Black Stump Ridge

by John Manning; Forrest Hedrick

“Yes, child, I’m talkin’ about him.”

  Silence grew as the girl digested the idea. After several moments she looked up. “Last night I dreamed I heered fiddle music. But, he’s locked up, right? He cain’t be makin’ no music. You showed me the wards in the cave and said he couldn’t get out so long as the wards was up. Right? He’s trapped behind the magic silver, right?”

  Truly sighed and looked directly at Betty June. She saw concern and fear on the girl’s face.

  “Not any more, hon,” she said as she reached across for Betty’s hand. She squeezed gently. “Not any more.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I’m sure of what we need to do, boys,” Jake said as he stared up at the fog-shrouded mountain. “I’m just not real sure of how we’re gonna do it. We got shine that’s ready to ship but we dasn’t go up there to get it. Leastwise, not ‘til Granny’s had a chance to put the wards back up. It ain’t safe.”

  Billy Ray looked up from the stick he’d been whittling. A small pile of curled shavings lay between his booted feet. “We can’t just leave it up there, Pa. There’s people waitin’ for it.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Jake shook his head. “Doc Johnson called me yesterday from Atlanta wantin’ t’know where his delivery was. I told him it wasn’t quite ready, yet.”

  “So, how long’s it gonna take for her to do what she needs to do?”

  “I don’t know, son. Ain’t nothin’ like this ever happened in my lifetime. I don’t know if she can do it.”

  “What’s the problem?” Bubba asked. He was two years younger than Billy Ray and a little slower thinking. Where Billy provided the brains to help Jake run the bootlegging operation, Bubba was the brawn. “All she’s gotta do is remake those silver marks, right? That can’t be too hard.”

  Jake looked from one to the other. His sons couldn’t be more different from each other. Billy Ray was short and thin, with black hair and eyes equally dark. Bubba was tall, bulky, light haired, and hazel eyed. They were good boys, though, as good as any man could expect and better than many these days. He supposed it didn’t really matter from whose loins the seed sprang. He loved them both and they both loved and respected him. Besides, if his wife had cheated on him, then she’d already paid for it when she gave birth to Bubba. The ordeal had done something to her insides, something the doctors couldn’t fix. She died five years later broken in body and mind.

  “You’re right, Bubba. If that’s all there was to it she could have it done before nightfall and we’d be back in business. Hell, if that’s all there was, you or me or Billy Ray could just go up there an’ paint little marks.” Jake glanced toward the ridge again. “It ain’t just makin’ marks. There’s stuff only Granny knows how to do, stuff that was passed down to her from her granny and her granny before her. It’s Cherokee magic passed on by medicine men a long time back. Besides, those silver marks don’t do any good if he’s on the outside. Everything’s gotta be done right or it don’t do no good.”

  “Is he even real?” Billy went back to his whittling. “I mean, no one’s ever seen him so far as I know. How do we know it ain’t just superstition?”

  Jake shook his head. That was the problem with the young ones these days. They saw so many movies, with their special computerized effects, that they didn’t believe in anything anymore.

  “Didn’t you hear the fiddle music last night?” he asked his sons. “Didn’t either one of you hear it?”

  Bubba shrugged. “I just thought it was those strangers up at Lawyer’s place playin’ their music real loud.”

  “No. That was him. That’s how he hunts. It’s how he baits his traps. One of the ways, anyway. You been hearin’ these stories all your lives. What did you think they was about?”

  Billy Ray shook his head. “I think it’s all they are, Pa. Stories. Old wives’ tales to make us be good when we was little.”

  “And, to keep other people from stickin’ their noses where they don’t belong,” Bubba added. “Like up there where the still sits.”

  “The only reason they work is ’cause the stories are true.” Jake ground out his cigarette in the dirt near his truck’s front tire.

  “If anyone but you was sayin’ that, I’d call him a liar or a fool.” Billy Ray went back to his whittling. “If those marks are powerful enough to keep him in, how does he get others to come inside the cave, then? How do they go back and forth?”

  “Do I look like a granny lady to you? I ain’t no Cherokee medicine man neither. I don’t know how it works. I only know they work on him and only him. Other things, like snakes and bats and other animals, they can go back and forth through the inside of the marks without nothing happening.”

  “Sounds like superstition to me,” Billy repeated, “all these stories ‘bout how girls go up the mountain at the dark o’ the moon an’ come down with some kind of monster baby in their bellies.”

  “What about Levi? How do you explain him?”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to explain. I feel sorry for him, but I don’t see any reason to be afraid of him.” Billy folded up his pocketknife and slipped it into his back pocket. He blew on the stick to clean out the carvings. He looked up at Jake. “He ain’t no monster. He mostly reminds me of those kids up Green Holler way. There’s a couple of them that remind me of Levi.”

  Jake spat on the ground. “There’s breedin’ involved all right, but it ain’t inbreedin’ like you’re thinkin’. Levi’s one of his children. Don’t you ever forget it, neither.”

  The two sons exchanged a look. Bubba started laughing. “But, Pa, he’s just retarded for gosh sakes. He’s like a little kid.”

  “Maybe. Maybe.” Jake pointed his finger at Bubba. “Remember this: his papa’s blood runs almost pure in his veins. His mama was one his children, too, ’fore he forced his seed on her. She was a half-breed. Levi’s blood’s about three-quarter pure. No one knows what he can do if he gets pushed enough. That’s why most folks just lets him do pretty much what he wants and looks the other way. No one wants to find out.”

  Billy Ray started to comment but the look on his father’s face killed it before it left his throat. Jake’s face looked ashen in the early morning light. “I thought folks just felt sorry for him.”

  “Yeah? Well think about this the next time you’re down at Purdie’s store.” Jake lit up another cigarette. “See if you can get Perdis to talk about Levi. If he does, watch his eyes. Tell me if you see pity there. If you can get him to talkin’ I’ll bet a box of Remington twelves it’s fear you see, not pity.”

  The silence grew while the boys considered Jake’s words.

  “So, what are we going to do, Pa?” Bubba’s voice broke the stillness.

  “Yeah.” Billy Ray joined in. “We can’t leave the stuff up in the cave.”

  “We’re gonna move the still an’ everything in it.”

  “Where to?”

  Jake scratched his chin. “I been givin’ that some thought.” He looked up at Billy Ray. “How bad you think that spot up on the east face is?”

  Bubba’s eyes widened. “Ain’t that the place where the Feds raided an’ busted everything up about ten years back?”

  Jake nodded. “Yep. That’s the spot.”

  Billy shrugged. “I don’t know. I ain’t been up there since last summer.”

  “I’m not thinkin’ about re-building there so much as relocating. I figure we can have everything moved from the cave to the old place by tomorrow night if we’re careful.”

  “What about the Feds?”

  “What about’em? They busted us a long time ago. That place is cold. They’ll figure we gave up. I haven’t seen any strangers sniffin’ around here for a few years now.”

  Billy pointed his index finger skyward. “That’s ’cause they don’t need to risk their agents no more. They got satellites that can take your picture from outer space while you’re takin’ a whiz in the woods and tell if you’re cut or not. They use infrared cameras to look for heat. Stills give off a lot of heat,
Pa. They’ll make one pass and have agents here before you can get enough made to sample, let alone sell. Especially as cold as it is right now.”

  “I thought of that and I have an idea that might help some. Suppose we do somethin’ like this?” Jake pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and opened it up on the hood of the truck. Billy Ray and Bubba crowded close on either side of him.

  Billy traced his finger over the design. “You know, this might work. These pipes would take the smoke and hot air this way and that and spread it out somewhere else. By then it would be cooled off some, too. ‘Course, you got the heat from the still. Might get someone’s attention, but they might think it’s hunters, too. It might work.”

  Jake slapped his hand on Billy Ray’s shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “If nothin’ else, it would buy us a little time while the Feds tried to figure out what was going on. That might be all Granny needs to put things back the way they were.”

  Bubba looked up from the paper. “When do we start?”

  “No time like the present,” Jake said as he folded up the drawing and put it back in his shirt pocket. “We have to work in the daylight an’ I don’t much care for that. I don’t want no one going up there after dark though.

  “We have to be careful. Those strangers up at Lawyer’s place will be out huntin’. They’re city folk so they’re liable to shoot at anything that moves – deer, squirrel, rabbits, dogs, cats, and…” Jake pointed his finger at his sons “…people not payin’ attention to where they’re walkin’. Let’s steer way clear of those blinds.”

  “What if they decide to go explorin’?” Bubba asked. “Suppose they see us movin’ some of the stuff?”

  “Well, I’m hopin’ Purdie convinced them it wasn’t a good idea to go wanderin’ through the woods, especially up around the ridge.”

  “An’ if he didn’t?”

  “I guess we’ll have to deal with whatever happens when it happens.” Jake looked meaningfully at his sons. “I don’t want no one carryin’ tales off the mountain, if you know what I mean.”

  Billy Ray and Bubba looked at each other and then at Jake. Both nodded but it was Billy Ray who spoke.

  “I suppose we do at that, Pa.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Fred squinted up at the sun as it shone coldly through the naked tree branches. He guessed it was nearly noon. He looked at his watch. At first he could see nothing through the disk floating in his vision. He blinked away the sun’s after image. The hands on the dial finally swam into focus. Eleven-thirty.

  Not bad for a city boy, he thought.

  “No sign of him,” Johnny yelled from the platform above. “Tarp’s still here.”

  “Come on down so we can figure out what to do next.” Fred sighed and looked at the others. Peete stared off into the woods. Dave looked at the ground. His slumped shoulders reflected his disappointment.

  It was the fifth and final blind. Only Charlie’s had shown any signs of disturbance. Although Fred and Johnny had checked that one the night before they still visited it first to make sure. It had been dark when they checked. No matter how intense the glow from a flashlight might be, it often created as many shadows as it penetrated. Unfortunately, they’d missed nothing on the previous trip.

  Fred’s thoughts returned to the gunshot he’d heard the night before. There had been only one, which suggested many different possibilities. Had the gun discharged accidentally? If so, was Charlie lying injured somewhere in the forest? Or worse, dead? Was it a signal for help? If so, why only one shot? Suppose he had killed his wife, as the TV news seemed to suggest. Would Charlie take his own life rather than risk capture?

  His thoughts jumped from the gunshot to the mangled cover they’d discovered this morning. Were the two related? If so, how? His shiver had nothing to do with the cold November morning. Something was going on, something very strange.

  The conversation with his mother the day before came suddenly to mind. They stood in the bedroom. She held the journal out to him, her face pale as she looked directly into his eyes. She stressed that he read the book. The scene played out with incredible clarity. The pebbled cover looked like black gooseflesh. He could see the fibers in the brushed red leather at each corner. The word Record stamped in gold leaf on the cover caught the room’s overhead light and reflected it back into his eyes as if each letter was lit from within. He could not recall ever seeing his mother as intense as she was at that moment. What could possibly be written on those pages that would affect her so?

  Suddenly he knew he had to get back to the house. He didn’t know what he expected to find. He only knew he had to read that journal.

  “What next, boss?” Johnny asked from the base of the tree.

  Fred jumped.

  “You okay?”

  Fred looked around sheepishly at the others. He nodded. “Sorry. I was thinking about something.”

  “I guess you were,” Dave laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you jump like that. Did you think of something that might help us find Charlie?”

  “No,” Fred replied. “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean, not exactly?” Dave asked. His eyes narrowed as he looked closely at Fred.

  Fred held up his hand and shook his head. “I was just thinking about something Mom told me when we were upstairs yesterday, that’s all.”

  Dave relaxed. “Okay. So, what next? Which direction you want me and Peete to go?”

  Fred looked at Dave and Peete and Johnny. He could see the growing concern for Charlie in all of their faces. Going back to the cabin was out. He couldn’t without having a good reason and he had none. All he had was a feeling. Charlie might be lost or hurt and need their help. That far outweighed his vague and uncertain feeling.

  “Why don’t you and Peete start looking down in that hollow,” he pointed behind them. “It goes back quite a ways. I think there’s even a spring at the back of it. I saw something on Purdie’s map. Charlie might have gone back there and got turned around. Be careful. The ground might get kind of swampy.

  “If you don’t see any signs of him down there, then check up on top of that ridgeline and maybe a little way down the other side depending on the light. Circle to the right and go that way. You should be able to make it back to the cabin by nightfall. Don’t try to cover so much ground you get caught out in the woods after dark, though. We can always come out again tomorrow if we need to.”

  “If we find him…” Peete hesitated, looking quickly at Dave and then back to Fred. He began again. “Suppose all we find is a body. Or, suppose we find him and he doesn’t want to come back.”

  “He’s a big boy.” Fred looked down at the leaves and scuffed them around with his toe. He finally looked up. “If he doesn’t want to come back, you can’t make him. Just make sure he’s okay. See if he needs anything. If he’s hurt or worse, then that’s another matter. I know it sounds like something from a movie, but if you find him and he’s hurt, fire three shots in the air. We’ll hear it and get to you as quick as we can. If we find him then we’ll do the same.”

  Dave and Peete shouldered their packs, checked their weapons to make sure that they were still safe, and then headed down the slope.

  “Good luck, guys!” Johnny shouted after them.

  “You, too,” they hollered back. Peete raised his left hand and waved without turning. Johnny and Fred watched them grow smaller until all they could see were an occasional flash of Day-Glo orange.

  Johnny turned to Fred. “Think we’ll find him?”

  Fred shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of real estate out here and all of it’s full of leaves and thickets and blow downs. Truthfully, I don’t think we’ll find him so much as we’ll find his body. I can’t get that gunshot out of my head. If there were more than one, I’d say someone was hunting or signaling or something. But, there was only the one. That sounds too much like…”

  “Yeah.” Johnny’s whole body seemed to sag. He took a de
ep breath and shook his head. “What a bitch.”

  “Yeah,” Fred agreed. “Helluva way to spend Thanksgiving, ain’t it?”

  “Sure is.” Johnny tightened his pack and picked up his rifle. “Which way, Keemo Sabe?”

  Fred pointed to the left. “Let’s check out that valley over here. Then, if we don’t see anything, we can go across and check out that ridge.”

  Johnny shaded his eyes from the sun as he looked at the distant formation. “I don’t know. That looks to be about five, maybe six miles straight line from here. By the time we go down and search those hollows it could be one-thirty, two o’clock. We head up to that ridge, we might have a hard time makin’ the cabin by nightfall. I don’t feel all that great about hikin’ back to the cabin through these woods in the dark.”

  Fred thought about the cover to the cistern. “You might be right. Let’s see how it looks when we get done down there.”

  “Fair enough.” Johnny started downhill, zigzagging through the trees. Fred looked to his right but saw no sign of the other two. After adjusting his pack and slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he followed Johnny into the valley.

  •

  “Hey, Dave!” Peete shouted. “Wait up a minute!”

  “Okay,” Dave wheezed. “I need to catch m’breath anyway.” He stopped. His chest heaved as he struggled to regain his breath. I need to spend more time in the gym and less in the kitchen, he told himself.

  Peete stopped in front of him. Dave was inwardly pleased to see his friend was panting, too.

  “Y’know, I been thinkin’,” Dave puffed as he leaned back against a nearly naked oak tree. “We could cover more ground if we split up.”

  “I don’t know,” Peete replied. “That might not be such a good idea. It’s what the white people always tell the black folks in the monster movies.”

  “Ha! I don’t see any monsters - just lots of rocks and trees and leaves and shit. It’s not like summer where you can disappear in three steps. Besides, we’re both wearin’ Day-Glo so we kinda stand out.”