Hindsight

by Ronald Kelly

  "What're you gonna do?"

  "I'm gonna bust that lock and take a look inside."

  Cindy watched silently as the other children followed Chester to the wooden chest. Suddenly, thoughts began to flood her mind again, thoughts that strangely were not her own. They came like the spewing of a great dam, a jumble of dark, shimmering images and voices that rang oddly familiar to her young mind:

  Five shadowy forms standing in the muted light of a coal oil lamp, three standing apart from the other two.

  "What the hell's going on here?"

  The soft rustle of coarse burlap. The glow of yellow light on the barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. "You've been suckered."

  One of the forms, a tall one, stepping forward. "Now, wait a minute—"

  "Just shut up!" A gawky scarecrow setting the lantern on the lid of the tool box.

  Cindy strained to pull away from the confusing rush of visions. On another plane of consciousness, she could see Chester kneeling before the wooden chest, examining the rusty lock. "Hand me that old hammer there, Benny."

  The murky images continued to invade her mind. "We want what money you're toting," demanded the big man with the scattergun.

  "I'm getting outta here." This from a little fellow among the three. "I ain't gonna take this anymore."

  "No, not anymore."

  Then the throaty explosion of a shotgun blast boomed in Cindy's ears, causing her heart to skip in mid-beat. The flash of burnt powder and a gorge of blood splattered the earthen floor as the little fellow was thrown back by the shot. She watched in horror the shimmering mirror image of a dying man. He stared dumbly at his friends — at her—his blood-dripping hands attempting to keep his innards from spilling out.

  Someone began to scream shrilly. Cindy began to back away from the horrible images that assaulted her. She backed into the far wall of the barn with a thud and, instinctively, laid her hand on one of the crude rungs of the ladder to steady herself.

  "Stop him ..." gritted someone behind her. Cindy whirled at the tone of cold cruelty, facing the roughly boarded wall and its makeshift ladder leading to the rafters above. But it was not her hand that now clutched the rung of rotten wood. It was the strongly sinewed hand of a man, dark skinned and calloused, that hovered before her puzzled eyes. The muscles tightened and flexed as if the hand's owner was about to pull himself up the ladder.

  She stood transfixed by the strange hand until, abruptly, another object entered the picture. It whistled through the stale air, a rusted mass of steel on a pitted handle of rock-hard hickory. She watched in gruesome fascination as the axe struck the veined wrist with the force of its powerful swing. The girl stumbled backward and sat down hard on the packed earth as the hand separated from its arm in a sickening burst of blood and splintered bone.

  Cynthia Ann sat there for a tense moment, her eyes screwed shut, desperately trying to cleanse her mind of the awful images. The moans and screams of the injured man echoed shrilly, then faded into silence. The frightened girl breathed in deeply, a palsy of shaking and nausea threatening to overcome her.

  There was a rattle and a curse from the far side of the barn. She struggled to her feet and saw Chester hunched over the padlock with a rusted ball-peen hammer in hand. With a grimace of stubborn determination, the boy began to assault the lock with a number of sharp, well-placed blows.

  The pounding of the hammer matched the frantic pulse that thrummed dully in Cindy's ears. I've got to get out of here, she told herself. Get out before it's too late. She turned and ran for the loose board at the far wall.

  "Where are you going, Cindy?" called Susan.

  "Let the peckerwood go," growled Chester. He took a firmer hold on the hammer's handle. "That'll just mean a bigger share of the loot for all of us."

  Cindy reached the wall. She began to search for the loose board, her fingers gripping the rough planks, trying to discover the one that would allow her access to the outer world. A world full of sunshine and green trees and life.

  "Where is it? Where the hell is the loose one?"

  The thought was not her own. Again, the images of another had intruded on her thoughts. The sensation that filled her at that instant was one of pure horror and overpowering panic. And the voice, again it was painfully familiar. It repeated itself over and over again until, at last, she had it pinpointed. A sinking fear pressed in on Cindy as she finally knew who the one in the thicket, the one who had been mercilessly hunted in her dreams, actually was.

  The cold realization reaffirmed itself when she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. It was a dark object tucked away in the dank shadows near an old plow. She forgot the loose board for the time being and walked apprehensively toward the source of her interest.

  It was a hat —a grey fedora long since misshapen and waterlogged by dampness.

  She picked up the hat and turned it over in her hands.

  "Gotcha . . . Johnny!" rasped the same gravelly voice in her ears, the same voice that preceded the deafening discharge of a twelve gauge shotgun.

  Cindy whirled, her heart pounding and tears welling in her eyes, just as the padlock burst apart under a mighty swing of the ball-peen hammer. Chester grinned, freed the clasp from the rest of the broken lock, and lifted up the lid.

  "DON'T OPEN THAT BOX!"

  Her frantic plea was ignored. The tool chest was thrown open with a squeal of rusty hinges and the clatter of ancient tools falling onto the earthen floor.

  Cynthia Ann Biggs ducked through the narrow opening of the wall just as the frightened screams of children filled the old tobacco barn, echoing sharply off the bowed rafters, off each uneven board held in place with ten-penny nails. Cindy's terror matched their own as she burst into the sweltering afternoon sun, away from the stench of decay and the sight of horrible death.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A rickety, flatbed truck stacked high with freshly cut lumber slowed on the main highway, then pulled down the rutted dirt road that spanned the length of the old Brewer place. Hot summer dust boiled dryly beneath the truck's tires as L.J. Pike drove past the farmhouse, toward the huge structure beyond.

  The Galbreth County lumberman sent a spritz of tobacco juice out the side window and cast a glance at his quiet passenger. Clayburn Biggs had not said a single word since they left Ollie Simpkins' farm, ten miles north of Coleman. Sheriff White had left word there that Clay was to get out to Harvey Brewer's place as soon as possible. The only thing they knew was that it had something to do with one of Clayburn's children. "I've told them young'uns a million times they could get hurt bad messing around that old barn." That had been the only statement the lanky man had uttered during the long ride across Bedloe County.

  "You want me to stick around, Clay?" Pike asked when he had braked to a halt.

  Clay shook his head. He climbed out of the truck and slammed the door shut. "I reckon you'd best get that lumber back to Simpkins. We lit outta there like hell on wheels. Thanks anyhow."

  Pike shifted the old lumber truck into reverse and backed up the long stretch of dirt track to the highway. Clay took a dirty bandanna from his back pocket and wiped the sweat and grit from the nape of his neck as he surveyed the activity around Brewer's curing barn. There were three cars parked nearby; two belonging to the Bedloe County Sheriff's department, the other, a dark sedan, he recognized as belonging to Anson Hubbard, Coleman's only practicing physician. A small crowd of people stood a distance from the barn, all friends and neighbors who lived along Old Newsome Road. As he started up the road, a heaviness settling in the pit of his belly, Clayburn stared at the huge building. The tall, double doors of the old barn stood open, the heavy logging chain that had sealed them for years having been removed. Somehow it appeared obscenely sinister, like the gaping, toothless maw of an old geezer who had died in his sleep.

  He felt eyes upon him as he reached the gathering that stood close to the edge of the thicket. Tension hung like electricity in the air. Something's wrong, Clay thought.
Something's awful damned wrong. He spotted Maudie and the children and started toward them. His wife's eyes were red and puffy from crying. All of his offspring were there, their faces stricken in sick masks of numb grief. Even young Josh, whose features had been burnt bronze by the summer sun, stared palely at him, a sobering expression of sad confusion replacing his carefree air.

  "Maudie?" Clay began, but the question he was about to ask hung dryly in his throat. His puzzled, blue eyes left his wife's colorless face, drifting downward to regard little Cindy. She stood before her mother's flour-speckled apron, seemingly detached from her surroundings. She held a dirty fedora hat in her small hands. It was a hat that Clay recognized immediately.

  Clay heard himself being called from the direction of the barn. He turned to see Sheriff Taylor White standing in the open doorway, motioning for him to join him. Reluctantly, the farmer left his bewildered family and started up the twin ruts of the dirt track to the towering entrance of Brewer's rundown barn. An awful dread pressed in on Clay. He felt as if he wanted to turn and run. . . run until he dropped from sheer exhaustion. At that moment, Clayburn Biggs wished that he were a thousand distant miles from the ominous structure.

  "What's going on here, Taylor?" he asked the portly sheriff. The constable was uniformed in a plain khaki shirt and trousers, a polished brass badge over his left pocket and a holstered Smith & Wesson .38 Special on his hip.

  Taylor White avoided Clay's eyes, turning toward the murky shadows of the barn's interior. "We'd best talk in here," he suggested, his voice cracking.

  Clay knew then that something terrible had taken place. The sheriff was a man who looked you straight in the eye when he spoke and wasted no time in getting to the point of what he needed to say. The big man was acting mighty spooked that afternoon, as if something had shaken his iron constitution to the point of breaking. Clay followed him into the cavernous building, his heart feeling as if it had been replaced by a stone.

  Harvey Brewer, Doc Hubbard, and Bedloe County's two deputies, Fred Ezell and Pauly Bishop, stood back in the depths of the old barn, near a long wooden box of a tool chest. They watched silently as Clay entered, then they too averted their attention from him.

  "I don't know how I'm gonna tell you this, Clay." Taylor shook his massive head and stared up at the cobweb-shrouded rafters, as if hoping for some divine assistance from the heavens.

  Clay half suspected the horrible news that the sheriff was so reluctant in giving. "It's Johnny, ain't it?" he asked straight out. "He's dead."

  The lawman turned, his small gray eyes as sad as a hound's. "Yes."

  Clayburn closed his eyes and felt a sick quiver run through his lanky frame. After seeing the battered fedora in his daughter's hands, he had expected that awful suspicion to be confirmed. But another part of him had hoped and prayed that the news would concern something else entirely. He stood there for a long moment, a spell of nausea washing over him, then slowly passing.

  Taylor White laid a supportive hand on Clay's shoulder. "You all right? You want I should get the doctor over here?"

  "No," breathed Clay. "I'll make it." After a long moment of silence, he turned tortured eyes to his friend. "How did it happen, Taylor? And what about his pals, C.J. and Billy?"

  "They're all dead. We're still trying to put all the pieces together, but from what we've gathered, someone lured the boys here to Mr. Brewer's barn and killed them. Then they dismembered the bodies and, covering them with lime, stashed them in the bottom of that old tool box over yonder."

  Clay looked toward the wooden chest and saw three blanketed forms lying in the shadows. The forms were lumpy and shapeless, not at all resembling those of human beings. "Oh, God Almighty!" rasped Clay. He turned away and put a hand on a support beam to steady himself.

  "I'm sorry, Clay," apologized the sheriff. "I didn't mean to sound so ghoulish."

  "No, I want to know about it. All of it." He regarded Harvey Brewer. "What about this, Harve? Are you the one who found them out here?"

  The old man, looking deathly sick himself, shook his balding head. "Naw, it was a bunch of young'uns. Sonny Martin's boy and some children from town. They were messing around in here and found the bodies."

  "Your girl, Cindy, was with them, Clay," Deputy Ezell put in. "Must've been awful her coming across her brother like that."

  The sheriff stared at Brewer, trying to read behind the pained expression on the elderly man's face. "Now, you're sure you don't know nothing about this, Harve? Didn't hear no shooting or anything like that recently?"

  "Like I told you before, I don't know a thing about this. You know as well as I do that all manner of trash sneaks on my land, trespassing, doing God knows what in this old barn. Sure I hear things sometimes, but I don't come down here snooping around. That's a damned good way to get your head blown off!"

  A tense silence filled the barn. Each man stood, involved in his own private thoughts, not knowing exactly what to say to one another. All eyes turned to the open doors as the rumble of an automobile roared faintly in their ears. It was a shiny, tan LaSalle, chrome sparkling in the afternoon sun. They all recognized the roadster as that of Bedloe County's heartless banker, Ransom Potts. In a cloud of dust, the businessman braked to a halt and, leaving the vehicle, stormed in their direction. No one in Coleman cared much for Potts, the sheriff included, but that desolate moment shrouded in the gloomy shadow of death, they could not help but feel pity for the man.

  Taylor White sighed. "This sure ain't gonna be easy," he said, more to himself than anyone else. He walked to the entrance to meet the banker when he got there.

  Absently, Clay pulled the makings from his shirt pocket, intending to roll himself a smoke. However, his hands shook so much out of frazzled nerves that he had to abort the attempt. He shoved the tobacco sack back into his pocket and stared blankly at the covered forms twenty feet away.

  "How are you holding up, Clayburn?" asked Doc Hubbard. The gray-haired physician stepped in front of the man, perhaps trying to block his view.

  "I don't know," admitted Clay. "Just can't believe he's really dead. It's so damned hard to get it through my head that he's lying under one of those blankets. Is there any chance that a mistake's been made? That it ain't really Johnny and the others?"

  "Afraid not," said Deputy Bishop. "Fred, show him what we found on the boy."

  The other deputy took a bundled handkerchief from where it lay atop the wooden box. He opened its folds, revealing a handful of meager possessions. Clay studied the items, a dull ache of emotion growing in his chest. A few cents in change — a silver dime and a few wheat pennies — a buckeye for good luck, and a coil of spare guitar string in a stained pasteboard packet. The last object among the others was the three-bladed Case pocket knife that Johnny had won in a talent contest at the local high school three years ago.

  "I'm sorry, Clay, but we're gonna have to keep this stuff for evidence."

  The farmer nodded grimly and handed the articles back.

  Sheriff White and Ransom Potts moved farther into the barn, their voices growing in intensity as the conversation reached its peak. As usual, Potts had not reacted with shock or grief, but with instinctive anger. His eyes burned with indignation, almost as if he had been cheated out of a substantial sum of money, rather than the life of his only son.

  "How did it happen?" demanded the banker. "Why would C.J. come to this godforsaken place?" Ransom Potts quaked and sputtered in his fury, a huge man in a gray double-breasted suit. The man was soft and vastly overweight, the sign of a pampered and well-fed man.

  Sheriff White shrugged. "Mr. Potts, I've told you our suspicions of what happened. The boys must have gotten sidetracked on their way to Nashville. Doc figures they've been buried there for going on two months now."

  Ransom's moon face lost a bit of its angry color, the pallid cast of shock creeping into the slack flesh of his jowls and the pits of his piggish eyes. He turned his attention to the doctor, his words less harsh in their tone.r />
  "How were they killed?"

  Anson Hubbard looked uncomfortably at the sheriff, then regarded both Clay and Ransom. "I'd rather not get into that till I've had time to do an autopsy. But from just looking at the wounds, I'd say two of them were shot, while the other was murdered with an axe or some such object."

  A long stretch of silence followed Doc's brief explanation. Clayburn sat heavily on the frame of the ancient plow, while Ransom Potts paced the floor. The banker dabbed at his massive face with a monogrammed handkerchief, the red flush of anger once again crawling up the nape of his neck into his beefy features.

  "I should have known it would come to this, letting my boy associate with all manner of scoundrels and white trash!" Potts proclaimed, staring Clay in the face. "I wanted C.J. to make something of his life. I even offered him an important position at the bank, making a decent wage. But, no, he wanted to defy me and put me to shame. And he did it, too, running off to join that degrading work camp to toil the earth like a common laborer. And I know who was the cause of his defiance and, eventually, his death. It was a damned half-breed and the no-account son of an ignorant tobacco planter!"

  Clayburn was on his feet in an instant, his blue eyes steely and his work-hardened fists doubled. Everyone in the barn thought that Potts' insulting words might fire Clay into violence and rightly so. But the lanky man surprised them all. He stood his ground, pinning Ransom stone still with hard words of his own.

  "If anyone got these boys killed, it was C.J. who done it. Maybe you never did notice it, Potts, him being your son and all, but folks didn't take to the boy very well. He was a smart-ass and a troublemaker and as stubborn as an old mule, just like his old man."

  Fearing that the hostile exchange might lead to blows, Taylor White stepped between the two, laying a firm hand on each man's shoulder. "Fellas, blaming one another just ain't gonna do no good. I know you two have no great love for one another, but you've gotta be civil just this once. I don't have much of a chance in solving this crime without your cooperation. And I want you both to know I am gonna find the lousy bastards who done this. I swear to God I will. And when I do, they'll pay dearly for this terrible act."