Country Dark

by Chris Offutt

I returned home to my family, with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise, at the risk of my life and fortune. —Daniel Boone

Epigraph

Anyone who fought wouldn’t know the difference between soldiers, the same as North and South Koreans. It was Truman’s war, not Tucker’s, but he’d killed and nearly been killed and watched men tremble with fear and cry like kids. His army pay of four hundred forty dollars was folded tight and distributed about his body in every pocket. The eleven medals he received were at the bottom of his rucksack.

The point here being - brother fighting against brother. 😢😞

Tucker awoke from dreamless rest, quickly alert, then relaxed as the knowledge of his whereabouts seeped through his mind.

PTSD. Poor guy. 😔

Walking soothed him. He enjoyed putting his legs to work like a machine he oversaw, the ruck’s weight on his back, the familiar strain tugging his shoulders. Out of habit he kept shifting his weight to accommodate the rifle that wasn’t there. The lack of a weapon troubled him in a distant way, like an amputee who’d lost a limb.

Tucker has just returned home from the Korean War and is readjusting to his rural life.

The boy’s deep-set eyes were two different colors—one blue, the other brown. Freeman had heard about that with cats but never a human man.

Tucker Carlson is physically and mentally a different "type" of man.

This boy would have to do. After a few tastes of rotgut rye he’d loosen his tongue enough to tell Freeman what a damn griffith was.

What is "rotgut rye"?

Rhonda’s insides tingled like a bottle of shook-up pop. She’d wanted out of that house and holler for years but wasn’t about to do what her sisters had done—marry the first boy who came around by making sure to get pregnant. No, she’d have none of that.

“It doesn’t work that way.” “How does it work? “I don’t know.” “All those years of schooling,” Tucker said, “and none of it took.”

😂 Facts.

He plucked a double handful of purple birdsfoot and white crownbeard, laid them on the truck seat, and drove home.

Offutt populates his narratives with Kentucy native animals and flora. If you're not familiar, they are all worth an internet search.

Most inmates were veterans of Korea and World War II, trained for violence but not in how to control it. Tucker knew he didn’t fall into that category. Half were crazy as a soup sandwich and the rest were dumb as dirt.

😞

“At school they said a dog went up in space. A Russian dog.” “Communists are all dogs. They’ll go anywhere. But they’re afraid of folks in these hills.”

A moment of humor based on the misunderstanding of another character. 😁

“That boy couldn’t drive a wedge up a goat’s ass.”

🤣