Excerpt from the novel "Miasma"

Johnny

”Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die

Born to be wild
Born to be wild…”

Johnny Watson was banging the steering wheel in a mock drum accompaniment to the car radio.  “The sound track of my youth,” he mused out loud of the lyrics and remembered back to when he was fifteen.  His eyes went distant for a minute as he stared at the blacktop and its needle-stitched yellow divider.  He wasn’t a teen now; that was twenty five years ago.  He hadn’t fired all his guns at once; life was the whimper, not the bang.

As for ‘nature’s child’, that much was true.  This was ‘nature’ alright; nothing but nature.  The grey-green foothills of the Rockies climbed to his left in the far distance; the tundra grass between the road and the hills was an uninterrupted carpet.  The highway was as straight as only a road can be in a wilderness where neither Man nor Mother Nature had bothered to create anything of interest to distract its arrow-straight progress.

Johnny had held on to the boyish name preferring it to Jonathan, had felt it went well with his youthful appearance, and might play a part in its preservation.  The placid existence here in this forgotten corner of America had at least helped maintain his physical vitality, even if it petrified the intellect.  He had his full blond hair with even the grey only adding highlight; he was physically fit both from the field work at the lab’s nature preserve as well as from mountain biking on the weekends.  And his stamina as a lover was renown, but he preferred to be selective and singular in his love interests rather than experimental and sporadic.  Since his wife’s death four years ago, he’d had only two women and each relationship had lasted more than six months.  In the end it was a drifting apart rather than a big blowup; recognition that Johnny was not the marrying kind.  “Not with a bang, but a whimper,” Johnny would explain the breakup to his friends, “let me rephrase that… ,” he’d add, noting the double meaning to the amusement of his buddies.      

            “You’ve been listening to Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’ on WBBK, Glacier, Montana,” the radio announcer trying unsuccessfully to mimic a New York DJ at the golden oldies hour, “If you remember when that song first came out in 1968, then you are ooolllddd!”

“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Johnny flashed, almost mad, but shrugged it off as the announcer actually being quite perceptive.  He continued his daydream confident that even if he drifted off to sleep, his car would take him home; it would be a rare event indeed if another car was on this road.

“It’s a gorgeous day here in Glacier, as if you didn’t notice.  It hit a near record 72 degrees; coming close to the all time high for this time of year of 74 set in 1932,”  the radio announcer treated the weather as the highpoint of his news reports; nothing but weather ever happened here.  “Now if you remember that date, then you’re beyond ooolllddd,”  the announcer had an apparent fixation with age.

Johnny checked the time; here his watch and not the signposts determined distance.  He had twenty five minutes before his next and last turn.  Johnny had decided to take this route even though it added more than a half hour to his commute from the lab.  The shortcut would have been along the main road of the National Park and the tourists on that road, particularly in the early summer, could clog traffic for hours if a bear or moose wandered too near the road.  Each driver no doubt thought that every other motorist shared his interest in stopping the car and calling out to the wild animals for a photo opportunity.  Johnny hoped one day, one of the bears would take them up on their invitation; that would put an end to the traffic jams.

A black pencil edge was drawn across the horizon and moved down the landscape toward Johnny’s car indicating the east-west road back to the edge of the park and home.  The late afternoon sun caused the heat from the upcoming road to crack the otherwise uninterrupted grass and create a mirage of a lake adjoining the road.  Johnny was always grateful for the special effects nature provided as a guidepost for the turn.  In actuality, the water might not have been as much a mirage as it was the collective natural memory of this ancient place.

Johnny was only somewhat aware, as were most of the residents near Glacier Park, of the labyrinth of caves below this tundra of grass.  No more than forty feet below where his car traveled at the moment, was one of the largest of the cave openings and within a radius of two hundred miles the subterranean structure was honeycombed with caverns.  Two billion years ago this tundra was a sea bed teaming with primitive life and, if legend is to be believed, ‘not-so-primitive’ life.  As the sea receded during the continental shifts, and the salt and silt dissolved, the limestone caves were left behind.  Legend also has it that some of the more intelligent of the life forms lived on.

The road that Johnny was about to turn onto was built coincidentally directly above a major east-west underground tunnel.  The tunnel started at the foothills where time and massive upheavals crushed its original entrance and traveled east almost as straight as the modern-day road descending as it went to the remnants of the underground sea.  No one was sure of how far these caves went, where these major tunnels led or even of the existence of the sea.  But just before Johnny reached the turn, something else was traveling below the road exploring the limits of its old home and probing for weaknesses in its confinement.  Something that had met Johnny years ago, and has been watching him ever since.       

He made the left turn and checked his rear view mirror, chuckling at the purposelessness of the bright red stop sign in his wake.  “If anything else leads a more uneventful life than I, it’s that sign,” it was his nightly observation.  The next time he would see the sign, his life would be totally different, and ‘uneventful’ would not be its description.

Sarah

Sarah was standing at the kitchen window looking eagerly across her yard at her neighbor’s driveway.  She was beginning to plan her day around Johnny’s comings and goings, adjusting her daily habits to being able to do exactly what she was doing now:  preparing dinner, standing at this window and acting disinterested when he drove in and waved.  “You’re becoming obsessed with this guy, Sarah,” she needed to tell herself.  Her obsession, if that’s what she’d admit to, was really serendipity.  The events that brought these two neighbors together in just this place and at just this time in their lives had to be magical --- or at least that’s how it seemed to them.

Sarah had played the field just after college and hadn’t thought much about settling down until she neared thirty.  A few of the men were serious contenders for a long term relationship, but Sarah had a plan as to exactly how things should work out.  She would enjoy life, squandering whatever money she made on herself.  She’d discover, at her leisure, what romance was about so she could properly define it with her ideal mate.  Then at thirty, she’d put her experience into practice, find the right man and begin a family.  She’d have two children by the time she was thirty-five, and then, based on the economics of the time, decide to raise the children herself or go back to work and bring in a nanny.

She was living with a roommate in Manhattan when she put these grand plans into place.  “Sarah, life doesn’t work out that way,” Gwen was always challenging the inevitability of the logic.  Not that Sarah wasn’t practical, if anything she was too practical, just that Gwen was more of a realist.  Gwen always had a backup plan, while Sarah had a single track with no contingencies.

Gwen seemed to be forever living in her backup plans.  Her relationships with men were always disastrous; she’d have diminished expectations but even they were never met.  It was Sarah, certain of her future, who got Gwen through the dozens of breakups.  Sarah had no illusions as to what purpose her own boy friends served, and if one of them seemed to be ahead of her scheduled plans, she’d let them down gently and move on.

In her twenty-ninth year Sarah met Eddie, and realized that this was the future husband that would settle her down. She had spent a year and would spend another, convincing herself that all her ideas of romance and marriage and child-raising would be shared by Eddie, and that which he didn’t quite subscribe to, she worked on until he did.  She truly loved Eddie, but wanted to be sure nonetheless that the love would be sustainable through her plans for their future.

But despite all her careful planning, Sarah was now thirty-five, unmarried and childless.  She was as far away from Manhattan as one could possibly get, and her prospects for marriage depended on being noticed by the only eligible bachelor in town (by her assessment) with whom her most involved relationship up to now centered on a cup of borrowed sugar.

All that was about to change.

Memory

The road finally started to twist as Johnny neared the small town of Memsford; the Rotarian sign doubled as a reduce speed warning, indicating the curves that brought the east-west road due south for its final few hundred yards.  The town was the center of a wagonwheel of development that had its origins in the 1860s.  Back then the rail line left the mountains and headed east toward Minneapolis paralleling the Canadian border and the road that Johnny came in on.  When the rail crossed Memory River, the requisite bridge construction spawned a few stores, a saloon with a boarding house above and the church.

Over time, the farmers settled the adjoining land and added whatever buildings were necessary to sustain Memsford’s growing centricity.  By 1889, when Montana became a state, each of eight farms radiated out from the town and gave the land deed map its characteristic wagonwheel appearance.  Each farm family instinctively built their houses near to the town for protection against the harsh weather and out of fear of the cruelty of things in the vast woods that surrounded the tundra and spread up into the mountains.  They would till the land and graze their livestock further out from the center based on the weather and their own abilities.  As the farms failed or the farmers aged, and their children moved away, the original settlers sold off parts of their acreage.  Johnny’s house was one of the original farmhouses while Sarah’s was built by her great uncle just before the Depression.  Seemingly imbued in every new land owner was the instinct to build the homes huddled together no matter how vast the landscape seemed to be.

There might have been a time, eons ago, when Memory was truly a river, but now it was barely a stream, a few feet in depth here and a few inches in depth there.  Regardless of its current status, Memory commanded the geographic rights of being the headwater of the Missouri River.

Lewis and Clark had approached the river in 1805, but decided that its origins in the mountains were unnavigable and the land route adjoining it, unpassable.  They were also driven south by the legends of the Blackfeet Indians who laid claim to this land and guarded the headwaters with a sacred ruthlessness.

The natural sheer walls that bordered the river’s progress for a few miles north and south of the town stood as evidence to with what force the river at one time must have cut through this landscape.  

The Ravine, as the townspeople called the river bed, necessitated the bridge which in turn necessitated the town and added to its charm.  The origins of Memory and the ravine went far back into the pine woods bordering the foothills, well within the National Park.  Only the young boys of the town, seemingly as a passage of manhood, attempted to trace its origins.  After school let out for the summer, a group of three or four would make plans to discover the ‘well spring’ of Memory. 

As it turned out, this was such a day:  four boys descended the gravel bank at the bridge, their backpacks neatly kitted out with enough food for three days.  This year’s scouts consisted of Frankie Wiggins, the oldest at fifteen and a recent graduate of the middle school.  He would be commuting to Clinton for High School next year, so this would be his last opportunity to be at the top of the food chain of adolescents:  next year he’d be starting at the bottom again.  He was followed by Bobbie-and-Tommie Fenton; indeed that’s how they were always described.  They’d be twins except for the year difference in their ages:  Bobbie was fourteen, Tommie thirteen.  The boys were inseparable, except for attending school which kept them apart in different grades from nine to three.

Last one down the slope and cautiously following in the footsteps of the other boys was Anthony “Squeaky” Porto, so named for his interminable changing voice.  He was just thirteen and had barely been eligible for the seventh grade along with Tommie.  He was given preferential treatment in placement in the school as a newcomer to town and the only Italian-American as well as the only catholic; although he was the brunt of abuse in every other quarter for just those same reasons.  This journey was a self-imposed requirement of his desperate need to fit in and his growing friendship with Tommie, whom he considered the only boy in town who might actually like him.

The first few hundred yards of the journey were easy going consisting of a well worn path of gravel and silt in which nothing could grow.  The ravine afforded a picturesque view of the town perched as it seemed on bluffs overlooking the river.  The more adventurous of the older townspeople would pick their way down to the stream and walk a few hundred feet in either direction, being careful to never lose sight of the bridge.

The trail nearest the town was easily maintained by the frequent footfalls of would-be explorers.  But then the going got rough as the stream widened out and served as irrigation to a more varied and tenacious vegetation.  By the time the ravine passed the Thompson farm, the furthest north of the town’s residents, the knotweed began to clog the stream and the honeysuckle threw a canopy over the paths.

It was here, considered the ‘point of no return,’ where the stories would begin.  “That’s the Thompson place,” Frankie pointed out.  Frankie had made the attempt to travel upstream last summer in the caravan of an older boy and now wanted to serve as leader to his own younger crew.  Last year’s journey had ended in frustration at this very spot when one of the younger boys became inexplicably terrified and refused to go on.  Although all the boys in this year’s crew were from the town, none had been to the Thompson farm and none would have seen the farmhouse this close and from the riverbed.  It stood in haunting magnificence rivaled only in prominence by the massive oak tree that protected it. 

“You know about the Thompsons, don’tcha?”  he asked without expecting a response.  Everyone knew something about the Thompsons, but it fell to Frankie this year to add a bit more to the stories that he had been told the year before.  In fact, generations of storytellers had added so much to the century of stories that they had come full circle closer to the truth than they realized.  

************************

In truth:

Hank and Jenny Thompson were the town’s oldest residents; Hank at ninety-three, his wife at ninety.  Hank was born in Memsford days after the turn of the century in January 1900, and was celebrated as the town’s first born of the twentieth century.  To be technical, his birth date would have really made him the last born of the nineteenth century, but the townspeople were not famous for putting too fine a point on things.

He met his wife in Chicago on the long trek back from France and the Great War.  She had been working in a diner near to where Hank was staying while he prepared himself for the five-day trek back into the prehistoric wilderness of Montana.  Jenny was sixteen and had already worked for two years to escape an abusive childhood.  She not only saw in Hank a giant bear of a man in contrast to the pasty boys of the Loop, but also her ticket out of the drudgery of blue-plate specials.

Hank spoke to her heart in simple phrases.  There was not the hidden sexual meaning that she had become wary of with some of the young men who lingered too long over their cold coffee throwing clichés about taking her away from all this --- even if they meant only two blocks away.  It wasn’t the ‘calm before the storm’ ramblings that her father had engaged her in to justify his beatings when she didn’t respond with just the right words to prop up his deteriorated self-worth.

Hank told her that he came from a place where no one was as beautiful as she.  And when, after a few days of watching his pained shyness dissipate, he finally was able to touch her hand, the feeling of peace and strength and security passed into her; she wanted to be in that place.

Thanks to Jenny, Hank spent a lot more time in Chicago then he had planned.  He knew the women that awaited him back in Memsford. They were of healthy stock:  able to plow the fields, battle back marauding wolves, and wrestle the cows for milk.  But Hank was more than man enough to do all that single handed; he didn’t need his wife to help.  The help he needed had to do with the cultivation of his soul, with battling back demons in his mind, and with wrestling with creatures that came to him in his nightmares.

Hank was concerned that Jenny might be too delicate a flower to survive Montana.  His stories of the primordial woods, the isolation and quiet, the sternness of the mountains was his way of testing Jenny’s resolve to join him a demanding existence.  To her, the more he painted a harsh wilderness, the more it stood in stark contrast to the teaming, filthy streets of Chicago and her indentured servitude.

Hank married Jenny in Chicago before he left.  It was easy enough:  strict rules were suspended for the survivors of the Great War, and Jenny captivated even the most heartless of bureaucrats by flashing her green eyes.  Hank concluded that he’d rather face his father with the deed done, then to persuade him of its merits in advance.  His father had inherited the family’s male sense of domination founded on piety, and would certainly have wanted to play the pivotal role in his son’s selection of a wife.  After all, Hank was the fourth generation of Thompsons in Memsford each of whom had produced a single son despite all religious justification for a larger family.  The choice of an acceptable wife was critical to the continuation of the family name.

Jenny blossomed despite the grueling train ride west; she seemed to draw her life-essence from Hank.  Her skin changed to a warm cream color blushed with pink at the mere thought that she was now a wife.  Her eyes became a deeper emerald green widened by the vast panorama that enfolded with unimaginable grandeur outside the train window.  And when she touched her husband’s arm, she could feel that he needed her as much as she needed him; the strength and peace and security was flowing both ways now.

For his part, Hank seemed to be changing, becoming more elemental.  He was still wearing his uniform which he scrupulously washed at every occasion; it was the only of his clothes that still fit him after two years away.  Surprisingly, even though he was now nineteen, he seemed to have still been growing during the war.  He let his beard grow in; he had refused to shave for the last two weeks.  Jenny liked the look of the dark growth, it added to her view of him as a giant teddy bear.  When they kissed, the hair felt more like warm fur than coarse bristles.

By the time they reached Memsford, except for the uniform, Hank looked like he had never left the town and was just coming in from the farm to pick up supplies.  Jenny stepped off the train as if she was simply lifted by the winds off the tundra.  She took a deep breath, as if for the first time, after a week of captivity in the train’s cramped quarters:  the blossom unfurled.  She brought a color and brightness with her that contrasted with the graying boards of the train station, and made Hank swell with pride. 

“Hank Thompson, is that you?”  it was Josh Higgins, the part-time station master, part-time post master, part-time general store manager.  “Boy, you’ve grown, you’re as big as your Pa,” he was bending his body backward trying to take in all of the big man standing in front of him.  “And who’s this lovely little thing?”  his eyes widened in disbelief that Hank could capture such a beauty.

“This is Jenny, Mr. Higgins,” he was puffed up even larger than was natural, “My wife,” he added proudly and emphatically.

“Your wife?!”  Josh was never good with words and he was now searching desperately for the words to make the young lady welcome.  But they wouldn’t come; he was too fascinated by her beauty and too happy for Hank to mar the moment with his simple-minded comments.  And Hank must have been through so much, how could there be anything appropriate to say.  But nonetheless, the way he held onto Hank’s hand and the little kiss he offered Jenny, careful not to ‘break’ her, were expression enough of how warmly he felt about the boy, and how ready he was to share that warmth with Jenny.

  “Hank, you’re a hero now … how was it …?”  he asked the question not really wanting an answer, but feeling the need to say something.  The reports of the Great War had been scant in these parts of the country, mostly carried in on the weekly pages of the Glacier Gazette. The brutality that was described was unthinkable for the simple folks out here; they wouldn’t treat the wild animals in woods the way this war was treating their boys.

Josh was still standing arched-back trying to take in the boy and the uniform and the wife, still struggling with something appropriate to say, but all he could think of was Hank’s mother.  “Your ma would be so proud, if she could see you now… ,”  he instantly clouded over realizing what he had just said, regretting his stupidity.  It wasn’t his place.

Hank’s mother had died that past winter.  A train load of Easterners had brought in the Spanish flu; the small town was ill-prepared for the ravages the disease would bring.  Hank’s ma had come into town to help with the dying, even ministered to Josh’s youngest boy while his wife lay delirious with fever in the next bed.  It was her cradling of the boy in her arms, fighting back the fever with rubbing alcohol and the force of her will, that got him through. 

“That’s what Christians do,” she had said standing chest high to her towering husband in direct challenge to his insistence that she stay within the protection of the farm.  How could she ask God to take care of her son, wherever he might be, if she turned her back on others?  It took less than a week for her to come down with the disease and be brought back to the farm to die.

Hank’s father sat with her through the last claims of the fever, holding her hands, kissing her colorless lips.  He prayed for her; despite his aversion to practicing religion, he was still God-fearing.  When all hope for her recovery was lost, he prayed that the Lord would take him, too.  He hoped that the final kisses would bring her peace, and might bring the contagion to him, but he was immune.

Josh Higgins was only able to tell a few facts of the passing before he was silenced by the grief that racked Hank’s body.  He could feel a moaning from within the boy, directly from his heart.  He had known Hank for years and had never known him without a smile, but now he was witnessing a grief disproportionate even to the great size of the boy.  Josh and Jenny cradled Hank’s chest in their arms, together they could barely encircle him.

“God bless her:  she was the best,” Josh choked through the tears, a final fitting testimony of Hank’s mother as he stepped backward away from the couple to leave them to their grief and to make preparations to get Hank and Jenny home.  Turning to find his son and the horse drawn wagon, Josh noted that the old station looked even grayer and more careworn; the sorrow was everywhere.

As if through the slow-motion of a dream, Hank and Jenny found themselves sitting arm-in-arm facing backward on the rear-board of the wagon.  Josh’s oldest son, Kip, was their driver and hadn’t needed much instruction from his dad to understand he should remain respectfully silent.  Kip stared at the road ahead, as Hank and Jenny stared back at the town, while the wagon headed toward the Thompson farm and their new home.  They watched the smoke from the departing train heading back East to civilization.

Hank was recounting to himself his childhood memories of his mother and steeling himself for what lie ahead.  His mother had always been the center of his life.  Despite the overwhelming physical size of the men in her life:  her husband, her father-in-law and her ever-growing son; she was the focal point around which they all revolved.  She would stand between her husband and his father when the old man raged on about religion; she would stand between her husband and her son when the punishment didn’t quite fit the crime, and she would stand between any and all of her men and the town whenever there was talk of the Legend.  And in every case she prevailed.

In an ironic twist, it was Hank’s mother who stood beside him when he decided to enlist, helping to persuade Hank’s father that the boy should lead his own life, and that leaving Memsford might be the best thing for him.  That’s when the Great War was viewed as a mere nuisance to be disposed of in a few weeks by the brave Americans.  Hank’s last memory of his mother was on the train platform surrounded by the townspeople waving flags, as he bent down to meet her kiss, lifting her off the boards in an embrace.  Now it was she who was gone away.  A sob caught in his chest. 

With every shutter that trembled through her husband’s body, Jenny was becoming more of a woman.  She was beginning to understand what being a wife was really about; she was beginning to understand what this stern land was really about.  She thought about the simple nobility of the station master:  Josh Higgins didn’t think it was his place to tell Hank about his mother, but yet when the time came, he felt it was his place to cradle the boy in his arms like he was his own son.  Jenny had never seen such an outpouring of genuine affection. As the last puffs of train smoke dispelled into the twilight, Jenny concluded that this truly was her new life; despite the heartache and tragedy that lay ahead, she’d never get on that train again.

They were halfway to the farm, when Hank awakened as if from a sleep.  He shook himself free of the cobwebs of grief and drew his wife closer in his embrace.  He picked her up like she was a sheaf of hay from the back of the wagon and turned her to face the road ahead.  He didn’t recognize the symbolism of the act; rather he wanted her to be in the best position to see their new home.  The wagon rattled and bobbed along the road long rutted by ages of travelers to this the oldest house in Memsford.

The final turning of the road enfolded a majestic panorama.  The trees parted from the sides of the road as if gliding apart in a stage set; the grey-green Rockies clearly visible in the distance were framing the last rays of the sun, one of whose beams was illuminating, as if internally, the giant oak that was the hallmark of the Thompson Farm.    

The house was a grand Victorian built from plans brought west from Philadelphia by Hank’s great-grandfather, Isiah.  The original Thompson was a religious man ‘called’ to this part of the country to bring religion into the wild lives of the gold miners and into the wilder lives of the native Blackfeet Indians of the region.  When the train was delayed waiting for the completion of the Memsford bridge, Isiah got off the train and never got back on.  His ‘calling’ told him that this was the very spot; there was something in the river that fascinated him.

Isiah built the church and laid claim to forty or so acres of land north of the town.  He built the house to the plans he had carried for just this eventuality.  Although the plans suggested that the house be a kaleidoscope of colors, Isiah painted the house white with dark green trim much like the church --- after all, this was the house of a Man of God, and it shouldn’t hint at vanity.

What the house lacked in color it made up for in detail; it was an encyclopedia of the Victorian style.  Every piece of wood was turned or carved or stenciled; every eave and cornice and arch was held up by sunbursts and spindles and outriggers.  Two chimneys supported the roof on either side of its peak and each suggested there were numerous fireplaces below.  However, the most dominant feature of the house was the huge porch that spanned the entire breadth of the house and extended beyond it ten feet on either side.  Eight large wood columns carried its roof and framed the curls and twists of the railings and corbels.

As the wagon traveled the last few dozen yards, Jenny watched the gloamin envelop the valley:  the giant tree darkened and the shadows raced across the tundra --- but the house framed in the encroaching darkness glowed with a pale butter hue.  There was warmth and heritage; this was home!

As the horse drew up to the steps, Jenny noticed a darkness eclipse the light that apparently ran the depth of the house to the back door.  As Hank lifted Jenny down from the wagon, she saw the eclipse again and watched a dark figure appear on the other side of the screen.  The shadow of the man ominously filled the doorway and slowly pushed the screen open as if hesitating to welcome the visitors.  Jenny’s heart sank, feeling that she would not be wanted.  But she was mistaken: Hank’s father finally recognized his son and came alive.  He now bounded the few feet that separated them and grabbed Hank in his arms.  He was laughing and crying at the same time, lifting Hank off the ground --- no small feat indeed.

“I thought I had lost you, too,” his face was buried in his son’s shoulder the words muffled but unmistakable as the deep growling of the old man.  They both rocked back and forth in their shared grief.  Jenny stood nearby made impossibly tiny by the combined size of the two huge men.  Hank’s father finally opened his tear swollen eyes as his son loosened his embrace:  they fixed on Jenny, they twinkled.

“Hank?  Don’t just stand there, boy, ain’t you proud of your Pa?”  he said, facing Jenny, waiting for the introduction.  The depth of the grieving had passed, it was time to rejoin the living.  After all, Hank’s father had been mourning for nearly a year now; the pain, once exquisite and suffocating, was now merely numbing.

“Pa, this is Jenny. … my wife,”  Hank seemed foolishly boyish behind the dark beard struggling with the words.

“Wife?!”  Hank’s father glanced at his son in mock disapproval at having been bypassed in the process, but then he turned to Jenny seeming to expand even beyond his already great size, and reaching out his huge arm, encircled Jenny, careful not to crush her, and brought her up toward his face to deliver a big kiss on her cheek.  He placed her back down on the ground, as she looked up lovingly into his now gentle face.  The origins of everything she had come to love in Hank, she saw in the big man’s eyes.

“What had Hank to fear in this man?” she asked of herself.

The old man’s eyes clouded briefly as he whispered, “She has your mother’s eyes.”  The green eyes were what had first attracted Hank to Jenny.

“Come on in before it gets cold,” Hank’s father had his arms around both of them.  “You, too, Kip.  Come in for a drink before you head back”, he added over his shoulder, “I won’t tell your dad.”  Then, as if suddenly rediscovering a long-lost civility, he added, “By the way, how is your dad, Kip?”  Hank’s father realized he hadn’t been into town since his wife’s death and hadn’t had anyone out except for the boy from the store delivering supplies.  That had to change now that there was new life in the house.

Kip was off the wagon in an instant, eager to finally break his vow of silence and to be treated like a grownup.  Besides it was getting cold; there was a mist coming in from the mountains.

****************************************

Ravine

The boys decided to camp just north of the Thompson farm.  They could explore further upstream before dusk and return to this spot to be within the relative safety of civilization, if the Thompsons could indeed be considered civilization.  Here the river was still contained within the lower channel of the ravine; further north it would broaden out and shallow, turning the river bank from wall to wall into an everglade that made dry land a rarity.  The boys set up a single tent and stored their food and other tents inside.  They’d come back to expand the camp and start a fire later.

The boys started out hugging the ravine wall as a guide, believing it was the only thing certain to be recognizable as they returned.  There were still the vestiges of a path:  the broken canes of the knotweed, the red silt earth blotching in a band through the green.  But the new knotweed shoots were everywhere; their devil-tongue leaves even pushing through the packed dirt of the path.  Within a week in the summer’s building heat, the path would be almost obliterated; the plants grew an average of a foot a week and this sultry environment seemed to accelerate even that rapacious growth.

The ravine wall was a good choice to landmark the travel, and had apparently served that purpose for decades.  The hacked down canes of the knotweed, slow to deteriorate, matted the border of the path.  After a half mile or so, the signs of civilization diminished --- there were no longer beer cans or candy wrappers or ‘dirty’ magazines.  This was the furthest reaches of the one-day adventurers; from this point further on only the more daring explorers had gone.  The river was more often obscured from sight by the vegetation with only its murmur reminding the boys of its existence; that and the increasing softness of the soil underfoot.  The knotweed was still in abundance and continuing its annual migration further and further upstream striving to claim more and more of the river as its own, but as often now, the scrub pines were still in domination heralding their bigger brothers up in the mountains.

The river bed started to climb gradually as it approached the foothills, still more than five miles in the distance, and with it so grew the ravine walls.  Apparently the river in its wilder youth had cut a deeper swath as it raced down the slopes.  The last of the salt backflows from the ancient sea were behind them, and the vegetation turned greener and more lush in the richer soil.

The atmosphere was beginning to darken, in part from the approaching twilight, in part from the overgrowth of honeysuckle and in largest measure from the increasing depression of the boys.  They had only gone a half hour from camp, and their mood was noticeably changing.  At first the occasional discarded girlie magazine had peaked their interest.  Obviously some older boys, earlier this year, had felt safe in bringing the magazines to a place this far from their parents but not safe enough to carry them back out.  Even the occasional cigarette that Bobbie-and-Tommie had stolen from their mother’s purse to christen their manhood in this place was sickening them.

“This place sucks!” Squeaky rasped, uneasily testing the limits of his temporary independence from his mom with the very succinct assessment.  “Look at that”, he pointed to the path ahead.  The knotweed had built a fence of canes along the path, at places thick as a stockade.  The honeysuckle had sent tendrils out from the top of the ravine wall where the sun was brightest and lassoed the tops of the knotweed.  Over the weeks, other tendrils followed and thickened the canopy to an almost opaque roof of leaves and vines.  Some stray tendrils flitted free of the roof and, like tongues, licked at the moist air of the passage.  The setting sun was dappled through the canopy in spots but in most places diffused into a dark green glow, somewhat gel-like in consistency.  The total effect was one of an endless tunnel leading into a gaping, toothed maw of strange, digestive juices.

Each boy studied the others’ faces, wondering how they’d react to the suggestion of abandoning this quest and going home.  It fell to Frankie as the oldest and the least likely to be considered a coward to speak, “This is as far as we can go before dark.”

“Oh, come on, we can get a lot further,” Bobbie spoke up, hoping his weak show of bravado would not reverse Frankie’s decision.  Tommie looked at his brother in disbelief and was met with a familiar glance that bound him to the pretense.

“No, we have all day tomorrow to get much further along,” Frankie was insistent.

“Thank God,” thought Tommie.

“Hell, we might go where no man has gone before,” Frankie was a ‘trekkie’ in the making.

Just as they turned from the tunnel to return to base camp something entered the tunnel at the other end two miles upstream and headed their way.  The updraft from the lower stream carried smells for miles in the uninterrupted passageway.  The lumbering shape shuffled along following the smell down toward the boys.  Its immense body crushing and spreading the new growth, and bulging the older canes outward.  From above it looked like a pig traveling through the body of a snake.

Old Man Thompson

The boys returned to their camp just as the advancing shadow of the mountains reached the ravine.  The adrenaline made quick work of the other two tents.  Bobbie-and-Tommie shared a small tent while Squeaky had a fancier one bought by the guilt of his parents in compensation for subjecting him to this new home.

They started a fire close to the wall of the ravine and out of sight of the Thompson house not wanting anyone brought out of the house to investigate.  The fire started quickly with last year’s cane stalks and was made lasting by the winter fall of pine and pin maple branches.  The smoke traveled upstream away from the boys and was drafted into the honeysuckle tunnel to greet the approaching beast.

As embers formed at the base of the fire, the boys pushed foiled wrapped potatoes into the graying coals.  They planned to wait for a while before toasting frankfurters; top everything off later with s’mores --- they’d planned a balanced meal.  Squeaky had brought cocoa but they didn’t want to waste the water in their canteens; no one was about to suggest using the water from the stream.

The Thompson house was already in shadow, further darkened by the centuries old oak that overhung the house.  There was a single light in the attic window, but otherwise the house was black.  The Thompson’s were now living on the charity of their neighbors and a meager social security benefit.  Even at their great age, they waited until they were banging into furniture to light any other lights, and usually they were in bed before that was required.

“See that light?”  Frankie asked of the other boys looking from face to face to see if they knew what was coming.  He was satisfied that this was the first time they would hear the story of the Thompsons.  They were transfixed in anticipation; to be in the company of a boy as worldly as Frankie was a titillating, almost sexual experience.

Frankie began his interpretation of events:

Old Man Thompson is half-man, half-bear.  Sometimes, if no one is watching, he runs around on all fours.  My Pa says that in his day he could bring down a deer; that’s how fast he was.  Anyway, he bought a mail-order bride from Chicago ‘cause all of the women around here were ‘fraid of him.  They said he’d claw them to death when they were in bed f… , ugh, making a baby.   (Frankie thought he should be careful with his language; what with Squeaky being Catholic and all.)

Anyway, Little Miss Thompson, comes here and at first she’s pretty scared.  She stayed in town with the ladies for the first few days until she could see if Old Man Thompson was dangerous.  Mr. Thompson’s Pa came and saw her and offered her money and told her his son wasn’t really dangerous, just overly big and all.

They say that if Old Man Thompson wasn’t right for her, than his Pa would pay her and marry her himself.  His own wife had died soon after Old Man Thompson was born and he was pretty lonely out here.  Miss Thompson agreed to try the relationship --- with the son, that is.

It worked out pretty well for a while.  Little Miss Thompson was a pretty thing (still is, I hear).  Coming in to town to do her shopping, she was friendly to everybody; she even got Old Man Thompson to go to Sunday services.  That was a big deal and all, since he was dead set against religion ‘cause of his grandpa.

Pretty soon some of the ladies from town came a-calling and gave their OK that even Old Man Thompson was normal --- just overly big and all.  And when Miss Thompson started to show, well the ladies thought the whole thing was very respectable.  Being Christian and all, (no offence Squeaky), they realized they might’d been wrong all along.

Miss Thompson was soon getting to the size where she couldn’t move around much.  Some of the ladies were worried that the baby she was carrying was Old Man Thompson’s size and the birth would kill her.  They took turns visiting her and bringing her food.  They say Old Man Thompson couldn’t sit still waiting for the child to come.  He paced day and night.  They say that’s when the howling started.  My Pa doesn’t believe it was Old Man Thompson, but he says that some of the wilder animals were coming down outta the mountains to be around for the birth of the child.

My Pa says, it was like they were waiting for one of their own.

Little Miss Thompson was early with the baby:  it came two weeks ahead of schedule.  Old Man Thompson was taken by surprise and barely had enough time to get to town and back to fetch Sadie May, the colored mid-wife.  Sadie May died a few years back you know; she used to be the oldest lady in town, and now that’s Miss Thompson.

Sadie May had already delivered about six others kids for the town, and she had two of her own already, but she was ascared on the ride out here.  Old Man Thompson was as big as the wagon, and she sat perched next to him barely able to hold on as he bounced against her.  There was a full moon that night, and Sadie May was praying to it.  They say she was a ‘night person’ from N’ Orleans and they did that there.  Well just as she’s getting into the sayings, the moon starts to go dark.  She says it wasn’t like there was clouds or anything cause she could see all the stars, but it was one of those eclipses --- you know, like with the sun.  (Frankie mimed:  one hand passing in front of the other.)

She thought it was her sayings that was making the moon go away, so she stopped, but the moon kept getting darker.  Old Man Thompson seemed to be getting wilder and wilder as the ride got darker and darker.  He seemed to be changing like he was going crazy or something.  “Thank God”, she says, as she sees the Thompson house up ahead; the moon is half gone when they get there.  She tucks into the house under that big oak, afraid like the moon’s going to lose all its strength and fall down on her.  

Anyway, Sadie used to tell the story of how by the time she finally got out here, Old Man Thompson, as big as he was and all, seemed more in need of doctoring than his wife.  Once he brought the horse in, he didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.  He kept pacing outside the bedroom where Sadie May was helping Miss Thompson.  He was moaning like a sick dog or somethin’.

Miss Thompson was flailing from side to side, as the baby started to show down there (the other boys would have usually seized the opportunity to get Frankie to talk dirty to them, but this story could not be interrupted).  Sadie says when the baby’s head showed, she thought Miss Thompson was going to split open like a melon.  It was amazing that she could be carrying this size kid:  it was almost as big as she was, and it already had all its hair and teeth. (The other boys gasped; this was unbelievable even for them.)

The story had kept the boys spellbound; they had ignored the potatoes that were smoldering in their wraps, and they didn’t want to interrupt the story to skewer the hot dogs.  Bobbie was munching on the Graham crackers.  Despite the crunching sound in his ears, he was the first to here the cracking canes.  “Hear that?” he was wide-eyed with alarm, hoping no one else had heard the noise.  A far away crackling and then silence; not even the mockingbirds were calling.

“Yeh, I heard it,” Tommie, of course, was bound to agree with his brother, but the other boys were nodding and looking up stream along the ravine wall.

The great beast had just left the entrance of the honeysuckle tunnel and was heading toward the smell of smoke.  It was cautious of its steps on the matted canes; and alert to the sounds of small animals escaping in terror from its approach.  It was aware of the increasing smell of the fire almost obscuring the smell of the young boys themselves:  the smell of perspiration and the musky smell of adolescence.  These boys were at puberty and, to the beast, it was an overwhelming scent.  While it moved, it kept a watchful eye on the light coming from the house across the field; the light had been a familiar beacon in its travels down the river at night but it also engendered an instinctive apprehension.

The beast’s fear of what might be in the house soon gave way to an awareness of another sound:  a rustling sound like the wind, but low to the ground not up in the trees and far away, but approaching fast.  The beast was certain that whatever it was had entered the tunnel now; a gentle howling added to the clatter of the dried canes against each other.  The beast knew this sound, and knew it brought with it great danger.

The darkness had completely overtaken the ravine now and the sliver of a moon was no help.  “Damn, it’s dark up there”, Frankie was on his feet, cursing in having forgotten that he should have waited for the moon to be full before undertaking this quest.  They all looked at the Thompson house and the single light in the attic, each boy calculating the time it would take to scale the ravine wall and make it across the field to the back door.  Each in his mind was thinking what he would rather face:  the unknown thing that was coming toward them down the river or Old Man Thompson.  Hell, it might be one and the same for all they knew:  Old Man Thompson even at this great age lumbering toward them on all fours with blood red eyes and drool pouring through his sharpened teeth.

The beast stood in the dark just out of the range of the campfire; the crushing sounds at its back approaching rapidly.  It watched the boys piling more branches onto the fire in a desperate attempt to increase its circumference of protection and ward off any evil.  The beast was calculating the distances between each boy, the ravine wall and the house with the light.  All its instincts told the beast that it should scale the wall and save itself, but the nearness of the boys kept it fixed to the spot.  It turned its back on the boys to focus its attention on the crush of air approaching them all, hoping desperately that what was coming would be miraculously diverted.  The leaves were hissed with a spray of moisture, and the beast could feel a cold breeze encircling its great legs penetrating to the skin through the thick matted hair.  It was too late; it was here!

The first thing each boy saw were the green eyes emerging from the darkness perched seven feet in the air over an immense brown mass of fur.  Then there were the outstretched arms blotting out half of the woods in their approach.  That’s when each boy’s attention went helter-skelter.  Frankie was at the ravine wall first and, as the tallest, was able to reach the overhanging vines and start digging at the mud and stone wall as if running in place.  He gained traction against the pockets of loosened stones and was nearly to the top when Squeaky’s body hit the wall next to him and fell back into the ravine.  Frankie figured that the beast had thrown Squeaky at him, using one boy to try to knock down the other. 

For a brief moment, Bobbie-and-Tommie were locked in each others arms and running in circles until they followed Frankie to the wall.  Their fear was blinding them and their hearts were making reason impossible.  They felt the cold mist at their feet climbing up their legs toward their groin, stabbing at them with icy pin pricks.  Then it was as if they were pushed by the mist up the ravine wall to safety in the tall grass at the top.

Frankie was already stumbling toward the Thompson house, his legs badly bruised by the rocks.   Bobbie was shakily on his feet and dragging his brother upright.  Tommie turned to look back into the ravine before he joined the race to safety.  The campfire was captured in the icy mist as if frozen; the beast, silhouetted in the dying flames, was staring up at him.  In the shadow the only details were the green eyes and a leering glint of teeth.  It scooped down into the mist and lifted the limp body of Squeaky Porto up by his waist.  Shaking the boy a few times, the beast threw him over its shoulder and headed upstream toward the honeysuckle tunnel.

Tommie could hear it moaning as it gradually melted into the darkness.  “It’s got Squeaky, it’s got Squeaky!”  Tommie was crying hysterically and trying to pull away from his brother as if he might chase down the beast and retrieve his friend.  It took only a few moments for reason to take hold, and for Tommie to realize there was no hope for Squeaky now.

Mist

As Johnny crossed the bridge he saw the specks of some boys in the distance following the river bank upstream.  “A ‘true nature’s child’, that’s it!” Johnny remembered; just like its name the river flooded his mind with his own attempt as a boy to find the headwaters of Memory River.  He was carrying that little Panasonic and was just where those boys are now when he first heard Steppenwolf.  He was carried back for a moment and then shook the childhood recollections back into his subconscious.

“Let’s not go there,” he said aloud, emphasizing the discomfort of the old thoughts.  Talking to one’s self was a common occurrence in this part of the country where human interaction was at a premium.

 He drove past the few buildings in town assuring himself that nothing was out of order.  He could walk through the town in his mind and paint an exact picture of the dozen or so stores.  The town was so unchanging that he’d be able to note the difference in the price on a sign advertising milk for sale.  That reminded him; he needed to do some food shopping.

He parked his car at Kip’s service station.  This Kip was the third generation of ‘Kips’ to own the gas station since his grandfather gave up ‘mastering’ trains for ‘mastering’ cars.  Johnny saw the grease-stained overalls extending out from under a truck, and yelled down to be heard above the engine noise, “Hey, Uncle Kip, is that you?”  Kip wasn’t actually Johnny’s uncle, but close enough.  The man back-peddled his dolly out from under the truck, but remained on his back ready to scoot back under. 

“Johnny, whazzup?” always with a smile, and certainly always for his ‘nephew.’

The younger man bent down and kissed his ‘uncle’ on the cheek, an unabashed show of affection in a town where handshakes could be made the fodder of gossip.  But no one in Memsford questioned the genuine attachment these two men had after what they’d been through --- particularly what Johnny had been through.  

“Just need a few things,”  Johnny was moving away to complete his chores, “Gotta’ run.”

Johnny preferred to go from shop to shop buying milk at the dairy store, bread at the bakery and some fruit and salad at the grocer rather than the one-stop shopping at the supermarket outside town.  This also gave him an opportunity to chat with the shopkeepers each of whom had known him since his parents had first visited the town almost thirty years ago.

By the time Johnny left the last of the stores, the shadows of the mountains from the setting sun were rushing toward the town.  The same shadows persuaded Sarah, back at her home, to flick on the kitchen light while she was still standing at the window anxiously waiting for Johnny, now an hour late.  And the same shadows convinced Frankie, upstream, to decide on behalf of his charges that this was as far as they’d get today.

The radio went on as Johnny started the car in Kip’s driveway, announcing, “Still 67 degrees, even as the sun sets …heading toward a low tonight of 45”.  “Now Ms. Whitney Houston and “I Will Always Love You” for all you romantics heading home to that special someone….” Johnny was not sure he wanted to hear this, but it was either this station, static or silence.

It took only a few minutes to drive one of the ‘spoke’ roads southeast out of the town and into the small enclave of twelve houses that had once been the Hammond Farm.  Whitney was on her last agonized shrill as Johnny approached his house noticing the mist rolling across the fields.

The Hammond Farm had been the second to be settled after the Thompsons’ and laid claim to the fertile watershed of Memory River as it finally breached the ravine.  In the spring, the river would wash the enriched topsoil and nutrients down from the mountains and flood the tundra that comprised the original expanse of the Hammond acreage.  The river would reform itself further on, gaining strength from other tributaries draining out of the foothills and finally taking on the characteristic grandeur of the Missouri by the time it reached Wyoming.

“That’s funny,” again speaking out loud.  The mist usually rolled in at morning and usually when the temperatures started to rise in the foothills and push the moisture out onto the tundra.  But this was too warm an afternoon for mist; the radio coincidently confirmed again that the temperature was still 67.  Johnny stopped the car in his driveway keeping one eye on the mist and the other on the rising garage door he’d just actuated.

The mist wasn’t white or cloudy but rather gelatinous; it made the grass somewhat greener in its wake, like it was coating it with something denser than just dew.  He watched it approach flattening the grass as it came; it had weight.  The first tendrils touched his neighbor, Sarah’s, house and reached her side door.  They seemed to pause there, as if looking for entry, or perhaps wary of Sam, the golden retriever, who stood guard.  It was then that he noticed Sarah at the window above what he knew to be her kitchen sink.  How long had she been there waving out at him?

He watched a second wave of green approach and engulf the lower half of his car.  It shimmered much like the mirage out on the highway that signaled his turn.  “That’s what this is, a mirage,” he reasoned to himself blinking, trying to clear the image.  No doubt it was brought on by the record heat, although 67 was no longer record heat.  Johnny checked the outside temperature gauge on his dashboard; it read 50 degrees!

“Wow!” Johnny offered a not a very informative reaction but nonetheless an accurate one.  Could it really have dropped seventeen degrees in a few minutes?  Johnny opened his driver side window, not wanting just yet to step out into the mist surrounding the car.  He watched the window lower and through it could see Sarah waving again from the kitchen.  He hadn’t noticed her wearing those red rubber gloves before.

The mist climbed the door of Johnny’s car and bubbled over the edge into his lap.  He felt an icy grip of pin pricks focusing on his waist and below into the warmth of his groin.  There was an instantaneous erotic reaction that bulged his pants but the numbness quickly followed and ended his momentary rapture.  A chill swept his body, bristling the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.

The car’s motor started revving, as Johnny’s numbed legs involuntarily pushed both the brake and accelerator.  He was suddenly no longer aware of being in the car, but rather of viewing it as if from up in the tree just ahead.  He was looking down at the green mist holding the car in its embrace, the white plume of exhaust from the rear of the car swirled through the mist as if it were cream captured in Jell-O.

From above, he looked through the windshield to the man behind the wheel, not quite convinced it was still himself down there.  There was a slight movement of the man’s legs and the car lurched forward leaving a gap of clear air behind it to the pavement.  The car hit the tree with an impact that vibrated through Johnny-in-the-tree and caused him to fly upward and out of the branches.  He settled back down again to watch as the car reversed, re-opening the wound behind it that the mist was starting to heal.  Again the car lurched forward but this time with more force and again hit the tree.  The tree vibrated, Johnny-in-the-tree took flight.  The tree was undamaged, its century-old trunk would easily withstand more than this, but the car was hissing now; its radiator was seriously damaged and iridescent antifreeze was pouring barely noticeable into the green mist.  The airbag deployed and instantly deflated, protecting Johnny-in-the-car from the windshield.

The car reversed.  Apparently the gasoline shutoff valve designed to immobilize the car after impact was defective.  Johnny-in-the-tree could not see the man’s legs shrouded in the denier remains of the airbag, but there was obviously purpose in the actions.  The car backed down the driveway further than it had before, calculating enough distance to build up serious speed; it rocked for a moment as the brake and accelerator vied for supremacy, and then, in a screeching lurch, headed for the tree.

Johnny-in-the-tree watched the event unfurl like the slow motion tests of a crash dummy in a television car ad.  The car wrapped itself around the trunk of the tree, the sheering sound of metal and fiberglass melding and disintegrating, the patches of bark and chrome thrown explosively out into space.  The car hit with such impact that it was almost able to re-form itself as it curved completely around the ancient tree.  At about the time that the car passed the midway point of the trunk, Johnny-in-the-car came through the windshield.  He was initially encased in a shroud of crushed glass like a chrysalis about to become a butterfly.  But the cocoon split open and deposited the bleeding remains onto the hood of the car;  Johnny’s forehead pressed up against the tree, his mouth started to dribble blood onto the bark, his one eye looking up at the tree branch just as his alter-ego fell to the earth, dead.

The event was instantaneous, but the sounds of metal and glass falling onto the driveway seemed to continue for seconds.  The cooling noises of the destroyed engine clanked on for minutes.  The green mist retreated back across the grass into the foothills.  The grass slowly regained its composition hiding the litter of small dead animals the mist left in its wake, among them a single black bird next to Johnny’s car in the driveway.

Denier

Sarah had watched Johnny turn into his driveway; she fantasized that he was coming home to her, her loins began to ache.  She started chopping more violently at the vegetables in front of her in an attempt to release the sexual tension that was building in her.  Sam cocked his head to the increased clatter.  He was sitting at attention just inside the kitchen door, his muzzle ruffled by the warm breeze coming through the screen.  From his vantage, he had a protective view of his mistress and, with a side-long glance, could keep an eye out for anyone approaching the house.

It was the golden who, like Sarah, noticed Johnny’s car, but he alone who watched the mist strain through the screen and settle at his feet.  He chuffed as the cold penetrated his fur and danced a bit with his front two paws to test what the mist was made of.  But his noises and movements didn’t distract Sarah who was transfixed by Johnny sitting quietly in his car and staring into space.

Sarah was relieved to feel the cool breeze at her feet; it was tempering the heat her daydreams of Johnny were producing.  She believed she was still dreaming when she looked down to see the kitchen floor covered in a pale green haze, her precious Sam parked obediently at the door with his chest feathers gently billowing.  The kitchen seemed to undulate with a gentle caressing movement that only added to the developing fantasy of being alone with Johnny.

She watched him across the yard waving to her, seductively beckoning her to join him for the evening.  She pressed herself tight against the sink cabinet trying to relieve the growing passion and steadied herself against the icy fingers that were reaching up under her skirt.  She was beginning to moan and to undulate along with the movement of the room; she was in rapture.

She looked down at her hands still automatically continuing with their chores of hacking at the ill-fated carrots.  She was unmoved when the blade began to chop at the fingertips of her left hand.  She continued to smile down as the serrated edge marched its way up the fingers; the nails and tips offered no resistance but the knuckles were proving more of a challenge and the blade bent from side to side in her attempt to snap the bones.

She paused for a moment, raising her bloody hand to wave back at Johnny as he lowered the car window, and she could get a view of that radiant blond hair.  She had stopped chopping at her hand and had it resting on the sink edge; the blood running down the white cabinet in pink rivulets diluted by the green mist that now reached almost to her waist.  Sam had settled down to sleep in the fog; one eyebrow raised over a watchful eye; still chuffing at the strange mist but content that Sarah was becalmed.

Sarah watched emotionless as Johnny slammed his car into the tree.  The sound of the crash didn’t seem to penetrate the kitchen.  She followed his movements as he backed the car and even more violently smashed into the tree a second time.  It wasn’t until she saw the airbag fill the car window that she emitted a faint whimper; Sam was upright and alert in an instant.  But Sarah hadn’t moved other than to lower her head; she closed her eyes and drifted back in time.

She was seated now in a car and looking down at her lap, to the deflated remains of the airbag that had just barely saved her life.  Her face felt like it was badly sunburned and a headache of colossal proportion was building behind her eyes and would soon blind her into unconsciousness; she knew from their impossibly bent condition that both her legs were broken.  The last sight she would remember that day, and that which she’d remember for the rest of her life, was of Eddie, her new husband of three months.  His air bag hadn’t deployed, it remained behind the half-opened lid of the steering wheel.  Eddie’s body was up out of the driver’s seat, his hips pressed against the collapsed steering column.  From the waist up and out over the dashboard, Sarah was having a hard time defining the human remains of her husband.  The blood was dripping down obscuring the tatters of clothes and dangling of arms and shreds of torn flesh.  It was only after a moment of study that she was able to recognize his head encased in the unyielding film of the shattered safety glass, his eyes looking back at her as if his last thoughts had been of her.  There was a faint bubbling of blood from Eddie’s mouth and then nothing --- nothing anywhere.  Sarah went into blackness.

When Sarah woke, she was again standing in her kitchen.  How much time had passed?  She looked out the kitchen window to see if Johnny was still there.  Johnny’s car was completely demolished around the tree; what looked like a body was crushed into the space between the windshield and the tree trunk.  She was shivering, but not from the dream or the sight of carnage just outside her window but rather from the mist that still engulfed her body.  She followed the streams of blood from the sink to the floor and back again to the counter.  Little bits of flesh and nail splattered the cutting board.  Sarah swept the remains into the sink with the stump of her left hand, and casually pushed the bits down into the garbage disposal.  Still pushing her hand into the disposal, she reached up with the other hand and flipped the on-switch.  The blades in the sink drain ground and halted, and ground again and then finally stopped as they reached the larger bones of Sarah’s palm.

Just as she was about to pass out for the second time, she heard the sirens and saw the police approaching Johnny’s house.  She turned to Sam, “I wonder what all the fuss is about?” her last words for a while.

Little Miss Thompson

“Frankie, wait up!” it was Tommie.  Frankie slowed to a trot but only until Tommie-and-Bobbie caught up; then he accelerated enough to keep them gasping.  There was still terror in his blood.

“Where’s Squeaky?” he slowed momentarily after looking over his shoulder.

“He’s killed; that thing’s got him!”  Tommie was gasping on the words, as much from hyperventilation as from grief.  He’d never seen a dead person, certainly never seen anyone actually die, and never thought of anyone his own age being killed --- nothing like this.

“Fuck!”  There was no need for Frankie to be careful with language anymore, and besides it was the most appropriate reaction.  “What was that thing?  Some kinda bear?”  Frankie had stopped just at the outskirt of the cut grass surrounding the Thompson house; there was still about a hundred yards to the back porch.

From this vantage, the boys could see anything approaching for as far around as the ravine and the hills --- the coast was clear.  Regardless of the panorama, everyone’s attention was on the exact point in the ravine where they had made their escape.  It was from there, they concluded, the thing would reappear if it intended to finish its work.

“That was no bear!”  Tommie was certain, “it was something like a giant man-bear.”  The boys spun around to stare at the house; the same thought crossing each of their minds.

“You don’t suppose it was Old Man Thompson,” it was Bobbie shaking his head in disbelief that any human being was capable of such cruelty against a kid.

“Well, you know, if it was him then the odds are he’s not back in the house,” Frankie was proud of his capacity for higher logic, even though it wasn’t in the least reassuring.  It wasn’t as much logic, as a desperate need to be anywhere else less vulnerable.

“Shit, I ain’t going in there,” Tommie was emphatic, but immediately realized as well that they had few options.  It was too dark to walk home along the road, and no one was going back the shorter distance in the ravine.  Besides, if Squeaky was still alive, they should call the police.  And what about his parents.  “Oh, God.”  Tommie was sobbing at the thought of Squeaky, maybe still barely alive, being torn apart and eaten by that monster.  He imagined he heard screams in the distance.

“What if he’s still alive?  What if he escaped and is hiding?” Frankie was still the leader, “We gotta’ get the police!”  They had already wasted precious time, but it was enough time for the terror to turn to simple fear, and the singular purpose of escape to expand to protection and help.

They approached the back of the house under the canopy of the huge oak; there wasn’t enough light to see anything except the attic light through the lower branches of the tree.  They were fixed on that beacon not looking where they were walking when they all became entangled in a small wrought iron fence.  They fell in a heap amidst the stones and branches, each emitting small gasps and muttered curses, but careful not to arouse anyone in the house just yet.  Tommie was feeling around in the flower bed when his hand came upon the curved upright stone; they had fallen into the family burial plot.

“It’s a graveyard,” he whispered.  The other boys moved so quickly, it was as if they exploded backward out of the plot.  They stood staring, waiting for zombies to rise up and drag them back.  Tommie wasn’t as affected; his threshold for the macabre had been elevated that evening.

They walked up to the darkened back porch and peered in the small panes of the ornate back door.  They could tell by the occasional glinting that they were looking into the kitchen at the ancient appliances; no other detail was visible.

“Miss Thompson, Miss Thompson, we need help?”  Frankie was gently tapping at the window and speaking barely above a whisper.  His subconscious said that if he spoke softly, he’d get Miss Thompson’s attention, but if he shouted, then Old Man Thompson would come lumbering at them from somewhere --- maybe he’s even behind them now.  Frankie turned around with a start, expecting to see the large mass of fur towering above him, arms outstretched just as he’d been back in the ravine.

Bobbie-and-Tommie grabbed each other and stared wide-eyed out into the darkness toward the ravine.  “Is he comin’; did you hear him?” they asked of Frankie, certain that he had heard the beast approaching.

“It’s OK, just my imagination,” Frankie reassured them and turned his attention back to the door.

“Aahhh, Goddd!”  Frankie leapt backward.  There, staring out of the lowest pane of the door and almost pressed against the glass was a small white face.  Tommie at first imagined it to be the shrunken head of one of Old Man Thompson’s victims, hung there as a warning to others.  But the head moved, and then spoke, “Who is it?  What do you want?” It was a crackling voice right out of Hansel and Gretel.

“Miss Thompson, we need help,” Frankie spoke in a gentle voice trying to reassure the old lady that it was safe, “there’s been an accident.”

“Oh, my God!”  her voice humanized and she could be heard fumbling with the latch.  “Come in, boys,” she was barely taller than the door knob and it seemed that the massive oak door required all her strength to open.  She had to look up, even at Bobbie, as each boy passed her into the house.

The boys stood in the dark kitchen squinting at the retreating figure of the tiny woman until all that was left was the shuffling of her bedroom slippers.  She seemed to scamper mouselike around the darkened house.  There was a faint click as Miss Thompson found the small nightlight near the stove.  The kitchen was cavernous, and the waist high position of the nightlight caused the appliances and furniture to cast strange looming shadows up on the walls.  Each shape reminded the boys of the ravine; they scanned the wall looking for the green eyes.

Miss Thompson had green eyes, but she was certainly no threat.  She had shrunken with age and become frail in her arms and legs, and breathless in her speech, but she was still a delicate flower --- perhaps a little withered but nonetheless a beauty.

“What happened?  Which of you is hurt?  You shouldn’t be out this late, you know!”  She was genuinely concerned as she walked anxiously around each boy looking for blood.  They were all becoming accustomed to the nightlight comforted by the soft smell of talc; all the while Miss Thompson was assuring herself that none of the boys were seriously injured.

“It’s none of us.  It’s Squeaky.  He’s … ,” Frankie was concerned that the full explanation might give the old woman a heart attack, “he’s back in the ravine, he’s hurt pretty bad.”  The old woman looked out the kitchen window but realized that the nightlight was only allowing a reflection of her own face and not a view to the ravine.

She walked over to the screen door and peered calmly out into the darkness, her green eyes narrowing.  Frankie imagined her pupils dilating like a cat’s, gathering in details that none of them could see.  “What’s happened to him?  Where is he?” she was asking the question as if she’d asked it before, many years before and many times since.

“We need help, we need the police,” Frankie didn’t want to be caught any further in a lie to the old woman.

“Yes, of course, the police,” she repeated and shuffled out of the kitchen to the hall leading to the front of the house, “come with me.”  Frankie followed, but the glow from the night light didn’t, and neither did Bobbie-and-Tommie electing to remain within its scant aura of protection.

Miss Thompson switched on a bigger lamp at the hall table.  This lamp gave a more natural light, and Frankie found himself in the center of a magnificent curving staircase.  He could see a large room in every direction from the center hall and a cathedral-high space above him, but his focus for the moment was on the incongruously cheap telephone on the table next to the Dresden china of the lamp.

“It’s a donation from the ladies,” Miss Thompson smiled, needing to explain; as if to point out it wasn’t something she would have chosen.  Frankie punched in 9‑1‑1 on the large-button phone, skeptical that the new emergency system would work.

“What is your emergency?”  The mechanical voice of some operator in the state capitol answered the phone.  Frankie was struck by the contrast of this seemingly emotionless woman with the unbelievable events he was about to describe.  He felt that, even hundreds of miles away, she, too, should be affected

“There’s been an accident, a very bad accident,” Frankie watched Miss Thompson glide back into the kitchen, briefly smile to the two boys still standing like statuary in the middle of the room and finally stopped at the rear screen door to peer out into the night.  He felt relieved that she didn’t quiz them about what had happened, but then it crossed his mind:  maybe she already knew.

“Where are you located?”  Frankie could imagine the woman filling out block letters on a questionnaire.

“I’m at the Old Thompson Farm,” Frankie realized too late that that wouldn’t mean anything to this automaton.

“Could you be more specific?  What city are you calling from?”  Frankie somehow had expected that response.

“Shit,” Frankie slammed the receiver, causing Miss Thompson to turn and call back at him across the expanse of house.

“Is everything alright, son?  Are they coming?”

“Yes, everything’s OK”, Frankie reassured her as he composed himself.

He simply hit the “O” button on the phone, and this time he was immediately connected.

“May I help you?”  It was Doris Sutter from the candy store who moonlighted for the telephone company.

“Miss Sutter, this is Frankie Wiggins.  We’re out at the Old Thompson place.  There’s been a terrible accident,” Frankie looked up to assure himself that Miss Thompson was still at the screen door.  He turned his back on her and cupped his hand over the phone, “It’s Squeaky Porto, I think he’s dead!” the last words caught in his throat.

“Stay on the line, Frankie, I’ll get the sheriff.”  Frankie heard a few clicks followed by a minute or two of silence, and then the sleepy voice of Sheriff Tim Melton.

“Frankie, are you OK?  Who you with, son? Where’s Squeaky now?”  The questions were all business and rapid-fire, but Frankie was trembling with relief that someone was in charge; someone, unlike himself, who really knew what they were doing.

“It was terrible, Sheriff.  It was some kinda monster come down outta the ravine and killed Squeaky and dragged him away!”  Frankie was crying uncontrollably now, he was reverting back to a mere fifteen year old boy; there was no longer a need to be the brave leader of the expeditionary forces.

“I’ll be right there, son.  Stay put,” the sheriff’s final instructions before he hung up.