Pretty
Quiet Around Here
“It’s actually been pretty quiet
here these past few years,” Jerry said.
I watched him take a long drag, keeping his hand flat across his face with the
Winston sticking out between his fingers.
When he pulled the hand away, his mouth stayed hidden behind unbridled
moustache, just a hint of red. The smoke
rolled out slowly.
“You say that like you’re
surprised,” I said. “It wasn’t always
like that?”
His eyes remained lost in their
distant gaze to the hills, to the darkness of forests surrounding the
farm. He seemed to be perpetually
struggling between focusing on a task before him and the distraction of
scanning the farm’s perimeter.
“Lemme show you around,” he
said.
He showed me the two tractors and
implements, the inoculation records of the herd, everything but the
farmhouse. “Later,” he said. “The woman’s sleeping.”
He led me to a pickup with a
wooden flatbed, fifteen or twenty years old.
The back bumper was bare of a license plate, and I figured he never took
it off the farm. He had mounted a
snowplow on the front. “Truck’s part of
the deal,” he said, “with the other equipment.
We’ll go over the list in the kitchen when we get back.”
Jerry took the truck up a
gravelly, rutty road. From atop that
steep hill we could get a view of the whole thing. The hill stood on the southeast corner of the
property. We came out of the bush on a
grassy crest, facing north. Below us
spread the farmhouse and the barn and the other outbuildings. The barn floor was raised up about four-five
feet. A ramp of earth rose up to its big
door for the tractor. Beside the barn, a
few cows grazed. The farmhouse was stone
and looked a hundred years old. A couple
of rooms had been added on and that looked newer. A warm glow lit one of the windows.
I looked to Jerry, but once
again, his eyes were looking beyond the barn and farmhouse, beyond and above
them, up to the green foothills. I tried
to see what he was looking at. Two other
farms were visible, off in the wild hills, plots cleared out of the woods far
from any road.
The closest farm to Jerry’s lay
higher, disappearing up into the dark valley, only partly visible between the
great greened lumps. “What can you tell
me about that place,” I asked, “your closest neighbor?”
“That’s the Colby place. No one there anymore,” he said. Then, anticipating my question, he added,
“Too high up: Early snow came and wiped out their livestock. No one’d buy it when they cleared out.”
Rocks poking upward crowned the
great worn mountains on the left.
“What are those crags called?”
“Dientes del lobo.”
“Spanish, eh?”
“Yeah – they settled here
first. Burned everything when they
left.” He turned his attention again
from the heights and waved his arm out toward the farm, remembering that he was
up here to showcase the property.
“There’s two parcels of land, a
lower eighty acres where the buildings are, open all year. In the hills, there’s the upper 920 for
summer grazing. That’ll close down,
sometimes second week of December, sometimes not till after Christmas, but I
wouldn’t keep the cattle up there that long.
It might open up again middle of February, but don’t bring the herd up
there till mid-March. And don’t’ ever be
up there yourself after dark.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“What? Someone got a still up there?” I waited a pause for him to respond, but he
remained silent. “Not a meth lab? No?
Mountain lions?”
He finally muttered, “Sumpin’
like that.”
A noise came from below and both
of us looked down. A shiny blue Ford
f150 with all the extra lights and chrome tore into his yard. A rusty Landrover and an SUV followed close
behind. Whoever they were, they were in
a hurry.
He threw the cigarette
aside. “Time to meet the neighbors,” he
said.
We got back in the truck.
On the way down, he started
talking. “Something’s up: They wouldn’t
a come if something weren’t up. The
little one with the fancy truck’ll do the talking. That’s Skinny Jack Hancock. He ain’t skinny.”
I was familiar with the
custom. If a guy was six-six they’d call
him Shorty.
“What do you think it is?” I
asked.
“Ain’t no way a knowin’” he
answered, but I began to suspect he had his notions.
As soon as we got out of the
truck, I saw which one he meant. The
three of them stood in front of the barn ramp with Skinny Jack in front and the
other two looking nervous on either side of him. Skinny Jack wore a leather vest over his
bulging belly. A heavy chain looped
between his belt and an unseen wallet.
He had a grim set to his mouth as if he hadn’t smiled in years.
“Tell yer friend to wait in the
house,” he said.
“This here’s Timmy Matthews,”
Jerry explained. “He’s here to look over
the land. Maybe make an offer.”
This took a second to settle
in.
“So you’re selling out,” one of
the sidekicks said.
“I mean to,” Jerry said.
Skinny Jack waved the other
farmer down with an inconsequential motion of his hand. “No one can blame ya,” he said. “You took as much as any of us.” Skinny Jack looked at me now for the first
time. “I guess he better hear now what
the trouble is. Got a right to
know: Bob’s girl is missing.”
“Who’s Bob?” I asked.
“Neighbor,” Jerry said. “Real name’s Baubreaux.”
“What’s this got to do with this
farm?”
“Well, that ain’t an easy
question to answer,” Skinny Jack said.
“Bob and you’ll share some upper graze land if you buy in.”
“Jerry’s already hinted at some
trouble up there.”
“Bob’s daughter’s been seein’
Archie, a kid who’s had some run-ins with the Law. Tonight Bob and his wife told her she
couldn’t see him no more and she took off all upset.”
There was a pause. I suppose they thought this was sinking in to
Jerry alone. It was hitting closer to
home than they could have known.
“Maybe Archie came and got her in
his car,” Jerry said.
“Nope – Bob found Archie right
away. Didn’t know nothing about it. Archie’s scared as anything. Looks like she took off down the road on
foot.”
“This late in the year?”
exclaimed the sidekick who talked. “What
was she thinking?”
“Like I said, she was upset. Bob and Archie’ll be here soon as they figure
where we are. Bob’ll want us to help
look for her.”
“Well, we gotta,” I said. “That’s what we gotta do, right?”
The four locals looked at each
other like they were bouncing balls back and forth with their eyes.
“Long time since there's been
trouble,” Jerry said. “Maybe if she kept
to the road…”
“Don’t you think that weren’t the
first thing Bob tried? He’s been up and
down that road. She’s in the forest,
sure.”
“What is all this?” I asked. “Why would she be in the forest? What does all this mean?”
“She’s dead, Mr. Matthews. They won’t find her till spring thaw, but
she’s dead sure. And any that goes after
her will turn up missing too.”
I looked them over. “Y’all think there’s something in the
forest. Just what is it you’re afraid of
here – werewolves?”
One of the sidekicks Pffed a
scoff, “There ain’t no such thing as werewolves, fella!”
The other three looked at him in
askance.
Skinny Jack turned to me. “This place has some history...” he
began.
Another pickup pulled into the
farmyard and the conversation stopped.
Out of it stepped a farmer, forty or so, his limp hat hanging over
worried eyes. A teen boy followed him,
slightly pimply with a Brillo of curls on top.
The older man, who I had to assume was Bob/Baubreaux, launched into it
without waiting: “I know what you’re gonna say,” he said, “but I know where
she’s gone – she’s gone to the old Colby place.
If we all went, all together…”
Skinny Jack Hancock turned from
the pleading parent as though he were a painting. “It’s not werewolves or goblins or something
you can lay your hands on, Mr. Matthews.
I done a lot of thinking about it over the years. I think it’s the land itself. The land doesn’t want us here. I’ve hear noises at night outside my
place. When I’ve gone outside, I’ve seen
this light, a light in the woods. It was
calling me. I go outside less and less
after dark, especially once we’ve had a frost.”
“Tell me you’re comin’ guys!” Bob
pleaded.
Skinny Jack looked at him,
briefly but hard as the stony hills.
Then he turned to his f150. The
sidekicks, seeing their chief leaving, turned to their vehicles as well,
leaving Jerry and I to face Baubreaux alone.
“Jerry…” Bob began.
Jerry held up his hand. “I’m packing it out. I’ve had enough.”
A flash of anger crossed Bob’s
face, and then he and Archie stalked to his truck with muttering and
swearing. They spun up dust and then we
were alone. The noise of the vehicles
could be heard growing fainter along the road, and then the trucks were
swallowed by the forest. I looked over
the horizon of forest around us, gazed into the wood of the hills above
us.
“You were going to show me the
farmhouse,” I said without returning my eyes to him. “You said that there was a list of what was
included in the sale.”
Jerry looked at me and there was
a pause as he collected himself. For a
moment, he couldn’t comprehend that I was still interested.
“Yeh – yeh,” he said and started
walking. “We got three apple trees: a
Jonathan, a Granny Smith, and a Beacon.”
“Beacon?”
“Great for cooking, but you’ll
have to spray them a lot. We also have
raspberries and some gooseberries, down by the ravine.”
“Good,” I said.
“We’re on a well, of course, but
there’s no lime or iron in it.”
We stepped up to the farmhouse to
meet the wife and to complete the deal.
He couldn’t know why I was still interested in the place, and he was
evidently content just to sell.
I didn’t tell him I had already
been in the neighborhood a great deal. I
had spent the night up at the Colby place, had seen the lights. One of them, I knew in my soul, was my girl,
my daughter. Her love of the outdoors
and her passion for photography led her up there. She never came down. Skinny Jack Hancock had said it was the land
itself – maybe. Whatever portal she had
stepped through, I knew, somehow, I would find it.
I tore my gaze from the heights
and closed the door behind me. I put on
the smile to complete the deal, and Jerry’s wife put on some coffee.