Thirteen
On a sweltering July evening JoJo was working close enough to home that he was able to take the day off and go fishing with his grandpa. Around suppertime, Dad called from the river to say they had caught a mess of catfish and for Mom and me to come to the cabin on the river for a fish fry. I helped Mom load up Dad’s old river truck and she headed toward the river. It was such a beautiful day, and since recently deciding that I needed to jump back on the exercise bandwagon, I decided to ride my bicycle and pedaled down the dusty, river road.
When we arrived at the river, JoJo had cut catfish into nuggets, rolled them in House Autry seasoning mix, and was dropping them into a frying pan filled with corn oil. He had already cooked French fries and hush puppies and had them in a covered bowl. Mom had brought a bowl of coleslaw and I had made a large jug of tea and grabbed a cheesecake out of the freezer.
I don’t know why, but food always tastes so much better when it’s cooked outside, especially on the riverbank. For some reason, I couldn’t remember being as happy and content as I was at that moment eating fish with my mom, dad, and son on the riverbank. Although, I had told no one about my visit with Marilyn, several had noticed a surprising change in me. The simplest way to explain it, I guess, would be to say that I no longer sweated the small stuff. I had lost that nervous, wound up tight and threatening to explode at any given minute, energy that everyone associated with me. For the first time in my adult life, I wasn’t singing the some man done me wrong song. I still found it hard to believe that, after forty-five years, I had successfully put the past where it belonged. In the past.
My dad and JoJo practically inhaled fish that tasted even more delicious than what you could order at our local Rocky River Springs Fish House. They were anxious to take the boat downriver to one of the deep holes where the flathead catfish lived and get in some night fishing. I had seen several fish reeled in from the river that when held in front of a 6 feet tall man would reach his chin.
JoJo waved, then faced the front of the boat steering it through dangerous clusters of underwater rocks that he knew by heart. The rocks had been the cause of many failed fishing trips, attributed to busted propellers, by boaters less skilled at navigating the hidden dangers of Rocky River
“Do you think JoJo will take that job in Charlotte and stop all that traveling?” Mom asked, as we cleared the picnic table and carried leftovers to the truck.
“I don’t know. It’s his decision and I try not to sway him one way or the other, although I sure would love to have him this close to home every day. Although, I try not to get down on my knees and beg. It’s a crazy world out there, Mom. I worry about him doing all that traveling.”
“Yes, it sure is a crazy world, Eve. And I’m afraid it’s going to get crazier. We got wars and rumors of wars all over the world. The Bible is fulfilling itself. Yes sir, the Bible is surely fulfilling itself. And anybody who has any doubt about it should just read Mark 13:8.”
She quoted: “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom, against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.”
“I agree, Mom. The bible does seem to spell it out and we’ve certainly had the earthquakes in diverse places in the last several years. And on the news yesterday they were comparing the drought we are experiencing now to the drought during the dust bowl.”
“Yep, it’s getting downright scary, Eve. You can’t hardly turn on the television set no more without seeing some new disaster that’s befalling this old earth.” Then she gave me a big hug and hopped in the truck. “Do you want to put the bike in back of the truck and ride back with me?”
I was still thinking on her prophetic words as I decided to ride my bike home and waved to Mom as she left in a cloud of dust.
I sat in a lawn chair gazing out at the river that had been such an integral part of my life. Leaves swirled on the surface of the water and floated by on a lazy current. A woodpecker pecked noisily in a tree overhead. A trail of determined ants made their way across the cleared picnic table searching for crumbs. And fish that always got playful toward dusk, jumped out of the water falling back into the river with a loud plop.
The sounds provoked new memories to stir inside my head. Pleasant memories. It was like the floodgates in my mind had suddenly opened up and for the first time, my childhood came rushing back to greet me. I remembered Christmases, Easters, Halloweens, Birthdays and Thanksgivings. I even remembered my Valentine’s Days spent passing out cards at school. I remembered them all.
I recalled that almost every weekend during the summer my family had camped out on this very spot, along with my mom’s sister and her family. I remembered sliding down the muddy riverbank and landing in the cool water with my sister and cousins giggling beside me, along with the time Mom had lifted the cover off a platter of grilled hamburgers and found a blowfly inside. She had panicked in a major way.
Not knowing any better, she was certain we would all die from maggot infestation since we had snacked on the burgers most of the day. She and my aunt had thrown every last child into my dad’s old river truck and rushed home at breakneck speed. Once there they had made us take a dose of Castor Oil, undoubtedly the nastiest substance on the planet, to clean out our systems.
Just remembering the horrible taste of the laxative was enough to make me gag now. I had to laugh, remembering the sleepless night my sister and brother and I had spent trotting back and forth to the bathroom. It was good to have memories again, some of them anyway. At least now I know why I have such an aversion to Castor Oil.
I could just make out the edge of Dad’s boat going around the bend in the river in the growing twilight. Crap! I had been so caught up in my onslaught of new memories that I hadn’t noticed the sun slipping behind the trees. It would soon be dark.
I hopped on my bicycle not cherishing the thought of riding home alone, especially at night. But Mom was long gone, and since the men had taken a lantern I knew they wouldn’t be returning until much later. Better leave now while there was enough fading light to still see the road.
The narrow dirt road from the river to the main road was surrounded on both sides by cornfields. In fact, the road twisted and turned in such a way that for most of the way out your were surrounded on all four sides by towering stalks of corn as far as the eye could see.
The corn stalks rustled and crackled, their tasseled tops swaying in the gentle breeze. Wiping the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand I closed my eyes for a few minutes savoring the feeling of being alone in my cacoon of corn. I breathed deeply of the cooler evening air realizing that I had been wrapped up in my own misery for so long that I had ignored the peace and tranquility right in my own back yard.
That was about to change. I intended to start communing with nature. Life was good again for the first time in a long, long time. Laughing out loud, I startled a covey of about a hundred guail and sent them into a noisy, scattered flight along with a grasshopper that landed on my knee and promptly spit a wad of tobacco juice on it.
JoJo would be coming back home for two weeks at Thanksgiving, I had a new contract at the county offices, and crying myself to sleep at night was a thing of the past. Huh. I suppose time does heal all wounds. Well, time and a good hypnotist. Amazing, since a few short months ago I would have bet my last pecan log that the wound Adam had inflicted on me would fill my body with enough pus and canker to give my shattered heart gangrene.
After twenty minutes of strenuous pedaling, I was beginning to feel the burn in my thighs. I had forgotten the return trip was mostly uphill. You can believe I was doing some heavy breathing and had just slowed down to catch my breath, when I heard a loud thrashing in the corn. It must be a raccoon or fox or other small creature that called the cornfields home, but man was he ever kicking up a fuss. The furry little critters were notorious for making a mad dash across the road -- I would swear they had turbo jets built into their hind legs-- causing you to slam on brakes to keep them from an early demise. Although in this case, with me on a bike, if we collided the odds were better that I would be the one picking my bruised bottom up off the ground after I took flight over the handlebars.
I stopped the bike, squinting into the dying light and waiting for the animal to cross the road. It must be a fast little critter the way it was charging through the cornfield. It got closer and closer and I waited impatiently for it to emerge in front of me so I could be on my way. But it didn’t. “Come on would you! We’re losing daylight here!”
The thrashing noise suddenly stopped and all was quiet. The animal must have spotted me and was too frightened to come out in the open. Good. I placed a foot on the pedal, when I heard what sounded like… a giggle. As a general rule, raccoon’s don’t… giggle. It had been my imagination for crying out loud. I pushed on the petal, but then curiosity got the best of me -- my nosiness has always been a curse—and I leaned slightly into the corn for a better look.
Oh, my sweet Jesus! Why did I do that? Why didn’t I just leave while I had the chance? And what in the hell was that glaring at me through the corn? Those eyes certainly did not belong to the animal kingdom! A horrified scream froze in my chest and my heart pounded against my ribs like a jackhammer as I saw large emerald green… laughing eyes… staring back at me.
They were human eyes, but not… quite… human eyes.
The urge to leap from my bike and run screaming through the soaring rows of corn was strong. However there was no way I was leaving my bike and being stuck…at night… in the middle of a cornfield with whatever that…thing… was. I might be scared shitless, but I wasn’t stupid. It was time to follow my golden rule and run, or pedal, like hell. Unfortunately, before I could get the wheels in motion a chubby little black face peeked out from behind the corn stalks. I shut my eyes for a second praying furiously that when I opened them again he wouldn’t be there and we could both pretend this never happened.
No such luck! He was still there and he had his full lips pursed as if he were puzzled to find a middle-aged woman on a bicycle in his cornfield. I took a slow steadying breath, tried to calm my rattled nerves and waited to see what the child would do. And he was such a beautiful child. He could have easily graced the cover of a parenting magazine. I couldn’t be afraid of him. Could I? He seemed perfectly normal. Well, bless his heart, he was filthy… but normal.
Except for the eyes.
Eyes that just looked… different.
Too brilliant.
Too green.
Like he had colored contact lenses or had just climbed out from under a rock.
Judging from the green eyes and his coffee with just a touch of cream skin tone, I assumed that one of his parents had been white. He didn’t speak, but just looked at me with two dirty little fingers tugging on his bottom lip as the sun dipped down below the cornfield. I shuddered at the thought of being trapped in the cornfield all night and pushed on the petal once again. The child grabbed a cornstalk and shook it vigorously to gain my attention, then he held out his other chubby, dimpled hand and playfully stuck one finger out, motioning for me to follow him.
Bless his little heart! The child had bumped his head on a corncob if he thought I could ever, in this life or any other, find the courage to go hiking through the corn with him. Nope, you’ll just have to wait for the next hapless cyclist to wander by sweetheart. Me? Follow him? Me? Who couldn’t even work up the nerve to stroll through a haunted house at Halloween?
As the child’s green gaze locked with mine, I was lost in a daze remembering Dad's story. Like the little boy in his story, this child was wearing nothing more than a saggy cloth diaper as well. But he wasn’t trembling and crying, possibly because dogs weren’t chasing him in freezing weather. He seemed to be in a rather playful, albeit a troubled mood, like he had heavy things weighing on his young mind...nope scratch that, he was undoubtedly way older than me.
Without speaking, I shook my head from side to side to let him know that I couldn’t work up the courage to go traipsing through the corn with him. My weak constitution simply wouldn’t allow it. And I can assure you that it was a constitution that was getting frailer by degrees with every passing second.
What to do? Run! Could he read minds? Possibly, because before I could lift a foot toward the pedal he again motioned determinedly with his little finger.
He must understand that he had the wrong person for the job here! Again I shook my head and then had a rare light bulb moment. “You come with me.” I croaked, given the fact that my saliva glands had ceased to produce even a drop of spittle. Then, in a determined effort to convince myself that the child was indeed human, I foolishly added, “Let’s go find your mommy.”
At the mention of his mommy his face hardened to stone, his eyes filled with tears and he again motioned for me to follow him, but not just with his finger. Now his entire hand was gesturing toward the cornfield behind him with hard, jerky movements.
“I can’t.” I licked my suddenly parched lips, while shaking my head vigorously from side to side. “I can’t follow you. Wait here and I’ll go find someone who will, okay?”
When I said this his eyes took on a menacing, reddish glare and the cheerful smile that had brightened his face earlier was quickly replaced by a wicked frown. He began to tap one dirty little foot on the ground. This couldn’t be good.
Trust me, red eyes erased all doubt from my mind. This child was not human.
As I live and breathe he was a tanned version of Chucky!
I took a second to look toward the sky as the gentle breeze that had been blowing suddenly picked up to forceful hot gusts that felt like they were blowing out of a furnace. I glanced back at the child and his eyes no longer had a reddish glare. They were blood red!
The wind speed was leaping in volumes by the second. The cornstalks swirled and the dry leaves crackled as the wind began to scream around me. I glanced back at the child, but quickly averted my gaze from his menacing red glare and evil leer. Within seconds, the wind was pounding me with a gale force. Fearing that I would be sucked from my bicycle and into a funnel cloud at any second, I glanced around for the nearest ditch.
Dad always said, “Get in a ditch if you are caught outside in a tornado.” But there were no ditches, only rows upon rows of corn. And as I glanced toward the sky in the growing twilight I was shocked to see that there wasn’t a cloud in sight! But it had to be a tornado. What else could produce wind this ferocious? My only thought was my survival as my hair whipped wildly around my face and the powerful blasts of wind seemed determined to rip the clothes from my trembling body. I tried to scream for help, but the powerful gusts blew the words away before they left my lips.
The stalks of corn twisted and jerked, doing a violent dance in the relentless wind. I heard a popping noise and glancing sideways saw corn… actually popping off the cob. On both sides of the road the ground was as white as snow. Oh Lord, get me out of here! Then the wind became even fiercer and I covered my face with my hands to keep the sand and dirt that felt like needles jabbing into my skin, out of my eyes. Sand, dirt and cornstalk debris swirled around me in a stifling cloud of dust making it difficult to breathe. I covered my face with my shirt and gasped for air.
I was absolutely terrified that at any moment I would be blown into the cornfield where he had wanted me to begin with. I could feel the cornstalks brushing against me as they bent almost to the ground and the roar of the vicious wind was deafening. I cried out in pain when the bicycle, with me on it, was blown to the ground.
I had never been so utterly terrified in my life! I knew the corn, even as flimsy at it was, was better than no cover at all so I crawled toward it. I had to find shelter from the funnel that I expected to drop from the sky at any minute.
Then as suddenly as it had started, the wind stopped blowing. The corn stopped rustling and dancing. All was calm. It wasn’t a gradual dying down of the wind either, it was a complete dead calm. Not a single breeze stirred the cornstalks. I heard frogs croaking in the pond, crickets chirping and bumblebees lazily buzzing around me.
Strange, I thought, lowering my shirt and pulling deep gulps of sweet air into my deprived lungs. You would think the frogs would be hiding underwater and the crickets and bumblebees would have been blown into the next county. Then I thought about Dad and my son. In a boat! In a tornado! I immediately dialed his cell phone.
“Are you okay?” I cried as soon as JoJo answered, relief washing over me at the sound of his voice.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding puzzled. “We’re good. Why?”
“I was worried that your boat might have turned over in all that wind.”
“What wind?”
“What wind?” I shrieked. “I was just in a tornado.”
“A tornado? Where are you, Mom?” I could hear the worry in his voice.
“Between the cornfields.”
“Mom, the wind hasn’t been blowing at all where we are. The water is as still as glass. Are you all right?”
What did he mean the wind hadn’t been blowing at all? He was less than a half-mile away. Surely, he had to have encountered a slight breeze. However, I couldn’t allow him to believe that I had taken to hallucinations now, along with my other countless issues. “I guess.”
“A little breeze sounds like a lot of wind when those cornstalks get to rustling. Do you want me to come and get you?”
“No, of course not. I’m fine. I can make it home.”
“Are you sure? I can be there in thirty minutes.”
“No, like you said, I just got a little spooked in the cornstalks. I’m fine now.”
“Well, call me the minute you get home. And don’t forget. I won’t rest until I hear from you.”
“I will.”
I glanced nervously around at the towering rows of corn and got back on my bike, shaking worse than the leaves of corn had shaken in the punishing wind. I was mentally calculating the distance to the main road. At least five more minutes in the cornfields, then I would be on paved road and a few miles from home. I could make it. The wind was calm and thankfully the little boy had returned to the corn.
I pedaled furiously, not looking in any direction other than straight ahead. After a few minutes, I could see the gate to the main road looming in the distance and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Thank God! I had almost made it out of the cornfields.
Increasing my speed, I absently slapped at a mosquito that was painfully trying to suck his evening meal from my neck. Ouch! Hearing a steadily increasing humming sound behind me, I glanced over my shoulder hoping to see a vehicle approaching, but no vehicle was in sight. I screeched when one of the blood-sucking insects landed on my ear and the humming sound increased to a tremendous buzzing that filled me with terror. Then I felt what I assumed was a wasp or a bee sting me on the back of the neck. I screamed, slapping furiously at the stinging pest.
I devoted every ounce of energy to pedaling the bike, but the relentless fog of insects was faster. Within seconds they had settled over me in a swarming cloud. I watched, horrified, as thousands quickly joined the others to cover my arms, legs, feet, head and face to bite or sting every inch of exposed skin. Almost immediately I felt sharp stingers piercing my body through my clothes! When I tried to breathe my throat clogged with bugs and I gagged. I was frantically slapping at them as they sank their needle sharp points into my skin. The buzzing increased in volume until I thought my head would split and my body was on fire with pain.
I was in a swarm so thick I couldn’t even see my hand in front of me, let alone the road. And the buzzing noise the insects made sounded like a couple thousand of them had settled on my eardrums. I tried to open my eyes, but they covered my eyeballs. I began to feel a growing hysteria creep over me as I was slapping at the insects, trying desperately to keep the bike upright, and pedal all at the same time.
“Keep it together, Eve!” I warned. “The gate can’t be much further.” For some strange reason, I felt certain that if I could just make it out of the cornfields I would survive this nightmare and live to tell my grandchildren about it.
Thankfully, I opened my eyes in time to see the gate looming directly in front of me or I would have plowed right into it, at a high rate of speed. Oh God! If I stopped to unlock the gate, I might not be able to get back on the bike. If they got me on the ground the bugs would kill me! I was certain they would suck every last ounce of blood from my body. That settled it.
There was no way I was stopping the bike. I slowed down, jumped off and slid across the dirt road losing several layers of skin from my outer right thigh in the process, but at least I was still alive. On trembling hands and knees I crawled under the gate feeling sharp, jagged rocks slicing into my knees and palms at every move. Miraculously, when I crossed under the gate the insects were gone, just as I had expected. I looked back and didn’t even see one lone bug.
Hallelujah!
Thank God!
I was alive!
I glanced cautiously around to see if anything else was coming my way. A raging elephant? A roaring lion? A stampeding herd of buffalo perhaps? Who the hell knows? I took a quick peek in the corn. Nothing. Good. However I was covered in red itching welts, bug bites, and stings from head to toe and my knees, palms and right leg were raw and bleeding. Needless to say, I am now a firm believer in the presence of poltergeists.
I sat down on the side of the road and had a good long cry, all the while wondering how I was going to get the bike to my side of the gate. It was full dark now and there was no way I would risk crawling back through the gates of hell to retrieve a bicycle. The kid could have it for all I cared.
As I picked my bloody, bruised and aching carcass off the ground and began the long walk home, I heard a child’s playful laughter coming from the edge of the cornfield.
Devious little shit!