Steve Tem - Excavation

Now Jake was out on the back porch in two garbage bags. They were waiting for the sheriff and the coroner from Four Corners.

“I don’t want you going up there no more.” Reed looked up, and realized Ben’s hand was on his shoulder, one finger touching Reed’s neck, as if giving him direction. “It ain’t safe up there, son.”

Reed just stared at him. His eyes were burning. His uncle’s face went slightly out of focus every few seconds. “I don’t want to show disrespect, but I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said. “Dammit, Reed! Just look at yourself! Sneezin’ an’ wheezin’. Eyes so wet and hot lookin’. You look worse than any sick hound dog I ever had! You’re killin’ yourself with this; that ole house’ll wait ‘til stuff dies down around here.”

“No,” Reed said slowly, with no feeling.

“You look damned feverish, son, like your eyes were burning your skin. It scares me.”

“I don’t think it’s going to wait. It isn’t going to wait for anything, Ben. It wants me there and I think I’d better do what it wants. What you can’t face… it controls you.”

“It? You don’t mean that bear?”

“Maybe.” He looked up at his uncle earnestly, and his uncle sighed. Reed had never seen the man look so sad.

“You know, you look just like you did when you were a boy and were confused about something, thought you’d done something wrong, and trying so hard to make things right.”

“I don’t really know what it is.”

Ben stared at him awhile, as if musing, then, “Your daddy ain’t up there, Reed.”

Reed looked up in surprise; a chuckle almost escaped. “Why, Ben. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Don’t you now?” He looked out the front window. “Wonder what’s keeping the sheriff so long… you been acting like you do, if I read your face right.

“Matter of fact, I’m beginning to think I believe in ‘em, too.”

There was a knock at the door and the sheriff pushed his way in, an old man who must be the coroner tagging along behind. The sour feeling in Reed’s stomach was fading, but he wished he could talk to Ben and find out what he knew.

The geologists from the main office crowded around the sinkhole, charts in hand. Mr. Emmanuel tried to talk to them about the cave-in, but they were ignoring him, in fact wouldn’t even let him near Willy’s sinkhole.

“Damn… this is impossible. ” Crouskey, the head geologist, sighed and scratched at the chart with the edge of his pencil.

A younger man strode up to the group. “I can’t find any possible source for that water, unless there’s an old storage tank buried somewhere here that they’ve ruptured.”

“I see no traces of metal here, Walt, just a clean break into the rock, as if we had an underground spring, despite what the charts say. That’s no buried tank.”

The men stared at the water in silence.

“Mr. Crouskey, I was thinking maybe some of my men could dig around the hole,” Felix Emmanuel babbled eagerly. “Maybe we could cut into the channel that’s bringing the water, expose it a little.”

Crouskey didn’t bother facing Emmanuel to reply. “You won’t be helping us at all on this one, Emmanuel. Or any other, once the main office gets my report. Just look at yourself. You hardly make a good local representative for this company.”

Mr. Emmanuel touched his face. He was sweating… sweating like a pig. And he was dirty, unkempt… filthy. He stared into the sinkhole. The water was moving, ever so slightly, barely visible. And unusually milky around the edges, like cloud, or… what was it?… fleece. He thought to call their attention to it, but did not.

Charlie went into the store early, but left the “Closed” sign out. At noon the sign was still out. By two that afternoon it was still out, and Charlie had drunk almost a quart of whiskey.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten drunk. Forty-two, forty-three… something like that. A prize horse had died… William Tell was his name, and you couldn’t find a finer thoroughbred a hundred miles from the Creeks. Mattie didn’t speak to him for a week—she never could abide a drunk. He supposed that Puritan streak in her was actually one of the reasons he’d married her—he figured she’d keep him out of most kinds of trouble. And she had.

But he’d never been in so much trouble as now, and the only bit of Mattie he had left was a few pictures, the lace doilies on all the furniture at home, and that blend of sweet gum and lilac smells that never seemed to leave the house, though it had no reason to be there. He really had no reason to believe anything out of the ordinary was happening in the Creeks; he’d been spooked that day in the woods, and later when they were hunting the bear, but he’d never seen anything that couldn’t be explained eventually.

Charlie burped and the amber liquid burned his throat. Damn, if he didn’t have the most cool-headed, practical sensibility! Here everybody was seeing things, unexplainable things… but not him. Doris Parkey and Hector Pierce had both seen a woman with flaming hair. Now they were both crazy, God knows, but it was kind of odd that two people would be sharin’ the same kind of craziness. And Joe Manors, about as sensible a man as he’d ever met, had seen a dead girl floating a good three feet and more off the ground. And here Ben Taylor, his best friend in this world, had sworn he’d seen Reed up on the Big Andy a good four hours before Reed could’ve gotten in on the train. And now Ben was acting so skittish about things, jumpin’ at shadows, lookin’ over his shoulder. And the way Inez had been looking the past few days, that quick, nervous movement in her gaze… everybody was changing.

Except good old level-headed Charlie.

He looked down at the bottle, then around at the darkened store where… he was hiding. He was scared to death.

He owed those people something… his daddy, his granddaddy, they all did… for what happened. He looked again at the bottle.

A face there. Reflected in the glass. Looking over his shoulder.

Pale cheeks and ragged hair and blue lips and dark shadows moving under the skin and white white teeth oh God God…

He jumped up and sprawled over the chair trying to get around to the other side of the counter. Knocking displays everywhere, breaking up displays that had been the same way, nary a bottle sold, since his daddy’s time. Dust and glass and his own spittle flying. He would have screamed, but the drink in him kept the screams traveling around inside, not sure which way was out.

He hit the far wall of the store and jerked around, his shoulder blades rubbing the old Doctor Scholl’s poster behind him. He blinked the tears away, trying to get a good look at the shadow floating across the room toward him.

Nothing. He saw nothing. He choked on a sob.

And that was when Charlie Simpson decided to start doing something about whatever was happening to his town. He watched as the rest of the whiskey joined the spilled tonics and elixirs pooling in front of the counter, the dark and amber liquids widening into a miniature flood.

He would start with the sinkhole at the Nole Company mine.

Joe Manors stood at his window in bright green underwear, holding the whiskey bottle nonchalantly on his cocked hip. He thought about what might happen if Inez were to pass by his window at the moment and glance up. Wouldn’t that be something? She’d toss him out on his ear… or maybe she’d comment on his pretty legs. He did have pretty legs.

He watched the line of woods bordering the old townsite. Most of the fog was gone, but mist still clung to trees here and there. He felt cold, but he was too drunk to put his pants back on.