Littlefield

by Scott Nicholson

  “I ate at the Davises’s,” he said.

  “Roast beef? Martha always has roast beef on Sundays.” Mom said it with the frustrated air of a homemaker who had nothing more than hamburger and tuna fish to work with.

  “Yeah. Mashed potatoes. That kind of stuff.”

  “Well, you ought to invite Vernon Ray over here to eat once in a while. They’ll think we’re sending you over to sponge off them.” She smoothed a greasy strand of hair over her ear. The kitchen smelled like old mushroom soup.

  “Sure, Mom.”

  The microwave dinged and Bobby took advantage of her distraction to beat it to his room. The door was still locked, meaning Dad hadn’t gotten pissed and kicked in the handle. Bobby retrieved the key from its hiding place under the washing machine and unlocked the door, securing it behind him.

  Jerrell would probably come dragging in around midnight, but Bobby hoped to be asleep before then. He wanted to rid himself of the image of the bulldozer guy’s brains exploding out the back of his skull and figured a dream, even a nightmare, would scrub some of the freshness from the memory. He tossed, thinking of Karen Greene, Vernon Ray, Col. Creep’s Jangling-Hole eyes, the sudden red spray, and finally the red blended to black.

  He awoke sweating and tangled in sheets, Jerrell snoring on the bunk above him. Bobby got up and dressed in the dark. He grabbed a couple of slices of white bread, squeezed them into balls the size of marbles, and popped them like pills. He decided to walk instead of waiting for the bus, because Dad might drive by on his way to a job. And Dad probably would want to ride his ass extra hard to make up for lost time.

  Bobby jogged the last quarter-mile to school, making home room just as the bell rang. The sweat made him self-conscious, especially when Karen Greene gave him the once-over and rolled her eyes away.

  He made it through algebra okay, not even batting an eye when the P.A. system clicked on and the principal beckoned a list of students to the gym for honors photographs. The students were mostly the same old rich kids that won everything and caught all the breaks, and of course Karen was among them. Bobby smiled when he heard Vernon Ray’s name called.

  Assuming V-Ray escaped from the Hole . . . .

  Mikey Pitts in the next aisle snickered and said, “Vernon Gay.” Bobby was tempted to give Mikey a little tweak, but he bit his tongue and focused on figuring out whatever the hell x equaled.

  It didn’t help his concentration when Karen sashayed down the aisle with a twist of her small hips, giving off a faint smell of soap and flowers. Bobby pressed his pencil hard against the paper until the lead tip snapped. He wondered how anybody survived the eighth grade, much less made it through high school, where the girls filled out more and their tight tops drove guys like Bobby wild.

  “Look but don’t touch,” was the message radiating from between their eyeliner and mascara, and trailer-park guys were doomed to dumpy, dull girls of their own social class. It wasn’t much of a consolation that such girls typically had low self-esteem and parted their legs for any guy that grinned and bought them a Big Mac, showing their gratitude by getting pregnant at 15.

  The great thing about adolescent sex was, despite the fact that it was mostly nothing but daydreams, it helped you forget about ghostly killers, haunted caves, and a home life that was right out of FOX television.

  Bobby rode out the frustration until lunch time, when he saw Vernon Ray sitting alone in the cafeteria, reading a book as he shoveled mystery meat into his mouth.

  Bobby slid into the plastic chair beside him. “What you eating? Looks like pterodactyl turds.”

  “Beef stew. You eating today?”

  “Not hungry,” Bobby lied. In truth, the stew smelled good, despite its brown, watery appearance.

  “You should have called me.”

  “I figured you bailed.”

  “Never. What happened?”

  Bobby ran down the list of possible lies and decided maybe being a coward wasn’t so bad, at least when compared to the truth. Even superheroes took off an issue once in a while, when saving the world became way more trouble than it was worth and some special guest star had to step in.

  “I freaked,” he said. “When those ghosts were chasing me, I just kept running. I didn’t know how far they’d go. I mean, maybe they’re tied to the mountain or something. And their charge would drain down if they got too far away.”

  “So you left me there by myself?”

  “Dang, V-Ray, I figured you hoofed it, too.”

  “And leave Donnie there to whatever is hiding in the cave?”

  “What is hiding in the cave? Now I’m not so sure we even saw anything.” Bobby reached over to Vernon Ray’s plate, snagged a roll, and shoved it in his mouth, figuring the food would give him a chance to think before he spoke again.

  “Dude, I thought the plan was to get some evidence so people would have to believe us.”

  Bobby chewed and nodded, nearly choking on the dry bread. Just his luck, he’d strangle on dough not 30 feet from where Karen was holding court with half the cheerleading squad.

  “Okay, chill out,” Vernon Ray said. “Here’s what happened: Right after you ran away, most of the ghosts chased you. I was about to go down to the Hole and get Donnie, but then that weird officer in the big hat was standing right in front of me, like he didn’t even take a step, just zapped himself up the ridge.”

  Bobby swallowed, wishing he could take a sip of Vernon Ray’s milk. “Christ. You got Col. Creep and I got the rest of the gang.”

  “It fits the transubstantiation theory. You gave off energy by running from them. Your fear fed them.”

  “Then they should be fat as Julie Houck, because I about crapped my pants. But what about you?”

  “I wasn’t really that afraid. More like curious, because I’m not sure these guys want to hurt anybody.”

  “Umm, dude. They were shooting.”

  “In quantum physics, reality is an ever-shifting set of illusions. It’s energy changing form. Nothing to be afraid of, when you think about it.”

  “My head hurts,” Bobby said. But not as much as the bulldozer man’s.

  “Forget all that for now. Col. Creep looked me in the eyes, I was as frozen as polar bear poop, and his lips moved under that gnarly mustache. He didn’t make any sound but I swear I heard his words in my head. They said, ‘This ain’t your war.’”

  “Ain’t your war?”

  “My first thought was that this creep was just like my dad. Keeping me out of the game. Out of sight, out of mind, like I didn’t matter. Like I was a nuisance.”

  “Jesus, Vee. You need to see Gerhart.” Bobby wouldn’t have wished a visit to the sour school counselor on his worst enemy, but Vernon Ray had so many issues that even Dr. Phil would need an entire broadcast season to solve them.

  “It ticked me off,” Vernon Ray said, his grimace revealing a strand of beef caught between his teeth. “Here was some 200-year-old dead man giving me hell, like he had any more right to be on Mulatto Mountain than me. I’d say I had more right, since I’m alive and he’s not.”

  “What was Donnie doing while this was going on?”

  “What do you think he was doing? He’s a moron. Drooling, spazzing, probably wetting his pants.”

  “Did you try to save him?”

  “You kidding? I tried to run past Col. Creep when he reached out with one hand and touched my head. I mean, his fingers went into my skull and it felt like he was tickling me. I sort of spaced out for a while—it could have been seconds or minutes, it was like swirling down a Twilight Zone toilet. Then I heard a shot on the other side of the mountain and I snapped out of it.”

  “Yeah, I heard it, too,” Bobby said, which was about all he wanted to give up at the moment. “I thought the bullet was headed my way.”

  “Well, you’re still alive.”

  “Barely.” He glanced over at Karen and the table of twittering, giggling honeys.

  “When I came back around, Donnie was gone, and I
knew they had him. I could see into the Hole and figured Col. Creep had either recruited him already and he was down in there behind the cave-in or he’d wandered off. So I grabbed our blankets and got the hell out of there.”

  “You weren’t worried about me?”

  “No, you’re like a weasel, quick and sneaky. I figured I was easy meat.”

  “Easy meat?” Dex cut in, approaching their table with his bagged lunch. “Vern, you might want to keep that kind of thing to yourself. People are already starting to talk, if you know what I mean.”

  Dex smirked. Bobby flipped him a bird and pulled out the next chair so Dex could sit down.

  “Speaking of talking,” Bobby said. “How did your little meeting with the sheriff go?”

  “He was just putting on a show. He gave me the standard line about trespassing and how even juveniles could get in big trouble for it, especially if they already had a record. ‘Course, my dad was sitting there the whole time so I’m sure the sheriff toned it down a little. A couple of times he squinted at me like he wanted to grab me by the collar and shake the crap out of me.”

  “That would take a lot of shaking, you’re so full of it,” Vernon Ray said.

  “Bite me,” Dex said. “On second thought, never mind. You might like it too much.”

  Bobby looked at Vernon Ray. “Should we tell him?”

  “Nah.”

  “What?” Dex said. “You guys got some action going on?”

  Bobby brought out his digital camera. He powered it up and flipped through the thumbnails, tilting it forward so the two boys could see the images.

  “So?” Dex said. “Looks like nothing but woods to me.”

  “They didn’t show up,” Vernon Ray said.

  “What didn’t?” Dex said.

  “We went back to the Hole yesterday,” Bobby said. “And we saw them.”

  “Saw who?” Dex was already bored and had turned his attention to the table full of cute girls. “Who’s the redhead sitting next to Karen? She got nice knockers.”

  “Ghosts,” Bobby said. “The dead soldiers at the Hole.”

  “You guys still into that?” Dex ripped open a Lunchables pack and shoved sandwich meat into his mouth. “The only hole I’m interested in right now is the one inside that redhead’s panties.”

  “They’re getting active,” Vernon Ray said. “Undergoing some sort of transformation. Juicing up.”

  “You guys need to get out a little more,” Dex said. “Look, I don’t mind hanging around. You’re both kind of weird, and that packs some entertainment value. But if you start taking this Jangling Hole stuff seriously, I might have to keep my distance for a while.”

  “Yeah,” Vernon Ray said. “Wouldn’t want you to be judged by the company you keep. Guilt by association.”

  “Whatever that means, yeah,” Dex said. “If your I.Q. is higher than your bowling average, you ain’t worth a turd.”

  “Give him a break,” Bobby said. “Something weird is going on but you’re too cool for Fool School.”

  Dex paused with a fruit roll-up dangling from his mouth. He looked around to see if anyone had heard Bobby raise his voice, which might have required a response that would confirm Dex’s bad-assness. Everyone was too busy with their own adolescent identity crises to notice. Dex chewed for a moment, eyes narrowed.

  “You guys can diddle each other to your Ghostbuster fantasies all you want, but don’t drag me into it.” Dex began shoving his leftovers into a paper bag. “Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I got business to attend to.”

  Dex sauntered over to the table where Karen sat, gave his money smile, and the redhead slid over to make room for him. Bobby’s neck grew warm when Karen laughed at something Dex said.

  Vernon Ray gave an exaggerated roll of his Bambi eyes. “He’s an asshole but he knows how to work a crowd.”

  “Yeah,” Bobby said. “So what’s going on with the re-enactment?”

  “Dad’s polishing his brass, as usual.”

  “Big deal, huh?”

  “Well, they’re too old for video games, so what can you do?”

  “You get to be in it this year?”

  “Nah. Who wants to dress up funny and march around in the sun all day? Besides, Dad bosses me around enough as it is.”

  “He gets off on being the captain, doesn’t he? And all that memorabilia and stuff must have cost a fortune.”

  “Yeah, Mom would give him hell except he deals some of the duplicates and makes pretty good money. Enough to pay for his hobby, anyway.”

  Bobby glanced over at the crowded table, hoping Karen would ignore Dex, but she was as enthralled as the rest of the girls. The redhead appeared to be brushing shoulders with him.

  “Think that has something to do with it?” Vernon Ray asked.

  “Dex being an ass-wipe?”

  “No, the re-enactment. Like there’s some kind of weird vibe that’s waking them up. Maybe an echo of their war or something.”

  “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

  “Comic books, TV, the Internet. It’s not that weird. What’s a ghost, after all? Why do they hang out in the places where they suffered some kind of pain? What’s so strange about ghost soldiers waking up when they hear the drums of war?”

  “Or maybe they don’t like the fake soldiers pretending to be them.”

  “Well, who’s real? The living or the dead?”

  “I wish I’d never heard of Kirk’s Raiders,” Bobby said, again thinking of the bulldozer man and the geyser of red and gray as the back of his skull exploded.

  “They let Donnie escape, so they must be under orders to take no prisoners.”

  “Yeah,” Bobby murmured. “Take no prisoners.”

  “So we might just have to wait until the armies suit up for battle and see what happens.”

  “You sound like you’re going to enjoy it.” Bobby thought of his dad in a scratchy wool uniform, marching with a replica Springfield on his shoulder, sweating beer. Dad had served four years in the Marine Corps after high school, marrying Mom the summer his furlough came through. Dad often made smart-assed comments about “Captain Jeffie,” but when the pretend battles started, Dad fell back into his buck-private days and ate whatever crap the officers dished out.

  “We ought to go see the reporter,” Vernon Ray said. “She writes those local ghost stories for the paper every Halloween. Maybe she knows something.”

  “Like you can trust a grown-up with this stuff?”

  “We can pretend we’re doing research. For class.”

  “Maybe.”

  The bell rang. Time for English. Dex and the redhead left together, and Karen was surrounded by her cutie-pie consorts. Bobby eyed the last three French fries on Vernon Ray’s tray.

  “You going to eat those?” Bobby asked.

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Bobby ate them, though they tasted as cold and greasy as the waxy fingers of a decaying corpse.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “You about scared the life out of me,” Pearl said. “Both of you.”

  Hardy nodded and rubbed his chest, recalling the piercing pain and the desperate sucking for a breath that would not come. The bearded man—GHOST, you old fool, it was a ghost as plain as day—had touched him and sent him into darkness, but Hardy had awakened when the shot was fired.

  He’d opened his eyes to Pearl’s worried face looming over him, and he’d smiled at her, seeing her the way she was as a virginal teenager. He’d felt young himself, invigorated, as full of milk sap as a March dandelion.

  Then he’d remembered Donnie, and he brushed aside Pearl’s concerns and pleas, climbed over the fence, and staggered to the Hole, where he’d found Donnie with the sheriff and the newspaper reporter.

  The sheriff had said there had been “an incident” and Donnie may have been involved, but when Hardy had figured out it was about the shooting, he’d asked the sheriff to sniff Donnie’s hands for signs of gunpowder and made the sheriff look at his s
on’s fingers, which flexed and twitched too spasmodically to ever be able to work a trigger.

  “We’re both fine and dandy,” Hardy said to Pearl with fake bluster, winking at Donnie, who was huddled over his papers and crayons. Donnie grunted and gave a peacock’s squawk.

  “Well, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to trust you with him outside again,” Pearl said. She was rolling out some scratch biscuits and had a dot of flour on her nose that, despite her serious tone and mournful eyes, made her almost unbearably cute.

  “We can’t keep him in a cage all his life,” Hardy said. “Might as well turn him over to the state if we’re going to do that.”

  Though Donnie’s strange autism gave the impression that words had no meaning to him, Hardy was uncomfortable talking about Donnie’s fate within his earshot. But something had changed Donnie the day before, from the mad dash up the mountain to whatever had happened to him before the sheriff found him in the Hole.

  His eyes held a peculiar light, and when Pearl had dropped the rolling pin and it rattled across the wooden floor, Donnie had snapped alert and grinned, tapping on the table with his fingers. Donnie’s scribbles had also exploded with color, though the patterns seemed as random as always.

  Pearl pounded her fist on the dough a little harder than was necessary. “I ain’t the only one protecting him,” she said.

  “He’s my son,” Hardy said. “What do you expect?”

  “I expect you to keep a better eye on him and not let him wander off like that. Who knows what might have happened if the sheriff hadn’t found him?”

  Hardy didn’t want to explain that Donnie hadn’t wandered. He’d made a direct line for the Jangling Hole, as if the path were laid with golden bricks lit by the sun. And Hardy was afraid the road was still open. “Well, we best keep him inside for a while,” he said.

  Inside. That meant either the special little hog pen Hardy had built for him or the kitchen with its gas stove and onions hanging from a string over the window. Steam from bacon grease had coated the ceiling yellow and a single bare bulb descended over the chipped cherry-top table.