vol. 1, 2007

The Wayside: An excerpt from the novel The Mantooth Covenant
John McManus

As Link walked home through Dreadfullwater Cove, he laid down the pen in his mind and reviewed the letter he’d been imagining: dear Mother I write to you this first as the sky grew dark over Galcatcher Mountain, the road lit less by sunlight now than by a glow that shone to Link from hollows in which families braced against night, huddling together to tell him he’d be lonely when he reached his destination. Recalling the wind against his skin, the whiskey wafting to him from the bottle and from his father’s breath, he sighed; there were orphans who never felt these feelings. Obie would consult him for advice about his covenant: does Appalachia have the same magnanimity of setting that hell has? Why not—because of the trees? Don’t act like you’re a mute again, am I to work it out with the slugs at least would leave me with some whiskey for myself but here I go, I’m sorry Link, my sermons don’t come easy and I need a whipping boy, that’s an idiom, not a literal thing that you are.

Link would look out over the junkpile at the petrified cedars and imagine floating away over the succession of longer and longer valleys. Seeing was better than feeling. Hearing wasn’t important. Nothing tasted good anymore. He and Obie were on a macrobiotic diet, which helped balance Link so Link wouldn’t be evil. God had been taking Obie’s words away as punishment for Link’s evil mind, so they ate seaweed together in the hope that He’d return them, but Link hungered for meat. He ate slugs and hoped they’d kill him. Children were supposed to fear death, but he feared only falling. Death itself would be fine. Also he was Obie’s one reason to keep living. Life was hard for Obie; recently his words had stopped coming. He was jealous of Link. His lead at rummy was shrinking; he was ahead 32,540 to 29,085. Lately he cursed God when he lost a hand. He explained these curses step by step: he didn’t want to condescend to God, but Link needed to understand. Once, when Link was five years old, they had come to a crossroads. Let’s see what lies to the left, Obie had said, we’ve never been through that valley, but Obie had promised that they’d ascend the mountain, and he told his father that he wanted to continue climbing.

Wonder what was down that road. Guess we’ll never know. That poor, lonely road. Where O where did it go. The sadness of Obie’s voice had broken Link’s heart. The things we might have seen in that valley. He’d begged his father to return. But how, my son? We were lost that day. I don’t know where we could have been. Their whole lives different if Link had said yes: it was too difficult to consider.

A pickup came chugging down the road, its lights blinding him, so that he stepped into the gully and looked away. The truck, a white Ranger, stopped by the knee-high weeds in which he stood, and a man rolled down the window and said, You need a ride?

You’re driving the opposite way from me.

Bout to turn around. Thought I might run into you, you’re Link Mantooth? I was just at your house in search of your pa Obediah, I’ll drive you back.

How do you know who I am?

Name’s Jack Satterfield. I’m a child welfare agent.

If you stole anything, my dad will shoot you.

Came to see him about a mule.

Nothing’s wrong with the welfare of our mule.

Heard it might be for sale.

How do you know my name?

Let me give you my phone number, Link.

As Satterfield reached for a pen, Link stared his hardest possible stare at the place just between the man’s eyes. It arose from that same location in himself, his third eye, the one that beheld the presence of God. Link laughed aloud at the thought of a government man beholding God. The only good cop was a dead cop, Obie had taught him, and Link agreed.

Take this number, son. Sure you won’t let me drive you?

When the scrap of paper had passed from Satterfield’s hand to his, he released it without a glance to fall into the thick dark of honeysuckle vines.

Now, I think you should have kept that number there—

Will you arrest me for littering?

Now I’m not a policeman, Link—

Stop using my Christian name. Our mule’s not for sale. Fuck off and find another mule. I don’t want to talk to you anymore; I’m leaving, drive away from me, good-bye.

And he walked past Satterfield’s brake lights into shadow, proud to have told a government man to fuck off but also frightened of the implication that his only advocate on earth had been reported as unfit to raise a child. The regime was declaring war on Obie, as he’d predicted so often. Behind Link, the truck continued south for a hundred feet then turned around. He braced himself for further conversation, but this time Satterfield drove on by.

I wish you could tell me what it’s like to kill, he thought again. Probably what I’m seeking from you isn’t advice, but approval.

He liked long walks because they weren’t predetermined, as life was. A good walk with a happy ending didn’t make his life better, overall, so the predetermining fates were as likely as not to grant one. But Satterfield had caused this particular walk to become entwined with life itself. Obie, he had suggested, was no better than Kermit in the eyes of the law. Alone on the taiga, Link’s walks would be unspoiled, though he didn’t deserve for them to be. The dead trees rising from beneath the lake were the murdered Cherokee. Ashamed of the blood of the children they’d killed, the whites had asked God to change the corpses into wood. Link had been their leader at that time. Since then, he’d toiled in lesser bodies, wanting lesser things, such as to walk. It was what he enjoyed and how he wanted to die. If it weren’t for the dams, he could float to the Gulf of Mexico, and his body would finally see the ocean. The Cherokee Nation was a landlocked place, and Link had never made it to the shore. He’d never wanted badly enough to go. He didn’t imagine adequate possibilities, so hypnotized was he by the few he’d imagined first. Cowboys whispered into their horses’ ears as they rode together across the southwest. It was lonelier on a walk, but better, because he didn’t have to doubt how some horse felt about him. Thinking only his own thoughts he walked around the bend to face his father’s truck at the bottom of the drive, Obie’s head poking above the junkpile and angrily red as he spoke to a man who turned out to be Satterfield. The Ranger, shorter than the Ram, became visible to Link above a stack of tires. He navigated the mounds of old appliances and compost heaps to the porch where Obie jousted at Satterfield with a television antenna, shouting what are you here for, tell me or get shot, what on earth do you want?

Heard you had a mule for sale.

That mule’s mine, Bub.

Which is what you’d get my money for.

Money doesn’t love you like a mule does.

So that’s what you do with your mule?

Care to say that again, my friend?

I mean folks know well that that mule—

I don’t do a goddamn thing with my mule.

That’s just what I was getting at.

Said you knew something about me and my mule.

People that have got mules have got reasons—

The reason for my mule is he’s mine!

Dad, why don’t you ask him how much he’ll give you—

Link was sent careening off the porch to land on dirt between two pyracantha bushes that grew by the steps. The fires of hell, he heard, consume you in your depravity you trespasser against God and my land and Link—

Touch that boy again you’ll be sorry—

The Lord Link took up my arm, get up I’ll ask Him why He smote you.

Fuck you and fuck God, said Link.

Link stop it stop it, as Obie plugged his ears with his fingers and cried No—

Fuck you both, I’ll shoot that piece of shit mule.

I love you Link it wasn’t me that was the agent of your fall.

But Link, still on the ground, stopped paying attention to his father’s words, because the path of the barn swallows overhead was reminding him of infinity. When the guidance counselors had tested him for disorders, they’d told him how to use infinity to calm himself down. They’d had him trace the infinity symbol on paper until his page was torn from pencil lead and his mind was the empty place they wanted it to become. The exercise had worked better than anyone could have imagined. At night he roamed the woods in patterns of infinity an infinite number of times, growing infinitely calm, until an infinite amount of emptiness had moved into him, at which time he would lie down on the grass hoping the stars could make him an Indian again.

Satterfield was hurrying away. Did the teachers ask about that bruise? I don’t want you fibbing to protect me; I’ll come up with the lies myself; what have we done to each other? Must be fun to live a life of sin and curses. I know you don’t like to yell at me like that; something possesses you. Mule man seemed to know you, who was that man and what have you done to our family?

As the truck spun out of the drive, leaving gravel dustclouds in its wake, Obie began to weep. It wasn’t the first time. He asked Link to hit him where he’d been hit. He gave Link a handicap based on their relative body weights and stood ready for impact as Link pushed himself up from the ground and considered shooting himself with two guns at once. What kind of temporal precision was needed to pull both triggers simultaneously? In Aristotle’s Physics he’d found no treatise on the mechanics of suicide, but it had been written prior to the wide proliferation of gunpowder. He decided to fulfill his father’s wish by kicking him in the balls. He prepared his foot, raised it, and struck accurately and hard. Obie watched this happen, sized Link up, and knelt into his pain as if to lap up water from the ground. Already Link could tell he’d derive no value from this experience. It was funny, the world. If only he were disturbed enough to disappear permanently into fantasy. He wanted someone to love, so God could test the love. He believed he could achieve mastery of the test. The person, of course, was Malabar; the test was her Kermit. His father was still crying. Link wandered away to the road and passed the time by ripping up chunks of asphalt where it was cracking, as he did sometimes. He’d use these fake rocks to dam the creek, causing it to flood the holes in the road, which often looked like countries. When he ripped them into newer shapes, he imagined he was destroying those countries. But the creek was nearly dry this spring. So much labor thwarted. He returned to the porch, where it shamed him to see his father’s swollen cheeks. He could never hold his grudges for long.

Dad? he asked. How do you get it to rain?

You can’t ask God for every little smidgen of your mind.

The Indians used to have a dance they did.

Link, you know a sad decayed part of me.

Will you just show me about the rain?

I’m not the man I was before. If you’d been born earlier.

God didn’t like naggy kids who begged for things, you got what you wanted by wanting it least, so it didn’t rain that night. Acts had no consequence. Drivers would notice the hole he’d ripped and steer away instead of wrecking, and he’d be weak in Malabar’s eyes. He followed Bonnie to the back yard, from whose weeds she produced a box turtle and gnawed mercilessly on its shell. He took it from her and beat it against a rock, then cut the tail off with his arrowhead, pocketed both, and gave the turtle back. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what was repugnant to others about pain. He’d caused some suffering, but now it wouldn’t suffer, and she could gnaw to her heart’s content as they meandered between the trees. In Cherokee mythology a turtle had carried dirt speck by speck from the sea floor to create the continents; since then, life had been episodic. Men wandered through it nomadically. Link was no different. There was a finite amount of existence. The turtle fell from Bonnie’s mouth. He pitched it at a poplar and heard its shell split open. Jays flew squawking out of the tree. The word was finitude, but it should have been finity: he lived in finity. Obie spoke of inventing a language, but this burden would fall on Link, because Obie was blocked. For several years now he’d been blocked. It was unpleasant to behold. Link put the turtle’s tail into his mouth and chewed. It tasted raw, like the earth. The myth explained why the world progressed so sluggishly. From the edge of his yard he could hear his father laughing like a devil. He spat the tail out and went to the back door. The television was on the kitchen table, and Obie was beating the top of it with a fist. He’d attached the antenna, but as he turned the UHF dial there was just fuzz.

Dad? said Link, the word emerging in a whisper, but Obie stared through him as if he didn’t recognize his son. Thanks for going to all that trouble for me.

What did you ask?

I’m glad you tried. I really appreciate it.

Obie shrugged and pushed the television onto the tile floor. Link clenched his eyes shut in anticipation of breaking glass. There was a crash, but that was all, and he opened his eyes to see that it had landed face-up and nothing had shattered.

Let’s forget what’s come between us. I was a fool to think an antenna could do you good. Closest station’s in Asheville. It’s too many mountains. Sound waves are no different from the rest of society. I only wanted to show you what our war will consist of, get my flask, see that it’s full, and we’ll go driving.

Didn’t you know where the stations were?

I could have sworn the hills were smaller. That the signals would cross.

Link nodded; he’d hoped they’d be able to do something together too.

Where will it get us to argue? Consider logic, and think what it makes sense to do, and do those things, and be happy, my boy, and we’ll drive the hills tonight, like that teacher of yours, the one who can’t sleep unless she’s in a moving car.

But except for dregs, Obie had run out of whiskey, so he ransacked the house for more, wasting a good ten minutes of nighttime before settling into acceptance of his fate, which was to drink beer. He carried a six-pack to the Ram and tucked it behind Link’s seat. Beer was made of rotten grains, which was exactly how it tasted. Link climbed into the cab and opened one for himself and one for his father, and they drove quickly toward moonrise, snaking across hillsides in the sallow light, throwing empty cans out the window, discussing what came to mind.

You know there’s a show about us on the TV?

What are you talking about?

I sold the rights when you were a baby.

For how much money?

It’s squandered now on drink.

What show? What’s it called?

They drive around the hills running from a sheriff.

Just a father and son, like us?

Stuck some women on there too. Painted the truck orange. Turned it into a car, drew a number on the side. Lifted it up and set it down again in the state of Georgia and changed everybody’s names, made everybody white, I’m sure you’ve seen it. You probably didn’t notice. Nobody recognizes himself when faced with his own image. I tried to make that antenna work for you, my son, I pointed it every which way.

I could go to someone else’s house and watch the war there instead.

Jump ship and make some other little brat friends. I won’t pull you under. I knew you wouldn’t be home when I returned. Drove all over hell and back to find that thing, and you were gone. Damn mule man got to me before you did, well, he was enough. I don’t need a son. I like to have at least one conversation a day with someone, somewhere, there’s the phone I guess at the bait shop, I can walk there, I need the exercise, the time alone—

Dad?

Yes, son?

Where are we driving?

There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing.

We could hunt more junk.

There’s the question of whom I’d call. Dial seven numbers I guess you’ll get somebody, somewhere. I guess if you have enough quarters you can eventually buy friendship, so long as you’re not deaf.

I was only trying to make you feel better.

Have I told you about the diseases that run in our family?

Parkinsons. Cancer. Brain disease.

But Meniere’s disease—have I told you of that one?

I don’t remember it.

You’d think it wouldn’t hurt to be deaf. Would you imagine that your brain would blow up with pressure like a helium balloon, except the opposite of floating, so all you hear is voices that are completely fake?

I’m not gonna worry about Meniere’s disease.

You’re calling me a liar? Say I’m a liar. Say I’m lying.

Fuck you if you’re gonna do this again—

Obie jerked the wheel to the left, pulling them off the road onto a gravel wayside. They had climbed a high ridge. Far below them, moonlight glistened on the surface of Fontana Lake. They were deep in the woods, far from any house. Link knew his father well; he shut his eyes. Wind was disturbing the trees, loons screeching in them as Obie turned the engine off and said, I’ve borne you into a cruel slavery. Your lot is to prevent my suicide. It’s consumed your childhood. I know I’ve been selfish. I offer you these keys. You know how I feel about metaphors, but this is important, this is our life together, so I offer you these keys as a metaphor for the very real prison keys that lock you into being with me. You can accept these keys and leave to live a new life of joy, or you can reject them in which case I’ll stay on and care for you and you for me, now here’s where the metaphor begins to collapse. Think of it as an inverse metaphor. Rejecting the keys is actually accepting them because you’ll keep them and thus I won’t start the car, but the converse holds true, too, because to accept the keys to your own life you must relinquish these metaphorical ones to me so I can start the car again, and after you get out, I’ll drive off the cliff, putting an end to my misery while you walk down the mountain two point seven miles, I measured it, to the Gulf station where with this quarter and this dime you’ll call someone who has the resources to make you happy Link I don’t want you to deem me disingenuous.

Obie dropped the keys into the supine palm of Link. Think hard about your answer Link base nothing of your yes and no upon yourself but consider me and how little I’ve given you and I present myself to you literally at the End. Of. My. Road.

Now Link was aware his father drank himself to sleep each night, but it had never occurred to him to attribute Obie’s erratic behavior to alcohol. He knew no different man than this, and although he was scared, he showed no fear. A Cherokee will creep in silence through the fallen leaves, never causing them to rustle. Link held the ring of keys. Outside, trees that had died in part or in full reached in all directions, and he felt that the world was full of suffering. Babies of rats had their legs bitten off by their rat mothers. He was able to read this in the trees, which took the evilness of dirt and laid it across the sky to tower over him and who climbed trees fell and who lived beneath was crushed and who tapped trees died of poisoned sugar, if not that then typhoid fever, diphtheria, rubella, toddlers in hollers didn’t know what to do with the bodies of their dead mothers, deaf-mute parricides wandered the land in terror never able to explain the accidental nature of their crimes. Link examined his skin wondering where fate would rip him asunder. The thrill of chance. Someday he’d live in the future looking back on these moments. He removed keys from the chain and threw them one by one off the cliff into Fontana Lake. He loves me, said Obie as each one fell, he loves me not, he loves me, and soon Link held nothing but a ring, and buzzards living on the cliff made nests of keys and died of metal and thus had Link affected the world.

Well, shit, said Obie. You ever hot-wired a car?

He shook his head. Have you?

Obie pulled and tugged and eventually pried loose a panel beneath the steering wheel, handed it to Link, squinted at the mess of wires, and spat Skoal into a Styrofoam cup in the cup holder. Could have been dead. Does that not do a thing to you? You read the one about the orphanage? Because if you want things, you saw what it does to want things— but Link had only skimmed that book, as he had with Crime and Punishment before it. He finished novels with little notion of their plots, especially ones from the past centuries like Obie made him read. It didn’t matter. If Obie asked him an unanswerable question about one of the books, eventually Obie would just keep talking.

Look here at the four wires. Now when we touch the wires together it’s possible for the car to start, or for us to explode, or for nothing to happen at all. You’re good at numbers, aren’t you? Figure out the chances of each.

There’s twenty-four combinations, but you named three things.

That’s true Link, you’re smart.

Can they each happen eight times?

No, you die only once.

But you know what I mean.

Don’t argue! thundered Obie, causing Link to cower away and press himself against the door, but only because he was surprised; there was nothing to fear.

That was just a joke Link. Calm down, this is a nice time, not like before.

I can’t figure chances that don’t make sense.

There’s only one chance that starts the engine.

Then it’s a four percent chance of success.

And of failure?

Ninety-six.

Of death?

I don’t know.

Do you hate me, Link?

Dad, stop it.

Just answer.

I’m warning you to stop.

You’d refuse your father in his time of need.

You don’t need shit, Dad.

Well that hurts me.

I don’t want to be here.

Then admit you hate me and we’ll leave.

Fine, I despise you. I hate your guts.

And you’re sure you mean that?

I hate everything about you—

That’s enough now—

I fucking hate you!

Do you really?

How many times do I have to say it?

Just one more time, so I can be certain.

I’ve always hated you. I’ll hate you till the day I die.

Okay, good; we’ll leave. You can wave good-bye to this place. Obie held the red and yellow wires. The smell of an explosion would be overpowering. Link winced. This was the end. Fate had caught up to him; he couldn’t keep going forever. Why had he discouraged Obie from death for so long? He could have been running through the woods with Malabar. If Obie could read his thoughts, he’d smite Link out the window and off the cliff. By the time he could regret it, Link would be dead. That was about to be the case anyway. His heart raced. The engine turned. We’re alive.