Rockinghorse

by William W. Johnstone

  Everything he saw was a mess. The garden ponds were choked with filth and looked as though they had not been cleaned out in years. Not even a catfish could live in that mess. The shrubbery and trees needed cutting back, and the once-lovely hedges that ran for several miles, circling and winding throughout the grounds, were a disgrace.

  Lucas knew to the penny what his aunt had left upon her death, knew to the penny how much the taxes were, and knew how much the estate allotted each year for upkeep.

  Lucas wondered what Lige Manning was doing with the money? Gambling, women, booze?—take your choice, he supposed.

  He walked swiftly to the rear of the house, found the cottage where he supposed Lige lived—had to be this one, the others were in ruin—and pounded on the door.

  “Lige!” he called.

  The dirty curtains parted.

  “Hold your horses, mister. I’m acomin’ fas’ as I can.”

  The door opened and a foul odor struck Lucas like a hammer. The place smelled like a skunk’s den.

  “Yeah?” Lige said.

  “You’re being paid to keep this place maintained, Lige,” Lucas said, having decided to be up front with the man. “And as far as I can see, you’re doing a lousy job of it. You have any excuses?”

  The man shrugged. “I’m doin’ the bes’ I can, considerin’ I’m jist one man.”

  “Don’t try to con me, Lige. I know what you’re being paid and how much you’re allowed for the upkeep of the house and grounds. Where’s the money going? And don’t tell me for equipment.”

  Lige’s eyes narrowed menacingly. “I don’t answer none to you, Bowers. I only answer to Lawyer Garrett down in Atlanta. And I ain’t seen him in nigh on ten year. So don’t you git up in my face ’bout nothin’, you hear?”

  Lucas resisted a sudden impulse to smash the man’s sneering, arrogant face. A low growl from behind him stopped his fist. Lige laughed. The man’s breath stank.

  “Look around you, Lawyer. That there’s ol’ Baby. Go on, New Yawk City hot-shot. You jist try and hit me and ol’ Baby’ll tear your gawddamned arm off and eat it.”

  Lucas turned to look at the dog. It was a mastiff, and one hell of a big one. The animal stood with legs stiff, fangs bared, drool dripping from its jaws. The animal’s eyes glowed with hate.

  Lucas lifted his eyes to Lige. In a level voice, he said, “Call that dog off and do it right now, Manning. Right now!”

  Some note in Lucas’s voice struck a chord with the caretaker. “Aw, now, Mister Bowers, sir. Hell! Ol’ Baby wouldn’t hurt you none,” he said very sarcastically. “Come on, Baby. Come on, girl. Gentle down now. We don’t want Mister Lawyer to shit his city pants.”

  The animal ceased its snarling, backed up, and went around the side of the house.

  Lige laughed at Lucas.

  Lucas whirled around and stalked away, walking back to the station wagon. He jerked the shotgun from its case, loaded it, and walked back around the house. He was so mad, so angry, he was almost out of control. All his heretofore-repressed emotions were roaring uncontrollably to the surface. All the past stress and what he and Tracy both considered the injustice in the handling of his parents’ monies erupted. Lucas had worked two jobs and Tracy had worked, stifling her own career to get him through law school. His grandmother had left none of the monies to any relation other than Ira. When Ira was considered legally dead, the monies reverted to the estate and its upkeep. Because of his brother’s institutionalization—and his parents’ forgetfulness in changing wills, the insurance money was tied up in the courts for years. It was almost a decade before he and Tracy realized a dime. He—as the sole survivor—had been saddled with the responsibility of overseeing the Bowers estate, with no recompense. It was almost as if he was being punished for living and Ira’s dying.

  “Lucas!” Tracy’s voice rang from the kitchen window. “Lucas! My God, what are you doing?”

  He ignored her. Approaching the cottage, he saw Lige’s face appear at a front window. Lucas jacked a round into the chamber, lifted the shotgun, and blew a hole in the front door of the caretaker’s cottage.

  Lige dropped from the window. He squalled in fright. “Holy shit! Goddamn! Jesus Christ!”

  The mastiff came charging around the side of the house. Lucas put some buckshot into the ground in front of the big animal. Ol’ Baby put on the brakes like a steam engine suddenly shoved in reverse, yelped in fear, and ran back around the house, barking and yelping and snorting like the doggie devil itself was on her tail.

  “Goddamn!” Lige hollered. He began whooping as total fear gripped him.

  Survival took over in Lucas’s head. Some primitive sense of warning told him to step behind a tree—just in case Lige came out with a gun in his hand.

  “Get your ass out here!” Lucas yelled. “And you’d better not have a gun in your hand.”

  “Lard God Amighty!” the caretaker squalled. “Don’t kill me, Mister Bowers. I was jist afunnin’ with you.”

  “I didn’t see the humor in it,” Lucas called. “Now get your ass out here!”

  “Lucas! ” Tracy screamed, running from the house. “Lucas, my God, have you gone crazy?”

  Timidly, very hesitantly, the buckshot-mangled door of the cottage slowly opened. The now-pale face of Lige Manning peeked out.

  “Out!” Lucas yelled.

  The mastiff wasn’t going to be back for awhile. Lucas could hear the animal breaking through the heavy brush far behind the mansion, yelping as she pushed her heavy body forward, fear pumping the legs.

  Lige stepped outside, his hands empty and raised over his head. “I’ll call the law on you!” he squalled.

  “You do that,” Lucas replied in a calm voice. “And I’ll be more than happy to file charges against you for theft, embezzlement, using the mails for illegal purposes, assault, and about fifteen other charges. It’s your move, Lige.”

  “You’d do it, too, wouldn’t you, Mister Bowers?” Lige asked sourly.

  “I sure would. Lower your hands.”

  Lige carefully lowered his hands. “How’d the mails get into this?”

  “I suspect you’re using the U.S. mails to deposit monies in various banks around the state. Right, Lige?”

  Lige grunted. “Had to stop sometime, I reckon. Smart, ain’t you? OK, Mister Bowers, where do we go from here?”

  “How do you get into town?”

  “Pickup truck.”

  “Paid for by the estate, right?” Lucas couldn’t remember whether or not the estate furnished transportation. Garrett had handled all that.

  “Yeah,” Lige said glumly. “I don’t wanna go to the pokey, Mister Bowers. I’ll do anything to stay shut of jail.”

  Tracy and the kids had stopped about twenty feet behind Lucas, standing silently, listening to the exchange.

  Lucas said, “Tomorrow morning, Lige, you and I will inventory the equipment on this place. What we need, you’ll buy, out of your own money. You understand?”

  “Yessir!”

  “You, Lige, will begin work immediately. You will get this place shipshape. Understand all that?”

  “Yessir! I mean, I’ll start work this afternoon. Right now!”

  “You will build a pen for that animal of yours, and you will keep said animal in that pen at all times. Is that understood?”

  “Yessir! I’ll git on that right away. I mean, like right now!”

  “I feel sorry for that animal, Lige, for I know it’s only what you made it. But if that mastiff gets loose and snarls at my wife, my children, or me—just one time—I’ll kill it. Do you understand that?”

  “Yessir!”

  “Tonight—tonight—I want you to start listing all the monies you’ve taken from the estate, and where you’ve banked them. Make the list, and then sign and date it. Give it to me in the morning when we begin the inventory. If you try to run, I’ll alert the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.” Lucas didn’t even know if the State of Georgia had a GBI—but it sounded impressi
ve. “Understood?”

  “Yessir! Lard, Lard, yessir, I surely do understand.”

  “Get a good night’s sleep, Lige. Tomorrow you start earning your money around here—for a change. Is that understood?”

  “Yessir! Can I say sumthang, Mister Bowers?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You’re crazy,” Lige said, but without any menace in his voice. “You’re jist like your brother, Ira—crazy. Bad seed in both of you. You coulda kilt me. You’re crazy.”

  Lucas smiled, but there was very little humor in the smile. “I got your attention, though. Didn’t I?”

  “Damn shore did that.”

  “You knew Ira?” Tracy asked.

  “I knowed him. Bad boy. Cruel mean. Liked to hurt things, animals, people, didn’t make no nevermind to him. Hated ever’body. Like to have tormented me to death all the time he were here.”

  “Goodnight, Lige,” Lucas said coldly.

  “Night, Mr. Bowers. Sir,” he quickly added.

  * * *

  Tracy shivered after Lucas told them what had led up to his getting the shotgun from the station wagon. “Do you think Lige is mentally unbalanced?” she asked.

  “Oh . . . to some degree, probably,” Lucas replied. “He’s lived alone out here most of his life, I imagine. I just faintly remember him—I guess it was him—from my visits. There is no telling how many thousands of dollars he squirreled away from this estate.”

  “I bet he’s the reason nobody wanted to buy this house,” Jackie said.

  “Yeah,” Johnny said. “That old nut probably scared them away.”

  “Probably did,” Lucas agreed, remembering Lige’s statement about ‘the house don’t want to be sold.’

  He had completely forgotten about the moments of terror that had gripped him only hours before.

  “I’ve never seen you that angry, Lucas,” Tracy said. “You even scared me. Lucas, you could have killed that old man.”

  “No,” Lucas corrected her. “He was at the side window when I shot at the door. I knew what I was doing.”

  “I think you should dismiss him. I think—”

  “You kids go out front and sit out there for a minute. We’ll be right out,” Lucas said.

  Jackie and Johnny obeyed without argument.

  “I know what you were about to say,” Lucas said. “And I don’t see any point in scaring the kids.”

  “I think he might harm the kids,” Tracy stuck to her guns.

  “I don’t believe he’s to be feared, Tracy. More to be pitied, perhaps. But I’ll talk to Jim in the morning; see what he has to say about it. If Lige buckles down and starts working, let’s give him another chance.”

  “And the money he’s stolen?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’m going to have to run down to Atlanta some morning and speak with Mr. Garrett; see how he wants to handle that.” He patted her arm. “It’ll work out.”

  On the front veranda, brother and sister sat and stared at the gravel road. “Dad really got tough with that bum, didn’t he?” Johnny asked.

  “He sure was mad,” Jackie agreed. “I think we’d better stay away from that Lige. I don’t much like him.”

  “Spooky for sure.”

  The kids watched as a sheriff’s department car drove slowly up the road in front of the mansion. They could see Deputy Simmons behind the wheel, looking at them.

  The deputy did not wave, and neither did the kids.

  “And I don’t like him, either,” Jackie said. “He gives me the creeps.”

  “How come?”

  She looked at her brother, two and a half years younger in one way, and about a zillion years younger in another. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “He looks at me . . . well, funny.”

  “Funny? What kind of reason is that for not liking somebody?”

  “I said you wouldn’t understand. Just skip it, Johnny.”

  Before he could come back at her, the faint sounds of a horse whinnying drifted to the brother and sister. It floated eerily over their heads.

  Then the sound ceased abruptly.

  “Where did that come from?” Johnny asked, looking around him. There was no horse in sight.

  Jackie pointed into the air, above her head. “From up there.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know about that. What I do know is, this place is weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  Deputy Simmons drove slowly past on his return trip. He looked at the kids on the veranda. From where they sat, Jackie thought she could see something evil on the man’s face. Something dirty.

  * * *

  While Lucas bought a lockback knife with belt sheath and slipped it on his belt, he told Jim about his run-in with Lige Manning.

  Jim thought it so funny he had Lucas tell it again. “Ol’ Lige, huh?” Jim laughed. “I’d have give a hundred-dollar bill to have seen that. I bet you scared the livin’ crap outta him when you popped that cap. That’ll get around, Lucas. Them folks so inclined to steal will think twice now that the city fellow has shown he ain’t gonna take no crap from nobody.”

  Lucas blushed with embarrassment. He had reviewed the incident in his mind several times and now felt—in his city opinion—that it had been a silly, rash thing to do. “I’m sorry I did it, Jim.”

  Jim shook his head. “Don’t be, Lucas. This ain’t the city. What you did was establish who is boss right off the bat, and with somebody like Lige, that’s important. You probably won’t have a minute’s worth of trouble out of him from now on.”

  “I would have preferred a written agreement,” Lucas said drily.

  “A handshake is still more important to country folks, Lucas. It’s changed some over the years, but a man’s word is still his bond in many parts of the country. But,” he held up a warning finger, “white trash don’t pay no mind to gentlemen’s agreements, Lucas. And that’s all Lige is, trash.”

  “I have heard the expression,” Lucas said, his ingrained New York City liberalism sending creeping doubt into his voice.

  Jim laughed at him. “I know where you’re coming from, Lucas, Believe me.”

  Jim bought them both Cokes and they sat outside on a bench in front of the station. Jim propped his cowboy boots up on a railing. “Country folks, Lucas, especially Southern country folks, don’t think like big-city folks. Especially Northern big-city folks; especially New York City folks, I know. I lived in New York City for a spell.”

  “You what?”

  Jim got a big laugh at the amazement in his new friend’s voice. “Oh, yeah. I graduated from college with a degree in business and a minor in advertising. Went to work for an agency in Atlanta. They discovered I had a flair more for advertising than for business. They moved me to L.A., and from there I went to New York City. Stayed four years in the Big Apple. I made big money, joined up with the ‘right people,’ ran with the ‘in crowd,’ got me an ulcer, and got mugged twice. The last time I whipped the livin’ daylights out of that punk; stomped his face in and kicked his balls up into his belly. The goddamn cops arrested me and the goddamn punk—who had a knife, by the way—sued me for damages. And won! I knew—I knew all along—that a country boy ain’t got no business livin’ in the big city. We think different. I told my wife—she was a city girl—we was pullin’ out, heading’ back to the country. She told me to take off, that she was stayin’. I said fine and pulled out back to the south. Ain’t seen hide nor hair of her since then.”

  “Except for a word or two from her lawyer,” Lucas said with a grin.

  “How true are your words.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Nineteen hundred and seventy, ol’ buddy.”

  “Then you wouldn’t know anything about Lige Manning? ”

  “Oh, I was born on a farm about twenty miles from here, Lucas. My parents died when I was just a kid.”

  “We have that in common.”


  “Oh? How old were you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “I was a little younger. Anyway, I know about Lige. I know things even the cops can’t find out. Lige was in the army for a time, but they kicked him out. He don’t deny it. He didn’t come back here ’til his daddy passed. Didn’t hardly nobody remember him—so I’m told. I was gone by then. He’s not a bad one, Lucas, Not bad in that he’s never killed anybody. But he’s a sneak thief. Just can’t nobody prove it. And he’s a window peeper. You keep that in mind. Collects all sort of filthy books and pictures, too. So I’m told. Lots of folks suspect he’s messed with some kids—but that was a long time back. He mostly just stays by himself and don’t mess with nobody no more. I guess that has to do with the town changin’ some.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, nothin’ a man can put his finger right on. Subtle changes. Town went from solid Baptist to Fundamental/Faith Healin’/Holy Rollin’. Them that didn’t start whoopin’ and hollerin’ and speakin’ in tongues right off just stopped goin’ to church altogether. And there’s some strange folks livin’ out not too far from y’all.”

  “Strange?”

  “Best way I know how to put it. Now don’t get me wrong; they buy their gas here and don’t pass no bad paper nor give me no trouble at all . . . but they’re weird. Two men and two women livin’ in the old Gibson house ’bout four mile from your place, through the woods.”

  “What do they do?”

  Jim looked at him, a flat look in his eyes. “Well, some folks around here say they worship the devil.”

  5

  Tracy spotted the lockback in leather attached to Lucas’s belt the instant he walked in the house. “Aren’t you carrying the country-living bit just a little too far?” she asked.

  Patiently, he hoped, he explained why he bought the knife.

  “Well, at least you didn’t come back wearing a pistol.”

  Now was not the time, he concluded, to tell her about the .45 he had hidden in his toolbox.

  The sounds of a motor running caught his ear. “What’s that?”

  Tracy brushed back a lock of hair and smiled. “That’s Lige. Ever since you left this morning he’s been working like a beaver. Takes a five-minute break on the hour and that’s all. It’s amazing what he’s done in so short a time.”