We catch up with Josh Davies trekking down a dust-baked trail in the company of a man called Arnie.
Josh has a pair of clodhoppers slung over his shoulders by the laces. Arnie, who’s not much higher than a man’s hip, has to hustle and skip to keep from falling behind. The two are headed south, followed in the distance by what looks like a frightened skunk.
“We might do well to call ‘round the grist mill and rustle up a cup of free cornmeal,” the man says to Josh.
The day’s been running long since early morning, and the heat’s got the back of Josh’s neck.
“Today being Friday, there could be a square dance or such, with gals all swinging pretty and fresh. We could pull one behind the barn between us, fill our needs and be gone before any commotion was kicked up.”
There’s at least one sharp stone stuck in the heel of his foot, but Josh is just too tired to stop and stoop.
The two had been partnered up for several days now, though you couldn’t say they had any bond. They roamed the land to ravage other men’s goods, leaving nothing but bad behind them.
Most recently they’d set upon the home of black sharecroppers, helping themselves to what little there was to be had. Arnie bashed in the gray head of a pappy Negro who’d caught them out in the act.
“Sweet Black Jesus, strike them dead,” the mammy called after them into the night, the white of her eyes filled with sorrow and hate, her slip set aglow by the light of the moon.
Then there was the incident at the church house. The preacher was away but not his wife. Hesitant but hopeful, she let them enter her home, offering up some fresh baked bread. But Arnie had other things on his mind and began to shed his clothing. The woman, gripped by terror then loathing, ended any promise of saucy entertainment by forcing herself on a knife. Josh cleaned out the cupboards with no particular haste, while his companion in crime covered the body with a checkered tablecloth because, “she wouldn’t quit eyeballing me.”
Now the stolen foodstuff had all but run out, and the men were seeking a place to pass the night.
“The country here is full of caves, some yellow and spiked overhead, but that’s a ways better than sleeping in a closed-out mineshaft – I’ll take my lead from a bullet to the head. We gotta keep ahead of the law.”
So Josh broke camp just over one ridge, while Arnie went to forage for kindle in a nearby wood of Oak Hickory. They would share the last can of beans over a small inconspicuous fire that nevertheless illuminated the walls of their limestone lodgings back to life.
“There’s big-eared bats in here, I’m sure, and a cave fish or two to be found in those ponds you can hear dripping full back yonder.”
Each man reclines into nocturnal repose at his own pace, on opposite sides of the fire, never fully yielding to the calls of deep sleep, one eye half open, the other half shut, a pair of boots sticking out the other end of a blanket.
Josh gets up several hours into the night and makes his way toward the back of the cave. The campfire cinders crackle, shadows flit from ceiling to floor, while the mountain man relieves his loins in silence.
Arnie’s not long in picking up the trail, steals his way beneath a forest of stalactites like a groundhog sniffing for grouse.
“You got the ass of an old man on you,” says Arnie through his teeth, almost whispering. He’s standing behind Josh at a safe distance and just out of the way of the fading light from the campfire.
Davies finishes his pissing and begins flicking off the last droplets of urine from his penis, without turning around.
“It’s all wrinkled like a chestnut, saggy like a wet man’s coat,” the half-man continues, screwing up his eyes in amazement, disgust, then a glimmer of opportunity growing into confident self-satisfaction; advantage over another that could surely come to pay off.
The campfire, about to die out, fills the cave with one last brilliant flare of orange afterglow, shoving all shadow to one side and baring Davies’s buttocks in the fullness of their grotesque contours. It’s as though a face, an angry old man’s face, had been sculpted into his behind and left there to live its own life hidden from public scrutiny by heavy trousers or other articles of opaque clothing. Complete with expression, character and even its own frame of mind, it has sulked beneath a layer of linen, seethed below unwieldy suspenders, chafed under the indignity of being sat on.
The man begins to laugh, first purposely and cruel, then with wild abandon. Josh turns toward him as the campfire goes cold and the cave falls into darkness.
By midday, there’s not a soul in the cave, and a party of lawmen has shown up.
“I do declare, this county has descended into infernal chaos, where murder, plunder and rapine are the norm. No good man can walk among these hills and feel himself secure anymore. There’s an evil present in no small measure, a devil in the guise of a man. I daresay he smiles like a child before savaging his victims like a beast. Women and old folk are not only not spared but appear to top the list of potential targets,” says one of the men.
“There’s two, I hear tell, and one’s no more than a half,” says another.
Two sheriff’s deputies exit the cave, each holding his hands over his mouth. Their eyes are bulged out in distortion, even though they’re wearing sunglasses. One darts toward some underbrush and pukes.
“Well, you can scratch that ‘half a man’ off your list of suspects, friend,” says the sheriff from the mouth of the cave.
Filed March 30, 2015