by Steve Vernon
I opened my eyes.
I tried to move.
Only I couldn’t.
I was staked out upon bare earth.
I looked around me. It looked like I was inside that ancient barn. The air stank of dried manure. Various tools hung upon wooden pegs. They looked like they might have been hanging there for a very long time. Rust caked on most of them.
Lon stood over me.
“She’ll be coming for you soon,” he said.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing old man,” I said, trying hard to sound tough. “But you can count me out.”
He didn’t even hear me.
“We tried hard to have another child after our boys were killed,” Lon said. “We tried hard but we’d waited too long. We were barren. We couldn’t grow anything.”
I struggled with the rope.
Nothing.
“So I took matters into my own hand,” Lon went on. “I put my seed into the dirt and called for a child. It took time. It wasn’t easy. She rose from the soil like Adam from the dust. She rose full grown.”
I found my eyes drawn to the wall full of tools. My imagination thought of chainsaw massacres and country fricassee. The tools were rusty but most looked quite potent.
“It was just a matter of the right signs and proper ceremonies. Something alive, as well. Stella didn’t mind. God, I don’t think she minded. She’d been leaning pretty close to death ever since the boys you know?”
Something alive.
“I put her in the dirt, like so much fertilizer.”
He had that damn deer skinning knife in his fist.
“Sheba’s special,” Lon went on. “She isn’t human. She talks to animals. They do things for her.”
I was thinking about the deer.
“I’m not even sure of all the things she can do,” Lon said. “I need help. She needs more than I can offer.”
“So why stake me out?” I croaked.
“It wasn’t me. Sheba staked you out. She means to keep you here. I guess she wants more of what you gave her last night. Maybe she wants a child. I’d hoped her romp with you last night had shaken the wildness from her. Only it didn’t. She just got wilder.”
“Sure,” I said. “Sure it was all Sheba.”
There was no way that girl had done this to me.
Then Lon came at me with the knife.
I screamed.
He brought the knife down. I felt my toes curl up and my fists clenched and I held my breath.
I’m not sure what any of that was supposed to do against a skinning knife but the nerves of terror run bone-deep, I guess.
And then he cut the ropes, one by one.
When he had three of the ropes cut he turned as if he’d heard something.
This was my chance.
I stood up, feeling the blood twist and pulse like a dying serpent within my veins. My muscles were knotted and sore and I was being man-slaughtered by a half a dozen Charlie horses at once. I got ready to fight. There was no way I was going to let that old man gut me open.
Only Lon ignored me.
He stood there, facing the doorway where Sheba stood, looking small and vulnerable.
Lon walked towards her, his knife hanging loosely at his side.
“Run Sheba!” I shouted.
She turned almost serenely. She walked outside. Lon followed her slowly, almost reverently. I didn’t like the feel of the way he was walking towards her. Both of them stepped outside and out of my sight.
“Sheba!” I screamed.
I lost precious seconds fumbling with the last rope, my hands fumbling like large clotted sponges. I heard a sharp noise, like a very large hammer striking against wood.
And then I was free.
I stomped to get the blood moving in my legs.
I should have run while I had the chance.
I stumbled outside, numb and sore. I had to stop Lon before he got to Sheba. I didn’t have far to look. Lon was hung on the outside of the barn. His feet were about a foot above the dirt. His knife was slammed through his chest into the wall behind him, with such an impact that the metal hilt was imbedded into his flesh.
Sheba appeared from nowhere. She was anointed in a spatter of blood. Lon’s blood. She held those loving arms out towards me. This was no time to be a gentleman. I swung at her.
She dodged me easily. My movements were slow and clumsy next to her animal litheness. Her delicate little hands gently grasped my outstretched right arm. I heard, then felt, a dry Thanksgiving wishbone crack.
My arm was broken.
Pain gave me strength. I pulled away from Sheba and fell back into the darkness of the barn. I half-crawled, half-clambered towards the wall, grabbing for weapon. My hands wouldn’t work. My broken arm hindered my efforts but I managed to wrap my arms around a scythe.
Sheba stepped in and opened her arms to embrace me. I lunged forward, still hanging onto the scythe.
This time I was faster than her. The blade sunk into her lower abdomen.
Lon was right.
She wasn’t human.
She just stood there, manhandling me with three feet of rusty steel scythe blade imbedded into her bowels. I heard the handle of the scythe snap in two. I pushed against the blade, trying to catch and twist it.
All at once she lay still.
I watched the blood soak into the dirt.
She had to be dead.
I headed out of the barn and stumbled towards the little trail to the road. I found the trail and fear broke me into a poorly-constructed facsimile of a run. I pushed forward, each step a pain-filled agony. Shattered bones gritted with each step I took. The trail slowly widened. I was certain I recognized some of the landscape. Any minute now I would come to the wreck of my car.
I rounded a bend in the path.
There before me stood an ancient trailer, squatting upon a stretch of hard cleared land. In the distance a weathered barn awaited my return.
The land was grey.
So terribly grey.
A shape emerged from the barn. Female and running straight towards me.
For a crazy half moment I thought it was Annie.
Only it wasn’t.
It was Sheba, of course.
I turned and plunged back into the woods. Maybe I could escape her by running overland. Maybe if I kept away from the trail I would not be fooled by whatever spell she had woven.
I should have known better.
Hadn’t Lon told me how much she’d loved these woods?
I glanced behind me. A small white shape flickered between the trees.
She was gaining on me.
I didn’t look behind again. I saved everything for the run.
Just for a moment I thought I was going to make it.
And then a second shape appeared in front of me. I couldn’t stop myself. I ran straight into the carcass of the buck. Only the dead buck wasn’t hanging from the tree where Lon had slung it. It was standing there on its own four legs, just waiting for me, its abdominal cavity gaping like an open mouth.
Slim white arms gently enfolded me from behind.
Held me fast, caressed me just once and then squeezed.
This last story of the collection is one I am very proud of in that originally appeared in Richard Chizmar’s anthology collection Shivers V (2009). I have long been a fan of chain-gang movies – and one of my favorites of the genre is COOL HAND LUKE. So naturally, I wanted to write something that sang to that tune and I think it pretty good job of it – so I’m going to let this tale tell itself.
The Forever Long Road of Olan Walker
I’m the teller, and I’m telling you it was the craziest thing anyone seen. An army of reporters, politicians, and police, trying to figure what emptied an Alabama work farm of sixty-eight convicts. What left a dozen bosses and twice as many gunbulls cindered down to charcoaled bone.
I’m the only one who survived.
Sort of.
I ain’t even here. You ca
n’t see me, and you sure as hell don’t want to hear me.
I’m just telling, a forever long way from you.
So stand there in the Alabama sun, scratching your heads and your asses while pretending to know what you’re looking at, because this is how it all unwound.
*
Easter Monday, 1952.
It was a day like any other. The slat truck rolled into camp with half a dozen new convicts. A couple of vagrants, one drunk, one assaulter and one assaultee.
And Olan Walker.
Olan Walker was first out of the slat truck and he could have slid through one of the slats. That man was nothing but lank. Lean as a dog in Lent. Lean as hunger, thinner than prison soup. Looked like he ate nothing but wind and shadow all his life. If there was a king and queen of skinny; a duke of rawbone, an earl of gaunt and a prince of scrawny - well Olan Walker was the lord of them all.
Still, size don’t mean much when you’re wearing a chain. Big man, small man, it’s all the same when you wear steel. Chain shorts you down, bit by bit, until you’re nothing more than a speck of walking dirt on a long dusty road.
So there we were, standing in the work camp, watching the slat truck unload.
Boss Brady was talking, as usual.
Like I said, there has always got to be a talker. A fellow who just can’t breathe without making some sort of a noise. That was Boss Brady. Mean little man in a mean little body. Short, with an unhealthy pudge. Face as brown and hard as a walnut. Imagine a fellow you’d dislike from hello, wrap him in a suit of cantanker, and you’re standing somewhere close to Boss Brady.
There isn’t a whole lot left of Boss Brady now.
He got it first.
“They call me Boss Brady,” he bellowed.
We stood and listened. It was easier than walking or working. You didn’t have to listen too hard. We had seen and heard this a thousand times.
Only this time was different.
“We gonna give you a red hat,” Boss Brady went on, as a gunbull plunked a big barn red palmetto wove hat on top of Olan Walker’s head.
That caught our attention.
Olan Walker was to be a member of the Red Hat Gang. They were the rough boys. The trouble makers. As penance they had to work twice as hard as the rest of us. They wore those palmetto hats to stand out. Nice targets in the Alabama sun.
We wondered what Olan Walker did to earn a red hat, fresh out of the slat truck.
It didn’t seem to bother him none. He stood as calm as Moses standing before Pharaoh. He stood there like he was standing somewhere else, a forever long way from here.
The camp blacksmith banged the kingbolt into the right leg shackle. Always put the right shackle on first. Man chained round his right ain’t likely to kick with his left.
“You get to wear these chains,” Boss Brady said, like he was inviting Olan Walker to tea.
Then he grinned a mean kind of grin. It was the only kind of grin Boss Brady ever wore. It was the kind of grin that made you think of liar snakes and guilty apples.
“That’s thirteen links, in’t boy?” Boss Brady said. “Thirteen links of honest US grade steel, hung between your legs like a rusty tallywhacker. Make some sweet music. Jingle jangle. You just wait, boy. Come tomorrow you’ll be counting each jing jang as another second passed in the service of the Alabama State Gov’ment.”
Olan Walker grinned like a secret. Then he spoke the very first words we ever heard him say.
“For such a little peckerhole you sure do an awful lot of talking, boss.”
That sure let the cougar out of the cave.
Brady reared back and let fly with his walking stick.
Olan Walker caught the stick like a man snagging a crippled blowfly.
Brady was bear fat and hate. He leaned into the cane. His eyes glowed like fresh coals. Spittle flew from his lips. The gristle about his eyepits coiled and popped like a nest of snakes.
Olan Walker took it all and turned it right back.
Brady’s cane was made from the dogwood root meaning it was made out of one of the toughest wood growing on God’s good earth. When that dogwood cane broke the snap was loud as any shot fired.
I swear I saw the stump of Brady’s cane, twisting in Olan Walker’s fist like a fresh caught eel.
Brady hung onto half a cane, his knuckles squeezed white.
He tried to find his pride back with words.
“Think you’re tough, boy?” he asked. “Ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen the road. You wearing a chain, now.”
“We all wear chains, boss,” Olan Walker said. “Free and prison alike. Chains of rot and misery, like a bunch of gourds left in the sun.”
Brady spat in the dirt. Seemed to hiss and sizzle where the spit hit home.
“You crack wise all you like. That chain’ll wear the sass and cider out of your bones.”
Right then and there we thought Olan Walker was some kind of walking god, but the chain went on him just the same.
Chain between the legs is bad enough, but each man wore a linkup. Three fat feet of chain drug behind you like a tail. One end bradded to the middle of the ankle chain. Free end hammered into a small shackle ring. The gun bulls used the linkup to marry us convicts together on the march. Just a snap of the ring, and you was a link in a chain stretched down the Alabama roadway.
The blacksmith fussed with the fit, on account of Olan Walker’s leanness. Then he tapped the kingbolt into the left leg shackle.
“Make sure you bang that kingbolt snug,” Brady warned. “You coming down awful light on that hammer, in’t you boy?”
That was for the backtalk.
Brady gave the chain a good hard shake, like he was checking on its snug. We knew he was just showing us his piss.
“Jingle jangle. Jingle jangle. Like walking with a bull rattler slung between your anklebones, in’t boy?”
Olan Walker smiled like that was the funniest thing he’d heard. It was a strange kind of smile, not cheery at all. More like the grin an alligator might give you right after it bit off your middle leg.
You don’t grin at no free man when you’re wearing Alabama steel.
“Don’t you be grinning at me, convict,” Brady warned.
He pulled his hand back from the chain.
He stood there and stared at his hand like he had just seen a snake.
“Damn,” Boss Brady swore.
His hand was bleeding. There was red spilling over the chain and dust around it.
It must have been a sharp spot.
Brady cuffed the blacksmith with the bloody side of his hand.
“Damn your eyes, boy. Why don’t you file that steel down better than that?”
Olan Walker kept grinning. Then he laughed. A mournish tuneful kind of laugh. Like a cold lonesome wind blowing through the belly of a hollowed out tree.
Brady curled his hand into a fist which only made the bleeding worse.
Olan Walker reached out, viper quick.
He caught Brady’s hand.
That was really bad.
Grinning was bad, laughing was worse, but you never ever touched a boss.
A gun bull stepped up like he’d been called. He slammed a shotgun butt hard into Olan Walker’s spine.
Olan Walker let go of Brady’s hand. Not because of the shotgun. He’d just finished what he wanted to do.
When he removed his hand the bleeding had stopped.
Brady held his hand up like fine cut crystal.
That’s when we knew. Olan Walker was a conjure man. It was the only way to heal by touch.
Brady snatched the blacksmith’s hammer. He stood there, pale as a fresh bled pig, hanging onto that hammer like he was going to use it.
Only hitting wasn’t Brady’s way. It was easier to get a gun bull to do it for him.
“Hit him in the legs,” Brady ordered. “So’s he’ll feel it tomorrow.”
The gun bull swung the shotgun hard into that soft hole behind the kneecap.
Olan Walker slid to his knees like he was getting set to pray.
Only he didn’t fall.
It was more like he let himself go down.
And once down, close to the dirt, he said one word.
“Rot,” Olan Walker said.
He said it like it sounded.
He said it so you smelled the stink of mushrooms creeping a mold ridden carcass. Trash heaps, and puss running in the sun. Fruit gone too ripe. You felt it, way he said it. Tasted it back in your throat like swallowed spit.
“Throw this bastard in the stocks,” Brady said. “We’ll show him rot.”
Only he didn’t sound all that certain. Not near as certain as Olan Walker sounded when he said that one terrible word.
Olan Walker let the gun bull and blacksmith drag him to his feet.
“You full of spite and piss right now, but we got something for you,” Brady said. “You just watch. Just wait. That’s all you’re gonna do, is watch and wait.”
He whirled, set to punish us all.
“You all watch. The eyes of God and Alabama and Boss Brady are burning down on all you boys out here. And that’s for God damned certain sure.”
Boss Brady had that right.
The eyes of God were watching, certain sure.
The eyes of God, and something a hell of a lot older than that.
*
The stocks were hanging pain. A rack made of hard hickory. They hung you from it by your hands and feet, legs jackknifed up until you could lean forward and kiss your kneecaps if the mood struck you.
They ratcheted Olan Walker up until his ass bone hung inches from dirt. The stocks creaked. Sounded ready to break. Prayed for that every time but they never did.
Olan Walker hung there, two or three goddamned inches from the dirt.
You got to understand the feeling of that. Knowing if you could stretch your spine a couple notches you could hold your weight with your butt. Only you can’t. You hang there until your arms and legs scream. Ain’t your mouth starts working first. It’s arms and legs, the knives of your hipbones worm-grinding into your gut.
I seen one man last in the stocks without screaming for God’s mercy,. He was crazier than a waltzing pig. Wasn’t much the bosses could do that’d stick.
Olan Walker was different, but just as crazy. He hung there grinning like we were feeding him milk and cream. Only it wasn’t no friendly grin. Made the grin he gave Brady look easy as a handshake. Kind of grin a man grins on his thousandth year in hell, after the king devil wore his brains out tormenting you. After your body decided it couldn’t bother to hurt no more.
