!Woodsmen
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by Anna @ 2016
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Chapter 4: The ditch | edit 2/29/24
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Some things I can't imagine. One of those Sunday
nights before the camp-out, Mike did something bad.
I think the guys had something to do with it, but I
really don't know.
Once home Mike cut on the TV. He watched NASCAR
without enthusiasm. He poured a cup of whiskey,
looked at it, set it down and looked at it some
more. He smelled like rust and hay, socks and arm-
pits and balls, vomit and fear.
He looked at NASCAR again without seeing it. He
wondered if that guy on the road, Terry or whatever,
died. Terry's blood was all over Mike's tshirt with
the arms torn out. The shirt was black, so it was
just rust-smelling crust. The blood was up and down
his arms. It flaked off when he scratched it in the
strobing TV light.
He stood, walked in the yard in his tshirt and
undershorts and socks, looked at the moon, pissed.
He sat down on a tire, beat his knees, put his head
on them, smelled the funk of his nasty balls, stood,
walked back inside. He looked around the kitchen,
turned the bathroom light on and off again, returned
to the couch, looked at the plastic cup with his
whiskey in it: Domino's goofy cartoon pizza mascot
The Noid looked back at him.
He fell on his back on the couch in the flicker of
the TV, its volume down, looked at the ceiling in
the dark, tugged down the waistband of his under-
shorts and beat off.
He pictured me. Parts of my body replaced with Farah
Fawcett and bar trash because he couldn't remember
me just right. I was a particular smell, an ass-
cheek freckle, the way I twitch when I'm really
feeling it, a tone of voice, a hip bone he liked to
grab.
If I hadn't left I'd be the person he could tell
what he did, about Terry. He'd tell me about being
wrong and knowing it but not knowing much else. He
flexed his ass cheeks, rocked his hips, grunted low
and throaty. He rutted with his fist, came down his
hand, wiped cum and Terry's blood-crust on his
Whitesnake tshirt, fell asleep.
Mike woke up still caked in blood and crust and
odor, showered, and headed to work. His body ached
from the outdoor labor and whatever had happened the
night before. The inside of his Tercel still smelled
powerfully of the deep metallic odor of the man's
mangled thigh.
Work has a rhythm to it. A reel of wire is stretched
out, each strand jacketed in rubber and printed,
strands twisted together, outer insulation slid on
and printed, and the finished cable wound on a reel.
A man wrapped the reel in plastic and labeled it.
This was what Mike fetched on the forklift and
loaded onto trailers.
The forklift beeped as it reversed. Hydraulics
effortlessly lifted big loads. Mike squinted his bad
eye and turned on a dime, shouted sometimes over the
factory racket to another man, Load it up!
At the end of the day, tired, he drove to the
package store in Lexington for a case of Michelob
Ultra, then back past the Okonite plant and his
house and out Crooksville Road to where he'd done
whatever he'd done the night before.
The shitty truck was still in the ditch. He pulled
the Tercel as far off the road as he could, climbed
out, and sat in the tilted, blood-caked bed of the
truck with its smashed out back window.
He climbed down again, retrieved the beers, hefted
them into the truck bed. He followed with a foot on
the tire and a vault into the truck bed. This time,
his deer rifle was in his trunk.
The sound of the first can opening grounded him in
the place where he was and the mystery of it. The
beer went down easy. The road remained deserted.
I don't know Mike's mind but I have drank beers with
him before. He passes through stages. Appreciative,
goofy, reflective, limber, absurd. In the truck bed
with his empties, the click and hiss of each new
beer, I'm sure he put together his story like I'm
putting mine together now.
Maybe he remembered siblings I've never heard of,
sunsets elsewhere, days in the woods when a deer
appeared miraculous and relaxed into the crack of
his rifle. Maybe he remembered the urge for disci-
pline or honor or travel or whatever got him to
enlist in the Army.
Maybe the monotony of the brig returned to him,
euphoria he saw in Shirley Chester's church, the
high the first time he smoked crack. Maybe he
imagined the son he'd have, a toddler, if I hadn't
aborted. Maybe he savored the remembered feeling of
me or another woman in his arms.
3:30 turned to four in the afternoon, the day dry
and placid. Down off the side of the road, cattle
lay in the shade. Sweat ran down from Mike's arm-
pits. Four turned to 4:30. A cluster of vehicles
headed west on Crooksville Road, two cars behind a
slow pickup hauling a trailer loaded with baled hay.
The drivers saw Mike drinking and didn't wave.
She was a long time coming but she came, up from the
mists of memory. Mike's sister, who drowned in a
cattle pond in South Carolina when he was five. Just
the sense of her. Older, smarter than him, dead
there in the truck with him. Not old enough to drink
as hard as Mike, but having whatever the dead have.
She sat with him, a chill breeze on a hot day, know-
ing what Mike couldn't figure. Whether that guy
Terry or whatever had died, that was one thing she
knew. Where America was headed, she knew that too.
She knew why he couldn't settle in with a woman
since I'd left, and she knew why I'd left. She knew
what we were doing in Kuwait, and she knew why she'd
died and he'd lived.
Two small birds landed on the tailgate. Mike didn't
know what they were but his sister probably did. His
sweat caused the clotted and dried blood on the hot
truck bed to stick to him. He wiped at it which
smeared the crust and blood-snot around, blooded his
hands, worsened the horror.
He crumpled his pack of cigarettes after he finished
the last one, watched more cars pass on the road,
thought about taking a piss.
That guy Terry, Mike said quietly, reflectively. He
could have been you.
Mike woke up in the pickup bed to a light in his
face, unstuck himself from the truck bed and knocked
some empty beer cans to shield his face from the
light.
Goddamnit, Mike said. Too bright.
You look fucking awful, the Sheriff's deputy said.
I am, man, Mike said.
I can see that, the deputy said. What are you doing r
in this truck?
Sleeping, Mike said.
Michael Tipton, the deputy said. You don't drink in
a truck in the ditch of the state road. This is a
dry county, you know that, and you're about as
publicly intoxicated as a man can get. You're
obstructing traffic, you're camping unlawfully, and
you're pathetic.
Mike clumsily sat up, leaned against the far side of
the truck bed. His head pounded. I don't think I
know you, Mike said.
I helped scrape you off the riverbank by Floyd
Chester's houseboat, the deputy said. Where's your
ID?
Wallet. Mike gestured back at the Tercel. Glove box.
The deputy and his flashlight walked to the Tercel,
shined in the window, reached in the window, found
the wallet, pulled the license. He walked to his
police car and sat in it awhile. He walked back to
Mike in the truck bed.
Pick up your mess, he said to Mike. Your cans.
Mike looked at them all.
Put them in the box, the deputy said.
One by one, Mike did. The deputy walked to the other
side of the road and pissed. He came back and
watched. When Mike was done, the deputy asked, Can
you stand up?
Mike got on hands and knees, started to crawl toward
the tailgate. Bring your emptys, the deputy said.
Mike dragged the box full of emptys with him. He sat
on the tailgate, slid off. He stood with a hand on
the tailgate, swaying, then sat on the pavement.
The deputy left again, came back with a bottle of
water, took off the cap. Drink this, he said.
Mike did, looking at the deputy between swallows.
When it was gone the deputy said, Try again.
Mike looked at him.
Stand up, the deputy said.
Mike did, and swayed.
Now walk to your car and get in.
Placing his hands on the hood, Mike made it to the
drivers seat and relaxed in it. He was done. The
deputy wasn't. He leaned in the window. Check your
glove box.
Mike did. See your wallet?
Yeah, Mike said.
I'm keeping your driver license, the deputy said.
Okay, Mike said.
The deputy walked down into the ditch, grabbed the
box full of emptys off the tailgate, walked back to
Mike's passenger window and dropped it on the seat.
You forgot this, the deputy said.
Sorry, Mike said.
Now Michael Tipton, you listening to me?
Yeah why, Mike said.
Here's what's gonna happen. I'm going to drive real
slow, and you're going to follow me, okay?
I'm drunk, Mike said.
Rear-end my cruiser and you'll wish you didn't. Turn
your car on now.
Mike got the engine to catch on the second try. The
deputy went back to his cruiser, pulled ahead,
flashed his brake lights. Mike pulled out behind.
They turned around in a driveway and headed west. It
took over an hour for the deputy to get Mike home.
