Campfire Tales



Campfire Tales

by 

Thomas Stone

We took the deer carcasses and dragged them out of the woods using the four-wheelers until we were in a small clearing. That's where we did the butchering. The two bucks were about the same size and the three of us set upon them with knives and bolt cutters and made short work of it. We buried the remains, packed the meat in the coolers, and off we went. Twenty minutes later it was dusk and we were back in camp. We all were all bloody and wore it as a badge of honor.

Bart coaxed the coals up into a new fire as I put ice atop the meat. Afterwards, Joe handed me a deep shot single malt whiskey and the three of us knocked back the first drink of the evening. The second and third quickly followed. Nobody seemed particularly interested in washing up so we cooked ourselves slices of venison and ate them fresh from the skillet, washed down with iced beers. Eventually, the evening closed in and we sat satiated around the dying fire.

I was looking at the stars trying to guide the conversation into cosmic realms but nobody was taking the bait. "Do you ever think about how big space is?" I asked.

Bart laughed. "I think about the lack of space in my garage." Joe nodded but said nothing. We all hoisted another shot and it was down the hatch again. We were fairly inebriated by that point. The warmth of the fire felt good on my face.

"All right," I said, "let's talk about something else."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Wait. How about the worst thing you've ever done?"

"You first."

"I don't think so."

"Aw, come on, it's just us here; it's just hearsay. Make it up if you want to" I said. "I'll tell you what I did if you promise to say what you did."

"I don't give a fuck," Bart said and hiccupped. Joe shrugged so I told them I would go first. I had a story prepared and queued up in my mind. "All right," I started out, "the worst thing I have ever done -- not the worst thing I've thought about, but the worst thing I've actually done was the time..."

"Wait, wait," interrupted Bart. "I want to go first."

"But I already started."

"I need to tell mine before I forget."

"What?"

"I'm pretty drunk so I'll tell mine first. Remember when Karmel Peterson lost those two coon dogs? They ran off and nobody seen 'em again. Really nice dogs too. Smart, always getting into things."

"I remember those dogs," Joe said. "That was fifteen years ago."

"Seems like yesterday," Bart murmurred.

"What about 'em?" I asked.

Bart looked at me, then across the fire to Joe, then back to me again. "I ran across those dogs in the woods at the rear of my place. They broke into the hutch and killed every rabbit I had. They didn't even run away when I approached. I shot them both dead on the spot. I put 'em in a hole and covered it up. Nobody ever knew."

It was quiet when Bart finished but the crickets still held sway and stars still shone from above. What Bart had done was bad, indeed, but not inconceivable. Perhaps its telling served to transition Bart's soul -- there seemed to be a palpable sense of relief.

Bart looked at me. "What did you do that was so bad?"

"Remember Shirley Mulvaney?"

Both Joe and Bart nodded. "She looked good," Bart affirmed.

"Well, the Mulvaneys lived just a few blocks from my house, so I used to casually walk by on the way to the park."

"You knew her?"

"I knew her. We didn't exactly hang out but I chatted her up and she invited me over one Friday when her parents were out. We drank her mother's white wine and watched TV in the front room so we could see her parents if they happened to drive up. Shirl said they'd be gone for hours; dinner, movies, and then to a bar for a nightcap."

"So what happened?"

"Well, we got a little drunk. She actually got bombed and we ended up stark naked on the couch. I was about to put it in when headlights shined through the big window. We raised up and peeked up to see it was Shil's parents returning from date night. I guess it was partially to do with all the wine she drank, but Shirl turned white as a sheet and promptly passed out.

There we were: naked as newborns on the couch and her parents were getting out of the car. In less than two minutes, they'd be entering the house."

"What'd you do?"

"I didn't have time to think about it. I arranged her on the couch so her legs were wide open and her hands were at her crotch. I snaked one finger of her right hand into her asshole, gathered up my clothes and ran through the house to the back door. By the time I stepped outside, Shirl's parents were coming in through the front door. Before I gingerly shut it, I heard Shirl's mother shriek. "Oh my God! Shirley! what are you doing?" That was enough for me and I pulled on my pants behind some bushes and crept out of there."

Bart and Joe looked at each other and began to laugh. "Is that for real?"

"I swear," I said. "Shirley would never speak to me after that. She wouldn't speak to me at the reunion five years ago."

Bart turned to Joe. "Your turn."

Joe shook his head. His low voice intoned. "No, I don't want to do it."

"You have to. We did. Now you have to."

Joe shook his head again.

"Come on," I said to Joe, "how bad can it be? Look, we swear that no matter how bad it is or how many laws you broke, it's a secret. Nothing leaves this area. This is our safe space." I looked to Bart.

"That's right," he agreed. "This is all safe, everywhere around here."

"You're drunk."

"I am," Bart said, "but I still want to hear Joe's story.” He looked at Joe.

Joe sighed. "Are you sure?"

"Hell yeah we're sure. Tell your story."

Joe looked at me in the eye. There was a coldness there I had not noticed prior. "All right," he said. Joe looked back at the fire and for a moment I thought he was going to back out again, but then he began to speak in that low, unassuming voice of his. “What I’m about to tell you happened almost six years ago.”

“2016?”

“That’s right. Right after the Spring floods. Remember? Main Street was flooded out and Clyde Barlow pulled a skier down the flooded street in his outboard boat. We were without water for a week and electricity was out for two weeks. There wasn’t much for the city kids to do so they came out to the river to fish and/or hunt. I was repairing my fences that particular day when three kids came riding up on their bicycles. They were twelve and thirteen, thereabouts.”

Bart exchanged a glance with me. Both of us remembered that three kids had disappeared but we waited for Joe to tell his story. Was it the same kids? What happened?

Joe continued. “They were sort of smart-mouthed. You know how kids are these days. They think they can get away with anything. Privileged and more concerned with their rights rather about what could actually happen to them out in the country with no witnesses around. They didn’t ask permission to be there, either. They just acted like they could go0 anywhere they pleased. I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t listen.”

“Well, what happened?”

Joe stared into the fire. “I killed ‘em. All three of ‘em. I grabbed the first one off his bike and wrapped my arm around his neck and throat and I squeezed until his eyes bulged. He struggled but he couldn’t speak without air. His neck bone popped and I let him fall to the ground. The other two were frozen. I grabbed the second one off his bike and the third kid tried to turn around. He wasn’t quick enough and I simply pushed him and his bike over with one hand while I held on to the second kid who had started to cry and begged me to let him go. I did not. Instead, I pulled my knife and ran it across his neck, under his chin. His eyes got big as saucers. I let him go and he reached up with both hands to his throat but it was too late. Blood was pouring out. In seconds, he was too weak to stand and he slumped to the ground. I lifted the bike off the last kid – he was holding it between me and him, like a shield. Without the bike, the kid cowered on the ground, crying and begging to be left along. I hated his whining, I couldn’t stand it so I jumped on his head a few times till he stopped talking and moving. Afterwards, I hauled off the bodies, quartered ‘em and buried them in half a dozen different spots,”

Joe paused to take a breath. We were quiet trying to decide if Joe was kidding us or not. The thing is, Joe wasn’t a kidder.

Bart finally broke the silence. “Is that for real?”

Joe didn’t answer – not really. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t care whether we believed him or not. In a quiet voice, I asked Joe, “Why’d you kill them?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. They irritated me, I guess.”

Bart and I exchanged worried glances.

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