The Last Child

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The boys moved slowly. The road was soft underfoot, the trees alive with birds and twists of shadow. Vines drooped to the ground, gray and smooth and thick as a large man’s wrist. Not far away, a woodpecker hammered for its breakfast.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Jack said.

“Just keep your eyes open.”

The forest darkened, and noise fell off with the sun.

“The screaming willies.”

“Shut up, Jack. Jeez.”

They walked for twenty minutes. None of the wheel ruts on the road looked recent, but that meant nothing. Freemantle was on foot when Johnny last saw him. Once through the trees, the road widened out, flattened, and the forest began to open up. They passed an overgrown orchard, apple trees heavy with bloom. Muscadine vines crawled over a collapsed trellis.

“We’re getting close,” Johnny said.

“To what?”

“Whatever’s out here.”

The road came to a crumbled gate, then turned right and disappeared around an elbow of brambles and heavy growth. The gun came out of the holster and Johnny tilted it awkwardly. “Does this have a safety?”

“No. I told you. Jesus, watch where you point it.”

“Sorry.” Johnny aimed the barrel at the ground. Wind lifted leaves to show their dull, silver bottoms. At the bend in the road, there were granite posts where the gate had fallen. The gate itself was on the ground, grass between the pales, its soft wood slowly rotting. White paint still showed in the grain.

Johnny edged his head past the granite, then pulled it back.

“What?” Jack asked.

“Nothing.” He stood. “Come on.”

They passed between the granite posts and the forest curved away. They saw shells of buildings, a house that had burned to the ground. There were blackened timbers, a bone of chimney. A granite step sat where the front door had been. A claw-foot tub lay on its side, spilling char and a few green shoots of some wild plant. An iron bed frame protruded from the rubble. So did other items too hard to burn: shattered crockery, a cooking pot, the steel handle of a well pump rusted solid. Johnny picked up a door hinge and saw hammer marks in the metal.

“What a mess.” Jack spoke for both of them.

The barn still stood, as did a smokehouse with an open door and steel hooks that hung on chains rusted red. Johnny saw a padlock on the door of a shed. Another building stood next to it. It had a single door, narrow windows, and two small chimneys. Like the main house, a single block of stone made a step to the door. It was worn smooth in the center. Peering through the glass, they saw a fireplace and a brick oven. A plain table and iron cookware. “This was the kitchen,” Johnny said. “They used to build them separate from the house to reduce the risk of a fire.”

“That’s ironic.”

Johnny stepped back and looked at the burned house. “No electricity out here, so it could have been a candle.”

“Or lightning.”

“Maybe.”

“Check that out.” Jack pointed.

Johnny turned. He saw a post, eight feet high, and a brass bell turned green. “That’s strange.”

“What?”

Johnny pushed through weeds as high as his waist. “It’s a slave bell. I saw one just like it in the civil rights museum in Wilmington. They rang these to call the slaves in from the fields.”

“Why would a freed slave keep a slave bell?”

Johnny peered under the bell. “I don’t know. A reminder?”

“Screaming willies, man.” It came as a whisper.

Johnny checked inside the barn. Except for the farm implements he expected to see-all of them dusty and unused-it was empty. He rattled the lock on the shed and peered through the cracks in the door. “Junk.”

“Can we go?”

Johnny surveyed the area. Everything stood out in the stark sunlight. The trees made a wall around the clearing. “Not yet.” He pointed to the far end of the clearing, where a gash split the trees. “Through there,” Johnny said.

They moved cautiously. The trees rose up, and then they were under them. A footpath ran fifty yards to another clearing. At the end of it, the sunlight lit up a waist-high stone wall and, beyond that, a hint of green grass. In the stone was another wooden gate. This one stood in fine repair. Its paint shone, white and perfect.

“I’ve never been so unhappy to see fresh paint,” Jack whispered.

They crept closer, heard a bird drop low, then veer off, felt the compression of leaves underfoot.

“What is that?”

A wet sound, a chuffing.

Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know.”

They ducked low, sprinted the last few yards, and crouched below the wall. The stone was warm, the sound close. It rose from beyond the wall. Johnny peered through the pales of the gate. He saw trimmed grass, and rows of carved stone.

Ducking back, he said, “It’s a cemetery.”

“What?”

Johnny held the gun against his chest and felt his heart thud against the steel. Breath snagged in his throat. “It’s a freaking cemetery.”

“Is he in there?”

A wide-eyed nod, the smallest of whispers. “Yes.”

Jack licked lips gone chalky white. “We have to get out of here.”

“He’s just sitting there.”

“Doing what?”

Johnny eased up the stone. The cemetery was small. Forty headstones, maybe. A tremendous oak tree stood in the center, magnolias in each of the back corners. The headstones stretched in rows, some silver gray, some black, all feathered with lichen and moss.

Levi Freemantle sat in the center, legs splayed in front of him. His clothes were filthy and torn. Blood smears showed at the knees and in the creases of his hands, a stain of it on the right side of his shirt and pants. One shoe was off, spilled over in the bright, clean grass. His foot and ankle were swollen to the point that they seemed to be a single, fused appendage. His finger was ripe with infection from Johnny’s bite. It was wrapped in cloth stained yellow. The skin strained so hard that it shone. He had a shovel in his lap. Beside him was a coffin.

“What’s he doing?”

Johnny didn’t answer right away. The light was so perfect that he could see every detail: streamers of silver tape dulled to lead; dried mud caked on the coffin, gouges in the wood, water stains. Freemantle’s knees were scraped nearly to the bone. Moisture glinted on his ruined face. Something jutted from his side. Johnny slid down the wall and pressed his back into the stone. “He’s burying a body.”

“Oh, shit.”

“And crying like a fifth-grade girl.”

Jack closed his eyes. Johnny raised the pistol so that the cylinder pressed against his forehead. He smelled gun oil and his lips moved without sound: The gun is power. I have the gun. The gun is power.

I have the gun.

He started to stand, but Jack pulled him down. “Don’t do it.” Jack squeezed harder, begged. “Don’t do it, man.”

“The fuck’s wrong with you, Jack?” Johnny pulled his arm free. “You think this is a game? You think this whole year has been a game? This is why we came.”

Jack’s terror was as plain on his face as the dirt. His whole body shook, but he nodded and lowered his hand. “Okay, Johnny.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“I said, okay.”

For a second, Johnny was held by the quiet, utter panic on his friend’s face, then he shoved himself to his feet and brought the gun up the way they did it in the movies: two hands on the grip, barrel as straight and steady as he could make it. Levi Freemantle stood, shovel in his hand, but he didn’t even notice Johnny. Head bent toward the ground, he stared at a shallow scrape he’d made in the earth.

Freemantle held his bad foot off the ground so that the shovel supported much of his weight. His tears were unabashed, and Johnny watched as he tried to dig a hole for the coffin. He stood on his good foot and used the bad one to drive the shovel, but pain twisted his face. He shifted his weight to the other foot, but the ankle crumpled.

He fell.

Climbed back to his feet.

Tried again.

Johnny opened the gate and stepped into the cemetery. Fifteen feet away, twelve, Freemantle oblivious. Johnny risked a glance at the coffin. It was small, a child’s coffin. He stepped closer and Freemantle looked up. His damp eyes jumped from Johnny’s face to the bare place in the ground. He hobbled a step, shovel blade rising, then crunching back into the earth. Johnny saw sadness and pain and dirt and blood, what looked like a piece of wood sticking out of his side. “Stop,” Johnny said.

Freemantle did as he was told, then raised a hand, palm up and flat. He gestured to the place where he’d scraped in the dirt, then finally looked at the gun. He looked at it for a long time, like he wasn’t sure what it was or why it was pointed at his chest. When he spoke, his words were thick. “Did you come to help me?”

“What?”

“I been asking for help, but he won’t talk to me.”

“Who?”

“Is he talking to you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The scars twisted on his face. One eye had a milky lens at its center. “I can’t make the hole.”

Johnny risked a glance at the wall. Jack shook his head. Johnny looked at the coffin. “Do you remember me?”

A nod. “You was running and I picked you up.”

“Why?’

“God said.”

“God said to pick me up?” Another nod. “Why?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Johnny.”

It was Jack, but Johnny ignored him. “What else did God tell you?”

“She’s my baby.” Freemantle pointed at the coffin. On his ruined face the tears gathered and fell. “I can’t make the hole.”

Johnny looked once at Jack.

Then he lowered the gun.