Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

We got back on the path, went up a ways. Richard led us onto a side trail that was overlapped with brush. We had to bend low to pass along it. It eventually widened, the brush disappeared, and there were just pines planted in a row, awaiting the saw.

Through them we could see something moving. We eased up, staying close to trees. When we finally stopped and squatted down, we saw it was a man. He had his back to us. He was wearing a hat, and he was digging in the dirt. Beside him, on the ground, lay something large wrapped in a blanket. The man was sobbing as he dug.

“It’s my daddy,” Richard said. “I can tell.”

“Why’s he crying?” I asked.

“How would I know . . . I ain’t never known him to cry. About nothin’.”

“You think he’s burying money?”

“What money? I can’t believe this. I ain’t never seen him cry like that.”

“Everybody cries,” Callie said.

“I ain’t never seen my daddy cry,” Richard said.

“Now you have,” Callie said.

We continued to squat there, whispering, then finally fell silent. Mr. Chapman ceased digging with his shovel, dropped it on the ground, picked up an axe and went to chopping. After a moment, he put the axe down, grabbed the shovel, went back to digging. Finally he tossed the shovel down and dragged the blanket-wrapped object into the hole and started covering it with dirt.

After a time, he patted the ground with the shovel, said a soft prayer, then, with tools in hand, went through the woods sobbing.

“I want to see what it is,” Richard said.

“Maybe we ought not,” I said.

“If my daddy is cryin’ over it,” Richard said, “I want to see what it is.”

“What do you think, Callie?” I asked.

“It don’t matter what neither of you think,” Richard said. “I’m gonna have me a look.”

We moved cautiously over to the fresh diggings. Richard got down on his knees, began raking back the dirt. We joined him. Obviously, the digging had been hard, marred by all the roots, and that’s what the axe had been for; there were pieces of chopped root mixed with the dirt.

There was a wide place above us with no tree limbs and the moonlight came through and landed right on the hole. It showed us what Mr. Chapman had put there. A patchwork quilt.

“That’s one of my mother’s quilts,” Richard said.

“It’s very pretty,” Callie said. Then looked at me, like: What am I saying?

Richard took hold of the quilt, tugged, but nothing happened. He pulled harder. The blanket moved. A head rolled free, and moonlight fell into its visible, dirt-specked eye.

———

IT WAS A LARGE DOG’S HEAD.

At first, I thought the head had been severed, but it was merely rolling loosely on the neck.

“It’s Butch,” Richard said.

“Why is he burying a dog?” Callie asked. “Besides it being dead, of course.”

“It’s his dog,” I said.

“Daddy was cryin’ over the dog,” Richard said. “He loved Butch. Damn. I didn’t know he was dead. He was pretty old. I guess he just keeled over . . . Damn, cryin’.”

I noticed Richard was crying as well. His tears in the moonlight looked like balls of amber that had heated up and come loose. They rolled down his face and over his chin. I thought at the time he was crying for Butch. Later I thought different.

“I wouldn’t have thought he would have cried for anything. But Butch . . . I’ll be damned.”

“Maybe we should cover him back up,” Callie said.

Richard pulled the quilt around Butch. We shoved the dirt back into the hole, finished by scraping pine straw over the grave with our feet.

“Tomorrow, I’ll bring some rocks out here, put them on top,” Richard said. “It’ll keep the varmints from diggin’ him up.”

“You want to just go on home?” I said.

Richard shook his head. “No. I guess if I go home Daddy will see me. He may already know I’m gone. If I’m gonna take a beatin’, I ought to take it for somethin’ I did completely. He wouldn’t want to know I seen him cryin’, and I darn sure don’t want him to know.”

A breeze made the pines sigh, as if standing tall made them tired. When we reached the trail the breeze picked up, tossed leaves about, hurtled them past and against us like blinded birds.

As we went, I had the uncanny feeling that someone was following us. That sensation you get of dagger points in the back of your head. When I turned there was nothing but the trees bending and flapping and leaves flying. I wondered if it could be Mr. Chapman out there, watching, or the ghost, or an animal. Or Bubba Joe. Or my imagination.

The trail emptied into a field scraped flat and pocked with gravel. There was a little railway shed there with a big padlock on the door. A little farther out were the rails, glowing like silver ribbons in the moonlight. Even before we were close, you could smell the creosote on the railroad ties. It was strong enough to make your eyes water.

“Where’s the ghost?” Callie asked.

“I didn’t say she’d be standin’ here waitin’ on us,” Richard said. “ ’Sides, this ain’t where they found her body. It’s up a ways. There ain’t no guarantee you’ll see anything.”

We walked to the tracks, crossed, sauntered up to where the woods crept close to the tracks and there was only a bit of a gravel path next to the rails.

“I can’t believe I’m out here doing this,” Callie said. “I must be crazy.”

“I didn’t make you come,” I said.

“I couldn’t let you go by yourself. Jeeze Louise, what was I thinking. I could end up never leaving the house again. Daddy just set me free, and here I am again, acting like an idiot. Well, actually, I didn’t really do anything the first time.”

“You sure have this time,” I said.

“Why don’t you shut your holes,” Richard said. “If we come on the ghost, y’all gonna scare it away.”

“If we can scare it, it isn’t much of a ghost,” Callie said.

I don’t know how far we went, but in the woods you could see swampy water and hear huge bullfrogs calling as if through megaphones. The way they splashed in the water, they sounded big as dogs.

“I knowed this colored woman once told me there’s a King of Bullfrogs,” Richard said.

“A king?” Callie said.

“A great big bullfrog. Said he was once this old nig— colored man, and he got this spell put on him, and he turned into this big black bullfrog. He rules over all the frogs and snakes and swimmin’ things.”

“Isn’t he lucky,” Callie said.

“Why’d he get turned into a frog?” I asked.

“He messed with women, and his wife was a witch and she done it ’cause he wouldn’t do right.”

“Good for her,” Callie said.

“He’s supposed to steal kids, take them back to the swamp for the frogs to eat.”

“Frogs don’t have teeth,” Callie said.

“They still eat.”

“Well, they aren’t big enough to eat children,” she said.

“Mostly the King Frog eats them. He’s got a crown on his head. He looks like a big colored man that squats like a frog. He ain’t exactly a man or a frog, but kinda both.”

“Maybe Chester would make a nice white frog to complement the black one,” Callie said. “He could be the Queen Frog . . . Think you could get me that frog recipe, Richard?”

“I thought you didn’t like Chester,” I said.

“I don’t. I liked him, you think I’d want him to be a frog?”

“Colored man’s wife turned him into a frog,” Richard said. “Didn’t she like him?”

“Not after she turned him into a frog,” Callie said.

“Ssshhhhhh,” Richard said. “That’s her house.”

“Whose house?” I asked.

“Hers. Margret’s. The girl got her head run over. The one that’s a ghost.”