Mystery Walk

Mystery Walk

Prologue

"Yes," the woman said at last, lifting her finely shaped chin from where it had rested against one thin brown hand, her elbow supported in turn on the armrest of a cherrywood rocking chair. She'd been staring into the fire as the two rawboned men in their patched overcoats and scuffed workboots had been talking. Though she was outwardly thin and fragile, the woman had deep-set hazel eyes that radiated a thoughtful inner strength. Her name was Ramona Creekmore, and she was one-fourth Choctaw Indian; the breed blood showed in her sharp, proud cheekbones, in the lustrous russet of her shoulder-length hair, and in the eyes that were as dark and placid as a forest pond at midnight.

When she spoke, John Creekmore shifted uneasily in his chair across the room. He'd pulled himself out of the way as they'd been talking, wanting to be no part of what was being said. He'd put his dog-eared Bible in his lap and looked into the fire and thought that Hell was all around him now, quickly closing in upon him. He had a long, lean, and weathered face, cracked with lines like a thin pane of autumn ice. His hair was thick and curly and reddish-brown, his eyes a clear ice-blue; Ramona had told him many times that she could see the sky in them, clouds when he was angry and rain when he was sad. Now, if she had looked into his eyes closely enough, she might've seen the approaching storm.

The two men hadn't moved. They were leaning on each side of the fireplace like long blue-jeaned bookends. John placed his hands on his Bible and watched the back of Ramona's head.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I'll come."

"No she won't!" John said harshly. The two men glanced at him, then waited for the woman to speak again. That angered him, and he said, "You two have made the trip up from Chapin for nothin'! It bein' such a cold day and all, I'm sorry for you. I know why you're here, and I know why you think my Ramona can help you, but that's all over now. It's in the past, and we're both tryin' to forget it." He rose to his feet, still clutching his Bible. He stood tall, at six-three, and his broad shoulders stretched the red flannel shirt he wore. "My wife can't help you. Don't you men see that she's eight months along?"

Ramona touched her stomach gently. Sometimes she could feel the baby kicking, but right now he—yes, it would be a boy, it had to be a boy, for her husband's sake—lay perfectly still, as if minding his manners because they had company. But she could feel his heart beating deep within her, like the soft fluttering of a bird aching to take flight.

"Mr Creekmore," the taller man said quietly; his name was Stanton, and he wore a full winter beard flecked with gray. He was pale and gaunt, and John figured he wasn't too far from eating bootsole soup. "We can't go on like this, don't you understand?" The man's narrow face was pinched, as if in pain. "My God, man, we just can't!"

"Don't you come in my house and take the Lord's name in vain!" John thundered. He stepped forward, raising his Bible like a weapon. "If you people in Chapin followed the Holy Word like you should, then maybe you wouldn't have this trouble! Maybe this is God's way of lettin' you know you've been sinners. Maybe it's meant to—"

"That ain't the way it is," the second man, named Zachary, said wearily. He turned toward the fire, kicking at errant chips of wood. "Lord knows we didn't want to come here. But . . . it's a painful thing and not somethin' that you want to talk about or think about too much. People know about your wife, Mr. Creekmore; you can't deny that they do. Oh, not everybody, I mean, but a few people. People who've had a need. And now ..." Zachary looked over his shoulder, directly at the woman. "We have the need."

"But you don't have the right!"

Zachary nodded. "Yes, that may be. But we had to come, and we had to ask, and now we have to hear the answer."

"I've given it." John raised the Bible high, firelight licking at the battered leather binding. "What you need is this, not my wife."

"Mr. Creekmore," Zachary said, "you don't understand, I'm Chapin's minister."

John's mouth hung open. The blood seemed to rush from his face, and the Bible slowly came down to his side. "Minister?" he echoed. "And you . . . you've seen this thing?"

"I've seen it," Stanton said, and quickly averted his gaze to the fire. "Oh, yeah, I've seen the thing. Not too clear or too close, mind you . . . but I've seen it."

There was a long moment of silence between the men. The firewood popped and sizzled quietly, and the November wind crooned across the roof. Ramona rocked in her chair with her hands across her belly and watched John.

"So you see," the minister said, "we didn't want to come. But it . . . it's an unholy thing not to try to do something. I've done all I could, which wasn't so much, I guess. Like I say, there are folks who know about your wife, and that's how we found out about her. I prayed to God about this, and Lord knows I don't understand it, but we had to come here and ask. Do you see, Mr Creekmore?"

John sighed and sat back down. His face was slack-jawed, his eyes grim. "No, I don't. Nothin' I see about it a'tall." But now he'd turned his attention to his wife and was waiting for her response. The Bible felt cool in his hands, like a metal shield. "Ain't no such thing," he said. "Never has been. Never will be."

Ramona turned her head slightly toward him, her delicate profile etched by the firelight. The two men were waiting, and they'd come a long way on a cold afternoon with a real need, and now they would have to have their answer She said to the minister, "Please leave us alone for a few minutes."

"Surely, ma'am. We'll just go out and wait in the truck." The two men went outside into the deepening gray light, and before the door shut, a cold wind whipped through and fanned the hearth flames into a crackling fury.

She rocked silently for a moment, waiting for him to speak. He said, "Well? Which is it?"

"I have to go."

John let out a long deep sigh. "I thought things were going to be different," he said. "I thought you wouldn't ... do those things anymore."

"I never agreed to that. I never could."

"It's unholy, Ramona. You're in danger of Hell, don't you know that?"

"Whose Hell, John? Yours? No, I don't believe in that kind of Hell. Not at the center of the world, not with devils carrying pitchforks. But Hell is right here on earth, John, and people can step into it without knowing, and they can't get out—"

"Stop it!" He rose abruptly from the chair and strode toward the fireplace. Ramona reached out and grasped his hand, pressing it against her warm cheek.

"Don't you understand that I try to do my best?" she asked softly, her voice quavering. "That's all there is in this world: to try to do the best you can. ..."

John suddenly sank down on his knees beside her and kissed her hand, and when her knuckles were pressed against his cheek she felt the wetness of a tear. "I love you, Ramona; Lord knows I do, and I love the child you're gonna give me. But I can't say yes to these things. I just . . . can't. ..." His voice cracked. He released her hand and stood up, his back toward her "It's up to you, I guess. It always has been. It's unholy, that's all I know, and if you want to walk that path then God help you." He winced as he heard her rise from the rocker.

She gently touched his shoulder, but he didn't turn toward her "It's not that I want to walk it," she said. "It's that I was born to. I have to go with them." She left him, going into the small bedroom where tiny pipings of wind shrilled through minute cracks in the pinewood walls. Just above the bed's headboard hung a beautifully detailed piece of needlepoint showing a forest in the flaming reds and oranges of autumn; it was the view from the house's front porch. Near a large maple wood chest of drawers—a wedding present from her mother—hung a 1951 Sears and Roebuck calendar; the first fifteen days of November had been crossed out.

Ramona struggled into an oversize pair of dungarees—her stomach was so big!—and a heavy brown sweater. She put on thick brown socks and her penny loafers, then tied a pale pink scarf around her head. The weather had snapped after a long warm Indian summer, and rain clouds had tumbled down from the north. Chill Novembers were rare in Alabama, but this one was a gray, hulking bear with a coat of freezing rain. As she struggled into her old plaid coat, she realized John was watching her from the doorway. He was whittling a bit of wood with his penknife, and when she said, "Do you want to go with us?" he turned and sank down into his chair again. No, of course not, she thought. She would have to do this alone, as always.

The two men were waiting patiently in their old green Ford pickup truck. Ramona walked to the truck through the swirling wind and saw that most of the dead brown leaves in the elm, ash, and pecan trees around the small farmhouse were still fixed securely to their branches like tenacious, wrinkled bats. That, Ramona knew, and the large number of blackbirds she'd seen out in the barren cornfield, were sure signs of a hard winter to come.

Zachary opened the door for her and she said, "I'm ready now." As they drove away from the house, along a narrow dirt road that cut through the pine forest and connected with Fayette County Road 35, Ramona looked back over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of John watching from a window. A sadness ached within her, and she quickly looked away.

The truck reached the potholed county road and turned north, away from the small scattering of farms and houses that made up the town of Hawthorne. Fifteen miles north lay the booming town of Fayette, population a little over three thousand, and forty miles to the northeast was Chapin, which, with almost four hundred people, was a bit larger than Hawthorne.

Once on the road, Zachary told Ramona the story: It had happened almost two years ago, when a farmer named Joe Rawlings had been driving his wife Cass to a square dance just north of Chapin. He was a good Christian man, Zachary explained, and no one could understand why or how it had happened ... or why it kept happening. Their truck had for some reason veered off the road and slammed at forty-five miles an hour into the Hangman's Oak. Maybe it wasn't so hard to figure out, Zachary said; it had been raining that night and the road was slippery. Four others had been killed at the Hangman's Oak curve as well, the minister told her; accidents happen there all the time. A couple of months later, some kids driving to a high-school dance had seen it. A state trooper had said he'd seen it, too. So had an old man named Walters and—worst of all—so had Cass Rawlings's sister Tessa. It had been Tessa who'd begged the minister for help.

The miles rolled past. Darkness started spreading. They passed abandoned gas stations and empty houses consumed by dense seas of kudzu. Thin evergreens swayed against a sky seething with the threat of freezing rain. Stanton switched on the headlights; one of them cast a murky yellowish glow, like light seen through a diseased eye. "Mind if we have music?" he asked, a.nervous quaver in his voice. When nobody spoke he turned on the radio, and from the cheap Philco Hank Williams was in the middle of singing about those chains he wore around his heart. Gusts of wind alternately pushed and tugged at the pickup, sweeping dead leaves from the overhanging trees and making them dance like brown bones in the road.

Stanton turned the dial, one eye on the snake-spine of the road ahead. Faraway voices and music floated past on a sea of static. And then a solid, burly, and authoritative voice boomed out from the tinny speaker: "You can't fool Jesus, neighbor, nosiree! And you can't lie to Jesus either!" The voice paused for a gulp of air, then steamed ahead; to Ramona it sounded rich and thick, like fine close-grained wood, but somehow sheened with an oily layer of shellac. "Nosiree, you can't make promises that you don't keep, neighbor, 'cause there's a tab bein' kept in Heaven and your name's right there on it! And if you go get yourself in trouble and you say, 'Jeeeesus, you get me out of this one and I'll put five dollars in the plate come Sunday morning,' and you go back on that promise, then . . . neighbor . . . WATCH OUT! Yes, watch out, 'cause Jesus don't forget!"

"Jimmy Jed Falconer," Zachary said. "That's coming from Fayette. He preaches a powerful message."

"Saw him preach in Tuscaloosa once," Stanton replied. "He filled up a tent as big as a football field."

Ramona closed her eyes, her hands laced across her stomach. The booming voice continued, and in it was a smooth, sure power that made her slightly uneasy. She tried to concentrate on what had to be done, but Falconer's voice kept getting in the way.

In another half-hour they passed through the center of quiet Chapin—like Hawthorne, blink your eyes and you missed it. Then they were curving in the darkness on a narrow road shouldered by underbrush, skeletal trees, and an occasional house fallen to ruin. Ramona noticed that Stanton's hands had clenched more tightly on the steering wheel, and she knew they must be almost there.

"It's just ahead." The minister reached forward and turned off the radio.

The truck rounded a bend and slowed. Ramona suddenly felt the life in her belly give a strong kick, then subside. The truck's headlights glanced off a huge, gnarled oak whose branches stretched out toward them like beckoning arms; Ramona saw the scars in the oak's massive trunk, and the ugly bulbous mass of wood tissue that had grown back to fill in the gashes.

Stanton pulled the truck off the road just this side of the Hangman's Oak. He cut the engine and the lights. "Well," he said, and cleared his throat, "this is where it happens."

Zachary drew a deep breath and slowly released it. Then he opened the pickup's door, got out, and held it open for Ramona. She stepped out of the pickup into a rush of frigid wind that caught at her coat and tried to rip it open; she had to hold it tightly around her, feeling that the wind might lift her off the ground and sail her into the darkness. Beside her, a line of dead trees swayed back and forth like a minstrel chorus. She walked away from the truck into knee-high grass, leaves crackling underfoot, and toward the looming Hangman's Oak. Behind her Stanton got out of the pickup truck, and the two men stood watching her, both of them shivering.

Ten feet away from the Hangman's Oak, Ramona abruptly stopped and sucked in her breath. She could feel a presence in the air: something cold, cold, a hundred times colder than the wind. It was something heavy and dark and very old, and it was waiting. "It's in the tree," she heard herself say.

"What?" Zachary called after her.

"The tree," she said in a whisper. She neared it and felt her flesh break out in goosebumps that ebbed and swelled; her hair crackled with static electricity, and she knew there was danger here—yes, yes, there was evil here—but she had to run her hands across the scarred wood, she had to feel it. She touched it; gingerly at first, then clasped her palms to the wood; a shiver of pain ran up her spine and centered at her neck, becoming unbearable. Very quickly she stepped away, her hands tingling. At her feet a small white-painted wooden cross had been hammered into the ground; a black-scrawled legend read: six killed here. your life is in your hands. drive careful.

"Mrs. Creekmore?" Zachary said, standing a few feet behind her She turned to face him. "It doesn't happen every night. Is there something you can do right here and now to . . . stop it?"

"No. I have to wait."

"Well, come on and wait in the truck, then. It'll be warmer. But like I say, it doesn't happen every night. I hear it happened twice last week, but . . . gosh it's cold out here, isn't it?"

"I have to wait," she repeated, and Zachary thought her voice sounded more determined. Her eyes were half closed, long strands of her russet hair flying free from her pink scarf, her arms cradling her child-heavy belly. He was suddenly afraid for her; she could get sick out in this cold, and something could happen to the child. He'd thought, from what he'd heard about her, that she could say some Indian words or something and that would be the end of it, but . . .

"I'm all right," Ramona said quietly. "I don't know how long it will be. It may not happen at all. But I have to wait."

"Okay, then. I'll wait with you."

"No. I have to be alone. You and Mr Stanton can stay in the truck if you like."

Zachary paused for a moment, undecided, then he nodded and, bowed into the wind, started walking back to where Sam Stanton was blowing into his hands and stamping his feet. He turned back after a few paces, his face furrowed with concern. "I don't ... I don't understand this, Mrs. Creekmore. I don't understand how it could . . . keep on happening."

She didn't answer She was a dark form staring out into the distance, along the road where it curved beyond a stand of pines. Her coat tortured by the wind, she walked past the oak tree and stood motionlessly at the roadside. Zachary returned to the pickup and climbed in, shivering to his bones.

Full dark covered the forest. Staring into the night through slitted eyes, Ramona had a sense of low-lying clouds running before the wind, just above the swaying treetops. All the world seemed in dark, tumultuous motion, but she had concentrated on rooting herself to the earth, on bending like a reed when the wind swept past so she wouldn't be knocked off her feet. She could feel the Hangman's Oak behind her, its old evil pulsating like a diseased heart. It would have to be cut down, the stump dug up like a rotten tooth, the crater salted. Above her its heavy branches stirred like the arms of a huge gray octopus. Dead leaves spun up from the ground and snapped at her cheeks.

"Do you want some light?" Stanton shouted from the truck. When the woman didn't even move, he glanced uneasily at Zachary and said, "I guess she don't." He fell into silence, wishing he'd brought along a snort of moonshine to keep warm and to keep from thinking about what moved along this road in the dead of night.

Headlights glinted through the pines. Ramona's eyes opened fully. The shape grew nearer; it was an old Packard with an ancient black man behind the wheel. The car slowed enough for the driver to get a good look at her, standing before the Hangman's Oak, and then the car accelerated away. Ramona relaxed again. She had decided she would wait for as long as it took, even though she could feel the life within her aching for warmth. The child would have to grow up strong, she thought, and would have to get used to hardships.

Almost three hours later, Stanton stirred and blew into his cupped hands. "What's she doin'?" he asked, straining to see through the darkness.

"Nothing," the minister replied. "She's still standing there. We were wrong to bring her out here, Sam. This whole thing is wrong."

"I don't think it's gonna happen tonight, parson. Maybe she's scared it off."

"I just don't know." Zachary shook his head in awe and bewilderment; his dark brown eyes had gone softly despairing. "Maybe it's all been talk—probably has been—but maybe . . . just maybe she can do something. Maybe if she believes she can, then . . ." He let his voice trail off. A few drops of cold rain spotted the windshield. Zachary's palms were wet and clammy, and had been since they'd brought the woman out here. He had agreed to ask the woman for help after he'd heard the stories, but now he was truly afraid. There seemed nothing of God in what she could do—if she actually had done those things—and he felt marked with sin. He nodded. "All right. Let's take her home."

They got out of the truck and approached her. The temperature had fallen again, and frequent drops of rain struck their faces. "Mrs. Creekmore?" Zachary called out. "You've got to give it up now!" Ramona didn't move. "Mrs. Creekmore!" he shouted again, trying to outshout the blustering wind. And then he suddenly stopped where he was, because he thought he'd seen something flicker like blue fire on the road, just beyond the curve through the screen of dancing pines. He stared, unable to move.

Ramona was stepping out into the road, between the oncoming thing and the Hangman's Oak. Behind the minister, Stanton shouted, "I see it! My God, I see it!" Zachary could see roiling streaks of blue, but nothing of any definite shape. He shouted, "What is it? What do you see?" But by then Stanton was shocked speechless; the man made a soft moaning noise from deep in his throat and was almost pitched to one side by a freight-train roar of wind.

Ramona could see it clearly. The pickup truck was outlined in blue flame; it was gliding soundlessly toward her, and as it neared she could make out the windshield wipers going full speed, and behind them the faces of a man and woman. The woman wore a bonnet, her face as round as an apple and beaming with anticipation of the dance. Suddenly the man's brown, seamed face contorted in surprised pain, and his hands left the steering wheel to clasp his temples. Ramona stood at the road's center, the blue-flaming headlights bearing steadily upon her.

Stanton's voice came out in a wild shout: "Get out of the way!"

Ramona held her hands out toward the blue truck and said quietly, "No fear. No pain. Only peace and rest." It seemed she could hear the engine now, and the tires shrieking as the truck slipped and veered across the road, picking up speed for its rendezvous with the Hangman's Oak. The woman in her bonnet was reaching desperately for the wheel; beside her the man writhed, his mouth open in a soundless scream.

"No fear," Ramona said. The truck was less than ten feet away. "No pain. Only peace and rest. Let go. Let go. Let . . ." As the blue flame bore down on her she heard Stanton cry out in terror, and she felt a crushing pain in her head that must've been a blood vessel bursting in Joe Rawlings's brain. She felt the woman's confusion and horror. Her jaw clenched tight to hold back an agonized scream. And then the blue-burning pickup truck struck full-force into her.

What Zachary and Stanton saw, they weren't sure. Afterward, they never spoke of it between them. When that truck hit the woman it seemed to collapse like a balloon exploding, and it was all a hazy blue mist as it lengthened and seemed to soak right into her body like water into a sponge. Stanton saw details—the truck, the passengers' faces—while Zachary was aware only of a presence, a swirl of blue mist, and the strange odor of burning rubber. They both saw Ramona Creekmore stagger backward, blue mist churning before her, and she gripped her head as if it were about to explode.

Then it was gone; all of it, gone. The wind seethed like something darkly hideous that had been deprived of a plaything. But the blue-flaming pickup truck was burned into Sam Stanton's eyes, and if he lived to be two hundred years old he'd never forget the sight of it disappearing into that witch-woman's body.

Ramona staggered out of the road and fell to her knees in the grass. For a long moment the two men were reluctant to move. Zachary heard himself whispering the Twenty-third Psalm, and then somehow he got his legs moving. Ramona groaned softly and rolled over on her back, her hands pressed to her stomach.

Stanton came up behind Zachary as the minister bent over Ramona Creekmore. The woman's face had gone gray, and there was blood on her lower lip where she'd bitten through. She clasped her stomach, looking up at the men with dazed and frightened eyes.

Stanton felt as if he'd been slugged with a sledgehammer. "Sweet Jesus, parson!" he managed to say. "This woman's about to have her baby!"

ONE

1

Struggling through his arithmetic homework in the warm glow of the hearth, the dark-haired ten-year-old boy suddenly looked up at the window. He was aware that the soft crooning of the wind had stopped and a deep silence had filled the woods. He could see bare branches waving against a gray slice of sky, and a quiver of excitement coursed through him. He put aside his pencil, pad, and book—gladly—and then rose from where he'd been lying on the floor. Something was different, he knew; something had changed. He reached the window and stretched upward to peer out.

At first nothing looked different, and he was mildly disappointed; all those numbers and additions and subtractions were rattling around in his head, clinking and clattering and making too much noise for him to think. But then his eyes widened, because he'd seen the first flurry of white flakes scatter down from the sky. His heart skipped a beat. "Daddy!" he said excitedly. "It's snowing!"

Reading his Bible in his chair before the fireplace, John Creekmore looked out the window and couldn't suppress a grin. "Well, it sure is!" He leaned forward, just as amazed as his son. "Glory be, weatherman was right for once." It rarely snowed this far south in Alabama; the last big snowfall he could recall was back in 1954, when Billy had been only three years old. That had been the winter they'd had to accept charity canned goods from the church, after the stone-scorching summer had burned the corn and bean crops to stunted cinders. Compared to that awful year, the last few crops had been real bounties, though John knew it was never a good thing to feel too blessed, because the Lord could easily take away what He had provided. At least they had enough to eat this year, and some money to see them through the rest of the winter. But now he was infected with Billy's giddy excitement, and he stepped to the window to watch the flurries beside his son.

"Might fall all night long," he said. "Might be up to the roof by mornin'!"

"Gosh!" Billy said, his light hazel eyes—so striking against the darker coloring he'd inherited from his mother—widening with pleasure and a bit of fear too; he could imagine them all getting very cold and hibernating like bears, snowed in until April when the flowers came out. "It won't be that deep, will it?"

John laughed and ruffled the boy's curly, reddish brown hair "Naw. Might not even stick. The way it's comin' down now, it's just bein' windblown."

Billy stood watching it fall for a moment more, then he shouted, "Momma!" and scuttled across the room, through a short hallway, and into the room where Ramona Creekmore sat propped up on pillows in bed, patiently mending a brown sweater she'd stitched for Billy as a Christmas present. It was less than a month since Christmas, and already Billy had worn the elbows out climbing trees and running wild in the woods. "Momma, it's snowing outside!" he told her, pointing out the small window near her bed.

"I told you those were snow clouds, didn't I?" she said, and smiled at him. There were deep wrinkles around her eyes, and strands of gray in her hair. Though she was only thirty-four, the years had been hard on her; she had almost died of pneumonia just after Billy was born, and she'd never fully recovered. She stayed in the house most of the time, doing her intricate needlepoint, and drank homemade herbal potions to fight off chills and fevers. Her body had gathered weight from lack of exercise, but her face was still fine-boned and lovely but for the faint dark circles under her eyes; her hair was still long and lustrous, her Indian complexion giving her a false appearance of perfect health. "Coldest weather of the year is still ahead, long as those blackbirds perch in the trees," she said, and returned to her work. It constantly amazed her how fast he was growing; clothes that fit him one month were the next ready to put back into the Hawthorne cycle of hand-me-downs.

"Don't you want to come see?"

"I know what it looks like. It's white."

It suddenly struck Billy that his mother didn't like the cold or the snow. She coughed a lot at night sometimes, and through the thin wall he could hear his father trying to soothe her "You don't have to get up, then," he said quickly. "It's better if you stay right here."

John came up behind him and pressed a weathered hand against the boy's shoulder "Why don't you bundle up and we'll take a walk."

"Yes sir!" Billy grinned widely and hurried to the closet for his battered green hooded parka.

John took his blue denim jacket with the sheepskin lining out of the closet; he slipped it on and then worked a black woolen cap onto his head. In the ten years that had passed, John Creekmore had grown lean and rugged, his wide shoulders stooped slightly from his seasonal labors in the field and the constant work of keeping the ramshackle cabin together through summer heatwave and winter frost. He was thirty-seven, but the lines in his face—as rough and straight as any furrow he'd ever plowed for a crop of com—made him out to be at least ten years older; his lips were thin and usually set in a grim line, but he was quick to smile when the boy was around. There were those in Hawthorne who said that John Creekmore was a preacher who'd missed his calling, settling for earth instead of reaching toward Heaven, and they said that when angered or antagonized his steely blue gaze could drill holes through barn planking; but his eyes were always soft when he looked at his son. "I guess I'm ready," he said. "Who wants to go walkin'?"

"Me!" Billy crowed.

"Time's wastin'," John said, and reached out to his son. They linked hands and John felt the immediate warm pleasure of contact with the boy. Billy was so alive, so alert and curious; some of his youth rubbed off on John when they could be together.

They pushed through the plain pine door and the screen door and out into the cold gray afternoon. As their boots crunched on the frozen dirt road that connected the Creekmore property, all two acres of it, with the highway, Billy could hear the soft hiss of the tiny snowflakes falling through the dense evergreens. They passed a small round pond, now muddy brown and veined with ice. A white mailbox dotted with .22 holes leaned toward the paved highway, and bore the legend j. creekmore. They walked along the roadside, toward the main part of Hawthorne less than a mile ahead, as the snow fluctuated between flakes and sleet; John made sure the boy's hood was up good and snug, and the cord tied securely beneath his chin.

It had already been a hard winter, with January not even half over yet. There had been several freezing rains, and a fierce hailstorm that had shattered windows all across Fayette County. But as sure as day followed night, John thought, spring would follow winter and the real work of farming would start again; there would be corn and beans, tomatoes and turnips to plant. A new scarecrow would have to be put out in the field, but in these troubled times it seemed that even the crows were willful and refused to be bluffed. He had lost much of his seed to birds and bugs in the last several plantings, and his corn had grown weak and stunted. This was good land, he thought, blessed by God; but it seemed that finally the earth was beginning to give out. He knew about rotation planting and nitrites and all kinds of chemical soil foods the county agent tried to sell him, but all those additives— except for plain old fertilizer, which was as basic as you could get—were violations of God's plan. If your land was played out, so be it.

But times were troubled everywhere, John thought. That Catholic was president now, the Communists were on the march again, and people were talking about going up into outer space. Many autumn and winter afternoons John ambled down to Curtis Peel's barbershop, where the men played checkers in the warm wash of a potbellied stove and listened to the news from Fayette on the ancient Zenith radio. Most people, John was sure, would agree that these were the Final Days, and he could point to the Book of Revelations to show scoffers just exactly what evils would befall humanity in the next ten years or so—if the world lasted that long. Things were even troubled right here in the Hawthorne Baptist Church; Reverend Horton did his best, but there was no fire nor brimstone in his sermons, and worst of all he'd been seen over at the church in Dusktown helping the blacks with their potluck supper Nobody liked to shake Horton's hand anymore after the services were over.

Billy's gloved hand was thrust out, trying to catch snowflakes. He snagged one on a fingertip and had a second to examine it— tiny and as lacy as his mother's Sunday tablecloth—before it vanished. She'd told him about the weather, and how it speaks in many voices when its moods change, but to hear it speak you have to be very quiet and listen. She had taught him to watch the beautiful pictures the clouds made, and to hear soft sounds in the forest that meant shy animals wandering near His father had taught him how to gig for frogs and had bought him a slingshot to bring down squirrels, but he didn't like the way they squeaked when they were hit.

They were passing the small wood-frame houses outside Hawthorne's single main street. Billy's best friend, Will Booker, lived in a green house with white shutters just up the road; he had a little sister named Katy and a dog called Boo.

There was a light scattering of snow on the road. A black pickup truck came crawling along the highway toward them, and when it reached them the driver's window rolled down and Lee Sayre, who owned the hardware and feed store where John Creekmore worked on weekends, stuck his crewcut head out. "Hey there, John! Where you goin'?"

"Just takin' the boy for a walk. Say hello to Mr. Sayre, Billy."

"Hello, Mr. Sayre."

"Billy, you're growin' like a weed! Bet you'll top six-four before you quit. How'd you like to be a football player?"

"Yes sir, that'd be fine."

Sayre smiled. In his ruddy and slightly overfed face, Sayre's eyes were as pale green as a jungle cat's. "Got some news for you about Mr. Horton," he said in a quieter tone of voice. "Seems he's been doin' more than socializin' with his darky friends. We need to have a talk."

John grunted softly. Billy was entranced by the white puffs of exhaust that were billowing from the rear of Mr. Sayre's truck. The tires had made dark lines in the faint white spread of the snow, and Billy wondered where the air came from that filled tires up.

"Real soon," Sayre said. "You come down to Peel's tomorrow afternoon around four. And pass the word along." Sayre waved to the boy and said cheerfully, "You take good care of your daddy now, Billy! Make sure he don't get lost!"

"I will!" Billy called back, but Mr. Sayre had already rolled up his window and the truck moved away along the road. Mr. Sayre was a nice man, Billy thought, but his eyes were scary. Once Billy had stood in the middle of the Ernest K. Kyle Softball Field on an April afternoon and watched a storm coming over the forested hills; he'd seen the black clouds rolling like a stampede of wild horses, and bolts of lightning had jabbed from clouds to earth. Lightning had struck very near, and the boom of thunder had shaken Billy to the soles of his battered Keds. Then he'd started running for home, but the rain had caught him and his father had given him a good whipping.

The memory of that storm wheeled through Billy's head as he watched the pickup drive away. There was lightning behind Mr. Sayre's eyes, and it was looking for a place to strike.

The snow had almost stopped. Nothing was even white, Billy saw, but instead a wet gray that meant there would be school tomorrow, and he would have to finish that arithmetic homework for Mrs. Cullens.

"Snow's about quit, bubber," John said; his face had gone red with cold. "Gettin' a bit chillier, though. You about ready to turn back?"

"Guess so," he answered, though he really wasn't. That seemed to him to be a matter of great concern: no matter how far you walked the road still went on to somewhere, and there were all the dirt trails and forest paths that led off every whichaway too, and what lay at the far end of them? It seemed to Billy that no matter how far you walked, you never really got to the end of things.

They walked on a few minutes longer, to the single blinking amber traffic light at the center of Hawthorne. The intersection was bordered by the barbershop, Coy Granger's Quick-Pik grocery store, a rundown Texaco gas station, and the Hawthorne post office. The rest of the town—clapboard-and-brick structures that looked like blocks a baby's hand had strewn into disarray—sat on either side of the highway, which swept on across an old gray trestle bridge and up into the brown hills where an occasional chimney spouted smoke. The sharp white steeple of the Hawthorne First Baptist Church stuck up through the leafless trees like an admonishing finger. Just on the other side of the disused railroad tracks was the jumble of stores and shanties known as Dusktown; the tracks might have been an electrified fence separating the black and white sections of Hawthorne. It disturbed John that Reverend Horton was leaving his rightful duties to go into Dusktown; the man had no cause to go over to the other side of the tracks, and all he was doing was trying to stir up things that were best kept buried.

"Better head on home now," John said, and took his son's hand.

In another few moments they came up even with the small but neatly kept green house on their right. It was one of the newer houses built in Hawthorne; there was a white-painted front porch at the top of a few steps, and white smoke curled from the chimney. Billy looked at the house, looked again, and saw Mr. Booker sitting up there on the porch. The man was wearing his yellow John Deere cap and a short-sleeved blue shirt. He waved to his best friend's father, but Mr. Booker seemed to be looking right through him. He said uneasily, "Daddy? . . ."

John said, "What, bubber?" Then he looked up and saw Dave Booker sitting there like a rock. He frowned and called out, "Afternoon, Dave! Pretty cold to be outside today, ain't it?"

Booker didn't move. John stopped walking, and realized that his old fishing partner was staring out at the hills with a blank, frozen expression, as if he were trying to see clear to Mississippi. John saw the summery short-sleeved shirt, and he said quietly, "Dave? Everything all right?" He and Billy came up the brown lawn slowly and stood at the foot of the steps. Booker was wearing fishing lures stuck in his hat; his square, heavy-jowled face was white with the cold, but now the man blinked and at least John knew he wasn't frozen to death.

"Mind if we come up for a spell?" John asked.

"Come on up, then. Long as you're here." Booker's voice was empty, and the sound of it scared Billy.

"Thanks kindly." John and Billy climbed the steps to the porch. A window curtain moved and Julie Ann, Dave's wife, peered out at them for a few seconds before the curtain closed. "How about that snow? Came down for a few minutes, didn't it?"

"Snow?" Booker's thick black brows knitted together The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, his lips liver-red and slack. "Yeah. Sure did." He nodded, making one of the chrome lures jingle.

"You okay, Dave?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" His gaze shifted away from John, and he was staring into Mississippi again.

"I don't know, I just ..." John let his voice trail off. On the floor beside Dave's chair was a scattering of hand-rolled Prince Albert cigarette butts and a baseball bat with what looked like dried blood on it. No, John thought, must be just mud. Sure, that's all it is. He gripped Billy's hand tightly.

"Man can sit on his own front porch, can't he?" Dave said quietly. "Last I heard he could. Last I heard it was a free country. Or has that changed?" His face turned, and now John could clearly see the terrible, cold rage in his eyes. John felt his spine crawl. He could see the wicked prongs of a hook protruding from the man's cap, and he recalled that they would've gone fishing last Saturday on Semmes Lake had it not been for one of Dave's frequent migraine headaches. "It's a fuckin' free country," Dave said, and suddenly grinned viciously.

John was jarred; it wasn't right that Dave should use such a word in front of the boy, but he decided to let it pass. Dave's gaze had clouded over.

The front door opened and Julie Ann peeked out. She was a tall, fragile-looking woman with curly brown hair and soft pale blue eyes. She smiled—grimaced, John thought—and said with tense good cheer, "John Creekmore! What brings you uptown? Billy, you takin' care of your daddy today? Step on in and let me offer you a cup of hot coffee, John."

"No, thank you. Billy and I've got to get on back. ..."

"Please," Julie Ann whispered. Her eyes were luminous with tears. She motioned with a quick tilt of her head. "Just one cup of coffee." She opened the door wider and raised her voice: "Will? Billy Creekmore's here!"

"KEEP YOUR DAMNED VOICE DOWN, WOMAN!" Dave thundered, twisting around in his chair; he plastered one hand against his forehead. "I'LL STROP YOU! I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL!"

John, Billy, and Julie Ann formed a frozen triangle around the man. From within the house Billy could hear little Katy sobbing in a back room, and tentatively Will called out, "Mom?" Julie Ann's grin hung by one lip, and she stood as if motion might cause Dave to explode. Dave abruptly looked away, dug into a back pocket, and brought out a bottle of Bayer aspirin; he unscrewed the cap and tilted the bottle to his lips, then crunched noisily.

"Strop you," he whispered, to no one in particular His eyes bulged above dark blue circles. "Strop the livin' shit out of you. . . ."

John pushed Billy toward the door, and they entered the house. As Julie Ann closed the door, Dave said mockingly, "Gonna talk about the old man again, aren't you? You dirty bitch. ..." And then Julie Ann shut the door, and her husband's curses were muffled, indistinct ravings.

2

The house was dark and oppressively hot, one of the few in Hawthorne that had the luxury of a coal-fed furnace. John saw splinters of glass twinkling in the grayish green carpet; a broken chair sagged in a corner, and there were two empty bottles of Bayer on a lamptable. A framed print of Jesus at the Last Supper hung crookedly on one wall, and opposite it was a stuffed and mounted large-mouth bass, painted in garish blue and silver. In addition to the furnace heat, raw pinewood crackled and hissed in the fireplace, sending plumes of smoke up the chimney and scenting the room with pine sap.

"Excuse the mess." Julie Ann was trembling but trying to keep a desperate smile on her face. "We've . . . had some trouble here today. Billy, Will's in his room if you want to go on back."

"Can I?" he asked his father, and when John nodded he rocketed down a corridor to the small room Will shared with his little sister. He knew the house by heart because he'd spent the night several times; the last time, he and Will had explored the forest together in search of lions, and when Katy had tagged along they'd let her carry their stick-guns for them, but she had to do as they told her and call them "Bwana," a word Will had learned from a Jungle Jim comic book. This time, though, the house seemed different; it was darker and quieter, and might have been scary, Billy thought, if he hadn't known his father was up in the front room.

As Billy entered, Will looked up from the plastic Civil War soldiers he'd arranged on the floor. Will was the same age as Billy, a small thin boy with unruly brown hair plagued with cowlicks, and he wore brown-framed glasses held together in the center with Scotch tape. On the other bed, his sister lay curled up in a ball, her face against the pillow. "I'm Robert E. Lee!" Will announced, his sallow, rather sad-eyed face brightening at the approach of his friend. "You can be General Grant!"

"I'm not a Yankee!" Billy objected, but within another minute he was commanding the bluecoats in a daring attack up Dead-man's Hill.

In the front room, John sat down on a rumpled sofa and watched as Julie Ann paced before him, stopped to peer out the window, then paced again. She said in a tense whisper, "He killed Boo, John. He beat Boo to death with that baseball bat and then he hung him in a tree with fishin' line. I tried to fight him, but he was too strong and . . ." Tears brimmed from her swollen eyes; John quickly averted his gaze to a little clock sitting on the mantel. It was ten minutes before five, and he wished he'd never offered to take Billy for a walk. "He was just too strong," she said, and made a terrible choking sound as she swallowed. "Boo . . . died so hard. ..."

John shifted uneasily. "Well, why'd he do it? What's wrong with him?"

She pressed a finger to her lips and stared fearfully at the door. She held her breath until she'd looked out the window again and seen her husband still sitting there in the cold chewing on another aspirin. "The children don't know about Boo," Julie Ann said. "It happened this mornin', while they were at school. I hid Boo in the woods—God, it was awful!—and they think he's just roamed off somewhere like he does. Dave didn't go to the garage today, didn't even call in sick. He woke up yesterday with one of his headaches, the worst he's ever had, and he didn't get a wink of sleep last night. Neither did I." She put a hand to her mouth and chewed on the knuckles; a cheap but sentimental wedding ring with tiny diamonds in the shape of a heart twinkled merrily in the orange firelight. "Today it ... it was the worst it's ever been. Ever. He screamed and threw things; first he couldn't get hot enough, then he had to get outside in the cool air. He said he was going to kill me, John." Her eyes were wide and terrified. "He said he knew all the things I'd done behind his back. But I swear I never did a thing, I swear it on a stack of Bi—"

"Just calm down, now," John whispered, glancing quickly at the door "Take it easy. Why don't you call Doc Scott?"

"No! I can't! I tried to this morning, but he ... he said he'd do to me what he did to Boo, and . . ." A sob welled from her throat. "I'm afraid! Dave's gotten mean before, and I never let on to anybody; but he's never been this bad! He's like somebody I don't even know! You should've heard him yell at Katy just a little while ago, and he eats those aspirins like candy and they never do no good!"

“Well” ― John looked at Jilie Ann's agonized expression and felt a long stupid grin stretch his face―”everything'll be all right. You'll see. Doc'll know what to do for Dave's headaches . . . .”

"No!" she shouted, and John winced. She stopped, frozen, while they both thought they heard Dave's chair scraping across the porch. "Doc Scott said he had a damned sinus infection! That old man ain't got good sense anymore, and you know it! Why, he almost let your own wife just linger and . . ." She blinked, unwilling to say the next word. Die is a terrible word, she thought, a word that should not be spoken out loud when talking about a person.

"Yeah, I guess so. But those headaches need lookin' after. Maybe you could talk him into goin' up to the Fayette hospital?"

The woman shook her head forlornly. "I've tried. He says there's nothin' wrong, and he don't want to spend the money on foolishness. I don't know what to do!"

John cleared his throat nervously and then rose to his feet, avoiding her stare. "Guess I'd better get Billy. We've been out too long as it is." He started to walk back through the hallway, but Julie Ann's arm shot out and grasped his wrist tightly. He looked up, startled.

"I'm afraid," she whispered, a tear trickling down her face. "I don't have anywhere to go, and I can't stay here another night!"

"I can't ..."

John looked away from her before she could finish. He was shaking inside, and he had to get out of this house fast. He looked into the back room, saw the two boys playing soldiers on the floor while Katy rubbed her reddened eyes and watched. "Got you!" Will shouted. "That one's dead! Bam! Bam! That one on the horse ls dead!"

"He's shot in the arm is all!" Billy said. "KABOOM! That's a cannon and that man and that man and that wagon are blown up!"

"Are not!" Will squawked.

"War's over, boys," John said. The strange ominous feeling in this house lay like a cold sheen of sweat on his neck. "Time to go, Billy. Say good-bye to Will and Katy. We'll see y'all later."

" 'Bye, Will!" Billy said, and then followed his father back to the living room while Will said, " 'Bye!" and went back to the sound-effects of rifles and cannons.

Julie Ann zipped up Billy's parka. When she looked at John her eyes were full of pleading. "Help me," she said.

"Wait until mornin' before you decide what to do. Sleep on it. Say thank you to Mrs. Booker for her hospitality, Billy."

"Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Booker."

"Good boy." He led his son to the door and opened it before Julie Ann could speak again. Dave Booker sat with a cigarette butt between his teeth; his eyes seemed sunken in his head, and the strange smile on his face made Billy think of a Halloween pumpkin's grin.

"You take it easy now, Dave," John said, and reached out to touch the man's shoulder. But then he stopped, because Dave's head was turning and his face was dead-white from the cold, and the smile on his thin lips was murderous.

Dave whispered, "Don't come back. This is my house. Don't you dare come back."

Julie Ann slammed the door shut.

John grasped Billy's hand and hurried down the steps, across the dead brown lawn to the road. His heart was beating very hard, and as they walked away he felt Dave's cold stare following them, and he knew that soon Dave would rise from that chair and go inside, and Lord help Julie Ann. He felt like a slinking dog; with that thought he envisioned Boo's white carcass swinging from a tree with fishing line knotted around its throat, bloodied eyes bulging.

Billy started to turn his head, snowflakes melting in his eyebrows.

John tightened his grip on the boy's hand and said tersely, "Don't look back."

3

Hawthorne closed down for the night when the steam whistle blew, promptly at five o'clock, at the sawmill owned by the Chatham brothers. When darkness settled across the valley, it signaled a time for families to eat dinner together, then sit before the fire and read their Bibles or subscription magazines like the Ladies' Home Journal or Southern Farm Times. Those who could afford radios listened to the popular programs. Watching television was a real luxury that only a few families possessed; reception from Fayette consisted of only one weak station. Several houses farther out from town still had outhouses. Porch lights— for those who could afford the electricity—usually burned until seven o'clock, meaning that visitors were welcome even on cold January nights, but after they went out it was time for bed.

In his wood-framed cot between the front room and the small kitchen, Billy Creekmore was asleep beneath a quilt and dreaming of Mrs. Cullens, who stared down at him through her fish-eyed glasses and demanded to know exactly why he hadn't finished his arithmetic homework. He tried to explain to her that it had been finished, but when he was walking to school he'd been caught in a thunderstorm and he'd started running, and pretty soon he was lost in the woods and somehow his blue Nifty notebook with the problems he'd done was gone. Suddenly, as dreams do, he was in the dense green forest, on an unfamiliar rocky path that led up into the hills. He followed it for a while, until he came to Mr. Booker sitting on a big rock staring out into space with his scary, sightless eyes. As he approached, Billy saw that there were timber rattlers on the rocks and ground all around him, crawling and rattling, tangled together. Mr. Booker, his eyes as black as new coals for the basement furnace, picked up a snake by the rattles and shook it at him; the man's mouth opened and a terrible shriek wailed out that grew louder and louder and louder and—

The shriek was still echoing in his head when Billy sat up with a muffled cry, and he could hear it fading off in the distance.

In another moment Billy could hear his parents' muffled voices through the wall beside him. The closet door opened and closed, and footsteps sounded on the floorboards. He got out of his cot in the dark, stepping into a draft that made his teeth chatter, and then he was facing the door of their bedroom. He paused, hearing them whispering inside but remembering the time he'd opened that door without knocking and had seen them dancing lying down; his father had been sputtering and furious, but his mother had explained that they needed to be in private and calmly asked him to close the door. At least that had been better than when he heard them fighting in there; usually it was his father's voice, raised in anger. Worse than the yelling, though, were the long wintry silences that sometimes stayed in the house for days at a time.

Billy gathered up his courage and knocked. The whisperings stopped. In the distance—out on the highway, he thought—he could hear another shriek like a ha'nt up in the Hawthorne cemetery. The door opened, and standing against the dim glow of a kerosene lamp was his father, pale and bleary-eyed, shrugging into his overcoat. "Go back to bed, son," John said.

"Are you goin' somewhere?"

"I have to go into town to see what those sirens are for. I want you to stay here with your mother, and I'll be back in a few . . ." He stopped speaking, listening to the fading echo of another siren.

Billy asked, "Can I go too?"

"No," John said firmly. "You're to stay right here. I'll be back as soon as I find out," he told Ramona, and she followed him with the oil lamp out into the front room. He unlatched the door, and when he opened it frost cracked on the hinges. Then John was walking toward his beat-up but still reliable 'fifty-five Oldsmobile, made up of different colors and different parts from several wrecked car dumps. Ice crystals seemed to hang in the air like sparks. He slipped behind the wheel, had to wake up the cold engine with a heavy foot on the gas, and then drove along the frozen dirt road to the main highway with a cloud of blue exhaust trailing behind. As soon as he turned onto the highway and started toward Hawthorne he could see the red comet flare of spinning lights. He knew with a sickening certainty that the police cars were parked in front of Dave Booker's house.

He felt numbed as he saw all the trooper cars and ambulances, and the dark human shapes standing out front. The Olds's headlights picked out an overcoated state trooper talking on his car radio; Hank Witherspoon and his wife Paula were standing nearby, wearing coats over their robes. They lived in the house closest to the Bookers. Lights blazed through the Bookers' windows, illuminating the bundled figures who went in and out through the open front door John stopped the car, leaned over, and rolled down his passenger window. "Hank!" he called out. "What's happened?"

Witherspoon and his wife were clinging to each other When the man turned, John saw that his face was gray, the eyes sick and glassy. Witherspoon made a whimpering sound, then he staggered away, bent double, and threw up into a steaming puddle on the icy concrete.

The trooper thrust a hawk-nosed face into the window. "Move along, fella. We got more gawkers than we need."

"I . . . just wanted to know what was goin' on. I live right down the highway, and I heard alt the commotion. ..."

"Are you related to the Booker family?"

"No, but . . . they're my friends. I thought maybe I could help, if . . ."

The trooper braced his Smokey the Bear hat to keep it from flying away in the wind. "Move on," he said, and then John's attention was caught by two white-coated men bringing a stretcher down the steps from the house; there was a brown blanket over the stretcher, preventing him from seeing who lay on it. A second stretcher was borne down the steps as well, this one covered with a bloody sheet. John felt the breath rasp in his lungs.

"Bring it on down!" the trooper shouted. "Got another ambulance on the way from Fayette!"

The first stretcher was being shoved into the rear of an ambulance not ten feet away from where John sat; the second, covered with the bloodied sheet, was laid down on the ground almost opposite his window. The wind caught at the sheet, and suddenly a white arm fell out as if trying to hold the sheet in place. John clearly saw the wedding ring with its heart-shape of diamonds. He heard one of the attendants say, "Holy Christ!" and the arm was shoved back underneath; it looked stiff and bloated and hard to manage.

"Bring 'em all down!" the trooper shouted.

"Please," John said, and reached for the man's sleeve. "Tell me what's happened!"

"They're all dead, mister. Every one of them." He whacked the side of the Olds with his hand and shouted, "Now get this damned piece of junk out of here!"

John pressed his foot to the accelerator. Another ambulance passed him before he turned off the highway for home.

4

The coals in the cast-iron stove at the rear of Curtis Peel's barbershop glowed as bright as newly spilled blood. Chairs had been pulled up in a circle around it, and five men sat in a blue shroud of smoke. There was only one barber chair at the front of the shop, a red-vinyl-padded monstrosity. It tilted backward to make shaving easier, and John Creekmore had always kidded Peel that he could cut hair, pull teeth, and shine shoes from that chair at the same time. A walnut Regulator clock rescued from the abandoned train depot lazily swung its brass pendulum. On the white tiled floor around the barber chair were straight brown snippets of Link Patterson's hair. Through the shop's plate-glass window the day was sunny but bone-chilling; from the distance, seeping in like the whine of an August mosquito, was the sound of saws at work up at the mill.

"Makes me sick to think about it," Link Patterson said, breaking the silence. He regarded his cigarette, took one more good pull from it, and then crushed the butt in an Alabama Girl Peaches can on the floor at his side. His smooth brown hair was clipped short and sheened with Wildroot. He was a slim, good-natured man with a high, heavily lined forehead, dark introspective eyes, and a narrow bony chin. "That man was crazy in the head all the time, and I saw him near about twice a week and I could never tell a thing was wrong! Makes you sick!"

"Yep," Hiram Keller said, picking at his teeth with a chip of wood. He was all leathery old flesh and bones that popped like wet wood when he moved. Gray grizzled whiskers covered his face, and now he stretched his hands out toward the stove to warm them. "Lord only knows what went on in that house last night. That pretty little girl. ..."

"Crazy as a drunk Indian." Ralph Leighton's ponderous bulk shifted, bringing a groan from the chair; he leaned over and spat Bull of the Woods tobacco into a Dixie cup. He was a large man who had no sense of his size, and he could knock you down if he brushed against you on the sidewalk; he'd played football at Fayette County High twenty years before and had been a hometown hero until his knee popped like a broomstick at the bottom of a six-man pileup. He'd spent bitter years tilling soil and trying to figure out whose weight had snapped that knee, robbing him of a future in football. For all his size, his face seemed chiseled from stone, all sharp cutting edges. He had hooded gray eyes that now glanced incuriously toward the opposite side of the stove, at John Creekmore, to see if that comment had struck a nerve. It hadn't, and Leighton scowled inwardly; he'd always thought that maybe—just maybe—Creekmore had stepped on that knee himself for the pleasure of hearing it crack. "Sure ain't gonna be no open coffins at the funeral home."

"I must've cut that man's hair a hundred times." Peel drew on a black pipe and shook his head, his small dark eyes narrowed in thought. "Cut Will's hair, too. Can't say Booker was a friendly man, though. Cut his hair crew in summer, gave him a sidepart in winter Anybody hear tell when the funerals are going to be?"

"Somebody said tomorrow afternoon," Link replied. "I think they want to get those bodies in the ground fast."

"Creekmore?" Leighton said quietly. "You ain't speakin' much."

John shrugged; a cigarette was burning down between his fingers, and now he drew from it and blew the smoke in the other man's direction.

"Well, you used to go fishing with Booker, didn't you? Seems you knew him better than us. What made him do it?"

"How should I know?" The tone of his voice betrayed his tension. "I just fished with him, I wasn't his keeper."

Ralph glanced around at the group and lifted his brows, "John, you were his friend, weren't you? You should've known he was crazy long before now. . . ."

John's face reddened with anger "You tryin' to blame me for it, Leighton? You best watch your mouth, if that's what you're tryin' to say!"

"He ain't tryin' to say anything, John," Link said, and waved a hand in his direction. "Get off that high horse before it throws you. Damn it, we're all tied up with nerves today."

"Dave Booker had headaches, that's all I know," John insisted, then lapsed into silence.

Curtis Peel relit his pipe and listened to the distant singing of the saws. This was the worst thing he'd ever remembered happening in Hawthorne, and he was privileged with more gossip and inside information than even Sheriff Bromley or Reverend Horton. "They had to take Hank Witherspoon to the hospital in Fayette," he told them. "Poor old man's ticker almost gave out. May Maxie told me Witherspoon heard the shots and went over to find out what had happened; seems he found Booker sittin' naked on his sofa, and the room was still full of shotgun smoke. Must've put both barrels under his chin and squeezed with his thumbs. 'Course, Hank couldn't tell who it was right off." He let a blue thread of smoke leak from one side of his mouth before he puffed again. "I guess the troopers found the rest of 'em. I liked Julie Ann, she always had a kind word. And those kids were as cute as buttons on a Sunday suit. Lordamighty, what a shame. . . ."

"Troopers are still at the house," Leighton said, risking a quick glance at John. He didn't like that sonofabitch, who'd married a women more squaw than white; he knew the tales told about that woman, too, just as everyone around this stove did. She didn't come into town much, but when she did she walked like she owned the whole street, and Leighton didn't think that was proper for a woman like her. In his opinion she should be crawling to the church to pray for her soul. That quiet dark-skinned whelp of hers wasn't any better either, and he knew his own twelve-year-old son Duke could whip the living hell out of that little queer. "Cleanin' up what's left, I suppose," he said. "What they're puzzlin' over is where the boy might be."

"May Maxie told me they found blood in his bed, all over the sheets. But could be he got away and ran off into the woods."

John grunted softly. May Maxie was Hawthorne's telephone operator, and lived attached to wires. "Thank the good Lord it's over with," he said.

"Nope." Hiram's eyes glinted. "It ain't over." He looked at each man in turn, then settled his gaze on John. "Whether Dave Booker was crazy or not, and how crazy he was, don't make no difference. What he did was pure evil, and once evil gets started it roots like a damn kudzu vine. Sure, there's been calamities in Hawthorne before, but now . . . You mark my words, it ain't over."

The front door opened, jingling a little bell that hung over it. Lee Sayre stepped in, wearing his brown-and-green-splotched hunting jacket with stags' blood still marking it like a badge of honor. He quickly shut the door against the cold and strode back to the stove to warm himself. "Colder than a witch's tit out there!" He took off his brown leather cap and hung it on a wall hook, then stood beside John and kneaded his hands as they thawed. "I hear Julie Ann's mother came to town this mornin'. They let her go in there and she had a fit. It's a shame, a whole family killed like that."

"Not a whole family," John reminded him. "Maybe the boy got away."

"Anybody believes that can whistle 'Dixie' out his ass." Sayre drew up a chair, turned it around so he could rest his arms across the back, and then sat down. "Next thing you'll be sayin', the boy did the killing himself."

That thought caused a sudden shock, but John knew it wasn't true. No, Will was either wandering in the woods or buried somewhere. He cursed himself for not seeing this before, in the rages of temper Dave had displayed sometimes when they were fishing. Once Dave had become infuriated with a tangled line and ended up throwing a perfectly good tackle box into Semmes Lake, then cradling his head and breaking into tears as John had nervously steered their rowboat back to shore. Lord, he thought, she was begging me to save their lives yesterday! He'd told no one that he'd been there; fear and shame had stitched his mouth shut.

"Yeah, it's a shame," Lee said. "But life's for the livin', huh?" He swept his gaze around at the others. "It's time we talked about what's to be done with Preacher Horton."

"Damned nigger-lover"—Ralph leaned over and spat tobacco juice—"I never liked that blowhard bastard."

"What's to be done?" Lee asked the group. "Are we going to have a regular meetin' to decide on it?"

"Lieutenants are all right here," Hiram drawled. "We can decide now and be done with it."

Curtis said hesitantly, "I don't know, Lee. Horton may be associatin' with the niggers, but he's still the minister He was awful good to my Louise when her mother took sick, you know."

"What're you talkin' about, boy? Horton's tryin' to get niggers to come to white services! He's been hangin' around Dusktown, and Lord only knows what he's up to!" Lee lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I hear he fancies some black tail, too, and he knows where to find it when he needs it. Are we gonna stand for that?"

"Nope," Ralph said. "No way in hell."

"John, you're mighty quiet today. Guess I can't blame you, seein' what went on last night and you were Dave Booker's best friend and all. But what do you say about Horton?"

John could feel them waiting for him to respond. He didn't like to have to make decisions, and he hadn't wanted to be a lieutenant anyway but they'd forced it on him. "I think we should wait until after the funerals," he said uncertainly. He could feel Ralph Leighton's wolfish gaze on him. "Horton's going to conduct the services, and I think we should show respect. Then . . ."He shrugged. "I'll go with whatever majority vote is."

"Good." Lee clapped the other man's shoulder "That's just what I was going to say. We wait until the Booker family is buried, then we pay a visit to Mr. Horton. I'll get things ready. Curtis, you start callin' everybody."

They talked on for a while longer, the conversation turning back to the murders. When Curtis started going into the details he'd heard from May Maxie again, John abruptly rose to his feet and put on his coat, telling them he had to be getting home. The men were silent as he left the barbershop, and John knew all too well what the subject of conversation would be after he was gone: Ramona. Her name was never mentioned in his presence, but he knew that as soon as he'd gone they would turn their minds and tongues to the subject of his wife, and what they disliked and feared about her. He couldn't blame them. But he was still a son of Hawthorne, no matter who he'd married, and they were respectful in his presence; all except that fat pig Leighton, John thought as he walked to his car.

He slid into the Oldsmobile and pulled away from the curb. Slowing as he reached the Bookers' house—help me help me, Julie Ann had said—he saw two state-trooper cars parked out in front; a trooper was walking up in the woods beyond the house, poking a stick into the ground. Two others were methodically ripping up some of the front-porch boards underneath. Never going to find that boy, John thought. If he ran away he's so scared he'll never come out, and if he's dead Dave did away with the corpse.

Returning his attention to the highway, he was startled to see two figures standing on the roadside staring across at the Booker house. Ramona wore her heavy brown coat and clenched Billy's gloved hand; her eyes were closed, her head tilted slightly back. John screeched the brakes in stopping the Olds, and he had his window roiled down as he backed up and yelled, "Ramona! Come on, both of you! Get in this car!"

Billy looked at him fearfully, but the woman stood very still for a moment more, her eyes open, gazing across the road at the house.

"RAMONA!" he thundered, his face flaming with anger. He was amazed that she'd ventured out from home in this numbing cold, because she rarely left the house even at the height of summer. But here she was, and he was furious because she'd dared to bring the boy. "Get in this car right now!"

Finally they crossed the road and climbed in. Billy shivered between them. John put the car into gear and drove on. "What're you doin' here?" he asked her angrily. "Why bring the boy? Don't you know what happened there last night?"

"I know," she replied.

"Oh, so you thought you'd bring Billy to see it, did you? Lord God!" He trembled, feeling like the sputtering wick on a stick of dynamite. "Don't you think he'll find out quick enough at school?"

"Find out what?" Billy said in a small voice, sensing the sparks of a fight about to explode into flames.

"Nothin'," John said. "Don't you worry about it, son."

"He needs to know. He needs to hear it from us, not from those children at school. ..."

"Shut up!" he shouted suddenly. "Just shut up, will you?" He was going too fast, about to overshoot his dirt driveway, and he had to fight the brakes to slow the lumbering Olds enough to turn it. Ramona had looked away from him, her hands clenched in her lap, and between them Billy had slunk down low with his head bowed. He wanted to know what those police cars were doing in front of Will's house, and why Will hadn't been at school this morning; he'd heard whispered stories from the other children, stories that made him feel sick and afraid inside. Something bad had happened, but no one was exactly sure just what it had been. Billy had heard Johnny Parker whisper the words murder house, but he'd shut his ears and hadn't listened anymore.

"Just can't leave it alone, can you?" John said between gritted teeth. The Olds was racing along the driveway, throwing up rocks and snapping sticks in its wake. "Woman, haven't you had a gutful of death and evil yet? Do you want to rub your own son's face in it? No, no, you can't leave it alone, you can't stay in the house where you belong when you smell death in the air, can you? You can't act like everybody else, and—"

Ramona said quietly but firmly, "That's enough."

The blood drained from his face for a few seconds, then his complexion turned an ugly mottled red. "HELL IT IS!" he roared. "You don't have to get out and go about the town! You can just stay put and hide, can't you? But what about me?" He wheeled the car to a halt in front of the house and yanked the key from the ignition. "I don't want you ever goin' back to that house again, do you hear me?" He reached out and caught her chin, squeezing it so she couldn't look away; her gaze was dulled and distant, and that made him want to hit her but he remembered Billy and so stayed his hand. "I don't want to hear any of your damned ravin's, do you understand? Answer me when I speak to you, woman!" In the sudden sharp silence he could hear Billy sobbing. He was pierced with shame, but there was still anger in him and he had to get it out. "ANSWER ME!" he shouted.

She sat very straight and motionless; there were tears in her eyes, and she regarded him for a long time before she spoke, making him feel like a bug that had just crawled from beneath a rock. She said softly, "I hear you."

"You better!" He released her chin, then he was out of the car and hurrying into the house, not daring to look over his shoulder at either of them because anger and guilt and fear were chewing him up inside like a dull plow on wet earth. He had to clench his hands around the Good Book, had to find something that would soothe the tortured ache in his soul.

When Ramona and Billy came in, John was already sitting before the hearth with the Bible on his lap. He was reading silently, his brow furrowed with concentration, but his lips were moving. Ramona squeezed her son's shoulder in reassurance and also as a warning to walk quietly, then she went quietly to the kitchen to finish the vegetable pie—made of leftovers from the last few meals—she was baking for their supper. Billy added another hickory log to the fire and positioned it with the poker. He could still feel the storm in the air, but most of it had already struck and he hoped things would be all right now; he wanted to find out from his father exactly what had happened to Will and the Bookers, and why those men were tearing up the front porch, but he knew it was something very bad and it might cause another fight between his momma and daddy. He replaced the poker, glanced at his father for approval—John was reading in the Book of Daniel and didn't look up—and then went back to the little secondhand desk next to his cot to start on his spelling homework.

John admired Daniel's strength. He liked to think that he and Daniel would have gotten along just fine. Sometimes John felt as if the whole of life were a lions' den, ravenous beasts snapping roaring on all sides and the Devil himself laughing fit to bust. At least, he thought, that's how it had turned out for him. He leaned forward and read Daniel's speech of deliverance to King Darius: "My God sent his angel and shut the lions' mouths, and they have not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him. ..."

. . . blameless before him . . .

John reread it and then closed the Good Book. Blameless. There was nothing he could've done about Julie Ann, or Katy, or Will, or Dave Booker. He felt that in his choice of this scripture he was being told everything was all right, he could let the worry melt away from his mind and put it in the past where it belonged.

He stared into the crackling flames. When he'd married Ramona—and God only knew why he had, except that he'd thought she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, and was all of twenty, not knowing anything about love or duty or responsibility—he'd stepped into the lions' den without knowing it, and it seemed to him that he had to guard himself every day to keep from being swallowed whole down the Devil's throat. He had prayed over and over again that the boy wasn't touched by her darkness too. If that ever happened, then . . . John was startled, because he'd had the mental image of himself in Dave Booker's place, bursting their heads open with a Louisville Slugger and then putting a shotgun underneath his chin. Lord God, he thought, and shunted that awful image away.

Putting the Bible aside, he rose from the chair and went into the bedroom. His heart was beating harder; he was thinking of Reverend Horton, creeping over the tracks to Dusktown. He didn't want to join in what had to be done, but he knew the others expected him to. He opened the closet and took out a cardboard box tied with twine. John cut the twine with his penknife, took the top off the box, and laid his Klan robes across the bed. They were dusty and wrinkled, made of heavy yellowing cotton; he clenched the material in one fist and felt the power of justice in it.

And in the kitchen, kneading dough between her brown hands, Ramona heard the distant call of a bluejay and knew that the cold weather had broken.

5

At the wheel of his racketing old Ford, Reverend Jim Horton rubbed his eyes wearily and tried to focus on the highway ahead. It had been a long and terrible week; tomorrow was Sunday, and he had yet to go over his material for the sermon, which he'd titled "Why Does God Let It Happen?" Tonight he would stay up late again at his desk, and his wife Carol would come in to rub the kinks out of his shoulders and neck before it was time for bed. He felt he'd been a stranger to her lately, but he'd told her a long time ago that being the wife of a country preacher was definitely not going to be a bed of roses.

The Ford's headlights cut white holes in the darkness. The heater chirred ineffectively, though it wasn't nearly as cold out now as it had been a few days before. He remembered how the sunlight and shadows had lain across the Hawthorne cemetery as the bodies of Dave Booker, Julie Ann, and Katy were lowered into the hard red-clay earth. The coffins had been closed, of course, during the memorial service at the Fayette funeral home, and Julie Ann's mother, Mrs. Mimms, had been almost overcome with grief. Tonight Horton had driven the fifteen miles to Mrs. Mimms's house to sit with her awhile, because she lived alone and was getting on in age, and it was obvious that this tragedy had almost destroyed her. He'd offered to have someone bring her in for church in the morning, and as he'd left she'd clutched his hand and cried like a baby.

Sheriff Bromley, Horton knew, was still searching for Will's corpse. Just yesteday the sheriff had poked a stick in the ground and brought up the odor of decaying meat; but when the shovels had finished it was Boo, the Bookers' dog, that lay moldering in the earth. Bromley had told him in private that most probably Will would never be found, that there were too many places Dave might have buried the body. Perhaps it was for the best, Horton thought, because Mrs. Mimms couldn't stand any more strain, and for that matter neither could Hawthorne itself.

He was aware that he walked a dangerous line. Things were changing in the world, due to people like Dr. King, but it wasn't fast enough to help the people of Dusktown. These last few weeks he felt he'd made a little progress: he'd been helping the Dusktown elders rebuild their burned-out box of a church, and he was on a committee to plan a potluck supper, raising money for purchase of lumber from the sawmill. There was still hard work to be done.

Horton was jarred out of his thoughts when a pair of headlights stabbed into his eyes. He instinctively swerved before he realized the headlights had reflected out of his rearview mirror. A red chevy roared past him as though he were sitting still, and he had the fleeting impression of a pale face glaring at him before the car whipped around a curve up ahead. He could hear the Chevy's horn honking—once, twice, three times—and he thought, Wild kids on a Saturday night. He would be in Hawthorne in just a minute; he hoped Carol would have coffee ready for him. When he took the curve the Chevy had disappeared around, Horton thought he saw something red flicker on the road before him. A strange thought flashed through his mind: Ramona Creekmore, at the Bookers' funeral, stepping forward from the assembly of people and standing right at the edge of Julie Ann's grave. Her hand had come up and out; dozens of red petals, picked from wild flowers that must've grown in some secret, protected grove of the forest, had floated down into the ground. Horton knew that the woman wasn't well liked, though in the eight months he'd been Hawthorne's minister he hadn't been able to find out exactly why. She never came to church, and he'd only seen her a few times in town, but she'd always seemed pleasant and certainly not a person to fear . . . .

Something moved on the road ahead, just out of range of his headlights. He thought of red petals floating, floating, floating down, and then . . .

The headlights picked out two large bales of hay that had been dragged into his path. He knew with a surge of fear that he couldn't stop the car at this distance, he was going to hit; and then he'd swerved the car to the right, the tires squealing, and slammed into one of the bales with a jolt that cracked his teeth together and struck his shoulder a bruising blow into the steering wheel. The Ford, out of control, left the highway and plowed into deep weeds. The car crashed into a three-foot-deep ditch and hung at an angle, its tires digging into the thawed mud. The engine rattled, and came to a dead stop.

Dazed, Horton touched his lower lip with a trembling hand; when he looked at his fingers he saw bright red petals blooming, and he numbly realized he'd bitten into his tongue. Fireflies were bobbing in the dark around the wrecked car, circling closer.

The driver's door opened. Startled, the minister looked up into the blinding glow of flashlights; behind them were white figures with black, ragged-rimmed eyes. Someone shouted, "Get that shit outta the road! Hurry it up!" He remembered the hay bales now, and swallowed blood. His right eye was swelling, and he was getting one whopper of a headache. A voice beside him said, "He's all bloody!" And another, muffled by a mask, answered, "Ain't nothin'! You ready to heave him out? Horton, you stay real quiet now, you hear? We don't want to have to get rough."

He was pulled out of the Ford by the hooded white figures, a blindfold of coarse burlap slipped around his eyes and knotted behind his head.

The Klansmen hauled him up into the bed of a pickup truck and covered him with gunnysacks. The engine started, and the truck headed for a backwoods road. Horton was held down by several men, and he imagined what they would probably do to him, but he was too weary to try to escape. He kept spitting blood until someone shook him and hissed, "Stop that, you damn nigger-lover!"

"You don't understand," he said with his mangled, bloody mouth. "Let me . . ."

Someone grabbed his hair. From the distance, perhaps at the end of the road, Horton heard a high-pitched Rebel yell. "You think we don't know?" a voice rasped into his ear. Horton could almost make out whose voice it was: Lee Sayre's? Ralph Leighton's? "The niggers are tryin' to take over the country, and it's sorry white trash like you that's helpin' 'em! You get 'em in your schools and your cafés and your churches, and they drag you down to where they are! And by God as long as I've got breath in my body and a pistol at my side no damned nigger is gonna take what belongs to me!"

"You don't . . ."the minister began, but he knew it was no use. The truck slowed, jarring over a last crater in the road, and stopped.

"We got him!" someone yelled. "Easy as pie!"

"Tie his hands," a harsh voice commanded.

6

Carol Horton knew her husband had probably stayed longer than he'd planned at Mrs. Mimms's house, and might have stopped somewhere else between here and there as well. But now, at twenty minutes before midnight, she was very worried. There might've been car trouble, a flat tire or something. Jim had been tired and disturbed when he'd left home, and Carol had been concerned for a long while that he was just trying to shoulder too much.

She looked up from the book she was reading on antebellum history and stared at the telephone. Mrs. Mimms would be asleep by now. Perhaps she should call Sheriff Bromley? No, no; if the sheriff had heard anything he would've called. . . .

There was a quick rapping at the front door. Carol leaped up from her chair and hurried to answer it, trying to get herself composed. If it was Sheriff Bromley standing out there, bringing the news of an accident on the highway, she didn't think she could take it. Just before she opened the door she heard a truck roar away, and a chorus of male laughter. She unbolted the door, her heart pounding.

In a way, she was relieved to find that no one was there. It was a joke, she thought; somebody was trying to scare her. But then her breath froze in her lungs, because she saw the mottled black-and-white bundle of rags out under the pines, at the edge of the light cast from the front-porch bulb. A few bits of white fluttered away on the chilly breeze.

Feathers, she thought suddenly, and almost laughed. Now who would dump a bundle of feathers into our front yard? She stepped off the porch, her gown windblown around her, and approached the mass; when she was five paces away she stopped, her legs gone rubbery, and stared. A crudely hand-lettered sign hung around the thing's neck: nigger-lover (this is what they get).

Carol did not scream when the eyes opened, wide and white like the eyes of a painted minstrel. She did not scream when the awful swollen face lifted toward her, shining in the light and oozing fresh tar into the grass; nor when the arm came slowly out, gripping at the empty air with a black-smeared hand.

The scream burst free, ravaging her throat, when the thing's tar-crusted mouth opened and whispered her name.

Feathers danced on the breeze. Hawthorne lay nestled in the valley like a sleeping child, only occasionally disturbed by nightmares. Wind moved like a living thing through the rooms of the dark Booker house, where brown blood stained the floors and walls, and in the profound silence there might have been a footstep and a soft, yearning sob.

TWO

The Coal Pile

7

"There she is, Billy!"

"Why don't ya go catch her, Billy?"

"Billy's got a girl friend, Billy's got a girl friend. ..."

The singing of that dreaded song was more than he could bear He took after his three tormentors—Johnny Parker, Ricky Sales, and Butch Bryant—swinging his schoolbooks at the end of a rubber strap like a makeshift knight's mace. The boys scattered in three directions, jeering and thumbing their noses at him while he stood sputtering like a live wire, atop the pitcher's mound at the center of Kyle Field, spring's dust rolling around his sneakers.

They couldn't fathom why Billy had started noticing Melissa Pettus. Maybe she did have long pretty blond hair done up with ribbons, but a bird-dog pup was pretty too and you didn't make a fuss about one of those, did you? So today, when they'd all been walking home across Kyle Field beneath a blue late-April sky and they'd seen Melissa walking up ahead through the green weeds, the only thing to do was to have some fun at Billy's expense. They hadn't expected such a violent reaction, but it gratified them, especially since they were aware Melissa had stopped and was watching.

Ricky Sales crowed, "Loverboy, loverboy, Billy's a loverb—" He had to dodge fast, because Billy was suddenly coming at him like a steam engine, swinging his schoolbooks.

Suddenly the strap broke with a moaning sound and books were flying through the air as if fired from a slingshot. They spread open like hard kites and sailed into the dustclouds.

"Oh . . . damn!" Billy said, instantly ashamed that he'd cussed. The other boys howled with laughter, but all the anger had seeped out of him; if there was anything Mrs. Cullens hated, Billy knew, it was a dirty arithmetic book, and he was certain some of the pages had been torn too. The boys danced around him for another moment, careful not to get too close, but they saw he didn't care anymore and so they started running away across the field. Ricky looked back and shouted, "See ya later, Billy! Okay?"

He waved halfheartedly, distressed about the battered books, and then began picking them up. He turned to pick up his arithmetic book, and Melissa Pettus, wearing a dress as green as the new grass of April, held it out to him. There were flecks of yellow pollen on her rosy cheeks; her hair shone in the sunshine like waves of spun gold, and she was smiling shyly.

"Thanks," Billy said, and took it from her. What do you say to girls? he asked himself, as he dusted the books off on the front of his shirt. Then he started walking for home again, aware that Melissa was walking a few feet to his left. She made him nervous down in the bottom of his stomach.

"I saw your books fall," Melissa said after another moment.

"Yeah. They're okay, though. Just dusty."

"I made a hundred on the spellin' test today."

"Oh." He'd only made an eighty-five. "I missed a couple of hard words."

Yellow butterflies swooped through the grass at their approach. The noise from the sawmill sounded like a big cricket hurnming up in the woods, interrupted by the chugging of conveyor belts hauling cut lumber Before them, heatwaves shimmered across the field.

What do you say to a girl? he asked himself again, feeling panic-stricken. "Do you like the Lone Ranger?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

"Last Saturday night we went to the movie in Fayette and know what we saw? The Lone Ranger and the Canyon of Gold, but I fell asleep before it was over There was too much talkin'. He rides on a horse named Silver and he shoots silver bullets."

"Why?"

He glanced at her, startled by the question. " 'Cause silver bullets kill the bad guys faster," he explained. "There were Indians in the movie too, they were 'Patchee Indians. I've got some Indian in me, did you know that? I'm part Choctaw, my momma says; they were the forest tribe that lived around here a long time ago. They hunted and fished and lived in huts."

"I'm an American," Melissa said. "If you're an Indian, how come you don't wear war paint and moccasins?"

" 'Cause I'm not on the warpath, that's why. Anyway, my momma says the Choctaws were peaceful and didn't like to fight."

Melissa thought he was cute, but she'd heard strange things about the Creekmores from her parents: that the witch-woman kept jars of bats' wings, lizard eyes, and graveyard dirt on shelves in her kitchen; that the needlepoint pictures she made were the most intricate anyone had ever seen because demons helped her do them in the dead of night; and that Billy, who looked so much like his mother and not at all like his father, must be tainted with sinful blood too, bubbling in his veins like the red morass in a hag's stewpot. But whether all that was true or not, Melissa liked him; she wouldn't let him walk her all the way home, though, for fear her parents might see them together.

They were nearing the place where Melissa turned off onto the path for home. "I've got to go now," Melissa told him. " 'Bye!" She cradled her books and walked off along the path, weeds catching at the hem of her dress.

"Good-bye!" Billy called after her "Thanks for helpin' with my books!" He thought for a moment that she wouldn't turn, but then she did—with a sunny smile—and he felt himself melting into his shoes like a grape Popsicle. The sky seemed as big as the world, and as blue as the special plates Gram had made for his mother's birthday last month. Billy turned in the opposite direction and walked across Kyle Field, heading homeward. He found a dime in his pocket, went into the Quik-Pik store, and bought a Butterfinger, eating it as he walked along the highway. Girl friend, girl friend, Billy's got a girl friend. Maybe Melissa was his girl friend, he thought suddenly. The heat of shame flamed his face as he thought of magazine covers he'd seen in the grocery store: True Love, Love Stories, and Young Romance. People were always kissing on those covers, getting his attention while he paged through the comic books.

A shadow fell across him. He looked up at the Booker house.

Billy froze. The green house was turning gray, the paint peeling in long strips; the dirty white shutters hung at broken angles around rock-shattered windows. The front door sagged on its hinges, and across it was written in red paint, private property! Keep out! Weeds and vines were creeping up the walls, green clinging vines of the forest reclaiming its territory. Billy thought he caught a soft, muffled sigh on the breeze, and he remembered that sad poem Mrs. Cullens had read to the class once, about the house that nobody lived in; he would have to get his feet moving now, he knew, or soon he'd feel the sadness in the air.

But he didn't move. He'd promised his daddy, back in January after it had happened, that he wouldn't go near this house, wouldn't stop in front of it just as he was doing now. He'd kept that promise for over three months, but he passed the Booker house twice a day on the walk to and from school and he'd found himself being drawn closer and closer to it, only a step or so at a time. Standing right in front of it, its shadow cast over him like a cold sheet, was the closest he'd ever come. His curiosity was tempting him to climb those steps to the front porch. He was sure there were mysteries waiting to be solved in that house, that when he stepped inside and looked for himself all the puzzling things about why Mr Booker had gone crazy and hurt his family would be revealed like a magician's trick.

His mother had tried to explain to him about Death, that the Bookers had "passed away" to another place and that Will had probably "passed away" too, but no one knew exactly where his body lay sleeping. She said he was most likely asleep back in the forest somewhere, lying on a bed of dark green moss, his head cradled on a pillow of decaying leaves, white mushrooms sprouting around him like tiny candles to reassure him against the dark.

Billy climbed two of the steps and stood staring at the front door. He'd promised his daddy he wouldn't go in! he agonized, but he didn't step down. It seemed to him to be like the story of Adam and Eve his daddy had read to him several times; he wanted to be good and live in the Garden, but this house—the murder house, everybody called it—was the Forbidden Fruit of Knowledge about how and why Will Booker had been called away by the Lord, and where Will had "passed away" to. He shivered on the hard edge of a decision.

Sometimes it seemed that when he'd tried to walk past this house without looking at it he could hear a soft, yearning sound through the trees that always made him look up; sometimes he imagined he heard his name whispered, and once he thought he'd seen a small figure standing behind one of the broken windows, waiting for him to pass. Know what I heard? Johnny Parker had asked him just a few days ago. The Booker house is full of ghosts! My daddy says for me not to play around there, 'cause at night people see funny lights and they hear screams! Old man Keller told my daddy Mr. Booker cut Katy's head off and set it on a bedpost, and my daddy thinks Mr. Booker hacked Will up into little pieces and scattered him all over the woods! . . .

Will was my best friend, Billy thought; there's nothing in that house that would hurt me. . . . Just one look, his curiosity urged.

He gazed off along the highway, thinking about his father busy at work in the cornfield, tending the new spring shoots. Just one look. Billy laid his books down on the steps. He climbed up and stood before the sagging door, his heartbeat quickening; the door had never looked so massive before, the inside of the house never so dark and full of mysteries. The Adam and Eve story flashed through his mind, like one last chance at turning back; Once you sin, he thought, once you go where you're not supposed to, you can never go back to the way it was before; once you step out of the Garden and into the Dark, it's too late. . . .

A bluejay shrieked, scaring him almost right out of his shoes. He thought he heard his name called in a hushed sigh of breath, and he listened hard but didn't hear it again. Momma's callin' me from the house, he told himself, 'cause I'm already so late. I'm gonna get a whippin'! He glanced to his left, at the ragged hole where the troopers had searched for Will under the porch. Then he grasped the door's edge and pulled it partway open. The bottom of the door scraped across the porch like a scream, and dry dusty air came roiling out of the house into his face.

Once you step out of the Garden, and into the Dark . . .

He took a deep breath of stale air and stepped across the threshold into the murder house.

8

The front room was huge, barely recognizable, because all the furniture had been hauled away. The Last Supper picture and the mounted fish were gone too, and yellowed newspaper pages covered the floor. Vines had crept through the cracks in the windows, snaking up toward the ceiling; Billy's gaze followed one of them, and stopped abruptly at a large mottled brown stain on the ceiling just above where he thought the sofa had been. The house was full of deep green, shadowy light, and seemed a secretive, terribly lonely place. Spider webs clung to the corners, and two wasps flew about seeking a secure place to start a nest. Nature was at work tearing the Booker house back to its basic elements.

When Billy crossed the room to the hallway, his shoes stirred up a few of the newspaper pages, exposing a horrible blotched brown patch on the floorboards. Billy carefully covered the stain back over again. When he walked into the hallway spider webs clutched at his hair, sending chills up his spine. What had been Mr. and Mrs. Booker's bedroom was bare but for a broken chair and more newspapers across the floor; in Will and Katy's room brown flecks and streaks marred the walls as if someone had fired paint from a shotgun. Billy got out of that room quickly, because his heart had suddenly given a violent kick and he'd had trouble getting his breath. The house was silent, but seemed alive with imagined noises: the creaks and sighs of a house continuing to settle into the earth. Billy heard the high whining of the saws at work, the barking of a dog in the distance, a screen door slam shut, sounds carried far on the warm spring air.

In the kitchen Billy found a garbage can filled with an odd assortment of items: hair curlers, ice trays, a reel of fishing line and a snapped pole, comic books and newspapers, brown-smeared rags, cracked cups and dishes, coat hangers, a pair of gray Keds that had belonged to Will, and a crumpled sack of Bama Dog Chow.

Sadness gripped his heart. This is all that's left of the Bookers, Billy thought, and placed his hand against the can's cool rim. Where was the life that had been here? he wondered desperately. He didn't understand Death, and felt a terrible sense of loneliness sweep over him like a January wind. The leaves of the snakelike vines that had found their way through the broken kitchen windows seemed to rattle a warning at him—Get out get out get out . . . before it's too late.

Billy turned and hurried along the hallway, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure the bloated corpse of Mr. Booker wasn't following, armed with a shotgun, grinning and wearing his yellow cap with the fishhooks in it.

Tears of fear burned his eyes. Spider webs caught at his face and hair, and as he passed the door that led down to the basement, something cracked sharply against the other side.

He yelped and flung himself backward, pressing against the opposite wall and staring at the doorknob, expecting it to . . . slowly . . . turn; but it never did. He looked toward the front door, getting ready to run before whatever haunted this murder house sprang up from the basement after him.

Then: bump! Silence. Billy's eyes widened, and he heard a low bubbling of fear deep in his throat.

Bump!

When it happened a third time, he realized what was causing the noise: someone was hitting the door with pebbles of coal from the large mound that lay down there, near the furnace.

There was a long silence. Billy said, "Who's there?"

And then there was a hail of noise, as if a flurry of coal had been thrown in response to Billy's voice. It went on and on, until Billy clapped his hands to his ears; then it abruptly stopped. "Whoever you are, you're not supposed to be in this house!" Billy called out. "It's private property!" He tried to sound braver than he was.

Slowly, he placed his hand on the cold knob; something pulsed into him like a mild charge of electricity, enough to make his arm buzz. Then he shoved the door open and protectively pressed against the opposite wall again. The basement was as dark as a cave, oozing a cold and oily odor. "I'll call Sheriff Bromley!" Billy warned. Nothing moved down there, and now he realized there were no pieces of coal littering the top few steps at all. Maybe they'd all fallen off, or bounced back down to the floor, he reasoned. But now he had the cold and certain feeling that the heart of the mystery—what had drawn him into this house, only a step or so a day for over three months—beat in the silence of the Bookers' basement. He gathered up his courage—Nothing in here that can hurt me!—and stepped into the darkness.

A few shards of muted gray light filtered through small, dirty panes of glass. The bulk of the furnace was like a scorched metal Halloween mask; and standing near it was a mountain of darkly glittering coal. Billy reached the bottom of the steps and stood on the red-clay floor A shovel was propped against the wall near him, its triangular head giving it the look of a snake about to strike. Billy avoided it, and as he walked closer to the coal pile, one tentative step at a time, he thought he could see the faint blue plume of his breath before him. It was much colder here than in the house. His arms were sprouting goose bumps, and the hair at the back of his neck was standing on end.

Billy stood a few feet away from the coal pile, which towered over him by several feet, as his eyes grew used to the dim light. He could see almost all the shadowed nooks and crannies of the basement now, and he was almost certain that he was alone. Still ... He called out in a shaky voice, "Anybody here?"

No, he thought, nobody's here. Then who made that noise on the door? . . .

His brain froze in midthought. He was staring at the coal pile, and he'd seen it shudder.

Bits of coal, a tiny avalanche, streamed down the sides; it seemed to breathe like a laboring bellows. Run! he screamed inwardly. But his gaze was fixed on the coal pile and his feet were glued to the ground. Something was coming up out of the coal— perhaps the dark key to a mystery, or grinning Mr Booker in his yellow cap, or the very essence of Evil itself coming to carry him to Hell.

And suddenly a small white hand clawed itself free from the top of the coal pile, perhaps three feet above Billy's head. An arm and shoulder followed, slowly working out and writhing in the air. Rivulets of coal rolled down and over Billy's sneakers. A small head broke free, and the ghastly, tormented face of Will Booker turned toward his friend, the sightless white eyes peering down with desperate terror.

The gray-lipped mouth struggled to form words. "Billy"—the voice was an awful, pleading whine—"tell them where I am, Billy . . . tell them where I am. . . ."

A wail ripped from Billy's throat, and he scrabbled up the basement stairs like a frantic crab. Behind him, he heard the coal pile shifting and groaning as if gathering itself to chase after him. He fell in the hallway, struggled wildly up, heard a scream like a neglected teakettle spouting hot steam filling the house as he burst onto the front porch and ran, ran, ran, forgetting his books on the porch steps, ran, forgetting everything but the horror that lay in the Bookers' basement, ran home screaming all the way.

9

John quietly opened the bedroom door and peered in. The boy was still lying huddled beneath the quilt, his face pressed against a pillow, but at least he wasn't making those awful whimpering sounds anymore. In a way, though, the silence was worse. Billy had sobbed himself sick for almost an hour, since coming home twenty minutes late from school. John thought he'd never forget the white expression of fear stamped on his son's face.

They'd put him in the bedroom, since it was much more comfortable than the cot and he could be quiet in here. As John watched, Billy shivered beneath the quilt and mumbled something that sounded like "cold, in the cold." John stepped inside, arranged the quilt a little more snugly because he thought Billy had felt a chill, and then realized his son's eyes were wide open, staring fixedly into a corner of the room.

John eased down on the side of the bed. "How you feelin'?" he asked softly; he touched Billy's forehead, even though Ramona had told him Billy didn't have a fever and didn't seem physically ill. They'd taken off his clothes and checked him thoroughly the double punctures of a snakebite, knowing how he liked to ramble through dark corners of the forest, but they'd found nothing.

"Want to talk about it now?"

Billy shook his head.

"Your momma's about to put supper on the table. You feel like eatin'?"

The boy whispered something, and John thought it sounded like "Butterfinger" "Huh? What do you want, a candy bar? We're havin' sweet potatoes, will that do?" When Billy didn't reply, but stared straight ahead with such intensity that John was beginning to feel uneasy, John squeezed the boy's shoulder through the quilt and said, "When you feel like talkin' about it, I'll listen." Then John rose from the bed, feeling sure Billy had just stumbled onto a snake up in the woods and he'd be more careful next time, and went to the kitchen, where Ramona was laboring over a woodburning stove. The kitchen was filled with late afternoon sunlight and smelled of fresh vegetables from several pots on the stove.

"Is he any better?" Ramona asked.

"He's quieted down some. What did he say to you when he first came in?"

"Nothing. He couldn't talk, he was sobbing so hard. I just picked him up and held him, and then you came in from the field."

"Yeah," John said grimly. "I saw his face. I've seen sun-bleached sheets that had more color in 'em. I can't figure out what he might've gotten into." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

"I think he'll want to sleep for a while. When he wants to talk about it, he'll let us know."

"Yeah. Know what he said he wanted? A Butterfinger, of all crazy things!" He paused, watching his wife take plates out of the cupboard and set them on the small dinner table, and then jingled the few loose coins in his pocket. "Maybe I'll drive down to the store to get him one before they close up. Might ease his mind. That suit you?"

She nodded. "I'll have your supper on the table in ten minutes."

John took the car keys from his pocket and left the house. Ramona stood over the stove until she heard the engine start and car pull away. Then she took the pots off their burners, checked the corn muffins, and hurried into the bedroom, wiping her callused hands on her apron. Her eyes were shining like polished amber stones as she stood over the bed, staring down at her son. Softly, she said, "Billy?"

He stirred but did not answer. She laid a hand on his cheek. "Billy? We've got to talk. Quickly, before your father comes back."

"No . . ." he whimpered, his mouth pressed against the pillow.

"I want to know where you went. I want to know what happened. Billy, please look at me."

After a few seconds he turned his head so he could see her from the corner of a swollen eye; he was still shaking with sobs he was too weak to let go of.

"I think you went someplace where your daddy didn't want you to go. Didn't you? I think you went to the Booker house." The boy tensed. "If not inside it, then very close to it. Is that right?"

Billy shivered, his hands gripping at the covers. New tears broke over his cheeks, and like a dam bursting everything came flooding out of him at once. He cried forlornly, "I didn't mean to go in there, I promise I didn't! I wasn't bad! But I heard ... I heard ... I heard it in the basement and I ... I had to go see what it was and it was ... it was . . . awful!" His face contorted with agony and Ramona reached for him, hugging him close. She could feel his heartbeat racing in his chest.

But she had to find out, before John returned. "What did you see?" she asked.

"No! Can't . . . can't tell. Please don't make me!"

"Something in the basement?"

Billy shuddered; the illusion he'd been building in his mind, that it had all been just a particularly nasty nightmare, was falling apart at the seams like wet and rotten cloth. "I didn't see anything!"

Ramona gripped his shoulders and looked deeply into his swollen eyes. "Your daddy's going to be back in a few minutes. He's a good man in his heart, Billy, and I love his heart, but I want you to remember this: your daddy is afraid, and he strikes out at what he fears because he doesn't understand it. He loves us; he loves you more than anything in the world, and I love you too, more than you'll ever know. But now you have to trust me, son. Did . . . whatever you see speak to you?"

Billy's gaze had gone glassy. He nodded his head with an effort, a strand of saliva breaking from his half-open mouth and trailing downward.

"I thought so," Ramona said gently. Her eyes were shining, but there was a deep sadness in her face too, and a certainty of the trouble to come. He's only a little boy! she thought. He's not strong enough yet! She bit her lower lip to keep her face from collapsing in a sob. "I love you," she told him. "I'll always be there when you need me. . . ."

The sounds of the sawmill's steam whistle and the screen door slamming came at almost the same time, making them both jump.

"Supper on yet?" John called from the front room.

Ramona kissed her son's cheek and eased his head back down on the pillow: Billy curled up again, staring sightlessly. Shock, she thought. I was like that too, the first time it happened to me. He would bear watching for the next few days.

John was standing in the doorway when Ramona looked up. He was holding two Butterfinger candy bars in his right hand, and with his left seemed to be supporting himself in the doorframe; Ramona knew it was her imagination, and perhaps a trick of the dusky afternoon light that cloaked his shoulders from behind, but he seemed to have aged ten years since he'd left the house. There appeared to be a sickness behind his eyes. A weary smile worked across his lips, and he came forward to offer the candy bars to Billy. "Here you go, son. Feelin' better?"

Billy took them gratefully, though he wasn't hungry and couldn't figure out why his father had brought them.

"Your face looks like a puffball," John said. "Guess you took a wrong turn in the woods and saw a snake, huh?" He gently ruffed the boy's hair before Billy could reply, and said, "Well, you've got to watch your step. You don't want to scare some poor timber rattler half to death, do you?"

For the first time that afternoon, Billy managed a tentative smile; Ramona thought, He's going to be all right.

"I'll put supper on the table now," she said, touching her son's cheek softly, and then walked past John—who stepped suddenly away from her, as if fearful of being contaminated—and into the hallway. She saw that John had left the front door open, and closed it against the evening chill.

And as she turned to go to the kitchen she saw the dusty set of schoolbooks lying on a chair.

10

As the pearly-white '58 Cadillac limousine, sparkling from its showroom wax job, its sharp rear fins jutting up like the tail of a Martian spacecraft, pulled up to the entranceway of the Tutwiler Hotel in downtown Birmingham, an elderly black doorman in a dark red uniform and cap was already coming down the marbled steps, eager to find out just who was riding in the rear seat of that spiffy automobile. Having worked for over twenty years at the Tutwiler—the finest hotel in Alabama—he was accustomed to celebrities, but he knew from a quick appraisal of that Caddy that behind those tinted rear windows was American sugar. He noticed the shining chrome hood ornament in the shape of clasped, praying hands. He reached the sidewalk and thrust out his frail hand to let the passenger out.

But the door fairly burst open before he could get a grip on it, and from the Caddy uncoiled a giant of a man in a bright yellow suit, spotless white shirt, and white silk tie; the man rose to a height well over six feet, his chest expanding like a yellow wall.

"Fine afternoon, isn't it?" the man boomed. At the crest of his high forehead was a curly mass of gray-flecked blond hair; he had the kind of handsome, square face that made him look like a human nutcracker, ready to burst walnuts between perfect white teeth.

"Yessir, sure is," the doorman said, nodding his gray-wooled head, aware that pedestrians on the Twentieth Street sidewalk were turning to gawk, caught by the sound of power in the man's voice.

Realizing he was the center of attention, the man beamed like sunlight on a July Sunday; he said, "Just take it around the corner and park it," addressing the Caddy's driver, a young man in a seersucker suit, and the long sleek car pulled away from the curb like a stretching lion.

"Yessir, nice afternoon," the doorman said, his eyes still jangling from that glowing suit.

The man grinned and thrust a hand into his inside coat pocket; the doorman grinned too—American sugar!—and reached out with the obligatory "Thankee, sir!" already on his lips. Paper was put into his palm, and then the giant man had taken two long steps and was moving up the marbled stairs like a golden locomotive. The doorman stepped back a pace, as if scorched by energy. When he looked at what he held gripped in his hand, he saw a small pamphlet titled Sin Destroyed the Roman Empire; across the title page was a signature in red ink: J.J. Falconer.

In the dimly lit, luxurious leather-and-wood interior of the Tutwiler, Jimmy Jed Falconer was met by a young gray-suited lawyer named Henry Bragg. They stood at the center of the large lobby, shaking hands and talking about general things—the state of the weather, farm economics, and what the Crimson Tide was likely to do next season.

"Everything ready up there, Henry?" Falconer asked.

"Yes sir. We're expecting Forrest any minute now."

"Lemonade?" Falconer lifted his thick blond brows.

"Yes sir, Mr. Falconer," Henry said. "I've already ordered it."

They entered the elevator and the coffee-colored woman sitting on a stool inside smiled politely and turned a brass lever to take them to the fifth floor.

"Didn't bring the wife and son with you this time?" Henry asked, pushing his black horn-rimmed glasses back onto his nose. He had graduated from the University of Alabama Law School only last year, and still wore the brutal white-walled haircut of his Delta Kappa Epsilon days; but he was a smart young man with alert blue eyes that rarely missed a trick, and he was pleased that J.J. Falconer remembered him from the work his firm had done last spring.

"Nope. Camille and Wayne stayed home, mindin' the store. I'll tell you, keepin' up with that Wayne is a full-time job in itself." He laughed, a bark of muted trumpets. "Boy can run a bloodhound ragged."

The fifth-floor suite, with windows overlooking Twentieth Street, was decked out like an office, containing a few desks, telephones, and filing cabinets. There was a reception area set apart from the workspace, containing comfortable easy chairs, a coffee table, and a long beige sofa framed by brass lamps. An easel had been set up facing the sofa, and on the wall hung a large framed Confederate flag.

A stocky man with thinning brown hair, wearing a pale blue short-sleeved shirt with G.H. monogrammed on the breast pocket, looked up from the paperwork strewn across one of the desks, smiled, and rose to his feet as the other two men entered.

Falconer gripped his hand and shook it. "Good to see you, George. How's the family?"

"Doing just fine. Camille and Wayne?"

"One's prettier than ever, the other's growin' like a wild weed. Now I see who the hard worker is in this organization." He slapped George Hodges on the back and slid a sidelong glance at Henry, whose smile slipped a fraction. "What do you have for me?"

Hodges offered him a couple of manila folders. "Tentative budget. Contribution records as of March thirty-first. Also a list of contributors through the last three years. Cash flow's thirty percent ahead of where we were this time last April."

Falconer shrugged out of his coat and sat down heavily on the sofa, then began reading the organizational reports. "I see we had a sizable donation from Peterson Construction by last April, and the April before that too; but they're not on the sheet this year. What happened?" He looked up squarely at his business manager.

"We've contacted them twice, took old man Peterson to lunch last week," Hodges explained while he sharpened a pencil. "Seems his son is in a stronger position this year, and the kid thinks tent revivals are . . . well, old-fashioned. The company needs a tax writeoff, but . . ."

"Uh-huh. Well, it appears to me that we've been barking up the wrong tree then, doesn't it? The Lord loves a cheerful giver, but He'll take it any way He can get it if it helps spread the Word." He smiled, and the others did too. "Seems we should've been talking to Peterson Junior. I'll remember to give him a personal call. George, you get his home phone number for me, will you?"

"Mr. Falconer," Bragg said as he sat down in one of the chairs, "it seems to me that—just maybe—Peterson has a point."

Hodges tensed and turned to stare; Falconer's head slowly rose from the file he was reading, his blue-green eyes glittering.

Bragg shrugged uneasily, realizing from the sudden chill that he'd stepped through the ice. "I just . . . meant to point out that in my research I've found most of the successful evangelists have made the transition from radio and tent revivals to television. I think television will prove itself to be a great social force in the next ten years, and I think you'd be wise to—"

Falconer laughed abruptly. "Listen to the young scholar, George!" he whooped. "Well, I can tell I don't have to worry about how slick your brain gears are, do I?" He leaned forward on the sofa, his face suddenly losing its grin, his eyes fixing in a hard stare. "Henry, I want to tell you something. My daddy was a dirt-poor Baptist preacher. Do you know what dirt-poor means, Henry?" His mouth crooked in a savage grin for a few seconds. "You come from a fine old Montgomery family, and I don't think you understand what it means to be hungry. My momma worried herself into an old woman at twenty-five. We were on the road most of the time, just like tramps. They were hard days, Henry. The Depression, nobody could get a job 'cause everything was closed down, all across the South." He stared up at the Confederate flag for a few seconds, his eyes dark.

"Anyway, somebody saw us on the road and gave us a beat-up old tent to live in. For us it was a mansion, Henry. We pitched camp on the roadside, and my daddy made a cross out of boards and nailed up a sign on a tree that said: >rev falconer's tent revivals nightly! everybody welcome! He preached for the tramps who came along that road, heading for Birmingham to find work. He was a good minister too, but something about being under that tent put brimstone and fire in his soul; he scared Satan out of more men and women than Hell could hold. People praised God and talked in tongues, and demons came spilling out right there like black bile. By the time my daddy died, the Lord's work was more than he could handle; hundreds of people were seeking him out day and night. So I stepped in to help, and I've been there ever since."

Falconer leveled his gaze at Bragg. "I used to do a radio show, about ten years or so back. Well, those were fine, but what about the people who don't have radios? What about those who don't own television sets? Don't they deserve to be touched, too? You know how many people lifted their hands to Jesus last summer, Henry? At least fifty a night, five nights a week May through August! Isn't that right, George?"

"Sure is, J.J."

"You're a bright young man," Falconer said to the lawyer. "I think what's in the back of your mind is the idea of expansion. Is that so? Breaking out of the regional circuit and going nationwide? That's fine; ideas like that are what I pay you for. Oh, it'll happen all right, praise the Lord, but I've got sawdust in my blood!" He grinned. "With Jesus in your heart and your blood full of sawdust, boy, you can lick Satan with one hand tied behind your back!"

There was a knock at the door, and a porter came in wheeling a cart with Dixie cups and a pitcher of cold lemonade, compliments of the management. The porter poured them all a drink and left the room clutching a religious pamphlet.

Falconer took a cooling sip. "Now that hits the spot dead-center," he said. "Seems Mr Forrest forgot about us, didn't he?"

"I spoke to him this morning, J.J.," Hodges said. "He told me there was an afternoon meeting he might get hung up in, but he'd be here as soon as he could."

Falconer grunted and picked up an Alabama Baptist newspaper.

Hodges opened a folder and sorted through a stack of letters and petitions—"fan letters to God," J.J. called them—sent from people all over the state, asking for the Falconer Crusade to visit their particular towns this summer. "Petition from Grove Hill's signed by over a hundred people," he told Falconer. "Most of them sent in contributions, too."

"The Lord's at work," Falconer commented, paging through the paper.

"An interesting letter here, too." Hodges spread it out on the blotter before him; there were a couple of stains on the lined paper that looked like tobacco juice. "Sent from a town called Hawthorne. . . ."

Falconer looked up. "It's not but fifteen miles or so away from Fayette, probably less than ten from my front door, as the crow flies. What about it?"

"Letter's from a man named Lee Sayre," Hodges continued. "Seems the town's been without a minister since the first of February, and the men have been taking turns reading a Bible lesson on Sunday mornings to the congregation. When did we last schedule a revival near your hometown, J.J.?"

"Four years or more, I suppose." Falconer frowned. "Without a minister, huh? They must be starving for real leadership by now. Does he say what happened?"

"Yes, says the man took ill and had to leave town for his health. Anyway, Sayre says he came to the Falconer revival in Tuscaloosa last year, and he's asking if we might get to Hawthorne this summer."

"Hawthorne's almost at my front door," he mused. "Folks would come in from Oakman, Patton Junction, Berry, a dozen other little towns. Maybe it's time for a homecoming, huh? Mark it down, George, and let's try to find a place in the schedule."

The door opened and a thin, middle-aged man in a baggy brown suit entered the room smiling nervously. He carried a bulging briefcase in one hand and an artist's portfolio clasped beneath the other arm. "Sorry I'm late," he said. "Meeting at the office went about an hour—"

"Close that door and cut the breeze." Falconer waved him in and rose to his feet. "Let's see what you ad boys have for us this year."

Forrest fumbled his way to the easel, set his briefcase on the floor, and then put the portfolio up on the easel where everyone could see it. There were faint dark circles beneath his arms. "Warm outside this afternoon, isn't it? Going to be a hot summer, probably. Can I . . . uh. . . ?" he motioned toward the lemonade cart, and when Falconer nodded he gratefully poured himself a cup. "I think you'll like what we've done this year, J.J."

"We'll see."

Forrest laid his half-empty cup on the coffee table, then took a deep breath and opened the portfolio, spreading three poster mockups. Hand-inked letters proclaimed: >TONIGHT! ONE NIGHT ONLY! SEE AND HEAR JIMMY JED FALCONER, AND GET CLOSE TO god! Beneath the lettering was a glossy photograph of Falconer, standing on a podium with his arms uplifted in a powerful gesture of appeal.

The second poster showed Falconer standing before a bookcase, framed on one side by an American flag and on the other by the flag of the Confederacy; he was thrusting a Bible toward the camera, a broad smile on his face. The lettering was simply blocked, and said: >the south's greatest evangelist, jimmy jed falconer! one night only! come and get close to god!

The third was all picture, with Falconer raising his arms and gaze upward in an expression of calm peace. White letters were superimposed at the bottom, and said: >one night only! see and hear jimmy jed falconer and get close to god! Falconer stepped toward the easel. "That picture is just fine," he said. "Yes, I like that one. I surely do! Knocks ten years off my age with that lighting, doesn't it?"

Forrest smiled and nodded. He brought out a briar pipe and tobacco pouch, fumbling to fill one from the other He got it lit after two tries and puffed smoke into the room. "Glad you like that one," he said, relieved.

"But," Falconer said quietly, "I like the message and the lettering on the middle poster the best."

"Oh, we can put them together any way you want. No problem."

Falconer stepped forward until his face was only a few inches from the photographed Falconer face. "That's what I want. This picture speaks. I want five thousand of these printed up, but with that other message and lettering. I want them by the end of this month."

Forrest cleared his throat. "Well . . . that's rushing things a bit, I guess. But we'll handle it, no problem."

"Fine." Beaming, Falconer turned from the poster and took the pipe from between Forrest's teeth, pulling it away like lollipop from a baby. "I cannot abide lateness, Mr. Forrest. And I have told you again and again how I hate the stink of the Devil's weed." Something bright and sharp flashed behind his gaze. Forrest's struggling smile hung crookedly from the man's face as Falconer submerged the pipe in the cup of lemonade. There was a tiny hiss as the tobacco was extinguished. "Bad for your health," Falconer said quietly, as if speaking to a retarded child. "Good for the Devil." He left the offending pipe in the Dixie cup, clapped Forrest on the shoulder, and stepped back so he could admire the poster again.

One of the telephones rang. Hodges picked it up, said, "Falconer Crusade. Oh. Hi there, Cammy, how are you . . . sure, just a minute." He held the receiver out for Falconer. "J.J.? It's Camille."

"Tell her I'll get back to her, George."

"She sounds awfully excited about something."

Falconer paused, then reached the phone with two long strides. "Hey hon. What can I do for you?" He watched as Forrest put the posters away and took the dripping pipe from the cup. "What's that? Hon, the connection's bad. Say that again now, I can hardly hear you." His broad face slackened. "Toby? When? Hurt bad? Well, I told you that dog was goin' to get hit chasin' cars! All right now, don't get all excited . . . just get Wayne to help you, and the both of you pick Toby up, put him in the station wagon, and drive to Dr. Considine's. He's the best vet in Fayette County, and he won't charge you . . ." He stopped speaking and listened instead. His mouth slowly opened, closed, opened again like a fish gasping for breath. "What?" he whispered, in a voice so fragile the other three men in the room looked at each other with amazed expressions: they'd never heard J.J. Falconer when he wasn't booming with good cheer.

"No," he whispered. "No, Cammy, that can't be. You're wrong." He listened, his face slowly going pale. "Cammy . . . I don't . . . know what to do. . . . Are you sure?" He glanced quickly up at the others, his beefy hand about to crunch the receiver in two. "Is Wayne there with you? All right, now listen to me carefully. I don't care, just listen! Get that dog to the vet and have it checked over real good. Don't talk to anybody but Dr. Considine, and tell him I asked that he keep this to himself until I speak to him. Got that? Calm down, now! I'll be home in a couple of hours, I'm leavin' as fast as I can. Are you sure about this?" He paused, exhaled a long sigh, and then said, "All right. Love you, hon. 'Bye." And hung up the receiver.

"Anything wrong, J.J.?" Hodges asked.

"Toby," Falconer said softly, staring out the window at the surrounding city, golden afternoon light splashed across his face. "My bird dog. Hit by a truck on the highway. ..."

"Sorry to hear about that," Forrest offered. "Good dogs are hard to . ."

Falconer turned to face them. He was grinning triumphantly, his face a bright beet-red. He clenched his fists and thrust them toward the ceiling. "Gentlemen," he said in a voice choked with emotion. "God works in mighty mysterious ways!"

THREE

Tent Show

11

Heat lay pressed close to the earth as John Creekmore drove away from the house on a Saturday morning in late July. Already the sun was a red ball of misery perched atop the eastern hills. As he drove toward the highway, heading for his job at Lee Sayre's hardware and feed store, a maelstrom of dust boiled up in the Olds's wake, hanging in brown sheets and slowly drifting toward the field of dry brown cornstalks.

There had been no rain since the second week of June. It was a time, John knew, of making do or doing without. His credit was getting pretty thin at the grocery store, and last week Sayre had told him that if business didn't pick up—which it wasn't likely to, being so late in the summer and so stifling hot—he'd have to let John go until the autumn. He was digging into the emergency money to get his family by, as were most of the valley's farmers. Perhaps the most contented creatures in the Hawthorne valley were the local hogs, who got to eat a great deal of the corn crop; happy also was the man from Birmingham who bought dry corncobs at dirt-cheap prices, turning them into pipes to be sold at drug stores.

There was the Crafts Fair, held in Fayette in August, to look forward to now. Ramona's needlepoint pictures sold well. John remembered a woman buying one of Ramona's pieces and saying it looked like something "Grandma Moses" might've done; he didn't know who "Grandma Moses" was, but he figured that was a compliment because the woman had cheerfully parted with five dollars.

Morning heat waves shimmered across the highway, making Hawthorne float like a mirage about to vanish. He shifted uneasily in his seat as he passed the still-vacant, rapidly deteriorating Booker house; it had a reputation, John knew, and nobody in his right mind would want to live there. Only when he had passed the vine-and-weed-grown structure did he permit himself to think about that awful day in April when he'd seen Billy's schoolbooks lying on the front steps. The boy still had occasional nightmares, but he never explained them and John didn't want to know, anyway. Something in Billy's face had changed since that day; his eyes were troubled, and locked behind them was a secret that John found himself afraid of. More than anything, John wished there was a real minister in town, someone who could fathom this change Billy was going through; the whole town was in dire need of a preacher: Saturday nights were getting wilder, bad words brewed into fights, and there'd even been a shooting over in Dusktown. Sheriff Bromley was a good, hard-working man, but Hawthorne was about to slip from his control; what the town needed now, John knew, was a strong man of God.

He had wanted to be a minister himself, a long time ago, but the farming heritage of his family had rooted him to the earth instead.

At a tent revival one hot August night, he'd watched his father spasm and roll in the sawdust as people screamed in strange tongues and others shouted hallelujahs; the unnerving sight of the lanky red-haired man with his face contorted, veins jutting out from the bullneck, had stayed with John all his life. John feared the blue evening twilight, when—his father had said—God's Eye roamed the world like a burning sun, in search of the sinners who would die that night. It was understood that Life was a gift from the Lord, but Death was Satan's touch in this perfect world; when a man died spiritually and turned away from God, physical death was sure to follow, and the pit of Hell yawned for his soul.

His father had been a good family man, but privately John was told that all women, like Eve, were cunning and deceitful—except for his mother, who was the finest woman God had ever created— and he was to beware of them at all times. They had strange beliefs, could be swayed by money and pretty clothes, and they bled once a month to atone for the Original Sin.

But, at a barn dance when he was twenty, John Creekmore had looked across at the line of local girls waiting to be asked to dance, and his heart had grown wings. The tawny-skinned girl was wearing a white dress with white honeysuckle blossoms braided into her long, shining russet hair; their eyes had met and held for a few seconds before she'd looked away and trembled like a skittish colt. He'd watched her dance with a boy whose clodhoppers kept coming down on her feet like mules' hooves, but she only smiled through the pain and lifted her white hem so it wouldn't get dirty. Rosin leapt from the fiddlers' bows, dusting the tobacco-stained air, as the dancers stomped and spun and bits of hay drifted down from the loft like confetti. When the girl and her partner had circled close enough, John Creekmore had stepped between them and taken her hands, spinning away with her so smoothly Old Mule Hoof grabbed for empty air, then scowled and kicked at a clump of hay since John was twice his size. She had smiled, shyly, but with true good humor in her sparkling hazel eyes, and after the dance was over John asked if he might come see her some evening.

At first, he'd never heard of Rebekah Fairmountain, Ramona's mother. Later, he dismissed the tales he heard as idle gossip. He refused to listen to any more wild stories and married Ramona; then it was too late, and he turned alternately to moonshine and the Bible. He could never say, though, that he hadn't been warned about how things were; he remembered several times even Ramona trying to tell him things he couldn't stand to hear. He clung to the Bible, to the memory of his father once telling him no good man would ever turn tail and run from a woman, and to God. And life, like the seasons, went on. There'd been two blessings: the birth of Billy, and the fact that Rebekah Fairmountain, as tough as kudzu vine and alone since the death of Ramona's father, had moved to a house fifty miles away, on land with a better consistency of clay for her pottery.

A man John had never seen before—city man, he guessed, from the looks of the clothes—was nailing up a poster on a telephone pole near Lee Sayre's store. John slowed the Olds and gawked. The poster showed a righteous-looking man lifting his arms to Heaven, and read: >the south's greatest evangelist, jimmy jed falconer! one night only! come and get close to god! Beneath that, in smaller letters, was: >and witness the god- given healing gifts of little wayne falconer!

John's heart thumped. Praise the Lord! he thought. His prayers had been answered. He'd heard of Jimmy Jed Falconer before, and the tent revivals that had saved hundreds of sinners; he'd always wanted to go, but they'd always been too far away before. "Hey, mister!" he called out. The man turned around, his sunburned face bright red against the whiteness of his sodden shirt. "When's that preacher speakin'? And where's he gonna be?"

"Wednesday night, seven o'clock," the man replied; he motioned with his hammer in the direction of Kyle Field. "Right over there, fella."

John grinned. "Thanks! Thanks a lot!"

"Sure thing. Be there, will you? And bring the family."

"You can count on it!" John waved, his spirits buoyed by the idea of taking Billy to hear an evangelist who would really put the fear of the Lord back into Hawthorne, and drove on to work.

12

Standing on the porch in the Wednesday evening twilight, Billy itched in a dark gray suit that was at least a size too small; his wrists jutted out from the coat, and the necktie his father had insisted he wear was about to choke the breath out of him. He'd accompanied his daddy to Peel's barbershop just that afternoon for a severe haircut that had seemingly lowered his ears by two inches. The front was pomaded enough to withstand a windstorm, but a disobedient curly cowlick had already popped up in the back; he smelled strongly of Vitalis, an aroma he loved.

Though the suit made him feel as if bumblebees were crawling over him, he was excited and eager about the tent revival; he didn't fully understand what went on at one, except that it was a lot like church, but people had been talking about it for several days, planning what to wear and who to sit with. As he and his father had passed Kyle Field that afternoon, Billy had seen the huge tent being staked down by the workmen, and a truck filled with sawdust to be used for covering the ground had rolled up into the grass like an enormous beetle. The tent, crisp-looking, brown and peaked at the center, took up almost the entire softball field, its folds stirring in the dusty breeze as another truck with a heavy-duty electric winch played out thick black cables. Billy had wanted to stay and watch, because he'd never seen such activity in Hawthorne before, but John had hurried him on; driving back home, they'd both glanced silently at the ruin of the Booker house, and Billy had squeezed his eyes shut.

A white full moon was rising in the darkening sky, and Billy watched with fascination as a long beam of light swept in a slow circle from the direction of Kyle Field. He heard his parents' voices from within the house and almost flinched, but then he realized they weren't arguing; everything had been fine today, since his mother had agreed to go to the tent revival with them. But when she'd at first refused to go, John had made the flimsy walls tremble with his shouts of indignation. The fighting had gone on for two days, usually with Ramona coldly silent and John circling her, trying to bait her into anger. But now, Billy thought, they were all going to the tent revival together, like a real family.

In another few minutes, John and Ramona came out on the porch. He was wearing an old brown suit and a black bow tie on a slightly yellowed dress shirt. His face and hair were freshly scrubbed. He carried his Bible pressed to his side.

She wore a dark blue dress and a white shawl around her shoulders; her hair had been brushed until it shone and was allowed to tumble freely down to the middle of her back. It was not for the evangelist, or to placate John, that she'd decided to go, but because she'd been in the house so long; she wanted to see people—not that people would be overjoyed, she knew, to see her.

Tonight, she decided, she would make herself be very strong. If she happened to see the black aura, she would quickly look away; but she probably wouldn't see it, and everything would be just fine.

"Ready, bubber?" John asked his son. "Let's go, then!"

They got into the car and drove away from the house. Won't see it tonight, Ramona thought, her palms suddenly perspiring; no, probably won't see it at all. . . .

Cars and pickup trucks were parked in rows all around the huge peaked tent, and there was a line of cars waiting to turn in beneath a long banner that read >revival tonight! everybody welcome! Men with flashlights were waving the vehicles into parking places, and John saw that school buses had brought whole loads of people. A gleaming silver Airstream trailer sat just behind the tent, separated from the parking lot by sawhorses. The air was filled with dust and voices, and John heard the banner crackle above them as he pulled the car onto the field.

A man with a flashlight peered into the window and.grinned. "Evenin' folks. Just pull on over to the right and follow the man who directs you over there." He held up a bucket that was filling up with change. "Quarter to park, please."

"Quarter? But . . . this is a public field, ain't it?"

The man shook his bucket so the coins jingled. "Not tonight, fella."

John found lint and fifteen cents in his pockets. Ramona opened her change purse, took out a dime, and gave it to him. They drove on, following the impatient swing of flashlights. They had to park at the far edge of the field, between two school buses; by the time they'd walked the fifty yards to the tent's entranceway their carefully prepared clothes were scaled with dust. John took Billy's hand as they stepped across the threshold.

The interior held more people than John had ever seen gathered together in his life, and still the folks were coming in, rapidly filling up the wooden folding chairs that faced a large raised platform. Golden light streamed from shaded bulbs hanging in rows from the tent's high ceiling. Over the excited but restrained murmur of voices, a church organ played "The Old Rugged Cross" through two mighty speakers, one on each side of the platform. An American flag and the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy were suspended above the platform, the Old Glory just slightly higher than its rival. A bow-tied usher in a white coat came back to help them find a seat, and John said they wanted to sit as close to the front as they could.

As they walked along the narrow aisle, John was uneasily aware of the stares that were directed toward Ramona. Whispers skittered back and forth, and a whole row of elderly matrons who comprised the Dorcas Society stopped their sewing to stare and gossip. John felt his face redden and wished he'd never insisted she come with them; he'd never expected her to give in, anyway. He glanced back at Ramona and saw she was walking with her spine stiff and straight. He found three chairs together—not nearly as close to the platform as he'd wanted to get, but he couldn't take the gauntlet of stares and whispers any longer—and he said to the usher, "Right here's fine."

At five minutes before seven there wasn't enough room in the tent for a thin stick. The air was heavy and humid, though the ushers had rolled up the tent's sides so a breeze could circulate; paper fans rustled like hummingbirds' wings. The organ played "In the Garden" and then, promptly at seven, a dark-haired man in a blue suit came out from behind a curtain at the right of the platform and climbed several steps up to it, where a podium and microphone had been set up. He tapped the mike to make sure it was working and then surveyed the crowd with a gleeful, toothy smile. "How do!" he said loudly. He introduced himself as Archie Kane, minister of the Freewill Baptist Church in Fayette, and talked about how glad he was to see such a good response, as a choir in yellow robes assembled on the platform behind him. Billy, who'd been growing a little restless in the stifling heat, was excited again because he liked music.

Kane led the choir and assembly in several hymns, then a long rambling prayer punctuated by people calling out hallelujahs. Kane grinned, dabbed at his sweating face with a handkerchief, and said, "Brothers and sisters, I suppose those who know me have enough of me on Sunday mornin's! So . . . there's a gentleman I want to introduce to you right now!" Whoops and hollers spread over the crowd. "A fine gentleman and a man of God, born right here in Fayette Cbunty! I expect you already know his name and love him like I do, but I'm gonna say it anyway: the South's greatest evangelist, Jimmy Jed FALCONER!"

There was an explosion of clapping and cheering, and people leaped to their feet. A fat man with a sweat-soaked plaid shirt rose up just in front of Billy, obscuring his view, but then John was rising to his feet with the rest of them and had swept Billy up high so he could see the man in the bright yellow suit who bounded to the platform.

Jimmy Jed Falconer grinned and raised his arms, and suddenly a huge poster began unrolling down the backdrop behind him, a black-and-white Jimmy Jed Falconer in almost the same pose the real one held. Across the poster's top was the large red legend: THE FALCONER CRUSADE.

Falconer waited for the applause and whooping to die down, then stepped quickly to the microphone and said in a polished, booming voice, "Do you want to know how God speaks, neighbors?" Before anyone could answer, he'd pulled a pistol out of his coat, aimed it upward, and fired: crack! Women screamed, and men were startled. "That's how He speaks!" Falconer thundered. "The Lord speaks like a gun, and you don't know when you're going to hear Him or what He's going to say, but you'd sure better be on His right side when He does His talkin'!"

Billy watched the blue haze of gunsmoke waft upward, but he couldn't see a bullethole. Blank he thought.

Falconer set the pistol atop the podium, then swept his intense blue-green gaze across the audience like the searchlight that still pierced the sky outside. Billy thought that the evangelist looked directly at him for a second, and a fearful thrill coursed through him. "Let's pray," Falconer whispered.

As the prayer went on, Ramona opened her eyes and lifted her head. She looked first at her son, his head bowed and eyes squeezed tightly shut, then directed her gaze across the tent to a small, frail-looking boy she'd noticed even before Archie Kane had started speaking. Her heart was pounding. Enveloping the child was a shiny, purplish black cocoon of malignant light that pulsated like a diseased heart. The child's head was bowed, his hands clasped tightly in prayer; he sat between his mother and father, two thin figures who had dressed in the pitiful rags of their Sunday best. As Ramona watched, the young mother placed her hand on the child's shoulder and gently squeezed. Her face was gaunt, pale, grasping at the last straw of hope. Tears burned in Ramona's eyes; the little boy was dying from some sickness, and would be dead soon: in a week, a day, several hours—she had no way of knowing when, but the black aura was clinging greedily to him, the sure harbinger of death that she had feared seeing in this crowded tent. She lowered her head, wondering as always when she saw it: What should I do?

And the awful answer, as always: There is nothing you can do.

"Amen," Jimmy Jed Falconer said. The congregation looked up, ready for an explosion of fire and brimstone.

But he began softly, by whispering, "Sin."

The sound of his voice made Billy tremble. John leaned forward slightly in his seat, his eyes wide and entranced; Ramona saw the dying child rest his head against his mother's shoulder.

"Sin," Falconer repeated, gripping the podium. "What do you think of it? What do you think is a sin? Somethin' you're not supposed to do or say or think?" He closed his eyes for a second. "Oh Lord God, sin . . . it's an evil that gets in the blood, gets in our hearts and minds and . . . corrupts, decays, makes rotten . . ."

He looked across the congregation, bright beads of sweat shining on his face. Then, in an instant, his placid expression changed; his lips curled, his eyes widened, and he growled, "SINNNNNN. . . . Can you smell it can you feel it can you see it? Do you know, neighbors, when you've sinned? I'll tell you what sin is, neighbors, pure and simple: it's walking away from God's light, that's what it is!" His ruddy face rippled with emotion, his voice taking the place of the silent organ, flowing up and down the scales. He pointed into the audience, at no one in particular, yet at everyone. "Have you ever stepped out of the light," he whispered, "and found yourself in a dark place?"

Billy tensed, sat bolt upright.

"I mean a darrrrrk place," the evangelist said, his voice deep and gravelly. "I mean a place so dark and Evil you can't find your way out. Answer for yourselves: have you been there?"

Yes, Billy thought. And it's still in my head, it comes to me at night when I try to sleep. . . .

"No matter where the place is—the poolhall, the gamblin' room, the shothouse, or the moonshine still—there's hope, neighbors. Or it might be even darker than that: it might be the Room of Lust, or Envy, or Adultery. If you're in one of those dark places, then you're a guest of Satan!"

Billy's eyes widened, his heart thumping. The last nightmare he'd had, several nights before, streaked through his mind: in it he'd sat up in his bed and seen the black mountain of coal slithering toward him through the hallway, and then the awful white hand had plunged out and grasped Billy's sheet . . . slowly, slowly pulling it off and to the floor.

"SATAN'S GOT YOU!" Falconer roared, the veins of his neck bulging. "That cloven-hoofed, horned, fork-tongued Devil has got you right in his clawwwwws"—he lifted his right hand into the air, contorting it into a claw and twisting as if ripping flesh from the bone—"and he's gonna squeeze you and mold you and make you like he isssss! . . . And if you're a guest in Satan's house and you like the dark, evil place, then you don't belong here tonight!" The evangelist's eyes glowed like spirit lamps, and now he lifted the microphone off its stand and paced the platform with nervous, electric energy. "Do you like the house of Satan? Do you like bein' in that darrrk place, with him for company?" He stopped pacing, flailed the air with his fists, and raised his voice to a volume that almost blew out the speakers. "Well, I'm here to tell you there's HOPE! You can BREAK OUT of Satan's house! You can FIGHT that silver-tongued Devil and WIN, yes, WIN! 'Cause there's nowhere so dark—not poolhall nor brothel nor Room of Adultery—where you can't find the Light of Jeeeesus! Nosir! It might be just one little candle, but it's there, neighbor! And if you follow that light it'll get bigger and brighter, and it'll sure enough lead you right out of that dark place! The light of Jeeeesus will save you from sin and corruption and the everlastin' burning fire of the PIT!" He stabbed his forefinger downward, and someone sitting behind Billy yelped, "Amen!"

Falconer grinned. He clapped his hands together like a second gunshot, and shouted, "Glory be to God, 'cause there's power in the blood!" He lifted his head upward like a dog baying toward the moon. "Praise be the Light! Praise be the Redemption of the Sinnnnner!" Then he was right at the edge of the platform, falling down on his knees with his hands tightly clasped. He whispered, "And do you know how to find that Light, neighbors? Do you know how to renounce your sins and get out of that dark place? You've got to confess those sins!" He leaped up, bounding across the platform. His face streamed with sweat. "Confess! Give it all up to Jeeeesus! You've got to lay that darrrrk place out for the Lord to see!"

Confess? Billy thought, his heart hammering. Is that what I have to do to get it out of me? Around him people were crying and moaning; his daddy's head was bowed in prayer, his momma was staring straight at the evangelist with a glazed look in her eyes. Confess? Billy asked himself, feeling a shiver of terror; if he didn't confess, how would he ever escape the dark place?

"Confess! Confess! Confess!" Falconer was shouting, pointing his finger at random into the congregation. A heavy-hipped woman in a print dress stood up and began shaking, strange gurglings coming out of her mouth as her eyes rolled back in her head. She lifted her fleshy arms, crying out, "Praise God!" through the gibberish. Then a crewcut man in overalls rose to his feet and began jumping as if buck dancing, his boots stirring up clouds of sawdust. "CONFESS! CONFESS!" the evangelist roared. "Get out of that dark, dark place in your soul! Lay it out for the Lord!" He paced the platform, raising people from their seats with broad sweeps of his arms, as if they were attached to him on strings. John stood up and pulled Billy with him. "Glory be to God!" John shouted.

Falconer clutched at the microphone. "Is the Spirit with us tonight, neighbors?"

"YES!"

"Are we gonna lay it all out for the Lord tonight?"

"YES!"

Organ chords crashed through the speakers. The choir began to sing "Love Lifted Me," and Falconer returned the microphone to its cradle, then clapped in rhythm to the music until everyone in the tent was clapping and singing. The golden light was full of sawdust, the air heavy and sweat-drenched. As the collection plate passed Billy, he saw it was filled with dollar bills.

When the offering was over and the plates had been taken up, Falconer shed his yellow coat and turned his blazing smile on full wattage. His shirt stuck to his back and ample belly. "Folks," he said, "maybe you didn't come here tonight just to hear me preach. Maybe you have other needs that have to be met. Right now I want to introduce somebody who's real close to my heart. You might've heard about this young man. Folks, here's my son— Little Wayne Falconer!"

There were loud whoops and hollers, and a small figure in a bright yellow suit ran up the steps to the platform, throwing himself into his father's arms. The evangelist caught him, and grinning, held him high. Billy craned his neck to get a good look. The little boy in Falconer's arms had a mass of curly red hair, and his smile was even more incandescent than his father's. Staring at him as the people in the audience shouted and applauded, Billy felt a strange stirring in the pit of his stomach. The boy's gaze swept the crowd and seemingly lingered on him for a few seconds. Billy had the sudden urge to race forward to that stage and touch that boy.

"Wayne?" the evangelist asked. "Do you feel the Presence in this tent tonight?"

A silence fell. "Yes, Daddy," the little boy said into the microphone.

"Do you hear the Presence callin' on you to do miracles?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Miracles!" Falconer shouted to the congregation. "You heard me right! The Lord has seen fit to work through my son! This boy has a power in him that'll shake you to your shoes, neighbors!" He lifted the boy as high as he could, and Wayne beamed. Again, Billy felt drawn toward that boy. "Are there those here tonight in need of healing?"

"Yes!" many in the audience cried out. Ramona saw that the young woman with the dying child—purplish black cocoon writhing, pulsating, sending out oily tendrils—had raised both arms, tears rolling down her face. The child clung around her neck, while the father whispered to him and smoothed his hair.

"Wayne, is the Presence gonna work through you tonight?"

The little boy's eyes glowed with inner fire. He nodded.

Falconer set his son down, then handed the microphone to Wayne. Then he lifted his arms and shouted to the audience, "DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?"

The tent was filled with clamorous shouts and cries, and already people were rising from their seats to approach the platform. Electricity sparked in the air. Beside Billy, John was dazed and weak with excitement.

Wayne Falconer took a stance like a fighting rooster at the platform's edge. His jaw was set and determined, though his eyes flickered nervously back and forth across the tent. "Who needs a miracle here tonight?" he called out, in a voice that carried almost as much power as his father's.

People started pushing forward, many of them weeping. Ramona watched the couple with the dying child stand up and get in the line that was forming along the aisle. "Come on!" Wayne shouted. "Don't be afraid!" He glanced back at his father for reassurance, then stretched out his hand for the first person in line, an elderly man in a red checked shirt. "Let the Lord work His miracles!"

The man gripped Wayne's hand. "What's your sickness, brother?" Wayne asked, and put the microphone to the man's lips.

"My stomach's got pains . . . my joints, oh Lord God they're always achin', and I can't sleep at night . . . I'm sick . . ."

Wayne placed his hand on the man's brown, creased forehead and closed his eyes tightly. "Satan's causin' this sufferin'!" he cried out. "Satan's in you, 'cause people with God in their souls don't get sick!" He'clamped his small hand to the man's head. "Come out, Satan of pain and sickness! I command you to come . . . out!" He trembled like a live wire, and the man's legs sagged. An usher stepped forward to help him away, but then the elderly man was dancing in a circle, his arms uplifted and a wide grin on his face. "Walk the way of God!" Wayne shouted.

The line kept moving forward, full of people whose knees were aching, whose hearing was deteriorating, who were short of breath. Wayne healed them all, commanding the Satan of bad knees, bad hearing, and shortness of breath to leave their bodies. Behind him, Falconer smiled proudly and urged people to come up.

Ramona saw the couple with the child reach the platform. Wayne thrust the microphone to the woman's lips.

"Donnie's so weak," she said in an emotion-laden voice. "Something's wrong with his blood, the doctors say." She sobbed brokenly. "Oh God sweet Jesus we're poor sinners, and we had to give up one baby 'cause there weren't no food. God's punishin' me 'cause I went and sold our little baby to a man in Fayette. . . ."

Wayne gripped the boy's head. The child began crying weakly. "Satan's in this boy's blood! I command you, Satan—come out!" The child jerked and wailed. "He won't need a doctor again!" Wayne said. "He's healed!"

Ramona reached for Billy's hand. She clenched it tightly, her insides trembling. The black aura around that child had gotten deeper and stronger. Now the parents were grinning and sobbing, hugging the little boy between them. The black aura swelled. She stared at Wayne Falconer, her eyes widening. "No," she whispered. "No, it's not true. ..."

And to her horror, she saw an aged woman leaning on a cane stagger forward. The black aura clung to this woman too. The woman spoke into the microphone about her heart pains, and she said she was taking medicine but needed a miracle.

"Throw away that medicine, sister!" Wayne crowed as she was helped away by an usher. "You're healed, you won't need it!"

The black aura pulsated around her.

"No!" Ramona said, and started to rise to her feet. "It's not—" But then Billy pulled free from her and was running up the aisle. She shouted, "Billy!" but John's hand closed on her arm. "Leave him be!" he said. "He knows what he's doing—finally!"

When Billy reached the front, a grinning usher swept him up so he could speak into the microphone. Up close, the young evangelist—about his own age, Billy realized—had eyes that glinted like chips of blue ice. Wayne started to reach out for him, then stopped; the power of his grin seemed to falter, and there was a hint of confusion in his eyes. Billy could feel the hair at the back of his neck standing on end.

"Sin!" Billy wailed. Suddenly he was crying, unable to hold it in any longer. "I've sinned, I've been in the dark place and I need to confess!"

Wayne paused, his hand out toward the other boy. Suddenly he trembled, and his hand closed into a fist. He stepped back from the edge of the platform as his father quickly brushed past him and took the microphone. Falconer helped Billy up. "Confess it, son!" Falconer told him, putting the microphone to his lips as Wayne watched.

"I went into the dark place!" The loudness of his voice through the speakers startled him. He was crackling with electricity, and he could feel Wayne Falconer's stare on him. Everyone was watching him. "I ... I saw Evil! It was in the basement, and ..."

Ramona suddenly rose to her feet.

". . . it crawled up out of the coal pile and it . . . it looked like Will Booker, but its face was so white you could almost see right through it!" Tears rolled down Billy's cheeks. The audience was silent. "It spoke to me . . . and said for me to tell people . . . where he was. ..."

"Billy!" John Creekmore shouted, breaking the awful silence. He stood up, gripping the chair before him, his face agonized.

"I sinned by going into the dark place!" Billy cried out. He turned to reach for Falconer's hand, but the evangelist's eyes were ticking back and forth. Falconer had sensed the gathering explosion, had seen the poisonous looks on the faces of the crowd.

And from the rear of the tent came a voice: "Demon!"

Someone else—Ralph Leighton's voice, John realized— shouted, "The boy's cursed, just like his mother! We all knew it, didn't we?"

"He's got the dark seed in him!"

"Like his mother, the Hawthorne witch!"

The tent erupted with ugly shouts. On the platform Billy felt a wave of hatred and fear crash over him. He stood stunned.

"He's a child of the witch!" Leighton shouted, from the rear of the tent. "His mother's Ramona Creekmore, and they don't belong in here!"

J.J. Falconer had sweat on his face. He sensed their mood, and he knew also what he had to do. He gripped Billy by the scruff of the neck. "Demon, do you say?" he crowed. "Are this boy and his mother pawns in the hand of Satan?" The name Ramona Creekmore had struck an alarm bell of recognition in him: Ramona Creekmore, the Hawthorne Valley witch, the woman who supposedly spoke with the dead and weaved evil spells. And this was her son? His showmanship went into high gear "We'll drag the Devil right out of this boy tonight! We'll pull out Old Scratch, a-kickin' and—"

Then there was utter silence. Ramona Creekmore was walking along the aisle, looking to neither right nor left. She said in a soft but commanding voice. "Take your hand off my son."

Falconer released his grip, his eyes narrowing.

Ramona helped Billy down. Behind Falconer she saw Wayne's frightened face, and something inside her twisted. Then she turned to face the mob. "You scared sheep!" she said, in a voice that carried to the back of the tent. "Nobody's been healed here tonight! People who think they're sick are being told they're well, but those in real need are being doomed by false hope!" Her heart pounded. "It's akin to murder, what these two are doing!"

"Shut your damned mouth!" a woman shouted. It was the young mother, still clutching her child.

Ramona turned toward Falconer. "Murder," she said, her eyes flashing. "Because deep in your hearts, you know what you're doing is wrong." She looked at the boy, who trembled and stepped back under her gaze.

The evangelist roared, "Do you know what the Unpardonable Sin is? It's seeing the Lord's Power and calling it the Devil's Work! You're lost to the Lord, woman!" A cheer went up. "You're lost!" he bellowed.

Before the ushers rushed them out of the tent, Billy looked over his shoulder. Behind the yellow-suited man, the boy in yellow stood rigid and frozen, his mouth half open. Their gazes met and locked. Billy felt righteous hatred, bitter and hot, flowing from that boy.

Then they were out in the field, and the ushers warned them not to come back.

They waited for over ten minutes, but John never came out. The congregation began singing in loud, loud voices. When Falconer's voice boomed out, Billy felt his mother tremble. She took his hand and they began to walk into the darkness toward home.

13

"Billy? Son, wake up! Wake up, now!" He sat up in the darkness, rubbing his eyes. He could make out a vague figure standing over his bed, and he recognized his daddy's voice. Billy had cried himself to sleep a few hours earlier, when his mother had told him that John was upset at them and might not come home for a while. Billy was puzzled, and didn't understand what had gone wrong. The power of that young evangelist had drawn him to the stage, but when he'd confessed his sin everything had gone bad. Now, at least, his daddy had come home.

"I'm sorry," Billy said. "I didn't mean to—"

"Shhhh. We have to be quiet. We don't want your mother to hear, do we?"

"Why not?"

"She's alseep," John said. "We don't want to wake her up. This is just something between us two men. I want you to put on your shoes. No need to change clothes, your pajamas'll do just fine. There's something I want to show you. Hurry now, and be real quiet."

There was something harsh about his father's voice, but Billy put on his shoes as the man asked.

"Come on," John said. "We're going out for a walk. Just the two of us."

"Can't I turn on a light?"

"No. Open the front door for your daddy now, and remember to be quiet."

Out in the humid night, crickets hummed in the woods. Billy followed his father's shape in the darkness. They walked down the driveway and toward the main road. When Billy tried to take his father's hand, John drew away and walked a little faster. He's still mad at me, Billy thought.

"Didn't I do right?" Billy asked—the same question he'd repeatedly asked his mother on that long walk home. "I wanted to confess my sin, like that preacher said to."

"You did fine." John slowed his pace. They were walking alongside the main road now, in the opposite direction from Hawthorne. "Just fine."

"But then how come everybody got mad?" His father looked a lot taller than usual. "How come you wouldn't go home with us?"

"I had my reasons."

They walked on a bit further The night sky was ablaze with stars. Billy was still sleepy, and he was puzzled as to where his father was taking him. John had started walking a few paces ahead of Billy, a little more out into the road. "Daddy?" Billy said. "When that boy looked at me, I . . . felt somethin' funny inside me."

"Funny? Like how?"

"I don't know. I thought about it all the way home, and I told Momma about it too. It was kinda like the time I went into the Booker house. I didn't really want to, but I felt like I had to. When 1 saw that boy's face, I felt like I had to go up there, to be close to him. Why was that, Daddy?"

"I don't know."

"Momma says it was because he's ...” He paused, trying to recall the word. “Charis . . . charismatic. Somethin' like that."

John was silent for a moment. Then he abruptly stopped, his face lifted toward the darkness. Billy had never remembered him looking so big.

John said quietly, "Let's cross the road here. What I want to show you is on the other side."

"Yes sir."

Billy followed his father. His eyes had began to droop, and he yawned.

The concrete trembled beneath his feet.

And from around a wooded curve thirty feet away came the dazzling headlights of a huge tractor-trailer rig, its high exhaust pipe spouting smoke, its diesel engine roaring.

Billy, caught in the center of the highway, was blinded and dazed; his legs were leaden, and he saw his father's shape before him in the headlights.

Except it was no longer John Creekmore. It was a huge, massive beast of some kind—a seven-foot-tall, hulking monster. Its head swiveled, its sunken eyes burning dark red; Billy saw it looked like a wild boar, and the beast grinned as it whirled into dark mist before the headlights of the speeding truck.

The driver, who hadn't slept for over twenty-four hours, only vaguely saw something dark in front of the truck. Then there was a boy in pajamas standing rooted in the middle of the road. With a cry of alarm, he hit the emergency brake and wildly swerved.

"Billy!" It was Ramona's voice, calling from the distance.

The clarity of it snapped Billy into action; he leaped toward the roadside, losing one shoe, and tumbled down into a ditch as the truck's wheels crushed past only inches away from him. He could feel the hot blast of the truck's exhaust scorching his back, and then his face was pressed into dirt and weeds.

The truck screeched to a stop, leaving rubber for fifty feet. "You little fool!" the driver shouted. "What the hell's wrong with you, boy?"

Billy didn't answer. He lay curled up in the ditch, shaking, until his mother found him. "It was Daddy," he whispered brokenly, as the truck driver continued to yell. "It was Daddy, but it wasn't Daddy. He wanted me to die, Momma. He wanted me to get run over!"

Ramona held him while he sobbed, and told the driver to go on. Lord God! she thought. Has it started already? She stared into the darkness, knowing what had to be done to protect her son's life.

14

Evening was falling, and still John hadn't come home. Ramona sat on the porch swing, as she had for most of the day, working on a new piece of needlepoint in the lamplight and watching the highway for John's car. The memory of what had happened last night still sent a tremor of terror through her It had been in the house, she knew, and she hadn't even heard it! It had tricked Billy, tried to kill him.

She felt an undercurrent of evil in the valley, running like silt in a stream. It had been in the Booker house the night of the violence; it had been in John's eyes when he'd come home one night smelling of tar; and it had been in that revival meeting last night, laughing and kicking up its heels as sick people were told Satan was in them and that they should throw away their medicine. The idea that only sinners got sick was ludicrous to her, and yet those two—Falconer and the boy—were trading on that inhuman notion.

She'd realized from the very beginning, when she'd seen a lanky red-haired boy at a barn social and her heart had galloped away with her head, that John should know everything about her. Her mother had urged her to tell him, and several times she'd tried—but John hadn't seemed to want to listen to any of it. Of course he'd found out after they were married. How could she have kept it from him? There were so many people, in little hamlets across Alabama, who'd heard the stories about her mother, Rebekah. For the first few years, John had shown her a gentle, loving kindness—but then it had all changed.

She recalled the day over thirteen years ago when a man named Hank Crotty, from Sulligent, had come to see her, and John, though puzzled, had let him in. Crotty said he'd first gone to see Rebekah Fairmountain, but the old woman had sent him to Ramona with a message: It's your turn now.

Her Mystery Walk called for her; how could she turn away?

Crotty's brother had been killed in a hunting accident two months before. But—and Crotty's face had gone dark with despair as John's had gone pale—some part of the dead man kept trying to get home, back to his wife and children. Something kept knocking on the door in the dead of the night, trying to get in. Crotty had broken into tears and begged for her help.

And that was how John had been made to realize the truth of Ramona's legacy: that in her Choctaw blood was the power to lay the dead to rest.

She'd waited alone at that house near Sulligent for two nights before the revenant came. It was first a small grayish blue light in the woods, and then as it approached the house it was a misty blue shape that took on the appearance of a man. Finally it was the outline of a man in a camouflage hunting jacket, his hands elapsed to a hole in his belly. Ramona had stepped between the revenant and the house; it had abruptly stopped, shimmering in the darkness, and Ramona had felt its confusion and agony. It was the essence of a human being, trying desperately to cling to life, not realizing it could give up its pain and confusion and pass on to another, better place. Her mother had taught her what to do, and Ramona had spoken gently to it, calling its name, bringing it closer to her by sheer willpower. It trembled like a small child who sees a lighted doorway but fears traveling through a dark corridor to get there. The entrance was through Ramona, and she would have to take its terror and earthly emotions into her so it could pass on unencumbered.

Finally, after a long time of trying to make the revenant understand it could no longer exist in this world, it had swept toward her as if rushing into her arms. The sheer force of its agony staggered her backward. She felt the bullethole in her stomach, felt the awful yearning to touch wife and children, felt a hundred different emotions that had to be left behind, inside her.

And then she was alone in the dark, lying on the ground, sobbing and full of terror. But the revenant had gone, shedding its pain like a dead old skin.

For a long time, the pain stayed with her She felt that bullet wound in a dozen nightmares. A package had come from her mother In it was a needlepoint kit and a note: I heard you did mighty good. I'm proud of you. But this won't be the last time. Remember I told you that once you'd done it, you'd have to handle the feelings that were left inside you? I recall you liked to sew as a little girl. Make me a pretty picture. I love you.

John had finally allowed himself to touch her again. But then the next caller came, and the next—and John had withdrawn into a scared chunk of ice. She'd been carefully watching Billy these last few years. He'd had his first contact with a revenant—a strong one, too, who'd needed his help badly. She hoped he'd be spared the ability to see the black aura, a power that hadn't developed in her until she was in her late teens. To her, that was the worst of it: knowing who was going to die, and not being able to help.

Ramona looked up, catching her breath. A car's headlights showed on the highway; the car turned in and started up toward the house. She rose unsteadily to her feet, clutching a porch post. It was Sheriff Bromley's dark blue Pontiac.

The screen door banged open and Billy, carrying the oil lamp he'd been reading a Hardy Boys book by, came running out of the house, expecting to see his father stepping out of the Olds. When he saw Sheriff Bromley he stopped as abruptly as if he'd run into a brick wall.

"Hi, Billy," the sheriff said; there was a thin, uneasy smile on his face. He cleared his throat and returned his gaze to Ramona. "I . . . uh . . . was at the tent revival last night. I guess most of Hawthorne was. I'm sorry you were treated roughly, but . . ."

"Has anything happened to John?"

Bromley said, "No. Isn't he here?" He worked his fingers into his belt loops and stared off into the darkness for a few seconds. "No, this isn't about John. I just have to ask Billy a few questions."

"Questions about what?"

He shifted uneasily.

"About Will Booker," he said finally.

"Billy, set that lamp on the table here to give us more light. You heard the sheriff. Will you answer his questions truthfully?"

He nodded uneasily.

Bromley stepped closer to the porch. "I have to ask you these things, Billy. That don't mean I want to."

"It's okay."

"Well . . . just when was it that you went down into the Bookers' basement?"

"The last part of April. I didn't mean to go in there, I know it was private property, but ..."

"Why did you decide to go down there in the first place?"

"I heard a . . ." He glanced at his mother, but she was staring out toward the highway, letting him handle this on his own. "I heard a tapping. Behind the basement door."

"Did you go back there again, after you . . . saw what you said you saw?"

"No sir. I couldn't go back to that place again."

Bromley looked into Billy's eyes for a few seconds, then sighed and nodded. "I believe you, boy. Now can I speak to your momma alone for just a minute?"

Billy took his lamp, leaving hers burning on the wicker table, and went inside. Fireflies winked in the woods, a chorus of toads began burping down at the green pond. She waited for him to speak.

"After Dave Booker killed them," Bromley said in a distant, wearied voice, "he stuffed Julie Ann's body beneath a bed, and he locked Katy's in a closet. It was . . . like he wanted to get rid of them, or pretend it hadn't happened. We searched for Will all through that house, up in the woods, under the front porch, everywhere we could think of. We looked for bones in the furnace, got a diver to go down into the well behind the Booker place, even dragged Semmes Lake. We looked through that coal pile, too, but we . . . never dug up the floor underneath it." He took his cap off and scratched his scalp. "That's where Will was, all the time. His little body was . . . curled up in a croaker sack. Looked like he might have been beat to death with a shovel or somethin', from the broken bones. Ah, this whole thing has been mighty shitty, 'scuse my French." He worked the cap back down onto his head again. "Link Patterson, Cale Joiner, and me found Will this morning. I've had to handle some bad things in my time, but this is the ..." He suddenly reached out and gripped a porch post, his knuckles whitening. "Mrs. Creekmore?" he said hoarsely, as if fighting emotions he knew a sheriff wasn't supposed to show. "I'm so sorry about what happened to you last night. I should've . . . done something, I guess. ..."

"No need."

"You . . . know what kind of things are said about you, don't you? I've heard 'em too, but I never gave them no account." His mouth worked, forming the words that were hard to find. "Are they true?"

She didn't answer. She knew he wanted desperately to understand, to know the secrets in her mind, and for an instant she wanted to trust him because maybe—just maybe—there was within this bearish man the spark of his own Mystery Walk. But then the instant passed, and she knew she could never bring herself to trust anyone in Hawthorne ever again.

"I don't believe in ghosts!" the sheriff said indignantly. "That's just . . . fool's talk! But can you answer me this? How did Billy know Will Booker was under that coal pile?" There was a long silence, broken only by the frogs and crickets. And then Bromley said, "Because he's like you, isn't he?"

Ramona's chin lifted slightly. "Yes," she said. "Like me."

"He's just a little boy! What . . . what in the name of Heaven is his life going to be like, if he's cursed to see ghosts and . . . God knows what else! . . ."

"Is your business finished, sheriff?"

Bromley blinked uncertainly, feeling a raw power in her leveled stare. "Yes . . . except for one last thing. Jimmy Jed Falconer is a well respected and loved man in this county, and that son of his is a bona fide miracle worker When you jump up and start yellin' 'Murder' you'd best be standing on solid ground unless you want a slander suit slapped on you."

"Slander? Isn't that saying things that aren't true? Then I've no need to worry, do I? Did that man, or someone from his Crusade, tell you to say that to me?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Just listen to what's said. Now my business is finished." He turned and stalked to his car, but paused with the door open. "You know things are never going to be the same for Billy ever again, don't you?" He got into the car and backed off down the road.

Ramona waited until the sheriff's car had gone, then took the lamp and went inside. Billy was sitting in his father's chair in the front room, his lamp and the Mystery of the Missing Chums on a table beside him. She knew that he must've heard everything said on the porch.

"Sheriff Bromley found Will," he said.

"Yes."

"But how could it be Will if Will was already dead?"

"I don't think it was Will as you knew him, Billy. I think it was . . . some part of Will that was scared and alone, and he'd been waiting for you to help him."

Billy frowned, his jaw working. "Did I help him, Momma?"

"I don't know. But I think that maybe you did; I think that he didn't want to be left lying alone in that basement. Who would want to wake up in the dark, without anyone near to help them?"

Billy had thought about his next question for a long time, and now he had to force himself to ask it. "Is Will going to Heaven or Hell?"

"I think . . . he's already spent enough time in Hell, don't you?"

"Yes."

"I'll make our supper now," Ramona said, and touched the boy's cheekbone. He was over his skittishness from the night before, but there were unanswered questions in his eyes. "I'll heat up the vegetable broth and fix some corn muffins, how about that?"

"Isn't Daddy ever comin' home?"

"He'll be home, sooner or later. But right now he's scared. Do you understand that not everybody could've seen what was left of Will Booker, and very few could've helped him like you have?"

"I don't know," he said uncertainly, his face a patchwork of orange light and black shadows.

"I wish I could help you with all of it," she said softly. She gripped his hand and held it. "God knows I do, but there are some things you have to find out on your own. But maybe .. . maybe your gram can help you in a way I can't because there's still so much I don't understand myself. . . ."

"Gram help me? How?"

"She can start you over at the beginning. She can reshape you and mold you, just like she molds those pieces she makes on her potter's wheel. She did that for me, too, a long time ago, just as her daddy did for her Your gram can teach you things that I can't."

He thought about this for a minute, his brow furrowed. He loved his grandmother's place—a white house on three thickly wooded acres with plenty of meandering trails to follow—but what would his father say? "When would we go?" he asked.

"Why not in the morning? We could catch the bus down at the grocery store and be there by early afternoon. But we'll go only if you want to."

"What kind of things do I have to learn?"

"Special things," Ramona said. "Things you won't learn anywhere else. Some of it will be easy and fun, and some of it . . . won't be; some of it may even hurt. You're standing on the edge between being a child and being a man, Billy, and maybe there are things you can understand better this summer than you could in the next."

There was a darkly luminous look in Ramona's eyes that both unsettled Billy and sparked his curiosity; it was like seeing something sparkle down along a forest path he'd never dared explore before. He said, "All right. I'll go."

"Then you're going to need to get some clothes together, 'cause we might be staying at Gram's for a while. Why don't you get some of your underwear and socks out of your desk, and while you're doing that I'll get my clothes ready too. Then we'll eat supper. All right?"

In the lamplight, Billy opened one of his desk drawers and laid a few pair of Fruit-of-the-Looms out on his bed. Then he rummaged for some socks, his T-shirts, and—his favorite—his Lone Ranger suspenders. His shirts and jeans were hanging in his mother's closet, so he'd have to get to them later. He leaned down and reached under the cot, pulling out a large paper sack; in it was a Dutch Masters cigar box he'd found on the roadside last summer, and contained within the box—which still smelled vaguely of cheroots—were Billy's earthly treasures.

He could use the paper sack to carry his clothes in, he decided, and now he sat on the cot with the cigar box on his lap and opened the lid.

Inside were several green cat's-eye marbles, smooth brown creek stones, a rock with the faint impression of a skeletal leaf pressed on it, a Duncan yo-yo that whistled, twenty-five Civil War bubble-gum cards with gory battle pictures on them, and . . .

Billy tilted the cigar box toward the light. He stared into the box, his eyes slowly widening; then he turned the lamp's wick up, because suddenly the room had seemed too dark by far.

A small piece of coal, glittering in the orange light, lay half buried under the Civil War cards. I didn't put that in there, Billy thought; or did I? He couldn't remember; no, no he was sure he hadn't. At first it looked only like a bulbous black lump, but as he stared at it he found himself recalling Will Booker's face in great detail, and he could remember the good times they'd had together He picked it up and held it close to his face, studying the dark ridges.

He didn't know how the coal had gotten there, but he knew there was a purpose behind it. Will was dead, yes, Billy knew, but something of the boy lived on in Billy's memories; and if you could remember—truly remember, Billy thought—then you could stop time, and nothing ever died. His fist slowly closed around the coal, a sensation of warmth spreading up his arm to his elbow.

His mind went back to the night before. He frowned, recalling the way that young evangelist, Wayne Falconer, had stared at him. He didn't understand what his mother had said about the healing being "akin to murder," but he knew she'd sensed something strange about them as he had, something that he couldn't fully perceive.

Nightsounds pressed in on the house. Billy sat listening for the sound of his father's car pulling up in front, but it didn't come. The image of a beast in a truck's headlights came at him with no warning. He shuddered, then finally replaced the piece of coal in the cigar box and put his clothes down into the paper sack, getting ready for tomorrow's journey.

15

Jimmy Jed Falconer awakened in the soft blue light before dawn, brought out of sleep by Toby's barking in the meadow. He lay awake, his pretty blond wife Camille sleeping at his side, and listened to Toby. Chasin' rabbits, he mused, as the barking faded in the direction of the woods. When he thought of the dog, he naturally thought of the miracle.

It had happened on that day in April. Cammy had been washing dishes in the kitchen when she'd heard Wayne scream, and she'd raced out of the house to see what had happened. Wayne was running toward her with the bloody bag of dogflesh in his arms, and his mouth was open and straining to cry out again. He'd stumbled and fallen to the ground, and when Cammy had reached him she'd seen that Toby was already almost dead, the breath coming in whining hitches from its crushed chest. The big dog's sinewy body was a mess of shattered bones, its head crooked at an awful angle and blood dripping from its floppy ears. Wayne had screamed, "Truck hit him, Momma! I saw it happen! Get somebody to make Toby well!"

But Cammy hadn't known what to do, and all the leaking blood had repulsed her. She'd stepped back, dazed, and her son—the tears streaming down his livid, dusty face—had shrieked at her, "GET SOMEBODY!" in a voice that had shaken her to her soul. She'd started running for the phone to call Jimmy Jed in Birmingham at his advertising meeting, but she knew that Toby wouldn't last more than a few minutes longer. At the front door she'd looked over her shoulder and seen Wayne bent down over the dog, his new jeans filthy with dust and blood.

The long-distance operator had just answered when she'd heard Wayne's voice rise in a blood-curdling shout that stretched on for several seconds: "TOOOOOBBBBBYYYYYY!" She'd dropped the receiver, and was so startled her hair had almost stood on end. She had gone to calm Wayne down, then stopped on the porch, watching Wayne lift Toby, stumble and almost fall again, and then come walking slowly toward her, dust puffing off the driveway around his shoes.

And he was grinning. Ear to ear His eyes were red and tear-swollen, but they'd burned with an electric power that was like nothing Cammy had ever seen before. She'd actually felt herself shrinking backward, against the white porch railing. He'd said in a hoarse voice, "Toby's all better now. ..."

Wayne had put Toby down, and Cammy had almost swooned. The dog's bones had been mended as if by a mad scientist or a frantic child. The head was frighteningly crooked, the front legs splayed and the back ones turned inward, the spine twisted and humped like a camel's. It was something that had stepped out of a freak show; but the dog's breathing wasn't labored anymore, and though it staggered for balance and its eyes were dazed, Camille could see that Toby was no longer near death. Then she'd gotten her feet uprooted from the porch floor, and somehow she'd made that call to Birmingham.

Falconer grinned to himself. He'd seen the X rays Dr. Considine had taken; the bones were a mess, jigsawed together haphazardly, but they were firmly cemented and showed only faint signs of having been snapped or crushed. The vet was frankly amazed at Toby's condition, telling Falconer that this was beyond science . . . way beyond. Toby's movement was limited, so his legs had to be rebroken and properly set, but now the dog had gotten used to its crimped spine and crooked neck and could run through the meadows of the Falconer estate like blue blazes again. And the question had begun ticking in Falconer's brain: if his son could heal an animal, what could he do for human beings?

The answer came in the shape of a beatup blue Ford pickup, carrying a grim-faced man and woman and a little girl with the perfect face of a doll. Their names were Gantt, they lived on the other side of Fayette, and they'd heard talk about J.J. Falconer's son from a friend, who'd heard the story in a direct line from the mouth of a certain veterinarian. The little girl couldn't walk; her father had told Falconer that her legs had "gone to sleep and never woked up."

"Who, Daddy?"

"A man and woman and their little girl. She's seven, and her name's Cheryl. Do you want to know why they're here?"

He nodded, carefully gluing a wing into place.

"Because of how you fixed Toby. Remember what you told me, that when you saw Toby about to die your head started aching so bad you thought it was going to explode, and then you felt that you had to lay your hands on Toby, and you wanted Toby to be fixed more than anything in the world?"

Wayne had put down his work and stared at his father, his eyes bright blue and puzzled. "Yes sir."

"And you said that in your mind you thought very hard of Toby's bones coming back together again, that your hands were tingling like they do when they've gone to sleep, and everywhere you touched you could feel the bones move?"

Wayne had nodded.

Falconer had gingerly touched his son's shoulder "Cheryl and her folks have come here to ask for you help, son. Her legs are asleep, and they need to be fixed."

Wayne looked bewildered. "Did a truck hit her?"

"No. I think this is a sickness in her mind and her nerves. But she needs . . . whatever it is you used before, to fix Toby. Do you think you can do that again?"

"I don't know. It's . . . it's different. Maybe I can't ever do it again, maybe I used all of it up the first time because I thought so hard. It made my head hurt so bad, Daddy. . . ."

"Yes, I know. But didn't it make you feel good too? Didn't it set you on fire, couldn't you hear the voice of God and feel His Power at work inside you?"

"I guess, but ..."

"You're a healer, son. A living, breathing miracle-working healer." He'd placed one of his large rough hands over his son's. "You've got the power in you, and it's been given to you for a very special purpose. Cheryl and her folks are waitin' downstairs, right now. What shall I tell 'em?"

"I . . . I did it because I love Toby so much, Daddy. I don't even know this little girl!"

Falconer had leaned close to him, and lowered his voice. "Do it because you love me."

A sheet was draped over the dining-room table, and Cheryl Gantt was laid on her back by her father. The little girl trembled and clutched at her mother's hand as Wayne stood over her, seemingly not knowing what to do. Falconer nodded encouragement to him; Cammy, overwrought by the whole thing, had to leave the house and sit on the porch until it was finished. When Wayne finally touched the little girl's legs, he shut his eyes and rubbed the knobby knees as a vein slowly beat at his temple. Cheryl stared at the ceiling, whimpering softly.

The boy tried for over an hour until his face was shiny with sweat and his hands cramped into claws. The Gantts were as kind as they could be, lifting their daughter off the table and taking her back out to their pickup truck. Wayne stood on the porch until the truck was out of sight, his shoulders slumped in defeat; when he met his father's eyes a sob rattled deep in his chest, and he hurried upstairs to his room.

Falconer went to his book-lined study, closed the double oak-paneled doors, and sat at his desk staring into space. He decided to turn to his Bible for comfort, and wherever it opened would be a message for him. He found himself looking at the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, at Christ's parable of seeds sown on rocky soil, in thorns, and on fertile earth where they yielded fruit; it took three slow readings before he grasped the message. It hit him like a thunderbolt; of course! he thought, newly excited. Just as the word of the Lord was lost on some folks, so were the Lord's miracles! If that little girl wasn't healed, maybe it was because her parents didn't have enough faith, or they were deep sinners who'd strayed far from the light. The problem hadn't been with Wayne, but with either the little girl or her folks! And he was about to go up to talk to Wayne when the telephone rang.