PINESAPT PINK

Jif and Owlsey think on Pink days when cold bite their ears and fingertips and work beyond their skins and into very bones their flesh hangs on. Think of him more today than they'd ever have, even when he was livin. Been gone five years now. Missin four months that winter five years gone. By time folks of Pinesapt found him, he'd turned an angel, face whiter than salt, eyes blue and clearer and colder than ice that cloaked them. Fuqua's pond nothin so much as remembrance even come springtime garlanded with wild flowers, bank studded with glowing candlenubs, flames shaking in insect riddled dusk. Jif and Owlsey said he shoulda been buried with his .410. So stubborn they spat bout it. Most folks agreed. Instead Pink's daddy handed the gun over to Jif. Told him to use it son and not put it on up like some antique that need shinin now and again.

Jif scraped his plate with a biscuit. He chewed and tasted the squirrel bits and gravy and the hot sauce he'd shaken to where it looked like he'd rekilled yon tree rat, shot him still and stiller again. Owlsey held his plate out and Maddie forked another squirrel out the pan and shook it off fork's tines onto his plate. Owlsey held it again and Maddie slopped gravy all over it, a gray mess of lard and flour thickened with squirrel blood and studded with hearts and livers and lungs. Yall aint gone out gen, Maddie said, turning purply squirrel bodies in boiling lard. Figure I gone ahead an tell yall. An I aint want to hear no lip bout it. Yall member Pinkie and what befell that boy an that all yall need to member. Jif and Owlsey hung their heads, still chewing, and looked up through their nests of hair and one another. The squirrels popped and cracked in the hot lard.

That old oak stood nearly full mile from the trailer. Boughs slowly shakin in freezin wind, pocked here an there with nests. Messes of leaves and pine needles and dirt. Pinesapt Inn Pink call it. Midwinter the tree held no fewer than thirty nests. Boys stood at its massive trunk, gun barrels aimed skyward. Shot pumped high and leaves fell from gray sky in autumnal reprise. Squirrels they scattered before triggers squeezed. Pink'd knock four hard in their heads before Jif could even get a goddamn bead. Owlsey mostly sat and cheered, screaming cusswords he'd heard Maddie say when she got down deep in last summer's muscadine wine.

What was he doin out there on that ice? What was he thinkin? He known it aint even froze on through. Never got that cold. At least not so far as I can member.

Clean them on an old stump by the trailer. Stumpface dented with cleavers from squirrel seasons ancient and without memory. Wood gone blush from blood, scattered thereabout with lines wild from Pink's K-Bar blade. He didn't clean so much as undress them. Dead thump chop here there on little gray legs. Dead slack hack above poop chute he called it, through yon tail and above flesh. Tail underfoot and then that soft quick tug. Pink said got them clothes off quicker than Boone's Farm did for Pinesapt High's ladyfolk. Carried them into Maddie and set them on paper towels on the formica table. She still in curlers and dirty pink robe, hand drifting smoke from menthol 100. Pink'd get all pissed when Maddie made that gut gravy. Said we should use em for those bigass cats in Fuqua's pond.

We never did. Still won't. Toll of Toll's Tradin Post was there when they sawed straight through the ice and pulled Pink out. Stiff as frozen hound. Said his fingers all eat up and toes chewed off right through his bootcaps. Said fish eat on him somethin jus awful. Owlsey start cryin and had to scream Toll down from his story, ol shit smilin still through it, mouth fulla pecans. Standin here now with cold sun slipt down hearin Maddie call hoarse for us, now hours more. Wind kick up through bare tree branch, water just there begin gone to ice, what not there ripplin slow in breeze. Aint so bad, even with Toll's godawful voice hard in our ears. Story don't mean so much no more. Here, with Pink, hands hard and tight on his .410, all us brothers. Quiet. Wind again. Here a cardinal there red and then gone. SSeen Pink's face in my mind, an angel even if I'd never seen asmuch with my eyes. Wind come up again. Trees bare and wind papery through slop of leaves about the ground. Water not yet frozen, small in pools, rippling there softly in freezing wind.