The Backwoods

“So until we meet again, gentlemen, I bid you a pleasant day.” But before Everd turned to leave, Sutter couldn’t resist: “Everd, tell me somethin’, will ya? What is that thing around your neck?”

The old man seemed unfazed by the question, untying the sack. “It’s called a tok.” He removed something stiff and twisted.

What in shit’s name!

It was a chicken head.

“It’s the severed head of a black cock—not an ordinary chicken, mind you,” Everd explained. “Upside down in the pouch. It preserves wisdom.” He started to take it off. “Here, I’d like you to have it, as my gift.”

Yow! Sutter held up his hand. “Aw, no, Everd, I couldn’t. But thanks just the same.”

“Very well. But it’s been a pleasure to be in your company these few minutes. I look forward to our next meeting.” And then Everd slipped away, silent as a shadow.

“How do you like that funky shit?” Trey chuckled. “With all the shit he said he was servin’ for dinner, I’m surprised there ain’t no chicken on the menu. Ain’t that some weird superstitious jive they got goin’ on?”

“You got that right,” Sutter said. “And I’ll definitely pass on the muskrat and cicadas.”

“Roger that.”

“Hey, Chief, why don’t ya hang a chicken head from the cruiser rearview? Maybe it’ll give us wisdom!”

Sutter looked after the old man, who’d already made it halfway up the road. “The Squatters are tough to figure. They’re kind of like Indians, but they don’t look it. All those charms they’re into.”

“Or like Gypsies,” Trey compared. “But they don’t look like Gypsies, either. They don’t even look European.”

“The accent’s weird too. One time I asked Everd where he and his people were from, and you know what he said? He said ‘the Old World.’ Then I asked him what the hell that mean, and he told me Agan’s Point is where they’re from. That his ancestors’ve always been here.” Sutter pinched his chin. “I wonder where they’re really from. . . .”

“Yeah, then there’s always the one question that’s more important than that,” Trey posed.

“What’s that?”

“Who gives a flying rat’s ass?”

Sutter was inclined to agree. He looked down the road again and saw no sign of Everd Stanherd. Trey had his back to him, looking off in the opposite direction. “Ooo-eee, Chief! Would you look at that Caddy!”

“Yeah. Nice set of wheels.”

A snappy, late-model Cadillac coup was cruising along past them, a ragtop, with a deep, rich paint job the color of red wine. The driver obviously spotted the two police watching her, and slowed down a bit.

Trey squinted. “Looks like some dandy tail drivin’ it, too. Looks hiiiiiigh-class.”

“Yeah, too high-class for this town, now that ya mention it,” Sutter considered. “Bet that car runs eighty grand outta the showroom, Trey. What the hell’s a rich gal like that doin’ in Agan’s Point?”

“Red-hairt, too,” Trey could see. “Ah-oooooo-gah! Bet she’s got red carpet to match those red drapes.” He elbowed Sutter. “Looks like she’s doin’ about five over the limit, Chief. What say we pull her over, see what she’s got to gander?”

Sutter frowned. “Git your mind outta the sewer, Trey.” But it wasn’t that bad an idea. Cops worked hard. They needed a perk now and again.

Then, as the car flashed by, the driver waved and honked.

Both men looked behind them. Trey scratched his head. “She wavin’ at us?”

That was when the red hair and upscale look clicked. “Ah, I know who that is, and so do you.”

“Huh?”

“Patricia, Judy Parker’s sister.”

Trey stared off after the vanishing car. “Ya don’t say? Ain’t seen her around here in—”

“About five years. Looks different ‘cos she cut her hair. Came back for Judy’s marriage to that scumbag Dwayne, and now it looks like she’s here again—”

“—for the scumbag’s funeral.”

A silence passed between them. The Cadillac disappeared around the road’s bend.

“Too bad about her, ya know?” Trey said.

Sutter nodded at the words. “I remember Patricia since she was tiny—shit, I wasn’t but twelve or thirteen myself when she was born. Fiery, chatty little kid, she was. Full a’ life, always happy.”

“Yeah. Then she just turned cold. Bet I didn’t hear her say two words before she ran off to college and law school.”

Sutter jingled his keys. He remembered. “Poor girl never was the same,” he said, “after the rape. . . .”

Three

(I)

An instant reminder: the odd knocker on the center stile of the front door. I’ve always hated the knocker, Patricia thought. She had parked the Caddy in the cul-de-sac, and had sat a while looking up at the house she grew up in. The great wooden edifice went back to pre-Civil War days, and had been refurbished incrementally over the decades. It looked the part: a Virginia plantation house with a high, sloping roof and awnings, and a screened porch that defined the entire circumference of the lower level. A grand house. There were plenty of ghost stories dating back to the days of slavery, when previous owners often executed unruly workers and buried them around the foundation to fertilize the hedges and flower beds. It made for excited talk, but in the eighteen years Patricia had lived here, she’d never seen a ghost.

She did now, though.

The door knocker. It was an eyesore and it was just plain peculiar: an oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth, no other features. In those last two years here before college, the knocker’s expression had reflected her own.

In truth, however, she had to admit that Judy had kept the place up beautifully, and were it not for the bad memories, Patricia would see the house as a gorgeous abode.

It was just getting dark. I forgot, she thought. Another cicada season. They had so many varieties down here; there were more seasons with them than without. The unique sound in the dark, surrounding her on the porch. She’d looked forward to that sound as a child, but now the throbbing drone served only as another jolting memory.

The summer she’d been raped had been a cicada season, too.

Soft lights lit the front bay windows, but there was only Judy’s car in the court. She shouldn’t be alone. . . . It was too soon. Patricia’s younger sister was a Rock of Gibraltar when in her element, but she was also terribly codependent. With Dwayne gone—abusive as he’d been—Judy would be unstable, flighty, and off-track. She knows I’m coming today, Patricia thought. Knowing her sister as she did, it was surprising that Judy wasn’t pacing the foyer with the front door open.

Can’t stand on the porch all night . . . Patricia winced, raising her hand to the unsightly knocker, but then saw that the door stood open a crack. The house is half-mine, she reminded herself, and stepped in.

The pendulum clock ticked to her left, and to her right stood a long walnut table containing knickknacks and candles, centered by an old framed photo of their parents as newlyweds. For a moment she imagined her father frowning in the frame, as though he disapproved of her arrival. “Judy?” she called out. Only silence returned her call. The interior seemed smaller than she remembered, cramped. Pictures on the walls seemed to hang lower, and had the wallpaper been changed? Everything looks different, but I know Judy would never change a thing.

She turned into the sitting room and stopped cold. A breath caught in her chest and wouldn’t come out.