The woman looked at him for a minute, then felt for a pulse. It was still there, but just barely.
She looked at the man and shrugged her shoulders. “I was hoping this one had a little more tolerance,” she said in an almost juvenile voice.
The man stopped his cutting and placed the scalpel on the instrument table. “We could still revive him if you want to take it farther.”
She stood there for a minute, as if in deep thought. Then she shook her head. “No. No let’s just get the plastic spread out in the van. I believe I’ve become bored with this one.”
CHAPTER TWO
Me and Glenn had been told to stay out of that cemetery at night no less than a thousand times. But what else were two fourteen year old boys who lived out in the country gonna do on a Saturday night? We were too young to drive, even if we had a car, and all the girls within walking distance were kin to at least one of us. There are always jokes being told about us folks in Alabama marrying our cousins. That’s mostly untrue. Anyway, even if there had been girls walking around as thick as fleas on a dog we would have been scared to death of them. Oh, we talked a big game when it came to the girls at school and what we would do if we ever got one of them alone, but up until this point talk is all it had amounted to. I could have made some stuff up, but I’m a horrible liar. Now Cob, Glenn’s brother, was an inveterate liar. He was four years older than us and had mastered the art not long after he learned his first words. But that had caused problems. He became like the little boy who cried wolf, and it got to the point that nobody knew if what he was saying was the truth or some fantastic yarn he’d spun.
But we were in the cemetery once again, along with Tom Jenkins, telling ghost stories and passing around the two Pabst Blue Ribbon beers Glenn had managed to steal from his daddy once he’d gotten too drunk to notice. Glenn’s momma even encouraged our stealing a couple of beers from old Roscoe on Saturday evenings. That meant there would be two less for him to drink. He still got falling down drunk anyway, but it was a nice gesture.
We all had pretty good imaginations and ghost story telling was in our DNA. I had two aunts that were afraid of everything that moved, except their husbands, but could tell the scariest stories you ever heard. A lot of nights I’d leave one of their houses after they had been telling those morbid tales and almost break my neck running home. Do you know how hard it is to run over a mile with your eyes shut every step of the way?
Anyway, back to the cemetery. The only reason our folks didn’t want us to hang out there at night was because of Old Man Turner, the de facto caretaker. He lived next to the place and was about eighty years old. He was still in good shape for his age, but his hearing wasn’t what it used to be and he was always afraid somebody was gonna steal some of his chickens or pigs or whatever else he had that was worth a continental shit. I believe the old man did have money, though. People said he was so stingy he wouldn’t give a nickel to see a piss-ant eat a bushel of corn and he probably still had ninety-cents of the first dollar he ever made.
But he was as nervous as a cut coon and suspicious of everybody and it only got worse as he got older. He kept an old double-barrel shotgun loaded with rock salt, and though rock salt is not lethal, if you were shot with it at fairly close range, it could make you wish you were dead. Momma was afraid we’d cause him to have a stroke or heart attack, or worse, shoot one of us. But when you’re young and full of piss and vinegar you will almost always do the opposite of what your folks tell you to do, so there we were.
We had just drained the last sixteen ounce can of beer, so naturally we had to pee. We jumped off the tables we were sitting on that the church had set up for their occasional dinners on the ground and walked to the little copse of woods behind the cemetery. The cemetery was on a hill and at the top of that hill, where the patch of woods were, the ground dropped almost straight down into a big, flat field. On the far side of the field, maybe two-hundred yards or so, we saw a light and the shadows of what looked to be two men, though at that distance it was hard to tell, even with the nearly full moon. They appeared to be just at the edge of the field where the woods began.
“You don’t reckon that’s Old Man Turner down there, do you?” Tom asked.
I was concentrating on keeping my aim on the tree I was peeing on and thinking about it.
“Nah, he wouldn’t be out in the middle of the night like this, would he?”
“He goes to bed with the chickens,” Glenn said. “It’s gotta be somebody else. Besides, there’s two of them. Looks like one’s got a shovel or somethin’.”
“Maybe they’re buryin’ a cow or somethin’ like that,” Tom said, zipping his pants.
“Well, if they are, they’re buryin’ it on Old Man Turner’s property. He’ll raise all manner of hell if he finds out.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re buryin’ it in the middle of the night,” was Glenn’s deduction.
Old Man Turner didn’t like anybody trespassing on his property for any reason, other than maybe stepping off the road for a car to get by. He was an irascible old cuss when he wanted to be and didn’t suffer fools or children. He tolerated us boys once we were big enough to help him get in his hay. We hired out in the summer to everyone in the community to help them get in hay and Old Man Turner always paid the lowest wages. But we helped him just the same. Momma said it was our Christian duty to help everyone in need. I thought us boys were in just as much need of money as he was help. Where was the quid-pro-quo?
We watched whoever it was doing whatever it was they were doing for about five minutes and finally got bored. We couldn’t tell what they were up to anyway, and were too big of cowards to walk down where they were. It could be anybody doing anything.
We eventually walked back up to the tables, had a seat, and continued our conversation, changing the topic from ghosts to girls. We knew a lot more about ghosts and weren’t nearly as afraid of them, but felt like we had to at least address the subject. Sooner or later we were going to have to stop being so spineless and actually start asking girls out on dates. We all three loved girls and fantasized about them constantly. Why was it we weren’t afraid of Daddy’s old mean bull, or afraid to dive off the high rock at Big Wills Creek, didn’t let rattlesnakes bother us much, but were terrified of a skinny little giggling girl? I couldn’t come up with an answer.
We hung around until about eleven o’clock and decided we had better head home. Me and Tom had to be at Sunday School in the morning. Glenn didn’t go to church much, despite the threats of fire and brimstone me and Tom always hurled at him like we were pounding him with rocks.
Just as we were nearing the end of the road that led out of the cemetery, an old screech owl let out a blood curdling scream that pierced the still night air like a bolt of lightning. It sounded just like a woman screaming and we all took off like we had been shot out of a cannon. After we had run far enough to be what we perceived out of danger, we stopped to catch our breaths.
“That wasn’t nuthin’ but an old owl.” Tom was bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing hard.
“Well I wasn’t gonna stick around to find out,” Glenn said. “It sounded like a woman to me. I’ve told y’all about old Jenny, the crazy woman that lives in that old house on the Dobb’s place. It could have been her. They say she comes to the graveyard at night sometimes and mourns them two girls, wailin’ away like there ain’t no tomorrow.”
Anytime we heard anything that even remotely sounded like someone screaming, Glenn always played the old crazy Jenny card.
There was this widow woman who lived in a house she rented from the Dobb’s family. The story was that she lost her marbles when her daughter died. The girl got hit by a car late one night when she was carrying water up Long Hollow Road from the spring below their house. One of the Bullard boys was driving the car and some said he ran over her on purpose. All those Bullards were mean as striped snakes, but most people didn’t believe that even they would run over a young girl that had ne
ver done anybody any harm. Personally, I thought the trouble making bastards were capable of anything. Anyway, it was ruled an accident and the poor girl was buried in a pine box. I was at the funeral and saw it. The woman was real poor and that was all she could afford. Folks in the Long Hollow community would have made up and given her enough money to have bought a decent casket, but she was too proud to ask.
The story goes that after her oldest daughter was killed, she was afraid to let her other daughter outdoors again. She locked her in her room and brought her meals to her and even made her use a slop jar so she wouldn’t have to go to the out-house. The poor girl died about two years later of unknown causes. Then old Jenny really lost it, they say. The yarn was spun even further that the girl stood at her window so much, wishing she could go outside, that her image was permanently frozen to the window panes.
These were the simpletons and dullards I was forced to grow up around and that were allowed to breathe the same air I did. And Glenn, bless his heart, was one of them. At least at times he was. He wanted desperately to believe in ghosts and goblins.
I knew better than to try and persuade Glenn that the sound we heard had not come from Jenny, so I didn’t waste my breath. As we were parting ways in front of the cemetery, a pick-up truck pulled out of the old dirt road that ran around behind the cemetery and turned onto Long Hollow Road and was coming toward us. We all jumped down the bank beside the road before the headlight beams were able to hit us. As soon as the truck had passed, we climbed back up the bank quickly to see if we could recognize whose truck it was, but it was impossible to tell from the fleeing tail lights.
“That’s those fellows that were down in the field,” Glenn said. “We ought to go down there tomorrow and try to figure out what they was doin’.”
“Well, if you really believe they were up to no good, we might just do
that. But I believe we’d be wastin’ valuable fishin’ time.”
CHAPTER THREE
I had noticed the Catawba worms starting to appear about a week earlier, which meant they should be out in full force by now. It’s remarkable how nature provides. The Catawba trees grew right on the banks of Big Wills Creek. So all expert anglers like me and Glenn had to do was pluck them off the leaves and bait our hooks. There was nothing bluegills and big mouth bass liked better than big, juicy Catawba worms, and we aimed to have us a fish fry that evening.
We had scrapped the idea about going down to the field behind the cemetery. Priorities change at the speed of light when you’re fourteen years old. We stopped at Aunt Lena’s store and bought us some fishing tackle. For somewhere around a dollar-fifty you could get the entire hook, line, sinker and float all bundled up in a neat little package. It was all wrapped around this little plastic do-dad that looked kind of like a toy ladder. We kept our poles stashed in a sink hole under some old drift wood that the creek had deposited there over the years when it flooded. If they weren’t there it was no big deal, because cane poles grew all along the creek bank, too. Another one of Mother Nature’s wonderful provisions.
Our favorite fishing spot lately had been about a mile below the Long Hollow Road bridge, where the roots of an ancient sycamore tree had finally succumbed to years of erosion caused by the creek when it flooded. The tree had fallen across the water and created a natural dam. This made a nice little waterfall about six feet high. At the bottom of the falls was a big, deep hole where the water was still and smooth as glass and as blue as the ocean. Me and Glenn had named it, obviously, The Blue Hole.
Just as we had climbed down to the bottom of the bank from the bridge, we saw Snake Williams leaning against a tree licking the paper on a cigarette he had just rolled. They had been making ready-rolls for about a hundred years but old Snake hadn’t caught on yet. Old Snake was as crazy as a shit-house rat and his family was as poor as Job’s turkey. He thought he was an Indian and probably did have a little Cherokee blood coursing through his veins. He was dark complected and had straight, shoulder length hair that was as black as a chunk of coal. He said he was a full-blooded Cherokee, but his brother, Frank, was only half. They had the same momma and daddy. I told you he was crazy.
Snake started walking toward us, lighting his cigarette. If he had any of the inherent traits an Indian was supposed to have, stealth sure wasn’t one of them. He was tall and lanky and had big feet that turned out like a penguins. He was clumsy as an ox and it seemed like he had to really concentrate hard just to put one foot in front of the other. His shoulders were always stooped and his long arms hung down to his knees. His head would bob like a chicken’s each time he took a step. I don’t believe his family had been walking upright for more than a couple of generations.
“Y’all hear about Auburn blockin’ them two kicks and a-beatin’ Alabama?” Snake asked, with a dull look on his face.
“That was two years ago, Snake,” I answered, wishing he hadn’t seen us.
“Well, I didn’t know zactly how long ago it was. I think I just heard about it the other day from Frank.”
Snake could talk the horns off a billy goat and was not someone you needed around when you were about to do some serious fishing. I figured the best thing to do was just stand there for a few minutes and let him get it out of his system. Besides, I didn’t want anybody else to know about our secret fishing hole. Snake talked on for about ten minutes, mostly on subjects that made no sense at all or had happened a long time ago.
“Well, I gotta git back towards the house, boys. Daddy wants me and Frank to sharpen them saws this evenin’ so’s they’ll be ready first thang in the mornin’. Hope y’all catch a big mess a fish.”
We waited until Snake stomped up the bank and got out of sight before we started walking toward our fishing spot.
“I feel sorry for ol’ Snake and all them Williams’, don’t you?” Glenn said as we were walking.
“Yeah, well, I do in a way,” I answered. “His daddy brings a lot of their woes on himself, though. Every time he gets two nickels to rub together he spends it all on beer and whiskey. And poor old Annie ain’t able to work with that arthritis she has. She barely can get around some days. Old Hugh is just white trash and he always will be. Annie only stays drunk because she’s always in pain and probably down and out all the time because of her miserable life. I believe what’s wrong with Snake and Frank is that Annie drank the whole time she was pregnant with them. His sisters are normal. His oldest sister, Georgia, was a real beauty, remember? She was real smart in school, too. When she married that man from Atlanta, he footed the bill for her to go to college. She’s got a high payin’ job over there now. But they say her husband won’t allow her to send her momma and daddy any money because he says old Hugh would just drink it all up.”
We crossed over the old rusty, barbed-wire fence that had served no purpose for years other than being an obstacle, and Glenn got his shirt tail caught on one of the barbs. It tore a small piece out and Glenn flew into cussing, “Shit fire to save matches. That’s nearly a new shirt!” His face was red as a beet.
“I’ve seen that shirt on you a bunch of times,” I said.
“Well, it still looks new. Or at least it did ‘til now.”
That shirt he had on had probably belonged to Cob and been passed down to Glenn. Glenn’s last name was Burt, and Old Man Turner didn’t have anything on that Burt family when it came to being tight with money.
After Glenn got over the devastation of the permanent damage his shirt had encountered, we began gathering Catawba worms and putting them in an old Maxwell House coffee can. We put two leaves off the Catawba trees in the can for provender and to try and re-create their natural habitat, as if two leaves in a tin can were going to accomplish this.
After a few minutes of fishing, out of the clear blue, Glenn suddenly decided he just wasn’t in a fishing mood today.
“Let’s go up to the old Horton place and see what that weird couple’s house looks like,” Glenn said.
I looked at him like he had l
ost his mind. I had already pulled in a big bluegill that was as wide as both my hands put together.
“The fish are bitin’,” I said, holding the bluegill up in front of his face as if he hadn’t already seen it.
“I don’t wanna fish. That’s all we ever do besides coon hunt and go in a cave once in a while. Don’t you ever wanna do something a little more adventurous?”
“Not when the damn fish are bitin’ I don’t! Besides, what’s so adventurous about goin’ to see somebody’s house?”
“It ain’t just anybody’s house,” Glenn retorted. “It’s that couple that nobody ever sees out anywhere. The only person I know who’s seen ‘em is Marvin Taylor. He was with his momma at the A&P in Collinwood the other day and saw ‘em. He said his momma spoke to ‘em and they barely nodded. But he said the woman was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. Said she looked as good as Madge, but I don’t believe that. Ain’t nobody looks that good.”
“Maybe they just like to be left alone,” I said.
“I’ll bet you anything they’re hidin’ something. Why do you think they bought the Horton place and built their house so far up in the woods?”
I knew nothing was going to please Glenn but to traipse through miles of thick woods and going to spy on some people who probably were not guilty of anything other than wanting their privacy. We stashed our fishing poles back in the little ditch and covered them back up. I turned the bluegill loose with great reluctance.
*****
I hadn’t been through the thick woods leading up to the Horton place in a couple of years. Whoever the people were who had built their house back in these ridges wanted privacy, alright. The drive that led to their house was almost two miles long and was rough as a washboard. There were ruts and gullies all the way up to a heavy metal gate that had been installed about halfway up the drive. Glenn pointed to what looked like a camera of some kind. Then we noticed there was one on both sides mounted on top of the large brick columns that supported the gate. We steered clear of the road and continued up through the woods. They were almost impenetrable from the thick patches of blackberry and saw briars, as well as every species of vine imaginable, including poison ivy. I wasn’t affected by poison ivy but Glenn could just look at it and break out in red, itchy whelps.
Long Holler Road - A Dark Southern Thriller Page 2