The Night Parade(96)

Ellie went halfway down the steps, then paused and looked at David.

“Go on,” he said.

Smiling, she rejoined Gany on the lawn. Gany took hold of Ellie’s hand and they proceeded to trot around the side of the farmhouse.

“She’s beautiful, David.”

“She looks like her mother,” David said.

“Come inside with me.” Tim slung an arm around David’s shoulder—it was like hefting a log onto his back—and led him up the porch and into the house.

David was surprised to find the interior of the farmhouse clean, organized, meticulous. The absence of personal flourishes—there were no pictures on the walls, no bric-a-brac on shelves, no homey touches—made the place seem more like a facility than a home. As Tim talked about how he’d purchased the property for a song, David followed him through a series of rooms that all seemed to serve their own very specific purpose—a room filled with computer equipment and two laptop monitors with activated screen savers; another room serving as a library, where hardbound books climbed the walls; a room overflowing with various ferns bursting from hanging pots lit by a regiment of solar lamps while misters breathed vapor into the air. Music issued from hidden speakers and followed them from room to room, some instrumental jazz heavy on the electric bass. The tour ended in a screened-in porch that overlooked a field of brown grass bisected by a narrow wooden structure that looked like a series of miniature boxcars shackled together. Beyond the field, a curtain of fir trees wreathed the base of a mountain range. There was snow on the peaks.

“It’s beautiful out here,” said David.

“Sit, sit,” Tim said, waving his hands around at a group of wicker chairs. “What happened to your nose?”

“Got in a tussle with some hillbilly zealot in Kentucky.”

“Broken?”

“I don’t think so.”

“How about your arm?”

“I cut it on some glass.” David sat, the Glock jabbing him painfully in the small of his back. He withdrew it and held it out toward Tim. “Think you could stow this away somewhere?”

“Christ, man. And they say some people never change.” Tim grinned, plucking the Glock from David’s hand and shoving it down in the rear waistband of his own pants.

David sighed. Above his head, more potted ferns gently swayed in the breeze that came through the screens. There were birdhouses hanging from the porch on the other side of the screens, but these looked about as vacant as the houses with the X’s on the doors back in Goodwin.

“Let’s have a look,” Tim said. He knelt beside David and proceeded to unwrap the bandaging.

“What were those aerials on the roof for?” David asked.

“I rigged them up myself. I’ve got a ham radio and some closed-circuit monitors in the basement. The place is outfitted with security cameras. Some other junk, too.” Tim removed the bandage from the wound, then made a disapproving face. David glanced down and saw that the wound was still bleeding. He felt woozy just looking at it.

“I thought you were off the grid.”

“Most grids,” said Tim. “How long ago did this happen?”

“Yesterday morning, I think. I’ve lost track of the days.”

“It’s reopened. It needs stitches.”

“I can’t go to a doctor.”

“You won’t have to. I can do it here.”

“Jesus,” David said, looking away.

Tim squeezed the back of David’s neck. “It’ll be fine. Ain’t my first rodeo.”

Tim got up and sauntered into the next room. David heard him rummaging through drawers. Glass bottles clinked together.

Out in the field, Gany and Ellie trudged through the tall brown grass on their way to the wooden structure that resembled a series of boxcars. David guessed they were the old chicken coops that had been modified into rabbit hutches.

“I don’t understand what you’re doing out here,” David said.

“I’m living,” Tim said from the next room.

“What happened to Kansas City?”

“I felt stifled there. It was always just a layover for me, anyhow.”

“Every place is just a layover for you.”

Tim laughed in the other room. When he returned, he had a black leather satchel under one arm and a lowball glass half-filled with amber liquid. “I was never one for the rat race. You know that. When they started marching the National Guard through downtown, I knew it was time to pop smoke. Hold still.”

“Wha—”

Tim splashed the contents of the lowball glass onto David’s wound. It was like being branded with an iron, and David half-expected the open gash to smoke and sizzle. Instead, he shouted and bolted right out of the chair.

Tim chuckled. “Relax. Sit back down.”

“Son of a bitch,” David gasped, though he lowered himself back into the chair.

Tim slipped back out into the adjoining room and returned with a refill. He handed the glass to David. “You can drink this one.”

David sniffed it. “Moonshine?”

“Go on,” Tim said, kneeling beside David’s chair. He unzipped the satchel as David upended the glass, knocking the liquor to the back of his throat. It seemed to fall straight down into his stomach, unimpeded, where it detonated like an explosion.