Beasts of the Field: The Murderer
Episode XII
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← In Episode XI: The Pieces, Judith and Tim worked to understand the disparate pieces of the case.
While Beasts of the Field can be read as a standalone story, you may appreciate the characters and their interactions more if you are familiar with Judith’s first adventure, Down in the Holler, in which she investigated a cold case in rural Kentucky. Click here to read Down in the Holler.
Skaggs don’t call the cops.
Daddy hadn’t wasted many words on his dimwitted son, but that was one lesson he drilled in real hard:
Skaggs don’t call the cops.
Didn’t matter if Leon’s Daddy fell off a ladder and hurt his back. Didn’t matter if he staggered in the door late at night, seeping blood from his belly after a deal gone wrong. Didn’t matter if he pushed Mama so hard that she split her head open on the corner of the table. Didn’t matter if little nine-year-old Leon fell from a tree and landed on his head, then stumbled back home, dizzy and vomiting. Didn’t matter.
Skaggs don’t call the cops.
Because what the cops might find in the house or the shed or the woods nearby was worth more, far more, to Abe Skaggs than an ambulance for his son.
The one time Mama had called the cops, when Leon had sliced his arm on a saw and the blood was coming out fast, so fast, fast enough to make his skin bleach white and his vision swim, it wasn’t just an ambulance that had arrived. The sheriff and a small fleet of McFerrin cops had showed up too, their eyes narrowed, watchful. Daddy had made Mama regret making that call. If there was one thing Leon knew, it was that Skaggs don’t call the cops.
Leon filled the kettle and set it on the stove, then lit the old gas burner with a lighter. Some tea, that would help him feel better. And a sandwich. He didn’t like being home alone, ever since –
But he didn’t like thinking about that.
Acorn’s sharp little nails scrabbled up the arm of Leon’s thick flannel jacket, and the squirrel perched on his shoulder. His silky, bushy tail tickled Leon’s ear. Leon reached up and rubbed the tip of his finger on the side of Acorn’s face, and the energetic little runt of a creature snatched his finger in its tiny paws, leapt onto his hand, and spun upside down, clinging with his claws to Leon’s jacket. Then, flipping back up, he climbed up Leon’s arm again and onto his shoulder before crawling into the hood of his sweatshirt, which hung over the collar of the flannel.
Leon left a little flap in the door open for Acorn, now that the weather had turned suddenly frigid. The little guy was too small, too young, too much of a runt and a loner, to make it through his first winter – a hard winter, with how suddenly the frost had appeared – without being able to come inside to get warm.
While the kettle burbled with rising heat, Leon pulled out bread and lunchmeat for a sandwich. Mama would be back soon. She hadn’t said when she’d be back, but she never left for long. She’d be back soon.
Still, Leon couldn’t shake the cold knot in his stomach or the chill on his skin that had nothing to do with the weather.
She’d be back, he was sure of it.
As the kettle started to whistle, Leon reached into the cabinet for tea, but the Mason jar was empty. He held it in his hands, turning it over and over.
He didn’t really need tea. He’d just have a sandwich. That would calm him down fine.
But he was cold, so cold.
Leon looked toward the pantry, hesitated, then made his slow, lumbering way to the door. He’d go in, real quick, and grab some tea. It’d be fine. He just wouldn’t think about it.
He opened the pantry door and pulled on the chain that sparked life into the old, flickering bulb on the ceiling. The light brightened the shelves, packed with cans of food and preserves and jars and jars and jars of Mama’s tea.
The cold knot in his stomach tightened, but Leon stepped forward anyway.
Usually Leon listened to that knot in his stomach. He didn’t know much, couldn’t do much, wasn’t worth much, but he trusted that knot to tell him when something just wasn’t right. But this coiled fear that set into him every time he walked into the pantry, it was plain foolishness. There wasn’t nothing in that pantry to be scared of.
Still, ever since that day, he’d been keeping his own little jar of tea in the kitchen, just so he wouldn’t have to fetch it from the pantry.
From outside, in the cold, a faint barking reached his ears.
The dogs must’ve seen a coyote or something. Maybe a deer. They’d be trying to jump over the fences of their kennels, wanting to race into the woods after whatever it was. He’d let them out to run later, maybe in the afternoon when the air warmed a bit.
Acorn poked his head out of Leon’s hood and climbed up on his shoulder. The little creature’s nose twitched, his ears perked up as though listening.
“Whatcha hear, little guy?” Leon said, scratching the squirrel’s head with the tip of his wide finger. Acorn didn’t lean into him or scrabble down his arm, but sat still for a few moments before scrambling back into Leon’s hood, his little body quivering.
Must be a hawk outside or something. Acorn had a sense for danger, even when he was safe inside with Leon.
Leon reached for a jar labeled lavender chamomile. He’d better steer clear of the black teas, with how cold and jittery he was feeling today. Stick to soothing teas, that’s what he’d do.
Under the light of the naked bulb, the jars in front cast shadows on the ones behind them, shrouding the tightly-packed jars in darkness.
Leon shivered, images seeping into his thoughts before he could even muster the awareness to drive them out.
She’d asked for lemon tea. She’d been shaking so hard and crying, her unseeing eyes red. He hadn’t wanted to make her a tea she wouldn’t like. Whatever Noah and those boys had done, though they hadn’t gotten to do all they’d wanted, had scared her half to death.
It would have been a nightmare even for someone who could see, someone who could fight back. But she couldn’t do either. Leon knew terror and helplessness and the dagger-sharp, fearful certainty that another person meant you harm. But he’d always been able to see who was hurting him. Not her. She wouldn’t even have been able to tell the cops their names.
He’d get her some tea, some food, just to calm her down, to slow down her sobs before he took her to the police. Skaggs don’t call the cops, but he could drive her to them.
No lemon tea. Of all the jars in the pantry, the only jar of lemon tea he could find was empty. But there were a couple jars in the very back, nestled in the shadows, that didn’t have labels. Strange. Mama labeled everything. But maybe she’d forgotten a couple.
He grabbed one of the unlabeled jars, opened it, and sniffed. Something orangey, with a hint of lavender and a creamy undertone. Not lemon.
He searched the others, to no avail. Then he reached for the very last jar, tucked in the farthest corner, all the way in the back of the pantry on the highest shelf.
Opening it, he took one last hopeful sniff. This one definitely smelled lemony, though there was a hint of floral sweetness about it too. One of Mama’s special blends, probably. It must be good, then, and it had lemon.
When he came back out of the pantry, he found Acorn sniffing the girl’s shoe. Her tears had slowed to quiet heaves, and she furrowed her eyebrows, her head cocked, listening. Like Acorn, almost, when he heard something new.
“That’s my squirrel,” Leon said. His voice rumbled in the quiet cabin, and he hoped it didn’t scare her. “Acorn.”
“I knew it wasn’t a cat,” she said, her voice wet and shaking. “But I couldn’t figure out what it was.”
“He’s real friendly.”
The girl reached her hand forward, too far to the left, but Acorn crept up and sniffed at her fingertips. She gasped, and a little of the tearful terror in her face cleared.
Leaving the girl and Acorn in the living room, Leon moved to the kitchen, making the tea that he hoped was lemony enough and putting together a sandwich. They only had roast beef and cheddar. He’d finished the lettuce and tomatoes yesterday. Hopefully she wouldn’t mind.
But she drank the tea and ate the sandwich and thanked him. She thanked him, again and again, for saving her, said she didn’t know what would have happened to her if he hadn’t come. Then she started crying again.
He didn’t know what to do when girls cried, and he squirmed in his seat, trying to figure out when he should suggest that they get back in the car so he could take her down to the cops. But in spite of all that, something swelled within him, spreading and blooming like a growing seed. He’d done something right.
There were advantages to being big, looking scary. Noah and his sharp-eyed friends had hesitated, given in, even though there were four of them and only one of him. But this girl didn’t know he was big and fleshy, that his hair was uncombed and his beard unkempt. She said he’d saved her. She thanked him, like he was a hero.
She kept crying, and, though he wasn’t much for talking, Leon started telling a story, just to get her to stop. He told about Wiley Callaghan, who’d plagued him all through middle and high school. He told her about the nasty words, the tripping in the hallway, the bruises at the bus stop. And he told her about the day he’d had enough, when he’d put an end to Wiley’s bullying.
It wasn’t a story Leon was proud of, but the words poured out of him. The girl sat there, listening, really listening, like it was a special gift, to be able to listen to him. And in the telling, the weight of the story, the weight of the harm he had caused, however justified that harm had felt in the moment, lifted, just a little.
The girl sniffed, gave a little smile. Then she told her stories too, of bullies and kind strangers, of a football player who’d stood up for her when she hadn’t thought anyone cared. And Leon tried hard to listen to her the way she’d listened to him. He was good at listening, too.
Then she asked for water, and everything changed. When he came back with a glass, her eyes were wide, frightened. She was breathing hard, her pale cheeks turning red, and she asked him to turn off the lights.
But she was blind, or mostly blind. He didn’t know why the lights would suddenly hurt her eyes. He turned them off anyway, then said they should go, that he should take her to the police.
But instead of moving toward the door, she lurched to her feet, asking for the bathroom. He tried to lead her down the hall, but she shrunk back at his touch, and the growing seed inside him started to shrivel back into itself.
He didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but he must’ve done something.
“You feelin’ sick?” he asked as she stumbled into the bathroom. That must be it. Noah had all kinds of drugs, sold them to whoever would buy them. Maybe he’d forced her to take something, something that made her sick. That must be it.
She locked the door.
The house was quiet for a while. Leon wasn’t sure how long. He tidied the kitchen, cleaned up the sandwich fixings.
Then, there came a whispering. She was talking to someone, but her words were nonsense.
Suddenly she screamed, her hands scrabbling against the walls.
“You okay in there?” he said, his chest squeezing. “We gotta get you to the cops or the hospital or somethin’.”
There was a thump. She mumbled something, her words lost through the thick wooden door.
He waited. For how long, he didn’t know. She screeched nonsense words, whimpered. She didn’t respond when he tried to talk to her.
He almost reached for a phone.
But Skaggs don’t call the cops.
Not even now, with his Daddy dead and gone. If something happened to this girl, and Leon couldn’t prove that Noah was responsible, who would they blame?
Him, the fat, stupid hillbilly with a blind girl in his bathroom.
After a while, she was quiet.
She stayed quiet, for a long time. Awful quiet.
Leon spoke through the door, asking if she was okay, asking her to come out. But she said nothing.
At last, the cold knot in his stomach so tight he thought he would vomit, Leon kicked open the door.
On the floor – she was on the floor. Still and cold, eyes open.
That’s when Leon’s memories fritzed.
When Mama came home two days later, the girl was in the shed out in the woods. That’s where Daddy had put Rankin Stokely before wrapping him up in a tarp and rolling him into the slurry pit a few hollers over. The shed was where dead bodies go. Leon didn’t know much, but he knew that.
By the time Mama had come home, it had been too late to tell the cops about Noah. They wouldn’t believe him, not when the girl’s body was rotting in his shed.
Mama had held his head against her shoulder, had rubbed his arm, saying she’d fix it. She had said she’d make it go away.
But the girl’s death hadn’t gone away. It wasn’t better. Weeks and weeks later, and he still couldn’t fetch tea from the pantry or use the bathroom without seeing her pale, dead face. He couldn’t be in the house alone without a cold knot of fear and shame settling in his stomach, so heavy he could crumble beneath its weight.
Noah had killed her, with some kind of drug. But Leon couldn’t shake the heavy, heavy shame, the doubt, the wondering. The poor girl. He should’ve been able to save her, should’ve called the cops.
But Skaggs don’t call the cops.
A cracking twig outside startled Leon from the frenzied kaleidoscope of memories, and he jolted back to the present with a gasp.
Inside his hood, Acorn shivered, curled up in a ball.
He was scared, burrowing.
Something was wrong.
Walking slowly on his heavy feet, Leon crept out of the pantry, the hairs rising on the back of his neck.
Someone was outside the house.
But why didn’t they knock on the door?
The cold knot within Leon pulsated, sending sharp twinges of warning through his body, alerting all his senses.
He slipped down the hall to the gun cabinet. Turning the key in the lock, he pulled out a shotgun and two boxes of shells.
Someone was outside.
Anyone who crept up on his house wasn’t here for tea and a sandwich.
His breath shaking but his hands steady, Leon popped open the shotgun and slid a shell into the barrel. Then another. And another, until the barrel was full and ready.
Thank you so much for taking time to read Beasts of the Field! Merry Christmas, and check back Saturday, December 28th for the final episode!
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→ Keep reading! Episode XIII: The Confrontation
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So tragic. And so well done.
Oh my god. That one hurt, Bridget. Poor Leon. This is not gonna end well. (And Tim better have his bulletproof vest on.)