John looked away from her before she could finish. He was shaking inside, and he had to get out of this house fast. He looked into the back room, saw the two boys playing soldiers on the floor while Katy rubbed her reddened eyes and watched. "Got you!" Will shouted. "That one's dead! Bam! Bam! That one on the horse ls dead!"
"He's shot in the arm is all!" Billy said. "KABOOM! That's a cannon and that man and that man and that wagon are blown up!"
"Are not!" Will squawked.
"War's over, boys," John said. The strange ominous feeling in this house lay like a cold sheen of sweat on his neck. "Time to go, Billy. Say good-bye to Will and Katy. We'll see y'all later."
" 'Bye, Will!" Billy said, and then followed his father back to the living room while Will said, " 'Bye!" and went back to the sound-effects of rifles and cannons.
Julie Ann zipped up Billy's parka. When she looked at John her eyes were full of pleading. "Help me," she said.
"Wait until mornin' before you decide what to do. Sleep on it. Say thank you to Mrs. Booker for her hospitality, Billy."
"Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Booker."
"Good boy." He led his son to the door and opened it before Julie Ann could speak again. Dave Booker sat with a cigarette butt between his teeth; his eyes seemed sunken in his head, and the strange smile on his face made Billy think of a Halloween pumpkin's grin.
"You take it easy now, Dave," John said, and reached out to touch the man's shoulder. But then he stopped, because Dave's head was turning and his face was dead-white from the cold, and the smile on his thin lips was murderous.
Dave whispered, "Don't come back. This is my house. Don't you dare come back."
Julie Ann slammed the door shut.
John grasped Billy's hand and hurried down the steps, across the dead brown lawn to the road. His heart was beating very hard, and as they walked away he felt Dave's cold stare following them, and he knew that soon Dave would rise from that chair and go inside, and Lord help Julie Ann. He felt like a slinking dog; with that thought he envisioned Boo's white carcass swinging from a tree with fishing line knotted around its throat, bloodied eyes bulging.
Billy started to turn his head, snowflakes melting in his eyebrows.
John tightened his grip on the boy's hand and said tersely, "Don't look back."
3
Hawthorne closed down for the night when the steam whistle blew, promptly at five o'clock, at the sawmill owned by the Chatham brothers. When darkness settled across the valley, it signaled a time for families to eat dinner together, then sit before the fire and read their Bibles or subscription magazines like the Ladies' Home Journal or Southern Farm Times. Those who could afford radios listened to the popular programs. Watching television was a real luxury that only a few families possessed; reception from Fayette consisted of only one weak station. Several houses farther out from town still had outhouses. Porch lights— for those who could afford the electricity—usually burned until seven o'clock, meaning that visitors were welcome even on cold January nights, but after they went out it was time for bed.
In his wood-framed cot between the front room and the small kitchen, Billy Creekmore was asleep beneath a quilt and dreaming of Mrs. Cullens, who stared down at him through her fish-eyed glasses and demanded to know exactly why he hadn't finished his arithmetic homework. He tried to explain to her that it had been finished, but when he was walking to school he'd been caught in a thunderstorm and he'd started running, and pretty soon he was lost in the woods and somehow his blue Nifty notebook with the problems he'd done was gone. Suddenly, as dreams do, he was in the dense green forest, on an unfamiliar rocky path that led up into the hills. He followed it for a while, until he came to Mr. Booker sitting on a big rock staring out into space with his scary, sightless eyes. As he approached, Billy saw that there were timber rattlers on the rocks and ground all around him, crawling and rattling, tangled together. Mr. Booker, his eyes as black as new coals for the basement furnace, picked up a snake by the rattles and shook it at him; the man's mouth opened and a terrible shriek wailed out that grew louder and louder and louder and—
The shriek was still echoing in his head when Billy sat up with a muffled cry, and he could hear it fading off in the distance.
In another moment Billy could hear his parents' muffled voices through the wall beside him. The closet door opened and closed, and footsteps sounded on the floorboards. He got out of his cot in the dark, stepping into a draft that made his teeth chatter, and then he was facing the door of their bedroom. He paused, hearing them whispering inside but remembering the time he'd opened that door without knocking and had seen them dancing lying down; his father had been sputtering and furious, but his mother had explained that they needed to be in private and calmly asked him to close the door. At least that had been better than when he heard them fighting in there; usually it was his father's voice, raised in anger. Worse than the yelling, though, were the long wintry silences that sometimes stayed in the house for days at a time.
Billy gathered up his courage and knocked. The whisperings stopped. In the distance—out on the highway, he thought—he could hear another shriek like a ha'nt up in the Hawthorne cemetery. The door opened, and standing against the dim glow of a kerosene lamp was his father, pale and bleary-eyed, shrugging into his overcoat. "Go back to bed, son," John said.
"Are you goin' somewhere?"
"I have to go into town to see what those sirens are for. I want you to stay here with your mother, and I'll be back in a few . . ." He stopped speaking, listening to the fading echo of another siren.
Billy asked, "Can I go too?"
"No," John said firmly. "You're to stay right here. I'll be back as soon as I find out," he told Ramona, and she followed him with the oil lamp out into the front room. He unlatched the door, and when he opened it frost cracked on the hinges. Then John was walking toward his beat-up but still reliable 'fifty-five Oldsmobile, made up of different colors and different parts from several wrecked car dumps. Ice crystals seemed to hang in the air like sparks. He slipped behind the wheel, had to wake up the cold engine with a heavy foot on the gas, and then drove along the frozen dirt road to the main highway with a cloud of blue exhaust trailing behind. As soon as he turned onto the highway and started toward Hawthorne he could see the red comet flare of spinning lights. He knew with a sickening certainty that the police cars were parked in front of Dave Booker's house.
He felt numbed as he saw all the trooper cars and ambulances, and the dark human shapes standing out front. The Olds's headlights picked out an overcoated state trooper talking on his car radio; Hank Witherspoon and his wife Paula were standing nearby, wearing coats over their robes. They lived in the house closest to the Bookers. Lights blazed through the Bookers' windows, illuminating the bundled figures who went in and out through the open front door John stopped the car, leaned over, and rolled down his passenger window. "Hank!" he called out. "What's happened?"
Witherspoon and his wife were clinging to each other When the man turned, John saw that his face was gray, the eyes sick and glassy. Witherspoon made a whimpering sound, then he staggered away, bent double, and threw up into a steaming puddle on the icy concrete.
The trooper thrust a hawk-nosed face into the window. "Move along, fella. We got more gawkers than we need."
"I . . . just wanted to know what was goin' on. I live right down the highway, and I heard alt the commotion. ..."
"Are you related to the Booker family?"