Mystery Walk

lying on a conveyor belt like a large squashed spider; the air was rank with blood and icy with shock.

Durkee rose to his feet. He let out a long sigh and shook his head. 'Somebody else'll have to close his eyes. I've had enough.' He walked past Chatham without looking back.

21

John Creekmore stood stiffly in an ill-fitting black suit, the sun hot on his neck through a break in the pines. As Reverend Laken spoke, John looked back over bis shoulder at the figure sitting up the hill perhaps fifty yards away, watching the funeral through the rows of small granite tombstones. Billy had been up there since John had arrived, before the funeral had started. The boy hadn't moved a muscle, and John knew the others had seen him up there too. John looked away, trying to concentrate on what Hawthorne's new minister was saying, but he could feel Billy sitting back amid the pines; he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, not knowing what to do with his hands.

'Amen,' Reverend Laken finally said. The coffin was cranked down into the ground, and Susie sobbed so terribly John had to walk away from her. He stood and stared up at his son for a moment. Billy was motionless. John thrust his hands into his pockets and walked carefully toward him between the mounds of earth, his shoes slipping on the carpet of fresh pine needles. The boy's face was a tight mask of secrets; John knew that Ramona and Billy kept a world of secrets from him—dark things that had to do with the time Billy had spent at his grandmother's house. John didn't want to know what they were, fearing contamination, but for one thing he could be happy: Rebekah Fairmountain had gone to her hellish reward two years ago. Ramona and Billy had found her on the day after Christmas, sitting with her eyes closed in her easy chair, a yellowed picture of her late husband and a red vase full of wild flowers on a table at her side.

John reached his son. 'What're you doin' here?'

'I wanted to come.'

'People saw you sittin' up here. Why didn't you come down?' He shook his head, amber lights glinting in his eyes; he was unable to explain his feelings, but when he'd seen that strange black haze clinging to Link Patterson he'd known something terrible was about to happen. He hadn't told his mother about it until later, after Mr Patterson was lying dead up at the sawmill and the whole town knew there'd been an awful accident. As he'd watched the coffin being lowered, he'd wondered if he had had the power to change the man's destiny, perhaps with a single word of warning, or if the accident was already waiting for Link Patterson to step into it and nothing Billy could've said or done would've mattered.

'What did you come for?' John asked. 'I thought you were supposed to be workin' at the gas station this afternoon.'

'I asked for the afternoon off. It doesn't matter anyway.'

'The hell it don't!' John felt a flush of unreasoned anger heat his face. 'People see you sittin' up here among the graves, what are they gonna think? Damn it, boy! Don't you have a lick of sense anymore?' He almost reached down and hauled Billy to his feet, but restrained himself; lately his nerves had been on edge all the time, and he lost his temper like a shatterpated fool. A pang of shame stabbed him. This is my son! he thought. Not a stranger I don't even know! He abruptly cleared his throat. 'You ready to go home now?'

They walked down the hill together, past the new grave with its bright bouquets of flowers, and to the Olds. The car was held together with more wire and odd junkyard pieces than Frankenstein's monster. The engine, when it finally caught, sounded as if it were gargling nuts and bolts. They drove out of the cemetery and toward home.

John saw it first: a white pickup truck with Chatham brothers stenciled on its side in red was parked in front of the house. 'Now what?' he said, and then thought: could be it's a job! His hands tightened around the steering wheel. Sure! They needed a new man on the line, since Link was ... He was sickened at what he was thinking, but —sickened or not—his heart was beating harder in anticipation.

Lamar Chatham himself was sitting on the front porch with Ramona. He rose to his feet, a short heavy man in a seersucker suit, as the Olds approached.

John stopped the car, then stepped out. He was sweating profusely in the dark suit. 'Howdy, Mr Chatham,' he called.

The man nodded, chewing on a toothpick. 'Hello, Creekmore.'

'My son and I went to pay our respects to Link Patterson. That was a terrible thing, but I guess a man can't be too careful around those saws. I mean, when you're workin' fast you've got to know what you're doin'.' He caught Ramona's dark gaze on him, and again he felt a hot surge of anger. 'I hear the mill's gonna be shut down for a while.'

'That's right. I've been waitin' to speak to you.'

'Oh? Well . . . what can I do for you, then?'

Chatham's fleshy face looked loose and slack, and there were gray patches beneath his blue eyes. He said, 'Not you, Creekmore. I've been waitin' to speak to your boy.'

'My boy? What for?'

Chatham took the toothpick from his mouth. 'I meant to go to the funeral,' he said, 'but I had business. I sent some flowers, you probably saw 'em there. Orchids. One thing about funerals: they're supposed to be final, ain't they?'

'I guess so,' John agreed.

'Yeah.' He gazed off at the field for a moment, where a new crop of corn and pole beans were straggling out of the dusty earth. 'I came to see your wife, and we had a good long talk about . . . things. But she says I should speak to Billy.' He looked at John again. 'Your wife says that Billy can do what has to be done.'

'What? What has to be done?'

'Billy,' the other man said quietly, 'I need to talk to you, boy. ...'

'Talk to me, damn it!' John's face flamed.

Ramona's voice was as soft as a cool breeze, but carried strength as well. 'Tell him,' she said.

'All right.' Chatham inserted his toothpick again, looking from Billy to John and back again. 'Yes ma'am, I will. First off, I want you all to know I don't believe in ... in haunts.' He gave a little lopsided grin that slipped off his uneasy face like thin grease. 'Nosir! Lamar Chatham never believed in anything he couldn't see! But, you know, the world's just full of superstitious folks who believe in rabbit's feet and demons and . . . and especially haunts. Now you take rugged men who work hard for a livin', and who work in a place that maybe—maybe—is dangerous. Sometimes they can be more superstitious than a gaggle of old farm women.' He let out a nervous burp of a laugh, his cheeks swelling like a bullfrog's. 'Link Patterson's been dead three days, and now he's buried. But . . . sometimes superstitions can get hold of a man's mind and just gnaw at him. They can chew a man down to nothin'.'

'Like that damned saw did to Link,' John said bitterly, all hopes of a job dashed to the winds. And worse, this bastard Chatham wanted Billy!

'Yeah. Maybe so. Sawmill's closed now. Shut down.'

'About time some work was done to make that place safe. Those belts and drive gears ain't been changed for years, I hear tell.'

'Maybe. Well, that ain't the reason the mill's shut down, Creekmore.' He poked the toothpick at an offending bit of barbecue. 'The mill's shut down,' he said, 'because the men won't work. I hired new ones. They walked out on me in less than an hour, yesterday. Production's fallin' behind. We turn a pretty fair profit, but too many days like these last few and'—he whistled and drew the stump of his index finger across his thick neck in a slashing gesture —'the whole town suffers for it. Hell, the sawmill is Hawthorne!'

'So what's that to us?'

'I came to see your wife because of who she is, and what her reputation says she can do. . . .'

'Get off my land.'

'Now just a min—'

'GET OFF, I SAID!' he roared, and rushed the porch. Chatham stayed planted like a slab of wood, his thickset body tensed for a fight. He'd been a logging man since he was old enough to swing an ax, and he'd never run from a tangle yet in any of the rough camps where muscle was king. His posture and steady glare flared a warning, and