Long Holler Road - A Dark Southern Thriller (3 page)

  The story goes that after her oldest daughter was killed, she was afraid to let her other daughter outdoors again. She locked her in her room and brought her meals to her and even made her use a slop jar so she wouldn’t have to go to the out-house. The poor girl died about two years later of unknown causes. Then old Jenny really lost it, they say. The yarn was spun even further that the girl stood at her window so much, wishing she could go outside, that her  image was permanently frozen to the window panes.

  These were the simpletons and dullards I was forced to grow up around and that were allowed to breathe the same air I did. And Glenn, bless his heart, was one of them. At least at times he was. He wanted desperately to believe in ghosts and goblins.

  I knew better than to try and persuade Glenn that the sound we heard had not come from Jenny, so I didn’t waste my breath. As we were parting ways in front of the cemetery, a pick-up truck pulled out of the old dirt road that ran around behind the cemetery and turned onto Long Hollow Road and was coming toward us. We all jumped down the bank beside the road before the headlight beams were able to hit us. As soon as the truck had passed, we climbed back up the bank quickly to see if we could recognize whose truck it was, but it was impossible to tell from the fleeing tail lights.

  “That’s those fellows that were down in the field,” Glenn said. “We ought to go down there tomorrow and try to figure out what they was doin’.”

  “Well, if you really believe they were up to no good, we might just do

that. But I believe we’d be wastin’ valuable fishin’ time.” 

CHAPTER THREE

 
I had noticed the Catawba worms starting to appear about a week earlier, which meant they should be out in full force by now. It’s remarkable how nature provides. The Catawba trees grew right on the banks of Big Wills Creek. So all expert anglers like me and Glenn had to do was pluck them off the leaves and bait our hooks. There was nothing bluegills and big mouth bass liked better than big, juicy Catawba worms, and we aimed to have us a fish fry that evening.

  We had scrapped the idea about going down to the field behind the cemetery. Priorities change at the speed of light when you’re fourteen years old. We stopped at Aunt Lena’s store and bought us some fishing tackle. For somewhere around a dollar-fifty you could get the entire hook, line, sinker and float all bundled up in a neat little package. It was all wrapped around this little plastic do-dad that looked kind of like a toy ladder. We kept our poles stashed in a sink hole under some old drift wood that the creek had deposited there over the years when it flooded. If they weren’t there it was no big deal, because cane poles grew all along the creek bank, too. Another one of Mother Nature’s wonderful provisions.

  Our favorite fishing spot lately had been about a mile below the Long Hollow Road bridge, where the roots of an ancient sycamore tree had finally succumbed to years of erosion caused by the creek when it flooded. The tree had fallen across the water and created a natural dam. This made a nice little waterfall about six feet high. At the bottom of the falls was a big, deep hole where the water was still and smooth as glass and as blue as the ocean. Me and Glenn had named it, obviously, The Blue Hole.

  Just as we had climbed down to the bottom of the bank from the bridge, we saw Snake Williams leaning against a tree licking the paper on a cigarette he had just rolled. They had been making ready-rolls for about a hundred years but old Snake hadn’t caught on yet. Old Snake was as crazy as a shit-house rat and his family was as poor as Job’s turkey. He thought he was an Indian and probably did have a little Cherokee blood coursing through his veins. He was dark complected and had straight, shoulder length hair that was as black as a chunk of coal. He said he was a full-blooded Cherokee, but his brother, Frank, was only half. They had the same momma and daddy. I told you he was crazy.

  Snake started walking toward us, lighting his cigarette. If he had any of the inherent traits an Indian was supposed to have, stealth sure wasn’t one of them. He was tall and lanky and had big feet that turned out like a penguins. He was clumsy as an ox and it seemed like he had to really concentrate hard just to put one foot in front of the other. His shoulders were always stooped and his long arms hung down to his knees. His head would bob like a chicken’s each time he took a step. I don’t believe his family had been walking upright for more than a couple of generations.

  “Y’all hear about Auburn blockin’ them two kicks and a-beatin’ Alabama?” Snake asked, with a dull look on his face.

  “That was two years ago, Snake,” I answered, wishing he hadn’t seen us.

  “Well, I didn’t know zactly how long ago it was. I think I just heard about it the other day from Frank.”

  Snake could talk the horns off a billy goat and was not someone you needed around when you were about to do some serious fishing. I figured the best thing to do was just stand there for a few minutes and let him get it out of his system. Besides, I didn’t want anybody else to know about our secret fishing hole. Snake talked on for about ten minutes, mostly on subjects that made no sense at all or had happened a long time ago.

  “Well, I gotta git back towards the house, boys. Daddy wants me and Frank to sharpen them saws this evenin’ so’s they’ll be ready first thang in the mornin’. Hope y’all catch a big mess a fish.”

  We waited until Snake stomped up the bank and got out of sight before we started walking toward our fishing spot.

  “I feel sorry for ol’ Snake and all them Williams’, don’t you?” Glenn said as we were walking.

  “Yeah, well, I do in a way,” I answered. “His daddy brings a lot of their woes on himself, though. Every time he gets two nickels to rub together he spends it all on beer and whiskey. And poor old Annie ain’t able to work with that arthritis she has. She barely can get around some days. Old Hugh is just white trash and he always will be. Annie only stays drunk because she’s always in pain and probably down and out all the time because of her miserable life. I believe what’s wrong with Snake and Frank is that Annie drank the whole time she was pregnant with them. His sisters are normal. His oldest sister, Georgia, was a real beauty, remember? She was real smart in school, too. When she married that man from Atlanta, he footed the bill for her to go to college. She’s got a high payin’ job over there now. But they say her husband won’t allow her to send her momma and daddy any money because he says old Hugh would just drink it all up.”

  We crossed over the old rusty, barbed-wire fence that had served no purpose for years other than being an obstacle, and Glenn got his shirt tail caught on one of the barbs. It tore a small piece out and Glenn flew into cussing, “Shit fire to save matches. That’s nearly a new shirt!” His face was red as a beet.

  “I’ve seen that shirt on you a bunch of times,” I said.

  “Well, it still looks new. Or at least it did ‘til now.”

  That shirt he had on had probably belonged to Cob and been passed down to Glenn. Glenn’s last name was Burt, and Old Man Turner didn’t have anything on that Burt family when it came to being tight with money.

  After Glenn got over the devastation of the permanent damage his shirt had encountered, we began gathering Catawba worms and putting them in an old Maxwell House coffee can. We put two leaves off the Catawba trees in the can for provender and to try and re-create their natural habitat, as if two leaves in a tin can were going to accomplish this.

   After a few minutes of fishing, out of the clear blue, Glenn suddenly decided he just wasn’t in a fishing mood today.

  “Let’s go up to the old Horton place and see what that weird couple’s house looks like,” Glenn said.

  I looked at him like he had lost his mind. I had already pulled in a big bluegill that was as wide as both my hands put together.

  “The fish are bitin’,” I said, holding the bluegill up in front of his face as if he hadn’t already seen it.

  “I don’t wanna fish. That’s all we ever do besides coon hunt and go in a cave once in a while. Don’t you ever wanna do something a little more adventurous?”

  “Not when the damn fish are bitin’ I don’t! Besides, what’s so adventurous about goin’ to see somebody’s house?”

  “It ain’t just anybody’s house,” Glenn retorted. “It’s that couple that nobody ever sees out anywhere. The only person I know who’s seen ‘em is Marvin Taylor. He was with his momma at the A&P in Collinwood the other day and saw ‘em. He said his momma spoke to ‘em and they barely nodded. But he said the woman was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. Said she looked as good as Madge, but I don’t believe that. Ain’t nobody looks that good.”

  “Maybe they just like to be left alone,” I said.

  “I’ll bet you anything they’re hidin’ something. Why do you think they bought the Horton place and built their house so far up in the woods?”

  I knew nothing was going to please Glenn but to traipse through miles of thick woods and going to spy on some people who probably were not guilty of anything other than wanting their privacy. We stashed our fishing poles back in the little ditch and covered them back up. I turned the bluegill loose with great reluctance.

*****

  I hadn’t been through the thick woods leading up to the Horton place in a couple of years. Whoever the people were who had built their house back in these ridges wanted privacy, alright. The drive that led to their house was almost two miles long and was rough as a washboard. There were ruts and gullies all the way up to a heavy metal gate that had been installed about halfway up the drive. Glenn pointed to what looked like a camera of some kind. Then we noticed there was one on both sides mounted on top of the large brick columns that supported the gate. We steered clear of the road and continued up through the woods. They were almost impenetrable from the thick patches of blackberry and saw briars, as well as every species of vine imaginable, including poison ivy. I wasn’t affected by poison ivy but Glenn could just look at it and break out in red, itchy whelps.

  After we had walked maybe a half mile, we spotted something metallic looking up ahead. We could see the reflection of small slivers of sunlight that managed to penetrate the thick canopy of trees reflecting off whatever the contraption was. We were both almost worn out from struggling through the undergrowth. Each step took effort and my legs were full of briars. I was cursing myself for letting Glenn talk me into this fool’s errand.

  As we got closer, we saw that the metallic structure was a huge fence. It must have been fifteen feet high and looked like it ran on forever. The fence was galvanized, heavy gage chain link and had six strands of wire at the top that curved outward. I’d never seen wire like this before. It wasn’t barbed wire like a lot of fences I’d seen that were similar. The wire was flat and looked like ribbon with edges that looked sharp enough to cut you to shreds if you tried to climb over it. Glenn reached out to put his hand on the fence and I quickly slapped it away.

  “What if it’s electrified?” I whispered.

  Glenn shook his head, agreeing with me. We followed the fence in the opposite direction of where the house was to see how far it went. We must have walked a hundred yards before the fence made a ninety degree turn. It continued on for what looked like an eternity, deeper into the dense woods.

  “There ain’t no telling how much they spent on this thing,” I whispered.      “I told you they were hidin’ somethin’,” Glenn said with a know-it-all look on his face. I hated it when he was right.

  We followed the fence farther. I couldn’t fathom why anybody would need such an elaborate, impenetrable fortress unless they truly were trying to hide something. They sure didn’t go to this much trouble and expense to keep cows in. Glenn heard it before I did and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me deeper into the woods. It was the unmistakable sound of an automobile. We laid down flat on our stomachs, both of us behind a separate pine tree.

  Over a small hill, a car came into view. And not just any car, either. It looked brand new. A shiny cherry red car with a black convertible top. I couldn’t believe anybody would be driving a car like that through a field. Then I noticed the car was traveling at a fairly high rate of speed and wasn’t bouncing around like it should have been driving across rough terrain. The reason was that it was actually driving on smooth pavement. Why would anybody have a driveway that was in worse shape than a logging road and then put a newly paved road in the middle of nowhere? This was starting to get interesting and kind of scary. Glenn poked me and pointed at the car.

  “That’s a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass 442. That’s a bad-ass car,” he said, with a look of awe on his face.

  I had never been impressed by cars, which I know was odd for a teenage boy in the ’70’s. To me they were just another piece of machinery that served a purpose. No different than a tractor or hay baler. We watched as the car came to a stop. A man and woman got out and walked over to a huge limestone rock. The man looked around a few times, like a small animal wary of predators, then bent down beside the rock and started fumbling with something. Then the woman walked over to a small metal box that was mounted to an oak tree. She took what I assumed to be a key and unlocked a lid that covered the front of the box. She stood there for a minute, appearing to be holding down a button or lever. Then she walked back over to where the man was and they disappeared as if they had been swallowed up by the earth.