humans. But that would mean having to explain why you were fishing instead of attending the tenth grade, which would lead to an ass-busting or at least a good bitching-out.
Or you can boot this deformed hunk of fishfuck the hell back into the creek and pretend you never saw it.
Junior pulled out his pocketknife and started to cut the line. The fish-thing writhed under his foot, spinning free and snapping at his leg.
'Goddamn it,' Junior yelled, hopping back. The thing's eyes were glowing, green and bright as the neon on the pool hall’s pinball machines. Junior whipped the pole, carrying the thing into the air and then back onto the earth. He whipped again and sent the thing's head cracking against a rock with the sound a dropped watermelon makes.
He lashed again and again, sweating and panicky, until the thing was a green-red hunk of shredded meat. Then he put his boot on the raw corpse and jerked the pole with all his strength, and the line finally broke.
'Son of a bitch,” he gasped, catching his breath. He kicked the thing into the water and watched as it turned once, slowly, then spiraled toward the creek bottom like a soggy log. He looked down at the twin rips in his denim cuffs.
He looked back at the thing and wished he hadn't. The tenderized fillet of dead meat had flipped its mutilated finger-fins and twitched its broken clubby tail and headed upstream.
Junior's buzz left him, jumping from his skin like a ghost from a guillotine victim.
Chester stepped off the porch and Boomer reluctantly followed. Even the hound dog sensed something was wrong. Boomer lowered his head and growled at the underbrush that was thick along the fence line. Boomer never riled himself enough to waste a good growl on shadows.
Something about the trees ain't right, Chester thought. I know I been in the white lightning just a mite early today, but that only makes a body see double or else see things that ain't there. And this IS there, whatever it is.
Chester looked at the forest that bordered his weedy cornfield. The trees swelled with buds and new leaves. The dandelions were popping their yellow heads out of the pasture. Usually at this time of year, Chester could practically feel the trees stretching up to the sky, fighting for sunshine and begging for leaves.
But these trees above the house looked kind of sick. Not quite withered, but droopy, like they were sad about something.
Trees ought to be happy in spring. Their sap-blood was frozen up all winter, when all they could do was shiver in the north wind while their bones snapped off. But now the thaw had come and you'd think the wooden- hearted things would be jumping for joy.
And that green glow was back, only it was real faint, so that only a buzzard-eyed mountain man like himself would ever notice. The few airplanes that flew over wouldn't have seen anything out of the ordinary.
He heard a cracking sound, then a rumble of falling timber. Trees only fell like that when struck by lightning or else coated by an ice storm. They didn't snap like that in March, when the roots were busy soaking up the melted snows from the soil.
'Well, I don't expect it's that acid rain that DeWalt's always going on about,' Chester said to Boomer after climbing back up on the porch and settling into his rocker. 'I mean, even if the trees is-now what's that twenty- dollar Yankee word that DeWalt used?'
Boomer looked up expectantly.
'Oh, yeah. ‘Distressed.’ So even if the trees is ‘distressed,’ as they say, they ought not be falling over for no earthly reason.”
Another tree dropped near the ridge line, a few hundred yards up the slope, the brittle sound echoing off the damp mountains. Chester saw the top of a white pine swaying where it had been hit by the falling tree. Something funny was going on. And he had half a mind to go out and investigate. But later was as good a time as now, maybe even better. That was the kind of philosophy that Chester credited with helping a body live to a ripe old age.
'I might have to give DeWalt a call,' Chester said, twisting the lid off his moonshine jar. 'See if he's got any book-learning on dropping-down-dead trees.'
Boomer slowly wagged his tail. Chester looked out at the strange woods. He had a feeling that the trees were waiting, holding their breath in that moment of stillness that always comes before a storm.
'Yep. DeWalt will know what to do.'
Boomer curled up at his master's feet to wait.
Nice little piece of tail there.
Forgive me, Lord, for I have committed the sin of lust. I have committed adultery in my mind. But, Sweet Jesus Christ, did you SEE that stuff bounce around inside that cotton dress? No church secretary should dress like that and expect a God-fearing man not to weaken a little. And her without a bra. Mercy, mercy.
Armfield Blevins pulled a handkerchief from the front pocket of his JC Penney jacket. He wiped at his forehead, the high glaring brow that his daughter said looked like Edgar Allan Poe's. Whoever the hell that was.
Probably one of them damned washed-up rock stars they couldn't seem to drive off the stage. Them ancient rock stars that would keep on rocking even if they had to do it from a rocking chair, and keep on rolling until their wheelchairs needed an overhaul. Getting up and spreading the devil's message just like Armfield spread the Word of God, only they delivered to packed stadiums and their message was blasted from a million stereo speakers. Armfield was lucky to draw two hundred for Sunday services, less during football season.
But the devil worked through everybody. The devil didn't need two-hundred-watt amplifiers. He whispered right in your ear. Look what he had done to Armfield. Steered his eyeballs right onto Nettie Hartbarger's body. He could feel the devil’s tool pressing like a hot and vile snake against the inseam of his slacks.
And, forgive me, Lord, but it feels good. And Nettie is just a door away, at her desk in the vestry, doing the books, doing Your work, back there all alone and warm-blooded and curvy.
But Armfield knew it was the devil working on him, softening him up, to coin a phrase. Just as the devil had laid out the shining cities before Jesus, sweeping his cloven hoof out like a real estate salesman, offering them to the Son of God free and clear and with a righteous right of way if Jesus would only forsake His Father. But Jesus had resisted, and so would Armfield.
But, damn it, we all fall short of the perfection and glory of God. And what would Jesus have done if the old devil had offered him a piece of Nettie's tail instead of some old Jew cities built of mud and stone?
Armfield gazed up at the mahogany crucifix hanging on the wall behind the pulpit. Jesus looked down in return, wooden and Indian colored and sad, peering from under His crown of briars.
Armfield had scored the crucifix at a foreclosure sale, from a Catholic church in a nearby rural county. The Catholics had suffered declining membership and the diocese decided to close the doors. Armfield saw the purchase as one more victory, one more proof of the rightness of the Baptist way. Some of his parishioners had grumbled when he’d placed the icon on the wall, but Armfield had persuaded his flock that the display was conservative, hearkening back to the old days of Christianity.
There was only one Old Time Religion, and that was the Baptist faith. Jesus didn’t belong to some bunch who worshipped Mary and ate wafers. The Son of God belonged to those who were willing to have their heads washed clean of sin. Armfield looked up at the darkly stained wooden face.
'Forgive me, Jesus,' the preacher whispered. Then, hearing a door creak open at the rear of the church, he added loudly, 'And thank thee, Oh Lord, for thy continued blessing, that it may shine on this, Your church. Amen.'
'Amen,' added Bill Lemly, his deep voice filling the narrow church hall. Armfield turned and saw Lemly's wide-shouldered frame filling the doorway against the backdrop of the dark, wet world outside. Lemly walked up the aisle, his shoes leaving prints on the red carpet, that tongue of sanctity that carried the sinners forward, nearer to God and close enough to smell the five-dollar-a-pint aftershave that Preacher Blevins wore on Sundays.
'Good evening, Preacher,' Lemly said. 'Looks like the Lord's brought us some more rain.'
'Yes, Brother Lemly. We may need to build ourselves an ark before this one's over with.'
'Now, God promised He'd never do that to us again. The next time He destroys the world, it will be with something different. Something good.'
