He began walking westward; he stopped once to look back over his shoulder, where his brother’s body lay. But his brother was gone, and there was no reason to mourn his passage to the other side. He wished he’d known more about Wayne, that they could’ve learned to understand each other. That they could’ve been friends, instead of two young men who’d walked separately, each seeking some kind of answer to the forces that had taken over their lives.
Billy left his brother’s corpse, and went on.
He alternated walking and resting all through the long, chilly night. His feet were bleeding again, his broken wrist swollen to twice its size, but he had to keep going. Just before dawn, when he was exhausted and staggering, he climbed a small hill and came upon a squatter’s cabin. The place was falling in, but inside there was a dirty mattress on the floor, on a table were plates with green-molded food not fit to touch, much less eat. But there was a coffee pot, too, and something faintly sloshed inside when Billy picked it up. He eagerly poured a few drops into the palm of his hand; the water was slimy and green and alive with bacteria. He took one of the plates outside, scraped it clean with coarse sand, and then brought it back in. He tore a square of his pants leg off and stretched it over the plate, then carefully poured the water through the cloth to catch the bigger clumps of green growth. What remained at the bottom of the plate—barely three swallows, brackish and stagnant—was quickly tipped into Billy’s mouth. He wet his face with the damp cloth, and then he slept for several hours on the filthy mattress.
When he awakened, bright swords of sunlight pierced gaping holes in the rotting walls around him. He was feverish and very weak, his legs cramped into knots. His arm was a burning, leaden weight, the wound oozing yellow fluids. He shut his mind to the pain, and concentrated on Bonnie. He would show Hawthorne to her, and he wanted to see Lamesa, and he wanted to know everything about her from the day she was born. He hung her face up in his mind like a picture. He would get back to her.
He stepped outside the cabin and was jolted by a sudden shock.
About three or four miles away, sitting right in the middle of brown sand desert, was a large lake. It was surrounded by motels and restaurants with high signs that could be seen from the highway that passed about a half-mile from the cabin. There were cars and dune buggies on the road, and out on the lake Billy could see a sleek red speedboat pulling a water-skier. Palm trees waved in the streets of some resort town built around a desert spring. The entire scene shimmered in the heat waves; Billy stood motionless, expecting the whole thing to vanish suddenly.
He began to walk toward the mirage. On the highway a dune buggy swerved to avoid him, blasting its horn. He walked slowly down the center, being passed by cars and motorcycles and dune buggies. Some of the cars were hauling speedboats, and kids were hanging out the windows. The lake glittered like liquid gold in the strong sunlight.
Billy stood in the center of the highway and started laughing. He couldn’t stop, even though his jaw was aching and he was so weak he was about to fall on his face. He was still laughing when a Mexican police officer on a motorcycle pulled up beside him and shouted something that included the word loco.
THIRTEEN
Home
64
THEY’D RENTED A BROWN Gremlin at the Birmingham airport, using Bonnie’s driver’s license, and had driven the two-hour trip to Fayette under a gray late-December sky. The southern winter had set in, a wave of cold air and rain had rolled down from the northwest scattering brown leaves before it. Christmas was two days away.
They passed a large sign, punctured by .22 bulletholes, that said WELCOME TO FAYETTE! HOME OF LITTLE WAYNE FALCONER, THE SOUTH’S GREATEST EVANGELIST! The second line, Billy saw, was being allowed to weather away. It would not be repainted. Home for Wayne’s body was now a meticulously kept cemetery near the Falconer estate; he’d been buried next to his daddy, and there were always fresh flowers on the grave.
“I’ve never seen so many hills,” Bonnie said. She’d noticed him wince, as if from an old injury, as they’d passed the sign. “Lamesa’s about as flat as a flapjack. Are we gettin’ near?”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes. It’s just past Fayette.” There were still dark hollows under his eyes, and he needed to gain five or six pounds so his face would fill out, but he was doing much better. He’d been able to walk without crutches for the first time just a week before. There were a few lost weeks in which Billy had faded in and out, his body fighting against massive infection. His jaw was wired and was healing well, as was his left arm in its thick elbow cast. Dr. Hillburn had been straight with him: the doctors didn’t know why he hadn’t died out in that desert. The injuries he’d received in the crash had been severe enough to begin with, but the exposure and the infection from his broken wrist should have finished him off.
Dr. Hillburn hadn’t replied when Billy told her that he had died, but had been sent back from the other side. And those people had been right, Billy said; it was beautiful over there. But he planned on sticking around here for a while longer, if Dr. Hillburn didn’t mind.
Dr. Hillburn had smiled and said she didn’t mind at all.
Later, Billy had asked about his mother. Dr. Hillburn confirmed what Billy already knew: Ramona Creekmore had died in a house fire of indeterminate origin. The cabin was almost a total ruin.
Bonnie stayed with him day and night, helping him with his grief. Now that he was safe, and his body was healing, his conflicting emotions about Wayne and the loss of his mother welled up out of him in agonized, bitter tears. Bonnie cradled his head while he cried. He had nightmares for a while, about the jet crash and the shape changer in possession of Krepsin’s bloated corpse, stalking him and Wayne across the burning desert; they faded as his body and mind healed, though he’d broken out in a cold sweat when he and Bonnie had stepped aboard the plane from Chicago, their trip a gift from the staff and residents of the Hillburn Institute. The most difficult thing was snapping the seatbelt, and when the 747 bound to Atlanta had taken off, he’d closed his eyes and held tightly to Bonnie’s hand. Once up in the air, though, his fear drained away—as he’d hoped it would—and he was even able to look out the window for a few minutes. The plane ride was much faster and more comfortable than the bus or the train, Billy’s other travel alternatives, and he’d wanted to get back to Hawthorne as quickly as possible.
He’d told Bonnie fragments of what had happened in Mexico, but she knew it was hard for him to talk about it. She didn’t want to push him; if and when he was ready to tell her, she would be there to listen.
Now they were passing through Fayette, and Hawthorne was only fifteen miles away.
Billy had turned twenty-one while still in a semiconscious state in the hospital. He was different now, he knew, from the person who’d left Hawthorne that first time to join Dr. Mirakle’s Ghost Show. He saw his direction more clearly, and he was secure with his own place in the world. He’d fought his way, he realized, through a rite of passage that had begun when he’d stepped down into the dark Booker basement a long time ago; he was strong now, strong in his heart, and he knew that in his life the eagle was winning.
His Mystery Walk was pulling him onward, out into the world. But first, before he could walk forward—to the University of California, Duke University, or even to Oxford in England, where parapsychologists had been studying the Alcott Tape and were eager to get Billy into their death survival research programs—he had to look back over his shoulder. There were good-byes to be said, both to people and to places.
The Gremlin rounded a bend, and Billy saw the old weather-beaten high-school building with its brick gym addition. There was a large, ragged scar in the football field, as if grass wouldn’t grow where the bonfire had exploded.
Billy touched Bonnie’s arm and asked her to stop.
The parking lot was empty, all the students out for Christmas holidays. Billy rolled down his window and stared out at the football field, his eyes dark with the memory of May
Night.
“Something bad happened here, didn’t it?” Bonnie asked.
“Yes. Very bad.”
“What was it?”
“A lot of kids got hurt. Some of them were killed.” He ran his gaze along the new fence, remembering the pain of his hands being ripped as the shock wave blustered past. He waited for a few minutes, listening to the sigh of wind out on the field. Pines swayed in the distance, and clouds seemed to skim the hills.
“They’re gone,” he said. “There’s nothing here. Thank God. Okay. I’m ready to go.”
They drove on, following the road into Hawthorne. When Billy saw the tangle of black timbers and the standing chimney where his house had once stood, his heart sank. The field was overgrown, the scarecrow sagging, everything gone to ruin. He didn’t ask Bonnie to slow down, though, until they’d almost reached the lot where the decaying hulk of the Booker house had stood.
The rubble had been cleared away, and now a trailer sat on the property. It was there to stay, sitting on concrete supports sunken into the earth. A Christmas tree stood in a front window, white lights blinking. A little boy—who looked not at all like Will Booker—sat outside, roughhousing with a big brown dog that was trying to lick him in the face. The boy saw the Gremlin and waved. Billy waved back. There was warmth surrounding that trailer, and he hoped the people who lived there were happy. Hawthorne’s “murder house” was long gone.
He heard the sawmill’s high whine as they approached the cluster of grocery store, gas station, and barbershop. A couple of farmers sat outside the gas station, watching with interest to see if the Gremlin would pull in. Someone was loading a sack of groceries into a pickup truck. A television flickered from within Curtis Peel’s barbershop, and Billy saw figures sitting around the red glow of the old heater. Life was going on in Hawthorne at its own slow, steady pace. The world had touched it—there was a poster on a telephone pole that said NOW HIRING QUALIFIED LABOR. APPLY AT THE CHATHAM PERSONNEL OFFICE. WE ARE AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER—but the essence of life, easy and unhurried, would never totally change. Maybe that was for the best, Billy thought; it was comforting to know that some places in the world remained the same, though the people living in them grew and matured and learned from their mistakes.
“Would you stop here?” Billy asked, motioning to the curb near Peel’s barbershop. “I want to go in there for a minute. Want to come with me?”
“That’s why I’m here,” she replied.
When Billy opened the barbershop door, the three men sitting around the heater looked up from their television show—“Let’s Make a Deal”—and froze. Curtis Peel’s mouth dropped open. Old Hiram Keller, as tough as leather, simply blinked, then returned his attention to Monty Hall. The third man, younger than the others, with curly brownish blond hair and a plump-cheeked face tinted red by the heater, leaned forward as if he were staring at a mirage.
“Damn my eyes!” Peel said, and stood up. “Is that… Billy Creekmore?”
“That’s right.” He stood tensed, ready for anything. He’d recognized the younger man, and saw Duke Leighton’s eyes narrow.
“Well, I’ll be a…” And suddenly Peel’s face broke into a grin. He came forward, clapped Billy on the shoulder, and then, embarrassed by his own ebullience, stepped back a pace. “Uh…we didn’t expect to see you back, after… I mean, we…”
“I know what you mean. I want you to meet my friend, Bonnie Hailey. This is Curtis Peel. That’s Hiram Keller, and Duke Leighton.”
“Howdy,” Hiram said without looking up.
“I didn’t figure you’d recognize me, Billy.” Duke patted his bulging beer-belly. “I guess I’ve changed a lot. You have, too. You look like you’ve been in an accident.”
“Could be.”
They were silent for a long moment. Then Curtis said, “Hey! You two young folks want a Coke? I’ve got some in the back, just as cold as they can be! No? Weather’s turned for the worse, I hear. Supposed to get a hard freeze tonight. Listen, y’all take a chair and make yourself—”
“We’re not staying,” Billy told him. “I’ve come to visit the cemetery.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well… Billy, that was a bad thing. A real terrible thing. The fire burned everything up so fast, and the wind was bad that night too. I… I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
Peel turned and stared into Bonnie’s face for a few seconds, seemingly entranced by her eyes. He smiled uncertainly, then looked back at Billy. “You need a haircut, Bill. Come on, get in the chair here and we’ll fix you up. On the house, okay? I recall you used to like the smell of Vitalis. You still do?”
“No,” he said, and smiled slightly at Peel’s willingness to please. “Afraid not.” He was aware of Leighton’s unyielding gaze on him, and he felt anger begin to simmer.
“Well…” Peel nervously cleared his throat. “Most everybody’s heard about you, Bill. You’re a celebrity. I mean, I don’t rightly understand what you’ve been up to and all, but…look here.” He stepped next to the shelves of hair tonic, shampoo, and pomades and pointed to something mounted on the wall; he smiled proudly, and Billy saw it was a bulletin board. It was covered with newspaper clippings about the “Mystery Medium,” and the Alcott tape, and pictures of Billy. “See here, Bill? I’ve been keepin’ them. People come in here to read ’em all the time. You’re a real celebrity hereabouts! And look up there on the wall. Recognize that?” He’d motioned to a framed needlepoint picture of an owl sitting on a tree limb; the features were a bright mixture of colors, the eyes so sharp and lifelike they followed you around the room. Billy recognized his mother’s handiwork. “Fella from Montgomery came through here about a month ago, offered me a hundred dollars for it,” Curtis said. He swelled his chest proudly. “I said no. I said it was done by a local artist, and you couldn’t put any price on something done with as much feeling as that’s got in it Didn’t I say that, Hiram?”
“Yep.”
“I’ve got another one at home. It shows a mountain and a lake, and an eagle flying way up far in the sky. I think it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. See, I’ve put this one where I can look at it all the time!”
Hiram suddenly stirred and regarded the picture. “Fine work,” he said, lighting his corncob pipe and sticking it in his grizzled gace. “You’d go a far piece to find anything finer, I’ll tell you that.” He cocked his head and looked at Billy. “Your mother was full of magic, boy. She was a damned fine woman, and it took us a long time to realize it. Any woman who could run a farm like she did, and make pictures like that, and never complain ’bout her lot in life…well, I remember that night at the tent revival. Maybe we didn’t want to hear what she said, but she had guts, boy. Looks like you’ve got your share too.” He motioned with his pipe toward the bulletin board.
“What…?” Billy managed to say. He was stunned, and he felt hot tears in his eyes. “You mean you…”
Duke Leighton started to rise. His gaze was baleful in the red light. When he stood erect, his back was hunched over; with his first step, Billy saw that he walked with a terrible limp, much worse than his father’s. As he approached Billy, Duke seemed to grow smaller and paler and thinner. He saw Billy staring and stood in front of him, his lower lip trembling. “It happened just after you left. I was ridin’ in the car with my dad. He was…he was drinking pretty heavily. He’d taken to drinkin’ a lot since Mom died. Anyway, he…the car was going too fast, and we went off the trestle bridge. I just got cut up, but my dad was dead by the time the ambulance came.” His face was set and grim. “About a week later, Coy Granger came to see me, and he said he’d seen my dad standing at the side of the road, right at the trestle bridge where the car had gone off…”
“Saw him myself,” Hiram said quietly. “Plain as day. Plain as I can see you.”
“My dad…couldn’t leave.” Duke’s voice cracked, his eyes swimming. “I saw him, and I called out to him, and he looked like he was tryin’ to answer but he…he couldn’t speak
. His…throat was crushed in the wreck, and he strangled to death. And when I tried to touch him, I felt so cold. Then he was gone, just faded away in an instant.” He looked helplessly at Bonnie, then back to Billy again. “Who else could I go to?” he asked. “I had to help my dad!”
“And my mother freed him?”
“I saw her do it.” Hiram puffed out a wreath of blue smoke. “We all did. She stood right there on the trestle bridge and opened up her arms, and we all saw Ralph Leighton with our own eyes.” He set his jaw and grunted. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. And Ralph just…disappeared, just kinda eased away, I guess. Ramona fell down, and she had to be helped home…”
“My wife stayed me night with her,” Peel said. “She took care of her.”
Duke wiped his face with a sleeve. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…act like a fool. I never believed in such a thing as spirits until I saw my own father standin’ there, trying to call out to me…”
“Sheer guts,” Hiram said. “She did it in front of everybody who cared to watch. Oh, at first some laughed. But after it was over and done…wasn’t nobody laughin’ no more.”
“I bought this picture from her soon after that,” Peel said. “She didn’t want to take the money. Said she had no need for it. But I made her take it. The very next night…well, that fire was so fast and windblown it was over before we knew it.”
“I didn’t know.” Billy looked at all of them in turn. “She never wrote me about what happened on the trestle bridge.”
“Maybe she figured you had your own worries.” Hiram relit his pipe, clenched it between his teeth, and watched the game show again.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Billy said.
“Yeah. Well, things hadn’t been too good between me and him for a long time. He took me down to the Marine recruiting station in Tuscaloosa right after high school. I never went to college like I was supposed to. I went to ’Nam—another kind of college, I guess. I got into demolition, but I guess you heard. That’s funny, huh? Me, in demolition?” He tried to smile, but his face was too loose and weary, his eyes too haunted.
Mystery Walk Page 45