by CS DeWildt
And that was the routine, so one could imagine the surprise he felt when he was sitting there at the fire pit, toeing at the ashes, writing wishes and swears in the remains of the burned up death, and he heard the old sound of the darkness approaching on him, creeping, and those hairs stood on end and he began to quiver until like always, he had to look and there she was, ghost white Rinthy coming up on him with her stone gray eyes and snaggletooth smile. Neil saw that and he passed out cold with fear.
“Hey. Hey,” Rinthy said, shaking Neil. “You alright? You need me to fetch somebody?” Neil opened his eyes and let the pieces fall together and he sat up and scrambled to his feet, looking down on the girl as she continued to kneel in her cotton dress and dirty feet. He felt the fool again.
“I’m fine. What are you doing here? This is my place.”
She looked hurt, her kindness thrown down and stomped. “Ain’t just your place. I come here too and I know for fact it ain’t your land.”
“How do you know it ain’t?”
“You got a deed?”
“Yeah. It’s at my house.”
“Liar. You can’t own it. You ain’t but a squirt.”
“Look who’s talking you runt. And it is at my house. It’s my daddy’s. And he’s dead so that makes it mine.”
“Well if that’s the truth I’m sorry for your daddy being dead, but I ain’t moving out of here until you come on back with that deed and show me, or the law and run me off for trespassing.”
“I could shoot you for trespassing right now and I’d be in my rights.”
“You don’t even have a gun, I’d bet all the money in the bank you don’t.”
“Then you’d lose it.”
“So show me.”
Neil looked at her, looked past her, behind the white clapboards. “Come on then.” He led her past the houses, watched her to see if she could feel all the evil around them, but she seemed unfazed by anything there, like she was oblivious to the true nature of the place. He stepped over the rusty rat wire and into the family plot and all the way at the back, under a wooden cross of sticks lashed with leather shoelace he started to dig.
“You buried your gun in a bone yard?”
“Where you keep yours?”
“I don’t have a gun of my own.”
“Mind your own then.” Neil pulled up the earth and lifted the rolled tarp. He laid it flat while Rinthy took him in, looking back from the tarp to him, still wondering exactly what he was going to pull out, still thinking him a liar. And then he held out the .22.
“Can I shoot it?”
“Can you shoot?”
“Better than you I’ll bet.”
“Girl, you’re gonna be in debt till you’re an old woman you keep making bets every time somebody says boo.”
“Let me shoot it. I’ll show you. Just tell me something to hit.”
Neil looked around and on the opposite side of the river there was a huge sycamore, spotted white like the scarred leg of a giant man, the rest of him hidden in the foliage of lesser trees. Neil led her to the bank of the Green, to the spot he’d found the gun some months before, the spot he shot old Jessup. Neil pointed off to the sycamore. “See that tree, the big one?”
“Yeah.”
“Hit that spot right above the knot there, that dark patch of bark. Blow it off of there.”
Rinthy scoffed and raised the gun. Now it was his turn to observe her, see if she was all she talked to be. She put the butt of the rifle hard to her shoulder, squinted through the sight, and squeezed gently. The crack carried and sent a wild turkey flying from the bushes a few yards away.
“You missed.” Neil said.
“I ain’t shot this one before. Yer sight is off anyway. I’ll get her this time.” She set again and fired off three quick shots. Across the bank, the brown patch of dark took three hits, and when the echo faded there was nothing left of the dark spot, virgin white tree flesh exposed. Rinthy turned and smiled. She handed the rifle to Neil. He expected some kind of smug talk, but instead she rolled up her dress to just below her bottom and stepped into the Green. He watched her wade deeper and deeper, those milk white limbs getting drunk up by the water, the flowing current kissing the fabric lightly.
“What you doing?”
“Looking for mussels,” Rinthy said. “Didn’t think I came down here to jaw with you, did ye?” Neil watched her wade, hunched over and eyes scanning the water like some kind of crazy bird, those long legs high stepping in and out of the river. Neil raised the gun and sighted her in, first her legs, then her bottom where the damp dress was clinging, up her spine and to her head. She turned and he nearly took the gun off her but brought it back steady and she cocked her head like Jessup used to do when he knew you were talking to him but didn’t quite know what you were getting at.
“You aim to kill me?” Rinthy said. “Best do it.”
Neil lowered the gun. “I wasn’t going to shoot.”
“Yeah, well that’s how accidents happen.”
“I don’t even know how to shoot. Nothing more than a few feet away anyhow.”
And Rinthy looked at him again, still that curious look, even more so. “Your daddy is really dead?”
“Yeah.”
“And he never taught you to shoot?”
“Nope. He always did the shooting.”
“I can teach you, if ye want. Help me look for some mussels.”
Neil stood still, watched her and tried to make sense of the relic, tried to figure out what it was that made it something more than a piece of archaic junk and more like a treasure. He put the gun down, sat on the bank and pulled off his boots, rolled up his pant legs and got into the water.
“How do you find them?” he asked.
“Don’t you know nothin’?” And then she laughed. It sounded smooth and sweet, like molasses, and he realized he hadn’t heard a real laugh in a long time, especially that of a woman.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Neil planned to slip in through the window again but the door was already kicked in at the Hoon place. Vandals maybe, more likely someone close to what happened. Neil was looking for something, what he wasn’t sure, but any piece was sure to help, unless it didn’t. Unless it just added to the mess. He saw it all out in front of him like some jigsaw puzzle, not of any picture, but a landscape of white, a featureless wall leaving no real clue, nothing to go on, no image to complete, leaving him nothing but trial and error in putting the pieces together until he found a match, a fit. Problem was nothing seemed to fit: If he went with opportunity, it was Helen. The odds said it was Heidi. If it was motive, it had to be Jenkins, the elder.
But none of that seemed right to Neil. Helen appeared genuinely crushed by Hoon’s demise and Heidi seemed to think the world of him as a daddy to the flesh and bone remnants of their youthful mistake. Jenkins might have been mad enough to kill Hoon, but what did he really have to gain from it? His daughter maybe, but that hadn’t worked out too well. Neil was at a loss so he poked around the Hoon place, looking for more pieces of that blank puzzle. Problem was anything there could be a piece, and it all looked the same. You don’t know nothing, do you?
“I don’t,” Neil said. He went to the kitchen. Trash overflowed and the musty sweet smell of rot hit him with the sound of the buzzing flies. On the stove top a pan sat cold, a half-cooked steak in coagulated grease writhed as if alive, cloaked in a layer of maggots. There was a half glass of curdled milk next to the stovetop singing a song of its own. Neil continued through the kitchen toward the back of the house. The walls were bare except for an old picture of Hoon and Heidi, seven months out of high school it looked, with Heidi’s distended belly cocooning Janie. They were at the Barren County fair, in front of the spook house, Hoon holding a tallboy of PBR and Heidi with a cotton candy and a cigarette. He hadn’t seen Heidi smoke any cigarettes at all while he had visited and thought that went along just fine with her new clean life as a Skaggs, gave up a lot of bad habits in addition to Hoon he figure
d. Still shining though. She was right: you can take the girl out of the holler.
Neil moved on to the bedrooms. One belonged to the babies, the boy and girl. Toys were scattered about, clothes, the beds were a mess of blankets and pillows and stuffed animals. Blue blankets on the bottom bunk, pink and purple on the top. The wall was decorated with colored drawings of domestic scenes, the big house was well represented and Neil very much doubted the children kept such drawings of the Hoon place on their bedroom walls at the Skaggs’ estate. The girl was getting older it seemed, pictures of nice androgynous boys were cut from magazines and pasted up on the wall of her top bunk. Hoon’s room wasn’t much cleaner than the kids’, but instead of toys it was an amalgam of dirty magazines and laundry and electronics, video games and sports memorabilia. Neil shook the waterbed with his hand, listened to the water slosh inside.
“Fixin’ for a nap?”
Neil spun around and looked into the barrel of the sheriff’s service revolver. “Jesus Christ!” The man with the gun was a monster, face burned and healed, skin rippled and pitted with the old fire, holding onto the shadow of flickering flame.
Sheriff held the barrel on the man for a moment longer and then holstered his weapon. “What are you doin’ here Neil? Ain’t you got some glue needs sniffin’?”
“Yeah. But not till later. What are you doin’ here?”
“Besides securing the property against trespassers?”
“Trespasser? You know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have business.”
“What is your business?”
“Confidential.”
“You sniffing around on behalf of the Jenkins girl?”
“Her daddy, you mean? He’s the one asked me to see if I could locate her. Seems he didn’t think he could count on the local law enforcement. But then, you did write this whole mess up as a suicide, didn’t you? That boy’s head was cut nearly clean off he fought the rope so hard.”
“So he had second thoughts. Anyway, county M.E. wrote it up. As far as we’re concerned, that’s what it was: suicide.”
“Horseshit. You crooked or just lazy?”
Sheriff laughed, mouth agape and stretching the waxy skin paper thin. “Oh Neil. What you say we go outside? It ain’t right to mess up a man’s house with someone else’s blood.”
“A pleasure,” Neil said and ushered Sheriff to the door. “After you.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it Neil. Now you come on,” he pointed to the window, “or you’ll go out through the glass.”
“Since you put it that way.”
Neil walked in front of Sheriff wondering exactly what he could do. If he ran, he’d get a bullet in his back. If he had to draw, he’d kill a cop. He didn’t have to think for long because as soon as he got to the screen door Sheriff kicked him hard in the small of the back. Neil went down the steps of the wood porch and hit the ground with a heavy flop that took every bit of wind. He sat up and opened his mouth for air and got a foot in it for his trouble. He rolled a back somersault and went for his piece, but took a boot to the ribs before he could fully draw and another foot caught him in the hand, knocking the gun into the dirt.
“Dirty fighter! You going to shoot the police, Neil? That what you want to do?” Neil answered him with a fist launched from hell itself, sent the sheriff stumbling back. Neil tried to advance but his ribs were screaming as he tried to get his air. Sheriff caught himself on one of the porch stanchions and shook off the punch. He pulled his own gun and started beating the hell out of Neil, nearly in the same spot Neil had busted up Hoon’s face only a couple days before. He fell to the ground, conscious but severed from whatever part of his brain could make him do anything but lie there like a bad dog. Sheriff threw down a couple more blows with his piece for good measure and then kicked Neil square in the groin. Sheriff put the barrel of the gun in Neil’s mouth and Neil could taste his own blood with the dust and steel.
“You stay out of it Neil. You find that girl, get her home and don’t worry about nothing’ else, understand? Then I suggest you stick to cheatin’ husbands and insurance fraud. Hoon is dead of suicide. If I even smell your stink around this I’m not gonna think twice about hauling you in and I know you, you’re gonna resist and then you’ll be forcin’ my hand. And that would make me very happy. Got that?”
Neil said nothing. He tried to speak and just wheezed, coughed a mix of blood and spittle onto Sheriff’s shining shoes.
“Good answer,” Sheriff said. “If you want to make a complaint against me, I’ll be at the station later.” He laughed all the way to his cruiser and left Neil to bleed, kept laughing all the way down the gravel drive. And Neil did bleed. He did it just fine.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The only time he saw Rinthy outside of Rogue’s Harbor, her brother gave Neil the stomping of his life. He’d waited for her at the Green most of the afternoon and finally went into the water alone, doing as she taught him, raking the sand and silt with his hands, pulling up the mussels and tossing them onto the bank. There was no real trick to it, if you knew how to do it. If you knew the value in mussels.
By evening he managed to collect a full potato sack, and he sat at the fire pit, still waiting as the sun began to dip behind the ridge. He pulled on his boots over his wet feet and thought about starting a fire so she wouldn’t have to stumble through the dark. He had no matches so he rubbed two sticks together for a half hour before his fingers were nothing but blisters, and his arms were limp and useless. Finally, he stood up with the sack of mussels and walked out of the clearing, thinking about Rinthy and worrying like he did the night his daddy told him to stay put, the same worry that now hurried him through the trees and up the path. And though the old fears were there, he couldn’t be bothered with them, and they tailed him like the horseflies, buzzing around him, tickling his nose and ears, testing his patience with vibrating wings, lighting upon him then brushed away as quickly, only to return with no consideration for true woe.
Neil reached the porch and set the sack down. He knocked on the rattling screen, heard movement inside, but no answer came. Through the dirty window was filth like he hadn’t known, even living with his uncle who was about as poor a housekeep as one could be. It was trash and half decayed foodstuffs, or what appeared to be foodstuffs strewn about everywhere, nearly raising the floor three inches, like the softest festering carpet of roach habitat. Neil could smell the sweet decay and fermentation as he knocked again, rousing the voices hidden inside. A face appeared in the cracked glass behind the screen and the resemblance was so strong that Neil smiled thinking it was her. The door opened and the young man opened the screen door quickly, hitting Neil with it before he could step back.
“What ye want?” the man asked. He squinted the way Rinthy did in the sun. His hair was just as white-blond, but cut short and darkened with the natural grease of man. He stepped onto the porch. “I said what you want?”
“Is Rinthy home?”
There was no warning, the man just stepped toward Neil, backing him up and off the porch and he definitely couldn’t be mistaken for the girl any longer. “The hell are ye? Why ye sniffin’ around for? State yer business!” The young man bared his teeth like a wild thing and Neil again saw Rinthy in the boy’s crooked tooth.
“No business. Just want to see her. I brought the mussels we been collecting.” Neil pointed back to the sack on the porch. The young man forgot his anger, at the mention of mussels, good as cash. He looked at the sack and then back to Neil.
“All right. Ye brought ’em. Now git. Git!” He thrust a finger out so fast Neil followed it with a turn of his head, as if he was to look at something specific. He hesitated and got a boot in the guts for his trouble, a well-placed one that made him sick and made him piss himself at the same time. He rolled away from the voice, eyes shut to the pain, blinded by it. He felt the strong hands on him, forcing him supine, readying him for more.
“Davey! Stop it! Leave him be goddamn it!” Neil looked up and saw a fuzzy
outline of Rinthy on the porch, backlit by the warm glow radiating off of the rotting filth inside.
“This who ye been with nights? This who ye been whorin’ with?” Davey punched Neil hard in the forehead, and the sharp sting popped his eyes open and sent him scrambling back as he ripped himself from Davey’s grasp. Davey pursued until Rinthy hopped on his back and dug in with her nails, sent Davey twirling around reaching for her, trying to spin free.
“Run Neil!” Rinthy screamed. “Git! Git!”
Neil ran and for a moment he thought he heard heavy footsteps trailing him. He looked back and saw no one, but still he heard the clomping steps, heavy and desperate. He realized the sound was the heavy hands of Rinthy’s brother beating her silly. Neil kept on running and felt for once like he was running into the fear and not away from it, everything screaming for him to go back, but unable to do anything other than what Rinthy had told him. “Run. Git.”
Neil hit the pavement at the end of the dirt drive and still heard those clomping steps, limping along and staying with him. Weak and fearful footsteps that would stay with him always, because they were his own.
