Hell With the Lid Blown Off Read online

  Something was moving ahead of him. He tugged on the reins and squinted at the apparition, not sure he had actually seen anything. But there it was—a pale, man-shaped figure weaving toward him through the darkness. His first thought was that someone had been killed by the storm and his haint hadn’t yet figured out that he was dead. Gee Dub smiled, amused at himself, and felt oddly better.

  “Is somebody there?” he called.

  The figure stopped, but no reply was forthcoming. He clucked at Penny and she walked a few steps forward. He was near enough now to see it was a man, strangely white from tip to toe. He unhooked the lantern from his saddle horn, fished a match out of his breast pocket, struck it on his thigh, and lit the wick. He held the lamp up and its weak yellow light illuminated the figure of a man standing exactly in front of him, bruised eyes staring at him out of a white face, stark naked, his bare skin tattooed with dirt and splinters.

  Gee Dub nearly dropped the lantern. “Mr. Eichelberger? What in the name of Pete…are you all right?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt like a fool. Mr. Eichelberger obviously was not all right. Gee Dub flung down out of the saddle and seized the man by the arm.

  Eichelberger stared and blinked at him. He slowly lifted one skinny arm and pointed off in the direction from which he had come. “There’s a dead man over there.”

  Gee Dub was removing his coat to cover the man’s nakedness, barely aware of what he had said. “Mr. Eichelberger, you’re hurt! Get up behind me, now, and I’ll take you to Doc Addison.”

  The suggestion roused Eichelberger to action, and he shook Gee Dub off. “No! I can’t go! I’m all right! I found him over there.” He dropped Gee Dub’s coat into the mud and ran off into the darkness, bare as the day he was born.

  Gee Dub didn’t call after him. It was just one more bizarre incident in a night full of them. With the lantern in one hand and Penny’s reins in the other, he walked ahead slowly, gingerly casting his eyes about for a body. He had only walked a few steps when Penny snorted and shied, and his heart jumped into his mouth. Mr. Eichelberger wasn’t delusional after all.

  He said a few soothing words to the horse before he wrapped her reins around the stubby stick of a ravaged sapling and made his way forward through the weedy ruts, lantern high.

  At first he thought he was seeing a dismembered leg, and he paused, nauseated by the idea. When he took a step closer he saw the shape of the rest of the man, half-buried in mud. He put the lantern on the ground, fell to his knees, and proceeded to dig the body out of the muck with his bare hands. He moved quickly at first but slowed when it became obvious that the man was quite dead. He scooped mud off the face, out of the hollows of the eyes, and reached for his lamp in hopes of identifying whomever it was he had just disinterred.

  The eyes were wide open. The mouth was open, too, and full of mud, as were the nostrils. Gee Dub stood up. Something about him was familiar, but he couldn’t put a name to him. The skin on the face had been practically flayed off, and the cheek and jaw on the right side were crushed in. The man had either been flung face-first into something hard, or skinned by the shrapnel of dirt and rocks and exploded buildings.

  Somebody has died, sure enough, his mother had said. Was this the lost horse’s rider? Gee Dub lost track of how long he stood and looked down at the body. He had seen death before. He had even seen violent death before. Though death had always horrified him, it had never seemed personal to him, even when the one who had died was known to him, even loved.

  Gee Dub gazed down at the dead stranger and wondered why this was different. The possibility of war, probably. Would he grow inured to sights like this? A tornado, a bomb, what was the difference? Something comes out of the sky and you’re dead in the blink of an eye.

  The corpse had been a man. That was all Gee Dub could tell for sure. Only a few sprigs of hair remained on the scoured scalp. They looked dark. The man was oddly unreal, like he had never been alive at all. The odd, staring eyes might as well have been painted marbles. Whatever it was that animated a man was long gone.

  Early this morning, Gee Dub thought, this fellow got up out of bed, put on his clothes, ate breakfast, and it never crossed his mind that he’d never do any of those things ever again. A storm came and killed him without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Gee Dub felt bad. The guy was all skint and muddy, with his mouth hanging open. It was undignified, and Gee Dub felt bad for him. Whoever he had been, he wouldn’t have liked to be seen this way. Gee Dub was seized by an urge to re-bury him, just to give the man a little privacy. He closed the corpse’s staring eyes.

  “I wish I could do something for you, Mister,” he said aloud, and felt foolish. There was no help for the dead man now, and he shouldn’t be wasting time like this.

  Since Gee Dub wasn’t really sure where he was, he looked around for a way to mark the location of the unfortunate soul, but found nothing that could differentiate the spot from the ruination around it. He thought of breaking the branch off of a bush and sticking one of the man’s boots onto one end and planting the other end in the ground next to the dead man’s head. But the body was only clad in the remnants of trousers.

  He was going to have to take the body with him or risk never finding it again. He glanced at his horse, who twitched an ear and snorted.

  Penny wasn’t going to like this.

  Gee Dub didn’t relish the idea of riding around in the dark with a mutilated corpse slung behind his saddle. He untied his blanket roll and rolled the body up in it like a cocoon. He knotted his rope around the man’s feet, then remounted and moved on slowly, dragging his ghoulish burden behind. He held the lantern high as he rode, but the road to Boynton was not to be found. Finally he gave Penny her head to pick a route south across the open field, and hoped she could make her own way toward town.

  Dr. Ann Addison

  Gee Dub had no idea how long he had been wandering around. He had hoped that he would eventually be able to navigate by the glow of the street lamps in Boynton, but there was no glow. He wasn’t surprised. The wind and rain had surely blown the street lamps out. But he was disappointed, nonetheless.

  He did the best he could by holding the lit kerosene lantern up high for as long as his arm would allow. He was pretty sure he was still headed southeast, and when he suddenly found himself riding under the broken branches of his grandfather’s apple orchard, he knew he was on the right track.

  He came up on his grandparents’ house from the rear and was relieved to see that it was largely untouched, apart from a missing section of fence and the loss of some roof shingles. He considered stopping for a welfare check, but since they seemed to have suffered little damage and he was eager to get the dead man into town, he pushed on into Boynton.

  Tree limbs were down all over town, some outbuildings blown over and windows blown out, but the tornado seemed to have largely missed the town. Still, nothing alive was stirring and every window on Main Street was dark. He dug his heels into Penny’s side.

  He turned up Second Street past Alice and Walter’s place and saw the dim glow of oil lamps through the window, but he didn’t stop until he reached Doc Addison’s house further down the lane. He slid off the horse’s back and left her in the middle of the road while he pounded on the front door.

  Doctor Ann opened it at once.

  Once he had blurted out his story, Doctor Ann told him that her husband was not at home. “Joey Bond from over your way came and got him just a few minutes ago. He said that the twister had blown their house to pieces, and the fireplace had fallen on his ma.”

  Gee Dub cursed under his breath. He shouldn’t have lingered over the body of a man who was beyond help. “John Lee is hurt bad, ma’am. We’ve taken him over to my sister Mary’s house since there’s no other place. And I’m afraid he’s not the only one who’s hurt. Mr. Eichelberger is injured for sure, and I‘ve been dragging the dead man behind m
y horse for near to an hour. I don’t know what to do with him this time of night. I passed more than one farmhouse that isn’t there anymore. My guess is there are a lot of folks out that direction needing the services of a doctor.”

  Doctor Ann listened with growing concern before inviting Gee Dub into the house. The other two doctors in town were likely tending to the wounded as well, but she tried to telephone them anyway. It was a futile effort. Even if Mrs. Smith was trying to operate the switchboard after-hours because of the storm, the lines were down.

  “I’ll go out to the Lukenbach place myself, son, being as there’s no other option.”

  Gee Dub watched the tall, dignified, midwife grab her bag and throw a shawl over her shoulders. “You won’t be able to get out there in a buggy, ma’am,” he warned. “You’ll have to go on horseback, and it’s next to impossible to see where you’re going.”

  Doctor Ann paused long enough to give him a thin smile. “We Cherokees have no trouble finding our way in the dark, my boy. I’ll borrow a horse from Mr. Turner.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve got to do something with my sad burden out there. I reckon I’ll go by Scott’s. Maybe he’ll tell me where to take it. I told my ma I’d check on my sisters while I’m here, as well.”

  Doctor Ann was already heading for the door. “As you wish, Gee Dub, but if you’re not at the livery by the time I’m saddled, I’m leaving without you.”

  Trenton Calder

  That was one strange night. I didn’t recognize where we were. There was no road, no houses, nothing left to where we could get our bearings. Me and Streeter kept going northwest, but we couldn’t recognize where we were by the landmarks because all the landmarks had been blown away. We found a turnoff that we thought was probably the right one, so we set off down that way. About a mile down, a big old uprooted persimmon tree lay right across our path. We were going to have to leave the road, such as it was, and go around it.

  I turned Brownie to the left and there, looming up out of the dark, was the gate to the Ross Dairy, broken but still upright. I hollered at Streeter, who was riding in front of me. “We’re heading toward Muskogee!”

  It was the right road. Wrong direction. I could see Streeter slump in the saddle before he turned his horse. “Come on, then, we’ll have to go back.”

  We made our way back toward the road, but we didn’t get there before I heard a shrill cry. “Help! Oh, help!”

  At first I thought I was hearing a child, but then I recognized the voice. “It’s Miz MacKenzie!”

  Streeter straightened up in the saddle and hollered back. “We hear you! Where are you?”

  Her voice was squeaky with panic. “I’m just on the other side of this fallen tree! I can’t get around it. Please help me.”

  Streeter gave me a look that said, What in the world is she doing out here? “Mrs. MacKenzie,” he yelled, “it’s Streeter McCoy. Trent Calder is here with me. Are you hurt? Did the tree fall on you?”

  “Oh, boys, I’m so glad you’ve come along! No, I’m not hurt. I’m on my way home from Muskogee, but this tree is blocking my path. I’m in my shay and I can’t get around.”

  “Hang on, we’re coming…”

  We recommenced our trip around the barrier, picking our way real slow in the dark through the debris. It took us near to fifteen minutes to go twenty feet, but we got around. And there we found Miz Beckie MacKenzie sitting in her one-horse conveyance with the top up against the rain, holding the reins in her gloved hands and wearing a fluffy hat just like a queen. Her little saddlebred mare was patiently standing with its nose to the roadblock, enjoying a snack of persimmon leaves, which according to my ma, was real good for her.

  We surveyed the situation for a minute. “Whatever possessed you to be out on a night like this, Miz MacKenzie?” I asked. “Ruth told me you’ve been at your son’s house. Couldn’t you have stayed over another night?” What I was thinking was, Whatever possessed your son to let you out on a night like this?

  Her hand went up to her throat. “Then Ruth is all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I went by your place to check on y’all as soon as the storm went by. She’s fine, but I’m afraid a tree about as big as this one took out a corner of your upstairs.”

  That didn’t seem to bother her much. I could plainly hear her relief. “Oh, thank the Lord! When I left Muskogee late this afternoon I figured I could beat the weather, but when it started storming bad I stopped over in Crecola with my friend Letty Allen. There is no telephone in Crecola and the telegraph office is closed, so I just had to try and get home and make sure dear Ruth is safe. The road is a mess, and it keeps getting worse the closer to Boynton I get!”

  “How long have you been sitting here, ma’am? You should have turned around and gone back to Crecola!” Streeter lifted up his hat far enough to run his fingers through his sand-colored hair and make it stand up on end.

  Miz Beckie looked abashed. “Well, yes, Streeter, I know you’re right. I just drove up not ten minutes before I heard you. I was pondering whether I could guide Teacup around, but it’s so dark that I was afraid to try.”

  Me and Streeter were both dismounting as she talked. “It’s a good thing you didn’t try,” I said. “You’d have got stuck for sure in this buggy.”

  “What shall I do, boys?”

  Miz Beckie stayed put while we reconnoitered for a spell and calculated our options. “I think the safest thing would be to unhitch the horse and guide it around. Leave the buggy here and retrieve it later,” I said to Streeter.

  He nodded. “Mrs. MacKenzie, can you ride astride?”

  We were standing beside the shay and couldn’t see her face, but when she answered she sounded the littlest bit affronted. “Of course I can, dear. I’m not entirely helpless, you know.”

  Streeter chuckled and walked over to give her a hand down. “I apologize for implying otherwise, ma’am.”

  Ruth Tucker

  Streeter and Trent managed to wend their way back through the ruination and the intermittent rain and deliver Beckie to her house. Since her house had sustained damage, the men offered to take Beckie to Sheriff Scott Tucker’s house for the night, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “If the house is still standing,” she insisted, “I will go back to it.”

  The compromise solution was that they would take Beckie home and then Trent would go back to Alice Kelly’s house and fetch Ruth, if she was willing, to stay with her mentor until morning. To their surprise, Ruth was already at the MacKenzie house when they arrived. She took Beckie’s sodden coat and droopy hat and ensconced the older woman in her armchair by the fire. She took her a cup of strong tea, then returned to the kitchen to pour steaming mugs for the men and exchange information. She was disappointed that they had not made it to the farm, but marveled that they had come across Beckie the way they did.

  Ruth had news of her own.

  “Gee Dub came by Alice’s a while ago and told us that Mama and Daddy had some damage to the house and Mary and Kurt are more or less unscathed. But the twister came down on John Lee and Phoebe’s place. They’re all alive, but their house is about gone and the barn fell in on John Lee and broke his leg. Everybody is at Mary’s tonight, since it’s the only house that’s big enough and all in one piece. Gee told me he found a dead man and brought the body into town with him and Scott had him take it to the Masonic Hall.”

  “A dead man!” Trent was shocked. “Who is it, did Gee Dub know?”

  Ruth shook her head. “He says the body was so damaged by the twister that he couldn’t tell.” She shuddered at the thought. “I talked Gee Dub into bringing me back here. I was here during the storm so I knew that the house isn’t busted up that bad. Besides, I know where Miz Beckie’s pistol is if I need it. Gee stayed long enough to help me move the rest of Miz Beckie’s bedroom furniture away from the hole in the wall, and then he wanted me to come home with him.”
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  “Why didn’t you go?” Streeter wondered.

  “I was set on being here in case Miz Beckie showed up and needed me, and it looks like I was right. Gee Dub left not an hour ago. He said he aims to go back out to Mary’s and let them know all of us are all right before Mama takes a notion to walk to town herself.”

  Streeter leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Ruth, honey, I don’t like the idea of you two ladies staying out here in this damaged house all by yourselves tonight. What if there comes another storm before morning?”

  “I’d be glad to sleep on Miz Beckie’s parlor couch tonight,” Trent volunteered.

  “Now, you fellows don’t need to fret so. Me and Miz Beckie will be just fine. Besides, I’m sure Alice and Martha are anxious to know what has become of you two. So drink up and ride on back to town. If it’ll set your minds to ease, drop back by in the morning on your way out to Mama and Daddy’s and see how we fare.”

  The men sat in weary silence for a moment after Ruth left them to tend her charge. Trent found himself mesmerized by the steam in his mug, and he jerked as his head dropped toward the table. He was suddenly aware of the amused look on Streeter McCoy’s face.

  Streeter chuckled. “You’d be well advised to go home and get some sleep. I’ll go back to Alice’s and fill them in.”

  Trent scrubbed his face with both hands. “Naw, I figure I ought to stop by Scott’s real quick and let him know what it’s like west of town. If you don’t mind, I’ll go with you out to the Tuckers’ in the morning.”

  Streeter nodded. “I’ll meet you in front of the hotel at dawn.”

  Beckie MacKenzie

  Ruth returned to the parlor to find Beckie holding her cup and saucer in her lap, staring out the window into the darkness, gray with exhaustion.

  Ruth sat down on the ottoman beside the fireplace. “I’m so glad to see you’re all right, Miz Beckie. I was worried that you got blown clean away on your way home! Did Trent tell you that a tree fell into your bedroom? The rest of the upstairs is intact, though.”