Bad Axe County by John Galligan

Author:John Galligan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

* * *

He drove off Red Mound, schmoozing about the weather again, about last spring’s flood, about some farmer’s drowned cattle found against a rolling dam three miles down the Mississippi. He drove Angus up the coulee parallel to Lost Hollow, to the gate of the Battle Bluff overlook. The gate was locked, not Memorial Day yet. Lund unlocked it and bumped the Tahoe up the narrow dirt road a quarter mile to the top. They arrived at a small open space of root-threaded limestone where a few red pines stood over a feeble shelter and a picnic table. Nearby were the remains of a campfire, a dozen or so beer cans and broken bottles, and the Blackhawk monument, the plaque that stood before the overlook. Lund drove up close.

“Why don’t you get out and enjoy the view.”

Angus opened his door and went to the rock retaining wall. Most of the Bad Axe spread out before him. To the west, to the left, he could see the Mississippi. In the other direction, he could see the ridges and the hollows extending east until Wisconsin leveled out. But straight ahead, north, he figured, was the view that Lund wanted him to have. You could see Beavers Salvage from up here. You had to look straight down, almost lean over the wall. That was Lost Hollow down there, that narrow coulee, that little creek, that meadow. That was his dad’s property, directly under Battle Bluff.

It had been a long time since Angus had seen it from up here. They used to picnic on the bluff when he was little, when they still had a farm, not a scrap yard. Angus used to throw pinecones off the edge, right here, imagining he could splash one in the creek. He had learned that was an illusion. It was a long way down. Then, when his mom died, they had stopped coming up here. Seeing the land below, the farm that had turned into what clearly was a junkyard, his throat filled and his eyes blurred.

But then as Angus watched, something separated from the mass of junk. An old red pickup with a snowplow blade pulled away from the scrap yard. Where was his dad’s Beavers Salvage truck? Who was that pulling away? Angus felt frantic suddenly. What had he missed?

Lund said, “If you can’t make good choices for your family, Hotshot, if you’re gonna pull dumbass stunts and get them hurt, you might as well ‘fly to Jesus’ right now.”

He was smiling out the Tahoe’s window.

“From right here, off that wall, like your hairy-assed mommy did.”

Angus knew then what had just happened down at the scrap yard. He vaulted the wall, landed on the scree of broken limestone, skidded, fell, skidded, ran, crashed through a lap of brush at the bottom. He forded the flooded crick, up to his armpits already. He wallowed across the filling meadow. He climbed up beneath his dad’s spewing pipe to the road.

The Beavers Salvage truck had been hammered by that snowplow blade into the greater mass of junk.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.