by Bob McGough
Only if you looked closer you could see the rot. I saw the shell of an old house, little more than a moss-covered brick chimney sprouting up out a pile of collapsed grey boards, and half-hidden in a stand of pines. A mile later was a house with its yard full of rusted out husks of cars, littered with broken kids’ toys and piles of beer cans.
Jubal County: a nice place to live, if you got rid of all the people.
I smelled the farm before we even got to it. Elias Richmond had four chicken houses, long silver buildings he’d had built out of sight behind an old oak grove. The trees however did little to hide the stink of chicken shit: the acrid, earthy smell filling my nostrils. It didn’t bother me, I’d done my fair share of working in chicken houses over the years, but it told me we were close.
We jostled past a well-maintained yard dominated by a white painted two story farmhouse. I didn’t see anyone, but Anthony stuck his arm out the window and waved regardless. The yard in turn was surrounded by the typical array of outbuildings you’d expect on a farm, sheds and barns, all filled with tractors and lord knows what.
There, right by the road still, was the watermelon patch. It was too early in the year for the melons to be ripe, but the spreading green vines filled a fenced in patch about half an acre in size. I knew if I was to walk in there now, there’d likely be fist-sized orbs of green hanging heavy on each plant. It set my mouth to watering in anticipation.
The curving drive that led back to the chicken houses came next, a broad line of packed dirt that cut through the trees. The smell was stronger here, with no wind that I could see to help shift it away. I caught sight of the tiniest sliver of silver, a part of one of the football field length roofs, and then we were past.
Rounding a gentle curve in the road we came upon Inez’s house where Anthony, for now, called home. It had been a good three years since I had been by to visit, if not longer, but it looked unchanged.
It was a small trailer, and old, but well kept. The yard had been cut recently, but whoever had done it hadn’t bothered to do the weed-eating, so around the skirting of the home tall weeds still sprouted. To the side they’d built a rough awning, and it was under this that Anthony pulled his truck.
An old wooden barn hugged the tree line, its doors long missing. It was up in the loft of that place that Thomas and I had gone a few times to smoke dope, or share a pipe, on those rare occasions that his mother was actually home. She was an addict herself, but damn if she didn’t freak out if she suspected her kids of using.
The wind blowing through the truck windows had allowed me, briefly, to forget just how hot it was. Stepping out quickly reminded me as the heat blanketed me, threatening to suck the life outta me. Even there in the shade of the carport, I could tell it was going to be miserably hot.
The boy had reached into the bed of the truck and pulled out the two welding rods, and walking around the truck he handed them to me. “It’s over here I need you to check,” he said, as he began walking into the backyard.
As he talked, explaining just what all he had planned as though I cared, I took those rods and began bending them. I guessed they were about three feet long, and had a dull grey tone to them. Each was a little smaller around than a pencil, so in a few moments I had the metal rods both shaped up into ‘L’ bends.
Taking one in each hand I looked up in time to see Anthony pointing. “So yeah, if you would just set off across the yard there and let me know where that power line is run.”
I nodded and raised my hands in front of me, bending my arms at the elbow so they sat about even with my belly button. Each of the rods I held real loose by the shorter length of the L, in such a way that they could swing freely about, but wouldn’t go tipping out of my hands. I gave it a second for them to steady, then set out walking real slowly across the yard.
Truth is, there ain’t no magic to it, least not any that I can tell. You walk until the rods start to turn inwards, and once they have crossed, boom, you found the pipe, or the line, or whatever it was you were looking for. I was pretty sure anyone could do it.
But water witching was one of the few of my monetary sidelines that was even close to honest money, so I wasn’t about to go spreading that knowledge around. Folks who knew, knew I was a water witch. Which earned me maybe a hundred bucks a year, if I was lucky. But I was certainly in no position to turn down any money at this point.
I’d made it maybe twenty good long steps when the rods began to drift inwards. Another step and they were good and crossed, and one more past that had them spreading back apart. I took a step back. “Here you go, something here.”
The boy had a few of what looked to be tent stakes in his hand, and carefully he stuck one in the ground where I pointed. “Reckon you could go across a few more times, maybe different places? So’s as I can see how it runs?”
“Sure,” I said agreeably enough. Twenty bucks for maybe five minutes work, well that’s good money, I don’t care who you are. “So what’s your mom think about this garden project?”
Forrest spat. “Like she’d care,” he muttered. “I ain’t seen her in days.”
That sounded like Inez. She tried to do alright sometimes, but when she fell off the wagon, she fell hard. And from what I heard, it had been some time since she’d even been in the same vicinity as the wagon. “How long she been gone this time?”
“A week.” There was a whole lot of bitterness in the boy’s voice, and I didn’t blame him. It reminded me of myself; I too had spent a lot of time growing up home alone.
I had narrowed in on another spot, pointing it out for the boy to mark. I reckoned he planned to run a string from stake to stake, so he’d know where to watch out. At least that’s what I would have done.
“That’s a long time for her to be gone, don’t you think?” I asked. Inez wasn’t a good mother by any stretch, but she at least tried, when the drugs let her. I’d never known her to be gone more than three, maybe four days at most. But then, it had been a few years, so who was I to know how bad up she was these days.
Anthony shrugged. “Yeah,” he relented after a few moments. “She ain’t stayed gone this long before.”
“You gone looking for her?” I asked, moving to the next spot the youth had indicated for me to check.
The laugh the boy hacked out was a soiled, angry thing. “You think I got time to run all over this county to find her? Someone gotta keep my brother and sister fed, and it damn sure ain’t her. Between working for Grandpa, and looking after them when do I got time for all that?”
“Yeah, I feel ya,” I said. I ain’t got many flaws, but a real soft spot for kids with shit parents is one of them. I felt a pang in my heart that I wasn’t really used to feeling to be honest. It was sorta like watching the end of Ol Yeller.
“She ain’t even called,” the boy spat. He had his can of dip out now, Timberwolf, the cheap stuff, and was slapping it against his leg to pack it down. “And the real pisser?”
Here he stopped. I watched him with a side eye, not staring, just watching curiously. As I looked, I saw him suck his bottom teeth, and sorta close his eyes. He had that look like he wanted to cry almost, but he would be damned if he was going to do that in front of me. The words warred inside him, but he managed to fight them down so’s they spilled out without dragging a bunch of tears along with them.
“Since Tom went to jail, she’d been doing better. Finally got some act right in her, for the most part. Told me she was going to that big revival when she left even. Was gonna try and get her some Jesus, help her make sense of the Tom thing.” He shook his head ruefully. “Ain’t seen her since. Fucking figures.”
I felt a flicker around my chest, a sort of flutter. There was an urge building in me that I was desperately trying to fight down and tuck back where it belonged. I’d been done similar a time or twelve over the years, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting.
“That’s why I am doing the garden. I think I can grow enough to help keep us fed pretty good, w
hat with what Grandpa pays me to help on the farm. Figure there ain’t no point in planning on her coming back.”
“Fuck me,” I said under my breath, as something inside me shifted a little, just enough to let a crack in my heart spread wide and let out something long buried.
“What’s that?” he asked, looking up from watching my witching.
“I said I’d find her for you,” and I inwardly swore at the words as they slipped out my traitor of a mouth.
Patience Is Key
“I’ve been coming out here once’t a week and cranking it up and driving it up the road and back. So it still runs, least it did on Monday,” Anthony was saying.
He was getting into a roughly painted blue Pontiac that was parked inside the old barn. It had been Thomas’s car the boy had said, and after the feds had got done searching it, they’d turned it loose to the family. It was to be my chariot for the day, as I went and found Inez.
The car cranked right up, causing the boy to grin broadly, pulling the skin of his lip tight across the dip that bulged his cheek out. “What I tell you,” he shouted over the sound of the engine. He clambered back out and stepped aside, waving me in.
The interior had a musty, moldy smell to it, but who was I to complain. I held up the spare key the boy had handed me earlier. “Now you’re sure this is the spare key to your momma’s car?”
“For the last time, I’m sure. I promise you that’s it.” He was still grinning. “Thank you again Howard. Even if you don’t find her, I appreciate you looking.” Pulling out a battered brown wallet he slipped a twenty and a ten from inside. “Here’s your pay for the witchin’ and here’s some gas money. I’d give you more, but…” He tipped the wallet so that I could see inside it. I swear a moth flew out, and there were cobwebs inside.
Part of me thought I should probably give him back the ten, but then the rest of my brain told that goody-goody part to go suck a dick. I wasn’t running a charity here, and I damn sure couldn’t afford to spend part of the twenty I’d earned putting gas in this old hunk of junk. That was just the way it had to be.
Folding the money in half I tucked it in the pocket of my shorts. “I got a couple good places to look, and I know where she used to hang out. I’ll get her found, no worries.”
He just nodded, and stepped back away from the car, giving me room to pull out. I slipped the car in drive, and slowly pressed the gas. The worn shocks on the car left it swaying a bit more than I was used to perhaps, enough to let me know I was gonna dread driving it up the dirt road, but it would have to do.
The A/C blew air that was fractionally cooler than the outside, so I let it blow. I kept the windows down as well though, so the wind could blow in and help cool things down. It would also help with that musty smell I hoped.
As I picked up speed, papers began to swirl on the floorboard and backseat. One threatened to flutter out the window, but I snagged it before it could. A quick glance showed it was agenda or some such shit for a church session. I’d known ol Tom had taken to religion there towards the end, which is why I hadn’t spent no time with him of note, but judging from the number of similar looking papers fluttering around he must have been going every chance he got. I crumpled the sheet up and tossed it on the floorboard. I didn’t bother trying to stop any other papers from flying out, and soon enough I was leaving a trail of them down the length of the dirt road, like drunken doves flapping to their death.
I was about to the end of the road when I carefully pulled over. I parked beneath an overhanging oak branch, keeping as deep to the shade as I could without going into the ditch. Getting stuck hadn’t gone real well for me last time it had happened, and I damn sure wasn’t looking to repeat that debacle. Especially as I suspected thirty odd bucks wouldn’t be enough to fix fuck all if I wrecked this boat.
With the car stopped I took that spare key in my hand, looking it over real good. It was a Honda key, not some Walmart reproduction spare key. That was good, otherwise this likely wouldn’t work. Closing my eyes, I began to use the fingers of one hand to rub that key, while my left hand did a bit of twirling. All the while I muttered a few words quiet enough that if by chance someone did walk up they wouldn’t be able to hear me.
While everyone knew me as a druggy and a small-time thief, and I mean everyone, I was known for other things. Like amongst older folks, folks who remembered my grandaddy, they knew me to be a water witch. But my most productive claim to fame however was finding things. If witchin’ earned me about a hundred a year, finding things could sometimes bring me five, ten times that in a year, depending on how lucky I was, and how unlucky everyone around me was. Which being Jubal County, luck was always in short supply.
There was a catch though, which sorta limited my appeal: I could only find inanimate objects, and they had to be connected to something else in some way. The thing I was best at finding was a lost earring. I’d probably found forty different ones over the years, everything from diamonds to cheap but sentimental numbers. They were easy, cause the damn things always came in pairs. But there were other things, like key rings, or wallets, just depending on what the folks still had.
I felt the magic flow from deep down in my, squirreling its way down my arm to get a taste of that key. In my minds’ eye I could practically see it, squirming around like a glowing, banded snake, tongue just a flicking. It sampled the goods, then flowed right back into me, leaving me feeling just a little bit more empty than I had been before this. In that empty spot however, there began to grow this tugging feeling.
Opening my eyes, I set off once more. Only now, I was listening to that pulling feeling. All I had to do was follow it, and it would take me to Inez’s car. God willing she would be located right around there, and then I could browbeat her into going home. Or not, but then I could at least tell Forrest where she was, so he could try and guilt her home.
Either way, I was making progress.
Pro...gress?
I still didn’t have a license, that would take far more money and finagling than I could muster even if I’d had the damn cash to do it. So I kept it nice and slow, and kept my usage to a minimum. I stuck to a nice, tight rolled blunt, the thick clouds of smoke I let flow out the window like some sort of modern day steamship.
It might have been hot enough to melt the tits off a brass monkey, but it was also a damn fine day. With the windows down the heat was tolerable, and the weed was mellowing me out enough that I didn’t mind what heat I did feel. It wasn’t a perfect situation, but it would do.
There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and the trees were about as green as you could ask for. Driving along I saw fields filled with growing corn and peanuts, even soybeans and a little cotton. The odd flower provided a splash of color on the side of the road, as did the glimpse I caught of the bright purple car I saw sitting out in a field.
I was in a weird mood. On the one hand I felt mighty dumb volunteering to hunt down Inez. But, it did make me feel...good? It was too early to say. I had no doubt that I would end up regretting it, as I did any other time I did something for someone else. I decided to not think about it, to just take in the day and try to make the most of it.
The tug of course didn’t take me straight down the road. It sorta pulled at me, and if I had tried to follow it directly I’d have run off the road. As I was trying to avoid that, I ended up just doing the best I could. I knew all these roads, so it would take a bit of roundabouting I was sure, but I would get there.
In Jubal County there isn’t much in the way of entertainment. You pretty much just have to drive up to Montgomery to find anything interesting to do. There is no movie theater, no bowling alley, no waterpark. If you wanted something to do you had to hope that high school sports were in season, which I always hated, or find a hobby like hunting or fishing. Those like me, we ended up choosing drugs, alcohol, and riding dirt roads. So even though I hadn’t had a car in years, my time as a late teen still held me in good stead.
It’s not like the count
y had had the money to build any sort of new roads for as long as I could remember.
My route looked to be taking me roughly in the direction of Jackson Hollow. Glancing at the gas gauge, I saw it had a bit more than a quarter tank. I knew old cars, not in a mechanical sense, but in the ‘how will it fuck with me’ sense, so I decided to go ahead and put that ten in gas inside. Partly to remove the temptation of me spending it on something else, which, as I knew me, was a real risk. Mainly though because I never liked to trust old gas gauges. I’d been burned more than once in that regard.
Turning onto Jackson Hollow Road had me pulling in the wrong direction, but I ignored that tug in my chest for the moment. I’d get my gas, then I would give into it once more, letting it guide me to Inez’s car. As the One Stop was only a couple miles up the road, it really wasn’t much of a detour.
The store looked same as it always did, save for a sign on the lonely pump that let me know they had started making folks pre-pay. That had been a long time coming in my mind, and I wondered how bad they’d got burned before they put a stop to the way things had been. Nodding to the old man sitting outside on a stack of milk crates, I stepped into the blessed coolness of the store.
Jerry Jackson was behind the counter, looking half asleep. He was also rail thin, and had a bad color to his cheeks. When he heard the door chime though he roused himself up, forcing a smile as he saw me. “Howard, how are ya know?”
“Oh, you know how it is, same shit, different day,” I grinned back at him and set the ten on the counter. “Lemme get ten in gas. And how about yourself?” I asked to be polite, even though I really didn’t want to. Either he’d lie, or worse, tell me the truth.
“Oh, about the same I reckon,” he replied. “Just watching things til Emma gets back. She had to run to Elk Grove, get a few groceries.”