from Bloodroot by Aaron Even
Wesley eased back and adjusted himself in the rocking chair from which comfortable
position he'd been narrating the story. The firewood was all chopped and set out back
of the cottage and the evening air smelled fragrantly of summer buttercups and wild
onion. TJ after just a couple of whiskeys had collapsed in a heap onto Wesley's bed,
muttering something about love. "It's time for my evening smoke," Wesley said. He
fiddled blindly about his pockets. When he'd succeeded in locating his pipe and packing
the tobacco to his satisfaction, he lit a match and breathed in, watching the faint red
glow begin to expand and retract with his suspirations, throwing a ring of lazy light
outward from the center of the bowl. Through that light could be seen spotted moths
beating the screen door and mosquitoes darting by on mysterious trajectories; nearby a
Japanese beetle crabbed lopsidedly up the porch rail, while the extremes of his
sister's features- one watchful eye, the curved bone of her nose and cheek, a flash of
grimacing teeth- stood out from the shadows like the exaggerated and expressionless
parts of an Indian mask.
"Gold?" he said suddenly, picking up after a silence. "I suppose you might say so,
if there was such a standard for common jealousy. The truth is, the two of them
hammered away on that ax blade surely as if they'd agreed beforehand to work in perfect
union and harmony till its completion."
"But it's plain who started it by the story."
"The question of whose idea it was, which one of them came up with it first and by
what means suggested it to the other, I've never been able to figure out nor really
cared to try," Wesley said. "Most probably they dreamed it up together the very moment
they laid eyes on one another, maybe even passing a bright little smile between them as
you might say A-ha to something clever you'd never thought of before. Of course, I was
asking myself a different question at the time: why didn't he tell me he couldn't
read?"
"What difference would that have made?"
Wesley shrugged. "Probably none. I might have been there from the beginning,
though, instead of interrupting when it was already too late. Maybe in the least I'd
have found a way to explain-"
"Cover up, you mean."
"If you say so. I'll admit it crossed my mind that way as well. But then you have
to understand what can happen in a place like that, out from under the eye of the law,
with nobody around to gainsay whatever LeClaire might pass off as the truth. Those
stories the organizer told about the manager watching us and holding us down- well,
that was used to advantage as you might say. But part of it was true: they did keep
their own code of law out there, a vigilante code, and it could go bad for you to run
the wrong side. I remember when they found a man crawling in a ditch one morning and
couldn't get him to stand, he was so badly whipped. And some disappeared, though I
imagine the majority of them just ran away for loneliness.
"There were plenty other signs," he continued in a mute, comfortable tone.
"Phrases, codes, you get to know them. You get a feeling for it. And deep down in your
gut you know when something is told in warning and even if you have no intention
whatever of heeling, obeying them, if you fool around- well, it's best to have no
illusions about what kind of people you are up against and how your own friends will
hang you out to dry. And that was the thing. He had no idea, no notion of it. He was
carrying on with the most amazing confidence in his safety, the most stubborn belief
that no matter what he did another man could not just stamp him out of existence, make
him disappear."
Cora snickered. "And so you felt obliged to look after him."
"It was that or start digging him a grave," Wesley said. "but I haven't finished
telling, you still don't know the whole story."
"I can see where it's headed, though. I expect you took him aside, advised him to
accept what they gave, don't want no fuss with the managers."
"Well," Wesley said, and took a slow drag on the end of his pipe, illuminating for
a moment the fixed red scowl on her face. "That's a serious thing, to tamper with a
man's wages. I've already explained- or tried to- the anticipation, how we waited for
our pay nearly holding breath, because so much was depending on it and so much already
given up on its account. TJ had given up his railroad job. That's not so much as some
others, who left wives and children behind, but it ain't so trifling either. The
trouble was the twist. And the twist was that LeClaire told the truth about the base
wage- those brothers from Carolina had received the same dollar and ten cents per day.
I suppose I'd just forgot the difference, it had been so many years.
"But that business with the ax blade, that was a slap in the face. It was also a
very intentional, unmistakable message. You could complain and make threats if you
liked or you could stop and look at the problem in a more practical way. If you did
you'd probably see that the only solution was for someone, most likely myself, to go
and have a quiet talk with Robbins and see if we couldn't work something out. Because I
don't believe the message came from him. I don't believe he ever knew a thing about it.
It had to do with the understanding between TJ and LeClaire which, as I said, they
seemed to have worked out beforehand-" he waved and pointed idly with the blackened
stem of his pipe- "the way a pair of these moths, according to their instinct, bang
themselves against the screen door until one or the other gives out."
"All very well and good, very fine sounding," Cora said, "comparing a man to a kind
of bug. But then you're only telling it that way to make yourself come out the
better."
"I'm just calling things the way I saw them."
"Or maybe you were just a little bit afraid for your skin. And since it shames you
to remember and since there's no one handy to say otherwise, you're trying to lay that
shame on TJ."
"Wait a minute," Wesley interrupted, settling back in his chair. "Let me explain:
it wasn't his politics that bothered me, I'd heard all that before from guys more
serious about it than him- or his posturing, we were all guilty of that in one way or
another. But the fact was since I'd brought him to camp and more or less stuck up for
him ever since, anything foolish that he might do ended up a reflection on me. I still
needed that job. At the time I didn't have anything else- you remember, you'd just
started working for the estate. I couldn't afford for him to go messing things up. But
as it happened TJ neither threatened LeClaire nor sent a soul to make amends. Neither
did he let the matter die. He saw after it in his own way, I suppose, according to his
instincts. Let me finish..."
"He kept real quiet. All the rest of the day he wouldn't speak a word. It was the
one long day since we'd arrived earlier that month that you didn't hear him yacking and
carrying on about whatever troubles passed through his head. Like when a neighbor's dog
suddenly stops barking in the middle of the night. I remember staying with him
throughout the afternoon and into the evening while he sat there humiliated on a pine
chair outside the tent, staring at the tops of his shoes. Meantime the temperature was
falling and a sharp wind had come up from the northwest, with a moon so bright and
slivered it might have been pared from the setting sun. That cook I spoke about greased
his skillets, got his dinner going, and doled out some kind of charred gristle cakes- I
could barely force them down. At first I figured that TJ wouldn't have an appetite, but
instead he came out eating like a prisoner kept under rations. His spirits even seemed
to lift a little- he mumbled a few words about the meal through his teeth and scowled
at me when I tried out a joke.
"Twilight came on with a mess of rain clouds bedding low on the horizon. I sat and
smoked a while and waited for it to begin. It took about an hour if I remember
correctly, and the hickory started swaying and between the hickory the pines. It looked
like it was going to be one hell of a night. Pretty soon the wind was gusting so hard
and cold it blew the fire out. Then pine needles started zinging through the air and
the dirt was blowing up in your eyes and everyone was running headlong for cover or
else checking stakes and ropes to make sure they would hold through the night. It
hadn't started raining yet when I decided to go inside. Them brothers from Carolina
were lying there so completely wrapped in their blankets that I could hardly tell one
from the other. I stepped over them and got into my bed and sat up a while watching the
shadows play on the walls of the tent. Then I heard the first patter of drops, big and
thick, coming in clusters, like the sky was just spitting them out, and I guess I
wouldn't have gone out there for the world.
"The next morning I would realize it was just that which allowed TJ to move
unsuspected around the camp and take his revenge without ever attracting the attention
of a single eye witness- but there was no way of knowing at the time. It rained all
night, a nasty, violent storm, so he would have been soaked through and half frozen, in
danger every moment of losing his way in the woods or turning his ankle on a stone. As
it happened he made it back in good time, slipping in just before sunrise. An awareness
of movement and a strange smell disturbed me, but I was exhausted and just turned over
in my quilt. Some time later the brothers from Carolina started shaking me and
whispering, 'Wake up, Wes. Hurry up.' And then I just knew. And I'll admit that I tried
to push them away but they kept tugging at my shirt and saying, 'You've got to see
this, Wes. If it ain't the damn funniest thing...'
"'What's going on?' I said, but they wouldn't answer. Instead they half dragged me
through the door and over the grass to where I could get a good look at Albert
LeClaire. He was standing next to that chair he usually sat on each morning while
scrubbing his boots, only now he was limping, hopping around on one perfectly sound
tall black boot while he picked over the surrounding earth with a long whipping cane.
'Where is it?' I said.
"'Gone,' the brothers told me.
"'Let's get him out of here,' I said.
"'Just look at LeClaire digging around in the mud.'
"I said, 'Get back inside. I don't want him to see us.' So we all turned around and
walked back over the sopping grass to the tent and what do you think we saw when we got
inside? He was lying there, TJ was, fully clothed, sleeping peacefully on a bed of wet
and twisted blankets. We looked at each other a minute, those brothers and I. Then I
went over and gave TJ a kick.
"'What's the big idea?' he says, sitting up immediately like he's been waiting for
us all along. I told him: 'You better change your clothes and come with us.' He looked
up with bloodshot eyes and asked me what was the matter. 'LeClaire,' I told him, but he
says he doesn't know what I'm talking about.
"'Look at your shoes,' I said to him. They were coated with a layer of slick orange
mud and pine needles broken into stickles. I asked him what he was going to say if
LeClaire walked in and found him looking like that.
"'I didn't do anything. Besides,' he says, 'what are they going to hang a guy for
having a little mud on his shoes?'
"Well, you can imagine what a scene we had in there: me yanking him to his feet and
the brothers stripping off his clothes, finding a pair of dry overalls and a clean
undershirt, which if I recall the younger one supplied from his own store, and all the
while TJ complaining and making it hard as possible for us to help him, and it was
about then we started to realize he wasn't looking so well, and by the time we got his
shoes and socks peeled off- that was no kind of pleasure I can tell you- he says,
'What's wrong with my feet? I can't even feel them.' They had turned the color of a
corpse. I said, 'What the hell did you do?' But he just started yacking about how he
had to jump in the creek to throw the hounds off his trail, and when I put my hand
against his forehead I realized how bad he was, and we began to try and rub him down.
Meantime he kept on about the hounds and how he'd heard them barking and closing on him
and how they would have treed him like a common animal if he hadn't gave them the slip.
By the time we got him dry and reasonably dressed the other guys were mostly finished
with breakfast and we had to hurry out to get ourselves something to eat and bring back
coffee for TJ, who by now was too sick to even think about food.
"Of course, we wondered what to do next, because there would likely be a degree of
suspicion whether we took him to work half draggled and dead, or told the foreman- who
was naturally LeClaire- that he'd taken sick overnight and was too feverish to leave
his bed. But as it happened TJ made the decision himself: he was going to work just
like everyone else, and even though the brothers both said he was crazy he didn't give
a damn what anyone thought. Myself, I didn't know what to do. And in fact the coffee
seemed to do him some good- he was speaking somewhat like he was in his right mind, and
a little of the color had come back to his face, though I worried about him trudging
around in those same wet shoes. But there was no helping that and we would all of us be
in similar straights inside of an hour, so in the end we put our jackets on and got our
tools and left together hoping to keep ahead of the group and, more than anything, out
of sight of LeClaire. But we had only gone a little ways across the camp when he came
out of his shack in a pair of old Indian moccasins he sometimes used for slippers and
looked right at us without any trace of what he might be thinking, without any
expression.
"It was the worst situation you could think of: he nodded good morning and followed
us into the woods. Why did he have to come out just then? the very moment we were
passing by his door? Or maybe he was waiting for us, I don't know. Anyway, we went on
acting natural while he walked with us, trying to make the regular remarks about this
and that without drawing any attention or even looking down at the flimsy moccasins he
was wearing, which after fifty feet of trail had completely disappeared under a blob of
mud and soil, and trying at the same time to keep him as far separated from TJ as
possible, though between TJ's sickness and LeClaire's bad shoes they were naturally
disposed to walk about the same slow pace, which made us all slow down so much that
pretty soon we were going along about a leisurely stroll and I was starting to think
there was no hope of putting off disaster- of course, I still didn't know exactly what
it was TJ had done with that boot, whether simply buried it somewhere or dropped it in
one of the camp fires or set it floating down the creek- and then there was the
question of how, by what possible method, he could have gotten hold of it to begin with
and I didn't even want to consider that, it was so beyond what I could imagine at the
time. And all the while we walked on, I was aware of them both aware of each other.
"Their hatred was a friendship, a brotherhood. I never saw anything like it. In any
case, pretty soon we came upon a man jogging back the other way- one of the foremen,
one of LeClaire's bunch- and he stops and stands there a minute kind of dumbstruck and
then asks LeClaire has he seen the clearing yet? The clearing- that was the area we
were working on, and we were almost done with it as a matter of fact, about another day
to go. So LeClaire, his face pinches up and he says obviously he hasn't seen the
clearing since we haven't got there yet, and the man looks at him again like he was
stepping careful around a rattlesnake and he says, pointing, 'Yonder.'
"Well, that just pissed LeClaire off. He yells out in a screechy, trembly voice:
'What the hell is that supposed to mean?' And then he waved the man aside and went on
his way, only moving a little quicker now. About then I noticed the older brother
whispering in the younger's ear and something about their expressions- the one
demanding, ordering the other, who was attempting to resist- gave me a good idea what
was going on. It was a terrible thing to watch and I let them fall behind. Besides, I
had to hurry to keep up with TJ, who was pushing along now like he was afraid LeClaire
might get ahead of him, like they were in some kind of race to get to the clearing and
find out what it was the foreman had been too afraid or stupid to say. Soon the path
forked downhill, very rocky and steep, and pretty much washed out of sight. By now our
shoes and pants were splattered front and back with mud and every other second we were
slipping on our hands and knees, sliding a couple feet before coming under control,
though we continued right down, and picked our way around the stumps, logs, and piles
of woodscrap, till we bottomed out in the hollow where it was easy ground, flat and
full of puddles.
"By now we could see the ring of men gathered in front of some sap barrels at the
base of a tall, dead cedar tree. It was a tree that served for a landmark of sorts,
since the hollow all around us had been pretty much cleared to the last hardwood. On
either hillside, though, the pine woods were left more or less intact since they were
longleafs and gave quality sap. Anyway, these men for whatever reason didn't seem to
notice us coming up the path, and they were having pretty good fun joking around with
one another in the loose and loudmouthed way that was usually reserved for the
off-hours and so it was that by the time one of them happened to look up and notice
LeClaire and make a signal to the others, we had come into earshot and clear as a gun
heard someone make the crack: 'Done hung him out to dry.' To which LeClaire, shoving
his way briskly into the circle, says: 'Who said that?'
"Nobody answered.
"'Hung?' he says, 'did I hear hung?' Then he begins to pace back and forth like a
soldier, and without seeming to look up he had somehow already taken in what I, only
now, following the eyes of the rest of the men up the base of the dead cedar past
scraped-away strips of bark and a few rotten branches, saw: LeClaire's boot, nailed
upside down to the top of the tree, dripping rainwater from the ruined leather ends.
And in the hush that had snapped into place LeClaire squints around and he says calmly,
quietly: 'The one and only thing you need to know is I'm gonna hang the sonofabitch by
the same godforsaken tree.' That dead hush went on for a while, with everyone scraping
their heels in the mud and looking innocent as they could be, until someone finally
couldn't stand it and made a move like he would take out his ax. But LeClaire just
holds up his hand and whispers: 'Leave it. Don't anybody so much as lay a finger on it.
Until I have the name of the sonofabitch, the tree stays up, and every mother's son of
you is paying with your backs.'"
"Git," Wesley said, and whizzed the broken end of a garden trowel through the air.
It sailed high and came angling down dead to rights, but the dog made a simple
unhurried adjustment in its path and the missile landed with a harmless thump in the
grass. Unimpressed, the dog came trotting into close range of the Wesleys' porch,
looking curiously and expectantly at the man and woman talking there with its ears and
tail turned up like antennae.
"They should have drowned you the day you were born," Wesley said.
The dog stood a while gawking and flicking its tail, its eyes dull and eager; then
it turned sniffing the air and went trotting away toward the bushes, sucked back into
the darkness of the yard.
Cora was quiet a moment, he could feel her stiffness.
"I'll take those guns apart in the morning." Wesley took the pipe out from between
his teeth. "You want something to drink?"
"Glass of lemon water would be nice."
He banged the screen door open and went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of
water, sliced the lemon in half and squeezed it as if it were a stone, adding an
impromptu nip of whiskey to both glasses and returning through the door with a kick of
his shoe, scattering moths like flakes of snow.
He handed a glass to Cora and sat in his rocker again.
"Mm," she said, still leaning against the porch rail.
While he was away his pipe had snuffed out and he tried half-heartedly to light it
again, then gave up and knocked it out against the side of the chair.
"That story," Cora said, pausing to take a long, easy drink. "I guess you must have
told it to me before, but I don't remember."
"Sure I told you."
"It must have been years and years ago."
Wesley nodded. "About the time of the War."
"That long. Seems like it was yesterday, for you."
"I still haven't finished," Wesley said. Her laughter came sniggering at him from
across the porch. "Well, I guess it was pretty funny, in some ways," he continued,
"though more than a couple of guys didn't think so at the time, LeClaire set to working
them so hard clearing brush and dragging barrels from here to there for no good reason,
other than to satisfy his revenge. I remember looking up now and then and seeing that
boot hanging there and thinking, trying to imagine, the effort he must have gone
through to get it there: in the rain, in the wind, with the lightning flashing and what
he thought was the barking of hounds, which may or may not have been a figment of his
terror, and on top of all that him climbing the tree, of all people, who was noteworthy
above all things for his dislike of physical work. It was the kind of tree he wouldn't
have looked at twice during the day and that if someone had ordered him to climb he
would have stood there and laughed, but that night he would have chosen it for the very
difficulty and prominence, the way an army captain plants his flag on the highest
ground. He would have gripped the boot- how? in his teeth?- pulling himself by main
strength up the high trunk which as I've said was nearly stripped of limbs until he got
to the point where he could nail it- how again? with what tools?"
"Maybe he took along a hammer," Cora said.
"And a couple of nails? Did he really think it through that well, or did he get to
the tree with the stolen boot in hand and then stop, thinking: what next? And did he
maybe stand there soaking and shivering- it was pretty cold, I can tell you- until he
got the idea in his head and went scrounging around the woodpiles, searching for a
discarded wedge or maybe even a stone that could fit in his pocket without getting too
much in his way, and then prying the nail from one of the catchcups which would have
meant looking a good distance to find one in the dark and then hurrying back, and doing
it all before he could begin to consider what might happen if he slipped half way up
the tree, or got himself stuck at the top, unable to climb back down.
"I don't know. I never asked him. But when LeClaire said that business about
hanging the sonofabitch from the same godforsaken tree, I knew that he knew and that TJ
knew, that it was unspoken between them, a kind of understanding as I've said, and
that it was only a matter of time before someone decided to tell LeClaire what he
already knew and then he would be able to set his own wheel in motion. And that would
go badly for TJ.
"So straight off I began thinking, wondering about those other times where men had
disappeared, just run away, and since it was the company trucks that took us out there
in the first place and since it was a healthy distance back to Mill Creek and no road
you might feel particularly comfortable on within ten or twenty miles, I figured those
guys must take a hitch on one of the trains passing along every night, since they run
slow enough through the mountains and generally carry a heavy freight. But LeClaire had
the watchman move down close by our tent, and all night long you could hear him playing
low on a harmonica he used to keep himself awake. In any case, TJ wasn't ready to pack
his bag just yet, though I tried talking him into it. He was having too good a time
enjoying his joke. And naturally the word or at least the suspicion of it had gone
around a bit, so everyone was grinning at him and paying him compliments every other
minute of the day, which was a bad sign as far as I was concerned.
"And what worried me more, those brothers from Carolina, ever since that morning
when I'd noticed them arguing under their breath, kept their distance from the two of
us like we were beggars or lepers out of the Bible. Well, that was as much as standing
in the middle of the camp and pointing fingers. But there was nothing I could say to
them; they made their choice.
"It was a day or two later when I came across Robbins, the manager, relaxing on his
porch and scribbling in a little halfsized book that he held balanced on one knee. I
remember he was wearing a pair of reading glasses, which made him look funny, almost
grandfatherly, and overalls and shiny black leather shoes the kind you buy in one of
the better stores in town. It was evening and I was just coming in from the woods, so
I had my tools slung over my shoulder and was more or less covered in mud from the
waist down- it was still wet out there, still a mess from that storm, because the
streams had overflowed and the runoff had nowhere to drain. Anyway, he looks at me and
sort of raises up his eyebrows and flags me over with his pen. 'Hey tha, Wes,' he says.
I greeted him and asked how he was doing and he says fine, fine, and starts telling me
how he's keeping a diary about life in the turpentine camp because it's occurred to him
that one day he might want to publish his memoirs. And if he ever decided to then it
would sure be helpful to have a diary, now wouldn't it? I guess I must have looked
surprised because he breaks out in a big laugh and says: 'Didn't take me for the
scholarly type, did you?' I don't recall what I said, something by the way of agreeing
with him, because I'd always assumed he couldn't read. But I guess I was wrong about
that, too.
"So next thing I know he's asking me if maybe I can help him with a problem he's
having, which is that he wants to put in a little something from a logger's
perspective- he called us loggers even though we mostly cut down only what was in our
way and sent almost nothing to the lumber mill. I told him I could probably help him as
good as anybody, since I'd been working there for seven years straight, and he said was
it really that long and I said yeah, it was. 'All right,' he says, 'then tell me this-
and tell me the truth, mind, even if you've got to be impolite, because it won't help
me if you lie to keep from saying something ungentlemanly besides which I won't hold
anything you say against you- I want to know what you loggers think about the company
men we've got working in the field and more particularly, I want to know who is the
single most yellowdog-hard-ass-slavedriver of them all.'
"'Sure,' I said, 'that's easy.'
"He opened his book again and pretended he was going to write down what I said for
his diary, memoir, whatever he called it. 'Go ahead,' he says.
"I said: 'Albert LeClaire.'
"He slapped a hand against his thigh and began wheezing so hard and dry I thought
he would choke. 'That's good,' he says, between wheezes, 'just what I would of thought.
Of course, I won't tell him you said that- but since you mention him, I wonder if you
know any good stories, something I might want to put in here that if I ever published
the book would be a kind of amusement.'
"I told him: 'I never heard anything amusing about him.'
"It was just about dinner time then and I was tired and now it was all settled. The
shadows got long and sharp, falling over the porch and over Robbins' face, which could
have used a shave or at least a bar of soap. He went on for a while longer, asking me
about things of small concern, things I couldn't have remembered half an hour later
because my mind had stopped, frozen, right where he meant it to, just like when a watch
has run down. Finally he says, 'Well, I could talk all night but you've got things to
do.'
"And I did. By that time it was nearly twilight and while I walked down the road
into camp the evening star came out and you could smell the smoke from the cooking
fires. First thing I dropped off my tools in the tent- but nobody was there, it was
just empty. I got a bad feeling right away. Then I looked outside but I didn't see
anyone I could talk to. So I went to wash up, figuring that wherever they'd all
disappeared to, they'd be back for dinner soon. I drew a bucket from the well-pump and
found a bit of rough soap to wash with and I remember watching a couple of mocking
birds yelling at something in the field- probably one of the cats guys brought along
for company and then let loose to fend for themselves. It wasn't till I turned around
that I noticed one of the foremen had followed me out there. He was standing about
fifty feet away with his foot up on a rock, sucking on a cigarette while he watched me.
We stood there for a long minute looking at each other. He was a foreign-looking guy
with a pockmarked face and a smashed-up nose. When finally I threw down the bucket and
started back, he kept on following me like I was some kind of a prisoner. So I got fed
up and hollered: 'What the hell are you looking at?' And he came over then and I waited
for him, feeling sick. We were by the outhouses, away from the others.
"'Get inside,' he says, and I looked at him like he was crazy, and then I was
through the outhouse door and he was panting in my face and I realized he'd shoved me
in there. It was dark and close with only a little light showing between the slats.
His hands were working up my collar and he was saying something I didn't understand.
Then the stench hit me and on top of that the smell of his breath while he muttered. I
tried to push out of there but he grabbed me by the neck and squeezed. I understood,
then. I was standing there thinking he's choking you, Wes, while he was squeezing me
and it seemed to take a long time for the message to get through. I was thinking
LeClaire wouldn't do this... while the man pulled his right hand away and came back
with a shaving razor pressed against my cheek. He was moving me back against the seat,
pushing me almost gently like he was a friend or father showing me where to sit. And
the awful thing was, there was a moment when I might have let him. I don't know if
you've ever felt anything like this - it's strange to say, but it was actually
seductive. It would have been easy. And during that long moment I felt a strange kind
of attraction... even pleasure, that I've never felt before or since. There's something
very satisfying in resignation. It's a shame to say, but I'm not going to deny it, it
was the very devil of a temptation. It even seemed logical, practical. After all, they
like to say it about us- frightful, weak-natured. But I grabbed his wrist and bent it
backward. He gave a little squeal and I heard the plop in the bottom of the pit.
"Then he was out the door and I remember seeing him flying over the field, his arms
pumping like a track star, like Jesse Owens. I started to chase after him, thinking all
the evil things I'd do in revenge for that nightmare, but I gave up after a couple of
shaky steps- I was never much for running."
"Five dollars?" Cora said. Where her outline leaned through the thickening dusk a
crescent paper fan passed languidly back and forth, chasing the bugs from her face.
"What were those axes made out of... gold?"
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