by Tom Deitz
“Maybe. But I’ve never seen anything good come of it; it only complicates your life and makes you unhappy. And unhappiness can’t be good—not intrinsically.”
“Hmmm. I’ll have to think about that ’un.”
“What about my promise to Brock?”
Kirk leaned back in his chair and puffed his cheeks. “Well, as I see it, you’ve gotta go through with it. Number one, you’ll guilt-trip yourself crazy if you don’t, so you might as well at least meet the kid. Do that, state your position clearly and concisely. Tell him exactly what you think, and explain all the risks and ramifications. And if that doesn’t work…you show him something that scares the livin’ pants off him, but that he can’t get the gear to duplicate solo.”
Calvin scowled. “It’s a thought.”
“Otherwise you break your promise. And if you break your promise…well, you have to honor promises, or you yourself have no honor. You’d be no better than a—’scuse me while I stereotype my fellow humans—white man.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“And the other problem?”
Calvin told him about the ghosts.
“Man, oh man,” Kirk groaned when he had finished. “Remind me to head for the high timber next time I see you comin’!”
“I’d just turn into an eagle and find you.”
Kirk stared at him for a long moment. “Yeah, you probably would. Okay then…only I’m not sure what to tell you, man. I’m an ethnohistorian; myth’s not my thing. In fact, you should’ve probably talked to that John Gregory guy who was here earlier, that’s his bag. All I can do is offer a couple of points. And the main one is to remind you of what you probably already know about ghosts. The first thing is that, according to our traditional worldview, a person who dies without all his parts is denied full admission to the Ghost Country.”
“And since Dad and that kid are missin’ their livers—”
“Right. They can’t rest.”
“What about the women?”
A shrug. “Search me. Maybe the gods are sexist.”
“And the other thing?”
“Ghosts get lonely—so they tend to try to lure their loved ones to the Ghost Country so they can be with ’em.”
Calvin struck himself on the forehead. “Oh, my God!”
“Sorry,” Kirk told him helplessly.
“Any idea how to placate one?”
Kirk shook his head. “Not a clue. Maybe if the missin’ parts were reunited and given proper burial?”
“The missin’ parts were in the stomach of a monster that dissolved in a south Georgia river!”
“Which gives you one more reason to return to the scene of the crime—beyond keepin’ your promise.”
Calvin yawned. Kirk saw him. “Yeah, me too.”
“Sorry.”
“Anything else before we crash?—not that either of us is likely to sleep.”
“One thing—make that two things.”
Kirk grimaced, finished his second cup. “Shoot.”
“That guy at the game: tall, lanky—weird eyes. Who is he?”
Kirk looked troubled. “He’s a problem, is what he is. And actually you hit pretty close when you commented on his eyes.”
“In what way?”
“Well, his name’s James Rainbow—or that’s what he calls himself, how he signs checks, and all. But folks around here have taken to callin’ him Snakeeyes, for obvious reasons.”
“Very obvious.”
“He’s from Oklahoma—supposedly: fresh off the boat. He’s also a witch—so folks say.”
Calvin frowned. “Not good, that.”
“Not when you know what witches really are—that in a culture that believes magic is everywhere, a witch is somebody who uses it specifically for harm.”
“Shit!” Calvin spat, pounding the arm of his chair with his fist. The coffee sloshed onto the porch beside him, narrowly missing Winford. “Fucking shit!”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing—except that the bastard saw my uktena scale.”
“Probably thought it was just a fish scale, like I did.”
“Yeah, but what if he didn’t? I mean something in that guy really put the wind up me. And he sure was lookin’ at it mighty hard when I was lyin’ there. And if he saw what you saw…”
“Shit!”
“And the girl?”
“What girl?”
“You have to have seen her! Good-lookin’, short hair, wild-lookin’ face—big eyes, and all. Had on one of Nathan’s T-shirts.”
“Oh, right; I know who you mean. She’s pretty sharp, isn’t she?”
“You know her?”
“I wish!”
“Okay…Churchy!”
“Uh…well, actually, I don’t know her name, though believe me, I’ve asked. She showed up the same time old Snakeeyes did, which is to say about a week ago. She hangs out with him a lot, only she doesn’t actually seem to like him. You never see her without him being around—but you never see them really close together, either.”
“Not like lovers?”
“Hard to say. Not in public, anyway. She doesn’t seem very happy, and less so the closer Snakeeyes gets.”
“More mystery.”
“Yeah,” Kirk sighed. “And I’m afraid I’ve had enough for one day—and night. So what d’ you say we sleep on all this, and maybe some new insight’ll be waitin’ for us tomorrow.”
“Except that I can’t wait till tomorrow—not past breakfast, anyway. If I’m gonna fulfill my promise, and check with the other folks I wanta check with, I’ve gotta head out at oh-bright-thirty.”
“It’s already oh-bright-thirty.”
“Before noon, then.”
“You sure you’re up for it? I mean with your ribs and all?”
“The bod’ll heal. But if I stand up Brock he might not—emotionally. ’Course on the other hand—” “
Fargo!”
“Okay, okay. Need some help cleanin’ up?”
“Yeah, but not from you. You’re gonna sleep. You can have the sofa if you want. Or the bed’s plenty big for two; I’m easy.”
“So I hear.”
“Asshole.”
Calvin bit his lip. “Actually…if it wouldn’t bug you too much, I think I might take you up on that. We’d probably both sleep better if we knew somebody else was close by.”
Kirk grinned wickedly as he rose. “I don’t suppose you could turn into a really pretty girl, could you? Long legs, big—”
“No, but I could turn you into a eunuch real easy!” Calvin cried—whereupon he leapt from his chair and chased his cousin into the cabin—until his ribs reminded him why he oughtn’t to do such things.
*
Blessedly, Calvin was asleep as soon as he hit the covers—as if sleep itself reached up to engulf him. For a long time fatigue kept any dreams away, but shortly past dawn one found him.
Not a dream actually, not in the sense of actions and images. Only a soft male voice murmuring insidiously, “Change, change, change, change, change…beasts have no worries, no responsibilities, and are not bound by promises…change, change, change…”
Somewhere, too, children were crying.
Chapter IX: Sneak Attack
(north of Qualla Boundary, North Carolina—Sunday, June 17—morning)
Calvin felt as though a take-no-prisoners game of anetsa had been played on his body when he awoke the next morning. He’d assumed he was in pretty good shape—Lord knew he jogged, did heavy chores around Sandy’s place, and generally kept himself busy outside. His muscles were hard, his stomach flat, his endurance dandy. But that evidently wasn’t enough to see him through even five minutes of a stickball game. And if he felt this bad after so little play, how must the other guys be feeling? Never mind that most were probably hung over.
On the other hand, as a too-abrupt stab at dragging the pillow over his head to shut out the morning light reminded him, they didn’t have cracked ribs and lacerated
chests. Well, some of ’em probably did, but that was neither here nor there.
It was then that he remembered the dream.
He’d had a disturbing dream about wanting to change shape. No! About someone urging him to change shape! Which meant it was some kind of sending! Which was even worse, because nobody was supposed to know he could do that except his friends. Only…who would send him dreams like that? Not Uki, surely; not something so…negative. But not Dave or any of that crowd either. First because it was totally unlike them—even if one of ’em could do such a thing, which he doubted. And secondly because they all knew enough about mojo to realize it produced more problems than solutions. Never mind that none of them knew about his visitations. Or at least he hadn’t told ’em.
His eyes popped full open at that, as adrenaline gave his system a jolt somewhere between a shock and a shiver. That made his chest hurt more, but was also enough to convince him that the low-level pain oozing through his arms and legs was mostly muscle soreness, which would disperse as he kicked about. Not bothering to suppress a groan, he flung off the pillow and dragged himself upright to sit on the edge of the bed and collect his bearings. Kirkwood’s side was empty, and to judge by the minimal wrinkles in the quilt on his half, he’d pretty much died when he hit the hay.
But not so far he couldn’t dream.
Jesus, but that bugged him! Shoot, maybe Kirk had sent it. They’d shared the bed—and had both crashed with their minds musing on the arcane. Maybe his cousin’s subconscious had conjured up the concept of permanent escape as an option, and he’d picked up on it.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Well, he wouldn’t learn anything sitting here in his drawers.
Yawning, he reached for his jeans—
—and couldn’t find them!
But…hadn’t he left them on the trunk beneath the front window when he’d cashed in? Of course he had been preoccupied then. Still…
Scowling fiercely, he rose, his gaze stumbling about in quest of, minimally, his pants. Unfortunately, the movement also put his eyes in line with a shaft of sunlight and set him squinting into a glare that was not that of early morning. A glance at his watch confirmed his suspicion. It was nearly eleven!
He’d wanted to be on the road by now!
Swearing softly, he padded around the foot of the bed and headed for the door. And caught himself up short. There the little sons-of-bitches were: his clothes and boots, all clumped up against the wall below Kirk’s window, along with his backpack. Which didn’t make sense. Preoccupied he might have been, but not so much he’d have shucked his duds there—or pushed them up like that. Of course it could have been one of Churchy’s jokes, but he didn’t think so; it wasn’t nearly subtle enough, for one thing. And then he realized something even more troubling. The morning light had been lancing in the window on his side, which meant that was east. Which made this west, which meant—
No way! No way his entire wardrobe could have meandered off westward like that. Small stuff, yes: quills, and arrowheads, and such like. But not a couple of pounds of cotton, denim, and leather.
Yet there they were—mundane stuff, too, which was a change.
“Shit!” he muttered, as he fished out his Levis and slipped them on. “I don’t need this!” But as he approached the door, he caught a strong whiff of new-perked coffee and fresh-fried bacon, and decided that cousin Kirkwood might get to live another day after all. And come to it, that his kinsman had plenty of reasons to lie abed late, given that he’d pretty much been up for twenty-four hours and had imbibed a fair bit of brew, which Calvin hadn’t. No sleep plus hangover was doubtless as uncool as a battered bod and bad dreams.
He’d made it to the other room by then, and leaned against the curio cabinet, surveying it. A breeze wafted in from the open front door to the left, to ease out its backporch twin close on Calvin’s right. His cousin was nowhere to be seen, but he could hear someone rattling and thumping around in the yard. Yawning again, Calvin sauntered to a small table in what served as the kitchen corner. It was set for two, with a percolator steaming on a hot plate and a platter of bacon still fresh enough to be warm covered by a grease-soaked paper towel. There was also a carafe of orange juice and a round of corn-bread—probably baked in the fireplace, if the residual heat and coals were any indication. He poured himself a half-cup of java (Antigua, rather) and broke off an edge of the bread, into which he inserted a strip of bacon. That done, he wandered to the back door, which opened onto a small and very cluttered back porch. An instant later, he stumped stiffly down the steps in quest of his kinsman.
It wasn’t difficult—if one had functional hearing. Or at least something was making an ungodly racket behind that head-high screen of laurel halfway between the porch and the creek. Partly it sounded like a tiny but intense rainstorm on a plastic roof, and partly it sounded like a very irate bobcat roused suddenly from a three-day bender and forced to sing “Down By the River.” Calvin grinned as he stepped into the yard. Some things never changed, and one of them was his cousin’s…singing.
A glance around showed it a fine morning indeed: the sky clear, the air still cool and dry enough to be comfortable. But halfway to the screen, a darkness passed overhead, even as, for the briefest instant, a shadow flicked across the ground. A skyward glance showed something occluding the sun, but it took a moment’s squinting to determine that a large bird was circling up there. Buzzard he assumed at first, only it didn’t look quite right. But a closer inspection, aided by a shading hand, showed it to be an…an owl. Which was damned unusual in daylight. The glare and distance kept him from identifying the species, but the mere fact of it gave him chills—especially in light of his dream.
Owls were often witches! Or witches were often owls. And though Calvin was not one to jump to conclusions, neither was he one to ignore facts. Maybe there was no connection between the odd dream, atypical conduct from the wildlife, his over-obvious uktena scale, and a weird guy over at the Boundary whom gossip said was a witch. Then again…
Pausing to polish off the coffee, he continued around the hedge toward the source of the caterwauling. It came, as he expected, from a complex maze of chest-high wooden panels covered with rice matting on the outside and lined with plastic sheeting. A pulsating snake of clear plastic tubing coiled up a sapling at one side, to empty into a bucket full of holes suspended from a branch, from which appliance water poured with force enough to comprise a make-do shower. Kirk was underneath, happily soaping his hairless chest, while a bubbly puddle slowly formed around the flat piece of slate on which he stood.
“Ahem!” Calvin called. “You’re pickin’ up a lot of static on your radio—oh, was that you? Sorry!”
Kirkwood blinked out from under his flag of sodden hair as he rinsed off his torso. “You don’t like my singin’?”
“Is that what that was? I thought somebody was stranglin’ cats. But I guess I like it better than some things.”
Kirk squatted down and did something obscure to the hose near his feet, at which point the bucket’s arcing streams fizzled down to drips. He grabbed a large red towel from a nearby post and applied it to his face as he joined Calvin. “Like what?” he asked with an innocent grin.
“Like the company that hangs around here, for one thing,” Calvin replied seriously, pointing to the sky, where the owl still circled. “Like you not wakin’ me up when you were supposed to, for another.”
Kirk was squinting into the glaring heavens. “Why’re you in such a hurry?”
“’Cause I’ve gotta be in south Georgia tomorrow night—like I told you.”
“Yeah, but where were you so hot to get to this mornin’?”
“Athens, mostly. There’s somebody I need to talk to down there.”
“This somebody have a name?”
“Dave Sullivan—if it’s any of your business.”
Kirk’s face turned serious as he looked back down at his cousin. “If that’s what I think it is circling around up there—or who—it may very we
ll be my business.”
“You’re thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve still gotta go to Athens.”
“No, you don’t.”
“The hell I don’t!”
“I’ve got a telephone, Cal. You can accomplish the same thing that way and lots faster. Besides, I’ve got breakfast ready—brunch, I guess it is now—and you look like you could use a shower. Better strike while the pressure’s good.”
Calvin eyed the apparatus dubiously. He was feeling pretty fried. And there was something pleasantly primal about cleaning up and looking at landscape at the same time.
Except—
His face clouded. Once more he glanced skyward, but the owl—if that’s what it had been, for he was no longer certain—had disappeared.
Kirk wrapped the towel around his waist and indicated the maze. “Be my guest.”
“Maybe it’ll wake me up,” Calvin agreed sullenly, unwinding his Ace bandage before shucking his jeans and boxers.
Kirk flopped up against one of the posts that supported the screen, just out of the range of spray. He looked troubled, Calvin realized, as he stepped under the bucket and found the tap that turned on the water. It was cold, bracing, and straight from the ground, courtesy of Kirkwood’s well. He stood there for a long appreciative moment, close to gasping at the cold, and let the water soak him all over, then felt for the soap. When he blinked his eyes clear again, it was to see his cousin still present, gazing a discreet few degrees off direct, but still sort of halfway looking at him. And he still looked troubled. In fact, Calvin realized, he looked old and weary. And his mouth kept twitching, as if he was about to say something and kept changing his mind.
“Something buggin’ you?” Calvin asked finally. Kirk’s gaze shifted toward him, hard and piercing—and suspicious. “Why do you ask?”
