Strange Doin's in the Pine Hills

by Ardath Mayhar

  She looked up at him, eyes sparkling black fire, and a tight little smile twitched at her lip. Somehow, the look of that smile gave me the shivers, but I didn’t mention it to Mel. He’d have hoorawed me about it. He didn’t think any woman who ever lived was worth the trouble of strangling.

  He thunked her down on her feet again, and she stood, hands on hips, looking at him. Up and down she surveyed him, then me. Then she said, “I’m a loner and a maverick. I thought maybe you two might be a couple more. But I was wrong. Low-life, ignorant thieves, that’s all. Well, you might have had my help, but now you won’t. And when Lena McCarver isn’t for you, she’s against you.”

  Mel laughed that booming laugh that didn’t sound cheerful at all. Then he said, “Fix supper, woman, and shut up.”

  She smiled again, that tight little twitch of her lip, and moved to the cook stove to add wood. When the skillet was sizzling with bacon, Mel and I stretched out in the two fair-sized chairs in the room. The rain was chattering away on the tin roof, and it felt mighty good to be inside and warm.

  When she put mugs of steamy liquid into our hands, we drank the contents, even if they did smell and taste strongly of mint. After a while, she slapped a couple of heavy plates onto the pine table and said, “Come eat. Much good may it do you.” Then she started for the door at the side of the room. Mel stood up and went after her, raising his right hand to swat her across the face.

  She never paused, but her right hand moved, the fingers making a funny weaving motion. Mel’s hand stuck in the air, about six inches short of the spot where she had been.

  “Take care, boy,” she breathed. “I’ve been right patient with you. You raise your hand to me again, and you’ll wish the FBI had you in some nice, safe prison. I’m going to my room to read, and you’ll do well to dig out your manners and dust them off. Lena McCarver may not look it now, but I was reared a lady of good family, used to civility.” She went through the door, leaving it open behind her.

  Mel stood looking at his hand. For a half-minute it stayed stuck in mid-air; then he was able to sort of reel it in. He wiggled his fingers with a frown on his face. “Feels numb-like,” he said. “Halfway between how a foot that’s been asleep feels when it comes back to life, and the way it feels when you get your finger on a bare wire. What the hell did that old broad do to me?”

  I pulled back a chair and sat down to pile my place with eggs and bacon and hot biscuits. “Leave her alone, Mel,” I choked, between bites. “That old biddy gives me a funny feeling. She’s got more on the ball, somehow, than you’d think. I feel it in my bones. Might be, we’d have done better out in the woods.”

  He snorted, but he sat down to eat with a thoughtful look on his ugly mug. When we were full as ticks, we opened out our bedrolls on the floor. Early as it was, we were hardly able to keep our eyes open, what with the full meal and the warm room. Before I lay down, I looked through the crack in Lena’s door.

  She was sitting at a little table with a coal-oil lamp in the middle. Her nose was almost touching the pages of a big, thick book, as she read, her lips moving as she moved her left index finger down the lines. Her right hand was held over the table, and she was making some sort of pattern, holding her fingers just so, crooking and wiggling them just so, until the shadow against the far wall was enough to make your skin squinch up into goose-pimples.

  “What’s she doing?” Mel asked, as I crept away from the door to my blankets.

  “Just reading,” I mumbled. But I never saw anybody read in just that way, ever before in my life. As I drifted off to sleep, the crack of light from her door seemed to grow wider and longer until it swallowed up the world...but by then, I was asleep.

  The next morning was still gray and damp, and Mel was mean as a mangy hound. But I noticed he didn’t snap at the old lady near as bad as he had before. Now and again he’d open his mouth with a snarly look at its corners, but she’d slant those eyes at him, and he’d just poke in more breakfast or a cigarette. Still, I could tell she was getting to him. His eyes were getting narrower and narrower and turning that dishwater gray that meant he was going to do something that might be dumb but that would surely be nasty.

  About the time we were finishing eating, there came a scratch at the door, and Lena let in a piebald tomcat with ears so mauled in old fights that he barely had any at all. She put a pan of scraps on the floor behind the stove for him, and he disappeared into the corner and started giving them a fit, growling at any foot that came too near. Mel glanced over that way, then away, and I crossed my fingers. I found out the hard way about bothering old ladies’ cats.

  None of my preacher Pa’s sermons ever taught me a thing, but old Mrs. Harrison’s whaling with a stick of stove wood gave me a lot or respect for old ladies and cats.

  I nudged Mel and whispered, “Let it be, Mel. It’s not going to help out a bit, messing with that cat.”

  He just glared at me and went to the door to look out into the dismal day. By that time, the old dame was done with her dishes and had refilled the kettle and tidied up the kitchen. She looked around, nodded, then went off into the unfinished part of the house.

  Mel grinned a wicked grin and eased over toward the stove. He nearly jumped out of his skin when her sharp voice said at his elbow, “’Round ten o’clock, Boze Blair will be coming out with my month’s groceries. I hire him to bring me what I need, regular. If you two don’t want to be seen, I’d suggest you hide in the smokehouse or the privy. If you kill Boze, his wife will have somebody out combing the woods for him, and here’s where they’ll look first. It’s nine-ten now, so you’d better be thinking where to go.”

  I said, “It’s mighty nasty out. Why don’t we hide in the other part of the house? At least, it’s got a roof.”

  She gave a little whinnying laugh. “Now that’s a plumb good idea,” she gasped. “You go right ahead and hide there. Just watch the clock, and about five to ten you go right in that door there.”

  I really didn’t like her laugh, but I couldn’t let on in front of Mel. We opened the door, and Mel sort of fooled the cat into going through. When the time came, we went in too, to find the critter sitting on a dusty mantel, looking down at us. We weren’t a bit too soon, because we heard a truck coming up the drive just after.

  Mel muttered through the door, “Remember, you wave him in here so we can hear every word. If anything makes him suspicious, we’ll blow you both to Kingdom Come. Don’t forget it.”

  She didn’t answer, but we could see through the cracks that she was doing what he said. A scraggy old codger mooched up the steps with a big grocery box and shoved the door open with his toe. We could see glimpses of him around the door, as he set it on the table and reached for the cup of tea she handed him.

  “Lots on the radio about the robbery up to Hampden,” she said. “Were you there?”

  “Nope,” he grunted. “I come along about ten minutes too late for it. They hid out for a while, them fellers thinks, out in this direction. Minty worried some about their coming in on you, but I told her that even a bank robber wasn’t going to risk the McCarver place, not to mention tackling you!” He cackled a high-pitched laugh. “Now they don’t have a Chinaman’s notion where them crooks is. Blocked all the roads, never thinking they might have gone ahead afoot. Fool town folks!”

  Though he drank the tea and was very polite, I felt that Boze was happy to go down the steps to his truck, after Lena had paid him with crumpled bills from a leather wallet green with mildew. I turned to tell Mel that it was safe to go back in the kitchen...but he was busy.

  Somehow he’d caught that tomcat and had his big hand around its neck, squeezing bit by bit. The cat’s pink tongue was out between its teeth, and it was struggling mightily to free its hind feet from Mel’s other hand, twisting and bucking in his fist like a fresh-caught trout.

  Mel’s eyes were bright and happy, and he was enjoying the critter’s desperation as much as he ever enjoyed anything. I was opening my mouth to call him ba
ck to his senses when a cracked cup that had been sitting on one of the windowsills just upped and came sailing across the room and shattered against Mel’s jawbone. As he stood, surprised, a glob of something black and sticky-looking oozed out of the fireplace and plopped across his wrist—the one holding the cat’s hind feet.

  Mel gave a yell, and his hand seemed to drop, limp, as the cat gave a heave and set to tearing Mel up with his claws. All at once, Mel had a handful of mad razorblades, and I could see little drops of his blood flying through the air every time the cat made a swipe at him. He tried to drop the cat, but now the cat had him, and it wasn’t letting go. It climbed him as if he were a tree, leaving blood all the way; then it skittered across the mantel and made an impossible leap to the open window and out.

  I went over and tried to mop Mel up with the bandana I had worn over my face in the robbery. Then I heard a giggle and turned. There stood Lena in the door, bent over, she was laughing so hard. Mel started toward her with murder in his eye, but she raised her hand and made a funny sign with her fingers.

  It was like being caught in plastic...or like being a fly frozen into an ice cube that wasn’t cold.

  I tried my damndest to move, even if it was just to fall flat, but it was as if the air had congealed around me. My eyeballs could swivel, my lids close, but that was all of me that would move. Mel, directly in my line of vision, was in the same condition. My heart seemed to have slowed down to a leisurely ta-thump, ta-thump, and I was breathing so slowly it wasn’t even noticeable.

  The old woman stopped laughing and stood straight, close to Mel. If she’d been a couple of feet taller, she’d have been eyeball to eyeball with him, but as it was the top of her head came about to his second coat button. She smiled that tight smile, and her slanty eyes were bright in the gloom of the cobwebby room.

  “It’s been a long time since I did a really big sticky-spell,” she said. “Had to study up. But it’s working fine, now isn’t it?”

  She walked around us, and I could feel the sharpness of her eyes like thumbtacks in my back. I could hear her rummaging around in the room behind us, and cold sweat began to ooze down my back and neck. She had us cold, and there was no way of knowing what in tunket she intended to do.

  Finally she came back into sight. She was carrying two big rag dolls with yarn hair and shoe-button eyes. They seemed to be clean and well kept, but their calico dresses were faded so much I knew they must be mighty old. She set the dolls on the mantel where the cat had been, propped against the mirror over it so they would sit up. Then she wiggled her fingers again, and I found my feet moving just enough so I was standing fully facing the fireplace.

  She moved away—into the kitchen it seemed like, and was gone for a few seconds. Then she was back, right in front of me. She carried a footstool in one hand and a little bowl in the other. She plunked the stool down and stepped up on it, so her face was just below mine. Then she dipped her finger into the bowl, and I could see something blue on its tip, as she reached up for my forehead. I could feel the tickle as she drew a circle on my skin and several shapes or patterns inside it.

  Then she got down and moved the stool, and I knew the same thing was being done to Mel. When she had finished, I could hear her pottering around putting everything away. Meanwhile, I felt as if all my insides had turned to water. I don’t think I could have stood, even if she had turned me loose. Waiting for her to make her move was worse than anything she could have done...I thought.

  After a bit, I heard her come back into the ruined room. She didn’t come where I could see her, but I heard her muttering and sort of singing, back there by the window. It got cold, all of a sudden, as if a blue norther had hit full force. My hands and feet went completely numb; then my body began to go numb too. Even the insulated hunting jacket I wore seemed to do no goot at all.

  Things went sort of dim, as if my eyes weren’t working right, and the gray light in the room wavered, as if thicker clouds were going over fast. My eyes felt funnier and funnier, and then they stopped seeing at all. In the blackness, I felt as if I were moving very fast down a tunnel, but in a little the light began to come back again.

  I could see the window...but from an odd angle. I could see the old woman standing there by the empty casement. I could see Mel, frozen like a statue. I could see ME! For a minute I couldn’t tell what had happened. I sat there, stunned; then I tried to move my eyelids. But from the way I felt, I didn’t have eyelids anymore. I slanted my gaze down as far as I could without an eyeball that moved. Two rag doll legs stuck out in front of me, with black cloth shoes on blobby feet.

  Lena looked up at the mantel where I sat and grinned, a real, wide, wicked grin. Then she reached up and took me down and tucked me under one arm. As I moved, I could see that she had Mel under the other arm. She took us into the kitchen and put us where we could see the cook stove and partway down the road from the small window. We seemed to be on a high shelf, and I felt the bulk of something that seemed to be a book digging into my side. THAT book, I thought, with a shudder.

  “I don’t want to be too mean to you boys,” Lena cackled. “Don’t want you to be too bored and unhappy. This way, you can see what goes on—what there is of it—and maybe you’ll do some thinking. I’m going to get enough work out of you to pay for all my trouble.”

  I could hear her tiny feet pattering back through the door, then returning—followed by the clunk, clunk of heavy feet in thick boots. They moved across the kitchen and out onto the porch, tap-tap-tap; CLUNK, CLUNK, CLUNK!

  Through the window, I watched them move down the road toward the woods. I carried a crosscut saw over my shoulder, and Mel had two axes in one hand and wedges in the other. A bottle of oil stuck out of his hip pocket.

  She went in front. One hand was in the air above her shoulder, beating time. Our feet, following obediently, kept to her beat.

  We sit on the shelf, Mel and I. Sometimes she moves us around. Sometimes she plays with us as if she were still ten years old.

  Mostly we sit. And think.

  THAT OLD BIDDY

  The young tend to think we old people are weak and helpless. Well, we may not be a strong as once we were, but what we lose in strength we gain in meanness.

  Denny and me was a team, you know? We got away with murder in school, stealin’ other kids’ lunch money, shopliftin’ from downtown stores, muggin’ old women. By the time we got expelled, we was shaking down old folks for their Social Security checks. When one of ’em killed himself on account of not having eatin’ money, things got hot for us. We decided to take a hike until it was safe to come back to the city.

  Denny had a grandpa lived out in the boonies, and we hitched a ride part way, then stole a car and drove up in style. The shanty was nothin’ much, and the grandpa was on his last legs, not able to run us off. The little chicken-run town was too small for much, but we kept our hands in by sneakin’ into houses at night and stealin’ what we could.

  Made quite a stir, I tell you. They hadn’t had a robbery in so long that nobody ever locked a door at night. The only law was a constable that lived twenty miles away, and that poor fool couldn’t find his own tail with both hands and a road map.

  Denny and me had a high-heeled old time, you better believe. Got so the folks even started lockin’ their cars, which they’d never done in their lives unless they visited the city. We had all them little old widows scared out of their drawers.

  We’d dumped the stolen car in the river. No way we’d be dumb enough to drive it, when there had to be notices out on the license number. No, we just “borrowed” cars at night, because a lot of folks still couldn’t remember to lock ’em up. We’d drive into Linton, go to a picture show, buy what we needed at the all-night grocery store, and mail the extra bucks to my Uncle Ned, who would hold the money for us till we could risk going back.

  Things went along, sweet and smooth, for the better part of a year. At least, they went fine as far as business was concerned. We just about died of
boredom. There was no—I mean NO—action. No girls, no booze (the place was dry and intended to stay that way), not even a poker game. We got so desperate we even went fishin’, for god’s sake!

  We kept asking Grandpa about the local folks, of course, but he was so ga-ga he didn’t remember things except by fits and starts. It took us ten months to find out about Miz Biddy Livingstone.

  We’d seen the overgrown driveway that went to her house, of course, but it wasn’t any different from the ones going to chicken farms or hay meadows. Who’d have thought there was a big house behind all those trees, and inside lived the only really rich human being around Cricket Hollow?

  Understand, we didn’t rush into anything. We might be young, but we wasn’t fools. We found out everything we could from the old man, which wasn’t much. Then we sneaked through the woods and watched that house, takin’ our time, figurin’ out what she did every day and when.

  The way she lived, you’d think she was dirt poor. At sunrise she was out feeding her chickens and the old mule that lived in a patch behind her house. She had no more use for that mule than we did, but she fed it as if it still pulled a plow. About nine or so she’d come out of the house again and work in her vegetable garden. Then she’d check her fences or cut wood in her wood-lot or some such, though according to grandpa she could’ve hired everything done or moved to town and lived without workin’ at all. Crazy old biddy!

  She wasn’t very big, though she was sort of square-built, like she’d been fairly strong in her day. Her hair had gone so thin we could see the sun shining off her scalp when she went outside without her big straw hat. She was about five-foot nothin’, and everybody knows old women are pretty weak, with brittle bones. We figured that if we went about it smart and sneaky, we could get into her house and find her stash of cash without her ever knowin’ it until too late.

  Still, we hadn’t got where we were by being careless. We acted normal as anything, going to town for the old man in daytime, pretendin’ we’d come to take care of him since he got so feeble. Folks got used to us and even seemed to think a lot of us for doin’ that. We even got introduced to Constable Stark, when he come to town for a church supper.