Down by the wyching tree

I toed off my shoes all mouse quiet to avoid the verbal hiding I was about to receive, but that weren’t gonna fool him. The man was like one of those psychic kids from the Stephen King books. The early ones. Those good ones left all beat to hell in the library cos so many hands have held them they are permanently fanned out with especial gaps where the good parts are. The scary parts. Sometimes the sexy parts.

It weren’t the well-oiled hinges that betrayed me, but the gust of autumn wind come raging through the open I had slipped through on my way in tattled by way the flickering of the candle light dancing shadows as it rush on past.

“Where you been.” It weren’t a question.

“Out.”

“Out?”

“Out.”

I didn’t bother hiding my footsteps no more as I walked down the hallway, didn’t skip that creaky part right by the picture of my ma when she weren’t much older than me.

“Down by that wyching tree, I expect you was.”

Well, I weren’t gonna lie. I weren’t so old that Grandad wouldn’t hide me for lying. But sure as hell I weren’t gonna confirm his suspicions.

I kept walking down the long, crimson runner carpeting the old farmhouse against the cold that would be coming any day down. Grandad must have bought roles of the stuff before Nan passed, on account of it always looking like it was straight from the store as far as I can recall. Never saw Grandad change it, but it never looked worn.

“Well?”

I swore soundless-like, Ah hell. He had done went ahead and turned it into a question. It meant he were spitting mad.

“I expect you know already where I was,” I said, peaking into the living room. Not an admission. Some guy on the TV news said, “nolo contendere” once about someone in court. I asked my English teacher what it meant and it fit the current moment some. I do not wish to contend. I almost said it alloud. For being a death language, Latin has some cool things going on for it.

“I tol’ you about that place,” said Grandad like he was thinking I needed the belt or the switch anyway.

I went and shook my head. “No.” I figured I might as well earn that hiding if it we coming by being smart with the hold man. “You just said we had no business being there. You ain’t never said the why, we weren’t to have business over there.”

Grandad’s eyes went from looking like the devil might be hiding in there to the way he used to look at me before Ma died and I ended up living with him on account of my Pa being nothing but a no-good, no-account drifter and daughter-molester. I don’t think he imagined having to be a father to another kid afore he passed, but things being as they were, he weren’t gonna let his blood grow up in foster care either.

I might not have been his daughter and I might have looked too much like Pa to suit him, but he also didn’t see no reason to hold me to account for my father’s “sins”. So he did the best he was able.

He sat back in his old rocking chair and lit up a cigarette. “Well, son,” he said in his drawl they all had here tucked up in the hills. “We need to remedy that omission on my part. If you and your friends are all adult enough to think to go visiting the thing when alls around here said y’ shouldn’t, then y’ need to what kind of place you’ve been visitin’.”

He gestured to the seat across from him. “Sit.”

I did as I were told.

It weren’t an invitation.