Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2)

by Miller, Jason Jack

  My dad leaned against the fence and stared at the cold, dry ground. His eyes were red from the whiskey. Rachael had her arm around him.

  My grandfather nodded to Jamie, who led the men back to the house. The procession took its good old time as uncles and cousins paid their respects to my old man. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. It wasn’t fair that only the women could stay.

  “C’mon.” Ben tugged on my elbow.

  Aunts and great-aunts and cousins stepped aside as Ben and I passed. Nobody cried except for Jane’s roommate, Alex. I always liked her, but Jane said she was off limits. Said I’d ‘ruin her.’ She was a ‘little too country’ for me. Rachael took her by the arm and told her to go with the guys into the house. The faint smell of lilac and lavender scented perfumes cut through the chill.

  The women chanted old words I barely recognized. On the icy breeze I caught a whiff of spring even stronger than their perfumes had been. I turned, and saw the women pulling sprigs of ferns and thistle from their jackets. Boughs of red spruce and bright green oak leaves. Apple blossoms.

  Ben said, “Don’t look, man. Just let it go.”

  Painted trillium. Closed gentians. Indian paintbrush, blood red against the white light of Old Christmas Eve. Cherry blossoms burst open in a holler of muted pink from the tree above Jane’s grave. But Old Christmas was just a belief my kin upheld. Just like their Irish ancestors, they believed the Holy Spirit chose the night of the Epiphany to manifest itself on Earth in the form of blooming flowers and God knows what else. But I didn’t believe that any more than I believed the sheep chose this night to tell what they saw in the manger the moment Jesus was born.

  “Flowers,” I said, walking back toward the plot.

  “I know. But you know what tonight is. I don’t chew cabbage twice, so just leave it.”

  The amber glow of the wake called to me from the old farm house. Inside those walls my grandfather and uncles and cousins poured whiskey, plated food and exchanged heartrending looks. Jamie tuned his fiddle. Going from cold to warm like that wasn’t good for an instrument, but he didn’t fuss at all.

  “Don’t make me go in there, man.” My pap’s cattle watched from the field below, braying and breathing huffs of steam.

  “Let the ladies do their thing. C’mon, man. Be strong, okay?” Ben threw his arm over my shoulder, gripping me in an embrace that solidified his anger and sadness. “She was like my sister too.”

  “Easy, Ben.” I pushed him off me. “Let me have this, all right?”

  “I’m fucking tired of it.” Ben clenched his teeth. “It ain’t fair what that Johnny Bull and his whores are doing. We can’t let them get away with this.”

  “It’s not a curse, Ben. It’s chance. It’s just how things are. She drowned, nobody drowned her.”

  “And Durbin’s downstream…” He shook as I talked, getting angrier rather than sadder.

  I said, “We have to understand that. I’m tired of this feud shit with the Lewises and all the hexes and spells. We have to…”

  Rachael turned her back to Ben and me as the women blew out their candles. Their chanting grew louder and their circle tightened a little. Mid-winter dusk let a muddy light trickle into the bare forest and fields that ran down to the Blackwater. It was an unpleasant light. Katy, the oldest of all my cousins, handed her tiny fiddle to her little sister as the circle tightened.

  But there was enough light to see Rachael scrawl Jane’s name onto the temporary tombstone with a piece of chalk, cross it out with a hunk of coal ash, then moisten her finger and write Katy’s name in the ash.

  From the house came the wail of Jamie’s newly-tuned violin, as loud as I’d ever heard it. Ben pushed me toward the back porch.

  “Get off me,” I said, almost ready to fight.

  “No. We can’t see this shit. You know the deal.”

  There was enough light to see Katy strip off her heavy coat and slip a thin white gown over her shoulders before climbing down into my sister’s grave.

  “You boys get in here now. Ben…” My grandfather called from the back porch. Champ barked and stepped into the yard. “Get back here, boy! Let’s go Henry. I hain’t telling you again.”

  Ben pulled me through the yard. The drone of violin made it too loud to hear anything else. The smell of food pushed through the evening. The promise of warmth made me feel guilty for leaving her in the cold ground.

  My pap slammed the door behind me. But he wasn’t quick enough. I’d heard it. Despite the barking dog and the chatter, despite the noise Jamie played as a distraction, I heard it.

  Katy screamed.

  My cousin’s cry was more horrific than the wail of a cougar ruminating over the loss of a cub. Her cry was louder than the roar of the Blackwater after a spring thaw.

  The assembly of men inside the house clapped and sang to drown out Katy’s shrill screams, loud enough to speak to the dead.

  Loud enough to speak for the dead. I’d heard Katy’s words and knew what they meant.

  Katy was crying the tears Jane cried on the night she died. Katy was meant to cry for all of us.

  No matter how tightly I pulled my coat the cold air found its way to my skin. Ben and I were bundled up pretty good, but the night made no apologies.

  “Hand me down them big ones first. Everything’s going to settle after the ground freezes and thaws a few times.”

  “I don’t think it matters. Just let me take the rocks from the top. We should’ve been done already,” Ben said. His words smelled just like Jameson.

  “It ain’t so much about the rocks. All right? I don’t care about the rocks. I just don’t want you dropping one on me. Got it?” I’d been arranging the stone like pieces of a puzzle, trying my best to interlock them.

  The night had calmed considerably. The flurries had ceased. There was no wind. But the clunk of the rocks and Ben’s chatter were like a band saw buzz to my haggard nerves. I didn’t have the luxury of intoxication.

  Ben said, “We have to finish up before midnight.”

  “Jesus, Ben. How fucking old are you? Stop it with that nonsense. What do you think you’re going to hear? Huh? Animals talking? I’m tired of this mountain superstition bullshit. Shit like this is why I’m leaving and never coming back. Never. Don’t care if it’s a wedding or another funeral. I’m never coming back here.”

  “I don’t believe you, Henry. Not for a second.” He said my name like he’d have said a swear word. “You’re telling me—”

  “Maybe it’s my turn for once.” I began pulling rocks from the pile myself. “I’m telling you, don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning and find I’d split.” “You don’t mean it.” Ben handed me another rock. “Where would you go?” “I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to find myself some new mountains.”

  Ben took another swig of scamper juice from my grandpap’s old flask.

  “Put that shine away. Have some respect.” “Respect? I have respect, Henry.”

  “Then why are you saying my name that way?”

  “Because respect, in this instance, means doing right by your sister. Respect means that you get proactive and find out what the hell really happened.” Ben teetered at the lip of the hole. It was too cold, the air too dry, to see his breath. “If I ever catch Lewis by himself I’m going to gut him and skin him like a buck for all the shit they pull—”

  “This isn’t the work of any Odelia Lewis curse. It was an accident. And don’t go putting ideas in my dad’s head. Because he’s going to end up in the slammer. I swear, if you don’t cut out that Lewis-feud shit he’s going to fly off the handle and hurt somebody. So give it a fucking rest already, will you?”

  “C’mon, Henry. She drowned? Just like Grandpap’s little sister and baby girl drowned in the river? That’s got Odelia Lewis written all over it. Our people live so long we’ll all be knocking heads come Judgment Day except for when Odelia Lewis gets fixated on revenge. Grandma said she ran a whole congregation out of Alpena. She got it in her head th
ey had cheated Charlie over some timber and in a matter of months every person in the entire congregation had moved out. That’s some fucked up shit. What if that’s why Jane never came back here? She knew they’d get her. Maybe Morgantown wasn’t far enough away?”

  “Stop it. I wish, for just once, somebody around here would put all that bullshit aside and—”

  Ben interrupted. “Well, you can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled the fastest. Just listen. What if the curse had something to do with your mom leaving? Why else would she run all the way down to Florida like green corn through the new maid if she wasn’t afraid somehow she’d be next?”

  “Ben. Please.”

  “I’m just saying…”

  “Not now. All right? Yeah, I’ll do something about it. But not right now. I think I deserve some peace.”

  “I’m not saying you don’t deserve a break. But Jane—finding out what happened is the only way to protect Katy and Chloe and the rest. We need to consider every option.”

  “I will. Just go home. I can finish by myself.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just…I’m just worn out.”

  “Me too, Ben. Me too. But somebody has to finish this.”

  “I know. Switch me places.” Ben pulled out his phone and looked at the time. The LCD screen ate at my night vision. “We can finish before midnight if…aw, shit.”

  The sound of plastic hitting the stones on Jane’s casket made me jump. “Seriously! You just need to go home. You’re drunk.”

  “I miss her, Henry. I always thought she’d come back home. I worried about her the whole time I was deployed, man. I never thought she’d end up in a grave before me.”

  I got on my knees and started feeling around for Ben’s phone. “Shit.” “What happened?”

  “I pinched my fucking thumb.” The bitter cold made everything hurt worse. I handed Ben my phone. “Call it.”

  Ben’s first attempt was with his gloves on. After a few unsuccessful tries he bit the thumb of his right glove, pulling his hand free.

  “I hear it.” It had bounced beyond the stones I’d just placed almost to the edge of the casket. The glow fell upon the flowers the women had placed on top of my thistle. I crawled toward the ring tone. “Holy shit.”

  “What is it?”

  In the glow of the tiny screen I could see that one of the nails holding the lid on had been pulled free. I searched for the next hole and saw that the nail from it, too, had been removed. “Ben, what the hell were they doing out here? Somebody had this open.”

  I stood up to hand Ben his phone. “Did you hear me?”

  “Shhh.” He was standing. In the light from the back porch I could see his head cocked, as if straining to hear. “Old Christmas is starting.”

  Leaving him to his redneck fantasy, I shook my head and pulled rocks from the pile myself. Cold sweat formed on my brow and against my back. “And you’re drunk.”

  “You don’t hear that?”

  “You didn’t hear what I said?” I continued working. More snow had begun to fall. “Tell me you can’t hear that.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. It’s been a long day. I’m burying my sister.” I climbed out of the hole.

  “Smell that?” He said, “Elderberry.”

  “I don’t smell anything but that hillbilly pop you been drinking all night.” Heavy snow looked like moths around a streetlight as it fell past the floodlights hanging above my pap’s back porch.

  “C’mon, man. Listen.”

  The only way to get him to shut up was to bite my own lip, so I obliged. Dogs barked down in Davis and the occasional lamb brayed over my pap’s barn. “I hear it.”

  “Really?” Ben smiled at being validated.

  “No. I’m going to finish now.” I sat on the edge of the grave. A stirring amongst my pap’s cattle stopped me from getting back into the hole. I brushed cherry blossom petals, not snow, off my shoulders.

  “And you’re so full of shit your eyes are brown. It’s coming,” Ben said. He walked past the other graves and toward the gate. “Let’s go.”

  The hinges squealed as he slipped past the fence. I lined the remainder of the stones on the lip of the grave so I’d be able to reach them from below. In the tree above, songbirds chirped an occasional exclamation. The air warmed with the scent of blackberry blossoms and hay-scented ferns.

  When the wind blew I heard the susurrus of summer leaves in the trees above instead of the thin whistling of naked winter branches.

  I could smell it. And I could hear it.

  I stood there, all of a sudden alone. From the edge of the forest a buck snorted, startling me. It was just like the ghost in the basement all over again.

  “Hang on, man.” I jogged to catch up with him.

  “Here.” Ben handed me the flask as I caught up, but I didn’t drink. Ben whispered, “Hay loft,” and ran ahead.

  A wheeze of cut hay and manure rolled out of the warm barn when Ben opened the door. We crept along the dry walls toward the ladder. Animals stirred in their stalls, creating an uneasy background of little noises. A bare bulb hung from a long wire, forcing naked shadows onto the old wormy chestnut. Dark stains clung to the splintered wood like long-eared bats.

  Ben grabbed the ladder and gestured for me to climb first. The top rung had been bolted to a cross post with galvanized brackets. The ladder twisted a fraction of an inch with each rung I climbed. Each tiny twist came with a squeak.

  I crawled along the edge of the loft, then watched Ben climb to the top. His flask was still in my pocket. I opened it, sniffed the barefoot whiskey—which reminded me too much of my dad—then set it on the ledge next to me. Ben crawled toward me, shuffling one hand at a time. He stopped a few feet from me, took his flask, then dropped his legs over the edge. He drank, then said, “So, what’s up with that roommate, Alex? Where’s she staying?”

  “Really? Nothing like burning your mouth on hot soup, right?” I shook my head. “Didn’t you notice the engagement ring?”

  “Sorry. Want some?”

  I waved the flask away. Him asking me to take a hit every four minutes frayed my nerves. “No, man. She’s out of your league anyway.” From the darkness a tiny voice said, “Give me a shot.”

  “Damn it, Katy!” I shouted a whisper. “What’re you thinking? I ‘bout jumped out of my skin.”

  “Hey, cousin?” Ben said. “Come on over.”

  Katy slid across the floor then plopped down between us without saying anything else. She just sniffled before taking a big swig. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes were red and weary. She rested her head on my shoulder. An old brown Carhartt coat covered the white gown she’d been wearing earlier.

  With his cell phone in his lap, Ben counted down the remaining minutes. He and Katy killed the last of the booze in just a few more swigs. After that, except for Ben’s countdown, there was only silence.

  “Five ‘til.” He looked at his phone. The blue glow shined up onto his face. For the first time tonight I took pity. I wasn’t sure until now that I’d have any to share.

  He put his phone back into his coat pocket. “Henry…I’m sorry about…”

  “Hush up, Ben.” Katy’s voice was raspy and raw from earlier. She coughed a dry little cough. “For once, just hush and listen instead of always being the one talking. Okay?”

  “Sorry.” The look he gave said more than his words would’ve anyway.

  He was in sad shape. We all were. We all needed some time to get ourselves together. There’d be no music from this side of the Blackwater for a few days—only long mornings in bed and sad, quiet dinners of leftovers. Shitty rigatoni and soggy fried chicken and whatever else the neighbors brought up. I couldn’t even say if there’d be any more tears shed or not.

  If there were I wouldn’t be here to see them. Right then and there I made up my mind that the time had come for me to pack up and go, first thing in the morning. I was sick of not sleeping, sick of worrying, sick of talking the
guys from Thomas out of beating the shit out of my old man every time he got hammered. Tonight would be my goodbye to Ben and Katy.

  “Two minutes,” Ben said.

  I put my arm around Katy. With all the quiet, sadness finally started to well up in me. Like my mind had nothing left to keep the feelings away. My chest and throat tightened. I could feel my face getting hot, pressure pushing behind my eyes.

  I took a deep breath. I had to tell them I was leaving. But knowing what I wanted to say, and being able to say it, were two different things entirely.

  Breaking my train of thought, Katy cleared her throat, and sang, “Down to the sea, down to the sea, sinners on the shore, waiting to be freed.”

  The broken silence seemed a lot louder than it had before. Shouting in the night always made it hard for me to get back to sleep. Like when my parents fought. Thank God I had a long bus ride and could sleep on the way to school. Otherwise I’d have my dad’s words in my head all day, how, “…you don’t know how hard life is ‘til you start sucking up that coal dust…”

  Ben took out his phone and checked the time, then shut it off and put it back into his pocket.

  Katy’s tune wasn’t anything I ever heard my uncle Jamie play. It sounded like a melody written when language was still young, when mountains were still pushing up through the flat, green plains that stood in this very spot a hundred million years ago. “One by one, by one, by one, into the water for the sins you’ve done.” Katy’s rasp thickened with each syllable. A chorus of echoes carried her words further and further into the night. The animals in the stalls below huffed and shuffled.

  I didn’t know what to expect, but it sure wasn’t this. Maybe part of me came up here to ease my mind, to prove to myself that none of this was real. But proof was never easy to come by, especially in these mountains.

  And this was how shit always went down. Late at night. Middle of nowhere. Not a credible witness in the bunch.

  “Sink or float, sink or float, my Lord and Savior guides my boat.” A choir of voices hummed just below Katie’s lead. The bull and rams sang low bass notes. The ewes muttered muddy refrains. Katy began to cry.