However things worked out with his eye, Lux was pretty sure Bertram would take up for him. Marriage was in the air this spring, and a few school friends had summer weddings planned. In some ways, Lux had a head start as a workingman, not a schoolboy. He’d worked part-time at A-1 for three years; he was full-time since the first of the year. Though some of his salary went to his pa, each week Lux added to a roll of bills stashed in a tobacco tin in the eaves. After his injury, the Workmen’s Comp paid the hospital, and his boss had handed him sixty dollars in cash. If his eye did get better, he wanted to cut the largest trees for veneer wood, where there was some real money to be made. But even if he’d have to work inside at the mill, it would be steady work. Dessie by his side, and a place of their own, he could make it all work out.
In the dim light of dusk, Lux stood back a good thirty feet from the wheelbarrow and tossed splits of stovewood from the log pile. Aiming with one eye he did just fine, hitting his mark with almost every underhand toss. Lux pushed the full wheelbarrow up the muddy path, stacked stovewood in neat piles in the wood box beside the pantry door, and returned to the woodshed for a final load. The moon was rising. The air was still and warm. With luck, he’d be out with his coonhound before Pa got home.
Damn his old man, and damn what he says about Bertram, Lux thought, setting the wheelbarrow back behind the woodshed. Bertram was a pipeline inspector. He had nothing to do with Pennzoil putting in a right-of-way. What man in his right mind would bite the hand that feeds him? The gas company saved his ass by leasing mineral rights, and Pa spent most of his time in a slat-back rocker on the front porch, swigging whiskey, living off royalties. Plus, Bertram was twice Pa’s size and twice as fast. After Pa got up in his face, Bertram pushed him out the backdoor, set him on his ass in a muddy alleyway beside the dumpster, and told Pa that if he didn’t watch himself, the law would show up to keep the peace the next time Pennzoil brought a crew up to check the lines.
Pa wasn’t hurt, but he was sore. He told anyone who would listen that someday he was going to drop a tree across the right-of-way to keep Pennzoil vehicles off his land. The old fool ought to know enough to let go when he was licked. But he held onto that anger, talking about how he sure showed them, didn’t he. When it came to his old man, reason flew out the window. Sooner or later, Pa would find out Lux had his eye on Dessie, but for the time being, the less said, the better. Lux could almost hear his Pa’s voice, raising the stakes, saying, Boy, y’ain’t got no business starting nothing y’ain’t man enough . . . Yes, he’d heard it all before. One thing was certain, he was not about to tell his old man that the steel ammo box had found its way to the Price family. Some things Lux couldn’t control, and some he could.
IT WAS almost too dark to see, but Lux had saved the best chore for last. Passing the corncrib, Lux took a handful of sweet feed as a treat for his mare and put it in his shirt pocket to see if she could smell it out. With a long, loud whistle, he headed to the paddock. When Uncle Ron had offered him Calamity Jane, right off Pa said, “There ain’t no such thing as a free horse,” adding that the only thing more useless and wasteful of money than owning a horse was owning one that was ornery and skittish. “Your uncle’s only giving you the damn thing ’cause he can’t do nothing with her hisself.” Uncle Ron had taken up for Lux, saying since Lux’s mother Aletha had just passed, it would be good for Lux to have the mare to care for, and that he’d take CJ back if it didn’t work out.
That was a couple of years back. At first the mare hung back, hard to catch, and even harder to mount, but she’d just needed some daily attention, and a few treats. Now, one whistle and she came trotting over with her colt Dakota, both of them eating out of his hand. Lux stroked the slender nose of the mare, rubbed her neck under her mane, and gently worked a burdock burr from her forelock. Jealous of the attention, Dakota butted his slim chocolate-brown head between them. Slow and steady, ain’t that the best plan, Lux thought, enjoying the night air, the sweet smell of warm horse.
Lux took a final glance to make sure the horses were safe for the night, and gazed up toward the eastern sky, where Venus shone as bright as a searchlight and the almost full moon had begun to rise above the ridgeline. It all felt so right, like there was a reason he saw Dessie, her smile, her wave that morning after the accident. He’d felt something, like that little tug on the crown of his head, like that sense his mother was beside him. Aletha would tell him to pray for guidance and allow the Lord to help. He needed some time alone with Dessie, not standing- around-being-stared-at-on-the-porch time, not even Sunday dinner time. Just the two of them, do a bit of straight-talking, get her to trust him. It was a matter of timing, of figuring out the right thing to say, the right time and place to say it.
THE NEXT day was clear, with a warm breeze that smelled of the richness of summer. Town boys wore shorts as they raced outside after school. Lux sat on the post-and-rail fence at the edge of the parking lot beside the school buses, waiting for junior and senior dismissal. He took a note out of his pocket, unfolded the lined paper, and reread his own tight scrawl.
Hey Good Lookin’,
It’s past midnight, and I’ve got Hank Williams running through my mind! I couldn’t sleep and I thought about coon hunting but the doc says no shooting, so I went out tonight just to see the moon. It was almost full, there was a silver ring around it, and it took me a while to figure out what I was thinking about. I was thinking about you! I drove up the old logging 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