Mystery Walk

You're a real celebrity hereabouts! And look up there on the wall. Recognize that?' He'd motioned to a framed needlepoint picture of an owl sitting on a tree limb; the features were a bright mixture of colors, the eyes so sharp and lifelike they followed you around the room. Billy recognized his mother's handiwork. 'Fella from Montgomery came through here about a month ago, offered me a hundred dollars for it,' Curtis said. He swelled his chest proudly. 'I said no. I said it was done by a local artist, and you couldn't put any price on something done with as much feeling as that's got in it. Didn't I say that, Hiram?'

'Yep.'

'I've got another one at home. It shows a mountain and a lake, and an eagle flying way up far in the sky. I think it's the prettiest thing I've ever seen. See, I've put this one where I can look at it all the time!'

Hiram suddenly stirred and regarded the picture. 'Fine work,' he said, lighting his corncob pipe and sticking it in his grizzled face. 'You'd go a far piece to find anything finer, I'll tell you that.' He cocked his head and looked at Billy. 'Your mother was full of magic, boy. She was a damned fine woman, and it took us a long time to realize it. Any woman who could run a farm like she did, and make pictures like that, and never complain 'bout her lot in life . . . well, I remember that night at the tent revival. Maybe we didn't want to hear what she said, but she had guts, boy. Looks like you've got your share too.' He motioned with his pipe toward the bulletin board.

'What . . . ?' Billy managed to say. He was stunned, and he felt hot tears in his eyes. 'You mean you ...'

Duke Leighton started to rise. His gaze was baleful in the red light. When he stood erect, his back was hunched over; with his first step, Billy saw that he walked with a terrible limp, much worse than his father's. As he approached Billy, Duke seemed to grow smaller and paler and thinner He saw Billy staring and stood in front of him, his lower lip trembling. 'It happened just after you left. I was ridin' in the car with my dad. He was ... he was drinking pretty heavily. He'd taken to drinkin' a lot since Mom died. Anyway, he . . . the car was going too fast, and we went off the trestle bridge. I just got cut up, but my dad was dead by the time the ambulance came.' His face was set and grim. 'About a week later, Coy Granger came to see me, and he said he'd seen my dad standing at the side of the road, right at the trestle bridge where the car had gone off. . . .'

'Saw him myself,' Hiram said quietly. 'Plain as day. Plain as I can see you.'

'My dad . . . couldn't leave.' Duke's voice cracked, his eyes swimming. 'I saw him, and I called out to him, and he looked like he was tryin' to answer but he ... he couldn't speak. His . . . throat was crushed in the wreck, and he strangled to death. And when I tried to touch him, I felt so cold. Then he was gone, just faded away in an instant.' He looked helplessly at Bonnie, then back to Billy again. 'Who else could I go to?' he asked. 'I had to help my dad!'

'And my mother freed him?'

'I saw her do it.' Hiram puffed out a wreath of blue smoke. 'We all did. She stood right there on the trestle bridge and opened up her arms, and we all saw Ralph Leighton with our own eyes.' He set his jaw and grunted. 'Damnedest thing I ever saw. And Ralph just . . . disappeared, just kinda eased away, I guess. Ramona fell down, and she had to be helped home. ...'

'My wife stayed the night with her,' Peel said. 'She took care of her.'

Duke wiped his face with a sleeve. 'Sorry. I didn't mean to . . . act like a fool. I never believed in such a thing as spirits until I saw my own father standin' there, trying to call out to me. . . .'

'Sheer guts,' Hiram said. 'She did it in front of everybody who cared to watch. Oh, at first some laughed. But after it was over and done . . . wasn't nobody laughin' no more.'

'I bought this picture from her soon after that,' Peel said. 'She didn't want to take the money. Said she had no need for it. But I made her take it. The very next night . . . well, that fire was so fast and windblown it was over before we knew it.'

'I didn't know.' Billy looked at all of them in turn. 'She never wrote me about what happened on the trestle bridge.'

'Maybe she figured you had your own worries.' Hiram relit his pipe, clenched it between his teeth, and watched the game show again.

'I'm sorry about your father,' Billy said.

'Yeah. Well, things hadn't been too good between me and him for a long time. He took me down to the Marine recruiting station in Tuscaloosa right after high school. I never went to college like I was supposed to. I went to 'Nam—another kind of college, I guess. I got into demolition, but I guess you heard. That's funny, huh? Me, in demolition?' He tried to smile, but his face was too loose and weary, his eyes too haunted.

'Funny? Why?'

Duke stared at him for a long moment. 'You . . . you don't know, do you? Well, why would you? I came back from 'Nam in seventy-one with a shot-up hip and a Purple Heart. Then what I'd done kept eatin' at me, so . . . I went to the sheriff and told him. I served my time—one year on a two-year sentence. I've just been out since October. But I want you to know, Billy, that it was never my idea. I wasn't the one who came up with the idea. . . .'

'What idea?'

'The fireworks,' Duke said quietly. 'I thought you knew; I thought everybody knew. I was one of the boys who put all those fireworks in the bonfire. It was . . . supposed to be a joke. Just a joke. I thought it'd make pretty colors. I thought people would laugh. I swear, I never knew it would blow up like that. My dad found out about it, and he shipped me off to the Marines damned fast. I can't ever forget that night, Billy. I don't sleep too good. I can still, y'know, hear the sounds they made. Billy, you'd . . . you'd know if any of them were still there, wouldn't you? I mean, you could tell, and you could help them?'

'They're gone,' he replied. 'I'm sure of it.'

But Duke shook his head. 'Oh, no they're not. Oh, no.' He opened his eyes and tapped a finger against his skull. 'They're all still in here, every one of them who died that night. You can't help me, can you?'

'No.'

'I didn't think so. I served my time, got out on good behavior. My dad pretended I was away, workin' in Georgia. Well ...' He moved past Bonnie and took his hat off the rack on the wall. It was a gas-station cap. 'I'd best get back to work. The gas won't pump itself. I thought you knew about all that, Billy. I surely did.'

'They're gone,' Billy said as he reached the door 'You don't have to keep them inside you anymore.'

'Yes I do,' Duke said, and then he opened the door—the little bell over it tinkled merrily—and he was gone.

'We were wrong about your mother,' Peel said. 'All of us were wrong. It wasn't evil. It never was, was it?'

Billy shook his head; his eyes were watering, and Bonnie pressed close to his side to support him.

'Terrible thing about that Falconer boy. Heard he died in a plane crash in Mexico, of all places. God only knows what he was doin' down there. I heard he went off the deep end, just gave up everything. ...'

'Not everything,' Billy said. 'Just the things that didn't matter.'

'Huh?'

'Nothing.' He looked again at the needlepoint owl. It was a beautiful picture, and would be seen by a lot of people. He couldn't think of a better place for it to be hanging.

Peel touched his shoulder. 'Bill, I've got a fine idea! Why don't you and the little lady join my family and me for dinner tonight? I'll call her, and I guarantee you the finest fried-chicken dinner you ever put in your mouth! All right?'

'You got room at that table for me?' Hiram asked.

'Maybe we do. What the hell . . . sure. We got room for everybody! Okay, Bill? How about it?'

He smiled, glanced at Bonnie, and then nodded. 'We'd like that very much.'

'Fine! Let me get on the horn right now!'

'Curtis,' Billy said as he moved to the phone, 'I'm going to see my mother. She is in the cemetery isn't she?'

'Oh. Yes, she is. Don't you worry about a thing. We took care of her real good, Bill. You'll see.'

'We'll be back.' They walked to the door, and as Billy opened it he heard Peel say over the phone, 'Ma? You're gonna have a real celebrity over tonight! Guess who's ...'