"Oh. Gosh, you"re gonna have a wet ride home."
"I don"t mind."
"Wouldn"t be good," he said, "if you had an accident on the way. You know, with that rain comin" down so hard, a car could hit you, you could go down in a ditch and..." His smile had slipped. Now it crept back. "Well, it wouldn"t be good."
"No sir."
"I suppose you"re wonderin" why I wanted to see you?"
I nodded.
"You know I was on the panel that judged the writin" contest? I enjoyed your story. Yessir, it deserved a prize." He picked up a briar pipe and popped open the can of tobacco. "It surely did. You"re the youngest person ever to win a plaque in the contest." I watched his fingers as he began to fill the pipe"s bowl with bits of tobacco. "I checked the records. You"re the youngest by far. That ought to make you and your folks very proud."
"I guess so."
"Oh, you don"t have to be so modest, Cory! I sure couldn"t write like that when I was your age! Nosir! I was good at math, but English wasn"t my subject." He produced a pack of matches from his pocket, struck one, and touched it to the tobacco in his pipe. Blue smoke bloomed around his mouth. His eyes were on me. "You"ve got a keen imagination," he said. "That part in your story about seein" somebody standin" in the woods across the road. I liked that part. How"d you happen to come up with that?"
"It really-" Happened, I was going to say. But before I could, somebody knocked at the door. Mrs. Axford looked in. "Mayor Swope?" she said. "Lord, it"s pourin" cats and dogs! I couldn"t even get to my car, and I just had my hair fixed yesterday! Do you have an umbrella I might borrow?"
"I believe so, Inez. Look in that closet over there."
She opened a closet and rummaged around in it. "Should be one in the corner," Mayor Swope told her. "Smells awfully musty in here!" Mrs. Axford said. "I believe somethin"s mildewed!"
"Yeah, gotta clean it out one of these days," he said.
Mrs. Axford came out of the closet clutching an umbrella. But her nose was wrinkled, and in her other hand she was clutching two articles of clothing that were white with mildew. "Look at these!" she said. "I believe mushrooms are growin" in here!"
My heart seized up.
Mrs. Axford was holding a mildew-blotched overcoat and a hat that appeared to have been run through a washer and wringer.
And in the band of that battered hat was a silver disc and a crumpled green feather.
"Whew! Just smell it!" Mrs. Axford made a face that might"ve stopped a clock. "What"re you keepin" this stuff for?"
"That"s my favorite hat. Was, at least. It got ruined the night of the flood, but I thought I could get it fixed. And I"ve had that raincoat for fifteen years."
"No wonder you won"t let me clean out your closet! What else is in here?"
"Never you mind! Run on, now! Leroy"s waitin" at home for you!"
"You want me to throw these in the garbage on my way out?"
"No, Lord no!" Mayor Swope said. "Just put "em back in there and close the door!"
"I swear," Mrs. Axford said as she returned the items to the closet, "you men are worse about hangin" on to old clothes than little babies with their blankets." She closed the door with a firm thunk. "There. I can still smell that mildew, though."
"It"s all right, Inez. You go on home, and be careful on the road."
"I will." She gave me a quick glance, and then she walked out of the office with the umbrella.
I don"t think I had drawn a breath during that entire exchange. Now I pulled one in, and I shivered as the air burned my lungs.
"Now, Cory," Mayor Swope said, "where were we? Oh yes: the man across the road. How"d you come up with that?"
"I... I..." The green-feathered hat was in a closet ten feet from me. Mayor Swope was the man who"d worn it that night when the floodwaters had raged in the streets of Bruton. "I... never said it was a man," I answered. "I just said... it was somebody standin" there."
"Well, that was a nice touch. I"ll bet that was an excitin" mornin" for you, wasn"t it?" He reached into another pocket, and when his hand came into view there was a small silver blade in it.
It was the knife I"d seen in his hand, that night when I was afraid he was going to sneak up behind my dad and stab him in the back for what he"d seen at Saxon"s Lake.
"I wish I could write," Mayor Swope said. He turned the blade around. On its other end was a blunt little piece of metal, which he used to tamp the burning tobacco down in his pipe. "I"ve always liked mysteries."
"Me too," I managed to rasp.
He stood up, rain pelting the windows behind him. Lightning zigzagged over Zephyr, and the lights suddenly flickered. Thunder crashed. "Oh my," Mayor Swope said. "That was a little too close, wasn"t it?"
"Yes sir." My hands were about to break the armrests of my chair.
"I want you," he said, "to wait right here for a minute. There"s somethin" I want to show you, and I think it"ll explain things." He crossed the room, the pipe clenched between his teeth and a scrawl of smoke behind him, and he went out into the area where Mrs. Axford"s desk was. He left the door ajar, and I could hear him opening the drawer of a filing cabinet.
My gaze went to the closet.
The green feather was in there. So close. What if I was to pluck it from its hat and compare it to the green feather I"d found on the sole of my shoe? If the feathers matched, what then?
I had to move fast if I was going to move at all.
The filing cabinet"s drawer closed. Another opened. "Just a minute!" Mayor Swope called to me. "It"s not where it"s supposed to be!"
I had to go. Right now.
I got up on rubbery legs and opened the closet. The reek of mildewed cloth hit me in the face like a damp slap. But the coat and the hat were there on the floor, nudged up into a corner. I heard the drawer slide shut. I grasped the feather and tugged at it. It wouldn"t come loose.
Mayor Swope was coming back into the office. My heart was a cold stone in my throat. Thunder boomed and the rain slammed against the windows, and I grasped that green feather and jerked it and this time it tore loose from the hatband. It was mine.
"Cory? What"re you doin" in-"
Lightning flared, so close you could hear the sizzle. The lights went out, and the next crack of thunder shook the windows.
I stood in the dark, the green feather in my hand and Mayor Swope in the doorway.
"Don"t move, Cory," he said. "Say somethin"."
I didn"t. I edged toward the wall and pressed my back against it.
"Cory? Come on, now. Let"s don"t play games." I heard him shut the door. A floorboard creaked, ever so quietly. He was moving. "Let"s sit down and talk, Cory. There"s somethin" very important you need to understand."
Outside, the clouds had gone almost black, and the room was a dungeon. I thought I could see his tall, thin shape gliding slowly toward me across the Persian carpet. I was going to have to get through him to the door.
"No need for this," Mayor Swope said, his voice trying to sound calm and rea.s.suring. It had the same hollow ring as Mr. Hargison"s false voice. "Cory?" I heard him release a long, resigned sigh. "You know, don"t you?"
Darned right I knew.
"Where are you, son? Talk to me."
I didn"t dare.
"How"d you find out?" he asked. "Just tell me that."
Lightning flickered and hissed. By its split-second glare I could see Mayor Swope, white as a zombie, standing at the center of the room with pipe smoke drifting around him like a wraith. Now my heart was really hammering; a spark of lightning had jumped off something metal clenched in his right hand.
"I"m sorry you found out, Cory," Mayor Swope said. "I didn"t want you to get hurt."
I couldn"t help it; in my panic, I blurted it out: "I wanna go home!"
"I can"t let you do that," he said, and his shape began moving toward me through the electric-charged dark. "You understand, don"t you?"
I understood. My legs responded first; they propelled me across the Persian carpet toward the way out, and my lungs snagged a breath and my hand gripped the green feather. I don"t know how near I pa.s.sed to him, but I got to the door unhindered and tried to twist the doork.n.o.b but my palm was slick with cold sweat. He must"ve heard the rattle, because he said, "Stop!" and I could sense him coming after me. Then the doork.n.o.b turned and the door opened and I shot through it as if from the barrel of a cannon. I collided with Mrs. Axford"s desk, and I heard the photographs clatter as they fell.
"Cory!" he said, louder. "No!"
I caromed off the side of the desk, a human pinball in motion. I went into the row of chairs, striking my right knee on a hard edge. My lips let out a cry of pain, and as I tried to find the door into the hallway it seemed that the chairs had come to malevolent life and were blocking my way. A cold chill skittered up my spine as Mayor Swope"s hand fell on my shoulder like a spider.
"No!" he said, and his fingers started to close.
I pulled loose. A chair was beside me, and I shoved it at Mayor Swope like a shield. He stumbled into it, and I heard him say "Oof!" as his legs got tangled up and he fell to the floor. Then I turned away from him, frantically searching for the door. At any second I expected a hand to seal itself around my ankle, and that hand to draw me to him like the tentacle of the gla.s.s-bowled monster of Invaders from Mars. Tears of terror were starting to burn my eyes. I blinked them away, and suddenly my hand found the cold k.n.o.b of the door that led out. I twisted it, pushed through, and ran along the storm-darkened corridor, my footsteps ringing on the linoleum and thunder echoing through the halls of justice.
"Cory! Come back here!" he hollered as if he really thought I might. He was coming after me, and he was running, too. I had the mental picture of myself beaten to a pulp, my hand cuffed to Rocket, and Rocket tumbling down, down, down into the awful netherworld of Saxon"s Lake.
I tripped over my own flying feet, fell, and skidded on my belly across the linoleum. My chin banged into the bottom of a wall, but I scrambled up and kept going, Mayor Swope"s footsteps right behind me. "Cory!" he shouted, fury in his voice. It was surely the voice of a crazed killer. " Stop where you are!"
Like h.e.l.l, I thought.
And then I saw dank gray light streaming through the cupola over the staircase and I started running down the stairs without even holding on to the railing, which was enough right there to cause my mother to go white-haired. Mayor Swope was puffing behind me, and his voice was losing its steam: "No, Cory! No!" I reached the bottom of the staircase, and I ran across the entrance lobby and out the front door into the chilly rain. The worst of the storm had already swept over Zephyr, and now squatted above the hills like a ma.s.sive grayish-blue toad-frog. I got Rocket unlocked, but I left the chain hanging. I pedaled away from the courthouse just as Mayor Swope came through the door hollering at me to stop.
The last thing he hollered-and I thought this was strange, coming from a crazed killer-was "For G.o.d"s sake, be careful!"
Rocket flew over the rain-pocked puddles, its golden eye picking out a path. The clouds were parting, shards of yellow sunlight breaking through. Dad had always told me that when it rained while the sun showed, the devil was beating his wife. Rocket dodged the splashing cars on Merchants Street and I hung on for the ride.
At home, Rocket skidded to a stop at the front porch steps and I ran inside, my hair plastered down with rain and my hand gripping the soggy green feather.
"Cory!" Mom called as the screen door slammed. "Cory Mackenson, come here!"
"Just a minute!" I ran into my room, and I searched the seven mystic drawers until I found the White Owl cigar box. I opened it, and there was the green feather I"d found on the bottom of my shoe.
"Come here this instant!" Mom shouted.
"Wait!" I placed the first green feather down on my desk, and the green feather I"d plucked from the mayor"s hatband beside it.
"Cory! Come in here! I"m on the phone with Mayor Swope!"
Oh-oh.
My feeling of triumph cracked, collapsed, cascaded around my wet sneakers.
The first feather, the one that had come from the woods, was a deep emerald green. The one from the mayor"s hatband was about three shades lighter. Not only that, but the hatband feather was at least twice as large as the Saxon"s Lake feather.
They didn"t match one iota.
"Cory! Come talk to the mayor before I get a switch after you!"
When I dared to walk into the kitchen, I saw that my mother"s face was as red as a strangled beet. She said into the telephone, "No sir, I promise you Cory doesn"t have a mental condition. No sir, he doesn"t have panic attacks, either. Here he is right now, I"ll put him on." She held the receiver out to me, and fixed me with a baleful glare. "Have you lost your mind? Take this phone and talk to the mayor!"
I took it. It was all I could do to utter one pitiable word: "h.e.l.lo?"
"Cory!" Mayor Swope said. "I had to call to make sure you"d gotten home all right! I was scared to death you were gonna fall down those stairs in the dark and break your neck! When you ran out, I thought you were... like... havin" a fit or somethin"."
"No sir," I answered meekly. "I wasn"t havin" a fit."
"Well, when the lights went out I figured you might be afraid of the dark. I didn"t want you to hurt yourself, so I was tryin" to get you settled down. And I figured your mom and dad wouldn"t want me to let you try gettin" home in that storm, either! If you"d gotten sideswiped by a car... well, thank the Lord it didn"t happen."
"I... thought..." My throat choked up. I could feel my mother"s burning eyes. "I thought... you were tryin" to... kill me," I said.
The mayor was silent for a few seconds, and I could imagine what he must be thinking. I was a pure number-one nut case. "Kill you? Whatever for?"
"Cory!" Mom said. "Are you crazy?"
"I"m sorry," I told the mayor. "My... imagination got away from me, I guess. But you said I knew somethin" about you, and you wondered how I"d found out, and-"
"No, not somethin" about me," Mayor Swope said. "Somethin" about your award."
"My award?"
"Your plaque. For winnin" third place in the short story contest. That"s why I asked you to come see me. I was afraid somebody else on the awards panel had told you before I could."
"Told me what?"
"Well, I wanted to show it to you. I was bringin" your plaque in to show you when the lights went out and you went wild. See, the fella who engraves the plaques misspelled your name. He spelled Cory with an "e." I wanted you to see it before the ceremony so you wouldn"t get your feelin"s hurt. The fella"s promised to do your plaque again, but he"s got to do some softball awards first and he can"t get to it for two weeks. Understand?"
Oh, what a bitter pill. What a bitter, bitter pill.
"Yes sir," I answered. I felt dazed, and my right knee was really starting to throb. "I do."
"Are you on... any medication?" the mayor asked me.
"No sir."
He grunted quietly. That grunt said, You sure ought to be.