'Will he be safe?' Ramona asked as they walked to the house, following the track of Rebekah's lantern.
'I hope so. He saw his twin natures, the good and the bad at war inside him, and he looked the shape changer in the face.' They reached the back door, and Ramona stopped to peer through the darkness at the smokehouse. Rebekah laid a hand on her shoulder 'Billy's already being poked and prodded, picked at for a weak spot. I didn't know it would start so soon. He resisted this time, but it won't return in that form again. No, the foe will be different and stronger. But so will Billy be, different and stronger.'
'Should he know about the black aura yet?'
'No. He'll grow into seeing it, just like you did. I don't want to put that on him just yet.' She regarded her daughter, her head cocked to one side. 'He'll sleep through the day. If you hear him cry out, you're not to go in there and wake him up. His old life is being shattered so the new one can start. Do you understand?'
'Yes,' Ramona said. 'It's just that . . . he's alone.'
'And that's how it has to be. After these three days are over you might be at his side, but the rest of the way he has to go alone. You knew that before you brought him to me.' Rebekah squeezed her daughter's shoulder gently. 'I was wrong about him; his blood may be tainted, but his heart and soul are strong. He'll make you proud, girl. Now come on and I'll make us a pot of tea.'
Ramona nodded and followed her mother into the house, shutting the screen door quietly.
Within the smokehouse, the boy had curled up like an infant about to emerge into light.
FIVE
'Billy?' Coy Granger called out toward the grocery store's small magazine rack. 'Found it for you!' He held up a dusty plastic-wrapped needlepoint kit. 'It was buried in a box back in the storeroom. Now you say you need some roofin' nails?'
Billy had grown into a handsome young man in the seven years since he'd visited his grandmother and sweated himself into a stupor in her smokehouse. Still, there was a wariness in his eyes, a careful shell to protect himself against the whispers he overheard in the halls of Fayette County High. They could talk about him all they liked; he didn't care, but once he heard his mother's or grandmother's name mentioned, he turned upon the offender with a vengeance. He wasn't mean, though, and was unprepared for the mean tricks used in after-school fights by country boys who were growing up to be the spitting images of their fathers; crotch kicks and eye gouges were common, and many times Billy had found himself ringed by gleefully shouting kids while his face banged into somebody's kneecap. There was no one he could really call a close friend, though he dreamed of being popular and going out on Saturday nights to Fayette with the gregarious bunch of kids who seemed to get along so well with just about everybody. It had taken him a long time to accept the fact that people were afraid of him; he saw it in their eyes when he walked into a room, heard it when conversations were cut off in his presence. He was different—it was difference enough that he was dark-skinned and obviously of Indian heritage—and since entering Fayette County High he'd been effectively isolated. His crust of caution went deep, protecting his self-respect and his still-childlike sense of wonder at the world.
He read a lot—damaged hardbacks and paperback novels he sometimes found at garage sales. He'd come across a real find several weeks ago: a boxful of old
His curiosity always burned within him to take one more step, to just round the next curve or top the next ridge; the world was beckoning him away from Hawthorne, away from the house where his quiet mother and his grim-lipped father waited for him.
'Here you go,' Granger said, and laid the packs of nails on the counter along with the other items—bread, bacon, sugar, milk, and flour—that Billy had come for. John owed Granger a good deal of money, and sent Billy in for groceries these days; Granger knew the Creekmores were just getting by on the skin of their teeth, and that those roofing nails would be used to try to hold that shack they called a house together for one more hot summer The last time that Granger had demanded his money, at the end of winter, Billy had worked for him in the afternoons for free, delivering groceries; now Billy was working out John Creekmore's gasoline and oil tab at the filling station. 'Want me to put this on your credit?' he asked the boy, trying to keep a hard edge out of his voice; though he honestly liked Billy, his feelings for John Creekmore's credit were showing through.
'No sir,' Billy said, and took out a few dollars from his jeans.
'Well! John go to market early this year?' He started adding up figures on a notepad.
'Mom sold some of her pieces to a dealer in Fayette. I don't think this is enough to take care of what we owe you, but . . .'
Granger took the money and shrugged. 'It's all right. I'll still be here.' He made change and handed back the few coins. 'Too bad John didn't get that job at the sawmill, huh? They pay pretty good up there, I understand.'
'Yes sir, but they only hired five new men, and Dad says over fifty showed up to get work.' Billy started sacking the groceries. 'I guess a lot of folks need the money pretty bad, what with the droughts we've been having.'
'Yes,' Coy agreed. He couldn't think of any family offhand who needed money any worse than the Creekmores. Perhaps the only business that was really thriving in Hawthorne was the Chatham brothers' sawmill; they had owned the family mill for over forty years, still housed in the same run-down wooden structure with most of the same engines and belts running the saws. 'Well, maybe they'll be hirin' more in the fall. Have you given any thought to your own future?'
Billy shrugged. Mr Dawson, who taught auto mechanics at Fayette County, had told him he was pretty quick at catching on to how machines worked and would probably make a good wrench-jockey after high school; the boy's adviser, Mr Marbury, had said his grades were very high in English and reading comprehension, but not quite high enough to get him a junior-college scholarship. 'I don't know. I guess I'll help out my dad for a while.'
Coy grunted. The Creekmore land hadn't produced a good crop in three years. 'You ought to get into the construction business, Billy. I hear some of the contractors up around Fayette are going to be hirin' laborers. That's good pay, too. You know, I think Hawthorne's a losin' proposition for a bright young man like you. I wouldn't say that to just anybody, but there's a real spark in you. You
'My folks need me.' He grinned. 'I'm the only one who can keep the Olds running.'
'Well, that's no kind of a future.' The bell over the front door clanged, and Billy looked up as Mrs. Pettus and Melissa—her radiant blue-eyed face framed by a bell of hair the color of pale summer straw—came into the grocery store. Billy forgot to breathe for an instant; he saw her every day at Fayette County High, but still there was a quiver of electric tension down in his stomach. The school dance—May Night—was less than two weeks away, and Billy had been trying to muster the courage to ask her before anyone else did, but whenever he thought he was about to approach her he'd remember that he had no money or driver's license, and that his clothes had been worn by someone else before him. Melissa always wore bright dresses, her face scrubbed and shining. Billy picked up his sacked groceries, wanting to get out before Melissa saw his grease-stained hands and shirt.
'My, my!' Coy said. 'Don't you two look lovely this afternoon!'
'That's what ladies do best!' Mrs. Pettus said merrily. She put a protective arm around her daughter as the Creekmore boy stepped past.
'Hi,' Billy blurted out.
