The Last Child

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Freemantle stared at the gun. It shook in Johnny’s hands. Johnny’s voice shook, too. “Where is she?”

Jack pushed closer, alarmed. “Johnny, what are you doing?”

“Where’s my sister?”

“I don’t know your sister.” An ember popped in the stove. “I don’t know you.”

Johnny stooped for the scrap of cloth with Alyssa’s name on it. He held it out. “This is my sister. Her name is Alyssa Merrimon. This is her name.” Freemantle kept his eyes on Johnny’s face. “Look at it,” Johnny said.

Freemantle shrugged and looked. “I can’t read.”

“She was taken a year ago. That’s her name.”

“I don’t think he knows,” Jack said.

“He has to.”

“I would tell you if I knew.”

“He doesn’t know,” Jack said.

“Where did you get this?” Johnny shoved the bloodstained cloth at Freemantle. “Where? When?”

Giant shoulders rolled, muscles tight under the skin. “I got that from broken man. Right after you bit me.”

“Who?”

“Broken man.” He said it like it was a name. “Broken man was by the bridge. I got that from broken man’s hand. He was holding it.”

The gun dipped. “After you picked me up?”

“God told me to see what you was running from, so I did.”

“David Wilson,” Johnny said. “Was he alive when you found him?”

Freemantle’s head tilted, and he closed his eyes, thinking. “Put the gun down,” Jack whispered. Johnny hesitated. “You really think this man has Alyssa? You’re going to get somebody killed.”

Johnny let the muzzle settle until it pointed at the dusty floor. “Was broken man alive?”

Freemantle’s eyes stayed shut. “There was voices in the river. Whispers. Dandelion words.” He made a floating motion with his fingers. “I was so tired…”

“Voices?” Johnny keyed on the word. “Did the broken man say something? Anything?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You have to.”

The big hands turned palm up. “The crows was coming. I was scared.” They were a foot apart, the boy, the man. “I’d tell you if I could.” Freemantle lay down on the warm stone. “Maybe I’ll know in the morning. That happens sometimes.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry about your sister. I’m done now.”

Johnny stared at Freemantle. He stared until his legs went numb. He felt despair, like hunger, and when he finally turned, Freemantle was snoring.

Johnny put the gun on a shelf. He looked at beams and posts and bits of sharp-edged metal. He turned his face to the roof as a dark pit opened in his chest. He was torn, and then he was empty. The pit was a vacuum.

It was Jack who broke the silence. “Why is he scared of crows?”

“I think he hears the devil when the crows get close.”

“The devil?”

“He hears one voice. Why not the other?”

“What if it’s true?” Jack put his arms around his knees. He rocked on the trunk and couldn’t meet Johnny’s eyes. “What if he really hears God’s voice? What if he really hears… You know.”

“He doesn’t.”

“But what if?”

“Nobody does.”

Jack pulled his knees tighter. Dirt rimed his face. “I don’t like crows, either. Been scared of them since I was little. What if that’s why?”

“Come on, Jack.”

“You know what they call a group of crows?” His voice was small and strained.

Johnny knew the answer. “A murder,” he said. “A murder of crows.”

“Maybe there’s a reason for that.” Jack looked at Freemantle. “What if God sent him here for a reason, too?”

“Look, Jack. This guy killed two people because they let his daughter die in a hot car. If thinking God told him to do it makes living with that fact any easier, then I guess that’s what he had to do. The crows, the other voice… that’s just guilty conscience catching up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” They both stared. “But he knows something.”

“I’m scared, Johnny.”

Johnny’s eyes glittered. He watched Freemantle by the fire, nodded as the night grew thin.

“He knows something.”

Jack fell into a fitful sleep as wind sighed through the cracks, a small voice that, twice, gusted into something terrible. The fire burned low. Johnny moved from anger to grief to unwanted sleep that took him down hard. He dreamed of stinking wood and sharp, yellow eyes, of a hard fall through shattered limbs and of his sister’s hopeful smile. She squatted in the dirt of a low cellar: filthy skin, tatters for clothes. A single candle burned, and she looked up, startled. Is that you? she said, and Johnny bolted up with a scream trapped behind his teeth.

For that instant, he did not know where he was or what had happened, but he knew that something was wrong. He felt it in the close, hot air.

Something was wrong.

Levi Freemantle sat in the dirt, cross-legged, not three feet away. He was sheeted with the same sweat, shadows gray on his black skin. His hands were cupped in his lap, the pistol in his hands. He was staring at it, tilting it toward the stove. His finger found the trigger.

“It’s loaded,” Johnny said.

When Freemantle looked up, Johnny had the sense that his sickness had spread, that little awareness remained behind the vacant eyes. He turned the gun and gazed into the muzzle. The moment drew out. Johnny held out his hand. “May I have that?”

Freemantle ignored him. His hand swallowed the grip. “I got shot once.” Johnny could barely hear him. Freemantle touched the bullet scar on his stomach. “Little boys shouldn’t have guns.”

“Who shot you?”

“My wife.”

“Why?”

He looked at the gun. “Just ’cause.”

“May I have that?” Johnny leaned closer and Freemantle handed him the gun. It could have been an apple. Or a cup of water. Johnny took it, pointed it at Freemantle’s face. He was scared. The dream still had him. “Where’s my sister?”

The muzzle was eighteen inches from Freemantle’s eyes.

“Where is she?” Louder. Twelve inches. Ten. The gun, this time, was deathly still, but Freemantle was as unconcerned as an ox facing a bolt gun.

“When she shot me.” His voice was low. “She said it’s ’cause I was stupid.”

Six inches. One hand cupping the other, finger tight on the trigger.

“You shouldn’t call people stupid,” Freemantle said. “Calling people names is mean.”

Johnny hesitated, and Freemantle lay down. The gun still pointed at the empty place his eyes had been, his yellow-stained, bloodshot, slaughterhouse eyes.