Edward Lee - Creekers

“In their mouths?” the little boy shrieked.

“That’s right, in their mouths too, not just their peeholes. But anyway, I heard Uncle Frank and my dad talkin’ ’bout it one night, and the Creekers have a special whorehouse, where men can pay to squirt their juice into Creeker ladies, like the kind I was tellin’ you about who are all messed up and wrong and gross-looking and have big heads and ten fingers on each hand…”

And teeth like Kevin Furman’s dog, the little boy remembered.

SPLAT!

The little boy looked up. Eagle had finally hit the big dead toad with the slingshot.

The toad’s insides splattered everywhere, in a wormy red mist.

««—»»

That day Eagle had gone on to say that this Creeker whorehouse was supposed to be a secret. Nobody talked much about it just like they didn’t talk much about Mrs. Nixerman. Not just any man could go there—’cos it was special—but only men who were friends with the Creekers. This all fascinated the little boy. That ladies—they were called whores—would let a man do these things to ’em for money, and ‘specially Creeker ladies…

But now the curiosity itched, much much worse than the way his skin itched under Doc Smith’s plaster cast.

The next day Eagle got grounded by his dad, for beating up his brothers Ricky and Billy ’cos Ricky and Billy had called him “bald eagle,” and only Eagle’s friends were allowed to call him that.

But the little boy still itched with curiosity, with the innocent quest for knowledge. He wanted to see…the “things” Uncle Frank had talked about.

So for the whole time Eagle was grounded the little boy wandered around the woods anyway. Right after school. Sometimes he’d stop by the police station and say hi to Big Chief Mullins, who chewed gross-out tobacco but seemed like a very nice man, and sometimes he’d give him licorice sticks; he even offered him a “chaw” once but the little boy didn’t want to put that stuff in his mouth.

««—»»

Summers made the town—his entire world, in fact—a wonderful, lazy dreamland. School was out; he did his paper route in the mornings, mowed lawns in the afternoon, and sometimes Big Chief Mullins would pay him a few dollars to wash the police cars or clean up the station. Most of his money he gave to his aunt, to help out with the bills, but in the summer he always had some left for Cokes and models. And when his work was done, he’d wander.

In the woods.

Maybe Eagle’s Uncle Frank was just kidding them. So far he hadn’t even come close to finding the “things.” There probably aren’t any, he thought one day, trudging through the wooded hills up behind the creek. Probably just said it to scare us…

But why would Uncle Frank do that?

It was mid-August, and the hottest day of the year. His belly didn’t feel right that day. “Too much of that ice cream,” his aunt told him that morning when he got back from his route, but he knew better. It was those stuffed peppers she’d served again last night. But like most ten-year-olds, he wasn’t about to let a bellyache keep him cooped up at home. He felt even worse mowing that day’s lawns; a couple times he thought he might upchuck. Mrs. Young would fire me for sure, he thought, puking stuffed peppers on her lawn! He should’ve stayed home when he was done, but he couldn’t help it. Bad as his belly felt, after he’d cleaned up the mower and put it back in the shed, he headed for the woods.

He crossed the rushing creek, carefully stepping on the stones he and Eagle had thrown in last year. Some green slimy stuff had grown on some of them—he had to be careful. Clumps of frog eggs clung to sticks in the water, and on the bank he almost stepped on a big brown snapping turtle he thought was a pile of mud. Uncle Frank said they’d bite your fingers off if you got too close. On the bank, he kicked over a log. Two fat shiny salamanders sat there, and they had yellow spots, which was neat. But his heart jumped when he kicked over another log: a nest of baby snakes slithered in the damp spot, six of them, but to him it looked like a hundred. And they were brown with tiny diamond heads. Harmless in reality—they were just hognose snakes—but to a ten-year-old boy, any brown snake was surely a copperhead.

He scaled the embankment up a fallen tree, then pushed into the woods. Eech! he thought when he also pushed through a sticky spiderweb suspended invisibly between two trees. Several trails branched out (he and Eagle hadn’t taken all of them) so he took the one to the far left and just started walking…

Maybe one of the trails would lead to the “things.”

He couldn’t imagine exactly what kind of things Uncle Frank meant. Maybe he’d find more of those moldy magazines that had pictures of naked ladies. Or maybe—

His heart jumped again.

Maybe I’ll find a lady who’s been raked, he fretted.

He hoped not. What would he do? And what would he do with the rake? Take it to Big Chief Mullins?

The sun blazed through the trees; sweat dripped in his eyes, and his T-shirt stuck to him. He passed another creek he’d never seen before and was suddenly swarmed by mosquitoes, and when he tried to run on he—SPLAT!—accidentally stepped on a big toad. Aw, gross! he thought. The toad’s plump body burst under his shoe like a baggie full of pudding.

The bugs were biting him all over, and the harder the August sun beat down, the worse he felt. Not just his belly now, but his throat was hurting too, and his head felt stuffed up, and there were a couple more times he thought he might upchuck. I’m never eating those stuffed peppers again, he vowed to himself. Ever!

After another twenty minutes his belly got to feeling real bad. This is stupid, he thought. There aren’t no things in the woods. Uncle Frank’s full of dog poop! And just as he was ready to turn around and go back home, something snapped. A branch? he wondered.

He stood still.

Then he heard a voice:

“You. Hey.”

Another branch snapped. Behind him.

His eyes darted around. It was a lady’s voice, he could tell, but it sounded sort of…funny. Sort of like the way his aunt sounded on Friday nights when she drank out of that big bottle of wine she kept in the icebox.

“Wha’choo fer lookin’, ah? Lost ya?”

At first he couldn’t see her; the old stained sundress she wore blended right in with the woods. But then she seemed to appear like magic while he squinted toward the direction of the voice. A girl stood a few yards away between two trees. She had real black straight hair, but it was all kind of mussed up in her face, and she wasn’t wearing any shoes, and her legs looked real dirty. She stood there a bit looking at him through her hair, and when he took a few curious steps, she took a few too and suddenly the sun was on her. She looked older, like maybe twelve or thirteen, ’cos she had little bubs pushing against the top of her dress like most of the sixth-grade girls had at school, and he could even see little buds poking through! “Bub-buds,” Dave the Cave called them. “Tittie buds. Milk comes out of ’em when ya suck ’em.” Milk? That sounded pretty silly. Why would milk be in a girl’s bubs, he remembered thinking, when you can get it right out of the icebox? But that was a while ago when the Cave had told him that, and it didn’t matter now. He could see this girl’s buds real good because her dress top was all stuck to her with sweat just like his Green Hornet T-shirt. He could tell he liked her, though, even though she was all dirty and all, and her messy hair was hanging in her face. Yeah, he could tell he liked her, and he could tell she was pretty. And there was one other thing he could tell:

Hillfolk! he realized. She’s a hill girl. Probably lives in a shack somewhere. Probably doesn’t even go to school…