Fall Line. Joe Samuel Starnes

broad face behind the windshield, his meaty hands on the steering wheel. There was a woman with him, dark-haired and small, sitting low in the passenger seat, not his wife. Warren smiled when he saw it was Elmer, pulling the truck up so close that the bumpers almost touched before shifting it into neutral and turning it off. The Ford towered over the squat blue Chevy.

      Warren opened his door and got out. Elmer stayed put, lighting another cigarette.

      “Elll—merrr! I figured that was your truck.” Warren said everything loudly. “Boy, what in the hell you doing out here? You got me blocked in.”

      Elmer did not smile or take the cigarette from his lips. He looked at the woman sitting low in Warren’s passenger seat. She was barely visible, only her eyes and forehead and a big mass of dark hair poofed out.

      Elmer stepped out of the truck and Warren approached, his thick hand out for a shake. Standing six inches taller and weighing at least one hundred pounds more than Elmer, he wore an untucked starched white shirt with a straight collar, the top three buttons unfastened, and navy dress pants and polished black cowboy boots.

      “Hey, Warren.”

      “Good to see you, cousin.”

      Warren’s grip was firm and he moved in with his left arm as though to scoop him up but Elmer escaped, extending the fire of his cigarette like a sharp sword and ducking behind the open truck door.

      “S’that something the men in Atlanta do these days, Warren? Hug one another?”

      “Damn, Elmer. It’s been a while. We are blood.”

      “Blood?” He spat on the ground. “How is that again?”

      “Aw, you know. Your grandma on your daddy’s side was a Higginbotham, a great-aunt to my daddy. That makes us second—or is it third?—cousins.”

      “Next thing you gonna tell me is that I’m Aubrey Terrell’s love child.”

      “He’s got some Higginbotham in him. Some of the same blood you got.”

      “Yeah, and that’s Pocahontas, my long-lost twin sister, over there.” He pointed to Warren’s truck.

      The smile dropped from Warren’s face. He turned and said, “You ain’t changed much.”

      “What you expect? Grandpa Jones?”

      “Naw, I shoulda figured. What are you doing out here?”

      “Just scouting lake bottom for Georgia Power.”

      Elmer took a long glance around at the brush and hardwoods, a mess of dogwoods and red maples that crowded the road.

      “What are you doing out here, Warren? I ain’t seen you in five years or so, not since you left the sheriff’s office to go to Atlanta. Where is it you work again? A bank, ain’t it?”

      “Yeah, I’ve been at the bank there five years now. It’s a good place.”

      “A bank.” Elmer shook his head and spat.

      “I’m just out here checking on my cows,” Warren said. Elmer looked back to the truck and the woman jerked her eyes away from his gaze. She had olive-colored skin and a sharp nose, was possibly Jewish, most likely from Atlanta or Columbus. He’d heard that the Jews had their own country clubs in the cities.

      “You still got cows down in these parts?”

      “Yeah, I been on up the hill there, checking on my old cow pasture, making sure there are none left, that they got ’em all moved.”

      “Ain’t no pastures on this road. This is a logging road. Besides, I ain’t seen no cows down this way since early summer. They moved ’em all up along the new Dam Road.”

      “S’that so? Well, just wanted to make sure one of mine doesn’t drown here in this lake. It’s something, ain’t it? Just flooding the land like this.”

      “Some of this land used to be in my mama’s family, long time ago, before my daddy got smart and tried to be a bidness man.” Elmer hustled his balls and spat on the ground.

      “That wasn’t a good time to be in business for anybody. Didn’t anybody make any money back then. ’Specially dirt farmers like your daddy.”

      “Certainly not him. But I guess it wouldn’t pay to own the bottom of the lake these days, or maybe it would, shit, I don’t know. I guess old Aubrey’s doing all right with that farmland, selling it to the state for the lake. I reckon there’s good money in selling what used to be my mama’s land.”

      “Shoot, the Guvnah’s done more good for this county than everybody else around here combined.”

      “Shit.” Elmer said. “I wouldn’t trust that sumbitch as far as I can throw him.”

      “You are wrong ’bout ’im, Elmer. I just stopped by and saw Uncle Lloyd and he said the Guvnah’s trying to help you.”

      “We’ll see about that.”

      “Yeah, Lloyd said he’s probably going to help set you up with something if you’ll let him. Lloyd’s worried about you, Elmer. It don’t pay to be so hardheaded all the time.”

      Elmer got into his truck. He put his hand on the open window to pull the door closed but Warren moved next to him and prevented his shutting it.

      “Hold on, now, Elmer. I didn’t mean to piss you off. Hold on.”

      Warren leaned toward Elmer and rested a big hand on his shoulder.

      “After we are done out at the dam, you should come over to Coach Hilliard’s house. He’s having a party tonight and lots of folks will be in town. You can be my guest. Coach always has good liquor, and there’s gonna be a lot of women around, from all over the state.” Warren nodded his head back in the direction of his truck and raised his eyebrows. “Some fine young thangs.”

      “You ain’t bringing your family down, I ’spect. Lloyd tells me you and Marilee got two young’uns.”

      “Yeah, that’s right.” Warren removed his hand from Elmer’s shoulder and stepped back, speaking lower. He looked at the truck and then back at Elmer. “Boys, three and six. They up in Atlanta with their mama. You’d be their cousin of some kind. You need to come up and see them. You’re family.”

      Elmer spat on the ground near Warren’s boots and slammed his door. He cranked up his truck and looked Warren in the eye. “I ain’t shit,” he said, and shifted into reverse.

      Elmer backed down the narrow road using the side mirrors as his guide until he found a clear spot wide enough to turn around, and then sped off with Warren’s Ford following. He watched the red truck in his rearview mirror and rode the gas hard, lashing out a batch of curses on Warren and his Jewess concubine, then Senator Aubrey Terrell and his Uncle Lloyd and their fondness for impure women and liquor and money and the love of their own images reflected in shiny glass. Elmer cut the wheel sharp as he turned left onto the pavement toward Finley Shoals, the place his great-grandfather had founded.

      Elmer watched in his rearview as Warren stopped at the intersection with Finley Shoals Road and paused there before lurching slowly to the right and back toward Lymanville, dust trailing the tires of the F-100 as he exited the logging road. Elmer mashed the gas pedal even harder as the road flattened out, land where the longleaf pines had once grown high and pristine but were now clear-cut. Finley Shoals devoid of its trees was ugly and sad.

      He slowed down as he got to the crossroads where the crumbling macadam of Finley Shoals Road met the red dirt of Sills Road. He sat there with the engine running, not a soul around the old general store that was catty-corner to where the church once stood. Across the street were a few clapboard houses with long porches running along the fronts and sides. All of the doorknobs were gone from the homes, and some of the doors, many of the windows busted and a few knocked out altogether. Some gutter troughs were hanging down and others completely gone. The old weathervane atop the store was