Creekers (19 page)

He scaled the embankment up a fallen tree, then pushed into the woods.
Eech!
he thought when he also pushed through a sticky spiderweb suspended invisibly between two trees. Several trails branched out (he and Eagle hadn’t taken all of them) so he took the one to the far left and just started walking…

Maybe one of the trails would lead to the “things.”

He couldn’t imagine exactly what kind of things Uncle Frank meant. Maybe he’d find more of those moldy magazines that had pictures of naked ladies. Or maybe—

His heart jumped again.

Maybe I’ll find a lady who’s been raked,
he fretted.

He hoped not. What would he do? And what would he do with the rake? Take it to Big Chief Mullins?

The sun blazed through the trees; sweat dripped in his eyes, and his T-shirt stuck to him. He passed another creek he’d never seen before and was suddenly swarmed by mosquitoes, and when he tried to run on he—
SPLAT!
—accidentally stepped on a big toad.
Aw, gross!
he thought. The toad’s plump body burst under his shoe like a baggie full of pudding.

The bugs were biting him all over, and the harder the August sun beat down, the worse he felt. Not just his belly now, but his throat was hurting too, and his head felt stuffed up, and there were a couple more times he thought he might upchuck.
I’m never eating those stuffed peppers again,
he vowed to himself.
Ever!

After another twenty minutes his belly got to feeling
real
bad.
This is stupid,
he thought.
There aren’t no things in the woods. Uncle Frank’s full of dog poop!
And just as he was ready to turn around and go back home, something snapped.
A branch?
he wondered.

He stood still.

Then he heard a voice:

“You. Hey.”

Another branch snapped. Behind him.

His eyes darted around. It was a lady’s voice, he could tell, but it sounded sort of…funny. Sort of like the way his aunt sounded on Friday nights when she drank out of that big bottle of wine she kept in the icebox.

“Wha’choo fer lookin’, ah? Lost ya?”

At first he couldn’t see her; the old stained sundress she wore blended right in with the woods. But then she seemed to appear like magic while he squinted toward the direction of the voice. A girl stood a few yards away between two trees. She had real black straight hair, but it was all kind of mussed up in her face, and she wasn’t wearing any shoes, and her legs looked real dirty. She stood there a bit looking at him through her hair, and when he took a few curious steps, she took a few too and suddenly the sun was on her. She looked older, like maybe twelve or thirteen, ’cos she had little bubs pushing against the top of her dress like most of the sixth-grade girls had at school, and he could even see little buds poking through! “Bub-buds,” Dave the Cave called them. “Tittie buds. Milk comes out of ’em when ya suck ’em.”
Milk?
That sounded pretty silly.
Why would milk be in a girl’s bubs,
he remembered thinking,
when you can get it right out of the icebox?
But that was a while ago when the Cave had told him that, and it didn’t matter now. He could see this girl’s buds real good because her dress top was all stuck to her with sweat just like his Green Hornet T-shirt. He could tell he liked her, though, even though she was all dirty and all, and her messy hair was hanging in her face. Yeah, he could tell he liked her, and he could tell she was pretty. And there was one other thing he could tell:

Hillfolk!
he realized.
She’s a hill girl. Probably lives in a shack somewhere. Probably doesn’t even go to school…

“Hi-yuh, ya,” she said, and black strands of hair hanging over her mouth sort of puffed out when she spoke. “What’s-er-yer name, er-ya?”

He squinted at her, not quite sure what she’d said. “Uh, Phil,” he said. “Phil Straker. What’s yours?”

“Dawnie, me.” She glanced around, like maybe she was nervous about something. “I’m me name Dawnie, me,” and there her hair went again, puff-puff-puff.

This hill girl fascinated him, and he kind of thought he fascinated her too because then they stood there some more just looking at each other, but all that looking made him feel dumb, like he should be saying something, so he just said the first thing that came to his head. “I go to Summerset Elementary. Where do you go?”

“Whuh-ut?” she replied.

What a dumb thing to ask her!
he immediately regretted it.
Hill kids don’t go to school!
Then he said, “I live off the Route in my aunt’s house. Where do you live, Dawnie?”

“There yonder, out.” And she pointed behind her, into the woods, and the little boy wondered exactly where and in what. Did she really live in a shack or a lean-to? Hill folk didn’t have any money at all so they couldn’t buy houses. They couldn’t even buy food, so they had to eat animals they caught in the woods. At least that’s what Uncle Frank had said…

“What’s, huh?” she said, stepping right up to him. He turned rigid as she abruptly put her hands on him, feeling his T-shirt. “What’s this hee-ah?” she asked.

“It’s the Green Hornet,” he mumbled back. Dawnie probably didn’t know who the Green Hornet was ’cos she’d probably never seen a comic. But then he felt flushed, instantly prickly. “What’s this?” she asked again, fingering at the rim of his underpants which stuck up over his belt. Then she pulled at it…

“It’s…underpants!” he replied, feeling hot and mushy, and suddenly his thing was stiff.

Her hands felt strange on him, but they felt good. Her breath puffing through her hair smelled sort of like milk. Then he looked at her hands—

Holy poop!

—and saw that one hand had seven fingers, and the other had four but was missing a thumb. And then he looked at her feet—

She’s a—

—which had at least eight little toes on each.

—Creeker!

She tugged curiously up on the edge of his underpants, and all at once his pee-er felt funny, like something was going to happen. The little boy couldn’t imagine what, though. He stared at her, never moving.
She’s a Creeker,
he thought more slowly this time. She had to be, just like what Eagle said. They were wrong, they were messed up. Why else would she have so many toes if she wasn’t a Creeker?

Her coal-black hair swayed in front of her face…

“You kin kiss me, ya want,” she said, and in that next second she was kissing him, real sloppy like, and putting her tongue into his mouth. At first he was grossed-out, but very quickly he started to like it. Then—

“Dawn!” a voice cracked out of the woods like a rifle shot. “Dawn! Hee-ah! Now, girl!”

Dawnie jerked back. “I go gotta now,” she whispered in panic, glancing back. “Bye!”

Then she ran off into the woods.

“Wait!” his voice broke. He wasn’t even thinking. He didn’t want her to go. He wanted to…kiss her some more. But off she went, her feet carrying her away.

What should I do?
 he thought quite dumbly. The answer was simple.

He ran after her.

She’d got a good head start. Leaves and branches crunched under his sneakered feet as he pedaled forward into the brush. Vines and thorn bushes scratched at his arms and face, but he didn’t care, he didn’t even feel it. His eyes darted forward. Where had she gone? All he saw up ahead were trees, woods, spiderwebs. Then he pushed through more thicket and sunlight broke on his face…

Suddenly he was standing at the end of a dirt road which led up a hill. At the end of the road stood a house.

A big three-story rickety farmhouse. Gables stuck out of the upstairs rooms; old gray wood showed through old whitewash, and some of the shingles on the roof were missing, which reminded him of Mrs. Nixerman’s missing teeth. The roof seemed to sag…

He still wasn’t thinking. He was running up the road. He didn’t see Dawnie, but he knew she must live there ’cos there weren’t any other houses around. The house got bigger as his feet stomped along the dusty dirt road. Big bugs zapped at his head.

Weathered planks creaked as he moved up the steps. He stood on the porch a moment, then took very slow steps to his right—

Toward the first window.

He placed his hand above his brow, to shield the sun from his eyes.

Then he put his face to the window and looked in…

— | — | —

Nine

Dream,
the parched thought throbbed in his head.

Phil was staring up into an abyss he eventually recognized as his bedroom ceiling. Threads of sunlight strayed through the gaps in his blackout curtains, spoiling the makeshift nighttime that his work schedule forced him to create. Despite the room’s beastly heat, he felt buried in cold mud.

A dream…

Not a dream as much as a replay, a mental towline dragging him back to that day twenty-five years ago. The rekindled images, now, made it seem like yesterday…