Moonweavers (18 page)

             
                                         
13

Patty pulled into the parking lot of Aunt Shirley
’s bar and grill two minutes before her shift start.  The gravel dust from the parking lot followed her in the door.  Like normal all the regulars said “Hi,” as her and the cloud of smoke entered the establishment.  It was extremely dry this year and the gravel parking lot caked over everything.  Patty hurried and put her apron on and started to deliver the food to the customers as Shirley took it off the grill.  It was all busy at Shirley’s during lunch hour, but today was extremely busy.  There wasn’t a chair to sit in.  All the tables were full and all the customers were hustling in and out, getting their lunch for the lunch hour before they were late for their jobs.  Patty’s main duties were on the customers on the floor.  When she wasn’t delivering the plates of food, she was filling up their glasses with soda or the coffee they needed.  Any beverages they required.  They were amazed at how quickly she could dish out all that food.  She remembers when she first started working for Aunt Shirley, that she was slower than this, amazed at how fast she could really do it now.  She knew almost everybody’s name in the bar and greeted them so, making them feel right at home.  Shirley wished that she could keep Patty full time at the bar, because she did know everybody and everybody knew her and liked her and she liked them.  Sure, when they tipped a little too many pints, they got a little grabby, but most of them were really friendly.  She was almost on cloud nine, thinking about Frank at home.  It was always pretty lonely out on the ranch since her mom died.  I mean, sure, she had the animals, but it isn’t the same as human companionship.  The nights got awfully lonely and cold.  For a long time this bar is all she had and then she just stopped working when her mom died.  She couldn’t stay down here and work.  She had to take care of all those animals.  But with Frank around, it gave her more time to find other ways of making ends meet.  The meat prices were so low and she didn’t have that much cattle or pork or anything to really survive on.  She needed this job.  She wondered how her mom even survived, but they never did without.  Her mom always managed to figure it out and put food on the table and presents at Christmas and birthdays.  She was a good mother.  She also knew that Aunt Shirley would loan her the money if she needed it.  She just hated to ask.  She knew Aunt Shirley was just skimping by too, with all the high liquor licensing, maintenance on the bar and inventory to supply the customers with, she barely made it as well.  But she would loan her the money if she needed to.  Aunt Shirley would do without for little Patty.  She was her only niece, for goodness sakes.  Shirley just wished she could do more.  It was Wednesday.  Aunt Shirley always got her hair done on Wednesday after the rush was done, which was good because it was extra money for Patty.  Like she suspected, as soon as the rush was over, Shirley told her she would have to watch the bar while she went to town to get her hair done.  Patty just smiled.  She loved Aunt Shirley’s beehive.  It was what made her, her.  It was unique these days.  It fit her well because she was a unique person.  Patty also knew that Aunt Shirley thought those moments were precious.  It was like a ball and chain, this bar and her.  She skipped out every chance she could get.  ‘And why shouldn’t she?’ Patty thought.  About that time,  Shirley hit the door running and Patty moseyed on up to the bar where all the regulars hung out.  There they were, Dan, Joe and four others and over at the table were a couple making out and dancing to the jukebox.  Dan ordered another round for the boys and he said, “Get you one too after you get off your shift, hon.”  Patty appreciated it.  She just might do that she said.  After Joe takes a nice long pull off of his frosty mug of draft beer, he wipes his face from the foam and gives out a satisfied, ‘Ah,’ then went on to say, “I haven’t seen this many cops around here in, well, never.”  Dan agrees quickly then says, “Even when they had that train wreck out east down by the river, there wasn’t this many cops and that had hazardous waste on it.  I ain’t sure what happened last night, but it had to not be good, I know that.”

“
Hell, no one knows,” one of the men reply.  “All the news says is there are a whole bunch of people missing out of that suburb yonder.”

“
Yea, Summer Breeze or some shit like that,” another customer says.  “They been putting them damn suburbs up quicker than a blink of an eye anymore.  They are scattered all over the place now.  Heck, just a few years back, there was nothing out there but farmland.  Old man Creedy had to make a fortune whenever he was alive, selling all that property to them.”

The old man Dan, looks him in the eye and laughs. 
“Hell, I remember, in just a blink of an eye, you were nothing but farmland.”  He takes a drink from his bottle.  “Any of ya up here at this bar, for that matter.  Heck, your property there, Patty, that ain’t been up twenty years either.”

“
Yea, but mom had a trailer there for a real long time.”

“
True, true,” Dan replies.  “Even when your mom and Aunt Shirley lived in town, they would come up that way and play at night.  I could hear them hooting and hollering down there by campfire when they were teenagers.  Boy, them two were wild girls.  They had little coads like they were going out to watch corn grow and camp out up there on that ridge for days.  Oh, that reminds me, I want to give you this.”  He reaches into his flannel pocket and pulls out a card and slides it on the bar toward Patty.  As Patty picks it up, Dan says, “I got a nephew who is back from college.  He started this Adams County Paranorma thingl…well, here it is.”

Patty reads the card.  It says,
‘Adams County Paranormal Society’. 

“
He started the group and then had to leave,” Dan said.  “His name is Billy Smith.  He might be able to take care of your little ghost problem, if there is one.”

“
Wouldn’t that be cool if he could get a hold of my mom?”  Patty replied.

“
The way that Billy always went on about it, he said there is something to it.”

“
Oh, seeing is believing,”  says Joe at the other end of the bar.  “And I ain’t never seen one.”
“Well if there was, it would be around that damn mountain,”  Dan replied.  “What I saw up there scared the shit out of me and it weren’t no ghost.  But if something like that can exist, then anything can.”  Dan wipes the sweat off his brow just thinking about the bigfoot and takes an even longer pull of his bottle of booze.

“
Joe said that they were right down the road from him,” said another male customer in the bar.  They all look at Joe.

Joe says,
“Yea, I seen the lights all night long from the porch.  I went down there in the truck, but they wouldn’t let me in.  It was closed off for a long time.  I just backed it up and went down the side of the road around all the cars and come back real quick.  It had to happen way before that though.  I could see their flashlights too, going all through the woods towards that mountain over there.”  He looks out the window to the south next to the door, then points to the mountain beyond it.  “I knew it had to be an accident.  It was right on the road.  I never knew nothing about that suburb though.  I had the tv blasting with some western, so I couldn’t hear nothing anyway.  I tell ya, damn, that suburb had a lot of houses in it.”

“
The news was saying there was like a hundred of them,”  Patty says quickly.  She gets busy getting the boys more booze, when one of them raise a buck in the air.

The couple back by the jukebox are getting a little more hands on now as the man leans her up against the pinball machine in the corner.  thay hears her giggle over the jukebox.  To try and keep them from going a little bit to far, Patty asks them if they need another round.  They both look over and nod in agreement and go quickly back to making out.  As it starts to kick and light up, the blinks interrupt the shadows of the dark corner in between the strobes from the slow pulse of the light on and off.  She turns to play the pinball game and he grinds up behind her and pulls the rod from the machine back and lets go.  As it flies forward and hit
’s the ball, he moves with it.  Forward and back, forward and back as the ball bounces within the machine.  The girl giggles.  The man gives a wolf like smile toward the bartender, Patty.  He then backs off and goes to the end of the bar to get his beverages. 

“
You give little Billy a call if you need any help with that.”  Patty jerks toward the right to see Dan when she hears the voice. 

“
I will,”  Patty replies as she washes the glasses underneath the bar in a little sink, then returns the mugs to the freezer to frost up for the next customer.  Patty watches the young couple again and starts to think passionately about Frank, wishing she still had the old landline just so she could call.  That thing he did with his mind really scared her.  She couldn’t comprehend how he did that to her.  Was he really telling the truth?  She still didn’t know for sure.  But with all this strange stuff going on all of a sudden, she second guessed herself.  Could he be, could he really be from another planet?  She thinks to herself, ‘That just won’t happen.  I mean really, come on Pats, you’re not that stupid.  It’s just some game he is playing with ya.  It’s probably the whole reason his girlfriend kicked him out of the car to begin with.  Remember that?  It was one of the first things he said to me.  But he could be so sweet and kind, he would never lie to me.  But I been a fool before and the whole ghost thing?  He is just making up stories, that’s all.  But that thing he did with my mind, the pictures I saw in my head, how could he do that?”  She shrugs it off and gives the boys another round that Joe bought this time.  He asks for a set of quarters for the pool table.  He and the boys start to play doubles at the table.  He asks Dan first if he wanted to be his partner and Dan happily declined, wanting to talk to Patty.  The old man enjoyed her company and thought his nephew and her would make a cute couple and this would be an easy way to set them up.  He thought it was dangerous living out there all alone with no protection, especially with a stranger who isn’t from around here.  There is so much talk all day on the television and radio about the incident that happened right down the road, that no one in the bar seemed to talk about it anymore.  But somehow, in their eyes, when they looked at each other they could see worry.  But the worry was unspoken.  Patty supposed this was their way to kind of cope with everything, like they were in shock of a sorts. 

Dan breaks it and says,
“That Mrs. Jackson and her children used to come down to the boat shop I work at along with a lot of those other people that come up missing.  I’m glad that little family was alright though.  It’s a shame about her husband though.  Last I heard, they left town and went back to where they came from.  Michigan, I think it is, to live with relatives.  Just wanted to get as far away from here as possible.  I’d probably do the same if I were in her shoes.  I mean, my gosh, she lost everything.  You know, nobody is gonna move out there to those houses now.  Not after that happened.  It’s gonna take a long time to clean it up too.  From what I hear, there is animal and human marks all over the floors and carpet.  Blood and muck.  Hell, if you ask me, I’m sure them people aren’t even alive anymore or they probably would have found them by now.  Maybe some sadistic cult just packed them all up into a semi and hauled them off.  We don’t know.”
“Or the government,”  one of the men playing pool replies.

Joe laughs at that and says,
“Or your Bigfoot, Dan.  Maybe he just got hungry.”

They all laugh at that, except for Dan and Patty.  Dan tenses up a little bit but he just lets it all go and stares at the wall for a minute.  Patty thought she heard some mumbling, but wasn
’t for sure, with the jukebox blaring in the background.  She figured he didn’t take to kindly to the remark at all though.  Dan quickly orders another beer and slides the money to Patty.  Patty gets up to retrieve it and sets  one down in front of the old man and sits back down on her barstool, directly across from him.

Dan speaks to Patty in a low voice. 
“Good thing you didn’t have to go get milk or anything last night or maybe you wouldn’t have shown up to work.  You better be very careful out there, Patty, I mean it, until we figure out exactly what is going on out there.  Them wolves that we shot last night, well, I would have sworn when I shot the damn thing on that bluff, the shadow, it didn’t look right, Patty.  I didn’t tell the other boys that.  I don’t know if it was one of them that jumped or what, but it was bigger and longer than any wolf I ever saw.  But the way they make fun of me about that Bigfoot and shit, I ain’t saying a word.  They think I am creepy enough as it is.  They never seem to mention it and they were there.  Look, I’m not trying to scare you or nothing, Patty, but keep your guns handy, if you know what I mean, until this all blows over.”
Patty nods.  “I will, Dan.”

Dan thought,
‘Something tells me way down deep inside, this is just the beginning.’  He didn’t mention that to Patty because he didn’t want to scare her.  He’d seen some strange shit though over the years being secluded out in the woods.  Like the time he saw the heat lightening out hunting early in the morning just before sunrise.  He was going out to his favorite spot and thought he saw some spaceships swirling around in the sky, moving too fast to be modern aircraft.  Needless to say, he put off hunting for that day and ran back to the truck.  Not to mention all the old stories the Indians that used to run around them parts told.  He wondered why it was so hard to believe in a Bigfoot that he saw that day with them legends.  Most were about him.  They seemed to not believe like he did.  But he imagines that if little Billy there ever saw what he saw that night in the woods, he would be wiping pee off his leg when he got home, for sure.  He giggles a little thinking about it.