Unraveled

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  “I know a way. We’re gonna have to cross that big ol’ foot log over Center Springs Branch, though. C’mon!”

  “Watch for snakes.”

  She slowed down some. Folks in Center Springs were killing snakes left and right since the lake started filling up. We’d seen more rattlers and water moccasins than usual when they started clearing the creek bottoms, but the rising water ran ’em out in numbers the old folks were talking about up at the store.

  One week before, someone ran over a big old timber rattler close to the house. Uncle Cody called us down to see it. He cut its head off, then gave the tail a shake so we’d know what a rattler sounded like. It had thirteen rattles and a button, and I hoped I’d never run across one without having a hoe close by.

  Pepper jogged through the trees and I had to hurry to keep up. Minutes later we came out in an open pasture. Hot as it was, we still loped through the deep grass until we came to the woods bordering the branch.

  The clear spring water of Center Springs Branch ran across both sand and gravel bars. Grandpa said the Indians used to come out of the Oklahoma Territory and camp there before he was born. The sites were somewhere nearby and the Indians traded with the white settlers who started our community. We were always finding arrowheads and old rusty pieces of metal, and once I found a spear point that saved my life.

  Uncle Cody and Grandpa liked to hunt quail and squirrels along the branch, too. I’d been down there often enough to know the land, and where the big old red oak tree Pepper was headed for had fallen across the branch. The last time we hunted down there, Uncle Cody and I used the foot log to cross to the other side.

  That was the day we sat on that log and he told me some things about my mama that I’d never heard. She and Daddy died in a car wreck right before I came to live with Grandpa and Miss Becky, and there was a lot I didn’t know.

  ***

  Uncle Cody pointed toward the deep branch. “See that foot log there?”

  The steep bank fell off to the trickle of water far below.

  “It’s a long way down.”

  “Yep. That tree’s been there before you was even thought of. I crossed it with your mama and daddy the year before you were born, on the way to catch some crappie out of the creek. I’ve always been a little skittish over footlogs, especially them that are so far above the water, but your daddy walked across like it was a sidewalk. I don’t believe I ever saw him afraid of anything.

  “That’s when your mama surprised me. She was in a dress, but she took off her shoes and went barefoot across right behind him. I was shocked to see her do that and I asked her, ‘When did you learn that?’ She whispered something to your daddy and they laughed, arms around each other on the far side. She said ‘You’d be surprised at what I can do.’”

  Uncle Cody shook his head and grinned. “Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that the young girls I knew would someday grow up to be mothers, and she looked completely different to me all of a sudden.”

  ***

  At that moment, thinking about what Uncle Cody had told me, I had something happen that I’d never experienced. I saw Mama standing there in a blue print dress, clear as day and as solid as the woods around us. She was twisting her wedding ring like she did when she was thinking or worried. She shook her head and watched over her shoulder toward the dam. Then she faded away and there was nothing left but the woods.

  Every hair on my body stood up and I knew what Miss Becky called the Poisoned Gift was working again, but it had never actually brought ghosts in front of me. Uncle Cody saw one once, and I wished he was there beside me right then. My heart skipped a beat and I could feel my jaw moving with me trying to talk but nothing coming out but the sounds I make when I have an asthma attack.

  “What are you doing?”

  Pepper’s voice jolted me back from wherever I’d been and I realized for only the second time in my that life I’d experienced the Gift while I was awake.

  It scared the pee-waddlin’ out of me.

  I finally snapped back to Pepper. “I just saw Mama.”

  She knew I saw things in my dreams that came true, but they were always mixed up and we couldn’t figure out what was going to happen, until after the event. That near-’bout drove us crazy.

  Pepper’s eyes widened and she looked around as if Mama might be hiding behind a buckeye bush or something. “What was she doing?”

  “Nothing. Standing there and worrying at her wedding ring.”

  “Far out! Did she say anything?”

  “No.” I imagine adults would spend some time talking about the vision, or what might be coming, but we shared so much over the years that we didn’t need to say hardly a thing. “She’s gone now.”

  Pepper shrugged and led the way like she always does. “Then what are we standing here for?”

  The log was solid, but scary. We were log-walkers from way back, but we still eased across like it was a thousand miles to the bottom. Even if we’d fallen, the ten-foot drop into soft mud and water wouldn’t have been bad, but it’d be a mess and we might have broke an arm like Kevin McDaniel did last year. What was worse, I heard about a cousin who fell off one and broke his neck.

  Pepper crossed with her arms out like a tightrope walker. I didn’t want to look like that, so I tucked my own arms close and kept my eyes on the far side instead of the log. The rotting bark crunched underfoot, but the bridge held steady. My tennis shoe caught on a stob and I caught my balance just in time to skip and dance the last couple of feet with a lump of fear as big as a horse apple in my throat.

  Back on solid ground we followed a game trail winding around trees and tangles of berry vines. A squirrel scolded us all the way, running from limb to limb and chattering like we’d stole his nuts. I wished I’d brought my BB gun to sting him and shut him up.

  Pepper was looking around for a rock to throw at him when she stepped in a thick stand of tall grass. The world exploded around her as a big covey of quail whirred into the air, scaring her so bad she jumped and screamed. The birds scattered and sailed through the trees.

  “Shit!”

  I laughed and pointed a finger “Pow! Pow!”

  “It ain’t funny. I think I peed myself a little.”

  That made me laugh even more.

  “I wish you’d stepped in ’em, then I could laugh at you.”

  “They’re only tee-tiny birds. Come on.”

  We finally broke out of the woods at the base of the dam. I stopped at a barbed-wire fence and peeked through the cedars growing thick and tall. We could see the broken rail high above at the top of the dam, and the long gouge in the dirt where they’d dragged the car back to the top.

  “They’re gone.” Pepper put her foot on the second strand of barbed-wire where it was stapled to a bodark post and crawled over the fence. “Shit! Look at this.” She pointed at a thick pool of blood.

  We’re no strangers to blood. We kill and eat our own cows and pigs, and hunt and fish, but I’d never seen so much in one big, thick puddle. It had already started to dry on the dirt and what little grass there was, and it looked like strawberry jelly to me.

  It was a person’s blood and it made me queasy.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off it, but Pepper stepped around the damp patch and kicked through the young Johnson grass. “Here’s her makeup.” She pointed up the slope. “There’s a pair of sunglasses up there.”

  It looked like someone had dumped a load of trash down the slope. Tissues, pens, papers, maps, and a dozen other things were mixed with dirt clods, torn-up grass, and scattered chrome trim. I imagined the woman screaming while the spinning car tore itself apart on the long way down.

  I noticed a man’s shoe nearby. My head spun. “They lost their shoes. Why would they lose their shoes?”

  Pepper was unfazed by it all. “There’s stuff everywhere.”

 
“Don’t touch it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It ain’t ours. It belongs to that poor lady and Frank Clay.” I didn’t know her, but I’d seen him a time or two up at the store after I came to live with Miss Becky and Grandpa Ned. He was a nice guy, the kind who always winked and grinned at a kid, whether he knew them or not. He had three kids of his own, but they were all younger than me.

  Pepper was holding a lipstick that she dropped back on the ground. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  A car slowed as it passed high overhead. I was sure the driver was looking at the rail, but he couldn’t see us from his side.

  We were trespassing where we shouldn’t have been and I felt bad for the folks who’d died there. It was suddenly personal. It reminded me of Mama and Daddy’s wreck, even though I hadn’t seen it and all of a sudden I felt like crying. “We need to go.”

  My eyes stung and I turned so Pepper couldn’t see. She bit her lip and I could tell she was watching me, but she wouldn’t let it go. “Do you think they suffered?”

  “Probably not.” I hoped my parents hadn’t suffered, either.

  Quiet for once, Pepper took one more glance around us.

  The lady’s shiny high-heeled shoe looked so out of place in the dirt that I felt swimmy-headed. I dropped to my knees thinking that it might help. “Should we get their shoes for them?”

  “No. What we do with them? They don’t have any use for shoes anymore.”

  “They’re good shoes.”

  “There’s only one of each.” She drew a deep breath and headed for the fence.

  I started to leave and noticed a tissue that looked like a big white Hershey Kiss. It was sitting up, with a rubber band around the top. Wanting to get my mind off the shoes, I picked it up. There was something hard inside and I started to tear it open when we heard a branch break on the other side of the spillway. Something grunted.

  You couldn’t tell if it was someone or something, but it was enough to spook us. I stuck the Kleenex in my pocket and we skinned on out of there so we wouldn’t get caught.

  Chapter Six

  The scruffy man once heard a story about something called a wraith. He looked it up in a dictionary. “A ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen shortly before or after their death” sounded exactly like him. He liked the dark sound of the word so much he memorized the definition, and The Wraith came alive. It was time for a reckoning.

  ***

  Harriet Clay, now a widow, sent word to Ned that she needed to see him at her house, if that was possible. It was the least he could do for her, and in his opinion, it was his job to give her the bad news in person.

  Ned drove to the Clay house half an hour after the ambulances took Frank and Maggie away. Set half a mile off Highway 79 toward Hopewell, the Queen-Anne style farmhouse was barely inside the Chisum City limits and surrounded by tall burr oak trees. Folks up on the river tended not to move into new houses if they could stay where they were raised, but in order to run for mayor, Frank Clay had to live in town.

  Shade was thick and solid around the house built back in the late 1800s. Ned parked under a tree with a hitch ring grown into the trunk. Sheriff Cody Parker pulled up and killed his engine. They met at the house.

  Cody rubbed his chin. “They live in town, so I guess I’ll tell her.”

  “Nope.” Ned absently touched his small constable’s bade with one finger. “They’re really Center Springs folks. I’ll do the telling.”

  Cody’s response was cut off when Wes Clay stepped outside. Tough and strapped with corded muscle, Wes had packed a lot of life into fifty years, spending more than a few of them in prison down in Huntsville. Most people said Wes would fight a buzzsaw.

  He scratched his flat belly through a dingy white tee shirt. “Well?”

  The two lawmen walked closer to the porch. Ned stopped and looked up from under his brim. “Harriet sent for us.”

  “You gonna tell her my baby brother’s dead?”

  Cody thumbed his hat back. “We need to talk to Harriet.”

  “You can talk to me. I’ll tell her.”

  Ned felt his face flush. “Is she in there?”

  “She is.”

  Cody jerked his head toward the house. “The kids close by?”

  “Naw. I took ’em over to Andy’s house. They don’t need to be here for a while.”

  Ned knew Andy and most of the huge Clay family. “You gonna invite us in?”

  Wes planted his feet as if they were about to lunge.

  The tense situation evaporated in an instant when Harriet’s weak voice came through the screen door. “Howdy, Ned, Cody. Wes, it’s all right.”

  Her brother-in-law refused to move, but Ned and Cody climbed the steps and parted around him. Harriet held the door and gave a vague wave to come in. Every window in the house was open to catch any available breeze on that still, humid morning. The air was thick and fragrant with the odor of bacon.

  “Y’all sit.” Harriet’s dark hair was messed, as if she’d been running her fingers through it. Her eyes were red from crying.

  Neither lawman sat. Instead, they backed up to the couch, holding their hats.

  Harriet dropped heavily into a blue chair. “He’s dead for sure, ain’t he?”

  Ned nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  Instead of dissolving into tears, she ducked her head as if thinking. Her Baptist raising prompted the next question. “Had he been drinking?”

  Ned took the conversation. “We don’t know.”

  “Was he driving?”

  “We don’t know for sure.”

  “I heard someone else was driving.” It was a statement. “That his car’s across the river in Juarez.”

  “We don’t know that for a fact, yet. Frank was in the car with Maggie Mayfield. She was still behind the wheel, so I believe she was driving, though I don’t know how she stayed in.” Ned hesitated after realizing he was talking too much. “They went off the bend in the Lake Lamar Dam. There was some skid marks. She might have been going too fast for the curve, or maybe she tried to miss a deer or something on the dam.”

  “She is…was, Frank’s secretary.” Harriet dried her eyes with a damp handkerchief. “He hired her here-while back. She may have been bringing him home. He’s worked late a lot lately, ’cause of the job. Maybe his car wouldn’t start or something.”

  The tightness in Ned’s stomach released now that he had an answer to his questions. “Well, that explains a lot.”

  She worried at a button on her blue print dress. “He’s been getting ready for the election in the fall. It takes a lot of time to lay groundwork. He’s been doing so much on his own, and even though he has what he calls his staff, he needed someone to handle the little day to day things. Maggie was supposed to take some of the pressure off and now she’s taken him with her.” She broke down in sobs.

  “I bet you’re right.” Cody fiddled with the brim of his hat. “They worked late last night and she was bringing him home.”

  Ned didn’t believe that, because evidence pointed toward the west, away from where they would have been going. He also hated giving the information piecemeal, but he didn’t seem to be able to stay in charge of the conversation. He wiped a film of sweat from his bald head.

  They waited in awkward silence until she composed herself. “Did he suffer much?”

  “I don’t know for sure.” Ned tapped his hat against his leg, a sure sign that he was ready to go. “We’ll never know.”

  “My poor babies don’t have a daddy anymore.”

  Wes used a forefinger and pulled the screen door open. “That’s enough now.”

  Ned agreed with him. “I reckon you’re right.”

  Cody surveyed the bright, airy room that was neat as a pin. A cluster of pictures on the wall showed Frank with a Te
xas senator, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, and the former Chisum mayor. “Harriet, I’m sorry.”

  The lawmen exchanged looks and Ned wiped his head again, ready to get outside where at least a little air was moving. “All right, then. That’s all we know. You holler if we can do anything for you.”

  She buried her face in the handkerchief again. A black woman Ned didn’t recognize came in from the kitchen and put her arms around the grieving widow. Neither looked up as Wes held the screen open.

  The lawmen filed through and were in the yard when Wes’ soft voice stopped them. “She’s a Mayfield.”

  Ned stopped and sighed. “Yes.”

  “No Mayfield had oughta work for a Clay. Frank shoulda known better, but he’d hired one already.” He jerked his thumb toward the house. “Did you check to see if there were tire marks other’n hers? Whoever run ’em off the road got two birds with one stone, ’cause he was in the car with that high-yeller woman that was married. I heard them Mayfields didn’t like it that she’d been seen across the river in Frogtown since her old man run off. They’ll pay for that.”

  “No they won’t.” Cody’s face reddened. “We don’t know it was intentional. It was an accident until we find out something different. Stay out of it.”

  “I hope y’all are going over to that nigger slut’s house to see what she was up to. I think there’s more to it than you’re lettin’ on.”

  Ned leveled his gaze at Wes who was working himself up. “We’ll do what we do. That’s none of your business.”

  “It is our business. He’s kinfolk. Them Mayfields are some sneakin’, fightin’ sonsabitches and they took Frank with ’em when they got rid of that slut. I’m gonna find out for sure what happened. When I do, I’ll take care of it.”

  Cody clamped his jaw. “He’s already told you to keep your nose clean. It’s law business.”

  Wes lit a cigarette, flicked the match at Cody, spat onto the boards between his feet. “It’s family business, now. It just came clear to me. A Mayfield killed a Clay. There’ll be blood over it.”