laughing. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a ditch.”
That’s a better lie than I’d have reckoned to spin and I figure I have picked up some pointers from Wesley. Timmy grins but doesn’t say anything else. He lets me out at my trailer and goes on his way. I’m starved and have got enough dirt on me to plant a garden, but I just fall in the bed and don’t open my eyes till it’s full dark outside. When I come awake it’s with the deepest kind of fearing, and for a few moments I’m more scared than any time before in my life. Then my mind settles and I see I’m in the trailer, not still in that graveyard.
Come Monday at work I hear how they found Wesley’s truck by the river, and most figure him down there fishing or drinking or both and he fell in and drowned. They drag the river for days but of course nothing comes up.
I wait a month before I try to sell the Civil War stuff, driving all the way to Montgomery, Alabama, to a big CSA convention where a whole auditorium is full of buyers and sellers. Some want certificates of authenticity and such, but I finally find a buyer I can do some business with. A lady at the library has pulled up some prices on the Internet and I’ve got a good figuring of what my stash is worth. The buyer’s only offering half what the value is but he’s also not asking for certificates or even my name. I tell him I’ll take what he’s offering but only if it’s cash money. He grumbles a bit about that, then finally says, “Stay here,” and goes off and comes backwith fifty-two hundred-dollar bills, new bills so crisp and smooth they look starched and ironed.
It’s more money than the hospital bill and I give what’s left to Momma. That makes what I’ve done feel less worrisome. I think about something else too, how both them graves had big fancy tombstones of cut marble, meaning those dead Confederates hadn’t known much wanting of money in their lives. Now that they was dead there was some fairness in letting Momma have something of what they’d left behind.
The only bad thing is I keep having a dream where that old man has shot me and I’m buried in the hole with Wesley. I’m shot bad but still alive and dirt’s piled on me and somewhere up above I hear that old man laughing like he was the devil himself. Every time I dream it, I rear up in bed and don’t stop gasping for nearly a whole minute. I’ve dreamed that same exact dream at least once a month for a year now, and I guess it’s likely I’ll keep doing so for the rest of my life. There’s always a price to be paid for anything you get. I wish it weren’t so, for it’s a fearsome dream, but if it’s the worst to come of all that happened I can live with it.
THE ASCENT
J ared had never been this far before, over Sawmill Ridge and across a creek glazed with ice, then past the triangular metal sign that said SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK . If it had still been snowing and his tracks were being covered up, he’d have turned back. People had gotten lost in this park. Children wandered off from family picnics, hikers strayed off trails. Sometimes it took days to find them. But today the sun was out, the sky deep and blue. No more snow would fall, so it would be easy to retrace his tracks. Jared heard a helicopter hovering somewhere to the west, which meant they still hadn’tfound the airplane. They’d been searching all the way from Bryson City to the Tennessee line, or so he’d heard at school.
The land slanted downward and the sound of the helicopter disappeared. In the steepest places, Jared leaned sideways and held on to trees to keep from slipping. As he made his way into the denser woods, he wasn’t thinking of the lost airplane or if he would get the mountain bike he’d asked for as his Christmas present. Not thinking about his parents either, though they were the main reason he was spending his first day of Christmas vacation out here—better to be outside on a cold day than in the house
That’s a better lie than I’d have reckoned to spin and I figure I have picked up some pointers from Wesley. Timmy grins but doesn’t say anything else. He lets me out at my trailer and goes on his way. I’m starved and have got enough dirt on me to plant a garden, but I just fall in the bed and don’t open my eyes till it’s full dark outside. When I come awake it’s with the deepest kind of fearing, and for a few moments I’m more scared than any time before in my life. Then my mind settles and I see I’m in the trailer, not still in that graveyard.
Come Monday at work I hear how they found Wesley’s truck by the river, and most figure him down there fishing or drinking or both and he fell in and drowned. They drag the river for days but of course nothing comes up.
I wait a month before I try to sell the Civil War stuff, driving all the way to Montgomery, Alabama, to a big CSA convention where a whole auditorium is full of buyers and sellers. Some want certificates of authenticity and such, but I finally find a buyer I can do some business with. A lady at the library has pulled up some prices on the Internet and I’ve got a good figuring of what my stash is worth. The buyer’s only offering half what the value is but he’s also not asking for certificates or even my name. I tell him I’ll take what he’s offering but only if it’s cash money. He grumbles a bit about that, then finally says, “Stay here,” and goes off and comes backwith fifty-two hundred-dollar bills, new bills so crisp and smooth they look starched and ironed.
It’s more money than the hospital bill and I give what’s left to Momma. That makes what I’ve done feel less worrisome. I think about something else too, how both them graves had big fancy tombstones of cut marble, meaning those dead Confederates hadn’t known much wanting of money in their lives. Now that they was dead there was some fairness in letting Momma have something of what they’d left behind.
The only bad thing is I keep having a dream where that old man has shot me and I’m buried in the hole with Wesley. I’m shot bad but still alive and dirt’s piled on me and somewhere up above I hear that old man laughing like he was the devil himself. Every time I dream it, I rear up in bed and don’t stop gasping for nearly a whole minute. I’ve dreamed that same exact dream at least once a month for a year now, and I guess it’s likely I’ll keep doing so for the rest of my life. There’s always a price to be paid for anything you get. I wish it weren’t so, for it’s a fearsome dream, but if it’s the worst to come of all that happened I can live with it.
THE ASCENT
J ared had never been this far before, over Sawmill Ridge and across a creek glazed with ice, then past the triangular metal sign that said SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK . If it had still been snowing and his tracks were being covered up, he’d have turned back. People had gotten lost in this park. Children wandered off from family picnics, hikers strayed off trails. Sometimes it took days to find them. But today the sun was out, the sky deep and blue. No more snow would fall, so it would be easy to retrace his tracks. Jared heard a helicopter hovering somewhere to the west, which meant they still hadn’tfound the airplane. They’d been searching all the way from Bryson City to the Tennessee line, or so he’d heard at school.
The land slanted downward and the sound of the helicopter disappeared. In the steepest places, Jared leaned sideways and held on to trees to keep from slipping. As he made his way into the denser woods, he wasn’t thinking of the lost airplane or if he would get the mountain bike he’d asked for as his Christmas present. Not thinking about his parents either, though they were the main reason he was spending his first day of Christmas vacation out here—better to be outside on a cold day than in the house
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