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Sam unhooked Isaiah’s shirt from where it had caught on the branch. Jericho lifted Isaiah from the river and carried his lifeless body back to the farm. The Diviners and Sarah Beth followed in a procession. Theta spread a blanket on the ground, and Jericho laid Isaiah down gently. Memphis fell to his knees beside his brother, weeping. He looked up at Sarah Beth with murder in his eyes.
“You killed my brother! All this time, I tried to keep him safe. All this time, it was you he should’ve been afraid of!”
“Stay with him,” Bill advised the others, and they surrounded Memphis like a shield.
Bill lifted his face, but the sun had gone sour. Everything seemed to tilt sideways. The wind was southerly. It brought the smell of the rotting corn. This land was cursed and nobody knew how to make it right. There were ghosts on the road and ghosts in his heart and he could scarcely breathe.
There were moments in a man’s life, Bill believed, when he could see the shape of his future as if he’d carved it himself from a piece of wood. Ghosts on the road, ghosts on the road. Isaiah had warned him all those months ago. Isaiah. Isaiah was dead.
Memphis was on his knees in the dust, broken, eyes red, seeing nothing. He was hot pain trapped inside skin clawing to get out, and when it did, god help him and everyone else. Theta and Sam were trying to help him up, holding him back. It was too much, too much. No. It was enough. Bill had had enough.
Under the sheltering oak, Sarah Beth swayed back and forth on the tire swing. She rubbed her fingers down the sides of her pink cheeks as if they were brand-new to her. A half smile played at her lips. All that power. She was punch-drunk on it. Bill watched the girl for as long as he could stand.
He motioned Jericho over to his side. He spoke calmly, firmly. “You need to get them all in the truck, you hear? Start it up. Throw Memphis into the back if you gotta. But get him in.”
“Then what?”
“Then you drive, and you keep driving. Go west. All the way to Death Valley. You got to stop this thing. Understand?”
Jericho nodded. By the fledgling willow tree, Memphis had crumpled next to his brother’s lifeless body. From the corner of his eye, Bill saw the girl still swinging, not a care in the world.
“You’ll meet us at the truck?” Jericho asked.
“Ain’t goin’ with you.”
“We’ll see you in Death Valley, then?”
Yes, sometimes a man just knew the shape of his future.
“Go on,” he said, shooing Jericho toward his friends. “Git.”
He watched as Jericho hurried back to the others. When Theta tried to coax Memphis toward the truck, he cried out and refused to leave Isaiah’s body there, so Jericho carried the boy in his arms and placed him in the back of the covered truck. Ling looked dazed and lost. Evie, Theta, Sam, and He
nry supported Memphis, half dragging him to the truck. Bill watched all of this. He watched as Jericho hopped behind the wheel and put the truck into gear. He watched as the truck drove across the dry field, wheels kicking up dust. He watched the ashen, expressionless faces of the Diviners peering out at where they’d been, what they’d seen by the river. They were ghosts on the road.
Bill watched and waited until they were safely down that road, a spot vanishing to a speck making a left past the railroad tracks. Coming up the other end of the road was the Olsons’ truck. It would be at the farm soon enough. When Bill could no longer see the Diviners, he walked toward the old oak, rolling up his sleeves as he went. The wind had shifted. It no longer blew from the south but from the east. That was the wind for you, constantly changing course. His shadow fell over Sarah Beth as she swung disinterestedly on the old tire.
“Where’d they go?” she asked.
“Never you mind.”
“Doesn’t matter. I can see everything if I have a mind to.”
“Can you now? Can you see everything?” Bill asked. He was very calm. He could hear the Olsons’ truck getting closer.
“I can see into the land of the dead. I can talk to him. He’ll want me more now, I’m so powerful.” She pushed off with sudden force, kicking dirt onto the tips of Bill’s shoes. He did not take a step back.
Bill grabbed hold of the rope. The swing stopped midair.
A tiny bit of fear flickered in Sarah Beth’s steely eyes, but only for a second. “I’ll scream for my pa. I’ll tell him you tried to rape me.”
“No, you won’t, neither.” Quick as the old days, Bill took Sarah Beth by the neck with both hands as if she were a goose ready for a Thanksgiving feast. “You cain’t have his power or yours no more. I won’t let you.”
“What are you doing?” she asked in a strained whisper. Her eyes were wild, but mean, too.
“And here I thought you could see everything.”
After Memphis had healed his eyesight, Bill had made a promise to whatever god he still believed in that he would do right. He wouldn’t take Diviner energy anymore. He was a man redeemed. But now Isaiah was going cold, with his skull bashed in, and the sun was dead, dead, dead in the sky, and who could say what was right in such a world? He wouldn’t kill the girl. But Bill Johnson would take justice for Isaiah Campbell. And he would make sure Sarah Beth Olson no longer had the means to hurt anybody else.
