Now that every footstep brings me closer, the madness of it still drives me on, in spite of the chill wind and the biting sleet.  Although it is but mid-afternoon, it feels like midnight.  Only the crunch of the snow beneath my feet breaks through the silence.  Here on this dull winter day of 1970, at last having found the courage to come this far, I cannot turn back until I have satisfied the morbid curiosity that has nagged at me for nearly fifty years.

The unexpected layover of my westbound train in this small Indiana town that was my boyhood home was the final impetus that sends me in furious pursuit of God himself knows what.  As I walk the lonely streets deserted by more prudent souls who have sought the warm refuge of their homes, I am amazed to find how little the town has changed.

My progress is slowed, hampered by the freezing slush, but restrained as well by the weight of the years that have changed me from a callow youth to a man, now nearly sixty years of age.

The obsession rooted in the last tragic year that I spent in this small rural community, though dimmed by time and distance, has never left me completely.   Now, as I near the edge of town and draw ever closer to that damned and deserted place, the primal scene marking all that came after, I feel the same fear and apprehension that was my near-constant companion when I was but a seven-year-old child.

That fateful year was 1920, and it changed my life.  Little did I dream that my twelve-years-older brother Davis, in devising his foolish scheme for us to steal a pumpkin from Neighbor Judson's field would have set us on a downward path that had no return.

Always the weaker one, always afraid, I had wanted no part of Davis and his daring plan.  But once again, Davis won the upper hand, and I followed him, shivering from both fear and the frigid wind that blew with unrelenting fervor across the dark frosty fields.

Our subsequent flight from the field, pumpkins in hand, with Mr. Judson close on our heels was what had led us into the tangled thicket that lay just outside the cemetery fence.  We had crouched in anxious concealment until Mr. Judson, brandishing his shotgun, had finally given up in disgust.

I probably would have waited there all night, fearing Mr. Judson's imminent return, but Davis, always more impatient, urged our return home.  Chilled to the bone, I was easily persuaded to follow.  As I got to my feet, Davis, with glee pointed out the damp piece of stone on which we had been kneeling.. The dull gray surface, cut with crude lettering was now visible in a patch of misty moonlight.

He traced his fingers again and again over the rough-carved single word, "WILLIS". He gave me an evil grin. "You know who this is, don't you, buried here in disgrace, outside the cemetery?" he asked.

I hopped up quickly as if burned.  "It's a grave?"

Davis laughed again with the dark lilt that I had noticed in his voice the last year or so.  "That's what it is, sissy!"

And I was out of that thicket like a shot!

I would probably have completely forgotten the incident, but for Davis and his incessant taunting of me: how scared I'd looked and what a baby I was. I'd certainly wanted to forget it--for I'd never heard of anyone named Willis--and I didn't want to think about him or wonder why his grave was there.  I knew, however, that it was not normal for someone to be buried outside the cemetery proper.  Mother's relentless shaping our of spiritual lives was always high-lighted with weekly Sunday church attendance.  The hell and brimstone preaching was lavishly peppered with references to sin and its consequences. 

While I was still a faithful adherent to the regimen, Davis found more and more excuses to attend less and less often. Mother's oft-expressed concerns fell on deaf ears as Davis became more interested in his town friends and activities and less willing to participate in our family routines.

It was not until a few weeks later, just before Christmas, that my curiosity had been piqued by a bit a information overheard when Aunt Hattie, Mother's sister, had visited us from out East.

I'd spend most of the cold, snowy evenings by the coal stove in the kitchen, pretending to do my schoolwork, while Aunt Hattie and Mother chatted over their chores.  They'd talked mostly about family news and some about Davis spending too much time away from the farm in "dubious" company.  I paid little attention to their conversations that mostly rehashed old stories that I'd heard many times.

But one night, a casual remark by my mother caused me to listen with renewed interest.  "Ach, Harry," Mother had said, her Germanic roots still poking about the edges of her speech as she spoke intimately to her beloved younger sister, "Old Mrs. Turner is finally gone; God rest her soul"

Aunt Hattie sniffed with disdain as she replied, "Died of a broken heart, that's for sure."

Mother stopped kneading a oaf of bread and shook her head sadly. "She held out 'till the very end, waiting, it seemed."

"The only one in Leesburg that still believed that boy innocent, no doubt," Aunt Hattie agreed.

"She knew her boy was not a murderer or a thief," Mother confirmed.  "For over a year, she didn't hear a word from him."

"But when they found him dead last fall..." Aunt Hattie's voice trailed off.

Mother had nodded.  "She refused to believe he had taken his own life, and she never got over it.  Why, she declared until the day she died, that Willis would somehow rise out of his grave, come back to her, and clear his name."

Just then, Mother must have realized how attentively I had been listening, and with a knowing look to Aunt Hattie, changed the subject.   But I'd thought about their comments, long after they'd gone on to talk of other things.

The little town of Leesburg wouldn't seem so far away now, but then my whole world encompassed only a few miles and I hadn't ever been there.  I'd never heard of a Mrs. Turner or her son Willis, but the emotion in my mother's voice and my frightening experience with Davis had made an impression on me that did not soon pass.

That night, after Davis had come home, and we'd gone to bed in our drafty attic room, I'd made the mistake of repeating to him what I'd overheard Mother saying to Aunt Hattie.

He'd laughed and gave me a wicked leer as he shucked off his thick wool pants, the legs stiff with frozen snow.  I'd turned my head to avoid his breath that smelled so strongly of spirits, but he'd not denied knowledge of Willis.

After that, it became his favorite subject for ridiculing me.   Whenever he was annoyed, which was often, he'd bring up Willis' name.  I'd cover my ears, but Davis would beat on me, until I gave up and took my hands away. Then he'd whisper, "When Willis walks..."

The holidays came and went, and Aunt Hattie returned home.  We had a brief January thaw, and the afternoon air turned balmy, almost spring-like. I was playing in the barn with one of the farm cats and her new litter of kittens.

The sun streaming in through the loose fitting wall boards cast beams of warmth on the hay.  I lay back in the scratchy softness and lazily watched the dust motes floating in the sunshine, felt the kittens romping up and down on top of me and heard the contented purr of their mother as she snuggled up against my arm.  I must have fallen asleep.  I woke up to the sound of digging in the ground in one of the stalls beneath me.

Carefully moving a bit of hay on the floor of the loft so that I could see through a wide space in the boards, I saw Davis almost directly below me, shoveling dirt from a corner of the empty stall.  After he stopped digging, he hunched over, and his back blocked my view of what he was doing.  A few minutes later, I heard the scattering sound of dirt being thrown, the clang of the shovel being set against the wall, and the creak of the closing barn door.

I remained quiet for a few more minutes.  Davis hadn't seen me, I was sure, and I'd been avoiding him as much as possible.  Finally, my curiosity got the better of me, and gently unburdening myself of the clutch of kittens and their mother, I hurried down the loft ladder.

The soil was soft and loosened now in the spot where he had been digging, and it didn't take me long to brush it away to reveal a small metal box.   "Leesburg Bank," was embossed on the front.  I rubbed my fingers over the now gritty letters.  Cautiously I opened the unsecured lid.  Inside was a stack of paper money and many coins.

A pang of fear went through me, and I quickly closed the box and carefully re-buried it, replacing the covering of earth.  I left the barn in a hurry; I was terrified.

Why was Davis hiding all that money?  From where had the box come?   From the Leesburg bank was the obvious answer, but the implications of that line of thinking were almost beyond my young comprehension.  I only knew that the connection between this box, Davis, and Leesburg caused an aching deep in my stomach that wouldn't go away.  I tried to put the thought out of my mind, but it would come, unbidden, whenever I let down  my conscious guard.

One morning before school as I ate my bowl of oatmeal, Davis came in, cold and out of sorts after doing the morning chores.  He didn't speak to me at first.  He just poured a mugful of the deep, dark-brewed coffee that only he and Father drank.  He warmed his hands around the mug and finally looked across the table at me.  I was aware of his scrutiny, but I didn't look up to me his eyes.

"There's the little sissy," he began. "Want to go out and look for Willis this afternoon?  Want to go out by the graveyard?"

I didn't reply, and Mother's arrival in the kitchen effectively ended the exchange. But late in the afternoon, when I had returned from school, Davis surprised me in the barnyard as I struggled to use a saw of Father's to cut a bit of wood for a carving project.  Startled, I broke a tooth out of the saw.

Davis pounced in triumph.   "Broke it, didn't you?   Well, I won't tell Father this time, if you'll come with me to visit Willis," he pronounced ominously.

For a moment I was frozen with indecision.  I couldn't decide if I was more afraid of incurring Father's wrath or going with Davis.  Finally, I chose what seemed to be the lesser of two evils, and I reluctantly dogged his heels.  But when we got to the edge of the fence row, I refused to enter the underbrush and clung defiantly to a post of the cemetery fence.

"I'll bring him out to you," Davis taunted me and laughed as he pushed back the branches and disappeared inside.  Then there was silence.  I waited for what seemed a long, long time.

Then I called to him in a harsh whisper, "Davis?  Davis, you in there?"

At last I got up enough courage to peer inside the tangled and shadowy thicket.  He was gone.  A sharp rush of anger and shame swept over me.  He must have slipped out the other side, leaving me alone to scare me.

Twilight was streaking purple across the late winter sky as I hurried off for home.  Then I went about my own chores, silently fuming inside about the way that Davis had tricked me.  I dreaded thinking how he'd laugh when I saw him, only I didn't see him again - ever.

Davis didn't return that afternoon. I didn't tell anyone where we had gone, although I did confess to father that I had broken his cherished tool.  But I received only a brief reprimand, because that minor event had been eclipsed by a larger worry.  by the time Davis was missed a newly fallen snow had covered all the tracks we had made, and there was no trace of our afternoon expedition.

Father was angry about Davis' absence, supposing that he'd gone into town with some of his friends who were not welcome on our farm.  And nobody thought to ask me.

But the next day, when Davis still had not returned, Father himself went to town, and learned that no one there had seen him lately.  With the help of men from the other farms, Father and the others had searched high and low for Davis, but they never found anything.

I kept my mouth shut about the rest: Davis's taunts, the events of that last afternoon, and the buried cash box in the barn.  When I was finally able to slip away to dig it up, I found that it, too, was missing.  The soil had refilled the vacated hole, and it was as if the box had never been there.

Life on our farm grew grimmer, as the realization of Davis's unexplained disappearance settled over our family. Father made little comment, and Mother seemed sadly resolved, but thoughts of Davis were never far from my mind.

They said Mother died of the influenza in the epidemic early the next spring, but I was sure it was the worry over Davis that really killed her.  I got the same sickness myself, and was so weak, that Aunt Hattie who had come to care for Mother, despaired of my recovery.  The doctor had said that I lost consciousness due to my high fever the day I fell ill, the day that Father brought to my room the new hired man who was to take over the work that Davis had done.

"Just call me Willis," the man had said in a strange voice when Father introduced him to me, and I fainted dead away.

Days later, when I was no longer delirious, they told me that Father had collapsed a few days after I had, but that he never recovered.  The new hired man had taken care of the chores for a few weeks; but one day he just announced to Aunt Hattie that he was leaving, and nobody ever saw him again.  The farm, of course, was sold, and just as quickly as things could be arranged, I went East to live with Aunt Hattie, with never a backward glance.

And all these years, I've just kept waiting and wondering if I'd ever hear from Davis again.  But now that nearly fifty years have passed, and I've finally gotten the chance and courage to return, I must find out the answer, although I fear I already know.  Yet, I must be certain, however much I dread the truth.

The sleet has softened now, into big fluffy flakes that fall gently to the ground, obscuring the landscape with a chilling whiteness.  The silence is deep, and even my footfalls are without sound.  I'm just outside the cemetery fence now, and holding my breath, I push aside the snow filled thicket of branches.

I kneel and brush away the light covering of snow.  The old square stone is beneath my fingers as I trace the rough, carved letters to spell out what I feared, yet knew it would: D A V I S...

No Spring Chicken - a short story by RoseMary McDaniel

Mattie sat quietly in her chair, her fingers working independently, surreptitiously, plucking the tied yarn knots from the quilt that covered her knees. Her fingernails were relentless as they plied apart the strands, that once loosened, were flicked aside to float gently to the floor. She had worked her way through nearly a third of the blanket, shards of yarn settling like bits of red dust, before someone came by to check up.

It was Miss Priss - which was Mattie's own name for the young aide who crept around tippy-toed on white crepe soled shoes and pursed her lips as if she smelled something nasty when she was displeased.   She was generally displeased with Mattie.

"Mattie, what on Earth are you doing?  You're simply ru-in-ing that spread," the aide exclaimed.

Mattie as usual, didn't reply, deep in whatever distant universe she was currently monitoring. 

Miss Priss made a clucking sound of disgust, pursed her lips, and bent to gather up the scattered yarn which she promptly chucked into the nearby wastebasket.    She turned the blanket around and flipped it over to the other side, hiding the yarn knots from Mattie's eager hands.

"That will be enough of that, Young Lady," the aide concluded, scolding Mattie as of she were a willful child.  Then, satisfied that order had been restored, she tiptoed off, the noise of her retreating soles scuffing against the carpet, music to Mattie's fading hearing.

But Mattie's eyes were eager and bright and constantly darted about the room.  She wasn't seeing this grim and falsely cheerful space.  Her eyes saw inward to a world of her own imagination.  She had peopled it with all those who had been a part of her past.  The mail carrier was there, and the iceman, and lots of relatives, the majority of them now dead. 

Mattie knew that, that she was alive, and they were dead, but it didn't matter.  In the dreamlike state where she spent most of her time, she could range far from this room, this time, this feeble body. She didn't care to make connections with what passed for reality today, where everyone was under thirty, and perpetually annoyed or clinically efficient with her. 

She could still speak perfectly well, but chose not to.  Her frame of reference and that of those who passed through her life now were so diverse that the chance that any of them could connect was as remote as Mattie addressing the U.S.Senate on Health Care Reform.  Not about to happen.

She'd tune in, occasionally, just to observe the natives who inhabited this region called Westbury Senior Center.  They generally spoke a foreign language, which they believed was English, but Mattie, having been an English teacher in a life so long ago that they'd long since torn down the school, knew the fundamentals of English speech, and she marveled at how little like English their conversations sounded - that is at those rare times she listened.

Miss Priss was her special adversary. Too professional by far for the likes of Westbury Center, the aide was nonetheless hanging on to her ideals of caregiving for dear life.  Mattie wondered what would happen when that fine young idealism turned to burn-out.  The thought of Miss Priss as a Wal-Mart greeter in a future career path amused Mattie's undiminished sense of humor.

Then there was Javon, the West Indian aide, whose dark face was highlighted with a wide smile showing white teeth offset by one gold tooth in front.   He teased and flirted with Mattie, though she didn't respond.  Every now and then, she couldn't help a tiny smile in response to his nonsense, and he'd wink at her, as if to say, "I know you can hear me."

And there was Lump.  That was what she ungraciously labeled her current roommate.  An old woman surely, but younger than Mattie herself - she'd overheard a conversation that confirmed it - who'd totally given up.  Mattie could have understood a desire to escape from pain, or as a protest against stupidity - but Lump just lay there.  It was the moaning at night that got to Mattie - and even the thought of a fellow human in such a depressive state, failed to force Mattie to be sympathetic. 

"It is good to persevere," Mattie's father had told her once, many centuries ago when she was just a little girl.  And Mattie had done so for - what was it now - nearly ninety years.  She stopped talking at eighty-seven, sick of answering inane questions.  It didn't really make any difference, anyway, they poked and prodded, and submitted her to all sorts of indignities, rather she consented or not.

For a while, it had been a staff-wide effort to pry Mattie from silence.   First the speech therapist showed up, then the Center's pet Doctor, and finally a visit from the local shrink.  But Mattie refused to give in and give them what they wanted: response.

She rather enjoyed being known famous for the last statement that she had uttered in the presence of witnesses:  "What do you expect?" she had said, "After all, I'm no Spring Chicken."  And that was Mattie's last word, and the rest, as far as Mattie was concerned was history. 

She knew that as long as some spark of electricity still connected the synapses of her memory, however weak, that she'd persevere.  Until the day that last shovelful of dirt dropped on top of her coffin - then maybe she'd close her eyes for a bit and let the dreams take over.  For now,she had a reputation to maintain, and all the attempts to mold her into the perfect patient were fruitless.

A smile appeared on Mattie's lips, and she folded her hands in an attitude of supplication.  In her mind's eye, a handsome young man appeared, carrying a wicker basket topped with a red checked cloth.  He was a much younger version of the old man of a couple in a frame that someone had placed on Mattie's wall to "help her remember."  But Mattie didn't want to remember him that way.  She had her own way, and he was calling to her.

"Come on, love," he called.  "Let's go on a picnic today.  No time to waste."

"I'm coming," Mattie called silently, and enjoyed the feel of the sun on her face, the cool of the breeze in her hair, and followed her young man down the path, feet skimming over the ground, knowing that the lithe figure that had first attracted him was still hers to command.

No Spring Chicken, indeed.