The Bottoms

7

By the time we hit the ground and got around front, the crowd was starting to break up. Folks were mumbling back and forth, mad ’cause they hadn’t learned anything, and the old colored man, Uncle Pharaoh, was moving his pig cart toward the commissary with, “Now get on, Pig Jesse.”

“I got to go catch up,” Abraham said when he saw Uncle Pharaoh. “He gonna need some help with some groceries and such.”

“I’m with them,” Richard said. “It was nice meetin’ you, Harry,” and they went away.

I felt abandoned and full of guilt. Daddy had told me to do a certain thing, and that was wait. I told myself that I had waited, but I knew I was splitting hairs. I had waited on the roof of the icehouse and seen what I wasn’t supposed to see; heard what I wasn’t supposed to hear. I didn’t always do as told, but somehow, this time, I felt as if I had transgressed beyond forgiveness.

I tried to look innocent as Daddy, Doc Tinn, and the Reverend came out. I had not seen the Reverend enter, but it had to be him. He was a tall, very lean colored man with a flat nose and a look like someone waiting on something bad to happen so he could talk salvation. He wore black pants and shoes and a white shirt with yellow sweat stains under the arms. He had on a thin black tie that looked to be fraying about the edges and he was putting on a soft brown felt hat as he came out of the icehouse. The hat had a little bright red and green feather in the brim on the left side.

As they came down the steps, Daddy, slipping on his hat, looked over at me, and though he didn’t say anything, his gaze made me nervous. At the bottom of the icehouse steps Daddy gave the Reverend something, turned to Doc Tinn and extended his hand. Doc Tinn, still unaccustomed to such, stuck out his hand quickly and they shook.

“I want to thank you for your help,” Daddy said. “I may be talkin’ to you again.”

“It’s all just opinion, Constable,” Doc Tinn said.

“It sounded like reasonable opinion to me,” Daddy said.

“Thank you, kindly, Constable.”

They talked a little more with the Reverend. I saw Daddy reach in his pocket and hand the preacher something, but I couldn’t make it out. Then he shook hands with him, turned around, and called to me.

“Son, let’s go.”

We walked over to Doc Tinn’s house, ahead of the Doc, got in our car, and drove over to the commissary. Uncle Pharaoh was around front, sitting in his cart in the shade of his willow and burlap sack cover, drinking a Dr Pepper. His hog, Jesse, was lying in the dirt with the cart posts and straps still on him. He had his head just under the porch in the shade and was grunting away, eating some old moldy bread.

“Now that’s a hog,” Daddy said to Uncle Pharaoh.

“Mr. Constable, how you doin’?”

Uncle Pharaoh knew my Daddy. My heart sank. Would he mention that me and Abraham and Richard had climbed on top of the icehouse?

“How the world treatin’ you, Mr. Constable?”

“Fair enough,” Daddy said. “And you?”

“I could complain, but it wouldn’t do no good.”

Daddy and Uncle Pharaoh exchanged a small laugh, and Daddy lifted his hand as if to wave Uncle Pharaoh away, like he couldn’t handle such powerful humor that time of day.

We went inside the commissary. I said, “You know him?”

“Son, wasn’t it obvious I did?”

“Yes sir.”

“He used to be the greatest hunter in all these bottoms until a wild hog tore up his leg. It’s a critter they call Old Satan. He wanders these here bottoms. Big old boar hog. And ain’t no one ever been able to kill him. He’s mainly over here on this side of the county. ’Round here and over toward Mud Creek.”

I started to ask if what Doc Stephenson had said about a wild hog tearing up that woman could be possible, when I caught myself.

“Sure are lots of towns named after creeks,” I said.

“Yeah,” Daddy said.

Abraham and Richard were inside getting groceries together for Uncle Pharaoh. They spoke to me and Daddy as we came in, then went on about their business.

Daddy bought us a slab of bologna, a box of crackers, some rat cheese, and a couple Co’-Colas. We sat on the front porch of the commissary where it was cooler and watched Jesse snooze with his nose in the shade and Uncle Pharaoh nurse his Dr Pepper. Daddy used his pocketknife to slice up the meat and cheese and he laid them out on the butcher paper they had come wrapped in. We ate the meat and cheese with the crackers and drank our pops. Wagons rattled by with fresh-cut lumber in them.

We sat quietly for a time, then Daddy said, “Son.”

“Yes sir.”

“I prefer you do as I ask. You get to be a grown man, you can do as you please. Long as it’s within the law and within God’s law, but as a boy, you do as I ask.”

So he had seen me. “Yes sir.”

We ate some more. I said, “You gonna give me a whippin’?”

“No. You’re gettin’ kind of old for that foolishness, don’t you think?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, you are. You act more your age, and I’ll treat you your age. That a deal?”

“Yes sir.”

“Being your age means listenin’ to what I tell you. Or your Mama tells you. You got to show some good sense. I didn’t want you to see all that.”

“I done seen her, Daddy.”

“I know, son. But that was an accident. This here, it wasn’t none of your business. It was in a different light. Hear what I’m sayin’?”

“Yes sir.”

“That poor woman was loved by someone somewhere, and it ain’t good to have a bunch a people gaping at her like she’s somethin’ in a circus. She ain’t got no control over what happens to her now, so we got to control it. Everything done there was to find out what we needed to know. And another thing, son, there’s things you don’t need in your head ’less you got to have ’em. You may not think that now, but believe me, there’s things you don’t need and they’ll come back to you and they won’t be pleasant. And by the way. I noticed you boys were up there soon as you climbed on the roof. Ain’t none of you quiet. Just to let you know, them boys are pretty good boys. Uncle Pharaoh’s the little one’s grandpa.”

“Abraham.”

“Yep, Abraham. And the other one is Mr. Dale’s boy. Mr. Dale is a pretty fair farmer. He wrestles at fairs for money. I hear he’s good at that too. His boy’s name is… let me see…”

“Richard.”

“Yep, Richard. They ain’t a bad couple to play with. And let me tell you something sad. Abraham, another few years, he and Richard won’t play together. They won’t even be together.”

“Why, Daddy?”

Daddy looked over at Uncle Pharaoh, as if to make sure he was out of earshot. “ ’Cause the world ain’t the way it’s supposed to be. You figure on that, and I think the answer will come to you.”

It already had. I said, “Daddy? Did you figure out who done that to that colored woman?”

“No. I don’t really know more than I did, ’cept it was horrible. I don’t know I’ll ever know any more than I know right now.”

“Why did Doc Stephenson come?”

“I don’t rightly know, but I figure he wanted to be in on something like that, and not have it hurt his business none.”

“He didn’t sound like he knew much.”

“I don’t think he cared one way or another. He just wanted to be the one making the statements, not a colored doctor. I’d come to Doc Tinn anytime before I’d go to that pill-pushin’ quack. Listen here. Whites and colored ain’t neither one better or worse than another. There’s just men and women of whatever color, and some of them are worse than others, and some are better. That’s the way to look at that matter. I’m an ignorant man, son, but I know that.”

“Daddy. Miss Maggie says it’s probably the Goat Man done it.”

“How’d she know anything was done?”

I blushed. “I guess I told her.”

“Well, I figure it’s no big secret by now, but you want to keep talk like that to yourself when you can.”

“Yes sir. She says the Goat Man might be the devil. Or one of the devil’s servants. Like Beezlebubba.”

“She means Beelzebub. But no. I done told you I don’t believe there’s no Goat Man,” Daddy said. “I’ve heard tell of such all my life, but ain’t never seen it. As for this fella done this being the devil’s servant, well, she might have somethin’ there. But I figure he’s flesh and blood all right.”

“Daddy, the one done that to that colored woman?”

“Miss Sykes, son. She had a name. We know it now.”

“Yes sir. One did that… He still around?”

Daddy had the bologna in his hand, and was cutting it with the pocketknife.

“I don’t know, son… I doubt it.”

It was then, for the first time, I thought my Daddy might have lied to me.

It was hotter on the way home than when we’d left, and a lot of the water had dried up or at least caked into mud. It was thick in the road and it caused us to go slow.

We hadn’t got more than a couple miles outside of Pearl Creek when a black Ford with dents all over it, sitting in the shade of a hickory nut tree, pulled onto the road and right up beside us, going fast enough to toss mud on us.

A red-faced man was sitting on the passenger side wearing a big white hat. He waved his arm out the open window at Daddy and pointed to the side of the road.

Daddy pulled over, said, “It’s all right, son. It’s the law over here. I know ’em. Wait on me, hear?”

As Daddy got out of the car, I slid over behind the steering wheel. Daddy went to the rear of our car, and the man on the passenger side of the dented Ford wearing the big white hat got out. He was big and solid. He was dressed in gray khakis and wore his sleeves rolled down and buttoned, as if it were the dead of winter. A badge was pinned on his shirt.

The driver, a fellow with a yellowish coloring to his features, wearing a tan hat with a near flat crown that made it look like the top to a butter churn, stayed behind the wheel chewing tobacco.

The man in the big hat shook hands with Daddy. I could hear them real good. The red-faced man said, “Good to see you, Jacob. I heard tell you was constable over there in your county.”

“I don’t expect you’re all that proud to see me, Woodrow,” Daddy said, “so don’t act like it.”

The man laughed a little. He took off his hat and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped sweat from the inside of it. His hair was even redder than his face.

“That Ralph Purdue with you?” Daddy asked.

The man Daddy called Woodrow didn’t answer that question. He said, “Jacob, I got to talk to you. This here nigger murder. We heard about it.”

“Who hasn’t.”

“Well, now, I could beat around the bush, but I ain’t gonna do that. What I got to say is simple. Over here ain’t your jurisdiction.”

“If I was solvin’ a crime, and it led me over here, you’d help me out, wouldn’t you, Woodrow?”

“Oh, you know it. But, a nigger? Listen, Jacob, let me give you some advice-”

“I’ve heard it before.”

“You heed it from me, okay?”

Daddy didn’t answer.

“There’s nigger murders, then there’s white murders, and then there’s nigger and white and white and nigger murders.”

“Murder’s murder.”

“Let me put it like this. Niggers over here don’t want nobody meddlin’ in their business. Not you. Not me.”

“We’re the law.”

“Yeah, but a nigger woman gets killed down in the bottoms, that’s one thing. It ain’t like it’s a good nigger. And it ain’t like it matters much to us. One’s gone, and that’s all there is to it. It was probably one of her boyfriends. She didn’t put out, or put out to someone else. It’s always something like that.

“Jacob, you got some Christian ideas, and that’s good. But niggers take care of their own. They like it that way, and we like it that way. They get in white business, then we take care of them. White man kills a nigger, that’s our responsibility. A nigger kills a white man, that’s sure our responsibility. But this…”

“Person’s dead, they’re dead,” Daddy said. “Isn’t that our responsibility?”

“There’s some things been a certain way for a long time, and they ought to stay that way.”

“I thought the Yankees whupped us,” Daddy said. “And Lincoln freed the slaves.”

“The Yankees didn’t whup me. Jacob, what happened here seems obvious. Somebody got off the train, a nigger hobo ridin’ the rails most likely, and he decided he needed some comfort. And he got with this nigger woman and didn’t have the money. She probably tried to cut him. He ended up doin’ her in and caught the next train out. Doc Stephenson, he sees it that way.”

“That’s funny,” Daddy said. “He told me he thought a panther did it. Or a wild boar. Or maybe a wild boar held her while the panther did it. I forget. When the two got through they tied her to a tree with some barbed wire.”

“Jacob-”

“Since when is Doc Stephenson able to look at a body and know a hobo did it? Did the hobo leave him a note?”

“Goddamn you, Jacob! It’s known far and wide all over this country you’re a nigger lover, and you ain’t careful you’re gonna bring up another generation of them nigger lovers, and some folks around here have all the nigger lovin’ they want. Over here, we take care of our niggers our way.”

“I want to tell you something, Woodrow. When we were boys you fell off a barge and damn near drowned-”

“Don’t hold that over my head.”

“Got in that sinkhole and was almost sucked down. But you wasn’t.”

“And I’ve thanked you.”

“You have. Thought you was real grateful about it. And even though you and I have our differences, I’ve always thought, when push come to shove, you was a fair man. But sometimes, I wish I’d have just gone on and let you go under. And if I could rightly figure for sure what you said about another generation of nigger lovers was some kind of threat on my family, I’d break your goddamn neck.”

Woodrow turned red and put his hat on.

“It wasn’t no threat. But you just keep in mind what I’ve said.”

“Whatever it is you said, you keep in mind what I just said. Take it to heart, Woodrow. I’m goin’ home now.”

“I ain’t finished, Jacob.”

“Yeah you are,” Daddy said.

As Daddy walked away, Woodrow said, “You tell May Lynn I said howdy.”

Daddy paused momentarily. I saw the arteries stand out in his neck, and for a moment I thought he might turn around, but he didn’t. He kept coming.

I slid away from the driver’s side and waited for Daddy to get in. When he was behind the wheel, I said, “Everything all right, Daddy?”

“Everything’s fine, son. Fine.”

I looked back and saw the banged-up black car was turned around and heading in the other direction, the man called Woodrow had his sleeve-covered arm hanging from the window.

When we got home, Daddy let me out, turned the Ford around, and headed off. He didn’t say where he was going. Just told me to tell Mother not to worry.

He didn’t come back until nightfall, and he was quiet all night. After supper, he and Mama sat and read awhile, her from the Bible and him from a seed catalogue and then the Farmer’s Almanac. But he seemed to be just going through the motions. I noticed that he had been on the same page for a long time. Once he looked over at Mother, sighed, then went back to glaring at the page, as if he wished to be absorbed by it, like a stain.

Me and Tom played checkers, and Tom, after me beating her four times in a row, got mad, turned over the checker board, and went out on the sleeping porch. There were a couple of cots out there, and when it was real hot, sometimes that’s where me and Tom slept.

Normally, I wasn’t of a mind to care a lot about how she felt, but maybe seeing that body had softened me. I went out on the porch. Tom was on one of the cots, her hands behind her head, looking up at the ceiling.

“It’s just an ole game,” I said, realizing I probably should have let her win one.

“That’s all right,” she said.

I sat on the other cot. We sat there in silence, listening to the crickets, some bugs banging up against the screen.

“That woman we found,” Tom asked, “you think the Goat Man did that to her?”

“Doc Stephenson said he thought some kind of animal did it. Doc Tinn said he thought a man did it. Constable over there thought it was a hobo.”

“How you know all that?” she said.

“I heard ’em talkin’.”

“Is a hobo a monster?”

“It’s a fella rides the trains by sneaking on.”

“Well, that’s a man, ain’t it? You said an animal, a man, or a hobo.”

“I suppose.”

“But could it have been the Goat Man?”

“Daddy says it ain’t. But if you put together what everyone says, it adds up to the Goat Man. Miss Maggie thinks it was the Goat Man.”

Tom considered on that for a while, said, “Miss Maggie knows all kinds of things. Makes sense to me it was the Goat Man. We seen it, didn’t we?”

“We did.”

“I didn’t see it real good. It was too dark. It looked pretty horrible though, didn’t it?”

I agreed it did.

“I think about it sometimes,” Tom said.

“I know.” I thought about Daddy telling me I didn’t need to talk about the body, but then again, hadn’t Tom already seen it?

Heck, I was turning out to be a real blabbermouth.

I told Tom what I had done, about climbing on the icehouse and looking through the hole. I told her what was said, and I embellished it a little, making myself the leader of the boys that climbed the chinaberry.

I also left out the part about being caught in the act of spying. That seemed to me to take the edge off the story and made me seem less clever than I wanted to be.

I also added, “Don’t say nothin’ about what I told you, or I’ll be in a heap of trouble.”

Me and Tom talked awhile, speculating on the Goat Man, and pretty soon we were starting to hear him creeping around at the back of the house, and maybe even calling to us in a kind of soft voice that mocked the wind. I got up and locked the screen door, but that didn’t keep us from being scared. Pretty soon every time a bug smacked up against the screen, I was sure it was the Goat Man scratching to get in.

Having scared ourselves to death, we gladly went inside to bed.

That night, as I lay in bed, Jelda May Sykes came to me, all cut up. Not just the way I found her, but the way Doc Tinn had cut her, from breastbone to private parts. There was a big empty gap in her stomach except for one long intestine Doc Tinn hadn’t pulled out. It hung out of the rip in her belly and dragged across the floor. She moved slowly, and finally stood by my bed, looking down at me. Her pubic hair and her cut-up womanhood was near my head. I had my eyes open and I could see her, but I couldn’t move. Very carefully, very slowly, she laid her hand on my forehead, as if checking for fever.

I woke up in a sweat, and lay panting. I looked to see if I had awakened Tom, but she was still sleeping sound by the window that connected to the sleeping porch. She might have been frightened when she went to bed, but she sure seemed content enough now. She had even opened the window, which was a good thing, hot as it was.

The wind was soft and gentle, moving the curtains. It licked at Tom’s dark hair and waved it about. I was certain I could smell death and river water in the room. I checked about, to see if Jelda May had moved into the shadows, waiting for me to get comfortable again, but there was nothing there but the shapes of familiar things.

I folded my pillow and stuffed it under my head and took deep breaths, tried not to think about Jelda May Sykes. While I was doing that, I heard Mom and Dad talking behind the wall, just a buzz of words.

I slid over and put my ear against the wall and tried to pick up what they were saying. They were speaking soft, and for a moment I couldn’t make anything out, but pretty soon I adjusted, shut out the sound of the wind coming through the window by putting a hand over my ear and pressing my other one tight against the wall.

“… you got to consider that except for stories I haven’t never heard of a panther killing anybody,” I heard Daddy say. “My belief is they probably have. Some say they don’t do that, but I think any kind of critter can do that under the right circumstances. Even a family dog. But Doc Stephenson didn’t have no reason to suspect that. He just wanted it to be that way.”

“Why?” Mama asked.

“He didn’t want no colored doctor making any kind of examination and maybe knowing something he didn’t know. Everyone that’s got the mind to admit it, knows Doc Tinn is a good doctor. Better’n most, white or black. That’s all I can figure. And Stephenson was drunk, so I don’t think that helped his judgment none. He may have been showin’ out for that intern, Taylor. Though I don’t think Taylor was much impressed.”

“What did Doc Tinn say?”

“He said she’d been raped and cut up. The cut-up part was obvious. He figured someone had come back after she was dead, probably the killer, and kind of played with the body.”

“You don’t mean it?”

“Uh huh.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t even an idea.”

“Did the doctor know her?”

“No, but the colored preacher over there, Reverend Bail, he knew her. Name was Jelda May Sykes. He said she was a local prostitute and a… he called her a juju woman.”

“A what?”

“Some kind of witchcraft they believe in. She sold charms and such. She worked in the juke joints along the river. Picked up a little white trade now and then.”

“So no one has any ideas who could have done it?”

“Nobody over there gives a damn, May Lynn. No one. The coloreds don’t have any high feelings for her, and the white law enforcement let me know real quick I was out of my jurisdiction.”

“If it’s out of your jurisdiction, you’ll have to leave it alone.”

“Taking her to Pearl Creek was out of my jurisdiction, but where she was found isn’t out of my jurisdiction. Law over there figures some hobo ridin’ the rails had his fun with her, dumped her in a river, and caught the next train out. They’re probably right. But if that’s so, who bound her to the tree?”

“It could have been someone else, couldn’t it?”

“I suppose, but it worries me mightily to think that there’s that much cruelty out there in the world. I’d rather it just be one fella, not two, and if I had my real druthers, I’d rather it not be any. But as they say, wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.”

“Jacob!” Mama said in what sounded like a not entirely offended tone. And then she laughed a little. “Such language.” Then: “What do they care if you chase this? Why are they so against it?”

“You know that much as I do,” Daddy said.

“ ’Cause she’s colored? But what would it matter to them if you wanted to chase it?”

“What if a white man done it?”

“Then he ought to pay.”

“Of course. But not everyone sees it that way. They figure a colored woman who was a prostitute… well, she had it coming. If it was a colored did it, one less colored woman for all they care, so why bother and upset the old apple cart. If it was a white man, then they want it left alone. They figure a white man can have his fun with a colored, no matter what kind of fun it is, and he ought not have to pay for it no kind of way.”

“When you dropped Harry off. Where did you go?”

“Into town to see Cal Fields.”

When he said that, I felt knee high to a crippled June bug. My climbing on the icehouse had probably got me sent home early, and Daddy had been discontent enough with me to drive me all the way home and take the ride into town by himself.

“He’s the newspaperman, isn’t he?” Mama asked. She was talking about our weekly newspaper, the Marvel Creek Guardian. “The older man with the younger wife,” she continued, “the hot patootie?”

“Yeah,” Daddy said. “He’s a good fella. His young wife ran off with a drummer, by the way. That doesn’t bother Cal any. He’s got a new girlfriend. But what he was tellin’ me was interestin’. He said this is the third murder in the area in eighteen months. He didn’t write about any of ’em in the paper, primarily because they’re messy, but also because they’ve all been colored killings, and his audience don’t care about colored killings.”

“How does he know about them?”

“He gets along pretty well with the colored communities here about. He said he’s got a nose for news, even if the newspaper he owns and writes isn’t one that’s worth all the news. He said all the murders have been of prostitutes. One happened in Pearl Creek. Her body was found stuffed in a big drainpipe down near the river by the sawmill. Her legs had been broken and pulled up and tied to her head and her body had been cut on. Like the one I seen today. Turned out nobody really knew this woman, though. She had sort of drifted in and got a job in one of the cribs over there.”

“Cribs?”

“That’s where the prostitutes work, dear. It’s a kind of house

… You know?”

“Oh. I’m certainly gettin’ an education. I didn’t know you knew all this.”

“I find out a lot doin’ my little constablin’. Anyway, she was found and buried by some Christians wanted her to have a burial, and after a time no one thought much about it. It’s the same old story. A colored murder isn’t something the colored say much about, ’cept amongst themselves. They take care of their own when they can, ’cause the white law sure ain’t gonna do much. In this case, wasn’t no one really knew the woman and wasn’t anyone suspected. Same thing was thought then that’s thought about Jelda May Sykes. It was figured a tramp done her in, caught the train out.”

“You said there were three.”

“Other was found in the river. Thought to be a drown victim at first. Cal said rumor was she was cut on, but he can’t say for sure if it’s true. Might not be any kind of connection.”

“When did these murders happen?”

“Best I can tell, the first one was killed January of last year. The other one, I don’t know. Don’t even know if it did happen. People could have been talking about something happened years ago and Cal caught wind of it. Or whoever told him might have misheard it. Or been yarn’n him. It’s hard to tell when it comes to the colored community.”

“Did Mr. Fields know about Jelda May Sykes?”

“He did.”

They were silent for a while. Through our thin walls I could hear the crickets outside, and somewhere in the bottoms, the sound of a big bullfrog bleating.

“Jelda May’s body,” Mama asked. “What happened to it? Who took it?”

“No one. Honey, I paid a little down payment to have her buried in the colored cemetery over there. I know we don’t have the money, but-”

“Shush. That’s all right. You did good.”

“I told the preacher over there I’d give him a bit more when I got it.”

“That’s good, Jacob. That’s real good.”

“By the way, the constable over there. You know who it is?”

“No.”

“Red Woodrow.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that. Did you know that?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“You didn’t mention it.”

“Didn’t see any reason to. I never thought about it much until today when I seen him. I didn’t want to mention it now-”

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

“ – but I felt I ought to. I don’t like to hide behind something bothers me. He told me to tell you hello.”

“He did.”

“I didn’t plan to tell you. I don’t know why I did.”

“Honey, you can quit being silly. You know there wasn’t nothing to any of that.”

Their tone had changed. Had become almost formal. I wasn’t sure what was different, but something was, and it had to do with Red Woodrow.

“He wanted me to stay out of things.”

“It is his jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

“Like I said, murder took place here. The only reason they have the body is I needed help from Doc Tinn.”

“Red can be… well, testy.”

“Wasn’t the word I had in mind for him,” Daddy said.

“Jacob, just forget him.”

“I want to.”

“His shirtsleeves?” Mama asked.

“He still keeps them rolled down.”

They grew silent. I turned on my back and looked at the ceiling. When I closed my eyes I saw Jelda May Sykes again, ruined and swollen, fixed to that tree with barbed wire. And then she was gone, just faded away, leaving only her dark eyes, and then the dark eyes turned bright and I saw white teeth in the dark face of the horned Goat Man.

Suddenly, I was standing in shadow in the middle of the trail looking at him. He started coming toward me.

I ran, and I could hear him running right behind me. I was breathing hard, and he was breathing even harder, but not like he was tired. It was more the fast-paced breathing of someone planning something they would enjoy.

The shadows from the trees grabbed at me and tried to hold me, but I broke loose. Just as the Goat Man was gaining on me, about to put his hand on my shoulder, I reached the Preacher’s Road ahead of him, and when I looked over my shoulder, he was gone. I was sitting up in bed, wide awake, staring at the wall.

It took me a long time to fall back asleep, and in the morning I awoke exhausted, as if I had been pursued all night by the devil himself.