Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie (10 page)

Chapter XII:

Old Man C
locker

T
hey had driven some minutes before Nessa finally thought to ask, exactly where it was that they were going?

“Does it much matter to you?” asked Cassie.

“I suppose not,” Nessa answered honestly.

“Then why not just sit back, and enjoy the ride?”

So Nessa sat quiet for some minutes; but grew curious again, as they drove farther and farther down Junction Road, with no apparent destination in sight. She knew only that, once out of the diner’s parking lot, they had turned South.

“I think that I would enjoy myself much more,” she said, “if I knew where we were going.”

“We’re going to visit a friend of mine,” said Cassie. “I drive to his house, every Wednesday after work.”

“And who is your friend?”

“His name is Samuel Clocker. He’s eighty years old, and he has palpitations of the heart, and cirrhosis of the liver. I’m never quite sure if I’ll see him again, every time I leave him – but he’s always there just the same.”

“Where does he live?”

“You’ll see.”

“How do you know him?”

Cassie did not answer the question rightly, but merely said, “I’ve known him for a long time.”

Finally they turned East onto a narrow, rutted road, and the car was thrown into a state of almost complete darkness, what with the dense patches of trees that grouped all around. Cassie’s window was open, and the smell of the place wafted in quite disagreeably. It seemed that they were passing into the last dumping place of a bayou: the great, round, marshy endpoint that was come to, after the river had turned in an opposite direction and forsaken it entirely; after there were no deep lakes for purposes of drainage, but only large and reeking puddles, filled with algae, weeds, and disgusting animals of the slimy sort.

“Your friend – lives
here?”
Nessa asked.

Cassie nodded. “He drives every other week to the main road, where he has his groceries delivered to him; but he never goes any farther than that. He’s let no one into his house, I think, for some years now – besides me.”
             

“Perhaps, then, I should wait in the car – you know, while you visit and all.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Cassie, patting her hand. “I’m sure he’ll like you very much – just the same as I do.”

Nessa swivelled her head towards Cassie, somewhat surprised by the latter part of her statement; but it seemed she could not catch her eye, so preoccupied was she with angling the car down the road, which had become incredibly strait and muddy; and then pushing it over a thin stream, which ran widthwise directly through the road. Past this she drove on for perhaps ten minutes more; but finally there came into sight several spots of yellow light, and five minutes after that, Cassie pulled the car alongside a small wooden house.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t –” began Nessa; but alas, she had no time to finish; for Cassie simply grabbed her hand, and yanked her directly across the seat, and out the driver’s side door.

“Come on, then,” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of! He’s eighty years old, after all.”

The twenty-yard space which needed be crossed, before the house was reached, was a very filthy and noisy undertaking. Mud clung and sucked underfoot, creating small vortexes betwixt the ground, and the sole of the shoe. But finally their feet left the patch of rank mud, and climbed four wide steps, which led to a square porch full of holes. 

Beside the door, affixed to the wall by a cast iron bracket, was a large bell. There protruded from somewhere in its depths a thick string, which Cassie presently took hold of, and gave a sharp tug. The sound was deep and hollow.

“Oh, damn!” Cassie said suddenly. “I forgot the pie.”

“The what?” said Nessa.

“The pie. I left it in the car. Just wait here – I’ll be right back.”

She dashed back down the steps; and Nessa was left glancing from the spot of her disappearance (a disappearance which had occurred in no more than two seconds, due to the thickness of the darkness and shadow there beneath the trees) to the short and heavy door. She hoped very much that Cassie would return before the door opened.

But in a moment she forgot her hope; for there was come a strange scent into her nose. It was difficult to tell, beyond the stink of the swamp, what exactly it was; but surely enough it was strange indeed. It was something, she thought, that she had smelt before; something that inspired a thrill of fear at the first whiff. She turned her head all around, peering into the darkness. But her keen eyes saw nothing. So she sniffed again – and the odour remained, just as worthy of apprehension, but just as hard to place.

And then, quite suddenly – the door began to open. It creaked slowly inward, and Nessa found herself standing face to face with what could only have been Mr Samuel Clocker. Face to face, yes; but the shadows of the bayou had crept stealthily over the threshold, and there was no lamp lit behind the door; so no face could truly be seen. Nessa saw nothing but a thin and withered hand, clutching tightly at the door’s iron handle.

She remembered, now, that she had wished for Cassie to be present at this moment; and so she was rendered something at a loss. She could think only to say, “Hello, Mr Clocker.”

“An’ who in the hell’re you?” cried a shrill voice, from just behind the boundary of the blackness. “Who in the hell is standin’ there on my porch? You better skedaddle, missy, a’fore I pump you full’a lead!”

“Mr Clocker, let me explain –”

But she had time to say no more; for there came at that instant, poking threateningly out of the shadows, the double-barrel of a shotgun. The old man seemed not willing to shoot her on first sight, but instead began beating at her shoulders with the barrels, in an effort to make her dismount from the porch. She growled angrily, but made no retaliation; that was, until the old man brought the barrels down atop her head; and only then did she seize the gun from his wrinkled but stalwart hands, and toss it back over her shoulder into the mud.

“Why, you little –!” shouted the old man, stepping out onto the porch into a weak and narrow beam of moonlight, to reveal a livid, liver-spotted face, and to take Nessa by the shoulders. His arms were like the sinewy roots of old trees, established and unbreakable; and though Nessa proceeded to wrestle with him (albeit at a degree much less than that which she was capable of), he would not be tossed. Finally her left foot fell down into one of the holes of the porch, and she went sailing back over the railing; taking Mr Samuel Clocker, with the arms of tree-roots, along with her.

“You old fool!” she cried, as they went splashing down into a deep puddle of muck. She could have sworn that she felt some sort of creature writhing against her back, having been pinned down by her fall – and in her hustle to get away from it, she lost track for a moment of the old man’s movements. And so she was very surprised indeed, when she learnt that he had found his shotgun in the darkness. He began pounding at her head with the butt, until she felt that she might actually lose consciousness; but suddenly he stopped, as the gun was whisked directly out of his hands.

“Mr Clocker!” cried Cassie. “What in the world are you doing?”

“Oh! Hello, Cassie,” said the old man. “I was only teachin’ this trespasser a lesson, you see.”

“That’s no trespasser, Mr Clocker. Her name is Nessa – and she’s my friend.”

“Oh! Well, then – why didn’ you jus’ say so, missy?”

The old man shook himself, splattering mud in all different directions (though mostly straight ahead, into Nessa’s face); took his gun from Cassie, and turned about on his heel. He marched through the squishing earth, and back up the steps, across the porch and through the door.

Nessa clenched her fists, and furrowed her brow, feeling her ire rise. Yet it began to ebb slowly (
very
slowly) away, when Cassie took her hand; and together they went into the house.

~

Once through the door, they went down a short hall, which opened up into one large room. In one corner of the room was a bed; and in another corner was a bathtub. In the third corner was a little table, and in the fourth was an old television set, complete with rabbit ears. Along the wall between the television and the bed stretched an old-fashioned cold-box, the kind which resembles the rear of a particularly old car, and inside which could quite plausibly be concealed a dead body. Nessa could hear it humming.

Into the third corner the old man led his guests (one of whom was covered, like himself, from head to toe with wet and odoriferous brown matter). The three of them sat down at the table; Cassie pushed the box, which she had retrieved from the backseat of the Pontiac, into the hands of the old man; and the latter began to consume its contents with the voracity of one who either has never seen an apple pie, or has not tasted one in an exceptionally long time. After a few minutes, he went to the cold-box, and removed a bottle of beer from somewhere in betwixt its ice-covered walls.

“You should scrape that, you know,” said Cassie. “And turn up the temperature. Your beer will freeze.”

He shook his bottle at her. “Does ‘is look frozen to you?”

“How should I know? The lights are too dim, and I can’t see through the brown glass.”

“Yer an insolent little bastard,” said Clocker. But then he smiled, and said: “Tha’s why Joe liked you s’much, I think. An insolent little bastard, jus’ like him.”

He popped the cap off his beer, and returned to the task of cleaning the pie from its aluminum pan. He said no more about his beer, or about Joe. He simply ate, alternating every few seconds between a heaping spoonful of pie, and a swig of beer. Once, he chased too large a bite of pie too quickly with his beer, and began to choke. He hacked for several long moments, but Cassie made no move; and finally, he gave an exceptionally loud splutter, and spit out the afflicting clod of apples onto the floor. He looked down at it for a moment, as if pondering whether he should clean it up. Then he went back to his pie.

~

“I thought you said that he was a lovely old man?” demanded Nessa, as she took her seat again in the Pontiac.

“You didn’t think so?” asked Cassie.

Nessa looked for a moment into her face; and then they burst out laughing.

“I suppose there’s just no selling some things,” said Cassie. “But I care for Mr Clocker very much, just the same.”

Nessa thought to repeat the question, how did she know him? But instead she asked, “Who is Joe?”

“He was Mr Clocker’s grandson.”

“Was?”

“Yes. Was.”

She seemed inclined to say no more; and so Nessa was inclined to ask no more. She only sat quiet, waiting for Cassie to introduce a different subject.

Nessa rolled down her window, and searched with all due subtlety once more for that unidentified scent, which had first assailed her on the porch of old man Clocker. But it seemed that they had moved too far away, now, from its point of origin.

And so she abandoned this occupation, and fell again into unobtrusive silence. Finally Cassie did speak; though it took much longer for her to do so than Nessa had anticipated. Yet she found herself wishing, after she
had
spoken, that it had in fact taken her even more time to find her voice; for her words were so disabling, and so unexpected, that Nessa knew not how to respond to them.

“So,” she said. “What do you want to do now?”

“I –”

Nessa closed her mouth, and pursed her lips.

“What was that?”

Nessa shook her head.

“Well,” said Cassie; “if you’ve no place to be, there’s something I’d like to show you. What do you think?”

Nessa nodded.

Cassie directed the car back up the road, and Nessa breathed easier, when at last they emerged onto the two-lane blacktop. North they turned; and they drove along for a little, until turning onto another road, which was very similar to the first they had taken.

“Oh,” moaned Nessa; “not another swamp.”

“No,” said Cassie. “Not another swamp.”

Indeed, the trees here were not so thick, and it was much easier to collect and keep one’s breath, without losing it to the foulness of unclean earth. This was not to say, of course, that Nessa could not detect the odour of that filth, wafting up from the South. Yet there came from much nearer, the smell of clean, flowing water; and of sweet flowers and plants.

They drew nearer to the heart of the bayou, that deep and wild place that led finally to the land of Samuel Clocker; but which was nothing at all like that land. This place, Nessa knew, was the largest waterway to be found between the boundaries of the small town in which she lived.

The grass grew up higher and higher, till finally the road was obscured, and Cassie turned the car into a small square of earth surrounded by trees. Then she made to exit, and motioned for Nessa to do the same.

Through the tall grass they trekked, for many long minutes, until finally it gave way to a high bank above the wide river. The silver of the moon fell upon a world of green, and created a sort of enchanted, miniature forest. Tall trees grew up beside the bank; and there spanned a sort of ethereal space between them and the river, in which Nessa and Cassie walked together. The light shone down on the water, too, and made clear its small waves and ripples, evidence of its steady flow Southward, towards the Gulf.