The memory of that storm wheeled through Billy’s head as he watched the pickup drive away. There was lightning behind Mr. Sayre’s eyes, and it was looking for a place to strike.
The snow had almost stopped. Nothing was even white, Billy saw, but instead a wet gray that meant there would be school tomorrow, and he would have to finish that arithmetic homework for Mrs. Cullens.
“Snow’s about quit, bubber,” John said; his face had gone red with cold. “Gettin’ a bit chillier, though. You about ready to turn back?”
“Guess so,” he answered, though he really wasn’t. That seemed to him to be a matter of great concern: no matter how far you walked the road still went on to somewhere, and there were all the dirt trails and forest paths that led off every whichaway too, and what lay at the far end of them? It seemed to Billy that no matter how far you walked, you never really got to the end of things.
They walked on a few minutes longer, to the single blinking amber traffic light at the center of Hawthorne. The intersection was bordered by the barbershop, Coy Granger’s Quick-Pik grocery store, a rundown Texaco gas station, and the Hawthorne post office. The rest of the town—clapboard-and-brick structures that looked like blocks a baby’s hand had strewn into disarray—sat on either side of the highway, which swept on across an old gray trestle bridge and up into the brown hills where an occasional chimney spouted smoke. The sharp white steeple of the Hawthorne First Baptist Church stuck up through the leafless trees like an admonishing finger. Just on the other side of the disused railroad tracks was the jumble of stores and shanties known as Dusktown; the tracks might have been an electrified fence separating the black and white sections of Hawthorne. It disturbed John that Reverend Horton was leaving his rightful duties to go into Dusktown; the man had no cause to go over to the other side of the tracks, and all he was doing was trying to stir up things that were best kept buried.
“Better head on home now,” John said, and took his son’s hand.
In another few moments they came up even with the small but neatly kept green house on their right. It was one of the newer houses built in Hawthorne; there was a white-painted front porch at the top of a few steps, and white smoke curled from the chimney. Billy looked at the house, looked again, and saw Mr. Booker sitting up there on the porch. The man was wearing his yellow John Deere cap and a short-sleeved blue shirt. He waved to his best friend’s father, but Mr. Booker seemed to be looking right through him. He said uneasily, “Daddy?…”
John said, “What, bubber?” Then he looked up and saw Dave Booker sitting there like a rock. He frowned and called out, “Afternoon, Dave! Pretty cold to be outside today, ain’t it?”
Booker didn’t move. John stopped walking, and realized that his old fishing partner was staring out at the hills with a blank, frozen expression, as if he were trying to see clear to Mississippi. John saw the summery short-sleeved shirt, and he said quietly, “Dave? Everything all right?” He and Billy came up the brown lawn slowly and stood at the foot of the steps. Booker was wearing fishing lures stock in his hat; his square, heavy-jowled face was white with the cold, but now the man blinked and at least John knew he wasn’t frozen to death.
“Mind if we come up for a spell?” John asked.
“Come on up, then. Long as you’re here.” Booker’s voice was empty, and the sound of it scared Billy.
“Thanks kindly.” John and Billy climbed the steps to the porch. A window curtain moved and Julie Ann, Dave’s wife, peered out at them for a few seconds before the curtain closed. “How about that snow? Came down for a few minutes, didn’t it?”
“Snow?” Booker’s thick black brows knitted together. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, his lips liver-red and slack. “Yeah. Sure did.” He nodded, making one of the chrome lures jingle.
“You okay, Dave?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” His gaze shifted away from John, and he was staring into Mississippi again.
“I don’t know, I just…” John let his voice trail off. On the floor beside Dave’s chair was a scattering of hand-rolled Prince Albert cigarette butts and a baseball bat with what looked like dried blood on it. No, John thought, must be just mud. Sure, that’s all it is. He gripped Billy’s hand tightly.
“Man can sit on his own front porch, can’t he?” Dave said quietly. “Last I heard he could. Last I heard it was a free country. Or has that changed?” His face turned, and now John could clearly see the terrible, cold rage in his eyes. John felt his spine crawl. He could see the wicked prongs of a hook protruding from the man’s cap, and he recalled that they would’ve gone fishing last Saturday on Semmes Lake had it not been for one of Dave’s frequent migraine headaches. “It’s a fuckin’ free country,” Dave said, and suddenly grinned viciously.
John was jarred; it wasn’t right that Dave should use such a word in front of the boy, but he decided to let it pass. Dave’s gaze had clouded over.
The front door opened and Julie Ann peeked out. She was a tall, fragile-looking woman with curly brown hair and soft pale blue eyes. She smiled—grimaced, John thought—and said with tense good cheer, “John Creekmore! What brings you uptown? Billy, you takin’ care of your daddy today? Step on in and let me offer you a cup of hot coffee, John.”
“No, thank you. Billy and I’ve got to get on back…”
“Please,” Julie Ann whispered. Her eyes were luminous with tears. She motioned with a quick tilt of her head. “Just one cup of coffee.” She opened the door wider and raised her voice: “Will? Billy Creekmore’s here!”
“KEEP YOUR DAMNED VOICE DOWN, WOMAN!” Dave thundered, twisting around in his chair; he plastered one hand against his forehead. “I’LL STROP YOU! I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL!”
John, Billy, and Julie Ann formed a frozen triangle around the man. From within the house Billy could hear little Katy sobbing in a back room, and tentatively Will called out, “Mom?” Julie Ann’s grin hung by one lip, and she stood as if motion might cause Dave to explode. Dave abruptly looked away, dug into a back pocket, and brought out a bottle of Bayer aspirin; he unscrewed the cap and tilted the bottle to his lips, then crunched noisily.
“Strop you,” he whispered, to no one in particular. His eyes bulged above dark blue circles. “Strop the livin’ shit out of you…”
John pushed Billy toward the door, and they entered the house. As Julie Ann closed the door, Dave said mockingly, “Gonna talk about the old man again, aren’t you? You dirty bitch…” And then Julie Ann shut the door, and her husband’s curses were muffled, indistinct ravings.
2
THE HOUSE WAS DARK and oppressively hot, one of the few in Hawthorne that had the luxury of a coal-fed furnace. John saw splinters of glass twinkling in the grayish green carpet; a broken chair sagged in a corner, and there were two empty bottles of Bayer on a lamptable. A framed print of Jesus at the Last Supper hung crookedly on one wall, and opposite it was a stuffed and mounted large-mouth bass, painted in garish blue and silver. In addition to the furnace heat, raw pinewood crackled and hissed in the fireplace, sending plumes of smoke up the chimney and scenting the room with pine sap.
“Excuse the mess.” Julie Ann was trembling but trying to keep a desperate smile on her face. “We’ve…had some trouble here today. Billy, Will’s in his room if you want to go on back.”
“Can I?” he asked his father, and when John nodded he rocketed down a corridor to the small room Will shared with his little sister. He knew the house by heart because he’d spent the night several times; the last time, he and Will had explored the forest together in search of lions, and when Katy had tagged along they’d let her carry their stick-guns for them, but she had to do as they told her and call them “Bwana,” a word Will had learned from a Jungle Jim comic book. This time, though, the house seemed different; it was darker and quieter, and might have been scary, Billy thought, if he hadn’t known his father was up in the front room.
As Billy entered, Will looked up from the plastic Civil War soldiers he’d arranged on
the floor. Will was the same age as Billy, a small thin boy with unruly brown hair plagued with cowlicks, and he wore brown-framed glasses held together in the center with Scotch tape. On the other bed, his sister lay curled up in a ball, her face against the pillow. “I’m Robert E. Lee!” Will announced, his sallow, rather sad-eyed face brightening at the approach of his friend. “You can be General Grant!”
“I’m not a Yankee!” Billy objected, but within another minute he was commanding the bluecoats in a daring attack up Dead-man’s Hill.
In the front room, John sat down on a rumpled sofa and watched as Julie Ann paced before him, stopped to peer out the window, then paced again. She said in a tense whisper, “He killed Boo, John. He beat Boo to death with that baseball bat and then he hung him in a tree with fishin’ line. I tried to fight him, but he was too strong and…” Tears brimmed from her swollen eyes; John quickly averted his gaze to a little clock sitting on the mantel. It was ten minutes before five, and he wished he’d never offered to take Billy for a walk. “He was just too strong,” she said, and made a terrible choking sound as she swallowed. “Boo…died so hard…”
John shifted uneasily. “Well, why’d he do it? What’s wrong with him?”
She pressed a finger to her lips and stared fearfully at the door. She held her breath until she’d looked out the window again and seen her husband still sitting there in the cold chewing on another aspirin. “The children don’t know about Boo,” Julie Ann said. “It happened this mornin’, while they were at school. I hid Boo in the woods—God, it was awful!—and they think he’s just roamed off somewhere like he does. Dave didn’t go to the garage today, didn’t even call in sick. He woke up yesterday with one of his headaches, the worst he’s ever had, and he didn’t get a wink of sleep last night. Neither did I.” She put a hand to her mouth and chewed on the knuckles; a cheap but sentimental wedding ring with tiny diamonds in the shape of a heart twinkled merrily in the orange firelight. “Today it…it was the worst it’s ever been. Ever. He screamed and threw things; first he couldn’t get hot enough, then he had to get outside in the cool air. He said he was going to kill me, John.” Her eyes were wide and terrified. “He said he knew all the things I’d done behind his back. But I swear I never did a thing, I swear it on a stack of Bi—”
“Just calm down, now,” John whispered, glancing quickly at the door. “Take it easy. Why don’t you call Doc Scott?”
“No! I can’t! I tried to this morning, but he…he said he’d do to me what he did to Boo, and…” A sob welled from her throat. “I’m afraid! Dave’s gotten mean before, and I never let on to anybody; but he’s never been this bad! He’s like somebody I don’t even know! You should’ve heard him yell at Katy just a little while ago, and he eats those aspirins like candy and they never do no good!”
“Well”—John looked at Julie Ann’s agonized expression and felt a long stupid grin stretch his face—“everything’ll be all right. You’ll see. Doc’ll know what to do for Dave’s headaches…”
“No!” she shouted, and John winced. She stopped, frozen, while they both thought they heard Dave’s chair scraping across the porch. “Doc Scott said he had a damned sinus infection! That old man ain’t got good sense anymore, and you know it! Why, he almost let your own wife just linger and…” She blinked, unwilling to say the next word. Die is a terrible word, she thought, a word that should not be spoken out loud when talking about a person.
“Yeah, I guess so. But those headaches need lookin’ after. Maybe you could talk him into goin’ up to the Fayette hospital?”
The woman shook her head forlornly. “I’ve tried. He says there’s nothin’ wrong, and he don’t want to spend the money on foolishness. I don’t know what to do!”
John cleared his throat nervously and then rose to his feet, avoiding her stare. “Guess I’d better get Billy. We’ve been out too long as it is.” He started to walk back through the hallway, but Julie Ann’s arm shot out and grasped his wrist tightly. He looked up, startled.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered, a tear trickling down her face. “I don’t have anywhere to go, and I can’t stay here another night!”
“Leave him? Come on now, it can’t be that bad! Dave’s your husband.” He pulled his arm away. “You can’t just pack up and leave!” He caught the broken chair from the corner of his eye, and the marks on the hearth where Dave had frantically shoved wood and kindling into the fireplace and scraped the paint. He summoned up another grin. “Everything’ll be fine in the mornin’. I know Dave pretty good, and I know how much he loves you.”
“I can’t…”
John looked away from her before she could finish. He was shaking inside, and he had to get out of this house fast. He looked into the back room, saw the two boys playing soldiers on the floor while Katy rubbed her reddened eyes and watched. “Got you!” Will shouted. “That one’s dead! Bam! Bam! That one on the horse is dead!”
“He’s shot in the arm is all!” Billy said. “KABOOM! That’s a cannon and that man and that man and that wagon are blown up!”
“Are not!” Will squawked.
“War’s over, boys,” John said. The strange ominous feeling in this house lay like a cold sheen of sweat on his neck. “Time to go, Billy. Say good-bye to Will and Katy. We’ll see y’all later.”
“’Bye, Will!” Billy said, and then followed his father back to the living room while Will said, “’Bye!” and went back to the sound-effects of rifles and cannons.
Julie Ann zipped up Billy’s parka. When she looked at John her eyes were full of pleading. “Help me,” she said.
“Wait until mornin’ before you decide what to do. Sleep on it. Say thank you to Mrs. Booker for her hospitality, Billy.”
“Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Booker.”
“Good boy.” He led his son to the door and opened it before Julie Ann could speak again. Dave Booker sat with a cigarette butt between his teeth; his eyes seemed sunken in his head, and the strange smile on his face made Billy think of a Halloween pumpkin’s grin.
“You take it easy now, Dave,” John said, and reached out to touch the man’s shoulder. But then he stopped, because Dave’s head was turning and his face was dead-white from the cold, and the smile on his thin lips was murderous.
Dave whispered, “Don’t come back. This is my house. Don’t you dare come back.”
Julie Ann slammed the door shut.
John grasped Billy’s hand and hurried down the steps, across the dead brown lawn to the road. His heart was beating very hard, and as they walked away he felt Dave’s cold stare following them, and he knew that soon Dave would rise from that chair and go inside, and Lord help Julie Ann. He felt like a slinking dog; with that thought he envisioned Boo’s white carcass swinging from a tree with fishing line knotted around its throat, bloodied eyes bulging.
Billy started to turn his head, snowflakes melting in his eyebrows.
John tightened his grip on the boy’s hand and said tersely, “Don’t look back.”
3
HAWTHORNE CLOSED DOWN FOR the night when the steam whistle blew, promptly at five o’clock, at the sawmill owned by the Chatham brothers. When darkness settled across the valley, it signaled a time for families to eat dinner together, then sit before the fire and read their Bibles or subscription magazines like the Ladies’ Home Journal or Southern Farm Times. Those who could afford radios listened to the popular programs. Watching television was a real luxury that only a few families possessed; reception from Fayette consisted of only one weak station. Several houses farther out from town still had outhouses. Porch lights—for those who could afford the electricity—usually burned until seven o’clock, meaning that visitors were welcome even on cold January nights, but after they went out it was time for bed.
In his wood-framed cot between the front room and the small kitchen, Billy Creekmore was asleep beneath a quilt and dreaming of Mrs. Cullens, who stared down at him through her fish-eyed glasses and demanded to know exactly
why he hadn’t finished his arithmetic homework. He tried to explain to her that it had been finished, but when he was walking to school he’d been caught in a thunderstorm and he’d started running, and pretty soon he was lost in the woods and somehow his blue Nifty notebook with the problems he’d done was gone. Suddenly, as dreams do, he was in the dense green forest, on an unfamiliar rocky path that led up into the hills. He followed it for a while, until he came to Mr. Booker sitting on a big rock staring out into space with his scary, sightless eyes. As he approached, Billy saw that there were timber rattlers on the rocks and ground all around him, crawling and rattling, tangled together. Mr. Booker, his eyes as black as new coals for the basement furnace, picked up a snake by the rattles and shook it at him; the man’s mouth opened and a terrible shriek wailed out that grew louder and louder and louder and—
The shriek was still echoing in his head when Billy sat up with a muffled cry, and he could hear it fading off in the distance.
In another moment Billy could hear his parents’ muffled voices through the wall beside him. The closet door opened and closed, and footsteps sounded on the floorboards. He got out of his cot in the dark, stepping into a draft that made his teeth chatter, and then he was facing the door of their bedroom. He paused, hearing them whispering inside but remembering the time he’d opened that door without knocking and had seen them dancing lying down; his father had been sputtering and furious, but his mother had explained that they needed to be in private and calmly asked him to close the door. At least that had been better than when he heard them fighting in there; usually it was his father’s voice, raised in anger. Worse than the yelling, though, were the long wintry silences that sometimes stayed in the house for days at a time.
Billy gathered up his courage and knocked. The whisperings stopped. In the distance—out on the highway, he thought—he could hear another shriek like a ha’nt up in the Hawthorne cemetery. The door opened, and standing against the dim glow of a kerosene lamp was his father, pale and bleary-eyed, shrugging into his overcoat. “Go back to bed, son,” John said.