Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock

wife and children. Ain’t no photos in his wallet, but ain’t none in mine neither.” His father filled his lungs and exhaled and closed his eyes. “I wonder if Hell is real,” he said. “You think Hell is real?”
    It wasn’t a question Vernon had ever studied. “I don’t know.”
    “I’ve been thinking a great deal about Hell. I don’t want to go there. I don’t know if it’s a real place or not, but a man can’t take his chances.”
    “You ought to lay on that bench over there, Pop. It’s in the sun a little. You oughtn’t stay in the shade with those wounds.”
    “I been thinking about Jesus, too. I figure Jesus wouldn’t have got nowhere if he were always backing down a road. Even Jesus had to stand and take his licks.”
    “That man stabbed you,” Vernon said. “He might’ve killed you.”
    “He’s got a name. Don’t call him that man, ” his father said, and opened his eyes and rose and walked to the dry bench in the sun. “Mr. Augusto surely weren’t going to back down. But he weren’t no different than me.” He lay back on the bench and covered his eyes with his arm. “Vernon?”
    “Yes, sir?”
    “You know why I believe there’s a God?”
    “No, sir.”
    “I feel a powerful tenderness for Mr. Augusto. Don’t make no sense otherwise. A man what come after me. A man I don’t know from Adam. Yet I’m still very sorry for him. If you wronged someone and still want to do good by them, I believe that tenderness is God up in you. I feel more tenderness for Mr. Nory Augusto than any man alive. I believe God is full up in me.”
    “Maybe the Devil was in you when you did it?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “What’s better anyway, Vernon? To have the Devil in me, or to have it be me alone?”
    “You ain’t a bad man, Pop.”
    His father shook his head. “We are what we do.”
    “You ain’t bad. I believe in that.”
    “No, Vernon,” his father said. “I’m about as bad as they come. Now go on and bring Mr. Augusto in here. I need to lay still and be quiet awhile.”
    “Mr. Augusto would’ve killed you.”
    “Then he’d be the bad man,” his father said, quietly. “Now leave me be awhile, Vernon. Gather wood for a fire. We’ll need lots of wood.”
    Vernon studied his father in the milky light, searching for something in his face, or the way he held his body, that was evidence of the good man he knew as a child. If God didn’t want Mr. Augusto dead, why’d he let Pop kill him? With all the killing in the world, did one more man really matter?
    Vernon crossed the room and crawled from the shimmering cavern. Maybe awful things is how God speaks to us, Vernon thought, trudging up the lightless tunnel. Maybe folks don’t trust in good things no more. Maybe awful things is all God’s got to remind us he’s alive. Maybe war is God come to life in men. Vernon pushed on toward the light of day. He stepped out onto the ledge and into the heat, and it felt like leaving a theater after the matinee had shown a sad film, the glare of sunshine after the darkness far too real to suffer.
    From the ledge, Vernon could see for miles: knobs of redbuds, poplars, dogwoods. The sky was slashed with smoke. Two thick black columns to the north, what Vernon figured was from the foundry stacks. An airy gossamer of soot far to the south, from coal barges out on the river. A curl of black smoke hung in the distant blue to the west, what Vernon knew was from town. It’d been a hot summer, with many fires; the bowling alley had burned to cinders, as had Prentice Baldwin’s house on the edge of town, the Harroget dairy, a grain silo out by the quarry. Vernon wondered what in town was on fire this time. The woods below had been slapped by drought but were still generally green. In the heart of this green was a circle of bare-branched hickories, leafless as they might look in winter.
    Vernon climbed carefully down the cliff and began gathering wood. His eyes were parched knots, and his