“To show me the truth,” I whisper as the bald man frowns.
Abe sighs. “And Cal? He needs to know, Benji. He needs to know, because if he doesn’t and something happens to you, it’s going to destroy him.”
“No. I can’t risk him. I can’t take the chance. He’s becoming human, and I can’t take the chance.” Stay away, Cal. Stay away. Calm. Hush.
“Human?” he says as he bows his head. “Oh, Benji… he’s becoming human?”
“I can’t risk him,” I say again. Because I can’t. I won’t. Once this is done, I will find a way for him to survive and stay with me forever. I will find a way to keep him with me at Little House and the world—be it Griggs or be it angels from On High— will never bother us again. We’ll live out the rest of our days as everything passes us by.
“He’ll find you. The threads. He’ll see.”
“Abe.”
“What?”
“The Colt .38 Super. In the office lockbox. Get it and the ammo. Quickly. If you’re going, we need to move. I don’t know how much longer Michael will allow the Strange Man to stay.”
He doesn’t move.
“Abe. Now.”
He hurries to the back office.
Stay away, Cal, I think. I can’t let you get hurt. Stay away.
The Strange Man begins to smile.
a thousand needles in your eye
We drive down Poplar Street in the Ford, away from the festival. As we pass
the diner, Dougie opens the front door, having finished boarding up the windows. He sees us and waves as we drive past him, a questioning look on his face. He’s obviously headed toward the festival, and I hope he gets distracted and doesn’t run into Cal to ask where Abe and I are going.
I don’t know where we’re going. As soon as we hopped into the Ford, the Strange Man disappeared, only to reappear farther down Poplar Street, headed toward home. Or Lost Hill Memorial. Or the Old Forest Highway, which would lead to mile marker seventy-seven. I follow him, and when we get within twenty yards, he vanishes and then returns, farther down the roadway again. Every time he reappears, it looks as if his smile gets a little bit bigger.
“Don’t know how much time we’ll have now,” Abe says as he waves at Dougie. “Cal’s going to find out one way or another. You sure about this, Benji?”
Stay away, Cal. “Yes.”
We reach the intersection as the Strange Man disappears again. I stop at the stop sign, waiting to see what direction he’ll lead us, though I know in my heart where it will be. The cloudy sky has taken on the peculiar orangish-reddish hue of an approaching summer storm. I can see rain falling far off in the distance, probably over in the next county. The rearview mirror shows rain falling on the mountains behind us as well.
“Odd storm,” Abe mutters, as if he can hear my thoughts. “Falling all around Roseland but it doesn’t look like it’s getting any closer.”
“Maybe we prayed the rain away.”
We look at each other and chuckle quietly, trying not to let our laughter turn into full-blown hysterics. The world has taken on an impossible (improbable) hue, and I barely recognize it anymore. I try to catch my breath, and Abe continues to huff out his laughter next to me, a high-pitched sound like he’s almost crying.
I wipe my eyes and pretend the tears are from laughing too hard as I look all three directions we can take. Nothing. Should I go left and head to the stone angel where my father rests? I don’t know what going there would solve. There’s nothing there I haven’t already seen. I don’t think there are any clues or mysteries buried with my father.
What about straight ahead? Big House and the house my father built await me there. Could my father have put something inside? Secreted away some journal or evidence that would explain everything completely? My father could have written out a final note to me, telling me he was sorry, he never meant for any of this to happen.
But, of course, that’s not how life works. Life is not a series of hopes and dreams cobbled together to make the shapes fit into the pattern, into a design. No, it doesn’t work like that at all. The Strange Man appears off to our right, heading toward the Old Forest Highway, toward mile marker seventy-seven, where so many things came to an end and so many things had their beginning.
I’m not surprised.
I turn right and follow the bald Strange Man, who disappears and then flickers back farther down the highway. I almost choke when I see him raise a single hand and waggle his fingers at me like he’s waving before he vanishes again.
Abe is staring at me out of the corner of his eyes, a determined look on his face, as if he expects me to stop the Ford and tell him to get out. I consider it, to a point, wondering how I can justify needing to protect Cal but be perfectly willing to put Abe, an old man, right in the middle of harm’s way.