Black Hands. Black Heart

Part One of The Ties that Bind

This is part one of The Ties that Bind, a Deep South mystery.

In part one: Meet Lee Blackwell, a special man who does not want to be special. The local sheriff asks for his help.

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Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

In constant sorrow, all through his days.

-The Soggy Bottom Boys

The bag over her head was snatched off and she was shoved into what she thought was a closet. As she looked left and right, she realized it wasn’t a closet, it was too big. The space stretched past where her eyes could see, the ends vanishing into dots. The light was diffused. It emanated from the wall in front of her that seemed like thick warped glass. At irregular intervals in either direction, thin slits of light provided some sense of scale. There was also a glow coming from her.

“Curious,” she thought.

A nearby beam of light widened and a plate with a white bread sandwich and a bottle of water were placed on the ground. Before she could cry out or move, the light snapped back to a slit. She walked over, picked up the plate, and, suddenly aware she was ravenous, took a bite. She sat down and wondered if anyone knew she was gone.

---

Thunk. 

Thunk. 

Thunk. 

The sound of the maul driving into the oak logs was rhythmic. Muscles tightened as the head was raised into the air. A pause, the anticipatory breath before action. The final assent to the law of inevitability. 

Lee Blackwell’s hands had developed hot spots. It had been since last winter that he had split wood and his callouses reflected that. He wasn’t a big man. Average height, average build, brown hair, brown eyes. He was not the type of man you would remember bumping into on the street, and he liked it that way. However, he moved with the confidence of someone who knew exactly what they were capable of. The only distinctive thing was the thin golden ring on the outer edge of his iris. You only noticed it if you got close enough or he used the Gift, which made the ring glow. Neither happened often.

“Should’ve worn gloves,” he thought. 

The stack of split firewood was neat on the backside of his one-room cabin. While not new, the cabin was well-built and suffused with the patina that only comes with age. 

The cabin was situated on the northern side of a hill near the Tennessee/Alabama border. The location wasn’t as remote as Lee would have liked, but it was what was available. It was secluded, but most importantly, it was forgotten. At one time, his family had owned a string of cabins throughout the region. They were hideouts and stills that the Blackwells had used during Prohibition. A bastardized Underground Railroad. Most of them had fallen into disrepair or had been sold off as the 21st century encroached even on the deep woods of Appalachia.

The hill was in a perpetual dusk. The mixture of towering hardwoods and pines covered the area, and beneath the verdant canopy, life was muted. The heights and depths of forest life were trimmed off, so only the middle existed. The sunlight was hazy and the deep shadows were gray instead of black. The air was thick here. Dripping off boughs like ethereal spanish moss. It was a place of history. It was a place of violence.

The fuzzy sounds of nature were punctuated only by Lee’s chores. Satisfied with the amount of wood he had, he put the maul away in the tool shed, lifted the canvas log bag easily with one hand, and carried it inside. Once there, he fed the coals from breakfast in the wood burning stove, and turned to the sink to wash his hands. 

Tops and bottoms, tops and bottoms. In between, in between. All around your hands, all around your hands. Now they’re clean. Now they’re clean. 

The sing-song rhyme his mother taught him when he was little tickled the back of his mind when he stepped up to the sink. Problem was, no amount of soap ever seemed to wash away the black streaks he saw on his hands. A perpetual MacBethian trope that seemed more cynical than tragic. 

Black hands. Black heart. 

This feeling was not new for Lee. He had long since come to grips with his complicated legacy. He came from a long line of wicked men and grifters who abused their possession of the Gift. It took a special person to take what set them apart from the common man, and use it to con those men. He had long since rejected that lineage.

Didn’t stop his hands from being stained black. 

He began to do chores. It was important to keep busy, if you’re busy you have less time to think, if you have less time to think, you have less time to remember. Lee did not want to remember. 

He had just finished cleaning the when his phone rang, startling him. Only a handful of people had his number. The callerID read “Sheriff Loxley”. 

“Must be another case,” he thought.

Lee would help the sheriff from time to time. He had a knack for finding people who didn't want to be found. Loxley knew about the Gift and assumed it was Lee's ace-in-the-hole for finding missing persons. Truth was, Lee rarely used his gift, even on particularly difficult cases. Lee's usefulness had partly to do with being observant, and mostly to do with understanding how people think. Especially people who don’t want to be found.

He dried his hands off on the dishtowel and answered. 

"Lee here." 

"Can you come in? I've got a case that is proving difficult." 

The way the sheriff said, difficult gave Lee pause. All the cases Lee got were the difficult ones.

“What do you mean difficult?”

“It’s a kid.”

“You know my rules, Sheriff.”

“I do. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need the help. Will you come in?”

Lee paused, a shadow crossed his mind and his hands tingled. He sighed.

"Sure thing. Be there in an hour." 

"See you then."

Click. 

Lee set the phone down and went to his bedroom. The room was small and rustically adorned, but comfortable. A twin bed sat on the far wall. A lamp with an incandescent edison bulb sat on a nightstand with a copy of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood next to it. In the drawer was a pistol his father had given him. Lee grabbed it and tucked it into the holster on his belt. He rarely needed it, but his upbringing wouldn't allow him to walk around unarmed. Not everyone in this world is out to get you, Sarah had said when they were still together. Some people are, was his reply.

He pulled on a black sweater, replacing the flannel he'd worn while splitting wood. He stepped out of his work boots and into a pair of gray sneakers. A black ball cap completed the ensemble. "What're you? A spy?" he sighed as he spied his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He grabbed the keys to his '89 Land Cruiser and strode out the front door.

As he eased down the gravel driveway towards town, a sense of foreboding descended on him. "I should turn around now," he thought and he took his foot off the gas. It wouldn’t be the first time he said no. 

“This one is proving difficult,” Loxely said. 

For a moment, everything stood still. The dust from the road floated through the sunlight that filtered through the trees. The world was suspended on an edge, waiting to see what he would do. An eerie quiet settled over the cab, a sense of destiny was palpable on Lee's tongue.

"Shit," he muttered. He flexed his fingers, checked the pistol, and stepped on the gas, resuming his journey into town. He couldn’t help but feel like it was a mistake.

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