Boys of Blur (15 page)

Natalie nodded. She was still wearing his heavy rings
around her neck. “This is it,” she said. “He only brought me here once, but I’m sure.”

Mack inhaled long and hard and stepped away from the car. A gun would be nice, tucked into the back of his waistband. Or some cops, though if they’d tagged along, they’d be more likely to arrest him than their old teammate, Bobby Reynolds.

All Mack had was a phone, his wife, and his daughter. And an awful feeling.

“Bobby!” Mack shouted. He walked toward the front door. “Bobby Reynolds!”

Mack stepped under a little stoop above the front door. He thumped the door with his fist, then tried the knob.

The cockeyed door swung open, dragging through a long, scraped-out groove as it did. Mack stared into the silent, glowing room.

“Bobby?” He stepped inside. “You here?”

There was a tightly made bed against one plank wall with a blanket folded at the foot. A lamp, a bookshelf, an overflowing ashtray. A thick rag rug, a woodstove, a sink, a refrigerator barely bigger than a five-gallon bucket, and a toilet sitting in a boxed-in closet with the door open.

Two newspaper photos hung on the wall, one of which Mack recognized immediately—Natalie had hung a large print of it in their bathroom. Mack was in his pads and drenched with champagne, holding Charlie on his shoulder. Natalie was standing beside him, laughing and lovely,
more alive and beautiful than anyone he had ever seen. That part of the photo, worn and creased, was in Mack’s wallet.

The other photo was of Sugar, his lean arms crossed, long black hair tucked behind his ears, and an almost-smile on his face. The headline above it read:

“SUGAR” TAKES THE REINS

That was it. No Charlie and no Bobby. Mack thumped his foot on the floor and looked down. A single piece of paper rested in the center of the rug. He picked it up.

Charlie crouched at the very end of the dock with the bag under his arm and his hand inside, on the bone knife wrapped in cloth. If the Stank came at him, he could pull it out. He could fight. At least he wanted to look like he could.

Sugar was beside him. The tall Stank was still pointing his club. He hadn’t taken one step onto the dock.

“What’s he doing?” Sugar hissed. “That stink, it makes me … it makes me think …”

“…  awful things,” Charlie finished. “Me too. Don’t believe it. And keep breathing through your mouth.”

Sugar groaned like he’d been punched in the stomach. Charlie felt the same wave of hate. He suddenly wanted to throttle his quarterback brother with the strong arm. He wanted to take that arm from him.

“No!” Charlie shouted, and the effort gave his mind
a small blast of clarity. “Change the subject. Think about something you know you love. Just … just run football plays in your head.”

Sugar nodded, breathing hard, focusing on the still-motionless Gren. “What’s he waiting for?” he asked.

“Us,” Charlie whispered. “Probably doesn’t want to risk being over deep water.”

“Do you think he’ll jump on me if I get in the boat?”

Charlie glanced at the boat, drifting where it was tied, then looked at his brother.

“Flare gun,” Sugar whispered. “Or we just boat away?”

“He’d only follow us on the bank,” Charlie whispered. “Grab the flare gun. I’ll get him out here, then you shoot and knock him in.”

Sugar nodded, then took one step and jumped into the boat. It bounced and splashed and swung out to the end of its rope.

The Stank tensed, crouching like a runner ready to explode. As Sugar rooted around under the seats, the Stank raised his club to throw.

“Hey!” Charlie shouted. The Stank turned to him, club still raised. Suddenly the crowd in the distant stadium erupted in cheers, the sound rolling down over the dike like a flood. Thousands of voices. Horns. Drums. Joy. The Stank snarled and rolled his neck and shoulders, writhing in pained irritation.

Mrs. Wisdom was right. The Stank hated sound.

“Touchdown,” Sugar said from the boat. He held up a bright yellow flare gun.

Charlie fished around in his bag, found the heavy air horn, and pulled it out. He pointed it at the Gren.

“Where’s your mother?” Charlie asked.

The Stank snarled.

Charlie shrugged and pulled the trigger.

The horn had been designed to signal distress across miles of water, to throw blaring sound beyond the horizon to the horizon that came after.

It did.

The blast shivered Charlie’s teeth. The Gren screamed and fell backward onto the bank. But only for a moment. Even as Charlie released the trigger, the Gren was exploding forward onto the dock with his club raised. Two huge strides. Three …

The dock bounced under his weight. Charlie didn’t even have time to jump.

A hot pink flare shrieked past Charlie, straight into the Gren’s face. The flare careened off his forehead and corkscrewed up and away. The Stank slipped sideways and tumbled into the water, limbs flailing as he was swallowed in splash. A swirling mat of raccoon fur bubbled up in the wash.

Sugar jumped out of the boat to stand beside Charlie. As they stared at the roiling water, a man surfaced, no
longer the terrifying creature that had fallen in. This man’s beard was muddy but white and his bare back was moon-pale. The muck that had been caked on his shoulders had been washed away, and his skin was baggy on his bones.

The old man—for that was now all he was—flailed weakly toward the bank.

“Mr. Welles?” Sugar asked, but the man didn’t answer. Sugar looked at Charlie, his eyes wide. “I knew him,” he whispered. “He worked at the bank before it closed. He used to give me candy. Until he died.”

Charlie didn’t know what to say. He felt a little better now that the stink was drifting away, but he was still sweating, still dizzy. The old man in the water was struggling to pull himself up onto the boulders that lined the canal bank. His skin sagged off the ribs as he freed himself from the water. His movements were jerky. Clumsy. Dead. And then they stopped completely. The strange second life of Mr. Welles had ended.

Sugar was staring at the body.

Charlie looked around. One hundred yards down the dike, two more shapes rose in silhouette against the glow of the stadium lights.
The horn. And the flare
.

“We have to go,” Charlie said. “Quick. To the swamps past the church, where the mound goes into the trees.”

Sugar shook his head. “I told you. I can’t let you—”

Charlie ran to the dike and began to climb. Sugar
caught up easily. When they reached the top, Sugar stayed low, practically crawling across the high, flat back of the dike to the other side. Charlie copied him.

Across the cane, Taper’s lights were dull and yellow beside the humming white of the stadium. In the stadium, tiny boys ran into each other. Tiny people banged drums. The crowd stomped and chanted. The lights above the stands rocked slightly. The helicopter had moved on, but cop lights flashed in the parking lots and along streets. On the northern side of town, alone in the darkness, a single light glowed next to the white church on its mound.

Charlie wiped sweat from his eyes and squinted. It looked like a LEGO block from here. Or half a sugar cube.

The good news was that heading north through town to the church wouldn’t take him any farther from Mrs. Wisdom’s trees than he had already gone. Unfortunately, there was no way to know exactly when he would run out of time—Cotton’s, or his own.

In the cane field below them, a small fire was burning.

“The flare,” Sugar said. “Let’s go.” He turned sideways and began to run down the dike toward the stadium. Charlie followed. Or he tried to. His ankle groaned, and his legs were growing heavy—too heavy to listen to him. He slipped and slid and ran again. He slipped and almost screamed when his ankle scraped across a jagged stone.

Sugar was waiting on a dirt track at the bottom of the
dike. Charlie was better on flat ground, but not much. After fifty yards, he fell. The next time he fell, he threw up.

He only had two glass bottles with breath from Mrs. Wisdom’s ironwood trees. Two. And it was already time for one of them.

Charlie staggered off the track and found himself facedown on soft earth. The dust seemed full of fiery sparks. Bad sign. He tried to blink them away.

Sugar dropped onto his knees beside him. “I’m carrying you, Charlie,” he said, sliding his hands under Charlie’s arms. “I’ll get you to Mack.”

“No. Bag,” Charlie grunted. “Get it off.”

As Sugar reached for the bag, stink swept over them, and they heard the sound of running feet.

Sugar dove onto his belly beside Charlie as a pack of six Gren flashed by. They wore animal skins and struggled as they ran, shoving and slashing like they hated each other. The cloud of reek trailed after them toward the stadium.

“No girls,” Charlie muttered. He felt hot all over. “Why no girls?”

Sugar rose to his knees and slid Charlie’s arms out of the bag’s shoulder straps. Charlie was surprised at how heavy his arms were when they were limp and useless.

“They have a mother,” Charlie added. His voice sounded funny inside his head. “So there could be girls.”

“Maybe that’s why,” Sugar whispered, lifting the bag.
“Mrs. Wiz says these things are all envy, right? A selfish dude hates on his sons. Maybe the Mother doesn’t want the competition.”

Sugar opened the bag flap and reached inside. “What do you need in here? Knife? Bottles?”

Acid boiled up into Charlie’s throat. A hammer jumped inside his head. “Panther,” he said.

“You’re scaring me, bro.” Sugar pulled out one of the glass bottles. He held it up. “Medicine, right?” He shook it. “Lead heavy but there’s nothing in it.”

Charlie fought to raise his dead arm. He made one finger almost point. “Panther,” he said again.

Across the track, the big cat was inching out of tall grass and stray cane, muscles taut beneath its fur, golden eyes wide.

Sugar turned and threw up his arms as the cat sprang across the track and slammed into him. They tumbled into the cane, and Charlie’s eyes closed.

He heard the cat return. It gripped Charlie’s shoulder at the base of his neck with its teeth and dragged him across the ground. His heels bounced, and his ankle hurt. Sugar was yelling again. The cat let go, and Charlie’s head thumped against the ground.

Charlie found himself drifting toward something warmer and deeper than sleep. While his body’s eyes were shut, some other eyes opened. He saw that he was lying on a vast bed of fiery sparks. The sparks tugged at him,
stinging his ankle when they touched it. It would stop stinging soon. His sparks would join the others. He would be muck.

Smooth cold slid into his mouth. Like syrup without the sticky. If syrup could be as heavy as lead but made from air. If air could taste like silver and forests and stars and ice and years and years and years. If joy and lightning and glory and grief could be coiled up like a spring and dropped inside you.

Boom.

Charlie’s nerves sharpened into crystals. His ankle screamed, but every other part of him was screaming, too. He was made of screaming. It was as if he were an arm or a leg that had grown numb, but now the blood was roaring back with an army of pricking needles. His eyes, his spine, his tongue, his throat—all of him tingled with the agony of returning life.

Sugar stood over him, holding an empty bottle. He was yelling, but his voice was nothing compared to the icebergs smashing inside Charlie’s eardrums. Charlie slammed his arms against the ground and jumped to his feet. He shook. He rolled his shoulders and swung his arms and bounced. He twitched and shivered and kicked. The tingling was growing, and Charlie felt like he was going to explode. Like he was going to shriek off into the air like a firework and light fields on fire where he landed. He yelled and then yelled some more, and when he inhaled, it felt
like his lungs were pressing against needles. Despite the pain, they wanted to keep filling, they wanted to expand until they splintered his ribs.

And then Charlie was still, his head was back, his face up. Hot tears slipped over his jaw and down his neck. The clouds had broken. He could see stars. He thought he knew what it must feel like to be one. He understood how a tree could spring up in a grave. If he died right here, with the breath of the ironwood in him, he knew another tree would come up for him.

“Charlie,” Sugar said behind him. “Charlie, the panther …”

Charlie looked down. The panther stood directly in front of him. He realized he’d seen her eyes before, in a tree above him. He’d helped Cotton honor her fallen mate. She was Lio’s.

The panther bit the hem of Charlie’s shirt and tugged. Mrs. Wisdom had said that Lio’s panther had been hunting the Mother with him. Lio’s last panther.

“I have to go,” Charlie said. He looked back at Sugar. His brother was wide-eyed and confused. Charlie’s bag was on the ground between them. “Find Mack. Tell him everything—Mrs. Wisdom, Cotton, me, all those sick sleeping boys. And stay clear of the Stanks.”