Fiends (16 page)

2

Dante's Mill State Park, seventeen miles west of Sublimity, had been created in the early sixties with the flooding of eleven hundred acres to create a lake popular with both fishermen and swimmers. Large powerboats were banned. Slow-moving houseboats were acceptable, and could be rented for the day at the state-run marina near the spillway. Thousands of tons of rock had been dumped to ensure a clean shoreline. There were three campgrounds, each with a swimming beach and boat landing, a cafeteria in the park's headquarters, and a children's petting zoo. The centerpiece of the park was the restored old settlers' town, more than a dozen frame buildings, four of which had been built before the Civil War; a stable and smithy; a mill that still functioned; and a covered bridge.

It was known before the land was purchased for a park that there were caves around and perhaps directly beneath Dante's Mill, as there were throughout the region. Some had been explored by cavers who thought there might be a link, a vast almost endless succession of deep chambers extending north and east to Dunbar Cave near Clarksville, Tennessee, and the famous Mammouth and Great Crystal Caves of Kentucky, a distance of more than one hundred miles. The ground due to be flooded was gone over thoroughly, and one previously undetected cave entrance the size of a rabbit hole was plugged after examination by members of the National Speleological Society revealed nothing but three muddy, middling caverns connected by umbilicus passages and containing only a few commonplace bats and transparent crickets.

Geologists concluded that the limestone subsurface of the land to be flooded could hold the lake; there were already dozens of really large man-made lakes across the Cumberland Plateau. Perhaps entrances to caves of incalculable had already been significance covered by the damned waters of Barren River, Percy Priest, or Guntersville. The chance that anything really worth exploring lay in the vicinity of Dante's Mill was remote, although previously undetected entrances to caves turned up all the time, betrayed by a puff of steam, a stream of bats at dusk, a newly created sinkhole, or an oddity like the Gochen Hollow Sucking Fire Pit in Alabama, so named because it inhaled the smoke from surrounding camp-fires.

"My mother must have found a dozen new caves," Duane said. "All over the south."

"She was a spelunker?"

"Cavers don't like to be called spelunkers. Spelunkers wear tennis shoes and write on the walls and leave Coke cans lying around. Cavers are serious explorers. My mom was stuck in a cave for three days once. A rockfall pinned her down. She never lost it, though. That's one thing she taught me: never lose it."

"What's 'it'?" Marjory asked him. They were driving through the cool woods toward the lake that came and went from view as the road curved through the hills of Dante's Mill State Park. They had put the top up on the unpaved road, which was a little clouded from gritty red dust raised by the tires of other vehicles.

"I guess she meant whatever it is you need to get through whatever's giving you hell right then. She took me down once. I was about three, but

I'll never forget. We just went straight down into this dark cave, two hundred and fifty feet on a rope. She had me under one arm."

"Good Lord. Were you scared?"

"I thought it was fun. They named a cave after her, in Missouri I think it was. I haven't seen her for a long time. Three years and two months. My dad divorced her when I was just a kid. He said all he wanted from a wife was dinner on the table every night when he got home. She wasn't too great about getting dinner on the table."

"Where is she now?"

"France. She married a, I think he teaches mountain climbing. She took that up, too. She writes me every month. In French, because she says she wants me to learn French. I'm learning it pretty good. When I was ten I hitchhiked to the airport and hid on a plane and they didn't find me until we were halfway to Washington. I just wanted to see her."

"Does she want to see you?"

"I don't know. She's got two other kids now. Maybe she doesn't. But she keeps on writing, so I know she thinks about me."

"Won't your dad let you go see her? You're old enough."

"He said if I could pay for my own ticket, okay. I had a job last year and I was saving up money. But he took it all to pay for the lawyer when I got in trouble."

"Do you get along with him?"

"Yeh. I just do what he says. He's not that bad. Neither is Nannie Dell. My stepmother."

"What's she like?"

"She wears pigtails. She organizes prayer groups. She's a good cook."

"Here we are!" Rita Sue announced, as Boyce found a place to park the Fairlane in a graveled lot that was almost full. "Who's going swimming?"

Rita Sue and Marjory changed in the women's bathhouse and joined the boys on the sunny strip of beach where they were having a chin-up contest on the exercise bars. Rita Sue wore a skimpy two-piece fire-engine-red suit with a long-sleeved lace shirt that came down to her knees, and a Mexican straw hat with a brim the size of a birdbath; Marjory wore a dark blue tank suit and matching short-sleeved top. She tried not to look down to see how much she was shading the sand with her hips.

Boyce complained about being out of shape after his week on crutches and dropped out of the contest. Duane had broken a sweat but wasn't breathing hard after twenty-seven chin-ups.

"You going in?" he asked Marjory.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Race you to the raft."

"Oh, I don't want to race."

Boyce laughed. Duane looked at him and looked at Marjory. "Why is that funny?"

"Race her and you'll find out," Boyce said.

Marjory was sitting on the side of the raft that wasn't overpopulated by kids when Duane finally showed up. She felt happier when he grinned at her.

"Shouldn't have done all those chin-ups first," he said.

"Don't you think Rita Sue's darling in that little suit?"

Duane turned for a look at the beach. "She's okay. No butt and, you know. You look a lot better."

"Maybe a little better than Namu the Killer Whale."

"Marjory, why don't you just shut up and stop criticizing yourself? Hey, you want to know something? Nannie Dell was seventeen when she married my dad, right? She looked just like you do: the same build. She says it was all baby fat; kind of laughs about it now. Nannie Dell turned twenty-four last Thursday and she's had offers to model, but she won't because she's too religious."

Marjory looked at the sky for a few moments, then at Duane's face in the water, and said, "I guess I kind of lost it there, didn't I?"

"No harm done. Let's swim."

3

After diving and swimming for an hour, they changed and joined Boyce and Rita Sue in the shade of the picnic grounds for lunch. Then Boyce and Rita Sue took a siesta in the macrame hammock Boyce strung between a couple of pines. Duane got two of his lethal jars, a small butterfly net, and a pair of binoculars from the trunk of Rita Sue's car. Marjory carried her Zenith shortwave radio and they went off down a nature trail, then left the trail and found a big log to sit on.

Duane took a two-inch joint rolled in Saran Wrap from his shirt pocket.

"Oh, do you smoke much dope?" Marjory asked him, mildly alarmed.

"No. Once in a while. There's a steel player down the street where I live, he used to be in Tammy Wynette's band. He has pretty good pot. Want to try a toke?"

"I, uh. Well. I never."

"I didn't think so. This is good stuff. If you want to try it."

"Sure. Why not?"

Duane lit the joint and showed her how to smoke it. "Suck in the smoke and hold it down as long as you can."

Marjory did as she was told, and managed not to choke. When she was red in the face she exhaled. "Yeah. So what?"

"Wait." Duane toked and passed the little joint back to her. They sat smoking for a while, not saying anything. Duane picked up his binoculars between tokes and scanned the trees overhead, the sun coming through in flashes. Marjory noticed a swarm of butterflies and nudged him.

"There's some." It seemed to her that each of the butterflies—there must have been fifty of them—stood out from the woodsy background with exceptional clarity. They were yellow with brown stripes and scallops of dusky blue. Their wings were serrated. Marjory felt an affinity for butterflies she'd never known before. She was in awe of them. She nudged Duane a second time.

"Tiger swallowtails," he said, and raised his binoculars again. "There's a painted lady over there. Nice specimen. Maybe I'll—no, there she goes."

Marjory nodded solemnly, holding down what felt like a furnaceful of smoke. She exhaled, looking at her feet. The radio played softly, a melancholy Judy Collins song. Marjory felt the urge to take off her sneakers and play with the pretty butterflies.

Duane handed her the binoculars and got up with a relaxed smile.

"Excuse me, Marjory. I need to go."

"To the little boys' room?"

"No, I'm just going to take a whiz in the woods."

Marjory laughed and laughed, rocking on the log. She thought it was one of the cleverest things she'd ever heard.

He glanced at what was left of the joint she was holding between thumb and forefinger. "You can finish that, I've got another one."

She nodded and took another drag on the diminishing joint as he walked away. So here she was, sitting on a log in the woods smoking pot with a car thief and amateur lepidopterist who she thought she might be in love with. Life took some funny turns, Marjory thought.

There was a mosquito on her wrist. Marjory just gazed at it benevolently until the mosquito was full and staggered into the air so slowly she thought it was going to crash-land. She imagined the mosquito big as a bomber and smashed on the ground, spilling quarts of her blood. She shuddered and felt less mellow. But another, last deep pull on the roach restored her blowsy good-humored equilibrium.

Judy Collins had segued from
'"Winter Sky"
to one of Marjory's favorite songs,
"The Last Thing on My Mind."
She sang along until the music was obliterated by a blast of static. Then, even more annoying, the radio seemed to go dead, although she'd changed the batteries the night before. Marjory picked up the radio and balanced it on her knee while she searched the AM band trying to find something. She heard voices, but faintly. Dry whispery sounds, in a language she didn't think was English. A woman, or i child, sobbing. She knew instantly it wasn't a program. The sobbing gave her a chill. She dialed higher up the band and came across it again. She turned the radio off. She felt uneasy. She looked at the roach that had almost burned itself out on the log beside her, one tiny spark remaining. There was a pain behind her eyes, as if the day had become too bright to bear. She had feelings of guilt, of obligation denied, that she couldn't make sense of. She looked up with a stricken expression when she heard Duane's footsteps in forest litter.

"What's the trouble?"

"I don't know. My radio's acting weird."

"Is it?" Duane took the Zenith from her and turned it on. A riot of music from a polka band caused Marjory to yelp and laugh in surprise. Duane turned the volume way down and found the Beatles. "Sounds like it's working okay."

"I guess so. I'm not sure what I heard. Maybe I was on the shortwave band and didn't know it. Could we go someplace else?"

"Sure. Where?"

"Dante's Mill isn't too far. It's a restored town, the way it was a hundred years ago, or something like that. There's a general store where they sell drinks and ice cream."

"Let's go."

He gave Marjory back the radio, which was behaving, and they took a marked nature path to the town, approaching by way of the little bluff overlooking the millpond. Weeping willows fringed the pond. In an open grassy area near the mill house people were sitting and sunning themselves, eating ice cream from the store. Duane and Marjory followed the footpath toward the cluster of town buildings a hundred yards west of the mill.

A slim girl in a halter top and smudged yellow short-shorts came out of the woods above them, skidding a little in her sandals the last few feet down to the path, causing Duane to stop suddenly and reach for her with a steadying hand. The girl was so dark it was as if the sun had dirtied as well as tanned her. Her smile was a replica of the necklace of shark's teeth she wore around her neck.

"Hey, thanks." She also had a portable radio, which she held protectively in both arms. She glanced at Marjory's radio, still smiling. Her eyes were almost perfectly round; a cast in one of them seemed to make it difficult for her to focus on whomever she was looking at. Also she was stoned. "Did you hear it, too? Man, I thought at first it was some really bad ganja, you know? But Wiley's my witness. That was before he got so bombed on Bud I couldn't move him with a fucking cattle prod. You know? Deke and Smidge, they've been out of it since like a week from Thursday. Hey, this is Saturday, right?"

"Right," Marjory said. "Hear what?"

"My name's Brittany," the girl said. "This year. Hey, glad to meet you guys. Hold this?" She thrust her large shiny radio at Duane, who already was carrying his box with the killing jars and carbon tetrachloride under one arm. "Is that a butterfly net? Cute. Listen, are you holding any good dope? What've you got? I'll pay you. I've got twenty bucks here somewhere." Brittany poked a couple of fingers beneath her halter top; after a lengthy search she came up with a twenty-dollar bill folded to the size of a spearmint Chiclet. She also left exposed to the air a nipple surrounded by suck marks. Duane turned around with a little shrug to Marjory until Brittany noticed the faux pas, muttered "Oh, shit," under her breath, and snugged the loose breast back into the knit top. "You didn't see that," she informed Duane, who shrugged again, guilelessly. "Twenty bucks enough?" Brittany asked, peering up at him with her gleaming sharky grin.

"I've only got one stick," Duane said. "You can have it. You don't need to pay me anything."

"Hey, thanks!" She was very quick to reinsert the compacted twenty into her top. "Who knows, we'll probably need this, something else goes wrong with the fucking woody. I should have known when I set eyes on it we wouldn't get all the way to fucking Chicago without
major
difficulty."

"Where're you from?" Marjory asked.

"You mean this week or last week? Last week I was in Sanibel. Next week maybe I'll be in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Isn't that nifty? My brother's part owner of a dairy farm there. I haven't seen Max in, Jesus, I don't know how many years. You tell me." She gave Duane an expectant look. He handed the portable radio back to her and reached into his shirt pocket for the other Saran-wrapped joint. Brittany accepted it with her free hand. "This is really great of you guys."

"Don't think anything of it," Marjory said. "I like your radio."

"Sure, it's a Grundig. Got it at the PX in Frankfurt. This is the one thing I won't part with no matter how tough times get. Not that I'm worried. I'm an Army brat. I know how to take care of myself. Wiley, well, he's not so bad when he's straight. I think I'll drop him when we get to Chicago, though. Call my brother for bus fare. I mean, can you imagine
Wiley
in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin?"

Marjory looked up at the woods, wondering where Brittany had left her traveling companions. "What was that you were saying about your radio? You asked me—"

"Yeah, oh yeah! If you heard it, too. What did you say your name was?"

"I'm Marjory. This is Duane."

"Well, Marj, talk about fucking
creepy."

"It was somebody like, crying, you mean?"

"That, too. But I meant
her.
Over and over. Tuff. Come and help me. I need you, Puff.'"

"Puff?"

"Yeah, isn't that
too fucking much?
Maybe five people in the whole world ever called me that. Did you hear her, too? Am I wrecked or what?"

"Well—”

"Your radio's working okay. I'm afraid to turn mine on again, I kid you not. Hey, let's go down there by the pond and pass this joint around. Get to know each other better."

"What about Wiley?"

"He'll be okay where he is. Honestly, he's a lot of fun when he's sober. Plays great cocktail piano. The Holiday Inn in Mo Bay held him over for fifty-seven weeks. But that's what did it. I mean, how can you sing 'Yellow Bird' every night for fifty-seven weeks without truly fucking up your head?"