The Binding (33 page)

Up again, turn, walk.

A photo in black-and-white,
very
black-and-white.

He veered this time to his right, and studied the photo between the doors marked
County Clerk
and
Water Department
. This one was of a baseball team,
The Black-and-Yellows, State Champions, 1906
. The men, half with mustaches, wore droopy
wool uniforms and held their banana-fingered baseball mitts out in front of them, frowning in concentration. Nat went on.

Toward the end of the hallway, something huge and red hung on the wall. He went farther and passed beneath the exit light and saw the red thing was a metal box fixed on the wall. Inside was a fire hose, its surface coarse like a snakeskin, fixed to a brass nozzle, new and glowing in the red light. The thing stirred something else in his mind.

Fire.

Turn, walk.

Yes, fire. Flames everywhere.

Pace. Water fountain. Pass on.

The dream. Of course. Becca’s dream of the house on fire, somewhere in a jungle. The painting in her room was probably related to the same nightmare. A man burning.

Stop, turn. Walk.

Slower now.

Nat stopped suddenly. The glass window of the sanitation department,
William Carlisle, Commissioner
stenciled in gold letters trimmed in black was to his left. On the door up ahead, he couldn’t read the letters. But something in his head had told him to stop.

You’re warm.

He took a step forward.

Warmer.

An image started to come to him, but blurry. Figures against a phosphorous-white sky, bony stick figures.

He took another step.

Hot.

Suddenly, Nat turned his head, knowing what he would find there. The photo seemed to bloom in his mind even before he set
eyes on the black-framed thing on the wall, with its stark blacks and bleached whites. The photo of the hanging in the town square.

His eyes open and his heart pattering fast, Nat stepped up to it. Of course. The image seemed to merge with the one that rushed into his mind now, the one that had been lurking in shadows. Every line, every angle matched up.

It was the photo of a public execution. The gallows stood in the town square on a crisp fall day. A thin man, his figure impossibly black against the sunlight that threw the photo into stark relief. The edge of the city hall’s cornice jutted into the top left of the picture, while the backs of the townspeople, the men in their dark wool coats and the women in billow-sleeved white blouses, formed a black border from which the gallows rose. The photographer had obviously been down among the spectators, as the camera was tilted up toward the hanging man. Whose neck was clearly broken.

Nat’s eyes darted to the little placard at the bottom.

The execution of Captain Thomas Markham, US Marine Reg. Two. June 14, 1920. Convicted of murder during the occupation of Haiti.

Nat stared in astonishment. Not West Africa.
Haiti.
An echo from his high school history class came back to him, and he remembered an occupation, American soldiers sent down for . . . He had no idea. But the Marines had gone in, that he remembered, and here was one of them, apparently a Northam man, being hanged for murder. But the murder of whom?

He brought his face closer to the photograph.
Who did you kill, Captain Markham? What did you get up to down in Haiti?
The white spaces of the photo seemed to throb, phosphorous and aglow in the darkness.

Nat reached up and rubbed his lips with his palm.
Easy, man. Take it easy.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

C
harlie was swaddled up in his father’s bed. There were wisps of things still in his head—the Magician’s face, smiling and then scowling, and a feeling of heaviness in the back of his brain, as if a cloud were slowly moving away—but he felt fine now. Just a little cold. The grass outside had been cold like little icicles that bent.

Out in the backyard, before his daddy came, he’d been talking with the Magician. About many things, snowstorms and flying horses and red-striped monsters. Mostly about monsters. While they were talking about the ones they feared the most, the Magician had revealed to Charlie a rather big secret. There was a monster of sorts, a little goblin that lived inside his—Charlie’s—mouth.

And do you know what?
the Magician said
. That’s the reason you can’t talk like other boys. The goblin won’t let you! He’s quite mean. He’s afraid if you tell someone about him, they’ll come and pull him out.

Well, that’s terrible
, Charlie said in his mind to the Magician. And he’d flushed with anger at the thought of a goblin blocking his words before anyone could hear them. He felt shock and happiness at once—he’d always wondered why he couldn’t speak
really
, though his parents had tried to explain it to him.

It is
, said the Magician.
Indeed it is.

Charlie had moved his tongue around, trying but failing to feel the goblin in the back of his mouth. He told the Magician this.

Oh, you’ll never catch him. He has a powder that made your tongue all numb back there. He’s quite safe.

Charlie had thought about that.

Hold on. Does this mean you’d like to talk, Charlie?

Yes, I would. Very much!

Well, then, I’ll tell you a little secret. Do you know what the goblin is scared of most in the whole wide world?

More than grown-ups finding him?

Yes, more than that.

What?
he’d said in his mind.
Tell me.

A gun.

He felt the gun in his hand then. He hadn’t remembered taking it from his father’s safe, but he must have. He could feel the little bumps along the handle, and he’d run his finger along it.

Show it to the bad little goblin and he’ll get scared and run away, Charlie. Then you can talk all you like. You’ll gab all day long!

He’d hesitated only a moment before opening his mouth. He’d raised the gun, so big it almost didn’t fit over his bottom teeth, and worked it in past the tip of his tongue. The metal was oh so cold.

But I still can’t talk
, he’d said to the Magician.
Did I do something wrong?

Oh, dear
. The reply had come after a moment.
The goblin isn’t scared enough.
I’ll tell you what, pull back on the trigger and scare him good, Charlie. He’s a tough one. He won’t go ’way unless you give him a real fright.

He’d started to pull the trigger back, but his daddy had come to stop him then.
I’m getting rid of the bad goblin
, he’d wanted to tell his daddy. But of course he still couldn’t speak, and his pad was nowhere close. Daddy had carried him inside to the bed, and worn out with the disappointment of not getting the goblin out, he’d fallen asleep.

But Charlie still wanted to talk. Maybe there were other ways to scare the goblin enough so that he’d leave. He would ask the Magician the next time he came.

Before he fell asleep, his daddy had talked to him about never
touching his gun, never ever, no matter what, and told him the gun would be locked away in the safe from now on, but please, he should never even touch the safe. Charlie had nodded at all of it; his father looked like he was getting sick, like he’d eaten something that made him feel bad, and Charlie wanted to make him better.

Now, refreshed by his nap, he waited for his father to leave before he went out and talked to Mrs. Finlay. There were three door sounds that always followed one after the other: the door to the garage closing, the chunk of the car door, and then the screech of the automatic door as it went up its track and then back down. When he heard the last one go still, Charlie walked out to the living room.

HI
, he wrote on the notebook. He walked up next to Mrs. Finlay, who had almost disappeared into the recliner she was so short, and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hello, Charlie. How are you?”

He swiveled the notebook back and wrote with his favorite blue Sharpie, then turned the page toward the old woman.

FINE. CAN I PLAY A COMPUTER GAME UNTIL SCHOOL?

Mrs. Finlay frowned. When she did that, her whole face got wrinkly.

“What about inviting a friend over? Have a little playdate? Don’t you have any friends, Charlie?”

Charlie thought quickly.

WELL, I CAN ASK ONE OF THEM ON THE COMPUTER.

“On the computer?”

SURE
, Charlie wrote, feeling bad already for lying. But this was important.

Mrs. Finlay glanced at him uncertainly. The tip of her tongue appeared in the corner of her mouth.

“Well, okay. But no YouTube. I heard about that one. Just see
if anyone wants to play.”

Charlie scooted off to his father’s room. His daddy’s computer—the one with the Internet connection—was sitting in the corner on a rickety little desk. Charlie pulled the wooden chair closer and sat in front of the keyboard. He listened for any sounds of Mrs. Finlay’s approach but all he could hear was
The Price Is Right
.

He logged in to the Gmail account his daddy had let him keep for writing his mother. He clicked on the latest message from her and hit
Reply
.

Mommy,
he wrote.
How are you? I’m fine, I got a B+ on my history test, the one I was worried about.

Mommy, Daddy acts strange sometimes. I don’t want to get him in trouble but sometimes he sits in the car when he gets home and Mrs. Finlay goes home, but Daddy just sits in the garage staring straight ahead. The car is running and everything and I heard that’s dangerous. One time the garage got smelly and I knocked on the window and Daddy didn’t even hear me.

Do you think he’s OK? Maybe he has too much stress. Or his head is hurting him.

Charlie stopped and stared up at the corner where the ceiling and two walls met. He hummed a song he’d heard on the radio that morning. He thought about telling his mommy about what had happened in the laundry room, but just thinking about it made his stomach all squirmy. The car stuff was normal strange, but the basement, that was different, like a horror movie. He wanted his mommy to tell him what to do, but not to get Daddy in trouble.

What should I do, Mommy? You can write me back and tell me. Please don’t tell Daddy, he has enough to worry about. I think he just needs a rest.

I get lots of homework. Could I get an Xbox for my birthday? It’s OK if you say no but please think about it. I am being good mostly and trying not to get Daddy stressed too much.

I love you.

Charlie

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

N
at banged on the museum’s front door. The windows up above were dark, the doorbell dead. He opened the screen door and pounded again.

He took two steps back and looked at the second-floor windows. Just then, a light came on in the left one, softened by a gauzy curtain.

Nat breathed in deeply.

A minute later, Mr. Atkins’s face appeared in the window, ghostly, white-blue against the black. His hair was disheveled, and he appeared angry. He opened the door. “What do you think you’re doing? It’s—”

“It wasn’t West Africa. It was Haiti.”

Atkins stood unmoving in the doorway. His lips were pressed together.

“Aren’t you going to say, ‘What was Haiti?’ Or did you know that I’d be back? You knew what I was looking for, but you said nothing.”

Atkins sighed. “I have no idea what you’re going on about. I want you to leave. Now, please.”

Nat stepped up through the door, forcing Atkins back. He closed the door behind him.

“Yes, you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. And I’m not leaving until you tell me everything.”

“Dr. Thayer—”

Nat shook his head. “Everything, Mr. Atkins. I can’t explain why, but someone’s life depends on it.”

Atkins stared, the eyes raw and huge behind his glasses.

“Whose life?”

“A young woman named Becca Prescott.”

Atkins seemed off balance. His lips repeated the name, but no sound emerged. He turned without a word and walked back into the museum.

They walked in darkness, the artifacts from the museum, so friendly and harmless during the sun-splashed days, now giving off evil little gleams of light. Dark, furrowed arrowheads in a glass case, two long and battered muskets crossed on the wall, a brace of elegant flintlock pistols laid out on a table. Atkins went to the far wall, flicked on a light, then walked back, stopping at a display table. He took something out of his pocket and bent down to the storage area underneath. He slipped a small key into the lock on the drawer and pulled it out.

He held a thin paperbound book in his hand.

“I’m presuming you’re here about Captain Markham,” Atkins said.

Nat stared.

“I couldn’t be sure before,” Atkins said. “I don’t like to stir things up.” He fluttered through the first few pages of the book.

“They brought Markham back to Northam,” Nat said, “and charged him with murder.”

“Yes. The trial was held here.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

Nat glanced around the room. A Union flag with bullet holes through three of the stripes hung above their heads. “Who did he kill?”

Atkins shoved the book at him, turning away slightly as if it were a sample of something toxic and possibly airborne. “You can read it for yourself.”

Nat took the book in his hands. Its surface was rough, not slick and glossy like a modern paperback. It had a black spine, and the lettering on the front was in gold.
The Journal of Sergeant Nicholas Godwin, United States Marine Corps, Expedition to Haiti.