by Ron Shiflet
A sudden breeze blew open the pages of another medical journal that was on the nightstand. Willy would have completely disregarded the magazine, but the woman had apparently marked off a section, underlining a paragraph with a thick red marker. The article was titled “Memory Functions of the Brain” and it was written in 1985 by some gray-matter genius named Tolbert whose first and middle names had been reduced to initials.
Human brain cells are finite in number. They gradually deteriorate with advanced age, and as many as one hundred thousand of them a day—cells that can never be replaced— simply disappear, taking with them fragments of memory and intelligence ...
Inside Willy’s head a red flare suddenly exploded. Hun’reds and hun’reds, a hun’red thousand of ’em a day, he thought, turning the old woman’s ravings over again in his memory. His mouth went dry as the synapses within his brain connected to formulate a thought too grotesque to share with his conscious mind.
That smell! That God-awful foul smell was coming from beneath the old woman’s bed! Oh, yes indeed, the woman was hoarding something under there, all right ...!
He tore the sheets and blankets from the mattress, stopping to cover his mouth and nose against the putrescence that assaulted his nostrils in thick waves and kick-boxed with his stomach. Clawing at the stained mattress in several aborted attempts at separating it from the screeching assortment of box springs below, he managed to dislodge the whole assembly of rusted springs and musty coverings, and looked into the black space below the area where the old woman had rested her head.
“ Sweet Mother of Christ . . . !”
Willy gagged up a taste of his own vomit.
They were in there, all right, clumped together in lumpy piles like stinking clusters of dried sponges, a crazy old woman’s hedge against the day when her mind had finally subtracted all those dying cells from her brain and left her with neither the memories nor sanity to soothe her. Some of the gray chunks contained long tail-like stems as if Willy had uncovered a cache of disfigured reptile remains. Others lay in fragmented blood-stained nuggets, like misshapen globs of dark clay that had been molded by an insane child.
There were dozens of them.
Maybe even a hundred.
... Hun‘reds of ’em .
A lunatic’s nest egg of human brains!
Willy suddenly realized how quiet the house had become. The loopy old bitch had stopped counting! Some cloudy signal passed through his own brain and told him maybe he ought to turn around. When he did the old woman was standing directly behind him, hovering over him.
“There’s just hun‘reds of ’em dyin’ inside my head even while I’m just standin’ here,” the old woman croaked. “And Lord knows, a body’s got to save ’em as best a body can!”
For a fleeting moment Willy forced a crooked smile at the woman standing over him. Then he saw what she held in her hands.
With both hands grasping the object tightly, old Nettie Hammond held a baseball bat high over her head.
“What the—?”
A thought raced through his mind that the crazy old broad could not possibly have the strength to do very much damage, not even with the heavy bat. For Christ’s sake, he could knock this old crow over with a goddamned feather, so how could the senile bitch ever manage to—-?
It was the last thought Willy McCorkle had before the woman brought the thick bat down like a mallet and shattered his skull.
The young man’s truck presented no problem for the old woman. She still remembered how to drive one of those four-on-the-floor jobs, and she wasn’t so far gone that she had forgotten the way to Marshall’s Swamp. Even a toothless relic like her could still remember how to do that much. Besides, she’d done it so many times before with the others.
But those blasted brain cells were drying up so fast, and sometimes it was hard to remember how to work that damned threshing machine the way Jake had showed her. Luckilly, enough of the little buggers had remained inside her head for her to recollect what she had to do. The thresher was supposed to be only for grain, really, and Jake had warned she couldn’t put anything too bulky into that thing, else the machine might choke. So she had to cut up everything she stuck into the thresher’s long chute, cut it up real careful into little chunks so that the machine could chew it up real nice for the cats .
The cats ... all those poor little cats in the shed ...
She didn’t really mind chopping this new one up so much . He wasn’t a nice fella like some of the others, talking to her like she was some kind of fool. Still, she had to be careful with the young man’s head, ’cause those brain cells were so damned important. She had read about the part of the skull that was easiest to crush and she pretty much knew how to bring her bat down directly at that spot near its base at the neck. Maybe she hadn’t done too much damage . Brain cells were getting mighty hard to come by, and she was still losing so many of them. A hundred thousand a day, that article had said.
Soon it would be time to set another one of the cats out on the road. She felt sad that she had to do that, they seemed to trust her so. But folks usually stopped because of the cats. Most folks were so kind about animals and old people, it could almost make you cry.
She felt truly sorry about that too, but sometimes a body’s got to do as best a body can. After all, she was just saving up all that gray matter for a rainy day. People would understand that. They always did. People always forgave a lonely old woman, even if she was missing a few brain cells.
Even if she was missing hundreds and hundreds of them ...
HOURS WITH THE DEAD
LEE CLARK ZUMPE
They had to keep his name a secret, for fear of reprisals.
Regardless of his efforts to hasten a victory for the North, elements of Major General George G. Meade’s Union forces would have seen him put in shackles and transferred to the overcrowded prison barracks at Fort Delaware the very day Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House. Confederate officers—particularly those who remained reluctant to stand down at the cessation of hostilities – envisioned a more bloody requital for the man who had caused so much grief and torment.
“That we allowed ourselves to be duped into complicity in his nefarious scheme is itself reprehensible,” an editor wrote in the nation’s capital. “None of us can deny the blood that has stained our hands. It is an ill omen, indeed.”
His subsequent disappearance caused neither surprise nor concern. Most believed he had taken his own life, and in a matter of months the ugly episode had been conveniently forgotten and expunged from official record.
By the time he arrived in Smithville, North Carolina, he had taken to calling himself Thaddeus Jackson.
“Mr. Jackson, is it?” The proprietor of the provisions store shot a disdainful look over his thick reading glasses. His gaze quickly fell back to a handwritten list of references that seemed too flawless to be real. “Says here you worked in some of the finest department stores in New York City before the war.”
“That’s right, sir.” Thaddeus kept his tone level, his demeanor unruffled but eager. He had a pallid face flecked by freckles and red hair that was balding a little at the top. “The Marble Palace, Macy’s and Lord & Taylor, sir.”
“Top quality establishments, I’m sure,” the man said, less than convinced about the applicant’s sincerity. “Why here, then, Mr. Jackson? Why this little village so far removed from the opulence and grandeur and comfort of your former residence?”
“My reasons are my own; but,” Thaddeus added, maintaining a dignified deportment, “suffice it to say I felt it time for a change of climate.”
“Well, as long as you aren’t one of those carpetbaggers come to point out our supposed inadequacies …” The man finally smiled with some semblance of approval. “Seems to be a conspiracy of misconception amongst Yankees these days, believing their Southern counterparts cannot aspire to economic success or summon up an ounce of self-discipline. So long as you don’t accept that fallac
y as gospel, you’re welcome to put in an honest day’s work in my store. Name’s Greenheath, incidentally,” the proprietor said, extending his hand as a show of warm welcome. “Ezekiel Greenheath. Most ’round here call me Zeke.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Thaddeus permitted himself the indulgence of at least a transitory emancipation: For the moment, his secrets remained undisclosed, his face unrecognized and his identity secure. As he had hoped, his infamy had not reached this small, secluded population. “I’m much obliged for the opportunity.”
“Just don’t expect to have an easy time of it,” Zeke said. “You’ll start before dawn sorting goods and filling orders, spend most of the day making deliveries to the outlying communities and then offload cargo three nights a week.”
“I don’t need much sleep, sir; and, I have a strong back for lifting.”
Thaddeus allowed his gaze to drift over shelves inside the store. He found a modest mix of groceries, hardware and even superior garments from European clothiers. Assorted fabrics also were displayed for those inclined to make their own attire. Behind the counter where transactions were recorded, bottles lined broad apothecary shelves topped with aging tomes. Thaddeus surmised from previous experience that the drawers below contained surplus corks, herbs, wooden pill boxes, a reserve stock of labels and bulk drugs and chemicals.
“You are a druggist, as well.”
“You’re standing in the only surviving pharmacy in the county.” Zeke, a tall and exceedingly thin man, twirled one end of his trimmed gray moustache between his thumb and index finger. His short-lived smile had faded. The burden of the war had left the man physically hollowed and distinctly somber. Though he offered no account of his personal tragedy, Thaddeus recognized it in the grief which yet dwelled in his eyes. “You’ll find a diverse range of commodities flows through this town—much of it through this very facility.” He paused, folded his arms across his chest. “I failed to mention that my clients enjoy a certain degree of anonymity.”
“I understand, sir.”
“You must be able to keep things to yourself, to refrain from the indulgence of gossip.” Zeke turned his back as he sauntered behind the counter. “There are more secrets in my trade than you might expect. I expect that you will be capable of keeping them.”
“Yes, sir,” Thaddeus said, though he doubted any of Smithville’s secrets could rival his own.
Not to be censured for lack of hospitality, Ezekiel Greenheath invited his new clerk to dinner that very first night in town and made arrangements for him to take up residence in a room at a nearby boarding house. The modest meal consisted of corn pone and mullet stew, a local favorite rarely offered to outsiders. Thaddeus, more recently accustomed to dining on crawdads and hardtack, unreservedly expressed his approval and conveyed his gratitude.
Afterward, they enjoyed black currant wine and soda cake with currants – the dessert being prepared from a recipe Zeke’s wife had found in a recent issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book. On the front porch of Greenheath’s manse, the two men smoked Marsh Wheeling brand cigars while watching the autumn breeze sweep wispy clouds across the faces of familiar constellations.
“It’s a cozy village, warm and welcoming.” Having visited the great manufacturing centers of the Mid-Atlantic States, where the taint of industry had already begun to smother out all things quaint and curious, Jackson found the coastal North Carolina town a refuge from the clutter and chaos of progress. “I can see why your family has lived here for so long.”
“For four generations, we’ve been here; long enough to remember when the entire town burned to the ground.” Located along the northern shore of the Kaldetseenee River not far from where it disappears into the sweeping currents of the Atlantic Ocean, Smithville boasted two dates of founding. Colonists first established the town in 1697. Following an accidental firestorm in the mid-eighteenth century, surviving inhabitants rebuilt it in 1792. “Before the end of the war, we feared we might have to start over once again. Somehow, though, we managed to avoid the fate of so many other towns.”
“And your children—do they reside here, as well?”
“No,” Zeke said, lowering his gaze from the heavens as if they had betrayed him. “We had two boys. One died at the Battle of Fort Fisher. The other,” he paused, an unexpected pang of revulsion distorting his otherwise cordial countenance, “Well, we’ve not heard from him since Stoneman’s Raid in the highlands. He served in a detachment of home-guard units near the towns of Winston and Salem.”
“I’m sorry,” Thaddeus said, wincing at memories uncovered by the mention of war. Like so many others, he found himself haunted by his experiences and by the carnage he had witnessed. Though he bore no physical scars to testify to his participation, his wounds remained raw and angry. He, however, shouldered a burden more devastating than most: he carried the shame of being the architect of an abominable massacre unrivaled in the history of warfare. “I had best retire to my room,” Jackson said after several minutes of uncomfortable silence. “I think I should get some rest before morning.”
Fitful sleep filled with nightmarish visions excluded Thaddeus from the respite he desired. The faces of young soldiers crowded his dreams, their pallid faces begging him for release, their mutilated bodies rank with decay. Stripped of speech and otherwise unfit to communicate, their poor, pathetic eyes spoke for them—shrieking out their misery, their disillusionment and their apprehension. They petitioned him only for peace—instead, he saw to it that their souls would writhe in torment for all eternity.
As a seaport, Smithville could not compete with nearby Wilmington and eventually accepted a less important role in regional commerce. To endure, it found itself often obliged to embrace dishonorable and disreputable tradres—notorious merchants banned from business at all the major hubs along the Eastern Seaboard. Through its harbor came a hodgepodge of contraband cargo including opiates and exotic spices, strange herbs and rare plants presumably employed for medicinal purposes. Hailing from foreign havens including Capetown, Port Said, Tunis, Zanzibar and Shanghai, Thaddeus Jackson suspected that some vessels might still ferry slave labor and indentured servants bound for exploitation in coal mines, in logging camps or in the construction of the first transcontinental railroad.
Primarily, though, Thaddeus spent his days processing more mundane imports for the townsfolk and delivering a peculiar assortment of oddities, curios and dusty tomes to wealthy patrons living on plantations skirting the borders of the dismal Green Swamp.
“Thank you, boy,” Mr. Sellers said, calling out across the courtyard of his estate one blustery afternoon in mid-November some six months after Thaddeus had arrived in Smithville. “Leave the package out front of the gin house, if you would.”
“Yes sir.” Jackson followed the old man’s instructions without a singular deviation, lifting a crate full of books off the back of his horse-drawn carriage. After carefully placing the shipment in a patch of shade, he lingered a moment beneath a magnolia tree. As he wiped sweat off his brow, he noticed a young woman staring at him from an upstairs window in the mansion. When their gazes met, she let the curtain fall back into place in accordance with the laws of modesty, but not before revealing a giddy smile that simultaneously surprised and stupefied him. He promptly shook off his uncharacteristic bliss and resumed a more professional frame of mind. “Do you have any further orders for Mr. Greenheath?”
“No, not today,” Sellers said, limping across the lawn. His leg had been badly injured in the war. Surgeons working in battlefield conditions had done their best to set the shattered bone, but, as was often the case, their efforts ultimately met with only limited success. “But do please pass along my salutations, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” Thaddeus watched as he approached, gauging the conspicuous pain in his face with each methodical footstep. He imagined the fragile bone deep beneath flesh and muscle, still vexed by numerous hairline fractures; he pictured splintered shards embedded in the surrounding tis
sue. “Any better today?” He pointed toward Sellers’s leg as he asked. “Any less pain?”
“Some days are good; others, not so good.”
“Wish there was something I could do for you.” Thaddeus stayed his hand, though the temptation gnawed at his soul. There was, after all, something he could do about it. He could make the tenderness subside, the sting evaporate. He could persuade the bone to restore itself to its former condition, mending the many fissures. He could dissolve the fragments, extract any remaining bits of shrapnel. With nothing more than the touch of his hand, he could heal Sellers. “Wish I could make you feel better.”
Thaddeus fought the sudden urge, denied himself the opportunity to right some of the many wrongs he had perpetrated in the last year of the war. Though his gift beckoned him now as it once had, he swallowed the inclination and impulse because he could not be certain what the consequences might be. He could not assure himself that an act he perceived as one of compassion might not somehow evolve into something more sinister.
Its power had overwhelmed him in the past. He could no longer trust it.
“Thank you, Thaddeus,” Sellers said. “Thank you for your concern. I’ll be fine, though.”
Thaddeus Jackson sat upon a stool behind the counter in Ezekiel Greenheath’s store, his attention wholly consumed by an article in a recently delivered issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. The wintry winds of a late season Nor’easter howled through the streets, uprooting trees and sending waves crashing into the docks down on the waterfront. While the grim, gray skies loosed a deluge across the low country and the gales churned the typically calm waters of Kaldetseenee Sound, Thaddeus conscientiously minded the shop on the off chance someone might brave the harsh weather for supplies.
By candlelight, he found himself obliged to scan again and again a particular passage which resided amidst less provocative literary, political and cultural content. There, in an article written by Arthur Fleming, he read: