The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Jenny Wingfield

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      Tonight, though, was different, and everybody noticed. Even Calla and Toy and Bernice had questioning looks on their faces.

      “Anything wrong, Sam?” Willadee asked.

      “I was planning to tell you about it first, and then break it to everybody else.”

      Willadee passed the speckled limas across to Toy. “They must be sending us to bayou country. We’ve been everywhere else.”

      Samuel said, “They’re not sending us to bayou country.” He set down his tea glass and rested both arms on the table. Everybody’s eyes were on him. Waiting.

      “They’re not sending us anywhere.”

      Swan broke all records getting out of the house after supper. She had to find a place to think this thing through. She would have settled into the swing, but Aunt Bernice would be out there again before you could even spit. She always hogged the swing as soon as she’d finished helping to clean the kitchen. Swan herself never had to assist with such chores, although she knew unfortunate kids her age who did. Willadee was of the opinion that you’re only a kid once. Grandma Calla thought that once was a dandy time to learn some responsibility, but Swan could wear you to a frazzle, so she never pushed her point. If Aunt Bernice had an opinion, she kept it to herself. She just did her share of the work as quickly as possible and disappeared into the porch shadows until bedtime. You wouldn’t have known she was there, except for the gentle squeaks the swing made.

      Swan wondered sometimes what Aunt Bernice found to think about, sitting out there all alone. She had asked her once. Aunt Bernice had lifted her hair up off the back of her neck and murmured, “Hmm? Oh. Things.”

      Anyway, the swing was out, so Swan passed it by and went on through the yard, past the haphazard jumble of vehicles parked between the house and the road. The regulars had been gathering in to Never Closes for over an hour now.

      Any other time, Swan would have crept around to the back of Never Closes and hid out, trying to get a peek inside. She and her brothers were strictly forbidden to do that, but they did it anyway, every chance they got. So far, they hadn’t seen anything worth looking at, and they’d have given the project up if it hadn’t been forbidden. But the fact that it was had to mean something, so they’d kept after it.

      Tonight, though, Swan didn’t feel much like spying. All she wanted was privacy. She reached the road and walked along the grassy shoulder. She could see perfectly well, even once she’d gotten away from the lights of the house and bar. The moon was almost, almost full. She’d never realized before that the moon could shed enough light to give the world any real brightness. She’d also never strayed far from her family in the dark. But it wasn’t dark. The night was luminous.

      Out there, walking along beside that easy-curving road, Swan decided she didn’t need to find a place to think. Who needed a place, when you could just keep moving, putting one foot in front of the other, enjoying going nowhere.

      By now, her father’s situation had pretty well sorted itself out inside her head. At first, when it had struck her that she and her folks didn’t have an income, or a house to live in, she’d felt guilty for wishing that her life was different. Maybe this was what happened when you wished for something you didn’t know enough about.

      The real gravity of the situation had escaped her, though. The Lake family changed homes every year or two anyway, so it wasn’t as though they were being jerked up by the roots. They didn’t have any roots. Besides, grown-ups worked out problems every day. That’s what grown-ups did. Plus, she figured, this had to be the Lord’s will. Hadn’t her daddy preached, time and again, about how God had a Plan, and how everything works together for those who love God? Her parents certainly loved God. Swan did, too, she was sure, even though she bent His rules with some degree of regularity, and prayed only When It Was Important. She’d never been one to wear God out with small talk.

      Anyway, if you looked at it right, there was a Bible guarantee of a favorable outcome to all this, so her conscience was off the hook.

      She sucked in a deep, glad gulp of honeysuckled air. The tall grass bent beneath her feet and straightened as she passed. She wasn’t ready to turn back just yet. This moment was too delicious. Ahead, and to the left, a narrow lane forked off the main road. She knew she shouldn’t take the lane, shouldn’t even be out here, but it couldn’t do any harm. Bad things happened on Dark and Stormy Nights, not on nights like tonight, when all of creation wore a soft satin sheen.

      Chapter 7

      The little lane wound and twisted and tapered down to almost nothing, and kept on going. Every bend promised some new discovery. And delivered. A slim young tree, silvered by moonlight. Dancing stars, mirrored in the rocky stream that tumbled alongside the rutted lane. Nothing was ordinary tonight. Even cow pastures and falling-down fences had an otherworldly look.

      And the silence! It was like the immense quiet of snowfall, right here in summer. This had to mean something. Something good. Only good could come from so much light where there would ordinarily be darkness.

      These were her thoughts as she rounded a final bend, and saw the house. It was smallish, built of faded wood and topped off by a tin roof. There were lights on inside, so the windows glowed golden against the silver of the night. An extremely neat yard wrapped around the house, and in that yard, there was a gleaming something. A vehicle. A pickup truck. As clear and brilliant as the night was, the light was no good for telling color. But Swan knew in her bones. It was red.

      She heard a dull, grunting noise, like a person makes when they’ve been socked in the stomach. It took a second for her to realize that she’d made the sound herself. She couldn’t seem to move. Surely, her heart had stopped.

      Only her mind was not immobilized. It was racing wildly, imagining the unimaginable. What if that little viper of a man was out here, somewhere, slithering around in the dark? What if he was watching her right now?

      She whirled and fled. Running, scrambling, away and away, back along the rutted lane. She could feel Ballenger, back there, behind her—and could sense him, up there, ahead of her. No direction was safe. The June breeze was his hot breath. The rustle of leaves was a sinister whisper. The snakeman, hissing her name.

      Swan thought of herself as a person who was prepared for anything. But she wasn’t prepared for this. And she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

      The moon slid behind a thick bank of clouds, and the world went dark. Suddenly, Swan couldn’t see where she was going—so she stumbled. There was nothing to catch hold of, to break her fall. She threw her arms out, flailing every which way like twin windmills, but that didn’t stop her from falling, either.

      It seemed as though she fell for the longest time. Head over heels, and heels over head. When she stopped falling, she lay still, afraid to move. The reason she was afraid to move was that her hand was touching something soft and warm. Another hand.

      Her eyes were closed, and she kept them that way, afraid of what she might see if she opened them.

      “Well, are you dead?” a voice asked.

      It wasn’t Ballenger’s voice. Swan could have died then, from relief. She opened her eyes, just enough so that she could peer through the darkness. Then she sat bolt upright.

      The person talking to her … was the kid. Ballenger’s little boy. The one who had gotten slapped that day outside СКАЧАТЬ