The Burning

'So how's your mom doing?'

Jolene shrugged. 'The same.'

'Are you staying with her?'

'For the moment.'

'Ah, the old dynamics never change, do they?'

'Not really,' she admitted.

'You could always bunk with me while you're in town. I have plenty of room.'

'Lezzie Finch!' Jolene said in a tone of mock shock.

Leslie threw a napkin at her. 'I can't believe you remember that!'

Both of them laughed. The frustrated boys on the varsity football team had dubbed her 'Lezzie' their senior year because two of them had asked her out and she'd turned them down. It was a nickname that had spread rapidly through Bear Flats High. Jolene's own sexuality had been called into question because of her friendship with Leslie and her complete disdain for nearly everyone and everything in Bear Flats- including the boys. Not that she'd cared. One advantage of having no respect for your peers was that it removed the power of peer pressure.

'So are you back permanently,' Leslie asked, 'or just here for a visit?'

Jolene glanced at Skylar. 'That's up in the air.'

Her friend nodded.

They finished eating, going into more detail about people they'd known in high school and what had become of them. A few more patrons had come into the restaurant while they ate, but the place was by no means crowded, and Jolene asked, 'Is business always this slow?'

'Lately,' Leslie admitted. 'That new McDonald's is killing us. It's the off-season, though. Once the mill's at full capacity and people are employed again, things'U pick up.' She downed the last of her iced tea. 'Why don't the two of you stop by my house? I'd love to show it to you. You're not in any hurry to get back, are you?'

'No,' Jolene said. 'But can you afford to take time off?' She leaned forward conspiratorially. 'That waitress is already mad at you. She keeps looking over here.'

Leslie laughed. 'Audra? That's just the way she is. Don't sweat it. Besides, this is a special occasion. And, conscientious worker that I am, I have enough sick and vacation time saved up to take a cruise to China. I practically live in this building. Come on, it'll just take twenty minutes or so. If there's a problem here, have my cell. They can reach me.'

Jolene nodded, smiling. 'Okay. Sounds great.'

Leslie went over to talk to their waitress and the other employees before heading back to her office. 'I'll meet you outside!' she called out. 'It'll just be a moment!'

Jolene took out three dollars for a tip and left it on the table. Their meal might be comped, but she still didn't want to stiff the waitress. Skylar used his straw to suck up the last of his lemonade, and the two of them walked outside to wait. After the dimness of the restaurant, the world seemed impossibly bright, and they were both still blinking when Leslie emerged from the building. She was wearing sunglasses, obviously an old hand at this transition thing.

'I'm just over there on Bluebird Lane, past the Presbyterian church. We could drive, but I usually like to walk. Would that be okay? take a shortcut through the woods behind Ray's.'

Jolene laughed. 'Is that the path where we used to-?'

'The very one.'

'With the graves?'

'Yep.'

'Graves?' Skylar said worriedly. It was the first time he'd spoken since ordering his lunch.

'It's daytime,' Jolene reassured him. 'And we'll just be passing by. Besides, I'm here.' She took his hand and squeezed it, and he squeezed back. These days, he usually considered himself too old to be holding his mom's hand, especially in public, but he did not let go as the two of them followed Leslie across the small parking lot and down the sidewalk.

The path had hardly changed. It no longer started in a vacant lot, beginning instead in the narrow empty space between two recently erected buildings, but once she was off the street, everything was familiar. Jolene could not recall the last time she'd been here, but her feet remembered the details and idiosyncrasies of the trail as though it were yesterday, automatically stepping over a half-buried boulder protruding from the hard-packed earth, skirting to the left to avoid a sticker bush around the first bend. She would have expected the trees and underbrush to have become overgrown or burned or cut down or changed in some way-and perhaps they had-but to her eye everything looked exactly the same. The old oak they'd christened the hanging tree silhouetted against the midday sun, the line of knotty pines that delineated the upper and lower halves of the town, the view of the sawmill's smokestack above the woods-everything was just as she remembered it.

Leslie in the lead, they walked through the forested area just above Bluebird Lane. Ahead, in the darkest part of the copse, Jolene could see a square of white picket fence set off from the trail on a small sunken section of ground. Within that square, she knew, were two graves with their weathered granite tombstones reading simply, Mother and Daughter. The graves had been there since before anyone in town could remember, and the rumor had always been that the unnamed mother and daughter were witches. Why else hadn't they been buried in the pioneer cemetery with everyone else? Why else were their names unmentioned on the gravestones? Generations of kids had frightened their siblings, their friends and themselves making up stories about this trail and the grave site, and Jolene and Leslie had been no different. One summer in junior high, they'd even teamed with Jimmy Payton and Cal Smyth and charged a quarter for fake haunted tours. They'd taken kids down the path, making up stories about gruesome events that they said had happened at various spots, culminating in a trip to the grave site, where Jimmy, dressed in black and wearing a mask, had jumped out from behind a tree and sent everyone running screaming up the trail the way they'd come.

The four of them had made over twenty dollars that summer.

'Want to know something freaky?' Leslie asked as they passed by the picket fence. 'I've heard shit from there.' She glanced quickly at Skylar. 'Stuff, I mean. I've heard stuff. Sorry,' she told Jolene. 'I didn't-'

'It's nothing he hasn't heard from his father,' Jolene said. She looked at Skylar. 'But that's still a bad word, right?'

'I know, Mom.'

'Okay.'

'Anyway,' Leslie said, 'I know you're not going to believe me, but every once in a while I walk by here- and it's not even night, sometimes it's in the middle of the day like now-and I hear ... I don't know, like, mumbling or something. Chanting. The first time, I thought it was the wind or sound carrying up from the street, some sort of aural illusion. I even thought it might be a trick, some kid's high-tech version of our haunted tour; I thought there might be a hidden speaker with a tape loop or something. But the second time, I was brave, and I walked over and ...' She took a deep breath. 'It was definitely coming from one of the graves. I couldn't tell which one. I just ran.'

It was not hard for Jolene to believe. She looked to the left. Even in the daytime, the grave site exuded an aura of dread, and although she was a grown woman, she felt the same way she had as a child and as a teenager, experienced the same sense of irrational foreboding. She'd forgotten that feeling, and she wished now that they'd driven, that Skylar had not seen the grave site. She glanced down at him. As always, his expression was unreadable, serious, grave.

Grave.

'How many times have you heard things?' she asked.

'Four,' Leslie admitted.

'And you still walk this way?'

'Yeah. But it's been a while since the last one. And it's not all that scary after the first few times. You kind of get used to it.'

Still, they were silent until they were past the site, until the square of white pickets had been swallowed by bushes and weeds and could no longer be seen behind them.

'Who paints that fence?' Jolene asked. 'Did anybody ever figure that out?'

'Good question,' Leslie said. 'I don't know the answer. Maybe someone does, but it's not general knowledge.'