The Last Child

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Freemantle was still talking, voice rising over the wind and the engine. The same words. Over and over. “This guy is freaking me out.” Jack turned up the radio and started punching buttons. Every station he found was for gospel or full-time preaching. He turned the knob, muttering under his breath; and Johnny heard him say, “… shut up, shut up…” He said it mad, and he said it kind of scared. He fiddled with the tuner until he’d been from one end of the dial to the other. “Can’t get shit out here.” He turned off the radio, leaned back, and Johnny steered for the trail out. They followed it until it turned into a road, where Jack opened the gate, then closed it behind them. He kept an eye on Freemantle, but the big man had finally gone still and quiet, fingers curled. “He’s out again.”

Johnny looked back once, then put the truck in gear. They rolled onto slick blacktop, a snake of road with a single yellow stripe worn through to black. Ahead, a car was parked on the side of the road. It was almost lost in the heat, but Johnny saw it pull out, turn across the road and speed away. “Want me to drop you off somewhere?”

Jack looked tempted, so Johnny tried to ignore the way his friend’s face twisted, the way his right hand beat a hard rhythm on the side of the door. Jack was scared. If he wanted out, he should get out; but when Jack finally spoke, it was a verbal shrug. “Still early,” he said.

And that was that.

Jack was in.

They made their way back toward town, out of the emptiness, past the old mansions and the golf courses, then west to another lonely stretch of nothing that pushed against the back of Johnny’s house. Johnny found the narrow gash in the long row of pines and turned back onto dirt. Jack opened another gate, closed it, and they drove into the abandoned tobacco farm. They passed through the thin row of trees and went left when the road split. It dipped once, then rose and cut back right, to where the tobacco barn sat in the scrub. Johnny rounded the bend and stopped the truck.

A single crow sat on the peak of the roof. It opened its beak and three more landed beside it. Johnny felt Jack tense beside him, saw his fingers touch the shirt where the silver cross lay against his skin. “Just relax.” Jack leaned forward to stare up through the windshield. A fifth crow flapped onto the roof. “There’s wild millet in the fields,” Johnny said. “Blueberries, too. Lots of acorns. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“You’ve seen them like this before? Here? All still like that?”

Johnny studied the birds. He’d never seen crows at the barn before, not like this. They were so still, all of them, marble eyes fixed on the truck, feathers shining like black glass. “They’re just birds,” he said, and opened the door. He picked up a stone and skimmed it at the roof. It clattered a few feet from the birds. They stared for a few seconds more, and when he stooped for another stone they lifted as a group and dropped away into the distant trees. “See.”

Jack climbed out. They lowered the tailgate and roused Freemantle enough to get him out of the truck and into the barn. It took awhile, but they got him stretched out on the floor. “He smells worse,” Jack said.

“Fever’s still climbing.”

“Now what?”

They were standing outside, trees wind-tossed and green across the scrub, earth blackened where their fire had burned two nights before. Johnny pointed. “The house is past that big rock, between those trees. Hop a creek and you’ll see it.”

Freemantle’s voice came from inside the barn. “Hop a creek and you’ll see…”

The boys waited but Freemantle said nothing else. He lay still in the gloom of the barn. “Are you going to talk to your mom?”

Johnny looked in at Freemantle. “I can’t think of anything else to do. Maybe she can talk to Detective Hunt. I don’t know, man. If she’s not there, I’ll bring some clean water and food. Medicine if we have any. I just need a minute. One minute where he’ll talk to me.”

“That’s no kind of plan, Johnny.”

He shrugged. “If I can’t make something happen soon, we’ll call an ambulance, the cops, whatever.”

Jack dug the toe of one sneaker into the still-damp earth. “What if he dies? That’s heavy stuff, man.”

Johnny stared into the gray interior, said nothing.

“What about me?” Jack said. “What do I do?”

“Somebody needs to stay here.”

“I want to go with you.”

“No.”

“He’s asleep anyway, Johnny. What if you get in trouble? There won’t be anybody to help you.”

Jack’s words made sense, but Johnny knew, in truth, that his friend was scared. He pulled the gun out of the truck, held it out, and Jack took it. “Just stay out of his reach,” Johnny said.

Jack stared into the barn and swallowed hard. “You owe me,” he said. “I want you to remember that.” But Johnny was already walking. Jack watched him slip into the trees and fade, then he turned for the barn and willed himself to step inside.

Two minutes later, a lone crow settled on the roof.

Then another.