DON'T NEED NOBODY

By Carver Adams

Ninety-year-old Tyler Francis sat in the chair his pappy’d made out of cowhide slung over pine post and looked out onto burnt fields.

“Used t’be corn.” He spoke to the inquisitive rooster.

The rooster crowed. Tyler laughed at the anemic sound and offered a high-pitched imitation.

“Nah, Roos. You ain’t got it right yet. I’m tired of tryin’t’ teach ya. ‘Sides, I’m talkin’ ‘bout corn. Go on, now git.” The rooster’s neck stretched, allowing his bead eye a closer critique of the frail old man. “Go on. You all by yer stud self too.” He watched the bird limp off. “What ya need is a cane, Roos. Think ya could learn t’ use it?”

Tyler wished someone else had heard the joke. Imagine a rooster with a cane. Years ago he would have pantomimed it, gone about flapping imaginary wings, crowing and leaning on an invisible stick. Instead, he found himself smiling over a pun that would never get laughed at by anybody but him.

He pulled himself up a joint at a time. “If it takes any longer t' get up it’ll be tomorrow by the time I’m there.” The arthritis had got in his blood, he decided. It curdled inside him, poisoning everything.

“Bet I’d bleed pain if I was poked.”

He visualized stabbing knives and needles jabbing in unison; glued together in assault. Swollen fingers, wrists, ankles, even his neck wanted to take part in it—a toothache in the bones.

“Stop! Damn ya, stop!” He yelled at the throbbing that sucked his focus away from everything else. Finally he stood. Looked like a windblown stalk of grain.

“Reckon I’ll go down to the road, if I git that far.”

There was no old dog to follow him or to commiserate. Jeremiah was in the ground, and had been for a year. But Tyler half expected the mangy beast, and turned as if to wait for him to catch up.

“Oh, hell. Forget that bony mutt, Tyler. Why ya keep lookin’ fer ‘im?”

The path was uneven and he leaned heavily on the walking stick. A black snake paused on its way by before ducking into the leaves.

“I ain’t after yer ass, snake. Jus’ tryin’ to make it to that bench.”

Ten years back he’d built the last three bench seats along the path to the road. “Somethin’ t’ do.”  Thick, hard-to-bend grapevines protested whatever design he planned. From his forcing, the results were unique, primitive.

Mildewed dried leaves stuck to the seat as if planted there waiting to sprout. Lichen, pale from drought, shriveled between the rounds, craving nightfall when dew might promise relief. After a difficult sit, Tyler realized the bench had started to sag and was too low for him “like the goddam toilet seat” and it creaked under his weight.

He eased his back onto the tree behind him where his old eyes caught sight of a spider making a quick disappearance. There was a time he’d have checked to see if it were venomous.

“Leave me alone and I’ll leave you be. If a widdy gets me now, I’ll just have t’ be got. Nah, I ain’t ready t’ die.”

He wondered if folks knew when it was time, if they wanted death to come. Old as he was, he wasn’t giving in yet.

“Always somethin’ keepin’ me here. Right now it’s Ethan. Never thought I’d have to get somebody else to do for me. Might as well pay that old toad t' buy m' food.”

Old Ethan wouldn’t let him down. He and Tyler had grown up together. Hunted the same fields, swapped corn, fish tales, camped out in the woods. There was something to be said for a relationship that ancient. Eighty-eight, Ethan still drove. Not the old Ford. He had a ‘65 Chevy pick-up now. Clanked and clattered, but it got him where he wanted to go. Tyler’s paying Ethan every week what little he did kept him in gas and smokes. Gave Ethan someplace to say he was going, too: “My pal Tyler, guess ya couldn’t get along without me.”

“Well, I could, dammit. Just need a payback now and again.” The paybacks had lasted over a year. Ethan carried groceries in the house for him; put heavy things like 5# bags of sugar into squat containers so he could get to them easily. Tyler downplayed the help, but appreciated it.

“Goddam, Ethan, you treat me like I was a helpless fool.”

“Well you are.” Ethan’s laugh was shrill and repetitive, like a hen cackling.

“You old bastard. When you gonna kick off?”

“I ain’t. I’m gon’ bury that Chevy before they bury me.”

“Just about already done that. It’s a piece of shit.”

“Don’t talk about m’ truck, now, Ty. M' truck brings them goods t’ ya ever’ week.”

“Oh, all right. God bless the fuckin’ truck,” and together they’d laugh. “God bless the fuckin’ truck.” Ethan went so far as to pat the hood before he’d get in to drive off.

“Why don’t ya kiss it? Maybe it’ll rust t’ yer lips.”

Ethan was the only one Tyler had told about the money he’d made from selling the pines. They’d paid off, all right.

“Land’s spent, though. Goddam pulpwood comp’nies. Buy off the trees, yank ‘em outta the ground, leave the stumps to rot barin’ their asses to the sky and expect the land to pick itself up and go on.”

He’d had to hire someone to clear all the stumps, then burn what was left. The ground was gray and black, sand and pine needles. As if it knew he wasn’t going to replant, it just lay there.

“Awful lookin’. I regret plantin’ t’ pines, Ethan. Didn’t need all that money. Just thought I did.”

Tyler studied the distance to the second bench. He could make it by the time Ethan got there. The cane was hardly up to the punishment. He used his left hand and arm to support himself, turning into it to push while his right hand pulled hard on the worn hickory staff. A groan helped him rise and distracted him from the sharp strain on wasted muscles. Bent over, he remained that way until sure his balance was achieved, then shifted a little at a time into a stand. The bench ahead was miles away.

Two hundred acres and he couldn’t go twenty-five feet in comfort. What good was the land? The money he’d got for the pines was all he had to show for it. And that was buried under Jeremiah. He’d kept at least $5,000 out for things he thought he’d need and stuck it in cans. He didn’t trust banks. To hide it better he transferred it from bills to coins.

It took a can of quarters to make $750 rolled. He’d felt like Midas sheathing it in those little wrappers. Felt better than Midas digging the holes to bury it. The work took two weeks with long rest periods between digs. Each spot was clearly marked: A cinder block signified one; a pallet another; the empty chicken roost a third. And Jeremiah, over the whole kingdom. No one would dig through a dead dog’s bones. They might find some of the money, but Jeremiah would guard the most of it. "Damn cur wasn’t worth a shit in life. In the grave he's a working son 'f a bitch."

When Tyler reached the next bench, he decided against going farther. Ethan would just have to look for him. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore his body. Listening to the wood rot beneath him, he eased off into sleep.

* * *

A roar of cicadas awakened him. It was dark. Where was Ethan? Tyler’s stomach growled.

“Where the hell ‘r’ ya Ethan?” Fuming, he doddered back to the porch. It took more than thirty minutes. With the dark of the new moon, he couldn’t see. He had to feel his way up to the door, fumble for the knob, guess his whereabouts until numb fingers found the lamp. Matches fell off onto the floor.

“Goddam. Time I got ‘lectricity.”

He could hear Ethan’s words: “Twentieth century, Ty. Ya gotta get some lights.” Tyler had canceled them after a couple of fights with the electric co-op when he’d decided they didn’t need his money and he could do without their product.

“No need fer it. Don’t need nuthin’ ‘cept you bringin’ my goods.”

Tyler sat on the porch in the cowhide chair and waited for Ethan in the dark.

“Son ‘f a bitch. I’m hungry, Ethan.”

* * *

The sun was up and down again and Ethan hadn’t come. During that day, Tyler found an old can of dog food. He couldn't get it open. The can opener hurt to turn. He thought of the axe but couldn’t lift it. Leftover bread from a moldy loaf quieted his stomach some.

The following morning when the rooster made his rounds, Tyler hailed him. “Roos, come here. Why ain’t you a hen? Git me a egg and I’ll let y’ live.” He thought all night about how tough the old bird would be to gnaw. “Ain’t worth killin’.”

Two more days, the rooster looked tender. Tyler worried about Ethan, but the emptiness of his stomach locked his mind on food.

The rooster hobbled by.

“Gotta do somethin’, Roos. This’s gettin’ outta hand.”

* * *

Tyler’s mail, even if it was just flyers, was always picked up. Warren Keyes, the postman, knew that Ethan collected it for the old guy a lot of times, but he’d just heard Ethan ran his old Chevy into a tree Saturday, stroked out and died. Tyler’s mailbox had been knocked over like others on the rural route. Kids on a joy ride usually were the bat-carrying-mailbox-slamming culprits, but Tyler hadn’t set the box upright like he did the last time that happened. Flyers were all over the road and the adjoining fields. Warren knew the old man would have been mad enough at least to have slipped it in its hole in the ground, even if it took him all day. He’d have made a big deal about it, too.

But Keyes wasn’t about to go down to the house. He and Tyler had got into enough rows for him to know better. All those handmade “No Trespassing” signs posted would keep even the deer out.

“It’s just a feeling I got, Sheriff. God knows the old codger is a pain in my ass, but habits is habits, and he has his.”

Sheriff Tatum thanked the mail carrier, telling him he’d look into the situation. By the time he arrived at Tyler’s homestead, it was late afternoon. He replanted the mailbox and used his boot to shuffle in enough dirt to keep it temporarily upright, all the while looking around and calling “Mr. Tyler Francis. Y’ hear me? It’s Sheriff Tatum”. With no answer, he followed the footpath up to the clearing by the house. When he saw the body, he stopped and called out again. The only answer was the feeble gesture of a hand. Tatum ran.

“Mr. Tyler. Are you all right?” He took the gnarled hand in his and looked down into Tyler’s dull eyes. “Are you all right, sir? You must’ve fallen off the porch.”

Tyler still gripped half of the ancient walking stick. His voice was thready, barely audible.

“I got ‘im Ethan. Had to. I was starvin’ t’ death.” Tatum could have sworn there were tears in the matted eyes, but he wasn’t sure.

“How’s that, Mr. Ty?”

Tyler didn’t speak. All the strength he had left was sapped by whatever effort it took to reach up to Ethan’s face and to mouth “Did ya have t' wait so long?” There was no breath left for anything else. 

“Damn,” Tatum whispered. “Goddamn.”

The gimpy rooster kept a safe distance, but Sheriff Tatum never noticed. The wind had blown away most of its missing feathers.

END

Carver Adams received a Word Hammer Award through millenniumshift.com for short fiction and has been published in Canopic Jar (#12), Dead Mule, the original Millennium Shift, and the Lake City Reporter.  She has written specialty ads and profiles of senior citizens for the Reporter, and frequently contributed a personal column for the newspaper’s Op-Ed page. Having left the quiet woods of North Florida she now resides where concrete and cacophony compete with the trees.