Men of Perdition

by Kelly M. Hudson

  “What do you think?” Burke said. He laughed. “I’d be lost without you, son.”

  Matt stuck out his hand and Burke took it. They shook and Matt turned and walked off through the field towards his red pickup parked over by the barn. Burke remembered when his hands used to feel like Matt’s, all rough and calloused from handling the tools, chopping the tobacco, hanging it in the barn to dry out, and all the other little things that had to be done around his farm. But his hands had gone soft in the years since he’d thrown his back out, and it kind of pissed him off a bit, but a lot of things did these days, so he did what he always did: he shrugged his shoulders and said fuck it.

  Maddie wouldn’t have liked that kind of language coming from his lips, much less tripping off the end of his mind, but that was too bad. Maddie was dead, had been for over twenty years now, and he was as alone as a person could be. Sure, Aggie stayed out at his place most nights, and he was a fine companion, but he didn’t make up for Maddie. Aggie was great, but he was a crabby old man sometimes, and if Burke had to put up with crabbiness, he’d rather it be attached to a woman, not to another man. He also had his business, growing the best damned tobacco in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, but even that wasn’t the same because he wasn’t able to get down into the soil and work the ground like he used to.

  He missed her sometimes; to be honest, he missed her every day. Maybe that’s why he had so much sympathy for people like Sam and Aggie; he understood the loss, the empty ache that came with losing someone close to you. It may also be why Burke, who could be quite curmudgeonly when he wasn’t being charming, didn’t come down on Sam or Aggie too hard. When he lost Maddie to the heart attack, he was too old to pick up and marry a new gal, just like Aggie was, but for Sam, there was really no excuse. He needed to snap out of his funk and take that Sadie Mills girl out, and when he finally had, Burke couldn’t be more delighted. He decided he was going to live his romantic life through the stories Sam was sure to tell. What he wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall for that little rendezvous. He wondered what they were doing right then, with the sun sliding over the horizon. Probably making out, maybe already in bed. He bet they’d sleep together, and probably right quick, too. They were holding back, he was sure, but he’d been young once, and he knew you could only hold back so long before you couldn’t take it much more.

  Speaking of hormones, where the hell was Aggie? It was getting close to six o’clock and he was supposed to be back home by now. He was out probably getting some tail from whatever woman he was slipping it to recently. Aggie never talked about his ‘conquests,’ but Burke knew something was going on. The old bastard grinned far too hard and was way too relaxed after a hard day at the diner to not be putting the salami to somebody.

  He chuckled to himself and scanned the fields around him. He had a pretty good operation here. Forty acres and nearly all of it covered in prime, rich tobacco. It wasn’t like it used to be, when he was out here every day, tending to his babies, but it would do. He still loved coming out and standing around, watching the boys work the field, jealous as hell of them, always considering throwing caution to the wind and joining them, every day a test. Maybe one time he’d do it. Maybe he’d say to hell with it and walk out and bend over and get to work. Last time he tried that, though, his back locked up on him and he had to have Matt and some of the boys carry him to the truck and drive him to see Doc, where he got a right good scolding. It took a week for his back to unlock and it had been humiliating, to say the least. That little experience never stopped him from thinking about trying again, though.

  A breeze stirred the tops of the plants. It wouldn’t be long before it was harvest time, when he’d have Matt hire some boys to come in and cut the plants down and hang them to dry in the barn. That was always the most exciting time for Burke, besides the planting. The beginning and the end of the process always held the most promise to him; the growth that was to come and the money that was to be made.

  The wind felt good on his face and he closed his eyes to better enjoy it. The air brought the smell of the rich earth at his feet and mixed it with the grass and trees growing in the distance. He loved it out here and wished he could sleep in these fields, to lie down and dream forever. But there was no way his back could handle it, and it was just a foolish, romantic dream.

  He needed to head back to the house, but what was waiting there for him? A can of soup to warm for supper? Some programs on the TV that managed to numb his brain and his spirit for a few hours, enough to get him tired and ready for bed? What kind of life was that, anyway? His real life was out here, in the fields, with his creation. Not for the last time, he cursed getting old and losing Maddie, and cursed the pain in his back that was even now tweaking him something fierce.

  He felt like crying. It wasn’t the first time he’d been out here, all alone, and wanted to bawl like a little baby and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Only this time was different. This time he actually heard himself crying. He opened his eyes and looked around. It wasn’t him who was crying, it was someone else.

  A tall woman, wearing a long white gown and a veil that hid her face, stood seven rows over at the opposite end of the field from Burke and she was weeping, her frail shoulders shaking and trembling. Where the hell had she come from?

  He watched her for a moment. How had he not seen her? The land was pretty flat all around him, so she couldn’t have snuck up on him. And even if she did, what was she doing dressed like that, standing amongst his crop, and crying like she was?

  “Excuse me,” he said. His voice crackled and broke, coming out barely above a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Excuse me.”

  She didn’t acknowledge him. Goddammit. He’d have to walk over there and see what was wrong. He took a step in her direction and froze, the air just in front of him suddenly chilly and cool. Something wasn’t right. One more step closer to her and his guts knotted up like he was going to vomit. He shook it off and took another step and the dread hit his jaw like a wicked left hook from a champion boxer.

  He staggered back a step. Something about this woman was disturbing him and he couldn’t put his finger on it, but he certainly wasn’t going to ignore it. He backed away, slowly, keeping the woman always in his sight. He was going to walk to the barn, fetch his shotgun, and call the sheriff. He didn’t understand why some frail, skinny woman crying in his field was scaring the shit out of him but he didn’t really care, either. He was going to listen to what his instincts told him, and that was to get his gun and call the sheriff.

  He reached the opposite end of the field from the Weeping Lady when his heel caught on the uneven ground and he tripped and fell, landing on his back. The earth punched the air from his lung and he saw stars. He tried to roll onto his stomach. His goddamned back was locked up again.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. Great timing, old man. Get creeped out by a crying lady and then trip and fuck yourself up. Smooth move.

  The sobbing seemed closer all of a sudden, and Burke twisted his neck to see the Weeping Lady standing next to him, the hem of her dress waving on the slight breeze and tickling his right cheek. How had she gotten there so fast? It was like she just appeared right next to him, like she was a ghost.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  The Weeping Lady kept her face hid behind her veil, but her cries wrenched his heart. She was suffering and his heart went out to her. Something was wrong, really wrong, but his fear was being melted by her pain.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  The Weeping Lady stopped for just a second, long enough to say, with a hitched breath, “Have you seen my children?”

  “What?”

  “Have you seen my children?”

  He looked around. He couldn’t move his back but he could lift his arms and turn his neck. He looked up and down the rows of tobacco and over the hills in the now-fading light of day. He didn’t see any children or anyone else, for that matter.

  “No,”
he said. He looked back up at her.

  The Weeping Lady wailed, her howls of pain a high keen. Somewhere in the distance, he swore he could hear a dog howling. He stared at her, still afraid but mostly concerned and fascinated. He’d known this pain once in his life, back when Maddie died. He remembered the nights alone, no son or daughter to help ease his anguish, crying himself to sleep and waking the next morning, face crusty with snot and dried tears. He never forgot those long, empty days, wandering around their big farmhouse, expecting to find her around every corner. Maddie was barren so they’d never had kids, and although they talked adoption, it was something they never got to do before she passed. So a house that was so big and so full of their young lives was suddenly vacant except for his grief, which filled every nook and cranny, crowding out the good memories. Burke remembered those days, and he remembered what his crying had sounded like, and it was echoed in the tears of the Weeping Lady.

  “Please,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  The Weeping Lady looked down at him through her veil. He still could not see her face; it was a vague shadow, a dark outline behind the stark white, impossibly ivory color of her dress. She did not stop crying, but her voice wasn’t as loud now.

  “Have you seen my children?” she said.

  He didn’t know how to respond. This woman was obviously out of her mind, either crazy from her loss or deranged in ways he couldn’t explain. Unfortunately for him, he was stuck like a turtle turned onto its shell.

  The Weeping Lady dropped to a knee next to him and her hand, ridiculously pale and webbed with blue veins that pulsed with the blood flowing through them, reached out and stroked his cheek. He shivered, her touch like that of a corpse pulled from a freezer. He stared at her and smiled as best he could to try and reassure her.

  “Have you seen my children?” she said.

  “No,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  The Weeping Lady took her hand from his face and lifted it to her veil. She raised the veil slowly, and he saw her face for the first time. He screamed, agonizing terror shuddering his body.

  He could not describe what he saw because her face was not composed of living flesh, but of something horrid, stitched together, like rotten skin from a cadaver, and it stunk of waste and something spoiled, like putrid garbage. But it was her eyes that held him, so dark and black and empty, like the void between stars. These black eyes swallowed him whole and he felt his soul slip out from his nostrils like hot breath on a cold winter’s day.

  The Weeping Lady cried, her tears dripping down her face and splattering on his cheeks. As she did so, his eyes bulged as if two invisible fingers were behind them, pushing up and out. His eyes popped like champagne corks and dribbled down the sides of his face, sliding, wet and thick with blood and tears. From the holes where his eyes had been, beetles poured forth, their legs clicking together as they scurried out across his head, down his neck, and inside his clothes.

  He screamed as the beetles bit him, their tiny mouths ripping and tearing small divots in his flesh. Within seconds, his nose was devoured until only a small bone jutted, soggy and smeared with blood, from between his black sockets. And then the bone, too, was gone, eaten by the beetles. They poured into his mouth, chewing his tongue, their legs ticking across his teeth, slipping and sliding, biting into his gums. A wild scream ripped from his throat, but there was no release for him. He died in agony and pain, and he did not fully die until most of his head was gone, reduced to gleaming bone.

  As the sun set, the Weeping Lady finished her work. She stopped crying and stood, replacing the veil over her face, and walked slowly towards the main road, her white gown sashaying over the soft grass, the sigh of the material swishing in harmony with the feasting of the beetles on Burke’s corpse.

  V

  Tom’s Cookout

  Tom laughed as he flipped the burgers on the grill. Smoke curled up and the meat sizzled, spitting hot grease into the air. God but he loved the smell of cooking meat. He was a pharmacist and he knew the dangers of too much meat in his diet, but he couldn’t help himself; he was an old school kind of guy who thought any meal without meat in it was no meal at all. What did his dad call a plate with no meat on it? A snack. Nobody at his barbecue was going to leave feeling like they’d just had a snack. Nope, they were going to leave good and full and maybe even a little drunk. He looked over the crowd of guests in his backyard and smiled pleasantly. They had so many friends, him and Dolores, and he considered himself a lucky man.

  Mayor Reed stood over by the keg with a fist full of beer and an armful of his wife, Hazel. He wondered if Hazel knew about the Mayor and his philandering with that Tina girl. He wasn’t sure of it himself, but there’d been rumors, straight out of the Mayor’s Office, and he didn’t doubt them. Tina was good looking, young, and ambitious, everything Hazel was not. She was fat, lazy, and had a bad temper. He didn’t really like Hazel and he didn’t know anyone else who did, either. Mayor Reed caught his eye and Tom raised his beer in salute. Mayor Reed returned the toast and gave Tom a wink. He hoped the bastard was screwing Tina, and good for him if he was.

  Betty Graybeal was over by the pool, sitting at its side with a plate of steaming food. Next to her was her husband, Barney. Tom thought they were a funny named couple, Barney and Betty Graybeal. They were nice though, if a bit boring. Betty had short hair, always cut in the latest fashion, and wore a tee-shirt and shorts that showed off her handsome legs. Barney was short, stocky, with a shaved head and dressed to almost exactly match his wife. Tom didn’t need to wonder who wore the pants in that family.

  They were grouped with the other Dobson’s employees: Gretchen Smalls, petite, lovely, with curly black hair and a flower dress; Lana Whitlock and her husband Bobby—Lana, tall and skinny, a real boney-maroney, with an awkward laugh and a pointed chin, and Bobby, also tall, the body of a swimmer with broad shoulders and a long, lithe torso—and Jenny Dobson. She always reminded Tom of a girl that came through a time machine from the 1970’s. He could picture her, back then, grooving to ‘Baby I Love Your Way’ by Frampton. And even though he hated the hell out of that song, he could see himself as a younger man, falling totally in love with her.

  As if called by his stray, wayward thought, Dolores appeared at Tom’s side, all smiles and cheer. She looked good, he thought, but she always did. Dolores had those features of a model from the old movies; thick hips, large chest, hair black as a deep well, shiny, intelligent eyes, and a grin that could light up a room. He loved her more than anything in this world and was damned lucky to have her in his life. They’d met in college at a fraternity party. She had been in the sister sorority, a year ahead of him, and when their eyes met they saw nothing else. It carried on that way, even to today.

  “It’s going good, huh?” Dolores said. She leaned against his chest as he flipped the burgers again.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Everyone loves your barbecue sauce.” She had her own homemade recipe, passed down by her grandmother, and every now and then she’d make a batch of bottles for friends and neighbors. It was the sweetest sauce he’d ever tasted and was a big hit with everyone they knew. He and Dolores had even talked of starting their own small business based on her sauce, and it was something they were going to discuss more seriously on their trip. He liked the idea even if the attention embarrassed her somewhat.

  “Thanks,” Dolores said. She blushed and looked down. He reached over and kissed her cheek.

  “Did I tell you how pretty you were tonight?” he said. And she was. She wore a custom made dress by Sadie Mills, light green with white swirling patterns that dipped down just below her knees.

  “Shut up,” she said. She smiled and blushed again.

  “Tom!” Bobby said, stumbling over to the grill. “We were just talking over there about your burgers and this delicious sauce.”

  “Hope you like them,” Tom said.

  “Sure we do,” Bobby said. His face was either red from the beer or from being out i
n the sun. Tom was betting the beer. Bobby loved to drink, and he swayed as he turned to Dolores. “Lana said you make this sauce, that sometimes you make bottles for folks.”

  “Sometimes,” Dolores said.

  “Well, put me down for four bottles,” Bobby said. He held up his burger, took a bite, and laughed as the sauce dripped down his chin. “I love this stuff!”

  Tom and Dolores laughed as Bobby waddled back to his group.

  “See, I told you. We could make good money off that sauce,” he said.

  “Shut up,” Dolores said.

  “Besides, it might be nice to have a rich wife. I could get used to something like that. You could be my sugar momma,” he said, laughing. He flipped the burgers. They were almost ready.

  “Shut up,” Dolores said.

  “Is that all you’ve got for me tonight, honey? ‘Shut up?’”

  Dolores smiled and sashayed away, off to visit with Mayor Reed and Hazel. He watched her go, her hips giving an extra little swish to let him know she was happy with him. He grinned.

  Ted and Carla Dobson appeared around the corner, all grins. Carla carried a big Tupperware bowl covered with aluminum foil. It had to be her specialty, potato salad. She made damned good potato salad; Tom had to agree, although he never said it too loud when Dolores was around. Carla once confided that she mixed a few sweet potatoes in the batch to give it more flavor. Whatever she did, it was wonderful.

  “There you are,” Tom said. He turned and stuck out his hand and Ted shook it, firm and vigorous. Ted was ten years Tom’s senior, but he didn’t look it. The only way you could tell he was older than thirty was by the gray at his temples. Ted was tall and kept himself in great shape by jogging each day and playing tennis every chance he could get. He had sharp brown eyes and a genuine charm and sense of ease about him.