Stories (2011) (114 page)

"Just went nuts. Got the butcher knife off the cabinet,
and I don't half remember.

"Later, when the police came out there looking for the
thumper, they didn't find a thing. Turned out he was a real blabbermouth.
Everyone in town knew about him and Amy before I did-I mean, you know, in that
way. So they believed me when I said I figured they'd run off together. I'm
sure glad they didn't seine the river, or they'd have found his car where I run
it off in the deep water.

"Guess that wouldn't have mattered much though. Even if
they'd found the car, they wouldn't have had no bodies. And without the bodies,
they can't do a thing to you. You see, I'd cut them up real good and lean and
laid me out about twenty lines. Fish hit that bait like it was made for them.
Took me maybe three days to use it up-which is about when the police showed up.
But by then the bait was gone and I'd sold most of the fish and turned myself a
nice dollar. Hell, rest of the mess I cooked up and ate. Matter-of-fact, them
officers were there when I was eating the last of it.

"I was a changed man after that. Got to smiling all the
time. Just couldn't help myself. Loved catchin' them fish. Fishing is just dear
to my heart, even more so now. You might say I owed it all to Amy.

"Got so I started making up more of the bait-you know,
other folks I'd find on the river, kind of out by themselves. It got so I was
making a living off fishing alone."

That's Old Charlie's story, fella... Hey why are you looking
at me like that?

Me, Old Charlie?

No sir, not me. This here on my right is Old Charlie.

What do you mean there's no one there? Sure there is...

Oh yeah, I forgot. No one else seems to see Old Charlie but
me. Can't understand that.

Old Charlie tells me it used to be no one could see me. Can
you believe that? Townsfolks used to say Old Charlie had gone crazy over his
wife running off and all. Said he'd taken to talking to himself, calling the
other self Ned.

Ain't so. I'm Ned. I work for Old Charlie now. Odd thing is,
I can't remember ever doing anything else. Old Charlie has got to where he
can't bring himself to kill folks for the bait anymore. Says it upsets him. So
he has me do it. I mean, we've got to go on living, don't we? Fishing is all we
know. You're a fisherman. You understand, don't you?

You sure are looking at me odd, fella. Is it the smile?
Yeah, guess it is. You see, I got it, too. Once... Wait a minute. What's that,
Charlie?... Yes, yes, I'm hurrying. Just a minute.

You see, once you get used to hauling in them fish, using
that sort of bait, it's the only kind you want to use from then on. Just keeps
me and Charlie smiling all the time.

So when we see someone like yourself sitting out here all
alone, we just can't help ourselves. Just got to have the bait. That's another
reason I keep the end of this cane pole so sharp.

Once upon a time, Ug said to Gar, let me tell you a story.

This was around a campfire, you see, people sitting around
with their naked asses hanging out, maybe a bearskin over their shoulders, or
when that wasn't available, a dog or wolf skin, something that might have given
the camp dog pause from time to time, lying there beside the fire, listening to
Ug tell Gar a story, trying to determine if that dog skin looked like a
relative or friend.

But I, as omniscient narrator, have departed from what I
first intended to do. This is common to me, and must be forgiven, and if not
forgiven, what can I say, I'll most likely do it anyway.

So Ug, he says to Gar, says it soft so his voice seems part
of the night and the high full moon, the not-so-distant howl of a wolf, says:
Once upon a time, I was down in the valley, the valley way low, over there
where the big thickets grow and the brambles twist and the trails are thin, way
down there, I heard a noise. We're not talking your usual noise, some wolf or
bear or tiger or such, but something that moved silent from tree to tree, in
the dark. It was like the shadows of the moon came unglued, swung swift and
silent through trees. And when I saw it, I said, Damn, that don't look good,
and I started moving away, slow like at first, then with a trot, carrying the
rabbits I'd killed, and then I realized that this shadow, this thing in the
trees, was following from limb to limb and gaining on me rapidly, and so, to
keep it at bay, I began tossing one rabbit back at a time, and when I looked
over my shoulder, lo and behold, that thing, that shadow, would drop from the
trees and stop to maul the little hopper I had tossed back, and when it did, in
the moonlight–and it was less light than tonight–I could see it had big white
teeth and big yellow-green eyes, the color of pus in a wound, and I ran and
ran, dropping rabbits as I went, and soon, way too soon, I had but one rabbit
left.

What did you do? Gar asked.

I tossed it, too. What could I do, and I looked back, and it
stopped to eat it, and I ran faster, until I thought my sides would break, and
then, over my breathing, which was loud and pained, my friend, I heard it breathing,
right down my neck, and its breath smelled of rabbit flesh and blood and dirt
and bone and all the death you could imagine, and up ahead of me I saw a break
in the trees, and somehow, somehow, I knew if I could get out of the trees, out
of the shadows they made, I'd be home free.

Wow! How would you know that?

I felt it. In my heart. I just knew. But just before I
reached the opening, the way out of the trees, I tripped.

Dog Butt! Gar said.

You said it, and when I fell it grabbed my ankle, pulled at
me, tried to yank me back deeper into the shadows of the trees, but there was a
stone in the field, and I took hold of it, and it held, and I used it to pull
myself forward, but just when I thought I had it made, it came loose.

Oh no.

You said it. But I turned, rolled on my back as I was being
dragged, and I threw that stone as hard as I could, threw it at its open mouth,
and the stone went in, and it gagged and swallowed, and let me go. I stood up
to run, but before I turned I saw it choking, rolling all over the leaves,
thrashing up against trees and bushes, twisting in brambles 'til it was wrapped
in them thick as this skin over my shoulders.

And then it coughed, my friend. Coughed. And out burst the
rock, like it was thrown. And it slowly turned its head and looked at me and
came for me and I ran, boy, did I run, even though I thought my sides would
explode.

But when I looked back it stood on the edge of the forest,
looking at me, not able to go out into the full moonlight, away from the trees
and shadows. So I stopped and I yelled and it hopped up and down and I laughed
and called it all sorts of names and finally it quit hopping and just looked at
me, as if to say, brother, you had better not come back. And then, it turned
and it took to the trees, climbing up and away, fast as a spear flies. Faster.

And it was gone.

Damn, Gar said.

First Episode:

"One minute he’s all right, then the little fucker cut a fart and he was
out of here, gone for good, like the five-cent candy bar."

"Shit. He was what? Twelve. Kid like that, you’d think
he could stand a kick or two to the head."

"You don’t know your own strength."

"That begging stuff. I couldn’t stand the
begging."

"He ain’t begging now."

"Naw he ain’t. It just went all over me, him begging
like that. Them cigarette burns wouldn’t have killed him. He didn’t have to beg
like that."

"You always got to push your fun, son."

"I don’t know what it is. Guess him being a nigger and
talking the way he did, all educated and everything, being young and talking
better than a grown man, his family having all that money. It just went all
over me. Hell, we’re the ones, the chosen people, not this jigaboo."

"I don’t know who’d choose him now. And the Jews that
are chosen are Yankee Jews. It’s all right they hate niggers, long as they
don’t talk with a Southern accent. They must think them Yankee vowels don’t
hurt a person’s ear. Well, they hurt mine plenty."

"I guess I kissed twenty thousand goodbye, didn’t
I?"

"Next time you kidnap somebody, don’t kidnap a nigger,
no matter how much money they got. A nigger seems to get on your nerves worse
than anybody. And stay away from women. I don’t think I’d like you to kidnap a
woman."

"Oh hell, Mama, you know you’re the one for me. You’re
always the one for me."

"Yeah, I’m all the woman there is when your root’s
talking, and your root’s talking right now. Doing things to niggers, it always
did get you hard."

"Oh, Mama, it ain’t that. It ain’t that way."

She goes into his arms and they kiss: "What kind of way
is it, baby? Show Mama what kind of way it is."

Second Episode:

A big guy is bouncing a basketball, taking some shots. A younger guy comes out
drinking a beer. He says: "There’s a nigger swelled up in the living
room."

"Yeah. I killed him."

"Y’all kidnap him?"

"Uh huh."

"You know how you are about niggers. You should have
got a white boy."

"I don’t care for gentiles all that much neither."

"Yeah, but their color doesn’t excite you."

"He died easy. Mama wasn’t too happy."

"Hell, she wasn’t. I bet you killed that nigger she got
wet, probably fucked your brains out."

"Yeah, well, she did me pretty good."

"Where is she?"

(Grins) "Sleeping it off."

"Whatcha gonna do?"

"Thought we’d take the nigger and dump him."

"You could still get the money."

"Whattaya mean?"

"Tell ‘em he’s dead, but they want the body back, they
still got to pay."

"I hadn’t thought of that. Hey, I take after daddy. I
think a little."

"Yeah, he was a good thinker all right. He wasn’t
thinking so good the night they cut his balls off."

"Well, he let the drink get ahead of him. Said some
things to those Mexes when he thought he had a gun."

"I’d like to seen his face when he reached for it and
didn’t find nothing."

"Yeah, that would have been something. He’s up there
looking down on things now, I bet he’d think what happened to him was
funny."

"I can just see the way his mouth used to do. You
remember." (Mimics)... "But you’re right. A nigger dead ought to be
worth as much as one alive."

"Don’t ask me what I’d pay. They ask me to pay for him he’d
be a nigger in a ditch somewhere. I wouldn’t give you five cents for his pecker
to feed my dog with."

The thunder pulled Pete out of sleep. He rolled over in bed
and looked out the window. Great bolts of lightning stitched the sky. The rain pounded
on the roof like nuts and bolts.

He made a mental note that tomorrow he would move his bed to
the far wall, away from the window. Mildred was the one who had wanted it here,
and that no longer mattered. He could do as he pleased now. Being this close to
the glass was too creepy, always had been for him.

Thunder boomed and caused Pete to jump. Lightning, bright as
mid-day, lit up his yard, the street and his neighbor’s garage, which was
directly across from his drive. His stupid neighbor had forgotten to close his
garage up again. In that flash he had been able to see their station wagon and
their kid’s toys strung out on their drive. Dumb kid never remembered to put up
anything. And with them being uphill, and him living on an incline, about half
the time it rained, the kid’s junk washed up in his yard. He told himself that
next time it happened, he was going to burn the stuff.

"Damn," Pete muttered. If there was one thing he
needed right now it was sleep. It had been one hell of a day. Work had been lousy.
The board had rejected his idea after he had invested six months of hard work
on it, and then he came home to Mildred’s goodbye note. He had been expecting
her to run off with their dentist ever since she had come back from having her
teeth capped with more than a proud smile on her face. That did not concern
him. He was glad to be rid of her. The fact that she had left before fixing
dinner did concern him. He had been forced to eat out at a pizza joint, one of
those quickie-service places, and that damn pepperoni had been wrestling with
him every since.

And now this. A storm complete with bass drums and light
show. Grumbling, Pete rolled out of bed, went to the bathroom to fix himself a
seltzer for his stomach. When he went back to bed he saw a peculiar thing. So
peculiar he shook his head to see if he were dreaming. No. He was wide awake.

On the tail of a lightning flash, Pete felt certain that he
had seen something fall from the sky and land in his yard. It looked as if it
had hit at the tip of his drive, just off the cement and on the grass, but he
couldn’t make it out.

Lightning flashed again, and Pete was positive that the
object was closer now, perhaps a couple of feet. And it looked to be bigger
than he remembered. But the flash was so brief he could not make it out.

He climbed back into bed, put his face to the window and
watched for a long time, but he could see nothing, the rain had grown so thick.

Just getting jumpy, he decided. What with a day like this
one, and then that pizza, it was no wonder he was imagining things. He hoped
Mildred’s caps fell off her teeth.

Pete pulled the covers up around his neck, and at that
moment the lightning flashed. Out of the corner of his eye he felt certain he
had seen something, movement, and the object was considerably bigger now. Maybe
a foot long and half a foot wide.