The Warblers Read online

  FIFTEEN

  The hours passed, as hours often do, and I was up and ready before the sun come up. I had a meager breakfast of biscuits, jam, and hardboiled eggs prepared for us by the time Pa had awoke. He came downstairs, looking like he’d had just about as much sleep as I had got, only he was worse for the wear. There were dark, puffy bags under his eyes and what looked like three days’ worth of beard stubble on his lined face. Even his hair looked greyer. He sat down and we ate our meal in silence, neither one of us daring to speak a word of what we knew was yet to come. We had chores to do, and the rest of the day to face yet, though I didn’t know quite how I’d manage. My stomach was all tied up in knots, so much so that I had begun to regret eating breakfast.

  After Pa finished eating, I cleared the table. Somehow along the way I dropped and broke a water glass, and when I bent down to retrieve the shards I cut myself. Bright red blood sprang to the surface of my finger. I stood and looked at it, watching as it grew into bigger and bigger drops before rolling down my hand and dripping onto my shoe. Once again it felt like an omen. I wasn’t the superstitious sort, not like Ma was, but I suppose some of her sayings might have rubbed off sometimes and stuck with me. I couldn’t shake that feeling, like someone had walked across my grave. I shook myself and chalked my jitters up to the excitement of the upcoming day. I finished with the dishes and cleaning up the broken glass before I went outside to help Pa fix up the side yard.

  SIXTEEN

  Pa and I spent the morning repairing the henhouse. It was hot, dirty work made worse by the fact that we were very near to the back shed. All the while we toiled I could hear those things in there, shifting and moving around and occasionally warbling softly in their sleep. Once in a while one of them would start the others off and there’d be a fight amongst them, screeching and scrabbling and making all kinds of commotion. I could smell them, too. A terrible odor like the henhouse when it needed to be cleaned, mixed with the stench of dead animals left out in the sun and Pa’s brown liquor. Pa pretended he didn’t notice it and I did the same, although the only ones we were fooling were ourselves.

  Our next task would be to clean out the barn, but before we started on that, I asked Pa if I could go see Nathan Scullory. If Pa thought there was anything odd about my request, he didn’t let on. Instead, he suggested I take one of Ma’s pies as a gift to Mrs. Scullory. It would go bad if not, he reasoned, by cause of the fact that neither of us had much of a sweet tooth, even if we had felt like eating.

  I went inside to wrap up the pie and I watched Pa through the window. He stood near the henhouse we had just fixed up and stared towards the back shed for a while, then he sat down on a stump and wiped the sweat from his brow with an old bandana he carried with him just for that purpose. I brought him out a glass of water before I left on my way to the Scullory’s. I stood there beside him while he gulped it down in two long swallows.

  “Thank you, son,” he said, handing me back the empty glass.

  “You’re welcome, Pa,” I said, looking once more towards the back shed.

  Whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen whether I liked it or not. I just hoped it happened soon. I was missing Ma and Mabel something fierce, and that feeling I had been getting, like something cold and dark come over me, was getting worse by the minute.

  I rinsed the glass and set it on the wire rack next to the sink before picking up the pie and heading out to the road and the Scullory place beyond. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say when I got there, but I would figure it out on the journey. All I needed to do was to find a way of informing Nathan that the Squamate would be coming that evening without his folks catching wise. I still didn’t like the idea of his lying to them, but I wanted him there sure as anything. Truth be told I think I just didn’t want to face whatever was going to happen all by my lonesome. I knew Pa would be there, but that was different. The past few days when I looked at my pa, I saw how old he was, how worn around the edges and just plain beat up. It offered me no comfort to have him at my side when I was afraid. Matter of fact, I felt almost like I’d have to take care of him. Nathan was closer to my age and he was in the military. He was the best protection I reckoned I was liable to get.

  As I walked down the road to the Scullory’s, my thoughts weighed heavy on me. What was the Squamate, and why was everyone so powerful afraid of it? What would it do to the warblers? Eat them, I supposed. But all of them? Just how big was it? I pictured some kind of a dragon like the ones on the covers of books I had seen at McRory’s. Would there be more than one Squamate? What would happen after it ate up its fill? I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions, only thing I did know was that time would be the only way to find out.

  SEVENTEEN

  I was just about halfway to the Scullory place when my thoughts turned to calling Nate’s motives into question. I had been thinking only of myself, which is an easy habit for one to get into. As it was, I just saw to the end of my own nose, as Ma would’ve said. Nate Scullory had to have a reason to be so keen on catching sight of the Squamate, and I was starting to wonder just what that was. I wasn’t a devious sort, myself, so I had a hard time with managing to think like them that were, but the thought occurred to me that perhaps Nathan wanted to kill the Squamate, to prove his mettle to the menfolk and show the whole of our little community how brave he was. That was a terrible thought, but it had a ring of truth to it nonetheless. The notion brought a sickness into my stomach and right then and there I decided I would have no part of it, not even if it meant facing that creature all by my lonesome. I supposed there must’ve been some of my pa in me after all.

  I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around to head back to home when Nathan Scullory came out of the bushes in front of me. His eyes were narrowed to mean little slits and he had his rifle slung over one shoulder. For the first time, I found myself afraid of old Nate in earnest.

  “Hello, Dell,” he said, taking the pie from my hands and unwrapping it before digging into it with his fingers.

  It was red gooseberry, I saw. Ma’s favorite. The filling looked gory and gruesome as Nate shoveled it into his mouth, pausing to lick his fingers in a way that made me think of a wolf eating from a fresh calf carcass.

  “Just where are you going on this fine afternoon?”

  I sensed there was real menace behind his words. Menace and maybe intent. I couldn’t keep my eyes from straying to the barrel of his rifle. I wondered if he’d ever shot a man but I was far too afraid to ask him outright, not that I believed he’d tell me the truth, anyway.

  “You wouldn’t have been coming to talk to me about the Squamate, would you?” he asked as he dug once more into Ma’s pie with his filthy fingers.

  I stood silent, watching Nathan eat the pie my ma had prepared with her own dear hands. Somehow the way he swallowed, barely stopping to taste her hard work seemed disrespectful to her.

  “Not chickening out, are you Dell?” he asked around a mouthful, poking me in the chest with a gooseberry covered finger.

  It left a red mark on my overalls, right about where my heart would be, if I recalled correctly. I didn’t like that imagery, not one bit.

  “No, I went up to your place. I left when I didn’t find you at home,” I lied, and I was mightily uncomfortable with even the notion of it, but I had no other thought come to mind and I was in a terrible state of panic right about then.

  Nate seemed to accept that. He nodded and ate some more of the pie. The hole he’d dug in the middle had begun to look an awful lot like my poor old Ginger. I thought I might be sick at the sight of it if I looked too long, brought that image back to mind, so I tried to keep my eyes aimed at another location. The only other place I could think to look was Nathan’s gun, which started my mind running off in other directions.

  “You find out when that creature’s supposed to get to your place yet?” Nathan asked, looking me square in the eyes.

  Even though I was a good bit taller than he was I felt lik
e he was somehow looking down to me.

  “Yessir,” I said, showing him more respect than I ought’ve. “Round about dusk.”

  I stared down at my shoes. I hadn’t wanted to give Nate that information, but I couldn’t see a way out of doing so, and I couldn’t have lied to him then even if I’d wanted to.

  He looked at me for another long minute during which time I felt like my heart had stopped beating, before he finally nodded his head. “I’ll be seeing you then,” he said, “Dusk.”

  That last word sounded almost like a threat. With a curl of his lip and a nod of his head, Nathan walked past me towards his homestead, pushing the mostly eaten pie into my chest as he went. The red filling spilled down the front of my overalls like it was my insides and I’d just been shot. That thought was more than a mite too gruesome for me. I just hoped it didn’t foretell of something yet to come.

  When I got back home I found I was too ashamed to tell Pa what had actually transpired on the roadway. I was ashamed of my actions, ashamed of telling Nathan what I had, and worried about what my pa would do with that information, so I lied once more and told him I’d fallen in the road, and that I’d not found the Scullorys at home. There was an awful pit growing at the bottom of my stomach, but just which of the things what was weighing on me was the greater cause of it I couldn’t be sure.

  EIGHTEEN

  On a farm, there’s about always work to be done, and ours was no exception. The day went by quicker than Pa or I had noticed, and after what felt like no time at all, the sun started to lower itself in the sky. I looked over at Pa and he looked back at me and without a word we made our way to the front steps to wait for our visitor in grim silence. As we stood, staring towards the road, a shadow crossed over the sun, casting our small piece of the world into momentary darkness. I was shook up so bad that I took a step much closer to Pa, who pushed me back. I supposed once again that he wanted me to be brave, so I stood off to the left of him, trying to get my bearings. We stood for what felt like hours, watching as the shadows stretched and darkened. I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of old Nate Scullory, and for that I was glad.

  I was just about to open my mouth to ask Pa what time he thought our visitors might show up when I spied something off in the distance. All I could do was point Pa’s vision in that direction.

  From where we stood, it looked somewhat like a big old fancy stage coach like the ones what sometimes brought the moving picture shows to Montgomery Center, only it was painted all dark, so dark that it didn’t seem to catch a glint of light off of the fading sun, but to swallow it whole. Dark as the bottom of a well, I thought. As it drew nearer, I noticed that there weren’t no horses, and the coach seemed to float all by itself somewhat up above the road. The wheels didn’t touch the ground somehow. They didn’t even finish, they just sort of faded into wisps of sooty smoke before they ever reached the earth.

  That coach moved awful fast, faster than anything I’d ever seen before. I was only vaguely aware that Pa had put his arm around my shoulder and was digging into my flesh with his fingers, his grip so tight his knuckles were near about white and my shoulder felt like it had been caught up in a vice. The coach drew up to a stop in front of us, but nothing broke the spell of silence what come upon us both since it had come into view. Somehow without even a door to open up, three figures appeared before us. Two were great big giants of men, or what looked like men, anyways. At least somewhat like men. Their skin was all gray like the marble on an old tombstone and it cracked in places around their mouths and eyes, showing through a bit of what was underneath, what looked like fire and brimstone. Their hair was a paler shade of gray and it faded away at the ends like smoke or fog the way the wheels on their carriage seemed to do. They weren’t twins, I supposed, but definitely relations, quite probably brothers from the looks of them. Broad foreheads and sharp noses in between wide cheekbones and strangely delicate ears what came to points at the top. They were dressed like the cowboys I had seen on the covers of the pulp westerns at McRory’s, only the colors were all wrong. Their hats were the color of charcoal, and below the shadow of the wide brims, their eyes glowed red like embers. They wore long coats the color of dried mud, and the only bright thing about their outfits was their matching red bandanas, which were a shade too bright to be natural or of this earth. Unlike their conveyance, their feet touched the ground good and proper, ending in pairs of matching cowboy boots what looked far too shiny, with huge, mean looking black spurs clinging to the backs. They were smiling, but there was no mirth there, only mire. Their teeth were too white, too straight, and far too sharp and their smiles were too wide to belong to real men of the earthly kind. Held between the two of them was the most magnificent beast I had ever seen with my own eyes.

  The Squamate was not what I had been expecting. It was something I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams or my most terrifying nightmares. It stood upright, like a man, though it was a good deal taller than Pa or I or even Uncle Errol. It came about to the shoulders of the men who carried it, its handlers, I supposed. It wore clothes like a man, at least in part. A long, thin tail what reminded me of a snake peeked from beneath a long coat like the ones worn by what I had taken to calling the Charcoal Cowboys in my mind, for no other name seemed fitting. The Squamate’s coat was of a soft yellow color like pollen and hung loose on its slender frame. Above its eyes, huge round pools of swirling gold and green near to the size of dinner plates, sat a brown broad brim hat. A gray bandana wrapped around its mouth and nose like one of those bandits I’d seen at the motion picture show, which was at odds with the bright green scales what covered its body. They looked hard as stone and shiny and smooth as glass. It had enormous thighs with muscles that rippled like water in a stream when it moved. The air all around it felt like being outside during a thunderstorm, charged with energy that made my skin tingle and my hair stand on end. Just being near to it gave me gooseflesh. Up in front of it, the creature held its hands—or maybe they were claws—out stiff. I could not see what they looked like, for they were encased inside a large metal box with a gigantic keyhole out in front. Rivets the size of half dollars stood out on the edges of that box, and I supposed it must be awful strong. For that I was doubly as glad.

  NINETEEN

  I had not realized that I had been holding my breath until I had begun to feel lightheaded. I gasped, sucking in air, and Pa startled, turning his head around quick to face me. I could see the fear in his eyes. I knew mine must’ve looked about the same. We were both fighting our instincts, the urge to run and flee. I thought of the horses in front of my uncle’s carriage and how they had looked on smelling the warblers. I imagine we must’ve looked about the same way.

  TWENTY

  One of the charcoal cowboys held out his huge hand to Pa, cracked palm facing up, and said, “Payment for services due,” in a voice what sounded like rock scraping rock and somehow vibrated the very air itself. I could feel those words echo right through my chest as if it was hollow and it made my bowels feel loose. I thought for a moment I might faint, but I held myself steady.

  Pa stepped forward and placed a small leather pouch into the man’s outstretched hand. It jingled lightly as it settled. The cowboy’s grin widened until it took up most of the lower part of his face, an effect which terrified me right to my very core.

  My heart was beating so fast I don’t know how it kept up with itself. The Charcoal Cowboy closed his fist around the money and when he opened it again, all that remained was a small puff of smoke.

  His brother removed from the folds of his coat a big old iron key with which he unlocked the metal box the Squamate held up in front of it. Both brothers had to hold it steady while the big reptile pulled its claws out, which was my first indication of just how god awful strong the Squamate really was. Its claws, I saw, looked much like hands, save for the fingers being far too long and tipped with what looked almost like shiny metal arrowheads. I had no doubt of what Nathan had said about it being able to take
off a man’s head with a swipe of one.

  The Squamate issued forth a low, menacing hiss as it walked slowly towards the rear yard, as graceful as a dancer. It drifted past Pa and I, lifting its nose in the air like a coonhound smelling out the bog.

  I saw something out the corner of my eye and, rattled as I was, I near jumped out of my skin. I turned my head to look and saw Nathan Scullory standing in a thicket just off to the porch. His face was all painted up like he was going to war and he had his rifle with him.

  At that point I knew for certain I had been right about his intentions. I opened my mouth to call out, but Nathan silenced me with a glare and a finger held up over his lips. He shook his head slowly and in such a way that I knew he meant to do me harm if I said anything. I swallowed down my words and looked back towards my pa. He stood staring after the Squamate as it wound its way around our porch, its large clawed feet seeming at odds with the delicate steps it took as it scented the air, picking up a whiff of our warblers, I assumed. I looked back just in time to see Nathan disappear into the woods behind the thicket, headed off in the direction of the rear yard. His rifle glinted in the dim light as he entered the brush.

  The Squamate was here to deal with the warblers what infested our back shed, just as we had paid for it to do. It was doing its job, as different and even frightening as that job was. The Squamate terrified me, but in a way it was beautiful. It was special. I knew right then in my heart that I just couldn’t let Nathan kill that animal.