by L. L. Akers
Joe climbed out of the water, his legs dripping wet, and stepped up next to Curt.
Jake’s eyebrows raised. “Curt, what’s with the divided crap? Tucker’s only trying to—”
“—Tucker’s trying to take over,” Curt interrupted. “Good to see you back in the ‘hood, Jake, but you weren’t here for the vote. You haven’t been here for days. You can’t just waltz in and think you know what’s going on now. How’d you get here anyway?” Curt gave him a suspicious look, and then glared at Grayson.
Jake answered him as politely as he could muster. “We drove here. We’re not staying—and before you ask, we don’t have much gas. Just enough to get home.”
Curt stared hard at Jake, and then Grayson again, and finally his eyes landed back on Tucker. “What do you guys want? Don’t you have work to do at your house?”
Tucker took a deep breath. He hated to ask now…already off on the wrong foot again. But he was desperate. “Look, Curt. We need your help. Sarah’s baby is really sick. It’s too young to eat yet. The little girl is literally starving to death. Are you sure you don’t have some formula? Or maybe some canned or powdered milk of some kind in your group?”
Curt put his hands on his hips. “I heard you’ve already been going door to door asking my people. You told me I couldn’t do that.”
Tucker slid his hands in his pockets only to avoid pulling his gun and shoving it down Curt’s throat. “I was asking for milk; not anything else. Only because…it’s a baby, dude. Come on. Do you have any or not?”
Curt exchanged a knowing look with Joe. All activity at the pool stopped and the air filled with a long, silent pause as Curt’s group looked on. For a moment, when his lips pressed together and he nodded, it looked like he was giving in…possibly remembering they did have some after all.
Tucker’s hopes soared.
“Nope,” Curt answered, with a sly smile.
He was lying… anyone could see that. Tucker lunged, one hand reaching for his gun. Grayson and Jake caught him, pulling him back. “You’ve got some! I see it on your face! You want her to die?” Tucker screamed.
Curt shrugged and Joe laughed.
Tucker lunged again, nearly breaking free from Jake and Grayson’s grasp. “What the hell is wrong with you two? Have you lost your minds? This is Sarah’s baby. You know her for God’s sake!”
The smiles slid off Curt and Joe’s face. Curt solemnly shook his head. “No, of course we don’t want her to die. I feel for Sarah. But like I said, I don’t have anything. Anyway, she chose to follow you, so let’s see how you handle the situation.”
Grayson kept his left hand gripped tightly on Tucker’s shooting arm, but took one step forward with his right hand hovering over his own gun. “Look man. I don’t know any of y’all. But if I had some, I’d give it to anyone here that needed it. This baby needs it. If you have it, speak up.”
Curt rubbed his fingers over his closed mouth from left to right, as though zipping it, and shook his head.
Joe stepped forward, his hand clearly hovering over his gun, too. “The man said no.”
Grayson looked at the ground and sadly shook his head. “That he did…that he did. Is that your final answer?” Once more he looked at Curt.
Curt nodded, a smug look over his face.
“Well, you’re about as useful as a pogo stick in quicksand, aren’t ya?” Grayson snapped at him, frustrated by his silence. “This is not going to end well, guys. I’m telling ya.” He pulled at Tucker, turning him around. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Jake helped him pull Tucker away, as Tucker looked back at Curt with wild crazy eyes, speechless. They have milk…or formula…he just knew it.
He dug in his feet, resisting. “We can’t let them—”
“You can’t get it this way,” Grayson whispered, and jerked him forward. “That man is on a power trip. He thinks he’s shittin’ in high cotton now and he won’t change his story. So, if this is a hill he wants to die on…let ‘em.” He looked at Tucker humorlessly and winked. “You get my point?”
Tucker straightened up and shook off Grayson and Jake’s hands. “Yeah. I get it. Let’s go.”
As the guys walked away, Curt had the gall to yell, “Say Tucker, I hear Xander’s a good hunter. Think he’ll take me out and show me the ropes? We might need some fresh meat for our group soon.”
“Over my dead body,” Tucker mumbled under his breath. “Or yours.”
42
Tullymore & Grayson’s Group
Grayson and Jake led the way back to Tucker’s house with Tucker dragging his feet behind them, his head bent low.
Jake slowed for his friend, to let him catch up. “Tucker, this isn’t your fault. Things are crazy right now. People are going to get sick. Maybe die. This has barely started. If the power doesn’t come back on…well, bad things happen. Not sure what you’re going to do about it.”
“It’s a baby, Jake.”
Jake patted him on the back. “Yeah, man. I know. This is harsh. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I do,” Grayson said.
Tucker looked to him, a spark of hope in his eyes.
“Kick leaves over that bastard. I’d bet their food is all stocked at his house—greedy little devil. Pop a cap in his ass and see what he’s got,” Grayson grumbled.
Jake looked at his brother-in-law in astonishment. “Great day, Grayson. You talking murder, here?”
Grayson shrugged. “If he’s got that milk and not giving it up, then he’s willing to kill. I’d say that baby’s life has more value that his.”
Jake answered, “Yeah, if he has it. And if he doesn’t…then what? Killed a man for nothing, that’s what. This ain’t Mad Max up in here.”
“Yet,” Grayson mumbled.
“Look,” Jake said. “What’s going on there?”
They were passing Neva’s house, which usually never showed any signs of life, but there were people lined up at her door ten deep; people from both sides of the neighborhood divide.
“Let’s check it out,” Tucker answered.
The guys stepped onto her lawn and Tucker asked the last guy in line what was happening.
“Neva’s some sort of doctor.”
Another woman turned around. “She’s not a doctor. She just knows a lot of natural remedies.”
“Rumor is she’s a witch,” the woman at the front of the line said. “But I’m hoping she can do something… other than voodoo or spells, to help me with my husband’s snoring. I haven’t got a wink of sleep since the CPAP machine stopped working.”
Tucker’s face lit up with hope once more. He pushed his way to the front of the line. “Sorry. Excuse me. It’s an emergency.”
A moment later the door opened and one of his neighbors walked out with a Ziploc bag of some sort of herbs, and a big smile on her face. IdaBelle was right behind her.
“Next!” IdaBelle said, smiling.
Tucker stepped up. “IdaBelle, does your aunt know of anything to give to a newborn child? The baby is very sick…maybe dying…she’s out of formula and her mom can’t make…” Tucker once again waved his hands around his chest, indicating breasts.
IdaBelle blinked rapidly a few times. “Yes, but she already told you. You didn’t listen.”
“Told me what?”
“The rice water. She told you to use the rice water, and to make the children, in particular, drink it.”
“This isn’t for a child. It’s a baby. She’s six weeks old. She probably needs more than rice water, I’d think.”
“Do you have more than rice water?” IdaBelle sweetly asked.
Tucker shook his head. “No. That’s what I’m asking. What else can we give her?”
IdaBelle laughed. “And I’m telling you…Aunt Neva said rice water! If that’s all you have, it’s better than nothing.”
Neva’s head popped up behind IdaBelle. “If she will take the rice water, you might save her. If she can keep that down, you can give her chamom
ile tea, later,” she said in a raspy voice.
“Thank you. Thank you so much…” Tucker answered. He turned to leave and then turned back and hugged IdaBelle, so overwhelmed to have some hope once again. He reached out to hug Neva, but Neva stepped backward, into the house, and disappeared, whispering to IdaBelle as she walked away.
IdaBelle bit her lip, and then repeated the message. “Aunt Neva said it might be too late, Tucker. All you can do is try…but go now. Try to get the rice water into the baby as soon as possible.”
Tucker took off at a fast walk toward home.
Jake turned to follow Tucker, expecting Grayson to go with them. Grayson instead went to the end of the line, and stood with his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to see what she has to say about this tooth,” he said. The swelling was getting worse in his face.
“Next!” IdaBelle said again. “And don’t forget, Aunt Neva is taking trade. Does everyone have something?”
One woman muttered under her breath, “I’ll be back.” She walked away empty-handed.
The woman behind her—the one with the husband who snored—held a roll of toilet paper, IdaBelle waved her in, but then noticed Grayson standing quietly at the back of the line, his left cheek puffy. She held up her hand, palm out to stop her from approaching. “If you don’t mind, he looks like he has an emergency.” She pointed at Grayson. “Sir, come on up.”
“I’m not old enough to be a sir to you…” Grayson mumbled grumpily and made his way up the steps to the front door, passing IdaBelle as she held it wide open for him.
He stepped in and looked around. The entry of the house was very dim, most of the curtains and blinds closed in the large formal den. The room was empty.
IdaBelle pointed to the kitchen, where plenty of light shone, streaming out the doorway. He made his way in there, expecting to see some sort of round table with a ruffly tablecloth, and a gypsy-ish woman sitting behind a crystal ball or a cauldron. But at this point, he didn’t care.
He’d put up with any sort of voodoo to make this tooth stop hurting.
But the kitchen was just a normal kitchen, albeit a little higher-end than most. Stainless steel appliances shone under the light streaming through the windows. The counters were granite and the backsplash a tumbled marble.
Everything looked completely normal.
Neva sat at a large, fancy table, an array of herbs and oils spread out in front of her. Behind her, a china cabinet held hundreds more bottles of the same on two shelves, and on the lower shelves were jar after jar lined up corner to corner. He eyeballed the jars, looking for blood or chicken parts, but he was disappointed. Nothing there but homegrown foods.
He couldn’t help but be a bit impressed. Looked like Neva was a bit of a prepper.
Neva waved him into a chair beside her and leaned forward, looking at his swollen cheek. “You have a bad tooth,” she said.
Grayson nodded.
No shit, he thought.
She grabbed a small flashlight and stood up, stepping into his personal space which put her nearly between his legs. “Open up.”
Grayson cringed at her close proximity…not because she was so awful to look at, but because Olivia wasn’t there. He couldn’t help but feel guilty even when he wasn’t—which was all the time—due to his wife’s suspicious and jealous nature.
Any woman standing between his legs was not something she’d approve of. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t drop-dead beautiful or even a tiny bit pretty. Eighteen to eighty…blind, crippled or crazy…didn’t matter to Olivia; she was jealous of them all.
But this one in particular wore a low-cut flowery blouse that clearly showed her cleavage; bending over would give him a full view. There was nothing for it, though. He obediently opened his mouth, but tightly closed his eyes—just in case Olivia somehow found her way there and walked through the door.
Neva leaned down to take a look. She stood up. “Yep. Bad tooth.”
“I know that. What can I do to fix it?” Grayson snapped.
“Can’t fix it. Too far gone. I smell infection. It needs pulled.”
Grayson flinched and rubbed his jaw. “I’d like to keep it if I could… anything else I can do?”
“What do you have to trade?” Neva asked.
Grayson sighed. “I don’t live here and I didn’t bring anything. Jake is my brother-in-law. He lives here. I’ll walk over to his house and bring something back. What do you want?”
Neva moved a few bottles around. “That tooth needs pulled. But you can try this Clove Oil—a few drops mixed with the coconut oil.” She slid two bottles toward Grayson. “That might help numb it awhile.”
She pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Do you have any Advil liquid-gel caps?”
Grayson shook his head. “I’ve got some pain reliever, but not that. And it hasn’t helped anyway. I’ve been swallowing them like candy.”
She opened a bottle and poured six liquid-gel capsules into her hand. “Don’t swallow them. Open the gel cap and pour the liquid right onto your tooth. That might help, too. But you have infection and that’s the biggest problem. You need to get the infection out. Do you have antibiotics?”
“Not really,” Grayson fudged. He was holding out partly for Puck, who didn’t seem to need them—yet—and partly for just in case there was another person even more hurt or sick later. The cayenne pepper he’d used on Puck had some antibiotic properties and Puck was healthy. He may not need them at all. But someone else might; someone worse off than Grayson.
She put her hands on her ample hips. “If you have them, you need to use them. Infection can kill you. But you’re the boss of you, and you seem a bit stubborn, so…”
She turned to a basket of vegetables and plucked out a bulb of garlic and put it next to the two bottles.
“Apply freshly extracted garlic juice, or make a garlic paste, and put it around the tooth for five minutes, then rinse it out with water. You can also add garlic juice into a cup of water and gargle with it a few times a day. Add as much garlic into your food as you can. It will combat the infection and strengthen your immune system. You have a garden, yes?”
Grayson nodded.
“Then I hope you have more garlic.”
“What order do I do this in?”
“Do the garlic first, several times a day to work out the infection. Rinse it out, then use the clove oil. If that doesn’t help the pain, use the Advil.”
She pushed the two bottles, the garlic, and the Advil toward Grayson. “Bring me any dried gravy mix you have—at least six packs—or a bottle of Soy Sauce, or three rolls of toilet paper, or… chocolate. You be fair to me, okay?”
Grayson nodded in agreement, hoping like hell Jake had any of this at his house to trade. He stood up to leave.
“You’ll be back, and when you do, bring a bottle of whisky. I’ll share it with you before I pull it, and I may need to stitch you up, too.”
Grayson cringed, and turned to leave. There was no way in hell he was letting this woman near him with a needle.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Neva smiled. “See you later.”
Grayson flinched. Her own mouth was a graveyard of crooked, rotten teeth and gaps. He’d need to find a new dentist…and soon.
IdaBelle was leading the woman with the snoring problem in as he was making his way out. He moved aside to let her through the kitchen door, and accidentally dropped the Advil. As he squatted down to pick them up, he listened to the whiny woman.
“Good lord, I hope you can help me. I can’t get a lick of sleep. My husband snores. Loudly. Without power, the CPAP machine isn’t working. Do you have anything for snoring?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Neva step over to a drawer, open it and remove something. He was interested because he too snored. Some nights, Olivia jabbed and poked him every half hour.
Neva handed the items to the woman. “There.”
The woman scoffed. “Seriously? This is all you have?”
/>
“Other than voodoo or spells? Yes.”
Grayson choked back a laugh as the woman pocketed the ear plugs, roughly dropped her roll of toilet paper on the table, and stomped out.
His chuckle petered off when he realized there was no way Neva could have heard that comment about the voodoo and spells. The door had been closed and they were outside when the woman had said it.
Still, the look on the woman’s stunned and guilty face was hilarious.
Unfortunately, Grayson wouldn’t be laughing the next time he came face to face with Neva.
43
The Three E’s
“Dadgummit,” Elmer yelled, swinging his shotgun in frustration.
He turned to Emma. “Did you see that? They got my fricken’ truck!” he yelled.
“Why was it so loud?” she asked.
“Dadblame muffler needs replaced,” he answered, staring down the road.
Emma nodded. “Did you see it had stuff in it? I think it was your stuff.”
“Yup. It was loaded to the huckleberries,” he said, and kicked at a rock on the ground. It went flying. “Now where in tarnation is that woman?”
“I don’t know where else she could be. We’ve been in the barn and the house.”
Elmer grunted his disapproval, and looked the opposite direction from the way the men had gone. “Probably walked all the way down to Rose’s to argue about that darn book again. It’s purt-near two miles that way—too far for her to be taking off on foot. But I’m glad she wasn’t here when they showed up,” he admitted.
But something didn’t feel right. Elmer could feel dread creeping up his spine, even as he tried to convince himself that Edith was just off visiting. Just in case, he decided to check again. He took off at a fast pace. When he stepped up on the back porch, he yelled through the screen door. Maybe she was just hiding. “Edith! They’re gone. Come out!”
There was no answer.
