Forever Never Ends (19 page)

DeWalt braced himself for the agony of rising, stiffening from the car crash. "Hold on, Chester. I'm coming, if I can get my legs to work."

He rattled down the stairs, feeling as old as Methuselah. He was huffing by the time he caught up. "What do we do when we get there?"

Chester smiled, the late afternoon light making shadows in the valleys of his face. "Daddy always told me to make hay while the sun shines, pardner," he said, leading the way across the fields. "Didn't say nothing about what to do in the dark."

***

"Look at this fucking rot, man.” Junior stomped the planks of Don Oscar's porch and moldy dust rose in the air around them. The porch was covered with a blue powdery fungus that was about an inch deep. The mold reminded Junior of the blue mold that tainted the tobacco that his grandfather used to grow, back before the old coot had gotten so lazy.

"Where's Don Oscar?" Wade asked, a little uneasy at messing around a bootlegger's house with no one home.

"Probably up the trail doing business. See those cars in the driveway? That Mazda ain't Don Oscar's, it must be some customer."

"No, that's the preacher's wife's car."

"The preacher's wife? How in the hell do you know what she drives?"

Wade looked down. "’Cause I go to the Baptist Church."

Junior let out a chortle. "You're fucking with me."

"Naw, man."

Junior looked at Wade with his head tilted. Maybe the guy was serious. He was from up north, after all. "Hey, how do you reckon getting wasted works in with religion?"

"What's that got to do with believing in Jesus?"

Junior thought it over for a second, until his head started hurting. "Uh, nothing, I guess."

Wade crinkled his nose against the ripe, rank odor. "Shoo. That damned wife of Don Oscar's needs to do some cleaning."

"What is this shit?" Junior said, drawing a trail on the moldy porch with the tip of his boot.

"Who knows? Let's get our moonshine and get the hell out of Dodge."

Junior led the way up the dark muddy stitch of ground that followed the creek. There was more mold along its banks, veins of faded avocado green and powder blue and dried mustard. Puffballs dotted the dead leaves under the trees like leather eggs. The glen smelled like a forgotten laundry basement.

Wade stopped and looked along the creek. "Hey, Junior, is it my imagination, or is all this grass dying?"

"Who the fuck are you, Ranger Rick or something? Let's get up to the springhouse."

But Wade was right. All the plants seemed to be wilted, as if tapped out by a late frost. The trees sagged toward the ground, already tired from holding up new leaves. Some had fallen, their trunks snapped in half, branches stunted. But Windshake hadn’t had an ice storm in weeks. The plants were supposed to be thriving this time of year.

Junior and Wade stepped from under the oak and hickory and balsam limbs into the springhouse clearing. The mold in the clearing seemed to have dried out from exposure to the sun. Junior lifted the heavy padlock on the springhouse door to make sure it was locked.

"Hey, Don Oscar?" he yelled, his eyes searching the edge of the clearing. "You out here?"

"Maybe he's on vacation, man."

Junior giggled at the image of Don Oscar in Bermuda shorts, sitting on the deck of an ocean liner with his shirt off, his Indian-red neck and arms meeting the pale gooseflesh of his bare chest in the perfect outline of a T-shirt. "Naw, man. Bootleggers don't go on vacation. You saw the cars in the driveway."

"Do you want to wait a while, or what?" Wade looked around uncertainly.

"Why not? Good a place as any to smoke a little number." They sat on a fallen log and replenished their buzz, blowing smoke pillars into the clear sky. Junior saw that the stovepipes were bare mouthed, meaning Don Oscar had let his cooking fire die out. That wasn't like the old bootlegger at all. He liked to brag that he kept the still cooking around the clock.

And thin powdery roots had crawled up the walls of the springhouse, veining out across the warped planks. Don Oscar usually took a lot of pride in his operation.

"Hey, look at that," Wade said, pointing into the shadowed pocket of a soggy stump.

"Just some mushrooms. Sons of bitches grow all over the mountains this time of year.”

"But those are the psychedelic kind. Used to pick them out of the cow pastures down in Florida, when we went for vacation. Hippies down there showed me which ones were the right kind. Pop a few, and a half-hour later, you're as fucked as a Homecoming cheerleader."

"I got news for you, Ranger Rick. In case you ain't noticed, this ain't fucking Florida."

"I heard they grew in the North Carolina mountains, too."

"Since when did you turn into a goddamned nature boy? As I remember it, you're making an ‘F’ in Science, same as me.”

"If it's got something to do with getting fucked up, then I'm an expert. Like peyote and acid and stuff. You ever tripped, man?"

Junior's stoned smile was plastered across his face. His cheeks tingled. He shook his head from side to side. That Panama Red was some ass-kicking shit. No wonder those spics just wanted to lay in the shade all day.

And what the hell was Wade doing, going over and picking some fucking mushrooms when they had a pocketful of pot, and maybe some moonshine in the near future as well?

Wade sat back down and broke the moist splintery stem of one of the mushrooms. "See, if the stem turns blue where it's broken, that means it's a magic mushroom, or ‘shroom,’ as the hippies call it."

"You're full of shit, Wade."

"Hell, no, I'm not. We had hippies up north, too. Some of my best connections were hippies. Once you get past that peace and love horseshit, they're just like regular folks. And they know a hell of a lot about getting wasted."

"Give me a joint and a jar, and I'm set. I don't know about that other stuff. Plus, what if it's one of the poison kind, death angels or whatnot?"

"Look here. The stem's turning. It's safe as mother's milk."

Junior looked dubiously at the stem, at the blue-green ring that was starting to emerge where Wade had broken the flesh of the fungus. Junior was starting to get thirsty.
Where the hell is Don Oscar?

"You ain't seriously going to eat that shit, are you?" Junior asked. But from the look in Wade's eyes, he didn't have to bother asking. Wade popped a couple of small caps in his mouth as if they were M&M's. Wade chewed and grimaced, then swallowed with effort.

He smiled at Junior, and it was a preacher smile, the kind people wore during weddings and holidays, or funerals where they didn't know the dead person too well. Wade held out his palm, and a couple of tan moist mushrooms lay across his lifelines.

"Magical Mystery Tour," Wade said, grimacing as if he had eaten a handful of earthworms.

"I don't know. I want to see if you drop over dead first."

"See you in the clouds, Chickenshit." Wade leaned back against the crisp, leaf-covered bank, oblivious to the moldering roots that threaded across the soil. "I'll say hello to God for you."

Junior was curious now. He hated missing out on a chance to escape from this fuck-up of a reality. What was the worst thing that could happen?

It was almost as if Wade read his mind, because Wade said, "What's the worst thing that can happen?"

"I'll die."

"Well, there's grass in heaven and there's booze in hell, so what have you got to lose?"

"Not a damn thing, I reckon."

He picked up the mushrooms that Wade had left on the log. They were light and innocent-looking. They couldn't be any worse for you than pot. His dad said that nature was there for a reason, and nature always did you right.

Junior put them in his mouth and bit down, then his taste buds were flooded with bitterness.

Wow man Wade is talking but his words are mushy and far away and they're not matching up with the way his lips are moving and the wind is painting my skin and I can feel every hair on my body and that tree has so many tiny flecks of bark, every one is alive, and the leaves are waving hello and the tree is slithering like a snake and the sky is an ocean if you look at it upside down and I can swim in it and Wade is smiling and I thought he said it took a half hour to kick in only how long has it been, hours or seconds, there's no difference because it all feels like NOW and I'm falling into the orange pool of the sun except these vines are holding me down and what the fuck these vines are holding me down and Wade's eyes are glowing, he didn't tell me it would be so fucking weird, no wonder those hippies are so goofy, this can't be real but what is real, and I want to lift my arms only the vines are holding me down but my arms are the vines and the vines are fingers reaching into the ground and I am the dirt and the trees and far-fucking-out I've come from the stars to swallow this land and I must eat the trees that I am and I am shu-shaaa and I must feed myself so I can go home and Wade's eyes are glowing green and he's part of me now and we are all children of the parent and boy am I fucked up and I bite the trees and I squeeze the life in my jaws and I come from space to eat the trees and I'm hungry and that is the wind in my throat and not my heart because my heart is not beating and this is really fucked up because I come from space to eat the life and eat myself who is the earth so I can go home and

I am shu-shaaa Mull but what the fuck is shu-shaaa that is me that is the tree that is the sky that fills the fucking sky and

I can’t feel the end where my skin used to be and I can never turn back until all is shu-shaaa and I come from space to eat the trees and I must go with the flow toward nothing and everything and always all at once and boy am I fucked up

CHAPTER TWELVE

"This is a gorgeous place, Bill," Nettie said. Bill watched her eyes as he helped spread the blanket across the warm clover.

They were on a rise of meadow that overlooked a laurel-covered river valley. The gray face of Bear Claw sloped upward from the meadow, the mountain harsh with rocky shadows. The softer outlines of Fool’s Knob and Antler Ridge met the sky on the southern horizon. The surrounding trees wore their new buds like a regal finery of jewelry and lace. A scattering of sparrows erupted from the forest and soared over the grass, their wings tilted at odd angles.

Bill smoothed the blanket with his hand and sat beside Nettie. He smelled dandelions and wild onions, fried chicken and raspberry tarts. He had planned on stopping at the Save-a-Ton and buying one of those ready-to-go deli picnics, but Nettie had insisted on providing the food. And she looked tasty herself, in that lavender blouse and light-colored skirt, a yellow scarf tying her hair back in a dark ponytail, little wispy curls brushing her cheeks.

Now get that stuff out of your mind
.
Is the devil going to follow you even out here, into the heart of God's country?

Nettie opened the basket and passed him a napkin. "Bill, what made you ask me out on the spur of the moment?"

Bill avoided her eyes and looked off at the mountains. "I just wanted to show you this place," he said, waving his work-roughened hand out toward the woods.

"I love it here. I feel so . . . free," she said. "Close to the Lord. Pure." She said the last with a small blush.

Bill saw the blush and gulped nervously. He nodded and said, "I've loved this place since I was a little boy. Used to go up there by that ridge and pick huckleberries."

He didn't add that he used to bring his high school dates out here to give the Corvette's shock absorbers a workout under the ogling moon. But that had been a different, devil-ridden Bill, before the Light had found him. Those sins had been washed away by the blood of the Lamb. He helped Nettie unpack the food.

"I'll bet you were cute as a boy."

Now it was Bill's turn to blush. Even his ears tingled. He dropped the bowl of mashed potatoes, tipping over the plastic container of sweet tea. He hated that he was always so clumsy around Nettie.

"Even as a boy, I knew I wanted to live out here one day. Finally I was able to make enough money to buy it."

"This place is
yours
?" Her eyes widened.

Bill hoped he didn't sound like he was bragging. "Well, actually, it's the Lord's, but I get to keep it until He comes back for it. The lot goes over to the base of the mountain and across that ridge there, the one with the stand of oaks, on down into that old growth thicket by the river."

Nettie picked a buttercup and tucked it behind her ear. "Wow, Bill, you certainly have an eye for beauty."

Bill studied her face, wondering if she were fishing for compliments the way some women did. He decided she wasn't insecure about her looks. She couldn't be, not with all the gifts she had been blessed with.

"Well, I've been wanting to settle here one day. Only . . . " He gulped again, feeling his big stupid vocal cords locking up on him. He'd never been very good at expressing himself, and now, when the bright sun and the swaying daisies and the velvet green fields demanded poetry, he could only stack words as if they were cinder blocks. " . . . only, the time's never been right."

"It's a nice dream, Bill. I hope it comes true. You deserve every good thing in the world."

Nettie was talking about dreams, and his heart clenched like a fist. He had shared dreams with his first wife, and she had vomited them back in his face every chance she got. She had ridiculed him, laughed at his idiotic plans that she said were a waste of money, snickered at his sexual performance, and taunted him with a string of lovers, from the entire landscaping crew to Sammy Ray Hawkins, making sure to time her trysts so that Bill had a fifty-fifty chance of walking in on her adulterous acrobatics.

Bill had tried hard to forgive her, even asked the Lord to forgive her, too. And he draped her in silk, adorned her with diamonds, wrapped her in gold chains, hoping he could buy her approval and affection. But he only built the wealth of her scorn. And the devil had gained final victory by forcing him to break a vow to God and divorce her.

He wasn't about to risk that pain again. Nettie must have sensed something, because she put her hand on his big forearm. "Is that the secret you told me about? You owning this?" she said quietly.