Hush My Mouth (27 page)

Emma had finished her supper and was waiting on the front steps when we arrived. As we began our climb up the mountain, she perched on the backseat with her headphones on, her head bobbing as she watched the houses pass and grow sparser until
trees took over the scenery. “You missed it last night,” I said to Melvin. “Do tell,” Melvin said, allowing a half smile.

“Your little ghoster film group captured some great storytelling last night, but they seemed more excited about blobs of light that looked suspiciously like bugs.”

“Blobs of light.”

“Excuse me. Orbs. Pardon my shocking lack of precision with the terminology.”

Melvin shook his head.

“It obviously wasn’t an invitation-only event. Tap’s Pool Room must have suffered a sharp drop in business last night because too many of his regulars opted to attend the storytelling and marshmallow roast.”

Melvin took his eyes off the road for a fraction of a blink to see if I was making up my unbelievable story. Unbelievable, yes. Definitely not fabricated.

“Don’t ask me what they were doing there, but Donlee and PeeVee and Cuke Metz and several of the Ghouly Boys showed up to watch the festivities and the filming.”

“Uh-oh.”

“My sentiments exactly. I suspect somebody in that group is the one who’s been suggesting haunted sites to Colin.”

“Couldn’t be your buddy Donlee.”

“Gosh, no. He’s not smart enough. And PeeVee’s status as the brains of that duo doesn’t qualify him, either. My money’s on Cuke, from what I’ve seen. You know him?”

“No.”

“He doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of that crowd, and he looks suspiciously like the guy who drove the truck on that Moody Springs video.”

“You’re kidding. You sure?”

I shrugged, not willing to swear to it.

“Did they cause any trouble last night?”

“The ghosters?”

“No, your buddies.”

I snorted. “Right. My buddies. No, they were perfect gentlemen, which is what worried me. Not even drinking, so’s you could tell it. But I don’t get a good feeling about it. Your ghosters are too earnest. They’re taking this way too seriously. That’s when somebody could get hurt.”

“Maybe not,” Melvin said.

“Somebody—namely you—needs to have a chat with them. They seem to take you seriously.”

Melvin cocked his head with the slow tick-tock of a metronome but didn’t say anything.

“True,” I said, playing devilish advocate. “All this nonsense might attract an investor for their film.”

“Might get somebody hurt, too,” Melvin said, coming around to my point.

At the state park, we left the car far away from the barn, even though we were early enough to pick a spot among the trees near the front door. The better to make our escape if the dance wasn’t as much fun as we remembered.

The long sunlight and the balmy air combined to make the perfect ending to the week, a lazy late afternoon.

We didn’t have enough time before dark or the dance to walk all the way around the lake that served for swimming, canoeing, fishing, and waterfront views for the thirteen scattered lakeside rental cabins. We wandered down to the roped-off swimming area with its coarse-sand beach and across the WPA-built spillway to check out the moonshine still they had on display and to soak up the quiet as dark encircled the tree-sheltered lake.

By the time we strolled back up the hill to the barn, the crowd had gathered and the music had started.

The doors on one side of the barn were open to let the massive fans suck air through the screens. Bleachers on either end of the dusty wooden floor could seat only a small number of local regulars and the campers who walked over from the cabins and the RV park, but the almost constant music made sure few people wanted to sit, drawing them to the dance floor.

Much hadn’t changed in the years since I’d last attended a square dance. The live band, with a couple of members I recognized. Young men grown to look more like their fathers than they’d want to know. The fathers grown into grandfathers who took turns calling the familiar changes in the dance. The rhythmic clacking of the two-tone taps nailed into the bottoms of loafers and boots, thudding in a pulse. The campers loose-limbed imitation of the knee-jarring buck-and-wing step.

Emma was a dance-school dropout like her aunt—too boring, she said. She needed the regimen of tae kwon do, she allowed, but she’d learned enough in her toddler tap class that she was a quick study. Melvin was the one who really surprised me. He remembered even the seldom-called changes, and he charmed Emma when we showed her and a little camper about her age how to do a freestyle swing turn.

Emma was thrilled with the orchestrated steps, less than enthralled with holding a little boy’s hand.

I remembered in a familiar rush the first time I’d come square dancing. A more experienced sixth-grade friend of mine had told me that holding hands with a boy wasn’t so bad, that you’d be having too much fun dancing to notice. “Not like you could really catch cooties or anything,” I whispered to Emma.

Melvin knew how to let me know that I didn’t need to lead. When he slid his hand under my shoulder blade and guided me into a swing spin on our first circle-four, then quickly led Emma
and her camper partner into a shoot-the-moon without missing a beat, I knew he’d logged some serious clogging time.

Had I seen him here, when I was in high school? Had he been one of the older dancers, one of the men who’d bent over politely to dance with the kids Emma’s age and then swept away in a courtly promenade me and the other high school girls—still kids but, at the same time, hopelessly grown-up and awkward, in our own minds? I didn’t remember seeing him or dancing with him, but his strong, sure lead brought back that tilting balance between goofy adolescent and fairy princess in a red-faced rush.

When the band stopped to take a break, Melvin grabbed soft drinks from the crowded canteen, and the three of us adjourned to a picnic table in the now-dark trees several yards from the barn.

The crowded dance floor and the frenetic clogging had left my sweat-damp shirt clammy in the humid night air. After the loud music, even the cicadas’ and tree frogs’ efforts to drown out conversation sounded muted.

We sat on the weathered tabletop, rested our feet on the splintery bench, and drank our icy Sprites in companionable exhaustion for a while.

“So the storyteller last night was good?” Melvin asked.

“Yep, she was. Somebody from over in Cullowhee. Think she might teach at Western Carolina.”

“Did she tell some scary stories?” Emma asked.

“Some. You’d have liked them.”

“Ah, you like ghost stories, Emma?”

She gave Melvin one of her solemn nods.

“How about the story of the ghost dog? You ever heard that one?”

“No.”

Emma was sitting on the other side of Melvin. Without her
noticing, I had no way to warn Melvin that she took life seriously, more like her great-great-aunt Aletha than any seven-year-old should be. He was on his own, picking a path between what any jaded seven-year-old would find tame, and therefore lame, and what a seven-year-old girl in the dark woods at night would find the stuff of nightmares. He was on his own, but I would be the one in trouble.

“Back up in these hills, before people had electricity and before many people had cars to get around in, most folks had sense enough to be in bed—or at least safely home—before it got dark.”

Melvin’s rich voice had taken on a country lilt I hadn’t heard from him before, the cadence that made a story sound authentic.

“Now days, we zip along in our cars and we have so many streetlights, even up here.” He gestured toward the lights surrounding the dance barn and visible through the trees. “We can hardly see the stars, much less what else might be around and visible only in the dark.”

“Like what?” Emma asked.

“Like ghost dogs.”

Reflected in the light, I saw Emma’s face scrunch up. She didn’t look scared, just skeptical.

“Lots of stories around here about them. Like one about a fellow heading home from a dance. A storm had blown through, keeping people inside until the wind and rain passed. He’d met a pretty girl there and he’d stayed longer than he intended. A friend offered him a bed for the night, not wanting him to head off on the hour’s walk alone.

“He waved the offer aside, said he had chores to tend to the next morning. His friends parted ways with him as they turned down the road to their houses. He had the long dark path to himself.

“A full moon was out that night, and he was thankful because
it lit things up almost as bright as day. Then, without warning, the moon slid behind a thick cloud, and he knew just how much he’d had to be thankful for when it had been shining bright. He prayed the cloud would pass, but he could do no more than pray and keep walking.

“He reached a place where the path forked. One path headed into some thick woods. He had some good reasons not to take that path. One, it led past an old graveyard, left by a family or church long gone. For another, the path crossed a high, lonesome footbridge over a deep ravine. Scary enough in daylight, hard to navigate at night with no moon.

“Unfortunately the other path took the long way around the woods, adding time to his journey home.

“He hesitated, looking skyward, trying to decide if the cloud would move away. He could see no stars. He was tired, in a hurry to get home.

“He took a step toward the dark trees. It took a moment for him to believe what his eyes saw. Blocking the path, between two thick tree trunks, stood a dog, glowing white as if a light shone on him alone.

“The man gave what he hoped was a friendly click of his tongue. ‘Hey, boy. Good boy.’

“The dog bared its teeth and growled. Its eyes glowed blood-red. The growl rumbled low, as if drawn from the very pit of hell.

“The man didn’t wait around to see if the dog stepped out from the shelter of the trees. He took off running down the long path as fast as he could.

“He glanced over his shoulder only once, to make sure the dog wasn’t following, afraid to know and afraid not to.

“He saw no sign of the dog. Not once did he glance into the trees, for he feared the glowing white dog tracked him, waiting to pounce.

“He made it home in record time. The next morning, a friend stopped by his farm. ‘Wanted to make sure you got home safely,’ his friend said. ‘Heard tell the wind blew a tree across the footbridge last night. We were worried that you might have gone that way and fallen into the river below.’

“The young man thanked his friend for his concern and waved him on his way. He didn’t tell him or anyone else about the ghostly glowing dog until years later, when enough time had passed that he didn’t mind if they ribbed him about it and when he no longer shook inside whenever he thought about it.

“When he finally talked about the dog, he learned of another man, not so fortunate. One night, years earlier, he’d taken the shortcut through the woods and, not being familiar with the area and having had a bit too much white lightning to drink that evening, he tumbled into the ravine and died.

“His body was found the next day when two men approached the ravine and found a large white dog. The dog ran down the steep slope into the ravine and back up again, showing them to his master’s body.”

“Did the dog die, too?” Emma studied Melvin with that quiet contemplation I so often get from her.

I hoped he remembered she was a little kid.

“No, not until years later. One of the men took him home and took very good care of him. Years later, after the faithful dog had lived a long life, the man buried him in the graveyard with his first owner. Apparently the dog continued to guard the spot, making sure nothing happened to another man.”

“Did you know these people?”

“No. Not personally. I’m not that old.”

She stared at him.

Melvin stared back, unfazed by her intensity.

“Do you believe ghosts are real?” Emma asked Melvin.

“Good question,” he said, matter-of-fact in the face of her stoic inquiry. “Ghosts might be like other things; they’re real if we believe in them. If we don’t, they just slip away.”

Emma studied him without comment. I was glad he was smart enough not to condescend to her. She doesn’t respond to that any better than I do.

“You’d believe a ghost story if I knew the people?” he asked her. “How about this one?”

Part of me wanted to end the ghost stories. If she had nightmares, her mama would call a halt to fun outings with Aunt Bree for a while. The other part liked the gentle thrill and Melvin’s rich voice from the other end of our dark table.

“When my very own grandmother was young, she’d passed the age when most young ladies got married. Everyone in church and around kept introducing her to eligible young men, but she wasn’t having any of it. ‘He’s not the one,’ she’d say. Everyone had decided she was destined to be an old maid.

“One day, she met a man from over in Seneca. He was a bit older than she was, though not too much. When he asked to come courting, she agreed.

“The whole family was surprised by that, but she offered no explanation. A few months later, after a scandalously short courtship, she accepted his proposal of marriage. She explained to her mother that she’d started having dreams when she was quite young, dreams about a man. She said she saw him clearly, and though she couldn’t ever recall what they talked about or what happened in the dreams, she knew he was the man she would marry. When Granddaddy appeared in person, she said she knew, as soon as she laid eyes on him, that he really was the man of her dreams.”

Emma stared at him a moment. Even with her head turned in profile, I could feel the full effect of the frown.

“That’s just mushy.”

“Hm. I thought girls liked mushy.”

“Not so much,” Emma said, hopping down from the picnic table. “I liked the ghost dog better.”

She dusted off the seat of her shorts and looked at us expectantly.

The music inside had started again, so we abandoned our dark perch and made our way back into what now felt like a crowded steam bath.

Melvin asked Emma to dance. I climbed up the metal bleachers near the screened wall and sat to watch. With an apologetic plea of fatigue, I waved away a dance invitation—not a longtime regular I recognized but also not a camper. Seemed to be a lot of people in that category, people from surrounding counties. One guy told me he drove an hour from Anderson to get here every Saturday.