Unbury Carol(96)

The gesture was familiar, the voice, too, and Moxie held his gun waist-high.

Molly…

“Come here, James…come heeeeeeeeere…meet my friend, Carrrrrolllllll…”

“Molly?” he said, the craziness in his face softening.

“Moxie?” Rinaldo stepped toward his hero and, without looking, Moxie trained his gun on him.

Rinaldo stopped.

“I’ll wait here,” he said. “I’ll guard the grave.”

Moxie rode Old Girl to an old stone whose letters had evaporated over time.

“Come here, James…meet my friend…”

The woman’s hair and forehead were visible above a wide marker, but she vanished quickly.

Moxie followed. She showed and hid, showed and hid behind other stones.

Moxie followed.

He caught her behind a mausoleum.

“Come here…I want to introduce you to my friend…”

It was Molly. She was undressed. But it was not Molly as she looked the day he met her, the day she introduced him to Carol in a tavern.

It was Molly as she looked now, dead for so many years.

Moxie gripped the reins.

Her black hair looked like string woven into the wrinkles of her scalp. Her face, it seemed, had shrunk with death, her eyes far from her ears. She spoke his name and he could smell the individual letters. As she smiled, the bones of her face tore the garlic-thin skin that remained.

“Molly?”

She gestured for him to follow her. Something moved within her sagging gray breasts.

Moxie followed.

“Molly? Are you taking me to Carol?”

The guilt. The memory. The moment he met Carol.

Molly turned and for a breath Moxie saw that both her eyes were in one socket, the other empty and dark.

“I’ve always brought you to Carol…”

Like Moxie had acted childish for asking.

They passed the last of the graves and Molly continued ahead, into the pines that framed the grounds, then into the sunless forest that stretched from the grassy grounds to the homes of Harrows.

“Molly,” Moxie said, blinded by remorse. “I don’t want to meet her, your friend. I’ll do her wrong. I’ll hurt her.”

Young laughter from inside a tavern erupted, and the first real sign of the sun arrived.

“Come, James…you’re going to fall in love with her…”

Moxie led Old Girl around solid stumps and fallen logs. Molly led them both.

She’s taking you to Carol, he thought. Carol’s the reason you ride again. Go to her…follow Molly…go to Carol and wake her…tell her you’re ready to help her now…

The space between the trees grew smaller and Old Girl had trouble getting through. Molly blurred ahead, visible, then not.

Moxie called to her. “Wait!”

A crisped shoulder, the bones of her spine. Partial images shown, then taken away.

Moxie could still smell her, but he could see her no more. His name echoed off the bark of a thousand trees: the sweet singsong voice of the dead woman, asking him to follow, come on, come meet my friend, love awaits thee. As he cried out, sweat coursed down the sides of his open mouth, rivulets in the soot.

The sun was rising. The burial was soon. So soon.

Was Molly taking him to Carol’s box?

She must be. She must.

But as Moxie guided Old Girl between a pair of maple trees as thick as the columns of the Mackatoon Courthouse, as he entered a blossom grove, he saw there was no box in the clearing at the foot of the black cherry trees.

It was Carol herself instead.

She looked as she looked now: twenty years since last he saw her, since the day he carried the owlfly in a jar away from her house. Her bare feet crunched pine needles on the forest floor.

She looked so intelligent. So strong. So totally alive.

“Carol,” Moxie said, riding slowly toward her. “Carol, you’re awake.”

Carol smiled. Her face, her expression, the strength in her eyes, the independence in her posture: It was everything Moxie would have hoped she’d become.

He smiled, too, as he dismounted. Old Girl neighed and Moxie patted her on the side, as though telling her, We made it. We’ve reached the end.

Moxie stepped toward Carol.

Then Carol collapsed…



* * *



—

…When Manders showed him the Bellafonte, Dwight just about screamed. He thought something had gone wrong or was about to go wrong or that Manders was feigning niceties but ten lawmen were about to come out from the back room and shoot him without asking why.

“Incredible,” Dwight said, trembling, gaping at the ornate box displayed in the funeral home’s foyer.

“Any idea who it’s from?” Manders asked. He noted the thin line of a scratch on Dwight’s cheek.

Dwight turned to him, wide-eyed, then back to the Bellafonte. He didn’t know who sent it. And the existence of the thing scared him. Deeply.

“Well,” Dwight said, “it’s a beautiful piece of work. It’s…”

Don’t let them use it, Dwight thought.

Lucas and Hank walked in carrying a stretcher between them. Norman entered, too. Manders politely explained to Dwight that it was time to transfer the lady from his coach to the casket. Dwight agreed because he was afraid to say no. He followed them outside. As the diggers opened the coach door, Dwight held his breath.