Wings to the Kingdom

I had thought all the cannonballs in the pyramids were welded together, but I’ve been wrong before. Dana had found a stray shell and was trying to lift it. They’re smaller than you might expect, only about the size of a toy bowling ball, but a whole lot heavier than they look.



I worked my fingers under one end while Dana worked her fingers under the other, and between us we shimmied it over to the window. Off in the not-too-distant distance, the digging man slid off the road into the grass, either missing the sidewalk or not knowing it was there. He might have been tracking us by acoustics, in which case he was in for a mighty damp surprise before reaching us.



A splash declared that he’d found the creek, and the ensuing clatter as he worked his way up the short banks told us we were running out of time.



“One,” I said, and swung my arms out.



Dana worked with me. “Two,” she declared, helping me pick up the pace.



“Three!” We said it together, not bothering to keep it down.



We released the cannonball, and it pitched forward by the weight of its own inertia, plunging through the glass. Immediately, a ferociously loud alarm sounded—a violent clanging that matched my concept of a firehouse bell.



“Now what?” Dana shouted over the din.



I grabbed her wrist, and my grip slid down to catch on her hand. For what felt like the one millionth time that evening, without any destination in mind, we ran.



14



Aftermath



By the time the police arrived, Dana and I were inside the visitors’ center, hiding behind the big, circular desk area that the rangers sit at during the day. I’d initially climbed over the counter because I thought maybe I’d find a weapon, or something, but there was no such luck to be had. The most exciting thing we found behind the counter was a Playboy magazine stuffed inside a historical journal.



The cops arrived within three minutes of us busting out the window, swarming the joint. We stood up and threw our hands in the air as soon as we heard them. Dana started crying.



We were interviewed, collectively and separately, for several hours. Jamie had showed up back at Ted’s, where he’d called the authorities as promised; but it took them hearing the formal alarm before they’d sent anybody out.



I was worried about Benny for a while. He seemed to have vanished, and I was hard-pressed to tell anyone where he’d run off to, apart from a general direction where he might have gone. Someone with a flashlight found him about an hour later. He’d face-planted into a tree back in the far side of the park and knocked himself out cold.



After the ambulance had finished with him, he held an ice pack against his forehead and sat down next to me and Jamie. We sat on the steps of the visitors’ center beside the big cannons and, between us, got most of the story out of our heads and into the cops’ notebooks.



Thirty-five minutes after I called home, Lu and Dave arrived at the battlefield. You just have to know the local geography to know how impressive that little feat was. To make it from the top of Signal Mountain to north Georgia in that sort of time, well, they’re lucky all the cops were down where we were and not running speed traps along the way.



I would have felt warm and fuzzy about their concern if they hadn’t been so quiet once they got here.



Screaming I could have dealt with. Yelling would have been a relief. Instead, they kept their collective cool and chatted with the cops, confirming my address and other assorted contact information.



Both of them were dressed, though rumpled. Lu’s socks didn’t match, and Dave wore a determinedly ugly plaid thing tossed over a red T-shirt that said JOE’S CRAB SHACK.



Dana wandered off with someone in a uniform, and I didn’t see her again for the rest of the night.



Looking up at Lu and Dave, I wondered if I was going to be okay.



Dave shot Jamie and Benny the sort of glare that is usually reserved for incoming suitors, and the guys dived off in opposite directions as if on cue. My aunt and uncle sat down on either side of me, replacing them.



For the moment, all the cops were off doing other things—milling around in that sort of way that implied that I wasn’t allowed to go yet, but they were finished talking to me for the time being.



“So,” Lu opened the floor. “Dancing, eh?”



“I didn’t tell you I was dancing,” I pointed out. “I just said I was going to be out late.”



“Perhaps you should’ve corrected our assumption.”



“Yeah.” I stared down at the step between my knees, feeling like a little kid.



“You really had us worried,” Dave piped up, staring straight ahead, just like I was.



“No I didn’t,” I argued. “You didn’t know there was any trouble until the cops called you in. From where I’m sitting, I was sparing you two worry. That was the point of not correcting your assumption, anyway.”



“Thanks,” they said together, neither one of them sounding sincere.



We sat in a row—monkeys Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Speak No Evil, respectively.



Lu stared off at one of the two ambulances. “Your friends okay?”



“They’re okay. Benny knocked his head on a tree, but he’ll live.”



Dave dropped his head into his hands, propping his forehead up with his elbows on his knees. “Eden, somebody died out here tonight.”



“I didn’t mean it that way. It was a poor choice of words.”



One of the other ambulances was closing up, and through the square window in the back I saw Dana’s blond head. I was miserable, but there was no fixing anything now, so I’d be better off if I could keep my mouth shut.



Lu leaned around me, noticing the hole in my shirt for the first time, and the dark stain around it. “What’s this?” she asked, and my mood sank even further.



“Nothing,” I muttered.



“Nothing?” She had Dave’s attention then, and they leaned in to poke at my chest.



“Well, you know. I’ve been running around in the dark, in the woods, and I’m sure I’ve finished the evening with more than a couple of scrapes. Bruises, and the like. It’s no big deal.”



Dave’s voice lifted an octave. “No big deal? Look at this crusty mess. You were bleeding.”



If it had been any other time, he’d have been answered with a menstrual joke. But he was Dave, and not someone else, so I saved it. It occurred to me that I needed to find a different way to deal with stress than resorting to bad humor. But it had been a rough night, and I was too tired to change my coping mechanism now.



“Leave me alone, y’all. I need a shower, my bed, and half a box of Band-Aids. And I’ll be fine.”



“Let me see it,” Lu demanded, and I let her.



I tugged the neckline of my shirt down to reveal a flat white bandage, because I’d already run through the paramedic gaunt-let. I love Lu and Dave, but I know them too well to let them get the drop on me. I’d had the patch put on before they could arrive and see the weirdness for themselves.



It was just one more part of the secret I’d carried out of the swamp in Florida. Getting hurt was bad enough; but they’d be even more alarmed if they knew how quickly the wound had closed itself.



“What’s underneath that?” Dave asked, pointing now instead of poking. There’s something so formal and official about medical tape; I knew good and well that neither one of them was going to make me take it off to satisfy their curiosity.



“A scratch.”



“A scratch?”



“A bad scratch. But it didn’t need stitches or anything, so it wasn’t that bad.”



I didn’t mention how the paramedic had grilled me—how he’d called the ambulance driver over to look at me too. I didn’t tell them how they hadn’t believed me, at first; and I didn’t say how they’d put their fingers through the hole in the shirt to convince themselves that the half-healed wound they found there was only an hour old.



It was weirder than they knew, and stranger than I was prepared to tell them.



I meant to change the subject, but Dave beat me to it.



“Is that my old camera?”



“Um. Yes.”



“Is it broken?”



“I…I don’t think so, no. Can we just go home now? I’ll explain everything after some sleep, and I think they’re mostly done with us here.”



Lu looked around at the visitors’ center parking lot—as far as she could see it, anyway. The fog had let up some as dawn was approaching, but it was still asserting a healthy presence.



“Where are you parked?” she asked.



“Back by Ted’s place.”



As if on cue, Ted appeared beside us. He was not perfectly coifed, but he was surprisingly well put-together for a man who’d been roused before dawn for an emergency phone call. He always was, though. There was something aesthetically mercenary about him that you either loved or found repulsive.



“And of course”—he inserted himself into our conversation, extending a hand to Lulu—“your lovely niece is welcome to leave it on my property for the time being.”



“Forget it,” I said.



“We’ll drive you home,” Dave said, patting my leg.



But I wasn’t about to leave the Death Nugget thirty-five miles away from its driveway of preference. “No way. I’m not hurt. I’m tired as hell, but so are you two—and I’ve still got leftover adrenaline to keep me awake. Besides, I’ve got to run these two nutters home.” I tipped my head at the boys.



Benny was still holding an ice pack to his head, and Jamie had a rat’s nest of leaf litter stuck in his curly mane.



Lu looked them up and down, noticing for the first time that they were alone. Both of them looked back at her with perfect dejection.



Neither one of them had summoned any family assistance. Jamie’s mother was old enough to be his grandmother and in poor health, so it didn’t surprise me that he hadn’t given her a call. And Benny was on the outs with all of his relations, save a much older brother. I didn’t know the details and I’d never asked. It was none of my business. If he wanted me to know, he’d tell me.