The Pines

hoped Athena never found out. She gets so funny about that sort of thing. Sighing, she walked on. Such a shame, Wallace dropping dead like that. They was so happy.

A breeze stirred in the smaller trees.

Lonny’s been gone almost two years this time. Leaving the road to town behind her, she wended between the little pines. Lord, I miss him. Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t really true. What she missed was what she’d never had.

Something rustled in the bushes.

“Dooley?” She stopped moving, stopped breathing. “Is there somebody?” She heard the dog bark somewhere far behind her. “Who is that?” Her voice trembled.

A match scratched and flared, and she flinched from the sudden light. “You scared me all to death!” she screeched, beginning to giggle.

Framed by tangled white-blond hair, a bloodless face floated in the dark. Marl Spencer stared stupidly, the flame glowing purple in his eyes. “Skeared ya?” The match twitched away.

Pam heard sucking. “You burn yourself, Marl?” Suddenly maternal, she moved toward him. Another match flared, and she paused, blinking.

Marl held the flame high with the other hand as he blew on his wet fingers. He had a crumpled paper sack under his arm, heavy shapes inside it.

“Is that my stuff?” she asked, not reaching for the bag. “Al Spencer shouldn’t be makin’ you deliver that so late at night,” her voice scolded. “An you can tell him I said so, too.”

“Gotta do it a’night,” the boy answered in a voice both shrill and husky.

“This-here purse is brand-new,” she told him proudly. “So I don’t have no money on me, but if you’ll walk me home I can…What’s that you sayin’, boy? Your pa said I can have credit, did he?” The match went out, and the paper sack rustled. She guessed he was holding it out to her. “I don’t want no credit. Now, you just come on to my place.” The bag rustled again. “It won’t take a minute, now. It’s just over here. Sides, I want to get you something for that burn.”

The boy mumbled.

“Oh, you got to put something on it right away! It’ll get all pus if you don’t. Now, you just come with me.” She started forward along the choked path. “You was on your way to the trailer anyways, right?” After a moment, she sensed his fleshy presence following.

The boy hung back when they reached the dark and littered clearing. The woman hurried past the black hulks of two automobiles, one on blocks, one on its side. “Well, here we are now.” She stamped up the metal steps of the trailer.

The door opened with a squeak, and lights came on inside. She stuck her head out the open door. The gleam revealed the clearing: a chicken-wire and plywood enclosure dominated the bare earth, and white petunias were bedded up against the trailer’s cinder-block foundations. Sagging from the roof, thick cable looped into the trees. “Ain’t you coming in?” The boy had his back to her. “What’s the matter? What do you keep looking over your shoulder for? You hear something? That’s right. You scared a dogs, ain’t you?” Still peering at him, she laughed. “Hell, the things people is scared of.” She liked the way the back of his head was shaped, she decided—he was growing up real nice. Of course everybody knew he was a retard, and he was still sort of pudgy. “Well, don’t just stand there then. Come on in the place.”

Reluctantly approaching the steps, he removed three large jars from the sack. Electric light gleamed yellow in the liquid as he handed them up to her. “Pop wants da jars back.”

She disappeared. “Can I git you some?” she called. “Oh, c’mon, have some. Maybe I’ll have a little. Not that I really drink or anything, you know. I just think it’s good to have some around. In case anybody should visit. You know, like a relative or something.”

He lingered on the stoop. “Uh…”

Something banged within, then glasses clicked. “Marl? What are we? Like cousins sort of?”

Backing away from the trailer, he folded the paper bag and stuck it in his pants as the woman’s voice faded behind him.

“I bet everybody in town thinks I’m real snotty, like I think I’m better than them or something, right? Marl? Marl?”

He’d already crossed the clearing.

Suddenly, she stood, tapping her foot in the doorway. “You don’t got no more deliveries to make to night, do you? Well then, come on in here and let me see that finger.”

Through the trees, there came distant, lonely barking. He froze. Slowly, he walked back toward the trailer. One foot on the stairs, he turned to the woods—the barking sounded again. He entered.

The night breathed through the empty clearing. Trees whispered. A slight breeze pressed through, muttering and sighing, and the pines moved, barely swaying. Moths danced in the arc of pale light from the doorway through which the woman’s voice drifted. “That’s a boy. Come on in here. You know, my sister-in-law was telling me just tonight about this bunch a wild dogs that’s running around. Now, hold it out while I put some of this on it—won’t hurt. Yeah, that’s right. They’re still out there somewheres, so you got to be careful going home, you know, and me all alone cause a Lonny’s still being away. Don’t move. Still away. It gets real lonely out here. Course ’Thena and me is real good friends. Hold still now. They talk about me in town? They tell jokes about me? Hold still. That’s it. Don’t that feel good? Don’t it? You’re really growing, really getting big now, ain’t you? Such nice big hands. You know, Marl, you ain’t like them other pineys in town. You’re more like me and ’Thena. Yeah, you got…fine qualities. I never believed none a them stories about you starting fires. Does that feel good? Come on. Yeah now. That’s it. Does it feel good now?”

Disturbed by the light, crickets chirruped erratically. In the coops, the chickens stirred and complained.

“Don’t move away now. This is nice, boy. Just let me…feels so…No!”

The boy burst out of the doorway, leaped the three steps and hit the clearing a good yard away. Tripping in the darkness, he picked himself up running.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?”

He glanced back once.

“Boy, you’re really weird!” She stood framed in the doorway. “Where you going? I won’t tell nobody. You coming back?” As he tore along the darkly tangled trail, her voice followed. “You gonna tell? Weird! What’s the matter with you?”

Reaching the road, he raced toward town, her words festering in his brain. Something clicked in his face, and his hand came away wet. He sucked in his breath. The barking seemed closer now, and he ran, his temples pounding. A pulse throbbed in his neck, and he panted, stumbling in the sand. Thoughts of wild dogs pursued him, raging in his mind: hounds smelling his blood. Howling surrounded him. He fled through the night in panic, blackness dripping onto his shirt.

The woods were not silent.

She’d lain awake, clenched and sweating, but sleep had finally rolled over her in thick, smoky waves. Athena’s mouth made tiny whistlings like a child’s as she breathed in the damp, moldy smell of the mattress. The liquid sigh of the pines seemed slower, more somber to night, only sometimes peaking with a rush. Crickets called weakly, and her breathing droned. The house itself creaked. Some deep recess of her sleeping mind still listened, as gradually the wooden groans grew rhythmic. Soon she could hear the slapping of waves on the outside walls. Rising. Receding. Darkness seemed to lap around her, and the mattress floated. On her spinning bed, she tensed, squirming as the nightmare began.

Dark…drowning…black choking…and suddenly eyes. At first many. Burning red. Malignant. Then only two.

Something hungry, watching from the dark.

Starting, she came fully awake and sat up, her body wet with perspiration. She kicked a tangled sheet and some clothes away from her legs, felt a wave of coolness. With one hand, she forced herself back down, felt the pounding in her chest.

Through the open window drifted the distant howling of the town’s dogs.

Well, that’s a new twist. Eyes wide-open, she lay, seeing nothing. Not just the dark this time, but something in it. Beads of sweat rolled down her face, and she inhaled