M.C. Higgins, the Great (21 page)

“You want to swing on the vines?” M.C. asked her.

“Yes—no.”

“You scared?”

“What if I fall?” she said.

“If you do, you can’t get hurt.”

“Maybe you can’t get hurt,” she said, and then: “What’s over there?”

“Kill’s Mound. All the Killburns.”

Lurhetta took it all in—the ancient trees, the stream, the mist and Ben, swinging in and out of it. It was then she saw the bridge.

“Hey, where you going?” M.C. said, as she turned and headed along the edge of the ravine.

“Watch it, my traps are in the weeds.”

She stopped still when she heard something thumping down in the ginseng weed.

“Quiet,” M.C. said, coming up to her. “We don’t want to scare him to death.” He stamped down the weeds around the middle trap. Inside was the rabbit racing frantically, its hind legs slipping and sliding, going nowhere.

“Hey there,” M.C. said, “you’re a big one.” Opening the trap, he grabbed the rabbit’s hindquarters and dragged it out.

“It might be better to scare it to death than to murder it,” Lurhetta said. She walked quickly away through the weeds.

Where’s she going now?

M.C. sighed and followed, clasping the rabbit by just its ears.

Lurhetta stood by the post of the bridge. She grasped the guide vine as she carefully stepped to the front of the span.

“Will it hold me?”

“It’ll hold more than ten people at once,” he said. He explained how he had planned it himself.

“Really?” she said.

“Sure. These old vines are stronger than anything.”

Holding tight to the side of the bridge, she inched along until she was halfway across. The bridge began to swing ever so gently. M.C. planted his feet wide apart to make it move more, until it was going with nearly a sweeping motion. Thirty feet below was the bottom of the ravine with its sink holes and muddy riverbed. Moisture dripped steadily from the trees, with the sound and touch of magic. M.C. could feel a damp breeze as the bridge swept through the air.

“Don’t!” Lurhetta said. “Please!”

“What’s the matter? It’s fun.”

“I said stop!”

So he stood there, not moving till the swaying stopped. He watched her and felt the rabbit twitch in his hand. Ben came up from the ravine at the other end of the bridge. He waited for them there, alert and smiling, his arms wrapped around a bridge post.

The rabbit suddenly started a frantic running, its hindquarters working against M.C.’s leg, but to no avail. M.C. held it expertly.

Softly, Lurhetta said, “Let it go.”

“Hey, come on, this rabbit’s for food,” M.C. said.

“You’re hurting it,” she said.

Oh, man. “Hey, you know, I don’t have my knife with me,” he said. He had forgotten it in his
rush out of the house.

“I have mine,” she said.

He reached out and automatically, she took her knife and handed it over before she thought.

Casually, M.C. made a swift motion with the knife. It all happened so fast. There was no sound, no movement from the rabbit for a second before it seemed to arch its back and let its hind legs hang farther down. M.C. had dug deep and slit its throat. Thick, dark blood swelled out and overflowed from the furry neck.

He held the rabbit out over the side of the bridge. Only a few red drops had fallen on the lattice-weave of vines. He let the rabbit bleed there until its life had drained away.

“You had to go use my knife—that’s awful,” Lurhetta said. Still, she couldn’t help watching.

“What’d you think I was going to do with it?” M.C. said. He glanced at her. “It’s just rabbit for food, like chicken is for food—you going to be sick? Then I’d better not gut it and skin it because that really is messy.”

“One minute, it’s alive and the next . . . you got my knife all bloody,” she said.

M.C. looked at the knife where blood streaks clung to the steel. He glanced over at Ben, who watched his every move. He took the knife blade between his finger and thumb and called softly to Ben, “Coming at you.”

Ben had time to duck away as the knife whizzed through the air and hit the post. It struck and trembled on its point a moment before it fell from the wood. Ben scrambled for the knife, found it and headed for the stream to clean it.

“You could have hit him!” she said, shocked at the force and speed with which M.C. had flung the knife.

“Ben knows what I’m doing almost as soon as I do,” M.C. said. “He knows how to move on a pinhead, just like I do.” He spoke as quietly as he could. And keeping his eye on the far end of the bridge, he made certain no Killburn materialized there.

“We’re close to the Mound,” he told Lurhetta. “Talk low.”

“Up there,” she said.

He nodded.

“Are you scared?” she asked.

“No,” M.C. said.

“Then prove it.” Very carefully, she walked along the bridge to the post where Ben had been.

“Come on back!” M.C. called softly. But she wouldn’t. He laid the rabbit out on the bridge. Ben came up the ravine.

“It’s all clean,” Ben told Lurhetta, handing the knife to her.

“Thanks,” she said, putting the knife through the loops on her belt. “You’re Ben. I’m Lurhetta. We never even said hello back there.”

“Hi,” Ben said shyly, looking from her to M.C., who was coming on reluctantly.

“Please to meet you, Ben,” she said, smiling at him. Ben broke into a grin, clearly pleased to be there with her and M.C. Happily, he looked from one to the other—if M.C. wanted the girl with them, it was fine with him.

“Hot,” she said. “I sure am thirsty.” Glancing up toward the Mound. They watched her as she wiped her palm over her face. “You think I could have some water?” she said to Ben.

A caution of silence in which the three of them seemed frozen separately. M.C. examined the fingers of one hand, pulling the knuckles and cracking them. Anxiously, Ben watched M.C.

“Drink from the stream,” M.C. said finally. “It’s fresh and cold as anything.”

“No sir,” she said, “I’m not going down there in all that quicksand.”

“There’s no quicksand down there,” M.C. said. “Just some wet and some fog.”

“You never know,” she said lightly. “I might go down there and be lost forever.” She winked at Ben. But so used to taking his cue from M.C, he didn’t know what to do.

“Can I please get a drink?” she asked. Ben’s pale face turned red. Hopelessly trapped, he could do nothing more than hang his head and wait for M.C.

M.C. sighed. What could you do with a girl like her, who didn’t know enough to even be afraid?

At last he said, “Let her have the water. But bring her right back—is your father at home?”

“He’s at home,” Ben said, “working in the fields.”

Oh, man. “Well, you all come right back, you hear?” M.C. told them.

“Aren’t you coming, too?” Lurhetta said. She smirked at him. He knew the look.

Prove it.

“M.C, the Great,” she said.

Swaying back and forth, holding on to the side of the bridge. A pretty thing. Just as slim.

“Come on, M.C. I’ve been to your house. Now I want to go over to your
friend’s
house.”

A threat. A forcing. M.C. understood the kind of nerve she had. And without another word, he began walking up toward the Mound.

Little Ben seemed to be everywhere at once. All around them. “You really coming over, M.C.?”

“Act like I never want to come over,” M.C. murmured. “Mostly, I don’t have a minute to spare. But today I’ve got the time.” Not allowing himself to think or to fear, he almost believed what he was saying.

Ben led the way, with Lurhetta behind him and in front of M.C. They were at the foot of the Mound on a stepped path cut out of rock. The strata of rock were worn smooth from years of barefoot climbing and descending, of running children, of sitting and playing. Wind and rain, sun, had given the path a patina neither man-hewn nor natural. Shiny smooth, it existed in neither the past or the present. So that walking on it now, they were neither here nor there, but perhaps heading toward some unknown future.

Something about tall white pine trees forming an entrance grove, a semicircle of evergreens on each side of the path. Entering the Mound, the three of them became aware of their place in the mood around them. They were made less self-conscious among trees whose height alone caused them to reach out and upward, away from themselves. It didn’t seem odd that Ben reached out to pat a pale pine trunk, sliding his six fingers along its rough bark. Lurhetta patted the tree, not to imitate Ben, but because it seemed natural to do so. Without hesitation, M.C. did the same and with the same result. He felt he’d introduced himself to a being he hadn’t the sense to greet before.

They were on the Mound. It was a place unexpected and out of tune with the hills. Lower than the plateau but higher than the ravine, it was a valley reach of land unmarred by a single curve, jagged boulder or coal seam. It was a fifteen-acre Midwestern plain perhaps transported by Killburn magic to the top of the Mound. An unbeatable square saved from being a burning, dull landscape by the straight thread of a wide stream that dissected it, fed it from underground springs and in the past had made its soil rich and black. To come upon such flatland without a single tree on it in the midst of the hills was a surprise in itself. But ahead of them was the weirdest sight. M.C. had seen it a few times in his life, he couldn’t recall where or when. But it was familiar. He turned to Ben. Ben raised his hand, those witchy fingers, motioning M.C. to stay still. Lurhetta was completely absorbed. M.C. knew she’d never seen anything like it before.

A snake rolling away from them down a runner bean row. They must have scared it coming off the path. It had taken its tail in its mouth and run off like a hoop. Grinning, Ben sidled up to it, careful not to step on any runners. He stuck his arm through the circle the snake made and lifted it, a dark wheel, still turning. He held the hoop up for them to see. Then he swirled it around and around his wrist. He let it fly; in midair, it snapped open and straightened like a stick.

Was it a stick by magic?

Falling, hitting the ground, it hooped again and rolled and rolled until it felt safe and hid.

“What in the world—!” Lurhetta said.

“Just a hoop snake,” Ben said, coming back to where they stood. “We have hoop snakes and milk snakes, garter snakes, green-grass snakes and some copperheads. Only the copperheads will kill you. Daddy don’t mind the copperheads but he’s been hating the green-grass snakes for longer than a month. The milk snake will steal the cow’s milk, but we don’t have a cow.”

“You mean your father likes them?” Lurhetta said.

“He feeds them,” Ben said. “He sets out milk for the milk snakes just to see them slither. He lets the garters sun and have their babies on the cement of the icehouse step and feed off the gardens. He don’t mind any kind of snake, can handle them like they were puppies. Copperheads, he talks to and if they don’t listen right, he grinds their heads into the ground.”

Uneasily, M.C. laughed. “How come he fell out with the green-grass snakes?” he asked.

“They did something wrong, most likely,” Ben said. “Probably made up with them now, though.”

“Whew!” M.C. said.

“Anyhow, from here,” Ben said, “we have to climb up and over. Nobody’s supposed to walk in the gardens unless they mean to work or to go inside.”

The houses of the Mound were grouped together to one side, a short distance away. Surrounded by outbuildings, every inch of space between the buildings was planted with crops. No yards, no dried, caked earth swept clean as were the yards of many hill houses. Up to the porches and foundations of piled stones, every foot of ground was taken up by tomatoes or potatoes. Runner beans, beets, lettuce and peas. Even in the hot darkness under the houses grew ghostly spreads of mushrooms. The trouble was, none of the vegetables looked healthy. Some had a blight of rust eating at the leaves. And others were being attacked by a black and white mold similar to mildew.

“Follow close,” Ben told Lurhetta. “Keep careful lookout for creatures if you not used to slithery things.”

At the thought of snakes, Lurhetta nearly walked on his heels.

“If I see one, I’m going to crush it,” she said.

“Better not,” M.C. told her. “Might be one of Mr. Killburn’s friends.”

They skirted the fields to a point very near the banks of the stream. Here there was an implanted space along the bank where they could walk inland toward the houses. They went slowly. Ben had cut his pace as if knowing Lurhetta and M.C., also, would need time to take in the view.

For the Killburn houses, sheds and barns were grouped to form an enclosure. This compound was in no way extraordinary to look at, at first sight. The sheds and barns were weathered silver, sagging and almost shapeless. The houses were not the unpainted crate construction of most hill houses, but on the order of rambling, frame farmhouses. They had been added onto at the rear each time a child was born; and they had been painted once, all the same color. A dark, deep brown trimmed in blue. There was still a thin covering of paint on the houses, although they hadn’t been retouched in years.

So that what happened right before M.C.’s eyes was that the enclosure of chocolate and silver sheds and barns took on the appearance of a fairyland. Carved out of dark soil and bold, blue sky, it looked unearthly all of a sudden, and slightly sinister.

There were men and women scattered over the land, working at hoeing and picking, and dropping vegetables into bushel baskets. At least four were bent to the task within the enclosure where row upon row of plants took the place of what would have been one large common yard. Every so often a figure would appear at the side of one of the houses, walk into the fields or disappear inside a house. M.C. found it hard to tell which figures were men and which were women, for all wore overalls of the bib kind with straps at the shoulders. But it wasn’t long before he discovered that those wearing bright blue overalls with dazzling white stitching were men. And that those wearing faded overalls were women, having obtained their outfits second-hand from the men. He had a vague memory that this arrangement was thought practical and had always been so. Many of the figures wore coverings on their heads against the fierce sun, but the men wore oddly shaped hats of a kind he’d not seen before.