Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

Doyle muttered something.

“Is that a no?” Cunliffe reached for his phone again.

“Naw, man. Just keep these fuckwits out of my face.”

The fuckwits surged forward. Cunliffe spread his arms to restrain them. “You’re number twenty-two for the Pirates,” he said to Doyle. “I remember you from last year. Cornerback, right?” He gave us both the eye. “You boys down here doing a little scouting?”

Doyle spat redly, and I said, “Uh-huh.”

“That’s gonna help!” one of the linemen said, and his buds laughed thickly.

Cunliffe shushed them and locked onto Doyle. “You played some damn good ball against us last year, Twenty-two. You figger marijuana’s gonna enhance your performance next month?”

“Not as much as the juice made these assholes’ nuts fall off,” said Doyle.

The linemen rumbled — Cunliffe pushed them toward the field, and they moved away through the purpling air. “Better get that eye took care of,” he said. “Get it all healed up by next month. My boys are like sharks once they get the smell of blood.”

“Those are some fat goddamn sharks,” Doyle said.

The towns of Taunton, Crescent Creek, and Edenburg are laid out in a triangle in the northeast corner of Culliver County, none more than fifteen miles apart. My mama calls the area “the Bermuda Triangle of South Carolina,” because of the weird things that happened there, ghosts and mysterious lights in the sky and such. Now I’ve done some traveling, I understand weirdness is a vein that cuts all through the world, but I cling to the belief that it cuts deeper than normal through Culliver County, and I do so in large part because of the chain of events whose first link was forged that evening in Crescent Creek.

Doyle and I hadn’t gone to the game to scout Taunton — we knew we had no chance against them. Only ninety-six boys at Edenburg High were eligible for football. Most of our team were the sons of tobacco farmers, many of whom couldn’t make half the practices because of responsibilities at home. Taunton, on the other hand, drew its student body from a population of factory workers, and they were a machine. Every year they went to the regional finals, and they’d come close to winning State on a couple of occasions. It was considered a moral victory if we held them to thirty points or under, something we hadn’t managed to do for the better part of a decade. So what we were up to, Doyle and I, was looking for two girls we’d met at a party in Crescent Creek the week before. We were only halfheartedly looking — I had a girlfriend, and Doyle was unofficially engaged — and after what the linemen had done to us, with our clothes bloody and faces bruised, we decided to go drinking instead.

We picked up a couple of twelve-packs at Snade’s Corners, a general store out on State Road 271 where they never checked ID, and drove along a dead-end dirt road to Warnoch’s Pond, a scummy eye of water set among scrub pine and brush, with a leafless live oak that clawed up from the bank beside it like a skeletal three-fingered hand. There was a considerable patch of bare ground between the pond and the brush, littered with flattened beer cans and condom wrappers and busted bottles with sun-bleached labels. Half a dozen stained, chewed-up sofas and easy chairs lined the bank. The black sofa on the far left was a new addition, I thought — at least it looked in better shape than the others.

The pond was where a lot of Edenburg girls, not to mention girls from Taunton and Crescent Creek, lost their cherry, but it was too early for couples to be showing up, and we had the place to ourselves. We sat on the black sofa and drank Blue Ribbon and talked about women and football and getting the hell out of Edenburg, the things we always talked about, the only things there were to talk about if you were a teenager in that region, except maybe for tobacco and TV. Doyle fumed over the fight for a time, swearing vengeance, but didn’t dwell on it — we’d had our butts kicked before. I told him that big as those linemen were, vengeance might require an elephant gun.

“I hate they kill us every year,” Doyle said. “I’d like to win one, you know.”

I cracked a beer and chugged down half. “Not gonna happen.”

“What the hell do you care? Only reason you play so’s you can get a better class of woman.”

I belched. “You know I’d lay me down and die for the ol’ scarlet and silver.”

Annoyed, he gave me a shove. “Well, I would for real. Just one win. That’s all I’m asking.”

“I’m getting a special feeling here,” I said.

“Shut up!”

“I’m getting all tingly and shit. like God’s listening in. He’s heard your voice and even now. ”

He chucked one of his empties at me.

“. universal forces are gathering, preparing to weave your heartfelt prayer into His Glorious Design.”

“I wish,” said Doyle.

Darkness folded down around us, hiding the scrub pine. Though it had been overcast all day, the stars were out in force. Doyle twisted up a joint and we smoked, we drank, we smoked some more, and by the time we’d finished the first twelve-pack, the dead live oak appeared more witchy than ever, the stars close enough to snatch down from the sky, and the pond, serene and shimmering with reflected light, might have been an illustration in a book of fairy tales. I thought about pointing this out to Doyle, but I restrained myself — he would have told me to quit talking like a homo.

Clouds blew in from the east, covering the stars, and we fell silent. All I could hear were dogs barking in the distance and that ambient hum that seems to run throughout the American night. I asked what he was thinking and he said, “Taunton.”

“Jesus, Doyle. Here.” I flipped him a fresh beer. “Get over it, okay?”

He turned the can over in his hands. “It ticks me off.”

“Look, man. The only way we’ll ever beat them is if their bus breaks down on the way to the game.”

“What do you mean?”

“If they show up late, they’ll have to forfeit.”

“Oh. yeah,” he said glumly, as if the notion didn’t satisfy him.

“So get over it.”

He started to respond but was cut off by a shrill jee-eep , a sound like a rusty gate opening; this was followed by a rustling, as of many wings.

I jumped up. “What was that?”

“Just a grackle,” Doyle said.

I peered into the darkness. Though it was likely my imagination, the night air looked to have taken on the glossiness of a grackle’s wing. I didn’t much like grackles. They were nest robbers and often ate fledglings. And there were stories. A droplet of ice formed at the tip of my spine.

“City boy,” said Doyle disparagingly, referring to the fact that I had spent my first decade in Aiken, which was a city compared to Edenburg. “Is Andy scared of the birdies?”

There came a series of jee-eeps , more rustling. I thought I detected almost invisible movement in every direction I turned.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Want me to hold your hand?”

“Come on! We can drive over to Dawn’s and see if she wants to do something.”

Doyle made a disgusted noise and stood. “Something’s about to poke a hole in my ass, anyway.” He touched the back of his jeans and then inspected his finger. “Christ, I’m bleeding. I think something bit me.” He kicked at the sofa. “I could get an infection off this damn thing!”

“I bet you can get Dawn to suck out the poison,” I said, hurrying toward the car.

As I backed up, the headlights swept across the bank, revealing the row of thrown-away sofas and chairs. I could have sworn one of them was missing, and as I went fishtailing off along the dirt road, the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that it was the one we had been sitting on.