The Jabberwock

by Ninie Hammon

  In them eyes was the sound of Elizabeth Mary — her only other little girl — coughing and coughing. And the silence that roared in when the coughing stopped. There was the pain of them tiny coffins, one after the other of them. Just get one settled in the dirt and you’d pick up a baby to nurse and it’d be cold as a rubber doll. Them coffins was always so small she worried the little ‘uns wouldn’t fit but they always did.

  And folks said they was a mean streak in them eyes, too, but they was wrong about that part. Wasn’t no streak of mean in Viola Tackett. What you seen in them eyes — so dark brown you couldn’t hardly see the black spot in the middle — was what you got, and there was waaaay more than just a streak of it. Wasn’t a single person still drawing breath who could lay claim to crossing Viola Tackett. She always settled her accounts, no matter how long it took, and her books always balanced.

  The old truck bounced down into another pothole as she was about to cross into Drayton County and she only had time to wonder about maybe picking some okra to fry for supper when she and the truck fell into a black nothingness that sparkled like black glitter, and her ears filled with a sound like static.

  Chapter Three

  Nower County Deputy Sheriff Liam Montgomery pulled his cruiser out onto County Road 278 West from the shoulder and flipped on his lights. Not the siren, though. He certainly wasn’t an expert on anything having to do with law enforcement, since he didn’t even have a year’s experience in the position, but it just seemed to him that a siren was yelling at people. And he didn’t see any sense in yelling unless folks didn’t answer when you spoke to them the first time.

  The fella who’d taught the handful of night classes in law enforcement that Liam had taken at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond had stressed how polite you needed to be. He’d said psychological tests demonstrated that people tended to mirror the attitude of the people around them. You needed to speak nice and respectful to the folks you pulled over—

  “Hello, ma am, I hate to tell you but you got a tail light’s burned out.”

  If you was being nice, chances are you’d get nice back. But if you put on a “Yore in a heap a’trouble, boy” attitude like you seen in the movies, you’d likely find trouble looking right back at you from the driver’s seat.

  Of course, Liam wouldn’t have been able to pull off anything that macho if he’d tried, cursed as he was with a baby face, round cheeks, curly blond hair and almost no chin at all. Still, roaring up behind somebody with your bubble-gum machine flashing and your siren wailing — Liam seen that as just plain rude. And if he didn’t have to be rude, he wouldn’t be.

  But the fella driving the car with Pennsylvania plates was either blind or thought if he ignored the flashing lights behind him and just kept going, the officer would think of some other more important thing he needed to do and leave him alone and not give him a ticket for going eighty-five in a fifty-five-mile zone.

  Liam reached up and flipped on his siren as he approached the sign the chamber of commerce put up that welcomed folks into the county on one side and told them goodbye on the other.

  “Ya’ll come back now, hear.”

  The boards of the sign were sagging, the paint chipped. Liam was surprised last night’s storm hadn’t done what years of neglect had failed to do. Though it looked ready to collapse, it still stood beside the road about half a mile from the county line, and if the guy from Pennsylvania didn’t pull over in that half mile, Liam’d have all kind of paperwork to do with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Department. When he passed the sign, he caught sight of the other side in his rearview mirror. Even backwards, he knew what it said. It told you everything you needed to know.

  “Welcome to Nower County, Kentucky.” That’s what it was supposed to say. But years ago, some vandals, most likely drunk teenagers, had taken red paint and added two letters to “Nower.” They stuck a big red H between the “w” and the “e” and added another “E” to the end of the word. Then the sign read:

  “Welcome to NowHerE County, Kentucky.”

  They’d done the same thing to every one of the welcome signs on all the county roads and as far as Liam knew, nobody had ever made any attempt to change the signs back. It was, after all, just calling a spade a spade. Nower County might have been somewhere once. Before the factory closed. Before the new Bluegrass Parkway was routed through Beaufort instead of Nower County. Before they closed the high school and the elementary school, the hospital and nursing home. Before the incorporated township of Persimmon Ridge had un-incorporated itself and most of the stores on Main Street had closed.

  There were a handful of un-incorporated areas that still had a business or two. He’d waved a hidey-do to Dr. E.J. Hamilton when he passed him on the way to work this morning at the crossroads. If the story was true — and wasn’t no reason to believe it wasn’t — the intersection of Route 17 and County Road 278 was the geographic center of Nower County.

  A little strip mall had tried to happen on the north side of County Road 278 at the crossroads back in the day but wasn’t much left of it now. E.J.’s Healthy Pets Veterinary Clinic and Animal Hospital was the only functioning enterprise there. It was a going concern, but beyond it were four boarded-up store fronts. The Dollar General Store sat in a building of its own next to the clinic.

  There was a bus shelter at the bottom of the parking lot about fifty feet back up County Road 278 from the intersection, though bus service into the county had been discontinued decades ago. The roof over the metal bench was held up by walls on both ends that were so covered in graffiti now it was hard to see through the panes of plexiglass. It sat beneath a lone streetlight with a white hood rusted almost completely through.

  About fifteen years ago, some enterprising citizen had affixed a professional-looking sign on that light pole proclaiming the area to be the “Middle of Nowhere,” with one of those little “You Are Here” icons at the bottom.

  Nobody ever took that sign down either, and it was likely because it had seemed clever at first. The geographic center of NowHerE County … the Middle of Nowhere. Get it? Ha. Ha.

  But as life hustled by out there in the rest of the world and droned on in insignificance here, folks didn’t change the signs because they figured they were accurate. This was Nowhere County and they were nowhere people. Simple as that.

  The speeder blew past the county line into Beaufort County with Liam only fifty yards behind, light flashing, siren screaming.

  And then the world went black. Black but not dark. Sparkling black. Liam caught a final glimpse of the car with Pennsylvania plates flying off into the blackness before everything was gone and a buzzing filled his head.

  Chapter Four

  Holmes Fischer — Fish to his friends, and most everybody he’d ever met fell into that category — wasn’t certain how he’d gotten here, or where exactly “here” was. He was certain, however, that he had just enough booze in him to comb the tangles out of his nerves but not nearly enough to make the world fuzzy and the memories go away. He was getting there, though. At least he thought he was, if he could just figure out …

  Trying to piece together his fragmented thoughts was like trying to assemble one of those 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. Work on it really hard and eventually you might be able to get the edges straight, but all the stuff in the middle was still a jumble, and you couldn’t help wondering how many pieces were lying on the floor or under the couch, critical pieces without which the puzzle would never be complete. That also served as a convenient out, when the pieces wouldn’t fit together and you were flat-out tired of fooling with it — well, there was a piece missing, that’s all.

  He found himself about to quote out loud a line from King Lear about … But he stopped. He had almost broken himself of that habit. You couldn’t go around in Nowhere County, Kentucky quoting Shakespeare and still be accepted by the populace as a not-dangerous vagrant. And he definitely didn’t want the good folks to decide he was mental, that he needed institutionali
zing instead of just another stiff drink. If that happened, they’d ship him off on an all-expenses paid trip to Saint Somebody’s Home for the Bewildered and he did not want to spend his last days in a place like that — sober.

  If he remained for all to see sane, then he could continue in the lifestyle he had chosen as the county’s homeless man who wasn’t homeless. Well, technically, he was homeless, that being defined by Merriam-Webster as a person without a home. But if you wiggled the edges of the definition just a little bit, stretched it spandex-style to fit a bigger set of hips, then he was more accurately described as multi-homed. On Monday nights, he usually slept in the basement of the Methodist church. He could still let himself in even though the church had folded and the minister’d run off with the only valuable item the church owned — a computer. Though its only riches were long gone, the doors were still locked, but he knew where the key was, and the teenagers contented themselves with vandalizing the sanctuary, spray painting the walls and throwing a pew through the stained glass window, and left his humble abode alone. Had a cot, even a hot plate that had worked until the electric company cut the power to the building.

  On Tuesdays, he laid down his head on the screened-in porch of Miss Wilimena Crandle, who always left blankets, usually left something to eat or drink, a sandwich or a coke cola. And even once in a blue moon, she’d leave a beer.

  He had residences like that all over the county. Transportation between them was the only challenge, as it had apparently been last night or he would not have awakened this morning with dew on his jacket and a fragrant mimosa tree blocking his view of the sunrise.

  His wasn’t a bad life, he reminded himself, even if right now he couldn’t recall exactly where he had been going or why. Particularly on a beautiful spring Friday. Or Saturday. Definitely one or the other, in June. He was sure about the June part, a couple of days in, the third or fourth. And the year — 1995.

  Kentucky was beautiful in the springtime, when the azaleas were in full bloom, blossoms so heavy they weighed the limbs down to the ground. Pink and white dogwood trees. Cherry blossoms in the tree at the front gate of the cemetery, under whose boughs he had spent more than a few nights, cuddled up warm in a sleeping bag that Lester Peetree at the hardware store had gifted him. He kept it inside the Mason family’s crypt.

  Lester had been a good student, seemed to really enjoy Fish’s literature class when he was a sophomore. Fish had let him read the part of the narrator in Our Town when the class did a reading enactment of the play the year before …

  Ah, yes. Before. There was Before. And there was After. And never the twain shall meet, so let it be written, so let it be done. Fish needed a drink.

  And that’s where he’d been going, said a little memory that bubbled to the top of his awareness, like those little bubbles from the aerator in a fish tank, coming slowly up to the top to vanish. Fish had been on his way to that liquor store a few miles inside the Beaufort County line. Nowhere County was dry. Could you beat that. That’s what you got when a bunch of Baptists got hold of a place. Oh, that didn’t mean the county residents didn’t drink. Of course they did. It was just inconvenient, that’s all. They could get beer at Henderson’s Grocery Store, but hard liquor — particularly, Fish’s favorite Maker’s Mark bourbon — was only available if you crossed the county line. He had never come up with the right adjective to describe the line of cars with Nowhere County plates in front of that store’s drive-in window on a Friday night. Pathetic, maybe. Sad, certainly. Hypocritical — absolutely that, too.

  He had been on his way to Saunders Wine and Spirits in an unincorporated area in Beaufort County just on other side of the Nowhere County line. It being the last day of the month, he would have money in his account by the time the check he was about to write cleared, so he could purchase legal alcohol. In a few weeks, he’d be buying cheap moonshine wherever he could get it and cough syrup from the Dollar Store when he couldn’t, but he always treated himself to some decent whiskey when his retirement check from the Kentucky Teacher’s Association came in at the first of the month.

  That’s where he’d been going. Now see, he had been able to put some of the pieces together after all. Not enough for a full picture, of course, but he had no desire for a complete picture. Not seeing a full picture was most of the point in drinking, after all.

  He got to his feet. The ground all around was wet but the pile of pine boughs he’d been sleeping on had kept him dry. He wasn’t even cold, but that was the booze, not the pine needles. Dusting off his coat and pants, he relieved himself behind the trunk of a persimmon tree and made his way down the embankment and back up onto the shoulder of the road. He would hitch a ride if he could get one. Why had he ridden only far enough to see the “Welcome to Nowhere County” sign and then ended up in the woods sleeping off his inebriation under a tree? Who had he hitched a ride with and why had they let him out …? There’d been a storm with wind that buffeted the car, knocked tree limbs across the road in front of it. They’d stopped because you couldn’t drive in a wind like that. And then …

  No, those pieces were obviously under the table, maybe kicked into the foostie and fur-ball enclave of darkness under the couch. Where he was indeed loath to seek them out. To what end? He often had no idea how he had been transported to a given location. What difference did it make?

  When he stepped up onto the shoulder of the road, he saw a car fly by clearly going too fast, as evidenced by the red lights and siren trailing behind it like the tail on a kite. The county-mounty in hot pursuit was Liam Montgomery. Fish waved but Liam didn’t respond.

  Both cars went around the bend out of sight and Fish started walking, his back to oncoming traffic, his hand out with his thumb up. Somebody’d pick him up and take him to the store. Or they wouldn’t, in which case he would walk.

  The morning was warm. He felt sweat bead on his brow and considered taking off his jacket. But he’d made it a practice over the years to keep his jacket on — otherwise he would leave it somewhere and have to figure out a way to come by a new one. He rounded the corner where the vehicles had disappeared from sight and approached the Beaufort County line.

  He stumbled a little, lost his footing, but didn’t go all the way down. When he looked back up again he saw himself coming toward him.

  That was crazy. He stopped cold in his tracks, looking. About ten feet in front of him was a mirror. Why in the name of all things reasonable in the world was there a mirror out here stretching across the road? It was mirror, after all, though even squinting to clear his vision, he couldn’t see the frame of the mirror, or what was holding it upright. He approached his reflection, noted that his coat was ripped, the sleeve of it. He needed to get that fixed. He’d ask Martha Whittiker to sew it up for him and likely she’d tell him it was not fit to be repaired and get him one of her husband’s old jackets that were still hanging in the bedroom closet ten years after he died.

  Fish took another step toward the mirror. Got a really good look at the hollows of his face, the scraggly beard, the empty eyes. He never looked in the mirror. When he shaved, and that wasn’t often, he only looked at his cheeks and the lather and the razor scraping along the skin. He didn’t look at his whole face. Probably hadn’t really looked at himself in …

  He didn’t know.

  But he was looking now, at the bright sky-blue eyes that had faded to an overcast day. At the mouth with loose lips. The hairs growing out of his nose. His whole body so skinny he could have played the part of the superstitious Ichabod Crane in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a priggish school teacher he had strived his whole career not to emulate.

  He didn’t like seeing himself, didn’t like having that image planted in his brain so that when he thought of himself that’s what he’d see. He much preferred the no-longer-accurate but infinitely more pleasing image of himself as the thin young man who taught high school English by day and by night expanded his consciousness with mushrooms and peyote and psychedelic drugs that ope
ned up for his inspection and enjoyment an unknown alternative universe of extraordinary beings …

  That was before.

  This was after. After he discovered the beings weren’t imaginary. After he came to understand they waited for him in the mist.

  The man with hollow eyes and only a finite number of days left to run from reality in this world, as evidenced by the sallow skin, the tremble in his hands, and the way his coat hung on him, not like a coat hanger but like a scarecrow.

  That’s another part he could play. The scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. But he wasn’t out looking for a brain. He had a perfectly good brain, thank you very much. A functioning brain. A brain that he did everything within his power to dull, pack in cotton, soak in a haze of inebriation. He would not ask the Wizard for a brain. Oh no, no, no. If he ever encountered the “whiz of a wiz if ever a wiz there was,” he would ask the man pulling levers behind the curtain to take the brain he already had. He’d ask the wizard to leave his head empty, so vacant there weren’t even dust bunnies on the floor. Then he would pack the empty head full of straw.

  He put out his hand, as his image put out its hand, and when their fingers touched the whole world went black, but he could see in the blackness as if it were light. Fish heard a sound that … No, he didn’t hear it. You hear with your ears, not with your fingers and your navel and your elbow. Not with your whole body. And he heard the static-y sound with every cell in his body, a mighty, fuzzy, buzzing sound that filled up his whole being, so loud-but-not-loud it loosened one of his fillings.