“Preacher Dudlow told me Megan visited him three days before she died.”
“Mrs. Swoozie likes a tap of whiskey with her pies. I asked Megan to get the money we were owed.”
“She knew it was for moon?”
“She wasn’t stupid. Of course she knew. It bothered her on occasion, that so many folks drank, even old church ladies like Mrs. Swoozie. But she never held it against anybody. It’s the way of the hollow.”
He wanted to ask Callie about the baby, see if there was any story there that would lead him back to his sister. It seemed so foolishly important that it might have some real bearing.
Sex? Underground baby trade? He’d met a couple guys in the slam who’d made big money off that before taking their falls. But Shad couldn’t figure out how to go about asking.
“And she didn’t have a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Why not? She was beautiful. Didn’t any come around?”
“No,” Callie whispered, so quiet he almost missed it. “She believed.”
“How’s that? Believed?”
“Yes.”
“In what?” he asked. They were talking at cross angles. “In God?”
Callie Anson looked away for a time, working up to it, as the mood around them grew heavier. With confusion, unspoken tragedies, and general senselessness, like a guy who can die by checking out his hair, a seventeen-year-old girl from a heart attack.
She checked him over to see if he could handle her words, unsure and thinking twice about it, but she decided to press on.
“She thought somebody . . . loved her.”
“Who?”
“I was talking about marriage. I told her it was hard sometimes, to curb Luppy and his drinking. I mentioned some of the rough patches we’ve had. I told her she was lucky not to have to worry on the troubles a wife had all the time. She said, ‘I may not be married, but I am loved.’”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m probably wrong about this. I might be making more of it than there is.”
He shrugged. “It’s okay, speak your mind.”
The black gems lost some of their shine for a moment, then turned on him, blazing. “Over the last couple of days, when I heard you were back home in the hollow kicking up a fuss, I started to think on it some more. It seemed she might be talking about a man. Like a man wanted her, you understand? And she liked it.”
Chapter Ten
VENN LUVELL, GLASSY-EYED, STOOD ON MAIN Street in front of Bardley Serret’s Rock Museum, his bottom lip dangling low and to the left like it had been tugged permanently out of shape by a jerking fishhook. There were bits of straw in his hair.
A few years back, he’d been one of the strongest men in Moon Run. He used to tussle with anybody at any time, and his reputation as a grappler grew until guys from all over the county would make official challenges against him.
So they built a ring over in the town square and the gamblers rampaged through the crowd fanning fifties and giving points. The ex–high school football stars and gator wrasslers would try him on for size every Saturday. Venn would end each match by holding his opponent overhead and flinging him over the ropes.
Shad remembered being a kid and looking up to him, hoping one day to be like that.
After a few months of battling and making some money, Venn considered moving to California and becoming a professional wrestler. Sheriff Increase Wintel promised to invest in Venn’s career and get him a promotional manager. But before they could gather the gumption to make a real effort, the moonshine got Venn the way it got nearly everybody and it brought him down hard.
The memory gave Shad some pause now as Venn clomped into the street directly in front of the ’Stang and Shad nearly ran him over.
It was close.
The pup yawped. Shad let out a cry and stood on the brake with his full weight, spinning the wheel hard to the left. Lament let out another throaty, terrorized bark and slammed up against the back of the passenger seat. The screech of tires sounded like a girlish scream of frustration, and the blue smoke of burning rubber rose up in a swirling gust. Shad cracked his temple against the window. His head filled with a billowing pain and the ghosts of the two previous owners. You couldn’t feel sorry for them, but man, you could feel them.
And unlike the first guy, you didn’t even get a chance to die with your hand between a woman’s legs, or even the love of one in your heart.
The car lurched to stop sideways in the street, cutting off both lanes like a roadblock.
Venn stepped up like it was nothing, knocked at the window as if he wanted to be let in. Shad glanced over, still stunned, a trickle of blood dribbling through his hairline.
The dead crowded him, and he didn’t know if they were trying to get in or out. Venn blinked and knocked again with that giant fist. The blood-smeared window shattered.
Grunting, Shad threw up an arm to protect his face. The shards rained down into his hair, slithered into his collar. He grappled for the door, swung it wide, and fell into the street. Venn Luvell’s arms encircled and lifted him up like a sleepy child.
It took a minute to clear his head, the fog parting and the dead guys withdrawing.
“Would you please let me go?” he asked.
“Y’kay?”
“Yes.”
Venn eased him back down until his feet touched ground. Lament snuffed and sneezed, shook up but apparently safe. His tail gingerly flicked twice.
Behind them on the sidewalk, M’am Luvell sat in the wheelchair Shad’s father had made her, so covered in blankets that you could only see her small face and the tips of her fingers. Her pipe was packed and the stink of marijuana drifted over and mixed pleasantly with the biting odor of fried rubber.
So, Bardley Serret was the weed supplier that M’am visited upon. Shad had never found it odd before that a Rock Museum could stay open for so long.
M’am said, “Come here.”
“No.”
“Shad Jenkins, do as I say.”
He already felt like a fool, but arguing with an old woman on Main Street was worse than simply obeying. Venn trudged up the sidewalk, and Shad swallowed a curse, tasting copper. The ’Stang had stalled. The pickups and cars still moving on Main Street gave him a wide berth but didn’t stop.
He got the Mustang started again and slowly pulled over to the curb. Lament shivered in nervousness and crawled into Shad’s lap. He carried the dog as he got out. A few folks on the street stared but no one came close or said anything. They’d be buzzing tonight all over town, and by the morning everybody would know how close Shad Jenkins had come to being another victim of the car.
M’am’s voice still had that tinge of mischief to it, as if she was this close to laughing in Shad’s face. “You’re bleeding.” She rummaged under the blankets and held out a rag to him.
“You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?” he asked.
“Walk along with us for a bit.”
“Jesus Christ, you people.”
“If you’re fretting about a little knock on the noggin then you’re not ready for what’s ahead of you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Walk along and we’ll talk. Give me a few minutes of your time and some words. Won’t hurt you and it might help.”
It took a great assertion of will not to mention that Venn stepping in front of the car had nearly killed them both, but Shad managed to hold his tongue. He could do it when he had to, he’d done it for two years behind bars. Why was it becoming so difficult to keep his own counsel at home?
She gave a sidelong glance, casual but aware. “You sometimes think you were stronger in prison than you are back in your own birthplace, ain’t that so?”
He was giving too much of himself away, but it didn’t matter anymore. She was merely showing off now and that said more about her flaws than his own. She nodded at him, eyes closed, her ageless virtue making him feel as if he was the elder. Like this might be n
o more than an afternoon spent with a child, heading for a picnic.
The oaks grew thick and wide on either side of Main Street. The breeze proved just strong enough to rattle the branches against one another. Crows sat up high without a sound, occasionally dive-bombing for scraps of food in the gutters and behind the diners. The sidewalks, though cracked, were cared for and well swept by the shop owners.
He stepped up beside Venn and saw almost nothing beneath the goliath’s perplexed grimace. Maybe a ripple of anxiety. There seemed to be barely enough mental current to keep his limbs moving.
Venn cocked his head at Lament, and went, “Dawg.”
M’am’s polished, store-bought pipe caught the sun and lit her chin. The craggy features hardly moved even as her expression changed. Only her mouth shifted, from pout to frown to grin. You got more from considering her lips than from watching the blunt angles of her flesh.
“So,” Shad said, “what do you ask of me?”
It made her laugh. “My, but you do have brass, boy. It’ll serve you well for what you got coming.”
“Do you have something to say or are we just going to stand here? I feel like we’re doing a drug deal.”
“I won’t keep you long. Let’s head around the town square.”
She kept eyeing him impassively. Venn’s enormous hands rested lightly on the back of the wheelchair, pressing M’am along. Lament heeled pretty well for a puppy and never left Shad’s ankle.
M’am appeared to be having a difficult time finding a handle on him to pull. She said, “Hoober done saw you out night walkin’.”
“It happens on occasion.”
She nodded at him, as if listening to someone else close by or watching things occurring around them that he couldn’t see.
“You go out of your way to do that?” he asked.
“What’s this?”
“You know, being off-putting the way you are, enjoying the unease of others. Or so it looks to me.”
She puffed on her pot and showed her brown nubby teeth. “Just sort of happens. My apologies to you, Shad Jenkins.”
The lady had a way about her all right, making it seem like he was just being sensitive, weak-minded. He stared at Venn again, took a step closer. Venn apparently didn’t recognize him.
Shad’s patience was a lot more limited now. The sensation that time was running out was beginning to overcome him.
“I expected you to come see me again,” M’am said.
“Why? You didn’t tell me anything useful before.”
She considered that, then shrugged. “That may be. Even so, it’d behoove you to indulge me a few minutes.”
“So you keep telling me. And so I keep doing.”
The laughter coming up in her made the bones clatter in her chest. “I been thinkin’ about your problem.”
“Which one?”
“The one that’s gonna send you up into them back hills.”
“What if I don’t go?”
“You will. I didn’t tell you everything about that day my mama was taken.”
“I figured not.”
M’am began to fidget in her chair, contorting until the toes of one foot popped up through the blankets, then vanished again.
“I already done declared how I used to go up there with my ma and pa on Sunday afternoons after church.”
“Yes. When you were dressed in pink with pretty bows in your blond hair, riding up in an ox wagon. You said it might be hard for somebody to picture that now, but it isn’t really.”
“That’s ’cause you see me as a child due to my size. Lots of folks do. They come to ask my advice on matters, and some of them pay me with candy and chocolate. Or with corn-husk dollies and little booties they stitched together. I don’t fret it none. We all got our notions and preconceptions. Now let me get on with it.”
“Sure.”
Something touched him and he looked down to see her tiny fingers plying his wrist. He didn’t know what it meant for a second until he thought she must want the rag back. What would a hex woman do with the blood on it? Use it to beguile somebody in his name? Cast a protection spell around him?
He handed the piece of cloth to her and she looked disgusted. “Gah, boy, keep it.”
“I thought you wanted it back.”
“The hell for? No, I was just patting your hand, the way your mother probably done, even if you don’t remember it none.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She didn’t hear him, which meant they were into it and already deep. M’am Luvell’s teeth ground down on her pipe and her gaze grew faraway, scanning backwards in time and finding horror.
“That ground is scornful and them woods is demented. The wraiths, they come up out of the gorge and across the land like a whirlwind and took my mama.” The strength of her emotions made her writhe in the chair as she tried to fight back a groan of distress but finally gave in. Lament keyed in on the old woman’s anguish and let loose with a whine. So did Venn. M’am’s voice had lost all its force. “It . . . it done things to her first.”
“You sure it wasn’t just a man?” Shad asked. “A deranged trapper living up there? Or a bear? Mountain lion?”
“I wasn’t a toddler nor a fool. I was four years old and I know what happened. Besides, no man would do that to a woman.”
A few guys in C-Block had done things with women that had gotten them written up in psychological textbooks. They’d even had psychoses named after them. There was one inmate on death row who’d lived in solitary for six years because of what he’d done to his daughter. He was the subject of a documentary called The Maniacal House Husband.
“You see how big Venn is? He gets that from my side of the family, if’n you accept it and even if you don’t. My daddy, he was two three inches taller than Venn even. No man ever scairt my daddy, nor bested him neither. My daddy would’ve folded any trapper in half, lunatic or not. He hunted bear and mountain cat regular, and he had respect for ’em but no fear of any animal.”
They made their way around the square, past the Civil War statues and the trim shrubs, the small stone walls where the town trustees and office clerks sometimes sat and took their lunches.
“My daddy . . . my papa . . .” The tears spilled freely down her cheeks and slid away in the crevices of her wrinkles. “My papa, he left me there. The ox ran and took off with the cart. Papa ran screaming after them back down Gospel Trail. I ran too, into the woods, didn’t know no better. The wraiths clung to me and pretended like they wanted to play. But in time they started to nibble at me, but they was slow after what they done to Mama. They was sated. They eventually let me go on my own way, more or less.”
“Why would ghosts do that?”
“I didn’t say a damn thing ’bout no ghosts. Ghosts is just dead folks that believe they’re still alive. Wraiths is something more. I don’t know exactly what, but that’s what all abides up in them hills. They part of the sick ground. Took me a full day to get back to town from Jonah Ridge. No one came lookin’ for me that night, not even my papa.”
“How do I stop it?” he asked, and the seriousness in his tone brought Lament’s chin up.
“You ask for help,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“You know what I mean, boy. You ask for help from those you talk to when you go night walkin’.”
It felt like someone had just struck him with a chilled ice pick. “What do you know about it, M’am?”
“I know you got the touch. The resolve to rile them woods even worse than they are. Ah yuh. Maybe you got the strength to put ’em to rest for a time. You call on those you call on, Shad Jenkins. Maybe they’ll help.”
A weighty silence passed between them, but neither looked away. He stood back and gazed at the dwarf granny witch woman, trying to decide which one of them was crazy, her or himself. He was sort of leaning toward both.
“What did your father say to you?” he asked. “The next day when you got back to town.”
“He n
ever said nothin’ to me, and after he told some lies to the sheriff, he never spoke to anyone again. Said Mama fell into the gorge on her own. He was scared they’d think he was cracked. He stopped talkin’ and stopped workin’ and three years later he tried to hang himself in the barn. Hung there an hour or two ’fore Aunt Tilly found him, and he was still alive. He was that strong. They took him away to a hospital in Enigma County. He lived to be eighty-seven ’fore he died there, and never said another word to nobody. Good riddance, I say. My papa died that day on the ridge when he turned tail.” She relit her pipe and eased the smoke toward him. “You remember that story up there when you face down the darkness.”
“I won’t run.”
“I believe you. Good luck, boy.”
Venn’s eyes focused for a moment. He held out his hand to shake, but before Shad could take it Venn appeared to lose the thought and dropped his arm to his side. He started back to his grandmother. His face cleared again and he turned, and said, “Bye, Shad Jenkins,” and pushed the old woman away.
WHEN YOU’RE FAVORED, EVEN IF ONLY FOR AN INSTANT, you can sense your fate coming forward at least halfway to meet you. It has no substance or direction, but the brunt of it can set you on your course like deadwood on the river.
Shad got back to the Mustang, cleaned the glass out as best he could, and fired her up. The engine thrummed and sounded as if the accident had given it a hunger, for him or somebody else.
He drew up to his father’s place, feeling his pa’s sadness like a fog descending. Lament, though, wagged his tail, recognizing home.
Pa was playing chess with himself again, the sunlight bearing down like a mad, golden avalanche. Pa hadn’t shaved in three days, which meant he still wasn’t sleeping well, but at least the shotgun wasn’t in sight. Maybe he no longer feared the menace of Zeke Hester, or had at last been willing to accept the truth that Zeke had never been a real threat at all.
Shad got out and Lament burst from the backseat and raced up the porch.
He took two steps and froze, feeling the hills thinking about him again, distressed and chafing, turning this way to hammer at him.
November Mourns Page 11
