November Mourns Page 13

  It must’ve been a big deal for kids years ago to walk from one side to the other on the rails. They must’ve known the schedule perfectly and timed the trains coming, then sat on the side posts as the cars crossed. Train speed couldn’t have been more than twenty miles an hour, with the mining cars stacked up behind. But the bridge, even in its prime, would’ve shaken and rattled like the apocalypse. The Pharisee would’ve felt like it was about to come down at any second.

  You had to be aware of the symbols that put you through your paces, so that later on, you didn’t sound like an idiot. Crossing a rickety bridge and heading into the backwoods. Taking nothing along, not even a light.

  When the men passed this story on, they’d snicker into their beer and shake their heads. Any damn fool knows not to travel up on the ridge without at least a rifle, a canteen, and a bag of trail mix. If you twisted your knee and got stuck outside all night, you could be as good as dead.

  Shad kept moving over the trestle, keeping to the rail where he could progress foot over foot like walking a balance beam. He didn’t trust those planks at all, staring through the holes and seeing the roiling waters far below.

  When he finally made it to the other side he stopped there, a little surprised that he hadn’t been ambushed. It seemed like the place for it.

  He scanned the forests heavy with pockets of snarled catclaw brambles and briars. The musty scent rose from the matted leaves everywhere. It got you contemplating on who had died in there and who might still be in hiding. Who might be stuck and waiting for your help.

  He walked over to the nearest sticker bush and ran his finger over a thorn. With the right equipment, could they tell one scratch from another? If some forensic specialist had examined Megan instead of Doc Bollar, could they have accurately pinpointed where it had happened? Which barb had cut her cheek?

  He hiked for over an hour into the backwoods of Jonah Ridge. A creek wound away in front of him, straggling through the forest on a downslope and careening over rocks worn to a sleek polish. Shad kneeled, washed his face, and wet down his hair in the icy stream. About twenty yards ahead he saw the water break wide over something too white to be a rock. He walked to it, reached into the current, and came up with a dimpled plastic container of moon.

  The only people he knew who liked to keep their shine cold were Red and Lottie Sublett. Shad had to be close to their place.

  He took a tap of the whiskey and spit it out. It wasn’t Luppy Joe’s or any of the usual makers. Someone was using an old car radiator as a still, and the lingering fluid tainted the liquor. Red must be making his own.

  Shad kept moving along the trail, watching for his sister. Over the next incline, as he parted the drifting branches still wet with dew, he spotted a shack that leaned so far to the left you could reach out the window on that side and touch the ground. Beyond it, a few twisted apple trees and a pumpkin patch took up about a half acre of partially cleared field.

  There was a small garden behind the shanty with a couple rows of lettuce and thin, high-growing corn that was mostly dying. To one side sat a rabbit hutch with a skinning knife jabbed into the top of the wooden box.

  Lottie Sublett sat on a carpet of pine needles, in the process of diapering four infants. These were the premature quadruplets that had shown up while Shad was in the can. The babies kicked out with stunted legs and held up their deformed fists, fingers missing from nearly every hand. The infants tried to suck their thumbs but only two of them had any.

  Five other children clambered and cowered around her, most of them barefoot and dressed only in ragged overalls. The oldest was a boy no more than thirteen.

  The November breeze had grown colder but none of Red Sublett’s brood looked to be uncomfortable. What did it do to your nervous system, that kind of life? When your parents were brother and sister? Did nature bury your nerve endings so deep in your flesh that you couldn’t feel somebody else’s sins?

  Lottie glanced up and gaped toothlessly at him. She flinched so harshly that the ill child she’d been diapering flipped over like a griddle cake.

  The years had forced their raw corruption on her, the trials of such extreme motherhood written in her face. What did you call it when a woman had so many children in so few years? Her body wracked by such burden, day in and out, month after month. She had stretch marks on her neck, along her jawline, and on just about every bald inch of her he could see. What man makes his own sister live this way?

  Lottie got to her feet, peered at him, finally tilted her head in recognition. “You,” she said. “I know you a bit, don’t I? From a few years back.”

  “That’s right. My name is Shad Jenkins.”

  The infant who’d been flopped like a flapjack sprang over again on his belly. It started creeping and mewling like an animal that had never been given a name. It looked at Shad and started toward him, like it wanted to take a bite out of him.

  “Your pa’s the carpenter,” Lottie said.

  “Yes.”

  “Jenkins. Ah yuh, so you are. What you doing this way? You come to visit on Red? He ain’t here right now, and I don’t know when he’ll be back. Had a red deer out behind the house and Red took a shot but missed the heart. He’s out there someplace tracking it so we can have somethin’ ’sides hare stew. Or are you meanin’ to join them church folk over yonder, eh?”

  “I thought I might stop in and talk with them some,” Shad admitted.

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “No?”

  “They got strange ways.” She said it with a hint of concern, as if it mattered but not a hell of a lot.

  It took Shad back a step. How odd could these people be that a woman with nine inbred kids would call them strange?

  “I don’t know much about them,” Shad said.

  “They’re snake handlers. They thrill on the venom. Moon ain’t strong enough, I suppose. Got a small settlement a few miles off. We don’t cotton with them much, but we trade supplies if’n we need to. They ain’t bad folks but they got a worshipful way with the snakes. It ain’t right, cavorting like that. It ain’t a blessed church.”

  “Did you ever see my sister out on this side of the gorge?”

  “Who she?”

  “Her name was Megan. She was seventeen, long blond hair.”

  “Was?”

  “She’s dead now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Comfort and condolences to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I never run into her.”

  “She might’ve come up with a boy. Possibly a man.”

  “Only girls that age I seen up this way are them Gabriel girls. Daughters of the man who runs the church. Lucas Gabriel.”

  The eldest of her children hobbled over and murmured in her ear, staring at Shad in alarm. She hugged the kid and hummed in his ear for a second, telling him, “No no no. No, Osgood, no.”

  But the boy had his mind set on something and kept arguing, his gaze shifting back and forth along the tree line.

  Shad said, “I’m alone.”

  “You ain’t lyin’ now, are you, mister?” Osgood asked.

  “No,” Shad told him.

  So he’d been right. Red had a little still somewhere, the guts of a radiator and copper piping making contaminated liquor. The kid’s mind had probably been filled with stories of how the Feds would come around and steal their civil liberties.

  You couldn’t expect the best social graces from a teenager who probably didn’t run into more than ten people a year. Osgood couldn’t meet Shad’s eyes. His face puckered and went skittering with emotion.

  Lottie finally grabbed the boy by the shoulders and shoved him toward the shack, and said, “Go on and start supper.”

  “He stayin’?”

  “Git in there.”

  “I wanna know if he’s stayin’ ’round here!”

  “Your daddy be back soon and you know he’ll be hungry.”

  “I seen he got a gun tucked in his belt!”

 
“No, he don’t. Yer eyes is bad.”

  “I see clear ’nough!”

  “Hush all this foolishness and git in there and cook supper!”

  As the kid trudged off Lottie grinned in embarrassment, showing nothing but gums. “He don’t know no better. It ain’t his fault. Me and Red really ought to make more of an effort to bring the children into town when we get our supplies. But Red’s a’scairt that the city ways might confuse and beguile the family.”

  Shad had never heard the hollow called a city before. Under different circumstances he might’ve laughed at that, but the way she said it made him nod in agreement. Her concerns were serious ones.

  He wondered how that lesson on the birds and the bees would go in this house.

  “Can you give me directions to that village?” Shad asked.

  “Ain’t rightly a village, I reckon. Just a whole mess of families gathered together within pissin’ distance. Their houses is real close together, so they’s like one big family. If you visit on them, make sure you’re careful on where you step. Those boots go beyond your heel?”

  “A little.”

  “Walk light. They might be doin’ a rattler roundup. They beat the fields and collect the vipers.” She pointed south, her arm firm and straight and without an ounce of flab. He could almost see the history of her life scrawled in her bones. “Like I says, you be cautious when you get farther on in the forest. You ain’t proper dressed for this area. There’s lots of thorny woods that way. You get lost in the dark and those thistles will surely trim your hair back for you.”

  “How far?”

  “About five miles or so, but the countryside gets pretty rugged. Don’t you have a knapsack or a heavier coat? It gets cold these nights. You didn’t bring no water along?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  The children began to mewl, almost in tune with one another, all of them prowling across the yard.

  “You already look like you a bit chilled,” Lottie said. “You want a tap of the jug?”

  “No thanks.” He was thirsty but could feel the tension building as she started to stare at him. The tip of her tongue wet those thin lips that buckled in around empty gums.

  “Red won’t be back for a while.”

  “You can just tell him I said Hi. Maybe I’ll stop back in on my way home again.”

  “I mean, we got us some time.” Her left hand came down over the center of her heavy breasts. Her right came up to fluff at her hair. It gave him a kick in the guts to realize she was trying to be demure. “I hardly get a chance to talk to nobody no more. You can come on inside. We got cards.”

  “I can’t right now, Lottie.”

  “If’n you wanna, you can come on back anytime. Come visit with us. Come see me.”

  “Sure,” Shad said, taking a step back.

  It saved his life. A clutch of rosebay and dogwood exploded about a foot from his head.

  “Goddamn!” he screamed.

  Osgood stomped off the decrepit porch step holding a double-barrel shotgun. He aimed it at Shad again. He reached for the second trigger and Shad leaped backwards into the brush.

  The shit you could get yourself into.

  The kid was too eager and reared at the last moment. The shot sheared loose the bark from a nearby oak.

  “No!” Lottie cried. “I told you no, child! No no!”

  “He’s gonna make trouble, Mama!” Osgood shouted. “I seen how he was lookin’ at you!”

  No wonder the kid was so trigger-happy. Shad saw now that Osgood’s index and middle fingers on both hands were fused.

  “No, boy, no!”

  “He’s one of them Federal men Daddy’s always talkin’ about! They got slick ways. He’s tryin’ to beguile you, Mama!”

  “He’s not, he’s not! He’s your daddy’s friend!”

  “Undercover lawman! Or a government stool pigeon!”

  The other children, the ones that could drag themselves around in circles anyway, moaned and let out agitated grunts. A couple of them were excitedly crabwalking side to side. They flailed and scrambled about in every direction, contorting and wriggling all over the place. It was like an anthill on fire. Leaves and moss flew in the air as they burrowed, caterwauling and braying. Holy Christ. Making more awful sounds, the babies slid and tumbled over one another, dipping into the earth at their mother’s feet.

  “Yellow G-Man! Don’t you never visit around here no more and make eyes at my mama again!”

  “Come back, Shad Jenkins,” called Lottie Sublett. “It’s okay now, he ain’t got no more shells. Come on back!”

  Shad slid deep into the woods and ran south.

  Chapter Twelve

  SHE STOOPED AT A STREAM SETTING SHEETS of onionskin paper adrift.

  They were so thin they absorbed the water and rode the surface tension of the creek, near invisible unless you knew what you were seeing. There was handwriting on the pages, Shad couldn’t make out from here.

  He hung back in the trees, watching. The cool burn in his muscles was making him feel as if he’d accomplished something. Sweat swam into his eyes and for an instant the girl shimmered.

  How many gorgeous young girls could you see in two days without starting to feel like a dirty old man at twenty-two?

  Or did they only become beautiful because you were so lonely? Lust could do serious damage to your vision. Guys in the slam knew all about that.

  She let loose with a chuckle as if someone had just spoken, and the laughter reached her eyes, slanted and crinkled them at the corners. So that she squinted like an eager lover about to crawl forward across the floor. Shad checked around to see if she was alone, and he didn’t spot anyone else.

  “My,” he whispered.

  This is how it happened in the folk tales and old country songs. The ones they sang around bonfires when they got their banjos out, ready to entertain the little ones. Like a fairy-tale book Tushie Kline once read aloud in a halting rhythm, enjoying it all the more because it had no chapters.

  Maybe Shad’s story was the same.

  A fella wandering along through a strange grove spots a beautiful changeling girl sunning herself in the shallows. They meet, and though she’s reluctant to give him attention at first, his charm eventually wins out. She’s more lovely than anyone he’s ever dreamed of before, so you just knew this couldn’t turn out good in the end.

  She vanishes into a hole in a stone wall too small for a human to pass through. He can’t follow so he slips her notes through the hole, professing his adoration. Her father, the king of goblins, discovers one of the letters. On his right wrist is perched the Killdove and in his left fist is a plague of flies. He locks his daughter in a tower of sapphire and promises obliteration for the fella if she should ever see him again.

  The princess weeps so hard that a river of tears flows out the tower window, across the land, and through the hole in the stone wall. The force of her sorrow shifts the rocks far enough apart that the fella can ease past. He follows the flood of tears back to the castle, climbs the thousand steps of the tower while fending off the bloodthirsty Killdove.

  He kicks open the door to her chamber and she rushes into his arms. If they’re ever going to be together, she must either renounce her supernatural ways and die like a woman or he must give up his way of life and fade away to some other realm.

  Before they can make a choice, the king of goblins prepares to release a plague of flies upon mankind. The fella grapples with the king and leaves his back unprotected as the Killdove strikes him between the shoulders and pecks out his heart.

  You didn’t get the full moral lesson of a fable unless somebody gave up everything for love and died for his troubles.

  When Tushie Kline finished the fairy-tale book, he fingered the knife scar under his chin, and said, “Shit, why can’t nobody bust my ass outta jail like that? It was breathtaking, man!”

  Shad watched the girl slip another piece of paper into the creek, humming as it drifted along the stream. I
t really did sound like she was talking to somebody else. He looked around again, saw nothing, and took a step forward.

  She gave a half turn and grinned over her shoulder as if she knew he was there but didn’t want to look at him. She pressed another page into the water and her finger urged it along downstream. The paper was so thin and delicate that it split apart before it had gone twenty feet, torn by the soft current. Shreds hung on stones and dead willow switches jutting from the mud.

  He said, “Hello.”

  Startled, she wheeled and nearly fell into the brook. She took two halting steps, stumbled over the slick rock, and went in up to her knees. It was cold water and she showed her teeth, hissing through them.

  Okay, he thought, so here it comes.

  She gave him a withering glare, and shouted, “The goddamn hell are you looking at!”

  He sighed. He was starting to realize that he didn’t possess as much natural charm as he’d always thought he did. He sure wasn’t bringing out the best in the people on either side of the Pharisee Bridge.

  Nobody in prison ever hated him at first sight the way people at home did.

  “Can’t you be civil?” he asked.

  She had an aloof but still-compassionate face, with soft lines at the corners of her mouth like afterimages from smiling too much. She was young, late teens or early twenties maybe, and it gave her an extra touch of humanity.

  Her bare shoulders were freckled and dappled with gooseflesh. The air grew heavy with the smell of rain. Disheveled blond bangs framed her heart-shaped face, and she swung her hair off her forehead with the back of her hand, pursing lavish, bee-stung lips.

  Shad’s breathing grew rapid. Had he been this horny for years and only just now noticed?

  “Well, what do you want then?” she said. “And why you creepin’ up behind me like that for?”

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m just—ah—”

  How did you explain yourself, about why you were here? Or why you were glancing left and right looking for your dead sister’s hand to give you some sign?