A little WICKED TEMPER interlude…

Before the woods gave him up, Matthew saw a few more things. With each dark discovery, he kept leaving parts of his head behind. The sun went steadily and, after a hair and shirt snagging push, Matthew stumbled into a wild chestnut grove. In the broken light, white chickens scratched at the mossy mountain skin, milling about. They were just a smattering of dumb cluckers, not like Bob’s flock. Nobody would know if he drop-kicked a few for fun. But right now, Matthew’s stilts were wobbly, his shoes full of sweat and mud, his feet were raw with blisters. Seeing the chickens, he felt closer to the homestead, though: a whoop or two away. So he limped faster. His moves stringhalted now, thanks to the hole in his thigh. It ain’t the gore-horn that kills you, he chanted softly. It’s the hole. The hole. The hole. It ain’t the gore-horn that kills you. It’s the hole.

Another half hour of misery was still ahead of him. But Matthew finally took a wild left turn through laurel briar and around a wasp’s nest and he came to a dead stop. What he saw down slope made him squeak like a rubber toy.

It was Bob Nottingham’s smokehouse.

Matthew left the leafy steambath. He tripped down to the house. Tizzy was waiting on the wagon tongue. She sat there boiling in her own little popskull, in the late glare of day.

“I doubt you could catch a bug in a bucket,” she said, once his tale of woe was told.

“He was sneaky. He threw me.”

“Yeah, and I’m wily Delilah.”

“I’m telling ye, Tizzy now—don’t rile me up. He’s a sneaky, backtracking shitrag and that’s all they is to it.”

“Take a rest, hogboy. You look thirsty.”

“I told ye don’t never call me no hog—”

“I’m sorry. I’m just hot, dern it.”

“Let’s git on in the house then. I need better shade and cool water.”

“Nope,” she said, chin on her knees. She would not even look at the house.

“And why not?”

“They’s something unfit about this place. It’s unfit, Matthew.”

“Well, I ain’t gone argue about that.”

“I’m as much to blame as you.”

“To blame? Fer what?”

“Well, I been thinking,” Tizzy said, picking up speed. “Why do we always gotta be running from something or running after something else?”

“Huh? What’s got into you while I was gone?”

“If we live backwards and upside down from the way of things, we ends up in unfit places.”

“Doll baby, I’d give you a pill but I ain’t got one,” he said. She was going frantic on him.

“Matthew, I wonder sometimes if we ain’t just whirlygigs, for no good reason at all. You know? Whirlygigs. Seeds. We just is. And we fall. And we don’t need no reason at all. And that’s okey-dokey. Besides, they ain’t none.”

“They ain’t no what?”

“No good reason at all.”

Matthew tried to decipher her. But not for long. He gave up quickly and dragged himself inside where he drank six dippers. He almost stopped there, then decided to have a seventh. The seventh dipper finally slaked his thirst, so Matthew took off his shoes. He took out his pocketknife and found a bottle of red iodine in a kitchen cupboard. Then he tip-toed back outside, cussing the hurt of it all the way. His blisters got doctored while he sat with Tizzy and watched the sun go down. They bided slow time until the man’s return.

from Wicked Temper by Randy Thornhorn

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