Contents
Special Thanks
Title
Fire on the Mountain
White Lightnin'
A Haint in the Holler
Appearances
About the Author
Also by John G. Hartness
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Ray Spitz
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Bill Schlichting
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Acknowledgements
A very heartfelt thanks to Melissa Gilbert of Clicking Keys for all her help.
Moonshine & Magic
A Beauregard the Monster Hunter
Collection
By John G. Hartness
Falstaff Books
Charlotte, NC
Fire on the Mountain
A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Short Story
By John G. Hartness
“Beauregard Ulysses Brabham, get your worthless ass down here and help me!” The shrill voice rang out over half the valley and Bubba sat bolt upright in his bed. Only he wasn’t in his bed, he was in the hammock out in his back yard, so the motion of sitting up quickly deposited all three hundred pounds of him firmly and swiftly onto the hard-packed earth. Bubba hauled himself up to hands and knees, then crawled out from under the hammock, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs. How did I end up in the hammock? He wondered. And where are my pants?
The answer to the second question revealed itself a few moments later as Bubba walked around the house to the front porch. His worn overalls were folded carefully over the porch railing, with an empty quart jar sitting next to them. Well, that explains about everything, I reckon. Bubba thought. Apparently Preacher Mason had come by with a sample from his newest batch of ‘shine and they had commenced to tasting. It all made sense to Bubba now. After the better part of a jar of Preacher Mason’s recipe, the wind through a man’s beard felt mighty fine, and the best way Bubba had to generate wind was to swing as quickly as possible in the hammock. That didn’t explain why he felt the need to remove his pants, but perhaps in his state of mind last night he wanted to feel the wind other places than just his beard.
Regardless, he put his pants on then pulled on his battered leather work boots. He had just stepped onto the porch to go inside and fix up some grits and bacon and maybe see if there was a slash or two left in that jar when Octavia’s voice rang out again, this time sounding even more irritated. “Beauregard! Come here, boy! I need you!”
Godawmighty you’d thing she was my wife instead of my little sister the way that woman abuses me. I need to get her married off so she’ll have somebody else to make miserable, Bubba thought. He sighed the sigh of a man who knew he was ruled by a woman, and started off down the hill to see what his sister wanted this time.
*****
Octavia was standing on her own porch peering into the woods when Bubba came stumping down the trail. “What in the blue blazes do you want, woman? Don’t you know a body needs his rest?” Octavia was dressed for work on the farm, in a plain homespun dress and apron, with her long blonde hair tied back from her strong jawline. She was what the mountain folk called a “healthy woman,” with “child-bearing hips” and a shelf of bosom that was impressive on an otherwise slender woman. She wore sensible leather boots and had a shotgun leaning on the porch rail beside her, along with a haversack.
She lit into her brother the second he hove his gigantic form into view. “Bubba, it is three hours past the noon meal you worthless layabout, so do not be speaking to me of rest! Now get your fat, lazy carcass down here and aid me in my moment of peril!”
“Moment of peril? You’re on your porch, what in the hell could possibly be periling you?”
“Don’t you swear in my presence, Bubba, for I am a lady. And it is not just my moment of peril, but the entire valley. We are under attack by sorcery and blackheartedness!”
“I told Pap he never should have taught you how to read, Tavvy. Now you ain’t never gone find a man.”
“I neither need nor desire a man, brother dear. Not for those purposes, at any rate. Now are you going to help me or not?”
“You got anything to eat?”
“There’s a rasher of bacon on the table with some grits, a half dozen biscuits and some gravy. Take what you like.”
“If you’ll feed me, Tavvy, I’ll do whatever you need.” Bubba pushed past his sister into the neat little kitchen. In complete contrast to his own, Octavia’s kitchen contained a modern icebox, a stove heated by some strange series of pipes from the wood stove out back, and food. There were also clean plates and no insects to be seen anywhere, both remarkable upgrades from Bubba’s house. Bubba piled all the food onto a serving platter and carried it back out to the porch. He sat down on the porch steps and called Octavia’s hound Buster over. After giving Buster a good scratch behind the ears, he slipped the dog a piece of bacon and started in on the biscuits.
A few minutes later the bacon and biscuits had all vanished, and Buster was licking the last remnants of the grits from the platter. Bubba leaned back on his elbows, let out a mighty belch that rattled the windows in Octavia’s cabin, and lookedup at his sister.
“Alright, Tavvy. What’s periling you today?”
“The children are missing, Bubba.”
“You ain’t got no children, Tavvy.”
“Not my children, you great lummox! The children from the congregation!” Octavia swatted him on one giant shoulder.
“What children?”
“If you would darken the door of our house of worship more than twice a year, you would know these things, Bubba. There are six children missing from nearby farms and homes.”
“I darken the door, Tavvy, I just can’t seem to find my way through it. Maybe if the door was taller I’d have an easier time of it. Where’d them young’uns go?” Bubba asked, sitting up and picking a tick from one of Buster’s ears.
“Nobody knows, Bubba! That’s why they’re missing.”
“Oh. Okay, what do you want me to do about it? You want me to go look for ‘em? I know the woods and these hills pretty good I reckon, but I don’t know where I’d start looking for kids…” He trailed off as he caught the black stare Octavia was giving him.
“You don’t want me to go looking for the kids, do you?”
“No, Bubba. I do not need you to go looking for them. I know where they are, I need your help to go get them back.”
Bubba stood up and snapped his fingers for Buster. The dog crouched beside Bubba’s feet but stayed alert. “Well, let’s go get ‘em! Are we gonna have to carry ‘em, Tavvy? ‘Cause half a dozen young ‘uns is gonna be hard to haul in one load.”
“Bubba, are you the stupidest human being in six counties? I don’t need you to carry the babies, I need you to shoot whatever took ‘em!”
“Oh. Well I can do that. Lemme go get my gun.” He stood and started back up the hill to his cabin, but stopped at Octavia’s exasperated sigh.
“Get in here, Bubba. You don’t need to go get that stupid double-barrel. I got something better.” She turned and went into her house, and Bubba followed. She led him through the kitchen into the rest of the cabin where they had grown up. Bubba took a moment to
observe the changes Octavia had wrought upon the old home place since their Pap died just two short years ago. Gone were the spittoons that once nestled in a corner of every room. Gone were the ashtrays on the arm of every chair. Instead the floors practically gleamed, they were so clean, and the windows had been scrubbed spotless and new curtains hung in every one. Bubba thought fleetingly of asking Octavia up to clean his cabin, but decided against it for fear he’d never find anything again.
Bubba clumped down the hall to what had once been his bedroom where Octavia waited. She stood in front of a workbench with her arms folded across her chest. When Bubba entered the room, she stepped to one side of the table and gestured grandly to the contraption sitting there. It was a bizarre apparatus, a pair of tanks sitting underneath a metal box, with straps coming off the tanks and making an “X” in the front of the machine. A hose stretched from the tanks to a set of three long tubes linked together with a small cross on one end. A handle came down on one side of the tubes, with what looked like a trigger mechanism on it.
“What in the world is that, Tavvy? And where the hell did you get it?”
“I made it, Bubba. I call it the Dervish!” She smiled, and suddenly Bubba was reminded of the girl she’d been before them Mam died and Pap fell to drink. She looked like his baby sister again, not the stern woman she’d turned into.
“What does it do?”
“It’s a gun, Bubba. I thought you’d recognize that right off. Come here.” Bubba stepped closer, and Octavia hefted the tanks. “Turn around and put your arms through the straps.” Bubba did as he was told, then fastened the straps across the center of his chest. He staggered a little under the weight, then got it settled onto his shoulders properly and quickly grew accustomed to the weight. Octavia handed him the set of tubes, and Bubba recognized them as shotgun barrels.
“How does it work?” Bubba asked, waving the barrel assembly around.
“It runs on moonshine. The ‘shine pumps into the converter, here.” She tapped the metal box that now sat right behind Bubba’s head. “The ‘shine burns, producing high-powered steam, which flows down this tube to force the barrels to rotate. As the barrels rotate, this gear pulls the hammer back on each barrel in turn. You hold the trigger down, and the hammer will drop as quickly as it was cocked. The gear turns a loading gear on the side of the barrel housing, which releases the loading spring, sending another shell into the barrel. So you can rain lead upon your enemies at the speed of steam!” Octavia was positively giddy, her cheeks were flushed and a slight sheen of sweat glowed on her brow.
“So it lets me shoot faster?”
“Faster than anyone has every shot before!”
“Then I love it. Even if it is a little heavy.”
“That’s the weight of the ‘shine. That’s why I haven’t been able to test it yet. I can’t carry it when loaded with liquor.”
“So ain’t nobody ever shot this thing?” Bubba’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline.
“Not yet.” Some of the gleam had fallen off of Octavia’s face, and she began to look concerned.
“Is this thing gonna explode, Tavvy? I remember what happened to your steam-powered log-splitter. That axe-head didn’t stop flying ’til it went through three trees.”
“This is different. I know what I’m doing now.”
“That’s what you said about the automated tomato-picker. It mashed them maters flatter than a flapjack.”
“A slight overcompensation in the steam engine. I’ve worked out all my finer gearing now.”
“And that flying machine? I don’t think it ever came down, Tavvy. I don’t know what woulda happened if I hadn’t jumped out into the top of that cedar tree.”
“Just put the damn thing on, Bubba, I swear on Mam’s grave that this one will work!”
“Well why didn’t you say sol, little sis? Let’s go!” Bubba turned and led the way out into the back yard, site of so many of his childhood adventures. There was the tree he’d fallen out of and broken his arm. There was the barn where he’d learned how milk a cow, and learned the difference between cows and bulls. And where he’d learned not to make the mistake of trying to milk a bull. There was the chicken coop where he’d been nearly pecked to death by an angry rooster while trying to collect eggs one morning. And there was the stump that Pap had usually bent him over whenever he misbehaved. No wonder I never come back here, Bubba thought. The past is nothing but one big bruise.
Octavia had set up a dozen or so glass bottles along the split-rail fence that marked the back edge of their property. Bubba set himself up about fifteen yards from the fence, pointed the barrels at his first target, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He looked confused for a moment, then pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened.
“It’s broke, Tavvy.”
“You have to fire the steamer, Bubba. You’ve gotta make the fire or there will be no steam.” She reached over his shoulder and flipped a switch on the box behind his head. Bubba heard a spark, then felt the box begin to heat up. After a few seconds, he could hear hiss of steam filling the tube that ran down his arm. He pointed the barrel at the fence again, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.
And the thunder of heaven rained down upon them like God himself was coming to earth, and was mightily upset. The barrels whirred, the hammers flew back and forth, and a barrage of lead shot the likes of which no one in Kentucky had ever seen flowed forth from the Dervish’s mouth. The shells spat forth at an amazing rate, destroying not just the bottles, but most of the fence as well.
Then it was over. Almost as soon as it had begun, the barrels whirred on empty air, the reservoir of ammunition quickly depleted. The bottles, the fence and a several trees in the vicinity were nothing but splinters and glass shards. Smoke billowed from the barrels like the mouth of an angry dragon, covering Bubba with an acrid grey fog. Bubba looked over at his sister, who had taken cover behind the door to the house. “Holy hell on crackers, Tavvy! This thing is amazing!”
Octavia ran down to him, her arms wide open and Bubba enveloped her in a gigantic bear hug, lifting her off her feet. “Now, big brother, can we go bring those babies home?”
“Dervish, huh? Little sis, with this thing I feel like I could take on the Devil himself!”
“Well, you might need to be doing some of that, too, Bubba.” The new voice came from the corner of the house. Bubba turned to find Preacher Mason leaning against the wall of the shack, his black suit a darker blur in the grey haze that covered the yard. Preacher Mason was a trim man, of average height, with dark hair and a neat beard. He was always clean and immaculately dressed, so people wondered why in the world he was often found in Bubba’s presence. The holy man never let on that he actually enjoyed the company of the giant, just talked about “salvation for everyone” and how devout his sister, Octavia, was.
Bubba went to the preacher and clasped hands with him. “How you feelin’ this morning, Preacher? I was right peaked when I first woke up, but this new contraption of Tavvy’s done got me about ready for another jar of your holy water!”
The preacher shot an embarrassed glance over at Octavia, then grinned through his short beard at Bubba. “I was feeling a mite weary this morning myself, Bubba. But it does my heart good to see you with your sister and not fighting for a change.” Bubba and Octavia both blushed at that. Their “conversations” sometimes echoed from nearby mountaintops when they reached particularly vociferous disagreements. “Now,” Mason went on, “about these missing young’uns.”
“I saw a bunch of lightnin’ last night up top of Henry’s Knob, and there weren’t no storm, so I figured that must have something to do with it.” Octavia said. “Old Man Gilbreath lives up there by himself since his wife and daughter died, and people say he went kinda off his rocker when that happened.” Bubba noticed for the first time that Octavia sounded different when the handsome young preacher was around. A little less uppity, if he had to put his finger on it.
“Well, Tav
vy, lightnin’ with no storm is peculiar, but it mighta been heat lightnin’.”
“Bubba if you wasn’t drunk every damn night you might notice that there’s been frost on the ground every mornin’ this week!” Octavia gave him a slap on the back of the head to punctuate her sentence. “Now I’m goin’ up there tonight and bringin’ those young’uns home. Are you two gone help me or not?”
“Well, Octavia…” Preacher Mason began, but Bubba cut him off.
“We’ll help. Right, Preacher?” Bubba looked down at the holy man, who sputtered for a few seconds then gave a rueful grin.
“Of course we will. What should I bring for a rescue?”
“How about a Bible and a shotgun, Preacher. That oughta cover most anything we run into.” Bubba grinned down at him.
“I believe I can provide that, Bubba. And perhaps a little of your favorite flavor of holy water besides.” The pastor grinned up at Bubba, who clapped him on the back and almost knocked him flat.
*****
The trio crept along the treeline outside the Gilbreath place, trying their best to keep out of sight. Octavia had changed into a rather scandalous pair of dark denim pants and one of Pap’s old flannel shirts, and she led the way into the clearing around the house. Bubba was clad in his usual coveralls and boots, but in a nod to his sobriety and the chill in the air he’d added a shirt to his standard ensemble. He even restrained his halo of wild hair with a cap, so as to limit the branches and critters crawling through his scalp. Preacher Mason had traded in his suit and good shoes for a pair of coveralls himself, with sturdy work boots that looked as though they had never seen a field or a cowpie.
The Gilbreath cabin was a shack like all the rest on the mountain, with a front room for visitors, a kitchen alongside that, and several bedrooms down a short hallway. Gilbreath had been the first on his mountain to add an indoor privy into his cabin, and soon became the envy of his neighbors for it. He remarked many times that “nothing was too good” for his girls, his beloved wife Annie and sweet daughter Faith. He had hardly been seen off his mountain in the six months since they were carried off by the fever back in the fall.
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