A wail ripped from Billy's throat, and he scrabbled up the basement stairs like a frantic crab. Behind him, he heard the coal pile shifting and groaning as if gathering itself to chase after him. He fell in the hallway, struggled wildly up, heard a scream like a neglected teakettle spouting hot steam filling the house as he burst onto the front porch and ran, ran, ran, forgetting his books on the porch steps, ran, forgetting everything but the horror that lay in the Bookers' basement, ran home screaming all the way.
9
John quietly opened the bedroom door and peered in. The boy was still lying huddled beneath the quilt, his face pressed against a pillow, but at least he wasn't making those awful whimpering sounds anymore. In a way, though, the silence was worse. Billy had sobbed himself sick for almost an hour, since coming home twenty minutes late from school. John thought he'd never forget the white expression of fear stamped on his son's face.
They'd put him in the bedroom, since it was much more comfortable than the cot and he could be quiet in here. As John watched, Billy shivered beneath the quilt and mumbled something that sounded like "cold, in the cold." John stepped inside, arranged the quilt a little more snugly because he thought Billy had felt a chill, and then realized his son's eyes were wide open, staring fixedly into a corner of the room.
John eased down on the side of the bed. "How you feelin'?" he asked softly; he touched Billy's forehead, even though Ramona had told him Billy didn't have a fever and didn't seem physically ill. They'd taken off his clothes and checked him thoroughly the double punctures of a snakebite, knowing how he liked to ramble through dark corners of the forest, but they'd found nothing.
"Want to talk about it now?"
Billy shook his head.
"Your momma's about to put supper on the table. You feel like eatin'?"
The boy whispered something, and John thought it sounded like "Butterfinger" "Huh? What do you want, a candy bar? We're havin' sweet potatoes, will that do?" When Billy didn't reply, but stared straight ahead with such intensity that John was beginning to feel uneasy, John squeezed the boy's shoulder through the quilt and said, "When you feel like talkin' about it, I'll listen." Then John rose from the bed, feeling sure Billy had just stumbled onto a snake up in the woods and he'd be more careful next time, and went to the kitchen, where Ramona was laboring over a woodburning stove. The kitchen was filled with late afternoon sunlight and smelled of fresh vegetables from several pots on the stove.
"Is he any better?" Ramona asked.
"He's quieted down some. What did he say to you when he first came in?"
"Nothing. He couldn't talk, he was sobbing so hard. I just picked him up and held him, and then you came in from the field."
"Yeah," John said grimly. "I saw his face. I've seen sun-bleached sheets that had more color in 'em. I can't figure out what he might've gotten into." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
"I think he'll want to sleep for a while. When he wants to talk about it, he'll let us know."
"Yeah. Know what he said he wanted? A Butterfinger, of all crazy things!" He paused, watching his wife take plates out of the cupboard and set them on the small dinner table, and then jingled the few loose coins in his pocket. "Maybe I'll drive down to the store to get him one before they close up. Might ease his mind. That suit you?"
She nodded. "I'll have your supper on the table in ten minutes."
John took the car keys from his pocket and left the house. Ramona stood over the stove until she heard the engine start and car pull away. Then she took the pots off their burners, checked the corn muffins, and hurried into the bedroom, wiping her callused hands on her apron. Her eyes were shining like polished amber stones as she stood over the bed, staring down at her son. Softly, she said, "Billy?"
He stirred but did not answer. She laid a hand on his cheek. "Billy? We've got to talk. Quickly, before your father comes back."
"No . . ." he whimpered, his mouth pressed against the pillow.
"I want to know where you went. I want to know what happened. Billy, please look at me."
After a few seconds he turned his head so he could see her from the corner of a swollen eye; he was still shaking with sobs he was too weak to let go of.
"I think you went someplace where your daddy didn't want you to go. Didn't you? I think you went to the Booker house." The boy tensed. "If not inside it, then very close to it. Is that right?"
Billy shivered, his hands gripping at the covers. New tears broke over his cheeks, and like a dam bursting everything came flooding out of him at once. He cried forlornly, "I didn't mean to go in there, I promise I didn't! I wasn't bad! But I heard ... I heard ... I heard it in the basement and I ... I had to go see what it was and it was ... it was . . . awful!" His face contorted with agony and Ramona reached for him, hugging him close. She could feel his heartbeat racing in his chest.
But she had to find out, before John returned. "What did you see?" she asked.
"No! Can't . . . can't tell. Please don't make me!"
"Something in the basement?"
Billy shuddered; the illusion he'd been building in his mind, that it had all been just a particularly nasty nightmare, was falling apart at the seams like wet and rotten cloth. "I didn't see anything!"
Ramona gripped his shoulders and looked deeply into his swollen eyes. "Your daddy's going to be back in a few minutes. He's a good man in his heart, Billy, and I love his heart, but I want you to remember this: your daddy is afraid, and he strikes out at what he fears because he doesn't understand it. He loves us; he loves you more than anything in the world, and I love you too, more than you'll ever know. But now you have to trust me, son. Did . . . whatever you see speak to you?"
Billy's gaze had gone glassy. He nodded his head with an effort, a strand of saliva breaking from his half-open mouth and trailing downward.
"I thought so," Ramona said gently. Her eyes were shining, but there was a deep sadness in her face too, and a certainty of the trouble to come. He's only a little boy! she thought. He's not strong enough yet! She bit her lower lip to keep her face from collapsing in a sob. "I love you," she told him. "I'll always be there when you need me. . . ."
The sounds of the sawmill's steam whistle and the screen door slamming came at almost the same time, making them both jump.
"Supper on yet?" John called from the front room.
Ramona kissed her son's cheek and eased his head back down on the pillow: Billy curled up again, staring sightlessly. Shock, she thought. I was like that too, the first time it happened to me. He would bear watching for the next few days.
John was standing in the doorway when Ramona looked up. He was holding two Butterfinger candy bars in his right hand, and with his left seemed to be supporting himself in the doorframe; Ramona knew it was her imagination, and perhaps a trick of the dusky afternoon light that cloaked his shoulders from behind, but he seemed to have aged ten years since he'd left the house. There appeared to be a sickness behind his eyes. A weary smile worked across his lips, and he came forward to offer the candy bars to Billy. "Here you go, son. Feelin' better?"
Billy took them gratefully, though he wasn't hungry and couldn't figure out why his father had brought them.
"Your face looks like a puffball," John said. "Guess you took a wrong turn in the woods and saw a snake, huh?" He gently ruffed the boy's hair before Billy could reply, and said, "Well, you've got to watch your step. You don't want to scare some poor timber rattler half to death, do you?"
For the first time that afternoon, Billy managed a tentative smile; Ramona thought, He's going to be all right.