AMayhar - The Conjure

  What a way for a big, tough grown man to act! he thought. He ought to be ashamed. But he kept right on going toward the turnoff to Boze's place.

  After World War I, Joseph Blair had used his veteran's bonus and bought, for a dollar an acre, most of the land on a long sandy ridge rising above the Nichayac River bottoms. There he cut enough timber to build a frame house, where he and his Nancy reared four sons.

  Two of those sons died in World War II. The remaining two, Boze and his brother Titus, had farmed together until Titus died of snakebite some ten years before. Now Boze and his wife lived there alone, their own children being grown and gone to make a living in some less depressed area of the state.

  Wash had known Boze since he was a child. In fact, back when Boze hauled hay for the dairy farmers that used to be so numerous in Nichayac County, Wash made most of his school money helping him load hay bales in the field and unload them into barns or sheds. Even after he went away to college, he'd spent several summers working with the old fellow.

  So Boze was a known and comfortable quantity. Wash intended to sound out the old fellow before asking him to go with him to the McCarver place. If anyone down here knew about strangers poking around in the river bottom country it would be Lena.

  When Wash turned into the long, tree-shaded drive, he could see the Blair pickup parked before the arbor vitae bush that flanked the yard gate. He was in luck. Old though he was, Boze stayed busy, if only visiting neighbors or playing dominos in the shade of the oak tree beside the general store.

  Today he was sitting in the swing in the side yard under his pecan tree. His lap was full of late fall peas, and he and his wife were shelling them into big pans, dropping the hulls into bushel baskets at their feet.

  A brindle cow was watching them, her head hung over the lot fence some yards from the scene of action, waiting. Wash grinned. She knew she'd get the hulls, in time, and her mouth was already watering.

  He honked politely and got out of the car. Three hound pups came lolloping out from under the arbor vitae and began yipping and growling and worrying his shoe-laces.

  "Sandy! Pinch! Grover! Get down now,” the old man yelled. “Come in this yard, Wash, and shell some peas. Bet it's been a coon's age since you did that."

  "Not since July, anyway,” Wash said. “I need some help, Mr. Blair. You mind if I sit down and tell you about it?"

  Blair's colorless wife rose and slipped into the house, as her generation had been taught to do when there was “man talk” to be conducted. That was one of the main things that bothered Jewel about going with him to the back country.

  Wash took her place and picked up her basin of peas, shelling absent-mindedly as he talked. “You know there's been a lot going on down here, I'm sure,” he said. “Not much of my business, until now. Maybe not altogether my business now, but somebody has burned the sheriff's house, right there in town, and I take that to mean I've been invited to the party.” A rattle of peas hailed into the pan.

  "I know nothing much goes on down here that the old timers don't know about. Of all your bunch, Lena McCarver probably knows the most. I want to go see her. I'd like for you to go with me, if you don't mind. I'm still...” he felt sheepish at saying the words ... “a little scared of her."

  Boze snorted and spilled a handful of peas into the sun-cooked grass at his feet. “Well you might be, boy. Well you might! I've knowed that woman for fifty years, and I'm a'scared of her, too.” He spat into a clump of ageratum.

  "Be glad to go with you, boy. Leave the rest of this to the old lady to finish up. It's a good thing you come around to me, ‘cause Miz Lena has locked her gate and hid her road. I got me a key, long years back. She sent me a letter to tell me to bring it along next time I fetch her groceries.

  "So we're all fixed up. You let me set all this junk down, and I'll get my hat and my key. We'll be on our way in just a jiffy."

  Watching the old fellow hobble up the back steps into the house, Wash marveled at the way country people lasted. They might get skinny and weathered, reddened and wrinkled by sun, but they hung in there, tough as old roots, until something big and tough and nasty finally carried them off. It looked as if Boze might last for a good few years more.

  The roads were dusty, for it hadn't rained for weeks. Bumping over washboarded dirt tracks had Wash's head aching long before he reached the gap into the McCarver place. At that point he stopped and stared, while beside him Boze chuckled.

  The cattleguard was invisible, the metal gate seemingly overgrown with berry vines. If Boze had not assured him that this was the place, he'd have thought this a long abandoned lane, impossible to travel.

  Boze got out and pushed through the stickery vines to the gate, where he fumbled for the rusty lock. He struggled with it for several minutes, without success. Even when Wash lent his great strength to the task, he had to back off or break the key inside the lock.

  Boze looked up at him, his watery gray eyes solemn. “Miz Lena don't want comp'ny, it's plain to see. When I come with her groceries nex’ week, I'll bet that sucker opens up slick as a weasel."

  "Likely, you're right,” Wash agreed. He climbed out of the vines and got back into his dusty car. “I just wish I could find some way to figure out what's going on down here. I have a feeling things are about to rip, but God only knows what."

  Boze spat a long streak of tobacco juice out of the window. “You want to know about the low country, you go find that boy Wim, down t'other side of the swamp. If you could find old Possum, he could tell you what you want to know, but nobody ever finds Possum Choa ‘less he wants you to. Wim, though, is young and cur'ous and would love to be in on any excitement. You go talk to that boy."

  Wash didn't admit he had already done that and warned the boy to stay clear of the swamp. But he realized Boze was right. If he intended to learn what he needed to know, he had to go back, eat crow, and invite the youngster into the game that was, he felt with increasing certainty, already being played out by known and unknown participants.

  CHAPTER XX. Nathaniel Farmer

  Back during the Depression, when his father had worked the family's cotton farm, wearing only his raincoat in order to save his only good pair of hickory stripe overalls for trips to town, Nate Farmer had promised himself that he would havemoney , before he died. However it had to be done, he had sworn a Bible oath to see after his mother and sisters and to own land and cattle and big cars and good clothes, if he had to walk over bodies to do it.

  He was proud to say he'd done all of it, including quite a few bodies, along the way. Not that he ever dirtied his hands with that kind of mess—he had specialists to tend to such matters, and ordinarily they did a good job.

  Now, leaning back in his leather chair, behind his impressive desk, he stared into the face of his second-in-command. “Harland, you're not doin’ thejob ,” he complained. Fielding turned pale. Those exact words had preceded more than one disappearance. He knew that for a fact, having been there at least four of those times. The men involved had been shot and put into septic tanks, if convenient, or buried deep in the woods. Harland was good at such things, Nate thought, but he had his weak points, like everybody else.

  "Nate, I've been doin’ everythin’ I can,” he said, barely keeping his voice under control. The dropped ‘g's betrayed his unease. When Harland Fielding slid back into East Texas sloppiness, forgetting his painfully learned “smart talk,” it meant he was sweating.

  That tickled Nate. He'd never bothered to slick himself up in any way. It wasn't how you talked, he'd decided decades ago, that made the difference. It was how youthought that either put you on top or on the bottom. And now this smartass dude had been dumped at his gate like a bag of garbage ... no way would Nate Farmer put up with that kind of insult.

  There were still suits up in Templeton who thought he was an ignorant redneck they could fool and cheat. They wouldn't learn any different if they checked out his bank accounts and tax returns, either. There were experts who could h
ide money slick as a whistle, with no evidence it ever existed, much less where it came from.

  The drug business was profitable. The lesser projects scattered around the county were income, though notbig income. But this last deal had been the biggest he'd ever attempted, and if he didn't come through with thatthing hidden in the middle of the missing ice chest, he might well pay it off with his own blood. Dead men had no use for money.

  Farmer sighed and fiddled with the polished horse-shoe that was his paperweight. “Harland, we've got a problem here that's goin’ to take a lot of fixin'. You sure and certain none of them folks down around the river knows how to find Possum Choa?

  "Oscar said plain and clear the old man's the one that put the chest in that sinkhole. We've had men out there pokin’ and pryin’ into every bit of quicksand we can locate, but that damn swamp's an almighty big place. We got to find that black Injun and make him take us to it."

  Fielding shook his head. “They all swear that nobodyever found the old man's place except that lost deputy, and he couldn't find it again when he tried. The Dooley woman don't hardly know her own name.

  "That painter woman, Follette, tried to smart-mouth me and I hit her a good one and left her lyin’ flat. Old Lena—well, I don't think even you'd want me to try messin’ with her any more."

  Nate closed his eyes, leaned back in the leather chair, and thought hard. He didn't suggest that Fielding should sit, and his henchman would never presume to do that without permission.

  Nate had flown over the river bottom country fifteen years back, looking for likely transfer points for his drug runners. Things showed up from the air...

  He sat up, cursing himself for being so old-fashioned. “How ‘bout we hire one of them he-l-i-o-copters, Harland? Search from the air? Oscar said that was the biggest sinkhole he ever seen in his life, and he was born down there. One that big ought to show up like a sore thumb, don't you think?"

  Fielding narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly. “Have to be careful about how we do it, Nate. Don't want anybody to suspect what we're up to, do we?"

  Farmer shook his head impatiently. “My nephew up to Tyler has one he bought from Army Surplus. Uses it for sprayin’ his rose fields. It's a old Huey out of Vietnam, but with the guns took off it.

  "That chest couldn't weigh more than maybe fifteen-twenty pounds. Should be plenty of lift there. And Grady knows how to keep his mouth shut—he better, ‘cause I started him off in business and hold his notes."

  The idea excited him now, and he picked up the phone and punched buttons. “Grady? Uncle Nate. Got a little job I need did—you still got that chopper?"

  In two minutes he had his nephew moving. The machine would be on his farm tomorrow by ten o'clock, Grady assured him.

  Farmer turned to Fielding. “You go down to my marina and get some of our heavy-duty grapplin’ stuff. Hooks, nets, cables—the whole shebang. We'll go in low, just above the trees, and spy out the land. Shouldn't take more'n two-three days to scout the area Oscar showed us. Then we'll go in late in the evenin's and dredge every sinkhole we can find. With a powerful metal detector, we ought to be able to find what we want."

  "That chest was aluminum,” Fielding objected.

  "What's in itain't .” Farmer thought about the little he knew about the secret cargo. “We'll take a Geiger counter, too, just in case. Between ‘em, we'll get that sucker out of there, and Possum Choa be damned."

  * * * *

  Wim Dooley was a boy of his word. When he promised Chief Shipp that he'd stay close to home, he meant it; except for school, he stayed right there, keeping an eye on his Ma and the children and wondering desperately what was going on. He had a pretty good idea what that Fielding fellow had been looking for when he came to the Dooley place.

  Choa had let that drug runner go, and he must have told his bosses where the ice chest was now. Nobody but Choa could find it, except for Wim, and it was clear that grownups never figured he could know anything.

  Only Shipp had consulted him, and it bothered him a lot that he'd been haltered this way. He felt just like the young steer they'd tied to a stake in the pasture; he'd like to do some snorting and pawing, himself, just from pure frustration.

  He was out in the fall garden, Saturday morning, planting a fresh batch of turnip greens, when he heard a sound that had always fascinated him. Sometimes the narcs checked the low country in a chopper, looking for stands of marijuana, and this sounded much the same—yet in some way it was different, too. The engine had a different pitch and the blades seemed to make more of a whine when the thing went over, very low, beyond the potato field.

  His mother came out of the house and looked up, shading her eyes with one calloused hand. “What you s'pose they want, Wim? They're a lot lower than they ought to be."

  Wim struggled mightily with his conscience and lost. “I'll just follow along off to the side and see which way they go,” he told her. “Looks as if they're searchin’ for somethin'. Might be somebody lost in the swamp or drowned in the river, maybe."

  He could see the idea take hold of her. Ma felt as if she was responsible for everybody ever borned, it seemed as if, and she nodded. “You find out. If help's needed, you run back and get me. Susie can take care of the chillun for a while."

  Feeling as if he'd dropped weight from his heels, Wim dashed away through the cut-over wood flanking the river bottoms. Though the chopper was out of sight, its distinctive sound guided him after it, and he soon realized that once it was over the southern edge of the swamp it had begun to make regular sweeps, east to west.

  "They're lookin’ for that hole where we put the chest,” he muttered. “Sure as shootin'."

  He could tell from the sound that they were a long way from the site of the sinky-hole. It would take them all day, where they were. Tomorrow they would maybe get closer.

  "I've got to get word to Chief Shipp,” he said aloud. “Possum'll keep an eye on that thing, but I bet the law ought to know it's down here.” The chopper came into view on the near leg of its sweep, so low it seemed about to brush the tops of the trees.

  Sheltered under a thick pine, Wim stared, shading his eyes, studying the craft, memorizing the identification numbers on its tail. That might be something the Chief could use. Then he turned and dashed for home. If he hopped it, he could maybe make it to Miz Libby's by taking the shortcut through the pine flats.

  His Ma looked apprehensive when he pounded up, but she seemed to read serious purpose in his eyes. “What's wrong, Wim?"

  "That chopper's no gover'ment one, Ma. It's goin’ back and forth across the low country, and Chief Shipp needs to know about it. Kin I run to Miz Libby's and get her to send word?” His face felt as if it were about to burst, and his heart was galloping like a runaway horse.

  "You git you a drink of water first, boy. You look like a ripe tomato. Then you kin take off for Miz Libby's. But watch for snakes, and don't run yourself totally to death."

  It was shady in the pine flats, and Wim jogged along, letting himself cool a bit. Only when he came to the long ridge separating the Brakes from the bottoms did he begin to hurry again. Something inside told him this was important, and he had to move fast.

  When he came through the thin swatch of cane alongside the dirt road that bisected the Brakes, he slowed again and turned into the lane leading to the old woman's shady yard.

  By now it was almost noon, and the smell of blackeyed peas and cornbread wafted from the back door as the boy stepped onto the “stoop."

  He tapped softly on the screen door frame. “Miz Libby? You there?” His mouth was watering, for Wim was always hungry.

  A halting step inside told him she was coming to the door. “Why Wim Dooley! You come right in here, child, and drink you some ice tea. You had your lunch yet? Boys is always hungry, so you set right down at this table.

  "I hate to eat alone. Lucy Bee, down the road, cooked me up this dinner, but she couldn't stay to share it with me.” The old woman brought another plate from
her shelf and set a fork beside it.

  She groaned her way down into a splint-bottomed chair and grinned at him. “You need to get in touch with Wash? I thought you might. But first we get rid of some of this here grub."

  Wim didn't protest. Tucking a paper napkin under his chin, as his Ma had taught him to do, he dug into the dish of peas, adding hot pepper sauce for tang, and buttered a big chunk of cornbread. Food never went begging when Wim Dooley was around.

  He helped her clear the table, afterward, and washed the dishes in her old fashioned porcelain sink. Running water was mighty handy, he decided. A lot better than heating it on the stove and pouring it into the dish pan like they did at home.

  When things were tidy again, Miz Libby set him down and questioned him closely. When he had told her all he knew, she nodded.

  "You're right, Wim. Wash ought to know there's a flying machine checking out the swamp. He can likely find out who it belongs to, from the numbers, too. I'll get Lucy Bee to drive me to the store so I can call him. The telephone my chillun put in here for me don't work today, but that's no problem. Lucy won't mind.