by Sharon Sala
The gray squirrel leaping from one tree to another seemed suspended in midair. The flock of birds taking flight from the sound of the gunshot moved like a kite just catching the wind. The flash of sunlight was a laser beam as it came through the forest canopy into his eyes.
And then he was down and his line of sight was the forest floor. Something sharp was poking the side of his face. Breath caught in a sob as a rush of blood flooded his mouth.
Oh God.
He gave in to the inevitable as the pain began to fade. His vision was beginning to blur. He blinked, and as he did, a tiny striped beetle with crab-like pincers came into focus. He watched it crawling on top of a pile of leaves and then saw the tail of a black snake as it slithered away.
A dog howled from somewhere nearby, and another answered, and then another, and he heard the footsteps again. But this time they were running away.
He could no longer feel his legs. He didn’t have enough air in his lungs to call for help. With the last of his life quickly fading, he pushed away the leaves from beneath his outstretched hand and scratched a name into the dirt.
* * *
Leigh Youngblood was in the garden behind her house hoeing weeds from the long rows of green beans. It was a repetitious job that required no thought, so she let her mind wander as she worked, thinking of the life she and Stanton had carved out for themselves on this West Virginia mountain.
Never once had she regretted giving up her family’s wealth and prestige to marry Stanton. The Wayne family from which she’d come held sway over most of Eden, the city in the valley below. Her family’s rage and disdain for what she’d done back then had known no bounds. They’d threatened Stanton’s life. They’d laughed and jeered at her, saying how far she would fall and how the two of them would fail. But loving Stanton was beyond her control. He was the beginning and the end of her world, and so she’d walked out of the good life and into his arms. Thirty-five years later they were still on the mountain, loving and thriving, and still proving all of them wrong.
Of their five sons, Samuel, Michael and Aidan were married and living close by. They had one grandson and another grandchild on the way.
Bowie was their oldest, but after the love of his life turned him down when he was younger, he’d left the mountains for the oil fields, mostly working on offshore rigs down south. He came home for Christmas every year but had never put down roots anywhere else.
Jesse was their youngest. He’d gone to war with plans of making the military his career, only to be sent home from what the war had done to him. Brain-damaged beyond repair, he would live out his life with the mind of a ten-year-old boy.
Leigh loved and supported them all, accepting their rights to strike out on their own as they saw fit, just as she had done.
She paused long enough to pull up a clump of grass from beneath the beans, and as she did, a tendril of her hair slipped free from the band holding it out of her eyes and proceeded to dangle in front of her face. She pushed it back as she tossed the grass clump out of the garden, then stopped to wipe away a bead of sweat. She was about to reach for the next clump of grass when she heard the crack of a gunshot, and then the echo as it bounced from peak to peak off the surrounding mountains.
Startled, she spun toward the sound just as a flock of birds took to the sky. Noting the direction, she thought of Stanton. He would be taking that route home, but he hadn’t taken his rifle. He’d only gone to visit his sister, who lived down near the lake.
Then she heard a dog howl, followed by another and another, and for a second she was so scared that her heart actually stopped. She didn’t know what had just happened, but something told her it wasn’t good. She dropped the hoe in the dirt and started walking toward the front yard.
Her son Jesse was sitting in a rocker on the porch, staring off into the trees.
“The war’s a-comin’,” he said, as she walked past him.
“Stay here,” she said, and when he started to get up and follow her, she turned and screamed, “Stay here! Get in your chair and don’t move until I get back. Do you understand?”
He was startled and a little upset that she’d yelled, but he minded her instantly and sat back in the chair.
“Stayin’ here,” he said, and started rocking.
Leigh was so scared she was shaking. She was afraid to leave Jesse and afraid not to go. She looked back at the forest, willing Stanton to come walking out into the sunlight with a logical explanation for what she’d heard.
When his face suddenly flashed before her eyes, her heart dropped. Stanton must be in danger. She started running into the trees, leaving home behind for whatever awaited her below. She set her path in the direction of where she’d seen the birds take flight and wouldn’t let fear lead her astray. She was a woman known for keeping a cool head and today would be no different, but she ran without thought for her own welfare, ignoring the brambles that caught in her skin or on her clothes, stumbling more than once on her downhill race to find the man who was her world.
All she needed to know was that he was okay, but she wasted no breath calling out his name. If the gunshot she’d heard had been a poacher’s bullet, she didn’t want to stumble into something and make it worse, and so she ran, ignoring the bramble vine that ripped the band from her hair. She ran without caution, falling more than once on her hands and knees, and once flat on her belly, causing her to lose her breath. She didn’t know she was crying until she felt the tears roll across her lips.
It was the sunlight coming through the canopy onto the back of Stanton’s red plaid shirt that she saw first. She stopped in midflight and screamed his name.
“Stanton! Stanton!”
Any second she expected he would lift his head and tell her it was just a broken leg or that he’d simply taken a fall. But when she was only a few feet from where he was lying, she stopped as if someone had shoved a hand against the middle of her chest.
He was dead.
She knew that from the bullet hole in the back of his shirt and the amount of blood on the ground beneath him. She fell to her knees from the shock, and then, when she couldn’t get up, began crawling toward him. The lack of a pulse was confirmation of what she already knew, and still she ran her fingers through his hair, through the long tangled strands, sobbing as the tendrils curled around her fingers. Tears continued to roll as she rocked back on her heels, searching the surrounding trees for signs of a poacher, and yelled out, “Are you still here, you bastard? Are you too scared to come out and admit what you’ve done?”
Then she noticed the odd crook of Stanton’s right arm and traced the length of it to the finger pointing at the word he’d scratched into the dirt.
Sound faded. Thought ceased.
A thousand images of the past thirty-plus years with him flashed through her mind, followed by shock and then disbelief.
“No! No, no, no, they didn’t! They wouldn’t! Why? Why now?”
All of a sudden she was on her feet, her heart pounding in growing rage. Then she threw back her head and screamed. Once she began, she couldn’t stop. One scream rolled into another, making it hard to breathe.
Nearby, dogs heard her, heard the devastation in her screams, and started howling. Then other dogs—dogs farther up the mountain and dogs farther down—heard and followed suit, until they were all howling in concert, understanding with their animal senses what humans had yet to discern.
Death had come to the mountain.
* * *
Samuel Youngblood had the strong bones and features of his Scottish ancestors, and looked like a mountain man with his long hair and simple clothes, but looks were deceiving. He made his living as a small business investor and a day trader, but being inside so much on pretty days like today was wearing, so he’d taken the day off to relax.
He was just getting ready to mow the yard w
hen his hunting dogs began to howl. He looked back toward their pen and frowned. Not only were they all howling, but they were extremely agitated, which was highly unusual.
His wife, Bella, came out onto the back porch, shading her eyes as she looked toward the pen.
“What’s wrong with those dogs?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s not just ours. Listen. Can you hear them?”
She tilted her head and then frowned.
“They’re howling all over the mountain,” she said.
“Something’s wrong,” Samuel said. “Bring me my rifle.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to take Big Red and find out what happened.”
She ran into the house as he headed for the dog pen. He grabbed a leash, clipped it on to his best tracker’s collar and headed back to the house.
Bella came out carrying the rifle and his phone as he was tying back his hair at the nape of his neck.
“I know the signal’s not good here, but you might need it,” she said, then handed him the rifle and dropped the phone in his shirt pocket. “I love you, Samuel. Be careful.”
“I love you, too, honey. I’ll be fine.” Then he let the leash out as far as it would go and tightened his grip as Big Red took the lead and began pulling him up the mountain.
* * *
Michael Youngblood had gone to his brother Aidan’s house early that morning to help him set up some new software on his home computer. Aidan was a website designer. Michael was in IT for a large computer company and, like Aidan and their other brother, Samuel, worked from home. All three men bore the traces of their Scottish ancestry with pride and kept their hair long.
They were still in Aidan’s office when they began hearing the distant sounds of dogs howling. Before they could comment, the dogs that were penned up out back began to howl in return.
“What the hell?” Aidan said, and got up from his computer and walked outside, with Michael behind him.
The moment they exited the house they heard the sound of distant howling.
“Sweet Lord, it sounds like every dog on the mountain is howling,” Michael muttered.
Aidan walked off the porch and then out into the yard, looking for smoke or a sign of something off-kilter, but all he could see were trees. He was just about to go back inside and call his mother when he realized there was another sound beneath the howls.
His heart skipped a beat.
“Michael! I hear a woman screaming.”
Michael frowned. “Can you tell the direction?”
“No. I need to get my dog. Tell Leslie to give you my rifle,” Aidan said, and headed for the pen as Michael ran back into the house.
Like Samuel, Aidan had hunting dogs—good trackers when they had a scent to follow. He wasn’t sure if his dog would lead them to the source, but they were about to find out.
Within minutes, he and Michael were in the woods, following Aidan’s dog Mollie down the mountain. He didn’t know whether she was following the sound of the dogs or the sound of the screams, but she was running full tilt. If he hadn’t had her on a leash, she would have run off and left them.
* * *
Samuel heard the woman screaming about ten minutes into the search. He knew now that Big Red was following her screams rather than the howls, because the farther they ran, the louder her voice became.
When he stumbled into the clearing and saw his mother, and then his father’s body on the ground, he thought he was dreaming. Then Big Red began to howl. At that point he tied the dog’s leash to a tree and ran toward her.
“Mama! Mama!”
Her screaming stopped the moment she heard her son’s voice. Then she realized what was about to happen and leaped across Stanton’s body before he stepped on what Stanton had scratched into the ground.
“Stop!” she cried, and then leaned her forehead against Samuel’s chest and began to shake. “He’s dead, Samuel, he’s dead. Someone shot him in the back.”
He looked down at his father in disbelief, trying to wrap his head around the fact that his father was dead. Tears rolled.
“Mama, what happened?”
She pulled out of his arms and pointed down.
“I don’t know why this happened, but your daddy named his killer before he died.”
Samuel looked down, saw the word and frowned.
“Wayne? Wayne who? Who do we know—”
“No!” she screamed. “Not Wayne who! My family. Those Waynes! Oh my God, they finally did it. They killed him, just like they threatened they would.”
Within seconds Michael and Aidan came running into the clearing. Aidan tied Mollie up and then ran to join their mother. The shock of finding out it was her screams they’d been following was horrifying, and then they saw their father’s body.
Aidan leaped forward as if he’d been launched, screaming, “Daddy! No, Daddy, no!”
Samuel turned and caught him.
Tears were running down Michael’s face as he took his mother into his arms. “What happened, Mama?”
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I was in the garden. I heard a shot, and I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew. I ran until I found him.” She pulled out of his arms and shoved her fingers through her hair, as if trying to gather her thoughts. “Did one of you bring your phone?”
All three of them pulled their phones out of their pockets.
“Not sure we can get a signal here,” Samuel said.
“You don’t need a signal to take pictures. Take pictures of your daddy, your daddy’s hand, and then the name he scratched in the dirt before something happens to it. Someone in my family did this.”
Aidan looked down, saw the name and all of his father’s blood that had seeped into the ground beneath him, and then staggered away and threw up.
Leigh had set aside her grief. It was rage carrying her through this tragedy, and when Aidan got sick she strode after him, impatience in every step.
“We have no time for this,” she said, as she grabbed his ponytail and held it back.
Even in anger, she was tending her own as she held his hair back away from his face while the spasms rolled through him.
Aidan took a deep breath and then straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’m sorry, it just... I can’t believe... Why, Mama? Why?”
“I don’t know, but I will find out which one of my siblings did this, and I will make them sorry they were ever born.”
The three brothers stared at her then, magnificent in her grief with the glare of the sunlight behind her, and her hair all wide and tangled around her scratched and bloody face. She looked like a warrior woman from another time.
Michael glanced at Samuel and then pointed at his father’s body.
“You two take the pictures. I’m going to try calling the constable.”
Leigh stood to one side, watching the proceedings without voicing the obvious.
Life as they’d known it was over.
* * *
Walter Riordan was in his twenty-fourth year of serving as county constable. He’d seen a lot of the sad side of life, but when he got a phone call from Michael Youngblood and heard the details of what had happened, his heart sank. Incidents like this one were how blood feuds began. Michael gave him the GPS readings from his phone, which gave Riordan a clear location.
“It will take us at least thirty minutes to get there,” Riordan said.
Michael looked back at his mother, who was standing guard over their father’s body.
“We’re not going anywhere,” he said, and disconnected, then ran back to the scene. “I spoke to Constable Riordan. It will be at least thirty minutes, maybe more, before they can get here.”
>
Leigh thought about Jesse alone at their house.
“Samuel, please call Bella and ask her to go stay with Jesse.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and then started walking until he had enough bars on his phone to make a call.
Bella answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” he said.
“Are you okay? Did you find out what happened?”
He tried to say it without breaking down, but the truth was too appalling.
“Daddy’s dead. Mama found him in the woods, shot in the back. He scratched the name ‘Wayne’ in the dirt before he died.”
Bella gasped, and then started crying.
“Who’s Wayne? Why would someone kill your daddy?”
“Mama says it’s someone from her family. She’s gone all quiet. I’ve never seen her like this. It’s nothing but pure rage.”
“What can I do?”
“Mama asked if you would please go to the house and stay with Jesse until we can all get back.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I’ll leave right now. Oh, Sammie, this just breaks my heart. I’m so sorry.”
“So am I, honey, so am I. I’ll see you there later.”
He disconnected and hurried back to his mother. “She’s on her way. What do you need me to do?” he asked.
She pointed into the woods.
“Take Big Red. See if you can find where the killer stood. It has to be in that general direction. If Red can catch the scent, set him on it and see how far he’ll take you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Samuel said, and ran for the dog, then headed into the woods as Michael and Aidan called their wives with the news. Like Bella, the other two daughters-in-law headed to the home place to be with Jesse.
It didn’t take Samuel long to find his daddy’s footprints because he recognized the boot tread, and even less time to find where the killer had stood when he shot him. He searched around the area and found an ejected cartridge. Rather than pick it up and possibly ruin a fingerprint, he marked the spot with a small pile of rocks, took a picture of the footprints, then set Big Red on the scent and held tight to the leash as the dog headed down the mountain.
