Strange Doin's in the Pine Hills

by Ardath Mayhar

  When I got within six feet of it, I saw it was that setter of Hallimore’s. The marks of my birdshot were all over his head and chest. He couldn’t be there, but I aimed my twenty-two. Before I could pull the trigger, he was gone, popped like a bubble.

  Damn!

  From that day on I never took a step outside that I didn’t hear the pad of paws in the trail behind me. Sometimes I saw him; most often there was nothing there, just those quiet sounds in the dust. It got to me. I made a pretty fair crop, and my boss in Dalby let me off for a week in the middle of September. Said I looked peaked and needed a rest.

  I did, at that. We went to Galveston, stayed in a nice hotel, and laid around on the beach doing nothing much in particular. There was no black setter there, and I felt a lot better.

  Quick as we got home, though, there he was again. I never hunted any more, just went out when I had to fix fence or tend the cattle or go to work. The dog came closer, clear up to the house. I could look out at night and there’d be two bright eyes shining and a row of white teeth. His black coat didn’t show up against the dark.

  Then it started talking to me. Not so my wife could hear, but in the night, real soft, after I went to sleep. It talked in Clay’s voice that was as familiar to me as my own Pa’s.

  “Jock,” it’d begin, “you just don’t know how black it is. Nothing comes in. Nothing can get out. Silence and darkness, that’s all. If it wasn’t for old Whiz, I’d go teetotal crazy, but he’s the best dog anybody ever had. He didn’t go wherever dead dogs go to. He came to me. He’s the only one can hear me or carry word for me.”

  I woke up in a cold sweat and looked out my window. Whiz was looking right back at me, through the glass. I scootched down and hid my face against Trudy’s back, but that didn’t stop the dog.

  “You’re the only one can see and hear us, Jock. Proves what a good friend you are. The only person in the world I can get through to. We’re grateful you let us come visit you. It gets so lonesome here in the dark. We’ll be your friends forever, Jock. You’ll never have to worry about being lonely. We’ll see to that.”

  Didn’t the fool know I shot him on purpose? But he sounded as if he meant every word. The dog knew—why couldn’t he make his master understand I tried to murder him? But maybe the communication only went one way.

  I tried talking, confessing, out in the woods while the dog padded along behind me. I went back to hunting, because there was no security inside the house any more, and I talked and talked while we trudged through the fields. Nothing helped. I had nothing but gratitude till it made me plumb sick.

  I stood it for a year. When I couldn’t take any more, I went and finished off Clay. Wasn’t hard—I just crept into his hospital room one night and shut off his oxygen for a minute. Then I turned it back on, hid till the nurse went back around the corner, and left. They expected him to die anyway, and nobody was surprised.

  It didn’t help a bit. By then he and his damn dog were so used to trailing after me they didn’t know how to quit.

  Which is why I’m writing this letter. I want Trudy to know that I’m not killing myself because of anything she’s done. She’s been true blue all the way. I just can’t live with my ghosts any more, and I want her to understand that.

  I don’t give a damn about anybody else.

  Signed:

  Jock Falls Wyndom

  FUNGUS GROWS IN THE DARK

  Political office holders in East Texas wrote the rule book on crookedness. Doris’s experience reflects those of others who have been framed to hide Good Old Boys’ misdeeds.

  It had been one of the worst of days, though most were hectic and stressful in Doris’s job. The Commissioners had met twice in executive session, and nobody seemed to be able to find out what the object was. As usual, Doris thought, they were meeting illegally to cover up some more of their petty misdeeds, but she didn’t worry about it. It was hard enough to adhere to the complex and contradictory orders that came down to her from week to week.

  Everyone in the office was on edge, for the bunch of Good Old Boys who ran the county could turn nasty if anyone questioned them or resisted their pet projects. Such a project was being opposed, right now, by a citizens’ group, and the County Judge was livid.

  But Doris covered her computer terminal, rechecked the records for the cash turned over to the Treasurer, and made certain that her books were in order. That was automatic, for back in Beaumont she had been the treasurer herself, and she knew how to keep accurate records and to make sure everything was ready to audit at any time. Indeed, she’d kept proof of all the instructions she’d been given, because they were just too flaky to let them pass.

  Here there was seldom an outside audit, and when it came, everyone knew long in advance. She wondered why they bothered. The orders they gave her sounded fishy most of the time, and she wondered what became of some of the funds transferred so frequently between departments.

  She made sure the other women were out of the office before clicking off the light. Her heels tapped loudly on the marble floor as she moved down the corridor toward the stair. Usually the last to leave, except for custodians and the sheriff’s department on the first floor of the courthouse, she was glad of the quiet time before getting home to her husband and daughters.

  Her car sat at the far end of the lot. As she approached it, the sound of footsteps alerted her. There had been muggings, even here under the sheriff’s elbow, so to speak, and she didn’t intend to add to their number. But as the man stepped beneath the light post she saw that it was Pepper, one of the deputies.

  “You startled me,” she said. “Good night.”

  He cleared his throat, and something about the way he sounded brought her up short. “Clem, are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, Miz Rogers. I’ve got to do this. Sheriff told me to. I hope you understand....” He paused and looked down at her, his entire body expressing extreme discomfort.

  “I got a warrant for your arrest.”

  The words flowed past her, meaningless. Impossible.

  Then she felt a jolt, as if someone had hit her in the stomach. Suddenly, she saw a pattern in the long history of conflicting, senseless orders that had come down the chain of command from those running the county. She swallowed hard. At last she managed to say, “And what is the charge, Clem?”

  He squirmed visibly in the harsh, blue-white light of the standard. “Embezzlement.”

  She knew that before he spoke. They had set her up and thought she had gone like a woolly lamb to slaughter. Used to controls and cross-checks, she had never quite believed that someone was siphoning off tax and fee moneys. Now it was perfectly clear, and she cursed herself for ten kinds of a fool for failing to see it sooner.

  She’d been warned about going to work for the county, after she and Bob moved here. Now she understood why. She thanked God for the warning. “So what now?” she asked. It wasn’t Clem’s fault, and he obviously hated what he was doing. There was no need to make him more uncomfortable.

  “Got to take you in and book you, Ma’am.”

  “I get a phone call, right? My husband is at home with the kids, expecting me in about ten minutes.” She wanted to scream, to hit him with her handbag or her shoe and run off into the darkness, but she knew she had to keep control, to be calm and cool and unperturbed. If she managed to do that, perhaps someone might let something slip.

  “You can do that in the office, Ma’am. I’m real sorry.”

  He sounded sorry, too. Poor kid—his uncle was Commissioner for Precinct Six, and slipped relatives into county jobs as if it were legal.

  Doris turned, her head high, anger filling her with determination. They were going to have to fight for this one. She wouldn’t go down tamely like Jenny Turner in the County Auditor’s office, framed and convicted without protest. This time those bastards were going to feel pain, no matter how it turned out.

  The combination police station and sheriff’s office took up the botto
m floor of the ancient brick structure housing the Amberson County courthouse. The hallway, painted a sick green, was lit by forty-watt bulbs, which left shadows lurking in odd corners, but she felt no unease. Once she was in a cell she might begin to cry, but for now Doris Rogers was furious.

  * * * * * * *

  She got her call at the phone booth, using her own coin. Kenneth was dumbfounded when she told him, and then he was furious too. But Doris had now had time to cool off a bit and get her wits together.

  “Don’t call a lawyer yet. Let me spend the night in jail,” she murmured into the phone, glancing aside at the deputy, who pretended not to be trying to hear what she said. “That will make a wrongful arrest and imprisonment suit just that much better. And remember where I hid my files and tapes. Thank God I didn’t try hiding them in the house—don’t let on that you know anything about them though.”

  She breathed the last words, hoping he would hear. Clem must not catch them.

  Actually, it was unlikely that anyone would suspect her of keeping her own account of the strange orders she was given. No other woman working here had ever been able to defend herself against unjust accusations. The Good Old Boys had gotten away with this sort of thing for so long, it probably never occurred to them that an end might come.

  A woman jailer she knew slightly from church strip-searched her and took her wristwatch, handbag, and glasses. Doris felt that Susan was as embarrassed as she was, trying hard not to show it. When that was done, Susan handed her the overall in bright orange and led her to a cell.

  “They’ll likely make your picture and fingerprint you and all that tomorrow,” she said. “Most of ’em’s gone to the football game tonight.”

  Just about everyone else had too, Doris decided. The small jail was empty except for a couple of jailers, after Susan’s shift ended and she left. There was the distant clank of a mop-bucket; Doris felt sure someone was cleaning up, but she couldn’t see a soul from her back-tier cell.

  The lights dimmed, though they were still too bright for sleeping. She stretched herself on the hard cot and stared at the sick-green ceiling. A roach big enough to pull a plow crawled across as she watched and slipped into a crack in the plaster.

  Doris shuddered. Never had she dreamed, even in a nightmare, that she would be in such a position!

  Something woke her, much later. A thud—that would be the heavy door into the office section closing. Steps approached along the narrow corridor. She pretended to be asleep, some atavistic instinct warning her to see who was coming before she responded.

  Square shoulders, bullet head—it was the sheriff himself! Damn! She was almost sure he was in with the power brokers that ran the city, the county, and the world, as far as local citizens were concerned.

  Something clanged loudly against the bars. “You! Get up and come over here!”

  She opened her eyes and gave her coldest stare. “I do not obey your orders,” she said. “If you have something to say, spit it out. If not, go away and allow me to sleep.” She deliberately used her most fastidious “city girl” accent.

  His thick neck turned red. The lock creaked, and he pushed the door wide.

  Doris was on her feet instantly, getting ready for anything he might try. She hadn’t lived most of her life in Los Angeles for nothing. Her father had insisted that she learn basic self-defense, and though the sheriff was too big and too powerful for her to defeat, he’d know he’d been in a fight.

  But he didn’t bother with anything fancy. Those long, brawny arms reached for her, and the cell was too small to avoid them. A fist came at her. She ducked too slowly. Stars burst inside her skull, and she dropped like a stone into darkness.

  * * * * * * *

  Doris felt herself floating upward, her arms spread, her legs lower than her chest. She caught her breath, choked, and flailed desperately, trying to reach the top of the water. Sputtering, she surfaced and tried to kick toward the overgrown bank some yards away.

  The pain in her legs was agonizing, and she sank again. But she had caught one valuable breath, and she moved her arms, making it up once more. This time she knew not to move her legs. That would kill her, without any doubt. Instead she kept breathing the way she’d been taught as a child at the local pool.

  With her hands, she moved herself through the murky water toward the reeds lining the shore. What she’d do when she arrived was a question to be answered later.

  It took a long time. As she struggled forward, keeping those shattered legs as quiet as possible, she began to recall what had happened. But there was one glaring gap—what had Sheriff Allen done to her? And how had he thought he’d get away with throwing her into a river?

  Her outstretched fingers touched slimy reeds. She struggled forward, and this time she caught a handful of the stuff and pulled herself into the thick growth. Her knee bumped mud; she was now close enough to climb out—if, of course, her legs had been in working order.

  Doris braced herself with both hands, staring up the gentle slope of wet grass and muck. It should be so easy to get up there, clear of the water, the snakes (she’d been told horror stories about water moccasins), the possible—she shivered—alligators that lived in the waters of East Texas.

  Spurred by the thought, she pulled herself against the slope and lay on her stomach. She moved one knee, just a bit, and the resulting agony told her that was not going to work. Doris took a deep breath, feeling water flutter in her throat and lungs. She still had elbows, by God!

  Digging into the soft ground, she dragged herself forward, one elbow at a time, until she was almost out of the stream. Her heart was running away, her chest hurting, her head feeling as if it might explode. What must my blood pressure be? she wondered.

  Resting for a moment, she listened hard. Above the flip of willow leaves in the breeze and the croaking of a million frogs, she could hear a rumble that had to be trucks on a highway. Not close, no. But it couldn’t be that far.

  Already her elbows felt raw, but she gritted her teeth and moved again up the slope, a few inches at a time. When she lay flat again, she was on level ground in a patch of sunlight. Her clammy orange coverall stuck to her skin and now felt steamy instead of chilly. But she’d be hotter before she was through.

  Beyond the flattish ridge edging the small river there was a thick stand of willows. She’d never be able to crawl through there, and it would be a fine place to find snakes as well. The ridge seemed to follow the river faithfully, and if she crept along it, dragging her useless legs behind her, eventually she would die or reach help.

  Doris dropped her head on her arms, tears leaking from her eyes. Damn! Damn! Damn! She’d never done anything in her life to deserve something like this.

  She sniffed hard and raised her head. Neither had any of those women who were now on parole or serving jail terms for things they hadn’t done. She wondered why, of them all, the county had decided that she posed a threat—had Clem heard what she told Ken, after all?

  But that was impossible. She had hardly spoken loudly enough for Ken to hear her. And Clem, she was almost sure, didn’t like what was being done to her. She’d noticed that he was off duty before she finished being processed.

  Had anyone suspected that she was keeping tapes of the orders she’d been given? That voice-activated mini-recorder in her purse was too small to show, and it didn’t make any noise. Her photocopies of the memos had been made after hours on her own paper. Nobody had been around except the janitors, and they hadn’t even been on the same floor at the time.

  How and why? As she plowed along, her elbows skinless and bleeding, she worried at the questions. That kept her from thinking about all the varied miseries in her battered body.

  At least the legs had gone numb. If she had a spinal injury, it must be below the waist. The thought of being a cripple the rest of her life didn’t disturb her much...not yet. Once she reached help, she was going to blow those bastards out of the water.

  Allen, of course, would be the f
irst and worst. Then Eva Janks, the county judge, realtor, and general wheeler-dealer. Oscar Revell was too dumb to understand much of anything, but he was as crooked as he could manage to be.

  The other commissioners were yes-men, rubber stamps for the machinations of the others. They deserved to suffer for having no spines or brains. Thinking about what she would do to them made the next hundred yards easier than it might have been.

  The sun moved across and began its downward slide. The shade of the willows kept the worst of the sun off her, but by then she was exhausted, scraped, battered, and bruised from head to foot. The orange coverall was worn away to shreds beneath her dragging stomach and legs, letting the patches of gravel along the way attack skin that had been somewhat protected by the uniform.

  It grew dark. Doris rested under a clump of button willow bushes, feeling that she had done all she could do. Now she would either bleed to death from the many shallow scratches or possible internal injuries, or she wouldn’t. Her children would never know what happened to her; Ken would be wild with worry. She would be dead and out of it, but what if the county government tried to go after her family?

  It was like a shot of adrenaline. She was not going to allow that. Again she elbowed forward, dragging her painful body, her mind wandering in a fog of fever. Everything else seemed to stop while she pushed her failing body onward, her will the only part of her that still held to its purpose.

  * * * * * * *

  Doris woke, sputtering. A large wet tongue was licking her cheek, saliva trickling down over her nose and lips. The damp soil was cold under her face, and she turned away from the helpful dog to find that it was daylight again.

  She tried to push herself up, to dig in with her elbows, but her arms had stiffened in the night and she could no longer move them. She felt frozen to the ground, only her head able to move on her neck. She drew a shuddering breath. To die on a riverbank attended by a friendly dog was a better fate than lying in the muck of the stream bed to be eaten by crawfish, she thought.