Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors (34 page)

Jonston
waved his hand, brushing aside the nicety.
 
“It’s my Henrietta’s favorite.
 
So you’re interested in hiring on here, are you?”

“Well, I don’t have any firm plans, but yes.
 
It does seem like a good opportunity.
 
I’d like some more details, of course.”

“What’s that?” asked the old man leaning forward addressing the empty chair that was Henrietta’s.
 
Jonston
nodded several times, “Of course I’ll get around to it, My Dear.
 
Just let me do it in my own way.”

“Uh,
Jonston
?
 
Are you okay, Sir?” asked Edwin, wondering if the old man was hallucinating.

Jonston
glanced at him irritably, then smiled and sat back.
 
“Sorry about that.
 
I’m just a crazy old man, you know.
 
A little crazy and almost harmless.”

Edwin laughed nervously and took a deep drought of the tea.
 
Yeah
, he thought,
drunk crazy.

“You joined the Army in 1973.
 
Isn’t that about right?”

“Uh, yes.
 
I mean, I finished a twenty-year tour.”

“You know that’s the same year my wife died.”

Edwin sat back and observed the old man with compassion.
 
Poor
Jonston
had never really let go, probably talked to his dead wife all the time—keeping him company in his old age.

“In fact, she told me she’d seen you before you joined up.
 
She always said how handsome you looked in your dress greens.”

“Thank you, Sir,” replied Edwin.
 
The only time he’d worn them was the day before he’d left and that day had been nothing but a bad day.
 
“I mean, I didn’t know your wife, but thanks just the same.
 
Of course, it was so long ago and I seem to have forgotten much.”

“Oh, I doubt you could ever forget her.
 
What’s that, my dear?”
Jonston
asked the empty chair.
 
“All right.
 
All right.
  
Settle down.
 
I’ll ask him.
 
I know you want to end this as much as I do.”

“Ask me what, Sir, I mean
Jonston
.” Edwin couldn’t help but think that if he had a jug, he could see who the old man was talking to.

“Here, have some more tea,” said the old man, standing and refilling the glass.
 
“My Henrietta says there were a bunch of boys you used to hang around with.
 
What were their names?
 
Let me see, there was Tom Hubbard, Bobby Burdette, Little Timmy Baugh, and Clay Archie.
 
Ain’t
that right?”

Edwin began to feel uncomfortable as a long forgotten memory started filtering through the years of practiced forgetfulness and alcohol.
 
He shifted and the chair squealed in protest.

“I remember them.
 
Haven’t seen them in twenty years, but yeah.
 
We used to hang out together.
 
What’s this have to do with the job?”

“Ah hell, boy.
 
Give an old man a chance to reminisce.
 
After all,” he said, staring pointedly at the empty chair, “I had to be sure, now, didn’t I.”

“Be sure of what?”

“Be sure you were one of the bastards that killed my Henrietta.
 
That’s what.”

Edwin spat out the tea he’d been drinking as the memories of that night flew to the front of his mind, his actions, the actions of everyone, suddenly in perfect clarity.
 
He stood quickly and took one step before his legs refused their commands.
 
He fell heavily to the wooden porch, landing on his side, staring up into the face of the old man which was suddenly filled with an almost religious fury.

“Don’t try to move, son.
 
Your legs won’t work proper.
 
And as soon as my mixture kicks in, you won’t be able to even blink.
 
It’s an old recipe my granddaddy used in the Civil War when they needed to amputate.
 
Part laudanum, part horse tranquilizer.”

“But why?”

“You have the gall to ask why?” spat the old man as he stood hovering over Edwin.
 
“You boys left her in that ditch, bleeding and broken.
 
She was alive, you know?
 
At least one of you bastards could have called an ambulance.
 
She was alive for a whole day, lying there as ants and beetles crawled over her—feeding on her blood.”

Alive.
 
She’d been alive?

Horrific thoughts moved sluggishly through his mind.
 
They were so sure she’d been dead.
 
After Clay had gone wild and hit her with the tire iron over and over and over, they were sure she’d died.

“Don’t you worry, boy.
 
You don’t have to admit anything.
 
Your friends all told me and Henrietta how you killed her.
 
And we’ve had fifteen years to wait for you ever since I tracked down Tom Hubbard in Pikeville.
 
Would you believe that they all blamed you?
 
They said it was you that tore into her with a tire iron.”

“No.
 
No, it... ”
 
The words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t feel his legs or his arms or his face and his tongue was thicker than a bread and butter pickle.

“You won’t be able to talk, now, but don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to tell your side.”

Edwin watched as the world went from horizontal to vertical as the old man lifted him up and swung a limp arm around a shoulder.
 
Jonston
levered the screen door opened with his booted foot and with grunts and a few damnations, carried and drug Edwin through the house and onto the back porch.
 
The back yard was filled with the sounds of buzzing flies and chirping crickets.
 
The corn Edwin had noticed earlier, was thick, allowing a half-circle of grass for a back yard.
 
The tall stalks of corn grew right up to the eaves on each corner of the house and was better than any fence for privacy.

Jonston
turned and nodded to a large wicker chair, “Have a seat, my dear.
 
This is the last one, so you best enjoy it.”

Edwin watched the empty chair and saw how the cushion pressed as if someone had just sat down.

“Now, take a look,” said the old man turning towards the back yard again.
 
“Your friends have been waiting for you.”

Edwin, unable to move his head or avert his eyes, saw that at the apex of the half-circle of lawn, were five scarecrows.
 
Four really, because in the center, was an empty cross of wood, about man-sized and freshly planted.

“I saved the position of honor for you, seeing as you were the one who was in charge of the killing.
 
Yeah, they all told me all about how you planned it, so don’t go thinking I don’t know the truth.”

The old man limped down the stairs and drug his captive across the lawn to the empty cross.
 
Beside it, sat a wooden crate filled with sundry instruments.
 
The old man leaned down and gripped a strand of rope, then, almost falling with his burden, pushed Edwin against the wood.
 
With one hand, he wrapped the rope around the upper post and around Edwin’s neck, securing it with a granny knot.
 
He stood back and grinned from ear to ear.

“Now, that’ll hold you for a minute.
 
Try and hold your breath, will you.
 
Little Timmy over there strangled to death before I could finish and Henrietta wouldn’t let me live it down for the longest time.”

Edwin tried to look where
Jonston
had indicated and felt his head roll slowly, until the scarecrow to his right was in view.
 
The anesthetic was beginning to wear off and he could just feel his legs and the strangling rope around his throat.
 
While the old man secured his hands to the cross-posts with rope, Edwin examined the scarecrow.
 
It wore a straw hat, a flannel shirt and even older dungarees than the old man wore.
 
Fresh straw had been stuffed in the sleeves and under the hat almost completely covering the sun-bleached bones of a skeleton.
 
He looked closer and within the straw of the head, he could make out a brown skull and the ants that still crawled in and out of the eye sockets.

Edwin turned his head and was confronted with the leering face of
Jonston
.
 
He tried to scream, but only a rough sigh exited his still paralyzed mouth.

“They’re still feeding aren’t they.
 
I squeeze honey into the eye sockets about once a week.
 
Henrietta tells me it makes the boys scream.
 
Says it itches like crazy.
 
Funny how you can itch when you’re dead,
ain’t
it.”

Edwin cried in his mind.
 
Sobbing internally as the truth finally set in.
 

It had been the night before he left for basic training and the boys had thrown him a going away party.
 
Between the shine and the whiskey and the beer, they’d all been wasted driving around in Archie’s old Mercury Cougar shouting their defiance to the stars.
 
They’d found Henrietta on the side of the road with a flat tire and stopped to help.
 
Bobby had been the one who threw her down and ripped off her dress.
 
At least he was the first one.
 
They all took turns, except for Edwin.
 
He was in the bushes puking.
 
After Clay beat her, it was Bobby who took her car and hid it in the woods.
 
They’d made a pact never to talk about it and until this day, Edwin had never told a soul.

“Pay attention, now, boy.
 
This is important,” said the old man holding up a hammer and what looked like a silver ten-penny nail.
 
“This here is made of silver and has been steeping in holy water for twenty years.
 
Prepared special-like just for you.
 
Why silver, do you ask?”

Edwin shook his head, he’d paid for his sin.
 
He’d paid for it for twenty years.
 
He remembered how he’d wanted to.
 
How he’d seen her naked and begging and felt himself throb, rubbing himself, a drunken need to fuck, to release his seed like a demon intent on conquer.
 

But he hadn’t done anything.
 
And it had cost him.
 
Never a relationship, never a happy day.
 
It was the bottle that had numbed him so he could make it to another day and another bottle.
 
If he was guilty of anything, it was for doing nothing, not murder.
 
He didn’t want to know what the nail was for.
 
He didn’t even want to be here.

The old man ignored him and continued, “These will not only hold you up, but they will bind you.
 
Hell will have to wait for a little while longer, because after I’m done, you’ll be here until the wood rots away and the silver turns to dust.
 
I hear they still find old silver coins from before the time of Jesus.
 
Damn if that
ain’t
a long time.”

Edwin was beginning to feel more and more of his body and he felt the impact of the hammering and the nail entering his left hand like a dull pain.
 
The next nail was pounded through his
tricep
and he could feel this one even more.
 
On the fourth, as the man hammered the nail happily through his right hand, it was as if all his feeling had returned and his scream pierced the air, sending crows flying from the corn and stilling the sounds of the thousand crickets.
 
It was the last nail that sent his bowels gushing.
 
His scream erupted from his soul, soaring beyond mortal hearing, making the angels flinch in their games and the demons pause in their laughter.

“Feel that, did you?
 
Well, don’t you worry, boy.
 
There’s only one more to go and then you won’t feel nothing.”

The last nail was twice as long as the others and was more like a railroad spike than a nail.
 
Old Man
Jonston
placed it right over Edwin’s heart, and with a wry chuckle, hammered it home.