Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller (16 page)

“Nick, my understanding is that members pay $75,000 per year for membership. Just doing quick math on the napkin here, fifty members at $75,000 times ten clubs, that’s closing in on $40 million per year in revenue.” Steve Doocy had brought up numbers that Nick wanted people to hear, but didn’t want to confess. Clint’s eyes grew wide as he heard the number and veered left on I-985 toward Gainesville.

“We don’t publish details about 50-Forks,” Nick began, “but as I said, it’s an exclusive club with fantastic benefits to everyone involved.”

Gretchen took the lead again. “Nick, we know you’re a very successful businessman, but that you’re a chef at heart. Can you tell us about anything special you’ll have...cooked up for your guests?” Both Gretchen and Nick smiled at the pun.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to give away the surprises for our guests, but let’s just say I’ve been preparing one of the dishes for two years now.”

Nick couldn’t see Gretchen and Steve look at each other with puzzled bewilderment on camera. Finally, Gretchen closed by saying, “There you have it, folks. A new twist on the world of underground dining.”

Steve added, “And a new twist on the phrase slow-food! I can’t imagine what the members of 50-Forks will get that took two years to cook up.”

Clint stared ahead at the road that meandered north toward the Georgia mountains and wondered the same thing.

Chapter 13

POP! POP! Thumpa-thumpa-THUMP! Pop! Pop! It wasn’t a smell that woke Ozzie from his nap. It was the rhythmic thumping that came on gradually as Hal’s thumper keg began to heat up, like popcorn starting to pop. Ozzie peeled his eyes open and rolled his head to the right. Hal took a swig from his cup and began dancing to the beat of the thumper keg.

“Hey Ozzie,” Hal said as he caught glimpse of Ozzie’s eyes. “Watch and I’ll teach you how to do the old thump keg waltz.” Hal continued clogging like a man who was hoping to audition for a remake of the movie
Deliverance
. Ozzie noticed the lumpy shape draped over Hal’s shoulders, but couldn’t make it out in the darkness. “If this world goes to hell in a hand basket all I need is a bit of grain and this here moonshine still, Ozzie, and I can keep us fed.”

Hal took another slug right off the worm of his moonshine still.

“Back in the old days, every village had themselves a preacher, a carpenter, a well-witcher, and a moonshiner. Hell, that’s all you need for a community right there.” Hal said, before adding the obvious. “I’d be the moonshiner. I figure Rex here would be the preacher. Which one would you be Ozzie? The well-witcher?”

Hal walked over and took a seat in the glow of the fire. Ozzie twitched his head and made out the lump on Hal’s shoulders. Hal saw Ozzie’s gaze and looked to his shoulder at Rex’s head. “This here’s Rex,” Hal said, nodding toward the opossum that sat on his left shoulder with its tail draped around Hal’s neck. “Hell, Rex here LOVES the ’shine! Sometimes Bambi comes up and drinks the shine. I done told you Ozzie, this here’s all you need to feed your family. Just ask these critters. They could eat anything in the woods, but they keep on coming back when they hear that thumper keg a’going.”

Ozzie groaned and grimaced but managed to right himself.

“Atta boy, Ozzie!” Hal said with wild enthusiasm. “Let’s drink to that!”

Hal gave Rex a few slurps of shine and then took a swig for himself from the same cup. He stood up, a little too quickly as it seemed to Ozzie that he had lost his balance, and then made his way over and plopped down next to Ozzie. Rex crawled behind Hal’s neck, as he was unsure of Ozzie’s character. Hal put the cup to Ozzie’s lips. He took a small sip and was able to really taste it for the first time. Hal started to remove the cup to check Ozzie’s bandages, but Ozzie wanted more.

“All righty then,” Hal said. “Let’s set you up, boy! Barkeep,” Hal called to himself as he walked to refill the cup. He gave the full cup to Ozzie who, partly out of hunger, partly out of thirst, but mainly out of the need for remedy, slugged every last drop. Hal burst out laughing. Ozzie appeared a little dazed, as if he was either unsure what he had done or not sure what happened to the moonshine. He just stared into the empty cup.

“Hell, Rex, that boy can drink!”

“Looks like you’re getting ’round better every day there Oz. Hell, it’s only been...well let’s see, don’t much have a calendar ’round here. I’d say about five or six weeks from your death bed to you scampering around camp during the day. Yep, moonshine, moss, and rest, that’s the recipe.” Hal leaned over and poured Ozzie a little more ’shine, which Ozzie slurped with enthusiasm. “C’mon boys, let’s have ourselves a party!” Hal said as he picked up his guitar and started picking. “We need us some women folk, though. It’s a sausagefest around here—uh, no offense there, Ozzie,” Hal said.

Ozzie didn’t get Hal’s meaning but it didn’t matter. He had no words to describe the steady shuffling of the twelve bar blues that came from the Martin guitar, but he couldn’t stop tapping to it. His entire body bobbed and shook uncontrollably, his eyes transfixed by the glow of the fire that cast its spotlight on Hal dancing and singing with Rex on his shoulder. The beat flowed into Ozzie’s blood.

Da dum dum da dum dum,

da da da,

Da dum dum da dum,

“We need an electric guitar to rip a solo and get this party rolling!” Hal said, stopping just long enough to take a swig from his cup and to refill Ozzie’s cup. The music kept playing in Ozzie’s ears even when Hal stopped. Ozzie had never felt so good, so free. So alive! Warmth from the evening campfire, warmth from Hal’s liquid concoction, and music that lifted his soul. Ozzie grinned his biggest grin and watched Hal make the amazing sounds. They had been hootin’ and hollerin’ around the campfire for hours, rendering Hal’s voice somewhat raspy, but it was the best singing Ozzie had ever heard.

“Don’t know why the hell they call this the blues,” Hal said. “Hell, this will cure anybody’s blues!” Hal ripped into the final chorus:

Well now they call me the breeze,

I keep blowing down the road

Ozzie bobbed and weaved to the beat.

Da dum dum da dum dum, da da da,

Da dum dum da dum

I ain’t got me nobody,

I don’t carry me no load

“Hot damn!” Hal screamed, wiping sweat from his brow. “That there’s some mighty fine Lynyrd Skynyrd, ain’t it Oz?” Ozzie kept bobbing his head, the music alive within him, comforting him. Hal took his guitar off and leaned it against the cabin, sat down by the fire.

“Hell, that’s all you need right there, fellas,” Hal said to Ozzie and Rex. “Whiskey, rock and roll, and a couple of pals. Don’t need none of that other bullshit.”

Ozzie still heard the beat of the blues rocking in his head and kept bobbing as Hal spoke, his rant sounding much like singing to Ozzie anyway. He didn’t know if it was the moonshine or Hal’s voice, but the combination of drink and Hal’s rambling captivated Ozzie. To him, this was the happiest place on the planet. Hal seemed so free and so carefree that Ozzie couldn’t remember why he had ever wanted to go back home. Hal seemed to take his mother’s place each passing day. Feeding him, protecting him and caring for him.
He’s living the life
! Ozzie thought as he watched Hal.
All I want is right here!

“Look at us,” Hal continued. “Where’s the heat? Right here in the fire. Where’s the air conditioning? Right there in them leaves. Ain’t no cost for HVAC and ain’t nothing to repair. Ain’t no cost for refrigeration neither, not with this cool mountain stream. Ain’t nobody to pay taxes to. My flatscreen TV is up right up yonder on the Milky Way channel. Almost every plant out here is medicine or food. Don’t need no General Mills or Johnson & Johnson. Hell, boys, we don’t need a blasted thing!” Hal stopped for a moment and reflected on what he had said, was saying. He had uttered these thoughts aloud to no one for years. The last person he had shared these thoughts with was his wife, Connie, before she became ill. The flickering campfire lured him back to another world, a world that now seemed as surreal as an alien landscape. He knocked back a slug of ’shine and got lost in a memory.

He had owned a small business with Connie, a bakery in Athens. They got by fine for years, but as he got closer to retirement age he grew disillusioned with the government, the Federal Reserve’s money printing machine, and how unfair everything seemed. Every time he earned another dollar it was offset by rising food or energy prices. Or taxes. Yes, retirement had begun to weigh heavily on him, although he took comfort in the modest 401K they had accumulated.

He didn’t know it then, but within three months his world would completely collapse.

It was just after Christmas in 2008 when Connie first complained of a constant headache. At first she described it as a
normal
headache, similar to others she had endured as of late. Hal attributed those to stress from being tied down to the bakery 24/7 with no end in sight. Connie took acetaminophen. When the headache persisted, she switched to Aleve. On New Years Day the headache became so excruciating that Connie complained of a stiff neck and told Hal her vision was blurred. Hal quietly panicked and prepared to take her to the emergency room at Athens Regional Hospital. He
should
have taken her to the emergency room. But Connie was fiercely independent and afraid of hospitals. “I’ll go to my doctor first thing in the morning,” she had insisted. Hal sat on the sofa holding her, his fingers caressing her forehead. As Hal dozed off, Connie drifted to sleep in his arms. She never awoke. When Hal found her motionless, apparently lifeless, he shook her violently and screamed her name. “Connie! CONNIE! Wake up!”

To Hal, it was as if everything that happened from that moment on happened to someone else. An old, horrifying movie that Hal vaguely remembered watching as an observer, not a participant. The 911 call, the paramedics, the doctor’s apologies, sympathies, and exhortations that “she should have gone to the emergency room when the headache persisted...”

She was gone. Hal was left to wander, sentenced to drift without a rudder in a sea of isolation and misery. He never made a conscious choice regarding his own fate. He felt an invisible hand guide him through the fog of Connie’s funeral and open his eyes to how pointless his business of baking bread was. Hal put a “closed” sign on the door, walked away, and never returned.

As the nation’s banks collapsed and financial markets plummeted over the next month to a twelve-year low, Hal watched his meaningless 401K dwindle to less than half its value while the government bailed out those too big to fail. It was all too much for him to take in, with or without the guiding hand. He cashed in what was left of his 401K and fumed some more when the government took its penalty for taxes and early withdrawal. All that was left for him was to make trips to a few stores. Army surplus for survival supplies, Barnes & Noble for some wilderness books, and finally a camping store. Hal drove north, unsure of his destination. The hand guided him to the mountains and down Warwoman Road where he found what looked like the most isolated and dense jungle on the planet. A place where he could hide, get lost and die, and be beholden to no one.

The doctors had offered no reason to satisfy Hal’s need to understand Connie’s sudden death. How could she have been here so alive, so much a part of him one moment and then gone, poof, the next? Just a ruptured aneurysm, that’s all. It happens. More and more often, they said. One doctor even suggested the increase in incidents of aneurysms had to do with the factory farming methods that leeched essential minerals such as copper from the soil and, ultimately, from the bloodstream. Hal heard little of it, consciously. Subconsciously, the doctor’s indictment against factory farming just piled on top of the bailouts, the finger pointing, the concrete jungles, and the sense of entitlement that increasingly everyone exhibited. Entitled to a job, entitled to a home, entitled to cheap food and fuel. It was an artificial world created by a parasitic invader—man. Hal was able to survive in that world with Connie because he and Connie created their own little world, their bubble. Without her, the bubble burst and deposited Hal in a world he wanted no part of.

“Ow! Jesus Rex, watch it!” Hal exclaimed. With the music stopped for the night, Rex dug his paws into Hal’s shoulder to climb down and go exploring in the darkness. Hal looked across the dwindling fire to Ozzie, either asleep or passed out on the porch. His grin had faded, turned to drool as Ozzie twitched violently.

Hope he’s having sweet dreams,
Hal thought to himself, as he got up and decided to turn in himself. First, he allowed the piss mister to extinguish the fire.

Hal walked past Ozzie into the cabin with a peace he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Somehow Ozzie was healing him as much as he was healing Ozzie. Getting him back in touch with life and forcing him to process feelings he had never fully explored.

God, I love that little guy
, Hal thought and drifted asleep as rain began to fall.

On the front porch, Ozzie began to dream. He dreamt that he was floating over the porch and spinning like a feather over the dying campfire. The heat pushed Ozzie above the forest canopy where he could look down to see a trail of smoke from Hal’s smoldering fire climb through the treetops like Jack’s beanstalk. Not far downstream, Ozzie saw a lush garden with an enchanting, black-haired angel standing in the middle with her arms spread wide. Overhead, he saw the swirling eye of an approaching storm, the sullen sky turning almost as dark as the mountain soil itself. Turning his gaze west, Ozzie drifted above another clearing where a winding road snaked up the mountainside. Below, he saw his mother lying on the ground alone, shivering and frightened. A lighting bolt singed Ozzie’s nose, tracing a path from the storm above and striking the ground near Isabella. From the ashes of the lightning strike, a man rose and brandished a steely knife in her face. Ozzie screamed at the man, but no sound came. He flung his arms to fly and save his mother, but the skies opened and—