Littlefield

by Scott Nicholson

  The bulldozer chuffed and trembled in the woods, tearing up trees as it made its inexorable assault on the ridge. Donnie was almost to the entrance now, Earley about 20 feet behind him. Donnie had dissolved and faded so that Bobby was able to see gray slabs of mossy granite through his body. Donnie was ten feet from the Hole when a command issued forth from the cave: “Halt!”

  Bobby didn’t recognize the deep and chilling voice, but he would have bet his entire run of Silver Surfer comics that it belonged to Col. Creep. Donnie and Earley both stopped, though Donnie continued to tap out his quiet cadence, his head bobbing up and down.

  “Vernon Ray?” Bobby shouted again, and he heard the reporter and the sheriff hollering after both of them, then the bulldozer burst through the line of laurels and clanked into the clearing, a wild-eyed Hardy Eggers at the controls.

  The sheriff stood near the stump where the boys had been smoking cigarettes a week ago. He held his pistol in his hand as if he were the star gunslinger in a shoot-em-up western. Bobby looked down at the rock in his hand, then at Hardy’s musket.

  Crapola. Am I the only one who isn’t packing heat?

  Just when Bobby thought the situation couldn’t get any weirder, Capt. Jefferson Davis jumped out from behind a boulder near the cave, his saber flashing in the filtered sun. He grabbed Earley and yanked the dead, ragged scarecrow of a soldier close, pressing the saber to Earley’s neck. The captain’s Rebel yell temporarily drowned out the rumbling bulldozer.

  Hardy stood in the cab of the idling bulldozer and his musket swiveled from the cave to Earley, then to Jeff Davis. The sheriff’s pistol did likewise. Cindy Baumhower had appeared at the sheriff’s side, and her camera lens also tracked between the various targets.

  The commanding voice boomed from the cave again: “Looks like we have us a standoff.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  There was motion at the mouth of the cave, and a hunk of shadow broke itself free and stepped forward.

  It was the man in the cavalier’s hat, the ratty ostrich plume flailing in the October breeze. Littlefield aimed his Glock at the man, and then remembered they’d already played out that scenario and all Littlefield had to show for it was an empty shell casing. Except the man–Col. George Kirk, if he believed Cindy–appeared more substantial than he had down at the park, as if submersing in the Hole had revitalized him in the same way that heated natural springs restored spa visitors.

  The dead colonel seemed calmest of all, as if defeat or victory led to the same fate. The veins in Jeff Davis’s temple were turgid and purple, his teeth bared in a rictus of madness. Littlefield didn’t know what would happen if Davis drew his saber across Earley’s throat, but he had a feeling that Kirk wouldn’t like it. And though Kirk held only a saber himself, he had a group of soldiers backing him up who had already proven they would follow him to hell and back.

  A click beside Littlefield startled him, then he heard the whir of machinery and realized Cindy was focusing her camera. “Quit it,” he said.

  “You do your job and I’ll do mine,” she said.

  Sounds simple, except I’m not sure what my job is at the moment. I can’t tell whether this situation calls for an undertaker, a psychiatrist, or an exorcist in a Sherman tank.

  Treetops shook as the bulldozer plowed toward the clearing, and the growling of the big Cat engine added extra tension to the scene, setting Littlefield’s teeth on edge.

  “Give me my soldier,” Jeff shouted at the colonel.

  The colonel merely stood with one hand on his saber, studying the assembly as if he were defending a fort surrounded on all sides. Jeff’s hostage, who Littlefield now recognized as the man he’d seen vanish in the lumberyard, appeared slack and resigned, like a scarecrow dangling on a cold and lonely winter pole.

  The hostage looked as solid and healthy as the colonel, except for his eyes, which had no whites. Littlefield wasn’t sure what would happen if Jeff drew the saber across the dead soldier’s throat, but he imagined a Pandora’s box of horrors spilling out from the wound, nasty stinging creatures and fanged bats and tiny, scaly dragons.

  Bobby, who had stopped when the colonel emerged from the Hole, edged toward the opening and paused again near Donnie. “Vernon Ray! Are you in there?”

  Metal clanked against stone, and the bulldozer’s treads rattled and squeaked as they fought for traction. Donnie’s hands moved up and down as if drumming in accompaniment, then the autistic man took a stiff stride toward the colonel. Bobby grabbed him and tried to tug him backward, but the man was too strong. Donnie shook free, knocking Bobby to his knees, and lumbered toward the colonel.

  “Donnie,” the sheriff shouted, taking a step forward bit unsure where his loyalties lay. “Get back here.”

  “You’re only getting one, but not mine,” Jeff said to the colonel. “Which one is it going to be?”

  Col. Kirk folded his arms across his chest as if he had all the time in the world, which Littlefield supposed he had. Then the colonel lifted his head and gazed at the sky as if remembering what it was like to breathe autumn mountain air. Aside from the cantankerous bulldozer, the moment was almost peaceful.

  Bobby scrambled to his feet and cupped his hands against his mouth. “Vernon Ray?”

  The colonel ignored him. Instead, his head swiveled toward Earley. “Desertion is a hanging offense, Corporal.”

  “Take him and hang him, then,” Jeff said, pressing the saber deeper into the solidified ether of Earley’s neck. Littlefield saw a black sliver open in the supernatural skin and wondered if Jeff Davis was committing a crime.

  Assault with intent to kill? Hard to make that one stand up in court when the victim was already dead.

  Folklore said if you wanted to kill a snake, you had to chop off its head and wait for sundown. He was considering giving Col. Kirk one more opportunity to take a bullet and die like a man, but before he could force himself to pull the trigger, the bulldozer burst forward, roots and branches dangling from its raised blade. Dirt and wet leaves sprinkled from its treads as it plowed ahead.

  Hardy Eggers tilted the throttle full ahead in a burst of black smoke. Littlefield started toward the bulldozer and showed his palm, even though he didn’t expect the crazy-eyed old man to obey his command to stop. From the way Hardy wrestled with the levers, Littlefield wasn’t sure the man could have put on the brakes if he wanted to. And Littlefield wasn’t about to climb over those churning treads to reach the cab.

  Hardy was pale and sweating, one white eyebrow twitching in anxiety. He eased one of the levers forward and the bulldozer slowed as he motioned Bobby away from the Hole. “I told you damned kids to stay away.”

  “My friend’s in there,”’ Bobby said.

  “I can’t worry about your friend,” Hardy said, tugging up one of his overall straps and pointing his musket into the Hole. “I got to save my boy. What’s left of him, anyways.”

  “They want Earley,” Bobby said. Littlefield took advantage of Hardy’s distraction to close in, and Cindy stuck to him like an unwanted shadow.

  “They done tried to take him but Earley ain’t going back. He’s done his duty.”

  “But somebody’s got to pay,” Bobby said.

  “Kirk needs a replacement,” Cindy said. “The law of mass and energy.”

  “I follow a different law,” Hardy shouted. “The Bible says an eye for an eye, blood for blood, a burning for a burning.”

  “There won’t be any more blood spilled here,” Littlefield said, though he doubted if the black stuff oozing from Earley’s neck counted as “blood.” “Not while I have anything to say about it.”

  “Why do you think you’d have any say?” Kirk thundered.

  “Give me back my boy,” Hardy yelled.

  “Give me back my boy,” Jeff yelled.

  Kirk’s head swiveled back and forth between Earley and Donnie as if making a decision, though his skull appeared too lolling and loose, as if his spine had shattered during the cave-in and the lo
ng decades hadn’t knitted the bones back together.

  Just before the beetle-black eyes could settle on a new recruit, Vernon Ray stepped from the shadows of the cave, though it looked to Littlefield as if some of the shadows still clung to him like old rotted rags. A snare drum bounced against his hip as he walked to the colonel’s side and stood at attention as if awaiting orders.

  His left hand held two drumsticks and his right palm was facing out as he saluted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Run, Vee,” Bobby yelled, not understanding how his friend–brother–could stand there with the Hole at his back like a giant mouth. Vernon Ray acted as if he hadn’t heard, as though the people gathered around him were toy soldiers on a make-believe map. Bobby expected gunfire to erupt at any moment, and since the boys in the Hole seemed to have hoarded enough munitions to last several centuries, Bobby would bet on Kirk’s Raiders to carry the day.

  “Come here, son,” Jeff shouted, momentarily relaxing his grip on Earley and letting his saber tilt down.

  Donnie spazz-marched in place, apparently excited by the presence of the snare drum, but Bobby held him by the waist. Hardy, perched in the bulldozer seat, put his musket to his shoulder and stared down the barrel at Kirk.

  Knowing the legendary inaccuracy of Civil War-era weaponry, Bobby figured V-Ray was as likely to take the bullet as Kirk was. Kirk had already spent his share of time on the mortal plane, and Vernon Ray might get cheated of his own go-round.

  “We’ll let them choose,” Kirk said, his lips scarcely moving but his voice making a duet with the bulldozer engine. He put a pale hand on Vernon Ray’s shoulder. Bobby imagined the colonel’s flesh was as cool and cloying as the dirt in the cave.

  “Don’t go AWOL, soldier,” Jeff shouted.

  Vernon Ray snapped off a mocking salute in his dad’s direction. “Reporting for duty, suh!”

  Donnie took another trembling step toward the Hole, and Hardy’s musket exploded in a flash of smoke. The musket ball must have been aimed at Donnie’s twitching legs because it kicked up a spray of mud several feet in front of them.

  Hardy’s shot triggered a chain reaction, and Bobby froze. Littlefield fired his pistol and Col. Kirk’s tunic erupted in a blossom of murky oil. The colonel looked down with no expression, eyes as dead and cool as the Jangling Hole that had infected them with its unwholesome lack of light.

  Earley Eggers escaped from Jeff Davis’s grip, going to smoke, leaving Jeff–Daddy?–to clutch at the evaporating fibers of his spectral hostage.

  Bobby sprang toward Vernon Ray, who stared out at the woods like a lone sentry of the soul, watching and waiting for an end to the forever war.

  Kirk clutched the wound in his chest, taking his hand away and staring at the sludge that dripped from his fingers as if finally realizing that he had been dead a long, long time. The colonel staggered backward toward the welcoming darkness of the Hole.

  “Get over here, you goddamned little homo,” Jeff screamed, expecting his orders to be obeyed without question. Vernon Ray tilted the snare drum against his waist and rolled his sticks into playing position.

  “Guh-ruk,” Donnie barked, wobbling uphill toward Kirk.

  Bobby glanced back, tightening his grip on Donnie’s waist, wondering if Hardy Eggers or the sheriff were about to fire again, but the sheriff and the reporter were running toward the Hole and Hardy had tossed his rifle aside, gunning the bulldozer engine and lurching forward in a titanic creak of steel, rust, and rage.

  Bobby was juiced by adrenaline instead of diesel, but he let out his own blast of internal combustion, shrieking in a mimic of Jeff Davis’s Rebel yell. Bobby pushed past Donnie, giving him a shove as if he were a linebacker interfering with a touchdown run, and launched himself toward Vernon Ray, who didn’t seem to recognize him.

  Dang, they’ve already got him . . . .

  Kirk fell to his knees just beyond the mouth of the cave, and a skeletal arm reached out as if to drag him to safety. Bobby hoped the sheriff wouldn’t shoot again, because he and Vernon Ray were exposed targets. And the monumental jangle of steel inside the mountain suggested that an army was massing to defend its borders.

  Vernon Ray struck the drum head a solid blow, and then delivered a left-handed roll that seemed to fill the sky like midnight thunder. Bobby was closer now, ducking low in case bullets flew, planning to drag Vernon Ray away from the mountain that wanted to swallow V-Ray and Donnie and Bobby and maybe the whole living, breathing, hateful world into the cold, endless sameness of its belly.

  “Come on, Vee,” Bobby said, reaching for his friend.

  He clutched a sleeve, but Vernon Ray shook free and continued drumming.

  Vernon Ray stared ahead, unblinking, not seeing the guy who was there for his first Incredible Hulk plastic model, his journey reading “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, his first chipped tooth from a skateboard accident. Bobby’s best friend had forged a new bond, an unspoken alliance with something no comic-book writer could ever dream up. The snare cadence rumbled through the forest and across the hills, calling all creatures to muster.

  But the cadence was drowned by a different rolling storm, that of the bulldozer growling its own battle cry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The sticks were light and strong in Vernon Ray’s hands, the kepi tucked tight and proud. Vernon Ray straightened his spine as much as he could, facing the full-frontal assault as bravely as he could.

  Dad was running toward him, waving his saber and calling him an idiot faggot, face so twisted in rage and fear that he looked like an escapee from the criminal psycho ward. Dad’s uniform was torn and filthy, and Vernon Ray would be blamed for it. Dad would dress him down, commandeer the kepi Col. Kirk had given him, and take away the beautiful and resonant snare drum that was as comforting as a mother’s heartbeat in the womb.

  He was out. Dad would call him “homo” and “faggot” until the end of time, or at least until Vernon Ray ran away or took up cutting himself until he got the nerve to check out for good, maybe with razor blades in the bathtub or by making one final trip to The Room, loading one of Dad’s collector Smith & Wessons, and painting the history books, maps, and artifacts with a red-and-gray shower of blood and brains.

  Bobby touched him—

  “Get away,” Vernon Ray said, retreating two steps but keeping the drumroll strong and steady. His colonel was wounded and the boys were helping, and maybe Vernon Ray could buy some time for them. Dad and the sheriff were closing in, but it was the bulldozer that worried him most–the enemy had brought out the heavy artillery for this one.

  “You’re spaced out, dude,” Bobby said, reaching again.

  Vernon Ray backed up another step, and then the colonel was beside him, swaying back and forth, pressing his hand against his wound to stem the flow of ichor.

  The lost leader’s face squirmed, as if the space between skin and skull was occupied by worms instead of meat. But his right hand held his saber, raised in defiance of those who sought to destroy what they couldn’t understand.

  Tears welled in Vernon Ray’s eyes.

  At last he understood the colonel’s recruiting pitch, and he repeated it now to Bobby.

  “We don’t belong together,” Vernon Ray said, only it had a different meaning out here under the blue sky and golden treetops and the all-seeing but dispassionate eye of heaven.

  “Sorry about this,” Bobby yelled, and Dad was screaming, the bulldozer was chuffing and choking, the sheriff was barking unheeded orders, the reporter was taking pictures of it all, and Earley Eggers had returned to smoke, finally released from service to return home. The Raiders jangled their weaponry in the Hole, packing sulfur and brimstone for a final siege.

  Bobby looked down at his hand, and Vernon Ray saw the rock. His best friend raised his arm, winging his elbow in the motion that had struck out Vernon Ray thirty-six times in a row on the baseball diamond. But Vernon Ray didn’t miss a beat. Or, rather, the sticks didn’t miss a beat, becau
se now they seemed to be driving his hands, lifting them, rolling his wrists.

  He was no longer playing the snare drum. It was playing him.

  The colonel stepped in front of him just as Bobby flung the chunk of granite. It struck the colonel’s forehead with a sickening crunch of bone, knocking the cavalier’s hat from his head. By emerging from the Hole, Kirk had made himself vulnerable.

  Sacrifice.

  Giving your life for a belief.

  Surrendering to a cause greater than yourself.

  Vernon Ray finally understood, and he changed the cadence to sound the retreat. Glory and honor were found as much in defeat as in victory. Maybe more so, when the war was senseless and never-ending.

  We don’t belong together.

  We’re not of this world, we don’t belong, so we might as well do it together.

  Not so lonely that way.

  Vernon Ray stepped back, tears leaking from his eyes, blurring the sad, frightened face of Bobby Eldreth. The colonel was dead, at least for now, though his uniform was turning to dust and his flesh was evaporating into the milk of mystery and yesteryear.

  “Queer,” Dad yelled, slashing his saber at the air as if he could cut a path between their great gulf.

  “Don’t go in there, son,” the sheriff yelled.

  Hardy Eggers, high in the bulldozer’s cab, squinted at the Hole as if it were an old enemy, pushing the machine to its limit, black smoke boiling from its pipe. Donnie Eggers–another who didn’t belong–knelt in the mud, head bobbing as if he could still hear the snare over the rumbling diesel motor.

  Vernon Ray imagined Donnie would continue to hear the muster call long after the battle was over, and would wake in the night and seek its direction in the wind.

  Then the cool, comforting embrace of the shadows took him, and he marched backward into the Jangling Hole, home at last, free to be, belonging.