Copyright © 2015 by Alex Taylor.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquires to:
Ig Publishing
392 Clinton Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, Alex.
The marble orchard / Alex Taylor.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-63246-000-4 (ebook)
1. Young men--Kentucy--Fiction. 2. Rural families--Kentucky--Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3620.A92M37 2015
813’.6--dc23
2014045522
This book is for my brother, Brian Taylor, and dedicated to the memory of Keri Beth Taylor
Contents
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Beam could believe all of it now.
Standing beneath the sycamore tree in the warm shade as it spilled over the thick wind-loomed grass, he watched the rowed and white-clothed picnic tables steeped with dishes and casseroles—deviled eggs, meats and gravies, baskets of rolls and cornbread wedges, bowls of soup beans, fried fish and fried turkey and fried deer tenderloin, the tables curving up the slight hill and beyond it to disappear into the old tobacco barn gone unroofed and useless these many decades before reemerging out the barn’s rear door, the entire dinner swarmed by gnats and black flies that appeared like frenzied dust against the white haze of the sky—and he could believe what he’d heard rumored for years but had never thought possible: that he was not a Sheetmire because some other blood yet howled fast and hot within him.
He stood with his mother and father. No one had spoken to them since they arrived in the family truck, a rusted two-tone beige and olive green GMC his father called Old Dog. Now they waited beside the pickup, Clem stroking the worn bed panel and brooding while Derna leaned against the passenger door, her arms folded over her breasts. Beam held quiet, one sneaker propped against the truck’s slick front tire, staring out at the line of kin as they moved down the row of tables to fill their plates, each Sheetmire a mirrored replica of the others: squat and neckless head with the flat broad cheeks and full lips and bald unbearded chin that suggested a few errant drops of Cherokee or possibly Chickasaw blood. The eyes, sharp and mystical, showed the squinty wrinkles of those given to hard grim laughter and the teeth, once unleashed, were jarringly white. The women were plain, but not dowdy, and they wore calm Sunday dresses of mute blue or floral print, their handbags riding the crook of their elbows when not in the care of their husbands, who were sedate and loyal in all weathers, men suited to the slow sweaty work of the land and who tried to love the quiet patient women they’d wed, and there stood in their eyes the circumspect gaze common to all survivors of trouble.
Not a one resembled Beam. He saw that plainly. All mirrors showed him the same gaunt face with its sleep-hollowed eyes and the thick blonde hair whorled about his head like a broken hay bale. At nineteen, he’d grown to a height of well above six feet. Straight and thin as a lodgepole pine, he seemed an odd and unlikely child of the stocky and swart Clem who, but for his dingy and unkempt appearance, would fit easily into the line of Sheetmires now feeding at the tables. He more closely favored his mother, Derna. Though she wasn’t tall, she owned the same lean cheeks as Beam, the same drowsy eyes. Her form, though slack and softened by age, still gave rumor to her past beauty, the dress fitted snug and shapely about her hips.
“It’d be something nice for one of them to say hello or ask us how we were doing,” she said. She leaned hard against the truck. Its drab double-tone paint flaked off onto her brown dress and the bondo drummed hollowly when she shifted her weight, though she was still a slight woman. Her black hair appeared scorched and blazed with gray and almost like burned foil as she smoked a menthol cigarette, her white vinyl purse crouched in the grass between her scuffed black slippers like an attack pup she’d sic on anyone fool enough to spit a cross word her way.
“Who was it called and invited us anyhow?” Clem asked. He’d turned away from the potluck and leaned against the truck’s bed panel, facing a glen of green that led into locust trees before it rose into older hardwoods.
“Alton invited us,” said Derna. “I told you that already.”
Clem picked a napkin-covered dish of fried chicken livers out of the truck bed. “Well, it don’t matter,” he said. “I’m going ahead and getting in line and not waiting for them to talk to me.”
He walked to the tables and settled the dish of livers amidst the rest of the spread and then retreated to the end of the line, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his blue cotton Dickies. A few of the Sheetmire women gave him curious stares, but he only nodded and smiled at them in return.
“I guess he’s right.” Derna sighed and dropped her cigarette in the grass, wiping a slipper over it. “We got invited. Might as well go ahead and eat.”
Beam gave a tiny shake of his head. “I’m not going to,” he said.
“Come along now. It’s all right.”
“No. I don’t