Bonegrinder (12 page)

“I’m suspicious of anyone who uses ‘superstition’ and ‘reason’ in the same sentence,” Kelly said.

Alan laughed, welding her body against his side with a spasmodic tension of his arm. The camera swung rhythmically on its strap against his chest. He knew he shouldn’t have brought Kelly with him to Borne’s death site, but he’d gone there on impulse after leaving the motel cabin. Kelly, more reluctant about this trip than he’d realized, was behaving unlike herself; he would have to be careful.

Ahead of them, above where the thick line of trees broke for the road’s passage, a hawk circled high in the darkening sky as if watching the road below. The hawk seemed to luxuriate in the rush of wind, disdaining the heat rising from the earth. Even from this distance Alan could see that since he’d been watching it, the soaring hawk hadn’t once beat its outstretched wings. As Alan felt a bead of perspiration roll down his back, he envied the hawk. Alan had always longed for freedom of a sort.

“Let’s go into Colver tonight,” he said to Kelly, “see if there’s a restaurant.”

“I don’t mind fixing us something in the cabin.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I thought we were counting pennies.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t spend a few. Anyway, I doubt if we’ll wander into the Ritz. We ought to be able to get a hamburger somewhere in town.”

After returning to their cabin Alan stood outside and waited while Kelly sat on the bed and picked burrs from her socks and denim pants legs. There was far from enough light now, but as he looked at the cabins he made up his mind to get some shots of the motel before they left. No two cabins were alike in detail, though they were all of the same basic design and obviously had been constructed at the same time. But they were old, and through the years each cabin had acquired a character of its own. A different-colored shingle had been used on one of the peaked roofs here, metal awnings had been added there, this cabin had been covered with asbestos siding, that one simply painted. On the steep roofs of some of the cabins, metal weather vanes turned slowly in the warm air as if seeking direction rather than pointing it out. And there was a kept-up but ramshackle air about all of the cabins. Native color, Alan thought, real native color.

Kelly came out of the cabin and shut the door firmly behind her, testing it to be sure the lock had caught. They got into their dusty white Volkswagen and headed for town.

Colver was less than they’d expected. The buildings were old, some of them dark red and dusty brick, but many of them frame and in need of paint, and some of the streets were unpaved. Alan dropped the Volkswagen into second and slowed to under twenty. He saw a small grocery store, a liquor store, a tavern … There were a few people on the streets. Two middle-aged men in bib overalls crossed in front of Alan with slow, hobbled gaits. He turned a corner, passed a general merchandise store, a sheriff’s office. When he’d driven a bit farther he came to a wood-fronted building with wide windows that were decorated with artificial ferns and marked by a wide, half-worn-away border design that looked like a decal. Turper’s Grill.

“Good enough for you?” Alan asked, pulling the Volkswagen to the side and braking.

“It looks cheap enough,” Kelly said, “and clean as we’re likely to find.”

Alan turned off the clattering engine. They left the windows down in the car and went inside.

Alan and Kelly took a booth along the wall and were served by a henna-haired waitress with a stiff but sincere smile. The place seemed clean enough, with rough-plastered walls and a scent of fried food that whetted the appetite. They soon found that Turper’s Grill served a better than passable hamburger and greasy but good French fries.

One other customer was in the restaurant, a lean old man seated at the counter sipping a cup of coffee. Occasionally he’d glance at them from the corner of his eye, and finally he turned on his stool to face them.

“You folks is new here?” His voice rose in question.

“Just arrived this afternoon,” Alan said, sprinkling salt on his French fries.

“Ain’t many comin’ to these parts now, what with Bonegrinder an’ all.”

“So I’ve been told. I find it hard to imagine so many people so scared.”

The old man had bright blue eyes that picked up the light. “Oh, you wouldn’t find it hard to believe if you was here, if you seen some of the things I seen.”

“Do you know a lot about it?” Kelly asked.

Stooped but nimble, the old man slipped from his stool and crossed the scuffed tile floor of the restaurant toward them. “I’m the man what found the body,” he said, “the first one was killed. An’ I seen the big print in the mud on the bank an’ reported it.” He pulled up a chair, sat at the end of the booth’s table. “Bonifield’s my name.”

As the old man talked, Alan could tell that Kelly was becoming more apprehensive. But Alan was becoming more interested. He was sure now that the reward would be worth the risk.

When Alan and Kelly left the restaurant, they saw a canvas-topped Jeep parked behind the Volkswagen and they stepped aside to make way for a tall, slender man who smoked a pipe and gave them a friendly smile and nod as he passed.

T
HE TALL MAN STANDING
inside the door to Wintone’s office said, “I’ve talked to Mr. Bonifield.”

“That’s some unusual,” Wintone said. “Mostly folks have to just listen.”

The man smiled. He was underweight but broad-shouldered, wearing faded tan slacks, scuffed boots made for hiking and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. There were marks on the bridge of his nose from the sunglasses now protruding from his shirt pocket. Wintone guessed him to be in his early forties.

“Mr. Bonifield said it would be all right to speak with you,” he said, advancing on Wintone’s desk with an easy, long stride. “Craig Holt’s my name. I’m from Rothkin University, and I’m with the U.S. Government Phenomena Study Group.”

Wintone shook Holt’s extended hand, noting a dry, extrafirm grip. “I can guess what phenomenon you’re here to study,” he said.

Holt smiled his easy smile. “I’m not really a scientist or a reporter, Sheriff Wintone, more an investigator and journalist. Primarily, I’m interested in folklore and its origins and effects.”

The swivel chair squealed as Wintone leaned back. “You look on Bonegrinder as folklore?”

“Future folklore. Unless, of course, some very common explanation is found for the killings and mutilations.” He gazed over Wintone’s head thoughtfully. “But maybe folklore even then. It might well depend on people’s needs.”

“It might at that,” Wintone agreed.

“In any event, right now I regard Bonegrinder as a burgeoning fear-figure of Ozark legend, and I’m interested. In time I think Bonegrinder might surpass Old Wall-eyes as a fearful legend. I suppose you’ve heard of Old Wall-eyes.”

“Most everyone in these parts has,” Wintone said. “He ran on the ground like a horse only faster, with teacup-size whirlin’ eyes an’ a mouth that got bigger the more he ate. An’ he could swallow a horse. My old grandfather used to tell me about him, about how once a fella had to keep tossin’ meat out of a wagon to slow him down, then finally had to toss out one of his children in order to beat Old Wall-eyes home. There’s a hundred different stories, but that don’t necessarily mean I believe in Old Wall-eyes. Even as a boy I never believed in him.”

“Most of those stories in one form or another appear in almost every culture in almost every corner of the world,” Holt said. “Not that they’re true, but they must have a common basis rooted deep in the human psyche.”

“You’re the expert,” Wintone said, with only the barest trace of skepticism.

“Tell me about this mysterious track discovered near the Larsen boy’s body.”

Holt had identified himself with the government. Wintone knew he had to cooperate with him and might as well do it as pleasantly and painlessly as possible. “I can show you a plaster cast I made,” he said, rising from behind his desk. Holt seemed rather surprised at the sheriff’s size when Wintone moved toward the filing cabinets. Wintone got out the mud-stained white cast and laid it on the desk corner.

Holt leaned over the plaster form and studied it intently, turning it to survey it from all angles. “Large …” he muttered, “very large….” He straightened and looked at Wintone. “Any ideas?”

Wintone chuckled and sat back down behind his desk. “Sure. Either it ain’t a real animal track, or it was made by somethin’ nobody’s ever seen.”

Holt jerked his head slightly and appeared startled. “Not a real track? Surely you don’t suspect …”

“I don’t suspect nothin’ yet,” Wintone said. “I don’t know, an’ possibly I never will. You get used to acceptin’ the fact there are things you don’t know about if you live in these parts, Mr. Holt.”

“And superstition creeps into the vacuum left by that lack of knowledge.”

“That’s true everywhere,” Wintone said, “even at Rothkin University.”

Holt grinned. He pulled a shallow-bowled pipe from a pocket of his corduroy pants and began packing it with tobacco from a leather pouch. Then he began tapping his pockets with his fingertips as if sending some sort of signal code. Wintone tossed him a book of matches from the desk top.

“Is it always so hot in this area?” Holt asked from behind the cloud of smoke he was creating as he sucked noisily on the pipe stem.

“Has been so far this summer,” Wintone said. He was surprised to find that the burning tobacco gave off a rather pleasant, sweet scent. “Farmers are worryin’ about their crops, what with the heat an’ lack of rain.”

“The drought was a contributing factor to the forest fire up north,” Holt said, tossing the book of matches back onto the desk. “Horrible.”

“There’s some around here would disagree with you.”

“Oh?” Holt removed the pipe from his mouth, pointing it stem first at Wintone as if indicating it was his turn to speak.

“Most of the tourist trade was burned out up there,” Wintone said. “Business around here was boomin’ for some time like it never has. The Bonegrinder thing seemed to help draw people to the area. Until Claude Borne was killed.”

“He was the farmer?”

Wintone nodded.

“How do you explain the sudden departure of tourism, then?”

“People got more scared than curious.”

Holt puffed on his pipe and nodded. “Succinct and accurate. Would it be possible, Sheriff, for me to see your files on the Bonegrinder deaths?”

Wintone tapped a boot toe lightly against a leg of his desk. Since Holt represented the federal government, the sheriff knew he probably had no choice but to open his files. Then, too, he didn’t see what harm it could do. “You want to look things over now?” he asked.

“A cursory look,” Holt said. “If you don’t mind, I might have to check for some detail or other at a later date.”

Wintone rose and went again to the file cabinets. He pulled out the Larsen and Borne files and set them on the table by the wall. Chair legs scraped on the hardwood floor as Holt pulled a chair over to the table, nodded his thanks and sat down to hunch over the files.

“What about the Jenkins death?” he asked.

Wintone got him that file, too.

“You never can tell where you’re going to find pertinent bits of information,” Holt said around his pipe stem.

Wintone sat at his desk and busied himself while Holt pored over the files for the next forty-five minutes. Holt barely moved in his chair except to lift his right hand to rearrange the files’ contents. The sweet scent of the pipe-tobacco smoke had lost its pleasantness and was beginning to wear on Wintone, to create a vague hint of nausea that came and went.

“The kind of folktale that persists,” Holt said absently, still examining the files, “is invariably rooted in our primal fear, our childhood fantasies, perhaps a certain consciousness that we are born with translated into fear.”

“You see that possibility in Bonegrinder?”

“Very strongly.” Holt turned in his chair to face Wintone. “A thing risen from the water, from whence we came, our primitive selves, our own primal past come to claim us. The elements are there.”

“Elements of what?”

“Elements of fear, in all of us. Our instinctive fears are the strongest. Creatures of ancient oral literature are found in various forms in our literature today, both written and oral, in our fears. To greater or lesser degrees, Sheriff, all of us are afraid of the dark.”

Holt turned back to the files. Wintone knew that he was right, but he didn’t have to be so damned enthusiastic about it.

“I’m surprised the government is interested in something like this,” Wintone said.

“They’re not.”

“You’re here,” Wintone said to Holt’s back.

“The government has much the same attitude toward my work that they have toward investigating UFOs or ESP. They feel an obligation, need someplace to channel crackpot stories and awkward questions so they won’t have to deal with them direct. So they created this scantily financed and loosely organized agency. It has a name and an office so people think that something is being accomplished, that someone cares.”

“Seems to me you care.”

“Oh, I do. The agency cares. But they don’t want the agency to find anything; not really. They simply want us to exist, and not rock the boat. We’re looking for the truth; they’ll settle for anything just barely possible so that the matter can be dismissed.”

Holt closed the last file folder, stood up from his chair. “You mind if I come back later and photograph these?” he asked, pointing to the files with his pipe stem. “It would save us both future bother.”

Wintone told himself that it didn’t matter. Practically everything in the files had found its way into the newspapers at one time or another. “Help yourself,” he said.

“Obliged.” Holt one-armed his wood chair to its previous position with another loud scraping sound. “I’m kind of curious about the conditions of the bodies. What do you remember about them?”

“They were badly tore up, each of them. The Larsen boy’s right leg was almost gone. Most of what I can remember of Claude Borne is blood, deep gashes across his body. You seen the autopsy reports in the files.”