Days of Little Texas (16 page)

“I don’t understand,” I say.

Lucy shifts on the bed again, slouching.

“You had to believe,” she says, “in me. At first you didn’t.

Not all the way. So I had to keep trying to come through until you did.”

“So you can’t come around unless I believe in you?”

“Yep. Something like that. The more you believe, the more you let me through. It’s like you kind
of create
me.”

“That’s blasphemy. Only the Lord can create a person.”

Lucy shakes her head. Shakes it so slow, I can barely tell what she’s doing.

“No. I don’t mean it like that,” she says. “We’re all creators. That’s what we
do
. But what we create is our own reality.” She lifts a weary arm and waves it around the room. “I couldn’t
be
,” she says, “without your need. Your need made it possible for you to believe. You believed, so you set me free.”

“What’s my need, then?”

She struggles to smile. “Those dreams? The white room?”

She knows
, I think. It’s too much—too much to even think about.
I feel so
—

“Come on, don’t be ashamed,” Lucy says. “Please. Because we’re here to help each other. Right? I have a need, too. They—they know I can’t do it on my own.”

My heart draws up.

“Can’t do what? Who is ‘they’?”

Lucy starts to speak, mouth going, but no sound comes out. She holds up her hands, takes the thumb and index finger of one hand and puts them round the wrist of the other. Like a bracelet.

“Them
,” she says, jaw clopping. She jiggles the fingers holding her wrist.

“A bracelet? Is that what you’re trying to show me, Lucy?”

She bows her head. Bows it so low, you’d think she was bearing up under a heavy weight.

“Don’t be thick,” she says slowly. “You almost sent me away again. I don’t know who they are. Not yet. That’s what we’re here to find out. They’re showing me … they want
me—they want
us
—to find them. Something is holding them here.”

“Here at Vanderloo?”

“We have to work … together, you and me. Find out what is holding them and help break them free. We were brought together to do this, okay?”

“Why? Why … us?”

“I don’t know all the reasons yet. Just the most important one.”

“Which is?”

“Because I love you, Ronald Earl.”

We sit there looking at each other. Lucy asks the question for me.

“How could I, right? That’s what you’re thinking. When I don’t even know you? But I do. I’ve always known you.
Inside
.” She points at my chest, making me lean back a little. “I couldn’t be here if I didn’t. Not like …
this
.” She touches her arm. “You understand?”

“Solid?” I say, finally able to speak again. “You couldn’t be
solid?
”

She smiles. “You’ve got a brain in there … after all. I … have to go.”

“Wait,” I say. “There are so many things I want to ask—”

“I’ll come again. We’ll start.”

“But what about—what about the drum? Why did you do that? You scared me half to death.”

The powdery eyes bore into me. “Ronald Earl. Don’t be so afraid. There is no such thing … as death.”

“But you …” I don’t know how to say it.

“Me? Yeah. I pretty much died. That’s not what I mean. Death is different from … dying. Death has no meaning. It’s not
real
.”

“But you gave me that article. About the boy with the burst appendix. You gave it to me at the drive-in theater. Now I know why. You were trying to tell me, weren’t you? You were trying to tell me that’s how you died.”

Lucy looks at me, slumping a little more.

“But—you’re in a better place now,” I say. “Sitting beside our Lord. Waiting on the Judgment. Aren’t you?”

Lucy shakes her head slowly, hitching and jerking. “You have to change. The way you think.”

“But it’s what I believe. It’s the
truth
. The only truth there is. Anything else … puts your eternal soul in danger of the fires of hell.”

“But I’m here now. And you have to believe …
bigger
. That’s all. The truth is not that…
small
.”

She reaches out to me. “Give me your hand.”

I don’t want to touch her, but I’m scared not to. I hold my hand up, trembling a little, and Lucy seizes at it so hard, my heart misses a beat. Her fingers are burning. She leans her head toward me, looks like she’s trying to whisper.

“The drum. That wasn’t
me
” she says.

The lightbulb in the lamp sputters and pops. I can’t feel her hand anymore. Then the light flares up bright again; Lucy has vanished.

When I finally get up the grit to climb into the empty bed, the sheets are burning hot.

Back in bed, staring at the ceiling, I feel like I’ve been split right down the middle. Everything that was in me has been taken out. Then cold, clean water was rushed through all the scooped-out places.

It’s like being born again. Only this time the old parts of me can’t match up with the new. I don’t know if I feel good or bad or crazy or all three. I
talked
with her.

“The truth is not that small
.”

But how can any truth be bigger than
His
truth? Isn’t His the only one?

After a while the sun is coming off the lake. I lay here,
spread open, and it fills me up with light. She’s real, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.

On this very first day of my new life, I step out of bed, and the first thing I see is a big gold key laying right in the middle of the floor. It’s heavy and cold in my palm, with a big loop on one end and teeth you fit in the lock on the other.

She must’ve left it for me. What does it fit into? “They want us to find them,” that’s what she said. “We have to work together.” I slide it into my suitcase and zip it shut. Say my morning prayers, then head on down for breakfast.

Most of the others are gone by the time I get to the table. Faye Barlow is sitting there in jeans that come just past her knees, a yellow shirt, and a big floppy hat. She swirls milk into her coffee.

“Well, good morning, Ronald Earl,” she says, face opening up when she sees who it is. She gives me a squeeze and a peck on the cheek that smells of orange juice. “I hope you slept well?”

“Mostly,” I say, not wanting to lie.

I put my fingers on the brick piece in my pocket and eat while holding it.

“So what are your plans for the day?” Faye says.

“I’m thinking maybe I’ll do a little exploring on the island.”

She frowns.

“Is there anything wrong?” I say.

“Oh, I’m just a worrier. Ask my husband.”

“What are you worried about?”

“Feelings. I get these feelings.”

Faye comes over and drapes her arms around me from behind, locking her fingers in front of my throat. Her hands are wet. Settles her mouth on top of my head. I can feel the heat of her breath on my scalp.

“I’ve got a few things to do here, but I might join y’all later,” she says into my hair. It feels funny being held this way. She turns me loose, and I slide my chair back.

“Be safe,” Faye says.

Outside, the morning is warm, and close by the house there’s a white oak full of blackbirds squawking back and forth. I walk toward the dock till I come to a little stand of cedars. It looks dark and cool in there. I step inside it, where I can’t be seen, and finger Lucy’s brick and close my eyes.

“Lucy?” I call out.

Nothing but a bobwhite singing in the distance. I open my eyes, and a long ways off I can see that same red-tailed hawk making a big turn over the sunny water. Devil Hill has a little bit of mist around its belly.

“Lucy?” I say again. “Are you there? Please say something if you are there.”

Maybe ghosts can’t come out in the daylight? “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she said. I put the brick away and head down to the boat.

Tee Barlow is riding herd on three men loading something made of dark, polished wood onto the pontoon boat.

“The pulpit from the Bethel Presbyterian Church,” he says. “I had to put a deposit on it. It goes back right after the service.”

“Where’s everybody else?”

“Gone to town. You want to come over with us?”

We motor over to the island, and Tee Barlow’s helpers start getting the pulpit stood up at one end of the clearing. There is definitely a different feel to this morning. I decide to scout around. Maybe there’s something left from the last time they had services here? I follow the edge of the woods till I come to a place where the older trees thin out. I look at it closer; it’s the head of an old trail that runs off into the forest. I decide to follow it.

“Don’t go too far,” Tee Barlow calls. “The woods are full of woolyboogers.” He laughs and smiles.

The trail is carpeted in pine straw and sprinkled with saplings. It’s been a long time since anybody came this way regular. It runs parallel to the shore for a ways; I can see blue water glinting through the trees. Once I’m out of sight, I settle on my knees in a quiet place and bow my head.

“Dear Lord Jesus Christ, please let me know what I am to do about this vision that has been sent to me. If Lucy is a devil, please send her away. But if she is something else, and she needs my help, please grant me your power and your love so that I might help her. Amen.” I settle back on my tailbone and haul out the brick again, cupping it in both hands.

“Lucy? Are you there?”

I wait, eyes closed, then something snaps close by. I jerk around.

A red-tailed fox is sitting in the middle of the trail looking at me, tail perked up in the air. I get to my feet and take a couple of steps toward it. He lifts his head and starts down the trail ahead of me. I follow along behind, watching the plumy tail bouncing up and down.

We walk like that a long ways, coming at last to a place where the trail narrows, choked with poison oak and tall purple milkweed. I push my way through, feeling very far from anything and downright alone. The sun is higher, but the woods are thicker, damping the light.

The fox just keeps trotting along, leading me. We come up another long curve, and up ahead the trail widens into a clearing, the forest floor dotted green and yellow where the sun peeps through. The place has a special feeling. “The kind of a place where the Lord lives” is how Sugar Tom would say it.

The fox sits down on his haunches right at the edge of the open place. He turns and looks back at me. Do foxes have rabies? I walk a little closer; the fox takes a quick, springy leap across a fallen sycamore, and he’s gone in the underbrush.

“Shoot.”

“Ronald Earl?”

I spin around, heart pounding. Faye Barlow is standing there. How in heaven did she get here?

“Don’t you go any farther,” she says, coming toward me, face darkening up.

“Why?”

“I was afraid you might stumble onto this place. I got to worrying so much about it back at the house, I had to come right over. You need to go back to the landing.”

“I saw a red-tailed fox—it was almost like he led me here.”

“Just come on now, the others will be waiting.”

She takes my hand and we start back.

“What didn’t you want me to see in that clearing?” I say after a while.

Faye stops and hugs me to her. Her body is soft and warm. She smells of vanilla extract. She pulls her face back and stares deep into my eyes, mouth just inches away.

“That place … it seems all right now, a beautiful day like this,” she says. “But it’s not a good place to go. Especially for you.”

“It has something to do with the devil, doesn’t it?” I say. “From that old revival service?”

Faye looks like she almost starts to laugh, then catches herself.

“Let me show you something.”

She leads me a little ways off the trail, being careful to keep us out of the stickers. We come to where a big, old shag-bark hickory has fallen, letting a lot of sunbeams through.

“Look here.” Faye points at a bunch of red flowers hanging at the end of some long, drooping stems. “See this part that’s curled up?”

I look closer. “They’re pretty,” I say, putting my hand out to touch one. She grabs my fingers away.

“This is a pitcher plant,” she says. “A killer, Ronald Earl. A carnivore. A
meat eater
. Their insides are slippery, so the insects can’t climb out. They say canebrake pitcher plants are only found farther down south, but here they are, on Devil Hill. Why do you think that is?”

“I—I don’t know much about plants.”

Faye straightens up from the flowers and takes both my hands in hers. Puts my fingers to her lips. I can feel the words slipping out of her mouth.

“It’s natural to be attracted to a place like this,” she says. “So alive and beautiful. It’s hard to imagine there could be anything dangerous here.
Evil
. Just like the pitcher plant, that’s the power of the attraction.”

“What’s in that clearing, Faye?”

She pulls my hands down. “Not here. I can’t talk about it here. Let’s go back.”

“Why?”

“Because …
it listens
.”