Wicked Temper Part 31

After Matthew took lightning quick leave of Tizzy, he sprinted, then slowed as the trees enclosed upon him. He would tolerate no more slurs to his manly vigor. Soon he was unreachable, sauntering through some thin birch until the darker blackjack forest took over, feeling the sinews of ancient hunters in his stride. Matthew was certain to return within the hour, keyring in hand. He would be reborn in her eyes. Sweet savior to his own folly. Why, forgetting those datgum keys was a joke, a freak. You couldn't expect some dead naked gal to trip up this pathfinder twice. Yet, no more than a quarter of an hour pa.s.sed before Matthew was lost again. Lost and thirsty and cursing Tizzy for letting him go.

Only the boogery woods of Riddle Top could betray his radar like this. Twisting, darkening, almost all sunlight cut out by the high spreading branches; the earth bred dank under here. Most of all Matthew didn't want to panic, not again. He lacked moxie, his Pap always said; moxie, pertinatiousness and pitdog gumption. And Pap knows, you little four-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.d, because Pap's owned one book in his life and that book is The Queen's Saxonican Juris Dictionary which he's never understood but wields like a bludgeon. Well, Zeph Birdnell was wrong again; wrong-headed and cruel. And he was a small man in every way. That's who gave Matthew this ill temper, that's who; so this killing boy came by it honest. His temper was his Pap's temper. His loud, half-breed, teat-sucking daddy. Too scared squirtless of the big world to be a worthy sonofab.i.t.c.h. But just the man for your daily, pint-size dose of sanctimony. Not that he'd ever darkened the door of Christ's Church. Not Zeph Birdnell, who stomped toys to death and drank heifer's milk straight from the heifer. Sometimes from the hog. Little Daddy didn't drink moon. He didn't need to. Mommy was half senseless anymore; worn out by way, way too many brats and one too many rows with those pig-farmer fists. But Matthew, he was fast, he was lean. He'd s.h.i.+rk them all yet.

Firstly, he must not peter out. He must succeed or set the woods on fire. Matthew knew his desires. Matthew would feed his desires. Matthew would plug ahead. Matthew would soon stumble over that creek and for a change creekwater would do him some good. Yes, the creek would lead him farther up the mountain to the trail, to the rock cottage. Sooner than later, because the air under these trees was thick, disturbing to him, like these blackoaks never breathed, nor drew any fresh breezes from the mountain. A rotting pall had overtaken the boy. Matthew could not carry a tune, yet Matthew began to whistle through his teeth, softly, seeking rea.s.surance; old strange words noodling through his brain.

O watch yer step, step, step...

Krrr-rickkk. A dry snap from behind.

The boy reeled and double-checked. No one went there. Only his mad chickens gone astray, fluttering underfoot. Zeph Birdnell hated chickens so Matthew kicked a hen aside; she went squawking as this Birdnell resumed his journey. But, whoa there, Zeph--what the h.e.l.l was that? Matthew c.o.c.ked sideways, looking back, still moving, still moving. Who's whistling, brother Weldon? Let me in on it. For just a flit Matthew thought he'd heard his own teeth whistle, an echo of that same lost tune floating back there, soft and airy in the web of trees. (O watch yer step, step...) Would his mind be playing feeble tricks or was there truly a whistler stalking him, keeping a safe distance? Matthew reset the butcher knife under his belt; she was still with him, sharp and deadly. He had the pistol of course, but she could backfire and alert Bob. Bob was sure to hear any gunshots. Bob comes running. Bob grins. Today's escape fizzles in nothing flat. No, if some weird Lych or any other hillcrazy troublemaker was to jump Matthew, he'd just have to jug the rascal with this knife.

Matthew struck a trot, picking up his pace through the blackoaks, aquiver for any sign, a creek, something. His radarwaves were sketchy under this cowl of leaf. So many things he'd seen but never told. He nudged back his specs. Mistakes had been made. Tizzy for one. She was no love partner. She was no gun moll. She'd been spared. Too much, maybe. But spared. He'd seen the gory cow. He remembered it well. Just another lost afternoon. The little spinebones wired together around an ash alter, he'd seen that. He never told her about that. Or about the monkrat skull in the red patent leather purse. Yes, he was sketchy. His lungs burned.

And, abruptly, Matthew landed atop a crest.

Here, the woods took a harsh dive then leveled off again, continuing the blackjacks with no hiccup in sight. Matthew came right up to the edge, onto a sunken timber---and the earth broke loose.

Rotten splinters and mulch slid down the incline, Matthew Birdnell went racing down with it, upright on his feet---he was forced to run faster, faster, getting ahead of himself down through the bank of soggy leaves. He was still fighting delirium when he reached bottom, eyes frantic, working hard to keep up with his muddy white-top spectators as he smashed into the tree.

No telling how long he was out. When Matthew came awake again, he was a salt lick. Wet. He felt wet. His tongue tasted another tongue. He first saw mottled specks of sunlight sprinkling down through the high leafy dome, then the mottled snout of Juda. The brindle dane bent over Matthew, a raspy tongue licking and s...o...b..ring over the boy's face. He lay beneath the sneaky tree which attacked him, his noggin aching, his eyes wanting to adjust. Oblivious, Matthew's hand went up and fondled the great dog's ears. With a pain shaken resolve, Matthew raised himself. Juda stopped licking the boy's mug and sat, watching Matthew prop his backside against the tree. Matthew focused his specs.

Nothing earthshattering. No last minute changes. The woods twittered and sunstreams danced across the dark forest bed. White biddy hens, they didn't dance, exactly. Who knew how many years he'd spent asleep? Juda, perhaps? It might have been minutes or hours, since Matthew could not quite read the sunstroked skew from within this grove. Daylight could rule one minute and dark the next. Why, down that d.a.m.nable mulchbank, ending at his white-top feet, Matthew's slide path still looked fairly fresh. No boogers went milling about, no, not a soul had crossed his path, only this great dog here. Juda panted and sat upright, low whimpers emitting from his deep pelted belly. With keen interest, the dog beheld the boy. The longlimbed youngster was brus.h.i.+ng mud and chaff from his mouth, his clothes, testing his scalp damage. To Matthew, this old hound didn't seem so bad after all. Kind of friendly.

For pity's sake, he reached out a hand to scruff the pointy ears again-- --and Juda's blunt eyes went feral, full of wickedness.

A terrible squelch from a savage belly. Matthew's hackles rose, he didn't move. Juda's eyes slanted.

With ripping growl, the rush of hot breath--Juda attacked! His fangs leapt!

He went for soft throat but Matthew threw up an arm. Another lunge on the boy's exposed gut then the hound recoiled, wickedly, shreds of Matthew's s.h.i.+rttail and flesh in his blooded fangs.

Matthew slid and ran; four eyes blitzing terror, chickens scattering, running blind with him. Juda close at bay.

The boy pealed through the brace of trees, aiming for a high blackberry bramble off the corner of his eyegla.s.s, slightly upslope. Juda chomped into Matthew's left calf, a horrible rutting howl ensued as the dog's anvil head thrashed, tearing at the muscle. Matthew wrenched free, slinging dirt, feverish, he dashed into the thicket. Briars and twigs popping, ripping as his body, Matthew forced himself through the obstinate brush. All was chaos, his heart punching, feet and arms flailing ahead. His wh.o.r.ef.u.c.king spectacles kept slipping down the nose. He plucked them, into his pocket. Blood roared in his ears, you can't stop, you can't think, you can't fret whether those are the hairy jaws of death at your heel. Split-second eternities came and went, then out of the flurry Matthew sprang, torn up, stumbling.

Matthew flipped around, Juda didn't break from the thicket--where was he? Matthew bolted. Guhhhrowwww! His head jerked aside and the beast tackled him, Juda lunging for that spastic boy's throat, again and again, Juda came. Clootie-loving sonofab.i.t.c.h must have skirted the bramble, Matthew flashed, locked in mortal fray; kicking and sc.r.a.pping for each inch of life betwixt him and vicious hound's breath. Dust churned. Juda sicked like a dervish, pounce upon pounce inflicting pain and abuse. Matthew suffered, Matthew kicked, Matthew dragged them both toward a root-ledged ravine. Pitching over these roots, boy and h.e.l.lish dog tumbled in a martyr's clench, a hindpaw shredded Matthew's cheek. Christfire! Then a searing tooth bit beside his pubis. They fell and exploded apart at the ravine's bottom.

KRRRR-ACKKKSSs.h.!.+ Here came a cras.h.i.+ng dead pine bough, just missing Matthew, sonic pain jolted his thigh, pain exploded his eardrums, the bough broke across the ravine. Matthew scuffled backward, slavering and yelping himself silly, eyes blinking fuzzy-eyed panic in every direction. The dog was gone. For the moment. But dog would be back, oh yes, oh no, this dog don't scare. And guess what? This Birdnell's leg felt broker than dead pine. But this Birdnell leapt up screaming, each step a b.l.o.o.d.y torture as he floundered, limping away fast down the ravine. More roots tripped him up. He hit hard. He began to crawl, then scramble hand over fist like a wild bug.

Ahead, the moldy hull of a big tree trunk lay against the ravine's wall, a long hollow beneath it. The boy burrowed under, hustling through the molder and spider webs to the center of the woodbark tunnel. He heard no dog. n.o.body growling at him. n.o.body. Safe, he was, by grace alone. But where was that Juda b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Tracking along the lip of the ravine, maybe, just overhead? Matthew coughed some dark sputum and looked down, smearing the growing cake of blood off his groin. Christ, so his leg wasn't broken after all. No, it wasn't a toothhole that burned and bled. It was the butcher knife blade; the silvery tip snapped off in his right thigh. The rest, the hilt and broad shank, was still under his belt.

Wincing, Matthew twisted in the tight hollow s.p.a.ce. He discarded the broken blade's handle with disgust, pressing his fingers around the oozing wound, the glinting tip embedded in his blood. He tried not to whimper or make any loud sound, not wanting to draw the hound's radar. But, mercy hold the phone, big brother Weldon: enough is dang sure enough. Matthew's gonna pop that demon yet, dog-dang it. Dog-dang, dog-dang, dog-dang it, who was it used to curse dog-dang? Well, hang whoever it was. Matthew reached around back for the pistol and found n.o.body home but his tailbone. Frantic, he searched the surrounding mulch. h.e.l.l and hiya Jesus. He'd lost the gun. h.e.l.l if he hadn't. His mind flew backwards, asking where it could be. Why, he could have lost the .38 anywhere in the tussle or the underbrush. Oh, sweet Juda, sweet Johab, he wouldn't be surprised if he had lost the pistol way back when, when he first tumbled down that slope into the tree. Before this dog found him.

Rrrrrrggg.

And d.a.m.n if Mad Dice wasn't found again. Rrrrrggg. Matthew sure heard the Juda now, down beyond his feet, sweet Juda snarling and sniffing down at that end of the log, until--Juda just up and shut up.

Holding his breath, not daring to suffer, Matthew listened as heavy paws clumped around outside, down the length of the tree hull then back again. A skidlick of leaf and thump, thump, thump--Juda was pacing atop the trunk's sh.e.l.l, scratching and clumping directly over Matthew's head. The torn boy felt like he was inside an ancient tom-tom. Seconds pa.s.sed, Matthew sweaty and clinching his eyes. Why hadn't he stayed back, tried to hotwire the car? Why hadn't he told darling Tizzy about the red patent leather purse. Such worries flew when an ear-splitting gggrrrooowl came down the grubby shaft.

Juda was inside the log suddenly, snarling in through the spider's den, angry to devour Matthew's face.

With amazing thrift, the boy backpaddled out from his lair then leapt atop the old log. The dog was out, teeth crus.h.i.+ng Matthew's ankle by the time Matthew got his arm around a high sapling at the ravine's edge. Hoisting himself, with grinding misery and hurt the boy dragged both legs and dog, scaling upward, off the log and out of the rut. Their clench spilled onto the gra.s.s above. But there was little froth left in poor Matthew. Vaguely, the rawboned kid knew his fight was near gone; he kicked weakly at Juda's dripping steel jaws. Juda reared up and back, recoiling, then took one last frothy snap at Matthew's cods. Hounddog's wicked eyes flared. "Please..." Matthew heard himself beg.

As Juda galloped away.

Juda, a furtive echo in the woods.

The sunspeckled oaks went quiet. Shadows swam together. Matthew lay shattered in the gra.s.s, cut and bloodied. A tossed-off sc.r.a.p. Waiting for more abuse, for the h.e.l.lhound to return. But it did not. The trees loomed dark above him, a low breeze moaned through the leaf. Somewhere, a bird was cawing, and he heard the idle cluck of hens, the fevered hush of death and fractured heat. The shock of recognition. There was a bad smell. The boy rolled over on hands and knees and threw up. Retching until his frothy cods wanted to heave out his gullet; Matthew finally got empty. His spasm ceased. Ague chills swept through his flesh, as the boy got up off his knees. Matthew stood half-bent with a stringhalted splay to his gimp leg, his brain slos.h.i.+ng. What was that stench? The boogery odor, the one that soured his guts; what was this stink all about? Matthew took a brave step. The unholy pain shot through him. But strange. Strange. How these oaks formed an openended circle, a shadowy alcove near the ravine. This place was freakish, with freak to spare. From his pocket, Matthew took his bent spectacles and looped them onto each ear. He hobbled closer, his face and clothing in shreds, a crazyquilt of b.l.o.o.d.y scratches, gouges and mud. Yet something more overtook him. A ghoulish curiosity, yes, it glistened in Matthew's seeing eyes. This cancer-eating fervor held him and made him want to see.

Betwixt certain elder oaks in the circle were rough wooden tables. Worktables which had been jointed betwixt their support trees so long, long ago that burled bark had grown out around the crude planks. Hung on horsenail pegs in the bark and stacked upon open-air shelves were all manner of cleavers and saws, a host of old forgehammered implements for cutting; crusted knives, barbed-wire coils and iron pokers. And jars. Empty gla.s.s jars. At the center of this configuration, the oaken cl.u.s.ter bowered around a huge, deep pit. So very deep you couldn't see its black-mawed bottom, big enough to swallow a dumptruck, rimmed by the gra.s.s Matthew stood on, and bigger than any G.o.dawful hole he'd ever dug. The stench came from within.

"Watch yer step..."

Matthew Birdnell came forward.

"...I'm the Mad Dice. I was borned bad, daddy."

Matthew wiped sweat and blood, smearing his visage all the worse. Trying not to inhale. Any more regurgitation would be impossible, only dry heaves. So Matthew blotted out this stench and the fire from that knife shard stuck alongside his groin. Matthew wanted to see in that pit. Was borned to see in that pit. Chawing his lip, the boy took a wince and a step closer to this rent in the earth. His hand went out, steadying against an oak. He took no notice, but its bark was aswarm with ants, swarming over his fingers. He squinted to see, drooling, festering, this pit was deep alright. Deep as Bob's gullet. Chickens fluttered. But, the hole, the hole. Why, she almost looked empty.

Behind him, he never heard the 20-pound sledge raised in those hard gritty hands. The first blow smashed into the back of Matthew's skull and his ears bled, his lanky frame teetering upright. The boy was staring dull ahead, his motors cut, as the sledge swung a second time and demolished his brains. This second blow knocked his specs off, they ricocheted loud off a nearby stump before Matthew gave up the ghost.

S T E P 1 7.

Tizzy p.r.i.c.ked her finger on a thorn. Nettles obscured her path, twining thistle and woodbine, but she pressed them aside; loneliness, nothingness, they were the mists moving Tizzy through these unearthly woods. That magpie spun through the trees, scaling the heights then returning to her. Soon this ghoulish light would fade and Tizzy would be a sad situation; she'd be alone in the night.

The magpie awakened her.

She had dozed off, waiting back in the blue Packard. Hours went by without Matthew's return, long shadows crept over the car, and finally her fears drifted. A pity, it was. She'd survived an unslept night. Now, the late sun lulled her. Tizzy fell into a nod, and when she awoke, it was due to magpie feet hopping across the Packard's hood. She rubbed her eyes open. The mountain had gone chilly again, the road cast in a bluish light. She hated any thought of returning to Mr. Nottingham's house, especially if it meant returning alone. For all she knew, Matthew had fouled and broken his leg or his datburn pencil neck and at this very moment lay near death in some culvert, moaning for Tizzy to save him. So maybe Tizzy ought to do something about Matthew before it got dark. She had a duty to him who brought her; though she doubted he'd ever been or ever would be saved. But the sprightly bird perched on the winds.h.i.+eld, rattling softly at her. And, suppose, just suppose, this birdrattle was a spirit, an omen come to fetch her to Matthew's ailing side.

"You ain't tellin me nothin," she told the magpie, her mind set. She abandoned the car shortly after.

Deep within this spectral forest, nothing much stirred. Only the magpie's wing. As if chickabiddies, insects and other odd beasts lay in wait, wis.h.i.+ng for a nightfall eternal, wis.h.i.+ng for the risen dark and dead. Tizzy wanted to go home. Back home to Cayuga Ridge, yes, even back to the Preacher Polk. She wanted to suffer sharp, h.e.l.lstinging thunderbolts and the Preacher's wrath of ages. Tizzy wanted to grieve. To weep. To know life again through her sufferance. She would stay safe and begrieved, amongst silly children and stern elders, but she would stay; because Tizzy Polk was guilty as a girl could be. Meaning, her atonement must begin. But this place, this Riddle Top, was tainting her, indeed it was too corrupted and haint-riddled to suffer. And there was an uncanny feeling she had failed, thus far, to avoid; the feeling that Mr. Nottingham was nowhere nearby, not watching, utterly mindless of her. It was too much cross to bear.

Yes, Tizzy would go home to the fires of Cayuga Ridge, once she found her lost boy.

Tizzy paused beneath a huge, broad-girded oak. A b.l.o.o.d.y acorn lay betwixt her toes. She looked straight up, into the great tree, spying a vast world up there, strange shapes in the skein of limbs. She couldn't make them out. Maybe they were other birds roosting, or spider nests.

Skreekacheeee--spake those black feathers swooping past Tizzy's face. Was it raven or magpie or what, pray tell? Whatever it was had spaken and flown, so how could it be the magpie when the magpie was just now descending upon her?

"Matthew...?" she called, walking on through the mist. "Matthew....?"

Her thin voice echoed, a far-off astral whisper on the mountain floor. The magpie landed a few feet ahead of Tizzy, hopping along, silent and twitching until she told the d.a.m.nable bird to skeedaddle. Which it did.

Tizzy walked on in her unwashed print dress, her buckletop shoes, just a pa.s.sing tremor, a mournful little squeak for Matthew...oh, Matthew...oh, Matthew, Matthew Birdnell, somewhere in this endless wood.

The girl persisted, far below, as her streak-feathered messenger: the vesper magpie, winged up into the great spreading oak. Higher and higher, upward into a tangled tree of hands. Hundreds, nay, thousands of hands, putrefied and withering; each with a spike through the palm, dangling by wire from scores of spindly limbs. The birds knew. So did b.u.t.ton. This was the undying tree of hands. Her magpie lit first on a slimboned hand with pale fingers and an opal ring; the bird pecked at fresh white skin then sprang, wings flapping, to the dirty hands dangling alongside. Here, the snippet's beak tugged and tugged on a grungy split thumbnail.

"Matthew...?" the waif rang out below.

When she reached the cottage, her day was almost undone. Wind had risen in the pines and Tizzy was afraid, as she approached, afraid she'd have to spend a night in that pretty rock cabin. Caught out here in the gloaming, she could see the front door stood open, just for her, whistling, singing with wind, just for her.

Tizzy, Tizzy, she saw the darkling door. Tizzy, Tizzy, she asked the door: How dare you hang so open? empty? dark? How utterly shameless of you. But a door has no reply, of course. Only the wind sings back, my dear.

So Tizzy accepted this cold hospitality, this invitation she met with dread. Entering strange upon the threshold, this cold cabin's welcome plucked a raw nerve in her, and that nerve stayed plucked. From this moment, onward, Tizzy Polk did repent. Repent. A mite named despair gnawing her heart, she went a few steps into the grey room, looking for the grey dead girl. No one sat in the gnurled rocker. Not a spark or ember in the hearth. There was no need for rocking chair daddies or fires in the hearth. For, lo and behold, Courtlynn's corpse had left this dreadful cottage; the naked schoolgirl was gone, without a worldly trace of her poor, handless, bloodless being.

Had the last shred of her been spirited beyond the veil? Had Courtlynn gone home at last, like a bride to her savior? Here was her empty bed with pretty patchwork covers; folded in place, a corner flipped back from the pillow, sheets crisp and inviting. Land's sakes alive, Tizzy thought, where were my eyes on my first visit here? These sheets were an epiphany. These were real sheets, tailored sheets from a magic land and Tizzy had never slept betwixt such finery. n.o.body afforded them in these parts. Her flesh had never fallen on such fine linens or cloudy pillows, her eyes had never landed on a clawfooted bedstand with no keyring left upon it. Her ears had never whistled so.

Wind whistled through the open door. Tizzy called out, timidly, but Matthew did not answer. Come out here with us, the wind replied.

Stumbling outside, Tizzy was afraid of outside. Petrified of another moonless night. Scared witless that down below, holidays and maydays had come and gone without them, that she and Matthew had missed so much they could never wend their way back. Rightly, she was afraid of that old rock well which beckoned up the rise. But the well might save her, if she'd let it. She felt woozy. Her gait began to drift; yet dreadfully, unyieldingly, she was lured upward toward the well. Maybe she would draw a cool drink or throw herself down its wellhole. As she ascended, a ghostly white peak pierced her vision. Beyond the well's winch, this opalescent thing had been obscured, hidden, invisible from downslope; but now Tizzy saw the up-jutting corner of a big white box. A box as big as a Gospeltime Milkwagon hiding behind her cottage in owl's light. Ascending past the well, Tizzy Polk got slower, and slower...

A gloomy ravine parted the earth before her, opening wide. A truck was tipped over the edge, into the fathomless channel, an old rust-eaten white panel truck. GOSPELTIME MILK - "Sweetest O'er The Land"

Now the wind was a hosanna. A choir of horned G.o.ds. Tizzy heard these G.o.ds so clearly, she heard them so datgum well.

The truck had no tires. The truck's gutted nose was buried down the ravine in a squalid nest of bedsprings and corrugated tin under char-blackened bottles and tires. The truck's double backdoors angled off kilter to the ravine's edge.

And for no hateful reason at all, Tizzy opened both milktruck doors.Tizzy would never quite recollect why she did it. Obligated by some spook, she was.

But she did open that reeking milktruck.

Tizzy stood agape, her eyes fixed.

A zitherbuzz chord struck, low earthly humming, then a thick clot of flies whooshed out past her.

Turning her head away, she cringed, shooing pitifully inside the fly-blown exodus.

Then Tizzy June Polk turned back to look. To see. With startling clarity, the horned G.o.ds presented themselves; she looked into the truck's innards and saw the oxen heads and corpses of strange critters, Matthew's rude face and torso, the remnants of folks, folks gone by, arms, legs, b.r.e.a.s.t.s with black nipples and pieces of Matthew. But no hands to rot, all hands were accounted for. Deep and resounding was the slaughter within. Sweetest O'er The Land.

Tizzy's mouth was open as some vulgar harlot, she was howling but nothing could she hear, yes, a shrieking silence tore from her lips, like her tongue was split in two.

Like her own throat was slit, slit like those horrors inside.

Her rictus stood etched at the open doors until Tizzy June Polk flung back rust-screeching hinges and ran; she ran blithering and making baby chatter, back downhill to the cottage. "...b.u.t.ta, b.u.t.ta, no, no, no, naaa..." Flying inside, she bolted the door behind her. Darkness was nigh complete on Old Riddle Top. And she was well aware of what it wanted. It wanted us all.

Oh me, oh my, what was that? Crunch, crunch. Boots on gravel out there; she heard boots.

BOOOM-BOOOM-BOOM. Someone pounding on the door, pounding as she shrieked. Outside, in a shrill wind, the shape of man s.h.i.+fting past the windowpanes. Tizzy, in blind panic, fled to the darkening kitchen.

In here--in here she saw her sanctuary. An open padlock. An inner door ajar.

She raced inside and pulled the pantry shut. Here was Tizzy's tiny black hole. She felt a bullwhip; a leather braid coiled on an inside doorhook. Tizzy pulled it down, las.h.i.+ng bullwhip to doork.n.o.b. She plundered her dress for a stolen matchbox. She lit one. A bacon rack glowed alongside the door, then flame scorched her fingers. She shook out the match, lashed the bullwhip's grip to some bacon rack tines, tying tight the door, hands feeling, searching, frantic in the black pitched closet. Once done, she lit another match, flying it along pantry shelves till she lit upon a wee candle amidst jars of preserves. Tizzy put flame to candlewick.

She stood, turning in this tight, strait pantry. The scent of coaldust nagged at her. Lord, it was hardly long enough in here for long Matthew Birdnell to lie down and stretch his long scattered legs.

But wait, my Lord, my Lord, these weren't fruit preserves after all. These shelves were rife, packed wall to wall with jars of deep red. Red like a jar draining into Mr. Nottingham's gullet when Tizzy Polk surprises him one evening. This pantry was jampacked with quart jars, up, down, surrounding Tizzy. And Tizzy saw, and Tizzy did not approve of what she saw, and she must not let her bloodhobs see, and Tizzy did crave such red and darkening juices.

And, O, those horned G.o.ds sang, yea, there was a refrain, swimming in her head...

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! Banging on the pantry door. Someone, some horned one, out there banging. BOOM! But not the true Jehovah. BOOM! Tizzy went squealing, twirling inward, inward, cras.h.i.+ng into shelves. BOOM BOOM! Walls of shelves collapsed--BOOM!---jars breaking, spilling forth, the candle snuffed out. Tizzy slipped on her b.l.o.o.d.y slime, collapsing in fever. She cried. Were there no serums for this torment? BOOM! the man spake. Do you really drink of the blood, of the blood, of the lamb? BOOM! the man spake. In a miasma of spirits, Tizzy writhed on the floor, wailing amidst the sea of blood and broken gla.s.s. All booming doors fell away, fell away, into the pit. The night was moonless, eternal, a purgatory of baby angels and childish refrains sung clearly to her unrested soul:

O watch yer step, step, step, O when yer ramblin o'er the land, October moon don't s.h.i.+ne on you, Or the hands...o...b..b Nottinham...

S T E P 1.

Dawn was rendered upon Old Riddle Top and it was hot, crackling hot. Sweetest o'er the land. The cottage sat still, the cottage door sat open, as she had left it.

Trudging into the slanting rays, she emerged, lost, weary. But it was morning, with ch.o.r.es to be done, time to scatter her acorns. Her face, her arms pitted with gla.s.s and blood, her dress in tatters, Tizzy moved as a sleepwalker moves, a puppet with strings cut. She traversed wood and briar, until, a day or a moment farther along, found herself in an open field. Flies and locust chittering around her bare ankles. Coming toward her through sunburnt gra.s.s was the brooding stagman, the man with tattoo scars. He bore a broadaxe. His smile was thin and rea.s.suring. Dry blood flecked the corners of his smile.

She did not flinch, for she was not afraid. He stopped and took her in, a cacophony of locust swirling around them.

"Was I a bad girl...Mr. Nottinham?" she asked, finally, her voice a husk.

He squinted in the morning sun, some kindliness on his grizzled stagface.

"No. No you were not."

"Ain't I a born sinner then?"

He shook his head slowly. The heat, the insects did not faze or interfere with his being.