Dark Places

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  He handed it to me. “Think you can hit him?”

  It was the first time he’d ever offered to let me shoot at something other than a target, so I took him up on it. “Sure ’nough.”

  “Don’t miss.” Miss Becky added her own flashlight beam. “I don’t want to lose no more fryers. He’s done killed half a dozen tonight for meanness.”

  I thumb-cocked the pistol. Grandpa didn’t say anything as I aimed. The barrel wandered around some, so I added my other hand to hold it tight. When I pulled the trigger, the muzzle flash blinded me, but I heard the coon thud on the ground at our feet.

  Hootie charged in and I hardly knew when Grandpa took the pistol from my hand. “Good shot, Davy Crockett.”

  “Back!” Miss Becky hollered at Hootie. He turned a-loose and backed up, still barking. She used both hands to pick the coon up by the tail. “My lands, this is the biggest ol’ bandit I’ve ever seen.”

  Hootie had it in his head that there was another one up there, so we left him barking at the empty limbs and walked back in the moonlight. He was still tellin’ it when we went through the gate into the yard. Grandpa pitched the coon into his truck bed and led us up on the dark porch.

  A car hissed past on the two-lane highway down the hill. Grandpa stopped, squinting. “Who’s running the highway this time of the morning?”

  A truck followed. Grandpa shook his head. “I swear, folks ought to be at home in bed at this time of night.” He gave me the eye. “They’re probably up to something. Don’t be where trouble starts, and you won’t get into trouble.”

  Miss Becky went in the house. I waited at screen door and hollered toward the barn. “Hootie! Get in here!”

  He must have remembered what happened a few months earlier when a pack of wild dogs nearly killed him. He quit barking like I’d thrown a switch and high-tailed it to the house.

  I held the door open for him and heard Grandpa talking to himself like he does.

  “Folks out this time of night are up to no good. No good a’tall.”

  Chapter Four

  When the monkey dropped onto Top’s head, Pepper’s sheer panic took her through the backyard and around the Ordway house. Cale and the Toadies’ footsteps faded into the darkness. She made it back to the front in time to see Doc Daingerfield set Top on his feet and dust him off.

  She waited in the shadows, thinking her heart was going to beat out of her chest when the doctor gripped Top by the shoulder and escorted him into the house. They were talking as they went in, but she was sure it wouldn’t be long before her Granddaddy showed up with a belt.

  When the door closed, she cut across the yard and headed down the highway, jittery with adrenaline. She’d barely reached the highway when Cale stepped out from behind a cedar. “I thought you’d got caught.”

  She recoiled and slapped him on the shoulder hard enough to sting. “Shit, you scared me! No thanks to you, Mr. Cale Westlake. Doc Daingerfield got Top, though.”

  “Well, he can have the little pipsqueak.”

  Pepper thought about slugging him, then she grinned. Nothing worse than a butt-whoopin was going to happen, so she didn’t feel too bad about Top getting caught. “That’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in a while, and it wasn’t even dangerous.”

  Cale walked beside her, staying on the hardtop. “Where are you going? Your house is the other way.”

  She jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. “I know which way my own house is, idiot. I’m not the least bit interested in going home. We’re out, so let’s do something.”

  “You don’t think Top’ll rat us out?”

  “Nope. He won’t say a word.” High on adrenaline, she stopped to think. “Let’s do something bad.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “You ever want to break into something?”

  “No way! Folks around here’ll shoot you if you try to get in their house or barn.”

  “I know where Old Man Peterson keeps his money.”

  “At his house?”

  “No, in the store.”

  “His register’ll be empty.”

  “No it won’t. I snuck around behind the counter one day when he was in the post office. That blind old fool didn’t have any idea I was there, and I snitched a twenty from a cigar box where he keeps his big bills.”

  “I’m not breaking into a store. Shit-fire, did you forget who my granddaddy is?”

  “You said…”

  “I said I wanted to do something bad, not stupid.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “Let’s run off.”

  “To where?”

  “San Francisco.” She dug her little transistor radio from her back pocket and spun the dial with a thumb. “Good Lovin’” by the Young Rascals filled the damp night air.

  Full of youth and still bubbling excitement, they ran down the dark highway. Hair flying, she twisted to shout over her shoulder. “You can have me if you catch me!”

  Cale tried, but she was fast as a deer and there was no way he could catch up. She quickly pulled away and he slowed to a trot, following the sound of her radio through the darkness.

  When he came over a hill, Pepper was standing in the middle of the two-lane road with her head tilted back and both eyes closed.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  “Diggin’ this music.” The Stones had given way to the Mamas and the Papas. “They’re in California. I mean it. Let’s go there.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Why not?”

  While he mulled the idea over, he heard a car in the distance. At night, sounds travel. He figured it was still at least a mile away, but coming fast. “We need to get out of the highway.”

  “No. I’m going to stand right here. Whoever it is can go around.”

  “C’mon.” Cale reached for her hand, but Pepper jerked it away, staying in the same position. “You’re gonna get run over.”

  “I’m gonna live some.”

  “You’re gonna get killed.” The car was closer, and he heard the hiss of tires on the road.

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” She used her thumb to turn up the volume. “It’s this place that’s killing me, from boredom. Say we can go to California and I’ll move.”

  “Someday.”

  “No.” She cranked the volume higher, distorting the sound.

  Close to panic, Cale reached for her hand again. There was no way the driver would see them in time, standing below the hill.

  “Stop!” Pepper drew a deep breath. “Feel it?”

  Cale saw the glow over the hill, but he could no longer hear the tires over the loud music. “Please?”

  “Titty baby!”

  The lights grew brighter. Cale danced in terror. “Pepper!”

  “I think I’ll lay down.” She dropped to the ground and threw her arms wide.

  “No!”

  “Promise me we’ll go to California.”

  “I promise!”

  “When?”

  “Shit. I don’t know!”

  The lights intensified and it was only a matter of seconds before the car crested the hill.

  “Then I’ll die here, because this place is killing me already.”

  “Fine. When I get some money.”

  He saw her open one eye in the moonlight. “When?”

  “In a few days.”

  “Promise?”

  Panicked, he grabbed her hand. “Promise!”

  Simon and Garfunkel came on, and she switched the radio off. “I hate that shit.”

  She lost her balance as he pulled, falling and cracking her elbow on the concrete. “Shit!” The radio flew from her hand, and with a jolt of fear, she suddenly realized she might have waited too long. Cale jerked her upright and her
sneakers found a grip. They shot off the highway only moments before the lights crested the hill.

  An Impala sedan flashed by, followed closely by a truck.

  Both kids saw the passenger’s head in back of the sedan jerk to the side as he caught sight of the kids lit by the truck’s headlights. They recognized the local bad boy, John T. West, and the expression on his face scared them as bad as if they’d caught sight of the old Devil himself.

  The moment the truck passed, Pepper and Cale ran across the highway and into the thick stand of trees dividing two pastures.

  Chapter Five

  Ned was barely back in bed when the phone rang. The late night calls weren’t as aggravating when he was younger, because they were part of being constable in Precinct 3, but once Top came to live with them after his parents died, it worried him that the fourteen-year-old wouldn’t get his rest.

  “I’god, what now!” Wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, he padded across the linoleum into the living room and settled onto the telephone table’s seat. “What?”

  “Ned?” Isaac Reader’s reedy voice on the other end sapped what little energy he had left. “What is it, Ike?”

  The jerky little farmer began with his usual pre-conversational quirk. “Listen, listen. Leland Hale’s cows are out on the road here, not far from his house.”

  “How many, you reckon?”

  Ike paused. “All of ’em. That ain’t it, though. You better get on out here, ’cause I done plowed into ’em and there’s dead cows scattered all to hell and gone.”

  Ned glanced at the dark window, knowing he wasn’t going to get any sleep that night. “All right, then. Are you hurt?”

  “Naw.”

  “Good.” Ned recalled the vehicles he’d seen on the highway less than a half hour earlier. “Why don’t you go on and wave a flashlight around to keep anybody else from hittin’ em. There’s fools running the roads when they should be in bed asleep.”

  “All right, I hope none of ’em run over me.”

  “They won’t, if you stay on the side and shine your light at ’em. I’ll be there directly.”

  “More trouble?” Miss Becky asked when he returned to the dark bedroom to dress.

  “Mostly with Ike Reader. Leland Hale’s cows are out and Ike’s done run over some of ’em.”

  “Oh, Lord. How does he know they’re Leland’s cows?”

  Ned paused to think, then clipped the gallus of his overalls into place and grunted into his brogans. “That’s a good question. I should have asked him.” He dropped the bigger .38 Colt into the front pocket of his overalls and pinned the badge to his shirt pocket. “I’ll be home after while.”

  When he stepped out on the porch, he chuckled. “A monkey. A damn monkey. Who’d-a had any idea a country kid would get in trouble with a monkey.”

  The engine of his new, used 1965 Plymouth Fury rumbled to life. He pulled the headlights on when he hit the highway, and accelerated. The cool night air flowed through the open windows. A four-point buck raised his head from a patch of grass beside the road and watched him pass. Two more eyes shined in the lights as a doe paused, then went back to grazing.

  He plucked the Motorola’s microphone from the dash bracket and pressed the key. “Who’s working tonight?”

  A strange voice squawked through the speaker. “This is Lizzie. Who’s this?”

  “Lizzie, this is Ned Parker. Sorry you have to work the late shift. I wanted somebody to know I’m heading out toward Isaac Reader’s house because some cows are out and one or two are down.”

  “Mornin’, Mr. Ned. All right. Call when you know something. I don’t want to have to send the National Guard after you.”

  He grinned. “I’ll do it, gal.”

  Minutes later, Ned slowed at the sight of Ike Reader’s flashlight and half a dozen white-face heifers standing on the road. Twice as many were grazing on the thick grass in the bar ditches. One lay on the side of the road, bellowing and struggling to get up. A second stood on three legs with her head hanging low in pain.

  Ike hurried toward the car as Ned pulled onto the shoulder and left the engine running. He hoped the bright headlights and emergency blinkers would slow anyone coming along the two-lane. He twisted the handle of the red spotlight mounted on the doorpost in the direction of oncoming traffic.

  Setting the felt Stetson firmly on his bald head, Ned grunted his way out of the car. “You reckon this is all of ’em?”

  Ike shrugged. Even that late at night, he wore his shirt buttoned at the neck under faded overalls. “Listen, listen, I don’t have any idy.” He paused to think. “You know, I didn’t mean to hit ’em.”

  “I know it. Where’d they get out?”

  “I cain’t say.”

  Ned played his beam over the heifer on the ground. She groaned and scraped at the highway with her front hooves. “Thissun been up at all?”

  “Naw. I believe her back’s broke.” Ike pointed with his beam. “Leg’s broke on that’un, too.”

  Before Ned could comment that he could see the obvious, a glow through the trees warned of a vehicle heading their way from Direct. “Damn it. Somebody’s comin’.” They watched the headlights come around a sharp bend. Luckily the truck was moving slow, making Ned wonder if they were spotlighting for deer.

  He crossed to the oncoming side of the road, waving his flashlight. Ike did the same, and Ned relaxed when he recognized the short-circuiting headlights of the Wilson boys’ truck. Though Ty Cobb and Jimmy Foxx owned a farm and rented several sections of land to raise crops, Ned often wondered how they could work all day, yet hunt all night and throughout the weekends.

  The truck crept to a halt and Ty Cobb stuck his head out the passenger window. “Ned? Y’all moving cows at this time of the night?” Coon dogs riding in the bed set up a racket so loud Ned couldn’t hardly hear what the man had to say.

  Ike always wanted to be first with any information even though he was farthest from the truck. “Naw! These is Leland Hale’s cows, they got out.…”

  The dogs drowned out Ike’s explanation. Jimmy Foxx got out. “Shut up!”

  Ike froze in shock before he realized Jimmy Foxx was yelling at the dogs. They settled down, but hung over the side of the truck, tongues lolling.

  “You boys having any luck?” Ned reached the window.

  “Couple of coons and a possum. It’s a slow night.”

  “Well, you should have been at my house a while ago. Why don’t y’all help us round up these cows before somebody runs in the middle of ’em again.”

  “Sure thing.” Ty Cobb stepped out.

  Jimmy Foxx jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We saw the fence was down back there.”

  “Want me to shoot that’un?” Ty Cobb pointed at the heifer lying in the road.

  Ned shook his head. “Naw. Let’s ease the rest of ’em back in the pasture before we handle these two.”

  Jimmy Foxx shifted into reverse and backed up to park the truck as a temporary block when the cows came down the road. He dug a hammer out of the cluttered floorboard and scooped a handful of staples from the bed full of dogs, hay, wire, and farm tools.

  The others rounded up the scattered survivors and pushed them toward the gap. With Jimmy Foxx blocking their way, the cattle turned back into their own pasture. Jimmy Foxx tucked his light under one arm and pulled one of the loose wires back into place. Ty Cobb joined him and pounded new staples into the post.

  They jumped at a sudden shot, then realizing what Ned was doing, went back to working on the fence. The second shot put down the cow with the broken leg. He slipped the .38 back into his pocket and joined them, waiting on the edge of the highway.

  “That’ll do for now, boys. I’ll run over to the house and wake Leland up, if he ain’t awake after all this shootin’. He can come out in the morning with a wire stretcher and tighten ’e
r up.”

  Jimmy Foxx saw a heifer in the pasture sniff at a thick stand of broom weed and jump to the side. “Ty Cobb, hold this fence.”

  He opened a gap in the wires and Jimmy Foxx stepped through. Seeing him in the pasture, the dogs leaped from the truck bed and joined him. They sniffed for only a moment until the pointer sat down, lifted his nose to the sky, and howled.

  The mournful sound made Ned shiver. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Ty Cobb straddled the fence and when he was on the other side, added his own beam to the scene. “Ike, you might want to help Ned get through. He’s gonna need to see this.”

  “What?” Ned didn’t particularly want to fight the loose fence if he didn’t have to.

  A breeze flicked Ty Cobb’s shaggy hair. “Leland Hale’s layin’ here dead.”

  Chapter Six

  In the moonlit bottoms, Marty’s headlights revealed bare tree trunks stacked like jackstraws in great piles. Splintered stumps lay on their sides, long roots like stiffened octopus legs splayed in irregular circles. Shallow pools of water reflected the brightest stars above.

  Some of the stacks smoldered, red coals glowing in their depths. Others had burned down to huge circular piles of gray ash swirling in the random breezes. Smoke lay thick and heavy in the lowest levels, filling the truck cab. Occasional gusts kicked up sparks that flickered like fireflies. The eerie glow made Freddy think this was what Hell looked like when the old Devil wasn’t home.

  Or maybe he was.

  Lightning flashed above the treetops like distant cannonade in the northwest. The wind freshened, whipping the smoke from one direction to the other.

  Marty laughed and slapped the steering wheel. “Hot damn! Ain’t this somethin’?” It was the meanest version of a snipe hunt he’d ever been on and that tickled him to death. He planned to play along with John T.’s deal for a while, but instead of robbing them like he wanted, Marty figured they’d take their keys and leave the strangers to walk out and find their car parked at the new overlook east of the dam.

  It’d be a good joke on the city slickers and even if the laws found out, they wouldn’t really care. Hell, they’d probably laugh, too.