The Peckerwood Coat of Arms Read online

  Petey sprayed some sort of liquid on my tender skin. Its coolness felt like a pardon from Heaven. The momentary relief combined with the Finn’s father’s calm, kind words allowed me to relax. Again that inner voice spoke up, assuring me everything was okay. I tried not to think about what might happen and just focused on the present. Finn’s parents asked me questions about my college courses and about my grandmother. They made me feel special, wanted.

  Petey finished his work. Still without speaking, he wrapped my tattoo in plastic, the kind used to cover food. I tried to hand him the sixty dollars, but he turned away. Finn appeared next to me and helped me rise.

  “This one’s on the house.”

  I started to argue, but, really, I wondered how I’d get back to Lufkin with no money. It was a good hundred miles, and I knew Marielle and Jesús wouldn’t offer me a cent on gas or road snacks.

  “Thanks, Petey,” I called back over my shoulder. For the first time, Petey met my eyes. A shiver rolled through me even though he smiled and waved. I shook off the creepy feeling. It was just the accumulation of a long evening and meeting these odd, but nice, people. I waved back and let Finn lead me out of the tent, now empty and dark, closed down for the night. We walked into the chilly fall evening.

  * * *

  Only a few stragglers wandered the narrow pathways of the makeshift carnival. The automotive thunder on the freeway had died down to a tolerable hum. Around us, workers tore down the rides and the toss-til-you-win booths.

  “Thanks,” I told Finn. “I thought tonight was a bust, but you and your family made it fun.”

  “Hope we didn’t creep you out,” he said. “Granny died last month. Cancer. It’s not the same without her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Dying’s part of living, I guess.” Finn waved to other workers as we walked through the dying festivities. “My great-uncle, her brother, usually travels with us. But he decided to take the rest of the year off. Too bad. He’d have loved meeting you.” He stopped and faced me. “He’s like you. He sees those who’ve passed from the plane of the living.”

  Here we go. The bad shit that always happens when people know about me will happen. I braced myself to run. Then, something new hit me. I’d always been afraid of the part of me that was different, the part that made me see ghosts. I thought myself an oddity, maybe a monster. I had transferred those feelings onto Finn, who’d been nothing but nice. Maybe the problem isn’t me but the company I keep. Finn smiled.

  “Don’t fear what you are, Peri Jean. Find that special place and those special people who love and appreciate you for who you are.” He hugged me. I should have been freaked out, a stranger hugging me, but I wasn’t. Not really. It felt right coming from Finn. I hugged him back, feeling good about myself for the first time since prom night in Gaslight City.

  “There she is,” Jesús yelled from somewhere behind me.

  I broke the hug and turned. My good feelings swirled away. My travel companions straggled toward me, their faces pinched in anger. I turned back to say something to Finn, but he’d already walked away. As though sensing my eyes on his back, he raised a hand in farewell.

  “Bye,” I whispered.

  “Where did you go?” Marielle leaned into my face. “We’ve been ready to leave for hours.”

  I wanted to knock her silly but knew I had to live with her a couple more months. Maybe I wouldn’t shove her head in the toilet between now and then.

  “Yeah,” Jesús said. “If you’d just given us your car keys—”

  “You could have left me here, right?” I dug out my car keys, knowing full well they’d have left me at the carnival if they could have. “Understand this: it will be a cold fucking day in hell before I trust you with my daddy’s car.”

  Jesús mumbled a retort. I bit back an insult. I did have to sleep under the same roof with them.

  We passed through the entrance gates. A familiar face caught my eye. I stopped to stare at a flyer taped to the front of a booth containing a roulette wheel and a bunch of stuffed monkeys.

  The flyer, which showed a picture of the same Petey who tattooed me not an hour earlier, read, “Please help the family of Peter Goya. Peter lost his battle with diabetes on the same night his grandmother died of cancer. The cost of two funerals has put the Goya in financial dire straits. All proceeds from this game of chance will go to help them recover.”

  * * *

  The man who tattooed me was a dead man. A ghost. A block of ice formed in my stomach and spread through my body, and I staggered several steps. Finn and his family sat there and talked to me while the ghost tattooed me. They acted like I was a special guest at a party. I felt the beginnings of shame. I’d let myself be tricked again.

  I glanced back into the carnival, fury taking hold, just hoping I could catch a glimpse of Finn. Then, I remembered his hug, how good he and his family made me feel. I let it go. After all, a tattoo from a ghost was probably fitting for an oddball like me.

  I poked the tattoo to make sure it was real. My tender skin sent up a shout of pain, and I winced. It’s real, all right.

  Marielle saw what I’d done and finally noticed my tattoo. “You got a tattoo here? I didn’t see where they were giving tattoos.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me under a lamp. “Oh, it’s awful. Looks like a peckerwood coat of arms. Typical redneck tattoo.”

  She and Jesús locked eyes. Something passed between them, and they cracked up. Face heating, I stared down at the tattoo. Did it look like a peckerwood coat of arms? If it did, now I was stuck with it. And it hadn’t even been what I wanted in the first place. Cringing with embarrassment and trying to ignore their laughter, I approached the man behind the roulette wheel.

  Barely glancing at me, he said, “Closed.”

  “Can I just make a donation?”

  The man glanced up from disassembling the roulette wheel and said, “Of course.”

  I dug ten dollars out of my wallet and handed it to him. Smiling, he thanked me and handed me a polka-dotted monkey. Though Finn allowed me to be tattooed by a ghost, he’d been nicer to me than Marielle or Jesús, who lived with me. His family had treated me better than people I’d known all my life. They were good people. Maybe a little weird, but good.

  “If you two want a ride back to Lufkin, you best come on.” I said to Marielle and Jesús.

  As we passed into the parking lot, I leaned close to Marielle and said, “You call me or my tattoo peckerwood or redneck again, and I’ll wait until you’re sleeping and beat you with a baseball bat.”

  Not surprisingly, the ride back to Lufkin was silent. I spent the whole two hours thinking about the way I’d always perceived myself. Finn told me to find the right people. What if they aren’t out there? They must be if Finn found me. I just needed to look harder.

  * * *

  The next day, I took a picture of my peckerwood coat of arms tattoo and mailed it to my grandmother. I knew she wouldn’t like it. She grew up thinking only outlaws, military men, and whores got tattooed. But I never expected the response I got.

  A few days after I mailed the picture, Marielle’s house phone rang. I answered.

  “Where’d you get that tattoo?” Memaw’s scratchy old voice boiled out of the speaker, hot and angry.

  My heart picked up speed. I expected annoyance. Her tone went beyond that.

  “A-At a roadside carnival in H-Houston.” I couldn’t help stuttering. Memaw rarely sounded this angry, especially not since I’d moved two hours away from her.

  “But who suggested you get that design?”

  Up to that point, I’d sort of blocked out the part about my tattoo coming from a ghost. My connection with the spirit world made Memaw intensely uncomfortable. No way I’d tell her. I gave her an edited version of the story.

  She listened without interrupting, only drawing in her breath when I mentioned Finn’s dead grandmother. When I finished, she was silent so long, my mouth started spewing nervous words.

 
; “I shouldn’t have gotten a tattoo at a carnival. It was probably a hundred different kinds of unsanitary.” I paused, wanting her to absolve me. She didn’t, and I babbled some more. “I’m sorry I made you worry, sending the picture.”

  Still, she said nothing. I racked my brain, trying to figure out how to make this right. She was all I had.

  “Memaw? You still there?”

  “I am, honey. I’m sorry I got so upset with you.” She heaved a sigh and launched into her lecture. “It’s just you hear about people getting diseases from those tattoo places. That one doesn’t sound like it was too clean.”

  I apologized again. My mind went back over her response. She’d been more upset about the design than the tattoo itself. I recalled that sharp intake of breath when I told her about Finn’s grandmother. I would have kept on rolling it over in my mind, looking for an answer, but Memaw said something that threw me for a loop.

  “Chase and Felicia got married last weekend. She’s pregnant, I think.” I heard her light a cigarette. “Figured you ought to know before you came home for Christmas.”

  The subject of the tattoo forgotten, I asked her a million questions about the first guy who broke my heart and the woman he used to do it. I wished I could go back to prom night and beat her up again.

  * * *

  Leticia Gregson Mace hung up the phone, her hand shaking so hard she dropped it on the floor. She scrambled it to grab it and stubbed her toe on the heavy, antique pie safe next to the kitchen table. She thumped down on the floor, holding her foot and rocking. Tears squeezed out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

  So Ruth, her twin sister, was dead of cancer. Her heart ached. She and Ruth hadn’t spoken for decades. And now Ruth was dead. Gone forever. Leticia put her face in her hands and sobbed.

  Finished, she thought about the people Peri Jean met. Obviously her twin sister, Ruth’s, children and grandchildren. Now they knew about Peri Jean. Would they take her away? They’d branded her so others would know who she belonged to.

  She stared at the phone. She ought to call Peri Jean back, talk her into coming home to Gaslight City. It wouldn’t be hard. She heard the uncertainty in her granddaughter’s voice every time they talked. She could keep an eye on her here, keep those people away from her.

  Leticia feared nothing as much as her family, even after all these years. Con artists like them eventually ended up in hot water. Sometimes they ended up dead or got innocent people killed.

  She lifted the phone from its cradle and started dialing. Before the phone on the other end even rang, she hung up. Manipulating Peri Jean into coming home would be a mistake. She had to let her go, so her beloved granddaughter could learn to take care of herself.

  I have to call her. I need to warn her. They’ve marked her. Now they’ll always know her. She picked up the phone then hung it up again. But, once she knows about them, she’ll be curious about them. Maybe seek them out. She turned away from the phone and took deep breaths to slow her racing heart.

  “I’ll bide my time,” she said to the empty room. “Only tell her when I’ve got to.”

  She peered out her window at the blustery fall day. As she mused about Peri Jean’s future, a raven swooped down and landed on her mimosa tree. Leticia drew in a sharp breath and took a quick step backward. Then her stubborn nature took over. She rapped on the window until the bird cocked its head in her direction.

  “You can’t have her,” she growled through the glass. “Now get outta here.”

  The bird flew off. But for how long?

  Thanks for reading “The Peckerwood Coat of Arms.” If you enjoyed this story, be sure to check out the rest of the Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thriller series. Click here to see what you’re missing!

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  About the Author

  Catie Rhodes is the author of the Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers. Her short stories have appeared in Tales from the Mist, Allegories of the Tarot, and Let’s Scare Cancer to Death.

  Born behind the pine curtain in East Texas, Catie grew up in a family of world champion liars. The stories they told molded Catie into a purveyor of her own brand of lies and legends. One day, she found the courage to start writing down her stories. It changed her life forever.

  Catie Rhodes lives steps from the Sam Houston National Forest with her long-suffering husband and her armpit terrorist of a little dog.

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  The Peckerwood Coat of Arms

  A Peri Jean Mace Short Story

  Copyright © 2013 Catie Rhodes.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by: Long Roads and Dark Ends Press

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission from the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  First Printing, 2013

  Rhodes, Catie.

  The Peckerwood Coat of Arms/ Catie Rhodes. — 1st ed.

  Visit the author website: www.catierhodes.com