Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors (7 page)

Two weeks later, the whole town had heard about the snake situation.
 
Max and Judd never spoke of the incident again, although they would beat half to death anyone who brought it up.
 
Some things were better off not talked about.

by Weston
Ochse

“
I
t’d been your Grandpa Jessup’s idea to put the outhouse on top of the
Hell Hole
.
 
On account of the Easter of ‘46, of course.
 
After the long battle, he’d gotten sorely drunk,
ramblin
’ on about them Nazis and them
Eye-
talians
.
 
You see, he’d hoped that after the Big War he’d be able to stop
fightin
’. He said he’d seen enough
killin
’ to last him two lifetimes.
 
Why, he was so busy
walkin
’ from Sicily to Berlin that he’d almost forgotten about
The Feud
.
 
And then he come home on Ash Wednesday and all the preparations was in gear — he was sure pissed.
 
Grandpa Jessup had thought his
fightin
’ days was over, so his goal was to make the Devil eat shit.”

Jimmy Lee glanced sidelong at his Granny as she paused to take a medicinal swig from a small silver flask.
 
Even old and shriveled with skin drawn tight against the bones, she was the toughest woman he’d ever heard of or seen.
 
And he’d even been to the city once.

“Well, after the battle was over, even before the smoke had cleared, he ordered your uncles to go and drag the old outhouse back from behind the barn and bring it into the ravine.
 
Them
boys, your uncles, was
hootin
’ and
hollerin
’.
 
They knew what your Grandpa was up to.
 
Even the
Whitmires
joined in and they passed around jugs and jugs of their
special
brew, if you know what I mean.
 
Well, when they placed the outhouse over the hole, Grandpa made sure he was the first one to take a dump.
 
He grunted and groaned so loud that everyone on both sides was laughing until their teeth hurt.
 
Then he up and came out and told everyone he had been so tired of taking the Devil’s shit that he felt it was only right to give a little back.
 
It was a regular Hoot n’ Annie with everyone singing and dancing and taking their turns trying to fill up the hole.
 
Why, in as long as I can remember, it was the first time that the
Whitmires
and the
Wheatons
had gotten together for anything but a fight.”

Jimmy Lee grinned and practiced his aim on the dozens of crosses the women had painted on the outhouse during the special ceremony they’d had on Ash Wednesday.
 
Some of the crosses he didn’t even recognize, but he’d heard they were ancient and never really used anymore.
 

 
“... and so to this day, we always build an outhouse after every battle and the day after Easter is
nothin
’ but one long party. And it was all ‘cause of your Grandpa, God rest his soul.”

He remembered last year’s party when he and Annie
Whitmire
had snuck up the slope with their own jug and she had showed him her
titties
.
 
Even let him touch them — once.
 
He tried to spy her out on the opposite slope, but couldn’t see her anywhere.
 
She was up there though.
 
She had to be.
 
Everyone was.
 
It was the agreement.
 
They was
tellin
’ the same story over there, being as this was
The
Tellin
’ Time
.

“Jimmy Lee?”

“Yeah, Granny,” said the blonde boy.

“See that
sassyfras
down there?
 
It’s
blockin
’ your Granny’s aim a bit.
 
Think you can
scoot
down there and make it go away?

“Be too easy, Granny,” said Jimmy Lee.
 
He laid his rifle aside and readied himself for the run.

“Don’t you let them
Whitmire’s
get the best of you boy,” said Granny Wheaton eyeing along the blue-metal of the old .44 caliber pistol she held in a two-handed grip.

Jimmy Lee jumped up, his machete held tightly in his left hand, and leapt over the log they were hiding behind.
 
He skipped down the embankment screeching a rebel yell, sending even the most curious squirrel back up and into its nest in fear of being the next tail on a hat.
 
Momentum and gravity soon sent him ass-over-tea-kettle through the sapling sassafras and hip-high ferns.
 
He finally tumbled to a stop, upside down and grinning against the side of the wooden outhouse, somehow managing not to slice off an arm or a leg or an ear with the machete he’d managed to hold onto.

On the other side of the ravine, Granny spied young
Quinten
Whitmire
loping down to meet her grandson, a Louisville slugger swinging in great arcs over his head as he made his way to the bottom.

“
Quinten
,” she yelled.
 
“You get your scrawny ass back up there and leave my grandson be or I’m
gonna
put a hole in
you
that even your Ma can’t sew up.”

“You harm my boy and I’m
gonna
do the same to you,” came a shriek from the other side of the ravine.

Quinten
had almost reached the bottom and even Granny could see the poor boy’s too-close-together eyes dance with excitement.
 
She knew that what he lacked in smarts, he more than made up for in size.
 
Jimmy Lee had scrambled a third of the way back up the hill and was already hacking at the arm-sized trunk of the sassafras that was blocking his Granny’s sight-picture.
 
It was amazing it had grown up so large in a year.
 
Must have been all that shit that made it grow so fast.
 

Quinten
yelled and launched himself up the hill at Jimmy Lee just as the machete separated the slender trunk.
 
Jimmy Lee grabbed the unwieldy bush and hurled it back into the face of his onrushing cousin, then turned and began scrambling back up the slope toward Granny.
 
Quinten
was faster and surer of foot, though.
 
He planted his boot in the center of Jimmy Lee’s back and lifted the Louisville Slugger above his head.
 
He was preparing to bring it down when it exploded in a shower of nasty, sharp fragments.
 
The sound of Granny’s shot caught up to it a moment later.
 
Quinten
staggered back a few steps, giving Jimmy Lee the chance to crest the hill in a rush, slipping breathlessly beside Granny.

“
Quinten
!” came the shriek from across the ravine.

The big boy turned and fell to his knees, his hand going first to his throat, then his chest, before his head bounced softly on the loamy earth.

“My boy.
 
You shot my boy!”

Over two dozen men and women popped up from behind the bushes and trees on the other side of the ravine and fired.
 
The thunderous cavalcade of buckshot, subsonic lead and high-powered bullets sliced through branches, bark and logs.
 
Splinters and huge chunks of wood flew from the front of the large log Granny and Jimmy Lee were hunched behind.
 
The fusillade lasted a full half a minute before it finally stopped.
 
Echoes of the assault reverberated back and forth within the ravine until they finally slipped away, leaving only the sound of falling leaves and branches.

From behind a large boulder came a tall man dressed in a black turn-of-the-century priest’s robe, which fit tightly from shoulders to hips, flaring like a dress to the ground.

“Stop this nonsense, you fools.
 
Look.
 
The boy’s fine.”

All eyes went to
Quinten
, who was dusting the leaves off his pants and picking up the fragments of his bat.
 
They watched as he stacked the broken segments, like pieces of kindling, in the crux of an arm and headed back up his family’s side of the ravine.

Granny chuckled and spit out a thin stream of tobacco spit.
 
“If I was
gonna
shoot the boy, Gladys, I would have shot him.
 
You know I don’t miss.”

Gladys rushed out from behind her tree and met her son as he crested the rise.

“You okay, boy?”

“Yeah,” said the boy with a wide, toothless grin.

“Don’t yeah me, boy.
 
And don’t you scare your ma like that again.”

The smack of
Gladdys’s
hand on
Quinten’s
face sounded like another gunshot, bringing out every hidden cousin on both sides of the ravine — almost a hundred people aiming weapons and hateful grins at each other.

“Enough of this.
 
Jacob, you over there?” said the priest, standing imperiously behind Granny.

“Sure am, David,” said an identically dressed man from the
Whitmire
side.

“Then let’s get this started.
 
It’s almost time anyway,” David said eyeing the outhouse fearfully.
 
He cleared his throat and climbed onto the log.
 
Men, women and children knelt and lowered their heads solemnly.
 
David cleared his throat one more time and eyed the kneeling figures of the families before he began.

“Our Lord God has once again brought these two families together in his time of need.
 
By his great wisdom and divine understanding, he selected these clans for a higher purpose. A purpose that has caused them to, for a short time, lay aside their differences and their hates.
 
A purpose that holds the fate of the world as hostage.
 
A purpose that has brought these two mighty tribes here this day to fight evil as one family.
 
Let us pray... ”

Jacob continued from the other side, his voice carrying clearly in the crisp mountain air.

“Dear Lord, bless us as we, your humble servants, are about to embark on a mission of destruction.”

“Lord hear our prayer,” came the reply from every mouth.

“Dear Lord, bless us on the day of your Son’s death, for the great weakness of the human spirit that has crippled the barriers between this, your holy place and the other
unnameable
one.”

“Lord, hear our prayer.”

“Dear Lord, bless us on this day of rejuvenation and give us the strength to conquer the great evil.”

“May the Lord be with us.”

From both sides, everyone stood and moved to their respective priest who laid hands on each person, each weapon, until even the smallest child had received the blessing.
 
Then as one, all trained their weapons on the lonely outhouse hunched on the empty floor of the ravine and waited.

The first indication was when the birds and the bugs and even the cicadas fell silent.
 
Then it was ten more minutes of waiting, where the loudest sound was your own heartbeat and every trigger finger quivered in anticipation.
 

Suddenly, the entire outhouse began rattling for what seemed a full minute, threatening to burst the boards.
 
Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stilled.

Jimmy Lee peered down the length of his 30-30.

He wasn’t aiming at the outhouse.
 
He had his own sector to shoot in at the base of their side of the ravine.
 
And if any of them evil bastards entered it, he was
gonna
make them wish they hadn’t.

The door flew off its hinges with a loud shriek and the tiny ones poured through.
 
They were about two feet high and hard as hell to hit.
 
When they landed on the ground, they shrieked like crows and headed in every direction.
 
From the corner of his vision, Jimmy Lee figured there must have been at least a hundred of the little bastards.
 
The first several shots rang out, but Jimmy Lee didn’t look.
 
Ten of the little devils were heading towards his sector and he felt his lips go dry.