Charnel House by Anderson Fred

Author:Anderson, Fred [Anderson, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-04-04T18:30:00+00:00

2

The road crossed the railroad tracks at an angle. It was wide, four lanes with almost as much traffic as there had been on the highway coming to Belleville. To the right—toward the Tennessee River and Decatur—the calm muddy waters of the wildlife refuge bordered the road, heavily wooded islands and fingers of land rising from it. They looked like they would be fun to explore, Bobby thought, as long as you had a boat and some waders. Not far from the boys, a series of concrete bridges allowed the water to flow under the road, into a narrower, more swamp-like slough. He saw an ancient strip of asphalt running across that side, gradually descending down into the murky depths. The sight bothered him on an instinctual level, but he didn’t know why. Like a road to nothing.

“All kinds of good fishing out that way,” Joey said, pointing. “My daddy takes me sometimes. It’s pretty cool, but there are some scary places back in there. Deep water.”

“Pussy,” Tanner said.

They were close to the store, Bobby saw. The gravel lot wasn’t more than a hundred yards away on their left, an aluminum sign high atop a steel pole near the edge of the road announcing the place as Crossen’s Crossing. Tanner took point on the shoulder, and the boys began to trek single file against the traffic, their clothes whipping in the exhaust-laden breeze created by the passing cars and trucks.

“You haven’t been back there,” Joey said. “You’d be a pussy about it, too. We were in one of the little coves once and when I dropped anchor, it never hit bottom. The rope on that anchor was thirty feet long, daddy said. Thirty feet. The damn channel in the river isn’t even that deep!” He shivered, despite the warmth of the day. “Daddy said there must be a spring or cave or something down there. He said the limestone bedrock’s full of things like that. I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t like it. Felt like I was hanging over a tunnel to hell or something.”

“Does the widdle pussy need a hug?” Tanner taunted. You could tell he was grinning, Bobby thought. He wondered if his cousin had been waiting for the chance to use the baby talk back on his friend.

“Whatever, man. Suck my dick.” Joey cast one final worried look across the water, and then they were at the store.

A row of pickup trucks sat parked in the gravel lot in front of Crossen’s. Rusted metal signs advertising everything from RC Cola to Sweet Lassy Feeds to Pennzoil decorated the front of the aluminum-sided building, and through the plate glass windows on either side of the wooden door Bobby saw several overalled geezers gathered in cane chairs around a cast iron potbelly stove.

Bells stitched to a piece of felt hanging from the inside doorknob jangled when Tanner pushed the door open, and the lively conversation going on within paused for a moment as the group of old men looked to see who was coming in.

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