The Cold Heart of Jarvis Turner

People agreed, it was wise to watch your back around Jarvis Turner. He was the kind of man who could stab you in the back just as easy as picking a grape off the vines along Horse Creek Road. Eventually, word got around about his shady business dealings and folks kept their distance from him. Before the stories spread, he had duped, bamboozled, and cheated his way across three counties around the turn of the century.

He scammed his way west from the big muddy river, leaving a trail of debt and heartache like the locals had never seen. He used his finely tuned swindling skills to amass quite a fortune for himself. He owned the biggest and most productive farm within six days’ ride, if you were on a strong and healthy horse. He also owned and operated the only sawmill in the area, and the lumber came from his own property, hundreds of acres of thick forestland. Keep in mind, this whole area was bustling at the time, with farms and homes going up like so many stalks of corn.

Yes, sir. Things were going pretty smoothly for the old shyster there for a while, until he chiseled the wrong family.

Charlie Reuter married a sweet gal from Dunklin County and the local wives described her as a “sturdy woman with birthing hips”. They started having kids right away and that tough woman continued the pattern deep into her forties. It was common to see an entire truckload of the Reuter clan rolling down Pear Tree Road, all smiles and waves on their way out to the fields. It came as no surprise when they ran into hard times. We had an early freeze that caused some crop failures. They had plenty of mouths to feed. It got so bad; I heard some fellows at the barber shop refer to them as “Reuter-beggars”. That is not a kind thing to repeat, for which I apologize.

We had an especially cold winter, and Charlie Reuter sent a few of his boys out to rustle up some work wherever they could. The only place that was hiring was Jarvis Turner’s lumber yard. They had a hard time keeping hired help. I don’t remember the details, but you can guess how that turned out. It went well for ol’ Jarvis, but poorly for the Reuter boys.

Those teenage boys were as hard and rough as hickory trees and swore they would get revenge. Charlie was busier than a bumblebee with only one wing. He couldn’t keep track of them.

One spring night, those mischievous boys got to drinking the potato liquor that Delvin Tubbs makes. They snuck up to Jarvis Turner’s fancy house and hid behind the woodshed. When the old miser came out for firewood, they stuck him with a pitchfork. Those shameless rascals loaded up their truck with the contents of Jarvis Turner’s freezer, plus a huge quantity of vegetables from the root cellar. Before they left, they dragged the old man’s cold carcass down to that fishing spot where Glaize Creek runs into the Meramec River. They wrapped him up in bob wire with a couple of cinder blocks and sank him in the deepest hole.

Those Reuter boys weren’t known for their exceptional brain power. They had no idea what kind of fool-headed move that would turn out to be. They found out soon enough.

When Jarvis turned up missing, the rumors flew like a scattered flock of starlings, or a murder of crows, you might say. Most folks figured ol’ cold-hearted Jarvis finally got what was coming to him. Without a body, very little effort was made by local law enforcement to solve the mystery.

About a month later, Charlie decided to take the whole family catfishing. Every now and again, they would gather under a full moon on the riverbank and fry up some flathead cats with hush puppies, frog legs, and crawdads.  Wouldn’t you know it, Charlie insisted on setting up at his favorite fishing spot at the end of Glaize Creek. Those murdering boys’ faces went pale as they reluctantly trudged through the sawgrass on the way to the old fishing hole. They got a surprise when they arrived.

The stagnant pool was full of fish carcasses, all belly up and white. Charlie and his boys quickly deduced there had been a fish kill. Dead catfish, carp, suckers, gar, and game fish, too. All of them floating in circles, dead as fence posts. The place stunk like Satan’s outhouse.

This type of thing happens occasionally. Sometimes it’s caused by toxic farm chemicals that seep into the soil. Every once in a while, there are inadequate oxygen levels. Naturally, the guilty teenagers assumed this particular problem was caused by the poisonous corpse of the meanest, most cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch west of the Mississippi.

Charlie gathered the clan and headed right back home, grumbling and complaining the whole way. That night, the boys didn’t sleep a wink, tossing and turning amongst their sins. Just after chores the next morning, they got together and decided something had to be done.

The plan was to wait for the next full moon, so visibility would be good. The boys told Charlie they were going raccoon hunting. They brought a long roll of twine and a few hooks used for bailing hay. It took about thirty swings before they snagged something they hoped would prove to be a soaked corpse. It took all their strength to drag it up to shore. The stench was awful. They rolled Jarvis Turner’s decayed remains into a horse blanket and carried the mess up the hill to the pickup truck, cussing and gagging the whole way.

They drove their old truck past Bauer’s Cemetery, across Dry Fork Creek, and turned right on a hidden farm road. The boys knew the dirt roads around here like their own eyelids. The overgrown path ran through an abandoned orchard farm, run by the Von Hagenstein family many years ago. The brothers had hunted out here in happier times with the Von Hagenstein’s youngest boy, before polio took him. In their grief, the Von Hagenstein family abandoned the place not long after.

Struggling through the blackberry brambles, the boys could not help but think of their happy memories. Stalking through these woods, listening to the coon hounds baying into the dark, deciphering their howls. A good hunter could not only decode which dog was howling, but also what he was howling about. It was heaven on Earth to a country boy.

Tonight, however, was more like the exact opposite of heaven.

They had to clear a few fallen limbs from the road to continue, but they gradually made it to their destination. Their plan was to bury the cold-hearted geezer in a sinkhole beneath an ancient cedar tree. With the Von Hagensteins long gone, the two murderous brothers were the only ones that knew about the sinkhole they referred to as the Hole to Hell. Years ago, they threw broken tools or the remains from a slaughter into the hole, only to return in a week or so to find everything had been sucked down deep into the rich, dark soil. When they were little squirts, they speculated that the tools and bones would pop up from the ground in China.

Foolish little boy stuff.

The boys turned into men overnight, dropping the horse blanket and its vile contents into the pit. They watched the mess begin to sink by the fading light of the full moon. Breaking their trance, they hustled back home, hoping their wicked adventure would come to a complete end the moment their heads hit their downy pillows.

The days went on as they commonly do on a farm. Eggs were gathered, crops were harvested, hay was baled. Amid the endless nightmares, the boys tried to put the horrible episode behind them and vowed to avoid evil doings for eternity.

On a warm summer morning, the brothers returned from a neighboring farm. It had taken most of the night to help butcher a hog and they were exhausted. It was rare to come home to an empty house, but they knew everyone was in the west field, picking cucumbers and tomatoes before the sun rose high enough to make farm life miserable. The boys headed straight for their shared bedroom to get a snooze before the gang returned.

On their way past the kitchen, the worn-out boys were drawn to the welcoming smell of recently baked pies. Their mother’s baking skills were legendary, and the boys could not resist the magnetic pull of the enchanting aroma.

Risking their mother’s wrath, they sliced two neat triangles out of the biggest one. They inhaled that delicious pie in a few bites and proceeded upstairs to collapse into a deep sleep.

A few hours later, the rest of the family returned from the fields with a wagon full of vegetables. They commenced organizing the baskets, sorting and storing the harvest as needed. Their tasks were interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream. They recognized the voice as that of their youngest, Lily, who was known to scream at the sight of anything with more than four legs. They had expected Lily would have outgrown the melodramatic behavior by now, but Charlie Reuters recognized that this incident was clearly more serious. He sent a few boys to investigate.

What they found was two teenage boys, lying in their beds, cold as granite. Their eyes were wide open as if staring at the Devil himself. Curiously, the dead boys’ hair had turned white as snow.

Amidst the shock and tears, they discovered the pie, two slices missing. They did not have a scientific method for testing the pies as is the modern practice. They quickly decided it was not worth the risk. They burned the pies in a bonfire near the tool shed, while their unconsolable mother wept in grief.

It was a dirty shame. The girls had spent hours picking the juicy blackberries from the thick brambles at the abandoned Von Hagenstein farm.

END