The Last Child (21 page)

Johnny pulled his hands beneath the sheet, but still felt the warm, spongy hole in the back of Jar’s head. He heard sounds that went from hard to wet and remembered that Jar was dead. Johnny rolled onto his side and closed out the light.

The door opened so quietly that Johnny didn’t really hear it. He sensed the movement of air, the presence of someone by his bed. He opened his eyes and saw Detective Hunt, who looked haggard, his smile forced. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he said, then gestured at the chair. “Do you mind?”

Johnny straightened against the pillows. He tried to speak, but the world was wrapped in cotton.

“How do you feel?” Hunt asked.

Johnny’s eyes settled on the gun whose butt showed under the detective’s jacket. “I’m okay.” The words sounded thick and slow and false.

Hunt sat. “Can we talk?” Johnny did not respond, and Detective Hunt leaned forward. He made a steeple of his fingers and put his elbows on his knees. The jacket gapped open so that Johnny could see the worn holster, the black lacquer that seemed to coat the steel. “I need to know what happened.”

Johnny didn’t answer. He was transfixed.

“Can you look at me, son?”

Johnny nodded, but his eyes felt too heavy to lift.

“Johnny?”

Johnny stared at the gun. The checkered grip. The white bead of the safety.

His hand moved, all on its own, and the cop was dimming, even as Johnny stretched for the gun. He just wanted to hold it, to see if it was as heavy as it looked, but the gun receded into a ball of soft light. A weight came onto Johnny’s chest. It pressed him into the mattress and he heard the cop’s distant voice. “Johnny. Stay with me, Johnny.”

Then he was falling, and somebody drove black spikes into his eyes.

Katherine ironed her clothes and dressed. She fought to keep her fingers steady, but the buttons felt very small. She dried her hair, combed out the tangles, and debated over makeup. In the end, she looked like a normal woman stretched over the bones of someone very ill. When she called for a cab, she had to think hard to remember the numbers on the house; then she sat on the sofa’s edge to wait.

A clock ticked in the kitchen.

She kept her back straight.

When the sweat began to form, it started between the blades on her back. She imagined the taste of a drink and heard the lullaby of one more forgotten day.

It would be easy.

So very, very easy.

The decision to pray stole across her like a shadow. It was as if she’d blinked, then opened her eyes to an absence of light so distinct, it made her look up. The temptation rose from a deep place in her soul, a once-fierce heat now compressed to something black and cold. She fought the temptation, but lost, and when she knelt, she felt like a liar and a fake, like a traveler lost in a night of ceaseless rain.

Words, at first, refused to come, and it felt like God, himself, had closed her throat. But she dipped her chin and strove to remember how it felt. Nakedness. Faith. The humility to plead. And that’s what she did. She begged for strength, and for her son to be well. She begged God for help, silently, ardently. She begged to keep what she had: her son, their life together. When she stood, she heard the sound of tires on gravel, and it sounded like rain. And then the sound stopped.

Ken Holloway met her at the door.

His suit was creased, the tie a rich purple, loose around his neck. Katherine froze when she saw the displeasure on his face, the sweat on his collar. She stared at the brush of hair that covered the back of his hand.

“What are you doing?” He cupped her chin with a thumb and two hard fingers. “Who are you so dressed up for?” She could not answer. He squeezed her chin. “I said, who are you so dressed up for?”

“I’m going to the hospital.” Small voice.

Ken looked at his watch. “Visiting hours will be over in an hour. How about you pour us a drink and you can go tomorrow? First thing.”

“They’ll wonder why I’m not there.”

“Who will wonder?”

She swallowed. “DSS.”

“Bureaucrats. They can’t hurt you.”

She raised her head. “I have to go.”

“Fix me a drink.”

“There’s nothing here.”

“What?”

“It’s gone. All of it.” She tried to move past him. He stopped her with one massive arm.

“It’s late.” He ran a hand down the small of her back.

“I can’t.”

“I was in jail all night.” He gripped her arm. “That was Johnny’s fault, you know. Your son’s fault. If he hadn’t thrown that rock through my window…”

“You don’t know that he did that.”

“Did you just contradict me?”

Pain flared in her arm. She looked down at his fingers. “Take your hand off me.”

He laughed, and she felt him move against her, the press of his chest as he filled the doorway. He began to drive her back. “Let go,” she said. But he was pushing her into the house, his lips thin below unforgiving eyes. A sudden image of her son came to Katherine, his small chin in one still hand as he sat on the stoop and looked up the hill for some sign of his father’s return. She’d chastised him for it, but she felt it now, the hope he must have felt. Her gaze slid up from Ken’s arm and she looked up the same hill. She imagined the rise and fall of her husband’s truck, but the hill was empty, the road a stretch of silent black. Ken made the same raw sound in his throat, and when she looked up, she saw a smile cut his face. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Johnny. First thing.”

She looked again to the hilltop, saw metal flash as a car rose at the crest. Her breath caught, then she recognized the car. “My cab,” she said.

Ken stepped back as the cab began to slow. Katherine pulled her arm free, but felt him there, tall and thick and angry. “I have to go,” she said, then pushed past him and met the cab in the drive.

“Katherine.” His smile was broad, and to anyone else might have seemed genuine. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

She threw herself into the cab, felt the seat on her back, smelled cigarettes, unwashed clothes and hair tonic. The driver had folded skin and a scar on his neck that was the color of damp pearl. “Where to?”

Katherine kept her eyes on Ken Holloway.

“Ma’am?”

Ken kept his smile.

“The hospital,” she said.

The driver watched her in the mirror. She felt his eyes and met them. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She was sweaty and shaking. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

But she was wrong.

Johnny stood with woods at his back, a narrow clearing before him. It was a scratch in a sea of trees, an imperfection; but from where Johnny stood, it was everything, a rolling thatch of green that bent to a silent breeze.

His sister stared at him from the center of the glade. She raised her hand, and Johnny found himself walking, grass at his ankles, then at his knees. Alyssa looked as she had the last time he’d seen her: pale yellow shorts, a white top. Her hair was as black as ink, her skin very tan. She kept one hand behind her back, and tilted her head so that strands of black fell across her eyes. She stood on a piece of rusted tin that pressed the grass flat. Johnny could smell the crushed-grass smell, the summer ripeness.

The snake curled at her feet. It was the copperhead he’d killed. Five feet long, brown and gold and silent. It tasted the air with its tongue, and when Johnny stopped, it raised its head.

Johnny remembered how it struck at him on the day he’d killed it. How close it had come.

Inches.

Maybe less.

Alyssa stooped for the snake, and her fingers closed around its midsection. The tail wrapped her wrist. The head rose higher as she straightened, and the snake met her gaze. Its tongue flicked out. “This is not strength,” she said.

The snake struck her in the face, and when it withdrew, two holes appeared, followed by dots of blood that looked like small, perfect apples. She held the snake higher, took a step and the tin shifted beneath her feet. “This is weakness.”

The snake struck, a blur that slowed only when the fangs snagged in her face. She faltered, and the snake hit her again. Twice. Once on the brow, once on her lower lip. More holes. More blood. She stopped walking, and suddenly her eyes shone, so brown they were black, so still they could pass for empty. They were Johnny’s eyes, their mother’s eyes. Her hand tightened on the snake, and Johnny saw that she was not afraid. Her face radiated violence and anger. Her lips paled and the snake began to struggle. She squeezed and her voice gained strength.

“Weakness,” she repeated, fingers white, snake becoming frantic as she crushed it. It struck her hand, her face. It hit the neck and hung on, pumping its venom even as it writhed. Alyssa ignored it, moved her other hand from behind her back. In it, she held a gun, black and gleaming in the hard, hot light.

“Power,” she said.

And ripped the snake from her neck.

Johnny woke with a start. The drugs had worn off, but the dream kept its grip: his vanished sister, and how she’d smiled as Johnny laid fingers on the warm, bright metal in her hand. He touched the bandages on his chest, then he saw his mother. She sat alone in a chair by the wall. Mascara stained the skin beneath her eyes. One knee twitched.

“Mom.”

Her head came around and her voice caught. “Johnny.” She found her feet in an instant, crossed the room and stood over him. Her hand smoothed his hair, then she bent and wrapped her arms around him. “My baby.”

Detective Hunt came two hours after breakfast. He appeared in the door, gave Johnny a tight smile, then crooked a finger at Katherine and moved back into the hall.

Johnny watched them through the glass. Whatever Hunt said, his mother didn’t like it. They argued hotly. She shook her head, stared twice through the window, then dipped her chin. Hunt’s hand touched her shoulder once, but she threw it off.

When the door finally opened, Hunt entered first, Johnny’s mother right behind him. She offered an unconvincing smile, then perched on the edge of a slick, vinyl-covered chair in the corner. She looked as if she might throw up.

“Hey, Johnny.” Hunt pulled a chair closer to the bed. “How are you feeling?”

Johnny looked from his mother to the glint of metal under Hunt’s arm, the black and shining steel. “Is Tiffany okay?”

Hunt twitched his jacket closed. “I think she will be.”

Johnny closed his eyes and saw her sitting in the dead man’s blood; he felt the dry, hot skin of her arm as he’d tried to get her in the car. “She didn’t know who I was. We’ve been in school together for seven years.” He shook his head. “Halfway to the hospital, she finally recognized me. She wouldn’t let go of me. Crying. Screaming.”

“I’ll find out how she is. First thing.” Hunt paused and his voice went grown-up serious. “It was a brave thing you did.”

Johnny blinked. “I didn’t save anybody.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s what they’re saying, isn’t it?”

“Some people are saying that. Yes.”

“He was going to kill me. Tiffany is the hero. They shouldn’t be telling stories otherwise.”

“TV people, Johnny. Don’t take it seriously.”

Johnny stared at the white wall and one hand touched the bandages on his chest. “He was going to kill me.”

Katherine made a noise that sounded like a sob, and Hunt turned in his seat. “There is really no need for you to be here.”

She rose from the edge of her seat. “You can’t make me go.”

“No one is suggesting—”

“I am not leaving.” Her voice climbed, hands shaking.

Hunt turned back to Johnny, and his smile seemed real, though troubled. “Are you strong enough to answer some questions?” Johnny nodded. “We’re going to start at the beginning. I want you to picture the man you saw on the bridge, the one driving the car that hit the motorcycle. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Now, picture the man that assaulted you after you ran.”

“He didn’t assault me. He just picked me up, kind of held me.”

“Held you?”

“Like he was waiting for something.”

“Is there any chance that it could have been the same man. The man on the bridge. The one that picked you up.”

“They were different men.”

“You barely saw the man on the bridge. You said he was a silhouette.”

“Different shape, different size. They were a mile apart, maybe even two.”

Hunt explained about the bend in the river. “It’s possible that it was the same man.”

“I know how the river runs. The middle of that bend is a swamp. If you tried to cut across it, you’d sink to your waist. The trail follows the river for a reason. They’re different men, trust me. The one on the bridge didn’t even look big enough to carry that box.”

“What box?”

“Like a trunk,” Johnny said. “Wrapped in plastic. He had it on a shoulder and it looked real heavy.”

“Describe it.”

“Black plastic. Silver tape. Long. Thick. Like a trunk. He held me with one arm, held the trunk with the other. Just stood there, like I said, and then he spoke to me.”

“You didn’t tell me that before. What did he say?”

“God says.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

Hunt stood and walked to the window. For a long minute, he stared through the glass. “Does the name David Wilson mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“What about Levi Freemantle?”

“David Wilson is the man that got knocked off the bridge. Levi Freemantle is the man that picked me up.”

“You said that the names meant nothing to you.”

Johnny rolled his shoulders. “They don’t. But Freemantle is a Mustee name, so that has to be the big guy. That makes David Wilson the dead one.”

“Mustee?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s mustee?”

“Indian blood mixed with African.” Hunt looked vacant. “Lumbee, Sapona, Cherokee, Catawba. There were Indian slaves, too. Didn’t you know that?”

Hunt studied the kid, not sure if he should believe him. “How do you know that Freemantle is a mustee name?”