Shooting Creek and Other Stories by Scott Loring Sanders

Author:Scott Loring Sanders
Format: epub

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Moss Man

“I never seen him directly,” said Bubba, the proprietor of the Lonely Tavern, where I sat drinking a can of Pabst after my third day in town. Bubba also ran the gas station/convenience store which sold not only gas and snacks, but every plastic Jersey Devil trinket and keychain imaginable. And I’m not talking about hockey team souvenirs. I’m talking about various replicas of the beast who had supposedly haunted the area for the last two centuries. Distorted face, elongated fangs, little T-Rex arms with bent wrists, veiny batwings protruding from its back. That’s the Jersey Devil I mean.

Bubba didn’t look like he should’ve been named Bubba at all. Tall and thin with white hair, sixty-ish, and a pair of over-sized glasses, he looked more like a Kenneth or Stuart. He stood behind the lacquered bar, sipping on a draft while I sat on a stool next to Katherine, the owner of the adjoining Lonely Tavern Lodge where I’d been residing. The pair had become my acquaintances each evening after I’d been out talking to people, driving around the desolate swamps and bogs trying to gather info from the locals (or Pineys, as they preferred) who, more often than not, weren’t overly excited to speak with me.

“The whole thing’s bullshit,” said Katherine, whose rough voice could be attributed—at least in part—to cigarettes, one of which currently wobbled between her lips. Apparently, Chris Christie’s state-wide smoking ban in restaurants and bars didn’t apply here. A hard woman, this one was. I’d smelled liquor on her breath that first morning when I’d strolled into the lobby to get a room. “But bullshit or not,” she said, “the Jersey Devil’s the only reason me and Bubba can scratch two dimes together, so I’m thankful to have him around. Tourists eat it up.”

She finished her beer, and Bubba grabbed the empty glass without being asked. He angled it beneath the tap, expertly drawing a head that bulged over the rim like a white, foamy muffin-top. That exact ritual had probably been repeated tens of thousands of times. Hell, I’d witnessed nearly a dozen refills within the past two hours, with no money exchanged. Yet Katherine was as steady and even-keeled as the sturdiest ship.

“You’ve probably heard fifteen variations already,” said Bubba. “Everybody’s got their own version, but I’ve lived here all my life and my story’s been passed down all the way back from my great-great-granddaddy.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. I opened my pad and flipped through the notes for my article. My boss had sent me south to the sweltering, bug-infested Pine Barrens to inquire about the mutilated carcasses that had been showing up lately. Possum, deer, even a bobcat, their bones snapped and twisted, their pelts peeled back from their bodies. It was impossible not to discuss the Devil when such things occurred, and if I could spin it, I would. As my boss had told me, “The Jersey Devil sells copy. Period.”

I lifted my empty, gave it a little shake in Bubba’s direction.

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