“But maybe it’s supposed to see me,” Dancy says aloud, though she’d only meant to think that to herself. Already she’s reaching for the Bowie knife tucked into the waistband of her jeans.
“Get outta the road,” the girl shouts, actually shouting this time, no longer trying not to be heard by the hairy black thing in the sky.
Dancy draws her knife, and the sun flashes off the stainless steel blade. Her hand is sweaty around the handle, that stout hilt carved from the antler of a white-tailed buck.
The dragon soars and banks, and then it dives for her.
Why wasn’t I warned? Why didn’t you tell me there are dragons?
But then she’s being pulled, hauled along with enough force and urgency that she almost loses her balance to tumble head over heels off the asphalt and into a tangle of blackberry briars.
“Jesus,” the girl says, “are you simple? Are you crazy?”
Dancy looks back over her shoulder just in time to see the dragon swoop low above the road; there can be no doubt that it was coming for her.
“You saw that?” she asks, and the girl tugging her deeper into the woods replies, “Yeah, I saw it. Of course I saw it. What were you doing back there? What did you think you were doing?”
And it’s not that Dancy doesn’t have an answer for her, it’s just that there’s something in the scolding, exasperated tone of the girl’s voice that makes her feel foolish, so she doesn’t reply.
“What the sam hill were you doing out there anyway, strolling down the road with a knapsack and a knife? You a hitchhiker or some sort of hobo?”
I’m going home to see my mother.
I’m going home no more to roam.
I’m just a-going over Jordan,
I’m just a-going over home.
The girl has stopped dragging Dancy, but she hasn’t released the death grip on her wrist and is still leading her through the woods. The girl’s short hair is braided close to her scalp in neat cornrows, and her skin, thinks Dancy, is almost the same deep brown as a Hershey bar. Beads of sweat stand out on the girl’s forehead and upper lip; a bead of sweat hangs from the tip of her nose.
“I’m not a hobo,” Dancy says. “I don’t hitchhike, either. And it’s not a knapsack, it’s a duffel bag. It was my great grandfather’s duffel bag, when he fought in World War II. He fought the Germans in the Argonne Forest in 1918, and this was his duffle bag.”
They’ve come to a small clearing near a stream, a place where the trees and vines have left enough room for the sun to reach the ground. Dancy asks the girl to please let go of her, and the girl does. Once again, Dancy looks back towards the road and the dragon. There’s a mounting sense that all of this is wrong, that she hasn’t done what she was meant to do back there. She doesn’t run from the monsters; she doesn’t ever run.
The air here is hot and still. It smells like pine sap and cicadas. The air here smells hot, and Dancy imagines that, rain or no rain, one careless match would be enough to set the world on fire. She drops her heavy duffel bag onto the ground, slips the knife back into her waistband, and looks about her. “Who are you, anyway?” she asks the girl.
“Who are you?”
“I asked first,” Dancy replies.
The girl who dragged her into the forest, away from the boomerangheaded dragon, shrugs, and alright, she says, whatever. “My name’s Jezzie, Jezzie Lilligraven.”
“Jessie?”
“No, Jezzie,” says the girl. “With z’s. It’s short for Jezebel.”
Dancy turns her attention back to the clearing. There’s a big wooden packing crate near the center, and a door and window has been cut into the side facing her. The wood is emblazoned with MAYTAG, and THIS END UP, and a red arrow pointing heavenward. There’s a piece of pale blue calico cloth tacked over the window and there’s a door made from corrugated tin. There aren’t any hinges; it’s just propped in place.
“That’s sort of an odd name,” Dancy says, glancing up at the sky, because the dragon might have followed them. “Who’d name their daughter after Jezebel? She was an evil woman who worshipped Baal and persecuted the prophets of God and his people. She was thrown from a window and fed to wild dogs by Jehu for her sins. Who would name their daughter after someone like that?”
The girl stares at Dancy a moment, rolls her eyes, then heads for the wooden packing crate.
“Yeah, so what’s your name, Little Miss Sunshine, and, by the way, you’re very welcome.”
“Dancy. My name is Dancy Flammarion. And very welcome for what?”
The girl lifts the corrugated tin and sets it aside, leaning it against the outer wall of the crate. Dancy thinks it looks cool in there, within the arms of those shadows.
“Dancy Flammarion? That’s your name?”
“Yeah. So?”
The girl shakes her head and steps into the packing crate, vanishing from view. Dancy can still hear her, though.
“Just, with a name like that, I wouldn’t be ragging on anyone else’s. Ever heard of throwing rocks in glass houses?”
“It’s a town up in Greene County,” Dancy says. “My grandmother was born in Dancy, so my mother named me Dancy.”
“You gonna stand out there or what?” the girl says from inside the packing crate.
“Well, you haven’t invited me in.”
There’s a pause, and then, with an exaggerated politeness, the girl says “Dancy Flammarion, would you like to come inside?”
“Yeah,” Dancy says, checking the sky one last time.
It isn’t as cool inside the crate as she’d hoped, but it’s cooler than it had been inside the abandoned Western Railway of Alabama boxcar. There’s a threadbare rug covering the floor, a rug the color of green apples; there’s a cot set up at one end of the crate and a folding aluminum card table at the other. There’s a blue blanket at the foot bed, neatly folded, and a pillow. Books are stacked under the cot and along the walls. On the table, there’s a box of graham crackers and another box of chocolate moon pies. There are also two cans of pork and beans. Beneath the table is a styrofoam cooler and a plastic jug of water.
“You live here?” Dancy asks, eyeing the water jug, aware now just how parched her mouth and throat is.
“No,” the girl replies. “I’m not a hobo. I live down on Parish Road, close to Fort Rucker. That’s an Army base.”
“I’m not a hobo. I done told you that already.”
“Says you. You’re the one out hitchhiking with a knapsack.”
Dancy frowns and looks around the crate again.
“All these books yours?”
“Yeah,” the girl says. “They were my granddad’s, and now they’re mine. My daddy was gonna throw ’em all out, but I saved them. You can have a seat on the cot there, if your britches ain’t too wet and if they ain’t muddy.”
Dancy pats the butt of her jeans, decides they probably are too damp to be sitting on anyone’s bed, and so she settles for a place on the rug, instead.
“It’s nice in here,” Dancy says.
“Thank you,” says Jezzie Lilligraven. “This is where I come to be alone and think, to get away from my brothers and just be by myself.”
“Well, it’s nice,” Dancy says again. Then she notices something else on the floor, something else spaced out here and there along the walls of the packing crate, between the stacks of books – there are pint Mason jars and big two and three big quart jars that might once have held dill pickles or pickled eggs or pickled pig’s feet, but now they’re filled with clear liquid and dead things. Dancy looks at Jezzie and then back at the jars. The one nearest Dancy has a big king snake, black coils and links of cream-colored scales, and the one next to it holds a baby alligator.