Beware the Wild

by Natalie C. Parker

  I’ve known most of them since I was eight, and Darold started bringing me with him for Saturday sticky buns. There’s Sheriff Felder, who takes the prize seat by the door; the local cattle Baron, Mr. Tilly; construction tyrant Mr. Wawheece, whose sons are the scourge of Sticks High, to name a few. Mr. Clary himself takes the seat on the other side of the door and doesn’t ever say much at all.

  Darold’s never been invited to join them. He says it’s because he’s not yet ancient enough to need a rocker, but I’m convinced half of them’ll vote Democrat before they let a black man join their ranks.

  As I approach the front steps, they toast me with steaming cups of coffee.

  “Here comes trouble,” says Mr. Marrioneaux, his mouth entirely obscured by a full beard. Featherhead Fred is what everyone around here calls him. Too much time hunting up natural gas has left him witless and brainsick, but harmless enough. He’s the only one in town I’ve ever heard tell his own swamp tale, which is as much reason for his nickname as anything else. If he wore overalls and held a banjo, he’d be his own tourist attraction.

  “Only if you get between me and my coffee,” I call, winning a hoarse laugh and a knee slap.

  Beside him sits Sheriff Felder, coffee mug on one knee, hat on the other. He gives me a nod and quick smile. “Mornin’, Miss Sterling. Didn’t manage to bring that deadbeat of a deputy with you?”

  There’s no hint of the sympathy from yesterday, no sign that I should have anything weighing on my mind. But I need to be sure. “I left the house early, sir. I’m sure he’s not far behind. He’s—I think he’s waiting on Lenora May.”

  Hope stirs like nausea in my guts. I wait for him to answer, pinching my fingers into fists for patience. I can’t be the only one. I can’t.

  “Sounds about right,” he says in his slow, sleepy way. “She’s in those advanced classes with all the exams this week, right? Smart genes in your family, Miss Sterling. Don’t you let that go to waste.”

  My stomach threatens to revolt if I stay in this conversation much longer. “Yes, sir,” I say with as much cheer as I can force. I take the front steps two at a time.

  Inside, Clary General smells like coffee, pinewood, and animal hide. With all the lazy fuss on the front porch this time of day, the interior is empty. The door groans behind me, and the floor beneath me. Clary General is an unquiet place, too full of memories to keep still.

  The front of the store is designed to trap the ten tourists who come through Sticks each year. Every shelf is dedicated to swamp paraphernalia and local crafts. One is covered entirely in gator goods: dried heads, boiled skulls, teeth, claws, gator jerky, recipe books, and gator-skin purses. One carries all the sweets you can imagine coming from sugar and nuts: five flavors of pralines, candied pecans, butter toffee, chewy caramels, and chocolate gators. Another holds the full collection of Clary General’s Tales of Sticks’ Swamp, an ongoing series of books written, illustrated, and published by the Clary family for more than a century. Every few years they release a new one and even locals can’t resist. Candy hordes them, adding each new tale to her arsenal with a delight born of scaring her friends stupid, but they’ve always left me with a shiver.

  I pull the most recent from the shelf. The first page is the same in every volume, a note from the first Old Lady Clary, who started recording these tales in 1868:

  I do not tell these stories to delight or entice. Rather, I tell these stories to entreat you—stay away from our swamp, but do not ignore it. Read these stories, my loves, and remember. Secrets are never so dangerous as when they’ve been forgotten.—Winona Love Clary

  Obviously, Winona Love Clary isn’t writing these anymore. This collection is the work of her some-number-of-greats granddaughter and current Old Lady Clary. I page through. All the stories are familiar. Unhelpful. Plenty of tales detail people going missing or getting stuck. But there’s nothing practical about how to find them again. If anyone in town knows more than these stories are telling, it’s got to be the author.

  I only know Old Lady Clary is behind the tall counter by the sounds she makes as she tears plastic wrap to drape over her sticky buns, the quiet smack of her lips as she licks errant frosting from her fingers, the small chuckle of satisfaction that follows. As I press the lever on the coffee dispenser, her round face peers around the canister. An ever-ready smile hangs from the apples of her cheeks, her lips thin and glossy with sugar.

  “Morning, Mrs. Clary.” I set my mug and a five-dollar bill on the distressed wooden countertop, beside a cluster of colorful seven-day candles. Each tall jar is painted with various Catholic saints and voodoo deities. More than once, I’ve seen locals take them through the back door and plant them along the ground at the base of the swamp fence.

  She eyes the book in my hand and then me, curious. “Where’d you get that?”

  I gesture to the shelves. “Over there. From your collection of swamp stories.”

  She makes a sharp, wet noise of displeasure. “Not the book, child. That.” She points to my wrist where the bracelet sits.

  “My bro—” I catch myself, suddenly unsure. “I mean, I found it in the attic. One of Grandpa’s old trinkets. Probably belonged to my grandma.”

  Old Lady Clary’s eyes narrow to slits, her mouth puckers. Everything about her goes still and she releases a slow “Mmm.” Then, moving more quickly than I’d have thought possible, she sweeps my money into her till and counts the change. “You want the book, too? Sorry to say it, but I’m afraid this ain’t enough.”

  “No, ma’am, I just had a question.” I pause, flipping through the pages of the slender volume.

  “About a prayer, shug?” she asks knowingly, reaching for one of the candles. It’s decorated with an elaborate image of Marie Laveau dancing, a snake dangling around her neck.

  “I think I’m past candles, Mrs. Clary.” I hit her with my next words before I can think better of it. “The swamp took my brother and no one remembers him.”

  The candle thunks against the counter, and the whole shop settles into a thick quiet. I feel hope down to my toes. She’s going to remember. She’s the one who will help me, who will tell me what’s happened, and how to fix it.

  “My, my, my,” she mutters. “Yes, you’re beyond candles, child, far beyond the reach of candles. I’m so sorry, so very sorry.”

  It takes a moment for that to register. She’s not denying what I’ve said, but what she’s offering is so much worse. “No. How do I get him back?”

  She shakes her head.

  “You have to help me get him back!”

  But Old Lady Clary gives another fierce shake of her head. “No, no. You stay away from that swamp. It’s a fearful place and no good can come of it. Best to forget and move along.” She cuts me off before I can voice a single word. “Nuh-huh. I don’t want to hear any more, Sterling Saucier. You mark my words and keep a good distance from that swamp.”

  “Please,” I beg. “You must know something.”

  She lowers her voice, her eyes on my bracelet. “There’s more than one kind of fog in that swamp. Keep clear of it. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

  The door opens with an offensive creak, and Mr. Marrioneaux lumbers in.

  “Dear Ida, I’ve come for a refill,” he sings.

  I don’t move, but Old Lady Clary won’t meet my eyes, focusing instead on Mr. Marrioneaux. It’s like I’m not even there.

  It’s all I can do to step away and hold all this anger inside myself when I’d like to throw it at Old Lady Clary.

  Through the open door, I spy Darold’s cruiser pulling into the store’s gravel lot, and then something I can’t believe: Phin’s Chevelle racing up the road toward school with Lenora May’s grinning face at the wheel.

  “Thanks for everything,” I call sarcastically. And then I hurry after the girl who stole my brother’s life. And his car.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .................................
.................................

  STICKS HIGH CROUCHES AT THE top of the only land in town high enough to call a hill. A flat, redbrick building with bits of white trim to add a touch of Southern flair, it’s old and quaint and a tight fit for the two hundred and thirty-two students it serves. The Chevelle gleams in the student lot, the one place Phin swore never to park, not with the money he poured into that paint job. Took six months of after-school work at the auto shop to save enough to paint it the color of open defiance. Of all the things Lenora May’s taken, this one seems the most unjust. After two seconds of staring at the shining chrome, feeling futile, I spin and let that anger carry me the rest of the way to school.

  Locker doors slam open and shut with the sort of enthusiasm reserved for the first and last weeks of school. The air is electric and cold and too sweet. Someone crows at the other end of the hall.

  I’m surprised to find Candy at my locker. Just as she’s the first on the volleyball court during the season, she likes to be in her desk no later than fifteen minutes early to get herself organized for the day.

  She greets me with a careful smile and an uncharacteristically gentle “Hey, Saucier.”

  “Hey,” I manage, trying to fathom why she’s so contrite this early in the day.

  “So, I’m the worst friend. I got into it with my mom last night and in my brilliance, left my phone in the den. I missed every one of your texts. Forgive me?”

  In the middle of the night, after hours of watching the Shine make eerie shapes and shivering in my bed, I’d sent her three 911 texts in a row. Now, I think I’m grateful she missed them.

  “Forgiven,” I say. “Last-minute panic about the final. I couldn’t remember the name of Twain’s first publication. L-Lenora May knew the answer.”

  She nods. Confirming what I already knew: she doesn’t remember Phineas.

  My stomach releases another angry yowl, reminding me that I haven’t eaten since sometime yesterday. Candy is immediately fierce.

  “When’s the last time you ate? Did you get breakfast? I’ll bet you didn’t.”

  I produce the apple and retrieve my coffee mug. “Breakfast of champions.”

  Her frown is bone deep. “Champions of what? You’ve got to eat, Saucier, it’s a basic function of the human body. We eat, we sleep, and we spike.”

  “Look. I’m eating. Mmmm, apple.” I take a big bite of the fruit. It’s sandy and mostly disgusting, but I force a smile. “So just leave it alone.”

  “You may not want to talk about this, and that’s fine, but you can’t hide the fact that you’ve been starving your brain for the past few months, and I need you on the court this fall—on varsity, so you can listen while I talk.”

  This is an argument we’ve rehearsed many times since the day Phin announced his intention to leave and I lost my appetite. I know how this conversation goes.

  Candy doesn’t disappoint. She launches into an account of my eating habits over the past three months, my slow but steady drop in weight, my inability to eat a normal meal, and ends with a statement about how “thin doesn’t equal beautiful.” She’s gotten better at it, I have to admit.

  “Beauty is a social construction. I’m your best friend and that means it’s my job to tell you the truth, and the truth is that you were a helluva lot prettier three months ago than you are now, so snap out of this.” She’s gotten so passionate in her speech that she’s turning heads. But she’s immune to the attention.

  “Keep your voice down, Candy, I hear you,” I say.

  “I’m not so sure that you do.”

  The first time she asked me about this, I’d tried and failed to explain that it wasn’t about wanting to be thin; I couldn’t think of food when the threat of losing Phin to college was so near. She’d cut me a little slack, but now that Phin’s not even a distant memory in her head, that piece of our friendship is gone, gone, gone. How much of my best friend disappeared with my brother?

  I’d rather not find out. I give her the only innocuous nonresponse I can think of. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Whatever you say,” she says with a defeated sigh, “but I’ll be here whenever you’re ready to talk. Promise me you’ll still be here, too.”

  She says the words so casually that at first I don’t understand her meaning. Where would I go? But then I get it. The constant pressure in my stomach becomes hard and pointed.

  “I promise,” I say, and it’s true. It never occurred to me that avoiding a few meals might actually kill me.

  Maybe it had occurred to Phin, though. The thing that made him angriest was fear, and he was furious in the moments before he ran into the swamp.

  “Sterling,” he’d said, his voice a caged bear. “Why are you doing this? Why are you starving yourself?”

  The bracelet was a dead weight in my hands, my shoulders pressed to the carport wall. I answered, “What do you care? You’re leaving.”

  He’d moved so quickly then. His fist flew at my face. I closed my eyes a split second before I felt the carport buck. Darold appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Phin from behind. That’s when Phin spun and threw a second punch into Darold’s eye.

  I’d thought it was anger that made him take a swing at me. I’d thought he was angry with me for losing weight or for caring so much that he was leaving. I’d thought that he was angry because leaving wasn’t easy. But maybe he was as afraid as I’d been.

  I take another bite of my apple, hoping it will taste good enough to get me through the whole thing. It’s grainy and gross and entirely unappetizing. Candy averts her gaze as I take one more bite and drop it in the trash.

  The bell rings five minutes after I’ve handed in my exam. Candy snaps her pencil against the desk and turns hers in with a little more flourish than is strictly necessary. On her return, she bends to drop a tease in Abigail’s ear. Abigail swats at her and continues frantically scribbling. Watching her makes me want to hold my own breath. Finally, she slides back in her seat, her shoulders relax, and she stretches her long, dark legs.

  From her desk, Mrs. Gwaltney reminds us to turn in our books if we haven’t and threatens the wrath of every writer from Thomas Malory to Mark Twain if we don’t. It’s the sort of joke she can only make at the end of the year, even then only a few of us paid enough attention to find the humor of it.

  Finally free, Candy, Abigail, and I join the rush of bodies sweeping along the hall to the cafeteria.

  “How’d you do, Beale?” Candy calls across my nose.

  “None of your business,” Abigail says, uninterested in competition off the volleyball court.

  Walking next to her, I always feel a good two feet shorter than I am in reality. She’s looming and serene with the hundreds of dark braids coiled on top of her head, adding a touch of regality. When Candy talks about beauty, Abigail’s the person I think of. Put her next to her sharper twin, Valerie, and they’re deadly gorgeous.

  Candy scoffs. “Everything is my business,” but she doesn’t press. Precedent is against her strong-arming Abigail into anything.

  The cafeteria is a long room lined with windows that face the football field, which stands between the school and the swamp. The walls are yellow, the floor a tightly checkered pattern of maroon and black and years and years of grease.

  Lenora May is already here, seated at a table full of senior girls. I search their faces for any sign of discomfort at her presence, but I should know by now that I’ll find none. Lenora May and the other girls move and talk in the rhythm of old friends. Her curls bounce while she laughs. Ketchup hangs from the little cluster of fries in her fingertips, and I hope with all my might that it’ll splatter the front of her dress. She notices, dabs it lightly on her plate, and eats.

  “Buying today?” Candy tugs me in the direction of the grease and canned veggies line.

  The sight of Lenora May has killed any appetite I might have dredged up during finals. I pat my backpack. “I’ve got mine. I’ll get a table.”

  “Whatever.” S
he stops short of calling my bluff and leaves to catch Abigail.

  The crowd is a smothering riot of laughter and anticipation of summer. I find myself enraged by how easily they accept Lenora May as one of them. Would Candy and Abigail so quickly relinquish memories of me?

  This sparks an idea in me.

  With a student body barely large enough to support the typical gamut of sports teams, it doesn’t take long to figure out who your friends and enemies are. And in a place like this, you’re either one or the other. In Phin’s case, there are more of the latter thanks to his fists-first philosophy of conflict management, but he wasn’t without allies.

  Scanning the room, I find Cody Hays sitting at a table by the vending machines for those who prefer sugar to grease for lunch. He’s been Phin’s best friend since I can remember. If there’s a chance anyone else in this entire town might remember Phin, surely it’s him. I have to try.

  Cody sits in the perfect center of his table, which will make this awkward no matter how I do it. I stop at the far end and push my hands into my pockets. Keeping my eyes steady on his face I say, “Hey, Cody.”

  “Hey, Sterling,” he says with a grin, leaning back a little. All heads at the table turn toward me. I can’t help but remember the two million times he’s teased me about my pale legs while Phin smacked the back of his head—we all knew his teasing was an excuse to look. Beside him, his girlfriend, Samantha, narrows her eyes.

  “What’s up?” he prompts.

  A weight heavy enough to stop me from speaking settles on my chest. Pushing my words past it makes their ends waver. “I wanted to know if you’ve heard from Phin.”

  There’s a pause and, in a burst of hope, I think he’s the one who will finally remember my brother. But then—