by J. D. Wilkes
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BOOK ONE:
THE DEADENING
Chapter One
THE DEADENING
Chapter Two
GOLGOTHA
Chapter Three
GODSTORM
Chapter Four
HUMBUG
Chapter Five
SIN EATER
Chapter Six
A CONFUSION OF FOWL
Chapter Seven
THE UNBLINKING EYE
Chapter Eight
THE STUBBLEFIELDS
Chapter Nine
SIN EATER Part 2
Chapter Ten
SOUTH ELECTRIC EYES (S.E.E.)
Chapter Eleven
HARRAKINS
Chapter Twelve
CARVER
Chapter Thirteen
DADDY
Chapter Fourteen
FATHER OF WATERS
Chapter Fifteen
STONEY KINGSTON
Chapter Sixteen
ONE MISSISSIPPI… TWO MISSISSIPPI…
Chapter Seventeen
DADDY Part 2
Chapter Eighteen
WUNDERKAMMER
Chapter Nineteen
SIN EATER Part 3
BOOK TWO:
PANDELIRIUM
Chapter Twenty
BURKEHOLDER
Chapter Twenty-One
SERPENT
Chapter Twenty-Two
OLD KATE
Chapter Twenty-Three
WHITTLE STICK
Chapter Twenty-Four
MOTH MAN
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE CURSE OF COPPERHEAD
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE ORDER OF COPPERHEAD
Chapter Twenty-Seven
GALLAVANT’S END
Chapter Twenty-Eight
CARVER part 2
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOK ONE:
THE DEADENING
“To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.” —Flannery O’Connor
Chapter One
THE DEADENING
Victims of the Southern Kudzu epidemic.
My friend Carver.
A bike ride to adventure.
Every morning they’d sit beneath the drugstore awning, dealing cards and trading fibs, their eyes fixed on the woods across the way. Sometimes their voices would trail off mid-story, as if in a trance. But they’d always snap to with a few good country one-liners:
“Best way to plant Kudzu? Hold it out, drop it, and run!”
“Yup” and “Yessir,” they’d answer, staring back into those trees, their voices lowering into a Southern mumble of superstition and slang. In their flannel shirts and WWII VETERAN caps they’d talk for hours, conjuring up an air of mystery. I just hung back and breathed it all in like dark-fired tobacco smoke. It’s a place I’ve always loved, where old warriors told ghost stories and old ghosts told war stories.
“Bless their hearts,” said one. “It all just happened so fast.”
“Yessir, yessir,” they’d answer back again.
Bit by bit, so would assemble my favorite local legend, one I’ve heard told by both old and young fogeys alike. A story that goes like this:
A reclusive elderly couple died within days of one another inside their woodland home. Perhaps they were so in love, or so codependent, they just couldn’t live apart.
In the resulting abandon, a little Kudzu weed sprouted up through the floorboards. It was nothing more than a sapling, a sprig popping up beneath their bed. But it soon flourished into a monster that filled all four corners of the house. It gobbled up every stick of furniture, every appliance, even the kitchen sink. It got into the chimney; it got into the vents. It even ran down into the plumbing. But that wasn’t enough. The vine soon commenced to crave the taste of flesh. So it turned its head toward the deceased.
First it sent but a single strand to weave up their ankles, just for a quick nibble. A toenail here, an earlobe there. Just a taste. Then it gathered itself up, burgeoning under the bed where the two lay spooning. It spread out wide, climbed the ceiling, and curled its tendrils in like the clefs of a lyre. Then with lush abandon, the thing descended to devour them both, stem to stern. It constricted about their torsos, squeezed around their skulls, and sent feelers weaving in and out of every pocket, socket, and hole.
Days passed into weeks. Then months. Soon it began resembling the digesting rat-lumps of a boa constrictor. It gloated and bloated with rich human nutrients and could not be contained. The rate of its growth doubled, then tripled. It pulled itself evermore through the floorboards like a giant thread unraveling from the very fabric of Nature.
At last, it burst through the walls and overtook the entire Kentucky cliff-top. Plus anything else in sight.
Since the shut-ins had no family to remove what was left of their bodies, the plant reserved the honors for itself. And in the same way an acorn can fall to the earth and spring to a mighty life of its own, in the same way roots exhume the coffins they so rudely invade, this humble weed defied expectation. It gathered the lovers up, pulled them through the window and crocheted them into the wilderness.
To this day, so it is said, it’s all there for anyone to see: a horrible hillbilly filigree of dangling belongings and shocking remains. All of it cocooned in the oaks up on high.
Yes, for decades these souls have just hung there, caught in a gauzy blur between Heaven and Earth. Robes of flesh fell away as a new circulatory system twisted through their bones. It is said that the husband, in particular, suspends crowned with the graying laurels of past winters. His jaw hangs like a swinging crescent as his ribcage houses a nest of squirrels. And his skull-eyes are the doors of a martin gourd.
But as well known as the old dead couple is down here at the drugstore, the truth is that few have actually laid eyes on them.
A collective belly-laugh at some corny joke always signaled the start of their slow, moseying dispersal.
“Whelp, fellers. Keep the shiny side up and the greasy side down.” Or, “Whelp, fellers. Glad ya got to see me!”
You couldn’t leave until you heard a quip and chuckled. Then off they’d limp out from under the awning toward their farm trucks to sputter home, thinking no more of the Kudzu House and the poor couple that hangs outside.
But as for me, myself, and I, we aim to find them!
KENTUCKY
The “Old Spur Line” is the name of the abandoned railroad bed that cuts a path directly toward this mortal coil of legend. Both the railroad and the house—plus the sea of trees that swallows them both—can be found in the western swamplands of Kentucky. Our eight little counties have little to no violent crime to speak of, transfixed as we are on our lazy rivers. It is a place utterly cut off from the rest of the commonwealth. Almost an island unto itself.
It is called the “Jackson Purchase.” That’s because President Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory himself, huckstered it away from the Chickasaw. Local native Chief Paduke, who may or may not have really existed, was swindled out of his land too, done in by George Rogers Clark, kin to those “Lewis and Clark” guys. This area shares borders with other local castoffs: the “Bootheel” of Missouri and a sad section of Southern Illinois known as “Little Egypt.”
The Jackson Purchase shares the same line of latitude as Damascus, Yokohama, and the Rock of Gibraltar, but there are few topographical highlights. Only the occasional Appalachian foothill can be seen here or there, subducting into the trench of the Mississippi River and descending out of sight forever into the underworld.
HOW TO FIND THE OLD SPUR LINE
Go to the Littleville Bottleworks and cut to
the left. There’s an empty schoolhouse where kids break in to steal old flags and maps. Head around back. Here the Old Spur Line begins its way into Marshall County, crooked as a dog’s hind leg. This is the trail that leads us to our dark prize, the Kudzu House of Horrors. Soon our journey will begin and we shall see the mythic Gordian Knot. A Kong-size monkey fist clenching real human skeletons!
HEXEN
I am drawn to the forest today—this instant, in fact. The midsummer doldrums have left me wanting, the weather is nice and the wind is whispering my name. Plus, I have a friend who’s supposed to meet me at the trailhead soon.
But a more powerful force beckons me.
It’s as if the trees are giant witching rods that lure me in. And why couldn’t the woods draw human souls inside? Consider the watchful black-and-white eyes of birch knots and the siren whispers of weeping willows. Come to think of it, aren’t both breeds the actual source wood of dowsing wands? As creatures made up of 75 percent water, how can we resist?
And what is our soul but a fluid thing too, a flowing power that tunnels through our veins like currents through underground channels, like the very well-waters sought by the diviner? So, it is obvious! The trees, with their forky sticks a-wigglin’, have witched me to their entryway. For I am the well they wish to tap.
COME WHAT MAY
This will be both my first and last childhood adventure, albeit one conducted in my thirties.
Understand, much of my actual youth was spent in a state of arrested development inside a fatherless home. I typically stayed out of the sun, alone in the woods or indoors reading books. I loved anything having to do with Greek mythology, philosophy, the classics, or the Bible. Alas, I am now the type of guy who says “alas.”
Yes, there in the dark I’d hide from the hordes of vicious Kentucky hillchildren. As a result, I stifled any desire to tackle the outside world. My innate curiosity was repressed as I hunkered down inside, stuck like a yawn that couldn’t be brought to completion.
But not anymore! I have something to prove to not only myself, but to the town. You see, I have a rival in this county. An old enemy who has plagued me since grammar school. Stoney Kingston. He’s a loud-mouth blowhard who brags that he’s been to see the bodies. Says he left his initials carved in the tree. But I know him too well.
Yeah, he’s an impressive guy, with his horse farm, big cowboy hat, muscles and swagger. He stole my One True Love, in fact. Delilah Vessels. However, I aim to prove him a fraud if it’s the last thing I do.
Stoney and Delilah (oh, how I hate to say their names together) have been together off and on since junior high. But during one of those off times she was with me. We got Blizzards at the DQ our last visit together. She talked about how she doesn’t really love him because he won’t commit. How he screws around with rodeo groupies. But two months later they were back at it again, down at the swimming hole, skinny-dipping and you-know-what. Yeah, the whole town told me. Stoney told me too, the bastard. Had the Polaroids to prove it. Aghhhh, I don’t know. I guess I should move on, but I can’t help but think maybe there’s hope. Especially if I prove him a fraud, once and for all.
As a grown-up, I have the skills to withstand those old persecutions. Pent-up energy and drugstore legends are fueling a need for excitement. This is the day. I want “to stretch my eyes out” as Grandma used to say when she wanted to see new things. Time to cut loose. No more hang-ups. No more excuses.
I’ve heard it said: “Dreams don’t chase themselves.”
CARVER CANUTE
A rusty chain dragging the ground between two posts blocks the trailhead. The upright crossties lean in at one another like an arch missing its keystone. Expert guide and kindred spirit Carver Canute is here, a man fifteen years my senior. He busts off the chain and makes short work of the beams. Barehanded, he bear-hugs each one out of the ground and caber-tosses them fifty feet into a soybean field. It is a completely unnecessary display of strength.
KEEP OUT! NO TRESTPASING!
NO ATV’s. NO TRUCK’s. NO HORSE’s.
“It don’t say a got-dern thing about no mountain bikes.”
He puts his boot through the sign, exploding it into toothpicks.
Carver Canute is more ape than man, God love him. He’s part hick, part “full-blooded Cherokee.” Thunderbolt tribe, specifically. He stands only five-foot-nine but he has all the top-heavy girth of a Minotaur. His shoulders look like football pads, but down at his little hooves he comes to a point like an ice cream cone. And that wild, ruddy head is just the cherry on top.
He’s a cocky Elvis-haired hell-raiser who keeps his pompadour aloft with pork drippin’s, sweat, and a wafting circle of lies. He’s constantly telling whoppers, and he doesn’t give a crap what people think about him. In fact, he just left his truck dumped in someone’s ditch down the road. It’s what he calls his “Holler Mobile,” a vehicle that’s won MARSHALL COUNTY’S UGLIEST TRUCK CONTEST three years in a row. It’s enough to make him display his usual quirk of pride: adjusting the crotch of his pants, as if no pair of jeans on Earth could possibly contain his girth.
But most importantly, Carver is an anachronism. Following a wild spell after his parents died, he was bailed out of juvie and adopted by his Native American granny. Her and her second husband, Zeb Canute. Zeb was a primitive octogenarian hillbilly whose ancestry was “Scotch Arsh.” So Carver is a strange combination of both cultures, and a complete generational throwback.
His hands are those of the olde village smithee: broad and calloused beneath a mist of simian hair. Meat hooks really, lacking any flair to express the emotion of speech. They were crafted by God for the sole purpose of upgrading ape to man. Undoubtedly, they could wrench the head off a jackrabbit or make mulch out of most men. His thumbnail is blackened from the wayward hammering of some masculine project. And the meat beneath his skin is permanently toughened from a life of machinery and mayhem. It has left him as oaken and gnarly as an antique cigar-store Indian—as if you could cut him in half, count his rings, and be left in a whiff of disturbed patina.
All in all, he is a good-humored, gear-headed, coon-huntin’ raconteur. A thrill-seeking adrenaline junky who sports leather wrist cuffs and a wallet chain. And check out those fringed knee-high moccasins. He calls them his “goatboots.”
“Yer suppose’t stick their back legs down the front,” he tells me. “So they cain’t get away, if ya know what I mean.”
He has a foul mouth. Literally. I mean, his mouth is foul. It’s a veritable monstrance of filth. Specifically, I mean his teeth—or the pea-green excuses he calls his teeth. These hollowed-out stalactites of tar-blotched failure. These bituminous slivers of un-brushed rubbish. These oozing protrusions of pitch, blackened at the gum-line, scaly across the front, smelling of mothballs and decay. All eleven of them (and the George Washington-lookin’ three in front) are the remnants of his two-pack-a-day habit. Gawd, he coulda been a star on Hee Haw.
I should talk. My sorry gob is held together by three gold caps, an old retainer, and enough lead to cast a set of chess pieces. (They’re good for tuning in radio signals at night though!)
The rest of me is rail thin and frail beneath Carhartts, waterproof socks, and galoshes. I am weak and incomplete, the curse of a fatherless home. But I am curious and discerning, cautious yet hungry. Faraway gunshots remind me to put my ball cap on. That Day-Glo orange one that screams, CAUTION! HUMAN HEAD. DO NOT SHOOT!
Between us, we have two canteens, two machetes, a pocket-knife, a compass, a map, and a harmonica I bought at a Cracker Barrel.
Around Carver’s neck, hidden under his collar, hangs his grandmother’s old “Mad Stone.” It’s a handy amulet that draws the poison out of animal bites. Only five other Cherokee Mad Stones are known to exist in Kentucky, each supposedly possessing different “magical” properties. My father was obsessed with finding one for himself. We were always stopping at rock shops and junk stores, but all they ever had were hippy crystals and fool’s gold. Alas, nary a
Mad Stone could be procured.
Carver described how his Stone was once used on the victim of a rabid dog attack. The boy was just four years old when his grandfather left him alone to play on the farm. But mad dogs came, from neighbors away, and descended upon him. A pack of five Rottweilers tore him to shreds.
It was a hysterical scene as everyone on the rez gathered to weep, pray, and sing. Once the doctor got the bleeding to stop, Granny Canute stepped in, Mad Stone in hand, to draw out the disease. A bowl of milk was fetched and the amulet was applied to the wound. Slowly and repeatedly the poison was released from the stone into the bowl, turning the milk a mucus-green. When it finally ran clear, the malady was expelled, and the boy was left alone to mend. And indeed, he grew up strong. He grew up to be Carver Canute!
Whatever else we need, Mr. Canute will show me how to finagle from the woods. He’s been to the Kudzu House before and says Stoney is full of crap. It’s not an easy place to get to, but Carver makes short work of most obstacles, which is precisely why he’s here.
With our ingress made ready, Carver signals the time is nigh. Time to saddle up our ten-speeds, these flat-black spray-painted Schwinns that he probably stole from the “WalMarx.”
Ready or not, we hit the trail beneath a purple-soaked, early morning sky.
Chapter Two
GOLGOTHA
The secret history of The Deadening.
A “true” story from Carver Canute.
A failed prophecy.
The Old Spur Line is a whirling portal of living, dead, and living-dead foliage. A forbidden path of Southern mystery, it retreats from our town into the neighboring farm communities. It’s a “fur piece” from end to end, as Carver puts it, where the fields are all fallow and the beasts are all feral.
City slickers be warned: the artifices of urban life are absent here. Your whimpers will win you no sympathy. As in olden days, Natural Law is in full swing. Nature, lest you’ve forgotten, rewards merit and punishes sloth. And, though you may turn a blind eye, a deaf ear, or a cold shoulder, the most barbarian truths are contained in everything you see, hear, and touch.