The Midnight Water

A Short Story

A wondrous dreamer of ancient fields and lost places.

Jade landscapes of unlimited variety.

Eight spectral bodies stood alongside the sinuous river.

Dancing at the cusp of the world.

Manged canine,

broken and withered, come to rest.

From the ridge,

I saw a man who looked like myself drowning in a black river.

The oily serpent carved the Earth in two.

Cascading velocity of midnight waters fell into the ever deepening abyss.

---

We sat there for close to an hour, waiting for the body to move. The boy sat with his back against a big oak tree, and his eyes faded with darkness. The hole in his neck was dried black with blood and he stared deep into the woods. Neither of us spoke. I waited for Jake to speak, and he waited for me, and I think we both waited for the boy, but the woods were beginning to fill with uncanny, deafening silence. Like the whole world was waiting for us. The sun was starting its trek down the mountain, and a strange blue began to submerge the forest. I knew Jake never meant to shoot the child. But the damage was done, and it was hell or high water for the both of us now.

---

Perverted clandestine cook house. An entropy of chemicals and strange glass shapes. Devilish fumes, the whispers of blood red smoke. Small slices of blue-green mold rimmed the edges of the linoleum. Deep sepia and carbon bottomed cookery. Sour sulfurs and acrid plastic scents seep into the nostrils, choking the mind. Beakers of multi colored paranoia and metallic notes hang in the air.
We cooked for hours in the glade of the woods. Holed up in that shoe box of a trailer, we cooked as our life depended on it, because it did. This was supposed to be the final one. The final cook to get the monkey off our back and our final chance to get off this mountain. All we had to do was cook this batch and drop it off. We could smell the finish line through the chemical sea we swam in.
Jake and I started the cook yesterday morning, and we planned to finish this evening. Drop off the package at sunset, and be across county lines by night fall. A plan that seemed as crystal as the product we cooked. We couldn’t imagine anything stopping this locomotive. We knew what we were doing, we were taught by the man himself. Our daddy cooked more meth than he cooked food for his family. They said he could teach you how to cook dope over the phone. When he passed away, we’d not only adopted his talents but his business as well. We never much wanted to live this life, but with a last name like Brooks, and the type of money we made, you would be signing up for a much tougher life. Between the industrialization that poisoned our land and the unrestricted land development that has destroyed centuries of families, selling dope was one of the only ways to keep your head above water.
We cooked like we always had, but the abandoned trailer held a heavier weight than it did before. Something was different, and as the day faded and drop off time neared, the air on the mountain felt abnormal on the skin. Once the cook was finished Jake and I sat on the steps of the abandoned trailer, stared at the bag of product, and smoked a joint the size of a Cuban cigar. Near a quarter pound of beautiful crystalline formations rolled around in the half gallon bag. Shards of opaque glacier frost with diaphanous translucent hostility. Demonistic hailstone with angel like structure. We sat and waited for our ticket text message out of Appalachia. Neither my daddy nor Jake and I have ever touched a substance like this. That was the first thing he’d ever taught us. Our father was never really the father type, but we loved him like we thought we were supposed to, or tried to anyway. We’d seen what it had done to not only the folks of the mountain but our loved ones. Beautiful men and women turned to leprous zombies overnight. Sullen eyes and sunken cheeks. Eyes rimmed with a phosphorescent redness in a bleak contrast to their pale skin.

“Hey, Parker?”

“What?”

“Where are we gonna go once this is over?”

“Anywhere but this damn mountain.”

“No really, what is our plan supposed to be?”

“I don’t know, Jake. Head for north Georgia and keep pushing south, I reckon.”

“Right,” Jake sighed and flicked the roach into the rusted woods that surrounded them.

“You like Florida?” Parker said.

“Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never been.”

“I think you’ll like it. Beautiful women and opportunity, wet and ready for you down there. I got plenty of friends we can lay up with for a while, till things seem safe.”

“You think we’re making a good choice? Jake said.

“I don’t know a damn thing about good choices. I just know I can’t sit here on this mountain all my godforsaken life and rot away like the rest of our dammed family.”

“Right.”

“Has that dick head text you back yet?”

“Nothing yet, I’ve messaged him and his ole lady.”

“You can never count on a damn dope head.”

I stood from the steps and dusted the back of my trousers. I stared deep into the endless woods.

“Well, dammit Jake, we’re gonna have to do something. We have no money, no clientele, and a quarter pound of ice. I don’t know if you know this, but you can’t pay the gas station clerk with a rock.”

“Well, I can’t make the son of a bitch text back any faster, Park. Hell, it was your idea to sell to this prick.”

“The bastard was about to piss his pants when I mentioned it to him over the phone just two days ago.”

“Hell Park, they probably done got their fix and they’re wide eyed and window peeking as we speak.”

I sat back down in the ragged camper and buried my face in my dirty, callused hands. The weight of the world was bearing down on us. The wind in the woods sang like ocean waves, and I thought about what it would be like to die here, and now. To feel to earth breathe beneath my back and gaze into the sea like sky. Lost in the watery cosmos of the unknown. Deep in thought, I was shot back to reality by the frightening ping of the messenger app.

“Uhh, Park. I think we got a problem.”

“For the love of God, what now?”

The messages read:

-u boys aint ur daddy

-this life aint for yins

-me n ray coming up there with a surprise if that dope isn’t left in the mailbox at the end of the road

“Who the fuck does this fat bastard think he is?”

“I don’t like the sounds of this, Park.”

“The only thing that fat fuck will take from us is 500 rounds of lead with brass jackets. We got enough for him and his boyfriend.”

“You can’t actually be serious about this, Parker? You’ve heard all the stories about ‘em, we can get another batch going in a few days. Another week here won’t kill us.”

“Ain’t nothin’ but fairy tales, Jake. You got to learn to stand up for yourself. Another week here will kill me, I won’t stay another fucking night.”

I could feel my blood boil and my heart thump like a Cherokee war drum. Our path was clear and our story was written. I was going to kill Donovan and Ray Johnson.
My face was buried against the dead bark of a fallen juniper, and I waited for the shitty Ford Ranger to make an appearance at the bottom of the road. Jake was about 100 yards behind me, in a tree stand overlooking the trailer. The woods were screaming with silence except for the occasional whippoorwill. Sweat beaded off my forehead and the .38 special felt strange in my hands. We waited for what felt like an eternity until the crack of the Winchester hunting rifle shook the world awake. My stomach instantly fell into a bottomless pit. I could feel my heart struggle to pump the blood through my narrowed arteries. A million needles pierced my skin. I sprinted back towards the trailer and found Jake’s eyes frozen in the treeline across from the shack. His face was drenched in fear, and his eyes began to well up.

“Why did you shoot? What did you shoot?”

Jake couldn’t speak, and a single tear fell towards the earth. I turned towards the treeline to see a small body in a camo hunting outfit. I knew what I was looking at but my mind couldn’t piece the scene together. As I approached, the boy’s hands curled towards his chest like a stepped on spider and the hole in his neck gushed dark blood like an oil seep. The sun felt as it had frozen in its descent, and the Earth stopped its rotation. The air was so thick with fear and confusion, you could’ve extracted and bottled it. I paced back and forth under the rusted foliage, letting my mind run, trying to piece it together. I turned back towards Jake, and was met with his steaming eyes rimmed with redness. The only words he could get out of his slobbering mouth were, “I thought it was them.” He sucked in the cool mountain air in rapid bursts, but could hardly catch his breath. I stood between Jake and the boy and rocked my head back and stared at the cobalt colored sky. The wind had begun to rock the mountain back to life, and the passage of time commenced once more. I grabbed the lifeless child and pulled his body up against the nearest tree I could find.
We sat there for close to an hour, waiting for the body to move. His eyes were black as onyx and that strange blue hue started to fill the forest around us. A series of scenarios flipped through my head like a sinister stereoscope. Images and sensations jetted across my mind until I could see the prescient grains of the future.
I shoved the sub nose revolver in my waistband and grabbed Jake and the Winchester hunting rifle. I led him across the gravel road that ran towards the trailer, and up the eroded embankment to a thick patch of woods where I knew no one could see him. I kissed him on the head and told him everything would be over soon, and his eyes began to swell once more. I grabbed him by the shirt collar and spoke in fiery tones about the life we were supposed to have and the things we needed to do at this moment. Jake calmed down and shook his head in agreement. I turned and headed down the embankment, trotting towards the end of the road. I crossed the macadam and lay in a patch of thick kudzu across from the mailboxes. It was minutes away from total darkness, and I was waiting for our friends to show up. You never could guess when the Johnson Brothers would arrive, but like a typical dope head, they were bound to show face at some point.
Not even 10 minutes later, I could hear the faint whine of a vehicle approaching in the distance. A single halogen headlight attempting to slice the trees, casting piss colored luminescence across the sleeping forest. The vehicle stopped in front of the mailboxes. I could see that Ray was driving and Donovan was in the passenger seat. I jumped up and popped the door handle on the driver’s side, and the bottom of the revolver split his forehead wide open. I shoved the sub nose revolver in his mouth and jerked it back and forth, attempting to break any teeth he might have left. I then grabbed him by his scraggly goat’s beard and proceeded to smash the back of his skull with the side of the revolver, the metal glinting in the moonlight with each swing. Donovan kicked the passenger door open, knocking down the dilapidated mailboxes. When he walked around the back of the Ford Ranger, I let go of his brother and backed away. I could tell he was holding a 6-inch Bowie knife, and he lunged at me like the bear he was. Before he could even close the distance. I squeezed the trigger, and a flame ignited between us. I only saw the flash and then his huge body lying on the macadam in front of me. No time for thoughts, I pulled both of their bodies off the side of the road and pushed them into the network of thick kudzu. I hopped in the driver’s seat and was barreling up the gravel road. I stopped the truck where I left Jake and hopped out and yelled out his name. Just a moment later, I could see those innocent eyes sliding down the bank.

“Are you okay?” Jake said.

I could tell he was still hanging on by a thread.

“I’m fine. We need to leave now.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, we have to go.”

“Well, what about the boy?”

“What about the damn boy? You want to take him with us, Jake? I’m sorry it has to be this way, but we need to leave now. If we stay here any longer, we’ll be digging our own grave.”
Jake climbed into the passenger seat, and I followed soon after. We pulled back up to the scene, buried our guns, and set the trailer on fire. The boy’s lifeless eyes were watching our every move. We got back in the truck and headed down the road. When we got into town, it was past midnight, and not a soul was on the road. A part of me hoped that the sun would never rise again. That the world would be engulfed in a darkness no one could understand. There was a billfold with $200 in it, and we stopped at a Citgo right before the state line and filled up the truck. We took Highway 129 to North Georgia, and was headed for Atlanta and then to God knows where else.
The Eastern sun was beginning to rise and drape gold over the western world. Jake was asleep, and my mind was oddly quiet. My father always told me that meanness was directly linked to the survival of his people. He said a weak man wouldn’t last a weekend on the mountain, and he said if I didn’t take care of my brother, we’d both be swallowed up by the jaws of this world.

My daddy always said when you were born, you were born in a hand basket, floating down a black water river as far as the eyes could see. He said that the river and basket determined your life. Until you step out on land, your life has yet to begin. He said when you were born, you were placed in that hand basket, woven by time, physics, laws, society, and other humanly constraints. He said then, you were placed in the river, and if you lived a good life, your basket would roll off the end of the world when your time came. Some men had faulty baskets and lived faulty lives under faulty principles, and those men drowned in the river. He said men like us were supposed to write our own story. Step on the land. Seek the mountains, and watch the lost souls drift downstream.