"What do you mean? I didn't." he replied.
"You dug me out of the mudslide. I was stuck solid. I probably would have died. I didn't get to thank you since I was hiding out as a cat, so...Thank You!" Stacy said the last part in a rush.
James gave her a sidelong look, and that half smile appeared on his lips again. His hand came out and ruffled her hair. "You're welcome Kitten. That's an odd form you got by the way. You shift into just a big cat?"
"No, I actually change into a mountain lion, this form just kind of showed up one night as I was wondering what it would be like to be a cat. Just a regular cat that would sit on a human's lap and get fed saucers of cream and sleep on silk cushions and all of that."
James nodded and kept driving, steering around the large potholes in the now gravel road. The scenery was changing as well. Vehicle noise was falling away. Signs of habitation began to disappear, become more sporadic. In fact, they drove for a little over three miles of dirt road before coming to a slow stop.
"I need to drop some things off for my neighbor..." James said as he got out of the truck. He paused looking in at his stowaway. "Wanna come in and say Hi?" Stacy glanced out the window but all she saw was a line of shrubbery along the side of the dirt road. This road could only be loosely called one; it was not even wide enough for two vehicles so they had pulled half in to the ditch to park.
She nodded though, curious to see who lived in this...this.... swamp? The air was thick out here, and humid. Almost felt like she was drinking as well as breathing! She set her backpack down and took her hooded sweatshirt off. She groaned as she felt the light breeze touch her skin, and slipped her backpack on again. Stacy could hear James rummaging around in the airstream trailer and met him at the door, accepting several cloth bags. She grunted at the weight and glanced inside to see several tubes of the sausage he had made recently.
"What's all of this for? Oh yeah, the neighbors." James nodded and grabbed another few bags before stepping out and locking the door behind him.
"They are the ones who got me the tags, and they help in other ways. Come along Stacy." Saying her name for the first time out loud made her feel, like she wanted to purr. This was all very confusing to her. They stepped through a bunch of tall grass and dogwood trees along the side of the dirt road. Stacy held the bags a little tighter, being careful where she placed her feet. She scented the air and smelled wood smoke and then the smell of chicken manure.
"Careful now, no sudden moves...and there they are!" James grunted and started making kissing noises just before a deep baying rang out in the humid autumn air. A pack of hounds of different sizes and colors and breeds burst through the mud and reeds. Stacy felt her hair trying to stand on end and out of sheer instinct she hissed a warning which made the dogs swerve and begin dancing around growling and baying their hearts out! The Shifter felt an overwhelming urge to change and scamper up the nearest tree!
"Hey there Blue! You ol' Snaggletooth...is that Red? Come here boy! Hey you know me Whitey. Shut your yap and get your asses back to the house! On the double you tick infested, barrel bellied hog! Lets go!" James was growling and barking orders which made the dogs start jumping up and down and whining at him. He kept on calling them names as they whined sniffing at his hands and boots and pants. Sometimes even trying to jump up to put their paws on his chest! He would gently step on their back paws making them back down.
At some unspoken signal all the dogs turned and raced back in the direction that they had come, some of them running back with eager whines and then running away again. James glanced at the teen and saw that Stacy still had her teeth drawn back from her teeth. He snickered.
"Don't like dogs too much do you?" He remarked.
"I like them just fine James...just not that many all at once!" She retorted, though her eyes were wide.
He motioned for them to keep walking, and they continued going uphill until they reached a small cabin built into the side of the hill. Stacy could smell wood smoke and saw a solar panel set out in a small clearing with an older man in a pair of jeans and suspenders in a rusty lawn chair. He was listening to a hand radio plugged into the solar panel and had a rifle of dubious origin across his lap. He turned to spit and shout at the pack of hounds that over ran his chair and tipped him over just as a French voice started screaming "Gooooaaaaallllll!" from the small speaker.
Several oaths were shouted as the man righted himself and pushed the dogs away before he spotted the visitors. Stacy was looking on in strange fascination at the scene. It obviously was a poor holding of a sort. The cabin looked in severe disrepair and so were the couple of shacks out behind the building, all of them with smoke lazily winding their way up through the tops of cypress trees. The man kicked a few more times at the dogs before walking down to meet them. He paused only for a moment after giving Stacy a once over.
He was a tall thin black man with white hair and beard. He smelled of corn and rye and yeast, and...a faint smell of maybe...patchouli? She wasn't sure.
"Oi' Jamie...did you bring me some meat?" He asked as he eyed the bags. Stacy was surprised by what sounded to be a thick French accent coming from the man's lips. James held up the bags he had in his hands.
"Course I did, you even blessed me before I left. Strangest blessing I ever saw. Making me split a plug of tobacco with you and then spitting on my boots and dousing me with moonshine!" James shook his head as he opened one of the bags and the dark skinned man smiled as he beheld the fat links of sausage.
"You know Josiah, that alcohol is flammable, we were right beside the fire! I could have been turned into a human torch!" James muttered with a twinkle in his eye. The older man chuckled wetly and held out his hand for the bag which James handed over.
"You are sauvage..." Josiah stated simply while opening the bag to give the long links of sausage a closer inspection. "...should you burn it would have non permanence."
The older man's voice was smooth and held a hidden depth of humor not easily noticeable by his appearance. He looked over at Stacy, and down at her bags. She in turn was eyeing the dogs that were approaching her again. A blue tick hound, wagging his tail, was snuffling at her elbow and she tentatively stroked the side of his muzzle. This resulted in her receiving a handful of wet and sticky fingers! She was reminded again why she didn't like dogs in the first place! She tried to surreptitiously wipe her fingers off on her jeans when she realized the two men were watching her.
"Prostituee?" Josiah asked James.
"No...A girl turned woman, though still thinks like a girl, but old enough to get her into trouble. Except she thinks she knows best." James said dryly. Stacy harrumphed while Josiah grinned with a startling white grin in his dark face.
"You explain most women this way Jamie." Josiah stated as he stepped towards Stacy. He looked down from a height of well over 6 feet his head cocked to the side as he studied her. Stacy looked him right back in the eye; she wasn't going to be intimidated by a human! He let a smile that didn't expose his teeth grace his lips as he took the bags from her. She blinked in surprise. "Josiah must be holding at least 75 pounds of meat in those bags!" She thought while watching him walk away.
"Come to my home mes amies. You need your trades." Josiah called back, the hounds trailing him like baby ducks following their mother up to the cabin.
Stacy looked over at James who nodded his head and gently put his hand on her upper hip to guide her in front of him as they walked.
"I thought you should meet Josiah. He is one of the good ones out here." James said quietly.
"He seems a bit strange, kind of odd..." Stacy replied just as quietly.
"We all have a history kitten, a story of some kind that brings us to places like these."
Stacy stopped for a moment in the doorway of the house to turn bright questioning eyes to James' face. "So what is your story then?"
James was surprised at how he felt looking down into the young Shifters face. He quickly jumped up and down on those feelings and rolled his eyes. "Too long to talk about in a door way. And take off your shoes before you enter someone's house! Were you raised in the wild or something?"
The meeting was kind of anticlimactic. The meat was tucked away and there were staples being brought out. Cornmeal, flour, salt, lard, several large clay jugs were brought out as well. Carefully marked in the clay before they had been fired were the numbers "95" which made Stacy look at James questioningly.
"It's moonshine..." James told her simply.
"Was it made in 1995? Was that a particularly good year for moonshine?" She asked as she looked over the hand made vessels. Josiah laughed heartily as he reached into his front pocket for what looked to be a good sized brownie treat wrapped in a piece of brown waxed paper. It had the words "Days Work Plug tobacco" on it. He opened an end and carefully bit off a chunk and passed it to James who did the same. He arced an eyebrow at the older man who grinned and then held out a case with several similar packages inside of it.
"Fille!" Josiah said to Stacy. "The moonshine, every year is the good year for it! Every day is the good day for it." He held up a similar clay jug and poured a finger into a mug and a mason jar and handed one to each of them.
"Salute!" Josiah said. They were about to drink until Josiah shushed them and looked at Stacy seriously for a moment.
"A moment cher, your first time with this, any drinks before?" Josiah asked. Stacy looked nervously at James who just was watching.
"I drink, just never had alcohol before now." She said, sounding unsure. Josiah nodded.
"Then no Salute..." He stood straighter and then clinked his bottle to her glass and to James mug and said with more formality, "...Cin Cin!" and took a drink. James polished off his drink and Stacy quickly did the same.
Now if she had known more about moonshine, Stacy might have tried to think of a way out of this. She also might have asked what the 95 meant on the side of the jug. She would have found out that most folk don't all use the proof rating. They usually use percentages. Some like their alcohol stronger than others. This one was 95%! It was clearly marked on the side for all to see.
If she would have known at least she might have been braced for it. She opened her mouth and tossed it back and let it set in her mouth before swallowing.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After the truck was loaded Stacy was sitting with a scowl on her face and her arms crossed over her chest. James was still snickering, and Josiah had given her a glass of water, which she sniffed suspiciously. It felt like her taste buds had died and been resurrected as zombies!
"You could have told me what it was!" Stacy said accusingly.
"It was more fun watching you dance around like that. Is that what the kids these days call Hip Hop?"
Stacy growled deep in her throat, kept staring out the front windshield ignoring James who smiled and put his truck in gear. Gently giving the Chevy Scottsdale gas he pulled back onto the dirt road and rumbled further down into the swamp.
Chapter 3: Life
The smell of water was thick, rot and vegetation and deep earthy notes filled Stacy's nose. She glanced at James who was smiling a little as he looked around the area at the familiar sights.
"Welcome to my home..." he said as he pulled into a small clearing. It was along side a slow moving river, or stream...depending on your definition of what each was. The stream was about twenty paces across and looked to be only a few feet deep. Cypress trees ringed the clearing, some growing in the water with roots bending and rising from the surface making it look like the trees were lifting their "knees" as if they were trying to wade across the stream.
James noticed her looking at the odd roots. "The trees do that so they don't drown." Stacy looked over at him, curiosity overriding her earlier animosity at the prank.
"What? Drowning trees?"
James nodded as he stepped out of the truck and walked over the short grass in the clearing staring at the ground. Stacy began to get out until James waved at her.
"No no...stay there a moment, let me have a look at the newspaper first." He was staring at the ground and walking gently. The old revolver in his hand, hammer cocked back. Stacy watched as he crouched and scanned more of the grass near a wet spot on the ground.
"Those trees over there, they grow...ummm...whatchamacallit? Secondary roots? I guess you could call it...these a word for it, it will come to me eventually. Anyway, the swamps rise up and lower. They cover up tree roots and smother them, drown them in the soil they are growing in. So they grow roots higher up on the trunk, or from the top of existing roots so they can breathe.
