Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock Page B

me? Ain’t nobody around but us.”
    Then Vernon was crying, and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Roy?”
    “Yes, Vernon?”
    “I hardly know him,” Vernon said. “I hardly know my own father since he come home. I know you better than my own father.”
    “Every boy in America knows me better than their father,” Roy said, and patted Vernon’s knee. “That’s why they love me so. Now what say we sing that song?”
    “I ain’t like you, Roy,” Vernon said, sobbing. “I’m shit scared all the time. I’m just a rope of sand. What if the war starts up again, Roy? It will sometime, won’t it? Folks say it will. I don’t want to end up like him. Don’t want to kill nobody. What if I got to take my turn?”
    “You ain’t any different than me, Vernon,” Roy said. “I just sing a song every now and again to take off the dark edges. What say we sing one now? Just to smooth off the dark edges?”
    Vernon wiped his eyes on his arm. “All right then.”
    Vernon stood and squeezed the bundle of sticks on his shoulder and ambled off through the forest, singing what words he could recall from “Get Along, Little Doggies.” He took his time, gathering more wood as he went, and soon was back at the honeycomb rock.
    He stopped singing and tied the bundle and began to climb, the song gone and the rocks so hot he had to spit on his palms to keep them from burning.
    The body lay on the ledge in the summit’s long shadow. Vernon stood over it with the sticks on his shoulder. He nudged the quilt edge with the toe of his boot. A corner folded over and revealed an ear and dark hair salted white and a cheek as smooth as ivory. That skin flustered Vernon. He lifted more quilt with his boot. A green eye showed itself, staring into nothing. Vernon had to see the rest of Mr. Augusto. He pulled a stick from his bundle and threw the quilt open.
    The man was thin and wore gray trousers pressed with a hard crease. He wore a matching vest with brass buttons, and a shirt the color of a salmon fillet. He looked like a politician. Like a preacher. The left side of his face was unscathed. The right eye socket was a blood-crusted pit, the cheekbone collapsed, and a gash ran from his forehead down the side of his nose to the point of his chin.
    Vernon turned over the boulder to be sick, but there was nothing left inside him. He ran into the cool of the tunnel. Slumped against the wall, he steadied his breathing. Then Vernon descended through strata of pallid light and tried to imagine this man wielding a knife. But he could not rectify the image in his mind and the pristine brass buttons and clean-shaven face.
    He entered the cavern to find his father asleep and shivering on the sun-washed granite slab. His father’s hand was unwrapped from its swaddling. Green stitches closed a gash on the back of his hand. His fingers were gnarled and black. Red blisters made a gross topography across his palm and wrist.
    Sunlight streamed a harsh tide into the cathedral, and water trickling down the walls threw tiny prisms. Vernon set his load of wood in the center of the benches. He lightly shook his father’s arm. His father’s eyes opened enough to show white through his lashes.
    “I need your lighter, Pop.”
    His father’s eyes batted, closed again. Vernon dug into his father’s pant’s pocket and found the silver lighter.
    The damp air made the fire difficult to start. Soon the wood crackled and let off a thin roil of smoke. His father now sat in a slouch, trying to comb his hair with a quivering hand. Vernon took the comb from him and ran it carefully through his father’s hair.
    “You was shivering.” Vernon gave his father the comb. “They’s lots of fires around. Don’t think ours’ll draw notice.”
    His father nodded. “Thank you, Vernon,” he said. “Now bring Mr. Augusto in here, please. And plenty more wood. Several big logs. Use the rope to get them up here if need be.”
    Vernon found he could no longer look at