DOTH THE WILD ASS BRAY by Garrett Simmons
Crows lighted, squawking, atop the outhouse’s rusted roof – midday and Dev Thornton, pants around his ankles, pistol nosed against the underbelly of his chin, listened as they pecked and scratched. He picked out his father’s whistling walk back to the fields and imagined hearing, farther off, through an open kitchen window, his mother cleaning the table of plates. If not for the pine boards enclosing him he might have turned on his seat and seen her there, tossing scraps into hungry dogs’ mouths. It got him thinking. If he’d shit like a beast where he pleased he’d have sun on his shoulders, and the breeze.
The outhouse was a stale damp box. It had been his burden to clean until his brother reached the age and Dev gave him the rake. Crows pranced atop the roof. He listened for his father to begin steering the plow again as above him they performed pirouettes. Hep! he heard called. The harness chains creaked and the blade scraped. His brother Lowell had made a pet of the mule their father kept. Dev came upon them an afternoon behind the barn, the animal and the boy, and discovered them waltzing together privately. Lowell held a carrot stub in his teeth with which he’d coaxed the mule to stand, resting its forelegs atop either frail shoulder. As frail as Dev was hardy, tender as he was rough, Lowell staggered under the mule’s heft but spoke sweetly into its turning ears. Dev felt looked at and strange, remembering it now. Who’d been the leader and who followed, where were they going? What if anything awaited them there? He cupped in his free hand himself hanging between his knees. Squawk, swore Dev Thornton, giving a squeeze.
He’d been last night between the legs of the Ebert girl again, the younger, fifteen, nipples big as wheat cakes rising, spit-shined, to his probing tongue. Thighs sweat-streaked, thick as hams. On a loose hay cushion, deep in a dusty loft corner, among coils of bale twine and innumerable, unseen spider nests – squawk, yes! – he’d emptied into her the seed of his being and rolled winded from her body onto his back to catch his breath. And she, saying nothing, Ebert’s youngest daughter, watched him button his pants and loop suspenders over his shoulders. She remained silent while he descended the ladder of her father’s barn to walk the mile-and-a-half return home in the dark.
Dev, you dirty demon, you damned devil . . . Grinning, pleased at himself, he had stumbled and fallen face-down in the roadside ditch. Hardly a moon to see where he was moving, and when he woke this morning he found last night’s clothes draped on the black iron foot-rail of his bed, caked with mud. He had recognized right off, from the angle of sunlight penetrating his bedroom, that not only breakfast but dinner also had been served without him. The voices of his family members murmuring in the kitchen down the hall confirmed: they would be just finishing, dabbing their plates with bread crusts, his father suggesting, Well . . . Yet making no movement to stand or even shift the position in which he sat at the table: Suppose I had better get back. Dev had known then the day was wasted. He knew without seeing that plates had been prepared for him at both mealtimes and deliberately let spoil while he slept and the others broke from their chores to eat. There would be no denying with whom he’d spent the previous night when months from now the evidence showed like a stone in the belly of Ebert’s daughter. Therefore, moving quietly, though he was aware that his every sound was being heard and scorned by his mother and father in the kitchen, Dev had climbed into his same mud-stiff pants and out his bedroom window onto the ground and walked barefoot down the hill to the outhouse, only to have his whereabouts revealed by crows – screaming – how many does a murder make? They croaked and, hopping, cawed. The pistol’s presence remained the only black spot in Dev’s memory, and he nudged the barrel deeper into the scruffy flesh of his chin to satisfy an itch. Soon Lowell will grow curious, he thought, or he’ll have to go himself and will stand outside the door whining to be let in. The day would only turn hotter but here the air was cool as river water, dark as a catfish hole. He would stay until evening, longer. The others would have to wait or find bases of thick trees to lean against. He would leave when he was well and ready.
A stubborn streak ran through all of them, as far back and deep in the family roots as anyone living could remember, but showed the most like a mule in Dev. The only man, his grandfather Heathrow claimed when Dev was still a child, he ever met could pick an argument with a block of wood – and win, by God. He’d sworn to Christ on it. The blood and body. His grandfather was always swearing, Dev remembered, and remembered too the old man’s graying, slouched figure propped always in one of the porch ladderbacks when Dev came in from his chores for a cup of buttermilk and a corn biscuit if there were any, or when he was very young, in winter when he came home from school. Heathrow’s head would have fallen back sometimes, struck by the blow of sleep. His frail neck looked bowed to the point of snapping. His mouth hung open and his chin pointed upwards at the sky beyond the porch roof. All year round he was there, dressed by Dev’s mother according to the season, observing over the course of the day the sun’s progress, witnessing changes. And when he slept the old man’s eyes remained open and grew bloodshot as air stole moisture from them. And when he woke from his slumber it was always violently, so that Dev did not allow himself to imagine what his grandfather had been dreaming, and would suffer hunger and cold rather than risk waking him on his way into the house. He released his hold between his legs, the skin there like his grand-father’s skin, so vulnerable and thin, and put his free hand to the pine boards left of him: flimsy planks stacked edge-on-edge atop each other, tacked with eight-penny nails to a skeleton frame. He shoved lightly against the wall, jostling the entire outhouse. Above him crows revolted. They stomped and yelled, and Dev felt the disturbance of their wings flapping through the tin roof barrier. He felt in his teeth their beaks hammering and mining rust spots, could taste the corrugated metal they tasted. A single bird, determined, could topple so thin a building.
Heathrow died swathed in quilts on the porch, eyes open. From the distance at which Dev had spotted him approaching the house, the old man had looked asleep in his chair as usual, chin arched, left arm dangling at his side like a scarf end. The membrane separating life and death had been, and would from that day on remain, stretched like a foreskin, punctured like a toy balloon. The pistol barrel rubbed roughly against his Adam’s apple as Dev struggled to swallow, knowing it had been he who ruptured it. For hadn’t he picked rocks from the ground and thrown them clattering against the porch? He’d thrown carefully, conscientious of windows and hitting too close to the old man’s body, intending only to wake him. Nevertheless, one had broken through. He’d already passed, Dev knew, beyond the skin of this world into the next. Nevertheless, Heathrow . . . Nevertheless . . .
Running his hand along the rough pine surface, lightly to avoid splinters, Dev found holes where knots had grown. Visiting relatives, female cousins from several counties over, had squealed when he looked in at them sitting with their dresses bunched at their waists, bloomers at their ankles, and run from the outhouse shrieking what a nasty thing Dev was. Later, as punishment, his father had made him search the fields and select the switch with which he preferred his backside whipped. He was thorough in his work, but secretly pleased, Dev knew, at having brought up his son in his image. You understand the reason I’m doing this? his father asked him, after delivering ten of the twenty marks he promised. Dev understood, and he said so remembering the dark thrill, like a cattle hook dug deep in the center of his stomach, excited by the glimpse he’d stolen.
Clamorous birds. His father had driven the plow to the far end of the potato patch, turned, and was now driving back, hipping and hawing the mule on between snatches of the melody that poured constantly through his lips. Where it came from was a mystery made more mysterious by his father’s distaste for music in general. He hadn’t time for it, he maintained, for anything frivolous to the work of living. He seemed to gain satisfaction from saying it, a point of pride. Hymnals were the sole exception: Take my voice and let me sing always, only, Lord, for Thee . . . Sundays the four of them would load scrubbed and dressed in clothes reserved for the occasion – his father’s starched white shirt and collar, once immaculate, stained grey beneath the arms and along the inside of the neck – into the hay wagon and drive the quarter-mile to the weathered church where they each, at one time or another, had been born again . . . Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages, Lord, from Thee . . . Dev’s life was a hymn he sang in hidden places, bedrooms and outhouses, composed of disgraces . . . Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise . . . Hep! called his father driving, and Dev felt pine fibers like a splintery hide under his palm. Hep! Ho, now . . . Git up, Molly, hear? Ho, now . . . Hep! No time for music-making when there’s potatoes to raise and the family to harvest . . . Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love . . . He could stack on end his disgraces and build a box of them, with holes to look out and peek in, and escaping there the height of heat, listen and sing; his soul’s hymn like a requiem. It seemed not only possible but right that a person should feel safe in shame, for what was any building but a shelter? Crows wanting in were unwitting adornments, living roof ornaments. As he listened to them he heard his father halt the mule’s progress and his whistling, and sigh tiredly. He would be taking the kerchief from his cover-alls pocket to dab sweat from his brow and neck while looking out from under his hat brim at the potato patch, calculating his progress in rows, a rock’s throw from the outhouse. Dev sensed his father’s head turn in the direction of the crows and considered tugging up his pants and running . . . Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee . . . He’d heard of country west of here where men dug precious rocks from the soil and lived in tents and on meals cooked on open fires and were rich . . . Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne . . . The walls of the outhouse were sturdier than sleep, thicker than dreams. They’d need a bullet to break, of which – checking – he had six, and an itchy finger’s tip.
With love in his heart, Dev pulled the hammer back slowly until it locked, and nudged the barrel higher under his chin. There had been love, too, in Lowell’s eyes when he and the mule supported each other dancing. That afternoon had been as today’s would surely be, hot, gnats swarming in the low slant of sunlight, the creatures of the farm feeding or waiting to be fed. Crickets had played. Dev had spent the morning, he recalled now, alongside his father in the low, soggy north field that bordered the stream, turning soil to mud, making a mess of the land and themselves. His father had known then – he’d had to – that the crop was ruined. Water below ground would rise to the surface with the season’s first rain and rot the corn they planted from the roots up, mildew browning the stalks until eventually the plants collapsed under their own weight. Nevertheless, they’d persisted, cutting rows in the soil which they destroyed, tramping and sliding through them in boots made huge by caked mud. Nevertheless they sowed seed and gobbed chicken shit in finger-sized holes to fertilize. They’d fought and bickered. At noon they were deemed filthy by Dev’s mother and quarantined to eat dinner on the porch. Lowell had spent all morning inside the kitchen helping their mother blanch and jar string peas, and was tickled to join them outdoors.
– Paw, is it true?
– Not with food in your mouth.
– Is it true, Lowell started over, after forcing down a mouthful of butter beans. What Dev said about . . .
From the porch step above him, Dev punched his baby brother’s thigh, causing Lowell’s plate to topple from his lap.
Their father paused his chewing and looked at Dev.
– True about what?
Lowell looked at his plate upside down on the porch next to him, his tin fork and food bits scattered for the dogs to find later.
– Nothing, answered Dev. Going back out, Paw. Lowell, hurry up and finish, he told his brother. Get back to helping Maw inside.
Presently Dev cleared his throat, felt the barrel poke him there. It had been true, in a way, when I told you, he thought. But you were growing faster than I’d guessed, and when you asked me did God love you, I answered Yes. We were in our separate beds, Lowell, talking like brothers, a conspiracy we maintained only at night when we both lay awake. And when you asked me where He lived, I said in everything. And when you asked me how I knew, I promised you, simply, I do.
Dev slid forward on the seat and shushed his blubbering. He pushed up on the pistol until he felt it under his tongue. Crows squawked atop the outhouse but inside it was dark and cool. Lowell before he let the mule’s legs down from atop his shoulders had fed the carrot stub from between his teeth, giving it with a kiss. Unaware that Dev was watching, he smiled and cooed. What a pretty girl she was, Lowell had told the mule. Tears pooled and ran down Dev’s face under his chin. What an awful liar he’d been. He heard the crows and thought of taking aim – taking two with one stone, all the same . . . He was ready. Outside the sun was shining. In the fields, important work was being done. A man was driving a plow behind a mule, whistling.
“Doth the Wild Ass Bray” is Garrett Simmons’ first published story in a national literary journal.