historic house during the city’s pilgrimage (actually more of a command, since her house was easily regarded as one of the most iconic examples of the city’s 19th century architecture) was an ordeal for her, but she knew it had to be done, and carried off with grace and style.

So every spring she hired a crew to clean the house from top to bottom, another to groom the grounds and provide colorful containers of thriving plants for conspicuous settings, another to fill the home’s pots and vases with fresh flowers and yet another to provide sweets and sandwiches as well as a punch to serve the afternoon her home was on tour. She also attended the beauty parlor that morning, and this year she even bought a new pair of persimmon pants, a matching pastel-patterned top and a silver necklace of pearl and crystal that she’d been admiring at that little boutique near her supermarket, but she wore her best pair of house shoes, since she knew she’d be on her feet for hours.

The tour extended from 2 until 5 on a sunny spring afternoon. The azaleas were in their full glory, blazing in every shade of red punctuated by brilliant whites. Tourists came in three groups of twelve or so, who followed Sylvia through the house while she recited a story (not hers) of the family who built it and lived in it during days when they were one of the wealthiest in the state. The house was of an Italianate design, which was unusual for the decade in this region, and by far its most spectacular features were two towers with abbreviated belvederes and a magnificent set of double stairs that swept upwards from the parquet floor like the wings of an earthbound angel aspiring to heaven.

“Daniel Bauer was a cotton broker,” she’d say. “His family immigrated to Charleston early in the 19th century, and his grandfather owned a grocery on Short Street, just north of Broad. This became the base of the family fortune. Daniel moved here after his marriage to a house on South Street, where their first children were born. He built this house in 1853.” Over time, Sylvia had learned that the question most people asked was why the house wasn’t burned when the federal army took the city. She always hesitated a bit before answering, because she knew the bit of drama would be appreciated.

“Yellow fever,” she said. “When the army came here three members of the family were sick, all but the youngest daughter, Rebecca. The house was quarantined, the family isolated. After her father, mother and older brother died, Rebecca was left alone in the house with the housekeeper Dotty, who was a free woman. The Bauer family never owned slaves. But she stayed with Rebecca, who died the year after the war was over. The house was sold then and turned into a boarding house, where Dotty worked as a cook until she died in 1900.”

The last group included Adelle Smith, the chairman of the pilgrimage committee, as well as her best friend, Mary Beth Langston, who trailed the rest, lingering in the foyer while the other ladies (and one gentleman in a seersucker suit) followed Sylvia into the parlor.

“Every year, she says she won’t do the tour unless she gets to tell what she calls ‘the whole story’ or ‘a better story’,” Adelle said to Mary Beth. “I don’t know how she makes this stuff up. The only documentation we have about the family, besides from the usual public records and old Daniel’s financial ledgers was a diary Rebecca kept starting when she was ten. She died six years later, so it’s mostly just the sorts of things you’d expect a girl her age to write about: birthday parties, visits from family and friends, new clothes, sewing and cooking lessons and schoolgirl crushes. She wrote little during the war years, most of that about everyone leaving and the food running out. She wrote nothing about the sickness and deaths; probably too painful for her, poor thing.”

“And Sylvia claims to know more?”

“Oh, Mary Beth,” Adelle said. “You know as well as I do that Sylvia never leaves this house; well, no more than she has to, anyway. Remember that fire she had three years ago? She burned her hands so badly she was in the hospital for two days. The firemen said it was started by a heater in a little room off the kitchen, and that room was the only room in the house that looked lived-in at all, and the cleaning people she has in before the pilgrimage say it takes them two days to get the dust and spider webs. Then she comes up with these crazy stories.”

“Like what?” Mary Beth asked. Adelle hesitated. “Mary Beth, how long have we known one another?”

“Since your cousin Randy married my sister Ruth,” Mary Beth said. “That was 1977. If you’ll remember, we met at the wedding at St. John’s. You were quite drunk.”

“And you looked like a fire hydrant in that red dress you were wearing,” Adelle replied. “It was also bad form for you to be flirting with the minister.”

“He married me, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Adelle admitted. “The reason was quite obvious at the time. Mary Beth, Sylvia has always been what our grandmother Ross called ‘queer’, though that meant quite a different thing then than it does these days. Ever since she was a little girl, Sylvia’s always heard things and seen things that nobody else did, and she would have these spells, days at a time, when she’d stay in her room and play with her dolls, and barely speak to anyone else. Their maid used to say Sylvia had a hole in her head, but Granny Ross told us that what she meant by that was that Sylvia had an open mind when it came to spiritual things. She was the only one of us who actually liked going to church. She’d even take her Bible to school and read it in study hall.”

“A real little Goody Two-Shoes, huh?” Mary Beth sniffed.

Adelle looked at her sharply. “No,” she said firmly. “It was more than that. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone.”

Then Sylvia led the group back towards the door, said hello to Adelle and Mary Beth, gathered them all before her and thanked them for coming. “We’re all in our city so very proud to still have this beautiful house for you all to visit,” she said, nodding at Adelle, who nodded back. “I want you all to go to the big reception they’re having over at the old Union Street Lyceum. You’re going to meet some wonderful people, and eat the best Southern food you’ve ever had in your life.”

After a scattering of applause, the group filed out the door. Adelle lingered, waving Mary Beth on with the others.  “Thank you, Sylvia,” she said. “The house is beautiful, and we so very much appreciate you opening it up for the public.”

Sylvia suddenly grasped her hands. “Adelle, after I’m gone, take of it for me.” Sylvia tightened her grip. “Don’t let them tear it down. Don’t.” Adelle stepped back at the look in her old friend’s eyes. Then she softened. “I won’t, Sylvia,” she said, knowing in her heart it was an empty promise. She hugged her and walked to the car where Mary Beth was waiting.

Once inside and the door closed, Sylvia heard a tiny, shaken voice from the top of the stairs. “Are they gone?”

“They’re gone, Rebecca,” Sylvia said. “Until next year. We have to do it again next year.”

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Rankin County Barbies

Reservoir Barbie

“Rez” Barbie comes with mid‐life crisis Ken and an SUV with stick figure family depicted in rear window and Republican candidate bumper stickers as well as a mega church membership and directions to the nearest wine shop in Hinds or Madison County. Options include a black party dress and a Xanax prescription.

Flowood Barbie

Manufactured outside Rankin County, “Flo” Barbie drives a Chevy Tahoe with multiple private school stickers on back window. Options include a tennis outfit, an IPhone 6s with a permanent hand attachment, matching earbuds, a Shih Tzu and a Kroger grocery cart with pineapple.

West Pearl Barbie

This pale model comes dressed in her own Wrangler jeans two sizes too small, a NASCAR t-shirt and Tweety bird tattoo on her shoulder. She has a six-pack of Bud Lite and a Hank Williams Jr. CD set. She can spit over 5 feet and kick mullet-haired Ken’s ass when she is drunk. Purchase her pickup truck separately and get a Confederate flag bumper sticker absolutely free.

East Pearl Barbie

This tobacco-chewing, brassy-haired Barbie has a pair of her own high-heeled sandals with one broken heel from the time she chased beer-gutted Ken out of Brandon Barbie’s house. Her ensemble includes low-rise acid-washed jeans, fake fingernails and a see-through halter-top. Also available with pink trim mobile home.

Pelahatchie Barbie

This outdoors Barbie comes with her own kayak and Ducks Unlimited Ken as well as a Longleaf camo outfit, a pair of Merrell Reflex Waterproof Hikers and an L.L. Bean backpack. Options include a Browning Citori 725, a Magellan GPS and a pedigree water Spaniel.

Star Barbie

This anorexic teen Barbie comes with a revoked driver’s license, Stage Mother Barbie and an alcoholic closeted Ken. Options include an NYX Cosmetics Soho Glam makeup kit, skin tight Daisy Dukes, ten pairs of glitter high heels and a pregnancy test.

Brandon Barbie

This Barbie has jet black straightened hair, over-plucked, drawn-on eyebrows, a LOVE tattoo on her neck, skin tight jeans, a fitted tank top and fringed soft cowboy boots. Her Meth Head Unshaven Ken has a Yeti logo tattoo, an NRA tattoo, and a recently-added Trump tattoo. Options include a voicebox reocrding with “Come back here, you motherfucker!” and a traumatized Baby Ken.

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Peanut Hummus

Billy Dale was holding court.

“Yancy, this is very simple. If you grind dry roasted peanuts with grease and salt, you get peanut butter; if you puree boiled peanuts with oil, you get redneck hummus. Imagine me, a shit-kicker from Opelousas, having to teach Mississippi’s go-to bubba on white trash food the difference.”

“Billy Dale, I have never as long as I’ve drawn breath ever claimed to be an authority on anything, I’m just trying to find out as much as I can by cautious questioning.”

“You’re a pompous asshole, too,” Dale said. “My wife said you remind her of an alcoholic Sunday school teacher she had in Iuka. Used to make them draw pictures of him holding up a Bible.”

“B.D., let me off the hook, okay?”

“Fine,” Dale said. “Go turn the chicken and get me another beer.”

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The Smug Alternative

Deena Boydd sipped a triple-cream latte and began her editorial for the next edition of The Jacktown Liberator.

“The worst problem in the world today is a false sense of self-importance,” she typed, considering it a brilliant beginning for a piece designed to skewer her detractors, a legion of local journalists, politicians and businessmen, not to mention creditors. While the journalists and politicians had other ridiculous axes to grind, her creditors, she reasoned, simply did not understand that she was a woman on a mission and that their concerns over money betrayed their petty sense of the world while confirming her broader and certainly more legitimate world-view.

A knock on the door of her tastefully neutral and largely barren office interrupted her reverie. Before she could say “come in” the door was opened by a short, very stout young black woman with a scowl on her face.

“Hello, Arusha, how are you this morning?” Deena asked, beaming with false goodwill.

“I been trying to get that man on the phone you told me about, but he ain’t takin’ any calls now,” Arusha said. “They said he got your message and he workin’ on a response.”

Deena frowned. Not only did she hope that the man Arusha was referring to, who happened to be the chairman of the city council, would respond to her questions by 5 p.m., her deadline to the printer, but she was also frustrated at trying to encourage Arusha to adopt a more sophisticated approach when it came to contacting people. Deena needed to speak with others simply in order to give the patina of reliability to her otherwise fabricated news stories about the inner workings of the city’s administration, but she felt that at the very least she should put a good face on her trumpery.

Deena clinched her teeth, which Arusha interpreted as a smile. Smiling in turn, Arusha asked, “Do you still want to go to lunch with me and Syllis at that foreign restaurant? She said it’s expensive. You know it’s my birthday that day, don’t you?”

“I thought you were a Virgo,” Deena said.

“Oh, I ain’t a Virgo. I got two kids. Anyway, I gotta go. It’s my turn to clean the bathroom, and Mr. Tadd’s picky about that. I thought he was going to have to be put in the hospital that time he found that cricket on the window. He sure is jumpy.”

Arusha left, slamming the door. Deena gritted her teeth hard even harder. Her gaze wandered from the door to the mirror on the wall opposite her desk.

‘I still look good,’ she said to herself. Deena was 53, a bottle blond with rapidly graying roots. She had begrudgingly decided to approve of her expanding bulk, which she reassuringly found in keeping for a mature woman of what she considered significant social stature. For a decade, her publication had ridden the modest wave of a small southern city’s liberal sentiments. Deena knew that her vision of the city’s future was the only one with any reason or design; she alone had her finger on the true pulse of the city. She felt that she’d established herself as a distinctive voice in local politics, when in actuality most people only picked up her publication in order to find out what bands were playing in the local nightspots.

Another knock at the door signaled the arrival of her partner, Tadd Stuffer, a pale, untidy man who stooped, snuffled and continually dusted his shoulders with dandruff. “We have to talk,” he said, glancing nervously down the hall before he closed the door.

“What is it this time?” Deena asked.

“Payday is this week,” he said. “And we don’t have enough money to pay everybody.”

“How much do we have?” Deena asked. Tadd quoted a figure. “Well, that’s enough for you and me, and enough to put out two more issues before another payday. We’ll issue everyone else vouchers.”

“We did that last time,” Tadd pointed out.

“In that case, you know what you have to do,” Deena said. “Call your mother and tell her we simply need a few thousand to see us through this rough spot.”

“Deena, I’m beginning to think Mommie’s patience is wearing thin with our continual need for money,” Tadd said. “She’s well-off, sure, but she’s already spent over a half a million dollars keeping us afloat for the past eight years. I don’t think she’s willing to do it for too much longer. Of course, it might help if you were a bit nicer to her.”

“Why should I be?” Deena thundered, her normally pallid, flaccid features mottled with fury. “She’s the one who made life miserable for you all those years, putting you in that clinic with all those other pathetic losers when all that was wrong with you was the need for the love of a strong woman. Look at all the good I’ve done for you. She should be grateful for that alone!”

“Deena, listen to me . . . “

“No, you listen to me! You get on the phone to that gold-plated bitch of a mother of yours and tell her that if she doesn’t send us twenty thousand bucks today, I’m going to tell her exactly what went on with her husband and your step-brother when he stayed in the pool house last summer.

“Deena, you promised!”

“I’m sorry, Tadd, but this newspaper is more important than your ugly family history. We are here in this city to help bring about a change, to bring a people out of bondage, to make good the wrongs of a century, and you’re worried about a measly case of incest?”

Deena was red in the face, her disproportionate Rubenesque body heaving with emotion. “Call her. Now!”

Tadd stared dumbly at her tits, which she had begun to knead provocatively. She started to unbutton her blouse. “Close the door,” she said.

“Here?” Tadd asked nervously.

“Yes.”

Tadd closed the door and whimpered while Deena drew a big black latex phallus from a bottom drawer.

***

In an office down the hall, Parsley Horton-Hoopey was giving her husband a lesson in political correctness.

“Zeus, I thought we’d agreed to call it ganja,” she said. “Marijuana is just a vulgarity invented by drug lords who only sell this sacred herb for money. And while we’re at it, it’s ‘maize’, not ‘corn’, for Demeter’s sake.”

Parsley had only recently moved to Jacktown from the West Coast, where she had lived in the commune near San Francisco her mother had founded in the mid-Sixties. She had moved to Jacktown to live with her grandmother after a series of arrests for larceny, fraud and drug charges had made it clear that the State of California teetered on the state of barbarism. Parsley had charmed Deena with her tale of persecution and woe. Deena, always the champion of those she perceived as underdogs, took her to her breast (quite literally and quite often, usually when Tadd was bound in handcuffs) and made her a managing editor, which meant that Parsley was in charge of the contributing writers, who were one by one becoming more and more frustrated and alienated because of her incompetence when faced with a paragraph and her indifference in dealing with deadlines.

In addition to her job at The Jacktown Liberator, Parsley also worked for a successful online marketing firm from which she had been pilfering funds in steadily increasing amounts for over six months. She reassured herself that if she got caught, she’d just get Zeus, who owned a small restaurant in the city’s trendy Fondue district, to pay them off and everything would be fine, and of course Deena would fight tooth and nail to keep her managing editor out of prison and avoid a scandal, wouldn’t she?

“And Zeus, don’t forget we have to go to Amelia’s house blessing Saturday afternoon.” Parsley listened on the phone then exploded. “I don’t care if you have to open the restaurant at 5! We’re going to Amelia’s! I’m supposed to hold the Holy Laurel Wreath! Besides . . . (she cooed) I have a surprise for you . . . Remember that black teddy you liked? . . . I bought it, and I’m wearing it to the ceremony.”

She hung up the phone with a sigh. God, she got tired of pushing sex, especially her own.

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A Feast of Feathers

This absolute gem of a story by Jeff Weddle, a man of many parts, but a poet at heart, was inspired by true events. It’s the lead item in his brilliant collection, When Giraffes Flew (SYP; Tallahassee, 2015).

You’re ten years old the day the chickens explode. What could possibly prepare you for this? You’re in the living room watching TV, and you hear the bang out in the yard, and you run to the door. A pickup truck is turned over beside a broken elm tree, and there are chicken crates everywhere and chickens all over the yard. Some of the chickens look dead already, but others are screaming and running around flapping their wings. Poochie and Smoke appear from somewhere out back and lay in on the chickens. They bite the heads and sling the bodies, both just the same, as if they had been taught to do this. They kill the birds and eat their fill, then kill more and leave them lying dead on the lawn.

“Mama,” you scream, but she’s not there. She’s visiting her sister in town, and you’re in the house alone-just you and the wrecked truck in the yard and all those chickens. Dead chickens, dying chickens, chickens being murdered by the dogs. The scene is horrible. Poochie and Smoke fight over a small bird. Poochie has it by the head and Smoke has a wing. The wing rips off, and Poochie backs away, growling.

“Mama,” you scream again.

The driver is still in the truck, but you don’t know this. You don’t even think about him. All you can think about is the chickens in your front yard.

You don’t know how long it is before you think to call somebody. You call your mother at your aunt’s house and tell her what’s happening.

“Calm down,” she says. “Talk slow. Tell me what’s the matter.”

Where do you start? What can you tell her?

“Feathers,” you say. “There are all these feathers. The yard is filled with them.”

“Feathers?”

But that’s all you can think to say. After a while, she stops trying to get the story, and says she’s coming right home. You hang up but don’t dare walk back to the door. Instead, you go back and stare at the television. You turn up the sound so you can’t hear what’s going on outside.

The front door opens. There’s a man standing there, a man you don’t know. He’s bloody and feathers are stuck all over him. He looks like a big, awful rooster. He stands there in your front room for a second then dips over and slides against the wall, all the way to the floor. There’s a wide trail of blood where he slides. You realize this isn’t good.

This is the driver. He’s a farmer from out in the county, and he was on his way to sell his chickens in town. Now he’s had a bad experience in your yard, and his chickens are mostly beyond salvage. Now he’s lying on your living room floor bleeding to death, feathers stuck all over his body. Now you have to deal with him.

But of course you can’t. There’s nothing to do but sit where you are and wait. The noise outside has quieted to the din of a few dozen chickens clucking and squawking. The dogs have followed the man into the house. This is the biggest chicken of them all, and they each know they must have him. Smoke wises up and latches onto his head, just above the cheek, and locks her jaw tight. Poochie has a shoulder. They try their best to sling him around and kill him, but he weighs too much. They growl and jerk, but it’s no good.

You run over and kick the dogs away, but they are crazed with blood. For a moment it looks like they’re going to jump on you, but they don’t; they want the big chicken and nothing is going to keep them from having it.

By the time your mother arrives it’s all over. The man’s face and arm are chewed to pieces. He’s on the floor, dead-blood and feathers stuck all over the floor and walls.

Your mother doesn’t know what to make of any of this. You think she’ll scream or faint, but what she does is scoop you up and run into the bathroom and lock the door.

“Are you okay?” she yells at you. “Are you okay?”

There is no way to answer this question. You sit on her lap and shake your head back and forth, but you don’t know what you’re doing.

A week later, things are mostly back to normal. The truck has been towed away and most of the feathers are gone from the yard. The front room is immaculate. The broken elm tree has been removed. A man from the sheriff’s office has come and taken Smoke and Poochie away. You cried over the dogs.

When the deputy came for them, you tried to keep him away, but you’ve learned now, there’s no fighting a man with a badge and a gun.

Your mother hasn’t left your side in seven days.

“Mama,” you tell her, the chicken man can’t hurt us anymore.”

She smiles the tiniest bit, but you know she believes something different. From now on, every so often, the yard will yield a host of bones.

If there is anything in the world you miss more than your dogs, you don’t want to think of it. At night, now, you wonder about all that road out there. There must be more trucks heading your way, and maybe chickens aren’t the worst of it. It’s hard to imagine this might be true, but something tells you to believe it.

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Nipping the Bud

The afternoon had been long, impeded by discoveries of even more cracks to caulk, more questions to quell, more smoke, more smiling. Now the sun was slatted on the wall, and he heard Mazie closing her office. She came through his door minutes later, a sheaf of files in her hand.

“This is the last of them,” she said. “Do you want me to take them to the bank?”

“No,” Clayton said. “I’ve got to go see Eddie later, just leave them here.” Mazie hesitated.

“Just leave them here,” Clayton repeated. “I’ll take care of them. And Mazie, you should know that I’ve decided to let you have that free time you’ve always wanted.”

“Free time?”

“Yes,” Clayton said. “Now that Jack is gone, I’ve decided to make some changes, and one of them is rewarding you for your service to the firm. You and Bud will be able to take those long fishing trips you’ve always wanted.”

Mazie looked at him steadily. “You’re firing me.”

“I’ll give you a nice severance check, and you have the retirement account Jack set up for you,” Clayton said. “Things are changing, and we need someone who knows all these new gadgets we’re using better than you do.”

“You won’t get away with it. I know things,” Mazie said.

“I know things, too,” Clayton said. “I know lots of things, Mazie. Like I know that Jack kept Bud out of prison fifteen years ago, and I know why. There’s no statute of limitation on murder, you know. I have the evidence.”

“It was an accident,” Mazie said, too quickly. She knew that Clayton would have the facts that Bud fired the shots that ended the woman’s life, and shots fired with malice and deliberation. Jack, only Jack, could have kept Bud out of prison, and he did somehow, before Clayton had joined the firm. Mazie didn’t even know that Clayton knew about it, but now that he did, and now that he intended to use it to keep Mazie at home and silent, she set her mouth.

“Then I’ll go,” she said. “You’re a bastard, Clayton Isley, a shit-splattered son-of-a-bitch. Your buddy Ward Mason is in the conference room. He said you told him to come in the back door. If Jack were here . . .”

Clayton pounded his fist on the desk. “Jack is NOT here! Jack is DEAD! I’m in charge now, and things are going to be different around here.” He sat back in his chair, breathing heavily and loosened his tie. “Go home, Mazie. And don’t forget what I said about Bud.”

Mazie left, her face set in fury and resignation. Clayton took the files she had been holding, the last of Jack Delancy’s records, and tossed them into the smoldering incinerator out back as he had done the rest of them.

He walked down the hall to the conference room. At the end of the table sat a wiry muscular man dressed in a threadbare jacket and a badly-pressed shirt. His watery blue eyes were set in a long face topped with thinning blond hair. His hands held a cigarette that wobbled slightly over the ashtray.

“Hey, Clayton!” the man said. His smile was wide, and his teeth were large, long and bright.

Clayton walked to a cabinet against the wall and poured a generous shot of whiskey into a glass. He sat the drink and bottle on the table next to the man and watched as he gulped down the drink, wiped his mouth with a hairy hand and poured another.

“How’ve you been, Ward?”

“Great! Great!  I got a new car last week, found a place down on Hooper Road, and I’m going to start fixing up the cabins on the lake, run the snakes out, do some rewiring, fix the plumbing, you know.”

“That’s just fine,” Clayton said. “You know, Ward, since Jack died . . . “

“Loved Jack!” Ward said. “He knew that boy was all about a bunch of lies, sayin’ I did all those things. Hell, I got kids of my own, you know. Love kids.”

Clayton looked at him. “Well, I believe that, Ward, I really do. You know, Frances has been a total mess since Jack died.”

“I can see why,” Ward said, nodding. “Losing a husband like that and them both in the prime of life.”

“She’s been having a lot of problems,” Clayton said. “We’ve had to keep her under a lot of sedation. I talked to a psychiatrist in Birmingham and he said it’s best that she goes to a place where she can get some rest, a private hospital he runs up in Gardendale. My wife and I are going to take care of the little girl, but the boy, well, he needs attention, and that’s why I asked you here.”

Ward’s smile faltered. “What do you mean, Clayton?”

“Well, a boy his age, he’ll be fourteen next week, a boy his age needs a man in his life, and I just don’t have the time,” Clayton said. “Now, I’ve arranged for him to be sent away to school, to a school up in North Carolina, not really a military academy, just an all-boys school that stresses discipline. But I think it would be a good idea for him to get to the country for a while before he goes, and I think you ought to take him with you up to the lake. Take him fishing, get some good fresh air. It’ll only be for a month or so.”

Ward licked his lips. “Clayton, you know, that boy in Jackson who got me into trouble . . .”

“I know all about the boy in Jackson,” Clayton said. He also knew about the boy in Mobile, the boy in Greenwood and the one in Memphis. He had seen the photographs Ward had taken, the looks in the boys’ eyes, and he knew that if it weren’t for Jack, Ward would probably be dead; either shot by a father or killed in prison.

“But Frances . . .”

“Frances doesn’t need to know,” Clayton said. “Nobody needs to know but you and me. I’ll bring him to you myself next Friday to stay with you at the lake. You can go fishing, take the boat out, skinny-dippin’ . . . He’s a good-looking kid. You two should have a good time together. I’ll pick him up in six weeks, in time for school.”

“Nobody’s gonna know?” Ward asked.

“Nope,” Clayton said. “I’ll pay you, of course. Cash. I’ll arrange for you to pick it up at the bait shop on Cane Creek.” He took out a manila envelope and pushed it across the table.
“Here’s some photos of him at the swimming pool.”

Ward opened the envelope. A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. He replaced the photos and put the money in his jacket pocket. “Wonder if he’s a real redhead?”

Clayton looked at him. “I’m sure you’ll find out, Ward. Now you’d better go. Did you park at the supermarket like I told you?”

“Yeah, and I came down the alley.”

“Okay, I’ll see you Friday,” Clayton said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

Ward left. It was dusk. Clayton drew a cigar from his shirt pocket, lit it and leaned back in his chair. Sometimes, he thought, it isn’t enough just to kill a man.

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Dodging Charles

When he came out of the restaurant, turning my way and looking at his watch, I slipped into the store next door not because I didn’t want to see Charles but because I didn’t know what to say.

He looked haggard and pale, unsurprising since he’d been sick for a while, likely not to get better I’d heard, but here he was walking toward me in the same rumpled wear and with the same wrinkled brow he’d always carried.

We’d had our ins and outs, but had come to an understanding. Charles always held me under his thumb, reminding me how much of a rube I was here in Jackson, how little I’d ever know of the machinations of the city and its people and how tragic it was that I didn’t care. I still don’t care, which is why Charles helped me in any way he could with the same gusto he might give an old crutch to an in-law who’d broken an ankle.

So when I saw him that morning I tilted the bill of my cap down, hastened my step and disappeared into the store, hoping to avoid him for the present and speak with him later. I was surprised to see him on his feet, to be honest. That afternoon I heard he’d died.

I’m just going to let it go. I don’t want to deal with it right now.