Part I:

 

 

1.

July 8, 1934

George Banyon climbed into bed, shucking his blanket to the floor. He was exhausted from rising at dawn and hastily working through his chores around the farm, from meeting up with his friends later on, and as the sun set, attempting to impress Betty Harris by swinging from a tattered rope into the Illinois River's murky water. Just one day in what seemed like an endless string, but regrettably, it would soon end. Soon he would have to behave like a man. After all, a month shy of seventeen, he would be graduating the following spring.

On the cusp of sleep moments after hitting the pillow, a tapping at the window nudged him fully awake.

Sitting up, sluggish sweat dripped from his sunburned skin. He looked across the darkened one-room farmhouse to Ellie's bed. His younger sister hadn't stirred. It amazed George that she could sleep so soundly with a blanket tucked over her shoulder. Their father, sitting in his handmade rocker, had passed out hours ago.

George swung his legs to the floor and stood, hoping the floorboards wouldn't reveal his late night creeping. He knew who was tapping and so he took his time. Jimmy Fowler, his best friend since either boy could walk. Whenever anything caught Jimmy's interest long enough that he couldn't keep it to himself until morning, he would come tapping on George's window. But right now, all George wanted was to stop sweating, and to fall into a deep and welcomed sleep. He went to the open window, not a hint of breeze to bring a moment's relief, and saw Jimmy's scruffy blond head. His blue eyes caught the moonlight, revealing his excitement. He gave it off like a pig's stinking breath.

"Get your fishing tackle," Jimmy whispered.

"Are you nuts? I got to get up at five a.m."

"Forget your chores. Won't matter after tonight."

"You're still thinking about old Greta's story?"

"I say we find out if it's true or not. If it's all made up, all that's lost is some sleep, but if we do track down the beast…"

"Come on, Jimmy. I'm tired."

"Just think what Betty Harris will think when we catch 'em."

George's heart fluttered. He tried not to show it. He'd had trouble speaking to Betty ever since the sixth grade when he discovered she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. But something had changed since school let out this summer. Her friends became friendly with his, mostly because Jimmy's girl, Louise Bradshaw, was friends with Betty.

"You really think Betty would be impressed?"

"Sure she would. Maybe she'd even let you take her to a movie."

George immediately started planning a first date with Betty. Borrowing a car, getting gas to drive to Peoria, ticking off a list of stuff to talk about during the drive. George pushed it all aside, not wanting the dizzying possibility of being alone with Betty to muddle his thoughts.

He would sneak out with Jimmy; he knew it as soon as Jimmy mentioned her name. George sighed in defeat. "Let me get my things." He looked at Ellie to make sure she was still asleep.

Then, as quietly as possible, George gathered a lantern, his fishing pole and tackle, and a stale hunk of bread for bait. He lowered everything down through the window to Jimmy.

"You won't regret this."

"Even if we do catch it, I bet we'll wish we hadn't." He looked in on his meager house. His little sister, who was for the most part more joy than trouble, and then his dad. He would be out for a good while yet and wouldn't notice a thing. George's stomach soured as he headed out the window.

Jimmy stopped him with a raised hand. "I got an idea."

"I hate when you say that."

"How about we bring along your dad's gun?"

"You really want me to get a whooping, don't you?"

"I see him over there in his rocker. He won't miss it a second."

George was about to ask why he thought it necessary to haul around such a weapon on a late night fishing trip. But he already knew the answer.

"Shit." His dad's cherished over/under was a true killing machine, twin shotgun barrels mounted over a still-deadly .30 chamber. "Fine. But he'll notice it's gone before he sees my bed's empty."

Hearing multiple meanings to his own words, he grabbed the gun from the rack on the nearby wall.

Of all their possessions, only the gun seemed to shine. Everything else was worn and tired. The years since The Crash had been rough on everyone, but around the Banyon place, it'd been a sorry sight long before '29. Ever since their mom died giving birth to Ellie, and their father's heavy drinking became commonplace. Yeah, things had been rough, much worse than he let on, even to his best friend, Jimmy Fowler. George held the gun protectively as he climbed out the window.

 

 

Despite the lantern, George couldn't see his feet, let alone anything up ahead. Greta Hildaberg said they'd find the cavern's hidden entryway after passing the untended acreage a mile outside Coal Hollow. Just over the last ripple of the last hillock, George could remember her saying. Before the land turned rocky and no longer tillable, through dense brambles and tangled cockleburs. While all of Coal Hollow's children listened to Greta's stories, most everyone thought that's all they were. Stories. But Jimmy, crazy Jimmy Fowler--if they weren't best friends and he didn't look up to him so much, George'd still be in bed.

Jimmy gained some ground on him, snapping twigs and cussing at the tearing undergrowth. As George's mind drifted to his morning chores--making Ellie's breakfast, making sure she brushed her teeth, and the cord of wood needing splitting--the sounds ahead disappeared. George suddenly felt alone, as if a rift in the earth had opened up and swallowed Jimmy, leaving him in the middle of God knows, not knowing the way home from his own elbow. He quickened his pace, still mindful of the grasping branches, the twisting roots.

When he broke through an opening in the undergrowth, he found Jimmy's legs kicking out behind him, his top half buried in the ground. If George weren't so scared, he would've found the discovery quite comical, but right now humor was the last thing on his mind. He ran to Jimmy, grabbed his thrashing feet, and pulled hard.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jimmy cried out.

George let go, embarrassed. "Your legs were shaking. I thought you were in some kind of trouble." Thought something dragged you off, George wanted to say, but held his tongue.

Field grass filled the entryway as Jimmy stood. If George hadn't watched Jimmy pull free from the hole, he wouldn't have given the grassy berm a second look.

"I think this is it." Even in the dark, George could see his beaming smile.

"That hole there?"

"It opens up after a few feet. I tossed a rock down a ways, and it just kept going. Sounds pretty deep."

"Are we going in?" George asked, his confidence fleeting with the passing seconds. He hoped Jimmy would change his mind. Not even thinking about impressing Betty Harris lent him much courage.

"Of course we are. We've got a legend to slay. We'll be heroes."

"Right. Heroes. The two of us."

White Bane. The words prickled George's spine. A two hundred pound albino catfish trolling a vast underground lake. The lake was real enough. It had given the local miners constant fits before the Grendal Coal Company pulled stakes. Decades ago, George's distant cousin died in a flooded shaft. A handful of miners drowned when an ill-placed TNT bundle breached the wall of the underground lake. The men died a half mile down, no one near enough to hear their all-too-brief screams.

Greta would speak about White Bane in her quiet, raspy voice, warning about a beast that ate children who went wandering where they shouldn't. As old as the hills, the catfish had long white whiskers and pink, unwavering eyes. White Bane could smell fear, would be brought to frenzy by it, leaping ashore to snatch at children with its jaws, or whipping them with its powerful tail. Either way, the result was the same. You weren't going home.

George was about to put his foot down by suggesting they wait until it was light out to take on this particular adventure. But crazy Jimmy Fowler had already thrown his tackle inside and was shimmying into the mouth of the hole. His torso disappeared, then his legs. With a grunt, Jimmy kicked off with his heel against a jutting rock, then was gone.

"Hand me your tackle." Jimmy's filthy hand snaked from the hole, his fingers grasping for George's tackle box.

"Sure, hold on." George lowered his fishing tackle to Jimmy's waiting hand.

"How about the gun?"

"I think I'll hold on to it." They both owned .22 rifles, having hunted small game since they could remember. But the over/under was a special weapon. It could do a heck of a lot more damage than any old .22. If he was going to get a whooping for taking the gun, then he was sure as hell going to carry it the whole time. His dad had been drinking for a week straight and wouldn't even notice he had snuck out, but if he did wake up to see his precious gun missing…

"Fine." Jimmy's hand disappeared, mild disappointment in his voice. "Coming?"

"Right behind you." George strained getting inside while carrying the gun and the lantern. Crawling through the opening, he left behind the night's gloaming, entering an entirely different darkness. As his legs entered the hole, the damp, earthen walls felt like they were closing in to crush his body. He hurried forward, hand over hand, struggling with the gun in the narrow tunnel. Losing his balance, he fell over a ledge, tumbling down a short slope. After coming to an abrupt halt, he braced himself to stand, his hand pressing against Jimmy's shoe.

"That sure was graceful. You oughta be a ballerina."

"Shut up." George looked back through the tunnel to the nighttime sky. He couldn't see much when he was outside, but inside the cave, he was as near to blind as he'd ever want to be.

Their voices were different. As was the air. It was impenetrable, consuming quiet sounds, while amplifying anything louder than their hushed voices. Their breathing disappeared; their footsteps sounded like a Roman legion. George, certain he would soon scream draped in the darkness of the cave, turned the lantern's breathe valve until its glow washed over the far-reaching limestone walls. He took it as a good sign that the lantern survived the fall.

The lamp pushed back the darkness, but didn't reveal the entire cave. He swung the light in a small arc near his knees. Water had dripped away pockets, eating limestone layers one drip at a time. Everything was damp, seeping with wetness, shining with cave slime and mud.

They were quiet, shuffling their feet, trying to figure out what to do next. There seemed to be a zigzagging trail, just wide enough to walk down, winding away from the opening.

"We'll be out of fuel in no time with that lamp turned up." While Jimmy sounded angry, his face showed his relief.

"You want me to turn it down again?"

"I suppose not. Not since you got it lit and all."

Jimmy, hesitant for one of the few times George could remember, tentatively headed down the trail. "Smells wet. I bet the lake's not far away." Jimmy made sure George was close by and following.

Spider webs as broad as bed sheets blocked a niche off to the right. After seeing a spider's measured movements, George swung the lantern in front of him again. A chill swept over him as he hurried next to Jimmy.

"Looks like the walls are crying." Jimmy trailed a finger along the porous wall. Mineral deposits stained the trickling water a reddish hue. To George, it looked more like blood than tears.

"Dead end," George said after they had walked for a time. The area seemed to have suffered a cave in. Boulders and rubble sealed the shaft.

"Can't be." Jimmy, not willing to give up the adventure when it had only begun, hunted the shadows for another way. George stood right where he was without moving, not wanting to touch or see anything unsavory. At this point, he'd be happy enough just to turn around and go home.

"Hey, swing the light this way," Jimmy said.

On his knees at the apparent dead end, Jimmy craned his head under a teetering rock. Near the floor, concealed by tumbled-over debris, the cavern picked up again under the rubble, sloping at an even steeper grade into the earth.

"That doesn't look right." Doesn't look one bit safe, he thought.

"The shaft gets bigger." His earlier reluctance was gone. He once again bustled with excitement. "Listen… that water is louder. Sounds like a falls to me."

Jimmy had a point. It might not be a waterfall, but it sounded like a heavier flow than the trickle they'd seen so far. "All right. You first."

George crouched low, holding the lantern inside the opening, lighting the way as Jimmy crawled ahead. "Kinda slick. The floor's covered in moss. And it stinks like cowshit." Jimmy didn't seem fazed at all.

"Great. Can't wait." George followed his friend, followed him when he had a feeling he shouldn't. It was the story of their friendship.

The damp moss soaked their clothes. With the steepness of the shaft, it was a minor miracle they reached a plateau without slipping the whole way down. Once again on level ground, the limestone ceiling was high enough to stand without hunching. The shaft opened into an extensive alcove. The twisting path led them to a body of water with a surface so smooth and dark it could've been a pane of cobalt glass.

"Shit," George whispered, his breath stolen by the sight.

Water fell from high up near the ceiling--so high the lantern only hinted at the source--to a limestone spillway. The slab, as big as a church altar, dispersed the falling water. When it dribbled into the lake, it barely dimpled the surface.

"This has got to be it. Shit is right. Let's drop our lines." Jimmy approached the water and set down his tackle. He yanked the barbed hook from the pole's cork handle, and with the line already carrying a tied-off bobber, flipped his wrist and the bobber went flying.

"You haven't baited your hook." George approached the water with caution. While he didn't truly believe Greta's stories, it was better to be safe than sorry.

"I know. Just want to see how deep it is. You can tell by the sound when it hits the water." The hook and bobber had made a thick, thoomping splash. The water was deep. Cranking the reel to pull in the line, the metal gears sounded incredibly loud. "Get me some bread. I guess that'll have to do. Wish we'd had time to dig night crawlers."

George took the hunk of bread from his tackle box and broke off two pieces. They baited their hooks and cast their lines in opposite directions, not wanting to tangle in the near-dark.

They sat side by side, the lantern lit and warm between them. They had no luck for quite a while, and the more time went by without any sign of White Bane, the more George felt at ease. It was a foolish story, anyway. A catfish lunging from the water in order to prey on kids? Just an old story to make sure kids didn't explore the abandoned coalmines marring the Illinois prairie. He imagined every coal town had a similar tale.

"Don't matter if we catch him, I'm going to ask out Betty Harris regardless." George didn't take his eyes from his line. He dipped the pole, dancing the bobber on the cold black surface. His voice softened, becoming sheepish, "Then I'm going to marry her. Well, some day."

"Good for you. She's a nice girl. Tit's are a little big, more like a cow's than a girl's, but hey, whatever you like you like, right?"

"Jackass."

"I'm just kidding. I'm happy for you. Just think about what you're doing before you do it," Jimmy said. The humor had left his voice. "That's all I gotta say."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Means I'm thinking about enlisting in the Army. My mom might have to sign something, but I'm strong for my size. They should take me, even though I ain't eighteen."

"What the hell're you getting at?" George was shocked, unable to figure why someone would enlist. Especially someone whose dad had died not long after coming home from the European trenches, his lungs just about liquefied from mustard gas.

"I gotta be a man. Make a living for myself."

"That's not what we planned." Their plans went back many years. George would take over the farm from his dad and buy the vacant land next to their fallow plot. Jimmy would work his acreage with his brother Jacob; together, with their mom, they'd make a go of it.

"Yeah. Things change." Jimmy stared at his fishing line. George hadn't bothered casting again after pulling in his line. This was serious news. What about picnics with their future wives and future kids? Sitting on the porch as old men, sipping hard cider and swapping familiar stories?

"What about Louise?"

Jimmy opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then clamped it shut.

"Jimmy?"

"That's the problem. I think I might be a father soon."

"Christ… really?"

"Yeah," Jimmy said, staring at the water. Eyes widening, he pointed to something cutting through the water. "Shit, what's that?"

George jumped to his feet and reached for his tackle box, ready to tear tail out of there. Then the fish changed directions and he realized just how small it was. It might've been a bluegill, a crappie at most. Nothing dangerous. Neither fantastic nor mythical. "That's a pan fish, dingy."

"I knew that. Really I did." Jimmy sighed with relief. Both seemed to want the adventure of searching for White Bane, but nothing of the actual confrontation. "I thought you were going to push me in front of you, let that big, scary pan fish get me instead of you."

"I would have, too. Don't you doubt it for a second." They laughed.

George swung his tackle box around as he reached to pick-up his pole again. In the process, he knocked the lantern over, sending it cracked and broken into the underground lake.

Instantly, they stood in utter darkness. Their breath hitched in their throats, otherwise, all they took in from their senses was the cold air.

"Damn, George, now what are we supposed to do? We're damn near a mile underground."

"It ain't near that far."

"Might as well be. We're blind."

Not knowing what else to say, but needing to hear his own voice, George said, "Maybe our eyes'll adjust."

"You got your matches, right?"

"Yeah, I think I've got a couple left. Let me check." He patted his pockets, found the smashed box. He slid it open, felt inside.

"Okay, don't panic," Jimmy said.

"I'm not. I still got three matches."

"I wasn't talking to you, just thinking out loud."

"Hell, just find something to burn. We can make a torch."

They hunted around on the floor, their hands encountering mud and flaked rock. Anything flammable would've quickly rotted and disintegrated in the damp atmosphere.

"How about in your tackle box?" Jimmy asked, his voice sounding far away.

"Didn't think of that. Let me check. How about you? Don't you have a comic with you when you fish?"

"Let me see… If I can find my box… Here we go. Tarzan might have to burn to get us out of here." Jimmy tore open his tackle box. Spoons and hooks rattled as he removed the top tray. Turning toward Jimmy's racket, George saw something, a glimmer, a phantom movement, something, in the distance hovering by the lake.

"Jimmy," George whispered.

"Damn. Nothing. I bet Jacob snatched my last Tarzan. I'm gonna whip his ass when I get home."

"Jimmy!"

"What the hell are you yapping about?"

"I see something. At least, I think I do." George did see movement. A flickering light, maybe a reflection off the water, on the far side of the lake.

"Where?"

"Just the other side of the water."

"Can't see nothing… Wait… I think I know what you mean. A wavery light. It's dim."

They both edged to the shore, standing shoulder to shoulder, trying to pick up the slightest detail. It was so quiet, the blood throbbed in George's ears as he strained to hear.

They nearly leapt from their skins as heavy chains rattled from somewhere near the phantom light.

Chains? George thought. "Shit. Let's get out of here."

"Wait, that could be someone. Give me a second." He stepped into the water. "Damn cold."

"What are you doing? You crazy?"

"Yeah, I think I just might be." Jimmy waded deeper. "There it is, found the drop off. It's maybe eight, ten feet in. Then it's deep as hell." His splashing increased as he dog paddled away from shore. "It is a light, George. There's an overhang. Might be a tunnel or something. The light's down the other side."

"Come on now, Jimmy. We should find our way back the way we came."

"What fun is that? Someone must've lit that fire, so there must be someone to help us get the hell out'a here."

"Shit, Jimmy," George said, mostly to himself. Even trapped in darkness and without a light to guide their way, George couldn't stop thinking: Jimmy Fowler's gonna be a dad. Who would've thought? His friend risked everything swimming in water as cold as a witch's tit, and with White Bane possibly nipping just under his feet. "Jimmy?"

"Huh?"

"You all right?" Feeling abandoned, George wanted to leave Jimmy and find his way back out. But he couldn't leave his friend behind. And White Bane? Nothing but an old lady's story that no one believed in the first place. Or so he hoped.

"Sure. Little cold's all."

"Hold up, will you? I'm coming with."

"That's just what I wanted to hear."

George took the matchbox from his pocket and placed it atop his tackle box. His dad's gun leaned against a boulder nearby. He wanted to take it with him--there was no way he wanted to discover the firelight's source without it--but it would be useless if it got wet. He wasn't as good a swimmer as Jimmy. He'd never be able to swim with the gun held overhead. He left it behind, noting the location as he stepped into the water.

Jimmy treaded water, waiting. As George swam out to meet him, he noticed he could actually make out his face. The firelight from down the tunnel was brighter, but the ceiling was a mere foot above the water.

"See what I mean? There has to be people over there. Even if it's just hoboes."

"If we're going to go, let's go. I can't swim as good as you." George struggled to keep his head above water. His soaked clothes pulled at him as if he had rocks in his pockets. "Just be careful."

"Careful? I'm always careful." Jimmy's tone was full of glee, happy to continue the adventure. He reached overhead as he entered the tunnel. "Not much room to spare. There's no tide in an underground lake is there?"

"You're joking, right?"

"Do I ever joke around? I'm as serious as the Spanish flu." Jimmy laughed, venturing farther. "Hey, once inside you can stand. On tip-toes, I can reach the bottom."

"Thank God." With the water lapping at George's ears, he was relieved when his toes finally touched the tunnel bottom.

"Come on, hurry up," Jimmy called out as he pulled away from George, unable to contain his excitement.

The icy water pressed against George's sternum as he trudged through the tunnel. Jimmy's wet head bobbed some twenty feet ahead. He reached the far end and cut a sharp right, out of sight.

It was just like Jimmy to leave him behind even though he was struggling. Sometimes he had no consideration at all. "Jimmy, wait up. I'm almost there." Violent shivers racked his body. The ceiling pulled closer to the water, forcing George to weave around low points where rock and water touched.

Jimmy didn't answer. The light brightened, and George could see torches hanging from the far wall. He was panicking now. He couldn't turn around, but in no way wanted to know what was in that alcove. Why hadn't Jimmy said a word?

"Jimmy?"

He's gonna leap out and try to scare me. That jackass. George hoped that was the case. He could forgive Jimmy if his silence was a measly attempt to scare him.

The tunnel widened. Jimmy stood on the shore twenty feet away. His friend was scaring him, but not in the typical Jimmy Fowler kind of way. A man with long blond hair held a blade to his friend's throat. Others stepped from the shadows, brandishing weapons of their own. Five men, ten. A score. A couple faces seemed familiar. Coal Hollow people. Behind the gathering, a Negro man stood chained to a wall. A whip cracked, followed by an agonized cry that dissipated into weakening echoes.

"You be quiet, boy," a slurred voice called from the crowd. "Take what's yours."

The blade at Jimmy's throat gleamed with candlelight. Jimmy's eyes were desperate, wide, more scared than George had ever seen.

"Run, George, run!" Jimmy screamed. The man silenced him by smashing the butt of his knife against his temple.

George's heart rollicked. Ever-fading candlelight reflected off the tunnel's cobalt water.

"Get'em boys. Bring'em back alive. If you can."

Something splashed nearby, three men taking up his pursuit. Crazed men. Swinging machetes. Their faces rough with beard growth, stained with tobacco juice. They all looked the same. They could have been brothers, triplets, even.

Still groggy, Jimmy was shoved aside, swallowed by shadows. The whip cracked the air, and again. The chained man no longer screamed; he slumped over, unconscious, the chains tight against his wrists. The firecracker snap cleared George's senses, stripping the numbing coldness from his limbs.

He made a break for the tunnel.

He didn't attempt to walk on his tiptoes as he had on the way in. He took up a full swimming motion, his arms and legs awkwardly cutting through the cold water. He naturally swam faster underwater, so he dove, pushing off the tunnel floor with his feet. He kicked hard, madly, too fast to be efficient. His lungs burned seconds after his dive, and his mind flooded with half-formed thoughts:

Jimmy's dead. They're gonna kill 'em…

Louise, what do I tell Louise?

Who's gonna take care of Ellie when I'm gone?

He broke the surface when his lungs couldn't take any more. Behind him, the splashing was deafening, as if a cavalry were fording a river. Leaving the light behind, his thoughts centered on getting to his dad's gun. Getting to the gun and buying some time.

He kicked down the tunnel, breaking through to the lake where they'd been peacefully fishing not more than twenty minutes ago. One man grunted, lunging for George's heels, snaring his pant cuff. The man laughed, but the sound was cut off when he pulled George under. Water bilged into his open mouth, his nose. Fighting frantically, he grasped above as if his fingers could take in air for his straining lungs. He kicked back, connecting with the man's face. Then again, and still the water invaded his mouth. He kicked a third time and broke free. Remaining underwater, he swam harder than he thought possible. He resurfaced when his palms slapped the rock shelf near the shore.

"Shitheel! Get back here, boy."

As soon as he pulled free from the lake, he convulsed, vomiting silt water. He still couldn't see anything, not without taking time to let his eyes readjust. He had no time. No time at all. One man reached the shelf. George crawled like mad, slipping across the muddy shore, mere feet ahead of his pursuer. George's shoulder crashed into his tackle box, but he welcomed the impact. It meant his dad's gun was close. If he could only remember which direction. Fumbling his hands forward, he somehow found the wooden gunstock. He grasped the gun and rolled to his back, bracing the stock against his shoulder.

Water slid down his cheekbones, and even though it hurt his chest, he tried to conceal his breathing.

He waited for any hint of movement.

A shadowy figure loomed above him. As the machete slit the air, he switched the latch on the gun and pulled the trigger. The shotgun jerked in his hands, blasting a hole in the man's chest, sending him head over heel to the water's edge. For a split second, the explosion lit the cavern as the others closed in. They could've been farmers. They all wore bib overalls, denim work shirts. Their faces revealed a grizzled sameness that left them indistinguishable in age, but they all had a farmer's strength, a corn-fed thickness to their arms and torsos.

As the echo tapered off, George heard the man's liquid-wheezing breath. His dying breaths. He'd killed someone. How in the world did the night turn so crazy?

George cradled the over/under and rolled to his feet. He ran as fast as possible through the winding trail, knocking his limbs against jagged outcroppings. He couldn't hear the other men, not with his ears ringing from the shotgun blast, but after killing one of their kind, he had no doubt they'd only redouble their efforts.

Who are you? George wanted to shout. He saved his breath. What did I ever do to you?

He reached the steep incline and scurried through the slick moss. When he reached the cave-in, he scrabbled into the low opening.

Once on the other side, he took a moment to catch his breath. Wheezing with his hands on his knees, a single thought pushed all others aside:

If I hadn't broken the lantern, none of this would've happened. I wouldn't have noticed the candlelight through the tunnel. Jimmy wouldn't have left me.

When he was ready to take off again, a face appeared in the low tunnel. Just the outline of a forehead, a curve of chin. Shadows for eyes. Nothing else. The man grunted, blindly swinging the machete as he crawled through the narrow opening. George switched to the other barrel and fired the shotgun into the man's skull. Something splattered George's face, but he hardly noticed. He turned and fled, desperately feeling for the next turn in the tunnel.

When he reached the last uphill leading to the cave's opening, he threw himself up the incline. The limestone floor transitioning to mud as he hit top soil. He shoved through the grass veil shielding the world from the unholy hell he had encountered below. Not knowing his location in relation to his house, he simply ran. The fog had burned off and the sky was warm with the rising sun. Before he lost sight of the cavern, he glanced back.

The unwounded third man appeared. Once clear of the small opening, another man's arm emerged from inside. Another man pulled free. The man had no face. Blood and clots of brain matter soaked his denim shirt. Once on his feet, the third man reached the opening, and he too climbed out, the mortal wound in his chest exposing his insides to the morning air.

The over/under had its .30 caliber round, but these men still chased him after being shot point-blank with a shotgun. There was no point in using the last round. George tossed the deadweight aside. He'd go back later for it. If he lived through this.

"You're never gonna see another sunset, shitheel!" said the unwounded man. "Don't worry, we'll make it go right-quick!"

The man's shrill voice didn't create an echo. The air was alive with birdsong, buzzing insects, a lush blowing breeze. It was maddening after the cavern's compressed, blunted air. George ran, his adrenaline fighting the mounting fatigue from a sleepless and a seemingly endless night of fear.

In no time, the clamor of pursuit intensified. Glancing back, he couldn't believe his eyes. Loping through clumsy strides, they were still somehow lightning-quick. But their skin… it had begun to sag, having turned to pulp. All three had started to disintegrate, even the man he hadn't shot. Lesions rioted across their exposed skin, gravity pulling the wounds wide. George turned away and crested a small hill, heading toward wetter terrain. The swamps. At least now he knew where he was. He darted down the trail, through wispy trees and rutted ground, unsure of his sanity after seeing such sights.

Behind him, the men kicked through the underbrush, picking up their pace, gaining on him with every stride.

 

2.

Heat waves danced above the rail ties, blurring anything more than twenty feet down the center. Road dust stained his dungarees a permanent earthen color. His threadbare knees and frayed cuffs looked like diseased wounds trying to heal and not quite succeeding. Cooper's face was leathery brown with sunburn gathered under each eye. He walked the center rail with little fear of oncoming trains, having not seen or heard a locomotive in over a day.

For the better part of a year he had been riding the rails, starting off from Chicago, tramping down to Dallas, and then out west, for an extended stay in California. He was now heading back toward Chicago, to home and family and his journey's end. Other people--typically traveling alone or in pairs--populated the rails along the way. Most tramps were men looking for work. Cooper had seen a few runaway children along the way as well. Judging the other tramps' haggard yet wary expressions, they were running from their past more than searching for their future.

Cooper tramped for other reasons, reasons he still didn't fully understand. He had little need for money, and even at thirty-eight, didn't have a family to support. When he set out, his lone reason for traveling was simply because he could. Long after quenching his desire for travel, a greater motive compelled him to continue. His grandmother's dying words. He'd known her for such a short while, yet she'd used her dying words to placate him at a time when he felt his world becoming unhinged. With the end of his travels in sight, he wondered if he'd failed her.

He adjusted his canvas pack higher on his gaunt shoulders. It would take an extended stay of eating steaming stews and gravy-dipped breads before he felt human again. In the next town he would check around, see if someone needed an extra hand. Chicago wasn't going anywhere. Besides, he didn't enjoy the prospect of arriving on his parents' doorstep looking emaciated and lacking the answers he had been so desperately seeking.

Not long into his journey he learned he needed to find a job upon entering a new town. If he needed to rest a few nights in a real bed and eat food cooked in a kitchen instead of over a campfire, he would take on an odd job. People didn't understand or respect a man traveling alone without the need or desire for employment. Sweeping a storeroom or some other trifling job would get the stares off his back for the duration of his stay.

Signs of settlement started filtering through a canopy of two hundred year-old oak trees. Some fields looked tended, some long fallow and overgrown. Many homesteads had boundary marker tree stands that doubled as windbreaks during the winter months. To Cooper, they looked like bony fifty-foot fingers bursting from the earth.

He contemplated such a boundary between two farms. Without question one property was worked and occupied, while the other hadn't seen a plow's heavy blade in a generation or longer. Weedy trees taller than a grown man grew sporadically throughout the property. Thick wheat grass grew waist-high, heavy with ripe seed.

The untended property was nearly clear from view when something caught his attention--the only unnatural color for as far as the eye could see. Everything was earthy brown or lush green, but a small red splash lurked within a copse of green growth. Cooper left the relative safety of the rails to investigate, cutting through the thinner undergrowth along a narrow animal trail. The land cleared, revealing a brightly painted water pump.

The pump stood near an abandoned farmhouse hidden away by trees and thorny brambles. He eased his pack from his shoulders and stretched his aching back.

With the home appearing abandoned, Cooper thought it wouldn't hurt anyone to see if the pump still worked. He grabbed the three foot arm and worked it for a good minute or two before it started to sputter and wheeze. Soon enough, water trickled from the wide spout, becoming a short-lived flow. He alternated pumping the arm and splashing his face with the cold water. He then filled his two canteens.

Cooper removed his straight razor from his pack and began to shave off his facial hair. He'd receive a warmer reception in town if he could mirror more the townsfolk's appearance than a man who had been on the road for a year. As he shaved, he surveyed the homestead. It was a nice scrap of land. The farmhouse looked as old as the surrounding trees, and in its neglected state, seemed to sulk like a kicked dog. The former farm patch was hairy with sapling oak and dark green bushes drooping with succulent wild berries.

Checking the sun's declination, he noted he had an hour or so before he needed to start worrying about getting camp ready. This property was as good a place as any to stay the night, he figured. Now that he'd shaved and washed, a good night's sleep would have him rested and presentable come morning.

After serving up bland corn mush for supper, Cooper set up his bedding near the front porch. Sleeping under the overhang would keep him dry, but for some reason, the vacant windows and large brass-hoop knocker made him uneasy. Instead, he situated his blankets on a slight rise twenty feet away. He faced the house, his back to the untended fields.

As the sun arched behind the trees, he wondered why the house was abandoned. Did the economic collapse bankrupt these people? He figured not. The land had grown wild for some time, long before the tenuous times they were currently facing. No, some other reason caused the farmers to shirk their land. Which was odd. People just didn't up and leave rich cropland. No, it had to be something else, some other reasonable explanation.

As was often the case after a day without catching a freighter, Cooper was bushed. With heavy eyes, his thoughts mingled incoherently. His mind drifted from increasingly improbable theories about the people who once farmed this land, to thoughts of his family, before eventually settling on the certainty that he would soon be home. Before his eyes closed for the night, his last cogent thought concerned the library. He wondered if they had held his position as they had promised. He missed the library. Things would be different when he returned, no doubt. After all, he was a different man than when he started his trek. Still, he missed the musty aisles and retreating into the stacks and into the written word, where the world seemed so much more cut and dry than reality. His eyes fluttered, easing shut with the pull of sleep.

 

 

Night darkened the house's interior, as if a long ago fire had left behind a charred, empty shell. In the quiet upper hallway, where no living person had ventured in eighty years, a gauzy spark snicked alive, shimmered and expanded under a glass globe, igniting a frayed wick. The lamp glowed golden, banishing the night beyond its ethereal reach. The lamp floated silently from room to room, pausing for a minute or more in each, plaintively pacing the house, as if the flame's bearer was searching for something long lost.

 

 

3.

It was a noise straight from one of Greta's stories. Metal striking stone. The tolling clang of a pickaxe methodically chipping away. At least that's what Betty Harris figured it sounded like. She had no practical knowledge, being sixteen, and not nearly old enough to remember the clattering of the former mines. No, she didn't know what could be making such a racket, but what else could it be?

"Junior?"

Her little brother didn't stir. Normally, she hated sharing a room with an obnoxious, always filthy, six-year-old. She looked forward to winter nights when she could escape by sleeping on a mat by the cook stove. Warmed by the dying embers from supper, she would enjoy her quiet nights alone. Snug under blankets, wedged between the stove and the short distance to the back wall, it felt like having a room all to herself. But now she was grateful for his presence, even if he was sleeping like the dead.

"Junior?" she whispered, sitting up in bed. "Wake up."

"Hmm?"

"You hear that?"

More chipping sounds. Loud enough now to create an echo.

Junior buried his face under his pillow, began snoring.

For an instant, she wished George Banyon were here. The sudden thought surprised her. With his lanky goofiness, his good-hearted nature--if he could only be here to put his arm around her, tell her nothing bad was going to happen.

Why did she think of him, of all people? Even though she wanted him to actually court her instead of acting like a fool, they'd rarely spoken in any depth. No, George Banyon wasn't here, and Junior was off sawing logs. Betty was on her own.

She stood, slipping on her house shoes. She padded over to the bedroom door, pressing her ear against it to listen.

She couldn't hear her parents stirring. But the sound. Digging. Grating metal on stone. Why weren't they awake?

She stepped out into the hall. Then, beneath the chipping sounds, there was something else. A whimper, full of sadness. She followed her ear, tracking it down the hall, the whimper becoming wracking sobs.

Mom.

Betty entered the kitchen. Her mom sat at the table. Standing, her dad held her teary-eyed face against his paunchy stomach. His chest heaved as he tried to hold back spasms brought on by blacklung.

"You shouldn't be here."

He looked so old. They had been late parents, but even so, his wrinkles seemed too deep for his age. His lip quivered for a moment, then calmed. Along with the rest of his skin, his lips were cadaverous gray.

"But I heard--"

"Go to bed, and don't come back out again. Go on."

"Daddy…? Mom, what's going on? What's that sound?"

"Betty! Do what I say, girl!" he said, then seethed through a coughing fit.

Her mother's eyes brimmed with pain and the weight of an unexplained misery. She didn't say a word.

"Please, Betty-Mae." The intensity drained from him. He looked wasted away, the final snow melting in springtime.

Reluctantly, she turned away.

Digging, chipping, shoveling. The sounds were malicious, cold. She looked at the closed door across from her bedroom. The cellar. She could no longer deny it. There was no other place it could be coming from.

But why?

She shut the bedroom door, and of course, that lunkhead Junior was snoring even louder, oblivious to the night's bizarre events.

The digging quieted, and after a short silence, was replaced by heavy-footed strides. Multiple people, from the sound. She tried to distinguish how many, but did it really matter? Who were these people?

Maybe Greta's stories were true, after all.

She opened her bedroom door a crack, just as wide as her pupil, waiting to see whatever had entered their house.

Why did she think that? That word. Whatever. Didn't she mean whoever?

She wished she would've made sure the cellar door was locked. But it was too late now. The doorknob turned, the tumblers rasping with rust. The door creaked opened. Her heart skipped a beat. She waited for her dad to cast out these invaders. No sound came.

All she heard was her mother's continued sobs.

A vile odor swept over her, reminiscent of days Junior spent in the swamps chasing tadpoles. The rank odor of pond muck and rotting vegetation. But this stench was ten times worse.

Someone stepped into the hall. There he lingered, as if considering his surroundings.

Is he looking at me? she cried out inside, frozen in place. All she could do was blink, her heart racing, aching.

She couldn't see anything in the hall's inky blackness. The strangers filled the space, their bodies consuming the pale moonlight creeping through the kitchen windows. Immobilized by fear, she didn't want to move to draw their attention. She also didn't want to see what was out there, but found it impossible to look away.

Then the floorboards sighed as they walked toward the kitchen, toward her parents.

She could tell now, as they moved single file with measured, cautious strides, there were three men. Featureless; as dark as shadows gathering in a well at midnight.

She expected a struggle or cries of outrage.

Their shuffling steps and her mom's cries were the only sounds. One final heart-breaking sob from her mom punctured the night. Then the steady footfalls returned, heading toward her room again.

One shadow-shrouded figure headed down the cellar steps. Followed by another. Seeing her dad's pale blue shirt was a shock after such darkness. His left shoulder came into view, then as he turned, she glimpsed his forearm with his sun-weathered skin looking like dried blood in the gloom. Then briefly, his profile. Two day's stubble, more gray than black. His crooked nose, twice broken in his youth.

His eyes. She needed to see his eyes.

Please Daddy. Let me see you!

But he didn't look her way.

He followed the men into the cellar. The last stranger stepped into view, blotting out the final image of her dad.

She began to cry. Greta hadn't lied. Betty had never believed her stories, not until this very second. But what else could they be besides the Collectors? She blinked away her tears when she heard a noise coming from the cellar. Before she could figure out what it was, a new coughing fit covered the sound.

She just knew he wouldn't go so willingly.

But she was mistaken. She placed the sound as the fit subsided. It was rocks grating on one another. Being stacked in to piles. Replaced to their rightful position. Covering up the tunnel dug into their home. Sealing away her dad into the earth.

 

 

4.

The sun lit the horizon when Cooper woke from a fitful night's sleep, his clothes damp with dew. He gathered up his gear and headed back down the game trail. He took the slight hill to the rails at a solid clip, trying to warm his muscles. He felt compelled to watch the house until it disappeared from view. Something there was peculiar. He felt it when he was near the house, a pulling at his consciousness, an inexplicable yearning, and now, as he was leaving it behind, the feeling receded like floodwater.

About a half mile off, Cooper came across what the townsfolk would have considered downtown. He left the rails since they curved away from town and into the hills, as if to avoid the town proper. There was a quaint main street, packed dirt like the other branching roads leading from town. Many of the shops had scavenged boards covering the windows. A bakery and a bar sandwiched a law office side by side by side, all three vacant and quiet.

A few tired-looking cars were angle-parked curbside. Most people living in this stretch of country still relied on horses, as their fathers and father's fathers once had. Others would get by like Cooper, walking to and fro, from here to there, and getting to their intended destination a lot slower than desired.

He stepped up to a plank walkway and considered the first business that wasn't boarded up. A hand-painted sign hung askew from the porch's overhang, touting the place as Calder's Mart. The window front displayed a handsome handmade rocking chair draped with a quilted tan blanket. A sign advertised flour, eggs and ice. Cooper peered through the window and could see a rows of dusty shelves. Campbells's Soup and sweet potatoes sat alongside glass jars packed with a variety of homegrown preserves. Tilted bins held fresh produce. Lettuce, tomatoes, chickpeas and beets. The stock was thin and the whole place looked sleepy.

Across an intersecting alley, Cooper looked in on a barbershop. An old man reclined in a barber chair, his straw hat pulled over his eyes. He gripped a half-empty bottle of hooch in his sprawled grasp, and though asleep, it didn't look like he would let it fall to the floor anytime soon. Another man was sitting on a wooden bench near the window, flipping through a yellowed newspaper.

"Good afternoon," Cooper said as he walked inside.

"Um, oh, hello." The man folded the newspaper he'd probably read front to back more times than he had fingers. He had short limbs on a stocky frame. His toes barely brushed the floor from his sitting position.

"Are you open?" Cooper's throat felt scratchy, his voice thicker than normal. He hadn't spoken to anyone in almost a week, since well south of Champaign.

"We sure are, come on in." The man slapped his palm against the open barber chair, raising a dust cloud. The man occupying the other seat didn't move. "You don't look familiar."

"I was just passing through, but with such an inviting town, I had to stop." Cooper sat in the offered chair. "Anyways, I need my ears lowered." It felt good to get off his feet and let his weight ease into an actual chair. His bones were feeling fragile lately.

"You sure do. Good thing you stopped in. At least your shave is civilized."

"What's this town called?"

"Coal Hollow. We been 'corperated since before the Civil War. I'm Bo Tingsley," he said and started snipping around Cooper's neck with his sheers. "Dad was in the war, pushed them Rebs right back to hell, he and a bunch of boys from Illinois. Dad moved down the road from Peoria after his service to the Union, then married Ma not long after," Bo Tingsley spoke as if he had chewed the ears off everyone in town and was happy to see an unmarred pair sitting in his barber chair.

"That so?"

"Sure is." Bo wetted a comb and swiped it dry through Cooper's shoulder-length black hair. "You planning on staying for a stretch?"

"I'm thinking about it. Coal Hollow looks like a good place to take root. By the way, my name's Cooper. Theodore Jameson Cooper. Most people just call me Cooper."

"Nice meeting you, Cooper. What's your trade if I might ask? I know just about everybody within fifty miles. Jobs are tough to come by this far off from anything you might call a city. Still, I might could steer you right."

"Oh, I suppose you can say I've done a little of everything along the way. Farming, ranching, stabling, shopclerking. I worked at a drug store jerking sodas all day. I'm sure I'm leaving something out, but I can do just about anything to earn an honest day's pay." He didn't bother mentioning his true profession as a librarian. Most folk didn't understand an educated man voluntarily taking to the roads and rails.

"Quite a laundry list. I'll have to take a time or two to think on it," Bo said, fighting a nasty cowlick at the top of Cooper's head.

A gurgle rumbled from the liquored lips of the man in the other chair. He rattled off a couple wet snores, then settled back into his murky respite.

"That's Magee over there. This is his barbering place, but as you can see, he's disposed of for the moment, if you catch my drift."

"Bo, I don't know Magee at all, but I do believe you'd give a better barbering than old Magee any day."

Bo laughed with comfortable acceptance.

Cooper observed Bo's handiwork in a cloudy mirror. "That's a nice cut, Bo. I'm glad I stopped in. I feel halfway human again. How much do I owe?"

"Two bits."

Cooper reached into his pocket and pulled out two quarters. If he judged Bo correctly, a big tip would pay off down the line.

"Thanks, Coop. That's mighty kind of you."

"It's just nice to be off the road is all I can say."

Cooper was about out the door when the chatterbox barber called out. "Say, Coop, you know where you're gonna lodge?"

"Magee's is the first place I stopped. Haven't had the time to look around. Is there a place you can recommend with a warm bed and warmer food?" He ran his hand through his close-cropped hair, again checking the mirror. He wasn't used to the short cut, but looked more presentable than before meeting Bo.

"The Calder Mart up the block has rooms above the store. You get a bed and three squares for a fair price. Thea, she's Henry Calder's daughter. She runs the place, for the most part. When you see her, you'll know it's her. She's a real looker. She went off to California to make movies, and actually made a few, but now she come home. She does the cooking, but it ain't even close to her ma's, God rest her soul." Bo paused and crossed himself before continuing. "Eating her mom's cooking felt like a sin of indulgence. She's gone now, a good four years or so. Pneumonia took her away."

"That's too bad." From the pain on Bo's face, the man still harbored feelings for his neighbor's wife. The barber's eyes darkened and became distant.

"Sounds like she was a fine woman." Cooper felt awkward, and wanted to leave Magee's more than anything.

"Oh, she was. A fine woman. A fine cook, but she had a finer heart. The kindliest woman you'd ever meet. Too bad Thea only got her looks. She inherited her Pa's mean streak. He's German, you know." Bo sat in the empty barber chair. He turned in the swivel chair, and continued to speak to the inebriated Magee. Cooper supposed the two old barbers held one-sided conversations like this quite often.

"Thanks for the advice, Bo."

"Oh, sure," Bo said distantly, his face turned away.

Cooper let the door close behind him.

 

 

A bell rattled above the entryway when he opened the door to Calder's Mart. Two wide aisles housed fresh produce bins, sacks of flour, jars of molasses and other assorted dry goods. Beyond, a hodgepodge of basic hardware hung on pegs against the back wall. Cooper walked to the far corner where the cash till stood on a high wooden countertop. Perfume bottles and cheap-looking jewelry boxes filled a display behind the counter. A black curtain blocked the view to a backroom. A scarred wooden counter formed an L-shape with the register counter. A few rickety stools stood in front for customers. The place had little stock and seemed deserted. Cooper waited at the counter, not sure if he should look around for anyone working the place.

A hand-painted placard hung next to the jewelry boxes and dusty perfume bottles.

Your business means the world to us. Let us know if you have any suggestions!

"Good afternoon," a harried voice called from a stairwell tucked away between a grimy pickle barrel and a display of Henderson brand pitchforks.

Cooper caught some of his breath before all of it rushed from his lungs. Bo hadn't lied. Thea Calder was a looker. She stood at the bottom of the steps, her hands on her hips, a damp apron around her thin waist.

"Can I help you, or are you just going to gawp-about like a doe-eyed simpleton?" Her cheeks were flushed and dark brown curls drifted from a haphazard bun.

Cooper's chest tightened. He realized he wasn't breathing. It had been a long while since he'd seen such an attractive woman. Eyes like smoky-brown coals, full lips painted a shade most respectable women avoided. She wore a simple flower-print dress, but Cooper figured Thea Calder could wear a housecoat in seminary and still command, at least momentarily, all the men's attention away from God.

"I heard you have lodging. Food too." He'd regained his breath and a partial amount of his ability to speak. Feeling childish, his face crept with color.

"You heard right. Is that all you wanted to know, or do you want to rent a room in this Godforsaken place?" She seemed downright offended he would consider taking a room at Calder's.

"A night or two is all. I'm passing through from all I can tell." He could look her in the eye now. Bo mentioned she'd been in California making movies. That's where she belonged, away from this small town, her face plastered on billboards and handbills announcing her latest film. She would be a cinch for a coquettish role. She could own the part of a shrew.

Thea nodded and Cooper could just about pluck the words from her head and place them on her tongue: So you're one of those, a transient. A vagabond?

He glanced at his clothes, at his threadbare knees and shineless shoes. His pack was by his feet, all his worldly possessions in one small, dingy pile. Thea's glare made Cooper feel about as small as a full-grown man could get. She stormed past and pulled a pad of paper from behind the counter.

"Can you sign your name?"

The question stymied Cooper. No one had ever asked him that since childhood. Of course he could read and write. He had read a library's worth of books.

"Do you have the ability to read? Can you even speak, or has the cat got your tongue?"

"I… sure I can read." He stepped up to the counter. Thea slapped the pad in front of him to read.

She decided to paraphrase anyway, in case he'd been lying. "Basically, we have three meals a day. One at seven, one at noon, the last at five-thirty. Five minutes late, you're out of luck. I'd rather serve the food to the dog than to a man late for a meal I slaved over. Also, lights out at ten. A minute after, you'll be out on the street. It'd be a shame considering no one else rents rooms for miles around. You pay for the following night's occupancy during the morning meal. If you aren't going to eat at the morning meal, you'll bring your payment to the morning meal anyways. Are we clear on all that?"

He nodded then signed the bottom and slid the pad back to Thea.

Thea inspected Cooper's signature before setting it aside. "I'll show you the room now. And another thing, for God's sake clean up after yourself. I'm too young to be someone's momma, and I'm not going to start acting like one for you."

"Sure thing, Thea. Uh, Miss Calder. I wouldn't want to be a burden on anyone." He followed her around the grimy pickle barrel and up the stairway.

"I don't repeat myself. If you can't act like a human being, you can move on to somewhere else that tolerates such behavior. And another thing, how'd you know my name?"

"I just had my hair cut. Bo Tingsley recommended your place."

"Don't get me started talking about Bo Tingsley." She didn't need prompting; she started on her own just fine. "That sonofabitch tried to break up my family. He had an unnatural attraction to my momma. He pined for her openly, brought her little trinkets. In some ways I'm glad for the pneumonia. She'd started to bend to the beady-eyed dwarf after awhile."

Cooper had lost the ability to speak again. He had a feeling he risked losing his room if he said the wrong thing. He also had an idea there was never a right thing to say to Thea Calder.

"Here's your damn room," Thea said, reaching the top.

She threw the door open. Cooper looked inside, but when he turned around to thank her, she was gone. All that remained was a haunting hint of perfume.

 

 

5.

Shocked and confused, Betty had climbed into bed after those men had taken her dad. Pulling the covers to her chin, it felt like a one hundred pound weight sat against her sternum. She watched the bedroom door, waiting for it to open, terrified the strangers would return to take her away.

Exhausted, she fell asleep with the sun's rising.

By the time she woke and pried herself from bed, she'd missed breakfast. She left her bedroom, keeping an eye on the cellar door as she made her way to the kitchen. It all seemed unreal; everything she'd seen last night, everything she didn't see.

Junior was already off doing whatever he did during his lazy summertime days. Probably causing some mindless ruckus somewhere. Obviously, he didn't know their dad was gone, didn't know that three featureless strangers had broken in during the night, had dug their way in to steal him away. Or that he had gone along without a fight.

Her mom had left her a breakfast plate at the kitchen table. A hollowed-out baked apple, filled with chopped dates and brown sugar. It was congealed and cold. Betty had no appetite.

She went to the back door, and despite wearing house shoes and a summer nightgown, she stepped outside. Her mom was in the garden next to the house. Her dad's garden. She never ventured into the extensive vegetable patch, claiming she had a black thumb compared to the emerald brilliance of her dad's.

"Mom?" She stopped at the chicken wire fence used to keep out the rabbits.

Her mom was on her hands and knees, crawling through rows of lettuce, working her hands under the wide outer leaves. Holding a long paring knife between her teeth, she looked up at Betty. She took the blade and cut a head from the ground. She then held it up to the sunlight, appraising it.

"Have to take out these heads before they get soft. Can't risk ruining your dad's reputation because I didn't get his lettuce to Calder's on time. I won't stand for it. He doesn't deserve it." She gently placed the head in a basket beside a half dozen others. She crawled a few feet down, found the next ripe head, and went at it with her knife.

"Mom? What's going on?"

"You gone deaf? I'm getting the lettuce ready for market. It'd be nice if you changed into some work clothes and lent me a hand. There's plenty of work to do." She hacked the knife through the lettuce root, held it up, found it to be an exemplary specimen, and placed it in the basket. "This garden… I didn't realize all the work he did," she said through panting breath, pulling the basket along with her to the next row. "Just think, he grows the best lettuce in all of Summerset County. People come from miles wide, because it's the crispest, and stays that way the longest."

"Mom, what the hell is going on?" Betty shouted, surprised by both her force and open vulgarity. "Where's Daddy? Who were those men who came in through the cellar?"

Her mother sighed, ignoring her obscenity. She placed the paring knife inside the basket and groaned as she stood. "Oh, my knees. I don't know how he managed this. I'm gonna be broke in half by winter." She blew an errant strand of hair from her eyes, walking stiffly to the chicken wire gate.

Her mother placed a hand on Betty's shoulder, guiding her away from the garden and empty house.

"You shouldn't go outside dressed like that anymore. You're no longer a girl. You don't know who could be watching you." Her mom squeezed her shoulder, but it wasn't a mean-spirited gesture meant to punctuate a scolding. There seemed to be a smile in her voice. An acceptance that her little girl was a grown woman.

They walked in silence through the apple orchard at the back of their property. A grown-over path through thick grass abutted the property boundary with two other farms. Her mom's cousins, the Newsteins, lived on one. Her dad's sister, Paulette, lived on the other. At the grassy corner was their family graveyard.

At first Betty thought they were walking to her Aunt Paulette's house. Such an even-keeled woman, Paulette would shed light on what was going on. A widow, she worked her one hundred-twenty acres side by side with a dour, quiet man, named Nelson. They had lived together for almost twenty years. Betty called Nelson her uncle, when she knew he wasn't; but he was a nice enough man. Hard working. Honest.

Betty's Uncle Craig was buried here. Aunt Paulette's husband. She came out every Sunday morning at sunrise and sat by the headstone, staring at the ground covering him. She sometimes cried, sometimes she smiled. Sometimes both at once. But she never forgot her Sunday visits, even though she'd been with Nelson twice as long as her first love.

Betty realized they weren't heading to her Aunt Paulette's when she saw the dark brown dirt of a freshly dug plot next to her Uncle Craig's.

"Mom."

A new headstone, with sharp-edged letters untouched by the elements, sat behind a blanket of recently turned loam.

With disbelief, she read the headstone's inscription:

Gerald Lincoln Harris

Born: March 19th, 1875

Died: July 8th, 1934

"No, Momma. NO!"

"Let me explain," her mom said, touching Betty's elbow. Betty shrugged her away. "Betty-Mae."

Betty turned from the grave and stared at their house without really taking in any detail. Her mind was a cluttered muddle. What in the world was happening to her life?

"That's not what happened," Betty said softly. She faced her mom, said resolutely, "He's not dead. I saw him. Those men took him away. You can't tell me different. He was alive. He is alive. Momma, tell me, tell me Daddy's alive!"

"He is, Betty-Mae, your daddy's alive."

"Then why, Momma? Tell me what's going on." Betty knelt by the new grave, the moist soil dirtying her nightgown. "Tell me everything is going to be all right." She touched the soil, ran her hand over the cool surface. She cried as if he really were dead. Her tears fell, soaking into the soil. She began to tremble uncontrollably, and she didn't try to fight it.

"Junior mustn't hear a word of this."

Her mom let her tears come and fall, let her purge her pain. Then she told her everything.

 

 

6.

In his room above Calder's Mart, Cooper broke open his pack and pulled out his cleanest and least threadbare clothes. With a haircut and wearing a clean set of clothes, he felt like a new man. Now, if only his bones would stop aching.

The room was sparse, but he thought FDR himself would like it just fine. A porcelain washbasin sat atop a short bureau. A coat rack was in one corner, while the other corner had windows on either side overlooking the main street below.

Before he took to the road, he'd lived in a first floor bedroom of his parents' row house in Chicago's Alta Vista neighborhood. His family had moved to the exclusive town home in '05, and he had little memory of the time before, the years when his parents had to worry about their next meal. After advancing from stockyarder to foreman, his father secured a bank loan and branched out to form his own company. He had refined a method for the further processing of the waste at the slaughterhouse. The Cooper Meat Company now shipped all across the forty-eight states, touting to be "The purveyors of the finest processed meats in Chicago." The quick ascent through class and wealth brought his family relative comfort, but Theodore never had the drive or passion that his father possessed--at least that's what his father told him. He would often rile on about Theodore's lack of understanding for how far they'd come, for just how hard he had worked to afford their home, their furnishings, the damn books in which Theodore always had his nose buried.

Once he finished buttoning his fresh shirt, Cooper reclined on the bed. Nothing had felt softer or more soothing since he'd devoured cotton candy at the county fair when he was a kid. He reached over to his pack and pulled out a battered copy of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. He found the dog-ear where he'd left off and read a few pages until his eyelids became heavy. Starting to doze, his rumbling stomach reminded him how long it had been since breakfast.

When sleep overtook his hunger, Cooper dreamed.

 

 

The dew-heavy grass slapped his thighs as he ran. His heart pounded a staccato rhythm, adrenaline seared his veins. Feeling alive, alert and full of fear, he had no idea where he was, just that it was nighttime and gray clouds shrouded the nearly full moon. The sensation of being followed was an interminable focal point. With single-minded clarity, his every thought centered on this feeling--a slathering wolf keening in on a staggered prey. He ran, his eyes prying every shadow, behind every hiding spot.

For reasons Cooper didn't understand, the relief at reaching the top of a sloping field made him feel like he had just been born again.

The roof's A-shaped peak looked like an opened book resting on the August-high cornstalks, as if set aside by a giant for later reading. Closing on the building, its beacon-like windows washed the bursting corn a warmer shade of gold. Someone played a pipe organ inside the home: a lulling dirge sweeping the field like a collapsing sigh of sadness. It was a sign--one he didn't know he was listening for until he heard the organ's lofty bellow. His fear dissipated into the misty air.

He had made it. He would find a new life; any life would be better than the one he had left behind.

He crashed through the last row of corn, his arms stinging from the whipping cornstalks. He felt no pain, only an overwhelming happiness that turned his stomach and slowed his stride. Walking more cautiously as he neared the house, he mounted the steps to the wrap-around porch and paused when he reached the door. A rusted bucket was near the doorframe, a water-dipper resting in the dark water. Another sign. The water dipper. The big dipper. The north star. Follow the north star.

This had to be the house. A brass-hoop knocker hung on the door, but for some reason he knew not to use it. He took one more look around to make sure no one had followed him, then rapped his knuckles on the oak door. Three knocks. Pause. Two knocks.

The organ's final note deflated to silence.

His heart beat more swiftly as he waited. Before long, his fear began to resurface. Maybe he had given the wrong entry knock. Maybe he was at the wrong house. He was unsure if he should try knocking again or if he should run back to the cover of the field. He stepped away from the door and was ready to start running, when the door creaked open a few inches. It was dark inside. Cooper saw little more than an old woman's wrinkled forehead and two dry, rheumy eyes backlit by an oil lamp's tempered glow.

When the door opened further, the woman beckoning him to enter, Cooper did not hesitate entering the darkness therein…

 

 

Cooper shook awake from his dream, the last moments as clear as day, yet fleetingly vague.

Looming cornstalks.

An old woman opening a creaky door.

An overpowering sense of security walking into the stranger's darkened house.

Escape.

He checked his pocket watch. It was shortly after five. He better get going or he'd miss his first meal prepared by Miss Thea Calder. No way he would miss this meal. Even if he weren't so hungry, he wouldn't miss it for anything.

His dream faded, but the nearly overwhelming feeling of security and happiness lingered on. Holding onto the feeling, finding comfort in its strength, he made his way down to the dining room. The first to arrive, he sat at the middle of the table facing the door he entered. The large oak table could seat twelve, but only five placements had been set. He took a folded napkin and spread it across his lap.

He hadn't eaten in an actual dining room since leaving Chicago. Since then, he usually prepared his meals over an open fire pit. Occasionally, he would venture into an inviting mom and pop diner and take refuge for an hour or two.

Just when Cooper was starting to think he'd found the wrong dining room, an old man entered. He limped through the entryway and sat across from Cooper without acknowledging him. He took his napkin, wiped his sallow lips, then set it aside.

"Hello?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, but I don't see so well lately. Actually, to be honest, I see closer to not at all more than anything."

"It's all right, really. It sure is dark with the curtains pulled."

"It's not all right by any means. I consider myself a gentleman, and not acknowledging someone you're going to break bread with is just downright rude, regardless of the situation. I'm Jasper Cartwright." His hair was soft, shaggy over the ears and gleaming white. He kept his mustache trimmed in impeccably tidy angles. Cooper wondered if the old man could still see enough to maintain his mustache to such standards, or if he had help, from possibly Magee or Bo.

"I'm Theodore Cooper. Most people call me Cooper."

"Nice to meet you, Cooper. Are you staying under the roof of our benevolent hostess, Thea Calder?"

"I'm staying at least for the night."

"I myself have been a perpetual guest for several years now. Oh, are you in for a treat. Her hospitality is unrivalled!"

"I don't know Jasper, but your voice seems to have a slice of sarcasm to it."

"Certainly it does. Since you noticed, that must mean you've met Thea Calder!" Jasper said, his voice as dry as autumn hay.

So far, Cooper was enjoying his visit to Coal Hollow. Even the tension Thea Calder carried with her like a storm cloud was somehow comforting. Cooper had just met Jasper, but he was starting to think the old man could only add to the town's charm.

"I've met our hostess. She doesn't seem all that bad."

"It must be one of her good days."

Cooper and Jasper shared a bonding laughter.

Two men entered the dining hall, talking avidly. Cooper recognized one of the men. It was Magee from Magee's barbershop. He looked none the worse for wear despite having earlier been in a drunken stupor.

"Well, Jasper, good evening," said the man Cooper didn't recognize.

"Evening Doc. Magee. Gentlemen, this is Cooper. He's new to town."

Cooper stood and shook hands with the new arrivals.

"Cooper, if you're ever feeling poorly, Dr. Thompson is the man to see. He can cure a mule of its stubbornness. Sure, he'll make you feel better, but in the same sense, make you feel even more poorly… in the wallet!" The three townsfolk all broke out in laughter, Dr. Thompson the most red faced and teary-eyed. Cooper hesitated to join in. Having spent so long on the road had eroded his social skills to a certain extent.

Dr. Thompson cut off their laughter. "Magee here runs a barber shop. He and his friend, Bo Tingsley," the graying doctor said as he dabbed at his eyes with a napkin.

"Oh, I met Bo already," Cooper added.

"I thought so." Thompson nodded to acknowledge Cooper's fresh haircut. "Turns out half the town gets a Magee haircut, the other gets a professional one. Looks like you got the latter," the doctor said, barely choking back his laughter before finishing the last of his sentence.

Magee scrunched his face like he'd eaten something tart, but his expression softened to a wrinkled smile.

Cooper looked at each man, noting the similarities in their appearance. They had probably known each other so long that they'd begun to look alike. All gray or graying, all with the same laugh lines at the corners of their mouths. All sported Bo Tingsley haircuts.

"I like my haircut fine, but I'll have to try out Magee the next go-around," Cooper said.

A man, who looked like he hadn't sat in a barber's chair for quite a while, entered the room. He wore a stained apron and no smile whatsoever. "Thea isn't feeling well. I'll bring some beef dumplings in a couple minutes."

"Henry, do you want me to look in on her?" Dr. Thompson said, halfway up from his chair.

Henry Calder waved the doctor to sit back down. "No, Doc, I don't think it's anything you can help with. It's a malady of a womanly nature. She just needs her rest."

"If anything changes, you let me know."

"The dumplings will be right out."

When Cooper was sure he was out of earshot, he said, "He's an abrupt fellow."

"Sure is. He wears on you after awhile," Jasper said.

"Wears like a shoe with a rock in it," Magee said, keeping his voice from drifting past the table. "At least supper will be somewhat palatable." Even though Henry Calder would soon serve a more desirable meal, the mood in the dining room had changed. Moments before the room was full of laughter. Now it seemed a heavy cloud of disappointment hung about like a stray animal.

They were silent and Cooper couldn't think of a thing to say to make it otherwise. The bells above the general store's door jangled as the door flew wide. A child's light, sandaled feet slapped the floor as someone ran through the store.

"Doc! Doc Thompson!"

The curtain flew open, and in rushed a dirty-faced girl with loose blonde braids. Salty tears streaked her face. A thin trail of blood flowed from her left nostril.

"Georgie's gone! Daddy's gone, too!" the little girl said between panting breaths. Drenched with sweat, her fair complexion was turning rosier by the second.

Dr. Thompson stood and went to the girl. He moved faster than Cooper thought possible. His knees popped like damp firewood as he squatted to the girl's eye level.

"Slow down, Ellie. You're going to scare yourself into a fainting spell." The doctor took out his kerchief and daubed the blood from her nose.

The girl took a deep, hitching breath. "G-georgie's gone. Daddy went looking for him." With her next breath the hitching in her chest brought along fresh tears. They streamed freer down her cheeks. The doctor dried these, also. "Daddy said to stay put. But I got scared when he didn't come back." It seemed her fresh tears loosened her voice, and now her voice was both smooth and heartbreaking.

"Where'd your brother go? How long's he been gone?" Magee asked. Dr. Thompson shot him a look as he continued to console the girl.

"Last night. He snuck out after Daddy… after Daddy went to sleep. I waited awhile, until morning, just in case he came home on his own. Then I woke Daddy."

Dr. Thompson pushed some hair from her forehead. "Ellie, couldn't George just be fishing?"

"Georgie doesn't fish with guns. I woke up when he took the over/under from the rack. Georgie doesn't touch Daddy's gun for nothing. He took the gun and snuck out the window."

Cooper sat back and took in the whirling conversation.

"Why'd he leave like that?" Magee asked.

"Dunno, but he sure was in a hurry." The girl's tears had stopped for the moment. She put an arm around Dr. Thompson's neck, and she looked like she didn't want to let go.

"Does Sheriff Bergman know about this?"

"No. I knew you eat here, so I came to tell you."

"Well, we should probably let the sheriff know." The doctor stood, his movements much slower now.

"Don't go!"

"I'm not going anywhere alone. You're coming with me."

"Find Georgie for me, Doc. Find my Georgie."

"I'm sure he'll turn up in no time at all. Don't you worry." Thompson and the little girl walked back through the store.

The bells above the door were still jingling when Henry Calder entered, a heaping pot of beef dumplings steaming in his hands. His expression wasn't especially pleasant when he counted heads and came up one short. He slammed the food down then left without saying a word.

 

 

7.

Wandering waist-high fields with a group of strangers, Cooper wondered why he decided to tag along at all. He didn't know George Banyon, and he didn't know these people, either. Maybe it was Ellie's desperation to find her brother, or perhaps he had been on the road too long and he had his own desperation eating away at him--desperation for human contact. In the end, he decided he might as well help a little girl along the way if for no other reason.

Not long after Ellie and Dr. Thompson bolted from Calder's dining room, they returned with the sheriff. Everyone but Jasper Cartwright and his failing vision volunteered to look for Ellie's brother. After leaving the dining room, the search party nearly trampled a man sitting on the plank walkway outside the market. Magee introduced the new man to Cooper as Arlen Polk. After a brief conversation with Sheriff Bergman, he joined their ranks.

Polk was dimwitted, Cooper could tell by his always-questioning eyes and slack jaw, but he seemed genuinely concerned about George's whereabouts. He was a shade over five foot tall, and his longish black hair and beard were greasy and unkempt. His eyes had a twitchy quality, and Cooper had a tough time deciding if Polk was closer to twenty years old or forty.

Sheriff Bergman's tan bowler cap seemed out of place sitting atop his pear-shaped head. He was no more than about thirty, and his excitability made him appear younger. Bergman led the way, pushing aside the dry, razor-sharp grass with a long tree branch he scavenged as they began their search. He looked like a scythe-wielding reaper intent on clearing all the land as they went. They would make good time with Bergman in the lead.

Cooper remained at the rear, matching strides with Magee, letting the others determine the direction of their search. He kept his eyes peeled for a boy of unspecified height and features, a boy everyone seemed terribly worried about. They were a good distance from town when they realized Polk carried their only oil lamp to fend off the coming dark. Luckily, the moon cut a bright yellow streak through the cloudless sky.

"Where we gonna look?" Polk asked to no one in particular. After leaving the town behind, they had fanned out and most of their conversation died off. It was a while before anyone responded.

Bergman broke the silence. "George Banyon didn't take food or other provisions. He wasn't going farther than he could walk from his home. This stretch of field covers between town and the Banyon place. We'll cover the ground surrounding their property first. Also, something scared George enough to carry a gun. Something scared him enough to take his Pa's gun without waking him. Even though George has his own gun, it was important enough to take the over/under without permission."

Cooper was impressed with Bergman's logic. He'd been on the road long enough to know that you don't go off on a long journey without first figuring out what supplies you needed. It also made him question beginning their search with night descending and Bergman's Colt revolver the group's only weapon. If George needed his father's gun for protection, and the boy was somewhere nearby, maybe Bergman was walking them straight into trouble.

A thought crossed Cooper's mind. "What about the boy's dad? Shouldn't we consider where he went?" With the commotion of Ellie running into the Calder's dining room, he'd forgotten the boy's dad was also gone.

"Oh, that's easy. Probably passed out somewhere, as usual," Magee said with a snobbish laugh.

Cooper recalled seeing Magee just this morning snoozing in his barber's chair, a half-bottle of whiskey in his hand. He guessed a drunk would naturally know another's inclination, even while looking down his nose at his peer in vice.

"How old is this boy, anyhow?" Cooper asked.

"What, sixteen-seventeen now?" Polk asked, his dull eyes peering at Magee. In the light of the oil lamp, Polk's eyes gleamed yellow, and his beard stubble seemed as prickly as the thorny undergrowth at their feet.

"Sounds about right. Ellie's no more than about eight. Their parents spread them out pretty good."

"Mr. Banyon's a surly sonofa-bee." As Polk walked, he turned the valve to brighten his lamp.

"Sure is. Makes Hank Calder look like a choirboy," Magee said as he watched Polk. "You just don't know what you're doing at all. Give me that." Magee took charge of holding the lamp.

Cooper noticed movement at the top of the slight rise they were cresting. Judging his abrupt halt, Bergman also took note. The field they'd been crossing for the last half hour was transitioning to forest. A green wall of trees provided a backdrop for the movement; two people in the distance, steadily approaching.

For the moment, Magee and Polk seemed more concerned about the oil lamp than finding the boy. Magee played with the lamp's valve as Polk held its handle.

Cooper surged past them, moving toward the others. "Bergman," Cooper whispered. "Sheriff Bergman."

Bergman held a hand up, "Yeah, I see it, Coop," the sheriff said, then blurted in a louder voice, "Everyone get down!" He motioned to the others. The doctor took Ellie's hand and they both kneeled in the grass. Having not heard Bergman's order, Polk and Magee continued walking toward the front of the group. Polk looked like a scolded child as they walked. Magee held the lamp, his chest puffed out like the victor of a great battle.

"Who is it?" Cooper asked, keeping his voice low.

"Don't know, but if something happened to George, I don't want to take a chance."

As Polk and Magee approached, they finally noticed the sheriff motioning for them to get down. They ducked down, continuing to bicker in quieter voices.

The approaching people disappeared into a gully. Cooper was beginning to question his reasoning for joining this search party. If he didn't know this boy at all, why was he putting himself in possible danger?

Ellie's tears were Cooper's answer. Seeing the little girl crouched in the damp grass, the unsettling pain etched into her face, he'd do whatever he could to help find her brother.

Bergman inched over to a mass of bushes, never letting his eyes stray from the approaching people. He pulled his Colt from his belt holster and raised it to firing height. He cocked the weapon, holding his position.

Someone rustled through the underbrush, silencing the chirruping crickets. Someone stumbled, followed by a raspy whisper, "You should've stayed home. I didn't want you out here like this."

While not familiar, the voice carried an unexpected quality. It was feminine.

"Don't move! Stay right where you are!"

After a shocked silence, the woman replied, "It's okay, sheriff, it's just us." She was still not visible behind a blanket of brambles.

"Just do as I say, and I'll say when you can move," Bergman's voice wavered as he approached the newcomers.

The tension eased from Cooper's limbs. He stood slowly, and the others followed suit.

"Larry, you better stop pointing that gun at me and my son!" As the woman's voice rose, its raspy quality smoothed to a light, almost lilting tone.

"Jane Fowler, what in the world are you doing out here in the middle of the night, and with Jacob, too?" Bergman looked exasperated. His face seemed to sag, and the yellow moon made his skin appear pasty and unwashed.

"Larry, the gun?" Jane Fowler said, the frustration in her voice evident.

"I'm sorry, Jane." Bergman lowered his gun.

Jane pushed aside the undergrowth and stood with her son in a small clearing. Mud caked her clothes. A ripped leaf clung to her hair. They both looked wrung through.

Cooper made his way toward Bergman, seeing Jacob at a better angle. He looked like a broomstick with limbs, no more than thirteen or so. His eyes were dark and would probably appear equally dark in the daylight or at night. Without knowing the boy, Cooper figured Jacob's sad expression was nothing new, as if he wore layers of sadness like winter clothing.

"I've known you since I looked after you and your sisters. How dare you point a gun at me and Jacob!"

"Jane, I… well, how was I supposed to know it was you? We got a situation out here and we got to be ready for anything."

"Situation? What situation? You mean you're actually playing policeman! You always loved that game when you were a little one. Or are you playing cowboys and Indians?"

"Come on now, Jane. I'm serious."

"Georgie's missing," Ellie interrupted as she walked to the center of this impromptu gathering.

"Since when?" Jacob asked. His voice was somewhere between being a boy's and being a man's--scratchy and warbled in an effort to find a balance.

"Last night. Real late," Ellie said. The two youngest people in the group had taken over the conversation.

"That makes sense now." Jacob nodded slowly.

"What makes sense, Jacob?" Bergman cut in.

"Well, for starters, Jimmy's gone, too. That's why me and Mom are out here. Jimmy and George must be together."

"You both look a mess," Ellie said, sizing up their muddied clothes and haggard faces. "No offense, Mrs. Fowler."

"None taken, dear. We've been at it all day." Jane sounded heartbroken, but her face held strong. Her fatigue could have been mistaken for stoicism.

"You've been looking for Jimmy all day and didn't bother to get help?" Magee asked. He still held Polk's lamp. Polk stood behind Magee, almost out of view. He looked dejected, and his eyes never left the back of Magee's head. "People would'a come to help you, Jane," Magee added.

"Oh, would they?" she said, an edge to her voice.

"We could've rallied more people than this if we had more time, then maybe by now we'd know where the boys are," Bergman said.

"I don't want any help," Jane said as she shoved by Bergman. "If you don't mind, I'd like to go find my son." She gave Ellie a knowing look and patted her shoulder before exiting the circle. "Come on Jacob, time's wasting. I want both my boys home in time for breakfast." She didn't look back.

Jacob took off in a gangly trot to catch his mother. The others watched as the Fowlers walked away.

"We can't just let them go," Polk said in a small voice.

"No, we can't. I say we go with them. There's safety in numbers," Dr. Thompson said. The lamplight caught and accentuated his every wrinkle. He looked ragged after only a short while searching. "Plus, we can compare notes, see what ground they've covered so far." After a moment's hesitation and silence from the others, he grabbed Ellie's hand. She went without question as he headed in the direction Jane Fowler had gone. Polk was the next to leave.

"I'm in charge here. We can't just split up like this," Bergman said.

Magee followed Polk, taking the oil lamp with him. The ground where Cooper stood darkened with the barber's every step. Cooper wanted to head back to his rented room and sink into the deep and inviting bed. If he decided to head back at this point, he wouldn't make it back to Calder's without getting lost himself. He shrugged at Bergman, then started in the direction the others had gone.

Jane never acknowledged her growing search party. They let her lead and no one said much as they weaved through a heavily wooded area. The group moved slower than when Bergman led and would stop when Jane raised a hand for them to halt. She would strain to hear the slightest sound, her eyes closed, her neck craning. Disappointed, she would motion for them to start again. With Jane and Jacob a few paces ahead of Polk and Magee, the party climbed a steep hill. Cooper walked with Ellie and the doctor. Jane seemed to be a better leader than Bergman. She certainly had more at stake than the sheriff, and was as alert and irritable as a poked badger.

Cooper glanced over his shoulder. Bergman followed thirty paces behind. His glare made Cooper look away. The sheriff was in a foul mood, and Cooper sensed that he shouldn't be in Bergman's way if he felt like taking it out on someone.

At the top of the hill, Cooper had a feeling he knew where they were, at least in relation to the railroad tracks. The raised rail line curved west, disappearing into a thicket. He confirmed his feeling when he saw the sagging farmhouse where he'd made camp the night before. Along the side of the house would be the red water pump that spouted the coldest watered he'd ever tasted. Seeing the rise of the gabled roof, the overgrown bushes, the snarled trees, Cooper had an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. Of course he'd seen the house before, just this morning, but the sensation didn't feel tied to earlier today. This was different.

Cooper asked, "Whose house is that atop the hill?"

"That's the Blankenship place. Or used to be," Dr. Thompson said, the only person to acknowledge Cooper's question. "Now, I guess it's left to the animals, the forest creatures and such. Too bad, too. It used to be a fine house."

"Who was Blankenship?"

"Reverend Horace Blankenship. He and his wife Eunice lived there. At one point the place was filled up with kids and grandkids, but long after the kids had moved on to other locales, the Blankenships left without a word in the middle of the night."

"Why's that Doc?"

"Not sure, really. Some say it was Harvard Square putting pressure on Horace for the mortgage. Don't know. But that was long ago. Decades."

"No one bought out the lot?"

"There was some interest after the bank took possession, but there's plenty of land out this way to build your own house. As time went on, the forest started creeping in on the property. By now, you'd have to put in some major work to re-clear the plot. And the house? A shambles."

Cooper felt drawn to the house. He kept an eye on it, nearly stumbling into Polk's feet.

Thompson was quiet, his information exhausted. The doctor looked down on Ellie, and the poor girl looked too tired to walk. She put up a good front as she trudged on. Cooper nodded his thanks, then picked up his pace to catch the Fowlers.

Jacob was taller than his mother, which made her seem even smaller. Earlier, she had said she use to watch Bergman when he was a child, and with Cooper thinking the sheriff was about thirty, that put her at least thirty-five. Even so, she looked younger than Bergman, and as she walked with Jacob, she looked too young to have two nearly grown sons.

The moon had fallen behind the trees and their only light was Polk's oil lamp still in Magee's possession. As they left the Blankenship property behind and descended the steady downhill, they entered a small valley steeped in damp fog. A surge of cool, earthy air brushed Cooper's face.

"The swamps? Why would the boys head this way?" Bergman asked.

"Because they're boys, and that'd be a boy-thing to do," Jane said.

"It's not too far from either the Fowler's place or the Banyon's," Dr. Thompson added. He moved like a man who didn't often leave his office. His arthritic movements were painful to watch, but he never complained.

"It just seems like where they'd be," Jane said.

"Why's that Miss Fowler?" Polk asked as he absently scratched his beard.

"Christ, I wish I could call it mother's intuition. At first I didn't want to search the swamp, but Jacob and I've searched just about everywhere else imaginable since last night. I want Jimmy to be anywhere else but the swamp. There's just no other place to go."

They walked on in silence and fanned out again to cover more ground. Soon, Jacob was the only person Cooper could see through the thickening fog. The others scuffled through thorny patches and cautiously hopped over marshy ground. As long as Cooper could still hear them, he wouldn't worry about becoming lost.

The ground became spongier with every downward step. Blooming flowers spilled their redolence to the nighttime sky. Stepping over snaking tree roots and small algae-covered pools, Cooper came across a level clearing. Ragged tree stumps speared skyward from the verdant water like shatter bones. The canopy enclosed the boggy glade like a ceiling.

Cooper saw the body for several seconds before his brain registered its import. Its shoes pointed toes up, the legs splayed in the mud. That was all that was visible. Green-scummed water covered the body from the waist up. The tip of its nose bobbed at the surface like an emerging island in a volcanic sea.

Cooper tried yelling for the others, but his voice caught just shy of his teeth. He cleared his throat, then tried again, letting loose a shout that sent birds angrily from their roosts.

Jacob was the first to arrive. The boy sprinted into the clearing, his wire-thin limbs flying wildly about. When he saw the body, he stopped as if struck in the chest. Cooper would've done anything to avoid seeing the look on his face.

Jane Fowler's scream stole Cooper's attention away from her son. She ran across the muddy ground all the way to the body, charging knee-deep into the water. Grabbing the shirt with both hands, she yanked up hard, as if there was still a life to save. She showed astonishing strength as she lifted the body from the water and brought it to rest in her lap as she sat on the muddy shore.

The others arrived as Jane rocked the corpse in her arms. Dr. Thompson attempted to shield Ellie from the awful sight. It didn't look like she wanted to see anyway. She pressed her face to his ribs.

Algae and moldering leaves clung to the body like a second skin. Jane muttered incomprehensible half-syllables. Her fingers trembled as she cleared the debris from the face, revealing swollen dead lips, a bloodless gash running the length of its cheek, and open eyes slathered with pond muck.

"This isn't my boy." The body dropped from her arms to the spongy ground. Standing on shaky legs, she looked at the others as if noticing them for the first time. Her eyes went from her hands to the body, then back to her hands. Realization sunk in.

"THIS IS NOT MY BOY!" Her expression slipped with oily ease from relief to utter revolt and then back again. Her flushed skin quickly blanched. Shock stole all sense from her and her eyes tilted back in her head. She fell to one knee and surprisingly, went no further. Polk went to her side and grabbed her by the armpit to steady her.

Thompson handed Ellie over to Magee, then approached the body. Cooper thought he would examine it, but he simply scowled and shook his head. The doctor didn't need to examine the body. Nothing in his power could change the fact that the boy was dead. He returned to Ellie's side, touching her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Ellie. Someone did something terrible to George. I don't know who, but whoever did will see justice." Pain choked the strength from his voice. "I promise."

When Thompson went to embrace the child, she ran past him to the water's edge, to her brother's brutalized body. Reaching down, she touched the pallid skin of George's hand.

Unaware her nose had started to bleed again, a streak flowed from her nostril, to her lips. Letting loose a heartrending wail of misery, she fell to the muddy ground. She tugged George's damp shirtsleeve as if pleading for him to stand.

 

 

8.

Considering Ellie's behavior, Cooper almost wished she'd go back to her hysterics. She stood with Dr. Thompson and Jane as the other townsfolk hoisted the boy's body from the seeping mire to a makeshift stretcher. Ellie's eyes were gummy and vacant. She sucked her thumb like a child half her age. Dr. Thompson hunched over to look into her eyes and take her pulse.

To make the stretcher, they tethered two long branches together with belts and suspenders. Polk gave up his outer shirt to cover the boy's face. When the body was ready for transport, Cooper offered to help, but they shook him away. Bergman hefted the front, while Polk and Magee handled the rear handles. They no longer fought over the oil lamp and had given up its possession to Jacob. The boy held it close to the stretcher, but kept his eyes facing his mother and Ellie.

When the sheriff nodded to Magee and Polk, the three men lifted George from the ground. Water dripped from the muddied clothes as if the body had sprung a leak. Because of his small stature, Polk's side hung lower by quite a bit. The stretcher dipped and a leg slipped off and dangled in the air, throwing the three men off balance. With the rest of the body sitting squarely on the stretcher, they couldn't do anything but stare at one another. When Cooper hurried to right the leg, his fingers skimmed across the cold exposed skin of the boy's calf. Even in the balmy night, a chill danced over his spine. The leg felt too heavy when he lifted it, as if a substance weightier than gravity held the lifeless flesh earthbound.

"Let's go," Bergman said, and the procession started back.

Jacob led, followed by the doctor and Ellie, the stretcher, with Cooper and Jane following.

"I liked George. He was a sweet kid," Jane said.

Cooper assumed she'd spoken to him, but he had nothing to say. He had no memories to share, so he remained silent as they snaked through the moonlit groundcover. Cooper had never felt so uncomfortable. These people seemed nice enough, especially Thompson, Jane and Ellie, but he wanted to leave Coal Hollow as soon as possible. Even though he was bone-weary from his long journey, he would gladly take to the rails tomorrow to escape the sadness of this town.

Ahead, Magee and Bergman lowered the stretcher to make it easier on Polk. The sky was beginning to bruise at the horizon with the coming morning. After besting a hill, they parted company with the last vestiges of the night's fog.

Jane stretched her arms over her head and couldn't help yawning. Her brown eyes were her most uncommon feature. They seemed to gleam through the darkness, especially when angered or upset. Now, nearly incoherent from exhaustion, her eyes lost their luster. She noticed Cooper looking at her as she finished her yawn. He felt ashamed for so blatantly taking in her features, as if she had caught him stealing. He looked away.

Quite unexpectedly, at least to Cooper, the group broke through a wooded ravine and were now facing the back of the buildings of downtown Coal Hollow. Just moments ago, Cooper couldn't imagine the end of their walk back. They could've continued for another hour without him beginning to wonder, but now they were nearly home. While the others had a home to return to, Cooper had his inviting mattress in his rented room to think about. He made a mental note to make provisions for paying Thea Calder before he fell asleep. The idea of having Hank Calder rouse him from sleep to kick him to the street for nonpayment didn't sound at all appealing.

Polk and Magee started to turn right, but Bergman stopped. His suddenness almost overturned the body. Bergman righted the stretcher. "Wait. We can't take the body to my office."

"Why not, you are the sheriff, right?" Magee said.

"Yeah, but I'm no mortician. You wouldn't want to step within a block of there come lunchtime."

"So what are you suggesting? You better suggest quickly, because if feels like my arm'as bout to fall off," Magee said.

"Calder's icehouse. We'll put the body there for the time being. How does that sound, Doc?"

"Seems the best thing to do. You don't want a body sitting out with how hot it's going to get when the sun comes up. We'll also need to track down his father to figure out burial details."

"All right then, we can take care of things from here. Why don't you get some sleep? It's been a long night," Bergman said to the Fowlers and Thompson, adjusting the stretcher from one hand to the other.

"Put the little one to bed, too," Magee said, motioning to Ellie. Her eyes glazed, she held a blood-stained handkerchief to her nose as she clung to the doctor's arm.

"I'll let her sleep for a while before taking her back to her house. I'm guessing her father's not back now anyway." Dr. Thompson guided Ellie across the street and she went without resistance.

"When you go by the Banyon place, if Charles isn't back yet, then just drop her off at my place," Jane said, raising her voice so the doctor could hear. "Actually, if he's home, you still might want to bring her over."

"Sure thing, Janie. Go get some sleep yourself. We'll regroup tomorrow after some rest, and then track down your boy."

"I appreciate it."

The doctor nodded, and then he and Ellie were off again.

"Mom, let's go. I'm tired," Jacob said.

Jane shook her head, as if she'd just woken from sleepwalking. "Okay. Lead the way."

"Well, what about you?" Bergman asked Cooper. "Where you staying?"

"Same place you're headed. I rented a room at Calder's yesterday before dinnertime, and that bed's calling my name," Cooper said.

"Come on then," Magee said.

When they reached the icehouse door, Cooper rushed ahead to open it. He found a lantern inside and lit it with one of the stove matches sitting next to it. Cold air slapped his face, chilling the sweat still dripping from his skin. Cooper maneuvered around the others to hold open the second door ten feet from the first and waited for them to heft the body through the opening.

Gingerly, Polk and Magee stepped down a set of stairs cut into the ground itself. Bergman held the stretcher, not letting it get any farther. "Just place that lantern on the stretcher pole. We'll take it from here."

Cooper slipped the lantern's handle over the stretcher pole on Bergman's end, glad he wouldn't have to venture down the rickety-looking steps.

"Thanks for your help tonight. Just one thing--"

Polk and Magee groaned in unison.

"Since you're so accommodating, Coop, do me a favor."

"Sure, what is it?"

"Stick around in case we need to talk about the night's events."

"What?" Cooper felt sucker punched.

"I'm not accusing you of nothing. I just find it a little odd is all. A stranger comes to town and willingly joins a search party, almost as soon as he settles in. Then, he's the one who finds the body. I find it a little peculiar."

Cooper stood stunned. With how tired he felt, the thinly-veiled accusation was almost beyond his comprehension. He could do little more than nod before leaving the icehouse. He parsed Bergman's words as he walked along the side of the building to the exterior stairwell.

Does Bergman actually think I killed George?

If Cooper weren't the person in question, he supposed he would be suspicious of his arrival as well. He scaled the wooden stairs and entered the building's second floor.

He bypassed his room and the one occupied by Jasper Cartwright, the Calders' perpetual guest. He made his way to the general store and wrote a brief note on a slip of butcher paper, folding two day's rent inside. He placed it by the cash register, hoping Hank Calder would come across it early in the morning. He fought the squeaking steps as he went back upstairs. Once inside his room, he took a weary breath and removed his muddy shoes. He didn't bother changing clothes. He eased back on the mattress, his mind quickly glossing over with sleep.

He dreamed of buzzing mosquitoes swarming into thick black clouds, of scummy water reeking of freshly spilled blood. With a clarity he would remember upon waking, the boy's slashed cheek spread like an opening mouth. The skin stretched, then tore, the wound gaping wider.

 

9.

The Fowlers walked along Teetering Road, the one lane dirt trap winding from one side of Summerset County to the other. His mom put her arm around him, mumbling about searching for Jimmy right after they got some rest. His mom had never been affectionate, but when she squeezed his shoulder, continuing to mumble on about how tall he was getting, he didn't shy away. He knew she didn't want him out of her sight.

The last traces of night slipped away; the somber silence and leaden air became a riot of chirping birds. Teetering Road picked up a quarter mile outside town, heading in a north-south direction. The Fowler's farmhouse was a mile south, and a couple farms farther down was the Banyon's one-room shack.

He blinked away the fatigue, trying to stay alert. He didn't want to bring up how they weren't exactly safe walking alone. Whoever killed George--probably some drunk nigger wandering in from Lewiston--was probably still around, could actually be hiding behind any of the countless tree trunks lining the road. His mom wasn't up for being careful, wasn't up for anything more than getting home and collapsing in bed. He'd be a fool not to be watchful.

Teetering Road curved east, and as it straightened again, he could see the double wheel ruts of their driveway. When they walked past the gray Ford Pickup, his mom chuckled weakly. He knew just what she was thinking. All that walking and they had a truck sitting at home, unused. The day before, they began their frantic search on foot since Jimmy had been on foot. They'd followed his trail through their pasture behind the house, but the bent grass had ended at the narrow creek just east of their property. They couldn't find his trail on either side of the creek. He could've gone just about anywhere from there. In retrospect, maybe they should've gone over to the Banyon place right away, but Jimmy was always going out at all hours, oftentimes by himself, chasing some new adventure.

"We're home." Jacob opened the front door. He walked his mom back to her bedroom at the far side of the house. Standing near the door, he made sure she safely made it to her bed.

"Thanks, Jacob. You're a good boy. You're going to be a good man. I can tell by your eyes. Just like your father's. I just need some sleep. I'll wake you with breakfast before we head out again."

"Sure, Mom. We'll find him straight away."

She gave him a brief smile that turned into a yawn. He closed the door, and didn't hear another sound from her room.

 

 

10.

After Jacob closed her bedroom door, Jane sat on the edge of her bed. Her limbs humming with fatigue, she gave in and let herself cry silently. She didn't know what she would do. It seemed like they'd searched for Jimmy all over the county, yet he was still missing. But the worst part was finding George Banyon dead. Such a sweet boy. The boys had been best friends for so long. In some ways, Jane had wanted George to rub off some on Jimmy, calm him down a little. Get him to focus his attentions. Maybe she should have alerted the townsfolk right away about Jimmy's disappearance. At the time, it had crossed her mind, but seeking help would've reinforced the town's belief that she couldn't raise her boys on her own. Most people thought she needed a man in her life to keep her safe, to provide for her family. They had always looked at her differently than other mothers. If she weren't so goddamned foolish. And stubborn. She could only hope that whatever had gotten to George… that her Jimmy…

She felt so helpless.

She fell to her side, tears spilling across her cheek. She saw her wedding photo on the nightstand. She missed Dwight terribly. Ever since he passed, the feeling of missing him would come unbidden and unexpected. It wasn't the emotion itself that would surprise her, but the sudden strength of the emotion. She could be setting the dinner table, her mind on some mundane task, but then the empty chair would be a cruel reminder. For some reason the first snowfall brought on the worst possible heartache. The pure whiteness, gently falling, touching the autumn brown grass, melting against its diminished warmth.

Dwight returned from the war emaciated and sick, irreparably damaged from exposure to mustard gas. His mind had been left even weaker than his frail body. His blue eyes had once glimmered like jewels, but during his time crawling through those God awful trenches, ducking mortal volleys and machine gun fire, they had steeled to the somber blue of a cold winter's day. Jacob was born ten months after his return, and then Dwight was gone not long after, just that quickly. Too soon. She was too young to have two children and no husband. It would always be too soon.

 

 

11.

Jacob wanted to sleep, craved it like a starving man fantasizing a banquet spread, but his mind raced. He considered his empty bedroom, but to feel closer to his brother, he went to Jimmy's room instead. He picked up his baseball glove and slipped it on. Jimmy didn't like baseball anymore--his passion for it left him years ago, replaced by his interest in girls--but he still took time to play catch with him. He would do anything to play catch with Jimmy again. One more time, just so he could let the big oaf tease him, pretend his palm hurt from him throwing too hard, and when they finished, having him ruffle his hair as they walked back to the house.

He took off the glove, tossed it on the bed. There wasn't much to the room. Dirty, holey socks littered the floor. The heavy coat he wore on chilly mornings in the fields hung on a bedpost. Jimmy's only indulgence was a short pile of new comics, flashy Tarzans, grim Dick Tracys, all neatly stacked on the dresser. It felt like Jimmy would never return home to wear his work coat, or finish reading those silly comic books.

Jimmy could be dead right now, his body thrown away like a sack of trash. Just like George Banyon.

Tears formed in his eyes. His mom had no one to keep her strong, no one to look out for her with Jimmy missing and possibly dead. He'd always been her rock, always there for her whenever the world was too rough and unkind to a young widow. Jacob didn't know if he could do the same. He wasn't as strong as Jimmy. He fell on the bed and buried his face in the pillow.

His mind drifted and sleep swept in. He slept dreamlessly until he woke with an aching back from the unfamiliar mattress, his eyes crusted with dried tears.

He rubbed his eyes awake as he stood. Judging the sun, he hadn't slept more than a couple hours. He felt guilty for his tears. He couldn't act this way, couldn't let his mom see him crying like a little kid.

Besides, Jimmy might not be dead. There was no sense in crying, not when he could walk through the front door at any moment.

Jacob picked up the first comic from the stack on the dresser. It was a Tarzan. Of course. Jimmy's favorite. His brother would often do stunts to show how he was as acrobatic and strong as his hero. Jumping from the top beam of the corncrib as the neighbor kids watched, landing in the scratchy-tassled corn. Climbing to the highest peak of the tallest tree in the woods near where old Greta lived. Not panicking as the branch he clung to bent to his weight, swinging to lower branches until he landed on the ground. Bowing to his awed audience. Brazenly presenting his audacity to the world.

While there were other comics, westerns and superheroes aplenty, Tarzan dominated. Reaching the bottom of the stack, he came across a thin composition notebook. Jimmy had never been studious--beyond his comics, all he ever read was the occasional sports column in the newspaper. Once school was out, he never held onto anything to remind him of the drudgery he had to endure for the better part of the year. Finding the notebook in his pile of prized possessions only heightened Jacob's curiosity.

He flipped it open and started to read, uncovering a side to his brother he didn't know existed. It was a dated journal. He skimmed the initial entry dated almost a year ago--a rambling jaunt stating his dreams of someday marrying Louise Bradshaw--and then flipped to the last entry, dated two nights ago. After finishing the entry, he shot up from the bed, rushing out to wake his mom. He thought he knew his brother, but after reading from his journal, Jimmy seemed like a complete stranger.

 

 

12.

Jacob sat in the chair at the foot of his mom's bed, listening to her read aloud from Jimmy's journal:

I'm not sure what I should do. I know what I want to do. Just leave home, leave Coal Hollow and just keep walking. But Louise needs me. If we're going to have a baby, she needs me to be here for her. But what can I do to support a family? I can't think any way out of this mess besides joining the army. They don't pay much, but at least I can hope for a steady income. I guess I'll look into that right away. It's not like I can put it off, not with Louise--

A knock at the front door cut off her reading. They shared a questioning look, and then Jacob hastened to the door. Of course Jimmy wouldn't knock, but maybe someone brought news.

"Jacob?" his mom stopped him before he reached the door. "Let's keep this journal to ourselves for the time being. I don't want to jump to any conclusions until I can speak with Louise."

"Okay."

When Jacob opened the door, Dr. Thomson stood on the landing, looking like he hadn't slept.

"Morning, Jacob."

"Oh, hi Dr. Thompson. Ellie."

The girl looked worn through. She stood meekly to one side, brown bags under her eyes, acting every bit the doctor's wilted shadow. From what he saw of her lowered eyes, she'd been crying quite a bit. He supposed it was better than her glazed-over expression or hysterical cries from last night.

"Your mother awake?"

"I'm here, Dr. Thompson. Come on in." As Ellie entered, his mom put a hand on her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. "Can I get you some coffee?" she asked the doctor.

"That sounds not only good, but necessary."

They sat at the kitchen table as his mom prepared the coffee on the stove. She lit the burner and placed the pot on to boil. She took mugs from a cabinet, waiting for the water to heat up. "Have you eaten? Can I get you anything?"

"No, I served up brunch before we came over. It wasn't gourmet cuisine, but we won't starve. Ellie had pancakes and eggs. Isn't that right, Ellie?"

The girl nodded, but didn't speak.

In a hushed tone that still seemed to fill the room, his mom asked, "No word on Charles?"

"Afraid not."

Jacob felt uneasy sitting next to Ellie when he still had hope for his own brother. George had always been kind, including him in games when most older kids wouldn't give him the time of day. Jacob couldn't help imagining him packed in straw inside the Calder's icehouse, waiting to be dumped into a fresh grave. He tried avoiding Ellie's gaze, but didn't need to worry. She didn't look up from her clasped hands resting on the table.

As his mom brought out coffee, including a cup for Jacob which she normally didn't abide, Dr. Thompson explained how he'd stopped at the empty Banyon house, how nothing appeared upturned or out of place. Just empty, seeming abandoned. He asked Jacob to bring in Ellie's bag from the trunk of his car. While at the Banyon's, he'd gathered a couple night's worth of clothes and her rag doll. When Jacob returned with Ellie's bag, the adults were talking about resuming the search for Jimmy.

"I appreciate your help, Dr. Thompson, but before we go wandering all over the county again, I think we should consider going about this in a different way."

"What are you thinking, Janie?"

"First off, I'd like to go talk to Jimmy's friends. He was popular--just about everybody knew him in one way or another. First on that list, I'd like to talk to Louise Bradshaw."

"That's right," the doctor said, surprised. "They've been courting, haven't they? Would you like a lift?"

"No, that's kind of you. We were heading out when you pulled up. I'd like to talk to Louise in private. I think she might speak openly if it's on a woman to woman basis."

"Is Ellie all right staying with you?"

"Ellie can stay as long as she wants."

 

 

13.

Thinking back to yesterday, Betty Harris realized how easily and instantly a child could change. Change not just in mood, but in a single moment become a different child down to their core.

Junior had come skipping up from the rear of the farm from parts unknown, covered in fresh scrapes and mud, a writhing garter snake slithering free from his pocket. In that snapshot moment, he looked every bit a Mark Twain character. As he came to an exaggerated halt near the garden, his teeth gleamed a white streak across his mud-speckled face. Judging his carefree temperament, it must have been quite an adventure-filled day.

Betty hefted one side of a produce-laden basket while their mother lifted the other. They brought it waist high before shifting it to the wagon bed. The sun was creeping behind the trees, a lurking pumpkin ready for slumber. The wagon would be ready for their mom to take to Calder's come morning.

Before Junior's arrival, they had worked out the details of their story. Or rather, Betty listened as her mother explained how things had to play out. After letting her in on secrets only certain adults of Coal Hollow shared, they had begun preparing for Junior's return home.

Wrangling the snake back into his pocket, even as young as he was, Junior sensed something was amiss.

Betty helped their mom cover the three produce baskets with a canvas tarp against the elements. Once the chore was finished, there was no avoiding Junior.

Before he could ask what'd got their goat, their mom had blurted, "Your dad's gone. He died in his sleep. He's gone."

In that instant, like a babe opening his eyes for the first time, Junior changed. The happy, youthful energy slid from his limbs. His eyes tensed as he searched for meaning in their mom's words. With doubtful eyes, he turned to Betty, but she looked to the ground, to Junior's bare feet. The garter snake flopped free, slithering to safety without Junior noticing.

Their dad had been sick with blacklung for so long, everyone in the family assumed it would eventually take him. Junior had never known his father to be well, to be youthful, without infirmity.

"We buried him just after sunup," Betty lied, speaking her mom's words, still unable to meet Junior's gaze.

"Daddy's gone?"

"You'll go by Gerald now, son. You're the man of the house."

Junior didn't cry, at least not in front of Betty. He walked away, dismayed, as if he'd just heard that tomorrow it'd rain buckets and he'd have to spend the day inside. He took a few steps down the trail leading to Aunt Paulette's house, but backtracked quickly when he realized his dad was buried at the end of the path. Still not saying a word, he went to the barn, to the comfort of his gray foal, Iggy. He slid the door closed behind him. The horse whinnied in greeting, and then the barn was quiet. Junior didn't come out until Betty was in bed, and then, he merely slinked into his own bed. A boy changed instantly, never to return to who he was.

Her mom had been right. Junior hadn't questioned the illogic of the swift burial. He was still too young.

 

 

Noontime was sunny and their mom had yet to return from her trip to town. She'd come home with a paltry credit slip instead of real money. Her dad always prided himself on making something of that small garden plot. Betty didn't care about the credit and didn't understand his glowing pride whenever someone lauded his green thumb. Instead, she dreamed of going to those fancy shops in Peoria and picking out a new dress and bringing it to the check out girl without even looking for a price tag. But no. All of that toil and sweat in the garden would get them store credit for ice or flour or some other trivial purchase.

Betty leaned her temple against the window frame and watched Junior sitting Indian-style next to the empty grave. It was too far away for her to see the headstone, for which she was grateful. Seeing Junior's messy blond hair shifting in the breeze, his slumped shoulders and downward gaze, she felt terribly guilty for lying to him.

He'd gone out there after breakfast, still having not said much of anything. Since then, she'd kept an eye on him, worried. His only movement was to snag a fresh blade of grass to chew on before returning his hands to his lap. He was broken. Like a shattered piece of pottery. Seeing him like that made her feel fragile herself, as if she too could shatter under the weight of an uncertain world.

Junior startled Betty by standing. His blond head popped up quick as a frog jumping from a lily pad, but his expression didn't match his energy. She still hadn't seen him shed a tear, but his eyes were bloodshot. When he reached the rear of the house, he stormed up the three steps to the door, came in and swept past Betty.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

"No." He didn't slow down. He marched right back to their bedroom.

"I can make us some sandwiches. Tomatoes and cheese."

"I said no."

His curtness made her flash with anger. She wanted to spill the secret, let him know their dad was still alive. But she didn't. He slammed the door. In a way, she was grateful for Junior's sadness. Otherwise, she might've spilled the beans. She couldn't do such a thing to her brother.

Distraction was a powerful thing. She thought about the tomato and cheese sandwich she tried to ply Junior with, and decided to make one for herself.

Gotta keep busy. Gotta get on with things. Because nothing bad really happened.

Her daddy was nearby and alive, and by now his illness would be healed as if by magic. He would never again cough up blood, his face flushed with purple blotches from the effort. Yes, he was alive, and even if he'd never walk her down the aisle at her wedding, or bounce a grandchild on his knee, he was alive.

She sliced the tomato and bread and cheese, slapping together her sandwich. She bit into it, the tomato gushing and cold against her teeth.

If he was unharmed--better than unharmed, actually healed of his sickness--why did she feel so empty?

Her appetite disappeared. She set aside the sandwich and walked down the hall. The cellar door was off to the right, but she avoided it, ignored its very existence, instead, she pressed her ear to her bedroom door. Junior's mewling cry sounded like a smothered kitten. She imagined his head under his pillow, both seething with pain and fighting to control his emotions. She was glad he was crying. Crying meant he'd get over it and move on. All for the better. She still felt guilty.

The screen door screeched open, then slammed shut. Betty jumped away from the bedroom, embarrassed for having listened to Junior when all he wanted was to mourn in private.

"Betty, come here please." Her mom looked tired and sweaty, as if she'd just mowed the front lawn with their push mower.

"How did it go? Did you tell Hank Calder?" They'd agreed they should let the town know what had happened to Gerald Harris, doting father of two, generous and loving husband, lies and all.

"Yes, I did. I also stopped in on the doctor, and he respected our wishes for privacy. They'll help spread the word," she said. As if saying the words had taken up the last of her energy, she slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, then stared off at the floor.

"That's it?"

"We got our credit. Hank gave me too much for the lettuce, but he's a kind man underneath it all. I think he did that instead of talking to me. He understands; he's lost his wife, you know. He understands what it's like."

"But it's not the same. Not with Daddy."

"You can't let on it's not."

"It makes me sick, Momma. I don't know if I can do this."

"Someday we'll see your father again. Then it'll be worth it. Just think of that. Seeing your father again."

"I guess."

"There's something I heard in town, Betty-Mae. I'm not sure how to tell you this…"

"What?" Betty approached her mom when she saw tears in her eyes. "What is it?"

"It's George."

Sensing her bleak tone, Betty's heart thrummed forcefully in her chest. "What about George?"

"He's dead. He died last night."

Betty let out a pent-up breath. Dead? The term didn't mean much anymore, did it? She let out a sharp laugh.

"Betty, I'm serious. It's not like your dad. He was mauled. By some animal. Out in the swamps."

"George? George Banyon?"

"Yes. I'm so sorry."

Her mom stood from her chair and stepped toward Betty, her arms extended in comfort. Betty pushed by her and out the back door, the screen snapping shut.

 

 

14.

The sun was falling from its highpoint when Cooper woke. His muscles ached, but he felt rested for the first time in many weeks. He hadn't recovered from the many months on the road, but was heading in the right direction. He washed his face in the basin on the nightstand, and then changed clothes. He headed down the narrow stairwell to the dining area, letting his nose lead him. The air was infused with different aromas. Freshly baked bread and apple cider. Cinnamon sprigs. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes. The dinning room was empty. Crumbs littered the tablecloth, chairs were askew, but people weren't enjoying the food that went along with the phantom aromas.

He heard a clattering of dishes, and without thinking, he headed toward the noise, passing amateur paintings of placid Midwestern landscapes, portraits of severe-looking pioneers. A recessed curio cabinet filled a wall, so prominent it seemed as if the Calders had built the entire house around a preexisting structure. Framed family photos lined the cabinet, packed as tight as fish scales. In one photo, Henry Calder was actually smiling. He sat in a chair and held a beautiful doe-eyed baby in his arms. A woman stood beside him, her delicate hand resting on his shoulder. Thea's mom matched his seated height. Her small mouth formed a slight Mona Lisa smile. Cooper could understand Bo Tingsley's harbored feelings for her.

"What are you doing?"

Cooper nearly jumped at Thea's shrill voice. "Sorry, I was just looking." He stepped away from the curio display.

"Just looking? Without permission to come back here, you might as well be a criminal." Thea's apron was wet, as if she'd been washing dishes for hours. Even so, plates and silverware were stacked in unstable towers behind her.

"I didn't mean any harm. I came down to eat, and when I didn't see anyone… I heard a noise, so I came this way."

"You missed lunch, obviously. I could shoot you for trespassing, and no court would convict me."

"I'm sorry, Miss Calder," he said as he turned quickly. "I'll be out of your way."

"Wait a minute."

Cooper faced her as she dried her hands on her apron.

"Maybe I shouldn't be so cross, especially with you being kind enough to at least drop off your payment last night."

"I didn't think I was going to wake for breakfast--"

"I heard what happened. It was all anyone could talk about at the supper table. George Banyon used to come in to buy penny candy, he and his sister. Such a shame. What a waste of a young life."

"I know. I'd never met him and it has me shaken. We didn't get back until the sun was starting to come up."

"Technically, you signed our contract, so I should boot you for breach." In the flash, Thea's spiteful side surfaced.

"So, do you want me to leave?" Cooper wondered where he would stay if the Calders had the only housing in all of Coal Hollow. He could always hole up how he normally did. Wrapped up in his blanket, hoping the hard ground wasn't too damp.

"You know, with all that's gone on since last night, and with you just arriving, why don't we make a little compromise?"

"What did you have in mind?"

Thea stepped aside and extended a hand to the piled dirty dishes as if revealing a prize.

 

 

15.

Gerald Harris cheated death as he crawled through the numbing darkness. His time had come, had been hovering over him like a malevolent cloud since last year. He stubbornly ignored his fate when his burning cough started dredging up blood, and in recent weeks, bloody tissue. But ignore it he did. When stubbornness could no longer mask his fear, it was too late. He could do nothing to change his fate. Except, possibly, entering the Underground.

When they first entered the kitchen to take him from his family, he thought they were a bunch of coloreds bent on some kind of misguided revenge. But after a moment's hesitation, Gerald Harris recognized them for what they were. They weren't a bunch of crazed Negroes starting up a race war. Their skin was coal-blackened. Ashy dust coated their skin, clung to their curled mustaches and bushy sideburns. The melted candles at the crest of their helmets remained unlit. When they blinked, the whites of their eyes flickered like flinty moths in a dusky backdrop. They were white men stained black by their profession. His tension eased off to a steady hum.

Gerald knew about the Underground. Most of the old-timers could sift fact from fable easily enough. The three men who he had so easily followed into the hollows of the earth weren't alive, but they weren't exactly dead, either. They were the Collectors. Miners trapped years ago--long before Gerald first doffed his miner's helmet--trapped in some perpetual cycle of escape and rescue. They should've been dead, but weren't. They should have suffocated in their mining accident, should have long ago rotted and crumbled to nothing. But they hadn't.

The Collectors. With primal desperation they forged through their freshly cut tunnels, seeking out those who they could save. Their single-minded focus drove them to chip away at bedrock, layers of limestone, veins of coal, through topsoil and the foundations of houses, to at last save lives. The Collectors were myth when the mine was still open, a myth given a wink and a nod by the local miners as their patron saints. They were guardian angels looking out for them when they were at their weakest, guaranteeing their safety and survival as they toiled in the mines. In the bars after quitting time, the miners would tip a glass to the Collectors, followed by equal parts reverential silence and rowdy good cheer. Gerald never believed the stories, but respectfully tipped his glass, just in case.

When the mine closed, the young and able-bodied either signed on with other mining companies scarring the prairies of the middle-west, or wended their way back to the Appalachians, from which many of them originally emigrated. Those who remained in Coal Hollow accepted their burdens of diminished physical capacity and the poisoned lungs that accompanied a coal miner's old age. Over the years, the myth gained credibility as the old-timers closed in on their dying days. People were disappearing. Sick people. Sick miners. Last night had been Gerald Harris's time. The Collectors entered the Harris household with the promise of eternal life. He wondered what ultimate price they would exact as compensation for such a gift.

He couldn't see a thing, and only the shuffling ahead prevented him from colliding with the Collector leading the way. They had yet to say word one to him. The two trailing miners dragged their shovels and pickaxes, grinding the metal against the cold stone with every stride. In their silence he felt alone, as if he were a blind mole burrowing down into its den. They were moving at a generous clip, yet he couldn't hear their gusting breath. Maybe they didn't need to breathe. Gerald considered himself, and yes, from the gentle pull of his lungs in his chest, he was still breathing, still alive. But these other three men… being stuck in a lightless tunnel with these unbreathing, undead… Collectors, Gerald felt a surge of panic, the tight clench of claustrophobia. Thirty-six years in the mines and he had never felt so trapped; never to such an extent had he ever felt the weight of the world above him, the gravity of the cold stone earth pressing down as if to crush him.

He then heard a grunt from behind, a discordant friable voice lost in an undead chest cavity. Did their blood still flow? he wondered. Did they have any thoughts other than to dig, shovel and pick their way through this lightless Underground maze? Again, the grunt sounded from behind him, insistent and irritated. Ahead, the shuffling sounds ceased.

The sweat clinging to his skin dried unnervingly. He realized he was no longer crawling. He had stopped in order to catch his panic-stricken breath, questioning why he had so willingly followed these monsters into their lair, knowing it was far too late at this point to change his mind. There was a scraping sound from behind as a shovel was thrown forward, followed by a cold pinging sound as the shovel slammed into his right ankle. He screamed, his voice absorbed by the surrounding tons of solid rock. White hot pain burst from the impact and up his leg. After the initial pain subsided, all he heard was the Collectors' angered grunts. He couldn't find his voice--he choked on any words forming on his lips--rubbing the barbs of pain from his ankle. He blinked in the darkness, searching for clarity or understanding to this situation, but was left wanting. A shovel prodded his calf, urging him on.

"Okay, okay." Wondering if his ankle was broken, Gerald pressed on, following at the pace of his Collectors, not wanting to further anger them.

He lost all sense of time, but hours had passed, surely, since he first entered the dark tunnel. He hadn't coughed since they reached a certain level below ground, a level at least a half mile deep by his educated guess. In fact, he didn't even feel the urge, which had rarely happened in the last decade. Hand over hand he crawled through the lightless void, his knees going numb and his calloused hands sanding down to more sensitive layers for all the friction, yet with all the motion and effort, still no coughing.

He inhaled deeply, his lungs expanding to what he thought was their physical limit, then expanded more, taking in more chilly air. With every fraction of an ounce of additional air, his energy was building, and he could have sworn he felt a tingling in his chest. A good tingling. Warm and… healing. Yes, healing. A wood fire was close, and also, the warm doughy sweetness of… apple pie? In the darkness, Gerald Harris, though tentative and beyond confused, felt a smile crease his lips.

 

 

16.

Cooper finished the last of the dishes, and was wiping down a water spill around the sink's edge. How did she do that? he wondered. Thea Calder was beautiful, but he'd encountered beautiful women before. She hadn't blinded him by batting her eyelashes or offering him a charming smile. He couldn't pinpoint it beyond an unnatural ability for manipulation.

A heady swirl of pipe smoke let Cooper know he wasn't alone.

"She got you pretty good, didn't she?" Henry Calder stood against the doorframe, his thick arms folded across his chest. He offered a knowing smirk. His cob pipe bobbed as he gnawed on its tip, his teeth clicking along its well-chewed surface.

"I suppose she did, Mr. Calder." Cooper worked the dishrag around, chasing spilled water. "I'm sure if I stay for any length of time, I'll wind up cooking for everyone, too." He tossed the dishrag in the sink, finished with his end of the "deal."

Henry Calder laughed, the gruff tenor sounding uncommon for him, as if his voice had long ago forgotten that facility. "I think my daughter could convince a beggar to give up his last penny, and feel good about it, too. Thea's got a good heart, it's just sometimes hard to see." His expression hardened back to what Cooper expected of him. All scowl and jowl.

"I better get going."

"Before you do, can I ask you something?"

"Sure." Cooper had a suspicious feeling. Whenever someone from Coal Hollow asked him a question, it always seemed to lead him to regret.

"If you're going to stay a while, I was curious if you had any leads on what you're going to do?"

"Actually, I was hoping to find out today."

"Well, I might help you with that. It's not much, but it's something."

"You've piqued my interest." Cooper was relieved at Calder's innocuous line of questioning.

"Then follow me."

Cooper followed Henry through the general store and out the front door. He just now noticed the man's limp, how he favored his right leg, shortening his left stride to compensate.

Henry surprised him by heading toward the icehouse. Inside the first door, Calder noticed his pipe had died, so he tapped it empty against his shoe, stowing the pipe in a pocket. Shy of opening the second door, he grabbed a coat from a hook in the corner. He threw it to Cooper. "It's not the greatest, but once inside, you'll be glad for it."

He smelled sour sweat and sawdust as he pulled it on.

Donning a jacket and leather gloves, Calder opened the inner door. After the outside heat, the cold air felt harsh against his face. Cooper couldn't imagine working in the icehouse or for Henry Calder for that matter. He couldn't stop thinking about last night. They'd taken George Banyon's body into the icehouse.

Henry grabbed a lamp from a hook, lighting it with a long stick match. He waved the match like a magician's wand, extinguishing the flame. "Watch your step. Granddad cut those steps himself. It doesn't embarrass me admitting he was a better businessman than stonemason." Henry took an unsteady downward step, gripping the wall as he went.

Cooper thought back to the sight of George Banyon's face after Jane Fowler pulled him from the swamp. Cooper had touched the boy's skin when righting his leg after it had fallen from the makeshift stretcher. The skin had felt impossibly cold in the muggy July night. The boy's gashed cheek had spread wide like a second set of lips. The dead eyes flickered open--

His eyes never flickered, he corrected. He was dead when I found him. Mud filled his eyes. I never saw them.

They climbed down more stairs than he thought possible. The steps weren't close to level, each one beveling at a different angle, as if they climbed the spine of dead and buried monster.

"It's getting harder for me to move around, you see plainly, and I can't expect Thea to lift all these supplies. We store perishables and block ice down here. If I can't get down these steps, there's no way my business can stay afloat. I'd need you to move stock to the storeroom as needed, and on an odd day, help around the store. Also, the ice needs cutting."

It felt colder as they descended. Cooper never imagined seeing his breath in July, but it gushed from his nostrils, quite visible in the lantern glow. Behind them, a crack at the closed door let in a pencil-thin band of sunlight, but it was getting narrower, weaker. The hand-hewn stone and mortar walls disappeared. Bedrock cold as frozen February surrounded them as they left the stairs and entered a subterranean room.

"Granddad might've cut the stairs, but for the most part, the dimensions of this icehouse are God's work," Calder said with a flourish. The room's ceiling hardly allowed for Cooper to stand upright. Henry's lamp illuminated the room. Rows of rough wooden shelves held boxes and crates. The floor was bare and nearly as smooth as a man-made surface.

"How come it's so cold down here?" Cooper's teeth verged on clattering.

Henry limped down an aisle and appeared to be taking note of the stock levels of certain perishables. Without looking, he ducked a low stretch of ceiling. "I don't know all the particulars, but Granddad was on his way from Ohio to California to make himself rich. Somehow, when he stopped here to re-supply and rest his horses, he discovered the shaft leading to this room. No one's figured out the reasoning behind the cold. I'd rather not open it up for world discussion, neither. This land's allowed my family to live comfortable for three generations now. I'm not going to let nothing spoil that."

"I don't blame you."

Calder continued his tour. Large ice blocks filled nooks in the stone walls. Ice hooks as long as Cooper's arm hung on nails driven below one of the wooden shelves. He also noticed work gloves and thick-toothed ice saws.

"Usually right after New Years, we harvest the ice from the Illinois River. I hire on local boys, mostly. They work hard, the older ones, and you don't need to pay them much. But then again, they aren't the most responsible people on the planet."

"I know what you mean."

"Ice doesn't melt a bit once we lug it down here, only shrinks some from evaporation," Calder said, then paused. His voice dropped in pitch as he continued, "Now don't get me wrong, I can understand Sheriff Bergman thinking it was a good idea to bring George's body down here last night, but I want him buried soon as possible. This is an icehouse, not a morgue."

Cooper followed Henry down the last aisle into a small open area beyond the last wooden shelf. A waist-high workbench lined the wall. Burlap sacks covered an oblong mound the length of the table. Cooper didn't need to ask what lay hidden beneath.

"What do you say?"

After letting the words sink in, Cooper responded. "Oh, the work, the ice cutting and stocking. Sure, I'm up for it," he said, not sure if he meant it.

"Great. Can you start tomorrow?"

"Sure. Whenever you want."

"It's a deal then." Henry Calder seemed relieved Cooper had accepted his offer. He clamped him on the shoulder with a gloved hand and let out a short laugh. "Let's get our asses out of here before we freeze them off."

They walked back the way they had come, faster now with the cold setting in. Tomorrow, when Cooper started his new job, he would be sharing his work space with a dead body. He imagined using one of the thick-toothed saws to cut a block of ice, working hard enough to break a sweat in the icehouse's frigid depths, only to glance at the back wall, at the workbench and the burlap sacks. The coarse brown burlap shifting, the dead boy silently sitting up at the waist, his eyes opening, staring at Cooper.

"Shee-ite, it's cold as hell down here. Don't know how I ever managed to do all this work myself."

Cooper checked the workbench before it was out of view. He was fairly certain the burlap didn't move.

 

 

17.

Sitting in front of her vanity mirror, Thea Calder ran a soft-bristled brush through her brown locks. As a child she would count the strokes, reaching one hundred on each side as well as the back. While still fretful over her hair's luster, something else concerned her more, something that would lead to her inevitable ruin. She placed the brush next to its matching comb and leaned closer to her reflection. She opened her eyes wide then scrunched them almost closed. It wasn't her eyes themselves that worried her, but the slight lines at the corners. Wrinkles. They would be her death. Wrinkles spelled out demise in the hardest irrevocable lines across a woman's face. As indelible as Hester Prin's adulterous letter A.

Yes, the crease was more distinct today. Would be more so tomorrow. She could tear the ears from that new boarder's head for making her so angry. Wandering around their living quarters as if he were a member of their family--

How could this happen to her? She was only twenty-six. With the precautions she took, she could often pass for a schoolgirl around people who didn't know her. She was reeling on the edge of some precarious cliff. Every day sent her leaning farther; soon her momentum would be too great, and she would tumble down, tumble to her ruin. Someday she would be old.

She pulled back from her reflection, knowing that fretting made it worse. Instead, she focused on her best qualities. Her flowing chocolate curls always brought her attention and praise. She pursed her full lips into a bow as if ready to kiss the mirror, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a hanky. Perhaps it wasn't so bad. Perhaps no one had noticed the new wrinkle.

If not, then they will someday, she thought unavoidably. Someday soon.

That was the real reason she had only two speaking parts during her time in California. Directors would say her face was fine, but her voice was fit for silent film. She could see through their lies. They watched her aging before their eyes. She could no longer pass for demure and innocent. Her appearance was heading straight for matronly.

Looking at the mirror, just over her reflection's shoulder, she sensed movement. Startled, she turned around, modestly holding a hand across her bosom as if she weren't dressed. The window was growing pale as the sun lost its strength. But she saw nothing unusual.

But it felt like eyes were on her. Somewhere out of sight, lurking in the shadows. Still there.

She knew this feeling well. Ever since her body had started to change at the age of twelve. The lecherous glare of a man. Any man. Married or not, young or old. Eyes on her, kneading her flesh with their lustful stares.

She wouldn't stand for this indiscretion. She stood quickly, toppling the stool. The narrow ledge outside her second floor window would be just wide enough for a particularly vulgar man to clamor along to gaze through her bedroom window.

A name popped into her head, and she felt right away she'd hit the nail squarely on its proverbial head.

Bo Tingsley. That lecherous bastard. First, lusting after her mother. Hoping to pry her away from her family to make her his own. People had always said Thea bore a striking resemblance to her mother. She wouldn't put it past the little bastard to redirect his lust toward her.

Without a lick of fear in her heart, she peered out the window, her nose an inch from the glass, checking at the widest possible angles for any sign of movement. She caught sight of someone's leg as he scurried along the narrow ledge and around the corner and out of sight. Full of rage, Thea Calder headed for her bedroom door. But before she could leave the room she obeyed a compulsion that had guided her life for as long as she could remember. She hastened back to the vanity mirror, checked her face, pushed an errant curl from her eyes. Then and only then could she leave her room.

That Bo Tingsley. How long has he been spying on me?

She fumed as she stormed down the hall, down the stairway and to the backdoor leading to the alley. She clenched her fingers into coiled-rope fists. This wouldn't do. Wouldn't do at all. Once she told Bo a thing or two, she would need to relax. Relax the stress from her face.

"Dear?" her father called out as she rushed by.

She heard him perfectly, but wasn't about to foist this trouble on him. She could take care of herself. He sighed at her brusqueness--such a familiar response, she noted. Indignant, he would withdraw to his dimly lit den, smoke his noxious-smelling pipe, and disappear into the memories of when their family was whole.

Thea put her father out of mind, reaching the backdoor and throwing it open. The outside stairwell angled over the doorway, leaving her standing in shadow.

The stench of rotting flesh nearly overpowered her. How wrong could she have been? She gasped as a cold hand grasped her wrist. It forced her to turn aside, her eyes taking in the horrible sight. Slick and wretched flesh falling in clumps from rotting bones. Gray lips forming a morbid sneer. Flies buzzing in frenzied feeding. And recognizing the man's eyes. Glints of starlight hovering near the pupils. Intelligent and intense. Green irises still swimming with life. So unlike the rest of his body.

She wanted to scream, but could only close her eyes as the man pulled her close. Her stomach pitched and rolled, but she willed herself to steady. The man's decayed lips brushed against hers before she could shy away, taking a step back.

"I couldn't wait to see you." The thing's voice grumbled unnervingly from around his decomposing vocal cords.

Taking in the sight of his rotting carcass and his vile odor--a mad shiver swept through Thea's limbs. She wanted to run away, flee his touch.

But they did have an arrangement. Even if he wasn't supposed to come to her, they still had an arrangement.

"Let's get out of here before you're seen. You damn fool."

Thea continued to scold Ethan Cartwright long after they found sanctuary within the bowels of the earth.