4 minute read
Family Business Michael Coombs
from Windhover Vol. LV
by Windhover
Michael Coombs Family Business
The car came to a lurching stop in the mud. Jaye stepped out, taking a long stride over the trench of it that her tires had dug up. She looked back at the dirtied sedan uneasily. In the soupy nighttime darkness you could only make out a faint grey orb on the windshield, mimicking the moon. She turned and faced the brush-strewn path ahead of her. An arrow-shaped wooden sign pointed down it, with “SAHGITAW THIS WAY” carved into the face of it. Jaye sighed, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and began the walk.
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Crickets chirped incessantly, grouped in many little choruses that echoed together through the woods. She felt the crunch of curled brown leaves beneath her flats, making the ground uneven and demanding short, certain steps. Only the moon could be her guide (a flashlight was risky, too risky), and so she kept her eyes straight ahead and let her ears take care of the surroundings. She was sweating more with each passing second and she felt the armpits of her thin khaki shirt begin to soak. Together with the wet southern Virginia air and the swampy terrain, it left a taste in her mouth of long summer campout nights spent peeing behind bushes. Her fingers started to tingle. She walked faster.
She stopped a moment later. She saw the outline of a building through the thin cracks between the trees. She followed the weeded curve of the road and poked her head around an old oak coated with vines. Through the moonlight, she made out a decrepit shed topped with a corrugated metal roof. She frowned at the sight. It was new.
The door, fashioned out of a sheet of plywood, rustled with life. Jaye ducked behind the tree, keeping her ears perked. She heard it creak open and someone stepped cautiously into the dirt. The familiar ka-cha of a pump-action shotgun followed. Her hand wandered to her hip. She gripped the holster and took a long breath. She submerged herself into her old mindset, fishing through her brain for what the old Jaye would do.
She thought of a long shooting range full of dead grass. She thought of huge wrinkled hands steadying her awkward grip. She thought of a single pigeon fluttering hopelessly into the sky, desperate to get away, desperate to find a friend. She thought of the shell, thick and red and fiery hot, rocketing out of the barrel and careening into the sky. She thought of Hickory’s laughter.
She heard the door creak back into place. Another cautious glance beyond the oak and then she was off, moving quietly but quickly. She’d be gone by the time they could aim. All the while her handgun’s holster burned against her.
*
Sahgitaw hadn’t changed in 20 years, at least not outwardly. Houses were made quickly and cheaply, with rubbery white paint and makeshift shingles on the roofs. It was more settlement than town, only a few blocks gridded out by a winding light-brown road. The road was bumpy, sometimes muddy, and wide enough for a single car, no more. It snaked through the lines between each building and then up a swampy slope, eventually leading out of the woods to a long-abandoned service road. Jaye hadn’t entered through that side. It seemed safer at first glance, but then Hickory would have seen her coming for sure.
The long rectangular saloon at the center of it all was the one building where the path didn’t connect right up to the door. It was situated by itself, on a small grassy hill above the rest of the shabby houses. Double
doors met patrons on each side, and tiny circular windows across the walls were left open to leak out cigarette smoke and the sounds of raucous laughter, shuffling feet. The sound was constant in the day and intermittent in the night. Sleeping schedules were never too consistent.
It was the type of town one had to know about in order to visit. If an outsider was unlucky enough to stumble upon it, it was a coin flip whether or not they would be run out or shot on sight. The ones that lived there tended to be around for specific reasons and short time frames. Only a few kept their little encampments up year-round, sleeping and eating there even through the foggy winters and boiling summers. Hickory was one of those few. Sahgitaw had been his home for Jaye’s entire life. She knew it only through scattered summertime visits as a child. Her father would hold her close to his side, a hand glued to her shoulder as if he was terrified to lose track of her. She’d never known any details or what made it the way it was. It was only on her first visit after her father died, 14 years old with no hand on her shoulder, that she was made aware of the whole story. She crept into town with the curving shade of the trees as her mask. It was a slow night at the saloon. The twangy melody of a Hank Williams song drifted out of the open windows, but no conversation accompanied it. If she focused she could make out the occasional clink of a glass. The bartender and a lone patron, most likely. Thank God for my luck, she thought.
