by Jeff Gelb
“Another go-round,” said the Man. “Please. That would be good.”
The preacher pulled a small pistol from his black jacket. His smile was gone, but in its place was not anger, just emotionless duty. “To the river,” he said.
Darla was crying. She stayed on her knees until the preacher put the pistol to her head. “To the river,” he said. “We don’t have time for this shit.”
Darla stood up beside Paul. The preacher led them to the river’s edge. He took white strips of cloth from his pocket. He tightly gagged Darla’s mouth. Then he gagged Paul.
“Silence of the lamb,” said the preacher. “And the lion.” He laughed.
Paul began to choke against the dry cloth. He could not swallow. He felt his nose could not take in enough air. He the wars stopped? Had the peace come?
“Hands back,” said the preacher.
Darla shook her head violently. The preacher put the mouth of the gun against her teeth and she stopped. She put her hands behind her back, and the preacher tied them with cloth. Then he looked at Paul.
Paul put his hands back.
“Good little lion,” said the preacher, and he secured Paul’s wrists. “You won’t be shot, though. Morons drown so much more naturally.”
There was a rumbling from the woods, and Paul looked behind to see a van moving out into the pasture. The Man stepped back to give it room. It stopped, and the engine was cut.
Darla’s eyes widened in hope. Paul tried to stumble forward. Rescue, oh, God, yes, thank God, thank God! He uttered a choked whine of agonized appeal.
The driver of the van swung out and around, then opened the sliding door on the side. Two blindfolded people climbed slowly into the daylight.
A young blindfolded man. A young blindfolded woman.
“They’re going to save the world, too,” said the preacher.
Ee-ii-ee-ii-oh, thought Paul.
The preacher baptized Darla and Paul in the brisk, running water of the river.
Hillbettys
Graham Watkins
There was no warning, none at all. One moment Ron was driving up a run-down mountain road, listening to his stereo; the next he’d rounded a sharp curve and seen the rockpile covering the pavement ahead. There was no way he could stop in time, and the front of his Mercedes slammed into the limestone chunks with a sickening crunch.
After sitting stunned for a few moments, he finally unhooked his seatbelt and opened the car door. On shaky legs, he climbed out and stood staring at the damage; it took only a few seconds for his relief at being uninjured to change to rage.
Clearly, the car wasn’t going anywhere. The engine might run, but the front end was crushed in against the wheels. He cursed the rocks, kicked one of them; then he aimed his fury at the tipster he’d met at an antique show in North Carolina, the man whose stories had sent him on this trip in the first place. The old trader had told tales about an out-of-the-way shop up in the hills where the proprietor had no notion of the true value of her merchandise, and even given Ron a map to find the place.
Turning away from the car, he began surveying his surroundings. To his right was a rocky slope dotted with clinging trees, rising on up toward some unseen peak or ridge; to his left, an abrupt dropoff. Ahead and behind nothing but woods and the tortuously winding road. The wasn’t a sign of human habitation anywhere; the road itself and a rutted dirt trail leading up the hillside a few hundred yards back were the only signs that anyone had been up here since the days of Daniel Boone. He’d already traversed tat least five deserted miles since leaving the main road. Going on might well lead to help sooner, but he had no way of knowing that; besides, it was steeply uphill. A resident of the urban hills of Knoxville, Ron allowed his choice to be determined by the slope of the road, by the known—even if the known did constitute one hell of a long hike.
Still cursing under his breath, he started walking. It was not yet noon; with any luck at all, he told himself, he’d be able to find a phone before nightfall. But even that wasn’t a certainty. He couldn’t remember seeing much of anything down on the main road either, not for quite a few miles. What he’d do if he found himself out wandering these hills after dark, he didn’t know.
“Hey, sonny,” a voice called before he’d conveyed a hundred yards. “Kindly looks lak ye done had y’seff some trouble thar!”
Stopping, he looked for the source. Up the rutted mountain trail a short distance stood a woman waving at him. She appeared to be perhaps forty, and she was dressed in the uniform of the mountain woman: long dress, heavy shoes, semipermanent apron.
“Yeah,” he called back. “Yeah, there’s been a rockslide, and I’ve wrecked my car. Do you live around here?”
She smiled; as he came closer he could see that she was really pretty good-looking, that she’d probably been stunning in her youth. Her black hair was heavily streaked with gray, but her eyes still seemed bright. “Why, shore,” she answered, her hill accent extreme. “Our place is raht on up the hill here a ways.”
“Do you have a phone?”
“Shore. C’mon. Lahk I said, it’s a ways!”
Smiling back at her, he turned onto the steep path. “Hey, I really appreciate it,” he told her. “Mrs….uh…”
“The name’s Reardon,” she supplied, cocking her head and looking him over. “Ye look lahk a city boy fer sure!”
He nodded. “Yeah, Knoxville. I’m Ron Maxwell—Dr. Ron Maxwell.”
Turning, she took a few steps up the hill, motioning for him to follow. “Doctor, huh? Whatcha doing’ up here? Makin’ a house call?”
“No,” he grunted sourly. “No, I was up here to—”
He stopped, fell silent. There was another woman waiting up there, and for a moment all Ron could do was stare. Daisy Mae, he’d always assumed, was strictly an Al Capp fantasy; yet, allowing for a few minor differences, there she stood on that rutted road, not fifty feet away. Barefoot, clad in tiny shorts and a tied plaid shirt that left her midriff and much of her upper chest exposed, she was dressed so much like L’il Abner’s wife that Ron wondered if it could be coincidence. Like Daisy Mae, her hair was blond; unlike the comic strip heroine, it was silky and straight, and it reached far down her almost unnaturally long legs.
“’At’s my oldest,” Mrs. Reardon said, not failing to notice what he was staring at. “Martha Jean. Martha Jean, this here’s Doc Maxwell. He done had some trouble down ’ar on ’at ol’ road.”
“Hey, Doc Maxwell,” the blond said. Her voice fitted her appearance: low-pitched, sultry. Evidently, deliberately so.
“Ron,” he said, his own voice just a little weak.
“C’mon now, you two,” the older woman said. “Y’all can talk later. My youngest is up thar a-fixin’ some vittles. I ’spect ye c’ud use a bite, cun’cha?”
“N—well—I don’t know—I really need to use that phone—”
“Wal, it’s up yonder too!”
Ron tried to keep up as the two women almost scampered up the hillside. He wasn’t really able to, and they were forced to slow down and wait for him. The trail seemed to go on forever; at the point where he was beginning to wonder if there actually was a house up there at all, it suddenly came into sight. Large, rustically but sturdily built, it looked quite old. Across the front stretched a full porch supported by barked but otherwise unaltered tree trunks, the steps leading to it rough-hewn. Inside, the impression of age persisted; few of the well-worn furnishings appeared to belong to the twentieth century. Giving him little time to look around, the two women guided him to the kitchen, where he’d been told the telephone was located. At the doorway, he was again stopped cold.
If Matha Jean was a Daisy Mae clone, then the girl working at the wood-fired stove as Moonbeam McSwine without the dirt. Shorter than her sister, she was dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired—and outrageously appealing in her tied shirt and shorts. Mrs. Reardon, obviously amused as his reaction, introduced her as Cindy Ann.
“Uh—could I see the phone, no
w?” he asked after a long pause. He was still staring at the dark-haired girl.
“Sho ’nuff,” Mrs. Reardon answered amiably. “It’s over on yonder wall thar.”
With mumbled thanks, he went to it; the instrument looked like it might have been one of the first dial phones ever produced, one generation after the crank. “You have a phone book?” he asked.
“Uh-uh. An’ it wu’nt do ye no good if’n we did. Ye cain’t call nobody ’ceptin’ th’ op’rator. Jis dial th’ O thar.”
There was a faint buzzing hum in the phone when he picked it up; as instructed, he dialed the zero. Immediately the sound ceased, the phone went dead. Clicking the hook restored the hum; dialing zero—or any other number—eliminated it.
What am I doing wrong?” he asked after several tries.
Mrs. Reardon took the receiver from him and tried it herself. “Well, drat!” she exclaimed. “Ol’ Bertha Sue must be a-goofin’ off again! That, or she was called away fer sumpin’.” She hung up the phone. “Ain’t nothin’ ye ki do but wait, Doc,” she said. “Jis sitcher seff down thar at th’ table. Cindy Ann, you ’n’ Martha Jean get some vittles on here, an’ git the Doc a glass o’ cider.”
“I don’t know,” Rod said doubtfully. “I don’t want to impose. Maybe I should go back to my car, see if someone else comes along…”
Mrs. Reardon waved her hands impatiently. “T’ain’t gonna do no good t’go back down thar t’ th’ road, Doc. Ain’t a lot o’ folks use that thar road; one, mebbe two cars a day. There’s times there ain’t none.” She laughed. “An’ we done had one today, raht?”
He couldn’t really argue; he himself had seen no other traffic there. Besides, he told himself as he watched the two women put food on the table, the scenery down there might be good but it was much better up here. “Okay,” he agreed. “Maybe you’re right. And I think a glass of that cider might be nice!”
The cider was very good indeed, flavorful and mildly alcoholic. The food was better; Cindy Ann could open a country-style restaurant in Knoxville and get rich overnight. By his standards, it was a huge lunch, but he ate heartily nonetheless; he couldn’t remember having eating potatoes, corn, ham, and gravy prepared as well as this.
Afterward he received a bit of a shock: On asking where the bathroom was, he was directed to an outhouse, and upon returning he learned that the Reardons did not even have running water; that water was hand-pumped from a well. He hadn’t imagined that anyone still lived so primitively, even in these remote Kentucky hills.
Over the course of the next couple of hours he tried the phone repeatedly—but without results. Each time Mrs. Reardon counseled patience—“Ol’ Bertha Sue’s bound to come back sooner er later!”—and each time he allowed himself to be persuaded. Between tries he spent most of his time in the Reardon living room, sipping the wonderful cider and talking with Martha Jean and Cindy Ann—and, in the process, learning a bit about the Reardon family. Martha Jean was twenty, Cindy Ann eighteen; their father had been dead for many years. They had no other siblings, no living relatives; the women were on their own. To his surprise, he learned that neither of them had ever attended public school. Mrs. Reardon had taught them the rudiments of reading and math, what the girls referred to as the “three Rs.”
Nor had they ever been employed. “Well, I don’t understand!” he exclaimed. “How do you live?”
“Don’t take much,” Cindy Ann replied in her slow, sleepy drawl. “We got our gardens, we got our hawgs. We get ’nuff t’eat.”
“Yes, but you can’t pay—oh, let’s say the phone bill!—with that!”
Here the younger girl looked hesitant—nervous, it seemed to him—and glanced at her sister. “Sho’ ’nuff,” Martha Jean answered quickly. “But we do awraht. We need some money, we c’n allus sell a hawg. We raises us some real fine hawgs up here, Rahn!”
He shrugged, let the subject drop. The afternoon slipped by gently, its passing cushioned by the cider and the two girls, who were utterly charming in spite of their sometimes almost grotesque accents. The Reardons seemed to enjoy his presence; at dinnertime a place was set for him, apparently as a matter of course. While they were eating, Mrs. Reardon informed him that it was useless to even try the phone again until the next morning. Berth Sue, it seemed, left work around six and did not reappear until nine the following morning. If you had a fire or a medical emergency in night, well, that was, presumably, just too bad.
It was also taken as a given that he’d spend the night. They had a spare bedroom, Mrs. Reardon told him, and first thing in the morning they’d see what could be done about his predicament. Feeling he had no choice, he accepted her invitation with thanks.
As night began to fall, Ron got another surprise: The Reardons had no electricity. Oil lamps and candles that he’d assumed were merely decorative were lit, and before long Mrs. Reardon began dropping hints that it might be about time for bed. It wasn’t much past nine; for Ron, it felt like going to bed in the middle of the day. He had a sinking feeling that someone was going to be knocking at his door and offering breakfast at—or even before—sunrise.
Again, thought, he felt he had little choice. Taking his leave of the two girls, he allowed Mrs. Reardon to show him to his upstairs room. As he stepped onto the stairway and put his hand on the banister it leaned far to one side, almost causing him to lose his balance. Mrs. Reardon made a clucking sound.
“Got to get attair thang fixed,” she observed. She pointed to a cracked support near the bottom. “Dang thang, hit got wet and split open. You whatcher seff thar, don’t let it throw ye.” He nodded, then followed her up the stairs to the guest room. Mrs. Reardon gave him a small oil lamp and a quick course in how to use it, then left.
Alone in the room, he kicked off his shoes, lay down on the overly soft bed, and allowed his gaze to roam. The furnishings, like virtually everything else here, were antique; except for a so-far nonfunctioning telephone, the Reardons lived without any sort of modern convenience. HE was glad that the telephone was here, even if it wasn’t working: it eliminated any “Twilight Zone” fantasies, any notions that he might’ve falling through some sort of time warp.
He was still thinking about that when the door of his room squeaked slightly and started moving open.
Instantly alert, he sat straight up in the bed, but when he saw that the intruder was Cindy Ann, he grinned and relaxed. Knocking, apparently, wasn’t a convention that was observed here. He watched her as she closed the door and turned a small wooden bar that he’d not noticed previously; it dropped into a slot in the thick wooden doorframe, locking the door.
Giving him a slightly tremulous smile, she came to the bed and sat down. “Y’doin’ okay, Rahn?” she asked. “Y’need anythin’?”
He smiled back, perhaps a little suspiciously. “I’m fine,” he replied. “I don’t need a thing. Maybe you’d better go.”
She scooted a little closer. “Now, Rahn,” she said with a smile that was by now almost overtly seductive, “I ain’t a-goin’ nowhere, not jis yet! ’Cause if’n I do, y’know what’s a-gonna happen!”
He looked a bit confused. “What’s that?”
Her eyes opened wide. “Why, you’re a-gonna go over t’ Martha Jean’s room, or else she’s a-gonna come in here! We ain’t ignorant, Rahn! We know how menfolks are!”
He had to struggle not to laugh. “No,” he told her. “I had no intention of going to your sister’s room, and I doubt that she—”
She pushed closer, pressing her bare thigh against his leg and running a hand down his chest. “I think,” she signed, “That ye lahk to talk too much! You just let ol’ Cindy Ann look after you, Rahn, and ye won’t hafta worry none ’bout Martha Jean!” By the time she’d finished speaking, her hand had dropped below his belt and she’d crossed her other leg over his knee.
Visions of back-country shotgun weddings started running through his head. “No, now wait a minute,” he protested, pushing her hand away. “I don’t think we should be—”
Ignoring his words, she kissed his cheek; she reached for her shirt, and before he could protest she’d pulled the knot. It fell open, revealing two of the most attractive breasts he’d ever seen. She shrugged it off, kissed his lips, began unbuttoning his shirt.
With much less conviction he continued to try to argue, to try to push her away. She was having none of it; her lips moved around his face, his neck, his ear. He started sweating; in spite of himself he started to respond. One of his hands was already on her silken thing, the other headed for those magnificent breasts. This doesn’t happen, he told himself as she smiled up at him engagingly and deftly undid his belt. It doesn’t. Women don’t act this way, back country or no. Maybe I already fell asleep?
But he really couldn’t buy that. “No,” he managed to croak. “No, Cindy Ann, you don’t want to do this, you—”
“Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, I do!” She unzipped his pants and quickly reached inside; when she wrapped her fingers around his erection, it became almost painful.
The thoughts of setups and shotgun weddings did not actually go out of his head, but they certainly got pushed down, far down. Slowly at first, then with increasing vigor, he began cooperating with her. Within minutes his clothes were gone; she took her shorts off, but she was still wearing a tiny undergarment, almost like a G-string but more rudely made.
For the moment, he paid little attention; he was too busy caressing, licking, and nibbling at her breasts. She moaned softly; her small nipples became quite hard. Lifting his head, he kissed her, and she kissed him back with an almost violent passion.
Finally he reached for the wispy undergarment, but she stopped him with her hand. “No,” she said, gently but firmly. “Cain’t. But don’t you worry, Rahn. I know how to make a man happy!” With this she pushed him back on the bed and lowered her head into his lap. Her head tipped up, her eyes fixed on his, she began licking his penis.
It was his turn to moan then, as she took it between her lips. She was startlingly expert, alternating quick movements with slow sensual ones, using both her tongue and her lips to perfection. He watched her, saw her glance up at him repeatedly, saw her smiling as she continued to push him higher and higher.
