THE WIND part 4

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

 

By R. Peterson

          It was almost eight in the morning by the time Melania, Bolger, Dorothy and Brian walked the four miles from the burned-out farm into Cloverdale. I should have loaded the Tall-Clock and whatever else I could salvage into the back of the truck and driven here Melania thought, but it just seems right to leave everything behind. She reached inside the hiking bag strapped to her back and let her fingers brush against the carved Ombré box with the ancient Tarot cards inside. With mother gone I’ll need to learn to trust in my instincts … and in other things.

The Momett family huddled close together as they crossed the Cottonmouth Bridge and the group made their way down Townsend Avenue. There were more people in town than normal for a Saturday morning. Melania noticed at least six cars and pick-up trucks parked in front of the town’s three bars and more than a dozen next to Spare-a-Dime café. Most of the vehicles were spattered with mud and some with a thin coating … white ash. Melania tried but could not vanquish the memories storming through her brain … the rain from the night before … the fires and the horrible mob violence that led to her mother’s death.

“We’re being watched.” Bolger whispered in Melania’s ear as they walked past the Sand Bar, a saloon with sawdust on the floor that sold cheap beer to the saw mill workers. He pulled Dorothy and Brian closer to him. Melania glanced out the corner of her eye. Several scowling faces peered through the grimy windows. She recognized Clem Johnson, Vern Pool and … wild-eyed Lavar Hicks. “Let’s hurry,” Melania said. “If my brother doesn’t have his doctor’s office open yet … I’ll throw rocks at his window!”

Parley Descombey’s doctor office was kitty-corner to the Spare-A-Dime café and occupied three rooms above Quality Works, a local variety store with two full rows of three-for-a-penny candy. Melania knew her brother had to be awake and busy; a throng of patients were lined up halfway down the outside staircase. She gave Bolger ten cents to buy sweets for the three of them and told the Momett family to wait for her in the city park.

Melania recognized Lois Brown waiting halfway down the stairs with her daughter Margie. The young girl was without shoes and one foot was wrapped in a bloody dish-towel. “What happened?” Melania liked the girl and sometimes paid her for help in the garden.

“She stepped on an old rusty pitch-fork half buried in the ground while running through some tall grass near the Olsen Farm,” her mother said. “I’ve warned her not to play near old abandoned buildings. I hope it’s not infected!”

Verdenia Nord was in line two steps higher and she turned around crinkling her crooked nose. “A pitch-fork you say?” she said. “What have I been saying about witchcraft? There’s Devil’s play at work in this damned county … and somebody bolder than our lazy Sheriff Walker better do something about it!” Verdenia’s bushy eyebrows made a V between her tiny black eyes when she noticed Melania. Her wrinkled lips pinched together as she turned away.

            “I think the sheriff is almost as busy as your brother,” Lois said. “Did you hear what happened to poor Mrs. White?”

            “No,” Melania told her. “Our farm was burned out last night!”

            “That’s awful!” Lois gasped. “Was anybody hurt?”

Melania noticed several people turning around on the stairs suddenly interested in her business; a few of them she thought were hiding smiles. “I can’t say any more,” she said. “Not until I talk to my uncle.” Melania hated to lie to people but her younger brother had aged normally while she hadn’t. Parley Descombey was sixty-four years old and looked it. Everyone thought she was in her early twenties … or younger.

-------2-------

            Lavar Hicks had seen enough. He turned away from the dirty window overlooking Townsend Avenue. Butch Fowler leaned against an empty pool table in the dim back of the room. White foam collected in his scraggly red beard as he emptied a two-quart Mason jar filled with beer. A giggling and swaying Gladys Barlow, showing a dangerous amount of cleavage in a home-altered Sears and Roebuck church-dress, scratched his back.

“You tied them rock punchers to that truck spark didn’t you?” Lavar wagged a pudgy finger in Butch’s face.

Butch glanced at Gladys, who was humming Alone by Tommy Dorsey as she pretended to dance, then back at Hicks. “She might be drunk but she’s still got ears!” He shoved the empty jar into Gladys’ hand. “Man business,” he said his making his voice louder. “Tell Larry no washday suds on the top this time … or I’ll pound his big ears into a ring-boxer’s salad!”  He swatted her ample backside a little too hard as she turned away. She almost fell and one high-heel shoe came off. “Leave it,” he ordered as she reached for it. He stared at her with mean little pig eyes as she did a lop-sided stagger toward the bar. “Yeah I wired ten dynamite sticks to the starter wire … just like you wanted.”

“Then how come no boom? And how come I just seen that sister-witch and them covered-head circus freaks walking down the street like they owned the town?”

“Maybe there was a boom!” Butch said. “They live too far out for us to hear it here. Maybe that’s why they were walking!”

“They were only the five of them on the farm,” Hicks said. “I watched that Tattie-Boogle dig the old witch woman’s grave. Somebody had to be inside the truck to make it explode!”

“They got to go back for it and the rest of their stuff sometime,” Fowler said as Gladys swayed toward them with two full-to-the-brim jars. “We can wait them out.”

Gladys looked stunned when Butch took his mug and then Hicks seized the other. “No more beer for you honey,” Hicks said as put his arm around her. He and Butch both laughed as they dragged her toward the back room. “You gonna be busy doing other things.”

-------3-------

            “I can’t believe mother is gone.” Parley put his head between his hands and sobbed. It was noon and the patients he hadn’t seen yet had gone to lunch.

            “There’s a lot of hate in this town,” Melania said. “Mother always said if it wasn’t for you wanting to become a doctor we would have just kept moving west.”

            “The gypsy days are over,” Parley told her wiping his eyes. “More people are walking away from farms than are trying to scratch out a living working on them. With the house, the barn and everything else gone you better salvage what you can and move away too.”

            “Where will we go?” Melania looked around the tiny room. “We can’t stay here.”

There was a light knock on the door. Melania was just turning when the door opened. Joseph Callahan stood in the doorway a felt hat clutched in his hand. Melania hadn’t seen him in more than two years … ever since she had broken off their engagement. He looked older somehow. “Excuse me,” he said glancing at Parley then locking his eyes on Melania. “I’ve just come from the sheriff’s office. There was some bad talk in town and John Walker finally decided to pay your farm a visit. He saw the burnt cross, the ashes and your mother’s grave with the marker on it. It wasn’t that hard to figure out what happened. He said to tell you that he has another murder to investigate but he will track down the murderers and make them pay … if it’s any consolation.” Joseph fiddled with the hat in his hands. “Your mother was a good woman and she will be missed by lots of us in town.”

“Bad things happen to lots of good people,” Parley said. “My … niece … and her friends are looking for a place to stay in town. Do you know of any houses for rent?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Joseph said. “The house that I started building two years ago, on the corner of Main and Galbraith streets, has finally been finished but I have to go away on business to South America for at least a year … maybe longer. I’m looking for someone to live in it and take care of things … someone I can trust.” He looked at Melania hopefully. “I won’t be around to cat after you again … if that’s what you’re afraid of. And your workers … Momett are they? The ones in that strange religious cult where they keep their heads covered … they’re welcome to live there too.”

“You never cat aftered me,” Melania said, remembering him courting her. “You showed your cat side … to some other girl.”

The color washed from Joseph’s face. “It was the biggest mistake I ever made,” he said. “I’ll go to my grave wishing I could do things over.”

He looked so sad Melania began to feel sorry for him. If he only knew. It wasn’t him flirting around with another girl that broke them up … it was her advanced age. She could lie to a lot of people … but never to her husband.

            “Well let’s take a look at this … house.” Melania smiled. Her eyes lit up a little despite the sad memories. “I remember you talking my ears off while we were wrestling in my momma’s porch swing about all the rooms in this mansion you were going to build with the attached motor car garage and an underground cellar as big as a corn-field for storage.”

Joseph laughed. “The basement isn’t quite that large but the house is the biggest one in town … in fact I think it’s the largest private home in Montana. If you have a few minutes I would love to show you!”

            Melania took Joseph by the arm and could almost feel his heart beating through the expensive suit he was wearing. “Until I go back to the farm and get our truck and see what’s left to haul back here I’m not going anywhere.”

            “Then you’ll look after … our … I mean my house while I’m gone?”

            “We’ll see,” Melania said. “If I remember right you promised me mice as big as horses and coach-sized pumpkins growing in the garden.”

Joseph laughed … but now it was a nervous laugh.

-------4-------

            Sheriff Walker knew the scene inside the White farmhouse had to be bad when he saw the county coroner come out the back door retching-up yesterday’s lunch in the snowball bushes beyond the steps … and probably a few meals before. One of his deputies shook his head as he approached the door. “It’s like a slaughter house inside,” he said.

            Blood was spattered on both walls just beyond the threshold. Erma White must have been almost to the locked door when something large broke through. A double-barrel shotgun with a broken stock lay in a puddle of blood in the parlor. John Walker smelled the end of both barrels it hadn’t been fired. Something was floating in the red pools covering the low spots in the stone tile floor leading into the kitchen. Fingers! Savagely ripped, torn or bitten away at the knuckles. Mrs. White must have tried to protect her face. Whatever it was … was large. Erma was picked up and carried through the back wall in the kitchen and through a bedroom. A lady’s black lace-up twenty-four eyelet fashion boot lay against an upholstered vanity chair half buried in plaster and lath with a severed foot still in it. A torn off leg with one buttock attached lay inside a gaping hole in the back wall … along with an arm, more blood and hair.  “This bear had to be a big as a breeding bull!” the deputy behind him whispered.

            “You think it was a bear that done this?” John turned to look at his subordinate welcoming any reason to take his eyes off the nightmare carnage.

            “What else could it have been?” The sheriff thought his deputy looked like a fatally injured car-accident victim he had once interviewed in Cloverdale General hospital … the only survivor from a family of eight … pale, shaky and half out of his mind.

Sheriff Walker started to shake his head to say he didn’t know when they pushed through the debris onto the back porch. One of the posts supporting the porch roof had been broken half-way up. Erma White’s severed head was jammed far down onto the splintered wood. Her large brown eyes, popped almost out of their sockets, stared without blinking … accusing him and others who weren’t there. It wasn’t no bear … that ripped my house down … and no wolf like in the fairy tales … it was a damn monster!

The rest of the old woman’s body lay in the branches of an old Poplar tree at least ten feet off the ground. Sticky blood ran down the rough bark and turned a mound of dry leaves gathered around exposed roots into glue.

John Walker held his mouth as he ran down the steps … looking for the nearest bush.

-------5-------

Melania thanked Joseph for giving her and the Mometts a ride as they pulled into the burned out farm. “Can I give you a hand loading your truck?”

            “There really isn’t much here,” Melania said looking around. “There’s the Tall clock that I saved from the house and a few tools.  Bolger is stronger than he looks … you’ve done so much already. I’m sure you’ve got better paces to be.”

            “That clock looks heavy and expensive,” Joseph said opening his door. “I better give your friend a hand loading it up.”

            “Thank you Joseph,” Melania said. “I’ve forgotten what a good heart you have.”

Melania watched as Bolger and Joseph strained to try to carry the large intricately carved clock. “Please be careful … my mother loved that timepiece!” She felt inside the bag strapped to her back for the truck key. “Just a minute,” she called when she found the tiny piece of metal that turned the ignition switch. She laid the bag with the straps on the ground. “I’ll back the truck up closer to you.”

The full moon stared down from a darkening sky unable to speak the language of humans or to yell warning … another even more terrible storm was on its way. Inside Melania’s back pack, the Ombré box began to vibrate but she wasn’t there to feel the ethereal trembling. The rows of parched corn in the field beyond swayed back and forth as if saying no … but she didn’t see. The wind whispered a dire warning in the tree tops as a murder of crows took flight … but Melania didn’t hear.

TO BE CONTINUED ….