Gather Her Round

by Alex Bledsoe

  His cry echoed off the sides of the hollow, then faded. For a long moment nothing happened. Crows cawed in the trees and launched their black forms into the sky, but otherwise, there was no sound, or no movement.

  Then, like someone had turned on a spigot, pigs poured from the cave. Their hooves rumbled against the frozen ground, and a few squealed in confusion.

  Before he’d even thought about it, Dolph had the rifle at his shoulder, the bead trained on the stream of porkers. He fired as quickly as he could, and his targets squealed as they went down and their compatriots trampled them. But there was no way he could keep up, and when the last pig had disappeared, there were only six dead ones left behind. At least twenty had escaped.

  And there had been no sign of the monster. It either hadn’t been there in the first place, or it was still in there. Or, in a best-case scenario, it was the source of the rotting smell. And there was only one way to find out.

  He dug out his cell phone and propped it atop the rock. If anything happened to him, this way the GPS would lead Jack and the search party right to him.

  He climbed down, his rifle ready, and stood to one side of the entrance. Again he cried out, “Soooo-eeeee!” but nothing else emerged, and nothing moved inside.

  He took out his small halogen flashlight and shone it into the cave.

  The cavity went back farther than he expected, and dropped down about six feet from the entrance. He moved into the darkness, and the intense odors made him gag. As he descended the ramplike path, he started to kick things with his boots. When he shone the light on them, he saw they were bones.

  He knelt and picked one up. It was a pig’s rib.

  He realized then the source of the rotting smell. Crammed into this hole, with so little to eat available outside, they’d begun cannibalizing the weak and helpless members of their own herd, including newborn piglets.

  At the bottom of the slope was a chamber with a five-foot ceiling, about fifteen feet across. The remains of other hogs were here as well, some fresher than he liked to imagine. But there was no sign of the monster, either in the bones or in the mess of tracks on the floor.

  He went back outside, retrieved his phone, and took pictures of the remains. It was only when the flash went off for the sixth one that he spotted the skull.

  The upper part sat upright, and he found the lower jaw nearby. A portion of the spine and two ribs were still attached. The bones were brown with time and exposure. He’d seen enough skeletal remains to tell from the overall bulk that this had been a man, and he knew of no other possible victim than Adam Procure.

  He turned his phone over in his hand and checked for a signal. He got nothing. He immediately took more pictures of the human remains and left the cave, careful to watch for ambush as he emerged into the light. When he checked again atop the rocks, he got three bars and quickly dialed Jack.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice surprisingly steady. “Anybody else turned up missing in Cloud County this winter?”

  “Not that I know of,” Jack said. “Why?”

  “In that case, I think the skunk’s off our hunt. I found what’s left of that Procure boy.”

  20

  She’d been silent for so long that Duncan jumped in his seat when Renny said, “I guess we need to go into town and get a marriage license. How long are they good for, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Duncan said. His hands were sweaty on the steering wheel.

  “Do you still have to do blood tests to make sure you ain’t got syphilis?”

  “I don’t think so. Never heard of anybody doing it.”

  “Think we should, just to be on the safe side?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Wonder if they check for AIDS, too?”

  “Can we not talk about this?” he snapped.

  “Sure,” she said in a small voice.

  “Ah, I’m sorry. I’m just tense.”

  “Second thoughts?”

  “What? No.” He looked over and saw that Renny was crying again. Before today, she’d never done that not in all the time they’d known each other, certainly not since they’d begun dating. For a moment, he couldn’t respond. At last he managed, “Wow, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She wiped her eyes. “For fuck’s sake, I told you, it’s just hormones, Duncan, don’t worry. Apparently I’ll be crying at every sunset and ASPCA commercial until the baby comes.”

  “And you’re not upset?”

  “Why should I be? I mean, you don’t have syphilis or AIDS, do you?”

  “No.”

  “And you love me, right?”

  “Of course,” he said, and suddenly realized it was true.

  “And I love you. So there’s nothing wrong.”

  Before he could say anything else, she turned on the radio and cranked the volume. Of all things, “Achy Breaky Heart” blared out. He repressed a shudder and resumed staring out at the passing trees.

  * * *

  Jack used a pen to lift the skull from its place on the den floor. He examined it carefully, especially the teeth. Like those of all Tufa, they were white and perfect, even when the rest of the skull was discolored. So even in death, even in decomposition, Adam still “grinned like a Tufa.”

  “It’s him,” Bliss said flatly, holding the plastic bag as he lowered the skull into it. She sealed it with a practiced zip.

  Jack nodded. “Have to use dental records to confirm that. Or do you Tufa not have dentists?”

  “We do all have pretty good teeth,” Bliss said, not rising to his sarcasm. “But that’s because we do go to the dentist when we need to.”

  Dolph, covering the entrance in the unlikely case the monster appeared, called back, “That state trooper’s here.”

  Darwin ducked down as he entered, and stopped to take in the carnage. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “They even kill their own.”

  Bliss held up the skull. “This is Adam Procure.”

  “Poor bastard.” He looked at the other bones. “Hard to tell which ones are the rest of him.”

  “I can tell,” Jack assured him. He wore blue latex gloves, and his boots were protected by white sterile shoe covers. He lifted a single human rib up into the light.

  “Good thing you’re here, then. I reckon I’ll let you and Miss Bliss gather up the remains, then. I’ll be outside with Dolph, seeing if ol’ Piggly-Wiggly is around.”

  “Who?” Bliss said.

  He laughed. “That’s what the kids at the high school call it. Somebody named it that in their school paper, and it caught on.”

  Jack shook his head. “That girl from the community meeting. The one who acted like she was Woodward and Bernstein.”

  “She’s like a snapping turtle, all right; she don’t let go until it thunders,” Darwin said, then left.

  Jack looked at Bliss. He held up a few still-connected vertebrae. “This is no joke. ‘Piggly-Wiggly’? People aren’t going to take it seriously.”

  “That’s how kids are,” Bliss said as she opened the next plastic bag. “They don’t have the emotional context for this yet.”

  “I hope they never do,” Jack muttered, and collected some more bones. He looked around and said, “We should call the TBI. Get them out here with a real forensics team. What if we don’t find all the remains?”

  “We’d be wasting their time. We’ll find what there is to find.” She put the bag in the cooler with the others.

  “You sound awfully certain of that.”

  She looked at him seriously. For a moment, her eyes reflected light the same way an animal’s might. “I am,” she said.

  * * *

  At the fire station that afternoon, Bliss looked down at the bones arranged on the long table. They made an almost complete skeleton, missing only some of the finger, toe, and rib bones. “There he is,” she said as she stepped back.

  Jack and Darwin stood with her. Dolph, exhausted, had been sent home, despite his insistence. Jack had a
lso discovered Adam’s mud- and shit-soaked wallet in the cave, which pretty much settled the identification, although dental records would still be checked to confirm it.

  Darwin sighed and said, “I’m not looking forward to telling the family. I hear tell that even after the funeral, they convinced themselves that he just ran off to work on the oil rigs in the Gulf.”

  “I’ll tell them,” Bliss said.

  “No, not this time. It’s my job. You can come with me, though. Give me a minute to check in with my dispatcher.” He put on his hat, touched the brim in salute, then left them alone.

  Bliss turned to Jack. “I didn’t know wild pigs kept a larder.”

  “I didn’t, either,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this. Obviously the smaller pigs couldn’t have done it, so it must have been the big one. Or…” He trailed off.

  Bliss prompted. “Or?”

  He looked up at her. “Or the body was placed there by person or persons unknown, so we’d think the pigs took him.”

  Bliss said nothing, but she knew his suspicions. The only eyewitness report of the fatal encounter came from Duncan Gowen. And if Duncan was lying, then they might not be able to trust any of their conclusions.

  Darwin returned, and watched silently as Jack inspected the bones. “You see any sign of foul play?” Darwin asked.

  “I didn’t,” Jack said, and gestured at Bliss. “Ask the coroner.”

  “Nothing overt,” Bliss said. “But I’ll take a closer look in more detail.”

  Jack stood up and looked at them both. “I think we should bring in a real coroner now.”

  “Let’s see what Bliss finds first,” Darwin said. As Jack started to protest, he added, “But you may be right.”

  Jack was about to snap a reply, when Darwin continued, “Mr. Cates, why don’t we get out of Bliss’s way? Ride with me down to the Pair-A-Dice, and the first round’s on me.”

  “I thought you were going to give the Procures the bad news.”

  “Nobody wants to hear bad news over lunch. We’ll go see them later this afternoon.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Jack said honestly.

  “I think this might be a day for a liquid lunch.”

  Before he could protest more, Bliss said, “Go on. I’ll call if there’s anything.”

  Jack looked at her. She was serious, and although he resented it, he had to trust her judgment. She gave his hand a little squeeze, then got back to work.

  “All right,” Jack said.

  * * *

  Bliss waited until the sound of Darwin’s big Ford Explorer faded. Then she sat down, folded her arms, and rested her chin on them. She looked at the skull, trying to put the flesh back on it in her mind. Adam, if you’ve got any secrets, now’s the time, she thought. If only you could sing us a song about what happened.

  Everyone knew the song “Knoxville Girl,” recorded by so many country and folk stars. It had come over from England as “The Wexford Girl,” and even that had been a version handed down. What no one knew was that it had been sung originally to force a confession, by someone who suspected the murder but had been unable to prove it. Should Bliss write a song like it? “The Boy of Half Pea Hollow”?

  “Is that him?” Mandalay said behind her.

  “It is,” she said. She was so used to these sudden appearances that she didn’t even jump. Instead, she stood so that Mandalay could get a good look.

  The girl took it all in. “Not all of him, though.”

  “The hogs ate some of the bones. Or they were too small, we missed them.”

  “Any sign of the monster?”

  “No.”

  Mandalay sat in Bliss’s chair and leaned her chin on her hands, just as Bliss had done moments before. “I went to see Miss Azure back in the fall, did I ever tell you?”

  “No.”

  “She read the leaves for me. She said the hog that did this is mostly real.”

  “‘Mostly’?”

  “Yeah. Which means it’s partly not.”

  “That explains some things. If she’s right in what the tea leaves said.”

  “She’s seldom wrong.”

  “But you said it was months ago. Maybe it wasn’t strong enough for her to read then?”

  Mandalay and Bliss held each other’s gaze. They both knew what she meant by “it”—or rather, whom she meant. So far, no one had reported any visits by his haint, and the night winds had not mentioned his name. But a man so powerful in life might not fade away so easily. She reached out and touched the skull with one fingertip. “Can you leave me and this young man alone for a bit? Junior should be along shortly, but I’d like a little time first.”

  Bliss nodded. “I’ll be outside.”

  * * *

  When the door closed behind her, Mandalay laid her head directly on the table, her right cheek flat against the surface. It was cold against her ear, but it put her on eye level with the skull.

  “Adam,” she said, “I’m sorry you’re having to go through all this. I know you were running around with Kera behind Duncan’s back, and I know love can make people do things they’d never do otherwise. You should have been honest with him from the start. If he killed you … show me. Let me see it. He’s about to marry your sister. You can’t rest until the truth gets out.”

  She closed her eyes and began to sing.

  There was a man who lived in the West,

  And of all the pickers he was the best,

  The man he has a-hunting gone

  And left his lady all alone.…

  The song, similar to the ancient story of Orpheus, hung in the air over the bones. She waited to see if it called anything up from this particular Underworld.

  * * *

  The Pair-A-Dice was sparsely attended that afternoon, with only a half-dozen black-haired, sullen men seated by themselves. There was no sound other than the whir of the big heater in the corner. No one took the stage, not even to start a jam.

  Darwin brought two beers from the bar, where the bartender Rachel watched him with the suspicion all bartenders had for cops, even Tufa cops. He handed one to Jack as he sat down.

  “Thanks,” Jack said.

  “You don’t like me much, do you?” Darwin said.

  Jack was a bit taken aback by the forthrightness. “I…” He paused as he mustered the word. “I don’t understand your approach to your job.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve worked with the highway patrol before. They’ve always been cooperative and by the book. I mean, we’re all on the same side, and we should enforce the same laws.”

  “And you think I don’t?”

  “You haven’t even called in the county sheriff, let alone a real coroner. And since this animal could very easily be across county lines, calling the TBI seems like common sense.”

  He chuckled. “There ain’t no county sheriff, Mr. Cates. The last time they had a real election in Cloud County was nearly twenty years ago. A write-in candidate won. Know what his name was? ‘None of the Above.’”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Nobody in this county wants a sheriff.”

  “I imagine that’s true of most counties around here.” With no jobs, no education, and no hope, a thriving criminal community had sprung up in the mountains, not just moonshiners and bootleggers but also meth dealers, painkiller merchants, and marijuana farmers. “But what if something happens? What if somebody kills somebody?”

  Darwin kicked back in his chair, one boot on the edge of the table. He radiated redneck cockiness, something Jack couldn’t stand. He said, “You’ve been keeping company with Bliss Overbay of late, haven’t you?”

  Jack was instantly on his guard. “We’ve hung out a little, yes.”

  “She ain’t told you about the First Daughters or the Silent Sons, has she?”

  “No. What are they?”

  Darwin took a drink and looked around, like a man who didn’t want to be overheard. When he spoke again
, his voice was pitched so low that Jack had to lean forward to hear.

  “Let’s just say that they’re the ones who step in when things need to get taken care of. There’s no one in Cloud County but the Tufa, and the Tufa look out for their own.”

  “So they have a private security force? Like the Klan?”

  Darwin looked at him with narrowed eyes. “That’s kind of harsh. Did you know a hundred years ago, the Klan might’ve lynched people all over this county? The Tufa were considered more black than white, even though the blacks didn’t claim ’em, and neither did the Indians. I sure wouldn’t have been hired to enforce the law.”

  Jack was too tired to continue being polite. “What are you trying to get me to do or say here, Officer?”

  “Please, call me Alvin. I just want you to accept that things are being handled in the best and most efficient way, even though it may not look like it. Bringing in outside people won’t make things better, and might make things worse.”

  “Worse than two kids dying?”

  “Yeah. Look, what’s really happened here? A wild animal killed a girl. That’s not unheard of, anywhere. Then that boy goes looking for that animal, finds it, and gets killed. The first one is totally random, the second one is the result of that boy deliberately seeking out trouble. It’s not the start of a pattern.”

  “You hope. I’ve seen animals on a rampage like this before. I helped track down a mountain lion that was eating nothing but family dogs.”

  “This is a little different.”

  “Only in scale.”

  Now it was Darwin’s turn to let the amusement fade from his expression. “You’re a stubborn fella, ain’t you?”

  “It’s been said.”

  “Look, Jack—may I call you Jack?—we’re both paid by the state. Like you said, we’re on the same side of this. I don’t want anyone else to die. I want that hog dead. So do you. Why are we acting like enemies?”

  Jack thought for a moment, then decided on total honesty. “Because you seem to want other things more than you do those two. Like keeping things quiet and not attracting attention.”

  Darwin spread his hands and grinned. “That’s just the Tufa way.”

  “So you’re a Tufa first and a law enforcement officer second?”