The Pines

Turning her back to the house, she looked around. Apparently, unoccupied shacks.

“What d’you want?”

Even as she spun around, she recognized the voice. I should have remembered the house.

“I know you. ’At daughter a mine’s sended you over here, dinchee?”

Athena didn’t believe she’d ever seen anyone so dirty. The dress looked as though it had been used as a cleaning rag. Hair trailed about the shoulders in gray-blonde strings, and the rough complexion lay buried beneath layers of old makeup. “Hello, Mrs. Stewart. I wonder if…”

“Miz.” Opening the door farther, the woman spat on the step. “Miz Stewart. I ain’t married.”

“Yes. I wonder if you’d mind talking to me about your son-in-law Lonny. I wanted to ask if you’d seen or heard anything the night he was killed.”

“She sended you round here to spy on me, dinchee? She wants my boy, donchee? She tried to get ’im from me before. You can tell ’er she ain’t gonna get my kid.” Lizzie’s chubby eyes slitted as she appraised Athena. “You got a retard kid too, doncha?”

Athena took a step forward. Holding her breath against the rotten-meat smell of the house, she spoke forcefully. “The night Lonny was killed, did you…?”

Lizzie stepped back, correctly assuming she would not be followed. “I don’ know nothing. Shit. You seen my boy out dere?”

“No, actually I don’t see anyone. Could you tell me where they all are?”

Lizzie just leered.

“I asked you a question.” She leaned on the door. “Perhaps you’d rather I had some friends of mine come around and talk to you.”

“Home. Behin’ locked doors. Where da ya think everbody is?” The woman threw her weight against the door, slamming it. Metal rasped as the bolt slid home, but cursing penetrated the wood. “…gonna send ’er friends ’round…who da fuck she think she…”

A fine start—strong-arming old whores. She walked rapidly away from the house. Maybe I should go back to the city and get a job with a collection agency. She peered up the road. Doris was probably at the house by now. When she sees I’m gone, she’ll be after me like a shot. I could probably walk up the road and meet her. The stench drifted from another direction now.

Let me just see what’s burning. She followed the odor, not to the garbage dump, but toward the main cluster of buildings.

A boy sat in thin shade. The fumes from the still house out back surrounded him, thick and overpowering. He looks like he’s been sniffing glue. She got to within a few feet of him before he so much as blinked.

She didn’t recognize him. From beneath a battered fishing hat, fine, light hair trailed almost to the boy’s shoulders. His face lacked color. Pale eyebrows and lashes faded into invisibility, and the whites of his eyes nearly matched the color of his flesh, his dilated pupils providing the only hints of darkness, like black specks floating in milk. The hum of flies was all around him.

The flaccid face moved. The boy’s mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. Even his lips were nearly white.

“My name is Mrs. Monroe.” While her eyes took in every detail of the boy’s appearance, she listened to her words flow nervously together. She wasn’t sure why she felt so nervous. Clearly, the boy presented no possible threat. Almost pretty, his blankly pubescent features had a waxen delicacy. “My brother-in-law used to live here. Did you know Lonny?” With sudden inspiration, she added, “I’ve come to get his things.”

The boy stared past her. She followed his gaze to a lean cat that was slinking around the side of the house, and she began to wonder if the boy might be deaf. Then he tilted his face toward her.

There was nothing that could really be called an expression. The light seemed to sleep there in his eyes, reflected in bright silence. “L-Lonny?”

“Yes, that’s right. Lonny.” She waited, smiling encouragingly, but he only blinked. “Do you know where his things are? Are they in his room?” She stepped up onto the porch.

“His stuff?” He looked away from her. “Gone. Took it.”

“Who took it?”

He gestured with one hand, vaguely indicating the town. His hand shook, and it troubled her to see an adolescent who trembled, palsied.

She couldn’t think what else to say. The boy shyly refused to look up at her again, and his arms and legs seemed to quiver. She sensed his desire to run away. “Do you live here?” He might have nodded slightly in response, but she couldn’t be sure. Turning from him, she surveyed the town: still no one around.

Suddenly realizing who he must be, she faced him again. The last time she’d seen the boy, he’d been fat and pimply. Now he looked almost wasted, as though from a long illness. “Is your father around someplace?” She looked about warily. She’d met Al once.

“N-Nobody’s here.”

She peered around back at the still house, a shed with no windows. Foul whitish vapor flowed steadily from a pipe chimney stuck through the roof. She turned back to the boy, who just kept staring at his feet. She moved closer to the door of the gin mill, peering into the gloom.

“Nobody?”

“J-Jus’ Ernie. Sick in bed. Upstairs.”

Jackpot. She beamed a smile at the boy, but her eyes went hard. “He’s sick? What’s wrong with him?” She stepped back to peer at the tiny second-story window. “Maybe I should go check on him?”

The door to the still house burst open. In a swirling cloud of steam, there emerged a pair of lurching forms, and the smoke cascaded about them, rising and suffusing into the bright haze of the sky. The door banged shut. One of the two men giggled, an unnaturally high-pitched sound. “Hey, lookit!”

The steam dissipated enough for her to get a look at them. The gangly one hung back, smiling broadly, but the heavyset blond man strutted toward her.

“Hey, girlie. D’you come out here lookin’ fer a man?” He swayed a few feet away from her. “I knows yours’s gone.” He grinned back at the other one, who giggled again. “So you come lookin’ for ole Wes?”

“Is that your name? Wes?” Resisting the impulse to punch him in the throat, she tried questioning him about Lonny, not very successfully. While she talked, the two men fell across the porch, squatting and then jumping up again like apes or drunken gargoyles.

“Yeah, I seen things, girlie.” Wes’s glance at his cohort elicited an appreciative laugh. “You wouldn’t believe some a the things I seen.”

She pointed toward the gin mill. “Do you know anything about the man upstairs?” She looked around. The boy had vanished.

“Ain’t nobody in there. Who you been talkin’ to? Marl? Can’t pay no attention a him. Can’t you tell he’s crazy? You stupid or something?”

“Could you tell me why the town seems so deserted?”

Both men broke up. “Well,” Wes gasped out. “When people starts to get et up by the Leeds Devil”—he collapsed with mirth—“everybody jus’ naturally runs away!” Wiping at his eyes, and slapping his friend on the back, he sidled closer to her. “You jus’ lucky Al ain’t here.” One leered, and the other smirked. “He’d eat chyou alive.”

“Oh? Where is Mr. Spencer?”

The men stopped laughing and looked at each other. “I’m his man now Lonny’s gone. ’Smy job takin’ care a things ’round here when Al’s…got business.” He swayed, and his mouth twitched. “It don’t like me. Tries to get in at night. I hear it. Hey, you was in dat—whazat thing? With the sick people and the rescue stuff, right? Maybe you kin help ole Manny here. Manny, what wuz you telling me ’bout yer little girl?”

“Yeah,” said Manny Leek. “She bit by a spider, day ’fore yestiday. Head’s all swole. Chile’s mother say she got fever.” Manny stumbled against her, and she shoved him back. “Wuz gonna get ole Mother Jenks to come, ’cept she ain’t been ’round lately, an’ ’er shacks all way down to…” He pointed off into the pines, and his legs seemed to buckle. She steadied him, grabbing hold of the gray length of rope that served as his belt. “Down that way. ’S far.”