Summer/Fall 2016

 

by Samuel K. Wilkes

 

Their howls sifted through the wooded dawn, waking the old man. He kept still, listening flat in his bed, picturing their reckless grins and imagining the whiskey fog in their breath. He eyed his granddaughter next to him as she clamped down into the pillow. Then he heard a bucket of syrupy deer guts splatter on his gravel driveway as their truck tires spun out.
That’s it.

After breakfast, Coleman drove down the county road through a wall of pines into town. When he arrived at Weatherford’s store, the day was cooler than the dawn, as if the sun meant nothing.

“Seems fall has finally made it to Alabama,” Bill Weatherford said as Coleman entered.

“Enjoy it while it’s here,” another customer smirked, blowing on his coffee.

Bill rang up the customer, then turned to Coleman, standing motionless like a large old oak in the middle of his store, “Can I help you, Coleman?”

He remained stagnant, looking past the short owner to the back aisles. The silence turned awkward as Coleman pondered something no one else was privy to, then he spoke, “I need a gate.”

Bill didn’t have to ask many questions to understand Coleman’s sudden need. He had heard the old man’s complaints before about his property—typically as minor venting while stopping in the store for some other project. This seemed different though. This seemed like there was no going back.

“Now, Coleman, I wouldn’t cross ways with those Rasin boys.”

Coleman looked to the floor and followed its cracks to the adjacent wall, as if studying a boundary line. He slid his hands in his overalls and tilted his head up to the paneled ceiling, “Bill, my great-granddaddy got that property from the United States government back in 1902. Mr. Roosevelt’s secretary signed off on the deed. That’s our 40 acres. Only property we own in Alabama. And we been here over 100 years. Now I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some country-ass deer-poaching thugs ruin it for me and my granddaughter.”

Bill wiped his brow with a handkerchief and folded it back into his pocket, “Now I meant no disrespect, Coleman. It’s your right. Now tell me how can I help.”

“Like I said, I need a gate.”

Coleman knew just as well as Bill—if not better—the rumors surrounding those Rasin boys. Their reputation followed them, lingering long after like the smell of stale cigarettes left by a chain smoker. But Coleman knew most of it as just talk. Or fear of the unknown. They were still kids to him. Kids that had crossed the line.

The Rasin boys owned a small tract of land on the west side of Coleman’s property, less than a third of the size. Problem was there were only two ways to access the Rasin property: either driving thirty minutes down Interstate 65 and fifteen minutes north up a county road or a ten-mile drive through Coleman’s property. Coleman had a prior agreement with their father, Will Rasin, years ago that let them use the access. A reasonable request. A reasonable acceptance. But once Will passed things started changing over the years. The rowdy sons and their friends took it to another level. Coming through at odd hours, illegally spotlight hunting, leaving their trash and guts strewn across the property. Coleman wasn’t the only victim. The Rasin boys had learned the old retirement community would bend easily to bare aggression. So like a wild pack of dogs, indifferent to customs or laws or life, they roamed the rural area, imposing their will.

“You need anything else?” Bill asked as he helped Coleman load the last board into the back of his truck.

“Just prayers.”

He closed the tailgate without looking back.

#

Coleman took the long way home so he could drive by the Rasin house. As predicted, the boys were all out front waiting for noon without a care between them. Two stripped Pontiacs sat in the side yard; weeds and kudzu having claimed one back to the wild. Thick smoke billowed from a charcoal grill. The decapitated head of a small buck, with its pitiful three-point antlers, lay on the open tailgate with his pink tongue dangling. An immature deer that any true hunter would not dream of taking. Coleman knew they killed that deer on his land. As he often told people, the Rasin property was too small one couldn’t even track a coon through it.

The boys stood in their camouflage bibs and stained white undershirts, plugs of tobacco in their lips, smiling and waving in a mocking manner at Coleman’s blue truck as it rattled by. The old man wanted them to see. He wanted them to know he wanted them to see.

#

As soon as Lucy’s sitter dropped her off, she ran over to the gravel drive to ask her granddaddy as many questions as she could fathom. Coleman wiped the sweat from his brow and patted her on the back.

“You like it?” he asked, smiling down at her wide brown eyes.

“We getting a dog?” she asked, excitedly.

Coleman looked at the gate, confused by the question, then followed her train of thought, “Lord no, sweetie, it’s to keep the strangers out. Remember what your granddaddy told you about strangers?”

Lucy nodded and ran up to the new gate, hopping on the first rail. The “No Trespassing” sign rattled with her weight, still missing its final two screws. Coleman could still smell the lingering odor of the deer guts that he just cleaned out of the gravel. Lucy didn’t seem to notice. He tried not to think about the countless times he had cleaned up their shit. He just kept telling himself it was the last time.

“Hold on, sweetie, and I’ll swing you out.”

He unlatched the hook and opened the gate wide with Lucy riding the entire way. She laughed and asked to ride again.

“Look,” he said, distracting her, “I got a key so we can lock people out and sleep good at night. We don’t have to hear those wild boys coming across our property no more.”

She looked at the gate and then back at her granddaddy, “Can I have a key?”

“Don’t worry, sweetie, I aint ever locking you out.”

#

That night the temperature dropped into the low forties, unseasonably cold for a lower Alabama November. Coleman woke as Lucy kicked his ribs under the double blankets. A space heater hummed in the corner of the small room. He watched Lucy play and twitch in her dreams. She had his piercing eyes with his wife’s nose and full cheeks. Prettiest girl he had ever seen. He thought about her mother—his daughter—and how her selfish choices and addictions placed the innocent child down a dangerous path without parents. He was happy to take her in, even after his wife passed last year.

Coleman made Lucy say the Lord’s Prayer every night before bed. His wife had started the tradition when they first took her in. He continued it. He wasn’t exactly sure why, it just sounded like the right thing to say. But he knew that wasn’t enough, he knew this wasn’t how it should be, he knew she deserved better. As he stared up at the cracks in the wooden ceiling, he wondered if he was being selfish, too; putting her in the middle of this needless strife with the Rasin boys.

I aint one to give up a fight, but if I need to, I’ll sell it all and move for her, he rationalized to himself in the dark.

As he rolled his head to the other side of the pillow, a truck door clapped.

Then another.

He sprang up. Holding his breath to take in every sound.

Amongst the crickets and frogs, he heard them spit their chew into the dead leaves, then the sound of a cork sucked from a bottle. Their low outside rumblings vibrated their way through the old wooden house. Coleman peeled his arm out from under Lucy, careful not to disturb her dreams. As he crept to the closet, their shadows flashed across the moonlit curtains. They grew larger. Closer. Then louder. One coughed. Another laughed. Coleman’s heart sped up. Beating too fast for his old age. But he couldn’t worry about that now.

Hot sweat ran down his arms as he took his Berretta from the corner of the closet. He broke the breech open and felt the smooth primer of the shells. Lucy stirred in her dream, under the mound of warm blankets, ignorant of the surrounding world.

Then the doors clapped again. Coleman froze. Their truck cranked and reversed out of the driveway, throwing the lights across the house. Then a bottle exploded against the gate. Laughter echoed down the county road.

#

That morning he didn’t tell Lucy what he heard while she slept. Or that he felt the need to grab his shotgun. She was too young to be bothered with such things. But he almost had to tell her after lunch the next day.

As the two sat outside the Dairy Queen finishing a vanilla cone, Coleman heard a rattling behind him and a barking voice.

“Hey man! You gonna let us get a key to dat gate?”

Coleman turned slowly to find young Willie Rasin pacing behind him, his cell phone to his ear.

“I’m sorry?”

“Dat gate you put up. You gonna let us get a key?” he spat, holding the cell phone away from his ear as if casually pausing a conversation to request the time from a stranger.

Coleman turned his back to the young man, “That’s just for family.”

“Ah, I see how it is, you must care a lot about family then.”

Coleman didn’t turn or respond.

“She your fam?” Willie stepped forward, pointing to Lucy with his cell phone.

Coleman jerked, slightly rising from his bench seat, “I’m done talking about this.”

Willie put the phone back to his ear and nodded, “Naw, naw, we aint even started talking old man.”

He eyed them as he backed away to the Dairy Queen entrance, then threw the glass door open.

“You finished?” Coleman asked Lucy as he wiped his hands.

“Who was that, Papa C?”

Coleman looked back at the young man inside, hanging over the counter, pestering some girl. “Nobody, sweetie. Just some kid who thinks he’s entitled to something that he aint earned.”

#

As November slipped into December without incident, Coleman gained confidence in his gate. He hadn’t seen or heard the Rasin boys since that night and following day. His concerns of retaliation faded. He had always assumed they were just punk kids without any real teeth. Now he started to believe it.

He strutted into Weatherford’s weeks later and confidently reported the problem finally resolved.

“I aint ever slept so good!” he slapped the counter with his hand like a large beaver tail.

Bill scratched his white slicked hair, “I’ll be damned, Coleman. I won’t lie, I was worried about you. I thought those boys would—”

“They’s just kids, Bill. It’s about time they show a little respect. Hell, of course they going to keep doing what they do as long we sit on our hands and let ‘em. They aint my people.”

Bill nodded and continued rolling his tobacco.

“We sure a dying breed, Bill, but we know more than these young thugs. Bout time we damn act like it,” Coleman huffed, putting his large hands in his pockets to finish his rant. “Well, ring me up now, I got get on back. My granddaughter’s waiting on me up at the house.”

Bill charged him for some sunflower seeds and a bag of candy corn for Lucy. As Coleman returned to his truck, clouds rolled over the sleepy downtown, shading the early afternoon. Coleman eyed the businesses around the square; most were boarded up, some were rotting. An old community that had lost its thriving young blood. The old oaks on the square hissed as the wind passed through their branches. The air vibrated with an electricity that comes only with an approaching storm.

#

Coleman knew some of the Rasin’s relatives worked at the volunteer fire station. So he didn’t think anything of it when he drove by and saw the Rasin boys standing beside their truck parked in front of the station garage. He gave a nonchalant wave out his open window, spit a sunflower seed, and continued up the county road. They acted like they didn’t see him, standing in front of the garage and pointing to the sky.

Two miles further, Coleman slowed for a raccoon crossing with her young ones. He thought it odd to see the nocturnal animal in the daylight, but he let the family take their time. One by one they disappeared into the dense pines.

The winter clouds blended into black towers of smoke as Coleman rounded the corner before his driveway. Three neighbors stood in his yard, staring at the auburn flames whipping atop his roof. Coleman jumped the curb and dropped out of the truck without killing the engine. The neighbors turned to him, speechless, holding their arms out and shaking their heads. He didn’t make a sound as he marched past them. Before he could make it to the porch steps, they grabbed the large man.

“It’s too late, Coleman,” one of them pleaded.

He strained forward, the fire reflecting in his eyes. Another joined the three and tackled him to the ground. He was old, but still had the brute force of a bull.

“My Lucy!” he cried out. “Goddammit, I gotta get my Lucy!”

“You’ll kill yourself, Coleman. That fire’s about done eat up the whole house.”

He growled from the ground and threw the men off with one solid swing. The flames lashed at his brow as he approached the front porch. One side of the house cracked and crumbled into a blaze.

“Lucy!” he cried, sweat running into his tears and becoming one.

Coleman pulled his shirt off and wrapped it around his mouth. He took the deepest breath he could manage and ducked into the dark smoke of the doorway.

“Papa C! Papa C!” he thought he heard as the deadly heat braced his neck, driving him to his knees in the den.

The main roof beam crackled and collapsed, erupting into a violent ball of fire. The neighbors lost their breath, helpless, trying not to turn away. Down the road, the Rasin boys eventually moved their truck and let the fire engine leave the station. Only to arrive to a massive uncontrolled bonfire, sweltering next to a new unlatched gate. The flames whipped and climbed upward, dissolving into thick clouds that snaked into other parts of the county.

 

 

[Check out Samuel’s backporch wisdom here]