The Rock Hole

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  “God love ’em. Any little ’uns?” She gathered tomatoes off the window sill where she put them to ripen.

  “Looked like a whole covey of kids to me. Top, get a couple dozen eggs out of the ice box and three of them gallon jars of milk. I bet they haven’t had fresh butter in a while, either.”

  Miss Becky went into the bedroom and returned with her arms around a load of clean clothes. I finished my pie and we loaded everything into the truck. Miss Becky stayed behind, but I rode back with him. Grandpa stopped in the dusty yard near a steaming wash pot. The mother was a worn-out looking Indian woman with a baby on her hip and a snotty nosed little boy hanging onto the tail of her shapeless shift.

  A bony white feller with a sharp, sad face stepped out onto the porch.

  “Stay here.” Grandpa killed the engine and got out to unload the boxes. The adults didn’t meet Grandpa’s eyes while they talked. Not even when he gave them the food and clothes. I glanced out the side window and watched half a dozen raggedly dressed kids staring at me. It was obvious they belonged to the Indian woman, and I could tell another one was on the way.

  I smiled and waved, but none of them returned even so much as a grin.

  Mark Lightfoot, the boy I’d met in the Hugo feed store, appeared around the corner of the house. He nodded slightly through the windshield between us, but I could tell he was embarrassed.

  The man finally mumbled something and offered his hand. Grandpa shook it and returned to the truck. The family gathered around the boxes in the dirt yard as we backed up and turned around.

  “The kids wouldn’t even talk to me.”

  Grandpa glanced in the mirror. “Folks sometimes don’t talk much, especially to strangers.”

  “How long you gonna let them live there?”

  “Awhile, I guess.”

  “G.W. gonna let ’em?”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “They don’t have nothing. I’ve seen colored folks dressed better than them Indians.”

  “It don’t matter how people are dressed, no matter what color they are. There are good and bad poor people, like there’s good and bad rich folks. You don’t go to judging them. I doubt they asked for things to be the way they are. They’ve had troubles a long time, but the man works for me now. Him and some of the older kids will be picking cotton starting tomorrow morning, so it looks like he’s worth more than some lazy rich people.”

  He wasn’t used to making such long speeches, so I knew I’d struck a nerve. “That wasn’t their daddy.”

  “I know. You could tell them little ’uns were full-blood Indian.”

  “One of the boys was Mark Lightfoot. You remember him from the feed store.”

  “You’re right. I guess that old boy moved in with the kid’s mama when Frank went to jail. I just hope he knows who he’s messing with. Frank Lightfoot’s liable to kill him for just looking at his woman.”

  It was dark when we got back home. I called Pepper to make sure she was still on for the camping trip the next morning and heard Miss Whitney breathing on the other end of the party line. She was about ninety and liked to listen in on other people’s conversations.

  Pepper must have been waiting for me to call, because she answered the phone on the first ring. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Helping Grandpa. Why don’t you see if you can spend the night over here so we can get an early start?”

  “I can’t. Aunt Tillie is here and everybody thinks I have to stay to keep her company. She’s old and all she does is sit in front of the TV.”

  “We may find another victim of the Dog Killer this weekend.” I didn’t care if anyone was listening. I was hoping to do a little Hardy Boys investigation.

  “Don’t get me into anything that’ll get me a whipping. Daddy gave me one last week for cussin’ and I don’t want another’n while he’s still thinking about it.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be mostly hunting. The worst thing that can happen is we’ll get covered in chiggers and ticks.”

  “Miss Whitney, do you have any sulphur we could borrow to keep the chiggers off our legs?” Pepper could get mean sometimes.

  Miss Whitney didn’t answer, but I could hear her take a breath in shock. The phone clicked.

  “Guess she doesn’t have any. I’ll see you in the morning.” She hung up abruptly, like always.

  I put down the receiver and went into the kitchen to see what Miss Becky had to eat. Even though it was late, she was making Grandpa’s favorite, fried peach pies. “Miss Whitney was listening in again on the telephone.”

  “That poor old soul. Sister Jean wasn’t so bad about snooping until Lefty died. Now she doesn’t have anyone to talk to. Bless her heart, all she has to do is listen in, so y’all don’t get on her too much about it.”

  I was grown before I realized “bless his or her heart’ was a nice way to complain about someone without sounding mean, or to say they weren’t quite right.

  “But she was listening to me and Pepper talk.”

  “Were you talking ugly?”

  “No, ma’am.” It wasn’t a complete lie. Pepper said the bad word, not me.

  “Umm, humm. Well, then don’t worry about her. Now, I want y’all to be careful out there in them woods with Cody this weekend.” She sighed and looked out the window over the sink. She sighed a lot whenever she talked about Cody. “That boy. He’s not much more than a kid himself, and I doubt he’ll ever grow up.” She flattened the dough with her glass rolling pin.

  “He’s grown now. He was in the army.”

  “Sometimes he don’t act like it, and you can be full growed but still be a kid. Now you mind what I say. If he takes a notion to go across the river while y’all are out, or if he starts drinking, I want the two of you to come straight home.” She dipped hot filling onto the dough, folded it, and crimped the edges.

  “We’ll be too busy hunting.” I had no intention of coming home if Uncle Cody had a beer.

  “Hum. Here.” She handed me the mixing bowl after she scraped out most of the fruit. “Eat what’s left so I can wash these dishes.”

  I forgot all about Miss Whitney and her nosey ways. It didn’t take long to finish the bowl as Miss Becky fried the half-moon shaped pies. While she finished up, I went to sleep in the living room while John Cameron Swayze strapped a Timex onto an outboard boat motor.

  ***

  I was dreaming about drowning again a little after one in the morning when the crunch of tires on gravel woke me from a sound sleep. Grandpa heard it too and was up before I could clear the fog in my head. Once I shook out the cobwebs, I fumbled for my puffer and inhaled a deep squeeze.

  A light mist began after we went to bed, and everything was wet and dripping. Barefoot and wearing nothing but his overalls, Grandpa flicked on the porch light, opened the wooden door, and looked through the screen to see who was in the yard. Carlo stood between the car and the house, barking at the visitor.

  “Shut up, Carlo!”

  I stopped in the kitchen door to hear what was going on. Grandpa’s .38 hung loosely in his hand. He squinted into the car’s headlights, trying to make out the driver.

  “Ned! It’s me.”

  “That don’t tell me nothin’. Turn out them lights. Who’s me?”

  The headlights went out. “Sorry. It’s me, Ty Cobb.”

  He sounded scared to me. Grandpa could see Ty Cobb Wilson standing behind the open driver’s door of his idling truck. He had one foot on the running board, in case he needed to jump back inside if Carlo tried to take a piece of his leg. Grandpa relaxed and slipped the pistol into the pocket of his overalls.

  He pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch in his bare feet. “What’s the matter?”

  “Me and Jimmy Foxx think we done found a dead man in a culvert over near Forest Chapel while we was trailing a coon.”

  “Why do you think you found a dead man? He’s either dead or he ain’t.”

  “I ’magine he’s dead, but
he’s hard to see. We thought we’d run the coon into a culvert under the road by the Forest Chapel Methodist Church. The dogs wouldn’t go in and took to barking in the hole, so I thought it had balled up in there to make a fight. When I bent down to shine my light in the pipe, I could see a beard and teeth and it weren’t no coon. I think somebody’s done killed some feller and poked him up in there.”

  “Where’s Jimmy Foxx?”

  “I left him back at the culvert to keep an eye out. Walt Simms was passing by and he’s waiting with him.”

  Grandpa was already turning around. “All right. Go on back and I’ll be along directly. Tell Jimmy Foxx and whoever else has stopped by to leave everything alone until I get there.”

  He saw me standing in the dark door in my underwear and grinned for a moment. “Well, as long as you’re already up, get’che britches on and come with me. I doubt they found somebody poked up in a pipe. Get you a jacket, too. It’s airish out this morning.”

  I was back in the bedroom and dressed before Grandpa could get his shirt and brogans on. I heard Miss Becky talking low without getting out of bed, asking what was going on. I was afraid she was going to put up a fuss about me going along, but Grandpa picked up his hat and waved toward the door. “Hurry up and let’s go.”

  We were on the road in no time at all. The weather was more damp than cold, but I was glad for the jacket. I shivered until the car’s heater warmed up enough to chase away the chill. The familiar woods on each side of the highway were eerie in the early morning darkness. I was seldom out so late, and it was an adventure to hear the coupe’s tires hiss down the wet road as we rolled through the night. Lightning flickered far to the north in Oklahoma.

  We drove west, past the store lit by a single light high on a telephone pole. Five minutes later we joined half a dozen trucks and cars parked with their headlights pointed toward the ditch. Even though it was early morning, several men milled around the lights, hands in their pockets, and hats pushed back on their foreheads. A heavy mist, almost like a fog, began to get thicker.

  I could see the drops in the headlights. Grandpa reached into the back seat for his flashlight and got out. I followed, but at a distance. He got right to business. “Mornin’ boys. Anybody else been in the ditch or messing around the culvert?”

  Jimmy Foxx was the first to answer. “No, sir. I been here since Ty Cobb come back, so nobody else has looked in here yet.”

  Grandpa directed his light into the ditch and grunted at the footprints. “Well, y’all may not have looked in the pipe, but there’s been a lot of feet down there in the grass. Don’t matter though. From the smell I’d say any other tracks have been gone for a while.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but carefully made his way down the wet slope and walked straight to the clay pipe. He bent down to shine his flashlight into the darkness and peered for a long time. “This booger’s been dead a while.”

  The men around me nodded in agreement.

  “Top, come down here.” I couldn’t imagine what he wanted, but I wove my way through a forest of legs and then half-slipped down the slope. “C’mere.” I stepped forward until I was beside him. “Squat down and tell me what that looks like to you.”

  Nearly overcome with horror, I did as I was told. The smell almost made Miss Becky’s fried pie public once again. Taking the light, I pointed the shaky beam into the darkness and squinted without saying anything.

  The men on the highway became completely silent. A night bird trilled in the trees beside the road, the only sound muffled by the heavy mist.

  “You know much about goats, son?”

  I glanced up and could see the twinkle in Grandpa’s eye. “A little.”

  “See them teeth a-shinin’?”

  “Yessir.”

  “See his head?”

  “Yessir.”

  “What does it look like to you?”

  “A goat, sir.”

  He laughed and straightened his popping knees. “He’s right, boys. Somebody killed an old goat, probably got scared and stuffed it up in here.”

  The men around us hooted and began to harass the Wilson boys.

  Jimmy Foxx scratched his head. “Well, if you ain’t expecting a dead goat in a drain in the middle of the night, it might look like a dead man. And I didn’t see no horns.”

  Grandpa struggled up to the road. “Y’all need to take this boy with you from now on, in case you see a dead calf. At least he can tell you what it is and you won’t wake me up anymore in the middle of the night.”

  The hoorawing got louder. Ty Cobb and Jimmy Foxx grinned and toed the ground, taking the good-natured ribbing.

  Grandpa motioned toward Ty Cobb. “Reach back in there and get a rope around something. I wanna see if it was run over, or stole and killed intentionally.”

  Relieved to get away from the ribbing, he quickly skinned off into the pipe with a lariat rope and backed out breathing through his mouth. His pants were wet and muddy from the knees down. “Sheewww! It’s damned ripe in there.”

  “You ain’t a-kiddin.” I didn’t know who said it, but everyone laughed like we had one of Ed Sullivan’s comedians with us.

  Jimmy Foxx joined him in the ditch and they gave the rope a good strong pull. It slid easy and they dragged the rotting goat out of the ditch and up on the shoulder of the road where it lay in the misty rain, lit by the headlights. Grandpa stared down for a long while, playing the beam of his flashlight over the carcass.

  Someone behind me cleared his throat. “Say, this goat’s been cut up.”

  The night bird stopped calling and something stirred in the dark brush along the ditch, beyond the lights. Suddenly grim, Grandpa shined his light there. We didn’t see anything. Then his gaze went to the men around us.

  “Yeah, it is. Boys, I got something to tell you.” Looking sad, Grandpa finally told what he’d been finding in the bottoms to those men standing in the chilly mist.

  The animals were getting bigger, but suddenly I wasn’t as excited about the Dog Killer as I was before. It wasn’t a secret anymore, and it had gotten scary.

  Chapter Ten

  I woke up to someone shaking me like a rag. When my eyes opened, I was buried up under two of Miss Becky’s quilts. She must have covered me up after I got back in the bed. It had cooled off considerably during the night.

  I cracked one eye and saw Uncle Cody grinning down at me. “Dang boy, you’re gonna sleep the day away and we won’t get any birds. Whadda think, Pepper? Should we leave this lazy bum here and go it alone?”

  I heard Pepper’s voice from the other end of the bed. “Yank the covers off of him and let’s go.”

  “Don’t you do it.” I opened the other eye and looked out the window. It was barely light enough to make out the cows on the other side of the fence. “I ain’t wearing nothing but my drawers and I don’t think I want Pepper to see them.”

  She snickered. “I’ve seen you nekked.”

  “Not lately.” I got a good grip on the covers in case one of them wanted to make a fight of it.

  Cody leaned casually against the door fame with a thumb hooked in the front pocket of his hunting pants. “You know the difference between nekked and naked?”

  Pepper played right along. “What?”

  “When you’re naked, you’re doing something you’re supposed to be doing. But when you’re nekked you’re about to get in trouble.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, especially after I heard Miss Becky holler. “Cody! Don’t you go to putting ideas in those babies’ heads with ugly talk. Y’all get in here and get you some breakfast so Top can get some clothes on. Pepper, come help me set the table.”

  Pepper stuck her tongue out at me, but she went. Cody threw my pants on the bed and followed her out. “Hurry up. I’m ready to shoot some birds.”

  I found my puffer under the pillow, gave it a squeeze, then quickly pulled on my clothes. By the time I got to the table they were already working on a big breakfast of boiled rice spri
nkled with sugar, oatmeal, sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, and scratch biscuits two inches thick. At his place at the head of the table, Grandpa Ned spread pear preserves on a biscuit while his coffee cooled in the saucer.

  During breakfast he told Cody about the goat and I’d almost lost my supper. Everyone ribbed me about it, but I was proud I hadn’t puked in front of all those grown men. The conversation moved to the animal mutilations and his concerns.

  Grandpa looked at Cody a long time before he made his mind up about something. “Cody, there’s one more thing you don’t know ’cause I wanted to keep everything quiet for a while, but one of the animals I found was your dog Pal. He was misused pretty bad out in Isaac Reader’s corn field.”

  I watched Cody’s face. It got real hard and his eyes shined for a minute. He looked down at his plate. “I knew somebody took him. Pal didn’t get out of the pen by hisself.”

  “I hate that it happened.” Miss Becky got teary-eyed. She was tender-hearted about all living things, but especially toward dogs.

  Cody gazed outside through the screen door. His were glassy. “So do I.”

  I didn’t say anything, but the knot in my stomach eased for the first time since the day I came to live with my grandparents. I hated to keep secrets from Uncle Cody, especially about the day we found his bird dog in Isaac Reader’s field. I was light enough to float out of the chair, but I just set there because of how heart-broke he looked on the other side of the table.

  “Well, now the cat’s out of the bag and it’s still happening. I need some more eyes out there.” Grandpa reached for another biscuit. “I don’t know who’s doing it, or why. But I want to catch him, so Cody, you keep the wax out of your ears in that honky-tonk you run, but let me handle it if you hear anything.”

  Uncle Cody nodded as he silently left the table and slammed the screen door behind him.

  “I mean it!”