If you drive south out of Van Buren, Missouri, on Big Spring Road and take a right on County Road 60-102, you’ll see that pretty soon it becomes Pea Vine Road. Pea Vine continues south along the western edge of Sweezie Hollow all the way to the Current River where it winds along the riverbank, crosses over the Big Spring tributary, bends to the west, and then loops northward back to Van Buren, that is, if you make the correct turns along the way. Big Spring is the largest spring in the Ozarks, gushing some 280 million gallons of crystal clear water into the Current River every day. Van Buren and its environs are known as the “heart of the Ozarks” because of our rugged hills, running rivers, and deep valleys.
And we’re also known for our cast of characters. Take Mr. Levin, for example, whose cabin sits atop Cave Spring. His great-grandparents had immigrated with a group of fifty Russian Jews to the Arkansas Ozarks before the Civil War. They were struggling to get by on their hard-scrabble farms when yellow fever, malaria, and a couple of other virulent bugs scattered them from Batesville, up the Arkansas River, all the way to the Mississippi River, and on to Memphis and St. Louis. For some reason, the ancestral Levins traveled north to homestead the hillside where Mr. Levin still lived. He seemed to be harmless, and he spoke with no accent, and while his whiskers were wild, they were no wilder than many another old Ozarker. Rumor, however, had it that he had acquired mystic powers from the kabbalah of his Jewish forbears. Joey Bitterman told a story that was famous in this regard. Joey said he was coon hunting when his dog Buddy trailed a raccoon in the direction of Mr. Levin’s property; Joey had just crested the ridge behind the cabin, and Buddy was running full tilt down the hill when he suddenly recoiled like he had been shot, flipped onto his back, and ran howling back up the hill, past Joey, all the way back to the Bitterman house. Joey said it was like Mr. Levin had a force field around his cabin.
So, Mr. Levin was a possibility.
Then there was Miss Melva Simples, spinster sister of Mrs. Marvel Burnett, who was the school librarian and who was thoroughly and boringly respectable. The same was not true of Miss Melva, who lived in Sweezie Hollow in a stone house—we called it a “giraffe house” because brown flagstones had been mortared into the wall with white grout, which made the exterior resemble the hide of a giraffe—and Miss Melva was rumored to be a witch. Well, not a witch exactly, but someone who had the “third eye” and could see the future. Miss Melva had never cut her hair, and if you happened to look in her window at night, you would see her hair falling down her back like a gray-streaked nun’s habit. Before she went out in public, she wound her hair into a round, gray cap and bobby pinned it, so the coil sat on top of her head like a cinnamon roll. She had large watery eyes, and her lipstick seeped into the little wrinkles around her mouth. Many a lovelorn youth had gone to Miss Melva for a glimpse into the unknown, and the story went that she never failed in her predictions. Whether or not she would be an accessory to revenge was another question altogether.
Miss Melva was another possibility.
Then there was Tina Thomas, who lived in an apartment over Buckley’s Five and Dime in Van Buren. She was different from the other two because she was still young, relatively speaking, somewhere in her mid-thirties and attractive in a heavy-hipped, thick-lipped way. Like Miss Melva she was unmarried, but unlike Miss Melva she was no virgin (if, in fact, Miss Melva was a virgin; who can say what erotic adventures Melva may have pursued in her youth?). Some said that Tina Thomas was a whore, but others that she “gave it away” because she was a nymphomaniac who couldn’t break the habit and didn’t really want to. She had moved to the Ozarks from San Francisco in 1965—a newcomer to an area where newcomers are always suspect, especially if they go about braless or wear a ring in their nose or enjoy sex, all of which Tina did. Or so went the rumors. How or why she chose to settle in Van Buren no one knew.
It was also said that she could “do things,” and not just sexual things. Weird things, occult things.
For example, Will Walters and Stu Stanford said they went to her apartment ostensibly to sell magazines but really to see if she might be as promiscuous as they had heard (and hoped). They knocked on the door, and she opened it wearing only a see through shift, which inflated their hopes. She apologized for her deshabille and invited them in but quickly retreated to her bedroom to put on a bathrobe. Their hopes deflated. They explained they were selling magazines for the Van Buren High School Marching Band, and she listened patiently and then asked if they would like some tea. Their hopes inflated. They said, yes, of course, though neither of them had ever had a cup of hot tea and learned soon enough they didn’t like it. When she lit a pipe, their hopes swelled. Then she said in a husky whisper, “I know what you want.” Their hopes all but burst. “It’s true, I do what I want but not with little boys. And certainly not with you.” Their hopes drooped into limp disappointment. “But let me show you something instead.” She handed them the pipe, of which they partook, went back into her bedroom, and returned with a Ouija board. She set the board on the kitchen table with and motioned to Will and Stu to sit beside her. Then according to the boys—I’m not making this up—the planchette was commandeered by a demon that led them down, down into the darkest chambers of hell and showed them such horrors that in time Will went on to become a priest at St. Michael’s and Stu a deacon in the Van Buren First Baptist Church.
I decided to go with Tina.
* * *
Sunday afternoon, November 21st, 1975: The river was running high from the fall rains, and the resorts had emptied out for Thanksgiving. The “Heart of the Ozarks” was beating more calmly. I borrowed my parents’ station wagon and drove to Van Buren. I turned off 103 onto Chicopee Street and parked in front of Wilson’s Five and Dime. A short stairway on the left led up to a door on the second floor, so I climbed up and was about to knock when the door opened, and there stood Tina Thomas, her heavy lips painted purple and her dark brown hair pulled back. She wore a maroon and gold top, cut low, and a pleated skirt of gray and dark blue. She looked for all the world like a gypsy. She was only missing the gold hoop earrings.
“Come in,” she said.
I did, and I asked her, “How did you know I was there?”
She smiled. “Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I winced when I said, “ma’am.” Any latent hope that she might be more affectionate with me than she had been with Stu and Will evaporated.
I sat on the sofa, and she put the cup on the coffee table.
“Be careful, it’s hot.”
I said, “Thank you,” and she sat beside me and asked me my name, and I told her, and she asked me what I wanted, and I told her about Jenn-if though I said her full name, Jennifer, not wanting to confuse any spirits who might be listening.
Tina said, “Ah, yes, Jennifer Briggs. She’s such a pretty girl and sweet, too. I know her mother well. So, what’s the problem?”
“Her boyfriend. He’s hurting her, and she needs to be saved from him.”
“Why do you think that?” So, I told her about the red marks around her wrists and what they surely meant, though I’ll admit I was embarrassed to say it out loud.
“It sounds to me like you have an over-active imagination. Tell me, do you know the root of the word ‘obsession’?”
“No, ma’am.” Damn! Why do I keep saying “ma’am”?
“It’s from obsidere—it means to lay siege to. A man who is obsessed is literally ‘under siege,’ held captive or even hostage by some stronger force. Young people, in fact, almost all people, are obsessed by sex. You yourself are held captive by pictures in magazines. But be careful: What you see in your mind may vomit out in a way you never expected.”
“I burned the magazines and scattered the ashes in the river.”
“But the images are still in your head.”
“Miss Thomas, I didn’t come here to talk about me. I came here because I’m concerned about Jennifer.”
“You didn’t come here out of concern for Jennifer! You came here because you want to possess her yourself. You want her to be obsessed by you.”
“I would be better for her than . . . he . . . is.”
“That’s what every jealous lover thinks. Listen, in matters like this, you have only three ways, and none of them is guaranteed to work, whatever ‘work’ means to you. One, you can try to defeat Benjamin by becoming better at football or lifting more weights or fighting him. That’s ‘the way of force.’ Two, you could try to bring him down by spreading lies and rumors about him, which might also bring him down in her eyes. That’s ‘the way of fraud.’ Of course, if you are too obvious about it, you’ll look like an envious fool and be disgraced before Jennifer and the rest of the school. Or three, you could consider that you might be wrong about Benjamin and focus on improving who you are, not just physically but spiritually and psychologically, too. That’s called ‘the way of reason.’”
“I have no time for number three. He’s hurting her; I know he is. She was almost crying the last time I talked to her. And number one won’t work either: I’m too small for football—I’d get crushed—and he’d beat the hell out of me if I tried to fight him. I could start lifting weights, but I can’t do it in time to save Jennifer. I already get better grades than he does, but no one cares about that. So, that leaves number two, ‘the way of fraud’. Tell me about that.”
“I won’t tell you anything, but I’ll give you a book to read.” She went to a bookcase across the room and came back with a slim volume bound in leather and The Prince embossed in gilt on the cover. “This will give you an outline for the revenge you seek. But beware, my skinny, envious friend. These things have a way of boomeranging when we least expect them, too.”
“I’m willing to risk anything for Jennifer!” I said, and I thought I sounded noble when I said it.