in mind.
It was then that the old man felt a slicing, blood-letting blow to his right temple, just barely seeing the business end of the spade before he blacked out. His final thought was a worry, a worry for his bride of forty-seven years-Hillary.
From inside the house where she was preparing a chicken for dinner, Hillary had watched her old man amble bowlegged into the barn, swallowed up by the darkness there. When she'd first married him, he was doing the southwest rodeo circuit. He'd been so handsome and such a fine horseman, and he'd spoken of one day owning a big, fine ranch filled with horses, but he could never get enough money together, and after the trampling he'd received when that bull named Angel's Breath in Ardmore threw him under its pounding weight, well, neither he nor his long-held dream was ever the same again. Still, she'd continued to love Redbird, despite the arguments of her family, and she made a good home for him, and she was the best wife she could be for him, and they had had a good life together, despite the most heartrending moments, as when they'd buried their two sons, who'd run their car into the Verdigris River and been too drunk to swim out, or when Aaron had left for college and never returned.
She was brought back from her reverie on hearing the annoyed whine of one of the plow horses and the wail of the milk cow, but nothing else. She, like her husband, was glad to have seen the last of their “nephew” by marriage. Jack Thomas Elkheart Mankiller, he'd pronounced himself that first night, laying out a string of tenuous details connecting the family to him, despite his obvious whiteness, which he claimed was due to some sort of illness similar to what Michael Jackson, the famous singer, had. And there was something around the mean eyes that reminded Hillary Clay Redbird of Big John Mankiller, who'd been married for near thirty-four years to Winnie Elkheart over near the Arkansas line, but both John and Winnie were years in the grave now. John, though, had been a massive fellow, nearly three hundred pounds, when he'd died of a heart attack, while this man was sickly by comparison. Of course, if the man could be believed, he'd been orphaned in Chicago, shunted about from foster home to foster home, as many a poor Indian child had been, hardly able to fend for himself. Little wonder he bore such scars and the crooked back. His face was sallow and etched with pain and menace, however, and Hillary felt too old to become anyone's fool, despite her good Christian upbringing.
Hillary had confided to her husband in their bed the night before that she'd taken to sleeping with her gun below her pillow from the moment the stranger had arrived. This had somewhat shocked Earl, but he'd seemed all of a sudden to understand her need. He'd drawn a hickory ball bat he kept in the closet closer to the bed that night as well. She'd asked him about it, but he'd just grunted something about the Res Police looking in on them and their newfound relative tomorrow.
But now it was morning and the birds were chattering away, chasing one another in the apple orchard, the light dancing along the leaves, a brilliant blue sky made the more blinding by great billowy Oklahoma clouds that hung so low she thought even a little woman like herself might reach up and touch them.
She looked up again from her work, expecting to see Earl come out of the blackness of the barn with the eggs and milk she'd requested. Couldn't make a proper stuffing without either. He'd also said that he had to fetch a hoe and a rake, to do something with the cucumber and squash patch alongside the house. So where in tarnation was he now? Had he forgotten what he was doing again?
She grew impatient, and thought again about Jack Thomas Mankiller. Mankiller was an old, even ancient tribal name, and there were Mankillers up and down the hills here, spread across the state. One of them had been the first Cherokee woman ever to become Principal Chief at the longhouse. So, why didn't this Jack stay with closer relatives who might better know him and who surely had more to give a passing stranger than they? She didn't mind being charitable, but there was a limit, blood or no, custom or no.
Still no sign of Earl.
The damned stuffing wasn't going to make itself. That hoeing wasn't going to take care of itself either. Where the deuce was he?
She placed the cleaned and waiting chicken aside in a large pot of water to allow it to rinse in herbs and salt water, an old recipe handed down by her mother to her. Washing and wiping her hands, she decided it was too lovely a day not to step out into it, at least for a moment. She did so with the ulterior motive of looking in on Earl. He was getting up in years, and there was no such thing as being too careful. Suppose he'd fallen inside the barn there, hurt or cut him self? This might account for the uneasy neighing that old swayback was putting up, and the racket Merleen was still raising with her mooing was going to put the old girl off her milk for a month.
Strange that the dog wasn't right in there with Merleen, making harmony, she thought as she neared the barn aperture, which was bathed in black shadow, a stark contrast to the light of the outside world.
“ Earl… Earl, honey? Are you aw'right in there?”
She stepped into the shadow and into horror. Earl was hanging by his tied heels from a large tenterhook at the end of a pulley, his throat slashed at the jugular, the blood pumping out in large coughing spurts like a poorly pressurized pump. The blood settled into a pool of red inside a sterling-new bucket Earl had brought back from the feed and grain store just the day before. Earl's dead arms dangled, limp tendrils trying halfheartedly to touch the blood-soaked earth and straw-strewn barn floor. His old dog lay dead half in and half out of Merleen's stall.
The horse was whinnying wildly and kicking at its stall. Merleen continued in distress. Chickens scattered and nervously paced. The only light she saw was that which streamed in through cracks and at the rear of the barn, and she wanted to race for the light, afraid to turn or back out the way she'd come, sensing that Mankiller-living up to his namesake- was in the shadows behind her. At the same time, she was wholly unable to move, frozen in place, her fear and disbelief overwhelming, cutting like a cold blade into her soul, and here she was… caught, trapped like this… without a weapon or a plan of any sort…
Matt Matisak stepped from behind the barn door and easily draped his arm around the old woman in a firm manner, squeezing her shoulder and indicating Earl's corpse as if he'd brought her a gift to show off, pleased and proud of his demonic accomplishment. Hillary's scream was cut short by a swoon, a dark blotch of redness filling her brain at the moment Matisak's bloody hand streaked her forehead.
“ War paint,” Matisak joked as she fell into a dead faint on the straw. Earl's dead form swayed in response.
Matisak next lowered a second tenterhook. The hooks had held an ancient carriage in the air which he'd earlier lowered and rolled to the rear of the barn. There were four hooks, one for each axle of the carriage, but he had only two bodies to drain.
Maybe he'd wait for those Res cops the old man had warned him about…
While he hadn't quite enough jars to accommodate the two additional blood-givers, he believed leaving four bodies rather than two dangling here would surely make a greater and more lasting impression on Jessica Coran and send her racing back like a yo-yo to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area in search of him. And as she hunted, so too would he…
He was ready for her to make her appearance this time, for he'd located the coins, a small sack of gold eagles, circa 1879. He'd have enough ready cash to do a complete and thorough job on Jessica. His thoughts continued to race as his hands busily worked to remove the old woman's clothing, revealing her leathery skin.
He now tied a small-link chain around Hillary's ankles as he had with Earl, and then he attached her to the J- hook and hoisted her wizened old body up. She dangled like a slaughter animal, her morning chores and dinner preparations going unattended forever now.
“ No more care in the world,” he assured her pliant form. But even as he hoisted her up, he realized she'd have to wait a bit, until he finished bleeding old Earl first. There was only one bucket in the place sterile enough for his needs, unless maybe he could find something new in the kitchen to assist in his endeavor here.
Serendipity had played its pixieish part in his vampiric orchestration of events. He'd been wondering and even worrying how he was going to get Jessica to come to him, while doubly worrying about what sort of containers he'd use to bleed his host and hostess. All senseless worries now, he thought. All things to those who wait, he told himself, and then the old man had shown up with his shiny new, silvery bucket, still fresh with the red and blue Chickasaw brand-name label along its front.
With Hillary now secure, the blood rushing to her head, Matt Matisak now began dipping the mason jars he'd confiscated from the old lady's fruit cellar into the bucket. He quickly filled each and screwed on the lids as he went, until Earl had no more to give. Hillary was coming around.
He emptied the remaining fluid from the bucket and into another jar, using a Rubber Maid ladle he'd stolen from the kitchen earlier, until the bucket was completely drained of Earl Redbird's blood. He then looked into
