P Deutermann - Spider mountain

I nodded.

“Where you gonna hide?”

We both looked at her, and she understood right away. “You wantin’ to hole up here, is that it?”

“We need somewhere to set up a base while we look for those children,” Carrie said. “You’re the only person we’ve met so far up here who’s not afraid of Mingo.”

Laurie May smiled. I think she recognized the sensation of some smoke being blown. “Y’all listen here,” she said. “I ain’t never said I wasn’t afraid of M. C. Mingo. I act all the fool and bluster them boys’a his like I was a crazy woman, but if’n they wanted to, they could do as they damn please. They know it, and I know it.”

“Okay,” I interjected. “Then it’s not right that we put you in any danger. If we can hole up here for the day, we’ll clear out tonight.”

“You hold your horses, there, mister deppity,” she said, wagging a bony finger at me. “I didn’t say y’all couldn’t stay. You just need to know how things really is. Ain’t no point in tryin’ to fool folks, not at my age.” She turned to Carrie. “Fetch my shawl over yonder, missy. I got somethin’ to show ye.”

We walked up the slope behind the house toward a circular grove of old pines occupying a wide swale. When we got closer we could see a tiny log cabin, perhaps twenty feet square, almost totally hidden by the sweeping pines. Based on the color of the chinking, the amount of moss on the foundation stones, and the lean of the stone chimney, I guessed it to be very old.

“That there’s Jessie’s cabin,” Laurie May said, stopping to catch her breath. “It’s got it some blood on the floor, but it’s a beauty for a hidin’ place. My granddaddy built it well more’n a hundred years back.”

The cabin had two shuttered windows, one on either side of the front door, a small front porch, and the single chimney at one end. The logs were of random diameter and black with age. The roof was painted metal that had rusted badly over the years. But the path leading to the porch was clear of weeds and there was no clutter on the porch.

“Blood on the floor?” I asked.

“Jessie’s my only daughter,” Laurie May said. “First born. Came to her beauty early on, married up with a no-good son of a bitch. They had ’em two young’uns right quick, but he was no provider, that one. Liked his whiskey, and liked to beat on her more’n he fancied workin’ for his keep. Right bastard, he was.”

“What happened?” Carrie asked.

“One night they had ’em a big ole set-to,” Laurie May replied. “Wasn’t the first time, neither. He was drunk and beatin’ on her some. Hurt her this time. Drew blood on her. She got the scattergun, told’m to clear on out. He said he’d kill her if she didn’t put it down. That the only thing she’d been good for was them kids. That he loved them and hated her. Hateful talk like that.”

She paused, staring hard at the cabin, remembering. A soft breeze stirred the big pines. Laurie May took a deep breath. “Then she went crazy, done somethin’ awful. She turned that there ten-bore on them little kids. Kilt ’em both dead, right in front of him. She tole him there wasn’t no reason for him to stay around anymore, was there. Then she walked out that door right there, and into them woods yonder. That was twenty-three years ago. Long time, but I remember it like it was last night.”

“What happened to her?” Carrie asked.

“She done disappeared off the face of the earth. I got one letter, months on after it happened. Tole me what happened, what she’d done. How sorry she was. That Larry, that was the bastard’s name, Larry, done drove her crazy. Said she knew she was damned forever. Said one day, she’d come back here and join ’em young’uns. They’s buried back there, behind the cabin. Last time we ever heered from her.”

“And Larry?” I asked.

“That no-count kilt hisself a week later. Took that self-same shotgun and blowed his head right off in his pickup truck. Did it right there on the main street in Rocky Falls. Took him near a whole bottle’a whiskey to work hisself up to it, but he done it, right there in broad daylight. They asked me if I’d bury him back there. I told them to burn his body, so’s it could keep up with his soul.”

“Damn,” I said. Blood on the floor indeed.

“Yessir, that’s a fact. But I been a’comin’ up here once a week, seein’ to the cabin. Said she was a-comin’ back, so I keep it ready. Clean. Firewood in the box. Ain’t no facilities, so you’d have to use my privy, but there ain’t no snakes nor a lick’a dirt in it. And ain’t no one goes near this place, neither, ‘cause folks ‘round here think it’s hainted by them young’uns and they daddy, wailin’ with the night wind for all they lost.”

I felt a shiver steal across my shoulders. There were probably more stories like this told across these hills than we knew.

“Shall we go inside?” Carrie asked me. I could tell she felt it, too. But the place was a perfect hideout, and at the moment we were fresh out of options. By now Mingo would have even the back roads covered.

Inside, the cabin was spotless. It was darkish; the front windows and the one door offered the only daylight. There were basically two rooms, one which combined a tiny kitchen, which had a woodstove and a dry sink, with a living room area containing a surprisingly large fireplace, a long farmhouse table, and six antique handmade wooden chairs. A smaller table by the door held four kerosene lanterns and some candles. The other room was a bedroom, which had a four-poster bed raised high off the wooden floor and a single oak armoire. The bed was made up with quilts and handmade pillows. There was another dry sink in one corner, with a brass chamber pot stowed on a lower shelf. There was no ceiling on the bedroom, and, like the front room, it was open to the rafters. The room smelled of old sachet and older dust.

“It ain’t fancy and there ain’t nothin’ modern about it,” Laurie May said, “but it’ll keep the rain off’n your heads. And looky here.”

She pulled aside a handmade knotted-rag rug revealing a trapdoor in the bedroom floor. “This here goes under the cabin and out the back. Tight squeeze an’ all, but somebody corners you up in here, you can sneak on out the back.”

I could just imagine what kinds of things were living under that floor, but it was good to know there was an escape hatch. There was another one of those rag rugs placed off center out in the living room area, which I was not going to look under.

“Like I was sayin’, I keep it clean and ready for when she comes home. I know it ain’t likely, but a mama’s got her duty.”

And her hopes, I thought. Of course, if her daughter ever did return, Laurie May would have a whole new set of problems, given what the daughter had predicted she’d do if she ever did come back.

“This is very generous of you,” Carrie said. “Are you sure it’s all right that we stay here?”

“Been enough pain and hurtin’ on young’uns in these hills,” Laurie May said. “If’n you can put a stop to it, I’m pleased to be of aid. You gonna have to hide that big vehicle, though-they gonna be lookin’ in barns like that one down there. That and them dogs, too.”

We moved our stuff out of the Suburban and into the cabin in the pines. There’d been no sign of a major search going on down on the hardtop, and only a few other vehicles moving along the river road, but it was still early. Mingo would have to know I’d had inside help getting out of that cell, and that might have delayed a broader search as he looked to clean house.

The shepherds plopped down on the porch as if they owned it. They knew where I was, and that was the main thing, except perhaps for chow. We had a fine view of tree trunks, which meant that no one down on the river road could see the cabin, either. Carrie plopped herself down at the big table. “Now what?” she said.