by Mark Clodi
“What'd they tell you?” asked Hon, drawn into the story.
“Well I didn't believe her at the time, but she told me, and I ain't lying, that I was never gonna marry and I would spend the rest of my life with four other men. And now look at me! How'd you like that for accuracy? Of course you're not quite a man yet, but the fortune fits. She had something different for Steve, what'd she tell you Steve?”
“She told me she didn't tell fortunes for the other workers at the fair, on account that we were like co-workers. She did give me some advice though, said to get....uh, to have as many girlfriends as I could and I wouldn't regret it. Crazy old coot. You know I only had three girlfriends after that?”
Jed laughed, “In ten years? That is a shame. You shoulda followed her advice. There ain't nothing wrong with girls Hon, good men like girls.”
Bubba frowned at Jed, and the man winked back at him.
“Well I guess even fortune tellers have off days. Or maybe not, she didn't say that Steve would have a lot of girlfriends, only that he should. So Jaye went to the old woman and asked her about his and Nattie's future. The old woman said, they didn't have one and tried to talk reason with him, said the girl he was after was no good and wouldn't make him happy, that sort of thing. But she mentioned maybe he should think about it and come back the next night if he couldn't get her out of his mind, she might be able to give him a potion to help him over it. I remember Jaye being all worked up when he came by afterwards, he was mad, saying some old gypsy woman didn't know anything anyhow. He wasn't gonna come back not at...”
“What's a potion?”
“It's magic. You know Cinderella? Where the witch gives her the apple and she falls asleep?”
“That's Snow White, Greg.” said Bubba.
“I think so.” said Hon, not knowing at all.
“Well in the movie Cinder...ah, Snow White eats an apple and falls asleep forever, until a prince can come and kiss her, which will wake her up. A potion is like that only in liquid. You drink them or get other people to drink them and stuff happens, it's magic. I think that the gypsy potions were mostly alcohol and I told Jaye to get it anyway; we could always use some good hooch. He went back the next night and I didn't know what happened at the time, but he told me later that he asked her for a love potion instead. Anyway he found me playing the games on the midway and was all mad that she wouldn't help him. As if the old woman could. I asked if he got the hooch, and he told me he didn't want hooch, so for me that was pretty much that. But not for Jaye. The fair ended, the gypsies went back to their swamp, I went back to looking for a job and mostly forgot about it.”
“That wasn't the last time I saw Jaye though, no siree Bob! He came to me one night and said the gypsies had a love potion and wouldn't sell it to him. But he was gonna get it. He really had a thing for Nattie. He said he was gonna wait until the old woman's kinfolk were gone in the spring and then go get a potion from her. I told him he was a fool, even if she made him a potion like that chances were good she'd make it wrong so Nattie would hate him or worse! But Jaye wasn't deterred, he said he was going and over the winter he told me a few more times he was gonna do it. Well come March the old woman's family mostly headed out again in their beat up old vans and cars and Jaye he went in. A couple days later the cops are asking around about him. I know Charles from way back, he was our sheriff here. So I knew he was coming to me for the straight score, not some excuse or 'I don't know nothing'. I asked what had happened and he said they found Jaye wandering around downtown, all beat up and naked as the day he was born, except for the leeches. Looked like he had been out in the swamps a couple days. Oh I know it ain't that cold around here over the winters, but we get snow and people can still die from exposure. I don't know how he lived in March for two days in the swamp. Charles said, that someone had been beating on the guy and left him to wander. Jaye was mostly out of his head and in the hospital down at the county seat. I was all set to rush up there. I mean Jaye wasn't like my brother or anything, but a friend is a friend and I ain't got enough of them that I can afford to be missing when they need help. Charles, he stopped me and made me tell the story to him. I didn't leave anything out and he said he figured it was about a woman and that the gypsies might be involved.”
Taking another sip from his mug Greg said, “Say, hadn't we better get to doing the work today? It is getting late and I didn't mean to jabber all morning...”
“Just finish the damned story!” Jed said. The others quickly echoed their agreement.
“Well, alright, but don't you go saying I set back our schedule or anything because you asked me to. Where was I?”
“Talking to Charlie.” said Hon.
“Charles, yeah, exactly. So Charles tells me to go up to the county hospital and see Jaye, see what he will tell me. Old Charles had a sense of humor he did, though I didn't get it at the time. I go up there to the hospital and found Jaye. He looked like he'd been wandering a month; he was down to skin and bones mostly. Maybe he lost a lot of weight over the winter, maybe not. Both his eyes were black bruises, tinged with yellow and his nose was a swollen lump on the front of his face. It never did heal the way it had been before. Worst of all, to me, was the fact that he had a big old wad of gauze in his mouth, with tubes running into it. That reminded me of some horror movie where people get force fed so aliens can eat them. Ha! No one would want to have eaten Jaye's skinny ass. He was awake, that struck me as odd, all that damage to his face alone and I would have thought the docs would keep him sedated. When I came in his eyes lit up and he nodded, his left hand was all bound up too, I found out he had four broken fingers on that hand. Jaye was right handed and took a pencil and a pad of paper and wrote out a note for me. It was the damnedest thing, too. You know the first thing he wrote to me?”
Hon and the others shook their heads 'no'.
“He wrote 'Don't tell Charles anything' and he underlined it and put an exclamation point on the end of it. We went back and forth a bit and when I couldn't promise him not to say nothing, well then he told me nothing. He wrote down his injuries, told me when the doctors thought he could leave the hospital and that was it. Jaye wouldn't write about what had happened to him.”
“So how do you know it was the swamp gypsies?” asked Hon.
“Well he didn't tell me that day, but after a couple years he kind of opened up, just a little. By then the investigation was formally closed, Jaye said he had gone on a bender after drinking some moonshine he bought from Harry Tillman over in Darlington County. The sheriff called over and their sheriff went and busted Tillman for the illegal still. So that part of the story seemed to hold up. But I know Jaye didn't know anybody named 'Tillman', if he had we'd have gotten hooch from him before. So where did the name come from? That is a story that took years to drag out of him and usually he only told a bit when he had a bit too much to drink. It was a fine line between giving him enough to drink that he would tell me anything and giving him too much so that he wouldn't be able to write. I couldn't get anything from him about what happened for a while, but the first nut to crack was the Tillman thing. The man went upstate for a nickel because of the booze, then had to pay Uncle Sam back taxes on his illegal income. He fell hard Mr Tillman did and I mentioned that to Jaye one night after seeing it in the paper that he was going to tax court or something.”
Greg took another drink from his coffee cup, and then continued, “Jaye said it was a shame what happened to the man, but he deserved it. He wouldn't say why, only that he really had never met the man, just like I suspected. Over the years I got the full story...it really is getting late, maybe I could finish this tonight?”
“Lord no! You got the fish on the line and you've got other stories you can tell us when you want. Just finish it and try to give us the short version.” laughed Jed.
“Okay, well Jaye said he did go out to the gypsies, the old woman was alone and she knew what he was after. She said he would do better to ask for a potion to forget the woman, than for o
ne to make her love him. He said he may have become ungentlemanly around her, but hadn't actually done anything, then she agreed to help him. She said the potion took a while to make and offered him coffee while he waited. It must have been poisoned is all Jaye can think, for the next thing he knew he was in the barn getting the shit beat out of him by the woman's kids and grandkids. He said they were all there, from the oldest man to babies still on their mama's teat. Jaye can't remember all that they said to him, but he remembers looking into their faces and seeing not an ounce of pity. In the end the old woman came forward with a bubbling broth and forced it down his gullet, then they took out his tongue, lopped it just about in half. The old woman warned him not to tell anyone or he and his family...and his friends, would pay a price. She said the potion was his purchase and she named the price, giving Harry Tillman over to the cops when they asked what happened to him. The old gypsy woman said the beating was for not respecting her and trying to come upon her like a fox gets chickens after the dogs have all gone off chasing squirrels. That was that. He never did go back to the fair and if he saw gypsies coming down the sidewalk he moved to the other side of the street to let them go by. They always looked at him too, from the oldest to the youngest, they would stare and shake their heads at him.”
“You know the weirdest part of all this?” again the listeners shook their heads, “I asked him if he still thought Nattie was worth it. Jaye just shook his head and wrote, 'Who?' on one of his ever present notebooks. So I guess he did get something after all.”
“Oh Goddamn it Greg you are so full of shit your eyes turned brown!” said Jed laughing again. Hon didn't laugh, but the other men chuckled a little. Turning to Hon, Jed said, “Don't you worry about swamp gypsies Honny boy, we got real monsters to be afraid of. The gypsies are all dead anyway, like everybody else.”
“Or maybe not. We never did go out there to check on them...” Steve said with some mock fear in his voice. The comment was directed at Hon, of course, and the men had another laugh while he processed what they said, then he smiled too.
“See? Our Hon, he ain't scared of nothing!” Jed boasted, “Now let's go see if we can bag a deer or two before the snow falls.”
Chapter 3
The shot rang out and the men cheered. They were gathered between two of the buildings in an alleyway they had blocked off at one end with dumpsters. The dumpsters had been filled with dirt a month ago when Jed had decided the men needed a firing range to test guns. Now they were teaching Hon how to shoot. The boy had nothing less than a Contender pistol, it fired a twenty-two long rifle bullet and the long barrel made it much more accurate than most short barreled pistols. It was the same model of gun that Jed used and he swore it was the most accurate pistol in the world. Jed's pistol used a military spec two-twenty-three caliber bullet and packed more punch, but more recoil too. The smaller sized bullet was easier for a beginner to handle, or so the men thought.
The morning's hunting had netted them a single rabbit, the fresh meat would be good after all the canned they had been living on, but one rabbit among four people was not much at all. Bubba had gone into an abandoned garden and harvested some massive carrots to go with the rabbit and the canned food they would make for dinner. Jed thought Hon should learn to shoot, the boy had looked to Bubba before agreeing, as if to confirm this wasn't another joke on Jed's part. Jed had sealed the deal by giving Hon one of the guns the men kept stored in the front office safe. The gun was a thing of beauty, the long lines and polished stock spoke of a killing elegance that many guns tried for but never achieved. Contenders were designed to be long range target pistols, they were single shot, but had interchangeable barrels. Jed had a wide variety of barrels to choose from too, the sized ranged from the small twenty two that was on Hon's gun up to a small shotgun barrel.
“You can shoot just fine Hon, but remember you have to put in a new bullet every time after you shoot. So don't go firing at just any old zombies you see, you gotta make sure they are alone. Or, if you have the distance you can kill one from far away and then run. This ain't a stand up and fight gun, it is more of a sniper weapon, but small enough so you can carry it easier.” said Jed.
“I know Jed, I won't shoot it at any zombie anyway, not unless you guys are around and shooting too.” Hon knew what a sniper was from the video games the men and he played almost every night before bed.
“That is the smart way to do it.” said Bubba, “Stick with us and do what we say and you should be fine.”
“Yeah, I know.” said Hon a bit irritated. He was treating Bubba like a father more and more every day and that included the natural rebellion of youth.
“Of course you know...right now. We aren't in any danger. But what if we are in town and jumped by thirty zombies, with some fast ones thrown in? You gonna remember what your da...Bubba says in the heat of the moment? That is why he says stuff so much, so you remember it when your guts tell you to do something else.” said Jed sharply. Anytime Hon talked back he found a way to reprimand the boy.
Forestalling another scene Steve said, “Well it was a fine shot. That is all I have to say. I think he should bring the gun tomorrow when we go hunting. He won't get a deer, but he might take a rabbit or some squirrels with it.”
“He might at that. What do you think Hon, you want to go along with us tomorrow and do more than watch and dig up carrots?” asked Jed.
“Can I shoot a deer if I see one?”
The men all laughed, but Bubba answered the boys confused look, “Naw you better not, that gun fires a small bullet. It fires it fast and accurately, but it is likely to just go through a deer and leave it still standing. Not that the thing won't bleed out and die, but it will be three miles away before we found it. I'll tell you this though, after you've shot, say ten rabbits and squirrels, we'll get you a rifle to shoot a deer with or put a different barrel on that pistol and let you have a go with it. Okay?”
“Ten?” exclaimed the boy in exasperation, “Of each or altogether?”
Bubba looked at the men and asked, “What do you think? Ten total or ten of one kind or another. Or ten of each?”
“Well...”, drawled Greg, “I think it should be ten of each, then he would be real good.”
“True but that might take a long time, maybe five of each?” said Steve.
“I say ten of one kind or another.” said Jed.
“But then he won't be motivated to shoot the other kind and meat is meat, make it ten altogether?” put in Bubba.
“Altogether then.” agreed Steve, “See Hon? You could get that many tomorrow if you tried hard enough.” As he said this he flashed a sly smile at the other men, a seasoned squirrel hunter might not get that many in a day. Ten small animals would probably keep the boy busy for weeks.
“I bet I will too! Can we go out today? There is still some light left.”
“Well I don't know...” Bubba began.
“Please? Please?” Hon begged.
“What do you think Jed? We'd stay in the woods across the highway. I could teach him some other safety things too, like to keep his bearings so he don't go firing back this way.”
Jed looked from the eager boy to the face of his friend, Bubba's face was an impenetrable mask to most people, but Jed could tell his buddy wanted to go out for a couple hours, so he said, “Sure, we ain't really doing anything else today anyway, that's why we are goofing off at the firing range. Anyone else wanna go with these two slackers?” While the boy was looking around at the other men Jed shook his head 'no' so he wouldn't see.
“Well, I was thinking about taking a little nap, I am on watch tonight, so I will have to miss the squirrel hunting. Besides for that sort of thing you don't want a whole bunch of guys around making noise anyway.” said Steve,
“Count me out too. I got dinner duty. You two go and have a good time and bring us back more fresh meat!” said Greg.
“I'll stay home too, you two go have your fun but don't go too far.” Jed said, making shooing gestures w
ith his hands.
After Bubba and Hon left Steve looked at Bubba, and asked, “What was that for?”
“What?”
“You didn't want us to go?”
“Naw, we'd just be in the way and Hon and Bubba need to bond a little tighter, you know? The boy needs a father and he picked Bubba for whatever reason, so they need time for father son things without us mucking up the works. C'mon, I'll help you with dinner.”
“You think the kid will get anything?”
“We didn't get anything. But he'll take a few shots and get some practice in, which is what he needs. Bubba might get something, it'd be nice if he does, I am tired of this canned shit. We really need to bring down a deer.”
Hon and Bubba each brought home a rabbit, which surprised the trio who were waiting for them to come back.
Chapter 4
“This will probably be our last trip into town, so get the things you really want.” Bubba told Hon for the third time as the pulled into the parking lot of a long wrecked super center. He scanned the lot, looking for movement, but aside from a few moldering corpses of zombies they had killed long ago, there was nothing.
