Black Mask

The Low Waters
by Larry D. Sweazy

The rented one-bedroom house sat on the lip of a dry South Texas canyon. In summer, the blazing sun beat down on the house’s corrugated metal roof unobstructed by trees, shadows, or the will to plant anything that might provide shade in the future. Paint of any kind was a quarter of a century old; faded, dull, a vanishing yellow frame. The wood siding was wind-beaten, tired, already gray, pocked with termite holes that had been stuffed with old shop rags. Moths ate at the oily cloth, littering the floor with tiny cotton shreds. Mice insulated their generational nests in the thin, decaying walls and lived the best life of them all.

A three-sided lean-to sat within a droopy fence behind the tired house, the barbed wire rusted and broken in places, its purpose resigned to the ground and staggering posts. An old donkey had lived there once. When it died, it fell to the ground and was left to rot. The haggard flesh and fur transformed into a temporary carpet of what once was; a heart filled with stubborn blood that had left a permanent stain on the thirsty ground. Vultures circled overhead for months after the donkey had succumbed to the heat and malnutrition. An impenetrable swarm of flies had taken up residence inside the fence for years afterward, vicious and unforgiving to anything; bereaved human, stray dog, or hungry coyote—nothing was spared from a bite. The flies’ intention was to draw blood, kill, and survive; it wasn’t a personal attack. Even the snakes stayed away.

It always came as a surprise that the inside of the slab-foundation house under the mountain of the landlord’s dirt was neat, clean, the floor swept every morning and evening by twelve-year-old Jim Parker’s mother, Lynnette. There was a place for everything when there was a thing to put in a place: old pictures in yard-sale frames; a porcelain cat, white, the glaze spiderwebbed, with one sapphire-blue eye and a hole where the other jewel once was, sitting on a wobbly end table. A collection of plates that had traveled from house to house, a mix of patterns broken by the road, rage, and disappointments that had led Jim, his mother, and his stepfather to the end of the canyon road sat in open-faced cupboards above a battered tin sink and a reluctant water pump, wiped with a soapy towel after every use.

Jim’s bedroom had been a pantry once: a long, narrow room big enough to slide a side-of-the-road mattress into, leaving six inches between the kitchen wall—that always smelled of mice, living and dead—to get in and out of bed. A chest of drawers sat wedged at the end of the bed. The two bottom drawers were inaccessible. The other two contained all of Jim’s clothes: one good pair of black pants, a white shirt, and a clip-on purple polka-dot tie for church—if his stepfather’s Saturday night hangover didn’t prevent attendance—and funerals, which were few and far between. His mother’s family lived a thousand miles away, out of reach, out of touch, no help at all. His stepfather’s family could have been ghosts for all Jim knew or cared. He had two pairs of everyday pants, one too short and the other too long. A lady from the church, Miss Mary Margaret Pursey, had provided the pants when she had cleaned out her son Bobby’s winter closet in the spring. Jim, being the only child, had no one in the metal-roofed house to receive hand-me-downs from, so his mother relied on the kindness and charity of the church people in town to provide most of Jim’s clothes. Mary Margaret Pursey always showed up at the house with Bobby in tow, preaching the value of good works and always making a point to tell Jim to be a good boy in a tone that belied her intent: She didn’t appear to believe he had any good in him at all and could fake the smile on her rouged face. Church was useful for handouts, the only cost to Jim’s momma was a cheap, forlorn acceptance. Women tended to see Lynnette as a threat to their simple, happy lives. She had dancer’s legs and a stripper’s smile, but she was smart enough to bow down when she should. Jim would need new shoes soon enough.

Jim’s stepfather worked at the local fertilizer factory when there was work to be had and that money barely paid the rent and put food on the table. Any extra money went for whiskey and cigarets. Jim hated wearing Bobby Pursey’s pants. Bobby was a grade higher than him, and he made fun of Jim every chance he got, especially when Jim was wearing something of his, or something Bobby knew had been donated by his mother or one of the other church ladies.

Along with the everyday pants that were too big and too small, the chest of drawers held his everyday shirts, bleached so many times the cotton was brittle, threatening to disintegrate with a hard run or a wrong turn. Underneath the bed was where Jim kept his treasures: a cigar box with a few baseball cards, a dead scorpion that had bit him and he had killed in retaliation, and coins that totaled up to three dollars and seventy-four cents. It was found money or offered money from men at the barbershop. They would wink at his momma, hoping to gain her favor by slipping Jim a quarter, especially Pete Anderson, the bartender at the Red Dog Tavern on Main Street. Pete always seemed to be in the barbershop when it was time for Jim to get his hair cut. While Jim was in the chair getting new whitewalls set around his ears, Pete and Lynnette would disappear outside, one right after the other, never together. After, of course, Pete slipped a shiny quarter or half-dollar into Jim’s hand. Everybody said Lynnette was a looker. Jim didn’t care much about that, but he never asked his momma where she and Pete went or what they did together either.

The school bus let Jim off at the mailbox, marked only with the RFD number, faded and tainted with rust, giving him a little time to himself as he made the half-mile trek down to the exposed and solitary house day in, day out.

*   *   *

The day the rain came had been like every other day, some classes in school he liked, others he fought to stay awake. The bus ride home had been uneventful, and the walk down the lane was too, until he hit the crest of the rise that allowed him to look down and see his stepfather’s truck parked alongside the house.

Luther McCandry, Lute to his few friends, feet stuffed in cowboy boots with two-and-a-half-inch heels that pushed him over five feet, eight inches tall, his belly flopping uncomfortably over his belt buckle, casting a long shadow on his toes. Luther had wanted to play basketball in high school, but like everything else Luther had coveted in his life, he wasn’t tall enough, smart enough, or wealthy enough to get what he said he’d wanted. Except Lynnette. Men in the barbershop would shake their heads in wonder about that, but Jim knew that story, and the why of it, though he would have been happy to have been in the company of the men who couldn’t believe Luther’s good fortune. He learned early on that desperation could bind a woman with an invisible chain: till death do us part. Of course, Lynnette and Jim had come as a package deal, and that was where the rub was for Luther. He didn’t like to share anything.

Luther usually didn’t get home until suppertime, and then it was with the smell of whiskey on his breath. Cigaret smoke had gathered in his clothes from the clouds of it he’d sat in at the Red Dog Tavern. Jim didn’t call the man Luther or Lute. He tried to never call him anything. Especially Daddy. Whatever bad feeling there was between the two of them, it was mutual. Jim had learned early on how to avoid scorpions after being bit that once.

After getting off the bus, Jim stopped and looked down on the house, then scanned the vista before him from left to right. The lean-to and dead-donkey rug were still in their places, along with everything else that had been there when he’d left for school that morning. The only thing that didn’t belong in his view was Luther’s tote-the-note pickup truck with its bald tires, cracked windshield, and dented right front fender. He looked at the empty lane behind him and felt the first claw of hunger pinch at the inside of his stomach. Clouds the size of a war cannon were starting to build in the south. The air changed a little, and Jim only noticed because he was standing still. There was a warning and a push to the new breeze. He didn’t know whether to run away or go home.

*   *   *

Luther sat hunched over at the kitchen table, rolling an unlit Winston between his fingers. His bristly hair was cut into a flattop; the tips of his hair were even, severe, provoked to stand up straight by a fresh tube of Brylcream filled with ego and goo. His hands and his shirt were as clean as they had been when he’d left for work.

Jim’s mother stood in front of the kitchen sink, bracing against it so it could hold her up. Her head was hung down, eyes focused on the floor. A bottle of Dr Pepper sat on the counter next to her, sweating, adjusting to the change in temperature from the icebox to the humid kitchen air. When Jim was sick, his mother would warm the Dr Pepper on the stove in a saucepan and add a little of Luther’s whiskey to help him sleep.

“Jim,” Lynette said, looking up as he walked in the door. A curling finger of wind followed him inside. The first drop of rain pinged on the metal roof overhead, echoing across the silent room. The radio and TV were off. Only the icebox dared to hum.

He stopped on the threshold, pressed against the invisible wall between him and Luther, and stared at the back of the man’s head. Once an interloper always an interloper. Then he looked up to the ceiling as more raindrops followed the first. He loved to fall asleep to the dancing pings, but this was no time to rest.

“You should go to your room,” his momma continued.

Jim stood firm, unwavering. “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t,” Luther said, his back to Jim, his muscles tightening into a grind. The order wasn’t meant for Lynnette.

Jim’s mother, dressed in her daily housedress, yellow flowers on a forever field of dark chocolate brown, and hard-toed slippers, ignored Luther too. “We’ve just got to sort some things out, honey. Luther got laid off for good today. Everyone did.”

“Oh,” Jim said. This wasn’t the first job Luther had lost, but even Jim knew there weren’t many jobs in town to go around. The fertilizer factory was the last stop for a lot of people.

Luther stopped twirling the cigaret, stuffed it between his lips, and lit it. An exhale of smoke filled the room; dreary to cloudy, the tavern brought home with him. The rain picked up even more. It sounded like a giant bucket of nails had been dropped onto the house. No one bothered to notice until a roll of thunder followed the latest deluge; the roof rattled, threatened to fly off. Everyone’s attention was drawn upward, then returned to the floor once the metal sheets settled back onto their hooks. Eye contact was as uncommon as a bluebird bathing in clean water.

“You should go to your room,” Lynnette said again. Her voice was a short Texas hardpan road with no exit. Her winter-blue eyes were skateable. She wasn’t going to tell him again.

Jim stiffened and swallowed the command without comment or hesitation. The last place he wanted to be was in the middle of his mother and Luther. But his room was no retreat. He could still feel their footsteps and hear their words: slightly muffled, the point and sharpness unmistakable. If it hadn’t been raining, he would have run to the canyon, hunted scorpions, or counted the vultures in the sky. Everything had taken cover, burrowed underground for safety, hugged a tree trunk against the wind. The rain on the roof intensified and drowned out most of the conversation in the kitchen. A drumbeat of water against metal relieved him of hearing all the desperate words even though he knew them like a poem, by heart, recitable: What are we going to do now? We’ll have to move. I can’t take this anymore. The threat to leave was always close at hand. Luther hated that one. Losing Lynnette would mean losing the one thing that made people notice him. He exploded in a rage. Fireworks. Thunder. Yelling. Cussing. A dish shattered. One less to box up. The storm finally landed in the heart of the house.

Jim was used to the yelling, the fights, but when he heard a slap rise above the noise of the rain and sting his ears, a pair of wings couldn’t have propelled him out of his room any faster.

He found his mother on the floor, crumpled, knees to her chest, her arm and elbow crooked, shielding her bloodied face. A river of blood ran from her nose onto the freshly swept floor. Luther was standing over her, his fist balled, his knuckles red, arched back, cocked, ready for another hit. A quiver under his right eye betrayed his stance. Restraint? Or was he trying to decide how far to go this time?

Shame and fear cut a new gorge across the floor, its trail shiny red; the house smelled of birth, death, and Pine-Sol. The clouds of cigaret smoke had vanished, but the remnants of whiskey lingered. Jim ran to the kitchen door and pulled the .22 varmint rifle from the corner. The rifle, a Winchester that was as common as blackbirds in Texas, was forbidden for Jim to touch, but that didn’t matter now. By the time the weapon was securely in his hand and a cartridge slid into the cold, hollow chamber, another crack of thunder erupted in the kitchen, not a punch, but an open-handed slap. Lynnette didn’t give Luther the pleasure of a whimper or scream. She bit her bloody lip to silence the voice inside of her.

“Leave her alone,” Jim said, aiming the barrel at his stepfather, controlling his breathing as his finger wrapped around the trigger; tense, not too tight—firing wouldn’t be an accident.

Luther stood up, stiffened, took in the sight of Jim, then stepped toward him with rage building on the down-beat of a thunderclap.

Jim pulled the trigger, tasted the residue of gun powder, forced his eyes to stay open. He wanted to see where he hit Luther.

Luther staggered and batted at his ear like the annoyed donkey had batted his tail at the flies; it was useless, the damage done. Blood erupted and spewed outward, then splashed onto the floor as the bullet tore cartilage from the top of Luther’s ear. The flesh vanished, vaporized, but he was still standing.

Jim dropped the rifle and ran out the door.

*   *   *

The rain tried to push Jim back inside the house, but its might was not as strong as his will. The sky had dropped a black curtain laced with gray feathery clouds, spinning in a kettle, threatening to join and create a new kind of weather, fiercer, angrier, a deadly tornado, or worse, two. Tall walls of fingernail-sized drops continued to march past the house, pushed by winds that had traveled halfway around the world and found a home in South Texas. The land cringed in retreat; mud was immobile, unable to be swirled and spun like cotton candy in the humid air.

Jim ran as fast as he could, pushing up the wall of the canyon with all the strength in his legs that he could call forward. The rain had mixed with the dry dirt and turned it into a thick and slippery brown mud. By the time he reached the top of the climb he was covered from head to toe with wet dirt; he could have fallen to the ground, rolled around, and hidden in plain sight. All he could think to do was keep running. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw Luther chasing after him with the .22 held firmly in his hand.

The only advantage that Jim had over his stepfather was his knowledge of the canyon. Jim had spent countless hours exploring the rocks, rises, and narrow formations, avoiding as much time inside the rented house as possible. He had a hiding place or two in mind, but the sudden appearance of water, of a downpour like he had never seen, made getting there difficult. It was like he had been dropped into a new place. Nothing looked the same wet and muddy. The thick, wet earth wanted to conquer him as much as Luther did.

Jim darted right, then left, making himself a difficult target in the rain, then slid in between two rocks that were taller than he was. Luther had stopped midway up the climb, had slipped, and caught himself with his left hand while holding the rifle in his right, protecting it from the mud. Blood rinsed off the side of his face as quick as it appeared. His clothes had already collected a gallon of water.

Thunder cracked overhead and lightning reached across the sky, searching, it seemed, for somewhere to land, do harm, attack. Jim could feel the vibration of electricity in the bottom of his teeth. He knew he was in big trouble. More trouble than he’d ever been in before. He didn’t know what Luther was going to do to him, but the fact that he had the rifle with him made it clear that retribution was heading for Jim. I’d beat your ass if she wasn’t lookin’.

“You better come back here, kid,” Luther yelled. He didn’t call Jim by his name unless he had to.

Jim took off again, pushing through the narrow rocks, edging downward to the floor of the canyon. The trail was like a slide instead of the safe, easy descent it was when it was dry. His feet went out from underneath him, and he landed hard on his butt. There was nothing to grab ahold of, wet rocks, syrupy mud as slick as ice. He protected his head and tried to ride the rest of the way down without breaking anything. Rain continued to fall from the sky in amounts that seemed biblical, like the ocean had been picked up by some supernatural force, carried inland, then dropped on Jim’s head. He wished he had gills.

The slide came to an end in a rushing river that had not existed hours before. Jim tumbled forward in water so turbulent it spun and groaned, then headed south, opposite the house. The current was strong and swept him along with it; he bobbed and banged in a rage of chocolate dirt soup. The river was two or three feet in depth and running fast. A boy had drowned in a bathtub when Jim was in first grade. Lynnette hadn’t let him bathe alone for weeks afterward. Instinctively, Jim knew not to fight the flood, to let it carry him as far away from Luther as it wanted.

Swimming had come natural to Jim, but this was being dragged down an unknown river filled with rocks and fallen trees. After dunking up and down, drinking more muddy water than he wanted to, Jim grabbed hold of a limb that hung out over the water. The tree had been dead for a long time. Beetles of some kind had made their home in it; a vibrant insect colony that rivaled the mice in the bedroom wall. There were lines and drill holes everywhere, but none of the bugs’ work gave anchor to Jim’s trembling hands.

The rain didn’t let up. If anything, it got worse, poured from the sky harder, angrier. Jim couldn’t hear himself think until he looked up to the top of the hill and saw Luther standing there, holding the rifle, wind and rain whipping around him in a familiar fury. Lightning danced in the sky behind him, uninterested in striking him.

Jim heard his mother calling; distant, on the wind, frantic, comforting. Stay away. He hoped that Luther couldn’t see him, but that was false hope. Luther looked behind him toward the voice, shouldered the .22, aimed it, and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit a foot over Jim’s head, pinging off a rock.

The wind, the rain, and the storm of a mother’s love appeared behind Luther seconds after the shot. Lynnette ran up to him, and with a yell that matched the anger of the gods, she pushed Luther from behind, sending him tumbling down the hill. The rifle flew from his hands and disappeared into the mud with a clatter and a thud.

*   *   *

All Bill Landry, lanky as a weed, with no-nonsense eyes like you would expect a sheriff to have, had to do was take one look at Lynnette to know that she was telling the truth. They found Luther battered, alive, at the bottom of the canyon. Jim and his momma didn’t wait for the ambulance to leave before they started packing.

*   *   *

The front of Luther’s truck wobbled, and Lynnette had to fight it to keep it going straight. Night had fallen, and they had outrun the storm. They had turned left, and it had turned right. The glow of the dashboard lit Lynnette’s face, bruised, black and blue like a bad birthmark. Her jaw was set tight, her eyes focused on the empty road. The radio was off, the only noise the grind of the out-of-balance tires trying to stay off the berm. Luther’s smell was everywhere inside the truck; cigarets, whiskey, Aqua Velva, bait for women who fell for bad boys with scars and a sweet song.

“Why didn’t you tell Sheriff Landry that he shot at me?” Jim said after an hour of silence.

Lynnette didn’t hesitate. “You shot him.”

“Because he was hitting you.”

“We would have had to stay is why. They’d have put him in jail and made a big to-do out of it, made us come in for a trial and all.”

“He could have killed me.”

“I think he was just tryin’ to scare you.”

“Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

Jim’s momma didn’t say anything. She looked in the mirror for longer than she should have, then nodded as she pulled the truck off the berm. “I’m sorry,” she said.

It was another hour before either of them said anything again. Jim sat up straight in his seat, wakened from staring out the window, and said, “What’s that?”

Lynnette shrugged and looked at the glow of light ahead of them. It was too early in the year for a football game, but it looked like a stadium or an arena, all lit up. A birthday cake with all of the candles afire sitting in the middle of a field, beckoning anyone and everyone to come and get a piece of it for themselves.

A little farther up, the truck’s headlights reflected off a sign that said: RODEO TONIGHT. A hand-painted green arrow pointed down a well-traveled dirt road.

“Can we stop?” Jim asked.

“We don’t have the money,” Lynnette said as she slowed down. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the rodeo.” It was a sigh. An old memory.

“I’ve never been.”

“I know.”

“I have some money in my cigar box.”

“Where’d you get money?”

“I find pennies in the street, and the money Pete Anderson gave me at the barbershop. I saved it all. I have some money. Can we stop?”

Lynnette looked in the rearview mirror, and so did Jim just to see what she was looking for, even though he knew. There was nothing there, just darkness and the new fear of being followed. “You never said anything to Lute about that, did you?”

“I never told him anything.”

“All right,” she said with a sigh of relief. “It’ll probably do us some good to have a little fun.”

Read the exciting conclusion in this month’s issue on sale now!

Copyright © 2024 The Low Waters by Larry D. Sweazy