by J. P. Willie
Gayla studied the expression upon her father’s face, still trying to read him. She possessed a God-given talent for reading people and later on in life, she would pass that ability to one of her sons; but for tonight, she just couldn’t figure her father at all – no matter how hard she tried.
Jerry Sr. reached his hand over to his daughter’s back, rubbing it in small circles. “It’s alright, Sissy, it’s alright,” he said.
Jerry Sr. knew full well what the hooded people were doing by the graveyard, but most importantly, he knew who – what – they were. He couldn’t tell his children the terrible truth, their youthful minds wouldn’t be able to comprehend the true horrors of what lurked in the town. Heck, he couldn’t even tell his wife!
Teddie was prone to overreacting and theatrics, which Jerry Sr. didn’t feel like entertaining right now. Yes, he thought to himself, he would tell several trusted members of the church – of course he would, he had to. There were the weekly meetings in which they discussed the comprehensive bible study curriculum, possible upcoming humanitarian aid support to the less fortunate countries on their ever-growing list, as well as who would host the next Saturday night pot luck at their home. Jerry was a man of God and a leader within the church, and he firmly believed that you must always protect the ones you love – and at any cost. And it was not just protection from the deranged and depraved, the killers and rapists, or those harmful lyrics within popular songs that could sway a person away from the Lord – no, Jerry Jones’s defense applied on every level as a father; protect them from pain, be it mental, physical, or emotional; Jerry Jones was a proud, stoic man who would willingly give up his life for any of his children.
Just as Jesus had died for all mankind.
Having well and truly instilled the Fear of God into his son, Jerry Sr. went to bed that night with fear in his own heart. He lay upon his bed, eyes wide and mind racing.
He prayed hard.
Not because he feared God – but because more than anything in the world, he feared what lurked in those woods.
CHAPTER ONE
COMING HOME: 2008
There were several reasons why I thought I would be dead long before Jamie.
I have witnessed the true revulsion of war, encountering bodies twisted and strewn in hideous, unnatural ways while serving my country in Afghanistan; man’s horror wrought upon his fellow man while supposedly seeking peace.
Also, there was what happened in the Woods.
I’m standing here in my old driveway thinking about my best friend, Jack’s sister, Jamie, who just passed away two weeks ago; she was sideswiped by an eighteen-wheeler as she was coming out of the Wal-Mart parking lot in our hometown, Hammond.
Memories of her as a young girl keep flashing in and out of my mind like an old, flickering film clip, only with color and occasional sound. I remember well all the times she used to bug the hell out of Jack and I, always diming us out to our parents whenever she found out some dirt. Even though she got on our nerves back then when we were kids, we are all wishing to God that she was still with us right now. Jesus, I can only imagine how much Jack must be missing her. The beauty mark she had under her left eye seems to be the image that burned its way into my mind like a hot iron; Jamie was the only girl I knew with one of those marks besides some erstwhile celebrities, and now my wife, Corrie.
I remember when Jamie was working at a Corndog stand in the Hammond Mall, a few years back, and giving away free food to my kids. Nachos, corndogs and strawberry ices had stuffed their greedy bellies that day and I remember asking myself, am I starving these kids or something? as I watched them scarf down greasy corndogs like prison inmates scoffing their final meal before the chair. I’d continued to stand at the counter and make small talk with Jamie while my unruly heathens finished their plates.
It breaks my heart now to know that although my children met her and will always remember her presence, Jamie’s own child, who is a year old, will never lay eyes on his mother’s face again, or even get to know her. I don’t know what else to say besides my heart goes out to him, and I know deep down in the remainder of my soul he’ll be loved and well taken care of for the rest of his life.
The smell of the air here always puts my body at ease as it chases itself, the cool chill of it descending deep down into my lungs. It actually feels as if I’m being cleansed of all the poison my body has been exposed to over the last thirteen years; the smells of the pines, honeysuckles and magnolia bushes remind me of the days that Jack and I roamed this street without a care in the world – it amazes me that our sense of smell as human beings is so directly linked to our memory, and how catching a whiff of something or having an unwanted stench invade your senses can set off one of two different chains of events. One is a swarming overflow of blissful memories being feelings of happiness; maybe the occasional replaying of a significant event in your life. The other is the complete opposite, which in turn is filled with regretful memories and feelings of sadness, accompanied with the rerun of something traumatic that occurred in your life.
To this very day, I can’t stand the smell of burnt pork.
One Father’s Day, while serving in Afghanistan, I had to medically evacuate several soldiers who’d been hit by a suicide bomber while riding reconnaissance in their vehicle. Once we’d got the injured soldiers transported out by helicopter, we were instructed to clean up the rest of the bomber and retrieve as many of the remains as possible. Lo and behold, less than fifty feet away from where I began my search I stumbled upon the bomber’s singed, mutilated, severed leg next to a building wall. The smell of the burning flesh that clung to the charred, protruding bones seared an everlasting imprint on both my senses and brain as I stood there under the scorching sun, breathing in the scorched stink of a dead coward.
But, unbeknownst to all around me, the aftermath of Mr. Suicide Bomber’s morning excursion wasn’t the first time I’d been subjected to violence, death, or the disturbingly macabre; I’d learned all about those right here where I’m standing – Rhine Road.
I can hear the crickets chirping in the distance, the same song they’ve sung since I was a small boy. The frogs are calling for their mates with stylish vocals, which to me sound horrible, all while the calm wind blows ever so gracefully through the tall, majestic pines. I’m here tonight not only to reminisce about the wonderful times I had while growing up on this street, but also to face the demons that have been haunting me and my dreams for the last thirteen years. Demons that kept me up at night more than the earth-shaking crash of mortar fire, or memories of random firefights combined. I have to do this thing for me, and no one else. I must come to terms with my past so that I may move on with my life.
As darkness begins to set in on Rhine Road, I watch the last sliver of daylight slope below the trees that stand directly in front of me. As I disregard the owls as they begin their nightly operas, I focus my attention to my old backyard and see that my basketball hoop is still exactly where I left it all those many years ago. Weeds and grass have wrapped themselves all the way up to engulf the backboard and now it resembles a basketball goal that Swamp Thing would shoot hoops on. I guess whoever moved into my grandparent’s old house recently never got around to tear the old bastard down, as unsafe as it looked. So here it is, like some lonely survivor of a Great Basketball Holocaust, becoming less and less visible to me as the darkness slowly swallows it up.
I shut my car door, walk down the old driveway and can’t believe it’s still partially paved with the remnants of the asphalt I remember so clearly. Weeds and grass are winning the battle over the pavement, though; green growth shoots out from the uncountable cracks that crisscross the lingering blacktop, like some oozing infection exuding from beneath the earth.
Snap!
I quickly turn around and with nervous eyes examine the woods directly behind me across the street. Something – or someone – was in there. I pause in total silence – listening, waiting and watching the woods.
No
thing.
Maybe it was just a raccoon, or some other furry creature chasing down its prey? A deep sigh of relief releases itself from my lungs and I turn back to resume my walk along the driveway. I postpone my trip a second time; my eyes blur and a faint vision of my old mobile home comes into focus on the flickering screen of my mind. It feels as I am suffering a hallucination, which is purposefully attempting to distract me from my purpose of being here.
Deep inside my imagination, I envision the trailer’s long, white body stretched sideways across the yard, separated by rust-colored lines that run vertically every fifteen feet or so, and my old bedroom window that seems to scream for my attention. I spent many rainy days and sleepless nights gazing from that window upon the star-filled skies, or the torrential downpours that often took place upon the weed-riddled lawn. In my mind, the front porch, which hosted many stunts with hippity-hops from my brother and I, stood its ground under the cheap outer screen door that firmly connected itself to the blistering white entrance of the trailer - it’s funny how I can remember what my trailer looked like way back then, yet I can’t remember where the hell I put my car keys on a daily basis. I made so many wonderful memories growing up in that old trailer with my mother, Gayla, and our brother, Hunter; often times, I wish I could return to those days, but of course, I can’t.
I take another deep breath of the fresh country air and feel it sweep down through my body. My chest begins to swell and a solitary tear rolls out of my left eye and trickles down my face. Wiping it away, I close my eyes and think back to 1989, the year I made some of my fondest memories as a child, and the time I began living some of my worst nightmares.
CHAPTER TWO
A Trip Down Memory Lane: 1989
I was eight years old and rocking a killer mullet hairstyle. I was as scrawny as hell, (weighed in at a whopping seventy pounds) and hyper as a field mouse on cocaine. I always wore spandex shorts of some sort, most of which were purchased by my mother from Wal-Mart. I never really wore a shirt much, so naturally I exhibited a nice tan almost all year round. I owned a blue bicycle that I rode everywhere I went – it was like my own American Express card; never left home without it.
Much later in life, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, good ol’ ADHD, but during those days growing up in the Deep South, despite diagnoses of hyperactivity having dated back to the late ‘60s, a kid like me was just considered a little badass with no home training.
Of course, that wasn’t true; my mother was a great parent. She raised and disciplined me well to her utmost and did the most amazing job as a single mother. Shit, it’s not easy raising children, period, especially those who are into every damned thing possible like my brother and I. My mother had been living on Rhine Road since way back in the ‘70s, many of her adolescent years having been spent here until she met my douchebag father in ‘78, married his no-good ass in ’80 and moved from Rhine Road out to Robert, Louisiana. She had me dragged out of her stomach – literally kicking and screaming – via caesarean, and then came back to Rhine Road in ‘81.
That’s right; you can’t say I was ever wet behind the ears. No pussy ever slapped me in the face on the way out.
Our trailer was located about a hundred feet to the right of our grandparent’s house – that’s Memaw and Papaw to my brother and I. Their home consisted of solid white slate rock – which produced a bright gleam of white only the clouds could envy – which supported your typical blacktop roofing. Inside, there were three bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen and a decent-sized living room. Momma told me once that Pepaw single-handedly ran all the plumbing – including the sewage – electric circuits and wiring throughout the house when it was being built. Pepaw was a latter day Bob the Builder, so to speak; it’s sad that most men don’t come handy like that anymore – hell, I can barely tighten up a screw in the rocking chair for my wife without my blood pressure rising! But Pepaw was special; one of the world’s last real, great men and that’s the God’s honest truth.
Over the years, Pepaw had built his own shed, with matching white slate rock and all, just behind the house, and I recall seeing him in there, constantly practicing his carpentry skills on some piece of lumber he’d acquired from somewhere or another, and I remember watching him wipe sawdust away from that bushy mustache of his, shooting a smile back at me as I watched him work.
You see, Pepaw and Memaw were helping take care of us financially, since my no-good excuse for a father claimed he wasn’t making enough money to send child support. We all knew that was horseshit.
My parents had only been officially divorced for two months and momma was too busy raising my brother and I to get a job; deep down, in the very fiber of her being, Momma felt that it was her sole responsibility and mission in life to raise us. I couldn’t have agreed any more, if she had not been there for us, there’s no telling if I’d actually still be alive today. Despite the divorce and the constantly present financial hardships, we as a family were extremely happy. Never were we upset, or depressed, especially about the divorce, although I suspected that my mother cried many tears behind closed doors, without my brother or I ever knowing for sure. That’s how she protected us, by not letting us see her pain. Momma always had a smile on her face for us kids, no matter how bad she was hurting that day, or wondering how the hell she was going to be able to survive on her own; my dear mother always seemed to shield us from any of life’s sorrows – and it worked, we never felt a thing.
Pepaw moved to Rhine Road in 1970 from Vivian, Louisiana after accepting a job with the Shell Oil Company out of New Orleans. Momma told me that when she’d moved to Rhine Road it was nothing more than a dirt road in the middle of the countryside. Over the years, the road was extended to about a mile and a half long and deep ditches were dug up on both sides to help decrease the flooding during the rainy months. Lining the man-made trenches stood the mountainous trees which casted a cool gaze upon the residents and offered a place of refuge from the unforgiving Louisiana sun. When I was younger, around six or seven years old, they made me think of oversized tree people watching a Mardi Gras Parade on a bright February afternoon, the wind swaying them from side to side as if they’d drunk too much bourbon.
Of course, Pepaw had to commute long drives to and from New Orleans, but Momma told me he liked the drive and actually appreciated the solitary peace of his monthly trips.
Most of Pepaw’s time wasn’t consumed in New Orleans behind a desk, but on oil rigs across America and in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He’d started off as a roughneck, but worked his ass off over the years and now spent his months in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen, always bringing back stories of the strange people he met there for Hunter and I, and gifts for the ladies. I remember well him telling me about children my age carrying machine guns in Saudi; in the not-so-distant future, I’m sure we wasted some of those kids after 9/11 – but let’s not get me started on the war in Afghanistan, or we’ll be here all damned day. All in all, Rhine Road was a quiet, peaceful street and that’s why my mother and Pepaw always came back to it.
During the year 1989, houses were sprouting up faster than the weeds up and down the street. A sub-division that Alton Benson (the local real estate snob) had just finished construction on –christened The Oaks – quickly became a hot commodity. Even though the street was beginning to build up nicely, this was still the country and the sub-division wasn’t all that big. The street names in The Oaks were named after Benson’s sons, Daniel, Keith and Alvin. All three Momma knew personally, but they were even better acquainted with my Uncle Jerry. Momma said she eventually fell out of touch with them over the years; she wasn’t the only one having kids and trying to survive life.
Rhine Road quickly filled with new faces and personalities. A mid-thirties couple, Matt and Julie Green, had moved into the house across the street from my grandparents’. They relocated from Mississippi and had two children, Kyle and Lucy. Kyle was about six years older than me, but Lucy was around my age.
Then you had Mr. Littleton, a cripple confined to a wheelchair, who was accompanied by a sweet lady named Miss Lynda, a single mother with a child named Alex.
One day, I was hanging out with Alex trying to catch minnows in one of the ditches by Pepaw’s house and I’d asked, “How do they actually do it? His pecker doesn’t even work!”
With a sly grin, Alex had responded with, “He just sucks on her tits and plays with her cooter; I’ve walked in on them a few times!”
At that, we laughed until it hurt.
Alex was a puny kid, not skinny like me but like a white version of the Ethiopians we saw on the TV documentaries. He was blonde, and had freckles all over his face, and his damned ears stood out like he was a wingnut or something. The poor kid was also incredibly impressionable, and I could get him to do pretty much anything I wanted him to.
During those early years on Rhine Road, Alex was the only person I could call a friend, but sometimes I fucked with him way too much. I recall one time convincing him that killer ninjas lived in the woods behind his house, and the poor little bastard couldn’t sleep for weeks. Miss Lynda eventually picked up the phone, dialed Momma and asked her if she’d tell me to lay off the killer ninja bullshit since Alex couldn’t sleep. What can I say? Ninja Gaiden was my favorite game at the time and I was obsessed with all things ninja, so why not make up a scary story to scare the shit out of someone? It wasn’t my fault that I had a wild imagination, and although the numerous times I messed with Alex’s head, he remained my first real friend on Rhine Road.
Around this time, Momma was dumb enough to convince Pepaw to get me a BB gun. I know, you’ll shoot your eye out was the well-worn saying that stuck with those confounded things ever since A Christmas Story hit the theaters, but I loved it and can still see perfectly fine with both eyes. Anyhow, we owned a dog named Trixy. She was some kind of mixed breed that we people down south refer to as shit-eaters. If it wasn’t pure breed, it was a shit-eater and boy, Trixy was a shit-eater all right. She looked to be ninety percent Chihuahua and ten percent French bulldog. She was cute as could be though, and her white underbelly was always dirty, while the rest of her was black as midnight.