The place where Jack Green's bones were buried. A place where the good folk didn't have to see a headstone or even the yellowed grass over the big metal box they'd murdered him in.
“Afternoon, Delaney.” Mains’ voice brings the hard bench and the worn vinyl tile floor back into focus.
I look up at him, careful-like. “Hello.”
“I thought you'd be stuck to young Cox.” His mouth twists, adding an obscene and knowing emphasis to the words.
“He's meetin’ with the sheriff.”
“And you aren't invited.”
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
“Not yet.” He sits down beside me on the bench. “I got a call said they were puttin’ together some kind of search party.”
“They want to find The Salesman.” I say it too loud because I'm nervous.
The skinny fellow on the other side of the counter that separates the reception area, with its artificial plants and the uncomfortable bench, from the rest of the office area twitches and flaps his hand around—a Southern Baptist doing his damnedest to cross himself.
Mains grins, dry as a drought. “Easy, Del. They'll put you outside if you ain't careful.”
“Might be better that way. Nobody lookin' at me. Hot though.”
“Storm's comin' in soon enough.”
I glance at the doors, the blacktop all washed out in the glare outside. “Dark is coming early tonight.”
The door to Sheriff Tolbert's office slams open and he stomps out and across the long room toward us. Percy's right behind him, eyebrows pulled down low. He's been arguing, no doubt. Trying to lift the blame from me for all that's happened.
Tolbert hooks his thumbs in his belt and glares down at me. “You know where the Trainer boys have been taking those women?”
I shrug. “I can guess.”
He ain't like Gil Mains who only got cleverer when he was afraid. Grabs me by both shoulders and yanks me up onto my feet, pushes his face up close, all red and sweaty. “Don't play games with me, girl. You might have the city boy fooled, but I know you've had a hand in this. You tell me where they're headed or by God I'll make Greenhaven look like a resort.”
He's pinching me so hard my fingers hurt, but I look at him square and cool with my green eye. “They'll be wherever Jack Green's bones were hid.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere in the woods out west of town.”
“That's a big place. Where exactly?” He shakes me like I'm a kid he caught throwing shit on his porch.
“That's enough.” Percy has a hand on Tolbert's shoulder, dragging him back a step.
Martinez steps into the intervening space, nearly trampling my feet as he gets between me and Tolbert and pushes him farther back. “Leave her alone.” He's cool as always, but solid as a wall.
The lobby crackles with tension—the deputies clustering behind the main desk, ready to swarm out to assist Tolbert, and Percy and his team lookin' ready to throw down themselves.
Mains clears his throat, staring hard at Tolbert. “Stupid,” he says.
Tolbert looks at me again and the color fades from his cheeks. He licks his lips and gives a hitch at his belt. “If she knows—”
“I don't know.” That part, at least, is true as the day is long. I know there's a clearing out there and an old house, but the woods are big and I've only been out there once in my physical self. “If we search for it, we'll find it.”
Maybe Tolbert feels the weight in those words, the knowledge that this will come to pass. For sure he remembers who he'd got hold of. He takes another few steps back, wiping his hands on the front of his shirt as though he can rub away bad luck. He looks at Percy. “Well?”
“She'll stay with me,” Percy says. “And Mains.”
Mains nods. “Sure.”
Tolbert licks his lips. “What are we looking for?”
“A clearing.” Percy looks at me for confirmation. “With an old house, half-covered by vine.”
“All right.” Tolbert scowls. “We'll start on Stringer's Road and move west.” He waves a hand at the deputy behind the counter. “Get the rest of the men in the cars. We don't have a lot of time and there's a storm comin'.”
20
The woods are dark and I put my hand on Percy's arm as we look for the path through the trees. To the left Mains is also searching, his light flashing now and then as he scans the ground for some sign of the track.
Martinez is to the right, moving more heavily, his light fixed on the ground in front of him. I know that farther out are the other members of Percival's team—Elliot and MacKenzie—but the undergrowth is too thick for me to make them out or catch the flicker of their flashlights.
I tuck my hand more snugly into the crook of Percy's elbow. This is the trickiest part. I have studied the details of these woods for years—the types of trees and underbrush, the way the land rolls, the build-up of leaves. The individual parts are all tucked away for reference, but I have not been able to walk here in this specific place.
Finding the threads of the folk that pass through here has been a challenge. Men cooking meth in the underbrush, the occasional young couple looking for a private spot to grope and kiss—all of 'em making me blush and fret, but in the end, I've learned the shape of these woods nearly end to end.
Walking in them now I'm pleased to note the overall similarity to the place I took Percy before, but the transition must be seamless, or I may lose my grip on him.
The darkness helps. I only need to add the large oak just in front of us, the half-lit beeches on either side. The rest is hidden.
As I have hoped and planned, Percy doesn't notice at first. We tramp along in the darkness. At least it seems that way. In reality, our physical selves are standing in the woods just beneath the edge of a great old oak. But our real selves, the undying parts, are here. In my woods.
Percy stops and shines the flashlight around. “Are you certain this is the right direction?” He squints into the darkness. “Mains.” There is no answer.
“Maybe he's fallen behind.”
“Maybe.” He scans the ground with the light again, and this time there is something other than dead leaves and soft-rotten sprawl of fallen beech limbs. “What's this?” He picks it up, brushes the leaves from the pale blue cover.
“It looks like a book.”
“I meant...” He shakes his head and looks at the spine. “Saint Joan.”
“George Bernard Shaw,” I whisper. It was one of the first things I memorized. One of the first things I lost behind the walls the meds have built in my head—chemically rearranging my brain as Dr. Everley tries to hide me from the magic in my bones.
Percy flips through the book. “These pages are blank.” A pause. He turns his light back toward the woods. “Mains. Martinez.” Yelling now, but there is no response. “Where are we, Delaney?” His flashlight is blinding.
I put my hand up to shield my eyes. “You know the answer to that, Percival.”
“Your woods. Your head.” He turns around, the leaves whispering underfoot, but nothing changes. “Why?”
“Because this is the only way. If we find that path and you reach the end of it...” I pause, searching for words to explain what I have seen will happen if he comes into contact with The Salesman.
I want more than anything to tell him that I do not fear losing him to death because it is only a temporary separation. The thing that shakes me to my soul is the other futures I have seen. The countless times he faces The Salesman and it wakens something dark and hideous in his soul. The things that he has forgotten. But even that I cannot tell him without risk.
He takes my hesitance as confirmation of his own fear. “I will die.”
I nod, willing to leave it at that. “Yes. You would die. But I told you I wouldn't let that happen.”
“We have discussed this. We are all taking precautions.”
I look at him silently.
“Aren't we?”
“I followed every thr
ead, Percy. Hundreds of them. And down every road more people died. And the more blood spilled the stronger The Salesman grew.” I lick my lips. “And you died.”
“You told me once you know the future you can change it.”
“Yes. And there was one thread that put an end to the terror. But only if I kept you from stopping me.”
“Stopping you.” He grabs my arm, hard. “Delaney. Whatever it is you're thinking of doing, it isn't necessary.”
I smile, wishing he was right. “Yes, it is.”
“No. We'll find another way.” He leans his forehead against mine. “If you are doing this because of me...”
I touch the book tucked in the crook of his arm. “You are part of it. But there is more to it.”
“I will not let you risk yourself. This is unnatural fire. It might kill you.”
“I am not afraid of death, Percy.”
He shakes his head. “No, Delaney.”
I can barely breathe around the weight of my heart. It smolders like the flames I know are waiting. I close my eyes and dig deep and desperate for the words that are still buried in my head, still buried in the book Percy found.
“Yes: they told me you were fools, and that I was not to listen to your fine words nor trust to your charity. You promised me my life; but you lied.”
“Ah, Delaney.” Percy sucks in a deep breath. He understands now. The idea of being forever shut up in Greenhaven is the only thing I truly fear. But the fire in his eyes tells me he will not let go of me easily.
I put my arms around him, finding strength in the words I hid away so many years ago. “You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread. When have I asked for more? It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and the flowers...” My throat aches and I lay my head against his chest as tears break free.
He murmurs in my hair. Wordless at first. His voice a deep and soothing vibration. Then, quiet-like. “Ursula, in a garden, found a bed of radishes. She kneeled upon the ground and gathered them, with flowers around, blue, gold, pink, and green. She dressed in red and gold brocade and in the grass an offering made of radishes and flowers.”
The flashlight has fallen to the ground, leaving his face in darkness. I bite my lip, reaching out to touch the world I have built here. Overhead the clouds peel back and the moon pours through as big and full as it is possible for the moon to be. So I can look at him. So he can look at me.
He tilts his head down and kisses me. Desperate. His hands on my face. Warm and tender. “I will not let you go, Delaney Green.”
“Ah.” I smile in spite of everything. “You must, Percy.”
“Then all of this...” He stops, eyes wide and dark. Considering for the first time that Martinez and the others might be right. That I may have raised The Salesman.
I reach up and take his hands in mine. “I want to be free, Percy. But not like that.”
“Then how? You told me something changed that brought the nightmare to life. Something that turned the small magic of many tongues into something real and hungry and evil.”
“But it weren't me.” I toss my hair back over my shoulder and the woods around us shake and resolve into a rough clearing. Overhead the moon grows hot and bright, and the gentle trill of tree frogs changes into the distant call of the mockingbird. On the far side an old house slowly withering with age.
Percy sucks in a hard breath and steps closer. “This is the place in my dream.”
“For good reason.” I slip my arm around his waist. “Now watch.”
Luke and Merv Trainer were never good for much. And may be that weren't their fault. Their daddy and his daddy and his daddy before him had all believed that the only education a man needed was the one he gave himself, that it was better to survive by one's wits than to work a long day in the service of another man. Of course, what they meant by surviving by their wits was taking whatever they could from any who was kind enough or foolish enough to offer them the opportunity.
The boys had come out here to this run down house in the middle of the hot summer woods because there was a rumor that the old lady who used to live there had buried some of her money somewhere in the clearing. They were smart enough to know to look for spots in the ground that were sunk in, but impatient too, digging little holes all over the clearing and finding nothing.
'Til one of 'em hits the corner of the box. The shovel thunks, metal-on-metal, and the energy shoots right through them. They dig fast now and steady, working around the edge and down the sides, scooping the dirt off the top until they have the whole thing uncovered. It ain't no coffee can like they'd been expecting to find. This is big and square, and it looks old, too.
Luke looks at Merv, a big greedy smile on his face. “What do you 'spect is in it?”
Merv shrugs. “Could be nothing. Ladies clothes or somethin'. Books.” He grabs the handle on one end. “Help me get it out of the hole.”
It takes a minute, sweat pushing out through their skin and slicking their shirts down, not to mention swearing in two voices with a fair amount of racial and sexual invective directed at the son-of-a-bitch who buried the damn thing in the first place. But they get it free of the dirt and stagger a few steps before setting it down. Straighten their backs and shake the sweat out of their eyes.
“It's heavy enough,” Luke says, hopeful-like.
“Made of iron or somethin'.” Merv works the edge of the shovel under the corner of the lid and pries up with it. The metal groans, but the rust flakes and breaks loose. “Get that other side.”
Luke sticks his fingers under the lip and pulls up. “Damn.” The lid flops open in a waft of dust and damp. He steps back, clutching one hand tight against his chest, little threads of blood leaking out between his fingers. “If I get lockjaw over a pair of old ladies’ bloomers...” He trails off.
Merv is staring into the chest, face as white and green as the wood ears that grow on dead trees. “Jesus.”
Luke edges closer. The chest is filled with ash and bones. Human bones. He knows because the skull is there, jaw gaping wide in a grisly jeer. “Fuck.” He grabs the shovel from Merv and digs around in the trunk, but there ain't nothing of value in there. The pins and ribbons Jack Green used to sell have long since turned to dust and ash.
“Nothin'.” Luke glares at Merv. “We done spent all this time diggin' that up and there ain't nothin’ in it but a bunch of bones.”
He flicks his hand, angry, and little drops of blood glide off his fingertips and land on the bones and ash. Even the blood of an idiot and an ass like Luke Trainer has a fair amount of magic in it. It calls out to the waiting magic of lips and tongue, and all the fear and hate and make-believin' about The Salesman comes straight to life.
The bones shiver, one against another, and the ash clots up around them in the imitation of flesh.
And Luke and Merv should be running like hell, but they just stand there, mouths open while The Salesman stands up. It flexes as if takin' a breath, but a thing like that don't breathe, and fire licks out of every joint and covers it like skin.
“Ah.” The Salesman sighs and looks at the Trainer boys with eyes that are nothin' but flame.
Luke swallows hard. “Wh-what you want?”
The Salesman tilts its head to one side. Its desires and needs are simple. Shaped by a century and a half of tongues telling a story that weren't true. “Revenge.” The fire covering its body licks out to turn the muggy summer afternoon even hotter.
He shakes his head. “Naw. You just get back in that damn chest, you hear?”
The Salesman reaches out faster than anyone can blink and grabs Luke by the arm. Just for a moment, but it leaves a blister the size of a hand on his skin.
Luke shrieks, doubling over on the ground while the Salesman stands over him. It's still got one foot in the iron trunk, but
I figure Luke don't know that it can't step any farther because he looks up, his eyes all wet and bloodshot. “What do you want me to do?”
“Women,” The Salesman says. “Bring me women and I will take my revenge.”
The clearing shivers and my woods return, with cool moonlight to soothe away the fear and fire we just witnessed. I take a deep breath. “That was how. And it weren't me.”
Percy looks at me, still suspicious. “You could have kept those two from finding the trunk.”
“Someone else would have. Later, when I was too old to do anything about it. Or when I had no way to get out.” I catch my lip between my teeth. “I was tempted there. But those roads... more people die. Not just the thirteen girls that died this way, but hundreds. And the story changed, let The Salesman walk free of his coffin and then more died.” I shake my head. “I couldn't let that happen.”
“Then let me go with you.”
“No. You'll be brave even though you don't mean to and I'll lose you. And my freedom. I cannot even say for sure which would hurt me more. But you cannot come with me.”
He shivers, holding on to me as though I'm the only thing keeping his legs from shaking right out from under him. “Delaney, I'm afraid.”
“I know.” I stretch up on tiptoe to kiss the tears from his cheeks, kiss his mouth with as much love as my lonely soul can muster. “It will be all right.” I touch my fingers to his forehead and will him to sleep. “When you wake up, it will be all right.”
He gets heavy in my arms and we sink toward the ground. “Delaney.” His tongue is blurry with sleep.
“Yes, Percival.”
“Promise me that I'll hold you again safe before the sun comes up.”
I smile. “I promise, Percy.”
He sighs and falls dead asleep and we drop back into the solid world.
Up ahead Martinez and the others are still picking their way through the trees, leaves scuffling underfoot despite their efforts to be quiet. There is no moon nor stars here, just the storm clouds as dark as the inside of a fist overhead and thunder grumbling on the horizon. The rain will be here soon.
Touch: A Trilogy Page 9