Seventh Sense

by Robert A. Brown

  So they usually ask me in, and I meet anyone else who’s at the house (a lot of times they’re more shacks than houses). Once we’ve all talked a little, I get out my tablet and take down the vitals on the person I’m there to interview. It’s not uncommon to find another old-timer or two, which means I have a chance of getting more than one story or reminiscence. But sometimes the family members talk over one other and butt into each others’ stories and that makes it tough, even though I can keep up pretty good by using that part-shorthand method we worked up all those years ago. Never thought it’d turn out to be helpful in a job, but it is.

  The tricky thing is getting the dialect, and then remembering it when I return to Ma Stean’s and write up the reports. These folks have a beautiful kind of Southeastern drawl that’s hard to get down on paper – like you saw with that witch story I sent you. Sometimes parts of it almost sound like colonial English. I sit and listen and sometimes prompt them with questions like, “Your grandpappy tell you ‘bout this more’n once?” I talk as close as I can to how they talk, which seems to be the right way to go about it.

  But they know I’m not from around these parts. So they ask me questions, too, and I tell them a little bit about my own grandfather, how he’s half-Sioux (although I don’t explain that he’s nuts and hates Indians), and about the state I come from and all its lakes and how “Minnesota” is Sioux for “cloudy water.” They usually want to know about fishing in the state, and I tell them about northern pike, which they don’t seem to have around here. We visit for a while and then I leave, either for the next interview or back to Ma’s to type up my notes. I don’t like for them to get cold. When I lay off too long, as I have a few times, I’ve been forced to go back to get a point elaborated or clarified, which just puts me behind.

  For the most part, these people are dirt-poor, living off the land, although some of them have a family member or two working at the processing plant, which gives them some social and economic standing. All it takes to get in with them is what comes natural, being respectful and remembering the Golden Rule. I get a lot of supper invitations and I rely on my seventh sense, or intuition, or whatever the hell gut feeling I get, to tell me whether to go or not. So far it’s worked out fine.

  Funny thing, though. Ma has been right with every single name she crossed off my list when I first hit this town. I’ve tried, but I haven’t made contact with a single one of those folks. When I pull up outside their houses and holler the house, nothing happens. Nobody comes out – except, a few times, as I’ve told you, a pack of half-wild pigs vicious enough to run me off.

  So she was right, and she and her friend Mrs. Davis still know a lot of things I don’t. I’m sure they know plenty about the cats in this town, and I think that mass grave I found holds more than a few pieces of the Mackaville puzzle. Maybe that’s what the old calico was trying to tell me.

  And maybe, just maybe, it’s all bull shit. If only I could believe that. I wish I could.

  Your pal and faithful comrade,

  Robert

  June 8, 1939

  Thursday afternoon

  Dear John,

  I kinda need to calm down a bunch but I’m really tired and maybe just a tiny tad drunk, too. Don’t tell Ma. She “don’t ‘low it” in her boarding house, liquor I mean, so I’m not sure what to do with the rest of this little jar the boys at the store sent me home with. Thought I might drink it and destroy the evidence. But I’ve hardly made more than a dent in it and my mind is wandering pretty fierce.

  Then I think about what happened today and I snap right back into sobriety. Wish you were right here for me to tell you. I’m going to try to type just like I’m talking to you.

  I was out this morning before sunrise. Had three stops I hoped to make way up north and west in the country around a place between mountains the locals call Flat Gap. It was neat driving this road by myself and the sun coming up behind me. Just as I came roaring over a rise I saw a small herd of deer a couple of hundred yards in front of me, leaping and bounding across the road. And then, right behind them, about a half-dozen or so of the ugliest pigs I have ever seen in my life, with black bristly hair and skinny little legs, and I swear they were chasing after the deer. The last pig ran across the road not twenty yards in front of me and just kind of looked casually back as I bore down on him, never breaking stride, like he wasn’t afraid at all. I got a glimpse of red eyes and dripping tusks and then I’d zipped past, missing him by only a couple dozen feet.

  I mean, these pigs were hideous, evil unnatural spawns of Beelzebub. Well, maybe that’s the liquor talking. But I mean they were UGLY, ugly enough to be unsettling. Down the road a little, I pulled off, killed the Indian, and looked back to where they’d crossed, but nothing else came by. I heard a lot of thrashing in the woods. I wondered if they really had been chasing those deer. And if they had, why? I remember hearing that wild hogs would run other animals away from food sources like a wheat or corn field, but these seemed to just be doing it for the hell of it, for meanness maybe. I figured I’d just gotten my first glimpse of Arkansas razorbacks, which a few of my interviewees had mentioned and told me to watch out for when I was up in the hills.

  After that encounter with Mother Nature Arkansas style, I got lucky. All three of the people I needed to interview were home and willing to talk, so I finished up a little after noon and stopped at a service station on my way back home to get a little something to eat. That mountain air gives you an appetite.

  This place had a couple of old trucks in the drive and four or five locals standing or sitting around a cracker barrel inside, hunkered over a checker game and drinking soda pop. When I walked inside I could tell they thought maybe I was some kind of forest ranger or cop, and given my outfit I couldn’t blame ‘em. I guess it’s about time for me to draw on my big government checks and invest in some work clothes, although I’ve grown used to my old CCC duds and there’s plenty of wear left in ‘em.

  Anyway, I made kind of a show of introducing myself, telling what I was doing in those parts, and I was so involved in trying to get over as a hail-fellow-well-met kind of guy that I didn’t realize it was Old Man Black standing off to one side until I’d stuck my hand out in front of him. You remember – he’s the whiskery geezer with the two idiot sons I got into it with on the train platform, the guy Ma Stean called a snake and told me to stay away from.

  The old son-of-a-bitch didn’t shake my hand. He just glared at me. I shrugged and went over to the pop box, fishing out a Double Cola. I heard him hack and spit behind me, and when I turned around I saw a glob of spittle on the floor, pretty near my boot and nowhere near the cuspidor.

  That got me. I doubled up my fist and took a couple of steps toward him, conscious of the other guys in the store watching. I had a foot or so and maybe 50 lbs. on him, but that was too bad.

  I was just about to him when he muttered something through those whiskers that sounded like an apology, although I couldn’t be sure. It was enough to slow me down, though, and still mumbling, he edged by me and stomped out the door. In just a minute, I heard one of the ancient pick-ups rev up and peel out onto the road.

  “Good riddance,” said the fat little man behind the counter, who during the introductions had told me his name was Dill Jolley – Dill, like in pickle, he’d said. The others in the store nodded. They were all older guys, none under about 60, in overalls. A couple of them had on straw hats. One or two of them were grinning, and from that evidence it didn’t look like there were enough teeth for one good set among the whole group.

  “I don’t mean to run off your business,” I told the proprietor.

  “Hell, he never buys nothin’ no way.”

  “Well,” I said, “I will. Give me a couple of cans of those sardines and some crackers.”

  “Help yourself.” He nodded toward the barrel where the men congregated. “Some good rat cheese in th’ icebox. Three cents fer a big slice.”

  “Sure. A couple of slices ought to do
it.”

  He picked up a big knife from a butcher-block table behind the cash register, reached down into a little ancient steel Frigidaire, and pulled out what had once been a huge round of cheese. Only about a quarter of it was left, a pie-shaped wedge covered by a coating of red wax. Jolley made a kind of show of cutting off a piece and holding it up.

  “Worth three pennies?” he asked.

  “You bet.”

  As he cut off a second slice, I looked around the store. It was what you’d expect out in these hills, nails and tire tubes sharing space with cans of food. The two men who were playing checkers lifted the board up off the top of the barrel, checkers still sitting on it, so I could reach in and get my crackers.

  Jolley sacked everything up, I paid him, and he came out from behind the counter and walked to the porch with me, telling me all the while what a horse’s arse Old Man Black was. I was just starting to tell him about my encounter with Black’s sons when I stepped off the stoop and something whacked me on the left leg, about six inches below my knee.

  “Holy hell, boy!” hollered Jolley. “You snakebit!”

  By God, he was right. Hanging onto my boot by its fangs was a damned rattlesnake a couple of feet long, writhing and twisting around.

  This was one time my theatrical nature paid off. As you know I carry a little sheath knife in the top of my right boot. Well, I dropped the groceries and jerked that knife out, and with one slash of that razor-sharp blade I’d severed that little bastard’s head from his body. The body dropped to the ground beside the porch but the head stayed attached, dug into that old stiff CCC leather, God bless it, three layers thick. To think how much I’ve cussed about how heavy those damn boots are...

  I stepped down off the porch, and while that vile body was twisting around at my feet, covering itself with blood and dust, I stuck the blade squarely between those snake eyes and cut his head right down the middle until it opened into two exact halves, an eye on each one. That killed the son-of-a-bitch, you bet! Then I used the blade to flick off the two pieces.

  Jolley’s shout had raised the others, and they’d all gathered on the porch to watch the show. I guess they were pretty impressed, because they invited me back into the store, and old Dill dug out a Mason jar full of what he called mountain dew. It was moonshine whisky, sure, and we all had a couple of shots right out of the container. The first one burned all the way down, like I was drinking gasoline. Tasted like it, too. After the second round, I sat down at one of the benches by the cracker barrel and examined my boot to make sure I wasn’t really bit. Sure enough, those fangs hadn’t gotten through the second layer of leather, much less the third.

  These boys made such a to-do over me that I had to sit there and smoke a King Edward cigar with them and knock back another couple of shots. This time, I mixed it with some lime soda pop Jolley offered me and it was pretty damn good. The rest of ‘em took it straight, including him.

  Well, I had another couple of interviews I wanted to get done this afternoon, but I couldn’t very well go to houses smelling like mountain dew, and to tell the truth I’m not all that steady on my feet right now anyway. Ma usually runs her errands on Thursday, so, lucky for me, nobody was around the boarding house but MacWhirtle when I drove the Indian back into the garage. He’s sitting here with me now, looking at me like he knows I’m tight. Ma usually doesn’t bother me while I’m working, so maybe I’ll type up the interviews I did today after I write you. Or maybe I’ll just go to bed. Pete’s expecting me later, but I’ll tell him tomorrow I was sick. Don’t want to call him right now. I think the best thing is to quit typing before Ma gets back and knows I’m here. Get a little early shut-eye.

  So I’m alive, snockered but alive, a fact I celebrated a little too heartily with my new chums at Jolley’s store.

  But something’s funny. When they took me back in and broke out the ‘shine, they were all talking like they thought I was dead for sure, and how I sliced up that rattler, and after the second or third round one of them said, “That’ll show old Black.” And everybody got quiet for a little bit.

  That whiskery old bastard wasn’t even there. So what do you suppose he meant? Yeah, I’d better go. It’s time to lie down.

  Your pal and faithful correspondent,

  Robert

  June 12, 1939

  Monday evening

  Dear John,

  I’m going to tell you as much as I can with this letter. But there’s an awful lot to tell, and if I get pooped I’ll have to stop and write more tomorrow. I’ll try not to leave you hanging like the end of a Republic serial, but I can’t make any promises.

  You know from my earlier letters that I’ve been thinking a lot about that mass grave and what it means, with the cholera epidemic happening exactly 50 years ago. A jubilee? Celebrating the death of maybe a couple hundred people?

  I knew that couldn’t be right. But I knew that grave had something to do with it all.

  Finally, I just figured I had to get away and think. At first, I thought about taking Patricia with me, up into the hills that morning, but I nixed that idea. I knew her grandmother wouldn’t allow it, for one thing. For another, I didn’t know if she’d even go if she could. For a third, I wasn’t anywhere near ready to tell her about everything that had been happening, much less how I thought her grandma was somehow involved in it. And lastly, I’d already had someone try to kill or cripple me with a log on one of those roads, and if there was any more danger up there I didn’t want her around it.

  Mrs. Davis didn’t let Patricia go out on school nights, so I had another date with her set up for Saturday night. I figured if I left early enough I could spend all morning and most of the afternoon in the hills, come back in and help at Pete’s service station for an hour or so, and still have plenty of time to pick up Patricia and get to the Mackaville picture show before the newsreel started.

  (It’s kinda tough, in a good way, to have Patricia there at Ma’s every day, helping serve up breakfast and dinner. I try not to flirt or anything. Sometimes I catch her eye and she smiles and kind of blushes, but I don’t think any of the other boarders have caught on. Ma knows, of course, but she hasn’t said anything to me. Yet.)

  So about seven Saturday morning, as soon as the grocery opened, I bought a chunk of ham about the size of a softball (you better like ham if you’re going to live in this town), a loaf of bread, and some pickles and apples. I filled up my old CCC canteen, wrapped it and the food in my ground sheet (that’s a light tarp for sissy boy townies like you), and tucked it under the seat in my side car beside the sawed-off shotgun and revolver I’d been carrying with me since the log incident. I’d already slipped a few shotgun shells – what was left of the “silver” ones – in my front pants pocket and gotten into that box of Bering cigars your folks gave me last Christmas.

  I’ve really been nursing them. In fact, I haven’t had one since I got to Mackaville, because I just want to smoke ‘em on special occasions, but this occasion seemed special enough.

  With two of those classy smokes resting in my front pocket and everything else in its place, I mounted up on the old Indian in search of adventure, or at least a place to think things over in solitude. It was a beautiful day, and when I stopped in at Pete’s Skelly station to gas up and told him what I was doing, he looked really hound-dog envious.

  “Why don’t you come along?” I said. “You’ve been telling me for weeks that you’ll show me some caves and swimming holes out in the hills. I’ve got lunch enough for us both, and”–I pulled the two Berings out of my front pocket–“I got smokes that are better than anything you can buy in this burg.” Which is true. They don’t sell Berings around here – King Edwards and Cremos are about the best you can hope for.

  I was just ragging him, so I was surprised when he kinda moved from one foot to another, like he was actually considering it. Then he surprised me again.

  “Look,” he said. “If Diffie can run the station for me until we get back, I’ll do it.
”

  He went inside, and I started checking over the bike. It’s a good machine, but it’s also a big machine with a lot of little parts to pay attention to. It was down about a half-quart of oil, so I topped her off, and just as I finished Pete walked out with Diffie. Turned out he’d been at the station all along.

  “He’ll do it,” Pete said.

  Diffie nodded. “Sure. How ya doin’, Robert?”

  “Swell,” I said, as I tightened up a couple of the fittings on the side car. “Thanks for taking over.”

  “Glad to.” I could see he was a little envious, too.

  “It’ll be your turn next time,” I said.

  That seemed to make him happy. He grinned at us as I handed Pete a spare set of goggles.

  “All right,” I told him. “Let’s get outta town.”

  He adjusted the goggles, leaving them pushed up on his forehead.

  “Add this to your plunder,” he told me, shoving a handful of candy bars my way. Then, “If you want, I’ll drive goin’ out, and you can drive coming back. That is if you trust me. I’d like to climb back on her for a little while.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I returned, climbing into the side car. I glanced back at Diffie, whose happy expression had changed to something that looked like bewilderment.

  “You gonna fit?” Pete asked.

  Folding myself into the side car, I nodded. “Near enough,” I told him. My knees stuck out clear above the dash, but I was in. “As long as you stop every once in a while for me to stretch my legs, I’ll make it.”

  Pete nodded, kicked the starter, let that old four-cylinder bang and roar for a few seconds, and we were off. It didn’t take him long to get used to my weight and the bike’s balance. When he did, he kicked it up to a steady 65 mph, ten miles faster than the limit. I’d be lying if I told you the fact that he’d crashed the Indian twice in the past crossed my mind, but I just let it go and kept an eye out for highway cops. We met one on the way out of town, but Pete slowed in time and waved at the guy as we passed. He waved back. It’s a funny thing, but people just seem to look at a motorcycle different, more friendly maybe, when there’s a side car attached. Maybe part of the reason is that you don’t see many of ‘em around.