by Phil Truman
“You Belle’s boy?” the man asked with some surprise.
“Yep, I reckon I am. I’m Ed Reed.”
“I remember you. You weren’t no bigger than a bobcat last time I saw you.”
“Belle’s dead,” Ed said. “She was shot in the back and kilt, yesterday.”
“Is that right?” the man said. His expression looked neither surprised nor sad.
Ed looked at the boy, who had lowered his rifle, but still glowered back at him. “You mind if I get down off my horse?” he asked them both.
“I ’spect that’d be awright,” the man said.
Ed looped the lead to the mule around his saddle horn, and swung down off his gelding. He removed his hat and whacked it across his pants leg. “I guess I met your boy Henry here, but don’t believe I caught your name,” he said to the man. He extended his hand.
“I’m Ned Starr,” the man took Ed’s shake. “But Henry here ain’t my boy; he’s my cousin. If you’d like to come along, we’d be happy to share our supper if you don’t mind eating venison and taters.”
“Nothing I’d like better right now, Ned. Much obliged.”
* * *
It turned out Ed guessed right about his chances of hooking up with some of the Starr Clan. Because Ned Starr not only fed him supper, but allowed Ed to stay the night. Ned and his wife, Nola, had two young girls and an infant son, so the cramped quarters in the cabin forced Ed to bunk in the barn with the animals, and young Henry.
Henry took off after a couple of days. Ed stayed on. He helped Ned around the small farm, and eventually built his own cabin, buying a five acre piece of land on the Illinois River. Ned and he became fast friends, and helped start the small settlement the Cherokee population named Tsalagi. Later, when the settlement became a town, and Indian Territory became the State of Oklahoma, the U.S. Postal Service put up a sign over the door of the new post office, which read, “Tsalagee, Oklahoma.” The corrupted spelling of the English phonetic spelling of the Cherokee word by a postal bureaucrat became the town’s official name.
Although Ed didn’t have a lot of fond memories of his mother, she did teach him a trade which helped him prosper—horse thievery and cattle rustling. But he only used the skills when the cash flow from his small distillery business ran low, or when he got bored.
The truth is, he stole horses and cattle more for sport than lack of money. A ready market always existed for his moonshine whiskey. He didn’t go looking for a lavish lifestyle. That would only help those looking for him, find him. He always felt people were looking for him; different tribal police, and injured parties of one sort or another. Despite his avowed innocence in his mother’s murder, his paranoia still kept him believing marshals from Fort Smith prowled the woods for him.
Because of this, he never used any of Belle’s loot. He feared that if he spent any of the gold or silver coins the fires of suspicion about him would flare up and lead bounty hunters right to him. He always thought he had a price on his head, even though no tangible evidence existed to support it. In fact, he became so obsessed with this fear, that he decided the best thing to do was hide his inheritance where no one would ever find it.
One night, while feeding the fire under his still, waiting for the next batch to cook, he heard a blood-chilling yowl from somewhere back in the hills. Henry felt sure no bear or wolf or cat made the sound. It made him reach for his rifle and hold it close while he threw a couple more logs onto the fire. He’d heard that haunting call on several other occasions during his stays at his still, as well as the native stories about its maker.
He’d asked Ned about the legends, did he believe in them, had he seen the creature of the legends. Ned got real quiet then, and refused to speak of it, only to say Ed should leave it be. Ed even suggested they go hunting for the creature, but Ned had become agitated and angry. He stood and shouted Cherokee words at him, words Ed didn’t understand; then looking him squarely in the eye Ned said, “This is not an animal to hunt!” He sat back down, and looked off into the woods. He told Ed never to speak of it again.
Once, when he was out in the woods alone, he sat down to rest by the river where it made a big horseshoe bend. He’d gone deep into the woods that day, wandering and hunting, and he was weary. The late afternoon sun was behind him as he sat looking across the water, and it lit up a high cliff face in a bright yellow-white glow. It was a beautiful sight, the shining limestone almost dazzling in its warm brilliance. Sitting there, mesmerized by the luster of the rock cliff, he saw a shape. It was large and regular, but Ed took it to be a trick of the light and shade and weathering. The more he looked, the more the shape came into focus. He realized, suddenly, that the shape was a representation of a giant standing creature; more man-like, than bear. But it never occurred to Ed that the shape on the cliff might be manmade.
Then something else caught his eye. To the right of the shape, near what would’ve been the tip of the creature’s outstretched hand, was a dot. In the direct sunlight, Ed could see it was the irregular outline of a hole, rendered pitch black by the sharp contrast between light and dark. From his vantage point the black spot was about half a thumb-width wide, its entirety obscured by large boulders balanced on a ledge in front of it. Were it not for that particular day and time, he wouldn’t have seen the hole at all. It must be a cave entrance, he decided. Looking to the left of the hole, his eyes traced the shadow of a narrow ledge that led precariously upward to the top of the cliff. That gave him an idea, and he stood to go investigate further.
Chapter 4
Sunny Meets Punch
June 2004
Sunny Griggs called herself a Wiccan, although she wasn’t a card-carrying member. She’d never actually joined a coven. Even after she came back to Tsalagee that would’ve been difficult to do, as no Wicca were known to exist there; however, most in town would agree that Maxine Applegate could’ve been a founding mother of such a cult, had she wanted the job. For fifty-three years, Maxine had witched, bitched, and terrified all the customers who came into Applegate’s Drug Store. Bud, her subdued and ancient husband, stayed in the sanctuary of the pharmacy dispensing prescriptions. Some said Maxine had an evil eye, and could, would, and did cast spells.
But Sunny wasn’t sure she wanted to go to the trouble of joining a coven. Everything she knew about the Wicca, she’d gathered from the internet. Before that she was a pseudo-Baptist, having attended, against her own free will, the Free Will Baptist Church of Tsalagee. She did that from age eleven through her teen years at the insistence of her foster parents, Lorene and Avery “Buck” Buchanan. Once she reached the age of consent, she consented as how she would never darken the door of that, or any church, as long as she lived.
From age eighteen to thirty-four, while living in Oklahoma City, Sunny worshipped at the alter of secular humanism. She partied hard and often and made no spiritual commitment to anything other than her own hedonism. Somewhere in her thirty-fifth year, the laws of nature started to catch up to her, particularly the one that states, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” So she started looking to fill her lack of substance with something more substantial than night-lights and short-term lovers.
Then one night, while surfing the Net for a good buy on some wicker furniture, she stumbled onto a site describing the Wicca religion. The more she read, the more fascinated she became. When she got to the Wicca Rede, or statement of advice, which read: “As it harm none, do as you will. As it cause harm, do as you must,” she decided, after all of two hours of Internet reading, she was a convert. Because she didn’t want the inconvenience of joining any group, she decided to call herself a Neo- or Solitary or Eclectic Wiccan as her readings suggested. It didn’t cause anyone any harm, so she could do as she willed. Perfect. It was about as subjective a religion as you could get.
Sunny’s newfound religion started opening those long locked doors in her mind where she had stored up all that hidden indoctrination she’d gotten from her hippie parents, Squeaky and Goat. Her father, Goat
, who’d lived in a perpetual cannabis fog, had always carried with him a ragged paperback copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land from which he would quote passages to her in his more lucid moments. The one she remembered, the one he always used those times he’d start to look up a passage and would lose his train of thought, was, “Thou art God.” Sunny never quite knew the context of the phrase, but now that she’d become a Neo-Wicca it spoke to her. She could worship everything and anything—trees, rocks, buttons, asparagus, spiders, dogs, cats, dolphins, whales, fence posts, all humans regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin, and all else in between. She could just about make up the rules as she went along. She could also pick her own top god, which in Sunny’s case was a goddess, or The Goddess, or Mother God.
Sunny had no animosity toward her foster parents. They were good, kind, and decent folks who rescued her during her adolescence when her alternative would’ve been bleak and dark. In fact, as her attitude evolved from surly and ungrateful teen to somewhat of a mature adult, she discovered a great affection for them. They were as close as she’d ever come to having normal parents, but those first eleven years of her life, the most formative, clouded that perspective. Buck and Lorene had no children of their own, so when Buck died, and Lorene’s Alzheimer’s condition required her to be confined to a nursing home, Sunny quit her job and came back home to Tsalagee to look after the Buchanans’ modest estate. Her city apartment living and cubicle-intensive work environment proved too confining to her new religious practices. A small town, rural setting became an opportunity dropped at her feet.
* * *
Punch cut the boat motor twenty-five feet from shore and fastened on his lure—a new Balsa Boogie Crankbait. He’d bought three to see what color worked best: the yellowish Homer, the orange-ish Fried Green Tomato, and the mostly red Plum Crazy. Kinda expensive, he thought, but the guy at Bass Pro said these little babies would excite the bass so much they’d wet themselves. Then the ole boy laughed; sort of like a madman, as Punch recalled. With that mental picture, he decided to go with the Plum Crazy first. This early June evening seemed perfect for fishing. The sun wouldn’t set for maybe two hours or so, and the lake gleamed like a sheet of glass.
His first cast fell in the water about ten feet short of where he aimed, so after a quick crank, he gave the next cast a little more wrist. This one sailed high about four feet beyond the water’s rocky edge and over a stand of thick sumac and brambles.
“Dang it,” Punch said quietly. He looked around quickly to see if any other anglers sat out on the lake near him. He felt durn glad White Oxley had come up with a toothache, and decided not to come out fishing with him this evening. This was downright embarrassin’.
He reeled in a little and yanked the rod, hoping the lure would snap free from the brush. It gave a little but didn’t come into the water.
“Hey!” someone shouted from behind the brambles and brush at about where he thought his lure lay. It sounded like a woman’s voice.
“You okay?” Punch hollered back.
“Well, no. I’ve got this red fish-hooky thing in me,” came the response.
“It’s Plum Crazy,” Punch said.
“Damn straight it’s crazy!”
“No, I mean the lure. It’s called a Plum Crazy.”
“Aren’t you supposed to keep these things in water?”
“Well... I... Here, don’t move. I’ll come help you get it out.”
Punch angled the boat toward the shore with the trolling motor. When the bow hit the rocky shore, he reached in his tackle box and grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers, then jumped out into the shallow water and pulled the craft a little further up onto the loose rocks. He waded into the thick brush just past the shoreline to find his catch.
A slenderish woman of indeterminate age wearing jeans, a blue plaid shirt, and a blue corduroy vest sat cross-legged on the ground trying to work the red fishing lure hooks out of the shoulder of her vest. She had dark blonde hair split into two pigtails dangling across her chest and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
“Hold on! Hold on!” he said bending down to stop her from twisting the hooks. “You don’t want to work them in further.”
She stopped fooling with the lure and looked up at Punch expecting him to take over the operation with his two free hands and the needle nose pliers. He pulled the lure out with a quick and expert movement, as if from the jaws of a bass.
“There,” he said, examining his new Balsa Boogie for any damage. Then he remembered what he had done.
“Sorry,” he said, clearly embarrassed. But not so much with snagging this woman, as he was for his inept cast.
The woman stood up and looked at him. At first she had fire in her eyes and Punch thought she aimed to lay into him. He had it coming with a dang fool cast like he done, so he was prepared to take it, and he would apologize some more, if he had to.
She started to say something, but her expression shifted as she looked up at him. Her face colored pink like maybe she had become a little overheated. One corner of her mouth twitched funny-like. It puzzled Punch. He could handle women mad and yelling at him. He had gotten used to that. But this gal... it wasn’t like she was afraid. It was different from all the looks he had ever gotten from females.
“Well, I... it’s... I mean, I don’t guess you did it on purpose,” she said and looked out toward the lake. She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “Just glad it got me in the vest and not the eye,” she added. She kept looking at him and then looking away quickly. Then she laughed a little nervous or crazy... but not quite like that guy at Bass Pro.
“My name is Sunny Griggs,” she said. She stuck out her right hand.
“Sunny Griggs. Oh, yeah, I know you,” Punch said with relief, thinking he wasn’t going to get woman-yelled-at again. “You lived with the Buchanans. I heard you’d come back to town.” He took her hand in a shake without putting a man-squeeze to it. “I’m Gale Roundstep. Most folks around here call me Punch.” Then he got real serious.
“Hey, I’m real sorry about Buck,” he said, looking at the ground. “Hard thing to figger. I liked Buck. He was a good man. And Lorene was an awful fine woman. Jo Lynn... that’s my ex. She always thought a lot of her.”
It bothered Sunny that the man... Punch, as he called himself, referred to Lorene in the past tense, but most people did nowadays. Even though she was still breathing and walking around, most who knew her considered her gone.
Did he say, “Ex?” The question came to the surface of her thoughts. But she ignored it. She looked at the man again, this time with a more... well, observant eye. He wasn’t what you’d call a small man; not so short, but not so tall either; broad at the shoulders, with beefy arms and chest. His stomach wasn’t exactly flat and looked to have the potential for expansion. She guessed him to be about six feet or so, but his width masked his height somewhat. “Husky” would be a good word to describe his physique. She guessed his age to be somewhere in his forties. Although his first impression repelled her, something about him excited her.
Punch looked around trying to think of something to change the subject. “You out here fishin’?” he asked. But he didn’t see any gear, only a burlap bag with a few lumps in it.
“Oh, no, I don’t fish. Fish are a part of Mother God’s order. I wouldn’t do anything to harm them. Besides, I don’t eat meat. I was out here looking for rocks; spirit stones to put in my garden. Their energy is better out here near the water.”
Punch laughed a little, being unsure; thinking this might be some kind of joke. Grinning, he asked, “Who’s this Mother God? Is that like Oprah?”
Sunny’s expression changed, but she kept her smile. “Mother God is The Goddess. She’s the Supreme Creator of all things,” she said coolly.
Punch removed his Bass Pro ball cap and scratched the top of his head in puzzlement. Then a light went on. “Oh, you mean Jesus’s momma. Mary?” He knew Catholics prayed a lot to Mary
and all of them had little statutes of her.
Sunny sighed and said in a condescending tone, “No, not Mary.”
Now Punch was genuinely perplexed. “Wull, you mean this Mother God is God’s momma? How can that be?”
Sunny looked at Punch and shook her head. “I don’t think I can explain it to you. You obviously aren’t capable of understanding this.”
Punch squinted at her. He wasn’t so dense that he couldn’t catch a belittling insult hurled at him. He decided maybe this high and mighty little lady needed a lesson in comeuppance.
“You know,” he said, looking back over his shoulder to the left, then right. He tried to show fearful concern on his face. “You really shouldn’t be traipsing around out here in these woods by yourself. Especially when it’s starting to get dark.”
Sunny bent and picked up a hand-sized smooth brown river rock. She turned it this way and that, examining it to see if it met her requirements as a spirit rock, and said with an amused and somewhat snooty tone, “Oh? And why’s that?”
“Well, you’ve lived around here before. I reckon you know about what’s in these here woods.” Punch nodded and looked grave.
“What, bears? Mountain lions?”
“Well, there’s them,” Punch said. “But that ain’t all.”
“Oh, come on,” Sunny said with a dismissive laugh. “Those animals haven’t been seen around here in years.” Then she looked at Punch with suspicion. “And, just so you know, if there’s any other kind of animal out here that wants to threaten me, I have a black belt in Karate.” She actually only had a green belt with just six months of training at the Y, but this guy didn’t need to know that.
Punch smirked. “Don’t flatter yourself, girly. I ain’t talking about me.”
Sunny was curious... and a little disappointed. “What are you talking about, then?” she asked.