It was a quick and simple funeral, the only one that I knew of during that entire death-filled time. Lucas, Mom Allie, and I took turns with a shovel from the garage, and though the grave we dug was shallow, we covered it over with heavy rocks from a pile by the fence, once Jess Sweetbrier was in it. Lantana knew the right words to say, and we all stood in the pale late-afternoon sunlight as she spoke.
"Lord, you've seen fit to give the world a new start. We all know that that means hardship and suffering for us and for ours. Our friend Jess has been spared the tribulations that we must still face. Welcome him to heaven, Jesus, and guide our way as we go."
We found our patient lying still and pale, but she looked up as we came in and said, "Our car is in the garage. If they didn't ruin it, it should run ... the battery was new last summer. We could go by the road and miss the woods entirely."
I looked at Mom Allie. She nodded. "You don't need to take a long, cold ride behind a mule, for sure," she said to Mrs. Sweetbrier. "I'll drive and Lantana can see to you. The three of us will go that way, and we will see what we can salvage of your clothes and covers.
"Luce," she turned to me, "Maud has to go back tonight. There's not so many mules left that we can risk one. Are you and Lucas game to take the wagon back?"
The thought of the thick woods along the river was now filled with dread. I knew that for my own self-respect I must go back that way.
The car, a 1980 Plymouth, started on the second try and ran like a top. The gas gauge sat on a half tank, which would give us more mobility than we had had with only the pickup for transport. Once we were sure that the three women would get safely away, we went back to the dreaming Maud, waked her with a cluck, and turned back toward the forest.
It was already dusky beneath the trees. Owls were hooting already, and as we turned into the track, heading home, a bobcat squalled in a thicket, to be answered by another up ahead. Maud picked up her ears, realized that she was headed, at last, in the right direction, and all but broke into a trot. We jounced along in the wagon, teeth rattling, but we were, if truth be told, glad enough to be moving at such a good clip. Neither Lucas nor I had any desire to meet those who had attacked the Sweetbriers.
The wagon rattled and squeaked, the harness chinked softly, but I kept my ears cocked for any sound that seemed alien or threatening. I was listening so hard that I almost missed seeing what was before my eyes. Another pair of eyes was staring into mine from the covert of a hucklebeny thicket.
My hand came down on Lucas's shoulder in a thump, and he turned to look where I was staring. At that moment, three ragged figures rose from right, left, and ahead and Maud came to a halt.
They were women. Filthy, ragged, wild-haired, but definitely women. I kept my hands in my pockets as if I were cold, letting Lucas hail them.
"Evenin'." came his cool voice. "Might we help you ladies?"
The oldest, in the thicket at my right, stepped forward into the track, and I could see that she was wearing men's overalls, rubber boots, and a violently cerise sweater that emphasized her immense bosom. She was grinning, and I was not reassured by that awkwardly lipsticked grimace.
"Why likely you can, old man, she shrilled. "Me'n the girls just purely need a mule. Hadn't thought on it before, but seein' yours give us the notion, didn't it, girls?"
The other harridans, one very young, the other a well-used thirty, giggled but said nothing. Their pale gray eyes lent the only clean spots to their thoroughly begrimed faces, making a strangely sinister effect.
"Sorry," Lucas said. "We need the mule to help make our spring crop. We just came down to check on the Sweetbriers, make sure they were all right."
The three cackled, high and shrill. "And were they all right?" yelled the woman to my right.
The three moved toward us before Lucas could answer. The younger two carried heavy sticks–they looked like hoe handles. I remembered Jess, and I yelled at Lucas, "Go!"
The old woman's hand whipped out, holding a knife, reaching for the mule's throat. I shot her through my jacket pocket, and she fell sidewise into a clump of sumac.
As Maud bolted, I got off one shot at the one ahead, but she dived into the brush. Then all I could do was hold on, for Maud intended to arrive home ten minutes ago, and the wagon just had to trail along the best way that it could. I glanced back once, to see the two women bending over their fallen leader? Mother? Whatever.
I shook with regret. I hated to leave even one of them alive.
CHAPTER SIX
We had come at an easy pace. The washed-out sections of the track, the holes interrupted by knots of tree roots hadn't bothered us. Now they all but bounced us out of the wagon. And all that clatter and jounce was a drag on Maud, who soon slowed to a more reasonable gait.
When things had settled to a passable condition, I said to Lucas, "Do you suppose that was all of them?" My teeth were chattering so that I could hardly articulate; the growing cold and the realization that I had killed someone seemed to be trying to shake me apart.
Lucas turned his wise brown eyes on me. He held out his arm, and I leaned against him and felt him patting me on the shoulder as if I were Sukie's age.
"Child, be easy. There's more than what we saw, I feel certain. More than I like to consider on. But you took one of them out, maybe permanent. Only thing you could do. Had you not, we'd both be like poor old Jess Sweetbrier by now. Those critters weren't more than half human. I don't know who they are or what made 'em that way. Lantana will know. She knows every man jack in this end of the county, by reputation, if not in person. Just you be easy, now. We'll be home in another ten minutes."
The sun was down, the sky glowing with angry color when we pulled up between the big woodpiles into the backyard and Maud came to a panting halt. Zack was there waiting. He saw at once that something had happened, and his hands gripped me so hard they hurt, as he lifted me down.
"Mom said she had a feeling something was going to happen, after you left. If she hadn't had to get Nellie Sweetbrier back here, she'd have taken out after you. You should have seen her driving up with Lantana holding Mrs.. S. and the goat standing in the back seat, looking out the window. In the days when there was traffic, there'd have been wrecks all along from folks trying to see what in thunder sort of passenger she was hauling.
He was babbling, something he never did except when under strain. I laid my head against his chest for a minute, then I looked up into his eyes.
"I killed an old woman, Zack," I said, holding my voice steady as I could. "She and two other women, younger, were waiting for us. They'd likely seen us as we came along and turned off to the Sweetbriers'. She started to cut Maud's throat, and I shot her dead. I think. I meant to. I believe I hit her in the throat.
"But the other two and likely more are out there in the woods down the river." And then my voice failed, and I felt tears creeping down my cheeks.
Lucas had quietly climbed down and turned Maud and the wagon over to Jim, who led her toward the shed. He told Zack exactly what had happened while I stood there, warmed by his arms, looking back down the tunnel of my memory at that red-sweatered form pitching into the sumac.
Then we went, together, into the warm house, where the lights, powered by their own Savonius and bank of batteries, burned defiance to the lightless world outside the shuttered windows. Inside the back door the shotgun was laid on a newly made rack. And I saw that the big mahogany box that had always held Zack's and my father's guns was open and empty. "There's never enough death, I sighed, sitting down on the bench along the table and tugging at my cold, damp boots. "It's not enough to have the world blow itself to kingdom come. Now the mad rats are creeping out of the walls to kill off the rest of us."
Laura came into the kitchen and sat on the bench beside me. "There's always been crazy folks," she said. "It'd be more luck than we deserve to have all of them be killed off. And, from what Lucas tells me, the ones you saw have been down here in the river bottom for a long time. The old woman–
the one you shot–had to be the Unger."
I looked up, startled. Tales of the Unger and her brood had given two generations of children goose bumps around campfires. I could remember staring off over my dad's shoulder into the dark brush and thinking I saw secret shapes, moving, as he recounted the wild deeds of that mad harridan. Even his solid presence hadn't quite made up for the deep night of the woods round our fishing camp, the weird tremolo of a distant screech owl, the fluttering call of whippoorwills.
Lantana nodded solemnly. "Has to be. She'd be old. A big stout woman with a front on her heavy enough to shove down a wall. Scraggly hair full of leaves and grass. And dirty. Dirtiest human I ever laid eyes on. My old Jake, fresh from the field in June, was sweet as a rose compared to her. You could smell her a mile before you could see her. And her chillun was the same; only time they touched water was when they fell in the river."
"But who was the father of her children?" I asked. I had always wondered vaguely why "the Unger" was always and ever a woman, with never a mention of a man..
"Who wasn't?" Lantana muttered. "I'Il tell you, Miss Luce, anybody, old or young, black or white, who wanted to prove he wasn't scared of nothin' could do it by goin' off down there to her big old shed of a house and takin' her on. A good bunch of 'em did, over the years. She had chillun of every color you can think of. And some few of them that went never come back at all. Got so's nobody ever took more'n just enough to pay her for her ... services. Safer that way.
"She had mostly girls. Or maybe she had boys, too, but she must of drowned 'em, because nobody ever knew of a one. Then the girls grew up–or grew up enough–and there was a whole new crew down there to tempt the money out of any man fool enough to go. It was a nest of bootleggers and whores fit to sicken a snake. Still is, I'd reckon!"
"Then there'd be more than just the two we saw with her," I said, slowly. "Maybe a lot more. Daughters and granddaughters. A whole crew of them."
"Way I figure it, they stayed down there for a while after things came to a halt. Then they got bored, maybe, or wanted somethin' they ran out of, and went lookin' for people. No tellin' what's down the line from the Sweetbriers. There's at least four more families that have places frontin' on that road and backin' up to the river. Some may have stayed. Two out of three we looked at had."
I felt sick. "We'll have to go and see about them," I agreed. "Not knowing whether there's somebody else in the shape Mrs. Sweetbrier was in would drive us crazy. But we're going to be a lot more cautious around here, too. They'll get to us, eventually."
Zack nodded. "We're going to listen to the crows," he said. "And somebody in every group of us is going to be armed. I've told the kids already to make for the house the minute they hear the crows in the river woods talking about something moving. It's better to take cover from a fox or a wolf than not to take cover and have those hellions on top of us."
"We'd better go back by the road," Mom Allie interjected from the next room. "We can run that old Plymouth on some of your alcohol, if we need to. That way they can't ambush us in the woods."
I heaved a sigh of relief. The thought of going through those thick, secret thickets again, knowing that something irrational might be watching, had given me the shivers.
Lucas, rising and putting on his coat, said, "Time Lantana and I get on home. One thing, though. Tomorrow, first thing, let's send the kids to move the horses out of the low pasture.. Those devils might kill 'em, just to be doing somethin'. And those horses are the future, don't ever forget it. The vehicles will run for a long time. We can make all the fuel we need. But parts are somethin' else again. And tires. Horses are the only long-term answer."
Zack nodded. "Smart thinking, Luke. Well get them moved first of all in the morning. Then I figure some of us are going to want to go on and check out those other folks downriver. I'll not sleep much tonight, worrying about somebody needing us right now, that we don't know about."
We had adapted the old coal-oil lanterns that had been used when we were children so that they could burn alcohol. Each of the old people lit one, and we watched them through the glass pane of the door as the two spots of clear light moved away and vanished in the trees. Then we went into the living roam to check on Nellie Sweetbrier.
She was lying on the couch, her head neatly bandaged, her eyes closed. When we hesitated, not wanting to wake her, she opened them and said, "I'm not asleep. Come sit down and let's talk a bit. Mrs. Hardeman is in her room making me a place to sleep. I was just lying here remembering Jess. We were together forty-three years. It'll take some getting used to, being without him."
"We'll keep you so busy that you won't be able to have time to grieve too much," Zack said, taking her blue-veined hand in his. "We are a going concern, here, Nellie. You'll fit right in."
"If we don't start dying of radiation sickness, or some plague that everybody thought was licked doesn't rise up again and take us off. Or those hellcats don't kill us all," she said bitterly. Her free hand twitched against the bright quilt that covered her. "I want you to tell me, right out, in full, what happened to Jess," she said to me. "I need to know. The things that I imagine are worse than anything that could possibly have happened for real. Tell me how he died, how he looked, how the room looked. It's only when I can see it like it really was that I'll be able to stop my mind from running around and around, making pictures of what might have been."
I looked into her eyes. There in the warmth of the wood fire that twinkled through the glass of the heater door, with the smell of stew filling the house with richness, with Zack's other hand in mine, the scene in that house downriver seemed already far-off and dreamlike. So it was that I could tell her, as if it were a story or a movie, exactly what Lucas and I had seen in that bloody bedroom where Jess had lain dead. I even told her about the trail of drops on the ceiling that had followed the are of the stick that had beaten her husband to death. For I knew that she was right. Only the truth, terrible as it was, would lay to rest her overstimulated imagination.
When I was done, she closed her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. Then she opened them and said, "Thank you. That was bad, but he died fast. Must have gone out when they hit him in the head. After that, they weren't truly hurting him. And he didn't have to lie there and freeze and wonder if they'd come back to finish the job, like I did; all in all, he was lucky. Thank you, Lucinda."
Then Suzi brought a bowl of stew for Nellie. "Supper's on in the kitchen. The children are washing up, and Mrs. Allie is on her way."
So we left the old lady to eat her supper and to come to grips with her loss.
The long evening was before us, and we all congregated around the big heater. Our newcomer didn't seem to want to talk, but her face smoothed as our bantering and tale telling accompanied the work of our hands. For, as it must have been in the long past, each of us was busy with some small but necessary task. The children were in a circle on the floor, a big bowl in the center, nutpicks in hand, as they picked out hickory nuts. A more tedious and frustrating job was never dreamed of, but when it was leavened with firelight and lamplight and stories of their grandmother's youth, it went almost effortlessly.
I had a lapful of socks, and Mom Allie and Suzi were mending knees in the children's outdoor clothes. Zack was oiling harness, rubbing the rich-smelling stuff into the dark old leather until it ran supple and living between his hands. No word passed between us of the discoveries the day had brought. The children knew what was necessary to make them cautious. We had no intention of making them afraid.
The bag of cracked nuts (Zack had shattered the tough hickories with his hammer on an iron block before turning them over to the children) went down at a slow but steady rate. Candy struggled with her fat fingers, being entirely too young to be trusted with a sharp nutpick. Eyes grew heavy. By the time the bag was empty, all four young ones were ready for bed.
When they had been bundled into their flannels and shooed upstairs, we turned to Nellie.
"Tomorrow we're g
oing back to check on the other folks down your way," Zack said to her. "We'll take your car, if you don't mind, so we won't have to go through the woods.
"We need to know who is down there, if you'll tell us."
She sighed, and her good eye closed for a moment. Then she hitched herself up and said, "All right. I hate to think what might be going on down there tonight. So."
She thought a minute. "By the road, you'll have a time knowing where to turn off to find the next house downriver from ours. There's what looks like a logging road, all arched over with trees. Thick brush on either hand. But you can tell, because there's a great big hickory tree just beside it. I mean a giant tree. Just past it, on the right, there's the track. The Fanchers live down there. Black folks, fairly young couple. They've got a bunch of children--seven or eight, maybe. The oldest might be eleven or so. Bill and Annie are good folks; just be careful how you approach them. They've had some bad experiences with white people. They came out of Tulsa ... bought the old Barron place through a real estate agent.
"When Claude Barron found out his old family place went to black people, he nearly went crazy. Bad streak in that family – always was. He has sneaked down there and shot at them ... yes sirree," she insisted, when we looked incredulous. "He tried to set fire to the house in the middle of the night. Just God's mercy that their dog woke them up so they could put it out before it did more than scorch their back stoop. Claude got them so nervous and suspicious that they hardly go anyplace or have anybody visit them.
"If they're there now, and I'd say they are, being sensible people, they're going to be antsy. Go easy. Blow the horn twice before you get to the house. They know the Plymouth's horn. When you get up to their back fence, stop and get out, all of you, so they can see you're not hiding anything. They shoot pretty quick, and I don't blame them."
The World Ends In Hickory Hollow Page 5