A Verdict of Gilt

Kettleman Deeps

by Gregory Story

I had driven into the Kettleman Hills to persuade a pair of landowners to sign drill leases.  My employer, a small petroleum firm, wanted in on Kern County, California’s oil boom, but hadn’t the heft to bid around Bakersfield.   A brutal drought now in its third year had desiccated the scrubby landscape, and it was hot.  100 degrees by the temperature readout on my rental.  II’d gotten a four-wheel drive SUV with high ground clearance and was glad of it when I turned off the lonely state highway onto a rutted dirt road.  The track wound south into the tangled Transverse Ranges.  In the gauzy heat haze, the hills seemed to pulse from something subterranean,  and blistered mesquite baking under a scorching sun along the slopes gave the air a charcoal stench.

My destination, Lizard Springs Ranch, abutted sandstone escarpments tilted up by seismic thrusts from ancient seafloor.  The locale looked like a fire trap with hillsides of dead brush descending to browned pasture and only one way out.  Lacy Chamiss had recently inherited the 200 acre property.   On the phone last night, she’d expressed eagerness for a deal that would let her move on.  The tumbleweeds certainly seemed bent on leaving.  A bunch blew by me as I drove in.  It wasn’t easy avoiding them on the narrow road.  I slowed the car to a crawl and rolled down the window crossing the vacant space in  front of the only house for miles.

    “Go ahead and park where you please,” I heard a woman call out from the porch.

I recognized the voice as Lacy’s.  She was sitting on a dilapidated couch next to an equally dilapidated dog that barely raised its head before returning to snooze mode.  

    “I’m glad my directions got you here okay.  This area has a way of turning people all around,” she said.

    Miss Chamiss was tall, slender, about my age, forty.  She wore black slacks and blouse which matched her hair that hung loose to her shoulders.  Her face appeared worn by worry and the merciless heat.

    “Navigation’s never a problem for me.  Getting agreement’s what gives me troubles,” I said exiting the car, briefcase in hand.  “Like I told you, the deal depends on getting the rights to that larger parcel to the north.  We can’t commit to a project on just your land alone.”  

    I’d made it to the porch and exchanged perfunctory handshakes.  We sat at opposite ends of the couch.  The sleepy dog was between us.  I envied his ease.   A dust devil rose momentarily by my car.

    “I think that owner, Harry Lean.”

     “Lead,” I corrected.”

    “Whatever.  That guy should be committed.  He’s been out here too long.”

    “The Leads do have some history in the Kettleman Hills.”

    “The Leads all end up in the cemetery he’s got out there.  That was the first thing he showed me when I went over.  Makes him so proud.  His folks all died for the cause, you know, but I don’t want to get into that wackiness.”

    And I didn’t want to go into the difficulties such a cemetery might cause my company.  I struggled to focus.  This was supposed to be the easy half of the day’s dealings, but the harsh heat and wind made concentration difficult.  As if on cue, there was a brief but sharp earth tremor.  Lacy chuckled when I startled.    

    “Get ‘em all the time out here,” she said.  “Lead claims they’re increasing because drilling’s riling up something below.  Just to worn you, that man might require some serious talking to.”

   “Warning taken,” I said.

   I suggested it would be better to conduct our business at a table or desk.  That moved us inside.  Lacy’s offer of something to drink was declined, for I wanted no impediment to a rapid return to the air conditioned comfort of the car. We sat at a table with two chairs which constituted half the furniture in the stark but sizable front room.  Along the opposite wall, a roll-top desk held a clutter of yellowed papers.  Worn envelopes of varying size jammed the cubbyhole compartments.  I’d have bet not a one had been mailed this millennium.  An old rotary dial telephone sat atop a pile of tattered parchment sheets.  The phone’s cloth cord was badly frayed.  The house’s wiring and plumbing were likely in similar disrepair.

.     Opening my briefcase, I laid papers on the scarred wood while speaking.

   “Lead’s not the only one around here who’s got spook stories to tell.  Believe me, I’ve heard plenty.  I did some research and found these tales go clear back to the county’s first oil strike.  That’s eighteen ninety something.”  

    “Well I’ve heard talk that went back way further.  When I was a little girl, my uncle told me in this very room about a force molded deep in the earth over millions of years.  On its own, it never moves, but it’s going everywhere because of what we do.  Just how, I never understood.  Hell, none of it made any sense, but it gave me nightmares.”

    Lacy wore a far away look remembering then added, “Stay out here long enough, and that’s the way you start thinking.  I’m not about to let that happen to me.”

    Her anxiety had to be contagious.  I had no other explanation for the desperate desire to flee that suddenly welled up within me.   

    “You know,I think it would be best if I just leave this material with you.  I’ll call you this evening after you’ve had a chance to look it over.  That way I can go to Lead’s place right now, and I’ll let you know tonight if he’s going to be a problem.”

    I was closing up my briefcase and rising to leave as I spoke.

    “My uncle left me a bunch of papers to go over on the desk there.  I really  don’t want to, but something keeps pulling me back to read more, and it can be hard.  Some of the pages are just about impossible to figure.  The writing’s illegible, faded, or foreign.  I’ll have to say a passage out loud real slow trying to sound  out how it’s supposed to go.”

   Lacy plainlyhad more to say, but her words had so ratcheted up my tension that it didn’t matter to me how rude and uncalled for being abrupt was.  I just said “goodby” and went out the door.  I had to shoo away the dog who tried to get into the car with me.  Then I drove much too fast down the bumpy lane.

    It was noon, and I feared my meeting with Lead would be lengthy.  He’d come across as a garrulous old timer on the phone.  His holding was sizable, over a thousand acres situated where the Kettleman Hills level out to prairie.  Vegetation on the flatland was limited to scatterings of shrubs bent by wind and withered by the punishing drought.  The road was indistinct, and I was on it for quite awhile.  It kept turning in different directions for no apparent reason.  “Convoluted,” Lead had warned.  The track forked, and I had to turn around after dead ending.  The car’s thermometer now registered 105, and I had a sinking feeling Lead’s place lacked air conditioning.

    I finally got to the ranch center.  There were a couple of sheds, a big barn that had seen better days, tanks for water and propane, and a nice looking double-wide trailer with a side yard of grass bordered by miniature palms that I parked beside.  I checked my briefcase to make sure the papers were in proper order and braced myself for the heat.  Outside, it was heartening to hear a large air conditioner running alongside the trailer.

    The front door opened after what seemed ages waiting in furnace like conditions.  Lead backed away from the opening bidding me enter into the wonderful coolness.  The man was quite elderly.  88 according to company reports and looked even older.  He was stooped over and wrinkled beyond belief.  A few wispy strands of hair clung to a skull blotched with liver spots.  However, he was dapper in dress: tailored suit, silk tie with diamond stickpin, gold cuff links, Rolex watch, and sharp leather shoes.  I had on casual slacks  and a sports shirt which I’d assumed would be dressier than my client’s clothing.  

    I followed the old gent over to a couple of leather couches set around a glass coffee table.  A silver tray on the tabletop held shaker, ice bucket, two martini glasses, a bottle of Gilbey’s Gin and one of Boissiere Vermouth.  And just how had Lead learned these were my preferred drink fixings?  I let it pass.  I’ve had prospects use tricks like this seeking an edge in negotiations.

    “You have a nice place here,” I said blandly.

    Expensive artwork adorned the walls. At the far end of the room, ceiling high curio cabinets held oddly shaped porcelain figurines, carved masks, and jeweled daggers.  Even at a distance, the collection appeared menacing.

    “What’s bellow's been good for Leads.  Now you’re preparing to pay, and you’ll end up in it.”

      Not having a clue what this meant, I sought to direct the conversation towards business with an allusion to financial gain.

    “I think we can end up with a deal where everybody profits,” I said.

     I laid my briefcase near the drink tray and noticed an oil pump, the sort that looks like a giant ant, had been artistically etched into the silver.

    “Of course we will,”  Lead said and started loading the shaker with ice, gin, and vermouth.  “Miss Chamiss has her part down pat, rehearsed it plenty she has, reading passages aloud, trying to make sense of them.  This very second she’s saying words, the right words.  How do I know?  Because every system’s built of it so everything’s telegraphed.  Once you sink in at the source, you get hooked up.  I’m speaking of our local source.  There all over.”

    Lead handed me the drink container.

    “You’re more spry.  Shake this thing some and pour us both a glass.”

    A drink couldn’t possibly make Mr. Lead any more cryptic, and I’d definitely welcome one.  I shook, poured, raised my glass in toast, and relished the icy relief going down.

    “That hits the spot,” I said and snapped open my briefcase.

    “It’s what fuels us,” Lead said.

    He took a big gulp and grinned.  His dentures were clearly coming loose.

    “Speaking of which,” I said laying a 12 page stapled lease document down before him.  “We think a great deal of fuel can be extracted here, and my company is making a handsome offer both for the rights to drill and to share in the sale of anything produced on your property.”

    Lead downed the rest of his drink in a couple of big gulps and set the glass down atop the lease pages.  His watery gray eyes suddenly sharpened.  They focused piercingly on me.

     “What fuels fuel?” he asked.

    “I don’t get you.”

    “Hay fuels a horse.  Seeds fuel a bird.  What fuels fuel?”

    “I truly do not know.”

    “Heat.  It needs heat.”

    Lead had sprung up faster than I would have expected though he couldn’t straighten out to his full height which had to be over six feet.  His crouched stance made him five five.

    “You’ve lost me,” I confessed.

    “You’ve been found, and I’m proud to play a role.  My only regret’s that none of my family’s left to participate, but sacrifices are required.” Lead said and collapsed onto the couch laughing.

    I suspected the martini he’d just downed was not his first of the day. A man his age likely needed something to act this stimulated.  Lead took the drink glass off the papers and pulled a fancy fountain pen out of his coat pocket.  After flipping through the pages, he started signiing his name and putting the date on the appropriate spaces at bottom.

    “You might want to look those over some,” I said

    “No need.  Things will proceed by design.  We can’t be of consequence with something this size. You understand the scale here?  What you figure global warming's all about?  Heat’s its element.  We started using so it got around.  After it was everywhere, we couldn’t do without more and more of it, and that was its plan all along.”

    “Whose plan?” I asked.

    “Oil,” Lead said.

    He put the pen back in his pocket and handed me the signed documents.  I placed the papers back in my briefcase while Lead loaded the shaker with ice and liquor.  I shook it and poured him a drink but declined one myself.  With the lease signed, I had no cause  to linger and again beat a hasty retreat.  Lead called out to me from  the trailer doorway as I hurried toward my car.

    “You’re lighting out fast because your survival instinct sounding an alarm.  Won’t do no good.  Its got you.  Its got us all.”

    I was glad to leave this goofy gab behind.  My plan now was to drive on over to Lizard Springs Ranch, answer any questions Lacy might have, get her to sign the lease, and make it to my motel in time for a swim before dinner.  It pleased me to think how productive a day this was becoming.  I tried calling Lacy, but my phone was dead.  Then I got so turned around getting off Lead’s pplace that I wound up circling his cemetery three times on the web of paths creasing the sere land.  The graveyard held an impressive collection of headstones, at least fifty.  Despite its considerable extent, there would be ample room for my company to build access roads around it.   

    I only had to go a short distance on the state highway before reaching the turn off for Lizard Springs Ranch.  Right after catching  sight of the house, I saw Lacy’s dog run past.  His yellow brown fur looked black.  Glancing in the rear-view, I realized the animal was covered in oil.  When I pulled up before the house, Lacy ran out onto the veranda.  The bathrobe she wore was blackened.  She was covered in oil and screaming.  

     “Help me.  Help me.  You got to shut it off.”

    “What happened,” I asked running onto the porch.

    “In the shower, the water turned to oil.  I slipped.  The dog ran in.  He slipped.  You got to try and turn it off, and for God’s sake, don’t slip.”

    She was pulling me inside by the  hand. The floor in the front room was streaked with oil.  The floor in the bathroom was coated with the stuff.  It was so slick I had to steady myself by grasping towel racks and cabinets to reach the shower enclosure. I twisted the knobs as hard as I could getting myself pretty oiled in the process, but couldn’t stop the black fluid from gushing out.   

    “No good,” I said.

    Oil began spurting out of the sink taps.

    “Forget it.  Let’s get out of here. I’ll just grab some clothes.  In the kitchen, under the sink there some garbage bags we can put on the seats so I don’t mess your car so much.  There’s also some rags and detergent you can  wash yourself off with.  I’m too far gone.  I’m hoping you’ll take me down to the coin-op car wash.  It’s about six miles down the highway.  You got to hose me down with soap then rinse me off before I go someplace to shower.”

    “Sure thing.  You can shower after at my motel room,” I told her.

    She muttered “thanks” and ducked into the bedroom.  I went into the kitchen and got a package of garbage bags out from under the sink and soaked a rag with dish washing detergent.  Oil gushed out when I turned on the faucet.  The flow proved unstoppable.  The Kettleman Hills are rife with small pressurized pockets of oil.  I told myself that the recent tremor caused the piping of the water-well to rupture into one.  My imagination fought a losing battle against darker considerations of primordial ooze as beginning and end with humanity something petty and brief in-between.

    I met Lacy in the front room and didn’t bother mentioning the oil in the kitchen. We  left the house too shaken to speak.  At the car, we lay garbage bags on the seats silently before getting in.  Lacy had wiped herself down pretty good and probably had less oil smeared on her than I did.  I turned the car on grateful for the cool coming from the air conditioner.

     “We’re going to be okay,” I said when I finally put the car in gear.

    I did not sound convincing.

    “Where you going?” Lacy shouted when the car turned left heading towards the  Transverse Ranges.

     “I’m not doing this,” I said frantically pushing buttons on the dash.

    The dealer had mentioned the car could park itself.  I’d paid no attention.  I never use driver-less systems.  Now I couldn’t get out of one.  Shutting off the ignition did nothing.  None of the controls worked, the pedals, the steering wheel, nothing.

    “Where does this road go?” I asked.

    ”Lord, it goes way back branching off  towards Wheeler Ridge and Big Pine Mountain, but it gets pretty rough. I don’t know how far this car could get.”

    “Or how far it’s programmed to get,” I said.

    My voice kind of trembled.  I couldn’t give myself much reason not to panic.  The car was traveling over serious ruts and bumps at a good clip.  The hills were closing in, becoming larger and steeper. They were matted with  fire blackened chaparral. The temperature guage read 110.  We had no water, and I was thirsty.  The only thing I’d had to drink in  the last three hours was a dry martini.

    I checked my watch before addressing Lacy who kept nervously running her fingers through her oily hair and then wiping them on a towel taken out of the tote bag she’d brought.

    “Were you reading something out loud from one of those parchment sheets at around ten after one?” I asked.

     “Yeah, what’s this all about?”   

     “What did it say?”

    “Mumbo jumbo.  Within without, above below, we are one, the time has come, it’s now begun.  I don’t know, it went on and on like that.  Something about under has risen and above will know below.  Does that mean something to you?”

    Before I could respond, Lacy shrieked, “Can the car do this?”

    We’d dropped into a steep gulch and only our momentum carried us up the other side.  The roughness of the ride shut us up.  It was a jeep road now.  The tires began to spin going up a grade.  The incline was too steep, and the engine stalled.  I tried the ignition.  Nothing.

    “What do we do?” Lacy shouted.

    I was worried she was about to lose it, that we were both about to lose it.  I took hold of her hand trying to reassure her.  Our palms were oily.  

    “We got to go back to your place.   You must have some water or juice in the fridge, right?”

    “Sure, I got a whole case of bottled water, but we’ve come a ways.”

    I figured it to be five miles, and the temperature guage read 112.  At least it was mostly downhill.

    “No choice,” I said stepping out into the heat.   

    I tried the trunk to see if there was anything in there we could use, but it wouldn’t open.  Lacy handed me a towel to drape over my head to give me some sun shielding and cloaked her head as well.  Hot air burned my nostrils, and my shirt clung to my skin with sweat before we’d gone a hundred yards.

    At the lip of the gully, we paused to pick out a safe path down.  I was amazed the car had managed to climb out of this declivity.   At the bottom, I had the sinking feeling we would not.  We sat to rest in the spot of shade provided by a contorted ironwood tree whose limbs hung gallows like above us.

    “Is that a water pump?” Lacy excitedly said pointing to a black metal contraption a couple hundred feet to our left anchored alongside a sheer face of conglomerate.

    She started running towards it.

    “Save your strength,” I called after.

    I knew it couldn’t be a working water well.  After getting up close, I was able to identify the aged plumbing from my readings.

    “This is Indian Springs.  Unfortunately, the springs were of oil not water.  The Indians use to come up here to collect it, and then in the late nineteenth century, wildcatters drilled it out, and it became the county’s first operating oil well.  It’s been shut off for over a century.

    It was no longer shut off.  The entire unit began violently shaking.  The pipes sputtered and hissed.  Sounding like a roaring dragon, the well blew with a geyser of wonderful cool water.  We danced around in the cascading shower and fell to our knees.  Cupping our hands, we drank again and again from the torrents that drenched us. We were saved.

    Only we weren’t.  I stopped guzzling and stared in horror at Lacy who was covered in oil and gulping down great gobs of it.  I had to have swallowed over a quart of the stuff myself and began retching.  Lacy joined me in barfing.  When we could puke no more, we collapsed supine in the pooling oil.  Then the earth opened to receive us.

                                                                The end

The Film Depository

Jenny and Frank counted the broken film sprockets a third time.  

     “Same sequence” Jenny said.

   “The pattern's like in “Close Encounters.”  They’re for lines of latitude and longitude.”'

    “Well, we can’t roll a big globe over here, though the film library does have one”

    “Of course it does.  You go to a great big university.”

    “And you go to a great big film school, but I bet you ain’t got a map.”

   “I got one in the car.   Come on.  I know where those coordinates are.  I used to be a geography major.  Remember?  They’re close.””

   “You used to be every kind of major, but I believe you,” she said as they hurried outside.

The drive only took half an hour.  Both remarked they’d never been out this way.

     “No reason to.  Range-land mainly.  Nothing much here.”

   “The Film Depository​?”

Jenny pointed at a large sign with an arrow marking a narrow road that curved into scrubby forest.

    “Let’s check it out, Frank said.

The road ended in a single lined space.  The sign in front read “Visitor Parking” in bold letters .

     “Guess they don’t expect crowds.” Frank cracked.

    “If there’s just one space, shouldn’t it be for handicapped? This is weird” Jenny said.

They followed a yellow tiled path to an imposing structure.

Imposing in size only.  The building was a concrete box a hundred yards deep.  The front was black glass.  Double doors opened before them, and a man called from inside.

     “Come in, please.”

The voice sounded old.   

    “Happy to receive you into our nappy home,” the man added.

    “Nappy​?” Frank said.       

  “Happy as well.” someone else said.

The speaker, an elderly woman, shuffled in from the dark.

  “We’ll show you,” she said.

Her gait was slow, but each step illuminated  a further expanse.  When the pair stood together behind a reception counter, the entire cavernous interior was illuminated.  Distant walls were blank.  Long rows of tables lined the floor.  Some were divided into sections.  Others held trays. The place was a duplication of the university film library only bigger, way bigger.

    “What will you show us?” Jenny asked.

    “Why anything you like.  This is The Film Depository,” the old man said and grinned.

His teeth were obviously false.

    “This is quite a set up you got here.  So how come two film aficionados like us never heard it was here?  Those are all films over there? “Frank said pointing towards the tables.

He sounded irritated.  Jenny put her arm a round his waist to be close.

    “This has got to be one of the world’s biggest film collections.”she said.   

    “The biggest,” the old woman interrupted.

    “So what goes on here?”  Jenny asked      

    “This is the stuff dreams are made of.” the old man said.

    “Oh sure, quote “The Maltese Falcon​”, why don’t you?”  Frank quipped.

   “Is that on the list today, Henry?”  The old woman asked.

    “No Gretta, but we do have a couple of Bogie films.  “African Queen’s” one.  Can’t recall the other.  We pull a lot of films, and my memory’s kind of slipping.”

    “We get so many requests for “African Queen,”  Gretta said

    “Requests from who?”  Jenny asked.

    “Operations,” Henry replied.

    “And what does operations do?”  Frank demanded      ‘

‘

    “We don’t know.”

After a pause, Henry continued, “We’re not involved in the design work or the selection process.  We just pull films and refile them when they return.”  

   “It isn’t a hard job. There’s plenty of down time, “Gretta said

She tittered then added, “More like fun time.”

Gretta reached over the counter to pat Jenny’s arm saying softly, conspiratorially,  “You’ll see.”

     ‘Let’s get out of here, Frank,” Jenny whispered.      

It didn’t come out quiet like she intended.  It echoed back across the room, repeatedly.  Swinging around to exit, Frank and Jenny saw only a concrete wall.

    “Whoa, how do we get out of here?” Frank shouted.

    “We’ll show you in a moment, but first you must see a film.  After all, you’re film students, and you’ve come all this way.”

     “You’ll be impressed, I promise,” Henry said moving to a side table topped by a control board with half a dozen rows of small brown buttons and a large red button on the far left.

     “I’m going to ask you to push down on this in a bit,” he said pointing to the red button.  

    ‘Think you can do that for me?”   

     “Sure, I guess so,” Frank muttered.

    “Great. Orders get printed out through this slot.” Henry said running a hand along the side of the unit.

Then he pushed the top button on the far right row.  An immense movie screen started sliding out of the wall.  The top nearly grazed the lofty ceiling while the bottom barely cleared the table trays.  The horizontal expanse grew beyond reason.

    “It makes IMax look like something on a cellphone,” Jenny exclaimed.

The screen lit up displaying a bucolic scene in technicolor.  Gently rolling hills of grass were splotched with majestic oaks.  In the distance, Frank noticed two small people frozen in place beneath a towering tree.  A deer and two doe calmly grazed in front of them.

    “Hey, that’s us,” Frank yelled.

    “This film is one we selected.  The next one as well,” Gretta said.

    “Nothing much to this one though we figured it would suit you.  A few birds fly by.  Some wildlife wanders through.” Henry said.

    “Why are we frozen figures over there/” Jenny asked.

    “Because the activation button hasn’t been pushed,” Gretta said.

     “Are you going to push the activation button?”  Frank asked

    “Not until the next film, and you’ll push it. Wouldn’t be a good idea right now.  See,  you can’t act in two places at the same time,”  Henry said.

Jenny let go of Frank and rushed towards the counter.  She leaned over to confront Gretta who serenely shuffled back a bit.

   “Do you know us somehow?  Those are our clothes on screen.  I recognize them,  but they’re not what we have on now.  And how’d you know we were film students?  We never told you that.”

    “Say, that’s right.  What gives?” Frank said.

   “It was important to us that the right pair be chosen, a couple that could truly appreciate The Film Depository’s possibilities,” Gretta said.

She turned and began slowly walking towards the tremendous screen.

    “We let operations know some of the qualities we wanted, and after they made the selections, they let us know a few things about you.  Nothing mysterious,” Henry said.

      “Nothing mysterious,” Frank bellowed.  

     “Just how did we end up, the chosen?”

      “Like I explained, we don’t know how operations works.   We stick to filling orders and napping.  The transponder board  let’s you do that six ways from  Sunday.  Believe  it.  Anywho, you know better than we do how operations got you here.” Henry said.

He pushed another button on the control panel, and the scene on screen switched to the main street of a town in the old west.  The setting had a rosy glow as the sun was starting to set.

Henry called over his shoulder as he hurried to join Gretta by he screen,  “Okay Frank, if you’ll just come around the counter and push that red activation button for us.  That’s how you exit.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Frank dashed over and hit the button.  He was shocked to see it vanish from the board.  He was even more amazed to see Henry and Gretta now onscreen walking towards a pair of Palominos tethered to a rail in front of the swinging doors to a saloon.

    “Look how gracefully they mounted up,” Jenny marveled.

Frank ran back around the counter and grabbed Jenny.

   “It isn’t real It’s a movie,” Frank shouted.

He released Jenny and looked at the screen.  Henry and Gretta had wheeled their horses around and were starting up the dusty lane.

    ‘Hey, you said the activation button was the way out.  So where is it?”  Frank called after them.

    “Oh, I don’t imagine that’ll pop up for quite a spell,” Henry shouted back.

The horses were now some distance so Jenny really had to yell.

    “What do the other buttons do?”

   “We’ll not spoil your fun, a lifetime of marvels awaits,” Gretta replied loudly as she and Henry spurred their mounts to a trot.  

Roy Rodgers began singing “Happy Trails.”  Frank and Jenny held each other tightly.  It was getting hard to see the riders in the distance, but he elderly couple seemed to be growing younger.   They were now silhouettes etched upon the red lowering sun, but their voices, now youthful, could still be heard.

    “I think operations made the right choice;’ Gretta said.

    “They always do,” Henry replied.

The screen went dark.  As it slid away, the transponder began to regurgitate a list.

Time to get to it.

The end

By Greg Story

    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