Wings to the Kingdom

You believed there was a ghost, maybe. You believed that there was spookiness out there on the battlefield. Thirty-five thousand people died there, isn’t that what the park people had said? Thirty-five thousand people don’t die violently anyplace and not leave a stain of some kind.



Pete believed in stains. He believed in marks.



He believed in places that gave you uncomfortable feelings because bad things had happened; and he believed in ghosts, if it came down to it. Why not? Lots of people claimed they’d seen them, all over the world. Pete had never personally seen a lot of things, but he was pretty sure they existed somewhere.



He’d never seen a kiwi bird, for example.



He’d read about kiwi birds in sixth grade, in Mr. Viar’s biology class. Class had been held in a trailer classroom—one of the “temporary” buildings that stood for thirty years without air-conditioning, and never did much to educate students at all. There’d been a chapter on birds, though, and about what makes a bird a bird. The teacher had said it wasn’t flying, like Pete had thought it might be. Turned out, it was feathers that made a bird a bird. Even birds that can’t fly are still birds, not just rats with beaks. Inside the biology textbook there had been a drawing of a brown bird that looked like a guinea pig on stilts, with a long pointed nose. The caption underneath had said it was a kiwi bird, and it didn’t live anyplace in America. And even though it’d only been a drawing, not even a photograph, Pete had believed that the kiwi bird existed.



But this was different.



He’d heard stories about Green Eyes, and even though he’d never seen him personally, he’d believed them. But seeing the thing in person had been like meeting his first kiwi and finding out it was as big as a moose. Green Eyes was the most horrible thing Pete had ever heard of. He felt cheated by folklore’s understatement. “Green Eyes” sounded like something ephemeral and floating—spooky glowing orbs that hover and flutter and float, not anything like a monster.



What he’d seen, Pete reflected as he drove back up Sand Mountain, was something capable of doing real harm. This was a being that could grab, and choke, and pummel. It was something stronger than a man, and bigger than any man Pete had ever seen.



And it had chased him away.



One of Pete’s more personal failings had always been an inability to leave well enough alone. The thought that he’d been chased away did worse to his ego than the soiled pants he’d disguised with the gasoline stink. Pete was not the sort of man to be chased away from a prize, much less one that was owed him or his family.



And the fact that he’d been chased at all suggested there might be something really good to be found. No one gets chased away from nothing.



Maybe Green Eyes knew about the treasure, and was guarding it for himself. In all the old stories, all the best treasures were guarded by fearsome creatures. But then he remembered that the gold itself almost certainly wasn’t buried on the field, and this theory pretty much tanked.



Whether or not the beast was guarding anything was beside the point, anyway. Green Eyes was there. He was intimidating and possibly violent. Homicidal, even. And while Green Eyes was present on the battlefield, it seemed unlikely that Pete was going to get anywhere near the relics of his dead ancestor.



The trick was how to get rid of him.



When he realized this was all he needed to do, Pete brightened up some.



If he’d met the thing under different circumstances, his first instinct might have been to call the cops; but that course of action was clearly out of the question. Even if the cops believed him that something strange was going on out at the battlefield, what would they do? Arrest Green Eyes—assuming he was even catchable?



No, if anyone was going to nab the big bastard, it surely would’ve happened by now. If Pete’s recollection served him, Green Eyes had been hanging around at least since the original battle. Nothing lives that long by being easy to catch.



So the cops were absolutely out. They’d never follow up on a tip from a criminal, anyway. So he might as well assume that the normal mortal channels were going to be closed to him. But there had to be another way.



All the way home, he turned the possibilities over in his mind. The odds of him scaring Green Eyes off weren’t good, and besides, who knew what that thing was afraid of? Not Pete. The odds of killing him weren’t much better, or at least Pete didn’t think so. The creature was terrifically strong, and solid, but it didn’t feel like he was permanently solid. Pete wasn’t sure it would do any good to bring a gun.



A gun might be worth having, though. He mentally filed it away as something to try, if all else failed. But there had to be a better way. A more definite way.



This was going to require some serious thought.



Back at the homestead, Rudy was still up but on the verge of hitting the sack. The two men exchanged pleasantries—Rudy’s were polite and concerned, and Pete’s were largely white lies about the impending job at the foundry. They passed each other and retired to their respective sleeping quarters.



Pete dropped himself onto the squeaky, thin mattress and stared at the ceiling with his hands under the back of his head. He’d been blessed with one good idea, and if he was going to follow through, he was going to need a second.



It was too much to hope for, but that didn’t stop him from trying.



The next day, he went back to the library, but finding nothing helpful in the tiny, underfunded branch, he borrowed the car again and headed back down into the valley. He made a point of striking during broad daylight this time. He wanted another shot at the lady at the ranger’s desk. It didn’t matter if she looked at him like he was crazy.



He figured he couldn’t be the first person who’d ever asked her about it, and he was right. The same blond lady in the beige uniform was working when he stopped by, and she greeted him in a formal, salaried way, though she didn’t act like she remembered him.



The mention of the familiar lore subject brought a smile to her face, but it wasn’t an unkind one. “Oh yes, dear Old Green Eyes. We get lots of questions about him. There’s always someone writing a book or preparing to sneak onto grounds after hours looking for him.”



“Have you ever seen him yourself?” Pete asked, trying to sound casual and succeeding more than not.



“Me? No. Well, I thought I did once, maybe. But Mel over in the gift shop said that if I only thought I saw him, I must’ve seen something else. He says that once you’ve gotten a look at him, you never wonder about it again.”



Pete was tempted to agree with her coworker, but he kept the temptation to himself. “What’s he doing here anyway, do you think?” he asked instead.



She tipped her head in a shrug, her heavily hair-sprayed bangs refraining from budging. “Who knows? Some people think he just guards the battlefield and protects it from trouble. A lot of people think it had something to do with the Cherokees out here, like he used to be some kind of spirit guide, or whatever. I don’t know. But if you talk to Mel—the gift shop manager—he could tell you about some of their old legends.”



“There are Cherokee legends about Green Eyes?”



“Sort of. It depends on who you ask.”



“You told me to ask Mel,” Pete said. “What would he tell me?”



“He’d tell you that there are half a dozen myths tied into everyone’s favorite battlefield spook. One of his favorites is about a strange creature with a glowing jewel on its head—I think he thinks that’s where we get the leftover ‘glowing green eyes’ bit from.”



It took Pete a minute to picture the connection, but when he did he nodded. “That’s not a real far jump. Glowing jewels to glowing eyes. But you say this like you think maybe your buddy Mel is full of malarkey. If that’s what he’d tell me, what would you tell me?”



She sat forward in her chair and folded her arms on the counter between them. “I’d tell you that it’s a bunch of nonsense, but it’s useful nonsense if it keeps idiot kids off the fields at night when we can’t watch them so good. If what it takes to keep the place safe is a story about a green-eyed haint, well, that’s nothing but all right with me.”



A quick inspection of the gift shop failed to turn up anyone named Mel. Pete didn’t consider it too big of a loss, though. The Indian angle had given him an idea.



Back in the pen, he’d known a guy, another nonviolent offender like himself, who claimed to be part Cherokee and considered himself an authority on all things Native American. His back was covered with an elaborate eagle tattoo, and his arms were decorated with bear totems and symbols like that. He’d made a dreamcatcher in one of Silverdale’s craft classes, and hung it up above his bed.



He even prayed to the Great Spirit, or some such shit.



Pete didn’t begrudge people their beliefs, but like everyone else, he thought Orin was a jackass. Of course, that didn’t have anything to do with the guy’s professed beliefs. It had to do with the fact that Orin was a redheaded Irish guy with green eyes and freckles.



Orin always said being Indian was the same as being black, and all it took was a drop to make you dark underneath. If that was true, then it was a mighty slim drop that was swimming through Orin’s veins.



But right about now, Pete didn’t care if Orin did or did not have a drop of Cherokee blood worth claiming. Orin knew lots about Indians, and Pete needed an expert.



Orin had gotten out of Silverdale a year ahead of Pete, and if Pete knew Chattanooga, Orin would be right where he’d said he was never going back to.



Up on the north side of town there was a bar backed up against the big rock ridge everyone calls Signal Mountain. The bar was called Kilroy’s, and to call it a hole-in-the-wall would be rude to respectable holes everywhere.



Orin’s father owned Kilroy’s, and he worked Kilroy’s, and he had every intention of passing it down to his son…but Orin had no intention of accepting it. Except, he always found his way back there eventually. One day, his father would probably die and Orin would probably inherit it, and then he’d probably sell it as fast as he could and blow the money on a preposterous get-rich-quick scheme.