Billy took the pipe while his mother fed more wet leaves to the fire. He took a tentative puff that almost knocked his head off, and he was convulsed with coughing for a moment. The smoke and heat seemed to be closing in, and he could hardly breathe. Panic streaked through him, but suddenly his grandmother's hand was on his arm and she said, "It's all right. Relax; now try it again."
He did, as acrid gray smoke bellowed from the fire. The pipe smoke seared the back of his throat as he drew it in, and black dots spun before his eyes.
"You'll get used to it," Rebekah said. "Now where was I? Oh, yes. The Giver of Breath. God of the Choctaws. God of the white man. He also gives gifts of talent, Billy, to use for His good. Inhale the smoke, all the way. Yes, that's right. Some people can paint beautiful pictures, some can make sweet music, others work with their hands, and some with their wits; but in all people is the seed of talent, to do something of value in this world. And doing that—perfecting that talent, making the seed grow to good fruit— should be the aim of this life."
Billy inhaled again and coughed violently. The quilt was damp with his sweating, and still the heat continued to mount. "Even me, Gram? Is that seed in me?"
"Yes. Especially in you." She took off the kerchief, wiped her eyes with it, and handed it across the boy to Ramona, who mopped at the freely running sweat on her face and neck.
Billy stared into the fire. His head was full of a burning-rope odor, and now the smoke even tasted sweet. The flames seemed to he flaring brighter; they held beautiful glints of rainbow colors, entrancing him. He heard himself speak as if from a distance: "What kind of seed is it?"
"Billy, all three of us share something very special, something that's been passed down to us through the generations. We don't how how it began, or where it will end, but . . . we can see the dead, Billy, and we can speak to them."
He trembled, watching the flames shoot out brilliant green-and-orange lights. Through the thick haze of smoke shadows capered on the walls. "No," he whispered. "That's . . . evil, like . . . like Daddy says!"
"Your father's wrong," Ramona said, "and he's afraid. There's dignity in death. But sometimes . . . there are those who need help in passing over from this world to the next, like Will Booker did. Will couldn't rest until he was lying next to his folks, but his spirit—his soul—will go on. Call them haunts, or ghosts, or revenants—but some of them cling to this world after death, out of confusion, pain, or fear; some of them are stunned and wander looking for help. But all of them have to find peace—they have to give up their emotions, and the feelings they had at the instant of death if those feelings are keeping them here in this world—before they can pass over. I'm not saying I understand death, and I'm not saying I know what Heaven and Hell are going to be like, but death itself isn't evil, Billy; it's the call to rest after a long day's work."
Billy opened his eyes and put a trembling hand to his forehead. You're in the darrrrrk place, a voice in his head hissed. It became Jimmy Jed Falconer's thunderous roar: YOU'RE A GUEST OF SATAN! "I don't want to go to Hell!" he moaned suddenly, and tried to fight free of the constricting blanket. "I don't want Satan to get me!"
Rebekah quickly gripped his shoulders and said, "Shhhhhh. It's all right now, you're safe right here." She let him lean his head on her shoulder and rocked him gently while Ramona added wet leaves to the fire. After another moment he calmed down, though he was still shaking. The heat was stifling now, but most of the smoke had risen to the ceiling where it undulated in thick gray layers. "Maybe Hell's just something a man made up," she said softly, "to make some other man afraid. I think that if Hell exists, it must be right here on this earth . . . just like Heaven can be, too. No, I think death's apart from all that; it's another step in who and what we are. We leave the clay behind and our spirits take flight." She tilted his face up and looked into his eyes. "That's not saying, though, that there isn't such a thing as evil. ..."
Billy blinked. His grandmother was a shadowy form, surrounded by a halo of reddish white light. He felt weary and struggled to keep his eyes open. "I'll . . . fight it," he mumbled. "I'll hit it . . . and kick it, and ..."
"I wish it was as simple as that," Rebekah said. "But it's cunning and takes all kinds of shapes. It can even make itself beautiful. Sometimes you don't see it for what it is until it's too late, and then it scars your spirit and gets a hold on you. The world itself can be an evil place, and make people sick to their guts with greed and hate and envy; but evil's a greedy hog that walks on its own legs, too, and tries to crush out any spark of good it can find."
As if in a dream, Billy lifted the pipe and drew from it again. The smoke tasted as smooth as a licorice stick. He was listening very carefully to his grandmother, and watching the undulating smoke at the ceiling.
The old woman brushed a sweat-damp curl from his forehead. "Are you afraid?" she asked gently.
"No," he replied. "But I'm . . . kinda sleepy."
"Good. I want you to rest now, if you can." She took the pipe from him and knocked the ashes into the fire.
"Can't," he said. "Not yet." And then his eyes closed and he was drifting in the dark, listening to the fire's soft crackling; the dark wasn't frightening, but instead was warm and secure.
Rebekah eased him to the ground, tucking the blanket in around him so he'd continue sweating. Ramona added more leaves to the fire and then they left the smokehouse.
19
Billy came awake with sudden start. He was alone. The fire had burned down to red embers; the heat was still fierce, and thick smoke had settled in a calm, still cloud at the ceiling. His heart was beating very fast, and he struggled to get free of the blanket. The grinning ceramic skull glinted with low red light.
And suddenly something began to happen in the fire. Flames snapped and hissed. As Billy stared, transfixed, a long fiery coil slowly rose from the embers. It rattled, sending off tiny red sparks.
A burning, spade-shaped head with eyes of sizzling cinders rose up. Red coils tangled and writhed, pushing the fiery length of flaming rattlesnake out of the fire and toward Billy. Its eyes fixed upon him, and when its jaws opened drops of burning venom, like shining rubies, drooled out. The snake slithered closer, with a noise like paper charring, across the clay floor, Billy tried to pull away, but he was tangled up in the blanket. He couldn't find his voice. The flame-rattler touched his blanket; the cloth sparked and burned. It reared back, its body a seething red, to strike.
Billy started to kick at it, but before he could, something gray and almost transparent swooped down from the cloud of smoke at the ceiling.
It was a large, fierce-looking eagle, its body and wings wraithlike, flurrying smoke. With a high, angered shriek that echoed within Billy's head, the smoke-eagle dropped through the air toward the flame-rattler, which reared back and spat sparks from between its burning fangs. The eagle swerved and dived again, its smoky claws gripping at the back of the snake's head. The two enemies fought for a few seconds, the eagle's wings beating at the air. Then the fire-snake's tail whipped up, striking into the eagle, and the eagle spun away.
Balancing on tattered wings, the smoke-eagle dropped down again, its claws clamping just behind the snake's head; the flame-rattler buried its burning jaws within the eagle's breast, and Billy could see its dripping fangs at work. But then the eagle slashed downward, and parts of the rattler's body hissed through the air in fragments of fire. Coils of flame wrapped around the eagle's form, and both of them whirled in a mad circle for a few seconds like a burning gray cloth. The eagle's wings drove them both upward, up into the cloud of smoke, and then they were gone except for a few droplets of flame that fell back into the embers.