Strange Doin's in the Pine Hills

by Ardath Mayhar

  “What did you do...with him?” I asked, half choked.

  “Why I fed him to Grampa Catfish. Drug him kicking and squealing right to the edge of the slough, after I’d tied him up with my belt and his galluses. Called the Old Man offen the bottom. Did you know I could do that? We come to an agreement, long years ago, boy. I’d go down and feed him trash fish outen my nets. He knowed when I called it meant food. Anyway, I called him and shoved Rupe in.

  “In a minute, there come a thrashing in the water. Grampa must weigh a couple of hundred pounds by now. Thereabouts. There was some bubbles and a bit of blood, and then nothing. So I come home and thought about it.” He stopped his busy fingers and looked at me.

  “You see, boy, when you’re old as I am, used to living alone in the woods, you can’t stand trials and jails and all such like that. Even did they find me innocent of anything but self defense, I’d die in the middle of it. I’ve got to live out my time right here, taking care of my woods. So I never said nothing. And if the thieves suspicioned what happened, they kept it to themselves. Couldn’t do much else, could they?

  “Rupe’s little wife is married to a real man, now. Got two little girls and is happier than she’s ever been, I’m told. So I think what I done was maybe right. Not legal, but right.”

  I’d lived for a long time in the civilized world and been contaminated by its ways. Now I put myself back into the old ways I’d learned as a boy from the old men sitting in the store on Saturdays. You took care of yourself and your own. You asked nothing of anyone. You did what seemed right at the time and lived with the result. By his own code, King had done nothing wrong.

  I smiled. “I remember Rupe,” I said. “If you hadn’t killed him, he would have killed you, just for the hell of it. He tried it with me once, and he nearly succeeded. I figure Grampa Catfish was just what he deserved.”

  The rest of the visit was full of stories. Trees and animals I had known were dead but not forgotten. Places were changed, but King was not. When I left, he looked at me a bit anxiously.

  “Hope to die,” I repeated, and that was enough for him.

  I have kept my word. Now he is dead and gone, his place tied up tightly as a gift to the Nature Conservancy, and I can tell his last, best tale. It’s one that moderns won’t approve, but that’s neither here nor there. A day will come again, I suspect, when everyone must care for his own. King knew how. His generation knew how.

  I am not so certain about ours.

  RUNNER

  Can you remember when the world was populated by mostly knee-caps and shoes? When everyone was bigger and taller and stronger than you, and you were at the mercy of nature? It isn’t easy being a child, particularly when you have to deal with vicious adults....

  The sharp scent of his mother’s blood filled the boy’s nostrils. He seemed to taste it on the back of his tongue, and it made him want to gag. Tam gulped, trying to hold his breath, to quiet his heartbeat. His stepfather had quick hearing; that racing heart might betray him to Mark, which would mean his own death.

  Mom had seemed fond of Mark for a while, and she’d tried to make Tam like him too. Yet something about those frozen blue eyes had been terrifying. When Mark started beating Mom, Tam tried to get her to run away, but she refused.

  “It’s my house,” Ruth Sechrist said. “He’s spending my money, living on my inheritance. If we go, he’ll get everything, and we’ll have to hide and starve, because he’ll kill us if he catches us. I’ve never been a runner. “Then she’d looked thoughtful. “But you have to run, Tam, if anything happens to me.”

  Now Tam remembered, listening to Mark search the house. Mark knew Tam had seen him hiding Mama’s body, the boy felt sure. He knew Tam would tell what he knew, if he ever got the chance. Mark had to find him and kill him, if he could.

  Tam grinned fiercely. Mark hadn’t lived his life in this old house, creeping about the attics, finding the ducts installed when the house got its central heating. He probably didn’t even know there were boy-sized ducts above the vent grillwork.

  The boy sighed very gently and put his head on his knees, feeling the metal cold at his back. He was in his own grandfather’s house, in a place to which Mark had never come. Only when he had given up his search could Tam hope to creep out and run.

  Where? Grampa was long dead. There were cousins Mom had mentioned once, but the boy had only a vague idea of where they lived. He couldn’t guess whether they would welcome him or turn him away. Everyone knew Mark was his stepfather. Nobody knew that Mark was a murderer. He might be turned over to his Mom’s killer, even by kin.

  Shivering, the boy waited, while time crept past and the distant footsteps came closer. The murderer searched the big old house, one room at a time, taking care to lock each door behind him. Tam was surprised, as he heard the distant clunks of the old locks, that there were keys to those doors.

  How could he hear those steps, so far away, through the solid wood of the house? Tam felt the subtle vibrations as Mark searched Mom’s room, the linen closet, the guest bedroom, the nursery, the closet beside the stair.

  The vent through which Tam had climbed opened above the top landing; he’d reached it by crawling up the carvings on the tall chest that stood there. Had his efforts left any betraying scuffs?

  As Mark reached the top step, Tam held his breath, gripped his hands around his knees, and thought himself into another time and place, as Mom taught him to do long ago. If he was not here, then Mark could not possibly find him. He withdrew into the past, into another house where his Papa’s mother had lived, with a deck extending over a river; he sat there, dangling his feet, looking down into the tan-green water, where minnows flirted.

  One part of him kept track of Mark; the rest, the important part, relived that summer afternoon. When no sound, no vibration, no shift of the air spoke of another human presence, Tam allowed himself to drift back into his body. Even then he didn’t venture to disturb the silence.

  Mark might lie in wait in the house or the garden. Tam had no intention of falling into his hands. Mom had, in the past weeks, whispered to him when she came to tell him his bedtime story. Instead of the familiar tales, she began telling him how to protect himself. Neither of them mentioned Mark, but Tam knew.

  Mom spoke of hiding places in the house and mentioned the old fire-rope that led from the upstairs dressing closet to the ground. She reminded him of things he had forgotten.

  Now Tam wondered about the fire-rope. Did Mark know that the large, box-crammed closet even had a window, hidden behind all the rubbish it held? Or that it opened onto a long slope of roof? Below, the privet hedge grew close to the wall. There was good cover, if he could reach it.

  Now the boy listened, holding his breath and trying to still the thudding of his heart. He heard the faint swish of wind over the shingled roof and the nervous skitter of mouse-claws in the attic beyond the duct.

  Nobody was going to save him. Mom had kept repeating that. “You have to save yourself, Tam. He won’t let me phone or go to town, so I can’t get help. You have to get clean away and never look back.”

  Now he stretched cautiously, trying to get the circulation going in his cramped legs and arms. His back was stiff as he flattened himself along the metal tunnel, still silent, still careful, and wriggled toward the vent in the bedroom nearest the closet. He would have to go out into the hall. If Mark waited, hidden.... Tam shuddered.

  He reached the dead end of the duct and paused for a long time, listening. The room below was dark: it was impossible to see through the grill over the vent. If Mark was waiting there, he had to breathe, maybe to cough or fidget. There was no sound at all. Even the wind had died.

  Tam slithered to the edge of the vent again and peered down into the gloom below. Nothing. He reached down and twisted the catch, which gave with a sharp click. Startled, he paused to catch his breath before easing himself down into the box-like opening of the vent.

  There was no tall furniture below; he would have t
o drop nine feet to the thick carpet. He just hoped the thump of his arrival wouldn’t alert Mark. He held onto the bracket holding the grill in place, let himself down the length of his arms, and dropped to the floor. His knees took up the shock, and his sneakered feet made almost no sound, though a pall of dust rose from the carpet.

  He held his nose, stifling a sneeze.

  Again he waited, listening for any sound in the hall, but only a fresh gust of wind moaned around the old house. Tam crept across the floor on hands and knees. Lying flat, he peered under the loosely hung panel and saw a dim strip of the upstairs hall. Nobody there—not visible, anyway. The closet door creaked faintly as he opened it and again as he pushed it shut. Boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling, leaving only a crooked aisle for getting around. He moved between the musty ranks, smelling mothballs, old woolens, ancient paper, until he reached the window, which was covered by a torn green shade.

  The rope was coiled around a stout hook let into the window facing. The window itself seemed to be stuck. It must have been years since anyone opened it, and Tam strained until his back hurt. At last the thing moved with a doleful screech, and he pushed it halfway up before it stuck again.

  His heart galloping, Tam flung the coil of rope out and crawled out of the narrow opening. As he grasped the rope firmly and began to descend, the door of the closet crashed open and something ran headlong into the boxes, sending them tumbling—Mark, of course, but now it would take him a moment to get to the window.

  Tam went down the sloping roof and into the hedge so fast that he burned his hands. Once amid the tangle of privet, he found the gap made by stray dogs and dived to the other side. Then he ran toward the old cool-room built into the stone bank of the creek. That was where he had watched Mark take Mama, and he knew he had to have evidence.

  A shout of fury split the chill of early twilight, as Tam reached the steps and pushed open the thick door. Mama lay on the stone slab where pails of milk used to stand while the cream rose. He went to her side and touched her cheek. Cold. Very cold.

  Her blouse was splotched with blood; that familiar scent almost made him retch. He tore off a generous patch of cloth, complete with stab-wound and blood, and moved up the steps to reconnoiter. Nobody was in sight, but he could hear footfalls pounding down the stair inside the house. He had to move.

  The lane behind the barn led to Mr. Christie’s cow barn. It was overgrown and rough, except for the narrow path, but Tam almost flew along it. As he ran he heard cursing far behind. Mark must have checked Mama’s body and found the piece of blouse missing. The sound sent him faster along the track, to round the barn and speed up the drive toward the county road.

  Then he skidded to a stop. Mark would surely take the car and search all the way to town. It was five miles to walk, and he was already pretty winded. He looked at the Christie house, where one dim light burned in the kitchen window. Mr. Christie didn’t like Granddad, and he’d extended his dislike to the rest of the family. Tam had never spoken to him in his life. But he was a man, and a big one, if rather old. Surely he would care that Mama had been murdered.

  Dragging his weary feet, the boy approached the kitchen and rapped timidly on the door. There came the scrape of a chair and the sound of steps on uncarpeted wood. The door opened and Christie’s long face peered out. “Yes? Who’s there?” It took a moment before he glanced down. Tam was now shivering and almost incapable of speech.

  “Come in, boy. Come in and sit down and tell me why you’re breakin’ down my door so late.” He gestured toward the kitchen, and Tam crept inside and dropped into a chair.

  “I...I...,” he gasped. Then, unable to speak, he held out the blood-soaked cloth he had carried so far.

  “My God, boy, what you got there?” Christie took the strip in his big, calloused hands and stared down. Then he turned on another light, this one much brighter than the first, and stared at it again.

  “Mama’s...dead. Mark...killed her,” Tam managed to say at last. “He’d kill me too, if he could...catch me.” His heart was settling down, and his breath was coming more easily.

  Christie looked up. “You’re Gamble Forbes’s grandson?”

  Tam sighed. “Yessir. Mama’s—was—his daughter.”

  “Hmm. This Mark fellow. Your step-dad, I take it.”

  “Yessir.”

  Christie shivered suddenly, as if a rabbit had walked over his grave. “You get in the car, boy. We got to go to town.”

  As they pulled out into the road, another car came barreling down the asphalt, twin points of light piercing the darkness. “Too fast for a road like this,” Christie mumbled.

  “It’s Mark. I bet you it’s Mark,” Tam whispered.

  Christie pulled out behind the other vehicle, heading the same way, much more slowly. Before they’d gone a mile, the car, now far ahead, braked, its taillights blooming scarlet, and whipped into a tight turn.

  “Get down!” Christie said. He gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles looked pale in the light from the dash. “He’s checkin’ us out.”

  The headlights went off, on again, off, as if signaling. Christie pulled to a halt beside the other car, while Tam crammed himself deep into the darkness beneath the dash. “You got problems?” Christie asked, his voice deep and untroubled.

  “I’m looking for my son. The boy’s run away, and his mother is just about out of her mind.” Mark sounded convincing, even to Tam. “You see a kid about eleven come along the road some time around dusk?”

  Christie rubbed his chin. “Seems as if I heard steps pass the house just before I sat down to supper. Didn’t think much about it, though. Might have been him, I guess.”

  Tam could almost see Mark’s face, the square chin, the chilly eyes, the ingratiating smile that had taken in smarter people than Mr. Christie. Mama, for instance.

  But Christie said nothing more. Mark passed them, turned in the road, and headed toward town again.

  “I guess we better take the turn up ahead and go to Lampkin,” Christie said. “The sheriff’s there, anyway. That bastard’s goin’ to have everybody in Stewartsville lookin’ for you. We got to get that piece of cloth to somebody who’ll look into this.”

  Tam scrootched out from his hiding place and sat again, staring at the craggy profile. “I thought you didn’t like my family, Mr. Christie. Why’re you helping me?”

  “Your granddad wouldn’t let me court Ruth,” he said. “If he had’ve, I’d of been your daddy. Let’s move, son. Anybody who’s killed Ruthie has got to pay.”

  Tam heaved a long breath of relief. He kept a sharp eye on the road, wondering if Mark would turn back again, but they saw nothing before they took the Lampkin turn and set off on the twenty-mile drive to the county seat.

  They were speeding along between ranks of tall trees, through the state forest, when Tam had a sudden thought. “Mr. Christie,” he said, touching the old man’s elbow. Mr. Christie, “I think you better stop and let me out. I think—I think he’s probably turned again and is after us. And he’s dangerous.”

  Christie didn’t put on the brakes, but he let the car glide to a halt. “You go out the window so the dome light won’t go on,” he said. “I got the same feelin’...he’s back there, coming hell bent for leather. You go hide, and I’ll try to make it to Lampkin.

  “Here, you take half that cloth and I’ll take the other half, so’s there’s blood on both. That way, each of us’ll have proof, if he gets one of us. We’re just east of the historical marker. Don’t you go gettin’ lost, you hear?”

  Then Tam was out of the window, standing beside the road. Christie looked at him, shrugged off his wool jacket, and shoved it out to him. “You need this more than I do. Now skedaddle.”

  Tam wrapped the warm jacket around him, finding that it came down almost to his ankles. He stumbled across the shoulder and into the bushes fringing the wood. The ground was damp, but he found a spot covered with pine needles, under a huge pine and walled in by a huckleberry thicket. He c
overed himself, head to heels, with the thick wool and closed his eyes.

  Then he opened them again, thinking hard. If Mark caught up with Christie, he might ram the old car and take the evidence from the older man. Mark was strong. He could do it, if he wanted to. Somebody needed to stop him, to give Christie time to get to Lampkin and hand over the cloth to the sheriff.

  There was nobody else. Just Tam. And it was his mother lying dead back there. Sighing, the boy crawled out of the thicket, leaving the betraying jacket behind, and headed for the highway. As he reached the shoulder, twin beams shot over the low hill and pinpointed him in their glare. Mark, almost certainly.

  Tam clenched his fists in his pockets and drew a long breath. He had to stand here, his body hiding the marble historical marker. If that was somebody else, maybe they’d stop and help. If it was Mark—well, if this was what it took to avenge Mama, that was all right, too. He didn’t stir as the car bulleted toward him, swerved to the shoulder, and crunched him against the deep-set marker, which screamed against the metal as if voicing Tam’s own pain and terror.

  Then it was all over, and he was rising above the tumble of broken marble and crumpled metal. A flicker of fire began to show its tongue beneath the hood, and the drifting boy could see the trapped man struggling to free himself. Then Tam laughed, though he had no voice.

  The engine had rammed right back into Mark’s lap. He was trapped there, and he would burn. There was no other car within sight, Tam saw as he rose higher and higher above the trees.

  “Mama?” he thought into the cold emptiness of the sky. “Mama, I killed him for you.”

  There was no reply. It didn’t matter; he had done what he wanted to do, and what happened now was not terribly important, whatever it might be that came after you died.