The Old Rabren Place
The Old Rabren Place
© John M. Williams
A dark stage as sounds of a rural Southern spring night swell into hearing: frogs, insects, a distant dog barking, etc. This lasts for a moment or two; then comes the faraway sound of a powerful vehicle screeching away and going through the gears, followed by the laughter of a little group of men as lights rise to discover them standing, sitting, leaning, gazing over their little valley drinking beer.
A Friday night in April: the attitude of the men suggests that the gathering is an old ritual of lifelong friends. The set can consist of something suggesting boulders (with initials, Les Moore was here, Tiny loves Thelma, etc.), a log, the back of a pick-up truck with a cooler of beer, some bushes at the edge of the stage. Sound effects should issue from behind the audience, as the space beyond the stage represents the valley.
LUTHER
(with a cigar, laughing in response to the vehicle)
There he goes. She must didn’t give him no tail.
ARVLE
(also with a cigar)
Sounds like she did.
LUTHER
Naw, if she did he wouldn’t be hightailing it nowhere. He’d be slipping down that back road over there to Jimmy and ems.
ARVLE
Try to act like he’d been there all night?
LUTHER
That’s right. He’s headed straight into Armaville–see if he can’t scare up a fight with some of them badasses.
ARVLE
Which, it’s a good thing he’s a badass hisself.
LUTHER
It don’t never hurt.
HORACE
He ought to be ashamed.
LUTHER
Well hell, Horace, what would you do if you was married to that thing he’s married to?
ARVLE
Kill hisself.
LUTHER
Hisself, hell. Kill her.
HORACE
Yall ought not be talking that way around this boy.
LUTHER
What way?
ARVLE
Did you hear that, Jackson? He called you a boy.
LUTHER
It ain’t nothing he ain’t heard before. Or don’t already know about hisself. Long as you understand the lesson in it, Jackson.
JACKSON
Don’t kill nobody?
LUTHER
Don’t marry nobody. Then you won’t have to.
ARVLE
Well, I’ll tell you–they’s one over there in Happy Valley just about got the ropes around him.
JACKSON
I ain’t getting married.
LUTHER
Whatever happened to that one with the harelip?
JACKSON
She didn’t have no harelip.
ARVLE
Man, where you been? That was two or three months ago. This new one run her off.
LUTHER
Well, I’m gone tell you–if she’s got tits anything like that harelip, this boy ain’t got a chance.
JACKSON
She wasn’t no harelip.
LUTHER
That’s what done me in. About your age. She aired them things out, and I just said good God amighty. Hell, I wasn’t nothing but a country boy, I hadn’t never seen nothing like that. I was about as much good as a damn blob of jelly after that. You see where it got me too.
JACKSON
I ain’t getting married.
LUTHER
I’m gone let you in on a little secret. We’d all be a hell of a lot better off if we never even got that first taste. Just go on about your life and the hell with it. Be a hundred times better off. You spend ninety-nine percent of your life either looking for it, running from it, about to do it, just did it, wishing you could, wishing you hadn’t, or both.
ARVLE
(to Jackson)
That’s the way a man talks that’s had so much he can’t even remember it all.
LUTHER
Why the hell would I want to remember it all? There ain’t nothing in life you can fall worse behind in or get caught up on quicker.
HORACE
Luther, you talk like it’s been so hard on you, but I ain’t noticed it inconveniencing you too bad.
LUTHER
Not lately. Which is called knowing what you’re talking about.
HORACE
How long is it now you’ve been living by yourself?
LUTHER
Not long. (beat) Twenty-four years in June. (laughter) With one or two little interruptions.
ARVLE
Yeah, we know all about your little interruptions.
LUTHER
Hell, the loneliest times in my life was when I was living with a woman. I just wasn’t meant to do it. Which I believe works out best all the way around. Even though Horace would tell you that ain’t the way the Good Lord intended.
HORACE
Well, it says it in the Bible. And all you got to do is open your eyes and see the natural way we’re created.
LUTHER
Now that’s where you and me is different. I don’t see nothing natural about it.
HORACE
You don’t think a man and a woman was naturally meant to be together?
LUTHER
Oh hell yeah. For about two or three days. (laughter) How many deer or squirrels or pigs you ever seen married, Horace, talking about natural?
HORACE
We ain’t animals, Luther.
LUTHER
When it comes time for getting down to business, we are.
ARVLE
Yeah boy.
HORACE
I never have understood why everybody wants to make it into something so dirty.
LUTHER
Because that’s when it’s best.
HORACE
Stop that kind of talking around Jackson.
LUTHER
He’s seventeen–he knows it hisself.
HORACE
Now you stop that kind of talking right now. And you know I don’t agree with all this running around. One man and one woman was meant to be together for their whole life. And you remember that, Jackson.
LUTHER
Yeah, and good luck. I know I couldn’t no more live with one woman my whole life than I could fly to Hawg Mountain over there.
ARVLE
There ain’t too many like you and Agnes, Horace. Not these days. I remember yall already keeping company when the rest of us was still driving circles around the Dairy Dee-Lite. And now yall been married how long?
HORACE
Thirty-six years.
ARVLE
Horace, you been grown up so long I can’t hardly remember you no other way.
HORACE
Well, I had to grow up fast. Daddy needed a man, not a boy.
LUTHER
I’ll tell you what there really ain’t too many of, is Agneses in this world.
HORACE
No.
LUTHER
See, you think they’re all like that.
HORACE
No, I know they’re not all like that.
LUTHER
Yall probably ain’t never even had a fight.
HORACE
We’ve had disagreements same as anybody else, Luther.
LUTHER
Well, I was married seven years. That don’t sound like all that long, till you consider there wasn’t one minute in them whole seven years that woman wasn’t trying to turn me into something I didn’t want to be. Then it’s amazing how long seven years can be. People talking about their life flying by so fast–I recommend moving in with her. And ever one since then’s been the same way. Soon as they get comfortable, here come the ropes.
ARVLE
The difference is, Luther, most men just take it.
LUTHER
Ain’t nobody holding a gun to their head.
ARVLE
They just know one day they’re going to need somebody to fill out the papers for the nursing home.
LUTHER
Well, I ain’t planning to go into no nursing home, so I ain’t worried.
ARVLE
Anyway, you ain’t got to wonder why his mama don’t consider you the best company.
LUTHER
Is that all? I thought it was all this drinking and carrying on.
ARVLE
Oh yeah, we’re just setting the woods on fire. Sitting up here with the deacon.
LUTHER
What do you think that little puppy dog preacher would say if he could see him?
ARVLE
Hell, he’d pee all over hisself. Dadgum Satan got in here amongst us.
HORACE
Listen to yall. I never said I was perfect.
LUTHER
Perfect ain’t even in it. Two beers on a Friday night–maybe even three. That’s got Hell wrote all over it.
HORACE
Yall hush now.
LUTHER
What do you think, Horace? Think we ought to invite that preacher up here with us next time?
HORACE
All right now. That’s enough.
LUTHER
Where’d yall come up with him anyway?
HORACE
He’s young and just starting out, Luther, you need to remember that.
LUTHER
Where’s the dadgum spirit of God? Ain’t that supposed to be in there somewhere? I can’t help but think of Mr. Howard. Now that was a preacher.
HORACE
Well, I don’t think ones like Mr. Howard come along but once in your life.
LUTHER
Which is why I ain’t been in twenty-five years.
HORACE
That’s up to you, Luther.
LUTHER
I can remember when that church was slap full, and Reunion they’d be so many you couldn’t hardly get to the table.
ARVLE
Hell, Luther, there wasn’t never a time you didn’t get to the table. Loading up what looked like a garbage can lid piled about this high.
LUTHER
Them was my young, mean days. There’s always been something about trying to stay awake for an hour that’s made me hungry.
HORACE
Well, this little community may be just about gone, but there’s still a congregation and I can tell you it ain’t easy to find anybody to come up here. So I appreciate him, and he’s a real fine young man too.
LUTHER
But has he got the spirit of God in him?
HORACE
I believe we all have the spirit of God in us one way or another.
LUTHER
In other words, he ain’t.
ARVLE
I’d say them is right hard to find.
LUTHER
Full of shit is a whole lot easier.
HORACE
Now I mean for yall to stop that kind of talk right now.
LUTHER
Well, I got to live up to my disreputable character–ain’t that right, Jackson?–or your mama’d be disappointed.
JACKSON
She don’t care if I drink beer.
LUTHER
Yeah, because she don’t care if she drinks a few herself. Plus, she ain’t stupid and knows you’re going to do it anyway.
ARVLE
She just wants to see you get settled in something, Jackson, that’s all. You can’t blame her–it’s just the mama in her.
LUTHER
Hell, I’m settled.
ARVLE
You’re sixty years old too.
LUTHER
Not yet I ain’t.
ARVLE
Yeah, you turn around snap your fingers and fart you will be.
LUTHER
Damn, that sounds old. The fizz is done been gone. If she’s worried about the likes of me, I can’t imagine what she’d do if Tommy was still around here.
ARVLE
She wouldn’t be real tickled about it. She wasn’t real tickled when he was here.
LUTHER
I still don’t know how he kept hisself from getting killed when Fred Palmer caught him with Peggy.
ARVLE
Hell, I do. He paid him.
LUTHER
Paid him?
ARVLE
Damn right. Give him five hundred dollars.
LUTHER
Get out of here with that crap.
ARVLE
Hell, I thought you knew that.
LUTHER
No, I didn’t know that. Where’d you hear that?
ARVLE
Earl told me. Fred come in there–caught them in the spare bedroom–and Tommy just said, all right, you put that gun up, let me walk out of here, you won’t never see me no more and I’ll have five hundred dollars cash setting on your front doorstep in the morning. (a beat pause) If you’ll just give me about ten more minutes.
LUTHER
Aw shit, he didn’t say that!
ARVLE
(laughing)
Naw, I made that last part up. But the rest is God’s truth.
LUTHER
That son of a bitch. Did he pay him?
ARVLE
Earl said he did. Said Fred had a tractor payment right then.
LUTHER
I don’t believe a word of it.
ARVLE
You don’t believe Tommy could have come up with five hundred dollars in one night?
LUTHER
Oh yeah, I believe that. Wherever he got it.
ARVLE
He just had money. In his family. Had to. There ain’t no other way to explain it.
LUTHER
I reckon. (pause) How old were you when Tommy was around here, Jackson?
JACKSON
I don’t know, about six or seven.
LUTHER
You remember him?
JACKSON
Yeah, I remember him.
ARVLE
Used to sneak off down to the creek with him and shoot cans.
LUTHER
Six years old? I bet your mama didn’t know that.
ARVLE
I didn’t know it neither till Jackson told me not long ago.
JACKSON
Wasn’t no big deal.
LUTHER
I hope yall was careful.
JACKSON
Yeah, we were careful. Just shooting cans in the creek with a .22 and his pistol.
LUTHER
Pistol? Good God, your mama’d a turned a double flip.
JACKSON
I could handle a pistol.
HORACE
Tommy didn’t have any business doing that.
ARVLE
Well, he’s alive, so what she don’t know won’t hurt her.
LUTHER
Wonder if Tommy is.
HORACE
I’ve had that same thought run through my mind.
ARVLE
Naw, hell. What you talking about? He ain’t dead. We’d have heard about it.
HORACE
From who? Now that Lambert’s dead. That was the only connection he had up here.
ARVLE
We’d have just heard, that’s all.
LUTHER
You’re probably right. Ain’t nobody seen his face around this sorry-ass place for ten years. They’s other things to be than dead. Like smart.
ARVLE
And that’s just what Jackson’s mama don’t want him doing.
LUTHER
What, being smart?
ARVLE
No, running off to Atlanta or somewhere and leaving her by herself.
LUTHER
Then she ain’t doing him no favors.
HORACE
Now what makes you want to talk that way about your home where you grew up and lived your whole life?
LUTHER
Because it ain’t what it was.
HORACE
Nothing’s what it was. But it’s still here. I’d still take it ten to one over Atlanta or anywhere else.
LUTHER
Yeah, Horace, you’re down there on the best hundred acres in it. You forget about all these dumbass dirt farmers scattered around the rest of it trying to scratch out a damn living.
ARVLE
Ain’t nothing here, Horace, no more. No work. Look at your boys.
HORACE
Well, I believe Ronnie will be the one to come back and take it over.
LUTHER
Well, I hope he will–but why would he want to? Take on all them headaches. Hell, he’s got a good job–he’s a damn engineer. All them benefits and everything else.
HORACE
Because it’s his land. It’s his home.
LUTHER
Well, what if he don’t?
HORACE
Well, I don’t know. I’m not settled in my mind about that.
The sound of baying dogs on a scent rises from the valley. The men listen for a minute.
ARVLE
Them Hume’s dogs out?
HORACE
Or Beasley’s.
LUTHER
Naw, they’re Hume’s. Which is a near-about guarantee that Hume ain’t.
ARVLE
Hell, it’s nine-thirty. He’s done been passed out three hours.
HORACE
What are they after?
LUTHER
Coon right now. Just give it a minute and it’ll be something else. Before the night’s over they’ll be done run a deer through them peas I just planted.
ARVLE
If it was me, I’d have done shot them dogs so long ago wouldn’t nobody even remember them.
LUTHER
The one that needs shooting is Hume. Only who’d want to waste the buckshot?
HORACE
Now, that’s no way to talk.
LUTHER
He’s the son of a bitch that started the whole thing, and you know it too, Horace.
HORACE
Well, if it hadn’t been Hume, it’d have been somebody else. There wasn’t no way to keep the paper company out of here.
LUTHER
Two or three of the prettiest hollows in here. Looks like a damn atom bomb hit.
HORACE
It’s just a sign of the times.
LUTHER
Yeah, it’s going to be a sign of the times too when them lawyers is standing around your deathbed with their damn briefcases.
HORACE
Well, I’ll just tell you one thing. No land company is touching one leaf of my property. Not now or ever.
LUTHER
How are you going to stop them, Horace?
HORACE
Well, if the Lord intends for that land to pass along to somebody else, then that’s what will happen. But I guarantee you it’ll be somebody who’ll work it.
LUTHER
How do you know what they’ll do in thirty years, or twenty, or ten?
HORACE
We’re just stewards of the earth anyway. We don’t really own it. No more than them Creek Indians did that probably used to sit right up here talking like we’re doing.
ARVLE
Not after they got run off it anyway.
LUTHER
I don’t know what all them deeds is for, then.
HORACE
It’s in the hands of the Lord. So I don’t lie awake at night thinking about it.
LUTHER
It’ll be in the hands of the damn paper company before it’s over. Ever square inch. They’ll just get it a piece at a time from these dumbass rednecks and they won’t stop till it ain’t nothing but pine trees from here to the Atlantic damn ocean.
ARVLE
These dumbass rednecks? Like you ain’t?
LUTHER
I never said I wasn’t no redneck. Just not a dumbass redneck.
ARVLE
Most of them just doing the best they can.
LUTHER
I never said they wasn’t. Hell, they can keep on plowing up this red-brick dirt from now till kingdom come, I don’t care. I’m just saying us rednecks with half a brain is a rare breed. That what you aiming to be when you grow up, Jackson?
JACKSON
I thought I already was.
ARVLE
Jackson’s going to do just fine. Soon as he figures out which half he got.
LUTHER
Well, you better hope it ain’t the dumbass half. The question is, what are you going to do with it?
ARVLE
He’s going to finish high school first.
JACKSON
I never said I wasn’t.
ARVLE
No, only about four hundred times.
JACKSON
I’ll finish it. I ain’t got but a year.
LUTHER
Then what?
ARVLE
He’s been talking about getting on over there in Armaville with Earl and them for a year and save his money.
LUTHER
Which one of us is going to talk him out of it?
ARVLE
Well, hold on–I don’t think it’s all that bad a idea. Just a year, save some money, then start down there at the junior college.
LUTHER
What you reckon you’ll end up doing, Jackson?
JACKSON
I don’t know.
LUTHER
Ain’t got no idea? (Jackson shakes his head.) Hell, I say turn him into a dadgum lawyer, let him figure out a way to run the paper company and all these goddam Atlanta doctors toting guns out of here.
JACKSON
I ain’t going to be a lawyer.
LUTHER
I didn’t think so. But you better be careful. You get on with Earl and them, next thing you know one year is two, and you got you a brand-new pick-up and a boat and a this and a that, then it’s five years and you got you about three or four mouths to feed, and you won’t never see the inside of that college.
JACKSON
They ain’t got nothing worth knowing anyway.
LUTHER
Now Jackson, my boy–that just flat ain’t true. Look at Horace’s boys. One of them is a engineer, and the other one’s a computer something or other. They make more money just getting out of bed than you’ll make driving that dozier for a month.
JACKSON
Skidder.
HORACE
(pleased)
I don’t know about that.
ARVLE
Only problem is, they’re gone.
LUTHER
Yeah, just like Tommy. Danged if I ain’t starting to see a pattern. Except for me and one or two others, everybody with any sense in this place has took and gone.
JACKSON
Did Tommy go to college?
ARVLE
He wouldn’t never talk about it, but I believe he was going to some kind of college that whole time, wasn’t he Horace?
HORACE
I believe so.
LUTHER
Must have finished.
ARVLE
Did you ever hear him say what he was taking?
HORACE
No, seems like he said one time, but it’s been so long.
ARVLE
You’d think he’d at least have let us know something.
LUTHER
Hell, I don’t blame him. What’s he going to say? I ain’t never going to see yall no more, it’s been nice?
ARVLE
Well–something.
LUTHER
He didn’t let us know he was coming, he wasn’t under no obligation to tell us he was gone.
ARVLE
You remember that boy he brought up here with him a few times? That Dexter or ever what his name was?
LUTHER
Yeah, I remember him.
ARVLE
That was strange bird, wasn’t it?
LUTHER
Yeah, he was a little on the odd side. Main thing I remember is them dadgum fingernails.
HORACE
I think that was on account of his git-tar playing.
ARVLE
They was kind of tight. I got the idea from somewheres they was going into some kind of business.
LUTHER
Might have. Except Tommy wasn’t exactly the work hisself to death type.
ARVLE
I still believe he just had money. The way he took it in his head whenever he wanted something he just went out and got it. Not to mention bought something for near about everybody up here at one time or another. Ever time he come it was this new rifle or that new stereo or something. And then by the next time he’d be done tired of it and done gave it away.
LUTHER
And the beer and the whiskey and the steaks and the everything else.
ARVLE
I’m talking about we had some poker parties now.
LUTHER
Yeah buddy, them was the days.
ARVLE
He just had money, that’s all.
LUTHER
Unless he was one of these that just goes around owing half the people in the world.
ARVLE
If he was, it didn’t bother him none.
HORACE
No, I believe they’d have came and got him.
LUTHER
Maybe they did.
ARVLE
Only thing I can say is, I ain’t never knowed a crazier son of a gun in my life. Who else you know would have spent the night at the old Rabren place?
HORACE
If he really did.
ARVLE
Well, I don’t believe he would have made it up. I got out there pretty early, and he was coming out from down in there. Right by hisself. I seen that.
HORACE
Well, maybe he did. It ain’t any different from spending the night anywhere else in the woods.
ARVLE
The hell it ain’t.
LUTHER
Only thing is, I’ll be honest with you: I’ve always had my doubts about whether he really heard that cat or not.
ARVLE
Well, it’s possible. I’ve heard it.
LUTHER
So have I. Thirty years ago.
JACKSON
Mama says there never was no such thing.
LUTHER
Mama is wrong, son. That thing was here, and I’m telling you when it cut loose with that scream it would make the back of your teeth hurt.
ARVLE
Sounded like a woman screaming the bloodcurdlingnest scream you ever heard in your life.
JACKSON
Did you ever see it?
LUTHER
I never saw it with my own eyes, but I’ve talked to too many people that did–including your daddy–and there ain’t no way they was all making it up.
HORACE
Daddy saw it. This was years ago. Run right across the road one night in front of him. Big long black painter. And if Daddy said he saw it, he saw it.
LUTHER
But that thing, or ever how many of them it was, has been dead. It’s been twenty-five years since anybody claimed they saw it. I believe Tommy just threw that in there for a little spice. Wouldn’t you say so, Horace?
HORACE
Well, I guess I’ve always had my doubts.
JACKSON
I hate I never got to see that place. I’m going to go down in there one day and find it.
LUTHER
Well, you better be ready to walk about ten miles.
JACKSON
I ain’t walking–I’m talking about taking that four-wheeler.
LUTHER
I don’t even think you could get that thing in there. You about couldn’t tell where the road was twenty years ago when the paper company blocked it off, and it was bad washed-out then. I’d hate to see it now. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to tell you how to find it.
JACKSON
Tommy found it.
LUTHER
Yeah, but that’s been twelve or thirteen years. If he really did.
HORACE
Plus, I’ll tell you, Jackson–I don’t believe you’d find too much even if you found it. The roof was about gone when I was a boy fifty years ago. I don’t know about them poplar logs. I’d be surprised if you found anything much beside the chimney. And I’m sure it’s all growed over now.
JACKSON
Somebody ought to took a picture.
ARVLE
Nobody thought about taking pictures of nothing back then. And even if they did you wouldn’t be able to tell what if felt like. That’s the spookiest damn place I’ve ever been in my life.
JACKSON
What was it made it so spooky?
ARVLE
Well, I think it was mostly where it was at. I mean, the middle of nowhere ain’t even in it with the old Rabren place. It just felt like you was so far away from anything–
LUTHER
You was.
ARVLE
And you wondered about them people, living way back in there.
LUTHER
It’s them damn boar tusks I remember. Stuck in that mud between them logs. I don’t know how many hundred they was.
JACKSON
Why’d they do that?
LUTHER
Hell, who knows? Just got in the habit of it, I guess. Or it might have been some kind of crazy thing they believed.
JACKSON
Who were they?
LUTHER
Son, there’s nobody alive on this earth can answer you that.
JACKSON
Somebody must have known them. Was their name Rabren?
LUTHER
Somebody’s name was Rabren. For all I know, they was different people lived there.
HORACE
I can remember my granddaddy talking about seeing them when he was a boy hunting down in there with his daddy–my great granddaddy.
LUTHER
And that wasn’t last weekend, I’m gone tell you.
ARVLE
If there’s any such thing as a haunted place, it was haunted.
LUTHER
Well, there ain’t, Arvle.
JACKSON
Like they was ghosts?
ARVLE
Naw, not really. It was just the feeling you got. Like they was something there and you could almost hear it talking but you couldn’t really say what it was. I tell you one thing: you couldn’t have paid me to go down there by myself at night.
LUTHER
Which is why Tommy done it: because nobody else would.
HORACE
I’m not sure what it proved.
ARVLE
Anyway, that’s where they found Buck Johnson, back in there–still don’t know what killed him.
HORACE
It was a heart attack, Arvle.
ARVLE
Yeah–from what?
HORACE
People do have heart attacks. Just have them.
JACKSON
Who was Buck Johnson?
ARVLE
Just somebody our granddaddies used to know. He was hunting in there. Didn’t come home that night–they went out looking for him but didn’t find him till it got light. Had just fell over stone dead. And I can remember when them folks from North Carolina disappeared down there. I was about seven or eight. I remember it.
JACKSON
What happened to them?
ARVLE
Just never found them.
LUTHER
That painter done had him a snack.
HORACE
They probably wandered down into some tighteye. Got hurt, couldn’t get back.
ARVLE
All of them?
HORACE
Well, I don’t know, Arvle. It was something. I just can’t understand why people have to come up with all this nonsense.
ARVLE
Because there was something about that place, Horace. I don’t care what you say.
LUTHER
Folks just need a little spooky. Breaks up the boredom.
ARVLE
Well, you can say what you want to. But I seen them eyes down there myself, and I ain’t never heard nobody explain that. And Daddy said the same thing. So did Uncle Burt.
JACKSON
Could have been that panther.
ARVLE
No. Yall don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about them things was a good ten foot apart. We was right there on the edge of that field–it was about half growed-over then–and this thing, ever what it was, was at the edge of the woods. We was late getting out of there–it was pretty near dark. And all three of us seen it. Them two eyes shining kind of yellow. They would blink together, at the same time–just the way something would if it was blinking its eyes.
JACKSON
Well, what was it?
ARVLE
I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to figure it out, and still ain’t. And I’m gone tell you: you ain’t never seen three people any happier to be in a truck. That’s about the scardest I’ve ever been.
HORACE
It was two things, Arvle. It had to be.
ARVLE
This wasn’t no two things. This was one thing.
Three quick muffled gunshots sound from the valley below. They all instinctively turn.
LUTHER
Look out. Somebody done kilt somebody.
HORACE
Sounded like it come from over in there by Danny and them.
ARVLE
No, I don’t believe so.
LUTHER
It’s that dadgum widow-woman what’s her name bout half a mile past Ed’s.
ARVLE
Tutwell.
LUTHER
Yeah. Something moves around that place, buddy, here come the twelve-gauge. Which is why I don’t hunt around there no more.
ARVLE
Jackson, wasn’t it right over there you killed that eight-point this year?
JACKSON
Right down there on that cut-over.
ARVLE
How far down?
JACKSON
Not the creek but the next one. He was just walking along that far edge–I had the wind.
ARVLE
He was pretty.
LUTHER
I bet I’ve killed ten deer right in that same spot through the years.
ARVLE
Tell the truth, Horace. Don’t you miss it?
HORACE
No, I don’t. I honestly don’t.
ARVLE
What I don’t understand is, you say you don’t feel like killing nothing, but you still fish.
HORACE
Well, you can always throw them back.
LUTHER
Then I don’t see no point in doing it.
HORACE
(laughs)
Just to be out there on the river. Get away from your problems.
LUTHER
Me, if I don’t catch nothing, that’s a problem.
HORACE
Well, I’m not trying to tell nobody else what to do. It just got where it felt different to me. Somebody else wants to hunt, that’s fine. You know I’m happy to have them come in and thin the deer out every year. They do their way, I do mine.
ARVLE
Well, that’s fine, Horace. But it’s a heap different from how you used to be.
HORACE
People change, Arvle.
ARVLE
Yeah, that’s a fact. They do.
HORACE
Daddy was the same way. Just got to where he didn’t enjoy it. Especially after Mr. Howard died.
LUTHER
I guess you spend your life hunting with a man like that, it’d be hard to do anything else.
HORACE
Maybe so. But them last two or three years of his life–I never saw any man change as much. He just got to where he wasn’t interested in nothing.
LUTHER
Well, he was sick, Horace.
HORACE
I know he was.
LUTHER
We’re ever one of us headed down the same road, if we keep breathing long enough. Just get flat-out sick and tired of it.
Train whistle sounds in the valley. During the time the train approaches, goes by, and fades, no one seems to notice it.
ARVLE
(after a pause)
They say it’s going to be another one of them damn dry summers. These last few has just about wore me out.
LUTHER
Makes it tough.
ARVLE
This dadgum global warming.
HORACE
The Bible says the End Days will be difficult.
LUTHER
I don’t know about all that–I’m just thinking about all them fleas and mosquitoes and standing out there half of every day with a hose.
ARVLE
Don’t even hardly have winter no more. And these summers just burn everything up.
LUTHER
Maybe Jesus is coming, sure enough. Except that don’t seem fair to Jackson. Just about make it to drinking age, and the damn world ends.
HORACE
It’s not the end of the world, Luther, it’s the beginning of a better world.
LUTHER
Couldn’t be a whole lot worse. Course, it does make you wonder: if it’s going to be all that much better, how come He didn’t just do it in the first place and save time?
HORACE
He did. But we messed it up.
LUTHER
Wonder what’ll keep us from doing it again?
ARVLE
Yall get into that, I’m leaving. Horace, how’s the azaleas?
HORACE
They’re pretty.
ARVLE
I’m gone ride over and look at them in a day or two. Your daddy planted enough for everybody.
HORACE
Yes he did.
ARVLE
And I’ll tell you something, Horace: he lived a good long life. You get to where you’ve done everything, and ain’t interested in nothing no more: that’s how long you want to live.
HORACE
I wonder if it ain’t just a little bit too long.
ARVLE
Well, would you rather go out kicking and screaming?
HORACE
I don’t know.
LUTHER
I ain’t never saw nobody exactly tickled about it, whenever it was. Ain’t nothing but the young part of it any good noway.
HORACE
I wouldn’t agree with that, Luther.
LUTHER
I would. It’s the truth. Ain’t that right, Arvle?
ARVLE
It’s got its good points.
HORACE
Yall are forgetting that life is a gift–it’s all good. Most people are healthy when they’re young, but then about half of what’s in your head is so silly too.
LUTHER
Is what’s in your head silly, Jackson?
JACKSON
Probably.
LUTHER
Shoot, Horace. You were a damn football star when you were young and had everybody slobbering all over you. You saying that ain’t better than now when your whole body ain’t nothing but a bunch of places waiting to hurt, and you lie awake at night worrying about what’s going to happen to your land?
HORACE
I don’t lie awake at night worrying about something the Lord’s in control of, and I wasn’t a football star.
LUTHER
Don’t let him fool you, Jackson. Horace was the best football player there’s ever been in this county.
HORACE
What are you talking about. That was forty years ago. There’s been all kind of ones come through here since then could run circles around me.
LUTHER
Well, it’s different now. And he could have gone to any one of about five colleges too.
HORACE
No I could not.
LUTHER
I’m just saying you could have.
HORACE
Well, it don’t matter now.
ARVLE
I’ll tell you one good thing about getting older: you can set still longer.
LUTHER
Yeah, it’s called a nap.
ARVLE
I don’t mean that. I mean just setting around thinking.
LUTHER
I’d say that depends on what you’re thinking about.
HORACE
I know what he means. It takes till you get older before you can just sit and think back to all the times in your life.
LUTHER
Yeah, because when you’re young you’re busy running around drinking and staying up all night being a love machine–doing everything you end up remembering. Sometimes I wonder if these that’s cut off in the middle ain’t the luckiest ones.
JACKSON
Daddy was thirty-five.
LUTHER
Well, now, wait a minute, Jackson, I was just talking. I didn’t mean him. I’d give anything in the world if he was still here with us.
ARVLE
Was he thirty-five?
JACKSON
Yeah.
ARVLE
I was thinking he was a little older.
JACKSON
Thirty-five.
ARVLE
You sure?
JACKSON
Thirty-five.
ARVLE
(calculating)
Well, maybe so. How old were you when he died?
JACKSON
Two.
ARVLE
You remember him?
JACKSON
I got a picture in my head of him setting out there in the back yard.
ARVLE
He’s set there a many a hour.
LUTHER
Whoo, I couldn’t count the times me and him went off somewhere–hunting or fishing or just carrying on.
JACKSON
I guess he was pretty good at carrying on.
ARVLE
He was a good man, Jackson.
LUTHER
There ain’t nothing he done half the rest of us ain’t done too. You listen to these women, they make it sound like something so godawful terrible, but who ain’t drank a little moonshine one time or another?
ARVLE
And it wasn’t the moonshine anyway–it was the lead. It’s a miracle it ain’t killed three-fourths of the county along with him.
Jackson nods, holding his emotion tight. They are quiet for a moment.
LUTHER
You wish you could have known him, don’t you Bud?
Jackson nods.
ARVLE
I’m sure he wishes that too, Jackson.
LUTHER
He was a good man, don’t let nobody tell you no different. Had a good heart. (sighs, growing reflective and a bit sentimental himself) I think about Daddy. Ain’t a day goes by I don’t think about him. I wasn’t but twelve myself. I remember me and him out there burying Raider–and you talk about somebody loved a dog, buddy–I still ain’t got over it–it wasn’t long after that. I remember thinking, well at least he got me through that.
JACKSON
You still miss him.
LUTHER
Ever single day of my life. A boy and his daddy–you know, that goes pretty deep.
HORACE
(after a pause of several beats)
You done had more than your share, Luther.
ARVLE
I believe what you gone through would have killed me.
LUTHER
Naw, it wouldn’t have killed you. You’d have just kept on, same as me. Ain’t nothing else you can do. But you’d know what it feels like when about half of you is gone with it.
ARVLE
How old was that little fella, Luther?
LUTHER
Four. (pause) Never had a mean thought. Never hated nobody. Never wanted to hurt nobody. Loved his daddy. Trusted his daddy. But his daddy couldn’t help him.
HORACE
Nobody could help him, Luther.
LUTHER
Naw, I reckon not. You want a beer?
ARVLE
I’m all right.
Luther glances at Horace, who shakes his head.
LUTHER
Jackson?
JACKSON
(finishing his beer)
Yeah.
Luther goes to the bushes just off-stage.
LUTHER
(calling out, relieving himself)
What you going to do with them four hundred acres, Arvle?
ARVLE
Ain’t much I can do.
LUTHER
You ain’t gone do nothing then?
ARVLE
What would you do?
LUTHER
I don’t know. Reckon they’s enough Atlanta doctors you could lease it out to? Just run all the deer in Buce county over them, charge them about a thousand dollars a day?
ARVLE
No.
LUTHER
I don’t either.
ARVLE
I don’t know. If I cut some timber every year to pay the taxes like Uncle Burt did, won’t be long I won’t have nothing to sell.
LUTHER
(coming back, stopping by the cooler for beers)
Sell?
ARVLE
Well, what would you do, Luther?
LUTHER
(after a long pause)
Just hold on to it.
ARVLE
That two thousand dollars a year ain’t just laying around in the road.
LUTHER
Well then, thin it all along, like Burt did. Replant it yourself.
ARVLE
Hell, I can’t afford it. You’re talking about a big operation, Luther. I got a full-time job–I run a store–I can’t go into the timber business.
LUTHER
(shakes his head)
It’s pretty over in there.
ARVLE
Yeah, it’s pretty. And it’s expensive too.
HORACE
Arvle, don’t you think you could lease it out to one of these hunting clubs sure enough, just to cover the taxes?
ARVLE
I guess I could. Hunt somewhere else myself. Kind of like letting somebody run you out of your house. And when that somebody is a bunch of nuts with rifles, it kind of bugs you.
HORACE
You could be selective.
ARVLE
Hell, I couldn’t control who they’d bring in there.
LUTHER
I tell you what I’d do. I’d plant it with some of this mary-juana. That’s the only way half of these hillbillies can make any money.
ARVLE
Oh yeah.
JACKSON
Daryl Brown was talking about how he leased his to the paper company.
ARVLE
Yeah, I know about Daryl Brown. I could lease mine too. Thirty years. They’d cut it down to the dirt, plant it in pine seedlings, and I’d spend the rest of my life looking at that. I’d sell it before I’d do that.
LUTHER
Which, they’d do the exact same thing.
JACKSON
How much can you get, Uncle Arvle?
ARVLE
Probably five hundred dollars an acre.
JACKSON
How much is that?
LUTHER
That’s two hundred thousand dollars, Jackson. That ain’t bad change. Arvle don’t need it, cause he’s the man who has ever-thing. But he’s got three younguns I bet would rather divide that up than get four hundred acres of land they can’t do nothing with.
HORACE
It’s not an easy situation.
LUTHER
No. It’s not. I tell you what, Jackson. I’m going to give you the best advice anybody ever give you. Don’t even think about working with Earl and them. Get your young butt down there into that college and get into something you can make a good living at as far away from this place as you can get.
HORACE
Now Luther, I don’t know that I’d put it like that.
LUTHER
I do. I mean, hell, this kid has spent his whole life wanting to be like us, and that’s fine and dandy, except here he is now about to finish school, and come to find out what we are ain’t nothing no more.
HORACE
Luther, what makes you talk like that?
LUTHER
Because I don’t want to lie to him. Sure, if he could be like you, that’d be fine, but he can’t. He ain’t got nothing but his two hands and whatever sense God give him.
ARVLE
That’s all he needs.
LUTHER
That’s right. So go off somewhere else and use it. You can’t stay here and live the way we have. Look at Tommy. You don’t see him staying around here, do you?
ARVLE
You fixing to get crossed up with his mama.
LUTHER
Then all she’s doing is holding him back. She’s thinking about her, not him. Man, even I got sense enough to see there ain’t no future in it. Hell, you talk about the Civil War–yeah, they come down here and whupped the South from one end to the other–just like the damn paper company: they clear-cut us and planted all their own shit right on top of us. It ain’t the whupping that was so bad if they’d just got their asses out of here when it was over and gone home. What was bad was how they took what we are, took the way we think away from us. Emptied us out and poured their own way in. Made us humilified and ashamed not to think their way. Made us say, come on down here and take over ever-thing, long as you give us your damn Yankee money.
HORACE
It ain’t just Yankees, Luther. Much as I hate to say it.
LUTHER
Yeah, I know. There ain’t never been no shortage of damn scallyways and trash–they smell the wind and say, we got to get in on the taking before it all gets took. Just look at Atlanta.
ARVLE
I’d rather not.
LUTHER
And soon as they steal enough, they get cleaned up and put on a tie. Then you can’t tell them apart from everybody else. And don’t nobody really care. That’s America. What something is ain’t nothing. It’s just what it looks like.
HORACE
Sometimes.
LUTHER
Just open your eyes and look around you–all around these hills–what do you see? I count one, two, three, four damn antennas sticking up. Hell, they got us in a damn force field, melting our brains out.
HORACE
(laughs)
Luther, you’re a mess.
LUTHER
We’re all a mess. When we ain’t looking they start taking our land away. It maybe ain’t as quick as just outright stealing it, but it works better. And you just drive around up and down these roads at night and what do you see? Inside of ever damn house they’s this damn blue thing glowing in there and they’re all setting around it like moths. Why do you think all these damn A-rabs and shit don’t want it in?
JACKSON
What did folks use to do?
LUTHER
See, that’s what everybody wonders today. They can’t even imagine nothing else.
ARVLE
What they did was go to bed–after they’d done broke their backs out there in them fields all day.
HORACE
That’s true. But Luther’s right now: folks did just sit around and talk more than they do now.
ARVLE
We ain’t doing too bad.
LUTHER
We’re a dying breed. Which is just exactly what we’re setting up here talking about.
JACKSON
I just wonder what they done down there at the old Rabren place.
ARVLE
Hell, I know them folks went to bed. They didn’t have but just theirselves.
LUTHER
(laughs)
Good God amighty. When I was married I run out of things to say, I believe it was the third afternoon. From then on, it wasn’t nothing to do but listen. And listen and listen and listen.
ARVLE
Hell, Luther, you didn’t listen.
LUTHER
I guess you got a point.
HORACE
You know, it hit me just the other day. I got to thinking about Granddaddy and Grandmama’s place–Grandmama had a little flower garden out there by the fence–and they was some kind of little windmill-looking thing Granddaddy had made in it–I had sort of a fuzzy picture of it in my head and I got to wondering about it–seems like it was a frog or a rooster or something–and I thought, well I’ll just ride around there and look–then right on top of that I remembered: shoot, the house ain’t even been there for twenty years, and they’ve been dead and gone for thirty. And I just wanted to ask somebody about it, but I couldn’t ask them, and I couldn’t ask Uncle Walker, or Uncle Hilton, or Aunt Sarah. And it hit me: there wasn’t a single soul left I could ask. They’re ever single one gone, and all there is left is this little piece of a memory in my head and when I’m gone it will be gone too. And it just give me the funniest feeling.
ARVLE
I’ve had that same feeling.
LUTHER
Get used to it. It don’t take long before ever-thing you ever knew is up there on that hillside by that church. (laughs) Look at Jackson. We’re about to scare him to death. Hell, it really ain’t all that bad till you have you three or four beers and get to blubbering about it.
The sound of a powerful vehicle, as before, but heading towards them, comes up from the valley.
LUTHER
Uh oh. Here he comes back. Must be gone try again. Only this time he’s drunk.
ARVLE
Hell, he was drunk the first time.
LUTHER
I’m talking about arm-waving drunk.
ARVLE
Yeah, but you know something? I believe he’s wasting his time. She’s looking out for herself, and I don’t blame her.
LUTHER
She’s done had the tingle–now she’s ready for the jingle.
ARVLE
That ain’t like you: you’re still looking for the tingle.
LUTHER
Hell, I ain’t looking for neither one. All I’m looking for is another beer.
ARVLE
Bring me one this time.
JACKSON
(kills his beer)
Me too.
LUTHER
(going to the cooler)
Deacon?
HORACE
Yeah, I guess maybe one more. (drinks)
LUTHER
Whoo boy. We’re fixing to pitch the biggest drunk since Uncle Walter found his teeth.
They laugh, he gets the beers, distributes them, as lights begin to fade. The men form a silent tableau, looking over the valley, as the earlier night sounds, and a distant train whistle, rise in volume to meet the vacancy. Slow fade to black-out.
