The Old Weird South

by Tim Westover

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  “Annie! Wake up!” Joe shook his wife awake.

  “Joe! What’s the matter?” Annie sat up, startled by Joe’s voice. “What time is it?”

  “On the road from Neosho . . . you shoulda seen it, woman . . .”

  “Seen what?” Annie slid her feet into slippers at the side of the bed and reached for her robe.

  “Quit interruptin’, Annie.”

  “Well, jes spit it out—wakin’ a body from a sound sleep—I do declare.”

  “I seen a will-o’-the-wisp or fireball or spook light or . . . somethin’ . . . out on the road from Neosho. Lordy! I had goose bumps all over, ’n’ the hair on my neck stood up.”

  Annie turned to make her way to the kitchen. “Jes calm down, ’n’ let me put the coffee on.” Annie took immense pride in believing she was a voice of reason amid chaos. “Wha’ja do when you saw this here thing?”

  “Uh . . . I stopped the vehicle and watched it.”

  “Watched it do what?” she asked while wondering why she had to pull out every thought from that man like pulling quills from a dog after he’d tangled with a porcupine.

  “It jes floated out thar. ’Twas like a big, huge ball, kinda yeller-colored, ’n’ then it came right dreckly at my automobile.”

  “How big?”

  “I dunno how big it was, woman! I blinked, ’n’ it was gone.”

  “Where’d it go?”

  “Dunno. I sat there in the automobile a spell to see if it’d come back. It didn’t, so I hightailed it here.”

  “Maybe it was the moon. Should I smell your breath?” Annie was joking, but she knew the men in the sheriff’s office had a certain approach in the policy of disposing of hard evidence upon the successful disposition of a criminal bootlegging case.

  “Annie . . . !”

  She looked deep into his eyes to decide if he was joshing her. “All right, Joe, tell me all about this thang.”

  “Well, blast it! If you don’t believe me, I’ll drive you out there, ’n’ you can see it yur own sef.”

  “You said it disappeared.”

  “It did!”

  With disdain in her tone, she said, “Ain’t much use a-goin’ that far to see somethin’ what done disappeared. You wanna sleep, or can I fix you some breakfast fore you go to work?”

  Joe wasn’t sleepy even though he’d not gotten a wink of sleep in the past twenty-four hours, and after breakfast, he set off about his daily business.

  The foolishness was still on Annie’s mind when Bertie, a neighbor lady, stepped up on the front porch and rapped at the screen door. “Mornin’, Annie. I see’d y’all up early this morn. Care for company?”

  “C’mon in, Bertie, coffee’s still warm.”

  Bertie opened the screen, took off her sun bonnet, and crossed the parlor to enter Annie’s kitchen.

  Bertie was one of those “sees all, knows all” women, but thankfully, she didn’t go about telling all . . . unless she was asked for something specific, and then even Saint Peter might pull up a chair to listen to the gossip.

  “Sometimes Joe can tell a tale so windy, you’d swear the man could blow up a burlap sack.”

  “All men do that,” said Bertie. “Zeke tol’ me ’bout a man who lies so much, he had to hire a boy to call his dawg.”

  They giggled.

  “Well . . . Joe woke me up with a story ’bout seein’ a floatin’ fireball out on the road toward Neosho.”

  “Why, fiddledeedee,” exclaimed Bertie. “That weren’t no fib. Folks round here don’t bother talkin’ on it les’un somebody just happens to see it again.”

  Annie sat her cup down and leaned forward. “You seen this?”

  “No, not my own personal sef, but there’s plenty a folks round here what can attest to it. I don’t know much, but’t ain’t no fib.”

  Annie picked up her cup and rubbed at the wet ring it left on the bare oak tabletop. “I recall listenin’ to some ol’ folks back home spinnin’ yarns ’bout fireballs a-dwellin’ ’n’ a-flittin’ round in swamps, but I figured that was jes fer entertainin’ the younguns.”

  Bertie nodded and said, “I guess you ’n’ me ain’t lived here long enough to heer ev’thing.”

  That disclosure surprised Annie. Bertie was the town’s midwife, and her husband Zeke was the carpenter, who built cabinets and coffins for the community. Bertie was fond of saying, “B’twixt Zeke ’n’ me, us two see ’em a-comin’ ’n’ a-goin’.”

  Bertie said, “Ol’ Miz Lucy would know ’bout such things.”

  Annie raised her eyebrows. “Who?”

  “Miz Lucy. In her seventy years a-livin’ here ’n’ bein’ a Quapaw Injun ’n’ all, thar ain’t much she don’t know ’bout this neck o’ the woods.”

  “Ain’t never met her.”

  Bertie rose from her chair. “I ain’t seen Miz Lucy in a coon’s age. Let’s go a-callin’ ’n’ see how the ol’ soul’s a-feelin’ these days. She tell you ’bout ev’thing.”

  The two women set off on a mission of discovery. They left their coffee cups sitting on the table and started toward ol’ Miz Lucy’s shack at the edge of town.