Short Fiction · The Martians and the Coys (1/3)

The Martians and the Coys

Maw Coy climbed the fence down at the end of the south pasture and started up the side of the creek, carrying her bundle over her shoulder and puffing slightly at her exertion.

She forded the creek there at the place where Hank’s old coon dog Jigger was killed by the boar three years ago come next hunting season. Jumping from rock to rock across the creek made her puff even harder; Maw Coy wasn’t as young as she once was.

On the other side she rested a minute to light up her pipe and to look carefully about before heading up the draw. She didn’t really expect to see any Martins around here, but you never knew. Besides, there might’ve been a revenue agent. They were getting mighty thick and mighty uppity these days. You’d think the government’d have more to do than bother honest folks trying to make an honest living.

The pipe lit, Maw swung the bundle back over her shoulder and started up the draw. Paw and the boys, she reckoned were probably hungry as a passel of hound dogs by now. She’d have to hurry.

When she entered the far side of the clearing, she couldn’t see any signs of them so she yelled, “You Paw! You Hank and Zeke!” Maw Coy liked to give the men folks warning before she came up on the still. Hank, in particular, was mighty quick on the trigger sometimes.

But there wasn’t any answer. She trudged across the clearing to where the still was hidden in a cluster of pines. Nobody was there but Lem.

She let the bundle down and glowered at him. “Lem, you no-account, why didn’t you answer me when I hollered?”

He grinned at her vacuously, not bothering to get up from where he sat whittling, his back to an old oak. “Huh?” he said. A thin trickle of brown ran down from the side of his mouth and through the stubble on his chin.

“I said, how come you didn’t answer when I hollered?”

He said, “You called Paw and Hank and Zeke, you didn’t holler for me. What you got there, Maw, huh?” His watery eyes were fixed on the bundle.

Maw Coy sighed deeply and sat down on a tree stump. “Now what you think I got there, Lem? I been a bringing your vittles to you every day since Paw and you boys started up this new still. Where’s Paw and Zeke and Hank?”

Lem scratched himself with the stick he’d been whittling on. “They went off scoutin’ around for the revenooers or maybe the Martins.” He let his mouth fall open and peered wistfully into the woods. He added, “I wish I could shoot me a Martin, Maw. I wish I could. I sure wish I could shoot me a Martin.”

The idea excited him. He brought his hulking body to its feet and went over to pick up an ancient shotgun from where it leaned against a mash barrel.

Maw Coy was taking corn pone, some cold fried salt pork, and a quart of black-strap molasses from her bundle and arranging it on the top of an empty keg. “You mind yourself with that gun now, Lem. Mind how you shot up your foot that time.”

Lem didn’t hear her, he was stroking the stock of the shotgun absently. “I could do it easy,” he muttered. “I could shoot me a Martin easy. I sure could Maw. I’d show Hank and Zeke, I would.”

“You forget about the Martins, son,” Maw Coy said softly. “Yore my simple son⁠—there’s at least one in every family, mostly more⁠—and it ain’t fittin’ that you get into fights. You got a strong back, strongest in the hills, but yore too simple, Lem.”

“I ain’t as simple as Jim Martin, Maw,” Lem protested.

“Son, they don’t come no more simple than you,” his mother told him gently. “And mind that gun. You know how you bent the barrel of Zeke’s Winchester back double that time, absentminded like.”

He stroked the gun stock, patted it, half in anger, half in protest. His lower lip hung down in a pout. “You stop talkin’ thataway, Maw,” he growled, “or I’ll larrup you one.”

Maw Coy didn’t answer. She reckoned she’d better set off into the woods and see if she could locate the rest of the men folks, so they could eat.

Lem said under his breath, “I could shoot me a Martin real easy, I could.”