The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (10 page)

The waitress came back with our coffee and to take our order. I grabbed the funnies and tried to read the rest of them, but I couldn’t concentrate on them long enough. I looked at the newspaper Bayard held, and saw a headline I’d seen far too much of that year: 13 KILLED IN GUNMAN’S SCHOOL RAMPAGE.

I dug in my pocket and pulled the top of the agent’s newspaper down, showing him the enigmatic key I’d gone around testing last night. “Would you happen to have any idea what this goes to?”

He seemed to think about it, and said, “Afraid I haven’t a clue.”

“I found it in one of the boxes that had my dad’s stuff in it.”

“Maybe it’s an extra house key.”

“See, I thought it might be, but I went to my dad’s house last night and tried it on every lock I could find. It doesn’t go to any of them.”

“Strange. Well, you know how people collect junk over the years. I myself have quite the impressive junk drawer. Drawers. Okay, a
garage.
”

I twirled the key this way and that, studying its dull, tarnished surface. That’s when I noticed a scratch on one face. Two scratches. Someone had used an engraving pen or something to carve a + on the key.

“What do you make of this?” I asked, showing it to Bayard.

He examined it up close, looking down his big nose at it through his bifocals.

“French toast and sausage,” said the waitress, putting a plate on the table. Bayard put aside his newspaper and gestured to himself. She put my omelet down in front of me and deposited a ramekin of pancake syrup and one of salsa. I took a sip of coffee and stared at the key, willing the secret to out itself. I began to feel like Don Quixote, chasing windmills.

Bayard grinned over my shoulder and boomed, “Hey, look what the cat dragged in. Come sit with us!”

I turned in my seat to see Sawyer Winton and the rock-chick Joanne Woodward I’d made uncomfortable eye contact with at the viewing. She was ruffling the rain out of her short pixie hair. Sawyer was folding an umbrella.

They came over and we made room for them; the waitress came back and took their orders. Sawyer was carrying the camera again, but it wasn’t running and the lens cap was in place.

The girl beamed at me. “It’s nice to finally meet you in a place that’s not quite so somber, Mr. Brigham,” she said, proferring a hand. I shook it. “My name is Noreen, Noreen Mears. I’ve been a fan of your dad’s books for as long as I can remember. I wish I’d gotten to meet him while he was alive. It’s a lot of lore to catch up on, isn’t it?

“I don’t envy you—but maybe I do, because you’re getting to experience the series from the very beginning. Oh, it must be so exciting! You’ve got a wonderful journey ahead of you, Mr. Brigham. I’m so jealous that you get to read all of your father’s notes, I bet he has an amazing collection of material built up over the years—”

“Three shoeboxes’ worth,” I interjected. “And I haven’t even looked at his laptop yet, which as I understand, might take some time—”

“Is it locked? I bet it’s got a really hard password. Would you like me to take a look at it?”

“No, that’s okay,” I said, as the waitress got a word in edgewise, and took their orders. “I think I can manage. Thank you for the offer, though. Oh, and just call me Ross—we’re almost the same age.”

“Oh, right.”

I was relieved that Ms. Mears was not drinking coffee. I put the key in the breast pocket of my jacket, but Sawyer had already noticed it. Thankfully, he didn’t mention it, or our trip to the Brigham estate yesterday.

I picked at my omelet, ate a few bites, and said, “You’re all coming to the burial today, then?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Sawyer.

Noreen looked me in the eyes, which again made me feel as if I were staring into the sun. Her eyes were a high, cold cerulean, and as piercing as any sword. I was fond of her smoky cowgirl voice. She sounded like she’d done a lot of yelling in her life. “Are you doing okay, Ross? How are you holding up? You look a bit less—”

Callous?

“—mellow than you did at the viewing.”

Like you’ve seen a ghost?
I glanced at Sawyer, but his face was impassive.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it’s finally hitting me.” I looked down at my food, and speared a bit of green pepper with my fork. My throat felt dry, like I hadn’t had anything to drink all morning, and the words had to climb to get out of me. “I guess it’s occurred to me that...I don’t know. I should’ve made more of an effort to connect with him.”

“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,” said Sawyer. He sounded genuinely sympathetic.

“Yep,” said Noreen. “Well...if it’s any consolation, you may have lost your father, but you’ve gained hundreds of friends.”

I regarded them both, and Bayard was smirking, his eyebrows arched. I agreed. “That I have.”

I abruptly took out the key and held it up where everyone could see it. “Everyone, I’m having a bit of a difficulty trying to figure out what this key unlocks. I would be highly obliged if one of you would perhaps take a penny for your thoughts on it.”

Bayard choked on his french toast and coughed. The fluorescent lights played across the key’s worn brown surface, glittering in the etched +. Noreen leaned closer for a look at it and asked, “Where did it come from?”

“I found it in a box of my dad’s things.”

“Have you noticed the cross somebody scratched on it?”

I nodded. “I have.” And then I paused. “Cross?”

“Yeah,” Noreen said, turning the key in my fingers so that I could see the +. Indeed, as she said, as I studied it, the lowest arm of the + did seem to be almost imperceptibly longer than the others. It did in fact resemble a crucifix, and now, I could not unsee it.

“You could be right.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Bayard, tucking back into his breakfast. He had methodically cut off and now chewed a bit of sausage, speaking to us as he did so. “You are—you are imagining—there is nothing to it. You are simply having trouble adjusting to your father’s death and your new obligations. I’m positive this key is just a spare house key, or perhaps it goes to an old storage locker somewhere.”

He swallowed, gesturing at the key with his fork, “In fact, I think I recall your father saying something a few months ago about having to give up a storage locker that he had been renting. He was keeping his motorcycle in it until he could get the shed in the back of his house cleaned out.”

I humored Bayard and let the subject drop. I caught a look in Noreen’s eye, however, that told me she was hooked on the mystery.

_______

The remainder of the meal passed in good-natured conversation about everybody’s jobs back home, and their immediate plans, and how they thought the continuation of
The Fiddle and The Fire
should proceed: how the plot should wrap up, how the characters should find closure, what kind of tone the book should end on.

Obviously, I didn’t know much about the series, so I didn’t have much input to offer, but I enjoyed it vicariously through listening to the others’ enthusiastic discussion.

I have to say, the discussion rejuvenated my creative energy. I was beginning to look forward to taking on the project. It was nice to be a part of something larger than myself again. I was getting the same feeling of responsibility I’d felt on deployment, thrust into a locus of tasks the likes of which I’d never had to deal with before.

If there was one thing I’d learned from war, it was that, surprisingly, I enjoyed having big things expected of me. Responsibility was motivating, empowering, and exhilarating, emotions I had never expected to experience.

As we were coming out of the IHOP, I told Bayard I was going to ride with Sawyer and Noreen. His reticence at deducing the key’s origin and purpose had made me wary of his motives. To me, the agent had seemed all too ready and willing to write it off as nothing but a coincidence, or something completely innocuous altogether.

There was something about the key—and the agent—I just couldn’t shake.

I approached Sawyer and Noreen as they were getting into Sawyer’s 4-Runner. “Hey, you guys mind if I ride with you? I don’t really feel like heading back to the motel just yet.”

“You’re not a very good liar, Ross,” said Noreen, squinting at me with suspicious eyes. The rain had lessened to a misting again, and it pebbled in her hair like diamonds. “You’ve got an idea about that key, and you want to drag us into your sordid, shadowy conundrum, don’t you?”

I paused. “Well, I—ahh—”

Sawyer smirked. “Get in the truck.”

As we roared down Main Street, I leaned close to the back of Noreen’s passenger seat, trying to get closer to the heater’s blast. She turned to me, holding the collar of her jacket shut with one white-knuckled hand, and raised her voice to be heard over the rumble of the Yota’s tires and the paper-bag bluster of the wind coursing around us.

“So what is this clue you’ve got in mind, Scooby Doo? Where is the Mystery Machine going?”

“I got to thinking about what a crucifix could mean,” I said, “—and I thought, well what about the church my parents got married in? I don’t know why my dad would have a key to it, but I couldn’t think of anything else.”

Noreen made a grand gesture through the windshield. “Make it so, Number One.”

Pack leapt out of his chair at the lowing of the carnyx. “What’s going on?” he asked.

The mercenary dumped the rest of his soup into the fire, dousing the embers. He drew both of his revolvers and ordered Pack into the tent, where he crouched by the tent opening. The boy clawed handfuls of laundry out of the trunk at the back and climbed inside, pulling the lid down over his head.

He pulled out his father’s gun and folded himself up in the cramped box, trembling in fear, peering out through a thin slit.

“It’s Wilders,” said the mercenary. Pack heard gunfire crackling out there, and a strange and horrifying hooting and snarling. “Stay quiet. We’ll get through this.”

With that, the man ran outside into the chaos. Pack never saw him again.

—The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 2 “The Cape and the Castle”

The Preacher-Man

I
T TOOK US A GOOD HOUR
to find the place, as it wasn’t quite where I remembered it. The church was a little red-brick affair tucked back in a subdivision on the road out of town. A illuminated letterboard sign out front read, “You Think Your Bad? Job 37:18.”

The grammar error made me wince as I ducked, jogging through the rain to the front door of the church. There were no services taking place, so the front was locked. I tried the key, but it wouldn’t even go into the doorknob keyhole. The deadbolt accepted it, but it wouldn’t turn.

I shook my head at the others as they sat in the Yota (Sawyer was pointing his camcorder at me), and went around to the back door, tried it.

No such luck.

When I came back, I noticed that the passenger-side mirror was missing from Sawyer’s truck. Noreen let me in and I collapsed into the back seat with a sigh. “No dice, team. Didn’t find anything.”

“Now what?” asked Noreen, staring out at the rain pattering on the windshield. Crystal rivulets snaked down the glass, scattered by the wipers whipping back and forth.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s just go get ready for the interment. I’m sure we’ll think of something later.”

_______

The rain tapped listlessly on the canvas tented above us on aluminum poles, providing a dissonant backbeat to the proceedings. I panned my gaze across the small sea of faces. It appeared that many of them had gone home after the viewing, reducing the number of attendees to about thirty.

I was glad to see that none of them had decided to wear their costumes. It was one thing, I think, to wear them to the viewing, on private property, inside a building...but I figure it was even beyond them to stand around a man’s burial dressed in a costume, outside.

The grave was at the top of a hill, at a cemetary only a few minutes’ walk from the commercial district. From where we stood, we could see just over the treetops of the oaks that populated the grass medians running through the city of Blackfield.