The Three Faces of Evil

I met him, it, no, him is a more appropriate pronoun considering what happened, one afternoon when I was hunting squirrels in the deep pine woods behind our tiny farm, bordering on the vast, fetid expanse of Flat Fork Swamp.



He was sitting on a old rotting tree stump just off what passed for a trail, and I almost tripped over him as I rounded a big old cypress tree that was heavily laden with the gray-green moss that is common in the river bottom, swampy area of east Texas.



I almost tripped over him; he was small in stature, and sitting hunched on the stump like that statute, the picture of which I saw in the encyclopedia in my old aunt's living room; you know, The Thinker. Only, he didn't look like he was thinking, more like he was moping and feeling bad about himself, and he smelled like he'd just run across the state line from Logansport, Louisiana, ferrying a load of bootleg liquor with the state police hot on his heels.



He was sort of brownish-gray, like he was covered in dust, and when he sat up, all startled like and all, little puffs of dust flew from his emaciated, dry looking frame.



"Oh, sorry," I said. "I didn't see you sitting there."



"Don't make no never mind," he said. His voice was as dry as he looked, raspy like sandpaper being rubbed across an oak board. "Iffen you'd stepped on me, you might never even noticed. No need to be givin' me no apologies."



"You from '˜round these parts?" I asked. "I ain't never seen you before."



"I am, uh I was from '˜round here," his raspy voice, that seemed to echo off the pine and cypress trees said. "I use to live up to Waskom; had me a little double-wide set back a bit off the highway."



"Oh, I been in Waskom once," I said. "My name's Larry Ray Keller, and I live on the farm on the other side of the woods over there with my ma and pa. We raise corn and pigs and sweet peas. What's your name?"



He raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were sort of clouded over, gray like they had a film of dust over them.



"Well, shoot," he said. "I don't rightly recollect my name."



"Where you live?"



"I live right here," he said. "Here in the woods and the swamp."



"You got yourself a cabin or something?" I asked.



"Naw, I just make me a burrow in the pine needles. The ground's pretty soft and comfortable at night. When it rain, I make me a little shelter of pine boughs sometimes."



"Don't you get scared being out here in the woods when it gets dark?"



"Heck no. I prefer the dark."



"You like living out here?" I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Nobody, and I mean nobody I knew would go into Flat Fork Swamp at night except in large bunches, like the men folk did when went frog gigging or to tend their stills which they kept on the edge of the swamp.



He laughed, a dry, mirthless rustling sound like dead leaves blowing across the hard packed red clay in the wind.



"Well," he rasped. "I can't exactly I live out here. I stay out here."



"What's the difference between living out here and staying?" I asked.



"I don't say I live out here, boy, because I ain't exactly alive."



It took a few seconds for what he said to sink into my brain. When it did, I took a step backward.



"What you mean, you ain't exactly alive?"



He waved his left hand, from which the first two fingers were missing, at another rotten looking tree trunk nearby. "Why don't you set yourself down," he said. "And, I'll tell you the story '˜bout how I come to be staying out here in the swamp."



Now, I was a tad scared, him being a stranger and all, and talking all crazy-like, but, I been cursed all my life with this curiosity that makes me want to know the answers to every question, and he was one big question. Besides, he hadn't made any threatening moves, and except for that raspy voice and him being all covered with dust and stuff, he didn't seem like such a bad fellow. So, I walked over and plopped my bottom down on the trunk.



"Okay, Mister whatever your name is," I said. "I want to hear how come you living, sorry, staying out here in the woods all by yourself."



He leaned back on the trunk and regarded me with those dusty looking eyes of his.



"I done told you," he began. "I used to live up to Waskom. Had me a real nice little trailer and a couple acres of land. I raised a little corn and lima beans and stuff, and from time to time made me up a batch of home brewed beer or some corn squeezing. Even had me a TV set and a radio."

He scratched at the tattered rags covering his upper torso, kicking up a cloud of dust.



"I was a bit of a dandy; that much I remember, and played a mean fiddle. All the girls up in Waskom loved to come to the honky tonk on Saturday nights to hear me play. Lordy, I wish I could remember my name, but it just won't come. Anyway," he continued. "There was this one girl; prettiest girl in town; lived on a farm '˜bout three, four miles from town; name was Virginia Bean. Anyhow, she took a liking to me, and we used to see each other now and then. Sometimes, she'd sneak over to my double wide and we'd, well, I reckon you too young for the details, but we got to know each other real well."



'˜How come you can remember her name, but not your own?" I asked.



"Boy, that is one of the mysteries of the universe that ain't been answered all the time I been down here in these woods. Anyway, let me finish my story," he said, with a little impatience in his voice. "Things was going real good until Ginny; I used to call her Ginny; decided we ought to get hitched. Now, I think the only thing needs hitching is a plow horse or an old mule, and I liked being single, you understand, so I told her I didn't think it was a good idea for us to get married."



"What did she do?"



"What didn't she do! Boy, she got plumb mad at me, and said I done took her virtue and I owed her, and all kind of stuff like that, and that if I didn't make her an honest woman, I'd pay for it for eternity."



"Yeah," I said. "My pa always says it ain't good to make a woman mad."



"And, it's even worse when she ain't really a woman."



"Huh?" Now, he had my full attention. I was talking to a plumb crazy old man, and he was telling me a tall tale that I could entertain my friends at school with. "You just said she was the prettiest girl in town."



"That's what I thought at first," he said. "Turned out, though, she was a bit more than a woman, and a bit less than human."



"Well, if she wasn't human, what was she?"



"Now, I never rightly figured out just what she was," he said. "When she got real steamed, she puffed up, got big muscles and hair all over, and teeth longer than a wolf, and she threatened to rip me to pieces."



"Golly gee, that must have been scary."



"It was. But, she changed back. Said killing was too good for me. Then, she changed into a tall, ugly-looking thing like a giant bat, and said she was gonna bite me and turn me into a vampire. Had two long teeth that stuck out of the side of her mouth and everything. But, then she said that was too good for me, too. And, that's when things got real ugly."



"She decided not to kill you and not to turn you into a vampire, what could be worse than that?"



"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it myself, boy, but she turned into a bent, ugly old woman with no teeth and wrinkly skin and scraggly hair. Like to made me upchuck my supper. Lord, was she ugly!" His body shook, making a rustling sound. "She said she was gonna kill me, but not let me die."



"That don't make no sense," I said.



"Didn't to me either at the time," he said. "But, danged if she didn't do it."



"Aw, come on," I said. "How she do that."



"Now, I don't rightly know how she did it, exactly. She waved these two bent and ugly hands '˜round in the air, and started muttering some words I didn't understand. First, nothing happened, but then, I got all dizzy and the room started spinning '˜round, then everything went black. I woke up, I was laying out in the woods. Don't recollect how I got there."



"So, she didn't kill you?"



"Oh, she kilt me all right. Soon's I got my bearings, I checked, and I didn't have no heartbeat, and I wasn't breathing, and my skin was all cold and clammy. I don't know how that old witch did it, but she done turned me into one of the undead, a zombie. And, I been wandering '˜round in these woods ever since"



"Aw, come on, old man," I said. "You don't expect me to believe that, do you?"



"Believe it or not, boy, don't make no never mind to me. But, let me ask you; how old you think I am?"



Now, I never been good at telling old folks' age and stuff. They just look old to me.



"I reckon you '˜bout thirty," I said.



"Boy, I moved down here to Flat Fork Swamp fifty year ago, just about time the Korean War was ending. I was near forty at the time; and in all that time, I ain't changed a bit, '˜cept loosing a couple of fingers when I tried playing me my fiddle. Strings on the danged thing just cut '˜em right off and I didn't bleed or feel any pain. Naw, she don kilt me all right, and she done turned me into a zombie."



I didn't know what to believe. I'd seen the zombie movies down town at the movie house, and he didn't look like one of the shambling, bloodthirsty critters to me. He just looked like a lonely old man; a lonely, crazy old man. He didn't look nowhere near ninety or a hundred like he was claiming.



"Come over here, boy and I'll show you," he said, and he stood.



He wasn't more than an inch taller than me, and since I'd just about got my full growth, he didn't look like he could do much harm. And, he didn't sound threatening. So, I got up and walked over to him.



He took my hand, gently, but his hand felt all dry and cold, like a stick of wood covered in dust. He pulled my hand and laid it over his chest. I suddenly felt cold inside. His chest wasn't moving. None of that up and down from breathing; and I couldn't feel his heartbeat. I jerked my hand away and took a step back.



"You ain't breathing," I said.



"Don't have to," he said.



Now, I was no longer curious; just plain scared.



"You gonna eat me, or something?"



"Where you get such a crazy idea, boy. I ain't no cannibal. I'm a zombie. I don't really have to eat, but every now and then I eat a frog or a bird just to remind myself what it felt like to be alive. But, I do get lonely sometimes, not having anybody to talk to, or not being able to play my fiddle or listen to the radio. But, you know what boy? The thing that bothers me most is she took away my name. She did something that make it impossible for me to remember what my mama called me."



He slumped back onto the stump and bowed his head, and his dusty body shuddered. He was all dry, and there were no tears, but I could tell he was crying. I ain't never been too good '˜round people crying and such; hate going to funerals for that reason; so I just backed away until I was around the bend and out of his sight, and then I took off running hell bent for leather back toward our farm.



I never did go back to that part of the woods; never went back anywhere near Flat Fork Swamp ever again. I also don't go to movies about vampires and zombies and such either. Oh, I did go to one; something about the night of the living dead or something like that. It showed the zombies as mindless, soulless creatures whose only objective was to kill the living. That ain't true; ain't true at all. That old man who couldn't remember his name taught me a thing or two about differences. Maybe zombies don't have hearts that beat and pump blood; '˜cause they ain't got no blood; and they don't have lungs pumping air; and they ain't got tear ducts, so they can't shed tears; and they don't feel no pain. But, they know pain and hurt; that kind what doctors can't give you medicine for. They might not have hearts, but they ain't heartless; zombies got feelings too.