Wormfood by Jeff Jacobson

slightly with the motion of the truck. Then we were over the top of the foothill and shuddering down the other side into the deep hollow where the Sawyer brothers lived. I pulled my eyes away from my bloody hand and twisted around so I could see through the two-inch gap in the wooden slats.
    The weak headlights splashed over a tangle of old fig trees that hadnever been pruned. A quagmire of rotten figs blanketed the ground beneath the trees. As we got closer, I heard a low buzzing fade in and out. It took me a moment, but when a wasp landed on the steer and crawled around, I realized what was causing the buzzing. I had never heard or seen wasps out at night before, and it made my skin crawl.
    A large, two-story farmhouse loomed up at odd angles into the circle of fig trees. It almost looked like the trees and the house were resting on each other for support. Faded white paint peeled away from the wooden sides in long, ragged strips. The gutters, filled with dirt and leaves and rainwater, had been partially torn away from the house by the summer storms. The whole place reminded me of some blocky gray spider with broken legs, waiting patiently for unsuspecting prey in a half-finished web. The truck bounced past the house and the headlights found the barn.
    It squatted on a low hill to the right of the house. Junior swung the truck in a tight circle, oversized tires crunching against the irregular patches of gravel, reversed with a jolt, and backed toward the large sliding doors in the center of the barn. As we swung around I caught a glimpse of the backyard.
    Here, the fig trees separated almost reluctantly away from the house and circled around a forest of giant weeds that filled the open space like rioting green wildfire. I could just make out the vague shapes of the corpses of five or six lawnmowers lurking in the tall Johnsongrass. I wondered if they’d died while valiantly trying to cut those weeds, killed in action. Strange plants in cracked ceramic pots hung haphazardly from the wooden beams, spaced unevenly along the sagging eve.
    Something was burning in the middle of the backyard. Thick, dark smoke billowed from what looked like a burn barrel. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a small figure next to the barrel, a woman maybe, hunched over a large metal tub. It kind of looked like she was washing clothes or something. The fire sent flickering, leaping shadows against the house and I couldn’t see clearly.
    But I knew it was Pearl.
    The headlights spilled over onto the fig trees. I kept watching the gaunt, dark figure. The tub looked like it was full of water or some other liquid, and Pearl was holding something under the water with her good arm. The other one, the one that I heard had gotten caught and chewed on by the lawn mower, she kept close to her body, curled around her torso. She wore a shapeless house dress, but I could tell she was thin, I mean, real thin. Her body looked like nothing more than a skeleton loosely wrapped in shredded newspaper. Long, stringy hair hung over her head, obscuring her face.
    I was glad, but a little disappointed too, because I had also heard that the lawn mower had gotten hold of her face as well when it jerked her arm into the spinning blade.
    Every once in a while her good arm, the one holding whatever it was in the tub, would give a little shiver. Then, finally, she lifted the thing out of the tub. It was some sort of lumpy cloth sack; a white pillowcase trapping a small, dense object. She turned away from me and twisted around to the burn barrel.
    The truck stopped with a jerk and as the engine rumbled softly I heard a little moaning kind of chant from the backyard. No real words that I could tell, just a lot of mumbled babbling, but uttered in a low, kind of singsong way. It almost sounded like she wanted to sing louder, but her lungs wouldn’t let her. She reached into the sack and lifted out a dead, wet kitten.
    I don’t know if I gasped or swallowed too loud or