Nancy A. Collins, page 5
Eunice looked at the surrounding underbrush nervously. “What about snakes, Grandpa? There won’t be any snakes, will there?”
“Not this late in the year, honey. Most of ‘em are hibernatin’ by now. They’re sound asleep and won’t be interested in botherin’ us,” Grandpa Junius replied reassuringly.
The blackberries weren’t exactly black-more a deep purple-but they smelled nice and tasted even better. Grandpa Junius had to scold Eunice more than once about eating more berries than they picked. Not that he was averse to sampling the pickings, either.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted your Granny’s blackberry pie!” Grandpa Junius exclaimed as he plucked the ripe berries from their prickly vines. “She makes a mighty fine conserve, as well. In the forty-eight _years since I first married your grandmother, she’s yet to serve me a meal that wasn’t fit for a king-even when we was poorer’n church mice!” He straightened up, massaging the small of his back, grimacing slightly. “Oof! Cold weather must be on the way! Whenever my back gets to achin’ like that, it’s a sure sign there’ll be frost of the pumpkin in day or two, you can take my word for-“
There was a loud, sharp sound, as if someone had broken a green tree branch over their knee, and Grandpa Junius suddenly collapsed to the ground. There was a hole in the side of his head the size of a quarter and his swan-white hair was now the color of red wine.
“Grandpa?” Eunice clutched her half-filled pail to her chest, her eyes huge. “Grandpa?”
Her grandfather remained both motionless and silent. A twig snapped, causing her to turn and face her grandfather’s killer.
Asa Stackpole stood behind her, dressed in the red plaid flannel shirt and canvas trousers of a hunter, a deer rifle held in the crook of one meaty arm. He stared down at her with dark, unreadable eyes. Enos, dressed and outfitted in a similar manner, stood in his father’s shadow.
Mr. Stackpole clucked his tongue and shook his head slightly. “Will you look at that …What a shame. What a horrible shame…”
“You hurt my grandpa!” Eunice wailed.
Mr. Stackpole opened the breech of his rifle, jettisoning the spent shell. He acted as if he couldn’t hear Eunice’s sobs as he casually reloaded. “Such a tragic accident. It happens at least once a year, though: some poor soul shot while in the woods, mistaken for a deer. Who would have thought it would happen to Junius McQuistion, of all people?” He snapped the rifle shut, fixing Eunice with his cruel, piggish gaze. “It’s just a cryin’ shame what happened to him and his sweet, innocent little granddaughter…”
“You killed him! You killed my grandaddy! You did it on purpose!” Eunice screamed. “I hate you!” With that she hurled her pail at Mr. Stackpole, striking him in the shin.
Mr. Stackpole’s smirk disappeared, to be replaced by a look of such sheer, unrestrained anger it frightened Eunice into silence. Mr. Stackpole grabbed Enos by the collar with his free hand and dragged him forward. “Shoot her!” he snarled.
Enos was sweating and twitching like he had a fever, holding his rifle the way a man might handle a serpent. He licked his lips nervously, his eyes focused on the red mess leaking out of Junius’ head.
“Daddy-“
“I said shoot the little bitch!” Mr. Stackpole roared. “Is that too much to ask, you little shit? You didn’t have any trouble slittin’ the throats of them pickaninnies when I told you!”
Enos shook his head as if trying to dislodge an earwig. “But-but they was niggers, Daddy! This is differentI can’t! I can’t do it!” Mr. Stackpole gave his son a withering look of disgust. “I might as well cut off your John Thomas and put you in a dress, for all the good you’re to me!”
“I don’t want to do this, daddy-“
Mr. Stackpole silenced his son with a cuff to the ear. “Warn? Since when does what anyone wants have to do with what has to be done? You think I ‘wanted’ to kill the Haldemans, Rialls, and Newburgs forty-five years ago? No! But my daddy told me to do it, so I did it! It had to be done! You didn’t hear me whinin’ about what I did and didn’t want! Now, do as I say, boy! Or it’s the strap!”
Enos lifted the rifle to his shoulder, trembling even harder than before. Tears and snot ran freely from his eyes and nose as he struggled to restrain his sobs.
Mr. Stackpole rolled his eyes in disgust. “Stop blubberin’ and do it!” he snapped.
Eyes squeezed into slits, teeth set, Enos fired into the branches overhead. Somewhere a mockingbird called out in alarm.
“Useless little shit!” Mr. Stackpole snarled, backhanding Enos hard enough to knock him to the ground. “If I want something done, I gotta do it myself!” He stepped forward, shouldering his rifle in one smooth movement. Mr. Stackpole cocked the trigger, looking down the barrel of his gun into Eunice’s tear-washed face. “Your grandaddy shouldn’t have taken you with him to that nigger’s shack, little girl. It’s his fault I gotta do this.”
Something beneath the litter of dead leaves and windfall under Eunice’s feet twitched. Even with certain death in the form of Mr. Stackpole’s rifle scant inches from her face, part of her worried that it might be a snake.
Mr. Stackpole frowned and lowered the rifle a bit, scowling down at his boots. “What the hell-?”
The ground beneath Eunice’s feet shuddered just like her grandaddy’s mule did when it was cold and burst outward, sending clods of dark, damp earth in every direction. Mr. Stackpole swore as the earth continued to undulate and shiver underneath his boots. His coarse shouts abruptly turned into a shriek of terror as the first skeletal hand burst from the ground.
Eunice lifted her arms to protect her face and cried out, tripping over her grandfather’s cooling body. Sprawled atop Junius’ corpse, she stared in mute horror as three, then six pairs of hands clawed their way free of the dirt. Soon their heads emerged from the soil, like hideous flowers striving to greet the sun. Some of them still had a little withered flesh clinging to them, and almost every skull sported a hole in its temple or forehead. Eunice closed her eyes against the sight, but deep inside herself she could hear Asa’s voice, echoing and re-echoing:
“They had pitched camp near Bayou Beelzebub …he had me bury ‘em deep, on account that he didn’t want no animals scatterin’ their bones where anyone might find ‘em …”
Mr. Stackpole was screaming now, flailing with his rifle butt at the dead things clutching his legs. He put the stock of the rifle through the skull of one of them, but it didn’t seem to either notice or care. Eunice shut her eyes as tightly as she could and clamped her hands over her ears and stayed that way until Mr. Stackpole stopped making noise.
When she reopened her eyes, the ground was whole and unmarred. There was a large circle, over fifty feet in diameter, that was swept clear of leaves and other forest detritus, but other than that there was no evidence of anything out of the unusual having occurred that afternoon. There was also no sign of either Mr. Stackpole or his rifle.
Eunice found Enos on her way to get help. He was wandering on his own, smiling vacantly at the trees overhead. The front of his pants were wet and he smelled like Granny Lucille’s compost heap. He smiled at Eunice the same way he smiled at the trees and didn’t protest when she took him by the hand and lead him back to her grandparents’ house.
000
Junius Gordon McQuistion’s death was ruled an accident. While out hunting with his father, Enos Stackpole had mistaken the old man for a deer and shot him in the head. Then Asa Stackpole, while attempting to fetch help, apparently lost his way and wandered into quicksand, meeting his death before his son’s eyes. Enos would never be the same again, poor boy.
Eunice returned to Little Rock after her grandfather’s funeral. She never once told the adults what truly happened that day-not even her Granny Lucille. She knew they wouldn’t believe her. And part of her did not want to be believed.
It wasn’t too hard to convince herself that the official account of what transpired that September afternoon was what actually happened. But sometimes she had dreams. Dreams of being trapped deep within the dark, damp earth. Dreams of being held in bony arms dressed in tatters of rotten flesh and desiccated muscle, her mouth filled with dirt and screams.
She always woke from these dreams to find herself smiling.
HOW IT WAS WITH THE KRAITS
They’re tearing down the old Krait house today. I reckon half the town will turn out to watch the bulldozer knock it down. Not that most folks here still remember anything about the Kraits, but in a place like Seven Devils, you got to get your thrills where you can. There was a time, back before the Second World War, when the town centered on the Kraits and their comings and goings. That was because Old Man Krait owned it, right down to the last pair of raggedy underwear on the skinniest cropper’s ass. I can still see him in my mind, clear as day, although I wasn’t more than five or six when he died.
He was a long drink of water with wide shoulders and a face like an angry owl’s. He’d suffered some kind of illness as a child and wore a funny-looking shoe with a heel as thick as my pa’s work boot. I remember how he used to clomp down Railroad Street-which was Main Street back then-clutching that cane of his, and my pa and the other men-folk would take off their hats to bid him good day. I don’t recollect him saying anything back. My mama, bless her soul, once slapped the bejesus out of me for asking why Old Man Krait wore such a funny shoe while he was still within earshot. I was only three or four and didn’t know nothing about mortgages and the difference between bank presidents and dirt farmers.
While Old Man Krait might not have been much to look at, he had himself a pretty wife. Eugenia Krait was a fine-looking woman, no two ways about it, and Old Man Krait married her before she was out of school. She was fifteen and he was fifty, so you know tongues wagged about that. It was five years before they had themselves a kid. Jasper Krait and me was born in 1920; that’s how I can keep most of what went on straight.
Jasper wasn’t a well baby. He had the colic and cried all the time. I reckon Old Man Krait was too set in his ways to put up with having a little baby in his house. My mama found out from some of their help that Old Man Krait had his son’s bottles doctored with cognac so he wouldn’t cry.
When Jasper started to walk and get into things, Old Man Krait’s way of handling it was to send his wife and child off to visit her kinfolks in Biloxi. For three years. Sometimes he’d take the train to spend holidays with them, but usually she would come to him. Without the boy, of course.
Then in 1925 Old Man Krait up and died while taking supper at his home. The day of the funeral everyone in Choctaw County, if not the whole of Southeast Arkansas, turned out on Railroad Street to watch the fancy hearse with etched glass and black plumed horses make its way to the Baptist church. My pa even put me up on his shoulders so’s I could get a better look. Hell, it was almost as good as the time the circus came to town!
Everyone figured Eugenia would up and marry again right quick, what with her being beautiful, young, and rich to boot. But she never did. And she stayed put in Seven Devils, even though her folks were in Mississippi. Turned out she learned a lot from Old Man Krait in the ten years they was married. The gal had a head for business, as Choctaw County soon discovered when she took over running her husband’s bank. But although she was good at driving hard bargains, the one thing Widow Krait was bad at was raising her son.
My mama was a tenderhearted woman by nature, and she felt sorry for Jasper, what with him losing his daddy and all; so she decided to invite him to my birthday party. The day of the party there comes this knock on our back door. When mama answered it she found one of Widow Kraits’ niggers standing there holding a big box wrapped in a fancy ribbon. The nigger told mama that Widow Krait regretted that Jasper would be unable to attend my birthday party, but wanted me to have a present anyway.
The box was a wooden case full of painted tin soldiers laid out on a velvet lining. They were the finest toys I’d ever seen-much less owned. Since I couldn’t have cared less if Jasper Krait came to my birthday party, I couldn’t understand why my mama got her nose so far out of joint. She wanted to send the toy soldiers back, but I kicked up such a fuss she let me keep them. However, she made me put them in the closet so’s the kids too poor to bring nothing but oranges or pecans wouldn’t feel shamed. My mama was good that way. Afterwards, I overheard her tellin’ my pa that it’d be a cold day in July before she’d extend another kindness to the Kraits.
I started first grade in ‘26 and went to the old three-room schoolhouse that used to stand where they got the Burger Bar now.
That’s where I met up with Heck Jones, the Wilberforce Twins, Freddie Nayland, and the gal I ended up marrying. If Jasper Krait ever saw the inside of that school, I never heard tell about it. Hell, far as I know, he never set foot in a real school at all. His mama hired some fancy-pants tutor from the college over at Monticello to teach Jasper at home. The tutor came in on the train early each morning and left late every afternoon. I don’t recall ever hearing his name.
The Widow Krait was still visiting her folks in Biloxi every summer and during Christmas. Her usual custom was to leave Seven Devils just before Decoration Day and stay gone until the first week of September. But for some reason, no one knows why, Widow Krait came home in July 1928, and never went to Biloxi again.
It wasn’t long after that the rumor started that Widow Krait had bought a little nigger boy as a “companion” for Jasper. Not that anyone was surprised, mind you. By that time Jasper was already on his way to being, well, Jasper. He was the kind of young’un you’d have to hang a hambone on just to get the dog to play with him.
Every so often me and the gang would catch a glimpse of Jasper and his pet nigger playing in the Kraits’ fenced-in backyard, but we couldn’t have cared less. The gang didn’t have much use for sissies, and you couldn’t get much sissier than Jasper Krait. Why, his ma used to dress him up in Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits, just like Mary Pickford! Hell, any self-respecting boy would have gone to church nekkid rather than be seen dressed like that! As it was, the only time folks in Seven Devils got an unobstructed view of Jasper was during Sunday services, and even then the Kraits had a pew all to themselves.
Things pretty much kept on like that until ‘32. That was the year the Widow Krait got herself a beau.
She’d been having business dealings with some fella out of Memphis, who came down on the train to get her to sign some papers. Once he got a good look at her, he stayed a week. It was all proper, of course. He stayed at the Railroad Arms, which was a right nice hotel back in them days. No one was surprised, truth to tell. Eugenia Krait was still young and had her looks, and the fella from Memphis was real handsome and polite. Not a thing like Old Man Krait.
The fella from Memphis started paying more and more calls on Widow Krait, and it was plain to see she enjoyed his company. My pa commented on how it’d do Jasper good to have a man around and once his ma remarried she wouldn’t spend so much time fussing over the boy. Mr. Svenson, the barber, nearly took off Pa’s earlobe agreeing with him.
When the Choctaw County Squib social page announced that the Widow Krait was planning to take a trip to Memphis without Jasper, all Seven Devils was abuzz with the news. To the best of anyone’s memory, it would be the first time since Old Man Krait’s death that mother and child had been separated. Widow Krait was to take the train to Memphis early that Friday and return by Sunday evening.
She never made it past the depot.
Just as the porters were smashing her baggage, Jasper’s pet nigger rode up on a mule. Seems Jasper fell out of the hayloft in the barn in back of the house and busted his collarbone. Widow Krait went straight home to look after her boy.
Turned out Jasper smashed a sight more than his collarbone; his right knee was hurt so bad the doctors couldn’t mend it properly. He ended up with a permanent limp and had to use his daddy’s cane to go up and down stairs.
When the doctors told her that her son would be a cripple, Widow Krait had the old barn destroyed. No one saw the fella from Memphis again; although someone said he’d gone on to open a chain of dry goods stores.
To tell the truth, Jasper Krait was pretty much a non-person as far as the citizens of Seven Devils were concerned. I had my own interests and entertainments and Jasper never once figured in them. Come the Second World War, his trick knee kept him out of the draft. I ended up in the Infantry and saw action in France. In ‘42 I married my gal, Nadine, while home on leave. I didn’t see her again until ‘46.
During that time Jasper was workin’ in his mama’s bank. Or was supposed to be. He’d picked up a taste for gambling and spent more time than not in Hot Springs, playing the ponies. When the track was shut, he’d hop a train down to New Orleans and waste his time in the casinos on River Road.
In ‘44, while I was gone fighting the war, there was some kind of hoo-ha over at the bank. My Nadine was working as a teller at the time, which is how I come to know about it. Seems that when the banking authorities came in and audited the books there were some ‘irregularities’. Things got settled-exactly how I don’t know-but the upshot was that Jasper got “laid off” and put on an allowance. He never did a lick of work from there on in.
When I got home in ‘46, the last thing on my mind was the Kraits. I had me a wife I hadn’t seen in four years, a three-year-old boy I was a stranger to, and a G.I. loan. But when I got back to Seven Devils I found the whole county gossiping about Jasper Krait having himself a girlfriend. Her name was Bessie Lynn Haig and she wasn’t exactly what you’d call glamorous. I’m not saying she was ugly, mind you. The girl was as plain as butcher-paper, that’s all. Bessie Lynn was the organist at the Baptist church and the Lord only knows how she and Jasper ever got together.
But as homely as she was, she seemed to exert a good influence on Jasper. He stopped drinking and gambling and took to bathing regular and actually doing things like telling folks ‘howdy’ when he saw them on the street. The change was monumental.
