Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Flora nodded, still watching him closely. Not a flicker of surprise had registered on her face.

  “I really enjoyed the cakes and all, but after all, business is business.”

  “In Scotland, it’s considered unlucky to do evil after you’ve accepted the hospitality of the house,” the old lady said calmly.

  Louis shrugged. “In America it’s unlucky to miss car payments.”

  She made no reply to this remark, but continued to gaze up at him impassively. At least she wasn’t being hysterical. He almost wished that he had given up the whole idea.

  Louis cleared his throat and continued. “The reason I have to tie you up is that I have to finish getting the stuff, and I have to make sure you can’t call for help until I’m long gone. But I won’t beat you up or anything.”

  “Kind of you,” she said dryly. “There is some spare clothesline in the bottom drawer of the left-hand cabinet.”

  He looked at her suspiciously. “Don’t try anything, okay? I don’t want to have to do anything rough.” He didn’t carry a gun (nobody was supposed to be home), but they both knew that a strong young man like Louis could do considerable damage to a frail old lady like Flora with his fists… a candlestick… almost anything could be a weapon.

  Keeping his eyes on her, he edged toward the cabinet, squatting down to pull out the drawer. She watched him steadily, making no move to leave her seat. As he eased the drawer open, he saw the white rope clothesline neatly bundled above a stack of paper bags. With considerable relief at the ease of it all, he picked up the rope and turned back to the old lady.

  “Okay,” he said, a little nervously. “I’m going to tie you up. Just relax. I don’t want to make it so tight it cuts off circulation, but I’m not, like, experienced, you know? Just sit in the chair with your feet flat on the floor in front of you.”

  She did as she was told, and he knelt and began winding the clothesline around her feet, anchoring it to the legs of the chair. He hoped it wasn’t going to be too painful, but he couldn’t risk her being able to escape. To cover his uneasiness at the silent reproach from his hostess, Louis began to whistle nervously as he worked. That was probably why he didn’t hear anything suspicious.

  His first inkling that anything was wrong was that Flora suddenly relaxed in her chair. He looked up quickly, thinking, Oh God! The old girl’s had a heart attack! But her eyes were open, and she was smiling. She seemed to be gazing at something just behind him.

  Slowly Louis turned his head in the direction of the back door. There was a short, blond woman of about thirty standing just inside the door. She was wearing a dark blue uniform and a positively menacing expression. But what bothered Louis the most about the intruder was the fact that her knees were bent, and she was holding a service revolver in both hands, its barrel aimed precisely at his head.

  Louis looked from the blond woman to Flora and back again, just beginning to make the connection. A jerk of the gun barrel made him move slowly away from the chair and put his hands up.

  “This is my daughter Doris,” said Flora calmly. “She’s a policewoman. You see, you were lucky for us, Louis. I’m sure she’ll get her promotion after this!”

  REMAINS TO BE SEEN

  WHEN THE TWO elderly ladies from the Craig Springs Community for Seniors saw the mummy on the top shelf of the army surplus store, one of them gasped, “Where did it come from?” The other one opened her purse and said, “How much?”

  George Carr, the owner of the Craig Springs Army Surplus Store, decided to answer the first question before he worried about the second.

  Every Thursday the van from Craig Springs brought a group of its sprier residents on a shopping trip downtown. There wasn’t much that anyone actually needed to buy-toothpaste, maybe, or the new Cosmopolitan-but they enjoyed the outing, and the chance to exercise and window-shop at the same time. George Carr was used to seeing some of the old gentlemen in his establishment. The World War II veterans loved to come in and reminisce about the old days, using his merchandise as visual aids for their war yarns. This was the first time, though, that any of the Craig Springs ladies had paid him a visit. George thought it was strange that they had.

  “We were tired of the usual round of drugstores and dress shops,” said the dumpy one in the black dress.

  Since he had just been wondering that very thing, George laughed and said, “You read my mind!”

  She turned triumphantly to her friend. “There, Lucille! I told you I’d been working on it. A dab of chicken blood behind each earlobe, and that Latin phrase I learned.”

  Lucille Beaumont, whose silver hair did not seem to go with her sharp black eyes and her hawk-bill nose, patted her friend’s arm. “Yes, Clutie. You’ve told me,” she said in patient but repressive tones. “Wouldn’t you like to look around?”

  Clutie Campbell shook her head. She looked up at the mummy. “You were going to tell us about him.”

  “Oh, Herman. Don’t know that that’s his real name, of course. But that’s what we call him. We’ve had him for the last twenty years.”

  The ladies turned and stared at the glass-sided wooden coffin resting on the top shelf of the far wall. Below it was a tangled assortment of knapsacks and canteens, and a hand-lettered sign that said: YOUR CHOICE-$5. Just visible through the dusty glass was the body of a man: a wrinkled, leathery face poking out from the folds of a tatty-looking black suit that seemed rather large for its owner.

  “Is it real?” asked Lucille Beaumont, sounding as if she rather hoped not.

  George Carr nodded. He was accustomed to the questions. Every time a stranger visited the store, the same conversation took place: He real? How’d you get him?

  “How’d you get him?” asked Clutie Campbell.

  George started his well-rehearsed tale at the beginning. “In the early Twenties, a traveling carnival came here to Greene County. You know how it was: they’d pitch a tent in the old fairgrounds, set up the booths and the rides and the girlie shows, and three days later they’d be gone, with the pocket money of every kid in town.”

  Clutie nodded impatiently. “So-what was he? A sideshow exhibit?”

  “No. Herman up there was a working member of the carnival. I think he was one of the construction crew, setting up the booths and all.”

  “A roustabout,” murmured Lucille, but she was shushed into silence by Clutie, who clearly did not want the conversation to be derailed into a discussion of vocabulary. In her youth Lucille had been in show business, and she was entirely too fond of showing off her expertise by correcting people’s speech and by critiquing the performances on Days of Our Lives. Clutie, for one, was sick of it.

  George Carr, well into his story by now, paid no attention to their bickering. “The way I heard it, Herman here died on the second night in town. I think maybe a beam knocked him in the head, or something. An accident, anyway.” He looked a little nervously at the stiff, leathery figure on the high shelf. “I never checked. Anyhow, his body was sent to Culbertson’s, the local funeral parlor. They got right to work embalming him, and they had him all ready for the funeral.”

  “I expect they provided the suit,” said Clutie with an appraising glance upward.

  “Culbertson’s had him all ready for the funeral and drew up their bill for services-and they come to find out that the carnival had pulled up stakes and left town. Nobody claimed Herman, and nobody paid the mortuary.”

  Lucille Beaumont frowned. “Couldn’t they have notified his next of kin?”

  George Carr shrugged. “Didn’t know who in Sam Hill he was. But Old Man Culbertson was firm on one point: no money, no funeral. So they kept him. As a floor model, you know. Showing what a good job they did at embalming. He was a curiosity around here when I was a kid. My pals and I used to love to go into Culbertson’s to look at Herman.”

  “How did you get him?” Clutie wanted to know.

  “Old Man Culbertson died back in ’68, and the funeral home went out of business. So Herman here
was auctioned off with the rest of the fixtures. I’ve had him here ever since.”

  Clutie pushed her gray bangs away from her glasses and peered up at the exhibit. “How much did you say he was?”

  Her friend touched her arm. “Oh, Clutie, you know you don’t-”

  Clutie Campbell slid a credit card out of her pigskin wallet. “Can I put him on VISA?”

  The Craig Springs minivan had the usual fourteen passengers for the return trip to the retirement community. George Carr had agreed-after some negotiation-to deliver the purchase and to leave Herman in the toolshed behind Craig Springs one hour after sunset. When he asked what the ladies wanted him for, Clutie had replied, “Religious reasons,” in a tone that did not invite further discussion. In a way, it was true.

  Lucille Beaumont had steered her friend to the back of the van, in hopes that Mr. Waldrop’s snoring would drown out their ongoing discussion.

  “You cannot purchase a corpse as a conversation piece!” Lucille whispered as the bus pulled away from the curb.

  Clutie Campbell sniffed and directed her gaze out the window. “It is not a conversation piece. This is just what the organization needs. The book lists all kinds of spells that you can work with a deader.”

  “It’s probably illegal!”

  Clutie smiled vaguely. “Do what thou wilt shalt be the whole of the law.”

  Lucille shook her head. “I do wish you’d give this up, Clutie.”

  Her friend patted her broom-straw hair. “I think you ought to join us, Lucille. Emmie Walkenshaw thinks we’re the oldest coven in the country.”

  “I am a Presbyterian!” hissed Lucille Beaumont between clenched teeth. “I refuse to join a group of satanists!”

  “Weren’t Presbyterians once called covenanters?” asked Clutie in mock innocence. “I’d look into it if I were you, Lucille. There may be no conflict of interest after all.” She smiled through a frosty silence for the duration of the ride.

  Lucille Beaumont was so out of sorts that evening that she sat with the ancient Mrs. Hartnell at dinner, which was as close as you could come to eating alone at Craig Springs. Annie Hartnell was fond of asking people, “Did you have a nice life?” And after that she pretty much ignored you until you went away. Usually people took pains to avoid her, but tonight Lucille decided that Mrs. Hartnell was the only company she was fit for.

  Really, she thought, Clutie Campbell’s satanist business was getting out of hand. Clutie was a widowed schoolteacher who claimed that the routine of Craig Springs bored her, and that the intellectual climate was nil. Her earlier attempts at culture-a poetry society and a debating team-had failed miserably, but the drama and secrecy of witchcraft had attracted a following. At first a group of folks had gone along with her because it made a nice change from square dancing and canasta, but now it was more than a game. The thirteen recruits had progressed from Ouija boards to table tapping to pentagrams and incantations. So far the staff was unaware of this diversion, and Lucille was determined not to be a snitch, but the coven was getting bolder (sillier! thought Lucille), and discovery seemed inevitable.

  As she carried her dinner tray to the service hutch, Lucille could not resist a warning to the head witch. “Clutie,” she said dramatically, not even bothering to lower her voice, “there is great danger in tampering with the forces of darkness!”

  Just then Mrs. Hartnell was wheeled by in her chair, beaming and nodding at the table of satanists. “Did you have a nice life?” she asked sweetly.

  Tinker’s Meadow was a quarter of a mile from the retirement community. It was bordered on three sides by piney woods and was fronted on the east by a little-used dirt road. High Priestess Clutie chose it for the ceremony for privacy-and because it was as far from the home as they could carry a mummy in a glass-fronted box.

  A pale dime-sized moon shone on the long grass, and an autumn wind made the coven shiver. It was just after eight o’clock. Midnight would have been a better time for spells to work, but several folks had to be back by eleven to take medication, so they had to make do with the darkness, the full moon, and a real corpse.

  Clutie wore a homemade Egyptian collar over her black evening gown, clumps of rings and bracelets, and a black pageboy wig reminiscent of Cher. But she was very dignified. She clutched her copy of Ancient Spells & Rituals with an air of solemn authority. At her direction, Mrs. Walkenshaw drew a pentagram on the ground (with chalk borrowed from the Craig Springs billiard table). Mr. Waldrop and Mr. Junger took the mummy out of its shabby coffin and placed it faceup within the circle. There was a smell of mothballs from the vintage suit.

  “He feels like the cover of a Bible,” Mr. Junger whispered to Miss Fowler.

  Clutie motioned for her followers to join hands and form a ring around the pentagram. She closed her eyes and threw back her head. “We are invoking the black angels with this once-living mortal-with this terrible sacrifice from A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk; the parching Air Burns frore, and cold performs th’ effect of Fire.” (The Craig Springs library copy of Paradise Lost had been missing for several months.)

  “In exchange for our demonic offering, we ask for power-” Clutie clanked her bracelets and made her voice rise to a howl as she chanted a few Latin phrases from the magic book.

  “Power!” murmured the coven members, swaying rhythmically as she chanted.

  “I drop fresh blood upon this offering and command you, Demon, to reveal yourself unto your priestess!”

  The circle began to writhe as the members turned and threaded their way to the left through the group, clasping each other’s hand as they passed. This completed, they rejoined hands and paced solemnly to the right in one full rotation. (Allemande left and circle right.)

  That was when the thing appeared at the edge of the woods. The coven members with better hearing had claimed to hear a snarl or a roar a few seconds before the apparition, but all eyes turned almost simultaneously to the dark clearing where a white shape had materialized. It was no more than a flash in the blackness, but suddenly-where its mouth ought to be-a long tongue of flames billowed forth like a fiery banner. Slowly, deliberately it began to move forward.

  The thirteen members of the Craig Springs coven thought they were screaming, “The Demon!” but in fact the sound came out more like “Aarggh!” Everybody got the message, though. In less time than you could say amen, the senior-citizen satanists had dropped hands and were sprinting toward the road. Clutie Campbell, her black drapery hitched up around her knees, was leading the pack. As they headed off in the direction of the retirement community, several members paused for breath and announced their intention of disbanding the coven. Mrs. Walkenshaw recited the Lord’s Prayer as one long word, refusing to look back. Clutie Campbell wondered if she ought to wait a week before she suggested a synchronized swimming team.

  The book of magic and the tatty roustabout mummy lay forgotten in the dirt of Tinker’s Meadow.

  When the shouts of the departing coven had faded into the autumn night, a solitary figure stepped out of the woods and walked toward the abandoned pentagram. Its white robe rustled in the long grass as it stopped to retrieve a long wooden-handled implement from the ground. The mummy’s leathery face remained impassive in the moonlight.

  “Well, that’s that,” said Lucille Beaumont softly as she looked down at the erstwhile sacrifice. “Of course, you probably didn’t know what was happening to you, but it was downright disrespectful, and I had to put a stop to it. Whoever you are, you deserve a proper funeral. All I can manage is a prayer and a few old hymns, though. I hope that will do.”

  Lucille rolled up the sleeves of her white Presbyterian choir robe and picked up the Craig Springs gardener’s shovel. “You deserve to get buried, too,” she told the mummy. “I was in a carnival when I was young, just like you, and us carnies have to stick together.” Lucille Beaumont’s second husband had been the fire-eater, and he’d taught her the tricks o
f his trade. Although she had much preferred being the fortune-teller, she never forgot her lessons in pyrotechnics. She had had to improvise the fire-eating materials for the Tinker’s Meadow performance, but she had apparently been a most convincing demon. She smiled to herself, remembering the satanists’ screaming retreat. Good thing there weren’t any heart patients in the coven.

  “I reckon a lifetime in show business is long enough,” she remarked. “A person ought to be allowed to retire. And you sure don’t want to keep on in show business when you’re dead, do you, mister?”

  Gently, but matter-of-factly, she placed the mummy back in his glass-fronted box, and she said a simple prayer for the repose of both body and soul. When that was done, she sank the shovel deep into the clay of Tinker’s Meadow to begin the makeshift grave. As the spadefuls of earth plopped softly on the grass, Lucille Beaumont sang her second husband’s favorite hymn-“Give Me Oil in My Lamp, Keep Me Burning”-in a voice like a rusting calliope.

  THE LUNCHEON

  SHE MUST BE careful not to let her anxiety show. Even if something were said during the lunch hour, she must take it calmly or, even better, pretend not to understand at all. Above all she must seem just as usual, no more or less quiet, attentive to the eddies in their lives.

  Usually this was not difficult. Kathryn and Jayne required no more than token contributions from her, since it was tacitly understood that her life was less interesting than theirs. Occasionally Thursday lunch turned into an inquisition, when she let something negative slip-such as a quarrel with Andrew that morning. Jayne had pounced, demanding that her problem be “shared,” and they had dissected it over chicken breast in wine sauce. By the time the dessert crêpes had arrived, Andrew’s forgetting to put mustard instead of mayonnaise on her sandwich had become an act of chauvinism.