I'll Wait Til The Mornin

I—probably nobody, both in a sense movin backward and forward here—would have never found the body if it hadn’t been for that scream that woke me out of a dead sleep. I hadn’t lived in West Virginia long but anybody who grew up huntin or spent a great deal of time in the woods had come across that god awful screech at some point or another I’d likely reckon. It sounded like a woman bein murdered. Just hearin it evoked images of a knife being dragged through a woman’s stomach. Course I still couldn’t be sure if it was a bobcat or a barn owl. All I knew was that it kept hollerin and finally I felt a deep bubble inside me burst. A bubble that holds that dark liquid fear that spreads through your innards when your skin prickles up and your hair stands and the stomach tightens; it’s a feelin I’ve felt enough times in my life to trust. It’s a feelin that I believe indicates the presence of evil, of wickedness and danger; of a very very bad thing.

So I looked at my clock by my bed which read it was half past two in the mornin. The screechin kept on and on as I sat up and gathered myself in the bedroom of my dark little cabin. I quickly threw on a pair of trousers over my long johns and then strapped on my old Army boots before grabbin my service rifle.

After retirin from the Army in 1968 I had no wife and kids to go home to, and my parents had long been dead so I bought a few acres in Seekum County, West Virginia and built a cabin on it.

It took me a year of living out of the bed of my Ford pick-up but I didn’t mind it one bit. Cept for the winter. For that I had to go and live in a motel for a few months. That was fine and reasonable I thought. Practical even. So I just relaxed and enjoyed the small town of Kater Duke Falls. Not that there was a lot to do, mind you. But a fella like me got drinks real cheap and free meals once they’d find out I was a retired Army ranger. Folks were real nice about that. Not that I felt I deserved it for I certainly believe in payin my own way, but folks there were dead set on the belief that I had already paid my dues over the course of twenty years. So I ate and drank to my heart’s content and would you believe I actually put on a few healthy pounds and grew my beard out. After so many years without one it was hard to take to, but I still like havin it. It kept me warm then and still keeps me warm. Don’t get me wrong it can get pretty tortuous to have during the summer time, but I have found it’s more tortuous here in the winter time without it. Plus the women love it—of whom I also enjoyed greatly during my stay at the Riverland Motel that winter. Like my beard, they too kept me warm on those long cold nights.

One in particular was this gorgeous ginger haired girl that was the type I usually never paid much attention to, but when we were at the bar up there in town and our eyes met, hers a deep brown and mine a pale blue, I could have taken her in my arms right then and there. Somethin about them eyes and smile working together to warm me up from about ten feet away down the bar was total magic. I hate to use that silly word but there just ain’t no other word good nuff. That red—almost sunset orange—hair flowed down across her shoulders, soft and vibrant. Her eyes were deep wells of chocolate—seriously, you ever just stare at a bar of chocolate? It’s smooth and invitin and perfect. Her lips were a pale pink and her face equally pale with a few freckles thrown on, but I’ll be damned if she hadn’t been one of the prettiest things I’d ever seen—even if she did seem to be a few years younger than me.

I took a shot of Bourbon and then sauntered over—already swimmin a bit—and introduced myself.

She smiled and said “Hi. I’m Connie.”

“What’s your drink Connie?”

“I’m just drinking a regular ol’ beer. You?”

“I’m a bourbon man myself but whadda say I get you another one of them while I enjoy two fingers of Salisar.” I spoke to both her and the bartender who had suddenly appeared.

She nodded with a firm but soft “Okay.”

The bartender went to makin the drinks and I sat down.

We chatted for a long while, until finally the same bartender told us it was closin time. But durin that long while I learned a lot about her. She had a real nice way of talkin and I had a real nice way of listenin.

She was from Delaware but was making her way west to California like many young women. Only—and I found this fascinatin—she didn’t want to be in the movies, she wanted to make what people wore in the movies. Costumer Designer is the official title I think and I thought that was just so interestin. Truth is I hadn’t seen a lot of movies, nor had I really ever paid much mind to what the people were wearin in them, but after talkin with her I guess them costumer designers did a damn good job. They felt like they was them peoples’ natural clothes. They didn’t feel like costumes. So I thought that was real swell of Connie to want to do that out there in Hollywood.

She let me talk some too though she didn’t need to. My story is a simple one. I grew up in the fringes of Arkansas farmin with my ma and pa and learned how to hunt and fish and live off the land. The problem was it got borin over the course of 18 years so I joined the Army. In 1960 my Ma died of an aneurysm and my Pa died a year later—I think of a broken heart—though the doctors say it was a broken neck from where he hung hisself in the barn.

I miss them dearly and was heartbroken about it for a good while, but I pressed on.

After the bartender told us to leave I invited her back to my motel room but then I panicked. I didn’t want her to think I just wanted to take her to bed—I mean I did and so would any man in his right mind, ginger hair be damned—but truthfully I just didn’t want to stop talkin to her.

Thankfully she looked at me with a smaller smile this time and said “Let’s go.”

We took her car back to the motel because that last drink had done me in. I fumbled with my room key which made her laugh and I’ll never forget that most of all. The way she laughed would have turned my legs to jelly if the bourbon hadn’t already.

I pushed into the room and she followed closely behind and before I knew it she had me on the bed and was pullin my clothes off. I wish I could remember more of it to be honest but other than seeing her undressed at the edge of the bed, just within the glow of the lamp, I only remember holdin her afterwards before fallin asleep.

It felt like I had slept for years, dreamin I was swimmin around in a long black lake that stretched through a canyon of snowcapped mountains. Anytime I’d try to swim to the shore the lake seemed to grow wider and wider.

Finally I woke up though—must have been about noon—and Connie was gone as was the cash from my wallet. I didn’t have much, maybe about thirty dollars on me but she had taken it all. I would have been fine with it had she left a note sayin she was takin it to finance her expedition westward or if she had said she was a workin girl, but I felt played and that just didn’t sit too good.

I checked the lot and sure enough her car was gone. So I got dressed and walked back to the bar and got my truck and then went about my day.

Sure I could have called the Sheriff but I didn’t think much could be done. It would have just looked like I had buyer’s remorse on a prostitute. Plus even if he had believed my slightly okay intentions thinkin she was just a girl actually interested in me—and she very well could have despite her thievery—I hadn’t got her last name and her first name could have been a lie and I was so drunk I couldn’t remember the type of car she drove.

All of that combined, forced me to swallow my pride and head back to the motel. Thankfully my bill wasn’t due to the end of the month when I got my retirement check so I told myself I could live with that girl robbin me of a few dollars to chase her dream—if indeed that’s what she was doin. It had been nearly a year since then and I went back to buildin and finishin up my cabin so I was able to put her out of my mind. Then came the night I woke up in bed to someone or something screamin.

I checked to make sure my rifle was loaded—even though I know it always is—and went to the front room where a fire was still smolderin in the stone fireplace. I grabbed my flannel coat by the front door and pulled it on. Then I undid the latch and pulled the door open.

The screechin came louder now as I stepped out onto my porch and made my way off it toward the dark tree line off to the side of the cabin.

The moon was out but not nearly as bright as I would preferred it, so I grabbed my flashlight from my truck and pressed on—as I always do.

Slowly I pushed past some pines and oaks and run into a thick maze of bushes. I moved along carefully—my Army trainin kickin in as I neared closer and closer to the screechin.

Somethin was surely wrong out here in those woods. I could feel it. It was dark out sure, but somethin darker lie ahead as I finally bustled through a bush and into a small clearin. A single group of tall oaks sat a couple hundred yards in front of me—the source of the screechin.

I continued on, steppin quietly through the open field. My heart was beatin faster and faster with each step that trodden down the damp grass.

Finally I smelled it. A smell that any farm boy or hunter knows. A smell that clings to rottin death. A smell harsh enough to make a grown man nearly vomit. Still as I flashed the light around, I couldn’t find the cause. However I did see the owl look at me from the tree top and screech. Its dark eyes peered hollow like from its half-Apple face. I always thought barn owls while somewhat cute, often resembled angels from biblical paintins which terrified me in my youth. Like barn owls they seemed judicial, their eyes always judgin—which I guess is sort of the point.

The owl stopped it’s screechin as soon as it saw me and flew off. It had done its part.

Still the stench was overwhelmin so I moved further into the clump of trees until I heard a soft buzzin that often accompanies insects. Then I saw the flies swarmin near the base of a tall and wide oak where a fire had been made inside of it long ago, burnin out a large alcove about five feet tall up the tree and a foot wide.

I flashed the light over the flies and then saw the body horrendously wrenched and twisted into the alcove of the tree. Almost like clothes that were stuffed into overstuffed luggage. How I didn’t vomit astounds me but my feet stood firm even though my hands began to shake. The light wobbled and that’s when I saw the sunset orange hair matted to what was left of the girl I knew as Connie.

She had only one eye left that now seemed made of glass. The birds must have eaten the other chocolate delight along with half of her bottom jaw. Maggots surely had eaten the rest of her body damn near. A skeletal hand pointed out at me, almost beckonin me forward. I graciously declined as I moved backward puttin my back against a tree. I had a lot of thought thrust upon me all of a sudden and this ghastly sight didn’t help so I clicked the light off and took control of my breathin as I stood there in the dark thinkin for a long while.

At first I thought somethin truly satanic or otherworldly had befallen this poor girl. Picturin a man or men stuffin her into this tree like this was hard to imagine, but eventually I convinced myself—based on the progress of her decay—that she must have met her killer not long after meetin me. And if said killer was given the same treatment she offered me, maybe he didn’t take to it as well and found her and gave her a thief’s death or a whore’s death, or both, whatever that could be considered in the mind of a maniac. All I know is that it made me sick. Still I had to gather myself for I was in quite a predicament. If I went and fetched the Sheriff I’d have a lot of explainin to do, especially if I told him how I knew the corpse. Then I’d have to deal with how suspicious it was that not only she had met death shortly after meetin me but also—and even more damnin—her body was shoved into a tree not a mile from my cabin. Technically she wasn’t on my land but it wasn’t far from it. How I’d avoid suspicion was lost on me so I had an alternative thought.

While I felt for the girl and anyone who went the way she did, I couldn’t reason that she was purely innocent if she did indeed rob her killer first. Not that I agree with the sentence she was handed, but as I stood there I didn’t feel I played much of a part in what had happened. But if I opened my mouth and ran to the Sheriff I was makin myself more of a character in a troubled story than I figured I ought to. So my second thought was to just walk away. Maybe say a blessin and wish justice upon her killer in one form or another, but then go home and forget what I saw.

I felt for her parents, as they’d always be wonderin what happened to their baby girl and that thought alone was enough for me to reconsider goin for the Sheriff. I flicked on the light again and grimaced at the sight. She seemed to be starin right at me with her remaining eye. Maybe I did play a bigger part in her story than I was thinkin. After all God had a plan for us all and she and I were meant to meet and know each other even if just for a night. I obviously was meant to find her but for what reason I couldn’t answer. The damned barn owl led me right here for what? It had the gall to judge me with its stare when it was able to just fly right away. So why couldn’t I do the same thing?

I felt a tremendous sadness befall me and I think if I had my truck right there I would have hopped in it and gone to the Sherriff’s office. Instead I knew I had a good deal of walking to do and a lot more thinking that would happen along the way before I got to my truck. I liked to think that the Sheriff would believe me and would do everythin he could to track down the real killer—hell maybe they’d find evidence of his on her—but I couldn’t be sure. So instead I flicked off the light and said some kind words and asked God to bring her and her family peace as I turned away and headed back through the clearin. I hadn’t made up my mind just yet, mind you. I decided no good decisions can be made on so little sleep so late into the night. So I decided, I’ll wait till the mornin and figure it out then. How I’d manage to sleep after seein somethin like that I wasn’t keen about, but I was damn sure going to try.