AMayhar - The Conjure

by The Conjure (v1. 0) [lit]

  "You keep an eye out for some kind of container with such stuff in it, and if you find it you get somebody to call the sheriff. There may be some kind of reward.We probably won't find it, if my experience here is any indication."

  Choa agreed completely. Even if someone had a “visioning” like Miz Lena and foretold exactly where that container was, it wasn't likely there'd be any volunteers to dive there, right under the eyes of a half dozen large gators, and bring it up again. And if anyone shot an alligator, with the laws like they were, he'd be in big trouble.

  The creeks ran into each other, around bits of higher ground, through choked woods, and wandered in deep loops. It was like a maze, and Choa felt sure Needham hadn't the skill to note landmarks. There was no way he'd ever find his way back again. Besides, Choa intended to block off that path he'd followed with clumps of button willow and huckleberry, so it looked as if there had never been a path there at all.

  They found the big creek well before noon, and there were tracks and traces of the search on the banks and along the trails beside the water. Somebody had a good head, Choa decided, for they were searching under cutbanks and in deep eddies.

  Too bad he'd messed up things for them, though he wasn'ttoo sorry. He'd heard tell (Lena and King were good sources of information) that sometimes drugs got “lost” with lawmen and turned up on the market anyway.

  "You yell and see if anybody's left around here,” he said to his passenger. “We'll go on down to the river, if need be, but I got things to do back home. My setlines need runnin'."

  Needham raised himself cautiously and cupped his hands about his mouth. “Whoooooeeeee!” he shouted, the sound echoing back from the woods beyond the next bend.

  Four times he yelled, and on the heels of the fourth they heard a pistol shot, cracking sharply through the muggy air. “Sounds like somebody still hasn't give you up,” Choa said. He dug in with his paddle, and they moved downstream, toward the source of the sound.

  Another shot, nearer, told them that someone was coming fast. Choa pushed the prow of his boat against the bank and asked apologetically, “You mind gettin’ out here? I don't mix with folks hardly a'tall, and it makes me nervous. Just tell ‘em old Possum brung you out. They'll know. I don't see folks much, but my friends tell me those that needs to knows my name."

  Needham stepped out onto the muddy bank, his weapon, still needing a good cleaning and oiling, in his hands. He shifted it around and stuck out his right hand to Choa. “I thank you, Possum Choa. You just about saved my life, last night, and I'm grateful. Anytime you need help, you send word. Don't forget my name, now. I'll do what I can for you."

  He meant it, the old man knew with some surprise. The fellow really meant it, though often such words meant nothing.

  "I'll be sure to,” he said. “Now you stay right here on the bank, and don't try to cut off any bends. This country, it'll fool you if you give it half a chance. Let those folks come up with you. You done enough walkin', I reckon, to do you a while.” He grinned and backed the boat off the mud.

  Choa turned the bow upstream and dug in with his paddle, feeling the resistance of the current. He'd be well out of sight before the rescuers arrived, and if they came upstream to look for him—well there were more creeks than one that emptied out of his swamp. If they picked the right one to follow, they deserved to catch up with him.

  CHAPTER VII. Questions! Questions!

  It was late, already hot and steamy, when Lena got up, and the tomcat rubbing about her ankles didn't help anything. “You got to wear that fur coat, Cat!” she grumbled. “Don't try to share it with me. I'd take off my skin, this morning, if I could."

  Barefooted, she hobbled into the kitchen and set her kettle on the range, punching up the ash-covered coals and sticking in some split wood. A wood-burning cookstove was nice in winter, but in summer it just added to the misery. However, hot mint tea always made her sweat, and that helped cool her off.

  She was sitting on her porch swing, sipping her tea as she pushed herself back and forth with one callused toe, when the sound of an approaching car made her prick up her ears. Lone, the tomcat, did the same, rising from his molten slump on the pine planks to sit on the steps and watch the road with narrowed green eyes.

  "I don't like it, Lone,” she said. “Coming on the heels of the news Possum brought me, it bodes no good. I'd better put on my dress before they come around the last bend. Don't want to shock anybody by being in my nightie at almost noon."

  She whipped into her bedroom and slipped a sleeveless cotton dress over her skimpy nightgown. Fumbling in a drawer, she pulled out a pair of panties that had not begun life as lace but were now decorated with tiny holes from long wear.

  "I'm not going to get out my best drawers for anybody I didn't invite to visit me,” she observed to the cat, who was now sitting on the windowsill, craning his neck as he tried to see the road. “Particularly if they're lawmen, which I'd bet a pretty they are."

  She poured another cup of tea, now strong enough to melt the enamel off her teeth, and stepped back onto the porch as a dusty Chevy bumped around that last bend and sighed to a stop beyond her rickety gate. She waved away the dust that drifted to her from the road and watched two men in uniform crawl out of the car and approach the gate.

  "Ma'am?” one called. “Is it all right to come in?"

  At least they were mannerly. Country folks didn't like people barging into their yards without any invitation.

  She nodded. “Come on,” she said. “We'll set on the porch. It's cooler out here."

  The taller man removed his hat and gestured to his smaller and younger companion to do the same. He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out his identification. “I'm Lieutenant Hardy, Ma'am. This is Johnny Sanders.” He looked down at the notebook and asked, “Are you Miz McCarver?” There he seemed to get stuck, his adam's apple wobbling but no words coming out.

  Lena grinned and nodded. She knew how she affected people who had never met her before. There was something about her, as there had been about generations of her ancestresses, that made people wary. And that was all to the good.

  "So,” she said. “What brings you fellows down here into the bottoms on such a hot day? Got anything to do with that body the radio's been talking about?"

  Hardy sighed with relief. “Yes Ma'am, that very thing. We're questioning everyone who lives down here and along the roads that end at the river, and even some that live right down close to the swamp, hoping they'll have heard something or seen something that may help us find who killed that man and what they did with the drugs he and his partners were supposed to bring in the other night."

  "Partners, eh?” she said. “There wasn't any mention of those on the radio."

  "At least one, and we think two. Oscar Parmelee was the ringleader of that bunch, we know for a fact, and he's disappeared from his usual haunts. A runty little guy named Yancy Flynn usually ran with them. The only one we've found since our big drug bust went sour was Ben Falls, the one that floated down the river on that log."

  Lena frowned thoughtfully. She had no intention of telling them anything she knew, but she also liked to stay on the right side of the law. It could come in handy, at times.

  "I heard some calling and some shooting last night, away off in the bottomland, close to the swamp,” she said. “I figured it was you folks, searching after somebody."

  Hardy nodded. “It was. One of our deputies got lost and we looked all night. An old fellow called Possum brought him almost out, this morning, and then went back wherever he came from. You know anybody named Possum?"

  She laughed. “Old Possum Choa? Everybody roundabout knows who he is, but precious few have laid eyes on him. He keeps himself to himself, does Choa. I see him maybe once or twice a year, when he trades me catfish and wild hog meat for staples he can't grow in the swamp."

  "Do you know where he lives?"

  She giggled. “Nobody knows where he lives. I sometimes wonder if he can find it him
self. If your man found him, he must have beenconsiderably lost."

  Hardy looked embarrassed. “He tried to tell us how to get there, but the ones they sent to look for the man never found him. Or at least they hadn't when we left, this morning."

  "And they won't,” she said. “Choa's folks lived in this country before the white folks came. Why, they was there before the Cherokee came in from the east. He may be the last of the old Caddos left at all. He knows this country like nobody else, and if he doesn't want to be found, you can bet your best boot-buttons he won't be. Possum Choa just doesn't like to be around people, particularly white people."

  "He ever seem to have more money than you'd think he should?” piped up young Sanders. “Or dress better than usual or anything like that?"

  This time Lena bent double with laughter. When she could speak, she wiped her eyes on her wrist and said, “Son, if Choa ever had so much as a penny, since he quit working outside, I never heard about it. He doesn't hold with money, has no need for it, and wouldn't take it if you offered it to him. He gets what he needs from the swamp and from trading with a few families along the creeks and the river...” she went off into another gale of laughter.

  "You mean he never hasany money?” the young man persisted.

  "Not that I ever saw. And he dresses in whatever hand-me-downs folks can spare, usually worn-out overalls. He does have boots, but that's because some of us get together when his old ones are all to pieces, which they are right now, and chip in to buy him some more that fit. I measured his track in the mud, once, so we'd know.

  "Then when we get those boots in, somebody with the right sized feet wears ‘em long enough so they don't look new, and the next time Possum comes by they tell him they've got some boots that pinch something awful and would he be able to use ‘em. No, if Possum ever showed up in anything that didn't have more holes than a crawfish mudflat, we'd all pass out from shock."

  She could tell the boy didn't believe a word of it. He was raised in town, where money measured a man's worth—or a woman's, for that matter—to the exclusion of everything else. A man without money just couldn't exist; she could see that conviction in his eyes.

  But Hardy seemed made of more realistic stuff. “One of the old kind, is he? Self-sufficient and hard-headed?"

  She nodded. “Choa helps those he can help and never harms anybody that doesn't try to harm him. Even then, he just ... discourages ‘em.

  "I never heard of him really hurting anybody in his life, and I've known him since he was born. But he can handle alligators, if they tackle him, and I wouldn't go out of my way to make him mad, if I was you. Messing around in his swamp is a good way to do that."

  The Lieutenant looked away across the hill toward the swamp. His eyes narrowed, and Lena turned to look, too. A circle of buzzards was just visible above the trees that topped the hill.

  She looked away. “Might be, there's another body out there that didn't wash down with the flood,” she suggested. “You just might try to see what those critters are checking out, if you feel like a long walk."

  Hardy rose, and Sanders got to his feet. “We'll do that. Thank you, Miz McCarver."

  Lena watched them trudge away over the hill down which Possum Choa had come two days before. Only when Hardy's hat disappeared amid the pine saplings did she turn to the house and call, “Lone! Cat, you come here."

  The tomcat rose onto his toes and stretched his long body, digging his claws into the worn boards of the porch. Then, with graceful nonchalance, he followed his mistress into the house, where the heat was just a bit above unbearable.

  Lena did not pause in the kitchen. She moved quickly into her bedroom, which was on the east and now was cooler with a slight breeze moving through the window.

  Lone, knowing from old habit what to do, leaped onto her striped cotton bedspread and sat, tail curled around his toes, head cocked, waiting while Lena opened the book on her table and bent over its soiled and foxed pages. When she looked up into his narrow green eyes, the old woman grinned.

  "We're going to vision a bit, old cat. You relax, now, while I get myself comfortable.” She stretched beside him on the narrow bed, and he lay on his side near her, his feet and his tail just touching her. It was too hot for either of them to bear closer contact, but just a little was enough.

  She closed her eyes and began a rhythmic chant, whose meaning, if ever there had been one, had been lost along the long tally of her forebears. But the sound soothed her almost into sleep, and the tiny window in her mind began to open.

  Sinking deeper and deeper into her vision, Lena felt the purr of the tomcat against her, charging her with energy. She focused her thoughts upon that circle of buzzards to the south ... and then she was among them, sweeping in long curves above the simmering country below.

  There! Some instinct borrowed from the buzzards gave her the direction, and she descended, leaving the freedom of their flight, to hover above the ground like a will-o-the-wisp, moving always toward the point she had located. Across a creek, now dwindling between banks that were sun-cracked mud, down to the edge of the river she went. At a sharp loop in the larger stream she could feel the presence of something alien to the bottomlands.

  And then she was there; without real sight, with no sense of smell, for which she was grateful, she saw as if through the wrong end of a telescope the sodden lump that had been a man, caught in a tangle of flotsam that had collected in the bend. Knowing that scavengers had been at work there, she did not try to look too closely.

  There would hardly be two bodies left undiscovered in the area, she felt certain. This had to be that Yancy fellow that Hardy and Sanders were looking for.

  Knowing that King Deport and Choa would be wondering about this, she floated up from her dreamlike state and sighed deeply. Lone raised his head, twitched his whiskers, and yawned, his pink mouth and white teeth looking like a weird flower in the dim light of her room.

  "Might as well send up the signal,” she told the cat. “King'll look this way before dark. He always does, just to see if I've got any news he ought to know. Good thing he can see the top of my big tree from the knoll behind his house—he'd be cut off for sure, if he couldn't."

  She opened her ancient wardrobe chest and took out a triangular yellow flag. Then, followed by Lone, she moved outside, up the slope opposite the one Hardy and Sanders had taken, and approached a pine that must have been eighty feet tall. Almost invisible, a double strand of dirty white line hung down its trunk, secured to a stub of branch.

  She loosed the knot and threaded the yellow flag through its grommets onto the line; then she pulled one of the strands, and the thing went up as if the tree were a flagpole. It caught, from time to time, on the rough bark or a dead branch, but at last she had it clear of the needled crest, moving up the long rod she had made one of her “helpers” put there.

  The breeze had picked up, and the yellow fabric stood straight out, flipping slightly and quite visible. King would be sure to see it, she thought, if the old fool remembered to check her signal tree.

  He was getting past it, she thought, though he lacked a good few years being as old as she. Some people, sad to say, lost their edge at entirely too young an age. At something all too near eighty, she was still going strong, thanks be to God, and she intended to stay that way.

  CHAPTER VIII. Squirrel's Nest

  The discovery of the second body set the law enforcement people to buzzing around the river bottom country. They even probed into the swamp as far as possible, but the water was still so high after the flood and the mosquitos were so terrible that they didn't do themselves much good, aside from making a lot of water moccasins angry.

  Choa watched their efforts, when he could spare the time, from the concealment of thickets or from one of his treetop perches. It was funny, he thought, that people hardly ever lookedup , when they were searching for things in the woods. His over-sized imitation squirrel nest coverts looked completely natural to townsfolk, and nobody ever st
ared up at them anyway.

  The untidy bundles of twigs, old leaves, and other debris littered the treetops in most oak and hickory woods. Acorns and hickory nuts provided most of the squirrels’ winter food stores, and those were their favorite places to nest.

  He created his own where he wanted them, large enough to hide his bony shape and anchored to branches heavy enough to hold his weight. He'd watched a lot of things happen in the swamp country over the years, while hidden in those coverts.

  It wasn't the lawmen, of course, whose efforts disturbed him, though he hated to have any outsider rummaging through his domain, scaring the birds and the small critters. No, he feared that others would come, as well, searching for that chest of drugs and whatever else it contained. From the sound of their conversation, he figured even the runners didn't know what their extra consignment might be.

  If anyone representing the owners came he intended to be on watch, for this was not the first time drug dealers had used the bottomlands and the edges of the swamp to hide their stocks. It was simply the first time their activities had involved him.