Redneck Eldritch

by Nathan Shumate

  “Oh, sure, climbing the butte and going swimming—what could be better?”

  He paused almost imperceptibly in packing my bags, then nodded and chuckled as if to say kids would be kids and kids do swim the summer away.

  The conversation felt dead, its hole of silence heavy. I said, “What I don’t understand is how my granmammy could afford to buy all that land around her property.”

  “Oh,” he said, his eyes unfocusing for a moment—or, rather, focusing about a mile beyond me, “I wouldn’t say Bethelsda ‘bought it.’ More like she come into it, say.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He shrugged and finished packing my groceries, placing the last plastic bag on the dogfood in my cart. “Just, she had a way with people. That’ll be eighty-nine forty-four, there.”

  He ran my card and excused himself to sweep. I walked to my car and sat for a moment behind the wheel. Then, deciding the milk and eggs and such would be fine, drove to see Mr. Barrett. I lifted the door as I turned the knob and walked in. A buxom forty-something sat at reception and greeted me.

  “Is Mr. Barrett in?”

  She frowned. “No… May I take a message?”

  “I—suppose. I’m Tabatha Crosby—Bethelsda Olney’s granddaughter?”

  “Oh,” she said. I didn’t know how to read her tone, but she promised to tell him I’d stopped by, then began tapping at her keyboard.

  “Well,” I said. “Thank you.” I stepped outside and took a breath of air as I looked up the main street. Not one week ago we’d driven in just there. I turned my head slowly, talking it in, when a hulking mass in my peripheral vision startled me and I swung my head to see the butte, looming over the town. I squinted. From ground level its hollow top was hidden from me, but I could see a couple small humanish forms going up the townward side.

  Based on my meager memories—possibly invented by California stereotypes of Oklahoma since I certainly never heard my parents speak of here—the economy of Boktussa is farming. Or ranching. I’m not sure if there’s a difference. Other than open land, however, I hadn’t seen much evidence of this, so it felt almost vindicating when a tractor came put-putting up the street, distracting me from the butte. Obviously an old machine, perhaps as old as the overalled man driving it. And—look!—his boots and denim below the knees, though dry, were caked white. I watched him pass by, my only clear thought curiosity. Had this man lost a dog?

  I had put the food away and was just about to go see the painting I’d begun work on when the children came home for lunch. I hosed them off, careful to place them downwind to keep the sulfur smell away from me, but didn’t make them shower as they told me they planned to swim more before bedtime.

  “You never swam this much when we had a swimming pool,” I said as I handed them grilled-cheese sandwiches.

  Andee, whose hair and scalp were deathly white, replied, “Chlorine makes your hair smell funny.”

  “Besides,” added Taggart, “in Sac we had AC. So it was easier to watch TV. It’s not as hot here, but still.”

  “And it’s, like, nature.” Andee took a big bite of her sandwich, melted butter gathering at the corners of her lips. Through the sandwich she said, “Dere’s shtuff.”

  I sat down and looked them over. With their faces still framed in shock white after their cursory washing, they were rather cinematic. One of these times, instead of hosing them off, I would have to have them pose for me.

  “How many other kids were there today?”

  Taggart shrugged. “Only two. But a bunch of grownups too.”

  “Oh. They swam?”

  Andee giggled. “No, they just walk around singing to the water.”

  “Yeah, they said they have to do it in daytime.”

  “For safety.”

  “Yeah. For safety.”

  “For safety,” I repeated. I should be going with them. “Did you take the dog with you?”

  Both shook their heads—disdainfully? “He won’t go. He’s scared.” Then they bye-mommed me and hugged me and were gone before I could offer to join them. I waited a moment then went out to watch them climb the butte. The dog was watching them also and whining, the white fur around his neck still slightly rusty with blood. I sat down and examined his scab, then scratched his back and together we watched them till they disappeared into the maw. “Well,” I said. “Well.”

  The dog dozed off. I gave him a pat, then went inside to wash my hands and head out to the barn. I propped open the door and started placing some old 2x4s to hold open the swing-up shutters on the windows. I was on the sixth and last when a sudden gust of wind knocked loose three shutters on the butte side and they swung down with a synchronous, clapping bang. That noise was followed by a hollow, tinny clunk. A tin can had fallen from one of the beams and was lying at the foot of my easel surrounded by cigarette butts. In the remaining sunlight, ash fluttered downward. Onto my wet oils. I ran over and grabbed the easel, pulling it toward the nearest open window to get the best light for cleanup.

  The left side of the painting was untouched, the brown-cloaked figure of my granmammy’s memory staring darkly from its shadows, her figure looking out from a blocked-in landscape of dark green and clotted red-browns. The ash had fallen onto the right side which I had left dominated by a massive white block. I hadn’t decided what it was to become—perhaps Jesus arriving triumphantly from heaven—but, wait.

  My breath fell heavily in my chest, as if I had inhaled argon. The cigarette ash had lighted on the taller peaks of the white paint creating, undeniably, two clear faces. The first, Andee, somber, staring, unkind. The second a death’s head complete with hollow eyes and naked teeth. I had no memory of painting any such things last night, white on white. But here they were now, outlined clearly in the black gray of ash.

  I stumbled backward and fell on my rear, unable to stop staring at the faces. I had never seen Andee’s visage filled with so devastating a purpose. And that skull! What did it—? Was it threatening Andee? Was it prompting her?

  I pushed myself back, away from this horror. My eyes never left Andee’s—not for full minutes—which is why it took me so long to realize that the green and brown blocking I had done on the other side took the form of the butte. Or that my granmammy and daughter were in perfect balance on opposite sides of the canvas. That the skull, for all its mythic weight, mattered less, and faded from my view.

  Ben called after the children were in bed. His hotel, he was certain, maintained most of its decor from the ’70s and ’80s, but the mattress was firm and he liked it. As we spoke, he was fiddling with an infrared camera the company had given him to test and experiment with. Eventually they wanted to connect them to folks’ phones and such to allow for distance viewing of home-security footage. He currently had it connected to his laptop and, though glitchy, said he could see the draft at the bottom of his balcony door, and the two red and white bodies sitting in the next room watching a glowing orange box.

  “You can see through walls?”

  “Yes. I mean—this is a lower-end model so I can’t see into the hotel room down the block from here, but I can see through wall singular and then down the block.”

  “Wall singular.” I looked at the kitchen wall facing the studio. “Still kind of creepy.”

  Ben grunted. “Which is why they only sell the better ones to airports and oil rigs and the FBI and stuff. Still. Vastly more interesting than my last assignment.”

  “C’mon, Ben. You like boring.” I turned on the TV. Just a staticky picture from the broadcast signal out of OKC, but better than the unblinking walls.

  He laughed. “True enough. You miss me?”

  “You know I miss you. I always miss you.”

  I was surprised by the emotion in my voice, but Ben didn’t notice as he abruptly started cursing.

  “What happened?”

  “Just dropped the camera. Damn it.”

  “It’s broken?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “You should g
o to bed anyway.”

  “I’ll pretend this pillow is you.”

  “Don’t get too confused. I have plans for your return.”

  The conversation turned more and more suggestive, but soon I was alone again with a bad TV signal and questions I couldn’t answer. I stood a long time in the bathroom debating whether to take melatonin or not. Its guaranteed sleep comes with guaranteed dreams.

  I took it.

  I awoke in the morning rested, but filled with memories of the butte drawing nearer and nearer, pulling our house up its banks until it, with me inside, slid into the water, while all the time Andee, naked and caked white, urged me to join her and a skeleton who stood beside her, wanting to speak but unable. The story had wound around and around my sleep in as many iterations as there are hours of night. I was glad to leave my bed and make a homey breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast and feed it to my children. I told them to dress nice and together we drove into town to seek a church. I knew there were none on the main drag but in a town the size of Boktussa, it wouldn’t take long.

  We drove up and down streets for half an hour without luck. I slowed and rolled down my window to talk to an elderly woman in a house dress. I asked her where to find a church.

  “Church?” She looked at me, then in the backseat at my children, then back at me. “You’re Bethelsda’s little gal, ain’t’cha?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I am.”

  “Hmm. Bethelsda never was one much for churches.”

  “You knew her, then?”

  The woman smiled, revealing small brown teeth. “Oh, sure I did. Sure I did. Now Bethelsda, when she wanted to worship, she just headed on up the butte.”

  “They hold services on the butte?”

  “Now and then they do. They’re overdue, I must say.” Her eyes traveled to the back again. “Boy and a girl. Isn’t that nice.”

  “I’m a boy and a girl! I’m both!”

  I was too surprised to say anything. We’d never told Andee to keep anything secret, but she’d never shouted it out before either.

  “Um, yes,” I said, trying to pull the woman’s attention back to me. “Hey, since you know my mother’s family, what happened to the rest of them?”

  The woman looked at me a long time. As her brow furrowed, her eyes shrunk into shining black dots. “Couldn’t say,” she said, and walked away.

  I was too unsettled by the exchange to keep looking. I took the children home and we read of Jesus’ visit to the Gadarenes which, I admit, provided less comfort than I was looking for, so we pressed on, reading of the raising of Jarius’ daughter and the woman with an issue of blood, then starting a new chapter. Finally Taggart and Andee tired and after Jesus fed the five thousand, I let them go. After a half-hour downstairs, they came up dressed to swim in their crusty white swimming gear. Andee’s skirt had hardened up. Something about her earlier declaration drew my attention to her small bulge and I wished to rush over and correct her skirt.

  I hadn’t moved from the sofa in their absence and now I gripped the Bible tight. “Aren’t you bored of swimming yet?”

  Oh no, oh no.

  “You really enjoy it that much?”

  Oh yes, oh yes.

  “Maybe I—I should come with you.”

  Oh no, Mom. Oh no.

  So again I watched them go. And I sat there. And I pressed my fingers into my mother’s Bible. The Bible of the mother who took me away from here. A place where my children’s bodies are mapped in layers of white.

  My phone rang and I jumped up to get it. Ben.

  “Ben!”

  “Hey, hon… Something wrong?”

  I hesitated.

  “Hon?”

  “Sorry, no, nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I just—I guess I miss you.”

  “Well then you’ll be glad to hear I just landed in Tulsa. I’ll be home before dinner.”

  “Oh, that’s great.” I was surprised to feel tears in my eyes. “I’m—I’ll look forward to you.”

  “Good… Look, though. I’m only home long enough to connect the cameras to our computer so I can test them while I’m finishing up in Madison. I fly out again tomorrow evening.”

  “O-okay. It’s—it’s still better than no Ben at all.”

  I could tell he wanted to ask me more about my state of mind, but I couldn’t let him. What would I say? Looked at rationally, was anything actually wrong? No. A couple of weird things, but… So I cut him off, said I was going swimming with the kids. But first I ran to the barn and hid the ash-Andee. Then I considered changing out of my church clothes, but instead I just hurried up the hill, calling their names. They met me at the ridge. I looked over their shoulders and in the water I could see, like white polka dots in the black water, the white-encrusted heads of other children. They all seemed to be looking at me, keeping their heads so low in the water I wasn’t sure they could breathe.

  “Mom?” Taggart looked at me perplexed.

  “Your father’s coming home. I need you to come clean up before we eat.”

  Andee sighed. For a moment, she became the teenager she too soon would be. “Mom,” she said. “We were doing something. And he hasn’t even been gone that long.”

  “That’s true, dear. But it’s his first return since we moved here. Come on.”

  She huffed and dragged her feet, but she followed me. I told her to shower first—and to start her shower in her suit to clean it up as well—and had Taggart feed the dog. Ben was home sooner than my most optimistic estimations and held me from behind as I stirred a sesame-based sauce into my stir-fry. He grabbed two trivets and carried over the rice as I brought over the vegetables.

  Ben sat down and reached out to grab mine and Andee’s hands. As we made a circle around Granmammy’s small table he asked Taggart to say grace.

  Taggart looked at Andee before closing his eyes. “Dear… God. Thanks, um, for this week. And that we’re all here. Thanks that we’re all here. Amen.”

  Ben raised an eyebrow at me, then stood to serve everyone rice.

  As soon as the kids were in bed, we were too. I clutched Ben desperately—almost fearfully—as we made love. Afterwards, he tried to ask me what was bothering me, but he couldn’t find a question I could answer. All I could say was that I felt better with him here. That when we were together, then I felt whole. But even with that clear truth that I’d told him before less fervently, I trailed off, thinking of the myth—was it Hindu—that at first we were all created like Andee, but the gods split us apart and our lives were spent looking for our other half. I had found this idea romantic in college, and before finding Ben, androgynes had found their way into the backgrounds of many of my paintings. I needed Ben. Did we, having found each other, need anything else?

  My thoughts rattled on, getting less and less coherent. Ben held me tighter and tighter, but his body relaxed into sleep before I found anything to say aloud. Focusing on his breathing calmed me. And soon I joined him.

  In the morning he set up four cameras outside the house, wherever there were outlets. I didn’t leave him but held the ladder, then came inside with him and sat beside him, letting my hand rest on his thigh as he checked the feeds and made sure they fed to his phone. “Just don’t turn the computer off while I’m gone, ’kay?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s nice that the kids haven’t messed up my desktop for a change.”

  “They just swim now.”

  “All day?”

  “Every day.”

  Ben turned his head to look at me. I felt my lips quiver. He held my face and kissed my forehead. “We’ve always wanted them to spend more time outside.”

  “Yeah.”

  We watched each other’s faces for a while. I don’t know what mine showed, but it caused his to show concern.

  “They’re okay.”

  I nodded.

  I was just about to wrap my arms around his shoulders when his phone buzzed. “Hold that thought. Ah, crap.”

  “What?”

  �
��Some storm’s moving into Kansas and they’re expecting tornado warnings tomorrow. They want to know if I can fly out of Tulsa tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll tell them I can’t do it. They’ll get me another flight.”

  “No, no. It’s fine.”

  He looked at me. I hadn’t seen him this skeptical since… I don’t know. “No,” he said. “I’ll stay tonight.”

  “No, Ben. Please. I’m a big girl. It’s fine.”

  “Maybe it’s fine, but are you fine?”

  “I’m fine. Go.”

  He didn’t move.

  “I wanted to go swimming with the kids today anyway. I’ll tell them goodbye for you.”

  “No, I’ll go up there first.”

  “No, no. They’ll be fine. And you’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “Not till nine.”

  “Go. Just call me when you get there.”

  He nodded. “You need this, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Okay. I’ll call you when I get back to Madison.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  He kissed me, then went to grab his travel case. Then he returned and we stood in the doorway and kissed. Although I had told him to go, I knew my mouth was telling him something else. But he’d already texted them to buy the ticket so it wasn’t long until he was backing up and, with a small wave, turning away and driving back towards Boktussa.

  I felt tears creeping up so I slammed the door and started disrobing as I ran to take a quick shower and make a haphazard pass over my legs. I put on my one-piece and some shorts, grabbed a towel, and went outside. I looked up at the butte and a whine drew my attention. The dog was peeking around the corner of the house. “Hey, Teddy. How’d you get outside? You want to come with me?” I squatted and scratched his head. I grabbed the leash off its hook and attached it to his collar then took a step towards the butte. Instantly Teddy sat down and started pulling back. “C’mon.” I pulled; he pulled back harder. Soon I was pulling as hard as I could and this little dog, his eyes bulging, would not budge. So I let go. “I’m sorry, buddy.” I held his face with both hands and let him lick my face. “I’m sorry.” I took off the leash and dropped it on the ground. Then I stood up and started walking, trying not to hear his whimpers.