Earl clicked off his flashlight. “Same place all jumpers jump from. No mystery there.”
Hitch stayed where he was and looked up at the moon. Seemed like the old girl was winking at him. Might it be she knew something they didn’t? What secrets did she hold within all that silence?
Three
WALTER LIKED THE early mornings, especially in the summer—with the full moon still hovering near the horizon, on its way to setting. It nestled, white as a heifer’s face, against the blinding blue of the morning sky. He craned his head back.
Maybe there’d be a real live airplane up there today too. The posters for the big show had been plastered all over town for weeks. His insides jigged at just the thought of it. He couldn’t help a grin, and he pulled in a deep breath.
There was something about the air at this time of day, all shiny with the mist rising off the dew-speckled cornfields. Even in a bad drought, everything smelled wet and alive. This late in the summer, the cornfields should have been towering far over his head—they should have been up over even Papa Byron’s or Deputy Griff’s heads. But thanks to the dry weather, the corn was barely taller than his four feet five and a quarter inches.
Cane pole over his shoulder and wearing only his patched overalls, he ran through the crabgrass and the purple alfalfa flowers that bordered the road to the creek. The dampness of the earth under his toes crinkled up his legs, straight to his head.
As Mama Nan would say, good sweet angels, wasn’t this the life! Seemed like the right moment to do a war whoop and a dance, for the fun of it. Problem with that was it involved saying something out loud. He opened his mouth, loosened his throat muscles, and waited. But speaking up felt wrong, even out here, where nobody could hear him. It would be kind of like cheating, since everybody wanted so much for him to say something back home.
He hadn’t said hardly a thing since that day four years ago, half his whole life past. That was the day he’d gotten so scared and let the bad thing happen to the twins down by the creek. Evvy and Annie had been just babies then. He was supposed to have taken care of them. But he hadn’t, and they’d just about died. And Mama Nan…
Sometimes her face from that day still flashed through his mind. Her eyes had been huge, her mouth open, gasping, like somebody had whacked her across the shins with the biggest stick they could find. She just stared at him and stared at him. And then words started coming out of her.
He didn’t remember exactly what she said. But whatever she said had been right: it had been his fault.
He had stood there, wet and shivering, on the creek bank. Nothing would move. No part of his body would work right. Not because anything was wrong with him—he wasn’t the one who’d just about died—but just… because.
And then he’d stopped talking.
But he didn’t like to think about that. Much better to enjoy the sunshine and the morning. Maybe one of these days, he’d finally say something again—and make Mama Nan happy with him. But for right now, it could wait.
He set down his pole and rolled a somersault. Surely, God would know a somersault meant the same thing as a war whoop anyway. It was a sort of a thank-you for early summer mornings like this, when Mama Nan and Molly were baking and Papa Byron was starting up his rusty old tractor. If everybody was too busy to notice him, that meant he got to go fishing.
When he reached the Berringers’ mailboxes—one neat and whitewashed and the other huge and rusty—he turned off the road into the trees that fringed the creek. His secret spot was on top of a flat boulder about a half mile down from the road. The rock had a round, hollowed-out spot on top, just perfect for sitting on.
Nobody else ever came out here. Well, maybe the old Berringer brothers, since it was their creek, but they never came out in the early morning. They wouldn’t mind him fishing here. Or at least Mr. Matthew wouldn’t. Mr. J.W. though, he was kind of grumpy and scary sometimes, like when he’d shot at Mr. Matthew’s prize hen and spooked her out of laying for a whole month.
Mr. J.W. hadn’t known Walter was hiding behind the fence post. Then, when he walked by and saw Walter, he winked and gave Walter a penny for hard candy. Walter still had the penny in a sock under his bed. Didn’t feel right somehow to spend a present from Mr. J.W. when he was afraid of him.
That was another reason he liked to come out here in the early mornings. Less of a chance of meeting Mr. J.W. or anybody else—like all these murdering sky people everybody in town was talking about lately.
Walter wasn’t supposed to know about that, of course, but he’d heard Mr. Fallon from the dry goods store telling Mama Nan. In the last few weeks, five dead people had been found roundabout. Nobody knew who they were, just that they were dressed funny—old-fashioned, kinda like Grandpapa Hugh back when he was alive.
Two days ago, old Mr. Scottie, who always spent all day sitting inside Dan and Rosie’s Cafe on Main Street, swore up and down he’d seen one of the bodies fall straight out of the sky. Everybody laughed at him like they didn’t believe it. They all said maybe it was one of the pilots here for the show, who’d gotten drunk and crashed his plane. But they’d all started talking about the sky people after that.
Why not sky people? Walter peered upwards. Better that than the gangsters and bootleggers in the radio programs. A shiver lifted the downy hairs on the back of his neck. Now that the airshow was in town, maybe the sky people would be scared off.
He clambered up onto his rock. The coolness of its pitted surface, still protected by the morning’s shadows, tingled against his feet. He settled down cross-legged, pole across his knees, and reached for the can he’d strapped around his waist. The piece of canvas tied over the top had kept the worms from falling out during his somersault.
Something splashed. And not a splash from a fish or a splash from a frog, but definitely a splash from a person.
He froze, then looked up.
There, on the opposite side of the creek, a few yards down from his special rock, was a lady. She crouched on the bank, leaning forward to drink from the water. She was wearing a big blue dress like people wore in some of Evvy and Annie’s storybooks about fairies and queens. But it was all torn on the bottom, maybe even burned in places.
She looked up and saw him.
He stared back, not even daring to breathe.
Her face was like a face out of the storybooks, pale and kind of glowy. Her hair was long and light brown, but it seemed shriveled, almost melted, at the ends.
She tilted up the corner of her mouth, and then she grinned full on at him.
His heart flopped over in his chest, and he grinned back. He even dared a wave.
She laughed, and it sounded like the creek gurgling past, only deeper. “Zdravstvuyte,” she said. “Prekrasnoe utro, ne tak li?”
She didn’t look like anyone around here, so it made a sort of sense she wouldn’t talk like anyone either.
He shook his head.
“Mmm.” She rose to her knees and gestured to her clothes. “_Mne nuzhna novaya odezhda._” She mimed taking off the dirty dress and throwing it away, then pulling on a shirt and a pair of pants. When she was done, she shrugged her shoulders almost to her earlobes.
Now this was a conversation he knew how to have. The only question was where she could get a new dress. Mama Nan could give him one, but she might not be happy about it. She’d told Molly the other night that she’d have to be more careful about keeping her dresses mended, since only the sweet angels knew where they’d get money for a new one. Molly hadn’t much liked that.