The Nine Pound Hammer (15 page)

Ray took out the lodestone and began following it.

He walked all morning and into the afternoon, passing ruined plantations and poor farmhouses. An old black man driving a Nissen wagon with a mule carried Ray for a stretch along dusty clay roads. Soon Ray left the roads and followed a lazy, meandering stream. The fields, ripe with midsummer, gave way to stretches of forest, and with the sun setting through the trees, Ray was again in the wilderness.

As he journeyed, Ray thought about Jolie and Conker. Ray still burned with resentment toward Jolie, but he regretted not having made up with Conker before leaving. He hated that Conker might be sore with him, and Ray
wished he could apologize to his friend. In fact, he wished Conker were with him now, out here in the woods, on some adventure.

He also wished he had taken food from the mess car. But unlike before, when he was in the Lost Wood, Ray was now able to recognize some plants in the forest that were edible. He dug up Indian cucumber and Jerusalem artichoke with the silver dagger and gathered some wild cherries from a tree. He found a cool, bubbling spring and made a camp for the night on a bed of pine needles. It was not his straw-tick bed in the
Ballyhoo
, but it was not so bad either.

Looking up at the stars through the swaying boughs high overhead, he thought of his father. A mix of emotions, from anger that his father abandoned his family to elation that he might still be alive, filled Ray’s chest.

If he was alive, Ray would find him. He wondered if he would have to travel as far as the Terrebonne swamp. If it would reunite him with his father, he was willing to go that far and beyond.

On the following day, Ray continued to follow the pull of the lodestone. The intensity was increasing, and Ray felt hopeful his father might be close. On and on he walked, excitement lifting his spirits. He continued through the sunlight-speckled woods, kicking at the ferns and humming a tune that Mister Everett liked to play.

As he walked along, Ray took the lodestone from his pocket to check that he was still going the right direction.
The lodestone jerked so suddenly it slipped from his fingers. While he was pulling it up with the twine from where it had fallen in the dense bracken ferns, the lodestone jumped again. Taking it with a better hold, he let it guide his steps, quicker and quicker. Then the stone’s pull stopped.

Ray looked around and found himself in a circular copse of pines. He turned around a few times wondering why the lodestone had stopped him here. His father wasn’t here; nobody was here. Ray touched his fingers to the handle of the dagger in his belt.

Something flickered from beneath the willowy ferns. It was a rabbit lying on its side. Ray inched closer, careful not to scare it away. As he neared, he realized how unlikely it would be that a rabbit would lie down. Its eyes were open, showing white pulses of fear at the edges.

Pulling back the ferns, Ray saw the reason for the rabbit’s strange position. It was caught in a rusted spring trap. The teeth had closed on one of the rabbit’s front paws, and from the black caking of dried blood, it seemed the rabbit had lain trapped for some time. Ray bent next to the rabbit.

“Why would somebody want to catch you way out here, little guy?” Ray whispered. He touched a hand to the rabbit’s ears, and it didn’t flinch. Running his fingers soothingly across the hazel fur, he touched the crusted spot where the teeth of the trap met. The paw was crushed, probably through the bone, but the rabbit had not been able to get free.

Ray’s chest pained for the poor animal; he hated to see it suffering.

“I know it hurts,” Ray said. “I’ll get you out, but I don’t think you’re going to keep that paw.”

He put the lodestone on the ground and felt along the steel trap, following the teeth to the hinge.

“Just a moment,” he whispered. He gripped both jaws of the trap and pulled. The springs were so rusted that they wouldn’t open. Ray adjusted his grasp and gave another pull, groaning with the effort. The tiniest squeal began and flecks of rust broke off in a powder across his knuckles.

“Come on!” he growled.

The rabbit’s eyes widened, but it remained still and calm. The squeal grew louder and louder with the breaking of the trap’s bite. Swirling whines and high-pitched shrieks deepened until the noise exploded into a howl. The trap broke open all at once, and the noise gave way to a blast of bluish light and force that threw Ray back across the forest floor.

It was as if a stick of dynamite had gone off, but with no fire or heat. The air, however, was full of smoke and the smell of sulfur. Ray pulled up on his elbows and looked for the rabbit, but the gap in the ferns was now empty.

The twine that held the lodestone had snapped at his belt from the blast. Ray saw the frayed end next to his boots, the length of twine trailing away until it disappeared beneath the ferns. Ray sat up and pulled the twine
back. As the weight on the end of the twine dragged across the ground, he saw a sparkle of gold.

He stopped pulling and got to his knees, crawling toward whatever it was that was shining. He reached out and touched it. There on the other end of the twine, the lodestone was gone. In its place was the rabbit’s foot. The fur and skin had turned to a hardened, glistening metal—a buttery gold, which became coppery-red at the claws.

The foot seemed to have consumed the lodestone, as the twine now disappeared into the end. He held it in his palms, speechless. Jumping up, Ray dashed around the copse, tearing back the ferns, but there was no sign of the rabbit and no sign of the steel spring trap.

What was going on? What had just happened? Ray held the golden rabbit’s foot. But no matter how long he held it, the talisman didn’t move. The lodestone was gone. How would he find his father now?

For the remainder of the day, Ray sat in the copse of pines. There was no escaping the terrible truth: he had lost his father’s lodestone. Without it he never would have found out who his father really was. And now …

Where should I go? Ray thought. The lodestone had been leading him, so he could try continuing in the same direction—whatever that was? Maybe he could still find his father. But before he stood to leave, a rustle sounded behind him and he turned, half expecting to see a three-legged rabbit.

But it was no rabbit. It was a small old woman, bent over nearly in half as she walked. She wore a patchwork dress. Her skin was gnarled and hardened into the color and texture of tree bark, and her cloud-white hair hung soft and thin around her shoulders.

She walked with a knotted root for a cane and approached Ray in the clearing of pines. With her deep hunch, her eyes faced the ground as she walked, and Ray was not even certain she had seen him yet. He slipped the rabbit’s foot back in his pocket cautiously.

He called to her, “Hello,” but the old woman did not reply.

She wandered a moment around the clearing, poking at the ferns as she went. After searching, she reached Ray’s side and cocked her head slightly, looking up at him with one black-button eye. The old woman asked in a grunting voice, “Who took my coney?”

“What?” Ray asked.

The old woman hit the ground sharply with her stick. “Yonder coney, did ye spy who took it? Didn’t get free from that snare on its own.”

“The rabbit?” Ray answered. “I got it out from the trap.”

The old woman grunted and went back to continue searching under the ferns. Ray came up behind her and asked, “Did you set that trap?”

“Reckon it weren’t!” she exclaimed as if Ray had insulted her in some manner. “Was the doing of something far worse than me, lad. What’s ye name?”

“Ray Fleming,” Ray said reflexively. “And what do you mean, something worse than you?”

“Weren’t no poacher’s snare, and sure weren’t no ordinary coney,” the old woman grunted. She stopped her search and peered up at Ray with her dark eye. “Ye say ye set it loose? I say you’re a-lying.”

Ray was startled by the old woman’s bluntness. “I’m not lying.”

“You’re a liar. I can spy it in ye.”

Ray frowned, but before he could argue further, the old woman reached out quickly and grabbed his hand. She felt around his palm with her coarse fingers, holding Ray in a firm grip until he pulled his hand away from her grasp.

“Hum.” She pondered a moment. “You’re a liar, least about your name, but you’re not a-lying about the coney. How’d ye set it free?”

“I just opened the trap,” Ray said.

“Ye hear what I said,” the old woman spat. “Weren’t no ordinary trap. Lad like you wouldn’t a been able to open it, and yet ye say ye did. I couldn’t open it. Don’t know another who could. Ye know what I am?”

“No,” Ray replied.

“I’m a seer. Somes would call me Mother Salagi. Come from the Clingman’s Dome, far up in yonder mountains.” She motioned again with her stick.

Ray realized she must have come a long way, because there were no mountains nearby and the Appalachians must be hundreds of miles to the northeast.

“Come all this way, ’cause I scatter some bones and I sees something—something I need to inspect. I come here. I find that coney in the trap. I work all manner of hoodoo on it, but can’t get them jaws a-opened. Something wicked keeping them shut. I been a-watching over that coney, trying to figure some way to get it out, trying to figure out why something wicked would have that coney trapped. And ye, ye opened it. Who are ye?”

“I’m Ray,” Ray answered, wondering if Mother Salagi had forgotten.

“Ye said that already,” she grunted. “But who are ye; that’s what I wants to know.”

Ray was not sure how to answer, and Mother Salagi motioned with her stick. “Come. Got a camp set just yonder. I’ll get ye fed, and ye’ll tell me who ye are.”

Mother Salagi led Ray to a spot not more than a few minutes’ walk through the woods, on the edge of a creek, where she had dug a fire pit and built a rough shelter out of branches and bark. She stoked up a fire and cut up wild tubers and watercress into a cast-iron pot.

As she prepared the meal, Ray began telling her his story, including his discovery that his father was the Rambler Li’l Bill who helped John Henry, and how he set the rabbit free.

“Rambler, eh …,” Mother Salagi mumbled as she stirred the simmering pot of stew. “Ye got that foot? Let me see it.”

Ray took the golden foot from his pocket and handed
it to the old seer. Mother Salagi held the foot close to her eye and inspected it by the light of the fire for a long time. She coiled up the twine still dangling from the end and then touched the foot to the side of her iron pot.

“Aye. Your lodestone’s still setting in that coney’s foot. Just a-buried beneath.” She handed it back to Ray and said, “Ye know what that coney was?”

“No, what do you mean?” Ray asked.

“That coney ye freed”—Mother Salagi pointed a crooked finger at Ray—“was your very own pappy, it was.”

Ray was on his feet in an instant. “What! How can that be?”

“Settle down, lad.” Mother Salagi brushed her hand at Ray. “Set. Set. And I’ll explain ye.”

When Ray was sitting again, she squinted an eye at him. “Ye say your pappy was a Rambler. I ain’t met Li’l Bill, but ye can be sure I heard of him. He’s a might powerful one, and thems like that can take the form of an animal. Li’l Bill ain’t the first. But a coney must have been the form he took to cross. Ye don’t know what crossing is, do ye?”

Ray shook his head.

“Crossing is to pass to the Gloaming. It’s a might different world than this one.” She slapped a hand to the ground. “When John Henry had to destroy the Gog’s Machine, he needed to get to the Gloaming. Powerful as John Henry was, he couldn’t a-cross. Needed Li’l Bill to cross
him to the Gloaming, where the Gog’s a-hidden his Machine.”

“I still don’t understand what the Gloaming is,” Ray said.

“Few that do. It’s a fair mystery even to me. What I comprehend is that it ain’t truly a physical world like where we a-setting. It’s a-connected more to our spirits and such. And it’s beyond and beneath and yet being sewn into the fabric of this world.” The old seer flexed her fingers and then clapped. She frowned as she looked at Ray. “I see ye ain’t exactly wrapping your head around what I’m a-saying. Well, don’t fret ye. It’s a piece of work to understand.”

“But what about my father?” Ray asked. “If he was the rabbit, and the rabbit is gone, then where is he?”

“I can’t say, I’m afeared. Ye say he was fighting a Hoarhound when he disappeared?”

Ray nodded.

“He might’ve tried to take the coney form to escape. Being able to cross and all, he must’ve expected to pass through the Gloaming to get away. Then that Hoarhound bit him first. Two of them pulled into the Gloaming locked together—”

“The steel trap!” Ray interrupted. “It was the Hoarhound.”

Mother Salagi nodded, scratching a fingernail to her chin. “I expect it were. As one of the Gog’s infernal devices,
it would twist into something else when yanked into the Gloaming. Into its essential being—that of a vicious mechanism. Fact is, that ye was able to open that Hoarhound’s jaws at all is something to be marveled. Ain’t no explaining I got for that, lad.”

Ray felt a peculiar pride. How had he been able to open it then? He looked down at the golden rabbit’s foot. He had found his father after all. His father had said the lodestone would not only guide Ray, but guide him, too, back home.

Ray looked up. “The Hoarhound severed my father’s hand … so why did it turn to gold?”

Mother Salagi considered this for a moment as she crushed a handful of herbs into the stew. “All I can figure is that your pappy was a-casting some spell, a-working some hoodoo, to protect himself. Must’ve been thinking the Hoarhound’s bite might kill him. Sent that spell to the hand. It has all the makings of a hoodoo charm. But something altogether more powerful than I can cipher.”

Mother Salagi ladled Ray some stew in a wooden bowl and handed it to him. Ray held the bowl without eating.

“Do you think he’s still alive?” Ray asked.

“I’d a-reckon he is.”

“Can I find him?”

“Does ye coney foot still pull like the lodestone done?”

“No. It’s not moving anymore.”