Cain's Mark

5

I called Harryetta with the bad news. She was clearly disappointed that I would not be carrying her to the movies. I heard it in her voice. When I hung up, I got in my car and headed back out to the Hollow.

This time, as I rounded the hill and headed toward the entrance to Cephas Stump's dirt road, I was not intimidated by the written warning of the hand-painted sign heading onto the Stump property.

When I banged on the door, I yelled out my name and that I wanted Cephas to answer it pronto. I had just stepped back to give myself enough room to push in the unpainted excuse for a door, when it opened like 'sesame.'

Cephas stood in the doorway, backlit by a roaring fire in the fireplace.

It was odd to have such an inferno in the middle of August, but then I smelled the beans he was cooking.

"You're like a bad penny," Cephas said.

"Yeah," I said. "And I ain't going away till I get some answers."

Cephas stepped back into the sitting room, motioning for me to enter his house.

"Whatever you want," he said, "I ain't got any."

"What makes you say that, Cephas?"

"Two times in one day, Harlest. It ain't rocket science. But before you start, lemme tell you, I been here all day. The barn's cleaned out. Best's its looked all year."

"And why the Mr. Clean touch today, of all days?" I asked.

"Just a wild hair, I guess," he said.

"Umm," I said, sitting down and wishing an Artic breeze would blow through the opened windows and cool the room down a few hundred degrees.

Cephas must have read my mind.

"I like my beans done," he said. "Can't stomach hard pintos. They give me the gripes."

"Umm," I said, again.

"What is it this time, Harlest?"

"Gotta kid missing," I said. "You seen any kids messin' round here?"

"Ain't seen no boys 'round my place," he said.

"I didn't say anything about it being a boy missing, Cephas."

"No, you didn't," he said. "But I ain't never seen no girls down by the creek. Not all in the years I been livin' here."

"I don't guess there'd be many girls wanting to fish much down there. Less they was starving," I said.

"No," he said. "Now, if this was the thirties, it might be a diff'rent story."

"Umm," I said.

He smiled. I knew what he was thinking.

I was playing it close to the vest. Not showing my hand, if I could help it.

And he was right.

"My middle name is Cain, Harlest," Cephas said. "Did you know that?"

"No," I said. "I didn't."

"Don't know why they called me that," Cephas said. "But I ain't never murdered my brother."

Here he chuckled.

"How could I? I ain't got none. But I'm cursed, just the same."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Anything that goes wrong within, what, a hundred miles, must be Stump's doing."

He looked me squarely in the eyes.

They were blue. Clear. And wise.

"I reckon you got a point," I said. "But all them warning signs you got posted at your road. Ain't the most welcoming message, Cephas."

"Naw," he said. "It ain't. But it works pretty good with the travelin' salesmen and the religious crowd."

"I could see how it would," I said, smiling.

I stood up, with all intentions of leaving Cephas to his pot of beans. I don't know what he thought, for the instant I rose, Cephas was at me with a knife. The sharp blade sank deeply into my soft organs.

There was surprisingly little pain.

"You harm Cain," Cephas said, "and it comes back on you sevenfold."