Blood Kin (30 page)

“You do the best you can,” she said.

“Right.”

“He wants us to continue the bloodline because we have this power, to see things, to feel things. So maybe that makes us safe, at least for a little while. Safe enough maybe to do what we need to do.”

They got to Sadie’s house after sunset. They came in the back. It was quiet, with only the one lamp on in the kitchen. It looked like her mother hadn’t started supper, so maybe she was still over at Grandpa’s farm. Sadie started to go into the living room and stopped. It was dark in there, but she could see a shape sitting in the old soft chair by the window. The room stank heavily of what at first she thought was that Minard’s Rubbing Alcohol her grandpa used on his sore muscles, but then she realized it was something else. She turned around and grabbed the lantern off the table and motioned Mickey-Gene to join her as she entered the room. “Daddy?” she said. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

He blinked a couple of times, his face yellow from the lantern. He wore nothing but a stained undershirt and boxers. He raised the jar of moonshine to his lips and sipped, wincing, and then licked his lips. “Felt like it I reckon. Where you been? That the idjit with you?”

“Dont call him that.”

“You makin the rules now?”

“Where’s Momma?”

He jerked his head toward the bedroom door. “Missus Willis give her something to help her rest. Woman’s been through Hell this week.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

He shrugged. “She’s a strong gal. Why I married her.”

“Daddy, I need your rifle, and the pistol.”

“Hell you say. You’re just a kid.” His wide eyes with the black marbles inside looked scared, not angry. But Sadie didn’t need her eyes to tell her that — the fear rolled off him in waves.

“We’re going for the preacher. We need some protection.”

“Aint no job for the two of you!”

“Why, are
you
going after him?” He put the jar down on the table and stared off toward the corner as if seeking some kind of advice there. “Is that Lowell Jepson’s shine?”

“Might be.”

“I thought you hated him. Didn’t you figure he’d poisoned Jesse into doing what he done?”

“Well,
you
said it wasn’t him! So when we paid him to get me outta jail he offered me some and I cepted it.”

“So you believed me when I said it was the preacher?”

He turned his head and looked at her calmly. But he was forcing himself. He wasn’t calm at all. “I did. You
sense
things, I knowed that about you.”

“So you’re just going to sit here? You’re not going to help?”

He picked up the jar again and started drinking from it. Then he said, “I cant leave your ma. And you two are gonna get yourselves killed.”

“Well, if I
do
get killed you’re
forgiven
. And if I
dont
get killed you’re
not!
”

“Forgiven!”

“For what you wanted to do. For what you tried. For how you made me feel. You know what I’m talking about.”

He sat there and neither moved or said anything more. Sadie went into the closet and got out a couple of coats, the rifle and the pistol, and she and Mickey-Gene left.

Chapter Twenty-One

M
ICHAEL FELT A
peculiar resignation as they drove out of the hospital parking lot and through this flat and much sanitized version of Morrison. He supposed if you’d lived here a long time you became accustomed to gradual change, so you weren’t shocked if any individual piece was shuttered, torn down, wiped off the map. And he supposed some might appreciate the easy access to gas, cigarettes, and snacks, and the larger roads quickly connecting you to distant cities. He probably could even have gotten cell service here, had he not misplaced his phone weeks ago. But he’d forgotten, as he’d forgotten most things that told him he was a young guy with an exciting life ahead of him.

He didn’t want to be one of those who thought all change was a decline, but how could this simple layout of similar buildings be an improvement over the richly-detailed community of his grandmother’s memories?

The lane up to that old and largely forgotten world was steep, warped and cracked, with tall trees both shading and threatening the shoulders. When they emerged onto the old main street it was as if they’d risen from the ground. Both his grandparents fixed themselves to the window then, as if they’d never seen the town before. Michael couldn’t take his eyes off it either. It was a jolt to be yanked out of the bustling thirties of his grandmother’s stories and into this almost abandoned, ghostly remnant of worn down brick and plank. Besides all the commercial buildings that had been torn down, the school up on the hill, the park, the houses close to town, all were gone.

“Not much left,” his grandmother said. “The kids leave, the old folks die, and nobody comes back. Cept you Michael. You came back.”

He’d come back, yet he’d belonged here less than most. And when this was over, however it was over, he’d be leaving. He hadn’t realized that until this moment. He’d be getting on with the rest of his life.

His grandfather had been muttering since they’d left the hospital. For all the man’s obvious intelligence he had a kind of weariness, and a mild befuddlement, that muted his ability to be present in the world. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” he repeated softly and constantly to the window.

Grandma kept patting Grandpa’s leg. “It’s his Shakespeare,” she explained to Michael. “It makes him feel better.”

As they left the old town limits Michael noticed the dark clouds out over the farms and fields. Not weather, too low to be weather. There was an agitation in them like the wings of thousands of insects, or bats, or birds, their sharp wings beating at each other.

But then he rolled down his window and sniffed the air. Smoke. A lot of something was burning. The world was on fire, or at least the world surrounding the Gibson family home.

A short distance outside town they encountered the first signs of what the kudzu had become. This area was, or had been, the Simpson farm owned by Michael’s great-great-grandfather, a series of greats that might have relegated the man to some sort of genealogical dustbin, but because of Sadie’s stories he was more vivid to Michael than his own father.

The white farmhouse had been torn down before Michael had lived with his grandmother as a child, but the red barn was still there, sold and resold over the years and used to store everything from hay to tobacco to antiques. It wasn’t precisely red anymore, more a grayish color with brown rubbed on to it, but it was still large and still standing.

And now featured a great, flowing green wig, the ends of which dangled like bouncing curls in the wind, giving the illusion that the whole building was shaking nervously. As he drove slowly past Michael could see that the runners came together at the base to form a series of thick, parallel trunks that ran along the ground and disappeared under the barbed-wire fence, wandering off through the fields and occasionally resurfacing.

“Creeps, creeps,” his grandfather muttered.

They travelled a little further down a series of sharp switchbacks that didn’t allow a view of what lay ahead, until the last bend pointed them toward the Gibson home place again, and the giant green shapes walking across the road, towering above the fields, escaping toward some distant ridge.

“It’s covered danged near everything,” his grandmother said.

“This petty, petty pace,” his grandfather said faintly.

The trees, the low hills, a few buildings were layered and mounded with the complex green leaves and runners of kudzu, the breeze making them shimmer and wave. Michael knew that the shapes he saw had little to do with the overgrown objects at the center of them — it was like interpreting the shapes in clouds. Still, some of them looked so specific, and nightmarish, it was hard to believe that some intelligence hadn’t played a part. Growth in the image of a giant warrior fallen, arms flailing, blocked the lane. A grizzled old man in an orange road crew vest stood in front of the kudzu, waving.

“From day to day to day,” Grandpa said.

“You cant get through here!” The old man waved his arms in the air, looking angry about the news he had to deliver. He approached the driver’s side window, peered inside. “Oh, hey Mizz Gibson.”

“Howdy, Tommy. How bad?”

“Afraid it’s like this the next mile, nothing but this crappy vine. With this here truck you can go off cross that field there, about a mile, then straight again. Just watch for the ditch on that far side. There’s a path, but you have to look for it. And
be careful
where they’re burnin! Some of these idjits dont know what they’re doin! Gonna burn down half the county afore it’s over!”

Michael got stuck a little when he first entered the field, but alternating forward and reverse a few times rocked him out of it. As he skirted the farthest reaches of the kudzu a wind-driven reach of the vine tried to snag him.

“To the last, the last,” his grandfather wheezed.

They got back on to another dirt road that would join the one they’d had to detour off of. The fields here were burning, caught fire no doubt from the green figures erupting nearby. Several men in coveralls appeared to be both fighting the blaze and igniting more. Michael wanted to drive as fast as possible past the burning areas but the road was too rutted and uneven — if he wasn’t careful he’d send them into a ditch.

A wall of flame rose behind the men, turning them into black silhouettes. He saw their arms go up, their legs moving as if they were dancing, but the joints too limber and improbably hinged, like marionettes. Igniting kudzu rose behind the flames and curled over, becoming burning streamers as they dropped toward the men.

At the last moment they danced out of the way but other runners on both sides were catching fire, hissing like vipers as the plants rose on the hot currents of air.

“Syl... syllable of recorded time.” His grandfather was gasping and coughing now from the thick smoke, the stench of pulpy, burning vegetable matter. Michael recklessly pushed on the gas pedal, anxious especially to get his grandparents out of this.

They swung back onto the better paved road on the other side of the huge green figures, now bending, struggling to stay upright.

“... all our yesterdays have... have lighted fools,” his grandfather continued, “the way to dusty death.”

“So is his Bible in the crate?” Michael asked them. “That’s why it’s all bound up, strapped in iron?”

“Out, out, brief candle!” his grandfather suddenly shouted. “Life’s but a walking shadow!”

“No, honey,” she replied. “
He’s
in the crate.”

“He?”

“The preacher. And now that bastard’s waking up!”

“... poor player that struts and frets...”

The overgrowth of kudzu had completely altered the landscape and Michael was quickly getting disoriented. The pavement had disappeared under a scatter of broken leaves and stems. Something had gone through here and ripped everything apart.

Something metal struck the left front fender with a loud clang followed by a terrible ripping sound. The truck rose up a little in front then slammed down.

“... and then is heard no more...”

“Stop here!” Grandma cried. But they were already stopped. They all stepped out of the truck. Michael crouched down near the left front wheel well. A heavily rusted metal post had gouged the fender, then fragmented into several pieces. Underneath it lay a corroded “Bird Sanctuary” sign.

“You aint the first,” Grandma said. “They put it up in the Fifties, because we had so many damn birds! Nuisances, a lot of them. Then it started a few years ago — ever vehicle going by hit that sign, didn’t matter where they were in the road they always managed to find it. Sign snapped off eventually, just leaving the post. The birds went away long time ago. You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence, the preacher being right there out in that field and all!”

She stepped over several thick kudzu runners and began wading through the stuff into the field. Michael picked up the longest section of the metal post and looked at it. Instead of snapping it had twisted and sheared along the rust lines leaving knife-like ends. He’d already cut his hand on one edge. He stuck it into his belt loop like a kid’s pretend double-ended sword, the kind of toy some reckless kids never survived. Well, he’d
been
a reckless kid. It looked silly, but they might need it.

“Told by an idiot, told by an idiot,” his grandfather muttered, and they both ran after her.

They followed her through torn apart vines and a choking cloud of green, finally joining her by the ruins of a shed. The filthy crate had been pulled out into the field and split apart. Inside were the skeletons of numerous snakes and nothing more.

“They were his’n,” Sadie said, “so we put them in there with him. We best get to the house now.”

“Why?”

“I hid his special Bible in there. He’ll be wanting it.”

His grandfather said, “The sound
and
the fury. Where’d you hide it?”

“Tell you true, I have no idear. It was a long time ago, and I aint bothered with it since then.”