World Made by Hand

Thirty-nine

The rest of our journey home would have been unremarkable, even pleasant except for a disturbing encounter on Route 4, the River Road, some five miles south of Starkville in midafternoon the next day when we came upon an old man driving an automobile. Yes, an automobile.

I had not seen a car in motion for years. This one was a Ford, the big Explorer model, the color of dull brass, with daisies of rust around the wheel wells and a broken rear window. It was creeping down the road slower than our horses might go at a moderate walk. The pavement on Route 4 was badly broken with potholes, and the driver was obviously steering around them with the utmost care. He came to a stop as we approached. His engine knocked, sputtered, and backfired.

“What you running that thing on, old-timer?” Minor said.

“Who wants to know?” the old man said. He might have been eighty years old given the wizened face beneath a stained and tattered baseball cap. “You pickers or regulators?”

“Naw, just regular folks,” Minor said and flashed a big grin around at all of us. He’d been walking, leading Jenny and the cart. Aaron Moyer was up on Minor’s horse, sitting straight in the saddle on his own now, feeling better after a day in the fresh air and sunshine. The rest of us soon formed a circle around the car. “Where you going in that thing, anyway?” Minor said.

“None of your damn business.”

“Excuse me for breathing,” Minor said.

“I got a firearm,” the old man said.

“Well you should,” Skip Tarbay said. “But keep the safety on. We’re men of Union Grove.”

“Far afield, ain’t you?”

“Far enough, and coming home from Albany now, thank God.”

“Is the mall still there?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. That wasn’t the part we were at. Hope you’re not aiming to go down there in your car.”

“Nope. I just like to keep her running,” the old man said. “You know, use it or lose it.”

“Sounds like she’s losing it,” Minor said. “What’s she running on?”

“Grain spirits.”

“A waste of the taste, if you ask me,” Minor said.

“I can’t taste nothing anyway,” the old man said. “And who asked you?”

“Must be uncomfortable driving that thing on this busted up road,” Skip said.

“It’s a damn sorry excuse for a state highway. The state won’t fix it. How do you like that? The taxes we paid all those years and look what we got to show for it.”

“Don’t hold your breath waiting for improvements, old-timer,” Minor said.

“We got a right to decent roads. This ain’t the American way.”

“The American way has kind of lost its way,” Minor said. “Maybe you should get a horse.”

The old man snorted scornfully and spat out the window onto the fissured asphalt. “This is supposed to be the modern age.”

“The modern age went to hell some time ago.”

“Is that so? Well I don’t like it.”

“It’s a fact we all got to live with.”

“You should have been around in the 1960s, boy. Hooo-weee. Gas was twenty-five cents and the roads were smooth as a baby’s behind. You could buy good bread and ground round anywhere, and the TV came on when you felt like it. Now nothing’s on when you want it.”

“It ain’t even on when you don’t want it,” Minor said, to everyone’s amusement. “Do the home folks know you’re out and about?” “They don’t give a damn whether I live or die.”

“You must be lonesome, then, old man.”

“It ain’t none of your damn business what I am.”

“Have you found the Lord?”

“No, I ain’t.”

“You could find some comfort there.”

“I’ll pass, thank you.”

“Why don’t you try letting him into your heart?”

“I don’t care to. I got this far without it.”

“This far ain’t nothing,” Minor said, raising his voice shrilly. “What about the trackless eternity you’re going to spend down in hell, old man, where the modern age is still going strong, waiting patiently for you to show up and sign back on? And you’ll get there pretty durn soon, I imagine, from the looks of you.”

“Are you crazy or something?”

“Hell no.”

“Well, you talk like a goddamn crazy man.”

“And I ain’t drunk, neither. But if I was, I’d be sober tomorrow. And you’d still be a godless old sumbitch.”

“Sonny, I’d put a bullet in your ass if I wasn’t saving it for something worthwhile.”

“And what’d that be?”

“You got more goddamn questions-get out of my goddamn way.

The old man put the engine back in gear and continued on, hardly giving Seth a chance to step his mount aside. He wove the car around a stretch of divots, ruts, and potholes and we watched him go, the very sight of an automobile going down the road a marvel, like seeing history come back to life. He had gone perhaps a hundred yards when we heard a little pop. I thought, oh no, he’s gone and blown a tire, given how old they must have been, and how rough the road, but the car did not stop. It veered to the side of the road and then clean off the shoulder and into a shrubby field where it plowed over a series of poplar saplings before coming to rest with a crunch against the trunk of a mature black ash tree. Even so, the engine kept running and the horn blared. We hurried down to it.

The old man lay slumped against the wheel. Tom and I helped get him out. He had a gash above an eyebrow. We laid him down in the weeds-black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace-and realized he was no longer breathing. Then we discovered it wasn’t the crash that had killed him. Rather, his tattered flannel shirt was dark and sopping with blood. We ripped it open. Underneath he had a clean purple hole in his chest with a slightly raised doughnut of blue flesh around it, just over his heart. Minor rooted around the interior of the car and emerged holding the pistol. He examined the cylinder and said, “One spent shell, all right. Sumbitch done himself in. How do you like that?”

Joseph slid down off his horse as though he was suddenly all in a hurry and stalked over to Minor.

“Give me that damn thing,” he said and wrenched the gun out of Minor’s hand, and proceeded to cuff him across the head, driving the smaller man to the ground. “You think death is just another of your jokes,” Joseph said. “I’m sick of it.”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with this—”

“You got to talk trash with everybody that crosses your path?”

“You think he kilt himself’cause I made a little chitchat?”

“Calling him a godless sumbitch! I got half a mind to strop you skinless.”

“Just you try it!” Minor reached for the dagger he called the last resort. Joseph kicked it out of his hand and, using a move that he might have learned in the military, had Minor flipped over with his face pinned in the weeds, a knee on his neck, and both of his arms nearly dislocated, held painfully behind him.

“Ow, ow! Damn you, you’re hurtin’ me!” Minor said.

“I aim to hurt you,” Joseph said. “If you ever raise up a weapon against one of your brothers again, you’ll get hurt so bad you’ll never recover. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Say you’re sorry.”

“I can’t breathe!”

“I don’t care about your comfort just now.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Minor said. Joseph released his arms and his boot from Minor’s neck, but Minor remained facedown. His body shook and he seemed to be blubbering. The Union Grove men turned away, in embarrassment I suppose. Elam and Seth eventually helped Minor back up on his feet. Jenny stood at the edge of the road in front of her cart blinking at us.