by Josh Kent
Hattie sang a song. His voice was cracked and old, and it made Jim think of the sounds of cold birds in the mud. The little boy stood up and started singing with him.
Old them woods was, shiver, shiver
Filled her boots with snow and silver
Shiver, shiver! Shiver, shiver!
Little darling by the river.
Jim took a drink of beer and smiled while the mug covered his mouth, but stopped smiling when he put the beer down.
Jim could never remember all the words to that song because for some reason he had started to focus in on this Simon Starkey, but the song was something about a lost little girl in the snow who was loved by the fairies. He wanted to write it down, but he didn’t.
It was this Simon fellow who had got all Jim’s focus. When he was over at the Hills’ earlier, Violet was saying some things about this kid, Simon.
“He was raised up by them from a little baby, is what they said,” she had said from in the kitchen.
“Violet,” Bill said, “you open up that window if you’re gonna be smokin’.”
The kitchen window squealed and there was a pause as she tinkered with something. She continued, “They came here with the baby, but that boy was full-grown sixteen years.”
“That’s right,” Bill said and pushed away his coffee cup a little.
“He spoke perfect too, just like me or you or Bill, remember? Even better than some around here speaks their own,” she called in.
Bill said, “Most foreigners have an accented speech.” And he eyed Jim with a half-squinted eye.
Jim gave a quick nod and called in to Violet, “Violet, this is very good coffee, thank you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Falk,” she said and came back in the room with a smile and looking a little flushed and fiddling with her necklace.
Jim Falk gazed at her and then back at Bill. Bill was staring out the window at a fog rolling in from the woods. Since Bill’s eyes were looking out the window, Jim took a second glance at Violet Hill. She was looking right back.
“How you get such a thick fog when it’s cold out like this?” Bill said, and Jim looked out the window fast.
Violet’s green eyes drew Jim back to her. “Dan, who was married to Elsie—he moved outta here about four or five years ago now, I guess, whenever that spring was right after the real bad winter and the awful snow.” Violet swallowed, put her left hand to her throat, fiddled with a silver chain, and then went on. “Elsie’s older than me. They come up here from some river town. They used to talk about that big river that comes down from the town they were in, River Top, River Den, River something.” She squeezed her eyes real hard as if that might help her remember. “See, Mr. Falk, Elsie might be older than me, but she’s still young, and that Simon boy isn’t at a right age, where they . . .” She wagged her finger at the empty coffee cups and raised up her eyebrows.
Bill said, “Yes, we’re done.”
“The right age?” Jim said, watching her hands take the cups.
Violet looked him straight in the eye, and he saw again that strange, moving jewel behind there. This time it slithered. “Well, I just mean that he ain’t the right age to be really raised by her. Since Dan’s gone, gone who knows where, she and that foreign boy that ain’t her boy have been shacked up in that house, if you catch my meaning.”
“Hey! You! Stranger!” Simon yelled over Hattie’s wiry fiddling.
The little boy who had been singing there along with Hattie stopped singing suddenly and started working at drawing pictures with ink and a feather on some yellow papers. He was working hard.
Jim had been staring at Benjamin Straddler’s hat and had faded out. It happened when he was thinking.
“Hey! Stranger!” Simon stood up now. He was a strange-looking kid for sure and he was strong, had strong arms. His eyes had an uncomfortable effect on Jim. “You wanna play?”
Benjamin Straddler tipped up his hat brim and laid his eyes on Jim Falk. He pulled on his stogie. The cigar breathed an orange light on his face and on his one raggedy eye where the eyelid was torn and the eye was whited over behind.
Jim didn’t like this look, but while he’d been faded out thinking, May had brought him another muddy-looking beer. He looked at the beer in the glass mug, picked it up, and drank some, trying to see if maybe Benjamin might look away.
Benjamin Straddler was looking at him harder now; Jim could feel that raggedy, busted eye poking around in his head. Straddler was looking in there for who Jim was. Jim patted at his pockets as if he were looking for some tobacco.
“No, thank you,” Jim said finally and raised his glass to the group. “Thank you very much, but I’m not a card player.”
“I guess he’s not a card player,” Simon said and grinned way up with only half of his mouth.
Benjamin Straddler just shook his head and said, “Outlanders. What? They don’t play cards where you come from on account of the scriptures?” Then he forced a laugh out of his throat and looked around at everyone, but no one else was laughing.
Hattie Jones squealed the fiddle and put it down all of a sudden. His lips puckered up and his brows went together and he took his pipe out of his mouth and said, “Hey! Who are you anyways?”
Jim had his nose back in his beer cup and wasn’t expecting such a straightforward question. He felt the urge to bark at the old man, but instead he held his eyes on the table and slowly drank the rest of his beer in one long drink. He stood then, and May and Huck and all the rest of them who were in there took notice.
Jim Falk made a thin silhouette in a long, dark coat. His hair, which before had looked blond, they could now see was gray as ash. His hands were strong and bony, but his face was lined and honest with eyes blue and strange. He tipped his hat, but did not take it off.
“My name is Jim Falk,” he said. “I believe that around these parts, you might call me a ghost killer or maybe even a hunter. I rid spooks.”
All the folks looked around. Huck Marbo looked over at May, who was pretending not to listen. When she caught his eye, he twirled his finger fast in a little circle in the air. This was to tell her to clean her tables and clean the kitchen and go to bed.
That night, after more beers and some kind of talk and excitement with the rest of them, Jim made his way along a dark path back to the Hills’. He couldn’t remember whether he’d made friend or foe at Huck Marbo’s bar, but he couldn’t care. His head was filled with whatever this little town’s good beer was and it gave his mind a soft, wooden feeling.
Back at the Hills’, Jim fell straight to sleep. His legs went up on the table in the Hills’ backhouse and his chair leaned back against the windowseat in the little room.
When he woke the next day, he had no memory of when Violet had come in and moved him out of the chair and onto the bed. She laid him there, right by his sack of gear, which he reached out for. He hugged it and snorted.
She stared for a long time at his drunken face all snarled and snorting. She looked over her shoulder and out the window and could see that the lamps were still burning where Bill had been up looking at his plans for fixing up the storehouse. Her hand lifted because she wanted to touch the outlander’s forehead to make the wrinkles go away. Instead, she left quickly and quietly shut the door behind her.
Jim sniffed and rolled around in the bed. “On that one tree,” a face in his dreams told him, “there was a black spider eating another black spider that was exactly like it.” Again, the lips said to him, “A black mirror eating a black mirror. Which one is the black mirror?”
That same night, Benjamin Straddler hurried through Sparrow mumbling to himself. Mumbling to himself past the shuttered windows, mumbling and stumbling along the rickety bridge over where Sparrow Creek ran through the middle of town, pulling his coat close to him and huffing along and looking from side to side with his one eye in the black and fog.. He wanted to go talk to the preacher’s brother, John Mosely. He figured that if he
went straight to the preacher there might be a lot of trouble all of a sudden and it might come toward him.
He came up two steps and onto the flat porch and knocked fast. John’s wife answered the door with a mean face, “It is very late, Benjamin Straddler. John is sleeping. You smell drunk. Go away.”
She started to shut the door and he put up his hands. “Ruth? Uh, how is John?”
Benjamin wasn’t the kind to drop by here at the Moselys’ late at night, drunk or otherwise. In fact, the only other time he’d been by was during the big snow a few years back.
“It’s cold and black out there, Benjamin Straddler. You could lose your way on a night like this. Come in and sit down. Should probably have some coffee before you’re back out in the night.”
She squinted and looked him up and down. Watching him as he pulled at his coat and looked this way and that, she helped Benjamin bump through the door. He slumped down and propped himself up very slowly, but neatly, in a soft chair in the foyer. He smiled at Ruth. “No moon, no moon out. Coffee . . .”
She turned to him before disappearing into the little kitchen. “John’s asleep nice and sound. Let’s try not to wake him. He doesn’t often get good sleep these days.”
Benjamin Straddler remembered this foyer. He had dug snow out of it with John Mosely and John’s older brother Vernon, the preacher. Vernon had his ears all burned up with the frost. Them preaching folk, like Vernon, they were always somehow finding bad trouble. Benjamin didn’t understand a bit of it. He didn’t understand how a man could believe stories and old writings so strong to think that others should believe them too, and he especially didn’t understand why good folk like these Moselys who tried to do good would run into such bad problems all the time. But when Vernon and John and this here Ruth had come to town, it just seemed as if their own special trouble came with them, might have followed them here. Just the way a special trouble had come for Notham Taylor, who’d been the other preacher, trouble, trouble, trouble.
It wasn’t long after the Moselys showed up that the bad winter laid hold of Sparrow. Yes, Benjamin had surely saved Vernon from frozen death in the frozen night.
“I dragged him outta the snow and back up the church, and Pritham worked at him,” Benjamin said.
“Benjamin Straddler, are you talking to yourself?” Ruth said as she reappeared in the foyer entryway with a white cup.
“Ruth?”
“Here’s your coffee, now drink it fast and let’s out with it. What’s so important that Benjamin Straddler comes knocking around the Moselys’ in the middle of the night? We haven’t seen you around the church in a long while. So what’s the trouble that’s finally brought you along?”
Benjamin opened his mouth and then shut it and then opened it again and then said, “Well, Ruth, there’s a man come to town called Jim Falk, and, Ruth, he says he’s a ghost-killer.” He swallowed. “You know, a spook ridder? He rids out spooks is what he said, if you know what that might be . . . and he’s here on account of he wants to get rid of a spook. That’s what he says. I told him that there ain’t no such spook and that Violet and Bill Hill are a couple of troublemakers. He’s stayin’ up their place, he says. A spook!”
“So who is this now? A spook ridder? And try to sit yourself up, Benjamin.”
Benjamin drank a fast half-cup and said, “Well, that’s what he says. I don’t know. He says he comes from a town around down South. I can’t remember now the name he said, it was a plain name that you can’t remember well, but he talks like he comes from up North from one of the big cities. He’s got a real straight-like voice, like he’s done a lot of book reading, almost kind of sounds like a preacher, but he also kinda sounds like one of them natives from the backwoods; you know he’s got that sound to his voice, like them old people. He said that he’s crafty with ways of ridding out spirits. And, Ruth, you know, I think he may have got . . . He did something. I don’t know how he did it. But, Ruth, well, we got to thinkin’ that maybe he’s got a power.”
“A power,” Ruth said to him. “You’re sure?”
He nodded, but then looked into his cup for a long time and then looked back at her and back at the cup. “He did something. I don’t know how he did it.”
Benjamin Straddler’s eyes began to close.
Ruth was older and looked tired too, but she also looked at him with her mouth pulled down and one eyebrow up. She must have understood something of what he was saying.
She said, “Let’s get you headed toward home. I’ll tell John all about this in the morning and we’ll need to go and see about this. This stranger is staying up with the Hills?”
“Well, yeah.” Benjamin drank the other half and swallowed hard. “He’s staying with the Hills is what he said. He told us Bill’s got him roomed up in their backhouse back there.”
“Well,” Ruth said, “I’ll tell John and in the morning, well, we’ll need to see about this.”
Her hands passed something small back and forth between them. Benjamin could not see it.
She let him out the door with a few encouraging words and looked up and down the crooked street that led up to their home. It was so dark.
She closed the door behind her and looked into her right hand. In it, a long, black spider curled wispy legs.
Benjamin got home somehow and laid down his head by his wife’s head. Lane was sleeping deep and soft, but her face looked concentrated. The coffee Ruth made for him had given him just enough energy to get home and dizzy.
He blacked out. In his mind he saw Jim Falk, though. He saw the way he looked at all the men in Huck’s place. He saw how those eyes held some secret. Then he saw Falk in Benjamin’s own kitchen. He was eating Benjamin’s bread at Benjamin’s table, laughing with Lane. Lane was laughing and Falk was pouring dark wine into a golden goblet in her hands. There was an emerald light growing and jumping between them.
He sat up quick in his bed in the dark.
“Spooks!” he yipped and squeezed his temple as the blood rushed forward.
Lane woke up then and put her hand on his shoulder and climbed herself up on his back and hugged from behind. Hopefully he wouldn’t be sick tonight.
She pressed her long nose into his fat cheek, kissed him, and whispered, “You smell very bad.”
“I’m sick. I feel sick.”
“Go back to sleep,” she said and kissed his ear. “There’ll be eggs in the morning and toast with butter.”
This thought of the hot eggs pushed away all the other thoughts, and he fell asleep smiling with his head on Lane’s chest. He dreamed of the little horse. The little horse was running through a pumpkin patch. The little horse licked his hands and he could feel the hot tongue. The little horse kicked and started dancing with him in the amber light of October. Red and gold leaves floated and swirled around them, and in the sunset was the black shape of a stranger with a beat-up hat.
Chapter 3
Her husband was already headed into Sparrow to pick up another bucket of nails, some glue, and some other such things. He was pretty near finished fixing up the busted storehouse.
Jim Falk rolled out of the small bed and washed up quickly. Violet was knocking on his door right away.
“Mr. Falk!” she called through the wood.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Falk, I’ve got breakfast.”
He opened the door. Violet had a tray, and on it was a decent breakfast with milk and coffee. Jim, for the first time, saw she was about half-a-head shorter than he. The trees reached up behind her gray silhouette in the white morning.
“Thank you,” he said as she handed over the tray of food.
She gave him a little half-smile. “You’d better get to your work soon. The last thing this town needs is another lazy drunk.” She might be serious, but there was a smirk on her mouth when she said it, and turning quickly, she invited his eyes on her neck and waist. “I’ve got some extra rolls and butter. When you’re done, put the tray out the door.”
Jim ate the eggs and toast and thought about the spook and this woman. Did she know? Did she know that she’d appeared in his head?
Last night, at Huck’s bar, Benjamin Straddler told him there was no spook.
“Ain’t no spook up in them woods or up in any woods,” Benjamin said, looking slowly, one at a time, from Jim to Simon to Hattie. “Those Hills are troublemakers and they want to have some kind of importance in this town, and so they make up tales and become a part of them. Bill Hill was a good man before he fell into marrying that Violet. She comes from the Gray family up the Ridges. The Grays are known for their insanity.”
Jim thought about that and looked over at Simon. “Simon, then, what about that baby? The Baby Starkey?”
Simon’s eyes grew dim and his smile faded out. “What was it that they told you? That the spook come and got her? Sorry, stranger. That baby died because of the cold and we ran outta wood. We ran outta wood and we were all huddled up close, but it just got too cold. It just got too cold one night and all of us all fell asleep. It was like the winter cast a spell on us, a deep spell. When we all woke up, we could not wake up that baby, and then Elsie started in something awful. Screaming at that baby. It was worse than the cold or the whole winter, or even that little dead baby—Elsie’s screaming.”
Benjamin said, “You see, now? The Hills will tell you it was the spook that got that baby, and that it was the spook howling in the night. It was Elsie in her grief.”
Jim Falk listened to it all, but he remembered especially “a deep spell.”
He shoved the tray on the table empty.
Today was the day to do two main things.
The one thing to do was to go into town and see. He had to see what kind of a town this was, and how many people were in it. Maybe he’d ask around a little bit, a few questions, but not a lot. People don’t like outlanders. People don’t trust outlanders. Outlanders, if they don’t wind up dead, at the least get sent back out, out into the outland.