Installment 8 - Crazy Talk

Dix Hill

Lunacy was such a source of pride in Visitation County that satisfaction practically oozed as people lamented Aunt Betty's reality fugues and Cousin Bo's various personalities.  Nervous breakdowns, schitzophrenia, and all the available manias were such sure-fire chitchat starters, that adults at cocktail parties spoke of little else.

Mannerly lunatics remained at home, looked after like pedigreed pets, regardless of any mortal danger they might have posed to themselves or others, mainly for bragging rights.  Stints up at "the Hill" were only the last resort when some nut became such a nuisance that the complaints of envious neighbors grated the family's last nerve.   In those cases, the inmate puffed with smug joy for the conversational mileage this was going to provide later on.  

Even though wild squirrels in the family tree were as common as the Cherokee ancestry they all bragged having, no matter how blond or how black, the folks who came up short regularly lied while those blessed with a gracious plenty were coyly modest. The McCrarys, for instance, could afford modesty.

Before they started letting "Batboy" bivouac on the Hill, neighbors had to admit that Lester McCrary was a good contender for the asylum if not 1313 Mockingbird Lane.  If he wasn't lurking in the window wearing a vampire cape and plastic fangs, shining a flashlight up under his chin, he was skulking in the shrubbery out front, waiting for anyone to stroll by so he could jump out at them, jabbering some jibberish in their faces that only he could understand, or tending to his "pretend" graveyard behind the kitchen.  This was all cute and endearing when he was a little kid, but when several neighbors' kitties went missing, and there seemed to be a matching number of fresh dirt mounds by the McCrary's place, a delegation was formed to have a word with Batboy's parents.  Nothing definitive was discovered in the play-graves, but there was a small bag of lime on the porch that Mr. McCrary insisted he had been using around the hydrangeas to achieve their spectacular blue.  The delegation had to admit they were the deepest azure on the block, and they left with no more than the promise that Batboy would be examined in Raleigh by Dr. Pediaditakis, and they'd follow whatever the doctor ordered.  

Martin was just as eager for Dr. P. to put Batboy up in Ashby Hall for a week as the neighbors were, and get him out of his hair, but the good doctor just put him on some stelazine, and opined that his maladjustment was due to something in his home-life that Mr. and Mrs. McCrary were never willing to discuss with others.  In an effort to avoid further confrontation, they rewarded his crazy behavior with a decommissioned Jeep mail truck and weekly bags of quarters from the bank which Batboy could carry down to Jupiter's Den, out of sight, out of mind, and out of trouble.

At Jupiter's Den, Batboy sprouted roots to the Bally Wizard pinball machine and met the already infamous Randy the Rabbitnapper.  The two of them came up with a plan the Daily Times captioned the "Cottondale Kitty Caper," where they catnapped Blackie, a pitiful, decrepit black panther that Cottondale High had bought cheap from the Ringling Brothers as their team mascot. According to the article, what originally appeared to authorities to be a typical schoolboy prank between rival schools, turned out to have started as Rabbitnapper's newest scheme to score ransom money after enjoying "Old Puss's musky charms" for a few days. It was further reported that "when Lester McC., 14, showed up for the heist in his decommissioned mail-truck carrying a bag of lime and two shovels in the back, Randy R., 15, knew he'd been out-classed," and evidently ran home to tattle to his daddy.

It took days for the police to be bothered with having to investigate, since Randy's dad didn't exactly rush right out to alert the press.  In fact, the discovery of the near-dead panther in a stairwell of the abandoned Galilee Orphanage was made by a group of men who claimed to be itinerant stage performers, preferred to remain anonymous, and offered no explanation as to why they were in town at all, much less what they were doing at the orphanage.  They were happy to split the fifty dollar reward offered by Cottondale High without further ado about it, though, and were on their merry way.

The Cottondale Kitty Caper was a clear violation of Randy Rabbitnapper's juvie probation for prior rabbit-napping.   Supposedly, he was to take the class bunny home one weekend, but the following Monday he didn't come to school and, taped to the front door, there was a note made of letters cut from the Visitation Times headlines, demanding $15.83 in cold currency to be sent across the Five Points Municipal Gardens pond.  The bunny would then be sent back in the same boat.  Maybe he thought they'd use a radio controlled boat, but how the rescuers would know where to direct the boat, or how Mr. Flop-Ears would be prevented from tipping over or leaping to his death is an eternal mystery.  Principal Hawkins and two Parks and Recreation employees closed in on Rabbitnapper in the nick of time.  What he got instead of $15.83 was an afternoon in juvenile hall, followed by a belt-whipping from his mama, a ten-day suspension from school, and probation.

This being Batboy's first real brush with the law, and him being a minor, all charges were dismissed in lieu of him spending the rest of that summer break at Dix Hill.  He loved it so much he determined to make it a regular thing. Martin had to ride along with his parents on visitation day, which he disliked after the novelty wore off.  He and his friends had visited other people there plenty of times before, and the friends were glad to ride along with Martin's family.  They'd "ditch the fam," as they called it, and sneak down to the basement looking for the dusty torture equipment that was rumored to be stored there, Motsie's idea, or skip like Dorothy and friends on the Yellow Brick Road down to Potters Field and count dead crazy people's graves, over 900 of them, speculating over what had killed them, Vincent's favorite, or sit on the west slope over the railroad tracks smoking pot and playing Truth or Dare, as Martin always loved. 

Installment 7 - Inside Galilee

Empty Ripple and Mad Dog bottles booby trapped Motsie's way to the back door. The scattering of feral kitties was followed by pairs of yellow or green eyes staring at Motsie from the corners and under the beds. The stump of a storm candle stood pegged to the center of the floor, and Motsie plucked it up along with a bottle to light her way to the door. Chicken bones and feathers lay scattered everywhere, and the corridor exhaled mildew, rot and something like burnt rubber through the doorway, but Motsie thought nothing of it. She could still hear bits of the conversation outside the window.

"One of the priests was just burning a wasp nest under the eaves, "Vincent was explaining, probably to reassure Lindsey. He went on while Motsie made her bottle torch that "...the time the place really burned was way longer ago, but they still kept orphans here after that, so there prob'ly weren't any of the dangerous kind of ... y'know...ghosts...." Lindsey was saying somethin ignorant but Motsie let their voices trail off as she made her way to the stairwell and doorway.

Motsie thought the whole story about Crybaby Lane was a slanderous myth started by ignorant Baptists like Lindsey. Ghosts were just the spirits of sinners in Purgatory, mainly Baptists, she was sure, and there were never any Baptists in Galilee. Anybody with one eye and half sense, she thought, would have known that since souls in heaven can't be ghosts, and all these orphans had to be Catholics baptized as babies, so there could be no Catholic orphan ghosts 'weeping and wailing in this vale of tears' on Crybaby Lane.

The the door to the back stairwell groaned like a bobcat's snarl and the stairwell reeked like the men’s room at the Esso. Motsie sincerely hoped the huge lozenges on the steps had been deposited by feral cats and not nasty people, even though Motsie calculated that loads of that particular caliber could only have been pumped out by a pretty good-sized barrel.

A spontaneous about-face led Motsie to a fresh idea that would teach that Lindsey a lesson. Curtains still festooned the front office, so Motsie went in and crawled onto the radiator, unfastening the drapery hooks from the rod, giggling to herself that she'd carry them into the belfry to wear as an angel costume to angelically proclaim something profound against Baptists.

The stairway at the front corner didn’t stink, and Motsie made quick time running up the steps in the dark. Upstairs was so tidy, she'd have easily believed no one had been upstairs since the orphanage closed except for the aroma of Old Spice and the deep laugh of some men, probably hobos or winos down the hall. She edged closer to the chuckling and stopped by the belfry door to make herself into an angel of the Lord before climbing up, wondering what those metal springs were squeaking about and what all that grunting was for. Hobos sure were racket makers, she decided, but at least they were a tidy folk, unless they'd been the ones using the back stairs as a litter box instead of the bathroom right next to them.

She swished her new curtain-wings dramatically, mentally rehearsing the angelic proclamations she might make, and the right curtain knocked over the candle and its Ripple holder with a bouncing clang clang clang that ended in a roll across the floor. The hobos hollered like ladies and bolted down to the farther stairway yelling "Lord have Mercy" and "feets don’t fail me now!" She heard their bare feet slapping on the stairs and their prayerful yelps all the way down Crybaby Lane. The next sound Motsie heard was the Jeep cranking up. The screech of peeling rubber was unmistakeable, and all she saw once she reached a window were the tail lights flicking on a hundred yards away, as Martin, Vincent, and Lindsey all ditched her.

“Oh, holy cow…” Motsie cut loose a string of unrepeatable cuss words she liked to refer to as the "Rosary." She sprinted across the dusty tiles to climb up the belfry and see if she could tell where the Jeep was heading but, as soon as she opened the belfry door, something furry brushed across her feet and, in an unplanned double-take, she conked her face on the edge of the door and saw stars. Her nose started bleeding. Her right angel-wing slid down her arm and flailed around before pouncing down the dim passage to that back stairwell that had smelled like the Esso men’s room.

Had she best leave now and walk home or wait for them to come back, Motsie wondered. The belfry was right there, though, incredibly dark except for three slashes of moonlight slanting across the bricks high above. One sliver of rope and edge of bell flattened themselves into the middle slash like tattoos. The brightest lights in sight from the belfry openings were at Channel 3, two lonely blocks beyond sparkly black-oaks full of fireflies, scratchy claws of ancient fiancées left waiting for centuries with their diamonds and rage. Motsie identified with them already as she watched those yellow-streaked traitors park and hop out of the Jeep to romp and frolic in the fountain without her! Right back down the ladder she shinnied, and grabbed the rope, pulled and pulled so hard that the bell’s swinging weight lifted her off the floor by the rope like a rag-doll. Those chicken livers in the fountain had better the hell hear her ringing this damn bell and get their sorry asses back for her!

Up the ladder she scurried again, deafened by the continued clanging and echoes in the masonry tower, and hung the other angel wing curtain with her nose blood drizzled down it out the belfry opening. When she saw the Jeep pulling off Crybaby Lane onto the bare dirt near the window she'd come in, she rushed down the ladder to run meet them. Sounded like babies crying in that cat poop stairwell when she flew into it with her breath held. Halfway down the first flight, in a pool of moonlight through the window, lay the hugest feral cat Motsie had ever seen, a rabid Carolina panther she was sure, just like the Cottondale High mascot, glaring up at her from the next landing.

She rustled the right hem of her maxi skirt up to draw the KA-BAR from its sheath just for safety, and she slipped on a mammoth plop of scat and slid her heel down the edge of the first step, bouncing on her behind down the rest of the flight right to the cat's fist-sized paws, felt it's whiskers tickle her face and smelled his tuna breath. That didn’t slow her down a bit, though, as she bounced right out of its powerful but clawless embrace and slammed the door between herself and the devil-cat, and then limped full speed into the pair of round headlights. Motsie knocked Vincent off Martin’s lap halfway into the hump over the drive shaft with his head on Lindsey’s thigh, and replaced him on top of Martin.

Motsie was like, “Drive, bitch, get us the hell outa here!”

Vincent was like, “Ow Motsie.you made me spill the bong water on my brand new shirt.”

Lindsey was like, “Aw, Vincent, we’ll get some napkins at the 7-Eleven and you can drive from there.”

Martin was like, “We got spooked by a couple o' haints runnin' out, and then something made the bells chime.  I was really worried about you!”

Motsie was like, "Well why the hell y'all ignos leave me behind if ya really thought there were any ghosts?"

Vincent was like, "Well we came back anyway, didn't we?"

Martin was like, "Let's all calm down and go get straight in Bolton's Teardrop."

Lindsey was like, "Motsie, your face is all bloody and you smell like crap. Literally."

Motsie was like, "Well, if you'd just wallowed around the floor with the Beast of Bladenboro, I doubt you'd be at your finest either, Miss Priss. And before we go to Bolton's, Martin, y'all gotta take me to wash in that fountain!"

Installment 6 - Graduation Night at the Orphanage, pt.2

Channel Three fountain that night

That rump slap Martin gave Motsie at the window when she was hocking up a lung made Lindsey's upper lip curl upward on one side like a bad dog. He had been flirting with her just a second earlier; how fickle, rude and unseemly, she later complained. For the moment, she just ducked over that slutty Motsie's bong to dissimulate her disgust from Martin as she muttered to Vincent, “Is everybody at Five Points High in special ed, or just the ones you like?”

“They’re both in Mensa, Mary. Not retards, just crazy,” Vincent whispered back as he rolled the baggie back up. “Crazy runs in their families. But they’re crazy in the nice way, Lindsey. I saw Martin trying to get next to you, and earlier he told me you looked like Stevie Nicks. I think he’s really dreamy, don’t you?”

“I do like his pretty blue eyes and blond hair, but I’m saving my stuff for someone like Mick Jagger, maybe, or Patrick McNee.”

“Ew!” Vincent laughed out loud and said in a perfectly loud voice, “They’re older than your parents!” Martin heard Vincent and moved back in to see what Lindsey might have said to Martin.

“Okay, Vincent," she went on with a sigh of indignation. "All’s I know is I’m not gonna be a slut like the Catholic girls, and then raise a child by myself up under some bridge, scroungin’ scraps from the dumpster behind Steak & Ale; oh hell to the no! Maybe I'll hold out for Prince Charles. Those English guys have cool accents, and every last one of 'em is rich."

Vincent thought Lindsey was as dream-stricken as Motsie's Cousin Garnet who always swore she'd marry a price, too, but one who kept her waist-high in pot and never made her leave the house before her royal beauticians had gotten through pampering her into gorgeousness. There was a long space before Lindsey continued out of context, "Plus, I don’t feel all that comfortable hangin' out here with the ghosts of dead Catholic orphans Baptized with an Amway bottle instead of the real way. All that satanic stuff gives me the shivery creeps, y’all.” She darted her eyes from one of them to the other, seeking someone's approval, but Vincent was Episcopalian and Martin was Unitarian, so neither was quite sure what the right way was.

“I wouldn’t let the mother of my child live like that, baby," Martin eventually chimed.

"Vincent is my back-up husband," Lindsey quickly announced to Martin. "Right Vincent?”

Martin ignored her and insisted that he could smell the ghost fire and hear the orphans crying, and Lindsey suddenly felt a cold chill pass through her, pretty sure she really smelled a little smoke, too. There was also a funny sound that didn’t fit with summer insects.

“Maybe it’s a cat?” Lindsey was hopeful, but not very.

Vincent was trying to strike a Blue Tip on his zipper. “I’ll probably remain a confirmed bachelor, but we’ll always be friends. First I want to get a college degree in something. Are you going to college, Martin?”

“Oh, hell no, not yet anyway. I was thinking of heading up to the mountains to Penland, play in the mud and make some pottery. Ashtrays and bongs. And take up the banjo, haha!” Martin had just been handed the bong out of turn, universal signal to shut up for a minute. He thrust it back to Vincent's hand and went over to try to crawl into the broken window after Motsie. He dangled there for a minute, Vincent’s eyes on his behind and Lindsey’s eyes on Vincent’s profile.

“Gyah, Vincent. I just assumed we’d eventually end up together, Lindsey hissed, starting low but her volume rising gradually with growing fury, "I can’t believe you just dissed me like that in front of 'lover-boy'. It’s not like you have anything better planned; Motsie’s a nut-case, and you said yourself that that slutty Micheline practically forced herself on you, and that she had way too much pussy juice! I mean, you said! I’m not sayin’ anything, or anything, Vincent, but I mean, I’m just sayin’. You said!”

Vincent gagged on a hit and coughed smoke out his nostrils. Martin came back over from the window and told Lindsey he’d walk her back around front like a true Southern gentleman, offering Lindsey his arm which she ignored, and Vincent followed behind them holding the blue lucite bong like a standard. Martin dared to put his arm around Lindsey, gently guiding her around the corner of the building, glancing over their shoulders at Vincent and then leaned in to whisper, “There’s just no such thing as too much, baby.”

“Oh my God!” Lindsey wrenched free of Martin, sudden;y aware he'd heard her remark to Vincent. She froze a second before whimpering, “I smell brimstone and sulphur... it's the ghostly smoke, y’all, And I don’t mean the weed; that was way back there.”

Vincent dramatically whiffed the air with his eyes closed. “I only smell sandalwood, Lindsey." He clearly was savoring an aroma. "It’s Martin’s soap. Delicious, Martin!”

Martin slid nearer to Lindsey, and Vincent slid nearer him, but Lindsey slid right up next to Vincent, so they were all huddled under a huge oak between the front windows and the patch of dirt and sparse grass where sat the Jeep, cutting their eyes back and forth and wondering who should say something. Suddenly, they all laughed at the same time and spread apart again.

Vincent passed the bong to Lindsey and loaded the bowl out of Motsie’s stash baggie. He got out the Blue Tips to give her a light, and Martin stood right next to her, scanning from the front door to the side door for Motsie

Lindsey felt him against her side and instinctively looked at his face, and followed his gaze to the window. She had her lungs full of weed smoke, but she yelped and saw the same ghostly apparition Martin saw in the front window. She huddled next to him now as Vincent begged them to tell him “What? What?”

It seemed like an eternity they waited behind the giant oak, barely speaking above whispers, searching the entire facade for some sign of poor Motsie, trapped within, probably dead, possibly being tortured by ghosts, maybe even halfway to hell already in the devil’s hand-basket.

There were sudden cries from deep inside, followed by slapping and then the side door exploded as two dark creatures flew out into the night like vampires, practically knocking Lindsey down as they passed, and disappeared among the trees lining Crybaby Lane.

That was all Lindsey needed to see; in about one second she was in the driver’s seat and starting that Jeep whether she knew how to change gears or not. Martin leaped into the passenger seat and Vincent swooped onto his lap, no time for formalities like climbing over to the back. Even the car must have been scared; it had never peeled off before. Then it also had its first epileptic seizure, as Lindsey missed the sweet-spot where clutch and accelerator kiss during shifts, but they still made it the couple of blocks to Channel Three in seconds flat.

There was some arguing over there under the bright lights of the parking area, regarding the fact they had left Motsie. Vincent and Martin were both pretty insistent that they ought to go back. Lindsey pointed out that someplace in the Bible Jesus had said to turn your back on Satan and all his ilk, or possibly his minions, she couldn’t remember the words or the exact verse for sure. What she did know was that it had been Motsie who had decided to do the whole Scooby-Doo thing.

“Y’all better come get born again in this fountain so we can be saved!” Dead serious. she hopped right in over the low wall and sat in the shallow pool, showered by she spray.

Martin followed Lindsey right into the water, and Vincent didn’t waste any time behind Martin, but both boys nagged Lindsey on and on about going back for Motsie. Lindsey didn't want to get out of the Jeep over there again, and they agreed she could even drive. Martin and Vincent made a plan to perch in the door opening, scanning for hide or hair of Motsie, and snag her on the fly. Lindsey would hardly even need to slow down.

Even with all that, Lindsey thought it was unwise to tramp back through that ill-fated Crybaby Lane, and resisted going back to look for Motsie. Still haunted by the devilish figured who'd brushed by them, and exhausted from arguing, they all sat dumbly in the fountain facing the orphanage, separated only be their thoughts.  Vincent and Martin felt pretty strongly that they should probably go back for Motsie.  Martin hated to look chicken in front of Lindsey.  Vincent wasn't about to go back alone, or without Vincent, anyway, but If Martin made the first move, he'd follow along.  As far as Lindsey was concerned, though, she was sorry she'd ever come out with these nuts, that she'd even gone to see Five Points High’s graduation, and most of all, that she hadn't stayed at home watching Love Boat and Fantasy Island with her parents and some handy firearms, safe from whatever spooks might lurk about in Cottondale; if crazy ol' Motsie got carried off by the devil, then it was her own damn fault.

Installment 5 - Graduation Night at the Orphanage (pt. 1 )

Galilee Orphanage, Visitation County, NC

Ironically, Motsie was the one voted by her Five Points High classmates 'most likely to commit murder.'  Though she never had a firearm, at least not in her own name, she was known to carry knives, whether in plain view or not.  Other kids had quit playing mumbley-peg with her in seventh grade when she tacked each of Randy Watson's desert boots to the ground during recess with a Bowie knife, and without skewering either of his feet.  She'd started the following grade at Perpetual Conception because of it, and had a little trouble there, too, but that's a different story.

Galilee loomed extra creepily on the night of the Five Points High Class of '74 graduation, backlit by a half moon and surrounded by black oaks glittering with lightning bugs, but Motsie handed her pouch of provisions over to Vincent and boldly penetrated the cluster of friends exiting the Jeep, and left them a cloud of her patchouli to arrive first at the broken window generally known to be the abandoned orphanage's new entrance.

"Hey, y'all boost me in the window and I'll go open the back door," Motsie called as they caught up.

"Motsie you be plum crazy, sho'nuff!" Lindsey mocked nervously from the back of the line in her acquired Cottondale dialect.

"Livin' south of the tracks made you scared of ghosts by osmosis, Jeri Curls?" Motsie returned.  She leaned over and pulled the back of her skirt between her legs and tucked it into her waist band, the leather sheath of a KA-BAR now peeping from the hem on her right thigh.  "I'll only just be a minute."

  "Famous last words, Sacagawea. I bet the orphan ghosts'll get you halfway down the hall." quipped Lindsey under her breath, loud enough for only the boys to hear. Then, backing over to one of the sparkly oaks, she called to them,  "Hey, how 'bout we just smoke under this tree, y'all.  It's a nice tree.  Nothing wrong with this tree. It's protected by fairies." 

Both hands now on the windowsill, Motsie called back over her shoulder, "That's fine, Aretha. You go show Martin and Vincent the new Jackson Five dance routines over yonder while I climb through and get to the door."

"I can't dance. I was asked to withdraw from cotillion," laughed Martin, swooping closer to Lindsey.  

"I could teach you, Martin."  Vincent instantly offered.  "I used to go to Arthur Murray with my mom.  Wanna come over tomorrow?"

   

"Yeah, Martin," Lindsey added, avoiding his advance. "We were on Teen Frolics last year, and Vincent was like a professional!"

With that, Martin popped back over to Motsie who was struggling to hoist herself into the window.  "I'll give you a boost, cuz.  I'm not scared of Catholics. I'm considering becoming a follower of theirs."

Vincent  rolled his eyes as Martin stared at Motsie's behind, both hands on one nether cheek while he shoved her up.   Her solar plexus pressed against the ledge sent Motsie into a convulsive fit of coughing.

"Oh my God, Motsie," cried Vincent. "Step on my back!" He ran over and stooped with his rear deliberately toward Martin, "Grab the other one, Martin!"

Motsie wrestled through the jagged glass, then leaned back over the sill and asked for the matches out of her pouch. Vincent scrounged around for them and lit a Salem Light first to use as a fuse for the bong they'd be toking in a minute, then he reached her the box.

"You could strike 'em on your jeans Vin, They're Ohio Blue Tips. Just lemme take a few out for me to see my way in the hall, and you can hold the box." 

Vincent struck a Blue Tip on his jeans and hit up the long lucite bong. His toking style was different from Lindsey's and Martin's,  wrapping his teeth and lips all the way around it. 

"Man, That's a little bit gross, Vincent. Reminds me of somethin' else, I'm not quite sure what. What's it remind you of, Lindsey?"

"Uh... nothin' I can think of." Lindsey skirted the mossy tree trunk, away from Martin. 

From the tiny portion of void beyond the broken window suddenly lit by a match, Motsie's voice came to them smaller, "I bet I can guess."  They heard bottles knocking each other and rolling on the floor, and then she was gone from them.

Installment 4 - Motsie's great ideas

Vincent's car in Martin's yard

Motsie climbed into the back seat behind Martin and leaned up between the front seats to cock Vincent's rearview mirror where she could see Martin's face while she ran her fingers through her scraggly hair, smiling at Vincent's annoyed sigh.  Vincent elbowed her back into her seat and readjusted his mirror for longer than necessary.  Motsie whispered into Martin's hair, "Not that it's a contest, cousin, cuz we both know who'd win, but I had to see my probation officer today."  She inhaled she scent of sandalwood soap before sitting back. "Would you reach my bong out from under the seat, please baby?"    She pulled a baggie out of her bra and rested it on his shoulder where he'd have to touch her hand when he reached for it. 

"She told me I'm getting terminated unsuccessfully 'cause I got caught back in New Hill Saturday.  Bitch.  And next month was going to be my last visit, too.  I know it's not jail, cuz, but I thought you'd feel better knowing you aren't the only one who can't ever run for president someday."

"What the hell is there in New Hill to attract you?" Martin wanted to know.  "A couple o' old farms along a deserted old road, a few pitiful trailers and that haunted house."

"Oh I just deliberately detoured through there when I was heading to Wrightsville.  Those trailer-dwellin' rednecks that had shot at me the other time finked on me this time for doin' a little thing I like to call 'taking out the trash."

Martin caught right on.  "Oh, yeah, takin' out the trash! Better than rollin' the trees with t.p. stolen from the 66.  I'm definitely gonna do that to Faulkner.  Where's your litter basket, Vincent?  Let's go down Flat Ridge Road right now."

"Oh, heck no, I'm no litter-bug!"  Vincent gasped.  He pulled out of Martin's yard and aimed toward the Five Points Municipal Garden.  "Which way we heading, boss?"  He made sure to look only at Martin, not at Motsie, in case there was any doubt who the boss might be.  "Bamboo or the orphanage; not Faulkner's."

Motsie giggled at him and went on, "I just sorta chucked it out the window as I drove by their trailer, Fabulous Knobs blaring on KIX.  Last I saw it was blowin' across their pitiful excuse for a crappy yard, bottle caps glinting in the sunset in my rearview mirror.  Oh, here's a Zippo, Martin.  The police report listed a November phone bill, a prescription bottle, and a fall semester report card from ECU, all in my name and with my mother's address.  Note to self: Next time, make sure there's nothin' incriminating in the litter bag first. Hey. What's this, Vincent?"  Motsie held something metallic up to examine in the streetlight, "Why is there a pulley on my seat?"

Vincent snatched it right out of her hand.  "Never you mind that pulley, Motsie!"  He called over his shoulder, as he cranked the window down with the other hand, swerved into the wrong lane, and chucked it out.

"Whoa, Nellie! At least one hand on the wheel, man; I almost spilled the bong!  So now you're joining Motsie and me in our life of crime,  Vincent?  It's gettin' kinda cold, can you roll up the window back up?"  Martin had loaded the lucite bong and was twisted around in his seat, offering to light it for Motsie, but she waved him on and kept talking.

"He's got a bedspread back here on the floor, Martin.  Nice, it's chenille! Want it?"  

Vincent swerved again.  "Oh, no,  Motsie, it might be really dirty.  Better leave it on the floor,"   and he readjusted his mirror on Motsie, sped up a little before he raised the window glass like Martin wanted.

"Something stuck on it, like a twig, what?  Were you doing something with this in the woods, Vincent?"  She teased.  "Oh, a little ring!   Look Martin, almost like one I had when I was little, remember?  A sterling silver dogwood flower.  I put mine in my grandaddy's coffin at the wake.  Can I please have it?" She thrust it into the dashboard lights between them, and Vincent recoiled as though she were brandishing a copperhead.

"Take it, take it, please!  I don't want it!"

Staring at Vincent, Martin finished loading the bowl.  "Man, maybe this hit should be for you, Vincent.  You are way over-tweaked."

Once Motsie had adjusted the little band and was admiring the ring on her little finger as she went on talking as if there had been no interruption.  "Dad thought the trailer trash had hit the car with a shotgun blast, 'cause it was split wide open in the trunk where I'd backed up and got skewered on a reflector pole turning around at the exit ramp.  He went to file charges on 'em, but I eventually confessed to that, too.  Sorta.  I told him it happened in Five Points though.  Really I had been rockin' on the pole for ages, skewered through the trunk, spinning my wheels and burning rubber.  Four Marines stopped and bounced me til I got off, but the trunk got all ripped up."

Martin could barely croak the words out through his laughter and still not lose any smoke. "That sounds so wrong for so many reasons, Motsie!"

"Why?  Oh, I get it," she laughed.  "You're nasty.  I almost let Dad blame them, too, but bearing false witness is a sin." 

"But lying is an art," he snorted, and Motsie couldn't have agreed more as she now accepted the bong, laughing with him.  

"I loved the part where you had your dad's woody wagon speeding a hundred up US-1 in the oncoming lane, passing cars with your lights off, trying to lose the losers," Vincent recalled.

Martin continued for him, "Mason's foot pressing yours on the gas pedal, Ray Junior and the purloined pie-safe sticking partly out the back, the rednecks with rifles gaining ground on you in their Camaro, and Raymond crying all the way."

Vincent made a whiney mock of Ray Junior's girlie voice, "'just slow it down to eighty an' I'll jump out here on the roadside!'  Y'all are lucky you didn't die in a head-on!"

Motsie finished her drag and reloaded for Vincent.  "Yeah, my real crime was being stupid enough to believe Mason and Ray Junior wanted me to come out because they liked me.  What an idiot I am!  Supposedly, they were gonna streak through Shakey's and I'd be the get-away driver.  Who knew they were going to rob a pie-safe from a haunted house?  Vincent, you wanna grab this bong the way you snatched that pulley while ago?  Don't fling it out the window, though! And then the d.a. had two bailiffs actually trot the thing out into the courtroom; oh brother!  Hit this, Vincent.  And it didn't even look any good, whitewash peeling off all over it.  I was embarrassed on their behalf, couldn't even steal something pretty.  Hey, Vincent."

"Oh, sorry.  Martin, Can you either hold the bong or the steering wheel so I can get my hit?  Please?  Yeah, they shoulda just stole something little, maybe a crystal goblet or an ash tray, y'know!  That's all I woulda taken.  What about you, Martin?"  Vincent pulled a good long toke off the bong Martin was holding for him.

"Unless you count Batboy's bedroom, the last haunted place I went was Galilee Orphanage on graduation night.  I didn't steal anything.   Damn, you suck hard, Vincent! So, Bethlehem again tonight?"

"Yes.  Whatever you say, Martin.  This is your night,"  Vincent smiled.  "Just don't be ambiguous..."

Martin jerked his head around and exchanged a glance with Motsie, suddenly adding,  "But I shouldn't stay out long, Daddy being dead and all."  He reached between the seats to sqeeze her knee, pleadingly. 

She grabbed his hand, only for a quick squeeze back.  "I know," she said. " Hey, turn on the eight track, Vincent.  Got any Arrogance up there?"

"We might pick up Tom Scott's Underground Sound on KIX.  We don't all have a fancy new car with an eight track like your mama's mammoth Thunderbird, Motsie. Anyway, we're almost at the orphanage.  Look, the moon is even just about as full as our graduation night!"

"Fuller, Vincent; that night was a half moon,"  Motsie answered instead of Martin,  draping herself through the front seats again to twist the dial through screeching and scratching until KIX cam in full flare with Glass Moon On a Carousel, and everybody in the car started bobbing heads and singing the chorus with Dave on the radio. "But just like y'all's graduation night, the weed is from Cousin Garnet's again.  I think the night after tomorrow night the moon'll be all the way full; we should bring a ouija board.  Oh, look, y'all!  Is that a pack o' drunk hobos sprinting across the driveway?  I bet they saw another black cat."

Vincent let the gears drop to neutral and coasted up crybaby Lane to the decrepit building,  "Well I bet they're running 'cause there's light in the upstairs of the orphanage, look, y'all!"

Martin and Motsie followed Martin's stare, Motsie practically lying on the console and handbrake since Vincent had pulled up so close.  "Oh, cool, y'all!  Let's get even 'stoneder'  'n go up there!  This time y'all are comin' with me."

Installment 3 - Martin's Palm Sunday incarceration and a wake

Martin tossing his fluids in the dough

Scandal of Lindsey's frolic hoisted the cross from Martin's shoulder like a derrick after his Palm Sunday fiasco, and blurred the reality of the open coffin in the living room. He and Motsie even stifled some undignified giggles and encouraged Vincent's story with "I betcha" supplements. It didn't hurt Martin's mood that all the banter about Lindsey conjured fond images of her in a halter and hot-pants, Cottondale's teeny-bopper version of Stevie Nicks, on graduation night with the Five Points' version of Cher, standing next to him now. Motsie's laughter tickling his neck hairs whet Martin's thirst, and he fished for more, baiting the hook with jail-life tidbits about sharing cigarettes with a carney, giving his cornbread to a stabber and sleeping on the top bunk right above a goat raper, all lies, but Motsie and Vincent were instantly enthralled, having no idea until this very moment that Martin had spent even one moment behind bars.

"No, I'm not kidding, I really did. I only got home like an hour ago, and then I had to, y'know," he gestured to his clean suit and fluffed the back of his hair, still a little damp, "get ready for all this company."

Motsie was the first to unslacken her jaw and ask, "Well, what the hell were you arrested for?"

"Not for what I'd expected it would be for," Martin winced and looked around, "which was on Saturday night at PTA. Old man Faulkner ordered me to soil a pizza. I felt like it was the wrong thing to do, but..."

Motsie interrupted, "Soiled? A Pizza? Did you sprinkle ant poison on it? Why?" Martin saw she was fascinated and let her swim with it a little so he could stare at her face from very close.

"No, I had just taken an order for the Manager's Special for one of the Kurtz brothers, only I just called it out as 'nickel-bag deluxe for Kurtz,' and that's when Faulkner went ballistic. I didn't want to, but, well, he's the boss, and all, so..."

"Do what, Martin? What did he make you do?" Motsie had the hook, but Martin wasn't ready to yank the line.

"Faulkner said Kurtz owed him for a nickel bag from last month, and he was going to get even with him, 'the usual way,' he said, 'plus some extra,' he yelled, and he looked meaner than usual, grinding one of his fists into the other palm." He looked over at Motsie who was just standing there, mesmerized, and thought it was worth waiting for another minute.

"See, we had a standard procedure we called 'the usual way,' for carefuly hiding one pubic hair under each pepperoni, but the 'extra?' Well, Faulkner sent me to the wash room with a Pixie cup and ordered me to fill it up, and I was pretty sure that part was illegal."

"Oh my Lord, Martin, no!" It was Vincent who took the hook. Motsie was still on the line, though.

"I got inside, and hollered through the door how much of my specimen he really needed, and he yelled back 'not so much the dough won't rise, but enough to get the message to Kurtz he can't rip PTA off for a pizza and nickel bag without repercussions,' Then he made me knead my own, you know, fluids into the ball o' dough and flip it around in the window like nothing was the matter with it, like nobody walkin' by was gonna smell it. I kept thinkin' a person might die from that, and it would be my fault, and Faulkner would sell me right down the river."

"That's just gross, Martin." Lindsey stepped away from him, and he figured he'd given too much line, and needed to tighten up just a little.

"But y'all know how bad I've needed my job, especially since... you know..." His eyes went to the coffin area where all the ladies were comforting Mrs. McCrary, and Batboy was standing on one foot, uselessly scraping at the corner of the coffin near his daddy's feet. Martin felt Motsie's sigh on his collar, and yanked the rod.

"After the pizza went out, Faulkner looked at the order and realized it was the wrong Kurtz, and blamed me for being, get this, 'ambiguous!' He sent me home, and all the way I was sure the cops were coming for me.

"When I got here, Daddy was breathing his last breaths. You'll never guess the very last thing he ever said to me." He looked only at Motsie but he could plainly feel Vincent's eyes burning into the side of his head. Motsie's eyes brimmed and Martin figured now he could reel her right on in.

"Oh, it's too painful to repeat," he exclaimed, slumping towards Motsie, who consoled him with a long hug.
"And now I'm a convict!" Martin sobbed into Motsie's neck as Vincent patted his back assuring him that everything would be fine, Vincent would always stand by his friend, and Martin tried to flick Vincent's hand off his back without breaking free of Motsie's hug.

"No, honey, you're no convict. You're our best friend, right Vincent? And it'll be fine, sugar.  So, did old man Faulkner call the law on you, sweetie?" Oh wasn't she getting mellifluous on him now! Hook, line and sinker!

"No no no. I had stopped at Cow Drive-thru on the way and got a six-pack to share with daddy. It was about the only thing he could still bother to enjoy. When I got home, he wasn't in the Lay-Z-Boy where he'd spent the last few months, y'know, since he couldn't breathe right if he laid down flat. Batboy had found a hospital bed by the dumpster behind Saint Mary's, and put it in the kitchen, and that's where he was. I cranked him up we had a Schlitz. Well I had one. And then... he asked me to please look after my little brother." Martin stepped aside and wiped his face with both hands. "I had another beer, and didn't go anywhere, didn't call anybody in, until after I'd had all the beer. He wasn't breathing anymore.

"When the church wagon got here I ran back for his quilt, and then I got in with him and covered him up so he wouldn't be cold. I wanted to ride with 'im over to the funerarium, and they wanted me the hell out. They started pulling me out by the feet, so I got all bowed up and kicked that driver in the face. I think I broke his nose. I know I knocked his front tooth out, 'cause it says that on the warrant.

"They had to call the law on me, and I wouldn't get out until they told me they had their guns drawn and I had to. That other fella was all covered in blood, getting into the ambulance when they were handcuffin' me and puttin' me in the patrol car. I don't know who ended up drivin' daddy in the church wagon. Maybe Batboy. I'm not even allowed over there by the open coffin, they gave me a restraining order keepin me at a distance of ten feet from that casket til whenever it's closed, and two car-lengths from the church wagon whenever we go to the burial."

"Oh, well believe me, Martin, there's really no need to get any closer to any coffin than where we are right here." Vincent sounded very convincing.

"Honey, your daddy knows you're near and you'd be right next to him if you could.  We could go get my ouija board if you wanna tell him so right quick before he all the way in heaven and caint talk back?"

Vincent was dead set against the ouija in spite of Martin's wanting to try it in time, so Motsie made a different suggestion.  "Wouldn't you like Vincent to drive us around for a smoke, then? Maybe just thirty minutes?  You'll feel a whole lot better, sugar. Maybe over to the bamboo or Galilee Orphanage?" And then she touched his hair as though a lock of it might have been out of place, and called him by the name they both knew melted him into submission every time; "You pick, cousin Martin, for old times' sake."

Installment 2 - how Lindsey was sent Straight to the Lord (and from there to hell in an Easter basket)

Tar River Lindsey and Sarah went down and found a man in the canoe

The whole Lindsey-the-Lezbo rumor got started on the weekend Vincent went to see her at Atlantic Christian College after leaving an amazingly well-preserved (for twelve years buried) corpse propped on a love-seat in Huhu's cedar closet. Three quarters of a refrain from Brotherhood of Man's Save your Kisses for Me was skipping, skipping, skipping through the half-open first floor window of their dorm room. He rapped several times before he rattled his way through the already damaged and filthy metal Venetian blinds to discover Lindsey and Sarah in a sort of dog-pile formation on one of the twin beds, all four bare feet on a camel-back trunk. They jerked upright when he lifted the arm of the record player. Sarah made a fast break for the shower, halfway asking permission with a nod and a raised eyebrow before grabbing a jar of Queen Helene hair dress that must have been Lindsey's.

"Oh, Chaka Khan; Chaka Khan," giggled Vincent, deflecting his nervousness. "So why y'all dressed up like Miss Kitty and her best girl?"

"From in here. Check out this trunk load of stuff Sarah's grandma brought last week from Pulleytown! Can you even imagine having a whole town names after your family? All this was Sarah's great-grandmother's stuff, when she was married to John Williamson, remember the slave guy that became a legislator?"

"Why would I know that?"

"He was in our history book!"

"Whose? I don't remember him."

Well, we sure learned about him at Cottondale High. I don't know what you people in Five Points learned. History o' NASCAR? He served six terms, for the love o' God! Look at all this cool stuff in here. He musta got rich before he was through."

Lindsey already had the trunk splayed wide open. She rummaged through letters in pale envelopes with faded cursive flowing across the fronts, and metallic photographs of very shiny black faces whose grim expressions like Vincent had seen in other old metallic photographs, convinced him that oral hygiene had not yet made its formal debut in polite society. Removing the top shelf, Lindsey pulled out beribboned laces and taffetas that exhaled a musty combination of lavender and mold.

"This is where we got these outfits, Vincent. Aren't they all gorgeous?" Lindsey's dress was minty colored and had a bustle. A bustle! The top came up around her throat and had a big glass bead sewn on where a man would've had an Adam's apple.

"Y'all look like those girls in Picnic at Hanging Rock."

Lindsey launched a rapid-fire version of her previous day, but the scent of Sarah's great-grandparents wafting from the coffin-like trunk took his mind back to where he'd just come from, and what all he'd been doing there, so he let her ramble, able to insert himself only into bits and pieces of her story between fits of memory.

"You want some Kool-Ade? Sarah made some grape yesterday." He did, so Lindsey got a Tupperware pitcherful from the mini-fridge and rummaged through a bucket of beer mugs, identical to the ones at Pizza Hut, to find the least dirty one. Vincent received the probably stolen glass and drank it down a bit while Lindsey talked at the speed of light.

It had been beautiful, according to Lindsey. Spanish moss dangled over the muddy Tar River, often sweeping long vee-shapes aimed against the current. She fake-whined that they had to take their Norton's Anthology texts along to study for an upcoming midterm, and Vincent understood his friend's back-handed manner of boasting.

She had always loved Romantic poetry, and would have chosen it as a minor if she'd been able to follow her dream of majoring in Marine Archeology at ECU. He'd teased her about it before, reading the Rime of the Ancient Mariner to Jacques Cousteau in the Calypso's minisub. She was trying to tell him more, and he started humming the John Denver Calypso song in a high voice through his little red mustache until she swatted his shoulder and ordered him to shut up.

Lindsey extended the pause in her story with a raised index finger while she swished her skirt, or as Vincent retold it, hustled her bustle, over to the door to gauge her length of safety for the next morsel, "Sarah's brother? That huge Apollo Pulley you met here last November? He seriously announced to us on the boat before he'd let us go ashore? That from here on out, we are hereby on 'notice,' he said, the he is to be addressed by no other name than, get this, Tiger Lilly!"

She fell over laughing into her bed pillow, and Vincent's eyes and nostrils grew three or four sizes before he snorted his laugh of tardy belief.

"Tiger Lilly and his, uh, I guess his consort du jour, the fabulous Dani Daletto, current Miss Drag USA no less, wearing waist-high waders were waiting for us in the shade under Greenville's Iron Bridge, bottles of Mad Dog sticking out their shirts. They climbed in and Tiger Lilly guided the boat through a maze of knobby kneed cypress trees I'm positive were brimming with snakes and alligators, to a hidden landing on the swampy north side of the river, oh, wait, I mean 'le Rive Gauche,' is what that Dani boy kept saying it was called."

"I'm sure the French would be flattered."

"I'm pretty sure the French are never flattered, Vincent. I know I never flatter 'em, anyway."

Vincent's mind wandered from Tiger Lily and Dani, right through le Rive Gauche to French I at Five Points High and Mme. Erlick welcoming them every Tuesday and Thursday, "Bienvenue, mes etudiants," and he was back to the night before. There was something about a visit to the Paddock Club disco with a thirty foot dance floor and a dozen pool tables, an image of Lindsey taking shotgun hits off a joint from a female lumber-jack whose lip was oddly prickly to Lindsey's, and then he was back, joking that it was probably Lindsey's own top lip she'd neglected to shave. She hit him for that, and he was still snickering when Sarah came back in a beach towel and plastic cap. Lindsey segued effortlessly into a middle-of-the-night ride back to Wilson "au plein aire" in the back of a powder blue Ranchero, a million stars overhead , the smell of fresh dirt and chlorophyll in their nostrils, Vincent was back in Benvenue Cemetery while the girls, real and wannabe, were detouring through a roadside cow pasture out from the Voice of America towers near Farmville for some fresh psilocybin mushrooms.

"And that's why we were crashed out here on the bed when you came. We probably hadn't been here more than an hour, and our brains less than that."

In the version Vincent told Motsie and Martin at Mr. McCrary's wake the following Tuesday, the girls had taken a moonlit canoe ride down the river, while in Lindsey's subsequently corrected account, they had gone in a bass boat Saturday morning with a ride waiting for them at the Iron Bridge. In Vincent's version, the girls were reading the poetry aloud to each other, while in Lindsey's they were both cramming for an exam. Both stories had the girls dancing at the Paddock Club, which Vincent knew to be a gay bar, but didn't repeat that, and which Lindsey protested was a popular country music dance hall. Vincent sure made light of Sarah's brother insisting with complete seriousness that everyone address him as Tiger Lilly, and Lindsey didn't refute it, but pronounced Dani's name more like Donny, and din't mention the word "fabulous," much less "Miss Drag USA." About the only part both versions shared was riding back to ACC in the back of a Ranchero, whether snuggled under a canoe, as in Vincent's version, or pulling an uncle's borrowed bass boat along behind, as in Lindsey's.

What Mr. Pearce heard after three or four repetions by some very busy Visitationites, was a gracious plenty, mainly about his daughter going to town, merrily merrily merrily down the stream, romantic poetry, a man in a canoe, and maybe something about hunkering down in the back, whatever that last bit might have meant. He loaded up his bolt action M-1 and sped Pastor Mozingo directly up to Wilson for an impromptu intervention, and then he sent Lindsey to a well-known retreat for homosexuals called Straight to the Lord, right on the New River between Glendale Springs and West Jefferson. The whole problem for Lindsey was that, in contrast to Vincent, no secret about her ever lay still for long before people got ahold and began pulling the facts all out from the middle like salt-water taffy, until they turned it into something way more sinfully delicious and colorful than whatever it had started off being.

Pastor "Little John" Gautier at the retreat saved Lindsey from the frying pan of chatter that lasted from Maundy Thursday that year until right around Christmas, but flipped her right into a pure hell-fire of steamy gossip that passed from lips to lips in every congregation from Ashe County to Cottondale when she showed back up as the heavily laden Blessed Virgin in the A.M.E. church's living nativity. The evil born of that encounter followed Lindsey for the next several decades like a very long thread trailing out of her sock.

Installment 1 - where Vincent digs up Huhu's dead husband

Little known facts about Vincent include that he was Carolynne's marijuana supplier back in the seventies, and that he was the one who dug up Huhu's husband for her one spring night, twelve years after he'd been buried there in Benvenue Cemetery.

That first fact may not have been the hugest secret at Midas Touch Beauty Saloon where he delivered the goods by bicycle to Carolynne and Marlene on Thursday afternoons in a Baggies Alligator bag stuffed inside a fancy tea tin his father had always used for storing Earl Grey tea. Vincent actually mixed a little tea in the baggie, then topped off the can with more of the same, and the curler-headed ladies remarked approvingly after every toke that the oil of bergamot imparted such a delightful high note in contrast to the exotic bass note of Sri Lankan black. Vincent was most popular with the tint-and-perm crowd! Yet not even Motsie dreamed he was supplying weed to her mother, nor did Carolynne ever imagine that Vincent had gone and dug her dear dead daddy up for Huhu.

Who ever could have believed such a feat from Vincent, the namby-pamby little redhead who fainted at the sight of his own blood and never ate meat, even before that became popular with the beautiful-people set, and not due to ethical conviction, but to disgust for the idea that there was blood involved? Yet he had carried tools to jack open the metal vault and casket, a regular old hammock and a clothes-line pulley to get Odell's earthly relic out and up into the cruel April air, a bedspread to wrap him in, thereby disguised as some other inanimate objet d'art protruding from the hatchback of his brand new yellow and black '76 le Car, filled the grave back in, and rolled the sod back over it like nothing had ever happened here people, move it along, nothing to see.

That Saturday had been Huhu's 75th birthday, and she had ridden up to town with Motsie who was coming home from college, but Vincent got roped into driving her home when Carolynne and Motsie had gotten into an argument, Motsie heading for Wrightsville Beach, all mad, and Carolynne taking to the divan in her room, both well laden with their personal stashes of pot kept totally secret from each other. The forty mile ride to Huhu's went from dusk to dark to bright moon, four days from being full. Huhu didn't stop talking for even an entire minute gathered up in one batch the whole way, about how she declared she wished folks would just get along, and how she declared she was lonesome for the old days when families were as one and never did have a single problem, and she declared she would lie awake again like every other night frettin' and prayin' over the sad state of her family, and she declared she did wish she could have one more happy birthday, surrounded by loving family but, she declared, they were all but dead, and the live ones, well, she just heaved a sigh and declared some more. Lord have mercy got thrown in a lot, too, just for spice, and Vincent was thoroughly sorry for Huhu. That's pretty much the only reason why Vincent agreed to do such a thing, pure pity and wanting to make one old lady happy with him. She wasn't even going to pay him, and he wouldn't have done it for money even if she had offered.

Since Vincent's adoptive dad had run off with his secretary at Westinghouse, and his adoptive mother was well into year five of her slut decade, there was nobody at his house when he crept up around 9:45 and loaded the items he would need into the back of his le Car, and even though there were no electric lights in the cemetery, the nearly full moon had risen high enough for him easily to find one of the spots most favored by Motsie and Cousin Garnet forat reunion every year "Reuning" with him and their dead relatives.

The houses nearest by the cemetery were inhabited by slow walking rural black folks who wouldn't dare come around, even if they heard Vincent just digging away for a fare thee well behind a row of cedars. That's what he kept telling himself. One thing would be to get caught by the law, but another thing entirely would be to get run up on in the moonlit graveyard by a drunken passel of country colored men. Sure, Sampson was a mouth-watering chunk of milk chocolate back in town, but these out here were rural black folk, entirely distinct from the sort who'd gone to school with Vincent. The difference between these and those would probably be as big as the difference between himself and those crazy weirdos in Deliverance, and unlike his other best friend, Lindsey, who grew up like a white dot on a domino over there in Cottendale, Vincent wasn't accustomed to the ways of this other race. He was pretty sure any country black person willing to come into a white cemetery around midnight with an almost full moon spying through the trees stood to be voodoo folk, for all he knew. "No no no no no," he thought out loud. "Don't they call those folks spooks because they're scared of white ghosts?" He cast his eyes through the branchy shadows all around him, and thought he heard a banjo for just a minute, but decided to believe it was more likely a bunch of katydids, crickets, june bugs and tree frogs.

Huhu climbed on her step stoo and pulled down the striped Hudson Belks box stored on the top shelf. Inside was a baby blue pure silk pajama embroidered with pink and yellow birds, that she had bought ten years before to look pretty someday in her open coffin. She laid the pajama out across the heavy acorn bed and pressed it flat with her gnarled and spotty old hands, left it to air awhile before she'd put it on.

Huhu waltzed down the hall to the kitchen and set the whistling kettle on the stove, ready to fix Vincent some tea, and sat in her recliner with the black and blue afghan she was crocheting for Motsie, and turned on Johnny Carson with a satisfied smile.

Vincent originally planned never to mention any of this to anyone, ever. Huhu had given him her word as a Christian Baptist never ever to tell on him if somebody, someday, were to discover what she hesitated before naming her "arrangement." He was pretty sure a person might go to jail for digging a body up, even with spousal consent, and he felt confident that he wouldn't last a night in any jail. The thought of how jail might be if he were in it made circle trails in his imagination while the practical side of his thinking cap worried about pulling the corpse into multiple sections. He was relieved that that didn't happen, and took it as a good omen. He carefully avoided actually touching any part of what had been in the ground for the last twelve years, that would be really gross, he thought. The hammock, the bedspread and his gardening gloves were always between all that and the actual skin of his hands.

The touchiest part was when he had to pull the chenille bedspread down into the grave with him right before prying open the lid of the coffin. He was concerned about the smell, and tied a section of the chenille around his face just below his eyes, Frito Bandito style, and held his breath while he pulled out the pins and rolled to the hinged side of the lid while he opened it up. Of course it slammed shut with a shotgun bang on the first two tries, and he was sure somebody would hear and call the law. He wound up having to open the lid by standing up on the hinged side and pulling with the tire jack he got from the car, then climb in and practically lie on the body with only that thin chenille between himself and Rest In Peace, while he did a sort of tuck-and-roll maneuver with the hammock to get it around the body right. Climbing out was a breeze using the edge of the opened coffin door as a step, and he set up the pulley and clothesline from a low oak branch. On the ground between the hole and the le Car, Vincent made the whole shebang into a nice cocoon, and turned his le Car to a slightly better angle before giving the cocoon a few practice swings that banged the bumper, then the rim of the tailgate, and finally made a clean sweep into the car. Mostly. He did have to push it the rest of the way in, like a drawer, and part of it still stuck out, but he used the clothes line to secure it well enough it wasn't going to fly out on the street going back to Huhu's.

By the time Vincent ensconced Odell's remains on the love-seat in the cedar closet and sipped a nice cup of tea with a few sugar wafers and a little bowl of Cheetos, it was four in the morning. Maybe he was just as bold as those incest people in deliverance, after all. He shuddered at the mere notion. Shuddered and shook it off. He didn't feel up to going home, and ACC was only half the distance from Huhu's that Visitation County was, so he drove the other way to spend Sunday with his other best friend, Lindsey, who was dealing with some juicy secret issues of her own from the day before. Neither one ever told the other a word about their secrets, so Vincent's stayed between him and Huhu for almost a quarter of a century after that, right up til about halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1999. Lindsey's secret, however, was not as well-kept but that is altogether another story.