Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2)

by Miller, Jason Jack

  North Fork Mountain kept people out of this part of the world; it was the first ridge in a series that ended at the Shenandoah in Virginia. Where Spruce Knob was capped with its namesake vegetation, North Fork Mountain had rocky fins of Tuscarora Sandstone crenellating its long, narrow expanse. Wanderers and outcasts gave in to the pull of West Virginia’s secret border, a place the rest of the country ignored. But the exposed rock nestled in a bed of white pine finally forced me to smile.

  We stopped to pee and to get more alcohol at a little country store that resided in an old post office. Preston said, mostly to Katy, "Currences lived back that way.”

  At Circleville we left the highway to begin the slow climb up the backside of Spruce Knob. I barely noticed Ben’s busted tailpipe. The quiet meadows along the road were about to erupt with the greens of wild bleeding hearts and tiger lilies. Some dark pocket on the backside of the ridge probably hid the last painted trillium of the year.

  The pavement turned into a gravel fire road that clung to the side of the mountain like wings to a June bug. When the trees parted, valleys and streams less than twenty people knew the names of were revealed. Alex pointed out buzzards and raptors floating in the open sky far below. Behind us a cloud of white dust grew. For a second the Jeep seemed more like a rocket, leaving Earth to visit worlds not yet explored.

  As the fire road turned north to follow the Continental Divide, Alex continued to gape at the thousand-foot drop-off to her right. Now, North Fork was in our shadow. The farms and homes sprinkled throughout the New Germany Valley looked tiny, uninhabitable.

  The vegetation changed once more as we neared the summit, becoming a moonscape of azaleas and blueberry bushes. We left behind the oak-hickory forest a long time ago. The maples of the higher elevations diminished with every mile we drove. Now spruce and mountain ash dominated, with laurels sitting in the dark hollows to confuse and confound trespassers. Tongues of gray conglomerate rock flowed in the contours like streams. Broken by the frosts that hit so hard up here, the tongues of rock were notorious for twisting ankles and scraping exposed skin.

  We bounced along the rough roads for another forty minutes before finally stopping at a wide meadow. Birds chirped with gusto as the sun dipped toward late afternoon. The air was so clear we could’ve seen the Pacific if the earth were just a little less round.

  Preston had his guitar out as soon as the Jeep stopped rolling. He laid on his back and strummed made up chords and lyrics. I brought the only tent, which Katy claimed for the girls, should it get too cold. “Listen here,” I said. “Not sure who put you in charge, but in that thirty-two square feet…” I pointed at my little blue tent. “I’m the king.”

  Preston laughed.

  “Don’t be a douche,” she said.

  “You learn that on the road?” Ben asked. He carried the cooler over to the fire ring, dropped it into the dirt then turned around and sat on it. “From your little hipster hillbilly wannabes?”

  “Nope. Learned that from Preston.” She circled three times, just like a cat, before plopping down in the grass next to her man. “Isn’t that right, honey?”

  He responded by busting out a John Lennon song.

  We drank wine in between gathering firewood and picking at the food Ben had stolen from his old man. Cheese and bread mostly, not that Carlo Rossi was necessarily a bread and cheese type of wine. We heckled Preston, shouting out stuff like “Freebird” and “Blackbird” and other songs that may or may not have been about birds. To his credit, we had a real hard time stumping him. Ben finally said, “I guess you’ll do just about anything to get out of getting firewood,” and disappeared into the forest.

  While he pouted, Katy asked Alex to get Jane’s envelope. Alex went to the Jeep, and returned with a small overnight bag. Before she even opened her bag Katy was on her feet grabbing for Jane’s envelope. They moved on the other side of the fire ring, away from me and Preston. Katy spread out a big old Mexican blanket, and plopped down in the middle. Alex looked over Katy’s shoulder as she spread the scraps of paper out. Almost immediately she started sorting them into two piles.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, moving to keep an eye on where she was putting everything.

  “Separating the stuff you need from the stuff you don’t.” Katy crossed her legs and sipped her wine.

  “Do you know what all of that is even? Jane had meant for me to have it, not you.” I crossed my arms.

  “Yes, Henry, that’s probably true. But what are you going to do with it? Do you believe any of it? That you can call serpents or poison a spring? Part of me thinks there’s a bunch of really good reasons for you to remain skeptical. Like, through all of this, your skepticism may serve a purpose. So this,” she shook a fistful of papers at me, “this is something you can leave to me. Yes, the envelope had your name on it, but I’m almost certain that Janie expected you to do what was best with it. Which, in this case, meant getting it to me. So congrats.”

  “Whatever. You know…forget it.” I started to walk away. I didn’t want to fight with her.

  “Henry, before you run off and pout, here’s the deal. For, like, twenty years nobody on our side wanted to do anything. Those Johnny Bulls did everything they could to twist the knife in Pap’s gut. And for what? They don’t go to half as many funerals as we do. I guarantee it. This half,” she waved her hand over the papers and scraps she’d set aside for me. “This is your case. This is your justification to get really pissed off and do something about it.”

  “Like what? What do you expect me to do?”

  Ben appeared at the edge of the meadow dragging a pair of long branches.

  “I expect you to end this. You were closest to Jane. It’s your duty. Nothing else in the whole wide world matters as much as avenging your sister.”

  “So you want me to go on a rampage, take out Charlie and Odelia and Darren and go to jail for the rest of my life? So I can get raped and beaten while you all just go on with your little road show?”

  Ben dropped the limbs near the fire ring and sat down. I looked at him for some kind of back-up.

  He said, “Don’t stop on my account. This sounds like it’s about to get good.”

  Katy stood up, made a fist and held it against her hip. “First of all, I don’t expect you to do anything without the rest of us there. You shouldn’t be going off alone, ever. First rule of dealing with Lewises—never get caught alone.”

  I shook my head and tried to force a laugh. “What kind of future am I looking at? Running from the law?”

  “What kind of future do you have now? Look at what they’re doing to Alex. And she’s blood.”

  Ben perked up. “Really? Alex, tell me it ain’t true.”

  “Jesus, Ben.” I turned on him like a copperhead in a corn crib. “Who do you think she’s hiding from? This ain’t some kind of summer camp, where people just drop in and dance around a fire because they feel like it. Charlie Lewis wants Alex’s to be the next body in the ground. So you know what?” I didn’t want to have to answer.

  “You may be slicker than shit, but you can’t slide on barbwire.” But Ben had to push it. He said, “Tell me ‘what?’”

  “Back the fuck off. That’s what.” I poked his shoulder.

  “Stop it. You guys just need to cool it. I love how Collins men get a little booze in them and all of a sudden everyone gets all Iron-horse Irish like nothing can hurt ‘em. If that were the case we wouldn’t be holed up where the internet doesn’t even reach waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “So what’re you saying, Katydid?” Ben started breaking limbs over his knee.

  “What I’m saying, and I want you boys to listen— you too, Preston—cause you may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.” Katy sat back down and began tucking everything neatly back into the envelope. “What I’m saying, is that Darren and Billy and Curtis don’t have kids.”

  Ben continued to snap branches. I found the sound to be kind of jarring, which, I supposed, was
probably the reason he kept on doing it.

  “Henry,” Katy said, “that’s how you get rid of fleas. You keep them from laying eggs. You go to war with them.”

  I picked up the limbs Ben had been breaking and started tossing them into the fire ring. He stuffed newspaper into the heap, lit it and watched it burn. We finished the first jug of wine in total silence. Preston held his guitar, but did not play it.

  Finally, Preston put his guitar back in its case and grabbed the next jug of wine from the cooler. He went from person to person, filling our cups even if we didn’t want any. After a minute he said, “I don’t expect yinz to all hold hands and start singing, but we didn’t come up here for this shit, right? So fill me in. What is the deal with the Lewises? I know I’m a little late to the game, but…I just thought, like, I should know or something.”

  Ben had been waiting for an invitation to resume control. I could tell by the way he jumped in. He gulped down his wine and said, “My dad said he found records in the courthouse that show our right to the land was contested as far back as 1890. Mary Lewis says we stole a family heirloom and that’s the only reason any Collins ever amounted to anything. Said it was all about the thing, whatever that thing was.”

  “What’s that have to do with Pap?”

  “I don’t know. Can’t remember.” He gestured for more wine.

  Alex listened nervously. Like part of his story would indict her somehow. I said, “But that doesn’t explain why they’d chase me across the border and shoot at us.”

  Katy didn’t seem to agree with the way Ben was telling the story and took over. “You all need to pay attention. A guy named Seamus Hamilton married Ruth Gaddis in the late 1800s when West Virginia was booming. Everybody was getting rich. Anyway, they had three children—Mary, Emma and Michael. Then Mason Collins, a wood hick from Petersburg, takes a liking to Emma and eventually asks for her hand. Seamus was pleased, and gave them the land we all live on today.”

  I interrupted, “Just gave him the land? Wasn’t that a bit generous?”

  “Don’t do that. If you’re going to listen, listen. Okay?” Katy sat with her legs crossed at the ankles. Beneath the new hair and jewelry it was still the same old Katy.

  “He figured it was a way to increase his own holdings. It wasn’t an un-selfish act.”

  “Sorry.” I made the mistake of looking at Ben. He rolled his eyes.

  Katy said, “The land wasn’t worth much. It wasn’t easy to get to, the winters were bad, and Seamus had taken most of the timber off of it.” Katy paused, almost like she was testing me not to say something else. “Emma lost a few children before finally entering into a heavenly realm herself. Some say being so far from her family killed her. A lot of people, including Mason Collins, suspected her sister, Mary, had poisoned her because she—the oldest—wasn’t married first.”

  “Go on,” I said. I think it sounded condescending, even though I hadn’t meant it that way.

  “Mary was ready to take care of Mason after her sister died. She’d been waiting for Mason to propose, but he remarried outside the family instead. A lady named Margaret Walsh. They had a son, Grandpap’s dad, Jameson Henry. Mason sold off the rest of the timber but was able to keep most of the mineral rights.”

  Ben interpreted Katy’s pause as a chance to jump in. “This was during a time when big coal was stealing rights all over southern West Virginia.

  “Anyway,” Katy said, “Margaret passed while she was still young. See a pattern? Mary took a job cleaning houses in Thomas to be close to Mason. But Mason wasn’t interested. He never remarried. Mary got tired of waiting and married a guy from Elkins. Peter Lewis. Mary wanted a daughter. They had themselves some sons, Charlie and his brothers.”

  Alex listened, half-turned away from the fire so nobody could see her face.

  “Jameson stayed on the farm after his dad died. He eventually married a Tuckahoe. That was our great-grandmother, Charlotte. I don’t know if you remember her or not?”

  I shook my head. “No. I was too young when she died.”

  “Anyway, here comes the good part. Jameson and Charlotte had five kids, Grandpap and his brothers and sisters. Sarah died before I was born. So this brings Mary back into the picture. After Peter Lewis dies quite mysteriously, she still feels like she’s owed something from a Collins. So she gets her daughter—Charlie’s sister, Odelia, who came as a surprise after Mary should’ve been too old to even have kids—fixated on Grandpap. Mary even sends Odelia to Morgantown when Pap goes away to school, gets her a job waiting tables. But Grandpap meets Grandma. That’s where we get that little bit of hunky blood in us. Her family strip mined for coal up in PA. I guess they hit it off pretty well. One day they went to eat lunch in the wrong diner. Odelia was livid. I guess she cursed them out into the street. Of course that gets her fired. That’s when Odelia moved back up here and…you know.”

  “No, I don’t. I hadn’t seen my mom since I was nine, and haven’t spoken to my dad since I graduated from high school. How the hell am I supposed to hear this kind of stuff?”

  Ben and Katy both looked a little guilty. I shouldn’t have had to remind them about something as monumental as not having either parent for the good part of my life. The best thing for both me and Katy would’ve been for her to go on like I’d never said what I said. But instead, I apologized. “I’m sorry. Just forget about it.”

  “It’s okay, douche runs in the family, too,” Katy said, capitalizing on my change of mood. “Anyway, the week Odelia leaves Morgantown, Oscar Wilson finds a barrel half-floating in the millpond by the bridge. The sheriff investigates and of course Odelia is the main suspect. But she has an alibi. Mary Lewis said they’d been with cousins in Charleston. They had train tickets even though nobody could place them on the train.”

  “How convenient,” Ben said.

  “I know, right?” Katy said, putting her own little finishing touch on it. “Pap said they hid out for days in the woods. I heard Odelia got frostbit real bad. Took her fingertips.”

  “Get the fuck out,” Ben said.

  “Ben, shut up. I heard the tips are black, and the bones stick out the end of her fingers.”

  “I call bullshit,” Ben said, unable to let it go. “Continue, but I call bullshit.”

  Katy said, “I’m fixing to punch you right in the eye. When you’re trying to pick up city girls you’ll have a cute story about how a girl popped you.”

  “So here’s my next question,” I said, still a bit confused. “Why do you know all this?”

  “It’s my duty to know all this, and if you ever have a little girl, it’ll be her duty to know it, too. I’ll tell her everything, not just what she needs to know.” Katy folded her arms. “More than you need to know.”

  “Damn those bastards. I swear if I ever saw any of them getting attacked by a bear I’d toss Fluffernutter sandwiches their way.” Ben said, “Some people can hold a grudge.”

  “But not for a hundred years. That shit’s insane,” Preston said. I replied, “You’re preaching to the choir.”

  “Hey man, I shouldn’t have even brought it up. Let’s forget it, okay? You’re not drinking enough anyway. Give me your cup.” Preston poured from the large glass jug, going well beyond halfway even though I motioned for him to stop. I took a few gulps to encourage the forgetting.

  I made eye contact with Ben. He gave me a little smile in return.

  When the fire burned down to coals Ben got the rest of the food out. We’d eaten all the bread, so we cut up the sausage and cooked it over the fire like hot dogs. Preston and Katy played a little, private songs that sounded soft and special. Katy and me sang a couple of old ones, stuff like “The Two Sisters” that you never hear anymore. In between songs I rambled on about the Milky Way, how it was like a white road from earth to heaven and about where in the universe you would end up if you stayed on it long enough. My words became more incoherent the more I drank. Alex seemed to know what I meant though.

  She rested he
r head in my lap and watched for shooting stars. Together we took in the full scope of the cosmos, seeing the things that no telescope, no matter how powerful, could reveal. Mars crept through the spruces on the ridge like a rabbit along a stream. The ecliptic stretched out before it like an empty page awaiting a haiku of reflected light.

  When the fire had burned all the way down, right before we all went to sleep, Katy said, “I love you guys,” and came over and sat down next to me.

  “I don’t want to bury anybody else.” She put her head on my shoulder, sniffled, and said, “I want kids. I don’t want to go to bed every night checking windows, and I don’t want to run any more. I want to come home.”

  I put my arm around her.

  She said, “That’s why you guys have to finish this.”

  SIX

  The starlight had ignited crazy dreams all night long. They weren’t memory dreams though. I knew because the dream-forest was more climactic than any I’d ever seen. Spruce trees, three hundred feet tall and ten feet across at the base, rested on a bed of humus so thick I nearly sank. Laurels dense enough to confound a team of trackers kept intruders at arm’s length. The laurel hell went off in all directions, like a green quilt. When I opened my eyes, I expected to be in the center of a large, primeval forest, the kind of place that died long before I was born, but the old green was gone.

  Killed by axes and steam trains.

  We quickly broke camp, then descended the mountain to finally have our breakfast of buckwheat cakes and sausage at the 4-U restaurant with real Formica counters and real waitresses. Katy and Preston spent a lot of time posing for pictures with some backpackers who recognized them from a show in Asheville. But the rest of the day was a blank slate. As we paid, Ben asked Alex what she wanted to do.

  “Can we go up to the top of the big rock thingy?” Alex said as we got back in the Jeep.