Medicine Walk (11 page)

Stories were his wound. When he came to think of them it wasn’t for the glimmer of worlds spun out of darkness and firelight, it was for the sudden holes life can sometimes fall into. Their cabin at the logging camp became Jenks’ second home. He rarely left. At first he was just there in the mornings, curled up by the fire in a sleeping bag. Then he was at his mother’s side, walking through the bush or along the edge of the stream. Then he was the lump beside her in her bed.

“Thought she loved your dad,” Jimmy said.

He spat in the dirt and rubbed at it with the toe of his boot. “Me too,” he said.

“So what’s this then?”

“Maybe she’s lonesome.”

“Lonesome’s one thing. Shackin’ up’s another.”

He lit up a smoke. They’d both taken to tobacco and he lit another off the end of his and handed it to Jimmy. They stood in the trees, eying the cabin where his mother and Jenks slept through the mid-morning haze.

Jenks became a demanding boss. There was a tougher edge to his voice and he separated himself from them. There were harsh orders and he rode them hard and insisted on a deliberate approach to the booming. There was no room for play. But they took his words without complaint. They felt the line he drew between them and shrugged him off and set to work. They understood that. The need to bend your back to things. The need to get a job done for the job’s sake. They’d been raised with it. But it didn’t make the change any more likeable.

“Frickin’ thinks he owns us now,” Jimmy said.

“Big man now, I guess,” he said. “Probably never had no woman before.”

“Not like your mom, least ways.”

“Straight fact,” he said.

He saw the first bruise after a month.

She walked out of the bedroom ramrod straight. She walked to the counter and clattered some dishes into a pile in a ten-gallon pail and splashed water and soap over them. It was morning. He watched her and when she turned to look at him the bruise sat in a ring around her throat. Purple. Like small blooms. He stood up slowly and he could feel his guts compress. She watched him and her mouth hung open. Her eyes were vacant and dull, a murky sheen on them like black ice.

“What the fuck?” he said. He’d never used man-talk in front of her before.

“Eldon.” She said it like a whisper. She held a hand up, palm outward as though warding him off.

He could feel his thighs shaking. There was a spike in his vision, the clarity of the morning sudden and sharp. He swallowed and took a step toward her and she put a hand on his shoulder. It was cool. He stared at it, the lines and follicles etched clearly against the small clumps of knuckles.

“I’m okay. I said things I shouldn’t.”

“He hurt you.” He couldn’t say anything beyond the obvious.

“I ran off at the mouth.” She looked down at her feet.

“About what?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She looked up at him and her face was grim. “It’s over.”

He looked down at her face. There was wet at her eyes and
he felt a part of himself crumble and ache. The shaking in his legs stopped and he stood there firm and held her to him. She breathed against his chest.

“Don’t like it,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “But we’re past it.”

He sat in the dimness and stared at Jenks when she read to them that night. The big man did not turn his head. He stared down at a spot between his mother’s feet and tapped a finger slowly on the floor. There was the small curl of a smile at his lips. She read a long time and he got up now and again and tended to the fire, banked it low so it would burn long, and every time he crawled by Jenks the man would only nod. He felt himself madden. There were words that needed saying and Jenks wasn’t speaking to him. He hated him for that.

Within a week there were more bruises. They were on her shoulders and arms and back. He saw them through the half-open door to the bathroom. She faced the mirror and traced one hand down her cheek and stared at her reflection. She cupped her face in her palms and closed her eyes and he could see her fight against the tears. When he stepped toward the door she gave a startled look and eased the towel up over her shoulders and closed the door. He stood in the vacant space. He had one hand up and stretched toward the door. All he could feel was distance.

That night she read stories. But he couldn’t get beyond watching Jenks sit there mute and solid as a boulder. He sat and stared at him and clenched and unclenched his fists, and when his mother caught his eye she stared at him while she read and he wanted to hit her too.

“Fucker punched her,” he said to Jimmy later. They were smoking in the dark behind the shack.

“I didn’t see no marks.”

“He hits her where no one can see.”

“She don’t say nothin’?”

“No. That’s a pisser. She pretends it’s nothing.”

“Whattaya gonna do?”

“Can’t know. I wanna crack him. Kick his ass. Sumthin’. Anything.”

“He’s our boss.”

“I know. Don’t mean we gotta take no shit. There or here. Especially here.”

They smoked their cigarettes down to the butt and lit two more off them and ground the first out under their boots. It was full dark. Moonless. An owl. Ravens. The sound of a truck gearing down for the hill that led to the highway into town. He took a draw and held it, felt the smoke churn in his lungs, then let it out with his head tilted back, straight up toward the stars.

“Happens again or worse, somethin’s gonna give,” he said. He flicked his smoke out into the air and they watched it arc like a falling star and land in the gravel and roll.

“I’m in,” Jimmy said.

Four nights later he stood in the trees. Neither he nor Jimmy could stomach the idea of sitting with Jenks while she read now and while Jimmy excused himself politely, he’d taken to walking out after he’d eaten. But he never went far. He found a place in a copse of trees that provided a good vantage point and he stood there and watched the cabin. Now he saw the lights in the cabin flicker before he heard the sounds, and when he drew close enough to discern them they rumbled
and crashed like logs in a flume. He heard the slap of an open palm on skin, and the crash of silverware, and when he broke from the trees Jimmy was suddenly beside him.

They ran in huge leaping bounds. She was screaming openly now and they could hear them slam into walls. They cleared the front step together and strode through the door into the pale yellow light of the shack. Jenks was bent over her with one hand at her throat and the other drawn back behind his shoulder ready to slam it into her. She could see them over that shoulder and her eyes were wide and filled with horror. Jenks turned his head, and when he saw them he let her go. She slid to the floor in a heap and let her head fall onto her arms while Jenks turned to face them. He stepped forward slowly. The bulk of him eating up the narrow space between them.

“You want some, pissants?” A thin line of spittle draped from his lips. He raised his fists.

“Not us who needs the beatin’,” Jimmy said.

“You two couldn’t beat a rug.”

“Step up and see, asshole,” Jimmy said.

He moved beside Jimmy and they squared to face Jenks, who smiled and spread his legs wide. Then the smile vanished slowly from his face and he stood clenching and unclenching his fists, urging them toward him. Taunting. When he moved they stepped apart. He grinned again. He was big and they could hear the floorboards creak beneath his weight and he juggled his fists. His mother crawled across the floor to the shelter of the space beneath the frail table and it cut him deeply to see her reduced to scuttling like a rodent.

“She don’t need none of you,” Eldon said.

Jenks smiled. “What she need she gets,” he said. “Know that if you were man enough. Kid.”

“My dad woulda killed you.”

“Yer dad ain’t here.”

“We’re here,” Jimmy said, taking a step forward.

“Then come ahead. Don’t let fear or common sense hold ya back.”

He could barely breathe. The roof of his mouth was dry and he fought to swallow. When he put his hands up the tightness in his shoulders made his arms tremble and when Jenks saw it he laughed and swung a long, wide punch at him. He ducked it. He could feel the whoosh of it in the air but he never saw the kick coming. It caught him in the belly and all the air went out of him and he fell to the floor, the rough wood of the floorboards at his cheek, the sharp, bitter taste of puke at his throat, and he closed his eyes.

Then he heard a dull whack like an axe handle on a sandbag and the cabin shook as a body hit the floor. He flicked his eyes open and Jenks lay beside him. They lay there eyeball to eyeball and he saw the man’s amazement when he raised fingers to his face and they were dripping with blood. He rubbed them on his cheek and his hand trailed down the lines of his face and fell and his big knuckles clunked to the floor and his eyes slammed shut and he didn’t move again.

He rolled onto his back and stared up at Jimmy. There was a hunting knife and a short, stout club in his hands.

“What the fuck, Jimmy?”

“I been waitin’ for this,” Jimmy said. “Waited the son of a bitch out is what I done.”

They heard his mother scream. They turned and she crawled out from under the table and scrabbled across the floor to where Jenks lay and put her hands on his face.

“Don’t worry. He’s out,” Jimmy said. “I done it. I took care of it.”

“You killed him,” she said. When she looked up she was crying.

“Woulda done more if I coulda.”

“You killed him,” she said again.

Jenks moaned and clutched at his side and blood seeped between his fingers. His mother scuttled closer and lifted his head and sat with it cradled in her lap. When she looked up at them again she was dry-eyed.

“You can’t say he didn’t deserve this and more,” he said, stepping up to stand beside Jimmy.

“You don’t know him.”

“Don’t care to.”

She put a knuckle to her forehead and closed her eyes. Then she shook her head as if to clear it and when she spoke it was harder. “You can’t stay here. You gotta run now. If he don’t sic the law on you the company will. He’s a foreman. You attacked him. They’ll jail you both.”

“Be worth it so folks know what a shit heel he is,” Jimmy said.

Jenks moaned again and his eyes fluttered open. They circled and spun and then came to rest and he stared at them, mute and vacant. “You’d best pack, Eldon,” she said.

“You’d choose him over me?” he said, his breathing rough and ragged.

“I’m not choosing. I’m telling you how it has to be.”

He stood up. He held his hand out and stared at it and stared at her. He wanted to slap her. He forced the hand down to his side. Jimmy eyed him. He glared at his mother and grimaced and he could feel the muscles in his face
quiver at the hard set of his jaw. He felt his throat constricted and aching.

“I ain’t asking. I’m telling,” she said.

He crossed the room in quick strides and pulled a rucksack from the closet and flung a few clothes into it. He went to the cupboard and pulled down the mason jar with his wages in it. “Ain’t gonna need this,” he said to her. “Got you a man to provide now. Only now there ain’t gonna be no one to help you when he does it again. But that’s yer choice, isn’t it?”

“Go now, Eldon, if you know what’s good for you. The both of you. Just go!”

He crossed the room and flung open the door. “Jimmy,” he said. He draped the rucksack over one shoulder.

Jimmy heaved a deep breath and looked square at her. “Hope he makes it,” he said. “But you tell him to watch his back. He won’t never, ever know where I’m gonna be.”

When Jimmy joined him at the door his cheeks were wet and he wiped at them with the edge of his fists. They stepped out onto the porch and turned and looked back at her. She lay Jenks’ head softly on the floor. Then she stood, smoothed the front of the smock dress, and regarded them blandly. “You best go,” she said. “I’m gonna fetch help.”

He glared at her then took the knife from Jimmy’s hand. He drove the knife into the jamb of the door. The shack shook under the impact and they turned and walked away into the night, the thrum of the knife quivering.

“
DID YOU GO BACK
?”
THE KID ASKED
.

“No.”

“Not ever?”

“No.” His father pulled the blanket tighter around himself and stared at the fire. He was trembling. The lines on his face were deeper, the shadow and the flicker of the flames making it look pocked, scarred, and ravaged. “Wanted to. Sometimes I even kinda headed that way. But we was proud. Both of us. Jimmy and me.

“We followed the work wherever it led. Lost ourselves in money, good times, the feel of men around us, the toughness of them. We wanted that. To be tough. Not bugged by nothin’ even though we were.”

“Your mother?” Becka asked. “You never wanted to find out how she made out?”

His father gazed at the kid meekly. There was a depth to his eyes the kid had never seen, a woe, a bleak space all the light seemed to seep into and fade, and it embarrassed him and he looked away. His father picked up the mug of whisky and held it in both hands, spun it slowly in his palms then set it down on the floor again. He put his head back and stared at the ceiling. “Didn’t know how to try,” he said. “Never cottoned on to whether she wanted me gone or saved.”

“You’re sure she was makin’ a choice?” Becka asked.

“Felt like it right then,” he said. “Felt like I was no account and it pissed me off. Made walkin’ away easier, but the anger cooled after a time. Then it was just guilt an’ shame over
leavin’ her alone with that bastard. Got to be so it ate at me bad. I dealt with it the only way I knew how.”

He looked at the kid. But the kid wouldn’t meet his eye, and he put a hand to his forehead and ran his palm across the top of his head. “Love an’ shame never mix,” he said. “One’s always gonna be runnin’ roughshod over the other. Lovin’ her. Feelin’ guilt an’ shame then gettin’ angry as hell at myself. I never could figger what to do and then there was a whole pile of years gone by an’ I give up on it.”

“You chicken-shitted me out of a grandmother,” the kid said quietly, staring at his feet.