“There’s storks out there, four feet tall, that’s what.” Foul gasses bubbled in his damp breath. “They see a man, they fly right at him, spear him through the eyes, eat his brains out.” He made a stabbing motion at Marl’s yes, and the boy jumped back, as much from the smell as from alarm.
“D-dey ain’t real.”
“Sure is real. How you think I got this?” The old man fingered the pocket of hardened scar tissue where his left eye should have been. “That ain’t all, neither.” He leaned forward. “If’n the storks don’t get you, the Devil will.”
“Leave ’im alone,” another man muttered. “He’s liable ta throw one.”
“You know how big the Devil is? He’s big as a house, boy! An’ he got wings like a bat!”
Marl tried to pull away, but Dan had him by the arm, gnarled fingers digging hard into the tender flesh about the elbow.
“All you’ll hear’ll be flappin’ like sheets on a line. Soon’s you hear that, you know you gonna die.” As he spoke, Dan leaned in and out of the sphere of light, eclipsed face, gesticulating hands, appearing and disappearing in fragments. “He’ll come right down behind you, he will. An’ first thing he’ll do is just swallow your head, just put your whole head in his mouth and bite it off. Then while he’s chewin’ he…”
With a startled cry, the boy leaped back, almost pulling the old man off his perch.
“Don’t bring that in here!” A general tumult erupted. “Put it outside!”
While the newcomer stood in the doorway, blinking and trying to identify the problem, his dog frisked to the end of its chain and sniffed at the room.
“You get that fuckin’ mutt outta here! You hear me? Or I’ll get down ’at meat cleaver and chop it up!” Al bellowed. “What did you say?”
Still shuffling his feet in confusion, the man faintly grumbled something like “Oh yeah?”
Al went berserk. “Good, an’ I’ll chop you up too, motherfucker!” Some of the regulars tried to calm him as he reached for the cleaver.
“What’s the matter wi’ him?” The man backed up, pulling the now growling dog. “Jest a hound dog.” He kicked the animal and dragged it outside.
“Who da hell’s he think he is?” Al started slamming things around. “Comin’ in my place with a dog? Ain’t no dogs allowed in here. I own the fuckin’ place, don’t I?”
“Sure thing, Al.”
“You’re right, Al. You’re right.”
Something crashed on the stairs.
Everyone looked while Lonny picked himself up and seemed to get his joints going in the right direction again. Eyes still rimmed with sleep, he headed straight for the whiskey barrel.
“’At’s it. Drink up my profits, shithead.” Al saw him freeze. “Good for nuthin’ rummy.”
Lonny blinked at him. “I jus’ want one, Al.”
“No.”
“But, Al,” he began, the trace of a whine already in his voice, “gotta have one. Al?”
“No.”
Lonny stood with his mouth open. He started to shake, and Al watched, smiling with satisfaction. The door opened and the guy who’d taken the dog out came in again, looking wary. Al shoved an open jug at Lonny.
“You tie up tha’ dog?” demanded Al.
The man looked up warily. “He’s outside.”
Spit ran down Lonny’s chin while he drank. It hit him fast. The almost painful warmth spread from the pit of his stomach and poured into his chest, flushed up his neck and face, melting his eyes.
Watching, Dan shook his head sadly, dirty gray hair flopping over the back of his collar. Lonny looked even worse than usual, yet for a moment, the old man recalled him as a boy, full of hell and haunting the pines.
“Well, then sit down and buy yaself a drink.” Al smiled expansively. “I ain’t seen ya in here before, buddy.” He pointed at Lonny. “Look at ’im. He don’t think I knew ’bout that jug he had upstairs. I knew. Yeah, I knew. Asshole.”
“Usually, I go out Bear Swamp Hill way.” He was a thin, gray sort of man, and as he moved into the light, Dan guessed him to be part Indian. So many around here were.
“It’s my boy, y’see,” Al explained, chuckling. “He’s scared a dogs. Like to have a fit when he saw ya bringin’ that one in here.”
Dan glanced at Marl—the stocky youth sat by himself, watching everything as usual. No, not so stocky, he decided, looking closer, not anymore leastways, and taller too, really starting to shoot up. “Hey, there ain’t been no ghosts to night,” Dan announced, peering around at the shadows and making sure the stranger noticed.
“How’s at?”
“This here gin mill’s haunted,” replied Dan. “I thought everybody knew that. You should see it sometimes when the spooks is out—things flyin’ around by themselves. You wanna hear about it?” He toyed with the cracked fruit jar he’d been drinking from, letting the guy see it was empty.
Jagged laughter exploded from the corner.
“Way I heard it, Lonny went after his brother’s wife one night, but she grabbed a shotgun and just ’bout blew ole Lonny’s head off.”
“How’s about it, Lonny? Can the black bitch take you in a fair fight?”
“Them ghosts—Hessian mercenaries they was.” Sooty lanterns flickered, and Dan’s eyes glinted as the words spun out. “Shot ’em against a wall in the old town. Back during the Revolution.”
“You pullin’ my leg, ole man?”
“Come to think on it, there ain’t been no ghosts in here fer a while. I remember once…” But the newcomer’s eyes had strayed to Lonny.
“I know wha’ tha’ bitch really wants.” Muttering to himself, Lonny began to get loud.
“I told you to lay off the stuff.”
“Ah, let ’im alone, Al,” somebody yelled. “It’s just getting good. What you saying, Lon?”
Lonny kept drinking. All around him voices blurred with the smoke, fogging into an uneven buzz.
“Yeah, tell us ’bout it, Lonny. Whatchya gonna do to ’er?”
“…what tha bitch…she ain’t takin’ nuthin’…’smy house, Jesus, ’Thena…what she really wants, my…”
“At’s a boy, Lonny!”
“You tell ’er!”
“Tha’ bitch!” He pounded his fist on the bar. Voices splashed around him. Words whirled about his ears, piercing his head. Hands slapped his back. Many hands. His friends—a flickering blur. Al laughed, and Wes kept pushing him, pushing him and yelling things. Someone—old Dan?—tried to take his arm, but he shook free like a dog throwing off water. And suddenly he was sailing toward the door, riding a crescendo of goading that seemed to carry him out into the night. The hollow roar of the gin mill burst behind him, then trundled away.
He couldn’t feel his feet, couldn’t see the ground, but he kept walking, somehow never falling, and one of the hounds that lay in the shadow of a truck got up to follow.
So strange to be outside. Such relief. No lights to hurt his eyes. But even here the air felt dense, stirring with damp heat, like the breath of a beast. His thoughts churned: it was his house, but he had nothing because of her. Choking, he loosened his shirt. He was a grown man, and they all laughed at him, because he had nothing, no home even, and all he wanted was to go home. He stumbled down the road. He was going home, and nothing could stop him.
His thoughts grew even more muddied. Had he lost his bearings? The house lay…that way. Ahead of him, pines swayed, and the breeze carried away the stink of the town dump.
The hound that followed idly, stopped and sniffed the air. It sat back on its haunches to watch the man’s progress into the woods. The dog stiffened. The beginnings of a growl stirred in its chest, then it twisted around with a wrenching movement and ran away as fast as it could.
As the sky began to flicker, the wind blew stronger.
Pine detritus crunched under the tires. Raindrops plopped randomly across the roof of the car, and dust billowed around the house. In the woods, a dog was howling. As Athena pushed the car door open, sudden wetness splattered over the windshield.
