Dark Places by Reavis Z Wortham

a little rise in the dark, I wound up swimming.”
    The men laughed. Isaac Reader, Neal Box, Wayne Simpson, Dub Hinkley, and Mike Parsons all loved a good hunting story, and none of them ever let the facts get in the way of telling it.
    â€œShoot, I know that trail like I know the back of my hand, and I’m a tellin’ you, the water is comin’ up so fast in them sloughs that you can watch it eat up the ground. I had to dog paddle back to the rise and Jimmy Foxx hauled me in like a big old gar. It won’t be long before the creek gets out of the banks.”
    Mike Parsons leaned forward to speak. He always leaned into a conversation. “It’s fillin’ up faster than they want. There’s a steady stream of heavy equipment coming up out of the bottoms. They ain’t even finished with burning up all the trees, but if they don’t get their rigs out pretty soon, they’ll be underwater the way it’s comin’ down.”
    â€œI came over a while ago,” Ned said. With the completion of the dam, there were now two ways to get to Center Springs off the highway running between Chisum and Hugo, in Oklahoma. The original two-lane road came from Arthur City, and now the cutoff across the dam originated in Powderly, about two miles south of the Texas/Oklahoma border. “All the fires are out and there ain’t but a couple of draglines left. They’re having to pull one out with a bulldozer.”
    â€œYep, they’ve beat the ground up so much that’s it’s boggy from all this rain.” Dub rubbed his three-day old whiskers. “The creek’s up seven or eight feet, which ain’t much down there in that big hole, but it’ll be a sight deeper if it don’t clear off soon.”
    â€œListen. Listen. They say it’s gonna rain for another week, at least.” Isaac Reader cleaned under his fingernails with a pocket knife. It always made Ned nervous to watch him do that, because Ike’s knives were sharp enough to shave with, and the jerky little farmer seemed to work way too deep under his nails.
    Mike Parsons crossed his arms. “Hell, Ike, they don’t know for sure. I can guess as good as the weatherman can.”
    â€œSo what do you think, then?”
    Mike scratched his head. “I think it’s gonna rain for another week.”
    More laughter. A dented Pontiac Catalina came down the road from the dam and slowed at the stop sign, then accelerated across the highway and into Oak Peterson’s drive. Ned hadn’t yet become accustomed to so many strange cars coming through Center Springs. “Y’all know who that is?”
    Jimmy Fox squinted past Ike. “That’s John T. West.” He resumed his position. “Most folks don’t have any use for him.”
    â€œI don’t neither.” Ned said. “He runs with a couple of other no’counts.”
    Ty Cobb bit his bottom lip, thinking. “Yeah, I’ve always thought it was him and Marty Smallwood who was settin’ fire to hay barns a few years back.”
    Marty’s name caught Ned’s attention. “That’s right.” He stood. “You know, I need to go. See y’all later.”
    He dropped heavily into the front seat of his car, slamming the door against the rain and rubbing his tingling scar for a minute. He slowly drove through the puddles in front of the domino hall and across the oil road between it and Oak’s store.
    He parked alongside John T.’s car and studied the undented front end for a moment before going inside. Unlike Neal Box’s store, Oak’s business seemed like a dungeon even on sunny days. Where Neal had three large double-hung windows on both sides of the frame building, Oak only had two thin, horizontal windows on the east side, up near the ceiling hanging thick with farm implements. The worn wooden floor sagged in places, and many of the dry goods on the shelves had been there