Child of God (8 page)

Get in here, said a woman in a thin cotton house-dress.

He went on up the porchsteps and entered the house. He spoke with the woman but his eye was on the daughter. She moved ill at ease about the house, all tits and plump young haunch and naked legs. Cold enough for ye? said Ballard.

What about this weather, said the woman.

I brung him a playpretty, Ballard said, nodding to the thing in the floor.

The woman turned her shallow dish-shaped face upon him. Done what? she said.

Brung him a playpretty. Looky here.

He hauled forth the half froze robin from his shirt and held it out. It turned its head. Its eye flicked.

Looky here, Billy, said the woman.

It didn’t look. A hugeheaded bald and slobbering primate that inhabited the lower reaches of the house, familiar of the warped floorboards and the holes tacked up with foodtins hammered flat, a consort of roaches and great hairy spiders in their season, perenially benastied and afflicted with a nameless crud.

Here’s ye a playpretty.

The robin started across the floor, its wings awobble like lateen sails. It spied the … what? child? child, and veered off toward a corner. The child’s dull eyes followed. It stirred into sluggish motion.

Ballard caught the bird and handed it down. The child took it in fat gray hands.

He’ll kill it, the girl said.

Ballard grinned at her. It’s hisn to kill if he wants to, he said.

The girl pouted her mouth at him. Shoot, she said.

I got somethin I’m a goin to bring you, Ballard told her.

You ain’t got nothin I want, she said.

Ballard grinned.

I got some coffee hot on the stove, said the woman from the kitchen. Did you want a cup?

I wouldn’t care to drink maybe just a cup, said Ballard, rubbing his hands together to say how cold it was.

At the kitchen table, a huge white porcelain cup before him, the steam white in the cold of the room by the one window where he sat and the moisture condensing on the flower faded oilcloth. He tilted canned milk in and stirred.

What time do you reckon Ralph will be in?

He ain’t said.

Well.

Just wait on him if ye want.

Well. I’ll wait on him a minute. If he don’t come I got to get on.

He heard the back door shut. He saw her go along the muddied rut of a path to the outhouse. He looked at the woman. She was rolling out biscuits at the sideboard. He looked quickly back out the window. The girl opened the outhouse door and closed it behind her. Ballard lowered his face into the steam from his cup.

Ralph didn’t come and didn’t come. Ballard finished the coffee and said that it was good and no thanks he didn’t want no more and said it again and said that he’d better get on.

I wish you’d looky here Mama, the girl said from the other room.

What is it? said the woman.

Ballard had stood up and was stretching uneasily. I better get on, he said.

Just wait on him if ye want.

Mama.

Ballard looked toward the front room. The bird crouched in the floor. The girl appeared in the doorway. I wisht you’d look in here, she said.

What is it? said the woman.

She was pointing toward the child. It sat as before, a gross tottertoy in a gray small shirt. Its mouth was stained with blood and it was chewing. Ballard went on through the door into the room and reached down to get the bird. It fluttered on the floor and fell over. He picked it up. Small red nubs worked in the soft down. Ballard set the bird down quickly.

I told ye not to let him have it, the girl said.

The bird floundered on the floor.

The woman had come to the door. She was wiping her hands on her apron. They were all looking at the bird. The woman said: What’s he done to it?

He’s done chewed its legs off, the girl said.

Ballard grinned uneasily. He wanted it to where it couldn’t run off, he said.

If I didn’t have no better sense than that I’d quit, said the girl.

Hush now, said the woman. Get that mess out of his mouth fore he gets sick on it.

T
HEY WASN’T NONE OF EM
any account that I ever heard of. I remember his grandaddy, name was Leland, he was gettin a war pension as a old man. Died back in the late twenties. Was supposed to of been in the Union Army. It was a known fact he didn’t do nothin the whole war but scout the bushes. They come lookin for him two or three times. Hell, he never did go to war. Old man Cameron tells this and I don’t know what cause he’d have to lie. Said they come out there to get Leland Ballard and while they was huntin him in the barn and smokehouse and all he slipped down out of the bushes to where their horses was at and cut the leather off the sergeant’s saddle to halfsole his shoes with.

No, I don’t know how he got that pension. Lied to em, I reckon. Sevier County put more men in the Union Army than it had registered voters but he wasn’t one of em. He was just the only one had brass enough to ast for a pension.

I’ll tell you one thing he was if he wasn’t no soldier. He was a by god White Cap.

O yes. He was that. Had a younger brother was one too that run off from here about that time. It’s a known fact he was hanged in Hattiesburg Mississippi. Goes to show it ain’t just the place. He’d of been hanged no matter where he lived.

I’ll say one thing about Lester though. You can trace em back to Adam if you want and goddamn if he didn’t outstrip em all.

That’s the god’s truth.

Talkin about Lester …

You all talk about him. I got supper waitin on me at the house.

II

O
N A COLD WINTER MORNING
in the early part of December Ballard came down off Frog Mountain with a brace of squirrels hanging from his belt and emerged onto the Frog Mountain road. When he looked back toward the turnaround he saw that there was a car there with the motor chugging gently and blue smoke coiling into the cold morning air. Ballard crossed the road and dropped down off through the weeds and climbed up through the woods until he came out above the turnaround. The car sat idling as before. He could not see anyone inside.

He made his way along by the roadside growth until he was within thirty feet of the car and there he stood watching. He could hear the steady loping of the engine
and he could hear somewhere faintly in the quiet mountainside morning the sound of a guitar and singing. After a while it stopped and he could hear a voice.

It’s a radio, he said.

There was no sign of anyone in the car. The windows were fogged but it didn’t look like there was anyone in there.

He came out of the bushes and walked on down past the automobile. He was just a squirrelhunter going on down the road if it was anybody’s business. When he passed the side of the automobile he looked in. The front seat was empty but in the back were two people half naked sprawled together. A bare thigh. An arm upflung. A hairy pair of buttocks. Ballard had kept on walking. Then he stopped. A pair of eyes staring with lidless fixity.

He turned and came back. With eyes uneasy he peered down through the window. Out of the disarray of clothes and the contorted limbs another’s eyes watched sightlessly from a bland white face. It was a young girl. Ballard tapped at the glass. The man on the radio said: We’d like to dedicate this next number especially for all the sick and the shut-in. On the mountain two crows put forth, thin raucous calls in the cold and lonely air.

Ballard opened the car door, his rifle at the ready. The man lay sprawled between the girl’s thighs. Hey, said Ballard.

Gathering flowers for the master’s bouquet.

Beautiful flowers that will never decay.

Ballard sat on the edge of the seat by the steering wheel and reached and turned the radio off. The motor went chug chug chug. He looked down and found the key and turned the ignition off. It was very quiet there in the car, just the three of them. He knelt in the seat and leaned over the back and studied the other two. He reached down and pulled the man by the shoulder. The man’s arm dropped off the seat onto the floor of the car and Ballard, rearing up at this unexpected movement, banged his head on the roof.

He didn’t even swear. He knelt there staring at the two bodies. Them sons of bitches is deader’n hell, he said.

He could see one of the girl’s breasts. Her blouse was open and her brassiere was pushed up around her neck. Ballard stared for a long time. Finally he reached across the dead man’s back and touched the breast. It was soft and cool. He stroked the full brown nipple with the ball of his thumb.

He was still holding the rifle. He backed off the seat and stood in the road and looked and listened. There was not even a birdcall to hear. He took the squirrels from his belt and laid them on top of the car and stood the rifle against the fender and got in again. Leaning over the seat he took hold of the man and tried to pull him off the girl. The body sprawled heavily, the head lolled. Ballard got him pulled sideways but he was jammed against the back of the front seat. He could see the girl better now. He reached and stroked her other breast. He did this for a while and then he pushed her
eyes shut with his thumb. She was young and very pretty. Ballard shut the front door of the car against the cold. He reached down and got hold of the man again. He seemed to be hung. He was wearing a shirt and his trousers were collapsed about the tops of his shoes. With a sort of dull loathing Ballard seized the cold and naked hipbone and pulled him over. He rolled off and slid down between the seats onto the floor where he lay staring up with one eye open and one half shut.

They godamighty, said Ballard. The dead man’s penis, sheathed in a wet yellow condom, was pointing at him rigidly.

He backed out of the car and picked up the rifle and walked out to where he could see down the road. He came back and shut the car door and walked around the other side. It was very cold. After a while he got in the car again. The girl lay with her eyes closed and her breasts peeking from her open blouse and her pale thighs spread. Ballard climbed over the seat.

The dead man was watching him from the floor of the car. Ballard kicked his feet out of the way and picked the girl’s panties up from the floor and sniffed at them and put them in his pocket. He looked out the rear window and he listened. Kneeling there between the girl’s legs he undid his buckle and lowered his trousers.

A crazed gymnast laboring over a cold corpse. He poured into that waxen ear everything he’d ever thought of saying to a woman. Who could say she did
not hear him? When he’d finished he raised up and looked out again. The windows were fogged. He took the hem of the girl’s skirt with which to wipe himself. He was standing on the dead man’s legs. The dead man’s member was still erect. Ballard pulled up his trousers and climbed over the seat and opened the door and stepped out into the road. He tucked in his shirt and buckled his breeches up. Then he picked up his rifle and started down the road. He hadn’t gone far before he stopped and came back. The first thing he saw was the squirrels on the roof. He put them inside his shirt and opened the door and reached in and turned the key and pushed the starter button. It cranked loudly in the silence and the motor came to life. He looked at the gas gauge. The needle showed a quarter tank. He glanced at the bodies in the back and shut the door and started back down the road.