The Crossroads

A little before four p.m. that same day, Billy O’Claire drove his pickup truck into the Rocky Hill Farms subdivision. He needed money so he could get away from his grandfather’s ghost, maybe head down to Florida. He stroked his hand through his sweaty hair and remembered the house with the gurgling toilet. He had never really finished that job. He should go back, talk to the owner, tell him he needed to do more work on his sewer lines, the main one in the basement, if he seriously wanted to stop the problem from reoccurring.

The owner would cut him a deposit check, might even give him cash. Of course, Billy would never come back to finish the job. He wouldn’t be able to: He’d be in Florida, hiding from Grandpa’s ghost.

“Car!” Zack yelled when he heard somebody pulling into the driveway. “Tarp!”

Two of the boys draped a big blue sheet over the stump to hide the holes. The boy currently manning the drill stuffed it back into the gym bag, then tossed the sack to another boy waiting up in the tree house, who stashed it behind a sliding panel of plywood.

The boys had all seen a lot of prison escape movies and knew how this sort of thing was supposed to be done.

“Howdy, son,” Billy said politely, holding his grungy baseball cap in his hands. “Is your mom or dad home?”

Zack stood with his hands on his hips. Zipper was at his side, ready to pounce.

“Dad?” Zack hollered. “Dad?”

His father came out to the back porch. “What’s up, Zack?”

“This guy’s here. The plumber.”

“Hey, great! I’ve been meaning to call you. I think we should take a look at the main drain—which I think is also our main pain.”

Billy nodded. “Yes, sir. That’s why I swung by. I was thinking the same thing. We might need to snake out the pipe leading to the street.”

“Exactly! Can you come back and do the job?”

“Yes, sir. Early next week.”

“Great.”

“Of course, I’ll need to rent a bunch of special equipment.”

“I could give you a deposit. Say fifty percent now, fifty percent when the job is done. Would that help?”

Billy smiled. “Yes, sir. That would help a whole bunch.”

Billy sat in the kitchen, sipping a cold Coke the man had given him while he ran off to find his checkbook.

Florida, here I come!

He felt a little bad about ripping this guy off, taking money for a job he knew he’d never finish. Heck, he wouldn’t even start it. He’d be on his way to Miami before the sun went down, which made him happy and sad at the same time. Happy that he was protecting his son. Sad that he’d probably never see his boy again.

All of sudden, he thought he could smell some of that minty gunk his ghostly grandpappy slicked through his hair. Then he saw a bowl of foil-wrapped candies sitting on the kitchen counter. Peppermint patties. Man, he had to get out of North Chester. Fast. The whole town was messing with his mind.

He stood up, eager to hit the highway. He was going to call out to the guy hunting down the checkbook until he realized he didn’t even know the man’s name. The general contractor who’d built the house had paid Billy for all his previous work. The job was always called “14 Stonebriar.” Never the “Jones House” or the “Smith House.”

Not knowing what to say, Billy went with the generic.

“Uh, excuse me? Sir? Sir?”

The man came into the kitchen. “Sorry,” he said. “Took me a minute to find the checkbook.”

“No problem, sir.”

“Please, call me George.”

“Okay, George. I’m Billy. Billy O’Claire.” Billy stretched out his arm to shake George’s hand.

“George Jennings.”

Billy blinked.

“Jennings?”

“Yeah.”

“We used to have us a sheriff up this way named Jennings. Sheriff James Jennings?”

“I know. He was my dad.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Your daddy was Sheriff Jennings?”

“Yep. He sure was.”

Billy grinned. “Well, I’ll be. Ain’t that something? Ain’t that just like crazy, daddy-o?”

Clint Eberhart’s soul had zoomed back inside Billy’s body and he was now using it to shake hands with George Jennings—the son of the man who had killed his son!