Overgrown shrubbery hid the massive front porch, providing dark warrens through which rats and rabbits hid and reproduced. Feral cats moved through the clutter.
He stood before the monstrously large building of his dreams, but this time it wasn’t a house and though familiar, it was unrecognizable. This wasn’t his subconscious. It was real.
Leaves clogged the rain gutters so long ago the contents had turned to rich, dark compost.
Or as real as a dream could get.
Animals discovered the ready-made den and the entire yard smelled of cat urine.
He could smell? In a dream?
The garbage was a junk collector’s dream. Deceased cars, boxes, crates, trunks, tires, motor parts, and raw wooden shelves full of jars prevented human entry into the structure. The warped double doors opened only wide enough to allow a small amount of light to reach the rear wall of a large room filled to overflowing.
An obscene force from below the ground pushed an oak sapling’s roots into the air. As it fell, a dark burrow was revealed, leading to a warren of horrors.
He tried to shriek. At the high keening sound, Norma Faye propped up on one elbow and shook Cody until he quit struggling and opened his eyes.
“You were having a nightmare.”
“Oh, lordy, you ain’t a lying.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders. She laid her red head on his bare chest and held him close until his heart no longer beat so rapidly in her ear.
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“You need to.”
Cody turned his eyes into the dark shadows against the ceiling’s corner. “Can’t.”
“Hon…”
“Shhhh.”
Chapter Twelve
For the past week I’d been reading a book I’d checked out from the library about Indian burial mounds and wanted to find one. Indians lived and traded in Center Springs in the eighteen hundreds and arrowheads were everywhere, if you knew where to hunt.
We had a fair collection of arrowheads and spear points, but the idea of finding even more was fascinating to us. I’d never known anyone up on the river talk about burial mounds, but there was one interesting hump not far from the store that I was convinced might be what we were looking for.
Pepper didn’t want to go and she dug her heels in at the idea. “I don’t want to do no damn digging. That’s work!”
“You’ll dig worms for fishing.”
“Fishing is fun.”
“So is finding Indian stuff. What if we dig up a tomahawk, or a breastplate…or even a real Indian skull?”
I knew I had her with the skull idea, and she finally gave in on Saturday morning. We were riding our bikes past Neal’s store when we saw Uncle Cody’s El Camino in the parking lot. He was leaning over the side of a truck, talking to men Miss Becky called the Spit and Whittle Club. When he saw us passing the domino hall, Uncle Cody waved us over.
“What are you two outlaws up to this morning with them shovels?” I noticed he was a young version of Grandpa. He wore a blue shirt with his little badge pinned onto the pocket, right next to the inside seam. Instead of a revolver on his hip, Uncle Cody carried a big old 1911 Colt .45. It wasn’t pretty like the Colts Grandpa carried. The .45 was oiled, worn, and looked pure-dee mean.
“We’re fixin’ to go out to a deep draw beside Mister Vern Taylor’s pasture.” I readjusted the shovel on my handlebars. “There’s an old Indian mound at the bottom and we’re gonna see what’s in it. Maybe we can dig up a tomahawk, or a pipe, or maybe even a skull.”
Uncle Cody studied us for a minute from under the brim of his hat. “You up for some digging, Pepper?”
“Sure, there’s nothing else to do.”
“Well, let’s put them bikes in the back of the truck here and go on up to the graveyard instead. I’ll get a shovel and we can all dig up a grave or two there. I bet there’s been some folks buried in the Forest Chapel cemetery that are still wearing rings and necklaces and stuff.”
The idea horrified me, and he saw it in my face. “We can’t do that!”
“I don’t know why not.” Uncle Cody shrugged. “It’s the same thing.”
“No it isn’t…we’re going to an Indian mound, not a cemetery.”
“That’s what an Indian mound is, Top. You’re talking about digging up our people. That might be a Choctaw mound with Miss Becky’s great-great-grandmother in it.”
Pepper rolled her eyes. “I told you this was a stupid idea, dumbass.”
“Did not.”
“Hey guys, how about we put your bikes in the back anyway, and y’all go to the bottoms with me. You don’t have anything else to do now, do you?”
Her eyes lit up when Pepper thought about running around with Uncle Cody. “Let’s go.”
I wasn’t really excited about it, but I went along with the idea. Uncle Cody pitched our shovels in the bed and laid the bikes on top. He waved goodbye at the men and we left. Pepper sat between us as he drove slowly past scattered farms. Uncle Cody rolled the windows down and let the breeze blow through.
We passed Isaac Reader’s house and turned on a dirt road that led between pastures and woods. About a hundred mallards paddled around on the slash, a swampy low place that was always boggy.
Uncle Cody pointed toward another flock that turned to pitch in beside the greenheads. “We’ll slip down here in two or three weeks and shoot us a mess of these ducks.”
Nearly all the crops were in, and the fields plowed straight and true. Only a few bare stalks stuck up here and there. We drove over a plank bridge and turned right toward Sanders Creek. There was an old, unpainted tarpaper shack sitting in the middle of a corn field full of dead stalks, not far from Love Thicket. Uncle Cody parked in front of the house.
“What are we doing here?” Pepper frowned at the shack.
“I’m gonna visit for a second.” A wrinkled little old lady stepped through the door with a dish rag in her hand. “Y’all stay right here.” Uncle Cody got out. “Howdy.”
He left the door open and walked toward the woman.
“Well, shit.” Pepper flopped backward in the seat. “I didn’t know we were going to sit in the car all day.”
“Well, it ain’t all day. He won’t be a minute. What are you griping about? We’d be helping Miss Becky if we were still back at the house.”
She crossed her arms and sulled up.
Instead of joining her, I turned the starter key. The radio warmed up and The Animals filled the cab with “House of the Rising Sun.”
Pepper turned up the volume. “That’s about whorehouses.”
Shocked and embarrassed, I tried to turn the radio down. She slapped my hand away and sat there like she’d done something big. I’d never thought about what the song meant, and I knew we’d get in trouble when Uncle Cody heard it when he got back.
The song was almost over when he opened the door. He grinned and turned the radio down. “What’s this world coming to when long-hairs are singing about cat houses?”
I started to ask what the song had to do about cats, but it dawned on me what he meant. My face went red and I felt the heat. Pepper saw it and reared back to laugh. Uncle Cody punched one of the buttons to change the station and turned back on the dirt road, this time listening to Roger Miller’s song “Chug a Lug.” We liked the part where he sang that “it makes you want to holler hi-de-ho” but when we all chimed in to sing along, Pepper changed it to “hiney hole” and I was shocked. Uncle Cody threw back his head and laughed, and after that, we sang it that way together.
He pulled into another yard, minutes later.
“What are we doing here?”
“I won’t be a minute, Top. I got some information from that lady I talked to a little bit ago, so now we’re stopping for me to ask these folks a few questions.”
Pepper thought about working up a mad. “Are we going to do this all day?”
“Nope, one more stop or two oughta get it.”
H
e got out of the truck again and waited by the fender. This time, a middle-aged man in greasy overalls left the tractor he was working on and shook his hand. They stood close enough for us to hear, so Pepper turned the radio down a little.
“Well howdy, Constable.”
“Howdy Jess. I’m poking around today, visiting with folks to see if anybody’s heard or seen anything around here that can help me. I’m needin’ to visit with Kendal Bowden for a spell. You know him?”
“Yeah, I know of him.”
“When was the last time you saw him.”
“Like I said, I know of him. I’ve haven’t laid eyes on him since we were knee high to a grasshopper. He used to play with Merle Clark and Randal Wicker and Josh…I’m sorry to hear about him. Do you reckon Kendal really did come back and kill him?”
“Can’t say for sure. Do you know of anyone around here that might have seen him lately?”
“Naw, no one has said anything. I’ve been mostly working, so the only people I see are up at the store.”
“I know the feeling.” Uncle Cody caught my eye and knew we heard every word they said.
“He’s kin to Donny Wayne Foster. You might go by and ask him.”
The name jolted us. Back in the spring, Donny Wayne, his sorry brother Tully Joe and another guy joined in with Calvin Williams to jump on Uncle Cody up at the store, intending to whip him because he was seeing Norma Fay after she’d left. They needed more than the four of them, though, because Uncle Cody whipped them all. I heard Grandpa say that Donny Wayne put out the word that he intended to kill him if he ever caught Uncle Cody alone.
“Well, you know me and Donny Wayne don’t gee-haw too good.”
“I heard. He got his jaw unwired about a month ago and he says it ain’t been the same since you broke it for him. He don’t seem right no more with all them teeth missing that you knocked out. Says that shoulder you dislocated has been troubling him some, too.”
“None of that was my idea.”
“I heard that, too. He ain’t home right now anyways. He took work out at Slate Shoals, hauling hay. You might go by his place and talk to his wife. She don’t hardly go nowhere, but you be careful around him and don’t let him get behind you.”
Uncle Cody stared across the field, like he was studying the cut stalks. “You say Donny Wayne for sure ain’t there?”
Jess shrugged. “I ain’t sure of nothin’.”
“All right. You call me if you see anything or hear about Bowden showing up here in the bottom.”
“I ain’t got no telephone here, Cody. You know that.”
“Well, I’ll let you get back to your rat-killin’. Holler at Neal up at the store, if you do. He’ll let me know.”
They shook again and in a minute he was settled back in the cab and slammed the door. Pepper turned the radio back up. “Where to now?”
“We’re going to Donny Wayne Foster’s house.”
He must have seen how the name affected us. “Don’t worry kids. He ain’t there and I don’t intend to fight anybody today. We’re fixin’ to stop by for a few minutes so I can ask his wife a question or two. When I’m done, we’ll go down to a little persimmon patch I know. After that frost last week, they should be ripe and we can gather Miss Becky a quart or two.”
Neither me nor Pepper liked persimmons. I always figured the texture and taste appealed only to older people, but going to the woods with Uncle Cody was always fun, so it sounded like a good idea.
A Chrysler was parked in front of the run-down farmhouse set at the edge of a field, with its back porch facing a thick stand of trees. The only pretty thing in sight, one lone red oak grew out front, the colorful leaves still hanging on. A tire swing hung steady in the still, cool air. A quarter mile to the west, neat rows of pecan trees extended into the distance, but they belonged to Old Man Tatum, and he’d call the laws if he knew anyone was even spitting at them.
“Y’all stay here and leave the motor running. I’ll be right back.” Uncle Cody got out of the truck, and this time he unsnapped his holster. I turned off the radio and leaned out of the open window.
Donny Wayne Foster’s teenage son, Harold, opened the screen door. “What do you want?”
“Harold, don’t act like your daddy. I dropped by to visit with your mama a minute to see if she’s seen Kendal Bowden.”
“Naw, she ain’t.”
“Let her tell me that.”
“She ain’t here.”
“Well, who’s that standing behind you, then?”
Harold cut his eyes to the side. “My cousin. She’s visitin’.”
The thin young woman stepped closer to the open door and by the rag tied on her head, I recognized her as the one who cleaned house for Mr. Martin Davis for the last few weeks before he died. “Oh, howdy. I’m Cody. Ned said he met you at Martin’s house when they came out to hunt quail a while back.”
“I remember.”
“You doing all right?”
I could tell Uncle Cody was trying to make conversation at the same time he was checking the windows to see if Kendal or Donny Wayne was inside.
“I’m good. Donny Wayne ain’t home, and neither is Shannon. She’s over at Henrietta Dibner’s this afternoon, helping with her sick baby. You can talk to her there.”
“That’s all right.” Uncle Cody stepped back. “I’ll come back later when Donny Wayne is here. It’s him I need to talk to.”
“He won’t have nothin’ to do with you,” Harold said. “Not after what you did to him up at the store.”
“Well, Harold,” Uncle Cody was getting mad, so he stopped himself. “Tell Donny Wayne I’ll be back again in a day or so. I intend to talk to him, because you know you aren’t telling me the truth, so I’ll keep dropping by from time to time…to visit.”
The girl stepped back inside and I saw her hand come out into the light and rest on Harold’s shoulder for a minute. He turned and snickered. “If there ain’t nothin’ else, I got business.”
Uncle Cody turned toward the car. “So do I, and my business is with your daddy. You tell him what I said.”
Harold stepped back inside and let the screen door slam shut. Uncle Cody had his jaw set when he got back in the El Camino. He reached over and turned the radio up loud, backed up, and we drove down to the creek, laughing at Frankie Valli singing “Rag Doll” in a high girl’s voice.
Uncle Cody shook his head. “Folks oughta be boys or girls, and not both.”
Chapter Thirteen
“How you doing, Mr. Jules?” Cody stepped into the courthouse elevator.
“Fair to middlin’, Constable Cody. Goin’ up to see Judge Rains?”
“Yep, he called for me this morning.”
“Well, he’s in a mood.”
Cody nodded, remembering all the years that O.C. Rains had been part of his life. “Well, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him when he wasn’t in a mood.”
Jules nearly danced as he laughed. “Thass right, Mr. Cody. That man is always in a mood. Always in a mood, yessir.”
The elevator stopped on the fourth floor and Cody gave the old man a pat on the shoulder as he stepped into the echoing corridor. O.C.’s secretary Thelma Lee Fletcher was away from her desk, so Cody quickly crossed the outer office to open the judge’s wood and frosted glass door at the same time he rapped.
O.C. frowned in annoyance at the unannounced entry, but his eyes quickly crinkled at the sight of his newest constable. “Howdy young ’un.”
“Thought I was Uncle Ned, didn’t you?”
“It crossed my mind. I was hoping the old bastard would show up today. I’ve been a-missin’ him lately. I haven’t had anybody to argue with.”
“Well, don’t start in on me. I haven’t had the practice, and you’d probably eat me for lunch.”
“Naw, I’d go easy on you for a while, till you toughened up anyways. How’s things going out in Center Springs?”
“Been doing good.” Cody tilted his hat back and sat in the only wooden
chair that wasn’t full of papers. The joints creaked under his weight. “You needed to see me?”
O.C. picked up a wire fly swatter and leaned back in his own creaking chair. “Yessir. I didn’t want to talk about this over the phone or the radio, but I heard tell where Kendal Bowden might be.”
If O.C. was expecting Cody to interrupt, he was wrong. Ned would have barged in with questions, but Cody simply sat and waited. The quiet respect wasn’t what O.C. was used to, and it annoyed him. He surely missed sparring with Ned.
He sighed. “Anyways, I got a call first thing this morning from somebody who wouldn’t leave a name, but he said he saw Kendal fooling around the old Cotton Exchange building. He may be hiding there. I want you to run over and check it out for me.”
Cody frowned and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Sure will, Judge. But…” He chose his words carefully, unsure of how to pursue his thoughts. “Mr. O.C., my precinct is up on the river, not here in town.” He watched the old judge’s reaction. “Won’t I be getting in someone else’s business here?”
The fly swatter twirled in the judge’s fingers. “You’re wondering if you’ll be stepping on Sheriff Griffin’s toes, or Dub Moore’s.”
“Yessir. It’s Dub’s precinct and I don’t want to get crossways with another constable over something like this. That big old building is right on the line…uh, right on the tracks, too. ”
“Good point, son. But you forget who’s sitting on this side of the desk. I can tell my constables what to do, and no one needs to make me mad. It’d be like poking a grizzly and I’m an old bear that’s best left alone to do what he does. Dub won’t say anything because he’s in Dallas, and neither will Griffin.”
“All right. I’d still like to take somebody with me. How about I ask Jeff Andrews to go? That way I’ll have somebody from the sheriff’s office if anything happens, and maybe Deputy Washington since the Cotton Exchange is on the tracks.”
“Deputy Andrews. That’s the boy Griffin hired out of Dallas here-while back?”
“Yessir. He’s a good hand and I’d feel better if I had one of Griffin’s men along for the ride, even though you’re the one who sent me.”
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