Low, In The Valley, page 16
“I don’t go there. Doesn’t feel…morally right.” Sallow squinted at his potato, going along with Keefie’s change of topic, as I’m sure everyone here was tired of Folk’s and mine shit. Sallow tossed the potato over his shoulder into the bush.
“Well, you should try it. The potato not the wife. She’s really not all that eager by the way, as the name of the establishment would imply,” Keefie said. “You know they really should change the name of it. Potato something. I dunno I’m not that savvy with names. Maybe Conley could help them out on that front.”
“Bah, she’s doing just fine there on her own eagerness to sell those spuds, better than we are out here. Burrow but it’s getting ball-shriveling cold out here, right lads? These nights are the worst. Does Vermont just seem…colder?” I asked. “Could just about slice this potato up with how hard my nipples constantly are out here. Chapped too. Burrow help me, I’d kill for some proper underclothes, I have two bloodied spots on my blouse where my nipples use to be,” I was in a mood. Hungry was the mood and also angry and cold. Something had to give quick and soon before the chilliness of the moon sent me on a misguided errand to warm my bottom up against one of my companions. I looked across the fire at the lot of my lads. Ugh.
“I shouldn’t have brought up the goats,” Folks laughed. “Conley, I’m sorry.”
“Apologize to my fucking nipples.” I shoved Folks’ arm.
Knots glanced a peep at me as I held my hands across my chest. Across the pan of roasting potatoes he said, “I’m sorry nipples.” Then looked away flush with red.
Folks and the lads couldn’t help but laugh.
I glared at Keefie. “How are you even dealing with this shit?” I asked.
“Oh.” She thought. “Oh, I’m just used to being miserable I reckon.”
“What day is it?” Keefie asked.
A pair of squirrels spit-roasted above a low burning fire.
“Not sure. Tuesday maybe?” I said.
“Sunday,” Samyel nodded. “Holiest of the days.”
“Don’t matter out here though,” Sallow admitted. He took a cut from one of the squirrels testing it, then cut the rest and passed a bit around to each of us. “All that matters out here, right now, is if this will get us through to the next squirrel. Easy.”
“What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen out there?” Keefie asked.
“What do you mean, Rye?” asked Samyel. He sat next to her on a moss grown log.
“I don’t know, just something that stuck with you. Something you’ll never forget,” Keefie answered. “I’m bored. Entertain me.”
“When Folks first ‘discovered’ the milk from silfrnymphs…” I offered as I twirled Sparrow around my fingers. I shuddered to emphasize my horror.
“Second that,” Sallow laughed.
“Okay, okay not counting that one. That was weird for all of us,” Keefie said. “Poor little thing.”
“I was dyin’ of thirst is all,” Folks blushed. “Those little nymphs were everywhere that night. They lured me in.” He paused chewing on squirrel and looked around at all of us. “It’s not my fault!”
“You disappeared for two days!” I said.
“Probably Wolf Mother,” Knots was quick with a second suggestion.
“She was just a wolf. A skinned one at that now that I recall, but just a wolf,” Sallow said.
“Big wolf. No fur. Wild.”
“I saw a black stag,” Sallow said. “Moss hung from its antlers. Must have been as tall as a cottage, maybe taller.”
“You were drunk,” Folks nudged him.
“I most certainly was not.”
“Sallow doesn’t get inebriated,” Skinny shook his head.
“He was in the tree line, and I was alone, standing by the river having a leak. Looked up and there he was. Didn’t even see me.”
“What about you big man?” I turned to Folks. “Surely nothing in this forest would surprise Folks Emery.”
“I saw a young girl.” Folks nodded. He closed his eyes trying to remember. “I was afraid.”
Keefie laughed and nudged Folks. “Of a girl?” Keefie snorted.
“If Folks was afraid of a girl, what chance do we have?” Sallow said.
Folks shook his head and smiled. “She was by the river, just alone, no one around. She seemed happy. I barely caught a glimpse of her.”
“You were spying on a young girl by the river?” I asked.
“Spying is a strong word,” Folks responded.
“I mean that’s what it sounds like you’re saying,” I said. “Spying on a girl taking a bath in the river. And that’s the wildest thing you’ve seen. Did you know her? No. Then that’s spying. Even if you did know here. Spying.”
“Never saw her before or again. Anyway. Like I said. I barely saw her. I didn’t want to get too close.”
“You should always be weary of river girls,” Knots said. “My Mamaw always said that.”
“You just had to be there I guess. Damnedest thing,” Folks added. “She weren’t no serpent or river devil like that.”
“And be a third wagon wheel? No thanks,” I said.
“Was she pretty?” Keefie asked.
“I wasn’t that close.” Folks replied.
“Must have been,” Keefie said.
“Maybe we can go back to the river and look for her,” I suggested. Folks shot me a look. I couldn’t help but grin.
“Yeah,” Folks moaned. “She was beautiful.”
I looked over at Keefie. “What about you? I’m assuming you asked us, so you could tell us yours.”
A hollow breeze blew through the woods, rustling the limbs and leaves in a gentle, wooded song. Everyone sat in their own silence for a few moments.
“I saw a turkey,” Keefie said, breaking the quiet.
“A real one?” Sallow asked.
“Yeah, couldn’t believe it,” Keefie said.
“You’re lying,” I cocked my brows at her.
“No really. He was just out there. Pecking at bugs and just doing turkey stuff.”
“A real turkey.” Sallow didn’t seem to believe her. “How do you know it was a turkey?”
“Sterling has a few old paintings of them, up in his room at the Perky Daughter. He loved the creatures. Used to paint them.” Keefie responded.
“Did it do the sound?” Sallow asked. He was shaking his head in disbelief.
“No just pecked bugs,” Keefie laughed.
“Well, we are all but doomed then…” Sallow moaned.
Another breeze pulled through. This one colder.
“How deep into these damned woods are we going?” Folk asked.
“Until we find them,” I replied.
“Or, they find us?” Keefie asked next.
“I don’t know where they live, yes,” I said. “Or, they find us.”
“So we are just out here walking around, no real destination, bumbling through these woods, hoping these loggers find us? Am I to understand that?” Folks slapped a low branch out of his face. He looked back at the trail, shifting his eyes up and down. “I want to go home Conley. I went along with this for as long as any reasonable person would, maybe further. The lads are ready to go home.”
The trail was narrow and muddy. Slick leaves slid under our boots as we sloshed through a wet early snow.
“What would be the point in turning back now Folks,” I said. “I’m not going back emptied knuckle and no Pynes. Came too far for that. Are we going to have this conversation again?”
“I’m getting older out here in all this. We’ve already been fighting these trails for I don’t know how many damn days. I’ll give it another day then we turn around.” Folks sat on a fallen log and kicked mud and stones from the bottom of his boot.
“We rest,” Sallow said.
I looked at him. “Yeah, we can rest.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Grey Sir Greggorty
“I CAN’T REALLY imagine what was in it.” No one was really paying attention to me, eyes on the trail, leading their horses on foot, looking for any sort of evidence of loggers. Felled trees, oxen trail marks, filers tools, anything.
Sallow stopped, then squinted at a tuft of brown bear fur between his fingers he’d plucked from a nearby thorn bush. His bow was in one hand and he dragged it along the dirt leaving a little line behind him, the reins of his horse in the other.
“Peaches, I know that much…and well I’m not actually sure what else goes into it on account I’m no baker,” I continued. “Crust of some sort. The peaches go under the crust, but I don’t know what goes into that.”
“What are you going on about? All morning with this.” Folks looked back at me as he ducked under some low branches, then through some bushes and crept forward best he could through the heavily grown trail.
“The cobbler. The peach cobbler.”
Keefie stopped walking and looked back at me. “Wait, what do you mean? The cobbler from Lil’ Gone?”
“You mean the cobbler from that cave,” Folks laughed. “Lil’ Gone weren’t no town. Just a cave we found with a vagabond living in it. Took us in for a couple of days and fed us. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The frown on Keefie’s face spoke for her.
“Haven’t really thought about it, huh? Been on my mind since we left Lil’ Gone,” I frowned back at her. “And those eggs. There were no chickens in that cave.”
A standing of stones eventually rose from the trail before us as we approached. Cries and yelps from forest creatures nearby rang around the trees creating a rising tide of sound that eventually died out as we approached the stones. Neat piles of them, hundreds, all standing along side the worn dirt road as some sort of trail marker. It all reminded me of the Cairns back home in Charleston.
There was a rotting, overturned wooden cart, overgrown with weeds and taken by the vines and plants of the forest. A stone bridge crossing over a small trickle of a crick greeted us a few yards past the standing stones. Lichen-stained skeletons of some small things poked up from the shallow, watery-mud under the bridge like garden flowers that had given up.
These woods belonged to ghosts and beasts and the filthy things.
My companions and I marched across the bridge, slow and ready. I stopped when I saw a man standing on the far opposite side of the bridge under a cyclopean stone archway where the trail picked back up. He held a bayoneted musket planted firmly on the bridge, his hand ran up and down along the long barrel. He was wearing tattered Confederate grays and tipped his wool kepi up slightly as we approached. We traveled too far to be stopped now. No. I would go through this fool if necessary if he chose to not step aside.
“I don’t suppose you’re this…devil of the forest I’ve been hearing so many things about?” I called out to him. It seemed a reasonable question at the time as he was the only other living thing we’ve seen since entering haunted Vermont.
“S’I am,” his answer.
“Great,” I returned. “Now what?”
“All hinges on what you want,” his reply, his accent deeply Southern.
Sallow stepped forward and squinted at the man as if looking at him closer. I could see the disappointment.
“I kind of expected more,” Sallow said.
“Is he witched or something? A beast? A Hallowfulk, maybe?” Samyel asked. “Is this a woodbugger?”
The man of the bridge called out. “Come on up a piece, girl.”
Everyone, including me, turned to look at Keefie. Her face sank to milk white.
“Not her, ya shunters, you. The head of your posse,” the man called back.
“Oh, she’s not the leader,” Folks yelled back to the man. I looked at him and smirked.
“You’re the man in charge then?” the man asked.
“No, he’s not,” I said.
Folks looked at me and frowned. “You get us into too much trouble.” He looked back at the man on the bridge. “I wouldn’t follow her anymore than a mule follows a horse.”
“I’ve seent mules after horses,” the gray bridge man said. “They are pack animals I reckon, it’s what they do. They follow the things what are ahead of them. If they’re not too stubborn.”
“She’s a stubborn one, going to get us killed, one by one likely,” Folks said.
“Hey,” I looked at Folks and frowned. I pushed a finger into Folks’ chest. “You have something to say? Say it.”
“You brought us out here, Conley,” Folks said. “Still trying to figure out what for.”
“You came on your own accord, Folks,” I said. “You’re welcome to go back any time you want.”
“Bah, who would watch your ass then? Samyel and Keefie?” Folks glared at the two of them. “Can’t have that can we?” He started walking across the bridge toward the man. The water barely trickled below.
I handed Keefie the reins to Good Horse, my new pony. She neighed once and went to nibbling at the moss on the trail.
I had no intention of settling for fools, so without much thought, I reached for Samyel’s Winchester before he could protest, cocked the lever then trotted toward the man on the bridge.
I stayed focused on the man in front of me, aiming the Winchester as I slowly approached him. He had, perhaps, the biggest musket I’d ever seen. And, I’ve seen plenty of big-musketed men.
“Quite a musket you have there,” I nodded at the weapon.
“Thank you ma’am, quite nice of you to mention,” the man’s reply. “It do tend to draw lots of stares.”
“I can only imagine.” The man made no effort to lift his musket. “What’s it called? The musket I mean. You seem the type to name his weapon, pardon if I’m wrong. It’s an Enfield, single-shot I should note. 1853? Early design, but clean.”
“Ain’t got no name,” he said as he spat some brown liquid on the ground. “After my Pa, whose life was lost in a knife fight before I had a full account of what to call ‘em other than Pa.” The man now picked up the Enfield musket, letting it rest it at his shoulder. “Go home. Ain’t nothing here for you.”
“And your name, sir?”
“Greggorty. Two g’s. Three if you do count the first.”
“Well, Greggorty with three g’s. We traveled a very, very long way to get here and I grow tired of sleeping in the dirt and long so badly for a real bed. Now, are there any loggers in this forest here? Maybe a camp of some kind? Answer that question and you may pass this bridge.”
Greggorty cocked his head to the side, “No loggers in these woods. And they ain’t receiving visitors at present.” He shook his head.
“They’re not? Isn’t that part of the deal being attendants of these woods? We are after all in their woods seeking refuge. Wouldn’t it only be polite to take us in? Where are the manners? The hospitality? Of these loggers I mean.”
“No. They’re very busy. They ain’t loggers here. No logging camp a piece north and a piece east or nothing of the sort.”
“I’m very confused. As you can imagine.”
Greggorty now held the Enfield out in front of him, with both hands spaced evenly on the barrel as if inspecting it, still, not aiming in my direction. “Does your weapon have a name? I shall like to know it to get an idear naming mine. Never thought of that a’for now.”
“Oh this? I’m only borrowing it,” I said and looked back at Samyel. “Does your rifle have a name? Greggorty would like to know it.”
“Beth.” Samyel called back.
“Beth? Who’s Beth?” I yelled back across the bridge.
“Baker girl. Doesn’t matter,” Samyel said, looking down at his boots. “Doesn’t matter.”
I knew enough about getting shot at to know speed wouldn’t be enough here. With that musket, Greggorty had exactly one shot before needing a reload - if it even still worked - which offered me the upper hand with Samyel’s Winchester.
Greggorty’s eyes focused on mine.
“You’re not the devil of woods we keep hearing about are you?” I asked.
“I have to apologize. I am not.” Greggorty stood still. He glanced over his shoulder at the stone archway behind him and took a few steps back toward it.
I looked back at my companions waiting by the bridge, then back at Greggorty. “I was so looking forward to telling everyone how I was the one to slay the devil. I have to say I am rather disappointed. This whole damn trip has been disappointing.”
“Again, I apologize, ma’am,” Greggorty said, bowing his head.
“You are very polite for a devil. Tell me, how near New Hampshire are we?”
“I ain’t no devil, I’m just watchin’ after this place is all,” He looked over my shoulder. “I’ll tell you what, tell the young lad to come forward. I’ll fight him instead.”
“What?” I was shocked. “That seems awfully rude. I’m already here and ready.”
“No, no, you seem too grumpy to account for this. It ain’t often I get visitors to duel me to cross my bridge.”
“But, I’m…we could just walk under it. Look there’s barely any water in the crick. Just a tinkle of piss in it in fact.”
“You there boy! Step forward, we are dueling.”
Samyel put his finger on his chest, “Me? No by all means, go ahead with her. She likes that sort of thing. It’s the attention. She loves it.”
“I refuse.” Greggorty pointed his Enfield back to the dirt. “Please, for honor’s sake.”
“I have to say, I’m really quite offended,” I said again. “I’m the best fighter among my group.”
“Hardly true!” Folks yelled across the bridge.
Keefie shook her head when I looked at her.
Samyel stepped forward and I handed him his Winchester back. I frowned at Greggorty.
“Forest’s tits boy, keep your hands up!” Folks shouted out over the rocky bridge. “It’s like the boy can only use one arm at a time,” he added, to whom he spoke I wasn’t really sure, but we all nodded in agreement. “Hold the thing with both hands like your mother taught you!”
Samyel forced a harsh glance toward him, but Folks only smiled a toothy grin back.
“Samyel come here,” I called out. I waited calmly as he approached.
