by John Hart
“I don’t understand it.” Jimmy Ray staggered to a halt. The sun was on the wrong shoulder; shadows made no sense. “This is not where we’re supposed to be.” He shook the compass. “Was it like this before?”
“No.”
“We should be there by now.”
“I need to rest.” The sheriff bent at the waist. His color was bad.
“We have ninety minutes of daylight.”
“God…”
“I’ll find something. We’ll make camp.”
“Thank you, Jimmy Ray. Thank you.”
“Hold on to my pack. Lean on it if you need to.”
The sheriff did as he was told, and Jimmy Ray pushed on in the black water, the failing light. The water passed his belt, his stomach; and he had most of the sheriff’s weight. Stumbling once, he caught himself, then staggered again and they went down together. Jimmy Ray dragged the sheriff up, water streaming from his hair. He pushed on, but the light went out, and when it did, the mosquitoes descended in a solemn cloud. They fed on his eyes and ears and lips. Jimmy Ray sprayed repellent and smeared mud on his face, but it made no difference. They got under his collar, into his sleeves. An hour later it was full dark, and Jimmy Ray drifted to a stop. There was no sound beyond mosquitoes and breath and dripping water.
The men stood chest deep.
The sheriff was weeping.
* * *
That night in the swamp was the worst Jimmy Ray Hill had ever known, worse even than Vietnam. The mosquitoes swarmed with a density and determination that felt purposeful. The air was heavy with them. Thousands. Millions. They matted in Jimmy Ray’s hair, plugged his ears and nostrils; filled his mouth if he opened it. The only true relief was to submerge, and that was heaven, sweet bliss. But they waited an inch off the surface, and spun in from the blackness when he rose. Jimmy Ray was not a churchgoing man, but by midnight knew one thing for sure: God hated him.
“Willard? You okay?”
The sheriff hung on Jimmy Ray’s shoulder, and hours had passed since he’d spoken. He didn’t go underwater; didn’t even try. Jimmy Ray smeared more mud on the sheriff’s face and neck.
“Just hold tight, all right. Daylight in five hours.”
They were the longest hours of Jimmy Ray’s life. When first light finally came, he almost missed it. Mosquitoes were a cloud, a gathering. He watched the daylight swell through swollen eyes, and when it touched water, the swarm broke apart like tissue in the rain.
“Willard, it’s done. Are you still with me?”
The sheriff’s head hung loosely, his chin on his chest. Jimmy Ray turned him to the light.
“Dear God.” Under the mud, the sheriff’s eyes were swollen shut. The nose was grotesque, his whole face inflamed, the tongue protruding. “Willard? Can you walk?” The sheriff groaned, and tried to move. He went down like a puppet with its strings cut. Jimmy Ray pulled him to his feet, then took his arm and felt the leeches. They were on both hands, under the sleeves. He scraped them off, then took a firmer grip. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”
Taking the sheriff’s weight, Jimmy Ray dragged him through the water, muttering, “Old man, stupid old man.” He was talking to the sheriff, and to himself. They had no business in this swamp—no one did—and leaving it should have been simple. Sunrise was as east as it gets. That made south and west an easy target, but six hours later, nothing had changed: shallow water, deep water, the clinging, black mud. By two o’clock, Jimmy Ray thought he was losing his mind. Trees looked like ones he’d seen before: the cypress with a broken top; the birch, half-dead on one side. By dusk, even Jimmy Ray’s strength had failed. The sun was on one shoulder and then the other. He had the sheriff’s full weight, and light, again, was dying. Hauling the sheriff up, Jimmy Ray dragged him through deep water, and felt the bottom shelve. To his right was a cypress with a broken top. Beside it was a birch, half-dead on one side. Jimmy Ray stopped where he stood, and felt his spirit break at last.
The cypress.
The birch.
He was walking in circles.
* * *
When night fell, the mosquitoes came again and were terrible in the blackness. The assault lasted for hours, and at some point Jimmy Ray’s mind broke. The air felt freezing cold; so did the water. The delirium grew worse because he saw blue light through the cloud, a sense of shadow and movement, of something else in the water with them. Jimmy Ray held very still, for nothing in life had prepared him for the sudden sense of expectance. The silence crackled; the air felt electric. He pulled the sheriff closer, and the light moved left, circling. Jimmy Ray felt pressure on his skin, and in his mind a touch.
Shhhh …
Jimmy Ray stopped breathing, not knowing if he’d heard the sound or felt it, or if his mind had truly snapped. He couldn’t move or think. The mosquitoes lifted and only the terror was real, the bang in his chest. Something was close. It tugged at the sheriff, but Jimmy Ray held on.
Will you die for this man?
He heard the words in his mind, or perhaps it was the delirium. All Jimmy Ray knew for sure was the steady pull, the hammer behind his ribs. “He’s my friend.”
Your friend is a danger to me and mine.
Jimmy Ray tried to see beyond the glow, but his eyes were swollen to slits. He saw the pale light floating, and felt it out there, its will and anger.
They weren’t supposed to be there.
They were unwanted.
Let him go or die with him.
Jimmy Ray almost broke, but did not. “I can’t,” he said. “He’s my friend.”
Very well.
Something ripped the sheriff from his grip and dragged him through the water. Jimmy Ray staggered behind in grim silence, then something took him by the neck and dragged him, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Johnny drifted in a lake of pain. It was acid, fire, lightning in the dark. There was no time, but time was all he had. Just pain and time.
Days of it.
Years.
“What’s happening to me?”
Don’t talk, a voice said. You’re dying.
Or dreaming, Johnny thought. His limbs were twisted and bent. The left eye was full of splintered bone. He forced the good eye open, and saw haze and blue light and something shapeless.
This will hurt, he heard.
Then Johnny’s world was pain and fire and screaming.
Hours of it.
A lifetime.
* * *
When the nightmare broke, Johnny touched his left eye and felt heat. His lips were cracked. In the darkness, a fire burned. “Thirsty,” he said. And something gave him water.
Sleep, it told him. Forget.
* * *
The next time Johnny woke, he stood by a stream with no memory of arriving there, though he knew the stream well. It spilled from northern hills then slowed to meet other waters. Sunlight seeped in from the east. It was morning. He was home. Touching his face, Johnny expected pain. He remembered flashing lights and violence, but the rest was vague. There’d been a gate, the feel of dirt under his fingers. Looking down, he saw dried blood on his clothes and shoes, but there was no sign of injury.
Nothing.
Not a mark.
At the cabin, he scrubbed blood from his hair and fingers and from the crevices beneath his nails. He put on clean shorts, and as he did, an image rose of cedar posts and rust, old steel in the mist. There’d been an accident, black trees, the gate.
Was there something else?
Pulling on a shirt, Johnny ran the swamp as only he could run it. When he reached the shed, he stripped the chain from the door, but the truck was gone. He found it a half mile past the gate and wedged into the understory. Johnny saw the broken glass first, then a rip in the ditch line. He touched bare metal and remembered the crash, but like the dream of a dream, a ghost of lights and noise and shattered glass. On the verge again, he looked up and down the road, trying to remember. There’d been men and violence. He tried t
o hold the image, but couldn’t.
Back at the cabin, he tore open boxes and drawers until he found the cell phone in a coffee can full of screwdrivers and drill bits and chisels. Taking it to a hill where he had reception, Johnny powered it up and stared for long seconds at the date on the home screen.
It was the ninth of September.
He’d lost five days.
* * *
Johnny sat on that hilltop for a long time. Eventually, he arranged a flatbed, then hiked out to meet the driver, who hitched the truck to a cable and winched it out of the woods. “That’s not what you want to see.” He slouched under an old cap, a young man in stained denim with a patch on the chest that said DAVE. “Truck’s what, a ’sixty-two?”
“’Sixty-three.”
“You the one who rolled it?”
“It’s kind of a blur.”
“I can take it in for you, put it on the lift, and see if the frame bent. Not much we can do if it is.”
“How much for the tow?”
“Hundred bucks?”
“How about fifty?”
They split the difference, and Johnny rode with him to a two-bay garage, where they slipped out of traffic and into a gravel lot. “Second lift is broken,” Dave said. “But we can get it on that one as soon as it’s free. You can wait if you want.”
An old Datsun was already on the lift, and didn’t look like it was going anywhere soon. All four tires were off. So was the exhaust manifold, the rear bearings. “There’s no rush,” Johnny said. “You can call me. I probably won’t answer. You can leave a message.”
“Suit yourself.”
They got out of the truck, and an eighteen-wheeler rumbled past on the two-lane. Johnny pulled the sheaf of bills from his pocket, and counted off seventy-five dollars. “I need something to drive.”
Dave pointed at a rusted convertible. “I’ll rent you that old beater for eighty bucks.”
“For how long?”
“Week.”
“What about that?” Johnny pointed at a moped with bald tires and foam stuffing sprung from the seat.
“I can’t even say she runs.”
“If she does, how about fifty bucks for a month?”
“I’ll tell you what.” Dave gave the same appraising stare, one eyebrow up. “Make it a hundred, and she’s yours to keep.”
* * *
Back at the Hush, Johnny sat beneath a tree and tried not to panic over the days he’d lost. He focused first on the heat, then on his heart, the blood in his veins. From that place, he turned outward to the bark against his back, sinking through it to the sapwood, then through the roots and into the stone that reached deep and cool, and was the floor of the world.
“Five days.”
He flexed his hand and felt the tendons shift. The truck was not just damaged; it was destroyed. That was real. What about the slashes of color that came and went? The gunfire flashes of sound and blood and violence, the impossible visions that left Johnny wondering if life in the Hush came with a price he could not afford to pay so blindly? For a moment he considered calling Jack, but Jack would worry, and Johnny wasn’t ready for that argument.
What did that leave?
Getting back on the moped, he left the Hush and circled north to Leon’s, where he found the big man behind the bar.
“A little early for you, isn’t it?”
“I’m not drinking,” Johnny said.
“Food?”
“That’s not why I came, either.” The big bartender took the comments in stride, his hands on one glass then another, an old rag rubbing the insides and out. On the ride in, Johnny had thought hard about how to approach his question, but in the end, there was no clever way to do it. “You told me once you grew up hunting.”
“That’s right.”
“That you could track anything that walked or crawled. You said it was the best thing you do.”
“It is.”
“Why don’t you go into the swamp?”
“Who says I don’t?”
“You.”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember saying that.”
“The first time I came here. You said walking into that swamp was an act of surrender you were unwilling to make. You called me a dumb-ass kid without the sense God gave rocks.”
Leon smiled that time. “Yeah, okay. I remember.”
“So, what are you afraid of?”
“You want to talk about the swamp? Now? After all these years?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Leon put down the glass and the rag. He spread his hands on the bar and leaned into it. “Why the sudden interest in something I said six years ago?”
“Maybe something scares me, too.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure.”
Tipping coffee into a mug, Leon slid it across the bar. “Drink that,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I need time to think.”
For the next hour, Leon polished glasses and swept the floor. Once, Johnny caught him watching, the broom very still, the big head tilted. At noon the lunch crowd came, and Leon gave Johnny a sandwich. Two hours later, Leon went to the horseshoe pits and led one of the old men back, handing him the apron and putting him behind the bar. “Don’t burn the place down. You. Come.”
He picked up a paper sack, then led Johnny to an old truck that spit blue smoke when he turned the key. Leon kept his hands on the wheel, the engine idle. “I’ve been more than fifty years on this earth,” he said. “And this is my place in the world: this truck and those people, twenty square miles, and maybe less.” He turned to face Johnny straight on. “Whatever brought you out of that swamp today, I don’t care to know it—not if you saw something or heard something or if God himself reached down to feed you breakfast. Understand?”
Johnny nodded.
“I’ll help you this once,” Leon said. “And after that, we’ll never discuss it. You can come back anytime. You can eat my ribs and drink my whiskey. We’ll talk about the weather or problems at the sawmill or about any of the soft, round ladies in their cutoff jeans and too-tight shirts. You tell anyone where I’m about to take you, and it’s over, this thing we have.”
“I understand.”
Leon studied Johnny’s face, then put the truck in gear. “Don’t make me regret this.”
They jolted through the dirt lot, and Leon drove them across the river, then along the edge of planted fields. Phone poles ran beside the road, and when the poles bent east, he kept north on a dirt track. The world around them was green and brown and September shimmer. Two miles later, Leon turned them into the trees and across a stream, engine gunning when the tires slipped. In the clearing, he stopped where a shack leaned between tulip poplars and a black oak. The shack had a cinder block chimney and a stained, metal roof. Skinned rabbits hung from rafters on the left side, and potted plants splashed color on the steps.
“Wait here.”
Leon crossed the yard, and dust rose at his feet. The porch took his weight, and the door opened before he could knock. An old woman glanced at Johnny, then closed the door between them. Four minutes later, Leon came out alone. He spoke as he neared. “She doesn’t like visitors, but she’ll see you.”
“Who?”
Leon settled into the truck. “You can call her Verdine. She’s old as sin and doesn’t care for visitors, which means I’m in a box if you treat her poorly. You’ll need this.” He handed Johnny a paper sack. “Sugar,” he said. “Little gifts. She values them.”
“Anything else?”
“The left eye is weak, so look her in the right. Don’t raise your voice or be impertinent. She likes a pretty face, so you should do okay.”
Johnny looked at the shack. The door hung ajar, and beyond it stood a tiny figure in a washed-out dress. “She knows the swamp?” Johnny asked.
“Better than you.”
“How?”
“She lived there half her life.”
Johnny fe
lt a tug of connection. “Anything else I should know?”
“One last thing, I guess.” Leon leaned forward, and watched the old woman, too. “She’s pretty much my grandmother.”
Johnny waited for something more, but left the truck without it. At the porch, he saw flies on the rabbits, a rifle by the door. The old woman was waiting. “Come closer,” she said. “So I can get a look at you.”
Johnny broke the plane of the door, and she met him where the light spilled in. She was very small, her hands light and steady as they touched his face and turned it toward the sun. “Leon says your name is Johnny Merrimon.”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. You look it.” She turned for the dim interior and settled into a rocking chair by the cold fireplace. The cabin was a single room: stove to the right, a bed in the corner. “Well, come on in,” she said. “I told Leon I’d talk to you. I didn’t say I’d spend all day.”
Johnny took a second chair across the hearth, and Verdine watched him settle. “Leon says he’s your grandson,” Johnny said.
“His momma had the roundest heels in the county, so maybe he is and maybe not. Is that for me?”
Johnny offered the sugar, and the old woman stuck a finger in the bag and sucked the sugar off. “All right.” She tucked the bag in the crook of her lap. “Tell me what you want to know.”
“You said I look like a Merrimon. What did you mean?”
“That you favor the men in your family.”
“How do you know that?”
She made a scoffing sound in her throat. “Your family owned mine for a lot of years. Or had that fact slipped your mind?”
Embarrassment made Johnny blush. He’d never thought it through. Had Leon?
“You smoke?” she asked.
“No.”
A hand-rolled cigarette appeared from one of her pockets. She struck a match, and smoke rolled out. It wasn’t tobacco smoke. “Leon says you own Hush Arbor.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The buildings? The land?”
“All of it, yes.”
She pulled in more smoke, then let it out and picked a piece of stem from her tongue. “He also says something scared you. What was it?”