“Now, where them white boys get the notion Isaac in the pig wells?” Aunt Babe asked.
“I guess they just figured it’s the one place nobody’s looked—or ever would look,” Pete said. “Do you remember the cholera?”
“’Course I do.”
“How come only pigs got it?”
“You can’t tell ’bout that cholera. Sometimes it go after people. Sometimes it go after pigs. Either way, a lotta dyin’ gonna follow it. That’s how come Paul made all her people pitch them dead pigs in the dried-up wells at Hinkey’s old sawmill—bottle up that cholera so it can’t get nothin’ else dead.” Aunt Babe’s eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Pete. “You know they ain’t no chance you gonna find Isaac alive in them wells, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you know Isaac wouldn’ never take off without tellin’ Hattie, like some folks been a-sayin’?”
“He’d never dust his broom.”
Aunt Babe rolled her eyes. “Listen at you. ‘Dust his broom,’ my hind leg. You know there ain’t gonna be no happy endin’ to this, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. But if I could just find him—find out what happened to him—Hattie could have him a funeral and put it to rest.”
“Hattie the only one need to put it to rest?” Aunt Babe eyed him closely.
“No, ma’am,” he admitted. “I guess not.”
“You know the way to them wells?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You got sense enough to know a well can cave in—way out past them brick walls around it—and you can fall in that hole from a ways back?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But you bound to go?”
“I’m bound to go.”
Aunt Babe put two fingers in her mouth and gave a loud, shrill whistle. A beautiful hound dog came bounding out from under the porch. His legs and most of his body were snow white, but he had a patch of black fur across his back that made him look like he was wearing a fine saddle. His head and tail were a rich golden brown except for a single white stripe right down the middle of his narrow face, from his brow to his nose. He sat down at Aunt Babe’s feet and looked up at her, waiting for instructions. She rubbed his head and scratched him behind the ears.
“This here’s Cyrus,” she said. “He gonna guide you. Cyrus know ever’ inch of that hollow. He done had his breakfast, and he gonna be hungry for his supper before sundown. He never miss a meal. He come home to supper without you, I gonna send for your granddaddy. Soon as you outta sight, I gonna call yo’ mama and see can I talk her outta the tree she likely done climb from worry. Give you time to get yo’ doin’s done. Now go on. Cyrus, you watch over this lost chile.”
“But I ain’t lost, Aunt Babe,” Pete said.
“Yeah y’are. You just don’t know it.”
Cyrus trotted onto the road and waited a few feet ahead of Pete as Aunt Babe went back inside.
Pete stroked the dog’s head and scratched him behind the ears just as Aunt Babe had done. “A dog will always remember you if you do that,” his father once told him. Cyrus fell into step with him as they followed the western split in the road, bound for the hollow.
For now, the road was sunny and bright. All the trees on either side had been cleared for cotton fields. But about a half mile ahead, fields would give way to woods. There was another bridge there with a deep, cold creek running beneath it. Whoever named it apparently didn’t have much time to think about it—it was called Deep Creek. That was the entrance to the hollow where all the Picketts lived.
They were Daddy Ballard’s last remaining tenant farmers. Most of the others had found work in the cotton mills or moved away altogether. The Picketts didn’t own any farmland or equipment. They farmed “on halves,” working his grandfather’s land with his equipment, and then giving him half the crop after the harvest. Years ago, they had chosen the most remote fields—150 acres on the river—because it allowed them to keep to themselves. That was Miss Paul’s doing.
The Picketts didn’t go to church, at least not with everybody else. But Roy and Lamar said that if you drove through the hollow on a Sunday afternoon, you could sometimes hear them singing in Miss Paul’s barn. Pete’s cousins—like most people in town—said the Picketts were snake handlers, but nobody had ever seen them do it. Pete could imagine Miss Paul shaking a big black Bible in the air as she preached to her clan, whipping them into such a frenzy that they danced around the barn with rattlesnakes and copperheads writhing in their hands.
Pete felt Cyrus nuzzle his hand. So intently had he been conjuring Miss Paul and her vipers that he didn’t realize he had made it to Deep Creek Bridge. When Cyrus trotted off the road and down the bank for a cool drink, Pete followed and fed him a leftover ham biscuit. Cyrus gave him an appreciative lick on the cheek and then took another long drink before climbing up the bank to the road.
They walked through a shady tunnel of towering oaks that overlapped high above—a welcome break from the hot sun. Hollow Road would be perfectly straight for about a hundred more yards, but then it would take a big dip, make a sharp turn to the left, and follow a serpentine path through the woods all the way to the river.
Nobody was stirring when Pete walked past Miss Paul’s barn. He had never noticed how many houses were tucked along this road. Most of them were unpainted shotguns or dogtrots with tin roofs and deep front porches, and they all had big vegetable gardens off to the side. The yards had no grass but were swept clean since most of the houses were nestled under shade trees.
The very last house that he and Cyrus passed was unlike all the others. It sat on a flat, sunny patch. A morning glory vine completely covered the porch railing and was climbing up the side of the house, while a rambling rose all but filled a small flower bed lined with rocks. The front porch and both sides of the house were bordered with a crazy quilt of flowers. There were milk and wine lilies, zinnias, geraniums, four-o’clocks, cannas—Pete knew them all from helping his mother work her flower beds. This was beautiful. It was like flipping through a coloring book that you thought was blank and stumbling onto one solitary picture that had been brilliantly colored. Cyrus had to bark to break Pete out of his trance and get him moving again.
Picking up their pace, they made their way around several bends in the road, past Pickett’s Pond, and finally to the piece of fence that marked the entrance to the sawmill. Every inch of it was covered in honeysuckle. A weedy path began where the main gate used to be. It led through a pine thicket to a small clearing where the mill, or what was left of it, stood. By the angle of the sun, Pete guessed that it was around ten o’clock.
He and Cyrus watched for snakes as they walked down the path. Just beyond the pine thicket, they could see the mill. The whole building leaned to one side, and it looked like the only thing holding it up was kudzu. All those vines had covered it in a leafy veil that draped around the trees surrounding the clearing, forming a dense wall of green that stretched as far as Pete could see. He would have to break through it to get to the wells.
With his hunting knife in hand, he began sawing at a small section of kudzu, but those vines were as tough as cowhide. Finally he managed to cut an opening big enough to push through. With his eyes closed and arms outstretched like a diver, he went in headfirst, twisting and thrashing in the small opening till half his body was through. With one more push, the vines gave way, and he landed on all fours inside the sawmill clearing. When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring down at a pair of pink plaid tennis shoes.
His eyes followed the shoes up bare legs to faded denim overall shorts, and finally to the stunned stare of a girl who looked about his age, maybe a little younger. He raised himself up on his knees. She had shiny black hair that was pinned back at the sides and fell into big curls around her shoulders. Her eyes were a strange and beautiful shade of bluish green, and her skin looked like—how would his mother describe it?—peaches and cream. She was wearing a pink T-shirt under her overalls. Sl
owly standing up to face her, Pete was relieved to see that he was a head taller than her. That seemed important right now, though he couldn’t say why.
“Your arms are bleedin’,” she said. He looked down to see scratches and small cuts up and down both arms, and he wished to goodness he could get some words to come out of his mouth. It had been hanging open from the minute he first saw her. “Is that there your dog?” she asked.
He hadn’t even noticed Cyrus at his side. “N-no,” he managed to get out. “I just—sorta—borrowed him. What are you doin’ here?”
“What are you doin’ here?” She hadn’t budged since Pete stood up, and she stood stock-still in front of him, while he nervously dusted himself off and blotted at his cuts with the hem of his T-shirt.
“I’m sorta lookin’ for somebody,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to be doing at a deserted sawmill.
“How ’bout you?” he tried again.
“I like it here ’cause it’s not as lonesome as a empty house.”
“How come your house is empty?”
She stared at him without answering. “I’m Dovey,” she finally said.
“I’m Pete.”
“Who you lookin’ for, Pete?”
“It’s sorta complicated.”
She sat down on a tree stump a few feet away and waited for him. Pete followed and sat cross-legged on the ground beside her as Cyrus stretched out in a shady spot and closed his eyes.
“I think my friend Isaac might be in one of them wells,” Pete began. Then he told her everything, all the way back to his father’s accident.
For a moment after he had finished, she just looked at him. He imagined she was making up her mind exactly how crazy he was and whether she should take off running or hit him over the head with something. “You need any help?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said. “You reckon Isaac could really be down there?”
“No,” she said. “But it sounds like you need to look.” She led Pete around to the back of the mill. The remains of several sheds and storage buildings circled out from it. Right in the center of that circle were three wells about ten feet apart. Their stone walls had crumbled down to low rims a couple of feet off the ground. All around them, the ground looked sunken and damp. Pete took a couple of steps toward the wells, but Cyrus leaped in front of him, blocking his path. He looked back at Dovey.
“You’d be stupid if you wasn’t scared,” she said.
Pete tried to step around Cyrus, who was circling his legs like a house cat.
Dovey reached out and grabbed his arm. “You’d be even stupider if you went near them wells without something to catch you if they cave in. C’mon. I know where there’s some rope.” She led him through one of the sheds and onto a path through the woods. He wished he had known about the path before he fought his way through all that kudzu. “Watch for snakes,” she said.
“But I thought—” Pete stopped himself.
“You thought what?”
“Well, ever’body says—I mean—don’t y’all handle snakes?”
“What do you mean, handle ’em?”
“You know—handle ’em.”
“When they get in the garden, we chop their heads off with a hoe—is that what you’re talkin’ about?”
“No, I mean when y’all are havin’ church in Miss Paul’s barn, do y’all pick up live rattlesnakes and copperheads and dance around with ’em while she preaches from the Bible?”
Dovey stopped in her tracks and glared at him. “Why would anybody do that?”
“I don’t know. I just thought—”
“Ain’t you ever seen nobody that’s been snakebit?”
“Well, no, I—”
“Whatever gets bit turns black, and you get chills and fever, and if you don’t die right then and there, sometimes they gotta cut off your foot or your leg or your arm or whatever has them fang marks in it. It turns my stomach just thinkin’ about it. What in the Sam Hill would make you think we’re crazy enough to pick up something that means to kill us and hold it in our bare hands?”
She walked quickly ahead of him, as if she were too disgusted by what he had said to share the path with him. He and Cyrus broke into a trot to try and catch up with her, but she wouldn’t slow down.
“Wait!” Pete called out. “Dovey, wait a minute!” She stopped and let him catch up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t have a bit o’ business askin’ you that. I’m real sorry.”
She seemed to be thinking it over as she twirled her hair around her finger. Then she gave him an unceremonious nod of forgiveness, and they fell into step with Cyrus a few feet ahead. Pete had so many questions he wanted to ask, but he was afraid of making her angry again.
“Go on,” she said.
“Go on and what?” he asked.
“Go on and ask me. If you thought we dance around with copperheads durin’ the Holy Scriptures, there’s no tellin’ what other crazy mess you’re wonderin’ about. Go on and ask. I promise not to get mad.”
“Well . . . how come y’all don’t go to school or to church with the rest of us?”
“What do you think people would do if we was to come walkin’ into your church or that school?” she countered.
“I think it’d be fine.”
She smiled at him like his mother did when she was trying to make him feel better about some idiotic thing he had done. “No it wouldn’t. We don’t belong there.”
“Well . . . how’d you get to be smart if you don’t go to school?”
“Smart don’t have nothin’ to do with school. Smart’s in your head. You just need somebody to teach you how to use it, and my Aunt Delphine teaches all of us. She teaches us how to read and do numbers. Our mothers teach us how to cook and keep house and grow a garden, and our daddies teach us how to get around in the woods. Granny Paul teaches us all about healin’ and the Bible and signs of bad weather. What else we gonna need?”
“But what if you have to leave here?” Pete persisted. “You know, like to go to college or join the army or something.”
She gave that smile again. “We ain’t about to join no army—and I don’t even know what college is.”
They had circled around behind Pickett’s Pond to a small shed behind one of the shotgun houses. Dovey led the way as they gathered up two long ropes, a big lantern, and a box of matches. Then they returned to the wells, where she lit the lantern, tied one end of the longest rope around the handle, and looped the rest into a bundle. She handed Pete the second rope. “Here, tie this around you good and tight,” she said. When he had secured one end of it around his waist, she tied the other end around the trunk of a stout pine tree a safe distance from the wells. Then she handed him the lantern and looped the extra rope over his shoulder.
“What’s this for?” Pete asked.
“So you can see inside the wells,” she said.
“But I brought a flashlight.”
“Ain’t no flashlight gonna shine down that far.”
He took a few steps toward the wells. About halfway there he turned to ask, “What about the cholera?”
“What?” Dovey asked.
“You know, from way back yonder—all them sick pigs.”
“Great day in the mornin’, that was a million years ago. Anyway, the cholera lives in water, and the wells are dry. Besides, when Granny Paul made everybody throw their pigs in, she told the men to pour gasoline down in there and burn off the disease. They tell about that cholera every time we smoke a hog over the pit out back of the barn. There ain’t no cholera left in them wells.”
“I reckon you’re right.” He slipped his hand in his pocket and gave the rabbit’s foot a squeeze before walking as fast as he could to the closest well. Getting down on his knees, he lowered the lantern over the side. Down, down, down it went into the dark pit. He couldn’t help gasping when the lantern illuminated a skull at the bottom. It wasn’t human, but it was creepy just the same.
“See anything?” Dovey called from her post by the tree Pete was tied to.
“Just pig bones—at least, I guess they’re pig bones. They ain’t Isaac, that’s for sure.” He hauled up the lantern and tried the center well, but it had caved in on itself. It was full of dirt almost all the way up to the stone wall and had been that way a while, because a thick carpet of moss covered the dirt, and there were little pine saplings growing out of it.
“Anything?” she called.
“Caved in.” He sidestepped his way over to the third well and lowered the lantern, but this time he leaned way out over the well to get a better look. The rope around his waist was stretched as far as it would go. Nothing. Not even pig bones. Just a deep, dark, barren hole. As he slowly pulled the lantern up and shut out the light, he could feel his eyes begin to sting. It would truly be the end of him if this girl saw him cry like a baby.
Keeping his head down, he took a few reluctant steps in her direction. But when he stepped on a mossy crack a couple of feet from the well, the ground opened up. “Pete!” he heard Dovey yell as the damp earth swallowed him down and the lantern went sailing out of sight, somewhere far below. His stomach jumped up in his throat, just like the time he had ridden a big roller coaster at the state fair. After that, he was just flailing through nothingness.
His head was two or three feet below ground level when the rope caught him. He could see the sun above but couldn’t see his hand in front of him and felt only cold air beneath his feet. Struggling to get his bearings in this dark, dank hole, all he could do was cling to Dovey’s rope and pray that it held.
“Pete, I’m comin’!” she called.
“No!” he yelled. “Dovey, can you hear me?”
“Yes, and I’m comin’!”
“No! Don’t come near this hole or you’ll fall through and you ain’t tied to no rope! I’m gonna try to climb out. You can run for help if I fall. Dovey? You hear me?”
Missing Isaac Page 5