Smokey Mountain Breakdown

So, the past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind with a busier than usual doctor-appointment-a-rama. Anyway--hope everyone had a joyous Turkey Day and a prosperous Black Friday.

So, I have a story out on Fried Chicken and Coffee. It's The Dark Hole. This is one of my rare short story length ones--4000 words--so bookmark it and sit down with a cup of joe when you have the time to sit and read. The Dark Hole was originally developed here on the blog back when I first started writing seriously. I think it was the first story that really made me feel I was ready to be a "real" writer (whatever that is). It's gone through a hundred or so rewrites, but it's still one of my early efforts that still moves me.

It's a dark tale, though--triggering for some people--dealing with what I call "the dark side of the mountain."

Okay, I know I promised to finish this on Sunday, but I've been distracted by a few craft projects. And I've finally been playing with my drop spindle. I seem to have the hang of it, but thus far it's resulted in a twisty, slubby mess. Which I'm told is okay and once I become proficient I'll be unable to create what's called a "novelty" yarn. I'm going to knit a scarf from it. Or at least that's the plan. I'm really liking it--but I'm suspicious that my sheep have gone to their final pasture--ie--are dead. Haven't seen hide nor fleece of them for a while. Either that--or they've taken permanent residence down the mountain where they were spending the summer. They should have returned by now.

At any rate, I haven't finished the story--but here's the awaited Part Two:

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“I know—let’s get him out of there and take a picture of the four of us.”

It was a bad idea whose time had come. They didn’t have too much trouble getting Junior out of the casket. As stiff as he was, he slid out like a knife from a sheath. There was a little wiggling and wedging involved but overall, Junior slid out of that coffin pretty easy. Once out, they were surprised to find that the nice wingtip shoes they’d included with his suit were not on his feet.

“Well, that won’t do,” said Boo. “I bought them shoes special for him for his 80th birthday party.”

Jim fished around in the bottom of the coffin, finally coming up with the shoes. “Here they is. They just put them down there in the bottom. Let’s get them on him.”

They tried to sit Junior in his favorite chair, a green pleather Laz-E-Boy he’d got at the factory seconds store in Morristown. Junior stubbornly refused to fold into a sitting position so they put the chair in the reclining position and laid him out like a board on a sawhorse. The foot part of the recliner kept going down so Boo got a cinderblock from the porch and propped it up. However, they soon found that Junior’s feet would not go in the shoes.

“I’ll get the camera,” said Jim.

What followed next would remain fuzzy in memory for the men, given the state of inebriation of three and the relative deadness of the fourth. When the film came back from the Wal-Mart Photo Center, the record showed that they first took photos of them standing around Junior in his favorite chair, stood him up and put their arms around each other, somehow wrestled Junior into his old hunting jacket and posed him with his rifle, took him outside and leaned him against his old Ford truck, then, for some reason, tried to feed him ice cream. Throughout all the photos, Junior remained agreeably and thoroughly dead.

The real trouble began the next morning when Mrs. Bess Truholt, one of Boo’s high school girlfriends who ended up marrying the late Skeeter Hall after Boo got too fresh with her on the walk back from church one Sunday, knocked on the door the next morning. Not getting an answer, she peeked in the window and what she saw made her drop that wet coconut cake and run screaming back to her car.

Once safely in her car, Bess called her best friend, Trudy, and said, “Junior Mantooth done rose from the dead, kilt all his family and ate them!”

Actually, what Bess saw through the window was the three men passed out in the living room in various states of disarray and Junior, propped in his chair in his hunting outfit, a rifle over his lap, melted strawberry ice cream smeared all over his face and leaking from his mouth like bloody drool.

Her car peeling out of the driveway roused Ed, who looked around the parlor of their house, the recliner where Junior, despite his deadness, seemed to have had too good of a time and said, “Oh shit.”

There are some stories that start where they should have ended. This might be just that sort of a story. For instance, I might tell you that Junior Mantooth was a righteous man who lived a righteous life and died well. That would be perfectly true. I might tell you that two thousand souls attended his viewing and the streets of Newport City, Tennessee looked like a street carnival that day with all the folks who come down out of the mountains to pay their respects and to visit with friends they hadn’t seen in many a long while. That would be true, also.

When Junior died, Clarence Huff, the funeral director came to the house and respectfully conveyed the old boy to the funeral home where they embalmed him, dressed him in his finest suit and placed him in their white “Gone to Glory” model casket with the pewter fittings. The viewing was set for a Saturday with the memorial following. Then, he was taken back to the family home where the wake was to be held. An old-fashioned vigil was scheduled all through Saturday night with the burial on Sunday at the family cemetery next to his three wives, parents and deceased daughters. All of this was in accordance with Junior’s last wishes. He always said he wanted his final homecoming to be the biggest party the mountain had ever seen.

Junior’s family, whittled down to two widower brothers and a bachelor son, had been taking care of him during his long illness and as anyone knows, menfolk ain’t good for nothing around the sick. Still they managed best they could, making Junior’s final years as comfortable as they were able. But it meant they couldn’t go down to the dump and jaw with the other old boys, couldn’t bear hunt during the season, nor fish and drink like they wanted. So, not surprisingly, Uncles Boo and Jim, and son Ed, were a bit overwhelmed by the social whirlwind that was Junior Mantooth’s funeral.

All the widow women showed up with dishes of food when the boys had been living off cornbread and beanie-weenies. A few came and cleaned up the house for them. An endless string of visitors came by the house and signed the registry at the funeral home. Junior had been a popular man and a generous one. Rumor was he had made a fortune ushering geologists around the mountains. They also said Junior had hidden gold around the place in a fleet of old junk cars and that was why the boys never could get rid of all the junk around the property, so all those widow women were smiling especially bright for all three of the fellows.

The ladies from First Baptist, Edwina Assembly of God in Jesus’ Name and Bridgeport Church of God all got together to help coordinate the wake, following Junior on his final trip from town to his home after the memorial service. The daytime headlights trailing the hearse stretched for six miles on the drive back to the house. Buddy Don’s Barbeque catered the event and was waiting in the yard with three whole hogs for the mourners. The Heavenly Hay Gospel Choir performed. It did indeed look like Junior’s last wishes were observed to the letter and his going away party was a shindig to say the least.

By nine p.m., the crowd had thinned out and by eleven p.m. only Boo, Jim and Ed’s friends were left. Junior lay in his casket in peaceful repose. A few hip flasks were produced and they began toasting Junior and recalling his long life. It started around two o’clock in the morning after many shots of Popcorn Sutton’s finest corn likker.

“You know? I don’t think we ever got a picture of the four of us together.”

“Seems a shame, don’t it?” said Ed, a bleary tear rolling down his cheek. “It’s just been the four of us these past five years since Daddy had the stroke.”

Boo reached in the casket and smoothed the old man’s hair. “Ain’t seen Brother look so fine in a long time. Clarence did a real good job of fixing the droopy part of his face.”

“I know—let’s get him out of there and take a picture of the four of us.”

It was a bad idea whose time had come...

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of "Junior Mantooth's Last Outing!"

I haven't written some tales just for you guys in a while, so this Halloween weekend I'll be giving you two stories--one today and one tomorrow. As these things go, I'll be writing from the seat of my pants--making it up as I go along.

I offer to you two completely true tales (as true as the tail I was born with!) to confound the imagination. There is a sixth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is the middle ground between light and shadow - between man's grasp and his reach; between science and superstition; between the pit of his fears and the sunlight of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area called The Creepy Appalachia Zone.

Red Arlington's Conversion

Some remember it only because it happened on the coldest winter these parts had seen in many a long year. They remember it because their breath fogged and froze into tiny ice crystals that shattered on the ground as they waited on the banks of Big Creek down by Sawmill Hole where Junior Tarlington’s sawmill wheel churned up the silt. When the wheel was braked, it was a fine place for a river baptism. They remembered because it took six strong men wielding mattocks and seven-pound sledges to break through the foot of ice and the bonfire built on the side of the creek barely saved Pastor Granger’s fingers and toes from falling off. They remembered because it seemed only fitting that the good Lord deemed as mean a man as Red Arlington would have to nearly die submerged in the frigid water to come up a saved man, sputtering “Hallelujah” between chittering, clenched teeth.

But the family remembered for another reason. The story started months before when the killing frosts had only just settled. It’s the story of Red Arlington’s choice, which wasn’t really a choice at all. For who would chose to dance for eternity locked in the Devil’s sulphurous embrace?

By all accounts, Red Arlington popped out of the womb mean as a henless rooster. His momma took the weed and nearly died of it—worse case of milk fever the doctor had ever seen. Some said Red was raised on rattlesnake milk because of it, but the truth was it were the milk of a contrary nanny goat. Same difference some said. At seven years of age, he wrapped a hound’s tail in tarred straw and lit it afire. At fifteen, Lucy Hall disappeared after walking home with him—not that they proved anything but there were always whispers. Then there was the time they found him sitting on Joe Lawes’s corpse while frying up a rasher of bacon. He claimed he didn’t have nothing to do with the man dying and all, but that’s a tale for anther time. At any rate, the mean little infant grew into a mean child, and the mean child into a mean adult. There’s not enough space here to chronicle the sins of Red Arlington, but suffice it to say, he was a bad, bad man.

His folks had hoped his marriage, celebrated at the business end of his father-in-law’s rifle-gun, would calm him down a bit. But after his bride popped out a few babies, Red predictably turned to making corn likker. And he was no master of the distillery arts, just in it for the easy money that come from them Chicago men who cared not a whit Red’s still was hacked together from car radiators or that once in a while a dead possum or some brake fluid added a special zing to his product. No telling how many dead Yankees adorned the endless scroll of Red’s transgressions awaiting him in heaven.

He kept his still down near Granny’s Branch, down-creek from a few homesteads—which is to say the branch water wasn’t a pure as it could be, if you get my drift. The rotgut Red made, didn’t make him a kinder man and oft was the night his wife boarded the door up to keep him out. She’d sit covering the ears of his two babes while Red cursed a streak of filth like to wake the dead from their inconstant dreaming.

It was the night of the third killing frost, and the leaves on the mile-a-minute vines had wilted, turning greeny-grey as a corpse’s toenails. The moon was setting over Sol Messer Mountain, but only a sliver and not near enough to light the footpath Red stumbled across on his trip home from the still. The lower path was near level, cut into the side of a steep ravine—one misstep would carry a man down into the darkness, dark even in the light of day, that misshapen holler. He sang into the frosty morning, that singing voice of his a redeeming feature. But when his toe stubbed against a root, he cursed, “Goddamnit to Hell!”

And that were when it happened. Those mile-a-minute vines came to life and snaked up, wrapping themselves around old Red’s ankles. They twisted and warped, dancing like a thousand whipping copperheads and pulled Red down, down, down. He screamed, grabbing onto the roots, rocks and dirt. He clawed and scratched, blood bubbling from his split fingernails. There wasn’t no one to hear him cry as the vines tortured and dragged him. Dragged him down into the cold, dark holler.

And he thought for a moment, it was a mercy he passed out.

When Red came to, he smelled the smell of land-fish mushrooms growing all around him and he felt peculiar warm for such a cold night. He tried to move, but couldn’t as it seemed he was embraced by a pair of arms holding him still.

“Ah…” sighed a sibilant voice, dry and crinkly in his ears, but womanly in tone, “Your song and words are precious to me, dear man. I fear I’ve fallen quite in love with you. Won’t you come below and dance with me? Dance a waltz to the devil’s box?”

He felt dry lips caress his ear and smelled the stink of the grave on the breath of this woman spirit. In a flash of insight, he thought to fool her and said, “My lovely, of course I’ll dance a merry fiddle dance with you. I’ll dance the night long, but let me go say goodbye to my family. I’ll return tomorrow night early and we will run away together. On this you have my promise.”

She sighed and he felt her tongue on his cheek—warm and forked. And so she released him. Red woke again on the path, shaking and shuddering, vomiting and feverish—and so stumbled back to his home just as the sun was rising—thinking he’d escaped a terrible fate.

Red stayed away from his still, the next night and the next. Until his wife tired of his laying about the house and scolded him, telling him to get his lazy self a job or cut up some firewood so they’d have money and some warmth for the winter. Red, never one to take an honest job in exchange for easy money, made his way back to the still to set up for another run of moonshine. He slept there at the still until he finally had to make his way back home one night.

This time, Red took the middle footpath home—it was a more difficult path than the lower one, but he was loath to take the same way home he had the night he dreamed (for surely it was a dream?) of the devil woman. As he climbed up and around the switchbacks, he hummed to himself—more to keep himself company and ease his nerves than anything else. At one point, the rotten rock and screed gave way and Red stumbled to his knees hollering, “Jaysus-fucking-Christ on a cracker!”

And that’s when it happened again. It seemed as though the entire mountain fell under his feet and Red was swept down, down, down past the lower path and into the cursed holler. Again, he scrabbled and scraped, grabbing onto any passing tree branch, trying to stop his fall by churning his feet, but to no avail. He tumbled and spun, down, down, down—down into the dark holler.

And this time, he did not think it a mercy when his eyes closed.

When he woke, the she-demon had her arms locked around him, but facing him so he could see her face. She was powersome beautiful in an evil way with mischievous eyes and pointed ears. The smell of mushrooms, he remembered from last time, he knew now was her special perfume. She scritched his back with her razor-sharp nails and pressed her pointy breasts against him and said, “Though you do me wrong and lie to me, I can’t help my love for you, dear man. It was naughty of you to tell me you would return and then not. But your song and your words bewitch and please me. I cannot help myself. Won’t you please come below and dance with me? Dance a waltz to the devil’s box?”

Red gave a nervous smile and thought fast. “Oh, sweet lady, I did not do you wrong, I swear,” he said. “You see, I play a bit of fiddle myself and I was composing a song to your beauty. It took me all this time to get it right and I didn’t think it worthy for your beloved ears until just this night. I was on my way home to fetch my fiddle and return to you. With this song as a gift.”

She drew a little blood with her nails, stinging him like a mankiller wasp. Then she thoughtfully said, “I will allow you to go back and collect your fiddle, since I dearly would like to hear this tune you’ve wrought. But bring yourself back to me this next night or there will be Hell to pay, mark my words.”

And with that, Red found himself back on the middle path, sick as a bluetick and stumbling home.

Red stayed home as long as he could. He did not leave his house and peered fearfully out the windows when night fell. He slept in fits and starts throughout the day, until his wife became irritable with him being underfoot.

“Why don’t you go out and get a real job?” she pleaded with him. And normally Red would backhand her across the mouth, but he watched her and womankind warily now. Still, he wasn’t ready to do such a thing, so he eventually headed back to his still. This time he stayed even longer, but finally it began to snow. It was a terrible snow that fell that winter and this was the first taste of it—and Red knew he had to make his way home if only for shelter.

This time, he took the longest way home, the upper path. It was treacherous, icy and slick. Red, not normally a praying man, found himself singing church hymns as he made his way up the steep mountainside. Closer and closer to the top he came and as the path became more dangerous, he prayed. Prayed real hard. And when a boulder came crashing down, he hollered, “Oh, Sweet Jesus, save me!”

But this time, he did not fall and the mountain did not come crashing down on his head. Instead, his demon lover emerged from the mist, rising up from the dark holler like a virago, like the possessed spirit she was. She rose until she dwarfed the mountain, wailing and rending her demon garments.

“Damn, you, Red Arlington! Damn you to Hell! You done broke my heart and I no longer find your songs sweet. You’ll make music no more, swear.”

And just like that, she was gone.

Red Arlington never made music again, and he never allowed it in his house with the exception of shape-note singing. No devil’s boxes were allowed. He was baptized that January in the frozen creek, and proclaimed himself saved—his sins forgiven.

But just you be careful, mind you what you say, if you travel the low road on a fall night when the moonlight slivers through the trees. They say the devil waits out there for you in a handsome form, waiting to take you below. Down, down, down—to dance to the devil’s box.


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Happy Halloween!

I think I’ll dedicate this story to Pastor Jimmy—because I think he’d enjoy this churchy little cautionary tale. And it’s based on a story I collected from Friend Scott about one of their mutual relatives.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you the strange tale of Junior Mantooth’s Last Outing. It’s sort of an Appalachian zombie story. Based on truth. I swear. You can read it in the paper.

Did everyone have a fun Fourth? Have your fill of hotdogs? Damn, I loves me a skinless Nathan's, know what I mean? Me? I spent a pretty quiet day. Watched some episodes of Oz. Drank some hot tea. Mowed the lawn. Watched the fireworks.

Anyway, my buddy, Leslie, over at Leslie's Omnibus, lured me over to blog story writing with her Take Three exercise. It's a bit more constricting a prompt than I'm accustomed to working with, but I gave it the old college try. The prompt was to write a story in under 1000 words with the following three sentences:

I hate nature… and WalMart.

And that’s when Nana went commando.

Moments like this make me very, very nervous.

So...I give you for your blogging consumption...

Hippie Chick Gets Us Busted at the Walmart Parking Lot

Donnie threw a hand up to shade his eyes, looking across the Walmart parking lot and the four-lane highway to the county sheriff's depot. The wind blew just right, 10 mph the paper said, wafting right into the right-hand corner of the Wal-mart parking lot. The monthly marijuana burn was about to commence and Donnie was looking forward to a free contact high.

He squinted and spat, kicking some garbage left by the fireworks vendor who'd vacated that bit of concrete that morning. Walter and his hippie chick girlfriend pulled up in the parking spot next to Donnie's truck.

"They started yet?" Walter hung his head out the car window, his squinty ginger eyes fading into the freckles of his ginger face and ginger hair.

"Nah, but they moving everything out onto the bonfire."

Walter and the hippie chick joined Donnie on the tailgate of the Ford truck.

"Hey man," said Donnie, "You got any crack?"

Hippie Chick scowls. Walter rolled his eyes. "Nah, Sasha don't let me do none."

"It's not natural," Sasha the hippie chick said as she jumped from the truck and began dancing a jerky, inelegant dance, not at all inconspicuous.

"Moments like this make me very, very nervous," Walter said, as shoppers turning into the Walmart rubbernecked at Sasha's dance, her hairy armpits all exposed. He passed a few hydros into Donnie's silent palm while Sasha wasn't looking.

"She's gonna draw a crowd."

"No shit. Rentacops too, prolly."

"So where'd you get these? I thought your uncle had your granny?" Donnie popped the hydros.

"We done got her back. Unc let her get away from him in Home Depot. She got one of them lawn tractors started and that's when Nana went commando."

"Christ, man! Shut the hell up! I don't want to hear nothin' 'bout your granny's va-jay-jay!"

"You perv!" Walter shoved Donnie in the arm. "I mean she went crazy! Mowed down half of lawn and garden. Put three guys in the ER before they stopped her. Anyway. Court ordered her back with us so Momma's got control of her meds and social security again. Unc's madder'n'hell."

Sasha pirouetted, bare dirty toes gripping the concrete as a cloud of blue, marijuana-flavored smoke rose from the depot and came roiling across the parking lot. She spread her legs wide, picked up the hem of her blouse and fanned the smoke into her face. She wasn't wearing a bra.

"Let us thank Gaia for her bounty!"

"Fuck me, what the hell is she on, Walter?"

"Mushrooms. Jimson weed. Tree bark. Christ, I dunno. She don't take nothin' less'n it grows in the woods."

Sasha stripped her top completely off.

"Make her stop, man! Woah--that's more 'nature' than I need. Shit man, Walmart done called the cops," Donnie said as the city cops came peeling into the lot.

"I hate nature," Walter said, "and Walmart."

The rolling thunder has begun, just as it did last summer--the summer when springs dried up and hay became scarce and horses were set free in stranger's yards. We have gotten a bit of rain, but it's so hot that the moisture rises off the dirt like tarmac. It was so warm this past winter, my lawn tractor's battery didn't die. That's the first time that's happened. But I'm looking forward to blackberries. At least we didn't have the double whammy of a killing freeze while all was in bloom.

I was researching through literary journals the other day. That's part of what I do--try to find journals who publish things sort of like what I write--or who seem open to the sort of stuff I write. Or if not--do I have an atypical piece they might like. I do have a few of those. I can write very arty clever literary things--but mostly get so carried away by things like two-headed calves I can't focus on being too clever.

And I think this is the considerate thing to do. Fiction editors have to go through a gang of crap. I've read the horror stories on their blogs. And you know I'm sort of a stickler for civility so I cringe when I hear a writer has been less than polite. So, I try not to send them stuff they wouldn't use in a million years. Sometimes I get this right--sometimes I fail miserably. But I do make the effort.

So, the other day, I'm going through a few online journals because I'm looking for places for a few SNOWs (stories no one wants) that have gotten excellent reviews but can't seem to find homes. One of them hit the top three on Zoetrope this month. They are not shabby stories.

I start going through the archives. Story one is a penis story. Oh, well, I think--don't have any of those--so I continue to browse and I'll be damned if every single story I pulled up randomly on this one journal didn't feature penises engaged in all sorts of penile activities. This is a literary journal, mind you--and I'm left to conclude that the fiction editor has some sort of monumental johnson fetish. It's not like there was a note in the guidelines that said, "Send your best penis stories," or "All penises, all the time."

It's not that I'm a prude or anything--I just don't have any good wanger tales to tell at this time that don't involve goats and urinary calculi. And I did spend an awful lot of time reading his sausage party stories--so I did rather feel entitled to get something out of it.

And you all know I'm a HUGE Python and Cook & Moore fan. So I wrote this. Enjoy.

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Mrs. Snodderly's Letter to the Editor

Dear Fiction Editor,

Whilst perusing journals, I came across your website and read with interest your guidelines and recent entries of the story type.

I find myself fascinated by your distaste for the term “flash fiction”, and the irony of that aversion combined with your publication’s focus upon stories dealing with lady parts and dangly bits. You must admit, there is something flashy about a ripping good dangly bits yarn, particularly coupled with liberal descriptions of lady parts.

While I have nothing against such tales dealing with bits and parts, my own work focuses more on moist cicadas emerging succulent from slitted shells, trout sliming across palms to plunge into dark wet spaces, spears of asparagus thrusting from loam, the swell of ripe squashes, farmer’s hands greased black fondling tractor pistons and the rumps of slaughter cattle dancing through chutes. I think we can both agree there is nothing of bits or parts involved here.

As I said, I am not in the least disturbed by collections of stories dealing exclusively with dangly bits or lady parts, indeed, I sometimes browse the internet looking for just such stories, though I’ve rarely found them presented in such a literary fashion as in your journal.

I will refrain from submitting at this time, since my current work is at odds with your journal. But I think I may have something for you in the future, perhaps with both trout and lady parts.

Cordially yours,

Mrs. Wilma P. Snodderly

It seems to have been the potatoes that did it. I'm not a huge potato eater. I like one now and again, but I got a bag of them to make some curry with and had the leftovers stored in a cabinet. It takes me a while to eat that many potatoes.

Anyway, I saw evidence of a mouse in my kitchen--hanging out around the potatoes. I don't know why it wants potatoes, but that seems to be what it is going for. But it's too late, the mouse is here and this is war.

So, I take three hours to do a cleanup yesterday that would normally take 30 minutes. What I really need to do is take everything out of the cabinets and figure out where the little bugger got in--but it takes two functional arms to do that.

I've set traps and put Havoc under the house and in places the dogs can't get to. But it really likes potatoes. Not sure if it's going to go for the Havoc. Getting rid of the potatoes today. At least it hasn't figured out how to get to the upper food storage shelves.

Here's a new installment of Porn and Donuts. Enjoy.

He met her a month ago at the dentist’s office. Their eyes met across the cracked linoleum of the waiting room under a sofa-sized portrait of a hunting scene. She smiled, revealing a sexy space between her front teeth and the dark place on the edge of her smile.

“I’m Kellie, Do I know you?”

“No, but you sure should.”

A cheerless technician called Lucius’ name and he went to pay in blood and pain for what he had come for.

The dental profession referred to Dr. Jeffers’ favorite tools as extraction forceps. Everyone else called them pliers. His second favorite tool rocked teeth loose in their sockets before the extraction forceps came into play. They called that a wedge. His clinic specialized in extracting teeth in an assembly line operation. He did not ask questions. He pulled teeth. For fifty dollars, he extracted one tooth and charged twenty-five dollars for each additional tooth. He gave his patients a script for thirty #10 hydrocodones and the antibiotic of their choice when they left.

Lucius came for the hydrocodone. He sat down in the dental chair, upholstered in cracked vinyl. The rusty metal fittings of the equipment and spit-flecked chrome creaked as he settled. Dr. Jeffers strode in, applying the Novocain injections with such speed that Lucius did not have time to flinch.

The dentist ripped off his gloves and delivered his parting shot before marching off to his next victim.

“Meth mouth.”

“E’s ‘ot!” Lucius protested as his face went numb and he lost the ability to blink his right eye.

Lucius had bad teeth, but they were bad from chewing assorted narcotics like they were Flintstones vitamins. This, combined with a steady diet of Mountain Dew, Pink Snowball cakes and Milky Way Bars rotted his teeth prematurely. The tooth pulled today had nothing wrong with it. He had run out of bad teeth to pull.

He looked across the hall into the next room. The girl, Kellie, was there and he could see her legs from the thighs down, resting on the dental chair. She kicked and twisted, tensing in evident pain. Her heels thumped against the footrest rhythmically.

“Aaargh--Aaar--Aaargh!”

Lucius became aroused and moved his coat to cover his lap. He tried to lick his lips but his tongue had gone numb. Her feet stopped drumming and Jeffers rushed out of the room, snapping off a pair of gloves.

Jeffers pried open Lucius’ mouth and retreated in a matter of moments with a tooth. The taste of iron and salt hit the back of his throat and gauze padding slammed into the socket. Jeffers was gone from the room by the time Lucius sat up.

Kellie stood in the doorway with a handful of bloody gauze pressed to her mouth. She flushed and her eyes glinted a bit too bright. They made their way up to the checkout desk together, with their frozen faces and bloody gauze wads.

They collected the hydro scripts and went to the pharmacy, glancing shyly at each other.

As my gift to you, my readers, I offer the following Christmas tale...and a little puzzle at the end. Props to Friend Scot for giving me the story idea, which is a mishmash of our discussion while driving home from his family's gathering last night.

Merry Christmas to you all and I hope you are having a joyous holiday!

Sukey sat on her haunches with her back to the mossy side of the poplar tree. She burrowed her face deeper in the frayed woolen scarf around her neck and blew warm breath into the oily wool to warm her nose up. Her shotgun felt heavy in her hands and the barrel seemed cold. It were funny, she thought to herself, how gunmetal never seemed to warm up no matter how tight you held it to yourself.

The moon was full like a white pumpkin sitting up in the sky with its tiny star friend just down to the left of it. It lit up the ridge, kissing the mountaintops. Sukey thought it looked like quilt pieces of blue against darker blue with a little line of silver edging. For sure, the moon right filled the sky tonight.

It were the best type of night to catch the varmint, she thought to herself. A varmint can’t bear to sit home sleeping when the moon were that big in the sky. So she waited and watched over the barnyard. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to be out here half the night to catch the thieving bastard.

They’d already lost half their chickens to the winter night raider and that was how Sukey found herself spending that Christmas Eve propped against the poplar tree in the shadows looking over the barnyard. Christmas or no, they couldn’t afford to lose no more chickens.

Sukey turned her face to that night sky and wondered what sort of night it were the night Baby Jesus entered the world. She wondered if he had entered the world in the usual way, all bloody and slimy and screaming. She wondered if his mommy had hollered a lot like her Mommy had when little Wivonnie were born. They seemed to sort of gloss over that part, she thought. She reckoned there must have been a fair amount of hollering. A fair amount of blood, too. And she thought that star they was always talking about must have been almost as bright as the moon were tonight.

Off in the distance she could hear the serinadin’ going on. Usually she would have joined them, but since they moved to the tarpaper shack here on the Bessenger farm to share crop, she didn’t have near as much free time. There were a few hilltops that glowed an extra bit from the bonfires.

Sukey wiggled her toes in her hobnail boots to warm them up. Leastways she had some socks on to keep her toes a bit warmer than if she’d not had them. So there was a blessing. You had to count your blessings, the preacher man was always saying. Lord, she thought, thank you for these socks.

It were so bright that you could see everything in the barnyard. A few of the cows were eating the corn fodder they’d left out for them. They’un’s couldn’t tell it were time to sleep, she reckoned.

Sukey watched them for a moment and wondered if they would kneel to pray as the old legend said. It was the night that the animals supposedly talked, and Sukey wondered what they would say if they could. She reckoned they’d say something like, “Mmmm, these here corn shucks is good!”

She dozed off there in the cold for a moment, her head falling heavily into the warm nest of her scarf. Her 12 gauge lay on her lap, crooked open and waiting for her shell.

It was the snuffling that stirred her. She smelled it before she saw it. It was the smell of wet dog, like a hound come up from the creek and had shook all over her. But it was also stronger and stinkier. She knew that smell, did Sukey.

Quietly, she slid two shells into the chamber. It sure wasn’t what she had expected to find out here and she was pretty sure it wasn’t what was killing the chickens, but it sure would be a good Christmas if she could kill it.

She sat tensed as it ambled into the clearing. The moon tried to light it up but is showed as a great black shadow. The cattle moaned in alarm and clattered around in their pen, moving to and fro.

Sukey took aim low on the chest of the beast where she knew its heart was. The shotgun roared and Sukey felt her shoulder wrench backwards into the mossy bark of the poplar tree. The bear dropped to the ground with a bellow and then was quiet.

Sukey stood and cautiously approached the dead bear. She kept the shotgun pointed at it. She stood there for a minute to make sure it stayed down. She rubbed her hands on her pants and stomped back to the shack. She saw a light go on as she climbed up onto the porch.

Her Papaw was there as she closed the door behind her and rested the shotgun against the wall.

“Did you get it?” He asked.

“Na, but I did get a bear!” She said with a gap-tooth grin.

“Don’t you tell tales to me, girl!” Her grandfather said to her.

“Don’t believe me? Fine! But I’m tired and I ain’t strong enough to string it up and dress it, so you better get Daddy and do something afore the wolves get it.”

She picked up an orange from the table. It was a rare treat that they only had at Christmas and it was the only special thing she and her little brothers and sisters would have on Christmas morning. She dug her fingernails into the rind and breathed the tart sweetness, so rare and precious.

It was the happiest Christmas ever. Ma fixed a huge bear roast and they sat around the table with the rich gamy grease smeared on their faces, their bellies full. They ate well for weeks off of that bear. And Sukey thought, yes, preacher man is right. You gots to count your blessings. Lord, thank you for this here bear.

Many years later, Susannah Kinston sat, her eyes lowered towards her bridge hand at the Lady’s Auxillary Club. They had gone around the room telling stories of their favorite childhood Christmas experiences. Susannah shifted in her Chanel wool suit and adjusted her gloves.

“Well,” she demurred, “We always had oranges. I do love a nice orange.”

“Thank you, Lord, for all my many blessings,” she thought, “and thank you, Lord, for sending that bear. But I think I’ll keep that between the two of us.”


As an extra Christmas puzzle, I’m mentioned the name of Sukey’s little sister, Wivonnie, in the story. This is spelled phonetically according to how the Appalachian people sometimes pronounce it and has a common spelling that you would recognize. What is it?

Boy-o-boy, it rained today!

Not enough to wet the dirt's spit, but at least it rained some. I got off my first submission today. It's for consideration for the William Richey Short Story Contest with The Yemassee Journal. That's the University of South Carolina's Literary magazine. I suppose it's a bit sentimental on my part. But it would be nice if my first professional recognition came from my home state and alma mater. I'll be submitting to College of Charleston's Crazyhorse Journal tomorrow.

If you would like to follow things beyond the development stages I workshop here on the blog, you can go to my EditRed page:

Rosie on EditRed

You can join for free and request to be one of my readers if you'd like access to the pieces I'm moving towards publication. Once I decide to move a piece in that direction, the roughs you enjoy reading here will be disappearing from the web. The early version of "The Dark Hole", for instance, is no longer available unless you are one of my EditRed readers.

Anyway...here's a bit more Porn and Donuts....

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Dr. Jefferson was a dentist. More precisely he was a wizard with the pliers that the dental profession called extraction forceps. His clinic specialized in cheaply extracting teeth in an assembly line operation. For 50 dollars he’d extract one tooth and there was a 25 dollar charge for each additional tooth. When you left, he’d give you a script for 30 #10 hydrocodones and the antibiotic of your choice.

Lucius was there for the hydrocodone. He sat down in the cracked dental chair. All of the metal fittings in the office were either rusty or covered with a dull greasy film. The mirrored surfaces looked to be flecked with something that looked like spit. Dr. Jefferson breezed in quickly and applied the novacaine injections so quickly, Lucius didn’t have time to flinch.

Jefferson ripped off his gloves and delivered his parting shot as he scuttled off to his next victim.

“Meth mouth.”

“E’s ‘ot!” Lucius protested as his face was going numb. He was losing the ability to blink his right eye.

But Jefferson was already gone. Lucius had bad teeth, but they were bad from chewing assorted narcotics like they were Flinstones vitamins. He was particular about his addictive substances and eschewed the frantic joys of amphetamines for the mellow high of opioids. Those combined with a steady diet of Mountain Dew, pink creme-filled coco-choco snowball cakes and Milky Way Bars had done his teeth in before their time. But there wasn’t anything wrong with the tooth he was getting pulled today. He had already run out of bad teeth to pull.

He could see across the way into the next room. The girl, Kellie, was over there and all he could see were her legs from the thighs down, resting on the dental chair. They were kicking in that odd way when one is trying to stay still against every instinct that screams at you to flee.

“Aaargh…Aaar….Aaargh!” She gurgled, loudly.

Lucius found himself getting aroused and moved his coat to cover his lap. He tried to lick his lips but his tongue had gone numb. Soon the drumming of her feet stopped and Jefferson sailed out of the room, snapping off a pair of gloves.

Now it was Lucius’ turn and Jefferson was in his mouth and out in a matter of moments with a bloody tooth. The taste of iron and salt hit the back of his throat and a gauze pad was crammed in there. Jefferson was gone from the room by the time Lucius sat up.

Kellie was standing in the doorway with a handful of bloody gauze pressed to her mouth. Her face was flushed and her eyes were a bit too bright. They made their way up to the checkout desk together, each glancing shyly at each other with their frozen faces and bloody gauze wads.

They collected their hydro scripts and went to the pharmacy together. They had rarely been separated since. Somehow, they just knew they had found their other half.

I think I'm about to lose Old Man. I had to carry him up the two short steps to the porch today. He's been breathing really hard and I think his little old heart is about to give out. He refused to eat anything but a few bites of boiled chicken today. Of course, I've been saying this for three years.

Well, I can't seem to restrain myself from throwing my roughs up here for everyone to read. It just feels so lonely writing to nobody in particular. The good news is, I've asked some people who know, and they say I should be able to submit my stories as long as I don't have a readership over 5,000 and I take them off the blog before I submit them. Also, the stories I put up here are rough drafts and I'm basically seeking peer approval here, so...the finished and honed copies are different. Anyway...things are going to start disappearing from the blog.

But for now...here's the start of "Porn and Donuts".

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Lucius was vaguely aware of the sun burning through his eyelids and the zinging sound of the traffic whizzing by. He felt the rough texture of the ground under him and turned his cheek into the rubbery cushion his head was resting on. His mouth was parched and the few teeth he had left felt like they had little sweaters on.

He smacked his tongue on the roof of his mouth and searched around his gums with it, probing the various sore spots. Then he slowly sat up on the verge of the interstate. He blinked painfully into the sun and scratched his crotch.

Lying on the ground beside him was his cushion, The Lola Delight Inflatable Pleasure Doll with five convenient orifices. Lola regarded Lucius with her permanently surprised gaze and her gaping oval mouth. Lucius thought he detected recrimination in her eyes and he punched her in her abdomen making her face bug out slightly.

“Shut up, bitch.” He croaked at her.

He grabbed Lola around the middle and got up, heading up the exit ramp towards the Downtown Buck Snort Citgo and the promise of a Big Sip 82 oz. Mountain Dew. As he trudged past the gawking truckers and motorists, he wondered about how he ended up here finally. He wondered if she would be waiting for him as they had agreed.

He’d met her a month ago at the dentist’s office. They were there for the same reason and had bonded instantly, somehow recognizing that they each shared a weird sense of kinship. Their eyes met across the cracked linoleum of the dingy waiting room under the yellowed sofa-sized portrait of a hunting scene. He smiled at her, showing his gap-tooth grin. And she smiled at him showing the same.

“I’m Kellie,” she said, “Do I know you?”

“No, but you sure should.” He replied.

And about that time, a worn looking technician called Lucius’s name and it was time to go pay in blood and pain for what he had come there for.

Stir with a Knife ~ Part Four

They were an odd thing, those golden needles. You wouldn’t think gold, as soft as it was, would make a good sewing needle. But these needles pierced true and sharp and with deadly accuracy.

But when Bessie took out her special golden needles, they said an eerie green glow could be seen around her house. The few people who saw the glow could swear they heard the sounds of laughter and music. They also said they saw shadows moving in the house behind the lace curtains. But everyone knew that Bessie kept to herself after the “accident”. She never had anything to do with the folk in the community anymore. So who could possibly be visiting her?

No one really connected Bessie with the untimely deaths that occurred on the mountain. Well, not at first, anyway. Life is cheap where life is that hard. It was not out of the ordinary when Bart Roach died in a sawmill accident. It was out of the ordinary that the three friends who left Bessie out in the woods all bled to death during childbirth within months of each other. Everyone commented how the three had been so looking forward to having their babies.

Stella, the last of the three who delivered, kept saying over and over in her delirium, “She’s coming to get me…she’s coming. She’s stitched my name, just like she got Cora and June…she’s coming to get me.”

No one really knew what she was talking about. They named her daughter, Lucille.

But it was in the nature of the community to revel in gossip. They gossiped about the good and the bad and often made things up just to spread around. And Bessie became something of a legend on the mountain. They called her “The Sew Witch”. And many a naughty child had been admonished with the words, “You better watch out or The Sew Witch’ll git you!”

Children often crept up to her house and then ran away screaming when she opened her door. Many a young boy had been dared to set foot on her porch. Few attempted it.

Bessie didn’t leave her house often. When she did, people tended to talk.

It was just such a day, many years later that the boy first saw her.

He huddled closer to his mother when she came inside the dusty confines of Timman's store. He'd been a good child and his mommy had bought him a Payday candy bar. He grasped it protectively when the woman came in and stood with the door open.

The rain was blowing in but no one said anything.

The child's mother picked up a knife and stirred her cup of coffee, averting her eyes from the newcomer.

The woman's one good eye took in the farmers and folk in the store. Her bad eye rolled around at nothing in particular. She did something that might have been a smile. It might have been a grimace. It was real hard to tell. There was dreadful scarring on her face, just visible from the knitted scarf that hid part of her face.

Everyone was silent.

She moved awkwardly around the store, her left foot dragging ever so slightly. One of her shoes had one heel that was two inches taller to account for the shorter leg. The rain still blew in the front door, but no one said anything.

She brought her purchases up to the counter. Everyone parted to give her a wide berth. There was a packet of no. 7 sharps, several spools of Coats white cotton thread and a thimble. Timman rang them up and took her money for the purchases. Her bad eye wandered around looking at no one. A few people made surreptitious hand signs.

She wrapped her purchases and put them in her tapestry bag and hobbled to the door. She turned before exiting and looked back, focusing her good eye on the young mother. She made that thing with her face again. Could have been a smile, could have been a grimace. She giggled and it made a sound like a crow eating poisoned corn.

"Stir with a knife....trouble and strife." Her voice croaked out with the sound of a barn latch not used often.

The young mother started and pulled her child closer as the woman left. She left the door open and the rain blew in.

Timman came out from behind his counter, wiping his hands on his apron. He shut the door behind the woman and looked at his customers.

"Well, that were right interestin'." He said and moved back behind the counter.

The young mother looked up from her coffee and whispered, "What do you suppose she meant?"

"Don't you worry none, Lucille," said one of the farmers. "All that stuff you hear 'bout that crazy old bat cain't be true. She's just a sad, sad old woman."

One of the young teens in the store said with wide eyes, "My momma said she got like that when the rats tried to eat her face whilst she were sleepin'!"

Timman snorted. "Nah, she got mauled by a bear. Ain't been right since."

Lester, whose farm was just up the road, chimed in, "She sure do sew purty, though. Heard she sold one of them baby quilts fer 50 dollar to some outsiders."

The young teen said, "My momma said them people, their baby died after they got that quilt. She says she sews hate into them there blankets. She says she wouldn't have one of them in the house fer love or money."

The young mother said again, "But what did she mean....trouble an' strife? She was looking right at me."

Lester laughed, "How can you tell? I sure can't tell what she's lookin' at!"

"The evil eye...that's what she's got." Said another patron.

"Pshaw!" Timmon said, wiping down the counter. "Ain't no such thing. It's just something she's always a'muttering."

One of the boys scuffed his boot in the sawdust on the plank flooring of the store. "Well, I heared that she keeps a big ole quilt that she never finishes. Every square got a hex on somebody on it. She sews a body's name on it and then you die."

"My Mamaw said she drownded her own baby in the creek and then ate it!" Said the boy's companion, in a fit of oneupsmanship. The boy looked peeved at his companion. He would have liked to reveal this detail.

Some of the patrons nodded grimly. They had heard all of this before.

"Awright, now! That's enough!" Timmon said. "She's just a hateful old woman. Don't you boys got chores to do? Get on out of here, you're takin' up air!"

The boys filed out into the rain, unhappy to leave the gossip in the warm dry store.

Later that night, Bessie stitched another square onto an impossibly huge quilt on her frame. Her deft needlework embroidered "Lucille" into the details of hand-sewn panel. She sat back and surveyed her handiwork with much satisfaction. The quilt stretched over the frame and spilled over the edge.

She cackled to herself softly. "Yes, indeedy. Stir with a knife, trouble and strife."

And her sisters laughed with her, as one spun the thread and another held the skein and the third cut it.

Sugar and Brimstone ~ Part Four

Tulah wanted to scream. She wanted to bolt out of her bed and run as fast as she could, but in that moment she was in the strange paralysis that happens between waking and sleeping. She stared through wide, fear-stricken eyes at Tarn.

His skin seemed to bubble in the phantom flames as the slowly consumed him. His hair floated around him like a silver halo with a flame edge. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a grimace of horror. He reached out his hands to her and she saw that the flesh on the tips of his fingers had burned off leaving blackened bone. Yet, still they moved.

“Come with me, little girl.” He said, his voice croaking out through his destroyed lips. “You promised you’d follow me anywhere, didn’t you?”

Tulah stared in shock at his hideous form and realized she smelled the odor of cooking pork. It took her a moment to realize it was Tarn’s skin and flesh burning in the ghastly fire.

“No!” She screamed, finally finding her voice. “You’re wrong. I thought that but I never said that to you. I didn’t!”

The burning man grinned in a rictus of bubbling skin, his nose nearly gone.

“Oh, but that don’t matter none…you wished it in your heart of hearts. It was your soul’s desire, and now you are mine! Follow me into the flames of eternity, little girl. Follow me like you promised!”

Tulah bounded out of bed, finding that she now could finally move, and ran screaming, “No, no, no!”

She ran out of the house and into the darkness of the wood. She ran, blindly, and as fast as her feet could take her. She felt the hem of her long gown catching on briers and tearing. She barely noticed the branches whipping past her face as she ran or the mud of the wet spring she crossed squishing between her toes.

She ran for a long time, and when she stopped she realized she was in a part of the wood she did not recognize. There, tucked away in the woods was a small abandoned church. It was in a lonely spot and she didn’t remember seeing it before. It had a bell tower and dark swathes of vines grew up the walls in unruly tangles. Tulah looked and saw a glow coming from the door that was inset into a small hallway. A dim glow came from the windows that were barely visible beneath the matted vegetation. It seemed as if the church was occupied at this odd hour.

She drew closer and tentatively climbed the steps that went up to the small vestibule. She heard fiddle music that kept playing the same odd few bars over and over. It wasn’t a tune or hymn she’d ever heard before. Light streamed through the keyhole and the crack in the door. Tulah slowly pressed her eye to the narrow bar of light where the two doors met and peered inside.

A man with golden hair dressed in a white suit was inside. He rested a silver fiddle on his shoulder and played intently. Around him danced small figures that Tulah tried to see, but for some reason she couldn’t make out who or what they were. She thought he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen ever. Light seemed to glow out of him and she could make out the strong line of his jaw as he held it firmly on the fiddle with his eyes cast down on the strings. She wondered if he was the preacher here at this little church and she wondered why she had never seen him. Surely, she would remember such a beautiful man.

Suddenly, a ring of fire rose up around the golden haired man and his playing became more frenzied. The figures dancing around the edge of the circle began to take form and Tulah saw that they were strange combinations of animals. There was a sow with a possum’s head that gaped her sharp teeth and instead of a regular pig’s tail, she had the possum’s slick scaly rat’s tail. There was a weasel with a viper’s head. A bear with the body of a raccoon. Tulah recoiled at the unnatural beasts. She seemed to recognize that there was something evil about them.

Into the ring of fire appeared the ghostly form of Tarn Rickson. He stood with his head down, shaking.

The golden haired man put down his fiddle and said, “ Did you not bring me anyone? That was the deal, wasn’t it?”

Tulah heard his voice as a soft musical sound. It was sweet, but sweet like something you knew would make you sick if you ate it.

“I need more time!” Pleaded Tarn. “Just give me a day or too. I can bring you someone…I knows I can. Just please…more time!”

The beautiful man said coldly, “There is no more time for you, Tarn.”

He snapped his fingers and a chainsaw chain with rusty edges appeared around Tarn’s neck. Tarn screamed as the beast imps leapt upon him. One began sawing Tarn’s neck with the chainsaw chain and while blood ran freely from his neck and he screamed most pitifully, the saw chain never seemed to cut through his neck. The Sow/Possum cackled with laughter. The Viper/Weasel produced a length of barbed wire and began beating Tarn with it, shredding his flesh down to the bone. The screams were dreadful and even more horrible than the scrams he had made earlier that night while he was burning to death. These were the screams of eternal torment.

The beautiful man snapped his fingers again and the ring of flame closed in and flared up, consuming the imps and Tarn Rickson. They seemed to disappear into the floor.

The man with the golden hair dusted his hands off on each other then picked up his fiddle and bow. Then he turned to where Tulah stood watching behind the door. It was the first time she had seen his face full on. His eyes glowed red.

And he said in his beautiful, sweet voice, “You aren’t mine yet, little girl.”

He grinned a wolfish grin, flashing perfectly white teeth.

“But you could be. Oh, yes…you could be.”

And with that, he disappeared into nothing and Tulah knew she had seen the Devil himself.

She woke up soaked with sweat in her own bed, trembling, and breathed a long deep sigh of relief when she realized it had all been a dream. She sat up and put her face in her hands. Surely it was the tea she drank to sleep that had given her such disturbing dreams.

She pulled her legs from underneath the pile of quilts on her bed and put her feet on the floor. She knew she needed to get out of her sweat soaked nightgown. She stood up on the cold plank floor and looked down.

The hem of her nightgown was dirty and torn and her bare feet were caked with mud.

Carolina Special ~ Part Three

The whistle blew mournfully as the train chugged around a curve on the track nearly drowning out the voices of the spectral chain gang that still played in Floyd’s head. He felt sure he would hear their mournful voices toiling for many years. The miles flew by as they cross the North Carolina / Tennessee border, winding through the Smoky Mountains.

The moon faded in and out of violet clouds that were moving so fast it seemed like the glowing sphere was itself traveling through the sky. Though there was only a slight breeze, the sky above seemed to be driven with fast moving air, herding the clouds ever westward.

Floyd watched the mountains roll by and the surface of the French Broad was glassy like a ballroom floor. The train was slowing to move past the market town of Newport and Dusty pointed his finger up to one of the cliffs that rose above the town.

“Look up there, boy,” he said, “This might be good for you to see.”

Floyd followed the line of Dusty’s pointing finger up to the cliffs above. There, illuminated by the moonlight, and giving off its own gentle glow was a white cross.

“What’s that for?” He asked.

“Well, you’ll see in a minute, but it’s there so all trainmen can say a prayer for the little girl who died on these tracks some years past. Her daddy put it up there.”

“All the way up there? You’d need some serious ropes to get up there.”

“Yes, that would have been the safe thing to do.” Said Dusty, “But just watch…”

As the train drew abreast of the town, Floyd looked down at the tracks below and saw to his amazement a young girl emerge from under the train. It shocked him so much he jumped back.

The child was dressed in a frilly old fashioned dress with lots of frills and bows. Her hair was arranged into cascades of curls on either side of her head. She cut a glance back at the train and waved at Floyd and flashed him a wide snaggletooth grin. Floyd waved back in astonishment. Then she ran off to the center of the river, floating above it as if it were solid. About the same time, he looked up to the glowing cross and saw a man emerge from behind it. He was dressed in an engineer’s garb of striped overalls and he had an impressive handlebar mustache. As Floyd was watching, he spread his arms out and floated down to the surface of the water where the little girl in the party dress waited. He landed gently and held a hand out to the child.

Then the two ghosts bowed at each other and began to waltz over the slick surface of the river. It was one of the most beautiful sights that Floyd had ever seen. And in his mind’s ear he could just barely hear the sound of the band playing the waltz.

“Who are they?” Asked Floyd in a half-whisper, not wanting to interrupt the ghostly dance that was taking place over the glassy water.

“That’s the little girl who died in this spot. And that’s her daddy with her. You see, he didn’t use no ropes to erect that cross on the cliff. He fell to his death while he was trying to climb back down. So he haunts the cross and makes it glow to remind other trainmen to pray for her, and she comes out from the tracks on nights when the moon is full and they dance a waltz. The love they shared for each other is what haunts this place.”

Dusty pulled his bandanna out of his side pocket and blew noisily into it and dabbed his eyes.

Floyd gave him a searching look.

“What? Cinder got in my eye is all.” Dust said gruffly.

The train emerged out of the mountains on that clear autumn night and picked up steam across the plateau as it got closer and closer to Knoxville. Floyd felt he’d learned so much from Dusty and felt he’s soon be able to take a train on this run by himself. But he was wondering if with his new ability to see the shades around him if this would be the best thing for him. He thought perhaps he’d give it a few more runs and see what happened. As long as he could do as Dusty advised and keep his mind on the engine and the track,

It seemed like the rest of the journey was going off without a hitch. Once in a while he’d hear something or see something out of the corner of his eye and Dusty would look at him and shake his head. Floyd had learned it was best to do as Dusty said.

The miles clattered by and soon they were approaching New Market which was just 20 or so miles from their final destination. The train started gradually slowing down so it could take on water at New Market. When it finally drew to a grinding and reluctant halt, Floyd realized Dusty was getting his kit bag together.

“That’s a good idea.” He said, “I’ll start getting my stuff ready to go, too.”

“No hurry, boy.” The old man said. “This is where I get off, I’m afraid. It’s been right nice traveling with you.”

“Hey, old man, you can’t get off here! There ain’t nothing here but the water tower. ‘Sides…you have to sign off in K-town for me.”

Dusty gave him one of those long looks with his eyes slightly narrowed, as if his old creased eyes were looking into the sun.

“ Oh really?” He said softy. “Look around you.”

Floyd ran a soot covered hand through his hair and then looked out into what should have been rolling hills of farmland. What he saw was like a punch to the gut.

All around the train were the ghostly remains of a dreadful train wreck. The real train, the one he was standing on was crossed and intersected by the ghostly twisted metal corpses of two steam engines. A cowcatcher, twisted into nothing was laid next to the stack of another. The carnage was dreadful. Specters walked up and down the remains of the train. One, an engineer, waved up a Dusty and Dusty waved back at him.

“Dusty, but…but…No!” Floyd said, looking desperately at the old guy.

“This is New Market, son. Site of the deadliest train wreck ever. Two trains going sixty miles an hour hitting dead-on with no warning. This is where I come from. See, I’m one of the lucky ones. I get to haunt this entire stretch of track from Spartanburg to here doin’ what I love best. Runnin’ trains. Can’t go to K-town. See, I never made it there on that run of the Carolina Special. Yessirree, my journey stopped right here.”

Dusty slapped Floyd on the back and grinned. “So you sign off for just yourself. Really, you’ve been doing it all on your own on this trip. I was just along for the ride.”

Floyd stood speechless as he watched the old man jump down from the cab. When he did so he assumed the same translucent, ghostly shape that the other apparitions held. The old guy went up to the engineer and shook his hand heartily and then turned and waved at Floyd as the train chugged forward towards Knoxville.

And in his mind’s ear he heard the old guy say to him, “Just remember, keep your eyes on your work…keep drivin’ the train and you won’t go wrong.”

But Floyd was severely shaken. The thought that he’d been traveling with a shade all this time was almost more than he could bear. And he’d grown genuinely fond of the old man and he would have liked to buy him a cup of coffee in the railroad diner. That Dusty was no more real than any of the spirits he’d seen that night was unthinkable. His cheek still stung where the old man had slapped it and he could still feel the imprint of his hand on his back. What was real anyway?

And Floyd wondered how he could run the train if he couldn’t trust his own senses. If the experience he had made it so that he couldn’t distinguish reality from the spirit world, perhaps it would be better not to work the rails. And it was then that Floyd decided to apprentice in the engineering department repairing the big engines back at the yard rather than being responsible for driving them.

When he disembarked at the K-town station, he walked to the local boarding house and slept deeply but restlessly. The next morning he came back to ride back to Carolina, this time in broad daylight. Blind Charlie Oates was already parked in his usual spot with his guitar and harmonica. His guitar case was open to hold his tips. He was singing “The New Market Crash”, one of his gorier train wreck songs, full of decapitated corpses and screaming metal.

And Floyd went up to Charlie and nudged him with his boot, interrupting him.

“Hey, Charlie. Here’s a dollar. I’ll give it to you if you’ll play something else.”

“What you want to hear?” he asked, his white eyes rolling up and around in their sockets as he rocked in the direction of Floyd’s voice.

“I don’t care, Charlie. Just don’t play that one.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He started tapping out the cinders from his pipe once more. He tapped them and tapped them past the point that there could possibly be anything else in the bowl.

His eyes were watery and blue that day.

“And you know what? Every time I found myself in Knoxville after that day, I always would pay Blind Charlie Oates to not play that song. And you know what?” He cut his eyes up with a half-smile. “It was money well spent.”

And he reached for his tobacco pouch and began filling the pipe and tapping down the shreds of tobacco.

Stir With a Knife ~ Part Three

Bessie struggled against the ropes and screamed for help into the gradually darkening day. The path was in the deep part of a holler which meant the sun would set here before it did on the ridge above. She lost track of time and her throat was hoarse from yelling for help.

“Oh, please, merciful Jesus!” she prayed tearfully. “Please send someone to help me!”

She continued to struggle against her bonds until finally, exhausted, she slumped against the tree in an uneasy doze.

In her first moments of returning consciousness she heard the babble of the nearby creek. The crickets were rhythmically chirping over this and the chirps were punctuated every now and again by the deep quivering call of a bullfrog. Before she even opened her eyes, she knew from the sounds that darkness had fallen here in this quiet glen in the wood.

Bessie wondered if it would be any use to holler for help anymore or if she should just prepare to spend the night here waiting for dawn to break and try not to draw attention to herself. She was dreadfully thirsty and if she could get to those moon pies in her apron bib, she would most certainly eat them.

She smelled it before she saw it. This is often the case. The heavy scent of wet dog slowly became stronger and stronger. It was like filthy wet wool that had been spun in the grease and then laid in front of the campfire to dry. There was not another smell like that and Bessie trembled in fear. She had no way to make herself larger or more threatening and in the dark of the night it would make little difference.

The dreadful sound of something large shuffling through the brush and grunting as it snuffled along the ground reached her ears and she was truly afraid.

She thought of the evil girls who had left her there and she thought of Bart who had set this all in motion. She thought about the community in general who seemed to take a perverse delight in thinking the worst of everyone as if a person’s hardships were cause for great joy. And Bessie felt a smoldering anger build deep within her. She’d be damned if she would face death sniveling and afraid here alone in this dark place.

Her eyes had adjusted to the dim moonlight filtering through the trees casting gray dappled shadows on the forest floor. The bear entered the clearing on the path where she was securely tied to the tree and lifted its huge head up into the wind to sample the smells of the night. Bessie hadn’ t seen such a large bear before, it seemed to easily be 400 pounds with a glossy black coat and its tan pointed muzzle. There was a curious intelligence glinting in the big bear’s button-like eyes.

The bear riveted it’s massive head around and stared at her, it’s eyes fixating on hers. Then it reared up on its hind legs like a shaggy man and roared. Bessie could smell the hot fetid breath of the beast from where she was. It shuffled closer and closer to her and she thought of her poor sick mommy who would be left without anyone to care for her once she was gone. And Bessie felt another surge of rage rise up from deep within her breast.

The bear snuffled at her feet then reared up again so that its huge head was looking down at her. She met the bear’s stare head on with a fierce look in her eye. Then, the bear lifted one paw, as big as a dinner plate, and rested it gently on the side of her face like a lover. She felt the coarse bristly texture of its pads against her cheek and the hard sharpness of its claws resting on her hairline.

“Hold! Ursula!” called a voice from somewhere in the darkness.

Bessie cut her eyes in that direction and she felt the bear freeze where it stood.

Slowly an eerie green light illuminated a spot across the wet spring. Bessie wasn’t sure what she was seeing but the spot grew brighter and brighter and suddenly there were three women standing there with their arms entwined. They were not comely but were strong looking women. Each wore a homespun kirtle and white shirtwaists with cameos at their throats. Their hair was long and flowing down their backs in the fashion of unmarried girls. They looked like women from old photos. They were not exactly young, nor were they old. They were bathed in the unearthly green light.

One carried a spinning bobbin, the other had a skein of yarn wrapped around her hand and the third had a large pair of scissors. They looked to Bessie to be women just come from a quilting bee or some other sewing gathering. She had been to many herself though she didn’t usually carry her supplies out in the open like that. She usually carried them in her large tapestry sewing bag.

The one with the scissors held them up and looked at the other two.

“Shall I?” she asked, looking at her two companions and then back at Bessie and the bear.

The one with the bobbin said, “No, wait…we may have a use for one such as this.”

Bessie finally found her voice, “Be careful! If you come closer the bear might git you!”

The three laughed. It was a silvery tinkling sound that seemed to travel over the air to the ear in a visible path. The green light shimmered with their laughter.

The one with the skein said, “Oh dear! Child, Ursula will not hurt us…nor you if we ask her not to.”

The bear looked kindly on the three women then looked a bit longingly at Bessie. Bessie frowned and glared back at the bear.

Bessie turned her face to the women and pleaded, “Please, please won’t you untie me? If you can control your bear I’d ‘preciate you callin’ her off of me!”

The three approached Bessie. The green twinkling light that surrounded them seemed to move with them and dance around in the night air. It moved around them like a live thing.

The bear continued to hold her huge paw against Bessie’s face as the women drew closer.

“You see,” said the one with the bobbin, “we lack one such as you in our circle. Mayhap you are the one we have been seeking.”

Bessie frowned and said, “What do you mean? Can’t you just untie me and let me go on home?”

The one with the skein said, “Well, you can clearly see that we have a weaver, a cutter and I hold the skeins, but we have no stitcher.”

The one with the scissors said, “Yes, we lack one to sew the fabric of life into quilts. Clearly, you can see that.”

The one with the skein said, “Mmmmm, yes, lovely quilts, warm and colorful. To hold the memories of the threads we cut.”

Bessie felt a surge of desperation. “Yes, Yes! I’ll join your sewing circle, though I’ve never seen you ‘round here before. I’m a good quilter, really I am. I’ve won prizes and all. Just please, let me go!”

And the one with the bobbin moved closer to her and wove around the tree and whispered into her ear, “But it will come at great cost. Are you sure?”

And the one with the skein whispered into her other ear, “Will you sacrifice your beauty? Will you live your life alone?”

And the one with the scissors said, stroking Bessie’s hair, “But you will have great power and will carry the golden needles. But it comes at such a cost…Are you sure?”

Bessie realized she was being offered something extraordinary, that these were no normal women. She wondered if they were even human and if they were maybe angels or fay folk of some sort. But she felt in her bones, in her angry tired bones that she would surely die if she turned down the offer of the three mysterious women and then no one would be there to take care of her mother.

She closed her eyes and said, “Yes. I accept.”

The women pulled back from her and the one with the bobbin reached into her skirts and brought out a packet of needles. When she flipped open the paper flap that covered them, Bessie saw that they were needles of the purest gold. They glinted in the moonlight with a mellow soft light.

And the one with the bobbin tucked the packet of needles into Bessie’s skirt pocket.

She whispered to her, “Take good care of them, my sister. Stir with a knife, trouble and strife…”

And they faded into the greenwood like ghosts with their bear following behind them and Bessie felt her bonds dissolve around her..

At least, that is the story she tried to tell months later when her wounds healed. They’d found Bessie still tied to the tree that morning. She had been mauled by what might have been a large bear or maybe a panther. They weren’t sure exactly what happened but the girl was not as injured as badly as they would have expected from such an attack. She still had two Moon Pies tucked in her apron pocket.

Her beauty was ruined by the deep claw marks on her face. They did not heal up well and the scars were puckered and drawn. One of her eyes no longer focused properly and she no longer could see too well out of it. One of her legs had been scarred as well. Bessie would dance no more. But she was glad she had lived so she could take care of her mother.

The other item she had on her when she was found was a packet of golden needles.

The Conclusion of "Stir with a Knife"

Sugar and Brimstone ~ Part Three

Tulah’s mother arrived late to the scene of the fire. She saw her daughter rocking on her knees in shock and went to her. Cinnie sank down beside the child who thought she was a woman and wrapped her arms around her. They both rocked back and forth with Cinnie murmuring, “Shhhhh, shhhhh, baby, shhhhh….”

Tulah couldn’t seem to say anything. She tried but it came out in big gulping shudders like a distraught five-year old. “Uh…uh…uh…”

Then she would commence to rock again, her eyes wide and staring.

Cinnie took her own coat off and wrapped around the girl. Tulah leaned into the leftover body heat in the wool and buried her face in it. It was as if she thought drinking in the scent of her mother could stop the shock and shuddering.

“Come on, baby…” Her mother said softly. “We need to get you home.”

She pulled the girl up to a standing position. Tulah stood on her legs swaying like a calf stumbling to its feet for the first time. If not for the supporting arm of her mother, she would have surely fallen back onto the ground in a stupor.

Cinnie led the girl slowly back down the path to their home. Tulah was barely conscious of getting there. Her brightly lit home looked somehow different. She looked at it with new eyes and she realized it wasn’t the house that had changed, it was her. Everything looked somehow smaller and she felt bigger, as though she was taking up so much more space than before. She didn’t feel safe and she didn’t like the feeling. She allowed her mother to sit her at the kitchen table and wrap her in a quilt.

Her mother took some water off of the stove and brewed up a pot of tea made from the mountain apricot vine. Tulah’s eyes followed her movement’s vacantly. Cinnie counted out the five minutes then poured the tea in a cup.

“Here you go,” she said, setting the big mug of tea down. “This will help you sleep.”

Tulah looked down into the pale green liquid and took a sip. She remembered the other-worldly saucer shaped flower the vine grew on and it’s odd spikes of lavender and white.

“Some folks call this passionflower.” She said. “What an odd thing to call a flower that puts you to sleep.”

Cinnie sat down next to her. “You drink up. You’re in shock.”

“They tried real hard to kill him Mommy. They tried real hard. I didn’t want them to at first, but by the end I was prayin’ for a bullet to hit him.”

Cinnie reached over and covered her daughter’s shaking hand with her own.

“Shhhhh…you drink now.”

Tulah drank her tea and felt the waves of sleepiness and calm flow over her. She allowed her mother to lead her to her bed and help her undress. Cinnie tucked her daughter in and sat on the side of the bed stroking her hair until the girl fell asleep. Then she quietly left the room, closing the door behind her.

She slept in a deep mindless sleep where dreams made less sense than usual. But it was not the sleep of an innocent girl anymore. Indeed, had it not been for the soporific effects of the mountain apricot tea, Tulah would have not been able to sleep at all. The cries of the burning man, the man she thought she loved, still played over and over in her mind. The rain began to fall on the tin roof at some point in the wee hours of the morning. This sound, which so many times had lulled her to sleep, seemed to waken her from the odd narcotic dreams she was having.

At least that was what she thought, when she became aware of a glow in her room. She thought perhaps her mother had opened the door to look in and check on her.

She looked towards the glow through her eyelashes and then, in horror, opened her eyes widely.

The ghostly apparition of Tarn Rickson stood at the foot of her bed, engulfed in flames.

The Conclusion of "Sugar and Brimstone"

Carolina Special ~ Part Two

Floyd looked at Dusty then turned back to see where the hound raced beside the train, but the beast was gone when he turned back.

Dusty fiddled with the gauges and said, “Oh, they only has a certain territory they range in. Ghosts, I guess you’d call them. But they’re liable to be more active tonight. You won’t see them this solid any other night of the year.”

“How come? What’s so special about tonight?”

Dusty gave Floyd a hard look and pointed at him then nodded toward the firebox. Floyd took the hint and started shoveling coal into the heart of the engine.

Dusty laughed. “It’s Halloween, son! Day of the Dead, Feast of All Souls, the night when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. Didn’t you pay no mind to the day when we set out?”

Floyd thought about this for a moment. He’d never been a superstitious man or given to fancies of ghosts and haunts, but he was now changing his mind.

“So, Dusty…do you remember her…I mean…do you remember when you saw them?”

“It was a long time ago, son. A long time ago. I was a much younger man. And like I said, it’s best to put it out of your mind. By the end of this journey to Knoxville you’ll know what I mean.”

Floyd tried to put his mind to the tasks at hand. He tried to think about the sound of the steam chuffing out of the engine and the color of the smoke coming out of the stack. But he just couldn’t get the beautiful woman of light out of his head. It never occurred to him that such a being existed.

The train chugged on through the night, gradually approaching Asheville. Floyd looked out into the night sky and the trail of white steam snaking behind them. When he looked out to the western mountains, those strange lights seemed brighter than the first time he saw them. There was something both beautiful and menacing about them. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was as if they were watching him and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand.

His eyes gazed down the track and he saw there a trestle looming in the distance. The train reduced its speed since they were drawing close to the city. Soon they seemed to be inching towards the trestle and Floyd saw a dark emptiness there under the bridge. It was a gaping hole of space that sparkled with misery. Swinging from a hangman’s noose from the trestle was a woman’s corpse. Her garments were white and glowing and seemed to float around her as if moved by some phantom wind.

Floyd was frozen in horror. He wanted to look away but couldn’t seem to. As they came closer and closer, the corpse raised her head. Her eyes were bugged from hanging and the noose had cut into her neck. Dark blood dripped down the front of her garments.

Out of her swollen distended mouth she screamed, “My baby…where’s my baby?”

By now they came abreast of the trestle and dark, misshapen figures began to emerge from the tree roots that lay exposed on the banks. They were a miserable lot and moaned and howled with agony.

Floyd recoiled as the seemed to swarm the train as they went under the bridge.

“Dusty…we got to go faster!” He screamed as the shades of the night seemed intent on overtaking the train. He hadn’t felt this way since he was a young boy, hiding his face under the covers to escape the sounds of the night.

“Don’t look at them, boy! We can’t go any faster through here.”

Skeletal hands with broken fingers raised in supplication to Floyd who looked on horrified as they passed this cursed spot. The hung woman continued to scream and keen for her baby and the things coming out from the tree roots moaned. Their fleshless bones made a dreadful clattering as they banged against each other. Their fleshless skulls with their gaping eyes bored into Floyd.

Soon, it was over and they were through the overhanging trestle. Floyd glanced behind him and saw the spirits attempting to follow, their bony joints stopping them short at some invisible line. They hit that point and jerked backwards like vicious dogs on chains. Some of them collapsed with the force of that correction into piles of quivering bones that tried in vain to reform themselves.

Floyd threw up out of the side of the cab. Shakily he looked at Dusty. Dusty looked like nothing at all had happened the old fireman busied himself with his firebox and looked out to see the color of the steam.

Floyd wiped his mouth on his handkerchief. Then he grabbed Dusty by the shoulders, shaking him and said, “What in the hell was that?"

Floyd’s voice squeaked as it hadn’t since he was a teenager.

Dusty pushed him off and said, crossly, “I told ya not to look. That’s Suicide Bridge. It’s where the most unquiet spirits of suicides in these parts go when they die. Spooked ya, didn’t they?”

Dusty fished a bag of chewing tobacco out of the pocket of his overalls and stuck a good-sized plug in his cheek.

“Now, maybe you’ll listen, boy. Don’t look at them. Ignore them. Eventually, all of that will just be blurs on the edge of your vision. Just like other people see them.”

“Other people see them?”

“Well of course, son, didn’t you ever wonder about all the times you saw something out of the corner of your eye? Thought it was a bird or something, maybe? A piece of paper tumbling in the wind? That’s what they all think. Yessiree…that’s what they all think. Because the truth would be too terrible to believe. And folks believe what they want to believe, don’t they?”

Floyd’s experience with Suicide Bridge had shaken him considerably. He took Dusty’s advice to keep his eyes firmly focused in the cab of the engine. The night train rattled and clanked its way past Asheville with it’s payload of coal through the crisp autumn night. It winded its way along the banks of the French Broad River, sometimes on tracks laid into sheer cliffs blasted into the mountains. The water of the river glinted and danced in the bright moonlight below where the train ran on the shining tracks.

Floyd might have been sleepy from the quiet pacing had it not been for the hard work involved in keeping the fire stoked. While he was now calm, he assiduously avoided looking out into the surrounding night.

As they were perched on a particularly perilous rock face, he began to hear something. It was soft and he really thought he was imagining it. The rhythm of the train on the track seemed to keep time with the voices he thought he heard and it was easy to just believe that his mind was filling in the blanks of the timing of the train. At least, that was what he tried desperately to believe. But the voices got progressively louder and louder and he realized they were singing..

There was also the gradually louder sound of metal striking rock in a relentless beat. He finally could make out the words. He heard one clear distinct voice that would shout out the first line of the song and then a chorus of others that would answer. All the while, the endless sound of the hammers beat against the rocks.

I’m goin’ back to the Swannanoa Tunnel
That’s my home, baby, that’s my home…

Cap’n, Cap’n can’t you see?
Linin’ this track is killing po’ me!

Asheville Junction, Swannanoa Tunnel…
All caved in, baby, all caved in…

Cap’n, Cap’n can’t you see?
Linin’ this track is killing po’ me!

Hammer fallin’ from my shoulder…
All day long, baby, all day long…

Cap’n, Cap’n can’t you see?
Linin’ this track is killing po’ me!

Take this hammer, throw it in the river…
It rings right on, baby, it shines right on…

Ten thousand biscuits in my hand,
Gonna sop my way to th’ Promised Land…

Floyd felt himself slipping away. He was mesmerized by the sound of the work song. The verses went on and on and on. He was soon rocking to the rhythm of the voices that seemed to rise from the river itself. He felt himself somehow rising above his body, as if he were looking down on himself there in the cab of the engine. It was odd, but he couldn’t see Dusty there in the train cab with him and he wondered why he could see himself but not the old fireman. The pull of the song was irresistible. He felt if only he could jump off the train into the swirling black and silver waters of the French Broad, that all would be right somehow. He watched his body move to the door of the cab.

And he saw himself reach for the latch of the door. And he felt a surge of joy that he would soon be plummeting to the water below.

About that time, just before he was allowed the blessed freedom of jumping from the train, he was jolted back to reality by several hard slaps to his face. He opened his eyes and looked into Dusty’s lined and concerned face.

Dusty spat a stream of tobacco juice out of the cab.

“Sorry, boy, my fault. Shoulda told you to close your ears as well. Chain gang perished in the river down there when they were laying this track. They’s buried under these rails. Looks like they just invited you to join ‘em.”

Floyd felt oddly sad. He had really wanted to know how the song ended.

He couldn’t know that the song had no end.

Carolina Special ~ Conclusion