Come Here and Save Us, Boy

by Myles C. Robb

Rain slid down his face and into the grave where it pooled like some oily sacrament. He struck the ground with the shovel. Each day bled into the next, and the boy searched for a way out, for the grave would always fill again. In his pocket, the dollar coin pressed against his thigh, as if it were a trapped freedom. Worn by hands not all his own, his fingers traced the handle’s grooves, which held the sweat of dead men. He drove the blade into the muck and let the earth swallow it whole.

Old Abner was asleep at the table when Eli shook him awake and pointed out the kitchen window. “Rain came in.”

Abner coughed and cleared his throat. “You take care of it when it passes, now. I expect it to be fit for when the Lord arrives. Bring the damn shovel in too, I ain’t got two of ‘em.” Eli brought the shovel inside and leaned it against the door. Sludge slid off the blade and collected on the hardwood.

In the evening, humidity festered in the ground like boiling water on a stovetop. Abner sat out on the porch while the boy fed the mules, his face caked in mire and sweat. The sun slipped beneath the gray-black sky and in its silhouette a man appeared on foot. A crack of thunder and a gloomy fog, thick as breath, followed close behind. 

Eli’s eyes tracked The Stranger, slithering through the yard. His boots sank into the mud, leaving no clear shape, just wide smears that were molded like clay by the very earth he stood upon. He approached the porch. “Thought I might find you here,” The Stranger said, his voice a gravel road. 

Abner stood fast now, squinting from the porch. His voice was stern. “Come here and let me see you, then.” 

A smile crept upon The Stranger’s cheeks. He set down a burlap sack and pulled a pale jar of peaches. A light drizzle returned, and hazed the picture of what The Stranger appeared as. Eli approached him cautiously, circling like a vulture. Abner recognized him and scoffed. “What’d you come all this way for then?”

“I wanted to see my son, aren’t I entitled to it?” He handed the jar to Eli, who clutched it in his chest. The Stranger looked the boy over, “You don’t remember me but, I’m your daddy, Caleb.” He smiled and Eli could make out a false tooth, though it was masked between its yellow neighbors. “I came a long way just to see you.”

Abner stood. “Why don’t we go inside and sort this out.”

 

When the darkness settled, a torrential downpour slammed into the windows and a mad wind coiled in the distance. Abner poured The Stranger a glass of whiskey and watched him drain the liquid before he had poured his own. Eli stood with the jar of peaches and opened the lid to sniff the insides. There was something so distinct about the sweetness that lay within, as if hidden in the juice was a perilous rot that consumed them. As if the very veins were stripped of their taste and all that was left was a curse, corroding whatever lay there dormant in the blood of the peaches. Eli tripped on a crack, dropping the jar against the floor and watching the peaches and liquid splatter and branch off.  

“Shit!” The Stranger flinched. 

Eli stood and wiped the grime and glass off his shirt. “Clean that up, boy.” Abner directed, sipping his liquor. 

The Stranger calculated the boy and in a sigh knelt on the floor and began to scoop up the broken glass shards with his son. “You don’t just drop a gift like that. Least not if you knew what it cost.” 

 

Shadows danced across the walls of Eli’s room, cast by the flickering candlelight. He made silent puppets with his fingers, shapes that wriggled and fought in the dimness, while thunder mumbled, like a funeral march approaching through the hills. He could see his dollar coin on the nightstand, and he felt it with his skin. The coin that had been given to him some inordinate amount of time ago, the one he had been saving for so long. His thoughts circled to the sopping pit outside, the grave he would dig tomorrow morning. A grave that never seemed that it would stay filled in. Maybe it would be easier to just leave the old man to die at the kitchen table. He could faintly smell the peaches beneath him, crawling upwards through the house. Muffled laughing rose downstairs, as if it were from another era. 

Eli woke to moonlight glittering through the window and a house that croaked and moaned around him. Water dripped steadily, and he could smell mold blooming in the night air. He stepped carefully through the darkness, his breath echoing in the quiet hall. Where The Stranger had curled and slept, the blankets now lay undisturbed. In his grandfather’s room, the bed was made, untouched. At the window, Eli saw only the pines, swaying, as if they were communicating a secret through dance. Downstairs, the scent of rotting peaches still clung to the wood, soaked deep into the floorboards. Then came the clatter of hooves. Eli peered out the front window. A shadow rode up the path, Abner. The old man dismounted, slow and deliberate, a bottle in one hand, and in the other, a length of parchment he rolled and slipped inside. 

 When Eli woke in the morning, he could not tell the day had begun. The sky was gray and the bottomlands were steaming, a layer of moisture gripped the bedsheets. There was a slight drizzle but he knew it wouldn’t matter. Eli slid down the stairs and grabbed his shovel. The grave had accumulated a layer of water and the mud dried, leaving behind an eroded pit as if it were an entrance to Hell. The boy would need to fill it in and start over. Eli looked towards the trees and he saw The Stranger leaned up against one, as if he had appeared out of an apparition or thought, waiting to be called upon. “Now, that’s a shame right there.” He picked his teeth with a toothpick. “Old man got you digging this out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Every day?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Stranger ushered for the shovel. He stuck it in the ground hard and leaned onto it. “What the hell are you doing it for?”

“Just to keep it ready.”

“There ain’t nothing to bury yet.” He sighed. “Why don’t me and you do a little huntin’ today? I’ll show you what I do. Give us some time together. What do you think?”

Eli hesitated. The ground squealed beneath his boots. “Okay.”

Caleb smirked. “Good.” He stood and left the shovel there in the mud, waltzing back towards the house. 

 

Along the riverside, they trudged through the marsh like two pilgrims crusading against the heretical sun. Gentle pellets of rainwater fell sporadically and the eternal gray sky churned over. Caleb held the rifle and the boy followed his trail, chained to the movement of the man. In his coat pocket, the boy fiddled with his dollar coin, as if the very touch were a comfort to his building sweat. The water beneath them was bubbling and the brown tides ran quickly downstream. 

In the thicket ahead, a rabbit jumped across the walking path. Caleb reached over his shoulder and aimed the rifle, waiting. Eli could hear him whisper under his breath, some ritual hymn of a forgotten tongue. A wild shot cracked and echoed throughout the rainy forest. The rabbit flopped into the seeping muck. Eli felt his shoes sink, falling deeper until he had to grab the bark of a tree to hold himself upright. Caleb handed the gun to the boy and unlatched a knife. Squatting there over the dead animal, he looked as if he were an ape from the old world, grunting as he cut. He peered back to look at the boy and his eyes were sharp and taut. “Come help me, then. I need you to hold something.” Eli obeyed. He crouched alongside him and held the carcass so that the man could cut the fur off the body. The rain fell harder and the boy felt as though he were slipping. His knee hit the ground and squished around and Caleb shouted, “Quit it! Just set for a minute! I need to focus.” Eli sat silent. Caleb stopped for a moment and thought. “Look, I hope that you see what I’m trying to do with you here. That old man, he just makes you do his bidding. Diggin’ a grave? You ought to have more freedom than that.”

Eli didn’t answer. 

“You don’t need to be helping him. You don’t owe him nothing. He’s poisoning you, can’t you feel it? He don’t even believe what he’s preaching to you. I was once a boy just like you. I know what it’s like to be suffocated somewhere without any prospects. If you let me show you,” He held up the bleeding rabbit carcass, “You’ll never have to listen to him again. Will you let me help you?”

Eli looked at him and the rabbit and looked towards the river. 

Caleb dropped the carcass on the ground and cupped the boy’s head in his hand. Eli’s throat tried desperately to swallow. Caleb grinned. “Don’t worry, I promise we can do something more fun later.”

It seemed as if the water began to churn louder, lashing at the banks with a force that made the boy listen, as if it were whispering its confession to him. Caleb slung the rabbit over his back and led the way through the pines.

 

 From the grass, the boy heard the chuck, chuck, chuck of the saw. Instinctively, he could picture the steady drip of water falling into the grave. He thought of the shovel, the piling of the dirt, how he had left it outside. Eli began to chew on his fingernails, cleaning the stains of blood. A sudden crack erupted from the shed and Eli’s bones rattled. The adze stopped. Caleb ran out of the barn and knelt in the dirt. “Shit!” He looked at Eli. “Get me something, boy!” Eli ran back into the house and pulled Abner up from his bed. The old man hustled quicker than the boy had ever seen, and looked reminiscent of Caleb in his strut. 

The old man held Caleb’s arm and wrapped his bleeding hand. “What happened?” He asked Caleb.

“I shot my damn finger.”

Abner dropped his hand and slapped Caleb across the face. And again harder. Eli looked on and Caleb looked right back at him.

 

Caleb found him when the sky had turned to ash and blackness crept through the cracks of the house. The rain had stopped and the rot of the peaches smoldered in the walls, encasing itself within the house like a weed, a vine that consumed all in its sight. There was no sound save for his breath. His eyes fluttered open to Caleb standing over him. “Get up, boy.”

Eli sat straight up. “What’s the matter?’

Caleb smiled. “You wanna come have some fun with me? I did promise you.”

Eli smiled and rustled out of bed, reaching to bring his dollar coin with him, following him through the dark hallway lit by a single candlelight. His bleeding finger had soaked through the bandage and in the light looked as if it were a mummified corpse. Abner watched them ride off into the black, the boy’s eyes turned happily upwards. He sipped his moonshine and told himself the boy would be fine.

 

Eli followed Caleb into town and he watched the rogue lights of the buildings like they were beacons in the valley. They approached a narrow and tall building that had drunks spilling out onto the boardwalk. Caleb ushered the boy inside. Lanterns flickered in the hushful silence and there were a few young women fanning themselves on the barline. Eli stood and watched Caleb point to two of the women, grabbing them both around the shoulders while his sweaty grin exposed the imperfect white tooth. Caleb swung the ladies up the stairs, Eli following as if he were an unconscious ghost. Caleb took one of the women into a private room and left the other with the boy and shooed them off opposite the hall. The woman pursed her lips at the boy and they went into a humid room with a solitary bed in the center. There was nothing between them save for the darkness in both of their eyes, and Eli could hear the woman breathing. “Mother.” He whispered to himself. She came closer and his breathing quickened. He hesitated briefly and gently pushed the woman off of him. He reached into his pocket and gave the woman his dollar coin. As he opened the door to leave he looked and saw her eyes gleaming in the darkness, then gave her a smile before returning into the hallway light. Caleb didn’t come out again until the moon sat high above, and Eli passed the time whispering to the mule, the coin gone from his pocket, the weight of it still in his palm.

 

The boy paced slowly behind Caleb, the mule’s feet stomping through the mud and slush from the stormfront. The only light in the sky was a crack of lightning, illuminating the outline of Caleb’s body in the darkness. Caleb sang through the booming thunder and his hands were raised up towards the Lord praising all the land before him, like a desert priest ripped out of the blood of Seth. When they had returned home, Abner still sat on the porch, holding a rifle in his lap. His body shook there in the cold and he drank down another gulp of whiskey. He stood and wobbled, loading and aiming the rifle at the man. Caleb shouted, “What the hell?” Abner fired off a round in the darkness and it whizzed about in the brush. Eli got off his mule and laid down in the grass. Caleb sprinted up to the porch and wrestled the gun away from the drunk old man shaking there in that cold. 

“You have corrupted him.” Abner’s voice shook. “Demon of pandemonium.”

Caleb smirked and his false tooth stood out like a sore thumb. “Old man, he’s my son. And this boy became a man tonight. You ought to be proud.” 

Eli’s breath tightened. 

Abner tried to grab Caleb’s shirt but his hand was smacked away and Abner melted back into his chair. Caleb disappeared and Eli crept to his grandfather, listening to him mutter psalms and verses. He looked at the boy, meeting his gaze, and a drunken slur rolled out of his mouth. “You look just like him.”

Eli woke in the morning to the sound of dry wind blowing through. He jumped out of bed and looked out to the hole in the backyard. He couldn’t see the bottom and he raced down the stairs and out the door through the murky grass. A layer of fog was still draped over the bottomlands, a simmering heat swelled in the jungle. His heart sank when he saw a pool of oily water lying there. With the shovel in hand, he worked to reshape the grave and he shifted the pit to form a pyramid, allowing the water to filter through. When he had finished, he smiled.

 

The Stranger had finished his glass of whiskey before the boy had even brought the food to the table. The shovel lay in the corner dripping onto the hardwood floor, sludge smeared against the blade, a spectator. Using his hands to eat, the Stranger looked as if he were a primordial human, his bandaged finger a crimson red stain. Abner watched the two eat and looked off into the window. “Did you dig out that grave, boy?” He asked Eli.

“No, sir. I had to-” 

Abner’s eyes grew furious, he turned and slapped the boy. “Don’t ever say no to me again.”

The Stranger stopped eating. His hands were caked in slime and a mosquito flew past his head. “Quit making a fuss about it. The boy ain’t even finish his thought there.”

Abner looked at his son. “Learn your place, there. I’m speaking with my blood.”

“Shit. I’m your blood too.” He stretched his arms out wide. “This whole tract is our blood. Sounds to me like you’re teaching the kid too much of your old man hoodoo. There ain’t no reward here, the boy has found that out sure enough. But we did the trick last night didn’t we?” The Stranger winked at Eli and smirked. The tooth gleamed in the lantern light. 

Abner reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle. “I know why you’re here, Caleb. And you can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to your own blood.” He reached in and pulled out a parchment paper, smoothing it out on the table and passing it across. Eli could smell the mold of those rotting peaches, bitter and faint.

The Stranger stared at it a long while before touching it. “You son of a bitch,” he whispered. Eli watched The Stranger laugh. Laughing and screaming and bellowing out into the house.“You can’t be serious.”

Abner pointed, “Read that signature, there.”

The Stranger tore the paper in half and stood. “There old man. No more of your deception.”

“It’s already sold. There ain’t nothing to be done about it.”

The Stranger’s eyes flicked to the boy and back to his father. He stood so fast the table shifted. He shattered the whiskey glass against the wood. In a blink, his arm wrapped around the old man’s throat, and a glass shard kissed the folds of his neck.

“Say it again,” he hissed. “Say it’s already done.”

Blood beaded down Abner’s skin seeping further like mire dripping into the grave.

“Help me, boy,” the old man said.

The glass pressed against his neck and Eli sat and watched. Watched the gritted teeth of The Stranger like he was an ape. Abner’s hand touched the boy’s shoulders. “Help me, boy.” He begged.

“Don’t listen to him! I said he would deceive us! He don’t even want to give you your own birthright. Think about what we can do together! Ain’t that what you want? Freedom? Come here and save us, boy.” The Stranger hissed.

Eli looked at the broken glass on the table, the face of The Stranger, the old man’s eyes. Abner turned back from the boy to his son and they wrestled onto the floor, breaking the wooden chair beneath their feet, collapsing into the ground.

Eli stood from the table and looked to the corner at the shovel. The two men fought like beasts, The Stranger pressing his fingers into the old man’s eyes, like he was trying to reach inside him. The old man began to bare his teeth and hit his son viciously across the head. 

Eli looked on for a moment longer and strode out of the house, shovel in hand. He drug it through the wet earth and stood alone in the night. The storm had passed, leaving cold summer air in its wake. He exhaled. Puddles of rainwater and mud lined the winding road ahead. Through the parting clouds, a band of light struck the path where his feet had paused. Eli sank to his knees, letting his arms out wide as if he were a corrupted prophet, his body lit by the faint flickers of sun.

END

 

Myles C. Robb has previously been published in Frontier Tales, Issue 175. He has lived in Alabama, and some of his family is still there today. The eastern region of the state inspires this story. Follow him on Twitter @mylescrobb.