gray bands. She said, “Open your right hand,” and when Dad did she unscrewed
the pill bottle’s cap and shook the river pebbles into his palm. “Work those
in your hand awhile,” she directed.
Dad gave a nervous smile as he did as she asked. “Did these come from Old
Moses’s stomach or somethin’?”
“No. They’re just old pebbles I found. Keep workin’ ’em, they’ll calm you
down.”
“Oh,” Dad said, rolling the worry-pebbles around and around in his palm.
Mom and I stood to one side, to give the Lady plenty of room to do what
she was going to do. Whatever that might be. I don’t know what I expected.
Maybe one of those torchlit ceremonies with people dancing around in circles
and hollering. But it wasn’t like that at all. The Lady began to shuffle the
cards, and the way she did it I suspected she might have given lessons to
Maverick. “Tell me about your dreams, Tom,” she said as the cards made a
rhythmic whirring noise between her supple fingers.
Dad glanced uneasily at us. “Do you want them to go?” the Lady asked, but
he shook his head. “I dream,” he began, “about watchin’ the car go into
Saxon’s Lake. Then I’m in the water with it, and I’m lookin’ through the
window at the dead man. His face… all smashed up. The handcuff on his wrist.
The piano wire around his throat. And as the car’s goin’ down and the water
starts floodin’ in he—” Dad had to pause a minute. The pebbles clicked
together in his palm. “He looks at me and he grins. That awful, smashed face
grins. And when he speaks it’s like… mud gurglin’.”
“What does he say?”
“He says… ‘Come with me, down in the dark.’” Dad’s face was a study in
pain, and it hurt me to look at it. “That’s what he says. ‘Come with me, down
in the dark.’ And he reaches for me, with his hand that isn’t shackled. He
reaches for me, and I pull back because I’m terrified he’s gonna touch me.
Then it ends.”
“You have other recurrin’ dreams?”
“A few. Not as strong as that one, though. Sometimes I think I hear piano
music. Sometimes I think I hear somebody hollerin’, but it sounds like
gibberish. Occasionally I see a pair of hands holdin’ that wire, and what
looks like a thick wooden baton wrapped up with black tape. There are faces in
there that are all blurred up, as if I’m lookin’ at ’em through blood or my
eyes can hardly hold a focus. But I don’t have those nearly as much as the one
about the man in the car.”
“Did Rebecca tell you that I’m pickin’ up some of those snippets, too?”
She continued to shuffle the cards. It was a hypnotic, soothing sound. “I hear
bits of piano music, the hollerin’, and I see the wire and the crackerknocker.
I’ve seen the tattoo, but not the rest of him.” She smiled faintly. “You and
me are plugged into the same socket, Tom, but you’re gettin’ more juice than I
am. Can you beat that?”
“I thought you were supposed to be the mystic,” Dad said.
“I am. Supposed to be. But everybody’s got the dream-eyes, Tom. Everybody
sees snippets of some quilt or another. You’re real close to this one. Closer
than I am. That’s why.”
Dad worked the river pebbles. The Lady shuffled her cards and waited.
“At first,” he said, “I was havin’ those dreams right when I went to bed.
Then later on… they started comin’ on me when I wasn’t even asleep. Durin’ the
day. I just have a flash of that car, and that man’s face, and I hear him
callin’. He says the same thing, over and over: ‘Come with me, down in the
dark.’ I hear that mud-gurglin’ voice, and I’ve… I’ve come close to goin’ to
pieces over it, because I can’t shake it. I can’t get any rest. It’s like I’m
up all night, too scared to let myself sleep for fear of…” He trailed off.
“Yes?” the Lady prodded.
“For fear of… listenin’ to that dead man, and doin’ what he wants me to
do.”
“And what might that be, Tom?”
“I think he wants me to kill myself,” Dad said.
The card shuffling ceased. Mom’s hand found mine and clenched it hard.
“I think he… wants me to come to that lake and drown myself in it. I
think he wants me to come with him, down in the dark.”
The Lady watched him intently, her emerald eyes gathering light. “Why
would he want you to do that, Tom?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he wants company.” He tried for a smile, but his
mouth wouldn’t work.
“I want you to think very, very carefully. Are those the exact words?”
“Yeah. ‘Come with me, down in the dark.’ He says it kinda gurgly, because
I guess his jaw’s busted or there’s blood or water or mud in his mouth, but…
yeah, that’s it.”
“Nothin’ else? Does he call you by name?”
“No. That’s all.”
“You know, that’s funny, don’t you think?” the Lady asked.
Dad grunted. “I wish I knew what was so funny about it!”
“This: If the dead man has a chance to speak to you—to give you a
message—then why does he waste it on askin’ you to commit suicide? Why doesn’t
he tell you who killed him?”
Dad blinked. Now the clickings of the pebbles stopped. “I… never thought
about that.”
“Think about it, then. The dead man has a voice, however torn up it is.
Why doesn’t he tell you the name of his killer?”
“I can’t say. Seems he would if he could.”
“He could.” The Lady nodded. “If he was speakin’ to you, that is.”
“I’m not followin’ you.”
“Maybe,” she said, “there are three plugs in that socket.”
Realization crawled over Dad’s face. Over mine and Mom’s, too.
“The dead man isn’t speakin’ to you, Tom,” the Lady said. “He’s speakin’
to his killer.”
“You… mean I’m…”
“Pickin’ up the killer’s dreams, like I’m pickin’ up yours. Oh, mercy!
You’ve got some strong dream-eyes, Tom!”
“He doesn’t… want me to… kill myself because I couldn’t get him out?”
“No,” the Lady said. “Of that I’m sure.”
Dad pressed his free hand to his mouth. Tears blurred his eyes, and I
heard Mom sob beside me at the sight. He leaned his head forward. A single
tear dropped to the table.
“Cuttin’ deep,” the Lady said, and she put a hand on his forearm. “It’s a
good hurt, though, isn’t it? Like cuttin’ away a cancer.”
“Yes.” His voice cracked. “Yes.”
“You want to go outside and walk around a bit, you go right ahead.”
Dad’s shoulders trembled. But the burden was leaving him, ton by ton. He
drew a deep, gasping breath, like the breath of someone whose head has just
broken the surface of dark water. “I’m all right,” he said, but he didn’t lift
his face up just yet. “Give me a minute.”
“All the minutes you need, take ’em.”
At last he looked up. He was still the man he’d been a moment before; his
face was still lined, his chin a little saggy. But in his eyes he was a boy
again, and he was free.
“You interested in tryin’ to find out who that killer might be?” the Lady
asked.
Dad nodded.
“I’ve got my own host of friends across the river. You get to be my age,
you’ve got more of ’em on that side than this. They see things, and sometimes
they tell me. But they like to play games with me. They like to throw me a
riddle or two. So they never come right out and answer any question directly;
it’s always a sly answer, but it’s always the truth. You want to involve them
in this matter?” It sounded like a question she was used to asking.
“I guess I do.”
“Either do or not, no damn guessin’ about it.”
After the least bit of hesitation, my father said, “I do.”
The Lady opened the silver filigreed box and shook six small bones out on
the table. “Put down the pebbles,” she said. “Pick up those in your right
hand.”
Dad looked distastefully at what lay before him. “Do I have to?”
The Lady paused. Then she sighed and said, “Naw. It’s a mood-setter, is
all.” She used the edge of her hand to sweep the bones back into the silver
box. She closed it and set it aside. Then she reached into the doctor’s bag
again. This time her hand came out with a small bottle of clear liquid and a
plastic bag full of cotton swabs. She set these between them and opened the
bottle. “You’ll have to put the pebbles down, though. Hold out your index
finger.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
He did it. The Lady opened the bottle and upturned it over one of the
cotton swabs. Then she dabbed the tip of Dad’s index finger. “Alcohol,” she
explained. “Get it from Dr. Parrish.” She spread the Nifty typing paper down
on the table. Then she unwrapped the object in the blue cloth. It was a stick
with two needles driven through one end. “Keep your finger still,” she told
him as she picked up the needled stick.
“What’re you gonna do? You’re not gonna jab me with those, are—”
The needles came down fast and rather roughly into the tip of Dad’s
finger. “Ouch!” he said. I, too, had winced, my index finger stinging with
phantom pain. Instantly blood began to well up from the needle holes. “Keep
your blood off that paper,” the Lady told him. Working quickly, she dabbed
alcohol on the index finger of her own right hand and with her left she
whacked the needles down. Here blood was drawn, too. She said, “Ask your
question. Not aloud, but in your mind. Ask it clearly. Ask it like you expect
an answer. Go ahead.”
“All right,” Dad said after a few seconds. “What now?”
“What was the date that car went into Saxon’s Lake?”
“March sixteenth.”
“Squeeze eight drops of blood on the center of the paper. Don’t be
stingy. Eight drops. Not one more and not one less.”
Dad squeezed his finger, and the blood began dripping. The Lady added
eight drops of her own red blood to the white paper. Dad said, “Good thing it
didn’t happen on the thirty-first.”
“Take the paper in your left hand and crumple it up with the blood inside
it,” the Lady instructed him, ignoring his witticism. Dad did as she said.
“Hold it and repeat the question aloud.”
“Who killed that man at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake?”
“Hold it tight,” the Lady told him, and she pressed another cotton swab
to her bleeding finger.
“Are your friends here right this minute?” Dad asked, his left fist
around the crumpled-up paper.
“We’ll soon find out, won’t we?” She held out her left palm. “Give it to
me.” When it was lodged there, she said sternly to the air, “Don’t ya’ll show
me up to be a fool, now. This is an important question, and it deserves an
answer. Not no riddle, neither. An answer we can figure out. Ya’ll gone help
us, or not?” She waited perhaps fifteen more seconds. Then she placed the
crumpled paper in the middle of the table. “Open it,” she said.
Dad took it. As he began to uncrumple it, my heart was slamming. If Dr.
Lezander was scrawled there in blood, I was going to split my skin.
When the paper was open, Mom and I peered over his shoulder. There was a
great big blotch of blood in the middle of the paper and other blotches all
around it. I couldn’t see a name in that mess to save my life. Then the Lady
took a pencil from her bag and studied the paper for a moment, after which she
began to play connect-the-blotches.
“I don’t see a thing,” Dad said.
“Have faith,” she told him. I watched the pencil’s tip at work, moving
between the blood. I watched a long, curvy line swing out and in.
And suddenly I realized I was looking at a 3.
The pencil’s tip kept moving. Curving again. Out and in, out and in.
A second 3. And then the pencil’s tip ran out of blood blotches to
connect.
“That’s it,” the Lady said. She frowned. “Two threes.”
“That’s sure not a name, is it?” Dad asked.
“They’ve riddled me again, is what they’ve done. I swear, I wish they’d
make somethin’ easy every once in a while!” She thunked the pencil down in
disgust. “Well, that’s all there’s gonna be.”
“That’s it?” Dad sucked at his wounded finger. “You’re sure you did this
right?”
Words cannot describe the look she gave him. “Two threes,” she said.
“That’s the answer. Three three. Maybe thirty-three. If we can figure out what
that means, we’ll have the killer’s name.”
“I can’t think of anybody who has three letters in their first and last
name. Or maybe it’s an address?”
“I don’t know. All I know is what I’m lookin’ at: three three.” She slid
the paper toward him; it was his to keep for his pain and trouble. “That’s all
I can do for you. Sorry there’s nothin’ more.”
“I am, too,” Dad said, and he took the paper and stood up.
Then the Lady removed her professional face and became sociable. She said
she smelled the fresh coffee, and that there was chocolate roulage made by
Mrs. Pearl from the Bake Shoppe. Dad, who had been eating like a bird before
we came to the Lady’s, ate two whopping pieces of roulage and washed them down
with two cups of hot black chicory coffee. He and the Moon Man talked about
that day the Blaylocks had been routed at the Trailways bus stop, and Dad
laughed at the memory of Biggun running from a bag full of garden snakes.
My father was well and truly returned. Maybe even better than he was
before.
“Thank you,” Dad said to the Lady as we stood at the door ready to leave.
Mom took her hand and kissed her ebony cheek. The Lady regarded me with her
shining emerald eyes. “You still gone be a writer?” she asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Seems to me a writer gets to hold a lot of keys,” she said. “Gets to
visit a lot of worlds and live in a lot of skins. Seems to me a writer has a
chance to live forever, if he’s good and if he’s lucky. Would you like that,
Cory? Would you like to live forever?”
I thought about it. Forever, like heaven, was an awfully long time. “No
ma’am,” I decided. “I think I might get tired.”
“Well,” she said, and she placed a hand on my shoulder, “it seems to me a
writer’s voice is a forever thing. Even if a boy and a man are not.” She
leaned her face closer to mine. I could feel the heat of her life, like the
sun glowing from her bones. “You’re gonna be kissed by a lot of girls,” she
said. “Gonna kiss a lot of girls, too. But remember this.” She kissed me, very
lightly, on the forehead. “Remember when you do all that kissin’ of girls and
