The rest is murmuring voices, like people talking in their sleep. I strain to listen, but it’s hopeless. Muscles in my back and arms tighten down with frustration. I want to scream. It takes physical effort to keep from smashing my fist against the tape player. Instead, I take everything back to the reference desk and thank the librarian for his help. As I leave, I feel lost and mad. I want to kick something. I want to curl up on the sidewalk and sob and give up.
Back at Stratofortress’s house, I grab the mail out of the beat-up mailbox. Turns out Max’s full name is Osgood Maxwell. Weird. I play with LeighAnn’s dogs, barefoot in the backyard, spiny grass poking my soles. When I hear the rumble of Tyler’s truck out front, I rush around and let him through the front gate. “So? What did Bo tell your parents?”
“Everything. All about the ring, you running away.”
“Son of a biscuit!” Leading him back around to the backyard, I ask, “Well? Did they freak?”
“Yeah. They got scared when I didn’t answer my phone last night, but I told them I was jamming with Ultimate and didn’t hear it.”
“They bought that?”
“Sure.” He shrugs. “Same thing happened last week.”
“So what about the ring and all that?”
“I, uh … I sort of put it all on you. Said I never really thought it was from Holly, but you were freaking out, and I was just sort of humoring you.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“It was the only thing I could think of. Sorry.”
I throw a stick for the dogs. Hobbit ignores it, lying down in a hole he’s dug. Cookie runs after the stick but won’t bring it back. He gnaws off the bark, leaving a jagged pale tip that looks like bone. Your bones are still in the drowned forest, mixed with the black mud. Your pa-paw’s bones are down there too, I guess, if you left him any bones after you were done with him. I remember how he stopped fighting when you embraced him, just quit, and my stomach suddenly hurts. I ask, “So what about Mr. Alton?”
“There’s nothing in the newspaper. The houseboat sunk. Nobody even realizes he’s missing yet.”
“So what do we do?”
Tyler shrugs again. “What can we do? You’ve got to stay out of sight, so we can’t go to the police. And even if we did, they wouldn’t believe us. Or worse, they’ll decide we’d murdered him.”
“You’re horrible.” I grab the stick from Cookie and throw it again.
“Jane … ”
“He was Holly’s grandpa, Tyler. And you just want to do nothing? He was a human being.” But Tyler’s right; there’s nothing we can do. Holly, we’ve messed everything up so bad and can’t fix it. It’s just easier to dump on Tyler than admit this.
He says, “You want to do right by Mr. Alton? Then we finish what he started. We find a way to put Holly’s soul to rest.”
I nod. “Maybe you’re right.”
“So … any ideas on how to do that?”
“Not any good ones, but I did go to the library today.” I tell him about Tommy Mud-and-Sticks and Auntie Peake. He gets excited, just like I did. Then I have to give him the bad news. “She was an old woman when she did that interview back in the eighties. She might be dead by now, and even if she isn’t, we don’t have a phone number or anything. All we know is she lived in Decatur.”
“Well, it’s still more than we had yesterday. Maybe we can get in touch with her. Maybe she can tell us what’s going on.”
I nod just as we hear the front gate swinging open again. It’s Max and Steve. We go inside through the sliding glass door and meet them in the kitchen. They’re both sweaty and flushed, wearing Florence Utilities work shirts. Steve carries a grocery sack. “How you doing, Jane?”
“Good. Just trying to think of a less rock ’n’ roll name than ‘Osgood.’”
“Robert Zimmerman,” Max answers.
“Who?”
Opening the grocery sack, Steve pulls out some gas station fried chicken and a large order of home fries. “Come on, you guys hungry?”
We eat around the cable spool. Max and Steve drink beer, me and Tyler have sweet tea. Steve wants to hear all about the catfish and last night.
“Where’s her ring? Can I see it?”
Tyler shakes his head. “I must’ve left it on the houseboat. It sunk.”
“This whole thing … ” Steve finishes his fries, wiping his hands on his jeans. “The whole thing … just … whoa, you know?”
“Ever hear anything like it?” Tyler asks.
“Nuh-uh. I’ve seen the ghosts over at Forks of Cypress. But they just looked like real pale light, nothing solid. But you know, the Devil’s Circle is near the lake,” Steve says. “Maybe that has something to do with all this.”
Max shakes his head. “The Devil’s Circle is way out, off of Wilson Highway.”
Tyler says, “No, it’s just past the embankment, real close to downtown. It’s on private land, and the owners keep it quiet in case they ever want to sell.”
Max keeps shaking his head. “I’m telling you, Twitchy went—” His phone rings, and he pulls it out. “Hey! How’s it going? Where are you guys?” He carries the phone into the living room. The rest of us keep talking about ghosts.
Everybody knows the story of the Devil’s Circle, even if nobody’s sure where it is. Long ago, there was a kid who played banjo better than almost anybody around here. One night the Devil showed up to dance. The boy was too scared to stop playing, so he played all night while the Devil swirled around and around. Finally, the boy just collapsed from exhaustion. The next morning, he found a boot stuffed with money and a wide circle where nothing would grow. No animals would get close to it, not even the best-trained horses or hunting dogs. The boy never picked up the banjo again, and the Devil’s Circle is still like that today.
The Forks of Cypress plantation house burned down a century ago. The great white columns still mark where it stood, though. Terrified ghosts still glimmer above the foundations some nights, and kids with cars dare each other to drive out there, rush up, and touch the columns.
We talk about Crybaby Bridge, the face in the Pickens County Courthouse window, and Gabriel’s Hounds tearing through the woods every Good Friday. They’re just scraps of stories, told and retold, parts lost and patched up with spare parts from fairy tales and movies. I wonder if the people from the holler knew the truth about them—the people like Mattie Peake, who’d lived there before the dam, far away from town, down where nights were as black as sin and fevers disguised themselves as toads.
Just as LeighAnn comes home, Max reappears and kisses her. “Guess what? Against the Dawn are playing the Bandito Burrito on Thursday.”
“Awesome!”
“That was Jessie on the phone. She wanted to know if they could crash here. I went ahead and said yes.”
LeighAnn gives a thumbs-up. “Gonna be like college again, except we won’t go to class the next morning. ’Course, we didn’t go to class when we were in college, so it’ll be like college again!”
“And also, she wanted us for their opening act.”
LeighAnn sighs. “Oh, well. You tell her Patterson was gone?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Tyler can fill in,” Steve says. Max and LeighAnn both look at Tyler.
Tyler shakes his head and concentrates on his chicken leg. “Come on, Ultimate, I told you, I’m not looking to be in a band right now.”
“You’re the only person who already knows all our songs.”
“Barely. Not nearly as good as Patterson.”
Max says, “How about you just stay for practice tonight, see how it goes?”
Tyler nods. “We’ll see how it goes.”
Ultimate Steve claps him on the back. LeighAnn goes to change out of her skirt suit. While she’s in the bedroom, that sketchy girl who was hanging on Steve the other day appears—I didn’t even hear the front door open. The first thing she does is hug Steve, pressing her face to his sweaty, mucky work shirt and breathing deep.