"Tell you what, Jimmy. Why don't you get a fifth of that Millstream and swing by, and maybe we'll talk about it?"
"Talk, hell. I want to do more than talk."
Peggy giggled like a teenager. "Well, the kids are off at school."
"I'll bring back that old lawn mower and stick it out in the shed so's the neighbors will think I've been fixing it."
"You're a regular fix-it man, that's for sure. You gonna fix me up?"
"Let me check my tool, darling. Yep, raring to go."
Peggy stubbed out her cigarette and rummaged through her purse for another. Her fingers felt the ring of her Earnhardt key chain, the one Jimmy had given her. Sylvester hadn't given her a damn thing except a hard time, and not the good kind, either. "Say, Jimmy . . ."
"Yeah, honey?"
"Why ain't you working today?"
There was a silence on the other end of the line, and Peggy listened to the faint electronic hum as Jimmy got his story straight. She glanced out the window and noticed that the trailer park was deader than usual. The curtains were drawn in Paul Crosley's Silverstream and the sawed-off Bronco was gone from the Wellborns' puddle-filled driveway. A patch of lilies poked up behind a rotted row of railroad ties at the park’s entrance.
"Lemly Building Supply didn't drop off the blocks like they was supposed to. No need to mess around that muddy foundation all day for nothing. Can't lay what I ain't got."
"And you ain't got me yet."
"I'm working on it. See you in about twenty minutes?"
"I'll leave the door unlocked. And, Jimmy—"
"Yeah?"
Peggy found a half-full cigarette pack and crinkled the cellophane trying to spill out a fresh smoke. She looked at her hand, red and raw and aging, a hand that had been delicate once.
"Tell me you love me." Even if you have to lie.
"I love you, Peggy."
"Bye now," she said faintly, slowly pulling the phone away from her bleached hair and hanging it in its cradle. She lit the cigarette with her bloodshot hand.
Tamara picked Kevin’s baseball glove off the floor and tucked it in the hall closet amid fishing poles, deflated soccer balls, windbreakers, and tangled piles of Christmas lights. One of these days they’d have to get around to spring cleaning. Because spring was here. The season of hope.
Yeah, right. Hope is a dirty word. I hope Robert will talk to me before our marriage slides the rest of the way into hell. I hope we can understand each other, because he’s in a mid-life crisis and I’m in the same old sanity crisis. I hope hope hope.
She opened the living room window and the breeze pushed the scent of flowers through the screen. Dampness still clung to the air, but the sun was strong, and in its glow the mountains were deep blue. Tamara’s gaze traveled up the slopes, over the ripples of dark ridges to the gray stone face of Bear Claw. The familiar tingle trickled through her, and she tried to ignore it and concentrate on the coming day’s lecture instead. But the sound cut through her thoughts.
Shu-shaaa.
She had no idea what the word meant, or if it even was a word. She tried it on her tongue.
“Shu-shaaa.”
As she said it, something drew her attention back to Bear Claw. She thought she saw a flash of green light near the distant peak, as if someone had signaled with a piece of mirror. A secret signal directed at Tamara.
No. Probably just a reflection off a rock.
Because you do not hear voices. You do not dream the future. You do not see invisible lights. You are NOT crazy.
You are a teacher, a mother, a wife, a sensitive soul who needs to grow a thicker hide. Maybe that’s not the right order of things, but brush your teeth and get down the mountain, and stop staring off into space waiting for spy messages to zap themselves into your brain.
If she wasn’t crazy yet, she might soon drive herself there. Shu-shaaa was a cavity and her mind was a tongue, probing, exploring, curious, even though the rot would only continue spreading until the hole was bigger than the tooth. She slammed the window closed and went down the hall, away from the secret lights of Bear Claw.
###
"So that whole mountainside belongs to one family?"
"Yes, sir. And they're in a selling mood. I talked to one of the sons already. His father got rid of a chunk of it a few years back."
"Cheap?" Emerland handed the binoculars back to his assistant.
The assistant strung them over his neck, the strap tangling with his tie. The wind ruffled the papers on his clipboard. "Ninety thou for twenty acres. Can you believe it?"
"The people are strange up here in the mountains. One minute they're giving it away, and the next they want an arm and a leg and your firstborn thrown in as a down payment."
Emerland gazed at the blue, stubbled face of Bear Claw, picturing three ski slopes, a glass lodge, and a condominium complex. The outlying areas that were too steep for serious development could be carved up into tiny lots and dotted with log cabins. The environmental regulations would be a bitch, with these new run-off laws, but Emerland knew how to go around or through red tape. He'd built Sugarfoot without much of a problem and he could do the same thing again. Maybe more than twice. There were mountains as far as the eye could see.
"Who did you say you talked to?" he asked his assistant.
"Johnny Mack Mull is the name."
"Johnny Mack, huh? What does he say?"
"Apparently the father doesn't want to sell out completely. Now that he's got some money he feels like he's set for life. And the two sons don't get their share until he's out of the picture."
"How far is the father from the edge of the picture?"
"He's sixty-seven but in pretty good health. Johnny Mack was asking me if there was some way they could have his father ruled incompetent. Says he's got mental problems."
"If the old man's out of the way, then we'd have to work with two owners. What about the other son?"
"Sylvester Mull. Delivery truck driver. Lives in a mobile home. Has two kids. Probably an easy sell there."
“And Herbert DeWalt bought a piece?”
“Yes, sir.”
“DeWalt’s got to be making a play. He’s never gone small on anything.”
Emerland squinted into the sun, listening to the wind bending the pines in the valley below. He felt like a conqueror, like Napoleon or Balboa, looking out and knowing that all this could be his. He had the investors. "And Johnny Mack?"
The assistant cleared his throat. "All he talks about is moving to Florida. But he'd probably want lawyers and residuals. He's not too bright, but he knows how to pick a wallet."
"Best to try the old man first. I'll make the contact."
"Yes, sir."
"There are ways to deal with these people. You’ve got to open a dialogue. Speak their language."
And Emerland knew the language.
It talked in more tongues than had the builders of the Tower of Babel.
Money.
CHAPTER FIVE
Junior Mull looked out from under the bushes, watching the silver strand of his fishing line where it entered the dark water of Stony Creek. Damned trout were taking a day off, he decided. Scarcely a nibble all morning.
His jeans were wet from where he'd been sitting in the black mud of the creek bank. Still, it beat the hell out of having his ass parked in a hard chair at Pickett High. He could be there right now, staring at the ceiling tiles and picking his nose as Old Bitch Moody droned on about integers.
The raw fish smell of the creek and the thick swampy odor of decaying weeds filled his nostrils. The water was a little murky from yesterday's rain, but the fish were supposed to bite better after a rain. That theory had gone all to hell today. Didn't those scaly bastards read Field and Stream?
He dried his fingers on his army jacket before reaching into his chest pocket. May as well fire up another joint. At least I can keep up my sense of humor.
Junior gripped the rod with his left hand as he flicked the light
er and drew in a lungful of harsh dope. He exhaled and fanned with his hand to disperse the smoke. Not much traffic on the road this time of day, but no need to advertise his location. That pea-headed truancy officer had been after him since the fifth grade. Plus, now that he was on probation for shoplifting, it was a good idea to keep a low profile when breaking the law.
He took another drag and looked around his hidey-hole. A stand of laurels hid him from passing cars and an old tired cedar drooped protectively overhead. Empty liquor bottles and rusted cans were scattered around the perimeter of the clearing, and black chunks of wood huddled together inside a ring of creek stones. The charred smell of the dead campfire mingled with the mist that drifted off the creek as the sun rose higher.
His old man had shown him this place. Sylvester was no slouch at playing hooky, either, and that was one of the few qualities Junior had inherited. That, and what his dad called a "kinship with nature." Junior giggled and took another hit.
Kinship, hell. Kinship was fucked up, that's what it was. Like Gramps, stewing away on that big old farm, sitting on a goddamned fortune. But did he ever give Junior a red penny of it? Hell, no.
Junior used to hang out up on the farm, especially in the summer when his dad was away on his hunting trips and Mom was staining the sheets with that redneck Jimmy Morris. Junior liked the smell of the hay in the barn and the rich dust from the tobacco that had hung drying in the rafters. He even liked the smell of chicken shit.
There was lots to do on the farm, playing "fort" in the corncrib with his brother Little Mack or fishing out of season in the branch. Or going up in the briars and eating gooseberries until your belly was about to bust. Even hoeing the garden beat the hell out of hanging around the pool halls in Windshake.
But then Gramps had caught Junior getting into the white lightning. All he'd taken was half a cupful, and he'd been real careful to mark the level in the jar so he could fill it back with water. But the leathery old bastard had taken one swig, sniffed at the jar like a dog smelling between a girl's legs, then went crazy enough to threaten him with a shotgun.
Well, fuck him and his liquor.
Junior sucked down another lungful of marijuana. Junior could go over to Don Oscar's and buy his own moonshine. And Gramps could sit in his chair and rock until his bones came loose before he'd ever set foot on that scraggly-assed side of the mountain again. Crazy old bastard.
Junior chuckled to himself.
The dope was starting to work, making his eyelids twitch and the water glitter under the sunlight in a billion little speckled diamonds and the breeze was a whisk broom in the treetops and seven birds were singing different songs but the notes kind of fit together if you listened. And his stomach was clenched and the back of his neck tingled and he stared at the fishing line where it went into the water and at the round ripple that went out from there, and then another little ring inside that one, and then another, perfect circles that would keep spreading forever but never touch the one ahead of it.
And the water was even laughing with him, lapping up against the creek bank and tickling the muddy ribs of the earth. Stony Creek was RIGHT.
He snorted a little as smoke snot rolled down his lip. He took a final draw, scorching his fingers as he pinched the roach, but even the pain was funny, kind of dead and faraway, as if it were somebody else's and he was only borrowing it for a second.
He went back to watching the ripples where his line went into the water. Might have to try some corn. They're not hitting nightcrawlers today. But I sure do like sticking those slimy, squirting bastards on the hook, though. And I'm as fucked up as a football bat and high as a Georgia pine.
Suddenly the line grew taut, but slackened almost immediately. Junior's hand clenched around the rod.
Come on, you bastard. Hit it one more time.
Then he was standing and the pole was quivering and the water erupted in white-silver splashes. Four-pounder, it felt like. It had taken the hook and was trying to wind the line around an old black tree stump that jutted from the creek like an overturned molar.
Junior tugged and then cranked the reel, pulling in the slack he had gained. He cleared the fish from the stump, but it could dip around a rock just as easily, cutting the line on a sharp edge. Then the fish surfaced again, twitching like a convict in an electric chair, but the fight was over, the bastard was Junior's now, and all that was left was a little show of sport.
Junior reeled it in and flipped it onto the bank. It was the ugliest fish he had ever seen. If it even was a fish.
The thing was shaped like a bowling pin, with a blunt face and heavy tail. It had fins that were like fingers, three in a row down each side. Its single gill was a continuous gray slit across its forehead and gooey mucus dribbled out as the gill flapped in search of water. Its eyes were like wine grapes, green and round and bulging and without pupils. And its mouth—
The fucker's got TEETH. Not little bumps of cartilage like hogsuckers and knottyheads have. This thing's got a mouthful of bone briars, and no way in hell am I gonna stick my hand in there and work the hook loose.
The fish-thing stopped wriggling as dirt and twigs collected in the gill. Junior put his boot on its belly so it wouldn't flop away while he figured out what to do with it.
Now, I may be fucked up. And after two joints of Tijuana Taxi, that's more than a maybe. But there's no way I'm as fucked up as this here fish-thing.
So, Junior, you can take this thing home and show the old man and see if he's ever seen anything like it, since he's caught and killed just about everything that bleeds in these Appalachian Mountains, except maybe humans. But that would mean having to explain why you were fishing instead of attending the tenth grade, which would lead to an ass-busting or at least a good bitching-out.
Or you can boot this deformed hunk of fishfuck the hell back into the creek and pretend you never saw it.
Junior pulled out his pocketknife and started to cut the line. The fish-thing writhed under his foot, spinning free and snapping at his leg.
"Goddamn it," Junior yelled, hopping back. The thing's eyes were glowing, green and bright as the neon on the pool hall’s pinball machines. Junior whipped the pole, carrying the thing into the air and then back onto the earth. He whipped again and sent the thing's head cracking against a rock with the sound a dropped watermelon makes.
He lashed again and again, sweating and panicky, until the thing was a green-red hunk of shredded meat. Then he put his boot on the raw corpse and jerked the pole with all his strength, and the line finally broke.
"Son of a bitch,” he gasped, catching his breath. He kicked the thing into the water and watched as it turned once, slowly, then spiraled toward the creek bottom like a soggy log. He looked down at the twin rips in his denim cuffs.
He looked back at the thing and wished he hadn't. The tenderized fillet of dead meat had flipped its mutilated finger-fins and twitched its broken clubby tail and headed upstream.
Junior's buzz left him, jumping from his skin like a ghost from a guillotine victim.
###
Chester stepped off the porch and Boomer reluctantly followed. Even the hound dog sensed something was wrong. Boomer lowered his head and growled at the underbrush that was thick along the fence line. Boomer never riled himself enough to waste a good growl on shadows.
Something about the trees ain't right, Chester thought. I know I been in the white lightning just a mite early today, but that only makes a body see double or else see things that ain't there. And this IS there, whatever it is.
Chester looked at the forest that bordered his weedy cornfield. The trees swelled with buds and new leaves. The dandelions were popping their yellow heads out of the pasture. Usually at this time of year, Chester could practically feel the trees stretching up to the sky, fighting for sunshine and begging for leaves.
But these trees above the house looked kind of sick. Not quite withered, but droopy, like they were sad about something.
Trees ought to b
e happy in spring. Their sap-blood was frozen up all winter, when all they could do was shiver in the north wind while their bones snapped off. But now the thaw had come and you'd think the wooden-hearted things would be jumping for joy.
And that green glow was back, only it was real faint, so that only a buzzard-eyed mountain man like himself would ever notice. The few airplanes that flew over wouldn't have seen anything out of the ordinary.
He heard a cracking sound, then a rumble of falling timber. Trees only fell like that when struck by lightning or else coated by an ice storm. They didn't snap like that in March, when the roots were busy soaking up the melted snows from the soil.
"Well, I don't expect it's that acid rain that DeWalt's always going on about," Chester said to Boomer after climbing back up on the porch and settling into his rocker. "I mean, even if the trees is—now what's that twenty-dollar Yankee word that DeWalt used?"
Boomer looked up expectantly.
"Oh, yeah. ‘Distressed.’ So even if the trees is ‘distressed,’ as they say, they ought not be falling over for no earthly reason.”
Another tree dropped near the ridge line, a few hundred yards up the slope, the brittle sound echoing off the damp mountains. Chester saw the top of a white pine swaying where it had been hit by the falling tree. Something funny was going on. And he had half a mind to go out and investigate. But later was as good a time as now, maybe even better. That was the kind of philosophy that Chester credited with helping a body live to a ripe old age.
"I might have to give DeWalt a call," Chester said, twisting the lid off his moonshine jar. "See if he's got any book-learning on dropping-down-dead trees."
Boomer slowly wagged his tail. Chester looked out at the strange woods. He had a feeling that the trees were waiting, holding their breath in that moment of stillness that always comes before a storm.
"Yep. DeWalt will know what to do."
Boomer curled up at his master's feet to wait.
###
Nice little piece of tail there.
The Harvest Page 6