alliecat8 | Spooks

I'm STARTING with the author's notes on this one, because it needs a heap o'explainin'! First, this is (just under the wire) birthday fic for

holycitygirl, who requested Sawyer getting killed by tree frogs. (!)

holycitygirl is a unique genius who makes me laugh and I adore her, so death-by-tree-frog it is (sorta!).

Second, this is about as Southern a fic as you can get. In my world, Sawyer grew up in the foothills of the Smokies, just outside of Knoxville.

holycitygirl might be the only reader who can appreciate my Southernisms!

Title: Spooks
Character: Sawyer
Rating: Um, PG-13 for spookiness, I guess
Word Count: 973
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
Warnings: Possible character death
Spoilers: None

Spooks always called to him.

When he was little, he used to take down his mamaw’s quilts, the ones she hung over the front windows like curtains, and drag them out to the screened porch. There was a cane-bottomed rocker on that porch, and an old wood burning stove that they never lit in the summertime, and if he pushed them close together and hung the quilts over them both, he’d have himself a tent. He could lie in that tent for hours, listening to the whispers and thinking things over, until he’d feel the weathered floorboards beneath him sag and smell cigarette smoke, and his papaw’s pea-gravel voice would say, “You playin’ possum again, boy?”

James wouldn’t answer at first because, sure enough, he was playing possum. Long as he was out here, pretending to be asleep, he didn’t have to be in the quiet of his own bed.

His papaw would grab hold of the rocker then, yanking it backward and burying James in musty, dusty cotton, and James hated it when that happened so finally, one night, he decided to quit playing possum and ‘fess up.

“I’m listenin’ to the spooks.” He stuck his head out from between the folds of his tent and blinked in the too-bright moonlight. “Hear ‘em?”

“Ain’t no such thing as spooks, son.” That sneer was in his papaw’s voice, the one that was always there whenever he used the word “son.” “Even if there was, spooks ain’t for hidin’ from. Spooks are for facin’ down, lookin’ straight in the eye.”

James wasn’t afraid of his papaw. Wasn’t afraid, even though he knew the old man hated him. He knew that every time he looked at him he saw James’ daddy, his real son. His son who shared James’ dimpled blond features, who’d used those looks to marry up, made something of himself, made his daddy proud and then went and shot it all to hell with two blasts of a gun. His papaw thought James’ daddy was a coward for turning that gun on himself, not on the man who deserved it. James wasn’t a coward like his daddy had been. He didn’t like it one bit that his papaw thought he was.

“I ain’t hidin’.” James scowled. “I’m just listenin.’ If I knew what they looked like, I’d find 'em and shoot ‘em down like a bear.”

His papaw snorted. “Son, you ain’t never shot no bear.” He grabbed a lantern from the peg beside the door. “C’mon, boy, we’re goin’ huntin’.”

James didn’t see his papaw’s shotgun anywhere in sight, so he was a little worried about this midnight hunting trip. But he wasn’t a coward, so he followed without saying a word. The screen door slammed behind them, bounced and slammed again, and something that might have been a raccoon scurried across the yard. The grass was cold and wet with dew under his bare feet as he ran to keep up with his papaw’s long strides. Moss and mud squished between his toes as they got closer to the river’s edge. The moon was so high that it almost looked like daytime, except that the water of the Little Pigeon River was blacker than the sky as it slid and gleamed over massive dark rocks. He stubbed his toe on one of the pebbles that littered the shore, but he didn’t cry out, didn’t remind his papaw that his mamaw didn’t let him come down here without shoes. James was tough, and he’d prove it.

“Spooks,” his papaw laughed, not a happy laugh but one that made James grit his teeth. “Look here, boy, them’s your spooks, right there.” He leaned over and set the lantern down on a rock, one that had a natural hollow in it that formed a pool of clear water. In the murky light James could see shapes like tiny fish swimming in the pool.

“Those’re tadpoles,” James said, a mite too scornfully, and earned himself a hard cuff to his ear.

“They’re your spooks, sure ‘nuff,” his papaw said, with another of those grinding laughs. He reached for the lantern and swung it upward, toward the overhanging branches of a looming hemlock. There, plastered against the tree bark as if they were stuck there with glue, were hundreds of little green frogs. The same kind of frogs that slithered up and down his bedroom windows after they’d had a spell of hard rain. “They’re just frogs,” James said, sullen now that he knew his papaw was playing tricks. He’d been ready to face his spooks, look ‘em in the eye, and all he got was frogs.

“Tree frogs. See what they’re doin’?” His papaw held the lantern closer to the branch. “They’re rubbing their back legs together. That’s the sound you hear. Ain’t no spooks in these parts, son. Just frogs. A big ol’ passel of frogs.”

***

The spooks still call to him. Even now, in another time and another place, a place about as far from the foothills of the Smokies as you can get. Ocean instead of river, jungle instead of forest, and James isn’t even James anymore, he’s Sawyer. Yet the spooks still call.

He lies in his tent, listening to the whispers. The whispers beckon him, calling him into the jungle. But almost no one goes into the jungle anymore. They don’t go now, since the Others discovered their camp, because going into the jungle means death. And yet the whispers still call to him, and beneath their song he hears his papaw’s voice. “Spooks ain’t for hidin’ from, son. Spooks are for facin’ down, lookin’ straight in the eye.”

“Ain’t no spooks in these parts,” he tells himself. “It’s nothin’ but frogs.” And he lets the jungle lure him in.

link to Prologue 2: Third Saturday in October

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

arabella-hope.livejournal.com

Yay, you're back! This was wonderful...I don't know that I've read any fics of Sawyer (James really) living with family after his parents died...and this was lovely!

The idea of the whispers in the jungle holding that double meaning to him...loved it!

From:

Thru with accepting limits 'cause someone says they're so

Spooks

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