I found myself needing to go back and look at, read, other work. Words I've already written.
For a few reason, not least of them the need to remind myself of them.
I remembered how much I enjoyed this bit of the novel it's the first chapter to. I told myself, a few years back, that I would write this story, someday.
And then someday got up and bit me, one day.
Any rate. In Her Eyes is a novel concerning one boy, who becomes later a father and an adult.
But in this time and place, where you and I catch him today, he's still yet a boy. Caught up in the heat of summer, the foolishness of old men and a mule.
And, perhaps, something else. Something dark, mean, jealous. For this week, I give you then...
An Excerpt from the novel In Her Eyes by M. K. Dreysen
One:
When the butcher's daughter came to town, the boy had no part in the matter. No idea, really.
On the day she and her family moved in, while she helped unpack boxes, and listened to her older brothers' complaints, he sat on the seat of a three-wheeler.
Watching two old fools and a mule argue with each other.
His uncle, and his uncle's best friend, had a pretty sweet arrangement. His uncle owned a couple hundred acres, leased a couple hundred more, and ran cattle on those acres.
His uncle's best friend owned fifty, just a mile or so away. He didn't run anything but the mule.
And the garden.
In between the two little pieces of heaven, between the plumber's weekend retreat and the carpenter's drinking trailer, stretched a patchwork quilt: a few other farms and ranches, but mostly lumber company land. Thousands of acres of it. Untilled, unmanaged, posted but the boy's uncle had an agreement. In writing.
He could hunt it, he could use bits and pieces of the timber land, so long as he made no permanent changes, cut down no trees, didn't do anything to lose the timber company money.
Uncle Levi was good with this. He'd bought his first piece of property, up in the piney woods well north of the marshland he'd been born to and lived his whole life in, with no clue whatsoever what timber company land meant.
He'd been a couple years into it before Levi discovered that not having any immediate neighbors, way up here, was a good thing. He got in his truck and went back to the world of pipe and sewer and job figuring, every Sunday around one or two in the afternoon. And while he might occasionally get back Friday afternoon to a little vandalism, or a little theft, he didn't get back to the farm and get involved in neighbor squabbles.
No politics, no gossip.
It was a quiet life. The kids, his sister's grandson included, could come up here, run like heathens Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, clean out the civilization their mothers insisted they learn, and then go back to school and life with, maybe, a few good memories of dirt and grass and cows and life that wasn't bound up in alarms and clocks and workaday schedules.
The boy tear-assed around on the three-wheeler that summer, oblivious to the world. During the week, he spent his time with his dad; Friday morning, Dad dropped him off with his mother's grandmother. Her oldest son, but the boy's grandmother was her oldest child, his mother's Uncle Levi picked him up on schedule, and they'd head off into the woods.
They always left on schedule. They had to; Levi ate lunch with his mother and father every day. His shop, the one he and his father had built up together, from nothing but a van and two guys to enough of a going concern to have been good collateral for the two hundred acres, sat right across the street from his mother's house.
The boy's great-grandmother and great-grandfather. Levi's and his wife's kids were all grown now. "Scattered to hell and back," Uncle Levi had told the boy, that first Friday on the way to the farm. "Aaron and Sonja come down with the girls a couple times a summer. Dee-dee, she's starting residency this fall."
Marcy, the youngest, six years older than the boy, had just graduated high school the week before. "Her mother dragged her off to Israel for the summer," Levi related to him. "Marcy begged me to get her out of it, but there was nothing I could do. She'll be out of the house and making her own life in a couple months. I've got to live with that woman for the rest of my life."
Aunt Grace. The boy echoed Uncle Levi's smile, faintly because he wasn't sure yet how Uncle Levi would react.
Aunt Grace was, the boy thought, a little much. Sweet, kind.
Batty. She'd got it in her head, this trip to the Holy Land, and the whole family had heard nothing but for the past three years. The boy came to visit at Christmas, and over summers, but usually only for a week or two each time. This summer was a little different, he'd been here longer than usual; he wondered what was going on, but he didn't like bugging his mom about it.
The boy admitted to himself that he was glad Aunt Grace wasn't around this summer. He loved her, like he did the whole family he was getting to know better this summer than he ever had. But if she'd been here, he wouldn't have had quite as much fun.
Especially not Sunday mornings. Aunt Grace's father lived down the road; the church Grace's family had attended since Saint Peter was in short pants, and Aunt Grace's father sat deacon in, was only half an hour away.
The boy had been, the only other time he'd been to Uncle Levi's farm, pressed into the pew Sunday morning, surrounded by people he didn't know at all, singing praises and calling down damnation in equal measure.
Aunt Grace's father had spent the rest of that day asking the boy questions. "Do you know Jesus in your soul, boy?" was the least of it.
He'd find out, years later, just what Aunt Grace's father thought of Catholics. That the old man had, honestly if a little disturbingly, feared they'd let one of the Vatican's foul servants into the back door of their community.
Then, though, the boy knew only that Aunt Grace's father wanted something from him, some bond, word, the boy couldn't understand. The old man's eyes bored into the boy, from the front seat of the car to the back, where the boy squirmed for a corner to hide in. "Do you know to fear Hell, boy, that the Devil himself waits for you there?"
The boy didn't know anything about devils, or Hell, but he knew to shrink away from the old man in the front seat, oh the way the old man's eyes burned; behind them, lighting that fire and giving energy enough so the old man gripped the seat and damned near tore the vinyl away, was some passion, anger, the child had never met before.
It reached for him. Through the old man. Bore down on the boy, and promised him that all was lost. Unless he figured some way to answer the old man's questions.
The boy hadn't been back to Uncle Levi's farm since he was eight years old. Four years removed; when he climbed into Uncle Levi's truck the first time this summer, he'd asked if they had to go to church Sunday morning. First thing, the boy wanted to know this first thing before he knew anything else.
And before he closed the truck door, most of all.
Uncle Levi, who'd been driving his wife's car that Sunday, and watched as his father-in-law drove damnation and hellfire into the boy's soul with the hammer and tongs of fanaticism, didn't smile, or laugh, not even a little, at the boy's fear.
He looked at the boy, waited until the kid turned and returned that look. When his niece's son finally did look back at him, Uncle Levi held up two fingers, one twisted around the other. "Know what this means?"
"Scout's honor," the boy replied.
"You won't have to go back to that church, never again, if you don't want to," Uncle Levi promised. "Scout's honor."
It was a small thing, one the boy never forgot.
Levi understood too well. As a matter of fact, he understood even more, things the boy wouldn't discover for some years. Levi was Catholic, too. He'd married into Grace's family without much thought about what the two of them were doing.
And discovered, when Aaron was born, enough about his father-in-law's family to share the fear emanating from the boy in the passenger seat. No, the boy wouldn't have to go to church with Grace's family. Any more than Levi went, these days.
He'd quit going that week, for good and all, after his father-in-law had confronted his niece's son, his god-daughter's son, in his own backseat. "I don't give a good goddamn what that old fart thinks anymore. He lives on land I paid for, he drinks my beer when he thinks none of his church can see him, he can keep his big mouth shut about where he thinks me or my family are going when we die."
No more pandering to Grace, God love her. She could, did, go all she wanted to. She could steal money from the company accounts, leaving him to repay the company so his father would see that Levi had taken only what he had earned, to go off to Israel for a summer.
But she'd damned well leave him alone about any of it.
Levi had sat down, alone in the little camp house on the farm, with a Diet Coke, a pencil, and the company books. And he'd cried like a baby. The week and a night ago, when he'd discovered what Grace had done to his business to pay for her trip.
Not just her trip. She'd paid for half her father's congregation to go with her. All of it out of the company accounts, the ones she was supposed to be doing the books for. "Why should we pay someone else to do them, Levi?" she'd said. "I'm home, save the money. And that way, we'll be able to spend the day together."
He'd just finished cleaning up the mess. He'd called Anne, his niece and god-daughter and the boy's mother, to help him straighten it all out. "You're the only accountant I know who'll understand what your Aunt Grace did, Annie."
"Have you told Paw-Paw yet?" she asked. Paw-Paw was his father. Still owner of a third of the business, it was enough for him to justify putting his nose into things, and then go off fishing when it looked like work.
"I haven't even told Marion yet." Marion, his younger brother, and owner of the other third of the company. Marion wasn't much interested in anything except driving for parts, in the air-conditioned comfort of the truck all day.
And cashing his check.
"Uncle Marion's the tough one, Uncle Levi. Paw-Paw will cuss you," and boy did he, "But he'll help you when he's got it out of his system."
Marion had his own lawyer, Buddy de Gaul; they'd gone to school together. If, when Buddy got wind of this, he'd tear into the courthouse faster than a roadrunner on speed.
"How much did she take?" Anne finally asked. "And have you made sure she never gets the chance to do it again?"
As it turned out, Grace had taken just less than half what Levi would have taken out as his share of the profits that year. Little enough so that Levi could reimburse the business without having to tap any credit union loans.
More than enough for him to tell Grace "To go ahead and find something else to do with your time. Something that doesn't have anything to do with the farm or the company." Levi hadn't had the heart to tell her what he might have, what he'd have said if she'd been there at the farm that night he'd added everything up.
And more than enough so that, when Ray showed up with a case of beer and an idea that he wanted to break out the mule again...
Which is what led to the two old fools standing in the middle of a field in June, busting dirt twenty yards at a time.
Not that the boy knew all of this. Oh, he knew more than Uncle Levi might have wanted him to. His mom was the one Levi had called, after all. In the middle of tax season, when she was already working double-time. Her grandparents' taxes, well she did those every year.
Put off her own to do them. If she'd ever sent her own taxes in by April fifteenth, instead of an extension, the boy didn't remember. He'd heard the call. Seen her break down, after hearing her godfather crying. "Mom, what happened?"
"Aunt Grace did something," Mom had said. "Levi's trying to fix it, before it causes trouble in the family." She'd wiped her face; it wasn't the first time he'd seen her cry that spring. "It's ok, we'll get it figured out."
The boy hadn't heard any more of it; once Mom realized he was paying attention, she'd switched that work to the office. Had Levi mail the account books to her there, rather than at home.
They'd been at it, Ray and Levi and the mule, for a couple of hours now. Coffee first thing, both of them up before dawn because the habit was so ingrained they didn't need alarms any more. Out at the barn at first light and the mule and fools harnessed together. "I'm damned if I'll be out here in the heat, Ray, following that jackass around under the noonday sun. Anything we haven't finished for lunch time will have to wait."
"I'm too goddamned old and fat to argue with you," Ray had answered, amiably enough. Ray wanted to get some dirt plowed up this weekend.
He didn't want sunstroke to go along with it. The tractor would do what they couldn't finish. But the mule had, for some reason known only to God, and glimpsed only briefly by Ray himself, made himself part of Ray's view of his garden.
The boy listened, when Ray talked his way through it. He wrapped himself in the lashes; Levi grabbed the handles on the plow. "Hi up, mule," Ray called, and the team began. In between calling the pace, and the turns, and cussing the clay, Ray explained, a little.
"I try and plant my garden four times a year... Spring, summer, fall, winter. A few rows, enough for Levi and Grace, and Gert. And your grandmother."
The boy had learned not to try and correct people, when they called his great-grandmother his grandmother, instead. This was Maw-Maw's country, that's all, and Grandma lived in Texas. Just like he did.
"Bust up the dirt now, get it harrowed and raked, set in a summer crop and we'll be harvesting these pumpkins and squashes in October. Just in time for Thanksgiving and Halloween."
"Why the mule, then?" the boy asked.
Ray grunted; Levi coughed. At that time, Levi had an ancient tractor, a big red beast that blasted you in the face with diesel exhaust, and had only a rusted metal overhead cover, of sorts, to keep the sun off. When Levi, or his father, used it in a few weeks to cut and bale hay, the boy would be pressed into service carrying gallon jugs of ice back and forth to whichever one drove the tractor. Between the engine and the summer sun, the ice melted faster than he'd have believed possible.
"That one's too big for this little garden," Levi answered, after a few minutes filled with the mule's steady work. "The tractor plow only fits on Stan's little green tractor."
Stan was Levi's father-in-law; the one who'd been so bound up in the state of the boy's soul. The boy felt the weight of the man's stare, and his questions, coming at him again from behind the years. "Are you working to go to heaven, child? Or do you follow the road to hell?" The boy wondered what was more important to Stan, that he'd work for heaven? Or that there might be stories of hell he'd never heard before?
"I'll walk many a mile behind this shitting damned mule if it means I don't have to ask that old bastard for use of his tractor," Ray finished.
As it turned out, Ray walked his last mile behind the mule that day. The boy didn't notice warning signs. He and Levi just figured, while it was happening, that Ray's red face was the result of too much sun, and too much beer the night before.
They changed their minds when Ray fell down, the traces falling under him. The boy noticed Ray keel over. Levi didn't, not until the mule kicked his head over, complaining at first because his boss was asking for a turn way too soon in the row. Then he whistled, and stopped. Ready to kick off a real fight over this crap. Until he looked over and saw his boss, his buddy, sprawled in the dirt.
Levi ran chest first into the plow handle. Like the mule, he figured at first this was just the start of another argument. But then, also like the mule, he saw Ray's feet.
He ran over. "Run, get some water."
"Where?" the boy replied.
"His trailer, right over there, door's open. Just get something, anything you can that you can easily carry."
The boy started to run to the trailer. But when he tripped on the fresh-turned dirt, he turned for the three-wheeler instead. It would be faster for him, maybe in the grass the trailer would have been close enough to run and beat the three-wheeler, but with the dirt...
Levi didn't notice the boy's indecision. He knelt over Ray, feeling for a pulse and a breath. "Damnit, Ray, don't do this to me, not here." Best case, it was an hour to a hospital. And that didn't count how long it would take to get him over to the truck. The boy was too young to do anything other than maybe pick up Ray's feet.
Ray wasn't dead. But he was red-faced and hot, and his eyes were rolled up in the back of his head. His heart beat under Levi's fingers, so fast it should have been like a jack-hammer, but the force of it didn't match the pace.
Levi felt like he was holding a baby bird between his fingers. "Just don't make me give you CPR, you crazy old sonofabitch."
He had to fight a giggle, when the image flew into his head, of him kneeling down, two fat old men, the bald one leaning over the sunburnt, heat-stroked buzz-cut one, opening his mouth, closing his eyes, and praying to God that the lunatic muletender hadn't managed to pick up some unnameable disease somewhere along the way.
Ten minutes never lasted so long. That's how long the clock would have said, if anyone had been able to ask one about it. But the boy didn't look for one; even if he'd thought to, the only clock in the trailer was the VCR Ray hadn't ever got around to figuring out, steady blinking it's 12:00 since the day he'd plugged it in. Even the microwave over the stove didn't have a clock, just a pair of idiot dials. The only thing Ray ever used that for was to heat a cup of coffee, or a bag of the extra-butter popcorn he didn't admit to his doctor, or his wife, that he kept stashed in the trailer pantry.
The crazy old sonofabitch didn't respond to the gallon jug of water the boy carried out, straight from the fridge to Uncle Levi, and then straight over Ray's head. Not at first, but after long long seconds, Ray gasped, and shook.
"Ray, Ray, you ok?" Levi asked. Begged. But Ray may have been able to answer a cold-assed jug of water poured over his head. But he wasn't yet up to answering his friend.
"Here, son, let's see if you and me can carry him up to the trailer." Levi hooked his arms under Ray's, laced his hands together on the chest of Ray's bib overalls, and hoisted. Ignoring the pain in his back and knees, and what his own face probably looked like now or soon would, he told the boy, "Grab his feet, if you can."
The boy could do that. Getting them up, Ray's legs with the leather workboots worn down so far the steel toes showed, and the socks threatened to peek through the worn soles, getting them up was easy enough. He just didn't think he'd be able to make it all the way to the trailer.
So he gasped with relief when Uncle Levi said, "Think you can drive him over there on that three-wheeler?"
"Yes, sir."
They crab-walked over to the bike, the kid climbed into the seat, and then Levi wormed his friend in behind the kid. The kid grunted with the weight, when his uncle leaned Ray's unresponsive body over him. "Hold onto his arm," Levi said. "Just pick second, and take it easy, you'll be ok. I'll be right behind you."
The mule whistled; the kid was too busy concentrating on the bike and his unconscious passenger to hear it. But Levi did. "Hang in there, Jack. We'll get you." He hoped, oh please God let Ray be ok when he hits the air-conditioner.
But he couldn't leave the mule like that. Levi forced himself to imagine it, he and the boy sitting in the emergency room, and the mule tethered to the plow, waiting for hours, overnight maybe. Maybe killing himself trying to kick free of the harness, because Ray passed and nobody had time or memory of a mule stuck like a minnow in a trap. Levi walked back to the mule and turned him loose. "Go on, Jack. I'd rather you run loose for a bit than..."
Jack snorted at him, then ran off. After the three-wheeler, up to a spot next to the trailer's steps.
"Well, look at that," Levi muttered as he made his slow way over the fresh-broken dirt.
Because it was that kind of day, by the time Levi made his way up to the trailer, Ray had finally started to come out of his daze, a little. And the mule had made up his mind that he was going to get more involved. "Back up, Jack, damnit!" the boy yelled.
"Clear off, mule," Levi added. "Give us a chance, he'll be all right."
"What happened, Levi?" Ray asked. When the mule backed off enough for the other man to get in close enough to hear Ray's faint voice. "Where am I?"
"Hip deep in trouble, if you don't start listening to that doctor," Levi supplied. "Maybe I should call him, or Deirdre."
"Fuck you, Levi."
"Ok, son, let's see if we can get him off that bike and into the trailer," Levi said.
Ray was awake enough to complain, in whispers barely more than a breath. And Jack threatened to knock all three of them into the dirt. But with a lot of effort, and Levi's face shading on to the red of a tomato, the man and the boy got Ray into the trailer and into the ancient recliner.
Levi felt Ray's pulse again, ignoring Ray batting at him with the other hand. "Hold still, you bastard, let me see if you're here enough to save, or if we just call Zach and tell him to haul your carcas off to the boneyard."
"I ain't dead yet, goddamnit, leave me alone!" Ray yelled. It wasn't a loud yell, not enough to scare the boy, or make Levi stop what he was doing.
The way his pulse actually pulsed, now, with real force, maybe a little hesitant but like Ray's heart had maybe taken its little break and decided it wanted to get back to work. That's what made Levi nod and drop Ray's wrist. "Now we just have to dump your ass in the shower," he told Ray.
The string of curses from the recliner started weak and slow, but by the time Levi walked over to the kitchen sink, pulled a couple of ancient, raggety dish towels from the rag drawer next to it, wet them, and returned to the recliner to slap them over Ray's face, the curses had ramped up to something like medium volume.
They got louder when Ray processed the shock of the cold, wet rags slapping across his neck and ears.
"Go fill a glass, ice and water," Levi told the boy. "A couple of them, I think. And get that milk jug back, fill it and put it back in the fridge. He'll need it."
Levi and the boy waited. Ray recovered, little by little, as the air conditioning and the cold water did their work. "Hell, I might have come close, there. Maybe that fucking doctor knows what he's doing, after all."
"Between you and the mule, a man would be hard pressed to decide which one of you was dumber than the other," Levi replied.
And on cue, the mule knocked on the trailer's steps.
"See what I mean?" Levi continued. "That jackass wants to know what the hell happened to you. He'd dump your ass in the garden and cover it in shit, any other time we asked him."
"Why do you think I keep working with him?" Ray replied.
The boy noticed the way Ray's face twisted, when he said that. Ray wanted to smile, laugh everything off and praise the mule. But underneath it, keeping him from really smiling, the boy saw something he didn't expect. Not from an adult.
Fear.
"Did you get him loose, Levi?" Ray asked. "Is he still hooked to that plow?"
In another day, Ray would begin to remember things for longer than five minutes. Right that minute, Levi couldn't do anything but worry about it. "Yeah, Ray, he's loose. We'll get him put up. Just as soon as we figure out whether to call the ambulance or not."
Ray shook his head at the reminder. "I'll be right. Go on, you two get out of here and quit hanging over me like a couple of buzzards. I ain't dead yet."
So Levi and the boy left the old bastard there in his chair.
The boy watched his uncle. He looked for something. He wasn't sure what it was that he thought he might see on Uncle Levi's face, not yet. He just knew that there should be something.
The worry, and still a little red, maybe sunburn. The boy catalogued those. After all, if Ray could fall over, so could Levi. Was there fear? The boy wondered if Uncle Levi had been, was, as scared as Ray.
The two of them put the mule back in his pasture, a ten acre piece of Ray's property he'd fenced off, between the trailer and the timber company's pine trees that formed Ray's back fence. They carried the harness and other tack into the shed behind the trailer. "Leave the plow, we'll get it tomorrow morning. It's too hot to fool with now."
The noon sun had quit hinting at its power. Now, it had gone past beating on them, in favor of full weight pressing on the boy and his uncle. "Are you going back to the camp?"
The house, they called it a camp, even ten years after the ancient job-trailer Levi had started with had been replaced with a real, stick-built little house. Most days, Levi would have been there already, inside with a sandwich, maybe a glass of milk, and a couple hours in his own recliner ahead of him.
"Damned right I am. You should come inside and eat, before you ride off on that bike again. Your mother will kill me if she finds out I'm not keeping you fed."
The boy didn't object. After fighting the mule's harness, here on Ray's land where the nearest shade tree was a hundred yards away, the boy looked forward to some time in the cook darkness of the house, with the air conditioning blowing on him.
And he wanted, no he needed to keep an eye on Uncle Levi. His face wasn't as red now, not even with the additional work, but the boy had a taste of Ray's fear in his mouth. He wasn't an adult yet, nor was there anyone else around, no other kids making him feel like he had to cover the fear up. So he let that fear do its thing. "I'll ride the three-wheeler over to the house."
The boy would normally have been halfway there, or at least out of Ray's driveway and throwing dust on his way back to the camp, before Levi had put his truck in gear. This time, the boy waited, until his uncle had the Chevy turned around and headed that way, before he took off.
It was too dry to try and follow alongside, or behind, Levi's truck. The truck threw up dust and gravel for most of a mile, and it hung there in the air for minutes. Riding through that in the three-wheeler meant the boy would chew on the dust for hours.
So he took off for the camp and let Levi chew on it, the dust streaming from the truck vents; this time of year, it settled on the bench seat, in the seams of the vinyl, coated the plastic cover over the speedometer, and pretty much made climbing into the truck, or any other vehicle that passed over the gravel, the full-sized equivalent of a crow dusting herself for mites.
Levi reminded the boy to dust himself off before he went inside. "Use the hose," he said, even as he was doing the same. "Gracie doesn't come up here often enough to matter, but I know you won't like eating dust on your sandwich, any more than I will."
If the truck kept most of the dust off, leaving enough to remind you of what you'd missed, the three-wheeler was a portable dust storm, on wheels. The kid looked like he'd been practicing for Halloween; red clay dust, a little sand, and an entire spring's worth of pollen covered him. There was no use pretending he could get it off without the hose; even his eyelashes were clumped. To the point where he had to squint to keep his eyes open enough to see anything.
Levi should have sprayed the kid down and put up with the yelling. Instead, he held the hose out so the boy could run his hands under it. "Just get the worst of it off. We'll deal with what comes in on your pants tonight. You'll be pushing a broom after you clean up."
The boy shrugged. He could stay in the kitchen, and the bathroom was right there. "What's for lunch?"
They at their ham and cheese in companionable silence. When they were done, Levi made for his recliner. "Don't get killed, if there's a gate turn around and go somewhere else, and stay off the blacktop. Other than that, be back here by about four o'clock, if you can manage it, and we'll go see if Ray's managed to come back to normal."
Staying off the blacktop was easy. He could run the bike for miles in every direction except east and never see another paved road. Nothing but gravel. And most of those turned into someone's driveway, or a lumber truck track into the pine trees. He had two possibilities, then. Stay on Levi's property, or head off into the woods.
The boy started with the property behind the house. Levi owned two hundred acres, split into four pieces, with the back half separated from the front half by a stream that split the property just about in half. Standing under the covered driveway, the boy could see the trees that grew around the stream, oak and pine mostly. There was a pond there, he remembered, barely more than a wide spot in the stream, it hid deep within shadows and a clay and sand bluff.
The gates were open, this time of year. Levi owned his piece; he leased almost twice as much. For hay, for extra room for the cattle.
For plenty of elbow room, and because Levi knew that, whatever else might happen in the local politics, if he was up on his rent, his neighbors would be inclined to keep a better opinion of him. "If you hit a gate, just stop," he'd told the kid the night before. And this afternoon.
The boy could, just about, make it one or two fields over. And it was hot, open, no shade at all. "So, go to the stream, and when you've done that, turn around and go down the road," he told himself.
So doing, he fired up the three-wheeler and headed east. Through the grass, threading his way past ant mounds and cow shit, and to the thin line of trees sheltering the stream.
The trees did most of the work, testifying to the water's presence. The water came up from underground, formed the pool which was right where the boy remembered it to be, drifted down for another thirty, fourty yards or so through a tangle of roots and clay, and then disappeared right back into the aquifer. Only to appear again, in the form of a two-acre stock pond at the very bottom of the hill, where another tangle of trees in front of Levi's camp showed the results.
And even where it did appear, the stream wasn't continuous. The boy followed a cow trail into the trees; faint hoof prints and cow patties just about grey with age told him it had been weeks, maybe months, since these fields had been used. He stopped the bike at the bottom of the trail.
If they'd had rain, where he climbed down from the bike would have been full of water. As it was, weeks since they'd had more than a trace, and weeks more before the August weather broke, the clay here was dry and hard. The pool held water, it was still deep enough, and sheltered enough from the sun. The other pools were hidden by grass and trees. Later, the boy would track each, falling into a couple because the grass grew completely over them.
For now, he let the shade envelope him, and the sounds. Away from the water, he heard crickets and the wind. Here, finches argued, but only so far because it was too damned hot to bother yet. A squirrel eased himself along a limb overhead, knowing the boy wasn't likely to be a threat, but at the same time... it was just better to keep things nice and simple.
The boy had wondered if he'd stand a chance to come fishing here. The water, or the lack of it, told him nope, it wasn't happening, not here. Maybe the pond at the bottom of the hill. Here, the trees and the weeds crept close to the water, too close really. He could stand here, where the cows drank when they passed this way, and just about touch the other side of the pool.
Lilly pads, and algae, covered the surface. If anything lived in it, now, other than the turtle giving him the stink eye, the boy didn't think he'd have much luck finding it. This place wasn't dead; but it was sleeping. 'Come here and sleep under the shade with us, child,' the place said to him. 'Now is a time of rest.'
He did doze there. He climbed up onto the three-wheeler, and listened again. A cicada whirred itself up to jet roar levels, somewhere off that way. When it finished, and the boy's nerves relaxed from the shock, the boy leaned back on the bike, feet over the handlebars, and let half an hour or so drift away.
Where the pool whispered to the boy of rest, and patience, the black cypress swamp clawed at the back of his mind. He found it by accident. When he woke from his doze, he let the three-wheeler find its way, back out past Levi's camp, north up the gravel road, almost halfway to Ray's trailer, and then west again.
He'd spotted this trail, between timber land on the south and a fenceline on the north, going back and forth to Ray's place. This one intrigued him. The fenceline said the little piece of open land belonged to somebody. The track into the timber told the boy this was only a temporary arrangement. The trees crept up and were fought back, that's all. They hadn't given up.
The boy roared up the gravel road, leaned into the turn, geared down. He didn't know the open land belonged to his mother's other uncle, Marion. Except for the two acres, a few hundred yards west, that Marion had sold to Stan, Levi's father-in-law, so he and his wife could build a house.
The boy didn't feel the weight of eyes. Someone had listened to the three-wheeler's motor run up the hill, and watched him now, for the few brief seconds before the trees swallowed him and the bike.
In a week or two, the boy would roar down this trail just as he would the gravel road. It was straight and clear for most of two miles, and only occasionally violated when a thunderstorm brought a tree down across the trail. The timber company and the utility company used it; poachers, in the fall and winter when whitetail meat in the freezer mattered a great deal up here in the woods. For now, the kid had the trail to himself.
The black squirrel surprised him. It ran out in front of the bike, and took off on a line down the middle of the trail. The boy let go of the throttle, for just a second, and then gunned it up again. Not enough to catch up to the squirrel, the boy didn't trust himself yet, but enough to keep it in sight.
It had come out of the woods from the north, more timber company land, they were far back from the road and worked land now, run down the track a ways and then off to the south. Had he really seen it? Pure black, mostly, but definitely not red or gray like most of the other squirrels. The boy stopped the three-wheeler at the spot where he thought the tree rat had gone into the woods.
He turned the bike off to listen.
But it wasn't sound that came to him first. It was the smell.
And then the color of the light. The sun stood proud and high above the trees, somewhere. But these trees fought it back; there was only shade and darkness here. He'd hit the bottom of something. On both sides of the track, and off to the west, water glinted, in the few rays of sunshine the trees allowed to hit the ground.
Ahead, the water encroached on the trail itself. The boy saw dry ground directly ahead of the wheel, and dry ground rising away into a hint of sunlight some fifty yards ahead.
In between, the trail worked down to a hint of marsh, cattails grew right up next to the little trail, and an open puddle filled it. If the water, the marsh, here knew of the dry heat on the other side of the trees, it didn't admit to it.
The smell drove at him; this wasn't live marsh, though. Not like the areas south of Maw-Maw's house, the saltwater marsh. Or the Atchafalaya, the big swamp.
This smelled of death, and decomposition. The pine trees, young, were few and far between down here. Here were oak trees, other hardwoods, never yet touched by saw. The wet ground showed him why. 'Walk in, ride in, and find out why no axe will ever fall here,' the black oaks whispered to the boy. 'Come to us.'
He ignored that. He fought fear enough, looking at the cattails and the puddle over the trail.
Going off it, into the black water, wasn't even a thought.
And now the mosquitoes were coming in. The first one had found him, he'd slapped at it absently while he searched the trees for the squirrel. Now, the whine of a single was buzzing up to the roar of a swarm. Now or never, but he'd have to get out, and fast, no slap of the hand would fight off the horde of mosquitoes coming for him.
He punched the button on the bike. It should have roared to life, but nothing. 'What the hell?'
The mosquito buzz grew, roared to life now, maybe they smelled his desperation. He pressed the button again, got nowhere, his heart raced now and his palms were loose on the handles from the sweat. Sweat dripped into his eyes, burned there, and he couldn't make out what was going on, just what in the everloving fuck was going on...
Then he remembered. Almost crying, he kicked at the gear lever, rocked the three-wheeler back and forth, little by little, until he found neutral.
And the machine fired up now, grateful, he figured, that the boy had clued in to what was needed. Almost sobbing, the boy fought off the urge to kick at the gear lever, he eased it up from neutral, into first, and dared the puddle. He didn't want second, no, he'd fly through the puddle, laughing at the splash of water, in second and third, later, when he'd recovered.
Now, here, he let it crawl through on barely more than idle throttle, while he slapped at the mosquito horde with his left hand, and fought back tears. 'Don't go, child, there are so many of us waiting for you,' the black oaks called to him.
The bike's wheels wallowed in the puddle, slid a little, sprayed a little water and a lot of mud when he goosed the throttle in automatic response, they spun and threatened to send them both off into the marsh on the south side of the trail, the lefthand path that his mind showed him pictures of, the bike disappearing into quicksand, mud bog, the boy grabbing at cattails and the 'tails breaking loose one by one...
Just before the bike tires caught, the boy looked over the bog water waiting, hoping, for him and the bike to lose their grip. Up and over that way, across the little stretch of open water, amid the black oaks, his eyes found more evidence, besides the hardwoods of the bog, that the marsh was far older than the pine trees that sheltered it on every side.
He saw cypress trees, a stretch of knobs and knees through the shade, and the trees that generated them standing above. Twenty or so of the big gnarly beasts, five, six feet in diameter, disappearing into the canopy above. But unlike the black oaks, the cypress trees let just a hint more of sunlight play along their base.
Not enough to illuminate their knees, the boy saw. That was a trap, down where the water ruled. The boy felt the tension, the cypress trees whispered to him of the game they played, of mud and bog and water and sun above, and the part the trees played in mediating the centuries between.
And then the tires caught, and the three-wheeler carried the boy away from that place.
He wound through more oaks, for a time, until he reached the top of a hill and the pine trees took over again.
He found other hardwood stands, that day and the others, scattered here and there throughout the pulpwood cover. These other stands were not as confident as those of the black oak marsh; they whispered fears to him. 'Soon,' they said, and he wondered at what 'Soon' meant to oak trees. 'Soon, the saws will find us. We have been fortunate, so far.'
The pine trees didn't have the same fear. They knew they were young and had only so long to live, by the standards of trees, the boy understood. The oak trees and the other hardwoods, some carried as acorns by the squirrels, others having survived previous rounds of cutting, didn't quite dare to hope they'd survive another pass.
The trail led him through a great stretch of timber land. It put him out on another gravel road, miles from the camp. Did he dare the road, which might or might not come out where he needed it to? He turned south and gunned it. A full tank of gas, maybe, and he'd time enough.
The road didn't disappoint him, it joined the east-west road that bracketed his uncle's land. By the time he'd made the circle, a great dust cloud heralding his passage through the afternoon heat, it was time to go back into the camp and find out if Levi was ready to go check on Ray.
By the time the two of them pulled up in front of Ray's trailer, the boy had almost forgotten the fear, and the black oak marsh that had centered it. Almost, but not quite.
And neither he nor Levi had felt anything odd coming from Stan's house. They passed it with no notice of the blinds that flickered in their wake.
Ray welcomed them at the door. "I'm ok. Wouldn't know it, though, you acting like an old bittie hen. Go on, Levi, get on with what you need to do and quit treating me like an invalid." He'd changed from his overalls to an undershirt and boxer shorts. His inside clothes, when he didn't have visitors he had to care about impressing.
Levi didn't press. He and the boy came in, took a long look around, neither one of them with a single clue what they should look for. Then, when they'd exhausted the conversation, and Levi had realized he wasn't going to be brave, or foolish, enough to remind Ray that the old bastard had come just that close to dying in his own field that morning, Levi slapped his knees and told the boy it was time to "Go do something about dinner. You hungry, Ray?"
"I've got a little something in the icebox. Deirdre made me up a couple plates, all I have to do is heat 'em up in the microwave."
Deirdre was Ray's wife. That she'd put up with him for all these years was, in Levi's estimation, testament to the fact that she was tougher than old boot leather. "Woman's meaner than he is," Levi told the boy, when they'd made their way back to the camp, and their own dinner. "Why she hasn't strangled him in his sleep, I'll never know."
If he hadn't met Deirdre, or recognized the faint amusement and affection under his uncle's comments, the boy would have been unnerved by them. Levi's description of her, the boy figured, was accurate. But she'd made it through this far with Ray, leaving him for the vultures would have to wait until neither she nor the doctor could keep him going. "Why doesn't she come up here with him?" the boy asked.
Or, "Why doesn't Aunt Grace come up here with you?", he didn't ask, but he might as well have. Or wanted to, at least.
"She and Grace have more sense than we do. They let us pretend we're working, and they go find something more interesting to do than fool around with cows and grass and gardens."
Or meatball gravy, which is what Levi had set himself to cook for dinner. Over the rice that they all of them ate with just about every meal; the boy knew rice with a little sugar and milk as breakfast, on occasion. Kid's food, for when the little ones weren't up to spicy foods yet, or for the picky ones.
They'd finished the cooking, the meal, and were washing the pans, the boy drying and putting away, when someone turned their truck off the gravel road into the camp driveway.
"That's Stan's truck, but I don't know the man driving it," Levi told the boy. "Let's walk out and get a good look at 'em."
They'd come from the same direction as Ray's trailer, or, as it turned out, Stan's house. There were a handful of other places, trailers and a couple older houses, that same direction.
The man who got down from the driver's side of the truck looked like he'd spent most of the day ironing his clothes. He'd even ironed his blue jeans, so much so that they'd formed a white line down the middle from the wear.
It was the guy getting down from the passenger side that raised the hackles on the back of the boy's neck. The boy knew this guy.
He'd been a deacon at Aunt Grace's church. 'Just some guy,' the boy told himself, handing out the flyers and the songbooks, and passing the plate during check-writing time.
'So why does it feel like I don't show my face if Uncle Levi isn't here?' the boy wondered to himself. Beard, faded camouflage pants, work boots. Mostly the guy looked like someone the kid would have passed in the feed store, or Wal-Mart. Just another guy. Except for something.
"Just wanted to drop by," the driver was saying to Levi. "Check in with you."
Levi dropped his hand onto the boy's shoulder before he said anything.
The gesture may have been meant to reassure the kid. And it did, a little.
Mostly, it warned the boy. To keep his mouth shut, and his ears open.
"Seems like I should know you," Levi said, after a minute. "But the fact is, I can't put a name to your face right now. And I'd hate to insult you by trying."
"Greg Madison," the man said, and then he stuck out his hand.
Levi took it. "Nice to meet you, Mister Madison."
"You're Levi Andrews," the guy continued. "Stan Murdock's son-in-law. Gracie's husband."
"Daddy always says," Levi replied, "That you can be sure your neighbors have an idea of who you are, when you're up this way."
The way the boy remembered Paw-Paw saying it was, "Goddamned bunch of hillbillies can't keep their noses out of your business. Every one of the bastards thinks they've got a right to tell you where to shit and how big." But the hand on his shoulder kept the boy's mouth shut. Which was unusual, even the boy had to admit.
Madison chuckled. "Stan asked us to run by his place on occasion, while he's out of the country. Make sure his garden's watered, and no one's run off with his tools. Run the truck to make sure the battery doesn't go dry. Like that. This is Rob Holland, by the way."
The other man nodded, but didn't stick his hand out. "Good to meet you," he said.
Levi nodded in return. "I believe I should probably remember you, Mister Holland."
"I'm happy to serve at the First Baptist," Holland answered. "It's all part of our little community, keeping up with our neighbors when they need a little help."
"Since it's my family that's being helped," Levi said, with a small smile, "You can be damned sure I'm happy to know the men who're doing it."
The boy knew his uncle well enough to be suspicious of that smile. This wasn't Levi saying he was glad to have met these two. Or, not in the way it sounds.
Just like a bear might be happy enough to have finally met the wolf that haunted his grounds and pissed on his trees. It's the knowledge and the face-to-face that cause the happiness. And the "Go on, get on with it" relief.
Madison chuckled again. "And I'm very glad we could be of help. We'll head on, now. I'm on best relations with my wife if I don't come in after dark."
All three of the men laughed at that one. As the other two turned back to the truck, the boy noticed something metal, brass colored, a badge, or the edge of one, glinting on Madison's chest. If it was a badge, the boy realized, Madison had turned it around, and tucked it between two of the buttons on his white, clean, oh-so carefully pressed dress shirt.
So that the badge wouldn't show, except for the clip. Which sort of looked like a tie clip, or maybe a pen, from a distance. The kid only just caught it, because they were close enough for him to see the bulge underneath the guy's shirt.
The two men were halfway into the cab of the truck before the other man, Holland, added anything to the conversation. "Oh, we saw your nephew pass by the house on that motorcycle of his," Holland said. "Now you be careful out there, young man. Mostly it's good folks here, and good country. But don't let yourself get hurt, running around like a bat out of hell on that thing."
And then the two men closed up the truck and went on their way.
Levi and the boy watched the truck make its way, back to the gravel and then out and onto the next road over and the path back to pavement. Levi waited until the sound of the tires on rock was gone, but the dust still hung in the air, to say anything. "I'd say we've been warned, son. What do you think they were so goddamned interested in, that they'd be worried you'd see it from the three-wheeler?"
The black oaks, the marsh, they whispered something in the back of the boy's mind. Nothing intelligible, just a little noise. Leaves, maybe, dry, hot, dusty, waving with the little bit of breeze. 'Was it a warning?' the boy wondered. 'From you, too?'
Maybe not a warning. But it was enough for the boy to turn to his memory. He was turning from the main gravel, onto the grass of the timber lane, fence off the right hand, thick young pine trees on the left, so close together only a deer could find passage between them.
Clear field on the other side of the fence, at least for a hundred yards or so, and across the open field, a house.
With Stan's truck parked in the driveway. The boy hadn't noticed, because of course Stan's truck would have been parked in his driveway.
Except, now the boy remembered: that Stan had gone to Israel, with Aunt Grace. And he'd had to drive into Lake Charles to meet her. So they could drive to the airport. In Houston.
"They were at Stan's house this afternoon, after lunch." The boy's cousins, Aaron, Sonja, Deirdre, called Stan Pops, because he was their grandfather. The boy didn't know what kind of relationship he'd use to describe his great-Uncle Levi's father-in-law, so he just said "Stan".
When it was just him and Levi, at least.
"What time, do you remember?"
The boy and watches were currently on a Cold War footing. He'd quit wearing one when his Casio's plastic band broke in April. And he'd only just this week discovered how nice it was, to not be able to look down and hear the responsible voice in the back of his head tell him 'Get back to work', or 'Get back home'. The best the boy could do for Levi's question was say, "About an hour or so after you laid down for your nap." Which was about the time the sun had told the boy he'd drowsed next to the pond, before running the roads.
Levi walked over to his truck. The boy followed him, getting into the passenger seat, rather than the three-wheeler. Tomorrow, he'd return to the bike.
He had questions now. "How did Stan get to the airport?" he asked Levi. And, "Is that guy a sheriff? Why'd he turn his badge in like that?"
Levi didn't answer either question right away. He let the truck almost idle, giving it just enough gas to go along, and raise only a little bit of dust behind them.
Not enough to see from the highway, two miles east. Levi made the turn onto Stan's driveway, a quarter mile of mostly grass that Levi reminded himself he'd need to cut and clear, maybe run the box grader over. He used Marion's land for hay this time of year, grazing in the winter, rye grass and turnips. Stan's piece was on the back part, the barely more than a cattle track excuse for a road was Levi's necessity as much as Stan's.
A cattle guard between the fence lines separated Stan's piece from the rest. Levi paused there, to look over the cattle guard, and answer the kid's first question. "Stan ended up riding back to Lake Charles with me last Sunday. Grace drove them both to Houston."
"Did he say anything about those two?" the boy asked.
"Not a bit. In fact, he asked me to look in on the house."
Which made sense, the boy figured, because Levi would be here every weekend, guaranteed. Even if something came up, he'd take a day if he had to, to check on the cattle, and the house. The cows mostly ran free, took care of themselves, really, except for the few times a year they needed to be moved, or the other things working cattle needed. Shots, feed in the winter, separate the calves, geld the little bulls and sell them off for beef and the cash they made. Nothing that needed to be done right now, always a little something to do.
Levi answered the second question, as best he could, after he drove over the cattle guard. "Guy's a deputy, I guess, but not really. He got one of those auxillary badges, so he could show it to cops in other counties and get out of speeding tickets. He used to brag about it. I've never seen him wear it though. He said he kept it on his dash where a cop would see it when they pulled him over."
Stan's house was a neat little place, all brick, covered driveway with a slab under the part next to the kitchen door. "We built it for him about five years ago," Levi told the boy. "Let's get down and walk around."
The boy noticed Stan's yard, first. Levi's camp, the house, was like this one, new enough and well built, but the yard was barely more than a hayfield. This place showed that Stan had put in more work than that, that he didn't think of it as a place he had to mow to keep the snakes away. This was, the yard testified, a home. Shade trees coming in in the front, hedges and flower beds in the front.
A garden in the back. Levi went around that way first. He didn't have to tell the boy why.
The only neighbors, or passers-by, who'd view the back porch were the squirrels. From the back porch, the boy looked out to the half-dozen rows of garden, another twenty yards or so of grass to the fenceline, and then the forest.
Somewhere back over to the left as he stood, the marsh whispered again. More low measured voicings, unintelligible.
The boy thought of a cat, rubbing against his ankles, in passing on the way to something else. A touch.
Stan's porch wasn't covered; he'd put a lemon tree in, a satsuma on the other side, south and north and they'd shade the porch as they came along, together with the peach tree directly to the west. Right now, the trees were all three barely more than whips, a handful of leaves showing they were alive, but definitely not appreciating the heat.
"See anything odd?" Levi asked.
The question jumped on the boy, jarred him out of his cataloguing and back to the moment. "No," he answered. And he didn't. Stan's place was just as neat, back here, as it had been in the front. The door was shut; he walked over, tried the locked handle, looked around the glass and wood and brass for anything out of the ordinary. "If they went inside, they had to use a key, right?"
The two of them shared a long look. Then Levi pulled his key ring out of his pocket. He chose one, shook the ring to free it up, and passed the ring to the boy. "Here, let's see what the inside has to say to us."
Not much. Other than the two empty Coke cans on the kitchen counter. "They must have come in for a cold drink, at least," Levi pointed out. "But everything else looks fine."
They returned to the back porch, Levi locking up behind them. They walked around the other sides of the house; nothing was disturbed, that the boy or his uncle could see. When they got all the way around, Levi checking the other doors as they went, the man and the boy stood at the truck.
The boy looked over the house again, for anything and nothing. His uncle stared out at the forest framing Stan's place.
The track was there, the one leading to the marsh, but the house blocked the view. It wasn't really even visible from the other side of the house; the boy had looked as they passed around. The only thing he could see from there was the fenceline and the trees.
But he and the three-wheeler would have been noticed. That much he could tell, feel. They'd have seen him passing. Maybe not at first, if they weren't expecting him, but there was better than three hundred yards of open field. Plenty of time to realize the boy was riding that way.
From next to the truck, Levi could only see, stare at, the back fence, and the other stretch of pine trees that hugged it. "I wonder..."
"What?" the boy asked. He turned to the timber land, hoping his uncle had found something.
"They spent an awful lot of time up here, to just have two Cokes and shoot the shit," Levi said.
"Maybe they were doing something in the garden?" the boy offered.
"Too early," his uncle answered. And it was. Another couple weeks and the tomatoes, cantaloupes and melons, they'd be coming in good and ripe. Right now, though, and they were all still green. "But that doesn't mean they weren't tending something else."
Now the kid looked at the back fence again. The light was going, they'd been here most of an hour, and started here after dinner. Seven o'clock, if the trees hadn't been in the way they'd be looking straight into the sun, instead they shaded their eyes against a diffusion of reds and oranges.
The boy didn't have to think too hard about what his uncle had come up with, as a possibility. Mom and Dad were flower children; he'd smelled the bittersweet smoke since long ago. Not anymore, they'd gone their separate ways, built their separate lives into work and kids and the humdrum world. Nothing major, just the way the world spun, Mom had told him.
There'd been friends and acquaintances. And more than one of Dad's friends... Dad was from this part of the world. He'd moved to Lake Charles early, for school and then job and now life. Never looked back, really, except for friends.
Ward, Dad's best friend, had been the one who'd told the story the boy remembered. About "The redbones hiding in the woods, growing their bud and making a fucking fortune. Go camping up there, kid, and you'd best be paying attention. Guys up there will dump you off where nobody'll ever find the body, just because you walked through the wrong patch of weed."
Ward had told him that the weed growers never used their own land. "Federal and state reserves, hell Fort Polk. Timber company land. Last year, I set up my deer stand in West Bay, and damned near got my ass shot because I'd put it right next to some motherfucker's patch of weed. Son of a bitch came after me with a fucking machine gun. Asshole took my fucking deer, and my goddamned bow. Told me I was lucky he didn't take my fucking truck and make me walk out."
"Where are you setting up now?" Dad had asked.
"Other side of the reserve," Ward had answered. "I don't want any goddamned accidents. Bastards will shoot you, call it a hunting accident. Sheriff's paid off, so what the hell else am I gonna do?"
The boy didn't know if the sheriff was paid off or not, or just couldn't keep up. But he couldn't blame Ward. Deer meat's nice, but it ain't worth getting shot over, not when you can buy meat at the grocery store.
There was an awful lot of room, the boy realized. Over that fence, in among young pine trees so thick a squirrel could walk almost to Deridder without bumping her ass on the ground. No other house, Ray's place was half a mile further along, the only things on the other side of Marion's fields, and the road, were Levi's cattle in the summer fields.
And who'd say anything about a couple of guys "Scouting" ahead of deer season? Worst case, the boy figured, unless they had the marijuana buds in their hands, they'd say "Look what we found! Some longhair's growing pot, sheriff, you oughta do something about that."
And, "Isn't there a reward?" Because of course they'd want to get a little something for the trouble.
All this ran through the boy's head while his uncle stared across Stan's back yard to the trees beyond. "I'd tell you to stay out of those woods, kid, but I don't want to force you to lie to me. Just do me a favor?" Levi turned so he could look his grand-nephew in the eyes.
The kid obliged.
"Pay a lot of attention to where you are. And where they might be. That fucker wasn't carrying that goddamned badge tucked away like that for no reason. Those two, and anybody else they're working with, won't hesitate to drop your carcass off in the woods, for the fire ants and the coyotes to take care of."
The boy nodded.
Levi loaded up, and the boy as well. When Levi got the truck turned around, he continued. "Sonsabitches might have their shit growing in half this parrish. If you're up here, you're going to be in the woods, and on the roads with that three-wheeler. And you've got every right to be."
If it had been his grandfather telling him this, the boy could have written the rest of it. About how his grandfather would make "Goddamned sure that bunch of crooked sonsabitches end up in jail" for thinking they'd taken over the place. How Granddad would "Call up Richard Widmark, I've played cards with that bastard for twenty years, he'll have 'em in jail before they know what hit 'em."
Levi knew Theo McGuin very well. His sister's ex-husband, father to all of her kids, Theo and Levi had been apprentices together, with Levi's father, the boy's Paw-Paw, as their teacher. Levi loved Theo very well, but he had his own ways. He'd listened to Theo's stories his whole life.
And not a bit of it had he ever taken as advice. Theo having a way of biting off about three times too much more than he could chew.
"But just because you've every right to be here, doesn't mean you should go out there and get yourself shot. Be smart, son, enjoy yourself, but pay a little fucking attention. That's all I ask."
"Yes, sir," the boy answered.
They were passing the little timber trail at that moment. The boy caught something out of the corner of his eye, something that didn't belong in amongst the bits of grass and pine needles.
He turned to get a good hard look; Levi wasn't driving fast. It was Holland, the deacon, and the passenger in Stan's truck. Even with the fading light, the boy was sure of it, that Holland had made his way back into the trees. Maybe Madison had dropped him off, and he'd walked back here.
Maybe he'd driven back in, while Levi and the boy were checking out Stan's house.
Either way. The boy knew, now, that if he rode that trail, maybe not all the way back to the marsh, but somewhere in that treeline, if he searched hard enough, he'd find what Holland was guarding.
Levi went back to the house, to a shower, the recliner, and nonsense on the television. He was asleep in that recliner in less than an hour.
And the boy was out the door into the darkness. With a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of cinnamon schnapps, both from Levi's emergency stash. The one he kept in the cabinet over the freezer. The cigarettes the boy took for his own enjoyment.
The schnapps came along because the marsh had whispered to him. 'Come learn a secret, child,' it had said.
He'd been waiting, flipping the channels on the satellite dish, the communicate-with-Mars fiberglass monstrosity Levi had finally acquiesed to. In between the randomness of it, beyond the static the whisper had come in. Of secrets. And of sacrifice.
He'd pushed a chair over to the stand-up freezer, the one that held the milk jugs full of ice for hay season, and a mountain of quart bags of purple-hull peas from last year's harvest. When he climbed up to get at Levi's cigarette carton, the boy's hand brushed between two bottles. A big jug of port, and a much smaller pint of the schnapps.
"The beer's for everyone," Levi had told him. "And so are those, really. Aaron raids my cigarettes. I keep the port and schnapps for the cold weather. A little nip against the frost."
The oaks trembled as the boy's hand reached for the cigarettes. He didn't like the response; he didn't think about it, either. He just grabbed the pint bottle of red liquor and pretended the shiver down his spine was from his own anticipation of going outlaw.
The boy told Levi that he wanted to go look for frogs. "I passed a few ponds. Maybe we can go frogging?"
"Moon's not right, not for a couple weeks," Levi answered, in between grunts and groans of the settling into the recliner process. "But if you see any, we'll know where to go when it gets here." Levi could guess which ponds the boy was referring to. He'd hunted them, for frogs in summer, wood ducks when fall came through.
He knew the trail that went to them, as well. And that the roads wound around the back way. He hunted the trail for squirrel and deer in their season, using the three-wheeler to get back there. "Take the road around, son. And make sure you fill up the gas tank before you go."
If he'd ever heard the marsh whisper to him, he never told his nephew.
The boy did as he was asked; he topped off the tank from the big gas can in the back of Levi's truck. And he took the back way to the ponds.
But he did that as much to make sure Holland didn't see him coming as he did for Levi's request. It just happened to work out that way.
The ponds were right on the gravel road, close enough for the three-wheeler's headlight to catch the red eyes of frogs and snakes and the other wet-world nightlife that hung out on the banks. He passed two of them, counting in his head. To make sure he went to the right pond.
The pine trees, and the darkness, pulled close. They masked the route, the one he'd have been so sure of. In the daytime. Now, the sun not even a hint and the moon not in the mood, and the pine trees loomed around him. The stars shone down, somewhere, but not enough to make him comfortable. In the clear fields next to the camp, the Milky Way had been so clear, so welcoming.
Here in the trees, the galaxy had taken a powder. The boy was on his own. 'And the pines had been so welcoming,' he told himself. It was a joke, he hoped.
Two ponds, and then the third, when he'd pulled out of the little trail, the marsh's echo drifting to silence behind him, he'd come out next to one pond, and then passed two others before he'd come back to the main gravel road. In the daylight, the ponds and the stretch of trail had passed quickly.
The minutes after the second pond in the dark weren't as kind. They clung by the second, and each that passed without a hint of water on his righthand side pushed the boy closer to his fear. By the time he saw red eyes shining back at him, the boy and his fear were buddies, and getting friendlier by the heartbeat.
When he saw the water, the boy slowed to a crawl, desparate now, heart up in his throat and his fingers aching from how hard he gripped the bike's handlebar. The only thought in his mind was 'Don't pass the trail'. And there it was.
He swung off onto it, and when he'd cleared the turn, he cut the engine, the headlight. And fought back a sob. He'd made it, he told himself his memory hadn't failed him it was just the darkness.
With the light off, the only sign that the pond held life was the sound from the peepers, the little frogs not worth hunting. They were the first ones to sound off. Once their chorus came in, the others, the bullfrogs, came in on bass. One by one they joined their smaller cousins.
And when the night chorus swung back into gear, the boy's fear slid down to nothing more than a whisper.
And the marsh at the bottom of the trail echoed that whisper. No words. Just a hint. That it waited on him.
The boy lit a cigarette. He had to fumble at it. He'd taken a box of kitchen matches, one of the small boxes of fifty bundled together in plastic wrap at the back of the pantry. He struck the first match two or three times, until he felt the head break loose, and then he tried again. Slower. The flame danced, and stole his night sight again, for the moments it took him to breathe the cigarette to life.
He tucked the matches into his jeans pocket, on the left hand side; the bottle was tucked into his right hand pocket. He didn't know why he'd brought it. He slid it out, fumbled with the cigarette and the screw top, and tasted the stuff. Just a little, he held his tongue against the flow so he wouldn't have to swallow any of it.
The schnapps reminded him of the cinnamon candies his great-grandmother kept, with the butterscotches and the peppermints, in a jar next to her door. He spit the tiny mouthful out, once he'd made his taste of it, screwed the top back on and tucked it back into his pocket.
He'd had a beer, once or twice, before then, stolen from the ice chest when he thought none of the adults were paying attention. A sip of wine at the table, and at communion. He'd stolen a sip from his dad's New Year's bourbon, that year, when they'd gone to somebody's big deal party. He knew the alcohol taste well enough.
The boy knew this particular thing wasn't his. Not yet. But more importantly, not this night. He'd brought the bottle because the marsh had told him to. That there was something it needed, if it was going to help him.
Was it going to help him? Did he want that help? When the cigarette had burned down to the filter, most of it without the boy's assistance, he flicked the butt into the water.
And the marsh showed him an image. Of Holland, moving down the trail from the other end. The man walked, easy as anything, down the center of that trail. 'Like it's his place,' the kid said to himself. 'Like we're nothing but interlopers.'
The marsh agreed, and the kid felt that.
That all humans were trespassing, the trees and the water knew. But the child might yet be seen as neutral. The way Levi was. But Levi's agreement was not the boy's. The marsh would have a different negotiation with the boy. A different set of requirements.
Would he accept them?
The question hung there in front of him. When he thumbed the three-wheeler to life, the marsh's question pushed in harder, insistent. How do you fit in this world? Do you fit here, where oak and cypress and pine yet hope?
The pressure grew, just as the fear had earlier, until the boy trembled with it. Until he kicked the bike into first gear, and thumbed the throttle. And rode the three-wheeler down the hill. Toward Holland.
Toward the marsh.
He didn't turn on the headlight. Not at first; he didn't need it. The marsh gave him something, sight, to make the mechanical light unnecessary. Without it, and with the marsh's first gift, the trail showed clear, and so too the spaces on each side, beneath the tree limbs. He saw the water, waiting at the bottom, a hint of dark and cool.
And Holland on the other side. That's when the boy flicked the headlight on. Not because he needed it to see. Just because he needed Holland to believe that the kid was nervous, a little scared. In the dark and in the woods and at the mercy of the man who waited for him.
The boy stopped the bike just shy of the marsh. The memory, of the way the wheels had slid, how the water had reached for him in that instant before the wheels finally caught a little traction and he sped away from that place, came to him as the engine idled. The marsh whispered in his head, 'Yes.'
And he cut the engine. And the light. And Holland's figured disappeared for the few moments it took for the boy's nightsight to return.
"I'd have figured your uncle was a little smarter than this," Holland called out. "But boys will be boys, I guess. You're on land you don't have any business on, boy. And we can't have that." He reached around his back as he said it, and pulled a gun loose. He let it hang at his side.
If everything had been the way Holland saw things, the boy wouldn't have seen the gun. No moon, no light, the man should have been just a shadow to the boy, and his hands moving just those shadows shifting.
The boy saw the gun though, a black ugly thing the man rested against his hip. The boy knew it was there.
He held his tongue. It wanted to rattle, wanted to negotiate. He didn't let it. The boy just sat on the bike, hands gripping the handlebars.
He had to fight not to start the bike. That got harder with every step Holland took. The man had started out on the opposite side of the marsh from the boy, now he was almost to the bottom, where the clay and the water took over the trail.
Holland didn't see it. He was too busy anticipating what was about to happen. How he'd get close enough, maybe to grab the kid before he could get up the nerve to run away. Maybe the kid would light the bike in time. But the three-wheeler didn't have a reverse gear, he'd have to turn the thing, in the dark. And Holland had the gun, so the kid wasn't going anywhere tonight. Holland grinned, teeth showing behind his beard. 'Oh, yeah,' he thought.
And then his feet slid, a little. Holland stopped, steadied himself, his left hand out in automatic search for balance. He turned his boots a little in the mud, until he was sure of things. And then he stepped out, ready now.
And like more than a few before him, he tripped over a cypress knee. His front foot found the knob, and his back foot slid on the clay, and then the water was coming up, and the fierce hot pain with it. From where his left knee found the cypress knob as Holland keeled over into the muck.
And from where another knob punched into his diaphragm.
The pain took over, there was only pain, Holland couldn't catch his breath because of the pain. The water he landed in didn't exist, he didn't see that he was over his head now, the muck and the clear water closing over the back of his neck. These things didn't matter at all. Not when the pain and the not-breathing cramp spread, down to his belly and up to his heart.
He couldn't move, except to slide over. The knob hadn't penetrated his belly, it just felt like it. So he slid off of it, and farther into the marsh. Now he knew he was in the water, under the water. And right as Holland became aware of the water... the pain receded, for an instant.
And Holland forgot about the water. There was no pain, and he could breathe again. He could breathe.
But he shouldn't have. Holland took a huge gasp, reaching at last for the blessed oxygen his body needed.
And found only water and mud.
The boy watched. In the dark, Holland thrashed, at first. But then he breathed in the marsh. And the thrashing ceased. So the boy waited. And the marsh waited as well.
Holland sank into the mud, the only bubbles coming from the settling of the mud around him.
Finally, after minutes, Holland gave one last mighty jerk. One last reflex. And then he died.
The marsh knew when Holland was done. 'He's gone,' it told the boy. 'But your part is not yet finished.'
The boy forgot everything, communion with this place, the bottle and the cigarettes in his pockets. There was only the man's back, the part of him showing above the water. 'How did he get here?' the boy asked himself. 'Should I try and pull him out?'
The boy shifted in the seat, to get down and help, that was the only thought he could manage. When he started to pull his leg over the three-wheeler's saddle, he felt something in his pocket.
When he reached down, and pulled the bottle free, that's when he came back to himself.
The boy finished climbing from the bike, then walked closer to the man's body. He pulled the bottle loose. Shook it.
There wasn't much in it. Maybe a third of the bottle.
The boy talked himself through it. Held up the bottle, unscrewed the top. "Holland tells Madison he wants to check on their little business in the woods," the boy said. "Madison drops him off and heads back into town."
The boy shook the bottle once, like the aspergillum the priests at school used to bless them with holy water. The liquor obligingly shook free, a little of the schnapps spraying over the ground between the boy and the corpse. "And then Holland gets a little too happy. Too much of the liquor he'd stashed in his pocket."
The boy looked for the gun. 'Gone,' the marsh told him. 'I hold some things forever.' Some, but not all. So the boy knelt, as close to the body as he dared, and shook the rest of the bottle's contents free. 'Sacrifice and camouflage,' the boy told the marsh.
The marsh whispered agreement. Then the boy washed the bottle, in clay and muck, to clean it of his and Levi's fingerprints. And then he tossed it, to the side, where it wouldn't disappear into the water. Nor would it attract anyone's attention. Until it needed to tell its part of the story.
The boy stood back, to look at the body, the bottle, and the story these things told whoever would come. "I'll have to let Levi find him," the boy said. "When the time comes."
'The guardian, he protects the land,' the marsh returned, giving the boy the marsh's reasons for why Levi was allowed passage. 'He will be the one to tell the tale, when the time comes.'
The boy nodded, climbed back on the bike, and turned it. The marsh might allow passage, but for tonight, he didn't want to test it. There was room enough to turn the three-wheeler and go back the other way. When he reached the top of the hill, the boy fumbled through lighting another cigarette, and let the smoke and the peepers' chorus drown out memory.
By the time he pulled into the camp's driveway, and killed the headlights for the last time that night, even the marsh's nightsight gift had faded away.
