by S. A. Austin
“Wake up, you dumb stupid idiot. You’re having a damn dream. That kid of your’n ain’t gone nowhere. But if she has, maybe that loverboy of yours done come and got her. Huh? Whaddya say about that? Speak up, woman. You didn’t have a problem speaking your mind a minute ago.”
He threw aside the covers, swung his legs off the bed.
She put her hand over her open mouth, and backed up. Once she was in the hallway she ran to the staircase, barely feeling the old floorboards under her feet. She reached the last step by the time Virgil put a foot on the first one.
She hobbled through the kitchen, and out the back door. Her toes swept up fallen Spanish moss. She lost precious time removing the coarse strands. Inside the barn she paused again to catch her second wind. Ruefully wished she had gone to the secret place in the attic.
Marie lifted the side of her nightgown to mount the hayloft ladder. Rivulets of blood were trailing down her ankle to the dirt floor. A wave of nausea engulfed her. Virgil had refused to take her to the hospital. He’d seen animals miscarry before, he told her, and they survived.
She heard him slap the screen door open and stomp out into the yard. She gathered her waning strength, climbed the ladder. Balancing perilously close to the edge of the loft, she attempted to haul the ladder up.
Amused, he stopped to watch her. Since he’d already seen her hiding place there wasn’t any point in struggling with the damn thing. “Dumb stupid idiot.”
He jumped up and grasped the bottom rung, triggering a fight-or-flight response from her. She hooked her arm around the end post of a short two-tier railing, and hung on to the ladder with both hands. For a split second the tension on the ladder was unequal in their dangerous game of tug-of-war. She let go, causing him to fall backward.
Embarrassed, he exploded in a tirade of expletives.
She scurried away from the edge, at long last understanding her predicament. Her mama—a descendant of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans—had died in unexplained circumstances along with her husband, little Marie’s stepfather, whose smarmy gaze often lingered too long on a young girl’s body.
Marie had no friends. Virgil said her place was in the kitchen. He never knew she married him because she lived in her car in back of the feed and seed store where he’d met her, or that the only reason the married proprietor had given her the job in the first place was because she’d agreed to frequently perform the act of fellatio while he sang hallelujah.
Nobody in the whole wide world would ever ask what had become of Marie Alma Wentzel—who tried to make a life for herself on a farm outside of New Orleans—except for, maybe, her weird daughter and a preteen son she hardly knew anymore.
I held the power of life and death in my hands, but Mama disapproved of Madame Laveau’s dark majick so much she forbade me to ever practice what I knew. Now, in a time of great need, I can’t recall a single spell to save my soul.
Marie viewed the loft in a glance.
Where’s my grimoire? And my special box?
Virgil tossed the ladder aside. He spread his feet wide, put his fists on his hips, and glared up at her, an action more ridiculous than threatening. She would’ve laughed had the look in his eyes not been so deadly serious.
Marie cowered in the clearing surrounded by hay bales. Knees drawn up to her chest, she folded her arms over them, buried her face. Quietly sobbed. She had nothing. No television to watch. No newspapers to read. No neighbors to chat with. She had no idea what went on outside the perimeter of Virgil’s fifty-acre farm.
She raised her head.
What was that?
Marie crawled to the start of the loft. Lying flat on her stomach, she eased her body under the railing that was attached to the interior wall on the opposite end, the end above Virgil. Careful not to drop any hay, she craned her neck to sneak a look. He had stepped on a rusty sheet of corrugated metal to pick up the top block of a half dozen forty-eight pound concrete blocks. He hurled it into a red, steel wheelbarrow where it landed with the sound of gunshot.
She yelped. Moved fast to her hiding place. Lay on her side, and curved her body into a fetal position. Intense abdominal pain made breathing difficult. Shaking with chills, she piled hay over her bloodstained pale blue nightgown.
A new sound alerted her.
Marie sensed nothing mattered anymore.
She limped to the railing.
He leaned the ladder against the wall beside the open doorway. “You’re pretty good at getting up there. Let’s see if you can get down.” He rolled the wheelbarrow outside, shut the doors fast, cutting off her screams. Stabbed a shovel through the metal handles to lock her in.
* * *
Virgil returned to the barn several days later. Struck a match and lit the wick of the oil lantern on his work bench by the pegboard wall. Mounted the ladder.
He knelt beside her, covered his nose with a soiled handkerchief. She was as stiff and bloated as any dead armadillo he’d seen on the side of the road. Flies and beetles had arrived to feed on maggots and the decaying flesh.
The plan was to send her to Hell along with her boyfriend, who was waiting for her in the pond. He’d already loaded the concrete block in his truck when a better plan came to him.
He managed to keep her balanced on his shoulder until he descended the ladder. Wasn’t until he laid her down on the floor that it occurred to him he should’ve just shoved her off the loft. Wouldn’t have matter none if she’d broken a bone or two. He laughed a little at his lack of common sense.
Remembering the bugs, he swiped a hand down each arm.
“Ah well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
He slid a pint of whiskey out of his hip pocket. Stayed long past midnight.
At daybreak, Virgil took Bérénice Jacquette to live with his older brother, Jessup Wentzel and the missus, at their cabin in the swampland near Chalmette in Louisiana.
CHAPTER 4
EIGHT YEARS LATER
Bernard turned seventeen the month he was released from the Orleans Parish jail after having been sentenced for criminal mischief in the fourth degree. With time served he’d done an additional three months, and fined $500. He apologized. Told the judge he’d discovered God, and his feet were on the path of righteousness.
Bérénice turned thirteen the month Jessup sent her back to Virgil declaring he and the missus had literally beaten the Devil out of her.
Long bouts of heavy drinking had taken its toll on Virgil and his farm. Wild Joe Pye weed had spread across the land, and stood at least five feet tall. Observing his property through an upstairs window it dawned on him that he should’ve stayed at his house in the city, and kept his job at the water company. But when old age pushed his parents to the grave, and the family lawyer told him he’d inherited the mortgage-free farm Jessup didn’t want, he was eager to move.
Now all he wanted to do was to sell the place and get out from under it.
On a cool December morn, one day after Bérénice was back together again with her brother, Virgil summoned them outside the house. Told them their mama was a no-good selfish whore who had an affair with a salesman. He showed them her final resting place.
Virgil awoke late at night to the hum of machinery. He went to the back yard. Followed the noise across the dry, rotted field where eggplants no longer provided an income.
When he reached the pond a sudden flash of light blurred his vision.
“What in the hell’s going on?” He shielded his eyes from the brightness, bobbed his head behind his open hand determined to know who was sitting in the driver’s seat. “What’re you doing? Haul your damn ass down from there.”
The monotone sound of chanting got to him just before he was struck deaf and blind. A single gunshot to his forehead, he fell backward into the dirty water, his arms spread-out like Jeebus Christ on the cross.
The chug and churn of a small backhoe lumbering back and forth sent unknown critters skittering into the darkness. Scoop after scoop of mud
was lifted and dumped until nothing remained of Virgil Wentzel or the shallow edge of a scummy pond.
CHAPTER 5
PRESENT DAY
Jacob sat on the stoop at the front of the farmhouse. He flicked a cigarette butt at the side of a palm tree full of dead fronds. Noticed that the fly on his jeans didn’t gape open like an evil yellow teeth grin, as his mama used to say.
“If I see that worm of yours peeping out again, little man, I’m gonna nail it to a tree stump and then whack it off with an axe.”
The whole time she yelled at him she also wagged a finger close to his face making him cross-eyed. He seriously considered how nice it’d be to bite off that finger. Many times he bit his lower lip until he tasted blood to ward off the urge.
Marie never knew she didn’t accomplish what she’d set out to do the day she sent him to school wearing a dress. Rounding the bend in the road and out of her line of vision, he darted into the woods. Removed the dress, and balled it up. Checked to see if the coast was clear. Ran across the field in his underwear, propelled by the anger always just beneath the surface, and hid in the unused outhouse. Watched the farmhouse through the crescent moon carved into the door for a chance to sneak up to the attic.
He buried the dress in the trunk. Closed himself up in the secret place inside the closet.
Later on, he slipped into the barn and got started on his chores. He was right where he was supposed to be when his papa came in from the field.
He hated his mama for what she had done to him. But he hated his papa more for allowing her to do it. There’d been a time or two, to be fair, when she was actually good to him. Memories of the small acts of kindness still brought tears to his eyes.
Well, his jeans fit now. All seven pairs he’d stolen, one at a time, from a major department store at one of the malls in New Orleans, in honor of making it to his thirty-first birthday.
Jacob viewed the wraparound porch in a glance.
The decades old three-story house with flaking white paint on weathered wood stood on the right side of a dirt road three miles in off the state highway. A creepy, densely wooded area on the other side. Faded red, pole barn with a dirt floor. Seven-foot-tall natural wood outhouse, fifty feet from the farmhouse. An old and secluded fifteen-foot stone water well with a wooden roof sheltering the well rope and pulley. A neglected field stretching farther than the eye can see. A foul pond of immeasurable depth that had known better days. The property his grandparents had modernized many years ago with electricity and running water was in a serious state of disrepair.
Left on their own, he and Bérénice had nowhere else to go. With him working full-time at the nearby Homer’s grocery store and her babysitting part-time, they scarcely brought in enough money to afford anything other than utility bills and food.
Bérénice lapsed into a coma after being hospitalized for head trauma sustained in a car wreck, joyriding with her intoxicated boyfriend. Jacob had to do a long stretch in the Army just to get three hots and a cot. Harboring deep-seated hatred of her, there was no good reason to remain by her side. Why should he? If it hadn’t been for Bérénice and the salesman, his mama wouldn’t have been murdered. And Papa wouldn’t have become meaner and angrier.
An image of the tree loomed up in his mind pushing aside all other recollections. Way beyond the field and the pond, the thick twisting branches of the mature oak shaded a portion of the covered bridge over the narrow road leading to his school.
A cotton clothesline had been tied to one wrist, stretched tight around the bole, then double knotted on his other wrist. Minutes later, a car passed by with two girls about his age sitting in the back seat. The gray dress blended well with the tree trunk, but he stayed rigid and unblinking, pretending he was a palace guard.
He’d done his best to become invisible, even while carpenter ants crawled up his arms. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to do the same with his ears and nose to keep the bugs from going inside his head and laying eggs. He squeezed so hard he wet his underpants.
“Little Bernieee, tied to a tree. A horde of ants, he wets his pants,” Jacob softly chanted their merciless taunt.
Bernice. That’s what they called him. Those older boys who showed up to hunt for crawfish in the creek below the bridge. They didn’t care he was tethered to the tree, told him he probably deserved it. The worst of the lot was Eli, the popular kid, the rich one who’d moved there from Shreveport. The one who’d made up the catcall the others were too eager to follow.
Jacob walked fast across the back yard to shake off embarrassing memories of the rumors about him that had circulated around his school where elementary and middle grade students were together under one roof.
He stood in the shade of the old elm near the barn. Looked up at the sprawling, coated branches. “The moss gatherer.” He wished the tree had been this big when he was nine years old.
Bypassing the old dried-up mossy well he almost didn’t see a Coon cat, or maybe a small black dog, dart across his path. He trudged through the field under a hot sun, the tips of his sneakers kicking aside dirt clods. He loved wide open spaces. Mostly he loved having lots of elbowroom more than ever since boot camp and his unfortunate days of incarceration.
Over the years, the field suffered more and more neglect. The eggplants had either been choked to death by weeds or devoured by a horde of marauding insects. Thinking of bugs, he kept a wary eye out for fire ants, God’s ultimate revenge upon mankind.
He fanned his face with a straw hat swatting flies and mosquitoes at the same time. Sunshine had turned his forearms a medium shade of brown. A farmer’s tan. He pushed a shirtsleeve up with his thumb, uncovering a patch of pale skin.
Would the guys at his new job poke fun at him as he changed clothes in the locker room?
Would they stop laughing if he showed them his scarred back?
No one around to see him, he peeled off the damp and sticky shirt. Tied it to his waist. Perspiration glistened on the muscular pecs and abs he believed made all the young girls swoon.
When he reached the pond he realized the drought they’d been experiencing since the flooding rains of early spring had caused the waterline to recede, exposing many frogs and turtles. And bones. Jacob squatted. Picked up a human skull and examined it.
The salesman?
“Did the sonofabitch actually live long enough to crawl onto the shore?”
One after another, he pitched the skull and bones to the center of the pond. Set in motion, the stagnant water stank worse than the septic tank did that day when two men came to empty it.
The soil around the water’s edge had split then curled into hundreds of brownish clay saucers. Short natural rock formations dotted the shoreline. He sat on the rock closest to his papa’s rowboat, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles.
“Eli. The rich Louisiana brat, two years older than me. Jeebus Christ, I hated that jerk.” He smoked another cigarette as the memory unfolded.
On a muggy spring day, hiding by a tree in the woods near the bridge, he watched Eli and his girlfriend, Vanessa, defy a ‘No Trespassing’ sign. They spread a blanket on the ground. Clothing was quickly strewn about. Eli stuck up his middle finger at the sign, hanging sideways on a weathered wood post on the property line of Wentzel Farm, eliciting a giggle from her. Both were juniors at his high school. Eli was a jerkwad drummer in the school’s marching band. Vanessa, a stupid majorette, had nothing else going for her except big bouncy tits.
Bernie undressed. Neatly piled his clothes and shoes under a bush next to the tree.
Lying on their sides, bare legs and bellies touching, Eli sucked the side of her neck making a little passion mark. Vanessa giggled. Had she opened her eyes she’d have seen the fifteen-year-old boy with black hair and fierce dark eyes, clutching a sturdy branch in his hands, sneaking up on them.
He swung the limb in a wide arc. Whacked Eli upside the head. “Strike one,” he shouted. The girl stared at him in shocked disbelief. “Strike two? Naaah.
” He dropped the limb. Dragged Eli aside. Naked as a bluejay, he got in position to lie down on top of her.
Vanessa rolled out of the way just in time, and stood up. “What’re you doing, you, you perverted little creep?” He tilted his head, one side to the other. So akin to his mama she was. She wagged her finger at him. “I’m calling the cops the minute I get home.” She gathered her things in her arms, then ran away.
Bernie caught up to her at the pond. Made a fist and punched her. Vanessa fell on her side striking her head against a large rock. He bit off her finger, spit it out on the ground. Her arm landed half in and half out of the water, the red swirling around the green. He straddled her, closed his eyes so he couldn’t see her face, and finished what he’d started.
“All that, and she wasn’t even a good lay.” He threw a pebble at the deepest part of the pond. “I think that’s where I left them.” The water rippled outward. “Are they crawling around down there like big ole mudbugs?”
The smirk vanished when he heard an unusual noise in the woods. He jumped up, put on his shirt. Absently searched the ground for something to use for a weapon.
“Ki moun ki Ia? Who is there?”
CHAPTER 6
A young woman rose up over a dead tree uprooted during a severe thunderstorm years ago. Jacob believed it was the night his papa had gone to see the man in the barn.
“It’s just me,” she said, softly.
Kelly Murphy. I’ll be damned.
She was the only kid who’d never made fun of him. Overweight and buck-toothed, she was a socially unacceptable misfit. He was just a brooding loner. The kids at their school shunned her, too, but she never seemed to mind. There’d been a strangeness about her that appealed to him, creating an unspoken bond between them.