by Ninie Hammon
By the time Sam saw him, the man was really sick, should have gone to a hospital when he got the bite, and now it was infected, too. One look at that finger and Sam had burst into a diatribe about how Neb could die and should have gotten help sooner. Surprisingly, the three boys and Viola had taken the tongue-lashing with admirable chagrin.
It was when Sam was on her way out to her car after she bandaged the wound that she saw Malachi. He came striding out of the barn and the sight was … stunning. He was a very good-looking man — broad shoulders, Marine Corps abs, and glossy black hair that fell over his forehead in a widow’s peak. His face was almost aristocratic with a wide forehead, high cheekbones and striking blue eyes beneath slender black eyebrows winging up at the corners. But his good looks only formed a small part of his charisma. There was a dangerous bad-boy vibe about him and an easy confidence, painted on a backdrop of being the high school heartthrob to everything in a skirt for three counties around. When he threw a pass — whether the receiver caught it or not didn’t matter — all the girls in the stands were on their feet squealing like they were at a rock concert.
Of course, Sam and Malachi had a history that went back before that. They had spent time together as children, unlikely as it would seem, considering their geography. The two of them and Charlie Ryan — McClintock — had done things together, though she had trouble recalling the specifics.
He’d greeted her, smiled, they’d chatted, caught up, and then she’d left. And dreamed about him for the next three days until she went back out to the Tacketts to see to Neb’s finger. Malachi was there, actually seemed to have been waiting for her to show up. They’d sat on the porch for a bit, just talking.
The next time she went to the Tacketts, Malachi’s leave was up and he was gone. She hadn’t seen him again until two weeks ago when she’d stepped out of E.J.’s veterinary hospital and saw him hunkered down behind the bus shelter with a .22, dodging imaginary bullets and scanning a scene only he could see for enemies who weren’t there. Gone was the charming man who chatted with her that day four years ago, sitting on the porch with the summer sun high in the blue sky. This man was a lost, haunted soul. The only Malachi Sam had ever known had left the building.
Chapter Nine
Holmes Fischer knew Martha Whittiker wasn’t home. He’d hung around in the shade of the walnut tree on the far side of her garage after he got up from his usual spot behind the swing on her front porch. He always left his sleeping accommodations at dawn. Even folks who granted him tacit agreement to curl up under the bush by their front gate would prefer not to see the homeless man when they woke up.
Thursday nights it was Martha Whittiker’s porch. Tonight he’d be back in the Methodist church basement. Or should be. But nothing was as it was supposed to be. All life had shifted and changed and the simple, downhill slide of Holmes Fischer into the depths of alcoholism and death had been interrupted two weeks ago when he had reached out to touch his own reflection in a mirage and had been transported to the Middle of Nowhere where he had come very close to choking to death on his own tongue.
Nothing was right in anybody’s world now. Everybody was scared and upset. Doing stupid things. Or very smart things designed to look stupid — as in the break-in at Peetree’s Hardware Store. Somebody had burglarized the place and made off with every box of ammunition in the building — for every imaginable kind of gun. Granted, there wasn’t much. If you wanted ammunition, or anything else related to your firearm, you had only to go to the Walmart’s sporting goods section in Carlisle to avail yourself of everything your heart could possibly desire.
Or you could go on “up Lexington,” as the nowhere people put it, the colloquialism that was like fingernails on a blackboard to an English teacher. Gun stores and firearms supplies took up two whole pages in the Yellow Pages in the Lexington telephone book.
Since neither option was open to the residents of Nowhere County since J-Day, it was quick thinking on someone’s part to figure out that ammunition was one of those disposable resources that once exhausted was irreplaceable.
It’d looked like teenagers had done it. There was graffiti spraypainted on the walls of the building and the thieves had also stolen all the candy off the rack by the cash register and a case of RC Cola in the back not yet loaded into the soft drink machine.
Fish didn’t think it was teenagers, though. He thought somebody wanted the world to think it had been teenagers, somebody smart enough to know it wasn’t a plan to let folks know how well armed you were in uncertain times such as these.
It wasn’t like Willie Peetree had gone in to work the morning after, saw the broken-out window in the door on the back of the building, and immediately called the law. As Sam had pointed out, a good word picture of life in Nowhere County, Kentucky, the first of June 1995 was “When you dial 911, nobody answers.”
Willie hadn’t even called the sheriff’s department until he’d cleaned up the mess, as far as Fish knew. And he knew quite a lot, actually, because he was a cigar store Indian. He was such a fixture, like a blue mailbox or a fire hydrant that was so familiar you stopped noticing it. People held conversations while Fish sat/leaned/or lay nearby without giving a moment’s thought to the fact that he could hear every word.
And what he’d heard in more than one conversation in the past couple of weeks was that Deputy Sheriff Liam Montgomery was doing his dead level best to keep the lid on, but the boy was hopelessly outgunned. Literally. Though it had not yet come to bullets fired, Fish knew it was only a matter of time before it did. And Liam’s presence was about as much deterrent to crime as a Doberman puppy guarding the silver.
He was trying, oh my yes, he was, but when you worked the logic out to the end … what could he do? What if he figured out who’d done the deed, stolen the weapons, then what? Go arrest the suspect. Okay, then what? Fish supposed Liam could put the arrested person or persons in the jail, the size-of-a-London-phone-booth building in the Ridge.
But then what? Arraign him? How? No prosecutor, no judge, no courtroom. What good did it do for Liam to find the offenders when there was no system in place, no process by which to detain and determine the guilt or innocence of any individual and no method by which to administer justice to them if you did?
Fish was counting on that.
Oh, he didn’t intend to get caught, but even if he did, he’d merely be sucked into all the then-whats that had no answers. Folks were more concerned with looking after themselves and their loved ones than they were in trying to design and implement a whole justice system on the fly.
Yes sir, Fish was counting on that.
He had had the presence of mind to figure out early on that it would not be long before the only resource that mattered to him was in jeopardy — alcohol. And even now, he could only manage to come by enough of it to comb the tangles out of his nerves. He had as quickly as was prudent gone to the residences of people he knew had not been inside the county on J-Day and relieved them of their supplies of alcohol. His meager stockpile, kept in what looked like a broken filing cabinet in the basement of the Methodist church, was being consumed about as fast as he could come by it.
And he had already stripped all the unoccupied homes he could think of. It wasn’t like he had a car and could cruise up and down the county roads, looking for unoccupied residences. He could get the booze from the places he could walk to. Whatever other bounty of alcohol might be out there was beyond his reach.
It was bound to come to this, of course, but he genuinely regretted that to feed the monkey on his back he was now forced to steal from people who were home. Oh, not home as in inside their houses, but home as not somewhere on the other side of the Jabberwock.
Mrs. Martha Whittiker was his first … he didn’t like the word “victim.” He had watched her drive away. And he’d peeked in the window of the garage apartment in her backyard to check on Dylan Shaw, her lowlife druggie grandson who lived there rather than in a cardboard box under a bridge. The teenager ha
d been lying on the couch amid all manner of drug paraphernalia and stoned out of his gourd. What was the kid going to do when his drug supply ran out? Clearly, he didn’t have sufficient properly firing synapses right now to care.
Fish didn’t think Mrs. Whittiker would be gone long, but it wouldn’t take him five minutes to slip in the back door, gather up all the booze and slip back out. In a movie, it’d be called “a daring daylight robbery.” For Fish, it was simple self-preservation.
Finding a Piggly Wiggly grocery bag in a kitchen cupboard, he searched the house like a kid looking for Easter eggs. He found half-full bottles of brandy and scotch and a full bottle of wine in a cabinet in the den and an almost-empty bottle of Bailey’s alongside an almost-full bottle of Kahlua in the refrigerator.
He opened the cabinet beside the refrigerator and found a bottle of cooking sherry. When he took it out and set it on the counter to load into his Easter basket he spied what was in the back of the cabinet behind it.
Oh my.
He picked up the bottle of Kentucky bourbon and held it reverently. He hadn’t had anything as fine as Maker’s Mark whiskey in … he didn’t even know how long! Seeing the bottle there, its red wax seal broken, but still almost a full bottle — he couldn’t help himself, didn’t even bother to pour himself a glass, just drank from the bottle. He only took a little sip. Just a little sip.
It went down smooth, so smooth. So he took another sip.
His concentrated delight was interrupted by the sound of someone unlocking the front door. It wasn’t until then that he realized he had slid down the kitchen wall, clutching the bottle of Maker’s Mark, and had been sitting there sampling it in delight for far too long. Mrs. Whittiker was home. He had to get out the back door. But not without the booze.
He turned too fast and dizzily stumbled, but managed to grab the grocery sack he had filled with bottles as he staggered past the kitchen counter on his way to make a hasty retreat—
“Fish?” Mrs. Whittiker sounded both surprised and confused. “Fish, what are you — Fish!”
Though a small woman, Mrs. Whittiker was neither frail nor fragile. She marched into the kitchen and confronted him.
“Fish, I am so disappointed … how could you … steal?”
“Never meant to take more than a small supply to keep me lubricated.” Hoping she’d be impressed by his remorse, he hung his head in shame. At that small movement, a wave of dizziness swept over him. Too much straight whiskey on an empty stomach had unbalanced him.
“Well, you aren’t getting lubricated on my good cooking sherry. How will I make chicken and broccoli stir fry?”
She could see him clutching the Maker’s Mark bottle to his chest, clearly the most valuable bottle of alcohol on the premises, but she was worried about the pitiful little bottle of sherry.
“You give me that!” She reached for the sherry.
He picked it up off the counter and swung around to hand it to her.
And he never knew exactly what happened then.
The handing-it-to-her motion must have made him dizzy and he stumbled forward with the momentum of the move … just as she was leaning forward, reaching …
But how could he have …?
The room spun like a freakshow funhouse around him as he clutched the bottle of Maker’s Mark to his chest. He had to grab hold of the kitchen counter to stay upright. Held on with the hand he’d been using to hold the bottle of sherry.
So where was the sherry?
In fact, where was Martha Whittiker?
He looked around, careful to move his head slowly. Then he looked down. Martha Whittiker was sprawled on the kitchen floor at his feet with blood pooling around her head.
Had he … he must have clocked her in the side of the head with the bottle of sherry.
Or maybe he’d tripped and stumbled into her and she’d fallen and hit her head.
Or maybe she … other explanations eluded him but surely there were many. The why didn’t seem nearly as important right now as the what — and that was the fact that Martha Whittiker was lying unconscious on her kitchen floor and he was in possession of her stolen alcohol.
Panic didn’t happen. He was too well lubricated for that. But a kind of drunken terror seized him and he grabbed the bag of accumulated booze and made for the back door. He crossed her backyard, slipped between the fence and the garage and hurried away down the side of the fence out of sight.
He made it all the way to the corner and turned before she set up a hue and cry for him.
Only she might still be unconscious. And he’d just left her there.
He shouldn’t have done that. Should have tended to her, tried to help her. But he didn’t. He just ran, and prayed dear Jesus that she would be alright.
Chapter Ten
Charlie only realized she was staring off into space when she heard Merrie’s voice, seeming to come from a long way away.
“You not picking up stuff,” the child said, her words full of reproach.
And then Charlie was back in the attic of her mother’s house, dust motes floating in the beams of sunlight that stabbed through the phlegm of dirt on the attic window.
“You worry about what you’re picking up. You may be the princess in this castle but I’m the queen.”
Merrie began again to gather up the contents of the fallen box.
The picture had sparked a fleeting memory that had suddenly blossomed into a short film strip of former reality, playing in the theatre of Charlie’s mind.
Maybe she shouldn’t have found such a good place to hide but she wants to win the game. It was all Malachi’s idea and then when they drew straws he got the short one so now he’s looking for her and Sam. If he finds her, Charlie will have to be “it” and she doesn’t want to be. Hiding is more fun.
And playing here in the woods is much more fun than standing around with the other children.
She looks out through the branches of the bush down the hillside toward where she can hear the sound of music and children’s voices. With that many kids running around and squealing, the three of them will never be missed. The secret to not getting in trouble is playing by the rules … well, some of them.
Sam didn’t want to do what Malachi suggested but she had to as soon as Charlie sided with Malachi, because they have to stay together. That’s the rule! If the teacher sees one of them by themselves, she’ll ask where the other two are because that’s the reason they were divided into three-kid groups.
Alphabetically: Ryan, Sheridan, Tackett.
The teacher said on the bus that the three-kid part was so if one got hurt there would be one other kid to stay with the first one that got hurt and a third kid to go for help.
Got hurt? How could you get hurt standing around looking at a bunch of boring stuff? Fake history is what Sam called it. Grownups in costumes showing how to make butter and how to make thread out of wool and then somehow the wool becomes a shirt but Charlie doesn’t think they show that part.
Sam was as bored as Charlie and Malachi so even if she didn’t want to play at first, Charlie was sure she was glad to get away.
Charlie wonders where Sam is hiding.
Hide-and-seek would have been a blast if they could have played in all the empty buildings. There would have been like a ba-gillian places to hide, but the kids aren’t allowed to go into the buildings because they’re old and falling down and not safe. Teachers take one group after another of the children to look around the houses and describe who might have lived there, but the exhibits are set up in the empty space in front of the buildings. Kids were not allowed to leave that area — they’d spot you if you tried to sneak away. So they’d had to settle for hiding somewhere among the exhibit booths. As soon as Malachi closed his eyes and started counting, Charlie had taken off into the woods behind where the woman was churning butter, found a great big oleander bush and hunkered down behind it. She’s not far from the booth, not far at all.
Maybe a teacher caught Sam or M
alachi and now they’re all in trouble for not staying together and—
No, if they’d gotten caught, the teachers would be looking for her, calling for her.
They’d agreed that big tree with the funny-looking bent limb was olly olly oxen free — the tree behind the booth where a man with a fake beard that’s coming unglued on one side is whittling something.
Charlie wonders if she should leave her hiding place and run for the tree when she sees Sam coming up the hillside, sneaking from one tree to the next. Sam sees Charlie at the same time she hears something behind her — it’s Malachi! Sam runs to a big oak tree that’s on the other side of a bare spot in the woods from the bush where she’s hiding.
“I see you,” Malachi calls out, but Charlie doesn’t know which one of them he means.
Sam motions to Charlie, telling her to stand up.
Both she and Sam step out of their hiding places into the clear spot.
Malachi sees them. He has to catch one of them and tag them, but he can’t chase them both at the same time.
“You can’t catch me!” Sam cries and runs off into the woods to her right, giggling.
Malachi starts after her when Charlie cries out the same thing, and runs in the opposite direction. She’s giggling, too, wondering which one of them he’ll chose to chase. She looks over her shoulder and sees that it’s Sam, so she stops.
“Hey Malachi, over here!” He stops and turns her way and she waves her hand. “Can’t catch ME,” she cries and the look on his face … she laughs out loud then.
She turns and runs away and Malachi must have changed his mind about Sam and come after Charlie because she hears a sound far off to the right. Sam’s laughing.
“Yo, Malachi,” Sam cries. “Mallllll-a-chiiiiii.”
It’s faint, but Charlie can hear the bluegrass music from down below as she runs, mingled with the hum of the crowd. There’s a pause, and then the fiddler cranks up “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” Charlie’s favorite, and she turns toward the familiar sound, looks down the mountainside. She can see Sam below her, but Sam’s not running or hiding. She’s just standing there, looking at something farther up the hillside beyond Charlie.
