the rotted slats. An ounce of pressure would send it over, and he could just imagine the rail giving away as he pressed his stomach to it, easing forward inch by inch, until he was plunging. Dave’s powerful arm struck out and braced him.
“How far up are we?”
“Elevation averages about thirty-four hundred feet along the rim of the gorge,” Dave said.
“Jesus—”
“Waters descend over two thousand feet before breaking into the open levels of the hollow. Jonah Ridge is on the other side of the chasm. My grandfather used to hunt grizzly and cougar up there.”
“Even though he thought the hills were haunted?”
“He was a man of contradictions.”
All of us are. You couldn’t get away from it.
“Anybody live out that way?”
That tremendous torso filled with cold air, working like a bellows. Dave gave him that same look as before, sad and almost loving, but ready to backhand him hard across his nose if need be. “You going to hunt down everybody for a twenty-mile radius, Shad Jenkins?”
“If I have to.”
“You’re gonna cause yourself a lot of pain. That the way you gonna go at this?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s mostly wilderness on Jonah. The grizzly and the big cats were wiped out. Now you’ve really only got deer, grouse, quail, and coon. Living off red chokeberry and wild indigo, they don’t get as big as you might think. Plenty of timber rattlers too, in case you decide to go take a gander. Get yourself some real boots. They’ll strike through the heels of what you’re wearing and you’ll probably be dead in two hours without treatment.”
It was an exaggeration. Probably. “How much farther up is the trestle that covers the divide?”
“Maybe a mile. It’s hidden from our line of view right now by the scrub and pine. The Pharisee Bridge. They were pure brimstone with naming things in these parts, weren’t they?”
“They do appear to have been single-minded people back then.”
“And some of their inheritors still can be.”
“I suppose we can.”
“The trestle was never the most stable structure, but the county used it for fifteen, twenty years or so beginning in the late thirties. They tried a couple of mining operations up there on Jonah but nothing ever came of it, and the tracks were abandoned and pulled up. Now the hill folk use the bridge to cut their trips to town in half, when they come down at all. Which happens less and less now. Nobody else would dare try it, not even the hunters. Easier and safer just to cross the Chatalaha at the bottom and drive up the old logging roads.”
Shad stepped back over to the rickety rail fence and forced himself to stand there. To show whoever was pondering on him that he wasn’t going to lie still or back off. He was coming.
He scanned the vista on the other side of the gorge, the dying orchards clustered with snarled catclaw brambles and briars.
A scratch on her cheek.
Pharisee.
If somebody hadn’t taken Megan up to Gospel Trail Road, then maybe someone had brought her down from the back hills instead.
Chapter Five
THE LUVELL GIRL HIS FATHER HAD SPOKEN OF turned out to be Glide, who after dropping out of school in the fifth grade spent most of her days helping make sour-mash whiskey. She was a year younger than Megan—than Megan had been—but Glide already had 36C breasts and a natural cunning and understanding of men. Like her mother and sisters before her, she was built to bear children, designed by the hollow to pass on the burden of her general simplemindedness.
Shad remembered her as a crude kid always pouting and posturing, smelling of fresh cornstalk. She’d grown into a provocative teenager aware of her sexuality but too immature to do more than stick her chest in your face. She managed to hit all the right poses that accentuated her heavily freckled cleavage.
The Luvells had come out of the bottoms only to develop a taste for their own moon. Their patriarch, Pike Luvell, had blown
“How far up are we?”
“Elevation averages about thirty-four hundred feet along the rim of the gorge,” Dave said.
“Jesus—”
“Waters descend over two thousand feet before breaking into the open levels of the hollow. Jonah Ridge is on the other side of the chasm. My grandfather used to hunt grizzly and cougar up there.”
“Even though he thought the hills were haunted?”
“He was a man of contradictions.”
All of us are. You couldn’t get away from it.
“Anybody live out that way?”
That tremendous torso filled with cold air, working like a bellows. Dave gave him that same look as before, sad and almost loving, but ready to backhand him hard across his nose if need be. “You going to hunt down everybody for a twenty-mile radius, Shad Jenkins?”
“If I have to.”
“You’re gonna cause yourself a lot of pain. That the way you gonna go at this?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s mostly wilderness on Jonah. The grizzly and the big cats were wiped out. Now you’ve really only got deer, grouse, quail, and coon. Living off red chokeberry and wild indigo, they don’t get as big as you might think. Plenty of timber rattlers too, in case you decide to go take a gander. Get yourself some real boots. They’ll strike through the heels of what you’re wearing and you’ll probably be dead in two hours without treatment.”
It was an exaggeration. Probably. “How much farther up is the trestle that covers the divide?”
“Maybe a mile. It’s hidden from our line of view right now by the scrub and pine. The Pharisee Bridge. They were pure brimstone with naming things in these parts, weren’t they?”
“They do appear to have been single-minded people back then.”
“And some of their inheritors still can be.”
“I suppose we can.”
“The trestle was never the most stable structure, but the county used it for fifteen, twenty years or so beginning in the late thirties. They tried a couple of mining operations up there on Jonah but nothing ever came of it, and the tracks were abandoned and pulled up. Now the hill folk use the bridge to cut their trips to town in half, when they come down at all. Which happens less and less now. Nobody else would dare try it, not even the hunters. Easier and safer just to cross the Chatalaha at the bottom and drive up the old logging roads.”
Shad stepped back over to the rickety rail fence and forced himself to stand there. To show whoever was pondering on him that he wasn’t going to lie still or back off. He was coming.
He scanned the vista on the other side of the gorge, the dying orchards clustered with snarled catclaw brambles and briars.
A scratch on her cheek.
Pharisee.
If somebody hadn’t taken Megan up to Gospel Trail Road, then maybe someone had brought her down from the back hills instead.
Chapter Five
THE LUVELL GIRL HIS FATHER HAD SPOKEN OF turned out to be Glide, who after dropping out of school in the fifth grade spent most of her days helping make sour-mash whiskey. She was a year younger than Megan—than Megan had been—but Glide already had 36C breasts and a natural cunning and understanding of men. Like her mother and sisters before her, she was built to bear children, designed by the hollow to pass on the burden of her general simplemindedness.
Shad remembered her as a crude kid always pouting and posturing, smelling of fresh cornstalk. She’d grown into a provocative teenager aware of her sexuality but too immature to do more than stick her chest in your face. She managed to hit all the right poses that accentuated her heavily freckled cleavage.
The Luvells had come out of the bottoms only to develop a taste for their own moon. Their patriarch, Pike Luvell, had blown
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