Long Holler Road - A Dark Southern Thriller (15 page)

  Ironically, it was Hugh Williams that had been one of the first to start stocking the pond with fish. Every time he or his boys would catch more than they could eat, which was often, they would turn the surplus loose in the rock quarry pond. Other people started doing the same thing and before long it was pretty well stocked, considering it had five acres of surface area and was over a hundred and twenty feet deep in many places. With the fecundity of most species of fish, even a pond with that much water would eventually become bountiful.

  It was a real challenge to try and catch some of the bigger bass and catfish because there was so much water and so many small fish and other things for them to feed on. But Glenn and me had discovered the summer before that the time to catch catfish was at night using chicken livers as bait. Fishing at night was also a good time to catch folks who were in search of the perfect place to make a stolen car disappear or to make their own car disappear to collect the insurance on it. Our pond had become famous for it because nobody was ever going to find a car or anything else in water that was over a hundred feet deep. The Bullards were some of the ones that were on the sheriff’s short list of having stolen cars and stripped them down of everything of value, then sending the frame to the murky depths of our quarry pond. On rare occasions, the cars would get hung up on one of the limestone ledges that jutted out just a few feet under the water and the cars had been retrieved by McAllen’s Wrecker Service. But there was never enough evidence to charge anyone with any crime, so they say.

  Snake had become mine and Glenn’s shadow since we had found the body of the girl. It was as if the poor girl nobody knew had cemented and made stronger the bond that had already existed between me, Glenn, Tom and Snake. He had gone from hanging out with us occasionally, to showing up every day. If we were doing chores, he’d help us. If we’d hired out to get in hay or hoe cotton, that was even better because he got paid for it. Nobody had ever had a problem hiring Snake, because he worked like a dog at the things he could do. But we had noticed a reluctance from some people to hire him lately from some people, probably as a result of all the foolish rumors that had been instigated by the Bullards.

  With Snake in tow, me and Glenn were out on our little flat bottom boat in the middle of the night trying to hook some of the giant catfish in the quarry pond. We had rigged a lantern holder out of a cedar sapling and attached it to the side of the boat and had our Coleman lantern burning brightly, trying to attract the whiskered lunkers. We had gone around the last couple of days bumming chicken livers from anyone that fried, baked or prepared a chicken in any way, or for that matter had a chicken die of old age or get hit by a car. We didn’t care what the cause of death was, we just wanted all the livers we could get our hands on without having to use our hard earned money to buy them from the store. We were having a pretty good night with eight on the stringer, two weighing over five pounds. I was trying to enjoy myself while staying in constant fear that all of Snake’s moving around, especially when he got excited, was going to turn our boat over. I had told him at least ten times to be careful. He’d apologize, stay still for a couple of minutes, then get caught up in a story or see one of our floats sink and damn near capsize us again. But what could I do? Hell, we had a bond now, remember?

  On a whim, which was the way we did most things, we decided to row completely to the other side and try our luck there, as if all the fish we’d caught had been bunched up in one immotile school and we had caught the last one. I could never help but wonder what it looked like down there where my baited hook was. What was the fish seeing and were there others watching, daring him to take a nibble? Or were they hoping he swam away so they could eat the delicious chicken liver or worm or cricket. What had they been eating until I came along? What about when they found out they were hooked and were being pulled out of the water. Did they think they were getting paid back evil for evil for trying to eat the poor, defenseless chicken liver? Or that maybe the chicken liver wasn’t so defenseless after all and had turned out to be just a bad-assed chicken liver that didn’t take no crap from a fish? Any reasoning, rational mind would ask the same questions.

  When we were almost to the center of the pond, I looked up at the sky. The sky was as clear as a bell and there was only a quarter moon, which made the billions of stars more visible. I knew that ancient astronomers and mariners had made shapes out of the stars and named them a long time ago, but I still enjoyed making my own. I was scanning the sky looking for the Big Dipper when I saw a big orange glow to the north, back in the direction of Long Hollow. In the direction of home. Sometimes on a clear night the lights of Fort Kane would light up the sky in that direction, but I had never seen it to this extent.

  I pointed to the glow and asked Glenn and Snake what they thought it might be.

  “I ain’t got no idea,” Snake said. He was having a good time fishing and could care less what was happening in the sky.

  “You remember when Joe Jenkins barn burned a couple of years ago?” Glenn asked, craning his neck to get a better look, “Damned if it don’t remind me of the way that made the sky look.”

  Glenn, realizing what he had just said, turned around to face me and see if I was thinking the same thing.

  “Somebody’s house or barn is on fire,” I exclaimed as an undisputed fact, and picked up my oar and started rowing. Glenn did the same and Snake just held on.

  A fire at night can be deceiving when viewed from a distance. It’s usually farther away than it appears. Once we were out of the water and back on higher ground, we could see that this one appeared close. We jumped in Roscoe’s old truck, which for all intents and purposes belonged to Glenn now, and started driving. Snake was more worried about making sure our fish were in the cooler and secure than some old fire that would probably turn out to be somebody burning a big brush pile or something. Snake had burned plenty of brush piles being in the pulp-wood business and had seen the sky aglow at night many times like this. He thought we were making too much of it and should have kept on fishing.

  We passed Mack Simpson’s house and knew we were getting close. Could it be J.F. Baxter’s house? We drove on and saw that Mr. Baxter’s house was also safe, but we had to be almost right on top of it. We could make out the smoke swirling around now. The smoke was circling around and looked a lot like the tornado that had come through three years earlier. It had to be just right up the road, maybe the next house……..  Panic gripped me and I felt like somebody had put their hands around my neck and was choking me. Snake was silent, hoping he was wrong and that it was the woods down in the pasture or something else close by.

  The driveway was blocked with cars that had driven there from nearby houses. A siren could be heard coming in the distance. It was the old fire engine from the volunteer fire department. The old fire engine only had a top speed of about 40 miles an hour. By the time you called in a fire and they had gathered up enough volunteers to man the engine, whatever you had was most likely gone, unless you had a really slow fire.

  The William’s house was completely engulfed in flames and the fire had even spread to the little well house that was about twenty feet off to the side. Snake didn’t utter a word to anybody, but just took off in a dead run toward the blazes.

  “Snake, come back here!” I yelled. “That house could collapse any minute.”

  Mack Simpson saw him out of the corner of his eye and just threw his wiry body in front of him, diving and cutting him off at the knees.

  Snake jumped up, addled but undeterred, and started toward the house again yelling, “Frank, Frank!!”

  I thought Snake was overreacting because Frank usually didn’t come in until bedtime, always out fishing, or hunting, or doing something. Even if he’d been home he would have seen the fire when it started and gotten out in plenty of time.

  “Snake, don’t get any closer,” I heard my daddy say.

  “Frank’s in there, Mr. George. I gotta git ’im out!” Snake cried hysterically.

  Just as Snake had gone as far as the heat from the flames would let him go and had turned around to escape the terrible heat, the house let out a whining moan as if it had finally given up the fight. The sound pierced the night air as the roof collapsed into the rest of the house forcing the front outside wall to fall outward and land almost directly on top of Snake.

  I ran as hard as I could, the heat from the flames almost unbearable, toward where Snake had fallen. Just as I reached him, someone grabbed me and at the same time got hold of Snake’s leg and drug us both away from the deadly flames that were what I imagined hell must be like. It was Daddy. Daddy was a fairly stout man anyway, but apparently adrenalin had taken over and given him the kind of strength I’d read about where somebody had a kid trapped under a car and had lifted it off him. Daddy had carried me under his left arm while dragging Snake with his right. I weighed about one-forty and Snake probably one-sixty. Daddy took off his shirt and started flailing away at Snake’s burning clothes, then rolled him over several times until the flame was extinguished.

  Snake lay on the ground, sobbing and trying to get back to his feet, but he was in too much pain. He kept calling Frank’s name and then, probably from shock, started calling for his Momma and Daddy. We loaded him up in Glenn’s brother, Cob’s, car. He had a hopped up Ford Mustang that was faster than a phone call and Daddy jumped in the back seat with them to rush Snake to the hospital at Fort Kane. One of Sheriff White’s deputies had arrived minutes before and he pulled out in front of them, siren wailing and lights flashing, giving them an escort. Cob passed the deputy less than a mile up Long Hollow road.

  It turned out that Frank had been in the house just like Snake was trying desperately to tell us. Not that it would have mattered. We couldn’t have gotten to him, and even if we could, he would have already been consumed by the horrific flames. It seems Frank had gone to bed early because he had hired out to help Otis Driskell in his sawmill the next morning.

  It didn’t take me long after the initial shock of the fire and trying to keep Snake from burning alive for me to come to what I believed to be a foregone conclusion. This fire and Frank’s death had the Bullard name written all over it.      

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I had attended almost as many funerals in the last six weeks than in my first fourteen years combined, and that was saying a lot considering how folks from Long Hollow, or anywhere in the south for that matter, love a good funeral. The burns Snake had gotten were not all that bad, though he was still wrapped up like a mummy at Frank’s funeral. Georgia had attended Frank’s funeral and had actually stayed a while this time, going to our house after it was over and eating with us and occasionally giving Snake a hug, forgetting about his burns. He would let out a muffled moan each time, trying his best to stifle it, because he craved the affection from the only family he had left. I guess her asshole of a husband didn’t feel that their money was at much risk anymore since Snake was the only one of the family left alive. There was still no one who knew anything about how to contact Virginia. I’m sure Georgia did, but she wasn’t telling.

  I had told Daddy, and he had in turn told Sheriff White, about the Bullard’s threats to run Snake and Frank off. Daddy had heard them too, as well as the sheriff, but you couldn’t arrest somebody for making threats or starting rumors. The special investigator from Montgomery had been to the scene twice and said that he wasn’t ruling arson out yet. He was supposed to come back again the next day and bring in another expert on accelerants. This guy had a dog that was supposed to be able to sniff them out. If the dog could sniff out lowlife, white trash, bastards that were good for nothing but stirring up trouble, it would make a beeline straight to the Bullard’s front door. The Bullards had been awful quiet since the fire according to Aunt Lena, who always had her finger on the pulse of the community, and to me that made them look even more suspicious.

*****

  Sheriff White was sitting at his desk looking over some papers that had to be served. Law suits, judgments, wage garnishments, the list went on and on. He was trying to divide them up as evenly as possible to distribute to his deputies to be served. The office was as quiet as an empty funeral parlor. Kate was out to lunch, most of the deputies were out and the ones that weren’t were hiding out somewhere. The phone rang and made him jump, almost spilling the coffee he’d just poured.

  “Sheriff’s Office,” he answered, clearing his throat. There was silence on the other end and just as he started to hang up, a muffled voice came across the line.

  “I have information on the fire at the William’s house,” the voice said.

  “Yes, ah….good, who’s this callin’?”

  “I know who’s responsible for settin’ the fire. If the investigator is lookin’ for signs of gasoline or diesel fuel he won’t find it. The accelerant was moonshine whiskey. Distilled locally at a still you probably know about, Sheriff.” It was unmistakably a woman’s voice.