Pitch

by William Ollie

  “If you can do it, I can do it,” E.L. said, hoping he was right.

  “We stopping off at Miss Maudie’s?” Jimmy asked.

  “Of course,” said Junior.

  “Who’s Miss Maudie?” E.L. said.

  “Nice old lady lives about halfway up the mountain,” Billy told him. “We always stop and see her. Either on our way up, or on the way back down.”

  “Wait’ll you see her,” Jackie said. “She’s as old as a tree… Most kids think she’s a witch or somethin’, but she’s really just a nice old lady. And I when I say old, I mean O.L.D. Just try and guess how old when you see her.”

  “She’s really neat,” Billy said. “Isn’t she, Jimmy?”

  “Sure is. Wait’ll you hear her stories.”

  “C’mon, y’all,” Jackie said, and he and his friends started up the narrow dirt road.

  This time they stayed on the trail until they came to a clearing about forty-five feet in diameter. Trees dotted the landscape where the clearing ended and the mountain started to angle straight up, and the High Street boys ran forward, whooping and hollering, leaving a confused E.L. following close behind. Jimmy grabbed a gnarled, brown vine hanging from an old oak tree, letting loose with a pint-sized Tarzan-like yell as he swung out over the road.

  “Wow!” E.L. said, and then ran into the clearing and grabbed a vine of his own.

  “Wait, E.L.!” Jackie called out, grabbing a vine, tugging on it and falling back with all his weight. “Like this!”

  E.L. tightened his grip and pulled on his vine, fell backward and the vine snapped, dropping him onto the seat of his pants.

  “See what I mean?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” E.L. said, as Billy went sailing through the air, and the puny-sounding Tarzan imitator swung out over the road again.

  “Don’t swing over the road!” Jackie yelled.

  But Jimmy kept going, yelling like Tarzan, laughing and giggling and swinging back and forth while the other boys forgot all about him as they grabbed vines of their own… until his vine suddenly snapped, dropping him to the road as Ranger Tom Joiner passed by in his Jeep, Jimmy landing flat on his back in the middle of a mud puddle, barely missing the tail end of the Jeep that puttered past him up the trail.

  Screaming now, crying, he rolled out of the muck and lay curled up in a fetal position by the side of the road, while Jackie stood in the middle of the clearing, laughing hysterically.

  “The hell’re you laughing at?” Billy said. “He almost got his ass runned over.”

  “What am I laughing at?” Jackie pointed at his mud-caked little brother, and started howling. “Look at him!”

  “Your brotherly concern is overwhelming,” E.L. said, futilely trying to make him feel guilty. But it was too late. The danger had passed, and seeing Jimmy standing in front of them, covered with mud from head to toe, caused the others to join in the laughter, until, finally, unable to help himself, E.L. started laughing, too.

  “C’mon y’all, let’s go,” Billy said, falling in as they started back up the dirt road, the road curving and winding, eventually narrowing until there was barely room enough for the ranger’s jeep to have all four tires on it. Potholes littered the landscape as they trekked forward; deep ruts lined the hard-packed dirt. They walked along, laughing and joking, and talking about how surprised they all had been when Earl Butler ended up seeing how it felt to get his ass kicked for a change.

  “How’d you do that?” Billy asked.

  “Pressure points,” E.L. said.

  “Say what?” said Junior.

  “Pressure points, places on the body that really hurt if you apply pressure to them, like shoulder blades, between the thumb and index finger. If you catch ‘em by surprise and grab ‘em in the right place, you really got an advantage.” ly pressure to them. aces on the body that are very vulnurqable

  “How’d you find out about them?” Jimmy said.

  “This kid kept beating me up, and one of my dad’s old army buddies showed me.”

  “That was slick when you kicked Earl’s feet out from under him,” Junior said.

  “Yeah, he showed me that, too.” Grinning, E.L. added, “And I showed Harbus.”

  “Like he’d have nerve enough to use it on somebody,” Jackie said, as Jimmy called out, “Hey, look, over there!”

  Off to their left through a clearing, a little old woman waved to them from her front porch, drawing the boys like human magnets, up through some bushes until they were close enough for her to hear them.

  “Hey, Miss Maudie,” Junior called out. “How you doing?”

  E.L. stood dumbfounded. They said she was old, but standing in front of him was a woman older than anyone he had ever seen. Thin, with wrinkles in her face that looked more like creases, she had coarse, silver hair; sharp-angled knots jutting out where her hands joined up with her wrists, the knuckles on her knobby fingers swollen big as acorns.

  No wonder the other kids think she’s a witch, he thought. I sure wouldn’t wanta run into her in the dark of night.

  But when he looked into her eyes, none of the physical characteristics bothered him. Maudie had eyes as kind and gentle as the eyes in portraits hanging in every church he had ever attended. One look into Maudie’s eyes, and he knew that she loved him and any other child she might ever come in contact with.

  Maudie looked down at Jimmy’s mud-caked body. “My goodness, child,” she said. “What happened to you?”

  “He’s been in swimmin’, Miss Maudie,” Jackie said, chuckling while his brother’s face turned red.

  “Well, you just come on with me, baby,” she said, taking Jimmy by the hand. “I’ll get you some clean clothes to put on while I warsh these here ones up for you.”

  “Aw, you don’t have to do that,” Jackie said. “He’ll just get ‘em dirty again.”

  “Lordy, we can’t have the little feller runnin’ around this dirty.” Maudie, laughing, led Jimmy through her house and into the bathroom. “Go on and clean yourself up a little, and I’ll get you somethin’ to put on.”

  She walked to the back of the house. Minutes later she returned with an old pair of jeans and a faded white t-shirt, stepping through the bathroom door just as Jimmy was climbing into the bathtub, naked as the day he was born.

  “Miss Maudie,” he said. “I’m naked!”

  “Lordy,” she said, laughing and laying the clothes on the toilet seat, then picking up his muddy discards. “You don’t think you’re the first child I ever saw naked, do you? C’mon out to the porch when you’re done, baby.”

  Maudie walked outside to find the other boys sitting around eating tuna fish sandwiches, and passing the water jug back and forth.

  “Y’all want some tea, or Kool-Aid?”

  “That’s okay ma’—”

  “I’ll take some Kool-Aid,” Billy said.

  “How bout y’all?”

  “Sure, we’ll all have Kool-Aid,” Junior said.

  When Maudie went back into the house, E.L. said, “What’d you make her go and get us that Kool-Aid for? She’s too old to be waitin’ on us. Hell, we oughta be waitin’ on her.”

  “Take it easy, man,” Jackie said. “Maudie loves fixin’ stuff for us kids. We’re about the only people ever comes to see her, except her great grandson and the ranger. Telling her no would hurt her feelings.”

  “Yeah, man,” Billy said.

  “Yeah, okay,” E.L. said. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem, but if she offers you something, just go on and take it.”

  Maudie came back out, holding a tray with six empty glasses, followed by Jimmy, who carried a pitcher of Kool-Aid, which he used to fill the glasses and pass them out to the others. Finished, he sat down on the top step, and his brother tossed him the half-full bag of sandwiches.

  “Miss Maudie,” Jackie said. “This here’s E.L. Davis. He’s come to town from Atlanta, Georgia so his daddy can run the Coca Cola plant.”

  “Well, ain’t that somethin’?
Pleased to meet you, baby.”

  “Yes ma’am. You too.”

  “You just call me Miss Maudie, like the rest of these here boys.”

  “Yes ma’— I mean, Miss Maudie.”

  “Miss Maudie, have you ever seen that ghost over there on Seeker’s Mountain?” Jackie asked, knowing that one question was all it would take to get her started.

  “No, baby, I ain’t never seen that ghost, but one of my grandchildren seen her a couple of times.” Maudie took a sip of Kool-Aid, and looked over toward Seeker’s Mountain, as if remembering the little girl her granddaughter used to bring along when she would visit.

  “Is there really a ghost, Miss Maudie?” Jimmy asked her.

  “Yes, baby, there really is, and she’s right up there on that mountain. You see, Missy Thomas was raised on a farm over there in Weaver’s Crick. Well, she was still Missy Toler back then… just a little thing, but boy weren’t she a pretty little thing. She had long blonde hair as soft as silk, and eyes that were as blue and deep as an ocean. When Missy turned fifteen, her daddy married her off to Jason Thomas.”

  “Fifteen, Miss Maudie?” Jimmy said, just like the last time he’d heard the story of the ghost of Seeker’s Mountain.

  “Yes, baby. Fifteen was a ripe age to be married off back then. I got married when I was thirteen. Anyway, Jason Thomas’ daddy was one of the richest mine owners in the state, and he must’ve paid a pretty penny for ol’ Billy Toler to have married his little girl off to a man like Jason. But Billy Toler sure enough did make her marry him. Jason was twenty-three years older’n Missy.”

  “When did all this happen, Miss Maudie?” E.L. asked.

  “Somewhere around 1916, I think. Jason was thirty-eight, fat and pretty near bald, and not one single day in that boy’s whole life had he gone to work. Just run up and down the streets all day and night, drinkin’, fightin’ and gamblin’ and chasin’ women around them beer gardens, doing everything but right.

  “One day my granddaughter brought her by. Missy was real quiet-like, and she just sat there, listenin’ to us go on about this and that. I could tell somethin’ was troublin’ that child. I found out later on she was pregnant, and she wasn’t happy about it. Vernie told me Jason was mean to her, and sometimes when he come home drunk, he’d beat on her. She had a boy over there in the Holler at Weaver’s Crick that she’d been sweet on, and when her daddy made her give him up to marry Jason, it like to broke her little heart. Elmer Hicks was his name. When Missy left him, he joined the army.

  “Well, Missy had her baby, and I didn’t see her for a long time after that. Vernie still saw her pretty regular, though. They went to the same church, and she and Vernie were still good friends. A few years later, she had another baby, but by then she’d finally got tired of Jason and his sorry ol’ self. You see, Elmer had come home from the army, and she’d been sneakin’ off to be with him. And now she found out she was pregnant again. ‘Course, there wasn’t no way for her to be sure whose baby it was, but she made up her mind it was Elmer’s.”

  “Whose baby was it?” Billy asked.

  “I’m not sure, darlin’, but she didn’t care who the real daddy was, because she believed it was Elmer’s. She never told Jason she was pregnant, and one night he come home drunk and got to slappin’ her around. She told him she was leavin’ and Jason took to beating on her, told her if she ever tried to leave he’d hunt her down and kill her, and nobody’d do anything about it if he did. Two weeks later she was dead. Nobody really knows what happened that night, but the story I heard was her and Jason got in a fight, and Missy knocked him cold with a cast iron skillet. Then she got up and took off walkin’ over the mountain.

  “I never understood why she left her two boys there, ‘specially with her knowin’ how crazy mean he could get if he woke up and found her gone. Most everybody figured she was going to Elmer, and the two of them would’ve come back for them two boys. ‘Course, now we know she made a dreadful mistake… them poor little babies.”

  Maudie pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket, dabbed her eyes a couple of times, and continued, “Jason caught up with her on Seeker’s Mountain, strangled the life right out of that poor little thing and went straight to his daddy. They found them two children smothered in their beds. Jason’s daddy told the sheriff Jason had been out to his house playin’ poker all night. The sheriff knew Jason and his daddy was lyin’, but Jason was right: nobody could prove he done anything.”

  “He got away with it?” E.L. asked her.

  “Not exactly. The next day, on a crowded street in broad daylight, Elmer Hicks walked up to Jason and sunk a huntin’ knife in that big belly of his. Killed him dead in front of half the town. But nobody on the street that day would own up to seeing anything, and the law couldn’t do a thing to him. They didn’t have to, of course, ‘cause that night they found Elmer hangin’ from an oak tree in his backyard.

  “A month later, a peddler drivin’ across Seeker’s Mountain saw a woman walkin’ down the road. When he looked in his mirror she was in the backseat, starin’ out the window. She wouldn’t answer him when he talked to her. When he crested the mountain, she was gone. A few years later, Vernie and her husband was goin’ to Charleston, and the same thing happened to them. Lot’s of folks have seen Missy over the years. I believe she’s tryin’ to go home to Weaver’s Crick, but somethin’ won’t let her cross the mountain. And no matter how far she gets, she always finds herself right back where she started.”

  Jackie looked around and almost burst out laughing.

  E.L. was sitting with his mouth wide open, and even though the others had heard this story at least three times, they too were enraptured by the sad tale of Missy Thomas. They wouldn’t have noticed if Jackie had thrown a firecracker at their feet, which he most definitely would have done, if he’d had one, and if Miss Maudie hadn’t been sitting there.

  “Wow, did all that really happen? Right here in Whitley?” E.L. said.

  “Yes, baby, it sure did. Right here in Whitley.” Maudie sighed, and like so many times before, wished it was just a story.

  “What happened to Jason Thomas’ daddy?” E.L. asked.

  “Oh, he left these here parts a little while later and never did come back.”

  “Miss Maudie, why do they call it Seeker’s Mountain?” Jackie said, remembering how he’d been unable to answer E.L. when he’d asked that question.

  “Well, that’s another story altogether. Back at the turn of the century, right about this time of year…” Maudie paused to take a sip of Kool Aid. “Halloween night it was, 1903. A posse ended a four day chase right here on the mountain. Every town they come to the sheriff told people they were seeking the man who had murdered his brother. That’s where the Seekers part comes from. Five men entered the woods where a little boy had seen the killer. Two other men went walkin’ up the road to make sure he didn’t try to circle back. Them two stopped here.”

  “Here, Miss Maudie?” Jimmy asked.

  “Right here at this very house, darlin’. They stayed for a while and left. Nobody ever saw them other men again.”

  “Wow,” Jackie said. “I never heard that before.”

  “Did they catch the killer?” Jimmy wanted to know.

  “Nobody who went up the mountain that night ever came back down, except them two that stopped at our house.”

  “Man, that’s weird,” E.L. said.

  “That wasn’t the only thing weird to happen that night.”

  “Oh yeah?” Junior said, and then filled his glass with Kool Aid.

  “We used to have Indians livin’ up here. Black Minquas, a tribe that had broke off from the Honniasonts and the Conoys. They lived right up here in them woods, and had teepees and camps all up and down the mountain. The mornin’ after them men chased that killer up here, the Indians that was left just up and took off.”

  “That was left?” Junior said.

  “Yep, most of ‘em got killed that night, slaughtered. And nobody ever found out who
done it. Mama, and Daddy, too, when he was still alive, always made us stay home on Halloween night, called it the Devil’s night. Said evil things could get loose up here in these woods. So we stayed home and sang gospel music, held our prayer services. I think they was right: somethin’ evil did get out that night.”

  Maudie looked at her young visitors. Some of them were excited and fascinated, but the smallest child seemed to be frightened. She decided not to tell them about the dreams she’d been having, or how she thought Sheriff Peters had been murdered by his wife and some of her friends. After all, they were only dreams, weren’t they?

  Jackie, checking his watch, said they should get a move on, and they all stood up, all of them filing past Maudie for a hug and a peck on the cheek before making their way down through the clearing.

  It took twenty minutes to reach the path that would take them to Ward Rock.

  On the way they talked about Missy Thomas, the posse that had disappeared back in 1903, and the Indians who’d fled the mountain that had been their home for hundreds of years. After discussing each topic, the first words to come out were, “Do you believe it?” None of them would admit to it, but deep down inside, they all believed everything Maudie had told them.

  “Hey,” Jackie said. “Y’all wanta come up here on Halloween?”

  “No,” Billy and Jimmy answered at the same time, and then punched each other’s shoulder, also at the same time.

  “Owe me a Pepsi!” they called out, both of them laughing.

  “Hell no!” E.L. said. “No way I’m comin’ up here on Halloween night!”

  “We oughta think it over, boys. Might be fun to come up here about midnight and get the shit scared out of us.”

  “Be my guest, Igmo,” Junior said, laughing.

  “Igmo?” E.L. said.

  Grinning, Junior said, “Ignorant moron.”

  “Well, here we are,” Jimmy said, nodding to his left at the giant rock formation the Indians had named Ward Rock.

  It took five minutes to get to the foot of the formation, another ten to follow a path around and up so they were finally able to step out onto the top. Ward Rock was twenty yards wide and thirty-three yards long. Standing at the edge and looking down at the valley revealed a picture-perfect postcard of their quaint little town sitting below a stunning array of mountain ranges stretching as far as the eye could see.