A Fine Dark Line Read online

  “You’re kind of in the wrong neighborhood, aren’t you, kid? You know what happened last time a white-trash kid came over here, bringing some little rat of a dog with him. I tell you what happened. He disappeared. Him and his little dog.”

  One of the boys, darker and stockier, walked closer to the edge of the curb. As he neared, I could smell his hair oil. The aroma was sweet and expensive, unlike the Vitalis on my head.

  “They found that boy dead alongside the railroad track with his pants down and his little dog stuffed head-first up his ass,” Stocky said. “The dog was still alive, ’cause when they came up on it, it wagged its tail.”

  He and the blond boy laughed.

  I knew it was a big joke, but it made me uncomfortable just the same.

  “I’m no white trash,” I said.

  “You aren’t from the hill,” the blond boy said, “so you have to be.”

  “I’m from the drive-in. Down there.”

  The blond boy grew serious. “Oh. Well, I go to the drive-in now and then. It’s all right. No hard feelings. I take dates to that drive-in. I don’t want to get in bad there. I was just kidding. You know how joking is.”

  The third boy, who so far had not spoken, walked over to the curb holding the football. He was tall and thin with brown hair, probably nice-looking. The other boys began walking back into the yard. He turned and tossed them the football. The blond kid caught it.

  “Don’t pay them any mind,” he said. “They think they’re funny. But they’re about as funny as a screen door on a submarine. You just have to ignore them. My name’s Drew. Drew Cleves.”

  I knew that name. It was the boy Callie had mentioned last night, that she liked. I decided not to mention that.

  “You live here?” I asked.

  “No. I live the house over.”

  “Do you know where the Stilwinds live?”

  “Oh yeah. Top of the hill. Around the curve. Dead center where the street ends. But they don’t really live there anymore. No one lives there. They have it for sale. But no one wants that house.”

  “Why?”

  “They say it’s haunted. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about it growing up.”

  “Does it look haunted?”

  “Just a little run-down. But there was some kind of murder there. Or maybe it wasn’t a murder. The story is kind of vague.”

  “Then the Stilwinds don’t live in Dewmont?”

  “Oh, they do, but just not up there. I don’t know exactly where they live. Different places. There’s several of them, you know. But I couldn’t tell you where. Why do you want to know?”

  “Just curious. Many years ago they used to have a house out back of our drive-in. Burned down.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Drew said. “My father knew them then. I understand they built the one here not long after the fire. I’ve never really been that curious about it. Went up there once with Tatum, that’s him.”

  He pointed at the blond kid. “We were maybe twelve. Don’t tell anybody, but we broke out a back window with a rock. It’s a little spooky-looking is all. Hey, I heard you say you’re one of the new people. The drive-in owners?”

  I nodded.

  “I met your sister, Callie, at the Piggly Wiggly at the beginning of the summer. She’s very pretty.”

  “Some think so. She tried to get a part-time job at the Piggly Wiggly.”

  “Did she get hired?”

  “No. My parents say it’s a good place to shop, though.”

  “I just get a candy bar and a Coke there now and then. My parents wouldn’t be caught dead shopping at the Piggly Wiggly.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hey, that’s them. I’d shop there if I shopped. I figure a loaf of bread tastes like a loaf of bread no matter where you get it.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Callie’s seeing Chester White, isn’t she?”

  “Not anymore. My dad doesn’t like him. In fact, he beat him up.”

  “Your father made a good choice. To beat Chester up, I mean. He’s not the best of people. Why did he beat him up?”

  I decided to lie. “I don’t know exactly.”

  “I’m sure he had a good reason. Hey, you ought to come over and throw the football around with us sometime.”

  “Sure.”

  “Now, if you want.”

  I thought, here’s a boy who wants to see my sister bad.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m going to see the house and go home. I got things to do later.”

  Drew stuck out his hand. I shook it. He said, “Nice meeting you. Give my best to your sister. And don’t pay these mooks any mind. They don’t know dog doo from a hairdo. The house . . . it’s right at the top of the hill.”

  I nodded, went up the street pushing my bicycle, Nub trotting beside me, his tongue hanging out, dripping water.

  Before me and Nub had gone very far it turned dark and the wind picked up. Glancing at the sky, I saw a huge raincloud had settled over us like a black umbrella. The wind was welcome though. It was cool and smelled of rain and there was a crackle to the air that made the hair on my arms stand up.

  When we got to the top of the hill, it curved slightly. I pushed my bike around the turn, and there, dead center, as Drew had described it, stood the Stilwind house. A FOR SALE sign with a real estate agent’s name on it poked up in the front yard.

  From a distance, it was not too unlike the other houses in the area, but as I grew closer I could see it was in great need of paint and the windows were specked with surprised bugs and water spots and the front door was swollen like a drunkard’s belly. The hedges grew too high, losing design, and the cement walk along front, side, and back of the house was hairline-cracked in many places. The oak trees near the house were moving in the wind and waving their boughs against the roof with a sound like cats scratching in a litterbox. You could see where the wind-pushed limbs had torn loose shingles and tossed them in the yard like an old man peeling dead skin from his feet.

  Still, the house was so magnificent on its wooded acreage I actually gasped. I got off my bike and kicked the kick stand out to support it, stood looking at the house.

  Nub sat in the street and looked at the house with me, turning his head from side to side.

  “What do you think, boy?”

  Nub didn’t seem to have an opinion.

  I walked up the drive, climbed the steps, and knocked on the bulging door, certain, of course, no one would answer. Nub sat on his haunches, watching me, trying to determine in his little dog brain exactly what I was doing.

  No one answered.

  Me and Nub walked around the back of the house, saw a massive heart-shaped swimming pool with a tall diving board. As I neared it, there was a burst of crows, like pieces of night exploding from the ground. They beat up to the sky, stalled, spread out and fled in all directions. They came together in the distance as if it had all been planned, and dissolved into the trees.

  A dead armadillo was lying on the bottom of the empty pool. It was almost flat, the crows having helped themselves to the better morsels, picking at it along with weather and time.

  Shrubs lined the remains of the tennis court, which had cracked and given way to yellow weeds and grass burrs. Beyond all this was a small pecan orchard and a great expanse of woods.

  I walked to the back of the house and touched the back door. It slid open slightly and jammed where it had swollen at the bottom. I pushed harder and made enough room to go inside.

  It was dark with patches of dirty light shining through the dusty windows. The place smelled. Beneath it all was that biting stench of rat’s nests and mildew.

  I slipped inside and Nub followed, staying close to my leg. My eyes became adjusted to the darkness, but the smell was almost overwhelming.

  I noticed there were footprints in the dust. Some of the prints were from animals, like squirrels, maybe a coon, but there were human footprints as well. Little feet in narrow shoes. As we came to a wide
staircase, I saw the prints went upstairs.

  We stopped at its base and I looked up and considered, but decided against it. The upper floor was crowded with shadows, as if something had squeezed them all into one spot, fastened them there with a wrap of invisible chain.

  I had the uneasy feeling that something lay at the top of the stairs, just where the steps curved to the upper landing.

  Nub looked up the stairs. I saw the hair on his back stand up like porcupine quills, then he growled. I strained to see if anything was there, but saw nothing, heard nothing.

  Then a shadow, shaped like a crone in a Halloween carnival, fled along the wall and went away.

  That was enough for me.

  Softly calling Nub, we went away from there very fast. Outside the air was cool and sharp with rain. It flushed the stench of mildew, rat’s nest, and discomfort out of my head. I dismissed the shadow as nothing more than a trick of the light.

  I mounted my bike. Beneath that dark cloud, the aroma of rain in my nostrils, I started pedaling down, Nub was running along beside me, his tongue hanging out like a small pink sock.

  I zoomed along with the wind in my hair, raindrops striking my face. As I came to the bottom of the hill, my speed picked up, and before I knew it, the highway loomed before me.

  I stepped back on the pedal with everything I had, putting the brakes on hard, but that big J.C. Higgins bike wasn’t having any of that. The tires glided over the slightly damp cement and the Higgins turned sideways, fell over, then dropped my leg hard against the concrete.

  I skidded right out into the middle of the highway. There was a blaring sound so loud my hair stood on end. I saw the grillework of a Big As Doom Mack Truck bearing down on me, knew right then there was a good chance I was going to miss that planned showing of Vertigo with the family, and most anything else that would come up a second later.

  In that instant I felt neither fear or regret, just resignation.

  As I continued to slide, I glimpsed Nub out of the corner of my eye, running between me and the truck. The horn blared again and something smacked me.

  PART TWO

  Buster Abbot

  Lighthorse Smith

  6

  YOU WERE LUCKY,” Richard said.

  It was three days after the accident. Richard Chapman was sitting in a chair by my bed writing his name on the cast on my left leg with a pencil stub he kept wetting by poking it into his mouth. His writing was slow and deliberate, so damp it was smeary.

  “That probably won’t be there long,” I said.

  “I’ll write it again,” he said. “Next time I’ll use ink.”

  As he wrote, he leaned forward so his long brown hair hung almost to his chin. As it dipped toward my leg, Nub, who was lying beside me, sniffed the tips of it with a wrinkled nose. Considering Nub would lick his ass hour on end, yet seemed offended by the smell of Richard’s hair, I assumed my friend’s locks were fairly ripe.

  “I was really lucky, I wouldn’t have got hit at all,” I said. “I wouldn’t have a broken leg. My bike wouldn’t be a bunch of bent-up metal. I wouldn’t be spending most of what’s left of the summer in a cast. I’m just glad Nub wasn’t hurt.”

  “You could’a been smashed like a possum, truck that big.”

  “Driver saw me, slammed on his brakes. Nub ran past me and another car went right over him. Mrs. Johnson was standing in her yard and she saw it all, told Mom and Mom told me.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She lives down from the drive-in a bit. Mom knows her some. She’s the one came and got me and my bike out of the highway. Her and the truck driver. It wasn’t his fault. I slid right out in front of him.”

  “Did you think it was all over, you seen that truck?”

  “I didn’t think much of anything. Not until the hospital anyway, and they were putting the cast on me.”

  “You really don’t remember the in-betweens? Don’t remember the truck running over your leg?”

  “Nope. Truck didn’t break my leg. I did it sliding on the road, that’s what Mrs. Johnson says. I got a real bad case of concrete rash, that’s for sure. My head got banged too. If I had been sitting up the truck would have knocked my head off. I just sort of slid under it and it passed over me, way that car did Nub.”

  “I got an arrow run right through my side oncet. I made it myself, sharpened it with my pocketknife, and I fell on it runnin’. It went right through the meat on my side. Hurt like the dickens, but I didn’t get nothing but a hole in my side and some blood. I got over it quick. I had to. Daddy put me in the fields cutting down dead corn stalks with a scythe. He don’t cotton much to foolish injury.”

  “I wish I’d got an arrow through my side. It beats this.”

  Richard finished writing his name, flipped his oily hair back in place, and tossed the pencil onto my nightstand, atop a stack of comic books.

  “You want me to bring you some more funny books? I want ’em back, but you can borrow ’em.”

  “Got anymore Batman?”

  “Naw, just them. I got some Superman funny books, though. I can’t buy the new ones. They’re a dime. But in the back of Mr. and Mrs. Greene’s store, they got them with half the cover cut off. There might be some Batman there. They’re just a nickel. I’ll be checking when I get a nickel.”

  “Why are they cut like that?”

  “They don’t sell after a time, they cut off half the cover, send it back, they get their money back, then they sell the funny book anyway. For a nickel. Ain’t supposed to, but they do. I got to hide all mine ’cause my daddy will tear them up. Actually, he takes them out to the outhouse and wipes his ass on ’em. He says they’re devil’s stuff. I thought about that, and I couldn’t picture no devil reading a Batman comic book.”

  “He won’t let you read comics?”

  “He don’t think you ought to read nothin’ but the Bible. He calls all them books man-made book learnin’. He wants me to drop out of school when I get a little older, go to work. He says that’s what a man does. Reckon I will drop out.”

  “I’m surprised your dad doesn’t want you to be a preacher.”

  “He don’t want nobody but him to be a preacher. What’s your daddy want you to be?”

  “Whatever I want. He always tells me to find something I’d like to do for free and learn to make a living at it. I don’t know what that is yet. Mama wants me to be a teacher.”

  “Your daddy lets her contradict him like that, tellin’ you what to be after him sayin’ do what you want?”

  I was a little taken aback.

  “Sure. He doesn’t care.”

  “In our house my daddy runs things and what he says is how it is.”

  “I guess Mama runs things here.”

  “Your mama?”

  “Daddy thinks he runs things, but Mama runs them.”

  “My mama don’t run a thing. Daddy’ll hit her in the mouth if she sasses back. He told me you got to treat a woman like a nigger sometimes.”

  “That doesn’t sound right to me,” I said. “No one should be treated that way.”

  “Well, I’m just sayin’ what he said. Mama, she reads that Bible all the time, and that’s the only thing Daddy gives her credit for. Hey, do you know Elvin Turner?”

  “No.”

  “He beat up a nigger with a stick. It was just a little nigger, but Elvin beat him anyway because he said the nigger looked at him funny.”

  “I’m sure Elvin is proud,” I said.

  “He’s pretty proud, all right, but I don’t know how Elvin could beat up much if he didn’t have a stick. Even with that, that little nigger put up a pretty good fight . . . Got to go. My old man is gonna whup the tar out of me with a razor strap or that darn belt of his I don’t get back in time to do chores.”

  “Thanks for loaning me the funny books, Richard.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Richard. Don’t say nigger here. Rosy Mae might hear it and it might hurt her feelings.”

&nbs
p; “Oh. Well, okay.”

  “Something else. You ever heard about a ghost in the house on the hill?”

  “Naw.”

  “What about by the railroad track?”

  “The girl lookin’ for her head? My daddy mentions her and her mother from time to time, and ain’t none of what he mentions is good. Then again, he ain’t got a lot of good to say about nobody less it’s Jesus. I been down there at night couple of times, and it’s spooky, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you.”

  “See any ghost?”

  “Naw. But they say it’s like a light that bounces around.”

  “I got this mystery going,” I said. “It seems to have something to do with this girl.”

  “What kind of mystery?”

  I briefly outlined it for him.

  “I heard about that Stilwind house burnin’ down from my daddy. He’s talked about it several times. He worked for the Stilwinds, odd chores and stuff. But I didn’t know the house used to be back there behind the drive-in.”

  “There wasn’t any drive-in then. On your way home, go to the trees out back and look up. You’ll see.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Richard left, scratching at the lice in his hair.

  Rosy Mae came up a few minutes after Richard left. She had been living with us ever since the night she came in hurt and confused. She was still sleeping on the couch. She smiled big, said, “I swear, that Mr. Richard’s momma need to hold him down and pour kerosene on his head and get rid of them bugs. Or get him some lye soap. I got me some I made from hog fat and lye and boiled mint leaves, and I’ll give him a right smart piece, if’n he’ll use it.”

  “He’s all right,” I said.

  “He come to see you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You is so polite. He bring them funny books?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then he all right, ain’t he? He better than his daddy.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “His daddy, he all the time nervous as a corn-fed duck on Christmas Day.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Uh huh. He got that religion, and ain’t a bit of it the way he understands it good to nobody but him. You know, twenty years ago, he a handsome man. But not now. He done let all that bitterness eat him up.”