“Yeah.”
“A real-what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“No idea.”
“Starts with p,” Sonny Junior said. He took out a flask, drank from it, passed it to Roy.
“Vodka and Tang?” Roy said.
Sonny Junior gave him a look. “You havin’ fun on me, cuz?”
“Nope.”
“This here’s the good stuff.”
Roy took it, drank: the good stuff. “Panorama,” he said.
Sonny Junior’s eyes widened. Then he clapped Roy on the back, hard enough to move him off his feet a bit. “Got the looks and the brains both, don’t you, Roy? Panorama. Son of a bitch.” He surveyed the view, all green and gold under a sky so densely blue it seemed to be made of something material. “You can see seven states from here,” he said.
Roy scanned the distant vistas.
“Two or three, anyways,” Sonny said. “You know what ticks me off, Roy? This view was ours.”
“Views don’t belong to anybody.”
“Fuck they don’t. Ever been to Malibu?”
“No.”
“Every good view on the planet is bought and paid for. What I want to know is who took ours away?”
“That doesn’t make sense, Sonny.”
“Why not?”
“Whatever happened was… a long time ago.”
“So?”
Roy didn’t answer.
“I’m right and you know it,” Sonny said. A lone bird, hawk or eagle, rose up and up on a thermal, shrank to almost nothing. Sonny took another draw from the flask, passed it to Roy.
Roy drank. “This Old Grand-Dad?”
“From the bottle I inadvertently brought Uncle Roy there at the end, him not having a chance to finish it for obvious reasons. Want another hit?”
Roy didn’t.
They climbed on, back in dense woods for a while, then up a steep section with fewer trees but wildflowers everywhere, red and white. The steep section rose to a towering ridge, all covered with moss, seeping water. They made their way around it, on hands and knees a couple of times, and at the head of the ridge stepped across a narrow stream that came bubbling out of a hole in the rocks a few feet above. Sonny Junior bent down, drank from cupped hands.
“Is that a good idea?” Roy said, remembering a scary article about microbes or parasites or something.
“Huh?” said Sonny.
Roy dipped his hand in the stream. How fast the water ran through his fingers, icy and energetic. He cupped his hands and drank. It stunned him: the best water he’d ever tasted, even better than the water from Chickamauga. Tasting was the wrong word. Tasting meant the taster was the master and the tasted was a thing. This water was the master: the best water he’d ever put inside himself, cleansing, purifying proof that all those eco-people were right about the earth being a living thing.
“This here’s the source of the crick,” said Sonny Junior.
“What crick?”
“Why, ours, Roy, that used to be ours, the crick what run the mill, way down below.”
“Does it have a name?”
“Course it has a name,” Sonny said. “Every crick has a name. This is the Crystal.”
“Crystal?”
“What’s so strange about that?”
“I camped by a creek with that name years ago.” With Marcia, but Roy left that out. “It couldn’t be the same one.”
“Course it could. This here bitty thing goes all the way into the Tennessee River.”
Remember that time up in Tennessee? What was the name of that crick? Crystal: Marcia naked, sitting on a log, leaning back a little, legs spread a little, bare feet in wildflowers, her eyes right on him as he came out from his swim. How they could have done what they’d done in the next twenty minutes, half hour, and then ended up like this, Roy didn’t understand.
They circled the ridge, found themselves in an up-sloping meadow with knee-high grass and more flowers, red and white. The meadow rose sharply at the end, then leveled out abruptly onto a broad plateau. Not far back on the plateau stood a dark-green grove of what looked like fruit trees, and in the green shadows Roy caught dappled glimpses of stone walls, a door frame, a wagon wheel.
“Not much to see,” Sonny said as they got closer.
Not much to see: stone walls, but crumbling, and the roof gone; door and window frames, but no doors and windows; a wagon wheel but no wagon. Roy went through the front door, smelled dampness and rot, looked out at Sonny Junior watching him through the doorway.
“Like I told you, a fallin’ down ruin.”
“What do you think they used it for?”
“Who?” said Sonny Junior.
“Roy Singleton Hill. I know he came up here.”
Sonny stared at him. “You’re gettin’ one of them psychic feelings?”
“He talks about it.”
“Uh-oh,” said Sonny. “You’re startin’ to scare me.”
“There’s nothing psychic about this,” Roy said, but even as he did, he recollected that crying sound he’d heard just before he opened the leather-bound chest for the first time. He took the diary from his pocket, stepped outside, opened it so Sonny could see.
Sonny ran his eyes down the page, his lips moving once or twice. “A fuckin’ illiterate,” he said. He turned the page; half of it flaked away, drifted down like a leaf.
“Easy,” said Roy.
Sonny’s gaze came up in a measured way, settled on Roy. “What’s that, cuz?”
“It’s old, Sonny. Delicate.”
“Don’t trust me with it, Roy?” Sonny handed back the diary.
Roy didn’t take it. “What’s up, Sonny?” he said.
“Don’t trust me because you’re thinking I screwed you out of your inheritance,” said Sonny.
“What are you talking about?”
“What am I talking about?” A bee darted down between them; Sonny smacked it out of the air with the back of his free hand. “Uncle Roy’s goddamn place and you thinking I jewed you out of it, is what.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s not what you think?”
“It’s not what I think, but I meant don’t say ‘jewed.’ “
“Not keeping up with you there, Roy.”
“You didn’t screw me out of the place, leave it at that,” Roy said.
“He did it all on his own.”
“I believe you.”
“I went in there with the bottle and those Cheetos. Forgot the briefs, did I mention that? Right away he was poppin’ off with all this negative shit about you.”
“Such as?”
“I already told you. About you never being much of a son to him, what with the naming of little Rhett and all. I didn’t say a word, Roy, I swear-just kept my mouth shut and handed over the bottle when he was good and done.”
“Thanks,” Roy said.
