Last month The Pen and Muse
http://penandmuse.com/ held a writing contest with the prompt
Haunted Mailbox and you got 700 words to tell your tale. Guess what--I missed the deadline! And, I went
way over at 5000 words and counting : ) But I did actual come up with a story with the help of my friend Judy Post!
http://writingmusings.com/ Yea, Judy!
I would like to dedicate this story to another friend of mine, Kathy Palm
http://findingfaeries.wordpress.com/ because she truly embodies the spirit of the holidays and she deserves a little love for all the good will she spreads : )
If you haven't had a chance to hit up my wip website on Weebly here's the link. I'd love to have you stop by and tell me what you think of what I've done so far.
http://siamarion.weebly.com/
So, here goes, hope you like it and feel free to leave a comment!
“Well then, sit down.”
“I’m…”
“I’m having me a
whiskey, night like this.”
The two strangers
circled each other in the yellow light of a hurricane lamp and a small fire,
the store’s antique electricity having failed when the rain began falling.
“Mr.
Studebaker…um…sir.”
“Well, sit down.”
“Sir…”
Through the thin
curtains, the afternoon is grey and wet and the walls of the quaint storefront
seemed to shutter under the brewing force of a fast approaching winter storm.
“I know-- Well, take
your muddy shoes off, tracking mud. What’d you say your name was?”
“Could I… I just wanted
to…”
The older man eyed his
guest. He judged the dark suit and the narrow striped tie the man wore with a
solemn nod that wobbled the loose skin around his neck. With his tongue, he probed
a tooth, and then softly clicked it at the shine on the man’s patent leather
dress shoes. He understood the briefcase, still buffed and glossy, what it meant
and why the other man carried it across his body like a military sash. There was
resignation in the breath he huffed at the folder of documents held in a smooth,
tight grip. Solemnly, his wrinkled face a picture of regret, the old man took a
pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of the pocket of his apron and unknotted the
strings from around his waist. He shucked it, in one movement, over his wooly
head, folded it into a tight square and layed it flat on a stack of crates left
just inside the back door.
“Well, I reckon you
come down from Topeka to hand me my walking papers, ain’t ya? Well, ain’t ya?
I’m gonna poke this fire while you think about it…Cat got your tongue? Sure is
blow’n.”
“I…Mr…could I sit down?
Newsome, is my…HmHm…Mr. Studebaker, I
would…Could you..?”
“Take that chair. This
here’s mine. I like to sit down in my own chair. Just always have.”
The younger man drew
himself up. He thought it would be easier than it’s turning out to be. After
all, the client was old. He was poor.
He looked around to gauge the condition of the little storefront and its
hodgepodge of miscellaneous items. The dusty, crowded little space made him
feel smugly certain of himself. Yes, he had nothing to fear here. He was in charge of this meeting and he
would make sure the results were just as he liked.
He looked out the
window, through the thin curtains that had obviously hung on the tarnished rods
for years, at the jagged post and metal box standing rigid as the day they were
first planted in the ground next to a huge oak tree fifteen feet around. “Will you tell me about the tree? And the
mailbox? Why not just move it? Or sell us your land and we’ll move it! With a strip of stores and a sign right out front, you’ll
get more customers! You’ll have more business. Don’t you want more business,
Mr. Studebaker?” He’d tried to inject enthusiasm into his voice, infuse an edge
of good cheer, but, of course he was lying. Once the land was theirs, once they
got their hands on it, that is, they’d rip this crumbling place down and
bulldoze it into a pile of toothpicks! Larry Newsome figured if the old man
couldn’t see that for himself, he wasn’t too bright and why bother with telling
him.
Larry Newsome had been
looking around at the dated and shabby furnishings as he spoke, but when his
gaze came back to that of his host, the stubborn look on the weathered face
across from him had the young man ending his question on a note that sounded
whiny even to his own ears. It robbed him of the sense of dignity four years at
the community college had instilled in him. He was embarrassed by this show of meager
backbone, embarrassed too, by the light in the old man’s eyes that said he saw
the weakness and pitied him for it. He drew a strong breath through his
nostrils, adjusted his plump behind and straightened his back in the chair he
perched on. Maybe it was time to show the old man just who in this room was the
weak one.
”It would be a shame
for you to lose your home after all these years, Mr. Studebaker,” There, he thought, that was better, more spunk there. No one would argue with that tone! “But,
Smith Construction is a mighty big company. We’re in three states now, you
know, and when they want something as badly as they want this property, well…”
His voice trailed off.
Really, it died when the old man finished adding another log and turned on his
heel where he squatted in front of the fire. The yellow cast of the new blaze
lit up the old, wrinkled skin and buried his eyes and cheeks in shadowy
hollows. His thin body was outlined, like a stick figure-- or a skeleton--black
against the red and gold flames. The night sounds heralding the approaching
storm hushed, the rain ceased its drumming on the old tin roof, and the
paper-dry sound of leaves rustling, (or was it mouse feet scratching across dry
planks?) filled the silence left behind.
Larry Newsome, late of Topeka, Kansas, current
site administrator for Smith &Sons Construction, frequent boaster at family
gatherings of his newly acquired position of extreme importance, jumped when
the fresh log caught and the sparks flared. He shrank back against the old
horsehair cushion, his stomach clenching where it sat resting on the girth of
his lap. For in that moment, that instant of suspended time—the old shopkeeper
had appeared by the fire’s glow to be more skeleton
than flesh and blood man.
When the wind picked
back up, rattled the knob on the flimsy front door, and rapped brisk knuckles
on the window panes, as if asking in its most friendly fashion to be let in on
a grisly mission, Larry Newsome jumped another half foot out of his comfortable
seat.
It took him a moment
and then another to get his breath back. When he did and then turned back to
the fire, he found the skeletal vision replaced with a pair of worn boots that
had been tugged off and left to dry on the hearth. He blinked his eyes in the
rapid way people with too much water in them do and found that Old Studebaker had
moved to his patchwork chair now and was settling his bones down with a sigh.
Larry Newsome watched
all this, knowing he was seeing an old shopkeeper of indeterminate age (but too
damned old in Larry Newsome’s eyes!), a country bumpkin of a man, but nothing
more. Certainly he was not seeing a
skeleton or scarecrow or vision of rattling- bones… Larry Newsome clenched his
pink hands into tight fists and berated his faulty eyesight. It was a stormy
night, that was it, and the novelty of a room lit by nothing more than candle
wattage had betrayed his imagination. It had been a lonesome drive out to this
godforsaken, electricity deprived, no mod-cons, backwater scrub and, obviously, he had gotten more worked up
than he realized when he drove through the wind and rain. The roads were a
rutted mess. The town, well, just say it was, in his opinion, better suited to
natives and people of small conversation. He was an important man with an
important job. Never mind he’d only been given the job because he had been
college roommates with the boss’s nephew and had seen him through his algebra
forms. Still, he had a job to do and now he would do it, night be damned!
“The mailbox, will you
move it? Or, well, I do have a letter from the authorities, if I must.” He liked
that he could say that, authorities.
He savored the flavor of the word as he patted the thin side of his newly
purchased briefcase, making sure not to smudge the shiny brass plate he’d had
installed in the lower right corner.
He felt a certain
tightness in his chest and a catch in his breathing that he attributed to
swelling pride at the good job of work he was doing. Any twinges of doubt he
experienced, any fear that his plans would be thwarted by the old man across
from him and that he would suffer the consequences, he stuffed below his
conscious and left them there to entertain themselves.
Just then, a heavy gust
of wind swept down the chimney. It stirred the embers with a demon’s finger
that caused the flames to leap out of the grate and alight on the very fabric
of Larry Newsome’s beautifully creased, professionally hemmed pant leg. Before he
could do more than drop his jaw, Old Studebaker had irons in hand and was
wrestling the lickers, slapping out the sparks and moving the heavy screen into
position to corral the greedy blaze.
“Can’t be moved. Tried
to tell you.”
Larry Newsome gaped and
shivered in his seat, out of breath and trembling.
“No good you coming all
the way out here for. Tried to tell you folks that over the telephone. Can’t be
moved. Never can—never will.”
Larry Newsome gaped
some more and wiped his forehead with a clean, white square, still rattled by
the close call with a painful death, so the old man took pity on his bemused
guest and set to tell a tale. But first, being as he was a good host, he got up and poured himself another
finger or two and one for his quaking listener. Then, he checked the fire and
glanced to the upper stories where the winds were shaking the cold from their
hands and testing the snap of their jaw against the slope of the tin roof.
“This here I’m about to
tell you happened. Maybe not just the way I’m saying it did, but it did,
nonetheless and so it’s true and you need to listen. You can’t move that
mailbox out there. Not you, not your rich company. Not by deed or by debt. ‘Cause it can’t be moved, hasn’t been
moved in a hundred years. Since it was first put in the ground, it hasn’t been
able to be moved.”
Larry choked on his
whisky and then croaked out, “Dynamite?”
“Nope.”
“But, that’s not
possible. Why? Why not?”
The old man lolled his
head and the firelight caught and tangled in the frayed ends of his coarse hair
and making him look like a raggedy man come back to life. “Well, it’s on
account of Big John, Little John.” He paused and thought and then said, ”A
hundred years ago, when this was just a territory and nobody lived here but
that they didn’t want to live back East, this piece of earth was tended by a
man called himself Big John. His son was named after him, only he was called
Little John.
“Now I say tended by ‘cause no one really owns
anything that they don’t give it back when their time on this earth is done. Some
people can keep to a place, though, like’s happened here, if what they done on
it or had done to them has been so
much of a thing that they can’t let go and the earth can’t seem to let’em go,
nuther.
“Big John was a man
called John by most people. He’d come from back East in the land rush to get
away from things and to avoid what was brewing, hoping to put together a farm
and maybe show some people what-for about himself. But, you know, it was dry out
here, more dry than he was used to farming in, and there were natives that
weren’t pleased to have the company of white men so close up and personal. Notwithstanding
all that, he also didn’t take too much to farming, what with all the need for
hauling and planting and birthing and chopping, so he felt a bit put out
because of it, and that might explain some of his mood, but not all.
“Big John was a small
man, not just in spirit but in stature as well. He only stood about as tall as
the low end of a stick and his feet were small and so were his hands, but he
made up for it by having the devil’s heart and a pistol that he always carried,
loaded, at his side. And he always said he would blow off the man’s head who
tried to get one by him.
“One day, his wife gave
birth to a son and the boy grew up to be slow-headed, but as big as a mountain,
and so was his spirit. Some folks said that John called his son Little John after him, in the hopes
that it would encourage them to be familiar with him as Big John. But it was just as many spoke that he did it because he
feared the boy’s might and was tempering against it.
“Anyway, none of that
mattered to Little John. He loved his daddy, and that was that until the day he
died, and maybe even after.”
Night had fallen while
the old man talked. His visitor, disturbed from his listening and his whiskey
haze by his host kicking at the fire screen, noticed the darkness draping the
windows thick, like a blanket (Or did he mean a hangman’s hood?), and he felt a
twinge of relief and then shame when his old companion stood up to one-hand his
bent back and poke the smoldering embers into a brighter glow.
The winter storm had
put on hobnail boots and was whistling and howling in a serpentine path around
the corners of the wood frame and slapping branches in a steady rat-a-tat-tat on the eaves and the
downspouts. In reply, the old man lifted another log onto the fire from the
neat stack in the corner to add more heat in the little room. When all was to
his liking again and warming up nicely, he tossed his guest a knitted throw for
his lap and clutching hands, then settled himself down once more.
“I don’t see what any
of this has to do with the mailbox,” Larry grumbled, meaning to sound tough,
but mostly sounding surly.
“You will,” said the
old man, filling his pipe. “Drink up and then we’ll have some more.
“The mail service in
eighteen sixty-three Oklahoma Territory was delivered by brave horses and foolish
men. Lots of trouble to be found in those days, both sides of the law.” The old
man looked out from under his thick brows at his pale visitor. He brushed his
knobby, calloused hand down the smooth wood arm of his worn chair, nodding and pulling
on his pipe when he saw that his point was taken.
“Seems they invented
the postage stamp sometime in the ‘50’s and folks wanted to use’em, folks being
folks. That meant more letters and a city delivery service run by the
government, but they couldn’t do any of that without a mailbox to deliver ’em
to.”
Larry Newsome shivered
under the thick blanket as the old man’s voice rumbled across the way and the
wind buffeted the board-and-batten. Outside, snow was piling up to reach the
brass knobs and frost had glazed the windows. He lifted his whiskey, admired
the light gleaming through its amber hue as he swirled the contents of his
glass, then downed it in a single throat-burning gulp. He brushed a lazy thumb
across his lips, letting his companion’s rumble soothe him, and felt warmth slowly
spread through his belly as the clouds of smoke curled up the chimney, taking
on the shapes of grazing horses, autumn fields and tree limbs crowded with
crows.
The mantle clock struck
the hour in a deep-throated voice and a strange light appeared, parting the chamber’s
gloom, wavering, never settling. It spread across the rug first, and then the
pot and the little Queen Anne, where sat the tray and the glasses and the
evening’s intended leisure, along with the day’s unopened mail.
Down the deserted lane,
the ruts already filled with winter, the bare trees stabbed their black branches,
furred with hoarfrost, into brown stalks of ragged grass. While, all the while,
the frigid air snapped, razor sharp, at the creak of harness leather and the cracking sound of a whip held by an
impatient hand.
Pull
on it harder then. Larry
Newsome’s brow puckered, Pull, I say!
Was it the voice of the wind, rattling the window frame?
Sap, popped in drying
logs, flames with a voice that crackles, Yes,
Sir, I’m sorry… sobbing from the attic, moans down the chimney lamenting, you told me…
The cellar door winced
on antique hinges and groaned itself open an inch or two. Larry Newsome curled his fingers around the
second glass of whiskey he found, waiting, at his elbow…
“What I told you was to
pull harder, can’t get the damn pole straight in this weather without you pull
on it.”
“I’m trying, Daddy, but the mud’s froze and my
hands is froze, too.”
Big John isn’t
listening. He’s busy, pounding his whip into the quivering flesh of his skinny
horse, mumbling under his breath about the government and the system. When his
hand gets tired, he stops and wipes his grimy forehead. “Take a hatchet to that
saplin’ and yank out the scrub. This tree’s comin’ up if it’s the last thing I
do.”
“But, Daddy…” Big John
levels a look in his son’s direction that deepens the scowl marks carved either
side of his pinched lips and causes the boy to stutter his words. “I mean…Big
John, I don’t feel so good about it. I don’t think we should dig up this tree.
Can’t we just…maybe –nail- the box up?”
“Did you get a letter
from the government telling you they ain’t delivering your mail what you don’t
put up a mailbox?” Big John’s face
reddens like a beet. “Well? I ain’t going without that money. Your ma’s folk owe me that money. It’s mine, I got it come’n
and I’m getting it.” Crack goes the
whip and Little John flinches against the sting. “Every six months for
seventeen years I been getting my money! Since that day I married her and took
their wayward daughter off their snotty hands. Well, it’s been six months! Ain’t
no government, no war, gonna stop me from gettin’ what’s due me! Now, get that
damned tree out of the ground so’s I can plant this here post in its stead!” Crack, and Little John wipes fresh blood
from his pale cheek.
As Little John hefts
the heavy ax across his shoulder and sets the blade to bark, the late afternoon
light greys to pewter, the winds pick up and dry leaves chatter and gambol
their way down the lane ahead.
Hailstones like fists punch new ruts in the old lane—within minutes, the
little farm’s slick with freezing rain.
Big John had never been
the type of farmer that would do a chore if it could just as easy be left undone. He’d cleared the way onto his
land when he first took up the property, and to his way of thinking, that oughta
be a deed done. Except’n, that left the scrub brush and vines to grow as they
may and so they did, but, with a sharp ax in the hands of a big man, it doesn’t
take long for the scrub that’s grown up to go down. One, clean blow and the wind howls. “I married
her, didn’t I? Like I said I would. Brought her out here so’s to save their precious
family name, didn’t I?” Big John sneers, his rough hands yanking at the horse’s
halter. In his rage, the thoughtless man drags his terrified animal closer to
the swinging ax blade.
The storm’s full-force hits
while Little John is raising his ax to swing at a little oak. Before he can complete
his stroke, a mighty gale buffets the sapling, cracking it down the middle with
a terrible sound, like a child’s mournful wail.
There’s only one tree
left now, standing between Big John and his goal, and Big John eyes it with
malice. He has a taste in his mouth of copper and his head full of spite, with
the tree that stands in his way, and with what lies beneath it-- buried now, all
these years, and only remembered by him every six months when the check
arrives.
Heavy gusts are shaking
and snapping the branches of the tree about, heaving the limbs of the
neighboring trees. It sends ’em swaying in all directions so’s Little John can’t
get close enough to the trunk for all they’re whipping like Gorgon’s snakes at
his face and hands. Finally, at his father’s shout of fury, he puts down his
ax, wipes the moisture from his eyes with the corner of his work shirt and grabs
at the branches with an unsteady hand.
“They owe me that
money!” Big John’s trembling, gripping the harness so hard the poor horse feels
his rage through the leather and shutters in fright. “I kept you, didn’t I? Well, didn’t I?” His
clawing fingers rake through the horse’s mane, searching for purchase as he
readies to mount.
“She died. And that’s what happened and no use
making a fuss she died. Them folks back East got what they paid for, didn’t
they? Weren’t my fault anyway! How’s I suppose to know she’d take to sickness?
Woman coughs, it ain’t a man’s job to stand over her and natter. A man has to
work, that’s what he does!” Now he’s shouting to be heard over the roar of the
storm.
The hail turns to snow
with a swirl like a swarm of bees, stinging the bare flesh of man and beast
alike. Little John picks up the ax and takes aim once more. The tree takes the
blow with a groan--he turns away, giving his broad back to the scene and letting
the cold winds slap red on his cheeks, making his nose—and his eyes-- run.
“It’s more your fault
than mine, anyway. You should’a stayed with her ‘stead of runnin’ off like ya
did to get me. If she was asking for me, it was only so’s she could nag at me
‘bout somethin’!” Big John turns to land his accusation, like a fist, on the boy
hunched into himself behind him. “You owe me for all I done for you!” --only to
find his stand on the earth has dissolved
under his feet.
The wind has a name on
its lips this night, and it calls it with a vengeful moan. Justice doesn’t
always come swift, but it comes—and tonight it’s come for Big John.
At the same moment Big
John finds his feet going in two directions,
the rending blow shakes a cloud of blackbirds from their roost in the falling
tree, sending them cawing into the swirling storm. The terrorized horse, its
bloody sides heaving in fear, its eyes rolling to show the whites, rears up to
pound at the air and knocks the little man off his already unsteady feet.
The little sapling, its
trunk split in two, has dropped its leafy head on the frozen ground. What’s
left behind is a jagged pike, its splinters jutting upward. Big John flails his arms, searching for
purchase as the snow churns around him. He calls for help from the boy he has
been haranguing, but the limbs of the neighboring trees arc downward while the
gale kicks up again, and they’re separated by the will of the storm.
Big John’s cries are
blown away before his son can hear them, drowned out by caws that sound too
much like the cry of a woman in pain. And, then-- it’s too late.
Big John’s boots
scramble on the hard pack, but the soil is turned from the pried up roots and
wet from the frost and snow. He lands on
the limb facedown, a belly-flop that buries wood fragments deep in his organs.
For a while he twitches, his limbs shaking, the life draining from him in a
crimson puddle that spreads beneath him and stains the snow, running in
rivulets into the hole left gaping by the shattered oak. But, by the time the
winds die back, and the arching limbs relent enough to alone a path for his son
to follow to his side, all that’s stopped and he’s still as stone.
“You’re leaking.”
Larry Newsome jerked.
“What?’
Old Studebaker gestured
to his guest’s runny nose and teary eyes. “You’re leaking.”
It was a hard fact for
Larry Newsome to accept, but it was true. He was crying like a baby. He daubed
at himself with his crumpled hanky, fighting for some attempt at dignity that
he knew failed. “What happened to them?”
His host shuffled his
socks across the rag rug at his feet.
“I mean…what does any
of this have to do with our… business…our…transaction?”
“After Big John’s
passin’, the storm just sort of moved along and Little John was left to clean
up his daddy’s body and sort through it all. But his heart wasn’t in it.” Old
Studebaker pulled lint from the sleeve of his sweater, dusted it from his
fingertips. “He only nailed the metal box to the pike and chopped the rest of
the tree up, then he sat down to wait for the itinerate preacher to come wandering
down the road.
“Neighbors said they tried to get him to come
in, to bury his daddy and come in off the mound, but Little John waited. Tended his daddy in death, just as he had in life until,
one day, the preacher came by and said a sweet prayer. With that done, Little
John was free to go on his own.”
Larry Newsome watched
as the old man stood and began opening cans and pulling out his pot to set on
the lone gas burner in the room.
“So, where did he go?
What did he do?” All pretenses at disinterest had been cast aside.
“Can’t believe a fancy
man like you is superstitious. You
can’t be interested in ghost tales.”
Larry Newsome cleared
his throat and pulled his cuffs down over his wrists with a quick jerk. “A man
needs to keep an open mind about these matters.”
“Alright then, he
didn’t. No, don’t you scoff at me. What I’m sayin’ is true. Little John never
left his daddy’s side.
“Once the preacher came
by and blessed Big John’s remains, Little John dug up the ground beneath him
and set him down in it next to his wife, Little John’s momma, and that’s under
the oak that killed Big John. Then, he waited for his own time to come, because
he was ready and he’d made a promise to his daddy that he would never let him
down again and he intended to keep it as it was a dying promise made on an open
grave. He had to wait a long time.” The last was said with an abstracted air
that had Larry Newsome leaning closer and Old Studebaker clearing his throat when
he realized what he had said. “So, you see why it’ll never be moved and you
can’t never build nothing on it.”
The storm that had
raged through the night was whispering now. It’d left behind silvery snowflake
pictures painted in the condensation on the windows. The dark had been eaten up
by a fat full moon that shed diamond glitter over the landscape as it crossed
the sky. Larry Newsome hugged his document to his chest and rubbed his fingers
over the smooth newness of his briefcase. With a sigh of regret, he allowed
that he still did not know why in
the world the mailbox could not be moved.
One cloud chased
another cloud over the moon’s bright face, hiding it. The night filled with
hollow sounds and the whispers became buzzes that swarmed like bees until they
filled Larry Newsome’s head and made his fleshy hands sting.
Old Studebaker stood up
from where he was bent over, stirring the pot set on the one gas burner until
he took on the proportions of a giant. His
tatty clothes that hung on him like they’d been set with clothes pins, filled
as he straightened. In the wavering glow cast by the settling fire, the hair of
his head stood out straight as sticks and his eyes turned to pitch. As Larry
Newsome gazed into those tarry orbs, he saw they’d swallowed up the night,
leaving nothing but fear.
The winds buffeted the
little store once more and swept down the chimney, so that the embers flared
and sparked. Then the old man was gone and in his place was a rattlin’-bones. His
voice lowered to a deep timber that scared poor Larry Newsome’s hands into
shaking with the palsy. “You won’t never disturb my daddy’s grave. You won’t
never take down my daddy’s mailbox. Not now, not never. You get out of here now
and don’t let me find you back!”
Larry Newsome lost his
water as well as his new briefcase when the skeleton man raised his mighty fist
over his head and lunged towards him. He jumped to his feet and rushed towards
the front door, howling and praying for all he was worth.
He’d almost made it,
too, when he felt the first bite of the whip rip open his suit coat and sting
like a swarm of bees across his exposed flesh. “Can’t let ya, can’t let ya
leave. I tried to tell you not to come, tried to tell you to leave us alone.
But you wouldn’t listen, and now ya ain’t left me no choice.”
The winds picked up
where they’d left off, swirling snow down the rutted lane and drowning out the
howls coming from the little storefront.
And that’s the story of
Big John, Little John… and how Larry Newsome, late of Smith & Sons
Construction, came to be buried under the old oak tree…
Fini
