The boy was strong and had God in his heart, Falconer knew, but still . . . something ate at Wayne, day and night. Something drove him, and tried to control him. He had fits of moods and temper, and sometimes he locked himself in the prayer chapel at home for hours on end. And Wayne had been complaining of a strange recurring nightmare lately, some nonsense about a snake and an eagle. Falconer couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Falconer was tired. He felt a sudden and awful pang of jealousy, and of anger at growing older and heavier and weaker.
He walked toward the trailer. His heart was deteriorating, the doctors had told him. Why, as he'd asked himself many times, was he afraid to ask Wayne to heal his heart, to patch up the leaks and make him strong again?
His answer was always the same as welclass="underline" Because he was deeply afraid that Wayne's healing Toby had been a strange—and terrible—fluke. And if Wayne tried to heal him and nothing happened, then . . . What had stayed with him for seven years was the voice of that Creekmore woman, the Hawthorne Valley witch, raised to tell everybody that he and his young son were murderers of the worst kind. Down deep inside, far from the light, in a dark place that knew neither God nor Satan but was instead wholly frightened animal, a nerve of truth had been trembling for seven long years. What if? What . . . if . . . ?
What if Wayne already knew? And had known since he'd touched the legs of a little girl whose frightened mind had kept her from wanting to walk.
"No," Falconer said. "No. The Lord's workin' through my son. He healed a dumb animal, didn't he? He's healed more than a thousand people." He shook his head. He had to shut off his thinking before it was harmful. He reached the shining silver trailer, unlocked it, and stepped inside. There was a plaque on the wall that said believe, and that was good enough for him.
SIX
May Night
24
They had driven in silence since leaving the house. John Creekmore watched the road unwinding before him in the yellow glare of the headlights; he was purposely keeping their speed ten miles per hour below the limit. "You sure you want to do this?" he asked, finally, without looking at his son. "I can turn the car around on the next dirt road."
"I want to go," Billy said. He was wearing a spotless but tightly fitting dark suit, a starched white shirt, and a bright paisley tie.
"Your choice. I've said all I can, I guess." His face was set and grim; he looked much the same as he had when he'd stepped out of the house one morning last week and had seen the scarecrow dummy hanging by its neck from an oak-tree limb. It was wrapped with used toilet paper Ever since that evening Billy had gone up to the sawmill with Lamar Chatham the air had been ugly; Chatham had gone around telling everybody with ears what had happened, and the story soon became embellished and distorted to the point that it was said Billy was in command of the demons that infested the mill. John knew all of that was ridiculous, but he wasn't given the chance to explain; when he'd last gone over to Curtis Peel's to play checkers, the other men had frozen him out, talking and looking right through him as if he were invisible. Less than ten minutes after he'd gotten there, they'd all decided they'd had enough and left, but John had seen them later, sitting on the benches in front of Lee Sayre's hardware store; Sayre was with them, the center of attention, and Ralph Leighton was grinning like a hyena. "Did your mother put you up to this?" John asked suddenly.
"No sir."
"Don't you know who's gonna be there, son? Just about everybody in the junior and senior classes, and a lot of their folks too! And everybody knows!" He tried to concentrate on his driving as the road snaked to the left. Fayette County High wasn't far now, just a mile or so ahead. "You ever ask anybody to go with you?"
Billy shook his head. He'd gathered the courage to call out Melissa's name in the hallway one day; when she'd turned toward him, Billy had seen her pretty face blanch. She'd hurried away as if he were offering her poison.
"Then I don't see why you want to go."
"It's May Night. It's the school dance. That's why."
John grunted. "No, that's not all of it, is it? I think you want to go because you want to prove something." He flicked a glance at the boy.
"I want to go to May Night, that's all."
He's stubborn as a deaf mule, John thought, and he's got a hell of a lot of guts, I'll say that for him. Billy was different, stronger-willed, somehow, and much more intense. Looking into his eyes was like seeing a thunderstorm on the horizon, and you didn't know which way the storm would turn or how fast it was moving.
"You may think you're not different," John said quietly, "but you're wrong. Lord knows I've prayed over you, Billy, and over your mother too. I've prayed until my head aches. But the Lord isn't gonna change you, son, not until you turn away from this . . . this black belief."
Billy was silent for a moment. The lights of Fayette brightened the sky before them. "I don't understand it," he said. "Maybe I never will, and maybe I'm not supposed to. But I think that part of Mr. Patterson was in that mill, Dad; it was a scared and hurt part, and too confused to know what to—"
"You don't know what you're talkin' about!" John snapped.
"Yes I do, Dad." The strength of his voice frightened John. "I helped Mr Patterson. I know I did."
John felt the quick, hot urge to strike his son across the face. Seventeen or not, the boy had no right to dispute his father's word. In John's way of thinking the boy was like a corrupting tarbaby, and John was afraid some of that evil tar might fix itself to him, too.
The county high school stood just outside the Fayette city limits. It was a large, two-storied red brick building that had gone up in the early forties and had survived, like a defiant dinosaur, the ravages of weather, vandalism, and county-education budget cuts. A gymnasium had been built off to the side in the mid-fifties, a square brick structure with a band of louvered windows beneath the slate roof. Outside the gym was a fenced-in football field, home to the Fayette County High Bulldogs. The parking lot held a varied assortment of vehicles, from rusted-out pickups to spit-shined sports cars. The school building itself was dark, but a few bright streamers of light shot out through the gym's open windows, and in the air there was the growl of a bass guitar and the high notes of laughter.
John slowed the car to a halt. "I guess this is the place. You sure you want to go through with it?"
"Yes sir."
"You don't have to, you know."
"I do have to."