Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [101]
Silence.
Bud studies the crowd and tips his forefinger to his brow.
Jones, talking to his cohorts, says, I’m wondering something. This mountain’s not a good place to sell bonded liquor. We’re making our own. So, same question. What the hell is he doing up here?
Bud had been too preoccupied with not freezing to death to have premeditated a good story. He starts riffing grammar however it links up in the moment.
—Seen a couple of kids? he says. Boy and a girl? Blond-headed? I’m part of the search party. The kids have been gone a day or two now. So, probably in this weather, we’re looking for bodies.
—Party? the old bootlegger says.
—Got separated from the others some while back. By the lake.
—And you kept on climbing by yourself? For what, six or eight hours?
—I really want to find those kids.
—Yeah, Jones says. That’s exactly how you struck me back in the summer sitting on my porch. The kind of fellow would give Jesus a run for his money when it comes to lost lambs.
But the tone Jones tries to set in regard to Bud won’t hold. This isn’t anything anyone is interested in. They drift back to the night they want.
And Bud is so happy to be suddenly not dying, that he doesn’t have room to be worried too much about anything. You fall from the brink of icy death into the warm lap of plenty, you lie back and enjoy.
Doesn’t take any time to learn that these old boys have all the shit in the world they need. Everything carried up by several packhorses, now standing at the edge of the circle, each one relaxing with a hind foot tipped. There’s food to last a couple of weeks, eating big. Sixteen-inch iron skillets, a refrigerator rack for a cooking grate, a Dutch oven for when biscuits and cornbread become necessary. A chain saw and a maul and splitting wedge to keep the fire fed. Much pork, especially in the form of bacon, but also wonderful sausages and smoked country hams. Syrup in gallon tins. Dozens of eggs sunk down in sacks of flour. Everybody wants pancakes at three in the morning, they’re set to go. Plenty of dried white beans to cook with ham hocks if anybody gets to craving vegetables.
Also, theoretically, all the coon and possum the dogs can raise. Except, sadly, little to show in that category of meat. Way deep in the outer reaches of firelight, pinch-waisted hounds shift about humpbacked with self-conscious looks on their faces. Talk of their failure swirls around the fire. Some dude lifting his head and saying something and then somebody else. Faces tipping up to the fire and catching the light and then nodding dark.
Somebody says, I never did confidence your blue tick much.
Jones says, Can we keep the local-color shit to a bare minimum?
And then he says to Bud, Whose kids would those be that you’re looking for?
—That Luce girl, Bud says. Trying to adjust his language to the audience.
—Lit’s girl, somebody says.
—Not hers. Her sister’s kids, somebody else says.
On the far side of the fire circle, a faint voice behind the roar and crackle says, Bad for one family to have so much trouble strike so close together. Lily and Lit and now this.
—Maybe we’ll find the kids tomorrow and maybe Lit’s gonna show up any day, Bud says, trying to get out ahead. Maybe Lit’s been to the beach with one of his women.
—Anyway, somebody says, the kids are retarded or something, so I guess they wandered off.
—Though you got to wonder, Bud says. Maybe she got tired of being substitute mama for messed-up kids. Probably they’ll never be found.
Some few of the drunk hunters who have known Luce since she was a child stick up for her, and some who hold Lit in low regard figure it’s possible. And then somebody brings up the school burning down when Luce walked out on her job, and they nearly all nod solemnly.
The talk swirls back around to shared memories and other useless bullshit. Baseball games back shortly after World War I, how somebody dropped a fly ball or hit a home run in the ninth inning. Ridicule and glory. Men