Tom Piccirilli - November Mourns

“How do I stop it?” he asked, and the seriousness in his tone brought Lament’s chin up.

“You ask for help,” she said.

“How’s that?”

“You know what I mean, boy. You ask for help from those you talk to when you go night walkin’.”

It felt like someone had just struck him with a chilled ice pick. “What do you know about it, M’am?”

“I know you got the touch. The resolve to rile them woods even worse than they are. Ah yuh. Maybe you got the strength to put ’em to rest for a time. You call on those you call on, Shad Jenkins. Maybe they’ll help.”

A weighty silence passed between them, but neither looked away. He stood back and gazed at the dwarf granny witch woman, trying to decide which one of them was crazy, her or himself. He was sort of leaning toward both.

“What did your father say to you?” he asked. “The next day when you got back to town.”

“He never said nothin’ to me, and after he told some lies to the sheriff, he never spoke to anyone again. Said Mama fell into the gorge on her own. He was scared they’d think he was cracked. He stopped talkin’ and stopped workin’ and three years later he tried to hang himself in the barn. Hung there an hour or two ’fore Aunt Tilly found him, and he was still alive. He was that strong. They took him away to a hospital in Enigma County. He lived to be eighty-seven ’fore he died there, and never said another word to nobody. Good riddance, I say. My papa died that day on the ridge when he turned tail.” She relit her pipe and eased the smoke toward him. “You remember that story up there when you face down the darkness.”

“I won’t run.”

“I believe you. Good luck, boy.”

Venn’s eyes focused for a moment. He held out his hand to shake, but before Shad could take it Venn appeared to lose the thought and dropped his arm to his side. He started back to his grandmother. His face cleared again and he turned, and said, “Bye, Shad Jenkins,” and pushed the old woman away.

WHEN YOU’RE FAVORED, EVEN IF ONLY FOR AN INSTANT, you can sense your fate coming forward at least halfway to meet you. It has no substance or direction, but the brunt of it can set you on your course like deadwood on the river.

Shad got back to the Mustang, cleaned the glass out as best he could, and fired her up. The engine thrummed and sounded as if the accident had given it a hunger, for him or somebody else.

He drew up to his father’s place, feeling his pa’s sadness like a fog descending. Lament, though, wagged his tail, recognizing home.

Pa was playing chess with himself again, the sunlight bearing down like a mad, golden avalanche. Pa hadn’t shaved in three days, which meant he still wasn’t sleeping well, but at least the shotgun wasn’t in sight. Maybe he no longer feared the menace of Zeke Hester, or had at last been willing to accept the truth that Zeke had never been a real threat at all.

Shad got out and Lament burst from the backseat and raced up the porch.

He took two steps and froze, feeling the hills thinking about him again, distressed and chafing, turning this way to hammer at him.

It was worse this time. The movement beneath the turnings of the world squirmed closer, almost on him before he noticed.

He hadn’t been vigilant enough. He’d waited too long. They were coming for him at the knees, from behind, crawling. Sweat beaded on his face and he had to reach for the rail to steady himself.

Rising now in back of him, knowing he was aware of it, the incomplete figure allowed itself to be observed for a second as it withdrew, hesitantly, like it was almost ready to speak to him.

Shad didn’t want to drop where he was and scare his father, but he watched his own hand turn ashen, the veins sticking out as black as if he’d been poisoned. He found himself seated on the bottom porch stair.

Pa came up out of his rocker crying, “Son? You ill? Are you hurt or you just been drinkin’ with your friends?”

It gave him an excuse. Shad smiled, hoping he looked abashed. “Must’ve had one too many with Jake Hapgood.”

“That’s all right, you earned yourself some good times after what you been through. If you’re gonna be sick, turn your chin to the weeds.”

Pa’s broad, stony face loosened into an expression of care, like he was glad to have somebody left to dote on. His father’s strong hands came down and pulled Shad to his feet. Shad went with it for a moment, laying his cheek against Pa’s chest, hearing the beat of his powerful heart, that aggressive strength of life within him.

The log house, no less alluring than a tomb, beckoned him inside and he went easily. As they passed through the doorway, he saw Megan’s fingers flutter at him from the depths of his darkened old bedroom.

Pa laid him out on the couch, the way he would’ve years ago when Shad had a fever. Mags would carry a bowl of soup in from the kitchen and feed him while he shivered on the hard cushions. Pa never stuffed enough cotton or feather into them because he liked the feel of the shaved wood against his back.

“Time’s coming, isn’t it?”

“I think so,” Shad said.

“I hear tell you been asking about the back hills. The Pharisee and Jonah Ridge. Been stirring up a lot of folks.” Then, with the grin chiseled into his rough features, “But you got the hollow buzzing again.”

Shad waited.

“You goin’ up there by yourself?” Pa asked.

“Yes.”

“Want me to come?”

“No.”

“Didn’t believe so.” It seemed to both rile and sadden the man, the relief showing through. Shad got the sudden but explicit impression that he didn’t know his father very well at all, and never would. “I get scared sometimes, son.”

“Why?”

“I don’t reckon I grasp hold of it exactly. I tend to… to just grow fearful, when I’m sitting on the porch. I worry that I didn’t do right by my women, your mother and sister included. That the dead don’t rest in the hollow, and they carry their resentment with them. Sounds foolish, I know, but it’s the truth. I only hope Megan understands I did my best by her. You think she might not?”

Shad checked his room to see if Mags’s hand would give him a sign, either yes or no or perhaps sometimes. It was gone. He turned back and his father was staring at him intently, caring about his response. “You’ve done your best by all of us, Pa, you’ve got nothing to regret.”

Even as he said it, he knew it was too broad a statement to make on another man’s behalf, even his father. Pa shifted uncomfortably in his seat, as if the frame of the chair wasn’t harsh enough against him.

“You ought to get married. Marry Elfie and go someplace else. Out on the coast, go live by the ocean.” Pa’s smile was nailed in place, as fake as his words. Shad realized his old man was giving him an out, a chance to run from the responsibilities already handed down to him.

There was a serenity in their immediate circumstances that wouldn’t last long now. Without meaning to do so, they had somehow reached a discreet balance. Shad couldn’t push or pull at his pa. Any pressure would offset the moment. There was so much he wanted to hear his father say, yet Shad was afraid that, in telling them, his father’s secrets would prove to be too common to carry any real weight.

Even if the man didn’t know it, he would always be part myth to his son-a legend, a desperate fable just as Shad’s mother continued to be. The sorcery of tradition and personal history carried down forever.

His father had grown up in the hollow, left at seventeen, and came back when he was thirty-five. You had to let some questions slide, but this was no longer one of them.

“Why’d you leave town? For those eighteen years. You’ve never said.”