by Bob McGough
As the breeze picked up a bit, I could hear the faint sounds of bamboo wood chimes clanking eerily off to my left. A tiny shudder passed through me, and I started veering more to my right. What they called the old witch hut was out that way, and I was not exactly too anxious to find myself near there after dark.
I passed near a briar patch, and I paused long enough to see if any of the blackberries were still edible this late in the year. I could see them there, what looked to be the dark ripeness I was hoping for, but I looked closer regardless. A handful of berries would do nothing for my hunger, not really, but I had a powerful love of the little things. And being free, that was my favorite flavor. I was out of luck, however, with every one I could find being a withered black berry, dried out and good for little more than some half-starved possum.
A good fifteen-minute walk had me leaving the forest and setting foot in the old cow pasture. There hadn’t been a cow living there since my granddaddy had been alive, and the grass was near knee high, even that late in the year. I had to at least be a little careful, as there were all manner of little potholes scattered across the field, hidden by the grass, and more than once I’d twisted an ankle in one.
I could, for the first time, see my granny’s house, as well as those of some of my uncles. All three homes were spread across about a mile of ridgeline on the far side of the pasture, and as it grew darker, I could see lights start to wink on inside. While the other two were small brick houses, Granny’s was a sprawling two-story antebellum house that dominated the hilltop like some old castle. Its white paint was flaking, but at this distance, and in the rising dusk, it appeared almost spectral. Like some ancient ghost prowling the hilltop, looking for souls to steal.
My stomach gave a growl, though any feeling of hunger was still subdued. I suspected I would find some sort of tasty morsel to mangle with my teeth once I got to where I was headed. I decided to give Granny’s a wide berth and head for Uncle Hubert Dale’s, her youngest son, and the uncle I was closest to.
I was just entering the yard when he stepped out onto the narrow strip of porch that ran the width of his small house. “Bout time you showed. ‘Spected you a good half hour ago,” was what he said by way of greeting. I didn’t bother to ask how he knew about my imminent arrival. In a family like mine, such things come to be expected.
His prematurely greying hair was shoulder length, and he was possessed of the same gaunt frame that the men of the Marsh clan were prone to. He had on an old pair of camouflage pants, pretty much the only kind of pants he ever wore, with some sort of free blood donation shirt. It hung loosely on him, being a size or two too large, but that was how he liked them. The porch light was behind him leaving his front mostly in shadow, but his scruffy face was lit by the red tip of his cigarette, and I could see he was grinning. “See you came cross the field. Been over at Lidda’s?”
My boots clumped up the few steps. I winked. “Perhaps. Give me some of that pork steak I smell and maybe I’ll tell you about it.”
He laughed, a reedy sound that descended into a hacking cough. He waved me on in. “I knewed you was hungry.”
He kept a tidy place - albeit a bit spare - just a few old and simple pieces of furniture paired with a couple of wedding pictures up on the wall. Uncle Hubert Dale was somewhat of a minimalist, with a place that could do with some cluttering up. It practically made my skin crawl, all those unused surfaces. Could pile a lot of scavenged treasure in a place like this.
There was a plate on the table with a fat, fried pork steak sitting on it, accompanied with a huge pile of roasted potatoes, all set out for me. I sidled up to the table and started to dig in. H.D. settled in across from me, opening a High Life as he did.
Taking a long drag on his smoke, he breathed out. “So what brings you out this way, boy? Besides my cooking, that is.”
I didn’t even slow down shoveling food into my mouth. It has been often said that table manners are not my strong suit. But then folks say a lot of things. Speaking from around a mouth full of food, I started to relate to him the course of the day’s events. By the time I sopped up the last of the grease with a fork full of potatoes, I had him pretty well caught up. He had sat through the whole recitation in silence, and when he saw that I was done, he grabbed my plate and took it over to the sink and started to rinse it off.
Over the sound of the water, he asked, “How about you get that folder of stuff laid out, and we can take a look at it proper like, see if we can get a handle on it?”
It occurred to me that I hadn’t bothered to give it a good going-over myself, which wasn’t like me at all. Subconsciously, I supposed I really didn’t want the job. The folder was sitting under my little box, so I pulled it out and laid out all the sheets side by side.
The first was a map of Jubal County. An area a bit east of Granny’s, maybe ten miles or so, was encircled in a red swoop, but otherwise it was just a typical county survey map. The next was a close-up map of the area, with property lines and such. Other than that, the others were just weather reports. I didn’t bother reading them, I would just take Rutherford’s word for it and save myself some time. The maps were the key to this.
H.D. was standing over the table, his hands planted on its top as he stared at the maps. “Well then,” was all he said.
I eyed him over. “Any more starting insights you’d like to posit there H.D.?”
He slowly shook his head. “Nope. Nothing sticking out at me. I mean, I know the area of course. But nothing too special about it. Right on the edge of Bay Houdan, but misses it a bit. Not sure if that matters. And it’s not quite a perfect circle, a bit more oblong I suppose. But just a little.”
I looked; he was correct in that. It wasn’t so much that it really stood out at you, but with a little looking you could tell. “Know anyone over that way?”
He leaned back, and finding the chair with his legs, sat down. “Oh yeah. Quite a few, I suppose. My first wife’s folks were from that area. Kershaws. Nice family for the most part, ‘cept for one crazy daughter that I had the ill luck of marrying. Bunch of peanut farmers by and large.”
I frowned. “When I asked, I sorta hoped you might know someone with their finger a little more on the pulse than a peanut farmer.”
He arched an eye at me. “You think someone will have a better grasp on the weather than a farmer?”
“Touché.” I produced a smoke and lit it up. Staring at the papers, I mulled things over. If folks knew what was going on, Rutherford’s agents would likely have ferreted it out. So clearly, whatever was going on lay outside the sort of questions even well-grounded federal agents and your normal farmers and housewives would ask. Whatever it was, it lay down the path less taken.
I asked the question I didn’t want to ask. “Should I talk to Granny?”
H.D. stiffened. “I would leave her out of things unless really needed. She’s on more of a tear than usual. Best to stay clear.”
I breathed a little sigh of relief. I had hoped he would say that. As little contact as possible with Granny almost always proved best.
Hubert Dale shook himself a little, clearly chasing out bad thoughts. Looking over at me, he paused thoughtfully, stroking his chin. His calloused fingers made a rasping noise as they passed over the stubble. “My thinking is that someone has put a curse out on someone. You find out who and why, problem solved.”
It was the obvious solution. But finding that could be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I swore lightly under my breath. “I reckon you’re right. Gonna need to borrow the van. Is that alright?”
He frowned at me. “Gonna put gas in it this time?”
A Solitary Ride
H.D. offered to ride with me, perhaps to make an introduction or two. But in the end, I left him behind. I was pretty sure his real motive was to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn’t damage his van. But I wasn’t sure what sort of timeline I was looking at with this job, and if he came along, sure as the world, we’d end up getting sidetrac
ked with his bullshit along the way.
Unlike his house, my uncle kept his van in a suitable state of trashiness. The kind of general junkiness in which I felt most at home with. Weeks’ worth of fast food containers rustled and swirled in the floorboard and across the seats as I rolled down the windows and started my way down the dirt road that led away from the ancestral estate. There were even a couple of halfway decent cassettes in one of the cup holders. I snagged out an old Ozzy tape and pushed it in the player. I do love some old school metal on occasion.
I made sure to creep slowly past Granny’s, though my instincts were to punch it in case she were to wander onto the porch. The family had discovered over the years that it just did not do to draw Granny’s eye until fully prepared. There was only one light on in the tired looking antebellum home in which she resided, and though I was sure I saw a flicker of movement, I steadily just attempted to ignore it.
It was fully dark now, but the full moon coupled with the van’s headlights illuminated things just fine. With the windows down, I could feel just how brisk the night air had gotten, the wind blowing across my skin, raising up the hairs there. To my drug-addled mind, it felt like fingers running up my arm and through my hair.
I made it down the driveway from the homesteads and turned onto Old Ebenezer Lane. The dirt road made for slow going at first, as it would not do to start this adventure with running off into a ditch and having to get Uncle Raymond to pull me out with the tractor. The road had been scraped somewhat recently, leaving all manner of rocks kicked up and making the going more bumpy than it usually was. Soon enough, however, I was moving along at a steady clip.
The trees grew close to the road here, creating a tunnel of overarching limbs that blocked out most of the moonlight. The banks were high on either side, the road having worn a deep cut over its many decades of use, and you could see roots spider-webbing through the thick red clay to either side, if one was so inclined. I had spent many an hour doing just that when I was little, looking for ammonites and such. I once had a collection of several dozen fossils that I had pried out of the soil around here. Lidda had gotten most of it as presents during high school, so lord only knows where they are now. But I still have a few of my favorites tucked away back at my shed. Useful little buggers sometimes.
I weighed going back to my shed first, debating on if I needed to gather up some curse-breaking type items, but in the end I decided against it. The plan of attack would be to go refill my box of oblivion at Jimmy’s now that I had a decent chunk of change. I would likely end up spending most of the night there, if history was any sort of indication. Then in the morning, I would head out to the pinpointed area and start to do a little snooping. With a little luck, come tomorrow night I might be back in my shed, tweaking out of my ever loving mind having put this whole thing to bed.
I was nearing the edge of our land, rounding a corner of the dirt road when I spotted it. All bleached bone and gnarled root, it looked down from atop the bank at me, the moon giving its skull a dull glow as it turned. I shuddered as it looked at me, and then, thankfully, I was past.
I shook for a good five minutes after I had reached the paved road. It had been a while since I had seen it. I had forgotten how close the old witch house came to the road at that point, a mistake I wouldn’t make again soon, at least not after dark. As the shakes subsided, I turned the wheel towards Jimmy’s. But I won’t talk about that little stop too much. No one likes snitches.
New Day Dawning
Jimmy’s had proven to be a resounding success. I probably wouldn’t sleep for two, maybe three days now, and I could feel the energy coursing through my veins like a stampede of horses. The sun was just starting to come up when I slipped once more behind the wheel and waved goodbye to my second favorite person in the world.
Jimmy stood there in a grimy pink bathrobe and his tighty whities and waved back. He turned back to his camper then, while crushing the beer can in his hand and tossing it onto the mountain of empties he was always saying he would one day recycle. “One day” hadn’t come in the four years I’d been coming by, and I suspected it never would.
Threading my way through the half dozen junk cars that filled the yard around the tiny camper, I rolled the window down. The air was cool on my body, and the way the wind coursed over my skin felt like thousands of tiny feather-soft snakes trying to give me hugs. The very air felt electric, and it was one of those mornings that you could just about see sound and hear color if you cocked your head just right. Those of us on a variety of drugs could even skip the head-cocking.
The morning mist was starting to thin a bit as I turned onto county road 98 towards Bay Houdan. It had been a few years since I had been out this way, as I mostly spent my time in Elk Grove these days. I am, and will always be, a child of the country, but small city life suits me just fine. Hard to go without the convenience once you become accustomed to it. And not having to have a car, with all its assorted expenses is always a bonus.
That said, as the cool breeze blew through my hair, I acknowledged that there was something soothing about a drive through the sticks. Having control of where you go, and when. A body could get used to it, that was for sure.
I had the map which contained the closeup of the area spread out on the seat beside me. One end flapped in the wind, but the other was held down by my box of fun. One hand on the wheel, I pressed the flapping end down and gave the map a quick look-over. I had decided to start near the middle of the circle, as that was likely the source of it all, so I would need to turn up Bienville Road once I reached it. Till then though, I just leaned back, flicked a cigarette alight, and cruised.
I decided to take the long way there. Partly because I was not too eager to get to where I was going, but also because I decided it would be best to get a little gas. Not too much, mind you, H.D. had been well-trained at this point to expect me to bring his van back more or less running on fumes. I hate to defy expectations, so a couple of gallons would be enough I hoped. As an added bonus, I could perhaps do a bit of reconnoitering.
Winding my way down county road 98, I turned off onto 7, which looped around to the back side of Bay Houdan if you followed it far enough. Instead, I veered off onto the Jackson Hollow Road after about three miles, and promptly found myself pulling into the Jackson Hollow One Stop.
Jackson Hollow was not a town, community, or anything really. It was a gas station, and the home of the man who owned the gas station. Thirty years ago, he seemingly had the mindset of “if you build it, they will come.” Folks said he wanted to be a mayor one day. Surprisingly enough, one gas station on a narrow country road is not quite a mecca for people to move to, and so Terry Jackson and his wife barely managed to eke out a living running the station.
I liked it though. Enough so that it was about the only gas station in the county that I had never even so much as shoplifted a cold beer from. There were always a couple of old men lingering about gossiping, which added credence to its country store credentials, I felt, and today was no exception.
Pulling up to the only pump, I got out and nodded to the pair of elderly black gentlemen seated on milk crates by the door. The One Stop was also the only station in the area that was not pre-pay, so I started to put a couple gallons in as I glanced around. It was a small wooden building, its boards weathered and in dire need of a good pressure washing. Its pair of small windows were filled up with signs for cigarettes.
Gas pumped, I walked inside. Terry’s wife, Emma, a short, broad woman with a cheerful smile, was behind the counter. “Howard! Been a while! Been keeping your nose clean?”
I laughed, and gave her what I thought to be a rather roguish wink. “Oh, you know, clean enough, I suppose.” I went over to the shelf and scooped up a can of boiled peanuts. “Where are you hiding Terry at today?”
Her face sobered a bit, but she plastered on a smile regardless. “Oh, you know, up at the hospital getting his treatment.”
Inwardly, I blanched. I had forgotten h
e had lung cancer.
A hint of desperation entered her voice. “I took him by to see your granny a week or so back. She was out though. Know when she might be home again?”
When folks tried to get up with my gran, you knew things had gotten bad. I set down the peanuts along with a glass bottle coke. “Granny was home last night. Heard she’s been on a bit of a tear though, so I might hold off a couple days.”
She nodded, biting her lower lip. “I’ll do that.” She rang me up and made small talk, clearly eager to veer the topic away from her dying husband. I was just as eager to step back outside and out of there. As the door shut behind me, I opened the can of peanuts and started to drain the water out of it onto the gravel.
“Hull them nuts and drop ‘em on in that coke. You’ll thank me later,” offered one of the old men from off to my left. His hands were wrapped tight around the head of a cane which he was gently rocking side to side between his legs.
I nodded, taking a step closer to them, signaling I was going nowhere in a hurry. “Ain’t telling me nothing I don’t already know there. I’ll drop a few in for sure.”
“Hard to beat peanuts and coke,” opined the other old man. He was wearing a black “Korean War Veteran” hat which he had tipped pretty far back on his head. “Been doing it since I was a young’un.”
I smelled an opening. “Speaking of, how’re the peanuts doing this year? Gonna make a good crop?”
Both men hawked and spat so close together you would have thought they had choreographed it. Veteran hat snorted. “All depends on the rain. I mean, they gonna make, regardless. But if folks around here keep having to run the irrigators, ain’t no one gonna make any money.”