The Ghosts of Varner Creek (19 page)

"No, I reckon he'd just think that crazy talk," I told George. Although I hadn’t seen Sarah since that night I roused the house, she was never far from my thoughts. I looked for her in the night and thought about her nearly all the time, but still hadn’t seen her again.

While we walked Uncle Marcus had me carry the rooster, who was still loudly protesting. He seemed preoccupied in his own thoughts and walked quietly. He was making use of his hands, however. He had taken out his pocketknife and was cutting some of the twine into three foot sections. When he had four of them he made each one into a slipknot noose. We were walking along, George and me whispering, Uncle Marcus tying, when we heard a loud crow. Our own rooster answered back in a half-hearted attempt and we stopped in our tracks.

"That must be him," I told Uncle Marcus.

"All right then," he said, "George, gimme your stick."

George reluctantly handed over his only defense from the evil rooster, figuring Uncle Marcus must be getting ready to go after Lucifer the Leghorn himself. Instead, though, Uncle Marcus kicked a little hole in the dirt with the heel of his boot and then jammed the stick into it. He pressed all his body weight against the top of the stick and then twisted it around until it sank down several inches into dirt. Then he had me fetch a rock off a ways and used it to knock the stick down even further. He tied one end of his little nooses to the stick all around it. George and I looked at each other dumbfounded. We had no clue what in the world he was up to. Lastly, he took George's poor rooster and with the last bit of twine tied him to the top of the stick, just about two feet off the ground, letting him hang there in the bag. "That'll do it," Uncle Marcus told us.

"Do what?" asked George.

"Y’all come sit over here with me and watch," he said.

We backtracked with Uncle Marcus about twenty yards away from George's rooster that was now miserably strung up, still squawking and complaining. He let out a little crow and immediately from up beyond in the denser trees came a blasting answer from Lucifer the Leghorn. Uncle Marcus took out his tobacco and cut off a piece and placed it in his mouth. "Roosters don't like any competition," he told us. "When I wasn't too much older than you boys I went to work for a man name Mr. Wilkins. He’s passed on now, but he used to fight roosters for sport. But don't go repeatin' that. He taught me this little trick here on how to catch a troublesome rooster." We sat in awe trying to imagine how George's rooster was going to catch Lucifer the Leghorn for us. For a few minutes nothing happened. Just some more clucking from the one in the bag, and occasionally a much louder and stronger answer from somewhere in the distance. Abruptly, though, a big feathery thing with huge wings came darting in towards the rooster on a stick. Even Uncle Marcus seemed startled at the speed of his approach. Leave it to Lucifer the Leghorn for a grand entrance. Again, there wasn't any tentative hopping in or cautious curiosity. Personally, I think he knew we were invading his territory yet again, this time bringing in another rooster, and he was pissed off. He shot in quick as a snake ready to inflict his vengeance for the invasion, but he never noticed George and me crouching by the bushes, and a bit behind Uncle Marcus if I'm to be perfectly honest, he went straight for the burlap sack with George's chicken. Lucifer the Leghorn was nearly twice the size of our bagged rooster who was bleating like a pig being slaughtered. It was something to see. That devil chicken was going absolutely berserk trying to get at poor George's rooster, furiously attacking at the bag again and again.

"What do we do now?" George asked Uncle Marcus.

"Nothin'," he responded, "Just watch. He'll get himself tangled nice and good, and then he's caught."

Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. Somehow or another Lucifer the Leghorn managed to get one of his wings stuck in a noose. The more he hopped and pulled, the tighter it got. Then one of his feet got stuck. And before we knew it he was caught up in twine fighting like mad. One second he was fighting to get at our rooster, and the next he was fighting to get free of the nooses, then back to trying to get at the bagged rooster again. He was just about as mad as I've ever seen a critter, but it wasn't no good. Before long he was exhausted and completely tethered to George's stick. He'd almost managed to pull it free from the ground, but got tired out before finishing the job.

"Got to let him wear hisself out before you go trying to manage him," Uncle Marcus explained. "But he looks good and tired now. We'll use them other two nooses to tie his legs and wings so he doesn't get free and can’t scratch."

George and I were beside ourselves. There he was, the king of the woods, our captive. Uncle Marcus had made it all look so easy. He’d done in ten minutes and without hardly any effort what George and I had spent all day yesterday trying to figure out how to do. And Uncle Marcus didn't have so much as a scratch on him. By the time we got to Lucifer the Leghorn, he could barely hop at us to attempt a good slash. He was still mad as ever, but the fight was out of him. Uncle Marcus used his pocketknife to cut the other two slipknots loose and bundled up the angry chicken. George's own rooster stopped squirming around like it had keeled over and died, but Uncle Marcus said it was fine. And when we carried our prize back through the woods towards home George's chicken started clucking and crowing again. He had nerves of steel once it seemed obvious the much bigger rooster couldn't get at him anymore.

It was quite a contemplation to figure out the fate of Lucifer the Longhorn. When we got him home that day Aunt Emma was shocked. She had never seen a rooster that big in her entire life. "Well, we ain't keeping that thing," she announced right away.

Both George and I protested. He was our captive, after all. Even if it took Uncle Marcus to make him that way. "But Mama, look at him. He's the grandest rooster there is," whined George.

Francine and Amber both agreed with Aunt Emma. They had a couple of puppies they had gotten from the Radtke farm down the way, and they didn’t like the new rooster one bit. "Mama, that thing will kill Boots for sure," cried Amber, speaking on behalf of her own puppy, named so because of his white paws.

"Not if we keep him in a pen," I said.

"What good is a rooster you can't let out?" said Aunt Emma. "And besides, I don't want to have to worry about that beast tearing me and the girls up. I'm with child if I need to remind you all. I can't be botherin' with a thing like this here rooster lookin' to get at me any chance it gets. You boys may enjoy such things, but personally I'd rather not have to fight a wild chicken like that every day just to get clothes out on the line or feed the animals. Nope," she said with conviction, "he most definitely goes."

Uncle Marcus suggested making dinner out of him, but George and I both couldn't endure the thought of it. As much as we wanted to keep him, we both had rather let him go than see him served up for dinner. He was too fine an example of a rooster for that and probably would’ve been tough as a boot, so it was decided that we'd keep him that night, and the next day George and I would let him free back in the woods.

Uncle Marcus stayed around that afternoon talking with Aunt Emma. Around five or so he headed to town saying there were some other folks he wanted to visit with. I wondered if the sheriff was one of the individuals, but I didn't ask.

When Uncle Colby came home that evening for supper he asked Aunt Emma, "Where'd that rooster come from?" Lucifer the Leghorn had been penned up by himself in the chicken coup. George's rooster was taunting him from a safe distance and Lucifer the Leghorn had been crowing so loudly in anger that Uncle Colby said he could hear him clear over at the Pyle's farm. Aunt Emma replayed the day's events for him and he immediately had the solution, "Well, I know someone who'd love to have that thing."

"Who would want that monstrosity?" Aunt Emma asked.

"Mr. Pyle," Uncle Colby said. "He's always looking for the biggest roosters." He caught himself saying a little too much. Mr. Pyle was a respected member of the community, and even though cock-fighting was a common practice, good Christian folks weren't supposed to indulge in such barbaric past-times. Mr. Pyle, however, had a weakness for the betting and excitement. He had himself had a few short-lived cock-fighting winners, but nothing special. Lucifer the Leghorn, however, could be just what he needed to rectify that. Aunt Emma didn't pry into why Mr. Pyle was always looking for roosters like the horrid one outside, though. She respected him too much to acknowledge such moral weaknesses in his character.

The next morning broke out in a ruckus of crowing. It was like the two outside were having a competition. Aunt Emma and Uncle Colby's family rooster let out his routine morning cry, only to be severely outdone in volume and intensity by Lucifer the Leghorn. And remarkably, when Uncle Colby spread out the morning corn and mash for the chickens on his way out to work, there seemed to be a number of more additions. Hens they'd never seen before came scratching and pecking along just like the ones that had been born and raised there. Uncle Colby went back inside and fetched Aunt Emma. "What in the world?" she said when she came out the back door. "Where'd they come from?"

George and I came out and recognized them immediately, "They're the ones from the woods," George said.

"Well, what in the Sam hell are they doing here?" she asked.

"Reckon they heard him hollering," Uncle Colby said, gesturing towards the extremely perturbed rooster in the pen. "I heard him all the way from the fields yesterday. I don't wonder that they did, too."

"Well, God bless," said Aunt Emma, "Ain't no telling what infestations they done brought with them." But she seemed pleased at suddenly having a dozen more full size hens to get eggs from. She threw together some concoction to kill whatever the wild chickens had spread to her good ones, as she was convinced they had, and as they pecked away at the ground she ran around singing, “Here, chick, chick, chick . . . here chick,” trying to douse all of them, hers and the new ones, with the powder. Even after Uncle Colby took Lucifer the Leghorn out of the pen, earning himself some deep scratches in the process, the hens stayed at Aunt Emma's house from that day forward. I guess the easy food was too much temptation to leave even after their great leader disappeared yet again.

Uncle Colby took Lucifer the Leghorn to Mr. Pyle, and the present only served to deepen his good graces. "That's the finest cock-fighting rooster I did ever see," he told Uncle Colby.

And from that day on, Lucifer the Leghorn became known as Pyle's Pride. He fought thirty-two cock-fights in his life, at least official ones with bets and all, there was no telling how many he truly fought in his life, and he won every one of them. People talked about that rooster, years after he was gone. And whenever a particularly large and fierce rooster fought and won, someone would say, "Like Pyle's Pride that one is." And pride is exactly what the rooster gave Mr. Pyle until the end of his own days. He always seemed to walk around with a little smile, privately enjoying the thought of the next cockfight and his impending victories.

Chapter 11

After the experience with the chickens I’d started feeling better about Uncle Marcus. He was still a stranger to me, but now that he’d managed to reach heroism in my eyes, I was less intimidated by him. If he’d of pulled me aside to ask me about things again, I would have at least told him my suspicions, even if not the reason for them. As it was, though, Uncle Marcus wasn’t around after that day.

I hadn't heard much about Pap during the past weeks up until Pyle's Pride began his new life of glory. Aunt Emma had told me Uncle Marcus hadn't visited Pap and didn't want anyone to mention to Pap that he was in town. It seemed peculiar to me, though, seeing how Uncle Marcus was willing to question everyone except Pap, the one person who might actually know something he wasn’t sharing, but I didn't know anything of their history together, yet.

A few days after Uncle Marcus had come to Varner Creek he left again. Not for good, though. He took the midday train that went back up to Houston on that day, some travel once there. He wanted to see if maybe Mama had gone to Houston and he might find her. Perhaps she had gone there to catch a train to Galveston, he thought. Maybe she even forgot he didn't live there anymore and was up there looking for him.

Once there he sent a message to his wife, Mary Jo, via telegram. There was the phone system, the state's first line being from Houston to Galveston back in 1883, but he wasn't fond of phones with everybody listening to everybody, so he didn't have one at home. Instead, he liked the tried and true method of telegrams. He knew he'd have to get a phone sooner or later, though, because Mary Jo and the kids were complaining about living in the dark ages, but he’d just as soon put it off as long as possible.

He had told his wife to expect the message on that day and wanted to know if she had heard anything from Annie. By this time we had a station in Varner Creek, too, but he mainly made the trip to look around the city for Mama and Sarah, just in case. He went by the telegram station and then and had an early supper in a nearby restaurant. The telegram station was still open when he finished and there was a return message waiting for him:

He read the message and crumpled it in frustration. He had been hoping Annie arrived just after he left and his concerns had been completely unjustified, but he knew his wife would have sent word to Varner Creek if that had been the case, and his worries were mounting. After reading the telegram he began going over the possibilities again in his mind. Did Annie make a fresh start somewhere else? No, if so she still would have written Emma, at least. And leaving her son behind was not the sister he had known in childhood. So what else could it be? If Abram had done something to her and was trying to cover it up, he was doing a remarkable job. He couldn't have just stashed the horse and wagon somewhere. By now somebody would have noticed, unless he manage to sell them in a town nearby and gotten rid of Annie and Sarah's belongings. But if he had finally crossed the line with Annie, what about Sarah? Things just weren't adding up. What was he missing? Annie didn't just fall off the face of the earth. Where was she? Why hadn't anybody heard from her in over three weeks? He knew he couldn't stay in Varner Creek forever. He had a family at home and work that needed to be done. He had always been frugal and had plenty of money saved, but every day he was gone was a day he risked his reputation with the railroad company and the others in town who came to him for specialty items. He had spent years building up a reputation as a reliable and excellent craftsman. He’d be doing wrong as a provider for his own family by turning his back on that reputation. Still, he blamed himself for the situation. He remembered his own father being content just to have the kids gone as soon as possible. He felt like it had fallen to him to protect his sister from making the mistakes that had led to this, and he had failed her. And even now, their own mother was practically disinterested in the mysterious disappearance of her middle daughter. She was worried and wanted word of events, but all her attention and devotion was placed on her grandchildren, both Marcus' and Candace's, who had married an architect there in Galveston the year before, 1908, and just had her first baby. His were bright and beautiful children, proper and respectable, the kind of children Mrs. Stotley had always wanted. She was worried for Annie, but she’d always felt like her two daughters had done wrong in the eyes of the Lord, and that kept her at a distance.