Mystery Walk

and desires still coursed through him. 'Next time,' he said. 'It's just ... I don't feel right about this. Okay?'

'Forget it. I need a man, not a little boy who can't even get it up! Come on, take me back to shore!'

Her voice was ugly. The sound of it scared Wayne. 'I just . . . you won't tell anybody about this, will you?'

'What's wrong with you? Are you queer?'

'No! Please . . . you won't tell anybody, will you?'

Lonnie buttoned her blouse. He saw her head tilted to one side, as if in concentration. Then, slowly, she turned toward him. 'Why not? It'd be somethin' for a laugh, wouldn't it?'

'Satan's in you,' he whispered. 'That's it, isn't it?'

'What?' He thought she smiled in the darkness.

'You're a Jezebel, a dirty sinner and oh God I shouldn't have come out here!'

'Now I know where I've heard your voice!' the girl said and Wayne cringed. 'My momma made me listen to that Crusade crap on the radio! You're—oh, wow! You're the little healer himself, ain't you?' She whooped with laughter. 'Yeah! You're Little Wayne Falconer! Oh, wow, everybody's gonna laugh their —'

'No,' he said forcefully, and she was silent. 'You're not going to tell anybody.'

'Who says? Take me back or I'll start screamin'!'

He had to make her understand! He had to make her see he was a righteous boy! He took a step toward her.

And then Lonnie abruptly turned toward shore and yelled, 'HELP!'

'Shut up!' he hissed, and pushed her. She staggered across the platform.

'HELP!' she shouted again, her voice echoing across the water.

Wayne exploded. He pushed her as hard as he could, and suddenly Lonnie's feet slipped out from under her on the moss-slick boards. She fell backward, her arms windmilling. There was a violent, sickening crunch! as the side of her head hit a corner of the platform.

She fell into the lake, and the black water covered her.

At once Wayne reached down to grasp her, but she was gone. Bubbles burst upward, smelling of lake mud. He leaned down, whining with panic, and thrust his arms underwater to find her. He got up, ran across the platform to the canoe to retrieve the paddle, and used that to probe the depths. He looked up toward the house, and started to scream for help. No! he thought. She's not hurt, she's all right! She only bumped her head a little bit, she'll come up in just a few seconds!

'Lonnie!' he whispered. 'Come on up, now! Come on!'

Black water sighed around the platform. He reached underwater again—and felt her hair. He gripped it and wrenched upward. It was a rotten tree limb with a green mane of algae.

He started to ease himself into the water to look for her, but realized that if he got wet everyone would know at the party. She was probably swimming to shore.

'Lonnie?' he called out, a little louder. Only crickets and bullfrogs answered.

After a while he began to cry, and he prayed as he'd never prayed before. The dark voice in his mind whispered, She was a Jezebel a dirty sinner and she deserved what she got! He sat on the platform for a long time, shaking, his head bowed.

Wayne was sitting in the Camaro's backseat when Terry and Helen found him about an hour later. His face was very pale. The gin got to him, Terry thought.

'Where've you been, Wayne?' Terry asked as he slipped behind the wheel. 'We were lookin' for you.'

Wayne's smile made his face look like a skull. 'Just around. I went for a long walk. The music was too loud.'

'You meet any of those pretty girls?' Helen asked.

'No. Not a one.'

'Great party, huh?' Terry started the engine. 'Listen, Wayne. Since I'm on a scholarship, you . . . uh . . . won't tell your dad about this, will you? I mean, I didn't smoke or drink.'

'No, I won't tell.'

'Good.' Terry winked at Helen. 'It'll be our secret, right?'

'Right,' Wayne said. 'Our secret.'

32

It was after eleven o'clock, and Wayne was way late getting home. Jimmy Jed Falconer, in his robe and slippers, stood on the front porch in the cool night air and looked out toward the highway.

He'd slipped out of bed without waking Cammy, because he didn't want her to be worried. His belly bulged the knot at the front of his robe, but still his stomach growled for food. Where could the boy be at this time of night? he wondered. He stood on the porch for a few minutes longer, then went back through the large, rambling house to the kitchen.

He switched on the lights, opened the refrigerator, and brought out a piece of blueberry pie Esther the cook had baked just that afternoon. Pouring himself a cold glass of milk, he sat down for a late-night snack.

The summer was almost over. And what a glorious summer it had been, too! The Crusade had held tent revivals throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—hitting the larger towns and the cities—and next year would be ready for expansion into Texas and Arkansas. An ailing Fayette radio station had been purchased, as well as a South Carolina publishing company, and the first issue of Forward, the Crusade's magazine, would be out in October. Wayne had touched and healed a few thousand people over the course of the summer: the boy was a masterful orator, and could hold that stage like he'd been born on it. When Wayne had finished the healing segment of the program, the offering plates came back filled to the brim. Wayne was a good boy, and he was as smart as a whip; but he had a stubborn streak in him, too, and he persisted in going out in the airfield where his Beechcraft Bonanza was hangared and flying without a co-pilot, getting up m the sky and doing all kinds of crazy loops and rolls. That sort of thing scared Falconer to death: what if the plane should crash? Wayne was a good pilot, but he took a lot of risks, and he seemed to enjoy the danger.

Falconer gulped down the milk and chewed on a bite of pie. Yessir! It had been a glorious summer!

Suddenly he realized his left arm was tingling. He shook the hand, thinking it had somehow fallen asleep. It was very hot here in the kitchen, he noticed; he'd begun sweating.

Do you know what you're doing, son?

Falconer stopped with another piece of pie right at his mouth. He'd thought about the night in May many times, and the question the Hawthorne witch-woman had posed to Wayne. That question had surfaced in his mind as he'd watched the pale and hopeful faces of the sick and infirm passing by in the Healing Line, reaching up with trembling hands toward Wayne. Suddenly, the blueberry pie tasted like ashes. He put the fork down on his plate, and touched his chest where a quick needle-jab of pain had pierced. Now it had passed. The pain was gone. Good.

But his mind was wandering in dangerous territory. What if— what if—the witch- woman was right? And he'd known it all along, that Wayne's internal battery was getting weaker and weaker, and that was why he never dared ask Wayne to heal his diseased heart. And what if Wayne knew it, too, and was continuing to play the part because . . . because it was all he'd ever been taught to do.

No! Falconer thought. Wayne healed Toby, didn't he? And thousands of letters came in from people who said they were healed by Wayne's touch and presence!

He recalled a letter from long ago, sent to the Crusade office a week or so after the tent revival in Hawthorne. It had been from a woman named Posey, and Falconer had thrown it away as soon as he'd read it:

Dear Rev. Falconer, we just want to tell you that our son Jimmie has been took by Jesus. Your boy healed