Edward Lee: Ghouls

The farther north he drove, the poorer the roadside residents appeared to be—their cars older, rustier, their homes more dilapidated, a few probably worth condemning. There were some trailer homes, he knew, recessed deep off the road and in the hills, where the people didn’t even have electricity. Poor white trash...

The road darkened toward this end, the fir and pine and poplar forest denser here and so tall that the heavy, reaching branches cut off the daylight as the sun moved steadily off. Here there were no homes on the right side of the road, the trees spireing over swamps rather than hills. A glance to the left after another mile, and Kurt saw the wildly overgrown confines of Beall Cemetery occupying a short clearing in the midst of the wood. (It struck him oddly then that so many Maryland cemeteries and funeral homes bore the cryptic name Beall.) He’d always thought the cemetery to be forgotten, but as he looked now he made out a line of cars at the shoulder, and a cluster of somberly dressed mourners standing round an open grave. And he remembered then the Drucker tragedy of a few days ago. Town drunk and crank Cody Drucker had stepped inadvertently on a croquet ball, whereupon he’d fallen down the stairs, clunking and cussing and breaking his neck in the process. No one could deduce exactly what the croquet ball had been doing on the landing, nor could anyone explain why Cody had been wearing black socks and black shoes and nothing more. It was unimportant, though; the town wouldn’t likely miss old Cody. The thin turnout at the funeral seemed an accurate reflection of his popularity.

There’s the mutha. Kurt slowed, then stopped on the shoulder. As reported, the chain across the first Belleau Wood entrance gate was down. He cut the wheel and nosed into the entranceway. Closer inspection of the chain told all—the case-hard master padlock on the post was still secure; the chain itself had been severed. Boltcutters, he thought. Damn things should be outlawed. He idled through and followed the old miner’s track, penetrating the legal boundaries of the property.

What the town referred to as Belleau Wood consisted of several hundred acres of undisturbed woods, some ignored farmland, and a half dozen mineshafts which had been closed since the late forties. The property had deteriorated to an unimpressive estate centered around the Belleau Wood mansion, possibly the least impressive feature of all. Abruptly right, built atop the tallest hill, the “mansion” stood brooding and disconsolate, a large pillar-porched colonial farmhouse, distinctive only in its constant state of disrepair. The house and all of the Belleau Wood property was owned by one Dr. Charles Willard. No one knew what kind of doctor he was; few knew him at all, and fewer cared. Kurt supposed that years ago Belleau Wood had made a striking piece of land. Now, though, after so much neglect, it looked like real estate in hell.

This road, one of four chained entrances to the property, formed the entire length of the acreage’s southern boundary. When Kurt had followed it to the very end, he saw Lenny Stokes’s primer-gray Chevelle parked near the mouth of the first mine. This was the only shaft that had not caved in. Kurt swore, irritation slipping up; he grabbed his Kel-Lite (a twenty-two-inch metal flashlight), got out, and entered the manway of the mine.

Darkness came in stages as he stepped cautiously in. The air was stale here, and heavy with fetors of stone dust and decomposed talc. Revealed around the flashlight beam was a maze of wooden stulls, splintering, rotted, that supported the mine’s roof. Kurt realized the danger, knew that it was just a matter of time before the stulls gave way and sealed the mine shut forever.

The flashlight blazed ahead, puncturing the black void. Streaks of talc ran through the walls like abscesses in the stone. Rubble filled ancient trackbeds, overflowing; trolley rails bent up to form twisted, skeletal shapes, caution: watch for trolleys, one sign warned. In the light, others floated up: keep left, haulage line, and main shaft ahead. Hard hats lay about like empty skulls, some dented, some crushed. Kurt felt pressed down by a sudden, haunted despair; this place tilled up ghosts of his childhood. His father had worked twenty years in coalmines. “Good, hard work with a pension a man can live on, the kind of work that makes this country strong.” Twenty years in the stopes. His father had collected only a few months of pension before dying from a combination of emphysema, black lung, and cancer.

Kurt shivered out of the fading oppression, stepping on, and then he perceived hints of female laughter and unintelligible male talk. This, he knew, would be Lenny Stokes and one of his entourage of sexual accomplices. Lenny Stokes and Kurt went back a long way, enemies since grade school, polar opposites; all they had in common was their age, twenty-six. In a town full of bad-asses, Stokes held the number-one position, and he truly looked the part. Face pitted by an adolescent war with acne. Weasel eyes. Lumberjack shirt and shitkicker boots. He wore his hair long and slicked back, and had Elvis sideburns and a satanic goatee. He poached and dealt drugs for money, ran around with any available girl for fun, and beat his wife when he had nothing better to do.

Kurt came around a slant in the manway and was detected at once. Two shock-white faces peered up into the beam. Lenny Stokes stood with his jeans down to his knees; what hung out began to dwindle. Kneeling before him was Joanne Sulley, a slim, vampiric brunette. Stokes had been “dating” her, behind his wife’s back, since last fall. At this particular moment, Joanne appropriately lacked blouse and bra.

“Party’s over,” Kurt said. Stokes and the girl became glimpses of flesh and shadow. The flashlight roved over chiaroscuro faces dispossessed of color by the effect of being so grandly caught in the act. Stokes yanked up his pants, muttering in his mysterious Deep-South twang, “Goddamn son of a horse’s ass. I shouldn’ve fuckin’ known some cop’d come walkin’ in.” Joanne groped frantically on hands and knees, in search of her blouse. To Kurt’s amusement, she didn’t seem to be having much luck.

“Lenny,” she squealed, “who is it?” and Kurt realized they couldn’t see his face, just the bright-white circle of his baton-light. “Morris,” Stokes snarled, shielding his eyes. “It’s got to be Morris.”

“That’s right,” Kurt said. “Good old all American love in the afternoon. Making sure her tonsils are still there, huh, Lenny?”

Stokes grimaced in the fierce, white beam. “Goddamn candyass. Get that fuckin’ light out of my eyes.”

Kurt did not comply with the request. “I ought to haul your tail in for chopping that chain.”

“You ain’t haulin’ shit, chump, ’cause that chain was down. Somebody else cut it.”

“Sure, Stokes, and water runs uphill, too, right? One of these days I’ll catch you with those boltcutters of yours and wrap them around your thieving hillbilly neck.”

Rage pinkened Stokes’s face. “Them’s some pretty rough words from a pussy. Just ’cause you got a gun and a badge, that don’t mean you can go fucking people around all you please. I ain’t scared of you, Morris, and one day I’m gonna kick your ass so bad you’ll think you died and come back as a soccer ball.”

“Talk is cheap, Stokes, and I can tell you talk a lot. Why don’t you just kick my ass right now?”

“No, not now, pussyman. When the time is right.”

Joanne was still groveling on the ground, her voice a shrill echo. “Oh, Lenny, I can’t find my shirt. Help me find my shirt.”

“Ditz,” Stokes replied. “It’s in the car. You took it off ’fore we came in.”