Tales From the Tangled Wood by Steve Vernon

Author:Steve Vernon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sea tales, noir, pulp
Publisher: Stark Raven Publishing
Published: 2016-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

A Wriggle of Maggot

“DON’T PICK AT THAT scab,” I said.

“Why not?” Billy asked.

It was a pretty good question, and I suppose I ought to have a pretty good answer for it. I was the Grandpa, after all, and this was our sacred fishing trip to the Fence Woods. It wasn’t our first trip and I didn’t imagine that it would be our last, but my time in the Korean War had taught me that life and death could be awfully sudden things and ought not to be taken lightly.

I know I don’t look that old, but this here world is a river that runs a lot deeper than most folks can imagine. That’s something else I’ve learned, and I try to impart a little bit of what I’d picked up along the trail every day that I was given a little more time with Billy and I thanked what gods grew out there for the gift of that precious time.

“Scabs are a part of you,” I said. “Our wounds are what we wear over our hurt, and you ought to let a thing like that just lie where it’s growing.”

“What if it’s the scab’s time to come off?” Billy asked. “What if the hurt has gone away and there’s nothing left but an itch?”

“Even a lonely old itch can be a kind of company,” I told him, looking off into the woods at the memories buried out there. “You carry what you’re given and you grow it as best as you can.”

I tasted the stillness and the years of life and death that grew up and rotted in a forest like this. All of nature leaping up and lying down before us, entire life times acted out on this wooded canvas. A man ought not to let himself be blind to what’s growing on around him. The world is calling and a fellow ought to learn to listen to the secrets it has got to say.

“I’m not lonely,” Billy said. “Not so long as we got us.”

That was good enough to grin at. Billy was always so good for the healing of my soul, and that was a wonder when you thought of it hard. Life just hadn’t been all that kind to Billy with a mom who had drowned herself in a gin bottle, one shot glass at a time, and a daddy who had never been much good at sticking. I raised Billy up as best I could on my own and he seemed to keep his grin on right in spite of it all. My own missus had died a long time ago and I’d buried her out here on these woods. The law had given me more than a little trouble over those particular burial arrangements, but I’ve stopped listening to any government or council but the tom-tom that beats in the warm darkness of my heart.

Billy picked at the scab again. I knew that trying to tell a sixteen year old boy not to do

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