Free The Clearing by Tim Gautreaux

delicate movement of cloth behind him, and he turned and saw the outline of the housekeeper sitting with her back against the wall at the end of the porch. The thought that it was too hot for her to sleep crossed his mind and kept on going.
    “Mr. Aldridge, how bad was it?”
    “The constable had to kill a man.” Saying this made it real, and he closed his eyes.
    “Who was it?” she asked quickly.
    “A Griggs boy from Shirmer.”
    “I don’t know him.” He heard her stand up. “But Mr. Byron, he didn’t need that.”
    He thought about what she meant. When he turned around, she was gone like a fragrant smoke.
    He began to wonder if his brother couldn’t have stopped the fight in some other fashion. And why, after the death, had he been so calm? He remembered his grandfather, who had helped Sherman to kill many a Confederate. He was a bilious and crowing old man, crying for every crook mentioned in the newspaper to be reformed on a gallows. He could have passed on some flaw in the Aldridge bloodline, the ability to kill a man as if he were a fly biting an ear. Looking out between the dark locomotive shed and the sleeping mill, he saw the kerosene light in his brother’s windows, and wondered if Byron could sleep after what he’d done. As though in answer, from that direction came the thin and scratchy vibrato of a violin pleading in the unforgiving woods, and a cloying, nasal voice singing of a postman whistling up the walk:
    He little knew the sorrow that he brought me When he handed me a letter edged in black.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    The next morning Randolph walked to the mill, determined to see only the ground and not the saloon porch where a body lay covered with a red-checkered oilcloth, its dread-naught boots jutting out into the sunlight. In his office he cranked the wall phone and raised the agent.
    “Southern Pacific Railroad speakin’.”
    He looked at the floor. “This is Mr. Aldridge. I want you to call Mildred Griggs at the Palmer House in Shirmer and tell her that her son that works at Nimbus has died. Can you do that?”
    There was a long pause on the line. “I’m writing all that down,” the agent told him.
    “Can you load a coffin on the one o’clock?”
    Another pause. “Are you paying the freight?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “I guess you’ll send the box up on the log train.”
    “No, you ninny, I’m going to fly it out in an aeroplane.” He hung up hard, and even though the sun was not strong yet, he went to his desk for a drink of brandy. The office door opened and his brother stood in the frame, unshaven, his hat in his hand.
    “Rando. You call out yet?” The voice was cheerful, but the face was not.
    “Just now. Have a seat.” He motioned him into a chair near his desk.
    “I saved that other man’s life, you know. The one that calls himself Pink.”
    The mill manager chose his words carefully. “I was sorry you couldn’t have stopped it earlier.”
    Byron shook his head and looked at his hat. “When they’re that drunk, almost nothing will stop them.”
    Randolph tried to see into his eyes. “You couldn’t have done something else?”
    “The card dealer had said aloud that Griggs was cheating.”
    “What dealer?”
    “Buzetti’s man. I think he was cheating and just blamed it on Griggs. He slipped out before you got there.” Byron was turning the hat in his hands. “It doesn’t bother me that I shot him. I had to do that.” He looked up. “What if that roomful had turned on us?”
    Randolph remembered the press and smell of wild, drunk men. “My Lord.”
    “I didn’t feel anything after I did it, if that’s what you’re wondering. Right now, I’m ready to go to the dance.” He made a horrible smile, showing all of his teeth at once.
    His brother didn’t know what to say. If lumber was miscounted, or a steam engine broke down, he could tell someone what to do, but Byron’s broken self was beyond his ken. Still, he knew he couldn’t give up on finding