Strings Bobby Ray Coombs trudged through the brilliant, multi-hued swirl that was a trademark of autumn in Southeastern Kentucky. The calves of his legs ached from the steep ascent to the top of Crawford’s Dome and the glut of blood washing his new barn coat and jeans had cooled, started to dry. His glazed eyes stared straight ahead, to the summit of the abrupt mountainside. His Wolverine work boots, also covered in the blood of his wife and best friend, plodded along the grown over, disused railway that stretched skyward to an old mine shaft opening that hadn’t been entered in nearly eighty-five years. Bobby Ray’s tongue was scalded from his jamming the white-hot barrel of the murder weapon – his Ruger Redhawk .44 Magnum – into his mouth in a half-hearted attempt to kill himself. After seeing what the hollow point rounds had done to his wife and friend, he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Instead, he threw the pistol into the scarlet mess that had been his marriage bed, and headed for the Daniel Boone National Forest and Crawford’s Dome. Ignoring the ‘no trespassing’ signs and climbing the razor wire topped fence, Bobby Ray proceeded two or three hundred yards into the thick, colorful forest until he picked up the mining tracks and crossties – a railway with no discernable beginning or end – and began what he knew would be his final journey. Crawford’s Dome rose nearly four hundred feet from the floor of the National Forest, and at the summit became a sheer, craggy precipice that fell to the bottom of a long abandoned strip mine and quarry. Bobby Ray couldn’t pull the trigger on himself, but he was sure he would be able to take a flying leap off the manmade ridge. Especially since every time he closed his eyes, he saw the exploded head of his wife, her brains slowly oozing down the headboard of their bed, and the body of his best friend Tim Waggoner, lying naked on the floor, a nickel-sized hole in his back, a ragged, softball sized exit wound in his chest. Just that morning, Bobby Ray had been called into the office of Manchester Mining – actually, a single-wide mobile home set up on the primary strip mine site – and had been given the bad news about an impending lay-off. That was not uncommon in the coal mining industry in Kentucky, Bobby Ray knew. He’d worked for Manchester for nearly five years, driving one of the massive haul trucks that transported the raw ore to processing. Usually, though, the lay-offs came as a group. That morning was different. "Bobby Ray," his supervisor, Stiffy Barnes said around an extinguished cigar, "I’m gone hafta letcha go, son. Stripping ain’t political correct no more. Them tree huggers has just about got us shut down." "C’mon, Stiffy, it’ll pick up. This shit happens ever year, man." Bobby Ray stared at the floor, his shoulders stooped. A rotund, slovenly man in a stained dress shirt and jeans, Barnes scraped a kitchen match across the rough surface of a "no smoking" sign stapled to the top of his scarred desk and fired up the stogie. "Look son. I knowed yore Daddy fore he come down wid the Black Lung. Best damn shaft miner I ever knew." Stiffy looked at Bobby Ray with a sly grin. "You ain’t yore Daddy, Bobby Ray. Your production numbers stink, you show up late with a hang around most days, and yore attitude is shit. Git yer gear and clear out. An’ don’t bother comin’ back." Bobby Ray sat in his brand new Silverado 4x4 pick-up truck – fifty-six payments to go – and sipped at a pint bottle of Old Grand Dad, staring through the streaked windshield at the dust-shrouded strip mine. The Ruger .44 mag sat on the seat beside him. He wanted to kill Stiffy Barnes, but what good would that do? He’d go to jail for life and his wife Connie Marie would find another man. Some other man would raise their three children. No, it wasn’t worth it. Bobby Ray would just go home and break the bad news to Connie Marie. Without a certain conspiracy of events, Tim Waggoner and Connie Marie Coombs would still be alive. If Tim hadn’t been laid off from another division of Manchester Mines the day before, if he and Connie Marie hadn’t bumped into one another over morning coffee at the Kentucky Inn, if Bobby Ray hadn’t slapped Connie Marie around the night before, if Bobby Ray hadn’t been fired, if he’d gone straight home instead of stopping at Stamper’s Liquor Store for another pint of Old Grand Dad, if Tim hadn’t hurriedly parked in front of Bobby Ray’s house, if Bobby Ray had left the Ruger in the truck. If Tim hadn’t just entered Connie Marie who moaned loudly when Bobby Ray crept through the bedroom door. If only... Timing wasn’t everything. Connie Marie gasped, rolling Tim off her. She covered her breasts with a sheet and screamed just before the hollow point round disintegrated her head. Tim shrieked (like a little girl, Bobby Ray thought darkly) and turned to run without excuse, apology or his pants. The second shot was easier, like plinking a target at a turkey shoot. Although he wouldn’t remember it until much, much later, Bobby Ray urinated in the face of Tim’s cooling corpse. Bobby Ray shuddered, tasting antimony. He’d inadvertently gnawed his tongue until it bled. Tears glazed his eyes and he stopped to clear them. God, he hoped the kids wouldn’t discover the bodies. He hadn’t thought of that before he left. Serve the bitch right, though, he thought acidly. Let them young’uns know what kinda slut their momma is. Was. Blind rage had subsided into seething anger; anger had melted into shock. Then came Bobby Ray’s realization of what he had done: with that, the worrisome shadows of guilt, remorse, regret. With the chill autumn air came the stark awareness of undoable deeds done. In the course of a few fevered seconds, Bobby Ray had, in effect, made his children orphans. His momma was incapable of taking care of herself, much less children. Connie Marie’s mother was a drunken tavern whore; her father no one seemed to remember had left for parts unknown decades ago. Bobby Ray’s father Denby, was dead. Denby Coombs had been a strapping bear of a man; two-fisted and barrel chested, in his prime, he could deep mine double the coal in a day as most any other miner. Just two years ago, he had gone from a healthy two hundred fifty pounds to a skeletal one hundred fifteen. He had died at home, in his bed, fingers clutching his throat, eyes bulging, as he drown in the viscous black sludge filling his lungs. Denby’s widow, Claire, had scarcely spoken since, and had seemed to wither within her own flesh. Bobby Ray thought she looked like a walking corpse, blazing eyes staring wide into the very guts of Hell. After a year, Claire’d finally packed up all of Denby’s belongings – including the rare 18th century Stainer fiddle he’d inherited from his grandfather – and burned everything in a backyard bonfire that blazed unnaturally brightly for hours and reeked of incinerated human flesh. Lost in thought, Bobby Ray had reached the boarded up mouth of the deep mine. He thought he could things scurrying around inside, and he shuddered with disgust and fear. Maybe it was the restless ghosts of all the miners this mine had killed. He thought of Connie Marie’s blond hair matted with blood and brain matter and trudged on. On the other side of a yellow-orange-scarlet stand of trees, the vast sky abruptly opened up, Kentucky blue. A full quarter of Crawford’s Dome had been sliced away, leaving a sheer drop of almost three hundred feet. No warning signs, no protective fence. The uninitiated might’ve stepped right off without realizing it. It ain’t the fall that gets ya son, it’s that sudden stop at the end. Bobby Ray looked out over the breathtaking vista. The forest below and all around -- beyond the ragged strip mine scar -- was virginal. Even under the circumstances, Bobby Ray was in awe. He peeked over the edge, down the dizzying distance along the craggy face of the cut. Bobby Ray swallowed hard and drained the last of the Old Grand Dad, flinging the empty bottle into the open space and then he waited. After what seemed like a lifetime, the barely visible bottle hit the boulders below and shattered. The sound was small and distant, and Bobby Ray thought that’s what the sound of his skull smashing against the rocks would probably be like. He took several steps away from the declivity and steeled himself. He thought of his kids. His lifeless mother. His father’s withered corpse. His dead wife and best friend. He thought of his shattered body lying cold and immobile on the craggy surface three hundred feet below. He thought of himself still alive, every bone in his body fractured, many of them ripping through the flesh. He thought of himself attempting in vain to shoo away various animals scavenging his ravaged body for a meal. Bobby Ray sat on a large chunk of bituminous coal and wept into his hands. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even muster the courage to kill himself. Crying for a couple hours seemed to drain much of the anxiety from his contrite soul. Guilt and remorse gave way to those court jesters of the heinous act, rationalization and self-preservation. "I’ll turn myself in," Bobby Ray said aloud. "Hell, man, they was screwin’. Ain’t no jury of my peers gonna fry me fer that. Shit, I was temp’rarily crazy. When I seen ‘em like that, I just went round the bend. Any man would." Bobby Ray wiped his tears away with the sleeve of his barn coat, smearing his face with clotted blood. He smiled and rubbed his hands together. "Okay. I can get through this. This is gonna work. Prolly won’t even lose my kids." He turned his back to the setting sun and, instead of returning the way he came, Bobby Ray headed down the east face of Crawford’s Dome, along the cut in the mountain. A wispy smudge of smoke appeared against the darkening sky. Just beyond the skeleton of a massive oak tree, Bobby Ray saw an old cabin, ruggedly hewn from heart pine and old stone. The chimney was a haphazard affair that appeared in grave danger of toppling and the lumber was age warped and scarred with tool markings. The place had to be ancient.
Bobby Ray was sure no one lived on Crawford’s Dome. There was a small porch beneath a rusted tin roof. The boards were worn and cracked from God only knew how many years of exposure to the elements atop the Dome. Four antique straight backed chairs were leaned against the cabin walls, on either side of the door. Bobby Ray wouldn’t have believed that anyone would be living here in decades, except that there was the familiar scent of old sulfuric coal burning in a stove and black smoke chugging relentlessly from the primitive chimney. "Hello?" Bobby Ray said, much more meekly than he intended. The occupants could’ve even been marijuana growers living up here tending their illegal crop on federally protected land. "Anybody here?" The door opened slowly on shrieking hinges. A gnarled old man with a walking stick and overalls stepped through the black opening. Bobby Ray strained to see inside, but couldn’t. The old man was bald except for a white wisp of fine peach fuzz coating his liver-spotted head. Oddly, thick sprouts of thick hair burst from his ears and nostrils. His eyes were filmy and might’ve been sightless. "Uh, sorry if’n I’m a tresspassin’, sir. I sorta got lost up here and -- " The old man grunted, reached inside the cabin and withdrew a beautiful caramel colored Martin acoustic guitar. The instrument was a very clean classic, circa 1910, if Bobby Ray was correct. Worth a small fortune. "Like I said, I was just -- " The old man righted one of the chairs and sat heavily. He nodded at one of the empty chairs and Bobby Ray reluctantly sat.
The old man’s stubby fingers with blackened nails danced over the frets effortlessly, playing a complex version of "Banks of the Ohio". A very old song about a man who killed his woman. On precisely the first note of the first break, the cabin door reopened, and an old man with a pristine Farland banjo appeared, sitting in the chair next to the first old man and began playing along, clawhammer style. A third person -- a stooped, hollow-eyed woman carrying a vintage Lyon and Healy mandolin -- appeared next, just as the song melded effortlessly into "Barbara Allen". Her voice suddenly rang out in the gathering dusk, crystal clear and much belying her obvious age.
O, mother, mother go make my bed
The song was beautiful and morbid; Bobby Ray had heard it a million times before, but never with such clarity as he did that evening. He abruptly stood; something told him that the fourth chair belonged to another musician.
They buried Barbara in the old church yard.
The door hinges screamed with the music; a fourth figured was
silhouetted in the obsidian doorway. The emaciated frame of Denby Coombs. Bobby Ray tried
to run -- tried to cry out -- but couldn’t. Denby grinned like a Halloween skull, produced his venerable Stainer fiddle and began playing with the melancholy band. The haggard old woman continued:
The music carried dirge-like among the trees and into the black vastness beyond the cliff. The group halted as one, each nodding to the other in quiet appreciation. Bobby Ray’s face was slick with tears and blood. "Dad?" "Hello, son," Denby said, a hollow croak. "Been waitin’ up here fer ya. Lemme introduce ya to the folks." Bobby Ray nodded mutely. "Feller on the geetar is Filbert Welles, banjo picker is Claude Elam and that perty young thang on the mandolin is Bessie Clevenger." "N-n-n-ice to meet you all," Bobby Ray stammered fearfully. The ‘folks’ merely nodded. The names were all horribly familiar, charter members of the Folk Legends’ Hall of Fame. Filbert Welles had been a blacksmith in town circa 1914 who’d killed his wife and six children after he’d discovered that he and his wife had been in fact, first cousins. He’d bludgeoned them all to death with his heavy blacksmith’s hammer then impaled himself on a pitchfork. In 1925, one Claude Elam had chunked his unfaithful wife Charlotte into a deep well, later depositing a number of timber rattlesnakes in on top of her. After the screaming finally stopped, Claude tucked a sawed-off Ithaca double-barreled shotgun beneath his chin and pulled both triggers, laughing loudly as his head vanished in a crimson spray. Bessie Clevenger’s clear, pure voice had been heard singing "Lonesome Valley" in the Spring of 1937, but when her husband finally returned from a hunting trip, she was found hanging from the rafters of their barn, their four young children drown in the water trough. She’d thoughtfully wrapped them all in warm clothing before holding their heads beneath the stagnant water until they stopped struggling forever. "Daddy," Bobby Ray whispered, "what – what’re you here?" Denby’s wan, shriveled face looked at his son thoughtfully. "I reckon I’m holdin’ yore place, son. Hell, I weren’t no prince neither, had a go or two at the neighbor’s wife and yore momma’ niece. But what you’ve done..." Denby shrugged sadly. "I – I don’t understand, Daddy," Bobby Ray choked. "You will. Anything in particular you’d like to hear before I go?" Bobby Ray bowed his head and shook it. "I know. ‘No Hiding Place Down Here’." Denby cleared the death rattle from his throat and the ancient bluegrass ensemble began playing effortlessly once again.
There's no hiding place down ground. There's no
hiding place down ground.
The wind began to howl, battering Crawford’s Dome seemingly from all directions. The leathery beating of wings filled the night and the screeches of the damned roared in Bobby Ray’s eardrums. He could see a hundred thousand vague shapes fluttering across the night sky – they were blacker than the deepest night. He couldn’t make out their features distinctly, but he was glad he couldn’t. He knew he was in the presence of loathsomeness. He could still hear his father’s rich baritone above the din:
I'll pitch tent on the old campground.
Dry, dead leaves swirled around the cabin and its occupants with hurricane force, nearly blinding Bobby Ray, who’d grasped the porch rail to keep from being blown away. The strange musicians played more fervently than ever and Bobby Ray could see the strings on their instruments begin to blaze like fire. The music was ear-shattering, overwhelming the horrible squalling of the winged creatures.
Oh, the devil, he wears a hypocrite's shoe. The fiery strings had become torrential infernos. Suddenly, with a peal of primordial thunder, they simultaneously leapt into the heavens, creating a febrile latticework against the turbulent sky. The shrieking creatures were sliced into ragged shreds, falling into the deep oceans and darkest corners of the earth. There would be more of them, Bobby Ray knew. There would always be more of them. The world became very silent. Denby Coombs had vanished. The old Stainer sat in the worn chair. Bobby Ray picked the instrument up, feeling the heat radiate from it. He looked at each of his new friends with a resigned half-smile. He lightly slid the bow across the shimmering strings. The sound was beautiful, bittersweet. "Y’all know ‘Weathered Grey Stone’?" They all nodded. Sorrowful, plaintive bluegrass filled the otherwise silent night.
If I had but one chance dear God I would never
©2002 Walt Hicks EXIT THE LIGHT |
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