Littlefield

by Scott Nicholson

  The room smelled of coffee and cabbage, and as prisons went, Hardy supposed it could be worse. At least the windows had no bars and the fridge was open for business around the clock.

  “Snurk,” Donnie said, joy splitting his face. He grabbed a crayon and worked his elbow in a dramatic flourish. He tossed the crayon aside and it rolled off the table, and before it hit the floor Donnie had another one, gashing at the page. He replaced the crayon again, and he was so aggressive with his scrawling that Pearl put aside her rolling pin and came to peer over his shoulder.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  Pearl had been to the Hole several times, including once when they were young and Hardy had put the moves on her, which was expected behavior for teens of his generation. “Going to the Hole” was local slang for intercourse, and though Pearl had turned him down that day and stayed a maiden until their wedding night, Hardy had made only a half-hearted attempt at lifting her skirt. He’d been too anxious about getting her away from there. So Pearl, despite knowing the ghost stories, had no real reason to ascribe any particular meaning to Donnie’s drawing.

  The black crevice wedged between gray stones and red-tinted trees was a clear reproduction of the Jangling Hole, and for the first time Hardy saw its resemblance to a woman’s mysterious opening.

  Donnie’s newfound skill wasn’t the only startling aspect of the artwork. Inside the waxy darkness, yellow splotches were suspended like stars against a night sky. Candles, maybe. Or the same shapes Hardy had seen flitting between the trees over the years.

  “I need some eggs,” Pearl said.

  Hardy swallowed hard. Pearl didn’t make out the geometry of the drawing, or else she was willfully ignoring the evidence of her own eyes. Pearl wasn’t one for flights of fancy, but neither was she one to deny the signs that God shoved right in front of her face.

  “That’s a right good drawing, Donnie,” Hardy said.

  His son, apparently spent from his burst of creativity, sagged in his chair, mouth open, a strand of drool hanging from his lower lip. His face had gone slack again, the brief burst of light in his eyes now extinguished.

  Pearl kissed the top of Donnie’s ruffled head. “You just rest up now,” she said, reaching over him and pushing the crayons away. She picked up the drawing, crumpled the paper with her flour-dusted hands, and carried it to the cast-iron woodstove. She tossed it inside and clanked the door closed, then turned as if a dead memory had been shelved in the root cellar and was nobody’s business but the Lord’s.

  “How about them eggs?” she said.

  Hardy knew that marriage was a long dance without music, and sometimes the toes of one spouse or the other were stepped on. Sometimes one of them even broke a foot or got crippled, or sometimes the partners each heard a different tune. But even when the steps were off kilter, you stayed on the floor and didn’t walk out. And he couldn’t walk out and leave a lie on the table.

  “Ignoring it won’t make it go away,” he said.

  “The Good Lord doesn’t allow such shenanigans,” she said. “Dead is dead except for them that dwell in the bosom of Heaven.”

  “The Good Lord gave us eyes to see with, and a tongue to call evil by its name,” he said.

  “Don’t go giving me your kitchen-table sermons,” Pearl said. “If the Lord was so wise and mighty and merciful, why did He do this to my Donnie?”

  Hardy had asked that same question himself, both on his knees in the Baptist church and in the dark, wee hours of the night when only solitude and sweat filled the space between heartbeats. Despite all the cockiness of the preachers who claimed to speak on behalf of God, the Bible pretty much set everything down as a mystery, and even Jesus seemed befuddled by it all.

  The sick, the halt, and the lame accepted their misery and sought solace in the promise of peace everlasting. But first they had to drag their pain over a long road to death’s gate before they could cash in on the promise.

  “This ain’t just about Donnie,” Hardy said.

  “It is to me,” she said. She folded her arms and Hardy knew the argument was over. He’d known the outcome before it had even begun. Pearl was that best kind of wife, one who brooked no bull manure in her mate but knew when to allow him to salvage a little pride, but when she made up her mind, even a divine thunderbolt would hardly shake her.

  Donnie tapped on the table, tongue wagging. Hardy knew the rhythm. He’d heard it a few times too many lately.

  “How many eggs you need?” he asked. “The guinea’s been laying those blue eggs but they’re kind of on the smallish side.”

  “Six, maybe. I’ll make enough biscuits to last a few days so we won’t have to run to the grocery store.”

  Hardy stopped by the back door to shrug into his jacket. He planned on spending a little time in the barn. The kitchen was getting a mite cramped.

  “Set the latch,” Pearl called after him, and Hardy was happy to oblige.

  The early-evening air was crisp with autumn, and the smoke from the woodstove whisked in the breeze. The grass was sweet, its sugar breaking down under the chemistry of the first frosts. Cows grazed with their heads pointed toward the west, where the sun made its slow crawl over the Blue Ridge. The sky was bruised and brooding with clouds.

  Hardy gathered seed corn and shoved a few dry ears into the grinder, turning the metal crank so the kernels spit out onto the packed-dirt floor of the barn. Chickens scurried out of their hidey holes at the familiar sound, and Hardy looked over the flock to see if any were healthy enough to serve up for Sunday dinner.

  A rooster looked up, exposing its neck before strutting into the thick of the feeding frenzy. Hardy sized it up for an ax blade and decided the rooster was a good fit for the frying pan.

  He was raiding the wooden boxes for eggs when a shadow separated from the corner of the barn and walked.

  Hardy’s heart sputtered and he was afraid he’d have another spell, maybe a full-blown coronary, and this time there was no healing touch around to restore his breath. He dropped the basket, breaking the four eggs he’d collected.

  The shadow shifted toward shape, until the raggedy man stepped more or less whole onto the dirt floor. The man’s eyes were black as roofing tar, empty and devoid of light. His clothes were threadbare, made of coarse material–a soldier’s uniform so filthy it would never pass muster.

  He moved toward Hardy without a sound, and Hardy knew enough of ghosts to stand aside and hope the dead man’s business would take him off the farm. The man stopped in the center of the barn and stood in the swirling yellow dust as hay chaff appeared to float right through him. The face formed more fully and reflected back like a mirror spitting out a lost time.

  “Get on, Earley,” Hardy said, voice cracking. “You got no business here.”

  Earley Eggers turned toward Hardy, and Hardy backed up and fumbled along the wall for a sharp tool. No pitchfork, but he found a length of chain used to hang hogs for slaughter. He pulled it from its nail and let it clink.

  Time for some jangling of my own. Oh, Lord, grant me the strength to kill what’s rightly already dead.

  He let a few feet of steel links slide between his hands, the hooked end swinging back and forth like the brass tongue of a grandfather clock. Earley’s scruffy head tilted to one side as if listening to the wind leaking between the cracks in the siding. Hardy was about to offer up another prayer when the colonel came through the open barn door.

  “Get on back to the Hole where you belong,” Hardy said, but the colonel didn’t even look at Hardy. If “look” was even the right word for what those midnight eyes did.

  The colonel strode toward Earley, and Hardy sensed an air of odd familiarity, as if these two had shared the same dance floor in some distant past. The colonel’s legs moved but his boots scuffed up no dry manure or straw. Earley retreated, except he didn’t use his feet, he drifted as if he were sliding on a meat hook down a well-oiled cable.

  The soldier had no weaponry that Hardy could see, and t
he colonel–Kirk, you know it’s Kirk, he was a bastard back then and he’s a worse bastard now–carried a sword tucked in its sheath. Hardy figured if it came to a throwdown, he’d put his money on the colonel, but you stayed on the side of blood kin even when it was the losing side. Through some peculiar witchery, the officer had probably saved him from a heart attack, but Hardy wasn’t willing to contemplate the motive. Better to just thank the Lord for mercy.

  And he wasn’t even sure Earley qualified as “blood kin” anymore since his blood should have long since gone to dust. At any rate, the chain felt cold and limp in his hands, and Hardy felt foolish, like he’d brought a knife to a gunfight.

  As the colonel closed in on Earley, other soldiers stitched themselves together from cobwebs and slivers of shadow, encircling their apparent quarry. Hardy recognized them from the fence line, the toothless man whose jaws twisted a plug of dark chaw, the gaunt teenager who looked far too young for service, the fat man with the red kerchief around his pale neck. They all wielded rifles, rusty muzzle-loaders from the looks of them but suggesting they could deliver some damage if necessary.

  Earley turned in a slow circle like a lamb surrounded by wolves.

  Well, you don’t have to outrun them, Earley. You can just up and disappear. And that would be fine by me.

  But Hardy knew this showdown wasn’t just North versus South, slave versus free, state’s rights versus federal say-so. This was about territory, heritage, and family pride. It was bad enough when the spirits had stuck to their old haunts up on the ridge, but now they were tromping all over the proper boundaries.

  Maybe no war ever really ended, not while its ghosts and echoes still hung like smoke over the land. Hardy rattled his chain, but no one noticed, so he let it drop to the dirt.

  Earley’s bony head swiveled as he took in the armed troop that surrounded him, then settled his gaze on Hardy. Though the dead eyes remained stovepipe black, the face around settled in an expression that might have been confusion.

  Don’t blame you none. Life is supposed to be a one-night barn dance and there you are acting like you don’t know where the door is.

  The soldier with the red kerchief leveled his rifle barrel, a blunt bayonet fixed on its tip. His eyes were as blank as Earley’s but there was menace in his movement. Kirk nodded in silent command and the soldier charged Earley.

  Chickens squawked and scattered, confirming that the soldiers were now solid and part of the same world that held Hardy trembling against the rough-sawn pine.

  Hardy wanted to look away, knowing the images would paint his dreams for the rest of his life. But he stared transfixed as his barn became a bull run for the dead, the bayonet aimed for Earley’s heart.

  “Run, Earley,” Hardy said, throat choked with chaff and fear.

  Kirk drew his sword, and Hardy heard–or imagined–the snick of steel against leather. The bayonet soldier rushed forward, bent at the waist as if still beholden to gravity. Earley dived toward the horse stall, metal canteen bouncing against his hip, the toe of one boot flopping against packed manure.

  The colonel moved forward with those weird, airy steps and swung his blade in a graceful arc. A swath appeared in Earley’s wool tunic and the gap gave way to the dark substance of a sick galaxy, as if the man’s form were stuffed with star crumbs and moon dust.

  A howl erupted inside the barn, rattling off the support timbers, causing the hog to squeal in unease. The sound rose in pitch until Hardy thought his eardrums would pop. Then, when it seemed the stifling air could hold no more vibration, the howl ended, giving way to silence as Earley swayed in place for a moment, mere feet from the gate of the stall that likely would have afforded no escape anyway.

  The only escape for the dead is to get on the Golden Road and follow where God intended, and these Jangling Hole hideaways have defied their call to duty long enough.

  Die proper this time, Earley. Please God, learn how to die proper.

  Earley’s face was twisted not in pain, but in the sadness borne by the lost and the lurking. His flesh faded and the dirty clothes fell, leaving the dented tin canteen lying on top of the pile. The colonel stood over the now-vacant uniform, pale lips pursed amid his beard as if toting up another war casualty.

  The revenant soldiers, now at ease, faded into the gloom until at last only Kirk stood, tugging at his matted facial hair. He nodded at Hardy in dismissal. Then he, too, joined the dusk and was gone, and Hardy stood in the dying cracks of leaking sundown until the canteen and uniform vanished, too.

  Hardy went back to the house empty handed. Pearl’s biscuits would just have to get by without eggs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The newspaper office smelled like old comic books and even older coffee grounds.

  Vernon Ray sat on a ratty sofa that looked like dogs and bums had shared it for a few decades. He’d never been in the Times office, at least not the section behind the classifieds counter where the typing and printing went on. He’d imagined stacks of mail, mountains of computer equipment, and rusty filing cabinets, and while he was not disappointed on those counts, the rest of the place was simply drab and cramped.

  Crusading journalism was apparently a long way from Twain, Hemingway, Woodward, and Bernstein these days, with the corporate money shifting to sexier media. Cindy’s cubicle was the only occupied one of the four that were tucked away in a corner of the warehouse. The rest of the space was filled with advertising slicks stacked on pallets, broken-down vending racks, and tall spools of leftover newsprint.

  Cindy Baumhower had ushered the boys to her cubicle, which was adorned with pin-ups of press awards, kindergarten art, and Carolina Panthers photographs. “I couldn’t resist an anonymous news tip from a couple of eighth graders,” Cindy said, giving a pleasant smile with slightly crooked teeth that put Vernon Ray at ease.

  Bobby appeared to be eyeing her breasts, and Vernon Ray gave them a glance, too. The shapes suggested beneath the taut cotton blouse were artistically pleasing, but they didn’t give him a zing of electricity. They might as well have been decked-out party balloons for all the thrill it gave him. He felt like he was missing out on something, but he wasn’t sure what, or if he should be upset about it.

  “I guess it wasn’t anonymous once we gave our names,” Bobby said.

  “Well, I’m good at protecting my sources,” Cindy said. She nodded toward the glassed-in office across the room, where a bald man with a janitor-broom mustache fidgeted with a page-layout program. On the window was a sign printed in large block type that said, “Don’t Feed The Editor,” and under that, someone had scribbled with a marker “dirty copy!!!”

  “We trust you,” Vernon Ray said, though he wasn’t sure they could. She was a grown-up, after all, and she seemed like the no-nonsense type, despite the collection of fast-food Harry Potter figurines lining the top of her computer monitor and her Halloween articles on local haunted hot spots,.

  “Fine, then, let’s get to it,” she said. “I’ve got a deadline in two hours.”

  “This might take longer than that,” Bobby said. “This might take forever.”

  Vernon Ray figured it was Bobby’s way of flirting, but his best friend was too vacant-eyed and unfocused. Vernon Ray put his camera on the reporter’s desk. The thumbnail setting showed the Jangling Hole and a vague wisp of white fuzz against the dark opening. “We took this up at Mulatto Mountain,” he said.

  Her eyebrows arched as she brought the camera view screen for a closer look.

  “Bill Willard’s property?”

  “The Hole,” Vernon Ray said, noticing Bobby was still zoned out. “You wrote about it a couple of Halloweens ago.”

  “Kirk’s Raiders, yeah,” she said, peering at the photo. “Unfortunately, there’s never been any solid evidence to support the legend.”

  “We’ve got plenty of unsolid evidence,” Bobby said.

  “‘Unsolid’ isn’t a word,” Vernon Ray said. “I think in ghost-hunting nomenclature it’s ‘insubstantial.�
�”

  “So you fellows are ghost hunters?” Cindy said, her smile displaying no hint of a smirk.

  “I don’t think we hunt so much as get hunted by,” Vernon Ray said. “We saw Col. Kirk and his Raiders yesterday, and the night before that, we encountered a soldier we believe must have escaped from the Hole.”

  “Let me download this so I can blow it up.” Cindy poked a cable into the digital camera’s port. After clicking her mouse, she said, “Assuming I believe you guys, why do you think the ghosts exist? What are they after?”

  Vernon Ray and Bobby shared a glance. “We were hoping you’d tell us,” Vernon Ray said. “We read comic books and watch Ghost TV like everyone else, but we’re basically grasping air on this thing.”

  Cindy clicked until the photo filled her screen. Enlarged, the wisp took on the indefinite shape of a man, though no features stood out that would have suggested he was a long-dead soldier.

  “Looks like he’s trying to power up,” Cindy said. “Like he doesn’t quite have enough juice to grow meat.”

  Jeez Louise, she believes us.

  Vernon Ray had almost hoped she would have laughed them out of the office. Because now they had to explain what was happening, and neither of them was sure what was real and what was the work of comic-book-geek fantasy. Vernon Ray described his experience in the Hole, when he thought he was being dragged into the cold darkness while Bobby waited outside.

  Then Bobby told her the story of the soldier on the tracks whose feet didn’t touch the ground—“And he had an authentic Confederate canteen,” Vernon Ray threw in—and then Bobby said someone in the cave, or maybe the Hole itself, had whispered “Early.”

  They then took turns telling about their stake-out of the Hole and how Donnie Eggers had wandered up crazy-eyed and spastic, with the ghosts solidifying around him. Through it all, Cindy sat soberly, occasionally glancing at the digital image.