"No, sir. I just walked in."
"They gone and let that boy go that killed his two buddies a few years back. Probably wasn't no older than you at the
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time. Let's see, this was probably around 1976 or thereabouts. You probably wasn't even born then, huh?"
Clifton smiled and then nervously picked at the plastic of some wrapped crackers sitting on a counter rack. He crinkled the corner of the package and tried to straighten the display. "No, sir, I was born already. But I was just a baby then."
"Well, let me tell you, young'un. It was quite a little to-do goin on around here back then. It happened down south, in Alabama I believe, if I got that right. This boy goes off and kills his two best friends. Murders em. A boy, same age as you, for no reason kills his two best buddies. Can you figure? And now they gone and let him go. They says he's all fixed up."
Clifton didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything for a moment. Instead, he just shook his head and continued fumbling with the pack of peanut butter crackers. Every time he entered Henry's shop, he knew it would be an adventure, but the old man seemed to be more out of sorts than usual today. Finally, Clifton asked, "Why'd he end up here in Virginia if it happened way down there?"
"Well, that's why everybody was puttin up such a stink. When the boy turned eighteen, he was supposed to move to a prison for adults. But their prisons was all overcrowded, so they shipped him up here with a handful of other no-good rascals. That Samford prison is private, you know, so they're
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willin' to take the scum from the bottom of an old johnboat if there's money in it. They don't give two hoots to hell as long as they're gettin' rich."
"Well, maybe he'll just head on back to where he came from."
"Seems to me that if a state can't control its own people, then they's the ones who got to deal with it. Don't seem right to ship em all up here. We got trash fillin' up our landfills from New York City on one hand, and murderers comin' from all over fillin' up our prisons on the other. And what do we get out of it? Nothin' but a damn headache if you ask me." Henry took a sip from a dark brown bottle that he pulled from underneath the counter. Then he put it back and rested his hands on the worn pine countertop. "I don't know what's gonna come from your generation. Goin' around, shootin' each other up, stabbin', doin' grass and drugs. You hear about it all the time over in Samford. And hell, seems like Roanoke's a war zone. Times was, if you had a problem with somebody, you went out back of the schoolyard and fought with your hands. Like men. You whupped him or he whupped you, and that was the end of it. Killin' your best buddies over nothin? No, sir. Not when I was a young'un."
Clifton nodded. "Yes, sir. It's awful," he said, doing his best to placate the old man without smiling.
"Damn right it's awful," said Henry. And then, without any
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warning, as if the subject were completely forgotten, he said, "They say it's gonna rain tomorrow. Should be good for the fishin'. You lookin' for some minners?"
Clifton hadn't been ready for the abrupt shift, but he was thankful for it. "No, sir, I got some worms. Thought I'd head on down the tracks a little ways and try down there."
Henry smiled for the first time, showing a perfectly white and straight set of dentures. Once the topic got on fishing, which it always eventually did, Old Henry's demeanor inevitably changed. "You headin' to Ward's Holler? If you are, go down to the old dam. That's a honey hole if there ever was one. Enough smallmouth and crappie down there to keep you busy. Big cats in the bottom. Like to hang down there under that busted-up concrete. Worms'll do you right down there."
Clifton looked to where the old picture of the giant catfish still hung on the wall, the corners folded over, the image faded and streaked with years of sun. "You think Ward's Hollow has got one like that lurking at the bottom?"
Henry smiled his biggest smile so far. "Don't rightly know, young'un. Fishin ain't as good as it used to be. Times was, folks would catch em close to that size pretty often. Not so much no more. Ever since they stocked the river with muskie years back, fish've gotten smaller. Those mean bastards eat up everythin'. Now that's a fish that'll fight you, but you'll need some steel leader if you're gonna try for them. Got teeth like
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razors. And smart. But you never can tell. A few months back, some boy was out with his daddy using nothin' but a rinky-dink Donald Duck rod and hooked into a little red-eye. Next thing he knows, as he's reelin' in, a muskie comes and chomps down on the red-eye. Hook gets him right in the corner of the mouth. Ends up haulin' in a twenty-pound muskie. Didn't even have a steel leader. Damndest thing. On a Donald Duck rod. Can you imagine?"
Clifton smiled. "No, not really. Never seems to happen to me."
"That's why they call it fishin', not catchin'. You don't want one of them anyway. Meat tastes like hell. But the only way to make it happen is to get you a wet line. You go on down to Ward's Holler and give her a try. Or a little farther down to the Palisades. You know where that's at?"
"Yes, sir."
"Fish up against them walls. That's some deep water. Goes all the way down to hell. You got smallmouth all up in there. They love them ledges."
Clifton hesitated for a moment, contemplating whether he should ask about Swamper or not. He picked once again at a cracker wrapper and then said, "I was thinking about going a little farther down than Ward's Hollow. Somebody told me there was good fishing down by Swamper's place. You know where his place is at?"
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Henry reached down and took another drink from his bottle. "'Course I know where it's at. Not too far past Ward's Holler but before the Palisades. On this side of the water but on the other side of the tracks. Sits on a hill. But the fishin' ain't all that good up there. Ward's Holler's where you want to go."
Clifton paused again. He scratched nervously at an itch in his scalp that wasn't there. "I guess you know Swamper then?"
Henry looked up for a moment as the two men who'd given Clifton a ride entered the shop. '"Course I know him. Known him all my life. He's one of them boys I fought in the schoolyard once. 'Course we went to different schools back then, but I know him. He comes in here from time to time. Good enough fella, I reckon. Loves my cracklin. Says I got the best around." He winked at Clifton and said, "And he ain't lyin' about that."
"Hey, Henry," yelled the passenger man who'd entered and now stood by the section of the shop that contained swivels and lead weights. "You got any two-ounce sinkers? The triangle kind? I don't see em. Kmart was all out."
Henry looked away from Clifton, his hearing apparently a lot better now that the radio was off. "Kmart? What kinda crackerjack operation you think I'm runnin' here, son? This is a tackle shop. This ain't no Kmart. Course I got em. Just hold on a minute." He then looked back to Clifton. "You want
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anythin', young'un, before I go help that blind, Kmart shopping son of a bitch over there?"
Clifton shook his head with a smile but then stopped. "Actually, yes sir. How about a cup of cracklin?"
"Now you're talkin'. My brother-in-law just slaughtered a hog a few days ago. Better if you kill em in the fall, but he don't give a damn. I'll get you a fresh cup." Henry went over to the fryer and dropped a basket into the oil, which immediately popped and snapped. A minute later, he scooped several ladlefuls of hot cracklin into a Styrofoam cup. He secured a plastic lid overtop and handed it to Clifton, his hands shaking slightly. "That'll be one dollar. Best damn cracklin in southwest Virginia. And that ain't no lie."
Clifton reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out one of the two dollars he'd swiped from his mother's purse before he left. He placed it in Henry's pink palm, and Henry put it in a steel lockbox underneath the counter, presumably next to his bottle.
"Thanks a lot," said Clifton.
"Come on back," said Henry as he walked toward the passenger man. As Clifton left the store he heard Henry say to the man, "Times was, you couldn't get no lead weigh
ts around here from anyone but me. Now with all them Kmarts and such ..."
He closed the door, placed the cup of cracklin inside his
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empty, wormless pail, and grabbed his rod. He glanced down at the solitary black man on the end of the dock who didn't look like he'd moved a muscle. He walked down the steps and then up the drive from where he'd come. When he got to the train tracks, he took a right, smelling the strong odor of creosote on the railroad ties as they stewed in the hot June sun. It can't hurt to go check it out, I guess, he said aloud as he began walking over the gravel between the ties in the direction of Swamper's place.
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***
Chapter 5
An oval of sweat dampened the neck of his T-shirt as he walked along the tracks. Patches of black tar on the ties cooked in the heat. The silver steel of the rails gleamed. What am I doing? This is crazy. It's not crazy. This is why you tossed all those bottles in the river. Yeah, I know, but it's weird. So what's going to happen? I say, "Hello, I'm Clifton. I wrote the note," and he says, "Oh yeah, nice to meet you." And then what? What am I trying to prove here?
A faint whistle in the distance finally awoke him from the conversation he'd been having in his head for the last ten minutes. When he turned back toward the train, though he could only hear it and couldn't see it yet, he figured he'd been walking for nearly a mile. And it had all been a blur. He'd been so entranced with talking to himself that he'd paid no
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attention to where he was going. For a moment, he had a sinking feeling that maybe he'd already passed the house, but then he reassured himself that he couldn't have missed it, despite the daze he'd fallen into.
When the rails began to shimmy and rumble, he hopped off the tracks and switchbacked down the steep gravel embankment to some thickets of rhododendron. Scattered at his feet were pieces of coal that had fallen from previous cars. When he looked back up toward the sloping bank, off to his right, maybe twenty-five yards away, a flicker of something caught his attention. It took him a moment to zero in on the movement, but when he did, and his eyes focused, in the shadows he located a doe, her brown tail twitching occasionally, showing glimpses of white. Her head was bowed to the ground as she foraged through the detritus of the forest. Clifton clicked with his cheek, as if calling a horse, and she sprang to attention. Her head shot up, neck extended, as she looked back toward him. She appeared to see him but didn't act alarmed. Clifton stood perfectly still and admired her grace and beauty. After a moment, she took a few steps closer to the base of the embankment before eating again.
The metallic squeal, like a fork against a car hood, got louder as the train rolled closer. Suddenly he realized that on either side of the doe, not more than four feet away from her,
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were two more deer, also rummaging for food along the forest floor. They had materialized out of nowhere.
The train whistled again, this time much louder, and the rumble and clicking along the tracks now began its rhythmic, hypnotic beat. One of the deer that had recently appeared, along with the one Clifton had first spotted, propped its head to attention when the whistle screeched, but the third one, a buck with only velvety nubs for antlers, continued eating as if he didn't have a care in the world. As the metronomic hum of the train got louder, the two alert deer effortlessly bounded up the hill and over the tracks to the other side. They stared at Clifton as they stood in the open sunshine a good fifty yards above him, their tan bodies perpendicular to the steep mountainside.
To Clifton's left, the engine turned the corner as the headlight peeked through the trees about a hundred yards away. When he looked back to the buck, it was no longer there. Up the hill, the other two deer still looked back in Clifton's direction. And then, just a little farther down the tracks, he spotted the solitary buck standing in the middle of the crossties, his head down and seemingly foraging for something, but for what, Clifton couldn't imagine. Clifton glanced to his left as the train drew dangerously near, then back to the deer, and repeated the process as if watching a tennis match. Clifton
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waved his arms and fishing rod, screaming, "Get off the tracks. What the hell're you doing? Get off the tracks."
He felt completely helpless as he watched everything unfold. As the engine screamed past him, the buck still remained stationary. The deer finally looked up, but the train was already on top of him. The engine skewed Clifton's view, so he didn't see the impact, but he felt just as sick as if he had. He couldn't do anything except watch as car after car flashed by in front of him. He could only wait futilely at the foot of the hill as the endless train kept rolling by. Brown painted steel, crested with mounds of chunked coal, whipped past him as bits of dust and wind stung his face. The leaves and branches of the rhododendron clicked against one another. When the rear engine finally passed and the train was swallowed by the mountain around the next bend, Clifton looked down the vacant and lonely strip of track. Everything had gone hauntingly quiet, just as it had been before the interruption. A few birds were singing, but nothing else stirred. He saw no sign of the buck, no mangled pieces, no destroyed and bloody carcass. He looked across the tracks and saw the other two deer, now standing next to some exposed granite a little farther up the hillside, feeding once more.
Clifton climbed the embankment and stood on the railroad ties, the thick, pleasant smell of creosote filling his nose
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once more. And then, just on the other side, in the bottom along the gravel and rocks that formed the foundation for the tracks, he saw the third deer--standing, his head upright, his velvet-covered antlers looking as soft as down feathers, his tail casually twitching, perfectly content as if nothing had happened.
The buck slowly clambered his way toward the other two, and when they'd regrouped, they trekked up the slope of the hillside as quietly as an owl on the wing, heading toward the plateau of the dirt road up above. Clifton kept his eyes on them, especially on the buck, until they melted into the landscape and vanished. He wondered if the buck had ever realized how dangerously close he'd been to dying.
As Clifton stood on the tracks, he looked around and soaked up the beauty surrounding him: the verdant woods of the forest; the cobalt sky sprayed with white cumulus clouds; the glimmer of the river below; the mockingbirds and cardinals now chirping away; the smell of cracklin emanating from his bucket. Maybe it was the day or maybe it was just the relief he'd felt from not having to witness the death of that deer, but either way, Clifton suddenly felt alive. He felt better than he could ever remember feeling.
When he spied a huge thicket of blackberry bushes running along the opposite side of the tracks, he dropped into
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the bottom. His feet spilled a little cascade of gravel and coal down the embankment in front of him, and then he immediately began popping the purplish-black fruit into his mouth. The sweet-sour juice trickled from his lips and down his chin as he voraciously picked and stuffed, picked and stuffed. He ate like a feral dog, and he didn't care. He felt alive and ready for an adventure. After ten minutes of gorging himself, he said aloud, as if talking to the blackberries, It's time to go meet Swamper.
Clifton grabbed his rod and pail and scrambled back up the gravel hill to the tracks. He set out walking again, probing between his teeth with his tongue for the little seeds that had gotten stuck there. When he rounded the bend where the train had disappeared, he saw the house.
Tucked into the steep side of the mountain, sitting in the middle of the woods without the slightest hint of a driveway, was Swamper's place. It was surprisingly similar to what Clifton had imagined: a tiny, boxlike, one-story structure with a porch that tilted to one side. A pair of dark, uninviting eyes-- where the windows were--stared at him from the green face of the house, daring him to enter through the mouth of the open doorway. The back corner of the roof looked to be damaged by a windblown maple. The tree, which was still alive, leaned against the corner, its dirt-clodded root b
all partially exposed. The rim of the brick chimney had all but crumbled
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away, and an orange slag line ran from its base, staining the scum-covered shingles. In the front yard, if it could be called a yard, was a square patch of turned earth that was Swamper's garden. Potato plants and the hollow stalks of onion popped from the ground in neat rows. The heart-shaped leaves of bean plants covered the far end, and scattered around the perimeter were young lettuce plants the same color as the fleshy pulp of a lime.
When Clifton stopped, his eyes followed the worn path of clay that led from the tracks and up the hill to the front steps of the porch. Clifton's palms were soaked with sweat and he felt his heart beating faster. I'm not going in there. No way in hell. Screw this. But before he could turn away and beat it down the line, an elderly man appeared in the doorway. He was tall and thin and had to duck below the door frame as he opened the screen door and walked out onto the porch. His jeans hung off of him loosely, and the sleeves of his flannel shirt were fastened at the wrists despite the heat. His skin looked red to Clifton, as if he'd spent most of his life outdoors, and his hair was as white as cake icing. It wasn't gray or silver, it was bright white. The man cupped his hand to his brow to cut the sun's glare and then craned his head forward as he spotted Clifton standing on the tracks. He lifted his other hand and waved. Clifton waved back with the tip of his fishing rod.
Gray baby: a novel Page 6
