Mystery Walk

'When you feel like talkin' about it, I'll listen.' Then John rose from the bed, feeling sure Billy had just stumbled onto a snake up in the woods and he'd be more careful next time, and went to the kitchen, where Ramona was laboring over a woodburning stove. The kitchen was filled with late afternoon sunlight and smelled of fresh vegetables from several pots on the stove.

'Is he any better?' Ramona asked.

'He's quieted down some. What did he say to you when he first came in?'

'Nothing. He couldn't talk, he was sobbing so hard. I just picked him up and held him, and then you came in from the field.'

'Yeah,' John said grimly. 'I saw his face. I've seen sun-bleached sheets that had more color in 'em. I can't figure out what he might've gotten into.' He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

'I think he'll want to sleep for a while. When he wants to talk about it, he'll let us know.'

'Yeah. Know what he said he wanted? A Butterfinger, of all crazy things!' He paused, watching his wife take plates out of the cupboard and set them on the small dinner table, and then jingled the few loose coins in his pocket. 'Maybe I'll drive down to the store to get him one before they close up. Might ease his mind. That suit you?'

She nodded. 'I'll have your supper on the table in ten minutes.'

John took the car keys from his pocket and left the house. Ramona stood over the stove until she heard the engine start and car pull away. Then she took the pots off their burners, checked the corn muffins, and hurried into the bedroom, wiping her callused hands on her apron. Her eyes were shining like polished amber stones as she stood over the bed, staring down at her son. Softly, she said, 'Billy?'

He stirred but did not answer. She laid a hand on his cheek. 'Billy? We've got to talk. Quickly, before your father comes back.'

'No . . .' he whimpered, his mouth pressed against the pillow.

'I want to know where you went. I want to know what happened. Billy, please look at me.'

After a few seconds he turned his head so he could see her from the corner of a swollen eye; he was still shaking with sobs he was too weak to let go of.

'I think you went someplace where your daddy didn't want you to go. Didn't you? I think you went to the Booker house.' The boy tensed. 'If not inside it, then very close to it. Is that right?'

Billy shivered, his hands gripping at the covers. New tears broke over his cheeks, and like a dam bursting everything came flooding out of him at once. He cried forlornly, 'I didn't mean to go in there, I promise I didn't! I wasn't bad! But I heard ... I heard ... I heard it in the basement and I ... I had to go see what it was and it was ... it was . . . awful!' His face contorted with agony and Ramona reached for him, hugging him close. She could feel his heartbeat racing in his chest.

But she had to find out, before John returned. 'What did you see?' she asked.

'No! Can't . . . can't tell. Please don't make me!'

'Something in the basement?'

Billy shuddered; the illusion he'd been building in his mind, that it had all been just a particularly nasty nightmare, was falling apart at the seams like wet and rotten cloth. 'I didn't see anything!'

Ramona gripped his shoulders and looked deeply into his swollen eyes. 'Your daddy's going to be back in a few minutes. He's a good man in his heart, Billy, and I love his heart, but I want you to remember this: your daddy is afraid, and he strikes out at what he fears because he doesn't understand it. He loves us; he loves you more than anything in the world, and I love you too, more than you'll ever know. But now you have to trust me, son. Did . . . whatever you see speak to you?'

Billy's gaze had gone glassy. He nodded his head with an effort, a strand of saliva breaking from his half-open mouth and trailing downward.

'I thought so,' Ramona said gently. Her eyes were shining, but there was a deep sadness in her face too, and a certainty of the trouble to come. He's only a little boy! she thought. He's not strong enough yet! She bit her lower lip to keep her face from collapsing in a sob. 'I love you,' she told him. 'I'll always be there when you need me. . . .'

The sounds of the sawmill's steam whistle and the screen door slamming came at almost the same time, making them both jump.

'Supper on yet?' John called from the front room.

Ramona kissed her son's cheek and eased his head back down on the pillow: Billy curled up again, staring sightlessly. Shock, she thought. I was like that too, the first time it happened to me. He would bear watching for the next few days.

John was standing in the doorway when Ramona looked up. He was holding two Butterfinger candy bars in his right hand, and with his left seemed to be supporting himself in the doorframe; Ramona knew it was her imagination, and perhaps a trick of the dusky afternoon light that cloaked his shoulders from behind, but he seemed to have aged ten years since he'd left the house. There appeared to be a sickness behind his eyes. A weary smile worked across his lips, and he came forward to offer the candy bars to Billy. 'Here you go, son. Feelin' better?'

Billy took them gratefully, though he wasn't hungry and couldn't figure out why his father had brought them.

'Your face looks like a puffball,' John said. 'Guess you took a wrong turn in the woods and saw a snake, huh?' He gently ruffed the boy's hair before Billy could reply, and said, 'Well, you've got to watch your step. You don't want to scare some poor timber rattler half to death, do you?'

For the first time that afternoon, Billy managed a tentative smile; Ramona thought, He's going to be all right.

'I'll put supper on the table now,' she said, touching her son's cheek softly, and then walked past John—who stepped suddenly away from her, as if fearful of being contaminated—and into the hallway. She saw that John had left the front door open, and closed it against the evening chill.

And as she turned to go to the kitchen she saw the dusty set of schoolbooks lying on a chair.

10

As the pearly-white '58 Cadillac limousine, sparkling from its showroom wax job, its sharp rear fins jutting up like the tail of a Martian spacecraft, pulled up to the entranceway of the Tutwiler Hotel in downtown Birmingham, an elderly black doorman in a dark red uniform and cap was already coming down the marbled steps, eager to find out just who was riding in the rear seat of that spiffy automobile. Having worked for over twenty years at the Tutwiler—the finest hotel in Alabama—he was accustomed to celebrities, but he knew from a quick appraisal of that Caddy that behind those tinted rear windows was American sugar. He noticed the shining chrome hood ornament in the shape of clasped, praying hands. He reached the sidewalk and thrust out his frail hand to let the passenger out.

But the door fairly burst open before he could get a grip on it, and from the Caddy uncoiled a giant of a man in a bright yellow suit, spotless white shirt, and white silk tie; the man rose to a height well over six feet, his chest expanding like a yellow wall.

'Fine afternoon, isn't it?' the man boomed. At the crest of his high forehead was a curly mass of gray-flecked blond hair; he had the kind of handsome, square face that made him look like a human nutcracker, ready to burst walnuts between perfect white teeth.

'Yessir, sure is,' the doorman said, nodding his gray-wooled head, aware that pedestrians on the Twentieth Street sidewalk were turning to gawk, caught by the sound of power in the man's voice.

Realizing he was the center of attention, the man beamed like sunlight on a July Sunday; he said, 'Just take it around the corner and park it,' addressing the Caddy's driver, a young man in a seersucker suit, and the long sleek car pulled away from the curb like a stretching lion.

'Yessir, nice afternoon,' the doorman said, his eyes still jangling from that glowing suit.

The man grinned and thrust a hand into his inside coat pocket; the doorman grinned too— American sugar!—and reached out with the obligatory 'Thankee, sir!' already on his lips. Paper was put into his palm, and then the giant man had taken two long steps and was moving up the marbled stairs like a golden locomotive. The doorman stepped back a pace, as if scorched by energy. When he looked at what he held gripped in his hand, he saw a small pamphlet titled Sin Destroyed the Roman Empire;