The Backwoods

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The Backwoods

Dorchester Publishing

All right reserved.

ISBN: 0-8439-5413-2

Chapter One

The moonlight revealed sleeping bulldozers, stacks of
foundation molds, and telltale trailers erected as
construction offices. It's progress, his benefactor had said
not too long ago. Progress equates to more jobs, more
satisfaction, and more money. In your pocket and mine. It's
exponential.

Dwayne's command of the English language excluded that
particular adjective-but he got the idea. He was going to
help speed progress along, and that was a good thing, wasn't
it?

* * *

The voice grated out of the dark: "Do a good job."

"I always do, don't I?" Dwayne Parker said. Huffy redneck
that he was, he felt mildly insulted by the other man's
comment.

"You do, yes. I'm not denying that."

"Ain't none been found, right?" Dwyane challenged.

"Right."

Workboots came forward, crunching softly. In the moonlight
Dwayne could see leaves and moss stuck to the tops of the
boots, but no mud like Dwayne's. Here was what Dwayne guessed
was the real difference between white collar and blue collar,
the brains and the brawn. Big fuckin' deal, he thought. Bet
I get laid twice as much as he does... It seemed a fair
recompense for brawn.

"Sounds like you don't trust me to get the job done," Dwayne
finally got it out. "The tone of your voice'n all. Like
maybe just 'cos I ain't no big college graduate like your
cronies."

"Don't be insecure." Now there was something else to the
tone. Dwayne didn't like it, yet he didn't push it. The
boots crunched forward another few steps, twigs crackling.
Moonlight flowed through the trees, bars of shadows from
branches splayed across the other man's face. "I have the
utmost confidence in you," he told Dwayne, and passed him an
envelope.

That's better ...

The envelope contained five crisp $100 bills.

The other man's voice seemed to resonate, a dark flutter from
the face barely visible. "You won't have to do this too many
more times before they all leave."

"What happens then?" Dwayne asked.

"Your wife sells the land to me. She'll be rich and so will
you."

Dwayne pocketed the money. Yeah, that's right. And until
then, I'm gonna have a lot of fun.

* * *

The cicadas were thrumming, a nearly electric drone that
issued out from the woods in all directions. If a sound could
be cloying, this was it. It pressed down on him like the
sickly sweet humidity of the marsh.

"Here's fine," Dwayne said.

The girl seemed surprised. "Here?" she questioned.
"Don't'cha wanna go back to my shack?"

Dwayne frowned. He'd seen where the Squatters lived: mostly
sheet-metal huts on the bayside of the Point. He hesitated,
"Well, uh-"

"Oh, it's nice," the girl promised. "Not like lot's of 'em.
My brothers built it for me, and I got it all to myself now
that I'm eighteen."

Dwayne repressed a grin. Eighteen? Shit, this girl looks
fourteen if that. She was a twig of a thing, ninety pounds
maybe, but then all the Squatters seemed small-Stanherd's
clan. The tallest males stood five-seven if they were lucky,
and the girls? They were all like this one: four-eleven, five
feet tops. Must be something hereditary, in the ancestral
blood. Stanherd's Squatters were small people.

But what had she been saying? Don't want to turn her trick in
the woods, he remembered. Wants me to go back to her
shack-well fuck that. Someone might see him.

"Naw, here's fine," he repeated. "All I got time for is a
quick one."

The girl was the sleekest shadow in the dark. "Oh, right,"
she said. "It's gettin' late and I guess yer wife'd wanna
know where you been."

"Just you let me worry about my wife," Dwayne said, annoyed.
"I don't answer to her."

"Don't she ever get suspicious of ya?" The girl had asked the
question with a baited calm and, unabashed, kicked off her
flip-flops and took off her shorts. "We all love her so much,
generous as she is to us."

Minimum wage to pick fuckin' crabs, Dwayne thought with
another hidden smile. And these pinheads think that's a lot
of money. Shit. Of course, Dwayne had done the same thing
quite a bit in his life, or any other menial job where
employers weren't discriminating. Dumpster cleaning, refuse
removal, oil-change jockey, and the like-any job his parole
officer could land him. Dwayne was almost forty now, and he'd
done three jolts with the Russell County Department of
Corrections, totaling seven years in stir. After the last one
(two years, assault with a baseball bat), he'd landed here for
a job picking crabmeat at the Agan's Point Shellfish Company.
Not the best job he'd ever had. After a while he'd begun to
smell like crab guts; no matter how many showers he took, the
dank fishy stink emanated from him. But then he'd met Judy
and his life had truly changed. She owned the company, which
her sister up in D.C. had helped her revamp, a small-time
operation that turned secretly lucrative. When Dwayne had
pulled enough wool over Judy's eyes, she'd practically been
begging him to marry her. And now?

Made in the shade, he thought.

Dwayne wasn't picking the crabs anymore, he was the supervisor
of the Squatters and other low-lifes who did.

But there was never enough, was there?

The $500 in his pocket reminded him of that.

When the girl turned in the wedge of moonlight, Dwayne saw
that she was fully naked now. Bitch don't waste time, he
mused. He also saw something else: evidence that she was
indeed at least eighteen. Full, fresh breasts, dark-nippled;
very feminine lines from shoulders to waist to hips; a plush
outgrowth of untrimmed pubic hair. Not that Dwayne would've
been worried about statutory rape ... No. Not with this one,
he thought. Or those six others.

"Still can't believe you wanna just do it here instead'a my
shack," she was saying. In the dark, she was bending over, a
gesture like someone putting on stockings. But why would she
do that? In the woods?

"And like I was saying," she went on, "what with your wife
bein' so kind to us, givin' us good work." She looked up,
looked right at him with dark sparkles for eyes. "I don't
feel too good 'bout doing this, you bein' Miss Judy's husband
and all."

Dwayne cut a frown. "Hey, a buck's a buck, right? You don't
want to do me because of my wife? Then one of your other
little friends will. In a heartbeat."

"I know ..."

"Besides, the twenty bucks I'm payin' you for five minutes of
your time you'd have to work three hours pickin' crabs."

"I know," she repeated.

That said it all. The Squatters were poor, and they weren't
even on the books as citizens. Invisible, like illegal
aliens. They worked hard for their low wages, and the
better-looking gals-like this one-utilized other resources for
increased income. The way of the world since humans came out
of the caves.

Dwayne squinted in the dark. What's she doing? She bent over
again, which replayed his notion that she was putting on
stockings or garters or something. Yes. She'd slipped
something up high on her bare thighs.

"What's that you're puttin' on yourself?" he finally asked
her.

"Wheat bands," she said. "Has to be a special kind'a wheat,
though, and they're hard to make. Hard to get the kernels to
stay together when you sew 'em on the band."

The hell? he thought. But suddenly he felt distracted by a
number of things. For one, the endless chorus of cicadas,
these being the three-year variety. This part of Virginia,
Agan's Point got them all-the three-year, the seven-year, the
thirteen-year, and the seventeen-year. As a kid, Dwayne had
always found these waves and waves of insect sounds to be
mysterious and captivating. But now-as an ex-con pushing
forty-he found them annoying. The girl's voice distracted him
too, the accent. All the Squatters had it, at least those
from Everd Stanherd's clan. No one could ever quite place it.
Part-backwoods hillbilly drawl mixed with something that
didn't even sound American. There was something rich and
swoony about the way they talked. When they spoke, their lips
didn't seem to move enough.

And then this new distraction. What the fuck? Dwayne thought.
Wheat bands she said?

Now she stood more directly in the moonlight, her fresh
young body nearly luminous, breasts jutting, her bellybutton a
perfect black shadow. She'd pulled a band up on each thigh,
like corroded garters.

"Those bands are made of wheat?"

"Um-hmm. It's middling wheat, and it ain't from around here.
The clan mother makes 'em, and every girl gets a pair soon as
she gits her period. The magic goes back a long way."

"Magic," Dwayne said.

"Yeah. It's for when you're gettin' with a fella. If ya
wanna baby boy, ya put it on the left thigh, and if ya wanna
girl, ya put it on the right." She adjusted the strange bands
daintily with her finger. "And if ya don't want nothin', ya
put 'em on both."

Dwayne shook his head. Squatters. Jesus. He knew there was
a lot of weird superstition with them, but this was one he'd
never heard before. Deep down he laughed to himself. Stupid
cracker. The last thing she needs to be worryin' about is
gettin' knocked up.

It was getting late. "Time to get down to business," he said
next and walked right over to her. He dropped a $20 bill down
on her clothes, then turned her bruskly around, her bare back
to him, and reached around to slid his callused hands over the
soft skin of her breasts and abdomen. He rubbed his groin
against her buttocks, feeling that forbidden charge. Her skin
seemed to rise in temperature as he maintained his rough
caresses, and she began to breathe harder. Dwayne thought
with an inner chuckle: Look at that, I'm turnin' the bitch on,
gettin' a whore all hot'n bothered. Guess them dirty little
clan boys don't do the job for her. Dwayne to the rescue ...

He figured it was the least he could do, considering ...

He sucked her neck, playing intently with her breasts. The
nipples felt pebble-firm now, and when he gave them a hard
tweeze with his fingers, she squealed delightedly, rising on
her tiptoes.

"I always had a big thing fer you," came her strange accented
whisper. "Just somethin' about you ..."

The evidence of that was plain when he delved his fingers
through her thatch into her sex. Dwayne felt electrified
below the belt. "I've had my eye on you, too, for awhile."

"Ya have not!" she playfully challenged.

"Sure I have. You're about the prettiest of all the clan
girls-"

"I am?"

"-and I've seen you on the line a lot. One of the hardest
workers at the picking den. That's what I told my wife."

"Bet'cher just sayin' that," she toyed. "Why, I bet ya don't
even know my name even though you do the pay envelopes every
week."

"Of course I remember your name," Dwayne insisted, still
cossetting her breasts, but then he thought, Fuck? What's
this hosebag's name? "Uh-" He paused. "Sunny, right?"

"Close," she told him, seeming at least pleased by that.
"It's Cindy. 'Least that's what I'm called mostly."

Dwayne didn't really give a flying shit what her name
was ... yet the comment nagged him. "What'cha mean, mostly?
It's either your name or it ain't."

"It ain't my clan name. It's awful."

He worked her breasts harder, with more focus. "What's your
clan name, then?"

"I ain't tellin'!" she seemed ashamed. "You'd laugh!"

"No, I wouldn't-"

"Everd says when we're 'round local folks, we use our other
names; we only use our clan names around ourselves. Everd
says it's easier for us to fit in. We all know we don't fit
in with ya all."

Dwayne was only worried about one thing fitting in, and it had
nothing to do with names. But the man she referred to-Everd
Stanherd-was a strange coot indeed. He was the clan's elder,
the Wise Man, so to speak, for all the Squatters. The fucker
claimed to be sixty but he looked eighty ... except for his
hair. Not a gray hair on his head anywhere, just jet black.
All the clan had weird shiny jet-black hair, even the older
women. Dwayne couldn't see folks like this using hair dye.

"You feel really good ... Cindy," he guttered. As his own
arousal steepened, the dense chorus of cicadas seemed nearly
deafening. Now his hands roamed all over-she felt tiny in
them, the lithe frame, the reed-thin physique almost
disproportionate to breasts firm and full as the popovers Judy
made on holidays-and just as warm.

Playtime was over; Dwayne was more than ready behind the
zipper. He urged her through trees hanging with mops of
Spanish moss, sort of pushing her along with his groin and his
fingers slid back up to her nipples. She was panting when he
got her to the clearing.

"Yeah, right here," he said. He turned her around, placed her
hands on his belt, telegraphing that it was time for her to
take off his pants.

Now her words sounded parched from desire. "You sure you
don't wanna go back to my shack?" she almost pleaded.

His jeans fell down. "Naw."

"It'd be lots more comfortable. What's so special about this
place?"

Dwayne dragged her down into the dirt, and as he pushed her
knees to her ears, his thoughts answered her question: This
place? It's only about ten feet from where I dug the hole
last night ...

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Backwoods
by Edward Lee
Copyright © 2005 by Edward Lee .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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