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Ray still thought of him like that, as a boy, and in a lot of ways he was, a child trapped in a grown man's body. Ricky was forty-one years old closing in on a casket. There were times when Ray wondered if some folks were just born sorry, and that thought hurt the worst because that was no way to think about his own flesh and blood, no way to think of his son.
Tommy Two-Ton stood by her food bowl at the edge of the kitchen and Ray knelt and scratched behind the hound's ears. The dog leaned all of her weight into the palm of Ray's hand. A milky haze clouded Tommy's eyes and she sniffed the air when Ray crossed the kitchen for an open sack of feed in the pantry.
The silverware drawer was pulled open on the cabinets. The drawer was emptied to its peeling flower-pattern liner. Ray closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, a mismatched set of stainless dinnerware stolen from the drawer.
"Had a lot more forks than spoons, a lot more spoons than flat knives. Ain't that right," Ray grumbled to the dog as he held the fifty-pound bag over the bowl and poured kibble from the torn corner. Tommy took a bite and peered up with those milky eyes while she chewed, not having the foggiest what the old man was saying, but satisfied just the same.
In the bedroom, Ray unfastened his galluses and dropped his overalls by the foot of the bed. He wore overalls every day of his life and a dress pair on Sundays, same as his father and grandfather, both now buried in theirs. A chestnut jewelry box he'd bought his wife at Mountain Heritage Day centered the dresser right where she'd left it. He glanced at himself in the vanity. A thick salt-and-pepper beard starting just under his eyes hung to the center of his chest. Heavy facial hair covered his lips, his words always seeming to come out of nowhere, his mood always concealed. He lifted his hat by the pinch-front crown, ran his fingers through what was left of his hair, and let out a heavy breath. A small brass clasp that held the jewelry box closed was unlatched. Standing there, he traced the edge of the lid with the tip of his finger for a long time before he found the courage to flip the box open.
The small silver locket and wedding band that had belonged to Doris's mother rested on one side of the black velvet bottom. The silver wedding band was warped into a crooked oval, almost completely worn in two where it rode between her mother's fingers while she worked the cabbage fields. The gold band and quarter-carat engagement ring he'd bought from Hollifield's to ask for Doris's hand were strung together with a thin green thread, her having never been much for wearing jewelry. The only other content was a tarnished wheat penny a little girl had given her once out of the blue at the meat counter in Harold's Supermarket, one of those random things that find their way into your hand and you wind up saving the rest of your life for no particular reason at all.
Ray closed the box and snapped the clasp shut. He braced his knuckles on top of the dresser and leaned in close to the mirror. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot and yellowed, their pale blue color almost gray. He was thankful some things were still sacred. If not forever, at least right then.
Closing his eyes, he inhaled until his chest could hold no more, and tried to imagine where the boy might be. The sound of the rain died on the roof and that silence washed his mind empty. Barely enough had fallen to rinse the dust off the world. He could not recall the last time a prayer was answered.
Two
A spot fire on Moses Creek rim-lit the mountains, but the wind was wrong to pose any real danger of it jumping the ridge to Wayehutta, a place locals pronounced worry hut. Raymond sat on his porch the way he did every evening, listening to the police scanner while he smoked a Backwoods and rattled Redbreast over ice in the bottom of a jelly jar.
A man needed something constant, something unchanging, that he could lean against when the world went to pot. Sooner or later, the cards always fell that way and the difference between those who buried their heads in their hands and those who kept their chins above water became a matter of reprieve. With the good and the bad, Ray started his days with a pot of coffee and a book, and ended them with four fingers of good whiskey and a gas station cigar.
Excerpted from When These Mountains Burn by David Joy. Copyright © 2020 by David Joy. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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