A Hidden Place

There was no response. An eyelid fluttered… unless he had imagined it.

Travis moved closer through the brittle weeds. The sunshine was oblique now and did not warm him. “Bone,” he said, bending over. “Wake up. A

And Bone’s huge fist lashed out.

Travis felt it thump into him, lift him off his feet; felt the astonishing momentum carry him backward.

He sat up slowly.

The fist had struck him squarely on the chest. It might have broken a rib … he felt a constriction as he gasped for his breath.

“Bone,” he said faintly.

The creature stood up. It loomed, a yard away from him, huge as a gantry tower. The eyes, Travis thought. They were like A

Your own deepest, hidden face… the words mocked him. Not this, he thought. Not this thing. Wounded, betrayed, hardly human for its wounding and betrayal…

Carefully, Travis stood up.

They faced each other.

“Bone,” Travis said.

The creature looked at him.

“Bone, A

And he stepped forward.

Bone raised his hand. Blue fire licked from his fingertips.

“They hurt you,” Travis said. A part of him had long since panicked; he was not sure where the words came from. Somewhere deep inside him. “They hurt you. I know. You trusted them and they hurt you. I know. Let me help.” He took a step forward and thought involuntarily of his mother, his mother who had shamed him, dying and looking at him with an expression he could only interpret as reproach. He had hated her then. Her ravaged body had cried out for his pity and he had withheld it: she was dying, of course she was dying, dying for her sins, for the hideous sins she had committed behind his back. An old, old bargain, Travis thought, and felt a surge of guilt like electricity in him: Christ God, could he truly have been so cruel?—hating her when she was dying, hating her because she was dying?

He looked at Bone. Maybe A

Trembling, Travis reached out toward the monster.

Shortly before dusk Liza Burack answered the timid knock at the front door and found Faye Wilcox shivering on the veranda. “Why, Faye,” she said, and was suddenly and obscurely afraid: Faye had lost the Baptist Women’s election, Faye was here to exact some strange kind of revenge…

But Faye said, “May I come in?” and it was so much like a plea, a prayer, that Liza could only nod.

Creath was still in the parlor, the lights off, dusk thickening about him like a viscous fluid. Liza steered Faye Wilcox past him and into the kitchen. Faye sat at the small Formica table, haphazardly dressed, her hair in loops and tangles down her broad back, and it was a moment before Liza remembered to say, “Coffee?”

“No. Thank you.”

Liza stood uneasily with her spine against the kitchen counter. She was conscious of the ticking of the clock. “Faye … if it’s about the election. …”

“Election?” The Wilcox woman seemed not to understand. “Election—no. It’s much more serious than that.” She adjusted her smudged bifocals. “Nancy’s gone. Did you know that?”

“Nancy? Gone where?”

“Where he is, I think. Where Travis is. You know, I pray they both get away safely. Truly, I pray for that. Is it un-Christian, Liza, that I should want them both to leave? But if they stay here they will be hurt. Worse.” She looked at Liza directly. “It’s tonight, you know.”

“I don’t understand… tonight? You mean the men who are meeting together?”

“Meeting together? Do you believe that’s what they’re doing? Is that why Creath is cleaning his rifle, Liza?” Faye Wilcox put her plump hands palms downward on the table. Her lips were pursed. “They are a posse. A mob.”

Vigilante, Liza thought. But— “You can’t know that.”

“How could I not? The rumor is all about town. But you don’t need a rumor to know.”

“But Travis? Surely Travis has left?”

“I believe he has not. Not while Nancy is here.”

Liza said nothing, only gripped the beveled edges of the kitchen counter. Faye stood up suddenly. “Your own sister’s child! How can you be so hard!”

Travis is lost, she thought dizzily. She had written him out of the book of her heart. But she thought of Creath with his rifle … of the other men with theirs. “Faye—”

“No,” Faye Wilcox said bleakly. “It was stupid to come here.” She went to the kitchen door and opened it. The hinges squealed; a breeze danced inside. There was the smell of woodsmoke. It was what Liza had always loved about autumn, that melancholy perfume on the air, the smell of winter stalking somewhere beyond the horizon. A dry leaf, wind-borne, swirled over the kitchen floor. “Pray for them,” Faye said. “Please do at least that much.”

Liza swallowed hard and nodded. Faye Wilcox closed the door behind her.

When the time came for Creath to leave the house, the fear Liza felt was for him as much as for Travis: it had lodged in her breast like a living thing. Outside, two big sedans pulled up and sounded their horns. Creath rose from his chair with glacial slowness and went to the door. His rifle was in his hand.

Liza took his arm. “Creath, don’t go.” He turned to stare at her and she fixed her eyes willfully on his red-checked shirt. His old hunting shirt. “It doesn’t matter what they want. Stay. Something bad might happen … I don’t want you to get hurt.”

But he pulled his arm free. The oily metallic smell of the gun was chokingly strong. Liza felt her eyes fill with tears.

“This is bought,” Creath said, and she knew at once that he did not mean the gun in his hand but the whole of it, the men waiting outside, the Baptist Women, the tent revival: all this skein of things and people into which she, Liza, had purposefully woven them; and she took a step backward, her breath catching in her throat. “Bought and paid for,” Creath said solemnly. “We can’t take it back now.”

No, Liza thought, it ca

But the cars were pulling away now, engines growling like animals against the night, and Liza faltered on the old boards of the veranda, alone, clutching her white knit sweater about her throat and thinking: He was right. This is bought. Bought and paid for.

Nancy brought the porcelain bowl to A

“Travis is attempting to.”

Nancy sat back, considering it. The sun was gone. On cloudless blue days like this, the darkness came down quickly. The sky beyond the open door of the switchman’s shack was giving up the last of its glow, and she used the time to light a candle. She was surprised to find that her hand was trembling.

She turned to A