Jerry Lee Statten
by Clint McCown
(from the novel, Haints)
His mama said anything he found, he could keep.
It was like a big treasure hunt. God had sent a strong wind to take things from the stores and hide them all over the countryside. Some things might be broken, but other things might be good as new. If Jerry Lee found something he liked, he could put it in his wagon and bring it home with him.
The idea of it amazed him. He might find all the toys he’d ever wanted. Red rubber balls, or toy hammers, or slide whistles, or tops, or cats-eye marbles. There might be toy soldiers that he could send out on patrol and pretend that one of them was his brother, Web. He might even find his favorite, the wooden gliders that cost a nickel at the Rea & Derrick.
But his mama also told him to remember his family. He should leave room in his wagon for gifts, because God’s blessings should always be shared. So if he found clothes that weren’t his size, or things for the kitchen, or ashtrays, or anything else good for grownups, he should gather those up, too, for his cousins, and his aunts and uncles, and his grandma. Maybe he could even find something to give his daddy for his birthday, she had told him.
He’d only been searching for a little while, and already he’d found a lamp that was broken in half but that still had good wires in it. He’d also found a broken picture frame with a color picture of a collie in it, and a bed sheet that was heavier than it looked because it came out of the creek. If his mama didn’t want the bed sheet, he’d use it for his costume next Halloween.
He found a tire that his daddy might like, but it was too big to put in the wagon. Maybe Jerry Lee could come back for it later. But he also found a brand new fancy shoe like his daddy wore sometimes when he and Mama went out in the evenings. Wing tips, his daddy called them, even though they didn’t have any wings. This one looked real nice—shiny and black with stitches sewn all over it. Maybe he’d even find the other shoe that went with it. But it would still be a good gift, even if he didn’t. One shoe was better than no shoe, Jerry Lee had learned that much already.
There were also plenty of boards with good nails in them, but the ones that weren’t broken were too long to carry. Besides, these boards probably came from the new house Miss Mary Jean was building down the street from his mama and daddy’s place, and it wasn’t right to take things that belonged to a neighbor.
The toys were harder to find than he thought they would be. In his mind, he’d seen them hanging from tree branches like it was Christmas morning, low enough that he could walk right up and pick them, easy as crabapples. He did see some things in the trees, but they were too high up, and anyway he couldn’t tell for sure what they were. They might have been parts of houses, and he didn‘t think his mama needed anything like that.
Still, he would keep looking. There might be grand surprises in the tall grass further along the creek bank toward the river, and today was finders-keepers day.
He stood at the crest of the higher bank beside his half-full wagon and scanned the creek bed for more presents. Something caught his eye downstream, something lodged in the mud at the mouth of a culvert. He left his wagon and walked a few steps closer, squinting hard to make out what it was. When it finally came into focus, his heart leapt and he broke into a run along the rocky bank.
It was a catcher’s mitt, the kind he’d seen in the window at Malone Hardware. Maybe it was the very same one. And there was no one else around to call dibs. The mitt was his alone.
He knelt in the rocky mud at the outer rim of the concrete tunnel that ran under the roadway and pulled the mitt from the tangle of mud and weeds. Even dirty, it still smelled brand new, and it was so stiff he could hardly bend it, even with both hands. Neatsfoot oil, that’s what he needed to loosen it up. Web had told him that was how to make a baseball glove soft. Soak it in neatsfoot oil and tie it shut overnight with a baseball tucked in the pocket. He didn’t know what neatsfoot oil was, but he knew his daddy could find him some.
Jerry Lee scraped most of the mud off with his finger and slid his hand into the opening. His fingers were too short to reach all the way inside, but that was all right, he was growing every day, that’s what his mama told him. He pounded his fist into the pocket, the way he had seen Web do when Web and his daddy had thrown the hard ball around in the chicken yard. It stung his fingers, but that was all right, too. Big boys didn’t mind if something hurt a little bit.
Web had taken their ball with him to the army, so Jerry Lee would have to get himself another one. But maybe he’d find a ball today, too. Then he could take Web’s place with his daddy in the chicken yard, and his daddy could cheer up again.
He tucked the mitt under his arm and began to look around for other windfalls. Almost right away he spotted something. Not four feet away, just inside the edge of the concrete tunnel, partly hidden by weeds and a chunk of concrete, was another shoe. He could only see part of it, but he could tell it didn’t match the wingtip he’d already collected. This one was a dark brown instead of black, and it didn’t look very new at all. Still, two shoes were better than one, no matter what they looked like.
He clapped his hands loudly to scare away any snakes or rats that might be waiting in the dark crevices beneath the tunnel and scooted down the bank to the lower edge of the culvert. He couldn’t climb inside the tunnel very easily without stepping in the creek, and he didn’t want to do that. He was barefooted, and there were crawfish under the rocks, sometimes big as his hand, with pinchers strong enough to make him bleed. Besides, this early in the year the water was still too cold for wading.
He set the mitt carefully on the curve of dry cement at the top of the arch; then he gripped the side of the tunnel and leaned out across the dark opening. He felt a little uneasy, because he didn’t know what kinds of things lived in tunnels under the road. Maybe bears. Or bobcats. Maybe wild dogs, like Rufus. His mother had told him to stay away from wild dogs because they might have rabies. Rabies meant you foamed at the mouth and went crazy, and were afraid of water. If Rufus lived here, though, he couldn’t have rabies, because there was water all around. And Rufus wasn’t as bad as his mother thought, anyway. Jerry Lee told her he had walked right up and patted his head once, and Rufus hadn’t minded. His daddy had laughed when he said that, but told him he was brave.
He needed to be brave now, too. He reached out as far as he could and hooked the heel of the shoe with his fingertips. He tried to pull it toward him, but it seemed to be caught on something. He tugged harder to try to break the snag, but the shoe still wouldn’t budge, so he edged closer and reached across the shoe-top for a better grip. But as he closed his fingers over the tightly strung laces, he suddenly understood something, and a terrible fear squeezed him from inside. He froze. The shoe was hard to move because it wasn’t empty. There was a foot in it, and probably a leg beyond that, stretching off into the darkness of the tunnel. Jerry Lee had grabbed hold of something straight from his worst nightmares, the ones where Jesus didn’t save him from the Enemy. And now he was too afraid to let go.
But he didn’t have to let go. The shoe pulled away from him all by itself, and a sorrowful moan rose up inside the tunnel, echoing louder than what any normal person ever sounded like, more like a monster waking up. Jerry Lee sprang backward and scrambled up over the top of the culvert to the gravel surface of the road. Whatever it was, it was now directly beneath him.
It moaned again. Jerry Lee crept back to the edge of the culvert and snatched up his new catcher’s mitt and held it to his heart. He didn’t know what to do next. If he ran for his wagon, he’d have to go back along the creek bank, and the thing in the tunnel could see him. Maybe if he just stayed where he was, he’d be safe.
But what kind of monster moaned so much and wore brown shoes?
In the story of the Three Little Billy Goats Gruff, the billy goats had a bad troll under their road. He didn’t know exactly what a troll was, but in the picture book it didn’t wear shoes. Maybe that didn’t mean anything, though. He remembered that all the goats were smarter than the bad troll, and so it hadn’t been able to win. And Jerry Lee was even smarter than goats, he knew that for a fact. They were dumb enough to eat tin cans. So maybe he didn’t have as much to be afraid of as he thought.
Still.
His mama had promised him there was no such thing as trolls, and his daddy had said he shouldn’t believe in any of that kind of stuff, not in trolls, or fairies, or goblins, or Paul Bunyan, or the Wolf Man, or even haints.
But the Tooth Fairy had already brought him a nickel three times. Every year the Easter Bunny left candy eggs out in the yard, and that was sure no regular bunny. Reverend Johnson warned them every Sunday about the Devil, and all the magic tricks he used to catch their souls. Santa Claus had to be some kind of haint, floating up and down chimneys the way he did. And Jesus was definitely a haint, because he was the Holy Ghost.
Maybe some people didn’t believe in things like that unless they saw it for themselves. Daddy said Web was gone, that the Enemy got him. But mama still talked to Web at night sometimes, and to Jesus, too. So he knew his mama believed in haints, no matter what his daddy had to say about it. And if Web was a haint now, then Jerry Lee believed in them, too.
So there was no telling what this thing under the road might be.
It moaned again, and then Jerry Lee thought he heard it call out something in a nearly normal voice, though he couldn’t make out the words. Somehow the thing didn’t sound as scary now. It didn’t sound mad, it sounded more like it was hurt, like it needed help. He remembered a story about a little boy who pulled a thorn out of a lion’s paw, and then the lion was his friend forever. Maybe he could do something like that, too.
He got down on his hands and knees and crawled quietly to the edge of the culvert. He leaned his head out far enough to see the brown shoe near the mouth of the tunnel. The shoe was right where he’d left it, but now the tunnel was filled with a groaning noise that went up and down, like the way his grandma breathed.
“Who’s there?” Jerry Lee asked. The groaning noise stopped.
“Who’s there yourself?” The voice was deep and ragged, and after it finished the question, it went into a harsh cough.
Jerry Lee didn’t want to say who he was, so he tried to think of a way around it.
“I believe in Jesus,” Jerry Lee answered.
There was a silence, followed by a shifting around inside the tunnel. Maybe Jerry Lee had found the Enemy, and it was about to come after him. The Enemy didn’t like Jesus, his daddy had said so.
“Me, too, I reckon,” said the voice. “Washed in the blood of the lamb,” it added, which was the same thing Reverend Johnson said sometimes. Jerry Lee didn’t know what it meant, exactly. But he knew it was supposed to be a good thing, even though it sounded awful.
Jerry Lee decided to take a risk.
“I’m Jerry Lee Statten,” he announced, as boldly as he could speak it.
There was another silence.
“I know some Stattens,” the voice said at last. “You any kin to Sammy Statten, up on Reservoir Hill?”
This caught him off guard.
“That’s my daddy,” Jerry Lee said.
“Well, your daddy’s a good man,” said the voice. “He’s had a tough row to hoe here lately. I guess you all have.”
Jerry Lee climbed down the side of the culvert and peered around into the tunnel. It took a little while for his eyes to see in the darkness, but what he finally saw made him somehow happy and frightened at the same time. Leaning back against the curve of the concrete wall was a man with only one leg.
“You’re Mr. Gatlin,” he whispered.
“Reckon that’s right,” said Mr. Gatlin. He looked around and scooted further up the wall, dragging his leg out of the trickle of water in the bottom of the tunnel. “Where exactly are we right now?” he asked.
“Under Mulberry Avenue,” Jerry Lee told him. “In the creek.”
“Norris Creek? Down by Roy Hopkins’ filling station?”
“I don’t know,” said Jerry Lee. “There’s an Esso station.”
“That’s the one,” said Mr. Gatlin. He wiped his shirt sleeve across his brow. “I don’t guess you’d happen to know how I got here,” he said.
Jerry Lee didn’t want to answer, because Mr. Gatlin might take it as bad news. But it was too big a thing to lie about.
“You got killed by the tornado,” he said.
Another silence.
Mr. Gatlin cleared his throat and spit something out onto the tunnel floor. “No wonder I’m feeling poorly,” he said, and he started to cough in a way that sounded like laughing.
“You was digging Miss Mary Jean’s well,” Jerry Lee went on.
“I remember that part,” said Mr. Gatlin. “And I seem to recall being mashed by a tree. But the rest is all God’s mystery.”
“My mama took Miss Mary Jean to the hospital in my daddy’s wheelbarrow,” Jerry Lee said.
“Miss Mary Jean? She didn’t get hurt, did she?”
Jerry Lee heard something that sounded like fear in Mr. Gatlin’s voice, but he knew that couldn’t be right. Haints had nothing to be afraid of.
“No, sir. I think she was just having a baby.”
Mr. Gatlin let out a raspy sigh. “Well, glory be,” he said, and settled into another silence.
Jerry Lee stepped carefully into the mouth of the tunnel and squatted against the wall across from Mr. Gatlin. He waited there in the quiet, with his baseball mitt clutched to his chest, listening to Mr. Gatlin breathe. After a little while, he saw Mr. Gatlin’s eyes shining in the shadows.
“I see you’re a ball player,” Mr. Gatlin said.
“Yes, sir. When I get big I’m gonna play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.”
“Like Jackie Robinson,” said Mr. Gatlin. “I hear he’s the highest paid player on the team.”
“He’s the best,” Jerry Lee told him.
“Well, your brother was mighty good,” said Mr. Gatlin. “No reason you can’t be, too.”
“I don’t have a ball,” he said.
“That’s not a problem. I never had me a ball neither. Used to play catch with hedge apples. You ever try that?”
“I roll them down the hill sometimes,” said Jerry Lee.
“That’s fun, too,” Mr. Gatlin agreed. He winced as he shifted his weight onto his side. Then he leaned his head forward into the light and spit something dark into the creek. Jerry Lee felt bad seeing what shape he was in. He looked like he had rust spots all over him, on his face, down his neck, even in his hair. His shirt collar had rust spots, too, and his sleeves were crusty with mud and with the chalky white dust from the cement walls. Mr. Gatlin looked at Jerry Lee like he could tell what he was thinking.
“I guess I must look pretty stove up,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll tell you the truth, Jerry Lee,” he said propping himself on his forearm. “I feel stove up, too. That twister was rough as a cob.”
“Rough as Jersey Joe Walcott,” Jerry Lee said.
Mr. Gatlin nodded and smiled. “You know about Jersey Joe, do you?”
“He’s the champ. That means he can knock down anybody he wants.” Jerry Lee pretended to scowl and swung his right arm in a small circle, delivering an uppercut to some invisible foe. “Jersey Joe’s not afraid of anything.”
Mr. Gatlin turned his face to the trickle of water and coughed hard. “That gives him a leg up on me,” he said, wheezing out his words like there was a fishbone in his throat.
“I could get you an aspirin,” Jerry Lee told him. “My mama keeps some in the medicine chest.”
“That’s a kind offer,” said Mr. Gatlin. “But I’ve got my own aspirin at home. I just need to get there.”
“Where do you live?” Jerry Lee asked.
“Not far.” He reached down past the cement lip of the culvert and dipped his cupped hand into the creek. “You know where the stockyards are?” he asked, and splashed his face with water.
“I can hear the cows sometimes,” Jerry Lee said.
“I’ve got me a little place back of the holding pens,” he said, wiping the drips from his stubbly chin. “On a normal day, I could just walk right on over there. But today’s not a normal day for me.”
“No, sir.”
“You know why?”
Jerry Lee pointed to the place where Mr. Gatlin’s right leg came to a sudden stop. “You missing your wooden leg today,” he said.
Mr. Gatlin chuckled and nodded his head. “That’s exactly the problem, Jerry Lee. But you could help me out, if you wanted to.”
“You need my daddy’s wheelbarrow?”
“Thank you, but I don’t think that would do it.” Mr. Gatlin squinted out at the creek bank. “Do you know what crutches are?”
“My Aunt Nelda got crutches when she stepped in a gopher hole.”
“Well, that’s what I need.”
“But she lives in Skinum,” Jerry Lee told him.
“That’s all right, son, it doesn’t have to be those particular crutches.” He waved his hand at the opening of the tunnel. “I suspect there’s a whole mess of fallen tree branches out there from the tornado. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I need you to drag one down here. The biggest you can handle. One with a fork in it about yay-high.” He held his hand up to the concrete ceiling, taller than Jerry Lee’s head. “You understand?”
“Yes, sir.” This was the part he’d been waiting for. The favor. He would do Mr. Gatlin this favor, and then Mr. Gatlin would always be on his side, always protect him from the Enemy. He stood on the lip of the culvert. “I’ll get you a good one,” he said, and jumped to the near bank. He didn’t know why a haint needed a crutch to get home, but that part didn’t matter. Maybe haints could only fly after dark. Or maybe this was just a test, something Mr. Gatlin made up so Jerry Lee could prove himself. He climbed quickly to the crest and ran to his wagon, where he tucked his catcher’s mitt inside the wet bedsheet.
Mr. Gatlin was right, there were broken limbs everywhere. He ran from one to another, searching for the very best crutch. Most were too small, just spindly twigs with bunches of leaves. A few were too large, thicker than fence posts, and fanning out so wide that he knew he could never drag them down to the culvert. Some looked good at first, stout and dark with no leaves at all, but those all ended up being rotten.
It was like the story of the Three Bears, where everything was either too much or too little, until something in-between showed up and turned out to be just right. That’s what he needed now, the one that was in-between, and he knew it would be here somewhere because that was the lesson of the story, he could always find the exact thing he needed if he looked hard enough. Just like he had found Mr. Gatlin.
He ran a little further up the hill and climbed up onto the rock wall that ran along the back of the Crabtrees’ yard, where he wasn’t supposed to go. The Crabtrees had a little black and white dog with pointy ears and a flat nose that always barked and tried to snap at him when he came too close. But today it wasn’t there. Maybe the tornado had got the Crabtree’s dog the same as it had got Mr. Gatlin.
From the top of the wall he could see all the fallen branches on the hillside. He cupped his hands around his eyes to block the sun, and stared hard at the piles of brush dotting the slope. None of the limbs looked right. He took a few steps along the wall and was about to hop back to the ground when he noticed a thick, forked branch poking from a bush beside the Crabtrees’ back stoop. He couldn’t be sure until he’d pulled it out, but it looked like the size Mr. Gatlin needed—thick as the neck of a baseball bat, but twice as long, with all the little branches broken off already. If it wasn’t rotten, it would be just right for a crutch.
He jumped into the soft dirt of the flower bed and ran to the thick row of bushes along the back of the house. As he tugged at the stick, which was caught up somehow in the heart of the bush, he was startled by a sudden rapping at the kitchen window. It was unfriendly rapping, the kind that said, Get out of my yard.
Jerry Lee jerked hard at the stick, and as it broke free of the snag, he stumbled backward and tripped over the edge of one of the Crabtree’s sidewalk stones. He fell onto his backside just as the person who rapped on the window, Mrs. Crabtree, most likely, or maybe her maid, opened the back door half way. The little black and white dog burst through the opening and leapt from the concrete stoop toward Jerry Lee, snarling all the way. He tried to fend the dog off with his bare feet, kicking at it’s muzzle, but it was too quick for him, and before Jerry Lee could squirm away, the dog had bitten his foot and sunk its teeth in his leg, shaking its head back and forth and ripping the blue jeans that his cousin Arthur had just recently outgrown.
Jerry Lee grabbed up the perfect crutch and slammed it down on the dog’s head. It let go of his leg and jumped sideways, yelping, and Jerry Lee hoped this was his chance to get away. He scrambled to his feet and hobbled backward toward the rock wall, still holding the crutch and keeping his eye on the dog, which was already shaking off its injury and growling louder than before.
“Sic him, Chester!” came a woman’s voice from inside the darkness of the house, and the dog ran at him again. But this time Jerry Lee was better prepared, he had Mr. Gatlin’s crutch to keep the dog away instead of just his bare feet, and he aimed the pointy end, the end where the branch had broken unevenly from the tree, at the dog’s face to make it stop. But the dog didn’t stop at all, it sprang forward like all it wanted in the world was to tear Jerry Lee to pieces and if it first had to eat a stick to get there, then that was just fine. But the moment the dog leapt was also the moment Jerry Lee jabbed the stick forward, and the blade-like end of the branch disappeared into the dog’s open mouth. Jerry Lee could feel the jolt all the way up to his shoulders, and he knew he’d poked through something inside the dog’s throat.
The dog thudded to the ground and frantically scooted backward from Jerry Lee toward the safety of the house while blood spurted from its mouth onto the sidewalk stones. It turned and clawed its way back onto the stoop, spraying blood across the concrete and even up along the white siding of the house before it disappeared at last through the open doorway. The woman inside the house screamed.
Jerry Lee crossed to the rock wall and hoisted himself up using Mr. Gatlin’s crutch. The woman, probably Mrs. Crabtree, was still screaming as he jumped from the wall. He limped as fast as he could manage across the littered hillside. His mama would spank him for tearing his new jeans, but that couldn’t be helped. His leg was beginning to feel like fire, and on any other day he would have cried. But there was no time for that now. The Crabtrees might come after him for killing their dog, and if they did, he’d have to lead them far away. He would circle up through the woods above Mulberry Avenue, then sneak down past the Esso station and come up the creek from the other end. He couldn’t let anyone follow him back to the tunnel. Mr. Gatlin might be skittish in the daylight, and if the Crabtrees came around, Mr. Gatlin might disappear. Then the bargain would be broken.
He wondered if dogs could be haints. Maybe Chester’s spirit would track Jerry Lee down, like any dog could, and get back at him in the night.
No. He would bring Mr. Gatlin the perfect crutch, and Mr. Gatlin would protect him from Chester and from everything else, even the Enemy. Jerry Lee had made friends with a haint. He’d never have to be afraid of the dark again.
