“And you can come get liquored up with me any time you want to, Jacob.” Bubba replied. They all laughed and limped down the stairs into the street, headed home.
A Haint in the Holler
A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Short Story
By John G. Hartness
“Dammit, Tavvy, I ain’t got not interest in pokin’ around down in that mine!” I even stood up to say, so she’d know I was serious. I mighta lurched a little, which probably didn’t do any help to my seriousness, but I needed another drink anyhow, so I stomped off the porch and around to the back of the house.
Tavvy followed close behind, chirping all the way. “But Beauregard, the miners are terrified! They can’t go down there without somebody telling them that it’s safe. And who better to do that than the Hero of the Hollow?”
I turned to where Tavvy stood with her arms crossed. She was dressed like she was going down in a mine, her normal skirts traded in for a pair of brown canvas pants tucked into what must have been a pair of Daddy’s old work boots, to be as beat up as they were. I wondered how many pairs of socks she had on to make ‘em fit. Her hair was braided in a thick brown rope that hung halfway down her back, and she had some kinda helmet in one hand with what looked like a shiny dinner plate to the front of it and a big loop on the back where it looked like some kind of bottle was supposed to go. I stared at it for a second and then decided that as long as she didn’t try to make me wear it, especially somewhere that people might see me, I wasn’t going to ask. Half the times the gadgets didn’t work, and the other half the explanations didn’t make no sense anyhow.
“I might be the Hero of the Holler, but I won’t get to enjoy my Hero-ness if I end up dead at the bottom of a mine shaft. And in case you ain’t noticed, Tavvy, I ain’t exatly of a size to be running around in tunnels with a couple of million tons of mountain on top of my head!”
“Are you scared, Bubba?” She used that same sing-sony little voice that she used to use when we were little kids. The one that always got me to do something stupid. I swore to myself that it wasn’t going to work this time.
“No, I ain’t scared!” I reached the edge of the creek behind the house and reache down for the piece of twine that I had tied off to the base of a little loblolly pine tree. I pulled on the twine and a crate came dragging along the rocks in the creek until it rested against the weeds on the bank. I reached down into the crate, brushed a couple of crawdaddies out of the way, and pulled a mason jar out. I shook the jar a little to get the water off it, then shoved the crate back into the creek as far as I could reach without stepping in the water. Even in July, that creek runs ice-cold all the way off the top of the mountain where my cabin sits. It probably warms up by the time it gets down deep in the holler, but up by the cabin it’s good enough to keep my white liquor chilled without any need for an icebox.
I carried my jar back up to the porch and sat back down in the rocking chair. I motioned for Tavvy to sit beside me in the other rocker, but she shook her head, standing at the top of the stairs looking down on me. I swear, sometimes I think that’s Octavia’s favorite pasttime — looking down on her older brother.
“All right, Tavvy, go ahead.” I said after I took a long slash of liquor and set the jar down on the porch beside me.
“Go ahead with what, brother dear?” She asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Go ahead with whatever devious thing you got planned to convince me to go into the damn mine with you. I done had another good drink, so I reckon I can handle it now.” I’ve found that it’s best not to get too deep into Tavvy’s plans while sober. Bad things happen when she gets to thinkin’, and it helps to have a lubricated mind, if you know what I mean.
“I would never use any devious means to convince you to help your fellow man, Beauregard. I’m offended that you would even think such a thing.” Tavvy turned away, probably trying to hide a grin. I wasn’t bothering to hide it — fighting with my sister is one of my favorite things to do on a summer afternoon, right up there with drinking liquor and picking banjo.
She kept on talking, even facing away from me. That was one of Tavvy’s tricks - sometimes she wouldn’t look at you when she was talking to you, like she didn’t care what you said in answer to watever she was askin’. That’s how I knew she really wanted me to help these miners, cause she was acting like she didn’t care.
“These men haven’t worked all week, which means they won’t be paid this week, which means that there won’t be any money to put in the offering plate at the church —“
I cut her off. “Yeah, but Preacher Mason ain’t like that Baptist fellow we had last spring, the one that spent all his time hollerin’ about Hell. If they ain’t got no money, Mason ain’t gonna turn ‘em out. He’ll preach at ‘em just like they could afford something.”
“Yes, but this is a very important time for Reverend Mason. He is being evaluated for fitness after the reports of our recent exploits in Atlanta reached the ears of the General Conference, and the Regional Conference has sent a representative to his church to determine if Reverend Mason is to be allowed to stay here or if he must move along.”
“Huh. Glad I never got too much religion, then, if the church bosses can just come around and tell you where to live and stuff like that. Anyhow, Preacher Mason’s offering plates is the least of our worries. If the mine ain’t working, before too long ain’t nobody around here gonna be working, and that ain’t good for nobody. So I reckon I’ll help out your miners. When do we start?”
“Why, I’m thrilled that you are feeling so charitable this afternoon, Beauregard. And it just so happens that Mr. McFadden is coming to meet us at the cabin any time now. So we should be somewhat more available when he arrives.”
“It’s alright, Octavia, I know Bubba keeps his liquor coolin’ in the creek back here. When he wasn’t on the porch, I reckoned he come back here to get himself another jar, so I knew right where to find y’all.” We turned and Billy Joe McFadden was leaning on a tree back by the corner of the house. He had the squinty-eyed look of a man who spent a lot of time underground, and the stooped walk that most miners had to keep from banging their heads into stuff. Even standing straight up, Billy Joe wasn’t anywhere near as tell as me, but hunched over like he normally was, he was a lot closer to Tavvy’s height than mine.
Billy Joe and I went way back to our school days together. He quit going when he was about fourteen to go work in the mine, and I quit about that same time to go cut down trees with Uncle Tom. I was a big kid, and Uncle Tom needed another man on the big saw, so into the woods I went, and I stayed happy there until the last few months when I started thinking there might be something to this whole monster-hunting business. I hadn’t quite figured out how to get paid to kill the nasty things we hunted down yet, but those were the kind of details I left to Tavvy.
“Bill,” I walked over and held out my hand. Billy Joe clasped my big paw in his, permanently stained black with coal dust that no amount of soap would dig out. “What can we help you with?”
“We been hearing tommyknockers, Bubba.” He cast a side-eye at the jar in my hand, so I passed it over. He took a long slash out of the jar and passed it back. “Smooth. It’s good cold like that. Anyhow, at first it was just down one shaft, over on the back side of the cut near where the old cave-in happened. But in the past couple weeks it’s been all over, and it starts almost as soon as we get out of sight of the entrance. I don’t know what to tell my men, and some of them have stopped showing up for work the past couple days. You know the mine’s been putting out less and less every year, and I’m scared if we don’t get back in there it’ll be the excuse the boss man needs to get the owners to shut her down and move on someplace else. That would leave a whole lot of men without a way to support their families.” Bill was right. The mine supported probably two-thirds of the people in the county, in one way or another.
“So what do you want us to do about it?” I asked.
Billy Joe looked down at
his brown work boots like there was an answer written on his toes. “We need y’all to go down there and do whatever you do.”
“I don’t think I understand, Billy Joe. I’m just a logger and about halfway to a drunk most days. What exactly is it y’all need us to do. I mean, Tavvy’s awful smart, but I don’t think you need a whole lot of book learning down in a mine.”
“We need y’all to make the tommyknockers quit so the boys will go back down the mine.” Billy Joe still hadn’t met my eyes, and I was starting to get a little hot.
“Well, Billy Joe, the way I was raised if you wanted somebody to help you do something, you looked him in the eye and said exactly what you wanted. There wasn’t none of this pussy-footing around about stuff. And since we grew up together, I reckon you was raised the same way. Now, what do y’all want?” I held out every word of that last bit, making it almost like its own sentence.
Billy Joe’s toe danced around in the dirt a little bit more, ’til finally he looked up at me and said, “Bubba, we need you and your sister to go down in the mine and run them ghosts off. My men can’t do it, and they’re too scared to work while the mine’s haunted? There, I done said it. Now will you help me?”
I looked in his eyes for a long minute. The eyes of a mountain man are like a window right into every little part of his soul, you can read everything about him if you know how to look. I saw a lot of pride, the kind of pride that led my old school pal to avoid asking for help until it was almost too late. I saw fear, the kind of fear that country people have of the unknown and the supernatural, and some of that fear was bleedin’ off onto me and Tavvy, too. And I finally saw what I was looking for, enough regret about the way folks down in town had been treating my sister ever since she started helping me hunt down big nasties that I was willing to forgive Billy Joe for any times he might have crossed the road to walk on the other sidewalk from Tavvy, or made the sign of the evil eye after she walked by, or suddenly changed pews at church after she wallked in and sat down.
I saw the fear, and the regret, and pride in his eyes, but most of all I saw the concern for his men, the men who wouldn’t get paid if they didn’t work, but were too damn scared to set foot in a place they thought was haunted. I looked in his eyes, and stuck out my hand.
“All right, Bill.” I said, giving his hand a shake. “Let’s get some gear and go chase down some tommyknockers.”
Billy Joe and I turned and started back around the side of the house to go down toward the mine, but Tavvy grabbed my arm. “What was all that about, Beauregard?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Octavia.” I didn’t look her in the eye. She knew I was lying, I knew I was lying, but there was no point in giving it all away.
“Yes, you do. What was all that mess about him looking you in the eye and asking for our help?”
I looked down at my sister, all fire and backbone and brains, and I shook my head a little. “Tavvy, you’re like most real smart people — sometime you’re just plain ignorant. You get so wrapped up in your gadgets and gizmos and helmets with little eyeglasses on them that you can’t see how people look at you. Well, I ain’t real smart, but I see stuff. And ever since we went up the hill and took care of Old Man Gilbreath, people have been looking at you funny. Me too, but that don’t matter. See, you’re a girl, and that kinda thing matters for a girl, and if these people around here are going to come up over here looking for me and you to haul their butts outta the fire every time something goes bump in the night, then they’re going to have to buck up and say hello when we meet in the road, too. It’s just common courtesy, and I made Billy Joe own it.”
Tavvy looked up at me for a minute, then her bottom lip started to quiver. I saw water fill up her pretty green eyes, and she threw her arms around my waist, squeezing me ’til I thought my ribs might bust. “I do love you, Bubba. You know that, don’t you?”
I looked down at the top of her head, red curls spilling out from under her funny hat. I put an arm around her and patted her on the back, real gentle so as not to bruise nothing. “I love you too, sis. I love you, too. Now let’s get on down the hill before these tommyknockers of Billy Joe’s do anything more than make a racket.” We walked around the house with my arm over her shoulder and got in Bill’s truck to ride down to the mine.
There weren’t any other cars in the parking lot out front of the mine when we pulled up, which made sense given what Billy Joe had said about the miners not working until we got the spooks out of the tunnels. There were a couple of dirty-faced men working on equipment around the mouth of the the mine, but it looked like they were running on a skeleton crew. Soon as we got good and stopped, the door flew open to the mine office building and a big man came down the steps, grinning like he’d just won first prize in a beauty contest. And by the looks of him, he might, too. He was tall, and strong-looking. Not like me, where I just take up a whole lot of space and look mean, he looked like a man who exercised, and maybe knew how to box. But he didn’t do it much, ‘cause his nose had never been broke. It was perfectly straight and set right in the middle of a handsome face, with a square jaw and hair slicked down in a part on one side. I didn’t have to get close enough to smell him to know he wore aftershave. Maybe aftershave and cologne. Me, I don’t shave. Ever. So aftershave ain’t in my medicine cabinet. Neither is cologne. I smell good enough by myself.
He had one other thing that screamed “boss” about him at a mine — he was clean. He wore work boots and work pants, and a chambray work shirt with the creases still in the sleeves from where it had been ironed for him. His black work boots were polished almost to military shine, and I swear I saw him walk a path through the parking lot to avoid scuffing his shoes on a rock.
He walked up to me, Tavvy and Bill and stuck out his hand. I took it, and we shook. He had a good, firm handshake, like you’d expect a man to have. Nothing limp or sweaty, and he didn’t squeeze and try to show me who was boss. He was in charge and knew it, he was a man who had nothing to prove. I hated him a little, and worked real hard at not squeezing his hand when we shook.
“Fred Baker, pleased to meet you.”
“Beauregard Brabham, my pleasure. This is my sister Octavia. We understand there might be some strange goings-on in your mine?” I nodded over at the empty tunnel mouth.”
Baker gave one of those big-guy full-body chuckles where you know they ain’t the least bit amused at whatever is going on, but they need to look all jovial and crap out in public. “Well, you know how these mountain folk can get superstitious. Seems a couple of the boys heard something back in the number four tunnel they couldn’t see a good cause for, and they decided that it was tommyknockers warning them of a cave-in. Now they won’t go back in the mine unless somebody tells them it’s safe.”
“Yeah, I know how these hillbillies can get. Ignorant hicks will believe anything. Well, Mr. Baker we’ll get down in there, tell you there ain’t no ghosts or ghouls, and you can get back to making buckets of money for the men off in New York or wherever that own this mine.”
Baker must have heard something in my tone that tipped him off I was a little irritated by his “mountain folk” comment, ‘cause he held up both hands like he was all innocent all of sudden. “Wait now, Mr. Brabham, I never meant to offend —“
I cut him off. “We’re here because Billy Joe and me go way back to when we were kids growing up on the side of that mountain over yonder, Mr. Baker, so when you talk about those ‘mountain people,’ you better remember you’re looking at one. Now I’ll go down there and make sure there ain’t nothing out of the ordinary in them tunnels, but I’m doing for Bill and his people. Not you. But don’t worry, you’ll be the one paying the bill for our services. You can make a fifty dollar donation to the Methodist Church in our name, and that’ll be pay enough to cover our services.”
I started to turn and go to the mine, but Baker grabbed my arm. “Now hold on a minute here, Brabham. Billy Joe didn’t say anything about any ind of donation. I was under th
e impression that this was the kind of thing you did for free.”
I looked down at the pretty man, laying a heavy eye on where he had hold of my elbow. After a long minute he took his hand off me and dropped it back to his side. “I do this kind of thing for free for the people around here. But if I’m doing something to help you make money, then you’re going to share the wealth. Do you think it’s costing your company more or less than fifty dollars to be shut down?”
Baker’s jaw worked like he was chewing on the inside of his cheek or something, but he finally grumbled “More.”
“Then take the bargain, Mr. Baker. Now if you’ll excuse us, I got some mountain superstitions to get rid of.” I stomped off toward the entrance to the mine, Tavvy and Billy Joe in tow.
Billy Joe stopped beside a rack of lights by the entrance and handed me one, along with a soft canvas caps. He showed me how to attach the lamp to the cap, and warned me to keep my head down so as not to spill the oil all over my face and burn my beard off. He turned to Tavvy, but she was already fastening the strap on a wide-brimmed helmet under her chin.
“What you got there, Tavvy?” I asked.
“This is my Spectaculator, Beauregard. I took a Dutch pith helmet, attached a clean-burning fuel supply to the back of the helmet, piped the fuel to the front and used lenses to focus the light into a bright, tight beam. I have a myriad of colored optics that can be placed in front of the light source to reveal many substances that would remain hidden to the naked eye. And the helmet provides a greater protection for my skull than the soft cloth caps the miners typically mount their lights to.” She reached up and flicked a wheel at the front of her helmet. A spark leapt out, and a blueish yellow flame burst to life right in front of the four-inch curved mirror on the front of her hat. She looked ridiculous, but her lamp was sure putting out a lot more light than mine or Billy Joe’s. Sometimes Tavvy’s contraptions worked out pretty good. I still hadn’t quite forgiven her for burning all the hair off my arms with her steam-assisted stump puller. Aftermy burns healed, I decided to just use a mule like everybody else.
Moonshine & Magic: A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Collection Page 6