1.
“That’s where my boy killed those sons-a-bitches dead,” Cooper yelled at the preacher. The crowd of wedding guests cheered and laughed. Gareth smiled at that. Annette did, too, but it came forced. She glanced down through the white veil at the bloodstain on the porch more out of reflex than pride. She’d seen the ugly thing a hundred times before. One of the men Gareth killed that night was Cody McCullin, the son of Delray McCullin, seeking revenge for something Cooper had done to his father. It was the night she fell in love with Gareth. Three summers later, here they were getting married on the same steps. The preacher looked to Cooper for permission to continue and the old man lifted his flask. “Go on,” he said. “Get on with it.”
2.
Halford Jefferson Burroughs was born the following spring of ’62. Annette had heard from other mothers on the mountain how wonderful and blessed the experience of having a little one grow inside her would be, but nothing about it was wonderful at all. She was tired all the time. Her tiny, pretty figure that made all the other women of Bull Mountain envious began to warp and contort into something she couldn’t bear to look at in the mirror. And her hair, her hair went from being as slick and shiny as a black diamond to looking like shit-covered straw at the bottom of a horse trailer. When the baby kicked, it wasn’t a warm, comforting event. It didn’t create a bond between mother and child. It hurt, was all. It just hurt. Sometimes it was painful enough to keep her hunched over in the bed for days. On days she felt well enough to leave the house, she couldn’t go nowhere, not even out to the market, without some group of old biddies wanting to feel her up and put their hands on the blessing. Most days she just wanted to scream, and scream she did. Childbirth was pain Annette wasn’t prepared for. She thought about a picture book she had checked out once from the library down in Waymore. It was full of photographs of Alaska. Picture after picture of sprawling snowcapped mountains and swirling colored lights in the sky that looked better to her than any fireworks she’d ever seen. While Halford was busy tearing a hole in her belly, Annette soared over those mountains in her mind. Sometimes she wondered if she’d ever come back.
The entirety of the Burroughs clan and nearly every other family living on Bull Mountain surrounded Annette, waiting on a chance to see the newborn, while Gareth glad-handed and got drunk. Most of the people there came only to be seen by Cooper. To show respect, they called it. To kiss his ass was more like it, Annette thought. Her own family was no different.
“That’s a fine-looking boy,” Annette’s father said, stroking the baby’s cheek with the side of a curled finger. Her mother, Jeanine, held the baby like it was made of fine china.
“Thank you,” Annette said out loud. Fuck you, she said in her mind.
“And where is the proud grandfather?” Jeanine asked.
Like you care, Annette thought. You only want the old man to see you holding his grandson so maybe someday if you need some of his money, or a favor done, he’ll be more prone to give it. She wondered when she’d gotten so bitter. She should be happy. If not now, when?
Annette looked at Gareth, who looked around the crowded room. “I’ll see if I can find him,” he said. He moved through the house, shaking hands and looking over shoulders, until he spotted Cooper through the kitchen window. He was pacing the pastures outside.
“Pop,” Gareth yelled, but Cooper didn’t respond. He was talking to someone, but Gareth didn’t see anyone else out there. He made his way outside, walked up to his father, and took his arm. “Deddy?”
“Goddamn it, boy!” Cooper said, and snatched his arm away.
“What are you doing out here, Deddy? Come see Annette. Come see the baby.”
“I don’t care about all that nonsense. We need to settle this business right here.”
“What business? What are you talking about?”
Cooper took a hard pull from the copper flask in his hand. “Tell him,” he said, motioning with the flask toward the woods. “Tell this stubborn son of a bitch.”
Gareth looked out into the darkness. “Tell what to who?”
“To Rye,” Cooper said. “Tell your stubborn-ass uncle Rye. Tell him we had to do it. Tell him I’m tired of listening to his whinin’.”
Gareth considered his old man for a moment and looked back out into the darkness, this time knowing there wasn’t anything there. He put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. Cooper tried to shake it off again, but Gareth held on. “There’s no one out here, Deddy. Just us.”