Boys of Blur (8 page)

Charlie staggered toward the canal after the rabbit, but a hand grabbed his arm and turned him around.

“You crazy, coz,” Cotton said. He tugged Charlie’s shirt down off his face, grinned, and pointed at the water. Ten yards away from the rabbit a small gator was gargling back a rat.

“Non compos mentis,” Cotton added. “I like that one. Now, let’s git.”

Charlie blinked and shook his head, trying to focus. “Where?” Charlie asked. He snorted, spat, dragged his forearm across his nose, and spat again. “Where were you?”

“Doing what needed to be done,” Cotton said. “Seeing what needed to be seen. Now we really gotta git. No lie, coz.” He pointed again, this time through the gentle ash blizzard, down the long dirt road beside the canal. The sheriff’s car was coming, trailing dust onto Mack’s new silver car behind it.

Sugar jogged into the road and tugged his own mask down before leaning his hands on his knees. He watched the wet cottontail climb out of the water and bound up the opposite bank.

“Hey,” Charlie said.

Sugar looked up.

“Tell my dad I found Cotton. Tell him I’ll see him back at the motel.”

“Your dad?” Sugar sneered. “I’m not telling
him
nothing.”

“I mean Mack,” Charlie said. “Tell Mack.”

He left the quarterback coughing in the road.

A man stood on the deck of his idling harvester. He had long hair the color of mud, a nose that had been broken more than once, and a blurry blue tattoo of a buccaneer
on the back of his hand. A cigarette burned between two thick oil-stained fingers.

He had forgotten to smoke. For the moment, he had even forgotten to breathe.

He watched the two boys race down the road until they turned and disappeared between fields.

One boy, he didn’t know.

The other had been his son.

Mack stepped out of his new car and squinted around. The field beside him had almost burned out. Brown smoke had become gray, and the wind was already stripping it away. Shafts of naked, bony cane stood in shadowy rows, ash below and smoke above. He knew what it would feel like to duck into that graveyard, he knew the heat the cane would press into his palm if he gripped a stalk. He knew the smell of the small, smoking bodies he would be sure to find back in ash shadows if he went searching.

He looked up. Dozens of vultures swirled around the thinning base of the pillar of smoke. Those birds knew it, too. Creatures of the cane were quick, but sometimes flame was quicker. When the harvesters had rolled, the vultures and crows would do their searching.

Mack turned toward the heavy machines waiting
across the canal just as one of the drivers ducked back into his cab.

Sheriff Spitz and Deputy Hydrant were both already out of their own vehicle and adjusting their belts.

“Hey, kid!” Spitz shouted at Sugar. “Charlie Reynolds make it back out of the smoke?”

Sugar looked straight past the sheriff at Mack. “Charlie just took off. Said he found that kid and he’ll see you later on.”

“Did he now?” The sheriff turned and eyed Mack over his glasses. “He saw something, Prester! You knows it and we knows it, and that’s that. There’s animal blood all over the church, a tree smashed right through a coffin in the bottom of an empty grave, and the bent-up bicycle of a missing boy—a boy your Charlie was with last night and says he’s with again. Someone’s going swamp-cat crazy, and no mistake.”

“No mistake,” Hydrant said.

Sugar’s mouth was open. His eyes bounced from the cops to his coach.

“What coffin?” Sugar asked. “Whose grave?”

Mack watched the vultures. He watched smoke sliding away. Mack had known Charlie needed to talk, but he’d assumed he was just nervous about the new school, or worried about Cotton.

A grave robbery? Who would want to steal a dead
football coach?
Why
would they want to steal a dead football coach?

Why would they want to paint blood on a church?

There were no nice answers in his head. Whatever was going on, it was far from friendly.

“He take off alone?” Mack asked. No one answered. He focused on Sugar. “Charlie. He take off alone?”

Sugar shook his head. “No, sir. Like I said, he was with that skinny little homeschool kid.
Rat
or
Fluff
, or whatever he’s called.”

“Cotton?” Mack asked.

Sugar nodded. “Quick kid.”

“And Charlie said he’d see me later?”

Another nod from Sugar. “At the motel.”

Sweating, coughing, ash-dusted boys were straggling out of the field toward the cars. A few held small brown rabbits by the scruff while they kicked in the air.

Surge, grinning, cradled three thumping rabbits against his stomach with one arm. A hissing possum dangled by the tail from his other hand.

“Sheriff,” Mack said. “I’m sure I’ll see you later. Right now, I have some debts to settle. At least your missing-boy case is closed.” He pulled out his wallet and walked toward his players.

“Not sure it is,” Spitz said. He jerked his sun visor down into place. “He’s still missing, ain’t he? Maybe he’s my body snatcher. Weird enough kid.”

“Oh,” Hydrant said. He shook his head slowly and held up his right hand. “He weird all right. ’Bout bit off my pinkie finger few months back. Weird.”

Mack didn’t answer. As he handed out bills, rabbits were released at his feet—hopping over his shoes and even hiding under his car. But he didn’t notice. His mind was elsewhere, searching for Charlie, trying to see whatever it was Charlie was seeing, whatever it was Charlie had already seen.

The harvesters shifted into gear and rumbled forward.

Charlie jogged along behind Cotton. The pace wasn’t hard, but his lungs still felt the heat of the burn, and smoke residue tickling at his throat made him want to double over and hack.

Cotton turned down another long dirt road beside yet another long, deep canal. Charlie turned after him and saw two gators slide quickly under the water.

“You hear about the church?” Cotton asked. He slowed and came even with Charlie.

Charlie sniffed and licked his lips with a dry tongue. He could manage a couple words between pounding strides.

“We were there.”

“No,” Cotton said. His breath was easy and even. But he hadn’t been in the smoke. Or maybe he had. “After. Big blood-map painted on the church. Cops think it’s
craziness, but I know it’s a map. And a tree. Ironwood tree planted in Coach’s grave. That part
is
craziness.”

“How do you—” Charlie said.

“Know it’s a map?” Cotton finished. “ ’Cause I read.”

“Map of what?” Charlie got the question out before hacking.

“The mounds,” said Cotton. “I recognized the shapes from a book.” Cotton turned around and began running backward beside Charlie. “Last night, I went back for my bike. It was bent-up, so I just left it. That grave-robbing resurrection man was gone, couldn’t smell no stink monster anywhere, but blood was up on that white church in all those circles and crescents and lines and craziness and I was pretty sure I’d seen it before, and I even knew where I had. So I went and busted into the library.”

“What?” Charlie asked. He had been slowly accelerating, trying to get Cotton to turn back around.

Cotton grinned, turned, and fell into step beside Charlie.

“Break in all the time. Little purple building with a flat roof and a busted latch skylight just my size. Looks like a gas station outside but nice enough inside. Sleep there sometimes.”

“Why?”

“Coz,” Cotton laughed. “If you were running away from a stack of books, where you figure no one would ever look?”

Charlie smiled despite his burning lungs.

“Secret is,” Cotton said, “I ain’t never running from piles of books. I run from the books she be putting in the piles.” His eyebrows went up. “You ever hear of the Brontës?”

Charlie shook his head.

“Well, don’t,” Cotton said. “Ever.” Cotton slowed to a walk and then paused, getting his bearings. Charlie leaned over his knees.

Beyond his own breathing, he could hear … nothing. The fields were quiet. Looking back, he could see the smoke and distant circling birds. Forward, the scruff of swamp trees was just visible over the cane.

Cotton picked his path, and Charlie followed, this time walking. After a few hundred yards, they reached a narrow canal between the cane and the trees. The trees were anything but quiet—birds squalled, mammals chattered, bugs clacked and pulsed. But when Cotton spoke, he whispered.

“Watch my back, coz. Don’t want nothing coming up behind.” Bending over at the waist, Cotton moved forward along the canal, his eyes locked on the shadows between the dense trees on the other side.

Charlie hurried after him, constantly glancing back, watching the tight wall of cane slide past.

Away from the burn and no longer running, he could feel the air cooling. A breeze was blowing, swaying the cane and rustling the green hair of the swamp trees.

They passed a dirt road between fields, and as they did, Charlie glimpsed the white church away on its mound. A cop car sat beside it. For a moment, the silhouettes of three men stood out against the sky before disappearing behind the cane as Charlie kept moving.

Cotton was leading them back to where that crazy old man with the sword and helmet, Lio, had first stepped out of the swamp, where a dead snake had been curled on a pale stone.

As they climbed onto the low mound and turned to bridge the canal, Cotton froze. Behind him, Charlie stopped breathing.

The white chalky stone was hidden beneath the curling bloody body of a large panther.

“Is it dead?” Charlie whispered.

Cotton inched forward. “On the stone, they’re always dead.”

Both boys waited. They stared at the motionless shoulders, at the back of the limp neck. The cat was big—bigger than either boy—and the fur was tan where it wasn’t matted nearly black with blood. One ear was missing, but the other was backed with night-dark fur. The tail, thick and kinked like an old abused hose, had a tip as black as wet muck.

Charlie’s mind spun. Was this one of the panthers from last night, the panthers that had chased the shadow away from the graveyard? Had the shadow killed it?

Cotton was a statue. After a long moment, Charlie slid past him. He crouched down and crept within reach of the body. He extended his hand like a doctor, to feel for a pulse.

The body was still warm. Fur as soft as a kitten’s slid between his knuckles. Fur scabbed rough like bark scratched his palm. Fur sticky with fresh blood clung to his fingertips. The soft thump of a dying heart shivered just beneath the loose skin of its neck.

The kinked tail rose slowly and then slapped the ground. The one ear twitched. The ribs heaved in a long, wet rattling breath.

Charlie swallowed a yell and tried not to move. The heartbeat fluttered again beneath his fingers. Behind him, he heard branches swing as Cotton slid away.

The panther heard it, too. The huge cat’s neck twisted slowly beneath Charlie’s hand. Eyes like two golden moons poured light into Charlie’s. The body tensed. Black glass pupils sharpened and the panther’s lip quivered and curled, baring white teeth, inches long.