Ghost Road Blues Read online

Page 4

 

  The Bone Man said nothing.

  “C’mon, Morse…why is that? Why is it that a skinny nigger like you is the only person in this whole town who ain’t scared to go out in the dark when there’s a killer running round loose?”

  Polk snickered. “Maybe he ain’t afraid ’cause the killer can’t see him in the dark, black as he is!”

  A few of the other guys laughed, but Vic didn’t and neither did Tow-?Truck Eddie. The big man’s face was almost thoughtful, but he didn’t say a word. Vic on the other hand flapped an arm at the others to shut them up.

  “Bullshit, Jimmy. This motherfucker ain’t afraid of what might be out here in the dark because he’s what’s out here in the dark. ”

  It took Polk and the others a couple of seconds to sort that out. Tow-?Truck Eddie just inhaled and exhaled, slowly and deeply, through his nose.

  “What kind of shit is this?” the Bone Man said, staring Vic right in the eye. “That’s jus’ bullshit and you know it. ”

  “Is it?” barked Crow, and Vic snapped, “Then why you got blood on your shirt?”

  The Bone Man glanced involuntarily down at his shirt. It was speckled with blood, though in the darkness it just looked black and wet.

  “What’d you do?” Polk sneered. “Cut yourself shaving?”

  “Holy shit,” murmured Stosh, who had apparently not noticed it until now.

  The Bone Man shook his head. “No, man, this is bullshit. I—”

  “Is it your blood?” asked Tow-?Truck Eddie. He had a soft, deep voice. In other circumstances it would have sounded kind.

  “No, but—”

  “Then whose blood is it?” Bernhardt asked.

  Overhead, there was thunder. The Bone Man looked from face to face and then licked his dry lips. “Look…you gotta believe me…. ”

  “What is it you want us to believe?” the big man asked, his voice still mild.

  “It’s about the killer…I found out who it was been cutting those people up. ” He licked his lips again. “I figured it out. ”

  “You figured it out,” Bernhardt said. “You? A corn-?picking nigger migrant worker figured it out when the whole police department hasn’t been able to find a single fucking clue?” He laughed. “Yeah, I’m ready to believe that shit. ”

  Vic stepped closer, his fists balled at his sides and his eyes suddenly intense. In a tight whisper he said, “And just who do you think it is?”

  The Bone Man started to say Ubel Griswold. It got as far as his tongue, his lips had just started to form the first sound when Vic hit him with such shocking speed and force that the Bone Man flew backward against Tow-?Truck Eddie’s chest. It was like hitting a brick wall.

  “Fuck you!” screamed Vic. “Whose blood is on your shirt? What the hell did you do?” He was screaming, totally out of control, as if someone had jabbed him with a hot wire. He stepped into the Bone Man and struck him again, and again.

  “Is that the piece of shit killed my boy?” Crow yelled, his expression of cruel delight giving way to real rage. “Give him to me, Vic…” But Vic was raining down blows on the Bone Man with an insane ferocity.

  “Stop!” the Bone Man screamed back, his mouth filling with blood. “Jesus, please make him stop!” He tried to cover his face with both arms the way a boxer does, tried to turn and twist to roll with blows, but even flipped out with rage, Vic Wingate was a good fighter. He used short hooks to claw the Bone Man’s arms away and fired straight jabs and crosses to the chest and face and throat. Vic’s hands were iron hammers and under the rain of blows the Bone Man could feel his face break and split.

  Tow-?Truck Eddie wrapped his arms around the Bone Man and spun him away from Vic. The other men, shocked by Vic’s sudden rage, felt their own anger dampening down. They milled, confused and embarrassed. Vic threw one more punch and it just bounced off Eddie’s huge shoulder.

  The Bone Man felt his legs buckle, but he didn’t fall. Tow-?Truck Eddie took bunched handfuls of the front of his shirt and held him up. He leaned in close, his pale eyes burning with a weird light.

  “Mr. Morse,” he said softly—so softly that only he, the Bone Man, and Vic could hear him. The Bone Man’s head lolled on a loose neck and sunbursts were exploding in his eyes. His ears rang like church bells. “Mr. Morse, tell me what you did tonight. Tell me whose blood this is. ”

  The Bone Man stared through the fireworks and tried to focus on the big man’s kind eyes. He looked deep into those eyes, searching for hope, or maybe an ally. “Don’t hurt me,” he whispered and was immediately ashamed of his cowardice. An hour ago he’d chased a monster down and killed him, and now he was pleading for his life from a group of Pennsylvania rednecks.

  “Tell me, Mr. Morse. ”

  “Damn it, Eddie, let me have him!” Vic snarled and tried to reach around the big man. Eddie turned again, blocking Vic’s reach with his broad back. He pushed the Bone Man up against the side of Vic’s pickup truck and leaned his face close.

  “Tell me and I’ll stop all of this, Mr. Morse,” whispered Eddie.

  The Bone Man thought he saw some kindly lights in the big man’s eyes. He turned his head and spat blood onto the gravel and then through a tight throat said, “It was Griswold. ”

  The big man’s face didn’t change.

  “What’d he say?” shouted Bernhardt and Crow together.

  “It was Ubel Griswold!” the Bone Man said, his voice a faint babble of desperation and pain. “It was him, man, swear to God. That farmer who owns the beef ranch down on the other side of the hollow. ” The Bone Man licked his pulped lips. “He’s the one been killing all them kids. ”

  His voice was only a whisper, and only Tow-?Truck Eddie heard it. He stared into the Bone Man’s eyes for a long time, his face thoughtful. Hope soared in the Bone Man’s chest. Then the big man shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “Wh…what?”

  “I said no. That isn’t possible. Mr. Griswold goes to my church. He’s a righteous man. He believes in God. ” His eyes searched the broken landscape of the Bone Man’s face. “I’ve never seen you at church, Mr. Morse. Tell me…what is it that you believe in?”

  “Please…”

  “Satan is the Father of Lies. ” Tow-?Truck Eddie’s eyes were as pale as ice, and looking into them the Bone Man saw that in thinking that salvation lay in the big man’s hands he had been terribly wrong. Eddie’s face almost looked sad as he said, “Vic’s right, it must be you did all those things. ”

  “But I—”

  “You’re the devil, Mr. Morse, you are the Beast,” he whispered. “God have mercy on you. ”

  Tow-?Truck Eddie hit him. He let go with his right hand, drew it back just eight inches, and punched the Bone Man in the face, turning into the punch with all the massive power of muscle and speed and torque.

  The blow exploded in the Bone Man’s brain and everything went white as a big bell broke in his mind. His limbs turned to jelly and Eddie let him fall. The Bone Man collapsed onto the gravel by the side of the truck. He flopped there, dazed, unable to speak. His nose was broken, and so was his jaw. The punch had herniated three disks in his neck and upper back, and his throat was filling with blood.

  Tow-?Truck Eddie turned to Vic and the others. Vic was the closest one and their eyes met and held.

  Vic licked his lips in much the same way as the Bone Man had. “Eddie…what did he say?”

  Their eyes held for a long time. Finally Tow-?Truck Eddie’s softened and he gave Vic a sad smile. “Only lies, Vic. All he had to say were the devil’s own lies. ”

  There was a strange flush of relief in Vic’s eyes and he took a second to set his features before he turned to the others. He looked at Jimmy Crow.

  “Jimmy,” he said, pitching his voice to sound grave, “I hate to tell you this, man, but…he’s the one killed your Billy. He just told me. ”

  Eddie
flicked a glance at Vic and almost said something, but then closed his mouth and stepped away. The eyes of every other man fell on the Bone Man. Eyes that had been confused a minute ago now hardened with purpose. They stared at the bleeding man for nearly fifteen seconds in silence, and then there was the cold rasp as Gus Bernhardt slid the hickory baton from its metal ring.

  As Tow-?Truck Eddie stepped out of their way, they suddenly rushed past him. After that, it was just a matter of doing the killing.

  5

  No one ever took either blame or credit for the murder of Oren Morse. His body was found tied to a scarecrow post at the crossroads of A-32 and Dark Hollow Road with a piece of paper stuffed in his shirt pocket that had the names of the sixteen people who had been killed that autumn. It was the end of the Black Harvest of 1976, and nearly everyone accepted the fiction that the Bone Man had been the killer. After all, who was he? A migrant farm worker who had told more than one person that he had been dodging the law since he’d dodged the draft in 1970. That made him a criminal already, and few of the farmers saw it as a far leap from being un-?American enough to flee from his responsibilities to the war effort to being a killer. Logical progression of thought didn’t seem to enter into it.

  The body of Ubel Griswold, a farmer and landowner who had settled in Pine Deep eight years before, was never found and was generally believed to have been the last victim of the Reaper, the lurid nickname given to the mass-?murderer by one of the local papers.

  Henry Guthrie—who owned the farm on whose outermost corner the grisly scarecrow was placed, and who had employed Morse as a migrant field worker—took the body down. He was one of the few who did not believe that Oren Morse was the Reaper. Guthrie kept it to himself, though. He had lost a cousin during the massacre, but he didn’t believe for a moment that Morse had done the killings.

  He and his brother, George, took the body to the old Presbyterian cemetery out by the canal bridge and buried it. The church had burned down forty years ago and no new Presbyterians had moved in to care for the graveyard. No one would know or care if there was a new grave there. The Guthrie brothers didn’t tell anyone about it, though; nor would the two children who stood by the brothers during the unbeneficed service. Guthrie’s ten-?year-?old daughter, Val, and her best friend, Malcolm Crow. Malcolm’s brother, Billy, had been one of the first townies killed, and though the boy would never know it, his father, Jimmy Crow, had helped stomp Morse to death. Malcolm, of everyone in town, knew for sure that the Reaper hadn’t been the bluesman, but his voice had been silenced forever. Weeks later, Morse—or “the Bone Man” as the kids had called him because he was so skinny—had saved Malcolm’s life in an incident that had revealed to just those two who the real killer had been.