A Fine Dark Line

by Joe R. Lansdale

  We walked on toward the sawmill. Nub deserted us, ran off into the woods to pursue dog business.

  “Sometimes people don’t know how to say those things,” I said.

  “He knew how to say it to his dog.”

  “What good will digging up the dog do?”

  We passed the sawmill, turned in the direction of the Chapman home.

  “I want to put that dog on the back porch. Want to dig it up ’cause he cried over it and he ain’t never cried over me. He went to all that trouble to bury it, and I’m going to unbury it.”

  “Richard, this is weird.”

  “It ain’t weird to me. Now be quiet.”

  We were near his house. We stopped for a moment and looked at it, bathed in shadow from the trees that surrounded it.

  “Daddy sleeps light. Used to claim he could hear a dog run across the yard, and I reckon he can.”

  “That doesn’t sound promising,” I said.

  “We’re gonna go out to the barn. There’s a shovel there.”

  “I don’t know, Richard.”

  “Listen here, Stanley. I didn’t ask you to come. I appreciate you did. But I didn’t ask you.”

  “You said we were going to get your bike.”

  “I am.”

  “You didn’t say anything about this dog business.”

  “I didn’t know I was gonna do it till I was standing out there in front of the old sawmill. It just come to me. You want to go home. Go. Ain’t gonna hold it against you. But I’m gonna dig that dog up, and I’m gonna drag it on that screen porch. He’ll know I done it, and that’s enough.”

  “How will he know?”

  “Because I’ll leave him somethin’ that lets him know.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I ain’t figured that yet. But I will. And even if he don’t know, I’ll know I done it.”

  I sighed. “All right. Let’s do it.”

  ———

  THE BACKYARD WAS BRIGHT with moonlight, so bright you could even see where chickens had been scratching in the dirt. Out by the barn, the hog snorted once at us, then lay down in its wallow and went silent.

  Richard and I removed the bar from the barn doors and heaved them open. Inside, the light from the moon was full in the doorway, but the back of the barn was as black as the devil’s thoughts.

  I pulled the small flashlight out of my pants pocket, and flashed it around. On the far wall of the barn hung a large cross. It looked to be splashed with dark paint. On either side of the cross were pages torn from the Bible and pinned to the wall. I remembered now what Richard had told me about the barn being a kind of church and Mr. Stilwind thinking he was a preacher.

  I pointed my light at the pages on the wall.

  “What is that about?” I asked.

  “Daddy sticks them on the wall, underlines them, makes me and Mama learn ’em. I had to stand in front of them and memorize them.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Would you tell that on purpose? I wouldn’t tell it now, but there it is.”

  “Tell me that’s paint on the cross.”

  “It’s mostly animal blood.”

  “Why? . . . Mostly?”

  “He butchered a chicken, hog, anything, he smeared the blood on there, let it dry. Didn’t never clean it.”

  “Why?”

  “Thought of it as a sacrifice to the Lord. You know, thanks for this here fryin’ hen. This here batch of pork chops. One time, when he whipped me across the back with his belt, he wiped the blood off and rubbed it on that cross, and he didn’t even say thanks. I wasn’t even as good as a fryin’ hen. He said, ‘And here’s the blood of a sinner.’ So it ain’t all animal blood.”

  “Tell me what religion he is so I can stay away from it.”

  “He says there ain’t none of the religions doin’ what they’re supposed to do. What they’re supposed to do is what he does.”

  “I don’t think they’d keep too many in church.”

  “Havin’ to hear his preachin’ might run ’em off too,” Richard said. “It’s mostly about dyin’ and goin’ to hell and burnin’ up and stuff. And how we have to serve penance all the time.”

  “What’s penance?”

  “Kind of sufferin’ and hurtin’ for what you believe, to show how much you believe it.”

  I waved the light around. On one side, in a stall, was the mule. Its eyes in the glow of the flashlight looked like huge black buttons. On the other side, on wooden racks, shiny and clean with filing and oiling, hung all manner of tools. Scythe. Axe. Hoe. Posthole diggers. A shovel.

  Richard stroked the old mule’s nose. “Hello, boy. How are you? He worked this mule hard as anyone. I ought to let it out, but it wouldn’t have nowhere to go. It’d just come back, or die somewhere.”

  “I’m afraid your parents will see us,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Richard said. He gave the mule a last pat, took the shovel from the rack on the other side.

  We pulled the doors back, slid the bolt across them as silently as possible, headed for the woods where the dog was buried.

  ———

  LEAVES SNAPPED under our feet, and in the woods it was dark. The flashlight batteries became faint, and I had to shake the flashlight to make it work. Finally it quit altogether.

  “Hopalong might ride a horse good,” Richard said, “but he makes a shitty flashlight.”

  Due to lack of a flashlight, the grave was hard to find. But finally the trail, which was little more than a single footpath, widened and the trees broke, and there in the moonlight, under the sky, was the mound of dirt where Butch lay.

  “I’ll do the diggin’,” Richard said.

  “Suits me.”

  “Figured it would.”

  “I feel like someone in one of those monster movies,” I said. “Ones with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The one where they were grave robbers or ghouls.”

  “You be Boris, and I’ll be Bela,” Richard said, and he started to dig.

  “I wonder what Nub is doing?” I said.

  “Chasin’ coons and night birds would be my guess. Or squattin’ behind a bush.”

  The dirt was not too hard, but it seemed to me Richard had to dig deeper than before. I suppose that feeling had to do with standing in the middle of the woods while you watched your friend dig up a dead dog in the moonlight.

  Before Richard reached the dog, the smell reached us. It was so strong I thought I was going to lose my dinner, but after a moment I became accustomed enough to it to stand it, long as I held one hand over my mouth and nose and didn’t breathe too deeply.

  “There he is,” Richard said, scraping the shovel along the length of the grave.

  Sure enough. There in the moonlight was the head. No eye visible, because it was gone. Richard cleared the length of the body and you could see it all now, from tip of nose to tip of tail. Head and body had shrunk, as if it were a package from which items had been removed. The dog’s snout had shrunk up so much, the teeth it contained seemed bared.

  “It sure stinks,” Richard said.

  “How are you going to haul it?”

  “Drag it on the blanket.”

  “Richard. I think you ought to just cover Butch up and let’s get your bike and go back to the house. All this is going to do is make him angry.”

  “He will be mad, won’t he?” Richard grinned big and the moonlight danced off his teeth.

  Richard slammed the shovel into the ground next to the dog’s grave, and there was the sound of dirt being parted, then something being cut.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Richard pulled the shovel up, went to work digging. After a moment he lifted out something on the shovel. At first it looked like a mound of dirt, but when he dropped it onto the ground, most of the sticky wet dirt shook off of it, and we both knew what it was.

  A human skull.

  ———

  WE LOOKED CLOSELY at the skull. The shovel had split the top of it and
gone deep. On the side of the skull was a hole, and the far side was shattered, bone poked out as if the brain had turned rabid and kicked its way free.

  “That looks way a shotgun blast looks,” Richard said.

  Richard dug more, soon uncovered a rib cage from which clung red clay. Then some other bones. And two skulls. He dug around and came up with a bone that he pulled free of some roots, said, “This here bone goes in the neck, the spine. See the way that bone is? That’s from a cut went into it.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “I’ve seen plenty of animals butchered. I don’t think people are all that different.”

  “We’ve found an old graveyard,” I said.

  Richard dug down again, came up with another skull. When he dropped it on the ground the dirt shook loose and I could see the teeth. One of the front teeth was silver.

  I had a sinking feeling.

  “My God,” I said.

  “What?”

  I told him about Rosy Mae telling me that Margret Wood had a silver tooth.

  “We’ve found her head, Stanley. The one the ghost has been looking for.”

  Richard poked around with the shovel some more, unearthed an arm. Meat was still on the bones.

  “Jesus,” he said. “This’n is recent.”

  Richard poked around some more, uncovered the rest of the body, and finally the head, which was cut free of it, tucked under the corpse’s right arm as if it were a joke. Though much of the flesh was gone, there was enough on the face and enough long black hair there to make out it had been a woman.

  “That there is the Mexican woman Daddy hired to do some house- and fieldwork. I think her name was Normaleen. She didn’t speak much English. Daddy told me she run off. It was maybe a month before we seen him buryin’ Butch out here.”

  Richard sat down as if someone had kicked his legs out from under him. “I think these here are all people worked for my daddy. I think . . .”

  “I think so too,” I said.

  “He said they quit or run off or he fired ’em. God, Stanley, he was murderin’ them people.”

  “I wasn’t murderin’.”

  Richard jumped to his feet and I spun. Mr. Chapman was standing at the mouth of the trail, where the woods cleared, and he was holding the scythe I had seen on the rack. He had his overalls on with no shirt. He had his shoes on without socks. His hair was like an explosion of dark sprouts. The wind moved it like it was alive. His face was sallow and wrinkled; I couldn’t imagine the handsome man that had once been there, the one Rosy talked about.

  I realized that Richard’s remarks about his father being able to hear a dog run across the yard had not been exaggerated. Mr. Chapman had heard us, gone out to the barn to get the scythe, and followed us.

  “You ought not to have dug Butch up,” Chapman said. “I put him to rest.”

  “Did you murder him too?” Richard said. “Did he bark when he shouldn’t have?”

  “Butch never let me down. As for the others, God lets a righteous man make decisions about such things. Did you know God come to me and told me to do you like Abraham was told to do Isaac? I had to take you out and kill you. ’Cept God didn’t come to me and tell me to turn my hand. I just didn’t do it. Your mother didn’t think it was the thing to do. She thought people would come to us, and want to know where you was, and that you’d be a strong worker. You remember any of that, boy?”

  Richard, trembling, said, “No, sir.”

  “Naw, you wouldn’t. I took you on a little squirrel huntin’ trip when you was five. And I was gonna shoot you in the back of the head ’cause God told me to, have a little hunting accident, but I didn’t do it. I was supposed to. It would have made life easier. Raisin’ you, that didn’t do me and your mama no good. The world would have just thought it was a little huntin’ accident. God was testin’ me, seein’ what I was made of. He never told me to stay my hand. I just did. And I shouldn’t have. Only time I ever let God down. I didn’t let him down with these others. When he come to me and told me what I had to do, I did it. But you were my son, so I didn’t do it. Now it comes back on me. You’re gonna turn me over to the infidels, ain’t you?”

  “For what?” Richard said.

  Chapman laughed. “That was quick, boy. You’re quick like your mother. You know, from the time I took you out and didn’t kill you, ’cause I had your mama’s thinkin’ on the matter in the back of my mind, things have gone bad. Crops ain’t good. World is changin’. Niggers is wantin’ rights. All manner of evil. Can’t abide it. No, sir. I won’t. Your mama, I make her pay for it every day. Not because I want to, son, but because God expects it, and in spite of her mistake, she’s a righteous woman, she is, and she takes it. She know she ought to. I ain’t killed none of these people ’cause I wanted to, but because it was right. It was the will of God. You’re my only mistake.

  “And you, son,” he said looking at me, “I reckon you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you are from a sinful family. I can see that. Your sister actin’ like she’s got the rights of a man. That daddy of yours whippin’ on me when I was seekin’ out my own son. Givin’ him refuge. Runnin’ that movie house. That’s wrong.”

  “You killed these people to save money,” Richard said. “I think that’s why you killed them. Because you’re cheap.”

  Chapman snorted. “You think that? Well, you would. Some of them people were drinkers, and fornicators . . . That silver-toothed one there. She was a whore, and ran with that Stilwind girl in a manner a girl ain’t supposed to go. I tried to witness to her. She wouldn’t have any of it.”

  “You witnessed to her by the railroad tracks?” I said.

  “You witness where you find the need.”

  “I think you wanted her,” I said. “You didn’t want anyone else to have her. So one night you followed her . . . with that scythe, and killed her. Brought the head back here.”

  “You ain’t no man of God,” Richard said. “You ain’t better than me. You ain’t as good as me.”

  Chapman’s face turned sad. He looked at Richard like the last morsel on a plate.

  “You killed Margret, and you burned up the Stilwind girl, didn’t you?” I said.

  “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Chapman said. “And I ain’t gonna talk no more.”

  That’s when Richard flicked a shovelful of dirt into Chapman’s face.

  Richard bolted. “Run!”

  I didn’t have to be told twice. I went after Richard. We started back in the direction of the sawmill.

  We zigzagged through trees and finally broke out to where we could see the old mill and the road beyond. I glanced over my shoulder, saw that Chapman was catching up. Spit was trailing out of his mouth in a way that made it look like foam.

  I realized we weren’t going to make it to the road before he caught up.

  Nub chose that moment to burst out of the woods, and when he saw me running, and Mr. Chapman after me, he broke straight away for my pursuer, barking.

  I shouldn’t have stopped, but I turned and yelled for Nub. It was too late. Nub hit Chapman’s ankle hard, and though he didn’t get in a good bite, Chapman’s legs got tangled and he went down, the scythe flying out in front of him.

  While he was getting up, I yelled for Nub in as hard and as insistent a voice as I could. Nub barked at Chapman, and chose to obey me for a change. He came running toward me happily, as if it were all a game.

  I bent down, held out my arms, and Nub jumped into them. I turned and started running, sneaked a look over my shoulder, saw Chapman was up now with his scythe, and he was picking up speed.

  Ahead of me, Richard was almost to the sawmill. I was coming up on his tail, panting with the weight of Nub and the weight of fear.

  When I reached the sawmill, Richard was at the base of the old ladder that lay fastened alongside the building and led to the upper platform. “Go up,” he said.

  Going up didn’t seem smart to me. We would be
trapped like a rat in a matchbox, but I couldn’t run anymore. My sides felt as if they were about to split.

  Richard pounded up the ladder before me. I tossed Nub over my shoulder with one hand, then started climbing, nearly losing my grip on the ladder and my grip on Nub, who was squirming like a snake.

  “Come on! Come on!” Richard said.

  The ladder was about eighteen feet high and I felt as if I were slower than a ground sloth, but I made the platform ahead of Chapman, set Nub on it, and looked over.

  Chapman had laid the scythe across the back of his neck, balancing it, and he was climbing up. Nub stood on the edge of the platform and barked furiously.

  Richard disappeared through the open door that led into the second-floor room, came back with an old busted two-by-four.

  “Daddy. Go down now.”

  Chapman looked up. “I’m not your daddy. You have no daddy.”

  Chapman continued to climb. Richard launched the two-by-four forward with all his might. It caught Chapman in the top of the head, knocked him backwards to the ground, sent the scythe skittering over the leaves, the blade winking in the moonlight like death’s smile.

  Chapman shook his head, put a hand to it. I could see something dark oozing between his fingers.

  “You child of the devil,” Chapman yelled. “You wicked boy. I will chastise you.”

  Richard sat on the edge of the platform, kicked at the top board. It creaked. He kicked again and it came loose and fell.

  “Hang on to me,” he said. I grabbed his arm and he swung down and tried to kick loose the next board, but it was too late, Chapman was screaming. He grabbed the scythe and swung it high and the blade passed just beneath Richard’s foot.

  “Pull me up,” Richard said.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I tugged him up.

  Chapman was coming up again, and I knew that one missing board wasn’t going to stop him.