Mystery Walk

running away across the field. Ricky looked back and shouted, 'See ya later, Billy! Okay?'

He waved halfheartedly, distressed about the battered books, and then began picking them up. He turned to pick up his arithmetic book, and Melissa Pettus, wearing a dress as green as the new grass of April, held it out to him. There were flecks of yellow pollen on her rosy cheeks; her hair shone in the sunshine like waves of spun gold, and she was smiling shyly.

'Thanks,' Billy said, and took it from her. What do you say to girls? he asked himself, as he dusted the books off on the front of his shirt. Then he started walking for home again, aware that Melissa was walking a few feet to his left. She made him nervous down in the bottom of his stomach.

'I saw your books fall,' Melissa said after another moment.

'Yeah. They're okay, though. Just dusty.'

'I made a hundred on the spellin' test today.'

'Oh.' He'd only made an eighty-five. 'I missed a couple of hard words.'

Yellow butterflies swooped through the grass at their approach. The noise from the sawmill sounded like a big cricket hurnming up in the woods, interrupted by the chugging of conveyor belts hauling cut lumber Before them, heatwaves shimmered across the field.

What do you say to a girl? he asked himself again, feeling panic-stricken. 'Do you like the Lone Ranger?'

She shrugged. 'I don't know.'

'Last Saturday night we went to the movie in Fayette and know what we saw? The Lone Ranger and the Canyon of Gold, but I fell asleep before it was over There was too much talkin'. He rides on a horse named Silver and he shoots silver bullets.'

'Why?'

He glanced at her, startled by the question. ' 'Cause silver bullets kill the bad guys faster,' he explained. 'There were Indians in the movie too, they were 'Patchee Indians. I've got some Indian in me, did you know that? I'm part Choctaw, my momma says; they were the forest tribe that lived around here a long time ago. They hunted and fished and lived in huts.'

'I'm an American,' Melissa said. 'If you're an Indian, how come you don't wear war paint and moccasins?'

' 'Cause I'm not on the warpath, that's why. Anyway, my momma says the Choctaws were peaceful and didn't like to fight.'

Melissa thought he was cute, but she'd heard strange things about the Creekmores from her parents: that the witch-woman kept jars of bats' wings, lizard eyes, and graveyard dirt on shelves in her kitchen; that the needlepoint pictures she made were the most intricate anyone had ever seen because demons helped her do them in the dead of night; and that Billy, who looked so much like his mother and not at all like his father, must be tainted with sinful blood too, bubbling in his veins like the red morass in a hag's stewpot. But whether all that was true or not, Melissa liked him; she wouldn't let him walk her all the way home, though, for fear her parents might see them together.

They were nearing the place where Melissa turned off onto the path for home. 'I've got to go now,' Melissa told him. ' 'Bye!' She cradled her books and walked off along the path, weeds catching at the hem of her dress.

'Good-bye!' Billy called after her 'Thanks for helpin' with my books!' He thought for a moment that she wouldn't turn, but then she did—with a sunny smile—and he felt himself melting into his shoes like a grape Popsicle. The sky seemed as big as the world, and as blue as the special plates Gram had made for his mother's birthday last month. Billy turned in the opposite direction and walked across Kyle Field, heading homeward. He found a dime in his pocket, went into the Quik-Pik store, and bought a Butterfinger, eating it as he walked along the highway. Girl friend, girl friend, Billy's got a girl friend. Maybe Melissa was his girl friend, he thought suddenly. The heat of shame flamed his face as he thought of magazine covers he'd seen in the grocery store: True Love, Love Stories, and Young Romance. People were always kissing on those covers, getting his attention while he paged through the comic books.

A shadow fell across him. He looked up at the Booker house.

Billy froze. The green house was turning gray, the paint peeling in long strips; the dirty white shutters hung at broken angles around rock-shattered windows. The front door sagged on its hinges, and across it was written in red paint, private property! Keep out! Weeds and vines were creeping up the walls, green clinging vines of the forest reclaiming its territory. Billy thought he caught a soft, muffled sigh on the breeze, and he remembered that sad poem Mrs. Cullens had read to the class once, about the house that nobody lived in; he would have to get his feet moving now, he knew, or soon he'd feel the sadness in the air.

But he didn't move. He'd promised his daddy, back in January after it had happened, that he wouldn't go near this house, wouldn't stop in front of it just as he was doing now. He'd kept that promise for over three months, but he passed the Booker house twice a day on the walk to and from school and he'd found himself being drawn closer and closer to it, only a step or so at a time. Standing right in front of it, its shadow cast over him like a cold sheet, was the closest he'd ever come. His curiosity was tempting him to climb those steps to the front porch. He was sure there were mysteries waiting to be solved in that house, that when he stepped inside and looked for himself all the puzzling things about why Mr Booker had gone crazy and hurt his family would be revealed like a magician's trick.

His mother had tried to explain to him about Death, that the Bookers had 'passed away' to another place and that Will had probably 'passed away' too, but no one knew exactly where his body lay sleeping. She said he was most likely asleep back in the forest somewhere, lying on a bed of dark green moss, his head cradled on a pillow of decaying leaves, white mushrooms sprouting around him like tiny candles to reassure him against the dark.

Billy climbed two of the steps and stood staring at the front door. He'd promised his daddy he wouldn't go in! he agonized, but he didn't step down. It seemed to him to be like the story of Adam and Eve his daddy had read to him several times; he wanted to be good and live in the Garden, but this house—the murder house, everybody called it—was the Forbidden Fruit of Knowledge about how and why Will Booker had been called away by the Lord, and where Will had 'passed away' to. He shivered on the hard edge of a decision.

Sometimes it seemed that when he'd tried to walk past this house without looking at it he could hear a soft, yearning sound through the trees that always made him look up; sometimes he imagined he heard his name whispered, and once he thought he'd seen a small figure standing behind one of the broken windows, waiting for him to pass. Know what I heard? Johnny Parker had asked him just a few days ago. The Booker house is full of ghosts! My daddy says for me not to play around there, 'cause at night people see funny lights and they hear screams! Old man Keller told my daddy Mr. Booker cut Katy's head off and set it on a bedpost, and my daddy thinks Mr. Booker hacked Will up into little pieces and scattered him all over the woods! . . .

Will was my best friend, Billy thought; there's nothing in that house that would hurt me. . . . Just one look, his curiosity urged.

He gazed off along the highway, thinking about his father busy at work in the cornfield, tending the new spring shoots. Just one look. Billy laid his books down on the steps. He climbed up and stood before the sagging door, his heartbeat quickening; the door had never looked so massive before, the inside of the house never so dark and full of mysteries. The Adam and Eve story flashed through his mind, like one last chance at turning back; Once you sin, he thought, once you go where you're not supposed to, you can never go back to the way it was before; once you step out of the Garden and into the Dark, it's too late. . . .

A bluejay shrieked, scaring him almost right out of his shoes. He thought he heard his name called in a hushed sigh of breath, and he listened hard but didn't hear it again. Momma's callin' me from the house, he told himself, 'cause I'm already so late. I'm gonna get a whippin'! He glanced to his left, at the ragged hole where the troopers had searched for Will under the porch. Then he grasped the door's edge and pulled it partway open. The bottom of the door scraped across the porch like a scream, and dry dusty air came roiling out of the house into his face.

Once you step out of the Garden, and into the Dark . . .

He took a deep breath of stale air and stepped across the threshold into the murder house.