NINE

Billy felt miserable while handcuffing Mrs. Shelton’s wrists behind the spindle-back cane chair in her kitchen. He squatted behind her, afraid that with the slightest roughness he’d tear through the liver-spotted skin of her frail wrists. He just hoped Mrs. Shelton wouldn’t remind him that she’d changed his diapers when he was a baby. Billy had never wanted to be a deputy, but when the Elders gave orders, there was no choice.

Everything about her kitchen was as he remembered. The flowered wallpaper, the lace curtains, the china set out as decoration. She’d put cookies and milk on the table before he could find the courage to tell her why he had knocked on her door.

Billy rose from the floor.

“If it hurts,” Billy said, “let me know. Maybe I can put a dishrag or something under the cuffs.”

“It’s a shame you have to do this.” She’d been a widow for two decades, the type of woman who stayed busy in the town, helping out where needed with the energy and mannerisms of a sparrow.

“Ma’am,” Billy said. “No offense. Sheriff Carney advised me against any conversation with you.”

Billy stood in front of her now, not quite able to meet her eyes. He focused on her forehead instead. A couple of deep blue veins pulsed under the surface of her translucent skin.

“No conversation?” Her smile faltered, adding to Billy’s misery.

“He said you were dangerous.”

“Sheriff Carney is afraid of a seventy-two-year-old woman?”

“No. He said I should be.”

“There’s nobody in the county bigger and stronger than you, Billy Jasper. How could I be any danger?”

“You managed to keep me talking,” Billy said. “I shouldn’t say anything more.”

“You can at least tell me why you’re doing this,” she said.

Billy did have orders to cover that. He pulled a vidpod from the back pocket of his deputy uniform and held the small rectangular screen in front of Mrs. Shelton’s face.

“I’m not wearing my glasses,” she said. “They are on the counter.”

Billy found them folded, beside the sink. He unfolded them and placed the wire frame gently on Mrs. Shelton’s nose, tucking the arms onto her ears. A couple wisps of her gray hair had fallen from the bun piled high on her head. He pushed them out of the way.

“You’re a kind young man,” she said. “I always liked that about you.”

No conversation, he reminded himself. He’d already slipped.

Billy touched the screen to play the arrest and search warrant for Mrs. Shelton. To authenticate the authority of the warrant, a face on the screen appeared briefly: Bar Elohim. Then Sheriff Carney’s image, speaking the words recorded for this occasion.

Carney spoke in monotone. “By the power vested in me through God and Bar Elohim, this arrest warrant is served on Gloria Shelton on charges of sedition against the state. A simultaneous search warrant of the Shelton residence and grounds has been issued to provide evidence for the arrest charge.”

“Who was it?” Mrs. Shelton said, sighing.

“Ma’am?”

“Who was it that turned me in?”

Billy had been hoping Mrs. Shelton would deny wrongdoing. When he was a boy, she’d always had a pitcher of lemonade ready for children in the neighborhood.

“You know I can’t answer that,” Billy said. Here he was, somehow engaged in conversation again.

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

Billy was a new deputy. Carney didn’t tell him who his informants were. He saw her vidpod on a desk on the far wall of the kitchen and took the opportunity to avoid her question. “I’ll need to transfer this warrant so you have a record of it. Is your infrared activated?”

Mrs. Shelton nodded. Billy beamed the information. It was required as part of any arrest.

“When I was a girl,” she said, “we didn’t have vidpods. Information was written down to be recorded.”

“With vidpods, you don’t need to write anything,” Billy answered after the small beep told him the transfer was complete. “This is easier and more efficient.”

Billy’s personal vidpod held everything he needed to know or reference. The filing system had folders with icons. When Bar Elohim needed to speak to all of Appalachia, the message was uploaded automatically on to every vidpod in every household. The vidpod was programmed to beep until the recipient listened to the directive. Billy hated letting the vidpod beep because it sounded to him like a little voice saying that he was sinning against God, so he always listened to his messages right after receiving them.

“Vidpods keep you from needing the ability to read,” Mrs. Shelton said.

There it was. In the open. She was almost admitting that she broke the law.

“Ma’am,” Billy said, “I have to search your house. For books. And your Bible.”

Then he realized he was talking to her again.

“Aren’t you curious,” she asked, “what it would be like to read books? What you might learn beyond what Bar Elohim permits?”

Carney had been right. She was dangerous. Like the snake, offering fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil.

“Ma’am, I’ve respected you since I was a boy. I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

He couldn’t stop himself from answering. Remaining silent seemed too cruel to Mrs. Shelton.

“Did the informer give Sheriff Carney a list of everyone?”

Everyone. Now Billy knew it was true. She’d also been secretly teaching people to read.

“No more conversation, Mrs. Shelton. I’m sorry.”

“If he doesn’t have a list, he’s going to make me give him names. You know that, don’t you? He’s going to hurt me.”

Billy didn’t want to think about it. But he knew that people shouldn’t break the law. “You want to tell me where to find the books? There’ll be less of a mess that way.”

Mrs. Shelton had always liked her house neat, Billy remembered.

She opened her mouth as if to respond, then leaned toward her middle, groaning. “My stomach!”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s my medication,” she said. “Every morning about now, it sends me running to the toilet. Please don’t make me dirty myself here in my kitchen.”

“Of course not,” Billy said. “You promise you won’t try to run?”

She managed to smile. “From a strong, handsome young man like you?”

Billy blushed.

She grimaced again, bending over. “Hurry!”

Billy unshackled her. He helped her from the chair to her feet. She leaned on his arm as he led her down the hallway, past the photos of her children and her grandchildren and her long-dead husband. She still smelled of peppermint and perfume.

“Thank you, Billy,” she said at the door to the bathroom. “You always were a nice young man.”

“You won’t try to leave through the window?”

“I’m seventy-two.”

“Yes ma’am,” Billy said. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”

The kitchen jutted out from the house. From there, he’d still be able to see the door in the hallway. As well as the neat yard outside. If she actually did try to escape, he’d see that too.

“Don’t forget the cookies, then,” she said. “Not much sense letting them go to waste.”

She closed the door.

Halfway through the second cookie, Billy thought he smelled kerosene. Then smoke.

He frowned, glanced around him.

Black smoke curled from beneath the door down the hallway.

It only took a single punch against the door to force it open. He saw her on the floor. Limp. A small vial had fallen from her hand, and little pills were scattered on the floor. Flames were rising around her, already crackling and devouring a pile of books in the bathtub. The door to the cupboard under the sink was open and empty.

Billy faced a grim choice. Find a way to fight the flames. Or carry Mrs. Shelton away from danger.

He lifted her onto his shoulders and ran back down the hallway.