Down These Strange Streets

praying about?”

“Shouldn’t you know—”

“Pretend I don’t.” Dropping an arm over the teen’s shoulder, Cross hustled him down the street. Behind him the door banged open and the fat man came rushing out.

Cross hurriedly flagged down a cab and thrust the kid inside. “Step on it,” he ordered the driver. Cross glanced out the back window at the receding figure of the factotum.

“Where to?” the cabbie asked.

Cross looked over at the kid. “You hungry? Of course you’re hungry. Kids your age are always hungry.”

* * *

SILVERWARE CLATTERED AGAINST PLATES; THE WAITRESS AND THE COOK sang out a call-and-response Blue plate, Order up. Cross indulged in a piece of cherry pie à la mode, a slice of devil’s-food cake, and a cup of coffee while the kid wolfed down the pot roast, slurped a Coca-Cola, and poured out his story.

“Ma died two years ago. Pa was really sad. Then Sharon came to the mission, and they started walking out together. They got married seven months ago.”

Cross’s attention drifted. He was focused on that damn thing wearing the people suit. Wondering how to fight it. Wondering if he could win. Wondering if it would end with him splintered and weakened yet again.

“. . . make me brush her hair.” Cross’s focus snapped back to the boy, who was red-faced and looking embarrassed, which made the smattering of pimples on his cheeks stand out all the brighter. “In their bedroom, when Pa would be downstairs reading.”

“Were you really brushing her hair, or is that a euphemism?”

“Pardon?”

“Another way to say fuck,” Cross said.

The boy went white, then red again, and took a large gulp of pop. “N . . . no,” he stammered. “I only touched her hair.”

“Tell me about that ring.”

“She had the stone in that silver setting when she showed up . . .”

My husband gave it to me. Cross flashed back to the conversation on the footbridge. No, not a twofer. Hanlin’s a dupe. It was Sharon and the Old One just finding a convenient meat puppet, he thought.

“And she made the band out of her and Pa’s hair.” The boy’s words seemed etched in the air.

Another memory surfaced—Sharon carefully removing her hair from his shoulder. “What did she do with the hair in the brush?”

Sean looked startled by both the question and the intensity with which it was asked. “She’d take it all out, and roll it up and keep it in this little box. She even made me pick up any hairs that fell on the floor.”

“Has she got the box with her?” Sean nodded. Cross leaned back and lit a cigarette. It was classic hair-and- skin magic. Cross was pretty sure he knew what was trapped in that ring. He tossed a few bills down on the table.

“You’re using money?”

“I got a news flash for you, kid; that whole loaves and fishes thing . . . complete bullshit. And another thing. I knew your name because your stepmother told me. No mystery. No miracle.”

Sean stopped dead and stared at Cross suspiciously. “You’re not my savior.”

“Actually, kid, I probably am. Look, I know that thing on stage is not your dad. It’s something else wearing his skin.”

The boy let out an explosive sob and dissolved. No longer on the cusp of manhood, Sean was a child again. Cross handed him his handkerchief. After a few minutes, the boy regained control. He mopped at his streaming eyes.

“I couldn’t tell anybody. They would have thought I was crazy, and she . . . she was my stepmom.”

“Yeah, kid, I know. It’s a bitch when a cliché turns out to be true. Now take me to where you’re staying.”

* * *

SEAN DIDN’T HAVE A KEY. “KEEP A LOOK OUT,” CROSS ORDERED AS HE PULLED out a lock-pick kit and knelt down in front of the door. The hotel was a modest affair a few blocks from the lake.

“You’re going to break in?”

“No, I’m going to pick the lock. Breaking in would be noisy.”

Sean tittered, betraying his nervousness. “You’re not nothin’ like what I expected.”

“Anything,” Cross corrected automatically as the delicate tools caught the mechanism and the lock clicked open. “You sound like a hick, you’re going to end up a hick, and I think you’re brighter than that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do.” Cross slipped the tools back into their case, returned the case to his pocket, and stood up. He pushed open the door, and he and the kid entered the room.

A carpetbag sat on the floor beneath a luggage stand that held an open suitcase. An iron bedstead was against one wall, and a flimsy chest of drawers against another. There was a mirror over the dresser, and the glass was occluded because of the Old One. A folded trundle bed filled the remaining space in the small room.

The top of the dresser held the various mysterious potions that constituted a woman’s war paint. Cross didn’t see a box. Maybe she kept it with her. That would make things harder.

“What does the box look like?” Cross asked.

“Metal, but it had holes, kind of like a net.”

Cross searched through the drawers. No box. Cross turned to face the room and studied the sparse furnishings. Cross checked under the mattress, inside the carpetbag, and in the suitcase. Sean watched him intently. Finally Cross moved to the trundle bed and thrust a hand into the folded mattress. Felt metal. He pulled out the box. Opened it and inspected the chocolatecolored hair inside.

He snapped shut the box and held it tightly in his hand. Considered what he knew. The Old One had inhabited a human body. Interesting that it hadn’t just built one the way Cross had. But that might indicate that it had limited power, which was one small bright spot in a giant shitstorm. At the mission, Cross had sensed that something was trapped. He had thought, mistakenly, that it was Sharon, but now he guessed that it was the electrical impulses that formed the essence of Marshall Hanlin.

So, all he had to do was force out the Old One. Restore the husband to his body. And deal with the Old One and Sharon.

Easy as pie.

Yeah, right.

“So, what do we do now?” Sean asked.

Cross swallowed the cold lump that had invaded his throat. “We go find your wicked stepmother.”

The theater was empty. A few pamphlets flapped sadly in the gutter as a breeze off the lake kicked down the street. Cross cursed. Having brought himself to the sticking point, he wanted to get it over with. Match his strength against the other Old One. End this nightmare for the boy at his side.

Sean looked at him with a combination of awe and trepidation. “Are those all cuss words?”

“Yeah, now forget you ever heard them. Where would they have gone?”

“Probably to the convention. Sharon wanted to see all the famous, rich people,” Sean replied.

“Okay. You want to see some famous, rich people?”

The kid shrugged. “Pa took me the first day we got here. They just looked like regular people, only in fancier clothes.”

Cross reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair. “You’ll do, kid.”

* * *

FARLEY HAD DONE AS PROMISED. CROSS WAS ON THE LIST TO ENTER THE stadium. He told them Sean was his son. The statement had the kid turning red, then white, then red again.

“What the hell’s wrong?”

“I can’t be your son! It’s sacrilege.”