Momma held me by the wrist and dragged me up the path to the house. She’s so much bigger than me that I was practically tripping over myself trying to keep up, kicking up little red dust clouds in our wake. She was breathing just a little quicker than normal and the pail she carried in her other hand thumped against her hip.
As we got closer to the house we kept passing all kinds of stuff, but Momma wouldn’t let me stop. She said there’d be time later. We had to walk past jackrabbits playing in a thicket, a pen full of goats, we didn’t even stop for a drink from the spigot sticking up out of the ground. The rusty one with chipped up orange paint. We kept walking around the bend and the house came into view.
Everyone says it was real pretty once, but now it just looks big. The pillars don’t do enough to hold up the roof, so you can notice it sagging if you’re sitting on the porch. Dirt is all stuck up on the walls on account of the wind, but I’m pretty it’s supposed to be white on the outside. The wood is spongy and the shutters don’t close right. It has one of them wraparound porches and two big staircases that kind of bump into each other and become one. Momma says there are pictures of her on those steps back when everything was still pretty and they threw a fancy party for her. She even says there’s pictures of Daddy at that party. One day she’ll have to find those pictures for me. We all agree the house has good bones though.
Momma practically started running to the front door and it felt like I was flying through the air behind her. She yelled “Uncle Jack!” and people started pouring out from the house like ants. Momma started hugging on everyone and being sorry that we were late while I dug a hole in the dirt with my shoe. Something bumped into my shoulder real hard and I lost my balance a little. It was my cousin John. He was the only kid my age in the family, but he was still bigger and older.
“We were playing football this morning.” He said. “I tackled Bill so hard he couldn’t breathe for five whole minutes.”
“Is he okay?” I asked.
“Course he is! I wouldn’t be bragging to no one if he was actually hurt.” He smiled real big and said “You and me should play more later since you didn’t get tackled this morning” before running off with some of the bigger kids.
Momma really likes Uncle Jack and made me come say hi. Says he’s always there when something bad happens. Like when her parents died when she was little or when daddy didn’t come back from the army. I try to be nice, but Uncle Jack scares me.
“Hi Uncle Jack.” I said as Momma nudged me forward.
“Hey there little buddy.” Uncle Jack says as he squats down and reaches out to grab my shoulders. He feels his way up my neck, touches my face, and tousles the top of my head.
“Would you look at that! I won’t be able to call you my little buddy much longer huh?” His white beard split open, showing off a yellowed and toothy grin.
I looked down at my shoes and felt Momma squeeze my hand hard. I jumped and looked up at Uncle Jack. His eyes were all milky and swimming in a pool of leathery skin.
“I nearly grown a foot this year.” I mumbled.
“I can tell, kiddo.” He scooped me up and Momma followed us into the house.
I wanted to go look at the goats now, but on account of how we were late there wasn’t any time. Momma said there would be time later though. We had to go around saying hello to everyone again once we got in the house, then Uncle Jack got us set up in a room. It was dusty and the walls were peeling. After Uncle Jack left Momma made us shake out the sheets on the bed and look all over for bugs before we could unpack. As we were doing that people started buzzing and banging around downstairs louder than before.
The women had to go get dinner ready and all the men had to get the house ready for tonight. People were up on ladders and patching the roof, out in the pasture putting the animals away early, and testing the lamps. John and I were boarding up all the windows on the first floor, but I didn’t get to do nothing but hold the nails.
John was standing on his tiptoes, holding a plank of wood to the window with one hand, hammering with the other and holding a couple nails in his teeth.
“You know why we all here, right?”
“Cause it’s the full moon in September.” I said.
“No that’s the when, I asked if you knew why we come here every time there’s a full moon in September.”
“I dunno, to see family?” I guessed, barely paying any attention.
“No. It’s cause if we didn’t, you’d die.”
I whipped around to stare at the back of his head.
“Huh?” I said.
John kept nailing up the board with dull thuds.
“John, what do you mean?” I said, walking up behind him.
He picked up another board and I handed him another nail. He started to hammer it in place.
“It’s like this,” he said as he continued to work. “It takes a lot of water for all of us to live here. And we gotta take care of the animals, grow our food, and wash our clothes too. This wouldn’t be any problem, but we ain’t the only ones here. We use a lot, and there isn’t enough to go around.”
“I know there’s people all over, but I haven’t heard the Tillermen or anyone else say they don’t got enough.” I had moved around to look at him in the side of his face and could see the devil in his eye.
“That’s not what I mean.” His voice was low and gravelly now, like the nails were in his throat instead of between his teeth. “I mean there’s something out here other than all of us. Something that ain’t human.”
“There are things that live out there in the grass and under the ground. They call them the Yucca Men. They’ve been here for a long time, a lot longer than us. They never liked to come out much, so it took a long time for anyone to even notice. But at first, they were nice. You’d get turned around out in the woods and a voice would help you get home. Maybe you lost your hammer while you were out somewhere, and it’d show up on your front porch without any explanation. Some folks say they’d even bring you gifts.
But they’re a real thirsty bunch and they’ve gotta drink a lot of water. Like I said there ain’t much out here and they started to dry out. At first, they just stopped being helpful. Some people thought they left all together. But they were just getting thirsty. Then they got a little more desperate and things got a whole lot worse.
Folks started to notice little animals showing up dead. A rabbit with all the juices sucked out of it or a squirrel that looked like it was nothing but fur stuck to a skeleton. They were getting so thirsty that they had to start drinking blood. More people kept coming and they got thirstier still.
It started happening to bigger animals and livestock. But now they weren’t just thirsty for animal blood, they’d take anything. And people are full of an awful lot of blood.
There’s so little water left for them they hibernate all year and soak up what they can from the soil. But it’s not enough. We use the most water getting ready for the harvest and that’s when they get thirstiest. Every time there’s a full moon in September it’s their chance to come out and drink. And they drink people now too.
Decades of drinking blood have changed the way they look. They used to look like plants. Some people even said their hair used to be made of flowers in the spring. But not anymore. Now their hair looks like the gnarled spines of a mesquite tree, their skin looks like a dried-out corn husk and their eyes have dried up into nothing. They say just looking at one is enough to kill you.”
Neither John or I said another word the rest of the time we were boarding up windows.
Soon the shadows were starting to get a little longer and it was time to wash up. It was getting windier and the grass was starting to blow around like golden waves. Out on the front of the porch Uncle Jack, Abel, and Ben were rocking back and forth in their chairs, telling stories and laughing. Abel had to wear bandages over his eyes from the war and Ben was an old man like Uncle Jack and had cataracts. Uncle Jack was lighting up his pipe and told us to “get on now” as he heard us walk by. They each had a shotgun in their lap.
Momma was helping me get changed for dinner and asked me what was wrong. I told her about the Yucca Men. She sighed, closed her eyes, and rubbed a few fingers against her head. “Don’t listen to that boy.” She said exhaustedly “He’s just trying to scare you with a ghost story is all.”
“I dunno.” I said, fiddling with a button on my vest. “That was a pretty good story and he’s not very smart.”
“Oh yeah? Well, if looking at a Yucca man kills you, how does John even know what one looks like?”
“I guess that doesn’t sound too smart neither.”
Momma laughed and lifted my chin. “You’re right, it doesn’t. And all you need to know is that you’re safe as can be. Okay?”
“Okay.” I said.
Dinner was really good. There was mashed potatoes, and collared greens, and three whole turkeys. I asked why we always made the same thing for dinner every year and they all laughed like I said something funny. I asked Momma about it again later and she said it’s tradition.
After dinner we made a fire in the parlor and started singing songs and playing games. It was a lot of fun too, but everyone seemed a little more nervous than they did at dinner. It was getting dark now and I saw Uncle Jack, Abel, and Ben leave the room.
Everyone kept talking for a while, or taking turns reading from The Bible, but the air was starting to feel thick and harder to talk through. The fire was burning down so we lit a lamp instead. It was getting real late but no one was going to bed. All you could hear outside was howling in the wind, the shuffling of the grass, and footsteps patrolling around on the porch.
There was the crack of a gun going off, and everyone jumped. No one said anything about it, but Aunt Maggie started leading us in a quiet song again. Then that died out too.
Things went on like that for a while. You’d hear footsteps and the rustle of the breeze. Sometimes you’d think you heard a twig snap or something and you’d jump out of your skin. And every now and then there was a gunshot.
Then one time there was a gunshot and a scream. Some of the grown ups turned around but the windows were boarded up and there was nothing to see. I could hear them using curse words outside. Nobody even tried to sleep after that and we all huddled closer together. I was sitting in Momma’s lap and she wrapped a blanket around us. She was muttering something I couldn’t hear. We could all hear the wind, the moaning, and the crying from outside. The wind never stopped, but eventually the moaning did. The gunshot’s kept going off till morning too.
The sunlight started to creep in through the boards and we all started to stir. Uncle Jack’s voice came in through the front door. “Y’all stay in there and get breakfast started. We’ll be in soon.” Then there was more muttering and shuffling sounds moving away from the porch.
Before we said grace and had breakfast Uncle Jack said we were gonna have a funeral for Ben tomorrow, but the casket would be closed because “nobody should have to see all that.”
I was allowed to go outside again. There was a puddle of black in the dirt and streaks leading off to the shed. People were pouring saw dust and kicking dirt over it. There was finally time for me to go see the goats in their pen, but the rabbits were long gone from the thicket, off playing somewhere else. On the walk back to the house I stopped and took a long drink from that rusty spigot.