“Anyone ever tell you that you shouldn’t be allowed out in public?”
Newton sighed. “My editor tells me that all the time.”
Crow sucked his teeth and after half a mile said, “Skip it.”
They passed a wrecker. Crow tooted his horn, and the driver of the wrecker raised a single hand in response.
“Friend of yours?”
“Not really. Guy named Eddie Oswald. Everyone calls him Tow-Truck Eddie. He’s okay,” Crow said.
A couple of cars passed going the other way, including a Pine Deep police cruiser, and then Crow slowed and drifted onto the shoulder at a crossroads where a dirt road lead away from the highway, forming the division between a vast pumpkin patch to the left and on the right a cornfield that sped away into the distance seemingly without a break. The road was small, but it looked well traveled, and there were deep wheel-ruts trailing away into the distance until the road jagged left and out of sight. Crow pointed. “That cornfield is the outer edge of Val’s farm. Ruger’s car was wrecked just a half-mile down the road. This pumpkin patch over here belongs to another family, the Conleys. They’ve been hit pretty hard by the blight. Worse than just about anyone.”
“And the road?” Newton nodded down the winding dirt lane.
“This here leads down to Dark Hollow, or rather to the entrance to it. One entrance. At the top is our local Lovers’ Lane—we call it the Passion Pit. I don’t know how much love goes on down there, but I hear it gets pretty intense.”
“Gee,” Newton said dryly, “our first date and you’re taking me to Lovers’ Lane.”
“No, dipshit, I’m taking you through Lovers’ Lane. We’ll park there and then go over the pitch and down the hill to the Hollow. I looked at the old maps and the old road that used to go to Griswold’s place isn’t even marked anymore. Don’t know if it ever was, being a private road, but there’s no way I know of to get a car in there. Going over the pitch and down the slope is no picnic, but at least it’s a way that’ll get us there.” He nodded down the dirt road. “This is gonna get bumpy, so buckle up for safety, kids.” Crow put the car back into drive and steered his way carefully down the dusty dirt road. It seemed to be comprised entirely of potholes.
“Nice road,” stuttered Newton as his body fought to jump free from the seat belt.
“Thank God for shocks, huh?”
“This car has shocks?” Newton asked doubtfully.
Crow steered around a couple of sharp turns and then into a clearing that seemed to appear magically out of the dense green forest. He braked to a stop and as the dust settled, he switched off the engine. “Weeee’re hee-eere,” he said, the same way the little blond girl had said “They’re here!” in Poltergeist. Newton gave him half a smile.
The reporter looked around the clearing and frowned. “This is Dark Hollow? It doesn’t look like much.”
Jerking open the door, Crow stepped out, saying, “This is the Passion Pit I was telling you about. Yonder,” he said, pointing to the western edge of the clearing, where the pinelands were showing signs of recovering from an old forest fire, “is the pitch, and way down below is Dark Hollow. From here we walk.”
Newton had brought a small backpack filled with sandwiches, juice boxes, PowerBars, and gum; it had a water bottle strapped across the top. He also had a walking stick he’d bought at a Natural Wonders store ten years ago and had never used. Crow popped his trunk and reached inside for his gear, strapping on an army-surplus web belt—vintage Desert Storm—then hung an authentic Boy Scout canteen over his rump, clipped a long, broad-bladed machete in a flat canvas sheath on his left hip, and from his right hip he slung a holstered automatic pistol. Newton stared at it for a moment, then looked at Crow and arched an eyebrow.
“Are we invading Cuba today?”
Crow gave him a big grin.
“Are you licensed to carry that?” Newton asked, nodding at the pistol.
“Sure. Businessman’s privilege in this town.”
“Does it matter at all to you that you look completely ridiculous?”
“Who gives a shit?”
“I hadn’t looked at it from that perspective.”
Crow hung a Maglite and a small compass to the web belt.
“What, no antitank gun?” asked Newton. “No lightsaber?”
Crow gave him a raspberry. He removed two long coils of rope from the car and laid them on the hood. He fished under his backseat and came up with a pair of work gloves and a pair of fingerless weightlifting gloves.
“What about your toothbrush, a Scotch-tape dispenser, and a Mr. Coffee? You forgot those.”
“Keep it up, Jimmy Olsen.” Crow took his cell phone out and tossed it onto the front seat and locked the car.
“You take everything except a fax machine and you leave your cell phone behind?”
“No reception around here,” Crow said. “Check it out.”
Newton looked at his own phone and saw that there were no bars.
Crow nodded. “This whole area’s like that, and it’ll probably be even worse down at the bottom of the Hollow. The cellular relay tower is on the other side of these mountains. Plus, it’s rough terrain down there, so I’d rather leave my phone here than risk losing it.”
“Swell.” Newton patted himself down and tugged a small digital camera out of his jacket pocket. “For the article,” he said and took a shot of Crow in all his gear, then walked to the rim of the pitch and took four shots of the long fall into the shadows at the foot of the mountains. He lowered the camera. “Charming.”
“Cheer up, it gets worse. Come on.” The first thing Crow did was to tie one end of each of the two lengths of rope to sturdy trees. He tied a complex series of knots and then jerked on them with great force to make sure they weren’t going to slip
“Don’t tell me we’re rappelling? I failed the rope climb in gym class every year.”
“Not really, but that pitch is too steep for you, and I’m not as spry as I used to be, so I’d rather we had a line to steady us down and then help us get back up again. Use these,” he said, indicating the heavy canvas gloves that were old and stained with grease. He slipped his own hands into the weightlifting gloves and flexed them, adjusting the Velcro straps. He picked up the two coils of rope and hurled them out over the pitch, then took one rope, tested the tension again, and stepped to the edge of the pitch. Until now everything Crow did had cool efficiency about it, but now, poised—literally—on the brink of commission he finally paused and Newton could see strain showing in his face. His eyes were slightly squinted and he would look up at the blue sky and then down into the shadows of the Hollow and back up again, repeating the cycle every few seconds while balancing his weight against the pull of the rope. His mouth was tight, lips pinched, and he was breathing through flared nostrils.
Newton picked up the end of the second rope and came to stand by Crow, and for a moment they both looked down into the Hollow, then Newton glanced at Crow. “You okay?”
“Nope,” Crow said with a tight smile. “I’m scared out of my mind.”
“We can still bag it and go catch lunch at the Harvestman.”
“Can’t,” Crow said.
“Can’t—why? No one’s making us do this, man.”
Instead of answering, Crow started singing under his breath. Words that didn’t mean anything to Newton. “I got an ax-handled pistol on a graveyard frame that shoots tombstone bullets, wearin’ balls and chain. I’m drinking TNT, I’m smoking dynamite…I hope some screwball start a fight.”
“What’s that?”
Crow turned to him. “Old Muddy Waters song, ‘I’m Ready.’ Great song.”