It looked to have weathered badly since that time Grandma and I had been trapped in it and we had seen the face of the Goat Man at the window.
The door was wide open.
“What if the Goat Man is waitin’ inside?” Tom asked.
“I’ll cut down on him with this here shotgun,” I said. “That’s what.”
“Maybe we ought to peek in a window first.”
That sounded like good advice, but we couldn’t make out much in there, just enough to assure us the Goat Man wasn’t lurking about.
It was a bigger mess inside than before. Toby went inside and sniffed and prowled about till we called him out of it. We went inside and looked around. Light came through the yellow paper over the paneless window, and wind whipped in with it. The window that had glass had been broken out, probably by kids, and from that direction the light was weak.
The framed photograph with the Sears picture stuck in the frame was knocked off the table, and I picked it up. With the door open rain had run in and ruined it, meshing the Sears photo to the photograph, blurring the whole thing into a kind of mush. I put it on the table, laying it face down this time.
“I don’t like it in here,” Tom said.
“Me neither.”
When we went out, I made sure to close the door good.
We walked around the house, to the side facing the river, and finally down to the water. Looking back at the house, I noted there was something hanging on a nail on the outside wall. It was a chain, and from the chain hung a number of fish skeletons, and one fresh fish.
We went over and looked at it.
“It looks like it’s just been hung up there,” Tom said. “There’s still water drippin’ off of it.”
The fish bones along with the fresh fish showed me someone had been hanging fish there on a regular basis, and for some time, like an offering to Mose.
On another nail, strings tied together, was a pair of old shoes that had most likely been fished from the river. Hung over that was a water-warped belt. On the ground, leaning against the side of the house, below the nail with the shoes, was a tin plate, a bright blue river rock, and a mason jar. All of it laid out like gifts.
I took the dead fish down, all the old bones, and cast them into the river and put the chain back on the nail. I tossed the shoes and belt, the plate, rock, and mason jar into the river.
“What’d you do that for?” Tom asked.
“I think that fish was still alive. It don’t need to suffer. Ain’t no one gonna come get it and cook it.”
“We could.”
“But we ain’t.”
“You throwed all that other stuff away too. That seems kinda mean, Harry. Someone is hanging it here like a gift.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I done it. Not out of meanness, but so the gifts would seem to be taken.”
I couldn’t really explain it. It just seemed like the thing to do.
Mose’s old boat was still by the house, laid up on rocks so it wouldn’t rot. A paddle lay in its bottom. We decided to take it and float it downriver to where the briar tunnels were. We loaded Toby in the boat, along with our shotgun, pushed it into the water and set out. We floated the long distance back to the Swinging Bridge and under it, watching to see if the Goat Man might be lurking about. Our idea that he was afraid of daylight was fading, and we had begun to feel nervous, and just a bit foolish.
We had been a lot braver planning than doing.
In shadow, under the bridge, deep into the bank, was a dark indention, like a cave. I imagined that was where the Goat Man lived, waiting for prey.
The thing to do, of course, was beard him in his lair. But we didn’t. We didn’t say a word. We just paddled on by.
We paddled gently to the riverbank where we had found the woman bound to the tree. There was no real sign she had ever been there. It seemed like a dream.
We pulled the boat onto the dirt and gravel bank and left it there as we went up the taller part of the bank, and into the briars. We hadn’t discussed this, but we wanted to see the spot where we had found the first body, where we had been frightened in the tunnel of briars.
The tunnel was the same, and it was clear in the daytime that the tunnel had, as we suspected, been cut into the briars. It was not as large or as long a tunnel as it had seemed that night, and it emptied out into a wider tunnel, and it too was shorter and smaller than we had remembered.
There were little bits of colored cloth hung on briars, like decoration. There was a red strip and a blue strip and a white strip with little red flowers on it. There were pictures from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue of women in underwear and there were a few of those playing cards like I had heard about. The briars were poked through the pictures where the women’s crotches were.
In the middle of the tunnel was a place where someone had built a fire, and above us the briars wrapped so thick and were so intertwined with low-hanging branches you could imagine much of this place staying dry during a rainstorm.
We hadn’t seen all those pieces of cloth and paper that night, but they, or ones like them, might have been there. Dry as the place was, during all that raining and flooding, it couldn’t have remained completely dry. Someone would have to have been adding fresh material to it from time to time.
Toby was sniffing and running about as best his poor old damaged back and legs would allow him. He was peeing on one spot, then another, leaving his mark all over. He was as agitated as if the briars were full of squirrels.
“It’s like some kind of nest,” Tom said. “The Goat Man’s nest.”
A chill came over me and it occurred to me that if that was true, and if this was his den instead of the cave under the bridge, he might come home at any time. I told Tom that, and we called up Toby and got out of there, tried to paddle the boat back upriver, but couldn’t.
We finally got out and made to carry it along the bank, but it was too heavy. We gave up and left it by the river. We walked past the Swinging Bridge and for a long ways after that till we found a sandbar. We used that to cross, went back home, finished the chores, cleaned ourselves and Toby up before Mama and Daddy and Grandma came home.
We thought about what we had seen all day, and considered telling Daddy, but since we weren’t supposed to have gone anywhere, our young minds were at an impasse. What would have seemed obvious to someone older didn’t seem all that obvious to us.
That night, as me and Tom were out on the sleeping porch, whispering, Grandma came out. We went quiet. She said, “You two been actin’ like conspirators all day. I’m too nosy to let it go.”
“It ain’t nothin’,” Tom said.
“I believe it is somethin’,” Grandma said, seating herself on the swing between our beds. “Why don’t you tell me. I promise I ain’t gonna tell your Mama and Daddy.”
We, of course, were dying to tell someone. I looked at Tom, she nodded. I nodded back. Tom said, “You swear not to tell, less’n your head falls off and gets covered in ants.”
Grandma laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t want that. So I swear.”
We told her all about it. When we finished she said, “You ain’t the only detectives. And since all three of us are detectin’, we need to make a pact right now. We’re gonna keep what we know between us.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Daddy might need to know some of this.”
Grandma considered. I knew enough about her to know she was the one that always wanted to be in the know. So it was no surprise to me when she made her proposition.
“Tell you what. Let’s keep it to ourselves, unless, or until, we got enough evidence your Daddy can use. That fair enough, kids?”
We agreed it was.
“Then we’ll make a pact to that effect, lest our heads fall off and get covered in ants.”
Grandma said, “I was in town today. I went over and visited Mr. Groon. He’s such a nice man.”
“You visit him a lot,” Tom said.
“I suppose I do.”
“Then you don’t think he had anything to do with this mess?” I asked.