Mystery Walk

Johnny Parker whisper the words murder house, but he'd shut his ears and hadn't listened anymore.

'Just can't leave it alone, can you?' John said between gritted teeth. The Olds was racing along the driveway, throwing up rocks and snapping sticks in its wake. 'Woman, haven't you had a gutful of death and evil yet? Do you want to rub your own son's face in it? No, no, you can't leave it alone, you can't stay in the house where you belong when you smell death in the air, can you? You can't act like everybody else, and—'

Ramona said quietly but firmly, 'That's enough.'

The blood drained from his face for a few seconds, then his complexion turned an ugly mottled red. 'HELL IT IS!' he roared. 'You don't have to get out and go about the town! You can just stay put and hide, can't you? But what about me?' He wheeled the car to a halt in front of the house and yanked the key from the ignition. 'I don't want you ever goin' back to that house again, do you hear me?' He reached out and caught her chin, squeezing it so she couldn't look away; her gaze was dulled and distant, and that made him want to hit her but he remembered Billy and so stayed his hand. 'I don't want to hear any of your damned ravin's, do you understand? Answer me when I speak to you, woman!' In the sudden sharp silence he could hear Billy sobbing. He was pierced with shame, but there was still anger in him and he had to get it out. 'ANSWER ME!' he shouted.

She sat very straight and motionless; there were tears in her eyes, and she regarded him for a long time before she spoke, making him feel like a bug that had just crawled from beneath a rock. She said softly, 'I hear you.'

'You better!' He released her chin, then he was out of the car and hurrying into the house, not daring to look over his shoulder at either of them because anger and guilt and fear were chewing him up inside like a dull plow on wet earth. He had to clench his hands around the Good Book, had to find something that would soothe the tortured ache in his soul.

When Ramona and Billy came in, John was already sitting before the hearth with the Bible on his lap. He was reading silently, his brow furrowed with concentration, but his lips were moving. Ramona squeezed her son's shoulder in reassurance and also as a warning to walk quietly, then she went quietly to the kitchen to finish the vegetable pie—made of leftovers from the last few meals—she was baking for their supper. Billy added another hickory log to the fire and positioned it with the poker. He could still feel the storm in the air, but most of it had already struck and he hoped things would be all right now; he wanted to find out from his father exactly what had happened to Will and the Bookers, and why those men were tearing up the front porch, but he knew it was something very bad and it might cause another fight between his momma and daddy. He replaced the poker, glanced at his father for approval—John was reading in the Book of Daniel and didn't look up—and then went back to the little secondhand desk next to his cot to start on his spelling homework.

John admired Daniel's strength. He liked to think that he and Daniel would have gotten along just fine. Sometimes John felt as if the whole of life were a lions' den, ravenous beasts snapping roaring on all sides and the Devil himself laughing fit to bust. At least, he thought, that's how it had turned out for him. He leaned forward and read Daniel's speech of deliverance to King Darius: 'My God sent his angel and shut the lions' mouths, and they have not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him. ...'

. . . blameless before him . . .

John reread it and then closed the Good Book. Blameless. There was nothing he could've done about Julie Ann, or Katy, or Will, or Dave Booker. He felt that in his choice of this scripture he was being told everything was all right, he could let the worry melt away from his mind and put it in the past where it belonged.

He stared into the crackling flames. When he'd married Ramona—and God only knew why he had, except that he'd thought she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, and was all of twenty, not knowing anything about love or duty or responsibility—he'd stepped into the lions' den without knowing it, and it seemed to him that he had to guard himself every day to keep from being swallowed whole down the Devil's throat. He had prayed over and over again that the boy wasn't touched by her darkness too. If that ever happened, then . . . John was startled, because he'd had the mental image of himself in Dave Booker's place, bursting their heads open with a Louisville Slugger and then putting a shotgun underneath his chin. Lord God, he thought, and shunted that awful image away.

Putting the Bible aside, he rose from the chair and went into the bedroom. His heart was beating harder; he was thinking of Reverend Horton, creeping over the tracks to Dusktown. He didn't want to join in what had to be done, but he knew the others expected him to. He opened the closet and took out a cardboard box tied with twine. John cut the twine with his penknife, took the top off the box, and laid his Klan robes across the bed. They were dusty and wrinkled, made of heavy yellowing cotton; he clenched the material in one fist and felt the power of justice in it.

And in the kitchen, kneading dough between her brown hands, Ramona heard the distant call of a bluejay and knew that the cold weather had broken.

5

At the wheel of his racketing old Ford, Reverend Jim Horton rubbed his eyes wearily and tried to focus on the highway ahead. It had been a long and terrible week; tomorrow was Sunday, and he had yet to go over his material for the sermon, which he'd titled 'Why Does God Let It Happen?' Tonight he would stay up late again at his desk, and his wife Carol would come in to rub the kinks out of his shoulders and neck before it was time for bed. He felt he'd been a stranger to her lately, but he'd told her a long time ago that being the wife of a country preacher was definitely not going to be a bed of roses.

The Ford's headlights cut white holes in the darkness. The heater chirred ineffectively, though it wasn't nearly as cold out now as it had been a few days before. He remembered how the sunlight and shadows had lain across the Hawthorne cemetery as the bodies of Dave Booker, Julie Ann, and Katy were lowered into the hard red- clay earth. The coffins had been closed, of course, during the memorial service at the Fayette funeral home, and Julie Ann's mother, Mrs. Mimms, had been almost overcome with grief. Tonight Horton had driven the fifteen miles to Mrs. Mimms's house to sit with her awhile, because she lived alone and was getting on in age, and it was obvious that this tragedy had almost destroyed her. He'd offered to have someone bring her in for church in the morning, and as he'd left she'd clutched his hand and cried like a baby.

Sheriff Bromley, Horton knew, was still searching for Will's corpse. Just yesteday the sheriff had poked a stick in the ground and brought up the odor of decaying meat; but when the shovels had finished it was Boo, the Bookers' dog, that lay moldering in the earth. Bromley had told him in private that most probably Will would never be found, that there were too many places Dave might have buried the body. Perhaps it was for the best, Horton thought, because Mrs. Mimms couldn't stand any more strain, and for that matter neither could Hawthorne itself.

He was aware that he walked a dangerous line. Things were changing in the world, due to people like Dr. King, but it wasn't fast enough to help the people of Dusktown. These last few weeks he felt he'd made a little progress: he'd been helping the Dusktown elders rebuild their burned-out box of a church, and he was on a committee to plan a potluck supper, raising money for purchase of lumber from the sawmill. There was still hard work to be done.

Horton was jarred out of his thoughts when a pair of headlights stabbed into his eyes. He instinctively swerved before he realized the headlights had reflected out of his rearview mirror. A red chevy roared past him as though he were sitting still, and he had the fleeting impression of a pale face glaring at him before the car whipped around a curve up ahead. He could hear the Chevy's horn honking—once, twice, three times—and he thought, Wild kids on a Saturday night. He would be in Hawthorne in just a minute; he hoped Carol would have coffee ready for him. When he took the curve the Chevy had disappeared around, Horton thought he saw something red flicker on the road before him. A strange thought flashed through his mind: Ramona Creekmore, at the Bookers' funeral, stepping forward from the assembly of people and standing right at the edge of Julie Ann's grave. Her hand had come up and out; dozens of red petals, picked from wild flowers that must've grown in some secret, protected grove of the forest, had floated down into the ground. Horton knew that the woman wasn't well liked, though in the eight months he'd been Hawthorne's minister he hadn't been able to find out exactly why. She never came to church, and he'd only seen her a few times in town, but she'd always seemed pleasant and certainly