Threshold. Part 9

The urgency in Dancy's voice more immediate than mere memory could ever be, and there was a noise from the bedroom or the bathroom, a b.u.mping, clumsy sort of a noise, and Sadie stood up very slowly. Watching the doorway to the bedroom, swallowing the tin-foil adrenaline taste at the back of her throat, and "Dancy!" she called out, shouting loud enough that everyone on the third floor probably got an earful. "This isn't funny anymore, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!"

But it wasn't Dancy that answered her, not really an answer at all, a laugh, maybe. A dry and perfectly humorless sound that was meant to be a laugh. A sound to make Sadie think of dead leaves and cold wind, of dark streets and the forsaken places where men left the skeletons of trains to decay beneath impossible rains of meat and blood.

It's not safe, and whatever was making the sound that wasn't laughter must have been remembering all the things that Dancy said, too, because it snorted once and there was the shattering sound of the bathroom mirror breaking, shards of gla.s.s falling into the sink, bouncing off the porcelain and smas.h.i.+ng against the tile floor.

"Run, Sadie. Now," and it didn't matter if it was her voice she was hearing, or Dancy's she was remembering, and Sadie didn't stop and look back until she was outside Quinlan Castle and standing in the dark on the other side of Twenty-first Street.

And if she'd been braver, she might have gone to the entrance to the tunnel in Valley View Park instead of going to Deacon. If she'd been half the person she'd always hoped she could be, because that's what Dancy had said, wasn't it? "We have to talk about the tunnel, and we have to go there, today," and so she knew that was where Dancy had gone. And Sadie also knew that she'd gone there alone, that it hadn't mattered if Chance believed her or Deacon believed her, not in the end, because Dancy believed, and finally there had been no other option.

Sadie stood beneath a street lamp and stared up at the castle silhouetted against the last fiery rind of the day, absurd edifice of rough sandstone blocks and corner towers lost in a wilderness of office buildings, watched the windows of her and Deacon's apartment; all the lights burning and she couldn't even remember if she'd shut the door behind her. There she was standing on the street, barefoot and afraid of something she might have heard or something she might only have imagined after five hours alone with her own bizarre thoughts.

Scaring myself half to f.u.c.king death, that's what I'm doing, she thought. That's all I'm doing, and the noises she heard had probably come from the apartment next door, if they'd come from anywhere at all. The guys next door and their PlayStation, all hours of the day and night, fighting zombies and wrecking cars, the volume cranked up so loud the windows rattled. Either video games or one of the kung-fu movies they were always watching over there, and Sadie stepped off the curb, first uncertain step back towards the castle, when a shadow moved slow across the bedroom curtains. A flowing, liquid shadow that almost seemed a thing unto itself, shadow of nothing but itself, and she stopped, one foot in the street, and watched as it moved across the window. As indistinct and undeniable as the edges of an eclipse, and in another moment it was gone and she was standing on the curb again.

"C'mon, baby," she whispered to herself, trying to salvage the meanest sc.r.a.p of calm, to sound the way that Deacon would sound-scared, because anyone sane would be scared, but together. Much too easy to let the fear shut her down, and so she turned her eyes away from the third-floor bedroom window and towards the north flank of the light-speckled mountain, the darker ridge raised against the indigo sky and the dim form of Vulcan outlined against the coming night, the great iron statue standing like the city's pagan, patron saint of steel and fire, rusting guardian towering high above Southside.

That's where she is, isn't it? Sadie thought. Right up there, and she pictured Dancy standing alone outside the pad-locked gate to the water works tunnel, peering between the corroded bars into the damp black core of the mountain. If Dancy looked up through the trees she would be able see the statue, too, looming huge from his pedestal a few hundred feet farther up the slope from her and almost directly above the park.

Sadie crossed the street, careful not to look at the castle as she pa.s.sed by it, trying hard not to think about anything but Dancy alone in the darkness at Vulcan's feet, alone because they were all three too busy or frightened or stubborn to go with her. If I don't have the courage, maybe shame will do. Maybe shame is enough to keep me moving, and she followed the asphalt and chain-link margin of a parking lot towards the welcoming noise and traffic of Twentieth Street. Later, secure in the whitestark light of the laundry, she would tell herself the thing that hobbled out of a row of bushes ahead of her was only a dog, a big, hungry stray with legs long and thin as rails, its ribs and spine showing straight through its mangy fur. She would tell herself that, and she wouldn't let herself think too much about the sounds it was making, or where she'd heard them before.

Sadie stood very still, not believing and knowing that her belief was irrelevant, while it sniffed at the concrete a moment before raising its wobbly head and turning towards her. It moved as slowly as the shadow she'd seen at the bedroom window; slow, but this movement as jerky as a marionette, wooden blocks dangling on puppet strings and eyes like hateful b.u.t.tons of bluegreen fire. And when it sat back on its narrow haunches, turned its head to one side, and stretched its black lips back in a wide, wide smile, she forgot about courage and shame and she ran.

"No, Pooh, I swear, you're a G.o.dd.a.m.n lifesaver," Deacon says, and the girl with the chemistry textbook, whose real name is Winnie, pretends to smile. He gives her a twenty, and she stares at it a moment like the bribe might be counterfeit before she folds it once and stuffs the bill into the bib pocket of her overalls.

"Yeah, thanks," Sadie says and Pooh shrugs and glances down at Sadie's dirty feet.

"Jesus, Deke. You really ought to buy your girlfriend some shoes," and she turns away, drops her textbook loudly onto the mint-green Formica countertop; Sadie starts to tell her to f.u.c.k off, never f.u.c.king mind, they can find somebody else, but Deacon jabs her hard with his elbow, and then he's talking again before Sadie can even open her mouth.

"Well, like I said, I'm gonna try and make it back by midnight, but I can't promise anything. I don't really know how this will turn out."

"Yeah," Pooh says. "Whatever. I'm here now. I might as well work," and she opens her book, flips aimlessly through the glossy pages, and Deacon takes Sadie's arm and leads her out of the laundromat into the warm summer night.

"They ought to call her Eeyore," Sadie grumbles, and Deacon nods his head, keeps a firm grip on her right arm like he's afraid she's going to turn around, go right back inside the Wash-N-Fold and pick a fight with Pooh. But that's just fine with Sadie. It's good to have him close, good to feel him there beside her. "So, what now, Miss Jasper?" he asks, and Sadie points southwest, in the direction of the little park and the tunnel entrance. A mile or more between here and there, and it'll take them at least another twenty or twenty-five minutes to walk that far.

"Now we have to find her. We have to make sure that she's okay," and without another word, Sadie leads him around the corner.

Less than a block from the park, and Sadie steps on a chunk of broken bottle, viciousgreen 7UP shard hiding in the gra.s.s and dandelions at the edge of the sidewalk, overgrown edge of someone's yard, and it leaves an inch-long gash in the heel of her right foot.

"Jesus, we're almost there," she says. "We can't stop now," and she's trying to act like it doesn't hurt like h.e.l.l, like she hasn't noticed all the blood on the concrete. But Deacon makes her sit down anyway, and he squints grimly at the cut by the dim yellow light from a nearby porch.

"It's pretty deep," he says, scowling at the bottom of her foot. "I think you're gonna need st.i.tches."

"Well, I can f.u.c.king need st.i.tches later," and Sadie starts to get up, but he makes her sit back down again.

"I can't let you walk on that, baby. I wasn't kidding when I said it was deep," and now he's hastily unlacing one of his sneakers, takes it off and pulls his sock off as well. Sadie hardly even notices what he's doing, stares anxiously towards the park, her eyes following the row of sodium-arc fireflies and lamplit windows bracketing the street, electric fairy trail that ends in Dancy and the hole in Red Mountain. She can see the edge of the park from where she's sitting, and there aren't any lights at all back there. Just the night curled in on itself, pressed black against the earth. "It's trying to stop me, Deacon," she says, her voice gone as brittle as a handful of old newspaper clippings, so close to tears now, but she doesn't care. "It's trying to keep me from getting to her."

"What are you talking about, Sadie? What's trying to stop you?" Deacon slips the white tube sock on over Sadie's injured foot and she flinches, grimaces and closes her eyes; she can feel the hot tears leaking down her cheeks, tears that have a lot more to do with anger than any pain, more to do with the bottomless conviction that she's failed Dancy than her fear of laughing shadows or scrawny, grinning dog monsters.

"Why won't you tell me what happened at the apartment? What did you see back there?" and she looks up at him, then, no time or patience for this, every second they sit here talking a second lost, a second wasted, and "Why won't you tell me about the tunnel, Deke?" she asks him, hoping she sounds every bit as resentful as she feels. "You haven't told me a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing since this began. Like it's all some holy f.u.c.king secret between you and Chance, like I'm just too stupid to understand, or it's none of my business. Like I'm too big a flake to deal with it. Well, fine. Wonderful. It doesn't matter anymore. Right now all that matters is that you find Dancy before something happens, because there's no one else to help her."

Deacon watches her silently for a moment, the surprised, uncertain expression on his face that says maybe he's seeing her for the first time, that perhaps he's never seen more than a pale ghost of this angry, bleeding girl, and "Yeah," he says finally. "But you're staying here, Sadie. Promise me you'll wait right here for me to come back."

"Cross my heart," and she does, draws a big X across her left breast, then glances down at Deacon's ridiculous white sock stuck on her foot. Cottonwhite sock turning scarlet, and "Be careful," she says. "I don't know what I saw, if I even saw anything at all, but . . ." and she pauses, hunting words that aren't there. "It was something wrong, Deacon."

Part of her hoping that he'll laugh at her, tell her she's full of s.h.i.+t, but Deacon only rubs at his stubbly cheeks and puts his tennis shoe back on his bare foot. "Everything's gonna be okay," he says, and Sadie can tell how much he wants her to believe him, even if he doesn't believe himself. So she smiles, and Deacon leans forward and kisses her, a quick kiss that leaves her lips tingling, the faint, musky taste of him on her mouth, and she tries to stop crying. He stands up and points at the porch behind her.

"Stay close to the lights, okay? If you hear anything, I want you to head straight for that house there. Or if I'm not back here in ten minutes. Don't think about it, Sadie, just do it. Tell them to call the cops."

"I love you," she says, but Deacon has turned away and he doesn't seem to hear her, too busy staring up the street at the darker place where the park begins.

"Everything's gonna be okay," he says again, and then he's moving away from her, his long strides carrying him quickly off into the gloom, and she's alone with the ache in her foot and the air that smells like kudzu and her blood drying on the sidewalk.

Deacon Silvey never saw the park or the entrance to the water works tunnel before he met Chance Matthews. She brought him here the first time, a few weeks after they began seeing each other. Someplace different to get drunk and hang out, someplace to talk, and she showed him the old blockhouse at the entrance to the tunnel, and they shared a bottle of Jack Daniel's, listened to Nick Cave on Chance's boombox, while she pointed out fossils in the limestone boulders scattered near the tunnel. Hard rock the dingygray color of lead, weather-rounded clumps of ancient reefs mashed flat by unimaginable pressures and the weight of ages.

They sat together in the gra.s.s while she talked, teaching him how to tell the difference between sponges and algae, bryozoans and corals, that there was a trilobite, Acaste birminghamensis, named after the city, and then telling the story of the men who'd carved the hole through the mountain more than a hundred years before. This tunnel one link in a system designed to bring fresh water all the way from the Cahaba River five miles south of the city, rough shaft dug more than two thousand feet straight through the limestone and chert and iron-ore bones of the mountain, and "My grandmother did some collecting in there sometime back in the early nineties," she said.

"So that's why you're such a big ol' geek," and he grinned and scratched at his chin. "It's all your grandmomma's fault."

Chance smiled back at him, and "Well, can you think of anything else I could do with my life that could ever possibly be half this splendid, half this important? I'm learning to read, Deke, and not just the handful of things men have been around long enough to write down. The history of the whole d.a.m.ned planet is written in rocks, just lying there waiting for us to learn how to read the words.

"How to read time," she said, and he kissed her, then, tasting the bourbon on her tongue and wis.h.i.+ng he could share even the smallest part of her pa.s.sion, loving her for that if nothing else, that she was still alive. That she had not lost herself, had not lost her heart or wonder, and perhaps she was strong enough that she never would.

But tonight that afternoon seems as far away and unredeemable as a time when the mountain was still silt, still mud, and living, oceanwarm waters blanketed the world, and Deacon pauses where the street dead-ends. Where the blacktop turns abruptly to well-tended park lawn and a winding trail leads between and through the trees to a picnic table near the blockhouse, and he looks back over his shoulder. He can't see Sadie from here, just the soft glow of porch lights and all the cars lined up neatly along both sides of the narrow, sloping street.

And he's suddenly so terribly afraid for her, this last thing keeping him together, tether for his shabby soul, and he wants to run back to Sadie and take her away from here, let Dancy fight her own demons, and he'll forget about Chance once and for all, forget the rainy night in April when he and Chance and Elise Alden came here with a pair of bolt cutters, and that's where all this crazy s.h.i.+t started, isn't it? Everything that's gone wrong and keeps going wronger, whatever the h.e.l.l happened here that none of them ever talked about and now Elise is dead. Forget that and forget the ghosts he's spent his whole life seeing, the horrors he left Atlanta to escape. Walk away right now, and finally he'll just be plain old Deke; if he can't get it from Sadie or a good bottle of whiskey then who needs it, anyway. Who needs their whole G.o.dd.a.m.n life turned into a bad episode of the Twilight Zone, and Deacon takes one step away from the nightshrouded park.

"Don't you think maybe you've come just a little too far for that?" and the steelhard and silk and burning voice is both inside him and hiding somewhere just out of sight, somewhere on the trail leading to the tunnel, and he knows it's his own voice just as surely as he knows that it's Elise's, as surely as it's Dancy Flammarion's. All these things at once like all the fraying lines of a wasted, coward's life that have brought him here and won't let him walk away, and Deacon turns to face the darkness waiting beneath the trees.

And that's when he sees the string looped tight around the trunk of a small dogwood growing beside the trail, white twine like lost kite string leading from the street to the tree and then on to the next tree after that. Deacon reaches out and gently brushes the taut cord with the tips of his fingers, the fingers of his left hand, like he shouldn't have known better, and all the smells of the muggy July evening are immediately swept aside by the sweetraw stench of putrefying fish and oranges. His knees suddenly gone weak as kittens and he has to hold onto the tree to keep from sinking to the ground, the pain at his temples, migraine throb between and behind his eyes, and "No," he snarls. "Not now," as if he has some say in the matter, as if there's any way to intimidate or bargain with the hole tearing itself wide around him, tattered hole in time or his sanity, and Deacon can only lean against the little tree and watch.

The iridescent eyes beneath writhing, seeping trees with fat leaves as soft and white as cheese, the lupine faces roughly woven from straw and hair and feathers, and "They hold to the secret land," Dancy says. Dancy slumped against the iron gate, the tunnel at her back, and she holds something out in front of her, something small and sharp and silver that catches the faint glint of starlight through the sick and ashen trees.

". . . the wolf-slopes . . ."

And Deacon's lost his hold on the tree now, the ground as insubstantial beneath his hands and knees as the sky overhead, the jealous sky clotted with angelflesh and deceit, and he claws at the dirt, anything to keep him from sliding any closer to the gaping iron-toothed mouth in the side of the mountain.

". . . the paths where the mountain stream goes down under the darkness of the hills, the flood under the earth."

He understands that she's calling them down, calling them out, opens his mouth to tell her to please shut the h.e.l.l up, and now he can hear the snick snick snick of claws and stolen teeth.

"Dancy . . ." he croaks, hoa.r.s.e, pathetic whisper from his lips as dry as sand, but she hears him and looks up, like the shades creeping towards her matter less, or matter hardly at all, and her skin s.h.i.+mmers faintly in the night. Dark and blisterbright s.h.i.+mmer instead of the powdery l.u.s.ter of her alabaster complexion, and She's sunburned, he thinks. He can't see her eyes, but he can feel them, everything locked there inside her pink eyes, and in another moment, they'll be on top of her. "You know this is already over, Deacon," she says, sounding sad and brave and grateful in a single breath, chiding him and thanking him at the same time.

"Try to change what hasn't happened yet," and Deacon recognizes the knife in her hand, Chance's Swiss Army knife, before he can't see her anymore, one of the twiggy scarecrow nightmares closing the s.p.a.ce between them.

And the earth rolls like a broken carnival ride, seasick Tilt-A-Whirl lurch and loll as the sky cracks apart and tumbles down in ebon splinters, and he opens his eyes. Opens his watering corporeal eyes, closing those other, secret eyes, those inward eyes that will take him to pieces one day, and the world falls back in place, the world and the night, and the only smells are dirt and gra.s.s. No telling how long since he touched the string wrapped around the dogwood tree.

Deacon rolls over on his back, breathless, his head like a throbbing, open wound; he blinks up at the low branches, canopy of limbs and leaves between him and infinity, but nothing strong enough to hold if he could let go and fall that one last time.

"Deacon? f.u.c.k . . ." and then the stars are blotted out by Sadie, her thin, sweaty face hanging somewhere above his own, her cheeks flushed and sweating like she's been running. "I heard you," she says. "I heard you scream."

And he can't remember screaming, but he can remember Dancy Flammarion brandis.h.i.+ng a pocketknife against the things that slunk out of the parkquiet night, Dancy sitting with her back against the locked and rusty gates of the water works tunnel, her skin s.h.i.+ning like blistered pearls.

He can remember all the things she said.

"Dancy," he whispers, and Sadie shakes her head slow, bending close now and she looks scared, looks worried.

"She's not here, Deke."

"No," he says. "She was here." He tries to sit and feels like he's going to puke, the vise at his temples tightening until it's surely only a matter of minutes, a matter of seconds, before his eyes pop out of his skull. "She was here," he says again and lies down and shuts his eyes.

"Well, she's not here now," Sadie says. "There's no one here now but us," and that makes him want to laugh, and he thinks that maybe the trees are laughing, maybe the tunnel is cackling through its wrought-iron teeth, because they know better. Deacon opens his eyes again, eyes full of tears, and he sees that he's only a few yards from the blockhouse.

"How did I get here, Sadie?" but she only shakes her head again and looks more concerned.

"Don't you remember?"

"No, I don't," and then he sees the twine lying on the ground, and he reaches for it, never mind the hurt, the hurt will be there anyway, until it gets bored with him and goes looking for someone else to torment. "What is it, Deke?" Sadie asks, whispers, but he doesn't answer her because he doesn't know, doesn't know anything more than she can see for herself. A white piece of twine, and he tugs at it and the string goes tight in his hand.

"It's tied to the gate," Sadie says, and she gets up, leaves him lying in the dirt and follows the line to the place where it's knotted around one of the bars.

"She was here, Deke," she says, and Deacon props himself up on one elbow, blinks and squints through the pain and nausea, forcing his blurry vision into focus, a sloppy surrogate for focus, until he can make out the dim form of Sadie crouched at the tunnel entrance. Sadie reaches down and picks something up, holds it out for Deacon to see. The blade of the Swiss Army knife twinkles dull and cold, hardly any light left here for steel to catch and s.h.i.+ne back, so little light that isn't swallowed by the hungry tunnel.

"What's happened to her?" Sadie asks him. "Where the h.e.l.l is she, Deke?" And he doesn't answer her, because he doesn't know, lies down and shuts his eyes, and Deacon listens to the crickets and Sadie crying while he waits for the pain to end.

Sometime later, an hour, two hours, and Deacon and Sadie are standing on Chance's big front porch again. Deacon's knocked three times already and no one's come to the door, not a sound from inside even though Chance's car is parked in the driveway and it seems like every light in the house is on.

Sadie's sitting alone in the porch swing, rocking slowly back and forth, the remains of Dancy's duffel bag draped across her lap. All they found after Deacon could walk and they followed the wandering trail of twine for three blocks, Sadie limping along as it led them from tree to telephone pole to sign post, dot to dot to dot, all the way from the tunnel to the marble steps of Ramsey High School. The duffel was lying beneath some oleander bushes near the sidewalk, two or three long slashes through the olivegreen canvas like somebody had been at it with a straight razor, and Dancy's ragged belongings were scattered up and down Thirteenth Street. Deacon said to leave them, just leave it all, Sadie, and come on, but she gathered up what she could find, a few dirty T-s.h.i.+rts and a pair of dirtier underwear, some books and an old Folger's coffee can with a plastic lid, and stuffed the things back into the bag.

Deacon knocks again, knocks harder than before, and this time he hears footsteps; "Just a minute," Chance calls out, and a second later, "Who is it?" Her voice seems nervous and faraway, m.u.f.fled, muted by the door.

"It's me," Deacon says, talking loud, and he puts his mouth near the wood so she can hear him on the other side. "Just me and Sadie."

The metal-against-metal sound of locks being turned, rolling tumblers and dullsharp dead-bolt click, the hesitant rattle of a safety chain, and when Chance finally opens the door, the glare from the hallway leaves Deacon half-blind after so much night, drives two fresh and searing spikes straight through his pupils and all the way to the back of his skull. Chance doesn't say a word, stares at him, and Deacon covers his eyes with one hand and squints back at her, strains to see through the light and the pain.

"Yeah, I know I should have called first," he says, but then he catches the furious swirl of emotions trapped inside her green eyes, the wild and emerald storm brewing there, something he's interrupted, and he forgets whatever he was going to say next.

"What do you want, Deacon?"

"Sadie's hurt. She cut her foot," and Chance takes an impatient breath, glances past him towards the porch swing. "And I think that Dancy might be dead," he says.

"You don't know that," Sadie snarls. "You don't know that at all. There wasn't a body. There wasn't even any blood, so don't f.u.c.king act like you know that, Deacon."

Chance looks back to Deacon, and there's something else in her eyes now, something new moving through the storm behind her eyes, and "What the h.e.l.l are the two of you talking about?" she asks him.

"Dancy went to the tunnel alone," and there's nothing else he can think of to say that will make sense of this, certainly no way he can tell her what he really saw in the park, not yet, anyway. So he reaches into the front pocket of his jeans, instead, takes out Chance's Swiss Army knife and holds it out to her. She stares at it, handful of time and no sound but the still, cicadawhisper night and the rhythmic porch-swing creak. And then she takes the knife from Deacon, and "You'd both better come inside," she says.

"No, I haven't been back. Not yet," Chance says, and she stares at the half inch of whiskey in her gla.s.s, doesn't look at Deacon or Sadie as she talks. "I finally made myself call Alice about an hour after I got home, and she called the cops. I was on the phone with her again when you guys showed up."

Deacon pours himself another drink from the pint bottle on the kitchen table, his third since they sat down and his head is beginning to clear enough that he can think around the th.o.r.n.y edges of the headache. Amber fire to drive away the agony, and that's no exaggeration; agony the best or only word for the crippling headaches that almost always follow his visions, his episodes, the seizures, whatever the f.u.c.k happens when he touches the wrong thing. And alcohol the quickest fix he's ever found. He takes a large swallow from his gla.s.s and watches Chance across the table. The old ledger from the crate is lying in front of her, and she's resting her right hand on the cover like someone taking an oath.

"Alice met campus security at the lab, and they did a walk-through with her."

"And? What'd they find?" Deacon asks and spits an ice cube back into his gla.s.s.

Chance shrugs her sagging, boybroad shoulders, and "Nothing. They didn't find anything at all," she replies. "Except that the crate was missing, and everything we'd taken out of the crate was gone. This is all that's left." She taps the cover of the ledger twice with the middle finger of her right hand, smiles a cold and weary smile. "I left it here when I took the crate to the lab this afternoon."

"I don't know why we haven't called the police," Sadie says. Her hands are still shaking so badly that Deacon can hear the ice cubes in her gla.s.s clinking against each other. She hasn't taken a single sip of her whiskey, has asked three times if Chance has a cigarette even though Sadie knows that she's never smoked. "We have to call the police."

"What would we tell them, Sadie?" Chance asks her, and Deacon can see how hard she's trying to say the right thing, say it exactly the right way, Chance's voice the strained calm of the profoundly uneasy trying to comfort the hysterical. Or maybe the chronically rational facing the undeniably weird, he thinks, and takes another drink of bourbon. And Jesus, none of them has even said anything yet, not really, so maybe that's the scariest part. What happens when they find the guts to start talking, filling in the gaping holes in their respective stories, and he decides it's probably best not to think about that until after he's had at least another gla.s.s or two of whiskey.

"What do you mean? We tell them she's missing," and there's just enough shrillness creeping into Sadie's voice that it's starting to get on Deacon's nerves. "We tell them she might be in trouble."

"But we don't know that," Chance says. "Right now, we don't know anything except that she left your apartment without saying good-bye, lost her duffel bag, and dropped my pocketknife in the park."

Sadie makes a bewildered, breathless noise in her throat and stares at Chance, confusion and rage competing silently for control of her face and finally settling on a grudging compromise, something that isn't exactly one or the other, the worst of both. She slams her gla.s.s down and most of the ice and bourbon sloshes out onto the sunflow oilcloth. "Christ, you don't care what happens to her, do you?" and she's almost shouting now. "Why the h.e.l.l did we even come back here, anyhow?"

"She's right, Sadie," Deacon says, rubs his eyes and stares at his empty gla.s.s. "I mean, you don't honestly think the cops give a s.h.i.+t if we've misplaced some homeless girl? And that's all she is to them, one more G.o.dd.a.m.n transient that they'd just as soon not even know about."

"She's just a kid," Sadie hisses, and Deacon sighs and reaches for the bottle of Jim Beam, but she grabs it, stands up and steps quickly away from the table.

"Now what the f.u.c.k did you do that for?"

" 'Cause I'm not gonna sit here and watch you get s.h.i.+t-faced, Deke, and watch her pretend that nothing's happening."

"Then what are you going to do, Sadie?" Chance asks, and now she sounds a lot less interested in coddling Sadie, or anyone else for that matter, a lot less interested in keeping the peace. "Why don't you stop yelling at us for a minute and tell us what precisely it is you intend to do?"

But Sadie only shakes her head and stares pitifully down at the mutilated duffel bag dangling from her right hand, sets the whiskey bottle back on the table. There's an orange and green striped T-s.h.i.+rt poking out through one of the slashes in the canvas, and "She's just a kid," she says again.

"Yeah," Deacon whispers, wis.h.i.+ng he knew anything at all to say that might help, and then he notices the blood seeping out of the tube sock he put on Sadie's right foot, a crimsonwide pool spreading across the floor of Chance's kitchen.

"Jesus, baby, you're bleeding again," and she looks down at the mess and starts crying, apologizes to Chance and sits back down, hugs the duffel bag to her chest, hides her face in the folds of ruined fabric.

"No, it's okay, Sadie. There's hydrogen peroxide and gauze in the medicine cabinet. I'll be right back," and Chance gets up from the table, takes the ledger with her, and "Thank you," Sadie sobs as Deacon screws the cap off the bottle of Jim Beam and pours himself another shot.

The headache has dwindled to an almost bearable pang lost somewhere between his ears, and the whiskey tastes sweet and hot and more forgiving than the night outside the kitchen windows. Something that Dancy said at the tunnel, something familiar, and he mumbles it out loud. "The paths where the mountain stream goes down under the darkness of the hills," he says, and Sadie looks up from the duffel bag, and she blinks at him through a runny mask of smeared mascara.

"What? What did you say?" she asks, and "Nothing," he replies. "No, it's probably nothing at all."

After Chance has finished doctoring Sadie's foot, has carefully washed the cut and wrapped it in clean white gauze up to the ankle, and after Sadie has hobbled silently back out onto the porch alone, Chance and Deacon sit on opposite ends of the sofa. The front door is open, and Deacon can hear Sadie in the noisy, old swing, back and forth lament of rusted chains and weathertired boards and the occasional thump or thud of Sadie's good foot against the porch as she kicks off again, keeping the swing in motion, keeping herself moving without ever going anywhere at all.

"She needs st.i.tches," Chance says, and Deacon nods his head once.

"Try telling her that," he replies. "Try telling her anything at all."

And then nothing else for a minute or two, just the porch-swing pendulum squeak and groan and the mute house and the murmuring summer night outside. Sounds that aren't sounds or only things that Deacon imagines he hears because there's too much quiet. He sighs and leans forward, his shadow stretching out across the coffee table and the floor, and rests his forearms on his legs.

"What's happening, Deke?" and it's a very quick and urgent whisper as if she's afraid, or maybe she just doesn't want Sadie to hear her. "I mean, I can still tell when you know more than you're saying. I remember that look you get."

Deacon picks up his drink from the table and finishes the whiskey, fills the gla.s.s to the rim again. He's drunk enough now that the headache is almost inconsequential, drunk enough that he smiles at Chance instead of getting angry.