A Convenant in Mud

East of Eureka, the hills rise in wild tangles of thorny brush and scrub pine, poor heirs to once mighty redwoods.  After clear-cutting the slopes, lumber companies moved on leaving a wasteland that slowly depopulated.  Climbing through this lonely land, the car towing the trailer appeared to be bobbing through a sea of stumps as it crossed denuded ridges.

    The driver turned north off Highway 299 to follow the canyon of the Trinity River.  Once inside the Hoopa Indian Reservation, the land turned lush with forests of fir.  The region’s remoteness attracted Judy Krantz.  Solitude suited her and her intention.  So did the weather, a combination of misty mornings and warm afternoons.  The most precious possession in her U-Haul was a baggie filled with high-grade marijuana seeds.

    It had been hard finding help to unload the trailer.  She’d gotten plenty of responses to her ad in the tribal newsletter.  The unemployment rate on the reservation was over forty percent, but every time she gave directions to her new place, the caller had simply hung up.

    “I’ll give you a hundred dollars apiece.  Two guys can do the whole job in a couple of hours,” she’d blurted to the last person on the line.

    The two teenagers who showed up unloaded everything in ninety minutes.  The young men met her at the cutoff onto the rutted forest service road, hopped onto the running boards of the trailer, and started banging on the sides telling her to hurry up.  When she stopped the car on the ridgeline where her cabin was perched, one of them was at the driver’s window demanding the door key before she’d even set the parking brake.  His partner was already on the porch yelling at his buddy to toss the key over.

    It was no use trying to strike up conversation.  Judy could only stand by and watch.  The boys were breathless from working so quickly and voiced little more than an occasional grunt.  After the pair had pocketed their dough and run off down the road, Judy sat on the veranda enjoying the view.

    Her cabin was sited on a long narrow meadow atop a forested hill.  On one side was the rugged canyon of the Trinity River.  To the west, thickly timbered ridges blurred into the haze on the horizon.  Not only was the scenery spectacular, it was all Indian land.  Outside law enforcement agencies, including the ham fisted and federally funded State Drug Enforcement Task Team, needed permission from the tribal council to enter, and the reservation’s police force was woefully undermanned.   

    After the experience with the movers, Judy worried whether she was going to have trouble getting to know the locals.  She needed help to set up a pot patch.  It didn’t take her long to find a partner.   

    Judy Krantz and Joe Highhat Machaw made an odd couple in the dark woods of Douglas Fir.  Struggling under the weight of backpacks, they bushwhacked their way over a saddle riddled with shattered wood from trees felled by lightning.  At the next ridgeline, the two paused and looked back towards Judy’s cabin visible across the way beyond a flat bottomed chasm gone riot with vines that half buried dying trees around a small pond.

    Judy stared down at the murky water and then looked up to see if it had begun to rain.  Something was pocking the pool.  Machaw shifted his pack, took off his cap, and checked the skies too.

    “We better get going.  It’s going to start raining soon,” he said.

     Machaw seemed the shorter standing next to Judy, but both were five foot eight.  Machaw was simply twice as wide and about double Judy’s age.  Fiftyish is all he would say.

    “What about down there in the mud flats at the south end of the pond?”  Judy said pointing down.  “It should get plenty of sun, there’s water close by, and I don’t think anybody’s going to tramp through all that undergrowth.”

    Machaw grabbed her by the arm and began dragging her down the trail.  Judy’d have been scared by what he was doing if Machaw weren’t talking like he was scared himself.

    “We’re not going down there.  It’s bad enough we have to walk above it.  That’s Tupman’s Hollow, and old man Tupman don’t like people nosing around his place.”

    Judy swung her arm releasing Machaw’s grip.  She wanted him to stop and explain himself, but his broad back slapped the brush as he kept rushing forward.

    “I thought you said everything around here was communally owned by the reservation,” Judy said.

    She didn’t want to loose sight of Machaw snaking along the game trail, and she was hurrying to keep up.

    “Let’s just say Tupman’s got certain proprietary rights down there.  He’s got a still or something around that pond that he don’t want nobody messing with,” Machaw called over his shoulder.

    “Is this guy a Hoopa?”  Judy asked.

    She was watching her footing and so ran right into Machaw when he stopped to face her.

    “I don’t know what Tupman is.  I don’t want to know.  That’s the way it’s going to be.  Understand?  If you can’t live with it, let’s just call things quit right now,” Machaw shouted.

    He started staring so intently into the dense foliage all around that Judy couldn’t help scanning the undergrowth herself.

    “Easy there, Highhat.  You just got my curiosity up, is all,” she said clapping one of his shoulders.   

    Machaw stiffened at her touch.

    “This is no place to be curious in,” he hissed.  “We’re six miles from the town that bills itself Bigfoot Capital of the World.  Why do you suppose there so many sightings around here?”

    “Because the Willet’s Chamber of Commerce wanted a hook to draw tourists to their Bigfoot Days Festival,” Judy said holding her arms akimbo.  “Bigfoot?  Come on.”

    “Not Bigfoot.  Something worse,” Machaw said.  His face was so gorged with blood he looked like an old style tinted Hollywood Indian.  “Bigfoot’s only a legend you stole from my people, but Tupman is real, and what he does to people who cross him is real.  What he’s done to my boy is very real.  I have over a hundred thousand dollars in medical bills to prove it.  That’s the only reason I’ve teamed up with you.  Living where you do, you’ll learn soon enough what I mean.  You’ll find strange clumps of mud in your pasture and see dark shapes scurrying through the trees.  Just pray you never have to watch a man lather himself up with mud down in the hollow.  It ain’t a fit sight to see.”

    Despite Judy’s prodding, Machaw refused to say another word on the subject.  He did however lead her to an excellent spot for a marijuana plantation.  They spent the rest of the day planting the seedlings they’d packed in.  A hundred small shoots lay tamped into a series of tiny terraces that ended abruptly in a cliff above the Trinity River.  A spring running along one side of the ledges would provide irrigation, and a wall of thorn studded berry bushes that had to be crawled through camouflaged the access from above.  The site faced south for good sun in a twist of the canyon so narrow that spotter planes would have to remain above the ridgeline more than two hundred feet overhead.  At that altitude, the plants would be indistinguishable among the trees.

    Back in her cabin, Judy kept telling herself she’d had a productive day.  It didn’t dispel her nervousness over Machaw’s tall tales about Tupman and mud men.  Two joints and half a bottle of wine did.  As she lay zonked on the couch stereo blasting, a full moon, the first one of spring, shone so brightly through the window she became restless.  Walking crookedly to the door, she stood on the porch watching the Trinity River gleam like an aluminum sword.  From the corner of her eye, she saw dark shapes ambling through the forest at the edge of the clearing.

    “I don’t want to know,” she said going back inside.

    She polished off the rest of the bottle of wine and passed out.

    All April, torrential rains kept her largely confined to the house.  By May, cabin fever had her so addled that she dashed outside at the first break in the clouds.  The dark shapes she’d once seen were a dim memory, and Judy feared her crop had been washed away.  Halfway across the field in front of the house, she started cursing a blue streak when her boot squished into a dark, gooey pile.  Running her foot sideways through the grass, she noticed mud, not cow dung on her shoe.  The entire meadow was spotted with clumps of the stuff.

    In the forest, water dripping from the trees mimicked the sound of rain.  All across the saddle separating her cabin’s ridge from the next, the fallen trees were festooned with mud.  Judy had just started down the following slope when she caught a glimpse of a dark figure in black rain gear coming towards her.  Rather than meet up with a stranger alone in the woods, she ducked behind some bushes hoping the man hadn’t seen her.  As she squatted and peered through the branches, it started to rain.  Her view was thus obscured and only momentary, but it was enough to tell the man was neither Negro nor wearing a raincoat.  He was simply encased from head to toe in mud so thick it rendered him virtually featureless.

    For agonizing minutes, Judy cowered shivering and waiting for the stygian form to get way past her.  When she ventured back onto the trail, she saw the brush was spattered with flecks of mud where branches bordered the path.  Judy decided she didn’t need to see her plants that badly.  As she crossed back over the saddle, it was raining buckets, but that didn’t seem to be what was roiling the waters of the pond below.  Black things kept bobbing up towards the surface then sinking back under as if yanked from below.

    When Judy reached her cabin, she built a roaring fire and called up Machaw.

    “Hey there, Highhat.  I tried checking out our plants, but somebody was up that way,” she said.

    “You crazy going out in weather like this?”  Machaw said.

    Judy recalled the last time she visited Machaw he was in his backyard working on a pickup in the pouring rain.

    “Look, I can see landslides all along the slope across the river.  I figured I’d better find out if our crop was still there,” she said.  Then she spoke in more hushed tones.  “Joe, I saw one of those mud people you were telling me about.”

    There was a long pause before Machaw spoke in a subdued voice.

    “Judy, they won’t hurt you.  They’ll just run off if they see you.  Unless of course they’re with Tupman.”

    Judy was looking out her kitchen window and thought she spied movement in the trees, but the forest was too far off to see much of anything in such rain.  She was mad at herself for letting her imagination run wild and angry with Machaw for feeding it.

    “What are you trying to say?  That people who tangle with Tupman end up covered in mud?  Have you actually seen this happen?”  She shouted.

    Now it was Machaw’s turn to sound angry.

    “Listen, I got me a boy who scratched himself blind because Tupman put an itch in him.  I’ve taken him to doctors and hospitals all over the country, but the only relief that poor kid gets is from mud mixed with pond water from down in that hollow.”

    Judy yanked the phone away from her ear when she heard the receiver slam down hard.  She was a long time getting back on the good side of Joe Highhat Machaw.

    Not that she didn’t make a special effort.  Judy knew few people up this way, none that she trusted, and she wasn’t about to check on her plants alone again.  Besides, Machaw was good company when he wasn’t telling wild yarns about mud men.  He had a droll manner that was utterly charming and completely at odds with what he was like when the subject of Tupman came up.  So she never spoke the name again.  Even when they were out weeding and watering their plants and dark shapes hurtled by through the underbrush, she pretended not to notice, and Machaw never said a word.

    As the days lengthened, the plants started to swell in size and flower.  Judy traveled all over Northern California meeting dealers and arranging to market her crop.  She figured she’d clear enough to make a down payment on a house in San Francisco and even persuaded a realtor to drive all the way from The City to draw up a preparatory bid on a fixer upper in the Haight District.

    She flung open the door ready to overwhelm the man with gratitude for having come so far.  Judy’d put on a tight fitting, ankle length dress that showed how lean and accessible she was because it had been a long time between romances and the guy was kind of cute.  Only she’d never be desperate enough to go for the gentleman standing on her porch.  One look at the stringy white hair sprouting beneath the stovepipe hat told her who he was, but she asked anyway and prayed it was just some wandering tramp.

    “Who are you?”

    “I be Aphis Tupman,” the man said.

    He smiled revealing long teeth the color of ivory left in the sun to rot.  Judy had been fantasizing about such an encounter ever since Machaw mentioned the man.  The hair was right, but she’d pictured Tupman taller with piercing black eyes.  Even if he could stand up straight which didn’t seem likely considering how pronounced his stoop, the man standing on her porch couldn’t be more than five feet even, and his eyes were milky blue.

    “Yeah, so?  What do you want?”  Judy asked.

    She had pulled the door partway closed wedging herself in the remaining slit ready to duck back inside.

    “Iffen you be mannered woman, you’d let me in.  Sensible woman’d do the same.”

    The man didn’t just sound archaic; he dressed like a figure in a daguerreotype.  In addition to the stovepipe hat, he wore leather breeches, a railroad conductor’s vest complete with a gold watch chain showing, a starched linen shirt, and hobnailed boots.

    “Well, I don’t claim to have the best manners, but I certainly have enough sense not to let strangers in my house at night.  Anything you’ve got to say, you can say from right there,” Judy said.

    Tupman put two tobacco stained fingers into his mouth and whistled shrilly.  From the edge of the forest, a horde of dark shapes emerged into the clearing and started shambling towards the house.

    “Sure a that are ye?”  Tupman said and again revealed his yellowed teeth streaked with tarter.  “Best talk’s done over drink’s what I always says.”

    Judy looked past him at the line of black figures closing in on the house and stepped aside to let Tupman pass.

    “Thankee,” he said and hopped across the threshold slamming the door shut behind him.

    Judy went over to the liquor cabinet and got out a bottle of wine.  When she offered Tupman a glass, he started to cackle like a rooster being strangled.  Judy couldn’t tell whether he was doubling over chortling or merely sitting on the couch, his movements were so herky-jerky.  He talked between peals of laughter.

    “Got one a them Boo-joo-lays?  Figure I’ll fancy that?  No matter.  I seen fit to bring my own stock.  Best fetch some glasses.  Less a course you be wantin it straight outta the bottle."

    Judy stood with her back pressed against the far wall.  She was trying to stay as far away from the couch as possible while still keeping an eye on the man seated on it.

    “No thanks.  I’m not having any,” she said weakly.

    Tupman’s cackling ceased as if sucked away.  He was looking up at her from beneath the brim of his hat, and his eyes were no longer milky, but gleamed like diamonds.

    “You don’t understand, lady.  I’s offerin you a drink outta my bottle.”

    Tupman took off his hat.  Judy expected him to have a pointed head, but it was flat, so flat the man could readily balance a half-pint bottle inside his hat.  The container had no label and was filled with something that looked darker than any store bought liquor.  Tupman sat hunched over tapping his hat against the bottle.  Watching the movement made Judy think of Machaw and his strange middle name.  Tupman saw her stare and, Judy imagined, read right through to her thoughts.

    “Got this here hat from your Injin friend,” Tupman said and studied the hat as if seeing it for the first time.  “I said, ‘Machaw, gimmie that hat,’ and he done just that.  Kind a him, weren’t it?”

    “Yes, he’s very kind,” Judy stammered.

    “See, I had me a heap a trouble with one a his boys, while back.  Had to teach the pup respect for his elders.  Gave him a dose a somethin he weren’t likely to forget, but then I needed to be sure there weren’t no bad blood twixt me and his pa.   I know’d once Machaw gimmie his namesake hat there’d be no further feudin,” Tupman said and carelessly tossed the hat onto the coffee table.  “Machaw got that hat from his grandpappy, he did.  White fellar.  Know’d him once.  Shot him twice.”

    “I’ll get the glasses,” Judy said and fled into the kitchen as Tupman began laughing again.

    She made a beeline for the back door, but when she threw it open, a man covered head to toe in mud was standing on the stoop.  He was slapping his face causing spatters of muck to spray sideways from his head.  His slack-jawed mouth oozed gruel as he moaned, "naagh, naagh, naagh.”  Judy screamed and slammed the door.  She could hear Tupman laughing in the living room.

    She got two glasses out of the cupboard and held them in one hand.  With the other, she carefully inserted the biggest knife from her utensil drawer into the top of her calf high boot.

    Tupman declined to take the glasses when she extended them towards him.

    “Just hold em out level.  My, but your hands do shake some,” he said pouring liquor into the tumblers.

    The booze was the color of blackstrap molasses and had a kerosene smell.  Judy waited for Tupman to down his shot in a gulp before taking a timorous sip from her glass.  The stuff was sweet to her tongue, but burned going down, and when it hit her stomach, she shuddered involuntarily causing Tupman to guffaw.

    “I’ve heard you’ve got a still down in the hollow.  Is this some of your brew?”  Judy asked as she carefully seated herself in a rocking chair.

    “Don’t go payin no mind to what Injins says a me.  I ain’t got no still,” Tupman said and poured himself another shot and held it up to the light.  “This here’s corn liquor made by the fellar what built this place.  Took the barrel from that corner right yonder.  He weren’t gonna have no use for it after he done took to my pond water.  That makes her fittin sippin for us to do business on.”

    Judy was sitting on the edge of her chair afraid that if she rocked back, the knife hidden in her shoe would cut into her leg.

    “Just what kind of business do you have in mind, Mister Tupman?”

    “Call me Aphis now.  And just what you call this here?”

    Tupman reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a stem of a marijuana plant that was just starting to bud.  Judy kept silent and took another sip of her drink.  In spite of all circumstance, the liquor had a delicious bite.

    “Don’t rightly matter, I reckon.  See, I’m gonna improve it considerable.  Folks says I got me a power,” Tupman said and smiled.

    Judy was fingering the back of her boot set to pull the knife.

    “I wouldn’t have thought you knew anything about growing marijuana, Mister Tupman.”

    “Aphis.”

    “Aphis.”

    “I can change all manner a things, child.  See, I got me a special kind a water down in that there hollow.  And you don’t gots to worry none bout the haulin neither cuz I got me a special kind a worker too.  We’ll talk a payment later.  I don’t expects you’ll try cheatin me.”

    While Judy searched for something to say, Tupman rose, put on his hat, and made his way to the door in spasmodic steps.

    “No, I don’t want to do that,” Judy shouted frozen in place on her rocker.

    Tupman paused a moment facing the door.  When he turned around to look at her, he was grinning.

    “Wants I should persuade you?”  He asked opening the door.

    Still glued to her seat, Judy could see her front porch was filled with dark figures that dripped mud as they staggered in circles slapping themselves.  She shook her head violently, and Tupman closed the door behind himself.  Judy noticed he’d left his bottle on the coffee table.  She reached out for it.  Something cylindrical was floating near the top of the liquor.  When Judy held the bottle up to the light and shook it, she saw it was a finger.

    Judy jumped up scratching her leg with the knife in her boot when the phone rang.  It was the realtor calling up to say he’d had car trouble in Ukiah and would be up tomorrow.

    “Don’t bother.  I’m going to be out of here tomorrow,” she said and stayed up the rest of the night packing.

    She called Machaw up at dawn to ask him to help her pick up and load a U-Haul.  Despite being woken from a sound sleep, he immediately wanted to know what was up.  After Judy told him about her visit from Tupman, Machaw told her he wouldn’t help her leave.

    “If he wants to do something with your pot, you’ve got to stick around, Judy,” he said as if to a child.  “I told you, you don’t defy Tupman.  You can end up like…”

    “Like your son,” she screamed and slammed down the phone.

    Judy hated herself for having spoken so cruelly, but her self-loathing in no way diminished her sense of self-preservation.  She drove all the way to Eureka to pick up a trailer and a couple of casual laborers that she’d phoned ahead to the unemployment office for.

    The three of them spent all afternoon loading her stuff.  It was the longest day of the year and so far the hottest.  They all drank countless cups of water and scratched themselves when their sweat stuck their clothes to their skin.

    Towards sundown, Judy was making a final check of the kitchen cabinets.  One of the men came up to her by the sink.  His face was blotchy, and she was scared he might be suffering heatstroke.

    “Excuse me.  I was wondering if you might have anything for poison oak.  Me and Hank seem to have caught a real bad dose,” he said.

    “Yes, there’s some calamine lotion in the small Bekins box marked bathroom,” she said.

    Judy looked down at her forearms.  They were scratched raw.

    “Thanks, it itches something fierce,” the man said as he left.

    Judy ran water in the sink and plunged her arms up to the elbows into the cool pool.  It soothed for a second, but then a burning sensation swelled to such intensity that she felt feint and had to stifle a sob.  The sun had angled down dead level with her kitchen window blinding her.  It’s heat made her head itch as hundreds of little droplets of sweat sprang from her scalp stinging like insects.  A sphere passed before the sun.  Through her rheumy eyes, she saw it eclipse the light into a fiery corona.  The moon had a face, Tupman’s.

   His head was no more than a foot from hers, too close for her to focus on his features or escape the rank, fetid breath.  Tupman backed away giving her a larger field of view.  Her teary vision made everything appear surreal, and her eyes itched so terribly she was afraid that if she began rubbing them, her fingers wouldn’t be able to stop until her eyeballs had been torn from their sockets.  Blinking madly, she watched Tupman hold out a small wooden bucket as if presenting it to her just beyond reach.

    “Seen your water tank were a might low.  Had some fellars fill her for you,” he said while pouring the contents out of the bucket.  “Weren’t that charitable a me now?”

    Judy saw mud oozing from the bucket.  She heard it plopping onto the ground in front of her then screams from somewhere behind.  Running out the front door, she froze on the porch.  Her toiletries were strewn across the drive behind the trailer.  One of the laborers was sitting on the ground beside the U-Haul.  He was stripped to the waist, and his torso was laced with ugly scratches as if he’d been flogged.  The man was crying and hyperventilating at the same time.  His fingernails kept perfect pace with his panting as they scratched his arms that ran red with blood.

    The guy who’d come into the kitchen was naked and down on all fours in front of the garden faucet.  He was colored crimson and cream from pouring lotions over his lacerated body and then trying to wash them off.  He slipped while trying to scratch himself and fell face down in the mud beneath the faucet.  As he raised himself up on his elbows, his face was covered with mud and blood, yet he wore the beatific look of a man who’d seen God.

    “Hank,” he said in a voice trembling with awe.  “The mud, it cools you.”

    “No, don’t do that,” Judy screamed running towards him.

    But it was too late.  Hank was already kicking his way out of his pants as he crawled towards the faucet, and the other man was smearing great gobs of goop all over his chest.  Judy grabbed his hand to stop him and felt mud squeeze through her fingers.  It extinguished the fire that seemed to have seeped all the way into her bones.  She looked at her forearms now coated with angry red pimples ready to erupt and knew she’d have to coat them with mud or else scratch the skin off and start shredding exposed tissue.

    She’d greased her arms up to the elbows and begun ripping open her blouse when she heard Tupman’s voice behind her.

    “Wants I should cure yuh?”

    There was an affected look of shock on his face when Judy turned around crying, “yes, yes.”

    “My, but you ain’t such a pretty little thing no more,” Tupman said gaily.  Then his voice got hard.  “You got same fool notions as what Injins got.  Ain’t a one a them sees it done got more power over me than what I gots over it cuz that’d be even worse, now wouldn’t it?  Well child, it done got the best control what is.  Oh, you’ll be cured all right.  By same as what ails you.  See, it got plans for you.  As to them,” Tupman pointed at the two men who were slapping great cakes of mud over their already coated bodies.  “I can always use more a their kind.  You can to iffen you be clever and see things fit like.  Just don’t go tryin to high tail off or do nothin else foolish agin.”

    Judy saw Tupman raise the bucket high in the air and swing it down towards her head.  The next thing she felt was cold liquid.  Opening her eyes, she saw she was lying naked in a tub of filthy water in her bathroom.  She shuddered to think Tupman and the laborers must have undressed and immersed her.  There was also relief the God-awful itchiness had gone.  Indeed, it all seemed a nightmare, but outside was proof what happened was real.  Her belongings were strewn out behind the trailer.

    Judy managed to bring in a box of clothes.  Then she brought in the box containing her wine collection and pot.  Then she didn’t step outside again for a week when Machaw came over.

    “Jeez, you look like shit,” Machaw said after Judy finally roused herself from a drunken stupor to answer the door.

    He peered around at the barren cabin littered with empty wine bottles and invited her over to his house.  In reply, Judy passed out on the floor.  For three days, Machaw nursed her in his home.  He finally talked about Tupman.  During the conversation, he had to struggle to contain his emotions, and he made sure no member of his extended family was in listening range.

    “My grandpa told me he went strange around the time I was born.  At least that’s when the trouble started.  People disappearing, turning into something horrible.  Before that he was a prospector known throughout these hills.  Then one day he set up camp down in that hollow,” Machaw said while practically force-feeding Judy another bowl of salmon stew from fish fresh caught from the river.

    “Does he live down there?”  Judy asked.

    She’d never seen any structure down in the glen, but the thick tangles of vines blanketing the trees could easily hide a house.

    “No one’s tried to find out anything about Tupman for a long time.  Some say he sleeps at the bottom of the pond.  Some say he molds himself out of the mud every morning.  I just wish he was dead, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen,” Machaw said.

    “Well, he must be awfully old.  Maybe he’ll just keel over and end our worries.”

    “Judy, I first saw Tupman when I was three years old.  He’s got a face you don’t forget, and he looked exactly the same then as he does now.”

    What drove Judy back to her cabin was the other person Machaw had to nurse, the one who lived in a shed out back.  On the third day of her stay, Machaw came to the door of her room graven faced.

    “I’m sorry, Judy, my boy’s screaming you got to go.”

    “Which one, Bobbie, Franklin, Tom?”  Judy asked.

    It was hard to keep track of all of Machaw’s kids and grandkids clustered in several buildings on the property, but Judy saw by the look in his eye that it was Donald.  The son Machaw wouldn’t let her see, would never even talk about, the one that had tangled with Tupman.

    “The mud I make for him from pond water does more than soothe,” Machaw said nearly in tears.  “It exerts some kind of control.  I don’t know how, but my boy’s hurting pretty bad, and when he gets this way, I got to do like he wants.”

    “I understand,” Judy said.

    And the horrible thing was she did.  A subtle change had stolen over her.  Judy was scared to go back to her cabin, but not as scared as she knew she ought to be and rather enjoyed putting her house back in order.  When she finally got around to returning the U-Haul, the thought of taking off never occurred to her, and she raced back home with an odd sense of anticipation.

    She kept close to the cabin doing her dealing now by phone.  Eventually, she realized that she owed it to her customers to check out her plants.  She’d been telling everyone for the last two weeks to expect the best weed in world history.  She also wanted to see for herself what, if anything, Tupman and his minions had done to her plantation.  Still, she remained terrified enough of Tupman to call Machaw and try and persuade him to go with her.

    “I’m burying my boy this afternoon, Judy,” he sobbed.

    “Oh Machaw, I’m so sorry.”

    “Don’t be.  He’s better off, believe me.  The way that he suffered.  Besides, nobody lasts long after they get that way.”

    The sickening realization she might not have long herself gave Judy the courage to brave the woods alone.  Machaw had informed her it would be best not to attend the funeral since his people viewed her as tainted.  Alert as a sapper, Judy looked around at every step, but saw no one on the trail.  Crawling through the tangled mass of berry bush, she leapt to her feet and did a little dance upon reaching her pot patch.  In early July, her plants looked the way she’d hoped they would be in October.  As tall or taller than she, they were as bushy as tumbleweeds with buds the size of burritos.  

    She couldn’t resist trying some and clipped off one of the smaller buds.  After a half an hour at low heat in her kitchen oven, the pot was dry enough to smoke.  She rolled a very thin number, lit it and cautiously took a puff.  The grass had so much resin the joint stuck to her lips.  The smoke was thick and sweet and seemed to expand in her lungs making her cough.  Definite two poke dope.

    Judy put some cool jazz on the stereo and lay back on the couch fantasizing about the money she was going to make.  Then came the knock on the door, and she started to cry because she knew who it was going to be.

    Tupman was casually dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.  The look he gave Judy made her keenly aware that she’d changed into short shorts and tank top.  Tupman stood on the porch crinkling his nose.

    “So you been samplin.  How is she now?”  He asked and cocked his head to look up at her.

    Somehow, the music blasting in the background emboldened Judy.

    “I’m afraid your mistaken, Mister Tupman.  I’ve been smoking some of my own stash,” she said defiantly.

    “Don’t lie to me, child.  You ain’t particular good at it,” Tupman said shrilly.

    He pulled a meerschaum pipe stained the exact color of his teeth out of his pocket and stuffed a glistening bud deep into the bowl.

    “No matter.  I seen fit to bring my own,” he said tamping the pot down.

    Judy backed out of the doorway as Tupman lurched towards her.  His body appeared operated by a puppeteer as he walked across the room in stiff strides and shut off the stereo.  Like some windup toy, he wheeled about, set himself, and crossed back towards Judy.  Lighting the pipe, he came closer, his face obscured by gray clouds of smoke pouring from his mouth.  Judy head was trapped in the chimney corner trying to duck the pipe stem Tupman held out.  A thin tendril of smoke oozed from the opening so dark and dense it appeared solid.

    “No, I’ve had enough.  You’re right.  I tried some.  It’s good.  It’s very good, “ she stammered.

    As she breathed in, snakes of smoke wafted towards her nostrils like dowsing rods.

    “This here’s better,” Tupman said.

    Judy had her eyes closed and her face turned sideways rubbing against chimney soot.  She felt the pipe stem being forced between her lips.  It was dripping with tar.  Smoke slid down her throat like a liquid washing her body away.  Her head felt disembodied as if it floated in thin air. She had to open her eyes to make sure she was still standing.  Tupman was grinning in front of her.  His eyes bulged out, red with blasted veins that radiated like tangled vines from irises bright as sparkling sapphires.

    “Smoke more,” he commanded.

    Judy inhaled until it felt as if smoke was leaking out her sides caging her completely in fog.  When she bent forward coughing, Tupman put his hand over her mouth and roughly slammed her skull back against the chimney stones.

    “What say we start walkin,” he said.

    Judy was reeling from the blow and the smoke, and the worst of it was that Tupman was holding her up as he marched her across the meadow.  He had the hand that had smelled of sewage and tasted of mold when held across her mouth now gripping the bare flesh at her waist.  At the ridgeline above the hollow, two men covered in mud emerged from the brush.

    “Recognize your friends?”  Tupman asked.

    Judy peered into the blackened faces.  They were so caked with filth it took her a moment to realize she was staring at John and Hank, the two laborers she’d hired.

    “Escort the little lady on down,” Tupman ordered.

    The men grabbed her arms to either side, and they started straight down the steep slope towards the water.  Judy felt thorny creepers lash out at her legs as the men dragged her along.  She could hear Tupman talking behind her all the while.

    “See, there ain’t no sendin what’s down there back cuz it’s kinda always been on the way here.  Time don’t mean nothin to it at all.  Things ain’t ready for it just yet, but I knows it’s done some powerful figurin on how to get loose.”

    Where the incline leveled out, the vines rose higher.  Judy had to put her arms around the two men and let them lift her out of the tangles.  She could feel mud sloughing off them onto the exposed skin at her sides.

    “It can be all over cuz it ain’t never completely one place,” Tupman was saying.  “It got all manner a reachin for us though it likes to start in on what you might call a fellar’s worse side, and don’t you go playin innocent, child, or were it your folks what taught you to grow them plants what brought you here?  Oh, it’s already done changed you some.  Were more than fear a me that done kept you here.”

    In the bottomland of the hollow, Judy had to bend over to follow the two men through a tunnel of vegetation with Tupman at her heels still talking nonstop.

    “I expects it seen right off that mud weren’t the way, but it got it a patience beyond what us folks can figure.  See, it’s gonnna have to change everything what is before it can altogether break loose so it ain’t troubled none iffen one lil thing don’t work out.  It already done found somethin new in them plants a yours that’ll likely work a sight better than mud.”

    Judy was crawling now through a welter of green growth.  By the reeds bordering the pond, the canopy of vegetation opened out, and the two men hoisted her to her feet.  Tupman stood to one side pointing out over the water as he spoke.

    “Look yonder to the deep end.  See it now?  Oh, it don’t talk none, but it’ll make itself clear once you go in.  It seen right off we’s mainly water.”

    Judy stared off into the dark depths.  A stain seemed to be rising to the surface.  It came up as a negative would develop whirling into a pinwheel of phosphorescence.  Movement smeared the arms that spread like a catherine wheel.  A primordial fear of what lay out there made Judy struggle to break free, but the two men held her fast and began wrestling her out into the water.  She could see a line of dark figures emerge on the far shoreline and begin slicking themselves with mud.

    “No, you can’t make me one of those things,” she screamed.

    Tupman skipped out into the water until he was waist deep and directly in front of Judy.  He shook his head and then slapped her face.

    “Girl, I done told you it were through with mud.  It done found a way to put something in that stuff you growed.  Maybe it’ll change folks some.  Maybe it’ll change em plenty.  Maybe nothin’ll happen.  It don’t rightly matter.  It’s gonna keep grabbin for us more way than we’ll ever figure,” he said.

    Tupman signaled the men to start moving and began backing away in front of them.  Judy could feel her feet sinking into the muck on the bottom as the water rose up her chest.

    “Why do you help it?”  She cried.

    Tupman raised his hand for the men to halt and smiled.

    “Well child, I weren’t a young man when I come here.  Weren’t a healthy one neither.  Had pains and all I wanted rid of permanent like.  So I tried drowning myself right about this spot here.  Maybe it were watchin on the outside waitin for such to happen.  Maybe it were already partly here and caught me showin my worse side.  I can’t rightly say, but I already told you it’s got the best sort a control what there is.  It’s done kept me goin for nigh on fifty years so I can’t hardly refuse it,” he said.

    Then Tupman grabbed her hair and plunged her head underwater.

    Judy wondered who it was that survived.  She could define only one change in herself, the newfound desire to aid the thing in the pond, but that one thing would destroy everything she cared for, and it no longer mattered to her.  Not even when it came to Machaw, her friend, the man who rescued her.

    Following his son’s funeral, Machaw had been walking despondently through the woods when he’d spotted Judy’s body lying by the shoreline in Tupman’s Hollow.  He’d gone down to get her.  After Judy regained consciousness and told him what had happened, he even exhibited the courage to finally stand up to his old nemesis.

    “I’m going out there right now and rip up every last one of those damn plants.  Tupman’s got to be stopped,” he shouted.

    “No,” Judy gasped.  “Tupman said he was going to keep a line of mud men around them night and day.”

    She started to cry, and Machaw gave her a hug, which made her cry harder knowing she’d just told a lie.  How could she make Machaw understand?  This had nothing to do with Tupman.  The entire fabric of reality was to be changed over eons.  Until you’d gone down into the waters of the pond, you couldn’t hope to fathom the grandeur of being one small cog in an immutable destiny.

    “Then I’ll get the tribal council to authorize a raid by the authorities,” Machaw said.

    Judy pulled away from him.

    “But you’re an accomplice.  You could get five years for cultivation,” she said desperately.

    Machaw gave her a funny look.

    “I’ll tell them Tupman grew it,” he said.

    “I’ll tell them you did,” Judy replied.

    Machaw helped her to her feet and sadly said, “I’ll help you home.”

    Back in her cabin, Judy was too exhausted to do anything but take to bed.  She dozed away the rest of the afternoon, slept through the night, and didn’t awaken until noon the following day as a plane turned north heading up the defile of the Trinity River.   

     The Cessna was too far off to hear.  Even if she were outdoors looking, it would still have been invisible over the horizon, but an alarm had gone off deep within Judy jittering her awake compelling her to act.  Something was threatening the newborn force in her, and to this consciousness so vast yet vague, nothing nearby escaped notice.  Everything for miles around became part of its purview and thence wormed into the minds of its minions.  Despite how sore her body felt, it went into a kind of overdrive in which, detached and amazed, she watched herself hurriedly pull on shirt and jeans and charge out the door not daring to take time to put on shoes.

    The plane could now be seen coming up the canyon.  It passed overhead as Judy raced across the meadow, a mist cloud emanating from beneath its wings.  At the saddle above the hollow, she felt a light rain falling.  The droplets smelled sickly sweet and clung to her skin with an oily sheen.  A pickup was pulling up along the dirt road spur atop the opposite ridge.  She recognized Machaw’s truck.

    The Indian jumped out of the cab and began heave hoeing a metal drum off the cargo bed in back.  It fell to the ground with a thud, and he started rolling the barrel towards the slope above the hollow.  Judy sensed the danger the container held and knew through means beyond reason or measure that it had been rigged to burst open upon hitting water.  

    “Stop, Machaw.  Don’t,” she screamed.

    Machaw looked over towards her, shook his head, and bent back to his work.  Judy tore down the slope oblivious to the thorny vines raking her arms and the tangles of brush scratching her bare feet.  The only thing that did registered in her was the ominous rustle and thump of the barrel as it hurtled down crashing through the vegetation of the slope.  She knew there was no chance to stop it in time, but blindly tore forward through the dense foliage of the bottomland desperate to try.  The projectile splashed into the pond as she reached the clearing near the water’s edge.  The lid popped off with a loud bang, and the barrel sank like a stone out of sight.   

    There was a brief moment of silence as Judy stood stunned, frozen in place.  Then the scummy surface of the pond suddenly erupted with mud men geysering like giblets in a blender full of entrails.  They were wailing like banshees, and jets of steam blew out their bodies as if they were teakettles exploding.  Some breached clear the water only to plop back down in agonized screams.  Others danced in macabre pirouettes flinging their arms heavenward.  Judy’s eyes stung and throat burned as noxious vapor wafted her way.  Her preternatural form of perception told her that all of Tupman’s forlorn creations had gathered together in the pond forewarned of this attack and that even now some were still under water trying to wrestle the barrel out of the pond and destroying themselves in the process.

    “Judy, get out of there.  That stuff’ll kill you,” Machaw shouted as he started heading down the hill towards her.

    In spite of everything, Judy wanted to laugh.  Instead, she began marching resolutely out into the pond that bubbled and boiled at the far end where mud men twirled and shrieked as they made for shore collapsing on the ground to writhe in contortions.

    “Stop, stop,” Machaw kept yelling over the caterwauling of the damned who flopped in the mudflats like fish out of water.

    Judy at last heeded his call halting in knee deep water.  The stench had become too overpowering to continue, a rank mix of poison and rot edulcorated by the air dropped chemicals from the plane.  She felt Machaw sweep her up in his arms.

    “Judy, it’s over.  We’re getting out of here,” he said hauling her out of the water.

    As he dragged her up the hill, Machaw kept his arm firmly about Judy’s waist speaking to her like a child.  

    “It’s over.  Do you understand?  The pilot sprayed the pot with paraquat.  Those things back there got a dose of something lots worse.”

    He swung her around so she could see the mud men lying ashore.  Their movements had gone from frenzied to feeble, and their screams had died down to pitiful moans.  The muck covering their bodies could be heard to sizzle and pop while an odiferous belching convulsed the pond.  The big bubbles roiling the surface gave off a gorge raising ammoniac stench.  As they turned back uphill, Tupman appeared at the crest of the ridge heading down towards them looking almost comical with his skipping straight-legged gait.  He held a shotgun cradled to his chest like a baby.   

    “Them down thar were what’s easy to kill, Injin.  You oughts to know that seeins how you jest done buried one whats used to be your son.  Donny twere his name, iffen I recall,” Tupman said halting before them.

    He was impeccably dressed in marked contrast to Judy and Machaw’s mud splattered, torn clothing.  Tupman had on a white silk shirt puffy with lace at the cuffs and collar.  His twe