Friends: One Down, One Arrested
Charles Hayes
Standing on a large rock and turning his face to the soft light filtering through the treetops, Ricky Teller prays, asking for forgiveness and that his body be found before it rots. After checking the tautness a final time, he pulls the noose over his head and tightens the knot behind his left ear. He does things right. Better than any note left behind to sweep his exit, this will be clear to anyone who cares to see. Lowering his eyes to the space that he intends to fill, his vision is taken up with a small sign of life in the creek below. On the bottom is a crawdad holding a small earthworm. Like a fan holds aloft a caught baseball, the crawdad seems to be showing the world that it can make it. Seeing this microcosm of life so clearly from his perch, as if somehow magically magnified especially for him, Ricky changes his mind. Sliding the knot loose with trembling hands, he lifts the rope from his neck, climbs down from the rock, and trudges out of the woods to his small home along the dirt road, his mind swirling with thoughts of his fleeing wife and stepkids.
~ ~ ~
Barbara Stephens, known simply as Babs, shacked up with Ben Hoons, the father of her two kids, until he left them for his younger cousin and their kid. Ricky, not one to miss such a rare opportunity, caught Bab’s bounce perfectly and they were quickly married.
Hearing that his old family had made a new home with Ricky, like a child that has thrown away his toys, Ben Hoons wanted them back. So he drove up the hollow to try to do that. But when he got to the little footbridge across the creek to Ricky’s shack, Ricky was waiting. “Get out of my way,” Ben said, as he tried to push past. Stiff armed by Ricky, Ben swung. Dodging and countering with two quick blows that knocked Ben down, Ricky gave Ben a choice.
“Let it go. Just go on and get off my property or I’ll get the law up here.”
His eye starting to puff up, Ben struggled to his feet, got back into his pick-up and, while cursing and waving a tire iron out the window, spun up a cloud of dust going away.
This problem was eventually ironed out by a judge and a poor people’s lawyer. The ruling gave Ricky, after many years of being alone, a bona fide wife with some step kids to boot. But with family came responsibilities. Having been told by Babs that if he ever started drinking again she and the kids would leave him, Ricky picked up the bottle a few months on anyway. It was like Babs had just been waiting for the opportunity. Looking out the window one day, Ricky saw his family, with their packed trash bags, walking across the footbridge, down the road, and out of his life.
Jay Handley, Ricky’s squad leader in Vietnam, was a kind of easy going guy. But with a bit of an insensitive streak. Once, patrolling out of a firebase near Hue, they located the charred bodies of a local Viet Cong cadre that had been caught in the open and napalmed. Stinking terribly to everyone else, the blackened mounds of flesh didn’t bother Handley. Grabbing one of the dead, propping him up against a palm tree, and shoving a cigarette in his mouth, Handley started talking to the charred mass as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The lieutenant really chewed him out but Handley just stood there smiling and leaning against that same palm tree like he was hanging on the street corner. When the lieutenant walked away Handley booted the corpse back to the ground and, to Ricky’s amazement, just winked and giggled before suddenly getting very serious.
“The lieutenant’s got no guts,” he said, “he’s not going to make it.”
Two months later the lieutenant stepped on a booby trapped 155 shell. It blew him 50 feet into the air and when he came down it was in three big pieces with lots of little pieces missing. Handley gathered the pieces for the chopper to lift out, saying over and over the whole time, “I knew it.”
~ ~ ~
Sitting on the outhouse toilet with the door open, watching the sun edge closer to the far western ridges, Ricky cups his chin in his hands and wonders what day it is. Almost mesmerized by the incessant drone of the locusts, he startles when he hears an old familiar voice.
“Still sitting on the can while the world passes you by, huh Teller?”
As out of left field as it gets, the voice brings Ricky to focus on Jay Handley walking across the outer edge of the property.
“I thought as much,” Jay continues. “I hope you’re doing better than you look.”
Cutting short his session and quickly pulling up his pants, Ricky comes out of the outhouse smiling, his hand outstretched. Grabbing Ricky’s wrist and inspecting his hand before shaking it, Jay lets out that booming laugh of times in that other world.
“What the hell are you doing in these parts,” Ricky says, “thought you were back in some factory up in Sandusky.”
“Not me, can’t take some labor boss telling me what to do any better than you can Teller. While I had an old lady maybe, but now, she’s gone, what’s the point?”
Laughing and feeling good for the first time in weeks, Ricky shakes his head.
“You mean to tell me that you actually found some woman that would put up with you. I don’t believe it, you got to be lying.”
Jay looks around at the shack, outhouse, and little patch of land between the road and the woods.
“Well it don’t appear to me that you’re doing much better. I don’t see any of the fairer sex pinning up your laundry.”
Suddenly remembering Babs and his step kids, Ricky loses his grip on the bravado and falls silent. Noticing the quick pain in Ricky’s eyes, Jay well remembers that look and how it was overseas. He would slap Ricky’s shoulder and tell him, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothin.” It was their mantra of pain and a way to try and arrest it. Make it stop. But Jay decides best he just let it die naturally this time. After a short pause, finally meeting each other’s eyes, Jay simply nods and says, “We waiting for the guide to this mansion or can we make it inside alone?”
Ricky laughs and playfully pushes Jay.
“Still the mood man, huh? Got a problem? Take it to Handley. Get in the door there and mind you wipe your feet first.”
A small wood burner, an old rocker, and a sofa, worn through to its pasteboard, make up the living room furnishings. But it is enough. Being of like ilk, they know that there are no revelations about their lives to put forward. No “catching up” to do. Just simply relaxing into some plain talk as they fire up a couple of sticks of home grown brings the two friends back home a bit. It is fine. Even if one foot remains where they were, they are not alone.
“Don’t you ever get the feeling that you’re trapped up this hollow, miles from the nearest town, no transportation?” Jay asks. “I don’t think I’d be able to take that for very long.”
“I get into town some,” Ricky says, “stir things up a little bit, then retire back here until things calm down. Besides there ain’t no liquor stores around here so I’m forced out every now and then.”
Jay laughs.
“Yeah I can see that, sure looks like some kind of solitary up here. Don’t expect people can get in your shit much out this way. I could use a couple of weeks of that about now. Might help me draw out where I’m heading, if anything can.”
“Hell man,” Ricky says, “throw your gear in that extra room there. It’s where my stepkids used to stay. Don’t expect that they’ll mind now.”
Before Jay can respond, Ricky suddenly jumps up and says, “It’s where I keep my guns. Come on, have a look.”
Following Ricky past the curtain and into the room, Jay sees a couple of Army cots with the mattresses rolled up, torn flowery wallpaper that looks 50 years old, and some indoor/outdoor carpet over most of the rough slat flooring. No furniture but between a couple of windows facing the outhouse and the steep woods beyond, a large gun rack is mounted. Several rifles and shotguns occupy it. Each gun shows not a flaw nor a speck of corrosion in its metal. And the stocks glow with rubbed in linseed oil like the day they were made. Jay, smiling like a Cheshire, walks over to the rack and admires an old Stevens 12 gauge as he lifts it from the rack.
“Man, this one goes back a ways. I got my first squirrel with one of these.”
“So did I,” replies Ricky. “Check out that Model 12 Winchester. Smoothest action I ever seen.”
Returning the Stevens and lifting the Model 12 free, Jay studies it a moment, then lifts it to his shoulder for a fit. Bringing it back down, he softly whistles and returns it to the rack.
“Man, Ricky, you got guns here worth more than this house.”
“Like em, don’t you Jay?” Ricky says. “Take your pick. We’ll go after squirrel tomorrow.”
“I’ll take the Model 12 if you can spare it. What will you use though?”
“The 22 automatic,” Ricky says. “It’s always what I use. Gives the critter a sporting chance.”
Slapping his thigh, Jay laughs.
“That’s right! Dead eye Teller! I bet you still don’t miss.”
Ricky, a little flattered by his old squad leader’s praise, walks over to the rack and lovingly strokes the scoped 22 before replying.
“Sometimes, Jay—on purpose.”
Hunting the hills together, not bringing in much game, but in a way reliving a part of their past, they quietly roam the hardwood forest and carry the guns that they love. Making one trip into town during that time, they use the last of Jay’s money for all the liquor they will need and some good food to cook up when they want. They even manage to complete a one-day roofing job for an old widow that lives nearby, asking only that she provide the materials. Finishing that job, sunburned and sweating alcohol, they amuse the widow with their discomfort. She tells them that it’s good for them and that it will remove a little of their barroom pallor. Laughing about it and realizing that it is her way of feeling like she is giving them something since she has no money, they tell her that she is probably right. Then packing it in, they head for the river to bathe.
Sitting and sipping their last bottle of Wild Turkey on the river rocks after their bath, not much passes between them. Out in the still water, beyond the rocks, the loud pop of a beaver tail brings their heads up to see a setting sun. Quietly, they put their clothes on, noticing the look in each other’s eyes. Knowing that the other is back at one of those streams in the Nam where they had bathed together, they silently leave the waters and go back up the hollow to their home.
Heavy rain pounding the tin roof, adding a small sense of security, brings them to in the wee hours of the morning. Finding the last two cans of beer in the fridge, Ricky gives one to Jay and, with unsteady hands, rolls up a joint and lights it.
“Well, that’s the end of the booze. Think we should scratch up some money and get some more?”
“No need to bother,” Jay replies, “time for me to hit the road again anyway. Catching and keeping rides is hard when the bottle goes along.”
Speaking in a slow quiet way that reminds Ricky of some of their conversations on night watch back in the war, Jay floats an idea.
“Say Rick, why don’t you come with me? There ain’t nothing holding you here. I figure on heading out to Seattle, try to get on some fishing trawler for a spell. You know, sock up a little money, then see what’s happening.”
“You mean hitchhike,” Ricky says, “I guess you know rides are hard to come by these days, especially for two grown men.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Maybe. Did you see that old VW setting under the tarp in the widow’s yard?”
Jay nods.
“Well, it’s been setting like that for two years that I know of. Parts are cheap, plus there’s an authorized dealer and parts store in town. The old woman liked our work. Maybe we could work some sort of deal with her, fix up that old house for the VW, and have some wheels to get around.”
Jay studies the proposition for a moment then shakes his head.
“Where are we going to get the money for gas? Food will cost plenty and you do want to let down every now and then, don’t you? Seems like it would just be another trapping to eat up resources, stifle what little freedom we got.”
Nodding in silence for several moments, Ricky decides to let it out.
“I got some money squirreled away that my mom left me. Not a lot but enough to get the VW going and get us out West. Don’t know why I was saving it, just felt like it wasn’t really my money. Might as well put it to some use.”
Jay looks to the ceiling and rolls his eyes. “You old sandbagging asshole you! Living up here hand to mouth and you got money in the bank! Hell yes, we can put that money to use.”
Getting a deal with the widow woman, who is glad to give them a shove off, the two aging Namies paint her house, rebuild the old porch, and repair her falling down barn. Happy with their work, the old woman deeds the VW, and wishes them
luck, telling them that they are too young to be idling away their time up a West Virginia hollow. After several trips hitchhiking to town and the local junk yards, they get the old car licensed and in good running shape. Time to hit the road. Loading the old bug up with their gear and locking the shack tight with the guns in a concealed wall compartment, they get ready to make their final trip out of the hollow. But as Jay starts to get behind the wheel, Ricky stops him.
“Hold tight a bit Jay, there’s something I need to do first, down the creek a little ways, back in the woods there. Come on, there’s something you’ve never seen. And I can’t just leave it like that.”
Coming upon the little space beside a small feeder stream to the main creek, they find the noose hanging from an old Elm limb, just as Ricky had left it. Staring up at it for what seems like a long time, both are lost. Finally, Jay looks away, avoiding Ricky’s eyes, shakes his head, and says in a choked whisper, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
“No doubt about it,” Ricky replies. “It don’t mean nothing. Now let’s get this rope to tie down some of our stuff.”
Lashing on the top of the VW all that would not fit inside and under the hood, they celebrate the death of the gallows, cracking jokes and laughing about it all. New beginnings are ahead.
Out of West Virginia, across Ohio, and almost all the way to Chicago that first day, they stop in a little roadside campground and spend the night before pushing on through the corn belt the next day. Passing through the broad expanses of the West and topping the continental divide, followed by crossing the Cascades, they finally come down into Western Washington and Seattle’s port by Puget Sound. Boats and ships are scattered about everywhere on the many huge waterways. Locating the fishing fleet base and its myriad of ships is easy. After getting their applications in for the next Bering Sea run up around Alaska, they luckily find a place to stay at a boarding home for fishermen and Alaska cannery workers waiting for the season.
Quickly called back for interviews after killing time around the waterfront and tourist spots, they are hired on one of the first trawlers to head North.
Having a record of good loads, a good galley, and adequate berthing, The Edson spends the first several weeks doing pretty standard fishing. Working the nets topside, Jay, who is the bigger of the two, ribs Ricky about his easier job below in the small processing unit. But they both know that topside is much more dangerous. And that is why it pays more and comes with life insurance.
As the season changes and the sun disappears for longer and longer periods, rough seas turn dangerous. One night, removing his safety line in order to work the nets faster, Jay is washed overboard by a rogue wave that almost capsizes the vessel. Taken down immediately by his heavy gear, Jay’s chances of being found are nil. After a cursory search for him, The Edson must make for the Alaska shore with many hands injured.
Having been thrown across the relay belt and knocked unconscious by the door hatch, Ricky’s right arm is broken. He has also sustained some serious cuts and lacerations that make it necessary to fly him to Seattle where the fleet takes care of his medical and living expenses until he can recover. Healing quickly, Ricky soon finds himself back on the streets of the City. Only this time he is alone. The beneficiary of Jay’s small life insurance policy and a small workman’s comp payment, Ricky receives enough money to get on with his life but one thing’s for sure. He is done with fishing. And while Seattle is nice with its moderate climate and generous people, it is still foreign to him. Seeing raccoons wander the streets at night, Ricky feels like a fragile Alice and almost wonders when the big rabbit will appear. It’s all just not him, whatever that is. He doesn’t have much but what he does have lies back East in the Appalachians. It’s where he should be.
Having sold the VW before going to sea, Ricky flies to Sandusky to look up Jay’s family and give them the money from the life insurance. In good conscience, he can’t keep it. Jay’s folks look like they can use it and Ricky, also hurting from the loss of his friend, finds a little peace in getting it to them. Treating him warmly, they bring out some of the pictures that Jay had taken in the Nam and show him some of the ones that he is in. Studying and restudying those photographs for a whole afternoon, Ricky remembers the time and those who didn’t make it and tries to put some kind of order to it all. The Handleys let him be during that last afternoon and Ricky seems to gain the purchase that he has been scrabbling for ever since that tragic night on the Bering Sea. And even before.
Saying goodbye to Jay’s family the next morning and catching a bus down to the Southern Appalachians of West Virginia, Ricky returns to Fox Run and his little place there. In a way he is glad to be back. Maybe he should never have left. Maybe he never will again.
Sitting by the cold wood stove, Ricky bends over and unlatches the snaps on his suitcase. Lying atop his few clothes is that old rope that went the distance with him and Jay. And then with him alone. Hefting it, he lets it part way uncurl to the floor and begins slowly counting the loops of the noose as he makes it. Stopping before he gets to thirteen, he just sits there looking down at the rope in his hands, feeling its coarseness and remembering the burns he used to get from an old childhood rope swing. Sitting most of the night holding that rope, dropping it and picking it up, smiling sometimes, and almost crying others, Ricky looks back.
Coming cold and grey, the February morning light slants through the window and into his senses. A fresh blanket of snow has fallen. Suddenly a little Black Capped Chickadee alights on the snow covered window sill. Fluffing and flapping around in the snow, as if bathing for an important event, it bursts loose with a song that breaks the morning silence. Just as suddenly the bird fluffs again and is gone. Standing and dropping the rope back into the suitcase, Ricky snaps it shut and puts it aside. Moving to the window, he looks out over the meadow to the perch halfway up the hillside beyond. Up where he and Jay sat after a still hunt and talked life. Covered by white powder, it seems cold and remote compared to his warm recall. Moments pass and its chill remains, so dissimilar to his memory. Grudgingly, he spins from the view, grabs an ax and heads to the wood pile, telling himself with every step, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
Charles Hayes
Standing on a large rock and turning his face to the soft light filtering through the treetops, Ricky Teller prays, asking for forgiveness and that his body be found before it rots. After checking the tautness a final time, he pulls the noose over his head and tightens the knot behind his left ear. He does things right. Better than any note left behind to sweep his exit, this will be clear to anyone who cares to see. Lowering his eyes to the space that he intends to fill, his vision is taken up with a small sign of life in the creek below. On the bottom is a crawdad holding a small earthworm. Like a fan holds aloft a caught baseball, the crawdad seems to be showing the world that it can make it. Seeing this microcosm of life so clearly from his perch, as if somehow magically magnified especially for him, Ricky changes his mind. Sliding the knot loose with trembling hands, he lifts the rope from his neck, climbs down from the rock, and trudges out of the woods to his small home along the dirt road, his mind swirling with thoughts of his fleeing wife and stepkids.
~ ~ ~
Barbara Stephens, known simply as Babs, shacked up with Ben Hoons, the father of her two kids, until he left them for his younger cousin and their kid. Ricky, not one to miss such a rare opportunity, caught Bab’s bounce perfectly and they were quickly married.
Hearing that his old family had made a new home with Ricky, like a child that has thrown away his toys, Ben Hoons wanted them back. So he drove up the hollow to try to do that. But when he got to the little footbridge across the creek to Ricky’s shack, Ricky was waiting. “Get out of my way,” Ben said, as he tried to push past. Stiff armed by Ricky, Ben swung. Dodging and countering with two quick blows that knocked Ben down, Ricky gave Ben a choice.
“Let it go. Just go on and get off my property or I’ll get the law up here.”
His eye starting to puff up, Ben struggled to his feet, got back into his pick-up and, while cursing and waving a tire iron out the window, spun up a cloud of dust going away.
This problem was eventually ironed out by a judge and a poor people’s lawyer. The ruling gave Ricky, after many years of being alone, a bona fide wife with some step kids to boot. But with family came responsibilities. Having been told by Babs that if he ever started drinking again she and the kids would leave him, Ricky picked up the bottle a few months on anyway. It was like Babs had just been waiting for the opportunity. Looking out the window one day, Ricky saw his family, with their packed trash bags, walking across the footbridge, down the road, and out of his life.
Jay Handley, Ricky’s squad leader in Vietnam, was a kind of easy going guy. But with a bit of an insensitive streak. Once, patrolling out of a firebase near Hue, they located the charred bodies of a local Viet Cong cadre that had been caught in the open and napalmed. Stinking terribly to everyone else, the blackened mounds of flesh didn’t bother Handley. Grabbing one of the dead, propping him up against a palm tree, and shoving a cigarette in his mouth, Handley started talking to the charred mass as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The lieutenant really chewed him out but Handley just stood there smiling and leaning against that same palm tree like he was hanging on the street corner. When the lieutenant walked away Handley booted the corpse back to the ground and, to Ricky’s amazement, just winked and giggled before suddenly getting very serious.
“The lieutenant’s got no guts,” he said, “he’s not going to make it.”
Two months later the lieutenant stepped on a booby trapped 155 shell. It blew him 50 feet into the air and when he came down it was in three big pieces with lots of little pieces missing. Handley gathered the pieces for the chopper to lift out, saying over and over the whole time, “I knew it.”
~ ~ ~
Sitting on the outhouse toilet with the door open, watching the sun edge closer to the far western ridges, Ricky cups his chin in his hands and wonders what day it is. Almost mesmerized by the incessant drone of the locusts, he startles when he hears an old familiar voice.
“Still sitting on the can while the world passes you by, huh Teller?”
As out of left field as it gets, the voice brings Ricky to focus on Jay Handley walking across the outer edge of the property.
“I thought as much,” Jay continues. “I hope you’re doing better than you look.”
Cutting short his session and quickly pulling up his pants, Ricky comes out of the outhouse smiling, his hand outstretched. Grabbing Ricky’s wrist and inspecting his hand before shaking it, Jay lets out that booming laugh of times in that other world.
“What the hell are you doing in these parts,” Ricky says, “thought you were back in some factory up in Sandusky.”
“Not me, can’t take some labor boss telling me what to do any better than you can Teller. While I had an old lady maybe, but now, she’s gone, what’s the point?”
Laughing and feeling good for the first time in weeks, Ricky shakes his head.
“You mean to tell me that you actually found some woman that would put up with you. I don’t believe it, you got to be lying.”
Jay looks around at the shack, outhouse, and little patch of land between the road and the woods.
“Well it don’t appear to me that you’re doing much better. I don’t see any of the fairer sex pinning up your laundry.”
Suddenly remembering Babs and his step kids, Ricky loses his grip on the bravado and falls silent. Noticing the quick pain in Ricky’s eyes, Jay well remembers that look and how it was overseas. He would slap Ricky’s shoulder and tell him, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothin.” It was their mantra of pain and a way to try and arrest it. Make it stop. But Jay decides best he just let it die naturally this time. After a short pause, finally meeting each other’s eyes, Jay simply nods and says, “We waiting for the guide to this mansion or can we make it inside alone?”
Ricky laughs and playfully pushes Jay.
“Still the mood man, huh? Got a problem? Take it to Handley. Get in the door there and mind you wipe your feet first.”
A small wood burner, an old rocker, and a sofa, worn through to its pasteboard, make up the living room furnishings. But it is enough. Being of like ilk, they know that there are no revelations about their lives to put forward. No “catching up” to do. Just simply relaxing into some plain talk as they fire up a couple of sticks of home grown brings the two friends back home a bit. It is fine. Even if one foot remains where they were, they are not alone.
“Don’t you ever get the feeling that you’re trapped up this hollow, miles from the nearest town, no transportation?” Jay asks. “I don’t think I’d be able to take that for very long.”
“I get into town some,” Ricky says, “stir things up a little bit, then retire back here until things calm down. Besides there ain’t no liquor stores around here so I’m forced out every now and then.”
Jay laughs.
“Yeah I can see that, sure looks like some kind of solitary up here. Don’t expect people can get in your shit much out this way. I could use a couple of weeks of that about now. Might help me draw out where I’m heading, if anything can.”
“Hell man,” Ricky says, “throw your gear in that extra room there. It’s where my stepkids used to stay. Don’t expect that they’ll mind now.”
Before Jay can respond, Ricky suddenly jumps up and says, “It’s where I keep my guns. Come on, have a look.”
Following Ricky past the curtain and into the room, Jay sees a couple of Army cots with the mattresses rolled up, torn flowery wallpaper that looks 50 years old, and some indoor/outdoor carpet over most of the rough slat flooring. No furniture but between a couple of windows facing the outhouse and the steep woods beyond, a large gun rack is mounted. Several rifles and shotguns occupy it. Each gun shows not a flaw nor a speck of corrosion in its metal. And the stocks glow with rubbed in linseed oil like the day they were made. Jay, smiling like a Cheshire, walks over to the rack and admires an old Stevens 12 gauge as he lifts it from the rack.
“Man, this one goes back a ways. I got my first squirrel with one of these.”
“So did I,” replies Ricky. “Check out that Model 12 Winchester. Smoothest action I ever seen.”
Returning the Stevens and lifting the Model 12 free, Jay studies it a moment, then lifts it to his shoulder for a fit. Bringing it back down, he softly whistles and returns it to the rack.
“Man, Ricky, you got guns here worth more than this house.”
“Like em, don’t you Jay?” Ricky says. “Take your pick. We’ll go after squirrel tomorrow.”
“I’ll take the Model 12 if you can spare it. What will you use though?”
“The 22 automatic,” Ricky says. “It’s always what I use. Gives the critter a sporting chance.”
Slapping his thigh, Jay laughs.
“That’s right! Dead eye Teller! I bet you still don’t miss.”
Ricky, a little flattered by his old squad leader’s praise, walks over to the rack and lovingly strokes the scoped 22 before replying.
“Sometimes, Jay—on purpose.”
Hunting the hills together, not bringing in much game, but in a way reliving a part of their past, they quietly roam the hardwood forest and carry the guns that they love. Making one trip into town during that time, they use the last of Jay’s money for all the liquor they will need and some good food to cook up when they want. They even manage to complete a one-day roofing job for an old widow that lives nearby, asking only that she provide the materials. Finishing that job, sunburned and sweating alcohol, they amuse the widow with their discomfort. She tells them that it’s good for them and that it will remove a little of their barroom pallor. Laughing about it and realizing that it is her way of feeling like she is giving them something since she has no money, they tell her that she is probably right. Then packing it in, they head for the river to bathe.
Sitting and sipping their last bottle of Wild Turkey on the river rocks after their bath, not much passes between them. Out in the still water, beyond the rocks, the loud pop of a beaver tail brings their heads up to see a setting sun. Quietly, they put their clothes on, noticing the look in each other’s eyes. Knowing that the other is back at one of those streams in the Nam where they had bathed together, they silently leave the waters and go back up the hollow to their home.
Heavy rain pounding the tin roof, adding a small sense of security, brings them to in the wee hours of the morning. Finding the last two cans of beer in the fridge, Ricky gives one to Jay and, with unsteady hands, rolls up a joint and lights it.
“Well, that’s the end of the booze. Think we should scratch up some money and get some more?”
“No need to bother,” Jay replies, “time for me to hit the road again anyway. Catching and keeping rides is hard when the bottle goes along.”
Speaking in a slow quiet way that reminds Ricky of some of their conversations on night watch back in the war, Jay floats an idea.
“Say Rick, why don’t you come with me? There ain’t nothing holding you here. I figure on heading out to Seattle, try to get on some fishing trawler for a spell. You know, sock up a little money, then see what’s happening.”
“You mean hitchhike,” Ricky says, “I guess you know rides are hard to come by these days, especially for two grown men.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Maybe. Did you see that old VW setting under the tarp in the widow’s yard?”
Jay nods.
“Well, it’s been setting like that for two years that I know of. Parts are cheap, plus there’s an authorized dealer and parts store in town. The old woman liked our work. Maybe we could work some sort of deal with her, fix up that old house for the VW, and have some wheels to get around.”
Jay studies the proposition for a moment then shakes his head.
“Where are we going to get the money for gas? Food will cost plenty and you do want to let down every now and then, don’t you? Seems like it would just be another trapping to eat up resources, stifle what little freedom we got.”
Nodding in silence for several moments, Ricky decides to let it out.
“I got some money squirreled away that my mom left me. Not a lot but enough to get the VW going and get us out West. Don’t know why I was saving it, just felt like it wasn’t really my money. Might as well put it to some use.”
Jay looks to the ceiling and rolls his eyes. “You old sandbagging asshole you! Living up here hand to mouth and you got money in the bank! Hell yes, we can put that money to use.”
Getting a deal with the widow woman, who is glad to give them a shove off, the two aging Namies paint her house, rebuild the old porch, and repair her falling down barn. Happy with their work, the old woman deeds the VW, and wishes them
luck, telling them that they are too young to be idling away their time up a West Virginia hollow. After several trips hitchhiking to town and the local junk yards, they get the old car licensed and in good running shape. Time to hit the road. Loading the old bug up with their gear and locking the shack tight with the guns in a concealed wall compartment, they get ready to make their final trip out of the hollow. But as Jay starts to get behind the wheel, Ricky stops him.
“Hold tight a bit Jay, there’s something I need to do first, down the creek a little ways, back in the woods there. Come on, there’s something you’ve never seen. And I can’t just leave it like that.”
Coming upon the little space beside a small feeder stream to the main creek, they find the noose hanging from an old Elm limb, just as Ricky had left it. Staring up at it for what seems like a long time, both are lost. Finally, Jay looks away, avoiding Ricky’s eyes, shakes his head, and says in a choked whisper, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
“No doubt about it,” Ricky replies. “It don’t mean nothing. Now let’s get this rope to tie down some of our stuff.”
Lashing on the top of the VW all that would not fit inside and under the hood, they celebrate the death of the gallows, cracking jokes and laughing about it all. New beginnings are ahead.
Out of West Virginia, across Ohio, and almost all the way to Chicago that first day, they stop in a little roadside campground and spend the night before pushing on through the corn belt the next day. Passing through the broad expanses of the West and topping the continental divide, followed by crossing the Cascades, they finally come down into Western Washington and Seattle’s port by Puget Sound. Boats and ships are scattered about everywhere on the many huge waterways. Locating the fishing fleet base and its myriad of ships is easy. After getting their applications in for the next Bering Sea run up around Alaska, they luckily find a place to stay at a boarding home for fishermen and Alaska cannery workers waiting for the season.
Quickly called back for interviews after killing time around the waterfront and tourist spots, they are hired on one of the first trawlers to head North.
Having a record of good loads, a good galley, and adequate berthing, The Edson spends the first several weeks doing pretty standard fishing. Working the nets topside, Jay, who is the bigger of the two, ribs Ricky about his easier job below in the small processing unit. But they both know that topside is much more dangerous. And that is why it pays more and comes with life insurance.
As the season changes and the sun disappears for longer and longer periods, rough seas turn dangerous. One night, removing his safety line in order to work the nets faster, Jay is washed overboard by a rogue wave that almost capsizes the vessel. Taken down immediately by his heavy gear, Jay’s chances of being found are nil. After a cursory search for him, The Edson must make for the Alaska shore with many hands injured.
Having been thrown across the relay belt and knocked unconscious by the door hatch, Ricky’s right arm is broken. He has also sustained some serious cuts and lacerations that make it necessary to fly him to Seattle where the fleet takes care of his medical and living expenses until he can recover. Healing quickly, Ricky soon finds himself back on the streets of the City. Only this time he is alone. The beneficiary of Jay’s small life insurance policy and a small workman’s comp payment, Ricky receives enough money to get on with his life but one thing’s for sure. He is done with fishing. And while Seattle is nice with its moderate climate and generous people, it is still foreign to him. Seeing raccoons wander the streets at night, Ricky feels like a fragile Alice and almost wonders when the big rabbit will appear. It’s all just not him, whatever that is. He doesn’t have much but what he does have lies back East in the Appalachians. It’s where he should be.
Having sold the VW before going to sea, Ricky flies to Sandusky to look up Jay’s family and give them the money from the life insurance. In good conscience, he can’t keep it. Jay’s folks look like they can use it and Ricky, also hurting from the loss of his friend, finds a little peace in getting it to them. Treating him warmly, they bring out some of the pictures that Jay had taken in the Nam and show him some of the ones that he is in. Studying and restudying those photographs for a whole afternoon, Ricky remembers the time and those who didn’t make it and tries to put some kind of order to it all. The Handleys let him be during that last afternoon and Ricky seems to gain the purchase that he has been scrabbling for ever since that tragic night on the Bering Sea. And even before.
Saying goodbye to Jay’s family the next morning and catching a bus down to the Southern Appalachians of West Virginia, Ricky returns to Fox Run and his little place there. In a way he is glad to be back. Maybe he should never have left. Maybe he never will again.
Sitting by the cold wood stove, Ricky bends over and unlatches the snaps on his suitcase. Lying atop his few clothes is that old rope that went the distance with him and Jay. And then with him alone. Hefting it, he lets it part way uncurl to the floor and begins slowly counting the loops of the noose as he makes it. Stopping before he gets to thirteen, he just sits there looking down at the rope in his hands, feeling its coarseness and remembering the burns he used to get from an old childhood rope swing. Sitting most of the night holding that rope, dropping it and picking it up, smiling sometimes, and almost crying others, Ricky looks back.
Coming cold and grey, the February morning light slants through the window and into his senses. A fresh blanket of snow has fallen. Suddenly a little Black Capped Chickadee alights on the snow covered window sill. Fluffing and flapping around in the snow, as if bathing for an important event, it bursts loose with a song that breaks the morning silence. Just as suddenly the bird fluffs again and is gone. Standing and dropping the rope back into the suitcase, Ricky snaps it shut and puts it aside. Moving to the window, he looks out over the meadow to the perch halfway up the hillside beyond. Up where he and Jay sat after a still hunt and talked life. Covered by white powder, it seems cold and remote compared to his warm recall. Moments pass and its chill remains, so dissimilar to his memory. Grudgingly, he spins from the view, grabs an ax and heads to the wood pile, telling himself with every step, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”