THE DETECTIVE
Zach Brockhouse
Here is where we keep the detective…
A plywood building with corrugated plastic, overgrown with honeysuckle as its roof. The floor is dirt, swept smooth every week. Wet newspaper bagged up. Piss in the air. Piss in everything. Sixteen dogs. The dogs my uncle uses to hunt quail and other things are in cages. Sixteen cracked plastic bowls of food. Sixteen steel bowls of water. Each pen built from two by fours and heavy-duty chicken wire. The detective curled into a ball next to a ratty tennis ball and chewed over knots of nautical rope.
It’s noon. The dogs are panting in the heat. The sun fills everything up shadowless in the pens, green from the plastic tint of the roof. The detective is drenched. He looks up and sees me watching him. He closes his eyes, sets his mouth and moves himself up on his arm. His ribs hurt and his eye is bruised. He fishes a strikeless match out of his shirt pocket, puts it between his teeth.
Kid, he says and looks me in the eye. I’ve been looking for you.
They hit him over and over again. My uncle beats the detective up. He and the Right or Wrong Hand Man. The detective doubles over. He’s middle-aged, getting on in years. His gut hangs over his pants where his shirt rides up. He falls against the wheel of his Plymouth and holds up his hands. My uncle picks up a bat, swings it. The detective doesn’t move again. The sound it makes is the sound of wood on wood.
The trees along the riverbank hang over the dark water. Their branches dabble with my fingers, tracing lazy patterns in the current. Water skippers dart close to the shore. Frogs hide where the grass grows. I’m eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a myrtle. I’m waiting for The Riverman to come visit my uncle.
It’s hot in the shade and I think about swimming, but I’m afraid. I hold my fingers close. It’s black. If I lean forward, I can see myself. The water is where things go to disappear. It’s a magical wonder when a fish pops to strike at the surface, or a raccoon crosses to the other bank. Something so unforgiving teeming the way it does with living things.
The detective holds his hand in the opening. He pushes it as far as the chain will allow. I spread my fingers. I know that if I touch his hand I’ll be sucked in, too. He looks at me. Dog chests rising and falling. Flies in dirty spears of sunlight. Leaves silhouetted by the sun. His face is greasy with sweat. His eyes are too far apart. Stubble grows in patches on his chin. I grab his hand.
This is how you clean a quail. My uncle is holding the dead bird up for me to see. The Sports are drinking beer by the trailers. A bonfire burns in front of them. Their faces light up to match the glow of sucked on cigarettes. Reflections of their beer cans shimmer against the leaves of the live oak in the middle of the turnaround drive. The local men wait in dark trucks while their women wait in the trailers.
The quail’s curled feet are so still. He uses garden shears to cut them off. He takes the headless bird and holds it upside down. With each thumb, he splits it. The feathers and skin pull away. It sounds like velvet. My uncle puts the cleaned bird onto a tray. He points to the pile the dogs have been eyeing.
You do the rest.
My hands split the birds. My hands touch his hands. Though it is night, I can feel the heat from the day on the chicken wire. The birds are cold, but inside I think I can still feel something. A toy drum winding down. Maybe it’s not heat, but it’s not cold.
I’m not allowed to go in the tractor shed. Uncle and the Right or Wrong Hand Man closed it up. A steam chimney smokes plastic sweet smoke when they’re in there working. I take the weed cutter and swing it golf style against the tall grass.
When the Sports are hunting and the camp is empty, I go into his trailer. The Nice Sport. I see his underwear and socks shoved against the dirty bed frame. An ashtray is overflowing with cigarette butts. A digital clock blinks 12 over and over. There is a duffel bag filled with more underwear and clothes and a bottle of whiskey. I know there is a compartment under the mattress. There is a briefcase. I lift it out.
I wonder what a bus ticket would cost. I know the long dirt road goes to a paved one. I know that’s the road they never want me to see.
What’s your name, son? the detective asks.
We’re holding hands now. His fingernails are dirty.
I tell him.
He repeats my name and smiles. I’ve been waiting for you.
I look at him. How’s that? I say.
You know where the key to that lock is?
I follow his eyes to the rusted Master Lock. I nod.
I think so, I say.
Good. He pulls his hand away from mine and pats it. One of the dogs looks up at us for a moment before going back to sleep. Wasps zap at the nest they are building in the corner.
He’s wearing dirty cut-off jeans. His shirt is sleeveless and white. It’s smeared from the scuffle by the car and red from his mouth. His right eye is purple swollen shut. When he speaks, long threads of spit stick to his lips.
Kid, he says. He drags his tongue across his lower lip. A blue jay calls out from the trees. Find that key, son. We’ll get out of here.
The rusted barbed wire that borders every runoff ditch. The cut trees and broken appliances. If I was blind, I could find my way to the house by touch alone. My aunt is on the front steps smoking. She fans herself and watches me as I walk up.
You hungry?
I stop at the bottom of the steps. She’s skinny everywhere but her belly. Her long brown hair hangs in a braid over her shoulder. Sweat stains the purple tank top she’s wearing.
I’m ok.
She nods and drags on her cigarette in a dreamy kind of way.
Ok, she says. The smoke leaves her nostrils, an upside down pour of sugar towards the trees. It circles lazily around her head. The housedog watches me from the shade by the cinderblock steps, its tongue lolling out and its chest panting in the heat.
I step past my aunt and onto the linoleum floor of the trailer. It’s a double wide, set back from the dirt turnaround driveway where the Sports sleep. I pass the bathroom and can’t remember the last time that I’ve used a toilet.
I found plywood. I made a house in the woods. No one misses me. I have a blanket and I can pull the door shut so nothing can get in. The chattering in the woods barely keeps me up anymore.
The keys are in a drawer filled with screws and fingernail clippers and batteries. A copper ring filled with keys. I hold them together so they don’t make a sound as I slide them out.
Keys. Here are my keys, he says. There is blood on his fingers as he holds them out. Pop the trunk. Get the tire iron out. Bring it to me.
I take the keys. I hold them together so they don’t make a sound. Through the field where the tall grass grows. Furrows have been dug by the tires of the car. River water is already pooling in them. Grasshoppers scatter as I move to the trunk. I hesitate before unlocking. The tire iron is there. Along with a bloody towel and two empty red egg crates. I look behind me, back to the tree line where the dog cages are kept.
I close the trunk and slide in behind the wheel. If I stretch, I can reach the pedals and still see over the steering wheel. The engine barks to life. The car shudders and vibrates beneath my fingers. The gears move from the trunk of the steering column and I pull the shifter down.
The car bucks forward and I pull the wheel to the left, toward the little dirt bridge over the drainage ditch. Grasshoppers bounce against the windshield as it moves through the field. The car just fits and I swing right onto the long dirt road.
I’ve never gone this far and when I come to the metal swing gate with the padlock, I hit the gas. The chain whips up and smashes the side view mirror, but I keep driving.
No. That’s not what happened. The gate flies out of the way and crashes against the trees. I’ve never been this far down the road before and I push the pedal all the way down. There are green soy fields to either side of me that stretch for miles. Row after row like the static lines of a television set. Windmills and cows dot the landscape. Golden bands of sunlight light up the dust behind me, swirling fire and smoke tracing all the way back to the dog pens.
At the end of the dirt road there is an enormous white bridge, larger than any bridge I’ve ever seen. There are no other cars on the road and the tires hum in a pleasant way when they hit the asphalt. It sounds like voices singing. It’s a suspension bridge and white support lines like the strings of a harp flash by me as I climb. The bridge touches the clouds and from the top I see the city appear when they break. A great sparkling harbor lies behind the city and there are white church steeples everywhere.
I came for you, the detective says. He moves his hand to keep the flies away from his bloody mouth. I came for you.
With some difficulty, he reaches into the pocket of his pants. He pulls out a crumpled photograph. His fingers streak mud and blood over it as he smooths it out and holds it up.
I look. The boy is young. Younger than I am. His brown hair is cut close to his head. He’s holding a toy drum. He’s smiling. A cat sleeps on the red couch behind him.
I take the photograph from his hands. Bunky, I say.
He looks at me.
I show him the photograph. The cat. Its name was Bunky.
He nods. You need to get me out of here before they come back.
I try each key until the lock snaps open. The detective takes my hand and groans as he stands up. He finds his suit and hat crumpled in the back seat of his car.
Shall we? he says and opens the passenger door. I get in.
My uncle is waiting for us by the gate. Always by his side, the Right or Wrong Hand Man has a deer rifle with a scope pointed at us. He pulls the trigger and the detective splashes red against the exploded windshield. The car bucks into the ditch and hits a tree.
Shall we? He says and opens the passenger door. Then we notice the tires have all been cut.
He looks around for a moment, grimacing against the sun. You know another way out of here? he asks me.
I nod. The river.
He puts his arm over my shoulders and I hold his hand against my chest to help him walk. We need to be quiet moving past the big trailer. The housedog will bark if he spots us. I see my aunt smoking on the steps. She doesn’t look over.
To get to the river, we need to cross The Field. I don’t like The Field. The Foreigner is there watching from the trees. The Smiling Women and The Lost Man and the Baby, they all hiss as we get closer. They hiss and move back and forth to warn us not to come in.
Every night I put rocks over the grassless patches where they are buried and every morning the rocks are gone. Nothing alive goes there. Not even snakes.
The worst thing about The Field, the thing that makes my heart freeze up into a scream, the thing that used to make me sleep under my bed before I built the box house, is The Banshee. It lives in a nest at the far end of The Field behind the tiny brick house with the chair and light bulb and the almost soundproof windows where the Right or Wrong Hand Man does his work. The Foreigner and Smiling Women and The Lost Man and the Baby all take care of it. They move back and forth across The Field like a tide, crabbing together sticks and vines. They sleep in a tangle of branches and thorns woven into a web. The Banshee is the worst thing I have ever seen. A hundred tentacles hang from under its red eye. Each tentacle ending with a razor sharp tooth and when The Banshee spots me, it raises the tentacles up together in an open-wide grin.
We can’t go in there, I say.
The detective looks at me. Why not? I can see the river through the trees.
We need to go around.
You afraid of them? he asks. They cain’t hurt you.
He pulls me into The Field and the Foreigner howls down at us from the trees. The Smiling Women and The Lost Man hiss and move towards us. The Lost Man’s neck is split and his windpipe whistles softly as he moves.
The detective waves them aside as we walk through. He simply pushes them out of the way.
Excuse me, he says. He kicks the Baby to the far end of the field. The Banshee nest rattles.
The detective looks back. What is that? he asks me.
I shake my head. You don’t want to know.
I’ll take your word on that. He grabs my hand and leads me across The Field. The ghosts watch us walk away.
There’s a clearing where the trees won’t grow and the moon sometime slaps against the water. It’s a place where teeth grow on cattails and the crickets never stop singing. Animals have worn the grass down to clay. Hawks wait in the trees during the day. Owls wait in the trees at night. This is where I bring the detective — A flat mud aluminum boat ramp pushed into the river. Tadpoles gather around boot plunged holes in the bank.
The black water shimmers by the shore. A log full of turtles shakes as each one retreats back into the water. We hear the sputtering outboard of The Riverman and watch as he comes around the bend.
His American flag bandana is holding back his long hair and his silvered sunglasses flash when he spots us. He grabs a shotgun and stands up in the boat. Before either of us can move, the detective has been shot. He falls backwards into the mud and grabs at his chest. Choking sounds and blood come out of his mouth. He looks at me in surprise. I grab at his coat and try to pull him out of the water.
The Riverman comes around the bend. The detective pushes my head down. Duck, he says.
We hide behind a cluster of cattails. As The Riverman putters by, the detective leaps. He and The Riverman fall onto the floor of the boat. The detective holds The Riverman down and swings his fist. Then the men are back up. The Riverman is bleeding. The detective grabs him by the shoulder and swings again. Something splashes in the water at my feet. Something bloody. I can see it’s a tooth.
The detective swings one more time. Something breaks in The Riverman and his eyes go hazy. He falls into the black water and disappears. The detective finds his hat and puts it back on. He cuts the engine. He sits down and pulls a strikeless match from his shirt, puts it between his teeth. Taking off his hat for a moment, he wipes the sweat from his forehead and smiles at me.
Well now. I think two parents are about to be very happy.
I stop and look at him.
He looks back at me and half-smiles.
What? You thought they were dead? He says.
I nod and look at my feet.
Well, someone’s paid me a lot of money to find you.
I look up at him and squint. I wipe some sweat away from my forehead with my hand wishing I had a hat. A dragonfly lands on a cattail.
Ok, I say.
He picks up a garbage bag near his feet and takes out a box.
What’s this? he says.
Cold medicine, I say. For my uncle.
Not gonna need this. He throws the bag into the river and the current carries it away.
He holds out his hand for me to climb aboard. The riverbanks slide by. The woods are filled with rotting wooden huts. Animal skulls hang from trees and rusted appliances grown over with kudzu lean into the small hills. The further we go, the cleaner the woods become. We see an osprey with a water moccasin in its beak. Rabbits watch us glide by from a green patch of clover. The river begins to widen. We see power lines and in the distance, the white buckboard of a lived-in house that I think I recognize.
My uncle is furious. He grabs me. What did you do with it? he yells.
The Right or Wrong Hand Man, kicks through my plywood house. They don’t find the briefcase. They don’t find anything.
This I serious, my Uncle says, finger in my face. Family only gets you so far.
The Right or Wrong Hand Man gives me a grin that makes my stomach knot up. The brick house grin. He stares at me long after my Uncle has turned to walk away.
It’s under the tractor shed. By the pile of garbage. A secret hole that I’ve dug. The brass locks pop when I finally open it. I see the bags of white powder and three black pistols. I know I’ve found Power and I’m happy to have taken it away.
The Sport tassles my hair and calls me son. He smiles at me before heading into the trailer where a local woman is waiting. He’s middle-aged and his eyes are too far apart. Lines appear next to them when he smiles. Maybe he is the one, I think to myself. Maybe he’s come to get me. He pops a strikeless match into his mouth.
In the morning he leaves to hunt with the others. I’ve brought him coffee. I’ve waited on the cinderblocks by the fire pit. He walks right by me. Never even looks. I watch him leave. My uncle follows him.
The detective is dead. For real dead. His nose is a black river of muddy blood and when they roll him over, his eyes are open, looking up at an impossible angle — Frozen question marks. The dogs are howling and biting at their cages. My Uncle and the Right or Wrong Hand Man carry his body into The Field. There is a hole already dug and I watch the men throw him in and cover him up.
That night, when I place the rocks on the fresh dirt, the Foreigner in the tree and The Lost Man and the Smiling Women and the Baby do not frighten me. What frightens me is at the far end of The Field where the brick house is. The web of brambles is trembling and chattering. I work quickly, ignoring the hissing from all around me. Then the ghosts stop and I turn around. The detective is there, smiling at me with a strikeless match in his mouth. He pulls his chest apart all velvety and from inside I can hear a tin drum toy a rhythm that gives off heat.
Let’s go see about that Banshee, he says and smiles. His skin crinkles around his eyes.
Zach Brockhouse is a transplanted Southerner living in Maine. He lives with his family in Portland and enjoys writing about ghosts. He’d love to hear your thoughts at [email protected].
Zach Brockhouse
Here is where we keep the detective…
A plywood building with corrugated plastic, overgrown with honeysuckle as its roof. The floor is dirt, swept smooth every week. Wet newspaper bagged up. Piss in the air. Piss in everything. Sixteen dogs. The dogs my uncle uses to hunt quail and other things are in cages. Sixteen cracked plastic bowls of food. Sixteen steel bowls of water. Each pen built from two by fours and heavy-duty chicken wire. The detective curled into a ball next to a ratty tennis ball and chewed over knots of nautical rope.
It’s noon. The dogs are panting in the heat. The sun fills everything up shadowless in the pens, green from the plastic tint of the roof. The detective is drenched. He looks up and sees me watching him. He closes his eyes, sets his mouth and moves himself up on his arm. His ribs hurt and his eye is bruised. He fishes a strikeless match out of his shirt pocket, puts it between his teeth.
Kid, he says and looks me in the eye. I’ve been looking for you.
They hit him over and over again. My uncle beats the detective up. He and the Right or Wrong Hand Man. The detective doubles over. He’s middle-aged, getting on in years. His gut hangs over his pants where his shirt rides up. He falls against the wheel of his Plymouth and holds up his hands. My uncle picks up a bat, swings it. The detective doesn’t move again. The sound it makes is the sound of wood on wood.
The trees along the riverbank hang over the dark water. Their branches dabble with my fingers, tracing lazy patterns in the current. Water skippers dart close to the shore. Frogs hide where the grass grows. I’m eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a myrtle. I’m waiting for The Riverman to come visit my uncle.
It’s hot in the shade and I think about swimming, but I’m afraid. I hold my fingers close. It’s black. If I lean forward, I can see myself. The water is where things go to disappear. It’s a magical wonder when a fish pops to strike at the surface, or a raccoon crosses to the other bank. Something so unforgiving teeming the way it does with living things.
The detective holds his hand in the opening. He pushes it as far as the chain will allow. I spread my fingers. I know that if I touch his hand I’ll be sucked in, too. He looks at me. Dog chests rising and falling. Flies in dirty spears of sunlight. Leaves silhouetted by the sun. His face is greasy with sweat. His eyes are too far apart. Stubble grows in patches on his chin. I grab his hand.
This is how you clean a quail. My uncle is holding the dead bird up for me to see. The Sports are drinking beer by the trailers. A bonfire burns in front of them. Their faces light up to match the glow of sucked on cigarettes. Reflections of their beer cans shimmer against the leaves of the live oak in the middle of the turnaround drive. The local men wait in dark trucks while their women wait in the trailers.
The quail’s curled feet are so still. He uses garden shears to cut them off. He takes the headless bird and holds it upside down. With each thumb, he splits it. The feathers and skin pull away. It sounds like velvet. My uncle puts the cleaned bird onto a tray. He points to the pile the dogs have been eyeing.
You do the rest.
My hands split the birds. My hands touch his hands. Though it is night, I can feel the heat from the day on the chicken wire. The birds are cold, but inside I think I can still feel something. A toy drum winding down. Maybe it’s not heat, but it’s not cold.
I’m not allowed to go in the tractor shed. Uncle and the Right or Wrong Hand Man closed it up. A steam chimney smokes plastic sweet smoke when they’re in there working. I take the weed cutter and swing it golf style against the tall grass.
When the Sports are hunting and the camp is empty, I go into his trailer. The Nice Sport. I see his underwear and socks shoved against the dirty bed frame. An ashtray is overflowing with cigarette butts. A digital clock blinks 12 over and over. There is a duffel bag filled with more underwear and clothes and a bottle of whiskey. I know there is a compartment under the mattress. There is a briefcase. I lift it out.
I wonder what a bus ticket would cost. I know the long dirt road goes to a paved one. I know that’s the road they never want me to see.
What’s your name, son? the detective asks.
We’re holding hands now. His fingernails are dirty.
I tell him.
He repeats my name and smiles. I’ve been waiting for you.
I look at him. How’s that? I say.
You know where the key to that lock is?
I follow his eyes to the rusted Master Lock. I nod.
I think so, I say.
Good. He pulls his hand away from mine and pats it. One of the dogs looks up at us for a moment before going back to sleep. Wasps zap at the nest they are building in the corner.
He’s wearing dirty cut-off jeans. His shirt is sleeveless and white. It’s smeared from the scuffle by the car and red from his mouth. His right eye is purple swollen shut. When he speaks, long threads of spit stick to his lips.
Kid, he says. He drags his tongue across his lower lip. A blue jay calls out from the trees. Find that key, son. We’ll get out of here.
The rusted barbed wire that borders every runoff ditch. The cut trees and broken appliances. If I was blind, I could find my way to the house by touch alone. My aunt is on the front steps smoking. She fans herself and watches me as I walk up.
You hungry?
I stop at the bottom of the steps. She’s skinny everywhere but her belly. Her long brown hair hangs in a braid over her shoulder. Sweat stains the purple tank top she’s wearing.
I’m ok.
She nods and drags on her cigarette in a dreamy kind of way.
Ok, she says. The smoke leaves her nostrils, an upside down pour of sugar towards the trees. It circles lazily around her head. The housedog watches me from the shade by the cinderblock steps, its tongue lolling out and its chest panting in the heat.
I step past my aunt and onto the linoleum floor of the trailer. It’s a double wide, set back from the dirt turnaround driveway where the Sports sleep. I pass the bathroom and can’t remember the last time that I’ve used a toilet.
I found plywood. I made a house in the woods. No one misses me. I have a blanket and I can pull the door shut so nothing can get in. The chattering in the woods barely keeps me up anymore.
The keys are in a drawer filled with screws and fingernail clippers and batteries. A copper ring filled with keys. I hold them together so they don’t make a sound as I slide them out.
Keys. Here are my keys, he says. There is blood on his fingers as he holds them out. Pop the trunk. Get the tire iron out. Bring it to me.
I take the keys. I hold them together so they don’t make a sound. Through the field where the tall grass grows. Furrows have been dug by the tires of the car. River water is already pooling in them. Grasshoppers scatter as I move to the trunk. I hesitate before unlocking. The tire iron is there. Along with a bloody towel and two empty red egg crates. I look behind me, back to the tree line where the dog cages are kept.
I close the trunk and slide in behind the wheel. If I stretch, I can reach the pedals and still see over the steering wheel. The engine barks to life. The car shudders and vibrates beneath my fingers. The gears move from the trunk of the steering column and I pull the shifter down.
The car bucks forward and I pull the wheel to the left, toward the little dirt bridge over the drainage ditch. Grasshoppers bounce against the windshield as it moves through the field. The car just fits and I swing right onto the long dirt road.
I’ve never gone this far and when I come to the metal swing gate with the padlock, I hit the gas. The chain whips up and smashes the side view mirror, but I keep driving.
No. That’s not what happened. The gate flies out of the way and crashes against the trees. I’ve never been this far down the road before and I push the pedal all the way down. There are green soy fields to either side of me that stretch for miles. Row after row like the static lines of a television set. Windmills and cows dot the landscape. Golden bands of sunlight light up the dust behind me, swirling fire and smoke tracing all the way back to the dog pens.
At the end of the dirt road there is an enormous white bridge, larger than any bridge I’ve ever seen. There are no other cars on the road and the tires hum in a pleasant way when they hit the asphalt. It sounds like voices singing. It’s a suspension bridge and white support lines like the strings of a harp flash by me as I climb. The bridge touches the clouds and from the top I see the city appear when they break. A great sparkling harbor lies behind the city and there are white church steeples everywhere.
I came for you, the detective says. He moves his hand to keep the flies away from his bloody mouth. I came for you.
With some difficulty, he reaches into the pocket of his pants. He pulls out a crumpled photograph. His fingers streak mud and blood over it as he smooths it out and holds it up.
I look. The boy is young. Younger than I am. His brown hair is cut close to his head. He’s holding a toy drum. He’s smiling. A cat sleeps on the red couch behind him.
I take the photograph from his hands. Bunky, I say.
He looks at me.
I show him the photograph. The cat. Its name was Bunky.
He nods. You need to get me out of here before they come back.
I try each key until the lock snaps open. The detective takes my hand and groans as he stands up. He finds his suit and hat crumpled in the back seat of his car.
Shall we? he says and opens the passenger door. I get in.
My uncle is waiting for us by the gate. Always by his side, the Right or Wrong Hand Man has a deer rifle with a scope pointed at us. He pulls the trigger and the detective splashes red against the exploded windshield. The car bucks into the ditch and hits a tree.
Shall we? He says and opens the passenger door. Then we notice the tires have all been cut.
He looks around for a moment, grimacing against the sun. You know another way out of here? he asks me.
I nod. The river.
He puts his arm over my shoulders and I hold his hand against my chest to help him walk. We need to be quiet moving past the big trailer. The housedog will bark if he spots us. I see my aunt smoking on the steps. She doesn’t look over.
To get to the river, we need to cross The Field. I don’t like The Field. The Foreigner is there watching from the trees. The Smiling Women and The Lost Man and the Baby, they all hiss as we get closer. They hiss and move back and forth to warn us not to come in.
Every night I put rocks over the grassless patches where they are buried and every morning the rocks are gone. Nothing alive goes there. Not even snakes.
The worst thing about The Field, the thing that makes my heart freeze up into a scream, the thing that used to make me sleep under my bed before I built the box house, is The Banshee. It lives in a nest at the far end of The Field behind the tiny brick house with the chair and light bulb and the almost soundproof windows where the Right or Wrong Hand Man does his work. The Foreigner and Smiling Women and The Lost Man and the Baby all take care of it. They move back and forth across The Field like a tide, crabbing together sticks and vines. They sleep in a tangle of branches and thorns woven into a web. The Banshee is the worst thing I have ever seen. A hundred tentacles hang from under its red eye. Each tentacle ending with a razor sharp tooth and when The Banshee spots me, it raises the tentacles up together in an open-wide grin.
We can’t go in there, I say.
The detective looks at me. Why not? I can see the river through the trees.
We need to go around.
You afraid of them? he asks. They cain’t hurt you.
He pulls me into The Field and the Foreigner howls down at us from the trees. The Smiling Women and The Lost Man hiss and move towards us. The Lost Man’s neck is split and his windpipe whistles softly as he moves.
The detective waves them aside as we walk through. He simply pushes them out of the way.
Excuse me, he says. He kicks the Baby to the far end of the field. The Banshee nest rattles.
The detective looks back. What is that? he asks me.
I shake my head. You don’t want to know.
I’ll take your word on that. He grabs my hand and leads me across The Field. The ghosts watch us walk away.
There’s a clearing where the trees won’t grow and the moon sometime slaps against the water. It’s a place where teeth grow on cattails and the crickets never stop singing. Animals have worn the grass down to clay. Hawks wait in the trees during the day. Owls wait in the trees at night. This is where I bring the detective — A flat mud aluminum boat ramp pushed into the river. Tadpoles gather around boot plunged holes in the bank.
The black water shimmers by the shore. A log full of turtles shakes as each one retreats back into the water. We hear the sputtering outboard of The Riverman and watch as he comes around the bend.
His American flag bandana is holding back his long hair and his silvered sunglasses flash when he spots us. He grabs a shotgun and stands up in the boat. Before either of us can move, the detective has been shot. He falls backwards into the mud and grabs at his chest. Choking sounds and blood come out of his mouth. He looks at me in surprise. I grab at his coat and try to pull him out of the water.
The Riverman comes around the bend. The detective pushes my head down. Duck, he says.
We hide behind a cluster of cattails. As The Riverman putters by, the detective leaps. He and The Riverman fall onto the floor of the boat. The detective holds The Riverman down and swings his fist. Then the men are back up. The Riverman is bleeding. The detective grabs him by the shoulder and swings again. Something splashes in the water at my feet. Something bloody. I can see it’s a tooth.
The detective swings one more time. Something breaks in The Riverman and his eyes go hazy. He falls into the black water and disappears. The detective finds his hat and puts it back on. He cuts the engine. He sits down and pulls a strikeless match from his shirt, puts it between his teeth. Taking off his hat for a moment, he wipes the sweat from his forehead and smiles at me.
Well now. I think two parents are about to be very happy.
I stop and look at him.
He looks back at me and half-smiles.
What? You thought they were dead? He says.
I nod and look at my feet.
Well, someone’s paid me a lot of money to find you.
I look up at him and squint. I wipe some sweat away from my forehead with my hand wishing I had a hat. A dragonfly lands on a cattail.
Ok, I say.
He picks up a garbage bag near his feet and takes out a box.
What’s this? he says.
Cold medicine, I say. For my uncle.
Not gonna need this. He throws the bag into the river and the current carries it away.
He holds out his hand for me to climb aboard. The riverbanks slide by. The woods are filled with rotting wooden huts. Animal skulls hang from trees and rusted appliances grown over with kudzu lean into the small hills. The further we go, the cleaner the woods become. We see an osprey with a water moccasin in its beak. Rabbits watch us glide by from a green patch of clover. The river begins to widen. We see power lines and in the distance, the white buckboard of a lived-in house that I think I recognize.
My uncle is furious. He grabs me. What did you do with it? he yells.
The Right or Wrong Hand Man, kicks through my plywood house. They don’t find the briefcase. They don’t find anything.
This I serious, my Uncle says, finger in my face. Family only gets you so far.
The Right or Wrong Hand Man gives me a grin that makes my stomach knot up. The brick house grin. He stares at me long after my Uncle has turned to walk away.
It’s under the tractor shed. By the pile of garbage. A secret hole that I’ve dug. The brass locks pop when I finally open it. I see the bags of white powder and three black pistols. I know I’ve found Power and I’m happy to have taken it away.
The Sport tassles my hair and calls me son. He smiles at me before heading into the trailer where a local woman is waiting. He’s middle-aged and his eyes are too far apart. Lines appear next to them when he smiles. Maybe he is the one, I think to myself. Maybe he’s come to get me. He pops a strikeless match into his mouth.
In the morning he leaves to hunt with the others. I’ve brought him coffee. I’ve waited on the cinderblocks by the fire pit. He walks right by me. Never even looks. I watch him leave. My uncle follows him.
The detective is dead. For real dead. His nose is a black river of muddy blood and when they roll him over, his eyes are open, looking up at an impossible angle — Frozen question marks. The dogs are howling and biting at their cages. My Uncle and the Right or Wrong Hand Man carry his body into The Field. There is a hole already dug and I watch the men throw him in and cover him up.
That night, when I place the rocks on the fresh dirt, the Foreigner in the tree and The Lost Man and the Smiling Women and the Baby do not frighten me. What frightens me is at the far end of The Field where the brick house is. The web of brambles is trembling and chattering. I work quickly, ignoring the hissing from all around me. Then the ghosts stop and I turn around. The detective is there, smiling at me with a strikeless match in his mouth. He pulls his chest apart all velvety and from inside I can hear a tin drum toy a rhythm that gives off heat.
Let’s go see about that Banshee, he says and smiles. His skin crinkles around his eyes.
Zach Brockhouse is a transplanted Southerner living in Maine. He lives with his family in Portland and enjoys writing about ghosts. He’d love to hear your thoughts at [email protected].