Child of God (11 page)

W
ITH THE BLANKETLOAD OF
provisions over his shoulder he looked like some crazy winter gnome clambering up through the snowfilled woods on the side of the mountain. He came on falling and sliding and cursing. It took him an hour to get to the cave. The second trip he carried the axe and the rifle and a lardpail filled with hot coals from the fire at the house.

The entrance to the cave was no more than a crawlway and Ballard was slick with red mud down the front of him from going in and out. Inside there was a large room with a bore of light that climbed slantwise from the red clay floor to a hole in the roof like
an incandescent treetrunk. Ballard blew up a flame from wisps of dry grass with his coals and assembled the lamp and lit it and kicked at the remains of an old fire in the center of the cave beneath the roof hole. He came dragging in slabs of hardwood from the upright shells of dead trees on the mountain and soon he had a good fire going in the cave. When he started back down the mountain for the mattress a steady plume of white smoke was rising from the hole in the ground behind him.

B
ALLARD STAMPED THE
snow from his shoes and leaned his rifle against the side of the house and tapped at the door. He glanced about. The sofa lay mantled in snow and over the snow lay a fine stippling of coalsoot and cat tracks. Behind the house stood the remains of several cars and from the rear glass of one of them a turkey watched him.

The door fell open and the dumpkeeper stood there in his shirtsleeves and suspenders. Come in, Lester, he said.

Ballard entered, his eyes wheeling about, his face stretched in a china smile. But there was no one to see. A young girl was sitting on a car seat holding a baby
and when Ballard came in she got up and went into the other room.

Get over here and warm fore ye take your death, said the dumpkeeper, making for the stove.

Where’s everbody at? said Ballard.

Shoot, said the dumpkeeper, they’ve all left out of here.

The mizzes ain’t left is she?

Aw naw. She’s a visitin her sister and them. Ever one of the girls is left savin the least’n though. We still got two of the babies here.

How come em to all leave of a sudden like that?

I don’t know, said the dumpkeeper. Young people these days, you cain’t tell em nothin. You ort to be proud, Lester, that you ain’t never married. It is a grief and a heartache and they ain’t no reward in it atall. You just raise enemies in ye own house to grow up and cuss ye.

Ballard turned his backside to the stove. Well, he said. I never could see it.

That’s where you’re smart, said the dumpkeeper.

Ballard agreed mutely, shaking his head.

I heard you got burned out over at your place, the dumpkeeper said.

Plumb to the ground, said Ballard. You never seen such a fire.

What caused it?

I don’t know. It started in the attic. I believe it must of been sparks from the chimney.

Was you asleep?

Yeah. I just did get out of there.

What did Waldrop say?

I don’t know. I ain’t seen him. I ain’t lookin for him.

Be proud you wasn’t like old man Parton up here got burned down in his bed that time.

Ballard turned around and warmed his hands at the stove. Did they ever find any of him? he said.

W
EN HE GOT TO THE HEAD OF
the hollow he rested, watching behind him the while. The tracks he followed had water standing in them and they went up the mountain but they did not come back down. He lost them later and found some different ones and he spent the afternoon in the woods stalking about like any hunter but when he returned to the cave just short of nightfall with his feet numb in the leaky shoes he had not found any of the whiskey and he had not seen Kirby.

He ran into Greer the next morning. It had begun to rain, a small cold winter rain that Ballard cursed. He lowered his head and tucked the rifle under his arm and stepped to one side to pass but the other would not have it so.

Howdy, he said.

Howdy, said Ballard.

You’re Ballard ain’t ye?

Ballard did not raise his head. He was watching the man’s shoes there in the wet leaves of the overgrown logging road. He said: No, I ain’t him, and went on.

B
ALLARD STOOD AT THE
door. There was no car in the driveway. A pale yellow trapezoid of light lay in the mud beneath the window. Within, the idiot child crawled in the floor and the girl was curled on the sofa reading a magazine. He raised his hand and tapped.

When the door opened he was standing there already wearing his sickish smile, his lips dry and tight over his teeth. Hidy, he said.

He ain’t here, said the girl. She stood hiploose in the doorframe and regarded him with frank indifference.

What time you expect him?

I don’t know. He’s took Mama to church. They won’t be back fore ten-thirty or eleven.

Well, said Ballard.

She said nothing.

Turned off cool, ain’t it?

It is standin here with the door open.

Well ain’t you goin to ast me in for a minute.

She thought about it before she swung the door back. You could see it in her eyes. But she let him in, more’s the fool.

He entered shuffling, beating his hands together. How’s that big boy? he said.

He’s crazy as ever, she said, headed for the sofa and her magazine.

Ballard squatted before the stained and drooling cretin and tousled its near bald head. Why that boy’s got good sense, he said. Ain’t ye?

Shoot, said the girl.

Ballard eyed her. She was wearing pink slacks of cheap cotton and she sat in the sofa with her legs crossed under her and a pillow in her lap. He rose and went to the stove and stood with his back to it. The stove was enclosed waisthigh in a chickenwire fence. The posts were toenailed to the floor and the fencing was nailed down as well. I bet he could push this over if he wanted to, said Ballard.

I’d smack the fire out of him too, said the girl.

Ballard was watching her. He narrowed his eyes cunningly and smiled. He’s yourn, ain’t he? he said.

The girl’s face snapped up. You’re crazy as shit, she said.

Ballard leered. Steam sifted up from his dark trouserlegs. You cain’t fool me, he said.

You’re a liar, the girl said.

You wisht I was.

You better hush.

Ballard turned to warm his front side. A car passed in the road. They both craned their necks to follow the lights along. She turned back and saw him and made a chickennecked grimace to mock him. The child in the floor sat drooling nor had it moved.

Wouldn’t be that old crazy Thomas boy, would it? said Ballard.

The girl glared at him. Her face was flushed and her eyes red.

You ain’t slipped off in the bushes with that old crazy thing have ye?

You better shut your mouth, Lester Ballard. I’ll tell Daddy on you.

I’ll tell Daddy on you, whined Ballard.

You just wait and see if I don’t.

Shoot, said Ballard. I was just teasin ye.

Why don’t you go on.

I guess you too young to know when a man’s teasin ye.

You ain’t even a man. You’re just a crazy thing.

I might be more than you think, said Ballard. How come you wear them britches? What’s it to you?

Ballard’s mouth was dry. You cain’t see nothin, he said.

She looked at him blankly, then she reddened. I ain’t got nothin for you to see, she said.

Ballard took a few wooden steps toward the sofa and
then stopped in the middle of the floor. Why don’t you show me them nice titties, he said hoarsely.

She stood up and pointed at the door. You get out of here, she said. Right now.

Come on, Ballard wheezed. I won’t ast ye nothin else.

Lester Ballard, when Daddy comes home he’s goin to kill you. Now I said get out of here and I mean it. She stamped her foot.

Ballard looked at her. All right, he said. If that’s the way you want it. He went to the door and opened it and went out and shut the door behind him. He heard her latch it. The night out there was clear and cold and the moon sat in a great ring in the sky. Ballard’s breath rose whitely toward the dark of the heavens. He turned and looked back at the house. She was watching from the corner of the window. He went on down the broken driveway to the road and crossed the ditch and went along the edge of the yard and crossed back up to the house. He picked up the rifle where he’d left it leaning against a crabapple tree and he went along the side of the house and stepped up onto a low wall of cinderblock and went along it past the clothesline and the coalpile to where he could see in the window there. He could see the back of her head above the sofa. He watched her for a while and then he raised the rifle and cocked it and laid the sights on her head. He had just done this when suddenly she rose from the sofa and turned facing the window. Ballard fired.

The crack of the rifle was outrageously loud in the
cold silence. Through the spidered glass he saw her slouch and stand again. He levered another shell into the chamber and raised the rifle and then she fell. He reached down and scrabbled about in the frozen mud for the empty shell but he could not find it. He raced around the house to the front and mounted the spindly steps and came up short against the door. You dumb son of a bitch, he said. You heard her lock it. He leaped to the ground and ran to the back of the house and entered a low screened porch and pushed open the kitchen door and went through and into the front room. She was lying in the floor but she was not dead. She was moving. She seemed to be trying to get up. A thin stream of blood ran across the yellow linoleum rug and seeped away darkly in the wood of the floor. Ballard gripped the rifle and watched her. Die, goddamn you, he said. She did.

When she had ceased moving he went about the room gathering up newspapers and magazines and shredding them. The idiot watched mutely. Ballard ripped away the chickenwire from around the stove and pushed the stove over with his foot. The pipe crashed into the room in a cloud of coalsoot. He snatched open the stove door and hot embers rolled out. He piled on papers. Soon a fire going in the middle of the room. Ballard raised up the dead girl. She was slick with blood. He got her onto his shoulder and looked around. The rifle. It was leaning against the sofa. He got it and looked about wildly. Already the ceiling of the room was packed with seething tiers of
smoke and small fires licked along the bare wood floor at the edge of the linoleum. As he whirled about there in the kitchen door the last thing he saw through the smoke was the idiot child. It sat watching him, berryeyed filthy and frightless among the painted flames.