“I will be forced to destroy this enclosure, after which I can take off vertically.”
“You’re going to blow up Mr. Bellamy’s barn?” I hadn’t realized the aircraft was that powerful.
“I do not wish to commit such vandalism, but that is what I shall be forced to do to fly from here.”
“Vernon…” said Mrs. Bellamy, in a voice which made it clear she was more worried about me than about herself.
“Wait,” I told her. “Please.” I reached in and squeezed her hand, then turned my face away from the stench. “Look, um…” I realized I had no name for the thing. “What can I call you? I feel pretty silly saying ‘computational rocket.’”
“I have recently been referred to as ‘Otto.’”
“I am not calling you Otto,” I hissed. It flew, it talked, it knew more than I did, and it came from some ancient, unimaginable place and time. Atlantis? Mars? Lord only knew, and He wasn’t telling me. A name popped into my head. “How about Pegasus?”
It was the best I could do. I was thinking of the sign at the gate of the Mobil refinery west of downtown Augusta.
“Pegasus? What does that mean?”
Dim memories of college classics courses bobbed to the surface. “Pegasus was a flying horse in Greek myth, borne of sea foam and blood.” I was amazed I could remember that. That the blood should be Dad’s was something I would regret for the rest of my life, but the name fit. Another bit of myth popped into my head. “Bellerophon rode her to places he could not have gone by any other means.”
“That would be you, Vernon Dunham,” said Pegasus.
“Right, me. I’ll soar to heaven and take my place among the stars with you. Unfortunately, at the moment I’m in this outhouse with Mrs. Bellamy, who is well and truly stuck. I need to get away from here, and bring her help. If I manage to sneak down to the barn, how long will it take you to prep for takeoff?”
“Vernon!” she said.
“I can accomplish my atmospheric preflight sequencing in approximately two minutes.”
For someone who got their English from the gospel radio, Pegasus sure could talk like an operations manual. That made it easier for me to accept it as a machine.
“All right, Pegasus. I’ll get over there as fast as I can. You seem to know where I am all the time. As soon as you sense me coming, start your preflight.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pegasus?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t call me sir.”
“Yes.”
I bent down over the pool again. “I’m going for help,” I told Mrs. Bellamy. “We can’t get you out, just the two of us, and your… husband’s… friends are out there. With guns.”
“Vernon Dunham, I know that. They had me locked up since yesterday in the root cellar, moved me out here when that policeman came.”
“Why?”
Her face set, impassive. “There’s some things you might be better not knowing, boy. I’m sorry. Just… get me help. Please?”
Squeezing her hand again, I turned to press my face against the outhouse door, down around knee-height, hopefully below where that old man on the roof would be likely to try shooting through the wood, and peeked out through the cracks. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. I would just have to brave it out. I figured I’d have to do it the ordinary way — open the door, walk out into the yard, and head for the barn. If Floyd or any of Mr. Bellamy’s gang stopped me, I would say that I was checking up on Floyd’s secret project.
The door creaked like an old leaf spring when I pushed it open. I stepped out into the dark yard, where there was just enough starlight to the bulk of the house, a few windows glowing from lanterns inside. I could see Floyd, too, standing right in front of me with one hand behind his back. He had a tense grin.
“Hey, Vernon.”
Had it been him that tied her up? Or one of those crazy old men with guns? “Uh, hello, Floyd.” I wished I were a better liar. Then maybe my voice wouldn’t have quavered so much.
“Spent a lot of time in the outhouse, I see. Thought I told you to use the chamber pot next time.”
I noticed the man on the roof had his rifle pointed at us.
“Not feeling too good,” I said, patting my stomach through the flannel bathrobe.
Floyd studied me, looking up and down, his eyes resting on my stained sleeve. “I see you’ve lost your candle. That’s a shame. Daddy told me to come apologize. We meant to dig a new trench and move the outhouse this morning, but what with the fire in town and your getting shot up, it just got away from us.”
“I didn’t notice anything unusual in there,” I said. Stupid, I told myself. I realized my breathing was faster, ragged, echoing like a drum between me and Floyd.
Floyd shook his head, sorrow and denial and indifference all together on his face as his smile quirked down to a little set of the lips. An expression I’d seen on Mr. Bellamy’s face. “Vern,” he said, “you never could lie worth a damn.” His eyes shone in the starlit darkness, tears or fear I couldn’t tell. He pulled his hand out from his back to show me a butcher knife, ten inches of sharp steel.
So he was in on it. Whatever ‘it’ was. He might as well have shoved his mother down that cesspit. For a moment, my eyes focused on the little hole at the upper corner of the blade. I shook my ahead, trying to clear the spell of the knife, and glanced up at the roof of the farmhouse. What would happen if I attacked Floyd and ran for the barn? The man on the roof was still watching us.
I looked back at Floyd, then glanced down at the ground. I didn’t want to meet my best friend’s eyes. Not now, not ever again. He laughed, a nervous chuckle that sounded forced. I felt a dim glimmer of hope at the fact that he felt the need to force it. Who was listening? Was Floyd laughing for his father? For Mr. Neville?
He whispered, “She was going to the Sheriff, Daddy said we had to stop her. We tied her up in the root cellar, but when Ollie come out here, we had to hide her better. Mr. Neville wanted to shoot her right then, but I couldn’t let him do that. Not my Mama!” Floyd was almost crying. “It was the best I could do, to save her. I had to leave her out there, to keep her away from Mr. Neville. What am I gonna do, Vern?” Then, more loudly, as he caught his breath. “I think you’d better come inside and have a little talk with Daddy.” Floyd waved me toward the kitchen door with the butcher knife.
Chapter Eleven
“Well, Vernon,” said Mr. Bellamy, slapping one hand against the pump of his shotgun. Mr. Neville sat next to him, in the same chair he’d had all evening, polishing the barrel of his pistol with one Mrs. Bellamy’s good napkins. Not that she had anything to say about it at this point.
I was flat terrified. Floyd was caught under their guns, just like me and Mrs. Bellamy, but he was trying to stay on their good side. Would he push me in the cess pit, too, to save me? Or worse? And the fact that Mr. Bellamy had finally gotten my name right after all this time was somehow all the more terrifying.
Mr. Bellamy leaned forward across the dining table. “What are we going to do with you?”
I could hear Floyd pace behind me. He still had that butcher knife. I just looked at Mr. Bellamy and shook my head.
“Is that ‘no?’” Mr. Bellamy looked at me like a roach he’d found in the flour tin. “Would that be, ‘I don’t know?’ Or maybe you’re saying ‘please don’t do anything at all to me, sir?’”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. My throat was closing up, and it was hard to talk. The headache I’d woken up with earlier was back with a vengeance. I wondered how much it would hurt when they killed me. I prayed it would be a bullet in the head, while I wasn’t looking. I didn’t want to know.