The Backwoods

“Christ, I feel sorry for your husband, Patricia, ’cos you are one right pain in the ass when you drink.”

She barely heard him. She arched her back against the tree, elucidating her breasts, and next she actually caressed them in her hands. When she pliered the nipples between her fingers, she moaned out loud.

“You’re drunk,” he declared.

“I know, but so what?”

She slipped her shorts down to midthigh, then openly played a hand through her scarlet pubic hair.

Ernie gnawed his lip, then decided. “You’re all bark and no bite, Patricia. You got some midlife fucked-up city-chick thing goin’ on, like teasin’ it up with some redneck sucker who had a crush on you since junior high’s gonna show ya somethin’ about yourself you didn’t know. It’s just bullshit, and I ain’t buyin’ it, and even if you were game, all that’d do is make ya feel guilty in the morning ‘cos you’re fuckin’ married and you and I both know you ain’t gonna cheat on your husband. You might act like you’d cheat on him, but you ain’t gonna do it, so’s I’m wastin’ my damn time standin’ here like a fuckin’ idiot.”

Ernie turned around and walked back to the cookout.

The reality collided with her. She was almost in tears when she pulled her shorts up and got back into her blouse. She stumbled to the fringes of the gathering, finally letting some common sense reach through her drunkenness. I am really one screwed-up woman. It doesn’t have anything to do with my childhood, or the rape or my parents. It’s got nothing to do with Dr. Sallee or Byron or Ernie or anyone. It’s me, and I’ve got to get my act together, and I’ve got to start right now. . . .

The party was still in full swing as some of the older Squatters lit the great bonfire in the middle of the field. Patricia edged around the crowd, cloaking herself in shadows. She didn’t look to see where Ernie was and she felt too embarrassed to allow herself to be seen. After several deep breaths, she felt a little less drunk, and she walked back up the hill.

The only person who even noticed her leaving was Everd Stanherd himself, who was looking out from the trees he’d been hiding in. He watched her walk home.

“Maybe she can help us, like you said,” Marthe Stanherd remarked. She held her husband’s hand in the dark.

“Maybe, my love,” he replied in his strange, buoyant accent. “Or maybe I’m wrong about everything, and the great Lord God has deemed me unfit to be a seer even for myself. . . .”

(II)

Chief Sutter had felt not quite right all day. This morning, for instance, he’d wakened with a grand erection— rare for a man his age—but when he took a look at his wife snoring next to him, he realized he’d sooner attempt to copulate with a grounded manatee. The box of jelly-filled doughnuts he’d picked up for breakfast at the Qwik-Mart was stale. He’d had a headache and a half since morning, which turned into a headache and seven-eights by noon from the pollen and the heat. All kinds of shit was going down in his town, none of which Sutter could reckon, and the only thing he had to look forward to all day was the Squatter cookout, which had kicked off just fine, and then he got a call from Trey on the radio. Something happened at the station. Jesus.

“What are all the damn lights doin’ off?” were the first words to exit Sutter’s mouth when he came in.

Trey looked up from his desk with an expression like bewilderment. The younger man rubbed his face. “Things are startin’ to get really fucked-up ’round here, Chief. I don’t know where to start.”

Sutter looked at his watch, his patience ticking away with it. “Why’d you call me down here at midnight, Trey? And why’d you turn off the lights? Start talkin’. Now.”

“Ricky Caudill’s dead, Chief,” Trey blurted.

“Bullshit.” Sutter bulled past Trey’s desk to the cells. The only light that remained on was the hall light, which bled into Caudill’s unit. The cell door stood unlocked.

“Fuck!” Sutter shouted.

Eventually Trey came down the hall. He was edgy, fidgeting. “That’s how I found him, Chief. Looks like . . .”

Sutter was leaning over the cot. “It looks like all his blood’s gone is what‘choo were about to say.” The wizened face looked pale as old candle wax. There was no blood on the floor, none on Caudill’s clothes, no evidence of a wound. “It’s fuckin’ crazy,” Sutter murmured, staring.

Trey turned on the cell light. Sutter unbuttoned Cauldill’s shirt to reveal a sheet-white chest underscored with blue veins. The lack of color in the flesh made Ricky’s chest hairs look like jet-black wires. The nipples were purple. Sutter lifted up the arm that dangled off the cot, then pushed Caudill’s body on its side. “No lividity,” he said.

“What’s that, Chief?”

“We’ve seen corpses before, Trey. After they’re dead an hour or two, the blood settles to the low points a’ the body and turns blue. But not here. It’s impossible.”

“I know, Chief,” Trey agreed wearily. “Lotta impossible shit been goin’ on lately, and you know what folks’re sayin’.”

Sutter turned and bellowed, “I ain’t believin’ no shit about Everd Stanherd hexin’ people! Ain’t no reason for Everd to hex Ricky or Junior anyway!”

Trey shrugged where he stood. “There is if it was Ricky ‘n’ Junior who killed the Hilds and the Ealds.”

Sutter’s face was reddening. “Why would they do that? You’re sayin’ the Caudills were into selling crystal meth, too?”

“I don’t know, Chief. Gimme another explanation, then. Somebody killed Ricky in his cell, drained all his blood without spillin’ a drop? You tell me.”

“There ain’t no fuckin’ such thing as hexes ’n’ curses ’n’ magic! We’re cops, for God’s sake!” Sutter yelled. “You hear me?”

Trey waited through a moment of silence. “Roger that, Chief. I don’t believe the shit either, but then again . . . I don’t know what to make of any a’ this.”

“Did you call the coroner’s office?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Trey let out a breath at the same time he took an inadvertent glance at Ricky Caudill’s grub-white corpse. “This place is givin’ me the creeps, Chief. Let’s go back out front and talk.”

Sutter’s temper was ranging up and down. He didn’t like not knowing things, and right now the only thing he did know was that something was seriously offkilter. “Turn some fuckin’ lights on,” he griped in the station lobby. “It’s dark as a fuckin’ tomb in here.”

There was a click. Suddenly a cone of light blossomed at Chief Sutter’s very own desk. But Trey was standing beside him.

Then who the hell was sitting at Sutter’s desk?

“Good evening, Chief Sutter,” Gordon Felps greeted him. Only the bottom half of his face could be seen in the light. “We were going to talk to you eventually, but certain events have expedited that need.”

“Mr. Felps? What are you—”

“It’s best if we just begin as openly as possible,” the blond man said. “You are the law, after all. But sometimes the law is malleable, for the greater good. The Squatters, for instance.”

Confusion immediately swept Sutter. He looked to Trey, who remained standing beside him. “What’s going on, Trey?”

Trey sighed. “Chief, it’s like last week, when we shook down those shitheads in the Hummer. Common drug dealers. We fucked ‘em up and took their cash, and booted ’em out of town, right?”

The reference threw Sutter for a big loop. That had been private police business, the details of which he didn’t particularly want to admit in front of Felps or any citizen. “Trey, you better level with me about what’s goin’ on here.”

Trey nodded, crossing his arms. “That’s what I’m doin’, boss. And you are the boss; don’t get me wrong. We want you in with us.”

“I’m not likin’ the sound of this.”

Trey held up a finger to make a point. “Lemme put it this way. Those scumbags in the Hummer, okay? What