road beside the gas well to where Lester treed a coon for me last week. Do you know what happened? As I was getting ready to leave, out came that old she-coon from the edge of the woods. I sat there, and soon it called and two twin kits came running out behind it, looking all tiny and squirrelly, running sideways, and I could see it all in the light of the moon. I wished you was there to watch this. Would you come out for a drive? I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.
Your Friend,
Lux Cranfield
PS. Can l come around for you tonight at dark?
Lux looked up as Dessie came out at last bell. He could see her right off, wearing a yellow-and-white flowered skirt, smiling about something. She looked older somehow than last night, more like a town girl. He began to wave at her, but then he stopped. She was halfway back in the bus line, talking to Jerry Higgs, the teacher’s boy with the gold Nova, a senior who’d won a scholarship to WVU. Lux’s jaw set, and he turned away. His hand clenched as he crushed the note into a tight ball. He pulled his A-1 cap down low on his face, rubbed at his eyepatch, then headed in the opposite direction. When Billie Price walked over to the fence, Lux had almost reached the Jeep.
“Hey, Lux,” Billie called. “Want to give me a lift home?”
“Not today,” Lux said. He stared once more at the bus line, turned toward the Jeep, and then stopped. The note felt solid in his right hand. He gripped it and then threw it hard enough to hit Billie on the top of her dark bangs. “Give that to your big sister, will ya?”
“Sure, Lux.” Billie fumbled to keep her schoolbooks from hitting the ground as she picked it up. “Nice throw!” she called, but he started up his Jeep and didn’t seem to hear.
ALL THAT afternoon Lux drove with the Jeep’s top down, sipping beer out of a grocery sack, listening to Top of the Country, WKKW. He passed the A-1 mill, where for almost a quarter mile irregular boards, cutoffs, and slabs were stacked on the side of the road for the taking. He passed the giant sawdust pile at the south end of the chipper, then headed toward the ridge and turned off at the muddy logging road that ran along North Fork into the deep woods. He felt like a green kid for letting himself get torn up. He should’ve seen that dead limb. Anyone who knew anything would have looked in all directions, including up, and once he’d seen it, he should have planned his cuts before he started up the saw. But hey, Lux thought, bad luck is bad luck, and sometimes your number comes up. Soon he’d find out more about his left eye. From what he could feel, it seemed like the stitches had healed. If he had his way, he’d kick off the cowboy boots and trade them for steel-toe boots, be back in the woods with Alan Ray and the crew.
And then there was Dessie. She must’ve seen him today at the school fence. Didn’t she want a ride home? What was she smiling about with that pissant Higgs? Where were his old teammates? Were they at practice? Last year it would have been him pitching, laying on the gas to see how much heat they could take. Now that was something to look back on, but not a part of him, not something to look forward to.
Lux shifted the jeep into first gear, then second. The sun was slanting lower in the west. He wondered if any girl was worth this trouble, but then again, he’d known Dessie all his life, she was as straight as an arrow, raised right, respected. Bertram wouldn’t let her get away with much. Lux popped open a can of beer. As the warm alcohol stung his lips, he remembered how he felt last night, his breath steaming in the cold air, the far-off barking of farm dogs and baying of coonhounds, the light of the full moon, the shadow of the bare branches; then later, staying up all night, how many times he tried to write that note, trying to figure out what he wanted to tell her, trying to get each goddamn word just goddamn right.
He guided the Jeep along the gravel road, stretching out his arms and fingers, missing the weight of his chainsaw, the way it ripped into oak and cherry, the sweet greasy smell of burnt sawdust mixed with chain oil. Most of all he missed the work, the task at hand, each felled tree its own kind of puzzle. Lux killed the Jeep’s engine beside a logging cut to listen for the distant whine of the saws, maybe to catch a glimpse of his crew, maybe say hey. But all he heard was the tick of the manifold cooling, the creak of trees in the wind, the cries of distant crows settling in to roost.
THE RISING moon lit the edges of clouds in the east when Lux parked on the wide shoulder of CR 57 and walked over the Prices’ footbridge. The golden retriever came out of the doghouse and halfway growled, but when she saw who it was, she yawned quietly and wagged her tail, watching from the end of her run. The house was dark downstairs, but upstairs light glowed in several windows. Bertram and Rose’s room, probably, was on the uphill side of the house, back from the road, where a single shaft of dim light slanted back toward the chicken pen. In the front, facing the road, could be the girls’ rooms, but where was Dessie? Lux picked up a small handful of gravel, then squinted, stood back in the shadows. He felt like a relief pitcher who’d been called to the mound but wasn’t sure which direction to throw the ball. One or two small stones could tap at the base of a window frame, but which window?
There was a way to get closer, and he pulled himself up into the lower branches of a large flowering crab apple tree between two shaded windows. He held onto a branch above his head, straining to listen to the noises in the house. From his perch in the tree, the moon dimmed behind dappled layers of clouds, the air around him was so fragrant he was almost dizzy. It smelled like girls. What was he thinking, he wondered. He was afraid to let go and rub his eyepatch, afraid he might take a sneezing fit. He wondered whether he should get down and leave, just cut his losses. He shifted his weight to get more comfortable, and the limb creaked under his feet.
Suddenly Billie’s shadowy profile appeared near one of the shaded windows. She said something to her sister somewhere in the house. Lux focused on the window frame, and even though Dessie was nowhere to be seen, he tossed a couple of small stones at Billie’s head, then winced as they clattered against glass. The shade flew up and the window lifted. Billie stared outside, craning her head toward the road. “Hey, Lux, is that you?” she called into the night air.
“Good God, girl,” said Lux, “You’re loud enough to be heard halfway to town! Where’s your sister? Did you give her that note?”
Billie gestured at the next window. “She’s a-waitin’ for you.” Billie’s overly loud whisper was like something from a school play. He turned to his left, inching out to get a better look. As he neared the slender end of the limb, the slick soles of his new boots began to slip, the limb bent, then it snapped. He slid down, his boots thudding into the soft dirt of the flower bed below. “Ah, shit!” he said, trying to keep his voice down but not succeeding.
Chickens begin to cackle and cluck from their pen, and a second window opened. A blonde head stretched out. “Lux?” Dessie said. “Where are you?” Lux waved his cap toward the light above his head. He was afraid to raise his head and see Bertram or Rose. He prayed that they would keep doing whatever nightly things they were doing. He wished the chickens would shut the hell up. He wished his blood would stop hammering at his forehead and temples. Standing there, he saw his pa’s face, darkly shaded, but somehow right before his eyes. “Now who’s the old fool?” his pa cackled.
“Go away!” he finally mumbled.
“Lux, I’m coming down!” Dessie said quietly. “Me too,” said Billie from the next window. “You just stay put up here and watch for Mom and Dad,” Dessie told her sister, and despite it all, Lux grinned.
A door opened at the rear of the house, and Dessie appeared around the corner. “Hey, lumberjack!” Dessie said as she stood beside Lux shining a flashlight into his good eye. “It looks like you fell out of your tree!” She motioned him away from the windows and toward the darkness.
“Worse than
