Blue Hole Back Home: A Novel (17 page)

“What’s eating him?” L. J. asked. At least he didn’t ask about what might be eating me.

“You know,” I whispered to him, “for a real smart guy, you don’t notice too much.”

He ignored me the rest of the climb, though we kept close together, our arms and legs pumping hand over hand, pulling us up, our legs dragging us the final flat of the path. We reached the Clearing at the same time.

Side by side, we stopped there at the head of the trail and stared.

And then, side by side, we broke into a run.

Smoke was pouring from Emerson’s truck cab.

21
An X Marked the Spot

I reached the truck first and peered into the passenger’s-side window to see what was causing the smoke. Two sticks were crossed at right angles and bound with blackberry vine. Flames leapt up from them.

I swung my wet towel through the open window at the thing, and L. J.’s towel followed close behind mine. The fire suffocated under wet terry cloth and mud. We fell against the truck, both of us holding our chests.

With the sleeve of his T-shirt, L. J. wiped the sweat from his nose and pushed his horn-rims back into place. “What in God’s name was that?”

I unpeeled my towel and his from the seat, both of them charred and in pieces. He picked up the bound sticks.

“L. J., don’t tell. Okay?”

“
What
? Why not?”

“Just … don’t.”

“You don’t expect your brother will perceive there’s been some alteration to his upholstery? Be realistic, Turtle.”

“The truck’s in bad shape. Maybe he’ll—Big Dog’s not here yet to sit on it even … Okay, yeah. He’ll notice. Just don’t.”

The others were emerging from the woods.

“You win,” I said loudly to L. J., and picked up a tape from the pile on the floor where Emerson stored them. “We’ll listen to Little River Band on the way home.” I edged away from the cab, and without meeting Em’s eye moved toward the bed.

“Hey, Turtle.” Emerson grabbed my arm. The air was heavy with heat and gas and burnt cloth.

“Hey, Em.”

“You got something to tell me?”

“Me?”

He nodded toward the seat. Big Dog, her chubby hind hips needing Emerson’s lift to mount the passenger seat, had her front end strained forward, her nose in the burn, and was sniffing and whining.

“What, that?” I asked.

“Yeah. That.”

L. J. stood to one side. “I told you he’d notice.”

Jimbo and Sanna were just reaching the head of the trail that opened onto the Clearing.

“Not everybody needs to see it, Em,” I pleaded. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“What, you didn’t think I’d see a cross charbroiled on my vinyl?”

“It’s just an X.”

“It’s a cross.”

“It’s nothing but an X.
Now
who’s being overdramatic? L. J., what do you say it is?” I demanded.

L. J. raised one eyebrow at me. “It’s a cross.”

I shrugged. “So what if it is?”

“If it is—and it most decidedly is,” L. J. pronounced, “well, then—” but he never finished.

Jimbo and Farsanna approached the truck.

I shook my head at Emerson. “Don’t mention it to her—”

“Why not?” he demanded. “How come you’re so all-fired bent on not telling anybody anything?”

“How come you’re so nasty with that tone of voice? I just don’t think anybody needs to jump to conclusions is all.”

“Look, enough fun and games here. I’m saying we got to tell someone about all this. We’ve been kidding ourselves that all this didn’t mean anything.”

Jimbo elbowed his way between us, and we both fell suddenly silent. “By all means, club, maul, or mangle each other,” Bo offered, “but just relocate y’all’s family feud to somewhere I ain’t so likely to starve standing up.”

We were all in the truck but Farsanna, and she was just swinging in when Bobby Welpler slipped out from the path that led to the Hole into the clearing with Mort.

I mouthed at L. J., “So if Mort’s here … then who?”

“I know,” he mouthed back.

“So who could’ve … lit those sticks? Did they loop up here and back down?”

L. J. shook his head and his shoulders twitched up and back down—it was the closest I ever saw to his admitting that he didn’t know.

Mort tipped sideways to whisper something to Welp, and the two of them laughed a little too hard and too loud, like people do when nothing’s particularly funny. Mort had left his gun in his truck, but he retrieved it now and caressed its long, shiny barrel like he’d missed it and needed to make up for lost time.

Then, looking up, he let out a whistle. “Looky there, Bob, it’s Turtle’s
friend
up there in the truck.”

I didn’t turn my head.

“Or should I say
Jimbo’s
friend? Hey, Bob, looky how fine them black apples is ripening up this season.”

Farsanna’s leg, which had frozen just in the process of leaping up and over into the truck, must’ve failed her just then. She dropped back down to the ground.

Jimbo stood up in the truck bed, his face already pulped blue.

Mort swung his square-column legs up into the cab of his own truck. “Lordy, Bob, would you look at that? Mm-
mmm
! Ain’t saying I’d keep me a black cow of my own, y’understand now. But I swear I might could be talked into borrowin’ theirs for a good time.”

I remember Mort’s mouth making the shapes for the sounds as much as I recollect the words the sounds made: his jaw dropping and rising, dropping and rising onto his chest, where his neck ought to have been.

Jimbo was out of the truck then and on the ground, my brother right beside him.

Barricading himself in with the driver’s-side door and waving for Bobby to join him, Mort reared back to deliver his finishing touch: “I tell you what, Welpler, that there girl is put together nearly as good as your momma!”

Welp’s snicker strangled on itself. Already trotting to jump in Mort’s cab, Bobby Welpler stopped where he was.

“Shoot, Welpler, don’t get no ideas to stick up for your old woman, now, just because she lies around the house buck naked. Got me a look—no thanks to choir boy there—and,
son
, I’m saying your momma, especially when she ain’t got no clothes on, is some kind of something. Woman could teach the new girl here a few lessons!”

Bobby Welpler’s pink face went purple, the acne across his nose a mountain range on a topographical map. His fists sprang up, small and gnarly. He swung at Mort.

Mort reached out one meaty arm and locked the heel of his hand on Welp’s forehead, so that Welp’s swings, and even his kicks, whiffed into the air. Mort laughed and looked at us to be sure we saw that Bobby Welpler was crying. With a snort of disgust, Mort pitched Welp aside.

Welp swung around again. One hand whipping his knife from his pocket, Welp threw himself, blade first, at Mort Beckwith. Who just laughed and pinioned Welp by the wrists.

Jimbo stormed toward them, and by the rage in Bo’s eyes, I knew for sure what was going to happen: Jimbo would pulverize Mort.

Mort, reared back and, laughing, released Welp. He lumbered back to his driver’s seat, motioning to Welp, “C’mon.” He revved his engine.

But Jimbo did what I could not have guessed. He lifted Bobby Welpler by the armpits, tossed him clear to Em’s truck, right at my feet. Emerson dove for Mort’s door handle and nearly got pulled under the wheels as Mort spun out from the clearing.

Em scrambled up from the ground where Mort’s truck had flung him.

Jimbo reached for Farsanna’s hand, and she grabbed at it this time and half hauled herself, half let herself be hauled up into the truck bed.

Welp curled up in a ball and sobbed.

22
Roadblock with Rifles

Jimbo, in the proper order of things, spoke first after we’d ridden a couple of miles away from the Hole. He propped himself in a sitting position, his face swollen and blue. “Steinberger’s?”

No reply.

He tried again. “Steinberger’s?”

“
No
!” That was little Bobby Welpler, suddenly come out of his ball.

“Welp, my man,” Jimbo told him, “I reckon you got a right to figure your snout’s got stuck in the cactus. But—”

“I ain’t hungry,” Welp sulked.

“Then come along for the fine talk and fellowship.”

“Just take me home.”

The word
home
croaked out unsteady, like he didn’t expect us to hear it any more than he’d meant what he’d said.

Welp raised his head to glower at us, meeting no one’s eye, but letting us all in on the sweep of his fury. “I ain’t going. And I’m telling you what, don’t you go neither.”

Jimbo reached to share L. J.’s Coke and added more peanuts. “Don’t what, Welp?”

“Don’t call me that name!”

“It’s a term of endearment, my man. Look, Mort’s making a pair of pig’s slippers out of himself. You know that. Your momma—”

“You just drop me off, you got that? And don’t be going to Steinberger’s. Or if you do, drop
her
off,” he stabbed a finger towards the tailgate of the truck where Farsanna sat still, staring out toward the woods. “And that’s all I’m saying. You got me?”

Jimbo crossed his arms and nodded, real slow. From the driver’s seat, Emerson cocked his head, trying to hear. The Big Dog whined softly.

Bo spoke up at last. “Bobby, my man. Seems to me you got to stay on board this ship for your own good tonight.” He banged on the cab window and motioned for Em to keep going.

Welp yelled up to Emerson, “Maynard, you drop me off! You got that? You drop me off
now
!”

Em ignored him.

Muttering, Welp resigned himself to a sulk and kept his eyes on the side of the road.

Bo looked at me. “Turtle? What do you think? You hungry?”

I shrugged.

He turned to Sanna and asked quietly, “How ’bout you?”

“Oh,” Welp fumed, “so
she
gets escorted home if she wants, that it?”

Farsanna crossed her arms. “I will stay.”

“Well,” L. J. said, “we could theoretically patronize another establishment.”

“Like what?” I asked. “The Pisgah Ridge Four Seasons?”

“Like, maybe just calling it a night,” he tried.

I reckon all of us were thinking our mothers wouldn’t so much mind our being home once for dinner. But none of us felt like dividing the day or our group or ourselves any further. I had the sensation of spinning, needing to clutch on to the people beside me or not be able to stand, the feeling of nearly being spun off into the night.
Ashes, ashes we all fall down
.

“We could,” L. J. tried again, “purchase sandwiches at the station.”

Jimbo wrinkled his nose—and that seemed to hurt his injured face enough to rouse him from his reverie, at least. “If you got a taste for motor oil with pimento cheese, maybe.”

So the whole Pack of us, including a seething Welp, shuffled our way through the sawdust up to Steinberger’s screen window. The old man was pacing behind the counter.

“Just closing down, kids!” he called, yanking the electrical plugs out of their sockets. He lowered the hinged wooden door behind the mesh windows.

Em looked at his watch. I looked at the sky, going ruddy between the pine fringes. We all looked at each other. It was well before closing time.

“Well,” said Jimbo, “I’ll be dyed amber.”

Wearing her black dress and straw hat and sitting on a picnic bench with a plate of barbecue, Mollybird Pittman had risen for a refill on her drink. “Levi? Levi Steinberger, what’s going on here? Levi, I want more sweet tea!”

The wooden door lifted a few inches, maybe a foot. Steinberger’s hand appeared briefly, shoving out a Styrofoam cup of iced tea and seven cans of soda, including my usual, Tab, and Big Dog’s Dr Pepper. Then the door dropped into place, and we could hear the hooks locking into their metal eyes.

Mollybird blinked at her tea. But then she plopped her plate in the round metal cans by the hut and stomped off to her car.

Jimbo tossed us each our can. “Might as well go, mangy pack.”

“What’s with the old man?” Emerson asked. “What’s with everybody today?”

We turned.

Steinberger dashed around the side of the hut. “You kids got that new girl with you tonight?” His eyes darted right and left as he spoke. My eyes followed, seeing nothing but trees and picnic tables—and Mollybird Pittman stomping back through sawdust to retrieve the purse she’d forgotten under a bench.

Bo jerked his head back toward our table. “Sure, we got her with us, Mr. S. As ever and always.”

Steinberger peered out to spot Sanna. “So you do. Well now, so you do. Look kids, I don’t want to be inhospitable….” He stopped there. “And I’m not going to be. Just … look … just be careful. And get on out of here soon, you hear? And turn left when you leave. That’s very important. And … just … you kids stick together, you hear?” Then he disappeared again. It wasn’t until the Volkswagen Rabbit he’d left idling behind the Hog Wild hut started to move that I saw his head poke from the driver’s-side window. “And turn
left
!” he called as the Rabbit darted into the road.

“Turn
left
?” I called back. “But—”

Steinberger couldn’t have heard me, though, his already pulling left on Stonewall Jackson Pike.

“He’s taking the long way,” L. J. observed. “Take him three times as long.”

We all looked at Welp. He stood, arms crossed, refusing to meet anyone’s eye.

Emerson nodded toward Mollybird, just pulling onto the Pike—and turning right. “But she’s headed the usual way.”

I pursed my lips, thinking. “Maybe she doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?” Emerson asked.

I shrugged. “Whatever it is we don’t know either.”

We stood by the truck and watched Mollybird’s taillights launch into the dusk.

Jimbo spoke then for the first time in some minutes. “Reckon we got to fish and cut bait.”

“That’s fish,” L. J. corrected, “
or
cut bait.”

“Not in this case it ain’t.”

Jimbo offered me a hand, like he always did, to help me into the truck—and this time I took it. And I didn’t let go.

As we rounded to the right on Stonewall Jackson Pike, ignoring Steinberger’s strange warning, the first thing I noticed there in the deepening gray, streaks of pink still stringing together the pines, was Mollybird Pittman’s taillights, which should not have been there. Having left Hog Wild a full five minutes before us, she should, in theory, have been long gone. Emerson pulled behind her lights, and we squinted into the dark.

The barriers blocking the road were nothing but orange-and-white-striped metal barrels armied across the stretch of asphalt just before Stonewall Jackson Pike met the main highway that formed Pisgah’s spine. Em’s truck could easily have nudged one barrel, maybe two, out of the way. On their own, they would have signaled only that potholes were being filled there by daylight, and the warm tar was hardening by night.

But the figures in white that swept among the striped barrels signaled what I already knew: This was no construction site.

I don’t suppose I’d ever seen any Klan members before—in full regalia, I mean. No doubt I’d seen them in daily life, knew who they were in their jeans and their T-shirts, their wingtips and ties, and yet not guessed at who else they might be. I’d only ever heard stories of the Klan all dressed in their white, and of their hauntings, and of the horrors they’d brought down, years ago, upon the heads of dissenters in the Valley below.

Up on the Ridge, understand, we’d mostly been above all the mess—no problems with buses or houses or seating at all—having no one of the wrong sort so much as staying the night. Old Man Steinberger had been threatened, I’d heard, when he first opened for business, but he’d never pushed himself forward, never talked of his rights, never asked anything but to be left alone with his daughters, to provide a service, three days hickory smoked, that no one could match, no one in three counties. So they’d let him alone.

But they’d not gone away, and we knew it, just ignored it. Now and then over the years, my father had written an editorial that sketched them, them and their hoods, as silly.

And if I’d only seen a snapshot of them in, say, a history book or microfilmed newspaper photos, I’d have said silly myself. On first glance, sure, they looked like somebody’d gotten just real tangled up trying to put the sheets on the line. And they cradled their rifles—like nursing infants. And the eyeholes of their hoods didn’t always line up just real straight with their eyes. So you had to wonder how much trouble they could’ve caused if they’d tried.

They billowed back and forth the width of the Pisgah Ridge Crossing, tripping occasionally over their long gowns. And in the arms of those not cradling rifles rode family-pack chicken-and-biscuit buckets brimming not with dinner but with donations.

These donations they’d been gathering, it seemed, with the method they were inflicting upon Mollybird Pittman. A group of three approached the driver’s-side window, tapped on the glass, and slid the mouth of a rifle into the car.

Then asked for a contribution.

It was when they drew near I knew that my father must never have seen them—never in person. All the movies and old newsreels that show them as clowns, as silly, ludicrous, laughable, have missed all their power, have misunderstood. The rippling white, the fire-red crosses in circles emblazoned on some of their chests: They approached like a battalion of childhood horrors, and I knew then that my father was wrong, that this was not some ridiculous redneck costume ball, a gaggle of old men clutching their gods, some Technicolored past that never existed.

They were all that too, I could see, but they were more.

The pale figures surrounding Mollybird’s car that night, and then Emerson’s truck, snaking around us, were specters of my own darkest fears, grim reapers in white, with loaded deer rifles standing in for a scythe. They didn’t think this was play. Black and vacant behind slits in pointed hoods, their eyes were hollowed, King Lear’s after his blinding. But they could see: They lowered their buckets and rifles together inside my brother’s window.

This was not play; this was business. The human heart gone to rot.