Shake the Witches by C.H. Hooks

Fall had dropped on the Low Country, pounced, like it had been watching us from a distance and decided the time was right. Just as it caught, it retracted its claws, and the heat swelled again, leaving a heavy layer of fog sitting on the water. Everyone had given up looking for Daddy, but I kept on. 

Between the alligators and the sharks that frequented the salty waters of the inlet, a man could disappear in a second. Deep in the dark of earliest morning, I bounced along, shining my lamp down into the water below, browsing and knowing the shallows and the creatures in it like my personal library of water. It should have been cold out. Instead, it was too warm to sleep, and I was back out bobbing on the sluggish, wallowing Wilmington River again for respite. I mapped the flats and the rice canals, and knew the alligators by their stripes and patterns, the dots of their eyes. I knew he was in there, in the river or the marsh, and I wanted a last word with him. 

Daddy disappearing was no surprise. He’d done that off and on my whole life. Losing his remains wasn’t much of a surprise either. There was always another animal to claim a body out of hunger. The night air was usually sweet. I stuck out my tongue and wagged it from side to side hoping for a taste, but I got only salt, thick and heavy. 

I was trying to shake the witches—that’s what Mama called my thoughts—from my head. They usually came at night in the form of a dark shape at the foot of my bed, casting long silent stares on me while I lay there, shoes caked in goofer dust. My eyes were always heavy, but the blanket of shadows never quite covered my lids enough for me to rest. They came again now, spinning thoughts, voices that crept in to fill in the blanks of missed conversations with my Daddy. 

 A small wispy shape floated in front of my eye. An eyelash. I plucked it and pushed it to my jeans, then mouthed a wish. Mama knew I’d been bothered. She told me the dead could talk if we were quiet enough. She’d read me my fortune from the time I was a child. After she gave me my last card reading, she handed me a silver dollar to place under my pillow, to rest my head on and to keep the spirits off. Still, sleep didn’t come. 

The brackish water slapped the hull of my skiff and talked in tongues. It crept up on the sides and hung there, salty residue never quite leaving completely. The bird on the bow cocked its head to one side. It watched the water a couple feet below. The moonlight moved out of the shallows. I cranked up the engine to chase the moon out into the sound. The water deepened, and the chop became rough as the tide retreated and met the normally calm waters of the inlets. 

Daddy was last seen a week ago by some shrimpers, wagging his dick at them while he drained out the last of a bottle of Evan Williams into the intracoastal. I knew from my earliest experiences how his final moments would have passed. Sloppy, unruly, slipping on the teak deck. Daddy had knocked teeth out before – his own – while falling off the boat drunk. I shook off the memory. Over my shoulder on the water, I hoped to see my thoughts get rolled up in the wake, whitewater in waves of my own making.  

I spoke. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” 

My accent tumbled in a wash. The word, thinking, rolled from my mouth sounding more akin to an expression of appreciation, thanking, than that of pondering. Vowels and consonants bled like lights and darks. The rounded sounds tumbled from my mouth, drawn out a beat, no sharps, a stick of butter gently melting in warm sun.

 “Where you at now?”

With the breeze came a chop on the water. The witches whispered a reply. 

He’s deep in the dark. 

The words took steps along the back of my neck, light as insects’ feet. 

Gone for good, boy, gone for good. 

I cut the engine again. 

“I’m no boy.”

A child is a rope— a trapeze, a lifeline, an escape, a tether. 

I poled the shallows, pointed the spotlight at the water.

“Where’d he even come from?”

The noise grew closer.

A parent is a vessel—an obstacle to inevitability 

Again, I poled. 

“Where’d he disappear to? All the time. Why’d he go?” The sentences, lines had repeated in my head nearly all my life, filled in scenes of frustrations and flight. 

 Words find each other, but never find an ear. 

“Close to true,” I said. 

The light illuminated what the moon could not. I pushed myself into the mouth of the canal and away from the channel. The wind grew in the more open waters of the intracoastal, and the chop grew with it. In the still waters, the barely lapping splash in the edge of the tall grass, the spotlight caught feet. 

Deck shoes pointed out from the marsh grass. Daddy’s shoes. He’d worn them for a decade or two at least, as far back as I could think. Slime on white soles and half a body hanging from the bearded grass. I stopped. Daddy was planted. Thick dark mud had sucked him in face down in the marsh, hair matted and yet looking now different than I ever remembered—like he was on his way out but found dirt instead of a door. My neck chilled. The voices caught flight with it, stopped. The sulfur smell of the salt marsh had taken on another scent that I could have only missed with the offshore winds. I pushed the pole down into the water to get a read. It was too deep to climb out, plus when I shined the spot into the grass, big orange eyes peeked back, blinking. Something was claiming his body.

Mosquitos hummed in my ears. My swats couldn’t keep them off. I pulled the knot out of the stern line and twisted up a lasso, then stepped to the bow. The boat bobbed, swishing side to side, and I propped the spotlight on the rail, pointed at the legs, and tossed the rope. The splash and the ripples, the small waves, startled mud minnows, and they flushed out of the pant legs where I figured they’d been enjoying a snack. 

The witches returned. 

When the salt water pickles us, are we worth keeping?

Perhaps it was better to be eaten by a shrimp or a crab, a shark? 

“Your thoughts, Daddy?”

The eyes in the brush were wide, and I could have sworn I heard a gator hiss. I exhaled. The eyes blinked then grew smaller with the rustle of the marsh grass as the gator backed up. I tossed the line again, and this time, the heavy knot in the rope pulled off a shoe. For a moment, the shoe floated on its sole, then it sank end-over-end. I pulled the line in and reset. The water running from the rope was cool. The fog coming off the top of the water was thick from the confusion in the air. It sat heavy in a blanket above the water line, but it brought me no comfort. I could feel the beads of moisture roll down my arms, creep into the cracks in my broken skin and light tiny fires.

“I’ve got questions for you,” I said, then widened the noose and threw again. “When you drown in the dark, do the lights still go out?” 

In the moonlight, I watched the rope, wide and firm as it took flight, maintaining shape for a moment, then wobbling with insecurity and shrinking as it fell at his feet.

Wrinkles in the bath same as the wrinkles that come face down in the river. 

This time I caught the ankle, rotten and bony. Daddy was heavy, and I was afraid his body might pull apart when I tugged. Fortunately, it held, and I brought Daddy alongside the boat to a final chorus of hisses from the brush. I turned him over. His features had faded, pocked and washed, molted and withered, mud in the craters of his mouth and eyes. I tried to recall his face from memory but only saw vague images, reliefs and features of my own. When he last left, he’d taken on a mythic quality in my mind. I thought of him as a large fish scrambled and stirring the turbidity of the universe I eased into as I grew. I’d seen him rarely over the years, each time more of a sighting than an interaction. I had always thought of questions when I saw him, but never caught him long enough to ask. Now, as I was pointing the light away from his face in an attempt to un-see him, trying to look over the rest of the bloat, searching for a clue, I knew that his last grip had forever-tangled him in water with a bottle of Evan Williams. There were no answers to be had.

I rolled the body back over and made a couple of attempts at lifting him from the dark water. Each time it made a sick, sucking noise, like when I tried to pull myself up from the bottom of the shower after passing out in it. He was too heavy, drowned and waterlogged. His t-shirt, at one time white, rolled up over his belly. 

“Will I become you?” I said.

When I yanked the pull-start, the carburetor sucked air and breathed, then exhaust spread across the water fogging the flats. I pulled up the anchor. 

The weight of Daddy was a drag, and if my boat was any bigger, I would have had to fly day-shapes to show I was under tow. I plowed into the channel from the canal; the body dragged the shallow delta and bites of pickled flesh broke away from bone and chummed the wake behind me. The engine smoked and groaned under the weight. 

“Hermaaaa”

I pulled back on the throttle. A small wave slapped the stern, the transom slowly bucked, and I felt the lift. I pointed the spot behind me. A stream of bubbles trailed up from near Daddy’s mouth, the gassy build-up of death in Daddy’s swollen self, banged out by a hard wake, a tumble and wash of the last remnants of life. The beating was enough to make him talk. I waited. The moonlight faded. My argument for existence felt weak when I thought about the billions of tiny molecules and pulses that somehow combined to form the busted man behind me. 

“What you got to say?” I called. 

I pushed the throttle and kept looking back. The wake from Daddy was wide, and it rolled off in a V—the symmetrical pattern was a sharper angle than that of the boat. The light flashed off the crests of mini waves, greater frequency and tighter patterns, the small splashing signals were announcements of my travels. Behind me, the morning sun broke thick gray clouds. Red lines of burn cracked the eggshell of dark. I yawned and blinked tears from my eyes. I knew they were from the wind.

“Hermaaaa”

I pulled back the throttle again. Felt heat rising up through my neck, confusion at the thought of feeling anger for someone who’d all but forgotten me. 

“My name? That it?” I shined the light on him and cupped a hand to my left ear. Kept my right on the throttle. 

“Bet you want something, huh?” A puff of breeze pushed the salt marsh, leaned it out toward the mouth of the river. “Money? Won’t do you no good now.” The breeze died, and the grass stiffened to quiet. 

“I’m here.” I held my hands up and out to the gray-yellow sky. My fingers were still wet, and I could feel the wind puff lightly as it shifted. “Just me and you. I’m listening.”

But all I heard was the clicking of an anhinga, angry that I’d stopped so close by the roost. 

I motored again, full forward and plowing. Waves crashed into the marsh, and I nearly forgot we were attached but for his calling.

“Hermaaaaaaaa”

I didn’t stop again. 

The skiff dragged and pushed water off the bow. The reversed chines gave the boat a beard, and the taut line pulled the body down the channel. We passed the point of Bonaventure’s bluff, and I looked up. The monuments above peered over the edge, spectators for the procession down below. High-water once cut the edges of the land. High-water would cut new paths again, wash away mud and leak out a deluge of caskets from the graves above, to the channel below. The ghosts sat on their gravestones. They watched me with their heads on their hands—weightless, I assumed—as I dragged my daddy down the river. Whooo found whooo? they called, bored and listless, but comfortable enough to hang around for an early morning happy hour. I felt like I had water in my ear, tilted my head to the side, hit my palm against the other side, but it was just more thoughts that fell out. 

The dock was empty. Daybreak would bring the sand gnats, flies, and fishermen. Only the most zealous were sitting in the parking lot already, drinking coffee on tailgates and reading the Morning News by dawn. I idled up to shore. 

Old, crackling men at the dock, haggard and sweating out Cutty Sark into their coffee, stood up at the sight of my Daddy bobbing up. They, too, had been involved in the search, but bailed for lack of a reward a week ago—about as soon as they’d started. They swarmed, dragged his body up the boat ramp, bottle still in tow. Their shock floated in the air, circled Daddy’s body like seagulls. Daddy’s pants were lost, along with the other shoe. He was never a big man, but a hefty portion of his bulk was left in the wake of the boat.  

I cut the line from the cleat. The water seized the knot of the noose, and I wasn’t real interested in prying it apart. The sun finished rising, and the folks on shore put a few towels over the body. A lump, wrapped up white, waiting for a hole to fall into. A haggard old fisherman, coverall clothed and rubber boots on his feet, poked the lump with a gaff. Daddy’s body belched salt water with a Herrrrrrp from under the towels and made a small water spot over the mouth. I stared, watched the water ring expand, and wondered if I missed my apology in the burp.

I trailered my boat, then pulled to the side and called Mama from the payphone in the parking lot. I knew her routine and that for sure she was sitting at her table, sorting out her horoscope, dealing tricks from a black deck, and drinking her second cup of coffee when she picked up.

“Found him.” I checked the coin return, just in case. The slot-cover rattled.

“Who?” Mama asked. I heard her shuffle, switching the phone to her better ear.   

“Who are you thinking?” I looked back over my shoulder. Curious gulls hopped around the towels. A man swatted at them with a fishing pole. Fiddler crabs skittered up and skittered away. A gull snatched one, then dropped it. There was pause on the other end of the line.

“Uh-huh. Saw that here in these cards.” She dealt another card, and I heard it snap from the deck. She paused. “He have anything to say for himself?”  

“Not a word.” I blew a sand gnat from my nose. “He’s here on the ramp.” 

A portion of him was, but the wildlife was curious. The man with the fishing pole had yet to be effective with his aim. Every swing and miss, bird hind-quarters he failed to connect with, seemed to draw another. The fiddler crabs were under the towel. 

“What now?” I asked. 

“Probably need to get him in the ground.” I heard another card snap down on her table. The final card. “Anything left?” Mama sniffed a rattling snort, the skin of her nostrils slapping, beating up the septum between. She spit whatever was in her throat, and I held the phone from my ear. Mama’s tone changed to her normal impatient self. “Body like that needs to be under some dirt, and quick.” She was loud enough for me to hear, even with the receiver pulled away from my ear. But I wasn’t rattled. Her sudden swings were as normal as the low country weather – a sky busted up by an afternoon thunderstorm, a hurricane’s sudden shift to the east. 

“That’s your thing. Looks to me like he’s been hugging on Evan Williams. Getting nibbled on.” 

Mama exhaled loudly, blew into the receiver. “Well, let me ring the parlor.” She switched ears again. “Bye, Sugar.”

“Bye, Mama.” I held the receiver, waiting for Mama to hang up first. She was distracted, and had the receiver tucked between her ample cheek and her shoulder. She shuffled the deck. The sound of her breath cycled from her mouth to her ear. On my end, seagulls called. 

“Herman? Sugar?” She knew I was still listening. 

“Yeah, Mama?”

“Can’t shake ‘em all.”

A ship in the channel, current pushing against the stern, out to sea – out to sea, while you wish to stay ashore.

I hung up the phone and checked the coin return again. Nothing fell. I clinched my hands into fists then stretched my fingers. They were blue from fighting with the line. I reached in my pockets to get my keys. More sun crept out from behind the trees. Back on the dock, the fishermen were moving the body, leaving a streak on the dry wood slicked up some seabird crap. It looked like a chalk line. Everyone needed to get on with their day. An ambulance rolled up, and two men stood above Daddy. I looked past the fiddler crabs in the rearview mirror and watched them pick up his pieces.

C.H. Hooks is the author of the forthcoming collection Eye Teeth (Summer Camp Publishing, 2021), and the novel Alligator Zoo-Park Magic (Bridge Eight Press, 2019). His work has appeared in publications including American Short Fiction, The Bitter Southerner, and Four Way Review. He has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar and Contributor at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and attended DISQUIET: Dzanc Books International Literary Program. He teaches at Flagler College.

6 August 2021