The Drought (21 page)

The room reeked of burnt hair and flesh. Granddad’s skin blackened and started to bubble but they stayed until the fire jumped from the burning husk, consumed the recliner, zigzagged across the carpet and climbed up the wall and the room filled with smoke and the hot air became impossible to breathe.

Daniel pulled her away from the fire and out of the burning house. When the fire department came they found two dazed children, faces smudged with smoke, lucky to be alive.

What was left of granddad was melted in with the metal springs of the recliner. Cause of death: Falling asleep with a lit cigarette.

Junction, Texas

A golden haze blocked the morning sun as Suzy dropped her bike at the top of Flatrock Bridge. Had Maple McManus been there, she would have pointed up at the golden sky and warned them a sandstorm was imminent and the two of them should stop messing about and hightail it home. Suzy did not notice the slight wind or the golden sand skittering across the bridge as she slid down the embankment toward what used to be the swimming hole.

The swimming hole was dry, the streambed cracked like the dessert floor. She was late, and she half hoped Jar had figured she wasn’t going to show and had gone home.

He was waiting in the shade of the bridge. “I didn’t think you were going to show.”

She squinted at him, “Neither did I.”

“Why did you?”

Uncertain of her answer, she dug into her pocket to retrieve something. She held the item clenched tightly in her hand. “My dad…” She paused then started again. “My dad was half mad when they brought him in from…” She waved her hand indicating the land surrounding Junction. “First he was rambling about Rod but then he started talking about Robert Riley.” She looked at Jar and said, “Your dad.” She paused for a moment letting the significance of the name sink in. “Anyway, I imagine he was drunk, and plus he was delirious from heat stroke. But he had something clutched in his hand and he wouldn’t let the doctors take it from him. He gave it to me for safekeeping.” She opened her clenched hand. The sun glinted off the object.

It was a pocketknife.

She blurted out, “It belonged to your dad. He told Rodney he wanted you to have it. She blushed, realizing how ridiculous the story sounded. “But Rod knew he wasn’t going to make it out of there, so he told my dad to make sure you got it.” She pointed at the handle. “It has your dad’s initials. R.R.”

The news hit him like a blow to the stomach. Reflexively, his fist closed around the pocketknife. It was still warm from her hand. The heat transferred to his palm and for a brief moment his mind cleared and his senses came alive. He could smell Irish spring mingled with Old spice, he could feel rough stubble on a chin that needed to be shaved and the warmth radiating up from his palm was his father’s calloused hand holding his own much smaller hand. In a hoarse voice he asked, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

She didn’t hesitate, “Yes, yes I do.”

He nodded and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Me, too.”

It was an awkward moment, charged with emotion. Trying to dispel it, Suzy clapped her hands together and said in a loud voice, “All right, what’s the plan?”

When he told her, she wished again she hadn’t come.

*

Jar crawled on his belly through the drainage pipe. His shirt rolled up under him, and the rope fastened around his waist was starting to chaff the tender skin of his stomach. The pen light, clenched in his mouth, illuminated a slight area in front of him but didn’t offer much comfort. There was no sign of Luke, or the Carlton Fisk baseball. The more he thought about the day Luke disappeared, the more he was certain there was a crevice somewhere in the pipe and that Luke was either wedged down in that crevice or he’d fallen all the way through into a cavern.

As much as he wanted to find Luke and put the whole issue to rest for Mrs. Casteel, and as much as he wanted to find the Carlton Fisk baseball he also wanted to know if his dreams were real. He wanted to find the dark man. Once he did, he wasn’t sure what he would do but he had to know one way or the other.

Suzy slouched lazily in the shade of the bridge watching the rope slowly disappear into the tunnel. Yellow police tape fluttered like a forgotten party streamer. She had one hand on the rope. It slid through her fingers as Jar inched his way further into the pipe. She scraped idly at the dry dirt with a long stick wondering when he would give it up and come back out. A part of her thought the whole thing was stupid. She didn’t think for a second Tanner would let Jar into his house, baseball or not, and if Luke was still in there after all this time, she knew she wouldn’t want to be the one to find him.

Jar had gotten something in his mind, something he just couldn’t shake and now he needed to find out what happened for himself and lay it to rest. None of them had come near this place for three months. Quite honestly she wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t been Jar who’d asked her to come.

It was creepy with the water gone. The earth was bone-dry. And after what they had all been through she wouldn’t be surprised for a minute if Luke’s ghost was somewhere nearby. She looked around uneasily, half-expecting Luke to come sneaking up on her.

The sudden movement of the rope startled her. It lurched forward and began to unravel at a fast pace. She grabbed for the rope. It burned a path across her palms. Crying out in surprise, she let go. The rope unraveled as she stood by, helpless.

A long muffled scream came from the tunnel. A moment later the rope pulled taut. She turned to see if the knot would hold. The tree bent under the weight, but the rope held; the knot was good.

Incapable of movement, her eyes darted from the tree to the tunnel and back again.
Come on, Suzy. Think damn it, think... you’ve got to do something
. She looked at her hands. They were messed up; the left one was bleeding. Tears rolled down her face but Suzy shook her head in anger.
Stop being such a girl, that’s Jar in there, you’ve got to help him
.

She pulled her T-shirt over her head. Standing in a pair of jean shorts and a pink bra, she wrapped the shirt around her injured hands and grabbed the rope. She closed her eyes against the pain and gave the rope a hard tug. It didn’t move. Breathing deeply she dug her feet into the ground and pulled as hard as she could, tears of pain and frustration squeezed between her clenched lids, mingling with the sweat running down her face. Exhausted she sat in the dirt.

I can’t do it Jar. I can’t. I’m just not strong enough. Even if my hands weren’t cut up, I couldn’t lift you out of there
. She sat there for a few minutes, her mind frantic. She knew she had to get help, but she didn’t want to leave Jar in the pipe alone. She figured forty minutes at the most. If she pedaled her fastest, she could get help and make it back. Her head jerked up as another muffled scream came from the tunnel. She sat up and stared in wide-eyed terror at the gaping hole. That scream was followed by another.

*

Jar fell for what seemed like an eternity. A deafening sound echoed off the darkness surrounding him.
High pitched screams. It was him. He was screaming like a girl
. Without warning, his descent came to a sudden halt.

The air rushed from his lungs.

Blinding pain engulfed him followed by merciful darkness.

Consciousness came slowly; it came in continuous waves of pain from his chest. He couldn’t feel anything below that and only knew he was alive because of the pain caused by breathing. He could see nothing. His world shifted, slowly.

More than anything, he wanted to slip back into unconsciousness where the pain wouldn’t find him, but something kept nagging at the perimeter of his mind.
Think, damn it! Concentrate if you want to survive.
His world shifted again.
The whole world was spinning.
Jar felt nausea building.
Oh shit. I’m gonna puke.
The heave was halfhearted at best, but even that slight motion caused white pain to slice through his chest, almost sending him back into unconsciousness.

The throw-up dribbled down his face. It tasted like stomach bile and strawberry poptarts.
Poptarts? Is that what he had for breakfast? How long ago was breakfast?
There was another smell assaulting him, something much stronger than his own puke. It reminded him of the time something had holed up under their trailer and died. The whole place had stunk to high heaven. His mother had crawled under the trailer with a plastic garbage bag and her cleaning gloves on, determined to find the animal. It was an old tom cat. When she came out she threw up three times before she could regain her composure. He had been relieved she hadn’t sent him under there.

His eyes caught on something. It glimmered for moment before disappearing. He waited. The world shifted. He tried to focus. It was gone. Comprehension came to him slowly but when it did he almost laughed out loud.
He was spinning. He was still attached to the rope.
Jar tried to move his head to see what had caught his attention. The rope continued its slow revolution. Then he saw it, a faint glow of light. His penlight was lying on the ground.

He waited for the rope to spin him around again, the sight of the small light giving him hope. It came into sight and he felt a feeble smile touch his lips. Then the light disappeared again but this time it did not reappear with his shifting position. He blinked, searching the darkness in vain for the tiny trace of light. It was gone. He felt disappointment but he was surprised the light had survived the fall in the first place. He wondered briefly if he could reach his dad’s pocketknife, but he still couldn’t feel his arms. Realizing Suzy was still up top, he felt a flood of hope. Certainly she would realize he had fallen. That would be the only thing that would explain the unraveling rope. He tried to relax. All he had to do was wait. Suzy would get help and they would pull him back to the top.

A sudden blast of light filled the darkness, blinding him. He closed his eyes against this new onslaught of pain. He reopened them, squinting against the brilliance. When his eyes adjusted the first thing he saw was his friend, Luke. Luke’s broken body lay on the ground almost directly below him, Mr. Tanner’s priceless ball only an arm’s length away.

He jerked away from the sight. His movement, as weak as it was, caused the rope to spin. As he spun away from the image of his dead friend, something else rose up out of the shadows.

He thought about Maple McManus digging with her spoons, afraid of what she would find hiding beneath the surface of Junction.

She had been right to be afraid.

The dark man was real.

Junction, Texas

The rope went slack.

Suzy gave it a timid pull. It came without resistance. She pulled frantically until she held the end in her hand. It had been cut. She looked at the drainage pipe trying to make sense of what happened. Her mind kept coming back to the same thing. He had to have fallen. It was the only thing that explained the unraveling rope. The next thought sent her heart racing. Jar cut the rope with his pocket knife which meant he was still alive after the fall. She leaned into the pipe and yelled at the top of her lungs. “Jar, can you hear me? I’m going for help!”

She slipped her dirty, bloodstained t-shirt over head and scrambled up the embankment, her feet sliding in the crumbling dirt. When she got to the road she jumped on her bike and began pedaling toward town. Sand was blowing on the wind. The grit hit her, stinging her bare skin.

An old yellow Ford passed her kicking up a cloud of golden dust. She recognized it from the day at the Stop-N-Wash. She tried to flag it down but the driver didn’t slow. “Thanks! I really appreciate your help!” Close to tears she continued to pedal, realizing she might have to ride all the way into town before she could find help.

The golden haze that had been high in the sky earlier that morning had lowered. Now it was as if she was looking through a golden filter. She came around a bend in the road and onto a straightaway. The yellow truck was visible but moving away fast. Suddenly, it swerved across the road, swerved back and flipped over twice.

In horror, she watched the accident unfold. Objects flew through the air. Dimly, she recalled the woman sitting in the back holding the small child and she knew instinctively the objects had been bodies. She pedaled faster until she came abreast of the accident. The yellow truck was upside down, tires were still spinning and smoke was pouring out of the engine compartment.

There were no seatbelts in the old truck. The driver and two passengers had been slammed into the windshield and tossed around each time the truck rolled. All three men were dead. Another man was pinned beneath the rim of the truck bed. He was screaming in a high pitched gibberish.