by Richard Peck
Lloyd tightened his grip on me. He knew I was fixing to go, that in my heart I was already gone.
Chapter Three
Me and Lloyd and Charlie Parr
“All right, Gold Dust Twins.” Tansy put out her hand.
“Let’s have those soap pads.” We handed them over, having no use for them ourselves.
Behind her on the kitchen table two parcels were tied up in napkins: cold fried chicken, a roasting ear, a jar each of pickled peaches for sure, and I don’t know what all. “I made the shortened biscuits myself,” Tansy said, speaking low because Aunt Maud was somewhere about the place.
This was the night me and Lloyd always went to the crick and camped out. It was a sacred part of our year. After the Case Special came through, we always spent that night at the crick, and hung on till morning, no matter what. It was how we kissed the summer good-bye before the darkness of learning fell about us.
And we felt the shades of eternal night falling fast because at this point, remember, we supposed Miss Myrt Arbuckle was alive and kicking and drawing up her lessons for another nightmare year.
A trip to town tired Dad more than a full day in the field, one more thing about being grown up I didn’t understand. He sent us off to the crick on our own. He expected me to look out for Lloyd, and I did, though in my own particular way.
It was a fishing trip, but Tansy had little faith in us as fishermen. She packed us more than we could eat if we got lost for a week and never found the crick. I’ll give her credit, though: She made up a can of dough balls for our bait.
We left Stentor at home to graze and hitched Siren to the spring wagon. She wasn’t as crazy as we were for another trip this soon, so we let her see us throw handfuls of alfalfa and oats and horse weeds into the wagon bed, and she was resigned. There was no getting away without J.W., of course.
He capered out from under the porch where he lived in hot weather, and ran circles around us, dropping down to slide his hind end in the weeds. He was Dad’s dog. Dad had trained him to run coons, but he couldn’t be broke from running rabbits instead, and couldn’t grasp the difference. His initials stood for “Just Worthless.” After two tries, he was up in the wagon, among the oats, whimpering with joy and confusion and looking everywhere for his tail.
At last we were off down the road with the setting sun casting long shadows before us. The dogs from every farm we went by raced out to see us past, and J.W., lolling over the wagon side, told them all about it.
Chickens having their dust baths in the road dived for the ditch, and Siren kicked up her heels a little bit along the straightaway. There aren’t a lot of perfect moments in life. This was one.
We went past the Leadill place. Then as we were coming past the Parrs’, Lloyd said, “How come Charlie’s not going with us?”
Charlie always went. It was part of our regular plan. But I told Lloyd Charlie thought he was getting too old for doings like this. Lloyd wondered why anybody thought he was too old to go to the crick.
It was the Little Shady which flowed into the Wabash which flowed into the Ohio and so forth. It was slow and mostly shallow. We camped by a grove a few rods from the road. We weren’t two miles from home, but the crick was somewhere else. How far off the Dakotas were I didn’t know.
There was a circle of stones from years past for our fire. Once we unhitched Siren and tied her up, we made a manger for her in the bole of the tree. J.W. went to work clearing the vicinity of rabbits while me and Lloyd began to string our trotlines.
That’s how we fished. Most of the Little Shady was shallow enough to wade. Lloyd plunged in first with a line to attach to something on the other bank. He carried the can of dough balls on a piece of twine around his neck. There were hooks spaced along the trotline, and we hung a dough ball on each. Then through the night we could pull on the line from the bank to feel if there was a fish on it. When there was, we’d wade out, take it off the hook, and bait that hook again. We ran six or eight lines across the crick.
Living in hope, we brought a skillet and a pat of lard. But we were apt to catch sunfish and cat too small to keep. Once in a while we’d get a five-pounder or bigger. Once in a great while. Charlie Parr scorned our kind of fishing. He liked what he called “loggin’.” He’d stalk out into the deepest part of the channel to where logs were sunk. Then he’d reach down under the log and grab a fish in his big bare hands. Of course he ran the risk that it was something else. Charlie’s arms were pitted with the scars of snapping turtles, which he wore with pride.
We were drenched from horsing around in the crick and stepping in holes we couldn’t see. It was still pretty nearly as hot as midday. Steam rose off the water and Siren. Now here came a bloodred moon on the rise through the sycamores while purple light still faded in the west.
We built up the fire and, naturally starved, thought we’d try one piece each of Tansy’s fried chicken. Wanting his share, J.W. hunkered forward through the weeds. We sat there around a fire that began to feel good. Lloyd picked burs out of J.W.’s matted pelt. A couple of old screech owls swooped up a hedgerow, looking for mice. Me and Lloyd speculated about using pickled peaches for bait. A star or two began to show. It would have been another of life’s perfect moments except for the mosquitoes and chiggers and whatever was crawling off J.W. and onto us.
You can hear farther in the dark. Now the night life of the river came forth to feed on one another. Above us we heard the crunch of bugs in beaks. Fish flopped. A noisy frog gave itself away and screamed as something bigger swallowed it.
I waited for just the right moment: this one.
Then I said to Lloyd, “It’s a durn good thing we got past the graveyard in daylight.” The old Balm of Gilead cemetery was along Quagmire Road, about halfway between here and home.
A breeze came up and ruffled our flesh. Lloyd kept picking things off J.W. He wouldn’t rise to my bait.
I pressed on. “Because of Old Man Lichtenberger.”
Still picking, Lloyd said at last, “What about him?”
“Well, they planted him last Wednesday, didn’t they?” It hadn’t been much of a funeral. Nobody we knew went.
“So what?” Lloyd wouldn’t meet my eye, though I was staring a hole in him.
“You know how these medical students come out and work the territory, after dark.”
“Why?” reluctant Lloyd said, though he knew. He knew. The hook wasn’t in his mouth, but the dough ball was.
“They got to have cadavers to cut up for their medical studies,” I explained. “There’s never enough cadavers to go around. How you going to know about people’s insides if you don’t own a set yourself? And a cadaver’s expensive when you can get one on the open market. You try buying a dead body. Them medical students work the whole state of Indiana for free cadavers they can dig up theirselves.”
“Naw,” Lloyd said.
“After dark,” I said.
Lloyd pulled on his little pointed chin. He tried to look older and wiser. The fire crackled between us. He wouldn’t look at me, though he felt my eyes upon him, and darkness at his back.
“You trying to spook me, Russell?” he inquired.
“I’m just saying,” I said.
“Anyhow, Old Man Lichtenberger would be pretty ripe by now,” Lloyd said hopefully. “Ripe and runny. It’s been a hot spell here lately.”
“Well, it won’t matter in his case, will it?” I said, ready for this.
“Won’t it?” J.W. sighed in Lloyd’s lap.
“He was an old soak,” I said. “Dad himself said Old Man Lichtenberger hadn’t been sober since Garfield was President.”
“So what?” Lloyd said faintly.
“That’s the kind of cadaver the medical students look for, one that’s already preserved in alcohol—a drunkard’s corpse.”
Silence, while the words drunkard’s corpse sank into Lloyd. Then he said, “He’d smell bad, though, wouldn’t he?” Lloyd was beginning to see the picture—the open grave steaming
by lantern light.
“Real bad,” I said. “But they’re naturally desperate, these medical students. It’d be more than your life was worth if you come across them opening a grave.” I was half spooked myself by now. “And they’ve got to be real careful lifting a cadaver out of a coffin, to keep it from coming apart.”
Lloyd swallowed.
Night wind rose in the rustling corn with a rattlesnake sound. “The medical students will hit pay dirt with Old Man Lichtenberger,” I said, summing up. “So to speak. I hear he was buried with a full bottle of brush whiskey to keep him from getting thirsty and restless.”
“I don’t think so,” Lloyd said, uncertain. “They wouldn’t do that. No preacher would put up with it.”
“I’m just saying what the grown-ups say when kids aren’t around.” Meaning Lloyd was a kid and I wasn’t. He was on the hook now, and I didn’t know how long I could keep him there. Silence lingered too long. I looked into the grove and saw nothing. The fire began to burn down. I seemed to nod off.
Then I jerked alert. Some sound strangulated out of my throat. Lloyd was surprised into looking right at me. He saw one of my hands clapped over my mouth and my eyes starting out of my head. My other hand pointed past Lloyd to the dark grove behind him.
At this selfsame moment J.W. came awake and backed out of Lloyd’s lap, which was perfect. Lloyd whirled around, following my pointing finger. The grove was darker than a crow’s insides now. But just at the farthest finger of firelight, between two sycamores, something was standing.
It looked taller than a man, a terrible, tattered figure, faceless in the leafy shadow. In its big, knobby, earth-blackened hand it held…a whiskey bottle.
“Ohhh, leave me be,” it moaned, gravely, like wind weeping in treetops. “Don’t defile my body.”
Lloyd dropped backward off his log.
Instead of lunging forward to protect us, J.W. backed into the weeds, growling and whining.
Lloyd was on his feet now. His breath came in sobs. He staggered sideways on his spindly legs, tripped over his own foot, and fell full-length into the crick. The water wasn’t crotch-deep on a dwarf at that point. But Lloyd went right under.
Charlie Parr walked out of the grove and up to the fire. “Have you et all Tansy’s chicken?” he asked, flipping the empty whiskey bottle into the weeds. J.W. yelped.
Charlie hadn’t emptied the bottle himself. He could be a handful, but even he wouldn’t take up hard liquor. His dad was the Methodist preacher. Us Culvers were Methodists too. It meant you could do pretty much as you pleased as long as you didn’t drink liquor or dance. Especially dance. Us Methodists said dancing was nothing but hugging to music.
Lloyd thrashed in the black water and finally found his feet. He’d gone in face-first, which hid his tears. “You dirty rat, Russell,” he hollered, spitting like a cat.
He stood in the crick, sopping and streaming. “You knowed that was Charlie. Him and you cooked this up.”
“Did I say it right?” Charlie asked me, beginning to rifle through Tansy’s eats.
Lloyd stalked out of the crick and teetered on the bank. He was shaking with rage and wetness. He wouldn’t come near us, but he wanted by the fire. He was on the horns of a dilemma.
“You’ve scared off every fish between here and the Wabash River at Vincennes,” I remarked.
“Shut up, Russell,” Lloyd spat. “Just shut—”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Charlie said. “You might could have something on the hook already.” He’d been hunkered before the fire and our food supply. Now he stood up, way up. He was about six foot three. He wandered over to the bank and began to pull on our trotlines. “Hey, you got somethin’ here.”
Lloyd was interested in spite of himself as Charlie strolled into the crick, following a line. We could use a mess of fish with Charlie around. He could eat you out of house and home, and he was too big to argue with. His thick fist followed the line till he came to a heavy hook. He grabbed there and heaved up.
My heart skipped a beat. Breaking the surface of the water was a writhing snake. It was thicker than Charlie’s wrist and an easy four foot long. I saw fangs and the pitiless gleam of an eye. The sickening white of its twisting belly flashed in the firelight. All I could think of was water moccasin. Now it was off the hook, whipping in the air like a wrangler’s rope.
“Sweet—” Charlie exclaimed, and his feet shot out from under him. He went down in the crick, full-length, with another almighty splat. Where the snake went you couldn’t see, and Charlie didn’t linger to find out. He was out of that crick like he could walk on water. I’d never seen that boy move so fast, not even on Hallowe’en night.
When he got to the bank, he was still traveling, and breathing real hard when he got to the fire. “You get the next one,” he gasped.
Then we were all sitting around the fire. We’d built it up with brush and pine knots to dry out these two, and Charlie’s dunking seemed some solace to Lloyd.
Charlie recovered pretty quick, because he said, “Them biscuits Tansy’s or your aunt Maud’s?”
“Aunt Maud’s,” I said, and Lloyd agreed, to keep Charlie from picking us clean. The chicken was already gone.
It was dead of night now with a ring around the moon. J.W. came back from his patrol, limping with a bur between his toes, and crept into Lloyd’s damp lap.
You could hear any distance now, even above the whine of the katydids. Way off somewhere a dog howled at the moon, and other dogs picked up his wolfish cry. Even J.W.’s ears pricked, though he never moved.
“That howling only means but one thing,” Charlie remarked, “and you know what.”
“What?” Lloyd said.
“Dogs always know when somebody’s died.”
“No, sir, you’re not getting me again, Charlie. You either, Russell,” Lloyd piped in a thin and wobbling voice, “you dirty—”
“I ain’t talking about gettin’ anybody,” Charlie said. “Somebody did die tonight. That’s why we—I was late. Everybody’s telling everybody else. You’re the only two who don’t know nothin’ about it.”
He had me about half interested. It wasn’t like Charlie to pull something on his own. He didn’t have that much imagination. “How’d you find out?” I asked, to see what he’d say. Charlie didn’t think quick enough to lie.
“Party line,” he said.
It was true that the Parrs subscribed to the telephone. We Culvers did too. “Who died?” I inquired.
“Take a guess,” Charlie said. “Go ahead.”
“Somebody we know?”
“You can believe that.”
“Somebody old or young?”
“Old,” Charlie said, “as the hills.”
Lloyd was looking back and forth between us, clutching J.W. He was on the hook again, and I was getting there.
“Old as Old Man Lichtenberger?”
“Nobody’s that old,” Charlie said.
“Man or woman?”
“That’d be tellin’ too much.”
“Somebody we like?”
“Not hardly,” Charlie said.
“Somebody who’s been feeling poorly late?” I was wracking my brains.
Charlie shrugged his big shoulders. “She must of felt pretty poorly tonight. She died.”
“So it’s a woman!”
“More or less,” Charlie said.
The truth burst over me. “You don’t mean Miss Myrt Arbuckle!”
“You got her,” Charlie said. “She’s dead as mutton.”
“Charlie, you lying—”
“No, Russell, believe me or believe me not. Miss Myrt kicked the bucket right about supper time.”
“Prove how you know.” I narrowed my eyes.
“Well, she rooms and boards with Miz Cooper, and when Miz Cooper rung the doctor, everybody picked up. My ma did. You can bet your aunt Maud did.”
That was the beauty of the old party line telephone. A call for one was a call for all. When somebody rang for
the doctor—two long rings and a short one—everybody picked up.
“When Miss Myrt didn’t come to supper, Miz Cooper went to her room. The old hen was stretched out on the bed, deader than a doornail. Doc Wilkinson told Miz Cooper to put pennies on Miss Myrt’s eyes to keep them closed till he could get there. And he said to tie up her jaw with a rag to keep it from sagging. So she’s shut up at last.”
Lloyd’s eyes were wide and staring. His jaw hung open.
I was almost speechless with amazement, but not quite. “What killed her?”
“You got me,” Charlie said. “All I know for sure is she’s cut her last switch.”
Many’s the time she’d striped Charlie Parr’s other end, back before the arthritis got in her elbow. Though he was a preacher’s son, it was at school where he learned to turn the other cheek. Charlie still walked with a slight limp.
As I say, it was like a miracle, if you could believe it. Miss Myrt dying practically on the eve of school starting up. In August.
“She’ll be a restless spirit,” Charlie observed. “She’ll be a soul in torment, carried off just when she was fixing to lock us up in that schoolhouse for another year.”
I hadn’t thought of it like that. And I didn’t have time to wonder how Charlie did. Somehow, it didn’t sound much like Charlie.
Lloyd sat studying the fire, wanting with his whole heart to believe. Him and Charlie sat with their backs to the grove, so I was the one to see Siren. She slept on her feet, and she’d dozed through everything so far. Now she nickered and pulled back on her rope. Her tail whipped around. The firelight caught one of her eyes rolling back with fear.
That was all the warning in the world I got. Siren nickered again, and I seemed to hear the answering nicker of another horse, far off. The mist in the grove was blue now, and a patch of the darkness changed. The underbrush crackled, as if from a footfall. Something was moving in the timber.
A hand pushed back a low-hanging limb. I saw her then, just a darkness against deeper dark. I saw the shawl over her head. Now the firelight found her. She stopped, keeping this distance from the living. More shadows puddled at her feet.
