out, damned spot

He died. He died and he reckoned, as a dead man does, that if he’d only had one more space of time, one more year to do it all again, he could set right that one thing he set wrong.

Bailey had always been the sort of man who missed the mark. Like when Joe Lambert tried to get him to go in and buy 200 acres on the back of Toler Mountain because Joe heard a rumor the road was coming through and if they bought now they could sell for a profit, a helluva profit, in a few years flat. Bailey said no. He wasn’t the speculating sort. Didn’t like to take chances. He was the kind of man who chained his tractor to a tree just to keep it from tempting his neighbour.

But Joe was right; and four years later when the State Road came through Joe and his family retired on the money made from selling off those acres. Money Bailey could have made too if he’d a been any sort of risk taker. But he wasn’t and he weren’t and and there aint no point going on about it now except to show how Bailey always missed the mark. Just like he missed it last February right before that tree fell on him and crushed or smothered – he still aint figured which – his life right on out.

If he’d just done what he had the chance to do that day. That very same day – instead of thinking he’d have another day and another time to make it right (like we all do, I suppose) then he wouldn’t be where he was – stuck somewhere between the now and the hereafter wishing he’d told Sullie about that thing buried in the back yard – and how it came to be there in the first place.