“There is,” Drew said, and he seemed happy about the idea.
We drove over there, went up a red-clay road and wound around amongst some trees and came out on a hill that overlooked the great house.
In the moonlight, from that distance, you couldn’t tell the house was run-down. The swimming pool, with the light of the moon filling it, looked to have water in it.
“When is she supposed to come?” Drew asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just a chance you might see her. She might be in the house now. She might not come at all.”
“I know,” Richard said. “Let’s go down there for a look.”
Drew said, “Why don’t you two go look?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Not by ourselves.”
“You chicken?” Drew said.
“Yes,” I said.
Drew laughed. “That’s honest. Oh, hell, let’s all go.”
Drew pulled a flashlight from under the seat. We walked down the hill, past the pool. We pushed open the back door. The only light was the moonlight that came through the windows.
Inside, Drew pulled the door closed, and there was an explosion of sound like dry leaves being run over by a herd of elephants.
“Bats,” Drew said.
I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them, fluttering up near the high ceilings and at the top of the staircase. In the beam of the flashlight, I could see the floor was littered with bat guano. It hadn’t been there at the first of the summer.
Drew played the light on the ceiling. There were large rafters and from the rafters hung bats, but just as many bats were fluttering about the house.
With a burst, the remaining bats on the rafters let loose and joined the others and swirled about. Then with a rush and a flutter, they made a stream of shadow. Drew’s light followed, and they exploded through a place where the roof had rotted and fallen in.
“Oooooh,” Callie said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What a shame for such a nice house to go to pieces,” Drew said.
“Come on, Drew, let’s go,” Callie said.
“In a moment,” Drew said. He shone the light on the stairs. “Let’s have a quick look up there. How much of the house have you seen, Stanley?”
“About what you see now. I didn’t stay long. I thought I heard and saw someone up there.”
“It could be a bum,” Callie said. “Anyone.”
“I think it was her. Mrs. Stilwind. That’s what Buster thinks.”
“Buster doesn’t know,” Callie said.
“He knows more than you think about most everything.”
“It won’t hurt to look,” Drew said.
“It might,” Callie said.
We went up the stairs, clustered together like grapes, Drew shining the light. The stairs creaked as we went. We came to a hallway. Along it were a number of doors. We opened one and Drew shone the light about. It was an empty room. The wallpaper was peeling in spots, and as we entered, dust rose up from the floor like a mist.
We checked a couple of other rooms. Same situation.
Finally, we entered a room and found a bed inside. There was also a nightstand with a mirror and the mirror was broken, only one piece of glass still in it. It was in the right-hand corner and was a very small piece. The rest of the mirror was on the floor, spread out like pieces of silver.
There was a brush on the nightstand, and there were long gray hairs in it. The bed had wrinkled dirty sheets on it and looked as if someone had been sleeping there. Up close, we saw there were gray hairs on the pillows.
“Wow,” Drew said. “Maybe she does come back here.”
“Come on,” Callie said. “Those bats make me nervous.”
“They’re gone,” Drew said.
“Come on,” Callie said again, and there was no sweetness in her voice.
We left out of there, half expecting to meet Mrs. Stilwind at the door.
Drew drove us home, Callie moving to the passenger position as we came closer to the Dew Drop.
———
UP IN MY ROOM, me and Richard went to bed early, preparing for school the next day. I was both excited and worried. At least I had one friend there. Richard. And he’d be going to school with me.
I was thinking about all this, lying wide awake, when Richard raised up on one elbow from his pallet, said, “Stanley?”
“Yes.”
“Your family has been good to me. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“But I’ve got to go.”
“Do what?”
I sat up in bed. So did Nub. He seemed annoyed. He didn’t like his sleep disturbed.
“What do you mean go?” I asked.
“I have to go home.”
“You can’t go there. Your father doesn’t want you there.”
“Not to see him. Or my mama. I was thinkin’ about that story you told about that old woman wandering back to her house, looking for her daughter’s ghost. My daddy and mama don’t even care about me and I’m alive. I’m not going there to see them, you can bet on that.”
“Then why?”
“I want my bike. That’s the main reason. I’m going to go over there and get it. I don’t get it, Daddy’s gonna sell it or throw it away for spite.”
“Do you have to do it tonight?”
“During the day they’ll see me, and if I wait too long, he’ll get rid of it. May have already.”
“You could get another bike.”
“I made that one out of old bikes I got down at the dump. He didn’t give it to me. They ain’t never give me much of anything besides a beatin’ and hard work. I’ve had more clothes give me since I been here than I got all them years from them. I didn’t even have no underwear till your mama gave me some.”
He stood up, took off the pajamas Mom had given him, started pulling on his clothes.
“You’re just going to go over there and get your bike?”
“Yeah. At least that.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll be back.”
I don’t know what I feared he might do, why I thought he might need a backup, but I said, “Wait up, and I’ll go with you. Just wait until it’s later and we’re sure everyone’s asleep, then we’ll both go. You’ll have to hide the bike nearby. Out behind the house in the woods. We’ll get it tomorrow, say we went over and got it after school. They see it tomorrow, they’ll know we went out tonight.”
“Ain’t no need in you going,” Richard said.
“I know. But I’m going.”
———
I GOT MY HOPALONG CASSIDY flashlight and snuck silently out the back way. In fact, any noise we might have made was covered by Rosy’s snoring.
With only one bike, we walked. Nub went with us, trotting along, sniffing the ground. There was a cool, late August wind, and it gently shook the trees on either side of us and made the shadows of their boughs cut back and forth across the road as if they were sawing the earth in half.
When we could see the old sawmill, we stopped. Nub sat down in the road and let his tongue hang out, dripping drool onto the ground.
Richard said, “I feel like that little colored boy under all that sawdust and nobody giving a damn. ’Cept I ain’t dead. If’n I was dead, maybe it would be easier. Maybe he’s got it lots better now.”
“Don’t talk like that,” I said.
“I don’t know any other way to talk. Come on, we’ll go behind the sawmill, slip over to the house, out to the barn. There ain’t no dog to bark, so we can get up there pretty easy. I can get a shovel there.”
“A shovel?”
“Yeah. I want to dig Butch up.”
“Say what?”
23
WHAT IN THE WORLD are you talking about? You came here to get your bike.”