“It takes away his headaches, but it gives him visions.”
“Visions? Are you senile, you old bitch?” His voice sounded closer to normal now, the snapping anger of a young man, none of the eerie formality he’d shown before.
“He sees your great-grandfather,” she said. “He sees Campbell.”
His forehead bunched into wrinkles above those strange eyes he had, eyes like oil.
“That man told you he’s seeing visions of Campbell.”
“Yes.”
“Either you are without your senses, or whatever scam this son of a bitch is running is more interesting that I had imagined. Can’t be a thing about it sorted out without him, though, can there?”
Anne didn’t answer.
“So we’ll need a meeting,” Josiah said. “A powwow, as our red brothers called it. You don’t mind your house being the location, do you? I didn’t expect that you would.”
He looked at the grandfather clock. “Too early for you to call, so we’ll have to enjoy each other’s company for a spell.”
She stayed silent, and he said, “Now, there’s no cause to be unfriendly, Mrs. McKinney. I’m a local, after all. Called this valley home for all my life. You just think of me as a visiting neighbor and we’ll be just fine.”
“If you’re a visiting neighbor,” she said, “you’d be willing to do me a favor.”
“I suspect you’re going to request something unreasonable.”
“I’d just like those curtains pushed back. I like to watch the sky.”
He hesitated but then got to his feet and pulled them back. Outside, the trees continued to sway with the wind, and though it was past sunrise now, the sky was a tapestry of gray clouds. The day had dawned dark.
49
CLAIRE WANTED TO COME along. She said he shouldn’t be alone, and when he told her that he wouldn’t be, she said that Kellen was a stranger and as far as she was concerned, being with a stranger was as good as being alone.
“Look,” he said, “you’re safe here, and you’re also here if I need you.”
“Yes. I’ll be here when you need me there. Wherever there might be.”
“We’re just going to look for a mineral spring. That’s all. Maybe take two hours. It could tell me something. Being there could tell me something.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“If it doesn’t, then we go home,” he said, although the idea left him uneasy, this place having wrapped him in its embrace now, made him feel like he belonged here.
She studied him, then echoed, “We go home.”
“Yes. Please, Claire. Let me leave to do this one thing.”
“Fine,” she said. “It’s not like I’m unused to you leaving.”
He was silent, and she said, softly, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re honest.”
She ran her hands over her face and through her hair and turned from him. “Go, then. And hurry, so we can go home.”
He kissed her. She was stiff, returned it with an uncomfortable formality. Tense with the effort of hiding those things she hid so well-anger, betrayal. She felt them now, and he knew it and still he was heading for the door. What did that make him?
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Quicker than you think, I promise.”
She nodded, and then after an awkward silence, he went to the door and opened it and said, “Good-bye.” She didn’t answer, and then he was in the hallway, the door shutting softly behind him and hiding her from sight.
Kellen was waiting in the parking lot, the Porsche at idle. He had the windows down and his eyes shielded by the sunglasses even though the morning was dark with heavy cloud cover.
“Something tells me that ain’t Dasani,” he said, eying the bottle of water in Eric’s hand. It was only half full now, maybe a little less. The headache was whispering to him, the pain like a soft, malevolent chuckle.
“No,” Eric said, fitting the bottle into a cup holder. “It’s not Dasani.”
Kellen nodded and put the car into drive. “A word of warning, my man-this might be the definition of a goose chase we’re embarking on here.”
“I thought you knew where the spot was?”
“I know where the gulf is. That’s all. There’s a lot of fields and woods around it, and how in the hell we’re supposed to find a spring, I don’t know.”
“We’ll give it a shot, at least,” Eric said. “Think we can beat the rain?” he asked, eyeing the darkening sky.
“I drive fast,” Kellen said.
They were on their way out of town when Eric said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why are you hanging in the game?”
“What do you mean?”
“If I were you, I’d probably have driven back to Bloomington by now and stopped taking calls from the crazy white guy. Why haven’t you?”
There was a brief silence, and then Kellen said, “All those stories my great-grandfather told me about this place? All those crazy-sounding stories? Well, Everett Cage was a talker, I’ll admit that. He liked to captivate his audience. But, Eric? He also wasn’t a liar. He was an honest man, and I’m sure of one thing-whatever he said, well, he believed it. I guess I’ve always wondered how he could believe things like that.”
It was quiet again, and then he said, “I’m starting to understand.”
Josiah found himself watching the clouds. At first he’d taken to gazing out the window just because he wanted to be sure the old woman wasn’t up to something, that there was no way she could signal for help once those drapes were pulled back. But the window showed only a field and a view of the western sky. The clouds were massing, unsettled and swirling, layers seeming to shift from bottom to top and then back. The sky over the yard was pale gray, but out in the west it looked like a bruise, and the wind pushed hard at the house and whistled with occasional gusts. Something about the turbulent sky pleased him, made him smile, and he pulled his lips back and spat tobacco juice onto the window, watched it slide down the glass in a brown smear. Funny he couldn’t even remember putting a chaw in. Hadn’t ever taken to the habit, threw up when he sampled his first dip at fourteen and never went back to the stuff, but there it was.
He waited until nearly nine before kneeling beside Anne McKinney and passing her his cell phone. Late enough that Shaw and the woman would be awake; early enough that they probably weren’t ready to check out. He had Danny watching in case they did, and the phone had been silent.
“Time for your part in this,” he said. “It’s a most minor role, Mrs. McKinney, but critical nonetheless. In other words, it is a role that I cannot allow you to… what’s the phrase I’m looking for? Fuck up. That’s it. I cannot allow you to fuck this up.”
She held his eyes and didn’t so much as blink. She was scared of him-she had to be-but she wasn’t allowing herself to show it, and there was a part of Josiah that admired that. Not a large enough part to tolerate it, though.
“If you’re fixing to hurt people,” she said, “I won’t have a part in it.”
“You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m fixing to do. Remember that. But here’s what I can tell you-this call doesn’t go through, people will begin to get hurt. And there’s only one person nearby for me to start with, too.”
“You’d threaten a woman of my years. That’s the kind of man you-”
“You ain’t got the first idea the kind of man I am. But I’ll give you a start: you picture the darkest soul you ever seen, and then, old woman, you add a little more black.”
He hovered over her, the phone extended, his eyes locked on hers. “Now, all you got to do is make a phone call and say a handful of words, and say them right. That happens, I got a feeling I’ll find my way out of that front door of yours, and you’ll be sitting here watching your damn sky as you like. But if it doesn’t happen?”
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’m a man of ambition. Not of patience.”
She tried to keep her gaze steady but her mouth was trembling a bit, and when he pressed the phone into her wrinkled palm, he felt a fearful jolt travel through her.
“You call that hotel,” he said. “You said he wanted that water? Well, tell him now’s the time to come get it. You’ll give it all to him, but he’s got to hurry up and get out here, because you’re going to be leaving town for a few days.”
“He won’t believe that.”
“Well, you best make him believe it. Because if he doesn’t? We’re going to have to find ourselves a whole new tactic. And with the mood I’ve found myself in, I don’t believe anyone would like to see what happens should I be required to get creative.”
He slid the shotgun over and leaned it against the edge of the couch so the muzzle was looking her in the face.
“Anne, you old bitch,” he said, “it’s got nothing to do with you. Don’t change the way I feel on that front.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll call. But whatever you think is going to happen, I can assure you it won’t work out as you’ve planned. Things never do.”
“Don’t you worry about me. I’m a man who’s capable of adjusting.”
She dialed, but he took the phone from her hand and put it to his ear to be certain she wasn’t calling anybody else. The voice that answered said, “West Baden Springs,” and Josiah, in a voice thick with easy charm, said, “I’m calling for a guest. Mr. Eric Shaw, please.”
“One moment,” the woman answered, and Josiah passed the phone back to Anne McKinney. Then he dropped to one knee on the floor in front of the couch and rested his hand around the stock of the shotgun, curled one finger around the trigger guard.
“Hello,” Anne said, and there was too much fluster in her voice. He shifted the gun as inspiration as she said, “I was, well, I was trying to reach Mr. Shaw.”
“Oh,” she said. A pause during which Josiah could hear a female voice, and then Anne said, “Oh, yes. Well… a message? I, um-”
Josiah gave an emphatic nod.
“Yes, I’d like to leave a message. My name is Anne McKinney. I’ve only just met… oh, he mentioned me? Well, you see, he wanted something from me. Some old bottles of Pluto Water. And I want him to have them but I need him to come get them soon because I have to go out of town.”
She was talking too fast, and Josiah moved the gun so the barrel was just inches from her chin.
“That’s all. Just tell him to come see Anne McKinney if he can. He knows where I live. Please tell him. Thank you.”
She shoved the phone away and Josiah took it and disconnected, regarding her with a sour expression. It hadn’t been the performance he’d needed. She was too shaky, too strange. He wanted to release some of the anger, but fear was already clear in her wrinkled old face and he didn’t have the energy for shouting, so he turned away instead and went to the window with gun in hand and looked out at those oncoming dark clouds.
“She said he was gone?” He spoke with his back to her.
“Yes. She told me she’d see that he got the message.”
“Ain’t that just dandy news,” Josiah said, thinking that Danny was even more worthless than assumed, had let Shaw walk right out of that hotel. Son of a bitch. Wasn’t nobody could be counted on in this world except himself…
He called Danny. Exploded on him before a word had been said, asking what in the hell he was doing up there, because Shaw was gone, damn it, and Danny hadn’t seen a thing because he was a useless piece of shit and-
“I’m following him, Josiah! Give me a break, I’m following him.”
“Why the hell didn’t you call and tell me that?”
“He didn’t leave but five minutes ago! I’m just trying to keep up, see where’s he going.”
Josiah reached up and squeezed the bridge of his nose, took a breath. “Well, damn it, next time tell me when they start moving, then call back. Where are they going?”
“Headed toward Paoli. The black kid picked him up in the Porsche. It was good work that I saw him go, since he didn’t take his own car.”
“Just follow them,” Josiah said, in no mood to offer Danny praise. “Hang back far enough that they don’t notice you, but don’t you lose them neither.”
“I’m doing best as I can but that black kid, he drives like-”
“Just stay behind them and let me know where they end up.”
They hadn’t made it more than a few miles out of town before Eric’s cell phone rang-Claire.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”
“That old lady called. She wants you to get her Pluto Water.”
“Okay. I’ll call her back in a while. I don’t really have time to-”
“She said she’s leaving for a few days, and if you want the bottles, you have to get them now. She sounded upset.”
Leaving for a few days? It was odd that she hadn’t mentioned it.
“She say where she was going?”
“Nope. Just that if you want the water, today’s the day to get it.”
Damn it. He didn’t have time for a delay like this, but he also couldn’t afford to let the last supply of original Pluto Water he had access to close off. Not right now, not when his hands were shaking and his head was throbbing and even full bottles of the hotel water didn’t do a damn thing to help. By now Anne’s water might not help either, but it was better to have at least the chance of a net under your tightrope.
“Hang on,” he said and then lowered the phone and said to Kellen, “Hey, are we going to pass by Anne McKinney’s on our way to this place?”
“That’s the exact opposite direction. But we can turn around.”
He didn’t want to turn around. He wanted to see the site of the old Granger cabin, and the sky was turning forbidding, more storms certainly on the way. But it was worth a delay if he could get his hands on a few more bottles…
“I’ll go see her,” Eric told Claire. “I hate to slow down for it now, because I want to find this spot I told you about and it looks like rain.”
“I had the TV on. They’re predicting bad storms all day.”
“Great. I’d love to get caught out in the woods in those. But if she’s leaving-”
“I could go get them,” Claire said.
He hesitated. “No. We agreed that it was safest for you to stay-”
“She’s an elderly woman, Eric. I think I can handle her.”
“I don’t really like that idea.”
“Well, I’d like to see one of these bottles, honestly.”
He remembered the way she’d inquired about the bottle as soon as she got to the hotel, as if testing him, searching for tangible proof of his wild stories.
“Fine,” he said. “Let me give you directions to the house.”