My eyes laid hold of an excellently dreadful path that lay before us. From that point on, I caught glimpses of Nicky every thirty seconds, when I briefly glanced up. The old one-lane bridge had no walkway. I wondered what would happen if a car came. The 1.5-inch slats of wood that lined it didn’t look very stable for a person, let alone a car. The slats spaced out, grossly uneven and often missing up to even three or four at a time. Nicky, about fifteen steps ahead of me, skated along. His feet missed every gap even though his eyes looked out over the river.
I was pretty sure that I was about to fall to my death. Meanwhile, Nicky confidently tread across the abyss leaving not even a shred of fear behind to comfort me.
Eventually, we descended from the bridge. I was just happy to be on dry land again. Nicky hadn’t looked back at me since the middle of the field.
I followed him off the road and into the woods—Nicky quiet, me quiet. Then Nicky stopped and pointed out some leaves to me. To my surprise he actually explained which ones were wild ginger and which were garlic and which grow by garlic and how to identify poison ivy and how that is different from poison oak. I was startled, as this was the first time Nicky talked with me, but unfortunately, to me the forest was pretty much one big pile of green. I tried to understand. He pointed out trees, naming their kinds and qualities. And he even pointed out flowers. He told me about a place that was a little north, an abandoned house surrounded by a field of lilies.
Nicky and I never did have much in common. Both of us were too quiet. We just never really talked. Not to mention I was just kind of scared of him, him being my big brother and everything. I think that day at Covert’s, Nicky outdid himself in words. It was the most, to this day, I’ve ever heard him talk, and to be quite honest it wasn’t really what I expected to be going on in his brain. From the look of his face, consistently pissed, I had assumed that he only thought about hoodlum stuff.
At Covert’s, it felt like maybe he didn’t mind me so much. It felt like we were family. It felt good.
Charlotte and I continued our inspecting of the field, but our efforts yielded nothing new. We got pretty close to the train tracks opposite the river.
“Char, let’s head back the other direction. I don’t think we are going to find much here,” I suggested. “I don’t think the overflow from the river reaches here, so it’s not going to bring up stuff that’s buried.” When she didn’t respond, I looked up at her.
She stood frozen. “What’s that sound?”
The train tracks were buzzing bees. Their rumbling matched their vibrating heat waves. I told her, “Trains comin’.”
With a surprised eye and knowing smile, she challenged me to a race. Charlotte took off toward the river. I grabbed hold of my satchel, and my camera and started after her. The still dewy sheaves of tall field-grass sliced my legs as I cut through them. The grass slowly engulfed us to shoulder height, which made it impossible to see the ground, especially moving at such a rapid pace. I could see Char’s head bobbing about ten feet in front of me. Then her head dropped right out of view. I attempted to slow my full speed, but it wasn’t quick enough. With arms slicing like windshield wipers through a thick patch of grass, I had both legs simultaneous knocked out from under me. Mid-air, my stomach lurched its way into my lungs while my head and shoulders still thought they were running. After about a half-a-second of total body flight, I face-planted into the ground, holding both the satchel and the camera in front of me, unharmed.
Charlotte lay laughing behind me, and the train zoomed by with an organ-like univocal tune.
“What in the world are you doing?!” I shouted, half playful, half furious.
“I tripped in a little dip or something,” Charlotte chuckled. “I was just getting back up, until crazy came barricading through!”
“Well, at least I had my hands out in front of me, before you gave me a lift, or I probably would’a smashed this damned camera.”
“Geez, sorry.”
After checking to see that the arrowheads were safe, I fumbled around in the grass, acting like I had resumed looking for more treasures. Honestly I wasn’t really looking. I was just looking like I was looking and trying to get over my embarrassment. I really hated looking stupid, because I was worried people would start thinking I was stupid all the time.
The train chi-chonk chi-chonk chi-chinked behind us, slowing its pace as the engine prepared to pull into the Joint.
“Hey,” Charlotte whisper-spoke. “I think I found something.”
“Arrowhead?”
“No.” Her voice wavered. She held her finger to her lips to shush me. “Rose, come look.”
I scuffled through the grass. Charlotte, bent-over, hands-on-knees, looked to the ground. I went around her to see what she was inspecting. She reached her hand down and moved a creamy colored stick that was encrusted with dirt. I got onto my knees and removed a clump of soil.
“Hm-m,” I picked up the stick and examined it.
Charlotte picked up another one. The train whistled in the distance, probably arriving in Mahoningtown. The little two-inch stick was most definitely a bone.
“Looks, like we found a grave,” I whispered. “I think these are finger bones.”
She nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.” Char’s face started to lose a little color.
Little finger particles were scattered at the base of a garbage-bag sized rock. I motioned for her to help me push it over.
We heaved the rock a solid six inches, enough to reveal the arm and shoulder of a full-on corpse. At first we stared, mouths agape. After a few seconds, I used my foot to kick up the humorous bone a bit. The length of the bone detached from the rounded joint on the elbow end. And maggots slithered out from the bone, leaving dark tracks of marrow over the creamy surface. A horrid stench, far beyond mold, far beyond feces, permeated the air. Terrified, but trying to remain calm, I looked up at Char’s face. “I’ll bet this is just one of the Indian graves that rose up from the flooded river.” I knew better, but I was trying to sound reassuring.
Char’s face was now the color of limestone, hard and white. Right before my eyes, all of the color retreated from her lips.
A deep, raspy, yet blood-curdling scream pierced my ears. But the scream did not come from Charlotte, or me for that matter. It came from someone somewhere in the field behind us. At the same time the scream broke out, Charlotte’s knees buckled and her forehead smashed right into the rock.
“HE-E-E-LP ME.” The voice pleaded—a man’s. “OH, GOD.”
I dropped next to Char. Her body rolled to the side, right into my arm. Her eyes opened unevenly, and rolled back inspecting her lids.
“A-G-H-H-H!” That scream again was followed by the sound of grass shuffling, met with grunts and the disoriented treading of struggling boots. Someone yelled,“STAI ZITTO GIDRUL’!” followed by an ear-splitting heavy snap. And a grown man’s whimper.
My heart pumped blood into my ears and pounded at the surface of my temples. I slowed my breathing and laid my head down on Char’s chest. Her heart pounded against my brain.
It sounded like several men were struggling their way toward us. They wrestled about twenty yards away, fifteen yards, ten yards. Grunting, they seemed to be trawling a catch through the mire. I sunk down harder into Char and lowered my hips into the mud, trying to disappear into the ground.
“What the hell?” one asked—a familiar voice.
“It’s the ground, gidrul’!” another answered. Their feet made a sloshy sound that told me they’d stepped into a mucky tributary.
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