Hindsight

by Ronald Kelly

  Just forget about it. His mind whirled, spinning in a dizzying maelstrom of fear and panic. Just forget about tonight. You ain't gonna fetch Sheriff White in the morning, and you ain't about to go looking around that barn. Just put it clean out of your mind. The fella was right. It ain't no concern of yours.

  Harvey Brewer lay on his feather bed for a long time that night before he finally fell to sleep.. He listened to the sound of rain drumming on the tin roof above. He remembered how he had enjoyed the sound in his youth. Back then it had seemed strangely comforting, lulling one into a sense of placid security beneath the warmth and safety of patchwork quilts.

  But that night it conjured an entirely different feeling. It rang dreadfully sinister in his aged ears, like the constant tapping of skeletal fingers on the lid of a casket.

  Chapter Ten

  A gusty May wind pushed the raging storm clouds farther eastward, and by morning, spring once again reigned across Bedloe County. The dawn began wet and dreary, but as the sun climbed higher into the endless blue canvas of the Tennessee sky, a lazy climate of sticky heat and humidity hung over the hollows and fields of the bottomland; promises of the burning summer to come.

  Raindrops dribbled slowly from the leaves of the spreading chestnut tree, striking the open hood of Clint Devane's old Chevy roadster, sometimes finding the brim of Clay's brown felt hat. Between the annoying drips and the elusive problem with the Chevrolet's inner workings, he had no great loss of things to swear about in the oily shade of the automobile's open chassis.

  "Want these pliers, Pappy?" questioned Polly. The girl dangled the greasy tool before his eyes. Clay cast a baleful glance at his eldest daughter and shook his head. Along with all the other annoyances that bugged him that Saturday morn, Polly was the icing on the cake. Since well after breakfast, the pigtailed girl had scrutinized her father's handiwork, offering advice and tools that had no logical bearing on the Chevy's mechanics. Now, as the morning drew on, she was beginning to grate on his nerves a mite.

  "You sure?" Polly worked the jaws of the pliers, nibbling hungrily on the sleeve of her daddy's gray cotton shirt.

  Clayburn Biggs wiped his grease-slickened hands on a bandanna and gave his eldest daughter a warning look. "You just can't help but pester a body to death, can you? Now git . . . before I take it upon myself to blister your prissy behind."

  Polly took her father's threat at face value. She looked around the backyard, perhaps to find someone else to bother. She spotted Cindy Ann sitting near the hickory stump that Clay used for splitting kindling in the fall. Her little sister played quietly with paper dolls she had clipped from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue with a pair of her mama's sewing scissors.

  Clay went back to work. Since having words with Maudie last night, he had felt uneasy and on edge. It did not seem to be their money problems or the thought of leaving Tennessee to seek steady employment that lay heavy on his mind. No, it was Cindy Ann and her nightmare that nagged at him. Like he had told his wife, he did not hold faith in such nonsense as seeing visions or foretelling futures. But he had stood there in the bedroom doorway and had seen her horror. The screams, the shock of awful terror ... both had been genuine and disturbing to witness.

  Old Tippy launched into a fit of hoarse barking as a rickety truck rumbled up the road from town. It braked to a screeching halt at the shoulder of the road. Hearing the crackle of gravel and the slam of the truck door, Clay peeped over the lip of the hood, hoping to greet someone with automotive problems. The out-of-work tobacco farmer sure could use the extra business.

  But that certainly was not the case that morning. Sonny Martin, the town grease-monkey and owner of Coleman's only 'Texaco station, was storming up the driveway. A look of dark fury shadowed Sonny's broad face, and it appeared to Clay that the man might be suffering from a bad hangover.

  Tippy snapped playfully at the mechanic's heels, receiving a forceful kick in his direction. The hound dodged the angry foot. Growling, the dog sauntered to the cool shade beneath the foundation of the single-story farmhouse.

  Clay sighed. He was sure Sonny had driven his wrecker all the way from town for the sole purpose of bitching and moaning about his loss of work. It was true that Clay had been offering his mechanical expertise to the residents of Bedloe County for half the price Sonny charged his customers. From what Clay had gathered, the station owner spent most of his time idly these days, patching flats and pumping Fire-Chief.

  Reluctant to get into a shouting match, Clayburn wiped his hands and stepped around the bumper of the Chevy. "What can I do for you, Sonny?"

  Sonny stood there and fumed for a moment. He was a large, heavyset man with ugly features and oily, black hair. He was an ignorant man, considered by his neighbors to be a cruel bigot, perhaps even a member of the local Klan. What few friends he did have usually congregated at the Bloody Bucket.

  "I wanna know what you're gonna do about what happened at the school yesterday," demanded Sonny.

  Clay studied the man for a long second. "I don't believe I know what you're talking about."

  "The hell you say!" boomed Martin. His big fists doubled threateningly. "My boy, Chester, came home from school looking like a damned freight train had run over him. Had two black eyes, bloody nose, a couple of loose teeth. He was bawling around all night about seeing snakes or something."

  "What does that have to do with me?"

  "I've heard the talk, Biggs. I ain't no damned fool!" Sonny pointed at the red-haired child who played by the stump. "It was that young'un of yours who done it! That Cindy Ann!"

  "It ain't so, Pappy!" Polly spoke out. "I saw the whole thing, and Cindy didn't lay a finger on dumb old Chester!"

  "Maybe not . . . but she went and put some kinda hex on the boy. Gave him the evil eye and made him see snakes and such."

  Clayburn felt the heat of anger begin to prickle the back of his neck. "Now, that's gotta be the biggest crock of bull I've ever heard you utter, Sonny."

  "You know about them Martins, Pappy!" proclaimed Polly from atop the hickory stump. "They're all a bunch of bald-faced liars!"

  Sonny glared at the spunky girl and took a couple of steps toward her. "Why, you little—"

  Clay blocked his path, his eyes cold and humorless. "Polly . . . get on into the house."

  "But, Pappy—"

  "You mind me, young lady."

  Indignantly, Polly stomped across the yard and disappeared into the house. Cindy was left behind at the stump, alone and forgotten for the moment.

  Sonny Martin crossed his hairy forearms in a show of dangerous bravado. "Like I asked before, Biggs, I wanna know what you're gonna do about this."

  Clay's impatience with the man's ignorance and superstition was beginning to bleed through. "I'll tell you what I'm fixing to do, Sonny. I'm fixing to toss your butt in the road if you don't get off my property right now."

  Sonny's dark eyes measured Clay's lanky frame and he laughed. "You sure you can manage it, Clay? I mean, you being such a fine, upstanding gentleman these days. I can remember the time you were right down there in the mud wallow with the rest of us drunkards and bums. You weren't too hesitant about busting your share of heads back then. I don't think you have near enough gut for it now."

  Clay's lean face became a hard mask. "I have no beef with you, Martin, but if you insist on talking nonsense and putting down my young'uns, well, I just can't stand for it. If you came here looking for a fight, I reckon I still have the backbone to oblige you."

  "Then let's get to it." Sonny grinned. The man grabbed a heavy monkey wrench from off the Chevy's fender. He brandished its hefty weight, intending to lay a forceful blow alongside Clayburn's skull.

  He was bringing the greasy wrench around with a powerful swing when an odd thing took place. The weight of the tool had somehow changed. It felt wrong. The hardness of steel had strangely lost its rigid content and now felt peculiarly limp and rubbery. There was the sensation of holding something dry and scaly to the touch. A cold shive
r reverberated through him as he hazarded a glance at the thing in his hand.

  Sonny's eyes widened and he yelped in sudden horror. There was a snake in his fist, a thick length of slithering, thrashing rattlesnake pulsating between his fingers. The serpent's body began to coil around his wrist, around the muscular bulge of his forearm. He stared, transfixed, at the rattler's head, the depthless pits of the beady eyes, the flickering pink fork of the reptile's tongue. The snake's head arched back, preparing for the strike, and Sonny lost his nerve. He screamed loudly, tossing the cursed thing into the balmy morning air.

  But, as the object spun in the spring sunlight, something strange and inexplicable happened. He no longer saw the writhing length of a poisonous snake hurling skyward, but another item entirely, glinting silver like a sunburst in the heavenly blueness. He watched, dazed, as the monkey wrench landed in a patch of young clover, striking the earth with a dull, clanking thud.

  Sonny stood there for a long moment, not knowing what to say or do. He stared dumbly at the wrench, then at Clay. The tobacco farmer regarded him as if he were crazy. Then Sonny turned his eyes to Cindy Ann and he knew. The little girl with the fire-red hair sat on the stump, a cheerful grin on her freckled face that by no means matched the cold malice in her hazel eyes.

  "Damn you, girl!" croaked Sonny. He stormed back to his tow truck and sped back down the dirt road for town, as if the devil himself were fast on his tail.

  Clayburn Biggs scratched his head in complete puzzlement. He looked over at Cindy. His daughter met his attention with a shy, engaging smile. "What . . . what did you just do to him, Cindy?"

  The child shrank back from her daddy's question, expecting a scolding or a spanking. "I don't know, Pappy. I just made him see something, I reckon."

  "Made him see something," repeated Clay, trying to comprehend the girl's meaning.

  "Just like Chester," she confessed timidly. "His daddy doesn't much cotton to snakes, either."

  "And you made Sonny see something —a snake — just now?"

  Cindy said that she did.

  Clayburn crouched on his haunches before the wrench. He stared at it lying there in the thick clover. Then he stared up at the girl. "Do you think you could make me see it? Just like you did Sonny?"

  "I don't know," The youngster frowned. There was reluctance in her voice. "I could try."

  "Then do it, honey."

  Cindy's brow creased in concentration, as if she was putting a great effort into what she was about to do. Her probing mind was not centered on the inanimate object, but on her father. She stared at him for a while, then ceased her mental strain. "I can't."

  "How come?"

  "You're stronger than they were," she explained. "Chester and Mr. Martin . . . they're kinda dumb. It's easier to fool them."

  Clayburn stood and regarded his fourth child with concern. "You go on and play with your paper dollies, pumpkin. I'm gonna fetch me a dipper of water."

  As Cindy Ann settled once again at the base of the stump, her collection of cutouts and her imagination her only playmates, Clay ducked inside the house. He went to the sink in the kitchen where the old iron pump drew drinking water from an underground well. Absently, he took a tin dipper from a bent nail on the wall. Working the lever a couple of times, Clay filled the cup with cool water.

  He stood at the kitchen window, sipping from the dipper and watching the little girl play. Despite what Cindy thought, her efforts had not been wasted on her father. For a moment, for a mere fraction of a second, Clay had seen something. He had been staring at the monkey wrench when the steel handle seemed to thicken and round, changing in size and texture. He had caught a fleeting glimpse of the rattler's brown diamond pattern just before the vision had faded and there was only the wrench once again.

  He thought back to Maudie's ravings again, the foolish nonsense about Cindy having the gift of second sight. He had dismissed her words as the ignorance of old wives tales as he always did when he encountered something he could not understand. But now he had seen the child's power, seen what it had done to a man' who would back down from no fight. A nine-year-old girl had twisted that man's way of thinking, made him see things that were not there, and made him scream like a hysterical woman.

  Clay stared at his daughter through the open sash of the kitchen window. Before that day, he had regarded Cindy with an emotion akin to resentment. But now, the cold contempt had melted away, and in its place lurked a tense uneasiness, a tangible fear deep down inside. Clay could not figure which feeling he despised more, especially when it was directed toward one of his own offspring.

  He stood there for a long while that morning before finally going back out to finish his work on the Chevrolet.

  Part Two

  Mournful Summer

  Chapter Eleven

  The thicket stretched like the walls of some dark labyrinth across the open field. Choking barriers of honeysuckle, thistle, and prickly blackberry bramble entwined narrow passageways, converging, then spreading once again into the openness of cool twilight. There was no source of nocturnal light, no moon or scattering of stars overhead ... only an oppressive covering of dense storm clouds pouring their drenching fury earthward.

  Someone made their way through the twisted tangle, haltingly, cautiously. The form was shadowy, blending with surrounding patches of blackness, then emerging to continue its agonizingly slow progress. Whether the form was that of a man or a woman could not be determined in the obscurity of the driving rain. The person walked with a limp, however; the shuffling, stiff-limbed gait of the wounded. Rain mingled with warm blood, merging, diluting, then splattering the sodden earth in random droplets.

  The crashing turbulence of the surrounding storm was overshadowed by a much more powerful presence. It was one that had existed since creation itself, one that lurked in the shadows of the mind when man first took weapon in hand and pursued the beast of the field. That was what took place that dank night in an abandoned tobacco field… pursuit. And the terrifying force that now tracked the limping form, the hunted, was fear—an emotion so very devastating and unpredictable that multitudes had been stricken down and entire fortresses had toppled beneath the oppressive weight of that single ogre.

  The drama that unfolded that night was horror on a much smaller scale, but horror just the same. The dark, drenched form staggered through heavy thicket, exhaustion and agony winning against faltering endurance. Hysterical thoughts flashed through the victim's panicked mind, harrowing memories of gunfire, blood, and the dead left behind. Death stalked the Tennessee countryside that furious night, a hulking Grim Reaper with a sawed-down length of cold blued steel clutched in his desperate hand.

  The figure limped onward. A few more feet of choking thicket was left behind. Through the pouring rain lay the dark folds of woodline, a promise of deliverance from the one who followed. Suddenly a form loomed nearby. The stalker! Quickly dropping to the wet ground, refuge was found beneath a thick of wild tobacco. There was the swish of advancing footsteps, growing nearer, then, finding no sign of the hunted, moving on.

  A ragged sigh of relief escaped trembling lips. Only a few feet more and then home free. Struggling from beneath the shadowy growth, the figure stood and took a few shuffling steps forward.

  "Gotcha . . ." a voice rasped from behind, cruel and triumphant. And, with it, the throaty roar Death.

  Cindy Ann pushed up from the depths of the big feather bed and sat there in darkness, a scream trapped in her throat. This time she had not yelled out. She had contained the awful terror and now sat there in the back bedroom, staring into the shadows until most of the disturbing dream had been driven from her mind.

  She breathed deeply, sucking in great gulps of humid, summer air which hung uncomfortably in the room, despite the open window. She sank back into the folds of the goose down bed. Polly lay on her side, black pigtails draped askew over a fluffy pillow, sleeping the slumber of the unconcerned. Cindy lay there for a long time, trying to forget the detai
ls of her haunting dream, but failing to fully obliterate the dreadful images that lingered.

  It was a Thursday night in mid-July. The house was dark, except for the kitchen where her mother washed the supper dishes by lamplight. The front porch was dark, but occupied. Pappy was out there with a couple of friends from town, Buster Cole and Woody Sadler, who ran Coleman's general store down near the forks.

  Cynthia Ann lay there listening to their idle conversation as it traveled from one point of interest to another. They talked of the weather, Roosevelt and his New Deal programs, which team was likely to win the World Series that year, and the speculation of war in Europe in the near future. Locally, the news ranged from Zeke Simpson's prized Black Angus bull getting its privates hung up in a barbed wire fence to Ransom Potts' foreclosure on the Givens farm. There was some talk of a Negro getting lynched in neighboring Trenton County. The young black man had been hung from the under beams of a railroad trestle, and suspicions were that the local faction of the Ku Klux Klan had been the ones responsible.

  The red-haired girl grew weary of the talk after a while. She lay there and contemplated the dream. The nightmare had invaded her sleep ever since school let out. It was always the same, the ones involved always obscured and cast in shadow. She was never able to identify them or the place where the grueling chase took place. Several times she felt she had been on the verge of recognizing the hunted one, but it had always eluded her.

  After listening to the sounds of men's strong voices and the nocturnal chirping of crickets in the dewy grass outside, Cindy swung down off the bed. The hardwood boards of the floor felt cool against the soles of her bare feet as she padded quietly to the door of the adjoining bedroom.