Excavation

Chapter 28

Felix Emmanuel didn’t hear the shiny gray-steel van pull into the lot outside the mine office that morning; he’d spent the entire evening there, sleeping little because of the storm. But he did hear the van doors slam, and the men talking.

He peered over the bottom sill of the front window, just enough to see the Nole Company insignia on the van door and the block lettering below it: GEOLOGY. Suddenly Doris Parkey moaned under him.

He crouched and grabbed the woman by the neck. “Hush! You want me fired?”

Doris giggled and pulled his hand down over her belly. “Dammit, woman!” Mr. Emmanuel slapped her hard, clamping his hand over her mouth as she whimpered. “I’ve had it! Another word and I’ll…” He was at a loss. What would he do?

Then he realized she was looking at him in a very strange way. Her eyes wide, almost pop-eyed. Her lips trembling, losing spittle into his hand.

And then she was struggling, clawing to get away from him. Her filthy thighs and feet squirmed around him, he was punched in the face, and suddenly she was free, breaking through the back door of the office and climbing the embankment into the trees. Naked, her flabby buttocks quivering grotesquely.

To Mr. Emmanuel’s dismay, he found himself aroused. He gritted his teeth and began jerking his clothes on. He could hear the men walking toward the front door.

Ben Taylor held out the coffee cup with both hands; his fingers were still trembling. “Here, Reed. Best drink up.”

Reed received the cup into waiting palms. He avoided looking at Ben, staring past the edge of the cup as he raised it carefully to his lips and drank. He sniffed, then gasped a mouthful of air. He could hardly breathe.

“Yeah,” Ben mumbled. “Hell of a thing.”

Reed had driven back to his uncle’s place in the middle of the night with the pieces of Jake Parkey’s body. He didn’t even know if he’d gotten it all. It had been dark and he’d had to feel around the area, picking up dead wood and mud clumps and anything else that seemed to feel right to the touch, his stomach wrenching anytime he felt something that seemed particularly soft or moist. He’d paused now and then to catch his breath; try to calm himself down. It took him hours. Like some bizarre fraternity rite, bananas and syrup.

The ground had been torn apart for yards around. It must have been quite a struggle.

Now Jake was out on the back porch in two garbage bags. They were waiting for the sheriff and the coroner from Four Corners.

“I don’t want you going up there no more.” Reed looked up, and realized Ben’s hand was on his shoulder, one finger touching Reed’s neck, as if giving him direction. “It ain’t safe up there, son.”

Reed just stared at him. His eyes were burning. His uncle’s face went slightly out of focus every few seconds. “I don’t want to show disrespect, but I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said. “Dammit, Reed! Just look at yourself! Sneezin’ an’ wheezin’. Eyes so wet and hot lookin’. You look worse than any sick hound dog I ever had! You’re killin’ yourself with this; that ole house’ll wait ‘til stuff dies down around here.”

“No,” Reed said slowly, with no feeling.

“You look damned feverish, son, like your eyes were burning your skin. It scares me.”

“I don’t think it’s going to wait. It isn’t going to wait for anything, Ben. It wants me there and I think I’d better do what it wants. What you can’t face… it controls you.”

“It? You don’t mean that bear?”

“Maybe.” He looked up at his uncle earnestly, and his uncle sighed. Reed had never seen the man look so sad.

“You know, you look just like you did when you were a boy and were confused about something, thought you’d done something wrong, and trying so hard to make things right.”

“I don’t really know what it is.”

Ben stared at him awhile, as if musing, then, “Your daddy ain’t up there, Reed.”

Reed looked up in surprise; a chuckle almost escaped. “Why, Ben. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Don’t you now?” He looked out the front window. “Wonder what’s keeping the sheriff so long… you been acting like you do, if I read your face right.

“Matter of fact, I’m beginning to think I believe in ‘em, too.”

There was a knock at the door and the sheriff pushed his way in, an old man who must be the coroner tagging along behind. The sour feeling in Reed’s stomach was fading, but he wished he could talk to Ben and find out what he knew.

The geologists from the main office crowded around the sinkhole, charts in hand. Mr. Emmanuel tried to talk to them about the cave-in, but they were ignoring him, in fact wouldn’t even let him near Willy’s sinkhole.

“Damn… this is impossible.” Crouskey, the head geologist, sighed and scratched at the chart with the edge of his pencil.

A younger man strode up to the group. “I can’t find any possible source for that water, unless there’s an old storage tank buried somewhere here that they’ve ruptured.”

“I see no traces of metal here, Walt, just a clean break into the rock, as if we had an underground spring, despite what the charts say. That’s no buried tank.”

The men stared at the water in silence.

“Mr. Crouskey, I was thinking maybe some of my men could dig around the hole,” Felix Emmanuel babbled eagerly. “Maybe we could cut into the channel that’s bringing the water, expose it a little.”

Crouskey didn’t bother facing Emmanuel to reply. “You won’t be helping us at all on this one, Emmanuel. Or any other, once the main office gets my report. Just look at yourself. You hardly make a good local representative for this company.”

Mr. Emmanuel touched his face. He was sweating… sweating like a pig. And he was dirty, unkempt… filthy. He stared into the sinkhole. The water was moving, ever so slightly, barely visible. And unusually milky around the edges, like cloud, or… what was it?… fleece. He thought to call their attention to it, but did not.

Charlie went into the store early, but left the “Closed” sign out. At noon the sign was still out. By two that afternoon it was still out, and Charlie had drunk almost a quart of whiskey.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten drunk. Forty-two, forty-three… something like that. A prize horse had died… William Tell was his name, and you couldn’t find a finer thoroughbred a hundred miles from the Creeks. Mattie didn’t speak to him for a week—she never could abide a drunk. He supposed that Puritan streak in her was actually one of the reasons he’d married her—he figured she’d keep him out of most kinds of trouble. And she had.

But he’d never been in so much trouble as now, and the only bit of Mattie he had left was a few pictures, the lace doilies on all the furniture at home, and that blend of sweet gum and lilac smells that never seemed to leave the house, though it had no reason to be there. He really had no reason to believe anything out of the ordinary was happening in the Creeks; he’d been spooked that day in the woods, and later when they were hunting the bear, but he’d never seen anything that couldn’t be explained eventually.

Charlie burped and the amber liquid burned his throat. Damn, if he didn’t have the most cool-headed, practical sensibility! Here everybody was seeing things, unexplainable things… but not him. Doris Parkey and Hector Pierce had both seen a woman with flaming hair. Now they were both crazy, God knows, but it was kind of odd that two people would be sharin’ the same kind of craziness. And Joe Manors, about as sensible a man as he’d ever met, had seen a dead girl floating a good three feet and more off the ground. And here Ben Taylor, his best friend in this world, had sworn he’d seen Reed up on the Big Andy a good four hours before Reed could’ve gotten in on the train. And now Ben was acting so skittish about things, jumpin’ at shadows, lookin’ over his shoulder. And the way Inez had been looking the past few days, that quick, nervous movement in her gaze… everybody was changing.

Except good old level-headed Charlie.

He looked down at the bottle, then around at the darkened store where… he was hiding. He was scared to death.

He owed those people something… his daddy, his granddaddy, they all did… for what happened. He looked again at the bottle.

A face there. Reflected in the glass. Looking over his shoulder.

Pale cheeks and ragged hair and blue lips and dark shadows moving under the skin and white white teeth oh God God…

He jumped up and sprawled over the chair trying to get around to the other side of the counter. Knocking displays everywhere, breaking up displays that had been the same way, nary a bottle sold, since his daddy’s time. Dust and glass and his own spittle flying. He would have screamed, but the drink in him kept the screams traveling around inside, not sure which way was out.

He hit the far wall of the store and jerked around, his shoulder blades rubbing the old Doctor Scholl’s poster behind him. He blinked the tears away, trying to get a good look at the shadow floating across the room toward him.

Nothing. He saw nothing. He choked on a sob.

And that was when Charlie Simpson decided to start doing something about whatever was happening to his town. He watched as the rest of the whiskey joined the spilled tonics and elixirs pooling in front of the counter, the dark and amber liquids widening into a miniature flood.

He would start with the sinkhole at the Nole Company mine.

Joe Manors stood at his window in bright green underwear, holding the whiskey bottle nonchalantly on his cocked hip. He thought about what might happen if Inez were to pass by his window at the moment and glance up. Wouldn’t that be something? She’d toss him out on his ear… or maybe she’d comment on his pretty legs. He did have pretty legs.

He watched the line of woods bordering the old townsite. Most of the fog was gone, but mist still clung to trees here and there. He felt cold, but he was too drunk to put his pants back on.

He’d seen the little girl three or four times the past couple of days. Once out in the field behind the boarding house, staring at him and grinning with those teeth that had a hint of green in them, even at that distance. And floating at least three feet off the ground, her damp hair drifting out from her head. He’d seen her again out by the willows bordering the creek, staring at him out of the boughs of one of the larger trees. And again standing on the roof, her feet not quite touching the shingles.

And once in his bathwater, and twice in the water in his sink—just the head, floating with bloated cheeks and the long brown hair wrapped around the neck. Now he couldn’t take a bath, or wash; he couldn’t even stand the thought of drinking water, imagining bits and pieces of her drifting out of the tap.

So he had to drink whiskey, lots of it, if he was going to stay alive. Maybe he’d have to start taking baths in it, too, and washing his clothes in it. Everybody would. He didn’t know if they could afford that much whiskey, or if Charlie Simpson had that much in stock, even if he’d sell them that much. Or maybe he’d just give some to everybody in town as a kind of public service. He grinned drunkenly; the idea seemed to make some sense.

Somehow, he knew it was that kid he’d left back in Cincinnati. He never should have done it. He’d really loved that child. And she was never going to let him go.

He put the bottle on the windowsill and, not bothering to dress, started down to Hector Pierce’s room. He’d sit up with him, listening as careful as he could. The old man was babbling all the time, and something important was being said. That old man was more scared than any of them… he must know what was really going on in Simpson Creeks.

Hector had been dreaming. It had been a nice dream. About his mother, or some other woman. Not enough softness in his life, in the Creeks, or anywhere else for that matter. Not enough softness at all. But the woman had been whispering to him, making him her baby, her boy-child, and that had been quite all right.

He’d gone into the mines at seventeen. Twice he’d almost married, but both times some other man took her.

Not enough softness. Not enough joy. Pretty soon it looked like all his chances were past.

Until now.

He groaned and reached up. But she was just out of his reach. It hurt him… hurt him bad. There shouldn’t be so much pain in the world. Shouldn’t be that way. She knew about pain. And vengeance, too.

Pretty soon everything’d be all right, and everybody’d be all together, in the same place.

Hector’s face felt drenched, and for a moment he thought the time had already come.

“The sheriff was pretty mad when he left.” Ben stroked his empty cup and stared at the back of his store fifty yards in front of the house. There might be a few customers waiting, but he wouldn’t be opening today; he might not be opening for some time. “See, he’s never had no trouble like this, Reed. Oh, occasionally some youngsters’ll get rowdy, or some man’ll start shootin’ at his wife, but nothing like what happened to Jake. These people are his responsibility, and he don’t like awful things happening to ‘em that he can’t explain to people.” Ben looked at Reed, who mirrored his pose on the front porch. “I told Martha and the kids to stay a few extra days at her sister’s in Four Corners. I don’t want ‘em here.” Reed looked at him and nodded. His eyes seemed swollen, his lips cracked. Ben thought of ordering Reed to the doctor’s, even dragging him if he had to, but suddenly thought maybe he was going to need Reed with him, to handle whatever it was they were going to have to handle over the next day or so.

“No sense not talking about it, is there, son?” Ben gazed at his nephew, trying to read his reaction. “We both know something awful’s going on here. Audra Larson was scared half to death the other night, and she told me she could swear it was you.”

“It wasn’t.”

Ben grinned weakly. “I believe you, but damn, what is it? Something bad’s out there. That bear… and we’re both thinking it ain’t just no ordinary bear… but even more than that. I do believe I’m considering witches and goblins, Reed… I do believe so.”

Reed just stared at him for a while. Ben watched his face. He was waiting for his nephew to cry any minute. The way the lines formed around the young man’s eyes and mouth… good God, Ben thought, maybe he’s going crazy!

“It’s an angry thing out there,” Reed said softly, but it made Ben feel better, just to hear the clarity in his nephew’s voice and choice of words.

“Now that it is.”

“They say anger stays behind in a place; I’ve read that.”

“I’ve read that, too.” Ben looked at him anxiously, lips parted to interrupt his nephew if the boy started to say too much, if he went too far.

“How angry could my father be, Ben? You knew him as well as…”

“Reed.”

“How angry?”

Ben wet his lips and looked back at his store, and in one sweeping gaze took in the rest of the town. “I shoulda done something… shoulda made those Nole bigwigs pay… something,”

“There’s a lot more I didn’t do, either. A lot more.”

“I don’t want you back there, Reed! Now listen to me… you and I, we can go join Martha and the kids, wait just a little while, and then I’ll go back up there with you.”

“There were a lot of things that didn’t get done. And those things aren’t going to wait.”

Ben looked at the boy, suddenly overwhelmed with love. And pride. And fear. He might lose him; after all this time… he might lose him again. He turned his head, looking up at Big Andy so Reed couldn’t see his tears. He was dizzy for a moment; it looked as if the mountain were leaning forward.

But it was just the shadows spreading out from the trees, the sun dropping unusually fast today, it seemed.

“It’s getting dark, son.”

Hector Pierce gasped once on his bed, shuddering like a beached fish on the pale, shiny sheets. Joe Manors listened from a chair at the foot of the bed. For hours he had been waiting rather self-righteously for some explanation from the old man, and he had received none.

Hector coughed and sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes bulging, his head turned slightly toward the window as if he was listening for something in the distance.

“You’re not going nowhere,” Joe said, walking over to the side of the bed and tucking in the sheets.

The old man looked at him then, clutching the front of the miner’s shirt, still smudged with coal, pulling Joe down to ear level. The pressure on his collar began to choke Joe. In a panic he struggled with the old man’s clenched hands, but for some reason he was unable to break the hold.

“That boy… he might drown… maybe get eat by them terrible, terrible… teeth…” the old man gasped into his ear.

Joe broke the grip and backed away sputtering.

“What boy, you old fool? Ain’t no boy ‘round here!”

“Why that… Reed boy… the one what stayed in the woods…”

“Old fool…” Joe sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for his bottle.