greater good.”
Oh my God! she thought. This is crazy! “Helton? How long are you going to…keep me?”
“Aw, won’t be long, couple’a days or—”
“A couple of days?” she shrieked.
“—or maybe a couple’a weeks, I s’pose. See, Veronnerka, it all depends how long it takes, and don’t ask me to ‘splain that, ’cos…ya simply wouldn’t understand.”
Madness, madness… “Helton, if I don’t show up for work tomorrow morning, then my boyfriend Mike will call me, and if I don’t answer, he’ll go to my apartment, and if I’m not there… he’ll call the police.”
Helton shrugged. “Don’t matter none. Oh, and since ya will be missin’ some workin’ time, we’ll’se pay double fer what’cha miss. How’s that?”
“How’s that?” she wailed. “That’s outrageous! You can’t just take people, Helton! It’s against the law!”
Helton’s tone grew stern. “So’s what was done ta my grandson.”
“What?”
Helton sighed. “Ya just wouldn’t understand, missy. So it’s easier ta just trust me…”
“Here we is, Paw,” Dumar said.
The truck slowed, jostled more violently, then stopped. Veronica, at last, broke down in tears and half- collapsed on Helton, hugging him.
“Please, Helton, don’t do this to me. Don’t hurt me—”
“We ain’t gonna hurt a hair on yer purdy head,” the bulky man assured. “And as fer you…bein’ our guest fer a spell… Believe me, it’s fer somethin’ real important.” Helton took something out of his pocket. “And it ain’t that we don’t trust ya, but, well, we’se just need ya ta stay put fer now,” then—
snap!
Veronica moaned when she was handcuffed to the metal table leg. Then Helton moved her knapsack far out of reach—the knapsack that contained her cellphone and wireless laptop.
“Git yerself some rest, why don’t’cha?” the younger man said.
Helton smiled. “Micky-Mack’s a crack shot with the sling, so’s he’s gonna catch us a squirrel or two while Dumar’n me build a campfire. But we’ll be just outside so’s if’n ya need anything, just holler.”
Madness, madness, she thought beneath her sobs.
“And if’n ya gotta pee”—Helton handed her an empty can of Heinz pork and beans. “There ya go.” He suddenly took a more serious cast. “While’s the squirrel’s cookin’, I gots to have me a long talk with the boys.”
Helton headed for the back door and exited the truck.
Madness, madness, madness, madness, Veronica thought.
(II)
Ten minutes was all it took for the young and eagle-eyed Micky-Mack to bag several squirrels, and a few minutes after that, those squirrels were promptly skinned and gutted via Helton’s big buck knife. Now the tasty rodents roasted slowly on stake-skewers over the roaring campfire outside the truck. The smell was delectable, and it was unfortunate that one of the family’s favorite meals would be tainted by the specter of death, sin, and secrets that hovered over many backwoods folks. They all sat on logs, keeping warm the way men were meant to. Dumar and Micky-Mack looked expectantly to their elder.
“Well, Paw?” Dumar asked.
“We’se waitin’,” Micky-Mack added, antsy by the mystery of what it was that so pained Helton to relate.
“The time’a reckonin’ is upon us, boys,” Helton began, eyes reflecting fire-light and something like dark wonder. “We done got our chops busted by this evil man Paulie, and now’s we’se out fer our revenge. It’s been the law of the land since time began. Someone do you wrong when you ain’t deserved it, then ya got no choice but to do him wrong even worse. Says so in the Bible”—he pronounced “Bible” as bob-ul. “Says ‘a eye fer an eye.’” Helton sipped some soda yet scarcely tasted it. “What I got ta tell ya both tonight hurts me right in my heart—”
“It hurt me in my heart, Paw!” Dumar raised his voice, “seein’ my boy kilt so awful!”
“Simmer down,” Helton ordered. “And listen. In these parts, for years and years, folks been feudin’ over this’n that. It’s part’a man’s nature, I s’pose. But sometimes folks can be so blammed evil that they’ll do ya a wrong that’s so ever-livin’ bad it seems there ain’t nothin’ you can do back to get yer proper revenge. This happened to our family way back in a war they calt the Civil War when the Yankee Army come through here’n start burnin’ our ancestors’ houses down for nothin’ more than retrievin’ the nails out the ashes, which they’d melt down to make more bullets so’s ta kill more decent Southern folk. But that ain’t all they did, see?”
Micky-Mack was so intrigued he sat on the edge of his log. “What else they do, Unc?”
Helton’s voice lowered to a grim rattle. “They round up all the gals in all the nearby towns, even li’l girls nine, ten years old, and they made ’em all live fer a month in what they called a Sibley Camp on account that’s what the tents they put up was called—Sibley tents, and what they turned this camp into…was a fuckin’ camp.”
“A what, Paw?” Dumar asked.
“It were a camp, son, where Yankees from all over could come and git thereselfs a piece’a ass. A blammed rape camp’s what is was! The Yankee general was a black- hearted cad the name’a Hildreth—it’s him was the one who order this big camp put up, and by the hunnerts, the Yankee soldiers’d come to git their willies up in our gals and fill ’em with their evil Yankee peckersnot, and General Hildreth, what he done is he charged each soldier a five-cent piece fer each nut they git in the camp, making profit on his crimes against our gals!” Helton’s rancor echoed through the woods. He had to recompose himself. “And, see, bein’ that the gals was forced ta live in this camp fer over a month, they’se all wound up pregnant, and General Hildreth, he like that a whole lot, he did, ’cos even after his Yankees left, these poor gals’d pop out kids they’d have to raise, just bringin’ more’n more hardship on ’em. And worser than that even was that whiles the gals was in the camp, they weren’t givin’ nothin’ to eat, so’s one’a the gals—name’a Constance McKinney, it was—she were kind’a the speaker fer all the poor gals. What she do is she say to General Hildreth, ‘Please, general, ya gots to give my gals some food ever so often, else we all starve to death!’ So ya know what General Hildreth did? He give each gal a tin cup and then he laugh back ta Constance’n said, ‘Each time one of my men gets his nut up your dirty Rebel pussies, you just stand up and put this cup between your legs and let my mens’ jism dribble in the cup…’cos that’s all you’re ever gonna get ta eat while you’re here! Ain’t no way I’m wasting a single morsel of food on Rebel bitches!’”
“God dang, Unc Helton!” Micky-Mack wailed. He and Dumar were clearly unsettled. “Shorely only the most evilest’a men’d make gals live on cum!”
The shadow of Helton’s nodding head loomed huge in the forest behind them. “Oh, they was evil, all right, boy, evil as if they was the sons’a Lucifer hisself. Our poor gals got fucked or sodder-mized probably a thousand times each by these dag-blasted Yanks. Eventually, though, they moved on, leavin’ our towns burnt and dester-toot. See, the Yanks et all the livestock theirselfs, but what was left they kilt’n left ta rot so’s no one else could have it, and they burnt all the fields too. That blammed Hildreth even sent his men inta the woods to kill every animal they could see; he didn’t want nothin’ left for the folks here to eat. And, a’course, all them poor gals was knocked up and their bellies full’a Yankee bastards…”
Dumar and Micky-Mack shivered, not from the chill air but from the macabre suspense being conveyed by the fire.
“Weren’t long after, the War ended, and the town’s men that didn’t get kilt or die in Yankee prison camps,
