“I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure or you won’t tell?” Johnny didn’t answer, and she nodded, watching him. “Smoke this,” she said.
“I don’t smoke.”
“You can smoke or you can leave.”
Johnny watched it burn in her hand. “What is it?”
“Marijuana. Mushrooms. Nothing that doesn’t grow from God’s green earth.” She held it out, waiting. One end was damp, the other an orange coal. After a moment Johnny took it and smoked. “Deeper.” He pulled in more smoke, choking. She took the cigarette back, satisfied. “What did you see that scared you?”
“Nothing. I lost days. That’s it. I lost five days.”
“You remember none of it?”
“Flickers,” he said. “A few images. I think I was hurt, and then I wasn’t. None of it makes sense.”
“Do you dream?” He hesitated, and she blew smoke in his face. “In the swamp? Do you dream?”
“Yes. I suppose.”
“Of what? Don’t lie.”
Johnny swallowed. It was hot in the shack, no breeze. The smoke was making him dizzy. “I see people hanged,” he said.
“What people?”
“A white man. Two slaves.”
“What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Smoke.” She passed the cigarette again, then leaned close as he smoked. “You’re at the tree. Men are screaming.”
“How do you know that?”
“Men are screaming. What else do you see?”
“There’s a girl with a knife. The men have been mutilated.”
The old woman drew back, and Johnny choked on smoke. He tried to breathe; couldn’t. “Tell me what you hear.”
“I don’t like this—”
“Tell me.”
“Screaming. Jesus Christ. I hear the men screaming.” Verdine leaned away, and for that instant Johnny was in the dream. He saw firelight, the twitching legs. Then he blinked and it faded. He started coughing; cleared his throat. “How do you know my dream?”
“Because dreams of the swamp are rarely dreams. Do you have others?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Take this.” She handed him a second cigarette. “Smoke it tonight, then come back and see me.”
“I told you, I don’t smoke.”
“Then make tea with it. I don’t care. The point is it will help you dream.”
“All I want is the truth.”
“Of course you do, but I told you once already: nightmare or vision, dreams of the swamp are rarely dreams.”
* * *
Johnny spent that night in the cabin, and it was late before he tried to dream. He didn’t trust the old woman or what was in the cigarette, but he sat on the bed with a mug in his hand whose contents smelled like boiled dirt and tasted about the same. That’s how desperate he was, and how afraid of lost days. When the last of the tea was gone, he stretched out and tried to find the peace that would lead him down and dark. Most nights it was simple: a few breaths, a gentle slope. Tonight he was nervous, and wanted it too much. He tossed and turned, then walked beneath the stars and lay down on the mosses and ferns. It was warm and still, and he imagined the sky as a great weight. He pictured himself as if seen from above. The earth turned and he was a heartbeat, another breath, a smudge on the green. The moss beneath him took his shape and held it. Stars faded, and Johnny drifted down. He was a man and a boy, then a flicker of thought in the moment before his birth. He glimpsed his father’s eyes, and his grandfather’s in the dimness beyond. He was Johnny Merrimon—named for John—and this was the line of men who’d made him. Johnny sank past one face and then another.
He was falling in the black.
He was dreaming.
* * *
When his eyes opened, the fear crushed him. She was dying, his lovely wife. The heat burned his skin where he touched her. No one had ever seen such a fever: none of the family and none of the slaves, not the doctor from across the river who’d told him the best he could do now was pray.
Leaning close, he pressed his cheek against hers, and felt more of the heat that was burning her alive. She moaned at the touch, but he kept his cheek against hers and placed a hand on the swollen belly that held their child. “Bring more ice,” he said.
“The icehouse is empty.”
He looked up, and the slaves were weeping, too. They loved Marion as well as he. Everyone did. She was nineteen and beautiful and kind.
“Towels,” he said. “Bring wet towels.”
Two of the women hurried off, and John took his wife’s hand. He owned forty thousand acres and would trade it all to have her back and well. They’d played together as children, and he’d loved her since she was thirteen. He was two years older, but it was she who’d touched his hand, that day in the shade. She’d said, “We’ll marry one day,” and he remembered how her eyes had gone from playful to sincere, his first look at the woman she’d become. She’d always been the wisest, the strongest.
“John…”
It was a gasp, a wretched sound.
“I’m here, Marion, beside you.”
“Water…”
He tilted her head, and raised a cup to her lips. She managed a sip, choking. John dabbed at the cracked lips, smoothed hair from her face. She was wasted and pale. Only the heat gave her color, only the fever. He wanted to squeeze her hand, but feared the skin might tear, the bones break. For three weeks, she’d spiraled into fire and delirium. How many days since she’d spoken? How many terrible nights?
“The baby…”
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll have a beautiful child, you’ll see. You’ll get better. The child will be fine.”
She moved his hand to her stomach. “Take it.…”
“The doctor is coming—”
“No time.”
“Marion—”
“Only the baby matters.” She blinked, and was dying. “Only the child…”
He kissed her forehead and burned from the heat.
“John…”
“I’m here.”
“If it’s a boy…” Her lips moved, but she had nothing left. “Do it now,” she said. “While I have the courage.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes.”
“My love…”
She begged with her eyes, and John’s hands shook, pale and empty. He kissed her once again; then someone pressed a knife against his palm.…
* * *
Johnny woke in starlight, and felt emotion like he’d never known.
He was two men.
Two lives.
An hour later he was still weeping.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jimmy Ray Hill woke in darkness with no knowledge of where he was or how badly he was hurt, though he thought it was bad. He smelled dampness and blood. One of his hands was broken. He tried to move, but nothing happened from the waist down, and when he touched his legs, he couldn’t feel them.
“Sweet Jesus…”
He lay back on the rough stone, and something in his back ground where it should not.
“Ah … shit.”
Touching his face, he found blood and torn skin. He felt his eyes to make sure they were open. That’s how black it was, like the bottom of the world.
“Willard?”
The name went out and died in the void. He said it again, then cradled the broken hand against his chest, and checked himself with the other. He found scrapes and mud and more blood. His back was broken.
“Ah, Christ.”
Jimmy Ray shifted, and stone and sticks moved beneath him. He risked a hand on his spine, felt the bone, like cornmeal. He was in the dark and broken and alone.
“Just breathe, old man.”
But his breath came short and fast.
“Willard!”
The sheriff didn’t answer. He was unconscious or somewhere else or dead. Jimmy Ray dug deep for the courage he’d known as a young man in Vietnam. He’d been sho
t twice, left on a battlefield. He remembered the long night, and high, pale stars, the sound of footsteps as he’d closed his eyes and prayed. The memory was a start. He focused on his breathing.
Slow and deep.
You’re still alive.…
Deep and slow.
Don’t you panic.…
It was hard with the pain. It spiked up from the shattered spine, throbbed in his hand. Through it all, he remembered the swamp and the light and bits of what followed. He’d been dragged, and then carried and dropped.
Dropped …
It was more like being tossed, as if he’d weighed nothing at first and then a thousand pounds as the earth fell away, and he hit the stony slope, the sheer drop that followed. Jimmy Ray remembered the fall, the rocks at the bottom, his back.
He was in a cave.
He heard water drip.
“Hello! Anybody!”
There was no one, and it took a long time to accept the fact that if he wanted to live, he’d have to do it on his own. Working carefully, he used his good hand to explore the area around him. He found a boulder behind his head; thought it was the one that’d broken his back. The other stones were smaller, like softballs and grapefruit, but jagged. His fingers touched a few old sticks, then moved on to smooth stone and sticky bits he thought might be his own blood. He needed his pack, some kind of light.
He found the sheriff instead.
“Willard, thank God.” He touched the sheriff’s boot first, then dragged himself closer, even though it hurt like hell and twisted the ruined spine. He couldn’t think about that, though. The damage was done; he was ruined. All that mattered now was his friend and getting out and living. He found the sheriff’s belt, his chest. He wasn’t breathing. He was cold. A final heave brought him even with the sheriff’s face, and Jimmy Ray felt for it, finding the nose, the swollen lips. He checked the throat for a pulse, but knew it was too late.
The sheriff was dead.
He’d been dead for a long time.
“Anybody!”
Jimmy called out, afraid, and the shame of that capitulation was almost as bad as the broken spine. Since that terrible night in Vietnam, he’d never needed anyone. He lived alone, worked alone. There was not a fight he couldn’t win, a horse he couldn’t break, or a machine he couldn’t fix. Now he was shaking beneath the earth, as lost and alone as he’d ever been.
Rolling the sheriff, Jimmy Ray checked his pockets, looking for matches, a flashlight. He felt behind him, but the rock rose up where he’d been dropped. Moving deeper, Jimmy Ray dragged himself past the body, finding smooth stone and a slope that angled him down. For an instant he was poised; then he slipped and tumbled. He bounced off another stone, and collapsed into some kind of deadfall, the old branches shifting. Reaching out, he touched nylon, and knew it was a pack, either his or Willard’s. Praying as he had on that distant battlefield, Jimmy Ray dragged out the heavy flashlight he’d bought ten years ago on a cold winter’s day. In its light, he saw damp stone, a hint of his friend and a stark, damn truth he’d never thought to see. The branches weren’t branches at all.
He was in a mass grave.
He was in a tomb.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When the sun broke, it was watery pale, and Johnny remembered little of the drive to Verdine’s. There was blacktop and dirt, then weeds and trees, a covered porch and clapboards baked the color of old bone. She was on the porch beside the ancient rifle, a smile on her face as Johnny took the dust yard like a breaking storm. He couldn’t help it. The darker emotions ran loose. “What the hell did you do to me?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s a damn lie and you know it. Whatever that was, it was no dream.”
“Anything you saw was between you and your people. The connections have always been there. I just opened the window.”
“What connections?”
“Hush Arbor, of course, your family and mine, those of us who lived there and died. Time is truly the thinnest of things.”
Johnny tried to settle. There was steadiness in her voice, and in the rhythm of the chair. “What was in that cigarette?”
“The cigarette’s not your problem.”
“Yesterday, you said ‘vision.’”
“Yes.”
“Last night, then.” He clenched his fists and fought for calm. “Was it a dream or drugs or something else?”
“Saw him, did you? John Merrimon.”
“No.” Johnny spoke from a still-troubled place. “I was him.”
“Tell me.”
“I saw a woman, dying. She was pregnant.”
“Marion Merrimon, your great-great-grandmother.”
“So, it’s real.”
“Summer of 1853, a mighty fever.”
Johnny sat on the top step and put his face in his hands. He knew their first kiss and their secrets, the touch of skin and the words they whispered. The love they shared was greater than anything Johnny had ever known. Even now it closed his throat. He’d never felt that kind of emotion. “I was there,” he finally said. “I held her hand. I felt the baby move.”
He broke off because it was too much. This other life. These feelings.
Verdine drew smoke and let it linger. “Your people and mine,” she said. “The visions find us, time to time.”
“How?”
“That truth is for later.”
“I need to understand.”
“What you need is to listen to me and be careful. Hush Arbor is a dangerous place for those who don’t respect its secrets. Dream enough, and you’ll find most every truth you need. Dream too much and this life pales. Understand? This life. Yours. Don’t get lost in the past. I’ve seen it happen.”
“So last night’s dream?”
“Is only the beginning.” She tried to smile, but Johnny saw sadness and hurt, a hundred years of unknowable things.
“Do you have the same dream?”
She shook her head. “I dream of my people, you dream of yours. That’s the nature of things.”
“What do you want from me?” Johnny asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
But that was a lie, and Johnny saw it plain as day. She wanted something from him. She desired it in the worst possible way. “I just want my life back,” he said.
“Yet some doors are hard to close.”
“What do I do?”
“The only thing possible.” Verdine pulled more cigarettes from a pocket in her robe. “Walk through the door,” she said. “And dream this time of darker truths.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Luana Freemantle knew weakness like she knew the bottom of a bottle. It lived in an old, deep part of her, and its birthplace was her childhood in the swamp. She’d never been the girl her mother wanted. She hated the heat and the mud, the legacy of slavery and old belief that steeped every aspect of life in Hush Arbor. She didn’t like the cutting or the hanging tree or the strange prayers in a strange tongue. Mostly though, she’d been afraid. She’d feared the nighttime and the woods and the expectations of all the women who’d gone before. Worst of all were the dreams. They’d started a week after her fifteenth birthday: dark visions of the hanging tree and another childhood, the weight of earth on the day she was buried alive. And they didn’t start slowly, those dreams. She turned fifteen and they landed on her like a mountain. She’d close her eyes a girl, and wake up a slave; and she knew such terrible things: how it felt to suffer and kill, the burn of betrayal.
This is our life, she’d been told. And our burden.
The old women had tried to comfort and explain, but Luana hadn’t cared. She’d been fifteen. She’d wanted television, air-conditioning, and smooth, fine boys like she’d seen once on the road beyond the swamp. Mostly, she’d wanted to escape the terrible, crushing dreams.
Now her daughter was having them, too.
“Cree?”
Luana knocked on the door, but her daughter didn’t answer. For three days, she’d hidden he
rself, whether on the roof or in her room. The only sounds she’d made were the screams when she slept or the sobbing when she woke.
“Sweetheart?”
Beyond the door the curtains were pulled tight, and no lamps burned. Cree looked like a bundle of rags where she sat in the corner, both knees pulled to her chest, her breathing too fast. Luana sat beside her and touched her face, feeling the heat and the sweat. Cree’s eyes showed mostly white. The dream had her.
“Oh, my baby. I should have never sent you back.”
A sound escaped Cree’s throat, but the breathing never slowed. She twitched and moaned, and Luana lived it with her. The same fist was in her chest, the same blindness and dread. Luana took her daughter’s hand, and flinched when the eyes rolled brown, and the girl screamed and fought and drummed her heels. Luana tried to hold her down, but the girl fought harder and clawed, so Luana did the only thing a mother could. She screamed her own mad scream. She held her child, and hid the tears that burned her face.
* * *
When it was done and both were quiet, Cree’s head was in her mother’s lap, and the housecoat was damp where her face pressed against it. “I’m going insane,” she said.
“You’re not,” Luana whispered.
“You have no idea.”
“Oh, child…” Luana stroked her hair because guilt stole the rest of her words. She’d sent her daughter back because the old women wanted her—that was true—but Luana had been selfish, too; she’d been young in a world of liquor and tall lights and smooth-skinned boys. “I should never have let them have you.”
“What’s happening to me?”
“Hush now. Just breathe.”
But it wasn’t that easy. She trembled and burned, and Luana knew how drawn she was. In the long fight to stay awake, the minutes were battles and the hours, wars. When sleep did come, it rarely came alone. The old women said that the strong would acclimate in time, but what did Luana know of strength? She was a runner, a quitter. “You’re stronger than you know,” she said, but doubted it was true. Her daughter had lost weight in three days. Her eyes were sunken. The jeans hung on her hips.
“Why are you even here?” Cree rose from her mother’s lap, and crossed to the bed. “You never come in my room.”