The Burning Time (6 page)

Perhaps thinking she wasn’t coming.

She forced her legs to move even faster. Her lungs burned and sweat ran from her forehead. Her nightshirt stuck to her chest, outlining the contours of her breasts. When she reached the Johnson’s farm, she cut across the field, pushing her way through the rows of half-grown feed corn.

Five minutes later, she burst from the stalks, struggling to breathe. Colored motes danced in her vision.

“I’m coming,” she tried to call out, but the words were little more than a croak. On trembling legs, she staggered to the embankment and up the hill. When she reached the top, she didn’t waste time wiping the sweat from her body or the blood from her broken fingernails. She crossed the road and climbed the divider on the side of the bridge overlooking the Alleghany River.

“Damon? Where are you?” Was she too late? She looked up and down the road, but only empty darkness waited, broken at periodic intervals by the greenish glow of the street lamps.

Look down, Sally.

She did, and her heart skipped a beat. There he was, his arms open wide, as if to hug her.

Or welcome her.

Go to him. He’s waiting.

“Damon,” she whispered and leaped from the bridge. His image smiled, and she felt herself smiling in return. Then her expression turned to horror as the face below her morphed into an obscene parody of Damon’s all-American good looks. The skin fell away, revealing the bloody skull beneath. Instead of a tongue, a black snake with glowing red eyes wriggled and curled between yellow, aged teeth.

Sally opened her mouth to scream, but it was too late. She hit the water face-first, crashing right through the dead-Damon’s chest. As rubbery, impossibly-strong tentacles encircled her body, and her lungs filled with cold, muddy water, she heard the voice in her head one last time.

Laughing.

The following morning brought no relief for John. Still distracted by the events of the previous afternoon, the stifling heat pounded at him as he made his way across town to the Anderson’s house. He arrived, sweaty and enervated, at eight, just as Danni and Mitch were leaving.

“There’s cold water and ice tea in the fridge,” Danni said. “Make sure you stop and rest. The last thing I need is to have you pass out from dehydration or heat stroke while I’m gone.” She smiled to take the sting from her words. “Besides, I’m not sure my insurance would cover it.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going to work on the porch today, so I’ll be in the shade.”

“All right. Mitch will be home at noon, and he can fix lunch for you both.”

John waved as the car pulled away and then laid out the tools he’d need. In the past week, he’d already replaced the kitchen linoleum and patched the holes and cracks in the sheetrock throughout the entire house. Over the years, he’d found he had a real knack for carpentry, enough so that the projects at the Anderson’s were moving along fast and easy.

After measuring the porch and determining the plank lengths he’d need, he removed his jacket and shirt and began sawing. He’d thought the manual labor would add to his malaise, but instead, he found it almost rejuvenating, as if each motion of the saw built up the charge inside his emotional and physical batteries. By the time he finished cutting the sections of wood, sweat was pouring off him, the rivulets cutting miniature canyons through the sawdust coating his arms and chest. But instead of exhaustion, he felt better than he had in days.

Nothing cures the blues like hard work.
His father had always said that whenever John had gotten into a mood. Back then, John had figured the hard work made you too tired to think about being depressed, but now he wondered if there might not be more to it than that.

“Whatever the reason, it’s working,” he said to the empty yard.

John took a quick break at ten, helping himself to ice tea and an apple, then got to work replacing the broken planks on the porch and steps.

His stomach rumbled, and he glanced at his watch, surprised to see it was almost one o’clock.

Mitch is late.
A tiny worry-mouse nibbled at his stomach. Since beginning camp, the boy had been unusually prompt in getting home. John suspected Mitch was one of those children doomed to have more friends in the pages of his books than in the real world.

Maybe he stopped on the way home to catch a frog, take a dip in a stream, or do any one of the thousand things young boys like to do during the summer.

After a moment’s thought, John decided to take a walk to the hardware store and pick up some things, and if Mitch wasn’t home by the time he got back, he’d go inside and call Danni. She had enough problems without him overreacting.

He jotted a quick note to Mitch explaining where he’d gone and then set off down the road. The hardware store was barely two miles away; he could be there and back in less than an hour.

The inside of Homestead Hardware was a cool oasis after the fifteen minute walk.

“Afternoon,” John said to the clerk, as he handed the boy the list of what he needed.

The young man stared at him for a long moment, a sour expression on his face. “We’re closed.”

“What?” John wasn’t sure if he’d hear correctly.

“I said——”

“It’s okay, Roy. Mister Root here’s working for Danni Anderson.” The store owner, a gray-haired man named Max Hopper, came around the counter and gave the clerk a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Just put it on her account.”

Roy glared at John and then walked away, heading toward the back of the store.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Max said. “People are starting to get edgy from the heat. Seen it before. Hot spell like this, people get like mad dogs.”

“It’s all right. Let’s hope the heat wave breaks before it comes to that.”

“Amen to that. But I got my doubts. Like Reverend Christian says, ‘Thou must suffer greatly before redemption can be found.’”

John nodded, unsure of what to say. He was saved from further conversation by Roy’s return, several pieces of molding balanced on his shoulder and a box of nails in his hand.

“Thanks again, Max. I’ll probably see you tomorrow.” John grabbed his purchases and exited the store. Stepping outside was like entering a sauna, and he staggered for a moment before regaining his balance.

He’d only walked for ten minutes when he spotted the group of kids scuffling in the empty field bordering the road. The waves of heat rising from the pavement made it hard to see their faces, but they didn’t hide the fact that five or six boys were delivering a serious beating to someone who lay curled up on the ground. Fists rose and fell, and more than one foot arrowed in for a hard kick.

John stopped, debating whether or not he should get involved. He knew his status as an outsider already had some people eyeing him with suspicion; he didn’t need to have a group of children making up false charges against him.

On the other hand, I can’t just let someone get beaten like that.

At that instant, his decision was made for him as the boy at the bottom of the pile shouted, “Leave me alone!”

In response, someone said, “Your sister ain’t here to save you now, Tiny.”

That’s Mitch!

John dropped the wood and took off across the field. “Hey! Leave him alone!”

As John drew closer, he saw it was indeed Mitch lying on the ground, his nose bleeding, his clothes and face covered in dirt. The boys backed off, and Mitch wasted no time getting to his feet and moving away from them.

“Hey, we didn’t mean nothin’,” the biggest of the boys said. His angry scowl belied the nonchalant tone of his words.

Ignoring them for the moment, John turned to Mitch. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Mitch wiped the blood away from his nose. Dark lines on his face showed where tears had turned dry dirt to mud. “These pussies couldn’t hit their way out of a paper bag.”

The boys’ apparent ringleader took a step forward. “You little fuck. I’ll—”

“That’s enough.” John stepped in front of Mitch. “Go home. Whatever problem you had with him is finished, understand? I find out you’ve been making trouble, I’ll go to the police.”

The group of young teens laughed. “Go ahead. Fatso Showalter ain’t gonna do shit to us.” The heavyset boy crossed his arms over his chest, calling John’s bluff.

Time to end this.
John whispered a few words in the language of the swamps and then made a fist. “If he won’t, then I’ll come after you myself.”

“You hit one of us, you’ll be the one in jail.”

“I didn’t say anything about hitting.”

John opened his hand, at the same time making an underhand tossing motion, as if throwing a ball to a small child. But instead of a ball, several long, green serpents sailed through the air toward the boys. They landed on the ground, hissing and coiling. Several of the boys jumped; the one who’d challenged John shouted and fell down as the snakes slithered rapidly toward them.

When they got within two or three feet, the boys lost their nerve and ran away.

Mitch turned to John. “Holy shit! How’d you do that?”

“Do what?”

“The—” Mitch pointed at the snakes and then stopped as he realized they were gone. “Where’d they go?”

John smiled. “Maybe they weren’t ever there. Or maybe they went back to where they came from. Cottonmouths prefer the swamps and streams.”

“There’s no Cottonmouths in New York,” Mitch said.

“You know what? You’re right. So I guess there couldn’t have been any snakes at all. C’mon.” He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and led him back to the road. “Help me carry some wood to your house. We still have work to do.”

As they picked up the railings, Mitch asked, “You’re not gonna tell Danni about this, are you?”

“Why don’t you want her to know?”

Mitch shrugged.

Remembering his own childhood and taunts of the children—
Witch boy! Your momma sleeps with the Devil!
—John nodded. “Children can be mean, especially when someone’s different. It doesn’t matter if that difference is being smarter, taller, or walking with a limp. I know it doesn’t help now, but in a few years things will be very different. Your brains will carry you a lot further than their muscles.”

“That’s if I make it through the next few years.”

John laughed. “You will. Nobody thinks they can, but everyone does. Look at all the adults around you. Most of them went through something at your age. Being a teenager is hard, no matter where or when you grow up.”

Mitch looked up at him. “Even for assholes like Ralphie?”

“Especially them. How would you feel if everyone was smarter than you? Most bullies do what they do so no one makes fun of them first.”

Mitch frowned as he considered John’s words. “So maybe Ralphie’s more miserable than me?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. And if he’s not now, he will be someday. Bullies always get theirs in the end. My father used to say, ‘The world has a way of evening the balance.’”

“Kinda like, ‘what comes around goes around?’”

“Exactly. The Hindus call it ‘karma.’”

“Reverend Christian says a real God smites his enemies, and we should do the same, before they can smite us.”

A brief chill ran up John’s back, making him shiver despite the blistering heat. “Be careful around him, Mitch. Some of the things he says, well...” He paused, unsure of how much to say.

“Well what?”

Leave it to a thirteen-year-old boy to not let something go.
John shook his head. “I guess what I’m trying to say is I don’t trust him.”

Mitch stared at the dusty road. “Yeah.” A car went by, sending a wave of hot air over them that did nothing to dry their sweat. “He scares me,” he said in a quiet voice.

“He scares me, too.”

Mitch didn’t say anything further, and they walked the rest of the way to the house in contemplative silence. John knew the boy had more to say, but in the short time he’d known the Andersons, he’d learned it was best to let the boy bring things up on his own, rather than try to force them out of him. Mitch already had a parent figure in Danni; what he needed was someone he could talk to without fear of being judged or told what to do.

A friend.

They deposited the wood by the porch. Mitch started gathering nails and a hammer, but John stopped him. “Let’s get you cleaned up first, okay?”

Some scrubbing with a soapy washcloth removed most of the dirt and crusted blood and revealed the marks of the beating hiding beneath them: a swollen lip and a bruise already forming on one cheek.

“Oh, man, Danni’s gonna shit when she sees my face.”

John knew he was right. If Danni saw her brother like this, she’d probably take him out of camp, which would be the worst thing to do. The other boys already thought he was weak; quitting camp would be admitting it. It was important for Mitch to prove he could take a beating and return, bloodied but unbowed.

Another unfortunate aspect of growing up as a boy.

Ice might take down the swelling of the lip, but there was no way to hide that purple and green bruise.

No way except one. But can you trust him not to tell?
John glanced at the boy, who looked close to tears again.

How can I not?

Pulling out his wallet, John did a quick calculation. He’d already paid for another week at the Chilton Arms. He’d also stocked up on canned soup and crackers. Lunches were usually taken at the Anderson’s. That left him almost thirty dollars for the week, with nothing to buy.

“I think I might have something that can take care of that bruise, back at my room. But we’ll have to hurry. Your sister will be home in a couple of hours. Call us a cab.”

Billy Ray Capshaw shivered as he entered the cool darkness of McNally’s Pub. He spotted Tony Lopez at the bar and nodded toward a booth at the back of the room. At three in the afternoon, the place was almost deserted. Two old-timers sat at the far end of the bar, eating pickled eggs and watching a horse race on television. A fat man in a cheap business suit was in the first booth, reading the paper and finishing the last of a burger and fries.