The Chestnut King

  Richard squelched along beside Henry, limping proudly on his bandaged thigh. He hobbled closer to Anastasia, and beside her, he felt tall.

  “A sword went right into my thigh,” he said. “All the way in. I watched it come out.”

  Anastasia had heard. Listening, Henry smiled.

  “And the whole time, I kept banging the soldier on the head.” Richard sniffed nobly. “With my mace. You should have seen it, Anastasia.”

  “I wish I had,” she said. “Do it again. Next time I’ll watch.”

  Henry filled his lungs with the cool air and listened to the wind. Broad wings sifted the air overhead, but the raggant was invisible in the darkness.

  “Go ahead,” Henry whispered to the knot of cousins and sisters around him. He wanted to walk alone.

  They hurried on, but Henrietta wasn’t so easy to push away. She walked with him through the mud and into the street, and she stayed beside him, saying nothing, all the way to the small slope that was the Henry, Kansas, graveyard.

  Tilly and Zeke were waiting for them, huddled beneath a blanket.

  As the line approached, Tilly stood, shifting nervously, her son’s shoulder anchoring her to one place.

  Hyacinth and Dotty walked to her, and they hugged her, and the three women wiped their eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Tilly said quietly. “I didn’t know what else to do. There wasn’t any money, and I already had the plot.” Three sons stood at the foot of the grave and held up their lanterns. The earth was freshly turned, like a newly plowed field, and a small cross at the head of it said simply, Mother. Beside it, there was a thicker cross. The name on it was the name of Zeke’s father—Timothy Johnson. Tilly suddenly laughed through her tears. “I couldn’t even afford all the letters in her name. We can do a new stone.”

  “You have done much for us,” Mordecai said. “You named her well.”

  Tilly sobbed, and Caleb set down his lantern and wrapped her in his arms.

  Hyacinth and her daughters sang, and their song made sorrow sweet. Little Anastasia sat in the grass with Penelope and wept. Henrietta cried, too, and she didn’t care if Henry saw.

  When the song had finished, and the lanterns faded, and everyone shivered in the crisp autumn night, Caleb took the last gift his mother had given him, and he gave it to Tilly. It was a blue gem set in a band that matched the moon.

  And then Dotty and Hyacinth and all the girls cried, because they loved Antilly Johnson, and Henry and Zeke laughed, because they would be cousins, and Frank and Mordecai slapped their brother’s shoulder, and James shook his hand, and Monmouth grinned beneath his bandage, and Richard laughed and hopped in place and said that being happy made his thigh hurt. His wound. From being stabbed with a sword.

  And farewells were said, but not to each other. They were said to Grandmother, and to the Kansas sky and to the Kansas earth, to the wind that dried tears, and to a spot in the soil that marked an end.

  The group walked slowly, whispering, to a little green house on the edge of town. Bowls of cereal were poured to take the edge off the darkness, and bags were packed. When the sun rose, the house was empty, the door was unlocked, and the old car was in the driveway.

  In Hylfing, there was a city to build, a fat king to visit, and a new emperor sending lots of invitations. Mordecai and Caleb stayed at home, and their hands blistered from working with stone. Frank laughed at their softness, and it was under his eye and guided by his hands that Hyacinth’s house rose from the ashes, and beside it, a house for Dotty. But Tilly wanted something set higher and closer to the sea.

  Henry and Henrietta spent days on their aunt Tilly’s roof, leaning against the wall beside Zeke. And when Henry was with his brothers, or walking the hills with his father, Henrietta went alone, and she and Zeke said nothing, but kept their eyes out past the jetty, where white lines rolled toward the shore, and the sea beat out its pulse against the cliffs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Kansas doesn’t change much. Times change. People change. Towns change. But Kansas keeps an even keel. People and towns are decorations—summer reading. But the seasons, the plowing and the seeding, the harvest and the burning, those run deeper.

  Tornadoes are more permanent than towns.

  Four falls faded into winters, and those four winters, those deaths, were reborn in springs and ripened into summers. Storms came, and blizzards blew, and combines rolled to keep the timing of the years.

  It was early in the fifth fall, still late in the summer by some people’s clocks, while the fields were burning, when a door reopened. A door that Kansas had not forgotten.

  Henry York Maccabee stood in the dust-blanketed kitchen and looked around at the broken plaster from the ceiling and the sink with no plumbing. He looked out the window at the flat sea of green prairie, rolling gently in the wind. Mordecai and Hyacinth stood beside him. Uncle Frank nudged the plaster and dust with his foot and stared at three fat gerbils who peered out from beneath the fridge. Aunt Dotty leaned against the door with her hands over her mouth, taking it all in, scrolling through her memories.

  Henry was lean and as tall as his father, though not as broad. He was taller than Frank. His skin was dark, but a white scar stood out on his jaw.

  “Oh my,” Dotty said. “I thought I’d forgotten so much, but I hadn’t.”

  Henry smiled at his aunt. Her smells, her pies, they were in Hylfing now. They were connected to her, not linoleum or countertops.

  When they were all ready, and small bags dangled from their shoulders, Mordecai stepped aside and let Henry open the back door.

  He opened it slowly at first, confused by what he saw. There were no people, so he pulled it wide and slipped through. The others followed quickly.

  Henry’s mouth hung open while his brain tried to process what he was seeing. Where he stood, the floor was glass, but that ended quickly. The rest of it was orange, waxed and polished. Large photos lined the walls between pedestalled displays in glass boxes. A rack of T-shirts was just in front of him. It was half souvenir shop, half museum.

  He pulled out a black shirt. In white letters across the chest, it read, I GOT LOST IN HENRY, KANSAS. He pulled out another one. A flying saucer, and beneath it: GIVE FRANK BACK. A matching design said simply, WHERE’S DOROTHY? There were tiny sizes for babies and oversize sweatshirts for the extremely large. Some of them incorporated a bizarre and unrecognizable version of Henry’s school photo from third or fourth grade. An entire rack held WHERE’S HENRY? in different colors and styles. A little map on the back of the shirt had a star on Henry, Kansas.

  Behind Henry, Uncle Frank began to laugh. Hyacinth and Mordecai were simply confused. By all of it.

  A tall, heavily freckled boy stepped around the corner with his arms full of shirts. He was wearing GIVE FRANK BACK in blue. “I’m sorry,” he said. “How’d I miss you all coming in? Can I help you? Have you been here before?”

  Henry nodded.

  “I thought so,” Freckles said. “You look familiar. We have a few new displays. And of course the sea window.” He pointed at the glass spot on the floor. Beneath it, a pipe sprayed an even seam of water down into a brown pond. “We keep it all filtered and salt-water treated so the crabs and shrimp don’t die. In the front, you can buy copies of different shows about the place.” He smiled. “I’m in most of them as a fat little kid.”

  Henry moved past Freckles. At the other end of the shop, a television was mounted to the ceiling, and it was playing a looped tape. As he got closer, he bit his lip so he wouldn’t burst out laughing. The screen was black, and then suddenly, a rectangle of light appeared in the sky, and there he was, from the lips down, and Henrietta and Zeke with him.

  “No one hits the Maccababy,” Henrietta’s voice said quietly—the sound was turned down—and then blackness swallowed up the light with a crash, and it began again.

  “That tape paid for all of this,” Freckles said. “You wouldn’t believe. Of course, now this all pays for itself. My stepdad an
d I have a barn out back full of stuff that we sell online and ship all over the world.”

  Henry laughed and nodded. “It’s a cool tape.”

  Freckles pointed to a picture of a fatter version of himself on the wall. Beneath it, a long printout had been framed. “That’s my story right there. Read it if you want to.”

  “Thanks,” Henry said, and he moved on. He moved past mugs and key chains, and alien dolls wearing WHERE’S HENRY? shirts. And then he stopped. In a glass box in front of him, a mannequin’s disembodied hand was wearing his first baseball glove. A plaque beside it was labeled HENRY IN HIDING?, and it had a picture of a thick cop holding the glove. Another picture was a close-up of Richard’s handwriting. Henry Yo.

  Freckles looked over from his shirt rack.

  “That’s not really his glove,” he said. “The cop is full of it, but we try to represent every theory.”

  “It’s not his glove?”

  Freckles shook his head. “No way. I knew Henry. He wasn’t here long, but we got pretty close. Always playing ball. That’s not his glove.”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “Huh.”

  Somewhere, a phone started ringing, and Freckles hurried away.

  Henry’s mother gripped his arm. Frank and Dotty were already outside. Mordecai stood in the door.

  “Henry!” Hyacinth whispered. Henry had sprung the lock, and the case was open. He shut it quickly and shoved the glove down his pants while his mother dragged him out of the air-conditioning and into the sun.

  “I need one of those shirts,” Frank was saying.

  “Need is the wrong word,” said Dotty.

  Mordecai looked at his son and smiled. “What did you thieve?”

  “Nothing,” Henry said. He grinned and lifted his shirt, flashing the top half of his glove. “But I found something.”

  There was a large parking lot beside the souvenir shop and the little saltwater hole. There were signs about the paranormal salt lake and alien crabs. As the five of them walked on, heading for the bus station, they saw stranger things. The Kansas Crab Shack. The old antiques store on Main Street was called Frank’s Trading Post. There was a little storefront called Dorothy’s Pies. There were two bed-and-breakfasts and, in the distance, a brick outline of a new school. The old gas and bait shop had managed to turn into the Tumbleweed Motel and Galaxy Steak House.

  The bus station was entirely remodeled, and the first town fathers would have been proud of themselves for not putting it on Main Street. They’d known something like this would come, and they hadn’t wanted the extra traffic.

  The restrooms were still the color of a swimming pool. But in one of them, someone named Greg said that he loved someone named Tiff. And he had said it with spray paint.

  Henry didn’t use the benches. He sat on the curb in the sun with his bag on his knees. His uncle sat beside him. Henry, Kansas, was still a quiet town. A fat, lazy fly circled above the street, buzzing and riding tiny updrafts and buzzing again.

  “Henry York,” Frank said, and his eyes were staring at something even Henry couldn’t see. “I reckon we’ve grown some, you and I.”

  Henry smelled the warmth of the street, and he nodded.

  “We wear life a little better now,” Uncle Frank said. He put his hard arms behind him and leaned back on the sidewalk, squinting at the blue sky. “It’s almost like it fits us.”

  Henry laughed and looked at his uncle. “Almost,” he said.

  The rumble of the diesel engine arrived long before the bus, and when the bus finally did pull up and air roared out of it, kicking up dust, and the driver levered that heavy door open, everyone was on their feet.

  Henry climbed on last and settled into a seat beside Hyacinth. It was a long ride to Boston, but there was a woman he had long called mother, and he wanted to see her. And meet her new husband. If his dreaming told him no lies, she had changed a great deal. And there was a small boy to meet, too. A boy almost three years old, who played ball with his father with a giant red bat and could hit like a champion.

  Hyacinth was talking, chatting with Dotty. Henry stretched over and kissed his mother’s cheek, and then he leaned his head against the window. A new park crept by, with six permanent barbecues and two separate pavilions. Boys were playing ball.

  He smiled and yawned, wondering how many miles one nap could handle. A large sign, blue with bright red letters approached. It told him what to do.

  SAY GOOD-BYE TO HENRY

  He did. And then he shut his eyes.

  EPILOGUE

  Wallace Merten liked to keep his feet on his desk. He was a coach, and he wanted to feel like one. Even if he didn’t have a team to coach. A desk got in the way. Unless he tipped back in his chair and pried his inflexible legs out from underneath it. Right now, with his legs crossed and his arms behind his head, he was staring up at the photos still on his wall. The ones he’d taken down were already in boxes.

  Opening day was in a week, and he was done. Not officially The team was taking batting practice out the window behind him. No pink slip had been nailed to his chest. But his tires had been slashed three times in a month. It worked out to the same thing.

  “Dad?” Mary stepped into his office. Her dark hair was pulled back tight. He didn’t like her hair that way. It made her look stark, and she scared people already, being tall. Especially boys. “These boys want to play for you. I told them your roster was full.” She cupped her hand and whispered loudly. “A little full of themselves.”

  Wallace swallowed back a laugh, dropped his feet to the ground, and stood up. Mary was gone, and he was left with the two boys, both wearing jeans and T-shirts. They were tall, about the same height, but the one with the squarer head and the gray eyes had more muscle to his body. The other kid was lean and had a nasty scar on his jaw. Wallace blinked. His eyes were strange. They were green, but the centers were flecked with gold. As he stared into them, his brain paused, and he felt like he wouldn’t be able to look away. The boy stuck out his hand, and his palm was scarred, too. Wallace shook it and shook his head at the same time. The boy’s grip was hot.

  “I’m afraid my daughter’s right. My roster’s full. The season kicks off next week. You could give one of the assistants your names, and we’ll check you out for next year.” He gestured toward the door.

  The two boys sat down in chairs facing his desk.

  Wallace put his hands on his hips. He didn’t sit down. His daughter had been right. Too much confidence. “I don’t have any scholarships,” he said. “And if I did, I wouldn’t just hand them out to anyone who walked into my office.”

  “We don’t need scholarships,” the lean one said. “We just want to play. Watch us play.”

  “Your team’s taking BP right now,” said the bigger one. “Name your bet. Not one of them will hit his heater.”

  “You pitch?” the coach looked back at Henry. “Right-hander?”

  Henry smiled and held up his left.

  “Okay,” the coach said. “I’ll give you ten minutes. I’ll watch you throw.” He turned to Zeke. “And you?”

  Henry straightened up in his chair. “He can hit my heater.”

  Twenty minutes later, two boys in jeans stepped onto the diamond. An hour after that, they were back in the coach’s office, while he giggled and rubbed his temples.

  “You didn’t play high school ball?” he asked again.

  Zeke and Henry shook their heads.

  “Do you have any more players for me?”

  “One,” Henry said. “In a couple years. Great second baseman. Placement hitter. Kid named Richard Hutchins.”

  The coach sat back and crossed his arms. “Why me? Why this school?”

  The two boys looked at each other. “You’re in Kansas. We like Kansas.”

  “It’s a hard school.” The coach shook his head. “I’ve lost great recruits before. We have language requirements. A tough math core.”

  Zeke laughed.

  “We’ll be fine,” Henry said.
>
  Henry, Kansas, was dead in the moonlight. Henry Maccabee guided the car slowly through town and pulled into a parking lot.

  “You did not get me dressed up to bring me here,” Mary said. “You said it was formal.”

  “It is,” Henry said. He hopped out of the car and hurried around to Mary’s door.

  She stepped out into the silver light, holding her skirt up off the asphalt. Her hair was pulled back tight. He loved that. He loved everything.

  “Do you know what I think?” she said. “I think you can throw harder, and you just don’t. For some reason, you don’t want to.”

  Henry shut the door and took her arm. “I throw hard enough.”

  “You do,” Mary said. “But not your hardest.”

  Henry sighed. “My hardest doesn’t go straight.”

  “Why are we here?” Mary asked suddenly. Henry had led her to the dark little shop. “This is the town where that kid and the family disappeared, and all that weirdness.”

  “Just trust me,” Henry said. He put his hand on the lock, and after a moment, it popped open.

  Mary looked at him. “Do you know the owner or something?”

  Henry laughed and led her in. “He says I do.”

  The door locked behind them, and they began to move through the shirts.

  “This is creepy,” Mary said. “What are you thinking?”

  They stopped on the glass above the pond. Henry shut his eyes, and breathing slowly, he put out his right hand.

  “Where’d you get that scar?” Mary said. “Or am I still not allowed to ask?”

  “Ask me in an hour.”

  “And why does my dad think I’m going to meet your family?”

  “You are,” said Henry. And a door opened in the air.

  GRATITUDE

  Spenser for The Faerie Queene

  Robert Kirk for Disappearing

  Kansas for Being

  Henry for Winning

  Rory D. for Loving

  Jim T. for Scrubbing