Wings to the Kingdom

I didn’t have any better ideas, anyway, so I left my books on the counter by the computer monitor and went back to my car. The coffee shop where Karl usually lurked was closed on Sundays, but I knew what his backup would be.



I tracked him down a few blocks away in the Bluff View Art District, up a hill and around a corner from his usual spot. He was parked with Cowboy in a pretty flagstone courtyard with an artsy stone fountain. The pair of them were presiding over a game of chess taking place outside the auxiliary coffee shop.



He waved when he saw me, inviting me over to the table. The chess players and the dog ignored me, but Karl was as chipper as ever.



“How you doing there, girl?”



“Fat and happy, darling. Have you got a minute?”



“For you? I’ve got all day. Pull up a chair.”



I did as instructed, and I wasted no time.



“Karl, this may sound like a weird question, but I thought you might know the answer.”



“Ask away,” he invited, shifting his chair to make me a little more room.



“It’s about Moccasin Bend. I heard someplace that it used to be—” I hesitated, because I felt stupid saying it out loud where the whole world could hear me. “Did it really used to be an Indian burial ground?”



One of the chess players cocked an eyebrow and nodded. Karl did the same. “Back in the day, it was a sacred site for the Cherokee people. There was a lot of controversy over the government putting the hospital there. It’s protected ground, or so they say. Like a park, I think. But once upon a time, yes, it was holy territory.”



“You’re joking.”



“’Fraid not.”



“So what you’re telling me is that the government built…a mental hospital…on top of a sacred Indian burial ground?”



“Yes ma’am.”



I blinked slowly and shook my head. “Had these people never seen a horror movie? Never read any Stephen King?”



“Apparently not. Why’re you so interested in Moccasin Bend all of a sudden anyway, kid?”



I balked, unsure of how much to share. “I heard something strange was going on over there, that’s all. Someone I know who worked out there heard some stories.” That was more true than not; Malachi had lived there for years, and I knew they’d put him to work in some menial capacity.



Both of the chess players laughed, even as one of them lost a bishop. The guy playing white looked up at me and said, “No one ever works out there long without gaining a story or two. It’s like working at the battlefield.”



“Funny you should make that connection,” I mumbled, but Karl heard me.



“You picked up something about Old Green Eyes?” he asked, lowering his voice just enough to make everyone around our table lean back and strain to hear us.



“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”



“Then what would you say?”



“I’d say that the world’s a funny place, Karl. And for now, I’d leave it at that.”



7



Rising Again



SAND MOUNTAIN, ALABAMA, SEVEN WEEKS EARLIER



Pete Buford was thirty-two years old when he was released from the Silverdale Correctional Facility. They turned him loose with a regular set of clothes, and his uncle Rudy picked him up to take him back up Sand Mountain to Henegar, Alabama, from whence he’d originally come.



Two women were conspicuously absent from his home-coming.



One of them, the girl he was once going to marry, had mailed him a Dear John letter two years previously; and the other had died of a heart attack a month after he’d gone in. Pete still thought the whole thing had been terrifically unfair. It should’ve gone the other way around, he thought. Allie should have been the one to bite it, and his mother should’ve been there to make him chicken dumplings to welcome him back to freedom.



As it was, no one was waiting at home and there would be no dumplings, though Rudy was kind enough to run by the KFC drive-through and pick up a bucket of the Colonel’s finest.



They talked a little. Mostly it was idle chitchat about what had become of the house and who had made off with what after Pete’s mother had died. Rudy admitted that while he’d kept the place up as best he could, it wasn’t in the greatest shape.



“Needs a new roof, for one thing,” he said. “I’m running out of pots for when it rains. And you can’t just let it fall wherever it wants. That floor’s old enough, and the wood’s getting weak in places.”



“I was going to fix it for her,” Pete mumbled.



“I remember that.”



Pete had been going to do a lot of things in the new millennium, but he’d only managed to follow through on the one that got him sent down the river. It was his dumb sister’s boyfriend’s idea. The whole scheme was that loser’s fault.



Brady, the chump his sister had been hanging on at the time, he’d heard about a way to make shit-tons of money driving stolen cars up to Canada and back. It had something to do with crossing the border and getting them reregistered, so they could be resold legally in the States. The plan had sounded a little complicated, but Pete hadn’t asked too many questions because he was afraid of looking stupid.



Everyone said the plan was brilliant and foolproof, so Pete didn’t argue when Everyone stood up to shake hands.



Ten years, the judge declared when they caught him in the hot Cadillac Escalade, but Everyone said he’d never serve it all, and on that particular occasion Everyone had been right. They’d turned him loose in four and a half—partly because he’d been good and partly because the county was running out of room. Moving stolen property around wasn’t a violent act; and with that in mind, the State of Tennessee had paroled him in favor of incarcerating some guy who killed little boys and dressed up in their clothes while finger-painting with the contents of their stomachs.



Despite his issues with the State of Tennessee, Pete had to admit they’d made a good judgment call on that one.



Pete might have driven a stolen Escalade through Murfreesboro with intent to take it across state lines, and he might have had a joint on him at the time, and he might even have tried to run from the cops for a few miles before wrecking the Caddy against a hotel manager’s office…but he hadn’t killed any little boys to make art with their innards, and he wasn’t likely to, either.



All Pete wanted to do was go home.



Despite Rudy’s warnings about the house’s condition, Pete didn’t think it looked much different than the last time he’d seen it. Leaky roof, battered porch, and all, it was a sight for sore eyes.



A big brown dog sleeping on the porch lifted its head when Rudy’s battered old Nova rumbled up into the driveway. The dog thumped its tail up and down a few times and yawned, then climbed to its feet and stretched.



“That’s not Digger,” Pete observed. “Where’s my dog?”



Rudy shook his head. “No, that’s Princess. I’m real sorry—I didn’t realize you didn’t know, but I guess nobody told you. Digger got hit by a car not long after your mother died. He was a good dog, though. I liked him. I liked having him here when I first moved in; he was the only one who wasn’t calling up yelling at me because Aunt Somebody-or-another took your mother’s something-or-other, and didn’t I know Sue would’ve wanted someone else to have it? I swear and be damned.”



“Man.” He said it as a vague, general curse.



“Yeah,” his uncle agreed. “But for what it’s worth, I did like that dog. I took care of him, but he was restless once you were gone and Sue died. I felt real bad about it.”



They simultaneously closed their car doors and approached the smallish yellow house with the wide gray porch.



“I picked up Princess at the county fair. Some kid was giving away free puppies, and I thought how it’d be nice to have a dog around again, so I took one. She’s mostly bloodhound, I think, and the rest is just a little of ’dis, and a little of ’dat.”



Princess snuffled her large head against Pete’s hand and deemed him worthy of a lick. She barked at Rudy, and he gave her a rough ear rubbing that delighted her. “I know she’s a little ugly,” Rudy said, gently slapping his hand against the dog’s side. “But she’s all right.”



“She’s not that ugly. Not as ugly as Digger was.”



“I wasn’t going to say that out of respect for the dead, but you may be right at that. The ugly ones make the best dogs—I don’t care what anyone says—and I don’t understand the people who breed them to look at them. But come on in. I’ll get you a Coke if you want one.”



“I’ll take one, if you don’t mind.”



“I don’t mind. And I need for you to know, that whatever the lawyer papers say this house is as much yours as mine. It was your home long before I took it on, and it’s your home as long as you need for it to be.”



“Thanks, Uncle Rudy.”



“You know, I didn’t move any of your stuff, either. It’s all back there in your room. I know you were packing up to move out with Allie when all the bad things happened, but I didn’t move any of it and I didn’t let your sister take it, either.”



“She tried?”



“Yeah, she tried. But I told her that stuff wasn’t hers, and she couldn’t have it. It was halfway her fault anyhow, what happened to you. Her fault and Brady’s.”



Pete appreciated the sentiment, but he knew better and it only made him sad. “No, Uncle Rudy. No one made me do a damn thing. Laura’s a bitch and more, but it wasn’t her fault—just her dumb idea. She’ll get hers someday.”



Rudy stood before the fireplace and watched his nephew closely for a moment. “That’s a good attitude to have about it. I think maybe you’ll come out okay yet. Have you got any thoughts about where you might want to work once you get settled in?”



He stared at the door to his mother’s bedroom, and then over to the door that marked his own.