Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) (17 page)

Ben continued to snap branches. I found the sound to be kind of jarring, which, I supposed, was probably the reason he kept on doing it.

“Henry,” Katy said, “that’s how you get rid of fleas. You keep them from laying eggs. You go to war with them.”

I picked up the limbs Ben had been breaking and started tossing them into the fire ring. He stuffed newspaper into the heap, lit it and watched it burn. We finished the first jug of wine in total silence. Preston held his guitar, but did not play it.

Finally, Preston put his guitar back in its case and grabbed the next jug of wine from the cooler. He went from person to person, filling our cups even if we didn’t want any. After a minute he said, “I don’t expect yinz to all hold hands and start singing, but we didn’t come up here for this shit, right? So fill me in. What is the deal with the Lewises? I know I’m a little late to the game, but…I just thought, like, I should know or something.”

Ben had been waiting for an invitation to resume control. I could tell by the way he jumped in. He gulped down his wine and said, “My dad said he found records in the courthouse that show our right to the land was contested as far back as 1890. Mary Lewis says we stole a family heirloom and that’s the only reason any Collins ever amounted to anything. Said it was all about the thing, whatever that thing was.”

“What’s that have to do with Pap?”

“I don’t know. Can’t remember.” He gestured for more wine.

Alex listened nervously. Like part of his story would indict her somehow. I said, “But that doesn’t explain why they’d chase me across the border and shoot at us.”

Katy didn’t seem to agree with the way Ben was telling the story and took over. “You all need to pay attention. A guy named Seamus Hamilton married Ruth Gaddis in the late 1800s when West Virginia was booming. Everybody was getting rich. Anyway, they had three children—Mary, Emma and Michael. Then Mason Collins, a wood hick from Petersburg, takes a liking to Emma and eventually asks for her hand. Seamus was pleased, and gave them the land we all live on today.”

I interrupted, “Just gave him the land? Wasn’t that a bit generous?”

“Don’t do that. If you’re going to listen, listen. Okay?” Katy sat with her legs crossed at the ankles. Beneath the new hair and jewelry it was still the same old Katy.

“He figured it was a way to increase his own holdings. It wasn’t an un-selfish act.”

“Sorry.” I made the mistake of looking at Ben. He rolled his eyes.

Katy said, “The land wasn’t worth much. It wasn’t easy to get to, the winters were bad, and Seamus had taken most of the timber off of it.” Katy paused, almost like she was testing me not to say something else. “Emma lost a few children before finally entering into a heavenly realm herself. Some say being so far from her family killed her. A lot of people, including Mason Collins, suspected her sister, Mary, had poisoned her because she—the oldest—wasn’t married first.”

“Go on,” I said. I think it sounded condescending, even though I hadn’t meant it that way.

“Mary was ready to take care of Mason after her sister died. She’d been waiting for Mason to propose, but he remarried outside the family instead. A lady named Margaret Walsh. They had a son, Grandpap’s dad, Jameson Henry. Mason sold off the rest of the timber but was able to keep most of the mineral rights.”

Ben interpreted Katy’s pause as a chance to jump in. “This was during a time when big coal was stealing rights all over southern West Virginia.

“Anyway,” Katy said, “Margaret passed while she was still young. See a pattern? Mary took a job cleaning houses in Thomas to be close to Mason. But Mason wasn’t interested. He never remarried. Mary got tired of waiting and married a guy from Elkins. Peter Lewis. Mary wanted a daughter. They had themselves some sons, Charlie and his brothers.”

Alex listened, half-turned away from the fire so nobody could see her face.

“Jameson stayed on the farm after his dad died. He eventually married a Tuckahoe. That was our great-grandmother, Charlotte. I don’t know if you remember her or not?”

I shook my head. “No. I was too young when she died.”

“Anyway, here comes the good part. Jameson and Charlotte had five kids, Grandpap and his brothers and sisters. Sarah died before I was born. So this brings Mary back into the picture. After Peter Lewis dies quite mysteriously, she still feels like she’s owed something from a Collins. So she gets her daughter—Charlie’s sister, Odelia, who came as a surprise after Mary should’ve been too old to even have kids—fixated on Grandpap. Mary even sends Odelia to Morgantown when Pap goes away to school, gets her a job waiting tables. But Grandpap meets Grandma. That’s where we get that little bit of hunky blood in us. Her family strip mined for coal up in PA. I guess they hit it off pretty well. One day they went to eat lunch in the wrong diner. Odelia was livid. I guess she cursed them out into the street. Of course that gets her fired. That’s when Odelia moved back up here and…you know.”

“No, I don’t. I hadn’t seen my mom since I was nine, and haven’t spoken to my dad since I graduated from high school. How the hell am I supposed to hear this kind of stuff?”

Ben and Katy both looked a little guilty. I shouldn’t have had to remind them about something as monumental as not having either parent for the good part of my life. The best thing for both me and Katy would’ve been for her to go on like I’d never said what I said. But instead, I apologized. “I’m sorry. Just forget about it.”

“It’s okay, douche runs in the family, too,” Katy said, capitalizing on my change of mood. “Anyway, the week Odelia leaves Morgantown, Oscar Wilson finds a barrel half-floating in the millpond by the bridge. The sheriff investigates and of course Odelia is the main suspect. But she has an alibi. Mary Lewis said they’d been with cousins in Charleston. They had train tickets even though nobody could place them on the train.”

“How convenient,” Ben said.

“I know, right?” Katy said, putting her own little finishing touch on it. “Pap said they hid out for days in the woods. I heard Odelia got frostbit real bad. Took her fingertips.”

“Get the fuck out,” Ben said.

“Ben, shut up. I heard the tips are black, and the bones stick out the end of her fingers.”

“I call bullshit,” Ben said, unable to let it go. “Continue, but I call bullshit.”

Katy said, “I’m fixing to punch you right in the eye. When you’re trying to pick up city girls you’ll have a cute story about how a girl popped you.”

“So here’s my next question,” I said, still a bit confused. “Why do you know all this?”

“It’s my duty to know all this, and if you ever have a little girl, it’ll be her duty to know it, too. I’ll tell her everything, not just what she needs to know.” Katy folded her arms. “More than you need to know.”

“Damn those bastards. I swear if I ever saw any of them getting attacked by a bear I’d toss Fluffernutter sandwiches their way.” Ben said, “Some people can hold a grudge.”

“But not for a hundred years. That shit’s insane,” Preston said. I replied, “You’re preaching to the choir.”

“Hey man, I shouldn’t have even brought it up. Let’s forget it, okay? You’re not drinking enough anyway. Give me your cup.” Preston poured from the large glass jug, going well beyond halfway even though I motioned for him to stop. I took a few gulps to encourage the forgetting.

I made eye contact with Ben. He gave me a little smile in return.

When the fire burned down to coals Ben got the rest of the food out. We’d eaten all the bread, so we cut up the sausage and cooked it over the fire like hot dogs. Preston and Katy played a little, private songs that sounded soft and special. Katy and me sang a couple of old ones, stuff like “The Two Sisters” that you never hear anymore. In between songs I rambled on about the Milky Way, how it was like a white road from earth to heaven and about where in the universe you would end up if you stayed on it long enough. My words became more incoherent the more I drank. Alex seemed to know what I meant though.

She rested her head in my lap and watched for shooting stars. Together we took in the full scope of the cosmos, seeing the things that no telescope, no matter how powerful, could reveal. Mars crept through the spruces on the ridge like a rabbit along a stream. The ecliptic stretched out before it like an empty page awaiting a haiku of reflected light.

When the fire had burned all the way down, right before we all went to sleep, Katy said, “I love you guys,” and came over and sat down next to me.

“I don’t want to bury anybody else.” She put her head on my shoulder, sniffled, and said, “I want kids. I don’t want to go to bed every night checking windows, and I don’t want to run any more. I want to come home.”

I put my arm around her.

She said, “That’s why you guys have to finish this.”

SIX

The starlight had ignited crazy dreams all night long. They weren’t memory dreams though. I knew because the dream-forest was more climactic than any I’d ever seen. Spruce trees, three hundred feet tall and ten feet across at the base, rested on a bed of humus so thick I nearly sank. Laurels dense enough to confound a team of trackers kept intruders at arm’s length. The laurel hell went off in all directions, like a green quilt. When I opened my eyes, I expected to be in the center of a large, primeval forest, the kind of place that died long before I was born, but the old green was gone.

Killed by axes and steam trains
.

We quickly broke camp, then descended the mountain to finally have our breakfast of buckwheat cakes and sausage at the 4-U restaurant with real Formica counters and real waitresses. Katy and Preston spent a lot of time posing for pictures with some backpackers who recognized them from a show in Asheville. But the rest of the day was a blank slate. As we paid, Ben asked Alex what she wanted to do.

“Can we go up to the top of the big rock thingy?” Alex said as we got back in the Jeep.

Ben said, “Seneca Rocks? Sure thing. I need to pick up a paycheck anyway.”

“You back to guiding?” I said, thinking Ben had been trying to hide something from me.

“Hell, no. Some freelancing stuff. Taking pictures for the website. Even got me a few magazine shoots. My lens is in demand and my days of fishing for tips from city folk are over.”

Katy said, “So, that means you’ll finally be moving out of Jamie’s basement?”

I smiled. He was getting cocky again and was glad Katy knocked him down a peg.

Ben put his arm around Katy’s shoulder and squeezed her in a big hug. “Heck no. Why should I?”

Katy tried to push him away. “Yeah, I guess you’d still have to grow up first.”

“Stop it, Katy,” I said. “If you don’t have to grow up why should he?”

“Ouch,” Ben said. “He knows us too well.”

By the time we hit Seneca Rocks the sun was halfway into its trip to noon. Shadows stretched out from the mountains, hiding coolness in their breeches. At the climbing school, guides sipped coffee and stretched their ropes. Ben pulled right up to the porch. Tourists lingered by their cars, as far from the guides as was proper. The stoners were slack-lining, their gear littered picnic tables. One had dreadlocks and a shaggy beard. The smell of weed hit me as soon as I got out of the Jeep. Say what you will about raft guides, but at least they got wet once a day.

“B.C.!” A pair of trustafarians shouted in unison as Ben emerged from his truck.

“B.C.?” I said.

Without a hint of shame, Ben replied, “Yeah, B.C. Before Collins, referring to a time when I was here, and then I wasn’t. You know, the good old days before my PTSD and raging temper.”

“That doesn’t even make a little sense,” Alex said.

“I know, but the kids like it. And I like to keep the gang happy.”

A couple of his protégés eyeballed me. I did my best to show them that B.C. didn’t impress me half as much as he did them.

Katy and Alex drifted over toward the little store, while Preston and me were left to look up at the big rock and talk about music and whatever. In a way I was kind of glad Ben came back to work here. Like, a return to normalcy could only be a good thing for him. When he got back from Afghanistan it took a long time for him to rebound. I thought he was going to end up in jail. Or worse.

One of the stoners yelled from the porch, “B.C., you got a message.”

He walked over to a bulletin board littered with classifieds and party invites. He went straight to a canary yellow Post-it, which only had four words on it.

Ben, get home. Urgent
.

“Katy! We have to go!” He tore the note from the wall and sprinted back to the truck. The girls turned and quickly got back in. The old Jeep drifted forward even as he turned the key, leaving a dusty cloud in our wake. We left the parking lot and ripped up the mountain like a bobcat into a bird’s nest.

“Katy, call your mom,” Ben said as he pushed the truck through gears it hadn’t fully used in a long time.

She said, “No phone.”

I said, “We left everything back at the house. Alex?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

Nobody said anything else—speculation was almost as bad as a lie in times like these. But we were all thinking it was Pap, or an accident, one of the kids got hurt, Fenton flipped the tractor on the steep hill behind the barn, Chloe ran off with her boyfriend. The purpose of this line of thinking was to prepare me for the worst, to show me that no matter what happened I would have thought of it already. Besides, it’s never as bad as you think.