Haunted

by Randy Wayne White

  No . . . two reasons. Theo had said to me, You don’t know what the word loyalty means.

  Now that I did understand, I couldn’t bear to ponder this admirable quality in an animal that intended to kill and eat me.

  Words from America’s bloodiest war also grated at my conscience: For them who runs, the fat pine is strung at every fence row. The Gerillas has been loosed & hells flames is ready.

  I had felt shamed by Ben Summerlin’s callousness. I’d condemned his behavior as “inhuman,” yet here I was stealing his plan of attack because I did not possess his resolve or war-hardened cunning. If anyone had a right to feel shame, it was the women who anchored my family history, Hannah and Sarah Smith. Unlike them, I was a modern girl. I had been pampered by current times and was unprepared for the realities of survival in this hard land.

  All sobering, all too true, but these negative tangents did not address the task at hand.

  Better to think about a cozy houseboat where, over coffee, Joey Egret had made up for his shyness by discussing his class on hazard reduction burning. He’d used terms like drip torch, fuel load, wet line, and flank fire. Lots of others that went over my head, but the basics stuck with me. I grew up in a house that had only a fireplace for heat, so fire-building skills are always of interest.

  My aunts Hannah and Sarah might have at least smiled at that.

  When Belton and I were ready, we started the palmettos burning in such a rush, I can’t claim skill was involved. Sap pine dabbed with combustible gel will blaze no matter who strikes the match—or Lucia’s lighter, which I chose not to use. Belton went one way, I went the other. I’d found a root so rock hard with sap I needed only a match to start it burning. That gnarled fork became my torch, which I used to light more pine fragments as I hurried along, starting a new fire every ten yards or so, palmetto leaves crackling with heat and rising flames as the wind tunneled beneath.

  A factor I hadn’t considered was what fire does to a person’s night vision. I couldn’t see beyond the torch, but details near my feet were as crisp as noon. This saved me from stepping on a rattlesnake that hadn’t bothered to coil, but it also cloaked Oliver’s movements. My response was to extend the fire line only a little farther before I tossed the torch away and jogged back to find Belton.

  He, too, was finished. Stomach cramps had forced him into the bushes, so I allowed the man privacy. Stood there, my bag at my feet, and for the first time got an overview of what we had done: a hundred yards of burning palmettos, some only sparking while other sections blazed. It was because of the vagaries of wind—another factor I hadn’t considered. I had hoped my inverted arrow design would lure and then trap Oliver by funneling him into the very heart of the flames. The wind, however, shifted and ricocheted and fueled random designs of its own.

  I began to worry, but there was nothing to do but stand back and watch. To the east was higher, drier ground. The waist-high fire we’d started had already jumped a distance and become a separate entity, a ravenous wall that shot sparks into the sky while it pushed toward a lone pine tree far away. Those sparks sailed and tumbled in the wind. Some landed in a meteorite arc and generated small blazes of their own. Most sputtered and died. A few did not.

  To the west was cypress swamp and the river basin, cooler areas that stirred breezy subcurrents. Those currents nudged flames northward despite a gusting northeast wind. Patches of fire appeared to leapfrog, desperate to dodge the cooler air. They moved in a counterflow and were soon feeding on brittle palmettos behind us.

  Belton stepped from the bushes, his jingling belt muted by the seesaw gusting flames. “We’ve got to get out of here. This whole damn field’s going up.”

  I had already shouldered my backpack, ready to move, but I didn’t move or respond because of what I saw gliding toward us: a flashlight, maybe a quarter mile away, a white mushroom glow that searched the ground, then went out. It angled from the northeast, our only corridor of escape.

  “That can’t be Oliver,” Belton said. He had to raise his voice to be heard. “Just a minute ago, he was south of us. Nothing on earth can move that fast. Maybe it’s a rancher who saw the fire.” Sick as he was, the man was nervous enough to finally address the creature by name.

  I noticed the slip, even while Ben Summerlin’s words gnawed at me, but from the aspect of the quarry, not the predator. For them who runs, the fat pine is strung at every fence row.

  I shook my head. “That’s what he wants us to do, go running toward that light for help. He’s upwind now. That means his nose is no help, so he’ll lie flat in the palmettos and use his ears. Or climb a tree and track us by sight. With all this smoke, we won’t know he’s close until he’s on us. Probably from behind. First me, then you.”

  Belton started to say, “You give that damn thing too much credit”—a statement that ended with a wince and a groan. He bent with another spasm, face pale. “There’s nothing left in my stomach, but it just gets worse.” He grimaced again before looking at me, helpless. “Take the gun, I understand. Save yourself, dear. Please.” He staggered toward the bushes while he undid his belt.

  The fire hadn’t encircled us but soon would. Wind whistled through palmettos with the rhythm of waves, each brown fan vibrating, while flames responded with a choral roar. The chorus oscillated with ascending and descending notes: a snoring giant, a waterfall. The voice of fire assumed many forms.

  Hypnotic. It was a seesaw melody that stilled a place inside me. As scared as I was, it allowed me to think. On the houseboat, Joey Egret had explained the dangers of setting a head fire. Head fires were impossible to control. It was better to start a blaze that crept slowly upwind—a burn back, he’d called it. The term was familiar. I had used it in a general way, but didn’t understand the subtleties until now.

  I put down my bag and called to Belton. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  Because of the noise, I had to repeat myself twice. Then explained, “The fire can’t reach us if there’s nothing left to burn. That’s what we’re going to do—clear a big, safe space and stay right in the middle. We’ll sleep here, for all I care. The important thing is, Oliver will have to walk through fire to get to us.”

  Before Belton could argue, I told him, “Say good-bye to those bushes and start collecting wood.”

  • • •

  THE HEAD FIRE we’d started charged southward, a gelatin wave that gained speed and width but also provided a space to retreat to when I torched the bushes behind us. Our retreat wasn’t hurried. No need. This was a different breed of fire. It sputtered and sparked, seeking fuel downwind, but there was no fuel, only scorched and smoking palmettos that refused to burn twice. So the flames I nursed stayed low and crept north at an angle. They reminded me of sailboats running close to the wind, pointing hard into the wind, before coming about and tacking. Fresh flames sparked a windward course. The mating of air and fire produced much softer choral notes: rain on asphalt, a woman’s sleepy laughter.

  Smoke was our only enemy . . . our only natural enemy, at least. We backed away, pulled our shirts over our mouths, and waited while the earth smoldered, the fire behind us a searing heat that I truly believed was our protector. We scanned the northern horizon and tried to see beyond the flames. In the distance, cows bawled—dark specks on a plain of milky blue. Smoke spun itself into dust devils, mini-tornadoes that sometimes charged us before levitating toward the moon.

  After a while, Belton asked to use my backpack as a seat. The man was exhausted yet felt the need to talk. Something was nagging at him—some lie he had told about my great-uncle’s journal, was my suspicion. But after he had circled the subject without getting to it, I told him, “Tomorrow, after you’ve slept and had a shower, we’ll talk. Or write it down, if your conscience is bothering you, and I’ll read it when you buy me dinner.” Then I made a joke, saying he had so much soot on his face, he was invisible, so he had nothing to worry about.
Like a commando.

  The man didn’t respond for a moment. Stared straight ahead, kept his eyes fixed, while he got to his feet and said, “There he is.”

  The flashlight again: a white mushroom glow to the northeast. Much closer, although distance is hard to judge when distorted by heat. A football field away? No . . . closer. My hand found the gun in my back pocket, but only for reassurance. For the same reason, I turned to inspect the fire protecting us to the south. Only twenty strides separated us from boiling flames, heat so intense it stung my face.

  Belton, voice low, said, “He’s coming.”

  Oliver, he meant.

  The mushroom glow had become a hard white eye. The light painted vertical brushstrokes as if carried by a man who was walking. The beam flattened, lifted, and suddenly loped toward us . . . or toward an opening in the flames—a corridor of smoke and seared grass cleared by the wind. It was the only safe entrance.

  I stepped toward the opening and drew the pistol. For the hundredth time, I confirmed that my last bullet was chambered, then attempted a deep breath, but heat—or fear—was a constricting weight. When several shallow breaths hadn’t helped, I retreated into that quiet space in my head. Choral notes of wind and flame mimicked a woman’s weepy laughter, but a bass-chord mantra dominated: Weakness can wait. Weakness can wait . . .

  I found a moment’s peace there. My long-dead aunts had survived this hard land. Irene Cadence, too, in her way, but with an end so empty of triumph that her loss and her loneliness hardened my resolve.

  Half a mile away, the lone pine tree exploded in flames. A beat later, the sound of the explosion pushed by me in a wave and changed the wind’s own cadence into a sustained wail. For an instant, just an instant, the tree blazed like a candle. It illuminated every shape and living thing outside the circle of flames, but I took an extra moment to analyze the flashlight’s source. Only then did I realize we had been terribly wrong.

  I wheeled around to warn Belton That’s not Oliver!

  Too late. I didn’t speak because Oliver was there. He was breathing heavy, standing erect, thick-jawed, his fur smoking after an upwind passage through the flames. Stared with amber oyster eyes that saw me, only me, indifferent to the man he was suffocating and Belton’s attempts to pry one massive paw from his face.

  I yelled, “Let him go!” and everything I saw after that was framed by the pistol’s gun sights.

  Oliver put a fist on the ground and vaulted closer, dragging Belton with him.

  A shield, I realized. First, a snare from a steering wheel. Now Oliver had devised a human shield.

  I backed a step while the stench of burning hair and sulfur found me. My eyes followed the pistol to Oliver’s exposed knees . . . tracked upward to where his circus-sized pants smoldered on blistered thighs. Only the space of a few inches separated Belton’s head from Oliver’s face. And there, on his neck, instead of a collar or a rope, a snake had anchored its fangs and held fast. A ribbon of scales still dangled.

  Tyrone’s carnival poster. The image appeared in my mind but was rejected. This was a man-ape, not Tyrone who had endured deformity since our school days.

  I wondered, What is keeping him alive?

  Loyalty . . . rage . . . hatred—none explained such relentless behavior. But what Oliver did next hinted at the truth and the truth was darker than any word I know. He grunted—ITCH!—and lunged at me with a sweeping arm. I dodged his hand and got the gun up while he opened his jaws wide, then posed for a microsecond over Belton’s exposed neck—a look that threatened Surrender or I’ll do it.

  That’s when I shot him. Squared the sights on Oliver’s forehead and didn’t remember squeezing the trigger or even the sound of the gun blast. The only thought in my mind was, Shoot low, you’ll kill Belton. Shoot high, Oliver’s teeth will find you.

  I shot to the right but low, which underlined a reality, not a threat: caged or uncaged, Oliver was a predator, a blood killer without soul or conscience. He would have feasted on me, feasted on all humanity, if I’d missed. So I had risked Belton’s life to save my own by lowering my aim.

  I didn’t miss. The bullet hit Oliver beneath the cheek, severed one clamshell ear, and tumbled him backward toward the flames. He didn’t move when I helped Belton to his feet, a man who was too angry to go into shock.

  “Is he dead? That son of a bitch!” Belton charged toward the creature—possibly to kick him—but collapsed after a step, groaning, “Damn . . . my leg.” Sat there and embraced his knee while I studied Oliver, who was on his belly and still breathing.

  I looked back at the opening in the flames, hollered, “We need help!” then placed myself between Belton and Oliver. His pelt smoldered while his ribs expanded and contracted. I watched ten bare toes flex as if testing mobility. His right hand moved, then his left arm. “Crawl away,” I told Belton.

  He did. I slid sideways, following.

  Because the pistol was empty, the slide had locked back to show its empty chamber. I thought, He can count, but he can’t see through metal, and I slammed the slide closed as if I’d just shucked a bullet.

  Oliver’s head tilted to focus his only ear. An amber eye opened. It fluttered as if fighting sleep, or death, and rotated toward me.

  I walked at him with the pistol. “I’ll shoot you again if you move.”

  Oliver exhaled a low growl and lay still, but his eye continued to track me.

  From behind, Belton sounded a note of surprise. “Hey . . . Hey, someone’s coming. Is that a horse?”

  I took a quick look: blurred by heat and flames, a man wearing a cowboy hat had dismounted. He hunkered low to summon his nerve, then charged through the smoke, calling, “Are you the idiots who started this fire? By damn, I’ll leave you here to burn if it was you.” He switched off his flashlight and pocketed the thing. A bandy-legged man in his sixties.

  Mild disappointment. I had hoped it was Joey Egret I’d seen approaching on horseback. Worse, the man was not carrying a rifle as cow hunters often do.

  Belton tried to stand. “Call the police—that thing’s a goddamn killer. I’ll explain, but not while it’s still alive. Do you have a gun? We need a gun if he’s not dead.” Talking too fast, Belton’s tone communicating fear.

  Oliver’s brain processed the words, his eye absorbed details. He got a knee under him and was positioning a hand when I leaned with both arms extended. “This pistol is all we need—now lay still, damn you.”

  The man said, “Hey, now!” and his boots clomped him closer. He removed his hat, slapped it clean of ashes while his eyes adjusted, looking from Belton to me, and then saw the heap of smoldering fur. “What the hell’s going on here? That one of my calves? Y’all going to jail if you kilt one of my—” He stopped a few steps from Oliver. “Good lord, this here’s a damn monkey. Why’d anybody want to hurt a monkey?”

  Oliver’s eye fluttered to consciousness and glared at me while he appealed for help by imitating the mewling of an injured puppy. The man said, “This ol’ boy’s in bad shape,” and reached to stroke Oliver’s shoulder but was unnerved when Belton and I both yelled out warnings.

  A low growl and one dulling amber eye tracked me while I backed the man a safe distance, far enough to say into his ear, “Is there a rifle scabbard on your saddle?”

  Cow hunters are prone to stubbornness. “I’m not known as a monkey killer,” he replied. “The way you keep that handgun pointed, why do you need my rifle? Poor thing’s about dead anyway. A veterinarian is what he needs, then we’ll let the law sort this out.”

  “Police will be more interested in a corpse you’ll find down by the river—most of his face missing,” I said.

  That got the man’s attention. I told him my name, and added, “I’m a friend of Joey Egret and probably a dozen other people you know. My uncle was Jake Smith, and I’m related to the Summerlins. I’m not asking for your blessings, sir. Just th
e loan of one bullet.”

  In rural areas, surnames are tribal and carry weight. Instantly, the man’s sympathies shifted and I was granted temporary rank in his cavalry of one. Mr. Harney—that was his name—kept my Devel pistol trained on the monkey but first wanted a question answered. “The other woman, where is she?”

  I assumed he had mistaken the wailing cry of fire and wind for a human voice.

  “No,” he insisted. “When that big pine went up, she waved for me to come. Sort of looked like you, but longer hair and wearing a bright red shirt. She ain’t here? Or . . . or maybe it was you.”

  In the fire’s heat, I felt a chill and could not answer until I’d returned with the rifle, a Winchester .30-30. I said, “Mr. Harney, in my SUV—if we find it—I’ve got a picture I’d like you to see.”

  Then I shucked a round and finished the job.

  • • •

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