Anyway, with THAT explosion of Stacey Graves having been Indian hanging in the air above me and Christine Gillette, she activated her inner demolition man and detonated the next charge, even sort of acted it out so I’d be sure to get it. What she did in her wheelchair was reach her right arm up for the big iron hook coming in under Stacey Graves’ chin, gouging up into her head like she was a fish wriggling on a trotline. And then her left hand joined her right, and using the strength of both she pulled herself up off that black hook, which Christine Gillette said was a good 2
dollar one, which is probably a fact we could check to verify the truthfulness of her story.
Because of the barb at the point of that hook that caught in this little girl’s chin right at the very end, when she was already trying to fall away and do what Stacey Graves DOES, which you of course already know from having lived here for so long and heard the stories, the final releasing of her hands made her hang sideways by only her jaw and everybody thought it was going to crack off and tear away. But then only SOME skin tore instead and runny black blood spurted out and then she was off the hook and to the races, and everybody was shrieking and pulling their hair and going to church first thing and promising not to go across the lake for elk anymore, which is kind of the secret real birth of the national forest if you ask me.
And Christine Gillette saw all of this 1st hand, Mr. Holmes. She was 14 that year. And the way I know she’s not making it up is that the story went on after that, and not because she was just trying to keep me there since nobody ever visits her according to the sheet I had to sign.
After what happened HAPPENED, nobody would go out onto the old pier anymore. Not even Cross Bull Joe to get his truck. So then one morning they heard a cracking and crashing sound, and by the time anybody looked out there, the old pier had mostly collapsed under the weight of that tow truck, probably when one bird too many landed on that black hook and that tall V of pipe holding the cable. If a pier can be a camel’s back, then a bird can be a straw, right?
Christine Gillette’s dad told her he would give her 1 whole dime if she would swim out there and untie that 2 dollar hook for him, but Christine Gillette says that her life was worth more than ten cents, which back then was a lot more than today of course.
So that hook’s still out there, I guess. And maybe that truck too, all rotted and flaked away, the window glass all turned to crumbles.
And also Stacey Graves, Mr. Holmes.
You had to know that’s where I was going.
So in conclusion and wrap up for the WHOLE SEMESTER including my course grade which maybe shouldn’t be history, what we thought was just fiction has in fact a basis in eyewitness testimony. And the way you can know I didn’t make this up is that if I were the one coming up with that then at the end of the story Christine Gillette would huff air out through her nose and two plugs of mud would splat onto the ground between us, and then I’d look up the moment after a shape just left from looking in the window, and there would probably be scary piano and violin playing too.
But none of that, sir.
Christine Gillette just reached a shaky hand for her coffee cup of only water, and I helped her by guiding the cup closer to her hand, and then held my breath when she drank because it was always about to spill but never did.
Then when I was leaving after many nods and grins and thank you’s, me the whole time imagining being 14 and seeing a live dead girl hauled up from the cold depths, Christine Gillette hummed a little bit, sir. It stopped me. I looked back to see what was up and if maybe she was having an episode or what.
“We used to jump rope to it,” she explained, and then added that they would jump rope to it when they could steal a rope from their dads’ shops or the beds of their trucks or from the “tack” shed.
“Jump rope to what?” I asked, because the good interviewer prompts with pertinent facts and phrases, as you told us.
What Christine Gillette came back with, sir, was straight out of a Freddy dream pretty much, and you know I don’t write poetry, so this is all her 100%: Stacey Stacey Stacey Graves
Born to put you in your grave
You see her in the dark of night
And once you do you’re lost from sight
Look for water, look for blood
Look for footprints in the mud
You never see her walk on grass
Don’t slow down, she’ll get your—
Christine Gillette didn’t do the obvious rhyming word, but she didn’t need to. I felt the shiver all the same, and am still hearing her and her friends’ feet slapping the packed dirt as they chant this, being sure to get indoors before dark, because Stacey Graves isn’t just a campfire story, Mr. Holmes.