The Backwoods

on clan land, in earth consecrated by Everd himself.

“I pray so,” he repeated, “but I fear not.”

“I won’t hear it, Everd!” Ethel nearly cried out at the remark. She was coming out of the trance. “Dwayne’s dead now. He hated us, but now he’s dead! There’s no reason for more of us to wind up”—she shivered when she looked at poor Cindy’s body—'like this.”

“We fear there is, dear.” Marthe spoke up in her smoke-light voice. “It’s that Felps man. Everd has foreseen this.”

The sawon nodded. They all paused in a moment of silence as the others lifted Cindy’s body and began to take it back to the property. “He wants this land, so he’s having us killed. People are doing this for him, for money.”

“For what purpose? Miss Judy would never sell the land out from under us.”

“She would if we weren’t here. She would if we all left. If more of us continue to disappear, if more of us are found murdered, then our people will get scared. And they will leave.”

No one argued with that.

“We must tell the constable.”

“That violates our own laws, and he wouldn’t do much to help us anyway. I haven’t even let on to Chief Sutter what I know. I let him believe that I think the missing ones left on their own accord. We take care of our own, Wilfrud; it’s our law, and it has been since longer than we can conceive. We will never go to outsiders. We will always take care of our own.”

At least Wilfrud seemed satisfied with what he said next. “And we can thank heaven and earth that you took care of Dwayne. . . .”

(III)

It appeared to be the makings of a great dream—no, a fantastic dream. Chief Sutter, behind the wheel of the town cruiser, was on routine patrol, ever diligent in his oath to protect and serve. The cruiser prowled through dark, Agan’s Point backstreets as the moon followed over treetops and the cicadas thrummed. Ever vigilant, he kept his eyes peeled for suspicious persons and signs of foul play. Police work was a thankless job, but Sutter was proud to have it. Who knew, for instance, that he was out here on the job right now? As Agan’s Point residents slept soundly in their beds, they could sleep ever more soundly with Chief Sutter maintaining watch over their safety in these wee hours of the night.

Even at this early juncture, the dream was proving to be damn good. Why? Because as he drove, his right hand regularly reached over to the passenger seat to withdraw a piece of his wife’s homemade fried chicken, which, as he recalled, was the best he’d ever eaten. She hadn’t actually prepared this favorite of his for many years, electing instead to tell him, “I feel like fried chicken tonight, honey, so why don’t you bring home a twenty-piece bucket from KFC on your way home from work?” But that was irrelevant here. This was a dream. This was not reality.

He ate the drumsticks first, peeling away the crunchy, delectable skin, then sucking the meat off the bone.

That was when he saw the girl.

Looks like a woman in distress, he noted, and properly switched on his flashing Visibar. She emerged from the darkness at the bend in the road ahead, a short woman with a curvaceous figure, raven-haired. Looks like she’s wearin’ a white bikini, Chief Sutter reasoned. And . . .

His eyes widened.

And she looks to be quite possibly the best-lookin’ gal I have set my eyes on in quite a spell!

Deeply tanned legs, belly, and arms. And a bosom . . .

Jiminy fuckin’ Christmas . . .

The bosom satcheled high in the big white bra looked about big enough to lay Thanksgiving dinner out on.

At the end of the headlights, she began to wave.

That was when Chief Sutter became aware of a serious discrepancy in his previous assumption as to her apparel. Was that really a white bikini she was wearing, or . . .

He squinted harder.

An exciting darkness seemed to lay triangularly at the crotch of the white bottoms, and as for the top: large, dark circles were centered . . .

And the final realization:

That ain’t no fuckin’ bikini! Those are tan lines!

The approaching woman wore no bikini at all. In fact, she wore nothing whatsoever.

What to do now? the chief asked himself. An errant rub to his crotch alerted him to a rising turgidity. The woman was obviously a Squatter; he could tell by the short stature and mussy black hair, and, of course, that—

Jiminy Christmas, Sutter thought again.

—and that jaw-dropping, one hundred percent perfect body

Sutter was thrown for a disturbing loop. Looks like I’ll have to arrest this gal for public nek-it- ness, I suppose. What the hell’s she doin’ walkin’ ‘round here at this time of night bare-assed?

His libido and human sexual responses in general didn’t ponder an answer to his question. She traipsed around the car, the headlights glaring over every perfect detail, breasts gently jogging, and then she—

Oh, Mother of God!

—she leaned over the passenger-side window and shot Chief Sutter a giant, sultry smile.

“Evenin’, there, Mr. Chief!”

“Huh-huh-howdy,” he stammered.

“What’cha doin’?”

'Ruh-ruh-ruh-routine patrol, miss.”

The Southern twang blended with that indefinable Squatter accent enriched her voice to something dark and syrupy and most definitely sexual. “Well, me, I’se just out fer a walk.”

Without being asked, then, she opened the passenger door and plopped her exquisite rump right on the seat. Chief Sutter did not raise an objection.

She grinned shyly at him in the dash lights. “Can I tell ya something, Mr. Chief?”

Sutter’s mouth opened but no response seemed possible. The mere sight of her body choked him up, circumventing any possibility of reply.

Her eyes looked dreamy, green gems filled with bright-blue chips that seemed to glow. “Just somethin’ about officers a’ the law, and the uniform ‘n’ all . . .” She sighed. “Just gets me all flustered. Cain’t really even say why.”

More proof that this was a dream. In Sutter’s forty years of police work—and forty years of obesity—no woman had ever voiced this cliche to him. And no woman this attractive had ever given him any kind of notice as overt as this. Still speechless, he felt his eyes struggle to stay in one place: her crotch, her tight belly, her bodacious breasts. Eventually the breasts won out as those dark pink jutting nipples bigger than silver dollars began to hypnotize him as surely as a mesmerist’s pendulum.

The voice oozed further. “Yeah, Mr. Chief. You fellas in uniform . . . ‘specially big, strong ones like you . . . git me so hot I cain’t rightly sit still. . . .”

Current as fierce as electricity speared through him when her hand—soft as a little bird but unduly hot—found his knee, then began to inch up higher on his leg. The humid night air hanging in the car drew the sweat out of her skin; soon her nakedness was shining, her breasts and belly aglaze. This pinpoint image of glimmering flesh, compounded by the sensation of her hand creeping toward his groin, made Chief Sutter feel as though his small and almost always flaccid penis had magically transformed into something the size and stiffness of a summer squash. It strained against his police trousers in an absolutely thrilling agony.