Daren Dean

Mercury in Retrograde 47

Troy

Thunder and lightning put on an act outside the picture window in the living room. The television blew during the news. He went outside and watched the sky light up, photoelectric. Troy always felt energized during the spring thunderstorms. When he was a boy he would run out in it across the pastures and down gullies as the rain poured out of the sullen clouds, but as he grew older he did that seldomer. Now, he still was possessed by the impulse but he held those feral inclinations at bay by smoking or taking a drink instead. He was more civilized now, and more miserable. He saw in the porch swing while Brown Dog sat at his feet providing a stop for his dragging feet as he swung slowly to and fro.

He stood up and jumped off the porch and when he came to the fence he stepped through the second and third barbed wires as pushed down the lower wire with his hands. His pant’s leg caught one of the barbs, but he straightened it out right quick. He walked across the field toward Merle’s house wondering what was left of the old man. Drinking had almost killed him several times in his life. He trudged across the field. He could hear Brown Dog panting behind him. The white mule looked at them, especially the dog and curled his lip like a pissed off old man.

Someone, probably his daddy, was target shooting out back. He started whistling a tuneless melody as he hefted himself over the fence surrounding the main house so his Daddy might hear him and might not shoot him for a stranger. Through the canebrakes he could see Merle unclearly wearing a gun belt and pistol with two additional pistols stuffed down the front of his jeans. In his hands was a shotgun broke open in front of him. Saw horses with a sheet of plywood draped over them for a makeshift table holding a cooler, assorted cans of beer, and boxes of red shells. Merle walked toward him and the noise he made as he shuffled through the weeds.

“Hello!” Troy shouted.

“Who’s out there?”

“It’s Troy,” he said.

“Who? Better speak up?”

“Shit,” Troy hissed to himself. The old man probably couldn’t hear anything from his ringing ears. Lively country music was on the transistor radio Troy recognized as the one that hung on a peg in the barn most usually.

A bullet whined on its way past him.

“Shit Daddy!” Troy called out. “It’s me! Troy!”

“Oh,” Merle said. “Why didn’t you say something? I thought you was Cyrus Phelps trying to sneak up on me.”

“I did say something!” Troy stepped out of the weeds. Brown Dog turned and went back to the house. He didn’t like loud noises like thunder or guns. “You just can’t hear shit.”

“Did you go see your parole officer recently?”

“Only missed once,” Troy said. “So far.”

“What?”

“I only missed one appointment!” Troy repeated with a hand to the side of his mouth, as if that helped. “I was sick with a cold and stayed home. It wasn’t no big deal. He came out and saw me anyway. Probably wanted to make sure I wasn’t lying to him.”

“Just don’t want to see you go back!”

“Well,” Troy said. “You don’t have to shout at me. I can hear just fine.”

“Want to shoot some?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Yep.”

“Want a beer?” Merle went to the cooler and pulled out a can of Olympia. “What a question, huh?”

“No.”

“What? Did you quit drinking?”

“No,” Troy said. “I just don’t want one right now. Have you been hitting ‘em hard or what? You look like hell, rode hard and put up wet like the man said.”

“Aw shit,” Merle said.

“Well,” Troy sat down on a wobbly lawn chair with green and white crossed straps of nylon. “And I don’t want to see you go back to the State hospital for drinking.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Merle said. “Hear about Royal?”

“No,” Troy shook his head. “What’s that crazy little fucker up to now?”

“He got Jesus.”

“The hell you say.”

“What?”

“Say he didn’t, I said!”

“He sure as hell did,” Merle laughed. “We going to have a preacher in the family yet.”

“You think Theron had something to do with it?”

“God bless him if he did,” Merle laughed. “We need an . . . what you call it . . . advocate . . . heaven for us Scofields.”

“How come him to get religion?”

“Hellfire, son,” Merle slid a red shell into the shotgun and cracked it shut. “How would I know? I think the boy came from outer space sometimes. I mean, he’s a good boy, but he gets some peculiar ideas sometimes. I don’t exactly got an explanation.”

“Spends too much time alone,” Troy offered. “Same as me. Except I got in trouble instead of doing crazy shit. I just did the normal crazy shit.”

“You got into trouble,” Merle agreed.

“Seems like King Henry told me he saw Royal downtown passing out one of them hell and damnation pamphlets with that old blind man down on the square.”

“About repentance,” Merle said. He raised the shotgun to his shoulder and shot a Cola bottle off a stump he used to cut firewood over.

“King Henry told me he hands them out all day on Sunday,” Troy said. “Somebody says he stands out there with the old man at five thirty in the morning.”

“King Henry,” Merle sneered. When he broke the stock, the empty cartridge flew over his shoulder. “What’s he King of? King of the niggers?”

“It’s just a nickname.”

“He probably made it up for himself.”

“I’m going to do something,” Troy said. “I got something to do.”

“What’s that?”

“”I got to go find Jaelyn,” Troy said.

“You’re messing up, son,” Merle shook his head. “You’re going to give up your freedom for some young pussy.”

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

“Ain’t no way to talk you of it then?” Merle asked. “I mean, you’d be violating the terms of your parole.”

“I know it.”

“Well,” Merle spit. “What the hell do I care then?”

Merle gathered up an armload of sticky pop bottles and walked down to the stump with them. Some of them he put sat atop fence posts, any place he could find that looked to put his transparent targets in a better position to be shot at. He mumbled to himself as he placed each bottle down. Troy listened to his father, his drinking and general behavior was consonant with the way he had acted years ago just before they took him to Fairmont State Hospital, what some folks used to call the lunatic asylum.

He rose up and went to the makeshift bench and picked up a .38 as Merle stumbled up toward him. Troy aimed the .38 right between the old man’s eyes. It would serve him right, he thought. Put him out of his misery. Merle stopped walking, lineaments of depression crossed over as he stood there like a cantankerous bull given up for a time on his paddocked harem. He squeezed off a round or two at the empty Coca-Cola products as Merle cursed him for a sorry son-of-a-bitch. The old man had always been grievous to his way of thinking. Why someone, anyone, hadn’t put him down by now was a question worth pondering.

It was oddly silent. The gunshots had frightened away all the birds, even the insects were silent. Only his father stood there flinching, then jerked his pistol out of its western-style holster and he shot a can of beer off the table just to the left of Troy. Troy sneered in response. But then it struck him as funny, maybe they would kill each other after all. The old man spun the gun around on his finger like some old peckerwood in a western and shoved it back down in the holster and laughed right along with him. A high nasal whine. He had spent his whole life thinking he was different from the old man, but there wasn’t much between them — six of one and half-dozen of the other.

May 4, 2010