Read an Excerpt

Mr. Charon

Abbott Press

Friday, June 1, 1962
Angelina County
Thornton, Texas

Except for the half-gone ear and tail, at a distance Mrs. Barrick's old tomcat could easily be mistaken for one of the many bobcats roaming the piney woods of East Texas. It was far larger than most cats, had all of the right colors, and as every pet in town had discovered, a disposition as mean.

The tom prowled the area, proving his rule, smugly walking atop fences, always remaining out of reach of the snapping jaws of frenzied dogs. Age had taught it patience and on this morning it lay sprawled along a tree limb like a jungle leopard waiting for its next prey. When one appeared, the tom went on the chase; alert, agile, and merciless.

The jerky stop and go travels of the field mouse crossing the yard caught the predator's eyes. With one leap the cat was out of the tree and on the ground, stalking the mouse with eyes focused, head hung low, and legs ready to catapult its body forward.

Sensing death's presence, the mouse drew still. It looked left, right, and bolted toward the loose tin sheets of a nearby barn.

When the mouse broke into a run, so did the big cat, trying to overtake its prey before it escaped into the dilapidated building. The distance between them closed but not swiftly enough. The mouse shot through a black gap and vanished as the old tom's paws pounded the ground behind him, its sharp claws raking the dirt each time.

Try as it may the cat couldn't squeeze through the gap. But the hunt wasn't over. The tom prowled the barn's perimeter until he found another opening in the tin sheets.

Sunlight shone through cracks in the barn's wall and filled the interior with faint, slender beams of light that caught specks of dust floating through the dead air like ghosts. The tomcat was an experienced ratter. It knew to find a vantage point and wait. The mouse would betray itself.

The aged barn was a tomb of long forgotten relics. Scanning the shadows, always vigilant, the old cat rested atop a rusted tractor, its head swiveling to listen for the least sound and to sniff the air for the scent of the mouse's fear.

The mouse squeaked in pain, faint yet enough for the tom to track. Avoiding beams of sunlight, the cat crept past water-stained cardboard boxes; pieces of farm machinery, and a car cloaked in years of thick dust and spider webs. When the cat reached the northern corner of the barn, the cries of the mouse hushed. The tom sniffed the floor and the air again. The scent of the mouse was strong.

Ready to attack, he crept around weathered boards and tattered tarps set deliberately to conceal the corner. Convulsing in spasms, the mouse lay on its side, next to a black steamer trunk lost in time. Once, twice, the mouse thrashed its legs and tail, and drew still.

Muscles tightened like coiled springs, the tomcat sprang forward, landing with claws digging deep to pin the mouse to the wood floor. But the mouse was dead. Raising its paw, the cat watched.

The cat rose and circled the body, wary of any tricks the mouse might try. As the cat walked between the mouse and the steamer trunk, its ribs brushed the trunk's metal sides.

Scorching agony skewered the cat, making it scream, twist about, furiously hiss, and strike out as if it were under attack. The tomcat felt itself being lifted and flung through the air. It crashed against the barn's tin wall with a loud boom. Falling to the floor, the cat clawed at an invisible foe and fought for its life.

The piercing pain stopped. The tom jumped clear, landing and leaping from machinery to boxes, fleeing as if a pack of starving wolves were giving chase. When a sunlit gap in the tin siding appeared, the old cat never slowed. He smashed head long into it, pushing and squeezing his body through until free of the barn.

At a full run, half way across the yard, the tom stumbled and rolled into the dirt. Once, twice, Mrs. Barrick's tomcat thrashed its legs and drew still.

The school bus made a loop through Huntington and back out onto the forest-lined Highway 69, heading south for its final stop of the day before returning to Lufkin. Black smoke belched from the tailpipes. Its young passengers were jolted hard each time Mr. Snider ground the gears as he shifted and shoved the accelerator to the floorboard. The scent of pine flowing through the open windows was a welcome relief. It masked the foul smell of burning oil that carried from the motor.

At Dead Man's Road the lumbering bus slowed and turned north toward the ghost like community of Thornton. There was a harsh raking of gears as the bus lurched forward, trailed by black smoke.

Mr. Snider glanced at the wide mirror above his visor and smiled. Eight anxious faces stared back at him.

"Stay in your seats. We're almost there," he yelled over the roar of the struggling engine and rattling bus windows. The school bus struck a shallow dip in the country road and roughly jostled the children on their bench seats.

"Dang!" Eddie Phillips said, eyebrows drawing together as he shook his head. Grabbing the top of the seat in front of him, he held fast to keep from being bashed into it. "He's crazy if he thinks we're gonna stand up the way he drives."

The four boys sitting around Eddie laughed. Each time they tried to speak the bus struck another hole, throwing them against one another.

* * *

Thornton was like a sinking ship crossing the Atlantic with an oblivious crew who believed it was still sea worthy. The community had died long ago, yet the remaining residents held on with hopes of its life. Aside from the five boys and three girls on the bus, and a few kids who rode with their parents to school, these children were the extent of Thornton's future. No one stayed anymore. After high school graduations, the young left within a few days. The only people who lingered were families too poor to move, lonely grandparents, and those with one foot already in the grave from working at the foundry, saw mill, and creosoting plant in Lufkin.

Dead Man's Road ran through the community and on like a winding snake deep into the thick forest. The pavement extended from the highway and through Thornton. After that was dirt, sand, and rock, graded every five years if the county remembered. Eventually, it intersected with other forgotten roads that led to the red-soil-stained Angelina River and the reservoir. Only ghost hunters, deer poachers, and couples desperate for privacy traveled the road past Thornton anymore. Before the turn of the century, the road became notorious for a high number of unsolved grisly deaths. The name stuck like an ugly wart that could never be removed after the newspapers nicknamed it Dead Man's Road.

Thornton itself was only four blocks long, bordered on both sides of the road by vacant, faded brick buildings, some boarded, some not, that once bustled with customers when the oilfield and lumber business still boomed. Now, only a handful of 'mom and pop' stores along the wide road endured the test of time.

The houses of Thornton were hardly better than its main strip. The few Victorian structures, once beautiful and alive with activity, sat vacant and crumbling with picket fences that leaned and had sections missing. Deserted farms with fields overrun by weeds lay on the outskirts of the community, and paint bare, wood-framed houses on concrete blocks were sprinkled over the land to both sides of Dead Man's Road.

Oil companies had built several Victorian houses for their supervision, and dozens of simple, wood-framed dwellings to house their transient 'oilfield trash' brought in to work on the wells. When the oil companies left, the houses were sold to a slumlord that without making repairs rented them to lumber company workers. The renters led a nomadic lifestyle, but some stayed until their children were grown. As people moved away, bulldozers leveled the wooden remnants and left empty lots and fields in their place as memorials to years past. Regardless of its declining state, though, Thornton had always been a community where houses were never locked, windows were always open, and keys remained in the ignitions of cars.

Entering the southern end of Thornton, Mr. Snider turned on the emergency flashers as he rolled the bus to a halt in front of Luke's Hardware. With hefty pulls on levers hand-polished through years of use, he opened the door and swung the 'STOP' sign out from the side of the bus by his window. He looked up into the visor mirror, his face aglow with achievement.

"All ashore that's going ashore," he said proudly. It was a phrase from his Navy years that every bus rider had grown accustomed to hearing. "Ladies first ... you gentlemen next. Watch your step!"

The girls rose from their seats near him and filed out, each pausing to say goodbye for the summer and tell him he would be missed. The five boys had already risen from the vinyl bench seats, gathered their belongings and were standing in line in the aisle, waiting their turns to leave.

From the middle of the line, Andy Dupree heard the girls, rolled his eyes, and rubbed the back pockets of his jeans. He glanced at his friends with blue eyes gleaming in mischief.

"I know my damn butt won't miss this bus ride," he whispered.

At the head of the line, Caleb McFarland adjusted his glasses and tried not to laugh.

Cooper Atkinson, the preacher's son, playfully jabbed an elbow into Andy's chest. "You don't have to curse." His words could barely be heard.

"Damn, damn, damn," Andy whispered into his ear. He flashed a smile when he heard Cooper's groan.

Mr. Snider turned in his seat to look at them.

"Oh, mercy, here comes trouble," the driver said, watching the boys march forward. They had grown together; inseparable blood brothers at heart. Even now, as they walked in line, their positions were always the same each day as if they had been ordered to never vary from it.

A smile edged across Mr. Snider's mouth, his face softening with the same pleasure a grandfather feels at the approach of a grandson. They had ridden his bus since the days each could barely climb aboard without assistance and now, a month or so from their fourteenth year, were growing into young men.

In the lead walked Caleb, the smart one of the bunch, tall and skinny as a rail, and usually with a book of some sort in hand. He hoped to be a writer one day like his grandfather. Next came Cooper Atkinson, the lanky, natural born baseball player whose father preferred he enter the ministry like himself. Behind Cooper was Andy, a good kid despite never having known his father. Herschel Lawson followed, the shy, chubby, stuttering boy with glasses who was all too often the brunt of every bully's joke in school. But no one bullied him when Eddie Phillips, the lean, tough kid with a burr haircut, was around. Eddie fiercely protected him. He hated bullies. The bruises and marks he often carried from home gave him reason to.

"Have a good summer, guys. Stay out of trouble and I'll see you in a few months!"

The boys whizzed past Mr. Snider and jumped from the high doorstep of the bus like soldiers parachuting into a warzone. They laughed and waved goodbye to him as they started across the street toward the Mobil gasoline station.

Mr. Snider sat watching them, tense without an immediate reason. Of the five boys, he knew Andy and Eddie had the roughest home lives; lives that boys their ages shouldn't have to experience. His fingers drummed the steering wheel. He sighed and the anxiety passed. Shrugging the feeling off, he closed the bus door and swung the 'STOP' sign in. Once Mr. Snider saw the boys disappear into the run down station, he made a U-turn and started the fifteen-mile trek back to Lufkin.

* * *

The little silver bell at the top of the door jingled when the boys entered. They fanned out through the combination makeshift store and gasoline station, glancing at posters on the walls, scanning the dusty cans on the shelves, and peering into the glass display cases to see if anything new had arrived. As Thornton's stores gradually closed, the gas station expanded its stock to save everyone from a forced drive into Lufkin for milk and other necessities. Selling a few groceries became the life jacket that kept the gas station afloat.

Cleaning his glasses with the end of his shirt, Herschel's green eyes squinted as he looked up at the monstrous mounted buck on the wall behind the cash register. He settled his glasses back into position and brushed red hair from his face. His gaze carried from the buck's thick, wide rack to Eddie.

"You know, th-that's a big buck."

Eddie grinned and patted the shoulder of his stuttering friend as he walked past him. "You say that every time we come in here, Hersch."

"He says it because it is a big buck. Biggest whitetail ever shot in Angelina County — and I shot him when I was about your age."

There was a note of pride in Tom Higgins' resounding voice. He stood wiping the grease from his hands with a mechanic's red rag as the glass door to the garage bays slowly closed behind him. He stuffed the rag in a pocket and, with a slight limp picked up from a sniper's bullet in Korea, walked around the counter to the cash register.

"What will it be, men? The usual?" he asked, already reaching into an ancient refrigerator for sodas.

The boys gathered around Caleb at the register as he tallied coins in his palm and laid several on the countertop.

"We only have enough for one today, sir," Caleb replied, verifying the correct change on the display case as Andy and Cooper watched over his shoulder.

Mr. Higgins smiled and put all of the bottles except one back into the refrigerator. He nodded, popped the cap off a tall Royal Crown cola and set it in front of Caleb. Without counting them, he raked the coins into his palm and dropped them into the cash register's open drawer.

Forming a circle with Caleb, the boys waited for him to have the first drink. It was only right because he'd paid for it. After taking a swig, he sighed and passed the bottle on to his friends. When Eddie finished the last of the cola, he puffed his chest out and a resounding belch escaped his lips. His cheeks flushed as he set the empty bottle on the counter.

A second of silence passed then they laughed. Even Mr. Higgins couldn't resist a grin as he walked around the counter to return to the garage.

"As much as y'all like those colas, you're going to need some spending money. When I was your age, I had to find a job to help my parents pay for my school clothes at the end of summer. Have you thought about any jobs?" he asked.

Cooper and Andy shook their heads and the others stood with confused looks.

"I might w-work a few days each w-week with my fa-father at Luke's," Herschel said. "I'll c-clean the store while he d-does inventory."

Higgins nodded and glanced at the other boys. "What about each of you?"

They stared at one another questioningly. A couple of the boys shrugged their shoulders. No one had an answer.

"Do you have anything we can do?" Cooper's eyebrows rose as he looked at the store's owner.

At the side door leading out into the garage bays, Mr. Higgins paused. He rubbed his chin.

"No, barely have enough business to keep me busy, but I was thinking about handyman work. There are a lot of houses around here that need things fixed or painted — most of the folks are too old to do it themselves. Make the rounds and ask if anyone has work you can do for them. Bound to be a fence that needs painting, some odd job, or a barn to be cleaned out. Y'all are big enough now to do those things."

"Yes, sir. Thank you. We'll definitely do it," replied Caleb. The others nodded in agreement and smiled as Mr. Higgins left.

Herschel looked at his watch and started toward the front door. "See y-y'all in the m-morning. I've g-got to go to m-my dad's store. He w-wanted me to h-help him this afternoon."

"I better head home. Need to check in with my mother," Caleb said, frustration showing in his eyes. He lightly shook his head. "Here I am going into the ninth grade and she's still treating me like a little kid. Thank goodness my dad doesn't."

Eddie remained silent. He held the front door open while everyone walked out.

Andy paused beside Eddie. His eyes were downcast and he spoke low so only Eddie could hear.

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Excerpted from Mr. Charon by GLENN STARKEY. Copyright © 2015 Glenn Starkey. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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