That was Will’s deal—his bod might be sitting about thirty-six inches from hers (now fully clothed, thank you) but Amy knew he was still walking those fathomless woods, flipping over his own guardrail. But it shouldn’t go on forever like this. He needed to download. You could do a lot of harm holding onto a trauma for too long and a lot of good starting the repairs as soon as possible. She reached out and encircled his hands and mug with her own rough palms. The A/C was blasting but he shouldn’t have been as cold as he was.
“Will?”
He raised his eyebrows, but kept his gaze on the tea.
“What happened to you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Sheriff?” She squeezed his hands, a hard pulse. “Hey!”
Will made eye contact, washed-out blue, bleached. He muttered something.
“What?” she asked.
“It’s Constable,” he said a little louder. “Tom Ward… the Sheriff’s up at the county courthouse.” He sounded like a man talking in his sleep.
Amy didn’t want to yank the information out of him, but needed to keep him engaged. If she was aggressive he might run the other way. She sat back in her seat and planted one booted leg up on the bench. “What’s the difference? Is Constable like a deputy or something?”
“Hum?”
Firmly, “What’s the difference, Will?”
“Oh, ah, a deputy works for the Sheriff. That’d be Si Smalls and a couple of other guys.”
“You don’t work for the Sheriff?”
“Shard’s in his jurisdiction…” His eyes had gone dull again.
She wasn’t letting him slip back. “And? But?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. Shard’s under his general jurisdiction, but I’m the prevailing law officer for what’s left of the municipality.”
“So he’s like the President and you’re the Governor?”
“Close enough, I guess.” He came up almost all the way. Talking about the normal, familiar parts of life was like laying the planks on the bridge back to reality. He tilted his head to the side. “Amy?”
“Yeah?”
“How come you were naked?”
She colored. “Bother you?”
Now, it was Will’s turn to blush. At least it made him look human. Another minute and she was ready to classify him as a new type of chalk. “I, uh, no it didn’t bother me,” he said. “Nice ink, by the by.”
She sat forward, “What happened to you, man?”
Will sat back, surprised by her sudden change in tack. Amy’s tone was still gentle, but insistent. He took a breath and spread his palms flat against the table top.
“Have you ever seen something, or experienced something that you knew didn’t happen?”
“I’m not sure I get you.”
Will frowned. “Okay, say you had a dream where you were—I dunno—a fairy princess with magical powers.”
“Gem.”
“What?”
“Gem. I always used to pretend I was Gem from Gem and Holograms.”
“I dunno know that one.” He shook his head as if to shoe a fly. “Don’t matter. Anyway, pretend you woke up from a dream where you were Gem, except that when you woke up you were still sure you were both Gem and yourself. How do you deal with that?”
A scowl dragged down Amy’s brow. “So, you’re saying that you’re sure not what’s real?” Her mouth quirked into a smile. “You shroomin’, Constable?”
“Ha, that’d be great. At least then I’d know what was what. I could put all the weird shit down to the psilocybin and accept everything else.”
His response didn’t guarantee anything, but it certainly made it sound like the good Constable was experienced in a Jimi Hendrix kinda way. She was digging him more and more. “Seriously,” she said, “you go for a hike and find something funky in them thar woods?”
Will patted Smaug. “I don’t get screwy on anything when I’m on duty. That whole altered reality thing doesn’t jive all that well with large caliber firearms.”
“Not even beer?”
“Never.” He ran his hands through his hair, knocking his old ball cap off. “Ah, man, I don’t know how start.”
Amy put her hand over his. “Try the beginning and we’ll figure it out from there.”
Her touch set off a thrum from his toes to his nose. Will hoped the blush he could feel creeping up his neck wasn’t visible. He felt like a cartoon character that’d just eaten a hot pepper, filling up red from the bottom like a thermometer. It wasn’t like Shard had a big dating pool. And now, what? Was he going to tell her what had just happened? This morning he’d been thinking about how to ask her to have dinner with him. Was he really going to include her in the insanity he’d just witnessed?
“Ah, hell,” he said. “Started when I saw my dad walking in the woods. He’s dead by the way.”
* * *
“So you think I’m completely crazy, right?”
Amy sat back and put her arms behind her head. She looked up at the ceiling of the darkening trailer. They were either going to be hit by a summer storm or time had slipped during Will’s story of giant spiders and shape-shifting dragons. She looked at him for a long enough time that the color began to rise in his cheeks and said, “I think that you probably are messed up somehow or another, yes.”
Will sighed, “Shew, that’s wonderful.”
“Seriously?”
“What, that I’m nuts or had a hallucination? In a word, hell yes.” He laughed. “Listen, I’d much rather put down what happened as a concussion dream than as real. Concussion means I don’t have to worry about a big demon-dragon-uh… thing and its freaky pet spider. Which, by the way, really seemed to want to eat me. Did I mention that?”
“You did.”
“Now I don’t need to plan my life around a battle with a wasp-creature who’s coming here to end the world. I can get that pedicure I was looking forward to on Wednesday.” He shook his head. “Now that I hear myself say it like that it’s amazing I was ever confused. Must have been the knock I took when I fell.”
He was speed-talking now and from a man who was a slow southern-drawler to begin with the effect was that much more pronounced. Amy let him go. He was babbling himself right in a way he hadn’t during the initial story telling. That had been more like listening to someone recount a dream, slow and stammering through impossible situations that seem real only moments after waking. This was his version of getting the shakes and crying.
“I suppose I should get myself on up to Lexington and load up into one of those MRIs. Have my brains scanned for any real harm. You shouldn’t ever have one of those, you know. They’re supposed to hurt like hell for people with tattoos.”
“Not anymore. If your paint’s less than 20 years old, you’re good. New ink doesn’t have all the heavy metals the old stuff used to.”
“Oh, okay, well, great. I won’t have to worry about that because I’m paintless, but I should probably have one just to make sure I’m not bleedin’ into my brain or anything. Then maybe I should get like a full neurological work up.”
He went for a little while longer, Amy nodding along and waiting for him to peter out. She didn’t believe that his episode was due to any concussion. First of all, he saw his dead father before he went into the mine and fell. Unless he started the walk in Them Thar Woods concussed, it didn’t make sense. Second, he just didn’t have that big a dent in his noggin. And his pupils were fine. He’d look like a big cat on ketamine if he’d hit his head hard enough to hallucinate as freely as he described. Third… well, shit, he just didn’t seem the type to go nuts all of a sudden. She didn’t want to think that about him.
But she wasn’t going to tell him that. Amy wanted him to think that it had all been a hallucination or dream, at least for a while. At least until she had time to do a little investigating of her own.
It was the description of the dragon’s chamber that got her. If even one tenth of what he saw was actually there, it would be the largest diam
ond and emerald deposit in the northern hemisphere. There were only two diamond deposits of any size in the lower forty-eight United States—northwest of Ft. Collins in Colorado and Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas. If she could discover another it would make her career. Even better, if she played her cards right she could lay claim to it, but that would be tricky. She’d have to find a partner to go in with her who would have to pretend to “stumble” on the find him or herself. They could then buy what was left of the mine and exploit the gems for themselves.
“So what do you think?”
Amy focused. “Huh?”
“About dinner tomorrow.” Will smiled. “You were totally just spacing out there, weren’t you?”
She laughed. “Caught me. Sorry. What’d you say?”
“Aw man, you’re going to make me ask you out twice? That’s hard.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m a hard woman.”
He swallowed. “My friend George seems to have made himself a new friend. He asked me over to his place for dinner with them tomorrow night. Wanna’ be my date?”
Amy crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know,” she said. “You put out?”
Will looked genuinely confused. “It’s been so long I’m not even sure.”
Chapter 13
Darwin’s claws clicked along the warm August pavement of what used to be Shard’s main street. Where there was still glass storefronts reflected a young boy with curly blond hair and his sturdy beagle. Darwin’s leg had healed up almost overnight and the spider web bandage had dropped away. The Amazing Ninja-Dog started howling in his beagle basso to be let out into the world again and finally Loraine Howard had capitulated. She’d admonished Childe to stay out of the woods, feeling every bit the worried mother straight from a Grimm’s Fairy Tale. The way they’d found Darwin and that giant web still hung in her mind (Or rather, her mind still twisted in the web.) Just so long as he minded himself and stayed out of those woods. She didn’t care what Constable Will had to say about it. So Childe and Darwin had rushed into a warm summer day.
His first steps out of the house had been electrified. Childe might not be able to go into the woods, but they surrounded the entire town. Whatever was there (giant spiders, coyotes) was all around them too. He felt a species of mingled fear and adventure, but tempered by a lifetime of normalcy. While he was only twelve, Childe Howard had been around long enough to have lost most of his magical-thinking. Didn’t matter what you saw the day before; comfortable reality always comes rushing back in. It wasn’t long before he was just bopping along in his usual, lonesome daydream.
It would have been cool to run into Howie Sams. The other kids busted on him a lot because he was pretty porky, but Howie was Childe’s age and smart. (He’d actually earned enough money day trading on-line to get an X-box, which was totally dope.) The other kids were all a couple of years older or younger. At least he had Darwin to keep him company. The makeshift leash (a twenty-foot length of clothesline) tied to his collar earned the Kiddo a few reproachful doggy looks from time to time, but Loraine wouldn’t have let them out without it.
Childe kicked a rock and it skittered over the pavement before bouncing into the gutter next to a smoking crack. The air burned with the usual back-of-the-throat tang that was Shard’s breath this far into town. Some days the fumes were stronger than others, but today wasn’t so bad. The thunderstorm the day before had pulled most of the mean out of the air. Childe’s brow was dry and Darwin was barely panting. It was a perfect day to be a twelve year-old explorer.
They walked over to the sidewalk outside the old movie theatre. If there was any one building in Shard Childe wanted to check out it was that one. Man, that would be awesome. He could just imagine the empty seats and the cool, mildewy smell, the secret, scary echoes the big space would make—it would be like a big cave. He could turn it into a neat clubhouse and he and Howie could hang out. Maybe they could invite Patty and Maddy Wilkerson, even if they were younger… and girls. There was no way he’d want to bring in Shard’s only teenager, Tommy Ray Dalton.
Tommy Ray insisted at knuckle-point that all the other kids refer to him as T.R. At sixteen he was already well over six feet, but probably only weighed in around one-sixty or so. His skin had this freaky yellow white tinge because he tried hard to stay out of the sun whenever possible. Tommy Ray’s parents both worked at the same factory almost sixty miles outside of town and he was the only child. During the year, Tommy sat quietly in class, reading his textbooks and making sure to have filled in all the blanks in his workbook. He was very polite to the teacher and the other grown-ups, but Childe and the rest of the kids in Shard knew better. You didn’t want to get caught in one of the school’s empty halls with Tommy.
Howie told Child about one time when he stumbled on Tommy Ray in one of the empty sections of the school. When it got toward the end of the year, Howie didn’t like to play outside with the other kids during recess—the heat and what his Mama called “baby fat” didn’t make for a good mix. Instead, he would recede into the one of the empty classrooms with his lunch and a good sci-fi novel. One day he looked up from his book, cookie crumbs on his shirt, to the sound of a low rhythmic banging out in the hall. Howie had gotten up and gone around the corner to find Tommy Ray repeatedly smashing his forehead into a locker. Howie had called out to him. Tommy Ray had thought himself alone and actually snarled as he spun around. In the darkened hall, his eyes and teeth seemed very bright. In a deep, flat drawl Tommy Ray had said, “Forget this or I’ll slit you open like a pig.”
If Childe and Howie ever did start up a clubhouse or a hideout in the old movie theatre, T.R. was not going to be on the guest list. “Got that right,” Childe said out loud. Darwin looked up from his sidewalk snuffles. “Wasn’t talking to you, boy. Just broadcastin’.” That was one of his mother’s. Loraine talked to herself a lot. She said it was a writer thing. Kiddo thought it was more likely a Loraine thing. He smiled. The Childe reflected in the ticket-taker’s booth (a little darker, a little dustier) smiled back. He sighed. Man, it would be so cool in there.
Darwin gave a gentle tug on the leash. Something farther down the sidewalk smelled an awful lot like woodchuck piss and he really needed to check into that. If memory served, that particular stretch of sidewalk belonged to him.
* * *
T.R. would kill someone by the end of that summer. He’d decided just that morning while lying in bed. Daddy and Mama had slammed the screen porch door on the way to work (just like they did every morning) yanking T.R. into consciousness. The thought was there waiting for him: I am going to commit murder.
For a few minutes he just laid there, one arm behind his head, the other absently squeezing his morning hard-on. How would he do it? More importantly: who would it be? His father, Gene, or his mother, Martha Jean, would both be likely choices. Everyone in this shitburg town referred to T.R.’s folks as “The pair of Jeans”. His folks even thought it was funny. On the rare occasion when either of them was home instead of catching overtime at the Maytag factory in Riectherville and a shitburger would happen by and inquire as to T.R.’s parents’ overall state, the conversation normally included back-and-forth not unlike, “Hiya, Gene. Martha Jean. How you all feeling today?”
“Oh, well, I’m a little blue,” his daddy would say.
“I’m feeling kind of faded, myself,” from his Mama.
And everyone would laugh just fit to split.
T.R. gasped and released his dick from a painful death grip. There was choking the chicken, but he’d been about to break its neck. He rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of black combat pants, festooned with nifty pockets for the storage of all kinds of interesting and useful things. He lifted the window shade and recoiled from the blue-white sunshine. He cracked the window and pulled the shade most of the way back down before plopping down at his computer.
T.R. nudged the mouse and lit a Marlboro. The box took fucking forever to wake up but the price had been right. The city h
ad paid for the used computer because T.R. was the only student in Shard who needed access to college level AP courses and that wasn’t going to happen under the tutelage of that walking root ball, Mizzzzz Najarian. (Maybe it’d be her?) As his dear, sage father liked to say about every three and a half fucking seconds, “Beggars can’t be choosin’ a fuckin’ thing in this world.”
Daddy would know, too. The Dalton’s were as dirt poor as just about everyone else in Shard. When T.R.’s grandmama finally kicked off a few years back, she’d left them with the family house and the property taxes to go with it. Sometimes, usually after a seventy-hour week, Daddy would muse about burning the grand old Victorian to the ground so they could up and move away. Finally get out and get a decent start somewhere that wasn’t dead. They wouldn’t have to travel sixty miles each way to a shitty job in a washing machine factory that threatened to close three or four times a year just to make barely enough money for food, gas and taxes on a house that no one would ever buy. But Mama wouldn’t have it. The house had been in their family for generations. Her great grandpappy had built it and okay, okay already Martha-Jean, just get me a beer and shut yer fucking pie hole.
The computer beeped and T.R.’s eyes swam into focus. He opened four browser windows and filled each one with a different on-line newspaper. He liked to compare coverage of a single story by several different media outlets. One man’s terrorist was another man’s insurgent was another man’s freedom fighter depending on the last name of the tired old fucker who owned the printing presses. That got old after a few minutes and he switched over to his favorite porn site, weirdasiansluts.com. He watched a grainy video of a skinny woman with a funnel in her rectum, mewling and moaning while another woman poured eels into the funnel. His cock didn’t stir. Hell with it. He’d seen this one a buncha’ times already anyway.
T.R.’s brain was fast, feverish at times, and the AP courses held his interest for short stretches. Chemistry was his favorite. If he could ever get his hands on a quantity of ammonium nitrate, well, let’s just say they would finally get some fireworks in Shard for the next Fourth of July. The fuel oil part of the recipe was easy to get but since Oklahoma City, the Feds tracked any purchase of ammonium nitrate over a few pounds.
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