Rolland Love's Ozark Mountains
BLUE HOLE Murder Mystery
By Rolland Love
Smashwords Edition Copyright ©2010 by Rolland Love
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The novel is based on Rolland Love’s experiences growing up in the Ozark Mountains; however, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Cover photograph Copyright © 2010 George Lyle.
Graphic Design by Mike Overmyer
A print version of the Blue Hole is available at www.goldmindspub.com
Reviews:
"To understand Overland Park writer Rolland Love, think Mark Twain."—Nick Kowalczyk, The Kansas City Star
“The Blue Hole is a great book and will make a great movie. Mark Twain meets Deliverance”—Mike Daniel, Director, Burt Reynolds Museum
“Glad to hear a sequel is in the works. I read the Blue Hole to my boys this summer on a gravel bar on Current River, a great book!”—Jim McCarty, Editor, Rural Missouri Magazine http://ruralmissouri.coop/
"Rolland Love writers in the Mark Twain vein…excellent storyteller who does not rely on graphic language or sex to cover up a weak story line. The Blue Hole is a fast-paced page-flipper of a read."—Molly Martin, Scribes World
Chapter One
I was awakened in the middle of the night by a scream from the back bedroom. A man with a deep loud voice shouted, “I’ve got to have hot water now.”
From the kitchen a woman yelled, “Water’s on the cook stove!”
My dog Trouser came over and licked my bare foot. I sat up on the side of the bed, rubbed my eyes and draped a wool blanket around my shoulders. I slid out of bed and walked across a cold hardwood floor.
“What are you doing up, Tommy?” Aunt Mille asked, as she rushed past me with an armload of towels and a sheet draped over her shoulder. Her long, blue cotton dress made a swishing sound as the hem dragged across the floor. Before I could say anything, I found myself standing at the bedroom door. The scene was strange and scary, like something in a dream.
Sitting on white wicker tables, one on each side of my mother and father’s bed, were kerosene lamps with thick yellow flames dancing inside glass mantles. The outlines of the people in the room cast dark shadows on the bedroom walls. The smell of burning oil permeated the air. I backed up when I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man with bushy white hair standing at the foot of the bed. My heart began to pound when I realized who it was.
“Push. Push.” Doc Barnes shouted, his deep voice rumbled like thunder. My mother grunted loudly as if she were trying to lift something that was too heavy each time Doc raised his hands in the air like a conductor.
Aunt Mille hurried over and gave me a nudge. “Go back to bed, Tommy. This is not something a little kid should see.”
I looked around when the front door banged open against the living room wall. My dad rushed in carrying an armload of wood. The cold chill of a winter wind that followed him snuffed out the flame of a candle burning on the coffee table. A half- dozen icicles blew off the Christmas tree and landed on top of presents wrapped in shiny red and gold paper.
“What you doin’ up, Son?” Dad asked, as he dumped the wood in a box beside the black cast- iron stove and brushed pieces of bark from the front of his bib overalls. He opened the stove door and pitched a cedar log in on top of a glowing bed of coals.
“Best you go back to bed. Get ol’ Trouser under the covers. You’ll both stay warmer. There’ll be a nice surprise for you come morning. I hope.” I looked up at Dad towering over me and began to cry. He closed the stove door, picked me up and carried me into my bedroom. Aunt Mille and a lady with bright red hair named Eleanor who lived in town came out of the kitchen with two steaming pails of hot water. They went into my mother’s bedroom and closed the door.
Dad sat for a spell and told me a story and as usual, before he finished, I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I lay in my bed and patted Trouser as he looked up at me with big brown eyes. I was trying to sort out if all of the commotion the night before was real or my imagination when I heard a baby cry. My brother Dwayne, later nicknamed Dub, had been born a few minutes past midnight on Christmas Day, December 25, l939. Doc Barnes carried him outside and rolled him in the snow because he was not breathing. The shock of the cold did the trick and brought him around.
Dub became the center of attention from the moment he popped out into the world and I swear nothing has changed since.
Chapter Two
Later—I mean a lot later—when Dub was twelve and I was fifteen. I awoke to the sound of Dub’s voice ringing in my ears as he leaned over my bed and yelled at me to get up so we could hurry downstairs to eat.
“We’ve got to get out of the house!” He grabbed his shoes from the seat of a battered old wicker chair and looked at me with steely blue eyes. “Before it’s too late!”
He jerked a red plaid shirt from a hanger in the closet, gave me a squint-eyed grin and disappeared through the bedroom door.
I raised my head up off the pillow and looked toward the open door. “Come back here, Dub!” I yelled as I plopped my head back down, picked up a corner of the bed sheet and wiped the sweat from my eyes.
The little rat was always on the move. Hurry Up would have been a better nickname for him, instead of Dub.
I needed to talk to him about what not to say to Mom. Sure as the world, she would try to stop us from going to our favorite camping spot on the Oak River—a deep pool of cool, spring-fed water called the Blue Hole. She had to let us go. I could probably make her understand why it was so important, if Dub did not mess things up.
I raised my head up off the pillow again when I heard one of Dub’s heavy leather brogans crash down the stairs and hit the floor with a thud. Oh great, I thought, knowing how Mom’s tolerance for loud noise was poor at best, especially early in the morning.
“Put them shoes on next time,” Mom yelled at Dub from the kitchen. “That’s a good way to trip an’ fall.”
“I was in a hurry,” Dub said, as he stomped on down the creaky wooden stairs. I strained an ear to hear what Mom would say after Dub told her his shoes were hard to put on because they were still wet. He slipped on a moss-covered rock the day before and fell into the spring branch that ran through the lower part of our yard, a couple of hundred feet or so to the south of our white two- story farmhouse that overlooked the Oak River.
“Wet? What do you mean wet?” Mom said, raising her voice. “Those shoes are brand-new. They’ve got to last all school year long.”
“Dub, would you come up here, please?” I pleaded loudly enough for him to hear, while trying not to sound desperate. I might as well have shouted into the wind.
Bang! I could not believe he let the back porch screen door slam shut. He was such a smart kid most of the time. Then he would turn right around and act as if he had the mind of a toad.
Dub’s right about one thing, I thought, when I heard the clock on the fireplace mantle in the living room clang out six loud chimes. We needed to get a move on for sure. It would be mid-afternoon by the time Dad hauled us to the river trail and we hiked to the Blue Hole.
Once we reached the river, we would have a bunch of stuff to do. First thing would be to take a swim to get ourselves cooled down after a long sweaty hike through the woods. Then we would unpack our gear, set up the tent and head downstream to do some fishing.
Being good fishermen, we would clean our catch, gather some wood and start a cooking fire. By the time we got the fish and potatoes fried for dinner, it would be close to dark and only a couple of hours before we dragged our tired bodies off to bed.
A chorus of night sounds would sing us to sleep. There would be crickets chirping and bellowing bullfrogs setting on the bank, or sprawled out on the top of floating green lily pads, back in the slough. The lonesome call of a whippoorwill would echo off of a bluff that towered two hundred feet above us. I heard Doc Barnes say the Blue Hole was a majestic stone monument millions of years in the making. Hidden away in the shadows animals would watch us with eyes that sparkled like foxfire when they ventured too close and caught the reflection of our campfire. Late at night there would be snakes on the prowl: big cottonmouths swimming back and forth like sentries across the silvery, moonlit surface of the deep dark water— assigned to guard against Dub or me leaving our tent. Normally, it would not have bothered me so badly to camp at the Blue Hole, Dub and I all by ourselves. So many strange things had happened lately that my mind had gotten out of kilter and caused my imagination to run wild. As if the situation with Doc Barnes, who mysteriously disappeared a month earlier, were not enough, I was headed back to the place where I got snake bit the summer before. Plus the moon would be full. Strange things happen during a full moon. I remembered the night Buzzard Thompson went on his shotgun rampage. The moon was full then, too.
When I sat up on the side of the bed, I noticed Dub had turned over to a new calendar page. September, l950: the picture at the top of the page was an outdoor scene of an old man and a hunting dog on the bank of a woods pond facing into the setting sun. It reminded me of Doc and his big red- boned hound, Lucky.
I thought of what Doc told me about ponds and lakes being the eyes of the earth, as I stared into the calendar picture at the mirrored surface of the water, colored reddish-purple and gold.
Still looking at the calendar, I wondered why Dub would do such a thing. He knew good and well I liked to turn up the next page at the end of each month. Why irritate the only person he would have contact with for the next three days in a remote section of the Ozark Mountains? A wilderness can be a lonely place when your only friends are nothing more than a bunch of insects, snakes and wild animals.
Dub acting up was only a part of what caused me to get an uneasy start on the day. I tossed and turned half of the night in a sweat-soaked bed trying to escape the slithering snake demons that haunted me in my dreams.
I slipped into my jeans and a faded denim work shirt laying on a nightstand beside my bed, and wiggled my feet into a pair of brown leather moccasins. My Aunt Maude, who lived in Arizona, sent the shoes for my fifteenth birthday the week before.
Heading for the kitchen, I stopped at the head of the stairs when I caught my reflection in a large wall mirror in a pine knot frame. Funny how a person can feel so jumbled up inside and still look as if nothing’s wrong on the outside, I thought. I turned my head to one side and moved forward for a closer look.
I thought about how many people compared the way I looked to my Dad, and it made me feel proud. I had his same square jaw, dark curly hair and rugged looks. Even the dimple in my chin flattened out when I smiled, like his. Not only was he smart when it came to book learning and things, he understood the ways of Mother Nature and how she taught the wild creatures to live in perfect harmony with the earth.
I rubbed the peach fuzz on my chin, and decided I would shave for the first time ever after Dub and I got back from our camping trip—if we actually got to go. I wanted to show up first day of school on Monday morning looking real spiffy. I needed to make a good impression on Lucy Denton. I hoped she would give me a chance to be something more than a friend. It seemed she started to like me more than usual the last couple of weeks before school let out for summer. I guess it was the kiss good-bye under the big oak tree caused my feelings to act up the way they did. Funny how one little thing turned my whole world upside down and caused me to think about her every day. Fact is, my thoughts about Lucy were pretty much the only good things happened to me the three long months she was away.
What concerned me a little was Lucy went to visit her aunt in St. Louis for the summer. I had not heard word one from her in all that time. I hoped the big city ways did not cause her to change. I liked her the way she was, soft red hair and big blue- green eyes that sparkled when she smiled at me. She smiled a lot.
“Come on, Tommy,” Dub yelled up the stairs. “What you doin’ up there anyhow? Let’s eat.”
Everyone was seated and waiting for me so grace could be said when I walked into the kitchen.
I met a glare with a glare when I pulled a red wooden chair out from under the table and plopped down into the seat. I was sick and tired of Dub greeting me at breakfast every morning by sticking out his tongue. It would not have been so bad if he didn’t flick it in and out like a snake testing the air for danger.
“You seem anxious to eat,” I said to Dub as I nodded my head at Dad and looked around the table at the spread of food. “This sure looks good, Mom.” I gave her an extra-big smile.
Crusted brown biscuits were stacked up next to a gray stone crock filled with thick dark gravy. Hard fried eggs with crispy edges shared a big white platter with sausage and ham. A tub of butter and a jar of combed honey were in the center of the table, one on each side of a pitcher of milk.
“Let’s eat,” Dub said as he picked up his fork and looked around the table wild-eyed as he tried to decide what he should haul onto his plate first. I knew what he was up to. He hoped to get past the ritual of saying grace. A quick hard stare from Mom delivered the message his plan would not work.
“I had the worst nightmares last night,” I said. “After I was—”
“Come on Tommy, say grace. We need to get on the move.” Dub had messed with me again. He butted in when I was about to tell Mom about my snake dream, which was one of the big reasons I needed to go camp out at the Blue Hole. I was going to tell her how I thought it might help me to face my fears. Which was what Doc said I needed to do. Mom respected what he said—a lot.
“You say grace, Dub. It’s your turn. You haven’t done it forever,” I said, narrowing my eyes. Finally, I turned to Mom for support after my attempt to stare Dub down did not even make him blink.
Mom straightened up in her chair and gave the two of us a disgusted look. “You boys best calm down. I won’t stand you bein’ plumb out of control.”
I figured she would jump onto us right then and there about the camping trip and flat-out say the whole thing was called off. Instead, she went on with the prayer.
“I’ll say grace this time. From now on, you boys will take turns. Next turn’s yours, Dwayne Benson.”
Mom always called Dub by his real name, when he got her upset. So she called him Dwayne Benson pretty often.
“Lord, please watch over Doc Barnes and bring him home safe. He’s a good man. He’s helped a lot of people. We need him with us a little longer, Lord.” Mom’s voice held a quiver as her true feelings for Doc came out.
I bit my lip and fought back the tears, partly because of my feelings for Doc, but more right then because I felt sorry for Mom. Her family raised Doc after his parents were struck down at an early age by, of all things, eating poison mushrooms. So Mom, having grown up with Doc, took his disappearance hard.
I glanced up as a tear slid down Mom’s cheek, and quickly looked away. Even though her face was drawn with sadness she still looked pretty sitting there. The early morning sun was shining through the kitchen window onto her reddish brown hair.
Mom closed the prayer by asking the Lord to please keep a close watch on Dub and me. She grabbed the tail of her apron, blotted the corner of her eyes, regained her composure and smiled.
After what she said about the Lord watching over us, I thought we might have escaped any further discussion regarding Doc and the camping trip and we were about to be set free. In the next breath she turned on us as if she was just getting us prepared for the worst. “You know what concerns me about you boys’ trip?” Mom said with a stern voice. “It’s the Blue Hole. That’s where the Patterson boy said Doc told him he was headed. No one’s seen Doc since.”
I scooted up to the edge of my chair and jumped to our defense. “You can’t believe Bobby Patterson.” My voice cracked. “He’s a wild storyteller. He’s the one told stuff about Lucy Denton. I know for a fact she’s one of the most....”
“Tommy. Tommy.” Dad reached over and patted me on the shoulder.
“What?” I blurted out, took a deep breath and sat back in my chair.
“Calm down, Son. We can discuss this civilized- like, okay?”
I looked down at my lap and cleared my throat. “All I know is, Bobby Patterson’s as windy as the month of March. Every kid in school will say the same.”
“Okay, Son,” Dad said. “Your mother’s got a good point though. The Blue Hole is a long ways from home.”
Dad was stopped before he could say anything else by a near-death experience. In an attempt to hog down a big bite of sausage, stacked up on his fork with an inch-thick pile of fried egg, Dub had gotten choked, really bad.
With a violent cough, he sprayed a chewed-up trail of white, yellow and brown food chunks down the front of his overalls and out onto the kitchen table. A moist little yellow piece about the size of a pea landed by the edge of my plate, and I flicked it back. I smiled at him when I pointed at the bloody spot on the back of my hand, where I smashed a mosquito while sitting on the edge of the bed looking at the new calendar page he turned over.
Looking for quick relief, Dub grabbed for his glass and turned over the drink. A pool of milk spread across the table and began to drip through a crack in the middle, sounding like rain falling on the roof as it dribbled onto the blue and white linoleum floor.
Hunter, the old gray and white tomcat curled up back in a corner behind the wood stove leaped up and scrambled toward the milk.
I picked up my glass real quick like, and guzzled down the milk to the last drop when Dub started to grab it. He gave me a dirty look that showed a chipped front tooth, caused by a fall from the hayloft when he was showing off as usual. He jumped up and headed for the water bucket beside the washbasin and picked up the wooden dipper. Water spilled from the corners of his mouth and dripped off his chin as he guzzled down a big long drink.
His coughing fit under control, he walked back to the table, jerked his chair back, plopped himself down, picked up his fork and as if nothing out of the ordinary ever happened, he began to eat.
“You look pale, Dub.” I tried to sound as sympathetic as I could be. “Are you okay?”
I looked around when I heard Dad clear his throat and saw a frown that wiped away my grin.
“If I’d wanted to eat with a pig, I’d be out in the hog lot,” Dad said, as he forked a bite of gravy- covered biscuit into his mouth and washed it down with a gulp of black coffee. “It doesn’t take much talent to shovel down food.”
“Sorry,” Dub said pitifully, sounding like he had a mouth full of marbles.
Dad sat up straight in his chair and ran his fingers back through his dark wavy hair. “Your mother’s sure right about one thing. You boys best calm down before you bust a gut. It goes double for you, Dub.”
With a big gulp and raised eyebrows, Dub called up one of his well-practiced hangdog expressions and moaned, “I’m sorry as can be, Dad. I surely am.”
I did not like to see Dub get into trouble. But, if trouble did not slap him upside the head every once in awhile, he would live to entertain himself and most of the time it would be at my expense.
Mom’s nostrils flared as she squinted her eyes and stared at Dub. “Let’s eat in peace now, okay, Son? Lord knows that’s what we need now more than anything.”
Except for a couple of fake coughs and Dub clearing his throat six or eight times, nothing else but some serious eating took place. Dub scooped up the final smear of apple butter on his plate with the last piece of his biscuit. He put his hands on the edge of the table and asked to be excused. He was hoping to push away from the table and get out of the house quickly to avoid any further discussion of Doc and the camping trip.
I shook my head and looked up at the ceiling, knowing his plan would never work.
“No, you can’t,” Dad said as he glanced over at Mom and she nodded back at him.
“How come?” Dub asked softly.
“Because your mother hasn’t had all her say, Dwayne. That’s the reason how come. Go on Elsia, you’ve got the floor.”
Mom looked at me and sighed. “Why the Blue Hole, Tommy? Why there of all places?”
“I’ve got a good reason why I want to go to the Blue Hole,” I said.
Mom looked deep into my eyes. “What if trouble found you up there in that Wilderness? You know how dangerous that country can be. There’d be no way on God’s green earth for you to get help if you got hurt. Camp someplace closer to home.”
While I was debating about what I should say next, Dub jumped into the conversation like a hound dog leading the pack. “Come on, Mom! Me an’ Tommy can take care of our own self. You know we can.”
There was a long silence, during which time Mom looked down at her plate and uttered a groan. Time was running out. I needed to say something convincing and do it quick.
“Well,” I said, as I looked around the room while I tried to think of what might save us.
Like a miracle, Dub blurted out a showstopper. “I’ve got to go, Mom. Tommy promised we’d camp at the Blue Hole all summer long. It’s my last chance ever before school starts.”
Mom threw her hands up in the air. “Okay, but I’ve got a powerful uneasy feeling something’s not right.” Dad, Dub and I scooted up to the edge of our chairs and anxiously waited to hear the reason. After a long pause, Mom said, “It’s ‘cause of a dream I had last night—a strong premonition.”
Oh, no, I said to myself, as my hopes sank. When Mom got one of her ill feelings, or sightings, as I heard her call the mystic occurrences, more times than not, something awful happened.
Everyone knew when she got a sign; it was time to give serious thought to her warning. Doc himself even said if Mom felt something might go wrong a body best watch out, because it probably would. Doc claimed a few people did have those kinds of powers to be able to foresee what might happen in the future, and Mom was one of those who were gifted.
She made a believer of me when she sensed something was wrong at Buzzard Thompson’s house even before Sheriff Johnson found the bodies. Mom was not like a witch or anything. She referred to it as being a gift from the Divine Creator.
“What did you see?” I asked, as I swallowed the lump in my throat, wishing I did not have to know.
She turned her head and stared at the dogwood tree outside the kitchen window, whose leafy branches swayed as if to wave back at her when there was a sudden gust of wind.
“A doll,” she said, without turning her head. “It was hanging in a tree by the edge of a tall bluff.”
“A doll hanging in a tree?” I said.
“Yes,” Mom said. “I heard water crashing over rocks in the river below.”
“That’s not so bad, is it?” I said, thinking if there was nothing more we might be home free.
Mom looked at me and shook her head. “A voice from above warned me not to go any further.” Dub threw his head back and started to act like his cocky self again. “What’s it got to do with us?”
“You boys were standin’ in front of the tree. Pale as a couple of ghosts, eyes wide and faces sweaty.”
Were doomed now, I thought as I looked at Dub and he frowned. We sat quietly for some time while giving our mother’s divine message serious thought and proper respect, as it more than well deserved. However, without a spoken word, we two tough young country boys, who thought we knew everything there was to know about pretty much everything, especially when it came to getting along in the great outdoors, convinced ourselves she could not possibly be right all of the time. This allowed our foolish desire to go to the Blue Hole to win out over Mom’s long-term proven logic. In our infinite wisdom, we were able to break through her spell.
So what could possibly go wrong?
“There’s another good reason besides my promise to Dub,” I said, feeling like a mouse about to get caught in a trap when I saw Mom sit back in her chair and tighten her jaws.
“Just what might that be, Son?” she asked sternly.
I cleared my throat and wiped the sweat away from under my chin with the back of my hand. “I had a horrible dream last night. It was terrible. I’ve got to get rid of those snakes.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said. “What’s that got to do with the camping trip?”
“Doc’s the one told me to do this.” I figured the use of his name right up front would be my best shot. “Remember what he said about me goin’ back to the Blue Hole?” Mom nodded and did not say a word. “He told me to go back to the place where I got bit. He said then I wouldn’t be afraid anymore. There would be no more bad dreams. Doc said I’d be facing my fears. That’s what I must do, he said.”
“Gosh, Tommy, you really think it would help?” Dub said. “If you camped at the Blue Hole with snakes all around?” Dub looked at Mom. “Tommy looked terrible this morning, wild-eyed and soaked with sweat. His face was scrunched up like he’d chomped down on a sour persimmon. He needs something done. That’s for sure. It keeps me worried. I can’t imagine how bad it is for him.”
I could not have hoped for a better reaction from Dub. I could tell by Mom’s expression he had made some serious headway toward helping our cause. When Mom talked to a person about something important, she always looked deep into their eyes. So I leaned forward and took a good long look into her sparkling brown eyes. “If Doc said it might work, I think there’s a good chance it could. Don’t you, Mom?”
“What about the big search for Doc with Uncle Ira’s hounds?” Dub said. “Those trackers would have found him and Lucky for sure, wouldn’t they, Dad? If they could have been found.”
Dad glanced at Mom and smiled. “Dub’s right, Elsia. Ira’s hounds would have sniffed out the slightest trace. I covered all that river country with Ira like we were sweepin’ a carpet. Between us and those dogs, we didn’t leave nary a stone not turned.”
“I can’t believe we’re not goin’,” Dub moaned, as he lowered his head. “Nothin’ can hurt Tommy and me. We’re tough as pine knots.”
“Hold it Dub,” Dad said, raising his voice. “Just hold it right there.”
Oh Lordy, I thought, figuring Dub had gone too far. To my surprise, instead of it being the end of the trail for Dub and I, Dad looked at Mom and said, “Elsia, I know you’re antsy about the boys takin’ this trip. They’re damn near grown men, especially Tommy. Couple more inches and he’ll be tall as me.”
Dub and I looked at one another with our mouths open. Not only had Dad come to our defense, it was the first time I heard him say anything about me being a man.
“Think of it this way, Elsia. If the boys don’t make it back, we’ll save a bundle on food alone.”
Dad folded his arms across his chest and sat back in the chair while he waited for a response. Mom bit her lower lip and looked away.
After a long pause, during which Mom fiddled with her napkin and looked up at the ceiling, probably consulting with a higher power, she turned to Dad and solemnly said, “All right, Dred Benson. You and your boys win. I’ve only got one last thing to say.”
“What’s that, Mother?” Dad said.
“I hope you’re not playin’ a game of chance with the Devil. If something dreadful happens, it’ll be a terrible burden for those of us left alive to pay. This is my final say about it, please be extra careful.”
Chapter Three
I waved good-bye to Dad after he dropped us off at the woods trail that led to the river, and his pickup disappeared around the bend. Dub stirred up a cloud of dust when he did a little dance. “We did it, Tommy!” he yelled. “We’re finally on our way to the Blue Hole.”
He grinned at me with clear, untroubled eyes. I felt sorry for what he did not know.
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and flicked the sweat onto the ground. Up ahead a red fox squirrel, sitting on the cab of an abandoned log truck, chattered at us and shook its bushy tail. I thought about Doc Barnes as I watched the big red scurry up a hickory nut tree and disappear into the forest. I hoped once again my shooting Doc by accident did not have anything to do with his disappearance.
No matter what some folks said about me not being a careful hunter, the shooting wasn’t my fault. When a dead limb breaks loose from a tree, it falls. It was not my fault I was standing under it and it hit the end of my rifle barrel as I started to shoot at a squirrel. The safety was on until I was ready to pull the trigger. What else could I do?
That happened in the early spring, three months ago, and Doc said his head wound healed up completely. He would have told me if it was a bad condition that might cause him to wander off into the woods. Good gosh, the man was a medical doctor for over fifty years. He should know what’s dangerous and what’s not.
“What are you thinking about?” Dub asked.
“Nothing.” I remembered how one day, out of the blue, poor old Jake Deacon wandered off and a week later they found him face down in the river.
The squawk of a blue jay up ahead filled the air with a warning sound to the rest of the wood’s creatures danger was approaching. Once again, I thought about me being responsible for my brother on a trip to the Blue Hole. I was the person who would get blamed if something bad happened to him. I shuddered.
“Come on, let’s go.” I picked up the pack and my single-shot .22 rifle. We hurried down the narrow dirt road toward the abandoned Thompson house.
Dub was taking in everything around us. He kicked a pinecone along in front of him and even whistled, “Old Joe Clark,” a popular Ozark fiddle tune. He whacked a leaf on an oak tree sprout growing alongside the road with the tip of his fishing rod and knocked it off onto the ground.
I smiled when Dub looked at me and laughed, even though inside I felt hollow like a rotten log. All I could think of was my having to go inside the Thompson place to look for Doc. Maybe I won’t have to, I thought. In one of my dreams, Doc was standing on the front porch waiting for me to come along and take him home.
Even though I would have felt bad about sneaking off if Mom told Dub and I we could not go on our camping trip at the Blue Hole, I would have taken off in the middle of the night. That’s how desperate I was to stop the nightmares and how bad I wanted to find Doc.
Dub looked at me and squinted his eyes. “Aren’t we close to the Thompson place?”
He ran up beside me when I did not answer and asked the question again.
“Yeah. Yeah.” I was only half paying attention.
“Look, Tommy,” Dub said, when we reached the edge of the clearing. “There it is up ahead. See the broken window. Didn’t that used to be where the Thompson kids slept? Wasn’t that their room— before, you know, before Buzzard turned on his family with the shotgun?”
“How would I know?” I was plenty put out with him, the silly kid. I almost turned right around and apologized. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” that’s what I should have said. I felt sick at my stomach when I did not see Doc standing on the front porch. I would have to go inside and if I did not find him there, the next place to look would be at the Conner brothers’ cabin and then Leatherwood Cave as a last resort. The thought of crawling back inside a dark cavern to search for Doc was about more than I could bear. What if I found him in there and he was dead? I might have a heart attack.
Another thing bothered me about spending the night camped out on a gravel bar was a lot of strange things happened during a full moon night.
“What’s wrong, Tommy? You look awful. Are you sick or something?”
“I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.”
I thought about Doc telling me fear was my worst enemy, when I told him about the snake dreams after I got bit. “Stand up straight and stare fear right in the face. Nothing can stop you. How do you think I’ve got by all these years?” Doc said.
I shaded my eyes to block out the sun, and stared at the run-down old Thompson house, trying to work up enough nerve to go inside. I could not believe what had happened to the place since I was there last.
I forced myself to step over the fallen gate, and walked into the front yard. A tangle of grapevines and sumac bushes were the only things keeping the rotten rail fence from falling to the ground. Mud dauber nests lined the overhang under a tarpaper roof that sagged in the middle like a swayback mule. It looked as if the next strong wind might blow the place down.
A shudder passed though me when I thought about what my friend Doodle and I walked in on the next day after the shooting. I would never forget the little red print of a child’s hand on the white kitchen wall. How crazy must old Buzzard be by now if he’s still alive? I wondered. Living out in the woods like a wild animal, there wouldn’t be much else to think about....other than what he did to his family. Most people thought he was dead, except Doc, which made me wonder if Buzzard was in contact with him at one time or another since after night.
The back of my shirt was soaked with sweat, yet I felt a chill. I could not believe I had come back to this place. I hated being here worse than anything. You’ve got no choice, I reminded myself, as I took a few more steps toward the front door.
“What?” I jerked my head around when I realized Dub was shaking my arm.
“What’s the matter? Is something wrong you’re not telling me about?” He squinted his eyes and stared at me as he ran his fingers back through curly blond hair. He spit on the ground through the wide crack in his front teeth. His tongue was a blue color from eating a handful of blackberries he picked along the side of the rocky old log road.
I took a deep breath. “I felt sick for a little bit. Probably the heat. I’ll be okay.”
“You look terrible. I hope you’re okay.”
I pulled a red bandanna from the hip pocket of my jeans and poured some water from a green, wax- coated canvas bag my Uncle Ira brought home from the war. The water from the dripping wet rag felt cool and soothing as I rubbed the back of my neck.
I could see inside an old log corncrib that sat back by the edge of the woods, about fifty yards or so past where a good-sized garden had been. The rim of a straw hat had fallen down onto the shoulders of a scarecrow dressed in raggedy red long johns. With the front door swinging wide open on its hinges, I saw the crib was empty, so there would be no need for me to tromp through the snaky weeds to look inside.
“Dub,” I said as I took a deep breath, “I’ve got to go inside the house. You don’t have to come. I’ve got no choice though.”
Dub’s mouth fell open. “Are you crazy? What on earth do you want to do that for?”
“Got to make sure Doc’s not inside.” I pointed at the porch with the rifle barrel. “He was standing out front right there in a lot of my dreams.”
“I don’t see him, do you? He’s not there, so let’s go.” Dub grabbed me by the arm.
“It don’t mean he’s not inside. I’ve got to go see for myself.”
It dawned on me I scribbled the names of the places I would look for Doc on the list I made for what to take on the camping trip. I left it lying on my bed at home. There was no good reason why I wrote them down, but I did anyway. Mom will find it for sure and when she sees I am going to the killer hole, she’ll be more upset than ever.
The killer hole was what she called Leatherwood Cave after one of her friend’s twelve and thirteen- year-old boys went in to explore one day and never came out. Even though ten years had passed, to Mom it was as if they disappeared only yesterday.
I could tell by the wild look in Dub’s eyes he was not about to take another step toward the house unless I dragged him.
“Look at those nasty things,” Dub said, pointing up at the sky. “I don’t like turkey buzzards circlin’ in so close. The idea they only eat dead things bothers me.”
I patted him on the shoulder and started toward the fallen-down old shack. The soft ripe berries of a pokeberry bush made a red streak across the back of my hand. I jerked my hand away as a blackberry vine grabbed hold of my pant leg and tore a hole in my blue jeans.
I pulled back the bolt and looked into the chamber of the single-shot 22 rifle to make sure it was still loaded. “Get out of here, copperheads!” When the echo of my voice faded away down the holler, I picked up a rusted hubcap and sailed it into the side of the house. A half-broken pane of glass in a second-story window jarred loose from the casing and shattered on the rocky ground. Having caused enough ruckus to let everything within a half-mile know I was coming, I walked on.
“Why are you doing this, Tommy?” Dub yelled, when I stepped up onto the front porch. “You said you’d never go back in that house again. What will I tell Mom?”
When I looked over my shoulder, he turned away. As I stared at the front door, I felt like my feet had grown into the ground. As if I were still the fearless guy I used to be, I forced myself to walk into the living room.
“Doc. It’s me, Tommy.” Except for a broken- down army cot, tipped over on its side and a cane- bottom chair leaned up against the wall beside a window filled with panes of jagged glass, the room was empty. The only sound was the buzz of a horsefly circling overhead and the pounding of my heart pulsing blood through my veins.
I stared at a red shotgun hull lying on the floor of the living room in front of a stairway door that led up to the second story where the Thompson kids used to sleep. I waited for what seemed like five minutes before I took another step.
Nothing seemed different from when we were there before, except the stench was gone. A mixture of blood and gunpowder ripened by the hot August sun, that smelled as if someone cooked blood on the stove and let the pot boil dry. The pungent odor made us gag and we ran out of the house into the front yard.
Now I wiped the sweat from my eyes and looked at the closed door across the room.
Goose bumps covered my arms. My heart pounded even harder. I knew I had to open the door and climb the stairs. I wanted to run away. I was so scared I felt numb.
“Doc?” I yelled again, and my voice trembled. “It’s me, Tommy.”
When he did not answer, I walked up to the door and turned the knob. The rusted hinges creaked as I slowly opened the heavy wooden door. I looked up the narrow dust-covered steps and half dozen big brown spiders scampered across a maze of silky white cobwebs that flapped up and down like angels’ wings. I froze, not wanting to go any farther. I have to do it. Doc might be up there injured and need my help. I stopped and listened when I put my foot on the first step. I thought I heard something in the living room, outside the door.
It’s my imagination, I said to myself when I did not hear it again. Using the barrel of my 22 rifle, I knocked the cobwebs out of the way, and hurried up I was surprised to see the entire upper floor was all one big room. Except for five mattresses on the floor and a little green dress hanging on a nail beside an open window, the room was empty. A torn lace curtain flapped in the wind. The goose bumps on my arms came back and I hurried down the stairs.
“Are you here, Doc? It’s me, Tommy.” I walked across the living room and stepped into the kitchen. My mouth was so dry I could not make spit. I licked my lips when I saw the water bucket sitting on the table by the back door. I pulled back the firing pin on the .22 rifle when I thought I heard something in the closet behind the sink. I curled my finger around the trigger and took a deep breath. I stepped to one side for a better look and saw a brown stain that looked like dried blood. I felt faint and thought I would pass out.
I whirled around quickly when I heard someone behind me moan. With angry eyes that stared right through me, and the front of his overalls covered in blood, there stood Buzzard Thompson. Without hesitation he shouldered a shotgun, pumped a shell into the chamber and pulled the trigger. There was a violent explosion, fire flew from the end of the barrel and I was blown back into the wall.
Or so I thought. I did not feel any pain.
I looked down at my chest but I did not see any blood. There was not even so much as a button missing from my shirt.
“Back up or I’ll shoot,” I shouted, as I raised the .22 rifle and pointed it right between his eyes. He lunged forward, I pulled the trigger, glass shattered in the mirror above the big stone fireplace and I imagined a tall, rugged looking man, with a thick matted beard, groaned and fell to the floor.
“What was that noise?” Dub yelled, when he heard the shot.
Everything became blurry as if I were looking through a smoke-filled room. My legs were weak. Something brushed the back of my neck and I stumbled toward the front door.
Chapter Four
“What happened?” Dub yelled, as I flew off the porch and landed on my hands and knees among a patch of blackberry vines with stickers that dug into my bare arms, tearing the flesh.
Something was on top of my head, screeching and pulling my hair. I hit at it, whatever it was, and saw a flying squirrel sail through the air, landing on the low hanging branch of a mulberry tree. I looked down at my chest again, still expecting to be sickened by a bloody mess, maybe even to see my heart beating.
There was nothing. My chest looked perfectly all right. I was not all right though. Not in the head I wasn’t. On top of everything else, the meltdown that caused me to do battle with the ghost of Buzzard Thompson put me right on the edge. As badly as I wanted to jump up and run back to the spot where Dad dropped us off, I had to go on. I owed it to Doc.
Dub looked down at me. “Come on, Tommy. Let’s go. Let’s get away from this place right now.”
When he sprinted down the path and into the woods, I jumped up and ran after him. It was a quarter-mile or better before he stopped. We were both out of breath. I unscrewed the cap and held out the canteen. Usually I would have drunk first, now I wanted to be good. I wanted to be a better big brother. I wanted to live in such a way I would not have to think ever again about the little red handprint on the white kitchen wall or the green dress hanging lonesome in the upstairs bedroom.
Dub wiped his mouth and handed back the canteen. “What did you shoot at?”
I took a long drink and looked away. “I wanted to make sure the rifle worked, that’s all. Never hurts to check.”
I barely remembered pulling the trigger. It was as if someone else fired the shot and I saw it happen from a distance. It scared me. My heart almost jumped out of my chest.
Dub walked around in front of me and stared into my eyes. “You’re not acting like yourself, Tommy. You’re making me jumpy.”
I looked up at the sky and wanted to say, hey Little Brother, you talk about jumpy, you should be inside my skin. Why should I? There was enough trouble already. He would ask a bunch more questions and I had no answers.
I took another swig of water, screwed the cap back on and thought about the next place I must look for Doc. I did not like it one bit. I knew the Conner brothers were questioned about Doc’s disappearance, but I did not hear anyone say they actually went inside of their cabin. Could be they were too afraid of making them mad, I thought. Everyone knew those two were as rough as cobs.
Did not come to town without starting a fight. I reached in my pocket and jiggled the .22 cartridges to make sure they were still there.
“I’m going to rest for a couple minutes.” I walked over beside a big black oak tree and lay down on a thick green carpet of moss. “I need to catch my breath. Need to think a couple of things out.”
Still panting heavily, Dub ambled over to a lonesome pine tree and plopped down on a soft bed of needles.
I was having a hard time keeping my mind from running wild and stopping my determination to turn back cold in its tracks—not because of the spooky places I had to go look for Doc, but other things could be dangerous too. What if we met up with Buzzard Thompson on the trail? What would a couple more killings mean to him? The thought of spending the night camped out on the gravel bar was bothering me a lot, knowing full well those same cottonmouths that bit me the summer before would be swimming around in the Blue Hole right behind our tent.
So what if my friend Doodle would tease me if I chickened out and went back home. So what if Dub was disappointed—we could camp on the river another day. Mom would be happy as everything if she heard the front screen door bang shut and saw Dub and I walk into the kitchen.
“What are you thinkin’ about now, Tommy? I hope it’s not about goin’ back home.”
I squinted my eyes when a ray of sunlight sneaked through the thick green layer of oak leaves my head and I glanced over at him. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I didn’t think so.” He smiled as he picked up a pinecone and tossed it at a rotted-out tree stump, and the cone disappeared inside of the hole in the center. “You’ve never broken a promise before. No reason you’d start now, I guess.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Sometimes Dub was too smart for his own good.
“We need to get a move on. The days wastin’ an’ the Blue Hole’s waitin’.”
“Okay, you’re right.” I stood up and brushed off a clump of green moss clinging to the side of my pant leg. “You’re right. We’ve hung around too long.”
“What was all the twitchin’ about? Did you go to sleep? Was you havin’ another bad dream?”
“I didn’t go to sleep. I was resting my eyes.”
“Yeah, okay.” He hit me on the butt with the tip of the fishing rod. “Know what I’m doin’ first when we get to the river? Set some traps. That’s what I’m doin’. You can help me if you want.” Dub pulled his red imitation Swiss army knife out of his pocket and showed me the saw blade. “I can do anything with this weapon. Even cut down trees.”
“Traps?” Mom’s warning still ran through my head and I felt uneasy. “What kind of traps?”
“What we’ll do is tie some fishin’ line to the willow branches. Anybody walks into it will think it’s a spider web and they’ll scream.”
“That sounds okay.” I thought about how if I was lucky I would find Doc before we got to the river. I could turn around and go home without anyone calling me a chicken. Plus I would be a hero. Most of my problems would be solved and I would have Doc back to fish with and talk to.
“We’ll also hang some tin cans with rocks in them from the branches. They’ll make a lot of noise, too. Right, Tommy?”
“Yeah, right.” I shook my head in disgust because I was even having such a conversation.
“We’ll lay a rope around the tent to keep the snakes away. You’ll feel safer then, I’m sure.”
“Better than nothing,” I said, but the thought of camping within a stone’s throw of the driftwood pile where I got bit the summer before made me nervous. I slapped myself upside the head with the flat of my hand, thinking: I’ve got to find Doc. Got to break the spell.
“You’re scaring me worse all the time, Tommy. Now you’ve hit yourself upside the head. Half the time you act like I’m not even here.”
“Let’s go. Just walk. No talk. Okay?” I grabbed the heavy pack, picked up the rifle and headed down the trail with Dub close behind.
“That’s okay with me. I don’t have much else to say.” We only went a couple hundred yards when he began talking to me again. “Too bad old Trouser isn’t with us. I’d feel a lot safer. Wouldn’t you?”
What a silly question, I thought as I took a couple of quick steps to put some space between us. Dub was right about, Trouser. The old dog would have ripped the ears off of anyone that messed with us. I would give everything I own to have him back, I thought. Knowing full well I could not have expected any dog to live more than fifteen years. Part of what bothered me was the way he died.
“Let me know if you want me to carry the heavy pack,” Dub said as he ran up beside me, and smiled when I nodded my head.
It was obvious he was trying his level best not to irritate me. He knew if I had a choice it would be Doodle and me on a camping trip instead of him. Which was kind of sad, but a person can’t help the way they feel when it comes to who is his best friend.
“You’re doing okay.” I wondered if I used to act like him when I was twelve years old.
Dub hurried up beside me, nudged my arm with his shoulder and smiled. He could not stand to bring up the rear for fear something might drop on him from a tree and I would not know he was in trouble until it was too late. That and it was like torture if he thought someone was mad at him. “I’ll be okay now we’re away from Buzzard’s place. I about jumped out of my skin while you were inside the house.”
“You know what happened back there?” I felt guilty about the way I treated him for no good reason at all. “The reason I fired the rifle?”
Dub ran up in front of me and turned around, so he could walk backwards and look at me while I talked. “What happened?” He stumbled over a limb, but did not miss a step.
“My mind played a big trick on me,” I said sheepishly. “I thought I saw Buzzard point a shotgun at me and pull the trigger. It still seems so real, I can’t believe it didn’t happen.”
“I would have passed plumb out.” “Yeah, well, I think for a few seconds I did. When I thought I saw him raise his shotgun, I shouldered the rifle and put a bullet between Buzzard’s eyes, except he wasn’t there. It was a reflection in the mirror.”
“You imagined it. What a humdinger of a daydream.”
“I even thought I saw fire fly from the end of the shotgun barrel. It was awful. Then a stupid little flying squirrel got tangled up in my hair. That’s when I ran outside.”
“That’s scary.” Dub slapped his hand against his chest and took a deep breath. “What did Buzzard look like?”