The Pines

by Robert Dunbar

  “You went to live with her after your mom died?”

  “Did you hear something outside?”

  “Prob’ly just the dog.”

  “Shall we make the trip to mount Holly this week?” Changing the subject, Athena cleared her throat. “We must be out of nearly everything. I know we need sugar.”

  “Yeah, all we really got is cans a soup. Remember, ’Thena, I bought all that stuff, and then I forgot and bought more?”

  The red light on the scanner wavered, and Athena went absolutely still.

  Pam could just make out what sounded like garbled numbers in the static. “What…?”

  “Police dispatcher, out by Atsion.” She listened. “That’s an accident.”

  “Will you have to go?”

  She shushed her. “At this hour, usually they’ll call Burlington County.” For another moment, she strained to hear voices. “My mother’s not dead. She’s in a…a sort of a home.”

  Outside was blackness, and the crickets raged. The two women sat in the grimy kitchen and listened to the scanner and planned a trip to a distant supermarket, the Ouija board untouched between them. “You hungry?” Pamela scrounged stale cookies out of a canister.

  Small wonder they w ere running low, Athena reflected—her sister-in-law ate everything in sight. Setting down the pencil stub, she twisted dials on the scanner, trying to recapture fading words. Finally giving up with a sigh, she continued writing up a shopping list on a bit of brown paper.

  “…an’ as long as we’re gonna be in Mount Holly, I’ll be needing some more bug spray, because them damn bees are eating up my flowers again. I swear, you can just sit there an see them going right after my flowers.”

  Athena almost choked on her coffee.

  “Oh, an’ I used your last light bulb. Didn’t you notice how nice an bright it is in here?” She waited for a response, but Athena had stopped paying attention again. “I guess it must be getting late.” Noisily draining the last of the liquid, Pam plunked her cup down on the tablecloth and stood up. “I guess I better be—”

  “I’ll walk out with you. I want to get rid of this garbage before the ants find it.”

  “Can’t that wait till morning, ’Thena? I know you don’t want to go out there.”

  Ignoring her, Athena maneuvered around the crowded kitchen and scraped plates into a leaking bag.

  “Here, why don’t you let me help you with that?” But she just leaned against the cellar door and watched.

  “You want to get the back door, Pamela? Don’t forget your board.”

  “I’m gonna leave it here. We’re supposed to play again tomorrow.” She held the door open while Athena carried the garbage onto the porch. “Oh, I meant to carry up that…” Pam hesitated. “You know that bag of clothes down the cellar? Matty needs…never mind, I’ll get them tomorrow.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Athena. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust. The open doorway lit the porch floor; it seemed to silence the crickets. “No.” The light began to swing away. “Leave the door open.”

  “But, ’Thena, the mosquitoes…”

  “Leave it.” The night sounded like a rustling curtain. Holding the bag away from herself, she moved down the porch steps as a brown form emerged from the yard.

  “Why don’t you just give that to me to dump?” Pamela trudged along behind her. “You go back to the house.”

  Athena kept walking, her shadow, framed in the kitchen light, spreading across the yard, while the dog frisked around, sniffing at the garbage.

  “Well then,” suggested Pam, “why don’t you just dump it here for now and…Oh well. Sure is dark to night. Get outta my way, Dooley.” Reluctantly, she took the path that led around to the front of the house. “Well then, see ya tomorrow then, I guess. You walkin’ me home, dog?”

  Athena stopped walking. “Do you want the flashlight?” she called. “It’s in the car.”

  “I can see. G’night. I’m takin’ Dooley.”

  “Are you sure?”

  A faint voice drifted back through the darkness. “I sure hope them wild dogs ain’t nowheres round here!”

  “Pamela?”

  An insect trilled.

  Beginning to sweat, Athena forced one foot in front of the other, quickly passing beyond the farthest perimeter of light, her footsteps making almost no noise in the sand and clumped weeds. She skirted the unused shed as a skittering sound issued from within its indefinite shape. Maybe rats, she thought. The weeds grew higher this far from the house, and they rustled dryly as she moved through them. Behind the shed, well beyond the yard, the trash heap was a formless hump, and to night the smell seemed especially bad. It would have to be burned soon. Trusting her nose for sense of direction, she chucked the garbage, and a tin can rattled.

  Pines circled everywhere, beyond the mound, around the shed.

  Another cricket called to the first now, softer, subdued, fading. I’m an intelligent adult. Then a third began. It’s irrational to be afraid of the dark. Heading back toward the porch, she tripped over something invisible, almost falling. I will not run. The yellowish light of the doorway seemed faraway. Never make it. The dark began a hollow roaring in her ears; like a swimmer swept out to sea, she foundered, the lighted doorway providing her only lifeline.

  As she climbed the porch steps, she could feel the darkness sucking at her. Heartbeat a little faster. She slammed the door and leaned against it. Respiration a bit more rapid—that’s all. All around her, the house lay still.

  Alone. Clearing the coffee cups, she stacked them with the rest of the week’s dirty dishes. Alone in the house. She picked up the scanner. All the downstairs lights were on, yet shadowed corners filled the rooms. Except for Matthew, of course. Her hand hesitated before switching off the kitchen light. Quietly, almost stealthily, she checked the living-room windows. Most were boarded, but through one intact pane the strumming night showed solid: iron nothingness. She tried to cover it by pulling and poking the skimpy curtains closed, but it was as though the window glass had been coated with black paint that seeped through the fabric.

  At the center of the room, an armchair stood on scrolled claw feet, and she perched on one of the massive arms. She’d always liked this chair. The frayed material, scratchy with the ghost of a raised pattern, had long ago faded to some indeterminate and dusty shade of gray. It was ugly, really, but so solid, so protective.

  She wound the rubber band out of her hair, smoothing back the dark curls with one hand, holding the scanner lightly in the other. She knew she should go to bed now. The armchair faced a tight, grimy fireplace, and blackness lay in the cracks of the floor. Dimness around the lamp transformed the room into something smaller, more personal. She crossed her arms in front of her breasts, hugged herself, breathing against the pressure, then letting go, allowing her arms to fall away and fade in her lap. She thought about bed again, but it seemed an impossible distance. She’d have to climb the stairs to her airless room, all that way. So far. Crickets sounded dimly through the walls, an empty nighttime noise, like the voice of faucets leaking at the edge of her awareness.

  Darkness pressed the house.

  Pamela picked her way across the bridge. Just my luck to fall in some night. She grinned to herself. They’ll hear me yelling from here to Leeds Point. One of the planks was missing, and she could smell the brown water below.

  Far ahead, she heard Dooley bark, the sound deep in his barrel chest. Chasing a possum or something. The dog often escorted her home, always ranging far into the night around her. She stepped up the pace. Her trailer lay just down the road toward town, making her Athena’s nearest neighbor.

  She heard loud breathing and the soft sound of running, then Dooley charged past her. “Good dog.” Panting, the dog padded around, licking at her. “Yuck.” She petted his head, wiping her hand on his fur. “Good boy now.” He trotted alongside a moment, then launched off into the darkness again.

  That pig. Following, Pam frowned. That piney b
itch. Her mother also lived along this road. Always flauntin’ all them men in my face, even when I was little.

  As she walked on, the memory of one afternoon in Athena’s kitchen came to her. She’d been boasting about how important her job at the army base had been. Becoming excited, she’d babbled about her “double life,” dropping exaggerated hints about the night she’d managed to get herself used by a group of drunken GIs. Maybe she’d been trying to shock Athena, or perhaps she’d wanted some sympathetic response. What ever she’d been looking for, she hadn’t found it: Athena’s face had twisted with disgust. I don’t see what she got so high and mighty about anyhow. It ain’t like everybody don’t know about her and that cop. Immediately, she felt ashamed. I shouldn’t think that way about ’Thena. Why she’s…she’s the most…

  Her landmark towered over her—a dead cypress the locals called “Hanging Tree.” They say she hung there till she was just a skeleton. The cypress loomed about the pines, one thick limb stretching over the road. Till the bones just dropped off one by one. By daylight, the rotted remnants of rope fibers could still be seen clinging to the bark. Athena always said it was probably just an old tire swing, but Pam believed, even cherished, the tale of the hanged witch.

  A branch of the road, just a fading trace, lay behind the thick cypress. Saplings and tall weeds had begun to cover it. Lonny’ll take care of things when he comes home. But some inner part of her understood that Lonny would approve of the overgrown road, that he’d like the way to the trailer being hidden, impassable, because the state police would never find it now. She was fairly certain their trailer was stolen and hoped Athena never found out. She gets so funny about that sort of thing. Sighing, she walked on. Such a shame, Wallace dropping dead like that. They was so happy.

  A breeze stirred in the smaller trees.

  Lonny’s been gone almost two years this time. Leaving the road to town behind her, she wended between the little pines. Lord, I miss him. Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t really true. What she missed was what she’d never had.

  Something rustled in the bushes.

  “Dooley?” She stopped moving, stopped breathing. “Is there somebody?” She heard the dog bark somewhere far behind her. “Who is that?” Her voice trembled.

  A match scratched and flared, and she flinched from the sudden light. “You scared me all to death!” she screeched, beginning to giggle.

  Framed by tangled white-blond hair, a bloodless face floated in the dark. Marl Spencer stared stupidly, the flame glowing purple in his eyes. “Skeared ya?” The match twitched away.

  Pam heard sucking. “You burn yourself, Marl?” Suddenly maternal, she moved toward him. Another match flared, and she paused, blinking.

  Marl held the flame high with the other hand as he blew on his wet fingers. He had a crumpled paper sack under his arm, heavy shapes inside it.

  “Is that my stuff?” she asked, not reaching for the bag. “Al Spencer shouldn’t be makin’ you deliver that so late at night,” her voice scolded. “An you can tell him I said so, too.”

  “Gotta do it a’night,” the boy answered in a voice both shrill and husky.

  “This-here purse is brand-new,” she told him proudly. “So I don’t have no money on me, but if you’ll walk me home I can…What’s that you sayin’, boy? Your pa said I can have credit, did he?” The match went out, and the paper sack rustled. She guessed he was holding it out to her. “I don’t want no credit. Now, you just come on to my place.” The bag rustled again. “It won’t take a minute, now. It’s just over here. Sides, I want to get you something for that burn.”

  The boy mumbled.

  “Oh, you got to put something on it right away! It’ll get all pus if you don’t. Now, you just come with me.” She started forward along the choked path. “You was on your way to the trailer anyways, right?” After a moment, she sensed his fleshy presence following.

  The boy hung back when they reached the dark and littered clearing. The woman hurried past the black hulks of two automobiles, one on blocks, one on its side. “Well, here we are now.” She stamped up the metal steps of the trailer.

  The door opened with a squeak, and lights came on inside. She stuck her head out the open door. The gleam revealed the clearing: a chicken-wire and plywood enclosure dominated the bare earth, and white petunias were bedded up against the trailer’s cinder-block foundations. Sagging from the roof, thick cable looped into the trees. “Ain’t you coming in?” The boy had his back to her. “What’s the matter? What do you keep looking over your shoulder for? You hear something? That’s right. You scared a dogs, ain’t you?” Still peering at him, she laughed. “Hell, the things people is scared of.” She liked the way the back of his head was shaped, she decided—he was growing up real nice. Of course everybody knew he was a retard, and he was still sort of pudgy. “Well, don’t just stand there then. Come on in the place.”

  Reluctantly approaching the steps, he removed three large jars from the sack. Electric light gleamed yellow in the liquid as he handed them up to her. “Pop wants da jars back.”

  She disappeared. “Can I git you some?” she called. “Oh, c’mon, have some. Maybe I’ll have a little. Not that I really drink or anything, you know. I just think it’s good to have some around. In case anybody should visit. You know, like a relative or something.”

  He lingered on the stoop. “Uh…”

  Something banged within, then glasses clicked. “Marl? What are we? Like cousins sort of?”

  Backing away from the trailer, he folded the paper bag and stuck it in his pants as the woman’s voice faded behind him.

  “I bet everybody in town thinks I’m real snotty, like I think I’m better than them or something, right? Marl? Marl?”

  He’d already crossed the clearing.

  Suddenly, she stood, tapping her foot in the doorway. “You don’t got no more deliveries to make to night, do you? Well then, come on in here and let me see that finger.”

  Through the trees, there came distant, lonely barking. He froze. Slowly, he walked back toward the trailer. One foot on the stairs, he turned to the woods—the barking sounded again. He entered.

  The night breathed through the empty clearing. Trees whispered. A slight breeze pressed through, muttering and sighing, and the pines moved, barely swaying. Moths danced in the arc of pale light from the doorway through which the woman’s voice drifted. “That’s a boy. Come on in here. You know, my sister-in-law was telling me just tonight about this bunch a wild dogs that’s running around. Now, hold it out while I put some of this on it—won’t hurt. Yeah, that’s right. They’re still out there somewheres, so you got to be careful going home, you know, and me all alone cause a Lonny’s still being away. Don’t move. Still away. It gets real lonely out here. Course ’Thena and me is real good friends. Hold still now. They talk about me in town? They tell jokes about me? Hold still. That’s it. Don’t that feel good? Don’t it? You’re really growing, really getting big now, ain’t you? Such nice big hands. You know, Marl, you ain’t like them other pineys in town. You’re more like me and ’Thena. Yeah, you got…fine qualities. I never believed none a them stories about you starting fires. Does that feel good? Come on. Yeah now. That’s it. Does it feel good now?”

  Disturbed by the light, crickets chirruped erratically. In the coops, the chickens stirred and complained.

  “Don’t move away now. This is nice, boy. Just let me…feels so…No!”

  The boy burst out of the doorway, leaped the three steps and hit the clearing a good yard away. Tripping in the darkness, he picked himself up running.

  “Hey, what’s the matter with you?”

  He glanced back once.

  “Boy, you’re really weird!” She stood framed in the doorway. “Where you going? I won’t tell nobody. You coming back?” As he tore along the darkly tangled trail, her voice followed. “You gonna tell? Weird! What’s the matter with you?”

  Reaching the road, he raced toward town, her words festerin
g in his brain. Something clicked in his face, and his hand came away wet. He sucked in his breath. The barking seemed closer now, and he ran, his temples pounding. A pulse throbbed in his neck, and he panted, stumbling in the sand. Thoughts of wild dogs pursued him, raging in his mind: hounds smelling his blood. Howling surrounded him. He fled through the night in panic, blackness dripping onto his shirt.

  The woods were not silent.

  She’d lain awake, clenched and sweating, but sleep had finally rolled over her in thick, smoky waves. Athena’s mouth made tiny whistlings like a child’s as she breathed in the damp, moldy smell of the mattress. The liquid sigh of the pines seemed slower, more somber to night, only sometimes peaking with a rush. Crickets called weakly, and her breathing droned. The house itself creaked. Some deep recess of her sleeping mind still listened, as gradually the wooden groans grew rhythmic. Soon she could hear the slapping of waves on the outside walls. Rising. Receding. Darkness seemed to lap around her, and the mattress floated. On her spinning bed, she tensed, squirming as the nightmare began.

  Dark…drowning…black choking…and suddenly eyes. At first many. Burning red. Malignant. Then only two.

  Something hungry, watching from the dark.

  Starting, she came fully awake and sat up, her body wet with perspiration. She kicked a tangled sheet and some clothes away from her legs, felt a wave of coolness. With one hand, she forced herself back down, felt the pounding in her chest.

  Through the open window drifted the distant howling of the town’s dogs.

  Well, that’s a new twist. Eyes wide-open, she lay, seeing nothing. Not just the dark this time, but something in it. Beads of sweat rolled down her face, and she inhaled deeply. After all these years, why should it change? The scanner’s tiny red light winked from the dresser. There’s my red eyes. The recognition brought no comfort—why should something so familiar, so positive, seem threatening? Her heart still hammered against the heel of her hand, and the sense of menace failed to dissipate.