Nathan's Clan of Deadheads Page 2

  But Nathan needed to return; he wasn’t soulless. He wanted the family to have closure and doing this ensured they would. He heard tell this kind of thing happened all the time: a kid ran away and the body would be found dumped at the edge of a road, half buried in thicket.

  The pressure in his abdomen lessened. He cleared, shook, and stuffed his now more than ample parts back into his pants. Walking to the truck he buttoned up, adjusted for comfort, got in, adjusted again, thinking that task would take some getting used to, and drove away. Three miles farther down the country road he rolled over the black hose next to one of the two ancient gas pumps at the Phillips 66 to ring the attendant bell, cranked down the window, and waited.

  A man, looking to Nathan to be about in his mid-forties, ambled out from the door of the building. “Lucky you caught me. ’Bout closin’ as you can see,” he said, hooking a thumb over a shoulder toward the closed door of the service bay. “What can I get ya?”

  “Directing me to the sheriff’s office would probably suffice.”

  “There a problem I might could help with?” the man asked, sincerity written in his voice and expression.

  “Doubt it, ’less you can deal with a body laying in the weeds up yonder about three miles.”

  The attendant’s jaw dropped an inch and surprise bugged his eyes open wide. “You ain’t serious.”

  Nathan nodded, his lips held in a grim line for effect. “I am.”

  “Well, huntin’ season ain’t started yet, but there’s always some knucklehead flickin’ his nose at the rules. S’pose it could be accidental and the nitwit who done it was too afraid to say nothing to nobody?”

  “Mmm, well, I’d doubt that. Not from the cursory look I got, anyway.”

  “Ain’t that somethin’.” The man removed his grimy, threadbare baseball cap, wiped his brow with the back of his grease-laden forearm, and returned the hat to his balding head. Wisps of his brown hair poked out in an odd array. “There ain’t been a killin’ in these parts in…well, I can’t remember when. Not unless you count the kid old man Kesterson shot a few years back, but that was pure mishap. Sheriff said so hisself. Ruled it strickly accidental manslaughter on account of the kids was tormentin’ the poor old geezer somethin’ fierce, and all he tried to do was scare ’em off. I heard tell one of ’em just got a might too close to the pattern of buckshot.”

  “Sheriff ever call in anyone else about that?” Nathan asked, putting real effort into phrasing and tone so it came off as an innocent question and not rouse suspicion. The answer could turn his decision toward home rather than law enforcement.

  “Nah, he didn’t see much need. Clear cut case.”

  Nathan allowed a slight smile to cross his lips as he moved the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Well, then, I guess he knows what he’s doing. He is the sheriff, after all.”

  The attendant bobbed his head in agreement. “That he is, that he is.”

  They fell silent for a minute. Then the station’s grease-jockey straightened up and slapped the rim of the door window he’d been hanging over. “Well, now, I’m hopin’ the sheriff ain’t too far out of your way. I’d offer to report it for you myself, but if I don’t get on home Mary Rose is likely to give me a tongue lashing to last me three weeks.”

  “I got a sister in Pittsburgh I’m headed up to see, but there’s no rush.”

  “That’s right along your way then.” The man nodded in the general direction. “Sheriff Stanton is likely to be gone home hisself by the time you get there. You’ll see one of the deputies. More’n likely Deputy Baylor; Big Bill everyone calls him.”

  Nathan flashed a white-toothed grin, hoping sheer friendliness showed in tiny wrinkles around the cobalt blue eyes. “I’ll tell him hey for you.”

  “Now, that’d be most kind. Ain’t many kind folks around anymore. Now, you head on up that-a-way, about five-six miles,” a finger pointed the way Nathan had been going and continued to emphasize directions. “Go on past Route 33 into Elkins. That’s a city, but mind you they got no jurisdiction out here. You’ll find the Randolph County—that’s where you are, you know—you’ll find the county sheriff’s office on your right-hand side about a mile-and-a-half in, just past High Street. Now, if you get to Gay Street, you gone too far.”

  “I sure appreciate it.” Nathan tipped his non-existent hat at the edge of the shaggy and slightly wavy light brown hair hanging across his forehead.

  “You’re mighty welcome. And maybe you’ll stop in for a fill-up on your way back. You drive safe now, hear?”

  The man slapped the door again as Nathan rolled away from the pumps, the service bell stuttering its sound as the wheels of his truck ran over the hoses. He watched through the rearview mirror as the guy shuffled back into the store. Nathan turned on the headlights and pulled out onto the road.

  On the trip into Elkins the dash panel began to cast a reflection on the cab windows and Nathan gave a studied nod of approval to this new self he’d acquired. It had been a shame to shed the kid, he’d accomplished a lot of necessary chores through the use of that mind and body. But, a bit on the older side fit better. Much better.

  The very first new person he’d become had happened ‘strickly accidental,’ as the guy at the gas station had turned the phrase. Yet over the ensuing years he’d been many different ages in many different bodies. Almost as many as there were dead bugs now splattered across the windshield.

  He’d spent damn little time in the world of the dead after dying in an explosion in 1858 at one of the coal mines his family owned. The blast threw him with such ferocity he was pushed right into another man whose heart still beat and lungs drew breath. He awoke in the makeshift medical facility near the mine entrance, a place gladly supplied by the family who, unlike their competitors, believed the lives and well-being of miners were more important than the amount of coal they could haul out. He knew right away he wasn’t himself; too many thoughts and memories which didn’t belong to him swam up from a fog-filled brain. Nathan sat up, swung his feet over the side of the bed, and called out to the nurse. He got no response. She carried on with her work changing the dressings of a nearby wounded patient. He turned around to see a broken, bandaged body lying next to him on the bed.

  He walked around, listening to the moans of injured men, thankful he wasn’t among them. But the knowledge he’d “…died. I died,” did not sit well. At thirty-one years old he hadn’t nearly lived. The transparency of his limbs frightened him. He tentatively reached out to touch a bed. The feel, the sensation of it registered, but in an odd way. Because, with added pressure, his finger didn’t make a dent in the padded material, it pushed through. Telling himself there wasn’t a dang thing he could do about it, he walked to the bed and stared down at the person lying there, yearning.

  The longer he stayed, the stronger the urge struck to return. After all, the body and head were bandaged so thoroughly and their frames so similar, no one could tell it wasn’t really him. And, he’d slipped right out. But the question remained, and he murmured it aloud, “Can I get back in?”

  He sat on the edge of the mattress and pushed his way on top of the man. Each new portion of Nathan’s body that made full contact resulted in a buzz, a tingling of sorts, and dissipated after a few minutes. Fully in, he winced from the pain of the injuries. But he smiled, too. The pain meant he was alive again.

  The man everyone thought was under the bandages, including Nathan’s own family, shocked staff and relatives alike when he asked for Nathan’s kinfolk. They all stood stunned for several moments. Then the whole place went into a tizzy. Though they’d been sure they had buried Nathan, he gave so many details and facts about family and business that even after the bandages came off nobody bothered with further questions; they eagerly attributed such a different appearance to injuries.

  Though the body stayed in the Crockett cemetery, the other man’s family was left to change out the headstone, and grieve.

  When that man died some
forty-odd years later, within hours Nathan longed to be alive once again. Life was too good. Things amongst the dead felt diminished to him. Items solid to the touch (including a body), the sweetness of the air after a rain, true sensations—rather than what felt like phantom to him—thirst or hunger, heat and cold, these were the things which signaled life for Nathan. He looked for and found another body to inhabit. Not entirely sure it would work a second time, he cautiously slipped in while the person slept amidst a strange fitful dream.

  Mostly a change was forced. Nathan knew time was near when vision started to fail, with darkness around the edges as if struck by disease, but when extremities began to turn a bit on the gray side he knew it had reached the point where he needed to rush things along.

  He almost missed the driveway into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office. The glaring lights on the US flag, and those splashed across the front of the building, caught his attention. Still, the driver’s side wheels bumped over the curb, jostling him in his seat. He eased the truck in to one of the angled spaces and sat for a moment to think about what to say. No, he had it straight: He’d pulled to the side of the road due to an enormous need to piss, and there it was under the splashing stream; the body that was too young, too used, though he wouldn’t make mention of that last part.

  He introduced himself as Nate and led Big Bill through the story a couple times, and then a third as he filled out the report. It took some doing in the dark to find the exact spot again, but Nate showed him to the place he’d left the young man.

  Big Bill’s face screwed up. “He’s a might ripe, ain’t he?” he asked, his rail thin torso leaning over the kid but with his head turned and shining the beam of his flashlight in Nathan’s face. “And you say this is exactly as you discovered him? You didn’t disturb a thing at all?”

  “Well, except for the bit of piss on his boots. And I’m rightly sorry about that, Deputy. I mean, I wouldn’t have done that if I’d been aware; that’s just downright…well, you know what I’m sayin’.”

  Big Bill straightened up, all five-foot two-inches of him, and sighed. “I guess I better call the coroner. He won’t be none too happy being pulled away from the T.V., but there’s nothing else for it.”

  “Is it okay if I head on out, then? I’ll stay if you think you need someone with you though,” Nathan offered, gazing around the deep shadows of the moonlit area. “But, the way things stand I’d hate to put my sister through more unnecessary worry than I already have with as late as I’ll be.”

  “Well, gosh darn it, I should’ve let you call from the station house. That was downright un-neighborly of me.”

  “That’s all right, Deputy, I can see how it slipped your mind. Long’s there’s a tower nearby, I can use my cell phone if the need strikes.”

  Big Bill started toward his squad car. “Well, son, I’ve got your information on the report you filled out. I know where to find you. You tell your sister hey for us when you get there.”

  Standing in the beams of headlights, Nathan shook a hand that felt tiny in his own. “I’ll do that. And I’m right sorry again for dragging you out like this.”

  “That’s just quite all right. It sure weren’t your fault.” Big Bill hollered, “You drive safe now, hear?” at the retreating tailgate after Nate had circled around.

  Nathan lifted a wave out the window and gave two quick toots on the horn. He drove as far as Route 33, where he turned east and circled around to head to a cabin deep in a West Virginia hollow. Not far from where the West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky state lines merged, the simple one-room building, surrounded by a cluster of smaller ones, had been his home for decades except in winter when, with a new body, he would lose himself somewhere among city crowds.

  Chapter 4

  Nathan pulled from the highway onto a gravel road not easily detected, bouncing in his seat as the truck jumped ruts and holes and thumped over tree roots. Up hills and down gullies, a little more than two miles into the hollow, he found a spot among the various other vehicles and parked. He got out, tapped down on the lock button, and slammed the door.

  Three-quarters of a mile along a path which included trekking over a crudely made footbridge above a steep-banked stream, Nathan finally caught sight of home. Though it may not have been the grand, stately manor of his (living) youth, the rustic building of one large room stood off to the right of a small meadow. From his vantage point on foot, eight smaller cabins were tucked under the spreading boughs of trees so thick the encampment wouldn’t be detectable from the air, even after the leaves blazed in variegated hues of red and gold, and dropped to the fertile ground.

  “Hey, Zach.” Nathan walked toward the tiny glow of red as the cigarette moved from hip to mouth. “Everything good?”

  “Hey, Nate,” a quiet voice called out of the early morning dark. “Everything’s good. Nice new timbre to the voice. Does the body match it?” A soft chuckle rolled over the expanse between them.

  “Well, I’d say you’ll have to judge that for yourself in the daylight.” Nathan shook the proffered hand. “Damn shame to lose the use of the kid, though. The exchange was a might tough this time. I’m seriously beat.”

  Zachariah thumped a hand to Nathan’s shoulder. “Hang in there, buddy.”

  “Oh, you know I will.” Nathan scanned the night sky, and took a quick glance around at what he could see by moonlight. Satisfied all was well, he nodded to himself. He’d been grateful to his grandpappy for acquiring so much property so many years ago; thousands of acres of pristine West Virginia hills far from prying eyes. He loved the land, and loved the solitude as much as he appreciated the ability it afforded him to live so many lifetimes without rousing suspicion. Of course, the kid had made it a lot easier with his boundless knowledge of computers.

  The facts were not lost on Nathan any more than they were lost on those he’d invited to join him here over the years. Each new self of all the inhabitants brought some useful skill to the place. Improvements had been made to the hundred and fifty-year old original structure Nathan had built as a young man. A different self had provided the know-how to get a gravity waterline to Nathan’s place, something he thought should be expanded soon to the other cabins; maybe the following summer. Another developed the portable solar system they wheeled out to the clearing for short spurts to provide ample electricity for small things like recharging cell phones, and the equipment the kid Nathan recently shed brought in to help them with their changing identities.

  “I think I’ll turn in. You wake me if you need to, hear?” Nathan ditched the chewed-up toothpick and headed for the door of his cabin.

  “Will do. You can sleep tight with me on watch.”

  The night watch had been in place for so long even Nathan couldn’t remember anymore when it had been started, or why. Even without weapons of any kind on hand, it gave him a sense of security, especially right after he’d slid into a new body. With each exchange, the fear of having been detected and followed gnawed at the back of his mind like a hound worried after a fox hiding in its den. Even in death his sense of moral code knew using the living, as his clan did, would not be exactly ethical. But, he couldn’t let life go. He didn’t want to let it go. None of them did.

  He went inside and stripped off his clothes, tossing his pants across the bottom of the bed for easy reach if an emergency cropped up. He slipped under the blanket to stave off the chill that stole through the air in the hills much sooner than in low-lying cities full of concrete and asphalt. Nathan dropped into sleep with the sounds of crickets and night birds in his ears.

  The next morning, the sun blazed through a small window casting a beam of brightness into his face. Nathan woke and rolled out of his bunk. The vision held strong, the fingers and toes looked pink and healthy as he examined himself. The body wasn’t exactly muscular but certainly more fit than the previous one. In the small mirror, hung by a strand of wire over his cold-water sink, he smiled at the new image. Tiny wrinkles formed at the corners of hi
s eyes. He liked it even better now that he could see it in natural daylight.

  Hoping the bank of truck batteries still held enough of a charge from the small solar system, he plugged in his little coffee pot. When the sound of the water heating and pumping in tiny spurts reached his ears, he grabbed a fresh toothpick and strode out the front door and crossed the covered porch.

  Nathan stretched in the sun and, taking his morning leak over the edge of the wooden planks, returned a greeting with a slight wave and squeaked out, “Hey, Sarah,” to one of the two current female residents. The compound’s inhabitants shared three outhouses, but the men never used them to pee. A strange pang hit the pit of his stomach at her seeing him naked; something he’d never experienced with any woman before.

  “Will you look at you! My, oh my, Nate, you’re gonna have hearts goin’ pit-pat over that.” Sarah fanned her face with a laugh.

  “Hey, I should be so lucky. ’Less, of course, you’d care to come in for a spell,” he joked to hide his odd embarrassment.

  “Well, now, you know I would,” Sarah teased, “but I got a feelin’ Steve might object to that some.”

  “Damn stingy bastard, ain’t he? ’Course, he’s free to join us.” Nathan laughed nervously and winked, even as he wondered where that idea had come from.

  Sarah let loose with a fun-natured giggle. “Nice to see you back in good condition, Nate. And, I’ll allow it’s mighty well distributed.”

  “Gonna take a bit of getting used to, but it feels right. I’ll see you later.” Nathan tipped his non-existent hat and went inside to begin his chores.

  Taking his coffee to the laptop he shared with the rest of his clan, Nathan sat and flipped the pages of the notebook until he found the proper instructions. He thought retraining a new self would be tough; it generally was. But it appeared the knowledge of gadgets he’d never dreamed of as a kid, came as second nature to most these days. With the slightest of glances at the notes, his hand took control of the mouse and his fingers began tapping the keys. Between sips of coffee, in rather short order he had a new picture stored on the desktop and inserted it into the graphic. He entered a birth date, and changed other pertinent information; Eyes: BLU, Hair: LT BRN, Hgt: 6’, Wgt: 190, (mighty well distributed)—though he’d guessed at those last two—and soon his new West Virginia driver’s license was spitting out of the printer. He inspected it, nodded, then shut down the computer equipment to save power and leaned over to switch on the laminator.