Peaches

The peach industry in Chilton County harvests thousands of peaches each year and I’ve always supposed my father figured that they wouldn’t miss a basket or two. After getting the idea around the time I was five, he and I went on countless little jaunts to the back of the orchards.

Eventually, stealing peaches in the early hours of the morning became something of a tradition for my father and me. Then my uncle and cousin started to join us. My cousin and I would wait sleepily on a pallet of blankets in the back of the truck’s camper while my father and uncle picked out a few buckets while passing a bottle of whiskey between them.

They were never in a hurry. They were never, to my knowledge, scared that they would be found out. They hooped and hollered and laughed and drank. But they never let us out of the camper. It wasn’t until I was in my early teens that I found out why.

The whole town was scared of that place.

"No one goes to Thirteen Bridges Road while the sun don’t shine," my grandfather had told me, "and neither should you and your daddy. The injuns say it’s a bad place and so do I." They’d had words about it. But it never stopped my father. Not until one morning in early June, just a few weeks before my birthday.

My father shook me awake and packed me in the truck. It was still dark as we drove the few minutes it took to meet my uncle at his home in Clanton. My uncle climbed in the cab and my cousin and I sluggishly moved into the camper. I could faintly hear a few grunts and laughs from my father and uncle in the cab between Marty Robbins’ Streets of Laredo humming its way out of the static. I felt a jolt as the truck popped into gear and we rumbled down the road towards the farm.

Soon enough, the smooth asphalt gave way to the bumpy dirt road. The dirt and rocks crackled against the tires as I drifted in and out of sleep, waking up every so often as we hit a dip in the road. The truck rumbled to a stop as we reached our destination and I heard the doors bang open as my father and uncle went in search of peaches.

I must have drifted off to sleep after that. I remember waking up to the sound of my father shouting from some distance away. After waking up fully, I thought I could hear a faint, wet, rattling sort of noise. It was so low I couldn’t tell if I was hearing it or just imagining it. It sounded like someone was at the bottom of a glass of chocolate milk and was sucking the hell out of it with a straw. Both my father’s shouting and the noise grew closer. My cousin was still fast asleep, snoring lightly.

I rubbed my eyes and peeked out the side window of the camper. I saw my father running towards the truck with no sign of my uncle. In a few strides, he cleared about fifteen feet and slammed into the cab of the truck, cranking up the engine. He was still shouting, his fear made his voice ragged. As he turned the truck around in the dirt road, I saw what he had been running from.

The moonlight illuminated the thing’s swollen head as it bobbed gently above the peach trees. The trees obscured the rest of its body as it glided towards the truck. Its head didn’t dip and rise with the motion of walking, it just seemed to will itself forward propelled by some arcane locomotion. Its face was gnarled and badly wrinkled, its small dark eyeballs popped from their sockets like spoiled eggs, the skin was the withered warm gray of a long dry river bed and its mouth was screwed up into a rictus grin with tiny nubs of yellowing teeth darting through. It caught sight of the truck and turned to face it. As it did, the mouth of the thing opened slightly and the sucking sound began again, more intensely.

By that time, my father had gotten the truck turned around and hit the gas. It took the tire a moment to gain traction on the red Alabama dirt but when it did, the truck lurched forward, knocking me over onto my cousin.

I don’t remember much else until my father stopped the truck. We were on the shoulder of the asphalt road, miles from the farm. My cousin was sobbing and asking for his father. He looked at me through tears and convulsing with sobs, covered up to his chin in the old blanket. I couldn't find words. He hadn't seen the thing, he wouldn't understand what happened and I had no way to explain it.

I heard the cab door open and I saw my father walk past with half-empty bottle of whiskey. He threw it into the woods with a yell and walked back to the truck. There was a short pause before he climbed back in the cab and slammed the door. The truck's engine roared to life and we drove home quietly into the pinkish violet hue of the rising sun.

The truck’s engine sputtered out the last of its temporary life in the plain concrete driveway of our home. My cousin and I, frightened, stayed quiet in the back of the camper, hoping at some moment this would all be awful prank. My uncle popping out of the bushes and yelling, “Gotcha!” while gut-laughing. In my heart, I knew differently. The quality unique to children that allows them to be bright-eyed and hopeful had been snuffed out when I saw the damned thing.

My father shakily opened the rear of the camper and looked at us. The morning light shone around him making a ragged silhouette from the man.

He looked towards me and muttered, “Did you see it?”

I gulped down the stone in my throat and nodded. He hung his head.

“Where’s my daddy?”

My cousin was out of the blanket now, his tearful eyes searched for an answer from my father but he had none to give. My father's body trembled slightly. He shook his head, turned and walked away.

My uncle was reported as a missing person by my aunt. There were search teams, there were dogs and even the local news station became interested after a while. But no one ever searched after the sun went down. They found nothing and after several weeks the official searches were called off.

After a few months, a memorial service was held for my uncle and everyone besides my father, my cousin and my aunt went on with their lives. My aunt still got a few do-gooders from church to search the fields of the county every now and then but as my father and I knew, it was all in vain. My uncle’s body would never be found. The thing had digested him along with his peaches or had done something much worse. I find it better not to think about it.

I watched the toll it took on my father through the remainder of his years. He didn't turn to drink or drugs, he didn't do much at all after that. The thing had sucked the joy of living from him. He committed suicide when I was eighteen but I wasn’t sad. I understood. He just couldn't bear the burden any longer. Being a kid when I saw it, it didn’t shatter me the way it had my father. I just accepted it into what I knew the world to be.

My cousin did the best he could for a boy that went through losing his father and is finishing up a business degree in Tuscaloosa. He remains pretty normal, doesn’t wake up screaming like I do. He came out of it the best of us but then, he never saw it.

Sometime after my father’s death, the screams of fear I’d always woken up with turned into screams of rage. That is partly why I am writing this down. I needed to let the ones that cared about me know what might happen to me. Although, you’d probably think it’s crazy and I wouldn’t blame you. Not at all. But if you’re reading this and I’m missing, don’t search for me. Just put my tombstone up next to my father’s and leave it at that.

I can’t live in the same world as the thing anymore. I don’t know what it is other than some old Indian legends that call it some kind of god. I’m not sure I can kill it but me and a few pounds of explosives are going to try. I rigged the vest up with some plans off the internet, so hopefully I won’t blow myself up before I get to Thirteen Bridges Road. Don’t grieve for me. I have nothing to live for. The things that bring others joy they don’t matter to me. There is a just a dull lump where my feelings should be. If I can kill this thing, then I’ll have done something worthwhile.

I have to try to end it. No more little cousins should grow up with a man-shaped hole in their life. I know it’s still out there. I keep up with the missing persons reports in this county.

I do this for my uncle and for my father. May they rest in peace.