by Hank Early
It stopped right there, as if something had distracted him from his writing.
I shook my head, trying to process it all.
“So this fell out of his pocket?”
Millie nodded. “I guess so. Is it a treasure map?”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s a map to a torture chamber.”
* * *
One of the reasons I drank like I did was to keep the dreams away. There was nothing like a fifth of Wild Turkey to put a man into a deep, dreamless sleep. Sometimes the dreams still came through, but they were fragmented enough to dismiss.
That evening, lying on the floor of the little shack without a drop of alcohol in my system other than the beer I’d had hours earlier, my dreams played catch-up with my subconscious and wreaked havoc on my nerves.
First, I dreamed of Granny’s funeral. Mary and I stood over a large hole in the ground waiting for her coffin to be lowered inside.
A machine roared nearby, cutting through the silent morning like a guttural scream. I watched as the machine deposited her coffin right before us. Mary held me tight and put her face in my side as she cried.
But there was something wrong with the coffin. The lid was missing, and there was a blanket pulled over Granny’s body. Mary reached for it and pulled it back for one last look.
We both gasped—the body inside the casket was not Granny’s. Instead, it was my father’s faceless body. I saw where the scavengers had eaten his eyes out and torn up his cheeks and pecked at his lips until what remained was little more than an eyeless mask. I forced my eyes away from his face and scanned the rest of his body. He was dressed in a brown suit, a color I never remembered him wearing in life. His shoes were black and polished so well, I could see my reflection in them. But when I looked closer, it wasn’t me I saw in the mirrored black—it was Lester.
I stepped away, looking at my hands, my clothes, my suit. Somehow, I’d become my brother in my dream, and the feeling was so cloying, I had to scream out loud.
I kept screaming until Mary squeezed me and told me it was okay.
“We found him. Finally.”
“Found who?” I asked. She pointed back to the open coffin. It was McCauley now, his face frozen how I remembered him best: wild eyed and far too desperate for someone to take him seriously. I reached out to pull up the blanket, to see if his hand was missing, but Mary stopped me.
“It’s in your pocket,” she whispered.
Repulsed, I tossed it into the coffin with him as faceless men picked up shovels and scooped dirt into his open grave.
When it was finished, everyone sang a song. It was an old gospel song that went on forever. At the end of it, I realized I was alone in the field of kudzu. No, not quite alone. Goose was there with Cloverfield, and they were playing among the twisting vines. I watched a thundercloud building in the sky over Ring Mountain. Lightning flashed out of it like electric pitchforks, impaling Ring Mountain and sparking a blaze that circled the peak and rose into the sky, an inferno that could touch heaven.
A hand fell on my back.
“Them dogs have found something.”
I started to turn to see who the voice belonged to, but before I could, I heard the dogs barking and dancing around a well that had emerged from the kudzu.
I walked over, as if compelled. I began to turn the crank, as I always did in the dream. Behind me, the voice—a voice I recognized but could not name—offered encouragement.
“It’s almost there, boy. Come on, put your back into it.”
The rope creaked. The bucket came into view, but it was tipped away from me, and I couldn’t see what was there.
“Crank it again. One more, boy.”
I bent my back into it and turned the crank another full revolution.
What I saw woke me up and sent me back to a time I’d nearly forgotten.
40
There were some things I didn’t think about anymore. My sister, Aida, was one of them. When I dreamed of her small, dead body inside the bucket, I woke up with a memory I had chosen to repress—or maybe I was just too afraid of what I’d discover if I thought on it too much.
But what did it mean? Seeing her in the bucket had to be important, but for the life of me, I couldn’t say how. I lay on the floor of the little cabin, listening to the rain falling outside, trying to make a connection between her short life and my present-day predicament.
It had happened after I’d returned from escorting Granny back to her house in the rain. I was soaking wet and angry when I came into the darkened house and saw Mama and Lester sitting expressionless on the couch. A few days later, Mama sent me up the mountain to look for Daddy.
I followed Ghost Creek until I found him at an old children’s cemetery, way up near the peak of Pointer Mountain. He was sitting on a big rock, looking at the little markers in the cemetery. His back was to me, and he seemed startled when I called his name.
A boy always remembers seeing his father cry. I suppose it’s a result of the deeply ingrained patriarchy I grew up in, but men—especially men like my father—did not cry. They prayed. They stood tall, Bible in hand, facing down the devil. There was no physical or spiritual damage that this world could send their way at which they couldn’t shout, “Get behind me, devil,” and then move forward, untouched, as if all trials in this life were made up of only weak-willed, obedient demons flung by a spiteful wind, incapable of touching the human spirit.
Even though the snakebite was responsible for galvanizing my rejection of my father’s faith, the doubts go back much further than that. The doubts began when he turned around and I saw his face streaked with tears.
“Daddy?”
He was clutching a wooden box to his chest. It was the size of a shoebox, something I’d seen him keep baby cottonmouths in before. I understood without having to ask that Aida was inside it now.
He laid the box on the ground and stood up, his legs trembling, his body wavering. For a moment, he didn’t seem real. He seemed like an electric ghost, a hologram of a father, and then he steadied, and I saw his eyes and understood that if there was a way to put a demon behind you, if there was a way to “pray” something away, he’d have already done it. But the pain there, the real hurt in his downcast, bleary gaze, told me there wasn’t. Not this time.
He didn’t say a word to me. Instead, he reached behind him for a shovel I’d not seen earlier.
He stuck it in the dirt and began to dig. He didn’t have to dig too far because the box was small. He was crying again—sobbing, really—as he laid it carefully inside. He scooped the dirt back over top and smoothed it out carefully.
When he was finished, he sat back down on the rock heavily and closed his eyes.
“Mama . . .” I started, but my voice caught, and I realized I was crying too. I’d seen something on that day that had taught me more about life than any sermon Daddy could ever dream up, more than any stomping on any stage or any snake held above any head. I’d seen a man weep.
“Mama said to find you.”
“Well, you did.”
“Daddy?”
He said nothing.
“I’m sorry.”
“Ain’t we all.”
I almost couldn’t process it. His daughter, my sister, was dead. He’d just laid her in the ground, yet he’d said not one word to or about God.
I waited for more, for some admonition for my own life, for something I could do to avoid such future grief, for something about Aida being in a better place, for something about how we should all wish to be so lucky, but he didn’t say anything else.
And I left him like that, my real father—stripped of the religion he wielded like a shield and a sword, but mostly, I realized for the first time, like a mask.
* * *
But what did it mean? Why was Aida in the bucket? Why would I suddenly remember that from so long ago? Was it my subconscious, still trying to look for a way to connect to my dead father, or was it something more, some kind of intricate code I
could not decipher?
Throughout the years of my life, I’d come to believe in something at work in the world. It was as subtle as faraway music on the breeze, but it was there. All of my experiences made it impossible to deny. I knew Daddy would say it was God calling me back home. And I wasn’t ready to say it might not be. But if he was calling me anywhere, it was back to myself, back to the memories and the experiences that made me who I was. Maybe even back to the single spark of divinity that had lit me up so many years ago. I’d felt it each and every time I’d defied my father, and I felt something like it now, remembering Daddy and Aida in that broken state.
I let my mind drift through the dreams again, the memories, looking for something my subconscious already knew but that had been locked down by my conscious mind.
I saw Daddy holding the snakes. I saw him lifting them high and shouting down demons within the congregation. I saw him weeping beside the little box.
I saw Aida in the bucket.
Then my mind drifted to the coffin. Granny’s coffin, except the players were interchangeable, weren’t they? Granny became Daddy and Daddy became McCauley. It was like Maggie becoming Allison and Allison becoming Millie and . . .
Baylee.
I remembered my resolution from the night before and felt a new urgency. Maggie and Allison were dead. Millie had run away.
There wasn’t any time to waste. I had to help Baylee.
I sat up quickly. The room was still. Millie and Todd breathed in a heavy rhythm. Only Cloverfield paid me any mind as I pulled on my boots, scribbled a note for them explaining my abrupt departure, and left it on the floor next to them with my credit card on top of it before slipping out into the overcast morning.
41
Hungry and sore, I didn’t have much choice but to hike up to Rufus’s place. He’d have something I could eat. Besides, I wanted to touch base with him so he could let Mary know I was okay and get her over to pick up those kids. I’d left them a note, suggesting Millie hike up to the gas station and use my credit card to buy something to eat, but I hated to think of someone from the Holy Flame spotting her.
My own plan was simple: get something to eat, rest during the daylight hours, and head over to Burt’s house that night, when he’d be working the night shift at the carpet mill.
After several stops to catch my breath, I eventually made it up the mountain and to Ghost Creek. I followed the creek for a half mile or so until I came to the church.
Right away, I knew something was wrong. My rental was gone. The place looked too quiet. I expected to hear Goose barking as I walked up, but there was only silence. Even the birds in the trees seemed asleep, or maybe just waiting for something.
The creek slipped by behind me, grooving the mountain with its deceptive force.
I walked forward, sure that when I stepped inside that church, I’d see something that would haunt me forever.
A voice came from behind me.
“He’s gone.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. I spun around, consumed by an irrational onset of fight-or-flight adrenaline, fists clenched, jaw set.
“Easy there, tiger.”
I relaxed a little. It was Ronnie Thrash. He was shirtless with a pair of old sweat pants and flip-flops. He was holding a can of Bud Ice. He tipped it back, drained it, and tossed the can in the creek.
“What do you mean gone?” I said.
“Sheriff’s deputies got him. They come up and towed that rental car of yours. Then they arrested the blind motherfucker. Him cursing them out all along the way.” He slipped his foot out of its flip-flop and touched his toe to the running water. “I figure you’re really the one they want, but I reckon he’ll do for the time being.”
“What about Goose?”
“He’s inside with Walt and Beard.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He shrugged. “Don’t mention it. He’s a good dog. You’re in deep shit, you know. I saw you drag Roger Peterson out of the bar last night. They say you fucked him up pretty good. That true?”
“What if it is?”
“Then I’d say congratu-fucking-lations. The sheriff’s office in this town is as corrupt as that church your daddy started.”
I nodded. “I think you’re right about that.”
“I’m right about a lot of stuff.”
“That so?”
“Yep. Don’t you remember, the first night we met?”
“I remember you showing up trying to act tough.”
He scratched under his arm and leaned into a loud fart. “I did send them boys home, but I wasn’t really talking about that. I was talking about what I told you.”
I didn’t have time for this. Then again, I didn’t really have any place to go. Not without some more sleep and something to eat. Maybe he could provide some if I played my cards right.
“And what was that?”
“I said me and you are a lot more alike than we are different. Remember?”
“You said something like that, but it ain’t no more true today than it was then.”
He grinned. “We’ll see.”
“I guess it always comes out one way or the other.”
“That it does.” He nodded slowly.
“I need to know something,” I said.
“All right.”
“Did you put a toy snake inside the church to try to scare me away?”
He laughed, rubbing his belly. “You got me confused with somebody from the Holy Flame. I won’t even touch a fake one after they made me hold the real one when my daddy died. Soon as I found me a place to stay, I ran away. Lived with Beard. He and his daddy ain’t never been nothing but heathens.” He grinned. “Like you and me. See, another little piece of common ground.”
“You’re full of shit.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. That don’t change the fact that me and you are a lot alike.”
“Okay, fine. We’re a lot alike. Now answer me another question.”
“I’ll try.”
“What the hell was my brother doing at your place the other night?”
This seemed to catch him off guard.
“What?”
“I saw Lester and you talking the other night. Why?”
“Maybe you better come inside,” he said.
I shook my head.
“Suit yourself. But I reckon the last place they’ll look for you is with me.” He pointed at the church. “And don’t think they won’t come back for you there. They will.”
I stared at him.
He smiled. “We got the same enemies, Earl. Hank Fucking Shaw and that damned church that tried to fuck us over. How’s that saying go? The enemy of my enemy is my best friend . . . or something like that.”
He was right. I decided to go inside. At least I might get some insight into Lester. Besides, I wanted to see Goose.
42
Goose was fine. In fact, I was surprised to see Beard and Walt playing keep-away with him using a tennis ball. Goose trotted over to me and actually jumped into my arms. I hugged him and let him lick my face before setting him back down.
“That’s Beard and Walt,” Ronnie said.
Both men nodded in my direction, raising their eyebrows just enough for me to see they disapproved but wouldn’t say so in front of Ronnie.
“Want some bacon or eggs or something? We just had breakfast, but there’s a shitload left over in the cooler.”
I nodded. He sat down at a card table and nodded toward the cooler. I rummaged through and pulled out a plate of eggs and a plate of bacon, both covered in plastic wrap.
I put them on the card table, and Ronnie handed me a fork.
I ate the eggs first and chased them with the bacon. Ronnie tossed me a beer. I was damned glad I’d come in. It was the best I’d felt in a couple of days.
“Lester contacted me a few months ago. Asked me if I was willing to be his eyes and ears.”
“Eyes and ears? What were you looking and listening for?”
“Rumors, plots, all that shit.”
“I don’t understand.”
He cracked another beer open for himself. “Well, you wouldn’t. Truth is, I didn’t understand either. Not until he filled me in. See, after your daddy ‘died,’ there was some turmoil about—”
“Why’d you do that?”
“Why’d I do what?”
“Make those air quotes when you said died?”
He flashed me a big grin. “You ain’t heard? Your daddy done rose from the grave, Earl. You can’t tell me you didn’t know the rumors.”
“I heard some stuff. I guess the problem is I don’t really know if they’re true or not.”
“Let me ask you something, Earl. Do you think a man can rise from the dead and ascend into the fucking mountains?”
I hesitated. Of course I didn’t think that was possible.
Did I?
“Are you seriously having to think about it?” he said.
“No.” I brought my fist down on the table for emphasis. “Of course not.”
“Well, there’s your answer then. He’s deader than a doornail. Lester saw the body. Lots of people saw the body.”
“But the face—”
“Was missing. I know. But it was your daddy. Ain’t nobody with a lick of sense disputes that.”
“But there’s a lot of folks out there without sense.” You’re one of them, Earl.
“Bingo. And Lester—he’s worried because he says there’s a faction in the church that claims your daddy’s displeased with the job Lester’s doing. They keep spreading these things around the church about how Brother RJ said this or Brother RJ said that. And they don’t mean before he died. These people are saying he talks all the time. Of course, if people say it, people will believe it. So long story short, your brother don’t know if your daddy is alive or if these people are just using his death as a way of fucking with him. You know?” He shook his head and blew out a laugh. “Fuck, I hate fucking religion. Don’t you?”
