The Vine That Ate the South

by J. D. Wilkes

  Mr. Cold exchanges glances with the White Thing and I am instructed to make myself comfortable, as comfortable as one can be when chest-deep sludge is lapping at your throat and your friend is lying dead a mile away. But I am powerless to resist as the Mothman winds up for a tale about this Great Spirit.

  LORD, when oh when will story-time be over?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE CURSE OF COPPERHEAD

  Indrid Cold reveals the hidden history of my homeland.

  “Picture it: Within the speckled black canvas of endless night, the architects of Fate lie dormant. God and the Devil, locked in stalemate… neither is watching. But there is one other player in this eternal drama. In case you didn’t know, the ‘Spirit’ you saw goes by the name ‘Copperhead.’ He joined the heavenly Host after he and his tribe of Chickasaw were slaughtered in the skirmishes following the Louisiana Purchase. Copperhead was grandfathered into Heaven to create a more diverse heavenly populace—one not so overwhelmed with Judeo-Christian fuddy-duddies. But do not speak his name lightly, for he is my worst rival. For two hundred years he has whiled away his celestial free time by meting out wickedness from Heaven upon the various nations of white men.

  “Then, in the same way one might choose a random location by pelting a finger onto a spinning globe, Copperhead sent his red talon descending through the Chaos to find another area to torment. And all the while, I must add, the hosts of Heaven never suspected a thing.

  “Your particular little county is where his finger most recently fell, almost thirty years ago to the day. His presence was felt within seconds as the townsfolk buckled under his sway. Writhing with misery, malaise, and decay, this place, this “Realm of the Red Snake,” helplessly wheeled in his shadow. And he would show no mercy. He never shows mercy.

  “When the floods came, your famous Indian burial mounds collapsed: their loose flint and pottery, a flotsam of history. Set free at last were the restless native specters, moving now like mystic swirls along the water, where spirits forever prefer to be. The ground was left a sloshy gray sponge. Cypress knees poked out of the quagmire like wooden shark fins, and what trees remained stood gutted and slumped, depressed that destruction hung so near.

  “April flooding subsided as May came pouting in. Receding floodwaters revealed random waterlogged carcasses in the creek beds. The membranous beatings of cicada wings hummed in the gray skies above. They barnstormed the town in an endless onslaught. Pre-war brick facades and blacktop swelled and popped in the ruthless white heat. Branches raked upward like pleading hands. The racket of buzzards and dirt daubers replaced the songs of doves and gulls. The whole county felt like a bee sting. But it wasn’t just a change in the weather; it was a shift in attitudes too. Hapless souls, suddenly made slaves to technology, greed, and progress, fell prey to the seven deadly sins. Community spirit was destroyed as families and friends turned inward to nurture their own ‘inner child.’ Outside the ruins of the town square, plastic backlit signage with fast food logos blazed across the once-lazy horse pastures. Cars honked, charged, and crunched as Copperhead’s sacro-savage influence was felt on every level imaginable.

  “However, so gradual was the full transformation that no one could quite detect it, although there were signs and signifiers. Locusts emitted a non-stop telemetric chatter, and bleak prophecies were constantly droning through the woodlands. Tree rings spun like decoder rings ciphering a mystic mathematics. However, some folks read the portents wrong, like Brother Stiles, your local televangelist. Only a chosen few, like the grave-keeper you saw today, could read the signs correctly.

  “Regardless, Copperhead continued to pull no punches ushering in this new Dark Age, this ‘Age of Information.’

  “‘You want progress?’ he said. ‘I’ll give you progress!’

  “What brain cells were spared by the television were fried by the even flashier technology. And don’t get me started on what they put in the tap water! Suffice to say, it was all one tacky headlong rush into extreme industry and leisure, and its consequences were felt full force. Enslaved by marketing and poisoned by processed foods and pharmaceuticals, the living were now dead, dead on the inside, and the actual dead didn’t know how good they had it.”

  I am still in a daze of swarming dots and droning woods, trying to understand who these entities are—Mr. Indrid Cold, the White Thing, and Copperhead—and what they want with me. Regardless, the Mothman continues recounting the hidden history of my homeland:

  “Indeed, just when you’d think it couldn’t get any worse, none other than Saint Gabriel himself—in a flash!—wrestled the ‘Red Snake’ from his post and cast him from Heaven. It was an explosive maelstrom of fury and Copperhead was at last doomed, his deeds exposed and his schemes upended. His wings were sawn off by Saint Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, and, just like Lucifer who was banished in a bolt of lightning, Copperhead suffered the same electric justice. The Van Allen belt snapped the dark voltage earthward, and within the blink of an eye, the Southern landscape below became the recipient of its own tormentor. With a deafening crack of thunder, his spirit struck directly into the heart of Marshall County.

  “But rather than being driven into the ground and on into Hell, the lightning bolt unfortunately arced. It struck a pole. Yes, a literal iron flagpole. The surge followed along a connecting metal leash and zapped a path straight into a chained-up junkyard dog. Yes, son. Right into the very soul of a certain German Shepherd.”

  “‘Sparky,’” chimed the White Thing from fifty feet away.

  “Yes. Sparky is the name of this animal, ironically…” Cold continues.

  “Probably not the same ‘Sparky’ with brass balls,” I somehow muse to myself.

  “The fur ran white down the hackles of the cursed cur’s back, his eyes clouded over with evil. Then, around the pole, the hainted hound did run, night and day, until the yard became a muddy circle of dog tracks and rabid foam.

  “However, while Copperhead seethed inside his new canine confines, something amazing happened. Something miraculous. For just as a human heart can be defibrillated by an electric charge, the heart of your homeland was released from its sickness and energized with fresh new power. A couple of Walmarts caught fire, the Lowes closed down, and folks started waking up out of their comas of self-absorption.

  “The evil rush to progress had been abated and everything immediately went back to near-normal.

  “What you will find even more interesting is that this all just happened mere moments ago, the exact moment when you were sent splashing to freedom. Your vines loosened, your tree was felled, and the Bell Witch was sent screaming back to her cave in Tennessee.

  “But, be warned. This good news only lasts as long as Copperhead is held hostage within the soul of another living thing. So, for the sake of your family and friends, you had better pray to God that dog keeps running.”

  “So we’re safe for now… sir?” I ask, remembering my place.

  “Yes, you are safe for now. As long as that dog is alive, which he is. Beyond that, I cannot tell. It is up to the LORD.”

  “But what’s this business with the Mad Stone? Kate said she wanted me to hand it over. But Carver’s got it.”

  “Your friend is carrying something special. It is one of only five in existence. Together they are powerful…” he pauses. “As your father once knew.”

  “You knew my dad?” I ask, still bobbing in the muck in disbelief.

  “We can do better than that!” he says, motioning toward the White Thing.

  “My friend can sing it to you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  THE ORDER OF COPPERHEAD

  The White Thing sings.

  Cult activity.

  The story of my father revealed.

  The White Thing is a curious creature. Not as odd as a Mothman, a Bell Witch, a Sin Eater, or a forest of dead souls, but still quite bizarre. There is a Cheshire cat quality to him, an aloof translucence. There is also a tangible, sine
wy aspect to this half-real beast, and a musculature that is 100 percent pure Kentucky panther. His fur is light gray, dull, and matted. He throws no shadow but is himself a pale penumbra of another world: a world “east of the sun and west of the moon.”

  His voice is banshee-high, clarion and sad, and the tale he sings spells out the occult backstory of my father’s dealings with something called the “Order of Copperhead.”

  Perhaps it must be added to the litany of other secret societies found deep in the backwoods South, the ones I mentioned before: the Ku Klux Klan, the Night Riders, the Loyal Leagues, the Rifle Clubs, and the Red Shirts. Not to mention the Order of Myths, the Mardi Gras marauders of Joe Cain.

  The White Thing stands erect, facing away with his paws held behind his back and his chest swelled up like a diplomat. His song of satanic conspiracy begins:

  Way down south

  In a Ken-Tuck town

  Where all of the Stubblefields grow

  One man did rise

  With the Devil in his eyes

  Whose heart was dark as West Field coal.

  Heart was dark as West Field coal.

  Twelve angry men

  Did join him in his sins.

  They knelt around a darkened grave.

  They drew their daggers down,

  The red ran to the ground

  And they licked along the bloodied blades.

  They licked along the bloodied blades.

  He said that he would share

  His sacrificial heir

  As soon as the child could be bred.

  They swore a bloody oath

  And drank a bloody toast

  And called themselves the Order of Copperhead

  Called themselves the Order of Copperhead

  When that awful day did come

  To offer up his son,

  He hid his only heir far from home.

  But the Order did give chase

  To hunt both night and day,

  While the father sought the five Mad Stones.

  He did search for the five magic stones.

  Only four of the stones

  Were able to be loaned,

  A fifth one would remain hid.

  But with four well in the hand

  T’was plenty to command

  A war against the cult of Copperhead.

  War against the cult of Copperhead.

  Years did come and go

  When at last one golden dawn,

  The men did meet to battle to the death.

  But the father, he was felled

  So too the fearsome Twelve

  Yet an evil prayer escaped their dying breath.

  A prayer escaped the Order’s dying breath.

  “Copperhead” is the name

  Of their shaman god of pain,

  Chief among the devils of the dead.

  “Of stones, there is a fifth

  Hidden with his kith,

  Avenge us!” they called to Copperhead.

  And so died the Order of Copperhead.

  Copperhead, in his rage,

  Commenced an evil Age

  To lure the son into his watchful woods.

  Yes, the heir and his friend

  Were to meet a fatal end,

  But the LORD God is just and is good.

  And smote the Serpent rightly where he stood.

  Take heed all ye wandering children so lost!

  Dwell not in the caves of your mind.

  Though the sins of the father

  Are paid upon the son

  His love is revealed over time

  A father’s love is revealed in time.

  The refrain hits me hard. I’m both devastated with relief and flabbergasted beyond belief. My wicked father, redeemed now to a degree, at last had enough humanity to sacrifice his own life in order to save mine. But what possessed him to get involved with such darkness in the first place? To hold court with a cult and promise to offer me, his infant child, as human sacrifice? What the hell?

  Was it easier for him to prove the existence of the Devil than God? Or was it just more fun?

  But by forming this pagan “Copperhead” group my father had bitten off more than he could chew. Initially it gave him power, a power that perhaps flourished in The Deadening. But it wasn’t enough to help him withstand the wages of his own sin.

  It occurs to me, as the two gods blur from view: I have now been spared twice, once by my terrestrial father and again by my Heavenly Father. If somewhere on my deathbed I am having this dream, indeed if I am receiving this message, then I am content to let go of my kite string and float off to meet my Maker. I have been blessed with a new comforting knowledge, a perspective that could only be provided in a fugue state. I am ready to be turned loose now, like so many shiny red balloons from the Kansas State Fair.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  GALLAVANT’S END

  Resuscitation.

  Carver Canute’s fate.

  Epilogue.

  Dear Mother,

  I am dead.

  I loved you though. Remember in church? Halfway through the sermon, when you’d tear a stick of mint gum in half and we’d share? I loved that.

  I hope I see you one day.

  mint… Mint… MINT

  Like its cousin “seafoam green,” the color “mint” reminds us of tropical havanas, shady seclusion, and safe harbor. It was a popular color in the 1950s, with everything from kitchen appliances to automobiles sporting the hue of the Hawaiian tropics (their new fiftieth state!). It is what doctors preferred to paint their operating rooms too. This is not just due to mid-century modern aesthetics. Rather, mint green is the natural complement of blood red. And as such, it neutralizes the after-image that imprints upon the surgeon’s retina during long hours of muck-raking and bone-sawing. Any other color and he would still see spots.

  So if you were to ask me what color symbolizes virtue I would tell you that mint is infinitely better than the classic answer, white. After all, mint is the color God Himself chose to negate the visual sting of blood, not to mention man’s age-old enemy, Fire!

  Mint is also the calming lens through which I observe my new life… the color of these hospital walls. And it is the polar opposite of the bloody veil that has been the back of my eyelids for what seems months on end.

  Photons of light assemble. The pixels of life! Suddenly I can see, hear, and feel my surroundings: Mint green walls, a beeping EKG monitor, a flat-screen TV, an overhead bulb, papery sheets, and painful plastic tubing. But my first instinct isn’t to yawn, stretch, and take a deep breath. It is to shut that damn TV off! Because if it’s one thing I can’t stand it’s those damn white-trash daytime talk shows, with all their paternity tests, food fights, and the hypocritical “moral” at the end from the host.

  I lunge for the remote control that sits an arm’s length away on my bedside tray, but I strangely come up short. An “arm’s length” is precisely what I’m lacking.

  “Oh no! They cut my arm off!” I gasp. “Oh God, no.”

  I reckon there’s been about two days’ worth of missing time since I discovered the amputation. I vaguely remember waking up once to discover a photo of myself taped to a coffee can full of money from my old pals at the drugstore. There were also a few Xeroxed copies of The Orthopaedics Journal set in a stack next to my bed. “Surviving a Snakebite” and “Starting Over As an Amputee” were the stories stapled in the corner and left for me to read. There was a picture of an Iraqi War soldier on one, I want to say. Then, it seems, a doctor might have come in and talked to me about my allergic predisposition to… blah blah blah. Something about a copperhead bite.

  To make matters worse, my current state of depression and pain is only compounded by my new visitor, Skitch Canute. The Devil’s understudy, always ready and willing to fill in in a pinch.

  “What were you two fudge-packers doin’ runnin’ around in the woods anyway?” Skitch yells from the hallway as he strides into the room. Strutting in like he
runs the place.

  “Where’s your brother? Where’s Carver?” I ask, mustering the strength to deal with this jerk. Skitch is only loud like this when he knows it will annoy someone.

  “He’s on the other side of the damn room, Sherlock, if ya just turn yer head and look.”

  Sure enough, Carver is lying in the bed next to mine. He is purpled and swollen beyond recognition. A hose has been fed down his throat. I see his heart rate on the EKG. It limps along like a three-legged dog.

  “Is he gonna pull through?”

  “Yeah. They found him just in time, thanks to that dogpath ol’ Tabitha Holt’s been cuttin’ out there. It made for quick n’ easy access.”

  “How? I mean, how did they find him? How did they know where to even start?”

  “After y’all come up missin’ fer so long, they finally sent out a search plane. The government keeps a fleet of crop dusters over at the waterworks. But somebody shot one th’ damn thangs down. It was that Dooney dumbass if I had t’guess. They sent some church folks down the dogpath to comb through that patch and they heard a bell a-ringin’.

  “Turns out that old ‘Bell’d Buzzard’ o’ mine was circlin’ Carver’s half-dead carcass. They never did find the plane’s pilot though, so it was really a lucky break that they found ol’ numb-nuts here, I tell ya what. They’s no way they woulda found him hidden up under all that laurel hell if it haint been for that bird looking for dinner.”

  “How long were we missing?”

  “Yessir, it was that Old Man Demp what shot Carver. But looka here. Right before Demp pulled the trigger, good ol’ Carver fired off a chunk of concrete and clocked that sum’mitch right between the eyes. Kilt ’im deader’n a dog in a ditch. Hah HA! DIE, you old bastard!” With my remote control, Skitch cranks the volume on today’s talk show and leans in for the paternity results.

  Delilah and Stoney, plus that Vietnam vet from the FOOD OWL, sit awaiting the announcement from the man in the sweater. The verdict is in: Stoney, that puppet-headed fraud, is the father. And I’m so crushed I can’t feel a damn thing. But it’s like I don’t even care anymore. Really, though. Who needs romance right now when life’s biggest question has already been answered? There IS a God!