Strange Doin's in the Pine Hills

by Ardath Mayhar

  I stayed in that tree all night. I wasn’t any threat to the Whachmacallits any longer, but they didn’t know that, and I did have a gun. It was obvious that they knew what guns could do, and I didn’t want any accidents like the one that had killed that dairy hand.

  When first light touched the treetops to the east, I went down, stiff and sore, and wondering what sort of madness had put me up there in the first place. Rupe came out of his nest in the bushes and wagged alongside as I headed for home.

  I wondered what Becky-Sue would say when we came home with our story. Then I grinned into the dark woods of my own place, which were uncut, except for carefully chosen firewood, for generations. They might visit me here, sometime, wanting real forest instead of cutover crap.

  Whistling, I went toward the lane leading home, Rupe dancing along ahead of me as if he was a young dog again. We both felt better, I think, than we had for days.

  Becky-Sue would be proud of us.

  KILLIN’ FENCE

  Good fences make good neighbors, Robert Frost said. Fence lines sometimes cause murders in East Texas, because land is a sacred thing to us. The first person I ever knew who was murdered died over a disputed fence line.

  The fence glinted in the staring sunlight, its barbs tipped with savage points of light. It was a tight fence, as taut-strung as the men who stood, one on either side, staring across it.

  “Three feet,” said the tall man. “Three feet of my land. It’ll come out of your hide, Sam, before I have done.”

  Sam shifted his weight uneasily, tucking a thumb in his worn leather belt. “Aw, Vince, come on! I split the difference, good as I could. What can you do when two surveyors say two different things? I just went halfway between ’em. If you’d been well enough to help build it, you’d have done the same thing, and no hard feelin’s.”

  The taller man grunted, frowning in the shadow of his sweaty felt hat. “Bud Pearcy says different. He told me you moved the stakes yourself. Told me what you said too—so don’t try to talk so sweet and reasonable.”

  “If you’ll listen to Bud Pearcy now, you must’ve been sicker than I knew or you let on,” interrupted Sam. “That greasy little snake’ll make trouble just for fun, and you know it. Never was any feudin’ around here, neighbor or family, that that squirt wasn’t nosin’ around in. Vince, we’ve been neighbors for twenty-two years right here, and never had any trouble at all until now. You’ve come to me when you needed somethin’, and I’ve come to you. Are you goin’ to let Bud put a spoke in both our wheels—over three feet of land that might be yours, but might just as well be mine?”

  But Vince squinted his pale eyes and laid his hand on the top strand of wire. The sparks of light danced on the barbs as he shook it.

  “Be damned to you. Be damned to your lies,” he said, and he turned and walked into the woods-path behind him.

  Sam shook his head as he watched his old friend go. Slowly, he pulled on his warped leather-palmed gloves, wiped his forehead on his sleeve and climbed back onto the tractor.

  He was a puzzled man. Because of a man he thought of as “po’ white trash,” here he was about to get good and mad at a man for whom he had great respect.

  I was sure I was doin’ Vince a good turn, he thought. I bought all the wire and cut the posts off my own place and put up that fence to stay a while, without askin’ him for anything, just because he had so much trouble with his heart and I felt like he could use the help. Didn’t even ask him to buy staples. Why I let that sneakin’ Bud help build it, I don’t know.

  He coughed in the dust raised by the hay rake.

  Why the old-timey surveyors used trees for line markers, I don’t understand, he mused. Didn’t they know the trees would die, one day, and leave all sorts of stumps and root-holes that might be the one and might not? When Vince decided we needed a new line fence, I tried to get him to stick to the old line, but some college-kid county agent talked him into havin’ the whole thing surveyed again. Pure D waste. And then the idiot of a surveyor couldn’t take the old stump for a mark. Nossir, had to go and decide the old survey had used the wrong stump for a marker forty years ago.

  I just couldn’t see takin’ six whole feet of land off Vince’s place, even if it was his own doin’. So I did the best I could. Would’ve been fine, too, if old Bud hadn’t come mooching around, crying for work.

  The long line of dust swept behind him, round and round the field, as he combed the tangled hay into neat rows for the automatic baler. The sun basted the field with a sear of haze and shimmer, and the crickets zipped off in a brittle spray before the tractor. Sam jounced easily in the seat, his corded wrists and heavy shoulders running with sweat which, combined with the breeze of moving, kept him reasonably cool. But when Bud Pearcy stepped from the woods at the far edge of the field and waved for him to stop, he began to warm up in the region of his collar.

  “What you want, Pearcy?” he demanded, cutting the throttle so he could hear the dirty little man when he spoke.

  “Well, Sam, I reckoned I ought to come and tell you—warn you, like. Seems you really got Vince riled about that fence. He’s plumb unreasonable. I come by his house—Mrs. Vince promised my woman some dresses she’d done with—and Vince come in, all hot and bothered, swearin’ that for two cents he’d shoot you. I tried my best to smooth him out, and his wife, she done her best to calm him down, but the more I talked, the madder he got. So I reckoned I better run over here and let you know, so’s you can steer clear of him until he cools off some. You’re too smart to let name-callin’ and cussin’ and carryin’ on like that get you down.

  “I told Vince, I said, ‘Sam Bullard’s not the man to make trouble. He’ll see things reasonable, if anybody will. You just go and talk things over with him, quiet like, and I’ll bet you’ll be friends again, right off’.”

  “But he got to ravin’ about how you was always comin’ after him to help load cattle or get in the hay when it looked like rain, and how seldom he ever called on you, and that it seemed to him he’d been livin’ for twenty years right next to a bum and just now come to see it.”

  “Course, Mrs. Vince, she reminded him of all the times you got up out of bed to drive him to the hospital, when he’d have those heart spells, but seemed like he didn’t remember at all. It’s real funny,” and the little man heaved a greasy sigh, “how bein’ sick will change a man and make him so ungrateful and forgetful.”

  Sam had listened silently, but his neck grew redder and his face was mottled with dark patches of blood, under his fair skin.

  “Bud,” he said in a mild tone, “You’d better get your tail off this place and don’t ever come back, even if all your brats take scarlet fever at once and your house is on fire to boot. I don’t like the looks of you or the smell of you, and I sure as hell don’t like the sound of you. Git!”

  Pearcy looked up, startled and unbelieving. “But, Sam, don’t you understand? Vince is goin’ to be comin’ along any minute now with his shotgun, aimin’ to kill you dead. I’m doin’ you a big favor. You oughtent to be so ungrateful as to chase me off like a yellow dog!”

  Sam spat into the dust by Pearcy’s foot. “I’ve got a gun too,” he said softly. “And I’m not too much agin shootin’ skunks. So git!”

  And as the little man crept away into the woods, Sam unhooked the tractor from the rake and headed for the house in a cloud of dust and grasshoppers. Bud Pearcy watched him go and grinned his foxy grin as he slipped into a thicket, where he would have a ringside seat.

  “Go right on, Mr. High-and-Mighty,” he whispered. “Git your gun. Load it up. One of you bastards is goin’ to be drawin’ flies before night. Always lookin’ down at me, feelin’ so kind and holy about givin’ me worn-out things for my folks to wear. Hatin’ to give me a little work, so’s I can buy groceries. Go right ahead and kill each other. I’ll be watchin’.”

  When Sam returned, he hooked up to the hay rake again and went about his work, but laid across the gearbox of the tractor was a loa
ded shotgun. Time strung out, long and thin, as the afternoon wore away. The man in the thicket dozed off. The man on the tractor drove with one eye on the windrow and one on the woods path.

  And when the shadows had begun to stretch out across the field from the west woods, Vince came walking from the east and stood at the fence.

  Sam shut off the ignition and stepped down from the tractor in one motion. With the gun in the crook of his arm, he sauntered toward his neighbor. “’Lo, Vince,” he said. “Going hunting?”

  The man whitened under his tan. “You know why I’ve got this gun, Sam,” he said. “Bud told me you threatened me, and I’m not one to stay at home and wait for somebody to come after me. If you want to kill me, well here I am. You don’t have to go lookin’ for me.”

  Sam drew a long breath. “Bud was here too. Told me that you were gunnin’ for me. Can’t you see that he’s been playin’ with both of us? He’s too lazy and too mean to amount to a hill of burnt beans, but he’s dead jealous of anybody who gets out and digs and accumulates something. Go home and put away the gun, Vince.” Sam turned and headed for the tractor.

  Some instinct made him stop in his tracks, turning slowly. The shotgun was aimed dead for his middle; Vince’s finger was on the trigger. Sam bowed his head and waited, as the finger tightened, bit by bit.

  Then it fell away from the trigger, as a look of amazement crossed Vince’s face, mixed with sudden agony. He hunched as he went to his knees, his hands pressed to the center of his chest. His head went back, his pale eyes wide in his suddenly colorless face. He stared up at Sam.

  Sam dropped his own gun and hurried forward, his hands outstretched. Before he could reach the fence, Vince gave a gasp. His right hand reached toward his old friend, but it found instead the barbed wire. He caught at it, in a last spasm.

  The entire strand hummed tautly along the length of the fence. The grip loosed, and the hand fell limp from the wire. The light of the sun, setting red in the west, shone along the length of the fence, dyeing the metal the color of blood.

  CRAWFISH

  Jealousy is a dreadful fault, and ignorance is the catalyst that causes nasty effects. If Browning’s “My Last Duchess” had lived in East Texas, this might have been what happened to her.

  It’s chill down there in the river, I reckon. She don’t know, though. Can’t know. Them big, innocent brown eyes are starin’ away down there, unless the crawfish...God, I wish I didn’t know nothin’ about crawfish.

  She’s got this soft white skin, like to a baby rabbit or some baby animal, sort of. It shined, even through the muddy old river water. I could see her, shinin’ and shinin’, as she sank. Her hair moved all out loose on the water, dark and curling in the moonlight. It kept moving in the water, all the way down...them crawfish....

  She was a tramp, I tell you. Everybody knowed it, I reckon. Smiling and smiling at everybody went by. I moved way down in the bottom-lands, ’count of that. No fancy traveling salesmen comes down here. No Avon women selling damnation. No men in cars and men in trucks that’d look at her when she worked out in the yard. Bending over, showing her legs. Tramp, just tramp!

  Must of been born that way. She was just fourteen when I hitched up with her and hadn’t had time to learn nothing about men then. Just naturally bad, flirting when we went into town, smilin’ at them tellers in the bank, in their white shirts and city suits. Looking with eyes of lust and fornication at them. First time, when I got her home, I beaten the living daylights outen her.

  Way she cried and took on, you’d of reckoned she was crazy. Her Pa never had no gumption with his women-folks. Let ’em have their own way clear to ruination, seems like. His woman even had money to spend, when she felt like it. So I guess Mattie wasn’t all the way to blame for her sinful ways.

  Still, beating didn’t do no good—not to last. She’d go round with her head down and her eyes on the ground, like is fitten, for a while. Then she’d see something, maybe just a flower or a bird or some such sinful uselessness. All that decency would be gone in a minute, and she’d be laughin’ to herself. And when she laughed, any man inside a mile would be starin’ at her like they knowed her already.

  I come home one evenin’ and she was full of talk. Met me at the door, jabbering fit to make me deaf. I slapped her a couple of times and quieted her down, like as my Pa used to my Ma, iffen she said more than is fitten for a woman. She didn’t say nothin’ else, just slapped the supper on the table and went off in the back to the garden and started pullin’ weeds. I looked round to make sure she wasn’t meetin’ nobody, afore I set down to eat.

  Next day, Miz Rogers, down the road, met me at the end of the row and asked me, real sly like, who’d been visitin’ Mattie yesterday. Seemed like I got hot all over—it just seemed to rise up from my feet clean to my head, and I was so mad I could of busted. Miz Rogers—she looked at me kind of scared-like and took off afore I could answer.

  It was away before noon, but I took the mules in and unhitched. When I got to the house, she was gigglin’ in the kitchen. I crept up, real sly like, and peeped in. They wasn’t no one there. She was crazy, clean crazy, and a whore too.

  I slammed the screen open till the spring busted. My head was like to bust too, with the blood poundin’ and poundin’. She looked round and turned white and funny-lookin’. After she picked herself up from where I knocked her, I started tellin’ her what she was. The Whore of Babylon was nice to what I called her.

  I slapped all her lies back into her teeth. She was gabblin’ about flat tires and women with thirsty children, but she quit that soon enough. She wasn’t so all-fired pretty after I got through with her. Her nose was all lopsided and her eyes was so swole you couldn’t see what color they was. I figgered, Hell, I might as well of married a homely woman, iffen I was goin’ to have to keep mine all bunged up to keep the men away from her.

  Next day I went down to see Pa. Didn’t let on what was goin’ on, but Pa, he’s read the Bible and helled around some, so he guessed pretty close. He told me he knowed of some land that was for rent, down close to the river. Said iffen I wanted, he could find somebody to take over my place and finish my crop. It was still early in the spring, so’s I had time to make a crop down there in the wet land.

  So we moved. There was a fair cabin on the place. Not fancy... she started sayin’ something about havin’ to carry water so fur, but I just had to look at her mean by then, and she shut right up. I broke a garden patch, and she put in a nice garden, but seemed like she didn’t care iffen it growed or not. She didn’t put no more flowers round the front neither, so’s I knowed she’d done it, t’other place, just to bend over and show her legs to the men on the road. She didn’t fix up the cabin none, either. Just went around like she was listenin’ to somethin’ inside her head. Her Maw come, a time or two, but I didn’t care about havin’ her come round givin’ Mattie fancy notions, so I got rid of her quick as I could.

  Got so I hated to come in after finishin’ work. I’d stay out till dark, near, or go night-fishin’ with the niggers down the river. She kind of looked at me like I was somethin’ scary. Give me funny feelin’s, the way she looked at me.

  No sir, when I took her where she couldn’t go smilin’ at the men and flirtin’ all over town on Saturday no more, she kind of dried up. Never even tried to talk to me no more. I might even of let her, so’s to liven up the quiet some, but she kept her lips tight shut over her broke tooth and let the mosquitoes buzz.

  Her eyes got queerer an’ queerer. They was big to start with, but it got so that they was deep as the pool down at the river and just as full of strange things. I’d go in at night and she’d watch me, starin’ and starin’ like I was a bug or a snake. She was crazy, I tell you.

  Anyways, one evening I come in dead tired. Crop was laid by and I’d been fishin’ all day, but it was so hot it like to of took your breath. They wasn’t no air down there, ’count of the woods just closed in all round like walls and kept it out.

  While I w
as eatin’ supper, she was standin’ by the wash-pan, waitin’ for the dishes. All of a sudden, she turned round with the meat knife in her hand and started for me. Iffen I hadn’t of looked up, she’d of killed me where I set. Seems like, when she done that, everything just come together, like. I took her round the neck and shut my hands tight and when I opened ’em up she was dead. My folks has always been mighty proud and upstandin’ people, round here. And Pa—why it’d kill Pa iffen they hung me over a woman. So I took her through the woods down to the river.

  I could hear the snakes slidin’ off in front of me, while I carried her down the path. The ’gators was bellowin’, and the moon was comin’ up full. It was right hard gettin’ her down the bank to the deep water. She was right smart tall, if she was so slim. I got her down, though, and tied on some weights offen the nets we’d been settin’ that day. They wasn’t too heavy, but nobody never come there no way. So I put her down in the water. And she sunk slow, and the moon made her go down shinin’ and shinin’, real soft, like a dream.

  Wasn’t till the next day I started thinkin’ about them crawfish. Iffen you never seen a body that’s been et by crawfish, you don’t want to. It’s a sight to turn a goat’s stomach, let alone a man’s. I kept thinkin’ about her down there, with them things eatin’ out her eyes, nibblin’ on that soft skin. Seems like I couldn’t rightly stand it. For two days I held myself down. I took out and went with the niggers down the river and never come back till the morning of the third day. This morning...seems like forever.

  Something drug me down there to the big pool. It’s like I couldn’t help myself at all. And when I got there, I couldn’t see nothin’. I would of thought she’d of riz some by then. Seems like I had to see what they’d done to her, though. Thinkin’ was a lot worse than knowin’. I took a sweetgum sapling and started dedgin’ around in the deep water, wadin’ out as fur as I could. I didn’t want to, couldn’t hardly stand it, but something made me keep pokin’ and feelin’ around with that pole, till it caught her.