Lux felt heat rising through his cheeks to the tips of his ears, the rush of the beer combined with an awareness that he had no idea what he should say next. He wasn’t about to dwell on the accident. He didn’t feel like talking about the Pirates or backtracking to his years on the mound. You were the first thing I saw, so beautiful in the morning light, a sign that things would all work out was too full of weight to toss out there. He wondered if Dessie was happy about him stopping by. They’d known each other for years. She was the girl with bright blue eyes and a ponytail, fun to talk to at practice, willing to set aside her homework, grab an oversized glove to fill in as an outfielder or catcher. At first, she could hold her own, but at some point the boys just got faster and stronger. He’d needled her about her baggy gym shorts, also about throwing like a girl. She could give it right back. If he blew through the signs or if he’d grumbled at an ump’s call, she’d mention that kind of thing, not mean-spirited, but with a twinkle in her eye. She took after her dad that way. They both had the same effect, something made him light up, try harder. Lux took a gulp of his beer, wiped his warm face with the back of his sleeve, kept his thoughts to himself, and enjoyed the safety of silence. The hell with it, he thought. She could take him as he is, and that’s what she should do.
Billie spoke up. “Hey, Lux, are you going to come back to school now? Varsity could use a good pitcher.”
“A one-eyed pitcher?” Lux stretched out his fingers and cracked his knuckles on his right hand, shaking his head, “No. Anyways, I don’t need to,” he said, looking at Bertram for agreement. “Pine’s coming in from Kingwood for framing, hardwood’s going out the door as fast as it comes in, cherry and walnut is up, and there’s plenty out there to cut. The mines need locust props, too. Boss says he’ll find something for me to do inside at the mill next week. That’s OK for now, but I want to get back into the woods.” Bertram nodded. Lux noticed Dessie didn’t look up. She was straightening out knots in Rose’s yarn.
Lux finished his beer. “I brung this for you to keep,” he told Dessie, setting the flattened ammo box beside her on the arm of the porch swing. He glanced at her; though she kept her gaze down, she had that little grin that was tricky to read. Then, turning toward the Jeep parked at the pull-off along the main road, he said, “Hey, Coach, could Dessie come out for a drive sometime?” The green Jeep stood high on oversized tires. Its top was off, and two squirrel tails hung from the roll bars. Despite sheet-metal patches on the body, it looked clean and cared for.
Bertram crushed the empty beer can between his palms and chuckled. The porch swing creaked as it swayed back and forth. The knitting needles kept on ticking against each other, but Rose lifted an eyebrow and gazed over her glasses across the porch at her husband. Dessie’s eyes fixed on the tangle of wool in her mother’s lap. Her cheeks had turned almost the same shade of pink as the yarn.
Billie looked at Dessie, smiled broadly, then glanced back at her Dad. “Hey, Daddy, can I go, too?” she asked.
“I believe Lux was asking Daddy about Dessie, Sis,” said Rose, “about whether we can spare her, come spring, one of these Sunday afternoons.” Rose kept her eyes fixed on Bertram, whose dimples had become more pronounced as his grin widened.
“I didn’t know you were allowed to drive with that eyepatch on, Lux Cranfield,” Dessie said. She stood, picked up the ammo box, stepped into the house and disappeared. The porch swing rocked as Rose grabbed for her yarn.
Lux watched the screen door spring shut, and then looked back at Bertram. “Of course I can drive! I can even drive the front-end loader and the forklift at the sawmill,” Lux answered, staring back at the closed door.
Bertram sat forward in the chair and nodded at Lux. “Well, then, I reckon you’re a twice-lucky man, Ace,” he said, tapping his cigarette pack into the palm of his hand.
“What d’ya mean, Coach?” asked Lux.
Bertram settled back in the recliner, stretched his legs out, and flicked up the cap on his Zippo lighter, striking the flint. “Well,” he answered, “a man that can get work is a lucky man for one thing, and you didn’t hear me tell you ‘no,’ now did you?”
LUX STEPPED over the planks on the Prices’ swinging bridge, not wanting to look awkward by making a grab for the cable handrail. The boards swayed under his bootheels as he made his way to the pull-off. He gunned the engine, waved his cap, and headed for home. Instead of taking the blacktop, he cut over the hill on Chestnut Ridge, winding back and forth on a gravel road that narrowed as it climbed until it was little better than a tractor path over the ridge. He wondered whether asking Bertram was the right thing, a needed first step, or was it the wrong approach? He wondered what Rose thought. Now everyone in the Price family, and likely very soon everyone at school and in town too, would know. Screw it, he thought. He was glad that he asked Bertram, not that he planned it, but those words came spilling out of his mouth. Now they were as solid as the steering wheel in his hands, and he could not take them back.
The Jeep’s tires skirted the flinty creek bed and climbed toward the ridge. Whenever the road leveled, through stands of sumac and flowering dogwood that had not yet leafed out, he could see fields set back against steep hillsides, homesteads in the full flush of springtime, a few cows or a draft horse or two, pale lilac bushes, a barn, a home, a chimney with smoke trailing upward. The gravel lane crested the wooded hilltop and dropped into a steeper, narrower valley. Further out from town, the road was rougher, folks had moved on. Hand-hewn log cabins and small barns stood empty in fields, siding boards curling away from the framing. Some homes had burned, and some had rotted once the roofs had begun to leak. All that remained were stone chimneys or the barest glimpses of flower-lined paths to sheds or outhouses that had long since sagged into hillsides.
Driving the county back roads, taking it slow, opening another beer, Lux thought about what it took to hold a homeplace together. Some folks seemed to know more than others about making their way on the land. His dad’s elder brother, Uncle Ron, pushing sixty now, his sons and their kin, they knew. They could cut lumber, mill boards, put up hay. They had it all, right there, a flock of chickens, a cow for milk, they could butcher their own hogs, set out traps or hunt for meat, even a pond for bluegill and bass. If a man wasn’t scared of a little hard work, Lux thought, that man could find himself a piece of land set back on some quiet country lane and have just about everything he needed.
Lux turned down a steep cutoff and wound his way toward his pa’s place, shifting into low to crawl the Jeep across the water bars and head onto an unpaved lane. Once he’d started working full-time, Lux had thought he’d help fix things up, maybe cut some locust posts, pick up slab wood and framing from the mill, and build a garage or at least a tall toolshed with a wide enough roof overhang to park under and keep out of the weather while working on cars, hang shelves for tools, but Everett had shot that idea down, saying, “I don’t want to see a bunch of no-account poles sticking up out of the ground once you figure out you got a real job on your hands,” then adding, “I won’t have you starting nothing you ain’t man enough to finish.”
Lux held his tongue. It was risky to take up for himself. The old man’s gray eyes turned as flat as the heads of steel tacks. He wasn’t above reaching for his belt if he thought he was being crossed. Since Mother died, his old man dug in over the least thing. Well, let him be the ruler over his own sad kingdom. Pa seemed to have let everything go, his tools, his things, his own self. Things don’t need to go like that, Lux thought. He had no one to blame but his own prideful self when rain rotted the handles of the tools left strewn in the yard, or when the tractor brakes rusted and seized to the rotors.
No truck was in the yard. That meant Pa’s old Ford had started, and he’d taken himself to town, stopping at the ABC store for Rebel Yell and a carton of Pall