The Savage(5)

But it haunted Van Dorn, leaving all those others behind; seeing their lost complexions saddened him. He’d viewed the dismantling of others, but never so close. He told himself he’d no time to free them. He was one against many.

Van Dorn’s stomach groaned. He couldn’t eat till dark. Fearing someone or something would see the smoke from a fire.

Running a forearm below his nose, he sponged mucus. Justified his choice of morals. He did what he had to do.

Grabbing a ceramic bowl from the cabinet, he placed the slices of meat inside. Turned and walked into the dining area, to the basement door on the far side of the room. Opened it, descended the old wooden steps. Outside light opened the darkness from small windows within the four corners overhead. Carved shadows down the rock walls that were lined with plywood shelves and weighted by jars and jars of canned vegetables. Green beans. Peas. Potatoes and carrots. Pickles, sliced to quarters or speared, and corn that’d been cut from the cob. A stain graphed around the rust-speckled freezer that had held dead game. Nourishment that’d been wrapped and stored till it went too long without power. He’d eaten and salvaged what he could, but most of the meat within it had expired.

For Van Dorn, vegetables served little purpose without meat. He longed for eggs and their thick cholesterol centers. He’d killed his remaining hens when too many weeks had passed without deer, rabbit, or squirrel.

The smell of mildewed earth and rotted meat rose all around him. He stepped to the wooden box that covered a hole within the floor. Where a whiskey barrel had been lowered into the ground. Gravel lined the outside of it, insulating it with cool. Creating a makeshift fridge built by his father and him.

Like his father, the Widow had learned him about the old ways. Gardening, hunting, fishing, and trapping. Loading ammo. Dynamite. Sharpening of a blade. Knowing one’s direction by the rising and lowering of the sun. And now it was being used.

Opening the barrel, he laid the meat inside. Wishing he had enough room to save what had been in the freezer.

He grabbed a jar of beans, pinkie-sized chunks layered the liquid within. Laying them on top of the wooden lid, he slid a walnut chair from beneath a matching table. Sat down. Glanced at the radio that offered no sound.

Beneath the table and in the corners, coils of boneless muscle lay. Skin patterns golden brown with black slithering their way toward his booted feet. As he reached down, one of the coils came cold into his palm. Screwed up and around his forearm. Raising it to the tabletop, he let the serpent slither from him and lie facing him. And her memory wrangled within. Droplets of moisture slid from her tight cheeks where eyes the shade of sky smiled. Her hands soft, working the blade, peeling potatoes, shedding their jackets, quartering them into a liquid that steamed. Blue flames heating the pot upon the gas stove. “You’re Van Dorn?” she asked.

“I am.”

“Your father, he speaks highly of you and your labors.”

It was Dorn’s first visit to the Sheldon girl’s home. His father and he had come looking to size up the property for running fence line. Dorn had stepped into the home for a swig of water.

“Does he, that’s his offering of kindness, I suppose.”

Dorn was hesitant. Nervous. Shy around a female near his age. But also of beauty.

She smiled, her teeth were of pearl, lips smooth, and she asked, “And you, how would you speak of your father?”

“Strong and of great knowledge. A man who fights many demons.”

“Demons? Awful colorful words, dramatic even.”

“Not when one’s viewed all the broken pieces of the world of which we’ve traveled.”

Running a forearm to blot the damp about her forehead, Sheldon shook her head. “You’re a traveler. Not from here. Where all have you seen?”

“I’s born here. Father took me to the road when my mother abandoned us. Took to Kentucky. Tennessee. Ohio. Seen those that’ve been relieved of their worth.”

“And now you’re gonna help my daddy construct a fence.”

“What my father told me. Think I could trouble you for a glass of water?”

Laughing, Sheldon told him, “That’s why you’ve stepped into our home. Not to see and flirt with the daughter. How about iced tea, is that suitable for a traveler such as yourself?”

Taking to the wonder within her bright eyes, the elegance of her pale pigment, Van Dorn smiled and replied, “Please, it’s of no trouble.”

Now, cat eyes watched him within the shadowed basement. Black tongue forked, jutting in and out. Van Dorn rubbed a pointer over the scaly head, whispering, “Know what I must do. Leave here. Find those faces I left behind.”

Van Dorn fell silent, watching the serpent. The others gathered around his feet. He sat waiting for dark. His memory drifting to a time before the silence. A time when he questioned how much longer he could live in an existence of hand to mouth with his father. Scavenging through the rural areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. Where in the wee hours of night they ripped and cut bronzed wiring and piping from the walls and floors of foreclosed homes. Traded the weight for tender at salvage yards.





THEN

After more than a year of travel, their frames sketched into the truck’s seat like two skeletons from a discerning past with no future. Abandoned vehicles scattered roadside from town to town. Out of gas. Broke down. Men and women out of work. Out of money. Maps lined the busted dash with Horace and Van Dorn’s routes highlighted. Addresses of houses seized by banks they’d written down from the county sheriff’s bulletin boards in the towns they’d visited.