Black Stump Ridge by John Manning; Forrest Hedrick

Author:John Manning; Forrest Hedrick [Hedrick, John Manning; Forrest]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Horror, General, Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 9781450289160
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

“I’m sure of what we need to do, boys,” Jake said as he stared up at the fog-shrouded mountain. “I’m just not real sure of how we’re gonna do it. We got shine that’s ready to ship but we dasn’t go up there to get it. Leastwise, not ‘til Granny’s had a chance to put the wards back up. It ain’t safe.”

Billy Ray looked up from the stick he’d been whittling. A small pile of curled shavings lay between his booted feet. “We can’t just leave it up there, Pa. There’s people waitin’ for it.”

“Don’t I know it?” Jake shook his head. “Doc Johnson called me yesterday from Atlanta wantin’ t’know where his delivery was. I told him it wasn’t quite ready, yet.”

“So, how long’s it gonna take for her to do what she needs to do?”

“I don’t know, son. Ain’t nothin’ like this ever happened in my lifetime. I don’t know if she can do it.”

“What’s the problem?” Bubba asked. He was two years younger than Billy Ray and a little slower thinking. Where Billy provided the brains to help Jake run the bootlegging operation, Bubba was the brawn. “All she’s gotta do is remake those silver marks, right? That can’t be too hard.”

Jake looked from one to the other. His sons couldn’t be more different from each other. Billy Ray was short and thin, with black hair and eyes equally dark. Bubba was tall, bulky, light haired, and hazel eyed. They were good boys, though, as good as any man could expect and better than many these days. He supposed it didn’t really matter from whose loins the seed sprang. He loved them both and they both loved and respected him. Besides, if his wife had cheated on him, then she’d already paid for it when she gave birth to Bubba. The ordeal had done something to her insides, something the doctors couldn’t fix. She died five years later broken in body and mind.

“You’re right, Bubba. If that’s all there was to it she could have it done before nightfall and we’d be back in business. Hell, if that’s all there was, you or me or Billy Ray could just go up there an’ paint little marks.” Jake glanced toward the ridge again. “It ain’t just makin’ marks. There’s stuff only Granny knows how to do, stuff that was passed down to her from her granny and her granny before her. It’s Cherokee magic passed on by medicine men a long time back. Besides, those silver marks don’t do any good if he’s on the outside. Everything’s gotta be done right or it don’t do no good.”

“Is he even real?” Billy went back to his whittling. “I mean, no one’s ever seen him so far as I know. How do we know it ain’t just superstition?”

Jake shook his head. That was the problem with the young ones these days. They saw so many movies, with their special computerized effects, that they didn’t believe in anything anymore.

“Didn’t you hear the fiddle music last night?” he asked his sons.

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