CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

March 27_free read_2687word count

Still continuing The Phantom Logging Operation

Chapter 25

         Sooner than I could have expected, the perimeter lines had been laid out; twine marked off the nursery's dimensions, stakes stood proud at the corners, and I was ready to begin delineating the interior rooms and to decide in which corner to place the greenhouse. I knew I ought to have planned all this out in advance; yet I hadn't been long finished building the cabin, and constructing an indoor privy and small shower stall had proved particularly time-consuming. I had been glad that I had waited till the last minute on that, after the cabin's construction had been completed and I had the wood-stove in place, and had begun adding some furniture, a kitchen table, chairs, and bedstead first of all-then the privy. That had been left till last because I wasn't sure of my skills at plumbing; as the matter progressed, I proved to be able enough, but because of my anxiety and uncertainty, I proceeded slowly, rather like the tortoise of nursery rhyme fame than the hare. In the meantime I was fortunate to have the use of the outhouse located quite some distance beyond the ruins of the old farmhouse that stood on my property, to the North and some distance East of where I decided to build my own homestead. I had found the “necessary,” as it was termed in the old days, while hunting around the ruins, and immediately put it to use. Even on the really cold nights I ended up sleeping on the back seat of the Merc wrapped in my sleeping bag, I was glad that privy stood near-or near enough. That also meant I could take what time I needed to complete the cabin's indoor facilities, and just as well that was; I did acceptably well, but at one point nearly encountered an unexpected shower when my wrench slipped and stripped a pipe joint.





         Today none of that difficulty emerged, and the three of us worked in tandem like an off-number team of draft horses. The boys followed my lead and my directions as if they had been born to it, and by 11 o'clock we had not just the perimeter lines but the wood framing the perimeter-simply narrow boards pounded into the ground-in place and were ready for a quick lunch before spending what promised to be a very productive afternoon. While I rustled up flapjacks, sausages, and bacon biscuits at the wood stove, I had the boys wash up too, and informed them that since the day was going so well we would work on till almost dark, if that was not amiss with them. They agreed, telling me their mother did not expect them before dark, and that they would return the hand grader to their uncle when they returned that evening to Collins Junction, and make sure he marked off my rental. Then they found themselves too occupied with lunch to talk, and soon we were back out at the Nursery layout, and spent the afternoon placing the floor pattern. The next big job would be construction of the Greenhouse, which I had decided would be the entire East side of the structure, running from the North wall to the South front wall. It would look out over my future garage and woodshed, but I didn't think that would be a problem for the plants, nor would the farther vista of the old farmhouse ruins, scarcely visible through the copse of pines standing on the far side of my drive.





         When we finished at dusk, I gave the boys a bag of cooled biscuits to take along, suggesting they might if they could bring along another bag of flour in the morning, unless they arrived too early for the stores to be open. They took along Mr. Oakes' hand grader, but we had stacked all the tools and the remaining lumber under the tarp. In the morning they would bring up another load. I apologized that they found themselves doing all this cartage, but they assured me that they didn't mind at all-and I noticed their secret smiles when I paid them well for the day's work.

Chapter 26

         I had been so certain in my heart that the prolonged and strenuous manual labor, coupled with devoting my every waking thought to accurately planning out the construction and the dimensions, would send me securely into sleep and at an early hour. But such  proved a pipe dream. The new series of horrors began as I sat alone at the kitchen table, chowing down a quick dinner after dusk. I had fried up the two trout the butcher had saved for me the day before, which I had stored in the ice house since early yesterday afternoon. It would have made a tasty meal, if not for the sudden roar of a motor beside the cabin, and the sounds of mud clots splashing against the near wall. I leapt up and rushed out the back door, eschewing stopping at the window, and ran to the corner, looking up and down the drive in both directions. I still could hear the motor's roar, still hear the pound of mud against the wall closer to the drive, but no vehicle was visible, no ruts showed up in my newly smoothed drive, no mud splashes appeared on my cabin wall. Nothing to show for the sound, which disappeared as suddenly as it had arisen. I threw up my hands in stunned exasperation, and returned to my dinner. No longer was I hungry, but Mamma had taught me well “waste not, want not,” so I finished the last half of the second trout and got up to clean up my plate, wondering what would happen next, if anything at all. While I washed the dishes, I realized how gratified I was that I now had an indoor facility and did not have to cross my yard into the abandoned lot and walk the distance beyond the old ruins to the outdoor privy. I really was thankful to avoid that on this night of all nights, just as on two nights ago during that horrible unexpected thunderstorm.





         Dishes finished and stacked in the drain without event, I cleaned out the percolator and readied it for the morning, which would come early enough-especially if the twins arrived at the crack of dawn hunting a sturdy breakfast! As I briefly showered, over the cascading stream I once again thought I had heard a train whistle, and remembered the sound rippling through the distance as I ran the dishwater. I yanked the water faucets to off, but heard nothing-the whistle had dissipated immediately, just as while running the dishwater. I hurriedly finished my shower, toweled off, and headed for bed, where I fell asleep within seconds, it seemed. But a peaceful rest was not to be for me this night, any more than last night's spell.





         I must have been deep in sleep for a few hours when I suddenly startled awake, convinced a piercing train whistle had sounded in my ear. I opened my eyes to a dark bedroom, expecting the blazing single eye of a locomotive headlight, but nothing was amiss. I heard crickets, an owl hooting nearby, a night hawk's screech; that was all. Rolling over I checked the old alarm clock my Mamma had used for years: nearly midnight. I lay back down and closed my eyes, headed once more for a deep and restful sleep, and was nearly there when the night's peace was interrupted once again, this time by the unmistakable noise of a semi-truck's engine climbing a steep grade. Now as I mentioned in an earlier chapter, my part of the County is relatively flat. There are no grades-to the North beyond The confines of The Big Forest is a range of hills, but to the best of my knowledge, no roads there were open to truck traffic, and I could not have heard an engine from that extended distance anyway, not even in the quiet of the night. Yet the labored groan of a loaded semi sounded clear, and now in addition I could hear the rattle of chained logs as the semi's load shifted from side to side. Oh my, what had I encountered now??





                   Feb. 15:





         I rolled to the right to look out the west window, next to my bed. Empty countryside as far as the eye could see, nothing passed on the road to the west, toward Knox and The Big Forest.


So I leaped out of bed and headed for the front window facing the south; still nothing, but that engine grind was that much clearer. I went on into the living room and peeked around the curtain at the picture window: here it came-faded red painted cab, older model, hauling a clearly overpacked load of shifting, rolling, bouncing logs-and these were packed all wrongly, for the crowns showed at both ends of the flatbed trailer. That is, instead of the logs being loaded all end to end, with the crowns at one end, at the back of the trailer, and the cut stump ends all together, towards the cab, this load resembled the wreck a child makes of his Tinker Toys, when he is tired and sleepy and needing his sleep but unwilling, and tosses them all askew and asunder.





         No wonder the log load reeled and rolled, like a batch of drunken sailors on leave from Great Lakes Naval Training Camp. For certain, that load was either going to begin slippin' loose, log by log, or that truck was going to flip on the grade-wait! Grade! What grade? Knox Road was smooth and flat from


about 13 miles east of my cabin, where the road turned beside open farmland and meadow and headed south to Collins Junction, the County Seat, along past my cabin 12 more miles west to Knox, and beyond that about 2-3 miles distance to the eastern point of The Big Forest, which opened up like a light bulb from that point on, West and North, and where Knox Road ended. There was no grade; yet here in front of me, as I looked to the east, I saw-a grade. About 7 percent, I adjudged, but the immense overload on the flatbed made the difficulty on that engine probably more like 12 percent with a steel load. Certainly the grinding worsened each moment, till it seemed as if the pistons would knock themselves silly, bust loose, and fly on out of the engine, off into space just to gain some relief.





         But no, the raggedy old logging truck continued to climb the grade toward me (Grade?? my brain called) and by now I could see around the curve (Curve??) to the rear of the trailer, where black smoke belched out. Clearly not only the pistons were in need, but the oil situation as well. That truck surely could not run much longer, and I sure hope it didn't falter to a halt-right here in front of my land-right here in the road opposite my cabin—right within sight of my big picture window of which I stood so proud-and yes it did-exactly that. That steep grade had proved too much for it (What Grade??? insisted my mind) and the engine shook, rattled, belched, coughed-and died.  To the east, behind the trailer, the grade had now mutated to about 12 per cent-steep-and the road on which the log truck had stopped had also raised, so that from my viewpoint standing at the edge of the window, my eyes were on a level with the cab's wheels, but I could not see inside. The passenger side faced me, and I saw no movement by the window-no surprise there, after the events of the last few days.





          (Rory, I said to myself, you're a skilled diesel man and a good one-if this were an ordinary situation you could go out there and offer to help out what you could. But this is no ordinary situation and you'd do best to just stay put, and go on back to sleep.)  Already I had forgotten that just a moment before, when I thought about the grade being more like 12 per cent than 7, it had indeed changed into 12 per cent; and sure enough, just as I thought about how I would offer to try to help, if the circumstances outside had been normal, I heard the driver's door chunk, and heavy boots clomp down onto the asphalt. I could see under the cab to the other side, and I watched two boots hit the road, then turn toward the front of the cab, where they disappeared from my view. I knew I really, really, should not continue to stand in front of the picture window. Instead, I should drop the curtain and run back to my bedroom, locking its door behind me and cowering under the covers. Thinking of this, I checked immediately that the front door was locked and bolted, then raced to the back door and checked it too, and the three kitchen windows. All were fine. Back into the front room, I could hear the stomp of work boots hitting asphalt, then silence as the driver stepped up onto the grassy lawn. I halted, knowing once more that I needed to run for the bed and hide; but that would be just so childish, would it not? After all, I was a man (even though Leill's treatment of me made me feel more like a mouse or a worm) and men don't hide and cower and cringe. My Daddy faced down the Huns in the European Theater and I could face whatever this was. So I thought, until I pulled back the edge of the curtain once again and faced what approached my front door.





         A man from the boots up to the chest, two feet in dusty scuffed-up boots, two legs in faded dirty jeans, black belt, jean jacket over black t-shirt, soiled red bandanna tied around the neck. Oh, the neck! It was present, as it normally should be on any usual human being, but on the neck, where ought to be attached a head, with a face and eyes and mouth and ears and nose, sometimes hair-was not a head, but a-a stump, like a tree leaves after cutting, if the stump had been shorn of bark and then whittled at and smoothed and scraped until it resembled a cypress knob in the swamp, all beige and fibrous and rounded and horrifying-


I dropped the curtain and sped for the bed, slamming and locking the bedroom door, and was in a flash up under the bed, no not under the covers, beneath the bed, reaching for the 12-gauge I kept there for emergencies or potential fall season deer hunting (though that was not likely for me), grabbed on to that grip like it was life's end for me, and shivered and shook to the pounding on my front door-the infernal, eternal pounding that seemed to go on and on to the end of life-though it probably lasted not more than a minute; then the silence, except for a swishing of boots dragging across the grass, then the clomp-clomp of boots on asphalt, silence again, then the clunk of a door. And incredibly, an engine fired, coughed, belched, backfired, belched again (I could taste the oily black smoke!) and labored off, grinding gears, misfiring pistons, chugging away and beyond-to where? Only one place I could think of-to The Big Forest, to the East. Yet I remained under the bed all of the remainder of the night-and in the morning, could not peel my fingers loose from the shotgun's grip for a very, very, long time. It was only later, on the verge of sleep, that I recalled the name I had seen scratched across the passenger door:

Property of


Testament Logging Corporation


Madison Mills

and written across the bottom of the metal frame of the log-bed trailer was the phrase “Murder Log.”