The Conqueror Worms

looking through a granite wall.

The wind blew the rain away from the house for a brief moment. I stared into the downpour; then I jumped back from the window.

Movement.

Something had moved out there. Something big. Bigger than the thing I’d seen earlier. And it had been close to the house. Between the clothesline and the shed.

Cautiously, I peeked outside again. There was nothing there. I chalked it up to old man jitters. Probably just a deer or even a shadow from a cloud.

I reminded myself there couldn’t be a shadow since there wasn’t any sunlight, and then I promptly told myself to shut up. Myself agreed with me. Myself then told myself that I was just a little skittish over what I’d seen happen to the bird earlier, or what I thought I’d seen. Add to that the white fungus growing on the deer and the trees, and the fact that I still didn’t have any dip, and I was bound to be a mite jumpy.

I sat back down and returned to the crossword puzzle book.

Three letter word for peccadillo, with an “i” in the middle…Three letter word…“i”…

“Oh, the hell with it!”

Exasperated, I threw the crossword puzzle book down and picked up Rose’s Bible instead. It was worn and tattered and held together with yellowed scraps of Scotch tape. It had been her mother’s and her grand-mother’s before that. I read it each day, taking ten minutes for a devotional. Like waking up at five in the morning, it was another one of life’s habits I couldn’t change, not that I’d have dared. Even with Rose gone, I knew that if I skipped a Bible lesson, I’d feel her watching me reproachfully for the rest of the day. I had no doubt in my mind she checked up on me from her place in Heaven. I opened the Bible. Reading it was like being with her again. Rose’s handwriting filled the book, places where she’d marked passages with a highlighter and jotted notes for the Bible study group she’d led every Wednesday night at the church.

A pink construction paper bookmark proclaiming For Mr. Garnett in a child’s crayon scrawl (a gift from the Renick Presbyterian Sunday School class) marked where I left off the day before, the Book of Job, chapter fourteen, verse eleven.

I read aloud, seeking the comfort of my own voice, but it sounded frail and hollow.

“As the waters fall from the sea, and the flood decays and dries up, so man lies down and rises no more. The waters wear the stones—”

Something crashed outside, and I bolted upright in the chair, yelping in surprise. I waited for it to repeat, but there was only the sound of the rain. Eventually, I stood up, the last words of the section flashing by my eyes as I shut the Bible.

—the things which grow out of the dust of the earth and destroy the hope of man.

When I looked out the kitchen window, all thoughts of the good book vanished from my mind. I yelled, shaking now not with fear, but with rage.

The rain’s pace had slackened somewhat and visibility had returned. The woodpile, previously stacked in an orderly fashion next to the shed, had collapsed. Split logs were scattered throughout my swampy backyard. It had taken me a full day to stack it, and I’d nearly worn myself out doing so. Now, kindling spilled out from beneath the blue plastic tarp I used to keep the wood dry. The tarp flapped in the wind, threatening to blow away. The mist swirled.

The firewood was already soaked. That didn’t bother me much. I couldn’t use the fireplace as long as it was raining anyway. I was more worried about the kerosene. I’d had two fifty-five gallon drums of the stuff also underneath the tarp, sitting on a concrete slab between the shed and the woodpile. I hadn’t been able to get them into the shed by myself, and there was nobody to help me move them. The tarp had seemed to be the next best thing. Now, one drum lay on its side in the mud, almost swallowed up by the fog, and the other one leaned at a precarious angle.

From where I stood, I couldn’t make out the cause of the destruction. I assumed it was the wind. Even if the worm was real, it couldn’t have done this. Could it? It didn’t matter. I had to get out there and fix it. Winter was coming, and without the kerosene, I might as well prepare to face my maker or swallow a bullet like the disc jockey.

I opened the hall closet, shrugged into my raincoat, and, with more difficulty than I like to admit, laced up my boots. My fingers were swollen from arthritis that morning, and it was all I could do to wrap them around the doorknob and turn it.

Before I could walk out onto the carport, a sheet of rain blew in through the open door, pelting my face with cold, fat drops. The wind lashed at me. Careful not to slip, I stepped onto the front stoop, my foot hovering above the concrete.

Then the carport moved.

As my foot froze in a half step, it happened again.

The concrete slab quivered just inches beneath my boot heel.

Then I noticed the stench, an electric mixture of ozone, rotting fish, and mud. That earthy aroma hung thick in the air, congealing underneath the carport’s roof. It was the smell of a spring morning after a rain shower. The scent of earthworms on a wet sidewalk.

The carport writhed again and then I understood. It was covered with worms, the concrete hidden beneath a writhing, coiling mass of elongated bodies. Small brown fishing worms and plump, reddish night crawlers. They came in various lengths, the largest as thick as a man’s thumb. It gave me a jolt, for sure. I imagined trying to bait a trout or a catfish line with one of those things, and shuddered. I damn near slammed the door.

The worms were everywhere. Literally. The carport was attached to the side of the house, and the concrete slab was big enough for the truck and the Taurus, plus an old red picnic table with chipped paint that had seen better years. The Taurus was out in the yard, covered by a plastic sheet and buried to the bumpers in mud, but the table and my banged up truck looked like islands, lost amidst a churning sea of wriggling bodies. They lay three inches thick in places, twisting and sliding through one another. Groping, glistening, blinded, slithering…

Worms.

It was the rain, of course. The rain had driven them topside, just like it always did during a storm. Only this time, every earthworm in a two-mile radius seemed to have discovered that my carport was the only dry spot left in all of Pocahontas County.

My breath fogged the air in front of me and my fingers were already growing cold. I stood there, half in and half out of the house. I couldn’t take my eyes off the worms. I probably would have stood there all day, gaping at the night crawlers with one foot hovering in the air, if I hadn’t heard the motor in the distance. The tortured sputter of a knocking rod announced Carl Seaton’s beat-to-shit, piss-yellow ’79 Dodge pickup long before it crested the hill and appeared at the end of the lane, emerging from a cloud of mist.

He careened up the driveway, tires squelching in the sodden ground while the windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm. The truck slid to a stop. Carl’s homely, pasty face stared out of the rain-streaked windows.

I stood there in the doorway, and my heart sang. Not only was there somebody else left, it just happened to be my best friend.

The engine didn’t so much quit as choke to death. Blue smoke belched from the rusty tailpipe, vanishing into the damp air. Carl rolled down the driver’s side window and appraised the situation, staring at my carport in disgust. His nose was a red-veined bulb, and his eyes looked bloodshot.

“Howdy, Teddy,” he shouted over the patter of the rain.

“Morning, Carl.”

“Boy, am I glad to see you! Figured you’d moved on by now. Gone to dryer parts with them National Guard boys.”

“Nope, I’m still here. They wanted me to leave, but I told them I was staying.”

“Me, too.” He nodded at the worms. “Looks like you’re fixing to do some fishing.”

“Just tending to my herd. I’m getting too old to raise cattle. Thought maybe I’d give worms a try instead.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “it’s pretty odd.”