Days of Little Texas

by R. A. Nelson

  Tee Barlow is riding herd on three men loading something made of dark, polished wood onto the pontoon boat.

  “The pulpit from the Bethel Presbyterian Church,” he says. “I had to put a deposit on it. It goes back right after the service.”

  “Where’s everybody else?”

  “Gone to town. You want to come over with us?”

  We motor over to the island, and Tee Barlow’s helpers start getting the pulpit stood up at one end of the clearing. There is definitely a different feel to this morning. I decide to scout around. Maybe there’s something left from the last time they had services here? I follow the edge of the woods till I come to a place where the older trees thin out. I look at it closer; it’s the head of an old trail that runs off into the forest. I decide to follow it.

  “Don’t go too far,” Tee Barlow calls. “The woods are full of woolyboogers.” He laughs and smiles.

  The trail is carpeted in pine straw and sprinkled with saplings. It’s been a long time since anybody came this way regular. It runs parallel to the shore for a ways; I can see blue water glinting through the trees. Once I’m out of sight, I settle on my knees in a quiet place and bow my head.

  “Dear Lord Jesus Christ, please let me know what I am to do about this vision that has been sent to me. If Lucy is a devil, please send her away. But if she is something else, and she needs my help, please grant me your power and your love so that I might help her. Amen.” I settle back on my tailbone and haul out the brick again, cupping it in both hands.

  “Lucy? Are you there?”

  I wait, eyes closed, then something snaps close by. I jerk around.

  A red-tailed fox is sitting in the middle of the trail looking at me, tail perked up in the air. I get to my feet and take a couple of steps toward it. He lifts his head and starts down the trail ahead of me. I follow along behind, watching the plumy tail bouncing up and down.

  We walk like that a long ways, coming at last to a place where the trail narrows, choked with poison oak and tall purple milkweed. I push my way through, feeling very far from anything and downright alone. The sun is higher, but the woods are thicker, damping the light.

  The fox just keeps trotting along, leading me. We come up another long curve, and up ahead the trail widens into a clearing, the forest floor dotted green and yellow where the sun peeps through. The place has a special feeling. “The kind of a place where the Lord lives” is how Sugar Tom would say it.

  The fox sits down on his haunches right at the edge of the open place. He turns and looks back at me. Do foxes have rabies? I walk a little closer; the fox takes a quick, springy leap across a fallen sycamore, and he’s gone in the underbrush.

  “Shoot.”

  “Ronald Earl?”

  I spin around, heart pounding. Faye Barlow is standing there. How in heaven did she get here?

  “Don’t you go any farther,” she says, coming toward me, face darkening up.

  “Why?”

  “I was afraid you might stumble onto this place. I got to worrying so much about it back at the house, I had to come right over. You need to go back to the landing.”

  “I saw a red-tailed fox—it was almost like he led me here.”

  “Just come on now, the others will be waiting.”

  She takes my hand and we start back.

  “What didn’t you want me to see in that clearing?” I say after a while.

  Faye stops and hugs me to her. Her body is soft and warm. She smells of vanilla extract. She pulls her face back and stares deep into my eyes, mouth just inches away.

  “That place … it seems all right now, a beautiful day like this,” she says. “But it’s not a good place to go. Especially for you.”

  “It has something to do with the devil, doesn’t it?” I say. “From that old revival service?”

  Faye looks like she almost starts to laugh, then catches herself.

  “Let me show you something.”

  She leads me a little ways off the trail, being careful to keep us out of the stickers. We come to where a big, old shag-bark hickory has fallen, letting a lot of sunbeams through.

  “Look here.” Faye points at a bunch of red flowers hanging at the end of some long, drooping stems. “See this part that’s curled up?”

  I look closer. “They’re pretty,” I say, putting my hand out to touch one. She grabs my fingers away.

  “This is a pitcher plant,” she says. “A killer, Ronald Earl. A carnivore. A meat eater. Their insides are slippery, so the insects can’t climb out. They say canebrake pitcher plants are only found farther down south, but here they are, on Devil Hill. Why do you think that is?”

  “I—I don’t know much about plants.”

  Faye straightens up from the flowers and takes both my hands in hers. Puts my fingers to her lips. I can feel the words slipping out of her mouth.

  “It’s natural to be attracted to a place like this,” she says. “So alive and beautiful. It’s hard to imagine there could be anything dangerous here. Evil. Just like the pitcher plant, that’s the power of the attraction.”

  “What’s in that clearing, Faye?”

  She pulls my hands down. “Not here. I can’t talk about it here. Let’s go back.”

  “Why?”

  “Because … it listens.”

  Back at the plantation Faye looks at me.

  “I want you to come help me with something, Ronald Earl.” She looks over at her husband and calls across the clearing, “Tee, can I borrow our star for a little bit?”

  We walk together down to the landing. I start to climb aboard the pontoon boat, but she pulls me another way. There is a canoe sitting there in the milfoil. Faye climbs in ahead of me; I watch the canoe wiggle and tip under her weight, feeling a lump in my throat.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never much been in little boats. And I’m not much of a swimmer.”

  “We’ll be perfectly safe,” she says. “I promise you.”

  She sits down at one end, leaving me to come behind her. I step on the first skinny little seat and feel the canoe rocking under me. I sit down, my ankles wiggling.

  “Now shove us off, please,” Faye says. “Just the paddle.”

  I reach out with the paddle and push at the shoreline, and we slip away from the bank. Faye takes the other paddle and starts pulling hard at the water. “There’s a little bit of a current here once we get out in the channel.”

  I dig my paddle in. The lake pulls harder at my arms than I expected, but after a few strokes I start to get the hang of it.

  “Hey, this is kind of fun,” I say.

  We slide with the current beneath the trestle. Looking up, I can see the bottom of the trestle and the big iron legs coming down to the concrete piers. I glance back at the island, and the columns of the ruined plantation look like something from a painting.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?” Faye Barlow says. She bites down on the words.

  Back at the house, I wonder if I should show her the key I found. But she heads straight to the kitchen, all business, and we get to working on an Italian dish called manicotti. Faye has me stir up some eggs and milk, then shows me how to pour the thin batter into a frying pan.

  “When they’re done, you spread them with the cheese mixture and roll them up into tubes and pour the sauce over the top,” she says. “You’ll love it, I promise.”

  “I’ve never done much cooking,” I say. “We mostly just eat out.”

  “That’s too bad. It helps me to think. So, you know what I’m thinking about right now?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’m thinking about putting you into my little car and driving you right straight on out of here. Hiding you away somewhere up in Memphis or Nashville.”

  I look at her till batter drips down my arm from the spoon.

  “I’m dead serious, Ronald Earl,” she says. “You just don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. That place. You can’t preach there. They won’t tell you. So I�
�ll tell you.”

  “What are you scared is going to happen?”

  Faye puts a dish towel over her shoulder and dumps more spice and onions in the sauce, stirring them together till everything’s rich and red as blood.

  “You have to understand,” she says. “The island—it was my special place. It always has been, ever since I used to visit my aunt here. It has always been a place I could go to get away for a few hours by myself. Watch birds, collect plants, draw.”

  She takes a deep breath and stops stirring. We watch the pot bubble.

  “Okay. Okay. Whew. I have never told anyone about this, not even Tee. It was just about this time of year when it happened. I remember because the evening primroses were out, and I wanted to collect some to press. So I took the canoe over there one afternoon when Tee was on a buying trip in Atlanta. Everything was so beautiful! I followed that same trail you found this morning until I came to the clearing.

  “Then, late in the day, without any warning, the sky turned pitch-black, and a lightning storm came up. I was afraid to take the canoe back. So I had to wait it out.

  “There was no way to see except for the flashes of the storm. But I had never been afraid on my island. Not ever … I went into the clearing looking for a big tree to shelter under—I know you aren’t supposed to do that—but I must have stayed there half the night, wet and miserable. Finally the storm passed. Then …”

  Her eyes well up with tears.

  “Are you all right?” I say.

  “Something was there, Ronald Earl. Something was there in that clearing with me. Something so frightening and evil—”

  “What did it look like?”

  Faye stifles a sob. “I—I don’t know, that’s just it! I never really saw it. It was so dark, and it happened so quickly. It came at me! Came at me from behind and pushed me down in the leaves! I couldn’t move! I couldn’t—couldn’t get away.”

  “Was it a man?”

  “I thought—I thought at first it was … until I felt its skin. So slick and cold in the rain—like a snake. Some kind of animal, but it wasn’t any animal. Because it spoke …”

  “What did it say?”

  “I couldn’t understand it! It wasn’t like any language I’ve ever known. It was … screaming at me—screaming and grunting and making this awful—this awful rattle in its throat. It did things to me, Ronald Earl. Things—I have never been able to tell anyone what it did. Not even Tee. It did things to me….”

  She sets the spoon down and begins to weep. I take her by the arm.

  “Please,” she says, very quiet. “Please just hold me a moment.”

  She takes me in her arms and squeezes me so hard, I can barely draw breath. I get hugged by folks all the time, I’m used to it. But I’ve never been clung to like this. She cries a very long time. All you can hear in that kitchen is her weeping and the bubbling of the sauce pot.

  “You don’t know—you don’t know how much it means to me, you coming here like this,” she says at last, whispering into my ear. “But I’m so afraid for you.”

  She’s quiet a little while, just breathing. Then I feel her mouth against my neck. Her lips are wet and cool. Faye looks up at me, eyes swoled up and red, and gives me a tiny little smile. Kisses my cheek, then kisses it again. Then she puts her mouth on my mouth. Kisses me hard.

  Oh my Lord. I am all funny and kind of sick inside. I begin to pull away, but she pulls me to her even stronger, keeps kissing, pressing hard with her wet mouth.

  “I love you. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

  Faye’s hot tongue is working against my lips, like it’s trying to find a way in. I keep my mouth clenched tight shut, wrenching my head side to side. But my struggling just makes her press harder, and then my mouth opens, and her tongue is there, pushing against my tongue, moving all over. Down below—I can feel it happening, feel the change coming, just like it happens in my dreams. Swelling against the front of her apron. Faye puts one of her hands there, touching me, feeling me get bigger. So dirty, so downright filthy and wrong—

  It’s not right. This is not right. Let go! Let go! Let go!

  Finally she lets go, and I jerk away from her. I stand there, my hands covering my front, as Faye slowly slides down the edge of the cupboard till she’s sitting on the floor. She puts her face in her hands.

  “I’m sorry. Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she says. “Please forgive me. I’m—I’m just so lonely sometimes. It’s like something knew—something knew what I needed, and it used me. It used me. It took hold of me. You have to forgive me. Say you will. Please.”

  I step back, still watching her, and swipe the back of my hand across my mouth. I feel sick and wobbly. I keep backing all the way into the living room. My leg brushes the couch, and I slump down against it.

  Faye is whimpering in the kitchen.

  Finally I can hear the scraping of the wooden spoon, the metal oven door opening and closing. Dishes being set out.

  A little while later Sugar Tom comes into the kitchen with Certain Certain. “Why, that smells positively delicious,” he says, easing into a chair. “What is it?”

  “Manicotti,” Faye says, quiet. She gives me a pleading look and swipes at her eyes with the dish towel. “Would you like a taste?”

  She carries the wooden spoon to Sugar Tom, holding one hand underneath it for drips.

  “Mmmm, I haven’t tasted anything like that in years,” Sugar Tom says, smacking his lips and closing his eyes.

  Faye brings a lick over for Certain Certain. “Is that garlic in there?” he says, smiling his raggedy smile.

  “Only two cloves,” Faye says.

  “Look out, now.”

  “So … so how are things coming?” Faye says.

  “Got a dozen men lined up. More than enough,” Certain Certain says.

  “Where’s—”

  “Miss Wanda Joy? She’s still stuck in town. Making phone calls, visiting folks, getting the news stories ready. That woman is flat on fire. Stayed up half the night working on the press release. Seven papers this Saturday, if she can manage it. And believe me, she can. Gonna be a sizable congregation on Sunday, she has any say.”

  Faye doesn’t say anything, just goes back to stirring. Certain Certain comes into the living room. “What you been up to, Lightning?”

  “I’ve been showing him around some,” Faye cuts in, standing in the doorway. “Now if you all will scoot, I’ll get the rest of the things ready, and we’ll have an early dinner.” She glances at me, pressing her lips like she’s in pain.

  I look out the big front window. The sun is lower, turning Devil Hill blood-red.

  The manicotti is delicious, just like Faye promised.

  But really all I can taste is the taste of her. Her mouth, her tongue. I’m so ashamed. Her sidling up against me. All the feelings … how foul I must be to have that inside me. I can feel it like a sickness.

  “Are you sure you’re getting enough to eat?” Faye says over my shoulder.

  She ladles more sauce over the rolled-up manicotti shells on my plate. My stomach hurts. I can’t eat. She doesn’t touch me the way she has been doing.

  Maybe—is this why Lucy came to me? Because it knows. Whatever is over on that island attacked Faye. It knows what is inside my soul. How black it is. How weak I am.

  “Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.”

  It knows it can get to me, just like it got to Faye.

  “This is going to be our largest service ever” Miss Wanda Joy says. Her face is glowing; this is the kind of thing she does best, run around organizing a big production. “I’ve got articles lined up in papers all the way to West Memphis, Arkansas,” she says.

  She goes on about how unprecedented and spectacular it’s all going to be, hardly stopping to breathe.

  After supper Certain Certain finds a TV in the den. We watch a show about passenger pigeons. How back in the 1800s there used to be billions of them. S
o many the flocks could run one mile wide by three hundred miles long. Took days for them to pass by. Then somebody figured out they were a cheap source of meat to feed the slaves. Hunters killed the last flock in 1896.

  “You ain’t said much this evening, Lightning,” Certain Certain says. “Didn’t eat much, neither. You thinking ’bout the service?”

  I shake my head. “I was wanting to ask you something. Do you think—do you think somebody could go to hell for …” I don’t know what to call it. This thing that I’ve done.

  “Spit it out, boy.”

  “Well. Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing ain’t something liable to send you to hell. What is it?”

  I bite my lip and glance at the living room behind me. “Say if—say if this girl, she came up to you and … well, she … started something.”

  Certain Certain leans forward in his chair. “Something like what?”

  “You know.”

  “Oh. Ohhh. Now I get you, doctor. Why, you planning on rubbing up against some gal sometime soon?”

  “No, what if … what if I already—”

  Faye comes in bringing us dishes of homemade peach ice cream. She hands me mine and plunks down next to me, watching me stir it around, pretending to eat.

  “The History Channel,” she says brightly. “Can’t you two do any better than that?”

  She goes to jabbing buttons on the clicker. Now we’re watching a movie called Sixteen Candles instead. It’s full of awful stuff—drinking, swearing, underwear. Right in the middle of the movie, Faye hooks her pinky finger around my thumb on the sly. I feel sick down in the very bottom of my stomach. It’s going to happen again, it’s going to happen—

  I excuse myself and head to my room, insides knotted like rope. I grab my Bible and sit on the bed, force myself to read through the Old Testament books Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai right in a row.

  Nothing works. I want to see her, Lucy. I want to see her so bad, I could chew glass. But maybe I shouldn’t. I’m so scared she’ll know. Somehow she’ll know what happened between Faye and me. What will she think? Will she even talk to me again? Do I want her to?