“I don’t think the cops will do a damn bit of good,” Vernon Ray said.
“Well, if they’re solid, they can be shot and killed,” Bobby said.
“I don’t think it works like that. They’re already dead, remember?”
“So we just watch while they do a ghost version of throwing a virgin sacrifice into a volcano?”
“Well, there’s one other option. That bearded creep must be the colonel.”
“Colonel Kirk?”
“The leader.”
The man with the scabbard—Colonel Creep, Bobby decided—stopped in front of Donnie, but Donnie stared at the ground, swaying back and forth as if the snare were still rattling out its rhythm. Through the zoom of the lens, the colonel’s eyes looked like black, miniature versions of the Jangling Hole.
Bobby looked at his friend, running down the many other options besides the one he knew Vernon Ray would offer. “We can shut our mouths and pretend nothing ever happened. We can say we got photos but have no idea what happened to the Eggers boy. We can say we thought they were Civil War re-enactors.”
“I know what it’s like in the Hole. If they take him in there, he’ll never come out.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. We can’t let that happen.”
Bobby sighed, reluctant to lose the Karen Greene hero-worship fantasy. Or possibly his life, for that matter. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about becoming grown-ups.”
“You want to do it, or me?”
“Which way you running?”
“You’re faster than me, so you head across the ridge. When they follow, I’ll grab Donnie and drag him away.”
“What if they don’t all chase me, or if more of them come out of the Hole?”
“Nobody lives forever.”
“Except them.”
Donnie still hadn’t looked at Colonel Creep. The other soldiers sagged like handless puppets, waiting to be snapped into action. The air was charged with expectation, as if the static were building for a thunderbolt. Bobby let the camera dangle from the strap around his neck and stood up, emerging from the concealment of the laurels.
He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Up here, you dirty Connecticut Yankee dogs.”
Donnie was the first to turn his head, followed by the bearded colonel. Shaking, Bobby lifted his middle finger and shot the ghost a bird, wondering if the universal hand signal for “Screw you” had been in vogue in the 1860s.
Vernon Ray waited in the thicket, peering through the binoculars.
“What’s he doing?” Bobby asked.
“Darn. Better duck.”
The soldiers, without speaking, had turned their attention toward Bobby, some of them raising their rifles. Bobby wondered if the ghostly musket balls and minis had any power in the real world, and decided despite his bravado about not growing up, he was in no rush to get killed.
For one thing, he still had a few gaps in his Spiderman collection to fill, and for another, he was going to kiss Karen Greene before the eighth grade was over. And one more notion ran under the others: if he died, then maybe his ghost would be stuck on Mulatto Mountain, too, conscripted to an endless darkness with the cold company of Colonel Creep’s Raiders.
He dodged behind a massive gnarled oak just as thunder erupted. Lead balls ripped though the leaves over his head, answering his question about the reality of ghost bullets. The soldiers scattered and headed up the slope toward him, their feet making no noise as they passed over the carpet of dead, dry leaves.
Bobby cupped his hands and yelled. “What now, Ghostbuster?”
“Run for it,” Vernon Ray said.
“Which way?”
“Both.”
“Great plan.” Another volley sounded, and Bobby peered around the oak to check the positions of the approaching soldiers. Two stood in the clearing by the cave, smoke rising from their rifles. One was reloading.
Good thing they’re using breech loaders instead of semiautomatics, or I’d be Swiss cheese.
Donnie finally looked up, though Bobby couldn’t make out his expression, and the colonel drew his sword from its dull brass scabbard and pointed it toward Bobby in another universal “Screw you” signal.
So much for Vernon Ray’s plan of “Divide and conquer.” Time for Plan B: Get the hell out of Dodge.
Bobby broke from cover and scrambled across the ridge, the protruding granite boulders giving him cover. He wondered if the sheriff’s deputy had known he was shooting at ghosts yesterday. Since cops were trained to be good shots, it probably proved that ghosts couldn’t be killed. On the other hand, ghosts seemed not only able and willing to kill the living, but took the mission pretty seriously. After all, Kirk’s Raiders had spent a century and a half stewing on their resentments.
An explosion of powder sounded. Something pinged off a nearby boulder, throwing rock chips in the air.
Bobby stayed low and kept running, dancing between rocks and trees the way he dodged tacklers on the gridiron, the camera bouncing off his rib cage, the dying green smell of autumn forest mixed with the rot of loam. Another shot echoed through the trees. He wondered if Vernon Ray had enough sense to run away, then realized they were almost recreating yesterday’s chase, only this time it was dead soldiers and not the law that was after them.
Breathing hard, he reached the highest point of the ridge, where storm-sheared hickory trees stood in jagged brown lines. A low branch thwacked him across the cheek, nearly knocking him off his feet. He rubbed the stinging flesh and hurried onward. He was about to descend the slope, figuring to curl around the rocky promontory and wait for Vernon Ray at the bottom of the mountain, when he heard a loud, low rumble.
Too loud for rifles.
Cannon? A hundred snare drums?
He slowed and squinted at the sky. Cloudy, but not dark enough for thunder.
Bobby found a rocky, rain-cut gully and scooted down it, sliding in the black mud. The mechanical chugging grew louder. The gulley opened onto a clearing of cut trees and an open, level gash of brown soil.
Two dump trucks and a logging truck were parked along one edge of a rough dirt road, and a bulldozer was parked in the clearing, black smoke rising from its smokestack. Bobby waved his arms and ran toward the man in the baseball cap who was revving the noisy, stinky diesel engine.
The man didn’t see Bobby at first, and Bobby climbed onto the dozer’s thick steel tread. He grabbed the dozer operator’s shirt and the man spun in surprise, nearly knocking Bobby from the bulldozer. “What?” the man shouted.
“Ghosts,” Bobby said, knowing it sounded like a bratty prank, but too shocked to tell anything but the simplest truth.
“Go?” the man yelled.
“They got somebody,” Bobby said, pointing toward the ridge.
The man’s face was blotched and his eyes bloodshot. His breath smelled of beer and onions. His eyebrows furrowed in anger and he yanked down the throttle, quieting the engine to a deep throb. “What you talking about?”
“They got my friend.”
“Who got him?”
“Ghosts. From the Jangling Hole.”
The man’s face scrunched again, but he must have seen the fear and panic in Bobby’s eyes. “Who are you?”
Bobby was again too shaken to lie. “Bobby Eldreth.”
“The plumber’s kid?”
Bobby nodded.
“What you doing out here? Don’t you know this is private land?”
“We came to see the ghosts.”
“That’s just stories they make up for kids on Halloween.”
“I saw them. And they’re taking away the Eggers boy. They’re taking him into the Hole.”
The man fidgeted with the throttle. “You been smoking something?”
“No, sir. You got to help.”
“I don’t know what you seen. But the Eggers boy ain’t got enough letters in his soup bowl to spell ‘C-A-T,’ much less wander this far from home. I got work to do.”
�
��Please.”
The man’s mouth twisted in a “Hell with it” mime then he shut the engine down. The diesel engine chugged, chuffed, and died, acrid exhaust hanging in the air. Bobby hopped off the dozer and waited for the man to climb down.
Bobby turned and found the soldiers had tracked him down. Or maybe they’d simply materialized in the clearing.
Because this is their mountain and they don’t like trespassers.
They circled Bobby and the bulldozer operator, their rifles leveled. They were close enough that Bobby could see the tarnished insignia on their uniforms and the moth holes in their filthy jackets.
“What in God’s name?” the man whispered.
“Like I said.”
“It’s them dress-up boys for Stoneman’s.”
The man stepped toward the closest soldier, who sighted down his barrel and thumbed back the flintlock.
“I think they want you to stop,” Bobby said.
“No way,” he said, continuing. “Nobody points a gun at me and gets away with it. Even if it’s a pretend gun.”
The soldier pulled the trigger and the flintlock struck, igniting the powder charge and propelling a lead ball into the man’s face. Bone crunched and a red spray jumped from the back of the man’s head, his cap flying off from the blow. A few drops of blood hit Bobby, and he saw other soldiers were aiming their weapons.
The bulldozer operator’s head, which had snapped backward on impact, now lolled forward as his knees collapsed. He flopped face-first as if making a snow angel in the mud of the road bed.
Bobby put his hands over his eyes, figuring the next volley would rip him to shreds, expecting his life to flash before his eyes. But all he saw was Karen Greene and his sneering dad and Vernon Ray’s Bambi eyes and a scene from Shrek where Donkey first realizes he can fly. Some life. He listened for the click of a trigger, wondering if he would die before he heard the shot.
He wondered how his dad would take it, and whether Will would sell his comic collection. Would Karen cry? He was wondering about the photos on his camera–maybe a little fame after his death–when he realized he’d been wondering for too many seconds.
What’s taking so long?
He uncovered one eye and blinked.
Nothing.
The soldiers were gone.
The man from the bulldozer lay on his belly, a pool of thick red spreading from his shattered skull.
After a minute, the birds began chirping again in the high treetops.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Come give me a hand, squirt,” Elmer said, knocking on the door to his sons’ room.
The Schlitz 40s had clubbed his head but good and the last thing he needed was little Bobby adding to the headache. Sunday afternoons were for sitting on the couch and watching NASCAR, but Vernell had ragged him so hard about Dolly’s Dollhouse that he’d promised to fix the leaking sewer pipe under the trailer.
It wasn’t like he’d even copped a feel, and the closest dancer to his table was a used-up warhorse whose tits drooped like cold balloons. He could have sworn that when she clamped her thighs around the brass pole and spun, dust had floated into the air and her skin had chafed like rusty brakes. So even if he didn’t feel any particular need to make amends for that sin, he’d rather wallow in shit under the trailer than put up with shit inside the house.
The space beneath the trailer was only three feet high, and while Elmer could slither through the septic mud and find the leak, he needed Bobby to fetch the proper lengths of pipe, carry tools, and do all the wriggling in and out.
Elmer pounded on the door harder. He wasn’t surprised Jerrell was nowhere around, because Jerrell had a job and his own wheels and was banging babes all over town. His real son, a real man. While Bobby, the bastard blonde, was probably polishing the old bone to pictures of those big-titted superbabes in the comic books.
Could be worse, could be a flaming fag like Jeff’s boy.
His face broke into a triumphant grin. Jeff could kick his ass in bowling, boss him around in the Civil War games, and draw twice the income, but when it came to raising them right, Elmer had the heating-and-AC man beat all to hell.
Elmer gave the door one more hard blow with the bottom fist. “Bobby, get your ass out here.”
He tried the door handle. Locked. Elmer could shove the flimsy door in, but then Vernell would give him shit about that, too, and he’d spend the rest of the evening replacing it, and the money would come out of his beer kitty.
Elmer went down the hall and through the living room, where Vernell sat on a sofa drying her fingernail polish. Elmer never understood how a woman could fix on one thing and block out everything else in the world. When Vernell dried her fingernails, that was all she did. If some corporation could figure out how to channel that empty happiness on her face, then preachers, barkeeps, and shrinks would all go out of business.
“Where’s Bobby?” she asked, as if she’d missed the tom-tom job he’d done on the bedroom door.
“Little idiot didn’t answer,” Elmer said.
“Stubborn,” she said. “Gets it from your side of the family.”
Elmer ducked his head back in the door, but didn’t catch her face in time to see if she was jerking him around. Pushing the little secret in his face. If he had the damned money to spare, he’d send the cuckold-spawn for DNA testing and then Vernell could bounce her ass out onto the street and start walking. “At least my side can cook.”
“He might have sneaked off with Vernon Ray,” she offered.
“Well, he didn’t come through the house.”
“Maybe he got up before we did. You was snoring so loud an elephant parade could have wandered down the hall without us knowing.”
Elmer didn’t want to get into it, not right now. He brawled better with a few tall ones under his belt. There were a couple under the truck seat and it would give him a head start on the afternoon and make crawling in shit a little more bearable.
He slammed the trailer door hard enough to cause Vernell to yip and then got his tools from the truck. Like most in vocational trades, Elmer didn’t like to take his work home with him. Carpenters couldn’t be troubled to so much as hang a picture hook, painters wouldn’t color a toenail, and plumbers were pissed off if they had to slorp a plunger around in a blocked toilet to jam out some cooze’s bloody Tampax.
As he went around the trailer, he saw the open window in the boys’ bedroom. He braced himself on the oil-tank rack and stretched up to look in the room. It looked like Bobby was still asleep, curled up in the blankets on the bottom bunk. He watched for a moment, figuring if Bobby was tickling the one-handed puppet then the bunk would be shaking.
Nothing. Not a thing. Not even the slow rise and fall of breathing.
Elmer was about to punch the glass hard enough to break it when he saw a crevice in the blankets, right where they met the pillow. He peered through the window at the place where Bobby’s head should be. The skin was smooth and white, and a stitched patch of black met it.
Fucking soccer ball. The bastard pulled the old sleeping-dummy trick.
Elmer stifled a surge of pride. Though he’d played a version of that stunt on his own folks plenty of times, sneaking out on Friday nights to knock down whiskey that his friends paid winos to purchase, he couldn’t rightly claim a genetic link. Bobby was just a drain on the wallet and another pain in the ass, and if Elmer couldn’t even get a little labor out of him, then he might as well send the brat’s medical and grocery bills to the real father, whoever that was.
Bobby was probably down at the Davis trailer, dorking around with Vernon Ray. Elmer had no idea why his inherited son would want to hang around with a blooming fruit, but Bobby had always been a little too sensitive for his own good. He read too many books, for one thing.
Elmer would have worried about Bobby maybe having a little sugar in his britches, but Bobby was a jock and the little chickies seemed to dig him just fine. Too bad he spent all his time hanging around with his
guy friends. He was probably missing out on a ton of stinky finger.
Well, even a bitch like Vernell can’t expect me to fix the busted pipe all by myself. I’ll go round up Bobby and maybe even get Vernon Ray to help out, too. About time Bobby learned the family trade, anyway.
Elmer walked to the Davis trailer, making sure he kicked over one of the little flagstones that girded the flower garden around the porch. Yes, suh, Captain Fucking Davis. The officer’s quarters are always a mite finer than what the troops get. Privilege of rank and all that happy horseshit.
Elmer pounded on the door, his hangover gripping his skull in the bright sun. Maybe he’d hit Jeff up for a cold one, even though it was barely past noon. Chat him about the Civil War and Elmer might even get two or three freebies, plenty of lubrication for wallowing in shitty water and fixing a pipe. Just like a regular workday.
Jeff opened the door a crack, his mustache twitching. “Hey, Elmer. You not in church?”
“I already been saved. After that, I didn’t see much point.”
“Got your golden ticket, huh? Want a beer?”
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
“Come on in. Martha’s gone to Barkersville to get her hair done.”
Elmer stepped inside. The trailer, as usual, smelled like mothballs and Clorox. Framed portraits of Jeff’s Civil War ancestors covered the walls, and a print of the C.S.S. Neuse, an ill-fated ironclad, dominated the wall behind the couch. Jeff’s wife had made a few decorative overtures like a basket of potpourri and doilies on the armchairs, but this was clearly Jeff’s house. It made Elmer resent him even more, because Elmer busted his ass to pay rent, but that lazy-assed Vernell called the shots.
Fuck it. He followed Jeff to the kitchen, his parched tongue licking his lips in anticipation.
As Jeff handed him a Budweiser, Elmer nodded thanks and said, “Say, did Bobby come over?”
Scott Nicholson Library Vol 2 Page 68
