Tale of an Ozark Howler, Novel by Kelly Reno

TALE OF AN OZARK HOWLER

The Novel By Kelly Reno

                                                 TALE OF AN OZARK HOWLER
                                                         THE SPELL QUILTS

                                                                BY KELLY RENO

Chapter One

The Journey of Doom

Summer, 1977

“Just one more wave…”

I paddled my long board into the surf, squinting as the sunshine danced across the red-tiled roofs of Santa
Barbara in the distance. Although I was just fifteen, I was hoping that a rip current would suck my body out
into the great beyond, or that a shark would attack me, for it seemed at the time - that death would be better
than what was looming in my future.

Brenda stood barefoot on the beach as the sun backlit her raven hair that she’d twisted into a pair of girlish
braids. Taking a gulp from her can of diet soda, she waved her arms to get my attention.

If this had been any other day, I might have mistaken her for a pretty teenager on the beach because she
looked too young to be my mother. With her sun-kissed skin of bronze and her high Indian cheekbones, she’
d once been a billboard model for Coppertone Suntan lotion, but to me, she was just Brenda. She’d given
birth to me when she was just fourteen and now she was twenty-nine, but she could pass for much younger
when she was smiling, something that didn’t happen very often these days.

I had eyes of hazel just like Brenda’s, but people said that mine glowed yellow sometimes, especially at
night. My shoulder-length hair was jet black and much darker than Brenda’s, prompting me to ask her one
time if I got my hair color from my real father, but she refused to talk about him and said that some things
were better left forgotten.

Brenda was the daughter of a full-blooded Cherokee named Blackfox and red-headed Irish woman named
Moriah, cursing her with a hell of a temper and the ability to drink like a sailor. But despite the fact that Brenda
was drunk a lot, she wasn’t a cruel mother. She was more like a really irresponsible babysitter.

Although her mouth was moving now, I couldn’t hear what she was saying over the crash of the surf.

I didn’t want to hear.

“Jack! Come on!” she hollered. “We’ve got to hit the road!”

Splashing the tears away with a handful of salt water, I waded back to shore to begin the journey of doom,
which is what I had secretly named it.

Spreading an Indian trade blanket across the backseat of our station wagon with bald tires, I climbed inside
wearing my wet swim trunks.
Jasper, the terrier mutt we’d found abandoned outside the dime store, was wedged into the back of the car,
his wiry tail drumming between a suitcase and the Coleman ice chest.

Brenda tossed me a beach towel as she tied my surfboard on top of the car. “You’re gonna get a lot of use
out of this board, Jack, I promise. I’m gonna drive you down to Clearwater Beach where the white sand is as
soft as baby powder and the water’s so clear you can see the fish winking at you.”

“Great”, I muttered, knowing we’d never really go there because we never went anywhere just for fun. But I
tried to fool myself into believing her this time just so I wouldn’t burst into tears. Experience had taught me
that if I started crying, then she’d start drinking and God only knows what roadhouse or honky-tonk we’d wind
up at for the rest of the night.

We were leaving Santa Barbara and there was nothing I could do about it. We’d lived there for the last three
years and rented a tiny caretaker’s apartment in the middle of a hundred-acre olive grove, the grove that
belonged to the Rhodes’ family.

Billy Rhodes was my best friend and his parents owned the grove as well as Santa Barbara’s largest
commercial olive cannery. The Rhodes’ were as rich as trolls, living in the mansion on top of the hill which
was a half mile hike up a dirt road from our apartment.

Brenda and I lived on the upstairs floor above the olive factory shipping building and we had a spectacular
view overlooking Refugio State Beach. The only drawback was that during the canning season, our
apartment reeked with the stench of black olives. But that was a small price to pay for what was otherwise a
surfer’s paradise.

Whenever Billy and I felt like going surfing we’d strap our long boards onto the back of his donkey, Coco, that
is, if Coco was in a cooperative mood, and on the days when the water was too cold for surfing we’d play war
in the groves. Overripe black olives made perfect ammunition for slingshots and when you got hit you’d be
marked with an unmistakable purple splotch that meant you were a dead man.

Santa Barbara was my home and the only place I felt like I had any roots. I could only vaguely remember the
other cities we’d lived in by the names of Brenda’s ex-boyfriends; there was John for El Paso, Tim for Phoenix
and Jasper for San Diego, the latter of whom she’d named the dog after.

Unfortunately, Brenda’s career as a portrait painter in Santa Barbara hadn’t worked out, mainly because she
couldn’t paint and her part-time sales job as a Mary Kay cosmetics lady ‘didn’t pay the rent’ as she put it.
Raising a young man all by herself, as if she was actually raising me, was just too expensive in California all
on her own, even though the United States government still mailed her checks every month.

My step-father was a Marine named John Kelly, but he’d gone missing-in-action in Vietnam eight years ago.
Brenda never wanted to talk about him either and the subject seemed to upset her, so I stopped asking
questions a long time ago. I never really got to know him because he was shipped out to the war when I was
really young - and I’m pretty sure that Brenda had erased him from her mind because she’d stopped lighting
candles beneath his picture and started having ‘visitors’ over to the apartment as soon as the government
made her widow status official. She once told me that she’d never remarry because the government would
stop sending her money – and that small bit of money was all that carried us through on some months.

But back to the journey of doom.

We were moving to the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas where Brenda grew up. Although I hadn’t been there
since I was an infant, I was sure it was the same place that I had recurring dreams about, those terrifying
night sweats that made me sleepwalk in the hours of darkness.

Brenda referred to my sleepwalking episodes as ‘spells’ and said I’d been doing it ever since I could crawl,
but it wasn’t really dangerous since I never wandered outside into the olive groves or anything like that.
Brenda said that she’d find me in the apartment during the middle of the night cleaning things and she
wouldn’t mind it too much if I’d clean stuff properly. But I’d wash the dishes with honey and polish the
furniture with her hairspray, generally making a mess of things. Although she made jokes about my sleep-
cleaning, I could tell by the uneasy look in her eyes that my sleepwalking frightened her for reasons that she
refused to talk about.

But there hadn’t been any sleep-cleaning episodes over the last six months. That’s because I’d been doing
the real thing. At first, I just couldn’t seem to fall asleep at night, but it soon turned into something else. There
were nights when I’d feel like a caged animal in our tiny apartment and my head would start pounding. When
the headaches came, I wanted to scream, but I forced myself to remain quiet. Once I was sure that Brenda
was asleep or passed out for the night, I’d sneak out the window and shimmy down the drain pipe on the
side of the building. Then I’d run through the olive groves and down to the beach, not stopping until I could
feel the sand beneath my bare feet. Sometimes I’d stalk along the edge of Pacific Coast Highway and other
times I’d just run until the pressure in my head went away. Normally, I’d return before daylight, but some
nights I’d fall sleep out in the olive groves and wouldn’t find my way home until the following morning. But
Brenda didn’t seem to notice that I’d been missing or that I’d been late to school, or if she did, she didn’t care.

The urge to prowl around at night seemed to be consuming me. It was as if I was overflowing with some
insatiable desire that I couldn’t name. I was starting to worry that I was losing my mind, but Billy Rhodes said
that my unnamable desire most certainly had a name and it was called S-E-X. He assured me that I’d be all
right after I got laid. As stupid as his analysis seemed, it gave me hope that I wasn’t a total lunatic. So I
stopped worrying so much about my obsession with prowling around like a weirdo and turned my attention to
other things—girls.

I’d always kept to myself and didn’t really socialize much with the other kids at high school. Mainly because
we were always moving from town to town. But I’d been in Santa Barbara long enough that I’d become
friendly with a lot of people. But what really got me noticed was my surfing. I’d gotten pretty good after a
couple of years and had come in second at the Junior Surfing Championship last month, an event that
marked the beginning of my social life.

In all the excitement about a local kid making it big in the competition, Billy decided to have a going away party
for me. He explained that girls always wanted what they couldn’t have and he figured that since I was moving,
I was about as close to untouchable as one could get. Billy informed me that I was ‘forbidden fruit’ and went
out of his way to invite a lot of chicks to the party.

About thirty kids from school had shown up and were clustered around a blazing campfire of driftwood on the
beach. To my surprise, a couple of the most popular girls at school had come and they’d worn short-shorts
for the occasion, even though it was May and the night was chilly. One of them was this super foxy girl from
my homeroom named Jennifer Lemon. She was standing at the water’s edge and dodging the incoming
tide. As a Kiss song blasted on the radio, I watched her from afar and swore that she was checking me out.
With the wind whipping through her dirty blonde hair, I thought that she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever
seen, in fact, I’d been fantasizing about her all year long. I could feel my heart pounding with anticipation and
I wished that she’d come over and talk to me, but I threw another piece of wood into the fire instead. As the
sparks floated up into the air, I squeezed my eyes shut and wished again with all my might. To my
amazement, when I opened them again, there was Jennifer Lemon walking toward me with a mischievous
grin on her face. “Hey Jack,” she said, crouching beside me at the edge of the fire.

“Hey, Jennifer.”

We made small talk about surfing and school. But the firelight that was bouncing off her long, silky legs was
sending my hormones into overdrive. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I decided to kiss her just as soon as the
conversation turned toward an appropriate subject like how I’d had a crush on her all year long. She said she’
d heard a rumor that I was thinking about going pro as a surfer.

Seizing the opportunity, I reminded her that I was moving away in a couple of weeks and probably wouldn’t be
able to surf anymore, let alone ever see her again. She got a little teary-eyed and took my hand in hers, “I
always thought you were so cool,” she whispered. “Gawd. It sucks you have to move. I’m freezing out here.
Wanna have sex?”

Billy had been watching the whole thing and was jabbing me in the ribs with a stick he’d been using to roast
marshmallows. I don’t think he’d heard what Jennifer had said to me, but he’d seen her take my hand.

“Uh, yeah,” I gulped. “That’d be far out.”

Still in a daze by the unexpected offer, I followed Jennifer to her mother’s VW bus in the parking lot. The two of
us climbed inside and she pulled the sliding door shut after us. We started making out on the floor of the van
and I could taste the salt of the ocean on her mouth. While I was still wondering how to go about the whole
sex experience, Jennifer shimmied out of her shorts and was all over me like a girl who’d done this before. I
gasped as she pulled off my jeans and trailed her fingers down my bare chest. Her long hair smelled like
flowery shampoo and I wondered why I’d waited so long to talk to her. I was trembling all over, but luckily,
Jennifer knew exactly what she wanted and talked me though the next fifteen minutes. I didn’t say much
because she was talking enough for both of us and besides, I don’t think I could have uttered a word even if
I’d wanted to.

After Jennifer had put her clothes back on, I found myself sprawled out on the floor of the van, still in shock
that I’d just lost my virginity to the foxiest chick in school. Jennifer arranged her hair into a ponytail and was
crying about how unfair it was that I had to move away and that we couldn’t do this all summer long. I
suggested that I could run away and live on the beach and I think I even blubbered a post-sex comment about
making a lair in the caves up the coast and living on roasted hot dogs. But Jennifer said it would never work
out as she took my face in her hands and feverishly kissed me again. Then she blubbered some more about
how cruel fate could be. That was the moment I knew her passion had been a product of the ‘forbidden fruit’
effect Billy had mentioned. It was beyond unfair and forever changed the way I felt about lemons.

Looking back at what happened in that VW bus, the event went down in history as the best night of my life. But
just when my life had begun, it had been taken away – all the way to Arkansas.

We were going to live with my Aunt Julene and I was being dragged across the country like a prisoner.
Brenda said that Julene was a doctor, but when I asked her what university she’d graduated from and what
kind of medical degree she had, Brenda went and changed the subject. “You’re not going to believe the size
of the blackberries they have back home,” she smiled. “Fields and fields of sweet, juicy blackberries. The first
thing you and me are gonna do when we get there is make us a whole slew of blackberry pies and go have
ourselves a fine picnic.”

I rolled my eyes, knowing that there would never be a picnic because this was the journey of doom and
there’d certainly be no pie making for us.

Brenda always said I was a glass-half-empty kind of person, but I knew otherwise. I was responsible. Just
about anything that could go wrong around that woman usually did and someone, namely me, had to be
around to empty the ashtrays and fix us breakfast in the morning.

One time I’d wandered into the living room sleep-cleaning after one of Brenda’s ‘visitors’ had left. She shook
me out of my spell and then she started crying. That was the night Brenda told me about the place where
she’d come from. She said it was strange and magical country that turned ordinary folks into wild things and
she swore on a stack of King James bibles that she’d never go back there, but she’d forgotten about telling
me that part. Brenda forgot a lot of things. And besides, she didn’t own a bible, King James or otherwise.

There’s another thing that I should mention. On top of my prowling problem, something else far more
disturbing was happening to me—I was seeing things that weren’t there.

Unlike the headaches and the sleepwalking, the visions would always start with a sort of electric tingling at
the base of my spine just before it happened, then I’d black out and my eyes would be filled with strange
pictures of another place. It didn’t seem to matter if I was wide awake and walking down the street or at home
in my own bed; I’d see the scenes as if they were right in front of me—as if I were living them. Sometimes it
was a walk through a green forest, so real I could feel the humidity prickling my skin. Other times I’d find
myself in a small room where I’d see flashes of sinister-looking things like human skulls and black candles.
I never knew if the pictures would last for just a few seconds or for minutes at a time. There was no order to it.
The only connection I could make was that I’d always see the same necklace hanging on my chest – a
strange and ugly necklace of white beads that looked like pieces of bone. The heavy, white chunks lay
against my skin and I’d see a hand caressing them; except it wasn’t my hand. It was a pale and freckled with
fingernails that were unusually long and yellowish.

I’ll never forget the first time it happened. Billy and I were in downtown Santa Barbara on Main Street a few
months earlier. We were walking along the boulevard, when suddenly I felt a strange tingling sensation in my
lower spine. My vision of the street was fading out and I managed to collapse onto a bus bench. I closed my
eyes to make it go away, but the vision of the other world only intensified. I was terrified as I saw a candle
burning in a human skull. I heard a man’s voice with a soft, Southern accent, but I couldn’t understand what
he was saying. It sounded like chanting. Although I could feel the California sun beating down on my back
and could hear Billy’s voice calling out to me, it was clearly night time in the vision running through my head.
Then I saw the strange hand touching the bone necklace—and it was over. I was sitting at the bus stop in
broad daylight and Billy was shaking my shoulders.

I was probably losing my mind, but I didn’t dare mention the visions to anyone except Billy. After several
similar episodes, he was used to my blackouts, so if he happened to be around when I collapsed, he just
stood there waiting until I came to. “What’d you see this time?” he’d ask eagerly, his theory being that my
Cherokee ancestors were taking my spirit on trips. I’d always tell Billy what I saw and it became a hobby for
him, trying to make sense of the messages I was receiving. I think he even kept a notebook on it.

The visions didn’t come often, but they were dangerous when they did because I’d go blind to the world
around me and only had seconds to prepare once the tingling in my spine began.

The last one I’d had was just a few days ago. While taking a break from packing our stuff into boxes, I was
sitting on the couch in the apartment. My spine started burning and I braced myself. Within seconds, I was
walking through a clearing in the forest where a grand party was taking place. The massive bonfires cast
strange shadows in the woods and the air was filled with the sound of fiddle music and cackling laughter.
Hundreds of people were dancing barefoot and there were even some attractive, young girls about, some of
them stark naked. The people seemed a bit drunk and I got the feeling that they were up to no good. On the
outskirts of the forest dance floor, there were others telling fortunes and selling strange objects from tents
and canvas booths; it looked something like a flea market. Strolling past the rows of vendors, I stopped to
inspect some small, waxy balls that a toothless old woman was selling. She nodded her head as if giving
me permission to test them out. I picked up one of the balls and tossed it into the trees where it exploded
with an impressive flash of light. Satisfied, I nodded, grabbed a handful of the balls and pressed some coins
into the dirty hand of the leering old woman.

As I walked through the crowd, people smiled as if they knew me, but as their eyes shifted away, I could
sense their fear—giving me the feeling that I was someone powerful and possibly even dangerous. I came
upon a young girl who was chained by the ankle to a wooden gypsy cart. Upon spotting her, I was
overwhelmed with an animalistic lust as the scent of her perspiration entered my nostrils. The girl was pretty
with long auburn hair and slightly crooked teeth. I watched her with amusement as she backed up when I
approached her. She had that same look of fear in her eyes that I’d seen in the others. But instead of walking
on or even offering her a friendly smile, I grabbed her by the hair and kissed her hard, pushing her up against
the side of the wagon she was shackled to. Her heart was beating like a small bird and I think I bit her lip on
purpose. The girl whimpered as a trickle of her salty blood stained my lips; and as I did it, I felt my own
features twisting into a cruel smile. I desperately wanted to stop myself; to tell her that I was sorry, but I wasn’t
able to speak whenever I had the visions. Instead, I nodded at the fat man standing by the cart and pulled the
frightened girl inside after me onto a straw mattress. As I removed my dark shirt, I felt my long white fingers
touching the strange necklace of bones that hung around my neck. When I let go of the bones, I was myself
again and back on the couch in the living room of our apartment. The TV show was almost over now and I’d
been out for almost fifteen minutes. I shuddered; attempting to shake off the disturbing vision. The only thing I
knew was that there was some connection between the bones and the things I was seeing, but other than
that, it made no sense. I was either a total creep or insane – or both.

I called Billy to tell him what I’d seen so he could jot it down in his notebook. But all he was interested in was
what had gone down in the cart with the girl.

As Brenda pulled the station wagon onto Pacific Coast Highway, she talked as if I were a gullible little boy.
“We’re gonna rope us up some fast, wild horses in the pasture and then we’ll go swimming all summer long
in the river by the big red house.” She was trying to make it sound like we were setting off on some kind of
exotic adventure, but I knew better; she was referring to the same river that she’d already told me was
wriggling with slimy, black cottonmouths and the pasture that had mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds.

I didn’t want to turn into a wild thing like Brenda and I feared for both of us what would happen if I did. I was
sure that the horrible place she came from was what had made her the way she was and I wasn’t willing to
go there without putting up a fight. All I wanted to do was stay in Santa Barbara where I could surf and have
sex with Jennifer Lemon in her mother’s van. I tried begging, arguing and reasoning with Brenda, but nothing
would change her mind.

A week earlier I’d gotten a fortune cookie at Wong’s Wok that read, ‘a dangerous adventure lies in your future.’
I tried to tell Brenda that this was a very bad omen because she was the kind of person who believed in signs
and superstitions and I hoped that it might persuade her to stay in California. But she responded by reading
the fortune she’d cracked out of her own cookie, ‘he who does not travel, never goes anyplace.’

Hers didn’t sound like much of a Chinese fortune to me, but she went and swallowed the piece of paper
before I could read it for myself. She always ate the paper like that.

Seeing how bummed I was about the move, Billy came up with a last-ditch plan so I wouldn’t have to leave.
As moronic as the idea was, I was willing to give it a shot. He figured if the two of us became blood brothers
then we’d officially be related. Billy swore that his family were good Christians and would never turn their
backs on a relative. He had a pretty good feeling that they might adopt me too. But even if they didn’t, he still
thought it would be cool to have some of my Cherokee blood running through his veins and was hoping that
my Indian spirits would show him some the exotic visions he’d become so obsessed with.

I thought it was the stupidest idea I’d ever heard, but I was desperate - and anything was better than moving
to Arkansas.

Billy insisted that we had to get drunk before the ceremony in order for our blood to thin out and mix properly,
only problem was, his parents were strict Catholics and didn’t allow any alcohol in the house. Billy suggested
that I just swipe some booze from Brenda because she was drunk most of the time, but Brenda never
seemed to have any leftover liquor around. So, after a long discussion on how to get our hands on some
alcohol we settled for a concoction of Listerine mouthwash, vanilla extract and red wine vinegar.

We prepared for the ritual in Billy’s tree house which took place at the stroke of midnight. We even tied Coco
to the tree to act as our witness. In honor of the Indian spirits, Billy thought that we ought to have stripes of
blue and red war paint on our faces, so I swiped some makeup from Brenda and made us look as Indian as
possible. Billy handed me a copy of the ceremony we’d written ourselves and we lit a candle. Then we read
aloud together, “Ancient spirits! Witness our bonding ritual as we are joined together as brothers!”

Trying not to gag, we each took a gulp of the mouthwash mixture and chanted the spell seven times, “blood is
thicker than wine and wine is thicker than water.”

Billy handed me the ceremonial Swiss Army knife and I gave myself a small cut on the arm. Billy did the
same, all the while, keeping our eyes locked on one another. With our hands clasped in an arm wrestling
position, he tied our bleeding forearms together with a leather cord and we finished the ceremony by reciting
the final secret passage, “brothers are we now as our life blood flows together like a river for all of eternity.
Never shall we part and always shall we be as one!”

It seemed like a halfway decent plan at the time, but our scheme to get the Rhodes family to adopt me had
backfired.

Billy’s mother had an absolute fit when she found out about the ceremony and she made him go to the doctor
and get a tetanus shot.

Brenda’s response was even worse. “Well, duh,” she snorted. “Of course it didn’t work. Everyone knows that
you have to slather yourselves with the fat of a black rooster before the ancient spirits will recognize two
people as blood brothers. Jack, baby? Want me to put some vodka on that cut for you?”

Sometimes I really hated her.

Sitting in the back seat of the station wagon, I glanced down at the silver coin hanging around my neck from a
leather cord, wishing that it would bring me some good luck because I really needed a miracle right now. I’d
found the coin buried in the sand last year and Billy and I were sure that there was a wrecked Spanish
treasure galleon somewhere out there. We’d even made plans to search for it this summer, but that was just
another dream that Brenda had smashed to smithereens for me. I glared at her reflection in the rearview
mirror as we drove down the highway, furious with her for wrecking my life.

Stealing a final glance at our perfect olive groves above the Pacific Ocean, I buried my face into Jasper’s
warm fur and fell asleep.

When I woke up two hours later we were parked outside a gas station in the Mojave Desert and Jasper was
licking my face as the sun sunk into the summer sky.

Brenda was rummaging around in the back of the station wagon, burying a new six-pack of Tab in the ice
chest.

“You’re drinking more Tab?” I asked in disbelief, pointing out the pile of empty, pink cans that already littered
the floor of the backseat. “My health class teacher said that saccharine causes cancer in laboratory rats and
they have scientific studies to prove it and everything.”

“Well, I ain’t no lab rat, honey,” she responded, jutting her front teeth out and crinkling her freckled nose at me
in a rat face. “Put     Jasper’s leash on and we’ll take a walk to stretch our legs.”

Jasper led the way down the main drag of Mojave, stopping to sniff at a fire hydrant in front of a motel.

“Jack? What’s on your mind?” Brenda asked.

“Nothing,” I grumbled, still bitter about being dragged away from Jennifer Lemon.

“You sure?” she asked.

I hesitated, thinking about something Billy had said when I told him where we were moving to. “Is it true that
people in Arkansas eat road kill and that the houses in the woods don’t have any toilets?” I questioned.

“Sure,” she said, popping her gum. “But there’s a pretty little outhouse. I don’t think your Aunt Julene ever
bothered to put a real toilet indoors with her being away from home so often. What would be the point in that?”

“Are you serious!” I exploded. “What are we supposed to do if we get the runs in the middle of the night from
eating ROAD KILL?”

“That’s why they call it the runs,” Brenda laughed. “You get up and run outside.”

“That’s gross!” I protested. “That’s totally disgusting!”

“No, it’s life,” she said, her mood becoming serious. Brenda stopped walking and put her hands on my
shoulders and I could see the sadness swimming behind her dark eyes. “Jack, I really need you to make the
best of this,” she sniffled, dabbing a tear from her eye. “I’m spending my last few dollars on gasoline to drive
us out there because I love you, and I honestly don’t know where else to go. So, I need you to be my best,
best friend, now more than ever. Okay? Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah, okay,” I mumbled, wishing she’d act like a proper mother for once in her life.

The smile on her face lit up again and she gave me a noogie on the head, messing up my hair.

For dinner, Brenda decided to splurge on two jumbo ice cream cones at the Dairy Queen instead of the
peanut butter sandwiches I’d packed for us in the cooler.

The two of us sat at an outside table for a good fifteen minutes, savoring every delicious bite. As we watched
the sun setting over the Mojave Desert, my cares seemed to melt away like the frosty vanilla ice cream on my
tongue and I even let Jasper wolf down my empty cone when I was finished. The sign advertising fresh-
squeezed lemonade didn’t even bother me that much.

It was probably just the sugar rushing through my blood, but in that brief instant of time, I felt like everything
was okay - and I loved Brenda just the way she was. After all, a proper mother would have never fed her child
ice cream for supper.

Chapter Two

Three states later…

I tried to explain to Brenda that it was illegal in all fifty states for a fifteen-year-old to drive a car, but it was
impossible to reason with her.

It was just after four-o’clock in the afternoon and we were sitting in a vinyl booth at a truck stop in Shawnee,
Oklahoma.

We’d been on the road for three days now and the weather had gotten really weird. In fact, the local television
station had just issued tornado warnings in three counties, including the one we were in right now. Brenda
was glued to the television set in the diner, soaking up every word of the news broadcast as the picture faded
in and out with static.

With a vacant stare, I watched the dessert case spinning round and round as the tapioca pudding and red
Jell-O and chocolate cake and banana cream pie spun by like a carousel, distracting me from the reality that
a monster tornado could pick up this truck stop and hurl it back across the state line at any moment. I think
the waitress must have noticed the look on my face because she brought me a dish of ice cream with a
cherry on top and said it was on the house.

Brenda’s wild eyes darted toward the window of the coffee shop every couple of minutes to look up at the sky.
Meanwhile I kept myself occupied by tying the stem of the cherry into a knot in my mouth without using my
fingers. Attempting to calm her nerves, Brenda downed her third Budweiser and made this annoying ‘ooh!’
sound every time they said the word ‘tornado’ on the news. She’d just done it again for the fifty-third time.

The plump waitress gave me a sympathetic look as I walked up to the register and paid the check. “Hey kid, if
y’all leave now, you’ll outrun the weather,” she whispered, offering me a weary smile.

“Thanks,” I said, studying the uneasy look on her face. “Do you really think so?”

The waitress reached across the counter and squeezed my hand. “You’ll be fine, sugar” she assured me,
“the storm’s coming up from the west, so as long as you drive pretty fast, you’ll stay well ahead of it.”

Just then, the electricity in the diner flickered off for a moment and the picture on the television turned to
complete static, sending Brenda into a frenzied panic. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here!” she screeched,
grabbing me by the arm. “Now!”

The waitress shot me a wink as I was dragged out of the diner by my deranged mother.

I sat behind the steering wheel of the Ford and exhaled, trying to remember which pedal was the gas and
which was the brake, but was finding it difficult to concentrate under this kind of pressure. “You know, I could
be arrested if we get pulled over by the cops,” I informed Brenda, “actually, they’d probably arrest you because
you’re the adult.”

Brenda’s eyes flicked up at the sky again, then back on me. “Just start the goddamn car, Jack and don’t be a
smartass! Don’t you know anything? The laws change during natural disasters and anyone can drive a
freaking car! Even the damn dog! So start driving before we get ourselves sucked up by some goddamn
tornado!”

“Fine! But I don’t know where to go! Which way is stupid Arkansas!?” I hollered.

Jasper was whimpering in the backseat and my so-called guardian was starting to have a serious meltdown.
“Jack Blackfox Kelly, just get us back on the damn the highway!”

“Okay! Don’t have a cow! Just gimme a second to figure it out!” With that said, I cranked the key in the ignition
and the engine rumbled to life. I felt a sudden swell of pride despite the incoherent blubbering of my
passenger who had just burst into tears.

“Hey,” I told her, calming my voice. “I’d never let anything bad happen to you. I’m gonna get us out of here. I
promise.”

With big soggy eyes, Brenda clasped her hand on my knee as I jerkily rolled out of the parking lot toward the
highway.

Luckily, I could actually drive a car. Brenda had taught me and Billy Rhodes how to drag race and spin donuts
in the K-Mart parking lot on my thirteenth birthday, but that was beside the point. If there were a contest for the
kid with the world’s worst mother, I’d probably win.

I managed to find the entrance to Highway 40 East and stepped on the gas pedal. As stressful as the
situation was, I felt strangely calm barreling down the desolate interstate at seventy miles per hour, the
minimum speed that Brenda had instructed me to drive at. After all, this was a natural disaster.

I thought about Billy Rhodes, now three states away, and knew exactly what he’d say if he could see me
behind the wheel of a car outrunning tornadoes. Lucky!

Even though it was still technically daylight outside, the atmosphere had an eerie gloominess to it. Monstrous
black clouds blocked out the sun and the air was crisp and humming with static electricity. Occasionally the
sky would flash white with lightening, making Brenda jolt upright in the passenger seat as if she’d been
personally struck by it.

Secretly, I thought it was kind of cool to be in weather like this after living in Santa Barbara where nothing
good ever happened.

Our station wagon was the only vehicle on the road as I drove by pastures of unconcerned-looking cows and
lopsided farmhouses that dotted the dreary landscape. Brenda’s knuckles were white from gripping the
dashboard, but she hadn’t said a word or made that annoying ‘ooh’ sound for the last half hour.

Personally, I didn’t get what the big deal was. The only tornado I’d ever seen was in Wizard of Oz and quite
frankly, the flying monkeys were far more terrifying than some stupid twister. I’d calculated the odds in my
head and figured that our chances of making it to Arkansas alive were pretty good. With two-hundred-million
people living in America, and maybe twenty people a year croaking from a tornado encounter, I decided that
we didn’t have too much to worry about. Easing off the gas pedal a little, I gradually slowed it down to fifty-five
miles per hour and was moving along without Brenda noticing the drop in speed.

And then I saw it.

I had to squint out the window to make sure it was real.

It was real all right…

Off to the left a mile away, a dreadful black funnel touched down in a cornfield. The black cloud cover seemed
to swirl around like a giant toilet bowl and the base of the tornado must have been twenty yards thick. A cloud
of dirt exploded as the monster dug its claws into the earth and cut a zigzag path toward the highway.

Adrenaline pumping, my body went numb. I steadied my hands on the steering wheel to stop them from
shaking and started whistling, praying that Brenda wouldn’t look out the window and see it too. My whistling
wouldn’t distract her for long and I didn’t think I could handle her hysterics right now. I had more important
things on my mind like those twenty suckers who die in tornado encounters every year.

“W-why don’t you put on some music?” I suggested. “How about your favorite?”

“Huh?” she asked, her eyes fixed straight ahead on the white lines of the highway.

Glancing at the tornado outside, I groped around on the front seat with my right hand until I located the eight-
track cassette tape. But pea-sized chunks of hail began to pelt the car, snapping Brenda to back into high
alert mode.

Her panic-filled eyes scanned the sky and she saw it too. “OH-MY-GOD!” she screeched, pointing a quaking
finger out the passenger side window at the tornado that was heading our way. “We’re gonna die! We’re
gonna die!”

It was all I could do to fling her hand out of my face and pop the cassette in the tape deck.

Hail was building up on the windshield and I had to do something fast because pulling over to the side of the
road right now was not an option. Fumbling around with the unfamiliar switches and buttons on the
dashboard, I managed to locate the windshield wiper control and turned it on high, but as the slush on the
glass was swiped aside, something even more horrifying materialized. A second, larger twister had touched
down next to the first one and it was heading directly toward us on the highway.

Just then, the funky guitar of K.C. and the Sunshine Band filled the interior of the car and I turned up the
volume to drown out Brenda’s screaming. “JACK! DO SOMETHING!”

“What do you want me to do?!” I yelled.

Brenda looked into my eyes with desperation. “Make it go away! You can make it go away of you try! I know
you can! Use your powers!”

Okay. She was drunker than I’d realized.

“Your magic powers!” she panted.

“Fine!” I shouted. “Uh - It’ll go away if you do exactly what I say!”

Brenda was all ears, hanging on my next words. “You have to, um, sing with me!” I told her. “Come on! Sing
with me!” I hollered. “Sing!”

"Shake, shake, shake, Shake, shake, shake, Shake your booty,Shake your booty…"

Brenda’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates and she was starting to hyperventilate. By now, Jasper had
spotted the funnel too and he was barking his head off in the backseat.

I grabbed Brenda’s hand to get her attention. “Listen to me! No one has EVER died while listening to K.C.
and the Sunshine Band! It just isn’t possible! But I need you to sing with me! Sing it or you’re gonna die!”

I kept on singing as the pair of tornadoes rumbled closer and closer. One was moving along the side of the
car and the other heading for us straight on. I still don’t know why I did it, but I rolled down the window and
turned up the volume of the stereo as loud as it would go, causing Brenda to look at me as if I were insane. I
started singing at the tornadoes, “SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!”

My surfboard was rattling and slapping against the top of the station wagon as one of the twisters unearthed
a cloud of dirt and corn husks just yards away from the highway.

Staring into the face of the monster, I continued singing and to my amazement Brenda joined in. If I were
going to be swallowed by a tornado, by God, I’d do it shaking my booty. Brenda and I sang until we were
laughing and crying and our lungs felt like they were going to explode.

Then something amazing happened.

The first tornado that had been right on our tail made a hideous noise that sounded like the belch of a giant
and started to change course, cutting back across the cornfield and the second, larger funnel began to follow
it.

Brenda and I stared at each other for a second, then we continued singing even louder until we were
screaming out the lyrics.

Like a pair of colossal black snakes, the twisters began wrapping around each other as if they were a couple
of ballroom dancers. It was the eeriest thing I’d ever seen. Then, just as suddenly as the tornadoes appeared
they were sucked back up into a hole in the clouds.

It was over.

The hail stopped spitting from the sky and I turned off the windshield wipers. Unwilling to take any chances, I
sped up again and drove like a demon to the sunshine beyond the cloud cover.

Not a single word passed between Brenda and me as we drove toward Arkansas, listening to the rest of the
tape on the stereo.

When we crossed the state line an hour later, I pulled off at the first exit in Fort Smith, parked the car at a gas
station and took a very, very deep breath. I looked over at Brenda who seemed to be lost in thought.

“Uh – are you all right?” I asked.

“Harry Wayne Casey is God!” she proclaimed. “I’ve been thinking about it and I’m absolutely sure.”

“What?”

Brenda was busy digging through her purse now looking for a pen. “Harry, he’s the singer of K.C. and the
Sunshine Band. It was a miracle! I’ve got to send him a letter and tell him what’s happened. Get me
something to write on.”

Too exhausted to argue that the man who wrote Shake Your Booty was not the Divine Creator, I got out of the
car and dug through a box in the backseat until I found the stationary. I handed Brenda an ice-cold Tab from
the cooler and a pad of writing paper. Jasper hopped out behind me and was sniffing around the parking lot
as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. With rubbery legs, I leaned against side of the station wagon.

That’s when I saw it, the sign that made me wonder if Harry Wayne Casey did, in fact possess supernatural
powers.

An entire ear of corn was embedded like a torpedo through the middle of my surfboard. As I ran my hands
across the board in disbelief, I grinned, despite the fact that it was totally trashed. Billy Rhodes would never
believe this one in a million years.

Jasper curled up beside the front tire and I stretched out on the warm hood of the car. Brenda wrote a very
long letter to the singer of K.C. and the Sunshine Band and I wrote a letter to Billy. I didn’t care if he believed
me or not. Even if it hadn’t actually happened, it was a hell of a story and it’d go down in history around the old
neighborhood. Maybe Jennifer Lemon would hear about it and wish that she’d taken me up on my offer of
unlimited sex and cave dwelling.

When Brenda had finished writing, she tucked a small photograph of herself into the envelope and moved
over into the driver’s seat with a smile. “Hey, Jack. I’m feeling better now,” she announced. “In fact, I feel good
enough to drive the rest of the way. Are you ready to go?”

“Sure.”

Before we set off into the Ozark Mountains, Brenda wanted to find a post office. She was mailing her letter to
the record company address that was printed on the outside of the K.C. tape. She stuck stamps on both of
our letters and drove around Fort Smith until she found a mailbox.

“Thanks for driving, Jack,” Brenda smiled at me. “You saved our butts making the tornado go away.”

“I did pretty good,” I admitted.

“You did an amazing job.”

Grinning with pride, I glanced over at the car keys dangling from the ignition. “I was kind of hoping you’d let
me drive the rest of the way,” I suggested. “What do you think?”

“Are you out of your god dammed mind?” she gasped. “I could be arrested for letting a kid drive a car!”

Brenda was back to normal all right, whatever that was.

Chapter Three

The Boondocks

It was close to three o’clock in the morning by the time we arrived in Gilbert, the closest town to my Aunt
Julene’s house.

Brenda had driven most of the night through the crooked, winding roads of the Ozark Mountains and she was
rubbing her eyes now. In the glare of the headlights, I’d counted five flattened raccoons, three squashed
armadillos and eight unidentified blobs of road kill, all plastered to the asphalt. Everything was inky black
outside and I couldn’t see much of the scenery, but I could hear a continuous chorus of frogs once we
entered the thick woodlands that were choked with trees.

Main Street in Gilbert didn’t appear to have any sidewalks, just a few sagging buildings that almost touched
the edge of the blacktop road. I squinted in the darkness and spotted a general store that doubled as a post
office and a gas station that sold fishing bait and rented canoes. It was a blip of a town. We crossed a one-
lane bridge and were back into the forest again before you could say ‘boondocks’.

Spinning around in my seat, I stared out the rear window of the station wagon as the dim lights of Gilbert
disappeared. “That was it? That was the entire town back there?”

“Yup. That was it,” Brenda yawned.

About five miles outside of Gilbert, Brenda slowed the car to a crawl and stopped before a caved-in mailbox
that was embedded in an old butter churn. We made a sharp right turn onto a dirt road, causing the suitcase
in the back seat to topple over onto Jasper. With a yelp, the little dog scrambled out from under the luggage
and leapt into my arms.

The property was pitch black and dotted with spooky looking trees and shadows. We’d been driving down the
isolated road for five minutes and I hadn’t seen a single house since we’d passed Gilbert. “Are you sure this
is the right way?” I panicked, stroking Jasper’s wiry coat.

“I’m sure.”

“Where am I gonna go to school? Do they even have a school around here?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she said. “But you’re almost sixteen. You don’t have to go to school no more if you don’t wanna.”

“Are you serious?” I exhaled, thrilled by the idea that I’d never have to open another boring book again if I didn’
t want to - and shocked that my own mother would deny her child an education. But then again, we were
talking about Brenda.

“Me and your aunt never finished school,” she shrugged.

“But you said Aunt Julene was a doctor,” I reminded her. “How is it possible that she didn’t finish school?”
“Would you quit talking so damn much? We’re almost there,” Brenda sighed. “It’s just around the next bend.”

The next bend turned out to be at least another mile and a half down a lonely forest road. Eventually I spotted
a porch light off in the distance and could make out the outline of a monstrous two-story house that looked
like it was at least a hundred years old. I couldn’t tell what color it was, but I counted four chimneys spiking up
from the peak of the steep roof and could see a front and back porch in the moonlight.

Brenda pulled the car to a stop under a large elm tree. “Home is where the dog is,” she sighed wearily. “Grab
the suitcase and I’ll let us inside.”

Climbing out of the car, I observed our strange, new house that seemed to be sitting in the middle of the
wilderness. The air was humid and sticky, humming with the sounds of insects and frogs. “Hey, is that the
Buffalo River out there? Am I allowed to climb the trees tomorrow? What about your sister? Should we wake
her up?”

“She ain’t here tonight,” Brenda said. “The motorcycle’s gone.”

“What motorcycle? She has a motorcycle?” I asked, wondering what kind of lady drove a chopper as I lugged
the suitcase toward the front door.

“Yes, your Aunt Julene has a motorcycle,” Brenda yawned, reaching behind the wooden porch swing where
she extracted a key. “Would you please stop asking me so many damn questions, Jack? I’m dog tired right
now.”

I stood out in front of the house for a moment staring at the endless woods beyond the river. I’d never seen
so much wilderness all at once and the effect was dizzying. As I squinted into the darkness, I could have
sworn I saw the shadow of a large animal weaving between some distant trees by the water. But it was late
and I supposed that my eyes were just playing tricks on me. I heard a twig snap from somewhere in the
forest and was suddenly overwhelmed by the idea that someone - or something - was, in fact, watching me
from out there. Without looking back, I darted into the house after Brenda.

The inside of the house was still dark by the time I stumbled up the steps of the front porch. Brenda was
fumbling around in the front room and turned on a lamp with a red glass shade. Shaking my head in
amazement, I took in the strange surroundings. A mounted deer head with a full feathered Indian headdress
hung over a stone fireplace and there were two cabinets filled with stacks of pretty dishes and lots of silver
things. There was a fancy cuckoo clock on the wall that looked like a Swiss chalet and it had little dancing
couples on it and brass pinecones hanging from the weight chains. It was almost three-thirty in the morning
and I hoped it would chime on the half hour.

A couch sat in the center of the room on top of a round rug that was made of knotted wool. Then I noticed a
velvet chair in the corner of the room that was stacked with dusty, patchwork quilts, all piled up on one
another. In fact, there were so many of them that they overflowed onto the surrounding floor. “How come all
those bedspreads and blankets are on that chair?” I asked curiously, stepping closer. “Did she put them out
for us? Does it get that cold around here?”

“Don’t touch the quilts”, Brenda warned, blocking me with her arm. “Don’t you ever touch the quilts!”

“Fine! You don’t have to have a cow about it,” I huffed. “I was just asking a simple question.”

Brenda looked at me apologetically. “Let’s go get some sleep, baby. It’s been a long night.”

I couldn’t have agreed more. I followed Brenda up the rickety wooden staircase, stopping to see if the clock
on the wall would chime. As the hands moved into position a little red bird popped out from the clock singing,
“cuckoo” and the colorful couples waltzed around to the sounds of a tinkling music box. Jasper growled at the
clock, then trotted up after Brenda.

Dragging the luggage up the steps, I wondered if we’d actually bake those blackberry pies tomorrow like
she’d promised.    My guess was no.

Glancing down the long hallway on the second floor, I spotted a door at the end which was painted black and
had an upside-down horseshoe nailed above it.

Brenda had me dump our things in a bedroom that I guessed must have been hers when she was a girl.
She turned down the frilly covers on the twin bed and warned, “Jack, don’t ever go into the room with the black
door. That’s Julene’s and it isn’t to be disturbed.”

“Fine. But where am I supposed to sleep?” I asked uncertainly, eyeing the rough, wooden floor.

To my delight, Brenda reached up by the closet and pulled down a retractable staircase that led to the attic.

“There’s two other bedrooms upstairs you can pick from,” Brenda explained. “But I though you’d like it up here
in the attic best.”

“Cool.”

A hurricane lamp on the night stand illuminated a magical room that was all mine. The huge attic space was
drastically different from my old bedroom in the cramped apartment we’d moved from; the ceiling was steep
with low, angled walls and there was a small window facing the elm tree outside. It was the coolest room I’d
ever seen. Although the walls and floor were bare wood, the bed had a swirled, black iron frame and a quilt
with blue, patchwork stars and some other strange symbols sewn onto it. Someone, my Aunt Julene I
guessed, had recently cleaned the room and it was spotless. I had the feeling that I was going to like her -
even if she did ride around on a motorcycle.

I woke up the next morning, plucking some feathers form the corner of my mouth that I figured must have
worked their way out of the lumpy, down mattress. I’d had the strangest dream and was trying to remember
the details…

I was charging through the forest with incredible force and speed and I was able to see in the dark woods. I
followed the smell of wood smoke and roasting meat to a small cabin nestled deep within the forest. The
sweet slow melody of a fiddle from inside the cabin pulled me closer and I leapt into the air, finding myself
crouched on top of the log structure. Staring down through the small holes in the tin roof, I watched a golden
haired girl in a yellow dress as she played her fiddle and danced across the floor in bare feet, spinning and
spinning and spinning…

I sat up in bed and took a deep breath, spitting out another feather that was stuck to my lip. I thought about
sleeping in a little bit longer, but just then, a terrible explosion of hollering and barking dogs erupted from
downstairs.

Where the hell are my clothes?! Throwing the patchwork quilt over my naked body, I rushed out of the attic to
see what was going on. On my way down the ladder, I noticed that Brenda’s bed had already been made and
she was nowhere to be seen. Sliding into the hallway on the second floor, I hung over the balcony and
gawked at the scene unfolding before my eyes.

“Goddamn dumbass, good fer’ nothin’ furry-assed stinkin’ mutts!”

A girl about my age with a voice like a foghorn and a tangle of unruly blonde hair, was standing by the front
door with her pixie-like face pinched up in a fury. Her twelve-gauge shotgun was aimed at Jasper and four
hound dogs that were nipping at the dead rabbits she had slung over her shoulder. One of the hounds
snatched a rabbit from her and the pack clamored into a growling, salivating pile after it.

I flew down the staircase, grabbed my dog away from the slobbering pack and yelled at her, “what do you
think you’re doing! Are you insane?”

The girl grabbed the dead rabbit from the dogs, laid her gun down by the coat rack, and grinned at me, “you
must me Miss Julene’s kin. Jack, right?”

She had skin as pale as the milk glass in the china cabinet and wore a pair of big leather boots that nearly
covered the tops of her knobby knees.

“Yeah, so?” I responded, eyeing her camouflage coat and cut-off shorts that were both five sizes too big.

“Who are you?”

The girl let out an earsplitting whistle and the dogs scurried off into the kitchen. “My name’s Periwinkle Dixie
Lee Gaston,” she announced with an exaggerated curtsey. “But most folks call me Peri. Didn’t Miss Julene
tell you ‘bout me? How I’m the daughter of the late, God rest her soul, Ozark Corn Princess?”

“I’ve never met my Aunt Julene and I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said in my rudest tone, looking
away from Peri’s gray, unwavering eyes. “And what are you doing with a bunch of dead rabbits anyway?”

“Goddamn Ozark howler’s on the loose an’ got two of Miss Julene’s hens out yonder last night.”

“Huh?”

Peri glanced at the rabbits over her shoulder and sniffed proudly, “so, these scrawny old cottontails’ll have to
do. They’re really nothin’ big enough to make a fuss ‘bout, but there’s four of ‘em.”

I rolled my eyes. “I can see what they are, but why did you kill them?”

“Fer’ supper, stupid,” she laughed.

“You’re gonna cook them?” I cringed.

“That ‘er you can go frog giggin’ down at the river n’ stick yer’self a couple a toads,” she suggested.

“Excuse me while I go barf my intestines out,” I sneered, carrying Jasper back upstairs with me.

“Hey Jack! If you’re fixin’ to go barf, the outhouse is that-a-way!” Peri was pointing a dirty finger at the front
door, her wiry frame shaking with laughter. The edge of her camouflage coat had slipped off her shoulder
and I shuddered, noticing the tuft of blonde hair sprouting from her armpit.

Turning my back on her, I disappeared up the stairs, realizing that I’d been standing in front of the lunatic
wearing nothing but a quilt.

I dug a pair of shorts and a clean t-shirt out of the suitcase and went back downstairs where I could hear Peri
singing in the kitchen. ‘I love you lots, I love you plenty, I hope we marry ‘fore I’m twenty.
I love cornbread, I do, I do, And someday I hope I can sleep with you!’

Horrified by her provocative nursery rhyme, I tiptoed across the floor to the front door then bolted outside. I
found the outhouse easily enough, but Brenda and the station wagon were gone.

The property was strangely familiar and I had the feeling that this was the same forest I’d dreamed about the
night before.

I could see that the big old house had once been painted bright red, but now the exterior coat was bubbled
and peeling away from the wood. There was nothing around the house but miles and miles of trees and
green grass, still wet with morning dew. The constant buzz of insects filled the warm, humid air and the sky
crackled with the boom of distant thunder. Looking up beyond the fortress of trees, I noticed that the sky was
choked with monstrous grey clouds that threatened to start raining at any moment. About a hundred yards
past the outhouse, I could see the wide Buffalo River as it ran past the house and around a bend of steep
cliffs. I imagined myself floating away on it in a big inner tube, but exploring the property would have to wait,
for I had more important things to do right now like figure out what that freak of a girl was doing in my new
house, and how to get rid of her.

If Peri had been a boy, I could’ve just socked her in the nose and that would’ve been that. But with her being a
girl – a girl with a very big shotgun, that complicated things. She didn’t seem like the type to squeal if I put a
frog in her pocket. The girl had as much hair growing in her armpits as I did.

I snuck back into Brenda’s bedroom with Jasper and shut the door, but I could still hear Peri clanging things
around in the kitchen, so I busied myself unpacking our clothes from the suitcase until I could figure out what
to do about her.

After an hour and a half, the delicious aroma of food began to waft under the door. Even though I knew it was
dead vermin roasting in the oven, it smelled awfully good. Jasper’s nose was twitching and he started
scratching to get out of the room. I imagined what I’d say to Peri if I were to go down there right now, What’s
this you’ve made? Road kill casserole with dead bunnies and juicy chunks of skunk? Yummy.

The insult I’d thought up made me giggle, but it didn’t do much to ease the hunger. I tried to ignore the
growling in my belly, but I hadn’t eaten since Oklahoma and I was starving, so swallowing my pride, I decided
to go down to the kitchen and make an effort to be civil to Peri.

As I crept down the stairs, I heard the door at the back porch slam shut. Peering out the window, I watched
Peri happily skipping off into the woods with her shotgun in tow and four unruly hound dogs following after
her. That girl was unlike anything I’d ever seen and as much as it nauseated me to think it, she was kind of
hot in a Pippi Longstocking sort of way. I’ll bet she didn’t shave her legs either.

Four mystery meat pies were cooling on the metal dough table, and a huge chocolate cake sat out that had
just been frosted. A note scrawled in childish handwriting read, This is Fur Supper. Doo Not Tuch!
Knowing that Peri had written it and that I was literally looking at a ‘fur’ supper, I touched her cake, dipping my
finger into the thick frosting around the edges of the plate, then I dug around in the kitchen for something
normal to eat.

The only eggs I could find were some small blue ones with brown speckles on the shells. But I was so
hungry that I didn’t care what they looked like, even though I suspected they’d come from a songbird. I mixed
the eggs together and cooked them up for me and Jasper in a big iron frying pan, using more salt and
pepper than usual just in case they tasted gamey and wild.

Out on the back porch, Jasper and I wolfed down our breakfast of unidentified eggs which were surprisingly
tasty.

Curious about my new home, I took a short walk around the property. I came across an old wooden door that
was wedged into the side of the hill which I guessed was the root cellar. Jarring the door open, I peered
around inside the dark, musty room that had been carved into the earth. There were bins of potatoes, crates
of carrots and corn and shelves stocked with pickled vegetables and fruit jams.

Venturing behind a rickety wooden shed a few yards further, I found a large herb garden with hundreds of clay
pots stacked on shelves beneath a shaded gazebo of bentwood twigs. There were handwritten markers in
the pots with sinister sounding names like horehound, skullcap, snakeroot, crowfoot and witch hazel. And
there were a few with names I’d heard of like ginger and spearmint. Out of curiosity, I tore off a leaf of the
spearmint and put it in my mouth and found it tasted like my favorite gum.

As I walked the perimeter of the big red house, I found a stone water well with a bucket attached to the end,
prompting the sneaking suspicion that this is where our water supply came from – and that I’d probably be
the one to lug bucketfuls back to the house every day - and possibly for the rest of my life. My dismal thoughts
were interrupted by the sound of Jasper barking beyond the thick trees. Cautiously, I crept over to check it out
and found him in a small clearing in the woods. The terrier was growling at an iron cauldron that was large
enough to cook a man. There was a pool of white, fatty sludge in the bottom of the pot and a recent pile of
ashes and charred wood underneath it. I could feel the hair prickling up on my arms and felt as though eyes
were watching me from somewhere beyond the trees. Spinning around in a circle, I scanned the wilderness,
but saw nothing beneath the darkening sky.

From what I could tell, something really bizarre was going on around this place and I began to feel alone and
spooked. Just then a burst of thunder boomed across the sky and drops of rain began to fall. Grabbing
Jasper in my arms, I sprinted back to the porch and sat down in the old hanging swing to think things over.

As I rocked back and forth watching the downpour, I stared into the endless woods where Peri had vanished,
wondering how she’d mustered up the nerve to step into that wild place of creepy cauldrons, buzzing insects
and trees so dense that they choked out almost all of the daylight. I supposed that trotting around with a
loaded shotgun would help one’s confidence a little bit.

But the truth of the matter was, I was already starting to get lonely - and Arkansas was a very bad place to get
lonely.

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW OF THE NOVEL, TALE OF AN OZARK HOWLER.

Copyright Kelly Reno, 2008. All rights reserved.

I hope you enjoy this sneak preview of my upcoming novel series,
Tale of an Ozark Howler. I've included the first three chapters to give
you a taste of it. The comic book is based on the first bit of my new
500 page novel which has just been completed. I'm currently writing
the second novel in the series.

I'll be returning to my hideout in the Ozark Mountains this summer to
add the final touches to the second manuscript. Dang it y'all!
I jes' love Arkansas! What can I say? I'd love to hear from you, so
drop me a line on the CONTACT US page.

Kelly Reno

GET YER' HOWL ON Y'ALL!