by Jessie Cox
“Lucky for that spook it’s almost dinner time,” she said aloud, taking comfort in her voice. “Me and the Lord would have made a hellova’ tag team!”
U’tiun’ta watched as the foolish old woman drove away. “What ‘Lord’ was she yelling about?” she wondered. “The White Jesus would overcome her?” She didn’t think so.
The setting sun found Ray at Maggie’s, sipping coffee, as he waited for Trudy to get off work.
Amos was at home, in his chair, listening to the news that was broadcast in his native language and trying not to go to sleep.
Ted was watching television and trying to think how to keep Toby and Sarah amused in his off hours.
Nettie had just decided that she should not mention what had happened today, because folks might think her crazy, and Grayson had just finished talking to an unexpected visitor.
Chapter 18
Arnold Clearwater, the remaining member of the two Creek men sent out by Grayson, watched the old house as the night grew steadily darker. Though he knew he didn’t have much chance alone against U’ tiun’ ta’, he could at least find her lair and then go to Grayson and see what he wanted to do.
The night creatures, having grown used to his presence, had begun to stir. He thought he heard something behind him, but dismissed the thought as probably a rabbit or a squirrel. Then a small pebble bounced off his head. Jumping to his feet and turning, with his knife ready, he saw one of the Cherokee men squatting a few feet away.
“You startled me,” Arnold said. “Where is your teammate?”
“He got sick and went home,” the man said. “Where is yours?”
“He was lonely for his girlfriend,” Arnold replied. “What is your name, again?”
“James Two Crows,” James answered. “I guess we team up. Have you seen anything?”
“No,” Arnold said. “We’ve been watching a different house each night. There has been nothing so far. I’m beginning to think the whole thing stems from an overly active imagination.”
“Grayson has no imagination,” came a voice from the shadows. “But if you think that, why don’t the two of you go home?”
Both men turned toward the voice in time to see the outline of a large man step into the clearing.
“This damn place is like Grand Central Station!” Arnold yelped. “Who the hell are you?”
Hello, Arnie,” the man said. “Do you not know your old friend, John Littlefeather?”
“Johnny?” Arnold said in surprise, jumping to his feet to meet his old friend. “What are you doing here? Last I heard the FBI was looking for you. Something about wanting to question you about a murder.”
“There was no murder,” John said. “Only justice for those who were responsible for many deaths.”
James stood and said, “All this talk about killing makes me uncomfortable. I’ll leave the two of you to continue the search. Good luck.”
“Wait up,” John said. “Arnie is going with you. I told Grayson I’d handle this alone.”
“Are you sure?” Arnold asked. “I’ll stay and help, if you need me.”
“No,” John said. “I work better alone. Just leave both of your obsidian knives. I may have a use for them.”
Arnold and James handed their knives to John, then bidding farewell, started to leave.
“By the way,” John called after them. “Say nothing about having seen me. I want my return to be a surprise.”
Both men agreed and disappeared silently into the forest. A couple of miles later, James paused and turning to Arnold, asked.
“That John dude, is he some kind of bad?”
“He was in the SEALs and survived three tours in Vietnam,” Arnold answered. “I’d say he rates high on the Bad Scale.”
John put a knife in each of his back pockets. Tomorrow, he would tape them, handle down, one on the bicep of each sleeve of his shirt.
Watching the deserted house for a few minutes, he eased into the darkness for a closer look. He doubted that with all the magpie chatter that had gone on amongst the men, there was anyone or anything in the house, but it would not hurt to check.
It lived beneath the dead rosebush beside that house. Its nocturnal diet consisted of field mice, toads and insects. It’s warm days spent on a rock to warm its cold blood, it sensed that night had fallen and the felt vibration in the ground told it, its supper was afoot. But wait! Something stranger than even the huge four-leggeds approached. While it felt no fear, it was curious to see what it was.
Sliding from the hole beneath the bush, it waited. Then, seeing the heat source of a truly horrible thing, it struck.
“Shit!” John said when he felt the sting of the bite on his thigh. With lighting fast reflexes, he caught the snake by the head before it could release from the bite and drop back to the ground.
Holding the snake by the head, John ran his other hand down to its tail. Finding no rattles, he knew it was a copperhead.
“Damn!” He said, as he pulled the snake’s head off and threw it into the bush. “Looks like I’m going to be very sick for a while.”
Returning to the clearing, he built a small fire, then skinned the snake. Putting the carcass on a green twig, he placed it over the fire to cook, while he searched for the roots he would pound into a poultice to draw the poison from his leg.
Chapter 19
Ted had awakened and left early to be on time when the kids arrived. The first half of the trip went well, but an overturned semi brought traffic to a halt.
Worried about the time, he got out of his car and walked through the stopped traffic to where a highway patrolman stood writing in a report book.
“Hello, Trooper,” Ted said. “Any idea how long this is going to take? I’m due at the Tulsa Airport at ten this morning.”
The Trooper snapped the book closed, then looked at Ted.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It will take as long as it does and not one minute more.”
The Trooper’s response irritated Ted, but he managed to keep a pleasant tone when he said, “Gee. Thanks.”
Going back to his car, Ted tuned in an Oldies Rock station on the radio and rocked out for the next two hours until the traffic started to move.
Reaching the exit for the airport, Ted broke free from the congestion on the highway. A glance at his watch told him he still had time to make it before the children’s plane landed, but just barely.
Pulling into a fifteen minute parking space, he tossed the ‘Police’ placard on the dash, tossed the Redcap a ten dollar bill and hurried inside the terminal.
Flashing his badge at Airport Security at the Security Check-in Line, Ted half walked and half jogged to the unloading gate where the plane would unload its passengers, only to find no one there. A quick glance at the reader board told him the plane had arrived ahead of schedule, but where were the children?
As it had been over two years since he last saw them, Ted was concerned that they may have changed so much, he would not recognize them if he saw them. Picking up the customer service phone to have them paged, Ted noticed two children about the right age standing in front of a magazine rack, in a small store across the hall.
Sarah looked a lot like Ellen, her mother, and Toby was...well, Toby, pudgy, blustery and alert in the protection of his younger sister.
Ted started across the hallway, but Sarah, looking up at his approach, yelled, “Daddy!” and flew into his arms. Toby walked unhurriedly over to Ted and holding out his hand to be shaken, said, “Ted. It is good to see you.”
Not showing the hurt that being called “Ted” by his son caused, they soon had their luggage and were on their way back to Ted’s house.
Once on the interstate, Ted asked, “You guys hungry?”
“No,” replied Sarah. “We ate on the plane.”
“How about you, Toby?” Ted asked. “There is a place up the road that serves waffles all day. Are they still your favorite?”
“Naw,” came the answer from the backseat.
<
br /> Ted had just returned his attention to his driving, when Sarah began to cry.
“Whoa! What’s this, sweetheart? Homesick already?” Ted asked.
“NNo,” cried Sarah. “I don’t want bugs in my hair!”
“Yeah, Father! What is this crap that we are going to have to play with filthy savages, who have bugs in their hair?” Toby demanded to know.
Ted bit his tongue and silently counted to ten before answering.
“I know that is what your mother told you,” Ted said, silently cursing Ellen. “But while there are some of the poorer families here that may not bathe as often as they should, I promise you that is not the case with the family you are going to meet.”
“Yeah? Well, screw that!” Toby said. “Sarah and I can find something to do on our own. We don’t need any naked savages to hang around with.”
“You will watch both your tone and your language around me, Toby!” Ted said. “I am your father.”
“Then you might start acting like it,” Toby replied.
“Fine,” Ted said. “I thought you were both too old to have a babysitter, but since I’ll be at work and can’t watch you and you refuse to even meet the family I had hopes you would become friends with, that is how it will have to be.”
“A babysitter?” Toby protested. “I’m almost eleven years old! I don’t need a sitter!”
“I want to go home!” Sarah cried.
Ted looked in the mirror at Toby, then glanced at Sarah.
“I no longer know them.” He thought.
Chapter 20
John Littlefeather loosened the tourniquet on his upper thigh. Having split both the inner and outer seams of his pant leg to allow for swelling, he changed the poultice, throwing the old into the fire and putting on fresh over the two cuts he’d made. The bite area was as black as a padre plum, but twice the size.
John knew he was in trouble. He was too far from anyone to go for help without the venom spreading into his system, but while he could and had lived for days without food, he needed water. Looking at the old house fifty yards away, he knew there had to be either a well or a pump that had provided for the previous residents of the distant past.
To a healthy man, fifty yards would be nothing, but to a man who needed to keep down his blood circulation, and had to crawl on his side with one leg doing the work while the other dragged like a dead weight, it would take a long time and many breaks to let his heart slow down, before he got there.
A third of the way there, John got the chills. Waves of cold washed over him and he felt his bones would break as his muscles clinched in response. Half way across the space, he lost his supper. The thought that the snake certainly didn’t agree with him sent John into peals of feverish laughter. Delirium and hallucinations made him forget to stop often and a raging thirst drove him on.
A gentle touch upon his fevered forehead and his thoughts cleared.
“John,” he heard a voice say, the voice he had heard so many times in his sleep, then would awaken with moist eyes and aching heart.
“Sharon?” he asked, not believing, but so wanting to believe.
“Yes, John,” the voice answered.
Looking up, he saw his wife.
“So beautiful,” he thought. “Even more beautiful than the day they were married. As beautiful as she was when the bomb exploded that turned Ray Corngrower into a haunted man and him back into the killer that he had thought was gone from him forever.”
“You can’t be here,” he told Sharon. “You are an illusion, a trick of mind from the poison.”
“But I am here,” Sharon replied. “I have never left you. Nor will I, until we are once again together.”
“Then let me die now,” John said, trying to pull one of the knives from his pocket. “I have missed you so much, my love.”
“John!” Sharon said in a sharp tone. “You will not do this! It is not your time and there is still much you must do!”
John lowered his head as the grass beneath turned wet with tears.
“Come, John,” Sharon said. “Just a few more yards and I will bring you water, while you rest in the shade.”
John crawled. Every time he thought he could go no further, Sharon would allow him a moment’s rest, then urge him onward again. Finally she urged no more. Bringing an old dried out hornet’s nest, as soft as any pillow, to lay under his head, Sharon kissed his dry lips. Promising to return, she brought him water in what seemed a silver drinking glass. Twice she returned with refills, and as he lay sipping from the third glass, she cleansed and changed the poultice on his thigh.
The late afternoon sun cast long shadows as a weary Ray Corngrower trudged up a weed-choked drive to check the last house of the day. Entering the old house, he searched the first floor and carefully descended the old rickety stair to the basement.
“Nope. Nothing here,” he said aloud.
Starting back up the stairs, he heard a groan. Stopping to try to locate where it came from, a second groan made him realize it came from outside.
Hurrying up the stairs and out the door, Ray found John unconscious on the ground. Noticing the hornet’s nest pillow and the rusty shiny thing in John’s grasp, Ray tried to remove it from his hand, but every time he tried, John grasped it tighter.
“John. It’s Ray. I’m going to bring the car up. I won’t be long, then I’ll get you help. Do you hear me, John?”
Twenty minutes later:
“Dispatch, Car Twelve!”
“Dispatch. Go, Car Twelve.”
“Dispatch, be advised enroute Code Three to the Emergency Room at Bristow Hospital with snakebite victim.”
“Ten-four, Car Twelve.”
With John strapped in the front seat beside him, Ray raced for the hospital.
“Ray?” John said barely conscious.
“Yeah, John,” Ray replied.
“I want you to keep this for me,” John said, handing Ray the glass Sharon had brought him water in.
“Okay,” Ray replied and wondered what was so important about the center piece out of an old hubcap.
Chapter 21
That morning, before Ray found John, Amos Badwater arose at his normal time of four-thirty. Making a pot of the thick black coffee that many recovering alcoholics prefer, he went out on his back porch to watch the world awaken. The creatures of the night were scurrying for a last quick bite before going to bed for the day. Soon the birds would start their songs of joy that greeted Grandfather Sun. Sipping his coffee, Amos watch a shadowy squirrel search for last year’s nuts beneath the hickory tree that grew in his backyard. Knowing that what few nuts that were left would be rotten, Amos went in to refill his cup and add a little milk. He spread a dab of peanut butter on a couple of crackers to give to the squirrel. Returning to his chair on the porch, Amos tossed the crackers into the yard. The squirrel investigated the offerings and, finding them to his satisfaction, sat on hind legs looking at Amos, as it ate.
“Yes,” Amos told the squirrel. “You are right. We are brothers and are each a part of the Whole.”
Made bold by Amos’ words, the squirrel ran up to the steps to the porch, then helped itself to the coffee in the cup sitting at Amos’ feet.
“Thirsty, too,” Amos said with a smile. “Okay. That’s enough. I’ll share, but you can’t have it all.”
The squirrel hopped off the porch as Amos reached for his cup.
A morning Jay lit on a limb of the old tree and screamed its joy that day had come.
“I know that you are happy,” Amos said. “But do you have to be so noisy?”
The Jay paid him no mind.
Looking around for the squirrel, Amos saw it dart from one side of the yard to the other.
“That is called a caffeine high,” Amos told the squirrel, then after watching it a few moments more, Amos went in to make his breakfast. He would wait before going to Timmy’s until after the delivery was made. Then he would take Timmy and Naomi to meet Toby and Sarah, as Ted had asked.
An uneasy silence that was thick as fog had settled in Ted’s car as he drove the last miles home.
Sarah had stopped crying and Toby gazed out the window in an angry huff.
Ted turned into his driveway and parked the car in the drive, so he didn’t have to navigate the overstuffed garage.
“This is where you live?” Toby said after getting out of the car and looking around with distaste.
“Yes,” Ted replied. “What’s wrong with it?”
