Migrators (22 page)

“People say believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear,” Buster said. He tilted his mug at Alan. “Quid pro quo.”

Alan covered his smile with his hand.
 

“Whether you believe in it or not,” Alan said. “Can you tell us what you’ve heard?”

Buster took another gulp.

“My cousin on my mother’s side was a curious boy. He pestered his ninth grade science teacher until the man explained how to combine saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. Next thing you know, my cousin was missing his right hand. He had to learn to beat off with the stump—he never could get a feel with his left hand. His father always blamed the science teacher. Gave him a little love tap in a parking lot with his Chevy and broke the teacher’s hip.”

“That’s charming, but we’re not children,” Alan said. “I have a boy myself. He’s not yet in high school. If there’s something living on my land, then I’d like to know what it is so I can keep him safe.”

Buster smiled and nodded. He turned to Bob. “Do you see that? He used my own logic against me. That’s pretty clever. But if you listen to my story, you’ll note that the science teacher paid a pretty heavy price too.”

“So you’re not going to tell us because you fear retribution?”

Buster wiped his face with his hand. As he scratched his neck, he gave another little burp and a look crossed his face. The look said he didn’t like what he tasted.

“Retribution,” Buster said. “Maybe a little fear is healthy.” Buster set down his mug and pushed his hands against his knees, stretching his shoulders and back.

Bob leaned forward. Alan took another sip of his laced coffee.

“Everything I’m about to say is pure conjecture and hearsay,” Buster said. “You have no business believing anything that’s about to come out of my mouth.”

“Fair enough,” Alan said.

X • X • X • X • X

“My father was a Jack of all trades,” Buster said. “Always used to tick him off that he was good at learning lots of new things, but never the best at anything. He cut wood for awhile, but Dickie and Vernon did it better. He trapped and tanned for awhile, but Donnie cleaned his clock at that. He couldn’t work a garden best, make a table best, nothing. He did all those things passably, but never enough to really make a living. We were always just scraping by.”

Buster stood so he could pour a little hot water from the teakettle into his mug. With just an inch of water in the bottom, Buster added a couple of inches of whiskey. He sat back down with another burp. With a practiced jerk, he pushed his torso back and the footrest popped out from under the recliner to support his feet.

“He knocked up Mom with six boys and one girl—finally something he did well. Paul was first. To hear Mom tell it, as soon as Paul could go half a day without shitting his pants, Dad had him out in the woods learning to harvest trees. Paul was only allowed to cut trees. He could chop them up for firewood or set them aside for lumber, but by Christ that’s all he was allowed to do. The old man didn’t let him bike, swim, fish, hunt, or nothing. Just dropping and dragging trees—that was Paul. You give Paul an axe and a draft horse and he would fill your shed with wood before dinner.”

Alan glanced at Bob and then up to the clock on the wall.
 

“Skip was the next boy born. He was allowed to mill, finish, and build. My brother Hooker was deemed the gardner. Gordie fished and trapped. Hubie fixed and drove anything mechanical. I was the hunter. I think he was saving that one for himself. After all the other boys were already entrenched in their duties, my old man was the hunter of the family. He only had to work a few months out of the year to fill up the freezer with meat, and his other boys did the rest.

“I came along after a bit of a break in the child bearing. When I was no more than three or four, Dad gave me my first twenty-two. I think maybe he hoped it would take the top of my head off, but it didn’t. By the time I was ten, I could shoot a barn cat from two-hundred yards.”

“Charming,” Alan said.

“The point is,” Buster said, “that us boys knew everything there was to know about our trade. We weren’t allowed any different. He pulled us out of school as soon as he could and he made us pull our own weight. By the time I learned to read, Paul had put Dickie and Vernon out of business. He cut wood ten months out of the year and split it and Hubie delivered. Paul was harvesting not just our lot, but half the goddamn woods in four towns. Of course, all the best trees went to Skip.”

Alan sat back in his chair. He gave up on learning anything useful, but the story was interesting enough to keep listening for a little while.

“Paul and Skip brought in most of the money, but Hooker, Gordie, and me kept the family fed. Hubie kept everything running. Without Hubie fixing the truck, the tractor, the boat, and making me parts for my guns, we all would have been sunk. Hubie didn’t get much love though. Everybody just took Hubie for granted. Together we made our own little self-sufficient village. Some people probably looked down on our shitty little house. We thought we were rich. There wasn’t anything we couldn’t build ourselves or find the money for if we wanted.

“That left Dad to go off and do whatever he pleased with his friends. They built that cabin over there on your road one summer, and they used to cook up liquor and get drunk pretty much every night. Mom didn’t seem to care, and none of us brothers did either. We’d learned all that we could from the old man.”

Bob freshened his coffee with another dollop of whiskey. Alan frowned into his own mug. He’d only drank about an inch before the mixture went cold and bitter.
 

“The point is, we became isolated experts,” Buster said. “After we graduated past what Dad could teach us, we learned the rest on our own. It was a point of pride. Even though Paul was more than ten years old than me, he wouldn’t have dared to tell me anything about hunting, and I wouldn’t have listened if he tried. Just the same as none of us would ever question what crops Hooker put in the ground each spring. That’s why it was so surprising when Paul pulled us all together one September.

“He said, ‘This year’s going to be different.’ You see, we all stopped everything outdoors in October. We’d spend nearly the whole month locked up inside, just eating our mother’s cooking and getting fat. It was no use trying to get anything done at all.”

“Why?” Bob asked.

Buster frowned.
 

“It was just the way it was. My father was raised to eat his peas with his knife. He made us do the same. I never thought to take a spoon or a fork to a helping of peas until I’d been living on my own for more than ten years. Same with October, I guess. Anyway, I never thought anything of it until that year that Paul called bullshit. He was trying to save up enough money to get a place of his own so he could propose to Debbie Pomroy. She had a taste for the finer things, and Paul knew he’d have to work straight through October to get his finances to an acceptable level.

“Turns out that my other brothers were feeling the same way. Everyone except Hubie had something they wanted to do outside in October and they wanted the moratorium on October work to end. Gordie was the only one of us who had any idea why we didn’t work in October, and he wasn’t talking. Paul got us together. We used to meet out in the horse stall when we’d have a conference. Dad bought that old horse to plow with, but he immediately started fighting with the horse and the fight turned into a blood feud. Paul took over the horse and used him to haul wood. Dad wouldn’t go near that horse stall so that’s where us boys would conference in private.

“So Paul and Skip got us together so we could all lean on Gordie. They said they wouldn’t give Hubie any money for gas if he kept fixing Gordie’s traps and reels. They blackmailed him indirectly, see. Gordie wouldn’t be able to work if Hubie didn’t support him. Gordie got pissed and finally spilled the beans. He told us about the migrators.”

Alan jerked upright and spilled some of his coffee on his shirt.

“Sorry,” Alan said as he wiped at the spill. “Go on.”

Buster studied Alan a second and then smiled. Buster continued.

“Gordie told us that there was these things that came out of the water. They move from west to east every October, coming up out of the ground and working their way towards the Kennebec river. Nobody was allowed to talk about them, because if you talked about them, they’d come to your house. According to Gordie, after he and Dad tangled with one, those migrators took the only girl baby that Mom ever had. It ate her skin and muscles right off of her crying body. It left just a rubbery skeleton full of organ meat by the side of the lake.”

“What?” Alan asked. “Come on.”

“I can’t say for sure because I didn’t bury her, but I do know that there was a headstone out back with the name Sophia Helen on it. I left flowers next to that headstone every October after I heard that story. Gordie said he had never gotten a really good look at one of the migrators, but he said that he would find fish remains, up and down the shore after Halloween. Gordie said that you couldn’t even see the migrators when they were awake. You could only spot them when they were asleep, and they only slept for about an hour a day. The rest of the time they would just blend into their surroundings and if they got ahold of you, there was no hope. That’s why we weren’t allowed to work outside in October.”

“What about other kids who went to school? How did they survive? Did the whole town shut down for an entire month? Is that even possible?” Alan asked.

“Nope, not the whole town. There was only a stretch where the migrators moved, and we just happened to be on that stretch. The migrators ran right through Dad’s land.”

“Where was this property?” Bob asked.

“I think you know,” Buster said. “You were hiking on part of it the other day.”

“You didn’t grow up in the house where I live, did you? The Colonel’s house?” Alan asked.

“No,” Buster said with a low chuckle. “That fancy place? Have you been listening to my story at all? We lived in a cobbled-together shit-hole. My childhood home burned down years ago. That cabin is the only thing left that my father ever had a hand in building. As far as I know, the migrators don’t get quite as far north as your place, but I’m pretty sure their route changes each year, so who knows.”

“So Gordie told you about the migrators,” Bob said.

“Yup, and it was the first time anyone had spoken of them at the house since my sister was taken. Gordie told us all he knew and then he told us we would all pay for making him tell. Of course, we didn’t believe it. Who would think that the simple act of telling a story could bring death to your door? But we were on their path and October was coming. I’ve thought about it a lot since then. Seems like maybe Gordie’s words hung in the air and left a scent. Maybe those slick bastards can track a scent like that back to its source. That’s the best explanation I can think of. There aren’t a lot of people left who I can compare notes with.”

“So what happened?” Alan asked.

Buster laughed.

X • X • X • X • X

“May I use your bathroom?” Bob asked.

“Down that way,” Buster said.

Bob left the room and Alan heard the door creak shut behind him.

“Do your brothers still live in the area?” Alan asked.

“Nope,” Buster said. “I was last in and I’ll be last out. They’ve all passed, but some of their kids still live pretty close. Skip’s son runs the lumber company that Skip built. He’s made a good run of it—built himself a little empire. Skip started that company with fifty bucks he borrowed from his wife, if you can believe that. He bought a little sawmill and went to town.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your brothers.”

“Don’t be,” Buster said. “Some of them lived a long time. After everything, we didn’t talk that much. I was closest to Paul in a lot of ways, and he’s been dead almost seven years now.”

Alan nodded. They heard the tail of the toilet’s flush when Bob opened the door down the hall.

“My brother Paul’s death, that was an interesting story too,” Buster said. “When Paul found out he had stomach cancer, he took one long look at what the future held and he decided he was done with it. His wife was living with their daughter to help out with the grandson. He’s special, the grandson is. So, with his wife out of the house and not much on speaking terms, and cancer ripping through his guts like wildfire—they say it runs in the family—Paul decided to pull his own lever. Quid pro quo.”

Alan looked at Bob. Bob was nodding.

“Paul had a screened in porch,” Buster said. “He went out there and put a shotgun in his mouth. I think he didn’t want to leave a mess inside, but he didn’t want to leave his body out where the animals would get at it. They said it looked like he’d been there a month before I found him.”

Alan winced and looked away. Bob was looking straight down into his cold cup of coffee.

“But that’s a different tale. I was about to tell you what happened to poor old Gordie,” Buster said. “We blackmailed him into telling us. Have either of you ever been to a hypnotist?”

Alan shook his head.

“No,” Bob said.

“They say a hypnotist can’t make you do anything you don’t really want to do. That’s the way I feel about Gordie talking about the migrators. On the one hand, he knew it was trouble. But there was something in his eyes—he wanted to tell that story. He wanted to unburden himself. He and Dad loaded that story onto their backs and carried it for all those years. He couldn’t give himself permission to let the story go, but as soon as everyone ganged up on him, it looked like the telling was a big relief.”

Buster settled deeper into his recliner, shooting his feet out a little farther down the footrest.

“Like I said, Dad took an interest in our education when we were just little tykes. For me, he gave me a gun and told me what to point it at. For Gordie, I suppose he showed him how to set a trap and bait a hook. Then he’d leave you alone until you had some reading under your belt. His next burst of instruction was intense. He’d give you a book or two so you could study up and then he’d just pour everything he knew into your little ear. God help you if you forgot one of his lessons by the next morning. You didn’t get many second chances without earning a spanking to go along with the second lesson. The boy was expected to listen and learn. You didn’t ask questions. You could just assume that Dad wouldn’t have an answer that could be heard, only felt.”