Ghost Towns. Martin H. Greenberg

shook his head. “It’s hard enough to manage the farming, just me and the girls. There’s not much time for tracking or trapping. Still, I’ve come close to catching the big devil. More than once, I have. And one day…”

      Kennedy slapped a palm on the table.

      “But look at me!” he boomed, suddenly jolly. “Keeping guests from their feed with all my blather. Eat up, boys! Eat up! Then, when you’re done, I’d like to show you around the place, if I may.”

      Right on cue, Fiona and Eileen hustled over to re-heap our plates with steaming-hot grub, and when my brother and I stood up fifteen minutes later, my belly sagged out over my belt like an overfilled sandbag. Yet somehow I found the strength to drag my newfound girth around after Kennedy as he gave us a tour of his spread.

      He had plenty to be proud of there: acres of wheat, garden vegetables growing in neat rows, a small but hearty assortment of livestock. And the pens, the barn, the water pump—all of it in good repair.

      I was amazed one old man and two women could manage so well on their own. But then I learned of the toll it took, and it seemed to make a little more sense.

      Behind the barn, in the midst of a small stand of firs, was a single grave marker. Kennedy noticed us eyeing it as he led us past.

      “My wife,” he said.

      Old Red moved closer to the lonely little family plot. Kennedy and I followed him.

      When we reached the cool shade of the trees, we all stopped and doffed our hats.

      “A good woman,” Kennedy said. “Been gone many a year now.”

      But not as many as I would’ve thought. Carved into the dark, knotty old wood were these words, which I read aloud for my brother’s benefit:

      ABIGAIL KENNEDY

      BELOVED WIFE & MOTHER

      DECEMBER 1, 1847—MARCH 15, 1875

      Which meant Eileen wasn’t three or four years my elder, as I’d reckoned. If her mother died birthing her, she was three years younger than me. Pretty though she still was, at the rate she was going she’d be a bent-backed, snaggle-toothed crone by the time she hit thirty.

      The Kennedys may have been surviving as a trio, but to thrive they’d need to be a quartet or quintet, at least. If the Water Indian didn’t kill them, the drudgery would.

      Well, the only decent thing to do was help out in whatever way we could. It was Old Red who volunteered us, actually, though I’d been just about to do so myself. Kennedy tried to look surprised, but it was plain he’d been hoping all along we’d offer to take on some chores. “No need for that” gave way to “You could nut a couple bull calves for me” in two seconds flat.

      The rest of the day passed as so many once had for me and my brother. Collecting prairie oysters, milking cows, slopping hogs, chopping wood—it was our childhood all over again, right down to the womenfolk. Instead of our dear Mutter and sisters toiling away beside us, though, it was Eileen and Fiona. Wherever we were, whatever we were doing, they were somewhere nearby, chattering, singing songs, bringing us cool water and warm smiles.

      Hard though the work was, it felt comfortable. Right. Seductive, you might even call it. I’d thought farming was about the last thing I ever wanted to do—all sodbusting ever brought our family was aches, pains, and early graves. But the Kennedys did their best to make it seem pleasant.

      And pleasant it was except for the flutter in my stomach, the itch at the back of my scalp, the creepy-crawly feeling that kept pulling my gaze to the woods.

      Something’s out there.

      The thought stayed stuck in my mind like a bit of gristle in your teeth you keep worrying with your tongue.

      Yet Old Red didn’t seem edgy in the least. Even more unlike him, he appeared to be enjoying himself, hotfooting from chore to chore with such cheerful obliviousness I almost expected him to start skipping and whistling. Knowing my brother as you do, you might doubt me more on this than on my sighting of the lake creature, but I swear I saw it with my own eyes. At one point, he approached Fiona—not just voluntarily, but smiling—and offered to help her hang out the washing.

      Soon after that, Kennedy invited us to stay the night. It was an offer we all knew was coming, as the sun was practically down in the treetops, and the shadows from the forest were stretching out ever longer and darker. My brother and I had already brought our horses over to be watered and fed, so there was nothing to it but to say yes.

      Kennedy seemed pleased—ecstatic, almost—and he immediately set his daughters to cooking up a regular feast. When us men came in at dusk, we found the kitchen table laden with baked ham, mashed yams, green beans in butter, and fresh bread.

      I felt a mite guilty about the sumptuousness of it all, these being folks who probably made do with vegetable stew and squirrel meat, most nights. Yet declining such hospitality would be a grievous insult, I told myself. Good manners dictated—nay, demanded—that I stuff myself like (and with) a pig. Which I did my utmost to do.

      Yet my utmost, for once, wasn’t up to the task. My stomach was already full…of butterflies. A whole swarm of them, it felt like, all of them a-flapping and a-fluttering and generally giving me the collywobbles. What I did get down my gullet, I barely tasted.

      “You don’t like the food?” Eileen asked me from across the table.

      I looked up—realizing only then that I’d been staring out the window—and found her pouting at me prettily.

      “Like it? Nope.” I popped a forkful of ham into my mouth. “I love it! Why, with you two here to work the stove for him, it’s a wonder your pa don’t weigh a thousand pounds.”

      “I’m getting close!” Kennedy chortled, and he leaned back in his chair and gave his big belly a playful pat.

      “So I noticed,” my brother shot back with (for him) uncommon impishness. He’d just been picking at his vittles, like me, though for him this was the norm. Most days, Old Red doesn’t eat enough to put fat on a consumptive flea.

      “You’re one to talk!” Kennedy joshed him. “You look like you’re about to dry up and blow away. What you need is a good woman cooking for you like this every day.”

      Fiona was seated next to him, across from my brother, and she turned and gave the old man a swat on the arm.

      “Dad….”

      She peeked over at Old Red and batted her eyes.

      “I’m just saying,” her father went on, “our friends here should settle down. Drifting from town to town, job to job—that’s all well and good for a young buck, but a man needs more. Sooner or later, you have to put down roots.”

      “We used to have roots,” I said. “Then the whole danged family tree up and died on us.”

      “We’ll put us down some new roots one day,” Old Red added, looking at me—almost making me a promise, it seemed. He shifted his gaze back to Kennedy and Fiona. “But the thing about roots is, they don’t just hold you steady. They hold you still. Almost like—”

      Chains, I think he was about to say. He amended himself at the last second, though.

      “…an anchor.”

      “Ahhh, but there’s nothing wrong with dropping anchor when you’ve found calm waters,” Kennedy said. “Stormy seas, my younger days were. Up here I finally found safe harbor.”

      “Safe harbor? With your Mormon troubles and your…”

      I couldn’t quite bring myself to say “monster,” so I jerked my head at the door—and the blackness beyond it.

      “…exotic wildlife.”

      Kennedy chuckled in a dismissive sort of way.

      “Oh, well, as much as I might complain