The Sick Stuff by Ronald Kelly

out to the West Piney. I
had my .22 rifle and my hound dog, Bones, with me. But taking
potshots at blue jays wasn't my only intention for walking the
woods that day. I had half a mind to drop by Jess Hedgecomb's
place. So I did.
    Old Hacker was reared back in a caneback
rocker, his feet propped up on the porch railing and his nose
buried in a dog-eared copy of the Farmers Almanac.
    "Mornin'" I called out. I had a nervous
feeling in my belly, the kind you get while waiting in the
dentist's office, listening to his drill at work.
    "Mornin' to you," acknowledged the old man.
"You're Harry Dean's eldest boy, ain't you?"
    "Yes, sir," I replied.
    He stuck the almanac in the side pocket of
his overalls and removed his store-bought reading glasses. "Well,
come on and pull up a chair, young man." He grinned, looking his
eighty years and then some. "I don't get a whole lot of company way
out here in the sticks."
    "Yes, sir," I said politely. I sat down in a
rocker identical to the one Mr. Hedgecomb occupied.
    We sat there in silence for a good long time.
Then Old Hacker looked over at me, his eyes sparkling. "Just
dropped by for a neighborly visit... that right, son?"
    I reached down to scratch behind Bones'
droopy ears. "That's right."
    "Naw, I don't think so," he chuckled. "I seen
you watching me over at Dawes Market. I figure it was more
curiosity than good manners that brought you out here this fine
morn."
    Then he leaned forward in his chair and
started that noisy hacking cough that I had grown to loath so much.
When he finally spat into the dry dust of the front yard, we both
sat there and watched. Bones bared his teeth and growled as the
gray-green glob slowly made a bee-line down the pathway, toward the
thicket.
    "They always travel west," Old Hacker said,
as if discussing the migration of birds. "No matter where I am in
the county, whenever I cough up one of the little devils, they
always head west -- straight for the piney woods."
    I held onto Bones' collar and watched the
high grass part as the living lunger disappeared into deep forest.
"Why is that?" I asked.
    "Oh, I know why," Jess Hedgecomb told me.
"But maybe you shouldn't want to. Maybe you shouldn't want to know
anything about me or my... affliction."
    Looking straight into that old man's haggard
eyes, I said "Yes, I do." I knew that I really didn't, that I would
probably be better off if I took my leave that instant and never
returned. But it was kind of like standing in line for the freak
show at the county fair. You have the creepy feeling that what
you're about to see will be horrible, but you still want to see it
all the same.
    The strange tale that Jess Hedgecomb told me
that day was much worse than any freak show I could ever hope to
attend, real or imagined.
    "I was born the son of a tobacco farmer," he
began innocently enough. "So were my boyhood buddies, Lester Wills
and Charlie Gooch. We worked the fields with our fathers. We
planted, harvested, and hung the leaves in the barn for curing. But
we were absolutely forbidden to partake of the stuff. 'I catch you
smoking before you come of age and I'll tan your hide right good,'
my papa would warn me. Of course, none of us listened. We'd do what
most kids our age did; smoke corn silk or sneak old butts outta the
ashtrays down at the train depot.
    "I'd say we were about twelve years old that
summer we found our own little goldmine out in the dark hollows of
West Piney Woods. We were walking home from skinny-dipping in
Silver Creek, when we came upon a heavy patch of wild tobacco
growing pretty as you please. What a stroke of luck, we thought.
Now we could harvest our own little crop without anyone knowing
about it. Lester and Charlie smuggled boards and tin from home and
we built us a small curing barn about the size of a doghouse. We
stripped the leaves off the stalk, hung them up in that little
shed, and smoked them with charcoal I filched from my papa's barn.
We'd only cure them leaves for a couple of days