Chapter Three - Cody
Ravanna sits right on the edge of the biggest cypress swamp in the world, in case you didn’t know. It fills up all the wide valleys that drain down into Caddo Lake, but there’s still quite a bit of high ground where the towns and things are.
Brandon Stone didn’t live on high ground.
He lived in an old school bus at the end of a muddy track that barely deserved to be called a road, amongst a thicket of cypress trees at the edge of a blackwater bayou. A rusty stovepipe stuck out one of the windows near the back, and the yard was littered with trash and three or four rusty vehicles up on blocks. Three mongrel dogs lay curled up under the bus in the shade, watching me. Maybe they were too lazy to bark; it wouldn’t have surprised me, if they took after their master.
I went up to knock on the door of the bus, only to find a double-barreled shotgun pushed right out into my face.
I really don’t like having guns aimed at me; there’s just something that really bothers me about that, you know? But I put my hands up where the dude could see them and backed up real slowly, making sure I didn’t make any sudden moves.
The door opened, and there stood a young boy no more than fourteen at the most, barefoot and bare-chested, with nothing on but a pair of overalls that were way too big for him. He looked just like the boy on the Tennessee Pride sausage wrappers, red hair and all, and I might have laughed if he hadn’t had a gun pointed right between my eyes. Somehow that killed all the humor in the situation.
“What do you want?” he asked, not even pretending to be friendly.
“I’m looking for Brandon Stone,” I said.
“You found him. Now what do you want?” he asked again, and I decided this was no time to beat around the bush.
“I was told you could tell me what I need to know. I have dreams sometimes. True ones. But I don’t always understand what they mean. I need your help,” I said. I didn’t know if he’d believe me or if he’d think I was crazy, but I couldn’t think of anything else the janitor could have meant by telling me this kid could tell me what I needed to know.
The boy looked hard at me for a while longer, and then slowly lowered the shotgun to his side. He had intensely blue eyes almost the same color as mine, something I’d rarely seen before.
“I see. Don’t know that I like that, much. Who told you where to find me?” he asked.
“A janitor at a church in Longview. I don’t know his name,” I said truthfully.
“Hmm. Well, you best come inside, then,” he said.
I followed him inside, and when I got closer I caught a whiff of body odor so strong it could have gagged a maggot at thirty paces. Not just body odor, either, but old body odor. I wondered when the kid had last taken a bath.
The smell was even stronger inside the bus. Dried sweat, wood smoke, and mildew all combined in a way that made me wish I could stop breathing for at least an hour.
The bus seats had been ripped out and the place had been refitted into a one-room house, sort of. There was a stack of ancient mattresses in one corner which passed for a bed, a table and chairs, a potbellied wood stove, and some canned goods and such on a shelf. Not much else.
I sat down in one of the chairs, and Brandon took a seat on the bed.
“So spit it out. I can’t tell you anything if you don’t cough up the story,” he finally said, with more than a hint of impatience in his voice.
So I told him the dream about Lisa, making sure not to leave out any details whether they seemed important or not. He listened without saying a thing, and when I was finished he did the last thing I would ever have expected. He got down on his knees beside the bed and prayed for at least five minutes, leaving me to sit there watching him.
When he was finished, he got up and sat back down on the bed again, watching me curiously.
“Well?” I finally asked.
“This is what God is saying to you. The cave means a time of doubt and uncertainty, and the crystal forest is a time of happiness that you and the girl will pass through. The silver bridge over dark waters means that you’ll face a dangerous time which you’ll need money to get through. But when you find it, that will lead you directly into the palace of the worst danger of all. The skeleton means death. Death to the girl, and to you too. But both of you will go willingly to meet it, because it’ll be cloaked in beauty. Don’t be fooled,” the boy said.
“Is that all?” I asked, chilled.
“Not quite. In spite of the disguise, you’ll still be able to see the evil underneath the surface, if you pay attention. The bones will still be visible underneath all those fine clothes, so to speak. The evil one will ask you to do something you know is wrong, just like the skeleton asked the girl to dance. Don’t do that thing, no matter how minor and harmless it might seem. If you do, it’ll cause you more grief than you could ever imagine. Once all is said and done, and final happiness seems to be in your hands, you’ll find that it suddenly crumbles to dust before you can stop it. That’s the meaning of the crystal twig falling to ashes in your hand,” he said.
“It seems awfully gloomy,” I muttered.
“I’m sorry to have to give you bad news,” the kid said, softening a little bit.
“Yeah, well, I wish I knew what I’m supposed to do, that’s all,” I said.
“Follow her, just like you did in the dream. That’s your job right now. Stick to her like glue. That’s all I know,” he said.
“Thanks, I guess,” I said.
“You’re welcome, maybe,” Brandon said with a scowl.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” I said.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said.
“So how old are you, anyway?” I asked, changing the subject to something less disturbing. It had nothing to do with what we’d been talking about and it was really none of my business, but finding a kid living alone in the middle of a swamp is a little strange, you’ve got to admit.
“Thirteen and a half, and before you even ask, yeah, I live here alone, I take care of myself, my parents are gone, and that suits me just fine. Anything else you want to know?” he asked, hostile again.
“No, I guess not,” I said.
“Good. And if you’re thinkin’ about telling anybody I’m here, you better think again. I will come after you,” he promised. I stared at the dirty boy across from me, with his twelve-gauge shotgun still within easy reach if he needed it, and somehow I wasn’t inclined to doubt he’d try his dead-level best to make good on that threat.
Well, I wouldn’t rat him out. Not because I was scared he might hunt me down later, but just because he helped me and you don’t betray people who do you a favor. He seemed to be surviving, at least, even though that was no way to live to my way of thinking.
I still had two hundred dollars left in my pocket from selling cows. We needed it, to be sure, but not as much as this strange kid did. Maybe I couldn’t help him any other way, but money might buy him food and clothes for a while. Better than nothing. I took it out of my pocket and offered it to him.
“Please take this, so I can thank you,” I told him. He eyed the cash, looking from it to me and then back again, like a coon watches a sweet plum in your hand while it decides whether it’s safe to grab it or not. Slowly he reached out and took it, stuffing the money inside his dirty overalls without even counting it.
“Much obliged,” he said.
“Least I could do,” I said.
I left after that, trying not to let it show how sweet the air smelled after that fetid bus. I didn’t want to offend Brandon; I might need his help again someday. Dream interpreters are hard to come by.
So I went home, thinking hard about what he’d told me and what all it might mean. I was supposed to stay close to Lisa; well, okay, I could handle that. The rest of it still seemed pretty murky, but if I kept my eyes open and paid attention, then there was a good chance I might spot the signs while there was still t
ime to do something about them.
I hoped.
Lisa texted me later that evening while I was doctoring a cut on Buck’s fetlock, and we talked for a while about horses and music and whatever else came to mind.
Over the next few days we took to calling or texting each other now and then throughout the day, and you know, she was really good at cheering me up whenever I was inclined to worry about how dry the fields were and how thin the cattle were getting or whether monsters or evil sorcerers or skeletons dressed in designer outfits were fixing to bash the doors in and kill us all.
I didn’t tell Mama about any of it, at least not yet. Marcus I didn’t have much choice about since he already knew I’d gone to check on things and he pestered me till he got the story. So I told him about what Brandon said the dream meant, confusing as that still was.
My conversations with Lisa were better. It’s not that she talked about anything in particular. She really didn’t say all that much at all, honestly. She just asked me what I was doing and thinking and it always seemed like she was interested to hear about anything I felt like telling her. It didn’t matter if I was feeding the cows or working on the tractor or practicing music, she never seemed to get bored.
So we talked about herbicides and fertilizer and the best way to handle aphids and a dozen other farming-related topics, and other times we talked about red-dirt bands and playing music at tailgate parties and going mudding on back roads after the rain, when the clay is so thick and sticky you could spread it like crimson peanut butter. Ordinary stuff, sure, but I think sometimes it’s that ordinary, everyday kind of conversation that really draws people closer.
I was working in the cotton fields one afternoon when she called me on her lunch break.
“Hey, Cody. What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just spraying the cotton, that’s all. Trying to keep the bugs down,” I said absently. I had my headset on so I could use my hands to drive the tractor, and that’s where most of my attention was focused.
“Oh, I see. Should be close to ripe by now, huh?” she asked.
“Few more weeks. But I’m not sure if it’ll make it, honestly. Been too hot lately. Once it gets over a hundred and five degrees outside then it starts killing things, even if they’ve got plenty of water. All the heat this summer is burning everything up, no matter what I do,” I said.
“Maybe it’ll break soon,” she said sympathetically.
“Yeah, maybe,” I agreed, without much enthusiasm. Short of a miracle or a hurricane, I didn’t see much chance of a break till fall.
“My garden’s doing real good. Got me some really nice watermelons coming on now,” she said.
“That’s cool. You like melons?” I asked.
“Oh, there’s nothing better than a nice, sweet, lusciously succulent watermelon, ice cold and dripping with juice,” she said, and I laughed a little.
“I don’t think I ever heard anybody talk about a watermelon quite like that, Lisa. Have you got yellow ones or red ones?” I asked.
“Red, of course. I always thought the yellow ones looked funny,” she said.
“I’m surprised you’ve still got any left, with the grasshoppers so bad this year. They pretty much destroyed everything in Mama’s garden even before it got hot,” I said, sliding back into my worried mood.
“Oh, I’ve got chickens to handle all that. They get rid of the ‘hoppers real well. I’m surprised y’all don’t have any,” she said.
“We do, but the garden is always fenced off to keep them out because they like to eat the tomatoes,” I said.
“Well, yeah, that they do,” she admitted.
She was like that. Always keeping my mind on something cheerful when I needed it the most, but always subtle about it. She had this wonderful gift for making it seem like everything would be all right, no matter what. That’s a powerful thing, when you stop to think about it. The more we talked the more I wanted to talk, and it got to the point that I looked forward to our conversations as one of the highlights of my day.
I might have worried more about how close we seemed to be getting, but she had that gift so strong that when we actually talked, I wasn’t even worried about that either. She was like an addictive drug, and I just couldn’t get enough of her.
I didn’t totally lose my head, of course. I was careful never to hint that we were anything more than good friends, and she never seemed to expect anything more. As long as things stayed like that, I could handle it.