Five hours. He could have been clear.
~
“I don’t know,” he said finally, and feared he had taken too long to say so.
She straightened. Fidgeted. “I … God … oh God.”
“Hey … it’s okay. I understand.”
Lynn didn’t reply; all she could muster was an expression of something fragile, between utter embarrassment and shame. Her eyes fell to the table and took root there, as if nothing could draw them free.
He took her hands in his and clasped them gently.
“I need you to look me in the eye, Lynn. You need to.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.” But she did.
“I’m Kain Richards.”
He saw the doubt lurking there like a beast.
“I want to believe you,” she said. “I do believe you. It’s just that Ryan keeps saying these awful things about you. I don’t understand it. Any of it.”
“Either do I.”
“Why? Why does he mistrust you?” But before he could respond: “I wasn’t asking. Just thinking out loud.”
“Oh.”
“I trust you,” she said. “I do. I just wish I knew what was going on in my son’s head.”
“And yours? What’s going on in Lynn Bishop’s head?”
“Nothing,” she replied, and sighed. “Everything.”
She was throwing off so much static it was screeching.
“You’re right,” she said, carrying right on. “It wasn’t the storm that kept me up. It wasn’t Ryan, either. And it wasn’t what happened in those woods.”
“Did something happen?”
“I had another dream.”
“Go on.”
“I was on the veranda,” she said. “Watering the plants. It was horribly hot. The sky was clear, but a storm was coming. The wind was howling. There was something else, like … I don’t know … like electricity in the air. I felt numb. You know, like when your foot goes to sleep. But I felt it all over. It’s the only way I can describe it.”
She went on. “Yes. Electricity. I remember the hair on my arms rising. The hair on my head, too. The storm kept getting worse. The flowers were blowing all over. One of the planters blew off the railing and shattered. All I could hear was the wind, but I kept on watering—you know how you do stupid things in dreams. Anyway, I kept hearing this noise. It sounded like a power saw or something. It kept growing and growing. By the time I realized what it was, it was too late.”
“Too late …”
“It was that Ben Caldwell,” she said. “His truck just came out of nowhere. And so did Costello.”
~
“It’s not the dream,” she said, after some reflection. “I mean, it was horrible. But that’s not what upset me.”
“Then what is it?”
“I woke up on fire,” she said, and he looked at her quizzically. “I felt like I was on fire. That dream, it … it wasn’t like any dream I’ve ever had. Do you remember what I told you about the first one? The one about Ryan?”
“You said it didn’t feel right.”
“Yes,” she said, excitedly. “Kain … I wasn’t just burning up. My eyes hurt. The wind was blowing so hard I remember dust whipping into them. I know how crazy this might sound, but it was almost as if I hadn’t dreamt it at all. If I hadn’t woken up where I was, I would swear on the Bible it really happened.”
“But you know that it didn’t.”
“I know. But I can’t explain how I feel. When I think about Costello … I saw her get run down. It happened.”
“We’ve all had dreams like that,” he said. “One time I woke up and swore I was President.”
She grinned mildly; looked at him oddly.
“What.”
“Just trying to picture you in the Oval Office,” she said. “Long hair and Levis.”
She laughed, despite herself, but he could hear the strain in her laughter. In another time, the old Kain Richards would have held her close and told her everything was going to be all right. But of course he couldn’t, for the damage—contamination came to mind, another Brikker favorite—had already been done.
There was another flash of lightning, chased by a roll of thunder. The rains kept on.
“You don’t like it,” she said. “The rain.”
~
He was going to say something utterly stupid like, Who, me?, but she didn’t give him that chance.
“You seemed so sad today,” she said. “In the woods.”
He didn’t answer. God thrust down another thunderbolt, and the lamp flickered again.
“I don’t mind it,” she said, anxiously. “I like to go for walks when it’s drizzling. I used to, anyway.”
“I don’t,” he said, and that’s all he said.
~
Later, around five, the hour he had hoped to be on his way north, he bolted upright from a nightmare. His heart thrummed so hard he feared it would break. His body and sheets were soaked. He ran with gooseflesh. The room was pitch dark and suffocating, and for a terrifying moment, he could smell Brikker’s cigarette lingering in the dead air, could taste its rancid filth as it slithered through his throat and into his lungs. Somewhere, deep inside his brain, he heard that voice, that voice—
Every muscle in his body screamed. He cried out.
The rains.
The rains had stopped, but he could still hear the whispers. Still hear the call of the road.
And he could hear—still, beyond the madman’s voice, beyond that jagged fffft-fffft fffft-fffft of Brikker’s machine—his screams.
~ 30
Kain looked out into the dawn. He slid the window open in hope of cool air to comfort him, yet could only grimace at that stifling Midwest heat.
Lynn had said nothing about the knapsack by the door, but she had seen it, oh yes; she had. He reasoned she had always assumed his stay would be short, a month at best, but she could not conceal her disappointment. He had offered nothing in explanation, and seeing that solemn expression sweep over her (the very same that had swept over Sarah-Jane back in Rocheport), he had wanted to curl up and die. She deserved so much better.
He sat up in his bed and felt a dull ache in his back. He rubbed his eyes.
Oh … right.
He drew the envelope from beneath the pillow. He had almost forgotten it. He read the letter. All four words.
Thank you. For everything.
Jesus. This wasn’t a letter … this was a note.
He hadn’t even signed it.
He stuffed the envelope in his pack and glanced outside. The reddened sun had grown fat as it crested the horizon, bathing this newest of morns in a luscious orange the color of bursting autumn pumpkins. That crow (Same one, had to be) arced high and wide with its powerful wings, dipping and darting across the landscape as if nothing could cage it and knowing it, and then it suddenly turned and took perch upon a leafless branch on that old man of an oak napping down in the gully.
He sighed; felt a vexing rise in his chest. The open road seemed a world away. And barely a step.
He tossed the knapsack in the corner, and waited.
~
He waited for Ryan. When Lynn had left, it had been long past one in the morning, the rain still coming steadily, and she had taken but a single step toward the farmhouse when she had turned about and told him that she would talk to him first. It would be better, she had said, and had said it again, as if to convince herself. He had only nodded, and she had simply walked away in the drizzle.
Around eight, Ryan emerged. Looking ragged in a wrinkled white T and worn jeans (he scratched his crotch repeatedly during a painfully long yawn)—and packing the grimace of one pissed-off teenager—the boy kept one hand on the railing as he eyed the guesthouse. He raised the other to shield the glare of the sun, and Kain, caught entirely off guard, backed away from the window.
You should be halfway to the state border by now. What the hell were you thinking?
He stood to
the side and leaned forward to peer out. Ryan was sitting on the top step now, looking as thrilled with this as he was. For the last few hours, he’d sat here, dumb as a stump, wondering what he might say to the boy. He could not believe what he had finally come up with.
He put on an armless white shirt and a fresh pair of jeans, slipped on his boots, tied his hair back in a ponytail, had second thoughts, had third and even fourth thoughts, and then finally went outside. The day was thick and hot and choking, one of those sweltering Iowa mornings he would never get used to. Not that he’d planned to.
He disappeared inside the barn, emerging with a bucket of baseballs in his right hand. A solid hickory bat he had slung over his left shoulder, a baseball glove slipped halfway up the handle. He dropped off the bucket behind the guesthouse. One of the balls rolled off the top of the heap, onto a small patch of browned grass.
With bat and glove still resting on his shoulder, he walked straight up. The boy hadn’t seen him yet. Ryan was gazing off to the east, where some thick white clouds had gathered in playful forms of shadow and light.
Kain set the gear in the grass. He held out his hand, but the boy never took it.
Ryan simply eyeballed the bat and the glove before turning back to the horizon.
“Save it,” he said. “Want an apology? I’m sorry.”
“We don’t have to be friends,” Kain said. “But we could try, couldn’t we?”
“You said so yourself … we don’t have to be.”
Static. Fiercer than yesterday. It was buzzing from the boy like a dozen crossed stations. Maybe his anger was fueling it. Who knew.
“You’re right about me, you know. I’m no good. Just a no-good drifter.”
The boy stirred.
“Isn’t that what you want to hear, Ryan?”
“What?”
“Nothing I say or do would convince you otherwise,” Kain said. “Isn’t that true?”
“Try me. Tell me something I can believe.”
“I don’t have a lock on the world’s secrets, Ryan. Everybody’s got something in their past. Everybody.”
The boy gave him a look. Then he rose and put a hand on the rail.
“I don’t,” he snapped. “Are we done?”
Kain looked at him dimly. He picked up the bat and slipped the pitcher’s glove free. He thrust the glove outward without warning, and it slapped hard against the boy’s abdomen. Ryan snagged it, barely, and that smugness evaporated into a full-blown scowl.
“What’s with you?”
“No more,” Kain said. “No more screwing around.”
The teenager’s eyes narrowed.
“You a betting man, Ryan?”
“What?”
“Three strikes,” Kain said. “Get three strikes on me, and the Little Ghost will vanish into thin air. Poof.”
“You’re crazy. You’re crazy.”
“Don’t think you can do it?”
“I could do it blindfolded.”
“Prove it. Come on.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then neither am I.”
The boy turned with a grimace, but there was something there: he seemed to be weighing the intriguing offer.
“You’ll leave? Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“And if I don’t … not that I won’t … what then?”
“Then … then we have business.”
The boy turned back to him.
“Here’s the deal, Ryan. If I get a hit off you—and I’ll tell you, the odds are way in your favor—you’ll get back on the team. You’ll do whatever it takes.”
The teenager chuckled. “I don’t think so. Besides … what’s the point now?”
“There’s still time. The season’s almost over, but the Tigers can still make the district finals.”
“Yeah? Who cares?”
“You afraid? Afraid of facing the team? Facing Jones?”
“I’m not afraid, Ghost.”
“Three strikes. Can’t be that tough.”
The boy straightened. The brash arrogance evaporated. He looked cold and flat and grim. He brooded a moment, and just when Kain thought he might turn away, Ryan Bishop nodded. And slipped his hand into the glove.
~ 31
Thinking he should have just kept his big mouth shut and hit the road—it occurred to him he could still salvage his situation, simply take a dive with three half-assed swings and be done with it—Kain found himself listening to a second voice in his head, a smaller yet entirely coercive one, a voice that would not allow him to deny the potential he saw in this troubled young man. It was the same voice that had nearly compelled him to speak to the coach, right after the kid had stormed off the mound for a crack at Jones. It seemed far too easy to walk away, to let the boy be someone else’s problem.
Lynn’s problem.
He walked several yards ahead, Ryan following sluggishly with his head down, as if he were on his way to the gallows. Kain scooped up the bucket by the handle, waited for him, offered it, and the boy regarded it dourly, his eyes hovering over the contents as if they were radioactive. Ryan glanced suspiciously at him and then frowned as he took the bucket, and then simply turned about and headed out to the roughed-in pitcher’s mound.
Kain positioned himself beside the guesthouse, roughly in line with the painted box outlining the strike zone. With no plate to orient him, he used the butt of the bat to hollow a square into the dirt. Ryan, standing flaccidly on the mound, the bucket tipped over and a dozen balls spilled out beside him, rolled his eyes.
Kain dug in with his boots and gripped the bat firmly. He choked up on the handle and let his fingers find their grip. He gave two soft half-swings that were clumsy and graceless in their rustiness. There was some pain in his lower back, but not so throbbing he couldn’t shake it off. A kind of sweet recollection swept over him. He didn’t realize he was smiling. It felt good to swing again. He hadn’t picked up a bat in a good twenty years, not since his stint in the Eastern League playing Class A ball. He wasn’t a long-ball hitter by any measure, but he wasn’t a strikeout king, either; he had held his own against some pretty good hurlers in those days. Yeah. The bat felt good in his hands, as it always had back then. It was like reaching up to the sky and touching that first fine day of spring, when the sun is just right and winter is a dream long lost, and everything seems impossibly possible.
He eyed the pitcher. “Anytime you’re ready.”
Ryan shook his head, grumbling something that sounded like, Yeah, right. He was thin and unimposing. He placed the ball in his glove, the ball he’d been rolling in his fingers so nervously. He set his place on the mound, and the batter, as ready as he was going to be, offered a simple half-swing.
The young thrower fell into his wind-up, gangly and awkward as he brought his leading leg up. He paused briefly, his head tilted down just so … and fired raw heat. The ball blazed straight for Kain’s head, and the drifter felt a sharp rush of air brush his hair as he slipped back and away. The ball thumped the side of the guesthouse with a solid thud and struck him in the right leg on the rebound. He lost his balance stumbling back and landed hard on his ass in the dirt.
He got up slowly. The boy was looking right at him, his expression stone cold. He could have been seated at a poker game, holding all the aces. Or zilch. You just couldn’t tell.
“Little rusty,” Ryan said impassively, reaching down for another ball.
Was there a hint of a grin there? Kain didn’t want to believe the kid had tried to bean him, but he didn’t discount it. He’d only seen him in one game, but he’d seen enough. The boy had a cannon of an arm, yet about as much accuracy as a blind man in a shooting gallery. Was it rust? It could have been a wild pitch. But then again, it could have been a less-than-subtle message.
“Anytime you’re ready,” Ryan deadpanned. His nimble fingers were really rolling the ball now.
Kain dusted himself off and glanced back at the farmhouse. He half
expected to see Lynn and Lee standing there laughing. Relieved that they weren’t, he settled into place and gave the kid two more half-swings.
Ryan slipped into that graceless wind-up again, paused, dipped his head, and let fly. This one was a touch softer, certainly hittable, the ball sailing straight and hard. Kain let it rip by with a check swing. The ball struck the wall just outside the painted box. It left a good dent in the wood, buried among a thousand others.
“One-and-one,” the batter said.
“I don’t need your help,” Ryan retorted, and picked up a third ball.
“Two-and-oh, then.”
Ryan kicked up some dirt on the mound. He folded his head down, muttering to himself. His glove hung at his side, his arm practically dangling there dead. In his pitching hand, he started to roll the ball in his skinny fingers. He set himself carefully and waited for Kain to give him a spot. The batter obliged with two crisp swings, and then he started into his delivery.
Kain grandstanded. He raised his left hand in the air, as if calling time, and stepped back from the crude plate he had drawn in the dirt.
Ryan followed through without releasing, his inertia sending him stumbling off the mound. He whipped round in a complete circle and took the batter to task.
“What the heck is that? This isn’t Yankee Stadium, for cryin’ out loud.”
Kain made a point of not looking at the pitcher. He had intended to test the boy to see if it would shake him. Mission accomplished. He probably shouldn’t have, given the stakes, but it was some small payback. He was almost certain the boy had tried to stone him on that first pitch. Besides, no one had said he couldn’t have fun with this.
“Are you ready, or what?” Ryan barked. “I got a life to live here.”
Kain ignored him. He took his sweet time, gently resting the bat between his legs. He rubbed his hands together. He gripped the bat, altered his grip up, up … down a bit … a little more. Stepping up to the plate, he tapped the end of the bat on the far side and then dug himself in to a comfortable position. He waggled his ass a bit, a little too much, but what the hell.
“All sizzle,” Ryan grumbled, stealing a line from Ben Caldwell. “Would you hurry up?”
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