Fiddlers Creek (How to Play the Dead)

Angela Readman
Aunt Patience lived in a house half way between a small town and nowhere. She didnt have a washing machine or a pop-up toaster. She got in her old pick-up and did house clearances to put food on the table. She kept to herself. At the grocery store, women retreated over the last pitcher of milk when she went to pick it up. Wilbur Ford said she was a witch. Your aunts in league with the devil. She put the evil eye on my Ma, so my Pa would disappear, Wilbur said. Wilbur was bigger than other kids. He talked garbage, so loudly the other kids agreed lest he empty his trash on them or tell his big brother Payne. Wilbur pushed me. I lunged. I stood at the blackboard writing lines after school: I am a boy, not a feral beast. I must not bite another boys ear. Did you bite the boys ear? Patience asked, sewing my shirt. There was no point lying. Aunt Patience could spot a lie quicker than a fart on a church pew. Yes Auntie. Better get washed up, she said. Boy like Wilbur Ford, if a dog bit him itd be the dog that caught rabies. I stayed clear of Wilbur Ford, like my aunt told me. The Fords were no good. It was best to stay on the right side of them, if you could find it. You didnt want to get on the radar of Payne Ford and his buddies or they might show up, radio blazing, car lights shining through the window. Theyd come scare you, or worse. Everyone knew they set fire to Widow Wichells truck, but Payne Fords momma said her son was home. There were rumors about where she was that night too. She smiled at the sheriff like a retired beauty queen with his secrets tucked in her crown. Now Wilbur Ford was in the ground, a mouthful of dirt where his curse words used to be. He was thirteen years old. At the funeral all eyes were fixed on the coffin like a magicians box bursting with a trick. Father OCleary called the deceased an angel. Aunt Patience met his gaze, eyes bright as the windows stained glass figures of saints falling into the mouth of lions. I saw the Widow Wichell outside the church, tears or weather in her eyes. She left before the mourners went home. Lovely service Father, Aunt Patience said as we left. The priest nodded like a wooden duck. She tucked her shawl tightly round her and walked away, muttering old goat. Father OCleary watched her walk away, I guessed he was making a note to make his next sermon about false prophets. Everyone knew my aunt talked to the dead. But no one knew I was her partner in crime. Wind whipped our faces as we walked through the grave stones towards home. I knew them well. My aunt taught me my ABCs writing down what the headstones said. Name? Age? Children? Siblings? When her back played up I bent to inspect notes on the flowers and wrote it down in a notebook. Shed point to a single red rose nestled beneath a bouquet from a wife. Pick that up. No card. Sunday school teacher, my eye! If the dead left resums, Aunt Patience was the only one in town with a knack for reading them, even the things they never wrote down. We reached our back door after the service. I was still thinking about Wilbur Ford. Will Wilbur really go to heaven? I asked. Thats between him and the Lord, Patience said. But I mean, Wilbur Ford. He... Aunt Patience pushed at the stiff back door with her foot, Sshhh.

Rule 1: Never Speak Ill of the Dead (even if they badmouth you)
Aunt Patience would sooner eat her bible than speak ill of the dead. So now Wilbur Ford was gone there was nothing to be said. At school his empty desk was covered in poems like prayers at the feet of a saint. The school principal spoke about a sweet gentle boy. They were naming the library after the kid who ate books. I put on a pan of milk to boil. Aunt Patience sat at the table and opened the paper, circling obituaries. The dead had lots of stuff they didnt use. They left them stuffed into the backs of couches like letters they could only now send. A pink egg cup, cracked but endlessly glued back together, at the back of a cupboard full of blue ones. A baby blanket and a tiny lock of hair in a trunk at the spinsters house. Aunt brought home things to sell and other things that spoke volumes, whole chapters not bound into the book of someones life. We sipped cocoa. The skin puckered tight as lips. Outside the light was failing, leaves fell from the apple tree. The coming of night was speeding up. From the front of the house came a knock at the door. Patience put down her cup, smoothed her hands across her hair and went to the door. From the kitchen, I listened.

Rule 2: Listen (If you wanna talk to the dead, get wise to what the living say)
Listen to the house, visitors who never bring flowers or bread. Listen to rumors. Better yet, find small spaces like pockets full of secrets. Theres a heating grill in the church next to the confessional, big enough for me to crawl in. I wait, hear whispers. I tell my aunt the root of every Hail Mary. Its the easiest way to help her get by. When I tried to help with laundry, I struggled, wet sheets clung to me till they bore the grubby hand prints of my escape. Id watch my aunt wash them again in the tin bath till her knuckles cracked. If I cleaned, I dropped things. Patience rubbed her back, bending to sweep crumbs I left wherever I went. I was The Pied Piper of mice. You wanna be some use round here? she said one day, picking up a plate as if it was laden with the burden of me. You ever wonder why they call me witch? No, Auntie. They dont say that. Aunt Patience waved her hand, Save your breath child, you lie less easily than a giraffe. They dont say nothing, I said. She sat down. They say that because they come to me to speak to their dead, she said. Zombies, ghosts, pumpkins riding headless horsemen and a mother I couldnt remember (God rest her soul) were all I knew of death. Dont be scared, listen Aunt Patience said. She reminded me of Father OClearys funerals where ashes met ashes and dust met dust. The dead have finished their business with the living, but many have unfinished business with the dead. You can help me help them, she said. So I learnt to become the deads little helper. Later, I wondered if I was the deads hustler. Either way it didnt matter. It was ordinary as taking out the trash. I pressed my eye to the kitchen door and saw the Widow Wichell in worn boots and a heavy overcoat. The woman seemed like shed always been a widow, like she was born to it. She had a farm up by Fiddlers Creek she worked with her son, Bobby. Her hair was wild, as if worries in her head had electrified each strand. May I take your coat? asked my aunt. The widow shook her head and plunged her hands deep in her pockets. I waited.

Rule 3: Work the Coats (wallets, purses, the whole kabang)

When visitors came it was my job to help with the coats. Aunt Patience hung them in the hall then

showed the guest to the back room and closed the door. The whole house was a carnival and a curse of treasures and junk, except for the back room. It had a table and chairs in the centre and a picture on the wall that was sometimes Jesus, sometimes Abe Lincoln, according to the way my aunt turned it. When a visitor was safely behind the closed door, Id tiptoe into the hall and rake through the pockets to find wallets, receipts or photographs. Id report what Id found, after my aunt showed out the visitor and asked them to return at a more convenient time. The widow stood as if her coat held her backbone inside. A crumpled tissue fell from her sleeve as she followed Aunt Patience into the back room.

Rule 4: Keep a Box of Tricks up Your Sleeve (or any ole place you can)
I walked to the larder and put my eye to the hole in the wall. In the larder was the fuse to the lights and a switch to the air vent in the back room. Id trip a switch when the time was right to make the lights in the back room flicker. Another switch made a draft move the drapes. I saw my aunt sit at the table but she didnt stretch out her palms and look up to give me the sign. You gotta help my boy, Bobby. Hes all I got, Widow Wichell said. What they saying bout him aint right. He wouldnt harm a bug. Bobby was a man, fully grown, maybe nearly thirty years old, but a little slow. How slow depended on who you listened to. The woman at the grocery said Bobby couldnt write his name. The guy at the garage said Bobby could fix an engine as good as him, but couldnt tell the time. Some said Bobby hit his head when he was six and it knocked everything hed yet to learn out of his skull. We all knew what they were saying about Bobby Wichell now. Guys at the hardware store, women at the grocery, Grown man like that, always somethink not right about him, He couldve killed us in our beds. I dont understand, Bobby isnt dead, my aunt said. I want you to get the truth outta that Wilbur Ford, the widow said as if talking to an operator who kept putting her through to the wrong line. Im sorry, I cant help you, Aunt Patience said, opening the door for her to leave. If its money, I aint got much, but I can give you eggs for a year. Damn grocery store aint buyin from me, since they took my Bobby in Aunt Patience locked the door and sat back down in the kitchen, sweeping crumbs from the table into her palm. Is Mrs Wichell coming back? I asked, picking up a deck of cards and shuffling. We often spent our evenings playing cards by the stove. There were no rules to our game, Gin, Blackjack, we played them all, fast. The only aim was to win. Cheat, if you must, but never get caught. Aunt Patience picked up the cards I lay in front of her, distracted by the newspapers headline about the violent death of the Ford boy and the man they arrested, Bobby Wichell. Folks said when the sheriff placed his handcuffs on Bobby he smiled as if he was playing cowboys and Indians. What good could come of it? What that woman wants to hear aint nothin good, Aunt Patience said.

Rule 5: Tell People What They Want to Hear (its smart business sense)
Sometimes, after a sance, Id burst out of the cupboard with questions. Like the time she told Connie Steward her husband was a good man, who wanted to tell her he loved her, but werent no good with words. What you talkin about? Kit Steward was always in his garage moaning about his missus all day long! I said. He said she had a tongue longer than a brake line, but twice as hard to fix! Aunt Patience said it wasnt her job to badmouth the dead, but say things to make the bereaved feel better. Mostly she did. There was an old lady who was a regular. She came to chat to her husband once a week, to ask him things like what he thought about her getting a refrigerator or removing one of the cupboards hed built to make way for a newfangled washing machine. There was never any need for me to turn the winch under the floorboards and make the table shake when she came. Aunt

Patience just gave the replies she could sense. He says he never liked that cupboard anyways, more trouble than it was worth. Hit his thumb with the darn hammer three times! The old lady smiled as she left. She walked down the path ten years younger. Aunt Patience watched her go, counting notes. Thats the utility bill, she said, folding money into a rusty tea tin. Why do you charge to help people? I asked. Folk only value what they pay for, she said. I thought about that. Though it seemed some folk might feel better if they didnt think their dead husbands were angels. Connie Steward could accept invitations to the church social instead of wearing black all the live long day.

Rule 6: Dont Know No One (enough for them to wise up and ask questions)
The day after the Widow Wichell came wasnt a school day. When I was bored I used to stop by where Bobby Wichell was working and tell him where there was a hawks nest or an old cart. He wasnt like other grown-ups, or any kid either. Hed be in the field, face gleaming in the sunlight, fine hair at his temples moving in the breeze like corn the day before harvesting. Hed lift me on his shoulders or haul an old cart from the creek to race up and down. His momma would be watching out the window. Shed come out with a brow like a ploughed field. Best get going now, Bobbys got lots of work to do, she said. Yeah, lots of work to do, Bobby repeated, waving his rake like evidence. His momma started back to the hen-house. Swing by later. Well race that cart to kingdom come, Bobby beamed. We raced the cart, Bobbys face pink with effort. Faster and faster we pushed each other. After we veered into a blueberry patch, Bobbys momma told my aunt to stop me coming around. Wed been laughing, wiping our hands on our shirts. The Widow came running out with a teacloth in her hands, screaming at Bobby stained with fruit. Dear Lord, what have you done... she cried, trying to bind Bobbys bloody looking hands with the cloth. Blueberries, Bobby grinned, licking his fingers. Bobby, go inside. You! You should know better, she yelled at me. Aunt Patience made me promise to stay away from the Wichells. It was bad for business. We were not our neighbors friends, or enemies either, even if Aunt Patience didnt like the widow much I wasnt to bother her, or her son. Widow Wichell was a God-fearing woman, as only a woman whose son had been bumped on the head the day she forgot to say grace might be. Once she was handing out prayer pamphlets in town. Scatagur, babbled Aunt Patience, twitching her hand in the widows direction. The widow made the sign of the cross and started murmuring the Lords prayer. Aunt Patience laughed all the way home. What was that? I asked. Silly cuckoos son overcharged me for eggs. Hell be up with her Hail Marys all night, she grinned. A few days after Wilbur Fords funeral, after the Widow Wichell came, Aunt Patience and I were playing cards. There was a knock at the door. From the kitchen, I saw a blonde woman, roots of her hair dark as dirt yellow reeds by the river. It was Wilbur Fords momma. Outside the sheriffs car waited. Hed given her a ride. Aunt Patience said later, not for the first time. I miss my boy, Mrs Ford cried, bursting through the front door. Condolences, lovely boy. There are no words, Aunt Patience said, showing her to the back room. Mrs Ford wasnt wearing a coat. I went to the pantry and looked through the hole in the wall into the back room and listened to them talk about Wilbur. His mother wanted to tell him she loved him, so did his aunt who worked at the drugstore. The woman from the grocery store what caught Wilbur stealing wanted to say she was sorry. My aunt nodded, looking at Mrs Ford and thinking she was someone whod want value for her money. Her sister and the grocery cashier would want

something to whisper over their counters. Theyd pay well for a good show.

Rule 7: Know When to Put on a Good Show (and get out while the goings good)
Once, I asked Aunt Patience why, if she could hear the dead, I had to make the lights flicker by tripping the switch and get the curtains to move by turning on the fan. The dead aint flash, she said, but some folk have to see something to believe what they need to hear. So I crouched by shelves of pickles, poking my fingers through gaps in the walls to make pictures tremble. Id make sounds through a tin funnel at the hole backing onto the air vent like the deads telephone. On the day of the sance I saw the Widow Wichell walking to the next town with her basket of eggs. Later, I went by her place and saw her digging potatoes. She bent slowly, throwing clods of potatoes into a pail with a clink. The sun was setting. The field stretched on, the pail just half full. Aunt Patience polished the table and turned the Abe Lincoln picture to the Jesus side. She closed the curtains and lit candles by the air vent. Mrs Ford and the others sat around the table holding hands. Aunt Patience said her usual prayers to the dead. I flicked the lights, then turned the air on cold. One of the candles blew out. My aunt continued. I shook pictures until knuckles at the table turned white. I sense Wilbur surrounded by light. He says sorry for what he done to the cat, and the word he carved in the desk. He dont want you to worry about him no more. Mrs Ford began to weep. You okay, son? I love you. Dont talk sissy, Ma, my aunt said. Mrs Ford made a noise like someone trying to remember how to laugh. I twisted the winch connected to a pole under the floorboards. Under its purple cloth the little table in the corner trembled. The finale was approaching. Aunt Patience would thrash and seem to be in a trance as the dead spoke through her. They seemed to speak from beyond, a sound that didnt come from the table, but elsewhere. The voice was whispery, not quite words. She wrote them out on a blackboard furiously, the deads secretary. I crouched in the larder waiting to make ghostly sounds. I could smell the earth of potatoes on the shelf. I thought of Bobby Wichell and Wilbur Ford. I wasnt the first boy to discover there was a kid strong enough to hoist you up to see a crows nest or hold the back of your bike and never get bored. The Widow looked at me and saw another kid whod be her sons friend. Then get older and tell his friends there was some dumb guy who believed anything you said. Kids like Wilbur Ford. Wilbur was trying to adopt his brothers friends. His favorite trick was to show them how grown he was by what he could away get with at the Wichell place. Bobbys spongy face soaked in whatever he said. Once, I saw Wilbur as I walked over to see Bobby. I crouched behind a hedge. Hey, Bobby, Wilbur smiled, the kinda smile a snake gives the second before it opens its jaws wide enough to swallow a mouse, theres pearls at the bottom of the creek. Im not supposed to talk to people, Bobby said, hoeing Shame, said Wilbur, sure that necklace of pearls would look real good on someone elses momma He pretended to walk away. I love my momma, said Bobby. Sure you do. Bobby followed Wilbur. I trailed behind them, a shiver in the bushes. Bobby bent to look at the pearls in the creek. He didnt want to get too close. He remembered last time Wilbur pushed him in. Its just there, look, said Wilbur, pointing. I got muddied before, Bobby said. Tell you what, just take your clothes off to fish out the necklace, so your momma cant get sore. Bobby undressed. When he was in the creek, Wilbur took his clothes from the rock and ran off laughing like a balloon with the knot untied. I came out of the bushes. Bobby was naked, big pink toes

splayed on stones like a pigeon learning to walk. Hey... smiled Bobby, hands cupped to his groin, happy to see me. Dont wave Buddy, okay? Stay here. Ill go get you clothes off the line. Wilbur wasnt done with Bobby Wichell (about the most fun a kid in these parts could have Sunday afternoons). I was on my way to Bobbys, when I saw Wilbur and got the hell out and dodged behind the henhouse. Hey Bobby, Wilbur grinned. Youre not sore about last time, are you? The wind blew your clothes away, I went chasing after them. Bobby kept digging. Have it your way, if you wont talk to me, I cant give you a message from a girl who asked me to give you a note, Wilbur said. He handed Bobby a shopping list. Bobby stared at the note, looking for words he knew. DeerMeat. Ill read it, said Wilbur. Says she wants to meet you up at Fiddlers Creek. Bobby wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers all the way to the creek till it looked like he had starfish in his pocket. I dont see no girls, he said. Look! Wilbur pointed. By a rock were some womens clothes, a dress, stockings and underwear. They looked like snake skins, the sort of clothes Wilburs momma wore when she went to town, but to Bobby they were just ladies things, delicate and different to his mommas Long Johns on the line. At the other side of the creek a bare arm beckoned from the bushes. She wants to swim with you, Wilbur said, Get in, shes shy. Bobby took off his clothes and waded through the creek, sun in his eyes. Hello? Payne Ford and his buddy Wade came out the bushes laughing like jackdaws, rolling down their sleeves. Dumbass. You think you got the right to even think about a pretty girl? Bobby stood naked, squinting into the sunlight. It was Wilbur who threw the first stone. Fat. Dumb. Fuck. Wilbur picked up a stone and threw. Bobby raised his arms to hide. The boys laughed harder than before. Payne and Wade threw stones, then stood back and said they were bored. Lets go swipe some beer, Payne said. He and Wade meandered away, whacking rustles in bushes with sticks, Wilbur trailing behind them. Wilbur turned back towards Bobby and threw a parting shot. Then another. Stones big as he could hold. A stone skimmed off Bobbys stomach. He smiled as if hed flicked a switch in his head to make the scene easier to understand. He picked up a rock like it was a snowball and threw. It struck Wilburs head with a crack like kindling. So much blood. I ran. Wake up, Wilbur, Bobby shivered. Theyd find him like that, sitting naked at the edge of the creek, cradling Wilburs head. He wouldnt tell his momma hed spoke to that Ford boy. He didnt say a word about anything at all. Through the pantry wall, I jiggled the pictures while mourners dabbed their eyes and said Wilbur was a saint. Aunt Patience rolled back her head to give the sign for my sounds from beyond. Like blood, then, it rose from somewhere deep inside, words that werent my own, that would give our game away. Stuff about Wilbur Ford, Payne, his mommas missing clothes, the sheriff, everything. All this bubbled up from somewhere beyond me. I placed my mouth to the walls.
Angela Readman gained her creative writing MA at University of Northumbria. Her poetry has been commended in The Arvon International Poetry Competition, twice placed in the Mslexia competition, and won both the Ragged Raven Competition and Biscuit Poetry Competition. She describes herself as a secret story writer, and only recently started sharing her prose. She won Inkspill magazines story competition last year. Her stories have appeared in Southword, Crannog, Pank, Metazen, Pygmy Giant, Black Market Review, Fractured West and The Journal.